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973.7 S52w 
Kevins, Allan, 1890- 
The War for the Union. 

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The War for the Union 



BOOKS BY ALLAN NEVINS 
PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

THE DIARY OF JOHN QuiNCY ADAMS (edited by Allan Nevins) 

THE ORDEAL OF THE UNION 

Volumes I and II ORDEAL OF THE UNION 

Volumes III and IV THE EMERGENCE OF LINCOLN 

Volume V THE WAR FOR THE UNION: THE IMPROVISED WAR, 1861-1862 
A CENTURY OF CARTOONS (in collaboration with Frank Weitenkampf) 
THIS IS ENGLAND TODAY 

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, THE HEROIC AGE OF AMERICAN ENTERPRISE, 1940 
STUDY IN POWER: JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, INDUSTRIALIST AND PHILANTHROPIST, 1953 
FORD: THE TIMES, THE MAN, THE COMPANY 

A History of Henry Ford, The Ford Motor Company, and The Automotive 

Industry, 1863-1925 (with Frank Ernest Hill) 
FORD: EXPANSION AND CHALLENGE: 1915-1933 (with Frank Ernest Hill) 

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER 

One Volume Condensation by William Greenleaf of STUDY IN POWER 

PUBLISHED ELSEWHERE 
ILLINOIS (Oxford Series on American Universities} 

THE AMERICAN STATES DURING AND AFTER THE REVOLUTION 

THE EVENING POST, A CENTURY OF JOURNALISM 

AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY RECORDED BY BRITISH TRAVELLERS 

THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1865-1877 

GROVER CLEVELAND, A STUDY IN COURAGE 

HAMILTON FISH, THE INNER HISTORY OF THE GRANT ADMINISTRATION 

ABRAM S. HEWITT, WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF PETER COOPER 

THE GATEWAY TO HISTORY 

FREMONT, PATHMAKER OF THE WEST 

THE WORLD OF ELI WHITNEY (with Jeannette Mir sky) 

AMERICA, THE STORY OF A FREE PEOPLE (with H. S. Cowmager) 
THE STATESMANSHIP OF THE CIVIL WAR 
THE UNITED STATES IN A CHAOTIC WORLD 

AS EDITOR 

LETTERS OF GROVER CLEVELAND 

SELECT WRITINGS OF ABRAM S. HEWITT 

THE DIARY OF PHILIP HONE 

THE DIARY OF JAMES K. POLK 

DIARY OF GEORGE TEMPLETON STRONG (with M. H. Thomas} 

LETTERS AND JOURNALS OF BRAND WHITLOCK 

FREMONT'S NARRATIVES OF EXPLORATION 

THE HERITAGE OF AMERICA (with H. S. Commager) 

THE LEATHERSTOCKING SAGA 




"Contrabands" Building Stockade at Alexandria, 1861 



The War for the Union 



VOLUME I.., 



THE 

IMPROVISED 
WAR 

1861-1862 



by ALLAN NEVINS 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

New York 



COPYRIGHT 1959 ALLAN NEVINS 



This book published simultaneously in the 
United States of America and in Canada 
Copyright under the Berne Convention 

All rights reserved. No part of this book 
may be reproduced in any form without the 
permission of Charles Scribner's Sons. 

B-io. 59 [V] 



Printed in the United States of America 

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 47-11072 



PREFACE 



THE CIVIL WAR, fought by every element in the Northern and Southern 
population, was a people's war, a Volkskrieg, in a fuller sense than any earlier 
conflict of modern time. On both sides the resourcefulness, stubborn courage, 
and devotion to high aims, the disorderliness, theatricality, and impatience, were 
alike popular traits. Behind the uprising after Sumter lay the demagogy, selfish- 
ness, and blindness of the period since Winfield Scott had occupied Mexico City; 
years of yeasty growth, leavened by little political honesty or wisdom, which 
the author has described in four previous volumes, Ordeal of the Union and 
The Emergence of Lincoln. They reflected little credit on the people. Now 
suddenly the storm changed the atmosphere. The people, both Confederates 
and Unionists, rose to the most desperate effort of their history. The tenacity 
with which the North fought on to total victory and the South to almost total 
ruin vindicated their claim to heroic strength of character, and left the country 
memories which partially redeem the record of a needless war. 

This volume and those which follow, treating the plain people as the real 
heroes and heroines of the war, have as a primary theme the impact of the war 
on national character. Their thesis, insofar as a single idea can be applied to a 
struggle so rnanysided, is that the war measurably transformed an inchoate na- 
tion, individualistic in temper and wedded to improvisation, into a shaped and 
disciplined nation, increasingly aware of the importance of plan and control. 
The improvised war of 1861-62 became the organized war of 1863-64. The 
invertebrate country of Bull Run days, goaded by necessity, gathered its en- 
ergies together, submitted to system, and became the partially-structured coun- 
try which heard the news of Five Forks. Northern manufacturing enterprises 
that had been unicellular became complex and organic; primitive transportation 
lines became parts of a fast-growing network; mercantile undertakings, pro- 
fessional groups, and cultural enterprises, gelatinous in 1861, became muscular 
enough to bear their share of the burden. To organize armies, to organize the 
production of arms, munitions, clothing, and food, to organize medical services 
and finance, to organize public sentiment all this required unprecedented at- 
tention to plan, and an unprecedented amount of cooperative effort. The re- 
sultant alteration in the national character was one of the central results of the 
gigantic struggle. 

No writer treating the Civil War as a detached unit could fail to give equal 
emphasis to the Southern and the Northern story. This history, however, has 
been planned to cover a much longer period, and its emphasis therefore falls 
on what is permanent in the life of the nation. From this standpoint much of 



VI 



PREFACE 



the Confederate effort appears too transitory to require detailed treatment. The 
interesting Confederate Constitution, for example, never came into full opera- 
tion, died in 1865, and had practically no influence on national polity. My regret 
over the abbreviation of the Confederate story is diminished by the fact that 
Southern historians have provided several admirable records. In the same way, 
my regret that tactical military operations are crowded out of a work devoted 
primarily to political, administrative, economic, and social history, is diminished 
by the fact that the long list of books of military history is daily swelled by 
useful additions. 

While the people are Hero in the Civil War, they could have accomplished 
nothing without leadership. A full treatment of Lincoln and his Cabinet, as of 
the civil leaders of the South, as they responded to growing war demands, is 
reserved to the next volume. But by the close of 1861 it was becoming clear 
that Lincoln also was hero of the conflict in a very special sense. For historical 
reasons the country depended on its professional politicians for guidance. In 
the first year only a few important figures were drawn from business and in- 
dustry to hold important executive posts in Washington: notably Anson Stager 
and Thomas A. Scott in the War Department, and Gustavus V. Fox in the 
Navy Department. The politicians controlled. And with some merits, what 
faults the politicians disclosed! Seward performed great services; but his pro- 
posal that the North provoke a war with Spain and France to extricate itself 
from its difficulties, as criminal as it was stupid, must make Americans blush 
that they had a foreign minister capable of such an act. Chase also did important 
service; but his uncontrollable vanity and ambition tempted him to mean 
courses. The ablest man would have failed in Cameron's place, but Cameron 
was both erratic and incompetent. Montgomery Blair was the most contriving 
member of an incredibly contriving, self-interested family. Well it was for the 
republic that out of such a political milieu rose a Chief Executive who com- 
bined the noblest qualities of the heart with a singularly lucid intellect and a 
piercing vision. 

The author gratefully acknowledges the help of the Carnegie Corporation 
and its head, Mr. John Gardiner; of Mrs. Davis Levy; of Mr. Lessing Rosen- 
wald; of Mrs. Jean Conti; of Dr. Abraham Flexner; of Mr. Frank E. Hill; of 
Professors David Donald and Louis Starr; of Mr. Bruce Catton and Mr. E. B. 
Long; of Miss Marian McKenna and Mrs. Mira Wilkins; of Dr. Wayne An- 
drews; of Dr. John Pomfret and the staff of the Huntington Library; of Drs. 
Carl White, Richard Logsdon, and Roland Baughman of the Columbia Uni- 
versity Library; of Dr. Joseph Rappaport, Dr. Saul Benison, and of a host of 
others generous in aid as in sympathy. 

Allan Nevins 
The Huntington Library, 
May i y 1959 



CONTENTS 



Prologue ... i 

I The Crisis ... 6 

II Peace or War? ...12 

III Contest for Power: Seward and Lincoln ... 37 

IV The North Lurches to Arms ... 67 
V The Confederacy at War ... 92 

VI Struggle -for the Western Border ... 119 

VII Struggle for the Eastern Border ... 137 

VIII Grandiose Plans and Blundering Leaders ... 148 

IX The Greenhorn Ar?nies ... 163 

X The Union Leaders ... 1 80 

XI The First Test of Strength . . . 207 

XII A Resurgent North ... 223 

XIII Giant in Swaddling Clothes ... 240 

XIV McClellan and the Tasks of Organization ... 266 
XV The General Who Would Not Dare ... 291 

XVI Fremont and the Impossible Task ... 306 

XVII New Star, New Issue ... 328 

XVIII The Firepower of the North . . . 342 



CONTENTS 

XIX December Gloom . . * 370 
XX "T&e Bottom Out of the Tub" ... 395 
Epilogue ... 414 
Bibliography ... 417 
Appendices ... 424 
Index . . .431 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



"Contrabands" Building Stockade at Alexandria, 1861 . . Frontispiece 
War Department Collection 

PAGE 

William H. Seward Facing 18 

Mathew B. Brady photograph reproduced from the Collections of the Library of 
Congress by permission of Alice Handy Cox, Falls Church, Virginia 

General Winfield Scott Facing 19 

Matthew B. Brady photograph reproduced from the Collections of the Library of 
Congress by penmssion of Alice Handy Cox 

Charleston Harbor 32 

From the map on page 21 f Campaigns of the Civil War, Volume I, The Outbreak 
of Rebellion, by John G. Nicolay, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1881 

Routes of Approach to Washington . . . . . . . .82 

From the map on page 93, Campaigns of the Civil War, Volume I 

Senator Charles Sumner ........ Facing 84 

Mathew B. Brady photograph reproduced from the Collections of the Library of 
Congress by permission of Alice Handy Cox 

Robert E. Lee Facing 85 

From a photograph by Vannerson, Richmond, 1864 

Horace Greeley of The Tribune ...... Facing 116 

Mathew B. Brady photograph reproduced from the Collections of the Library of 
Congress by permission of Alice Handy Cox 

Henry J. Raymond of The Times Facing 117 

Mathew B. Brady photograph reproduced from the Collections of the Library of 
Congress by permission of Alice Handy Cox 

Burnside's Rhode Island Brigade at Bull Run .... Facing 212 

Pencil and wash drawing by Alfred A. Waud, July, 1861, reproduced from the 
Collections of the Library of Congress 

John Charles Fremont Facing 213 

Mathew B. Brady photograph reproduced from the Collections of the Library of 
Congress by permission of Alice Handy Cox 

ix 



x ILLUSTRATIONS 

Field of Operations in Virginia ......... 215 

From the map on page 21, Campaigns of the Civil War, Volume III, McClellan's 
Campaign of 1862, by Alexander S. Webb, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 



Bull Run The Field of Strategy ........ 219 

From the map on page ijj, Campaigns of the Civil War, Volume I 

Washington and its Ultimate Defenses ....... 238 

From the map on page 33, Campaigns of the Civil War, Volume III 

Making Gun Carriages at the Richmond Armory . . . Facing 244 

From a lithograph in Harper's Weekly, April 6, 1861, pages 216-217, after a 
wood engraving by William L. Sheppard of Richmond 

The Springfield Armory ........ Facing 245 

From a contemporary drawing, courtesy of The City Library Association, 
Springfield, Massachusetts 

Coast and Sounds of North Carolina ........ 287 

From the map -facing page 163, The Navy in the Civil War, Volume II, The 
Atlantic Coast, by Daniel Ammen, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1883 

The Field of Operations in Missouri ........ 313 

From the map on page 3, Campaigns of the Civil War, Volume II, From Fort 
Henry to Corinth, by M. F. Force, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1881 

The South and the South Atlantic Coast ....... 373 

From the map facing page i$> The Navy in the Civil War, Volume II 



The War for the Union 



PROLOGUE 



Winds of Doctrine 



IT IS LATE afternoon of the first day of March, 1861; early spring in the 
South, but still \vinter in the North. The sun, sloping westward, shines brightly 
on the whole eastern half of the United States, filling the Atlantic bays with 
light, gilding the Appalachian crests, and giving the Mississippi valley a prom- 
ise of vernal warmth. It finds the people busy with their wonted occupations. 
Ships crowded with immigrants are gliding into Boston and New York. Fac- 
tory smoke curls over all southern New England, the Philadelphia area, and 
the Pittsburgh gateway. Railroad lines, glistening toward the West, hum with 
traffic; the rivers are dotted with steamboats from St. Paul to New Orleans. 
While the Gulf plains are already green, in the Carolinas and Tennessee farm- 
ers begin to follow the receding frost with black furrows. 

To the spiritual ear, a medley of voices rises to the skies. From a minister: 
"Peace! Let us have peace." A brisk merchant: "Our city board of trade 
calculated ten years ago that we might have thirty million people by this 
census. I scoffed at them. But now the government figures our population at 
31,375,000. What a market!" A promoter breaks in: "Ajnd see where the 
growth lies! Pennsylvania's up 600,000, New York's up 800,000, but Illinois 
is up by nigh on to a million. The Northwest that's the coming country." 
A blander voice succeeds: "But don't forget Georgia. Ten years ago she was 
lagging. Now she has more than a million people. And don't forget that cotton 
calls the tune, either." Peace, industry, growth^ hope, seem for a moment 
universal. 

Then harsher voices break in. From several quarters: "War! we must 
prepare for war." Discussion grows heated. A Yankee speaks: "Nobody 
blames the South for having slavery; the whole world is to blame. But I do 
blame them for wanting to spread it over the whole West." A Virginian re- 
plies: "All over the West nothing! Hasn't Kansas just come in as a free State? 
Aren't Minnesota, Oregon, California all in the Union as free States? When 
do we gain anything?" "Gentlemen, gentlemen!" interposes a New Yorker. 
"Haven't you read Seward's latest speech? He says we have more than a 



2 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

million square miles of territory left, enough for twenty-four new States. 
And though much of this area lies far south and has been under a slave code 
for years, how many slaves live in it? Seward says just twenty-four; one for 
each new State. Climate and soil govern the issue. We are quarreling about 
nothing." 

At this a Kansan sharply interrupts. "Who makes the quarrel? You South- 
erners do. James Harlan of Iowa told Congress: 'You offensively thrust slavery 
on us as a great good to be desired and extended and perpetuated by all the 
powers of the national government.' " An Illinoisan applauds: "And we stand 
with Lyman Trumbull, who says, 'A Union which can be destroyed at the will 
of any one State is hardly worth preserving." 5 But a Southerner responds 
with deep feeling: "No, it is you who make the quarrel. Jefferson Davis spoke 
the exact truth when he said, The temper of the Black Republicans is not 
to give us our rights in the Union, or to allow us to go peacably out of it.' " 

Three cities on which that March sun shines warmest are centers of 
special tension: Montgomery, Charleston, Washington. The outer streets of 
Montgomery, with fine houses, churches, lawns, and trees, are lovely, but 
the center of town is untidy. The neo-classical State capitol is not yet worthy 
of its noble site above the Alabama. A brick building close by, topped by a 
Confederate flag, houses the new government. Its broad whitewashed hall is 
full of chatting politicians. Their voices compete with the noises drifting in 
from outside: a company at drill, a band, hucksters, and, at the fountain 
near the principal hotel, an auctioneer selling a few slaves. 

A Mississippian: "Ten days yesterday since we swore in Davis as pro- 
visional President. We're making progress. You Georgians should be satisfied. 
You have Alec Stephens as Vice-President and Robert Toombs as Secretary 
of State." 

A Georgian: "Poor consolation for losing the Presidency. Except for his 
one weakness" he crooks his elbow significantly "Bob Toombs would have 
made a better chief than Davis. But I grant you Porcher Miles may be 
right when he says, *Mr. Davis was the choice of the whole people of the 
South.' " 

An Alabamian, soothingly: "Nobody should complain. Each of the seven 
States has a member of government. Alabama has Leroy P. Walker as Secre- 
tary of War. Louisiana has Judah P. Benjamin as Attorney-General. South 
Carolina has Christopher G. Memminger in the Treasury. Texas has John 
H. Reagan as Postmaster-General a smart man even if he did begin life as a 
plantation overseer. And Florida has Stephen R. Mallory, raised down Key 
West way, to head our navy if we ever get one." 

A South Carolinian: "We're making a nation, and at record speed too. 



PROLOGUE: WINDS OF DOCTRINE 

They tell me the permanent Constitution will be ready in another week. We'll 
adopt it unanimously, just as we've taken all important steps unanimously. 
If we only had more States!" 

The Georgian again: "Don't worry; the seven today may be twice that 
many soon. Here is a letter Herschel V. Johnson has just written: 'I look 
with intense anxiety to the action of the border States. If they join us, we 
will constitute a respectable power among nations and shall be able to main- 
tain an advancing career. If they adhere to the old Union, I shall regard it 
as a precursor of their emancipating at an early day. That will be a calamity 
on us. Without expansion, slavery must be limited in duration. But with a 
Southern Confederacy of fourteen States, we can maintain the Monroe Doc- 
trine and acquire, when necessary, other lands suited to slave labor/ " 

The South Carolinian: "If fighting begins, Tennessee and North Carolina 
and Virginia will come soon enough; maybe Maryland, maybe Kentucky 
and Missouri. Commissioners have gone to Washington to demand Sumter 
again. That's where the first blow may come." 

Sumter! On this first day of March, the name is on everybody's lips. In 
Charleston the atmosphere is feverish. Every square contains soldiers camping 
or drilling; many of them in gray trousers and jackets, with yellow facings 
and palmetto buttons. Some ships in the harbor carry palmetto flags; so do the 
massive storehouses fronting the wharves. Three miles out the famous fort 
frowns over- the harbor entrance. To South Carolinians it looks formidable, 
though actually it is small by European standards, is mainly of brick, not 
stone, and shows errors of construction the inflammable barracks are within 
the walls. All the promenaders on the Battery are talking of it: 

Cautious Speaker: "Heaven knows what answer the commissioners will 
get. This is what the Buchanan Administration wrote Governor Pickens when 
we demanded Sumter just after we fired on the Star of the West last January. 
'If, with all the multiplied proofs which exist of the President's anxiety for 
peace .... the authorities of South Carolina shall assault Fort Sumter and 
peril the handful of brave and loyal men shut up within its walls, and thus 
plunge the country into the horrors of civil war, then upon them and those 
they represent must rest the responsibility.' If weak Buchanan won't give 
Sumter up, how can Lincoln do it? We are on the brink of what Buchanan 
calls a horrid civil war." 

Fiery Speaker: "Maybe maybe not Buchanan didn't resent the firing on 
the Star of the West, though New York and Pennsylvania voted him men to 
fight with. When Lincoln sees that he must give Sumter up to avoid fight- 
ing, he'll do it meekly enough. Why, the South has already seized a long list 
of national forts and arsenals." 



4 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Conservative Speaker: "Lincoln won't give Sumter up for two reasons. 
First, the eyes of the country are on Sumter as a test case; the eyes of every 
Republican governor, every Republican Senator. Second, he has no power 
to give it up. Joseph Holt put that in a nutshell for Buchanan. The President 
can no more cede Sumter back to South Carolina constitutionally than he 
can cede the District of Columbia back to Maryland." 

Fiery Speaker: "I differ. R. M. T. Hunter of Virginia was correct when 
he told the Senate that Washington has no right to hold the Southern forts. 
The legislatures ceded these places to the government, not for pecuniary 
considerations, but for the defense of the States. Now they cannot possibly 
be used for defense, and may be used for offense." 

Conservative Speaker: "I repeat, we were within an inch of war last Jan- 
uary. The Sumter garrison was on the very point of firing on Fort Moultrie 
when the Star of the West retreated. Major Anderson then threatened to use 
his guns to close the harbor. Fort Sumter is a bomb with a time fuse at- 
tached. When her provisions run low six weeks hence, we shall see what stuff 
Lincoln is made of." 

Washington, three days before the inauguration, is agitated by precisely 
that question: What stuff is Lincoln made of? General Winfield Scott has 
brought a thousand regular troops into the city, who are supported by volun- 
teer companies. Batteries are being strategically placed. Leading Republicans 
are besieging the President-elect in Parlor No. 6 of Willard's Hotel. The 
streets are thronged with a heterogeneous mass: office-seekers, newspaper- 
men, Baltimore plug-uglies, mere tourists, jubilant free-soilers. 

Office-seeker: "Did you see what the Washington correspondent of the 
New York Herald said about Lincoln ten days ago? He wrote: 'He is unequal 
to the crisis, and will feel it so sensibly when he arrives here that it is inferred 
he will rush for safety into the arms of some man of strong will, who will 
keep his conscience and manage the government.' The Herald says this will 
be either Seward, with Wall Street, the Cotton Whigs, and the conservative 
Republicans behind him, or Salmon P. Chase, supported by Horace Greeley, 
William Cullen Bryant, Ben Wade, Lyman Trumbull, and other hotheads." 

Newspaperman: "The New York Tribune takes a more judicious view. It 
thinks pretty well of Mr, Lincoln. Its correspondent, James S. Pike, says that 
as soon as Lincoln takes office, he will be under such pressure as no man in 
the country ever suffered before. Will he make heavy concessions to the 
South? Pike doesn't know, but he says Seward will advise him to do so. 
And he concludes that the Lincoln Administration will try to preserve 
peace. 'My conjecture,' he writes, 'is that its stature will about come up to the 
old compromise standard.' " 



PROLOGUE: WINDS OF DOCTRINE * 

Republican: "I have just seen a letter by George W. Julian of Indiana after 
he talked with the next President. Julian assured a friend: 'Lincoln is right. 
His backbone is pronounced good by the best judges.' " 

Second Republican: "And I have just talked with Senator Charles Sumner, 
who manages to keep in touch with everything. He quoted to me a telling 
remark by Old Abe. Lincoln said that the Administration and the party 
must not become c a mere sucked egg, all shell and no meat the principle 
all sucked out.' " * 

Thus began the uneasiest and most momentous March in American history; 
the last peaceful March for four agonizing years. The sun went down on a 
Confederate President who in his recent inaugural, after praying for peace, 
had said: "if . . . the integrity of our territory and jurisdiction be as- 
sailed, it will but remain for us with firm resolve to appeal to arms and invoke 
the blessing of Providence on a just cause. . . ." It went down on a President- 
elect in Washington whose inaugural address, after pleading for peace, con- 
tained an unequivocal pledge: "The power confided to me will be used to 
hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the govern- 
ment, and to collect the duties and imposts." If the words of the two leaders 
stated anything, they stated a frontal collision. 

i Julian's letter about Lincoln's backbone, undated but by internal evidence written 
about March i, is in Julian Papers, Indiana State Library. 



The Crisis 



IT WAS in a somber mood that Americans read Lincoln's inaugural plea to 
the seceded states, March 4, 1861. Men still living could recall the nation as it 
took shape in Washington's Presidency and already it was rent into dis- 
cordant halves! Harrowing as the hour was to those who thought only of 
the domestic future of America, it was yet more distressing to those who 
recalled what the Founders had often said about her world mission. Not 
many years earlier Tocqueville had written: "From the eighteenth century 
and the [French] Revolution, as if from a common source, two streams flowed 
forth; the first led mankind toward free institutions, the other led mankind 
toward absolute power." The young nation which, as Lincoln had said 
in Independence Hall on his way to Washington, once offered the world 
such hope of liberty and equality, might now become an object of derision and 
reproach. As Columbia faltered, the European champions of absolutism gained 
in arrogance. 

For while America stood convulsed and divided, never had her living exam- 
ple of freedom, democracy, and humanitarianism been more needed by other 
peoples. Of Tocqueville's two streams, the grimmer seemed triumphing. In 
France, the glowing dreams of 1789 forgotten, a pinchbeck Napoleon exer- 
cised swaggering powers. He commanded the army and navy; he decided on 
alliances and wars; he dominated the discordant European concert. He ap- 
pointed the ministers, the council of state, the senate, and the high court; 
he laid before the legislative assembly its principal bills; and he convened and 
adjourned that body at will. Subject only to mass opinion, he strove to cow 
even that monster into subjection. He chained the press, exiled enemies, pro- 
hibited political meetings, and turned universal suffrage into a farce. Nor was 
the situation better in most other lands of the Continent. 

Across the Rhine in Prussia, government lay in the hands of a reactionary 
king and a hidebound group of Junkers intent on perpetuating the principles 
of feudalism. Since 1848 constant efforts had been made to turn back the 
hands of the clock. The people had been abused by an unscrupulous police, 

6 



THE CRISIS j 

a postal espionage that spied upon the letters of men high and low, von Roon's 
strict enforcement of three-year conscription, and a ministry which interpreted 
the constitution by nullifying its more liberal provisions. In the background, 
like a shark circling a shattered boat, waited Bismarck, a fierce believer in 
the Prussian crown, Prussian absolutism, and Prussian power; eager to bring 
parliamentary institutions to the kill. 

Elsewhere men could speak of Tocqueville's free impulses in the language 
of the Psalmist: "Oh how suddenly do they consume away, perish, and come 
to a fearful end!" The circling sun looked down on camps and cannon, 
gendarmes and prisons, provocateurs and plotters. From the convict settle- 
ments of Siberia to the garrisons of Polish towns, Russia was a terrorized 
land. In the Orient, despotism ruled unchecked from the Levant to Mongolia. 
Throughout the Austrian domains, Hapsburg absolutism had restored all 
the tyrannies existing before the tempest of 1848: among the Italians of Venetia 
and Lombardy, the Hungarians, the Bohemians, and the volatile Austrians 
themselves. The old stagnant order had momentarily quivered when in 1859 
Vienna had been compelled to cede Lombardy to Piedmont, and would 
quiver again when a new imperial constitution was written this very year; 
but the constitution would remain mere paper. Spain lay in her accustomed 
torpor. The whims of Isabella II, swayed by religious fanaticism and ideas 
of divine right, the intrigues of a court camarilla, the feeble conservatism of 
weak, short-lived ministries, the obscurantism of a church which hated literacy 
and freedom of thought all these forces kept the Spanish people enchained. 

The Old World power where freedom broadened slowly down was 
Britain; the Britain of that middle-class devotion to social progress typified 
by John Bright and Richard Cobden, of the strong moral impulses represented 
by Gladstone, and of the increasing domination of thought by Manchester 
Liberalism and its ideas of peace, free trade, industrial energy, and govern- 
mental laissez faire. But, always a land of compromise, Britain at the moment 
was ruled by the aristocratic Whigs under the jovial, clearheaded, imperious 
Palmerston "old Pam," a great believer in freedom abroad, and a strong 
brake on its progress at home and the cautious Lord John Russell, once 
active in reform but now warily immobile. Under their government the ruling 
principle of Lord Melbourne, "Why can't they leave it alone?" had full sway. 
If the abuses which the Chartist movement had tried to extirpate no longer 
flourished unchecked, change came in but slowly. The cardinal points of the 
People's Charter, universal male suffrage, the secret ballot, abolition of prop- 
erty qualifications for the House, and salaries for members, were still to be 
gained. The poor were voteless, gross inequalities among constituencies per- 
sisted, and education lay beyond the reach of half the children of the land. 



g THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

The social structure of Britain was still stratified by harsh class lines and 
honeycombed by ancient abuses. Westminster still held Ireland under an op- 
pressive yoke. Power and privilege rested with the nobility, gentry, and 
upper-middle classes, and so long as Palrnerston and Russell kept office, change 
would be gradual. 

Had the prospects of freedom abroad been hopeless, the paralysis of 
America might have seemed less deplorable. It would not have mattered 
that the spirits of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson could no longer be in- 
voked to fight alongside those of Burke, Fox, and Condorcet. But under the 
superficial ice of reaction the liberal currents ran with tremendous force. In 
England the orderly popular agitation of the masses was too stubborn to be 
stayed. The voices of reform Dickens, Kingsley, Harriet Martineau, John 
Stuart Mill, and even Tennyson with his denunciation of "Timour-Mammon 
grinning on a pile of children's bones" were loud and eloquent; a bolder 
Whiggism was coming gradually to birth. Bright and Cobden, the Daily News 
and the Spectator, the great social ameliorists like Shaftesbury, and such 
battlers against orthodoxy as Buckle, Lyell, and Darwin, were stirring the 
pool of opinion. In France, despite the bitter humiliations of 1848-49, the 
battlers for freedom Victor Hugo, Gambetta, Chevalier never lost heart. 
The victories of Garibaldi, Victor Emmanuel, and Cavour in Italy heartened 
the friends of liberty all over Europe. Clough and the Brownings sang of the 
Italian cause. Exiles like the German Forty-eighters rejoiced when Italy in 
1859 emerged as a European power, and in Hungary and Poland patriots 
plucked up heart. 

Never might the example and encouragement of a free, united, progres- 
sive America have been more effective. For three generations, in a world of 
fitful political progress and frequent relapse, the Western republic had repre- 
sented to uncounted millions a sober, steady hope. It was the brightest gov- 
ernmental and social experiment ever made. The young nation had no monarch, 
no aristocratic institutions, and almost no vestiges of feudalism. It was without 
fixed class lines, without official prejudice as to religion, and without bars to 
the refugees from European lands. "Power, at thy bounds," Bryant wrote, 
"calls back his baffled hounds." That suffrage should be the right of every 
adult male, that the highest authority should repeatedly be given to men 
of the poorest origins, that public moneys should be spent on schools and 
not armies, that social equality should be enforced by opinion as vigorously 
as it was protected by law, all seemed to European liberals a kind of miracle. 
The experiment was new and its scale was unprecedented. Would the re- 
public endure? Or would its failure, like that of some democracies of the 



THE CRISIS 9 

past, prove that only a centralized autocracy could govern wide areas and 
large populations with efficiency? 

The situation in which the United States stood on March 4, 1861, was 
thus of decisive import to half the world. The disruption of the republic 
would feed the confidence of every despot from the Hermitage on the Neva 
to Francia's palace in Paraguay, and strike dismay to the Sheffield foundry- 
man, the Lyons silk weaver, and the Bavarian peasant. The circumstances 
in which disruption was threatened, moreover, were peculiarly painful. 

The nation had endured part slave, part free, for seventy years under the 
Constitution. During that period the opinion of the civilized world respecting 
slavery had radically altered. The institution was arraigned by the conscience 
of enlightened men in older lands, condemned by most people of the Northern 
States, and deplored by a considerable body of Southerners. It stood indicted 
not only as profoundly immoral, but as a grievous economic, social, and 
political handicap to the nation. All progress at the South was clogged by the 
necessity of restraining and disciplining a helot population, of keeping it in 
ignorance, and of fettering agriculture and industry by its low capacities. 
The governing whites could not escape from the unhappy influence, intel- 
lectual and moral, of the retarded blacks. In the long run the situation was 
intolerable. The honor, moral integrity, and international influence of the 
nation all demanded that it be brought to an end. Yet during these seventy 
years America had done singularly little for the slaves. It had not attached 
them to the soil, protected their family life, or provided for their schooling. 
Many vocal Southerners had departed so far from the Jeffersonian abhorrence 
of slavery that they now declared it a permanent institution. Since its vitality 
depended on expansion, most Southerners demanded the right to enlarge its 
bounds. 

A powerful party had arisen in the North, determined to end the expan- 
sion. Lincoln as its leader had also proclaimed a much larger and more radical 
idea: the idea that the nation must accept the principle that slavery was a 
temporary institution, and at once take thought on the grim questions of when, 
and how, and under what safeguards it would be abolished. 

It had always been clear that acceptance of this principle by a majority of 
Americans would precipitate a sectional crisis. Since slavery interpenetrated 
and conditioned all Southern life, the main body of Southerners, proud, sensi- 
tive, apprehensive of racial amalgamation even while permitting a great deal 
of miscegenation, regarded the principle with doubt or horror. To talk about 
ending slavery in a distant, indefinite age was hard enough; to think about 
ending it in 1870 or 1890 was terrifying. The Republican party wished the 



I0 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

South to face realities. Lincoln said bluntly that the crisis must be reached 
and passed; that is, the South must honestly face the great principle, and 
agree to its soundness. Then, patiently, cooperatively, South and North could 
agree on ways, means, and times for extinguishing the anachronistic system. 
Lincoln knew that, as Jefferson had said, the South had the wolf by the ears. 
He knew that both sections shared responsibility for the origins and growth 
of the institution, and both should bear the burden of getting rid of it. But 
on this one point he was firm: it must be put in the path of ultimate ex- 
tinction. 

The election of 1860 had proved two facts. It showed that a majority 
of Americans were now in favor of halting the expansion of slavery, and so 
setting a period to its existence; for most Douglas Democrats wished to put 
bounds to it by popular sovereignty just as the Lincoln Republicans wished 
to fence it in by Federal restriction. It also showed that the South could not 
be brought to meet and pass the crisis; that it balked at accepting the prin- 
ciple of the transiency of slavery. A dominant body of Southerners stub- 
bornly insisted on dealing with slavery and race relations only in their own 
way and at their own leisure. Thus alone, said some, can we keep it as a 
positive good. Thus alone, said others, can we feel safe from the agonies of 
a precipitate social and economic revolution. Robert Toombs gave the Senate 
the conditions on which the South would remain in the Union. They were 
that its people should have equal rights to migrate to the Territories with all 
their property; that property in slaves should be protected like any other, 
leaving control over slavery to the States; that persons committing crimes 
against slave property should not be permitted to take refuge in other States; 
that fugitive slaves should be surrendered; and that Congress should pass 
laws to punish all who, like John Brown, aided invasion or insurrection in 
any State. 

A group of leaders, in a carefully planned conspiracy, took steps which 
first split the Democratic party and so ensured Lincoln's election, and which 
then used his election to inspire Southern secession. As they did so, Southerners 
emphasized their own interpretation of the Constitution. The nation, they 
said, was a confederation of sovereign independent States. Already the South 
had suffered heavily from the North in taxation, tariffs, and an unequal dis- 
tribution of national benefits; and they would not tolerate the erection of a 
consolidated democracy, for this, as Calhoun had predicted, would end in 
control, proscription, and political disfranchisement. 

