Confederate army

The Confederate army consisted of a regular force, the Army of the CoNEEDERATE STATES Of America, and a volunteer force designated the Provisional Army of the Confederate States. Created by the provisional CoNEEDERATE Congress on March 6, 1861, the Confederate regulars imitated the U. S. Army’s organizational structure and its operational manual, Rifle and Infantry Tactics, written by Col. William J. Hardee, now a Confederate general. Regulations for the Army of the Confederate States were, with two minor revisions, a copy of the U. S. Army Regulation, 1857.

While very few enlisted men from the U. S. Army joined the Confederate cause, as many as one-fourth of the officers took commissions in the rebel regulars. These men exerted significant influence over the operations of volunteer military forces as senior general officers, engineer officers, staff officers, and supply bureau officers. This approach reflected Confederate jEEEERsoN Davis’s belief in reliance on state formations, buttressed by a small steady corps of trained regular soldiers and officers. In numbers, however, the Confederate regular army proved insignificant. Authorized to enlist 15,000 men in eight regiments of infantry, two regiments of cavalry, a corps of artillery, a corps of engineers, and a company of sappers and bombardiers, during the entire 1861-65 period a mere 1,650 men served in the regulars. Of these, half were officers. The principal reason for this endemic lack of manpower was the assigned term of service. State soldiers enlisted for the duration of the conflict and would be discharged at its conclusion, whereas the regulars signed on for a specific time span that was mandatory whether hostilities had ceased or not. Given Southerners’ tepid response to such service, the regular army’s recruiting stations all closed down within weeks of the war’s outbreak. All told, the Confederate regular army died a quiet death, and few outside its minuscule ranks noticed its passing.

Numerically, the volunteer force proved the most significant element of the Confederate military. Created by the Confederate Congress February 28, 1861, the provisional army provided a temporary force to deal specifically with the threat of Northern attempts to stop secession by force. The enabling legislation granted the president the power to accept into Confederate service any units in state service for a period of 12 months. The legislation also allowed a call for 100,000 volunteers and the enrolling of the various state militias into Confederate service. Privately raised and trained companies from various states ensured a ready pool of reasonably proficient soldiers. Moreover, these private companies were available much more quickly

Print of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee, Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, and P. G. T. Beauregard surrounded by the busts of Jefferson Davis and Confederate army officers (ca. 1896) (Library of Congress)

And at less expense to the central government than the hastily raised and untrained regular soldiers. In August 1861 Congress authorized a second call for 400,000 volunteers to serve enlistments ranging from one to three years. These troops remained in the service of their respective states until April 1862, when as part of the first conscription act, they became a part of the provisional army. Throughout the war, between 600,000 and 1.5 million men served in the provisional army. Due to the haphazard nature of Confederate military administration, however, the precise number of formations actually fielded is unknown. It is estimated at anywhere between 750 and 1,009 identifiable units.

Recruiting the Confederate military forces took place at various levels. The regular army created recruiting stations at Baton Rouge Barracks, Louisiana; San Antonio Barracks, Texas; Mount Vernon Arsenal, Alabama; Augusta Arsenal, Georgia; Castle Pinckney, South Carolina; Fort Johnston, North Carolina; and Bellona Arsenal, Virginia. At these stations, recruitment officers attempted to obtain men. However, the recruiting of regular army enlisted men failed miserably, and most of the stations suspended operations by the end of 1861.

More successful during 1861 was the creation of various volunteer military companies throughout the towns and countryside of the Confederate states. Prominent citizens who called on their neighbors to join in creating small military units (e. g., an infantry company, an artillery battery, a company of cavalry, and so on) often organized this local recruiting. These units then consolidated into regiments with others from the same state. During 1861, more volunteers presented themselves than could by law be accepted into Confederate service. The emotional response was so great that, in many cases, hopeful soldiers in units not accepted for field service grew furious at the thought of missing out on the action. They despaired that they would never get a chance to fight, since the war would end after the Yankees got a taste of Southern fighting. Manpower levels fluctuated throughout the war, although individual Southern units, repeatedly replenished by new personnel, remained stronger than their Union counterparts through 1864. Near the end of the conflict, severely depleted units were consolidated to form stronger formations capable of handling battlefield contingencies.

