Rather than ordering them to return to Washington as McClellan might have, admitting defeat, he merely sent them back down a transverse road to attack at another point. All that was left was a battle of attrition which the South could never hope to win.
Ambrose Bierce was one of the leading American literary figures of his generation, approaching the rank of his contemporary, Mark Twain. He was the only first class author to fight in the Civil War and to write extensively about it in both fiction and non-fiction genres. He enlisted as a private a few days after Fort Sumter fell and served until wounded in early 1865, reaching the rank of major. Decorated for bravery many times, he developed a keen sense for military strategy and the realities of war as a topographer on the staff of Sherman's army during its campaigns in Tennessee and Georgia. In one of his essays, he deflated popular romantic conceptions of the nature of the War:
War is made, not against the bodies of adult males, but against the means of subsistence of a people. The fighting is incident to the devastation: we kill soldiers because they protect their material resources -- get between us and the fields that feed them, the factories that clothe them, the arsenals that arm them.
Civilians then, are the true object of war: "the humane thing is to overcome them by means of hunger and nakedness. The earlier we can do so, the less effusion of blood." Bierce acknowledge that the Union had gone through a learning process....
"I speak of the latter part of the
conflict, when we had learned how to conduct military operations. As long as our main purpose was bloodshed we made little progress." Northern victory in the Civil War was inevitable because in modern warfare the means of production translate directly into military power. In this regard, the South was extraordinarily weak compared to the North. But the Union victory was only achieved when Northern commanders realized the true nature of the war and prosecuted it accordingly. By the end of the war, Northern industry was turning out unlimited quantities of repeating rifles, breech-loading artillery, and iron clad warships. The South had lost even its never very great capacity to make muskets. This disparity was at one and the same time the cause and effect of the Northern victory.
Works Cited
Bierce, Ambrose. n. d. "The Nature of War," in Russell Duncan and David J. Klooster, eds. 2002. Phantoms of a Blood-Stained period: the Complete Civil War Writings of Ambrose Bierce. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 309-10.
Elmer Ellsworth and the Zouave Craze. 2000. http://192.220.64.117/craze.html (Accessed Apr. 26, 2008).
Famous American Duels. 2005. http://www.law.gwu.edu/Burns/rarebooks/exhibits/duel_american.htm (Accessed Apr. 26, 2008).
Keegan, John. 1987. The Mask of Command. New York: Viking.
Kiley, Kevin, 2005. Napoleon Himself. http://www.napoleon-series.org/research/napoleon/c_quotes.html#war (Accessed Apr. 26, 2008).
Longstreet, James. 1908. From Manassas to Appomattox. Philadelphia J.B. Lippincott. http://books.google.com/books?id=UDkOAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=longstreet&ei=ogkUSOeqBqaiiwG0guDZBQ#PPA386,M1 (Accessed Apr. 26, 2008).
Scott, Beth F., ed. 2000. The Logistics of War: a
Historical Perspective. Maxwell AFB, Alabama: Air Force Logistics Management Agency. http://books.google.com/books?id=IA20xVTl-nEC&printsec=frontcover&sig=X75QNTqPtrFlsvz3FKEr3ry4CcE (Accessed Apr. 26, 2008).
Snell, Kelly. 2005. Influence of Napoleon on Civil War tactics and Strategy. http://www.civilwarhome.com/napoleontactics.htm (Accessed Apr. 26, 2008).
Steward. Dick. 2005. Duels and the Roots of Violence in Missouri. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.
Keegan 1987.
Steward 2005; Famous American Duels 2005.
Elmer Ellsworth and the Zouave Craz. 2000.
Snell 2005.
Longstreet 1908, 386
Quoted in Kiley 2005.
Scott, ed. 2000, 32.
Bierce n.d.This and following
quotes at 309.