The whole future of the American nation, as the chief exponent and shield 
of liberal democracy, was thus placed in doubt by a struggle concerning an 
institution which the moral impulses of the age pronounced a blot on the 



THE CRISIS u 

national shield, and concerning the constitutional ideas involved in this con- 
test. Sensitive leaders felt keenly the tragic bearing of the convulsion on world 
affairs. Many Southerners winced at the renunciation of Jeffersonian prin- 
ciples by their hotheads. 1 Many Union men saw that the meaning of the 
American dream to mankind was being put to the test. "I felt great repugnance 
in drawing the sword against my own kindred," wrote a Kentuckian, "but 
now when I see that a dissolution would be regarded all over Europe as a 
condemnation of republicanism, I feel there are no ties sacred enough to 
withhold me from the battlefield." 2 Charles Sumner had returned from Europe 
in 1860 after an observation of affairs in France, Italy, and Britain which 
convinced him that liberalism was slowly moving forward, always alert to 
the American scene. "I need not say to you," he wrote a British friend, "that 
I find much to disappoint me in the tone of persons and things. I long to see 
my country beautiful, great, and good, and am unhappy." 3 

Would the country recapture the international ideal held aloft by Wash- 
ington in his Farewell Address? "It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, 
and at no distant period a great nation to give to mankind the magnanimous 
and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and 
benevolence." Now the vision of the founder, like a torch dashed to earth, 
seemed quenched by darkness. 

1 T. S. Gourdin of Florida, editor of the Southern Confederacy, wrote that with the 
formation of the Confederacy, "we must abandon the old idea of our forefathers that 'all 
men were born free and equal,' and teach the doctrine of the diversity of the races, and of 
the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon race over all others. We must take the ground never 
dreamed of by the men of '76, that African Slavery is right in itself, and therefore should be 
preserved." Quoted in N. Y. Tribune, March 12, 1861. 

2 Cassius M. Gay, St. Petersburg Legation, June 30, 1861, to Francis Lieber; Lieber 
Papers, HJL. 

3 Sumner to the Duchess of Argyll, Washington, May 22, 1860; HJL. 




Peace or War? 



"GOD GRANT that the Constitution and the Union shall be perpetual," 
exclaimed Buchanan to the crowd when he reached his Lancaster home just 
after Lincoln's inauguration. Most Americans still believed a sectional ad- 
justment possible without bloodshed. They were naturally optimists; they 
had discounted radical threats for so many years that they could not now 
take them at face value, and the idea of a brothers' war was too monstrous 
to seem credible. A reporter of the New York Tribune speculated on the 
use to be made of the extra troops in Washington when the capital "resumes 
its wonted quiet." Rebellion had asserted itself, but civil war had not begun. 
As yet, only seven States had left the Union. In at least three, Georgia, 
Alabama, and Louisiana, strong evidence existed that a really fair plebiscite 
might have shown a majority for the national tie, while in the four others, 
Mississippi, Texas, South Carolina, and Florida, vigorous minorities had op- 
posed secession. Southerners could not point to a single right except that of the 
prompt return of fugitive slaves which was being abridged or directly threat- 
ened, and some of the Northern States with personal liberty laws were re- 
pealing or amending them. While half a dozen Republican governors, led 
by E. D. Morgan of New York, Richard Yates of Illinois, and N. P. Banks 
of Massachusetts, recommended that such laws be wiped from the books, 
Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Vermont took appropriate action. 1 If the 
South had no concrete grievances of importance, many asked, why should it 
revolt? Had not Congress just submitted, by two-thirds vote in each chamber, 
a constitutional amendment forbidding any change in the organic law which 

r On this subject see Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, pp. 436, 452, 556, 576 ff"., 634; 
McPherson, Pol. Hist, of the Rebellion, 44; Rhodes, Hist. U. S. from the Compromise of 
1850, III, 253; Randall, Civil War and Reconstruction, 229. Ohio had no law, but Governor 
Dennison urged conditional repeal in other States. The governors of Maine and Michigan 
opposed repeal. The total number of cases arising under personal liberty laws was probably 
small; see W. B. Hesseltine, Lincoln and the War Governors, 103 ff,, 124 rT. Lincoln said 
that if the laws were as bad as Southerners asserted (he had never read one), they should 
be repealed. 



12 



PEACE OR WAR? ~ 

would enable the government to interfere with slavery inside a State? 2 Was 
it not certain that this amendment, if needed to save the Union, would be 
quickly ratified? 

In the wide border area, when Lincoln entered the White House, the 
situation appeared hopeful. The Delaware legislature, after hearing a seces- 
sionist agent from Mississippi, had voted down his proposals the house 
unanimously. Governor Thomas H. Hicks of Maryland, though asserting 
that the State sympathized with the South and hoped to see it given new 
guarantees, had stubbornly refused to call an extra legislative session as a 
first step toward rebellion, and had been overwhelmingly supported by the 
people. In Kentucky the senate, appealing to the South to recede, voted more 
than two to one against a State convention. Arkansas chose a convention 
with a decidedly conservative majority, and Missouri elected one which did 
not include a single advocate of immediate secession. In Virginia, the house 
in January had voted down a secessionist resolution. The Unionists had car- 
ried the elections for a convention, and from the moment that this body met 
in mid-February, it had been under the sway of astute conservatives. North 
Carolina, in a popular election, defeated the call for a convention, and at the 
same time chose eighty-two conservatives as against thirty-eight secessionists 
to sit in that body if it ever met. The people of Tennessee likewise voted 
decisively against a convention, and still more decisively for a Unionist 
majority of delegates. 

"Here are eight of the fifteen States," rejoiced the New York Tribune, 
"declaring that they wish and mean to stay in the Union, and not follow the 
defeated and bankrupt officeholders into the abyss of secession, treason, and 
civil war." The borderland, lamented the Charleston Mercury, was ready to 
accept much less than the proposed Crittenden compromise, which would 
have restored the Missouri Compromise line across the Federal Territories 
and protected slavery south of it. 3 Many Union men, believing that the cotton 
States had been thrown into revolt by a temporary emotional reaction follow- 
ing Lincoln's election, thought that a counter-reaction might soon hurl the 
fire-eaters into oblivion. 

Lincoln shared this hope. Three days after the inauguration, Representa- 
tive T. A. R. Nelson of Tennessee, a strong unionist of the American Party, 
obtained an interview at the White House. Lincoln said that he was anxious 
to maintain peace, and believed that the Federal revenues should not be col- 

2 This passed the House Feb. 28 by 133 to 65; the Senate March 2 by 24 to 12; Cong. 
Globe, 36th Cong., 2d Sess., 1285, 1403. 

3 N. Y. Tribune March 7, 1861; Charleston Mercury Feb. 14, 1861. For action of the 
border States see Ann. Cyc. 1861, pp. 256, 257; 395; 442-444** 6 77~ 6 79* 7 2 9~73 r - 



I4 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

lected in the seceded States until men had time for reflection. As he still 
regarded Southerners as members of the national family, he was not inclined 
to deny them mail facilities. Congress was equally hopeful and still more 
anxious for peace. Up to the end of its session on March 3, it had been careful 
not to give the South needless offense. No Republican Senator made any 
effort to press the bill outlawing slavery in the old Territories which the 
House had passed in the first session of the 36th Congress. It was not necessary 
(New Mexico after ten years of slavery protection had only twenty-two 
slaves, ten of them transients), and not politic. 4 

Nor did the Republican majority, passing bills to organize the new Ter- 
ritories of Dakota, Colorado, and Nevada, include any formal prohibition of 
slavery. It was a basic Republican doctrine that the natural state of any 
Territory was one of freedom, and that action was hence unnecessary; but 
the party leaders also wished to avoid any provocative act. Nor did Congress 
pass any measure giving the President military weapons to meet the crisis. 
Two bills for this purpose "force bills," in Southern parlance were intro- 
duced in the House, but not carried. 

All but a few extremists hoped for peace, but on what terms? The answer 
was clear. To men of the North and the borderland, with a restoration of the 
Union; to men of the cotton kingdom, with a peaceable separation. All ef- 
forts at an arrangement had thus far proved abortive. The Crittenden com- 
promise, which Lincoln opposed, had been defeated by a substitute resolu- 
tion affirming that no need existed for amendment of the Constitution. Though 
this resolution passed, 25 to 23, only when six senators from the lower South 
refused to vote, the Republicans were mainly responsible for it. They had 
three main reasons for defeating Crittenden's plan. The first was that, pro- 
tecting slavery south of 36 30', it might stimulate Southern annexationist 
schemes in Mexico, Central America, and Cuba. The second was that it nomi- 
nally handed over to slavery a region nearly as large as the original thirteen 
States, which had come to the United States as free soil, without a single 
slave when annexed; and it did this at a time when the party, declaring its 
solemn conviction that the government had no power to plant slavery on soil 
previously free, had just elected Lincoln on a platform forbidding slavery 
extension. The third reason, comprehending the other two, lay in Lincoln's 
moral imperative: the South must agree that slavery was temporary. 

Meanwhile, the Peace Convention, with its eminent delegates from twenty- 
one States, had foundered in floods of oratory. The shrewd Adams-Seward 

4 Representative Nelson describes his interesting interview with Lincoln in the Knoxville 
Whig, March 19, 1861. For slavery in New Mexico see the speech by C. F. Adams in Cong. 
Globe, 36th Cong., zd Sess., Appendix, 124-127. 



PEACE OR WAR? I5 

plan for putting an end to quarrels over slavery in the Territories by im- 
mediately admitting the whole Southwest (the present area of New Mexico, 
Arizona, Nevada, and Utah) as one State had been rejected by Southerners, 
for that State would obviously come in free. 5 

Yet most men still believed that peace would be preserved. They cal- 
culated, on the basis of the vote for Lincoln, Douglas, and the Bell-Everett 
ticket, that a decisive majority of Americans wished for peace, moderation, 
and compromise. Those who, like Zachariah Chandler of Michigan and Barn- 
well Rhett of South Carolina, wanted "a little bloodletting," were a small 
minority. 6 

c i ] 

Southern expectation of peace was based on the idea that the North would 
yield. Secessionist leaders hoped that the Lincoln Administration would let 
the new cotton republic go its way without hindrance. Many in the deep 
South cherished an illusion that Yankees were interested only in money- 
grubbing. Utterly materialistic, secessionists told themselves, Northerners 
lacked the fine sense of honor and fighting spirit which characterized the 
best "Southrons." Moreover, according to the Dixie view, these New Eng- 
landers or Ohioans, aware that they would soon be worsted, shrank from 
conflict. Had not all the great American generals, Washington, Andrew 
Jackson, Winfield Scott, Zachary Taylor, been Southerners? Had not the 
Mexican War been won mainly by Southern troops? Did not military schools, 
military parades, and military adventures appeal to the South, while Northern- 
ers kept their noses in ledgers? This confidence was buttressed by Northern 
talk of peace, the anti-war fulminations of Northern Democrats, a faith in 
border State protection, and a feeling that the South was irresistible* 

Secessionist leaders had taken note of Franklin Pierce's irresponsible as- 
sertion that before any Northern army reached the South it would have to 
fight organized forces in its own section. Unfortunately, they heard many 
similar Northern voices. 

Douglas, telling the Senate on January 3 that peace was the only sane 
course, declared that if war began, reunion would be impossible. The alterna- 
tives were subjugation and extermination on one hand, and separation on the 
other; and since extermination was unthinkable, he felt convinced that war 
would mean "final, irrevocable, eternal separation." His follower Senator 

5 Nevins, Emergence of Lincoln, II, 397 fT., details measures and efforts in Congress and 
elsewhere for peace; see also Randall, Civil War and Reconstruction, 200 ff. The Adams- 
Seward plan is best followed in the manuscript diary of C. F. Adams. 

6 The phrase is Zack Chandler's; Kevins, Emergence of Lincoln, n, 411, 412. 



I( 5 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

George Pugh of Ohio found the idea of coercing the South "utterly revolt- 
ing." John A. Logan of Illinois echoed them, saying that war would not only 
fill the land with widows and orphans, but result in "disunion forever." Henry 
M. Rice of Minnesota assured the Senate that it must never expect the North- 
western States to vote a man or a dollar for war. Numerous journals spoke 
in like terms. The Detroit Free Press had the effrontery to predict that if a 
conflict came, "that war will be -fought at the North" and to threaten that 
in Michigan 65,000 men would interpose between any Union army and the 
Southern people. The Cincinnati Enquirer warned coercionists that if Ohio 
troops were called out, they might march against the government, not for it. 7 
Southerners could not believe that the North was capable of war when they 
read that citizens in southern Ohio, ^ Indiana, and Illinois, assuming that dis- 
union would be permanent, proposed taking the lower part of these States 
into the Confederacy. This was a very real movement. "I believe, upon my 
soul/' the editor of the Chicago Tribune had written Senator Lyman Trum- 
bull in January, "that if the Union is divided on the line of the Ohio, we 
shall be compelled to struggle to maintain the territorial integrity of this 
State." Samuel Medary, former territorial governor of Kansas and Minnesota, 
had just established a journal in Columbus, Ohio, which pledged obstruction 
to the use of force. Similar fulminations came from the Chicago Times and 
Herald., controlled by Cyrus H. McCormick, the New York Day Book, and 
the Boston Courier. No paper was blunter than the New York Express: 

If the people of one section madly proposes to itself the task of trying to 
whip the other, the hope of reconciliation is extinguished forever. . . . There 
is a chance that fraternal relations, though temporarily ruptured, may one day 
be restored, if peace is preserved. 

When the municipal elections this spring, from Cleveland to Chicago, re- 
vealed a shift in favor of the Democrats, hope that this party might prevent 
coercive action increased in the South. Buchanan later denounced the politi- 
cians and editors who assured the Confederacy it would have powerful allies. 
"This, with the persistent inaction of Congress and General Scott's Views/ 
induced the leaders of the Cotton States to believe there was but little danger 
of Civil War." 8 

7 Pierce fruitlessly wrote the other ex-Presidents (Tyler, Fillmore, Van Buren, Buchanan, 
a singularly uninspiring lot) proposing a meeting to suggest remedial measures. Douglas' 
speech is in Cong. Globe, 361*1 Cong., 2d Sess., Appendix, 35-42; Pugh's Ib. 29-35; Logan's 
Ib. 178-181. Pugh spoke Dec. 20, 1860; Logan, Feb. 5, 1861. Vallandigham called coercion 
"atrocious and fruitless"; O. C. Hooper, The Crisis and the Man, 7. Rice's speech is in 
Cong. Globe, 36th Cong., 2d Sess., 1373. Cf. Wood Gray, The Hidden Civil War, 45 if. 

8 C. H. Ray quoted in Wood Gray, op. cit., 45; O. C. Hooper, op. cit., 1-35; A. C. Cole, 
Era of the Civil War, 253-257; N. Y. Express (controlled by Benjamin and Fernando 
Wood), Jan. 16, 1861; Buchanan, July i, 1863, to Royal Phelps, in Miscellaneous Presidents' 



PEACE OR WAR? I7 

Still greater was the Southern faith in a protective borderland shield. If 
this area was against secession, it was equally adamant against coercion. 

Hicks of Maryland declared that his State would make common cause 
with its sisters in resistance to tyranny if need arose. Even Unionists in Ken- 
tucky asserted that they would desert the government if it used force. The 
Virginia house with but five dissenting votes denounced any thought of 
coercive action. In Nashville the legislature served notice that if any Union 
force were sent south, Tennesseeans would join as one man in repelling the 
invaders. These declarations had fervent conviction behind them. The great 
majority in the border region, Southern in origin, tastes, and sympathies, 
would feel a blow against Southern culture as one which smote themselves. 
Devoted as they were to the Union, they shrank from the idea of saving it 
by blood. And behind their antagonism to force lay a hope that if time were 
allowed for reflection, the two sections would find reason overcoming pas- 
sion, and agree on a reasonable compromise. 

The feeling of the cotton States that war was impossible because they were 
unconquerable was partly braggadocio, for the region was rich in Captain 
Bobadils. It sprang more rationally, however, from the military preparations 
they were making, and the deep hold taken by the doctrine that King Cotton 
ruled Britain and France. 

The new republic, against countless handicaps, was trying to establish 
forces able to face the Northern regulars and militia. Its Congress had passed 
legislation creating a provisional regular army of 10,500 officers and men, 
including 4 brigadier generals and 9 colonels. P. G. T. Beauregard, resigning 
from the Union army, had been appointed brigadier and hurried to the 
command at Charleston. An act of February 28 authorized the President to 
receive State forces if tendered, or volunteers with State consent. Southerners 
hoped that their troops, under the new flag of 3 stripes, red, white, and 
blue, with a union of 7 stars, would soon number 50,000. Meanwhile, the 
States were filling their ranks. Mississippi in January had authorized the 
formation of a division of infantry and was sending a force to Pensacola. 
Its volunteers came in more rapidly than they could be equipped, officered, 
and drilled. In Louisiana the secession convention established 2 standing regi- 
ments, i infantry and i artillery, while by mid-February the State had issued 
arms to 28 volunteer companies with a strength of 1765. A similar story- 
could be told of the other cotton States. On March 9, under a law passed 

File, NYPL. Buchanan laid the blame for "go in peace" utterances on certain Republicans, 
but Democratic leaders were of course much the more numerous and flagrant offenders. 
"My voice was unheeded," he wrote, "though I often warned them [the secessionists] that 
the first gun fired at Charleston would unite all parties " 



jg THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

three days earlier authorizing the President to ask for any number of volun- 
teers up to 100,000, Secretary of War L. P. Walker called on all the seceded 
States to furnish quotas, chiefly for garrisoning forts; and he stood ready 
to issue a further call at any time. 9 

Meanwhile, the Montgomery government was blithely taking over a 
great part of the arms and munitions lodged in old Federal repositories. It 
deeply galled the North to read of large stores thus "stolen" from the United 
States. New Orleans on March 6 gave an imposing ovation to General David 
E. Twiggs, fresh from his surrender (still in national uniform, and before 
passage of the State ordinance of secession) of nineteen army posts in Texas. 
Bands pounded along Canal Street, which was dressed in pelican bunting and 
palmetto flags; oratory resounded, cheers echoed; and Twiggs, his large bald 
head uncovered, bowed right and left from his barouche with General Braxton 
Bragg, heading files of troops. Early in the year Southern forces had taken 
over Fort Pulaski at Savannah, Fort Morgan at Mobile, and Fort Barrancas 
at Pensacola, with their contents. The head of the navy department, S. R. 
Mallory, was busy recruiting sailors. 10 

Even if peace reigned, it seemed probable that the Confederacy might be 
more of a military nation than the United States. At first it would use its 
armed power to deter the North from attack. Then its ardors might turn 
elsewhere. Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens, after predicting to an At- 
lanta audience that Sumter would be surrendered, the North would accept 
the situation, and the border States would eventually join their sisters, spoke 
in Columbus, Georgia, of martial conquests. The Confederacy, acting on 
the principle that slavery must be extended and perpetuated, might in time 
acquire Cuba and parts of Mexico and Central America. 11 

Altogether, the cotton kingdom flexed its muscles with a sense of exuberant 
strength. Its leaders had cherished the forecast of Langdon Cheves at the Nash- 
ville Convention: "Unite and you shall form one of the most splendid empires 
on which the sun ever shone." And never for a moment did the Deep South 
forget what Senator James H. Hammond and others said of its power to rally 
European support. A threat to the cotton kingdom would be a stroke at the 
jugular vein of the greatest naval powers of the globe. 

"The first demonstration of blockade of the southern ports," prophesied 
Major W. H. Chase of Florida in the January issue of De Bow's Review } 

9 J. D. Bragg, Louisiana in the Confederacy, 53-55; Statutes at Large. Provisional Govt. 
CSA, 43-52; O. R. I, iv, pt. i, 135; N. Y. Tribune, March 19, 1861. 

10 Moore, Rebellion Record, I, yfL; Twiggs, a Georgian by birth, was soon made a 
major general in the Confederate army, but was too old for active service. 

11 Columbus Sun, quoted in N. Y. Tribune, March 19, 1861; Johnston and Browne, 
Alexander H. Stephens, 356, 363, 396. Slavery was the cornerstone, said Stephens. 




William H. Seward 




General Winfield Scott 



PEACE OR WAR? J? 

"would be swept away by English fleets of observation hovering on the 
Southern coasts, to protect English commerce and especially the free flow of 
cotton to English and French factories. The flow of cotton must not cease for 
a day, because the enormous sum of ^f 150,000,000 is annually devoted to the 
elaboration of raw cotton; and because five millions of people annually derive 
their daily and immediate support therefrom in England alone, and every 
interest in the kingdom is connected therewith. Nor must the cotton states 
be invaded by land, for it would interrupt the cultivation of the great staple." 
Even the Northwest, he continued, would act to protect the free ports and 
markets of the South. 12 

Cotton would maintain peace, for cotton ruled the world. 

[ II 3 

Most Northerners expected peace to prevail for a quite different set of 
reasons. They thought that the seven cotton States had no vital grievances 
and would soon come to their senses, that the new republic was too weak to be 
viable, and that the border area would offer persuasive arguments for a return. 
They had seen so many other crises 1820, 1833, 1850 disappear that they 
gave rein to cheering hopes. "I guess we'll keep house," said Lincoln. They 
had heard so much gasconade that they lumped most secessionists with the 
fire-eaters. "I incline to believe," wrote Charles Eliot Norton on March 5, 
"that they will not try violence, and that their course as an independent Con- 
federacy is nearly at an end." In a let-them-cool-down mood the Atlantic 
published a resigned quatrain: 

Go then, our rash sister! afar and aloof 

Run wild in the sunshine away from our roof; 

But when your heart aches and your feet have grown sore, 

Remember the pathway that leads to our door! 

On the absence of substantial Southern hurts, Douglas was emphatic. He 
argued that the South had gained more than if the line of 36 30' had been 
revived by the Crittenden amendment. "There stands your slave code in New 
Mexico protecting slavery up to the thirty-seventh degree as effectually as 
laws can be made to protect it. ... The South has all below the thirty-seventh 
parallel, while Congress has not prohibited slavery even north of it." It was 
true that slavery had a legal right to spread farther than for climatic and 
economic reasons it might actually go. What a Southern historian was later 
to call the natural limits of slavery had perhaps been reached. Charles Francis 

12 De Bow's Review, voL 30, January, 1861; Chase, an ardent secessionist, argued that the 
potency of cotton made Southern armies and fleets superfluous. 



20 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Adams was equally derisive as to Southern grievances. To complain of personal 
liberty laws which had never freed a single slave, of exclusion from territory 
which slavery could never hope to occupy, and of fear of Federal interference 
with slavery in the States, against which the North was now willing to erect 
a solemn bar this was puerile. Adams called upon the Southerners to recover 
from what he called "panic, pure panic." 13 

Adams, like Seward and many others, was certain the Confederacy must soon 
collapse from inner weakness. It could never be more than a secondary power, 
he declared; never a maritime state. It labored under the necessity of keeping 
eight millions of its population to watch four millions. If independent, it would 
have to guard several thousand miles of frontier against the flight of slaves to 
territory where they could never be reclaimed. "The experiment will ignomin- 
iously fail." So thought John W. Forney, writing his Philadelphia Press from 
Washington that anybody who talked with secessionists could see that they 
lacked heart in their enterprise, and looked forward to the speedy collapse of 
their whole conspiracy. Douglas, who never faltered in his hope that inner 
weakness would undo the new nation, announced late in March: "Division and 
discontent are beginning to appear in the revolting Southern Confederacy." 14 

Always bold and imaginative, Douglas was revolving a plan of which he 
spoke to William H. Russell of the London Times and others; a plan for a 
North American customs union embracing Canada, Mexico, and the United 
States, which he hoped would pave the way to reunion. Like others, he be- 
lieved in the healing power of delay. He wished to fix a conciliatory character 
upon Administration policy, and, as he told friends, to "tomahawk" the Ad- 
ministration if it took a belligerent line. On March 6 he therefore gave the 
Senate an elaborate misinterpretation of Lincoln's inaugural as a pacific man- 
ifesto. He was delighted, he said, to find Lincoln so conservative in temper, for 
the Union could never be cemented by blood. The President had promised to 
abstain from any offensive acts, had let clear Federal rights lie dormant, had 
suggested that the Constitution be amended, and had promised to allow the 
people to devise such changes as they desired. Furthermore, he had declared 
that in every exigency he would lean to friendly solutions. 15 Douglas went on, 
in a pernicious warping of Lincoln's words: 

13 Sandburg, Lincoln: The War Years, I, 120 fL; C. E. Norton, Letters , I, 219; Adams in 
Cong. Globe, 36th Cong., 2d Sess., Appendix, 127 (Jan. 31, 1861); Douglas, Cong. Globe, 
36th Cong., 2d Sess. (March 25, 1861), p. 1504; Atlantic, May, 1861. 

14 Adams, ut sup.; Forney is quoted in Springfield Republican, March 19, 1861, Douglas 
in Chicago Morning Post, March 27, 1861. 

15 Russell, My Diary North and South, April 4, 1861, for Douglas' plan; Cong. Globe, 
36th Cong., 2d Sess. (March 6, i860, pp. 1436-1439. But Douglas frankly told Welles that 
he had no influence. The Democratic party had broken up; the Republican party had no 
use for him; nobody would follow him. Diary, I, 34, 35. 



PEACE OR WAR? 2I 

In other words, if the collection of the revenue leads to a peaceful solution, 
it is to be collected; if the recapture of Fort Moultrie would tend to a peace- 
ful solution, he stands pledged to recapture it; if the recapture would tend 
to violence and war, he is pledged not to recapture it; if the enforcement of 
the laws in the seceding States would tend to facilitate a peaceful solution, he 
is pledged to their enforcement; if the omission to enforce these laws would 
best facilitate peace, he is pledged to omit to enforce them; if maintaining 
possession of Fort Sumter would facilitate peace, he stands pledged to retain 
its possession; if, on the contrary, the abandonment of Fort Sumter and the 
withdrawal of the troops would facilitate a peaceful solution, he is pledged to 
abandon the fort and withdraw the troops. 

Of far greater importance, in this crisis, was Seward's belief in peace. The 
veteran New York politician, who for a dozen stormy years in the Senate had 
closely observed Southern friends and enemies, and who as a man of tortuous 
expedients believed that expediency ruled human conduct, was certain that 
war could be avoided. As Gideon Welles put it later, Seward had no doubt 
that he could set to w r ork immediately the new Administration came in, recon- 
cile the main differences, and within ninety days restore harmony to the 
nation. He was head of the Republican party, and he would be the real power 
behind the weak railsplitter. During the brief month of William Henry 
Harrison's Administration he had dominated that President; during Zachary 
Taylor's sixteen months he had again swayed the scepter; now he would be 
Grand Vizier once more. Thrusting Lincoln aside, he would rely on time, 
forbearance, and patience to bring the cotton States back. 

"I learned early from Jefferson," Seward had told the Senate, "that in 
political affairs we cannot always do what seems to us absolutely best." He 
would like to see all the Territories organized at once into two States, one 
Southwestern, one Northwestern, reserving the right later to subdivide them 
into several convenient new States; but such a reservation was constitutionally 
impossible, and he believed that the embarrassments resulting from the hasty 
incorporation of two areas of such vast extent and various characteristics and 
interests would outweigh the immediate advantages of halting the slavery 
quarrel. To admit one great Southwestern State was as far as he would go. 
Meanwhile, he would trust to cool second thoughts: 

When the eccentric movements of secession and disunion shall have ended, 
in whatever form that end may come, and the angry excitements of the hour 
shall have subsided, then, and not until then, one, two, or three years hence 
I should cheerfully advise a convention of the people, to be assembled in 
pursuance of the Constitution, to consider and decide whether any and what 
amendments of the organizational law ought to be made. 16 

16 Welles, Nov. 27, 1872, to I. N. Arnold, Arnold Papers, Chicago Hist. Soc.; Cong. 
Globe, 3<5th Cong., 2d Sess., Jan. 12, 1861. 



22 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Seward, thin and worn, said just before Lincoln came in: "The majority 
of those around me are determined to pull the house down, and I am determined 
not to let them," 17 He had written Lincoln on February 24 that he knew the 
real peril much better than his Republican colleagues in Washington, and that 
only the soothing words which he had spoken "have saved us and carried us 
along thus far." A man of ripe political experience, he could show impressive 
astuteness, and had a fine capacity for persuasive public speech. Yet he revealed 
at times superficial thinking, erratic judgment, and a devious, impetuous temper, 
which w r ere the more dangerous because he was cockily self-confident. He had 
immense vanity; in fact, remarked the British minister, so much more vanity, 
personal and national, than tact, that he seldom made a favorable impression at 
first, 18 Now he was sure that he could restore the Union with one great 
if if Lincoln would let him take the helm. 

Justice John A. Campbell of the Supreme Court, a mild, sagacious Alabama 
unionist, attended a dinner party which Douglas gave shortly before the 
inauguration and which Seward dominated as the great power-to-be. When 
asked for a toast, Seward proposed: "Away with all parties, all platforms, all 
persons committed to whatever else will stand in the way of the American 
Union." After dinner, Campbell told the company that slavery was a transitory 
institution, which though yet strong in the deep South was steadily dying in 
the border area. Once the Constitution was amended to protect slavery in the 
States from any national interference, the only question would be that of New 
Mexico, which was unsuited to slavery anyhow. "How, Mr. Seward," he asked, 
"can you fail to effect an adjustment?" The Senator replied: "I have a telegram 
from Springfield today in which I am told that Senator Cameron will not be 
Secretary of the Treasury, and that Salmon P. Chase will be; that it is not 
certain that Cameron will have a place in the Cabinet; and that my own 
position is not fully assured. What can I do? " He had hoped that Simon Cameron 
might abet his conservative labors for peace. 

What he did was to make a last-minute movement to keep Chase, whom 
he feared as a radical, out of the Cabinet. When this failed, he nevertheless took 
the State Department, confident that he could manipulate Lincoln and so save 
national peace. 19 

Horace Greeley likewise believed a rapid readjustment possible. His sug- 
gestion that the erring sisters go in peace was qualified by his insistence that 
they should first prove that a majority of their people wished to go, for he was 

17 C. F. Adams to R. H. Dana, Jr., Feb. 28, 1861; Dana Papers, MHS. 

18 Newton, Lord Lyons, I, 117; Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History, III, 319, 
320. 

19 Campbell, undated memorandum "Relative to the Secession Movement," Confederate 
Museum; Nevins, Emergence of Lincoln, II, 452-455; N. Y. Weekly Tribune, April 30, 1861. 



PEACE OR WAR? 23 

confident that in Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana no such majority existed. 
Even late in the spring he told a Cooper Union audience that the Southern 
people were at heart for the old ties. "I believe that the tide makes for the 
Union, and not against it; that secession is exhausting itself as a fever; and if it 
can be judiciously handled for a few months, it will burn out." S. F. B. Morse 
proposed an amicable temporary separation pending negotiations for a new and 
better Union. The two peoples should conclude an immediate alliance, divide 
the national property, and sever the flag (the blue union diagonally, the stripes 
horizontally) until such date as their junction should again make the banner 
one. 20 

This faith that if Lincoln's Administration accepted the status quo, vigor- 
ously waving a palm branch, the cotton domain would come back, was shared 
by that old Jacksonian Democrat George Bancroft. He assured an English 
historian that Southern leaders had seceded only with a view to reconstructing 
the Union on their own terms, possibly with New England (as Bennett's 
Herald suggested) left outside. John Bell of Tennessee, lingering in Washing- 
ton after March 4 and repeatedly seeing Lincoln, entreated the President not to 
molest the Confederacy, for any attempt to reinforce the forts or collect the 
revenues would result in bloodshed and Border State secession. He advised an 
indefinite truce. The more the cotton States armed and the heavier the taxation 
they imposed, the sooner would a wave of popular discontent rise, resulting 
at last in a friendly reconstruction. Bell might have quoted such voices of dis- 
content as the New Orleans True Delta: 

The odds and ends of every faction which have combined themselves to- 
gether to precipitate the cotton states into revolution have shown an audacity 
which Marat, Danton, or Robespierre might have envied. Special privilege, 
a rag money aristocracy, and favored classes, will now be fastened upon un- 
fortunate Louisiana; and in return the people will have the consolation de- 
rivable from the reflection that one of her greatest domestic interests is de- 
stroyed and her importance as a state of the Union dwarfed into a pigmy as- 
sociation with decaying, retrograding, and penniless confederates. The depth 
of our own degradation for the time distracts the attention of the people from 
the progress of oligarchical usurpation and tyranny in our sister States, which 
are made participators with us in a humiliating calamity. 21 

If worst came to worst, in the opinion of some Northern observers, unity 
could be restored on the basis of Manifest Destiny; that is, on the common 
ambition of powerful groups North and South to take possession of the whole 
continent and its islands. 

20 Morse manifesto, undated, S. F. B. Morse Papers, LC. 

21 M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Bancroft, II, 135-136; True Delta, April 10, 1861. Bell's views 
are summarized by M. J. Crawford, writing March 3, 1861, to Toombs; Toombs Letter- 
books, South Carolinians Library. 



24 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

[ HI ] 

The realities of the crisis were grimly different from these dreams. Peace, 
as time proved, was impossible. It was impossible because neither North nor 
South could now yield. Both were prisoners of the situation created by long 
years of paltering and evasion. 

The Confederacy must stand fast because its goal was not readjustment, 
but independence. The successful secessionist conspiracy had been a drive, we 
repeat, to give the people of the Deep South full power to settle their own 
problems in their own way. Retreat would mean a sacrifice of their constitu- 
tional principles, a humiliating blow to their pride, and a definite subordina- 
tion to the North and Northwest. The heads of the Confederacy were not 
bluffing, but in deadly earnest. They were determined to maintain their new 
nation at all hazards and whatever cost. 

