 There's an old saying that, in various forms, has been attributed to umpteen different people in history. If I had more time, it would have been shorter. I feel like that may be the case for my series on the Civil War. We've had 35 episodes so far just to get through 1861, and that doesn't include the 24 episodes spent on the antebellum years in season 2. So instead of doing a full episode today, I decided that it might be useful to offer a much shorter than usual episode, reviewing some important themes and events we found in 1861. This is partly just to give myself a break, as this episode doesn't require all the digging through books I usually have to do, but I think it will also be a good way to highlight what's important, which I think can easily get crowded out in the flood of details I include in these stories compared with lecture formats. And since I know a lot of people don't listen to every episode, and we're hopefully getting new listeners, this might also be the opportunity to catch everybody up regarding the situation in the war coming in 1862. The first major theme that we find in the first year of the Civil War is division. Obviously, this theme applies to the two waves of secession, the first of which was undeniably driven by the desire to maintain the institution of slavery, despite their surviving interpretations that revolve around tariffs or whatever else, and I've devoted enough time to that to not warrant rehashing here, but you can find all that in several previous episodes, especially the ones on the antebellum years. But the second wave of secession, which saw Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina join the Confederacy, was more complicated as it was triggered by Lincoln's call for 75,000 troops, and other actions by Lincoln and his administration, such as the suspension of habeas corpus, brought previous unionists over to the side of the secessionists in border states. So the theme of division is more interesting in these border states, not just those in the second wave of secession, but also in three of the four other slave states that remained in the union, Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky. All seven of these border states were internally divided between people who supported secession and those who wanted to remain in the union. The outcome varied in each state, Western Virginia split off and would eventually become a new state, Missouri, which stayed in the union, still sent representatives to the Confederate Congress, Tennessee's Andrew Johnson refused to give up his seat in the Senate, Baltimore rioted against the union troops passing through its town and tried to secede without the rest of Maryland. As I recently pointed out, very analogous divisions took place in the Native American tribes who officially allied with the Confederacy, but still had significant factions who wanted to remain neutral or favor the union. Related to this are the early attempts at compromise and the resort to tyrannical measures when this failed, referring to the Lincoln administration's policies of oppression in the North as tyrannical, though I do believe it's accurate, is not just my commentary. It is important to understand that this was the perception of his policies by a significant portion of the Northern population and it affected support for the war at a time when people were still debating whether the South should be allowed to peacefully separate. The most infamous compromise is the Corwin amendment, which was the failed 13th amendment that would have constitutionally protected slavery where it already existed and even though it fizzled out during the war it was actually ratified by a number of Northern states. Its failure was less because Northern states opposed it and more because the compromise clearly was failing to attract the Confederate states back into the union anyway. Once it became clear that the compromise was not going to be successful, the Northern policy for reunion was obviously war and the Lincoln administration, with Secretary of State William Seward taking charge, imposed oppressive measures as far north as Maine. Habeas Corpus was suspended allowing the imprisonment of anybody that was even suspected of being process session or anti-war. This included a large number of newspaper editors and any paper critical of the war was suppressed either by arresting the editor until he agreed to stop publishing critical editorials or confiscating the paper entirely. In Maryland and Kentucky members of the state legislature were also arrested to ensure that they could not vote to officially secede and in Maryland in particular this allowed the Lincoln administration to effectively engineer a pro-union election in the state. It is important to understand that officials made no distinction between process session and anti-war either. And people who fully opposed procession and slavery, if they criticized the war, were subject to arrest. And people who vocally defended slavery but also defended the union were safe from persecution. Lincoln often gets blamed for these acts of tyranny and not without reason since he was the president and he sanctioned all of these actions, but it is also important to recognize that William Seward was by far the more active figure in the policies of domestic oppression and he seems to have taken great relish in his political power. One of the most important elements to understand coming into 1862 is that almost everybody at the time believed that the Confederacy was winning the war. There were four significant battles in 1861 and the Confederacy won all of them. The first, of course, was the battle of Fort Sumter in April which is more significant for marking the official start of the war. During this, most people in the North believed that a single large battle would decide the war with an easy union victory. This came at the end of July with the first battle of Bull Run when it ended in an embarrassing union defeat and a scandal over the civilian spectators that were present. Some people in the North wanted to call the war quits but others, including the Lincoln administration and the radical Republicans in Congress, wanted to double down. Only a couple of weeks later, Missouri saw the second major union defeat in the battle of Wilson's Creek in which the first union general officer was killed, this being Nathaniel Lyon, who was martyrized in the North. In October, the union would face a third defeat in the battle of Balls Bluff. By itself, this is a relatively minor battle