The United States and the Civil War
内战与美国
As mentioned previously, observers of global politics from de Tocqueville onward felt that the rise of the Russian Empire went in parallel with that of the United States. To be sure, everyone admitted that there were fundamental differences in the political culture and constitutions of those two states, but in World Power terms they seemed very much alike in respect to their geographical size, their “open” and ever-moving frontiers, their fast-growing populations, and their scarcely tapped resources. 77 While much of that is true, the fact remains that throughout the nineteenth century there were important economic discrepancies between the United States and Russia which would have an increasing impact upon their national power. The first of these was in terms of total population, although the gap significantly narrowed between 1816 (Russia 51. 2 million, United States 8. 5 million) and 1860 (Russia 76 million, United States 31. 4 million). What was more pertinent was the character of that population: whereas Russia consisted overwhelmingly of serfs, with low income and low production, Americans on their homesteads or in the swiftly growing cities generally* enjoyed a high standard of living, and of national output, relative to other countries. Already in 1800, wages had been about one-third higher than those in western Europe, and that superiority was to be preserved, if not increased, throughout the century. Despite the vast inflow of European immigrants by the 1850s, the ready availability of land in the west, together with constant industrial growth, caused labor to be relatively scarce and wages to be high, which in turn induced manufacturers to invest in labor-saving machinery, further stimulating national productivity. The young republic’s isolation from European power struggles, and the cordon sanitaire which the Royal Navy (rather than the Monroe Doctrine) imposed to separate the Old World from the New, meant that the only threat to the United States’ future prosperity could come from Britain itself. Yet despite sore memories of 1776 and 1812, and border disputes in the northwest,78 an Anglo-American war was unlikely; the flow of British capital and manufactures toward the United States and the return flow of American raw materials (especially cotton) tied the two economies ever closer together and further stimulated American economic growth. Instead of having to divert financial resources into large-scale defense expenditures, therefore, a strategically secure United States could concentrate its own (and British) funds upon developing its vast economic potential. Neither conflict with the Indians nor the 1846 war with Mexico was a substantial drain upon such productive investment.
前面已经提到，从德·托克维尔起的全球政治观察家都感到，俄帝国的崛起可与美国的崛起相比。的确，每个人都会承认两国的政治、文化和体制存在着根本的差别，但从世界大国的角度观察，它们的面积大小、“敞开的”和不断变动的边界、迅速增长的人口和几乎没有开发的资源，看上去却很相似。虽然以上大部分情况是事实，但在整个19世纪，美国与俄国依然存在着重要的经济差距，这些差距对两国实力的影响日益增加。第一个经济差距在总人口数方面，虽然在1816年（俄国5120万，美国850万）到1860年（俄国7600万，美国3140万）差距大大地缩小了。更关键的是人口的素质：俄国人口的绝大部分是农奴，收入和生产力都低；而分得土地的，或住在迅速成长的城市中的美国人，与其他国家相比，则普遍地[11]享受、创造高标准的生活和国民产值。早在1800年，美国工资已高于西欧工资1/3，这种优势在整个19世纪即使没有扩大，也仍保持着。到19世纪50年代，尽管来了大量欧洲移民，但美国西部容易取得土地的情况，再加上持续的工业增长，造成了劳动力的相对缺乏和高工资，这两者转过来又促使制造商们投资于节省劳力的机器，从而进一步刺激了国民的生产力。这个年轻的合众国超然于欧洲的权力斗争之外，英国皇家海军（不是门罗主义）布置“防疫线”，以强行把旧世界同新世界分开，这些情况意味着对美国未来繁荣的威胁只能来自英国本身。可是，尽管有1776年和1812年的辛酸回忆及西北边境的争端，英美之间的战争是不可能发生的。英国资本和制成品流入美国，美国的原材料（特别是棉花）回流到英国，这种情况把两国的经济更紧密地拴在一起，并进一步促进了美国经济的成长。因此，战略上安全的美国不必把财政资源分散地用于国防支出，而可以集中自己的（和英国的）资金去开发其巨大的经济潜力。与印第安人的冲突和1846年与墨西哥的战争，都没有大量消耗这种生产性投资。
The result of all this was that even before the outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861, the United States had become an economic giant, although its own distance from Europe, its concentration upon internal development (rather than foreign trade), and the rugged nature of the countryside partly disguised that fact. While its share of world manufacturing output in 1860 was well behind that of Great Britain, it had already surged past Germany and Russia and was on the point of overtaking France. The United States, with only 40 percent of Russia’s population in 1860, had an urban population more than twice as large, produced 830,000 tons of iron to Russia’s 350,000 tons, had an energy consumption from modern fuel sources fifteen times as large, and a railway mileage thirty times greater (and even three times greater than Britain’s). By contrast, the United States possessed a regular army of a mere 26,000 men compared with Russia’s gigantic force of 862,000. 79 The disparity between the economic indices and the military indices of the two continent-wide states was perhaps never greater than at this point.