Certainly every public and private utterance emphasized the permanency 
of their government. Mrs. Jefferson Davis, who like her husband would have 
preferred to see the Union kept intact on Southern terms, wrote Buchanan on 
March 18 that she had found the opposition in Montgomery to reconstruction 
quite violent. "I fear me greatly, my dear old friend, that you are really the 
last of an illustrious line." This was the conviction of John Slidell of Louisiana. 
He wrote S. L. M. Barlow, one of the first great corporation attorneys of New 
York and an ardent Democrat of conservative views, that reconstruction was 
a hopeless idea at any time or under any conditions. "At this point there is 
unanimity of feeling of which you can form no idea without passing some 
time amongst and mixing freely with our people." We could quote other men 
at tiresome length. Louis T. Wigfall of Texas in the Senate on March 7 
repeated Robert Toombs' statement that the seceded States would never 
come back under any circumstances. Treat them as independent and the na- 
tion could have peace, he vociferated; treat them as part of the Union and it 
would have war. Wlliam M. Browne, former editor of the Washington 
Constitution, now in the Confederate State Department, was amazed by North- 
ern talk of reconciliation. "Knowing, as we do here," he wrote from Mont- 
gomery March 6, "the temper of the people, not the politicians their hopes, 
aspirations, resolution, and resources we look upon union as impossible as 
the annexation of the Confederate States to Great Britain in their old colonial 
condition." 

The roots of this Southern determination ran deep indeed. Secession, as 
old Barnwell Rhett said, was not the work of a day, but had been preparing for 
twenty years. 22 

22 Slidell to Barlow, New Orleans, March 24, 1861, Barlow Papers; Browne to Barlow, 
March 6, 18, 1861, Ibid. Still only in his middle thirties, handsome, wealthy, and cultivated, 



PEACE OR WAR? 1? 

Sectional pride, and sensitiveness to sectional honor, had played a large 
part in crystallizing Confederate resolution. The South was denied equality 
in the Union, men argued, when it was debarred from taking its slave property 
into the common Territories. This feeling of sectional jealousy and patriotism 
more than any other explains the surge of rejoicing that swept across the cotton 
kingdom as the secession ordinances were adopted. How humiliating now to 
fall back! But material motives played their part. Convinced that the South was 
systematically exploited by Northern merchants, brokers, shippers, and bankers, 
estimating that Yankee harpies bled it of a hundred and fifty millions a year, 
and resentful of Northern tariffs, coastal trade monopoly, and fishing subsidies, 
Southern leaders believed they had issued a declaration of economic freedom. 
They would build a richer agriculture; they would have their own flourishing 
ports and fleets; they would make New Orleans, Mobile, Charleston, and 
Savannah opulent seats of finance and industry. 

But above all, Southern determination rested on a sense of fear which had 
grown more acute ever since John Brown's raid; a foreboding that they could 
never entrust the intertwined problems of slavery and race adjustment (they 
feared that emancipation would mean eventual amalgamation, a negroid 
South) to a Northern majority. "A crisis must be met and passed 7 '; but they 
refused to pass it to take the decision to put slavery on the road to ultimate 
extinction. They feared Northern clumsiness, precipitancy, and ruthlessness. 
Henry W. Hilliard of Alabama stated this frankly in a letter to a New England 
friend. "It is supposed," he wrote, "very generally, that we apprehend some 
immediate mischief from Mr. Lincoln's administration; some direct and plain 
interference with our rights; and we are appealed to by our northern friends 
to await some hostile demonstration on his part; we are reminded that his 
character is conservative. . . . Now all this may be conceded, and yet if 
the whole southern mind could be brought to yield implicit faith in these 
assurances, still the attitude of the southern states would remain unchanged. 
It is not any apprehension of aggressive action on the part of the incoming 
administration which rouses the incoming administration to resistance, but it 
is the demonstration which Mr. Lincoln's election by such overwhelming 
majorities affords, of the supremacy of a sentiment hostile to slavery in the 
nonslaveholding states of the union." 23 

The South contained many who felt a repugnance to slavery. Hilliard 

Barlow belonged to the Buchanan wing of the party. Keitt of South Carolina said, "I have 
been engaged in this movement ever since I entered political life"; Springfield Republican, 
Jan. 19, 1 86 1. A Northerner interviewed Davis, Toombs, and R. M. T. Hunter in Washing- 
ton in December and January of the secession winter, and presented his report, "Conversa- 
tional Opinions of the Leaders of Secession," in the Atlantic, Nov., 1862, pp. 613-623. All 
three regarded secession as final; Toombs and Davis spoke of using force to sustain it. 
23 Quoted in Springfield Republican, Jan. i, 1861. 



2 <5 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

knew that world sentiment was hostile to it. What he meant was that the 
Lower South could not commit its fate, in its position of delicacy and peril, to 
a sectional majority which might prove heedless and dogmatic. This was the 
Hobbesian ultimate of fear, the chief cause of war; the fear of a people that 
its way of life would be overthrown by a rival power and creed. The South 
could not turn back. 

[ IV ] 

Still less could the North yield on the mighty issue of disunion. How 
long had its leaders been explicit on that point! "Liberty and Union, now and 
forever, one and inseparable" every schoolboy knew the reply to Hayne. 
"Our Federal Union: it must be preserved!" every Northern youth thrilled to 
Jackson's sentiment. Webster had said in his Seventh of March speech that the 
idea of peaceable secession was an absurdity. Henry Clay that same year had 
declared that if any State put itself in military array against the Union, he was 
for trying the strength of the nation. "I am for ascertaining whether we have 
a Government or not practical, efficient, capable of maintaining its author- 
ity. . . . Nor, sir, am I to be alarmed or dissuaded from any such course by 
intimations of the spilling of blood. If blood is to be spilt, by whose fault is it?" 
Thomas Hart Benton had fierily asserted that the Union must be upheld, if 
need be, by arms, and President Taylor had promised cold shot and hempen 
rope to traitors. Lincoln but echoed these leaders when he placed in his 
inaugural his single veiled threat to Southerners: "In your hands, my dissatis- 
fied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war." 

Beyond a sentimental attachment to the idea of Union, beyond old fealties, 
loomed irreducible material considerations. Divorce usually means a partition 
of property. Men might pause but briefly over the question whether they could 
divide the Fourth of July, Yorktown, Lundy's Lane, and Buena Vista; but the 
government held title to vast physical possessions. Said the Chicago Tribune: 
"No party in the North will ever consent to a division of the national territory, 
the national armaments, the national archives, or the national treasury." A 
President consenting to it would have courted instant impeachment. What 
of the Southwest? If peaceable secession were permitted, the Confederacy 
would lay claim to part of New Mexico and Arizona, with hope of a frontage 
on the Pacific. Confederate sympathizers in Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri 
would almost certainly attempt to seize the Indian Territory, a key to the 
Southwestern domain. Where would the international border be drawn, and 
how would it be policed? Once demarcated, that boundary would certainly 
be crossed by numberless runaway slaves and streams of free Negroes; it 



PEACE OR WAR? ^ 

would be invaded by Northern agitators; and new John Browns would raid 
more Harpers Ferries. 24 

How, asked John Minor Botts of Virginia in a letter to disunionists, are you 
going to dispose of the Mississippi River? That question stung Northwestern 
emotion like a poisoned barb. Let the South try to sever the stream, said 
Douglas, and the men of Illinois would follow its waters inch by inch with 
the bayonet to the Gulf. The lower part of the great river had been paid for 
out of the common purse for the common national good. When Northerners 
read that Mississippi had placed a battery at the Vicksburg bluffs which was 
halting steamboats bound downstream, their blood boiled. Congressmen and 
editors spoke in no modulated tones. "We would like to see them help them- 
selves," retorted the Memphis Evening Argus. Later the Confederate Congress 
conceded the full and free navigation of the river, but it made no provision for 
the landing or transshipment of cargoes. As river boats could not go to Europe 
nor ocean ships ascend to St. Louis, import and export shipments were thrown 
under Confederate power. Amos Kendall, the veteran Jacksonian, told an 
Illinois friend that if he were an editor he would make the nation ring with his 
protests. He would declare that the West should never submit to such a situa- 
tion; that its industrial and commercial interests were hanging over an abyss; 
and that when Southern complaints touching slavery had been removed, the 
seceding States must reenter the Union under compulsion if necessary. 25 He 
knew that compulsion was war. 

It was obvious, moreover, that the precedent of Southern secession might 
be fatal to the entire national future. Winfield Scott in the "Views" he had 
sent Buchanan had babbled of a land of four capitals, at Albany, Washington, 
Columbia, S. G, and Alton or Quincy, Illinois. Each of these four new coun- 
tries would have ports on navigable waters. But what if some interior States 
were shut out of the new confederations and left landlocked? What if Michigan 
could at any time join Canada, closing the Soo? For that matter, what if the 
Confederacy found Texas becoming opposed to slavery, withdrawing from 
the new bond, and making herself independent again? American stability, 
credit, prestige, and power would be dealt shattering blows by a principle 
of withdrawal which held the potentialities of unlimited dissolution of na- 
tional suicide. A once great nation might be Balkanized. The idea, abhorrent 
to all thoughtful Northerners and many Southerners, was abhorrent most of 
all to those who saw the nation as a beacon-light of stability, moderation, 
and freedom in a disorderly world. 

24 Clay's speech (a reply to Dawson of Georgia) is in Cong. Globe. For Benton see 
Thirty Years, II, 200^ for Douglas' views, Milton, Eve of Conflict, 396; the editorial in the 
Chicago Tribune, Dec. 12, 1860, was repeated more emphatically Dec. 22. 

25 Kendall to J. D. Caton, March 14, 1861; Caton Papers, LC 



2 8 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Farewell, if secession prevailed, to all ideas of American greatness, and of 
American leadership of the liberal forces of the globe! Instead, the emergence 
of two jagged, unhappy, mutually resentful fragments, one a slave-mongering 
nation of oppressor and oppressed, the other a nation compelled to militarize 
itself and debase its temper and institutions because of an antagonistic neighbor. 
Farewell to the old fraternalism, optimism, and idealism, now to be replaced 
by a Peloponnesian atmosphere, a hostility like that of Athens and Sparta, 
Rome and Carthage! 

Northern unwillingness to yield was heightened by the growing conviction 
that however fervent was the emotion of the cotton States, it had been brought 
to its climax by a conspiracy as deliberate and selfish as Catiline's. A deep 
anger burned in many Northerners as they read of this conspiracy. The Nash- 
ville Patriot during the recent Presidential campaign had arraigned W. L. 
Yancey, Barnwell Rhett, and Porcher Miles as its leaders. It had related how 
the conspiracy began with the Southern Convention in Montgomery in May, 
1858; how the Southern League, to promote a great Southern party, had been 
systematically organized; how Yancey had persuaded the Alabama legislature 
to assert that it would never submit to the domination of a sectional Northern 
party; and how he had induced the Democratic State convention in Alabama 
on April 23, 1859, to declare that unless the Federal Government gave slavery 
positive protection on the high seas and in the Territories, it would use its 
best endeavors to withdraw from that government. The Patriot described 
how Yancey appeared in Charleston as leader of the disunionists and helped 
engineer the disruption of the Democratic Party, simply to make sure of Re- 
publican victory and subsequent secession. 26 "Then we can excite the South 
to rise," Yancey had said. 

The National Intelligencer in Washington took up the conspiracy thread 
and pursued it further. In that careful, moderate paper a noted Southerner, a 
former member of Congress, published on January 9, 1861, his f accuse. "I 
charge," he wrote, "that on last Saturday night a caucus was held in this city 
by the Southern secession Senators from Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, 
Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas.'* They resolved, he went on, to seize all po- 
litical and military power in the South. They telegraphed orders for the draft- 
ing of final plans to seize all forts, arsenals, and custom houses; they sent advice 
that the secession conventions then or soon to be in session should pass ordi- 
nances for immediate withdrawal; and they directed the assembling of a seces- 
sion convention at Montgomery on February 13. In order to thwart any at- 
tempted interference by Washington, they determined that the seceding States 

26 Widely republished, South as well as North; for example, in Selma, Ala., Reporter, 
July 26, 1860. 



PEACE OR WAR? 2? 

should temporarily keep their members sitting in Congress. "They have pos- 
sessed themselves of all the avenues of information in the South, the telegraph, 
the press, and the general control of the postmasters." 27 

"Have we not known men," Andrew Johnson presently asked the Senate, 
"to sit at their desks in this chamber, using the government's stationary to 
write treasonable letters; and while receiving their pay and sworn to support 
the Constitution and sustain the law, engaging in midnight conclaves to devise 
ways and means by which the government should be overthrown?" 2S Stephen 
A. Douglas went further. He believed, with Charles Francis Adams, that the 
conspiracy embraced a plan to seize the Capitol before Lincoln could be 
inaugurated there, and to paralyze the government; a plan which only the 
unexpected strength of the Virginia Unionists in the election of 1860 frustrated. 

Because of the tremendous sentimental and moral values attached to the 
Union, because of the impossibility of dividing its assets and dissevering a land 
where the greatest river systems and mountain valleys ran athwart sections, 
because secession meant a chain process of suicide, because the integrity of 
the republic was the life of world liberalism, and because to most observers it 
seemed that a squalid conspiracy had turned natural Southern aspirations and 
apprehensions to unnatural ends, the North could never give way. Certainly 
Lincoln would not give way; his inaugural address had clearly stated his de- 
termination to maintain the Union and hold its property. But in believing that 
he could do this and still avoid war, he made three errors. First, he temporarily 
underrated the gravity of the crisis. Second, he overrated the strength of Union 
sentiment in the South, as he showed in a futile effort to persuade Sam Houston 
of Texas to rally the nationalist groups. And lastly, as David M. Potter says, he 
misconceived the conditional character of much Southern Unionism. These 
were errors of the head, not of the heart, and because of the confused and 
murky situation were natural enough. 29 

27 This letter was vouched for by the eminent editor W. W. Seaton. Arkansas, not yet 
seceded when Lincoln took office, stood on the brink. 

28 Cong. Globe, 37th Cong., ist Sess. (July 27, 1861), 297. 

29 Jefferson Davis wrote later that he knew war was inevitable. He had served long in 
Washington beside Northern leaders. "With such opportunities of ascertaining the power 
and sentiments of the Northern people, it would have shown an inexcusable want of per- 
ception if I had shared the hopes of men less favored with opportunities for forming cor- 
rect judgments, in believing with them that secession could be or would be peacefully 
accomplished." "Lord Wolseley's Mistakes," North American Review, vol. 149, Oct., 1889, 
475. In his Senate speech Jan. 10, 1861, he had predicted long years of war, terrible devasta- 
tion, and a final peace between two republics. He wrote to Governor Pickens, Jan. 13: "We 
are probably soon to be involved in that fiercest of human strife, a civil war." Lincoln 
would never have written that! Davis knew that no Federal Government worthy of the 
nation could avoid meeting with arms the policy he was helping carry through. Even 
Buchanan, since the revolution in his Cabinet, was not that feeble! "When Lincoln comes 
in," wrote Davis to Franklin Pierece, Jan. 20, "he will have but to continue in the path of 



3 o THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

[V] 

The Confederacy in March faced a vital issue: Should it wait or strike? 
If it waited, it might gain by finding time to install its government, organize 
its resources, and import foreign materials. It might also lose by giving Union 
sentiment in large areas, such as northern Alabama, time to reassert itself once 
the first fine rapture of independence began to decline. But above all, its atten- 
tion was centered on border States. If it waited, would they gravitate to the 
Confederacy, or fix their allegiance yet more firmly in the Union? If it struck, 
would the shock make them embrace secession or recoil from it? 

The best opportunity for a stroke presented itself at Fort Pickens on Pen- 
sacola Bay and Fort Suinter in Charleston Harbor, two thorns in Confederate 
flesh. Pensacola was much the less sensitive spot. Florida was not South Carolina. 
Here a Yankee lieutenant occupied Pickens, which could be easily reinforced 
from the sea, with a tiny body of troops under a workable arrangement that he 
should hold his island fort unharmed while Florida forces occupied the neigh- 
boring mainland positions without disturbance. 30 Danger of an explosion was 
slight, and he had provisions for five months. 

Sumter held a different status. Recent events had made it to Northerners a 
symbol of the maintenance of the Union, and to Confederates a symbol of 
foreign intrusion. Radical Northerners believed that it must be held, radical 
Southerners that it must be taken. Under Robert Anderson, a veteran of the 
Mexican War, it symbolized the choice between acquiescence in secession, or 
stern resistance to it. 

Confederate leaders had forcibly indicated their determination to attack 
Sumter if it were not quickly evacuated. Judah P. Benjamin wrote S. L. M. 
Barlow in New York as early as January 17, 1861, that an act of war impended 
at Sumter or Pickens. "At neither can it be long delayed." When Jefferson 
Davis was elected President, William Porcher Miles of South Carolina was at 
hand in Montgomery. He favored an early assault, but urged his State govern- 
ment not to permit it until the Confederate authorities gave the word. Our 
attack, he wrote, would necessarily plunge the new nation into war with the 
United States, and that before the six other States were prepared. Davis on 
March i appointed Beauregard to command at Charleston. As he did so he 
informed the Governor, Francis W. Pickens of South Carolina, that he was 
anxious to vindicate Southern rights territorial and jurisdictional, and that he 

his predecessor to inaugurate a civil war." Dunbar Rowland, ed., Jefferson Davis, Letters, 
Papers, and Speeches, V, 36-38. Potter's statement is in Lincoln and his Party in the 
Secession Crisis, 375. 
30 On Lieutenant Slemmer and his opponents see O. R., I, i, 333-342. 



PEACE OR WAR? z 

had discussed with Beauregard the works needful to reduce Sumter most 
speedily. Confederate authorities hurried a colonel to New Orleans to buy 
fifteen tons of cannon powder for immediate shipment to Charleston. The 
moment the governor of Florida read a synopsis of Lincoln's message he 
telegraphed Pickens in South Carolina: "Will you open at once upon Fort 
Sumter?" 31 

Yet before Lincoln took office, the Buchanan Administration, fortified by 
the addition of Edwin M. Stanton, Joseph Holt, and John A. Dix to the 
Cabinet, repeatedly warned the Confederate leaders that an attack on the fort 
would mean war. Buchanan not only refused to withdraw the troops from 
Sumter, but declined to promise not to reinforce them. Indeed, as he wrote 
later, he uniformly declared he would send reinforcements whenever Major 
Anderson requested them or the safety of the post demanded them. Joseph 
Holt, as Secretary of War, met South Carolina's demands for evacuation with 
the stiffest denials. The United States held absolute sovereignty over the fort, 
he declared; the government possessed no more authority to surrender it 
than to cede the District of Columbia to Maryland; the small garrison was 
not a menace, but was maintained to protect South Carolina from foreign 
foes. If rash leaders assaulted Sumter "and thus plunge our country into civil 
war, then upon them and those they represent must rest the responsibility." 32 

Charleston throughout March resounded with martial activities, for 
Beauregard put new energy into preparations for war. He found the harbor 
already bristling with guns, every point of access from the sea fortified, the 
channel obstructed, and watch maintained to make sure that not even a small 
boat reached Fort Sumter. Charlestonians, their State troops drilling day and 
night, thought they had done everything possible. But Beauregard mobilized 
a large body of Negro laborers to strengthen the harbor defenses, improved 
the position of the guns, enlisted more artillerists, and hastened the arming of 
small vessels to operate in coastal waters. Secretary of War Walker urged him 
on: "Give but little credit to rumors of an amicable adjustment," he wrote 
March 15. During battery practice a heavy ball struck the Sumter walls; and 
though an officer was sent at once to explain that it was a chance shot, Charles- 
tonians guessed that their gunners were fixing the range of the fort. A floating 
battery was heavily armed to be anchored near Sumter. 33 

31 Barlow Papers; Miles Porcher to F. W. Porcher Feb. 9, 1861, Amer. Art. Assn. Cata- 
logue Feb. 5, 1929, p. 39; Davis to Governor Pickens, A. S. W. Rosenbach Collection; Mem- 
rnuiger, Feb. 16, 1861, to Col. M. A. Moore, Memminger Papers South Caroliniana Lib. Gov. 
W. O. Perry to Gov. Pickens, March 5, 1861, Pickens-Bonham Papers LC. 

32 Curtis, Buchanan, II, 541 #.; Holt, Feb. <5, 1861, to Attorney-General J. W. Hayne of 
S. C., N. Y. Tribune, Feb. 9, 1861. 

33 O. R. I, i, 275, 276; Charleston correspondence, March 9, 10, in N. Y. Tribune, March 
13, 16, 1861. 




I S pP/STAR OF THE WEST 
BATTERY 



CHARLESTON 
HARBOR 



Many officers were spoiling for a fight. Beauregard, reporting March 22 
that all his batteries would be in full trim in a few days, was able to add that 
Sumter was nearly out of fuel and provisions. Five days later he expressed hope 
that the fort would soon surrender, for the uncertainty ought not to last be- 
yond the period when he had completed all his preparations to compel Ander- 
son to surrender. 34 



[ VI ] 

Meanwhile, in Washington, Abraham Lincoln, new to high office, totally 
untrained in administrative duties, inexperienced in the leadership of Congress 
and public sentiment, and quite unacquainted with his Cabinet, had to face 
a multiplicity of problems with scanty assistance and amid constant distractions. 
For secretarial aid he had only two men, John Hay and John G. Nicolay, both 
able, but very young, very green, and very provincially Western. The country 
would have gained had Lincoln brought some capable Republican of more 
experience, like Horace White of the Chicago Tribune staff, who had reported 
the Lincoln-Douglas debates, to reinforce them. The first week Lincoln 
had to receive callers in droves, meet the diplomatic corps as it paid its respects, 
address delegations from six States, handle a swollen mail, and hold his first 
formal Cabinet meeting (March 9). That week Seward, on whose friendly if 
contriving advice he could best lean, was ill with lumbago. 

In his first days Lincoln had to fill the principal existing vacancies before 
the Senate adjourned its short special session; to consult with General Scott on 
the bad position of the army, whose two principal administrative officers, 
Samuel Cooper as adjutant-general and Joseph E. Johnston as quartermaster- 

34 O. R., I, i, 280, 283; Beauregard to Walker, March 22, 27, 



PEACE OR WAR? 33 

general, leaned to the South; and to study the possibility of keeping Mary- 
land, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri in the Union. Washington was spec- 
ulating on antagonisms within the Cabinet, with Seward, Cameron, and Bates 
understood to be moderate, while Chase, Montgomery Blair, and Welles sup- 
posedly held more extreme views. 35 Martin J. Crawford, one of three Con- 
federate commissioners whom Jefferson Davis had just sent to Washington to 
explore the chances of a treaty of amity, w r as busily inquiring as to the inten- 
tions of the new regime, and reporting to Montgomery on March 6 that Seward 
and Cameron could be relied on to maintain a peace policy. Another com- 
missioner, John Forsyth, arrived on his heels, and both men began using ex- 
Senator Gwin of California and Senator R. M. T. Hunter of Virginia in an 
effort to establish unofficial relations with Seward. 

When did Lincoln have time to ponder the one question that mattered: 
the question what course could best serve the cause of peace and reunion? Not 
during his first levee, which so jammed the White House that for an hour 
those who wished to leave had to get out through the windows. And not 
while he was incessantly besieged by office-hunters and Congressional patron- 
age-dispensers. At first he refused to limit his hours for seeing people. But 
when he found that he had no time to take a drink of water, he fixed them 
at ten o'clock till three, and later at ten till one. 36 

Lincoln thought it appalling that while the national house was on fire at 
one end, he had to be letting out rooms at the other. Sane observers were 
equally aghast. We have no national policy, no administration plan, one of 
Greeley's friends lamented near the end of March; while the government 
crumbles underfoot, the only problem considered is whether some supplicant 
should be a tide-waiter, a village postmaster, or an Indian agent. But the system 
existed; the President had no escape. 

He was in fact the focal point of pressures which reached out to every town 
and county with a sizable Republican vote. After filling his Cabinet, he had but 
one important personal appointment to make that of Hiram Barney, a capable 
attorney, to be collector of the port of New York. Barney, a friend of William 
Cullen Bryant, had extended Lincoln some valued courtesies at the time of the 
Cooper Union address, and had supported him in the Chicago convention. The 
President took a certain interest also in sending Charles Francis Adams to 
London, W. L. Dayton to Paris, Norman Judd to Berlin, and that eccentric 
eo-otist Cassius M. Clay to St. Petersburg. In the main, however, his appoint- 
ments had to be parceled out to clamorously selfish men and groups. 37 

35 Elaine, Twenty Years, I, 285, 286. 

36 N. Y. Herald, March 9, 1861; Helen Nicolay, Lincoln's Secretary, 82, 83, 

37 The Barney appointment is discussed in Alexander, Political Hist. N. Y., II, 390-396; 
cf. Wm. Allen Butler (a law partner), A Retrospect of Forty Years, 349, 350. 



34 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Every Republican in Congress wished to strengthen his political organiza- 
tion; every editor coveted a post-office connection to swell his subscription 
list; every jobless politician wanted a salary. The Illinois members, for example, 
met in conclave to draw up a slate of appointments to be requested of Lincoln. 
After dividing marshalships, district attorneyships, and territorial posts, they 
demanded a slice of foreign-service pie. Senator Lyman Trumbull wanted two 
consulships, Representative Elihu Washburne one, and Representative W. P. 
Kellogg one. Joseph Medill of the Chicago Tribune, meanwhile, wished one 
of his staff made the new Chicago postmaster. "If Mr. Scripps has it," he ex- 
plained, "the country postmasters of the Northwest would work to extend 
our circulation." And Illinois was but one State! Three-quarters of the March 
correspondence of the typical Senator, Representative, or Cabinet member in 
this hour of crisis pertained to jobs. A clamor of greed and grumbling filled 
the capital. 38 

In this matter Lincoln was the victim not merely of the national system, but 
of the special necessities of the Republicans. They did not as yet have a coher- 
ent, well-organized party. It had been born some half dozen years earlier as a 
patchwork of local organizations; it had fought the campaign of 1856 under a 
hastily-chosen nominee as a coalition of new, uncertain State organizations, and 
had lost; in the three years after 1856 it had largely disappeared from view as 
a national entity. Its enthusiastic rally in 1860, a marvel of improvisation, might 
have failed again but for the Democratic schism. Its members included former 
Whigs, former Know-Nothings, former Freesoil Democrats, and young men 
who were simon-pure Republicans. Now it needed the cement of national office 
to make it a unified, well-knit party on a truly national basis. Its chieftains 
governors, Senators, Representatives, editors, State and local committeemen 
were resolved that it should obtain this cement, and anxious to determine its 
quality. Lincoln was well aware that parties are essential to democratic govern- 
ment, and that his Administration could not possibly succeed without strong 
party support. In the hours he gave to applicants he was not merely dividing 
spoils; he was building a foundation. 

Throughout March the hotels were jammed. In one, three hundred un- 
bathed men slept in the dining room. Anybody could get into the White 
House, and nearly everybody did. The physical and psychological pressure on 

38 Medill's letter, March 4, 1861, is in the Lyman Trumbull Papers, LC; see also the 
Washburne Papers. Among the dissatisfied elements the Constitutional Unionists were 
prominent. Edward Everett resentfully- noted that in Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, 
where the Republican vote had been trifling and the Constitutional Union vote tremendous, 
Lincoln had bestowed the three great plums on Republicans Montgomery Blair, Cassms M. 
Clay, and Edward Bates. Everett, March 31, 1861, to Sir Henry Holland; Everett Papers, 
MHS. 



PEACE OR WAR? 35 

Lincoln was crushing. On March 14 one correspondent shouldered his way 
through the fragrant throng. "I saw the President this morning, and his whole 
air was that of not only a worried but an ill man. He would require a fortnight's 
rest, it seemed to me, to enable him to let off a joke or a jolly backwoods 
reminiscence." Not until hundreds of appointees had been confirmed, and the 
special Senate session had ended on March 28, could the Administration give 
wholehearted attention to the grave national issues. 

To add to Lincoln's difficulties, Douglas as the chief Democratic leader 
spent March indicating that he would harass the Administration mercilessly 
unless it sacrificed almost everything for peace. He seemed a very different 
Douglas from the man who had recently talked of hanging traitors. For one 
reason, he was trying to pull the defeated Democratic party together, and to 
rally Union forces in the South. For another, he was drinking heavily again, 
a fact which explained some excesses of language and one bout of fisticuffs on 
the Senate floor. But when all allowances are made, his attacks were out- 
rageously sharp. He introduced a resolution calling on the Administration to 
tell the Senate how many forts, arsenals, and navy yards it held inside the 
seceded States, with what forces, and with what intentions. His object, he 
stated, was to press the government into a definite avowal of policy. In his 
opinion, it had but three courses open: It could amend the Constitution to 
preserve the Union, it could assent to a peaceable division, or it could make 
war to subjugate the lost States. "The first proposition is the best and the last 
is the worst," he declared. 

If Douglas wished assurances that Lincoln would not wantonly provoke 
war, he got them. Senator Fessenden, assuring him that the President would 
use no questionable powers and violate no law in an effort to collect the rev- 
enues, obviously spoke for Lincoln. It was not clear that the government had 
any right to collect customs dues aboard a warship, and it would certainly 
not do so without explicit mandate from Congress. Yet day by day Douglas 
kept up his scoriae outbursts, often using bitter personalities. His manner was 
satanically provoking. Sometimes he exhibited a heavy-handed malignity, 
sometimes he was patronizingly sarcastic. You state that you mean peace, he 
said tauntingly, and yet pass laws that cannot be enforced without war. You 
talk of maintaining the Federal authority, yet you have not a Federal officer, 
acting by your authority, in the whole secession area. However affronted, his 
opponents thought it best to bite their lips in silence. 39 

One eloquent foreign voice, in these dark days, was raised to hearten Amer- 

39 Cong. Globe, 361*1 Cong., 2d Sess., 1436 ff. "I expect to oppose his [Lincoln's] adminis- 
tration with all my energy on those great principles which have separated parties in former 
times," Douglas said March 6; but on a Constitutional amendment to settle the slavery 
issue, he would support Lincoln. 



3 6 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

ican friends of freedom. Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote an American 
acquaintance that some evils were worse than civil conflict. "My serious fear," 
she declared, "has been, and is, not for the dissolution of the body but the 
death of the soul not of a rupture of states and civil war, but of reconciliation 
and peace at the expense of a deadly compromise of principle. Nothing will 
destroy the republic but what corrupts its conscience and disturbs its frame 
for the stain upon the honor must come off upon the flag. If, on the other hand, 
the North stands fast on the moral ground no glory will be like your glory." 40 
These were the sentiments of millions of lovers of the Union. 

Most men on both sides in the sectional struggle felt that they stood upon 
sound moral ground. It was all-important that the leaders on each side, and 
especially on the Union side, should act on high principle and not expediency. 
Would Lincoln, so untried in great responsibilities, yield to the heavy pressures 
for peace at any price for delay beyond the point of no return? Or would he 
stand by his declaration that evasion must stop? Before the answer was given, 
a quietly desperate struggle between him and Seward had to be decided. 

40 N. Y. Independent, March 10, 1861. 




Contest for Power: Seward and Lincoln 

LINCOLN headed what was essentially a coalition government. His Cabinet 
represented groups of diverse origins and principles conservative Whigs, 
freesoil Whigs, Union Democrats of Jacksonian cast, and radical adherents 
of new Republican ideas. Of its members a majority Secretary of State 
Seward, Secretary of the Treasury Chase, Secretary of War Cameron, and 
Attorney-General Bates had aspired to the Presidency, and Chase and per- 
haps Seward hoped for that prize in the future. The Cabinet had not even the 
semblance of unity, and its level of responsibility was low. As the diaries of 
Chase, Bates, and Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles show, they had no 
trust in each other. Several were at critical moments to prove disloyal to the 
President; and at least tw r o were so undependable that part of their duties had 
to be taken over by others, Cameron ceding certain military responsibilities 
to Chase, and Bates certain responsibilities over civil justice to Seward. Lincoln, 
like other leaders of coalitions which included headstrong men (Lloyd George 
in the First World War, for example), had to fight for his tenure of power. 
His first battle was to be for the control of his Administration, his second for 
the control of military strategy and others were to follow. 

From the moment South Carolina seceded, Seward had been actuated by 
the idea of compromise; from the moment he took the State Department, he 
had cherished a belief that he could dominate Lincoln. Having led rough Zack 
Taylor when he was only Senator, now as the ablest Cabinet member he 
would lead the rustic neophyte from the Sangamon. Recent events strength- 
ened his confidence. He had revised the inaugural address, put his friend 
Cameron into the Cabinet even if he had failed to keep Chase out, and easily 
established himself as Lincoln's chief adviser. 1 

To comprehend Seward's attitude, we should glance at a few comparative 

i The exact extent of Seward's influence over Lincoln is hard to gauge. But we may 
agree with Douglas that it was much greater than it should have been. Lincoln often sat 
listening to his breezy, genial, cynical talk and drew profit from his experience. It was 
temporarily an Eisenhower-Taft situation, rather than a Wilson-Underwood situation. 
Welles, I, Diary, 34, 35. 

37 



3 g THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

facts. He was almost eight years older than the President. When little Abe 
Lincoln was a ragged backwoods lad trudging to log schools in Indiana for 
brief intervals of ciphering, Seward was studying at Union College. While 
Lincoln was keeping store, splitting rails, and surveying at New Salem, 
Seward was leader of the New York Senate. The year 1842 found Lincoln 
a struggling Springfield lawyer; it found Seward completing four busy years 
as governor of the Empire State. When Lincoln left the House in defeat 
after one term, Seward sat in the Senate as almost the peer of Clay or Webster. 
Throughout the iSjo's Seward seemed the chief embodiment of the freesoil 
cause; no other Republican leader gained so much experience or renown; 
and wearing the laurels of twelve years of versatile Senate service, he 
entered the party convention of 1860 the leading candidate and to most 
citizens unquestionably the strongest man to be beaten by a raw Western 
attorney. 