There were three primary branches in the provisional army: infantry, cavalry, and artillery. The largest number of men served in the infantry. Organized into regiments of 10 companies totaling 1,000 men, this branch of the service constituted the main fighting force of the Confederate military. Infantry training proceeded unevenly and depended in many instances on the ability of the local unit commanders to teach themselves (while simultaneously teaching their men) the mysteries of tactics. The work proved difficult and seemed unending to the volunteers. As one Virginian put it, drill “was arduous labor, harder than grubbing, stump-pulling, or cracking rocks on the turnpike.” While difficult, it was also necessary because the period’s infantry fighting tactics required a complex evolution of movements made by men standing in line elbow to elbow in two ranks. To help facilitate the training of the CiTiZEN-SOLDlERs, the Confederate government assigned professional soldiers and, in some cases, the cadets of the state military schools to instruct the recruits. Slowly, the men learned the drills and the officers learned how to control their units. In the two main Confederate armies serving in northern Virginia and Tennessee, drill proficiency reached high levels within a fairly short time. By early 1862, most of the incompetent elected officers had been removed and replaced by more highly skilled tacticians and administrators. In their capable hands, the Confederate volunteers gained a just reputation as among the most capable and effective fighters in military history.

In the secondary branches, artillery and cavalry, the Confederates achieved mixed success in training and tactics. In the artillery, the lack of experienced officers and enlisted men created problems throughout the war. One Rebel gunner remembered after the CiviL War that “whole battalions of artillery went into active service without a single man, whether officer, non-commissioned officer, or private, who knew anything about artillery.” In a service where technical knowledge played a major role, the lack of skilled men resulted in a tactically inferior force. Talented and capable artillery leaders did, however, exist in the Confederate service. The best example was Gen. Edward P. Alexander, whose deft handling of Southern cannon at Fredericksburg transformed that battlefield into a killing ground for Union troops. Southern artillery was also quicker to adapt four-battery battalion formations at the divisional and corps levels, enabling them to neutralize Northern manpower advantages in many early engagements.

In cavalry, the Confederates held an early advantage in leadership and in rank and file. Bold leaders such as J. E. B. Stuart, Nathan Bedford Forrest, John Singleton Mosby, and John Hunt Morgan used their mounted troops aggressively and imaginatively. The skill of many Southern horsemen contributed to the success of the cavalry, which maintained its superiority to Union mounted troops until 1864, when declining supplies of horses limited rebel mobility and the employment of rapid-fire shoulder arms gave Federal cavalry troops firepower advantage.

While many volunteer units struggled to organize and train, the presence of state militias and military schools, such as the Citadel in Charleston and the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia, improved the state of military preparedness. Although many Southern militia units were little more than glorified social clubs, some units, such as the Washington Artillery of New Orleans, the Oglethorpe Light Infantry of Savannah, the Kentucky State Guard, and various state militias, provided a small core of trained soldiers. These prewar institutions impacted most strongly the army forming in Virginia, where many of the officers who led the rebel forces had served in some of the South’s best militias. Throughout the war, their experience provided the foundation of a well-led force. In other regions, where the militia influence was less (such as the army forming in Tennessee), the officer corps remained weak and leadership less than ideal.

