The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy toward Southern Civilians, 1861-1865. By Mark Grimsley. 1997; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

            Lurid images of the destruction Union forces visited on the Southern home, exemplified by Sheridan’s campaign through the Shenandoah Valley and Sherman’s March to the Sea, burn brightly in American memory. That this aspect of Union war policy remains so persistently exaggerated and misunderstood makes The Hard Hand of War by Ohio State’s Mark Grimsley an indispensable addition to Civil War historiography. Grimsley eschews the complicated modern term “total war” in favor of “hard war,” a phrase actually used by Union policy makers and combatants which better captures the limits of Civil War destruction. Addressing Northern military policy toward Southern civilians, Grimsley charts the transformation from policies of conciliation to “war in earnest” to “hard war” in reactions to the failure of limited war policy and Confederate intransigence, in so doing challenging the mythology of wanton Yankee cruelty and destruction by characterizing Union policy as one of “directed severity.”

            Early war policy makers, particularly Winfield Scott and George McClellan, championed a policy of conciliation toward Southern civilians, including proactive measures to protect private property and avoiding any appearance of challenging the institution of slavery, measures which Abraham Lincoln adopted in hopes of winning the rebellious states back into the Union as quickly as possible. Conciliation seemed to have promise as a string of Union victories in spring 1862 seemingly spelt the doom of the Confederacy. The policy’s prospects eroded soon after, Grimsley argues, primarily because of the failure of McClellan’s Peninsular Campaign, and in part because of Union soldiers’ frustration with a “kid glove” policy to hostile civilians and because the Union’s contraband policy overshadowed conciliatory measures. In late 1862 and 1863, civilian policy morphed into a “war in earnest” as Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation struck decisively at slavery and as Union forces, particularly those in the Western Theater, found it necessary to sustain themselves off the fat of the land and to deal more harshly with Confederate communities abetting behind the lines. Union policy further intensified in 1864 as Union armies, in conjunction with Grant’s multi-pronged offensive, launched large scale raids into the Confederate interior, including Sheridan’s and Sherman’s famous campaigns. These raids served the purposes of targeting the Confederacy’s manufacturing, agricultural, and transportation means of supplying its troops as well as demonstrating to Southern civilians the inability of Jefferson Davis’ government to defend them, much the same goals (as Grimsley perceptively notes) as a medieval chevauchée.

            Grimsely makes a strong case for the relative restraint of even the hardest of the Union’s hard war policies, including the rarity at which occupied (i.e. not abandoned) civilian dwellings were burned and the dearth of outright crimes committed against civilians. Sherman’s decision to evacuate the inhabitants of Atlanta, unique as it was, affected a population that had by 1864 shrunk to a mere 3,000, and only about half of these actually complied with Sherman’s order. Grimsley does not gloss over regrettable instances of outright arson and plunder, yet he also reveals numerous Union soldiers deplored it as well. In one instance, amidst the plundering of Fredericksburg in December 1862 (after the town had been held by Confederate sharpshooters, driven out only after intense street fighting, a Union general invited the 1st Minnesota to loot the home of his Confederate brother-in-law. Instead, Grimsley observes, the Minnesotans “spontaneously established a protective guard around the house and saved it from destruction by other troops” (108-09). A subtheme of The Hard Hand of War actually testifies to the morality and restraint of the common Union soldier. The North’s “rank and file recognized and understood” policy distinctions between loyal, neutral, and rebellious Southern civilians in part because they were products of politically astute and values-oriented communities (185), “neither barbarians, brutalized by war, nor ‘realists,’ unleashing indiscriminate violence” (225).