Just before the inauguration he inspired a friend to publish in the New 
York Evening Post a letter presenting him as a paladin of peace, who would 
effect an early restoration of the Union if only New York enemies, fanatic 
abolitionists, and (it was hinted) an inexperienced President did not prevent 
him. The letter writer lamented that never before had so many members of 
Congress been open applicants for Presidential favors. "This, and the im- 
pression which exists that Mr. Lincoln is opposed to any form of compromise, 
makes members firm who ne'er were firm before, and creates obstacles to 
the settlement of our difficulties which ten words from the lips of Mr. Lincoln 
would dispel in a moment." 2 Let Seward be the deus ex Tmchina! A Southern 
commissioner reported what was doubtless an accurate transcript of Seward's 
loose, fluent talk just after the inauguration. "I have built up the Republican 
party, I have brought it to triumph, but its advent to power is accompanied 
by great difficulties and perils. I must save the party, and save the govern- 
ment in its hands. To do this, war must be averted, the negro question must 
be dropped, the irrepressible conflict ignored, and a Union Party to embrace 
the border slave States inaugurated. . . . [Then] the people of the cotton 
States, unwillingly led into secession, will rebel." 3 

It is certain that the three main ideas in this passage were really held by 
Seward. First, he believed that he must take the leadership; he had so written 

2 This letter in the Evening Post was acridly dissected by the N. Y. Tribune of Feb. 27. 
We are credibly informed, said the Tribune, "that the very language of this letter is the same 
as has been repeatedly used by Mr. Seward in private conversation." Greeley very wrath- 
fully accused Seward of trying to take charge of the Administration and reduce Lincoln to 
a cipher. 

3 Forsyth, March 8, 1861, to Robert Toombs; Toombs Letterbook, South Caroliniana 
Library, Univ. of S. C. 



CONTEST FOR POWER: SEWARD AND LINCOLN ^ 

his wife. Second, he believed that the Republican Party must be broadened 
into a Union Party, powerful in the border States, and quiet on the slavery 
issue. Third, he assumed that if the seven cotton States were isolated, their 
people would soon beg for readmittance. Winfield Scott wrote Seward on 
March 3 outlining various alternatives before the government, and ending 
with alternative number four let the seceded States depart in peace. This 
implied that the head of the army regarded Seward, not Lincoln, as general 
manager of the new regime, and Seward showed the letter widely around 
Washington to confirm that belief and strengthen the peace party. 

Back of Seward's policy lay a profound moral defect. He could not take 
the great issue of Southern intransigence, so all-important to the future of 
the nation, with due seriousness. He thought that any storm, even this, could 
be controlled by cunning management, party bargains, and dexterous maneuv- 
ering; he did not realize that he was facing men in deadly earnest, whose 
determination was fixed, and was dealing with a movement far too powerful 
for mere shrewd manipulation. Douglas, among others, saw through his shallow 
conceit. Douglas knew that he had been hand-in-glove with various Southern 
Senators all winter, playing a dangerous game with them. The time for games 
had now passed. 



On inauguration day Sam Ward, son of a rich New York banker, skilled 
lobbyist, and friend of many leaders in both parties, launched an effort to 
encourage Seward's peacemaking. He wrote the Secretary that he had talked 
with several Confederate leaders; that he had learned that Robert Toombs was 
the master spirit of the new government (an illusion Toombs liked to create) ; 
and that the Southern Congress was adamant for independence. He warned 
Seward that if the Southern commissioners who had come to open negotiations 
in Washington were sent back unrecognized, President Davis could not restrain 
the incensed South Carolinians from attacking Sumter. His informants, ex- 
Senator W. M. Gwin of California and Senator R. M. T. Hunter of Virginia, 
thought that the question of treating with the commissioners ought to be 
submitted to the Senate, where twenty-two favorable Democratic votes could 
be counted on. 

It is clear that Ward, Gwin, and Hunter assumed that Lincoln was a 
nullity, and hoped that Seward would so manage affairs as to preserve peace. 4 

4 Ward's letters are in Bancroft, Settlor d, U, 542-545; see also Crawford, Genesis \ 322; 
Rhodes, History, IE, 328; Bancroft, Seward, II, in. 



40 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

In Montgomery, meanwhile, Judah P. Benjamin was voicing the indignation 
of the Confederate Government over the way in which Washington let 
matters drift, and its determination shortly to seize the forts. 

Sew r ard was perfectly willing to hold indirect parleys with the Confederate 
commissioners. He allowed Gwin, a warm sympathizer with the South, to run 
back and forth between him and the three agents, Martin J. Crawford, A. B. 
Roman, and John Forsyth, who regarded themselves as envoys of a foreign 
power. While the trio threatened immediate blows against Forts Sumter and 
Pickens, Seward pleaded for delay and peace. Finally, the commissioners 
sent the Secretary a memorandum agreement (March 8) offering a wait of 
twenty days in return for a promise that the existing military position would 
be preserved in every respect. Seward meanwhile assured Sam Ward that 
the Administration would take no warlike steps; and Ward delightedly urged 
his New York friends to buy stocks and keep on buying. 5 Momentarily, the 
commissioners hoped they had entrapped Seward. If he signed their memoran- 
dum, he in effect recognized the Confederacy! 6 When the paper arrived, 
however, the wily Secretary was abed with lumbago and declared that his 
physician had forbidden him to transact any business whatever. Gwin at this 
point dropped his dubious and doubtless distasteful activities as a go-between. 7 

Seward was certainly too shrewd a fox to be ensnared. However anxious 
he was to take a conciliatory line, evacuate Fort Sumter, and charm the Con- 
federate States back into the Union, he could not possibly recognize the 
commissioners as agents of an independent government. Undiscouraged, the 
three emissaries persuaded Senator Hunter to accept the role of intermediary. 
When on March 11 the convalescent Seward returned to the State Depart- 
ment, he found that conservative slaveholder on his doorstep. The Secretary 
was embarrassed and uneasy, and when Hunter pressed him, merely said that 
he would ask the President about the propriety of an informal interview. 
Next day he wrote Hunter that he could not see the commissioners. Never- 
theless, Crawford and Forsyth remained of good heart, informing Toombs 
cheerfully on March 12: 

While ... a refusal to treat with us ... in the absence of the evacua- 
tion of the Charleston and Pensacola forts is, from our point of view, certain 
war, the Administration still talks of peace. A gentleman from Tennessee had 
a half hour's private conversation with Mr. Lincoln this morning, and he as- 
sured him there would be no war and he was determined to keep the peace. 
. . . Mr. Crittenden of Kentucky told Mr. Crawford this morning that Gen- 
eral Scott was also for peace, and would sustain Mr. Seward's policy, and if 

5 Ward, March 9, 1861, Barlow Papers. 

6 The commissioners to Toombs, March 8, 1861, Toombs Letterbook, South Caroliniana. 

7 W. M. Gwin, MS Memoirs, Bancroft Library, Univ. of California, 190-200. 



CONTEST FOR POWER: SEW ARD AND LINCOLN ^ 

Sumter should be evacuated we think it will be the influence of General Scott 
upon the President which will produce that result. . . . 

We are still of the opinion that Fort Sumter will be evacuated. 8 

Lincoln at this point, in fact, almost made up his mind that the evacuation 
of Sumter was a military necessity. Major Robert Anderson, commanding 
there, had suddenly reported on February 28 that he did not think an attempt 
to reinforce the post could succeed without 20,000 disciplined men. This had 
astonished the outgoing Secretary of War, Joseph Holt. Anderson had been 
told to report frequently on the condition of his garrison and on any warlike 
preparations around him; he had not suggested that the preparations were 
threatening or that reinforcements were needed; nevertheless, since an exigency 
might arise at any moment, Holt had quietly prepared a small expedition 
which was ready to sail from New York on a few hours' notice with troops 
and provisions. Now Anderson estimated that a relief attempt would be 
hopeless without forces far beyond the nation's immediate means large naval 
units to break past the defenses into Charleston Harbor, and a powerful army 
to overwhelm the hostile fortifications from the rear. Where were the war- 
ships and the troops? Only eight companies were stationed in Washington, 
and only seven at Fort Monroe all required where they were. 9 

It was all too true that Anderson's position was increasingly precarious. 
The South Carolina authorities permitted him to buy meat and vegetables in 
Charleston only from one market day to another, and forbade him to lay in a 
stock of nonperishables like flour. 10 In Washington, A. D. Bache of the 
Coast Survey and Col. J. G. Totten, chief engineer of the army, agreed that 
the strengthening of Fort Moultrie, the erection of land batteries, and the 
obstruction of channels had put Sumter in grave danger. Army officers talked 
of Charleston as "a new Sebastopol." Nearly the entire available force of 
South Carolina was in the field, and squads of recruits were arriving in an 
unsteady stream from other Southern States even Maryland. Special trains 
were leaving Richmond with mortars, shot, shells, and ammunition. Even 
as Lincoln took his oath Governor Pickens telegraphed the Tredegar Iron 
Works: "Please send 400 shells for Dahlgren guns in addition to those already 
ordered." n The floating battery was anchored within range of Sumter, and 
Beauregard expressed confidence that he could blow Anderson out of the 
place at a moment's notice. 

But various Union leaders refused to believe that a huge fleet and army 

8 Toombs Letterbook, South Caroliniana Library. 

9 Secretary Holt to Lincoln, March 3, 1861; Robert Todd Lincoln Papers, LC. It would 
take weeks to bring back the small forces garrisoning the Southwest. 

10 N. Y. Tribune, March n, 1861. 

n See telegrams of L. P. Walker, Pickens, and others in Pickens-Bonham Papers, LC. 



4 2, THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

would be needed to save Sumter, and declared it outrageous to talk of giving 
up the fort. Gideon Welles shook his beard with the exclamation, "Astound- 
ing!" Attorney-General Bates was resentfully perplexed. Above all, Postmaster- 
General Montgomery Blair, determined that the Union must be maintained 
at any cost, was profoundly stirred. 12 His brother-in-law Gustavus V. Fox, 
a man of determined chin and bald, domelike brow, systematic and energetic, 
and an Annapolis graduate who had overseen the transport of troops to Vera 
Cruz during the Mexican War, felt the same way. Blair had just brought 
him to Washington from his business in Massachusetts to advise General 
Winfield Scott, head of the Army, and he was ready to play his part. When 
Lincoln on Saturday, March 9, held his first Cabinet meeting, everyone agreed 
that more information was needed. 

That same day Lincoln asked Scott to answer three questions in writing: 
How long could Sumter hold out? Could it be reinforced or supplied during 
that period with existing means? If not, what additional forces would be needed? 
On the following Monday, March 11, Scott laid his depressing answers before 
Lincoln. Sumter had hard bread, flour, and rice for only 26 days, with salt 
meat for 48; and to relieve the fort with existing resources was impossible, 
for he would need a strong fleet, 5000 additional regulars, and 20,000 volun- 
teers. 

These responses shocked Lincoln. He held Scott in high respect, for the 
old general had always been deeply attached to the Union, and there was 
of course no question of his impressive military achievements. Lincoln had 
supported him when he was the Whig Presidential candidate in 1852. He 
trusted Scott sufficiently to be appalled by his report. What he did not realize 
was that Scott in this matter was largely an echo of Seward, who adroitly 
manipulated him, and that the commander at times showed evidences of 
senility, although, as we shall see, he could if aroused plan ably and boldly. 
When the President on March 5 had requested Scott to be vigilant in 
maintaining all Federal forts and posts, the General had done almost noth- 
ing. 13 But this Lincoln did not yet know. 

It is not strange that on these three days, March 9-11, Lincoln almost 

12 O. R,, I, i, 196-198; Bates, Diary, 177, 178; Welles, Diary (retrospective), I, 4. 

13 Lincoln, worried over Fort Pickens at Pensacola, on March n repeated in writing his 
order to Scott to maintain Federal positions. Next day Scott started orders to the com- 
mander of some troops on the warship Brooklyn off Pensacola to land his company to 
reinforce Pickens. But this order was not obeyed 1 . The naval commander refused to let 
the men land. He wrote Secretary Welles April i that such a movement "would most 
certainly be viewed as a hostile act, and would be resisted to the utmost." He would not 
begin the war under Scott as head of the Army, though he would willingly obey any order 
from Welles as head of the Navy. "Omitted Letters" in G. V. Fox Correspondence, N. Y, 
Hist. Soc. 



CONTEST FOR POWER: SEW ARD AND LINCOLN ^ 

gave way. In Washington the National Intelligencer, long the nation's prin- 
cipal Whig newspaper, appeared with an earnest editorial plea for withdrawal. 
The National Republican, a newspaper close to some Administration leaders, 
the same day explicitly announced that the Cabinet had decided to evacuate 
both Sumter and Pickens. It is possible that Seward nudged the elbows of 
both editors. Certainly he helped spread word of an imminent evacuation, 
and told J. C. Welling of the National Intelligencer to convey the news to a 
Union leader in the convention which Virginia was then holding. On the izth 
the Charleston Courier and Mercury announced that Sumter would soon be 
in Confederate hands without a fight. 

This news, in fact, rapidly spread through the country. The New York 
Herald carried a dispatch on the izth denouncing the reports as a stockjobbing 
scheme, and a cloak for secret Administration efforts to strengthen the fort. 
But next day it ate its words. "I am able to state positively," wrote the Wash- 
ington correspondent, "that the abandonment of Fort Sumter has been de- 
termined upon by the President and his Cabinet." 

Fierce and swift was the wrath of all radical Republicans. The lobbies 
of hotels rang with denunciation. Ben Wade's profanity was fearful to hear. 
Greeley's Tribune uttered an angry wail. To give up the fort in the first 
fortnight of power! To abandon what Buchanan in spite of all his imbecility 
and cowardice had held! This would be an acknowledgment that the Union was 
dissolved forever unless it was saved later by the most abject concessions. 
Perhaps, wrote Greeley, the North really was too demoralized to act with 
vigor, or perhaps circumstances necessitated the step; but he could not help 
thinking that if the Administration were to accept disunion, it might begin 
with a step less humiliating. John A. Dix commented that the grief and anger 
of the North would almost ruin the Administration. Western Congressmen 
were particularly indignant. 14 

tin 

Yet Lincoln had not fully made up his mind, and Lincoln still gripped the 
reins. 

The anxious Cabinet held two sessions on March 14, the first from ten to 
one, the second from four till seven. The members now divided sharply on 
Scott's report that evacuation was practically unavoidable. Montgomery 
Blair, a tall, ministerial-looking attorney who as a boy had often listened 
to the talk of his father and Andrew Jackson, and who believed that his West 

14 N. Y. Times, Tribune, Herald, March 12-15, 1861; note especially J. S. Pike's Washing- 
ton correspondence in the Tribune. 



44 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Point training enabled him to speak on military topics, led the opposition to 
surrender. Since nullification days his family had made the word "Union" 
a shibboleth. He had represented Dred Scott before the Supreme Court. Now 
he felt certain that Winfield Scott was growing imbecile, and that neither 
Seward nor Cameron understood the kind of action that the crisis demanded. 
Violence was not to be met by temporizing. "It is my deliberate opinion," 
he had recently written, "that if such a policy is acted on we shall have a 
long and bloody war and permanent disunion"; on the other hand, if a strong 
Northern blow were struck, the Southern masses would rise against the Con- 
federate Government. 15 One root of the difficulty, in Blair's opinion, was the 
widespread Southern conviction that all Yankees lacked courage. Appeasement 
by the surrender of Sumter would convince them of this, and simply make a 
collision more probable. The Southern Gascons needed a lesson, nor should it 
be costly. And Montgomery Blair was only one of many who believed that 
a firm attitude would mean a shorter war. 

Blair came to the Cabinet armed with a plan for the naval relief of Sumter 
prepared by his brother-in-law. Gustavus V. Fox proposed sending to Charles- 
ton, under convoy of the seven-gun vessel Pawnee and the revenue cutter 
Harriet Lane, a steamship laden with stores and two tugboats. If on reaching 
Charleston they found Confederate gunboats opposing their entry, the two 
warships must destroy or drive ashore the Southern craft, Major Anderson 
assisting with his guns. Then, at nightfall, the tugboats would run past the 
shore batteries and relieve the fort. Even if one tug was lost, the other could 
deliver the stores and a limited number of troops, after which the tugs would 
be abandoned while their crews joined the garrison. The scheme was en- 
dorsed by experienced sailors. At Kinnburn on the Black Sea eight British 
gunboats one night had safely passed Russian forts mounting eighty guns. 
What Fox was now proposing was something like the running of Vicksburg 
and Mobile during subsequent naval operations. However, two naval men 
who at first leaned to the plan, Commodore S. H. Stringham and Commander 
J. H. Ward, shortly became convinced that it was impracticable. 16 

Seward protested violently. He was adamant in his opposition to any at- 
tempt at relief. It was the duty of the Administration, he argued, to defer 
to the opinion of General Scott, Major Anderson, and other high military 
officers that any such effort would be abortive and costly. A relief expedition 
would precipitate hostilities, and if war was to begin, the North should not 
strike the first blow. Alongside Seward stood his old friend Cameron, the 
conservative Indiana wirepuller Caleb B. Smith whom Lincoln had reluctantly 

15 Blair, Jan. 23, 1861, to John A. Andrew; Andrew Papers, MHS. 

16 Fox's plan is in Confidential Correspondence of G. V. Fox, I, 8 5. 



CONTEST FOR POWER: SEWARD AND LINCOLN ^ 

appointed to the Interior Department, and, with some reservations, Attorney- 
General Bates. 17 

The two Cabinet meetings reached no conclusion. Thereupon Lincoln, 
desiring a more considered statement of views, on the i5th sent every Cabinet 
member a letter asking whether, as a political measure, it was wise to try to 
provision Sumter. To this query Blair alone gave an unqualified yes. He de- 
clared once more that firm action would do more than weak appeasement to 
avoid prolonged bloodshed and end the rebellion. Chase took a stand which, 
had it been widely known, would have astonished the nation. He had gone into 
the Cabinet with the reputation of an unflinching radical, the doughtiest 
champion of those whom C. F. Adams called the ramwells that is, the die- 
hards. But at the moment it was actually true that, as Greeley's Washington 
correspondent wrote, he was no extremist, but "moderate, conciliatory, de- 
liberate, and conservative." 1S One important factor in his hesitation was his 
fear that a war would be very difficult, and perhaps impossible, to finance. 
He was under pressure from Eastern bankers who had warned him that they 
would not take his pending eight-million-dollar loan unless the government 
pursued a peace policy. Now he wrote Lincoln that if relieving the fort 
meant enlisting huge armies and spending millions, he would not advise it. It 
was only because he believed that the South might be cajoled by full explana- 
tions and other conciliatory gestures into accepting the relief effort without 
war that he supported it. That is, he was for relief only with careful ex- 
planations. 

The other replies said no. Wordy letters of Caleb B. Smith and Gideon 
Welles boiled down to a simple statement that relief would be politically un- 
wise. Cameron stressed the weight of adverse military opinion. Bates, like 
Seward, emphasized the argument that the North ought not to provoke hos- 
tilities. Our right is unquestionable, he wrote, and we have the means to act, 
But "I am willing to evacuate Fort Sumter, rather than be an active party 
in the beginning of civil war." Seward's position hardly needed restatement. 
While he declared that the nation must be kept intact even if this ultimately 
meant war, he argued that Sumter was useless, and conciliation would give the 
Unionists of the South an opportunity to rally and undo the work of the fire- 
eaters. He would try to collect the national revenues, but only at sea. "I 
would defer military action on land until a case should arise when we would 
hold the defense. In that case, we should have the spirit of the country and 
the approval of mankind on our side." Essentially true is the statement which 
Montgomery Blair later made: "Alone in the Cabinet, I resisted the surrender 

17 Welles, Diary, I, 8ff. 

18 N. Y. Tribune, March 6, i$6i. 



4 <5 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

of Forts Sumter and Pickens and the dissolution of the Union which that sur- 
render signified, and put my resignation on the issue." 19 

Lincoln yet hesitated. That he inclined toward an early evacuation is indi- 
cated by three pieces of evidence. The first is that on March 18 he placed a 
memorandum in his office papers summarizing the arguments for and against 
it, with the weight heavily against any effort at relief. The second is that on 
the same day he sent inquiries to Welles (about naval force), Bates (about legal 
right), and Chase (about general practicability) respecting the offshore col- 
lection of tariff duties, an indication that he leaned toward the plan sug- 
gested by Seward. The Secretary of State, according to Welles, was spend- 
ing much of each day at the White House, vigilantly informing himself of 
every act, word, and idea of Lincoln and the other Cabinet members. The 
third bit of evidence is that Montgomery Blair in desperation wrote out his 
resignation, determined to quit if no effort were made to relieve Major 
Anderson. 

The President was keeping an uneasy eye on Virginia, where on February 
4 a convention had been elected to deal with the problems of the hour. The 
Union men had won a decisive victory, which Seward had hailed as a gleam 
of sunshine in a storm. Only 30 unconditional secessionists had been elected 
among 152 members, and by a vote of more than two to one the people re- 
quired that any findings of the convention must be submitted to a plebiscite. 
Disunion had met "a Waterloo defeat," declared the Richmond Whig. But the 
Unionists represented various shades of opinion, and if the North attempted 
coercion, a majority would at once become disunionists. Through confidential 
channels, both Lincoln and Seward tried to keep in touch with the convention. 

In fact, Lincoln immediately after his arrival in Washington had talked 
one evening for several hours with a border group which included the venera- 
ble William C. Rives of Virginia, Judge George W. Summers of that State, 
and James B. Guthrie of Kentucky, head of the Treasury under Franklin 
Pierce. All had gathered in a semicircle about the President-elect, who sat 
awkwardly in a chair, his feet on the rungs, his elbows on his angular knees, 
and his large hands cupped under his cheeks. After telling a story drawn 

19 To Cassius M. Clay, Dec. 31, 1881; Henry B. Joy Collection. Chase was actually 
willing to let the cotton States go. He later wrote Alphonso Taft that he had taken the view 
that the government had two feasible alternatives: to enforce the laws of the Union every- 
where, or to recognize the Confederacy of seven States as an accomplished fact, let it try 
its experiment of separate nationality, and forbid any further dismemberment of the nation, 
enforcing its authority vigorously. April 28, 1861; Chase Collection, Univ. of Pa. It is an 
equally striking fact that Charles Sumner also had been conditionally ready to let the cot- 
ton States depart in peace. He had written the Duchess of Argyll, Dec. 14, 1860, that he 
approached the question with the greatest caution, and that if secession could be restricted to 
the seven States, "I shall be willing to let them go." Sumner Papers, HL, 



CONTEST FOR POWER: SEWARD AND LINCOLN ^ 

from his frontier law experiences, and one from Aesop, both of which made 
good points, Lincoln laid down the principles on which he said he would 
stand firmly: slavery must not be extended into any Territory, and the laws 
must be faithfully executed. Various men spoke. At last Rives, a dignified and 
impressive figure, made with trembling voice an eloquent plea. He referred 
to the potential horrors concealed in the lowering clouds, and to his own 
profound love of the Union. But if Lincoln resorted to force, he said, Virginia 
would secede, and old as he was he would fight for Virginia. 

At this Lincoln uncoiled his huge frame from the chair, advanced a step, 
and according to one account said: "Mr. Rives, Mr. Rives! If Virginia will 
stay in I will withdraw the troops from Fort Sumter." The story has a plausible 
ring. It is certain that Lincoln was intensely concerned lest Virginia go out, 
and hopeful that the convention would adjourn without action. He later told 
John Hay about the call of these border leaders. "He promised," Hay records 
in his diary for October 22, 1861, "to evacuate Sumter if they would break up 
their convention, without any row or nonsense. They demurred. Subsequently 
he renewed [the] proposition to Summers, but without any result. The Presi- 
dent was most anxious to avoid bloodshed." Lincoln remarked that it would be 
sound policy to trade a fort for a State. But the Virginia convention kept on 
sitting, obviously in order to vote secession if the government took any step 
that could be construed as coercion. 20 

[ m] 

In this duel of Montgomery Blair with Seward, it momentarily seemed 
that Seward was winning. But the situation was suddenly changed by a dra- 
matic intervention. 

Blair apprised his father, the venerable Francis P. Blair, living at Silver 
Springs near Washington, of his probable resignation. The stalwart Jack- 
sonian, one of the elder statesmen of the nation, a founder of the Republican 
Party, and a great power throughout the border area, was fiercely aroused. 
At the next session of the Cabinet (apparently Monday, March 18) he followed 

20 Charles S. Morehead of Kentucky, who was a member of the Peace Convention in 
Washington, later described this meeting in a speech reported in the Liverpool, O., Mercury, 
Oct. 13, 1862. He had served a term with Lincoln in Congress, and Lincoln sent word 
through a friend asking him to call. It was Morehead who then arranged to bring in Rives, 
Guthrie, General Donovan of Missouri, and Judge George W. Summers of Virginia. The 
conversation began at nine in the evening in Lincoln's quarters in his hotel. Morehead told 
also of meeting with Seward, who pledged his honor that no collision would take place 
between North and South. " 'Nay,' said he, 'Governor Morehead/ laying his hand on my 
shoulder to make it more emphatic, let me once hold the reins of power firmly in my hands, 
and if I don't settle this matter to the entire satisfaction of the South in sixty days, I will 
give you my head for a football!' " For editorial comment see N. Y. Tribune, Nov. 6, 1862. 



4 8 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Montgomery to the White House, ensconcing himself in Nicolay's office. As 
soon as the meeting broke up, he sought Lincoln. He found the President 
in the Cabinet room reading the written statements of the members. "Will 
you give up the fort?" Blair demanded. Lincoln did not say. He merely re- 
plied that nearly all the Cabinet favored it. 

"It would be treason to surrender Sumter, sir," trumpeted the old man. He 
told Lincoln that the step would "irrevocably lose the Administration the 
public confidence." Acquiescence in secession would be a recognition of its 
constitutionality. Scott was timid and senile; as for Seward, the man had 
never known what principle and firmness meant. "If you abandon Sumter," 
Blair declared, in effect, "you will be impeached!" And returning to Silver 
Springs, he wrote the President that while he did not question Scott's 
patriotism, he regarded Seward as a thoroughly dangerous counselor. 

Lincoln's secretaries tell us that he was at heart for holding Sumter, and 
that only the bulk of adverse opinion had shaken his resolve. The aged Blair 
produced a telling effect. "His earnestness and indignation aroused and elec- 
trified the President," recalls Gideon Welles; "and when, in his zeal, Blair 
warned the President that the abandonment of Sumter would justly be con- 
sidered by the people, by the world, by history, as treason to the country, 
he touched a chord that responded to his invocation. The President decided 
from that moment that an attempt should be made to convey supplies to 
Major Anderson, and that he would reinforce Sumter." This is a gross over- 
statement Lincoln did not yet fully make up his mind. When he did decide, 
it was on the basis of complex factors, not Blair's plea alone, and this final 
resolve was to provision Sumter, not reinforce it. But the plea was neverthe- 
less potent. 21 

Lincoln, still hesitant, determined to send personal agents to Charleston as 
investigators. Montgomery Blair proposed that Gustavus V. Fox make a quick 
visit to look into the position of Sumter, and Lincoln consented subject to 
the approval of Cameron and Scott. Immediately afterwards the President 
arranged an inquiry into the political situation. Stephen A. Hurlbut of Illinois, 
an old associate, a Charlestonian by birth and a whilom law student under 
the famous South Carolina jurist James Louis Petigru, was in Washington. 
He would command the confidence of prominent Charlestonians. On March 
2 1 Lincoln asked him to hurry down and test Seward's supposition that South 
Carolina harbored many crypto-Uniordsts. Hurlbut, telegraphing his sister 
that he was making her a visit, at once departed. Lincoln's friend Ward Hill 

21 Rhodes make no mention of Blair's call on Lincoln; neither do Nicolay and Hay. It 
was briefly noted in Crawford's Genesis, p. 368. Welles, Diary, I, 13, 14, gives a fuller ac- 
count, and Smith, Blair t II, 9-13, fuller still. 



CONTEST FOR POWER: SEWARD AND LINCOLN ^ 

Lamon, who had come from Springfield to seek the Federal marshalship in 
Washington a big, loquacious humbler of more self-assurance than discre- 
tion also went down. In fact, he and Hurlbut traveled together, each sup- 
posing that he was the principal emissary. 

Fox should be back on March 25th, Hurlbut and Lamon on the zyth. A 
final decision would have to be made immediately afterward. The Virginia 
convention still marked time. Public opinion North and South still waited in 
rising anxiety. 

[ IV] 

The intentions of Confederate leaders, meanwhile, were in no doubt 
whatever. They meant to establish their independent republic forever. William 
M. Browne spoke for nearly everyone at Montgomery when on March 22 
he warned a New York friend that they would attack Sumter if Federal 
troops were not soon removed. "I am still very confident we shall have a 
collision," Judah P. Benjamin informed S. L. M. Barlow on April 3. "We 
have almost certain intelligence of an intention to reinforce Pickens, and 
that is of course war, and must be so treated by us at all hazards." 22 

The Confederate commissioners were later to accuse Seward of flagrant 
deception in leading them to believe throughout March that the evacuation 
of Sumter was imminent. But that the commissioners themselves attempted 
to delude and deceive Seward by tacitly encouraging his belief in eventual 
Southern return there is no doubt! Crawford admitted as much when early 
in March he notified Toombs that he had acquiesced in Seward's plea for 
delay, on condition that the existing status be rigidly preserved. "His reasons, 
and my own, it is proper to say, are as wide apart as the poles; he is fully 
persuaded that peace will bring about a reconstruction of the Union, whilst 
I feel confident that it will build up and cement our Confederacy, and put us 
beyond the reach either of his arms or diplomacy." He did not tell Seward 
that! 23 * 

The same point was made with yet greater vigor by Crawford and A. B. 
Roman in a letter of March 26. Poor Seward still thought that peace would 
lead to a reunion. Very well, they would fool him to the top of his bent. 
"We believe the peace party is strengthening every day in the North, and we 
further believe that every day's peace lessens the chance of war. . . . We 
know that we are independent of this government, living under our own 
Constitution, and enforcing our own laws, levying tribute upon the North, 

22 Barlow Papers. 

2$ March 6, 1861; Toombs Letterbook. 



5 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

and doing all things which a free people may of right do. These things aid 
us at home in solidifying our Government and preparing our people for any 
emergency; abroad it gives us power, character, and influence. We should 
do nothing therefore lightly to disturb our rapid growth, and show us less 
prepared for war than this Government supposes us to be." 24 

As intermediary the commissioners were now employing John A. Camp- 
bell of the Supreme Court, a lover of the Union, and a man of fine integrity, 
cultivation, and tact. He and Seward were old friends who could talk frankly. 
To some interviews Campbell took Supreme Court Justice Samuel Nelson, 
a New York Democrat of nearly seventy. Just what promises did Seward 
give? Just what deceptions did he practice? 25 

Campbell on March 15, after seeing Seward, told Crawford he felt con- 
fident that the Administration contemplated no change prejudicial to the 
Confederacy, and that Sumter would be evacuated in five days. This of course 
reflected his conversation with Seward. The five days having expired, the 
commissioners asked Campbell to inquire into the delay. Three times on 
March 21-22 the judge again saw Seward. Once more Campbell on returning 
from these talks expressed unabated confidence that Sumter would shortly be 
evacuated, and that no change would be made in the status of Pickens. 

At one point Seward most improperly let his expectations of imminent 
evacuation carry him away. Judge Campbell remarked that he was going to 
write a letter to Jefferson Davis. "What shall I say to him on the subject of 
Fort Sumter?" he inquired. "You may say to him," replied Seward, "that 
before that letter reaches him how far is it to Montgomery?" "Three days," 
rejoined Campbell. And Seward completed his sentence: "You may say to 
him that before that letter reaches him, the telegraph will have informed 
him that Sumter will have been evacuated." 

Nevertheless, the commissioners well understood that all this represented 
no pledge by Seward, but simply expressed his confidence that he could 
manipulate Lincoln and control events. They well knew that inside the Cabinet 
and party a terrific struggle was taking place. They realized that, as Crawford 
and Roman ungenerously put it on March 26, "The courage and pertinacity 
of Mr. Chase [they should have written Blair] may prevail over the craftiness 
and timidity of Mr. Seward." "We believe," they reported, "that he [Seward] 
will impress the President so strongly with his wisdom that he will ultimately 
control him, but this may be a mistake, and he [Lincoln] may at last fall upon 

24 March 26; Ibid. 

25 Campbell was hotly denounced in Alabama for his unwavering adherence to the Union. 
He and Judge Nelson shared a conviction that they could combine loyalty to the Union 
with opposition to coercion. It was Judge Nelson who, after talking with Seward, arranged 
for Campbell to serve as intermediary. 



CONTEST FOR POWER: SEWARD AND LINCOLN ?I 

the other side." Clearly, they were tinder no deception. They possessed a 
correct view of realities. 

Playing for high stakes, the commissioners used every possible tool, every 
expedient, every device. Not satisfied with two Supreme Court justices as 
go-betweens, they soon utilized the Russian minister, Stoeckl. Roman con- 
versed with Stoeckl in fluent Louisiana French, and made a tentative plan 
for a meeting, seemingly accidental, between himself and Seward at Stoeckl's 
residence. This fell through. Meanwhile, the commissioners still used threats. 
Crawford, for example, had Campbell tell Seward on March 14 that Sumter 
was a point of the greatest possible danger, as hostilities might commence 
at any moment. At all times the commissioners, speaking scornfully of Seward 
behind his back, hoped to use him as a cat's-paw. "It is well that he should 
indulge in dreams that we know are not to be realized," they had exultantly 
commented to Toombs. 26 

The Confederate Government was coolly determined to parley so long 
as negotiations seemed profitable, and to begin shooting when violence be- 
came expedient. Toombs on April 2 wrote the commissioners in derision of 
Seward's hopes: "It is a matter of no importance to us what motives may 
induce the adoption of Mr. Seward's policy by his government. We are 
satisfied that it will redound to our advantage, and therefore, care little for 
Mr. Seward's calculations as to its future effects upon the Confederate 
States." 27 Dr. Gwin returned in April from a trip to Mississippi, full of con- 
fidence in the future of the Confederacy. 28 We know that Northern acts of 
apparent acquiescence in separation were not strengthening the Unionists in 
the South, but weakening them. 29 That combative young Virginia orator 
Roger A. Pryor, who had just resigned from Congress, was traveling through 
the Carolinas assuring hearers that one resolute Confederate blow would 
bring the upper South into the new republic. 

