The Rest Is History - 201. American Civil War: Outbreak

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

Welcome to the second episode in The Rest Is History's 'American Civil War' series. The release schedule of the remaining two episodes is as follows: Gettysburg (Thursday 30th June) Aftermath & Legacy (Monday 4th July) However, members of The Rest Is History Club get all episodes RIGHT NOW, so head to restishistorypod.com to sign up. In today's pod, Dominic, Tom and historian Adam Smith discuss the opening exchanges of the war and the tactics both sides used. They also look at some of the big characters including Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, and ask whether there was ever any realistic chance of the European nations joining the conflict. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Let the consequences be what they may, whether the Potomac is crimsoned in human gore and Pennsylvania Avenue is paved ten fathoms deep with mangled bodies, or whether the last vestige of liberty is swept from the face of the American continent, the South will never submit to such humiliation and degradation as the inauguration of abraham lincoln that's just chilling with my chilling that superb

american accent i mean i didn't even try and do an atlanta accent there but because that was that was written have you been to georgia i'll come to that in a minute that was that was from the atlanta newspaper the southern confederacy in august 1860 um i have been to savannah oh that's very georgia yeah so yes i have but you clearly didn't pick up the local dialect no i didn't i'm afraid um so many apologies to um all americans from the south who may be listening to this um i put my hands up i can't do it i really apologize um but it's we wanted to read that because i mean it is a i mean it's a kind of the death knell for the uh the peace that it held and the sense of kind of the carnage that is to come. And it's a perfect introduction to part two

of the episode we're doing here on The Rest of History on the American Civil War. And in the first part, Adam Smith, great scholar of the period, took us through the causes of the war. And Adam, you took us up to the firing on Fort Sumter and the establishment of the Confederacy with its capital at Richmond. At what point

do you think it becomes absolutely clear that there is no way back? Is it the firing on Fort Sumter? That's what's traditionally said, isn't it? Or even after that, might it have been possible to pull back the dogs of war? No, I don't don't think so because by that point the this new confederacy had um this huge burst of self-confidence you know they they pulled it off they pulled off what seemed to be what may seem to us to be the most extraordinary thing to create a a new slave holding republic in the middle of the 19th century, but they'd done it. And what were the chances that the United States, with virtually no standing army, and what army it had, was kind of strung out, policing the frontier, Native Americans?

What chance had they got of subduing militarily an area that's the size of Western Europe? How were they going to manage that? Do they think that there simply won't be a war that people in the north will just accept it i think there's definitely many southerners who hope that because they have a pretty low opinion but do they think it i think some of them who thought it yeah some of them calculated that the north was too divided um that it was made up of this polyglot. We didn't talk in the last episode about immigration,

but that's actually part of the story here, this big-scale immigration of Catholic Irish mainly into New York and Boston and Philadelphia in the 1850s. And Southerners look at this, and the Germans come in as well, and the Southerners look at this and the germans come in as well and the the southerners look at this and they think you know this this polyglot conglomeration of greasy mechanics you know they don't know how to handle a gun they've got they've got no clue they've got no capacity there's no political will so they're not going to be able to fight us and but if there is a war there'll be one great climactic napoleonic style battle and clearly we'll win it and it'll be job done.

But Adam, I mean, the question that always has been on my mind is why, and I mean, a lot of Americans will say, oh, it's obvious, but I would say to an outsider, to a non-American, it's not obvious. The northerners hate slavery. They think slavery is corrupting. They think the South is sunk in sin, is steeped in sin sin why don't the northerners just let the south go i mean why don't they just say okay sod you set up your tin pot confederacy we've got you know billions more factories than you we're much more prosperous we're much more productive we're not corrupted by slavery you'll sink like a stone and then you'll

come begging to us in 10 years please can, can we come back into the union? I mean, why don't they do that? Yeah. I mean, it's a question I've been asking for 20 years, actually, Dominic. I mean, I think you're absolutely right. It is the question. Because I think the other side of it, which is not hard for me to explain why Southerners wanted to secede. There's a lot much more being written about that question.

