The Confederate Army

The permanent Constitution of the Confederate States of America provided that the President should be commander-in-chicf of the army and navy, and of the militia of the several States when called into actual service. Accordingly, in any consideration of the Confederate army, the part played by President Davis must be borne in mind; also the fact that he previously had seen service in the United States army and that he had been Secretary of War of the United States. As Secretaries of War in the Confederate States Government there were associated with President Davis, the following: Leltoy Pope Walker, of Alabama, February 21, 1861, to September 17, 1861; Judah P. Benjamin, of Louisiana, September 17, 1861, to March 17, 1862; George W. Randolph, of Virginia, March 17, 1862, to November 17, 1862; Major-General Gustavus W. Smith, of Kentucky, November 17, 1862, to November 21, 1862; James A. Seddon, of Virginia, from November 21, 1862, to February 6,1865 ; and Major General John C. Brcckinridge, of Kentucky, February 6, 1865, to the close of the war.

Unlike the Union army there were generals, both regular and of the provisional army, as well as lieutenant-generals; it being the intention that every commander of an army should rank as general, and every commander of a corps should rank as lieutenant-general. Such was the case with the generals mentioned in the biographical matter following in connection with the various armies and other organizations. An exception to this statement was General Samuel Cooper, who served at Richmond as adjutant and inspector-general.

In the Civil War great armies were developed by local military problems and their names grew out of local circumstances. The great Federal Army of the East took its name from a river, the Potomac, and its antagonist, the great Confederate army of Lee, bore the name of the state which it was created to defend, Virginia. There were seventeen Federal armies acting as separate units, five of them bearing the name of a river, eight that of a state and four the name of the section wherein they operated. The Confederate States had in all twenty-three [by another count a total of 26] separate armies of which four took the name of a river; eleven the name of a state and eight of a section. There were, of course, mauy shiftings of command, promotions, changes in the names of military departments, &c..

The early Confederate armies in Virginia were known as "the Army of the Potomac " and "the Army of the Shenandoah." Afterwards there were only known two great army organizations in the Coniederacy, east of the Mississippi River - "the Army of Northern Virginia" and "the Army of Tennessee."

1. Army of the Potomac: First commander, Joseph E. Johnston.
2. Army of the Shenandoah: First commander, Joseph E. Johnston.
3. Army of Yorktown: First commander, J. Bankhead Magruder.
4. Army of the Peninsula : First commander, J. Bankhead Magruder.
5. Army of the Kanawha: First commander, J. B. Floyd.
6. Army of the. Northwest : First commander, R. E. Lee.
7. Army of the Valley: First commander, T. J. Jackson.
8. Northwestern Army: First commander, R. S. Garnett.
9. Army of Northern Virginia : First commander, Joseph E. Johnston.
10. Army of Arkansas : First commander, Ben McCullough.
11. Army of Liberation: First commander, Gid J. Pillow.
12. Army of New Mexico : First commander, H. H. Sibley.
13. Army of Tennessee: First commander, A. S. Johnston.
14. Army of West Tennessee: First commander, Earl Van Dorn.
15. Army of the District of Mississippi: First commander, Mansfield Lovell.
16. Army of Central Kentucky: First commander, A. S. Johnston.
17. Army of the Mississippi Valley: First commander, G. T. Beauregard.
18. Army of Mississippi: First commander, L. Polk.
19. Army of Texas: First commander, H. P. Bee.
20. Western Army: First commander, Ben McCullough.
21. Army of the West : First commander, Sterling Price.
22. Army of Eastern Kentucky: First commander, Humphrey Marshall.
23. Army of Missouri: First commander, Sterling Price.
24. Army of Mobile: First commander, Thomas M. Jones.
25. Army of Perfeacola: First commander, B. Bragg.
26. Southwestern Army: First commander, E. Kirby Smith.

The only armies that went all through were those of Northern Virginia, Tennessee, Mississippi, and possibly Kirby Smith's Southwestern; but the others were extremely short-lived and might be said to have almost died "a-bornin'." Two of the great contending armies on each side reinforced each other or in some way cooperated at critical periods - the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and the Confederate Army of Tennessee, the Federal Army of the Potomac and the Federal Army of the Tennessee. The Federal Army of the Potomac was built up from a nucleus composed of troops summoned to the defense of Washington and the vital Potomac line in 1861. In the same way the force which opposed it for nearly four years sprung from a nucleus (originally Virginia state units) which defended Northern Virginia, that is the region bordering on the Potomac, in the first year of the war.

The Federal Army of the Tennessee, whose operations ultimately linked up strategically with those of the Army of the Potomac, was created in the Shiloh campaign, Spring of 1862, to defend the Tennessee River region. Its antagonist of three years of combat, the Confederate Army of Tennessee, first took form and name in the fall of 1862 when all Southern troops in Tennessee-men of Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi-were fused in one mass to wrest the mountain state from Federal control. Thus each of these pairs of armies had objectives which in the main were identical; objectives, too, that suggested a name for each and kept them afield for three years more or less with the result that Civil War history turns largely upon their battle fortunes.