26 Letters of Crawford and later Crawford, Forsyth, and Roman in Toombs Letterbook, 
March 8, 22, 25, 1861. It is fair to say that Seward at first seemed as willing as Roman for 
the meeting at Baron Stoeckl's, and withdrew from the arrangement only because he feared 
unfavorable publicity. 

27 Bancroft, Seivard, 31, 119. James G. Randall in Lincoln the President, I, 324, speaks of 
Seward's "definite pledge of evacuation," as do other writers. This is a misuse or words. 
No pledge was given because (i) Seward obviously had no power to give one, and (2) 
Campbell's reports clearly state a prediction a belief in strong probability but not a 
categorical promise. It is plain from the commissioners' reports that they at first accepted 
Seward's belief, but that by March 22 they were doubtfu^ and that on March 26 they knew 
that he would probably lose his game. If the Commissioners did not know that Seward 
was characteristically loose of speech, anybody in Washington could have told them. 

28 Curtis, Buchanan, II, 539. 

29 William Watson, a young Scottish engineer of Baton Rouge, and F. A. P. Barnard 
of the Univ. of Mississippi, are among a number who so declare; Watson, Life in the Con- 
federate Army; John Fulton, Memoirs of F. A. P. Barnard^ 276, 277. 



5 2 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Seward had gradually evolved a definite program. He hoped that the 
Virginia convention, after rejecting secession, would call a meeting of dele- 
gates from the border States, as some leaders talked of doing; that this body 
would formulate a plan of reunion; and that a national convention would 
follow. Actually, he was playing with a dangerous idea. 30 The proposed 
border gathering might easily result in a new wave of secession and a Border 
Confederacy, which would first try to dictate to both North and South a 
set of terms for reunion; then if the North balked, as well it might, the border 
area would have grounds for joining the cotton States. By April, however, 
sentiment in Virginia was plainly shifting toward abandonment of the Union, 
and secessionist managers in the convention were inclined to drop the idea 
of a Border Confederacy. 31 

Suppose that Seward's idea of a national convention to hammer out terms 
of reunion had ultimately prevailed. Would the seven Confederate States have 
responded? On the contrary, the probability was that the gap would have 
steadily widened. Each side would accommodate its institutions, usages, and 
requirements to the new order. Under shelter of the Confederacy a large 
body of special interests would spring up mercantile groups fostered by its 
low tariffs; shipping groups nourished by the direct trade between New Or- 
leans, Mobile, and Charleston on one hand, and Liverpool, London, and 
Havre on the other; planting groups able to buy more cheaply in Europe 
than in the North; thousands of officeholders and contractors paid in Con- 
federate money; publishers, writers, editors, lecturers, and politicians capitaliz- 
ing on Confederate nationalism; and manufacturers exploiting the cry, "Buy 
Confederate wares." Erstwhile doubters would find that the cotton kingdom 
could really do without the North and West. Meanwhile, many Northerners 
would lose their sense of shock over the rending of the national fabric. Peace 
feeling in many Northern communities would grow. Tokens of this trend 
were already appearing. Wendell Phillips was silenced by a mob when he 
tried to speak in Cincinnati late in March. Elections early in April resulted 
in the defeat of two Republican Congressmen in Connecticut and two more 
in Rhode Island, and in Democratic victories in St. Louis and other important 
cities; a reaction attributed to confusion and discouragement among Union 
men. 32 

30 George W. Summers of the Virginia Convention indirecdy let Montgomery Blair 
know that he and his associates hoped to call a border convention in Nashville or Frank- 
fort, submit a plan of compromise to both sides, and adjourn until fall. Meanwhile they 
would begin the spring canvass to defeat secessionism in Virginia. Summers to J. C. Welling, 
March 19, 1861, Blair Papers, LC. 

31 Wash, correspondence dated April i, 1861, in N. Y. Tribime. 

32 For election results see N. Y. Herald, April 6, 7, 10. 



CONTEST FOR POWER: SEWARD AND LINCOLN ^ 

Sam Ward, who not only talked with Southern leaders in Washington 
but traveled in the South, formed a more astute judgment of the situation 
than Seward. Later, in the spring of 1862, he heard Seward say that if the 
South had been allowed to go in peace, within two years it would have come 
back. "I differ from you," he declared. "I found among the leaders a malig- 
nant bitterness and contemptuous hatred of the North which rendered this 
lesson necessary. Within two years they would have formed entangling free 
trade and free navigation treaties with Europe, and have become a military 
power hostile to us." 33 

[ V] 

What of the investigators sent to Charleston? Gustavus V. Fox posted 
back with encouraging word that a relief expedition was quite practicable. 
The vital requirement, in his opinion, was a naval force strong enough to 
drive off the petty warships in the harbor if they offered resistance. "All else 
is easy." He told the President that Scott's adverse judgment was worthless, 
for the question of sending a squadron past the forts at night was naval, not 
military. He compiled for Lincoln a list of various operations in which ships 
had passed land batteries with impunity. At Blair's instance he appeared at 
several Cabinet meetings to advise the President, and in one had the satisfac- 
tion of hearing the eminent engineer Colonel G. M. Totten declare his plan 
feasible. 

On Fox's heels returned Stephen A. Hurlbut, who had seen a number 
of prominent Charlestonians. "From these sources," he wrote, "I have no 
hesitation in reporting as unquestionable that separate nationality is a fixed 
fact that there is an unanimity of sentiment which is to my mind astonishing 
that there is no attachment to the Union." It would be useless, he reported, 
to appeal to the laboring masses. Power in South Carolina and the Confederacy 
was swayed by men who, while they desired to avoid war, intended and 
expected a peaceable separation, after which they believed that the two sec- 
tions would be friendlier than before. "But it is equally true that there 
exists a large minority indefatigably active and reckless who desire to precipi- 
tate collision, inaugurate war, and unite the Southern Confederacy by that 
means." 

The Confederacy would never turn back, warned Hurlbut; unless the 
United States resisted, at least five States (he had no information on Louisiana 
and Texas) were irrevocably gone. As yet, he believed that the garrison at 
Sumter could be withdrawn without insult, but in another week even that 

33 March 27, 1862; Barlow Papers. 



54 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

would probably be impossible. "I have no doubt that a ship known to contain 
only provisions for Sumter would be stopped and refused admittance." He 
closed with a note of warning. This was a time to expect the worst, and to be 
prepared for it; to yield only from strength, not from weakness; and if not 
to yield, to be yet more amply prepared. 

The bumbling Lamon likewise returned with an oral report that no real 
Union party existed in South Carolina, that the people of the cotton States 
were infuriated, and that the masses were being hurried into open rebellion. 
He had talked with Governor Pickens, former Representative Lawrence Keitt, 
Postmaster Huger, and the Unionist James Louis Petigru; and Petigru himself 
had declared that the only alternatives now were peaceable secession or war. 
Lamon was in close touch with Seward. It was under Seward's influence 
that he actually told Governor Pickens that he had come to arrange for the 
withdrawal of the garrison, and that after his return he wrote the governor 
that he would be back in a few days to assist in the evacuation! He also gave 
Major Anderson the impression that no relief would be attempted. All this 
was outrageous, and when Lincoln heard of Lamon's letter to Pickens, he in- 
dignantly denied that the man possessed any authority to make such a state- 
ment. 34 

The critical hour had now struck. Congress, the people of the country, 
the merchants and manufacturers suffering from a grave interruption of busi- 
ness, the Virginia convention, all were in anxious suspense. The uncertainty 
as to Administration policy must be ended. On March 28 a series of events 
brought matters to a head. 

First, the press that morning published dispatches revealing that General 
Scott a fortnight earlier had ordered the Brooklyn, lying off Pensacola, to 
reinforce Fort Pickens. Actually, as we have seen, it had not been reinforced 
because its commander would not obey Scott's orders, but the press did not 
know this. Much more importantly, Lyman Trumbull that day introduced an 
ominous resolution. Expressing the impatience of the unyielding Republicans, 
it breathed a hint of impeachment. "Resolved," it ran, "That in the opinion 
of the Senate, the true way to preserve the Union is to enforce the laws of 
the Union; that resistance to their enforcement, whether under the name 
of anti-coercion or any other name, is encouragement to disunion; and that it 
is the duty of the President of the United States to use all the means in his 

34 G. V. Fox, Confidential Correspondence, I, 12. Hurlbut's long and well written report 
is in the R. T. Lincoln Papers; see also Nicolay and Hay, HI, 391, 392. For Lamon's report 
see his Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847-65, 70-79; Lamon's communications with 
Pickens and Anderson are in O. R., I, i, 221, 222, 281, 282. See also Crawford, Genesis, 337. 
Lamon's papers in the Huntington Library throw no light on the subject except to confirm 
his general inepmess. 



CONTEST FOR POWER: SEWARD AND LINCOLN 5J 

power to hold and protect the public property of the United States, and en- 
force the laws thereof. . . ." This was a shot aimed straight at Seward. 35 

And in the third place, Lincoln's first state dinner, held that evening, was 
followed by a dramatic scene. Just as the party at the White House broke up, 
he called his Cabinet into a separate room, shut the door, and with evident 
emotion told them that Scott that day had advised evacuating Fort Pickens at 
Pensacola as well as Sumter. Montgomery Blair tells us that a silence of amaze- 
ment followed. Everyone knew that Seward had prompted Scott. The hush 
was broken by Blair's impassioned denunciation of the old general in effect 
a denunciation of Seward. As it was common knowledge that Pickens could 
be held indefinitely, Scott's advice was obviously given on political, not mili- 
tary, grounds. 36 

Blair knew that Seward had overshot his mark. Lincoln's emotion proved 
it. To give up Sumter under military necessity would be bad enough, but to 
give up Pickens as well would be ignominious surrender. The Cabinet without 
dissent (Cameron was absent in Harrisburg) condemned Scott's recommenda- 
tion. Its members knew that TrumbulTs resolution was supported by a large 
majority of Senate Republicans, and a vociferous body of Northern opinion. 
In a recent caucus of Republican Senators, only three had dared to advocate 
the abandonment of Sumter, while the others had angrily denounced any 
such act as national dishonor. 37 

Lincoln unquestionably felt a sense of betrayal when he told his Cabinet 
of Scott's stand. That night, knowing that he must meet the crisis, he did not 
sleep. He rose greatly depressed. To a friend he remarked that he was "in the 
dumps" for he knew that he must try to relieve Sumter, and relief meant 
war. 

When the Cabinet met again at noon on March 29, a desultory discussion 
showed that Seward was now on the defensive. He hardly dared lift his voice. 
Nobody but the feeble Caleb B. Smith concurred in the proposal to give up 
both forts, and he only if military necessity should dictate it. Bates finally 
cut through the talk with a suggestion that Lincoln should state his questions, 
and all should give their written replies on the spot. These replies, some of 
them headed "In Cabinet," revealed a marked crystallization of opinion. 

35 Wash. National Intelligencer, N. Y. Herald, Times, Phila. Press, etc.; Cong. Globe, 
36th Cong., id Sess., p. 1519. 

36 Nicoky and Hay, HI, 394; Welles, Lincoln and Seward, 64-69, with Montgomery 
Blair's letter to Welles, May 17, 1873. Scott had earlier, March 17, sent Secretary Cameron a 
memorandum which is given in O. R., I, i, 200, 201. The state dinner is graphically described 
by W. H. Russell, My Diary North and South. 

37 The Confederate commissioners, writing Toombs on March 22, reported that the Senate 
caucus was "violently and bitterly opposed" to evacuation, and that "their influence and 
power has been brought to bear on the Govt. to prevent it." Toombs Letterbook. 



5 6 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Chase had now firmly made up his mind. "I am clearly in favor of main- 
taining Fort Pickens and just as clearly in favor of provisioning Fort Sumter," 
he wrote. "If the attempt be resisted by military force Fort Sumter should, 
in my judgment, be reinforced." Welles was equally emphatic. "I concur," 
he stated, "in the proposition to send an armed force off Charleston with 
supplies of provisions and reinforcement for the garrison at Fort Sumter, and 
of communicating, at the proper time, the intentions of the government to 
provision the fort, peaceably if unmolested." He thought resistance highly 
probable, and held that this would justify the government in using all the 
force at its command. He concluded: "The time has arrived, when it is the 
duty of the government to assert and maintain its authority." Bates declared 
that Pickens should be supplied and reinforced at all hazards, and a naval 
force should be kept on the Southern coast sufficient to blockade any port. 
As for Sumter, the time had come either to evacuate or relieve it. 38 

Caleb Smith in his written opinion proposed evacuating Sumter as a neces- 
sity, but defending Pickens, blockading the Southern ports, and enforcing 
the collection of revenues. Seward was of course for abandoning Sumter 
immediately. But even he declared that he would at once, and at every cost, 
prepare for war at Fort Pickens and in Texas, to be waged, however, only 
to maintain the possessions and authority of the United States. It is certain 
that at heart he really wished to give up Pickens. It is also certain that he 
yielded ground only because he saw that the opposition to his ideas was so 
overwhelming that he would lose all chance of maintaining his leadership un- 
less he shifted his stand. 39 

Blair, anxious for the immediate relief of Sumter, stood triumphant. A 
fortnight earlier a majority of the Cabinet had been against that step; now 
three out of six were for making the attempt, and the other three were for 
militant action at other points action that would mean war. Seward re- 
marked to Montgomery C. Meigs that all men of sense saw that war must 
come. 40 This, however, may have been either adroit dissimulation or a passing 
mood of discouragement, for he still clung to the hope that, by hook or 
crook, he could maintain peace. 

Opinion among the sterner Republican leaders was hardening, for they 
perceived that if mere drift prevailed much longer, pacifism in the North 
would infect many people. Henry J. Raymond's Times had declared ten days 
earlier that it saw "a growing sentiment throughout the North in favor of 

38 Bates, Diary, 180. It was Sam Ward who reported Lincoln's depression; letter to 
Barlow, March 31, 1861, Barlow Papers. Text of Bates's paper in Robert Todd Lincoln 
Papers; essential excerpts in Nicolay and Hay, III, 429-432. 

39 Seward's biographer Bancroft believes that his statement that he now wished to hold 
Pickens was just a pretense; C. W. Elliott in his Winfield Scott, 703 ff., takes the same view. 

40 Meigs, MS Diary. 



CONTEST FOR POWER: SEW ARD AND LINCOLN ^ 

letting the Gulf States go." Thurlow Weed's Albany Evening Journal agreed 
with the Times that Lincoln should never adopt a coercive policy without 
the sanction of a special session of Congress. Even that influential New 
England organ, the Springfield Republican, was reluctant to hold the cotton 
States by force. 41 Impressed by both the rising intransigence of the Lower 
South and the vigor of the Northern peace party, and feeling that national 
salvation or ruin must be put to the test at once, most Republican chieftains 
were becoming insistent that Lincoln take a resolute stand. 

Ben Wade shared the views expressed in Lyman Trumbuirs militant resolu- 
tion. In seven States, he told the Senate, the people were dominated by usurp- 
ers. "A military despotism tramples their rights under foot," and they should 
be rescued at once. Zack Chandler of Michigan spoke with characteristic 
vehemence. If the Administration did not act to maintain the Union, he would 
quit the disgraced soil of the United States and join the Comanche Indians. 
Wigfall of Texas retorted that the Comanches had already suffered too much 
from contact with the whites, but Chandler was in deadly earnest. 42 Owen 
Love joy was too warmly devoted to Lincoln to use harsh language, but he 
wrote the President in blunt terms that he must relieve the fort, or an uncon- 
stitutional act recognize the Confederacy. Greeley was declaring that if 
Sumter had of necessity to be given up, the nation would be heartsick; but 
that if the Administration surrendered Pickens as well, it would sink lower 
than Buchanan's, and America would become a second-rate power. Carl 
Schurz was writing Lincoln to predict general disheartenment and loss of 
the fall elections if he did not send reinforcements forward. Bryant of the 
New York Evening Post, Forney of the Philadelphia Press, and Medill of the 
Chicago Tribune were demanding a firm stand. 43 

From some quarter a call went out to the stanchest Republican gov- 
ernors to assemble in Washington if they could, and Curtin of Pennsylvania 
and several others prepared to hurry to the capital. 

[ VI ] 

Thus it was that the last act of the drama began; an act which reached 
its climax in Seward's final desperate effort to seize the rod of authority from 
Lincoln. 

Lincoln was now ready to use Gustavus V, Fox's plan for sending pro- 

41 N. Y. Times, March 31, April 3; Albany Evening Journal, March 23; Springfield 
Republican, March 20-26, 1861. 

42 Congressional Globe, 36th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 1514 (March 27, 1861); Halsey Wigfall, 
Washington, March 30, to Louise T. Wigfall, Wigfall Family Papers, Univ. of Texas. 

43 N. Y. Tribune, March 27, and see the editorial "Come to the Point," April 4, 1861; 
Springfield Republican, April n, 1861. Love joy's and Schurz's letters in the Robert T. 
Lincoln Papers are typical of a number there. 



58 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

vision ships to Sumter, with warships behind them in readiness for use. He 
asked Fox to write a memorandum on the requirements of the expedition. 
In a dozen lines, Fox suggested that the Pawnee, Pocahontas, and Harriet Lane 
be prepared for sea, that a large steamer and three tugs be hired, that three 
hundred sailors and two hundred soldiers be ordered ready for service, and 
that provisions be collected sufficient for a hundred men during one year. 44 
Approving this scheme, Lincoln on March 29 directed the War and Navy De- 
partments to get the expedition ready to sail by April 6; and although he later 
explained to Congress that it was to be withheld or sent forward as circum- 
stances dictated, only some strong evidence that retention would save Virginia 
and pave the way to reunion could now alter his decision. That decision 
made war almost inevitable. Lincoln gave his order in the deepest agony of 
spirit. On March 30 he had a bad sick-headache, and "keeled over," as Mrs. 
Lincoln put it, for the first time in years. 45 

Seward also was in profound agony of spirit. Would he have to confess 
that Montgomery Blair and the Congressional iron men had worsted him, 
that Lincoln had rejected his guidance, and that his dream of replacing the 
Republican Party by a Union Party, saving the country, and emerging as the 
greatest statesman of the century, had dissolved? He still had faith in appease- 
ment. Was that faith to be quenched in torrents of blood? 

The policy Lincoln had thus far pursued needs little explanation. His 
inaugural address had been one long plea for patience, forbearance, and the 
avoidance of rash action. He had called for "patient confidence in the ultimate 
justice of the people," had asked the nation to "remain patient," and had re- 
minded everyone that "nothing valuable can be lost by taking time." He had 
given Southerners a solemn pledge: "The government will not assail you, un- 
less you first assail it." He had announced that he would avoid provocative 
acts to allow the people "that sense of perfect security which is most favora- 
ble to calm thought and reflection." After this, he had to strain patience even 
to the point of seeming infirm. But he had made two facts entirely clear. He 
would not tolerate secession, "the essence of anarchy," and he would use 
the power confided to him to hold the property and places belonging to 
the government, and to collect its revenues. He could not fail to provision 
Sumter once that was shown possible, or to hold Pickens. 

A different judgment must be delivered on Seward's policy. It had one 
fine aspect in its humanitarian and idealistic quality. Growing up with the 
republic, he had talked with Jefferson, had sat at the feet of John Quincy 
Adams, and had labored side by side with Webster, Benton, and Clay. He 

44 Nicolay and Hay, III, 433; O. R., I, iv, 227. 

45 Message of July 4, 1861 ; Nicolay and Hay, III, 434. Sam Ward, writing S. L. M. Barlow 
March 31, quoted Mrs. Lincoln on the President's prostration; Barlow Papers. All witnesses 
testify that the double strain of the crisis and the office-seekers had worn him to exhaustion. 



CONTEST FOR POWER: SEW ARD AND LINCOLN ^ 

cherished the lofty vision of a Union of fraternal concord, and had written 
that image into the single eloquent passage of Lincoln's inaugural. But his 
course had a base aspect in its devious duplicity. Ever since March 4 he had 
been partially deceiving Lincoln on one side, and the Southern commissioners 
(themselves brazen deceivers) on the other. He had been using the aged 
Scott as a tool; Scott's memoranda on the heavy forces needed to coerce the 
South, on the impossibility of reinforcing Sumter, and on the desperate plight 
of Pickens, precisely fitted Seward's policy. He continued to stand in a most 
equivocal position in relation to the Southern commissioners, and as late as 
April 7 sent Judge Campbell a message: "Faith as to Sumter fully kept. Wait 
and see." 46 

Once Lincoln determined to send a relief expedition to Sumter, Seward 
saw that he must change his strategy. To maintain an ascendancy over the 
President, he would have to move boldly and fast. On April i, Greeley's 
Tribune blazed with headlines: "Fort Sumter to be Reinforced. Views in Favor 
of It. A Peaceful Movement. The Attack Left to the South." The dispatch 
below, dated from Washington March 31, stated that heavy pressure had 
been brought to bear for holding Sumter at all hazards; that Northwestern 
members of Congress (this meant Trumbull, Love joy, Elihu Washburne, Zack 
Chandler, Ben Wade, and others) were specially urgent; that feeling in the 
Cabinet had changed; and that several naval officers were now confident 
that steamships could run the Charleston batteries. This was so correct that 
the correspondent obviously had some inside informant. Next day the Con- 
federate commissioners telegraphed Toombs in Montgomery: "The war wing 
presses on the President; he vibrates to that side." Secretary of War Walker 
at once telegraphed Beauregard in Charleston to treat the Sumter garrison 
as a force with which he might at any moment be in conflict 47 In Virginia 
secession feeling Tiad hardened; the cord with the Union was ready to snap 
at any moment. 48 

46 See Bancroft, Seivard, n, 123 fT.; Gideon Welles, Lincoln cmd Seward , 59, 60 ; Elliott, 
Scott, jofi. Seward on April i talked with Campbell, and wrote out for him an explicit 
assurance: "I am satisfied that the Government will not undertake to supply Fort Sumter 
without giving notice to Governor Pickens." This of course alarmed Campbell, who asked 
if Lincoln had undertaken to supply Sumter- as he had. "No, I think not," replied Seward. 
"It is a very irksome thing for him to surrender it. His ears are open to everyone, and 
they fill his head with schemes for supply. I do not think he will adopt any of them. There 
is no design to reinforce it." So Campbell some years after the event remembered Seward's 
words. If his report is accurate, Seward was counting on Lincoln's retreat, or was self- 
deceived, or to cloak his own defeat was deceiving Campbell. See Campbell's MS "Facts of 
History," Crawford Papers, LC. Blair believed that Seward was capable of any trickery. 
"Nobody," he wrote, "has ever long associated with him who had not heard him recount 
by the hour his successful political strategy." Welles, Lincoln and Seivard, 68. 

47 O. R., I, i, 284-286. 

48 On April 6 the Richmond correspondent of the N. Y. Herald wrote: "The revolution 
is daily gathering strength." He added that Unionists in the State convention were anxious 
to adjourn before the tide swept it into disunion. 



6 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Sumter, according to Fox, could hold out only till mid-April. Seward had 
but a few days in which to retrieve the situation. His acts bore the stamp of 
almost insane desperation. 

First, he attempted to substitute for the relief of Sumter, which meant 
war, a diversionary expedition to Fort Pickens. On the afternoon of March 
29 he took to the White House his friend Montgomery C. Meigs, widely 
known as the West Point engineer who had built the Rock Creek aqueduct 
and was in charge of the Capitol wings and dome. On the way he explained 
that he wished to hold Pickens and the Texas ports, letting the conflict begin 
there if the Confederates chose. Lincoln asked if the Pensacola fort could 
be held. "Certainly," replied Meigs, "if the navy does its duty." The upshot, 
after Meigs had prepared and submitted a detailed plan, was that Lincoln 
told him to take it to Scott at once: "Tell him that I wish this thing done, 
and not to let it fail unless he can show that I have refused him something he 
asked for as necessary." And Scott, stiffening his tall frame, quoted Frederick 
the Great: " 'When the king commands, all things are possible.' " 49 

Thus was authorized a movement that Seward hoped might become a sub- 
stitute for the Sumter effort, and so gain delay. He and Meigs drove rapidly 
ahead with their plan. They fitted out vessels laden with troops and stores. 
They put Lieutenant David D. Porter and Colonel Harvey Brown in naval 
and military command respectively. Needing a warship powerful enough to 
beat off possible assailants, they fastened upon the one strong ship readily 
available, the Powhatan; and they prepared for Lincoln's signature orders 
commandeering that vessel, which in the pressure of business he signed with- 
out proper inspection. 

Seward saw to it that the closest secrecy surrounded the expedition. To 
nobody on the ships but the commanders, and to nobody in Washington but 
the President and Seward's close group, was the destination known until 
the squadron was within sight of the sand dunes of Pensacola. Secretary Welles 
of the navy was not consulted, and the Powhatan was taken from him without 
his knowledge just as he and Fox were planning to send it to accompany 
the Sumter relief expedition! 

In the second place, Seward made a direct plunge for the powers of the 
Presidency. That Lincoln was suffering terribly from his multitudinous anx- 
ieties, from the unending harassment of patronage hunters, from the conflict 
between his hatred of bloodshed and his determination to do his duty, was 

49 Meigs, MS Diary, LC; Nicolay and Hay, III, 436, 437; Meigs in the National Intelli- 
gencer, Sept. 1 6, 1865, replying to G. V. Fox. Scott in January had renewed earlier pleas 
to Buchanan to be allowed to reinforce Pickens, but nothing effective was done; Memoirs, 
II, 622-624. Lincoln assented because he thought all along that whatever happened at 
Sumter, reinforcement of Pickens would help assure the country of Administration staunch- 
ness. Collected Works, IV, 424. 



CONTEST FOR POWER: SEW ARD AND LINCOLN fa 

plain to everyone. His prostration by migraine was immediately followed 
by a most unusual flare of temper. On March 3 1 a California delegation called 
to protest against the influence of Senator Edward D. Baker over appoint- 
ments, and presented a paper severely reflecting on Baker's motives. For a 
quarter century Lincoln had counted Baker one of his dearest friends; he had 
named a son for him; he respected his oaken character. Tearing the paper 
into shreds and flinging it into the fireplace, he dismissed the group with 
stinging words. 50 The next day Seward chose to hand the overburdened execu- 
tive what he hoped would be a decisive document, his paper entitled "Some 
Thoughts for the President's Consideration." He proposed that he should 
take the helm; what was more, that he should provoke a war with Spain and 
France. 

This memorandum has usually been treated as an inexplicable piece of 
folly. Seward remonstrated with Lincoln for his supposed lack of policy, 
domestic or foreign; declared that the central question must be changed from 
slavery to union versus disunion; stated that he would let Sumter go because 
it was generally associated with the slavery question; and asserted that he 
would simultaneously reinforce all the Gulf forts, and put the scattered navy 
in readiness to blockade the South, for this would bring the issue of union 
to the front. This part of the memorandum was erratic enough. But the really 
startling section was Seward's plan for healing national division by precipitat- 
ing a great foreign conflict: 

I would demand explanations from Spain and France, categorically, at once. 

I would seek explanations from Great Britain and Russia, and send agents 
into Canada, Mexico, and Central America, to rouse a vigorous continental 
spirit of independence on this continent against European intervention. 

And if satisfactory explanations are not received from Spain and France, 

Would convene Congress and declare war against them. 

But whatever policy we adopt, there must be an energetic prosecution of 
it. 51 

Seward calmly offered to assume all responsibility, and pursue and direct 
the new policy incessantly. 

The fact was that the Administration possessed a domestic policy, which 
Lincoln had outlined in his inaugural. It had also a foreign policy, embodied in 
Seward's own instructions, approved by Lincoln, to our envoys. Moderate but 
firm, these instructions directed our ministers to assert that the government 
would never consent to a dissolution of the Union; that the United States 
was determined and able to maintain its integrity; that it wanted no help, 
and would brook no interference. Our envoys were told never to discuss 

50 This scene is described by the Washington correspondent of the N. Y, Tribune, 
April i, 1861. 

51 Text in Nicolay and Hay, IV, Ch. I. 



6 2 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

the merits of the quarrel between North and South as if they admitted of 
argument. They were to emphasize the commercial advantages of a preserva- 
tion of the Union. They were also to use language of generous forbearance 
in speaking of the South; and they were to declare that if war came, it would 
be by the act not of Washington, but of its armed, open, and irreconcilable 
enemies. 52 

Seward's plan was foolish indeed, but it was not such incomprehensible 
folly as has always been supposed. The usual explanation is that he thought 
merely of the unifying effect of a foreign war. He did, of course, think 
partly of this. He knew that chauvinism is always latent in every nation, 
that American editors and politicians always got a ready response to anti- 
Spanish, anti-French, and anti-British utterances, and that Douglas, Cass, and 
others had often given reckless vent to xenophobia. In a speech at the New 
England Society dinner in New York the previous December, Seward him- 
self had been cheered for boasting that if a foreign foe attacked the metropolis, 
"all the hills of South Carolina would pour forth their populations to the 
rescue." ^ But Seward's plan was more subtle in nature than a mere effort 
to merge the sectional conflict in intercontinental conflict. 54 

The key to his scheme is found in reports by the British minister, Lord 
Lyons, of various conversations with the Secretary; and its essence lay not 
in the idea that South Carolinians would leap to defend New York, but in 
the idea that they would strongly object to seeing New York conquer Cuba 
without their help. It was war with Spain that Seward had primarily in mind, 
and this because he knew that powerful Southern forces had long desired just 
such a war. He never thought of embroiling America with Great Britain. 
That would be far too doubtful a contest. But he did believe that the United 
States could easily defeat Spain, which had just invaded Santo Domingo, 
and that in defeating her could swiftly overrun Cuba and Puerto Rico. 

The moment Washington opened war on Spain, Seward believed, the cotton 
States would tremble lest Cuba become free soil either as an independent re- 
public, or a State of the Union. That, indeed, had long been a bugbear of the 
Lower South. To avert such a calamity, he hoped that Southerners would join 
the attack. If the Confederacy did not forego its independence to share in the 
new conquest, then the United States would at least gain a great island base for 
operating against the Confederates, and for closing the Gulf. It would also 

52 See instructions to C. F. Adams, Diplomatic Correspondence, 1861, p. 59. 

53 Seward, Works, IV, 649. 

54 This is the view of Seward's motivation stated, for example, by Nicolay and Hay, by 
Rhodes, and by Bancroft in his Seward, II, 134-137. But these writers had not studied Lyons' 
dispatches in the British Foreign Office. Seward was far too much of a Talleyrand to be 
actuated by simple motives. 



CONTEST FOR POWER: SEW ARD AND LINCOLN ^ 

gain other advantages: The ending of the slave trade to Cuba, a closer relation- 
ship with Great Britain, which had long tried to destroy that monstrous traffic, 
and the enhanced respect of other nations. If France entered the war, the 
United States would also seize the French islands. 

Seward disclosed these views in a number of confidential talks with Lord 
Lyons this spring. In one conversation he suggested that America and Britain 
should sign a convention for suppressing the Cuban slave trade and guarantee- 
ing the independence of Santo Domingo. He expatiated at the same time upon 
the readiness of the United States to defy Spain, and upon the fruits she might 
win from a Spanish war. "For his own part," he said, "he should have no ob- 
jection to make an anti-African-Slave Trade demonstration against Spain; if 
she were rash enough to provoke it. Such a demonstration might have a good 
effect upon the Southern States. These States had always held that the mainte- 
nance of slavery in Cuba was essential to their own safety. It might not be a 
bad lesson to them to see how much they had put at hazard by attempting to 
withdraw from the protection of the United States." 55 

That Lincoln was thunderstruck by Seward's cool proposal that he should 
divest himself of his constitutional functions, delegate the Presidential authority 
to another, bury in oblivion the great freesoil victory, and arbitrarily thrust the 
nation into war with a European power perhaps two powers need not be 
said. His management of the situation offered a signal proof of his statesman- 
ship. That same day he wrote a short reply characterized by tact, common 
sense, and firmness, which annihilated Seward's proposals, but left Seward un- 
harmed. He knew, of course, that not a word of the matter must reach the 
public. This reply remained in Lincoln's papers. Perhaps it was shown to 
Seward; perhaps Lincoln, with characteristic magnanimity, decided that it 
would be kindlier to transmit its substance orally. Not until a quarter century 
had elapsed did Lincoln's secretaries give the world its first knowledge of the 
incident. 56 

The President pointed out that in his inaugural address he had defined his 
domestic policy he would "hold, occupy, and possess the property and places 
belonging to the government" and would collect the duties and imposts and 
that he still maintained that policy. Seward had approved it, but Seward now 
proposed to abandon Sumter. As for external affairs, he and Seward had been 
preparing circulars and instructions to ministers in perfect harmony "without 
even a suggestion that we had no foreign policy." Upon Seward's closing 
proposition that whatever policy was adopted must be energetically prosecuted, 

55 British Foreign Office Papers (hereafter cited F. O.), 4/1137, Lyons, May u, 1861, 
to Lord John Russell. 

56 See Roy P. Easier, ed., Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, IV, 315-318. 



64 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

and either the President must do this himself or devolve the responsibility on 
some member of his Cabinet, Lincoln commented: "I remark that if this must 
be done, / must do it. When a general line of policy is adopted, I apprehend 
there is no danger of its being changed without good reason, or continuing to 
be a subject of unnecessary debate; still, upon points arising in its progress, I 
wish, and suppose I am entitled to have the advice of all the cabinet." 

From that hour the question who should lead the nation was decisively an- 
swered. 

