The Myth of Southern "Military Tradition"

[IcarusPhoenix]

Personally, I feel that much of the success of early war eastern Confederate generals was less often about inherent strategic or tactical genius on their own part and more often due to an ability to exploit tactical errors made by their opponents.

However, the assertion often made that the Confederacy had a greater share of talent at the opening of the war or benefited from an alleged "military tradition" ignores something that has been discussed to death and that many of the more fervent proponents of southern arms don't really like to think about - the non-universality of support for secession within the seceded states.

Cullum's Register (a biographical register of all USMA graduates maintained to this day) shows that 330 of the 820 West Point graduates still in active service were from states in rebellion. Of those 330, 162 remained loyal to the Union. In addition to the 168 who joined the Confederate Army, there were an additional 16 active duty officers from non-insurrectionist states who did the same.

Of the 425 living graduates who had left the army in the years preceding the war, 145 were from insurrectionist states; 98 of these joined the rebellion, and the remaining 47 appear to have stayed out of military service to either side. Of the remaining 280 in civilian life from non-insurrectionist states, 1 joined the Confederate Army, and 114 returned to the US Army in one capacity or another.

This means the following:
-Of 1,245 total living West Point graduates, 283 (22.7%) served the Confederacy and 750 (60.2%) the Union, and the remaining 216 (17.3%) stayed out of the service.
-Of the 820 West Point-educated officers still in the service, 184 (22.4%) joined the Confederacy and 610 (77.6%) stayed in the US Army, while 26 appear to have left military service entirely.
-Of the 425 West Point graduates in civilian life, 99 (23.3%) joined the Confederate Army, 114 (26.8%) returned to the US Army, and 213 (50.1%) remained out of military service.
-Of the 475 living graduates from insurrectionist states, 266 (56%) joined the rebellion, 162 (34%) remained loyal, and 47 (9.8%) stayed out of military service.
-Of the 330 West Point-educated officers from insurrectionist states who were still in service, 168 (50.9%) joined the Confederate Army, and 162 (49.1%) remained in Union service.

In addition to these, a few of the 285 non-West Point officers serving in the antebellum army - many of whom were educated at private military academies - "went south". The Confederate Army received 56 such experienced officers (19.6%), while 203 (71.2%) remained in the Army and 26 (9.1%) resigned and served in neither army. Thus, of the total officer corps of the US Army at the start of the war - 1,105 men - 240 (21.7%) joined the Confederate Army, 813 (73.6%) remained in the Army, and 52 (4.7%) left the service entirely.

The Confederacy did have a larger proportion of privately educated officers available to them, both in an out of the army, most of these having been educated at VMI, supplemented by officers from The Citadel, NCMI, and a few smaller colleges. The north, by contrast, only had one large private military school, Norwich University. However, this difference ultimately was not enough to make up the above deficit of experience in the upper echelons, as very few of those graduates had ever seen active service (unlike their West Point counter-parts), most having never served in a military capacity outside of their local militias.

It is worth noting that VMI was by far the largest private military school, and was so large that it actually turned out much larger gradating classes than West Point; there were 1,902 living graduates at the war's opening, despite VMI being only twenty-two years old at the time. While 1,791 would serve in the Confederate Army and only 19 in the Union (92 not entering military service on either side), only 12 rose to the rank of general. The next-largest military school in the south (and third-largest overall), The Citadel, only provided 175 officers to the Confederate Army - 6 of them generals - and as near as I can figure, none to the Union.

The second-largest private military college - and only sizable one in the north - was Norwich University, which provided the Confederacy with 34 officers and the Union with 523.

Thanks to the massive numbers of VMI graduates, it does appear at first blush - and without proper examination - that the Confederacy did have a larger combined pool of trained and/or experienced officer talent from which to draw at the beginning of the war, approximately 2,400 men (75% of them VMI grads) to the Union's approximately 1,800. Certainly one could argue whether or not VMI, Citadel, or Norwich graduates were as well-trained as their West Point counter-parts, but I think the war certainly demonstrated that they did indeed have equal or near-equal potential, at least at the company and field levels.

That being said, experience matters, and in this, the Confederacy was woefully outmatched. Less than a quarter (about 500) of their trained officers also had any real military experience, whereas more than half (around 1,000) of the trained Union officers did. When experience becomes the primary factor considered - which it should be when it's the beginning of hostilities and your armies and officers as yet lack combat records with which to compare their merits - then the Confederate Army's seeming 4-to-3 advantage in officers becomes a very concerning 2-to-1 deficit. Put simply, the insurrectionists had a surplus of potential lieutenants, but a dearth of potential colonels.