这一切造成的结果是，甚至在1861年4月内战爆发前，美国已经成为一个经济巨人，虽然它远离欧洲，注意力集中在国内发展（而不是对外贸易）和依然保持着自然粗犷风貌的农村，部分地掩盖了这个事实。1860年，它在世界工业产量中所占的份额远远落在英国后面，但却超过了德国和俄国，快要赶上法国。1860年人口只占俄国40%的美国，其城市人口却比俄国多一倍，生产83万吨铁（俄国只生产35万吨），消耗现代燃料的能源是俄国的15倍，铁路长度是俄国的30倍（甚至是英国的3倍）。相比之下，美国只有一支2.6万名士兵的正规军，而俄国庞大的兵力则高达86.2万人。两个远隔重洋的国家的经济指数和军事指数的差距，也许再没有比这个时候更为悬殊的了。
Within another year, of course, the Civil War had begun to transform the amount of national resources which Americans devoted to military purposes. The origins and causes of that conflict are not for discussion here; but since the leadership of both sides had determined upon a fight to the finish, and since each side could call upon hundreds of thousands of men, the struggle was likely to be prolonged. What made it more so was the distances involved, with the “front” ranging from the Virginia coast to the Mississippi, and even farther westward into Missouri and Arkansas—much of this being forest, mountain range, and swamplands. Similarly, the North’s naval blockade of its foes’ ports involved patrolling a coastline as extensive as that between Hamburg and Genoa. Crushing the South, in other words, would be an extraordinarily difficult logistical and military task, especially for a people which had kept its armed forces to a minimum and had no experience of large-scale war.
当然，在下一年中，内战开始改变美国人专门用于军事目的的国家资源的数量。这场冲突的根源和原因，这里不加论述，但是由于双方的领导已经决定把战斗进行到底，又都能号召数十万人，斗争就会延续下去。由于战斗席卷广大地区，情况更是如此。“战线”从弗吉尼亚沿岸直至密西西比，甚至往西更远至密苏里和阿肯色——大部分地区是森林、山脉和沼泽地。同样，北方的海军封锁了敌人的港口，它巡逻的海岸线同汉堡与热那亚之间的距离一样长。换句话说，尤其是对一个已把武装部队保持在最低水平而且没有大规模战争经验的民族来说，打垮南方将是一个困难的后勤和军事任务。
Yet while the four years of conflict were exhausting and fearfully bloody—the Union losing about 360,000 men to the Confederacy’s 258,000*—they also catalyzed the latent national power which the United States possessed, transforming it (at least for a short while) into the greatest military nation on earth before its post-1865 demobilization. From amateur beginnings, the armed forces of each side turned themselves into mass conscript armies, employing modern rifled artillery and small arms, grinding away in the siege warfare of northern Virginia or being shuttled en masse by rail to the western theaters, communicating by telegraph to army headquarters, and drawing upon the resources of a mobilized war economy; the naval campaigns, moreover, witnessed the first use of ironclads, of rotating turrets, of early torpedos and mines, and of swift, steam-driven commerce raiders. Since this conflict much more than either the Crimean struggle or Prussia’s wars of unification lays claim to being the first real industrialized “total war” on prototwentieth- century lines, it is worth noting why the North won.
