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Title: Captains of the Civil War, A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray

Author: William Wood

May, 2001  [Etext #2649]


The Project Gutenberg Etext of Captains of the Civil War, by Wood
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THIS BOOK, VOLUME 31 IN THE CHRONICLES OF AMERICA SERIES, ALLEN
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THIS BOOK, VOLUME 31 IN THE CHRONICLES OF AMERICA SERIES, ALLEN
JOHNSON, EDITOR, WAS DONATED TO PROJECT GUTENBERG BY THE JAMES J.
KELLY LIBRARY OF ST. GREGORY'S UNIVERSITY; THANKS TO ALEV AKMAN.

Scanned by Dianne Bean.





CAPTAINS OF THE CIVIL WAR

A CHRONICLE OF THE BLUE AND THE GRAY

BY WILLIAM WOOD




PREFACE

Sixty years ago today the guns that thundered round Fort Sumter
began the third and greatest modern civil war fought by
English-speaking people. This war was quite as full of politics
as were the other two--the War of the American Revolution and
that of Puritan and Cavalier. But, though the present Chronicle
never ignores the vital correlations between statesmen and
commanders, it is a book of warriors, through and through.

I gratefully acknowledge the indispensable assistance of Colonel
G. J. Fiebeger, a West Point expert, and of Dr. Allen Johnson,
chief editor of the series and Professor of American History at
Yale.

WILLIAM WOOD,

Late Colonel commanding 8th Royal Rifles, and Officer-in-charge,
Canadian Special Mission Overseas.

QUEBEC, April 18, 1921, CONTENTS

I. THE CLASH: 1861

II. THE COMBATANTS

III. THE NAVAL WAR: 1862

IV. THE RIVER WAR: 1861

V. LINCOLN: WAR STATESMAN

VI. LEE AND JACKSON: 1862-3

VII. GRANT WINS THE RIVER WAR: 1863 VIII. GETTYSBURG: 1863

IX. FARRAGUT AND THE NAVY: 1863-4

X. GRANT ATTACKS THE FRONT: 1864

XI. SHERMAN DESTROYS THE BASE: 1864

XII. THE END: 1865

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE



CAPTAINS OF THE CIVIL WAR

CHAPTER I. THE CLASH: 1861

States which claimed a sovereign right to secede from the Union
naturally claimed the corresponding right to resume possession of
all the land they had ceded to that Union's Government for the
use of its naval and military posts. So South Carolina, after
leading the way to secession on December 20,1860, at once began
to work for the retrocession of the forts defending her famous
cotton port of Charleston. These defenses, being of vital
consequence to both sides, were soon to attract the strained
attention of the whole country.

There were three minor forts: Castle Pinckney, dozing away, in
charge of a solitary sergeant, on an island less than a mile from
the city; Fort Moultrie, feebly garrisoned and completely at the
mercy of attackers on its landward side; and Fort Johnson over on
James Island. Lastly, there was the world-renowned Fort Sumter,
which then stood, unfinished and ungarrisoned, on a little islet
beside the main ship channel, at the entrance to the harbor, and
facing Fort Moultrie just a mile away. The proper war garrison of
all the forts should have been over a thousand men. The actual
garrison--including officers, band, and the Castle Pinckney
sergeant--was less than a hundred. It was, however, loyal to the
Union; and its commandant, Major Robert Anderson, though born in
the slave-owning State of Kentucky, was determined to fight.

The situation, here as elsewhere, was complicated by Floyd,
President Buchanan's Secretary of War, soon to be forced out of
office on a charge of misapplying public funds. Floyd, as an
ardent Southerner, was using the last lax days of the Buchanan
Government to get the army posts ready for capitulation whenever
secession should have become an accomplished fact. He urged on
construction, repairs, and armament at Charleston, while refusing
to strengthen the garrison, in order, as he said, not to provoke
Carolina. Moreover, in November he had replaced old Colonel
Gardner, a Northern veteran of "1812," by Anderson the
Southerner, in whom he hoped to find a good capitulator. But this
time Floyd was wrong.

The day after Christmas Anderson's little garrison at Fort
Moultrie slipped over to Fort Sumter under cover of the dark,
quietly removed Floyd's workmen, who were mostly Baltimore
Secessionists, and began to prepare for. defense. Next morning
Charleston was furious and began to prepare for attack. The South
Carolina authorities at once took formal possession of Pinckney
and Moultrie; and three days later seized the United States
Arsenal in Charleston itself. Ten days later again, on January 9,
1861, the Star of the West, a merchant vessel coming in with
reinforcements and supplies for Anderson, was fired on and forced
to turn back. Anderson, who had expected a man-of-war, would not
fire in her defense, partly because he still hoped there might
yet be peace.

While Charleston stood at gaze and Anderson at bay the ferment of
secession was working fast in Florida, where another tiny
garrison was all the Union had to hold its own. This garrison,
under two loyal young lieutenants, Slemmer and Gilman, occupied
Barrancas Barracks in Pensacola Bay. Late at night on the eighth
of January (the day before the Star of the West was fired on at
Charleston) some twenty Secessionists came to seize the old
Spanish Fort San Carlos, where, up to that time, the powder had
been kept. This fort, though lying close beside the barracks, had
always been unoccupied; so the Secessionists looked forward to an
easy capture. But, to their dismay, an unexpected guard
challenged them, and, not getting the proper password in reply,
dispersed them with the first shots of the Civil War.

Commodore Armstrong sat idle at the Pensacola Navy Yard,
distracted between the Union and secession. On the ninth Slemmer
received orders from Winfield Scott, General-in-Chief at
Washington, to use all means in defense of Union property. Next
morning Slemmer and his fifty faithful men were landed on Santa
Rosa Island, just one mile across the bay, where the dilapidated
old Fort Pickens stood forlorn. Two days later the Commodore
surrendered the Navy Yard, the Stars and Stripes were lowered,
and everything ashore fell into the enemy's hands. There was no
flagstaff at Fort Pickens; but the Union colors were at once hung
out over the northwest bastion, in full view of the shore, while
the Supply and Wyandotte, the only naval vessels in the bay, and
both commanded by loyal men, mastheaded extra colors and stood
clear. Five days afterwards they had to sail for New York; and
Slemmer, whose total garrison had been raised to eighty by the
addition of thirty sailors, was left to hold Fort Pickens if he
could.

He had already been summoned to surrender by Colonel Chase and
Captain Farrand, who had left the United States Army and Navy for
the service of the South. Chase, like many another Southern
officer, was stirred to his inmost depths by his own change of
allegiance. "I have come," he said, "to ask of you young
officers, officers of the same army in which I have spent the
best and happiest years of my life, the surrender of this fort;
and fearing that I might not be able to say it as I ought, and
also to have it in proper form, I have put it in writing and will
read it." He then began to read. But his eyes filled with tears,
and, stamping his foot, he said: "I can't read it. Here, Farrand,
you read it." Farrand, however, pleading that his eyes were weak,
handed the paper to the younger Union officer, saying, "Here,
Gilman, you have good eyes, please read it." Slemmer refused to
surrender and held out till reinforced in April, by which time
the war had begun in earnest. Fort Pickens was never taken. On
the contrary, it supported the bombardment of the Confederate
longshore positions the next New Year (1869.) and witnessed the
burning and evacuation of Pensacola the following ninth of May.

While Charleston and Pensacola were fanning the flames of
secession the wildfire was running round the Gulf, catching well
throughout Louisiana, where the Governor ordered the state
militia to seize every place belonging to the Union, and striking
inland till it reached the farthest army posts in Texas. In all
Louisiana the Union Government had only forty men. These occupied
the Arsenal at Baton Rouge under Major Haskins. Haskins was
loyal. But when five hundred state militiamen surrounded him, and
his old brother-officer, the future Confederate General Bragg,
persuaded him that the Union was really at an end, to all intents
and purposes, and when he found no orders, no support, and not
even any guidance from the Government at Washington, he
surrendered with the honors of war and left by boat for St. Louis
in Missouri.

There was then in Louisiana another Union officer; but made of
sterner stuff. This was Colonel W. T. Sherman, Superintendent of
the State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy at
Alexandria, up the Red River. He was much respected by all the
state authorities, and was carefully watching over the two young
sons of another future Confederate leader, General Beauregard.
William Tecumseh Sherman had retired from the Army without seeing
any war service, unlike Haskins, who was a one-armed veteran of
the Mexican campaign. But Sherman was determined to stand by the
Union, come what might. Yet he was equally determined to wind up
the affairs of the State Academy so as to hand them over in
perfect order. A few days after the seizure of the Arsenal, and
before the formal secession of the State, he wrote to the
Governor:

"Sir: As I occupy a quasi-military position under the laws of the
State, I deem it proper to acquaint you that I accepted such
position when Louisiana was a State of the Union, and when the
motto of this seminary was inserted in marble over the main door:
"By the liberality of the General Government of the United
States. The Union--esto perpetua." Recent events foreshadow a
great change, and it becomes all men to choose .... I beg you to
take immediate steps to relieve me as superintendent, the moment
the State determines to secede, for on no earthly account will I
do any act or think any thought hostile to, or in defiance of,
the old Government of the United States."

Then, to the lasting credit of all concerned, the future
political enemies parted as the best of personal friends. Sherman
left everything in perfect order, accounted for every cent of the
funds, and received the heartiest thanks and best wishes of all
the governing officials, who embodied the following sentence in
their final resolution of April 1, 1861: "They cannot fail to
appreciate the manliness of character which has always marked the
actions of Colonel Sherman." Long before this Louisiana had
seceded, and Sherman had gone north to Lancaster, Ohio, where he
arrived about the time of Lincoln's inauguration.

Meanwhile, on the eighteenth of February, the greatest of all
surrenders had taken place in Texas, where nineteen army posts
were handed over to the State by General Twiggs. San Antonio was
swarming with Secessionist rangers. Unionist companies were
marching up and down. The Federal garrison was leaving the town
on parole, with the band playing Union airs and Union colors
flying. The whole place was at sixes and sevens, and anything
might have happened.

In the midst of this confusion the colonel commanding the Second
Regiment of United States Cavalry arrived from Fort Mason. He was
on his way to Washington, where Winfield Scott, the veteran
General-in-Chief, was anxiously waiting to see him; for this
colonel was no ordinary man. He had been Scott's Chief of Staff
in Mexico, where he had twice won promotion for service in the
field. He had been a model Superintendent at West Point and an
exceedingly good officer of engineers before he left them, on
promotion, for the cavalry. Very tall and handsome, magnificently
fit in body and in mind, genial but of commanding presence, this
flower of Southern chivalry was not only every inch a soldier but
a leader born and bred. Though still unknown to public fame he
was the one man to whom the most insightful leaders of both sides
turned, and rightly turned; for this was Robert Lee, Lee of
Virginia, soon to become one of the very few really great
commanders of the world.

As Lee came up to the hotel at San Antonio he was warmly greeted
by Mrs. Barrow, the anxious wife of the confidential clerk to
Major Vinton, the staunch Union officer in charge of the pay and
quartermaster services. "Who are those men?" he asked, pointing
to the rangers, who wore red flannel shoulder straps. "They are
McCulloch's," she answered; "General Twiggs surrendered
everything, to the State this morning." Years after, when she and
her husband and Vinton had suffered for one side and Lee had
suffered for the other, she wrote her recollection of that
memorable day in these few, telling words: "I shall never forget
his look of astonishment, as, with his lips trembling and his
eyes full of tears, he exclaimed, 'Has it come so soon as this?'
In a short time I saw him crossing the plaza on his way to
headquarters and noticed particularly that he was in citizen's
dress. He returned at night and shut himself into his room, which
was over mine; and I heard his footsteps through the night, and
sometimes the murmur of his voice, as if he was praying. He
remained at the hotel a week and in conversations declared that
the position he held was a neutral one."

Three other Union witnesses show how Lee agonized over the
fateful decision he was being forced to make. Captain R. M.
Potter says: "I have seldom seen a more distressed man. He said,
'When I get to Virginia I think the world will have one soldier
less. I shall resign and go to planting corn.'" Colonel Albert G.
Brackett says: "Lee was filled with sorrow at the condition of
affairs, and, in a letter to me, deploring the war in which we
were about to engage, made use of these words: 'I fear the
liberties of our country will be buried in the tomb of a great
nation.'" Colonel Charles Anderson, quoting Lee's final words in
Texas, carries us to the point of parting: "I still think my
loyalty to Virginia ought to take precedence over that which is
due to the Federal Government; and I shall so report myself in
Washington. If Virginia stands by the old Union, so will I. But
if she secedes (though I do not believe in secession as a
constitutional right, nor that there is sufficient cause for
revolution) then I will still follow my native State with my
sword, and, if need be, with my life. I know you think and feel
very differently. But I can't help it. These are my principles;
and I must follow them."

Lee reached Washington on the first of March. Lincoln, delivering
his Inaugural on the fourth, brought the country one step nearer
war by showing the neutrals how impossible it was to reconcile
his, principles as President of the whole United States with
those of Jefferson Davis as President of the seceding parts. "The
power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess
the property and places belonging to the government." Three days
later the provisional Confederate Congress at Montgomery in
Alabama passed an Army Act authorizing the enlistment of one
hundred thousand men for one year's service. Nine days later
again, having adopted a Constitution in the meantime, this
Congress passed a Navy Act, authorizing the purchase or
construction of ten little gunboats.

In April the main storm center went whirling back to Charleston,
where Sherman's old friend Beauregard commanded the forces that
encircled Sumter. Sumter, still unfinished, had been designed for
a garrison of six hundred and fifty combatant men. It now
contained exactly sixty-five. It was to have been provisioned for
six months. The actual supplies could not be made to last beyond
two weeks. Both sides knew that Anderson's gallant little
garrison must be starved out by the fifteenth. But the excited
Carolinians would not wait, because they feared that the arrival
of reinforcements might balk them of their easy prey. On the
eleventh Beauregard, acting under orders from the Confederate
Government, sent in a summons to surrender. Anderson refused. At
a quarter to one the next morning the summons was repeated, as
pilots had meanwhile reported a Federal vessel approaching the
harbor. Anderson again refused and again admitted that he would
be starved out on the fifteenth. Thereupon Beauregard's aides
declared immediate surrender the only possible alternative to a
bombardment and signed a note at 3:20 A.M. giving Anderson formal
warning that fire would be opened in an hour.

Fort Sumter stood about half a mile inside the harbor mouth,
fully exposed to the converging fire of four relatively powerful
batteries, three about a mile away, the fourth nearly twice as
far. At the northern side of the harbor mouth stood Fort
Moultrie; at the southern stood the batteries on Cummings Point;
and almost due west of Sumter stood Fort Johnson. Near Moultrie
was a four-gun floating battery with an iron shield. A mile
northwest of Moultrie, farther up the harbor, stood the Mount
Pleasant battery, nearly two miles off from Sumter. At half-past
four, in the first faint light of a gray morning, a sudden spurt
of flame shot out from Fort Johnson, the dull roar of a mortar
floated through the misty air, and the big shell--the first shot
of the real war--soared up at a steep angle, its course
distinctly marked by its burning fuse, and then plunged down on
Sumter. It was a capital shot, right on the center of the target,
and was followed by an admirable burst. Then all the converging
batteries opened full; while the whole population of perfervid
Charleston rushed out of doors to throng their beautiful East
Battery, a flagstone marine parade three miles in from Sumter, of
which and of the attacking batteries it had a perfect view.

But Sumter remained as silent as the grave. Anderson decided not
to return the fire till it was broad daylight. In the meantime
all ranks went to breakfast, which consisted entirely of water
and salt pork. Then the gun crews went to action stations and
fired back steadily with solid shot. The ironclad battery was an
exasperating target; for the shot bounced off it like dried peas.
Moultrie seemed more vulnerable. But appearances were deceptive;
for it was thoroughly quilted with bales of cotton, which the
solid shot simply rammed into an impenetrable mass. Wishing to
save his men, in which he was quite successful, Anderson had
forbidden the use of the shell-guns, which were mounted on the
upper works and therefore more exposed. Shell fire would have
burst the bales and set the cotton flaming. This was so evident
that Sergeant Carmody, unable to stand such futile practice any
longer, quietly stole up to the loaded guns and fired them in
succession. The aim lacked final correction; and the result was
small, except that Moultrie, thinking itself in danger,
concentrated all its efforts on silencing these guns. The
silencing seemed most effective; for Carmody could not reload
alone, and so his first shots were his last.

At nightfall Sumter ceased fire while the Confederates kept on
slowly till daylight. Next morning the officers' quarters were
set on fire by red-hot shot. Immediately the Confederates
redoubled their efforts. Inside Sumter the fire was creeping
towards the magazine, the door of which was shut only just in
time. Then the flagstaff was shot down. Anderson ran his colors
up again, but the situation was rapidly becoming impossible. Most
of the worn-out men were fighting the flames while a few were
firing at long intervals to show they would not yet give in. This
excited the generous admiration of the enemy, who cheered the
gallantry of Sumter while sneering at the caution of the Union
fleet outside. The fact was, however, that this so-called fleet
was a mere assemblage of vessels quite unable to fight the
Charleston batteries and without the slightest chance of saving
Sumter.

Having done his best for the honor of the flag, though not a man
was killed within the walls, Anderson surrendered in the
afternoon. Charleston went wild with joy; but applauded the
generosity of Beauregard's chivalrous terms. Next day, Sunday the
fourteenth, Anderson's little garrison saluted the Stars and
Stripes with fifty guns, and then, with colors flying, marched
down on board a transport to the strains of Yankee Doodle.

Strange to say, after being four years in Confederate hands,
Sumter was recaptured by the Union forces on the anniversary of
its surrender. It was often bombarded, though never taken, in the
meantime.

The fall of Sumter not only fired all Union loyalty but made
Confederates eager for the fray. The very next day Lincoln called
for 75,000 three-month volunteers. Two days later Confederate
letters of marque were issued to any privateers that would prey
on Union shipping. Two days later again Lincoln declared a
blockade of every port from South Carolina round to Texas. Eight
days afterwards he extended it to North Carolina and Virginia.

But in the meantime Lincoln had been himself marooned in
Washington. On the nineteenth of April, the day he declared his
first blockade, the Sixth Massachusetts were attacked by a mob in
Baltimore, through which the direct rails ran from North to
South. Baltimore was full of secession, and the bloodshed roused
its fury. Maryland was a border slave State out of which the
District of Columbia was carved. Virginia had just seceded. So
when the would-be Confederates of Maryland, led by the Mayor of
Baltimore, began tearing up rails, burning bridges, and cutting
the wires, the Union Government found itself enisled in a hostile
sea. Its own forces abandoned the Arsenal at Harper's Ferry and
the Navy Yard at Norfolk. The work of demolition at Harper's
Ferry had to be bungled off in haste, owing to shortness of time
and lack of means. The demolition of Norfolk was better done, and
the ships were sunk at anchor. But many valuable stores fell into
enemy hands at both these Virginian outposts of the Federal
forces. Through six long days of dire suspense not a ship, not a
train, came into Washington. At last, on the twentyfifth, the
Seventh New York got through, having come south by boat with the
Eighth Massachusetts, landed at Annapolis, and commandeered a
train to run over relaid rails. With them came the news that all
the loyal North was up, that the Seventh had marched through
miles of cheering patriots in New York, and that these two fine
regiments were only the vanguard of a host.

But just a week before Lincoln experienced this inexpressible
relief he lost, and his enemy won, a single officer, who,
according to Winfield Scott, was alone worth more than fifty
thousand veteran men. On the seventeenth of April Virginia voted
for secession. On the eighteenth Lee had a long confidential
interview with his old chief, Winfield Scott. On the twentieth he
resigned, writing privately to Scott at the same time: "My
resignation would have been presented at once but for the
struggle it has cost me to separate myself from a service to
which I have devoted the best years of my life. During the whole
of that time I have experienced nothing but kindness from my
superiors and a most cordial friendship from my comrades. I shall
carry to the grave the most grateful recollections of your kind
consideration, and your name and fame shall always be dear to me.
Save in the defense of my native State I never desire again to
draw my sword."

The three great motives which finally determined his momentous
course of action were: first, his aversion from taking any part
in coercing the home folks of Virginia; secondly, his belief in
State rights, tempered though it was by admiration for the Union;
and thirdly, his clear perception that war was now inevitable,
and that defeat for the South would inevitably mean a violent
change of all the ways of Southern life, above all, a change
imposed by force from outside, instead of the gradual change he
wished to see effected from within. He was opposed to slavery;
and both his own and his wife's slaves had long been free. Like
his famous lieutenant, Stonewall Jackson, he was particularly
kind to the blacks; none of whom ever wanted to leave, once they
had been domiciled at Arlington, the estate that came to him
through his wife, Mary Custis, great-granddaughter of Martha
Washington. But, like Lincoln before the war, he wished
emancipation to come from the slave States themselves, as in time
it must have come, with due regard for compensation.

On the twenty-third of this eventful April Lee was given the
chief command of all Virginia's forces. Three days later "Joe"
Johnston took command of the Virginians at Richmond. One day
later again "Stonewall" Jackson took command at Harper's Ferry.
Johnston played a great and noble part throughout the war; and we
shall meet him again and again, down to the very end. But Jackson
claims our first attention here.

Like all the great leaders on both sides Jackson had been an
officer of regulars. He was, however, in many ways unlike the
army type. He disliked society amusements, was awkward, shy,
reserved, and apparently recluse. Moderately tall, with large
hands and feet, stiff in his movements, ungainly in the saddle,
he was a mere nobody in public estimation when the war broke out.
A few brother-officers had seen his consummate skill and bravery
as a subaltern in Mexico; and still fewer close acquaintances had
seen his sterling qualities at Lexington, where, for ten years,
he had been a professor at the Virginia Military Institute. But
these few were the only ones who were not surprised when this
recluse of peace suddenly became a very thunderbolt of
war--Puritan in soul, Cavalier in daring: a Cromwell come to life
again.

Harper's Ferry was a strategic point in northern Virginia. It was
the gate to the Shenandoah Valley as well as the point where the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad crossed the Potomac some sixty miles
northwest of Washington. Harper's Ferry was known by name to
North and South through John Brown's raid two years before. It
was now coveted by Virginia for its Arsenal as well as for its
command of road, rail, and water routes. The plan to raid it was
arranged at Richmond on the sixteenth of April. But when the
raiders reached it on the eighteenth they found it abandoned and
its Arsenal in flames. The machine shops, however, were saved, as
well as the metal parts of twenty thousand stand of arms. Then
the Virginia militiamen and volunteers streamed in, to the number
of over four thousand. They were a mere conglomeration of
semi-independent units, mostly composed of raw recruits under
officers who themselves knew next to nothing. As usual with such
fledgling troops there was no end to the fuss and feathers among
the members of the busybody staffs, who were numerous enough to
manage an army but clumsy enough to spoil a platoon. It was said,
and not without good reason, that there was as much gold lace at
Harper's Ferry, when the sun was shining, as at a grand review in
Paris.

Into this gaudy assemblage rode Thomas Jonathan Jackson, mounted
on Little Sorrel, a horse as unpretentious as himself, and
dressed in his faded old blue professor's uniform without one
gleam of gold. He had only two staff officers, both dressed as
plainly as himself. He was not a major-general, nor even a
brigadier; just a colonel. He held no trumpeting reviews. He made
no flowery speeches. He didn't even swear. The armed mob at
Harper's Ferry felt that they would lose caste on Sunday
afternoons under a commandant like this. Their feelings were
still more outraged when they heard that every officer above the
rank of captain was to lose his higher rank, and that all new
reappointments were to be made on military merit and direct from
Richmond. Companies accustomed to elect their officers according
to the whim of the moment eagerly joined the higher officers in
passing adverse resolutions. But authorities who were unanimous
for Lee were not to be shaken by such absurdities in face of a
serious war. And when the froth had been blown off the top, and
the dregs drained out of the bottom, the solid mass between, who
really were sound patriots, settled down to work.

There was seven hours' drill every day except Sunday; no light
task for a mere armed mob groping its ignorant way, however
zealously, towards the organized efficiency of a real army. The
companies had to be formed into workable battalions, the
battalions into brigades. There was a deplorable lack of cavalry,
artillery, engineers, commissariat, transport, medical services,
and, above all, staff. Armament was bad; other munitions were
worse. There would have been no chance whatever of holding
Harper's Ferry unless the Northern conglomeration had been even
less like a fighting army than the Southern was.

Harper's Ferry was not only important in itself but still more
important for what it covered: the wonderfully fruitful
Shenandoah Valley, running southwest a hundred and forty miles to
the neighborhood of Lexington, with an average width of only
twenty-four. Bounded on the west by the Alleghanies and on the
east by the long Blue Ridge this valley was a regular covered way
by which the Northern invaders might approach, cut Virginia in
two (for West Virginia was then a part of the State) and, after
devastating the valley itself (thus destroying half the foodbase
of Virginia) attack eastern Virginia through whichever gaps might
serve the purpose best. More than this, the only direct line from
Richmond to the Mississippi ran just below the southwest end of
the valley, while a network of roads radiated from Winchester
near the northeast end, thirty miles southwest of Harper's Ferry.

Throughout the month of May Jackson went on working his men into
shape and watching the enemy, three thousand strong, at
Chambersburg, forty-five miles north of Harper's Ferry, and
twelve thousand strong farther north still. One day he made a
magnificent capture of rolling stock on the twenty-seven miles of
double track that centered in Harper's Ferry. This greatly
hampered the accumulation of coal at Washington besides helping
the railroads of the South. Destroying the line was out of the
question, because it ran through West Virginia and Maryland, both
of which he hoped to see on the Confederate side. He was himself
a West Virginian, born at Clarksburg; and it grieved him greatly
when West Virginia stood by the Union.

Apart from this he did nothing spectacular. The rest was all just
sheer hard work. He kept his own counsel so carefully that no one
knew anything about what he would do if the enemy advanced. Even
the officers of outposts were forbidden to notice or mention his
arrival or departure on his constant tours of inspection, lest a
longer look than usual at any point might let an awkward
inference be drawn. He was the sternest of disciplinarians when
the good of the service required it. But no one knew better that
the finest discipline springs from self-sacrifice willingly made
for a worthy cause; and no one was readier to help all ranks
along toward real efficiency in the kindest possible way when he
saw they were doing their best.

At the end of May Johnston took over the command of the
increasing force at Harper's Ferry, while Jackson was given the
First Shenandoah Brigade, a unit soon, like himself, to be raised
by service into fame.


On the first and third of May Virginia issued calls for more men;
and on the third Lincoln, who quite understood the signs of the
times, called for men whose term of service would be three years
and not three months.

Just a week later Missouri was saved for the Union by the daring
skill of two determined leaders, Francis P. Blair, a Member of
Congress who became a good major-general, and Captain Nathaniel
Lyon, an excellent soldier, who commanded the little garrison of
regulars at St. Louis. When Lincoln called upon Governor
Claiborne Jackson to supply Missouri's quota of three-month
volunteers the Governor denounced the proposed coercion as
"illegal, unconstitutional, revolutionary, inhuman, and
diabolical"; and thereafter did his best to make Missouri join
the South. But Blair and Lyon were too quick for him. Blair
organized the Home Guards, whom Lyon armed from the arsenal. Lyon
then sent all the surplus arms and stores across the river into
Illinois, while he occupied the most commanding position near the
arsenal with his own troops, thus forestalling the Confederates,
under Brigadier-General D. M. Frost, who was now forced to
establish Camp Jackson in a far less favorable place. So
vigorously had Blair and Lyon worked that they had armed
thousands while Frost had only armed hundreds. But when Frost
received siege guns and mortars from farther south Lyon felt the
time had come for action.

Lyon was a born leader, though Grant and Sherman (then in St.
Louis as junior ex-officers, quite unknown to fame) were almost
the only men, apart from Blair, to see any signs of preeminence
in this fiery little redheaded, weather-beaten captain, who kept
dashing about the arsenal, with his pockets full of papers,
making sure of every detail connected with the handful of
regulars and the thousands of Home Guards.

On the ninth of May Lyon borrowed an old dress from Blair's
mother-in-law, completing the disguise with a thickly veiled
sunbonnet, and drove through Camp Jackson. That night he and
Blair attended a council of war, at which, overcoming all
opposition, answering all objections, and making all
arrangements, they laid their plans for the morrow. When Lyon's
seven thousand surrounded Frost's seven hundred the Confederates
surrendered at discretion and were marched as prisoners through
St. Louis. There were many Southern sympathizers among the crowds
in the streets; one of them fired a pistol; and the Home Guards
fired back, killing several women and children by mistake. This
unfortunate incident hardened many neutrals and even Unionists
against the Union forces; so much so that Sterling Price, a
Unionist and former governor, became a Confederate general, whose
field for recruiting round Jefferson City on the Missouri
promised a good crop of enemies to the Union cause.

Lyon and Blair wished to march against Price immediately and
smash every hostile force while still in the act of forming. But
General Harney, who commanded the Department of the West,
returned to St. Louis the day after the shooting and made peace
instead of war with Price. By the end of the month, however,
Lincoln removed Harney and promoted Lyon in his place; whereupon
Price and Governor Jackson at once prepared to fight. Then sundry
neutrals, of the gabbling kind who think talk enough will settle
anything, induced the implacables to meet in St. Louis. The
conference was ended by Lyon's declaration that he would see
every Missourian under the sod before he would take any orders
from the State about any Federal matter, however small. "This,"
he said in conclusion, "means war." And it did.

Again a single week sufficed for the striking of the blow. The
conference was held on the eleventh of June. On the fourteenth
Lyon reached Jefferson City only to find that the Governor had
decamped for Boonville, still higher up the Missouri. Here, on
the seventeenth, Lyon attacked him with greatly superior numbers
and skill, defeated him utterly, and sent him flying south with
only a few hundred followers left. Boonville was, in itself, a
very small affair indeed. But it had immense results. Lyon had
seized the best strategic point of rail and river junction on the
Mississippi by holding St. Louis. He had also secured supremacy
in arms, munitions, and morale. By turning the Governor out of
Jefferson City, the State capital, he had deprived the
Confederates of the prestige and convenience of an acknowledged
headquarters. Now, by defeating him at Boonville and driving his
forces south in headlong flight he had practically made the whole
Missouri River a Federal line of communication as well as a
barrier between would-be Confederates to the north and south of
it. More than this, the possession of Boonville struck a fatal
blow at Confederate recruiting and organization throughout the
whole of that strategic area; for Boonville was the center to
which pro-Southern Missourians were flocking. The tide of battle
was to go against the Federals at Wilson's Creek in the southwest
of the State, and even at Lexington on the Missouri, as we shall
presently see; but this was only the breaking of the last
Confederate waves. As a State, Missouri was lost to the South
already.

In Kentucky, the next border State, opinions were likewise
divided; and Kentuckians fought each other with help from both
sides. Anderson, of Fort Sumter fame, was appointed to the
Kentucky command in May. But here the crisis did not occur for
months, while a border campaign was already being fought in West
Virginia.

West Virginia, which became a separate State during the war, was
strongly Federal, like eastern Tennessee. These Federal parts of
two Confederate States formed a wedge dangerous to the whole
South, especially to Virginia and the Carolinas. Each side
therefore tried to control this area itself. The Federals, under
McClellan, of whom we shall soon hear more, had two lines of
invasion into West Virginia, both based on the Ohio. The northern
converged by rail, from Wheeling and Parkersburg, on Grafton, the
only junction in West Virginia. The southern ran up the Great
Kanawha, with good navigation to Charleston and water enough for
small craft on to Gauley Bridge, which was the strategic point.

In May the Confederates cut the line near Grafton. As this broke
direct communication between the West and Washington, McClellan
sent forces from which two flying columns, three thousand strong,
converged on Philippi, fifteen miles south of Grafton, and
surprised a thousand Confederates. These thereupon retired, with
little loss, to Beverly, thirty miles farther south still. Here
there was a combat at Rich Mountain on the eleventh of July. The
Confederates again retreated, losing General Garnett in a
skirmish the following day. This ended McClellan's own campaign
in West Virginia. But the Kanawha campaign, which lasted till
November, had only just begun, with Rosecrans as successor to
McClellan (who had been recalled to Washington for very high
command) and with General Jacob D. Cox leading the force against
Gauley. The Confederates did all they could to keep their
precarious foothold. They sent political chiefs, like Henry A.
Wise, ex-Governor of Virginia, and John B. Floyd, the late
Federal Secretary of War, both of whom were now Confederate
brigadiers. They even sent Lee himself in general commend. But,
confronted by superior forces in a difficult and thoroughly
hostile country, they at last retired east of the Alleghanies,
which thenceforth became the frontier of two warring States.

The campaign in West Virginia was a foregone conclusion. It was
not marked by any real battles; and there was no scope for
exceptional skill of the higher kind on either side. But it made
McClellan's bubble reputation.

McClellan was an ex-captain of United States Engineers who had
done very well at West Point, had distinguished himself in
Mexico, had represented the American army with the Allies in the
Crimea, had written a good official report on his observations
there, had become manager of a big railroad after leaving the
service, and had so impressed people with his ability and modesty
on the outbreak of war that his appointment to the chief command
in West Virginia was hailed with the utmost satisfaction. Then
came the two affairs at Philippi and Rich Mountain, the first of
which was planned and carried out by other men, while the second
was, if anything, spoiled by himself; for here, as afterwards on
a vastly greater scene of action, he failed to strike home at the
critical moment.

Yet though he failed in arms he won by proclamations; so much so,
in fact, that WORDS NOT DEEDs might well have been his motto. He
began with a bombastic address to the inhabitants and ended with
another to his troops, whom he congratulated on having
"annihilated two armies, commanded by educated and experienced
soldiers, intrenched in mountain fastnesses fortified at their
leisure."

It disastrously happened that the Union public were hungering for
heroes at this particular time and that Union journalists were
itching to write one up to the top of their bent. So all
McClellan's tinsel was counted out for gold before an avaricious
mob of undiscriminating readers; and when, at the height of the
publicity campaign, the Government wanted to retrieve Bull Run
they turned to the ''Man of Destiny" who had been given the
noisiest advertisement as the "Young Napoleon of the West."
McClellan had many good qualities for organization, and even some
for strategy. An excited press and public, however, would not
acclaim him for what he was but for what he most decidedly was
not.


Meanwhile, before McClellan went to Washington and Lee to West
Virginia, the main Union army had been disastrously defeated by
the main Confederate army at Bull Run, on that vital ground which
lay between the rival capitals.

In April Lincoln had called for three-month volunteers. In May
the term of service for new enlistments was three years. In June
the military chiefs at Washington were vainly doing all that
military men could do to make something like the beginnings of an
army out of the conglomerating mass. Winfield Scott, the veteran
General-in-Chief, rightly revered by the whole service as a most
experienced, farsighted, and practical man, was ably assisted by
W. T. Sherman and Irvin McDowell. But civilian interference
ruined all. Even Lincoln had not yet learned the quintessential
difference between that civil control by which the fighting
services are so rightly made the real servants of the whole
people and that civilian interference which is very much the same
as if a landlubber owning, a ship should grab the wheel
repeatedly in the middle of a storm. Simon Cameron, then
Secretary of War, was good enough as a party politician, but all
thumbs when fumbling with the armies in the field. The other
members of the Cabinet had war nostrums of their own; and every
politician with a pull did what he could to use it. Behind all
these surged a clamorous press and an excited people, both
patriotic and well meaning; but both wholly ignorant of war, and
therefore generating a public opinion that forced the not
unwilling Government to order an armed mob "on to Richmond"
before it had the slightest chance of learning how to be an army.

The Congress that met on the Fourth of July voted five hundred
thousand men and two hundred and fifty million dollars. This
showed that the greatness of the war was beginning to be seen.
But the men, the money, and the Glorious Fourth were so blurred
together in the public mind that the distinction between a vote
in Congress and its effect upon some future battlefield was never
realized. The result was a new access of zeal for driving
McDowell "on to Richmond." Making the best of a bad business,
Scott had already begun his preparations for the premature
advance.

By the end of May Confederate pickets had been in sight of
Washington, while McDowell, crossing the Potomac, was faced by
his friend of old West Point and Mexican days, General
Beauregard, fresh from the capture of Fort Sumter. By the
beginning of July General Patterson, a veteran of "1812" and
Mexico, was in command up the Potomac near Harper's Ferry. He was
opposed by "Joe" Johnston, who had taken over that Confederate
command from "Stonewall" Jackson. Down the Potomac and Chesapeake
Bay there was nothing to oppose the Union navy. General Benjamin
Butler, threatening Richmond in flank, along the lower
Chesapeake, was watched by the Confederates Huger and Magruder.
Meanwhile, as eve have seen already, the West Virginian campaign
was in full swing, with superior Federal forces under McClellan.

Thus the general situation in July was that the whole of
northeastern Virginia was faced by a semicircle of superior
forces which began at the Kanawha River, ran northeast to
Grafton, then northeast to Cumberland, then along the Potomac to
Chesapeake Bay and on to Fortress Monroe. From the Kanawha to
Grafton there were only roads. From Grafton to Cumberland there
was rail as well. From Cumberland to Washington there were road,
rail, river, and canal. From Washington to Fortress Monroe there
was water fit for any fleet. The Union armies along this
semicircle were not only twice as numerous as the Confederates
facing them but they were backed by a sea-power, both naval and
mercantile, which the Confederates could not begin to challenge,
much less overcome. Lee was the military adviser to the
Confederate Government at Richmond as Scott then was to the Union
Government at Washington.

Such was the central scene of action, where the first great
battle of the war was fought. The Union forces were based on the
Potomac from Washington to Harper's Ferry. The Confederates faced
them from Bull Run to Winchester, which points were nearly sixty
miles apart by road and rail. The Union forces were fifty
thousand strong, the Confederate thirty-three thousand. The Union
problem was how to keep "Joe" Johnston in the Winchester position
by threatening or actually making an invasion of the Shenandoah
Valley with Patterson's superior force, while McDowell's superior
force attacked or turned Beauregard's position at Bull Run. The
Confederate problem was how to give Patterson the slip and reach
Bull Run in time to meet McDowell with an equal force. The
Confederates had the advantage of interior lines both here and in
the semicircle as a whole, though the Union forces enjoyed in
general much better means of transportation. The Confederates
enjoyed better control from government headquarters, where the
Cabinet mostly had the sense to trust in Lee. Scott, on the other
hand, was tied down by orders to defend Washington by purely
defensive means as well as by the "on to Richmond" march.
Patterson was therefore obliged to watch the Federal back door at
Harper's Ferry as well as the Confederate side doors up the
Shenandoah : an impossible task, on exterior lines, with the kind
of force he had. The civilian chiefs at Washington did not see
that the best of all defense was to destroy the enemy's means of
destroying THEM, and that his greatest force of fighting MEN, not
any particular PLACE, should always be their main objective.

On the fourteenth of June Johnston had destroyed everything
useful to the enemy at Harper's Ferry and retired to Winchester.
On the twentieth Jackson's brigade marched on Martinsburg to
destroy the workshops of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway and to
support the three hundred troopers under J. E. B. Stuart, who was
so soon to be the greatest of cavalry commanders on the
Confederate side. Unknown at twenty-nine, killed at thirty-one,
"Jeb" Stuart was a Virginian ex-officer of United States
Dragoons, trained in frontier fighting, and the perfect type of
what a cavalry commander should be: tall, handsome, splendidly
supple and strong, hawk-eyed and lion-hearted, quick, bold,
determined, and inspiring, yet always full of knowledge and
precaution too; indefatigable at all times, and so persistent in
carrying out a plan that the enemy could no more shake him off
than they could escape their shadows.

On the second of July the first brush took place at Falling
Waters, five miles south of the Potomac, where Jackson came into
touch with Patterson's advanced guard. As Jackson withdrew his
handful of Virginian infantry the Federal cavalry came clattering
down the turnpike and were met by a single shot from a
Confederate gun that smashed the head of their column and sent
the others flying. Meanwhile Stuart, who had been reconnoitering,
came upon a company of Federal infantry resting in a field.
Galloping among them suddenly he shouted, "Throw down your arms
or you are all dead men!" Whereupon they all threw down their
arms; and his troopers led them off. Patterson, badly served by
his very raw staff, reported Jackson's little vanguard as being
precisely ten times stronger than it was. He pushed out
cautiously to right and left; and when he tried to engage again
he found that Jackson had withdrawn. Falling Waters was
microscopically small as a fight. But it served to raise
Confederate morale and depress the Federals correspondingly.

Patterson occupied Martinsburg,while Johnston, drawn up in line
of battle, awaited his further advance four days before retiring.
Then, with his fourteen thousand, Patterson advanced again, stood
irresolute under distracting orders from the Government in
Washington, and finally went to Charlestown on the seventeenth of
July--almost back to Harper's Ferry. Johnston, with his eleven
thousand, now stood fast at Winchester, fifteen miles southwest,
while Stuart, like a living screen, moved to and fro between
them.

Meanwhile McDowell's thirty-six thousand had marched past the
President with bands playing and colors flying amid a scene of
great enthusiasm. The press campaign was at its height; so was
the speechifying; and ninety-nine people out of. every hundred
thought Beauregard's twenty-two thousand at Bull Run would be
defeated in a way that would be sure to make the South give in.
McDowell had between two and three thousand regulars: viz., seven
troops of cavalry, nine batteries of artillery, eight companies
of infantry, and a little battalion of marines. Then there was
the immense paper army voted on the Glorious Fourth. And here,
for the general public to admire, was a collection of armed and
uniformed men that members of Congress and writers in the press
united in calling one of the best armies the world had ever seen.
Moreover, the publicity campaign was kept up unflaggingly till
the very clash of arms began. Reporters marched along and sent
off reams of copy. Congressmen, and even ladies, graced the
occasion in every way they could. "The various regiments were
brilliantly uniformed according to the aesthetic taste of peace,"
wrote General Fry, then an officer on McDowell's staff, and
"during the nineteenth and twentieth the bivouacs at Centreville,
almost within cannon range of the enemy, were thronged with
visitors, official and unofficial, who came in carriages from
Washington, were under no military restraint, and passed to and
fro among the troops as they pleased, giving the scene the
appearance of a monster military picnic."

Had McDowell been able to attack on either of these two days he
must have won. But previous Governments had never given the army
the means of making proper surveys; so here, within a day's march
of the Federal capital, the maps were worthless for military use.
Information had to be gleaned by reconnaissance; and
reconnaissance takes time, especially without trustworthy guides,
sufficient cavalry, and a proper staff. Moreover, the army was
all parts and no whole, through no fault of McDowell's or of his
military chiefs. The three-month volunteers, whose term of
service was nearly over, had not learned their drill as
individuals before being herded into companies, battalions, and
brigades, of course becoming more and more inefficient as the
units grew more and more complex. Of the still more essential
discipline they naturally knew still less. There was no lack of
courage; for these were the same breed of men as those with whom
Washington had won immortal fame, the same as those with whom
both Grant and Lee were yet to win it. But, as Napoleon used to
say, mere men are not the same as soldiers. Nor are armed mobs
the same as armies.

The short march to the front was both confused and demoralizing.
No American officer had ever had the chance even of seeing, much
less handling, thirty-six thousand men under arms. This force was
followed by an immense and unwieldy train of supplies, manned by
wholly undisciplined civilian drivers; while other, and quite
superfluous, civilians clogged every movement and made confusion
worse confounded. "The march," says Sherman, who commanded a
brigade, "demonstrated little save the general laxity of
discipline; for, with all my personal efforts, I could not
prevent the men from straggling for water, blackberries, or
anything on the way they fancied." In the whole of the first long
summer's day, the sixteenth of July, the army only marched six
miles; and it took the better part of the seventeenth to herd its
stragglers back again. "I wished them, " says McDowell, "to go to
Centreville the second day [only another six miles out] but the
men were footweary, not so much by the distance marched as by the
time they had been on foot." That observant private, Warren Lee
Goss, has told us how hard it is to soldier suddenly. "My canteen
banged against my bayonet; both tin cup and bayonet badly
interfered with the butt of my musket, while my cartridge-box and
haversack were constantly flopping up and down--the whole
jangling like loose harness and chains on a runaway horse." The
weather was hot. The roads were dusty. And many a man threw away
parts of his kit for which he suffered later on. There was food
in superabundance. But, with that unwieldy and grossly
undisciplined supply-and-transport service, the men and their
food never came together at the proper time.

Early on the eighteenth McDowell, whose own work was excellent
all through, pushed forward a brigade against Blackburn's Ford,
toward the Confederate right, in order to distract attention from
the real objective, which was to be the turning of the left. The
Confederate outposts fell back beyond the ford. The Federal
brigade followed on; when suddenly sharp volleys took it in front
and flank. The opposing brigade, under Longstreet (of whom we
shall often hear again), had lain concealed and sprung its trap
quite neatly. Most of the Federals behaved extremely well under
these untoward circumstances. But one whole battery and another
whole battalion, whose term of service expired that afternoon,
were officially reported as having "moved to the rear to the
sound of the enemy's cannon." Thereafter, as military units, they
simply ceased to exist.

At one o'clock in the morning of this same day Johnston received
a telegram at Winchester, from Richmond, warning him that
McDowell was advancing on Bull Run, with the evident intention of
seizing Manassas Junction, which would cut the Confederate rail
communication with the Shenandoah Valley and so prevent all
chance of immediate concentration at Bull Run. Johnston saw that
the hour had come. It could not have come before, as Lee and the
rest had foreseen; because an earlier concentration at Bull Run
would have drawn the two superior Federal forces together on the
selfsame spot. There was still some risk about giving Patterson
the slip. True, his three-month special-constable array was
semi-mutinous already; and its term of service had only a few
more days to run. True, also, that the men had cause for
grievance. They were all without pay, and some of them were
reported as being still "without pants." But, despite such
drawbacks, a resolute attack by Patterson's fourteen thousand
could have at least held fast Johnston's eleven thousand, who
were mostly little better off in military ways. Patterson,
however, suffered from distracting orders, and that was his
undoing. Johnston, admirably screened by Stuart, drew quietly
away, leaving his sick at Winchester and raising the spirits of
his whole command by telling them that Beauregard was in danger
and that they were to "make a forced march to save the country."

Straining every nerve they stepped out gallantly and covered mile
after mile till they reached the Shenandoah, forded it, and
crossed the Blue Ridge at Ashby's Gap. But lack of training and
march discipline told increasingly against them. "The
discouragement of that day's march," said Johnston, "is
indescribable. Frequent and unreasonable delays caused so slow a
rate of marching as to make me despair of joining General
Beauregard in time to aid him." Even the First Brigade, with all
the advantages of leading the march and of having learnt the
rudiments of drill and discipline, was exhausted by a day's work
that it could have romped through later on. Jackson himself stood
guard alone till dawn while all his soldiers slept.

As Jackson's men marched down to take the train at Piedmont,
Stuart gayly trotted past, having left Patterson still in
ignorance that Johnston's force had gone. By four in the
afternoon of the nineteenth Jackson was detraining at Manassas.
But, as we shall presently see, it was nearly two whole days
before the last of Johnston's brigades arrived, just in time for
the crisis of the battle. When Johnston had joined Beauregard
their united effective total was thirty thousand men. There had
been a wastage of three thousand. McDowell also had no more than
thirty thousand effectives present on the twenty-first; for he
left one division at Centreville and lost the rest by straggling
and by the way in which the battery and battalion already
mentioned had "claimed their discharge" at Blackburn's Ford.
Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth, while, sorely against
his will, the Federals were having their "monster military
picnic" at Centreville, he was reconnoitering his constantly
increasing enemy under the greatest difficulties, with his
ill-trained staff, bad maps, and lack of proper guides.

Lee had chosen six miles of Bull Run as a good defensive
position. But Beauregard intended to attack, hoping to profit by
the Federal disjointedness. Consequently none of the eight fords
were strongly defended except at Union Mills on the extreme right
and the Stone Bridge on the extreme left, where the turnpike from
Centreville to Warrenton crossed the Run. Bull Run itself was a
considerable obstacle, having fairly high banks and running along
the Confederate front like the ditch of a fortress. Three miles
in rear stood Manassas Junction on a moderate plateau intersected
by several creeks. The most important of these creeks, Young's
Branch, joined Bull Run on the extreme left, near the Stone
Bridge and Warrenton turnpike, after flowing through the little
valley between the Henry Hill and Matthews Hill. Three miles in
front, across Bull Run, stood Centreville, the Federal camp and
field base during the battle.

Sunday, July 21, 1861, was a beautiful midsummer day. Both armies
were stirring soon after dawn. But a miscarriage of orders
delayed the Confederate offensive so much that the initiative of
attack passed to the Federals, who advanced against the Stone
Bridge shortly after six. This attack, however, though made by a
whole division against a single small brigade, was immediately
recognized as a mere feint when, two hours later, Evans,
commanding the Confederate brigade, saw dense clouds of dust
rising above the woods on his left front, where the road crossed
Sudley Springs, nearly two miles beyond his own left. Perceiving
that this new development must be a regular attempt to turn the
whole Confederate left by crossing Bull Run, he sent back word to
Beauregard, posted some men to hold the Stone Bridge, and marched
the rest to crown the Matthews Hill, facing Sudley Springs a mile
away. Meanwhile four of "Joe" Johnston's five Shenandoah
brigades--Bee's, Bartow's, Bonham's, and Jackson's--had been
coming over from the right reserve to strengthen Evans at the
Bridge. As the great Federal turning movement developed against
the Confederate left these brigades followed Evans and were
themselves followed by other troops, till the real battle raged
not along Bull Run but across the Matthews Hill and Henry Hill.

