This is pretty much what i came in to say.
Of course, Lincoln didn’t do all this by himself, by any means, but there was plenty of non-war related legislation going on during the Civil War.
Nitpick re the railroad: It was actually a series of acts, starting in 1862 and followed up by a new act every year for the next three or four years. IIRC, it was actually the 1864 Act that really made the biggest difference, and allowed work to begin in earnest.
I think this is probably better suited to IMHO than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Interestingly, Stalin did in fact save the Soviet Union from the Germans. And won WWII.
The answer to the OP is historians punt the whole question. The things that happened outside the war are totally neglected or passed over lightly by every historian I’ve read. (I so want to do a book on this and so want not to have to do the research that would be required.)
But that in itself should tell us something. For the North, life went on very much as usual. The war had hideous effects on individuals and families, but not on the states. Almost all the fighting was confined to border or slave states; the few instances in which the South pushed into the North were met by near-hysteria. Doing so was not a mistake by the South - no war can ever be won by fighting solely on your own territory.* These incursions show the incredible superiority the North had. It literally could not lose except by surrender. Lincoln would never surrender, and that is why he both won the war and is ranked high by historians.
Both he and Congress continued to run the country with as much continuity as possible during the war. The bills already mentioned show a magnificent future vision of normality, expansion, and success that I would say is a unique attitude for any country engaged in a war of this magnitude. We did less of this in WWI and WWII, even though half the physical territory of the country wasn’t being devastated.
Lincoln should get enormous credit just because he kept the country going on in a way that would be invisible to history if the war could somehow be filtered away. The years 1855-1860, 1861-1865, and 1866-1870 would all look essentially identical in a history book were it not for the war. That’s unprecedented and undervalued.
*Nitpickers, I mean territory you control: this is as applicable to civil wars as any others.
FIFY
What about the American Revolution?
Hi, Son of a Rich…
Just to let you know, it’s against the rules to change the quote of someone’s post. Please refrain from doing this again.
The high seas.
umm, ok, but the various South American Independence wars were won without significant naval actions.
Also, the Algerian Independence war against the french, the Vietnam war (against the french at least, against the USA you could count south Vietnam as enemy territory).
A nitpick, at best. The premise is wrong. A war for autonomy can be won fighting solely within the area a group wants autonomy over, if one is willing to wait out an unpopular war for the occupiers.
Does he take any blame for instituting the income tax?
If that was all he was known for I think Lincoln would still be placed at least in the top quarter of great Presidents (unless you think activism is a bad Presidential trait)
Part of the problem here is a misunderstanding of Lincoln’s achievements.
Lincoln was directly responsible for the South attacking first. He resisted IMMENSE pressure to start the war while quite deliberately maneuvering South Carolina into firing on Sumter. Not luck in the slightest.
Lincoln wasn’t responsible for Lee’s move toward Gettysburg, but long before that move, he’d determined that every time the Confederate armies moved north, they became vulnerable to isolation and annihilation. Antietam and Gettysburg were each golden opportunities to wipe out Lee entirely and all but win the war at a stroke, and Lincoln was one of the very few people to grasp this.
The North didn’t have as overwhelming an advantage in resources and men as people always seem to imply – other wars have been won against MUCH longer odds (notably the American Revolution and the Vietnam War.) But the leveraging of those resources was more effective because of Lincoln’s tireless work.
The South’s failure to receive foreign recognition and aid was partly due to Lincoln’s work. The Emancipation Proclamation made it politically impossible for Britain to support the Confederacy (and France had to follow Britain’s lead at that time) – Britain’s out-of-work textile workers, despite being idled by the cotton famine, would not support slavery, even at the cost of economic ruin. And the Proclamation’s having this effect was planned. Furthermore, the Proclamation’s release was made possible by Antietam, which was (barely, sort-of) won by McClellan – AFTER Lincoln had sustained him in defiance of Congress and his own cabinet. (When one official suggested anyone would be better than McClellan, Lincoln famously shook his head and said, “Anyone might do for you, but I must have someone.” On that occasion, at least, Little Mac was necessary – the army had been shattered after Pope’s debacle, and probably only McClellan could have restored its morale and organization in time for Antietam.
Also, in the *Trent *affair, Lincoln resisted calls for war with Britain, and eventually got a response from his Secretary of State that defused the situation while maintaining American honor (and scoring political points with the American public.) Lincoln had, of course, had early difficulty with this cabinet member, but had won the man over – it wasn’t luck.
Lincoln’s search for “cutthroat” generals wasn’t “luck.” If anything, he had BAD luck getting generals, and he worked his way through a lot of them to find the winners. And your characterization of Sherman and Grant is at best superficial – Grant hated killing and was deeply disturbed by what he felt compelled to do, which, by the way, did *end *the killing. And Sherman’s war on economic property was a very conscious choice to save lives, Southern lives included. faced with the choice of “shattering local economies” or “killing large numbers of people,” he chose the less bloodthirsty course and has been denounced ever after by people who, apparently, value plantation houses over human lives.
Sherman on several occasions allowed small Confederate armies to slip away, or brushed them aside, because killing those men wasn’t going to be enough damage to win the war (and his marches were already winning the war.) Look at the Straight Dope’s own “Greatest Military Leader Elimination Game” thread in the game room for more on this topic.
Certainly the Union was, by definition, the work of many people, and Lincoln didn’t do everything by himself. But he’s rightly credited with doing a remarkable number of things right, at a time when the country desperately needed someone who could do that. And maybe he did get lucky a few times. But almost everything you attributed to “luck” above was the product of hard work, statesmanship, leadership, and clear thinking.
The South lost the western part of their entire country by mid-1863, and prior to that had already lost their largest city.
You can’t “sit tight” when your country has been bisected and the other side is itching to invade. Gettysburg represented about one percent of Confederate army deaths during the war and was a loss of no ground and no initiative.
Lincoln was also able to carry out the war without demonizing his opponents. How many leaders of a devastating civil war have responded “with malice towards none”?
Mrs. Lincoln: “Well, to be honest, it was actually quite funny.”
We can’t even pull off an election by that standard anymore.
It’s the other way round. The North had far more of an advantage in resources and men than historians have given them credit for. None of the standard histories that are always - and rightly - recommended here talk about how overwhelming the advantage was. You have to go to more specialized econometric histories for that.
One point that seldom gets mentioned: The North saw over 750,000 immigrants move there during the war. Although refugees often move between countries during war I believe this is the only example of a voluntary mass migration to a country at total war. The majority of these were young, single men looking to make good, and large numbers of them accepted the bounties offered for enlisting. In another uniqueness, the Civil War is probably the only war in history in which one side had a larger population of healthy young men to use as troops at the end of the war than at the beginning.
And this is still less of an advantage than the monumental superiority the North had in railroads, arms, telegraph wire, and every other type of industry. The South was basically Iraq. We apparently don’t like to acknowledge this because it demeans the valor of the Northern troops and makes the Great Combat into an unfair fight between an adult and a child. But that’s what it was, although it surely did not appear to them to be so. It takes hindsight to understand.
And to clarify, when I said that Lincoln would have to surrender to lose, I meant that all wars on rebel territory can be won only if the other side just gives it up as not worth the expense. The South could not win the war merely by winning battles on its territory and all of its political and military leaders knew that.
This post is ace.
Well, since I’m replying to people who insist that the North’s victory was utterly inevitable due to overwhelming superiority, it can’t really be “the other way 'round.”
It is very nice to know that others also say this, but in my experience they are few and far between.