Originally aired on January 26, 1996 - In part 74 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson says that the Civil War is a classic example of the axiom that responding to change is a supreme test of national leadership. He says the struggle was a conflict for which neither North nor South stood ready.
#74 – The Enthusiasm of War (National Leadership)
Historian James McGregor Burns once noted: “War is a great engine of change; the more nearly total the war, the faster and broader the flow of change tends to be. But the shape and texture of the change depends on human beings and how they respond to the forces streaming around them. Responding to change is the supreme test of (national) leadership.”
The Civil War is a classic example of that axiom.
That struggle was a conflict for which neither North nor South stood ready. But then, America has never been “ready” for a war. There has always been in the American character an aversion to large standing armies, to a professional military, and to all the machinery that both require. It was no more different in the 1850s than it is in the 1990s.
Most Americans were astonished to find the country at war against itself in the spring of 1861. No one on either side had the vaguest idea how the war was to be waged or how, more importantly, the war was to be won.
Further, on both sides the notion prevailed that this civil war would be short. The Mexican War, which served as a natural reference point, had lasted only sixteen months, and it had resulted in the conquest of a country larger than the Southern Confederacy. The Franco-Prussian War of 1859 was over in three months.
Thus, after Fort Sumter, South Carolina, fell to Confederates in April, 1861, the New York Times predicted that what it called a “local commotion” down south would be put down in thirty days. The Chicago Tribune was more pessimistic: it thought the war might continue for at least two months.
Confederate estimates were even more unrealistic. Most Southerners felt open contempt for their Northern counterparts. Many believed that one Rebel could lick ten Yankees because (as one extreme Southern “fire-eater” exclaimed) “the Yankee army is filled with the scum of creation and ours with the best blood of the grand old Southland”.
Driven by misconceptions and sectional patriotism, men on both sides stormed to recruiting offices to become part of the great contest. A young Tennessean spoke for many when he commented: “I was a mere boy and tormented by feverish anxiety before I joined my regiment for fear the fighting would be over before I got into it.”
All wanted to serve, to fight, to gain that “red badge of courage” (as a battle wound was then called). Few in that first spring of hostilities thought about pain or suffering. If such things happened, they would happen to other soldiers. The possibility of death was too slim to be taken seriously in the face of the opportunity to fight for home, country, glory, and God.
That the Civil War would be clean and enjoyable was one of history’s great delusions. Those eager recruits of 1861 could not envisage the mud or choking dust, the bone-deep fatigue, the searing thirst and gnawing hunger, the bitter cold or enervating heat of the march or bivouac; the boredom of camp life; the gut-tearing pain of diarrhea or the delirious ravings of typhoid fever in some primitive army hospital; the smoke, noise, confusion, and terror of battle; the blood and screams and amputated limbs in the surgeon’s tent.
And so for three months – from the fall of Fort Sumter to the first major land battle at Manassas, Virginia, Americans lived in an illusion. In time, experience would replace excitement, reality would overcome revelry, and heartache would take the place of headiness. From the outset, inside the velvet glove of knightly courage and enthusiasm was the scarred, iron fist of war.
