Introduction
The American Civil War was fought from 1861 to 1865. The Union faced secessionists in eleven Southern states grouped together as the Confederate States of America. The Union, or North, won the Civil War, which has gone down as the bloodiest war in U.S. history. The following presentation briefly covers some key events of the Civil War which have not been brought to light in mainstream academia; namely the role Russia played in the war by coming to the aid of the Union and the politics of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Lincoln, Russia, and Slavery
On September 22, 1862, just days after the federal army stopped a confederate advance at the battle of Antietam, Abraham Lincoln announced his plans to order the freeing of Southern slaves unless the Southern states returned to the Union. This decree had been held in abeyance for nine months awaiting a Union battlefield victory.
With no response from the South, Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. He proclaimed freedom for all slaves in Rebel-held territory. It was a purely political act, since obviously he had no authority in those areas. But it brought the issue of slavery to the forefront of the conflict. Lincoln later explained this pragmatic gesture by saying, “Things had gone from bad to worse until I felt that we had reached the end of our rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing; that we had about played our last card, and must change our tactics or lose the game. I now determined upon the adoption of the emancipation policy.” In other words, it was halfway through this fratricidal war that slavery became a central issue. The proclamation was a brilliant strategic maneuver as the citizens of neither Britain nor France would have accepted their nation's support of slavery – and it strengthened Lincoln's hand at home.
When Lincoln instituted the first military draft in 1863, there were riots in several major cities including New York. Between July 13 and 16 more than one thousand people were killed or wounded as army troops restored peace at gunpoint. After the passage of many years, it is easy to forget that Lincoln had an insurrection on his hands in the North as well as in the South. To control [this Northern] insurrection, Lincoln ignored the Constitution by suspending the right of habeas corpus, which made it possible for the government to imprison its critics without formal charges and without trial. Thus, under the banner of opposing slavery, American citizens in the North, not only were killed on the streets of their own cities, they were put into military combat against their will and thrown into prison without due process of law. In other words, free men were enslaved so that slaves could be made free. Even if the pretended crusade had been genuine, it was a bad exchange.
By the fall of 1863 Lincoln was becoming increasingly concerned with the foreign military presence in Canada and Mexico. His concern over the French in Mexico led to a hasty attack at Sabine Pass at the mouth of the Sabine River separating Texas from Louisiana. On September 8, 1863, a mere forty-seven Texas militiamen with six cannons chased off a flotilla of Union ships composed of twenty-two transports carrying five thousand Yankee troops escorted by four gunboats.
With France and Britain coming dangerously close to both recognizing and aiding the South, it was Russia's pro-North Czar Alexander II who tipped the balance the other way. After receiving information that England and France were plotting war to divide up the Russian Empire, Alexander ordered two Russian fleets to the United States in the fall of 1863. One anchored off the coast of Virginia while the other rested at San Francisco. Both were in perfect position to attack British and French commerce shipping lines. No threats or ultimatums were made public, but it was clear that should war come, the Russian Navy was in a position to wreak havoc. Without the inhibited effect of the presence of the Russian fleets, the course of the war could have been significantly different.
Due chiefly to the presence of these fleets, coupled with the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation on their constituents, Britain and France declined to intervene for the South as planned. By early 1865 the South had been bled dry, both in men and materials. The Mississippi River was in federal hands and Union general William T. Sherman had cut the Confederacy in two with his infamous “march to the sea” through Georgia. The [Confederate] nation was able to keep an army in the field only because of the matchless endurance and determination of its surviving soldiers. Opposing it was a nation which the war had strengthened instead of weakened – a nation which had had the greater strength to begin with and which had now become one of the strongest powers on the globe. The war could end only as it did. The Confederacy died because the war had finally worn it out.
Conclusion
The blood cost of the American Civil War was horrendous – the 365,000 Yankee deaths combined with 258,000 Confederates totaled more dead than all other U.S. wars combined. And the financial cost was staggering. At the end of 1861 government spending was $67 million. By 1865 this number had grown to more than $1 billion. The national debt, which was a mere $2.80 per capita for a population of 33 million in 1861, rose to $75 per person by 1865. It was estimated in 1910 that the total cost of the war, including pensions and the burial of veterans, totaled almost $12 billion, a preposterous sum at that time.
Abraham Lincoln himself was also aware of the cost of the Civil War and had a keen insight into the economic machinations of America during his presidency. After the passage of the National Banking Act of 1863 and shortly before he was assassinated Lincoln said:
“I see in the future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country; corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed.”
His
prophecy is all but fulfilled.
References:
Marrs, J. Rule by Secrecy. (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 2000).
Elsom, J. Lightning Over The Treasury Building. (Hawthorne, CA: Omni Publications, 1941).