Forming the new front at right angles to the old, so as to attack
and defend the Confederate left on the Matthews and Henry Hills,
caused much confusion on both sides; but more on the Federal, as
the Confederates knew the ground better. By eleven Bee had
reached Evans and sent word back to hurry Bartow on. But the
Federals, having double numbers and a great preponderance in
guns, soon drove the Confederates off the Matthews Hill. As the
Confederates recrossed Young's Branch and climbed the Henry Hill
the regular artillery of the Federals limbered up smartly,
galloped across the Matthews Hill, and from its nearer slope
plied the retreating Confederates on the opposite slope with
admirably served shell. Under this fire the raw Confederates ran
in confusion, while their uncovered guns galloped back to find a
new position. "Curse them for deserting the guns," snapped
Imboden, whose battery came face to face with Jackson's brigade.
"I'll support you," said Jackson, "unlimber right here." At the
same time, half-past eleven, Bee galloped up on his foaming
charger, saying, "General, they're beating us back." "Then, Sir,"
said Jackson, "we'll give them the bayonet"; and his lips shut
tight as a vice.

Bee then went back behind the Henry Hill, where his broken
brigade was trying to rally, and, pointing toward the crest with
his sword, shouted in a voice of thunder: "Rally behind the
Virginians! Look! There's Jackson standing like a stone wall!"
From that one cry of battle Stonewall Jackson got his name.

While the rest of the Shenandoahs were rallying, in rear of
Jackson, Beauregard and Johnston came up, followed by two
batteries. Miles behind them, all the men that could be spared
from the fords were coming too. But the Federals on the Matthews
Hill were still in more than double numbers; and they enjoyed the
priceless advantage of having some regulars among them. If the
Federal division at the Stone Bridge had only pushed home its
attack at this favorable moment the Confederates must have been
defeated. But the division again fumbled about to little purpose;
and for the second time McDowell's admirable plan was spoilt.

It was now past noon on that sweltering midsummer day; and there
was a welcome lull for the rallying Confederates while the
Federals were coming down the Matthews Hill, struggling across
the swamps and thickets of Young's Branch, and climbing the Henry
Hill. Within another hour the opposing forces were at close grips
again, and the Federals, flushed with success and steadied by the
regulars, seemed certain to succeed.

Imboden has vividly described his meeting Jackson at this time.
"The fight was just then hot enough to make him feel well. His
eyes fairly blazed. He had a way of throwing up his left hand
with the open palm towards the person he was addressing; and, as
he told me to go, he made this gesture. The air was full of
flying missiles, and as he spoke he jerked down his hand, and I
saw that blood was streaming from it. I exclaimed, 'General, you
are wounded.' 'Only a scratch--a mere scratch,' he replied; and,
binding it hastily with a handkerchief, he galloped away along
his line."

Five hundred yards apart the opposing cannon thundered, while the
musketry of the long lines of infantry swelled the deafening
roar. Suddenly two Federal batteries of regulars dashed forward
to even shorter range, covered by two battalions on their flank.
But the gaudy Zouaves of the outer battalion lost formation in
their advance; whereupon "Jeb" Stuart, with only a hundred and
fifty horsemen, swooped down and smashed them to pieces by a
daring charge. Then, just as the scattered white turbans went
wildly bobbing about, into the midst of the inner battalion, out
rushed the Thirty-third Virginians, straight at the guns. The
battery officers held their fire, uncertain in the smoke whether
the newcomers were friend or foe, till a deadly volley struck
home at less than eighty yards. Down went the gunners to a man;
down went the teams to a horse; and off ran the Zouaves and the
other supporting battalion, helter-skelter for the rear.

But other Federals were still full of fight and in superior
numbers. They came on with great gallantry, considering they were
raw troops who were now without the comfort of the guns. Once
more a Federal victory seemed secure; and if the infantry had
only pressed on (not piecemeal, by disjoined battalions, but by
brigades) without letting the Confederates recover from one blow
before another struck them, the day would have certainly been
theirs. Moreover, they would have inflicted not simply a defeat
but a severe disaster on their enemy, who would have been caught
in flank by the troops at the Stone Bridge; for these troops,
however dilatory, must have known what to do with a broken and
flying Confederate flank right under their very eyes. Premonitory
symptoms of such a flight were not wanting. Confederate wounded,
stragglers, and skulkers were making for the rear; and the
rallied brigades were again in disorder, with Bee and Bartow, two
first-rate brigadiers, just killed, and other seniors wounded.
Another ominous sign was the limbering up of Confederate guns to
cover the expected retreat from the Henry Hill.

But on its reverse slope lay Jackson's Shenandoahs, three
thousand strong, and by far the best drilled and disciplined
brigade that either side had yet produced apart, of course, from
regulars. Jackson had ridden up and down before them, calm as
they had ever seen him on parade, quietly saying, "Steady, men,
steady! All's well." In this way he had held them straining at
the leash for hours. Now, at last, their time had come. Riding
out to the center of his line he gave his final orders: "Reserve
your fire till they come within fifty yards. Then fire and give
them the bayonet; and yell like furies when you charge!" Five
minutes later, as the triumphant Federals topped the crest, the
long gray line rose up, stood fast, fired one crashing
point-blank volley, and immediately charged home with the first
of those wild, high rebel yells that rang throughout the war. The
stricken and astounded Federal front caved in, turned round, and
fled. At the same instant the last of the Shenandoahs--Kirby
Smith's brigade, detrained just in the nick of time--charged the
wavering flank. Then, like the first quiver of an avalanche, a
tremor shook the whole massed Federals one moment on that fatal
hill: the next, like a loosened cliff, they began the landslide
down.

There, in the valley, along Young's Branch, McDowell established
his last line of battle, based on the firm rock of the regulars.
But by this time the Confederates had brought up troops from the
whole length of their line; the balance of numbers was at last in
their favor; and nothing could stay the Federal recoil. Lack of
drill and discipline soon changed this recoil into a disorderly
retreat. There was no panic; but most of the military units
"dissolved into a mere mob whose heart was set on getting back to
Washington in any way left '''Open. The regulars and a few formed
bodies in reserve did their best to stem the stream. But all in
vain.

One mile short of Centreville there was a sudden upset and
consequent block on the bridge across Cub Run. Then the stream of
men retreating, mixed with clogging masses of panic-struck
civilians, became a torrent.


Bull Run was only a special-constable affair on a gigantic scale.
The losses were comparatively small--3553 killed and wounded on
both sides put together: not ten per cent of the less than forty
thousand who actually fought. Moreover, the side that won the
battle lost the war. And yet Bull Run had many points of very
great importance. In spite of all shortcomings it showed the good
quality of the troops engaged: if not as soldiers, at all events
as men. It proved that the war, unlike the battle, would not be
fought by special constables, some of whom first fired their
rifles when their target was firing back at them. It brought one
great leader--Stonewall Jackson--into fame. Above all, it
profoundly affected the popular points of view, both North and
South. In the South there was undue elation, followed by the
absurd belief that one Southerner could beat two Northerners any
day and that the North would now back down en masse, as its army
had from the Henry Hill. A dangerous slackening of military
preparation was the unavoidable result. In the North, on the
other hand, a good many people began to see the difference
between armed mobs and armies; and the thorough Unionists, led by
the wise and steadfast Lincoln, braced themselves for real war.



CHAPTER II. THE COMBATANTS

No map can show the exact dividing line between the actual
combatants of North and South. Eleven States seceded: Virginia,
the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee,
Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas. But the mountain folk of western
Virginia and eastern Tennessee were strong Unionists; and West
Virginia became a State while the war was being fought. On the
other hand, the four border States, though officially Federal
under stress of circumstances, were divided against themselves.
In Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and Kansas, many citizens took
the Southern side. Maryland would have gone with the South if it
had not been for the presence of overwhelming Northern sea-power
and the absence of any good land frontier of her own. Kentucky
remained neutral for several months. Missouri was saved for the
Union by those two resourceful and determined men, Lyon and
Blair. Kansas, though preponderantly Unionist, had many
Confederates along its southern boundary. On the whole the Union
gained greatly throughout the borderlands as the war went on; and
the remaining Confederate hold on the border people was more than
counterbalanced by the Federal hold on those in the western parts
of old Virginia and the eastern parts of Tennessee. Among the
small seafaring population along the Southern coast there were
also some strongly Union men.

Counting out Northern Confederates and Southern Federals as
canceling each other, so far as effective fighting was concerned
a comparison made between the North and South along the line of
actual secession reveals the one real advantage the South enjoyed
all through--an overwhelming party in favor of the war. When once
the die was cast there was certainly not a tenth of the Southern
whites who did not belong to the war party; and the peace party
always had to hold its tongue. The Southerners formed simpler and
far more homogeneous communities of the old long-settled stock,
and were more inclined to act together when once their feelings
were profoundly stirred.

The Northern communities, on the other hand, being far more
complex and far less homogeneous, were plagued with peace parties
that grew like human weeds, clogging the springs of action
everywhere. There were immigrants new to the country and
therefore not inclined to take risks for a cause they had not
learned to make their own. There were also naturalized, and even
American-born, aliens, aliens in speech, race, thought, and every
way of life. Then there were the oppositionists of different
kinds, who would not support any war government, however like a
perfect coalition it might be. Among these were some Northerners
who did business with the South, especially the men who financed
the cotton and tobacco crops. Others, again, were those
loose-tongued folk who think any vexed question can be settled by
unlimited talk. Next came those "defeatist" cranks who always
think their own side must be wrong, and who are of no more
practical use than the out-and-out "pacifists" who think
everybody wrong except themselves. Finally, there were those
slippery folk who try to evade all public duty, especially when
it smacks of danger. These skulkers flourish best in large and
complex populations, where they may even masquerade as patriots
of the kind so well described by Lincoln when he said how often
he had noticed that the men who were loudest in proclaiming their
readiness to shed their last drop of blood were generally the
most careful not to shed the first.

Many of these fustian heroes formed the mushroom secret societies
that played their vile extravaganza right under the shadow of the
real tragedy of war. Worse still, not content with the
abracadabra of their silly oaths, the busybody members made all
the mischief they could during Lincoln's last election. Worst of
all, they not only tried their hands at political assassination
in the North but they lured many a gallant Confederate to his
death by promising to rise in their might for a "Free Northwest"
the moment the Southern troopers should appear. Needless to say,
not a single one of the whole bombastic band of cowards stirred a
finger to help the Confederate troopers who rode to their doom on
Morgan's Raid through Indiana and Ohio. The peace party wore a
copper as a badge, and so came to be known as "Copperheads," much
to the disgust of its more inflated members, who called
themselves the Sons of Liberty. The war party, with a better
appreciation of how names and things should be connected, used
their own descriptive "Copperhead" in its appropriate meaning of
a poisonous snake in the grass behind.

The Indians would have preferred neutrality between the two kinds
of inevitably dispossessing whites. But neutrality was impossible
in what was then the Far West. Not ten thousand Indians fought
for both sides put together. On the whole they fought well as
skirmishers, though they rarely withstood shell fire, even when
their cover was good and their casualties small.

The ten times more numerous negroes were naturally a much more
serious factor. The North encouraged the employment of colored
labor corps and even colored soldiers, especially after
Emancipation. But the vast majority of negroes, whether slave or
free, either preferred or put up with their Southern masters,
whom they generally served faithfully enough either in military
labor corps or on the old plantations. As the colored population
of the South was three and a half millions this general fidelity
was of great importance to the forces in the field.

The total population of the United States in 1861 was about
thirty-one and a half millions. Of this total twenty-two and a
half belonged to the North and nine to the South. The grand total
odds were therefore five against two. The odds against the South
rise to four against one if the blacks are left out. There were
twenty-two million whites in the North against five and a half in
the South. But to reach the real fighting odds of three to one we
must also eliminate the peace parties, large in the North, small
in the South. If we take a tenth off the Southern whites and a
third off the Northern grand total we shall get the approximate
war-party odds of three to one; for these subtractions leave
fifteen millions in the North against only five in the South.

This gives the statistical key to the startling contrasts which
were so often noted by foreign correspondents at the time, and
which are still so puzzling in the absence of the key. The whole
normal life of the South was visibly changed by the war. But in
the North the inquiring foreigner could find, on one hand, the
most steadfast loyalty and heroic sacrifice, both in the Northern
armies and among their folks at home, while on the other he could
find a wholly different kind of life flaunting its most shameless
features in his face. The theaters were crowded. Profiteers
abounded, taking their pleasures with ravenous greed; for the
best of their blood-money would end with the war. Everywhere
there was the same fundamental difference between the patriots
who carried on the war and the parasites who hindered them. Of
course the two-thirds who made up the war party were not all
saints or even perfect patriots. Nor was the other third composed
exclusively of wanton sinners. There were, for instance, the
genuine settlers whom the Union Government encouraged to occupy
the West, beyond the actual reach of war. But the distinction
still remains.

Though sorely hampered, the Union Government did, on the whole,
succeed in turning the vast and varied resources of the North
against the much smaller and less varied resources of the South.
The North held the machinery of national government, though with
the loss of a good quarter of the engineers. In agriculture of,
all kinds both North and South were very strong for purposes of
peace. Each had food in superabundance. But the trading strength
of the South lay in cotton and tobacco, neither of which could be
turned into money without going north or to sea. In finance the
North was overwhelmingly strong by comparison, more especially
because Northern sea-power shut off the South from all its
foreign markets. In manufactures the South could not compare at
all.

Northern factories alone could not supply the armies. But finance
and factories together could. The Southern soldier looked to the
battlefield and the raiding of a base for supplying many of his
most pressing needs in arms, equipment, clothing, and even food--
for Southern transport suffered from many disabilities. Fierce
wolfish cries would mingle with the rebel yell in battle when the
two sides closed. "You've got to leave your rations!"--"Come out
of them clothes!"--"Take off them boots, Yank!"--"Come on, blue
bellies, we want them blankets!"

It was the same in almost every kind of goods. The South made
next to none for herself and had to import from the North or
overseas. The North could buy silk for balloons. The South could
not. The Southern women gave in their whole supply of silk for
the big balloon that was lost during the Seven Days' Battle in
the second year of the war. The Southern soldiers never forgave
what they considered the ungallant trick of the Northerners who
took this many-hued balloon from a steamer stranded on a bar at
low tide down near the mouth of the James. Thus fell the last
silk dress, a queer tribute to Northern seapower! Northern
seapower also cut off nearly everything the sick and wounded
needed; which raised the death rate of the Southern forces far
beyond the corresponding death rate in the North. Again,
preserved rations were almost unknown in the South. But they were
plentiful throughout the Northern armies: far too plentiful,
indeed, for the taste of the men, who got "fed up" on the
dessicated vegetables and concentrated milk which they
rechristened "desecrated vegetables" and "consecrated milk."

There is the same tale to tell about transport and munitions.
Outside the Tredegar Iron Works at Richmond the only places where
Southern cannon could be made were Charlotte in North Carolina,
Atlanta and Macon in Georgia, and Selma in Alabama. The North had
many places, each with superior plant, besides which the oversea
munition world was far more at the service of the open-ported
North than of the close-blockaded South. What sea-power meant in
this respect may be estimated from the fact that out of the more
than three-quarters of a million rifles bought by the North in
the first fourteen months of the war all but a beggarly thirty
thousand came from overseas.

Transport was done by road, rail, sea, and inland waters. Other
things being equal, a hundred tons could be moved by water as
easily as ten by rail or one by road. Now, the North not only
enjoyed enormous advantages in sea-power, both mercantile and
naval, but in road, rail, canal, and river transport too. The
road transport that affected both sides most was chiefly in the
South, because most maneuvering took place there. "Have you been
through Virginia?--Yes, in several places" is a witticism that
might be applied to many another State where muddy sloughs
abounded. In horses, mules, and vehicles the richer North wore
out the poorer and blockaded South. Both sides sent troops,
munitions, and supplies by rail whenever they could; and here, as
a glance at the map will show, the North greatly surpassed the
South in mileage, strategic disposition, and every other way.

The South had only one through line from the Atlantic to the
Mississippi; and this ran across that Northern salient which
threatened the South from the southwestern Alleghanies. The other
rails all had the strategic defect of not being convenient for
rapid concentration by land; for most of the Southern rails were
laid with a view to getting surplus cotton and tobacco overseas.
The strategic gap at Petersburg was due to a very different
cause; for there, in order to keep its local transfers, the town
refused to let the most important Virginian lines connect.

Taking sea-power in its fullest sense, to include all naval and
mercantile parts on both salt and fresh water, we can quite
understand how it helped the nautical North to get the
strangle-hold on the landsman's South. The great bulk of the
whole external trade of the South was done by shipping. But,
though the South was strong in exportable goods, it was very weak
in ships. It owned comparatively few of the vessels that carried
its rice, cotton, and tobacco crops to market and brought back
made goods in return. Yankees, Britishers, and Bluenoses (as Nova
Scotian craft were called) did most of the oversea
transportation.

Moreover, the North was vastly stronger than the South on all the
inland waters that were not "Secesh" from end to end. The map
shows how Northern sea-power could not only divide the South in
two but almost enisle the eastern part as well. Holding the
Mississippi would effect the division, while holding the Ohio
would make the eastern part a peninsula, with the upper end of
the isthmus safe in Northern hands between Pittsburgh, the great
coal and iron inland port, and Philadelphia, the great seaport,
less than three hundred miles away. The same isthmus narrows to
less than two hundred miles between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg (on
the Susquehanna River); and its whole line is almost equally safe
in Northern hands. A little farther south, along the disputed
borderlands, it narrows to less than one hundred miles, . from
Pittsburgh to Cumberland (on the Potomac canal). Even this is not
the narrowest part of the isthmus, which is less than seventy
miles across from Cumberland to Brownsville (on the Monongahela)
and less than fifty from Cumberland to the Ohiopyle Falls (on the
Youghiogheny). These last distances are measured between places
that are only fit for minor navigation. But even small craft had
an enormous advantage over road and rail together when bulky
stores were moved. So Northern sea-power could make its
controlling influence felt in one continuous line all round the
eastern South, except for fifty miles where small craft were
concerned and for two hundred miles in the case of larger
vessels. These two hundred miles of land were those between the
Ohio River port of Wheeling and the Navy Yard at Washington.

Nor was this virtual enislement the only advantage to be won. For
while the strong right arm of Union sea-power, facing northward
from the Gulf, could hold the coast, and its sinewy left could
hold the Mississippi, the supple left fingers could feel their
way along the tributary streams until the clutching hand had got
its grip on the whole of the Ohio, Cumberland, Tennessee,
Missouri, Arkansas, and Red rivers. This meant that the North
would not only enjoy the vast advantages of transport by water
over transport by land but that it would cause the best lines of
invasion to be opened up as well.

Of course the South had some sea-power of her own. Nine-tenths of
the United States Navy stood by the Union. But, with the
remaining tenth and some foreign help, the South managed to
contrive the makeshift parts of what might have become a navy if
the North had only let it grow. The North, however, did not let
it grow.

The regular navy of the United States, though very small to start
with, was always strong enough to keep the command of the sea and
to prevent the makeshift Southern parts of a navy from ever
becoming a whole. Privateers took out letters of marque to prey
on Northern shipping. But privateering soon withered off, because
prizes could not be run through the blockade in sufficient
numbers to make it pay; and no prize would be recognized except
in a Southern port. Raiders did better and for a much longer
time. The Shenandoah was burning Northern whalers in Bering Sea
at the end of the war. The Sumter and the Florida cut a wide
swath under instructions which "left much to discretion and more
to the torch." The famous Alabama only succumbed to the U.S.S.
Kearsarge after sinking the Hatteras man-of-war and raiding
seventy other vessels. Yet still the South, in spite of her
ironclads, raiders, and rams, in spite of her river craft, of the
home ships or foreigners that ran the blockade, and of all her
other efforts, was a landsman's country that could make no real
headway against the native seapower of the North.

Perhaps the worst of all the disabilities under which the
abortive Southern navy suffered was lubberly administration and
gross civilian interference. The Administration actually refused
to buy the beginnings of a ready-made sea-going fleet when it had
the offer of ten British East Indiamen specially built for rapid
conversion into men-of-war. Forty thousand bales of cotton would
have bought the lot. The Mississippi record was even worse. Five
conflicting authorities divided the undefined and overlapping
responsibilities between them: the Confederate Government, the
State governments, the army, the navy, and the Mississippi
skippers. A typical result may be seen in the fate of the
fourteen "rams" which were absurdly mishandled by fourteen
independent civilian skippers with two civilian commodores. This
"River Defense Fleet" was "backed by the whole Missouri
delegation" at Richmond, and blessed by the Confederate Secretary
of War, Judah P. Benjamin, that very clever lawyer-politician and
eversmiling Jew. Six of the fourteen "rams" were lost, with sheer
futility, at New Orleans in April, '62; the rest at Memphis the
following June.

As a matter of fact the Confederate navy never had but one real
man-of-war, the famous Merrimac; and she was a mere razee, cut
down for a special purpose, and too feebly engined to keep the
sea. Even the equally famous Alabama was only a raider, never
meant for action with a fleet. Over three hundred officers left
the United States Navy for the South; but, as in the case of the
Army, they were followed by very few men. The total personnel of
the regular Confederate navy never exceeded four thousand at any
one time. The irregular forces afloat often did gallant, and
sometimes even skillful, service in little isolated ways. But
when massed together they were always at sixes and sevens; and
they could never do more than make the best of a very bad
business indeed. The Secretary of the Confederate navy, Stephen
R. Mallory, was not to blame. He was one of the very few
civilians who understood and tried to follow any naval principles
at all. He had done good work as chairman of the Naval Committee
in the Senate before the war, and had learnt a good deal more
than his Northern rival, Gideon Welles. He often saw what should
have been done. But men and means were lacking.

Men and means were also lacking in the naval North at the time
the war began. But the small regular navy was invincible against
next to none; and it enjoyed many means of expansion denied to
the South.

On the outbreak of hostilities the United States Navy had ninety
ships and about nine thousand men--all ranks and ratings (with
marines) included. The age of steam had come. But fifty vessels
had no steam at all. Of the rest one was on the Lakes, five were
quite unserviceable, and thirty-four were scattered about the
world without the slightest thought of how to mobilize a fleet at
home. The age of ironclads had begun already overseas. But in his
report to Congress on July 4, 1861, Gideon Welles, Secretary of
the Navy, only made some wholly non-committal observations in
ponderous "officialese." In August he appointed a committee which
began its report in September with the sage remark that "Opinions
differ amongst naval and scientific men as to the policy of
adopting the iron armament for ships-of-war." In December Welles
transmitted this report to Congress with the still sager remark
that "The subject of iron armature for ships is one of great
general interest, not only to the navy and country, but is
engaging the attention of the civilized world." Such was the
higher administrative preparation for the ironclad battle of the
following year.

It was the same in everything. The people had taken no interest
in the navy and Congress had faithfully represented them by
denying the service all chance of preparing for war till after
war had broken out. Then there was the usual hurry and horrible
waste. Fortunately for all concerned, Gideon Welles, after vainly
groping about the administrative maze for the first five months,
called Gustavus V. Fox to his assistance. Fox had been a naval
officer of exceptional promise, who had left the service to go
into business, who had a natural turn for administration, and who
now made an almost ideal Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He was,
indeed, far more than this; for, in most essentials, he acted
throughout the war as a regular Chief of Staff.

One of the greatest troubles was the glut of senior officers who
were too old and the alarming dearth of juniors fit for immediate
work afloat. It was only after the disaster at Bull Run that
Congress authorized the formation of a Promotion Board to see
what could be done to clear the active list and make it really a
list of officers fit for active service. Up to this time there
had been no system of retiring men for inefficiency or age. An
officer who did not retire of his own accord simply went on
rising automatically till he died. The president of this board
had himself turned sixty. But he was the thoroughly efficient
David Glasgow Farragut, a man who was to do greater things afloat
than even Fox could do ashore. How badly active officers were
wanted may be inferred from the fact that before the appointment
of Farragut's promotion board the total number of regular
officers remaining in the navy was only 1457. Intensive training
was tried at the Naval Academy. Yet 7500 volunteer officers had
to be used before the war was over. These came mostly from the
merchant service and were generally brave, capable, first-rate
men. But a nautical is not the same as a naval training; and the
dearth of good professional naval officers was felt to the end.
The number of enlisted seamen authorized by Congress rose from
7600 to 51,500. But the very greatest difficulty was found in
"keeping up to strength," even with the most lavish use of
bounties.

The number of vessels in the navy kept on growing all through. Of
course not nearly all of them were regular men-of-war or even
fighting craft "fit to go foreign." At the end of the first year
there were 264 in commission; at the end of the second, 427; at
the end of the third, 588; and at the end of the fourth, 671.

Bearing this in mind, and remembering the many other Northern
odds, one might easily imagine that the Southern armies fought
only with the courage of despair. Yet such was not the case. This
was no ordinary war, to be ended by a treaty in which compromise
would play its part. There could be only two alternatives: either
the South would win her independence or the North would have to
beat her into complete submission. Under the circumstances the
united South would win whenever the divided North thought that
complete subjugation would cost more than it was worth. The great
aim of the South was, therefore, not to conquer the North but
simply to sicken the North of trying to conquer her. "Let us
alone and we'll let you alone" was her insinuating argument; and
this, as she knew very well, was echoed by many people in the
North. Thus, as regards her own objective, she began with hopes
that the Northern peace party never quite let die.

Then, so far as her patriotic feelings were concerned, the South
was not fighting for any one point at issue--not even for
slavery, because only a small minority held slaves--but for her
whole way of life, which, rightly or wrongly, she wanted to live
in her own Southern way; and she passionately resented the
invasion of her soil. This gave her army a very high morale,
which, in its turn, inclined her soldiers the better to
appreciate their real or imagined advantages over the Northern
hosts. First, they and their enemies both knew that they enjoyed
the three real advantages of fighting at home under magnificent
leaders and with interior lines. Robert Lee and Stonewall Jackson
stood head and shoulders above any Northern leaders till Grant
and Sherman rose to greatness during the latter half of the war.
Lee himself was never surpassed; and he, like Jackson and several
more, made the best use of home surroundings and of interior
lines. Anybody can appreciate the prime advantage of interior
lines by imagining two armies of equal strength operating against
each other under perfectly equal conditions except that one has
to move round the circumference of a circle while the other moves
to meet it along the shorter lines inside. The army moving round
the circumference is said to be operating on exterior lines,
while the army moving from point to point of the circumference by
the straighter, and therefore shorter, lines inside is said to be
operating on interior lines. In more homely language the straight
road beats the crooked one. In plain slang, it's best to have the
inside track.

Of course there is a reverse to all this. If the roads, rails,
and waterways are better around the circle than inside it, then
the odds may be turned the other way; and this happens most often
when the forces on the exterior lines are the better provided
with sea-power. Again, if the exterior forces are so much
stronger than the interior forces that these latter dare not
leave any strategic point open in case the enemy breaks through,
then it is evident that the interior forces will suffer all the
disadvantages of being surrounded, divided, worn out, and
defeated.

This happened at last to the South, and was one of the four
advantages she lost. Another was the hope of foreign
intervention, which died hard in Southern hearts, but which was
already moribund halfway through the war. A third was the hope of
dissension in the North, a hope which often ran high till
Lincoln's reelection in November, '64, and one which only died
out completely with the surrender of Lee. The fourth was the
unfounded belief that Southerners were the better fighting men.
They certainly had an advantage at first in having a larger
proportion of men accustomed to horses and arms and inured to
life in the open. But, other things being equal, there was
nothing to choose between the two sides, so far as natural
fighting values were concerned.

Practically all the Southern "military males" passed into the
ranks; and a military male eventually meant any one who could
march to the front or do non-combatant service with an army, from
boys in their teens to men in their sixties. Conscription came
after one year; and with very few exemptions, such as the clergy,
Quakers, many doctors, newspaper editors, and "indispensable"
civil servants. Lee used to express his regret that all the
greatest strategists were tied to their editorial chairs. But
sterner feelings were aroused against that recalcitrant State
Governor, Joseph Brown of Georgia, who declared eight thousand of
his civil servants to be totally exempt. From first to last,
conscripts and volunteers, nearly a million men were enrolled:
equaling one-fifth of the entire war-party white population of
the seceding States.

All branches of the service suffered from a constant lack of arms
and munitions. As with the ships for the navy so with munitions
for the army, the South did not exploit the European markets
while her ports were still half open and her credit good,
Jefferson Davis was spotlessly honest, an able bureaucrat, and
full of undying zeal. But, though an old West Pointer, he was
neither a foresightful organizer nor fit to exercise any of the
executive power which he held as the constitutional
commander-in-chief by land and sea. He ordered rifles by the
thousand instead of by the hundred thousand; and he actually told
his Cabinet that if he could only take one wing while Lee took
the other they would surely beat the North. Worse still, he and
his politicians kept the commissariat under civilian orders and
full of civilian interference, even at the front, which, in this
respect, was always a house divided against itself.


The little regular army of '61, only sixteen thousand strong,
stood by the Union almost to a man; though a quarter of the
officers went over to the South. Yet the enlisted man was
despised even by the common loafers who would not fight if they
could help it. "Why don't you come in?" asked a zealous lady at a
distribution of patriotic gifts, "aren't you one of our heroes?"
"No, ma'am," answered the soldier, "I'm only a regular."

The question of command was often a very vexed one; and many
mistakes were made before the final answers came. The most
significant of all emergent facts was this: that though the
officers who had been regulars before the war did not form a
hundredth part of all who held commissions during it, yet these
old regulars alone supplied every successful high commander,
Federal and Confederate alike, both afloat and ashore.

The North had four times as many whites as the South; it used
more blacks as soldiers; and the complete grand total of all the
men who joined its forces during the war reached two millions and
three-quarters. But this gives a quite misleading idea of the
real odds in favor of the North, especially the odds available in
battle. A third of the Northern people belonged to the peace
party and furnished no recruits at all till after conscription
came in. The late introduction of conscription, the abominable
substitution clause, and the prevalence of bounty-jumping
combined to reduce both the quantity and quality of the recruits
obtained by money or compulsion. The Northerners that did fight
were generally fighting in the South, among a very hostile
population, which, while it made the Southern lines of
communication perfectly safe, threatened those of the North at
every point and thus obliged the Northern armies to leave more
and more men behind to guard the communications that each advance
made longer still. Finally, the South generally published the
numbers of only its actual combatants, while the Northern returns
always included every man drawing pay, whether a combatant or
not. On the whole, the North had more than double numbers, even
if compared with a Southern total that includes noncombatants.
But it should be remembered that a Northern army fighting in the
heart of the South, and therefore having to guard every mile of
the way back home, could not meet a Southern one with equal
strength in battle unless it had left the North with fully twice
as many.

Conscription came a year later (1863) in the North than in the
South and was vitiated by a substitution clause. The fact that a
man could buy himself out of danger made some patriots call it "a
rich man's war and a poor man's fight." And the further fact that
substitutes generally became regular bounty-jumpers, who joined
and deserted at will, over and over again, went far to increase
the disgust of those who really served. Frank Wilkeson's
"Recollections of a Private Soldier in the Army of the Potomac"
is a true voice from the ranks when he explains "how the resort
to volunteering, the unprincipled dodge of cowardly politicians,
ground up the choicest seedcorn of the nation; how it consumed
the young, the patriotic, the intelligent, the generous, and the
brave; and how it wasted the best moral, social, and political
elements of the Republic, leaving the cowards, shirkers,
egotists, and moneymakers to stay at home and procreate their
kind."

That is to say, it was so arranged that the fogy-witted lived,
while the lion-hearted died.

The organization of the vast numbers enrolled was excellent
whenever experts were given a free hand. But this free hand was
rare. One vital point only needs special notice here: the
wastefulness of raising new regiments when the old ones were
withering away for want of reinforcements. A new local regiment
made a better "story" in the press; and new and superfluous
regiments meant new and superfluous colonels, mostly of the
speechifying kind. So it often happened that the State
authorities felt obliged to humor zealots set on raising those
brand-new regiments which doubled their own difficulties by
having to learn their lesson alone, halved the efficiency of the
old regiments they should have reinforced, and harassed the
commanders and staff by increasing the number of units that were
of different and ever-changing efficiency and strength. It was a
system of making and breaking all through.


The end came when Northern sea-power had strangled the Southern
resources and the unified Northern armies had worn out the
fighting force. Of the single million soldiers raised by the
South only two hundred thousand remained in arms, half starved,
half clad, with the scantiest of munitions, and without reserves
of any kind. Meanwhile the Northern hosts had risen to a million
in the field, well fed, well clothed, well armed, abundantly
provided with munitions, and at last well disciplined under the
unified command of that great leader, Grant. Moreover, behind
this million stood another million fit to bear arms and
obtainable at will from the two millions of enrolled reserves.

The cost of the war was stupendous. But the losses of war are not
to be measured in money. The real loss was the loss of a million
men, on both sides put together, for these men who died were of
the nation's best.


CHAPTER III. THE NAVAL WAR: 1862

Bull Run had riveted attention on the land between the opposing
capitals and on the armies fighting there. Very few people were
thinking of the navies and the sea. And yet it was at sea, and
not on land, that the Union had a force against which the
Confederates could never prevail, a force which gradually cut
them off from the whole world's base of war supplies, a force
which enabled the Union armies to get and keep the strangle-hold
which did the South to death.

The blockade declared in April was no empty threat. The sails of
Federal frigates, still more the sinister black hulls of the new
steam men-of-war, meant that the South was fast becoming a land
besieged, with every outwork accessible by water exposed to
sudden attack and almost certain capture by any good amphibious
force of soldiers and sailors combined.

Sea-power kept the North in affluence while it starved the South.
Sea-power held Maryland in its relentless grip and did more than
land-power to keep her in the Union. Sea-power was the chief
factor in saving Washington. Seapower enabled the North to hold
such points of vantage as Fortress Monroe right on the flank of
the South. And sea-power likewise enabled the North to take or
retake other points of similar importance: for instance, Hatteras
Island.

In a couple of days at the end of August, 1861, the Confederate
forts at Hatteras Inlet, North Carolina, were compelled to
surrender to a joint naval and military expedition under
Flag-Officer Stringham and Major-General B. F. Butler. The
immediate result, besides the capture of seven hundred men, was
the control of the best entrance to North Carolina waters, which
entailed the stoppage of many oversea supplies for the
Confederate army. The ulterior result was the securing of a base
from which a further invasion could be made with great advantage.


The naval campaign of the following year was truly epoch-making;
for the duel between the Monitor and Merrimac in Hampton Roads on
March 9, 1862, was the first action ever fought between ironclad
steam men-of-war.

Eleven months earlier the Federal Government had suddenly
abandoned the Norfolk Navy Yard; though their strongest garrison
was at Fortress Monroe, only twelve miles north along a waterway
which was under the absolute control of their navy, and though
the Confederates', had nothing but an inadequate little untrained
force on the spot. Among the spoils of war falling into
Confederate hands were twelve hundred guns and the Merrimac, a
forty-gun steam frigate. The Merrimac, though fired and scuttled
by the Federals, was hove up, cut down, plated over, and renamed
the Virginia. (History, however, knows her only as the Merrimac.)
John L. Porter, Naval Constructor to the Confederate States, had
made a model of an ironclad at Pittsburgh fifteen years before;
and he now applied this model to the rebuilding of the Merrimac.
He first cut down everything above the water line, except the gun
deck, which he converted into a regular citadel with flat top,
sides sloping at thirty-five degrees, and ends stopping short of
the ship's own ends by seventy feet fore and aft. The effect,
therefore, was that of an ironclad citadel built on the midships
of a submerged frigate's hull. The four-inch iron plating of the
citadel knuckled over the wooden sides two feet under water. The
engines, which the South had no means of replacing, were the old
ones which had been condemned before being sunk. A four-foot
castiron ram was clamped on to the bow. Ten guns were mounted:
six nine-inch smooth-bores, with two six-inch and two seven-inch
rifles. Commodore Franklin Buchanan took command and had
magnificent professional officers under him. But the crew, three
hundred strong, were mostly landsmen; for, as in the case of the
Army, the men of the Navy nearly all took sides with the North,
and the South had very few seamen of any other kind.

To oppose the Merrimac the dilatory North contracted with John
Ericsson the Swede, who had to build the Monitor much smaller
than the Merrimac owing to pressure of time. He enjoyed, however,
enormous advantages in every other respect, owing to the vastly
superior resources of the North in marine engineering,
armor-plating, and all other points of naval construction. The
Monitor was launched at New York on January 30, 1869., the
hundredth day after the laying of her keel-plate. Her length over
all was 172 feet, her beam was 41, and her draught only 10--less
than half the draught of the Merrimac. Her whole crew numbered
only 58; but every single one was a trained professional naval
seaman who had volunteered for dangerous service under Captain
John L. Worden. She was not a good sea boat; and she nearly
foundered on her way down from New York to Fortress Monroe. Her
underwater hull was shipshape enough; but her superstructure--a
round iron tower resting on a very low deck--was not.
Contemptuous eyewitnesses described her very well as looking like
a tin can on a shingle or a cheesebox on a raft. She carried only
two guns, eleven-inchers, both mounted inside her turret, which
revolved by machinery; but their 180-pound shot were far more
powerful than any aboard the Merrimac. In maneuvering the Monitor
enjoyed an immense advantage, with her light draft, strong
engines, and well-protected screws and rudder.

On the eighth of March, a lovely spring day, the Merrimac made
her trial trip by going into action with her wheezy old engines,
lubberly crew, and the guns she had never yet fired. She shoveled
along at only five knots; but the Confederate garrisons cheered
her to the echo. Seven miles north she came upon the astonished
fifty-gun Congress and thirty-gun Cumberland swinging drowsily at
anchor off Newport News, with their boats alongside and the men's
wash drying in the rigging. Yet the surprised frigates opened
fire at twelve hundred yards and were joined by the shore
batteries, all converging on the Merrimac, from whose iron sides
the shot glanced up without doing more than hammer her hard and
start a few rivets. Closing in at top speed--barely six
knots--the Merrimac gave the Congress a broadside before ramming
the Cumberland and opening a hole "wide enough to drive in a
horse and cart." Backing clear and turning the after-pivot gun,
the Merrimac then got in three raking shells against the
Congress, which grounded when trying to escape. Meanwhile the
Cumberland was listing over and rapidly filling, though she kept
up the fight to the very last gasp. When she sank with a roar her
topmasts still showed above water and her colors waved defiance.
An hour later the terribly mauled Congress surrendered; whereupon
her crew was rescued and she was set on fire. By this time
various smaller craft on both sides had joined the fray. But the
big Minnesota still remained, though aground and apparently at
the mercy of the Merrimac. The great draught of the Merrimac and
the setting in of the ebb tide, however, made the Confederates
draw off for the night.

Next morning they saw the "tin can on the shingle" between them
and their prey. The Monitor and Merrimac then began their
epoch-making fight. The patchwork engines of the deep-draught
Merrimac made her as unhandy as if she had been water-logged,
while the light-draught Monitor could not only play round her
when close-to but maneuver all over the surrounding shallows as
well. The Merrimac put her last ounce of steam into an attempt to
ram her agile opponent. But a touch of the Monitor's helm swung
her round just in time to make the blow perfectly harmless. The
Merrimac simply barged into her, grated harshly against her iron
side, and sheered off beaten. The firing was furious and mostly
at pointblank range. Once the Monitor fired while the sides were
actually touching. The concussion was so tremendous that all the
Merrimac's gun-crews aft were struck down flat, with bleeding
ears and noses. But in spite of this her boarders were called
away; whereupon every man who could handle cutlass and revolver
made ready and stood by. The Monitor, however, dropped astern too
quickly; and the wallowing Merrimac had no chance of catching
her. The fight had lasted all through that calm spring morning
when the Monitor steamed off, across the shallows, still keeping
carefully between the Merrimac and Minnesota. It was a drawn
battle. But the effect was that of a Northern victory; for the
Merrimac was balked of her easy prey, and the North gained time
to outbuild the South completely.

Outbuilding the South of course meant tightening the "anaconda"
system of blockade, in the entangling coils of which the South
was caught already. Three thousand miles of Southern coastline
was, however, more than the North could blockade or even watch to
its own satisfaction all at once. Fogs, storms, and clever ruses
played their part on behalf of those who ran the blockade,
especially during the first two years; and it was almost more
than human nature could stand to keep forever on the extreme
alert, day after dreary day, through the deadly boredom of a long
blockade. Like caged eagles the crews passed many a weary week of
dull monotony without the chance of swooping on a chase. "Smoke
ho!" would be called from the main-topgallant cross-tree. "Where
away?" would be called back from the deck. "Up the river,
Sir!"--and there it would stay, the very mark of hope deferred.
Occasionally a cotton ship would make a dash, with lights out on
a dark night, or through a dense fog, when her smoke might
sometimes be conned from the tops. Occasionally, too, a foreigner
would try to run in, and not seldom succeed, because only the
fastest vessels tried to run the blockade after the first few
months. But the general experience was one of utter boredom
rarely relieved by a stroke of good luck.

The South could not break the blockade. But the North could
tighten it, and did so repeatedly, not only at sea but by
establishing strong strategic centers of its own along the
Southern coast. We have seen already how Hatteras Island was
taken in '61, five weeks after Bull Run. Within another three
weeks Ship Island was also taken, to the great disadvantage of
the Gulf ports and the corresponding advantage of the Federal
fleet blockading them; for Ship Island commanded the coastwise
channels between Mobile and New Orleans, the two great scenes of
Farragut's success. Then, on the seventh of November, the day
that Grant began his triumphant career by dealing the
Confederates a shrewd strategic blow at Belmont in Missouri,
South Carolina suffered a worse defeat at Port Royal (where she
lost Forts Beauregard and Walker) than North Carolina had
suffered at Hatteras Island. Admiral S. F. Du Pont managed the
naval part of the Port Royal expedition with consummate skill,
especially the fine fleet action off Hilton Head against the
Southern ships and forts. He was ably seconded by General Thomas
West Sherman, commanding the troops.

North Carolina's turn soon came again, when she lost Roanoke
Island (and with it the command of Albemarle Sound) on February
8, 1862; and when she also had Pamlico Sound shut against her by
a joint expedition that struck down her defenses as far inland as
Newbern on the fourteenth of March. Then came the turn of
Georgia, where Fort Pulaski, the outpost of Savannah, fell to the
Federals on the eleventh of April. Within another month Florida
was even more hardly hit when the pressure of the Union fleet and
army on Virginia compelled the South to use. as reinforcements
the garrison that had held Pensacola since the beginning of the
war.

These were all severe blows to the Southern cause. But they were
nothing to the one which immediately followed.

The idea of an attack on New Orleans had been conceived in June,
'61, by Commander (afterwards Admiral) D.D. Porter, of the U.S.S.
Powhatan, when he was helping to blockade the Mississippi. The
Navy Department had begun thinking over the same idea in
September and had worked out a definite scheme. New Orleans was
of immense strategic importance, as being the link between the
sea and river systems of the war. The mass of people and their
politicians, on both sides, absurdly thought of New Orleans as
the objective of a land invasion from the north. Happily for the
Union cause, Gustavus Fox, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, knew
better and persuaded his civilian chief, Gideon Welles, that this
was work for a joint expedition, with the navy first, the army
second. The navy could take New Orleans. The army would have to
hold it.

The squadron destined for this enterprise was commanded by David
Glasgow Farragut, who arrived at Ship Island on February 20,
1862, in the Hartford, the famous man-of-war that carried his
flag in triumph to the end. Unlike Lee and Jackson, Grant and
Sherman, the other four great leaders in the Civil War, Farragut
was not an American whose ancestors on both sides had come from
the British Isles. Like Lee, however, he was of very ancient
lineage, one of his ancestors, Don Pedro Farragut, having held a
high command under the King of Aragon in the Moorish wars of the
thirteenth century. Farragut's father was a pure-blooded
Spaniard, born under the British flag in Minorca in 1755. Half
Spanish, half Southern by descent, Farragut was wholly Southern
by family environment. His mother, Elizabeth Shine, was a native
of North Carolina. He spent his early boyhood in New Orleans.
Both his first and second wives came from Virginia; and he made
his home at Norfolk. On the outbreak of the war, however, he
immediately went North and applied for employment with the Union
fleet.

Farragut was the oldest of the five great leaders, being now
sixty years of age, while Lee was fifty-five, Sherman forty-two,
Grant forty, and Jackson thirty-eight. He was, however, fit as an
athlete in training, able to turn a handspring on his birthday
and to hold his own in swordsmanship against any of his officers.
Of middle height, strong build, and rather plain features, he did
not attract attention in a crowd. But his alert and upright
carriage, keenly interested look, and genial smile impressed all
who ever knew him with a sense of native kindliness and power.
Though far too great a master of the art of war to interfere with
his subordinates he always took care to understand their duties
from their own points of view so that he could control every part
of the complex naval instruments of war--human and material
alike--with a sure and inspiring touch. His one weakness as a
leader was his generous inclination to give subordinates the
chance of distinguishing themselves when they could have done
more useful service in a less conspicuous position.

Farragut's base at Ship Island was about a hundred miles east
from the Confederate Forts Jackson and St. Philip. These forts
guarded the entrance to the Mississippi. Ninety miles above them
stood New Orleans, to which they gave protection and from which
they drew all their supplies. The result of a conference at
Washington was an order from Welles to "reduce the defenses which
guard the approaches to New Orleans." But Farragut's own
infinitely better plan was to run past the forts and take New
Orleans first. By doing this he would save the extra loss
required for reducing the forts and would take the weak defenses
of New Orleans entirely by surprise. Then, when New Orleans fell,
the forts, cut off from all supplies, would have to surrender
without the firing of another shot. Everything depended on
whether Farragut could run past without too much loss. Profoundly
versed in all the factors of the problem, he foresaw that his
solution would prove right, while Washington's would as certainly
be wrong. So, taking the utmost advantage of all the freedom that
his general instructions allowed, he followed a course in which
anything short of complete success would mean the ruin of his
whole career.

The forts were strong, had ninety guns that would bear once
fleet, and were well placed, one on each side of the river. But
they suffered from all the disadvantages of fixed defenses
opposed by a mobile enemy, and their own mobile auxiliaries were
far from being satisfactory. The best of the "River Defense
Fleet," including several rams, had been ordered up to Memphis,
so sure was the Confederate Government that the attack would come
from the north. Two home-made ironclads were failures. The
Louisiana's engines were not ready in time; and her captain
refused to be towed into the position near the boom where he
could do the enemy most harm. The Mississippi, a mere floating
house, built by ordinary carpenters, never reached the forts at
all and was burnt by her own men at New Orleans.

Farragut felt sure of his fleet. He had four splendid new
men-of-war that formed a homogeneous squadron, four other sizable
warships, and nine new gunboats. All spars and rigging that could
be dispensed with were taken down; all hulls camouflaged with
Mississippi mud; and all decks whitened for handiness at night. A
weak point, however, was the presence of mortar-boats that would
have been better out of the way altogether. These boats had been
sent to bombard the forts,which, according to the plan preferred
by the Government, were to be taken before New Orleans was
attacked. In other words, the Government wished to cut off the
branches first; while Farragut wished to cut down the tree
itself, knowing the branches must fall with the trunk.

On the eighteenth of April the mortar-boats began heaving shells
at the forts. But, after six days of bombardment, the forts were
nowhere near the point of surrendering, and the supply of shells
had begun to run low.

Meanwhile the squadron had been busy preparing for the great
ordeal. The first task was to break the boom across the river.
This boom was placed so as to hold the ships under the fire of
the forts; and the four-knot spring current was so strong that
the eight-knot ships could not make way enough against it to cut
clear through with certainty. Moreover, the middle of the boom
was filled in by eight big schooners, chained together, with
their masts and rigging dragging astern so as to form a most
awkward entanglement. Farragut's fleet captain, Henry H. Bell,
taking two gunboats, Itasca and Pinola, under Lieutenants
Caldwell and Crosby, slipped the chains of one schooner;
whereupon this schooner and the Itasca swung back and grounded
under fire of the forts. The Pinola gallantly stood by, helping
Itasca clear. Then Caldwell, with splendid audacity and skill,
steamed up through the narrow gap, turned round, put on the
Itasca's utmost speed, and, with the current in his favor,
charged full tilt against the chains that still held fast. For
one breathless moment the little Itasca seemed lost. Her bows
rose clear out, as, quivering from stem to stern, she was
suddenly brought up short from top speed to nothing. But, in
another fateful minute, with a rending crash, the two nearest
schooners gave way and swept back like a gate, while the Itasca
herself shot clear and came down in triumph to the fleet.