And to me, it's not really a mystery at all i think they're absolutely given their own given the situation they were in by 1860 i think they were quite right to roll the dice and the southerners the southerners yeah it's like i mean it it turned out really really badly for them but i think i can totally see why given the election of lincoln they were going to be they were going to be a lot more republican presidents potentially where he came from given the shifting shifting demographics, given the electoral system. And it's really hard to maintain an oppressive system of human enslavement. You've got to know that the polity that you are existing in respects and is going to uphold the idea of property in human beings. And if you've got a president of your country who doesn't believe that property in human beings is legitimate, that's really, really bad.

So, you know, it makes it make complete sense. Now, there are lots of reasons why. But yeah, but hang on. The enslaved people can still escape across the north and then you won't have the Fugitive Slave Act to get your property as you think of it returned. But then they're saying well that wasn't working anyway so what have you lost really so it makes complete sense why southerners wanted to secede but your question why then did northerners respond to secession with a war to save the union is a right one after all i mean what would we do if uh when scotland votes for independence are you

gonna join up to fight for the union perhaps you will tom i don't know i think you've written quite passionately on this. Tom has got, I mean, I've been to Tom's house. He's got a whole room full of stuff, like ready to go. He's got like disguisery. Yeah, he's got it all. Well, actually, we've got a house on the north bank of the Tweed, just inside Scotland.

So it'll be a bridgehead. Fort Sumter. But yeah, I mean, obviously there's your example Adam right I mean okay so but anyway I've not answered your question here let me try and answer your question why why did I mean the word I mean suppose some people did say that let the southern let the erring sisters depart in peace it was a headline in the New York Tribune I mean there was that there was that sentiment but why not because in the end the point is this the united states is the last best hope of earth that's abraham lincoln's phrase it is and that and just think about that this is the last refuge for for humanity if the experiment in democracy of constitutional government is seen to fail, if the response to a duly constituted election is that half of the country

or almost half of the country throws its toys out of the pram and walks out, then the light of freedom will dim around the world but also a house divided against itself cannot stand so so if half the house goes and there's the rest the whole house may collapse so that's lincoln lincoln made that speech shouldn't he i think in the lincoln douglas debates that a house divided itself can't stand that's right isn't it but i mean 1858 why don't if the house so patently is divided why not just cut off the stand that's right isn't it but i mean 1858 why did if the house so patently is divided why not just cut off the bit that's the problem the rotten bits as it were and the rest of your house is going to be fine i mean that would be my argument in some ways if you're a northerner

you might well say listen we're a lot better off without those clowns they're bad people they've got slaves you know they're backward because that's what a lot of northerners thought about the south right they thought they were backward and kind of fly bitten and and all this sort of stuff um i mean i would say it still is quite baffling that you're prepared to lose you know lose what is it more than 300 000 northerners die in the civil war to force these people to be back in their their country yeah yeah yeah um and you you've got i mean i agree i think it is baffling it's something i've really i've been struggling with for 20 years i mean you you have american listeners they can write in and tell you why us three brits asking

this question what what we're missing and why it's all so ludicrous that we're even asking the question but the answer must have something to do with the idea of the union yeah it must do and what that promise of the revolution and the declaration of independence represents i mean it's it's it's kind of very on brand now to to sneer at the idea that there was a kind of moral imperative behind the union in the civil war that it's couched in overtly cynical terms and yet this i i can't understand why they would have done it unless a certain sense of kind of an identification of their cause with what was best not just for the north but for the united

states and for the whole of the world yes it was in play i mean it's it's yes you've put that very well that's exactly what they said repeatedly and i think that's exactly what they thought. I mean, the flip side of that was the humiliation they said they felt, how diminished they felt on the world stage as a result of secession. That this was a necessary project in order, the fiery trial through which they now had to pass was necessary in order to prove themselves as a real nation on the global stage. Adam, we've been talking about it so far as though North and South are absolutely distinguishable, or as though in effect, they have become two separate countries. But of course, we call it the American Civil War. And that implies, you know, institutions and even families

being divided. And i suppose an obvious institution that does end up divided would be west point which is the great u.s military academy where large numbers of of graduates and officers who are commanding heights of the u.s army have to decide which which of the two sides they're going to go for um and i suppose the emblematic figure who has to make his mind up is perhaps the most famous general of all, perhaps from Ulysses S. Grant, which is the guy who ends up leading the Confederacy, Robert E. Lee. So what's his background? And how does he come to choose the Confederacy over the Union?