可是，虽然4年的冲突消耗元气且伤亡惨重（北方联邦政府约损失36万人，而南方邦联则损失25.8万人[12]），但它也体现了美国拥有的潜在国力。这场冲突（至少短期地）把美国改造成地球上最大的军事国家（1865年以后到大幅度减员之前）。双方的武装部队从一开始的外行转变成不断进行大量征兵的陆军，它们使用了有膛线的现代大炮和小型武器，在北弗吉尼亚的围城战中展开拉锯，大批兵员乘火车奔赴西部战场，双方的陆军司令部都采用电报通信，并且利用动员起来的战时经济资源；在海战中，出现了首先使用的铁甲舰、旋转炮塔、早期的鱼雷和水雷，以及用于劫掠商船的蒸汽快船。比起克里米亚战争或德意志统一战争，这场冲突更有资格号称第一次真正的工业化“总体战”，所以指出北方取胜的原因是非常有必要的。
The first and most obvious reason—assuming that willpower would remain equal on each side—was the disproportion in resources and population. It may have been true that the South enjoyed the morale advantage of fighting for its very existence and (usually) on its own soil; that it could call upon a higher proportion of white males who were used to riding and shooting; that it possessed determined and goodquality generals and that, for a long while, it could import munitions and other supplies to make up for its matériel deficiencies. 80 But none of these could fully compensate for the great numerical imbalance between the North and the South. While the former contained a population of approximately twenty million whites, the Confederacy had only six million. What was more, the Union’s total was steadily enhanced by immigrants (more than 800,000 arrived between 1861 and 1865) and by the 1862 decision to enlist black troops—something which the South avoided, predictably enough, until the last few months of the war. Around two million men served in the Union Army, which reached a peak strength of about one million in 1864–1865, whereas only about 900,000 men fought for the Confederate Army, whose maximum strength was never more than 464,500—from which “peak,” reached in late 1863, it slowly declined.
假定双方的意志力保持不变，第一和最明显的原因是资源和人口的悬殊。以下的情况可能是事实：南方为自己生存而战，而且（通常地）在自己的土地上战斗，所以在斗志方面占了优势；它能征召更高比率的擅长骑射的白人男子；它拥有一批坚定和优秀的将领；在相当长一段时期内，它可以进口军火和其他供应，以弥补物资的亏缺。但这些都不能补偿北方和南方之间数字上的巨大差距。当北方拥有将近2000万的白人人口时，南方邦联只有600万。此外，由于移民（1861～1865年来了80万）和1862年征募黑人部队的决定（完全可以预料，这是南方在战争最后几个月之前回避的事），联邦政府的人口总数不断增长。约200万人曾在联邦政府军中服役，1864～1865年它的实力达到了顶峰，约有100万士兵。只有约90万士兵曾经陆续为南方邦联军作战，它的最大兵力从没有超过464500人——这是1863年晚些时候达到的“最高峰”，从此人数就逐渐地减少了。
But there was, as usual, more to war than sheer numbers. Even to reach the army size it did, the South ran the risk of taking too many men away from agriculture, mines, and foundries, thus weakening its already questionable capacity to fight a prolonged war. From the very beginning, in fact, the Confederates found themselves disadvantaged economically. In 1860 the North possessed 110,000 manufacturing establishments to the South’s 18,000 (and many of the latter relied upon Northern technological expertise and skilled laborers); the Confederacy produced only 36,700 tons of pig iron, whereas Pennsylvania’s total alone was 580,000 tons; New York State manufactured almost $300 million worth of goods—well over four times the production of Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi combined. This staggering disparity in the economic base of each belligerent steadily transformed itself into real military effectiveness.