Seward, still hoping that the Sumter expedition might be held back while 
the Pickens relief squadron went forward, had a third card to play a weak 
and dubious card. On April 2 or 3 he asked Allan B. Magruder, a Virginia 
Whig practicing law in Washington, to accompany him to the White House, 
where Lincoln was expecting their call. The President requested Magruder to 
hurry to Richmond, and bring G. W. Summers, a Union leader in the Virginia 
Convention, to Washington. It was common knowledge that Virginia now 
teetered on the edge of secession, and some believed that public sentiment 
might force the convention to declare for it at any moment. As Virginia acted, 
so would North Carolina, Tennessee, and perhaps Kentucky. If they all seceded, 
the Confederacy would become highly formidable. Seward hoped that using 
an influential intermediary, the Administration might arrange a last-minute 
bargain, agreeing to let Sumter go if Virginia would stay in the Union. On the 
way back from the White House, the Secretary still expressed confidence that 
the troubles would blow over without war, and the Union be saved! Magruder 
hurried off, and on April 4 he returned, not with Summers, but with another 
Virginia Unionist, Colonel John B. Baldwin. 

Of the ensuing conference between Lincoln and Baldwin we have no first- 
hand account. We possess only Magruder's confused statement of what Bald- 
win told him, published fourteen years later. From this narrative it appears that 
Lincoln was in great agony of spirit, but that at no point did he offer to evacuate 
Sumter, and that he regarded the die as cast in favor of its relief. His first words 
were, "Mr. Baldwin, I am afraid you have come too late." And when Baldwin 
begged him to issue a proclamation waiving the right to hold Sumter and 
Pickens, and calling a national convention, Lincoln looked at him with manifest 
disapproval "Sir," he said, "that is impossible." 57 

57 No episode of the time is murkier than this interview arranged by Seward. Magruder's 
"A Piece of Secret History," Atlantic, vol. 35 (April, 1875), 438-445, is hazy and obviously 
inaccurate. The subject is again hazily treated in several letters by George Plummer Smith 
to John Hay, Jan. 7, 9, 20, 1863, in the Robert Todd Lincoln Papers. John Minor Botts in 
The Great Rebellion briefly mentions it. Baldwin made no proposal to the convention. In 




XIII, 260-269. 



CONTEST FOR POWER: SEWARD AND LINCOLN <5~ 

[ VII ] 

It was indeed too late. Both sections by this date believed that war was 
at hand. On April 4 Lincoln received a letter written by Major Anderson on 
the first saying that by sharp economy he could make his rations last about a 
week longer. Startled, the President bade Secretary Cameron order Anderson 
to hold out until the i ith or iith, and tell him that the relief expedition would 
go forward. On the 6th the Powhatan sailed from New York for Fort Pickens, 
precipitating an acrid quarrel between Seward and Welles. The Secretary of 
the Navy, justly incensed that Seward should have taken his most effective 
warship and crippled the Sumter expedition without even notifying him, never 
ceased to believe that his colleague was a double-dealer particularly as Seward 
so bungled Lincoln's order transferring the Powhatan to the Sumter force that 
it went to Pensacola after all! 5S On the 6th, Lincoln started a State Department 
clerk to Charleston to notify the governor of South Carolina, in very placatory 
terms, that the government would attempt to supply Fort Sumter with pro- 
visions only. He also sent an army lieutenant with word that if South Carolina 
did not resist the provisioning, the United States would not attempt to throw 
in unannounced arms or ammunition. 

And at last the Sumter expedition got off. The little Harriet Lane sailed 
April 8; the transport Baltic, with Captain Gustavus V. Fox, troops, and stores, 
went off with two tugs on the pth; and the Pocahontas on the loth. This 
limping, scattered exit was appropriate to an expedition which had been tardily 
planned, weakly organized, poorly equipped, and belatedly dispatched. But at 
any rate, it was on its way. 50 

The country waited tensely. A number of Northern governors who had 

58 He signed the order "Seward" instead of "Lincoln," and Captain Mercer could not 
obey it. Welles tells the story in his Lincoln and Seward, 54 fL, with graphic detail and 
strong feeling. He also penned a sixteen-page narrative, undated, which is partially quoted in 
The Collector (Walter R. Benjamin), LXIX, No. 4 (April, 1956). Orders and letters con- 
cerning the Sumter and Pickens expeditions will be found in O. R., I, i, where Meigs's state- 
ments are particularly useful. 

An interesting adventure story is connected with the Pickens expedition. When Welles 
on April 6 received word that Captain Adams had not obeyed orders to reinforce Pickens, 
a piece of news which took him and Lincoln aback, he summoned Lieutenant John L. 
Worden. It was just before midnight. Welles gave the young man secret dispatches to be 
carried to Adams. Donning civilian garb, Worden set off at once. On the way to Atlanta 
he found his car filled with Southern troops, and fearing he might be searched, memorized 
the dispatch and destroyed it. It was nearly midnight on April 10 when he reached Pensacola. 
He had to obtain a pass to reach Captain Adams from General Braxton Bragg. Later Bragg 
said he got the pass only by asserting that he had an oral message of a peaceful nature; 
Worden denied making any such statement. At noon on the nth the young man reached 
Adams. That night Pickens was reinforced by 470 soldiers, marines, and a tew days later, 
a further reinforcement of about 600 men was added. With a garrison of 1 100 and provisions 
for six months, Pickens was safe. See the Worden Papers, Lincoln Memorial University, 
Harrogate, Term. 

rr O. "R- T. i. 220 22^. 2AC- 2OI. 



<56 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

met in Washington to reinforce the Senators and Representatives demanding 
action, and to counteract Seward, waited. The stock market waited. Thurlow 
Weed and Samuel Blatchford, on what they thought inside information, sold 
out their shares and waited. A fog of secrecy closed in upon government 
offices. All the departments, by strict Presidential order, debarred reporters. 
Seward directed that any clerk who admitted a stranger to his room without 
express permission should be dismissed. New York correspondents told Sam 
Ward that the Cabinet was as impenetrable as the Venetian Council of Ten: 
"The oldest rats and foxes can glean nothing." 60 

By the izth the little fleet should be off the Charleston bar. Lincoln knew 
that any moment thereafter the telegraph might bring news of war. 

60 S. W. Crawford, Genesti, 416, 417; Sam Ward to S. L. M. Barlow, April 6, 10, Barlow 
Papers. 




The North Lurches to Arms 



NEWS THAT an expedition had started for Sumter fell upon Charleston like 
a tensely awaited tocsin. The first word came by irregular channels. Seward, 
who had kept the expedition to Pickens secret even from Welles and Cameron, 
the two Secretaries most concerned, divulged the Sumter plans to a newspaper 
correspondent and friend, James E. Harvey, whom he had just nominated 
as Minister to Portugal Harvey, a native of South Carolina, at once telegraphed 
Charleston: "Positively determined not to withdraw Anderson. Supplies go 
immediately, supported by naval force if their landing be resisted. A Friend." 1 
Then on Monday night, April 8, Lincoln's two messengers reached the city 
with their official notification. One of them, learning that the Confederacy 
would allow no provisioning of Sumter, at eleven in the evening started back 
for Washington. An hour later, amid a heavy rainstorm, seven guns from 
Citadel Square gave the signal for an immediate muster of all reserves. Hun- 
dreds of men sprang to arms; the home guard clattered through the wet streets 
arousing laggards; and all night the long roll kept citizens awake. By dawn 
3,000 men had been called to the colors, and telegrams were summoning 4,000 
more from the interior. 

It was now necessary for Montgomery to make its momentous decision. 
What Davis would do could hardly be doubted. To be sure, no military reason 
whatever existed for an attack on Sumter. The victualing of the fort might 
reasonably be regarded as a mere maintenance of the status quo. But as dominant 
Northern sentiment made it necessary for Lincoln to try to maintain the post, 
so dominant Confederate sentiment necessitated its reduction. Any retreat 
might dangerously encourage Southern Unionism. 

i Seward's act was susceptible of being read either as impulsive folly or double-dealing. 
Why tell a South Carolinian? Montgomery Blair always believed this was another move to 
wreck the Sumter expedition. The dispatch, he pointed out, was sent the very day that 
Lincoln ordered the expedition; it was sent by Seward's intimate friend; and when Senators 
tried to have Harvey removed from his diplomatic post, Seward prevented them. Letter 
to S. L. M. Barlow, 1865, no day, Barlow Papers. See O. R., I, i, 187, for the telegrams; 
Nicolay and Hay, IV, 32, for Seward's lame explanation. 

67 



68 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

When Beauregard telegraphed the message from Lincoln, Secretary of War 
Walker at once notified President Davis. The Cabinet, hastily summoned the 
morning of the pth, realized the gravity of the issue. They deliberated long 
and earnestly. Walker, the Secretary of War, an Alabamian who was well 
aware of his section's unreadiness for conflict, was reluctant to move. 2 Toombs 
was still more averse, for he predicted that an attack would open a bloody civil 
war, and he could not take the responsibility of advising it. As they talked he 
grew more decided. "Mr. President,' 7 he pleaded, "at this time it is suicide, 
murder, and will lose us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a 
hornet's nest which extends from mountain to ocean, and legions now quiet 
will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; 
it is fatal." 3 But others took a different view. Judah P. Benjamin had com- 
mitted himself to an assault. So had C. G. Memminger, the head of the 
Treasury. Senator Jere Clemens of Alabama said later that he heard J. G. Gil- 
christ, an Alabama leader, address Walker in impassioned terms: "Sir, unless 
you sprinkle blood in the face of the people of Alabama, they will be back in 
the old Union in less than ten days!" 4 

The strong current of radical Southern feeling carried Davis along with it. 
A host of men in the cotton States were impatient for a blow. From Austin to 
Beaufort, they were angered by the failure of the Confederate commissioners 
to obtain any Northern concessions. "These men," stormed the Savannah 
Republican, "should require to know within five days whether the forts on our 
soil, and justly belonging to us, are to be given up, or whether we shall be 
compelled to take them by force of arms." Already Georgia troops had left 
for Pensacola in readiness to attack Fort Pickens. South Carolina could hardly 
be restrained any longer. Davis feared that the peppery little State would act 
for itself, with resultant confusion, and he knew that most people of the 
Lower South would regard further delay as cowardice. Representative David 
Clopton of Alabama had expressed their view weeks before: "The argument 
is exhausted, further remonstrance is dishonorable, hesitation is dangerous, 
delay is submission, 'to your tents, O Israel!' and let the God of battles decide 
the issue." 5 

The Cabinet decided to strike for a multiplicity of reasons: A desire to 
bring the hesitant borderland, Virginia at its head, into the Confederacy 
without more ado; a hope that the North would offer more bluster than fight; 

2 So L. P. Walker wrote S. W. Crawford, Genesis, 421. 

3 Stovall, Toombs, 226; U. B. Phillips in his life of Toombs accepts this statement. 

4 Jeremiah Clemens in a speech at Huntsville, Alabama, March 13, 1864, reported in 
N. Y. Tribune, March 24. 

5 Savannah Republican quoted in Charleston correspondence, April 2, N. Y. Tribune, 
April 5, 1861; Clopton to C. C. Clay, Jr., Dec. 13, 1860, Clay Papers, Duke Univ. 



THE NORTH LURCHES TO ARMS fy 

a conviction that Britain and France must soon recognize the nation on which 
they depended for cotton. But above all, Southern nationalism impelled the gov- 
ernment. The idea that a Federal fort should be maintained in one of the prin- 
cipal ports of the Confederacy seemed intolerable, while the desire to display 
Southern prowess in arms had grown irrepressible. On the loth, Secretary 
Walker notified Beauregard that he should at once demand the evacuation of 
Sumter, and if it were refused, proceed to compel its surrender. 

A bare chance of prolonging peace yet remained. The following afternoon, 
Beauregard sent three aides to demand Anderson's surrender. The major, in 
handing them a written refusal, remarked: "Gentlemen, if you do not batter 
the fort to pieces about us, we shall be starved out in a few days." 6 Actually, 
with stern belt-tightening, he could have subsisted on his dry stores longer. 

This statement Beauregard naturally deemed so important that he tel- 
egraphed it to Montgomery. President Davis and Secretary Walker conferred. 
Walker then replied that the government did not wish to bombard Sumter 
needlessly. If Anderson would state a time for his evacuation, and would 
promise meanwhile to fire no gun without provocation, "you are authorized 
thus to avoid the effusion of blood. If this or its equivalent be refused, reduce 
the fort as your judgment decides to be most practicable." 

Four men James Chesnut, a former South Carolina Senator and wealthy 
plantation owner who had said that commerce, culture, and Christianity derived 
their "chief earthly impulse" from slavery, Roger A. Pryor, the fiery Virginia 
lawyer, duelist, and secessionist, and two aides took the proposal to Anderson 
just after midnight on the night of April 11-12. After a long conference with 
his officers, he offered to evacuate Sumter by noon of the 15th, engaging 
meanwhile not to open fire unless he received orders from his government 
or additional supplies. 7 He thus went as far as he could to meet Walker's de- 
mands. Actually, Anderson, a Kentuckian, believed that Sumter ought to be 
given up for both political and military reasons. He did not wish to be relieved 
or reinforced, and he disapproved of the relief expedition. 8 

But Chesnut, Pryor, and the two aides, reading his answer on the spot, 
decided that his proviso, which left him free to use his guns to cooperate with a 
relief force trying to enter the harbor, was unacceptable. Rejecting the terms, 
they informed Anderson that their batteries would open in an hour. In this 

6 O. R. I, i, 301. 

7 O. R. I, i, 14; Crawford Genesis, 422-426. 

8 See his letter of April 8, 1861, O. R. I, i, 284. Anderson was married to a Georgian, and 
though by conviction he was a Unionist, he had a natural sympathy with the South. His 
disapproval was partly founded on his belief that the expedition must fail disastrously. 
Then, too, he felt very bitter about being left sitting on so exposed a limb. Among his many 
letters, published and unpublished, that of April 8, i86r, to Lorenzo Thomas, O. R. I, i, is 
specially interesting. 



jo THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

they took upon themselves a tremendous responsibility. They might have 
telegraphed Walker again, and could have had Davis' reply in a few hours. A 
wait would have cost nothing. The victualing expedition would in any event 
have been a failure, for without the Poivhatan it lacked sufficient strength to 
provision the fort against Confederate opposition. 9 But the four had color of 
authority to act, and were impatient. Pryor two days earlier had told a crowd 
that he knew the way to put Virginia into the Confederacy in less than an 
hour by Shrewsbury clock: "Strike a blow!" 

On the day just ended, April 11, both North and South seemed to know 
that war was but a few hours away. In Montgomery the War Department 
was swamped with applications from regiments, battalions, and companies for 
active service. In Washington the swearing in of volunteer militiamen, begun 
the previous day, was continued, and sentries were stationed on all roads lead- 
ing into the city. By nightfall the capital was garrisoned by about 500 regulars 
and 700 militia. The Confederate commissioners departed, first sending Seward 
a letter in which they charged that the Administration had grossly deceived 
them. 1 * 

Charleston that day had been full of rumors a false report that the 
Federal fleet was just off the bar; a true report that the Harriet Lane had been 
sighted; reports that Anderson would and would not surrender. With business 
suspended, thousands flocked to the waterfront. Occasional armed patrols 
swirled up and down the streets. At nightfall a bombardment was reported 
imminent. Some people congregated before the two newspaper offices, while 
others climbed to the housetops. Trains poured new spectators into the city, 
who hurried to the Battery. Signal lights burned and flashed in the harbor, 
where the sea was calm under bright stars. Soon after midnight a speck-like 
boat moved toward Sumter; men waited while St. Michael's intoned two, then 
three; four came, and the speck moved away from the fort. 

Then, at four-thirty, as the east began to pale, the dull boom of a mortar 
came from Fort Johnson, and a moment later a shell burst just over Sumter. 
It was a signal shot. A brief pause ensued. Then other guns announced that 
war had begun; among them, the columbiad of the iron battery on Morris Island 
was fired by that exultant secessionist, Edmund Ruffin of Virginia. 

9 Admiral Porter later asserted that as the Charleston bar had only thirteen feet of water 
and the Powhatan drew twenty-one, she could not have crossed it, or have gotten within 
five miles of the Confederate guns. "Statement" in Crawford Papers, LC. 

10 One of the gloomiest Washington observers was E. M. Stanton, lately of Buchanan's 
Cabinet. On April 10 he commented caustically that the Administration was "panic- 
stricken." On the nth he reported a general distrust of the sincerity of Lincoln and the 
Cabinet, and a sharp diminution of loyalty within the city. But Stanton was always morose 
and censorious. Curtis, Buchanan, II, 538-54Z. 



THE NORTH LURCHES TO ARMS ?I 

[ I ] 

Looking backward, we can now see that a conflict between North and 
South had been certain when Lincoln was inaugurated. Nothing the govern- 
ment might legitimately have done could have averted it. The seven States of 
the cotton kingdom were determined to erect a separate republic; the United 
States was determined to maintain the Union. At some point and some moment 
battle was certain. It would have taken place at Pickens if not at Sumter, in 
Texas if not at Pickens, or on the banks of the Mississippi if not in Texas. The 
powerful groups which had carried secession through would never turn back; 
no government in Washington worthy of the name could assent to the disrup- 
tion of the nation. 

The point at which the Gvil War could possibly have been averted lay 
much further back. If the plan of Yancey, Rhett, and others to divide the 
Democratic Party at Charleston had been defeated, as with more Southern 
wisdom it could have been, Union men might well have controlled the situation 
in that party and the South. If the timid, irresolute Buchanan had acted at once 
after South Carolina's secession to call a national convention, a remedy for 
Southern disaffection might have been devised. But by March 4 war could no 
more be prevented than the Niagara River could be halted on the brink. 11 

Nevertheless, the conduct of affairs both North and South between March 
4 and April 14 furnished a spectacle as painful as it was confusing. 

In Washington, what situation could have been more anomalous than that 
of a President moving in one direction, and his chief Cabinet officer moving 
in another, while Congress and subordinate leaders groped in the dark? It is 
impossible to acquit Lincoln of great clumsiness. His central policy was sound: 
he would hold all the national forts and places he could hold, and let the South 
make war if it attacked them. But he groped his way, failing to act incisively. He 
should have ascertained more rapidly the exact length of time Sumter could 
hold out, the precise temper of Montgomery, and the true possibilities of 

ii A careful sociologist studying the origins of war in general states that the pattern 
rarely shows a spiral movement of public opinion that gets out of control and ends in a 
stampede. Instead, it shows that groups representing some special or political interest lay 
their plans for war well in advance. These men coolly weigh their chances their ability to 
arouse sectional or national sentiment in favor of some "cause," their economic potential, 
their relative military strength. The decision to make war is in most instances reached 
months or even years before the first shots. Thus the Samuel Adams-James Otis group long 
planned the Revolution; the European coalition began in 1792; the Austrian ultimatum to 
Serbia was planned in March, 1909; Mussolini set the dateline for the Ethiopian war a good 
two years in advance; Hitler long planned the attack on Poland. The Gvil War conforms 
to this pattern. Yancey and others planned to sunder the Democracy, "fire the Southern 
heart," and precipitate secession, Cf . Theodore Abel, "The Element of Decision in the Pattern 
of War," American Sociological 'R.evie t w > Vol. 6 (December, 1941), 853-9. 



7 2 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

victualing Sumter. Instead, showing too little personal initiative, he left it to 
Seward and Scott to tell him how long Sumter could stand without reinforce- 
ment. He left it to Montgomery Blair and Gustavus V. Fox to find out that a 
possibility of reinforcing it did exist. He left the real intentions of the Southern 
leaders and people to guesswork. 

Moreover, Lincoln as yet gave his associates no sense of authentic and alert 
leadership. Most Cabinet members thought that he was concerting measures 
with Seward. Yet on April i, Seward was convinced that no policy existed and 
that Lincoln was incapable of formulating one. Montgomery Blair in the 
opposite faction decided that Lincoln had no backbone, no principle, no policy 
but a mistaken readiness to yield, and he called in his father to turn the balance. 
Winfield Scott thought Lincoln weak, or he would never have proposed to 
abandon Pickens. Judge Campbell believed leadership totally wanting. "The 
tone of the [inaugural] message will be followed," he wrote, "and its recom- 
mendations will be allowed to slide, as are the expressions common to that class 
of thieves known as politicians." 12 Charles Francis Adams, visiting Washington 
March 28, got from Seward an alarming picture of the President: "No system, 
no relative ideas, no conception of his situation much absorption in the de- 
tails of office dispensation, but little application to great ideas. The Cabinet 
without unity, and without confidence in the head or each other." Adams' 
call on Lincoln confirmed this image: ". . . the course of the President is 
drifting the country into war, by its want of decision. . . . The man is not 
equal to the hour." 13 

As for Seward, his conduct was highly exasperating. He could not shake 
off the delusion that he was to be prime minister and show the rough rail- 
splitter how to act. Worse still, he totally miscalculated the national situation. 
He thought that if peace were kept at any price, the South would drift back. 
Instead, every day these seven States, with a domain stretching from Charleston 
to Corpus Christi and from New Orleans to Atlanta, with important economic 
groups anxious for all the low-tariff gains they could seize, with politicians 
hungry for Confederate ofEce, with poets, editors, lawyers, ministers, physi- 
cians, and others ardently nursing the idea of Southern independence, with a 
rising generation proud of Dixie virtues and scornful of Yankee vices, would 
drift further away. Once fully established, such political separations like 
those of Southern Ireland from Britain, Norway from Sweden, Pakistan from 

12 Campbell's first notes on Lincoln are severe. The inaugural he called a mere stump 
speech. "It is wanting in statesmanship of which he has none and dignity and decorum. 
I should call it an incendiary message, one calculated to set the country in a blaze. He is 
a conceited man evidently he has been a great man in Springfield, Illinois." To his mother, 
March 6, 1861, Campbell Papers, Alabama State Archives. 

13 Adams, MS Diary, March 28, March 31, 1861. 



THE NORTH LURCHES TO ARMS 7? 

India have a way of making themselves permanent. Too much pride, too 
many selfish interests, too fervent a loyalty, crystallize within the new bound- 
aries. 14 Montgomery Blair was more straightforward than Seward, but he 
equally miscalculated the situation. He thought that a few hard blows at the 
the Confederate oligarchs would move the Southern people to overthrow their 
government and come back into the fold. He totally misconceived the inevitable 
Southern response to blows. 

The Confederacy showed an equal lack of wisdom. Still more unfortunately, 
its leaders showed little indeed of the tormented shrinking from war that was 
to be found in Washington. 

The firing on Sumter was an act of rash emotionalism. What would it really 
matter if it remained for months in Northern hands? It offered neither im- 
pediment nor threat to the Confederacy. Let it alone, and although at some 
point the North could certainly have fought to maintain the Union, a period of 
Northern inaction was not only possible but probable. Given Seward's be- 
lief in waiting, and Lincoln's vast patience and forbearance, a protracted pause 
might have ensued, during which the Confederacy could have exported cotton, 
imported arms and munitions, stocked defense plants with machinery, and 
drilled troops. The astute Alexander H. Stephens, counseling delay, showed 
more statesmanship than Jefferson Davis. Indeed, Davis might well have re- 
called that in January he had written Governor Pickens to leave Sumter alone: 
"The little garrison in its present position presses on nothing but a point of 
pride." 

But the callousness evinced in Montgomery's rush into battle is especially 
discreditable. In Washington the debating, the hesitations, and the agony of 
the leaders, at least point to an underlying sense of the awful responsibilities of 
the hour. In the end the government gave Charleston courteous notice that 
it was sending supplies to a famished garrison, protested its pacific temper, 
and declared that it would not fire until fired on. In Montgomery, however, 
the debate was brief and hasty; neither Davis, great gentleman though he was, 
nor any associate showed real agony of spirit; and the final decision put it in the 
power of Beauregard, living in "an ecstasy of glory and rhetoric," 15 and two 
impetuous aides to start the bloodiest war of the century. 

The one bright element in the history of these six dark weeks is the com- 
plete integrity of purpose exhibited by Lincoln. Adhering to his oath, he never 
wavered in his determination to hold Pickens. He wavered on Sumter only 

14 Even restricted to seven States, the Confederacy would have had an area of 560,000 
square miles, a population of 5,000,000, and resources far excelling those of most nations 
or the globe. Arkansas seemed likely to join in any event, adding some 53,000 square 
miles and 435,000 people. 

15 T. Harry Williams, Beauregard, 50. 



74 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

when the highest military authority told him it could not be held, and reverted 
to his determination when other authorities reassured him. He did not for a 
moment share Seward's delusion that appeasement would solve the problem, 
or Montgomery Blair's delusion that the Southern people were not really be- 
hind their leaders; he saw the realities. That he lacked vigor, foresight, and 
organizing capacity is all too clear. He did not clearly understand the currents 
of opinion in the South. But his honesty of intention was plain. A humane, 
kindly man, he felt the greatest distress over the impending bloodshed. A 
patriot who had devoted his best thought to the Constitution, laws, writings, 
and traditions handed down by the architects of the republic, he grieved over 
the demolition of the harmonious structure they had built. He wrestled with 
himself in the sleepless hours recorded by his secretaries. But his purposes 
were always elevated, and when war came he could feel that he had but per- 
formed his sworn duty. 

In your hands, not mine, he had told Southerners, lies the issue of peace or 
war. The shells that burst over a Federal fort, awaiting a victualing expedition 
which had orders not to fire unless it was fired upon, gave the answer to that 
statement. 16 



[II ] 

The thunderclap of Sumter produced a startling crystallization of Northern 
sentiment. Apathy had seemed in the air. The timidities of Buchanan, the 
futilities of the Peace Convention, the later alternations of hope and fear, had 
given rise to a sense of helplessness. But Sumter disclosed the irrevocable 
determination of the Lower South to divide the nation; Anderson's hoisting 
of the white flag on the i3th, followed by his evacuation of the fort next day, 
was a stain upon Northern honor. Anger swept the land. From every side came 
news of mass meetings, speeches, resolutions, tenders of business support, the 

1 6 The efforts of some Southern historians (C. W. Ramsdell, "Lincoln and Fort Sumter," 
Journal of Southern History, HI, 259 ff.; Clement Eaton, A History of the Southern Con- 
federacy, Ch. 21 ) to suggest that Lincoln needlessly brought on the war by trying to pro- 
vision Sumter may be left to fulfill their presumed purpose of comforting sensitive South- 
erners. Ramsdell did not explore the question whether Davis needed to attack the Federal 
fort! Lincoln was required by the Constitution to protect the properties of the United States; 
he could have been impeached had he failed to do so*, he had explicitly pledged himself in 
his inaugural to do so; and dominant Northern sentiment demanded that he do so. He 
warned the South in direct terms that he would do so. The proposition that he should have 
let Sumter go in the hope of ultimate reunion is really a proposition that he should have 
broken his oath and defied the public will just to take a fearful risk the risk of division into 
two and perhaps several jangling, inferior republics. Confederate leaders meanwhile yielded 
nothing, and promised nothing but defiance. See James G, Randall's decisive refutation of 
the Ramsdell thesis in Lincoln the Liberal Statesman, and in Lincoln the President, II, 342- 
350. 



THE NORTH LURCHES TO ARMS J5 

muster of companies and regiments, the determined action of governors and 
legislatures. 

In this eruption of emotion most Northerners took unthinking pride. It 
seemed a purifying hurricane which swept away all sordid aims. Idealists had 
been disheartened by the trickeries, bargains, and compromises of the past 
ten years; by the Ostend Manifesto, the Nebraska Act, the Lecompton swindle, 
the filibustering, the corruption, and the absorption in moneymaking. Now, 
they said, the flame of devotion to the principles of Washington, Hamilton, and 
Marshall was burning brightly again. Even the most timid took courage, even 
the most partisan became firm nationalists. As mass meetings cheered the 
Union and Constitution, as churches followed Trinity by flinging the Stars and 
Stripes from their steeples, and as armories resounded with the tramp and 
clash of drilling troops, many felt that they had emerged into an effulgent 
new era. They forgot that excitement was not patriotism. They forgot that 
an ounce of planning, forethought, and coordination was worth many pounds 
of passionate demonstration. 

The very basis of organization was endangered by the delusion that victory 
would be quick and cheap. The New York Commercial Advertiser spoke of 
the rebels as a "small minority." Greeley's Tribune exulted in the notion that 
the first week would see 10,000 men in Washington, the second 20,000, the 
third 40,000. Raymond's Times believed the "local commotion" could be 
quelled "effectually in thirty days." The Philadelphia Press also deemed a 
month sufficient, while the Public Ledger seemed to think that a mere procla- 
mation would suffice. 17 In Chicago the Tribune declared that the west alone 
could end the conflict in two or three months. Soldiers, politicians, and min- 
isters all had the optimism that Lowell's Hosea Biglow later ruefully recalled: 

I hoped, las' Spring, jest arter Sumter's shame 
When every flagstaff flapped its tethered flame, 
An' all the people, startled from their doubt, 
Come musterin' to the flag with sech a shout, 
I hoped to see things settled 'fore this fall, 
The Rebbles licked, Jeff Davis hanged, an' all ... 

One of the few immediate attempts to analyze the uprising was made by 
the historian Bancroft. While the politicians had been wavering, he believed, 

17 Commercial Advertiser, April 15; N. Y. Tribune ', April 17; Public Ledger, April 15, 
etc. Harper's Weekly observed (May 4) that men might as well fight as try to do business. 
"The war has begun and the trade of the year is as thoroughly ruined as it can be. We shall 
do no mischief by prosecuting the war vigorously. By prosecuting it vigorously we shall 
secure peace and fair trade next year." An astounding somersault was performed by the 
Independent, which had shared W. L. Garrison's pacifism. Now it praised war as a vital 
defense of the Constitution, a restorer of national life, and a divine retribution for slavery; 
but it too expected a short war. May 4, 1 1, etc. 



7 6 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

the people had pondered the situation and had reached four basic conclusions. 
One was that the populous Northwest could never let the lower course of its 
great central waterway pass into foreign hands. The second was that dwellers 
on the upper Chesapeake, its headwaters flowing from New York and Pennsyl- 
vania and its principal railroad clasping the West, felt the same jealous anxiety 
over their communications. As a third consideration, people feared the expan- 
sive temper of the Confederacy. It claimed Maryland, Virginia, Washington 
and the States below, it claimed Missouri, it claimed the best avenues to Califor- 
nia, and it claimed the boundary with Mexico which it would soon invade. 
So, wrote Bancroft, "I witnessed the sublimest spectacle I ever knew," an 
irresistible rush to the defense of law, order, and liberty. 18 It is strange that 
Bancroft said nothing about the passionate attachment of millions to the idea 
of Union, inculcated by every national leader from Franklin to Webster, and 
nothing about the fact that the success of the great American experiment in 
democratic self-government, as an example to the world, depended on mainte- 
nance of the Union. 

Major Anderson, his officers and men, reached New York April 18 to 
meet a wild demonstration. Joseph Holt soon reported a talk with him. "He 
was satisfied," wrote Holt, "that the course pursued had been the means of fix- 
ing the eyes of the nation on Sumter, and of awakening to the last degree its 
anxieties for its fate; so that ... its fall proved the instrument of arousing the 
national enthusiasm and loyalty. . . ." 19 This was just what Lincoln meant 
when he shortly told Orville H. Browning of Illinois that the plan of supplying 
Sumter had in a sense succeeded: "They attacked Sumter it fell, and thus, 
did more service than it otherwise could." 20 

18 M. A. De Wolfe Howe, Bancroft, II, 137-138. 

19 Anderson came in on the steamer Baltic; Holt to Buchanan, May 24, 1861, Curtis, 
Buchanan, II, 550, 551. 

20 Browning's report of Lincoln's words, not written down on the spot but recorded 
later, cannot be regarded as literally accurate. Lincoln said something like this statement; 
it was a gloss on his careful explanation of his course in his first message to Congress in 
July, and he meant that although the North failed to hold Sumter, the sudden and un- 
necessary Southern seizure of it aroused Northern determination. Browning, Diary , July 3, 
1 86 1. He meant just this when he wrote Gustavus V. Fox on May i in similar terms. A really 
trustworthy report of Lincoln, closer to the event than Browning's, can be found in the 
letter of Senator Garrett Davis of Kentucky, April 28, 1861, detailing an interview in the 
White House "early last week." Lincoln was "frank and calm, but decided and firm." He 
said that he had decided not to try to reinforce the Sumter garrison, "but merely, and only, 
to supply its handful of famishing men with food," a purpose he had distinctly communicated 
to the Southern authorities. "The President further said, that events had now reached a 
point where it must be decided whether our system of federal government was only a league 
of sovereign and independent States, from which any State could withdraw at pleasure, or 
whether the Constitution formed a government with strength and powers sufficient to up- 
hold its own authority, and to enforce the execution of the laws of Congress." Frankfort, 
Ky., Commonwealth, May 3, 1861. 



THE NORTH LURCHES TO ARMS ?? 

[ HI ] 

Clear-sighted Americans saw that the whole issue of the war, and with it 
the position of the United States in the world, depended on the border States. 
If all of them went out, the Union could not be saved. If even Kentucky and 
Missouri went out, along with Virginia and Tennessee, Northern victory 
would be almost impossible. The next few weeks, deciding this question, 
would decide almost the whole game. Could they be held? 

The next six weeks, April 14-June i, were a period of touch and go. It 
was touch and go whether Maryland and Baltimore would not fall under the 
control of secessionists; whether Washington would not be captured and 
Lincoln and his Cabinet put to flight; whether the Virginia forces which 
seized Harpers Ferry and Norfolk would not close in on some other important 
point; whether Kentucky and Missouri would not slip away; whether so many 
army officers would not resign as to cripple the nation. In facing these con- 
tingencies, the Administration paid in dire anxiety for its failure to take some 
elementary precautions for war. While the South armed itself, Washington had 
done nothing. True, Seward and Lincoln wished to avoid provocative steps. 
But would it have been provocative to get a few more regulars into Washing- 
ton from the West, or to suggest to Governor Curtin that two strong militia 
regiments be ready at Harrisburg? Fortunate it was that Curtin had taken a few 
simple steps, and that the recently elected governor of Massachusetts, John A. 
Andrew, had done more. Fortunate it also was that Virginia did not possess a 
governor as impetuously earnest as Curtin, and as farsightedly efficient as 
Andrew. 

