December 31, 1863---New Year's Eve: The Last Full Calendar Year Of War Begins

DECEMBER 31, 1863:
         

As 1863 passes into history and 1864 dawns, throughout the Confederacy, people brace themselves for future privations anticipated. Confederate war clerk J. B. Jones wrote in his diary: 


Flour is now held at $150 per barrel. Captain Warner has just sold me two bushels of meal at $5 per bushel; the price in market is $16 a bushel. I did not go to any of the receptions today, but remained at home, transplanting lettuce plants, which have so far withstood the frost, and a couple of fig bushes I bought yesterday. I am also breaking up some warm beds for early vegetables, preparing for the siege and famine looked for in May and June, when the enemy encompasses the city. I bought some tripe and liver in the market for the low price of $1 per pound. 


The Richmond Examiner, a staunch friend of secession, was so forlorn as to headline the words: "To-day closes the gloomiest year of our struggle.” 

On this dark New Year’s Eve of 1863, and as the last full calendar year of the Civil War begins, only a scruple of the most hardcore Confederate fire-eaters still believe that the Confederacy can win its war of independence solely through force of arms. Overlapping this small circle is another, whose members believe that the scales of war can still be tipped in the Confederacy’s favor by the intervention of a European power. Among this fading cadre of believers, France is still considered the most likely intervenor, if only to protect its imperial interests in Mexico. 

Most Confederates no longer have unbending faith in either Confederate arms or in Confederate foreign affairs. The summer’s military disasters at Gettysburg and Vicksburg and late autumn defeats in Tennessee, combined with Robert E. Lee’s clear hesitancy to join battle with the Union during the Mine Run Campaign, have convinced almost all Southerners that mere force of arms will not vouchsafe the South a victory. 

The South, indeed, is struggling mightily just to maintain its war machine, often at cost to its noncombatant civilian population, who find their food stocks seized and valuable possessions expropriated --- at least those they have not yet sold for the food the army seizes. This expropriation policy is a failure. Aside from embittering Confederates against their own government, the Confederacy’s horses are starving, its gunboats are shipping water, and its fighting men are oft-times barefoot, underarmed, and underfed. The British decision, coming in the end days of ’63, to halt all arms trading with the Confederacy means that the South’s primary source of war materiel is now beyond the pale.

 

After two years of war, the South’s chief domestic arms manufactory is still the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond. The South has not done nothing, but it has done little, to expand its arms manufacturing capabilities. A few small-scale machine shops and artisans have become weapons designers and builders, but they lack the raw materials needed to forge plowshares into swords on any scale. This means that, beside itself, the South has only three uncertain sources of arms --- foreign nations via blockade-running, the United States, via weaponsmiths willing to engage in illegal arms trading, and the U.S. Army, via raid and capture of military supplies. In short, the South’s intended victory depends on the North’s bristling army.

Most Southerners are becoming more and more convinced that the only way to secure independence is through negotiations with the Union.  And though they don’t know what that portends --- most are holding out for complete independence, while an increasingly vocal few are proposing an economic consolidation with the North that will allow the South to maintain its political autonomy and its “peculiar institution” of slavery --- all Southerners understand that the chief stumbling block to a negotiated peace is Abraham Lincoln, with his bewildering, seemingly-fanatical insistence on maintaining the Union and abolishing slavery, both entire. 

The Peace Democrats and Copperheads of the North are also bewildered. Earlier in the war they wished for the “erring sisters to depart in peace,” and throughout two years of bloodletting they have worked diligently --- sometimes treasonously --- to end the war. The Peace Democrats want a negotiated settlement and reunification. The Copperheads want an end to the war without conditions. Many would prefer to see an independent South maintain its peculiar institution if for no other reason than they are enjoying financial gain by and through the toil of slaves. 

In 1862, when the tide of the war was at low ebb for the North, the Peace Democrats and Copperheads pressed noisily for peace --- why spill rivers of blood in a losing cause? Now, in 1863, with the tide of the war running at flood for the North, they noisily press for peace --- why spill rivers of blood in a winning cause? 

Is it merely for the slaves?

Most Northerners agree with Lincoln. The Union must be maintained. But few whites anywhere really understand his position on Emancipation. Few 19^th Century American whites, North or South, perceive blacks as complete human beings. At best, many opine, they make excellent servants and hard workers --- in short, charming housepets --- when properly trained. 

  

Only a few see a race of mankind in enforced anguish. 

Although the Peace Democrats were soundly defeated in the 1863 off-year elections, this has not undone their cause. Indeed, as 1864 progresses, they will become louder, more well-organized, and more focused on attacking President Lincoln as the author of their continuing woes --- and, as they insist, merely for the slaves!

 

Abraham Lincoln finds himself at the center of the vortex of this cyclonic war. Having gone to war on a platform of Union, he will not yield on this issue. And having declared the Emancipation of slaves as a military expedient, he now wishes to confirm that expedient by amending the Constitution to abolish involuntary servitude. The idea of re-enslaving those he has freed is anathema to him, and the idea of not extending Emancipation to all people held in bondage is equal anathema. At core, Lincoln tells his confidants, he made a promise and he cannot break it. Many members of his Administration are amazed at the President’s seemingly childish insistence on keeping a promise. 

But Abraham Lincoln already understands something that his contemporaries and even his closest friends will fail to grasp for some months yet --- that this Civil War is no longer about “rebellion” alone, or a mere political realignment, or “Union” or “slavery”. It has become a battle for the soul of the United States, and the path that soul shall walk in the future. Lincoln understands that an expedient peace with the South under current conditions will only be a truce --- even if it lasts 1000 years, it will rot the heart of the nation. To maintain slavery is to drink another dose of that slow-acting poison that has led to this historical moment. And this historical moment is about whether a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” shall perish or not. A Southern victory --- even a minor concession --- will spell a victory of privileged aristocracy over Everyman, and will end the American Experiment. Lincoln, the Everyman extraordinary, will not permit that on his watch, he will not be America’s Deathsman. 

Unlike all his predecessors but for the Founders, Lincoln understands that the United States of America is truly unique. The “original gorilla,” “King Abraham Africanus The First,” the “Dictator,” is truly the first American Exceptionalist.