但是，与常情一样，对战争来说，除单纯的数字外还有其他因素。南方即使达到了军队的规模，它还要冒从农业、矿业和铸造厂抽调过多的男人的风险，从而削弱了打一场长期战争时必须依靠的能力。事实上从一开始，南方邦联的支持者已经发现他们在经济上处于不利地位。在1860年，北方拥有11万个制造业设施，而南方只有1.8万个（其中许多还依靠北方的技术专业知识和技工）；邦联只生产3.67万吨生铁，而宾夕法尼亚一地的产量就达58万吨；纽约州几乎生产了价值3亿美元的货物——是弗吉尼亚、亚拉巴马、路易斯安那和密西西比产值总和的4倍以上。交战双方经济基础的惊人差距，不断地表现为战斗力的差距。
For example, whereas the South could make very few rifles (chiefly from the machinery captured at Harper’s Ferry) and heavily relied upon imports, the North massively expanded its home manufactures of rifles, of which nearly 1. 7 million were produced. The North’s railway system (some 22,000 miles in length, and fanning out from the east to the southwest) could be maintained, and even expanded, during the war; the South’s mere 9,000 miles of track, and inadequate supplies of locomotives and rolling stock, was gradually worn out. Similarly, while neither side possessed much of a navy at the outset of the conflict, the South was disadvantaged by having no machine shop which could build marine engines, whereas the North possessed several dozen such establishments. Although it took time for the Union’s maritime supremacy to make itself felt—during which period blockade runners brought European-made munitions to the Confederate Army, and Southern commerce raiders inflicted heavy losses upon the North’s merchant marine —the net slowly and inexorably tightened around the South’s ports. By December 1864 the Union’s navy totaled some 671 warships, including 236 steam vessels built since the war’s beginning. Northern sea power was also vital in giving its armed forces control of the great inland rivers, especially in the Mississippi-Tennessee region; it was the successful use of combined rail and water transport which aided the Union’s offensives in the western theater.
例如，南方仅能制造少量的步枪（主要是用从哈珀渡口缴获的机器制造的），并且严重地依靠进口；北方则大量在国内制造步枪，生产的步枪近170万支。北方的铁路系统（长度约2.2万英里，并从东部向西南扇形展开）在战时得以维护甚至发展；南方只有0.9万英里的路轨和供应不足的机车和车皮，而且在逐渐磨损。同样，虽然双方在冲突开始时基本上都没有海军，但南方因没有建造船舶发动机的机器车间而处于不利地位，而北方则有几十个这样的设施。虽然要经过一段时期，人们才能感到北方联邦政府的海上优势（在此期间，偷越封锁的船只把欧洲造的军火运给邦联军，使南方用于劫掠商船的武装快船给北方的商船造成了重大的损失），但封锁网缓慢而无情地在南方港口周围收紧了。到1864年12月，北方联邦政府的海军共有671艘战船，其中包括战争开始以来建造的236艘汽船。北方的海上力量在使其武装部队控制几条大内河——特别是在密西西比至田纳西地区——方面也发挥了重要作用；铁路和水路运输成功的结合使用，帮助了联邦政府在西部战场的进攻。
Finally, the Confederates found it impossible to pay for the war. Their chief income in peacetime came from the export of cotton; when that trade dried up and when—to the South’s disappointment—the European powers did not intervene in the struggle, there was no way to compensate for the loss. There were few banks in the South, and little liquid capital; and taxing land and slaves brought little revenue when the productivity of both was being hard hit by the war. Borrowing from abroad produced little, yet without foreign currency or specie it was difficult to pay for vital imports. Inevitably, perhaps, the Confederate treasury turned to the printing press, but “overabundant paper money combined with severe commodity shortages to create rampant inflation”81—which in turn dealt a severe blow to the populace’s will to continue the fight. By contrast, the North could always raise enough money, from taxation and loans, to pay for the conflict; and its printing of “greenbacks” in some ways stimulated further industrial and economic growth. Impressively, the Union’s productivity surged again during the war, not only in munitions, railway-building, and ironclad construction, but also in agricultural output. By the end of the war, Northern soldiers were probably better fed and supplied than any army in history. If there was going to be a particularly American approach to military conflict—an “American way of war,” to use Professor Weigley’s phrase82—then it was first forged here, in the Union’s mobilization and deployment of its massive industrial-technological potential to crush its foe.
