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The Year 1863
When you include Union General William S.
Rosecrans’ long preparation at the beginning and the end
of the campaign, Tullahoma actually consumed nine
months. In part, the planning for the Tullahoma
Campaign began just as the
Battle of Stones
River ended (2 January 1863) and continued until the
initial troop engagements of the
Battle of Chickamauga
(10 September 1863). Moreover, this vast span of months
encompassed fundamental shifts in the nature of the war
itself. Not only were
Gettysburg
and
Vicksburg
(July 1863) played out during this time, but both the
Confederacy and the Union moved closer than ever before
to fighting a modern industrial war. No matter the
war’s outcome, neither could possibly restore life as it
had been in 1860. The Tullahoma Campaign was a
vital part of this shift, and further exposed the
ironies of the war.
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Emancipation.
On January 1, 1863, the North officially
made the war a crusade to liberate the slaves with the
adoption of the Emancipation Proclamation. For
President Lincoln liberation was both a moral referendum
against the institution of slavery and a strategic
attempt to disrupt the Southern war effort. As the
Federal Armies moved south fleeing slaves abandoned
plantations for Union lines. The Emancipation
Proclamation also reaffirmed the president’s authority
to enlist black soldiers, and inaugurated an effort to
organize all-black regiments. Nearly 200,000 black men
would serve as Union soldiers, sailors, or laborers by
the end of the war. In Tennessee, the construction of
Fortress Rosecrans
in Murfreesboro and Ft. Negley in
Nashville were material results of emancipation and the
use of contraband, or freed slaves.
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Conscription and Centralization.
Although the political debate over slavery during the
1850s produced an elaborate southern defense of a strict
constructionist or states rights vision of the
Constitution, the argument for limited government only
went so far. This was the mid-nineteenth century, after
all, the time frame that formed the industrial nation
state as a type (as witness the creation of Bismarck’s
Germany). Leading southern politicians were as much a
part of this trend as anyone else. As a revealing
example, during his Senate career in the 1850s,
Jefferson Davis was an insistent states rights Democrat
when it came to the matter of federal power over
slavery, but an exuberant nationalist when it came to
using the Washington government to help build a
transcontinental railroad. This attitude carried over
into the war when the same Davis, as president of the
Confederacy, promoted
conscription and direct national
taxation (in this case, the exercise of eminent domain
over a portion of every farmer’s crops and livestock)
out of the need to support the troops in the field.
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War Against Southern Society.
Like Emancipation, other war objectives
changed as well. When conflict broke out in 1861, the
Northern war aim was to restore the Union of voluntary
consent that had existed in 1860. By the time of
Tullahoma, Northerners were fashioning a new kind of
nation—one cemented by power and by the demonstrated
ability to conquer. The Tullahoma Campaign itself was
part of this change. The military strategy in middle
Tennessee centered on driving a wedge from Nashville
through Chattanooga to Atlanta, a wedge that would
effectively isolate the Confederate east coast from the
entire rest of the South. If successful the Confederacy
would be divided into a series of isolated fragments,
each incapable of mounting a defense, and vulnerable to
destruction by the North. The nation would be made
whole again not by restoring the old Union, but
by destroying the secessionist republic.
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The South’s Internal Fragmentation.
Although secessionist radicals had
labored for years to construct a united Southern
response to Northern incursions, the
proslavery movement,
they never achieved their aim. From the bitter
sectional debates during the Mexican War on into the
1850s, Southerners disagreed violently among themselves
about the correct course to take, and about the real
nature of the threat posed by abolitionism and the
Republican Party. This disagreement continued through
Lincoln’s election and beyond. Middle Tennessee was
particularly divided, voting first one way in February
of 1861, then the other in early June, on the question
of secession. Like other areas of the country during
the war, neighbors fought against neighbors.
Shelbyville, the seat of Bedford County, remained
staunchly unionist throughout the war. In Northern
papers the town was referred to as “Little Boston”
because of its pro-Union stance. When Federal cavalry
entered Shelbyville in late June American flags were
prominently displayed by citizens welcoming the Union
army as liberators. Neighboring Franklin County,
however, was filled with Southern partisans. In the
spring of 1861 an unsuccessful movement to secede from
Tennessee and join Alabama transpired. Animosity
between the two counties continued after the war and
Moore County was created in 1866 as a buffer. The
Provost Marshal reports of internecine fighting that
developed after 1865, however, would generate more
vindictiveness than the formal combat during the
campaign as vigilantes from both sides produced random
acts of violence that included hangings.
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