Ultimately, the Confederacy had a comparative deficit of properly experienced officers at the beginning of the war, but they had one huge advantage as well: Jefferson Davis. Davis - as something of a control freak - got intimately involved in military organization and administration to an absurd degree, but the benefit of that was a far better utilization of existing military talent at the beginning of the war, while Union talent often still had to earn their way to the top over time alongside talented amateurs and the politically well-connected. The downside, of course, was that Davis' frequent inability to see past his personal disputes meant that his micromanagement of the Army went from an minor advantage at the beginning of the war to an increasing handicap as the war dragged on.

In short, the Confederacy did not have superior military leadership available to them; far from it, in fact. What they did have was far superior allocation of the talent they had at the very beginning of the war.

Additional references for above numbers:
George W. Cullum: Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy
Ezra J. Warner: Generals in Grey
Ezra J. Warner: Generals in Blue
Herman Hattaway & Archer Jones: How the North Won

Postscript: Incidentally, of the approximately 15,000 enlisted personnel in the US Army when the war started, only 26 (er, <0.2%?) are documented to have deserted to join the Confederate Army. Part of that may have had to do the fact that an officer could "resign" while an enlisted man would be counted as a deserter, and part of that may have been a class difference; officers were generally formally educated and politically active, while enlisted men were usually more apathetic about political matters.

 

[diane]

I particularly like the 'experience matters' notation. Civilian soldiers Wade Hampton and N B Forrest were well in that category even though neither of them had a formal military education. Southern society was rumored (and fairly well founded rumor at that!) to be a violent one, particularly the further west you went. The Old Southwest, consisting of very recently ceded lands in Mississippi and Tennessee, had a strict code of honor that served as a policing device as there wasn't much law available. A cracker cavalier like Forrest, lacking education and a genteel background, excelled in what amounted to para-military training in the use of various weapons and physical training that amounted to martial arts. Hampton was particularly good with this - he was huge all around. Killing bears or slicing the ears off a cougar were demonstrations of skills they didn't teach at West Point. And, they were slave owners. Hampton had huge numbers of them and Forrest was a trader. This meant he knew how to get a large number of people from one place to another quickly and with food and supplies in sufficient quantity. Hampton, too, knew these kinds of logistics. It makes you squeeze your eyes shut and grimace, but slave owners (the more the better) had skills of experience one didn't get formally that was extremely useful during the war. This included psychological skills - such as how to get men who hated you to do what you wanted.

 

[jgoodguy]

I particularly like the 'experience matters' notation. Civilian soldiers Wade Hampton and N B Forrest were well in that category even though neither of them had a formal military education. Southern society was rumored (and fairly well founded rumor at that!) to be a violent one, particularly the further west you went. The Old Southwest, consisting of very recently ceded lands in Mississippi and Tennessee, had a strict code of honor that served as a policing device as there wasn't much law available. A cracker cavalier like Forrest, lacking education and a genteel background, excelled in what amounted to para-military training in the use of various weapons and physical training that amounted to martial arts. Hampton was particularly good with this - he was huge all around. Killing bears or slicing the ears off a cougar were demonstrations of skills they didn't teach at West Point. And, they were slave owners. Hampton had huge numbers of them and Forrest was a trader. This meant he knew how to get a large number of people from one place to another quickly and with food and supplies in sufficient quantity. Hampton, too, knew these kinds of logistics. It makes you squeeze your eyes shut and grimace, but slave owners (the more the better) had skills of experience one didn't get formally that was extremely useful during the war. This included psychological skills - such as how to get men who hated you to do what you wanted.

Good points. The Western Union soldiers were like that too. One reason that the Union West kicked ass while the effete city boys of the East sort of stumbled around.

 

[diane]

Good points. The Western Union soldiers were like that too. One reason that the Union West kicked ass while the effete city boys of the East sort of stumbled around.

That's true - Forrest had zero respect for Eastern cavalry and they'd given him no reason to have any! But those from the West were another matter - they had the same skills he had and weren't cowed by him. He once grumbled the war would have been over in a year if the Westerners had stayed home!

 

[jgoodguy]

Ultimately, the Confederacy had a comparative deficit of properly experienced officers at the beginning of the war, but they had one huge advantage as well: Jefferson Davis. Davis - as something of a control freak - got intimately involved in military organization and administration to an absurd degree, but the benefit of that was a far better utilization of existing military talent at the beginning of the war, while Union talent often still had to earn their way to the top over time alongside talented amateurs and the politically well-connected. The downside, of course, was that Davis' frequent inability to see past his personal disputes meant that his micromanagement of the Army went from an minor advantage at the beginning of the war to an increasing handicap as the war dragged on.

