Articles and resources about the Civil War and other periods in our history.

Blue, Grey, and Red Soldiers During the Civil War

The Civil War was tragic on many levels. It was a domestic war that killed more Americans than would die in America's ten foreign wars put together, and it utterly destroyed southern infrastructure. Though many readers are probably tired of hearing that the war "pitted brother against brother", the almost worn out phrase is unfortunately only too true when applied to a group of fighting men whose story is sometimes overlooked entirely when studying the great conflict. American Indians, like their white counterparts, served in both the Union and the Confederate armies, but, if anything, the results of their participation were even more tragic.

How did Native Americans serve during the War? Approximately 20,000 Amerindians served in both the CS and US armies as soldiers, guides, and staff officers. Native Americans fought in the United States Colored Troops (USCT) at the Battle of the Crater. Members of the Pamunkey and Mataponi nations served as Union river pilots, land guides, and spies for McClellan during the Peninsula Campaign. Highly acclaimed Delaware Indian guides and scouts served the US army in the Trans-Mississippi West. The best known of these scouts was Black Beaver, an Absentee Delaware who also served as a US army captain during the Mexican War.

Indians held a vital bridge and repulsed the advance of General George Pickett's forces, which were attempting to seize Union supplies and halt railroad operations at New Bern, NC. A Tuscarora, Lt. Cornelius C. Cusick, was twice cited for heroism in the Official Record. Oneida and Stockbridge Indians in the 14th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry of the Grand Army of the West aided General William Tecumseh Sherman in his Atlanta and Carolina Campaigns. Colonel Ely S. Parker, a Seneca, transcribed Lee's official surrender papers at Appomattox.

The Lowry Band of guerillas, seen as common outlaws by many whites, but lauded as folk heroes by their people, the Lumbee Indians of North Carolina, fought against the state's home guards, which enslaved Indians during the Civil War, and against the Ku Klux Klan, who murdered Indians after the War. Catawba who had remained behind after their removal from ancestral lands served South Carolina faithfully throughout the conflict, fighting in the Peninsula Campaign, Second Manassas, Antietam, and Petersburg's trenches.



Civil War Leaders as Indian Fighters

Following the Civil War, instead of totally demobilizing its vast army, the United States sent many units to the far West to "pacify the Indians".

Gen. George Crook, a veteran of the 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign, dealt with the Apache nation patiently and honorably. When once asked about "bad Indians", his response was that he had "never yet seen one so demoralized that he was not an example in honor and nobility compared to the wretches who plunder him of the little our government appropriates for him". However, Crook's less patient successor removed all the Apaches he could find east to Florida, much as the Army had marched the Cherokees along the Trail of Tears from North Carolina west to Indian Territory (Oklahoma) some decades before.

Other Civil War officers were also assigned to the far western states. George Custer, who had participated in the burning of the Shenandoah Valley, made his "first stand" when he attacked Black Kettle's Cheyenne village on the Washita River in Indian Territory, killing 38 sleeping men, women, and children. Six weeks later, Custer's commander during the 1864 Valley Campaign, Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, toured Oklahoma to test the temper of the resident tribes. Sheridan, who had promised President Lincoln in 1864 that after he burnt the Valley a crow would not be able to fly across it without bringing its own food, now made another famous declaration. Upon meeting Tochoway, who introduced himself as a "good Indian", Sheridan replied: "the only good Indians I ever saw were dead". This was not the first time anyone had expressed the sentiment on the frontier, but it was the first time a man of high rank had publicly sanctioned the extermination philosophy. Later, at his "last stand" at Little Big Horn on 25 June 1876, Custer and his 7th cavalry were utterly destroyed, a great Sioux victory that nevertheless proved counterproductive for Indians everywhere. Word of the humiliating defeat reached Washington during the Centennial celebrations of national pride, embarrassed leaders stepped up their determination to punish the "savages" who challenged the power of the United States.

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A Look at Hupp's Hill's Involvement in the Valley Campaigns - Part 1: The 1862 Valley Campaign

Always mystify, mislead and surprise the enemy.
-T. J. Jackson

The Shenandoah Valley is steeped in beauty and mystique. A large part of its allure for modern historians, however, is its pivotal importance during the Civil War. The Shenandoah Valley was vital to the Confederate war effort for several reasons. It was a breadbasket, one of few areas in the South that produced grain, not cash crops. It was also a source of both manpower and horsepower for Southern armies. But perhaps the Valley's major significance was its strategic southwest-to-northeast alignment, which could literally aim southern military forces directly at the US capital in Washington and the major northern industrial cities of Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. Further, if the Great Valley of Virginia was lost, invading Federals could move through the Blue Ridge Mountains' eleven passes to flank the southern capital at Richmond.

In the lower Valley just north of the town of Strasburg, a set of weathered, deforested upland ridges dominates the northeast corner of Shenandoah County to the southern bank of Cedar Creek. Named Hupp's Hill for the German family that settled it in 1755, the panoramic view from the 750-foot-high Hill encompasses Belle Grove Plantation on the heights above Cedar Creek, the Sandy Hook oxbow of the Shenandoah River, Signal Knob, the town of Strasburg, and Fishers Hill. This strategic position astride the macadamized Valley Turnpike situated Hupp's Hill in the center of both the 1862 and the 1864 Valley Campaigns.



A Look at Hupp's Hill's Involvement in the Shenandoah Valley Campaigns Part 2: The 1864 Valley Campaign

After Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's 1862 Valley Campaign and throughout 1863, Hupp's Hill and the entire lower Valley saw little major military action. But by 1864 Northern leaders again viewed control of the Valley as a vital component in defeating their Southern foes; the Valley's southwest to northeast alignment made it an excellent avenue of invasion from the South into the Union capital in Washington and the region also produced a large portion of the food that supplied the Confederate army. Hupp's Hill became a key site throughout the resulting 1864 Valley Campaign.