For although Virginia moved, she moved slowly. Her convention on April 
17 passed an ordinance of secession subject to popular ratification in May. 
Word of this "resumption of sovereignty," telegraphed over the North, ended 
the fatuous predictions that Arkansas alone of the hesitant States would secede. 
However, declared Greeley's Tribune, the rebels might gain little, for Rich- 
mond would have to give close attention to the angry Unionists of western 
Virginia and the restive slaves. Some support was lent this view by the heavy 
vote against the secession ordinance, 55 to 88, by Governor Letcher's previous 
unwillingness to leave the Union, and by the convention's tardiness in placing 
the State in full cooperation with the Confederacy no alliance being effected 
until April 25. Vice-President A. H. Stephens, hurrying to Richmond, com- 
plained that Virginians were far behind the times and preferred talk to war. 21 

Nevertheless, the position of Washington was serious. Lincoln's proclama- 
tion of April 15 asking for 75,000 militia was indignantly rejected by the 

21 Tribune, April 19, 1861; Johnston and Browne, Stephew, 399 (April 25). 



7 8 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

governors of Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, 
and given only a conditional response by Maryland and Delaware. 22 It was of 
course heartily accepted by all the others, and the War Department fixed the 
State quotas, asking New York for 17 regiments, Pennsylvania 16, Ohio 13, 
Illinois 6, Massachusetts 2, and so on each regiment to consist, as nearly as 
possible, of 780 officers and men. But the militia system at once showed its 
characteristic state of decay. In some cities it consisted only of amateurish 
bandbox forces, which had served to hold balls, grace public parades with 
showy uniforms, and attend inaugurations; in smaller places it mustered an 
array of rural bumpkins. One of the familiar gems of Congressional humor 
was a speech by Tom Corwin ridiculing the Kentucky militia "generals" who 
restored their men after their drill by a treat of watermelons and whiskey at 
a country store. Now it was necessary to call out volunteers to create new 
militia regiments. The want of depots of proper arms, clothing, and other 
equipment was distressing. And how get them to Washington? Could that 
city be properly garrisoned in time? 

While the Charleston batteries still pounded Sumter, the Confederate 
Secretary of War boasted in a Montgomery speech: "The flag which now 
flaunts the breeze here will float over the dome of the old Capitol at Washing- 
ton before the first of May." 2S Various Southern journals predicted that a 
column from the Lower South, reinforced in North Carolina and Virginia, 
would seize the Federal District before the North could defend it. Which 
nation would first mass its troops on the Potomac? Tidewater Virginia seemed 
to spring to arms overnight. The day of Sumter a New Orleans businessman 
sent a Yankee friend a threat: Davis had 60,000 troops ready to march, "and all 
say here that Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York will be taken within 
thirty days. . . ." 24 While W. H. Russell reported to the London Times 
from Montgomery that the Confederacy intended to attack and hold Washing- 
ton, the British minister, Lord Lyons, wrote that the principal fear of the 
Lincoln Administration was for the city. 25 

When Virginia seceded, the tiny detachments scattered through Washing- 
ton were strengthened, more troops and cannon were placed at the Long 

22 O. R. Series HI, i, 67 ff . deak with this militia call. The governors sent their first con- 
tingents to the field, under Lincoln's call, organized as brigades and divisions. They there- 
fore took the generals of militia, like Ben Butler, who had more idea of military organization 
than anyone else at hand. 

25 N. Y. Evening Post, April 23, 1861. 

24 For the brag by Secretary Walker, a fire-eating protege of Yancey, see N. Y. Evening 
Post, April 23, 1861. This paper erroneously reported that Jefferson Davis had reached Rich- 
mond to lead an immediate attack on Washington. For the New Orleans letter dated April 
ir, see N. Y. Tribune, April 24. 

25 Frederick W. Seward, Seward 1846-1861, p. 545; Russell, My Diary (London ed., 
1863), I, 259, 260. 



THE NORTH LURCHES TO ARMS ^ 

Bridge, and batteries were posted on strategic hills. New volunteer companies 
were set to drilling. Two irrepressible gentlemen dangerous chiefly to their 
own side, Senator James H. Lane of Kansas and Cassius M. Clay of Kentucky, 
organized companies of their own, Lane bivouacking his men in the East 
Room of the White House. Veterans of 1812 shakily stumped into line. A 
home guard of elderly men, fitly called the Silver Grays, was whipped to- 
gether. All told, the national capital in the first anxious days after Sumter had 
for its protection one dilapidated fort twelve miles down the Potomac, six 
companies of regulars, about two hundred marines at the navy yard, two 
companies of dismounted cavalry, and the flatfooted, flatchested, untrust- 
worthy militia or uniformed volunteers of the District, numbering fifteen com- 
panies on April 13 and about twice as many a week later. 26 

Winfield Scott's plan, if the city were attacked by overwhelming force, 
was to make a citadel of the Treasury Building, with the President and Cabinet 
in the basement, and all the troops concentrated about Lafayette Square. 

The general hoped for the best; when the news of Sumter came, he ex- 
pected the early arrival of a war steamer to cruise the Potomac, and some 
artillery from the regular forces in the Northwest. Lincoln imperturbably 
continued his accustomed round of conferences and other duties, only now 
and then revealing his deep anxiety as in an impulsive walk to the arsenal, 
whose doors stood open unguarded. The general alarm nevertheless continued 
great. When on April 18 the first little force arrived from the North, five 
tough-looking companies of Pennsylvania militia whom Curtin, with the aid 
of a regular officer, Fitz-John Porter, had hurried off, only slight relief was 
felt. Unfortunately, these men had only thirty-four muskets and no ammuni- 
tion! But they could be equipped, and they were marched to the Capitol. 
Word also came that a stronger body of Pennsylvania volunteers was on the 
Susquehanna opposite Havre de Grace. 27 

[IV] 

This was improvisation, but one governor, Andrew of Massachusetts, had 
really planned. Early in January he had begun to equip all the volunteer com- 

26 Scott's daily reports to Lincoln, R. T. Lincoln Papers; Margaret Leech, Reveille, Ch. 4. 
John G. Nicolay, sitting in the White House, thought that the District Militia were politi- 
cally unreliable, and might turn against the government, so that they would all find them- 
selves looking down the muzzles of their own g;uns. "We were not only surrounded by the 
enemy, but in the midst of traitors." To his wife, April 26, Nicolay Papers, LC. Winfield 
Scott had told a Cabinet meeting that he thought Fort Washington could be taken by a 
bottle of whiskey. 

27 Leech, Reveille, 65; Nicolay and Hay, IV, 70, 71; W. B. Wilson, Acts and Actors m 
the Civil War, 24 ff. 



8o THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

panics and set them drilling nightly. Before darkness fell on the day of Lincoln's 
call for troops, colonels of regiments at New Bedford, Quincy, Lowell, and 
Lynn had orders to muster on Boston Common. April i6th found them 
parading under the elms, drums beating, flags flying. Next day the governor 
commissioned Ben Butler as commander of the brigade, and before night 
all four regiments had departed for the front. 28 The Sixth Massachusetts, 800 
strong, went first by rail. Breakfasting next morning at New York hotels, they 
marched down Broadway, beflagged, crowded, and throbbing, to the Hudson 
ferry. The band played but a single bar of "Yankee Doodle" before it was 
drowned out. The roar of cheers, the thrashing handerchiefs and banners, the 
hot emotion of the densely jammed spectators, made the scene the most im- 
pressive that men could remember. But at that moment secessionists in Bal- 
timore were busy arousing mob passion. 

Baltimore, the third city of the nation, had half the population of Mary- 
land. More than a third of her great trade was with the South and Southwest. 
For weeks the Baltimore Sun and Examiner had been stirring the bitter waters 
of anti-Northern feeling. "If we are to grow, thrive, and prosper as a man- 
ufacturing city," the Sun had declared, "our sources of prosperity must be in 
the South." Ross Winans, who had introduced the eight-wheeled railroad-car 
system and established in Baltimore the largest railroad machine shops in the 
country, a man sometimes rated hardly second in wealth to William B. Astor, 
was helping to finance the secessionist cause. Such merchants as Johns Hopkins 
and William T. Walters did a huge Southern business. Slave property in the 
State was valued at sixty to seventy million dollars. The tidewater arm had 
immemorial ties of blood and sentiment with Virginia. Louis M. McLane, just 
back from diplomatic service in Mexico, had told a secessionist meeting that he 
favored confronting any Northern force on the Susquehanna with arms. Most 
officers of the city government, the mayor excepted, were on the secessionist 
side, and so were a majority of the legislature, which the loyal but wabbling 
Governor Thomas H. Hicks refused to call into session. The city was a powder 
tub ready for a match. 29 

28 Lossing, Civil War, I, 401, 402; Schouler, Massachusetts in the Civil War, I, 49 ff. 

29 Senator Anthony Kennedy told the chamber in 1863 that "in 1860 the trade of the 
city of Baltimore, according to the report of her chartered Board of Trade, amounted to 
$168,000,000; $26,000,000 over her great railroad lines to the West, and $100,000,000 directly 
to the South and Southwest." Cong. Globe, 37th Cong., 3d Sess., pp. 1374, 1375. This was an 
exaggeration. According to the Baltimore correspondent of the N. Y. Tribune, March 12, 
1861, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana bought almost two-thirds of the general merchandise 
sold in Baltimore, the Upper South the other third, and the Lower South but a small amount. 
But Baltimore, struggling amain with New York and Philadelphia, greatly valued her 
Southern connections. The influential Severn Teackle Wallis, who had studied law with 
William Wirt, leaned to the secessionist side and wrote many editorials for the Examiner. 
By the census of 1860 New York and Brooklyn had 1,072,300 people, Philadelphia had 562,- 
500, and Baltimore 212,400. 



THE NORTH LURCHES TO ARMS gi 

As the cars of the Sixth Massachusetts rumbled across upper Maryland, 
Southern sympathizers poured into Monument Square; not a ragged, disorderly 
rabble, but a well-dressed crowd numbering merchants and lawyers of note. 
Shortly before noon on the i9th the troop train drew into the President Street 
station. The men had to be moved across town to the Camden Street station 
and the mob was gathering fast. By quick, determined action, the troops might 
have kept control of the situation, but a series of disastrous errors was made. 

One error was that of the mayor, who had sent police to the Camden Street 
station, a mile from the true danger point. Another was that of the colonel, 
who should have unloaded his men, formed them in solid column with bayonets 
fixed, and marched them across town at the double-quick, but who instead 
kept them in the cars, to be drawn slowly by horses along tracks in Pratt 
Street. When the mob obstructed the cars, attacked them with paving stones, 
and tore up the tracks, most of the regiment had to climb down amid a rain 
of missiles. Somebody fired, and before the melee ended, four infantrymen and 
a larger number of the mob had been killed and many injured. The city police 
finally did most to restore order. Although the Sixth reached Washington at 
five in the afternoon, seven companies of unarmed Pennsylvania volunteers 
remained at the President Street station until they were sent back to the 
Susquehanna. 30 

Anti-Northern feeling rose higher than ever in Baltimore. "The excitement 
and rage of everyone, of all classes, of all shades of opinion," reported the 
British consul, "was intense. Strong Union men harangued the crowd, declar- 
ing they were no longer such, and demanding immediate action." 

That day brought news that the little Union garrison at Harpers Ferry had 
destroyed arms, armory, and arsenal, and retreated across the Potomac to 
Hagerstown, Maryland. At Norfolk the commandant of the Navy Yard was 
about to scuttle all but one of the warships there afloat. Baltimore, raging 
like a hornet's nest, would ambuscade any fresh Federal troops who attempted 
a passage. Thus hostile forces ringed Washington. When a body of Ohio militia 
reached Pittsburgh on April 19 on their way to the capital they were suddenly 
halted by orders from Governor Dennison, who had heard that Cincinnati 
was about to be attacked. The burning question was whether Maryland and 
Virginia secessionists, while the entire border rose, would cut off all access 
to Washington. 

During four days, April 19-22, bellicose Marylanders swept both city and 
State government before them like straw upon a flood. Cowed by the violent 

30 For the riot, see G. W. Brown, Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April, 1861; Marshal 
George Kane's report to the police board, Cong. Globe, 37th Cong., ist Sess., 200, 201; 
Mayor Brown's report, O. R. I, ii, 15-20; N. Y. Tribune, May 9, 1861. 




ROUTES OF APPROACH 
TO WASHINGTON 



Southern demonstrations of the i8th and ipth, Governor Hicks gave way. 
He had thus far stood by the Union, refusing a special session of the legislature, 
and pledging Lincoln four regiments if they were used only in Maryland and 
the District of Columbia. But now he told a seething crowd in Monument 
Square that he would suffer his right arm to be torn from his body before he 
would raise it to strike a sister State; he telegraphed Lincoln, "Send no more 
troops here"; and he announced that his main object was to save the State from 
civil war. Mayor George W. Brown made a concurring declaration that no 
Maryland boys would fight the sons of other States. The two wrote President 
John W. Garrett of the Baltimore & Ohio advising him to take all Northern 
soldiers back into Pennsylvania. Worse still, Hicks, Brown, and Police Marshal 
George P. Kane agreed in midnight conclave that the best way to avoid a 
renewal of the fighting between rioters and Union troops would be to destroy 
the railroad bridges connecting Baltimore with the North. Kane, thinking he 
had an authorization to do this, sent out gangs which demolished the short 
Canton bridge just outside the city, the long bridges over Gunpowder and 
Bush Creeks (arms of the Chesapeake), and two wooden bridges at Cockeys- 
ville fifteen miles north of Baltimore. 

No step could have done more to isolate Washington. The seat of govern- 
ment was cut off from the loyal States by rail through Baltimore from the 
night of April 19. Meanwhile, the mob remained dominant in Baltimore 
throughout April 20-21. It shut the President Street station, forced Unionists 
to haul down their flags, and patrolled the streets trying to seize Union soldiers. 



THE NORTH LURCHES TO ARMS 3 

Kane, espousing the secessionist side, was ready to go to any length. He 
telegraphed a Maryland Congressman to send out messengers to arouse Vir- 
ginia and Maryland riflemen and hurry them to Baltimore: "Fresh hordes will 
be down upon us tomorrow. We will fight them and whip them, or die." On the 
zist the wires were cut, and Washington thereafter could send telegrams north 
only by the precarious Harpers Ferry route. 31 

The reign of terror continued until April 24th. Hundreds of Unionists were 
driven from Baltimore, and thousands more fled. When Ben Butler arrived 
in Philadelphia on the 2Oth with 800 Massachusetts militia, he found the direct 
route to Washington closed. With instant resourcefulness he took his troops 
by rail to Chesapeake Bay, put them on a boat, and steamed down to Annapolis. 
Governor Hicks having the effrontery to protest against this landing on sa- 
cred Maryland soil, Butler delivered a spirited rebuke. If necessary, he said, he 
was ready to treat Maryland as enemy territory; and taking possession of the 
frigate Constitution, so dear to Yankee hearts, he announced that this partially 
consoled Massachusetts for the loss of her sons. 

Meanwhile, Governor Hicks surrendered to the demand for a special session 
of the secessionist-controlled legislature; S2 and hard on Ben Butler's heels the 
New York Seventh, a crack parade regiment, also had to take the bay route to 
Annapolis. One of its officers was the gifted Major Theodore Winthrop, who 
wrote a graphic account of its southward journey. Some 1700 Pennsylvania 
militia, partly unarmed, had revolted against their detention on the Maryland 
boundary, and were marching down the empty railroad line toward Cockeys- 
ville north of Baltimore. In Washington, Lincoln himself uttered the anguished 
cry: "Why don't they come? Why don't they come?" Speaking to the Mas- 
sachusetts soldiers, he said that he didn't believe there was any North; the 
Seventh Regiment was a myth "You are the only realities." 

In his alarm and indignation, the President immediately after the Baltimore 
riot summoned Mayor Brown and Governor Hicks. On Sunday morning, 
April 2ist, Brown and three prominent Baltimoreans (Hicks was ill) were 
ushered into the President's office, where General Scott and the Cabinet joined 
them. Though Lincoln was anxious to avoid fresh collisions, he made clear the 
absolute necessity of safe transit for Federal troops. No forces would be used 
against Maryland, he said, and none for aggression upon the South. But Wash- 

31 Kane's story as given in the Congressional Globe, ut sup., is scathingly interpreted 
there by Representative Francis Thomas, who had no doubt of his disloyalty. He was ar- 
rested and long held in confinement. Governor Hicks and Mayor Brown both denied later 
that they had really intended the destruction of the bridges, and it seems they had given 
only a limited and partial assent. G. L. P. RadclifTe, Governor T. H. Hicks and the Civil War, 
54 fT. 

32 For Hicks* explanation see the speech he later made as Maryland Senator, Cong. Globe, 
37th Cong., jd Sess., 1376, 13775 an enlightening statement on the whole situation. 



84 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

ington must be protected, and since troops could no longer be safely brought 
up the Potomac, they must cross Maryland. General Scott underlined this 
warning. It was not a question of using Baltimore streets, he said. Regiments 
might by-pass the city by taking the water route to Annapolis or wagon roads 
to the Relay House just southwest of Baltimore. 33 

Mayor Brown assured Lincoln that the city authorities would do their ut- 
most to prevent mob interference with the roundabout routes. Lincoln then 
directed that the Pennsylvania militia at Cockeysville either march around 
Baltimore to the Relay House, or go back to York and Harrisburg. 

It was an extraordinary spectacle, this of the President of the United 
States and the general of its armies parleying with a mayor and suspending 
the right of national troops to march through his city to save Washington. 
When later it became known, it aroused intense indignation in the North. 34 
But it reflected the disorganization of the hour: the lack of efficient action 
to forward troops from New York and Philadelphia; the poor information 
facilities of the government, which remained ignorant of the fervid Northern 
rising; above all, the want of antecedent military preparation in Washington. 
Under the circumstances, Lincoln acted sagaciously. He did not have suf- 
ficient military power to risk enforcing a right of transit, and provocative 
orders might have stirred tens of thousands of wavering Marylanders to join 
Virginia in attacking the capital. 



[V] 

Then by April 25 the skies cleared. In Maryland the Unionists rallied. 
It is true that in Baltimore the secessionists and neutralists remained dominant; 
the city council appropriated half a million for defending the place, Mayor 
Brown asked citizens to lend their arms and ammunition, and Southern sym- 
pathizers organized companies to repel the Northern "myrmidons." 35 But 
many eastern Marylanders realized that if Baltimore continued obstructive it 
would be stormed and perhaps laid in ashes, while western Marylanders 
were mainly loyal. News arrived that troops were concentrating in Pittsburgh, 

33 Actually the Overland line from the Northern Central R. R. to the Relay House, the 
point eight miles southwest of Baltimore where one branch of the Baltimore & Ohio led 
to Washington, was more difficult than Scott believed. No good common road of less than 
thirty miles connected the two railroads. President J. Edgar Thomson of the Pennsylvania 
Central wrote from Philadelphia April 23 that more vigor should be shown in organizing 
troop movements, that Baltimore should be put under martial law, and that Maryland 
should be made to feel the weight of national power. O. R., I, ii, 587, 596-597. 

34 See N. Y. Tribune editorial, May 3, 1861. 

35 Radcliffe, Hicks and the Civil War, 67. 




Head of the Foreign Relations Committee: 




Robert E. Lee 



THE NORTH LURCHES TO ARMS 5 

York, Philadelphia, and other cities. 36 Federal units took possession of the rail- 
road from Philadelphia to Perryville on Chesapeake Bay, strengthened the 
track, brought down new locomotives, arranged for three trains a day, and 
got three steamboats plying to Annapolis. 

"If the route from Annapolis to Washington City is open," J. Edgar 
Thomson wrote Secretary Cameron April 23, "we have transportation facilities 
on the Chesapeake equal to the movement of fifteen thousand troops a day 
to your city, together with any amount of provisions, etc." And the Annapolis- 
Washington railway was open. Ben Butler had found in an Annapolis railroad 
shed a rusty half-dismantled locomotive, and had asked his men if anybody 
could repair it. A private stepped forward to reply: "That engine was made 
in our shop; I guess I can fit her up and run her." Cameron had Vice-President 
Thomas A. Scott of the Pennsylvania Central take a body of picked railroad- 
men, including young Andrew Carnegie, to Annapolis to help put the line 
in order. Annapolis was suddenly full of troops, waiting for the first train. 37 

When Thursday the 2jth dawned in Washington the spirits of loyal men 
had sunk to a low ebb. The city still seemed hemmed in by rebel elements, 
and Southern sympathizers were exultantly circulating rumors of a Virginia 
drive. General Scott was getting ready to issue General Orders No. 4, which 
went out next day: "From the known assemblage near this city of numerous 
hostile bodies of troops it is evident that an attack upon it may be expected 
at any moment." The North was trembling for the capital. In Albany, Gov- 
ernor Morgan heard the "most painful reports" of its peril. In Philadelphia 
all city regiments were detained by a woeful deficiency of guns and am- 
munition. 38 

Then, at noon, a mighty shout came from the Sixth Massachusetts en- 
camped on Capitol Hill. They had seen a troop train drawing into the station. 
Citizens began running pell-mell to the scene. As the train stopped a wild 
burst of cheering was heard even at the Treasury. Under a bright sun, the 
trim ranks of the Seventh were soon marching up Pennsylvania Avenue, whose 
sidewalks filled magically. The men kept soldierly step under their unstained 
banners, and when their band struck up onlookers danced with delight. On 
they came, past Willard's, past the Treasury, through the White House 
grounds, and under the very eaves of the mansion. Lincoln emerged to wave 

36 When Ben Butler in Philadelphia heard of the attack on the Sixth Massachusetts, he 
not only hurried Col. Munroe's regiment to Annapolis, but telegraphed to Governor Andrew 
for artillery; and Andrew leaped to throw new bodies of troops aboard trains. They reached 
New York the night of Sunday the list, clattered aboard two waiting transports on Monday, 
and sailed with all possible speed to join Munroe at Annapolis. 

37 O. R. I, ii, 596; Butler's Book, 202. 

38 O. R. I, ii, 600-602. 



86 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

them a greeting, the happiest-looking man in town. As an Illinois man re- 
marked, "He smiled all over." 39 Then the footsore, sunburnt privates, turn- 
ing back to the marble-paved courtyard of Willard's, half-stripped to splash 
in the fountain. That evening they too went into bivouac on Capitol Hill, 
enlivening the soft spring night by selections from their band. 

Troops now poured steadily into Washington. Colonel Elmer Ellsworth's 
Zouaves, recruited largely from the New York Fire Department, left for the 
capital. The Seventy-first New York arrived and found quarters in the tem- 
porary hall erected for the inauguration ball. The first Rhode Island came 
in, commanded by a West Pointer recently with the Illinois Central, the burly, 
bewhiskered Ambrose E. Burnside, and accompanied by the slender "boy gov- 
ernor," William Sprague of the rich cotton-textile family. The Twelfth and 
Sixty-ninth New York, the First and Second Connecticut, the New Jersey 
Brigade, and other units were soon being disposed about town. A scurrying, 
squealing covey of transports, ferries, and small boats kept Annapolis harbor 
busy. Even Westerners arrived; Secretary Chase on the 24th had besought 
the Ohio authorities to add 50 per cent to their contingents, and hurry them 
forward by the Pennsylvania Central "Delays and mistakes are dangerous." 

The soldiers represented American life in all its colorful contrasts. Some 
of the First Zouaves were dangerous criminals, some of the Seventh the fash- 
ionable elite of Gramercy Square, many of the Yankee boys mill-hands, 
many of the Westerners fresh from the plow. Ben Butler made merry over one 
fearful hardship suffered by the Seventh New York. They left behind at 
Annapolis a thousand velvet-carpet campstools which never caught up! 

For the moment the fast-arriving soldiers found their experience entrancing. 
It was nearly all gaiety, movement, color, and adventure. 40 

Three units were soon quartered in the Capitol, the Sixth Massachusetts in 
the Senate, the Eighth Massachusetts under the dome, the Seventh New 
York in the House. Odors of lilac and horse-chestnut blooms drifted in at the 
windows. At daybreak reveille blared through the dim interior. Chaffing, 
shouting, and singing, the soldiers marched for their meals to the hotels, where 
they scuffled with squads of waiters for food. The regiments competed hotly 
with each other in drills. The Rhode Islanders attracted particular attention 
by their natty uniforms, shining arms, and long baggage trains, with vivandieres 
(a short-lived feature) adding a romantic touch. Dress parades, band concerts, 
and "universal promenading" made Washington livelier than ever before. 
With trees leafing out, shoals of ambitious men arriving to seek military com- 

39 N. Y. Tribune, April z<5, 1861, Wash, correspondence. 

40 See Theodore Winthrop's delightful essay, "Washington as a Camp," Atlantic, vol. 8 
(July, 1861), 105-118. 



THE NORTH LURCHES TO ARMS 87 

missions, and shops busy, the city was too prosperous to listen to secessionist 
sympathizers. As the May sunshine grew hotter and the streets livelier with 
uniforms, most units moved under canvas. They specially liked the large 
Sibley tent; a wrinkle, wrote Theodore Winthrop, taken from savage life, 
for it was the Sioux tepee made more compact, handsome, and, if the flaps 
were kept open, healthy. 

The rapid increase of Federal strength completely changed the situation 
in Maryland. Some men had been for rough action; Governor Morgan of 
New York had telegraphed Cameron to open a way through Baltimore "cost 
what it may," and the First Zouaves had boasted that they could go through 
the city "like a dose of salts." 41 But a refluent wave of Union sentiment soon 
surged across the State. General Scott late in April created the Department 
of Annapolis, a belt twenty miles wide on each side of the Annapolis- 
Washington railway, with the iron-fisted Ben Butler in command, and placed 
all eastern Maryland, outside this belt, in the Department of Pennsylvania 
under Major General Robert Patterson. Baltimore began a grand- jury investi- 
gation of the riot. 42 When Hicks met the legislature in Frederick its members 
were overawed by the massing of Union forces and the strength of loyal senti- 
ment in the central and western counties. 

Baltimore was soon in an especially chastened mood, for the mob outbreak 
and flight of citizens caused a collapse of rents, realty prices, tax receipts, and 
trade. When businessmen asked the government to restore railway service, 
telegraphs, and mails, Secretary Cameron refused until Federal forces con- 
trolled the city and his own agents the railroad offices. Before the end of 
April, Fort McHenry had been heavily reinforced, Fort Morris garrisoned, 
and gangs of men put to work restoring the railway bridges. On May 5, 
Ben Butler's troops occupied the Relay House. Next day the Northern 
Central Railroad was in full running order, and a Union recruiting office 
was opened on Baltimore Street. Finally, on the night of May 12, Butler used 
a thousand men and a battery to occupy Federal Hill commanding the city, 
and seize some arms about to be shipped south. The movement was dramati- 
cally executed in thick darkness, amid a violent thunderstorm, the lightning 
gleaming on the fixed bayonets. 43 

Increasing numbers of troops poured into Washington. Throughout large 
parts of the North men had volunteered in throngs, anxious to serve before 

41 Morgan's letter, April 25, 1861, is in O. R. 1, ii, 600. 

42 O. R. I, ii, 607, 611. 

43 N. Y. Tribune) May 16, 1861, on Baltimore business troubles; Butler's Book, 227-230. 
The British consul, reporting to his government April 27 that many of the laboring classes 
were in a state of starvation, feared rioting and revolt, and sent his family to Philadelphia 
for safety; FO 5/778. 



gg THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

the short war ended. In Indiana, Governor Morton announced the day 
of Lincoln's call that he could forward 30,000 men instead of the six regi- 
ments requested. When a Massachusetts volunteer was asked in New York 
how many were coining, he replied: "How many? We're all a-coming." New 
York authorized the enlistment of 30,000 two-year men. Money, too, was 
poured out generously. Congress, in its anxiety to avoid provocative action, 
had made no special appropriation available before it adjourned. All loyal 
States, all large cities, and many towns, however, were ready to appropriate 
funds. What occurred in the Empire State was typical. While the common 
council of New York City on April 22 voted a million to equip regiments 
and half a million for the families of soldiers, a tumultuous city mass meeting 
appointed a Union Defense Committee which immediately raised large sums. 
The Brooklyn common council set aside $100,000 for the Thirteenth Regi- 
ment and its dependents. Rochester made available $130,500; Buffalo $50,000; 
Troy $10,000. All this was in addition to a State appropriation of three mil- 
lions signed by Governor Morgan a few days after Sumter. 44 

Men (untrained) and money were momentarily plentiful. But where were 
the arms, uniforms, tents, blankets, and camp kitchens? Where was the barest 
organization for feeding troops, drilling them, and nursing them when ill? 
What, above all, was to be the method of coordinating national, state, and 
local efforts, a vast jumble? 

Coordination moved like a rusty oxcart. The fate of Major-General John 
E. Wool, commander of the Department of the East, offers an example. He 
arrived in New York on April 22, and from quarters in the St. Nicholas 
Hotel threw himself into the work of providing arms and forwarding troops. 45 
He ordered the Federal quartermaster and commissary offices in New York 
to give transportation and thirty days' rations to each soldier bound for 
Washington; he conferred with the Union Defense Committee on plans for 
relieving the capital; he chartered transports and armed steamers for troops; 
he sent ammunition, gun carriages, and provisions to Fortress Monroe; he di- 
rected Governor Richard Yates in Illinois to send a force to seize possession of 
the arsenal in St. Louis (for his jurisdiction extended to the Mississippi); he 
telegraphed Frank P. Blair to aid the movement; he ordered heavy cannon 
and other war materials to Cairo; and when Ellsworth's Zouaves were held up 
by stupid State orders he sent them forward. He had efficient co-workers in 

44 O. R. I, iii, passim, for a wealth of material; N. Y. Tribune, April 23, 1861, for inter- 
views with volunteers; J. A. Stevens, ed., Minutes, Correspondence, and Reports of the Union 
Defense Committee (1885). Connecticut showed an equally militant temper. While the 
legislature voted two millions and guaranteed every soldier ten dollars a month in addition 
to Federal pay, Hartford raised $64,000, New Haven $30,000, and other places similar sums. 

45 Wool Papers, N. Y. State Library. 



THE NORTH LURCHES TO ARMS 9 

Chester A. Arthur, the State's assistant quartermaster-general, who from a 
downtown office arranged for feeding, clothing, and to some extent arming 
the soldiers, and John A. Dix, chairman of the Union Defense Committee. 
The Committee on April 31 adopted resolutions praising Wool's energy and 
ability, and the value of his long experience and military skill. 

But at that very moment Wool was ordered back to Troy; and when he 
asked why, Cameron replied that his emergency activities, while Washing- 
ton was cut off and could not be consulted, had seriously embarrassed the 
War Department! 46 

Shortages, confusion, and delays reigned paramount. Of small arms an 
apparently adequate supply existed on paper in public repositories, but for 
three reasons troops often went without them. Many were too poor to use, 
facilities existing for their distribution were weak, and Scott wished most of 
the best pieces kept for long-term troops, not issued to three months' militia 
to be abused and lost. The government had no cannon foundry. Uniforms, 
blankets, tents, and medical equipment were all in very short supply. Food 
was abundant, but its preparation and distribution were so poor that units 
detained in populous cities for example, Pennsylvania troops in Harrisburg 
and Philadephia were literally half-starved. The press soon reported that 
some companies in the capital itself had but two meals a day, and those of 
bread, fat salt pork, and water. Governors and adjutant-generals found it easy 
to write orders and sign contracts, but the arms and goods were slow to 
arrive. 

Even barracks and proper camps were wanting. Early in May the diarist 
George Templeton Strong found several hundred men stuffed into a building 
at Broadway and Fourth Street, the air mephitic and ammoniacal "I never 
knew before what rankness of stench could be emitted by unwashed hu- 
manity." 47 The installation of Washington troops in public buildings was 
eloquent of the slapdash improvisation of the time. Amid the general indis- 
cipline, it was no wonder that a private whose regiment was visited at the 
Capitol by Lincoln remarked saucily to the President: "Now, sir, stand by us, 
for we mean to stand by you." 

All over the country, the ninety-day regiments departed with the most 
rudimentary equipment. New York had better resources than some other 
States. Yet a large part of the Eighth New York went southward in citizens' 
dress and without arms. When the Thirteenth New York, the pride of 
Brooklyn, marched to its transport, about 200 of its 650 men were left be- 

46 Dix, Dix, II r i -i 6; George F. Howe, Arthur, 24; Stevens, Union Defense Committee, 
passim; O. R. I, ii, 160. 

47 Strong, Diary, III, 148. For difficulties of Mobilization see K. P. Williams, Lincoln 
Finds a General^ II, 796-800. 



90 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

hind because they had no muskets. The others had received them, with 
knapsacks and blankets, at the last hour. As for the Sixty-ninth New York, 
it embarked only after scenes of indescribable confusion. Men accepted and 
men still clamoring for acceptance had crowded early that morning into 
Prince Street. Here, in front of Colonel Corcoran's house, a large truck was 
stationed. "The rush at this point," wrote a reporter, "was perfectly tre- 
mendous, so eager were the men to obtain their equipment. The captain of 
each company was stationed on the vehicle, and here the acceptance or rejec- 
tion of the recruits occurred.' ' As each man was enrolled a blanket was thrown 
over him. He was passed to another man, who snatched off his hat and put a 
regimental cap on his head. Still another man thrust a musket into his hands, 
while others gave him a tin plate, knife, fork, and tin cup. 48 

The War Department was a scene of hurry, endless intensive work, un- 
certainty, and chaos. Cameron hired all the clerks and copyists his rooms 
could hold. He, the commissary-general, and the quartermaster-general kept 
their forces busy without reference to clocks. Some men stayed in the building 
twenty-four hours a day, gobbled food brought from a restaurant, and caught 
a few hours' sleep on a settee. Yet from troops everywhere still came reports 
of hunger, discomfort, and general mismanagement. 