Because he actually gets offered the leadership of the Union, doesn't he? He does, because he's regarded as one of the most able officers in the United States Army in 1860, 1861. He is a career army officer, but he's a Virginian. We mentioned him in the last episode. He was the guy who arrested John Brown when Brown launched his raid on Harper's Ferry in Virginia to trying to distribute the guns from that arsenal and set off a slave interaction. So, you know, the story about Lee that has been told down the generations and that is much cherished by, you know, has been much cherished, still is by white Southerners, is that he was in an agony of indecision. You know, what should he do? You know, he's, after all, he's an officer of the United States. So he's sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. But in his heart, he's a Virginian, and he's completely divided on what's he going to do. In the end, he can't bring himself to lead an army of invasion into his home state that's the story that's that's told about robert e lee well i think

that that is giving i think what that undersells is the extent to which lee like other elite white virginians was fundamentally committed to slavery well because his wife owns large numbers of plantations right yeah and slaves and yes he's he's fully married into he's part of a virginia dynasty that has owned uh slaves for uh generations he cannot he temperamentally culturally intellectually politically he is he loathes everything that this new insurgent radical Republican, as people would probably call it like him, black Republican Party represents. There's just no way, no way that Robert E. Lee was ever going to be comfortable leading the union army right because it's an important part of his brand that he's so he gets compared to a perfect british gentleman by a you know british observer during the war he's a kind of silver fox he's very stylish well that's the confederacy's brand though tom i mean that really is the confederacy's brand i mean i read in my children's history book

yeah i read in the 1970s that was the confederacy's and so that's what that could cavaliers yeah and that is why lee... Could have Cavaliers. Yeah. And that is why Lee is the kind of... I mean, he's, in a sense, the Prince Rupert of the Confederacy. He's the dashing Cavalier. He's the emblem of it. But in essence, he is doing it because he wants to keep his children's inheritance safe. And that inheritance consists of plantations and of human property. Yeah. And the vision of America that he understands and that he understands he's inherited from his ancestors who fought in the revolution is one that fundamentally includes slavery.

And as it were, what you know, why shouldn't it? Because that's what the republic has always done. And so he's standing against revolution, as he sees it. I mean, he could not conceive that a United States run by these new Republicans was going to be one that he would recognize. His world is about to end if the Republicans' vision for America dominates. And let's sort of pull back the camera back a bit. So by the summer of 1861, you have think 11 states in the confederate states of america um they've got a population of nine million people three and a half million of them or so are slaves and they are against 22 states in the union so the rump union if you like our usa i suppose you would call them, with 22 million people, but massive advantages in mills, factories, railroads,

and all those things. We know now, everybody listening to this knows that the union wins. Just to go through those facts and figures, it makes it sound like, okay, it's just like playing out a board game. You know, you've got all the cards. We've got two questions which go together well.

One is Grant Rogers, why did the union army lose so many battles at first? Spoiler alert, they do. And Will Randall, did the South stand a chance and was the north always going to win so i think those those questions kind of go together really because it's it's the fact that the north doesn't um win a kind of crushing victory initially that enables allows the war to go on but sets up the question of was the north always going to win i think the north was always going to win if it could stay the course if the war went on long enough for it to bring to bear its advantages

in men and material and its diplomatic advantages and its territorial advantages and everything else if the war went on long enough but it might not have done it might have ended earlier than that so there are scenarios i think where you could which I think, which we can talk about. We can imagine scenarios short of the total military victory that the North in the end won. I mean, isn't that the only way they win, though, Adam, the total military victory? Because all the Confederacy has to do is just somehow plot along and keep keep going and they'll eventually win right because the north will settle and then so the confederate objectives are to persuade the north this isn't a war that they can that they can win in that total way that this it isn't worth the enormous cost so in the and therefore because the united States is a democracy, albeit only with, you know, with men voting and essentially white he had to do was to persuade ordinary northern people that this wasn't a war that was worth fighting that's what the south had to do what the north

had to do as you say dominic is to completely destroy the south which in the end uh was was what they did but it took them four years and it took them four years to marshal their superior resources so by the very end of the war by by the final year of the war, the North was fighting essentially a war of attrition, which it was pummeling the South day after day after day after day, often losing more men than the South in any given battle. But it could afford to do so. Yeah. Okay. So Adam, one other way in which people say that the Confederacy, I mean, wouldn't have been able to hold out perhaps, is if the European powers, and perhaps particularly Britain, had entered the war on its side. So you mentioned about the Confederacy sending emissaries to Paris and to London. What would have happened if either the French or the

British had come in on the Confederate side? And was there ever any prospect of that happening? Yeah, so this is kind of always the sort of deus ex machina for the South, right? This notion that there would be some foreign intervention. And after all, they knew how this would work, because they could look back to the American War of Independence, right? So there was a war in which a bunch of sort of scrappy colonials with no proper army defeated the world's leading military superpower. I mean, what were the chances of that? Well, one of the ways in which they did it, of course, was with French military help. So they had a template there, get the French involved again, or get the Brits involved.