The task of supplying the vast number of volunteers created major problems for the Confederate government. With no formal military supply apparatus in place and with limited production capabilities, the Confederate War Department faced a seemingly impossible task. Fortunately for them, supply functions were in the capable hands of Col. JosiAH Gorgas, a former Union officer from Pennsylvania. Gorgas effectively served as Confederate chief of ordnance throughout the war. His farsighted policies—battlefield recovery, decentralized production facilities, and decentralized administration facilities throughout the South—ameliorated a pressing supply problem so that no Confederate army was ever defeated for want of weapons. Gorgas went so far as to operate his own fleet of transport vessels, charged with smuggling British weapons and munitions into Confederate ports. His contributions to the war effort probably extended the life of the Confederacy. Without them it is doubtful that Confederate armies would have performed as effectively in the field against their well-equipped Northern counterparts.

Arming the volunteers presented the most pressing problem for the secessionist war department. At the war’s outset, Southern arsenals contained roughly 296,000 shoulder weapons of all types. Many of them were old smoothbore muskets, some still using the outdated flintlock ignition system. In all, only about 24,000 modern rifles and rifle muskets were available. Regiments were unable to take the field in many instances because they had no weapons. By 1862, through a combination of domestic production, battlefield captures, and imports from Europe, the supply problem lessened. Throughout the Confederacy, increasing numbers of rebel troops obtained long-range, efficient weapons, thus improving their combat effectiveness. Still, mixed supplies of weapons within regiments and brigades led to problems in the field and limited the overall efficiency of some units. In the artillery service, weapons proved an even greater problem. Unable to produce adequate numbers of cannons and reliable ammunition, the Confederate artillery almost always fought at a tactical disadvantage.

Clothing varied at the war’s outset, from the fine uniforms worn by the former militia companies and provided by friends, to the mismatched civilian clothing worn by many volunteers. However, problems appeared early as the clothes worn by the troops began to wear out. The central government responded by creating a system called “commutation.” In this system, soldiers either bought clothes or were supplied by their home states at the expense of the Richmond, Virginia, government. Slowly, the quartermaster department established a series of depots throughout the South where clothing was produced for issue to all troops in Confederate service. This system worked with varying degrees of success through 1862-65.

Food and transportation also presented operational challenges to the emerging armies. Shortages of grain and meat, and the inability to transport these vital supplies, were serious problems. So severe were the shortages that the Confederate government resorted to the practice of impressment to obtain sufficient supplies of flour and meat. While this did little to ease the problem, it underscored the degree of shortage in the Southern armies. Inadequate supplies of horses and vehicles to transport ammunition, clothing, and food compounded all of the supply problems. As the number of horses declined, so did the ability of the armies to take offensive actions or even feed themselves.

One area in which Confederate armies had a distinct tactical advantage over the North was organization. While their overall numbers were inferior, they were usually better situated to make use of troops they brought onto the battlefield. Southern units, regardless of branch, were retained in the field longer than Union formations and were continually fleshed out with new recruits. The Union ARMY practice, by comparison, was to return units that had been severely weakened (through combat, sickness, or desertion) to the states for a refit. As a result, Southern units were usually better prepared to deploy soldiers at a given geographic point than Northern units of comparable size. Although the Confederate army had fewer units, it thus enjoyed considerable manpower advantages on the ground, enabling commanders to concentrate their strength quickly for decisive effect. This operating principle, which held true in the brigade and division level as well, gave the Confederacy a military advantage through 1864.

Operationally, the volunteer force was divided into several organizations known as armies. These forces were generally arrayed to protect the Southern territory. During 1861, the government spread its military forces widely in an attempt to protect as many points as possible. This resulted in troops being scattered along the Gulf Coast, in northern Virginia, and across the northern border of Tennessee. The nature of the Federal invasion of the South in some ways dictated the emerging shape of the two main rebel forces. In Virginia, the front of the Union advance in July 1861, the forces assigned to protecting the Shenandoah Valley consolidated with Southern troops at Manassas. This army successfully defended Richmond in the summer of 1862 and became famous as Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia (so named shortly after Lee took command). As the threat to the Confederate capital increased, more and more troops from the Atlantic coast and western Virginia were funneled to Lee’s army. By far the most successful of the Confederate armies, the Army of Northern Virginia fought at the Battles Of Bull Run, the Seven Days’ campaign, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancel-lorsville, Gettysburg, the Overland campaign of 1864, and the Petersburg campaign. Some of the most famous secessionist generals including Joseph E. Johnston, Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson, J. E. B. Stuart, James Longstreet, and George E. Pickett served in the Army of Northern Virginia. Indeed, by 1863, General Lee and his army had come to symbolize the heart and soul of the Confederate cause for most of the Southern people.

