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Chapter 5 - The Civil War


There was an important exception to the rule of relative peace that
the United States enjoyed for 100 years after Waterloo: the Civil War
of 1861 - 1865. This desperate struggle between the Union and the
Confederacy forced both sides to put large, full-time armies into the
field and to devote most of their resources to the war effort. The
principle of civilian control, which had proven remarkably durable in
times of peace, was put to the test. What would happen during a
profound national emergency? Would military priorities and values
overwhelm established civil institutions?

President Abraham Lincoln made extensive use of his powers as
commander in chief as he devoted his vast energies to the prosecution
of the Civil War. No previous chief executive had faced a comparable
challenge; no one had anticipated the extraordinary measures, both
civil and military, required to wage a great war. Lincoln had to field
a huge army and to build a powerful navy. Despite this massive war
effort, President Lincoln was firm in preserving civilian control of
the military. During his long search for an effective commander of the
Army of the Potomac, Lincoln in communications to field commanders
never hesitated to assert his supremacy. In addition, when, at the end
of the war, the Confederate army commanded by General Robert E. Lee
was about to surrender, the president sent a sharp message through his
secretary of war to his field commander, General Ulysses S. Grant,
that fully captured his views on this question. "You are not to
decide, discuss, or confer [with General Lee] upon any political
question. Such questions the president holds in his own hands, and
will submit them to no military conferences or conventions." Grant
replied that he would not "under any circumstances exceed my authority
or in any way embarrass the government."

At times, Lincoln's use of his powers as commander in chief seemed to
endanger civil liberties. Lincoln, for example, suspended the right of
habeas corpus (the common-law injunction against imprisonment without
trial) and authorized the use of military tribunals to try citizens
accused of supporting the rebellion. Only after the war did the
federal judiciary interpose its authority and overrule some serious
wartime violations of personal freedoms. Among other things, the
courts limited the scope of martial law and prevented persecution of
political prisoners. Even in a moment of maximal danger, the
fundamental democratic values to which the nation had committed itself
were upheld.

Although Jefferson Davis denounced the "tyranny" of Lincoln, the
Confederate president himself in 1862 obtained from his own Congress
the power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. He promptly did so in
Richmond, Virginia, and other places, and arbitrary and unjust
proceedings occurred. It is also interesting to note the degree to
which extreme assertion of the principle of states' rights impeded the
efforts of the Confederate president to control, man and equip his
armed forces. In this case, civil authorities so feared the
interference of the Confederate States of America that they hamstrung
Davis in prosecuting the war of secession.

The Civil War long exerted a powerful influence on many aspects of
American life, but it did not have a marked effect on either public
attitudes toward the Army and the Navy or the institutional
arrangements for them. The war was viewed as a one-time catastrophe.
The public did not discern a need to make permanent changes in
military policies and practices in reaction to a threat that would
never recur. Soon after hostilities ended, the powerful wartime forces
were demobilized, and the armed services reverted to the prewar status
quo. More than 30 years later, on the eve of the Spanish-American War,
the regular Army consisted of only 28,000 troops. The Navy was
sufficiently strong to destroy Spain's weak squadrons in Cuban and
Philippine waters, but could not have defeated the fleet of any great
power.