And all of a sudden, you change the military balance. And they had, you know, they had good reason for optimism. I mean, after all, if, and it's obviously a very big if, you take slavery out of the equation, then what the Southerners were doing in 1861 was national self-determination. If you're a British liberal, you know, if you're Gladstone, liberal you know if you're if you're gladstone or or more to the point if you're a guardian you're richard cobden yeah you look at this and you're kind of you know your head explodes because national self-determination obviously good like

what's not to like about that um the southerners support free trade they're anti-protectionist that's obviously good um but on the other hand, they're slaveholders, that's a bit of a problem. And so British liberals were in this genuine dilemma at the start of the war. But the fact that at the beginning of the war, Lincoln and the Union said, well, this is not a war to end slavery. This is just a war to keep the Union together, meant that there was space in British liberal radical circles to say, well, okay, if this really isn't a war to end slavery, then, and maybe as, you know, as Dominic was saying earlier, maybe actually slavery will come to an end earlier, if it's kind of quarantined in this new confederate. And then we can apply sanctions, we can use economic influence somehow or other, potentially,

we can blockade them, we can stop imports of new slaves, maybe slavery can end more quickly. But also, Adam, isn't it the case that you could argue it's in Britain's strategic interest to them we can stop imports of new slaves maybe slavery can end more quickly yeah but also uh adam isn't it the case that you could argue it's in britain's strategic interest to break up the united states i mean there are all fear there are fears all through the 19th century that there could be war between the united states and british north america you know what becomes canada so surely i mean isn't there an argument from kind of Palmerston and people like that? Listen, let's pile in, smash it all up. Great for us. We're even more top nation than we were already.

The pesky colonials have been taught a lesson. And it's pretty much what the French are doing in Mexico, right? So we did an episode on the extraordinary French adventure in Mexico. And that basically is an attempt to try and set up a french zone of influence while the americans are distracted yeah since the french are already militarily engaged in in north america with this bizarre intervention in in mexico um napoleon the third is probably more likely to come in on in support of the Confederacy in the end than Britain. Everything you say is totally right, Dominic, about the kind of schadenfreude and the kind of gleeful enjoyment of the of the Americans going to war with one another in 1861.

But what the countervailing factors that meant that in the end, I actually kind of, you know, to answer your question, was Britain ever likely to intervene on the part of the Confederacy? I think no is the answer. What were the countervailing factors? Well, one of them was the City of London and the massive amounts of investment that had been made in United States railroads. And that all would have been put at jeopardy if Britain then had to go to war with the United States, which presumably would have been put at jeopardy if Britain then had to go to war with the United States, which presumably would have been the inevitable consequence of intervention in support of the Confederacy. And the second one in the end was slavery. In the end, as it became clearer and clearer that union victory in the war would deal likely an irreparable

blow to slavery, it became harder and harder to imagine how a british government would do anything to actively support a pro-slavery republic yeah and that among the liberals as you say that i mean they can't do it really can they deep down they can't pile in to support slaveholders because because although as cynical and as ruthless as lots of liberal politicians are they are as tom would say they are deeply christian and um well um i think we should take a break at this point uh when we come back i think we should look at the actual course of the war so we've we've kind of alluded to the fact that uh basically it's confederate successes all the way and effectively that establishes a stalemate.