The passage was made on the twenty-fourth, in line-ahead (that
is, one after another) because Farragut found the opening
narrower than he thought it should be for two columns abreast, at
night, under fire, and against the spring current. Owing to the
configuration of the channel the starboard column had to weigh
first, which gave the lead to the 500-ton gunboat Cayuga. This
was the one weak point, because the leading vessel, drawing most
fire, should have been the strongest. The fault was Farragut's;
for his heart got the better of his head when it came to placing
Captain Theodorus Bailey, his dauntless second-in-command, on
board a vessel fit to lead the starboard column. He could not
bear to obscure any captain's chances of distinction by putting
another captain over him. So Bailey was sent to the best vessel
commanded by a lieutenant.

The Cayuga's navigating officer, finding that the guns of the
forts were all trained on midstream, edged in towards Fort St.
Philip. His masts were shot to pieces, but his hull drew clear
without great damage. "Then," he says, "I looked back for some of
our vessels; and my heart jumped up into my mouth when I found I
could not see a single one. I thought they must all have been
sunk by the forts." But not a ship had gone down. The three big
ones of the starboard column--Pensacola, Mississippi, and
Oneida--closed with the fort (so that the gunners on both sides
exchanged jeers of defiance) and kept up a furious fire till the
lighter craft astern slipped past safely and joined the Cayuga
above.

Meanwhile the Cayuga had been attacked by a mob of Mississippi
steamers, six of which belonged to the original fourteen blessed
with their precious independence by Secretary Benjamin, "backed
by the whole Missouri Delegation." So when the rest of the
Federal light craft came up, "all sorts of things happened" in a
general free fight. There was no lack of Confederate courage; but
an utter absence of concerted action and of the simplest kind of
naval skill, except on the part of the two vessels commanded by
ex-officers of the United States Navy. The Federal light craft
cut their way through their unorganized opponents as easily as a
battalion of regulars could cut through a mob throwing stones.
But the only two Confederate naval officers got clear of the
scrimmage and did all that skill could do with their makeshift
little craft against the Federal fleet. Kennon singled out the
Varuna (the only one of Farragut's vessels that was not a real
man-of-war), raked her stern with the two guns of his own much
inferior vessel, the Governor Moore, and rammed her into a
sinking condition. Warley flew at bigger game with his little
ram, the Manassas, trying three of the large men-of-war, one
after another, as they came upstream. The Pensacola eluded him by
a knowing turn of her helm that roused his warmest admiration.
The Mississippi caught the blow glancingly on her quarter and got
off with little damage. The Brooklyn was taken fair and square
amidships; but, though her planking was crushed in, she sprang no
serious leak and went on with the fight. The wretched little
Confederate engines had not been able to drive the ram home.

The Brooklyn was the flagship Hartford's next-astern and the
Richmond's next-ahead, these three forming the main body of
Farragut's own port column, which followed hard on the heels of
the starboard one, so hard, indeed, that there were only twenty
minutes between the first shot fired by the forts at the Cayuga
and the first shot fired by the Hartford at the forts. Besides
the forts there was the Louisiana floating battery that helped to
swell the storm of shot and shell; and down the river came a
fire-raft gallantly towed by a tug. The Hartford sheered off,
over towards Fort St. Philip, under whose guns she took ground by
the head while the raft closed in and set her ablaze. Instantly
the hands on fire duty sprang to their work. But the flames
rushed in through the ports; and the men were forced a step back.
Farragut at once called out: "Don't flinch from the fire, boys.
There's a hotter fire than that for those who don't do their
duty!" Whereupon they plied their hoses to such good effect that
the fire was soon got under control. Farragut calmly resumed his
walk up and down the poop, while the gunners blew the gallant
little tug to bits and smashed the raft in pieces. Then he stood
keenly watching the Hartford back clear, gather way, and take the
lead upstream again. Every now and then he looked at the pocket
compass that hung from his watch chain; though, for the most
part, he tried to scan a scene of action lit only by the flashes
of the guns. The air was dense and very still; so the smoke of
guns and funnels hung like a pall over both the combatants while
the desperate fight went on.

At last the fleet fought through and reached the clearer
atmosphere above the forts; all but the last three gunboats,
which were driven back by the fire. Then Farragut immediately
sent word to General Benjamin F. Butler that the troops could be
brought up by the bayous that ran parallel to the river out of
range of the forts. But the General, having taken in the
situation at a glance from a transport just below the scene of
action, had begun to collect his men at Sable Island, twelve
miles behind Fort St. Philip, long before Farragut's messenger
could reach him by way of the Quarantine Bayou. From Sable Island
the troops were taken by the transports to a point on the
Mississippi five miles above Fort St. Philip.

After a well-earned rest the whole fleet moved up to New Orleans
on the twenty-fifth, turning the city's lines five miles
downstream without the loss of a man, for the simple reason that
these had been built only to resist an army, and so lay with
flanks entirely open to a fleet. General Lovell (the able
commander who had so often warned the Confederate Government of
the danger from the sea) at once evacuated the defenseless city.
The best of the younger men were away with the armies. The best
of the older men were too few for the storm. And so pandemonium
broke loose. Burning boats, blazing cotton, and a howling mob
greeted Farragut's arrival. But after the forts (now completely
cut off from their base) had surrendered on the twenty-eighth a
landing party from the fleet soon brought the mob to its senses
by planting howitzers in the streets and lowering the Confederate
colors over the city hall. On the first of May a garrison of
Federal troops took charge of New Orleans and kept it till the
war was over.


New Orleans was a most pregnant Federal victory; for it
established a Union base at the great strategic point where
sea-power and land-power could meet most effectively in
Mississippi waters.

But it was followed by a perfect anti-climax; for the Federal
Government, having planned a naval concentration at Vicksburg,
determined to put the plan in operation; though all the naval and
military means concerned made such a plan impossible of execution
in 1862. Amphibious forces--fleets and armies combined--were
essential. There was no use in parading up and down the river,
however triumphantly, so long as the force employed could only
hold the part of the channel within actual range of its guns. The
Confederates could be driven off the Mississippi at any given
point. But there was nothing to prevent them from coming back
again when once the ships had passed. An army to seize and hold
strategic points ashore was absolutely indispensable. Then, and
only then, Farragut's long line of communication with his base at
New Orleans would be safe, and the land in which the Mississippi
was the principal highway could itself be conquered.

"If the Mississippi expedition from Cairo shall not have
descended the river, you will take advantage of the panic to push
a strong force up the river to take all their defenses in rear."
These were the orders Farragut had to obey if he succeeded in
taking New Orleans. They were soon reinforced by this reminder:
"The only anxiety we feel is to know if you have followed up your
instructions and pushed a strong force up the river to meet the
Western flotilla." Farragut therefore felt bound to obey and do
all that could be done to carry on a quite impossible campaign.
So, with a useless landing party of only fifteen hundred troops,
he pushed up to Vicksburg, four hundred miles above New Orleans.
The nearest Federal army had been halted by the Confederate
defenses above Memphis, another four hundred higher still.

There were several reasons why Farragut should not have gone up.
His big ships would certainly be stranded if he went up and
waited for the army to come down; moreover, when stranded, these
ships would be captured while waiting, because both banks were
swarming with vastly outnumbering Confederate troops. Then, such
a disaster would more than offset the triumph of New Orleans by
still further depressing Federal morale at a time when the
Federal arms were doing none too well near Washington. Finally,
all the force that was being worse than wasted up the Mississippi
might have been turned against Mobile, which, at that time, was
much weaker than the defenses Farragut had already overcome. But
the people of the North were clamorous for more victories along
the line to which the press had drawn their gaze. So the
Government ordered the fleet to carry on this impossible
campaign.

Farragut did his best. Within a month of passing the forts he had
not only captured New Orleans and repaired the many serious
damages suffered by his fleet but had captured Baton Rouge, and
taken even his biggest ships to Vicksburg, five hundred miles
from the Gulf, against a continuous current, and right through
the heart of a hostile land. Finding that there were thirty
thousand Confederates in, near, or within a day of Vicksburg he
and General Thomas Williams agreed that nothing could be done
with the fifteen hundred troops which formed the only landing
party. Sickness and casualties had reduced the ships' companies;
so there were not even a few seamen to spare as reinforcements
for these fifteen hundred soldiers, whom Butler had sent, under
Williams, with the fleet. Then Farragut turned back, his stores
running dangerously short owing to the enormous difficulties of
keeping open his long, precarious line of communications. "I
arrived in New Orleans with five or six days' provisions and one
anchor, and am now trying to procure others . . . . Fighting is
nothing to the evils of the river--getting on shore, running foul
of one another, losing anchors, etc." In a confidential letter
home he is still more outspoken. "They will keep us in this river
till the vessels break down and all the little reputation we have
made has evaporated. The Government appears to think that we can
do anything. They expect, me to navigate the Mississippi nine
hundred miles in the face of batteries, ironclad rams, etc.; and
yet with all the ironclad vessels they have North they could not
get to Norfolk or Richmond."

Back from Washington came still more urgent orders to join the
Mississippi flotilla which was coming down to Vicksburg from the
north under Flag Officer Charles H. Davis. So once more the fleet
worked its laboriously wasteful way up to Vicksburg, where it
passed the forts with the help of Porter's flotilla of
mortar-boats on the twenty-eighth of June and joined Davis on the
first of July. There, in useless danger, the joint forces lay
till the fifteenth, the day on which Grant's own "most anxious
period of the war" began on the Memphis-Corinth line, four
hundred miles above.

Farragut, getting very anxious about the shoaling of the water,
was then preparing to run down when he heard firing in the Yazoo,
a tributary that joined the Mississippi four miles higher up.
This came from a fight between one of his reconnoitering
gunboats, the Carondelet, and the Arkansas, an ironclad
Confederate ram that would have been very dangerous indeed if her
miserable engines had been able to give her any speed. She was
beating the Carondelet, but getting her smoke-stack so badly
holed that her speed dropped down to one knot, which scarcely
gave her steerage way and made her unable to ram. Firing hard she
ran the gauntlet of both fleets and took refuge under the
Vicksburg bluffs, whence she might run out and ram the Union
vessels below. Farragut therefore ran down himself, hoping to
smash her by successive broadsides in passing. But the
difficulties of the passage wasted the daylight, so that he had
to run by at night. She therefore survived his attack, and went
downstream to join the Confederates against Baton Rouge. But her
engines gave way before she got there; and she had to be blown
up.

Farragut was back at New Orleans before the end of July. On the
fifth of August the Confederates made their attack on Baton
Rouge; but were beaten back by the Union garrison aided by three
of Farragut's gunboats and two larger vessels from Davis's
command. The losses were not very severe on either side; but the
Union lost a leader of really magnificent promise in its
commanding general, Thomas Williams, a great-hearted, cool-headed
man and most accomplished officer. The garrison of Baton Rouge,
being too small and sickly and exposed, was withdrawn to New
Orleans a few days later.

Then Farragut at last returned to the Gulf blockade. Davis went
back up the river, where he was succeeded by D.D. Porter in
October. And the Confederates, warned of what was coming, made
Port Hudson and Vicksburg as strong as they could. Vicksburg was
now the only point they held on the Mississippi where there were
rails on both sides; and the Red River, flowing in from the West
between Vicksburg and Port Hudson, was the only good line of
communication connecting them with Texas, whence so much of their
meat was obtained.

For three months Farragut directed the Gulf blockade from
Pensacola, where, on the day of his arrival, the twentieth of
August, he was the first American to hoist an admiral's flag. The
rank of rear-admiral in the United States Navy had been created
on the previous sixteenth of July; and Farragut was the senior of
the first three officers upon whom it was conferred.

Farragut became the ranking admiral just when the United States
Navy was having its hardest struggle to do its fivefold duty
well. There was commerce protection on the high seas, blockade
along the coast, cooperation with the army on salt water and on
fresh, and of course the destruction of the nascent Confederate
forces afloat. But perhaps a knottier problem than any part of
its combatant duty was how to manage, in the very midst of war,
that rapid expansion of its own strength for which no government
had let it prepare in time of peace. During this year the number
of vessels in commission grew from 264 to 427. Yet such a form of
expansion was much simpler than that of the enlisted men; and the
expansion of even the most highly trained enlisted personnel was
very much simpler than the corresponding expansion of the
officers. Happily for the United States Navy it started with a
long lead over its enemy. More happily still it could expand with
the help of greatly superior resources. Most happily of all, the
sevenfold expansion that was effected before the war was over
could be made under leaders like Farragut: leaders, that is, who,
though in mere numbers they were no more, in proportion to their
whole service, than the flag as mere material is to a man-of-war,
were yet, as is the flag, the living symbol of a people's soul.

Commerce protection on the high seas was an exceedingly harassing
affair. A few swift raiders, having the initiative, enjoyed great
advantages over a far larger number of defending vessels. Every
daring raid was trumpeted round the world, bringing down
unmeasured, and often unmerited, blame on the defense. The most
successful vigilance would, on the other hand, pass by unheeded.
The Union navy lacked the means of patrolling the sea lanes of
commerce over millions and millions of desolate square miles.
Consequently the war-risk insurance rose to a prohibitive height
on vessels flying the Stars and Stripes; and, as a further
result, enormous transfers were made to other flags. The
incessant calls for recruits, afloat and ashore, and to some
extent the lure of the western lands, also robbed the merchant
service of its men. Thus, one way and another, the glory of the
old merchant marine departed with the Civil War.

Blockade was more to the point than any attempt to patrol the sea
lanes. Yet it was even more harassing; for it involved three
distinct though closely correlated kinds of operation: not only
the seizure, in conjunction with the army, of enemy ports, and
the patrolling of an enemy coastline three thousand miles long,
but also the patrolling of those oversea ports from which most
contraband came. This oversea patrol was the most effective,
because it went straight to the source of trouble. But it
required extraordinary vigilance, because it had to be conducted
from beyond the three-mile limit, and with the greatest care for
all the rights of neutrals.

By mid-November Farragut was back at New Orleans. A month later
General Banks arrived with reinforcements. He superseded General
Butler and was under orders to cooperate with McClernand, Grant's
second-in-command, who was to come down the Mississippi from
Cairo. But the proposed meeting of the two armies never took
place. Banks remained south of Port Hudson, McClernand far north
of Vicksburg; for, as we shall see in the next chapter, Sherman's
attempt to take Vicksburg from the North failed on the
twenty-ninth of December.

The naval and river campaigns of '62 thus ended in disappointment
for the Union. And, on New Year's Day, Galveston, which Farragut
had occupied in October without a fight and which was lightly
garrisoned by three hundred soldiers, fell into Confederate hands
under most exasperating circumstances. After the captain and
first lieutenant of the U.S.S. Harriet Lane had been shot by the
riflemen aboard two cotton-clad steamers the next officer tamely
surrendered. Commander Renshaw, who was in charge of the
blockade, amply redeemed the honor of the Navy by refusing to
surrender the Westfield, in spite of the odds against him, and by
blowing her up instead. But when he died at the post of duty the
remaining Union vessels escaped; and the blockade was raised for
a week.

After that Commodore H.H. Bell, one of Farragut's best men,
closed in with a grip which never let go. Yet even Bell suffered
a reverse when he sent the U.S.S. Hatteras to overhaul a strange
vessel that lured her off some fifteen miles and sank her in a
thirteen-minute fight. This stranger was the Alabama, then just
beginning her famous or notorious career. Nor were these the only
Union troubles in the Gulf during the first three weeks of the
new year. Commander J.N. Matt ran the Florida out of Mobile,
right through the squadron that had been specially strengthened
to deal with her; and the shore defenses of the Sabine Pass, like
those of Galveston, fell into Confederate hands again, to remain
there till the war was over.

In spite of all failures, however, Farragut still had the upper
hand along the Gulf, and up the Mississippi as far as New
Orleans, without which admirable base the River War of '69. could
never have prepared the way for Grant's magnificent victory in
the River War of '63.



CHAPTER IV. THE RIVER WAR: 1862

The military front stretched east and west across the border
States from the Mississippi Valley to the sea. This immense and
fluctuating front, under its various and often changed
commanders, was never a well coordinated whole. The Alleghany
Mountains divided the eastern or Virginian wing from the western
or "River" wing. Yet there was always more or less connection
between these two main parts, and the fortunes of one naturally
affected those of the other. Most eyes, both at home and abroad,
were fixed on the Virginian wing, where the Confederate capital
stood little more than a hundred miles from Washington, where the
greatest rival armies fought, and where decisive victory was
bound to have the most momentous consequences. But the River wing
was hardly less important; for there the Union Government
actually hoped to reach these three supreme objectives in this
one campaign: the absolute possession of the border States, the
undisputed right of way along the Mississippi from Cairo to the
Gulf, and the triumphant invasion of the lower South in
conjunction with the final conquest of Virginia.

We have seen already how the Union navy, aided by the army, won
its way up the Mississippi from the Gulf to Baton Rouge, but
failed to secure a single point beyond. We shall now see how the
Union army, aided by the navy, won its way down the Mississippi
from Cairo to Memphis, and fairly attained the first
objective--the possession of the border States; but how it also
failed from the north, as the others had failed from the south,
to gain a footing on the crucial stretch between Vicksburg and
Port Hudson. One more year was required to win the Mississippi;
two more to invade the lower South; three to conquer Virginia.


Just after the fall of Fort Sumter the Union Government had the
foresight to warn James B. Eads, the well-known builder of
Mississippi jetties, that they would probably draw upon his
"thorough knowledge of our Western rivers and the use of steam on
them." But it was not till August that they gave him the contract
for the regular gunboat flotilla; and it was not till the
following year that his vessels began their work. In the meantime
the armies were asking for all sorts of transport and protective
craft. So the first flotilla on Mississippi waters started under
the War (not the Navy) Department, though manned under the
executive orders of Commander John Rodgers, U. S. N., who bought
three river steamers at Cincinnati, lowered their engines,
strengthened their frames, protected their decks, and changed
them into gunboats.

The first phase of the clash in this land of navigable rivers had
ended, as we have seen already, with the taking of Boonville on
the Missouri by that staunch and daring Union regular, General
Nathaniel Lyon, on June 17, 1861. Boonville was a stunning blow
to secession in those parts. Confederate hopes, however, again
rose high when the news of Bull Run came through. At this time
General John C. Fremont was taking command of all the Union
forces in the "Western Department," which included Illinois and
everything between the Mississippi and the Rockies. Fremont's
command, however, was short and full of trouble. Round his
headquarters at St. Louis the Confederate colors were flaunted in
his face. His requisitions for arms and money were not met at
Washington. Union regiments marched in without proper equipment
and with next to no supplies. There were boards of inquiry on his
contracts. There were endless cross-purposes between him and
Washington. And early in November he was transferred to West
Virginia just as he was about to attack with what seemed to him
every prospect of success. He had not succeeded. But he had done
good work in fortifying St. Louis; in ordering gunboats, tugs,
and mortar-boats; in producing some kind of system out of utter
confusion,; in trusting good men like Lyon; and in sending the
then unknown Ulysses Grant to take command at Cairo, the
excellent strategic base where the Ohio joins the Mississippi.

The most determined fighting that took place during Fremont's
command was brought on by Lyon, who attacked Ben McCulloch at
Wilson's Creek, in southwest Missouri, on the tenth of August.
Though McCulloch had ten thousand, against not much over five,
Lyon was so set on driving the Confederates away from such an
important lead-bearing region that he risked an attack, hoping by
surprise, skillful maneuvers, and the help of his regulars to
shake the enemy's hold, even if he could not thoroughly defeat
him. Disheartened by his repeated failure to get reinforcements,
and very anxious about the fate of his flanking column under
Sigel, whose attack from the rear was defeated, he expressed his
forebodings to his staff. But the light of battle shone bright as
ever in his eyes; he was killed leading a magnificent charge; and
when, after his death, his little army drew off in good order,
the Confederates, by their own account, "were glad to see him
go."

On the twentieth of September the Confederates under Sterling
Price won a barren victory by taking Lexington, Missouri, where
Colonel James Mulligan made a gallant defense. That was the last
Confederate foothold on the Missouri; and it could not be
maintained.

In October, Anderson, who had never recovered from the strain of
defending Fort Sumter, turned over to Sherman the very
troublesome Kentucky command. Sherman pointed out to the visiting
Secretary of War, Simon Cameron, that while McClellan had a
hundred thousand men for a front of a hundred miles in Virginia,
and Fremont had sixty thousand for about the same distance, he
(Sherman) had been given only eighteen thousand to guard the link
between them, although this link stretched out three hundred
miles. Sherman then asked for sixty thousand men at once; and
said two hundred thousand would be needed later on. "Good God!"
said Cameron, "where are they to come from?" Come they had to, as
Sherman foresaw. Cameron made trouble at Washington by calling
Sherman's words "insane"; and Sherman's "insanity" became a
stumbling-block that took a long time to remove.

Grant, in command at Cairo, began his career as a general by
cleverly forestalling the enemy at Paducah, where the Tennessee
flows into the Ohio. Then, on the seventh of November, he closed
the first confused campaign on the Mississippi by attacking
Belmont, Missouri, twenty miles downstream from Cairo, in order
to prevent the Confederates at Columbus, Kentucky, right
opposite, from sending reinforcements to Sterling Price in
Arkansas. There was a stiff fight, in which the Union gunboats
did good work. Grant handled his soldiers equally well; and the
Union objective was fully attained.


Halleck, the Federal Commander-in-Chief for the river campaign of
'62, fixed his headquarters at St. Louis. From this main base his
right wing had rails as far as Rolla, whence the mail road went
on southwest, straight across Missouri. At Lebanon, near the
middle of the State, General Samuel R. Curtis was concentrating,
before advancing still farther southwest against the Confederates
whom he eventually fought at Pea Ridge. From St. Louis there was
good river, rail, and road connection south to Halleck's center
in the neighborhood of Cairo, where General Ulysses S. Grant had
his chief field base, at the junction of the Mississippi and
Ohio. A little farther east Grant had another excellent position
at Paducah, beside the junction of the Ohio and the Tennessee.
Naval forces were of course indispensable for this amphibious
campaign; and in Flag-Officer Andrew Hull Foote the Western
Flotilla had a commander able to cooperate with the best of his
military colleagues. Halleck's left--a semi-independent
command--was based on the Ohio, stretched clear across Kentucky,
and was commanded by a good organizer and disciplinarian, General
Don Carlos Buell, whose own position at Munfordville was not only
near the middle of the State but about midway between the
important railway junctions of Louisville and Nashville.

Henry W. Halleck was a middle-aged, commonplace, and very
cautious general, who faithfully plodded through the war without
defeat or victory. He looked so long before he leaped that he
never leaped at all--not even on retreating enemies. Good for the
regular officework routine, he was like a hen with ducklings for
this river war, in which Curtis, Grant, Buell, and his naval
colleague Foote, were all his betters on the fighting line.

His opponent, Albert Sidney Johnston, was also middle-aged, being
fifty-nine; but quite fit for active service. Johnston had had a
picturesque career, both in and out of the army; and many on both
sides thought him likely to prove the greatest leader of the war.
He was, however, a less formidable opponent than Northerners were
apt to think. He was not a consummate genius like Lee. He had
inferior numbers and resources; and the Confederate Government
interfered with him. Yet they did have the good sense to put both
sides of the Mississippi under his unified command, including not
only Kentucky and Tennessee, Missouri and Arkansas, but the whole
of the crucial stretch from Vicksburg to Port Hudson. In this
they were wiser than the Federal Government with Halleck's
command, which was neither so extensive nor so completely
unified.

Johnston took post in his own front line at Bowling Green,
Kentucky, not far south of Buell's position at Munfordville. He
was very anxious to keep a hold on Kentucky and Missouri, along
the southern frontiers of which his forces were arrayed. His
extreme right was thrown northward under General Marshall to
Prestonburg, near the border of West Virginia, in the dangerous
neighborhood of many Union mountain folk. His southern outpost on
the right was also in the same kind of danger at Cumberland Gap,
a strategic pass into the Alleghanies at a point where Kentucky,
Tennessee, and Virginia meet. Halfway west from there, to Bowling
Green the Confederates hoped to hold the Cumberland near Logan's
Cross Roads and Mill Springs. Westwards from Bowling Green
Johnston's line held positions at Fort Donelson on the
Cumberland, Fort Henry on the Tennessee, and Columbus on the
Mississippi. All his Trans-Mississippi troops were under the
command of the enthusiastic Earl Van Dorn, who hoped to end his
spring campaign in triumph at St. Louis.


The fighting began in January at the northeastern end of the
line, where the Union Government, chiefly for political reasons,
was particularly anxious to strengthen the Unionists that lived
all down the western Alleghanies and so were a thorn in the side
of the solid South beyond. On the tenth Colonel James A.
Garfield, a future President, attacked and defeated Marshall near
Prestonburg and occupied the line of Middle Creek. The
Confederates, half starved, half clad, ill armed, slightly
outnumbered, and with no advantage except their position, fought
well, but unavailingly. Only some three thousand men were engaged
on both sides put together. Yet the result was important because
it meant that the Confederates had lost their hold on the eastern
end of Kentucky, which was now in unrestricted touch with West
Virginia.

Within eight days a greater Union commander, General G.H. Thomas,
emerged as the victor of a much bigger battle at Mill Springs and
Logan's Cross Roads on the upper Cumberland, ninety miles due
east of Bowling Green. The victory was complete, and Thomas's
name was made. Thomas, indeed, was known already as a man whose
stentorian orders had to be obeyed; and a clever young
Confederate prisoner used this reputation as his excuse for
getting beaten: "We were doing pretty good fighting till old man
Thomas rose up in his stirrups, and we heard him holler out:
'Attention, Creation! By kingdoms, right wheel!' Then we knew you
had us."

There were only about four thousand men a side. But in itself,
and in conjunction with Garfield's little victory at Prestonburg,
the battle of Logan's Cross Roads was important as raising the
Federal morale, as breaking through Johnston's right, and as
opening the road into eastern Tennessee. Short supplies and
almost impassable roads, however, prevented a further advance.
One brigade was therefore detached against Cumberland Gap, while
the rest joined Buell's command, which was engaged in organizing,
drilling hard, and keeping an eye on Johnston.

In February the scene of action changed to Johnston's left
center, where Forts Donelson and Henry were blocking the Federal
advance up the Cumberland and the Tennessee.

On the fourth, Flag-Officer Foote, with seven gunboats, of which
four were ironclads, led the way up the Tennessee, against Fort
Henry. That day the furious current was dashing driftwood in
whirling masses against the flotilla, which had all it could do
to keep station, even with double anchors down and full steam up.
Next morning a new danger appeared in the shape of what looked
like a school of dead porpoises. These were Confederate
torpedoes, washed from their moorings. As it was now broad
daylight they were all successfully avoided; and the crews felt
as if they had won the first round.

The sixth of February dawned clear, with just sufficient breeze
to blow the smoke away. The flotilla steamed up the swollen
Tennessee between the silent, densely wooded banks. Not a sound
was heard ashore until, just after noon, Fort Henry came into
view and answered the flagship's signal shot with a crashing
discharge of all its big guns. Then the fire waxed hot and heavy
on both sides, the gunboats knocking geyser-spouts of earth about
the fort, and the fort knocking gigantic splinters out of the
gunboats. The Essex ironclad was doing very well when a big shot
crashed into her middle boiler, which immediately burst like a
shell, scalding the nearest men to death, burning others, and
sending the rest flying overboard or aft. With both pilots dead
and Commander W.D. Porter badly scalded, the Essex was drifting
out of action when the word went round that Fort Henry had
surrendered: and there, sure enough, were the Confederate colors
coming down. Instantly Porter rallied for the moment, called for
three cheers, and fell back exhausted at the third.

The Confederate General Tilghman surrendered to Foote with less
than a hundred men, all the rest, over twenty-five hundred,
having started towards Fort Donelson before the flag came down.
The Western Flotilla had won the day alone. But it was the fear
of Grant's approaching army that hurried the escaping garrison.
An hour after the surrender Grant rode in and took command. That
night victors and vanquished were dining together when a fussy
staff officer came in to tell Grant that he could not find the
Confederate reports. On this Captain Jesse Taylor, the chief
Confederate staff officer, replied that he had destroyed them.
The angry Federal then turned on him with the question, "Don't
you know you've laid yourself open to punishment?" and was
storming along, when Grant quietly broke in: "I should be very
much surprised and mortified if one of my subordinate officers
should allow information which he could destroy to fall into the
hands of the enemy."

The surrender of Fort Henry, coming so soon after Prestonburg and
Logan's Cross Roads, caused great rejoicing in the loyal North.
The victory, effective in itself, was completed by sending the
ironclad Carondelet several miles upstream to destroy the
Memphis-Ohio railway bridge, thus cutting the shortest line from
Bowling Green to the Mississippi. But the action, in which the
army took no part, was only a preliminary skirmish compared with
the joint attack of the fleet and army on Fort Donelson. Fort
Donelson was of great strategic importance. If it held fast, and
the Federals were defeated, then Johnston's line would probably
hold from Bowling Green to Columbus, and the rails, roads, and
rivers would remain Confederate in western Tennessee. If, on the
other hand, Fort Donelson fell, and more especially if its
garrison surrendered, then Johnston's line would have to be
withdrawn at once, lest the same fate should overtake the
outflanked remains of it. Both sides understood this perfectly
well; and all concerned looked anxiously to see how the new
Federal commander, General Grant, would face the crisis.


Ulysses Simpson Grant came of sturdy New England stock, being
eighth in descent from Matthew Grant, who landed in 1630 and was
Surveyor of Connecticut for over forty years. Grant's mother was
one of the Simpsons who had been Pennsylvanians for several
generations. His family was therefore as racy of the North as
Lee's was of the South. His great-grandfather and
great-granduncle, Noah and Solomon Grant, held British
commissions during the final French-and-Indian or Seven Years'
War (1756-63) when both were killed in the same campaign. His
grandfather Noah served all through the Revolutionary War.
Financial reverses and the death of his grandmother broke up the
family; and his father, Jesse Grant, was given the kindest of
homes by Judge Tod of Ohio. Jesse, being as independent as he was
grateful, turned his energies into the first business at hand,
which happened to be a tannery at Deerfield owned by the father
of that wild enthusiast John Brown. A great reader, an able
contributor to the Western press, and a most public-spirited
citizen, Jesse Grant was a good father to his famous son, who was
born on April 27, 1822, at Point Pleasant, Clermont County, Ohio.
Young Grant hated the tannery, but delighted in everything
connected with horses; so he looked after the teams. One day,
after swapping horses many miles from home, he found himself
driving a terrified bolter that he only just managed to stop on
the edge of a big embankment. His grown-up companion, who had no
stomach for any more, then changed into a safe freight wagon. But
Ulysses, tying his bandanna over the runaway's eyes, stuck to the
post of danger.

After passing through West Point without any special distinction,
except that he came out first in horsemanship, Grant was
disappointed at not receiving the cavalry commission which he
would have greatly preferred to the infantry one he was given
instead. Years later, when already a rising general, he vainly
yearned for a cavalry brigade. Otherwise he had curiously little
taste for military life; though at West Point he thought the two
finest men in the world were Captain C.F. Smith, the splendidly
smart Commandant, and, even more, that magnificently handsome
giant, Winfield Scott, who came down to inspect the cadets. Some
years after having served with credit all through the Mexican War
(when, like Lee, he learnt so much about so many future friends
and foes) he left the army, not to return till he and Sherman had
seen Blair and Lyon take Camp Jackson. After wisely declining to
reenter the service under the patronage of General John Pope, who
was full of self-importance about his acquaintance with the Union
leaders of Illinois, Grant wrote to the Adjutant-General at
Washington offering to command a regiment. Like Sherman, he felt
much more diffident about the rise from ex-captain of regulars to
colonel commanding a battalion than some mere civilians felt
about commanding brigades or directing the strategy of armies. He
has himself recorded his horror of sole responsibility as he
approached what might have been a little battlefield on which his
own battalion would have been pitted against a Southern one
commanded by a Colonel Harris. "My heart kept getting higher and
higher until it felt as though it was in my throat. I would have
given anything then to have been back in Illinois; but I had not
the moral courage to halt and consider what to do. When we
reached a point from which the valley below was in full view . .
. the troops were gone. My heart resumed its place. It occurred
to me at once that Harris had been as much afraid of me as I had
been of him: This was a view of the question I never forgot."

Grant's latent powers developed rapidly. Starting with a good
stock of military knowledge he soon added to it in every way he
could. He had the insight of genius. Above all, he had an
indomitable will both in carrying out practicable plans in spite
of every obstacle and in ruthlessly dismissing every one who
failed. Not tall, not handsome, in no way striking at first
sight, he looked the leader born only by reason of his square
jaw, keen eye, and determined expression. Lincoln's conclusive
answer to a deputation asking for Grant's removal simply was, "he
fights." And, when mounted on his splendid charger Cincinnati,
Grant even looked what he was--"a first-class fighting man."


Grant marched straight across the narrow neck of land between the
forts, which were only twelve miles apart. Foote of course had to
go round by the Ohio--fifteen times as far. His vanguard, the
dauntless Carondelet, now commanded by Henry Walke, arrived on
the twelfth and fired the first shots at the fort, which stood on
a bluff more than a hundred feet high and mounted fifteen heavy
guns in three tiers of fire. Grant's infantry was already in
position round the Confederate entrenchments; and when his
soldiers heard the naval guns they first gave three rousing
cheers and then began firing hard, lest the sailors should get
ahead of them again. Birge's sharpshooters, the snipers of those
days, were particularly keen. They never drilled as a battalion,
but simply assembled in bunches for orders, when Birge would ask:
"Canteens full? Biscuits for all day?" After which he would sing
out: "All right, boys, hunt your holes"; and off they would go to
stalk the enemy with their long-range rifles.

Early next morning Grant sent word to Walke that he was
establishing the rest of his batteries and that he was ready to
take advantage of any diversion which the Carondelet could make
in his favor. Walke then fired hard for two hours under cover of
a wooded point. The fort fired back equally hard; but with little
effect except for one big solid shot which stove in a casemate,
knocked down a dozen men, burst the steam heater, and bounded
about the engine room "like a wild beast pursuing its prey."
Forty minutes later the Carondelet was again in action, firing
hard till dark. Late that night Foote arrived with the rest of
the flotilla.

The fourteenth was another naval day. Foote's flotilla advanced
gallantly, the four ironclads leading in line abreast, the two
wooden gunboats half a mile astern. The ironclads closed in to
less than a quarter-mile and hung on like bulldogs till the
Confederates in the lowest battery were driven from their guns.
But the plunging fire from the big guns on the bluff crashed down
with ever increasing effect. Davits were smashed like matches,
boats knocked into kindling wood, armor dented, started, ripped,
stripped, and sent splashing overboard as if by strokes of
lightning. Before the decks could be resanded there was so much
blood on them that the gun crews could hardly work for slipping.
Presently the Pittsburgh swung round, ran foul of the Carondelet,
and dropped downstream. The pilot of the St. Louis was killed,
and Foote, who stood beside him, wounded. The wheel-ropes of the
St. Louis, like those of the Louisville, were shot away. The
whole flotilla then retired, still firing hard; and the
Confederates wired a victory to Richmond.

Both sides now redoubled their efforts; for Donelson was a great
prize and the forces engaged were second only to those at Bull
Run. Afloat and ashore, all ranks and ratings on both sides
together, there were fifty thousand men present at the investment
from first to last. The Confederates began with about twenty
thousand, Grant with fifteen thousand. But Grant had twenty-seven
thousand fit for duty at the end, in spite of all his losses. He
was fortunate in his chief staff officer, the devoted and capable
John A. Rawlins, afterwards a general and Secretary of War. Two
of his divisional commanders, Lew Wallace and, still more, C.F.
Smith, the old Commandant of Cadets, were also first-rate. But
the third, McClernand, here began to follow those distorting
ideas which led to his dismissal later on. The three chief
Confederates ranked in reverse order of efficiency: Floyd first
and worst, cantankerous Pillow next, and Buckner best though
last.

The Federal prospect was anything but bright on the evening of
the fourteenth. Foote had just been repulsed; while McClernand
had fought a silly little battle on his own account the day
before, to the delight of the Confederates and the grievous
annoyance of Grant. The fifteenth dawned on a scene of midwinter
discomfort in the Federal lines, where most of the rawest men had
neither great-coats nor blankets, having thrown them away during
the short march from Fort Henry, regardless of the fact that they
would have to bivouac at Donelson. Thus it was in no happy frame
of mind that Grant slithered across the frozen mud to see what
Foote proposed; and, when Foote explained that the gunboats would
take ten days for indispensable repairs, Grant resigned himself
to the very unwelcome idea of going through the long-drawn
horrors of a regular winter siege.

But, to his intense surprise, the enemy saved him the trouble. At
first, when they had a slight preponderance of numbers, they
stood fast and let Grant invest them. Now that he had the
preponderance they tried to cut their way out by the southern
road, upstream, where McClernand's division stood guard. As Grant
came ashore from his interview with Foote an aide met him with
the news that McClernand had been badly beaten and that the enemy
was breaking out. Grant set spurs to his horse and galloped the
four muddy miles to his left, where that admirable soldier, C.F.
Smith, was as cool and wary as ever, harassing the enemy's new
rear by threatening an assault, but keeping his division safe for
whatever future use Grant wanted. Wallace had also done the right
thing, pressing the enemy on his own front and sending a brigade
to relieve the pressure on McClernand. These two generals were in
conversation during a lull in the battle when Grant rode up,
calmly returned their salutes, attentively listened to their
reports, and then, instead of trying the Halleckian expedient of
digging in farther back before the enemy could make a second
rush, quietly said: "Gentlemen, the position on the right must be
retaken."

Grant knew that Floyd was no soldier and that Pillow was a
stumbling-block. He read the enemy's mind like an open book and
made up his own at once by the flash of intuition which told him
that their men were mostly as much demoralized by finding their
first attempt at escape more than half a failure as even
McClernand's were by being driven back. He decided to use Smith's
fresh division for an assault in rear, while McClernand's,
stiffened by Wallace's, should re-form and hold fast. Before
leaving the excited officers and men, who were talking in groups
without thinking of their exhausted ammunition, he called out
cheerily "Fill your cartridge boxes quick, and get into line. The
enemy is trying to escape and he must not be permitted to do so."
McClernand's division, excellent men, but not yet disciplined
soldiers, responded at once to the touch of a master hand; and as
Grant rode off to Smith's he had the satisfaction of seeing the
defenseless groups melt, change, and harden into well-armed
lines.

Smith, ready at all points, had only to slip his own division
from the leash. Buckner, who was to have covered the Confederate
escape, was also ready with the guns of Fort Donelson and the
rifles of defenses that "looked too thick for a rabbit to get
through." Smith, knowing his unseasoned men would need the
example of a commander they could actually see, rode out in front
of his center as if at a formal review. "I was nearly scared to
death," said one of his followers, "but I saw the old man's white
moustache over his shoulder, and so I went on." As the line
neared the Confederate abatis a sudden gust of fire seemed to
strike it numb. In an instant Smith had his cap on the point of
his sword. Then, rising in his stirrups to his full gigantic
height, he shouted in stentorian tones: "No flinching now, my
lads! Here--this way in! Come on!" In, through, and out the other
side they went, Smith riding ahead, holding his sword and cap
aloft, and seeming to bear a charmed life amid that hail of
bullets. Up the slope he rode, the Confederates retiring before
him, till, unscathed, he reached the deadly crest, where the
Union colors waved defiance and the Union troops stood fast.

Floyd, being under special indictment at Washington for
misconduct as Secretary of War, was so anxious to escape that he
turned over the command to Pillow, who declined it in favor of
Buckner. That night Floyd and Pillow made off with all the river
steamers; Forrest's cavalry floundered past McClernand's exposed
flank, which rested on a shallow backwater; and Buckner was left
with over twelve thousand men to make what terms he could. Next
morning, the sixteenth, he wrote to Grant proposing the
appointment of commissioners to agree upon terms of surrender.
But Grant had made up his mind that compromise was out of place
in civil war and that absolute defeat or victory were the only
alternatives. So he instantly wrote back the famous letter which
quickly earned him the appropriate nickname--suggested by his own
initials--of Unconditional Surrender Grant.


                 Hd Qrs., Army in the Field
                 Camp near Donelson Feb'y 18th 1882

Gen. S.B. Buckner,
  Confed. Army.

Sir: Yours of this date proposing armistice, and appointment of
Commissioners to settle terms of capitulation is just received.
No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be
accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works

    I am, Sir, very respectfully,
                Your obt. sert.,
                   U.S. GRANT
                       Brig. Gen.

Grant and Buckner were old army friends; so their personal talk
was very pleasant at the little tavern where Buckner and his
staff had just breakfasted off corn bread and coffee, which was
all the Confederate stores afforded.

Donelson at once became, like Grant, a name to conjure with. The
fact that the Union had at last won a fight in which the numbers
neared, and the losses much exceeded, those at Bull Run itself,
the further fact that this victory made a fatal breach in the
defiant Southern line beyond the Alleghanies, and the delight of
discovering another, and this time a genuine, hero in
"Unconditional Surrender Grant," all combined to set the loyal
North aflame with satisfaction, pride, and joyful expectation.
Great things were expected in Virginia, where the invasion had
not yet begun. Great things were expected in the Gulf, where
Farragut had not yet tried the Mississippi. And great things were
expected to result from Donelson itself, whence the Union forces
were to press on south till they met other Union forces pressing
north. The river campaign was then to end in a blaze of glory.

Donelson did have important results. Johnston, who had already
abandoned Bowling Green for Nashville, had now to abandon
Nashville, with most of its great and very sorely needed stores,
as well as the rest of Tennessee, and take up a new position
along the rails that ran from Memphis to Chattanooga, whence they
forked northeast to Richmond and Washington and southeast to
Charleston and Savannah. Columbus was also abandoned, and the
only points left to the Confederates anywhere near the old line
were Island Number Ten in the Mississippi and the Boston
Mountains in Arkansas.

But the triumphant Union advance from the north did not take
place in '62. Grant was for pushing south as fast as possible to
attack the Confederates before they had time to defend their
great railway junction at Corinth. But Halleck was too cautious;
and misunderstandings, coupled with division of command, did the
rest. Halleck was the senior general in the West. But the three,
and afterwards four, departments into which the West was divided
were never properly brought under a single command. Then
telegrams went wrong at the wire-end advancing southwardly from
Cairo, the end Grant had to use. A wire from McClellan on the
sixteenth of February was not delivered till the third of March.
Next day Grant was thunderstruck at receiving this from Halleck:
"Place C.F. Smith in command of expedition and remain yourself at
Fort Henry. Why do you not obey my orders to report strength and
positions of your command?" And so it went on till McClellan
authorized Halleck to place Grant under arrest for
insubordination. Then the operator at the wire-end suddenly
deserted, taking a sheaf of dispatches with him. He was a clever
Confederate.

Explanations followed; and on the seventeenth of March Grant
rejoined his army, which was assembling round Pittsburg Landing
on the Tennessee, near the future battlefield of Shiloh, and some
twenty miles northeast of Corinth.

Meanwhile Van Dorn and Sterling Price, thinking it was now or
never for Missouri, decided to attack Curtis. They had fifteen
against ten thousand men, and hoped to crush Curtis utterly by
catching him between two fires. But on the seventh of March the
Federal left beat off the flanking attack of McCulloch and
McIntosh, both of whom were killed. The right, furiously assailed
by the Confederate Missourians under Van Dorn and Price, fared
badly and was pressed back. Yet on the eighth Curtis emerged
victorious on the hard-fought field that bears the double name of
Elkhorn Tavern and Pea Ridge. This battle in the northwest corner
of Arkansas settled the fate of Missouri.

A month later the final attack was made on Island Number Ten.
Foote's flotilla had been at work there as early as the middle of
March, when the strong Confederate batteries on the island and
east shore bluffs were bombarded by ironclads and mortarboats.
Then the Union General John Pope took post at New Madrid, eight
miles below the island, on the west shore, which the Confederates
had to evacuate when he cut their line of communications farther
south. They now held only the island and the east shore opposite,
with no line of retreat except the Mississippi, because the land
line on the east shore was blocked by swamps and flanked by the
Union armies in western Tennessee.

On the night of the fourth of April the Carondelet started to cut
this last line south. She was swathed in hawsers and chain
cables. Her decks were packed tight with every sort of gear that
would break the force of plunging shot; and a big barge, laden
with coal and rammed hay, was lashed to her port side to protect
her magazine. Twenty-three picked Illinoisian sharpshooters went
aboard; while pistols, muskets, cutlasses, boarding-pikes, and
hand grenades were placed ready for instant use. The escape-pipe
was led aft into the wheel-house, so as to deaden the noise; and
hose was attached to the boilers ready to scald any Confederates
that tried to board. Then, through the heart of a terrific
thunderstorm, and amid a furious cannonade, the Carondelet ran
the desperate gauntlet at full speed and arrived at New Madrid by
midnight.

The Confederates were now cut off both above and below; for the
position of Island Number Ten was at the lower point of a
V-shaped bend in the Mississippi, with Federal forces at the two
upper points. But the Federal troops could not close on the
Confederates without crossing over to the east bank; and their
transports could not run the gauntlet like the ironclads. So the
Engineer Regiment of the West cut out a water road connecting the
two upper points of the V. This admirable feat of emergency field
engineering was effected by sawing through three miles of heavy
timber to the nearest bayou, whence a channel was cleared down to
New Madrid. Then the transports went through in perfect safety
and took Pope's advanced guard aboard. The ironclad Pittsburg had
come down, through another thunderstorm, this same morning of the
seventh; and when the island garrison saw their position
completely cut off they surrendered to Foote. Next day Pope's men
cut off the greater part of the Confederates on the mainland.
Thus fell the last point near Johnston's original line along the
southern borders of Missouri and Kentucky. Just before it fell
Johnston made a desperate counterattack from his new line at
Corinth, in northwest Mississippi, against Grant's encroaching
force at Shiloh, fifteen miles northeast, on the Tennessee River.

Writing "A. S. Johnston, 3d April, 62, en avant" on his pocket
map of Tennessee, the Confederate leader, anguished by the bitter
criticism with which his unavoidable retreat had been assailed,
cast the die for an immediate attack on Grant before slow Halleck
reinforced or ready Buell joined him. Johnston's lieutenants,
Beauregard and Bragg, had obtained ten days for reorganization;
and their commands were as ready as raw forces could be made in
an extreme emergency. They hoped to be joined by Van Dorn, whose
beaten army was working east from Pea Ridge. But on the second
they heard that Buell was approaching Grant from Nashville; and
on the third Johnston's advanced guard began to move off. Van
Dorn arrived too late.

The march, which it was hoped to complete on the fourth, was not
completed till the fifth. The roads were ankle-deep in clinging
mud, the country densely wooded and full of bogs and marshes. The
forty thousand men were not yet seasoned; and, though full of
enthusiasm, they neither knew nor had time to learn march
discipline. Moreover, Johnston allowed his own proper plan of
attacking in columns of corps to be changed by Beauregard into a
three-line attack, each line being formed by one complete corps.
This meant certain and perhaps disastrous confusion. For in an
attack by columns of corps the firing line would always be
reinforced by successive lines of the same corps; while attacking
by lines of corps meant that the leading corps would first be
mixed up with the second, and then both with the third.

In the meantime Grant was busier with his own pressing problems
of organization for an advance than with any idea of resisting
attack. He lacked the prevision of Winfield Scott and Lee, both
of whom expected from the first that the war would last for
years. His own expectation up to this had been that the South
would collapse after the first smashing blow, and that its
western armies were now about to be dealt such a blow. He was not
unmindful of all precautions; for he knew the Confederates were
stirring on his front. Yet he went downstream to Savannah without
making sure that his army was really safe at Shiloh.

Pittsburg Landing was at the base of the Shiloh position. But the
point at which, by the original orders, Buell was to join was
Savannah, nine miles north along the Tennessee. So Grant had to
keep in touch with both. He had not ignored the advantage of
entrenching. But the best line for entrenching was too far from
good water; and he thought he chose the lesser of two evils when
he devoted the time that might have been used for digging to
drilling instead. His army was raw as an army; many of the men
were still rawer recruits; and, as usual, the recruiting
authorities had sent him several brand-new battalions, which knew
nothing at all, instead of sending the same men as reinforcements
to older battalions that could "learn 'em how." Grant's total
effectives at first were only thirty-three thousand. This made
the odds five to four in favor of Johnston's attack. But the
rejoining of Lew Wallace's division, the great reinforcement by
Buell's troops, and the two ironclad gunboats on the river,
raised Grant's final effective grand total to sixty thousand. The
combined grand totals therefore reached a hundred
thousand--double the totals at Donelson and far exceeding those
at Bull Run.

After a horrible week of cold and wet the sun set clear and calm
on Saturday, the eve of battle. The woods were alive with forty
thousand Confederates all ready for their supreme attack on the
thirty-three thousand Federals on their immediate four-mile
front. Grant's front ran, facing south, between Owl and Lick
Creeks, two tributaries that joined the Tennessee on either side
of Pittsburg Landing. Buell's advance division, under Nelson, was
just across the Tennessee. But Grant was in no hurry to get it
over. His reassuring wire that night to Halleck said: "The main
force of the enemy is at Corinth. I have scarcely the faintest
idea of an attack (general one) being made upon us." But the
skirmishing farther south on Friday had warned Grant, as well as
Sherman and the vigilant Prentiss, that Johnston might be trying
a reconnaissance in force--the very thing that Beauregard wished
the Confederates to do.

