In the West the Federals were almost uniformly successful in the greater battles, the Confederates winning in these but two decisive victories, Chickamauga and Sabine Cross Roads, in Louisiana. Estimating, according to the method of military experts, the percentage of losses of the victor only, Chickamauga was the bloodiest battle of the world, from and including Waterloo down to the present time. Gettysburg and Sharpsburg also rank as high in losses as any battle fought elsewhere in this long period, which takes in the Franco-German and the Russo-Japanese wars. At Sharpsburg or Antietam the losses exceeded those in any other one day's battle.[87]
The Confederates were successful, excepting Antietam or Sharpsburg and Gettysburg, and perhaps Seven Pines or Fair Oaks, in all the great battles in the East, down to the time when the shattered remnant of Lee's army was overwhelmed at Petersburg and surrendered at Appomattox. The élan the Southerners acquired in the many victories they won fighting for their homes is not to be overlooked. But the failure of the North with its overwhelming numbers and resources, to overcome the resistance of the half-famished Confederates until nearly four years had elapsed, can only be fully accounted for, in fairness to the undoubted courage of the Union armies, by the fact, on which foreign military critics are agreed, that the North had no such generals as Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Only by the superior generalship of their leaders could the Confederates have won as many battles as they did against vastly superior numbers.
But against the United States navy the brilliant generalship of the Confederates and their marvellous courage were powerless.
Accepted histories of the war have been written largely by the army and its friends, and, strangely enough, the general historians have been so attracted by the gallantry displayed in great land battles, and the immediate results, that they have utterly failed to appreciate the services of the United States navy.
The Southerners accomplished remarkable results with torpedoes with the Merrimac or Virginia and their little fleet of commerce destroyers; but the United States navy, by its effective blockade, starved the Confederacy to death. The Southern government could not market its cotton, nor could it import or manufacture enough military supplies. Among its extremest needs were rails and rolling stock to refit its lines of communication. For want of transportation it was unable to concentrate its armies, and for the same reason its troops were not half fed.
In addition to its services on the blockade, which, in Lord Wolseley's opinion, decided the war, the navy, with General Grant's help, cut the Confederacy in twain by way of the Mississippi. It penetrated every Southern river, severing Confederate communications and destroying depots of supplies. It assisted in the capture, early in the war, of Forts Henry and Donelson, and it conducted Union troops along the Tennessee River into east Tennessee and north Alabama. It furnished objective points and supplies at Savannah, Charleston, and Wilmington, to Sherman on his march from Atlanta; and finally Grant, the great Union general, who had failed to reach Richmond by way of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, and Cold Harbor, achieved success only when the navy was at his back, holding his base, while he laid a nine months' siege to Petersburg.
That distinguished author, Charles Francis Adams, himself a Union general in the Army of the Potomac, says that the United States navy was the deciding factor in the Civil War. He even says that every single successful operation of the Union forces "hinged and depended on naval supremacy."
The following is from the preface to "The Crisis of the Confederacy," in which, published in 1905, a foreign expert, Captain Cecil Battine, of the King's Hussars, condenses all that needs further to be said here about the purely military side of the Civil War:
The history of the American Civil War still remains the most important theme for the student and the statesman because it was waged between adversaries of the highest intelligence and courage, who fought by land and sea over an enormous area with every device within the reach of human ingenuity, and who had to create every organization needed for the purpose after the struggle had begun. The admiration which the valor of the Confederate soldiers, fighting against superior numbers and resources, excited in Europe; the dazzling genius of some of the Confederate generals, and in some measure jealousy at the power of the United States, have ranged the sympathies of the world during the war and ever since to a large degree on the side of the vanquished. Justice has hardly been done to the armies which arose time and again from sanguinary repulses, and from disasters more demoralizing than any repulse in the field, because they were caused by political and military incapacity in high places, to redeem which the soldiers freely shed their blood as it seemed in vain. If the heroic endurance of the Southern people and the fiery valor of the Southern armies thrill us to-day with wonder and admiration, the stubborn tenacity and courage which succeeded in preserving intact the heritage of the American nation, and which triumphed over foes so formidable, are not less worthy of praise and imitation. The Americans still hold the world's record for hard fighting.
The great majority of the Union soldiers enlisted for the preservation of the Union and not for the abolition of slavery. But among these soldiers there was an abolition element, and very soon the tramp of federal regiments was keeping time to