            Grimsley further brings sophisticated analysis not only to actual Union policy and conduct but to its broader historical context as well. He pays considerable attention to the theories of military conduct based on European and early American precedent which guided policy makers. Notably, though the Union officially regarded the Civil War as a war against a rebellion, it treated Confederate soldiers and civilians as members of a state in all but name, rather than treating the rebellion as an insurgency which would have warranted harsher policies under the rules of war. Historical context from the Thirty Years War to World War II illustrates that Union hard war policy was notably tame and set hardly any true precedent in the evolution of “total war.” Grimsley reveals that American and European military thinkers saw little remarkable in the evolution of Union hard war policy immediately after the Civil War. Only reading history backwards from the tragedies of the twentieth century or distorted through the lens of the Lost Cause does the Union’s hard hand of war bear any hallmarks of “total war.”

Jonathan Steplyk                                                                         Texas Christian University

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The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861-1865. By Mark Grimsley. New York: Cambridge, 1995.

The American Civil War exhibited many unique characteristics seen for the first time or for the only time in United States military history.  One of the best examples of these distinctive occurrences can be found the policy towards southern civilians enacted by Union forces in the last two years of the conflict.  Prior to these years the military policy of the United States Army had been to keep military conflict as far from the civilian population as possible.  After the ascension of Ulysses S. Grant to command of the majority of Union combat forces though, the policy of the U.S. Army became to bring the war to the civilians.  In The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861-1865 Mark Grimsley explores how and why this policy came to be and the effect this policy change had on both Southern civilians and Northern soldiers. 

Grimsley argues that the unique nature of fighting a civil war as well as the increasing frustration on the part of Union commanders to bring the war to a close resulted in the shift in policy towards directly attacking the civil population of the South in order to detract from that groups will to support the Southern war effort.  Earlier in the conflict many Northern generals, especially those with Democratic Party affiliations, desired a conciliatory strategy aimed at enabling Southern Unionists to regain control of their states and bring their fellow civilians back into the fold.  A number of Union generals and Republican politicians believed the proper course rested in making continued separation from the Union undesirable, even on a personal level, for Southern civilians.  Grimsley finds some substantial evidence to maintain the latter argument on the grounds that because the conflict was a civil war it made the decision to support the war, on the part of all people involved, extremely personal and rigid.  Once a Southerner, even a civilian, chose the side of the Confederacy they had a vested political and individual desire to see the conflict through to the end.

Though the actions of the Union Army committed numerous excesses against Southern civilians the author finds the restrain shown by Northern soldiers especially telling.  Indeed it is interesting the number of times that Union raids and attacks on civil centers could have degenerated into mob violence and orgies of destruction.  Rather, those occurrences took place only a handful of times and in areas that exhibited extremely hard-line attitudes towards the Confederacy in general and support for Southern guerilla operations in particular.  On the whole, Northern soldiers exhibited generous amounts of compassion for Southern civilians and in their actions against the civilian population of the South tended to treat the situation in a, “it’s nothing personal, it’s only business,” manner.  Despite the lore of the South following reconstruction, few examples exist where Union soldiers wantonly destroyed Southern property just for the joy of doing so.

The Hard Hand of War is an important book in the historiography of the American Civil War as well as the study of wartime civil-military relations between the U.S. and the belligerent population.  Any serious student of either topic should read this book to help their understanding of the both the effects of war on the civilian population, and also how the civilian population effects the conduct of operations in the field.  Wars can be won and lost in the enemy’s homes as much as they can on the battlefield.  Mark Grimsley’s work showcases that fact in unique and insightful ways.

Joe Stoltz                                                                                                Texas Christian University

 

 

Mark Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy toward Southern Civilians, 1861-1865, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

             Sherman’s March to the Sea – alternately famous or infamous in history, generally depending on one’s geographic relationship to the Mason-Dixon line – was the culmination of a deliberate, evolution of a fundamentally Clausewitzian Union military policy. While innovative in some ways, Sherman’s tactics remained tethered to political goals and thus, though they involved substantial force directed toward some Southern civilians, exhibited restraint. Far from the modern concept of total war as the indiscriminate targeting of combatants and civilians alike, even the “hard war” policies of the Union army evinced “the continual working of a political logic [and] a deep sense of moral justice” (2).