Long before the beautiful dawn of Sunday, the fateful sixth of
April, Prentiss had thrown out from the center a battalion which
presently met and drove in the vanguard of the first Confederate
line of assault. The Confederate center soon came up, overwhelmed
this advanced battalion, and burst like a storm on the whole of
Prentiss's division. Then, above the swelling roar of
multitudinous musketry, rose the thunder of the first big guns.
"Note the hour, please, gentlemen," said Johnston; and a member
of his staff wrote down: "5:14 A.M."

Johnston's admirable plan was, first, to drive Grant's left clear
of Lick Creek, then drive it clear of Pittsburg Landing, where
the two Federal ironclads were guarding the ferry. This, combined
with a determined general assault on the rest of Grant's line,
would huddle the retreating Federals into the cramped angle
between Owl Creek and the Tennessee and force them to surrender.
But there were three great obstacles to this: Sherman on the
right, the "Hornet's Nest" in the center, and the gunboats at the
Landing. Worse still for the Confederates, Buell was now too
close at hand. Three days earlier Johnston had wired from Corinth
to the Government at Richmond: "Hope engagement before Buell can
form junction." But the troubles of the march had lost him one
whole priceless day.

The Confederate attack was splendidly gallant and at first pushed
home regardless of loss. The ground was confusing to both sides:
a bewilderment of ups and downs, of underbrush, woods, fields,
and clumps of trees, criss-cross paths, small creeks, ravines,
and swamps, without a single commanding height or any outstanding
features except the two big creeks, the river, and the Pittsburg
Landing.

At the first signs of a big battle Grant hurried to the field,
first sending a note to Buell, whom he was to have met at
Savannah, then touching at Crump's Landing on the way, to see Lew
Wallace and make sure whether this, and not the Pittsburg
Landing, was the point of attack. Arrived on the field of Shiloh,
calm and determined as ever, he was reassured by finding how well
Sherman was holding his raw troops in hand at the extremely
important point of Shiloh itself, next to Owl Creek.

But elsewhere the prospect was not encouraging, though the men
got under arms very fast and most of them fought very well. The
eager gray lines kept pressing on like the rising tide of an
angry sea, dashing in fury against all obstructing fronts and
swirling round the disconnecting flanks. The blue lines, for the
most part, resisted till the swift gray tide threatened to cut
them off. Half of Prentiss's remaining men were in fact cut off
that afternoon and forced to surrender with their chief, whose
conduct, like their own, was worthy of all praise. Back and still
back the blue lines went before the encroaching gray, each losing
heavily by sheer hard fighting at the front and streams of
stragglers running towards the rear.

Sherman, like others, gave ground, but still held his men
together, except for the stragglers he could not control. In the
center C.F. Smith's division, with Hurlbut's in support, and all
that was left of Prentiss's, defended themselves so desperately
that their enemies called their position the Hornet's Nest. Here
the fight swayed back and forth for hours, with ghastly losses on
both sides. C.F. Smith himself was on his deathbed at Savannah.
But he heard the roar of battle. His excellent successor, W.H.L.
Wallace, was killed; and battalions, brigades, and even
divisions, soon became inextricably mixed together. There was now
the same confusion on the Confederate side, where Johnston was
wounded by a bullet from the Hornet's Nest. It was not in itself
a mortal wound. But, knowing how vital this point was, he went on
encouraging his men till, falling from the saddle, he was carried
back to die.

Grant still felt confident; though he had seen the worst in the
rear as well as the best at the front. Two of his brand-new
battalions, the very men who afterwards fought like heroes, when
they had learned the soldier's work, now ran like hares. "During
the day," says Grant, "I rode back as far as the river and met
General Buell, who had just arrived. There probably were as many
as four or five thousand stragglers lying under cover of the
river bluff, panic-stricken. As we left the boat Buell's
attention was attracted by these men. I saw him berating them and
trying to shame them into joining their regiments. He even
threatened them with shells from the gunboats nearby. But all to
no effect. Most of these men afterward proved themselves as
gallant as any of those who saved the battle from which they had
deserted."

By half-past five, after twelve hours' fighting, Grant at last
succeeded in forming a new and shorter line, a mile behind that
morning's front, but without any dangerous gaps. There were three
reorganized divisions--Sherman's, McClernand's, and Hurlbut's,
one fresh division under Nelson, and a strong land battery of
over twenty field guns helping the two ironclad gunboats in the
defense of Pittsburg Landing. The Confederate effectives, reduced
by heavy losses and by as many stragglers as the Federals, were
now faced by five thousand fresh men on guard at the Landing.
Beauregard, who had succeeded Johnston, then stopped the battle
for the day, with the idea of retiring next morning to Corinth.
But, before his orders reached it, his battleworn right made a
desperate, fruitless, and costly attack on the immensely
strengthened Landing.

That night the rain came down in torrents; and the Confederates
sought shelter in the tents the Federals had abandoned. They
found little rest there, being harassed all through the bleak
dark by the big shells that the gunboats threw among them.

At dawn Grant, now reinforced by twenty-five thousand fresh men
under Buell and Lew Wallace, took the offensive. Beauregard,
hopelessly outnumbered and without a single fresh man, retired on
Corinth, magnificently covered by Bragg's rearguard, which held
the Federals back for hours near the crucial point of Shiloh
Church.

Shiloh was the fiercest battle ever fought in the River War. The
losses were over ten thousand a side in killed and wounded; while
a thousand Confederates and three thousand Federals were
captured. It was a Confederate failure; but hardly the kind of
victory the Federals needed just then, before the consummate
triumph of Farragut at New Orleans. It brought together Federal
forces that the Confederates could not possibly withstand, even
on their new line east from Memphis. But it did not raise the
Federal, or depress the Confederate, morale.


Four days after the battle Halleck arrived at Pittsburg Landing
and took command of the combined armies. He was soon reinforced
by Pope; whereupon he divided the whole into right and left
wings, center, and reserve, each under its own commander. Grant
was made second in command of the whole. But, as Halleck dealt
directly with his other immediate subordinates, Grant simply
became the fifth wheel of the Halleckian slowcoach, which, after
twenty days of preparation, began, with most elaborate
precautions, its crawl toward Corinth.

Grant's position became so nearly unbearable that he applied more
than once for transfer to some other place. But this was refused.
So he strove to do his impossible duty till the middle of July,
when his punishment for Shiloh was completed by his promotion to
command a depleted remnant of Halleck's Grand Army. It is not by
any means the least of Grant's claims to real greatness that, as
a leader, he was able to survive his most searching trials: the
surprise at Shiloh, the misunderstandings and arrest that
followed Shiloh, the slur of being made a fifth-wheel
second-in-command, the demoralizing strain of that "most anxious
period of the war" when his depleted forces were thrown back on
the defensive, and the eight discouraging months of Sisyphean
offensive which preceded his triumph at Vicksburg. No one who has
not been in the heart of things with fighting fleets or armies
can realize what it means to all ranks when there is, or even is
supposed to be, "something wrong" with the living pivot on which
the whole force turns. And only those who have been behind the
scenes of war's all-testing drama can understand what it means
for even an imagined "failure" to "come back."

Corinth was of immense importance to both sides, as it commanded
the rails not only east and west, from the Tennessee to Memphis,
but north and south, from the Ohio to New Orleans and Mobile.
Though New Orleans was taken by Farragut on the twenty-fifth of
April, the rails between Vicksburg and Port Hudson remained in
Confederate hands till next year; while Mobile remained so till
the year after that.

Beauregard collected all the troops he could at Corinth. Yet,
even with Van Dorn's and other reinforcements, he had only sixty
thousand effectives against Halleck's double numbers. Moreover,
the loss of three States and many battles had so shaken the
Confederate forces that they stood no chance whatever against
Halleck's double numbers in the open. All the same, Halleck
burrowed slowly forward like a mole, entrenching every night as
if the respective strengths and victories had been reversed.

After advancing nearly a mile a day Halleck closed in on Corinth.
He was so deeply entrenched that no one could tell from
appearances which side was besieging the other. Towards the end
of May many Federal railwaymen reported that empty trains could
be heard running into Corinth and full trains running out. But,
as the Confederates greeted each arriving "empty" with tremendous
Cheers, Halleck felt sure that Beauregard was being greatly
reinforced. The Confederate bluff worked to admiration. On the
twenty-sixth Beauregard issued orders for complete evacuation on
the twenty-ninth. On the thirtieth Halleck drew up his whole
grand army ready for a desperate defense against an enemy that
had already gone a full day's march away.

In the meantime the Federal flotilla had been fighting its way
down the Mississippi, under (the invalided) Foote's very capable
successor, Flag-Officer Charles Henry Davis. The Confederates had
very few naval men on the river, but many of their Mississippi
skippers were game to the death. They rammed Federal vessels on
the tenth of May at Fort Pillow, eighty miles above Memphis.
Eight of their fighting craft were strongly built and heavily
armored, though very deficient in speed. The Federal flotilla was
very well manned by first-class naval ratings, and was reinforced
early in June by seven fast new rams, commanded by their
designer, Colonel Charles Ellet, a famous civil engineer.

At sunrise on the lovely sixth of June the Federal flotilla,
having overcome the Confederate posts farther north and being
joined by Ellet's rams, lay near Memphis. The Confederates came
upstream to the attack, expecting to ram the gunboats in the
stern as they had at Fort Pillow. But Ellet suddenly darted down
on the eight Confederate ironclads, caught one of them on the
broadside, sank her, and disabled two others. The action then
became general. The overmatched Confederates kept up a losing
battle for more than an hour, in full view of many thousands of
ardent Southerners ashore. The scene, at its height, was
appalling. The smoke, belching black from the funnels and white
from the guns, made a suffocating pall overhead; while the dark,
squat, hideous ironclad hulls seemed to have risen from a
submarine inferno to stab each other with livid tongues of
flame--so deadly close the two flotillas fought. When the awful
hour was over the Confederates were not only defeated but
destroyed; and a wail went up from the thousands of their
anguished friends, as if the very shores were mourning.


For the next month Grant held the command at Memphis. Then, on
the eleventh of July, Halleck was recalled to Washington as
General-in-Chief of the whole army; while Pope was transferred to
Virginia. The Federal invasion of Virginia under that "Young
Napoleon," McClellan, had not been a success against Lee and
Stonewall Jackson. Nor did it improve with Pope at the front and
Halleck in the rear, as we shall presently see; though Halleck
had declared that Pope's operations at Island Number Ten were
destined to immortal fame, and Pope himself admitted his own
greatness in sundry proclamations to the world.

The campaign now entered its second phase. The Virginian wing (of
the whole front reaching from the Mississippi to the sea) was
checked this summer; and was to remain more or less checked for
many a long day. The river wing, under the general direction of
Halleck, had also reached its limit for '62 about the same time,
after having conquered Kentucky and western Tennessee as well as
the Mississippi down to Memphis.

This river wing was now depleted of some excellent troops and
again divided into quite separate commands. Buell commanded the
Army of the Ohio. Grant commanded his own Army of the Tennessee
and Rosecrans's Army of the Mississippi. Buell's scene of action
lay between the tributary streams--Ohio, Cumberland, and
Tennessee--with Chattanooga as his ultimate objective. Grant's
scene of action lay along the southward rails and Mississippi,
with Vicksburg as his ultimate objective.

The Confederates were of course set on recovering complete
control of the line of Southern rails that made direct
connections between the Mississippi Valley and the sea: crossing
the western tributaries of the St. Francis and White Rivers; then
running east from Memphis, through Grand Junction, Corinth, and
Iuka, to Chattanooga; thence forking off northeast, through
Knoxville, to Washington, Richmond, and Norfolk; and southeast to
Charleston and Savannah. Confederate attention had originally
been fixed on Corinth and Chattanooga. But General O. M.
Mitchel's abortive raid, just after Shiloh, had also drawn it to
the part between. The Federals therefore found their enemy alert
at every point.

Braxton Bragg, Beauregard's successor and Buell's opponent,
basing himself on Chattanooga, tried to drive his line of
Confederate reconquest through the heart of Tennessee and thence
through mid-Kentucky, with the Ohio as his ultimate objective.
His colleagues near the Mississippi, Van Dorn and Sterling Price,
meanwhile tried to effect the reconquest of the Memphis-Corinth
rails that Grant and Rosecrans were holding.

All main offensives, on both sides, ultimately failed in this
latter half of the river campaign of '62. So nothing but the bare
fact that they were attempted needs any notice here.

In August, about the time that Lee and Jackson were maneuvering
in Virginia to bring on the Second Bull Run, Price and Bragg
began their respective advances against Grant and Buell. Buell
was at Murfreesboro, defending Nashville. Bragg, screened by the
hills of eastern Tennessee, made for the Ohio at Louisville and
Cincinnati. Pivoting on his left he wheeled his whole army round
and raced for Louisville. Buell enjoyed the advantage of rails
over roads and of interior lines as well. But Bragg had stolen
several marches on him at the start and he only won by a head.

The Union Government, now thoroughly alarmed, sent Thomas to
supersede Buell. But Thomas declined to take over the command,
and on the eighth of October Buell fought Bragg at Perryville.
There was no tactical defeat or victory; but Bragg retired on
Chattanooga. The Government now urged Buell to enter east
Tennessee. He protested that lack of transport and supplies made
such a move impossible. William S. Rosecrans then replaced him.
Buell was never employed again. He certainly failed fully to
appreciate the legitimate bearing of statesmanship on strategy;
but, for all that, he was an excellent organizer and a good
commander.

In the meantime Grant had been experiencing his "most anxious
period of the war." During this anxious period, which lasted from
July to October, Rosecrans defeated Price at Iuka. This happened
on the nineteenth of September. Van Dorn then joined Price and
returned to the attack but was defeated by Rosecrans at Corinth
on the fourth of October. The Confederates, who had come near
victory on the third, retired in safety, because Grant still
lacked the means of resuming the offensive.

As soon as he had the means Grant marched his army south for
Vicksburg. There were three converging forces: Grant's from Grand
Junction, Sherman's from Memphis, and a smaller one from Helena
in Arkansas. But the Confederate General, J.C. Pemberton, who had
replaced Van Dorn, escaped the trap they tried to set for him. He
was strongly entrenched on the south side of the Tallahatchie,
north of Oxford, on the Mississippi Central rails. While Grant
and Sherman converged on his front, the force from Helena rounded
his rear and cut the rails. But the damage was quickly repaired;
and Pemberton retired south toward Vicksburg before Grant and
Sherman could close and make him fight.

Then Grant tried again. This time Sherman advanced on board of
Mississippi steamers, with the idea of meeting the Union
expedition coming up from New Orleans. But Van Dorn cut Grant's
long line of land communications at Holly Springs, forcing Grant
back for supplies and leaving Sherman, who had made his way up
the Yazoo, completely isolated. Grant fared well enough, so far
as food was concerned; for he found such abundant supplies that
he at once perceived the possibility of living on the country
without troubling about a northern base. He spent Christmas and
New Year at Holly Springs, and then moved back to Memphis.

In the meantime Sherman's separated force had come to grief. On
the twenty-ninth of December its attempt to carry the Chickasaw
Bluffs, just north of Vicksburg, was completely frustrated by
Pemberton; for Sherman could not deploy into line on the few
causeways that stood above the flooded ground.

On the eleventh of January this first campaign along the
Mississippi was ended by the capture of Arkansas Post. McClernand
was the senior there. But Sherman did the work ashore as D. D.
Porter did afloat.

Meanwhile Bragg had brought the campaign to a close among the
eastern tributaries by a daring, though abortive, march on
Nashville. Rosecrans, now commanding the army of the Cumberland,
stopped and defeated him at Stone's River on New Year's Eve.


The "War in the West," that is, in those parts of the Southwest
which lay beyond the navigable tributaries of the Mississippi
system, was even more futile at the time and absolutely null in
the end. Its scene of action, which practically consisted of
inland Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, was not in itself
important enough to be a great determining factor in the actual
clash of arms. But Texas supplied many good men to the Southern
ranks; and the Southern commissariat missed the Texan cattle
after the fall of Vicksburg in '63. New Mexico might also have
been a good deal more important than it actually was if it could
have been made the base of a real, instead of an abortive,
invasion of California, the El Dorado of Confederate finance.

We have already seen what happened on February 15, 1861, when
General Twiggs handed over to the State authorities all the army
posts in Texas. On the first of the following August Captain John
R. Baylor, who had been forming a little Confederate army under
pretext of a big buffalo hunt, proclaimed himself Governor of New
Mexico (south of 34 degrees) and established his capital at
Mesilla. In the meantime the Confederate Government itself had
appointed General H.H. Sibley to the command of a brigade for the
conquest of all New Mexico. Not ten thousand men were engaged in
this campaign, Federals and Confederates, whites and Indians, all
together; but a decisive Confederate success might have been
pregnant of future victories farther west. Some Indians fought on
one side, some on the other; and some of the wilder tribes,
delighted to see the encroaching whites at loggerheads, gave
trouble to both.

On February 21, 1862, Sibley defeated Colonel E.R.S. Canby at
Valverde near Fort Craig. But his further advance was hindered by
the barrenness of the country, by the complete destruction of all
Union stores likely to fall into his hands, and by the fact that
he was between two Federal forts when the battle ended. On the
twentyeighth of March there was a desperate fight in Apache
Canon. Both sides claimed the victory. But the Confederates lost
more men as well as the whole of their supply and ammunition
train. After this Sibley began a retreat which ended in May at
San Antonio. His route was marked by bleaching skeletons for many
a long day; and from this time forward the conquest of California
became nothing but a dream.


The "War in the West" was a mere twig on the Trans-Mississippi
branch; and when the fall of Vicksburg severed the branch from
the tree the twig simply withered away.


The sword that ultimately severed branch and twig was firmly held
by Union hands before the year was out; and this notwithstanding
all the Union failures in the last six months. Grant and Porter
from above, Banks and Farragut from below, had already massed
forces strong enough to make the Mississippi a Union river from
source to sea, in spite of all Confederates from Vicksburg to
Port Hudson.



CHAPTER V. LINCOLN: WAR STATESMAN

Lincoln was one of those men who require some mighty crisis to
call their genius forth. Though more successful than Grant in
ordinary life, he was never regarded as a national figure in law
or poli tics till he had passed his fiftieth year. He had no
advantages of birth; though he came of a sturdy old English stock
that emigrated from Norfolk to Massachusetts in the seventeenth
century, and though his mother seems to have been, both in
tellectually and otherwise, above the general run of the
Kentuckians among whom he was born in 1809. His educational
advantages were still less. Yet he soon found his true amities in
books, as afterwards in life, not among the clever, smart, or
sentimental, but among the simple and the great. He read and
reread Shakespeare and the Bible, not because they were the
merely proper things to read but because his spirit was akin to
theirs. This meant that he never was a bookworm. Words were
things of life to him; and, for that reason, his own words live.

He had no artificial graces to soften the uncouth appearance of
his huge, gaunt six-foot-four of powerful bone and muscle. But he
had the native dignity of straightforward manhood; and, though a
champion competitor in feats of strength, his opinion was always
sought as that of an impartial umpire, even in cases affecting
himself. He "played the game" in his frontier home as he
afterwards played the greater game of life-or-death at
Washington. His rough-hewn, strong-featured face, shaped by his
kindly humor to the finer ends of power, was lit by a steady gaze
that saw yet looked beyond, till the immediate parts of the
subject appeared in due relation to the whole. Like many another
man who sees farther and feels more deeply than the rest, and who
has the saving grace of humor, he knew what yearning melancholy
was; yet kept the springs of action tense and strong. Firm as a
rock on essentials he was extremely tolerant about all minor
differences. His policy was to live and let live whenever that
was possible. The preservation of the Union was his
master-passion, and he was ready for any honorable compromise
that left the Union safe. Himself a teetotaller, he silenced a
temperance delegation whose members were accusing Grant of
drunkenness by saying he should like to send some of his other
generals a keg of the same whisky if it would only make them
fight.

When he took arms against the sea of troubles that awaited him at
Washington he had dire need of all his calm tolerance and
strength. To add to his burdens, he was beset by far more than
the usual horde of officeseekers. These men were doubly ravenous
because their party was so new to power. They were peculiarly
hard to place with due regard for all the elements within the
coalition. And each appointment needed most discriminating care,
lest a traitor to the Union might creep in. While the guns were
thundering against Fort Sumter, and afterwards, when the Union
Government was marooned in Washington itself, the vestibules,
stairways, ante-rooms, and offices were clogged with eager
applicants for every kind of civil service job. And then, when
this vast human flood subsided, the "interviewing" stream began
to flow and went on swelling to the bitter end. These war-time
interviewers claimed most of Lincoln's personal attention just
when he had the least to spare. But he would deny no one the
chance of receiving presidential aid or comfort and he gladly
suffered many fools for the chance of relieving the sad or
serious others. Add to all this the ceaseless work of helping to
form public opinion, of counteracting enemy propaganda, of
shaping Union policy under ever-changing circumstances, of
carrying it out by coalition means, and of exercising civil
control over such vast armed forces as no American had hitherto
imagined: add these extra burdens, and we can begin to realize
what Lincoln had to do as the chief war statesman of the North.

A sound public opinion is the best embattlement of any home
front. So Lincoln set out to help in forming it. War on a
national scale was something entirely new to both sides, and
especially unwelcome to many people in the North, though the
really loyal North was up at Lincoln's call. Then came Bull Run;
and Lincoln's renewed determination, so well expressed in
Whitman's words: "The President, recovering himself, begins that
very night--sternly, rapidly sets about the task of reorganizing
his forces, and placing himself in positions for future and surer
work. If there was nothing else of Abraham Lincoln for history to
stamp him with, it is enough to send him with his wreath to the
memory of all future time, that he endured that hour, that day,
bitterer than gall--indeed a crucifixion day--that it did not
conquer him that he unflinchingly stemmed it, and resolved to
lift himself and the Union out of it."

Bull Run was only the beginning of troubles. There were many more
rocks ahead in the stormy sea of public opinion. The peace party
was always ready to lure the ship of state out of its true course
by using false lights, even when certain to bring about a
universal wreck in which the "pacifists" would suffer with the
rest. But dissensions within the war party were worse, especially
when caused by action in the field. Fremont's dismissal in
November, '61, caused great dissatisfaction among three kinds of
people: those who thought him a great general because he knew how
to pose as one and really had some streaks of great ability,
those who were fattening on the army contracts he let out with
such a lavish hand, and those who hailed him as the liberator of
the slaves because he went unwarrantably far beyond what was then
politically wise or even possible. He was the first Unionist
commander to enter the Northern Cave of Adullam, already infested
with Copperhead snakes.

There he was joined by McClellan exactly a year later; and there
the peace-at-current-prices party continued to nurse and cry
their grievances till the war was over. McClellan's dismissal was
a matter of dire necessity because victory was impossible under
his command. But he was a dangerous reinforcement to the
Adullamites; for many of the loyal public had been fooled by his
proclamations, the press had written him up to the skies as the
Young Napoleon, and the great mass of the rank and file still
believed in him. He took the kindly interest in camp comforts
that goes to the soldier's heart; and he really did know how to
organize. Add his power of passing off tinsel promises for golden
deeds, and it can be well understood how great was the danger of
dismissing him before his defects had become so apparent to the
mass of people as to have turned opinion decisively against him.
We shall presently meet him in his relation to Lincoln during the
Virginian campaign, and later on in his relation to Lee. Here we
may leave him with the reminder that he was the Democratic
candidate for President in '64, that he was still a mortal danger
to the Union, even though he had rejected the actual wording of
his party's peace plank.

The turn of the tide at the fighting front came in '63; but not
at the home front, where public opinion of the most vocal kind
was stirred to its dregs by the enforcement of the draft. The
dime song books of the Copperhead parts of New York expressed in
rude rhymes very much the same sort of apprehension that was
voiced by the official opposition in the Presidential campaign of
'64.

Abram Lincoln, what yer 'bout?
Stop this war, for it's played out.

Another rhyme, called "The Beauties of Conscription," was a more
decorous expression of such public opinion.

And this, the "People's Sovereignty,"
Before a despot humbled!
. . . .
Well have they cashed old Lincoln's drafts,
Hurrah for the Conscription!
. . . .
Is not this war--this MURDER--for
The negro, nolens volens?

So, carrying out their ideas to the same sort of logical
conclusion, the New York mob of '63 not only burnt every
recruiting office they found undefended but burnt the negro
orphan asylum and killed all the negroes they could lay their
hands on.

Public opinion did veer round a little with the rising tide of
victory in the winter of '63 and '64. But, incredible as it may
seem to those who think the home front must always reflect the
fighting front, the nadir of public opinion in the North was
reached in the summer of '64, when every expert knew that the
resources of the South were nearing exhaustion and that the
forces of the North could certainly wear out Lee's dwindling army
even if they could not beat it. The trumpet gave no uncertain
sound from Lincoln's lips. "In this purpose to save the country
and its liberties no class of people seem so nearly unanimous as
the soldiers in the field and the sailors afloat. Do they not
have the hardest of it? Who should quail while they do not?" But
the mere excellence of a vast fighting front means a certain loss
of the nobler qualities in the home front, from which so many of
the staunchest are withdrawn. And then warweariness breeds
doubts, doubts breed fears, and fears breed the spirit of
surrender.

There seemed to be more Copperheads in the conglomerate
opposition than Unionists ready to withstand them. The sinister
figure of Vallandigham loomed large in Ohio, where he openly
denounced the war in such disloyal terms that the military
authorities arrested him. An opposition committee, backed by the
snakes in the grass of the secret societies, at once wrote to
Lincoln demanding release. Lincoln thereupon offered release if
the committee would sign a declaration that, since rebellion
existed, and since the armed forces of the United States were the
constitutional means of suppressing rebellion, each member of the
committee would support the war till rebellion was put down. The
committee refused to sign. More people then began to see the
self-contradictions of the opposition, and most of those "plain
people" to whom Lincoln consciously appealed were touched to the
heart by his pathetic question: "Must I shoot the simpleminded
soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of the
wily agitator who induces him to desert?"

But there was still defection on the Union side, and among many
"plain people" too; for Horace Greeley, the best-known Union
editor, lost his nerve and ran away. And Greeley was not the only
Union journalist who helped, sometimes unwittingly, to pervert
public opinion. The "writing up" of McClellan for what he was
not, though rather hysterical, was at least well meant. But the
reporters who "wrote down" General Cox, because he would not make
them members of his staff in West Virginia, disgraced their
profession. The lies about Sherman's "insanity" and Grant's
"intoxication" were shamelessly excused on the plea that they
made "good stories." Sherman's insanity, as we have seen already,
existed only in the disordered imagination of blabbing old Simon
Cameron. Grant, at the time these stories were published, was
strictly temperate.

Amid all the hindrances--and encouragements, for the Union press
generally did noble service in the Union cause--of an uncensored
press, and all the complexities of public opinion, Lincoln kept
his head and heart set firmly on the one supreme objective of the
Union. He foresaw from the first that if all the States came
through the war United, then all the reforms for which the war
was fought would follow; but that if any particular reform was
itself made the supreme objective, then it, and with it all the
other reforms, would fail, because only part of the Union
strength would be involved, whereas the whole was needed.
Moreover, he clearly foresaw the absolute nature of a great civil
war. Foreign wars may well, and often do, end in some sort of
compromise, especially when the home life of the opponents can go
on as before. But a great civil war cannot end in compromise
because it radically changes the home life of one side or the
other. Davis stood for "Independence or extermination"; Lincoln
simply for the Union, which, in his clear prevision, meant all
that the body politic could need for a new and better life. He
accepted the word "enemy" as descriptive of a passing phase. He
would not accept such phraseology as Meade's, "driving the
invader from our soil." "Will our generals," he complained,
"never get that idea out of their heads? The whole country is our
soil."

He was a life-long advocate of Emancipation, first, with
compensation, now as part of the price to be paid for rebellion.
Emancipation, however, depended on the Union, not the Union on
it. His Proclamation was ready in the summer of '62. But to
publish it in the midst of defeat would make it look like an act
of despair. In September, when the Confederates had to recross
the Potomac after Antietam, the Proclamation was given to the
world. Its first effect was greater abroad than at home; for now
no foreign government could say, and rightly say, that the war,
not being fought on account of slavery, might leave that issue
still unsettled. This was a most important point in Lincoln's
foreign policy, a policy which had been haunted by the fear of
recognition for the South or the possibility of war with either
the French or British, or even both together.

Lincoln's Cabinet was composed of two factions, one headed by
Seward, the Secretary of State, the other by Chase, the Secretary
of the Treasury. Both the fighting services were under War
Democrats: the Army under Stanton, the Navy under Welles. All
these ministers began by thinking that Lincoln had the least
ability among them. Seward and Welles presently learnt better.
Stanton's exclamation at Lincoln's death speaks for itself "Now
he belongs to the ages!" But Chase never believed that Lincoln
could even be his equal. Chase and the Treasury were a thorn in
the side of the Government; Chase because it was his nature, the
Treasury because its notes fell to thirty-nine cents in the
dollar during the summer of '64. Welles, hard-working and
upright, was guided by an expert assistant. Stanton, equally
upright and equally hardworking, made many mistakes. And yet,
when all is said and done, Stanton was a really able patriot who
worked his hardest for what seemed to him the best.

Such were the four chief men in that Cabinet with which Lincoln
carried out his Union policy and over which he towered in what
became transcendent statesmanship--the head, the heart, the
genius of the war. He never, for one moment, changed his course,
but kept it fixed upon the Union, no matter what the winds and
tides, the currents and cross-currents were. Thus, while so many
lesser minds were busy with flotsam and jetsam of the
controversial storm, his own serener soul was already beyond the
far horizon, voyaging toward the one sure haven for the Ship of
State.


But Lincoln was more than the principal civilian war statesman:
he was the constitutional Commander-in-Chief of all the Union
forces, afloat and ashore. He was responsible not only for
raising, supplying, and controlling them, but for their actual
command by men who, in the eyes of the law, were simply his own
lieutenants. The problem of exercising civil control without
practicing civilian interference, always and everywhere hard, and
especially hard in a civil war, was particularly hard in his
case, in view of public opinion, the press, his own war policy,
and the composition of his Cabinet. His solution was by no means
perfect; but the wonder is that he reached it so well in spite of
such perverting factors. He began with the mere armed mob that
fought the First Bull Run beset with interference. He ended with
Farragut, Grant, and Sherman, combined in one great scheme of
strategy that included Mobile, Virginia, and the lower South, and
that, while under full civil control, was mostly free from
interference with its naval and military work--except at the
fussy hands of Stanton.

The fundamental difference between civil control, which is the
very breath of freedom, and civilian interference, which means
the death of all efficiency, can be quite simply illustrated by
supposing the proverbial Ship of State to be a fighting
man-of-war. The People are the owners, with all an owner's
rights; while their chosen Government is their agent, with all an
agent's delegated power. The fighting Services, as the word
itself so properly implies, are simply the People's servants,
though they take their orders from the Government. So far, so
good, within the limits of civil control, under which, and which
alone, any national resources--in men, money, or material--can
lawfully be turned to warlike ends. But when the ship is fitting
out, still more when she is out at sea, and most of all when she
is fighting, then she should be handled only by her expert
captain with his expert crew. Civilian interference begins the
moment any inexpert outsider takes the captain's place; and this
interference is no less disastrous when the outsider remains at
home than when he is on the actual spot.

Lincoln and Stanton were out of their element in the strategic
fight with Lee and Stonewall Jackson, as the next chapter
abundantly proves. But they will bear, and more than bear,
comparison with Davis and Benjamin, their own special "opposite
numbers." Benjamin, when Confederate Secretary of War in '62,
nearly drove Jackson out of the service by ordering him to follow
the advice of some disgruntled subordinates who objected to being
moved about for strategic reasons which they could not
understand. To make matters worse, Benjamin sent this precious
order direct to Jackson without even informing his immediate
superior, "Joe" Johnston, or even Lee himself. Thus discipline,
the very soul of armies, was attacked from above and beneath by
the man who should have been its chief upholder. Luckily for the
South things were smoothed over, and Benjamin learnt something he
should have known at first. Davis had none of Lincoln's
diffidence about his own capacity for directing the strategy of
armies. He had passed through West Point and commanded a
battalion in Mexico without finding out that his fitness stopped
there. He interfered with Lee and Jackson, sometimes to almost a
disabling extent. He forced his enmity on "Joe" Johnston and
superseded him at the very worst time in the final campaign. He
interfered more than ever just when Lee most required a free
hand. And when he did make Lee a real Commander-in-Chief the
Southern cause had been lost already. Lincoln's war statesmanship
grew with the war. Davis remained as he was.

Lincoln had to meet the difficulties that always occur when
professionals and amateurs are serving together. How much
Lincoln, Stanton, professionals, and amateurs had to do with the
system that was evolved under great stress is far too complex for
discussion here. Suffice it to say this: Lincoln's clear insight
and openness of mind enabled him to see the universal truth,
that, other things being equal, the trained and expert
professional must excel the untrained and inexpert amateur. But
other things are never precisely equal; and a war in which the
whole mass-manhood is concerned brings in a host of amateurs.
Lincoln was as devoid of prejudice against the regular officers
as he was against any other class of men; and he was ready to try
and try again to find a satisfactory commander among them, in
spite of many failures. The plan of campaign proposed by General
Winfield Scott (and ultimately carried out in a modified form)
was dubbed by wiseacre public men the "Anaconda policy"; witlings
derided it, and the people were too impatient for anything except
"On to Richmond!" Scott, unable to take the field at seventyfive,
had no second-in-command. Halleck was a very poor substitute
later on. In the meantime McDowell was chosen and generously
helped by Lincoln and Stanton. But after Bull Run the very people
whose impatience made victory impossible howled him down.

Then the choice fell on McClellan, whose notorious campaign fills
much of our next chapter. There we shall see how refractory
circumstances, Stanton's waywardness among them, forced Lincoln
to go beyond the limits of civil control. Here we need only note
McClellan's personal relations with the President. Instead of
summoning him to the White House Lincoln often called at
McClellan's for discussion. McClellan presently began to treat
Lincoln's questions as intrusions, and one day sent down word
that he was too tired to see the President. Lincoln had told a
friend that he would hold McClellan's stirrups for the sake of
victory. But he could not abdicate in favor of McClellan or any
one else.

It was none of Lincoln's business to be an actual
Commander-in-Chief. Yet night after weary night he sat up
studying the science and art of war, groping his untutored way
toward those general principles and essential human facts which
his native genius enabled him to reach, but never quite
understanding--how could he?--their practical application to the
field of strategy. His supremely good common sense saved him from
going beyond his depth whenever he could help it. His Military
Orders were forced upon him by the extreme pressure of impatient
public opinion. He told Grant "he did not know but they were all
wrong, and he did know that some of them were."

McClellan was not the only failure in Virginia. Burnside and
Hooker also failed against Lee and Jackson. All three suffered
from civilian interference as well as from their own defects. At
last, in the third year of the war, a victor appeared in Meade, a
good, but by no means great, commander. In the fourth year
Lincoln gave the chief command to Grant, whom he had carefully
watched and wisely supported through all the ups and downs of the
river campaigns.

Grant's account of his first conference alone with Lincoln is
eloquent of Lincoln's wise war statesmanship

"He stated that he had never professed to be a military man or to
know how campaigns should be conducted, and never wanted to
interfere in them . . . . All he wanted was some one who would
take the responsibility and act, and call on him for all the
assistance needed, pledging himself to use all the power of the
government in rendering such assistance . . . . He pointed out on
the map two streams which empty into the Potomac, and suggested
that the army might be moved on boats and landed between the
mouths of these streams. We would then have the Potomac to bring
our supplies and the tributaries would protect our flanks while
we moved out. I listened respectfully, but did not suggest that
the same streams would protect Lee's flanks while he was shutting
us up. I did not communicate my plans to the President; nor did I
to the Secretary of War or to General Halleck."

Trust begot trust; and some months later Grant showed war
statesmanship of the same magnificent kind. McClellan had become
the Democratic candidate for President, to the wellfounded alarm
of all who put the Union first. In June, when Grant and Lee were
at grips round Richmond, Lincoin was invited to a public meeting
got up in honor of Grant with only a flimsy disguise of the
ominous fact that Grant, and not Lincoln, might be the Union
choice. Lincoln sagaciously wrote back: "It is impossible for me
to attend. I approve nevertheless of whatever may tend to
strengthen and sustain General Grant and the noble armies now
under his command. He and his brave soldiers are now in the midst
of their great trial, and I trust that at your meeting you will
so shape your good words that they may turn to men and guns,
moving to his and their support." The danger to the Union of
taking Grant away from the front moved Lincoln deeply all through
that anxious summer of '64, though he never thought Grant would
leave the front with his work half done. In August an officious
editor told Lincoln that he ought to take a good long rest.
Lincoln, however, was determined to stand by his own post of duty
and find out from Grant, through their common friend, John Eaton,
what Grant's own views of such ideas were. This is Eaton's
account of how Grant took it:

"We had been talking very quietly. But Grant's reply came in an
instant and with a violence for which I was not prepared. He
brought his clenched fists down hard on the strap arms of his
camp chair. 'They can't do it. They can't compel me to do it.'
Emphatic gesture was not a strong point with Grant. 'Have you
said this to the President?' 'No,' said Grant, 'I have not
thought it worth while to assure the President of my opinion. I
consider it as important for the cause that he should be elected
as that the army should be successful in the field.'"

When Eaton brought back his report Lincoln simply said, "I told
you they could not get him to run till he had closed out the
rebellion."

On the twenty-third of this same gloomy August, lightened only by
the taking of Mobile, Lincoln asked his Cabinet if they would
endorse a memorandum without reading it. They all immediately
signed. After his reelection in November he read it out: "This
morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable
that this Administration will not be reelected. Then it will be
my duty to so cooperate with the President-elect as to save the
Union between the election and the inauguration, as he will have
secured his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save
it afterwards." He added that he would have asked McClellan to
throw his whole influence into getting enough recruits to finish
the war before the fourth of March. "And McClellan," was Seward's
comment, "would have said 'Yes, yes,' and then done nothing."

Lincoln's reelection was helped by Farragut's victory in August,
Sherman's in September, and Sheridan's raid through the
Shenandoah Valley in October. But it was also helped by that
strange, vivifying touch which passes, no one knows how, from the
man who best embodies a supremely patriotic cause to the masses
of his fellow patriots, and then, at some great crisis, when they
scale heights which he has long since trod, comes back in flood
and carries him to power.

Lincoln stories were abroad; the true were eclipsing the false;
and all the true ones gained him increasing credit. Naval
reformers, and many others too, enjoyed the homely wit with which
he closed the first conference about such a startlingly novel
craft as the plans for the Monitor promised: "Well, Gentlemen,
all I have to say is what the girl said when she put her foot
into the stocking: 'It strikes me there's something in it.'" The
army enjoyed the joke against the three-month captain whom
Sherman threatened to shoot if he went home without leave. The
same day Lincoln, visiting the camp, was harangued by this
prospective deserter in presence of many another man disheartened
by Bull Run. "Mr. President: this morning I spoke to Colonel
Sherman and he threatened to shoot me, Sir!" Lincoln looked the
two men over, and then, in a stage whisper every listener could
hear, said: "Well, if I were you, and he threatened to shoot me,
I wouldn't trust him; for I'm sure he'd do it." Both Services
were not only pleased with the "rise" Lincoln took out of a too
inquisitive politician but were much reassured by its model
discretion. This importunate politician so badgered Lincoln about
the real destination of McClellan's transports that Lincoln at
last promised to tell everything he could if the politician would
promise not to repeat it. Then, after swearing the utmost
secrecy, the politician got the news: "They are going to sea."

The whole home front as well as the Services were touched to the
heart by tales of Lincoln's kindness in his many interviews with
the warbereaved; and letters like these spoke for themselves to
every patriot in the land:

                          Executive Mansion, November 21, 1864.

Mrs. Bixby, Boston, Massachusetts.

Dear Madam: I have been shown in the files of the War Department
a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are
the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of
battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine
which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so
overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the
consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they
died to save. I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the
anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished
memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be
yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of
freedom.

         Yours very sincerely and respectfully,
                             Abraham Lincoln.


Nor did the Lincoln touch stop there. It even began to make its
quietly persuasive way among the finer spirits of the South from
the very day on which the Second Inaugural closed with words
which were the noblest consummation of the prophecy made in the
First. This was the prophecy: "The mystic chords of memory,
stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every
living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet
swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they
will be, by the better angels of our nature." And this the
consummation "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with
firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us
strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's
wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for
his widow and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish
a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."



CHAPTER VI. LEE AND JACKSON: 1862-3

Most Southerners remained spellbound by the glamour of Bull Run
till the hard, sharp truths of '62 began to rouse them from their
flattering dream. They fondly hoped, and even half believed, that
if another Northern army dared to invade Virginia it would
certainly fail against their entrenchments at Bull Run. If, so
ran the argument, the North failed in the open field it must fail
still worse against a fortified position.

The Southern generals vainly urged their Government to put forth
its utmost strength at once, before the more complex and less
united North had time to recover and begin anew. They asked for
sixty thousand men at Bull Run, to be used for a vigorous
counterstroke at Washington. They pointed out the absurdity of
misusing the Bull Run (or Manassas) position as a mere shield,
fixed to one spot, instead of making it the hilt of a sword
thrust straight at the heart of the North. Robert E. Lee, now a
full general in the Confederate Army and adviser to the
President, grasped the whole situation from the first and urged
the right solution in the official way. Stonewall Jackson, still
a junior general, was in full accord with Lee, as we know from
the confidential interview (at the end of October, '61) between
him and his divisional commander, General G. W. Smith, who made
it public many years later. The gist of Jackson's argument was
this: "McClellan won't come out this year with his army of
recruits. We ought to invade now, not wait to be invaded later
on. If Davis would concentrate every man who can be spared from
all other points and let us invade before winter sets in, then
McClellan's recruits couldn't stand against us in the field.--Let
us cross the upper Potomac, occupy Baltimore, and, holding
Maryland, cut the communications of Washington, force the Federal
Government out of it, beat McClellan if he attacks, destroy
industrial plants liable to be turned to warlike ends, cut the
big commercial lines of communication, close the coal mines,
seize the neck of land between Pittsburg and Lake Erie, live on
the country by requisition, and show the North what it would cost
to conquer the South." On asking Smith if he agreed, Smith
answered: "I will tell you a secret; for I am sure it won't be
divulged. These views were rejected by the Government during the
conference at Fairfax Court House at the beginning of the month."
Jackson thereupon shook Smith's hand, saying, "I am sorry, very
sorry," and, mounting Little Sorrel without another word, rode
sadly away.

Jefferson Davis probably, and some of his Cabinet possibly,
understood what Lee, "Joe" Johnston, Beauregard, Smith, and
Jackson so strongly urged. But they feared the outcry that would
assuredly be raised by people in districts denuded of troops for
the grand concentration elsewhere. So they remained passive when
they should have been active, and, trying to strengthen each
separate part, fatally weakened the whole.

Meanwhile the North was collecting the different elements of
warlike force and changing its Secretary of War. Cameron was
superseded by Stanton on the fifteenth of January. Twelve days
later Lincoln issued the first of those military orders which, as
we have just seen, he afterwards told Grant that the impatience
of the loyal North compelled him to issue, though he knew some
were certainly, and all were possibly, wrong. This first order
was one of the certainly wrong. McClellan's unready masses were
to begin an unlimited mud march through the early spring. roads
of Virginia on the twenty-second of February, in honor of
Washington's birthday. A reconnoitering staff officer reported
the roads as being in their proper places; but he guessed the
bottom had fallen out. So McClellan was granted some delay.

His grand total was now over two hundred thousand men. The
Confederate grand total was estimated at a hundred and fifteen
thousand by the civilian detectives whom the Federal Government
employed to serve in place of an expert intelligence staff. The
detective estimate was sixty-five thousand men out. The real
Confederate strength at this time was only fifty thousand. There
was little chance of getting true estimates in any other way, as
the Federal Government had no adequate cavalry. Most of the few
cavalry McClellan commanded were as yet a mere collection of men
and horses, quite unfit for reconnoitering and testing an enemy's
force.

McClellan's own plan, formed on the supposition that the
Confederates held the Bull Run position with at least a hundred
thousand men, involved the transfer of a hundred and fifty
thousand Federals by sea from Washington to Fortress Monroe, on
the historic peninsula between the York and James rivers. Then,
using these rivers as lines of communication, his army would take
Richmond in flank. Lincoln's objection to this plan was based on
the very significant argument that while the Federal army was
being transported piecemeal to Fortress Monroe the Confederates
might take Washington by a sudden dash from their base at
Centreville, only thirty miles off. This was a valid objection;
for Washington was not only the Federal Headquarters but the very
emblem of the Union cause--a sort of living Stars and
Stripes--and Washington lost might well be understood to mean
almost the same as if the Ship of State had struck her colors.

On the ninth of March the immediate anxiety about Washington was
relieved. That day came news that the Monitor had checkmated the
Merrimac in Hampton Roads and that "Joe" Johnston had withdrawn
his forces from the Bull Run position and had retired behind the
Rappahannock to Culpeper. On the tenth McClellan began a
reconnoitering pursuit of Johnston from Washington. Having found
burnt bridges and other signs of decisive retirement, he at last
persuaded the reluctant Lincoln to sanction the Peninsula
Campaign. On the seventeenth his army began embarking for
Fortress Monroe, ten thousand men at a time, that being all the
transports could carry. For a week the movement of troops went on
successfully; while the Confederates could not make out what was
happening along the coast. Everything also seemed quite safe,
from the Federal point of view, in the Shenandoah Valley, where
General Banks commanded. And both there and along the Potomac the
Federals were in apparently overwhelming strength; even though
the detectives doing duty as staff officers still kept on
doubling the numbers of all the Confederates under arms.

Suddenly, on the twenty-third, a fight at Kernstown in the
Shenandoah Valley gave a serious shock to the victorious
Federals, not only there but all over the semicircle of invasion,
from West Virginia round by the Potomac and down to Fortress
Monroe. The fighting on both sides was magnificent. Yet Kernstown
itself was a very small affair. Little more than ten thousand men
had been in action: seven thousand Federals under Shields against
half as many Confederates under Stonewall Jackson. The point is
that Jackson's attack, though unsuccessful, was very
disconcerting elsewhere. From Kernstown the area of disturbance
spread like wildfire till the tactical victory of seven thousand
Federals had spoilt the strategy of thirty times as many. Shields
reported: "I set to work during the night to bring together all
the troops within my reach. I sent an express after Williams's
division, requesting the rear brigade, about twenty miles
distant, to march all night and join me in the morning. I swept
the posts in rear of almost all their guards, hurrying them
forward by forced marches, to be with me at daylight." Banks, now
on his way to Washington, halted in alarm at Harper's Ferry.
McClellan, perceiving that Jackson's little force was more than a
mere corps of observation, approved Banks and added: "As soon as
you are strong enough push Jackson hard and drive him well beyond
Strasburg," that is, west of the Massanuttons, where Fremont
could close in and finish him. Lincoln had already been thinking
of transferring nine thousand men from McClellan to Fremont.
Kernstown decided it; so off they went to West Virginia. Still
fearing an attack on Washington, Lincoln halted McDowell's army
corps, thirty-seven thousand strong, on the march overland to
join McClellan on the Peninsula, and kept them stuck fast round
Centreville, near Bull Run. And so McClellan's Peninsular force
was suddenly reduced by forty-six thousand men.

April was a month of maneuvers and suspense. By the end of it
McClellan, based on Fortress Monroe, had accumulated a hundred
and ten thousand men. The Confederates on the Peninsula, holding
Yorktown, numbered fifty thousand. McClellan sadly missed
McDowell, whose corps was to have taken the fort at Gloucester
Point that prevented the Federal gunboats from turning the
enemy's lines at Yorktown. McDowell moved south to
Fredericksburg, leaving a small force near Manassas Junction to
connect him with the garrison of Washington. The Confederates
could spare only twelve thousand men to watch him. Meanwhile
Banks occupied the Shenandoah Valley, having twenty thousand men
at Harrisonburg and smaller forces at several points all round,
from southwest to northeast, each designed to form part of the
net that was soon to catch Jackson. Beyond Banks stood Fremont's
force in West Virginia, also ready to close in. Jackson's
complete grand total was less than that of Banks's own main body.
Yet, with one eye on Richmond, he lay in wait at Swift Run Gap,
crouching for a tiger-spring at Banks. Virginia was semicircled
by superior forces. But everywhere inside the semicircle the
Confederate parts all formed one strategic whole; while the
Federal parts outside did not. Moreover, the South had already
decided to call up every available man; thus forestalling the
North by more than ten months on the vital issue of conscription.

