The Uniqueness Of The Civil War In America

In both its topography and its viciousness, the Civil War is still immensely unlike the other conflicts experienced by Americans since that war ended. The extensive effect of the war on the population, the economy, and the land proves that the consequences of the Civil War were felt as much on the home front as it was on the battlefield. In some ways the US civil war was like any other. It was an extremely bitter and remorseless fight by both sides. It rent families and whole communities. It spawned sectional bitterness that lingered for generations. Some would say they are manifest today. It brought out the absolute worst in people who were formerly neighbours, driving them to unheard of cruelties to soldiers and civilians alike. It gives the lie to the term “civil” war. It was anything but civil, especially toward the end.

But it was also unique in several ways. It was perhaps the first truly modern war, one that brought to bear the full weight of virtually every major innovation inspired by the industrial revolution. Steam propulsion, factory-based mass production, electricity, steamships, railroads, the telegraph, canned foods and the gas-filled balloon were not new. They had been developed over nearly a century in Europe. But the US essentially put them all to work in waging war that turned killing into the output of an industrial process. They pioneered the idea of total war that would be borrowed back by Europe and seen at its most horrific in 1914. It was also unique because it was fought entirely over abstract ideas. In part it was a family quarrel over the principle that a State formed by the consent of its constituent parts could not be divided. It was a marriage for life. Divorce was simply not an option. It was also fought over the idea that no man may own another. Men were prepared to die in their hundreds of thousands for political and social ideas. And ironically, both combatants based their quarrel on the same document that had birthed them in the first place - the US Constitution.

It was the first truly democratic war, a truth that is often overlooked. Democracy was of course rooted in ancient Greece. However, its organization at a national level - the idea of the “nation state” - had never before been tried and tested in this profound way. And it was organized and prosecuted by democratically elected polities on both sides. In terms of military innovation, the Civil War also foreshadowed the kind of wars that would be fought throughout the world in 1914, and again in 1939. Entrenchments, sandbags, bunkers, wire entanglements, breech loading repeating rifles, landmines, aerial reconnaissance, the tactic of fire and movement, the machine-gun and even terrorism were all pioneered in this fraternal slaughterhouse.

At the war's end, President Lincoln, understanding the depth of bitterness and despair that lingered in the South, adopted a policy of reconciliation expressed in his admonition to General Grant: “Let’em up easy”. Unfortunately, he was assassinated before he could see it through. The mantle was tossed to Vice-president Johnson who tried but was outflanked by the hardliners in Lincoln’s Cabinet who turned reconciliation into “reconstruction”, a mere veil over their agenda of retribution on the former rebels. They imposed a military occupation on the South that lasted eight years, along with radical reforms to their political institutions designed to embed Republicans in positions of economic and political power. They gave birth to the lingering image of the money grasping Northern “carpetbaggers” descending on the Southern States to reap profits from their misery. No matter what one's viewpoint may be on the rights and wrongs of the war, this program of political and social repression merely sowed a legacy of sectional bitterness and delayed the actual “reconstruction” of the South until well into the 20th century.

In summary, the Civil War was decidedly uncivil in its highly organized and systematic brutality and sheer scale of destruction. It was equally uncivil in the betrayal of Lincoln’s plan for reconciliation by the radicals’ harsh treatment of the defeated States for nearly a decade after Appomattox. It was the first truly industrial war. And it was a test-bed in the ways and means of mass slaughter that presaged later global conflicts. It's proof of the French axiom that roughly translated says: “The more things change, the more they stay the same”.