            Author Mark Grimsley defines the Union’s first military policies as “conciliation.” From the outbreak of war in 1861 through roughly June 1862, proponents of conciliation – including prominent generals Winfield Scott and George McClellan – believed that a slaveholding oligarchy duped the Southern people into secession. This, in addition to existing philosophies of the nature of war and military experience gained from the Seven Years’ War through the Mexican War, suggested to planners that “Southern civilians should not be subjected to the direct burdens of war,” (22) lest they turn against the Union en masse. Yet, conciliation depended almost entirely on the shallow commitment of the Southern people to the war; while it seemed effective in western Virginia, this was an isolated pocket of Unionism and the policy did not bear similar fruit elsewhere in the South. Nevertheless, the strategy underpinned McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign – he hoped to siphon off loyalists throughout the South then crush the Confederate capital with one grand siege, brining an end to the war before divisive issues like slavery had to be addressed.

            Thus, Grimsley asserts, the major casualty of McClellan’s failure on the peninsula was the policy of conciliation. Indeed, Lincoln’s reassignment of McClellan was as much a repudiation of his timidity on the peninsula as McClellan’s conciliation philosophy as articulated in the Harrison Landing Letter. Meanwhile, Congress debated and passed the Second Confiscation Act, while Gen. John Pope ordered the Army of Virginia to live off the land and make it clear that communities would be held responsible for acts of insurgency from within their ranks. Such policies signaled to Southerners and Union officers alike that “pragmatism” had replaced conciliation as the Union’s official strategy. This dominated military policy from July 1862 through early 1864, and was pursued especially vigorously in the Western Theater. Grimsley defines this as “a program of relative mildness or severity depending on civilian behavior and the army’s military needs” (98). Thus, officers like Grant and Rosecrans authorized foraging in the west, but urged their soldiers (who, according to Grimsley, self-policed such behavior even outside official doctrines) to take first from combatant properties, then from lands of Confederate supporters. Rarely, if ever, would this policy willingly inflict harm on the properties of Union sympathizers in the South. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation demonstrated the move toward pragmatism not only in military conduct, but also in the Clausewitzian definition of war as a continuation of politics. Grimsley asserts that Lincoln had long sought emancipation, but by 1862 possessed the political capital to do so.

            Shortly thereafter, the Western Theater witnessed the first signs of evolution toward “hard war.” Grant at Vicksburg and Sherman at Jackson both attempted to deny their enemy supplies. Although this did not engage the enemy in a Napoleonic battle, their “attacks” on non-combatant property bore an indivisible link to a military aim – the eventual destruction of the enemy army. As Grant came to command all Union armies, this strategy directed his thinking. He directed Sheridan to defeat Jubal Early, but more importantly to destroy the “breadbasket” of the Shenandoah Valley. Additionally, Sherman cut a swath from Atlanta to the sea primarily because Georgians refused an opportunity to turn away from the Confederacy. Rather than risk long supply lines, Sherman determined to reposition his base at Savannah. Between the two cities, his army “burdened” Southerners with a punishment befitting their status as secessionists and sympathizers.

            Yet, Grimsley strongly denies this constituted “total war.” Rather than indiscriminate destruction of non-combatants and their property, even Sherman’s legendary march demonstrated restraint – in moving quickly toward the coast, he limited the damage his soldiers could practically inflict. Instead, Grimsley suggests the “Union army’s policy toward Southern civilians was one long exercise in [the] diplomacy [of “directed severity”]” (208). It was deliberately restricted, and its attacks on property more closely mirrored old European warfare than that of the coming century. Most interestingly, the relationship of “hard war” to a democratic society allowed the “morally aware citizen-soldiery” (225) to justify their destructiveness, yet it simultaneously, and effectively, checked such behavior.

 Matthew A. McNiece

 

The Hard Hand of War:  Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861-1865.  By Mark Grimsley.  Cambridge and New York:  Cambridge University Press, 1995.  Pp. xii, 244.

