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March 1863: Dire Situations


by Diana Loski

Abraham Lincoln, circa 1863
(Library of Congress)

Abraham Lincoln, circa 1863

(Library of Congress)

The winter of early 1863 lasted much longer than anticipated, with two snowstorms hitting the winter quarters of both the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia during the month of March.  With the inclement weather, both armies were forced to remain in their camps, and unable to march or fight.

Circumstances had teetered on the brink of disaster for the Union army earlier in the year, but the situation improved greatly through the month of February and into March with the arrival of the Union army’s new commander, Joe Hooker.  The new general immediately improved conditions for the men in blue with better and more plentiful rations, regular pay, and reorganizing the army with corps symbols and insignia through brigade level to bring order and raise morale.

The Confederates fared worse, as conditions deteriorated further with the lack of sustenance and daily necessities.  One Southern officer declared that the winter of early 1863 was “the Valley Forge of the war”, as many men in the ranks were without enough food, shoes and blankets to protect them from the elements.  By March, the situation had become dire as the men suffered from widespread malnourishment.  General Lee wrote to the Secretary of War James Seddon, asking for more rations.  He wrote that the army only had “one fourth pound of bacon, eighteen ounces of flour and ten pounds of rice for every one hundred men every third day.”  He added that the troops were barely sustainable with the meager food availability while in camp, but the shortages “certainly will cause them to break down when called upon for exertion.”  Another officer remembered the month of March in 1863 as having “  cruel shortage of provisions.”  The suffering increased when scurvy was discovered among the troops, due to lack of fruit in their already poor diets.  Besides the men, horses and mules were perishing from starvation, crippling the cavalry, the artillery, and the availability of supplies brought by wagons.1

The food shortages caused riots among the civilians in major Southern cities like Richmond, exacerbated by rising inflation.  To offset the inflation, the Confederacy appealed to France for a loan for the desperately needed funds.  A loan of three million pounds was secured by a wealthy banker in Paris, to be repaid after the war in cotton.2

In Washington, President Lincoln was occupied with other matters.  While the Confederacy had implemented a conscription law in April 1862, the Union troops were dwindling without a significant number of volunteers.  Congress passed the Act for Enrolling and Calling Out the National Forces on March 3, 1863. This mandatory draft was put into action to secure enough soldiers to continue the war.  The conscription called for able-bodied men between the ages of 20 and 45 to be eligible for three years’ service in the military.  There were a few loopholes in the new law: the most common was that a man who wished to avoid fighting could employ another to take his place for three hundred dollars per annum.  There were myriad immigrants, men from Germany, Ireland, Great Britain and other nations who eagerly took the money – comparable to a year’s salary for a laborer – to fight instead.  One of the nation’s future U.S. Presidents, Grover Cleveland, took advantage of that means of escape.3

Shortly after the Conscription Law passed, the Supreme Court handed down multiple decisions that offered more political victories to Abraham Lincoln.  The court decided that the President had the right to suspend Habeus Corpus (Latin for one has the body: a law that prevents detaining a person arrested for a crime without due process).  Lincoln could only suspend this law in times of war to put down insurrections; even if war were not yet declared, the President could still place insurgents in jail for an undetermined amount of time in order to stop rebellions that are a threat to public safety.   Lincoln had already suspended Habeus Corpus earlier in the war to protect the Union and the public.  The Supreme Court finally gave the President, and any succeeding Presidents, the right to suspend this particular law in times of war to prevent a crisis to the citizenry.4

With the recent issuance of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and with the need for more soldiers to add to the ranks, the War Department issued a statement that promised equal pay and equal rations to all men fighting for the Federal cause regardless of color.  The pledge received a substantial number of volunteers as a result.5

The inception of conscription, on the heels of the Emancipation Proclamation and the promise of equal pay to minority soldiers incensed the Peace Democrats of the North.  Congressman Clement Vallandigham of Ohio raged that their quest for peace was practically destroyed with the passage of these laws.6

To offset the fallout from the opposing Northern Democrats, public rallies in major cities in the Union were set up, bringing thousands of civilians to demonstrate their public approval of the perpetuation of the war.  One of the largest occurred in Washington, D.C., which took place at the site of the yet unfinished Washington Monument not far from the White House.  President Lincoln and his Cabinet attended.  One correspondent claimed that “it was the greatest popular demonstration ever known in Washington.” 7

In March 1863 the city of Washington had swelled to nearly a quarter million people.  The capital was still largely agrarian, with cattle roaming near the Executive Mansion, grazing beneath the Washington Monument.  Makeshift hospitals suddenly appeared throughout the city:  churches, museums, galleries and public buildings were transformed into housing and operating rooms for the countless Union wounded from the previous year’s battles.  In addition to the soldiers, both wounded and able, there were multitudinous others – doctors and nurses, blockade runners, spies, concerned family members of the wounded, and a plethora of ladies of ill repute offering their services among pelting rain and streets that had become hopelessly mud-filled.8

Among the Confederates, there was one man who was in desperate need of medical care.  General Robert E. Lee was seriously ill for much of the month, laying prostrated in his tent for over a week before he was taken from the wretched winter quarters and taken to Richmond for examination by a doctor.  Lee suffered from a throat infection, which was exacerbated by sharp pains in his chest, back, and arms.  He was diagnosed with severe angina, and was bedridden for over a week until his throat infection was cured.  The second ailment, however, was not one that could be cured.  Lee was told he had a problematic heart, and that was not going to improve.9

The amalgamation of circumstances, making situations increasingly dire for the South and still not honed for the North, created a path that would lead to Lee’s incredible victory at Chancellorsville in the spring – giving the ailing commander in gray the idea that his army could, and should, invade the North.  The severe lack of food, shoes, horses and supplies for the Confederates, with a commander who was ill and impatient to end the war, would play out soon enough, with disaster in its wake. 

On the Federal side, Hooker was a decent leader in camp, and a good organizer who raised morale, but his lack of leadership in battle would bring another change in command. 

It all would come together a few months later on the pastoral lands of Pennsylvania.


Robert E. Lee
(Library of Congress)

Robert E. Lee

(Library of Congress)



Sources:  Freeman, Douglas Southall.  R.E. Lee .  Volume II.   New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1962 (reprint, first published in  1934).  Goodwin, Doris Kearns.  Team of  Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln .  New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005.  Sandburg, Carl.  Abraham  Lincoln: The Prairie Years & The War Years .  New York:   Galahad Books, 1993 (reprint, first published as two volumes, 1934 and  1939).  Wagner, Margaret E.  The Library  of Congress Illustrated Timeline of the Civil War .  New York, Boston, London: Little, Brown and  Company, 2011.  Whitney, David C. with  Robyn Vaughn Whitney.  The American Presidents .  New York: Doubleday & Company, 1993.

End Notes: 
1.  Goodwin, p. 503.  Freeman,pp. 494-495. 

2.  Ibid.

3.  Wagner, p. 112.  Whitney, p. 177. 

4.  Wagner, p. 113. 

5.  Ibid. 

6.  Goodwin, p. 503. 

7.  Ibid. p. 504. 
v 8.  Sandburg, pp. 399-400. 

9. Freeman, pp. 502-503.

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