but it was still significant for two reasons. First is that Colonel Edward Baker, who was also a sitting senator, was killed in the battle. Perhaps even more important was that Baker was Lincoln's closest friend who the president had even named his second son after years earlier. His death was more personal for Lincoln than anything previous had been. The second was huge political ramifications that came out of Balls Bluff as it served as the catalyst for the joint committee to investigate the conduct of the war, which almost never gets talked about. This committee was controlled by radical Republicans and they used the committee to throw union officers under the bus, blaming them for northern failures. The committee's behavior was overtly political and they had no compunction about destroying the careers of loyal officers as a way to deflect responsibility from themselves. However, they did at least start bringing the issue of slavery into the war. Long before Lincoln was considering emancipation, the radical Republicans on this committee were arguing that slavery should be made the focal issue of the war. Contrary to common views about Lincoln, these were the men who led the way in making emancipation a war aim, which will play out even more in 1862 as the emancipation proclamation would be delivered on January 1st, 1863. With these early battles, we also see two other important themes in 1861. One is the role of new technology that would change battlefield tactics throughout the war. Chief among these is rifling technology in the mini-ball. At the outset of the war, most soldiers were still using muskets, but many of the muskets had already been rifled, meaning that they were still barrel loaded but they could fire the new mini-ball which, with rifling, had far better range and accuracy than smoothbore muskets. The consequence of this change was tremendous. It made bayonet charges a traditional battlefield tactic far less effective because infantry could cut down a charging enemy a lot more quickly. It also made cavalry less effective for the same reason as the great speed of horses mattered less and they proved easier targets with the more accurate firearms. Napoleon-style artillery charges in which artillery would be set up extremely close to enemy lines were also ineffective as the rifling technology allowed soldiers to cut artillery teams down, which would prove important in the Union victory at Bull Run. Rifling technology would also be applied to cannons, giving artillery better range as well, but this would have more of an effect on naval warfare, tipping the balance of power from defending forts to attacking ships. In the past two episodes, I have also talked a little bit about the changing naval technology in the form of steamships, which altered the course of naval warfare as well, though I will be discussing some of the naval innovations in the coming episodes. The second important theme that came out of the early battles is the loss of romance about the war. At the outset of the Civil War, volunteers on both sides saw joining the army as an exciting adventure. They wanted to see battle and claim their share of the glory, but after they faced their first major battle, with the technology making it easier to kill, they quickly learned the horrors of war, and this change is evident in letters left behind by soldiers. Finally, we also see the abysmal failures at diplomacy by both the Union and the Confederacy. William Seward proved to be a horrible representative for the country, as pretty much everybody he dealt with in Britain and France couldn't stand the guy. He was arrogant, condescending, and enjoyed making veiled threats of war. At one point, because of statements from Seward, Britain so sincerely believed that the Union was planning to invade Canada, that they actually started sending troops to reinforce their Canadian territories and broaden their own military leaders to discuss the best strategy for preemptively invading the northern states, if need be. The most famous incident in Union and Confederate diplomacy was the Trent Affair, in which the two Confederate diplomats to Britain and France, respectively, were illegally arrested from a British ship of violation of international law and the rights of neutrals, and temporarily imprisoned in the north. The scandal was so enormous that when the news hit London, many people were calling for war. Ultimately, Britain pressured the Lincoln administration to release the diplomats. And many people at the time believed that had it not been for the broken Atlantic telegraph wire forcing communication between the two countries to take several weeks, Britain and the United States would have gone to war, while outrage over the incident was at its peak. At the war's outset, General Winfield Scott came up with an anaconda plan, which proposed a blockade of the Confederate coast. This is what we've discussed in the two most recent episodes, and it is where we find the only real Union victories in the first year of the war, not including some minor victories, such as those in Western Virginia. The formation of the blockade was a long and difficult process, especially as the US Navy was rather small in 1861. But these early campaigns would prove strategically important as we will see as we move into 1862, where the Confederacy continues to claim victories on the land, but lose this important ground on the water. So this is where we are at the beginning of 1862. Obviously, these general themes and bullet points don't do justice to the actual events that took place in the first year of the war. And you can refer back to the 35 episodes that cover all this in excessive detail if you want that. But these are the elements that are worth underscoring in 1861, which will help understand how things changed over the course of the war. In the next episode, we will return to the normal full-length format, picking up where we left off in the Civil War on the waters, looking at the Burnside Expedition off the Eastern Coast, and then turning for a few episodes to the fascinating story of the battle of the ironclads. Historical controversies is a production of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. If you would like to support the show, please subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher, and leave a positive review. You can also support the show financially by donating at Mises.org slash SupportHC. If you would like to explore the rest of our content, please visit Mises.org, that's M-I-S-E-S dot O-R-G.