Ulysses S. Grant sent MGen. Franz Sigel to the Shenandoah Valley to act as a strategic diversion in support of the Army of the Potomac in eastern Virginia and the Army of West Virginia in Wythe County. Advancing from Winchester, Sigel's forces marched through Strasburg en route to their defeat at New Market on 15 May. On 16 May, the weary and battered Federals retreated to Strasburg, where Sigel headquartered at the Hupp Mansion at the southern base of Hupp's Hill while most of his troops encamped on its heights. On 17 May, the entire command shifted to the north bank of Cedar Creek, but maintained several outposts south of his position, including a picket force on Hupp's Hill commanded by Col. George D. Wells of the 34th Massachusetts.

On 21 May, MGen. David Hunter relieved Sigel and immediately strengthened these outposts by setting up two companies from the 34th on Hupp's Hill, one on each side of the north/south-oriented Valley Pike. These and other patrol units remained in position until Hunter moved southward on 26 May. Hunter won battles at Piedmont and Lexington, but MGen. Jubal A. Early defeated him at Lynchburg on 18 June. Hunter then withdrew westward into the Kanawha Valley, which enabled Early to advance down the Valley and begin his famous Raid on Washington, passing through Strasburg and across Hupp's Hill on 1 July. On 11 July, Federal reinforcements forced him to withdraw from the capital area, but after fighting a successful rear guard action near Cool Spring, Early pulled his force back to Cedar Creek on 21 July and shifted south of the creek onto Hupp's Hill the next day, with Gordon's Division encamping on Hupp's Hill.

Shortages and Substitutes on the Southern Home Front

Wartime conditions produced shortages in three-fourths of the items Southerners used in their everyday lives. The roots of the shortages crisis can be traced to the same sectional divergences that caused the armed conflict. These shortages inspired inventive Southern women to first "stretch" their precious supplies and then, when supplies ran out entirely, to invent ingenious substitutes.

The northern and southern states were in many crucial respects very different from each other. The rocky soil of the north promoted the growth of small farms and big industry. By contrast, the southern states included vast tracts of fertile flat land that gave rise to the plantation system, which required either large numbers of laborers or laborsaving machinery to produce (usually inedible) cash crops. Until appropriate technologies were invented, the need for labor was filled by the slavery system. Although enlightened souls found the slave system morally reprehensible, economics usually took first priority. Once Northerners found the slave system unprofitable, they abolished it in their states. Many Southerners also found their "peculiar institution" extremely expensive and, by the end of the War, the Confederate Congress was examining legislation to end the practice. However, the economic identities of the industrial North and the agrarian South were firmly established, and sectional interest dominated domestic politics.

The agrarian South exchanged its cash crops for industrial goods produced in either the Northern states or European cities. Sectional conflict began with tariffs, which penalized the import-loving South while protecting northern manufactures. Tariff controversies raged in the early United States, resulting in carefully devised compromises that attempted to balance Northern and Southern interests. When compromise broke down, whether regarding tariffs, fugitive slaves, or westward expansion, the conflict finally escalated to violent confrontation.

In Cracker Culture, Grady McWhiney postulated a cultural dimension of the divergent sectional value systems. He observed that English people with a thrifty Yankee business sense and the relentless Protestant Work Ethic had developed the northern states, in contrast to a large Gaelic population with a much more laid-back attitude who had settled the hardscrabble southern backcountry. Unlike the Gaels, who included many Irish-Catholics and fighting Scotsmen, the English tended to value the accumulation of material possessions as the measure of a successful life, often viewing groups that did not share that belief system as primitive.

To facilitate business, Yankee merchants promoted internal improvements at public expense, building roads, railroads, and canals with tax revenues. Gaels, although seemingly unsuccessful (by English standards) on their hardscrabble farms, possessed "enough food, shelter, and material possessions to get by" and valued their rich oral tradition of storytelling and discourse more than accumulation of wealth. Further, Gaels were content to use rivers for travel, saw no need for internal improvements, certainly did not want to spend tax revenues on their construction, and did not want strangers traveling to their homes anyway!

McWhiney suggests that the American Civil War is just an extension of the long-running violence between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. In both cases, unresolved conflicts between entirely different cultures, including religion to be sure, but also encompassing all lifeways, led to wars. The ability to fight a modern war was also dependent on those lifeways, as the divergent value systems were carried into each section's infrastructure.

Whether or not you subscribe to McWhiney's explanation, it is nevertheless an incontestable truth that at the beginning of the American Civil War, the northern states possessed ten times more roads and railroad track than the Southern states, which adversely impacted Confederate troop movement and supply distribution. This already immense gap in distribution capabilities was further compounded by normal cycles of inclement weather and by wartime conditions. This, the first modern war, featured war of attrition, all-out war that systematically targets civilian resources in order to destroy both the enemy's ability and desire to continue fighting. Most Civil War battles occurred in Southern territory, causing immense damage to Confederate roads, bridges, and railroad lines.

But even if the transportation system had remained intact, there was the problem of production because factories and farms were also targeted for destruction. As the South had long favored an agrarian economy over the development of industry, her industrial production capacity was already unequal to the task to supplying her armies and citizens, even without the added burden of replacing factory complexes that had been destroyed by the enemy. And, with three of every four Southern men serving in the Confederate army, a severe manpower shortage curtailed many capital improvements.

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