In May the preliminary clash of arms began on the Peninsula. The
Confederates evacuated the Yorktown lines on the third. On the
fifth McClellan's advanced guard fought its way past
Williamsburg. On the seventh he began changing his base from
Fortress Monroe to White House on the Pamunkey. Here on the
sixteenth he was within twenty miles of Richmond, while all the
seaways behind him were safe in Union hands. The fate not only of
Richmond but of the whole South seemed trembling in the scales.
The Northern armies had cleared the Mississippi down to Memphis.
The Northern navy had taken New Orleans, the greatest Southern
port. And now the Northern hosts were striking at the Southern
capital. McClellan with double numbers from the east, McDowell
with treble numbers from the north, and the Union navy, with more
than fourfold strength on all the navigable waters, were closing
in. The Confederate Government had even decided to take the
extreme step of evacuating Richmond, hoping to prolong the
struggle elsewhere. The official records had been packed. Davis
had made all arrangements for the flight of his family. And from
Drewry's Bluff, eight miles south of Richmond, the masts of the
foremost Federal vessels could be seen coming up the James,
where, on the eleventh, the Merrimac, having grounded, had been
destroyed by her own commander.

But the General Assembly of Virginia, passionately seconded by
the City Council, petitioned the Government to stand its ground
"till not a stone was left upon another." Every man in Richmond
who could do a hand's turn and who was not already in arms
marched out to complete the defenses of the James at Drewry's
Bluff. Senators, bankers, bondmen and free, merchants, laborers,
and ministers of all religions, dug earthworks, hauled cannon,
piled ammunition, or worked, wet to the waist, at the big boom
that was to stop the ships and hold them under fire. The
Government had changed its mind. Richmond was to be held to the
last extremity. And the Southern women were as willing as the
men.

In the midst of all this turmoil Lee calmly reviewed the
situation. He saw that the Federal gunboats coming up the James
were acting alone, as the disconnected vanguard of what should
have been a joint advance, and that no army was yet moving to
support them. He knew McClellan and Banks and read them like a
book. He also knew Jackson, and decided to use him again in the
Shenandoah Valley as a menace to Washington. Writing to him on
the sixteenth of May, the very day McClellan reached White House,
only twenty miles from Richmond, he said: "Whatever movement you
make against Banks, do it speedily, and, if successful, drive him
back towards the Potomac, and create the impression, as far as
possible, that you design threatening that line." Moreover, out
of his own scanty forces, he sent Jackson two excellent brigades.
Thus, while the great Federal civilians who knew nothing
practical of war were all agog about Richmond, a single point at
one end of the semicircle, the great Confederate strategist was
forging a thunderbolt to relieve the pressure on it by striking
the Federal center so as to threaten Washington. The fundamental
idea was a Fabian defensive at Richmond, a vigorous offensive in
the Valley, to produce Federal dispersion between these points
and Washington; then rapid concentration against McClellan on the
Chickahominy.

The unsupported Federal gunboats were stopped and turned back at
the boom near Drewry's Bluff. McClellan, bent on besieging
Richmond in due form, crawled cautiously about the intervening
swamps of the oozy Chickahominy. McDowell, who could not advance
alone, remained at Fredericksburg. Shields stood behind him, near
Catlett's Station, to keep another eye on nervous Washington.


In the meantime Stonewall Jackson, still in the Shenandoah, had
fought no battles since his tactical defeat at Kernstown on the
twenty-third of March had proved such a pregnant strategic
victory elsewhere. But late in April he had a letter from Lee,
telling of the general situation and suggesting an attack on
Banks. Banks, however, still had twenty thousand men at
Harrisonburg, with twenty-five thousand more in or within call of
the Valley. Jackson's complete grand total was less than eighteen
thousand. The odds against him therefore exceeded five against
two; and direct attack was out of the question. But he now began
his maneuvers anew and on a bolder scale than ever. He had upset
the Federal strategy at Kernstown, when there were less than
eight thousand Confederates in the Valley. What might he not do
with ten thousand more? His wonderful Valley Campaign, famous
forever in the history of war, gives us the answer.

He had five advantages over Banks. First, his own expert
knowledge and genius for war, backed by a dauntless character.
Banks was a very able man who had worked his way up from factory
hand to Speaker of the House of Representatives and Governor of
Massachusetts. But he had neither the knowledge, genius, nor
character required for high command; and he owed his present
position more to his ardor as a politician than to his ability as
a general. Jackson's second advantage was his own and his army's
knowledge of the country for which they naturally fought with a
loving zeal which no invaders could equal. The third advantage
was in having Turner Ashby's cavalry. These were horsemen born
and bred, who could make their way across country as easily as
the "footy" Federals could along the road. In answer to a
peremptory order a Federal cavalry commander could only explain:
"I can't catch them. They leap fences and walls like deer.
Neither our men nor our horses are so trained." The fourth
advantage was in discipline. Jackson habitually spared his men
more than his officers, and his officers more than himself,
whenever indulgence was possible. But when discipline had to be
sternly maintained he, maintained it sternly, throughout all
ranks, knowing that the flower of discipline is selfsacrifice,
from the senior general down, and that the root is due
subordination, from the junior private up. After the Conscription
Act had come into force a few companies, who were time-expired as
volunteers, threw down their arms and told their colonel they
wouldn't serve another day. On hearing this officially Jackson
asked: "Why does Colonel Grigsby refer to me to learn how to deal
with mutineers? He should shoot them where they stand." The rest
of the regiment was then paraded with loaded arms, facing the
mutineers, who were given the choice of complete submission or
instant death. They chose submission. That was the last mutiny
under Stonewall Jackson. Both sides suffered from straggling, the
Confederates as much as the Federals. But Confederate stragglers
rejoined the better of the two; and in downright desertion the
Federals were the worse, simply because their own peace party was
by far the stronger. The final advantage brings us back to
strategy, on which the whole campaign was turning. Lee and
Jackson worked the Confederates together. Lincoln and Stanton
worked the Federals apart.

On the last of April Jackson slipped away from Swift Run Gap
while Ewell quietly took his place and Ashby blinded Banks by
driving the Federal cavalry back on Harrisonburg. Jackson's men
were thoroughly puzzled and disheartened when they had to leave
the Valley in full possession of the enemy while they ploughed
through seas of mud towards Richmond. What was the matter? Were
they off to Richmond? No; for they presently wheeled round. "Old
Jack's crazy, sure, this time." Even one of his staff officers
thought so himself, and put it on paper, to his own confusion
afterwards. The rain came down in driving sheets. The roads
became mere drains for the oozing woods. Wheels stuck fast; and
Jackson was seen heaving his hardest with an exhausted gun team.
But still the march went on--slosh, slosh, squelch; they slogged
it through. CLOSE UP, MEN!--CLOSE UP IN REAR!--CLOSE UP, THERE,
CLOSE UP!

On the fourth of May Jackson got word from Edward Johnson,
commanding his detached brigade near Staunton, that Milroy,
commanding Fremont's advanced guard, was coming on from West
Virginia. Jackson at once seized the chance of smashing Milroy by
railing in to Staunton before Banks or Fremont could interfere.
This would have been suicidal against a great commander with a
well-trained force. But Banks, grossly exaggerating Jackson's
numbers, was already marching north to the railhead at New
Market, where he would be nearer his friends if Jackson swooped
down. Detraining at Staunton the Confederates picketed the whole
neighborhood to stop news getting out before they made their dash
against Milroy. On the seventh they moved off. The cadets of the
Virginia Military Institute, where Jackson had been a professor
for so many years, had just joined to gain some experience of the
real thing, and as they stepped out in their smart uniforms, with
all the exactness of parade-ground drill, they formed a marked
contrast to the gaunt soldiers of the Valley, half fed, half
clad, but wholly eager for the fray.

That night Milroy got together all the men he could collect at
McDowell, a little village just beyond the Valley and on the road
to Gauley Bridge in West Virginia. He sent posthaste for
reinforcements. But Fremont's men were divided too far west,
fearing nothing from the Valley, while Banks's were thinking of a
concentration too far north.

In the afternoon of the eighth, Milroy attacked Jackson with
great determination and much skill. But after a stern encounter,
in which the outnumbered Federals fought very well indeed, the
Confederates won a decisive victory. The numbers actually
engaged--twenty-five hundred Federals against four thousand
Confederates--were even smaller than at Kernstown. But this time
the Confederates won the tactical victory on the spot as well as
the strategic victory all over the Valley; and the news cheered
Richmond at what, as we have seen already, was its very darkest
hour. The night of the battle Jackson sent out strong working
parties to destroy all bridges and culverts and to block all
roads by which Fremont could reach the Valley. In some places
bowlders were rolled down from the hills. In one the trees were
felled athwart the path for a mile. A week later Jackson was back
in the Valley at Lebanon Springs, while Fremont was blocked off
from Banks, who was now distractedly groping for safety and news.

The following day, the famous sixteenth, we regain touch with
Lee, who, as mentioned already, then wrote to Jackson about
attacking Banks in order to threaten Washington. This dire day at
Richmond, the day McClellan reached White House, was also the one
appointed by the Southern Government as a day of intercession for
God's blessing on the Southern arms. None kept it more fervently,
even in beleaguered Richmond, than pious Jackson in the Valley.
Then, like a giant refreshed, he rose for swift and silent
marches and also sudden hammer-strokes at Banks.

Confident that all would now go well, Washington thought nothing
of the little skirmish at McDowell, because it apparently
disturbed nothing beyond the Shenandoah Valley. The news from
everywhere else was good; and Federals were jubilant. So were the
civilian strategists, particularly Stanton, who, though tied to
his desk as Secretary of War, was busy wire-pulling Banks's men
about the Valley. Stanton ordered Banks to take post at Strasburg
and to hold the bridges at Front Royal with two detached
battalions. This masterpiece of bungling put the Federals at
Front Royal in the air, endangered their communications north to
Winchester, and therefore menaced the Valley line toward
Washington. But Banks said nothing; and Stanton would have
snubbed him if he had.

On the twenty-third of May a thousand Federals under Colonel
Kenly were sweltering in the first hot weather of the year at
Stanton's indefensible position of Front Royal when suddenly a
long gray line of skirmishers emerged from the woods, the
Confederate bugles rang out, and Jackson's battle line appeared.
Then came a crashing volley, which drove in the Federal pickets
for their lives. Colonel Kenly did his best. But he was
outflanked and forced back in confusion. A squadron of New York
cavalry came to the rescue; but were themselves outflanked and
helpless on the road against the Virginian horsemen, who could
ride across country. Kenly had just made a second stand, when
down came the Virginians, led by Colonel Flournoy at racing speed
over fence and ditch, scattering the Federal cavalry like chaff
before the wind and smashing into the Federal infantry. Two
hundred and fifty really efficient cavalry took two guns
(complete with limbers, men, and horses), killed and wounded a
hundred and fifty-four of their opponents, and captured six
hundred prisoners as well--and all with a loss to themselves of
only eleven killed and fifteen wounded.

Ashby's cavalry, several hundreds strong, pushed on and out to
the flanks, cutting the wires, destroying bridges, and blocking
the roads against reinforcements from beyond the Valley. Three
hours after the attack a dispatchrider dashed up to Banks's
headquarters at Strasburg. But Banks refused to move, saying,
when pressed by his staff to make a strategic retreat on
Winchester, "By God, sir, I will not retreat! We have more to
fear from the opinions of our friends than from the bayonets of
our enemies!" The Cabinet backed him up next day by actually
proposing to reinforce him at Strasburg with troops from
Washington and Baltimore. Nevertheless he was forced to fly for
his life to Winchester. His stores at Strasburg had to be
abandoned. His long train of wagons was checked on the way, with
considerable loss. And some of his cavalry, caught on the road by
horsemen who could ride across country, were smashed to pieces.

Jackson pressed on relentlessly to Winchester with every one who
could march like "foot cavalry," as his Valley men came to be
called. On the twenty-fifth, the third day of unremitting action,
he carried the Winchester heights and drove Banks through the
town. Only the Second Massachusetts, which had already
distinguished itself during the retreat, preserved its formation.
Ten thousand Confederate bayonets glittered in the morning sun.
The long gray lines swept forward. The piercing rebel yell rose
high. And the people, wild with joy, rushed out of doors to urge
the victors on.

By the twenty-sixth, the first day on which Stanton's
reinforcements from Baltimore and Washington could possibly have
fought at Strasburg, the Confederates had reached Martinsburg,
fifty miles beyond it. Banks had already crossed the Potomac,
farther on still. The newsboys of the North were crying, DEFEAT
OF GENERAL BANKS! WASHINGTON IN DANGER! Thirteen Governors were
calling for special State militia, for which a million men were
volunteering, spare troops were hurrying to Harper's Ferry, a
reserve corps was being formed at Washington, the Federal
Government was assuming control of all the railroad lines, and
McClellan was being warned that he must either take Richmond at
once or come back to save the capital. Nor did the strategic
disturbance stop even there; for the Washington authorities
ordered McDowell's force at Fredericksburg to the Valley just as
it was coming into touch with McClellan.

On the twenty-eighth Jackson might have taken Harper's Ferry. But
the storm was gathering round him. A great strategist directing
the Federal forces could have concentrated fifty thousand men, by
sunset on the first of June, against Jackson's Army of the
Valley, which could not possibly have mustered one-third of such
a number. McDowell arrived that night at Front Royal. He had
vainly protested against the false strategy imposed by the
Government from Washington, and he was not a free agent now. Yet,
even so, his force was at least a menace to Jackson, who had only
two chances of getting away to aid in the. defeat of McClellan
and the saving of Richmond. One was to outmarch the converging
Federals, gain interior lines along the Valley, and defeat them
there in detail. The other was to march into friendly Maryland,
trusting to her Southern sentiments for help and reinforcements.
He decided on the Valley route and marched straight in between
his enemies.

His fortnight's work, from the nineteenth of May to the first of
June, inclusive, is worth summing up. In these fourteen days he
had marched 170 miles, routed 12,500 men, threatened an invasion
of the North, drawn McDowell off from Fredericksburg, taken or
destroyed all Federal stores at Front Royal, Winchester, and
Martinsburg, and brought off safely a convoy seven miles long.
Moreover, he had done all this with the loss of only six hundred,
though sixty thousand enemies lay on three sides of his own
sixteen thousand men.

His remaining problem was harder still. It was how to mystify,
tire out, check short, and then immobilize the converging
Federals long enough to let him slip secretly away in time to
help Johnston and Lee against McClellan. Jackson, like his
enemies, moved through what has been well called the Fog of
War--that inevitable uncertainty through which all commanders
must find their way. But none of his enemies equaled him in
knowledge, genius, or character for war.

The first week in June saw desperate marches in the Valley, with
the outnumbering Federals hotfoot on the trail of Jackson, who
turned to bay one moment and at the next was off again. On the
sixth the Federals got home against his rear guard. It began to
waver, and Ashby ordered the infantry to charge. As he gave the
order his horse fell dead. In a flash he was up, waving his sword
and shouting: "Charge, for God's sake, charge!" The Confederate
line swept forward gallantly. But, just as it left the wood,
Ashby was shot through the heart. His men avenged him. Yet none
could fill his place as a born leader of irregular light horse.

Next morning the hounds were hot upon the scent again: Shields
and Fremont converging on Jackson, whom they would run to earth
somewhere north of Staunton. But on the eighth and ninth Jackson
turned sharply and bit back, first at Fremont close to Cross
Keys, then at Shields near Port Republic. Each was caught alone,
just before their point of junction, and each was defeated in
detail as well.

Fully to appreciate Jackson's strategy we must compare the
strategical and tactical numbers concerned throughout this short
but momentous Valley Campaign. The strategic numbers are those at
the disposal of the commander within the theater of operations.
The tactical numbers are those actually present on the field of
battle, whether engaged or not. At McDowell the Federals had
30,000 in strategic strength against 17,000 Confederates; yet the
Confederates got 6000 on to the field of battle against no more
than 2500. At Winchester the Federal strategic strength was
60,000 against 16,000; yet the Confederate tactical strength was
every man of the 16,000 against 7500--only one-eighth of Banks's
grand total. At Cross Keys the strategic strengths were 23,000
Federals against 13,000 Confederates; yet 12,750 Federals were
beaten by 8000 Confederates. Finally, at Port Republic, the
Federals, with a strategic strength of 22,000 against the
Confederate 12,700, could only bring a tactical strength of 4500
to bear on 6000 Confederates. The grand aggregate of these four
remarkable actions is well worth adding up. It comes to this in
strategic strength: 135,000 Federals against 58,700 Confederates.
Yet in tactical strength the odds are reversed; for they come to
this: 36,000 Confederates against only 27,250 Federals. Therefore
Stonewall Jackson, with strategic odds of nearly seven to three
against him, managed to fight with tactical odds of four to three
in his favor.


While Jackson was fighting in the Valley the Confederates at
Richmond were watching the nightly glow of Federal camp fires.
McClellan had 30,000 men north of the Chickahominy, waiting for
McDowell to come back from his enterprise against Jackson, and
75,000 south of it. What could the 65,000 Confederates do, except
hold fast to their lines? TO RICHMOND 4 1/2 MILES: so read the
sign-post at the Mechanicsville bridge, and there stood the
nearest Federal picket. Johnston and Lee knew, however, that
McClellan's alarmist detectives swore to a Confederate army three
times its actual strength at this time; and there was reason to
hope that the consequent moral ascendancy would help the shock of
an attack suddenly made on one of McClellan's two wings while the
flooded Chickahominy flowed between them and its oozy swamps
bewildered his staff.

Hearing that McDowell need not be feared, Johnston attacked at
daylight on the thirty-first of May. The battle of Seven Pines
(known also as Fair Oaks) was not unlike Shiloh. The Federals
were taken by surprise on the first day and only succeeded in
holding their own by hard fighting and with a good deal of loss.
A mistake was made by the Confederate division told off for the
attack on the key to the Federal front (an attack which, if
completely successful, would have split the Federals in two) and
the main bodies were engaged before this fatal error could be
rectified. So the surprised Federals gradually recovered from the
first shock and began to feel and use their hitherto unrealized
strength. On the second day (the first of June) Johnston, who had
been severely wounded, was plainly defeated and compelled to fall
back on Richmond again.

On the morrow of this defeat Lee was appointed to "the immediate
command of the armies in eastern Virginia and North Carolina."
Davis was not war statesman enough to make him Commander-in-Chief
till '65--four years too late. Johnston did not reappear till he
tried to relieve Vicksburg from the determined attacks of Grant
in '63.

The twelfth of June will be remembered forever in the annals of
cavalry for Stuart's first great ride round McClellan's host.
With twelve hundred troopers and two horse artillery guns he
stole out beyond the western flank of the Federals and reached
Taylorsville that evening, twenty-two miles north of Richmond.
Next day he rode right in among the Federal posts in rear,
discovering that McClellan's right stretched little north of the
Chickahominy, that it was not fortified, and that it did not rest
on any strong natural feature, such as a swampy stream. This was
exactly the information Lee required. So far, so good. The
Federals met with up to this time had simply been ridden down.
But now the whole country was alarmed and McClellan had forces
out to cut Stuart off on his return, while General Cooke
(Stuart's father-inlaw) began to pursue him from Hanover Court
House.

Then Stuart took the boldest step of all, deciding to go clear
round the rest of the Federal army. At Tunstall's Station on the
York River Railroad he routed the guard, tore up the track,
destroyed the stores and wagons, cut the wires, burnt the bridge,
and replenished his supplies. Thence southeast, by the
Williamsburg road, his column marched under a full summer moon,
the people running out of doors, wild with joy at his daring. At
sunrise he reached the Chickahominy, only to find it flooded,
full of timber, and spanned by nothing better than a broken
bridge. But, using the materials of a warehouse to make a
footway, the troopers crossed in single file, leading their
chargers, which swam. Waving his hand to the Federals, who had
just arrived too late, Stuart pushed on the remaining thirty-five
miles to Richmond, rounding the Federal flank within range of
Federal gunboats on the James.

This magnificent raid not only procured in three days information
that McClellan's civilian detectives could not have procured in
three years but raised Confederate morale and depressed the
Federals correspondingly. Moreover, it drove the first nail into
McClellan's coffin. For in October, just after another Stuart
raid, the following curious incident occurred on board the Martha
Washington when Lincoln was returning from an Alexandria review
which had cheered him up considerably, coming, as it did, after
Lee had failed in Maryland. By way of answering the very
pertinent question--"Mr. President, how about McClellan?"-
-Lincoln simply drew a ring on the deck, quietly adding: "When I
was a boy we used to play a game called 'Three times round and
out.' Stuart has been round McClellan twice. The third time
McClellan will be out."

Stuart rode ahead of his troopers, straight to Lee, who
immediately wrote to Jackson suggesting that the Army of the
Valley, while keeping the Federals alarmed to the last about an
attack on the line of the Potomac, might secretly slip away and
join a combined attack on McClellan. Jackson, who had of course
foreseen this, was ready with every blind known to the art of
war. Even his staff and generals knew nothing of their
destination. The first move was so secret that the enemy never
suspected anything till it was too late, while friends thought
there was to be another surprise in the Valley. The second move
led various people to suspect a march on Washington--no bad news
to leak out; and nothing but misleading items did leak out. The
Army of the Valley moved within a charmed circle of cavalry which
prevented any one from going forward, ahead of the advance, and
swept before it all stragglers through whom the news might leak
out by the rear. On the twenty-third of June, only eight days
after Stuart had reported his raid to Lee, Jackson attended Lee's
conference at the same place, Richmond. The Valley Army was then
on its thirty-mile march from Frederick's Hall to Ashland, where
it arrived on the twenty-fifth, fifteen miles north.

McClellan had over a hundred thousand men. Lee had less than
ninety thousand, even after Jackson had joined him. To attack
McClellan's strongly fortified front, with its almost impregnable
flanks, would have been suicide. But McClellan's farther right,
commanded by that excellent officer, FitzJohn Porter, lay north
of the Chickahominy, with its own right open for junction with
McDowell. So Lee, knowing McClellan and the state of this Federal
right, decided on the twenty-fourth to attack Porter and threaten
McClellan's communications not only with McDowell to the north
but with White House, the Federal base twenty miles northeast.
This was an exceedingly bold move, first, because McClellan had
plenty of men to take Richmond during Lee's march north,
secondly, because it meant the convergence of separate forces on
the field of battle (Jackson being at Ashland, fifteen miles from
Richmond) and, thirdly, because the Confederates were inferior in
armament and in supplies of all kinds as well as in actual
numbers. Magruder, who had held the Yorktown lines so cleverly
with such inferior forces, was to hold Richmond (on both sides of
the James) with thirty-five thousand men against McClellan's
seventy-five thousand, while Lee and Jackson converged on
Porter's twenty-five thousand with over fifty thousand.

Then followed the famous Seven Days, beginning on the
twenty-sixth of June near the signpost at the Mechanicsville
bridge--TO RICHMOND 4 1/2 MILES--and ending at Harrison's Landing
on the second of July. On the twenty-sixth the attack was made
with consummate strategic skill. But it was marred by bad staff
work, by the great obstructions in Jackson's path, and by A.P.
Hill's premature attack with ten thousand men against Porter's
admirable front at Beaver Dam Creek. Hill's men moved down their
own side of the little valley in dense masses till every gun and
rifle on Porter's side was suddenly unmasked. No scythe could
have mowed the leading Confederates better. Two thousand went
down in the first few minutes, and the rest at once retreated.

Porter fell back on Gaines's Mill, where, after being reinforced,
he took up a strong position on the twentyseventh. Again there
was failure in combining the attack. Jackson found obstructions
that even he could not overcome quickly enough. Hill attacked
again with the utmost gallantry, wave after wave of Confederates
rushing forward only to melt away before the concentrated fire of
Porter's reinforced command.

But at last the Confederates--though checked and roughly
handled--converged under Lee's own eye; and an inferno of shot
and shell loosened and shook the steadfast Federal defense. Lee
and Jackson, though far apart, gave the word for the final charge
at almost the same moment. As Jackson's army suddenly burst into
view and swept forward to the assault the joyful news was shouted
down the ranks: "The Valley men are here!" Thereupon Lee's men
took up the double-quick with "Stonewall Jackson! Jackson!
Jackson!" as their battle cry. The Federals fought right
valiantly till their key-point suddenly gave way, smashed in by
weight of numbers; for Lee had brought into action half as many
again as Porter had, even with his reinforcements. On the
gallantly defended hill the long blue lines rocked, reeled, and
broke to right and left all but the steadfast regulars, whose
infantry fell back in perfect order, whose cavalry made a
desperate though futile attempt to stay the rout by charging one
against twenty, and whose four magnificent batteries, splendidly
served to the very last round, retired unbroken with the loss of
only two guns. Then the Confederate colors waved in triumph on
the hard-won crest against the crimson of the setting sun.

The victorious Confederates spent the twentyeighth and
twenty-ninth in finding the way to McClellan's new base. His
absolute control of all the waterways had enabled him to change
his base from White House on the Pamunkey to Harrison's Landing
on the James. When the Confederates discovered his line of
retreat by the Quaker Road they pressed in to cut it. On the
thirtieth there was severe fighting in White Oak Swamp and on
Frayser's Farm. But the Federals passed through, and made a fine
stand on Malvern Hill next day. Finally, when they turned at bay
on the Evelington Heights, which covered Harrison's Landing, they
convinced their pursuers that it would be fatal to attack again;
for now Northern sea-power was visibly present in flotillas of
gunboats, which made the flanks as hopelessly strong as the
front.

McClellan therefore remained safely behind his entrenchments,
with the navy in support. He had to his own credit the strategic
success of having foiled Lee by a clever change of base; and to
the credit of his army stood some first-rate fighting besides
some tactical success, especially at Malvern Hill. Nevertheless
the second invasion of Virginia was plainly a failure; though by
no means a glaring disaster, like the first invasion at Bull Run.

McClellan, again reinforced, still professed his readiness to
take Richmond under conditions that suited himself. But the most
promising Northern force now seemed to be Pope's Army of
Virginia, coming down from the line of the Potomac, forty-seven
thousand strong, composed of excellent material, and heralded by
proclamations which even McClellan could never excel. John Pope,
Halleck's hero of Island Number Ten, came from the West to show
the East how to fight. "I presume that I have been called here to
lead you against the enemy, and that speedily. I hear constantly
of taking strong positions and holding them--of lines of retreat
and bases of supplies. Let us discard such ideas. Let us study
the probable line of retreat of our opponents, and leave our own
to take care of themselves." His Army of Virginia contained
Fremont's (now Sigel's) corps, as well as those of Banks and
McDowell--all experts in the art of "chasing Jackson."

Jackson was soon ready to be chased again. The Confederate
strength had been reduced by the Seven Days and not made good by
reinforcement; so Lee could spare Jackson only twenty-four
thousand men with whom to meet the almost double numbers under
Pope. But Jackson's men had the better morale, not only on
account of their previous service but because of their rage to
beat Pope, who, unlike other Northerners, was enforcing the
harshest rules of war. His lieutenant, General von Steinwehr,
went further, not only seizing prominent civilians as hostages
(to be shot whenever he chose to draw his own distinctions
between Confederate soldiers and guerillas) but giving his German
subordinates a liberty that some of them knew well how to turn
into license. This, of course, was most exceptional; for nearly
all Northerners made war like gentlemen. Unhappily, those who did
not were bad enough and numerous enough to infuriate the South.

Halleck, who had now become chief military adviser to the Union
Government, was as cautious as McClellan and had so little
discernment that he thought Pope a better general than Grant.
Lincoln, Stanton, and Halleck put their heads together; and an
order soon followed which had the effect of relieving the
pressure on Richmond and giving the initiative to Lee. Halleck
ordered McClellan to withdraw from Harrison's Landing, take his
Army of the Potomac round by sea to Aquia Creek, and join Pope on
the Rappahannock--an operation requiring the whole month of
August to complete.

Lee lost no time. His first move was to get Pope's advanced
troops defeated by Jackson, who brought more than double numbers
against Banks at Cedar Run on the ninth of August. The Federals
fought magnificently, nine against twenty thousand men. After the
battle Jackson marched across the Rapidan, and Halleck wisely
forbade Pope from following him, even though the first of
Burnside's men (now the advanced guard of McClellan's army) had
arrived at Aquia and were marching overland to Pope. Then
followed some anxious days at Federal Headquarters. Jackson
vanished; and Pope's cavalry, numerous as it was, wore itself out
trying to find the clue. MeClellan was still busy moving his men
from Harrison's Landing to Fortress Monroe, whence detachments
kept sailing to Aquia. What would Lee do now?

On the thirteenth he began entraining Longstreet's troops for
Gordonsville. On the fifteenth he conferred with his generals.
And on the seventeenth, from the lookout on Clark's Mountain, he
saw Pope's unsuspecting army camped round Slaughter Mountain
within fifteen miles of the united Confederates. Halleck had just
given Pope the fatal order to "fight like the devil" till
McClellan came up. Pope was full of confidence. And there he lay,
in a bad strategic and worse tactical position, and with slightly
inferior numbers, just within reach of Jackson and Lee. Pope was,
however, saved from immediate disaster by an oversight on the
part of Stuart. In ordering Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry brigade to
rendezvous at Verdierville that night Stuart forgot to make the
order urgent and the missing brigade came in late. Stuart,
anxious to see the enemy's position for himself, rode out and was
nearly taken prisoner. His dispatch-box fell into Pope's hands,
with a memorandum of Jackson's reinforcements. Jackson was for
attacking next day in any case and groaned aloud when Lee decided
not to, owing to the failure of cavalry combination in front and
the belated supplies in the rear. Pope retired safely on the
eighteenth, and on the nineteenth a thick haze hid his rear from
Lee's lookout,

Lee was now in a very difficult position, apparently face to face
with what would soon be the joint forces of Pope, McClellan, and
probably another corps from Washington: the whole well fed, well
armed, and certainly more than twice as strong as the united
Confederates. But Jackson and Stuart multiplied their forces by
skillful maneuvers and mystifying raids, and presently Stuart had
his revenge for the affront he had suffered on the seventeenth.
On the tempestuous night of the twentysecond he captured Pope's
dispatches. On the twentyfourth, at Jefferson, Lee and Jackson
discussed the situation with these dispatches before them. Dr.
Hunter McGuire, the Confederate staff-surgeon, noticed that
Jackson was unusually animated, drawing curves in the sand with
the toe of his boot while Lee nodded assent. Perhaps it was
Jackson who suggested the strategic idea of that wonderful last
week in August. However that may have been, Lee alone was
responsible for its adoption and superior direction.

With a marvelous insight into the characters of his opponents, a
consummate knowledge of the science and art of war, and--quite as
important--an exact appreciation of the risks worth running, Lee
actually divided his 55,000 men in face of Pope's 80,000, of
20,000 more at Washington and Aquia, and of 50,000 available
reinforcements. Then, by the well-deserved results obtained, he
became one of the extremely few really great commanders of all
time.

The "bookish theorick" who, with all the facts before him, revels
in the fond delights of retrospective prophecy, will never
understand how Lee succeeded in this enterprise, except by sheer
good luck. Only those who themselves have groped their perilous
way through the dense, distorting fog of war can understand the
application of that knowledge, genius, and character for war
which so rarely unite in one man.

Lee sent Jackson north, to march at utmost speed under cover of
the Bull Run Mountains, to cross them at Thoroughfare Gap, and to
cut Pope's line at Manassas, where the enormous Federal field
base had been established. Unknown to Pope, Longstreet then
slipped into Jackson's place, so as to keep Pope in play till the
raid on Manassas and threat against Washington would draw him
northeast, away from McClellan at Aquia. The final move of this
profound, though very daring, plan was to take advantage of the
Federal distractions and consequent dispersions so as to effect a
junction on the field of battle against a conquerable force.

Jackson moved off by the first gray streak of dawn on the
twenty-fifth, and that day made good the six-and-twenty miles to
Salem Church. Screened by Stuart's cavalry, and marching through
a country of devoted friends on such an errand as a commonplace
general would never suspect, Jackson stole this march on Pope in
perfect safety. The next day's march was far more dangerous.
Roused while the stars were shining the men moved off in even
greater wonder as to their destination. But when the first flush
of dawn revealed the Bull Run Mountains, with the wellknown
Thoroughfare Gap straight to their front, they at once divined
their part of Lee's stupendous plan: a giant raid on Manassas,
the Federal base of superabundant supplies. The news ran down the
miles of men, and with it the thrill that presaged victory. Mile
after mile was gained, almost in dead silence, except for the
clank of harness, the rumble of wheels, the running beat of
hoofs, and that long, low, ceaselessly rippling sound of
multitudinous men's feet. Hungry, ill-clad, and worn to their
last spare ounce, the gaunt gray ranks strained forward, slipped
from their leash at last and almost in sight of their prey. So
far they were undiscovered. But the Gap was only ten miles by
airline from Pope's extreme right, and the tell-tale cloud of
dust, floating down the mountain side above them, must soon be
sighted, signaled, noted, and attended to. Only speed, the speed
of "foot-cavalry," could now prevail, and not a man must be an
inch behind. CLOSE UP, MEN, CLOSE UP!--CLOSE UP THERE IN
REAR!--CLOSE UP! CLOSE UP!

By noon the head of the column had already crossed those same
communications which Pope had told his army to disregard in favor
of the much more interesting enemy line of retreat. Little did he
think that the man he had come to chase was about to burn the
bridge at Bristoe Station and thus cut the line between the
Federal front at Warrenton and the Federal base at Manassas. All
went well with Jackson, except that some news escaped to
Washington and Warrenton sooner than he expected. A Federal train
dashed on to Washington before the rails could be torn up. The
next two trains were both derailed and wrecked. But the fourth
put all brakes down and speeded back to Warrenton. Jackson
quickly took up a very strong position on the north side of Broad
Run, behind the burnt railway bridge, and sent Stuart's troopers
with two battalions of "foot-cavalry" to raid the base at
Manassas, replenish the exhausted Confederate supplies, and do
the northward scouting.

The situation of the rival armies on the night of the
twentyseventh forms one of the curiosities of war. Jackson was
concentrating round Manassas Junction. Lee was following
Jackson's line of march, but was still beyond Thoroughfare Gap.
Between them stood part of Pope's army, the whole of which
occupied an irregular quadrilateral formed by lines joining the
following points: Warrenton Junction, Bristoe Station,
Gainesville, and Thoroughfare Gap. Thirty miles northeast were
the twenty thousand Federals who joined Pope too late. Thirty
miles southeast the rear of McClellan's forces were still massing
at Aquia. In Pope's opinion Jackson was clearly trapped and Lee
cut off.

But when Pope began to close his cumbrous net the following day
Jackson had disappeared again. Orders and counter-orders
thereupon succeeded each other in bewildering confusion.
McClellan could be left out: and a very good thing too, thought
Pope, who wanted the victory all to himself, and whose own army
greatly outnumbered Lee's and Jackson's put together. But
Washington was nervous again; it contained the reinforcements;
and it had suddenly become indispensable to Pope as an immediate
base of supplies now that the base at Manassas had been so
completely destroyed. Pope's troops therefore mostly drew east
during the twentyeighth, forming by nightfall a long irregular
line, facing west, with its right beyond Centreville and its
extreme left held by Banks's mauled divisions south of Catlett's
Station. Meanwhile Jackson had slipped into place in the curve of
Bull Run, facing southeast, with his left near Stone Bridge, his
back to Sudley Springs, and his right open to junction with Lee,
who was waiting for daylight to force the Gap against the single
division left there on guard.

During the afternoon, while Jackson's tired men were lying sound
asleep in their ranks, Jackson himself was roused to see captured
orders which showed that some Federals were crossing his front.
Reading these orders to his divisional commanders he immediately
ordered one to attack and another to support. If the Federals
concerned were exposing an unguarded flank they should be
attacked at a disadvantage. If they were screening larger forces
trying to join the reinforcements from Washington or Aquia, then
they should be attacked so as to distract Pope's attention and
draw him on before the Federal union became complete, though not
before Lee had reached the new Bull Run position the following
day. The attack was consequently made from the woods around
Groveton not too long before dark. It resulted in a desperate
frontal fight, neither side knowing what the other had in its
rear or on its flanks. Again the Federals were outnumbered:
twenty-eight against forty-five hundred men in action. But again
they fought with the utmost resolution and drew off in good
order. The strategic advantage, however, was wholly Confederate;
for Pope, who thought Jackson must now be falling back to the
Gap, at once began confusedly trying to concentrate for pursuit
on the twenty-ninth--the very thing that suited Lee and Jackson
best.

Early that morning the two-days' Battle of Second Manassas (or
Second Bull Run) began with Pope's absurd attempt to pursue an
army drawn up in line of battle. Moreover, Jackson's position was
not only strong in itself but well adapted for giving attackers a
shattering surprise. The left rested on Bull Run at Sudley Ford.
The center occupied the edge of the flat-topped Stony Ridge. A
quarter-mile in front of it, and some way lower down, were the
embankments and cuttings of an unfinished railroad. On the right
was Stuart's Hill, where Lee was to join by sending Longstreet
in. The approaches in rear were hidden from the eyes of an enemy
in front. The cuttings and embankments made excellent field works
for the defense. And the forward edge of the Ridge was wooded
enough to let counter-attackers mass under cover and then run
down to surprise the attackers by manning the cuttings and
embankments.

Sigel's Germans, supported by the splendid Pennsylvanians under
Reynolds, advanced from the Henry Hill to hold Jackson till Pope
could come up and finish him. The numbers were about even, with
slight odds in favor of Jackson. But the shock was delivered
piecemeal. Each part was roughly handled and driven back in
disorder. And by the time Reynolds had come to the front Lee's
advanced guard was arriving. Then eighteen thousand Federals
marched in from Centreville under Reno, Kearny, and "fighting Joe
Hooker," of whom we shall hear again. Pope came up in person with
the rest of his available command, rode along his line, and
explained the situation as founded on his ignorance and colored
by his fancy. At this very moment Longstreet came up on Jackson's
right. Reynolds went into action against what he thought was
Jackson's extended right but what was really Longstreet's left.
Meanwhile the Centreville troops attacked near Bull Run. But that
dashing commander, Philip Kearny, was held up by Jackson's
concentrated guns; so Hooker and Reno advanced alone, straight
for the railroad line. The Confederates behind it poured in a
tremendous hail of bullets, and the long dry grass caught fire.
But nothing stopped Hooker till bayonets were crossed on the
rails and the Confederate line was broken. Then the Confederate
reserves charged in and drove the Federals back. No sooner was
this seen than, with a burst of cheering, another blue line
surged forward. Again the Confederate front was broken, but again
their reserves drove back the Federals. And so the fight went on,
with stroke and counterstroke, till, at a quarter past five,
twelve hours after Pope's first men had started from the Henry
Hill, his thirty thousand attackers found themselves unable to
break through.

Pope wished to make one more effort to round up Jackson's
supposedly open right. But Porter quite properly sent back word
that it was far too strong for his own ten thousand. In reply
Pope angrily ordered an immediate attack. But it was now too
dark, and the battle ended for the day.

Strangely enough, Lee was also having trouble with his
subordinate on the same flank at the same time, but with this
difference, that Porter was right while Longstreet was wrong. Lee
saw his chance of rolling up Pope's left and ordered Longstreet
to do it. But, after reconnoitering the ground, Longstreet came
back to say the chance was "not inviting." Again Lee ordered an
attack. But Longstreet wasted time, looking for needlessly
favorable ground till long after dark. Meanwhile the Federals
were also feeling their way forward over the same ground to get
into a good flanking position for next day's battle. So the two
sides met; and it was past midnight when Longstreet settled down.
Lee wanted a sword thrust. Longstreet gave a pin prick. We shall
meet Longstreet again, in the same character of obstructive
subordinate, at Gettysburg. But he was, for the most part, a very
good officer indeed; and the South, with its scanty supply of
trained leaders, could not afford to make changes like the North.
The fault, too, was partly Lee's; for his one weak point with
good but wayward subordinates was a tendency to let his sensitive
consideration for their feelings overcome his sterner insight
into their defects.

At noon on the fatal thirtieth of August, Pope, selfdeluded and
self-sufficient as before, dismayed his best officers by ordering
his sixty-five thousand men to be "immediately thrown forward in
pursuit of the enemy, "whose own fifty thousand were now far
readier than on the previous day.

Then the dense blue masses marched to their doom. Twenty thousand
bayonets shone together from Groveton to Bull Run. Forty thousand
more supported them on the slopes in rear, while every Federal
gun thundered forth protectingly from the heights behind. The
Confederate batteries were pointed out as the objective of
attack. Not one glint of steel appeared between these batteries
and the glittering Federal host. To the men in the ranks and to
Pope himself victory seemed assured. But no sooner had that brave
array come within rifle range of the deserted railroad line than,
high and clear, the Confederate bugles called along the hidden
edges of the flat-topped Ridge; when instantly the great gray
host broke cover, ran forward as one man, and held the whole
embankment with a line of fire and steel.

A shock of sheer amazement ran through the Federal mass. Then,
knightly as any hero of romance, a mounted officer rode out
alone, in front of the center, and, with his sword held high,
continued leading the advance, which itself went on undaunted.
The Confederate flank batteries crossed their fire on this
devoted center. Bayonets flashed out of line in hundreds as their
owners fell. Colors were cut down, raised high, cut down again.
But still that gallant horse and man went on, unswerving and
untouched. Even the sweeping volleys spared them both, though
now, as the Federals closed, these volleys cut down more men than
the cross-fire of the guns. At last the unscathed hero waved his
sword and rode straight up the deadly embankment, followed by the
charging line. "Don't kill him! Don't kill him!" shouted the
admiring Confederates as his splendid figure stood, one glorious
moment, on the top. The next, both horse and man sank wounded,
and were at once put under cover by their generous foes.

For thirty-five dire minutes the fight raged face to face. One
Federal color rose, fell, and rose again as fast as living hands
could take it from the dead. Over a hundred men lay round it when
the few survivors drew back to re-form. Pope fed his front line
with reserves, who advanced with the same undaunted gallantry,
but also with the same result. As if to make this same result
more sure he never tried to win by one combined assault, wave
after crashing wave, without allowing the defense to get its
second wind; but let each unit taste defeat before the next came
on. Federal bravery remained. But Federal morale was rapidly
disintegrating under the palpable errors of Pope. Misguided,
misled, and mishandled, the blue lines still fought on till four,
by which time every corps, division, and brigade had failed
entirely.

Then, at the perfect moment and in the perfect way, Lee's
counterstroke was made: the beaten Federals being assailed in
flank as well as front by every sword, gun, bayonet, and bullet
that could possibly be brought to bear. Only the batteries
remained on the ridge, firing furiously till the Federals were
driven out of range. The infantry and cavalry were sent in--wave
after wave of them, without respite, till the last had hurled
destruction on the foe.

As at the First Bull Run, so here, the regulars fell back in good
order, fighting to the very end. But the rest of Pope's Army of
Virginia was no longer an organized unit. Even strong
reinforcements could do nothing for it now. On the second of
September, three days after the battle, its arrival at
Washington, heralded by thousands of weary stragglers, threw the
whole Union into gloom.


The first counter-invasion naturally followed. Southern hopes ran
high. Bragg's invasion of Kentucky seemed to be succeeding at
this time. The trans-Mississippi line still held at Vicksburg and
Port Hudson. Richmond had been saved. Washington was menaced. And
most people on both sides thought so much more of the land than
of the sea that the Federal victories along the coast and up the
Mississippi were half forgotten for the time being; and so was
the strangling blockade. Lee, of course, saw the situation as a
whole; and, as a whole, it was far from bright. But though the
counter-invasion was now a year too late it seemed worth making.
Maryland was full of Southern sympathizers; and campaigning there
would give Virginia a chance to recuperate, while also preventing
the North from recovering too quickly from its last reverse. Thus
it was with great expectations that the Confederates crossed the
Potomac singing "Maryland, my Maryland!"

But Maryland did not respond to this appeal. The women, it is
true, were mostly Southern to the core and ready to serve the
Confederate cause in every way they could. But the men,
reflecting more, knew they were in the grip of Northern seapower.
Nor could they fail to notice the vast difference between the
warlike resources of the North and South. Northern armies had
been marching through for many months, well fed, well armed, and
superabundantly supplied. The Confederates, on the other hand,
were fewer in numbers, half starved, in ragged clothing, less
well armed, and far less abundantly supplied in every way. A
Northerner who fell sick could generally count on the best of
medical care, not to mention a profusion of medical comforts. But
the blockade kept medicines and surgical instruments out of the
Southern ports; and the South could make few of her own. So, to
be very sick or badly wounded meant almost a sentence of death in
the South. Eighteen months of war had disillusioned Maryland. The
expected reinforcements never came.

Lee had again divided his army in the hope of snatching victory
by means of better strategy. On the thirteenth of September
Jackson was bombarding the Federals at Harper's Ferry, Longstreet
was at Hagerstown, and Stuart was holding the gaps of South
Mountain.

The same day McClellan, whose whole army was at Frederick,
received a copy of Lee's orders. They had been wrapped round
three cigars and lost by a careless Confederate staff officer.
Had McClellan forced the gaps immediately, maneuvered with
reasonable skill, and struck home with every available man, he
might have annihilated Lee. But he let the thirteenth pass
quietly; and when he did take the passes on the fourteenth it
cost him a good deal, as the Confederate infantry had reinforced
Stuart. On the fifteenth Jackson took Harper's Ferry. On the
sixteenth he joined Lee at Antietam. And on the seventeenth, when
the remaining availables had also joined Lee, McClellan made up
his mind to attack. "Ask me for anything but time," said the real
Napoleon. The "Young Napoleon" did not even need the asking.

Antietam (so called from the Antietam Creek) or Sharpsburg (so
called from the Confederate headquarters there) was one of the
biggest battles of the Civil War; and it might possibly have been
the most momentous. But, as things turned out, it was in itself
an indecisive action, spoilt for the Federals, first, by
McClellan's hesitating strategy, and then by his failure to press
the attack home at all costs, with every available man, in an
unbroken succession of assaults. He had over 80,000 men with 275
guns against barely 40,000 with 194 guns of inferior strength.
But though the Federals fought with magnificent devotion, and
though the losses were very serious on both sides, the tactical
result was a mutual checkmate. The strategic result, however, was
a Confederate defeat; for, with his few worn veterans, Lee had no
chance whatever of keeping his precarious hold on a neutral
Maryland.

October was a quiet month, each side reorganizing without much
interference from the other, except for Stuart's second raid
round the whole embattled army of McClellan. This time Stuart
took nearly two thousand men and four horse artillery guns.
Crossing the Potomac at McCoy's Ford on the tenth he reached
Chambersburg that night, destroyed the Federal stores, took all
the prisoners he wanted, cut the wires, obstructed the rails, and
went on with hundreds of Federal horses. Next day he circled the
Federal rear toward Gettysburg, turned south through Emmitsburg,
and crossed McClellan's line of communications with Washington at
Hyattstown early on the twelfth. By this time the Federal cavalry
were riding themselves to exhaustion in vain pursuit; while many
other forces were trying to close in and cut him off. But he
reached the mouth of the Monocacy and crossed White's Ford in
safety, fighting off all interference. The information he brought
back was of priceless value. Lee now learned that McClellan was
not falling back on Washington but being reinforced from there,
and that consequently no new Peninsula Campaign was to be feared
at present. This alone was worth the effort, risk, and negligible
loss. Stuart had marched a hundred and twenty-six miles on the
Federal side of the Potomac--eighty of them without a single
halt; and he had been fifty-six hours inside the Federal lines,
mostly within four riding hours of McClellan's own headquarters.

This second stinging raid roused the loyal North to fury; and by
November a new invasion of Virginia was in full swing on the old
ground, with McClellan at Warrenton, Lee at Culpeper, and Jackson
in the Valley.

But McClellan's own last chance had gone. Late at night on the
seventh he was sitting alone in his tent, writing to his wife,
when Burnside asked if he could come in with General C.P.
Buckingham, the confidential staff officer to the War Department.
After some forced conversation Buckingham handed McClellan a
paper ordering his supersession by Burnside. McClellan simply
said: "Well, Burnside, I turn the command over to you." The
eighth and ninth were spent in handing over; and on the tenth
McClellan made his official farewell. Next day he was entraining
at Warrenton Junction when the men, among whom he was immensely
popular, broke ranks and swarmed round his car, cursing the
Government and swearing they would follow no one but their "Old
Commander." McClellan, with all his faults in the field, was a
good organizer, an extremely able engineer, a very brave soldier,
a very sympathetic comrade in arms, and a regular father to his
men, whose personal interests were always his first care. The
moment was critical. McClellan, had he chosen, might have
imitated the Roman generals who led the revolts of Praetorian
Guards. But he stepped out on the front platform of the car, held
up his hand, and, amid tense silence, asked the men to "stand by
General Burnside as you have stood by me." The car they had
uncoupled to prevent his departure was run up and coupled again;
and then, amid cheers of mournful farewell, they let him go.

General Ambrose E. Burnside was expected to smash Lee, take
Richmond, and end the war at once. He was a good subordinate, but
quite unfit for supreme command, which he accepted only under
protest. Moreover, he was not supported as he should have been by
the War Department, nor even by the Headquarter Staff. While
changing his position from Warrenton to Fredericksburg he was
hampered by avoidable delays. So when he reached Falmouth he
found Lee had forestalled him on the opposing heights of
Fredericksburg itself.