I hope I've got that right. Tom, am I not right in thinking for any listeners who attempted to disappear, you're also going to be talking about cricket? Possibly, but I don't want to scare any remaining American listeners. All right, see you after the break. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment

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therestisentertainment.com dot com that's the rest is entertainment dot com welcome back to the rest is history we've been talking about the american civil war we've been talking about how it started uh why people chose sides and why britain did not get involved now adam um tom and i were discussing this before we started recording and the complexity we are not military historians by any means and the complexity of the sort of battle narrative i think our puny minds struggle to kind of explode yeah to compute explode so so am i right in are we right in thinking that basically this it's a stalemate for the first 18 months or so in which the confederates probably win more battles than the than the union is that about right the only problem i have with the word stalemate is that implies there isn't any movement any territorial gains and and and there is um so if you if you in

the in the western theater i mean the union makes some significant gains i mean new orleans um falls to well the union navy plays in Key World there in the spring of 1862. Much of the Mississippi Valley is under Union control. So I think stalemate would be an exaggeration. But if you look at the Virginia Theatre, so inevitably a lot of the battles were focused on this area between the two capitals, Richmond and Washington. And that was the place that it was easier for news reporters to get to. That was where Robert E. Lee was in by the spring of 62,

was put in command of Confederate forces, the Army of Northern Virginia. So that was the kind of, that was the glamour end of the war. And certainly throughout the spring and summer of 1862 it was the confederates uh in the driving seat all the way so lee is the kind of the poster boy but the other poster boy for that is um stonewall jackson tom loves stonewall jackson adam well i don't love i but tom has a very soft spot, I know I don't want to get you cancelled, Tom, because having soft spots for Confederate generals is quite dodgy. But I know you have a torn dress for Stonewall Jackson.

Well, so a question from Brad Smith. How should history view figures like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson? We'll come to that in due course. I think Stonewall Jackson is kind of an interesting figure, isn't he? Because the archetype of the Confederate general is, well, cavalier. Long hair. Long hair, kind of dashing, all that kind of stuff. Stable Jackson is slightly made of sterner stuff.

I mean, he is a more Cromwellian figure. He is, you know, he teaches black children at sunday school and all that kind of thing uh and the fact that he he gets the nickname doesn't he because um in the very first battle at bull run um there's the threat that the confederate line will give way and he stands still and he's compared to a stone wall um am i right in seeing him as as a kind of distinctive a distinctive figure or is he just part of this blur of kind of dashing morally dubious confederate generals there is something about stonewall jackson isn't that i mean my mother-in-law like you is a big is a big fan of stonewall jackson i just go on the record i wouldn't describe myself as a big fan

but he does seem an intriguing figure he is an intriguing figure he sucks lemons i believe yeah he goes into battle there's been a lot of talk about that hasn't there about whether he ate lemons or whatever yeah yeah and peaches as well i gather yeah um so yeah i i've never quite thought about it as he he complicates the the the cavalier um roundhead divide but you're totally right tom that he does because he is he is he's a kind of roundhead figure in a in a in a cavalier army and maybe that's what makes him stand out among confederate generals i never quite thought about it like that before but i think you're right but adam is it is it i mean so that the the stereotypical view and actually you get this right at the end of the war the surrender surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Ulysses S. Grant, the Union commander,

is all kind of muddy and shabby figure, and Robert E. Lear's in his best uniform and a nice hat and all this sort of stuff. And that's the 1970s kind of children's book version of the war, and the version that I think a lot of americans in the 20th century grew up with is that cavalier stuff i mean we can get in in a later episode i think to the lost cause the confederacy is that all just nonsense i mean these are slave owners these are slave holders these people some of the professional military men i mean they're not just sort of simpering gone with the wind style fops with big hair, are they? No, they're definitely not.

Whether or not it all falls depends on what you kind of want to do with this cavalier roundhead dichotomy because I think, you know, culturally, religiously, temperamentally, there is, I think, some truth in the notion that this is, is you know this is a forlorn um this is a what what seems in retrospect to be a full forlorn effort by people who are um defending a kind of older system of values uh against a more modern army so if you know if that's what you mean by the cavalier roundhead division then i think there is some truth to it. But of course, you're right that these people are, I mean, the officer class in particular, anyway, in the Army of Northern Virginia are overwhelmingly slaveholders or the sons of slaveholders.

But let's talk a bit about the experience of the first episode in his mark in his beautiful car marks quotation was about it as a sort of modern as it's the first modern war it's it's a war full of novelty but that makes it a horrible war isn't it as a soldier i mean is it too fanciful to see it as a little bit you know there's a lot of it's very first world war at times there's an awful lot of mud. There is, you know, you're being hit by shrapnel. There's a lot of disease behind the lines. The conditions are horrible. What do the men themselves think of it? It becomes more and more like the First World War.