            Mark Grimsley considers the political ideology and military policies of Union soldiers toward Southern civilians in The Hard Hand of War:  Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861-1865.  The author describes the origins of the term “hard war” as well as the various phases of civilian treatment by Union soldiers during the Civil War.  While politicians initially directed the treatment of Southerners through military commanders in the early days of the war, reality dictated an evolution of military policy as the war progressed.  Tracing the development of military management in regards to civilian considerations, the author places the American Civil War into an international perspective by comparing “hard war” as it occurred in the South with other wars such as the Franco-Prussian War and World War One.  Grimsley successfully transformed his doctoral dissertation into an impressive study which clearly deserved the Lincoln Prize it received in 1996.

            Grimsley begins by describing the origins of civilian treatment as Federal politicians and Union military commanders saw it.  As a result of moral obligations, political rhetoric, and military successes, three distinct phases of Union military policy toward Southern civilians occurred during the Civil War.  The first phase followed naïve beliefs about the dedication of Southerners to the Confederacy and the perceived duration of the war.  This period of conciliation, as military and political leaders dubbed it, carefully attempted to spare white Southerners from the reality of warfare.  At the direction of the Lincoln administration, Union armies recognized the constitutional and property rights of civilians who had renounced their allegiance to the United States.  President Lincoln and many Northerners incorrectly assumed that the majority of Southerners remained halfheartedly committed to the Confederacy.  This policy formed the approach to Southern civilians from the beginning of the war until the summer of 1862.

            Following several military setbacks and the presentation of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in September, 1862, a new stage of civilian treatment commenced.  Once again, following the leadership of the Lincoln administration, an interim period of pragmatism regarded Southerners differently.  This lasted approximately from July, 1862, until January, 1864.  Adopting this attitude, Union commanders and soldiers began seizing Southern property only as it aided their military objectives.  Surprisingly, Union generals such as Grant and Sherman retained a considerable amount of control over their subordinates.  Throughout this phase, the Federal government and army informally issued a collective statement declaring that their “primary objective remained the restoration of the Union, not the devastation of the South” (3).  Inherent to that end was the destruction of the Confederacy but not necessarily Southerners.

            The final phase of civilian treatment by Union forces began in early 1864, a period Grimsley calls “hard war” rather than total war as some other historians have viewed it.  In the author’s analysis, hard war entails two main aspects.  First, any action by Union soldiers which resulted in the confiscation of Southern property or soldiers seeking to demoralize the civilian population or economy (particularly in the areas of industry, infrastructure, or transportation) serves as an example of hard war.  Second, the distribution of military resources to achieve a military objective, as Grimsley views it, also equates hard war.  This form of warfare against Southerners began under Grant in the West in 1863 and traveled with the commander when he moved to the eastern theater in 1864.  This final approach to civilians in the Civil War began in February, 1864, and lasted until the war’s end.

            Grimsley is quick to note the differences in the phases of civilian warfare.  First, differences did exist in the levels of loyalty by Southerners to the Confederacy.  The author differentiates between three categories of Southerners—overt secessionists, neutral/passive citizens, and Union sympathizers.  Each type of Southern citizen required different treatment when in contact with Union forces.  Second, political wrangling, moral debate, and military successes determined the nature and duration of the phases of civilian warfare in the western and eastern theaters.  The western theater, under Grant and Sherman, experienced more of the interim and hard war phases and little to no conciliation phase.  Under General Lee in the eastern theater, civilians encountered all three phases.  Finally, Grimsley analyzes the legacy of hard war in the United States.  He compares the experience of Southerners civilians to civilians in other conflicts from the German War for Unification to World War Two.  He concludes that “Union soldiers exercised restraint even as they made war against the Confederate civilian population” (224).

            Grimsley’s addition to Civil War and military historiography is a smooth synthesis of primary and secondary sources.  His consideration of the different levels of war against civilians is a remarkable approach to studies in military history.  Mark E. Neely Jr. did not exaggerate when he described this well-researched and well-written work as “one of the best books of Civil War military history published in twenty-five years.”

Dana Magill