Conclusion and consequences 313governments, a trend that has continued
ever since. The nation moved on an
accelerated course of industrialization and
urbanization. And finally, the Northern
version of freedom, with aspirations of
egalitarianism and economic opportunity for
all, prevailed for white Americans.
Although Southern whites howled over
Reconstruction policies, they were under the
circumstances quite mild. There were no
wholesale land confiscations, no widespread
imprisonments, no mass executions for
treason. Only Major Henry Wirz,
Commandant of Andersonville Prison, was
put to death. Among Rebel leaders, Jefferson
Davis alone was held in jail for two years,
but Northerners never had the stomach for a
trial. After his release, Davis lived a long life
in the United States. By 1877, the US
government had removed all soldiers from
the former Confederacy, and the last of the
secessionist states had returned as full and
equal partners in the Union.
After the war, word circulated that the
great Prussian general Helmuth von Moltke
had said of Sherman's army that there was
nothing one could learn from 'an armed
mob.' When asked about it, Sherman replied
that he knew Moltke but never questioned
him on the story, 'because I did not presume
that he was such an ass as to say that.'
From a military standpoint, the Civil War
offered an extremely valuable legacy for
thoughtful analysts. American military leaders
realized that rifles, artillery, and field
fortifications weighed heavily on the side of
defenders. Over the next few decades, US army
officers sought to restore the tactical offensive
to warfare through single-line formations with
greater dispersion and mobility, to reduce the
impact of defensive weapons.
Most European analysts dismissed the war
as one conducted by bumbling amateurs.
They insisted that breech-loading small arms
of the late 1860s made lessons from all
previous wars obsolete. In the minds of most
foreign experts, the lightning offensives and
decisive campaigns of the Austro-Prussian
and Franco-Prussian Wars readily cast a dark
shadow over any insights into future
conflicts from the American Civil War. Yet
the Civil War proved more prophetic of the
First World War than either of those clashes
between European powers. Analysts failed to
grasp the enhanced power of the defensive
and the value of good field works. They also
missed valuable lessons from cavalry serving
as mounted infantry, a combination of
mobility and firepower that proved so
decisive in the Second World War.
Lieutenant-Ceneral Philip Sheridan, the
hard-charging general who had arrested a
corps commander for arriving with his men
12 hours late, observed the Franco-Prussian
War from the Prussian side. In a letter to
Grant in 1870, he thought that the battles
were actually not that distinct from the Civil
War, and 'that difference is to the credit of
our own country.' Sheridan believed, 'There
is nothing to be learned here professionally,
but it is a satisfaction to learn that such is
the case.' He insisted that Europeans could
benefit from studying Americans' more
effective use of cavalry and rifle pits, better
protection of their lines of communication,
and more efficient staff departments. By the
end of the century, some European officers
had extracted valuable lessons from studying
the Civil War, particularly tactics, but not
enough to anticipate the unparalleled
bloodshed in the First World War.
Little more than a month before his
death, Lincoln had called for the nation to
complete its undertaking and then bind its
wounds. Several decades later, survivors on
both sides attempted to do just that, to set
aside old grudges and to shake hands at
several battlefield commemorations. In their
youth, they had been touched by fire. By
middle and old age, that passion and animus
had largely flickered out. And while veterans
retained many fond memories, and preferred
to emphasize those aspects in their letters
and conversations, they never forgot the
harsh side of war.
In 1864, an Illinois officer assessed, 'There
is no God in war. It is merciless, cruel,
vindictive, un-christian savage, relentless. It
is all that devils could wish for.' Few veterans
would have disagreed.