Civil War Primer — by Pat Granstra

The Civil War grew at a monstrous rate during 1862, reaching across the Confederate states and  into the North.

On December 7, Union forces quashed  Confederate plans to re-enter Missouri by turning back Major General Thomas Hindman’s poorly equipped Army of the Trans-Mississippi at Prairie Grove, Arkansas.  In the East the armies of  General Robert E. Lee and Major General Ambrose Burnside clashed at Fredericksburg, Virginia from December 11-15  before Burnside withdrew to the north side of the Rappahannock River after suffering over 13,000 casualties.

These two battles reflected the general path of the war in 1862–  the Union’s gaining control of territory in the West and the Trans-Mississippi but failing in its attempts to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond.

Early 1862 had brought significant Union victories in Tennessee.  Forts Henry and Donelson fell in February, and April yielded a bloody but significant success at Shiloh. By May, Yankees controlled New Orleans, and Union bockades of Southern ports significantly curtailed the flow of goods into the Confederacy.  The Anaconda Plan General Winfield Scott envisioned at the war’s outset was working.

The spring had held promise for Union victories in the East was well, but in July George McClellan ended his Peninsula Campaign without having captured Richmond despite a torturous series of battles with Rebel defenders.  The pendulum swung in favor of the South in August when the Union Army, this time under the command of John Pope, was defeated at the second battle of Manassas.

Each of these battles resulted in casualties for both sides, but because they were all fought in Virginia, it was her civilians who suffered most.  Crops, buildings, and other property had been destroyed; wounded filled hospitals and homes; prisoners required space and sustenance.  Robert E. Lee, who had assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia in the midst of the Peninsula Campaign, tried to even the score by carrying the war into Maryland in September, only to be repelled at Antietam.

Because the Confederates withdrew from Maryland, the Lincoln administration deemed Antietam a victory.  McClellan, however, failed to pursue and crush Lee’s army, prompting the president to replace him with Burnside, who felt himself inadequate to head the Army of the Potomac.  Nevertheless, he determined to do his best to meet Lincoln’s expectations. His best, however, was not good enough.  His Fredericksburg campaign– ill-timed,  mismanaged, and fraught with problems– resulted in over 14,000 Union casualties.

It is not surprising that as Christmas neared, the New York Times observed, “… as a nation, we are not in a particularly jolly mood,” a sentiment no one understood better than Abraham Lincoln. As the war neared its second anniversary with no victory in sight, war-weary voters had handed Democrats a net gain of 28 congressional seats in November’s midterm elections. In addition, the Emancipation Proclamation– announced by Lincoln in  September and scheduled to become effective on January 1, 1863– and his suspension of  habeas corpus met with criticism on several fronts, and a group of Republican senators demanded a revamping of the Lincoln cabinet.

As the Fredericksburg wounded streamed into Washington’s hospitals, news from the West added to Lincoln’s woes.  On December 19, Confederate cavalry under Major General Earl Van Dorn destroyed a major Union supply depot in Holly Springs, Mississippi and tore up railroad tracks and telegraph lines north into Tennessee.  With the Holly Springs raid, Union plans to capture Vicksburg from the southeast evaporated.

Cartoonist Thomas Nast drew this now-familiar version of Santa Claus in 1862. It appeared on the cover of Harper's Weekly in January 1863.

President Jefferson Davis faced political and military problems of his own in December 1862.  New Orleans and Memphis were under Union control, leaving no doubt that Vicksburg, the South’s last significant city on the Mississippi, would be its next target.  Citizens in Mississippi and neighboring states felt threatened by the Union armies and neglected by the Confederate government.

Reluctantly, Davis left Richmond on December 11, travelling to the West by train, giving speeches at stops along the way to bolster flagging morale and to encourage enlistments, and to inspect the Confederate armies.  He returned to Richmond on January 5, weary but in better spirits.  During his absence, Lee had stopped Burnside at Fredericksburg, Van Dorn had destroyed  Grant’s Holly Springs supply base, and John Pemberton had repelled Sherman at Chickasaw Bayou.  For the moment, both Richmond and Vicksburg were safe.

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How Some Notables Spent Christmas 1862

• President and Mrs. Lincoln visited soldiers in a number of Washington hospitals on Christmas Day.
• Jefferson Davis spent Christmas Day in Jackson, Mississippi, where he prepared a speech for the following day.  In it, he rekindled secessionist sentiments by referring to the “wickedness of the North” and asking his fellow Mississippians “Will you be slaves or will you be independent?”  Apparently neither he nor his audience saw the irony in his choice of words.
• Stonewall Jackson hosted a Christmas dinner for several officers, including Lee, at his winter quarters.  Jackson had received a special Christmas present from his wife:  A lock of hair from his daughter, born on November 23, 1862. Jackson would see his child only once before his death in May 1863.
• Ulysses Grant spent Christmas with his wife, Julia, who had been staying in a private home in Holly Springs when it was raided by Van Dorn’s men on December 20.  Some Confederate soldiers arrested her there,  but their superiors quickly ordered her release, and she travelled to Grant’s new headquarters in Oxford, Mississippi.
• Louisa Mae Alcott spent Christmas nursing wounded soldiers from Fredericksburg at the Union Hotel Hospital in Washington, D. C.
• Walt Whitman left New York for Virginia after seeing his brother’s name on a list of Fredericksburg casualties.  George Whitman’s injury was minor, but Walt was so deeply affected by the suffering of other wounded men that he moved to Washington and did volunteer work at hospitals until the war ended.
• At Hilton Head a Christmas-day baseball game between the 165th New York Zouves and a team comprised of men from several other units entertained hundreds, possibly thousands, of viewers.  One player, Abraham Gilbert Mills, became president of the National League in 1883.