So if we were transported now to outside Petersburg and Virginia in August 1864, we'd see entrenchments barbed wire proto machine guns we'd see um union mining engineers tunneling under confederate lines in order to blow holes underneath in order to try to engineer in advance, just like on the Western Front. It's also Napoleonic, right, as well, though. Right, exactly. Because you've got cavalry, you've got Custer, you've got Jeb Stuart. And that's why it's a classic transition war.

And so certainly through most of 1861, 62, 63, you wouldn't have seen much or any of that. You would have seen some entrenchments in some places, but you certainly would have seen some entrenchments in some places but you certainly would have seen uh cavalry charges and all through and really right up until the end of the war this continuing faith that bayonet charges the kind of cult of the bayonet charge as the great glamorous decisive moment that's going to that's going to let's wait because we'll talk about that in the context of gettysburg which perhaps we'll do in the next

episode um we've talked about the experience of men in the war could we also talk about the experience of women so one of the things that makes to go back to my old friend stonewall jackson interesting is that his sister is a very, very keen abolitionist and goes on the union side. So that's kind of representative perhaps of families divided. Is that common? Is there a kind of, you know, is that sense of a gender divide one that is common or is that distinctive to Jackson's family? And more generally, what is the role that women are playing? Because as I understand it, it's unusually heightened relative to earlier wars, the role that women play. Yes, women are very involved in both sides, in helping to undermine the war effort. So, for example, by the summer of 1863,

women on the home front in the South who were suffering severe shortages of bread and other basic foodstuffs, and in the context of massive Weimar Germany-style inflation, are out on the streets rioting and encouraging desertion from the Confederate Army in some places. But at the same time, they're also the embodiment, women are projected as being the kind of embodiment

of the patriotic cause on both sides. And so as in other modern wars, both the imagined reality of the role that women are playing, but also the actual material reality as nurses and as volunteers and as the people who are sustaining the war effort back home. Right, so people are running the farms and things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's hugely important.

So the men are away from home. They're riddled with disease. A lot of them presumably, I mean, prostitution. There must be camp followers with the two armies, Adam? Yeah, yeah. And General Hooker, of course, is supposedly the person who most encouraged or at least turned a blind eye to camp followers. And, you know, his name was attached to some of them. The word hooker comes from General Hooker.

Well, I've learned something absolutely splendid. That is fascinating. OK, so when people are not consorting with Ladies of the Night, of course, what they should be doing is playing cricket. I mean, everyone knows that. And cricket is very, very popular in the United States prior to the Civil War. Where does it all go wrong? Cricket is the forgotten casualty of the American Civil War.

And I'm glad that on this podcast, we're going to restore it to its central central place as you will know better than me Tom in in 1859 there was an England tour of North America I think they they played three matches against uh United States 22 uh in the Americans have twice as many players yeah they did and I don't know I mean tell me presumably they didn't have 22 people actually on the field they must have they had 22 people batting that would be too bad but only but only 11 but only 11 fielding england won all three of those matches anyway one in one in new jersey across the across the river from new york uh one in in boston one in philadelphia and they also played two matches against upper canada i think on the same tour and and cricket was indeed a very popular summer game and that England tour really kind of brought it into the public attention and the new illustrated press

was all over it and yeah it was a big thing and fast forward six years the end of the American Civil War and and cricket struggling and and and it's never really recovered. I think there was another England cricket tour in 1868. Is that right? But it didn't have anything like the same impact as the 1859 tour. And baseball has taken over, right? Baseball has taken over. And, you know, one of the reasons for this is that baseball is a quicker game. Yeah.

Also because it doesn't require – We can all agree. It's basically a children's game yeah also because it doesn't require it doesn't we can all agree it's basically a children's game isn't it i mean it's a children's game let's be let's be frank about it and it doesn't require because you don't have to um you don't have to you don't have to roll out a pitch because the ball doesn't bounce does it when you when you pitch in baseball the ball doesn't actually pitch uh so uh therefore um baseball was easier to play in in army camps um where um where it might have been harder to play cricket so i i do think this is there are if you search through the official records of the war of the rebellion um looking for which is the huge compilation of all of the reports written by you know by by officers throughout the whole of the