The disastrous thirteenth of December was dull, calm, and misty.
But presently the sun shone down with unwonted warmth; the mists
rolled up like curtains; and there stood 200,000 men, arrayed in
order of battle: 80,000 Confederates awaiting the onslaught of
120,000 Federals.

On came the solid masses of the Federals, eighty thousand strong,
with forty in support, amid the thunder of five hundred attacking
and defending guns. The sunlight played upon the rising tide of
Federal bayonets as on sea currents when they turn inshore. The
colors waved proudly as ever; and to the outward eye the attack
seemed almost strong enough to drive the stern and silent gray
Confederates clear off the crest. But the indispensable morale
was wanting. For this was the end of a long campaign, full of
drawn battles and terrible defeats. Burnside was an unpopular
substitute for McClellan; he was not in any way a great
commander; and he was acting under pressure against his own best
judgment. His army knew or felt all this; and he knew they knew
or felt it. The Federals, for all their glorious courage, felt,
when the two fronts met at Fredericksburg, that they were no more
than sacrificial pawns in the grim game of war. After much
useless slaughter they reeled back beaten. But they could and did
retire in safety, skillfully "staffed" by their leaders and close
to their unconquerable sea.

Lee could make no counterstroke. The Confederate Government had
not dared to let him occupy the far better position on the line
of the North Anna, from which a vigorous counterstroke might have
almost annihilated a beaten attacker, who would have been exposed
on both flanks, beyond the sure protection of the sea. Thus fear
of an outcry against "abandoning" the country between
Fredericksburg and the North Anna caused the Southern politicians
to lose their chance at home. But without a decisive victory they
could not hope for foreign intervention. So losing their chance
at home made them lose it abroad as well.

Burnside was dazed by his defeat and the appalling loss of life
in vain. But after five weeks of most discouraging inaction he
tried to surprise Lee by crossing the Rappahannock several miles
higher up. On the twentieth and twenty-first of that miserable
January the Federal army ploughed its dreary way through sloughs
of gluey mud under torrents of chilling rain. Then, when the pace
had slackened to a funereal crawl, and the absurdly little chance
of surprising Lee had vanished altogether, this despairing "Mud
March" came to its wretched end. Four days later Burnside was
superseded by one of his own subordinates, General Joseph Hooker,
known to all ranks as "Fighting Joe Hooker."


Fredericksburg, the spell of relaxing winter quarters beside the
fatal Rappahannock, and then the fatal "Mud March," combined to
lower Federal morale. Yet the mass of the men, being composed of
fine human material, quickly recovered under "Fighting Joe
Hooker," who knew what discipline meant. Numbers and discipline
tell. But disciplined numbers were not the only or even the
greatest menace to the South. For here, as farther west, the
Confederate Government was beginning to be foolish just as the
Federal Government showed signs of growing wise. Lincoln and
Stanton were giving Joe Hooker a fairly free hand just when Davis
and Seddon (his makeshift minister of war) were using Confederate
forces as puppets to be pulled about by Cabinet strings from
Richmond. Here again (as later on at Chattanooga) Longstreet was
sent away on a useless errand just when he was needed most by
Lee. Good soldier though he was in many ways he was no such man
as Stonewall Jackson; and, in this one year, he failed his
seniors thrice.

It is true enough that the April situation of 1863 might well
shake governmental nerves; for Richmond was being menaced from
three points north, southeast, and south: Fredericksburg due
north, Suffolk southeast, Newbern south. Newbern in North
Carolina was a long way off. But its possession by an active
enemy threatened the rail connection from Richmond south to
Wilmington, Charleston, and Savannah, the only three Atlantic
ports through which the South could get supplies from overseas.
Suffolk was nearer. It covered the landward side of Norfolk,
which, with Fortress Monroe, might become the base of a new
Peninsula Campaign. But Fredericksburg was nearest; nearest to
Richmond, nearest to Washington, nearest to the main Southern
force; and not only nearest but strongest, in every way strongest
and most to be feared. "Fighting Joe Hooker" was there, with a
hundred and thirty thousand men, already stirring for the spring
campaign that was to wipe out memories of Fredericksburg, make
short work of Lee, and end the war at Richmond.

Yet Longstreet cheerfully marched off, pleased with his new
command, to see what he could do to soothe the Government by
winning laurels for himself at Suffolk. On the seventeenth, just
two weeks before the supreme test came on Lee's weakened army at
Chancellorsville, Longstreet reported to Seddon that Suffolk
would cost three thousand men, if taken by assault, or three
days' heavy firing if subdued by bombardment. Shrinking from such
expenditure of life or ammunition, Davis, Seddon, and Longstreet
fell back on a siege, which, preventing all junction with Lee,
might well have cost the ruin of their cause.

Lee and Jackson then prepared to make the best of a bad business
along the Rappahannock, and to snatch victory once more, if
possible, from the very jaws of death. The prospect was grimmer
than before. Hooker was a better fighter than McClellan and wiser
than Burnside or Pope. Moreover, after two years of war, the
Union Government had at last found out that civilian detectives
knew less about armies than expert staff officers know, and that
cavalry which was something more than mere men on horses could
collect a little information too. Hooker knew Lee's strength as
well as his own. So he decided to hold Lee fast with one part of
the big Federal army, turn his flank with another, and cut his
line of supply and retreat with Stoneman's ten thousand sabers as
well. The respective grand totals were 130,000 Federals against
62,000 Confederates.

So far, so good; so very good indeed that Hooker and his staff
were as nearly free from care on May Day as headquarter men can
ever be in the midst of vital operations. Hooker had just reason
to be proud of the Army of the Potomac and of his own work in
reviving it. He had, indeed, issued one bombastic order of the
day in which he called it "the finest on the planet." But even
this might be excused in view of the popular call for encouraging
words. What was more to the point was the reestablishment of
Federal morale, which had been terribly shaken after the great
Mud March. Hooker's sworn evidence (as given in the official
"Report of Committee on the Conduct of the War") speaks for
itself: "The moment I was placed in command I caused a return to
be made of the absentees of the army, and found the number to be
2922 commissioned officers and 81,964 non-commissioned officers
and privates. They were scattered all over the country, and the
majority were absent from causes unknown."

On the twenty-eighth of April Stuart saw the redisciplined
Federals in motion far up the Rappahannock, while next day
Jackson saw others laying pontoons thirty miles lower down, just
on the seaward side of Fredericksburg. Lee took this news with
genial calm, remarking to the aide: "Well, I heard firing and was
beginning to think it was time some of your lazy young fellows
were coming to tell me what it was about. Tell your good general
he knows what to do with the enemy just as well as I do." On the
thirtieth it became quite clear that Hooker was bent on turning
Lee's left and that he had divided his army to do so. Jackson
wished to attack Sedgwick's 35,000 Federals still on the plains
of Fredericksburg. But Lee convinced him that the better way
would be to hold these men with 10,000 Confederates in the
fortified position on the confronting heights while the remaining
52,000 should try to catch Hooker himself between the jaws of a
trap in the forest round Chancellorsville, where the Federal
masses would be far more likely to get out of hand. It was an
extremely daring maneuver to be setting this trap when Sedgwick
had enough men to storm the heights of Fredericksburg, when
Stoneman was on the line of communication with the south, and
when Hooker himself, with superior numbers, was gaining Lee's
rear. But Lee had Jackson as his lieutenant, not Longstreet, as
he was to have at Gettysburg.

Hooker's movements were rapid, well arranged, and admirably
executed up to the evening of the first of May, when, finding
those of the enemy very puzzling among the dense woods, he chose
the worst of three alternatives. The first and best, an immediate
counter-attack, would have kept up his army's morale and, if well
executed, revealed his own greater strength. The second, a
continued advance till he reached clearer ground, might have
succeeded or not. The third and worst was to stand on his
defense, a plan which, however sound in other places, was fatal
here, because it not only depressed the spirits of his army but
gave two men of genius the initiative against him in a country
where they were at home and he was not. The absence of ten
thousand cavalry baffled his efforts to get trustworthy
information on the ground, while the dense woods baffled his
balloons from above. On the second of May he still thought the
initiative was his, that the Confederates were retreating, and
that his own jaws were closing on them instead of theirs on him.

Meanwhile, owing to miscalculations of the space that had to be
held in force, his right was not only thrown forward too far but
presented a flank in the air. This was the flank round which
Stonewall Jackson maneuvered with such consummate skill that it
was taken on three sides and rolled up in fatal confusion. Its
commander, the very capable General O.O. Howard, who perceived
the mistake he could not correct, tried hard to stay the rout.
But, as his whole reserve had been withdrawn by Hooker to join an
attack elsewhere, his lines simply melted away. The three days'
battle that followed (ending on the fifth of May) was bravely
fought by the bewildered Federals. Yet all in vain. Hooker was
caught like a bull in a net; and the more he struggled the worse
it became. At 6 P.M.. on the second the cunning trap was sprung
when a single Confederate bugle rang out. Instantly other bugles
repeated the call at regular intervals through miles of forest.
Then, high and clear on the silent air of that calm May evening,
the rebel yell rose like the baying of innumerable hounds, hot on
the scent of their quarry, with Jackson leading on. Nothing could
stop the eager gray lines, wave after wave of them pressing
through the woods; not even the gallant fifty guns that fought
with desperation in defense of Hazel Grove, where Hooker was
rallying his men.

For two days more the tide of battle ebbed and flowed; but always
against the Federals in the end, till, broken, bewildered, and
disheartened, they retired as best they could. Lee was unable to
pursue. Longstreet's men were still missing; and so were many
supplies that should have been forwarded from Richmond. There the
Government clung to the fond belief that this mere victory had
won the war, and that pursuit was useless. Thus Lee's last chance
of crushing the invaders was taken from him by his friends.

At the same time the Southern cause suffered another irreparable
loss; but in this case at the purely accidental hands of Southern
men. Jackson's staff, suddenly emerging from a thicket as the
first night closed in, was mistaken for Federal cavalry and shot
down. Jackson himself was badly wounded in three places and
carried from the field. He never heard the rebel yell again. Next
Sunday, when the staff-surgeon told him that he could not
possibly live through the night, he simply answered: "Very good,
very good; it is all right." Presently he asked Major Pendleton
what chaplain was preaching at headquarters. "Mr. Lacy, sir; and
the whole army is praying for you." "Thank God," said Jackson,
"they are very kind to me." A little later, rousing himself as if
from sleep, he called out: "Order A.P. Hill to prepare for
action! Pass the infantry to the front! Tell Major Hawks--" There
his strength failed him. But after a pause he said quietly, "Let
us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees."
And with these words he died.



CHAPTER VII. GRANT WINS THE RIVER WAR: 1863

We have seen already how the River War of '89 ended in a double
failure of the Federal advance on Vicksburg: how Grant and
Sherman, aided by the flanking force from Helena in Arkansas,
failed to catch Pemberton along the Tallahatchie; and then how
Sherman alone, moving down the Mississippi, was defeated by
Pemberton at Chickasaw Bayou, just outside of Vicksburg.

Leaving Memphis for good, Grant took command in the field again
on the thirtieth of January. His army was strung out along
seventy miles of the Mississippi just north of Vicksburg, so hard
was it to find enough firm ground. The first important move was
made when, in Grant's own words, "the entire Army of the
Tennessee was transferred to the neighborhood of Vicksburg and
landed on the opposite or western bank of the river at Milliken's
Bend."

Grant, everywhere in touch with Admiral D. D. Porter's fleet and
plentifully supplied with water transport of all kinds, thus
commanded the peninsula or tongue of low land-round which the
mighty river took its course in the form of an elongated U right
opposite Vicksburg. His farthest north base was still at Cairo;
and the whole line of the Mississippi above him was effectively
held by Union forces afloat and ashore. Four hundred miles south
lay Farragut and Banks, preparing for an attack on Port Hudson
and intent on making junction with the Union forces above.

Two bad generals stood very much in Grant's way, one on either
side of him in rank--McClernand, his own second-in-command, and
Banks, his only senior in the Mississippi area. McClernand
presently found rope enough to hang himself. Our old friend
Banks, who had not yet learnt the elements of war, though
schooled by Stonewall Jackson, never got beyond Port Hudson, and
so could not spoil Grant's command in addition to his own.
Fortunately, besides Sherman and other professional soldiers of
quite exceptional ability, Grant had three of the best generals
who ever came from civil life: Logan, Blair, and Crocker. Logan
shed all the vices, while keeping all the virtues, of the lawyer
when he took up arms. Blair knew how to be one man as an
ambitious politician and another as a general in the field.
Crocker was in consumption, but determined to die in his boots
and do his military best for the Union service first. The
personnel of the army was mostly excellent all through. The men
were both hardy and handy as a rule, being to a large extent
farmers, teamsters, railroad and steamboat men, well fitted to
meet the emergencies of the severe and intricate Vicksburg
campaign.

Throughout this campaign the army and navy of the Union worked
together as a single amphibious force. Grant's own words are no
mere compliment, but the sober statement of a fact. "The navy,
under Porter, was all it could be during the entire campaign.
Without its assistance the campaign could not have been
successfully made with twice the number of men engaged. It could
not have been made at all, in the way it was, with any number of
men, without such assistance. The most perfect harmony reigned
between the two arms of the Service. There never was a request
made, that I am aware of, either of the Flag-Officer or any of
his subordinates, that was not promptly complied with." And what
is true of Porter is at least as true of Farragut, who was the
greater man and the senior of every one afloat.

Grant could take Vicksburg only by reaching good ground, and the
only good ground was below and in rear of the fortress. There was
no foothold for his army on the east bank of the Mississippi
anywhere between Memphis and Vicksburg. This meant that he must
either start afresh from Memphis and try again to push overland
by rail or cross the swampy peninsula in front of him and circle
round his enemy. A retirement on Memphis, no matter how wise,
would look like another great Union defeat and consequently lower
a public morale which, depressed enough by Fredericksburg, was
being kept down by the constant naval reverses that opened '63.
Circling the front was therefore very much to be preferred from
the political point of view. On the other hand, it was beset by
many alarming difficulties; for it meant starting from the
flooded Mississippi and working through the waterlogged lowlands,
across the peninsula, till a foothold could be seized on the
eastern bank below Vicksburg. Moreover, this circling attack,
though feasible, might depress the morale of the troops by the
way. Burnside's disastrous "Mud March" through the January
sloughs of Virginia, made in the vain hope of outflanking Lee,
had lowered the morale of the army almost as much as
Fredericksburg itself had lowered the morale of the people.

Through the depth of winter the army toiled "in ineffectual
efforts," says Grant, "to reach high land above Vicksburg from
which we could operate against that stronghold, and in making
artificial waterways through which a fleet might pass, avoiding
the batteries to the south of the town, in case the other efforts
should fail." A wetter winter had never been known. The whole
complicated network of bends and bayous, of creeks, streams,
runs, and tributary rivers, was overflowing the few slimy trails
through the spongy forest and threatening the neglected levees
which still held back the encroaching waters. There was nothing
to do, however, but to keep the men busy and the enemy confused
by trying first one line and then another for two weary months.
By April, writes Grant, "the waters of the Mississippi having
receded sufficiently to make it possible to march an army across
the peninsula opposite Vicksburg, I determined to adopt this
course, and moved my advance to a point below the town."

Meanwhile, far below, Farragut and Banks were at work round Port
Hudson: Farragut to good effect; Banks as usual. On the
fourteenth of March Farragut started up the river with seven
men-of-war and wanted the troops to make a demonstration against
Port Hudson from the rear while the fleet worked its way past the
front. But, just as Farragut was weighing anchor, Banks, who had
had ample time for preparation, sent word to say he was still
five miles from Port Hudson. "He'd as well beat New Orleans,"
muttered Farragut, "for all the good he's doing us."

Six of the vessels were lashed together in pairs, the heavier
ones next the enemy, the lighter ones secured well aft so as to
mask the fewest guns. This arrangement also gave each pair the
advantage of having twin screws. Farragut's flagship, the
Hartford, leading the line-ahead, suffered least from the dense
smoke on that damp, calm, moonless night. But the others were
soon groping blindly up the tortuous channel. The Hartford
herself took the ground for a critical moment. But, with her own
screw going ahead and that of the Albatross going astern, she
drew clear and won through. Not so, however, the other five
ships. Only the Hartford and Albatross reached the Red River. Yet
even this was of great importance, as it completely cut off Port
Hudson from all chance of relief. Farragut went on up the
Mississippi to see Grant, destroying all riverside stores on the
way. Grant was delighted, and, in the absence of Porter, who was
up the Yazoo, sent Farragut an Ellet ram and some sorely needed
coal.

Grant's seventh (and frst successful) effort to get a foothold
(from which to carry out one of the boldest and most brilliant
operations recorded in the history of war) began with a naval
operation on the sixteenth of April, when Porter ran past the
Vicksburg batteries by night. Though Porter had the four-knot
current in his favor he needed all his skill and moral courage to
take a regular flotilla round the elongated U made by the
Mississippi at Vicksburg, with such a bend as to keep vessels
under more or less distant fire for five miles, aid under much
closer fire for nearly nine. At the bend the vessels could be
caught end-on. For nearly five miles after that they were subject
to a plunging fire. Porter led the way on board the flagship
Benton. He had seven ironclads, of which three were larger
vessels and four were gunboats built by Eads, a naval constructor
with orignal ideas and great executive ability. One ram and three
transports followed. Coal barges were lashed alongside or taken
in tow. Some of these were lost and one transport was sunk. But
the rest got through, though not unscathed. It seemed like a
miracle to the tense spectators that any flotilla should survive
this dash down a river of death flowing through a furnace. But
the ironclads, magnificently handled, stood up to their work
unflinchingly, fired back with regulated vigor, and took their
terrific pounding without one vital wound.

Porter presently relieved Farragut, who went back to New Orleans.
From this time, till after the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson,
Porter commanded three flotillas, each with a base of its own:
first, a flotilla remaining north of Vicksburg for work on the
Yazoo; secondly, the main body between Vicksburg and Grand Gulf;
thirdly, the Red River flotilla. This combined naval force
commanded all lines of communication north, south, and west of
Vicksburg, thus enabling Grant to concentrate entirely against
the eastern side.

On the thirtieth of April Grant landed with twenty thousand men
at Bruinsburg, on the east side of the Mississippi, about sixty
miles below Vicksburg. A week later Sherman reinforced him to
thirty-three thousand. Before the fall of Vicksburg his total
strength reached seventy-five thousand. The Confederate total
also fluctuated; but not so much. There were about sixty thousand
Confederates in the whole strategic area between Vicksburg and
Jackson (fifty miles east) when Grant made his first daring move,
and about the same when Vicksburg surrendered. The scene of
action was almost triangular; for it lay between the three lines
joining Jackson, Haynes's Bluff, Rodney, and Jackson again. The
respective lengths of these straight lines are forty, fifty, and
seventy miles. But roundabout ways by land and water multiplied
these distances, and much fighting and many obstacles vastly
increased Grant's difficulties.

An army, however, that had managed to reach Bruinsburg from the
north and west was assuredly fit for more hard work of any kind;
while a commander who had, left a safe base above Vicksburg and
landed below, to live on (as well as in) an enemy country till
victory should give him a new land line to the north, must, in
view of the resultant triumph, be counted among the master-minds
of war. Grant's marvelous skill in massing, dividing, forwarding,
and concentrating his forces over a hundred miles of intricate
passages between Milliken's Bend and Bruinsburg was only excelled
by his consummate genius in carrying out this daring operation,
forcing his way through his enemies, into full possession of
interior lines, between their great garrison of Vicksburg and
their field army from Jackson. He had to create two fronts in
spite of his doubled enemy and live on that enemy's country
without any land base of his own.

Grant knew the country was quite able to support his army if he
could only control enough of it. Bread, beef, and mutton would be
almost unobtainable. But chickens, turkeys, and ducks were
abundant, while hard-tack would do instead of bread.
Bird-and-biscuit of course became unpopular; and after weeks of
it Grant was not surprised to hear a soldier mutter "hard-tack"
loudly enough for others to take up the cry. By this time,
however, he luckily knew that the bread ration was about to be
resumed; and when he told the men they cheered as only men on
service can men to whom battles are rare events but rations the
very stuff of daily existence. Coffee, bacon, beef, and mutton
came next in popular favor when full rations were renewed. So
when the Northern land line was reopened towards the end of the
siege, and friends came into camp with presents from home, they
found, to their amazement, that even the tenderest spring chicken
was loathsome to their boys in blue.

Grant set to work immediately on landing. His first objective was
Grand Gulf, which he wanted as a field base for further advance.
But in order to get it he had to drive away the enemy from Port
Gibson, which was by no means easy, even with superior numbers,
because the whole country thereabouts was so densely wooded and
so intricately watered that concerted movements could only be
made along the few and conspicuous roads. On the first of May,
however, the Confederates were driven off before their
reinforcements could arrive. McClernand bungled brigades and
divisions out of mutual support. But Grant personally put things
right again.

By the third of May the bridge burnt by the enemy had been
repaired and Grant's men were crossing to press them back on
Vicksburg, so as to clear Grand Gulf. Grant's supply train
(raised by impressing every horse, mule, ox, and wheeled thing in
the neighborhood) looked more like comic opera than war. Fine
private carriages, piled high with ammunition, and sometimes
drawn by mules with straw collars and rope lines, went side by
side with the longest plantation wagons drawn by many oxen, or
with a two-wheeled cart drawn by a thoroughbred horse.

Before any more actions could be fought news came through that
the Federals in Virginia had been terribly beaten by Lee, who was
now expected to invade the North. The South was triumphant; so
much so, indeed, that its Government thought the war itself had
now been won. But Lincoln, Grant, and Lee knew better.

Swiftly, silently, and with a sure strategic touch, Grant marched
northeast on Jackson, to make his rear secure before he turned on
Vicksburg. On the twelfth he won at Raymond and on the fourteenth
at Jackson itself. Here he turned back west again. On the
sixteenth he won the stubborn fight of Champion's Hill, on the
seventeenth he won again at Big Black River, and on the
eighteenth he appeared before the lines of Vicksburg. With the
prestige of five victories in twenty days, and with the momentum
acquired in the process, he then tried to carry the lines by
assault on the spot. But the attack of the nineteenth failed, as
did its renewal on the twenty-second. Next day both sides settled
down to a six weeks' siege.

The failure of the two assaults was recognized by friend and foe
as being a mere check; and Grant's men all believed they had now
found the lookedfor leader. So they had. Like Lee and Stonewall
Jackson in Virginia, Grant, with as yet inferior numbers (but
with the immense advantage of sea-power), had seized, held, and
acted on interior lines so ably that his forty-three thousand men
had out-maneuvered and out-fought the sixty thousand of the
enemy, beating them in detail on ground of their own besides
inflicting a threefold loss. Grant lost little over four
thousand. The Confederates lost nearly twelve thousand, half of
whom were captured.

The only real trouble, besides the failure to carry the lines by
assault, was with the two bad generals, McClernand and Banks.
McClernand had promulgated an order praising his own. corps to
the skies and conveying the idea that he and it had won the
battles. Moreover, he hinted that he had succeeded in the assault
while the others had failed. This was especially offensive
because Grant, at McClernand's urgent request, had sent
reinforcements from other corps to confirm a success that he
found nonexistent on the spot, except in McClernand's own words.
To crown this, McClernand had sent his official order, with all
its misleading statements, to be published in the Northern press;
and the whole army was now supplied with the papers containing
it. So gross a breach of discipline could not go unpunished; and
McClernand was sent back to Springfield in disgrace.

Banks, unfortunately, was senior to Grant and of course
independent of Farragut; so he could safely vex them both--Grant,
by spoiling the plan of concerting the attacks on Port Hudson and
Vicksburg in May; Farragut, by continual failure in cooperation
and by leaving big guns exposed to capture on the west bank. But
things turned out well, after all. The guns were saved by the
naval vessels that beat off a Confederate attack on
Donaldsonville; and Grant's army was saved from coming under
Banks's command by Banks's own egregious failure in cooperation.
This failure thus became a blessing in disguise: a disguise too
good for Halleck, whose reprimand from Washington on the
twenty-third of May shows what dangers lurked beneath the
mighthave-been. "The Government is exceedingly disappointed that
you and General Grant are not acting in conjunction. It thought
to secure that object by authorizing you to assume the entire
command as soon as you and General Grant could unite."

In the end the Confederates suffered much more than the Federals
from civilian interference; for the orders of their Government
came through in time to confuse a situation that was already bad
and growing worse. Between Porter afloat and Grant ashore
Vicksburg was doomed unless "Joe" Johnston came west with
sufficient force to relieve it in time. Johnston did come early
enough, but not in sufficient force; so the next best thing was
to destroy all stores, abandon Vicksburg, and save the garrison.
The Government, however, sent positive orders to hold Vicksburg
to the very last gasp. Johnston had meanwhile sent Pemberton (the
Vicksburg commander) orders to combine with him in free
maneuvering for an attack in the field. But Pemberton's own idea
was to await Grant on the Big Black River, where, with Johnston's
help, he thought he could beat him. Then followed hesitation, a
futile attempt to harmonize the three incompatible schemes; and
presently the, division of the Confederates into separated
armies, driven apart by Grant, whose own army soon dug itself in
between them and quickly grew stronger than both.

Grant's lines, facing both opponents, from Haynes's Bluff to
Warrenton, were fifteen miles long, which gave him one man per
foot when his full strength was reached Pemberton's were only
seven; and his position was strong. both towards the river, where
the bluffs rose two hundred feet, and on the landward side, where
the slopes were sharp and well fortified. Grant closed in,
however, and pressed the bombardment home. Except for six 32-
pounders and a battery of big naval guns he had nothing but field
artillery. Yet the abundance of ammunition, the closeness of the
range, and the support of his many excellent snipers, soon gave
him the upper hand. Six hundred yards was the farthest the lines
were apart. In some places they nearly touched.

All ranks worked hard, especially at engineering, in which there
was such a dearth of officers that Grant ordered every West
Pointer to do his turn with the sappers and miners as well as his
other duty. This brought forth a respectful protest from the
enormously fat Chief Commissary, who said he could only be used
as a saproller (the big roller sappers shove protectingly before
them when snipers get their range). The real sap-rollers came to
grief when an ingenious Confederate stuffed port-fires with
turpentined cotton and shot them into rollers only a few yards
off. But after this the Federals kept their rollers wet; and
sapped and burrowed till the big mine was fully charged and safe
from the Confederate countermine, which had missed its mark.

While trying to blow each other up the men on both sides
exchanged amenities and chaff like the best of friends. Each side
sold its papers to the other; and the wall-paper newsprint of
Vicksburg made a good war souvenir for both. There was a steady
demand for Federal bread and Confederate tobacco. When market
time was over the Confederates would heave down hand-grenades,
which agile Federals, good at baseball, would heave uphill again
before they exploded. And woe to the man whose head appeared out
of hours; for snipers were always on the watch, especially that
prince of snipers, Lieutenant H.C. Foster, renowned as "Coonskin"
from the cap he wore. A wonderful stalker and dead shot he was a
terror to exposed Confederates at all times; but more
particularly towards the end, when (their front artillery having
been silenced by Grant's guns) Coonskin built a log tower,
armored with railway iron, from which he picked off men who were
safe from ordinary fire.

On the twenty-first of June Pemberton planned an escape across
the Mississippi and built some rough boats. But Grant heard of
this; the flotilla grew more watchful still; and before any
attempt at escape could be made the great mine was fired on the
twenty-fifth. The whole top of the hill was blown off, and with
it some men who came down alive on the Federal side. Among these
was an unwounded but terrified colored man, who, on being asked
how high he had gone, said, "Dunno, Massa, but t'ink 'bout t'ree
mile." An immense crater was formed. But there was no practicable
breach; so the assault was deferred. A second mine was exploded
on the first of July. But again there was no assault; for Grant
had decided to wait till several huge mines could be exploded
simultaneously. In the meantime an intercepted dispatch warned
him that Johnston would try to help Pemberton to cut his way out.
But by the time the second mine was exploded Pemberton was
sounding his generals about the chances of getting their own
thirty thousand to join Johnston's thirty thousand against
Grant's seventyfive thousand. The generals said No. Negotiations
then began.

On the third of July Grant met Pemberton under the "Vicksburg
Oak," which, though quite a small tree, furnished
souvenir-hunters with many cords of sacred wood in after years.
Grant very wisely allowed surrender on parole, which somewhat
depleted Confederate ranks in the future by the number of men
who, returning to their homes, afterwards refused to come back
when the exchange of prisoners would have permitted them to do
so.

That was a great week of Federal victory--the week including the
third, fourth, and eighth of July. On the third Lee was defeated
at Gettysburg. On the now doubly "Glorious Fourth" Vicksburg
surrendered and the last Confederate attack was repulsed at
Helena in Arkansas. On the eighth Port Hudson surrendered. With
this the whole Mississippi fell into Federal hands for good. On
the first of August Farragut left New Orleans for New York in the
battle-scarred Hartford after turning over the Mississippi
command to Porter's separate care.


Meanwhile the Confederates in Tennessee, weakened by reinforcing
Johnston against Grant, had been obliged to retire on
Chattanooga. To cover this retirement and make what diversion he
could, Bragg sent John H. Morgan with twenty-five hundred cavalry
to raid Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio. Perplexing the outnumbering
Federals by his daring, "Our Jack Morgan" crossed the Ohio at
Brandenburg, rode northeast through Indiana, wheeled south at
Hamilton, Ohio, rode through the suburbs of Cincinnati, reached
Buffington Island on the border of West Virginia, and then, hotly
pursued by ever-increasing forces, made northeast toward
Pennsylvania. On the twenty-sixth of July he surrendered near New
Lisbon with less than four hundred men left.

The Confederate main body passed the summer vainly trying to stem
the advance of the Army of the Cumberland, with which Rosecrans
and Thomas skillfully maneuvered Bragg farther and farther south
till they had forced him into and out of Chattanooga. In the
meantime Burnside's Army of the Ohio cleared eastern Tennessee
and settled down in Knoxville.

But in the middle of September Longstreet came to Bragg's rescue;
and a desperate battle was fought at Chickamauga on the
nineteenth and twentieth. The Confederates had seventy thousand
men against fifty-six thousand Federals: odds of five to four.
They were determined to win at any price; and it cost them
eighteen thousand men, killed, wounded, and missing; which was
two thousand more than the Federals lost. But they felt it was
now or never as they turned to bay with, for once, superior
numbers. As usual, too, they coveted Federal supplies. "Come on,
boys, and charge!" yelled an encouraging sergeant, "they have
cheese in their haversacks!" Yet the pride of the soldier stood
higher than hunger. General D.H. Hill stooped to cheer a very
badly wounded man. "What's your regiment?" asked Hill. "Fifth
Confederate, New Orleans, and a damned good regiment it is," came
the ready answer.

Rosecrans, like many another man who succeeds halfway up, failed
at the top. He ordered an immediate general retreat which would
have changed the hard-won Confederate victory into a Federal
rout. But Thomas, with admirable judgment and iron nerve, stood
fast till he had shielded all the others clear. From this time on
both armies knew him as the "Rock of Chickamauga."

The unexpected defeat of Chickamauga roused Washington to
immediate, and this time most sensible, action. Grant was given
supreme command over the whole strategic area. Thomas superseded
Rosecrans. Sherman came down with the Army of the Tennessee. And
Hooker railed through from Virginia with two good veteran corps.
Meanwhile the Richmond Government was more foolish than the
Washington was wise; for it let Davis mismanage the strategy
without any reference to Lee. Bragg also made a capital mistake
by sending Longstreet off to Knoxville with more than a third of
his command just before Grant's final advance. The result was
that Bragg found himself with only thirty thousand men at
Chattanooga when Grant closed in with sixty thousand, and that
Longstreet was useless at Knoxville, which was entirely dependent
on Chattanooga. Whoever won decisively at Chattanooga could have
Knoxville too. Davis, as the highest authority, and Bragg, as the
most responsible subordinate, ensured their own defeat.

Chattanooga was the key to the whole strategic area of the upper
Tennessee; for it was the best road, rail, and river junction
between the lower Mississippi and the Atlantic ports of the
South. It had been held for some time by a Federal garrison which
had made it fairly strong. But toward the end of October it was
short of supplies; and Hooker had to fight Longstreet at
Wauhatchie in the Lookout Valley before it could be revictualed.
When Hooker, Thomas, and Sherman were there together under Grant
in November it was of course perfectly safe; and the problem
changed from defense to attack. The question was how to drive
Bragg from his commanding positions on Missionary Ridge and
Lookout Mountain. The woods and hills offered concealment to the
attack in some places. But Lookout Mountain was a splendid
observation post, twenty-two hundred feet high and crested with
columns of rock. The Ridge was three miles east, the Mountain
three miles south, of Cameron Hill, which stood just west of
Chattanooga, commanding the bridge of boats that crossed the
Tennessee.

The battle, fought with great determination on both sides, lasted
three days--the twenty-third, twenty-fourth, and twenty-fifth of
November. Sherman made the flank attack on Missionary Ridge from
the north and Thomas the frontal attack from the west. Hooker
attacked the western flank of Lookout Mountain.

Thomas did the first day's fighting, which was all preliminary
work, by advancing a good mile, taking the Confederate lines on
the lower slopes of the Ridge, and changing their defensive
features to face the Ridge instead of Chattanooga.

At two the next morning Giles Smith's brigade dropped down the
Tennessee in boats and surprised the extreme north pickets placed
by Bragg at the mouth of the South Chickamauga to cover the right
of the Ridge. By noon Sherman's men were over the Tennessee ready
to cooperate with Thomas. Sherman had hidden his camp among the
hills on the other side so well that his movements could not be
observed, even from the commanding height of Lookout Mountain.
The night surprise of Bragg's pickets and the drizzling rain of
the morning prevented the Confederates from hearing or seeing
anything of Sherman's attack in the early afternoon; so he found
himself on the northern flank of Missionary Ridge before Bragg's
main body knew what he was doing. When the Confederates did
attack it was too late; and the twenty-fourth ended with Sherman
entrenched against the flank on even higher ground than Thomas
held against the center. Sherman's cavalry had meanwhile moved
round the flank, on the lower level and much farther off, to cut
Bragg's right rear connection with Chickamauga Station, whence
the rails ran east to Cleveland, Knoxville, and Virginia.

Hooker's work this second day was to feel the Confederate force
on Lookout Mountain while keeping the touch with Thomas, who kept
the touch with Sherman. Mists hid his earlier maneuvers. He
closed in successfully, handled his men to admiration, and gained
more ground than either he or Grant had expected. Having
succeeded so well he changed his demonstration into a regular
attack, which became known as the "Battle above the Clouds." Step
by step he fought his way up, over breastworks and rifle pits,
felled trees and bowlders, through ravines and gullies, till the
vanguard reached the giant palisades of rock which ramparted the
top. The roar of battle was most distinctly heard four miles
away, on Orchard Knob, where Grant and Thomas were anxiously
waiting. But nothing could be seen until a sudden breeze blew the
clouds aside just as the long blue lines charged home and the
broken gray retreated. Then, from thirty thousand watching
Federals, went up a cheer that even cannon could not silence.

At midnight Grant sent a word of encouragement to Burnside at
Knoxville. He then wrote his orders for what he now hoped would
be a completely victorious attack. The twenty-fifth of November
broke beautifully clear, and the whole scene of action remained
in full view all day long. Fearful of being cut off from their
main body on Missionary Ridge the Confederates had left Lookout
Mountain under cover of the dark. But by destroying the bridges
across the. Chattanooga River, which ran through the valley
between the Mountain and the Ridge, they delayed Hooker till late
that afternoon, thus saving their left from an even worse
disaster than the one that overtook their center and their right.

Sherman had desperate work against their right, as Bragg massed
every available gun and man to meet him. This massing, however,
was just what Grant wanted; for he now expected Hooker to appear
on the other flank, which Bragg would either have to give up in
despair or strengthen at the expense of the center, which Thomas
was ready to charge. But with Hooker not appearing, and Sherman
barely holding his own, Grant slipped Thomas from the leash. The
two centers then met hand to hand. But there was no withstanding
the Federal charge. Back went the Confederates, turning to bay at
their second line of defense. Here again they were overborne by
well-led superior numbers and soon put to flight. Sheridan, of
whom we shall hear again in '64, took up the pursuit. Bragg lost
all control of his men. Stores, guns, and even rifles were
abandoned. Thousands of prisoners were taken; and most of the
others were scattered in flight. The battle, the whole campaign,
and even the war in the Tennessee sector, were won.

Vicksburg meant that the trans-Mississippi South would
thenceforth wither like a severed branch. Chattanooga meant that
the Union forces had at last laid the age to the root of the
tree.



CHAPTER VIII. GETTYSBURG: 1863

On the fifth of May we left Lee victorious in Virginia; but with
his indispensable lieutenant, Stonewall Jackson, mortally
wounded.

Though thoroughly defeated at Chancellorsville, Hooker soon
recovered control of the Army of the Potomac and prepared to
dispute Lee's right of way. Lee faced a difficult, perhaps an
insoluble, problem. Longstreet urged him to relieve the local
pressure on Vicksburg by concentrating every available man in
eastern Tennessee, not only withdrawing Johnston's force from
Grant's rear but also depleting the Confederates in Virginia for
the same purpose. Then, combining these armies from east and west
with the one already there under Bragg, the united Confederates
were to crush Rosecrans in their immediate front and make
Cincinnati their great objective. Lee, however, dared not risk
the loss of his Virginian bases in the meantime; and so he
decided on a vigorous counter-attack, right into Pennsylvania,
hoping that, if successful, this would . produce a greater effect
than any corresponding victory could possibly produce elsewhere.

On the ninth of June a cavalry combat round Brandy Station, in
the heart of Virginia, made Hooker's staff feel certain that Lee
was again going up the Valley and on to Maryland. At one time,
for want of supplies, Lee had to spread out his front along a
line running eighty miles northwest from Fredericksburg to
Strasburg. Hooker, on the keen alert, implored the Government to
let him attack the three Confederate corps in detail. Success
against one at least was certain. Lincoln understood this
perfectly. But the nerves of his colleagues were again on edge;
and no argument could persuade them to adopt the best of all
possible schemes of defense by destroying the enemy's means of
destroying them. They insisted on the usual shield theory of
passive defense, and ordered Hooker to keep between Lee and
Washington whatever might happen. This absurd maneuver was of
course attended with all the usual evil results at the time.
Equally of course, it afterwards drew down the wrath of the
wiseacre public on their own representatives. But wiseacre
publics never stop to think that many a government is forced to
do foolish and even suicidal things in war simply because it
represents the ignorance and folly, as well as the wisdom, of all
who have the vote.

Yet both the loyal public and its Government had some good
reasons to doubt Hooker's ability, even apart from his recent
defeat; and Lincoln, wisest of all--except in applying strategy
to problems he could not fully understand--felt almost certain
that Hooker's character contained at least the seeds of failure
in supreme command. "He talks to me like a father," said Hooker,
on reading the letter Lincoln wrote when appointing him
Burnside's successor. This remarkable letter, dated January 26,
1863, though printed many times, is worth reading again:

"I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac. Of
course I have done this upon what appears to me to be sufficient
reasons, and yet I think it best for you to know that there are
some things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you.
I believe you to be a brave and skillful soldier, which, of
course, I like. I also believe you do not mix politics with your
profession, in which you are right. You have confidence in
yourself, which is a valuable, if not an indispensable, quality.
You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good
rather than harm; but I think that during General Burnside's
command of the army you have taken counsel of your ambition, and
thwarted him as much as you could, in which you did a great wrong
to the country and to a most meritorious and honorable brother
officer. I have heard, in such way as to believe it, of your
recently saying that both the army and the Government needed a
Dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in spite of it, that
I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain
successes can set up dictatorships. What I now ask of you is
military success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The
Government will support you to the utmost of its ability, which
is neither more nor less than it has done and will do for all
commanders. I much fear that the spirit which you have aided to
infuse into the army, of criticizing their commander and
withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall
assist you as far as I can to put it down. Neither you nor
Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good out of an
army while such a spirit prevails in it. And now, beware of
rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward, and
give us victories."

Then came Chancellorsville, doubts at Washington, interference by
Stanton, ill-judged orders from Halleck, and some not very
judicious rejoinders from Hooker himself, who became rather
peevish, to Lincoln's alarm. So when, on the twentyseventh of
June, Hooker tendered his resignation, it was promptly accepted.
With Lee in Pennsylvania there was no time for discussion: only
for finding some one to trust.

Lee, as usual, had divined the political forces working on the
Union armies from Washington and had maneuvered with a
combination of skill and daring that exactly met the situation.
Throwing his left forward (under Ewell) in the Shenandoah Valley
he had driven Milroy out of Winchester on the fourteenth of June
and next day secured a foothold across the Potomac. Then the rest
of his army followed. It was so much stretched out (to facilitate
its food supply) that Lincoln again wished to strike it at any
vulnerable spot. But the Cabinet in general (and Stanton in
particular) were still determined that the Union army should be
their passive shield, not their active sword. On the
twenty-fourth Ewell was already beginning to semicircle
Gettysburg from the Cumberland Valley. On the twenty-eighth, the
day on which Meade succeeded Hooker in the Federal command, the
Confederate semicircle, now formed by Lee's whole army, stretched
from Chambersburg on the west, through Carlisle on the north, to
York on the east; while the massed Federals were still in
Maryland, near Middletown and Frederick, thirty miles south of
Gettysburg, and only forty miles northwest of nervous Washington.

Hooker's successor, George G. Meade, was the fifth defender of
Washington within the last ten months. Luckily for the Union,
Meade was a sound, though not a great, commander, and his hands
were fairly free. Luckily again, he was succeeded in command of
the Fifth Corps by George Sykes, the excellent leader of those
magnificent regulars who fought so well at Antietam and Second
Manassas. The change from interference to control was made only
just in time at Washington; for three days after Meade's free
hand began to feel its way along the threatened front the armies
met upon the unexpected battlefield of Gettysburg.

Lee in Pennsylvania was in the midst of a very hostile population
and facing superior forces which he could only defeat in one of
two difficult ways: either by a sudden, bewildering, and
unexpected attack, like Jackson's and his own at
Chancellorsville, or by an impregnable defense on ground that
also favored a victorious counter-attack and the subsequent
crushing pursuit. But there was no Jackson now; and the nature of
the country did not favor the bewildering of Federals who were
fighting at home under excellent generals well served by a
competent staff and well screened by cavalry. So the "fog of war"
was quite as dense round Lee's headquarters as it was round
Meade's on the first of July, when Lee found that his chosen
point of concentration near Gettysburg was already occupied by
Buford's cavalry, with infantry and some artillery in support.
The surprise--and no very great surprise--was mutual. The
Federals were found where they could stand on their defense in a
very strong position if the rest of their army could come up in
time. And Lee's only advantage was that, having already ordered
concentration round the same position, he had a few hours' start
of Meade in getting there.

Each commander had intended to make the other one attack if
possible; and Meade of course knew that Lee, with inferior
numbers and vastly inferior supplies, could not afford to stay
long among gathering enemies in the hostile North without
decisive action. The Confederates must either fight or retreat
without fighting, and make their choice very soon. So, when the
two armies met at Gettysburg, Lee was practically forced to risk
an immediate action or begin a retreat that might have ruined
Confederate morale.

Gettysburg is one of those battles about which men will always
differ. The numbers present, the behavior of subordinates, the
tactics employed, were, and still are, subjects of dispute. Above
all, there is the vexed question of what Lee should or should not
have done. We have little space to spare for any such
discussions. We can only refer inquirers to the original evidence
(some of which is most conflicting) and give the gist of what
seems to be indubitable fact. The numbers were a good seventy
thousand Confederates against about eighty thousand Federals. But
these are the approximate grand totals; and it must be remembered
that the Confederates, having the start, were in superior numbers
during the first two days. On each side there was an aggrieved
and aggrieving subordinate general, Sickles on the Federal side,
Longstreet on the other. But Sickles was by far the less
important of the two. In tactics the Federals displayed great
judgment, skill, and resolution. The Northern people called
Gettysburg a soldiers' battle; and so, in many ways, it was; for
there was heroic work among the rank and file on both sides. But
it most emphatically was not a soldiers' battle in the sense of
its having been won more by the rank and file than by the
generals in high command; for never did so many Federal chiefs
show to such great advantage. No less than five commanded in
succession between morning and midnight on the first day, each
meeting the crisis till the next senior came up. They were
Buford, Reynolds, Howard, Hancock, Meade. Hunt also excelled in
command of the artillery; and this in spite of much
misorganization of that arm at Washington. Warren was not only a
good commander of the engineers but a good all-round general, as
he showed by seizing, on his own initiative, the Little Round
Top, without which the left flank could never have been held.

Finally, there is the great vexed question of what Lee should or
should not have done. First, it seems clear that (like Farragut
and unlike Grant and Jackson) he lacked the ruthless power of
making every subordinate bend or break in every time of crisis:
otherwise he would have bent or broken Longstreet. Next, it may
have been that he was not then at his best. Concludingly, it may
be granted to armchair (and even other) critics that if
everything had been something else the results might not have
been the same.


Lee, having invaded the North by marching northeast under cover
of the mountains and wheeling southeast to concentrate at
Gettysburg, found Buford's cavalry suddenly resisting him, as
they formed the northwest outpost of Meade's army, which was
itself concentrating round Pipe Creek, near Taneytown in
Maryland, fifteen miles southeast. Gettysburg was a meeting place
of many important roads. It stood at the western end of a branch
line connecting with all the eastern rails. And it occupied a
strong strategic point in the vitally important triangle formed
by Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Washington. Thus, like a magnet,
it drew the contending armies to what they knew would prove a
field decisive of the whole campaign.

The Federal line, as finally held on the third of July, was
nearly five miles long. The front faced west and was nearly three
miles long. The flanks, thrown back at right angles, faced north
and south. Near the north end of the front stood Cemetery Hill,
near the south the Devil's Den, a maze of gigantic bowlders.
Along the front the ground was mostly ridged, and even the lower
ground about the center was a rise from which a gradual slope
went down to the valley that rose again to the opposite heights
of Seminary Ridge, where Lee had his headquarters only a mile
away. The so-called hills were no more than hillocks, the ridges
were low, and most slopes were those of a rolling country. But
the general contour of the ground, the swelling hillocks on the
flanks (Culp's Hill on the right, the Round Tops on the left) and
the broad glacis up which attackers must advance against the
center, all combined to make the position very strong indeed when
held by even or superior numbers.

The first day's fight began when A.P. Hill's Confederates, with
Longstreet's following, closed in on Gettysburg from the west to
meet Ewell's, who were coming down from the north. Buford's
Federal cavalry resisted Hill's advanced brigades successfully
till Reynolds had brought the First Corps forward in support and
ordered the two other nearest corps to follow at the double
quick. Reynolds was killed early in the day; but not before his
well trained eye had taken in the situation at a glance and his
sure judgment had half committed both armies to that famous
field.

The full commitment came shortly after, when Meade sent Hancock
forward to command the three corps and Buford's cavalry in their
attempt to stem the Confederate advance. Howard was then the
senior general on the field, having taken over from Doubleday,
who had succeeded Reynolds. But he at once agreed that such a
strong position should be held and that Hancock should proceed to
rectify the lines. This was no easy task; for Ewell's
Confederates had meanwhile come down from the north and driven in
the Federal flank on the already hard-pressed front. The front
thereupon gave way and fell back in confusion. But Hancock's
masterly work was quickly done and the Federal line was
reestablished so well that the Confederates paused in their
attack and waited for the morrow.

The Confederates had got as good as they gave, much to their
disgust. Archer, one of their best brigadiers, felt particularly
sore when most of his men were rounded up by Meredith's "Iron
Brigade." When Doubleday saw his old West Point friend a prisoner
he shook hands cordially, saying, "Well, Archer, I AM glad to see
you!" But Archer answered, "Well, I'm not so glad to see YOU--not
by a damned sight!" The fact was that the excellent Federal
defense had come as a very unpleasing surprise upon the rather
too cocksure Confederates. Buford's cavalry and Reynolds's
infantry had staunchly withstood superior numbers; while
Lieutenant Bayard Wilkeson actually held back a Confederate
division for some time with the guns of Battery G, Fourth U. S.
Artillery. This heroic youth, only nineteen years of age, kept
his men in action, though they were suffering terrible losses,
till two converging batteries brought him down.

He was well matched by a veteran of over seventy, John Burns, an
old soldier, whom the sound of battle drew from his little home
like the trumpet-call to arms. In his swallow-tailed,
brass-buttoned, old-fashioned coatee, Burns seemed a very comic
sight to the nearest boys in blue until they found he really
meant to join them and that he knew a thing or two of war. "Which
way are the rebels?" he asked, "and where are our troops? I know
how to fight--I've fit before." So he did; and he fought to good
purpose till wounded three times.

Late in the evening Meade arrived and inspected the lines by
moonlight. Having ordered every remaining man to hasten forward
he faced the second day with wellfounded anxiety lest Lee's full
strength should break through before his own last men were up.
His right was not safe against surprise by the Confederates who
slept at the foot of Culp's Hill, and his left was in imminent
danger from Longstreet's corps. But on the second day Longstreet
marked his disagreement with Lee's plans by delaying his attack
till Warren, with admirable judgment, had ordered the Round Tops
to be seized at the double quick and held to the last extremity.
Then, after wasting enough time for this to be done, Longstreet
attacked and was repulsed; though his men fought very well.
Meanwhile Ewell, whose attack against the right was to
synchronize with Longstreet's against the left, was delayed by
Longstreet till the afternoon, when he carried Culp's Hill.