On balance, IMHO Davis was a huge deficit for the CSA.

My observation is that for both sides, it was on the job training. Also the South was fighting for independence which gave them a morale advantage over the Eastern Union armies. OTOH the Caliver world view of the South encouraged waste of precious resources.

 

[jgoodguy]

He once grumbled the war would have been over in a year if the Westerners had stayed home!

I agree to a great extent. However Lincoln was from the West.

 

[IcarusPhoenix]

It makes you squeeze your eyes shut and grimace, but slave owners (the more the better) had skills of experience one didn't get formally that was extremely useful during the war. This included psychological skills - such as how to get men who hated you to do what you wanted.

This is certainly an aspect not addressed above that was certainly to the advantage of the slaveholding states. This, however, was possibly less of an advantage in an American volunteer army of free (and free-minded) citizens than it would have been in the more flogging-happy conscription armies of Europe. Indeed, one issue Confederate slaveholding officers found they had early in the war was that their soldiers often refused to do the basic non-martial duties

It's also worth noting that a man like Forrest certainly had the necessary traits of a good guerilla on paper, but whether he appeared at first blush to have the more formal military talents he later turned out to possess is more debatable.

On balance, IMHO Davis was a huge deficit for the CSA.

Certainly in the long run, absolutely. I do feel that in the first few months of buildup to war, his knowledge of the men involved and his willingness to spend political capital to sustain men who were derided for various reasons by their superiors or inferiors and by the political classes or citizns was an advantage to building the army.

My observation is that for both sides, it was on the job training.

This is what I mean when I refer to "talented amateurs" being able to rise to the top over time. Of course, it's also worth noting that there wasn't a single officer in the county who had experience leading armies more than a fraction of the size this war would see. Even Winfield Scott had never commanded more than about 24,000 men.

 

[diane]

This is certainly an aspect not addressed above that was certainly to the advantage of the slaveholding states. This, however, was possibly less of an advantage in an American volunteer army of free (and free-minded) citizens than it would have been in the more flogging-happy conscription armies of Europe. Indeed, one issue Confederate slaveholding officers found they had early in the war was that their soldiers often refused to do the basic non-martial duties

It's also worth noting that a man like Forrest certainly had the necessary traits of a good guerilla on paper, but whether he appeared at first blush to have the more formal military talents he later turned out to possess is more debatable.

I agree the North didn't have this mentality. Forrest, as a slave trader, was always picking up and selling large lots of slaves all over the South, and sometimes had problems you'd meet in no other circumstances! His best man for gathering intelligence and scouting was his brother Bill, who also took care of picking up runaways. His prewar operations went throughout the South, from Georgia to Tennessee. Grant was particularly wary of the Forrest brothers - all of them were slave traders and all knew the tricks of their trade. He'd briefly owned one man - and he didn't like the fit of the shirt! But the whole twisted psychology of cajoling, threatening, rewarding, terrorizing - all these were honed while dealing with slaves and came in pretty handy (in modified forms but not really in some cases) in dealing with soldiers. The British navy it wasn't but not far off if the men pushed their luck!

 

[jgoodguy]

his is certainly an aspect not addressed above that was certainly to the advantage of the slaveholding states. This, however, was possibly less of an advantage in an American volunteer army of free (and free-minded) citizens than it would have been in the more flogging-happy conscription armies of Europe. Indeed, one issue Confederate slaveholding officers found they had early in the war was that their soldiers often refused to do the basic non-martial duties

This was true of the officers too. Soldiers had to do menial work that was relegated to slaves rather than the glorious fighting. Even a simple drill was resented because of the bias toward action. Officers also had to do jobs beneath their station.

 

[Kirk's Raider's]

I particularly like the 'experience matters' notation. Civilian soldiers Wade Hampton and N B Forrest were well in that category even though neither of them had a formal military education. Southern society was rumored (and fairly well founded rumor at that!) to be a violent one, particularly the further west you went. The Old Southwest, consisting of very recently ceded lands in Mississippi and Tennessee, had a strict code of honor that served as a policing device as there wasn't much law available. A cracker cavalier like Forrest, lacking education and a genteel background, excelled in what amounted to para-military training in the use of various weapons and physical training that amounted to martial arts. Hampton was particularly good with this - he was huge all around. Killing bears or slicing the ears off a cougar were demonstrations of skills they didn't teach at West Point. And, they were slave owners. Hampton had huge numbers of them and Forrest was a trader. This meant he knew how to get a large number of people from one place to another quickly and with food and supplies in sufficient quantity. Hampton, too, knew these kinds of logistics. It makes you squeeze your eyes shut and grimace, but slave owners (the more the better) had skills of experience one didn't get formally that was extremely useful during the war. This included psychological skills - such as how to get men who hated you to do what you wanted.