four years of the war there are a few scattered references to cricket um there were a few cricket games played between regiments um especially in the earlier of the war but it but it becomes it's eclipsed by baseball it's a terrible thing it's like the the the uh the cricket tour to uh france that was projected in 1789 the great events of world history keep getting in the way so so sad so sad so let's get back to the great events what happens over the course of 1862 so the very first episode we had carl marx looking at you know in in awe at the spectacle of these vast armies kind of ignorant armies clashing by night what is going on what can what

just give us a very quick kind of resume of what of the campaigning so um in the west the union army is making advances down the mississippi valley capturing new orleans which is really critically important because that cuts it in two right it doesn't it's not fully cut into until the summer of 1863 when Vicksburg falls. But the Union is making territorial gains in Tennessee and in Arkansas and in Louisiana. Meanwhile, in the east, in Virginia, Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia is kind of running rings around the the union army so so the first uh or not the first but the but the first union uh commander to make a serious effort to uh try to win the war is general mcclellan who has this idea that he will kind of float the union army down to the james river and advance on richmond from the east um along the peninsula.

Because otherwise he's got this problem. There are all these rivers that are running eastward, cutting off a direct north-south assault from Washington to Richmond. So this is his clever idea. But he is defeated by General Lee in what are known as the Seven Days Battles in the summer of 1862. And Lee then audaciously follows up on these important battles a slave state, but one that has not seceded. It's basically been held within the Union kind of by force of arms. incredibly um audacious effort but it goes back to this core objective of the confederacy that

we talked about earlier which is to persuade the north that this is not a war that in the end they can win because if they can win with this offensive campaign adam the war's been going on for more than a year lee presumably thinks if we can lay waste maryland you know smash the union arm is the union just give up they'll realize they can't ever beat us yeah he kind of also hopes as well that that maryland being a slave state will kind of rise up in support of the confederacy augment his army and he can then move further from maryland into pennsylvania maybe even into new jersey who knows did he did he hope to capture washington itself he said yes i mean i mean that was within the that would have been the you know the outside the most ambitious objective or at least to encircle washington because washington is very

vulnerable of course surrounded by slave states i mean it's a it's a federal district um which slavery um was legal on the eve of the war um there was one impossible to imagine that confederates could have encircled washington and that clearly would have been very, very dangerous for the Union. And the bloodiest of all the battles is Antietam. Is that right? Bloodiest single day. Yes. The Battle of Towton of the American history, as I like to think of it. Yes. Yes. And that's a battle that is essentially a really bloody draw. So that's very First World War. Well, except it was a battle in a day. So that's very First World War.

Well, except it was a battle in a day. That isn't so First World War, is it? Okay, all right, okay. General Lee had this incredible stroke of bad luck, which is that Confederate battle plans were lost by a dispatch rider and picked up by a Union spy. And so General McClellan, the Union commander, actually knew exactly where the Confederate army was going to be. It gave them a huge advantage.

Even so, it was less than a fully decisive Union victory, but it still stopped this kind of sense of kind of awe-inspiring inevitability of dramatic southern victories because Antietam was definitely not that. And as a result of it, Lee's army retreated back into Virginia. But the other big result of it, I guess, is that... So we talked about Abraham Lincoln a lot before, and we haven't talked about him so much in this episode, but all this time Lincoln has been chafing, hasn't he? Because he wanted MacLennan, his commander,

to wage a much more sort of total war McLennan was sort of wittering about fighting a war on Christian principles and being kind to people and stuff and not attacking the mind strategy yeah which obviously Lincoln thought was a complete dead loss didn't he because Lincoln is much more clear-sighted but Lincoln you mentioned before Lincoln had said at beginning, it's not a war to end slavery. I mean, an extraordinary thing to say when we look back at it now, when we think of the war as a war to end slavery. So has Lincoln been itching for an opportunity, for one victory, so that he can change the terms of the war?

Or do you think, Adam, or does he issue, because he comes to issue the Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves, does he do that in desperation? Or does he do that because he's always wanted to do it? He has always wanted slavery to end. But it's not that he had a clear plan in his mind from the outset of hostilities. If, let's just imagine, McClellan had been a better general, or General Lee had been a worse general, and the Peninsular Campaign in the spring of 1862 had been a better general or General Lee had been a worse general and the Peninsula Campaign in the spring of 1862 had been successful and Richmond had fallen in May or June or July of 1862. And let's just imagine that if that happened, that was such a morale blow to the South that several southern states said, okay, the game's up. Let's rejoin the union.