This was the only Confederate success; for Early failed to carry
Cemetery Hill, the adjoining high ground, which formed the right
center, and the rest of the Federal line remained intact; though
not without desperate struggles.

The third was the decisive day; and on it Meade rose to the
height of his unappreciated skill. This was the first great
battle in which all the chief Federals worked so well together
and the first in which the commander-in-chief used reserves with
such excellent effect, throwing them in at exactly the right
moment and at the proper place. But these indispensable qualities
were not of the kind that the public wanted to acclaim, or,
indeed, of the kind that they could understand.

Meade was determined to clear his flanks. So he began at dawn to
attack Ewell on Culp's Hill and kept on doggedly till, after four
hours of strenuous fighting, he had driven him off. By this time
Meade saw that Lee was not going to press home any serious attack
against the Round Tops and Devil's Den on the left. So the main
interest of the whole battle shifted to the center of the field,
where Lee was massing for a final charge. The idea had been to
synchronize three cooperating movements against Meade's whole
position. His left was to have been held by a demonstration in
force by Longstreet against the Devil's Den and Round Tops, while
Ewell held Culp's Hill, which seemed to be at his mercy, and
which would flank any Federal retreat. At the same time Meade's
center was to have been rushed by Pickett's fresh division
supported by three attached brigades. But though the central
force was ready before nine o'clock it never stepped off till
three; so great was Longstreet's delay in ordering Pickett's
advance. Meanwhile the Federals had made Culp's Hill quite safe
against Ewell. So all depended now on the one last desperate
assault against the Federal center.

This immortal assault is known as Pickett's Charge because it was
made by Pickett's division of Longstreet's corps supported by
three brigades from Hill's--Wilcox's, Perry's, and Pettigrew's.
The whole formed a mass of about ten thousand men. If they broke
the Federal line in two, then every supporting Confederate was to
follow, while the rest turned the flanks. If they failed, then
the battle must be lost.

Hour after hour passed by. But it was not till well past one that
Longstreet opened fire with a hundred and forty guns. Hunt had
seventy-seven ready to reply. But after firing for half an hour
he ceased, wishing to reserve his ammunition for use against the
charging infantry. This encouraged the Confederate gunners, who
thought they had silenced him. They then continued for some time,
preparing the way for the charge, but firing too high and doing
little execution against the Federal infantry, who were lying
down, mostly under cover. Hunt's guns were more exposed and
formed better targets; so some of them suffered severely: none
more than those of Battery A, Fourth U.S. Artillery. This gallant
battery had three of its limbers blown up and replaced. Wheels
were also smashed to pieces and guns put out of action, till only
a single gun, with men enough to handle it, was left with only a
single officer. This heroic young lieutenant, Alonzo H. Cushing
(brother to the naval Cushing who destroyed the Albemarle), then
ran his gun up to the fence and fired his last round through it
into Pickett's men as he himself fell dead.

Pickett advanced at three o'clock, to the breathless admiration
of both friend and foe. He had a mile of open ground to cover.
But his three lines marched forward as steadily and blithely as
if the occasion was a gala one and they were on parade. The
Confederate bombardment ceased. The Federal guns and rifles held
their fire. Fate hung in silence on those gallant lines of gray.
Then the Federal skirmishers down in the valley began fitfully
firing; and the waiting masses on the Federal slopes began to
watch more intently still. "Here they come! Here comes the
infantry!" The blue ranks stirred a little as the men felt their
cartridge boxes and the sockets of their bayonets. The calm
warnings of the officers could be heard all down the line of
Gibbon's magnificent division, which stood straight in Pickett's
path. "Steady, men, steady! Don't fire yet!"

For a very few, tense minutes Pickett's division disappeared in
an undulation of the ground. Then, at less than point-blank
range, it seemed to spring out of the very earth, no longer in
three lines but one solid mass of rushing gray, cresting, like a
tidal wave, to break in fury on the shore. Instantly, as if in
answer to a single word, Hunt's guns and Gibbon's rifles crashed
out together, and shot, shell, canister, and bullet cut gaping
wounds deep into the dense gray ranks. Still, the wave broke;
and, from its storm-blown top, one furious tongue surged over the
breastwork and through the hedge of bayonets. It came from
Armistead's brigade of stark Virginians. He led it on; and, with
a few score men, reached the highwater mark of that last spring
tide.

When he fell the tide of battle turned; turned everywhere upon
that stricken field; turned throughout the whole campaign; turned
even in the war itself.

As Pickett's men fell back they were swept by scythe-like fire
from every gun and rifle that could mow them down. Not a single
mounted officer remained; and of all the brave array that Pickett
led three-fourths fell killed or wounded. The other fourth
returned undaunted still, but only as the wreckage of a storm.

Lee's loss exceeded forty per cent of his command. Meade's loss
fell short of thirty. But Meade was quite unable to pursue at
once when Lee retired on the evening of the fourth. The opposing
cavalry, under Pleasonton and Stuart respectively, had fought a
flanking battle of their own, but without decisive result. So Lee
could screen his retreat to the Potomac, where, however, his
whole supply train might have been cut off if its escort under
the steadfast Imboden had not been reinforced by every teamster
who could pull a trigger.


Gettysburg and Vicksburg, coming together, of course raised the
wildest expectations among the general public, expectations which
found an unworthy welcome at Government headquarters, where
Halleck wrote to Meade on the fourteenth: "The escape of Lee's
army has created great dissatisfaction in the mind of the
President." Meade at once replied: "The censure is, in my
judgment, so undeserved that I most respectfully ask to be
immediately relieved from the command of this army." Wiser
counsels thereupon prevailed.

Lee and Meade maneuvered over the old Virginian scenes of action,
each trying to outflank the other, and each being hampered by
having to send reinforcements to their friends in Tennessee,
where, as we have seen already, Bragg and Rosecrans were now
maneuvering in front of Chattanooga. In October (after the
Confederate victory of Chickamauga) Meade foiled Lee's attempt to
bring on a Third Manassas. The campaign closed at Mine Run, where
Lee repulsed Meade's attempted surprise in a three-day action,
which began on the twenty-sixth of November, the morrow of
Grant's three days at Chattanooga.


From this time forward the South was like a beleaguered city,
certain to fall if not relieved, unless, indeed, the hearts of
those who swayed the Northern vote should fail them at the next
election.



CHAPTER IX. FARRAGUT AND THE NAVY: 1863-4

The Navy's task in '63 was complicated by the many foreign
vessels that ran only between two neutral ports but broke bulk
into blockade-runners at their own port of destination. For
instance, a neutral vessel, with neutral crew and cargo, would
leave a port in Europe for a neutral port in America, say, Nassau
in the Bahamas or Matamoras on the Rio Grande. She could not be
touched of course at either port or anywhere inside the
three-mile limit. But international law accepted the doctrine of
continuous voyage, by which contraband could be taken anywhere on
the high seas, provided, of course, that the blockader could
prove his case. If, for example, there were ten times as many
goods going into Matamoras as could possibly be used through that
port by Mexico, then the presumption was that nine-tenths were
contraband. Presumption becoming proof by further evidence, the
doctrine of continuous voyage could be used in favor of the
blockaders who stopped the contraband at sea between the neutral
ports. The blockade therefore required a double line of
operation: one, the old line along' the Southern coast, the
other, the new line out at sea, and preferably just beyond the
three-mile limit outside the original port of departure, so as to
kill the evil at its source. Nassau and Matamoras gave the coast
blockade plenty of harassing work; Nassau because it was "handy
to" the Atlantic ports, Matamoras because it was at the mouth of
the Rio Grande, over the shoals of which the Union warships could
not go to prevent contraband crossing into Texas, thence up to
the Red River, down to the Mississippi (between the Confederate
strongholds of Vicksburg and Port Hudson) and on to any other
part of the South. But what may be called the highseas blockade
was no less harassing, complicated as it was by the work of
Confederate raiders.

The coast blockade of '63 was marked by two notable ship duels
and three fights round Charleston, then, as always, a great storm
center of the wax. At the end of January two Confederate gunboats
under Commodore Ingraham attacked the blockading flotilla of
Charleston, forced the Mercedita to surrender, badly mauled the
Keystone State, and damaged the Quaker City. But, though some
foreign consuls and all Charleston thought the blockade had been
raised for the time being, it was only bent, not broken.

At the end of February the Union monitor Montauk destroyed the
Confederate privateer Nashville near Fort McAllister on the
Ogeechee River in Georgia. In April nine Union monitors steamed
in to test the strength of Charleston; but, as they got back more
than they could give, Admiral Du Pont wisely decided not to try
the fight-to-a-finish he had meant to make next morning. Wassaw
Sound in Georgia was the scene of a desperate duel on the
seventeenth of June, when the Union monitor Weehawken captured
the old blockade-runner Fingal, which had been converted into the
new Confederate ram Atlanta. The third week in August witnessed
another bombardment of Charleston, this time on a larger scale,
for a longer time, and by military as well as naval means. But
Charleston remained defiant and unconquered both this year and
the next.

Confederate raiders were at work along the trade routes of the
world in '63, doing much harm by capture and destruction, and
even more by shaking the security of the American mercantile
marine. American crews were hard to get when so many hands were
wanted for other war work; and American vessels were increasingly
apt to seek the safety of a neutral flag.

Slowly, and with much perverse interference to overcome in the
course of its harassing duties, the Union navy was getting the
strangle-hold that killed the sea-girt South. By '64 the North
had secured this strangle-hold; and nothing but foreign
intervention or the political death of the Northern War Party
could possibly shake it off. The South was feeling its practical
enislement as never before. The strong right arm of the Union
navy held it fast at every point but three--Wilmington,
Charleston, and Mobile; and round these three the stern
blockaders grew stronger every day. The Sabine Pass and Galveston
also remained in Southern hands; and the border town of Matamoras
still imported contraband. But these other three points were
closely watched; and the greatly lessened contraband that did get
through them now only served the western South, which had been
completely severed from the eastern South by the fall of
Vicksburg and Port Hudson. The left arm of the Union navy now
held the whole line of the Mississippi, while the gripping hand
held all the tributary streams--Ohio, Cumberland, and
Tennessee--from which the Union armies were to invade, divide,
and devastate the eastern South this year.


Several Southern raiders were still at large in '64. But the most
famous or notorious three have each their own year of glory. The
Florida belongs to '63, the Shenandoah to '65. So the one great
raiding story we have now to tell is that of the Alabama, the
greatest of them all.

The Alabama was a beautiful thousand-ton wooden barkentine, built
by the Lairds at Birkenhead in '62, with standing rigging of
wire, a single screw driven by two horizontal three-hundred horse
power engines, coal room for three hundred and fifty tons, eight
good guns, the heaviest a hundred-pound rifle, and a maximum crew
of one hundred and forty-nine--all ranks and ratings--under
Captain Raphael Semmes, late U.S.N. Semmes was not only a very
able officer but an accomplished lawyer, well posted on
belligerent and neutral rights at sea.

For nearly two years the Alabama roved the oceans of the Old
World and the New, taking sixty-six Union vessels valued at seven
million dollars, spreading the terror of her name among all the
merchantmen that flew the Stars and Stripes, and infuriating the
Navy by the wonderful way in which she contrived to escape every
trap it set for her. She was designed for speed rather than for
fighting, and, with her great spread of canvas, could sometimes
work large areas under sail. But, even so, her runs, captures,
and escapes formed a series of adventures that no mere luck could
have possibly performed with a fluctuating foreign crew commanded
by ex-officers of the Navy. Her wanderings took her through
nearly a hundred degrees of latitude, from the coast of Scotland
to St. Paul Island, south of the Indian Ocean, also through more
than two hundred degrees of longitude, from the Gulf of Mexico to
the China Sea. She captured "Yankees" within one day's steaming
of the New York Navy Yard as well as in the Straits of Sunda.
West of the Azores and off the coast of Brazil her captures came
so thick and fast that they might have almost been a flock of
.sheep run down there by a wolf. Finally, to fill the cup of
wrath against her, she had sunk a blockader off the coast of
Texas, given the slip to a Union manof-war at the Cape of Good
Hope, and kept the Navy guessing her unanswered riddles for two
whole years.

Imagine, then, the keen elation with which all hands aboard the
U.S.S. Kearsarge heard at their berth off Flushing that the
Alabama was in port at Cherbourg on the Channel coast of France,
only one day's sail southwest! And there she was when the
Kearsarge came to anchor; and every Northern eye was turned to
see the ship of which the world had heard so much. The Kearsarges
hardly dared to hope that there would be a fight; for they had
the stronger vessel, and now the faster one as well. The Alabama
had been built for speed; but she had knocked about so much
without a proper overhaul that her copper sheathing was in rags,
while she was more or less strained. in nearly every other part.
The Kearsarge, on the other hand, was in good order, with
mantlets of chain cable protecting her vitals, with one-third
greater horse power, with fourteen more men in her crew, and with
two big pivot guns throwing eleven inch shells with great force
at short ranges. Moreover, the Kearsarge, with her superior speed
and stronger hull, could choose the range and risk close
quarters,. The Alabamas were also keen to estimate respective
strengths. But the French authorities naturally kept the two
ships pretty far apart; so the Alabamas never saw the chain
mantlets which the Kearsarges had cleverly hidden under a
covering of wood that appeared to be flush with the hull.

The Kearsarges had a second and still more elating surprise when
they heard the Alabama was coming out to fight. Semmes was
apparently anxious to show that his raider could be as gallant in
fighting a man-of-war as she was effective in sinking merchant
vessels; so he wrote his challenge to the Confederate Consul at
Cherbourg, who passed it on to the U. S. Consul, who handed it to
Captain Winslow, commanding the Kearsarge. Still, four days
passed without the Alabama; and the Kearsarges were giving up
hope, when, suddenly, on Sunday morning, the nineteenth of June,
just as they had rigged church and fallen in for prayers, out
came the Alabama. The Kearsarge thereupon drew off, so that the
Alabama could not easily escape to neutral waters if the duel
went against her. Cherbourg, of course, was all agog to see the
fight; and many thousands of people, some from as far as Paris,
watched every move. An English yacht, the Deerhound, kept an
offing of about a mile, ready to rescue survivors from a watery
grave. Its owner, with his wife and family, had intended to stay
ashore and go to church. But, when they heard the Alabama was
really going out, he put the question to the vote around the
breakfast-table, whereupon it was carried unanimously that the
Deerhound should go too.

When the deck-officer of the Kearsarge sang out, "Alabama!"
Captain Winslow put down his prayerbook, seized his
speaking-trumpet, and turned to gain a proper offing, while the
drum beat to general quarters and the ship was cleared for
action, with pivot-guns to starboard. The weather was fine, with
a slight haze, little sea, and a light west breeze. Having drawn
the Alabama far enough to sea, the Kearsarge turned toward her
again, showing the starboard bow. When at a mile the Alabama
fired her hundred-pounder. For nearly the whole hour this famous
duel lasted the ships continued fighting in the same way--
starboard to starboard, round and round a circle from half to a
quarter mile across. Each captain stood on the horse-block
abreast the mizzen-mast to direct the fight. Semmes presently
called to his executive officer: "Mr. Kell, use solid shot! Our
shell strike the enemy's side and fall into the water" (after
bounding off the iron mantlets Winslow had so cleverly
concealed). The Kearsarge's gunnery was magnificent, especially
from the after-pivot, which Quartermaster William Smith fired
with deadly aim, even when three of his gun's crew had been
wounded by a shell. These three, strange to say, were the only
casualties that occurred aboard the Kearsarge. But at sea the
stronger side usually suffers much less and the weaker much more
than on land. The Alabama lost forty: killed, drowned, and
wounded.

The Kearsarges soon saw how the fight was going and began to
cheer each first-rate shot. "That's a good one! Now we have her!
Give her another like the last!" The big eleven-inchers got home
repeatedly as the range decreased; so much so that Semmes ordered
Kell to keep the Alabama headed for the coast the next time the
circling brought her bow that way. This would bring her port side
into action, which was just what Semmes wanted now, because she
had a dangerous list to starboard, where the water was pouring
through the shot-holes. Kell changed her course with perfect
skill, righting the helm, hoisting the head-sails, hauling the
fore-trysail-sheet well aft, and pivoting to port for a broadside
delivered almost as quickly as if there had not been a change at
all. But at this moment the engineer came up to say the water had
put his fires out and that the ship was sinking. At the same time
a strange thing happened. An early shot from the Kearsarge had
carried away the Alabama's colors; and now the Alabama's own last
broadside actually announced her own defeat by "breaking out" the
special Stars and Stripes that Window had run up his mizzenmast
on purpose to break out in case of victory. A cannon ball had
twitched the cord that held the flag rolled up "in stops."

Semmes sent his one remaining boat to announce his surrender;
threw his sword into the sea; and jumped in with the survivors.
The Deerhound, on authority from Winslow, had already closed in
to the rescue, followed by two French pilot boats and two from
the Kearsarge; when suddenly the Alabama, rearing like a stricken
horse, plunged to her doom.


Long before the Alabama's end the Navy had been preparing for the
finishing blows against the Southern ports. Farragut had returned
to New Orleans in January, '64, hoping for immediate action. But
vexatious delays at Washington postponed his great attack till
August, when he crowned his whole career by his master-stroke
against Mobile. Grant was equally annoyed by this absurd delay,
which was caused by the eccentric, and therefore entirely
wasteful, Red River Expedition of '64, an expedition we shall
ignore otherwise than by pointing out, in this and the succeeding
chapters, that it not only postponed the overdue attack on Mobile
but spoilt Sherman's grand strategy as well as Farragut's and
Grant's. Banks commanded it. But by this time even he had learnt
enough of war to know that it was a totally false move. So he
boldly protested against it. But Halleck's orders, dictated by
the Government, were positive. So there was nothing for it but to
suffer a well-deserved defeat while trying to kill the dead and
withering branches of Confederate power beyond the Mississippi,
in order to "show the flag in Texas" and say "hands off!" to
Mexico and France in the least effective way of all.

During this delay the Confederate ram Albemarle came down the
Roanoke River, hoping to break through the local blockade in
Albemarle Sound and so give North Carolina an outlet to the sea.
Two attempts against Newbern, which closed the way out to Pamlico
Sound, had failed; but now (the fifth of May) great hopes were
set upon the Albemarle. At first she seemed impregnable; and the
Federal shot and shell glanced harmlessly off her iron sides. But
presently Commander Roe of the Sassacus (a light-draft,
pair-paddle, double-ender gunboat) getting at right angles to
her, ordered his engineer to stuff the fires with oiled waste and
keep the throttle open. "ALL HANDS, LIE DOWN!" shouted Roe, as
the throbbing engines drove his vessel to the charge. Then came
an earthquake shock: the Sassacus crashed her bronze beak into
the Albemarle's side. Both vessels were disabled; a shell from
the Albemarle burst the boilers of the Sassacus, scalding the
engineers. But the rest fought off the attempt made by the
Albemarles to board. Presently the furious opponents drifted
apart; and the Albemarle, unable to face her other enemies, took
refuge upstream. There, on the twenty-seventh of October, she was
heroically attacked and sunk by Lieutenant W.B. Cushing, U.S.N.,
with a spar torpedo projecting from a little steam launch.
Cushing himself swam off through a hail of bullets, worked his
way through the woods, seized a skiff belonging to one of the
enemy's outposts, and reached the flagship half dead but wholly
triumphant.


Between the Albemarle's two fights Farragut took Mobile after a
magnificent action on the fifth of of August. There were
batteries ashore, torpedoes across the channel, the Tennessee ram
and other Confederate vessels waiting on the flank: three kinds
of danger to the Union fleet if one false movement had been made.
But Farragut's touch was sure. He sent his ironclads through next
to the batteries, which were only really dangerous on one side.
This protected the wooden ships against the batteries and the
ironclads against the torpedoes; for the Confederates had to
leave part of the fairway clear in order to use it themselves.
Through this narrow channel the four strongly armored monitors
led the desperate way, a little ahead and to starboard of the
wooden vessels, which followed in pairs, each pair lashed
together, with the stronger on the starboard side, next to Fort
Morgan.

The Confederates in Fort Morgan, and in the small and distant
Fort Powell on the other side, hardly reached a thousand men.
Their force afloat was also comparatively small: the ironclad ram
Tennessee and three side-wheeler gunboats. But the great strength
of their position and the many dangers to a hostile fleet
combined to make Farragut's attack a very serious operation, even
with his four monitors, eight screw sloops, and four smaller
vessels. The Union army, which took no part in this great attack,
was over five thousand strong, and lost only seven men in the
land bombardment later on.

Farragut crossed the bar in the Hartford at ten past six in the
morning with the young flood tide and a westerly breeze to blow
the smoke against Fort Morgan. All his ships ran up the Stars and
Stripes not only at the peak, as usual, but at each mast-head as
well. Farragut himself at first took post in the port main
rigging. But as the smoke of battle rose around him he climbed
higher and higher till he got close under the maintop, where a
seaman, sent up by Captain Drayton, lashed him on securely.

All went well amid the furious cannonade till the monitor
Tecumseh, taking the wrong side of the channel buoy in her
anxiety to ram the Tennessee, ran over the torpedoes, was
horribly holed by the explosion, and plunged headforemost to the
bottom, her screw madly whirling in the air. Nor was this the
worst; for the Tecumseh's mistake had thrown the other monitors
out of their proper lineahead, athwart the wooden ships, which
began to slow and swing about in some confusion. The Confederates
redoubled their fire. Ahead lay the fatal torpedoes. For a moment
Farragut could not decide whether to risk an advance at all costs
or to turn back beaten. He was a very devout as well as a most
determined man; and his simple prayer, "O God, shall I go on?"
seemed answered by the echo of his soul, "Go on!" So on he went,
not in unreflecting exaltation, but in exaltation based on
knowledge and on skill. Like Cromwell, he might well have said,
"Trust in the Lord and keep your powder dry!" For he had done all
that naval foresight could have done to ensure success. And now,
in one lightning flash of genius, he reviewed the situation. He
knew the torpedoes of his day were often unreliable, that they
exploded only on a special kind of shock, that those which did
explode could not be replaced in action, that they were all fixed
to their own spots, and that if one ship was blown up her
next-astern would get through safely.

The Brooklyn, his next-ahead, was in his way. So he ordered the
flagship Hartford and her lashedtogether consort, the
double-ender Metacomet, to use, the one her screw, the other her
paddles, in opposite directions, till he had cleared the
Brooklyn's stern. As he, drew clear and headed for the
danger-channel a shoutwent up from the Brooklyn's deck--"'ware
torpedoes!" But Farragut, his mind made up, instantly roared
back--"Damn the torpedoes!" Then, turning to the Hartford's and
Metacomet's decks, he called his orders down: "Four bells!
Captain Drayton, go ahead! Captain Jouett, full speed!" In answer
to the order of "four bells" the engines worked their very utmost
and the two vessels dashed ahead. Torpedoes knocked against the
bottom and some of the primers actually snapped. But nothing
exploded; and Farragut won through.

Inside the harbor the Tennessee fought hard against the
overwhelming Union fleet. But her lowpowered engines gave her no
chance at quick maneuvers. Three vessels rammed her in
succession; and she was forced to surrender.

After this purely naval victory on the fifth of August, General
Granger's troops invested Fort Morgan, which, becoming the target
of an irresistible converging fire from both land and sea on the
twenty-second, surrendered on the twenty-third.

The next objective of a joint expedition was Fort Fisher, which
stood at the end of a long, low tongue of land between the sea
and Cape Fear River. Fort Fisher guarded the entrance to
Wilmington in North Carolina, the port, above all others, from
which the Confederate armies drew their oversea supplies. Lee
wrote to Colonel Lamb, its commandant, saying that he could not
subsist if it was taken. Lamb had less than two thousand men in
the fort; but there were six thousand more forming an army of
support outside. The Confederates, however, had no naval force to
speak of, while the Union fleet, commanded by Admiral Porter, was
the largest that had ever yet assembled under the Stars and
Stripes. There were nearly sixty fighting vessels of all kinds,
including five new ironclads and the three finest new frigates.
The guns that were carried exceeded six hundred.

There was also a mine ship, the old Louisiana, stuffed
chock-a-block with powder to blow in the side of the fort. The
Washington wiseacres set great store on this new mine of theirs.
It was, of course, to end the war. But naval and military experts
on the spot were more than doubtful. On the night of the
twenty-third of December the Louisiana was safely worked in near
the fort by brave Commander Rhind, who fired the slow match and
escaped unhurt with his devoted crew of volunteers. A tremendous
explosion followed. But, as there was nothing to drive the force
of it against the walls, it simply resulted in an enormous flurry
of water, mud, sand, earth, and bits of flaming wreckage.

Next morning the fleet bombarded with such success as to silence
many of the guns opposed to them. But on Christmas Day General
Weitzel reported that an assault would fail; whereupon General
Butler concurred and retreated, much to the rage of the fleet,
which thought quite otherwise.

In a few days General Terry arrived with the same white troops
reinforced by two small colored brigades, making a total of eight
thousand men. To these Porter, strongly reinforced, added a naval
brigade, two thousand strong, that volunteered to storm the sea
face of Fort Fisher. These gallant men had only cutlasses and
pistols--except the four hundred marines, who carried bayonets
and rifles. They were a scratch lot, from the soldier's point of
view, never having been landed together as a single unit till
called upon to assault the most dangerous features of the fort.
Yet, though they were repulsed with considerable loss, they
greatly helped to win the day by obliging the defenders to divide
their forces. As Terry's army was, by itself, four or five times
stronger than Lamb's entire command the military stormers
succeeded in fighting their way through every line of defense and
compelling a surrender. They did exceedingly well. But their rear
was safe, because Bragg had withdrawn the supporting army for
service elsewhere; while, in their front, the enemy defenses had
been almost torn out by the roots in many places under the
terrific converging fire of six hundred naval guns for three
successive days.

When Fort Fisher surrendered on the fifteenth of January (1865)
the exhausted South had only one good port and one good raider
left: Charleston and the Shenandoah.



CHAPTER X. GRANT ATTACKS THE FRONT: 1864

On March 9, 1864, at the Executive Mansion, and in the presence
of all the Cabinet Ministers, Lincoln handed Grant the
Lieutenant-General's commission which made him Commander-in-Chief
of all the Union armies--a commission such as no one else had
held since Washington. On April 9, 1865, Grant received the
surrender of Lee at Appomattox; and the four years war was ended
by a thirteen months campaign.


Victor of the River War in '63, Grant moved his headquarters from
Chattanooga to Nashville soon before Christmas. He then expected
not only to lead the river armies against Atlanta in '64 but, at
the same time, to send another army against Mobile, where it
could act in conjunction with the naval forces under Farragut's
command.

He consequently made a midwinter tour of inspection: southeast to
Chattanooga, northeast to Knoxville and Cumberland Gap, northwest
to Lexington and Louisville, thence south, straight back to
Nashville. This satisfied him that his main positions were
properly taken and held, and that a well-concerted drive would
clear his own strategic area of all but Forrest's elusive
cavalry.

It was the hardest winter known for many years. The sticky clay
roads round Cumberland Gap had been churned by wheels and pitted
by innumerable feet throughout the autumn rains. Now they were
frozen solid and horribly encumbered by debris mixed up with
thousands upon thousands of perished mules and horses. Grant
regretted this terrible wastage of animals as much in a personal
as in a military way; for, like nearly all great men, his
sympathies were broad enough to make him compassionate toward
every kind of sentient life. No Arab ever loved his horse better
than Grant loved his splfndid charger Cincinnati, the worthy
counterpart of Traveler, Lee's magnificent gray.

Summoned to Washington in March, Grant, after one scrutinizing
look at the political world, then and there made up his steadfast
mind that no commander-in-chief could ever carry out his own
plans from any distant point; for, even in his fourth year of the
war, civilian interference was still being practiced in defiance
of naval and military facts and needs, and of some very serious
dangers.

Lincoln stood wisely for civil control. But even he could not
resist the perverting pressure in favor of the disastrous Red
River Expedition, against which even Banks protested. Public and
Government alike desired to give the French fair warning that the
establishment of an imperial Mexico, especially by means of
foreign intervention, was regarded as a semi-hostile act. There
were two entirely different ways in which this warning could be
given: one completely effective without being provocative, the
other provocative without being in the very least degree
effective. The only effective way was to win the war; and the
best way to win the war was to strike straight at the heart of
the South with all the Union forces. The most ineffective way was
to withdraw Union forces from the heart of the war, send them off
at a wasteful tangent, misuse them in eccentric operations just
where they would give most offense to the French, and then expose
them to what, at best, could only be a detrimental victory, and
to what would much more likely be defeat, if not disaster.

Yet, to Grant's and Farragut's and every other soldier's and
sailor's disgust, this worst way of all was chosen; and Banks's
forty thousand sorely needed veterans were sent to their double
defeat at Sabine Cross Roads and Pleasant Hill on the eighth and
ninth of April, while Porter's invaluable fleet and the no less
indispensable transports were nearly lost altogether owing to the
long-foretold fall of the dangerous Red River. The one success of
this whole disastrous affair was the admirable work of Colonel
Joseph Bailey, who dammed the water up just in time to let the
rapidly stranding vessels slide into safety through a very narrow
sluice.

Even the Red River lesson was thrown away on Stanton, whose
interference continued to the bitter end, except when checked by
Lincoln or countered by Grant and Sherman in the field. When
Grant was starting on his tour of inspection he found that
Stanton had forbidden all War Department operators to let
commanding generals use the official cipher except when in
communication with himself. There were to be no secrets at the
front between the commanding generals, even on matters of
immediate life and death, unless they were first approved by
Stanton at his leisure. The fact that the enemy could use
unciphered messages was nothing in his autocratic eyes. Nor did
it prick his conscience to change the wording in ways that
bewildered his own side and served the enemy's turn.

When Grant took the cipher Stanton ordered the operator to be
dismissed. Grant thereupon shouldered the responsibility, saying
that Stanton would have to punish him if any one was punished.
Then Stanton gave in. Grant saw through him clearly. "Mr. Stanton
never questioned his own authority to command, unless resisted.
He felt no hesitation in assuming the functions of the Executive
or in acting without advising with him . . . . He was very timid,
and it was impossible for him to avoid interfering with the
armies covering the capital when it was sought to defend it by an
offensive movement against the army defending the Confederate
capital. The enemy would not have been in danger if Mr. Stanton
had been in the field."

Stanton was unteachable. He never learnt where control ended and
disabling interference began. In the very critical month of
August, '64, he interfered with Hunter to such an extent that
this patriotic general had to tell Grant "he was so embarrassed
with orders from Washington that he had lost all trace of the
enemy." Nor was that the end of Stanton's interference with the
operations in the Shenandoah Valley. Lincoln's own cipher letter
to Grant on the third of August shows what both these great men
had to suffer from the weak link in the chain between them.

"I have seen your despatch in which you say, 'I want Sheridan put
in command of all the troops in the field, with instructions to
put himself south of the enemy, and follow him to the death.
Wherever the enemy goes, let our troops go also.' This, I think,
is exactly right, as to how our forces should move. But please
look over the despatches you may have received from here, even
since you made that order, and discover, if you can, that there
is any idea in the head of any one here of "putting our army
SOUTH of the enemy," or of 'following him to the DEATH' in any
direction. I repeat to you it will neither be done or attempted
unless you watch it every day, and hour, and force it.'

The experts of the loyal North were partly comforted by knowing
that Davis and his ministers had interfered with Jackson, that
during the present campaign they made a crucial mistake about
Johnston, and that they failed to give Lee the supreme command
until it was too late. But no Southern Secretary went quite so
far as Stanton, who actually falsified Grant's order to Sheridan
at the crisis of the Valley campaign in October. Here are Grant's
own words: "This order had to go through Washington, where it was
intercepted; and when Sheridan received what purported to be a
statement of what I wanted him to do it was something entirely
different."

Nor was Stanton the only responsible civilian to interfere with
Grant. There was no government press censorship--perhaps, in this
peculiar war, there could not be one. So the only safety was
unceasing care, even in cases vouched for by civilians of high
official standing. When Grant was beginning the great campaign of
'64 the Honorable Elihu B. Washburne, afterwards United States
Minister to France, introduced one Swinton as the prospective
historian of the war. On this understanding Swinton accompanied
the army. One night Grant gave verbal orders to the staff officer
on duty. Three days later these orders appeared in a Richmond
paper. Shortly afterwards, in the midst of the Wilderness battle,
Swinton was found eavesdropping behind a stump during a midnight
conference at headquarters. Sent off with a serious warning, he
next appeared, in another place, as a prisoner condemned to death
for spying. Grant, satisfied that he was not bent on getting news
for the enemy in particular, but only for the press in general,
released and expelled him with such a warning this time that he
never once came back.


The Union forces at the front were about twice the corresponding
forces of the South: Sherman, who commanded the river armies
after Grant's transfer to Virginia, says: "I always estimated my
force at about double, and could afford to lose two to one
without disturbing our relative proportion." In Virginia the Army
of the Potomac under Meade and the new Army of the James under
Butler, both under Grant's immediate command, totaled over a
hundred and fifty thousand men against the ninety thousand under
Lee. These odds of five to three remained the same when a hundred
and ten thousand Federals went into winter quarters against
sixtysix thousand Confederates at Petersburg. But, when the naval
odds of more than ten to one in favor of the North are added in,
the general odds of two to one are reached on this as well as
other scenes of action. In reserves the odds were very much
greater; for while the South was getting down to its last
available man the North began the following year with nearly one
million in the forces and two millions on the registered reserve.
Thus, even supposing that half the reserves were unfit for active
service, the man-power odds against the South were these: two to
one in arms at the beginning of the great campaign, five to one
at the end of it, and ten to one if the fit reserves were all
included. The odds in transportation by land, and very much more
so by water, were even greater at corresponding times; while the
odds in all the other resources which could be turned to warlike
ends were greater still.

The Southern situation, therefore, was not encouraging from the
naval and military point of view. The border States had long been
lost, then the trans-Mississippi; and now the whole river lea was
held as a base by the North. Only five States remained effective:
Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia. These formed an
irregular oblong of about two hundred thousand square miles
between the Appalachians and the sea. There were a good eight
hundred Confederate miles from the Shenandoah Valley to Mobile.
But the three hundred miles across the oblong, even in its widest
part, were everywhere threatened and in some places held by the
North. The whole coast was more closely blockaded than ever; and
only three ports remained with their defenses still in Southern
hands: Wilmington, Charleston, and Mobile. Alabama was threatened
by land and sea from the lower Mississippi and the Gulf. Georgia,
was threatened by Sherman's main body in southeastern Tennessee.
The Carolinas were in less immediate danger. But they were
menaced both from the mountains and the sea; and if the Union
forces conquered Virginia and Georgia, then the Carolinas were
certain to be ground into subjugation between Grant's victorious
forces on the north and Sherman's on the south.

Grant fixed his own headquarters with the Army of the Potomac at
Culpeper Court House, north of the Rapidan. Lee's Army of
Northern Virginia, was at Orange Court House, over twenty miles
south. Grant, taking his own headquarters as the center, regarded
Butler's Army of the James as the left wing, which could unite
with the center round Richmond and Petersburg. The long right
wing ran through the whole of West Virginia, Kentucky, and
Tennessee, clear away to Memphis, with its own headquarters at
Chattanooga. There Sherman faced Johnston, who occupied a strong
position at Dalton, over thirty miles southeast. The great
objectives were, of course, the two main Southern armies under
Lee and Johnston, with Richmond and Atlanta as the chief
positions to be gained.

All other Union forces were regarded as attacking the South from
the rear. Wherever coast garrisons could help to tighten the
blockade or seriously distract Confederate attention they were
left to do so. Wherever they could not they were either depleted
for the front or sent there bodily. The principal Union field
force attacking from the rear was to have been formed by Banks's
forty thousand veterans in conjunction with Farragut's fleet
against Mobile. But the Red River Expedition spoilt that
combination in the spring and postponed it till August, when
Farragut did nearly all the fighting, and the cooperating army
was far too late to produce the distracting effect that Grant had
originally planned.

General Franz Sigel was sent to the upper Shenandoah Valley, both
to guard that approach on Washington and to destroy the resources
on which Lee's army so greatly relied. General George Crook was
given a mounted column to operate from southern West Virginia
against the line of rails running toward Tennessee through the
lower end of the Valley.

The most notable new general was Philip H. Sheridan, whom Grant
selected for the cavalry command. Sheridan was thirty-three, two
years older than his Southern rival, Stuart, and, like him, a
young regular officer who rose to well-earned fame the moment his
first great chance occurred.

Sherman we have met from the very beginning of the war and
followed throughout its course. He was continually rising to more
and more responsible command; but it was only now that he became
the virtual Commander-in-Chief of all the river armies and the
chosen cooperator with Grant on a universal scale. He was of the
old original stock, his first American ancestors having emigrated
from England in 1634. An old regular, with special knowledge of
the South, and in the fullness of his powers at the age of
forty-four, he had developed with the war till there was no
position which he could not fill to the best advantage of the
service.

Grant fixed the fourth of May for the combined advance of all the
converging forces of invasion. There were two weak points where
the Union armies failed: one in the farthest south, where, as we
have so often seen, Banks could not attack Mobile owing to his
absence at Red River; the other in the farthest north, where
Sigel was badly beaten and replaced by Hunter. Here, after much
disabling interference at the hands of Stanton, Hunter was
succeeded by Sheridan, whom Grant himself directed with
consummate skill. There were also two Confederate thorns in the
Federal side: Forrest's cavalry in Sherman's rear, Mosby's
cavalry in Grant's. Forrest roved about the river area, snapping
up small garrisons, cutting communications, and doing a good deal
of damage right up to the Ohio. Mosby, with a much smaller but
equally efficient force, actually raided to and fro in Grant's
immediate rear; and on one occasion nearly captured Grant himself
just on the eve of the opening move. As Grant's unguarded special
train from Washington pulled up at Warrenton Junction, where
there was only one Union official, Mosby's men had just crossed
the track in pursuit of some Federal cavalry.

But neither these two Confederate thorns in the side nor the more
serious Federal failures could stop the general advance. Nor yet
could Butler's lack of success on the James. Butler had seized
and fortified. an exceedingly strong defensive position at
Bermuda Hundred on a peninsula, with navigable water on both
flanks and in rear, and a very narrow neck of land in front. The
only trouble was that it was as hard for him to surmount the
Confederate front across the same narrow neck as it was for the
enemy to surmount his own. He was, in fact, bottled up, with the
cork in the enemy's hands. He did send out cavalry from Suffolk
to cut the rails south of Petersburg. But no permanent damage was
done there. Petersburg itself, which at that time was almost
defenseless, was-not . taken. And in the middle of the month
Beauregard attacked Butler so vigorously as to make the Army of
the James rather a passive than an active force till it was
presently, absorbed by Grant when he arrived before Richmond in
June.

Grant felt perfect confidence only in four prime elements of
victory: first, in his ability to wear Lee down by sheer
attrition if other means failed; next, in his own magnificent
army; then in Sherman's; and lastly in Sheridan's cavalry. His
supply and transport services were nearly perfect, even in his
own most critical eyes. "There never was a corps better organized
than was the quartermaster's corps with the Army of the Potomac
in 1864." His field engineering and his signal service were also
exceedingly good. At every halt the army threw up earth and
timber entrenchments with wonderful rapidity and skill. At the
same time the telegraph and signal corps was busy laying
insulated wires by means of reels on muleback. Parallel lines
would be led to the rear of each brigade till quite clear, when
their ends would be joined by a wire at right angles, from which
headquarters could communicate with every unit at the front.
Sherman's army was equally efficient, and Sheridan's cavalry soon
proved that sweeping raids could be carried out by one side as
well as by the other.

Crossing the Rapidan at the Germanna Ford, Grant marched south
through the Wilderness on the fifth of May. The Wilderness was
densely wooded; the roads were few and bad; the clearings rare
and too small for large units. When Lee attacked from the west
and Grant turned to face him the fighting soon became desperate,
close, and somewhat confused. Neither side gained any substantial
advantage on the first day. Next morning Grant, preparing to
attack at five, was forestalled by Lee, who wished to keep him at
arm's length till Longstreet came up on the southern flank. Again
the opposing armies closed and fought with the greatest
determination for over an hour, when the Confederates fell back
in some confusion. Then Longstreet arrived and restored the
battle till he was severely wounded. After this Lee took command
of his right, or southern, wing and kept up the fight all day.
Meanwhile Sheridan had countered the Confederate cavalry under
Stuart, which had been trying to swing round the same southern
flank. The main bodies of infantry swayed back and forth till
dark, with the woods and breastworks on fire in several places,
and many of the wounded smothering in the smoke.

On the seventh reassuring news came in from Sherman and Butler,
Sheridan drove off the Confederate cavalry at Todd's Tavern, and
the southward march continued. As Grant and Meade rode south that
evening, past Hancock's corps, and the men saw they were heading
straight for Richmond, there was such a burst of cheering that
the Confederates, thinking it meant a night attack, deluged the
intervening woods with a heavy barrage till they found out their
mistake.

The race for Richmond continued on the eighth, each army trying
to get south of the other without exposing itself to a flank
attack. Grant had sent his wagon trains farther east, to move
south on parallel roads and keep those nearest Lee quite clear
for fighting. This movement at first led Lee to suspect a Federal
retirement on Fredericksburg, which caused him to send
Longstreet's corps south to Spotsylvania. The woods being on
fire, and the men unable to bivouac, the whole corps pushed on to
Spotsylvania, thus forestalling Grant, who had intended to get
there first himself.

This brought on another tremendous battle in the bush. Lee formed
a semicircle, facing north, round Spotsylvania, in a supreme
effort to stem, if not throw back, Grant's most determined
advance. Grant, on the other hand, indomitably pressed home wave
after wave of attack till the evening of the twelfth. The morning
of that desperate day was foggy; and the attack was delayed. The
Federal objective was a commanding salient, jutting out from the
Confederate center, and now weakened by the removal of guns
overnight to follow the apparent Federal move toward the south.
The gray sentries, peering through the dripping woods, suddenly
found them astir. Then wave after wave of densely massed blue
dashed to the assault, swarming up and over on both sides,
regardless of losses, and fighting hand to hand with a fury that
earned this famous salient the name of Bloody Angle. Back and
still back went the outnumbered gray, many of whom were
surrounded by the swirling currents of inpouring blue. But
presently Lee himself came up, and would have led his
reinforcements to the charge if a pleading shout of "General Lee
to the rear!" had not induced him to desist. Every spare
Confederate rushed to the rescue. From right and left and rear
the gray streams came, impetuous and strong, united in one main
current and dashed against the blue. There, in the Bloody Angle,
the battle raged with everincreasing fury until the rising tide
of strife, bursting its narrow bounds, carried the blue attackers
back to where they came from. But they were hardly clear of that
appalling slope before they reformed, presented an undaunted
front once more, and then drew off with stinging resistance to
the very last.

After five days of much rain and little fighting Grant made his
final effort on the eighteenth. This was meant to be a great
surprise. Two corps changed position under cover of the night and
sprang their trap at four in the morning. But Lee was again
before them, ready and resolute as ever. Thirty guns converged
their withering fire on the big blue masses and seemed to burn
them off the field. These masses never closed, as they had done
six days before; and when they fell back beaten the fortnight's
battle in the Wilderness was done.

During it there had been two operations that gave Grant better
satisfaction: Sheridan's raid and Sherman's advance. As large
bodies of cavalry could not maneuver in the bush Grant had sent
Sheridan off on his Richmond Raid ten days before. Striking south
near Spotsylvania, Sheridan's ten thousand horsemen rounded Lee's
right, cut the rails on either side of Beaver Dam Station,
destroyed this important depot on the Virginia Central Railroad,
and then made straight for Richmond. Stuart followed hard, made
an exhausting sweep round Sheridan's flank, and faced him on the
eleventh at Yellow Tavern, six miles north of Richmond. Here the
tired and outnumbered Confederates made a desperate attempt to
stem Sheridan's advance. But Stuart, the hero of his own men, and
the admiration of his generous foes, was mortally wounded; and
his thinner lines, overlapped and outweighed, gave ground and
drew off. Richmond had no garrison to resist a determined attack.
But Sheridan, knowing he could not hold it and having better work
to do, pushed on southeast to Haxall's Landing, where he could
draw much-needed supplies from Butler, just across the James.
With the enemy aggressive and alert all round him, he built a
bridge under fire across the Chickahominy, struck north for the
Army of the Potomac, and reported his return to Grant at
Chesterfield Station--halfway back to Spotsylvania--on his
seventeenth day out.

In the course of this great raid Sheridan had drawn off the
Confederate cavalry; fought four successful actions; released
hundreds of Union prisoners and taken as many himself; cut rails
and wires to such an extent that Lee could only communicate with
Richmond by messenger; destroyed enormous quantities of the most
vitally needed enemy stores, especially food and medical
supplies; and, by penetrating the outer defenses of Richmond,
raised Federal prestige to a higher plane at a most important
juncture.

Meanwhile Sherman, whose own main body included a hundred
thousand men, had started from Chattanooga at the same time as
Grant from Culpeper Court House. In Grant's opinion "Johnston,
with Atlanta, was of less importance only because the capture of
Johnston and his army would not produce so immediate and decisive
a result in closing the rebellion as would the possession of
Richmond, Lee, and his army." Sherman's organization, supply and
transport, engineers, staff, and army generally were excellent.
So skillful, indeed, were his railway engineers that a disgusted
Confederate raider called out to a demolition party: "Better save
your powder, boys. What's the good of blowing up this one when
Sherman brings duplicate tunnels along?"

Sherman had double Johnston's numbers in the field. But Johnston,
as a supremely skillful Fabian, was a most worthy opponent for
this campaign, when the Confederate object was to gain time and
sicken the North of the war by falling back from one strongly
prepared position to another, inflicting as much loss as possible
on the attackers, and forcing them to stretch their line of
communication to the breaking point among a hostile population.
Two of Sherman's best divisions were still floundering about with
the rest of the Red River Expedition. So he had to modify his
original plan, which would have taken him much sooner to Atlanta
and given him the support of a simultaneous attack on Mobile by a
cooperating joint expedition. But he was ready to the minute, all
the same.

Dalton, Johnston's first stronghold, was cleverly turned by
McPherson's right flank march; where upon Johnston fell back on
Resaca. Here, on the upon the fifteenth of May, the armies fought
hard for some hours. But Sherman again outflanked the fortified
enemy, who retired to Kingston. Then, after Sherman had made a
four days' halt to accumulate supplies, the advance was resumed,
against determined opposition and with a good deal of hard
fighting for a week in the neighborhood of New Hope Church. The
result of the usual outflanking movements was that Johnston had
to evacuate Allatoona on the fourth of June. Sherman at once
turned it into his advanced field base; while Johnston fell back
on another strong and wellprepared position at Kenesaw Mountain.

Grant, favored in a general way by Sherman and in a special way
by Sheridan, had meanwhile enjoyed a third advantage, this time
on his own immediate front, through the sickness of Lee, who
could not take personal command during the last ten days of May.
On the twenty-first half of Grant's army marched south while half
stood threatening Lee, in order to give their friends a start
toward Richmond. This move was so well staffed and screened that
perhaps Lee could not have seen his chance quite soon enough in
any case. But when he did learn what had happened even his calm
self-control gave way to the exceeding bitter cry: "We must
strike them! We must never let them pass us again!" On the
thirtieth he was horrified at getting from Beauregard (who was
then between Richmond and Petersburg) a telegram which showed
that the Confederate Government was busy with the circumlocution
office in Richmond while the enemy was thundering at the gate.
"War Department must determine when and what troops to order from
here." Lee immediately answered: "If you cannot determine what
troops you can spare, the Department cannot. The result of your
delay will be disaster. Butler's troops will be with Grant
tomorrow." Lee also telegraphed direct to Davis for immediate
reinforcements, which arrived only just in time for the terrific
battle of Cold Harbor.

With these three advantages, in addition to the other odds in his
favor, Grant seemed to have found the tide of fortune at the
flood in the latter part of May. But he had many troubles of his
own. No sooner had half his army been badly defeated on the
eighteenth than news came that Sigel was in full retreat instead
of cutting off supplies from Lee. Then came news of Butler's
retreat from Drewry's Bluff, close in to Richmond. Nor was this
all; for it was only now that definite news of the Red River
Expedition arrived to confirm Grant's worst suspicions and ruin
his second plan of helping Farragut to take Mobile. But, as was
his wont, Grant at once took steps to meet the crisis. He ordered
Hunter to replace Sigel and go south--straight into the heart of
the Valley, asked the navy to move his own base down the
Rappahannock from Fredericksburg to Port Royal, and then himself
marched on toward Richmond, where Lee was desperately trying to
concentrate for battle.