最后，南方邦联的支持者发现不可能负担战争的费用。他们在和平时期的主要收入来自棉花出口，当这项贸易萎缩且欧洲列强没有干涉这场争斗（这使南方感到失望）时，他们就无法弥补损失。南方的银行很少，也没有什么流动资本；当土地和奴隶的生产受到战争的严重打击时，土地税和奴隶税的收入就很少了。向外国借款收效不大，可是没有外国的通货或硬币，就难以支付主要的进口货。也许南方邦联的金库不可避免地要求助于印刷机，但是“过滥的钞票，加上几种商品的短缺，造成了不可收拾的通货膨胀”，这又转过来严重地打击了民众继续战斗的意志。对比之下，北方通过税收和借款，始终能筹措足够的资金去支付这场冲突的费用；它印发的“美钞”在一定程度上进一步刺激了工业和经济的增长。在战争期间，联邦政府的生产力，不但在军火、铁路建设和铁甲舰的建造方面，而且在农业产量方面，都增长迅猛。到战争结束时，北方军队的伙食和供应可能比历史上的任何军队都强。如果说正在出现一种特殊的进行军事冲突的美国方法（韦格利教授称之为“美国式的战争”），那么它首先在这里，即在联邦政府动员和利用其巨大的工业—技术潜力以打垮其敌人的行动中形成。
If all the above sounds too deterministic an explanation for the outcome of a conflict which seemed to sway backward and forward for nearly four years, then it may be worth stressing the fundamental strategical problem which faced the South. Given the imbalances in size and population, there was no way in which it could overrun the North; the best that could be achieved was to so blunt the enemy’s armies, and willpower, that he would abandon his policy of coercion and admit the South’s claims (to slavery, or to secede, or both). This strategy would have been greatly aided if the border states like Maryland and Kentucky had overwhelmingly voted to join the Confederacy, which simply didn’t happen; and it would have been helped beyond measure if a foreign power like Britain had intervened, but to suppose that was likely was a staggering misreading of British political priorities in the early 1860s. 83 With the exclusion of those two possibilities of swinging the overall military balance in favor of the South, the Confederates were simply left with the strategy of resisting the Union’s pressures and hoping that a majority of Northerners would tire of the war. But that meant, unavoidably, a long-drawn-out conflict—and the lengthier the war was, the more the Union could mobilize its greater resources, boost its munitions production, lay down hundreds of warships, and inexorably squeeze the South, by naval blockade, by unrelenting military pressure in northern Virginia, by long-range campaigning in the west, and by Sherman’s devastating drives through enemy territories. As the South’s economy, morale, and front-line forces waned—by the beginning of 1865 its “present for duty” troop total was down to 155,000 men—surrender was the only realistic choice left.
如果以上一切因素对解释一场拉锯将近4年的冲突的结果来说听起来过于像物质决定论，那么着重指出南方面临的基本战略问题也许是值得的。由于面积和人口的差距，南方无法赶上北方。充其量它只能做到削弱敌人的锐气和意志力，以致使他们放弃其高压政策和承认南方的权力（维持奴隶制，或者分治，或者两者兼而有之）。如果处于南北交界的州，如马里兰和肯塔基，有绝大部分人投票要求加入邦联，这个策略将得到很大的帮助，可是这种事根本没有发生；假如外国（像英国）干预，南方又会得到无法估量的帮助，但作这样的假设，是对19世纪60年代初叶英国政治的权衡与抉择的惊人的误解。排除了以上两种使全面军事优势转向南方的可能性，邦联的支持者只能采用抵抗联邦政府的压力和希望大部分北方佬厌战的战略了。但是，这样必然意味着一场旷日持久的冲突；而战争时间拖得越长，联邦政府就越能动员其更丰富的资源，提高其军火生产，兴建数百艘战舰并无情地压制南方——通过海军封锁、对弗吉尼亚北部施加持久的压力、在西部长期征战和谢尔曼破坏性地深入敌人领土来完成。像南方的经济一样，士气下降，前线的军队也衰弱了，到1865年初，它“应召”部队的总数降至15.5万人，投降是剩下的唯一现实的选择。