If that had happened and somehow the war had come to an end, then slavery still would have existed. And Lincoln would have had to put up with that more than put up with that. Lincoln would have regarded that as a great political victory. His struggle against slavery, no doubt would have continued. He wouldn't have changed his mind about slavery, but the war could easily have come to an end if it had if it had saved the union or could have come to an end if

there'd been a way of saving it while still while slavery remained intact lincoln said as much in terms in a letter he wrote to a northern newspaper editor horace greeley in which he said if i could save the union by freeing all the slaves i would said, if I could save the Union by freeing all the slaves, I would do it. If I could save the Union by freeing some of them and leaving others alone, I would do that. If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves, I would do that too. So the Union genuinely matters more to him. What he's doing is saving the Union.

Now, the thing is, when he wrote that letter, though, he had already written and signed a draft of the preliminary emancipation proclamation, but he'd locked it in his desk drawer. He hadn't made it public. So even while he's saying everything I do, I do to save the union, he knows the way this is going. And the reason why he hadn't, this is in the summer of July, August 1862, and the reason why he hadn't made the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation public at that point was precisely because, as you just said, Dominic, it might be perceived as desperation. Right. And then maybe it would be counterproductive. Maybe then it would actually convince European powers that, oh, my God, if they're needing to do this, then the Union is really on the back foot. And so perhaps they kind of win a victory in September at Antietam in Maryland,

which you've just been talking about. And so it's on the back of that that Lincoln issues this preliminary emancipation proclamation. And we were saying before that lots of people were abolitionists and yet were very racist. And, of course, there are lots of people in the North who probably aren't abolitionists, as so often in history. There are probably lots of people who couldn't care less about slavery

one way or the other. Are they alarmed by such a revolutionary – I mean, given everything we talked about in the first episode, this torturous, gruelling argument about the future of slavery, and suddenly Lincoln is like, bang, right, that's it. Through executive action, I am emancipating all the slaves. Getting abolitionism done. Yeah, let's get abolitionism done. He's on his bloody Boris thing, smashing through the polystyrene blocks.

Are there not people who say, oh my God, what a usurpation of executive power, he shouldn't have done this? Or have they all become so radicalised by the war that they don't care anymore no there are loads of people saying exactly that in exactly in exactly that language he's politically very very divisive and of course he does it just before the midterm elections in which the republicans then lose a bunch of seats to the democrats in the north and lose some key the the new york governorship for example goes is won by a Democrat who's opposed to the emancipation policy. He's not really getting emancipation done though anyway. What he's actually saying in the September preliminary emancipation proclamation is, if this war is still going

on on the 1st of January 1863 in three months' time, if the southern states are still pretending that they're outside of the union, then at that point, I will regard enslaved people in those areas still in rebellion as free. That's what he's actually... So what he's not doing is to free... I mean, there are, in fact, when it comes to it, some tens of thousands of enslaved people who are directly freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. But in fact, what he's doing is declaring free those slaves who are not in union control and not freeing those slaves who are in union control. And there are still, after all, at this point, four states where slavery is legal that are still in the union for border slave states. So Jefferson Davis, who is the president of the Confederacy and his pals, how do they react to this?

I imagine with ecstatic joy. They regard it as the most dastardly thing ever done in the long annals of human warfare. But the levels of despicable desperation on display by this emancipation policy appalls them. It is their ultimate nightmare. It's everything they've always feared about this jacobinical black Republican Party.

And so presumably that makes their determination to fight on even more resolute. Yeah, because there can be no settlement. Likewise, it gives to the union, to those fighting from conviction for the union, a sense that they are engaged in what we might call a crusade. Yes. And so therefore it,

it sets up, sets us up for 1863, which in many ways is the kind of the, the fulcrum of the, the entire war, which I think we should look at in our next episode. Tom, I thought you were going to ask another question, but actually that was a beautiful segue into the end of the episode.

It's very nice. Shall I carry on? This is for broadcast. I'm complimenting you. Oh, okay. All right. That's very kind. Okay.

Well, on that, as Dominic described it, beautiful ending. We will end. Bye-bye. Bye-bye bye-bye thanks for listening to the rest is history for bonus episodes early access ad free listening and access to our chat community please sign up at rest is historyorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our members club if you want ad-free listening bonus episodes and early access to live tickets