In the final stage of the conflict the Federal Army of the Tennessee, with its companion armies of the West, all under Sherman, encircled the South to support the Federal Army of the Potomac in Virginia. Also the Confederate Army of Tennessee, reenforced by fragments of other armies out of the West, confronted its old foe under Sherman in the Carolinas, in order to biiccor the Army of Northern Virginia from the pincers about to close on it around Richmond. Lee's army had then ceased to be the Army of Northern Virginia in the original and literal sense for the war front in the East had moved from the Potomac to the James, well to the south of the geographical centre of the state.

The evolution of army names in the Civil War is illustrated by the titles given to the Federal Army of the Ohio. Originally based on the Ohio it took its name from that river. Subsequent operations left the Ohio River far in the rear and the new fighting zone for that force was Tennessee, in the region of the Cumberland range and Cumberland River. On October 8, 1862, the Army of the Ohio fought its last battle at Perryville, Ky., and on December 31 the same troops baptized at Stone's River, Tenn., their new name, Army of the Cumberland. Later appeared the Army of Ohio an entirely distinct force organized in the Department of Ohio.

Owing to the fact of the changes that took place in the names of the main armies contending on the eastern coast of the United States, they having been in one instance even interchanged, it is necessary to mention formally what these names on the respective sides were and what they finally became. In the Confederate Army, Beauregard's army was called the Army of the Potomac, and Johnston's the Army of the Shenandoah, while McDowell's army was not popularly known by any distinctive name. In the next campaign, that of the Peninsula, under General George B. McClellan, the Federal army was known as the Army of the Potomac, and the Confederate one as the Army of Northern Virginia. In the immediately following campaign, that of the second battle of Bull Run, some of the troops of the Army of the Potomac reinforced a Federal army under General John Pope, known as the Army of Virginia, which fought a number of battles with the Army of Northern Virginia. Finally the Federal army continued to retain the name of the Army of the Potomac, and the Confederate army to retain that of the Army of Northern Virginia, and they thus remained named and known until the end of the war.

The Virginians first used the title, Army of the Potomac, giving it to a small force which opened the battle of Bull Run and later united with troops from the Shenandoah Valley to form the Army of Northern Virginia and help make a name that in itself proved to be invincible under varying fortunes. The captivating title, Army of the Shenandoah, was borne by two different Federal armies at different stages of the warfare along that famous river, and also by a Confederate force early in the war. The Mississippi gave its name to two Federal armies and to one Confederate force.

Army corps came comparatively late in the Civil War and sometimes revealed the disadvantage of such units in battle. A Confederate corps was formed different from a corps of the Union army. They only accounted for the men actually present in the ranks doing duty, while the Union army accounted for all men's names that appeared on the rolls. No matter if a man was absent in some Southern prison-pen, or wounded and in hospital, or perhaps on detached service, his name was accounted for each and every day. A corps of Confederate troops was composed of three divisions; a division consisted of four brigades, and a brigade, as a rule, consisted of twenty-five hundred men, thus making ten thousand men to a division, and three divisions to a corps - thirty thousand men.

Three corps, making ninety thousand troops of infantry, together with the cavalry and artillery, constituted Lee's army at Gettysburg. This army numbered not less than one hundred and ten or twelve thousand men. The First corps of the Confederate Army was under command of General Longstreet, the Second corps was commanded by General Ewell, and the Third corps by General A. P. Hill. Just before Gettysburg Robert E. Lee declared that a corps was too large a body for one commander to handle successfully. He urged his division commanders to make their divisions do the work of a corps, and one needs but search the battle records of any great army of Lee's era to be convinced that the divisions composing it helped individually to build up its greatness. Divisions possess individuality - distinct, strong and inspiring.

The "Stonewall" division of Virginians earned renown when it was the sole command of "Stonewall" Jackson. Later it often acted as the bulwark of a line composed of two or more divisions and again of the corps of which it became a part-corps led successively by Jackson, Ewell, Early and John B. Gordon. Hood's division, another strong unit of Lee's army, likewise Cleburne's, of the Confederate Army of Tennessee, never missed the "post of danger" and never emerged as "second best" from the deadliest encounters.

Under Mr. Davis the armies were organized, and in those armies were more soldiers than the white arms-bearing population living within the military lines of the Confederacy. In some way under his administration these soldiers were admirably armed, fairly supplied with a fair quality of the necessary munitions of war; were clad, not sufficiently, but so as to be protected from the.severer weather; and fed, not amply, but so as to fit them for the most fatiguing marches and glorious victories.