Happy Birthday John -- I Wish

John H. Edinger, Jr., 1940-2010
(Photo: John H. "Jack" Edinger, III)

John would have been seventy-three years old today. I tried to always send him a card. His birthday follows so closely behind Christmas and New Years that it kind of sneaked up on me and I had to rush to find a card. As often as not, if memory serves, my card was late. 

Along with the card I also generally bought him a book. Books were about the only kind of gift from me that he appreciated. It was a challenge to find one that he had not already read or knew about. Memorable are the occasions when I got him one that he really enjoyed. He would tell me all about it, many times over the breakfast table at some greasy spoon, in Mount Airy where he lived or else here in Augusta. Whenever Connie and I visited him and Mom—or whenever the two of them visited us—John and I always went out for breakfast. It seems we did just about all our talking over sausage and eggs, grits on some mornings and hash browns on others, sometimes a little bacon, or a stack of pancakes, and gallons and gallons of coffee. 

1863-1864 and Events upon which the Civil War Turned

From the start of the Civil War, disparities between the North and South in terms of capabilities and resources gave the North a sizeable advantage.  Yet for about the first two years of fighting that advantage had not yielded much.  Though the scales had always been weighted in favor of the North, in 1863 they began tipping more and more in that direction.  There are several reasons for this.

President Lincoln visits his commanders in the field

First, President Lincoln issued the second (final) Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863.  The net effect of this was increased black recruitment and the organization of black regiments in the Union Army.  Henceforth, about nine percent of Union forces were black.[1]  This represented a significant manpower drain away from the Confederacy and to the Union.  Given the disparity in manpower strength at the beginning of the war, this was a huge factor in tipping the scales more in favor of the North.

National conscription became necessary for both the North and the South, and both sides instituted this practice, the South in 1862[2] and the North on March 3, 1863[3].  Given the much larger manpower base from which to draw on in the North, universal (compulsory) military service further weighted the manpower advantage to the North.

As the war entered its third year, anti-war sentiment in the North increased.  This was a political problem for President Lincoln who in 1863 began suppressing civil liberties, including suspension of the writ of habeas corpus.  These three things, the emancipation, national conscription, and suspension of the writ of habeas corpus intensified Northern opposition to the war, but when Congress in March of 1863 passed the Habeas Corpus Act,[4] it strengthened the president’s hand and sapped much of the strength of the anti-war movement.  This drag upon the North’s war-making ability removed, the president was freed to prosecute the war even more vigorously.