The second major Confederate force coalesced in northern Mississippi as Union forces advanced along the

Tennessee River and into the Confederate heartland. Several scattered corps under Leonidas Polk and William J. Hardee held the southern part of Kentucky in 1861 and early 1862. These Confederate troops retreated into northern Mississippi following the fall of Fort Donelson in February 1862. Directed by Albert Sidney Johnston, the forces concentrated at Corinth, Mississippi, in March 1862 and were bolstered by reinforcements under Braxton Bragg from the Gulf Coast. The concentrated army struck back and met the invading force at the Battle of Shiloh in southwestern Tennessee.

Having lost the battle and its commander, Albert Sidney Johnston, the army retreated to northern Mississippi where it worked to perfect its organization under Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard and later Bragg. First called the Army of the Mississippi, and later the Army of Tennessee, this force under Braxton Bragg proved much less successful than Lee’s army. Under Bragg, the command failed to protect the valuable food - and supply-producing regions of Tennessee and Georgia. With Bragg as commander, the Army of Tennessee fought at the Battles of Perryville, Kentucky; MuRfREEsBoro, Tennessee; Chick-amauga, Georgia; and Chattanooga, Tennessee. Following the rebel rout at Chattanooga in November 1863, Bragg resigned from active command and was replaced by Joseph E. Johnston. Johnston commanded the army in July 1864 but was fired for his inability to defend Atlanta. John Bell Hood took command, lost the Atlanta campaign, and destroyed the Army of Tennessee’s effective field capabilities by hurling it against the Federal trenches at Franklin, Tennessee, on November 30, 1864. The army essentially dissolved in the face of fierce Federal attacks at Nashville on December 16, 1864.

Other significant armies created by the Confederate government included Earl Van Dorn’s Army of the West that was defeated at Pea Ridge, Arkansas, in March 1862; H. H. Sibley’s Army of New Mexico that attempted but failed to take and hold Arizona and New Mexico for the Confederacy; John C. Pemberton’s Army of Vicksburg that, in July 1863, surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant; and Kirby Smith’s Army of the Trans-Mississippi that served in the Confederate territory west of the Mississippi River. In sum, the individual Southern soldier proved himself hardy, resilient, talented, and brave, fighting with a tenacity that belied his nation’s overall lack of numbers. But neither the armies of the Confederacy nor their senior leaders were uniformly successful on the battlefield, where the Civil War was decided. The South found itself in a perilous predicament: fighting an enemy with significant manpower and materiel advantages. The situation allowed for little margin of error at either the strategic or the tactical level.

See also bounty system; desertion.

Further reading: Thomas L. Connelly, Army of the Heartland: The Army of Tennessee, 1861-1862 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967); Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command (New York: Scribner, 1998); Gary W. Gallagher, Lee and His Army in Confederate History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Joseph T. Glatthaar, General Lee’s Army: From Victory to Collapse (New York: Free Press, 2008); Sean M. O’Brien, Irish Americans in the Confederate Army (Jefferson, N. C.: McFarland, 2007); Jason Phillips, Diehard Rebels: The Confederate Culture of Invincibility (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007); J. Tracy Power, Lee’s Miserables: Life in the Army of Northern Virginia from the Wilderness to Appomattox (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998); George Walsh, Damage Them All You Can: Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia (New York: Forge, 2002); Mark A. Weitz, More Damning Than Slaughter: Desertion in the Confederate Army (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005); Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987).

—James Daryl Black