On the other hand the Confederate Army had a tremendous problem with it's soldiers defecting to the Union or becoming Unionist guerrllas so not all Confederate soldiers got the memo that they need to obey their slave owning generals. The only other army that I can think of that had the same degree of defections was the Soviet Army in WWII that had an estimated one million men serve in the German Army or SS in various capacities. Approximately 194 Southern white men served in the Confederate Army many who had previously served in the Confederate Army that equals at least ten percent of the enlisted total of the Confederate Army.
Kirk's Raiders

 

[diane]

Certainly not everybody in the South wanted to die for the Confederacy. Right off the bat they had a mini-insurrection in east Tennessee, and sent Ledbetter to straighten them out. That did not go well! Those folks couldn't win for losing anyway - if the Confederates weren't beating up on them, the Union was. The planters were so used to getting their own way they had blinders on, believing everybody would fight for their causes, but...pride goeth before a fall.

 

[O' Be Joyful]

they had a mini-insurrection in east Tennessee

Don't screw w/ them hard-scrabble mountaineers.

The Lost State of Franklin: How 8 Counties in East Tennessee Almost Became America’s 14th State

Back in the 1780s, eight counties in Tennessee almost became America's 14th state! Here is the strange story of the Lost State of Franklin.

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The True Story of the Short-Lived State of Franklin

Several counties in what is today Tennessee tried to form their own independent state

www.smithsonianmag.com

The flat-landers and the Tide-water a-holes always try to control everything.

 

[5fish]

In short, the Confederacy did not have superior military leadership available to them; far from it, in fact. What they did have was far superior allocation of the talent they had at the very beginning of the war.

What is the difference between superior allocation of talent and leadership? The Confederacy seems to have had better leadership in the East than in the West. It seems the Confederacy's military talent was in pooling in the east in Virginia. I think the question is why did the most talented officers end up in Virginia.

In the West it seems the Union had the greater military talent then the Confederates but this is all being done with hindsight.

I do not know why they allowed Lee to hog all the young talented officers. When it became obvious the West needed better leadership...

 

[diane]

Just a note, but Virginian Winfield Scott had great control over who was put in leadership positions in the 'old' US army. He was considered America's greatest soldier, so his suggestions were more than that! He did favor Southerners, in particular those from his home state, because he believed them to be more martial.

Lee sure did hog the good officers...and any general would have if he could have!

 

[Jim Klag]

What is the difference between superior allocation of talent and leadership? The Confederacy seems to have had better leadership in the East than in the West. It seems the Confederacy's military talent was in pooling in the east in Virginia. I think the question is why did the most talented officers end up in Virginia.

In the West it seems the Union had the greater military talent then the Confederates but this is all being done with hindsight.

I do not know why they allowed Lee to hog all the young talented officers. When it became obvious the West needed better leadership...

It may not be "worse" leadership in the west but maybe due to the fact that the USA had competent leadership that knew how to take advantage of their material advantage. I don't say that Grant and his minions would have defeated Lee early on, but they most assuredly would have beaten Johnston and Beauregard before Lee had a chance to take over.

 

[Joshism]

Personally, I feel that much of the success of early war eastern Confederate generals was less often about inherent strategic or tactical genius on their own part and more often due to an ability to exploit tactical errors made by their opponents

Successfully appointing your opponent's mistakes is a skill.

It may not be "worse" leadership in the west but maybe due to the fact that the USA had competent leadership that knew how to take advantage of their material advantage. I don't say that Grant and his minions would have defeated Lee early on, but they most assuredly would have beaten Johnston and Beauregard before Lee had a chance to take over.

I don't know about that. Grant, Sherman, and Thomas were learning as they went along too. Joe Johnston and PGT Beauregard were no Lee, but they weren't Polk, Pemberton, Pillow, or Floyd either.

 

[diane]

Learn as you go was quite the norm - which it had not been in the peace time army. It's really surprising how many really special generals were sitting at the bottom of the barrel because some senior officer didn't like the cut of their jib! Grant's boss Buchanan couldn't wait to run off Grant for smelling of whiskey one payday...and was exceedingly frustrated when the irritating subordinate won the whole war... That was the beauty of peace time politics in the army - you could more easily sabotage your competition. Lincoln just dumped the barrel out and said I know there's a decent general in here someplace...ah-ha! Come here, you... When Grant began to be famous, he took a quick trip back to the old home town...news of a fine victory was circulating and people began to point at him. "He won that battle? Him? Useless? I'll be..." And he would have stayed that way without Lincoln!