The two armies were now drawing all available force together
round the strategic center of Cold Harbor, only nine miles east
of Richmond. On the thirty-first Sheridan drove out the enemy
detachments there, and was himself about to retire before much
superior reinforcements when he got Grant's order to hold his
ground at any cost. Nightfall prevented a general assault till
the next morning, when Sheridan managed to stand fast till
Wright's whole corps came up and the enemy at once desisted. But
elsewhere the Confederates did what they could to stave the
Federals off from advantageous ground on that day and the next.
The day after--the fateful third of June--the two sides closed in
death-grips at Cold Harbor.

On this, the thirtieth day of Grant's campaign of stern attrition
and would-be-smashing hammerstrokes at Lee, these were his orders
for attack: "The moment it becomes certain that an assault cannot
succeed, suspend the offensive. But when one does succeed, push
it vigorously, and, if necessary, pile in troops at the
successful point from wherever they can be taken." The trouble
was that Grant was two days late in carrying on the battle so
well begun by Sheridan, that Warren's corps was two miles off and
entirely disconnected, and that the three remaining corps formed
three parts and no whole when the stress of action came.

At dawn Meade's Army of the Potomac (less Warren's corps) began
to take post for the grand attack that some, more sanguine than
reflecting, hoped would win the war. When it was light the guns
burst out in furious defiance, each side's artillery trying to
beat the other's down before the crisis of the infantry assault.
There was no maneuvering. Each one of Meade's three corps-
-Hancock's, Wright's, and Smith's (brought over from Butler's
command)--marched straight to its front. This led them apart, on
diverging lines, and so exposed their flanks as well as their
fronts to enemy fire. But though each corps thought its neighbor
wrong to uncover its flanks, and the true cause was not
discovered till compass bearings were afterwards compared, yet
each went on undaunted, gaining momentum with every step, and
gathering itself together for the final charge.

Then, surging like great storm-blown waves, the blue lines broke
against Lee's iron front. In every gallant case there was the
same wild cresting of the wave, the same terrific crash, the same
adventurous tongues of blue that darted up as far as they could
go alive, the same anguishing recession from the fatal mark, and
the same agonizing wreckage left behind. In Hancock's corps the
crisis passed in just eight minutes. But in those eight dire
minutes eight colonels died while leading their regiments on to a
foredoomed defeat. One of these eight, James P. McMahon of New
York, alone among his dauntless fellows, actually reached the
Confederate lines, and, catching the colors from their stricken
bearer, waved them one moment above the parapet before he fell.

Flesh and blood could do no more. Under the withering fire and
crossfire of Lee's unshaken front the beaten corps went back,
re-formed, and waited. They had not long to wait; for Grant was
set on swinging his three hammers for three more blows at least.
So again the three assaults were separately made on the one
impregnable front; and again the waves receded, leaving a second
mass of agonizing wreckage with the first. Yet even this was not
enough for Grant, who once more renewed his orders. These orders
quickly ran their usual course, from the army to the different
corps, from each corps to its own divisions, and from divisions
to brigades. But not a single unit stirred. From the generals to
the "thinking bayonets" every soldier knew the limit had been
reached. Officially the order was obeyed by a front-line fire of
musketry, as well as by the staunch artillery, which again gave
its infantry the comfort of the guns. But that was all.

Thus ended the battle of Cold Harbor, the last pitched battle on
Virginian soil. Grant reported it in three short sentences; and
afterwards referred to it in these other three. "I have always
regretted that the last assault [i.e., the whole battle of the
third of June] was ever made. No advantage whatever was gained to
compensate for the heavy loss. Indeed, the advantages, other than
those of relative losses, were on the Confederate side." Even
these, however, were also on the Confederate side, as Grant lost
nearly thirteen thousand, while Lee lost less than eighteen
hundred. Cold Harbor undoubtedly lowered Union morale, both at
the front and all through the loyal North. It encouraged the
Peace Party, revived Confederate hopes, and shook the army's
faith in Grant's commandership. Martin McMahon, a Union general,
writing many years after the event, of which he was a most
competent witness, said: "It was the dreary, dismal, bloody,
ineffective close of the lieutenant-general's first campaign with
the Army of the Potomac."


Cold Harbor caused a change of plan. Reporting two days later
Grant said: "I now find, after thirty days of trial, the enemy
deems it of the first importance to run no risks with the armies
they now have. Without a greater sacrifice of human life than I
am willing to make all cannot be accomplished that I had designed
outside of the city [of Richmond]. I have therefore resolved upon
the following plan," which, in one word, involved a complete
change from a series of pitched battles to a long-drawn open
siege.

The battles lasted thirty days, the siege three hundred.
Therefore, from this time on for the next ten months, Lee had to
keep his living shield between Grant's main body and the last
great stronghold of the fighting South, while the rising tide of
Northern force, commanding all the sea and an ever-increasing
portion of the land, beat ceaselessly against his front and
flanks, threw out destroying arms against his ever-diminishing
sources of supply, and wore the starving shield itself down to
the very bone.

Grant's losses--forty thousand killed and wounded--were all made
good by immediate reinforcement; as was his other human wastage
from sickness, straggling, and desertion: made good, that is, in
the quantities required to wear out Lee, whose thinning ranks
could never be renewed; but not made good in quality; for many of
the best were dead. The wastage of material is hardly worth
considering on the Northern side; for it could always be made
good, superabundantly good. But the corresponding wastage on the
Southern side was unrenewed and unrenewable. Food, clothing,
munitions, medical stores--it was all the same for all the
Southern armies: desperate expedients, slow starvation, death.

Consternation reigned at Richmond on the twelfth of June, the day
the fitful firing ceased around Cold Harbor. There was danger in
the Valley, where Hunter had won success at Staunton, and where
Crook's and Averell's Union troops were expected to arrive from
West Virginia. Sheridan, too, was off on a twenty-day raid. He
cut the Virginia Central rails at Trevilian, did much other
damage between Richmond and the Valley, and, toward the end of
June, rejoined Grant, who had reached the James nearly a
fortnight before. Always trying to overlap Lee's extending right,
Grant closed in on Petersburg with the Army of the Potomac while
the Army of the James held fast against Richmond. This part of
the front then remained comparatively quiet till the end of July.

But the beleaguered Confederates made one last sortie out of the
Valley and straight against Washington. At the beginning of July
the Valley was uncovered owing to the roundabout flank march that
Hunter was forced to make back to his base for ammunition. The
enterprising Jubal Early took advantage of this with some veteran
troops and made straight for Washington. On the ninth Lew Wallace
succeeded in delaying him for one day at the Monocacy by an
admirably planned defense most gallantly carried out with greatly
inferior numbers and far less veteran men. This gave time for
reinforcements to pour into Washington; so that on the twelfth,
Early, finding the works alive with men, had to retreat even
faster than he came.

In the meantime Grant's extreme right wing was steadily pressing
the invasion of Georgia, where we left Sherman and Johnston face
to face at Kenesaw in June. Here again the beleaguered
Confederates had been making desperate raids or sorties, trying
to cut Sherman off from his base in Tennessee and keep back the
Federal forces in other parts of the river area. "Our Jack
Morgan," whom we left as a prisoner of war after his Ohio raid of
'63, had escaped in November, fought Crook and Averell for
Saltville and Wytheville in May, and then, leaving southwest
Virginia, had raided Kentucky and taken Lexington, but been
defeated at Cynthiana and driven back by overwhelming numbers
till he again entered southwest Virginia on the twentieth of
June. Forrest raided northeastern Mississippi, badly defeated
Sturgis at Brice's Cross Roads in June, but was himself defeated
by A.J. Smith at Tupelo in July.

Meanwhile Sherman had been tapping Johnston's fifty miles of
entrenchments for three weeks of rainy June weather, hoping to
find a suitable place into which he could drive a wedge of
attack. On the twenty-seventh he tried to carry the Kene saw
lines by assault, but failed at every point, with a loss of
twenty-five hundred--three times what Johnston lost.

By a well-combined series of maneuvers Sherman then forced
Johnston to fall back or be hopelessly outflanked. Johnston, with
equal skill, crossed the Chattahoochee under cover of the
strongly fortified bridgehead which he had built unknown to
Sherman. But Sherman, with his double numbers, could always hold
Johnston with one-half in front while turning his flank with the
other. So even the Chattahoochee was safely crossed on the
seventeenth of July and the final move against Atlanta was begun.
That same night Johnston's magnificent skill was thrown to the
winds by Davis, who had ordered the bold and skillful but far too
headlong John B. Hood to take command and "fight."

Five days later Hood fought the battle of Atlanta. Just as
Sherman was closing in to entrench for a siege Hood attacked his
extreme left flank with the utmost resolution, driving it in and
completely enveloping it. But Sherman was not to be caught.
Knowing that only a part of Hood's army could be sent to this
attack while the rest held the lines of Atlanta, Sherman left
McPherson's veteran Army of the Tennessee to do the actual
fighting, supported, of course, by the movement of troops on
their engaged right. McPherson was killed. Logan ably replaced
him and won a hard-fought day. Hood's loss was well over eight
thousand; Sherman's considerably less than half.

On the twenty-eighth Hood attacked the extreme right, now
commanded by General O.O. Howard in succession to McPherson,
whose Army of the Tennessee again did most distinguished service,
especially Logan's Fifteenth Corps near Ezra Church. The
Confederates were again defeated with the heavier loss. After
this the siege continued all through the month of August.

While Hood was trying to keep Sherman off Atlanta Grant was
trying to make a breach at Petersburg. Grant gave Meade "minute
orders on the 24th [of July] how I wanted the assault conducted,"
and Meade elaborated the actual plan with admirable skill except
in one particular that of the generals concerned. Burnside was
ordered to use his corps for the assault, and he chose Ledlie's
division to lead. The mine was on an enormous scale, designed to
hold eight tons of powder, though it was only charged with four,
and was approached by a gallery five hundred feet long. On the
twentyninth Grant brought every available man into proper support
of Burnside, whose other three divisions were to form the
immediate support of Ledlie's grand forlorn hope.

In the early morning of the thirtieth the mine blew up with an
earthquaking shock; the enemy round it ran helterskelter to the
rear; a crater like that of a volcano was formed; and a hundred
and sixty pieces of artillery opened a furious fire on every
square inch near it. Ledlie's division rushed forward and
occupied the crater. But there the whole maneuver stopped short;
for everything hinged on Ledlie's movements; and Ledlie was
hiding, well out of danger, instead of "carrying on." After a
pause Confederate reinforcements came up and drove the leaderless
division back. "The effort," said Grant, "was a stupendous
failure"; and it cost him nearly four thousand men, mostly
captured.

August was a sad month for the loyal North. It was then, as we
have seen, that Lincoln had to warn Grant about the way in which
his orders were being falsified in Washington. It was then that
Sherman asked for reinforcements, so as to be up to strength
before and after the taking of Atlanta. And it was then that
Halleck warned Grant to be ready to send some of his best men
north if there should be serious resistance to the draft. Nor was
this all. Thurlow Weed, the great election agent, told Lincoln
that the Government would be defeated; which meant, of course,
that the compromised and compromising Peace Party would probably
be at the helm in time to wreck the Union. With so many of the
best men dead or at the front the whole tone of political society
had been considerably lowered--to the corresponding advantage of
all those meaner elements that fish in troubled waters when the
dregs are well stirred up. There were sinister signs in the big
cities, in the press, and in financial circles. The Union dollar
once sank to thirty-nine cents. To make matters worse, there was
a good deal of well-founded discontent among the selfsacrificing
loyalists, both at the home and fighting fronts, because the
Government apparently allowed disloyal and evasive citizens to
live as parasites on the Union's body politic. The blood tax and
money tax alike fell far too heavily on the patriots; while many
a parasite grew rich in unshamed safety.

Mobile was won in August. But the people's eyes were mostly fixed
upon the land. So a much greater effect was produced by Sherman's
laconic dispatch of the second of September announcing the fall
of Atlanta. The Confederates, despairing of holding it to any
good purpose, had blown up everything they could not move and
then retreated. This thrilling news heartened the whole loyal
North, and, as Lincoln at once sent word to Sherman, "entitled
those who had participated to the applause and thanks of the
nation." Grant fired a salute of shotted guns from every battery
bearing on the enemy, who were correspondingly depressed. For
every one could now see that if the Union put forth its full
strength the shrunken forces of the South could not prevent the
Northern vice from crushing them to death.

September also saw the turning of the tide on the still more
conspicuous scene of action in Virginia. Grant had sent Sheridan
to the Valley, and had just completed a tour of personal
inspection there, when Sheridan, finding Early's Confederates
divided, swooped down on the exposed main body at Opequan Creek
and won a brilliant victory which raised the hopes of the loyal
North a good deal higher still.

Exactly a month later, on the nineteenth of October, Early made a
desperate attempt to turn the tables on the Federals in the
Valley by attacking them suddenly, on their exposed left flank,
while Sheridan was absent at Washington. (We must remember that
Grant had to concert action personally with his sub-commanders,
as his orders were so often "queered" when seen at Washington by
autocratic Stanton and bureaucratic Halleck.) The troops attacked
broke up and were driven in on their supports in wild confusion.
Then the supports gave way; and a Confederate victory seemed to
be assured.

But Sheridan was on his way. He had left the scene of his
previous victory at Opequan Creek, near Winchester, and was now
riding to the rescue of his army at Cedar Creek, twenty miles
south. "Sheridan's Ride," so widely known in song and story, was
enough to shake the nerves of any but a very fit commander. The
flotsam and jetsam of defeat swirled round him as he rode. Yet,
with unerring eye, he picked out the few that could influence the
rest and set them at work to rally, reform, and return. Inspired
by his example many a straggler who had run for miles presently
"found himself" again and got back in time to redeem his
reputation.

Arriving on the field Sheridan discovered those two splendid
leaders, Custer and Getty, holding off the victorious
Confederates from what otherwise seemed an easy prey. His
presence encouraged the formed defense, restored confidence among
the rest near by, and stiffened resistance so much that hasty
entrenchments were successfully made and still more successfully
held. The first rush having been stopped, Sheridan turned the
lull that ensued into a triumphal progress by riding bareheaded
along his whole line, so that all his men might feel themselves
once more under his personal command. Cheer upon cheer greeted
him as his gallant charger carried him past; and when the
astonished enemy were themselves attacked they broke in
irretrievable defeat.

This crowning victory of the long-drawn Valley campaigns, coming
with cumulative force after those of Mobile, Atlanta, and Opequan
Creek, did more to turn the critical election than all the
speeches in the North. The fittest at the home front judged by
deeds, not words, agreeing therein with Rutherford B. Hayes (a
future President, now one of Sheridan's generals) who said: "Any
officer fit for duty who at this crisis would abandon his post to
electioneer for a seat in Congress, ought to be scalped."

The devastation of everything in the Valley that might be useful
to Lee's army completed the Union victory in arms; while
Lincoln's own triumph in November completed it in politics and
raised his party to the highest plane of statesmanship in war.

From this time till the early spring the battle of the giants in
Virginia calmed down to the minor moves and clashes that mark a
period of winter quarters; while the scene of more stirring
action shifts once more to Georgia and Tennessee.



CHAPTER XI. SHERMAN DESTROYS THE BASE: 1864

Sherman made Atlanta his field headquarters for September and
October, changing it entirely from a Southern city to a Northern
camp. The whole population was removed, every one being given the
choice of going north or south. In his own words, Sherman "had
seen Memphis, Vicksburg, Natchez, and New Orleans, all captured
from the enemy, and each at once garrisoned by a full division,
if not more; so that success was actually crippling our armies in
the field by detachments to guard and protect the interests of a
hostile population." In reporting to Washington he said: "If the
people raise a howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will
answer that war is war, and not popularity seeking. If they want
peace, they and their relatives must stop the war." He also
excluded the swarms of demoralizing camp-followers that had
clogged him elsewhere. One licensed sutler was allowed for each
of his three armies, and no more. Atlanta thus became a perfect
Union stronghold fixed in the flank of the South.

The balance of losses in action, from May to September, was
heavily against the South: nearly nine to four. The actual
numbers did not greatly differ: thirty-two thousand Federals to
thirty-five thousand Confederates. (And in killed and wounded the
Federals lost many more than the Confederates. It was the
thirteen thousand captured Confederates that redressed the
balance.) But, since Sherman had twice as many in his total as
the Confederates had in theirs, the odds in relative loss were
nine to four in his favor. The balance of loss from disease was
also heavily against the Confedates, who as usual suffered from
dearth of medical stores. The losses in present and prospective
food supplies were even more in Sherman's favor; for his
devastations had begun. Yet Jefferson Davis was bound that Hood
should "fight"; and Hood was nothing loth.

Davis went about denouncing Johnston for his magnificent Fabian
defense; and added insult to injury by coupling the name of this
very able soldier and quite incorruptible man with that of Joseph
E. Brown, Governor of Georgia, who, though a violent
Secessionist, opposed all proper unification of effort, and
exempted eight thousand State employees from conscription as
civilian "indispensables." Then, when Sherman approached, Brown
ran away with all the food and furniture he could stuff into his
own special train; though he left behind him all arms,
ammunition, and other warlike stores, besides the confidential
documents belonging to the State.

Brown had also weakened Hood's army by withdrawing the State
troops to gather in the harvest and store it where Sherman
afterwards used what he wanted and destroyed the rest. Yet Hood
kept operating in Sherman's rear, admirably seconded by Forrest's
and Wheeler's raiding cavalry. Late in October Forrest performed
the remarkable feat of taking a flotilla with cavalry. He
suddenly swooped down on the Tennessee near Johnsonville and took
the gunboat Undine with a couple of transports. Hood had
meanwhile been busy on Sherman's line of communications, hoping
at least to immobilize him round Atlanta, and at best to bring
him back from Georgia for a Federal defeat in Tennessee.

On the fifth of October the last action near Atlanta was fought
thirty miles northwest, when Hood made a desperate attempt on
Allatoona with a greatly superior force. Twelve miles off, on
Kenesaw Mountain, Sherman could see the smoke and hear the sounds
of battle through the clear, still, autumn air. But as his
signalers could get no answer from the fort he began to fear that
Allatoona was already lost, when the signal officer's quick eye
caught the faintest flutter at one of the fort windows. Presently
the letters, C - R - S - E - H - E - R, were made out; which
meant that General John M. Corse, one of the best volunteers
produced by the war, was holding out. He had hurried over from
Rome, on a call from Allatoona, and was withstanding more than
four thousand men with less than two thousand. All morning long
the Confederates persisted in their attacks, while Sherman's
relief column was hurrying over from Kenesaw. Early in the
afternoon the fire slackened and ceased before this column
arrived. But Sherman's renewed fears were soon allayed. For
Corse, after losing more than a third of his men, had repulsed
the enemy alone, inflicting on them an even greater loss in
proportion to their double strength.

Corse was still full of fight, reporting back to Kenesaw that
though "short a cheek bone and an ear" he was "able to whip all
hell yet." Sherman thanked the brave defenders in his general
orders of the seventh for "the handsome defense made at
Allatoona" and pointed the moral that "garrisons must hold their
posts to the last minute, sure that the time gained is valuable
and necessary to their comrades at the front."

The situation at the beginning of November was most peculiar.
With the whole Gulf coast blockaded and the three great ports in
Union hands, with the Mississippi a Union stream from source to
sea, and with Sherman firmly set in the northwest flank of
Georgia, Hood made the last grand sortie from the beleaguered
South. It was a desperate adventure to go north against the
Federal troops in Tennessee, with Kentucky and the line of the
Ohio as his ultimate objective, when Lincoln had been returned to
power, when Grant was surely wearing down Lee in Virginia, and
when Sherman's preponderance of force was not only assured in
Georgia but in Tennessee as well. Moreover, Thomas, the "Rock of
Chickamauga," had been sent back to counter Hood from Grant's and
Sherman's old headquarters at Nashville on the Cumberland. And
Thomas was soon to have the usual double numbers; for all the
Western depots sent him their trained recruits, till, by the end
of November, his total was over seventy thousand. Hood's forty
thousand could not be increased or even stopped from dwindling.
Yet he pushed on, with the consent of Beauregard, who now held
the general command of all the troops opposed to Sherman.

The next moves were even more peculiar than the first. For while
Hood hoped to close the breach in Georgia by drawing Sherman
back, and Sherman expected that when he went on to widen the
breach he would draw Hood back, what really happened was that
each advanced on his own new line in opposite directions, Hood
north through Tennessee, Sherman southeast through Georgia. So
firm was the grip of the Union on all the navigable waters that
Hood could only cross the Tennessee somewhere along the shoals.
He chose a place near Florence, Alabama, got safely over and
encamped. There, for the moment, we shall leave him and follow
Sherman to the sea.


The region of the Gulf and lower Mississippi being now under the
assured predominance of Union forces, Grant, with equal wisdom
and decision, entirely approved of Sherman's plan to cut loose
from his western base, make a devastating march through the heart
of fertile Georgia, and join the eastern forces of the North at
Savannah, where Fort Pulaski was in Union hands and the Union
navy was, as usual, overwhelmingly strong.

Sherman's March to the Sea at once acquired a popular renown
which it has never lost. This, however, was chiefly because it
happened to catch the public eye while nothing else was on the
stage. For its many admirable features were those about which
most people know little and care less: well-combined grand
strategy, perfection in headquarter orders and the incidental
staff work, excellent march discipline, wonderful coordination
between the different arms of the Service and with all auxiliary
branches--especially the commissariat and transport, and, to
clinch everything, a thoroughness of execution which
distinguished each unit concerned. As a feat of arms this famous
march is hardly worth mentioning. There were no battles and no
such masterly maneuvers as those of the much harder march to
Atlanta. Nor was the operational problem to be mentioned in the
same breath with that of the subsequent march through the
Carolinas. Sherman himself says: "Were I to express my measure of
the relative importance of the march to the sea, and of that from
Savannah northward, I would place the former at one, and the
latter at ten--or the maximum."

The Government was very doubtful and counseled reconsideration.
But Grant and Sherman, knowing the factors so very much better,
were sure the problem could easily be solved. Sherman left
Atlanta on the fifteenth of November and laid siege to Savannah
on the tenth of December. He utterly destroyed the military value
of Atlanta and everything else on the way that could be used by
the armies in the field. Of course, to do this he had to reduce
civilian supplies to the point at which no surplus remained for
transport to the front; and civilians naturally suffered. But his
object was to destroy the Georgian base of supplies without
inflicting more than incidental hardship on civilians. And this
object he attained. He cut a swath of devastation sixty miles
wide all the way to Savannah. Every rail was rooted up, made
red-hot, and twisted into scrap. Every road and bridge was
destroyed. Every kind of surplus supplies an army could possibly
need was burnt or consumed. Civilians were left with enough to
keep body and soul together, but nothing to send away, even if
the means of transportation had been left.

Sherman's sixty thousand men were all as fit as his own tall
sinewy form, which was the very embodiment of expert energy.
Every weakling had been left behind. Consequently the whole
veteran force simply romped through this Georgian raid. The main
body mostly followed the rails, which gangs of soldiers would
pile on bonfires of sleepers. The mounted men swept up everything
about the flanks. But nothing escaped the "bummers," who foraged
for their units every day, starting out empty-handed on foot and
returning heavily laden on horses or mules or in some kind of
vehicle. If Atlanta had been a volcano in eruption, and the
molten lava had flowed to Savannah in a stream sixty miles wide
and five times as long, the destruction could hardly have been
worse, except, of course, that civilians were left enough to keep
them alive, and that, with a few inevitable exceptions, they were
not ill treated.

The fighting hardly disturbed the daily routine. Sherman was
never in danger; though wiseacre Washington, supposing that he
ought to be, used to pester Lincoln, who always replied: "Grant
says the men are safe with Sherman, and that if they can't get
out where they want to, they can crawl back by the hole they went
in at." This seemed to allay anxiety; though the truth was that
Sherman's real safety lay in going ahead to the Union sea, not in
retracing his steps over the devastated line of his advance.

On approaching Savannah a mounted officer was blown up by a land
torpedo, his horse killed, and himself badly lacerated. Sherman
at once sent his prisoners ahead to dig up the other torpedoes or
get blown up by those they failed to find. No more explosions
took place. Savannah itself was strongly entrenched and further
defended by Fort McAllister. Against this fort Sherman detached
his own old Shiloh division of the Fifteenth Corps, now under the
very capable command of General William B. Hazen. As the day wore
on Sherman became very impatient, watching for Hazen's attack,
when a black object went gliding up the Ogeechee River toward the
fort. Presently a man-of-war appeared flying the Stars and
Stripes and signaling, "Who are you?" On getting the answer,
"General Sherman", she asked, "Is Fort McAllister taken?" and
immediately received the cheering assurance, "No; but it will be
in a minute." Then, just as the signal flags ceased waving,
Hazen's straight blue lines broke cover, advanced, charged
through the hail of shot, shell, and rifle bullets, rushed the
defenses, and stood triumphant on the top.

Before midnight Sherman was writing his dispatches on board the
U.S.S. Dandelion and examining those received from Grant. He
learned now, from Grant's of the third (ten days before), that
Thomas was facing Hood round Nashville and that the Government,
and even Grant, were getting very impatient with Thomas for not
striking hard and at once. A week later the Confederate general,
Hardee, managed to evacuate Savannah before his one remaining
line of retreat had been cut off. He was a thorough soldier. But
men and means and time were lacking; and the civil population
hoped to save all that was not considered warlike stores. Thus
immense supplies fell into Sherman's hands. Savannah was of
course placed under martial law. But as the wax was now nearing
its inevitable end, and the citizens were thoroughly
"subjugated," those who wished to remain were allowed to do so.
Only two hundred left, going to Charleston under a flag of truce.

The following official announcement reached Lincoln on Christmas
Eve.

                 Savannah, Georgia, December 22, 1864.

To His Excellency President Lincoln,
         Washington, D. C.

I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah,
with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition,
also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton.
          W. T. Sherman, Major-General.


In the meantime Hood's desperate sortie had struck north as far
as Franklin, Tennessee. Here, on the last of November, General
John Schofield, commanding the advanced part of Thomas's army,
gallantly withstood a furious attack. On this the closing day of
a lingering Indian summer the massed Confederates charged with
the piercing rebel yell, and charged again; re-formed under cover
of the dense pall of stationary smoke; and returned to the charge
again and again. Many a leader met his death right against the
very breastworks. Another would instantly spring forward, only to
fall in his turn. Thirteen times the gaunt gray lines rushed
madly through the battle smoke and lost their front ranks against
the withering fire before the autumn night closed in. Schofield
then fell back on Brentwood, halfway on the twenty miles to
Nashville. He had lost over two thousand men. But Hood had lost
three times as many; and Hood's were irreplaceable except by a
very few local recruits.

Hood now concentrated every available man for his final attack on
Thomas, who had odds of twenty thousand in his favor. Hood
marched his thirty-five thousand up to Nashville, where he
actually invested the fifty-five thousand Federals. By this time
even Grant was so annoyed at what seemed to him unreasoning delay
that he sent Logan to take command at once and "fight." But on
the fifteenth of December Thomas came out of his works and fought
Hood with determined skill all day. Having gained a decisive
advantage already he pressed it home to the very utmost on the
morrow, breaking through Hood's shaken lines, enveloping whole
units with converging fire, and taking prisoners in mass. After a
last wild effort Hood's beaten army fled, having lost fifteen
thousand men, five times as much as Thomas.

The battle of Nashville came nearer than any other to being a
really annihilating victory. Out of the forty thousand men Hood
had at first in Tennessee not half escaped; and of the remainder
not nearly half were ever seen in arms again. As an organized
force his army simply disappeared. The few thousands saved from
the wreckage of the storm found their painful way east to join
all that was left for the last stand against the overwhelming
forces of the North.



CHAPTER XII. THE END: 1865

By '65 the Southern cause was lost. There was nothing to hope for
from abroad. Neither was there anything to hope for at home, now
that Lincoln and the Union Government had been returned to power.
From the very first the disparity of resources was so great that
the South had never had a chance alone except against a disunited
North. Now that the North could bring its full strength to bear
against the worn-out South the only question remaining to be
settled in the field was simply one of time. Yet Davis, with his
indomitable will, would never yield so long as any Confederates
would remain in arms. And men like Lee would never willingly give
up the fight so long as those they served required them.
Therefore the war went on until the Southern armies failed
through sheer exhaustion.

The North had nearly a million men by land and sea. The South had
perhaps two hundred thousand. The North could count on a million
recruits out of the whole reserve of twice as many. The South had
no reserves at all. The total odds were therefore five to one
without reserves and ten to one if these came in.

The scene of action, for all decisive purposes, had shrunk again,
and now included nothing beyond Virginia and the Carolinas; and
even there the Union forces had impregnable bases of attack. When
Wilmington fell in January the only port still left in Southern
hands was Charleston; and that was close-blockaded. Fighting
Confederates still remained in the lower South. But victories
like Olustee, Florida, barren in '64, could not avail them now,
even if they had the troops to win them. The lower South was now
as much isolated as the trans-Mississippi. Between its blockaded
and garrisoned coast on one side and its sixty-mile swath of
devastation through the heart of Georgia on the other it might as
well have been a shipless island. The same was true of all
Confederate places beyond Virginia and the Carolinas. The last
shots were fired in Texas near the middle of May. But they were
as futile against the course of events as was the final act of
war committed by the Confederate raider Shenandoah at the end of
June, when she sank the whaling fleet, far off in the lone
Pacific.

For the last two months of the four-years' war Davis made Lee
Commander-in-Chief. Lee at once restored Johnston to his rightful
place. These two great soldiers then did what could be done to
stave off Grant and Sherman. Lee's and Johnston's problem was of
course insoluble. For each was facing an army which was alone a
match for both. The only chance of prolonging anything more than
a mere guerilla war was to join forces in southwest Virginia,
where the only line of rails was safe from capture for the
moment. But this meant eluding Grant and Sherman; and these two
leaders would never let a plain chance slip. They took good care
that all Confederate forces outside the central scene of action
were kept busy with their own defense. They also closed in enough
men from the west to prevent Lee and Johnston escaping by the
mountains. Then, with the help of the navy, having cut off every
means of escape--north, south, east, and west--they themselves
closed in for the death-grip.

By the first of February Sherman was on his way north through the
Carolinas with sixty thousand picked men, drawing in
reinforcements as he advanced against Johnston's dwindling forty
thousand, until the thousands that faced each other at the end in
April were ninety and thirty respectively. On the ninth of
February (the day Lee became Commander-in-Chief) Sherman was
crossing the rails between Charleston and Augusta, of course
destroying them. A week later he was doing the same at Columbia
in the middle of South Carolina. By this time his old antagonist,
Johnston, had assumed command; so that he had to reckon with the
chances of a battle, as on his way against Atlanta, and not only
with the troubles of devastating an undefended base, as on his
march to the sea. The difficulties of hard marching through an
enemy country full of natural and artificial obstacles were also
much greater here than in Georgia. How well these difficulties
could be surmounted by a veteran army may be realized from a
recorded instance which, though it occurred elsewhere, was yet
entirely typical. In forty days an infantry division of eight
thousand men repaired a hundred miles of rail and built a hundred
and eighty-two bridges.

Sherman took a month to advance from Columbia in the middle of
South Carolina to Bentonville in the middle of North Carolina.
Here Johnston stood his ground; and a battle was fought from the
nineteenth to the twenty-first of March. Had Sherman known at the
time that his own numbers were, as he afterwards reported,
"vastly superior," he might have crushed Johnston then and there.
But, as it was, he ably supported the exposed flank that Johnston
so skillfully attacked, won the battle, inflicted losses a good
deal larger than his own, and gained his ulterior objective as
well as if there had not been a fight at all. This objective was
the concentration of his whole army round Goldsboro by the
twenty-fifth. At Goldsboro he held the strategic center of North
Carolina, being at the junction whence the rails ran east to
Newbern (which had long been in Union hands), west to meet the
only rails by which Lee's army might for a time escape, and north
(a hundred and fifty miles) to Grant's besieging host at
Petersburg. Sherman's record is one of which his men might well
be proud. In fifty days from Savannah he had made a winter march
through four hundred and twenty-five miles of mud, had captured
three cities, destroyed four railways, drained the Confederate
resources, increased his own, and half closed on Lee and Johnston
the vice which he and Grant could soon close altogether.
Nevertheless Grant records that "one of the most anxious periods
was the last few weeks before Petersburg"; for he was haunted by
the fear that Lee's army, now nearing the last extremity of
famine, might risk all on railing off southwest to Danville, the
one line left. Lee, consummate now as when victorious before,
masked his movements wonderfully well till the early morning of
the twenty-fifth of March, when he suddenly made a furious attack
where the lines were very near together. For some hours he held a
salient in the Federal position. But he was presently driven back
with loss; and his intention to escape stood plainly revealed.

The same day Sherman railed down to Newbern over the line
repaired by that indefatigable and most accomplished engineer,
Colonel W. W. Wright, took ship for City Point, Virginia, and met
Lincoln, Grant, and Admiral Porter there on the twenty-seventh
and twenty-eighth. Grant explained to Lincoln that Sheridan was
crossing the James just below them, to cut the rails running
south from Petersburg and then, by forced marches, to cut those
running southwest from Richmond, Lee's last possible line of
escape. Grant added that the final crisis was very near and that
his only anxiety was lest Lee might escape before Sheridan cut
the Richmond line southwest to Danville. Lincoln said he hoped
the war would end at once and with no more bloodshed. Grant and
Sherman, however, could not guarantee that Davis might not force
Lee and Johnston to one last desperate fight. Lincoln added that
all he wanted after the surrender was to get the Confederates
back to their civil life and make them good contented citizens.
As for Davis: well, there once was a man who, having taken the
pledge, was asked if he wouldn't let his host put just a drop of
brandy in the lemonade. His answer was: "See here, if you do it
unbeknownst, I won't object." From the way that Lincoln told this
story Grant and Sherman both inferred that he would be glad to
see Davis disembarrass the reunited States of his annoying
presence.

This twenty-eighth of March saw the last farewells between the
President and his naval and military lieutenants at the front.
Admiral Porter immediately wrote down a full account of the
conversations, from which, together with Grant's and Sherman's
strong corroboration, we know that Lincoln entirely approved of
the terms which Grant gave Lee, and that he would have approved
quite as heartily of those which Sherman gave to Johnston.

Next morning the final race, pursuit, defeat, and victory began.
Grant marched all his spare, men west to cut Lee off completely.
He left enough to hold his lines at Petersburg, in case Lee
should remain; and he arranged with Sherman for a combined
movement, to begin on the tenth of April, in case Johnston and
Lee should try to join each other. But he felt fairly confident
that he could run Lee down while Sherman tackled Johnston.

On the first of April Sheridan won a hard fight at Five Forks,
southwest of Petersburg. On Sunday (the second) Lee left
Petersburg for good, sending word to Richmond. That morning Davis
rose from his place in church and the clergyman quietly told the
congregation that there would be no evening service. On Monday
morning Grant rode into Petersburg, and saw the Confederate
rearguard clubbed together round the bridge. "I had not the
heart," said Grant, "to turn the artillery upon such a mass of
defeated and fleeing men, and I hoped to capture them soon." On
Tuesday Grant closed his orders to Sherman with the words, "Rebel
armies are now the only strategic points to strike at," and
himself pressed on relentlessly.

Late next afternoon a horseman in full Confederate uniform
suddenly broke cover from the enemy side of a dense wood and
dashed straight at the headquarter staff. The escort made as if
to seize him. But a staff officer called out, "How d'ye do,
Campbell?" This famous scout then took a wad of tobacco out of
his mouth, a roll of tinfoil out of the wad, and a piece of
tissue paper out of the tinfoil. When Grant read Sheridan's
report ending "I wish you were here" (that is, at Jetersville,
halfway between Petersburg and Appomattox), he immediately got
off his black pony, mounted Cincinnati, and rode the twenty miles
at speed, to learn that Lee was heading due west for Farmville,
less than thirty miles from Appomattox.

On Thursday the sixth, Lee, closely beset in flank and rear, lost
seven thousand men at Sailor's Creek, mostly as prisoners. The
heroes of this fight were six hundred Federals, who, having gone
to blow up High Bridge on the Appomattox, found their retreat cut
off by the whole Confederate advanced guard. Under Colonel
Francis Washburn, Fourth Massachusetts Cavalry, and Colonel
Theodore Read, of General Ord's staff, this dauntless six hundred
charged again and again until, their leaders killed and most of
the others dead or wounded, the rest surrendered. They had gained
their object by holding up Lee's column long enough to let its
wagon. train be raided.

Grant, now feeling that his hold on Lee could not be shaken off,
wrote him a letter on Friday afternoon, saying: "The results of
the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further
resistance." That night Lee replied asking what terms Grant
proposed to offer. Next morning Grant wrote again to propose a
meeting, and Lee answered to say he was willing to treat for
peace. Grant at once informed him that the only subject for
discussion was the surrender of the army. That evening Federal
cavalry under General George A. Custer raided Appomattox Station,
five miles southwest of the Court House, and held up four trains.
A few hours later, early on Sunday, the famous ninth of April,
1865, Lee's advanced guard was astounded to find its way disputed
so far west. It attacked with desperation, hoping to break
through what seemed to be a cavalry screen before the infantry
came up; but when Lee's main body joined in, only to find a solid
mass of Federal infantry straight across its one way out, Lee at
once sent forward a white flag.

Grant, overwrought with anxiety, had been suffering from an
excruciating headache all night long. But the moment he opened
Lee's note, offering to discuss surrender, he felt as well as
ever, and instantly wrote back to say he was ready. Pushing
rapidly on he met Lee at McLean's private residence near
Appomattox Court House. There was a remarkable contrast between
the appearance of the two commanders. Grant, only forty-three,
and without a tinge of gray in his brown hair, took an inch or
two off his medium height by stooping keenly forward, and had
nothing in his shabby private's uniform to show his rank except
the three-starred shoulder-straps. When the main business was
over, and he had time to notice details, he apologized to Lee,
explaining that the extreme rapidity of his movements had carried
him far ahead of his baggage. Lee's aide-de-camp, Colonel Charles
Marshall, afterwards explained that when the Confederates had
been obliged to reduce themselves simply to what they stood in,
each officer had naturally put on his best. Hence Lee's
magnificent appearance in a brand-new general's uniform with the
jeweled sword of honor that Virginia had given him. Well over six
feet tall, straight as an arrow in spite of his fifty-eight years
and snow-white, war-grown beard, still extremely handsome, and
full of equal dignity and charm, he looked, from head to foot,
the perfect leader of devoted men.

Grant, holding out his hand in cordial greeting, began the
conversation by saying: "I met you once before, General Lee,
while we were serving in Mexico . . . . I have always remembered
your appearance, and I think I should have recognized you
anywhere." After some other personal talk Lee said: "I suppose,
General Grant, that the object of our present meeting is fully
understood. I asked to see you in order to ascertain on what
terms you would receive the surrender of my army." Grant answered
that officers and men were to be paroled and disqualified from
serving again till properly exchanged, and that all warlike and
other stores were to be treated as captured. Lee bowed assent,
said that was what he had expected, and presently suggested that
Grant should commit the terms to writing on the spot. When Grant
got to the end of the terms already discussed his eye fell on
Lee's splendid sword of honor, and he immediately added the
sentence: "This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers,
nor their private horses or baggage." When Lee read over the
draft he flushed slightly on coming to this generous proviso and
gratefully said: "This will have a very happy effect upon my
army." Grant then asked him if he had any suggestions to make;
whereupon he said that the mounted Confederates, unlike the
Federals, owned their horses. Before he had time to ask a favor
Grant said that as these horses would be invaluable for men
returning to civil life they could all be taken home after full
proof of ownership. Lee again flushed and gratefully replied:
"This will have the best possible effect upon the men. It will be
very gratifying and do much toward conciliating our people."

While the documents were being written out for signature Grant
introduced the generals and staff officers to Lee. Then Lee once
more led the conversation back to business by saying he wished to
return his prisoners to Grant at the earliest possible moment
because he had nothing more for them to eat. "I have, indeed,
nothing for my own men," he added. They had been living on the
scantiest supply of parched corn for several days; and this
famine fare, combined with their utter lack of all other
supplies--especially medicine and clothing--was wearing them away
faster than any "war of attrition" in the open field. After
heartily agreeing that the prisoners should immediately return
Grant said: "I will take steps at once to have your army supplied
with rations. Suppose I send over twenty-five thousand; do you
think that will be a sufficient supply?" "I think it will be
ample," said Lee, who, after a pause, added: "and it will be a
great relief, I assure you."

Then Lee rose, shook Grant warmly by the hand, bowed to the
others, and left the room. As he appeared on the porch all the
Union officers in the grounds rose respectfully and saluted him.
While the Confederate orderly was bridling the horses Lee stood
alone, gazing in unutterable grief across the valley to where the
remnant of his army lay. Then, as he mounted Traveler, every
Union officer followed Grant's noble example by standing
bareheaded till horse and rider had disappeared from view.

Grant next sent off the news to Washington and, true to his
sterling worth, immediately stopped the salutes which some of his
enthusiastic soldiers were already beginning to fire. "The war is
over," he told his staff, "the rebels are our countrymen again,
and the best sign of rejoicing after the victory will be to
abstain from all demonstrations in the field."

In the meantime Lee had returned to his own lines, along which he
now rode for the last time. The reserve with which he had steeled
his heart during the surrender gave way completely when he came
to bid his men farewell. After a few simple words, advising his
devoted veterans to become good citizens of their reunited
country, the tears could no longer be kept back. Then, as he rode
slowly on, from the remnant of one old regiment to another, the
men broke ranks, and, mostly silent with emotion, pressed round
their loved commander, to take his hand, to touch his sword, or
fondly stroke his splendid gray horse, Traveler, the same that
had so often carried him victorious through the hard-fought day.


North and South had scarcely grasped the full significance of
Lee's surrender, when, only five days later, Lincoln was
assassinated. "It would be impossible for me," said Grant, "to
describe the feeling that overcame me at the news. I knew his
goodness of heart, and above all his desire to see all the people
of the United States enter again upon the full privileges of
citizenship with equality among all. I felt that reconstruction
had been set back, no telling how far." "Of all the men I ever
met," said Sherman, "he seemed to possess more of the elements of
greatness, combined with goodness, than any other."

On the very day of the assassination Sherman had written to
Johnston offering the same terms Grant had given Lee and Lincoln
had most heartily approved. Three days later, on the seventeenth,
just as Sherman was entering the train for his meeting with
Johnston, the operator handed him a telegram announcing the
assassination. Enjoining secrecy till he returned, Sherman took
the telegram with him and showed it to Johnston, whom he watched
intently. "The perspiration came out on his forehead," Sherman
wrote, "and he did not attempt to conceal his distress. He
denounced the act as a disgrace to the age and hoped I did not
charge it to the Confederate Government. I told him I could not
believe that he or General Lee or the officers of the Confederate
army could possibly be privy to acts of assassination." When
Sherman got back to Raleigh he published the news in general
orders, and experienced the supreme satisfaction of finding that
not one man in all that mournful army had to be restrained from a
single act of revenge.

After much misunderstanding with Washington now in lesser hands,
the surrender of Johnston's and the other Confederate armies was
effected. Each body of troops laid down its arms and quietly
dispersed. One day the bugles called, the camp fires burned, and
comrades were together in the ranks. The next, like morning
mists, they disappeared, thenceforth to be remembered and admired
only as the heroes of a hopeless cause.


It was a very different scene through which their rivals marched
into lasting fame with all the pride, pomp, and circumstance of
war. On the twenty-third and twenty-fourth of May, in perfect
weather, and in the stirring presence of a loyal, vast,
enthusiastic throng, the Union armies were reviewed in
Washington. For over six full hours each day the troops marched
past--the very flower of those who had come back victorious. The
route was flagged from end to end with Stars and Stripes, and
banked with friends of each and every regiment there. Between
these banks, and to the sound of thrilling martial music, the
long blue column flowed--a living stream of men whose bayonets
made its surface flash like burnished silver under the glorious
sun.


Then, when the pageantry was finished, and the volunteers that
formed the vast bulk of those magnificent Federal armies had
again become American civilians in thought and word and deed,
these steadfast men, whose arms had saved the Union in the field,
were first in peace as they had been in war: first in the
reconstruction of their country's interrupted life, first in
recognizing all that was best in the splendid fighters with whom
they had crossed swords, and first--incomparably first--in
keeping one and indivisible the reunited home land of both North
and South.



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Thousands of books have been written about the Civil War; and
more about the armies than about the navies and the civil
interests together. Yet, even about the armies, there are very
few that give a just idea of how every part of the war was
correlated with every other part and with the very complex whole;
while fewer still give any idea of how closely the navies were
correlated with the armies throughout the long amphibious
campaigns.

The only works mentioned here are either those containing the
original evidence or those written by experts directly from the
original evidence. And of course there are a good many works
belonging to both these classes for which no room can be found in
a bibliography so very brief as the present one must be.

"The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records
of the Union and Confederate Armies", 128 vols. (1880-1901), and
"Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War
of the Rebellion", 28 vols. (1894-), form two magnificent
collections of original evidence published by the United States
Government. But they have some gaps which nothing else can fill.
"Battles and Leaders of the Civil War"(1887-89), written by
competent witnesses on both sides, gives the gist of the story in
four volumes (published afterwards in eight). "The Rebellion
Record", 12 vols. (1862-68), edited by Frank Moore, forms an
interesting collection of non-official documents. "The Story of
the Civil War", 4 vols. (1895-1913), begun by J.C. Ropes, and
continued by W.R. Livermore, is an historical work of real value.
"Larned's Literature of American History" contains an excellent
bibliography; but it needs supplementing by bibliographies of the
present century. Inquiring readers should consult the
bibliographies in volumes 20 and 21 (by J.K. Hosmer) in the
American Nation series.

There are many works of a more special kind that deserve
particular attention. General E.P. Alexander's "Military Memoirs
of a Confederate" (1907), the "Transactions of the Military
Historical Society of Massachusetts", Major John Bigelow's "The
Campaign of Chancellorsville" (1910), and J.D. Cox's "Military
Reminiscences", 2 vols. (1900), are admirable specimens of this
very extensive class.

The two greatest generals on the Northern side have written their
own memoirs, and written them exceedingly well: "Personal Memoirs
of U.S. Grant", 2 vols. (1885-86), and "Memoirs of General W.T.
Sherman", 2 vols. (1886). But the two greatest on the Southern
side wrote nothing themselves; and no one else has written a
really great life of that very great commander, Robert Lee.
Fitzhugh Lee's enthusiastic sketch of his uncle, "General Lee"
(1894), is one of the several second-rate books on the subject.
Colonel G.F.R. Henderson's "Stonewall Jackson and the American
Civil War", 2 vols. (1898), is, on the other hand, among the best
of war biographies. Henderson's strategical study of the Valley
Campaign is a masterpiece. Two good works of very different kinds
are: "A History of the Civil War in the United States" (1905), by
W. Birkbeck Wood and Major J.E. Edmonds, and "A History of the
United States f from the Compromise of 1850", 8 vols.
(1893-1919), by James Ford Rhodes. The first is military, the
second political. Mr. Rhodes has also written a single volume
"History of the Civil War" (1917). "American Campaigns" by Major
M.F. Steele, issued under the supervision of the War Department
(1909), deals chiefly with the military operations of the Civil
War.

The naval side of this, as of all other wars, has been far too
much neglected. But that great historian of sea-power, Admiral
Mahan, has told the best of the story in his "Admiral Farragut"
(1892).

An interesting contemporary account of the war will be found in
the five volumes of Appleton's "American Annual Cyclopoedia" for
the years from 1861 to 1865. B.J. Lossing's "Pictorial History of
the Civil War", 3 vols. (1866-69), and Harper's "Pictorial
History of the Rebellion", 2 vols. (1868), give graphic pictures
of military life as seen by contemporaries. Personal
reminiscences of the war, of varying merit, have multiplied
rapidly in recent years. These are appraised for the unwary
reader in the bibliographies already mentioned. Frank Wilkeson's
"Recollections of a Private Soldier in the Army of the Potomac"
(1887), George C. Eggleston's "A Rebel's Recollections" (1905),
and Mrs. Mary B. Chestnut's "Diary from Dixie" (1905) are among
the best of these personal recollections.

The political and diplomatic history has been dealt with already
in the two preceding Chronicles. "Abraham Lincoln: a History", by
John G. Nicolay and John Hay, in ten volumes (1890), and "The
Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln", in twelve volumes (1905),
form the quarry from which all true accounts of his war
statesmanship must be built up. Lord Charnwood's "Abraham
Lincoln" (1917) is an admirable summary. To these titles should
be added Gideon Welles's "Diary", 3 vols. (1911), and, on the
Confederate side, Jefferson Davis's "The Rise and Fall of the
Confederate Government", 2 vols. (1881), and Alexander H.
Stephens's "A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the
States", 2 vols. (1870). The best life of Jefferson Davis is that
by William E. Dodd in the "American Crisis Biographies" (1907).
W. H. Russell's "My Diary North and South" (1863) records the
impressions of an intelligent foreign observer.

The present Chronicle is based entirely on the original evidence,
with the convenient use only of such works as have themselves
been written by qualified experts directly from the original
evidence.





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Captains of the Civil War, by Wood