Most serious of all was a conflict of views in high circles. General Scott 
thought that troops should be brought to Washington even if ill equipped; 
Secretary Cameron maintained that no large number should come until they 
had a full outfit for camp and field. Lincoln, deferential to Scott's military 
experience, inclined to take his side. 49 

[ VI ] 

It is in the light of these difficulties that we must weigh the question 
whether Lincoln erred in not calling at once for more than 75,000 ninety-day 
men. Douglas said that he would have called for 200,000. Greeley clamored 
for a large force. "Assuming that the crushing out of the rebellion is a ques- 
tion of time and cost only," the Tribune commented, "we hold it cheaper to 
employ 400,000 men in six months than 200,000 to close it up in a year." 
Lincoln might have been wiser to call for 100,000 or 150,000 men, and as- 
suredly should have made the term longer. But if a larger number had been 
demanded, the confusion, the hardships of ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed troops, 
and the public irritation over duplication, waste, and shortages, would have 
been multiplied. Moreover, the problem of costs was serious. As matters 

48 N. Y. Tribune, May 9, 1861; G. T. Strong, Diary, IE, 132; N. Y. Tribune, April 24. 

49 Meneely, War Department in 1861, 159 F. 



THE NORTH LURCHES TO ARMS ?I 

stood, Chase was despondent and harassed, uncertain whether money could 
be raised for exigent needs. The President underrated the formidability of 
the Confederacy, the determination and talent of its leaders; he hoped, with 
Seward, that the flame of revolt would still die down, and he feared that 
too threatening a military effort might affect border State sentiment ad- 
versely. 50 

In one decision, that not to call Congress into special session, Lincoln made 
no error. For several reasons it was wise to defer the session for ten weeks, 
and public opinion approved his course. 

It was necessary, first of all, to make sure that Washington was a safe 
place in which to sit. In the second place, he could do everything essential 
without Congressional action; in fact, during the emergency Congress would 
be rather an encumbrance than help. As a third consideration, key men of 
Congress would be summoned as wanted. Thus before the end of May, Sena- 
tor William Pitt Fessenden of Maine got a letter from Chase saying that 
Lincoln wished him and other important members of the Senate Finance 
Committee to come to Washington at once to help prepare financial measures. 
Finally, so long as Lincoln and Seward cherished even faint hopes of a peace- 
able conclusion and a restoration of the Union, they feared the loud hostility 
of radical-minded members of Congress to compromise measures. 

But action in Washington depended in great measure on action by the 
States in revolt. What, in these weeks, was the Confederacy doing? 

50 For discussion of this subject see Ropes, Story of the Civil War, I, in, 112; Comte de 
Paris, Civil War, I, Book II, Ch. IV; and such later writers as Fred A. Shannon, Organization 
and Administration of the Union Army, I, 3 iff. Ropes points out that Lincoln's call for 
75,000 was followed on May 3 by a call for 42,034 three-year volunteers, 22,714 men for the 
regular army, and 18,000 men for the navy. Altogether, this raised the available army to 
156,861 men, and the navy to 25,600 men, "certainly a very respectable force." Kenneth P. 
Williams has a judicious treatment of call for troops in Lincoln Finds a General, II, 796-800. 




The Confederacy at War 

THE ARDOR of the South after Sumter was as impressive as that of the 
North and the lack of hardheaded planning just as remarkable. Feeling was 
even more vehement, indeed, than above the Potomac. Since the South had 
no great cities, scenes of mass enthusiasm were impossible. But its young 
men had been even quicker to enlist, and its women more eager to applaud 
them. Its clergy were as ready to consecrate stands of colors, its propertied 
men as generous in subscribing to loans, as in New England. In all the towns 
bands played, military companies paraded, bonfires blazed, and orators 
harangued the crowds. 1 Rural districts were equally exuberant. John B. Gor- 
don, leading some North Georgia volunteers in coonskin caps from Atlanta 
to Montgomery, found the line of travel in unbroken uproar. Troops gath- 
ered at the stations under banners of strange device; fires lighted the hilltops; 
fife-and-drum corps shrilled and thumped; cannon exploded their salutes; 
and girls rushed aboard the cars to pin blue cockades on the men. 2 A war 
of resistance to tyranny, a struggle for freedom like that of 1776 so every- 
body believed. Sang ardent Henry Timrod: "Hath not the morning dawned 
with added light?" 

For the moment an astonishing unanimity seemed to possess most of the 
South. A Northern journalist traveling through the Gulf States found the 
Unionists "completely crushed out for the time." 3 In countless breasts, of 
course, affection for the old nation contended with loyalty to the new. In 
South Carolina the aged Alfred Huger melted into tears when he thought of 
the past; in Virginia the youthful John S. Wise watched the Stars and Stripes 
hauled down with indescribable emotions. Many dissenters were prudently 
silent. 4 But so convinced were most Southerners of the right of secession and 
so sternly did they condemn coercion that Lincoln's call for troops brought 

1 A. H. Bill, The Beleaguered City, 38, 39, pictures the excitement in Richmond. 

2 Gordon, Reminiscences, 10. 

3 Albert D. Richardson, letter in N. Y. Tribune, May 18 (dated May 10), 1861. 

4 Russell, My Diary, Chs. 13-17 deal with feeling in S. C.; Wise, The End of an Era, 160. 
The real extent of the Union feeling in the South will be considered later, 

9* 



THE CONFEDERACY AT WAR 93 

a wave of anger that overthrew all differences. In an instant, the editor of 
the Southern Literary Messenger told the novelist John P. Kennedy, the 
proclamation transformed 75,000 Virginia Unionists into bitter enemies of 
the United States. Conservative leaders of the Virginia convention turned 
about face. 5 

Instantly the center of Southern interest moved from Charleston to the 
Potomac. Jefferson Davis on hearing of Sumter telegraphed his congratula- 
tions: "All honor to the gallant sons of Carolina, and thanks to God for their 
preservation." But at once he sent further messages: the governor of Virginia 
was asking for troops, and the regiment at Columbia and a regiment from 
Charleston were needed on the James, for the defense of the northern bound- 
ary of the Confederacy had suddenly become a matter of extreme ur- 
gency. 

It was certain that Virginia would leave the Union, the only question 
being whether she would go at once or wait for the border States. Her con- 
vention went into secret session. Not only most delegates from the western 
counties, but some others, contended for delay. While they debated, mob 
excitement in Richmond rose until Union members feared violence; but the 
pause was brief. On April 17 the convention by the before-noted vote of 
88 to 55, with 10 members absent, passed an ordinance of secession, to be sub- 
mitted to the people May 23. Meanwhile the convention assumed supreme 
authority, and Governor Letcher ordered all military units to hold them- 
selves alert. A fresh wave of enthusiasm rolled over Richmond. John Tyler 
joined in addressing a "spontaneous people's convention" sitting in town; 
Letcher had the Confederate flag, with an eighth star for Virginia, hoisted 
over the capitol; and a nocturnal procession flowed through the streets, cheer- 
ing an orator who predicted the capture of Washington within sixty days. 6 

The alliance of Virginia and the Confederacy was quickly cemented by 
formal compact. When State leaders appealed to Montgomery for succor, 
Davis and the Cabinet prevailed on Vice-President Alexander EL Stephens 
to leave Georgia for Richmond on April 19. On his way north he spoke at 
station after station, insisting that Washington be taken as soon as possible. 
Though the South mingled aggressiveness with apprehension, the cry "On to 
Washington!" was fervently raised. Reaching Richmond on April 22, Stephens 
conferred with John Tyler and six other commissioners on a treaty of al- 
liance with the Confederacy, and addressed the convention, outlining Southern 

5 John R. Thompson to Kennedy, May 16, 1861; Kennedy Papers, Peabody Institute. 

6 Letcher had behaved with cool moderation; to an early mob in Richmond he said 
that their banners meant nothing to him, for Virginia was still one of the United States, 
and that the cannon they dragged was State property which they must restore at once. Hill, 
Beleaguered City, 39; Ann. Cyc. 1861, p. 735. 



94 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

policy. Already Richmond was so full of soldiers, with more pouring in by 
every train, that Governor Letcher soon had to stop the flow. 

On April 24 the alliance of Virginia and the Confederacy was signed. Next 
day the convention ratified it. This step, momentous in itself, was potent in 
its influence on North Carolina and Tennessee, still delaying action. 7 The old 
Dominion lent the cause a dignity it had not before possessed, and promised 
to bring new and valuable leaders to the government and army. 

That the South had spiritual qualities of its own which in several respects 
were superior to those of the North few impartial observers denied; and these 
qualities Virginia had once shown at their best. When Southerners asserted that 
they were maintaining a special way of life which independence alone could 
safeguard, they meant not only the social system based on slavery, but a 
dignity, repose, jealousy of personal honor, and courtesy that the hurried 
Yankee world could not match. They might be leisurely to the point of 
indolence, but their best circles stood closer to the Renaissance ideal of hu- 
manism; they might possess less social conscience than the Puritanic reformers 
of the North, but they had a mellower urbanity, and a keener sense of the 
romantic. Versatile Virginians like William Byrd and Thomas Jefferson had 
established the humanistic tradition of the South, and the Virginian John 
Esten Cooke had come nearest the spirit of Walter Scott. The slave-selling 
State of 1 86 1 had slipped downward, but it was still a proud State. 

[I] 

Like the North, the Confederacy underestimated the magnitude of the 
struggle before it. Until autumn, most people anticipated a short contest. 
When the Confederate Congress met on April 29 in Montgomery to deal 
with what Davis called a declaration of war by Lincoln, it showed a con- 
fident optimism. Davis in his message dwelt with pride on the response of 
the South to the crisis. Transportation companies had freely offered the use 
of their lines; a convention of Southern railway presidents in Montgomery 
had not only reduced the rates for men and munitions, but had offered to 
accept compensation in Confederate bonds; farmers, mechanics, and profes- 
sional men had all been eager to make sacrifices. Age and youth alike had 
rushed to the colors, and men of high civil rank had been willing to enlist as 
privates. We shall never be subjugated by arms, proclaimed Davis. He told 
Congress that he had 19,000 men under arms in various places, that 16,000 
more were being assembled in Virginia, and that under existing legislation 
bie planned to organize forces of 100,000, to be ready for instant action. He 
7 Davis, Rise and Fall, I, 328 ff. 



THE CONFEDERACY AT WAR 

asked for a new grade of command, that of general, to outrank the major- 
generals of various States. 8 

"You count without your host," a brother-in-law of Jefferson Davis had 
told Charles Sumner the previous winter; "when the fighting begins it will all 
be north of the Susquehanna." 9 This idea that the resistance of Northern 
Democrats to all Yankee war measures would defeat coercion quickly died. 
But the Southern muster of force was so prompt and exuberant that multi- 
tudes believed in a quick victory. Many Southerners were persuaded that in- 
asmuch as the North had grown rich at their expense, collecting fat brokerages 
and shipping charges, making fortunes by buying raw cotton cheap and selling 
cotton textiles high, and levying tariffs on Southern consumption, the Yankee 
economy would collapse after secession. "Look at the four hundred millions 
in Northern losses," exclaimed Alexander H. Stephens in May; "the leeches are 
now realizing whose wealth sustained them!" As news of the Northern business 
depression floated down, Southern editors gloated over the prospect of grassy 
New York streets. The South was one of the richest lands in the world, 
exulted the Richmond Examiner, and the North one of the poorest sixty- 
eight Boston bankruptcies in a week proved it. Many who did not go so far 
as this nevertheless held that much of the Northern strength was artificial, 
and that of the slave States basic and impregnable. While the Yankee world 
depended on manufactures for which the demand might wither overnight, 
the South relied upon farm commodities for which the market exceeded the 
supply. The Northern economy was topheavy, the Southern stable. 

We have already noted the allied concept, related to Napoleon's sneer at 
the nation of shopkeepers, that the commercial-minded Yankee lacked fight- 
ing spirit. To some the war lay between gentlemen and yeomen on one 
side, and "vulgar, fanatical, cheating counter-jumpers" on the other. Beaure- 
gard was convinced that the average Southerner was physically stronger than 
the average Northerner. "Yankee trash" was a familiar phrase, varied by sug- 
gestions that most New York soldiers were thugs and jailbirds. 10 Southern 
newspapers and letters of the spring of 1861 are full of vaunts that one Con- 
federate equaled five of Lincoln's "myrmidons," that a Southron (another 
favorite term) could whip a Yankee with one hand tied behind his back, 
and that Northerners could be defeated with children's popguns. Unfor- 
tunately, John B. Gordon later ruefully remarked, they wouldn't fight that 
way! Such gasconade is common in all wars, but in this one many Southerners 
believed it. 

8 Messages and Papers of the Coitfederacy, I. 
o Sumner to Duchess of Argyll, Boston, June 4, 1861, HL. 

10 W. H. Russell quotes both the counter-jumper phrase and Beauregardj My Diary, 
Chs. 1 8, 19. He notes also the thug-and-jailbird characterization, Ch. 30. 



9 6 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

"Just throw three or four shells among those blue-bellied Yankees," a 
Northern newspaper correspondent heard a young man tell a crowded car in 
North Carolina, "and they'll scatter like sheep." This correspondent was so 
pained by the oft-repeated declaration that Yankees were cowards that he 
almost rejoiced in the brilliant prospect the South enjoyed for learning the 
truth. 11 

Even if the North fought well, averred many Southerners, it could never 
subjugate a freedom-loving people who battled on the defensive for their 
homes and institutions. As Great Britain had failed in the Revolution, so 
Federal power must fail now. What did it cost the government to get fifteen 
hundred Seminole warriors out of the Everglades? demanded a Tennessee 
Congressman. Thirty millions! "When you talk of conquering States, the 
whole arithmetic fails of figures to count the cost." 12 Distance was a defense. 
Above all, a population of eight millions determined to die rather than yield 
could no more be beaten down than the Swiss had been by the Austrians, 
the English by the Armada, or the Dutch by Philip II. This belief had a 
poignant intensity. When John Tyler traced the Anglo-Saxon struggle for 
liberty and self-determination from Magna Charta down through Naseby 
and Saratoga to Sumter, he touched a vibrant chord. But all the defenses named 
might prove treacherous. 13 River and railroad could conquer distances; the 
"inside lines" of the South lost meaning when a Union army moved up the 
Tennessee into the heart of the Confederacy; and the North too could state 
principles which steeled the arm and exalted the spirit. 

When rugged John H. Reagan of Texas declared that if war came the 
South would show how brave men could die, Emory B. Pottle of New York 
uttered a rejoinder of ringing truth. "I do not doubt it," he told the House, 
"and I tell the gentleman that he knows little of the North if he thinks the 
example will be thrown away upon us. Sirs, you do injustice to our common 
ancestry if you doubt that we can meet the shock of battle upon equal terms 
with you. Who doubts the courage of either section?" While the Southerners 
had a greater taste for military pursuits, no statement was more fallacious 
than the frequent remark that they displayed a superior fighting ability. 14 

11 Gordon, Reminiscences, 7; Albert D. Richardson in N. Y. Weekly Tribune, May 18, 
'861. 

12 James H. Thomas in Cong. Globe, 36th Cong., id Sess., p. 437. 

13 Richmond Examiner, April 20, 21. 

14 Cong. Globe, 36th Cong., id Sess. (Jan. 25, 1861), 570. Perhaps the Southerners did 
tave a greater aptitude for war, for it is true they rode and shot better at first. But North- 
rners and Southerners were the same people, with essentially the same characteristics. If 
he Southerners possibly had a little more ardor, the Northerners possibly had a little more 
ndurance; but both statements are dubious. The best brief statement of the differences 
etween Northern and Southern troops is in Comte de Paris, I. He thinks the Northerner 
:>mewhat superior, as being better educated, and therefore more resourceful and quicker- 
linded, but he was a prejudiced witness. 



THE CONFEDERACY AT WAR 97 

The Southerners' faith in a short war derived much, finally, from their 
before-mentioned confidence in the power of cotton. From Jefferson Davis 
to the humblest farmer, countless men accepted the doctrine so often preached 
by James H. Hammond and others that cotton was king. A child can break a 
thread of cotton, wrote Benjamin H. Hill of Georgia, but on that thread 
hangs the world. 15 W. H. Russell, dining in Charleston, heard a Carolinian 
tell the British consul that England was a helpless subject of this potentate. 
"Why, sir, we have only to shut off your supply of cotton for a few weeks, 
and we can create a revolution in Great Britain." Even a steward on a 
Mississippi River steamboat assured Russell that all the world could not beat 
the South, for King Cotton was autocrat of Europe. 16 If the Upper South 
doubted his potency, in the Lower South few questioned the weight of his 
scepter. It was a dangerous theory, for it encouraged a policy which played 
into the hands of the Northern blockade. 

The wilder Southern utterances on this subject had long amazed Britons. 
"There is something truly astonishing," the London Economist had said in 
1851, "in the infatuations which seem to possess the Southern States of Amer- 
ica." If civil w r ar took place, "no bribes, however enormous, would induce 
the English people or any class among them, however interested in the 
result to lend its aid to a revolt which they believe to be utterly unpro- 
voked, the result of the worst political passions, and likely to end in the 
degradation of the Southern States." 

The London Spectator had spoken in similar terms. Lord Derby, head 
of the Conservative Party, quoting the Charleston Mercury on the power 
of cotton to make Britain recognize and even ally herself with a Southern 
republic, termed such statements the fruit of a distempered fancy. He warned 
Southerners that Britain would not intervene, that any reduction of the South- 
ern cotton supply would merely stimulate its cultivation from Brazil to India, 
and that they would find themselves hoist by their own petard. In the five 
years 1845-49, the South had supplied Britain with 84 per cent of her cotton 
requirements, and the rest of the globe had given her 16 per cent. In the five 
years 1855-59, the South had furnished but 76 per cent, and other countries 24. 17 

The cotton kingdom cherished its dream because it knew so little of 
European realities. Few Southerners were students of the economy of other 
nations; fewer still traveled attentively abroad or talked with foreign business- 
men. The fact that the South was provincial enabled the ignorant Governor 
R. K. Call of Florida to gain wide credence for his statement that Britain 

15 Quoted by Coulter, The Confederate States, 184, 185. 

1 6 Russell, My Diary, Chs. 14, 51. 

17 Full material on this subject may be found in a pamphlet, "Disunion and Its Results to 
the South," dated Washington, Feb. 18, 1861, of anonymous authorship; HL. It warned the 
South that King Wheat, King Corn, and other kings were more powerful than cotton. 



98 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

completely depended on the South. "A failure of our cotton crop for three 
years would be a far greater calamity to England than three years' war with 
the greatest power on earth." 1S 

[ II ] 

The second session of the Provisional Confederate Congress, a unicameral 
body whose members were appointed by the State secession conventions, 
sat in hot, humid, mosquito-ridden Montgomery from April 29, and dealt 
with problems of the utmost magnitude. It was a mediocre body, indebted 
to the secrecy of its sessions for its short-lived reputation for sense and 
courage. As one member remarked, it had few if any superior minds, and 
seldom held a debate marked by noteworthy wisdom. Its informality was 
reminiscent of Washington: the same want of dignity and earnestness, the 
same spectacle of feet on desks, dark-circled spittoons, buzzing gossipers, 
and lobby vultures sharpening their beaks. Most of the ability of the South 
was drained into the Army, Cabinet, and diplomatic service. In Howell Cobb 
as president it had an urbane leader until he left to pursue martial glory. 
Thomas S. Bocock of Virginia, who had once barely missed election to the 
national speakership, entered early in May. Others of repute included William 
Porcher Miles of South Carolina, Benjamin H. Hill of Georgia, and Louis 
T. Wigfall of Texas; in general, however, observers wondered why so many 
hacks had been chosen. 19 

Congress not only gave Davis the large force for which he asked, but 
permitted him to accept volunteers without State consent. It authorized an 
issue of $50,000,000 of 2o-year 8 per cent bonds, or, alternatively, an issue of 
$30,000,000 in such bonds and $20,000,000 in treasury notes, not bearing 
interest. It debated an embargo on the export of cotton by sea, and prohibited 
the payment of debts beyond the confines of the border States. Obviously, 
these enactments all possessed cardinal importance. 20 

The first gave the Confederacy the partial but only partial basis of an 
army bound to serve for three years unless it won an earlier peace. This was 
something the Union did not have for long months to come. Down to Sumter 

1 8 Letter of Governor R. K. Call of Florida to John S. Littell, pamphlet dated Feb. 12, 
[861; HL. 

29 See the sketch in T. C. DeLeon, Four Years in Rebel Capitals, 31, 32, and the full ac- 
count in E. M. Coulter, The Confederate States of America, Ch. VII. The United States 
ater published the Journals of the Confederate Congress in seven volumes, and the South- 
ern Historical Society has published press reports of proceedings. 

20 Coulter, the Confederate States, i34fL; Eaton, History of the Southern Confederacy, 
4 if.; Johnston and Browne, Stephens, 401-404. The Provisional Congress lasted from Feb. 
, 1861, to Feb. 17, 1862, holding five sessions. The first Congress, which was the first body 
lected by the people, met Feb. 18, 1862. W. C. Rives, a member, wrote scathingly of the 
'ro visional Congress to A. L. Rives, Aug. 14, 1861-, Rives Papers, Univ. of Virginia Library. 



THE CONFEDERACY AT WAR 

the Confederacy had been receiving militia and volunteers for six months or 
a year, and only by consent of their States. Now that the situation had radically 
changed, the President was authorized (May 8, 13) to receive up to 400,000 
men, without delaying for State permission, who would serve for three years 
or the duration. Recruits wishing to enlist for only six or twelve months 
might still come in as members of a State unit. An array of short-term, inter- 
mediate-term, and long-term troops therefore soon appeared at the front, 
some of them State volunteers, some militiamen, and some national volunteers. 
The resulting confusion and jealousy were serious. 

It would have been far better for the Southern cause could a uniform 
enlistment of three years have been prescribed. But Secretary Walker, whom 
Alexander H. Stephens called "rash in counsel, irresolute in action," and who 
haggled over prices when the Confederacy needed every gun it could obtain, 
furnished poor leadership; while Congress and the people could not believe 
in three years of battle and bloodshed. President Davis almost alone had pub- 
licly and constantly predicted a long and costly war. 21 For these prophecies, 
ardent advocates of secession had berated him as slow and conservative; now 
hotheaded patriots abused him as pessimistic and feeble-hearted. Vice-Presi- 
dent Stephens, at this stage in sympathetic rapport with Davis, also told 
everybody that the conflict would be prolonged and sanguinary, would re- 
quire the severest sacrifices, and would fail if the people did not show en- 
durance. He was similarly attacked. As the troops gathered, all exuberance 
and thirst for the clash of arms, many feared only that victory would be 
won before they could share it. Their elders anticipated a few fierce com- 
bats, and then a negotiated peace of independence. 

In passing its first financial measures, Congress again took shortsighted 
views. The new head of the Treasury, Christopher G. Memminger, a Char- 
leston attorney who had long been chairman of the finance committee of 
the South Carolina House, had methodical industry, but no particular ex- 
pertness, vision, or force of personality, and he also thought in terms of a 
short war. He had begun work in a bare room in Montgomery, unswept, 
uncarpeted, unfurnished, and without a cent of public money, so that even 
his desk and chair were paid for from his own pocket. His whole official term 
was to be a career of expedients, and the first emergency measures were 
typical of those to come. He made it plain that he expected no great immediate 
revenue from import or export duties, and not more than $15,000,000 the first 
year from direct taxes, which most of the States assumed anyway and paid 

21 Davis insists on this in his Rise and. Fall of the Confederate Government, with ample 
evidence; and his final speeches in the United States Senate show that he had a clear expecta- 
tion of a long, savage conflict. For Walker see C. A. Evans, Confederate Military History > 
L This fastidious Alabaman, disliking contractors, groaned: "No gentleman can be fit for 
office." 



I0 o THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

in their own notes. The seeds of a lusty inflation were sown in the market- 
ing of $50,000,000 of treasury notes. 

Happily for his power to meet the most immediate needs, he obtained 
some $560,000 in Federal cash and bullion from the mint and custom house 
in New Orleans, while various States, towns, and individuals Alabama in 
the van with $5,000,000 made loans or gifts. But it w r as clear even in the 
spring of 1 86 1 that the Confederacy would float to victory or defeat on a sea 
of paper. 22 Not until the spring of 1863 did Congress pass a comprehensive 
tax law too little and too late. 

The bill for an embargo on cotton was of course simply an application 
of the Confederate doctrine that King Cotton, by judicious squeezes on the 
British windpipe, could compel foreign assistance. We hold the aces, rejoiced 
the Charleston Mercury, and we shall bankrupt every cotton factory in Britain 
and France if those nations do not acknowledge our independence. Other 
newspapers advised the planters to keep the cotton on their plantations; thus 
it could neither fall into Union hands nor relieve that desperate European 
stringency which would soon force foreign intervention. The cotton mer- 
chants, the warehouse owners, the insurance writers, and the factors doing 
a brokerage business all united in urging retention of the great staple. Before 
long the principal British consuls in the South reported to the foreign office 
that planters and government were alike determined to carry through a plan 
of economic coercion: no cotton except in return for recognition and the 
breaking of the Northern blockade! The first bill for an embargo, with such 
popular feeling behind it, seemed certain to pass; so did later bills. 

But not quite. When embargo came to the point of enactment, an unseen 
but easily identifiable influence halted it. Jefferson Davis saw clearly that 
while the threat of such a law might effectively influence foreign opinion, 
actual passage would carry pressure too far. So unfriendly a measure would 
anger the British and French governments. The proper pose of the Con- 
federacy was that of an anxious friend of free commercial intercourse, only 
too ready to ship its staple abroad once the North permitted. The President 
therefore let Congress pass bills cutting off trade with the United States, 
and forbidding exports of Southern crops to Europe except through Southern 
ports, but he went no further. 23 

22 J. C. Schwab, The Confederate States, lofL Some Federal money and bullion were 
obtained at the Dahlonega (Ga.) mint, and the Charlotte (N. C.) assay office. The Con- 
federacy provided for a million dollars in interest-bearing notes in March, 1861. The total 
of specie on which it was able to lay hands during its whole existence amounted only to 
127,000,000. Schwab, 43. 

23 See Frank L. Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy, Ch. I. Congress did levy a duty of one- 
eighth of one per cent a pound on cotton exports, to pay the interest on early loans (Feb. 
28). Davis, Rise and Fall, I, 486; Schwab, 239, 240. 



THE CONFEDERACY AT WAR IOI 

The first civil policies of the government had thus been fairly well fixed 
when a convention in Raleigh unanimously passed a secession ordinance for 
North Carolina on May 20, and Virginia by overwhelming popular vote on 
May 23 decided in favor of leaving the Union. The w T ay was now open 
for a transfer of the capital of the Confederacy to Richmond. When Vice- 
President Stephens visited Virginia, he had all but promised that this step 
would be taken. The Virginia convention issued a formal invitation which 
filled most members of Congress with enthusiasm. They were heartily tired 
of Montgomery, with its wilting temperatures, pestiferous insects, and still 
hungrier lobbyists and office-seekers. The city's hotels were overcrowded, 
dirty, and ill served; the flies were fearful; the streets lifeless and uninteresting. 
Richmond by comparison was a metropolis. President Davis vetoed the bill 
for the transfer, but Congress at once repassed it. 24 

Some Southerners believed that strategic considerations pointed to the 
choice of a railway center less exposed to Federal attack: Lynchburg, Chat- 
tanooga, or Nashville. The arguments for Richmond, however, were over- 
whelming. The importance of the city as a rail and iron-manufacturing center, 
its Tredegar Works holding a national reputation, and the value of northern 
Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley as storehouses of grain, meat, and other 
supplies, made their defense absolutely vital. As it was certain that the most 
formidable army of the Confederacy would soon hold positions between the 
James and the Potomac, command could best be exercised from Richmond. 

Sentimental factors were also potent. Here on the historic James stood a 
handsome capitol building; here was Crawford's statue of Washington, with 
its attendant cluster of Virginia celebrities; here were spots hallowed by 
Jefferson, Patrick Henry, George Mason, Madison, and John Marshall. And 
finally, certain political arguments had great weight. Since part of the border 
area was still hesitant, since the Lower South had launched secession and many 
feared that the cotton kingdom would dominate the Confederacy, and since 
the primacy of Virginia in the Southern sisterhood could not be denied, 
Richmond was to be preferred above all other cities of the new nation. 25 

Howell Cobb predicted that Virginia soil would soon become a vast battle- 
ground, dyed with the blood of the bravest Southern heroes. Even those 
who derided his suggestion that at critical moments members of Congress 
might doff their togas and buckle on their armor, felt that the government 
could well gain from proximity to its forces. 26 Communications both north 
and south would be easier, and to plant the capital so far toward the front 

24 Bill, Beleaguered City, gives an interesting sketch of the transfer. 

25 Coulter, Confederate States, 100, 101. 

26 Speech at Atlanta May 22, 1861, Ann. Cyc., 140. 



I02 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

would show a sense of strength. At this date Stephens and others expected 
President Davis to take command of the Army of Virginia in person, and 
some believed that the brief, sharp conflict would be mainly confined to the 
Old Dominion. 27 It took time to reveal the disadvantages of an exposed posi- 
tion not quite no miles from Washington and close to tidewater. It also 
took time to show that the choice of Richmond had some unfortunate effects 
on the broad lines of Confederate strategy, for it reduced the scale of army 
movements, and it strengthened the natural tendency to favor Eastern as 
against Western demands. 

With a distinguished entourage, Davis left Montgomery on Sunday 
evening, May 26, for Virginia. All along the way, at Atlanta, Augusta, 
Wilmington, Goldsboro, and other towns, crowds assembled which, despite 
announcements that the President was ill and wished privacy, demanded 
speeches. Shouts of "The old hero!" and "We want Jeff Davis!" brought 
him out for a few fervent sentences. Having reached Richmond, he drove 
behind four white horses, between cheering banks of people, to the Spots- 
wood Hotel. The sound of saw and hammer vibrated from Capitol Hill, where 
buildings were being altered for the new government. Davis, with Toombs 
and the State Department and Memminger and the Treasury, took up offices 
in the former custom house. The War Department under Walker, with other 
departments and bureaus, found rooms in the ugly brick Mechanics' In- 
stitute, where the headquarters for Virginia troops occupied the top floor. 

[ HI ] 

Alexander H. Stephens, fierily addressing a crowd at Atlanta, told it that 
however long the struggle, triumph was certain. "We have now Maryland 
and Virginia and all the Border States with us. We have ten millions of 
people with us, heart and hand, to defend us to the death. We can call out 
a million people, if need be; and when they are cut down we can call out 
another, and still another ... a triumphant victory and independence, with 
an unparalleled career of glory, prosperity, and independence, await us." 2S 
But did the Confederacy really have the Border States? 

Once Lincoln called for troops, the secession of Virginia, North Carolina, 
Tennessee, and Arkansas was so certain that the Confederacy immediately 
treated all four as quasi-members. Although all had been fundamentally 
Unionist in sentiment, the hostility of all to coercion was overwhelming. 
What the ablest Southern religious editor, George McNeil of the North 

27 Johnston and Browne, Stephens, 403. 

28 N. Y. Tribune, May 9, 1861. 



THE CONFEDERACY AT WAR 

Carolina Presbyterian, had said of his State was essentially true of the others. 
After taking pains to ascertain popular feeling, McNeil had written an article 
addressed to the nation declaring that although three-fourths of the North 
Carolinians were anxious to preserve the Federal tie, while only one-fourth 
stood for secession, practically all of them would resist coercive action. "We 
have yet to see an individual who would tolerate an invasion of the South." 
In other States the secessionists had been a distinct minority. Tennessee had 
voted decisively against a convention to debate separation, and East Tennessee 
had voted four to one. In Arkansas the State Gazette had declared March 30 
that all informed men put the Union majority at fully 20,ooo. 29 History, 
wrote an agonized Virginian, would record that a majority in the Old Do- 
minion carried their struggle for national unity to the point of pusillanimity 
and dishonor. 30 But a great majority \vere against coercion. 

Why? If they believed in the Union and the Union was attacked, why 
join the assailants and not the defenders? Theoretically, because they did 
not believe in the indissoluble Union of which Washington repeatedly spoke, 
but in the dissoluble Union of John Taylor of Caroline. They held the com- 
pact theory of the Federal tie. Emotionally, because they felt themselves 
identified with the Lower South. Pragmatically, because they saw that slavery 
and other special economic interests which they shared with the cotton king- 
dom would be endangered by its defeat. But if they ever thought of them- 
selves as true Unionists they had a twisted logic and a confused set of loyalties; 
they should have called themselves tepid, conditional, and halfw r ay Unionists. 
Andrew Jackson would have applied more scorching adjectives. They had none 
of Jefferson's conviction, as expressed in a letter to Washington in 1792, that 
the rending of the Union into two or more parts would be an evil of incalculable 
proportions. 

In Virginia the result of the referendum at once became foregone. The 
most prominent "Union" men in Richmond, including several who had been 
emphatic in their assertions of attachment to the nation in recent public meet- 
ings, took their stand with Governor Letcher. John Baldwin of Augusta 
County, who had spoken powerfully for the Union in the convention, wrote 
the Staunton Spectator that their only hope now was in "making ready for 
the biggest fight that is in us." Only one Unionist leader of high rank re- 
mained unyielding; John Carlile, after resisting secession on the convention 
floor until adjournment, returned to western Virginia to lead the struggle 
against it there. Throughout the tidewater area a spirit of intimidation reigned: 

29 North Carolina Presbyterian, Nov. 24, 1860; Ann. Cyc. 1861, p. 678, for Tennessee; 
Arkansas State Gazette, March 30, 1861. 

30 Wm. Frazier, Rockbridge, Va., May 20, 1861, to Horatio King; H. King Papers, LC. 



WAR FOR THE UNION 

No Union man dared vote his convictions, and opposition to secession was 
measured only by absenteeism from the polls. Vigorous use was made of Sena- 
tor James Mason's letter stigmatizing antagonists as traitors, and of a judicial 
charge to a grand jury declaring that any citizen who adhered to the Federal 
government might be indicted for treason. 31 

Under these circumstances, the referendum was a farce; the State had really 
been out of the Union since April 17 and the plebiscite simply ratified a fait 
accompli. The soldiers voting in their camps, where any opposition voice 
would have been drastically silenced, were practically unanimous. The 
piedmont counties were almost as solidly for the ordinance as the tidewater 
area. Most localities in western Virginia were against it, but they stood alone. 
Had a fair, calm election been possible, Norfolk County, which sold much 
produce to Northern cities, and the counties around Washington, connected 
with the free States by commercial and social ties, would have polled a 
large Union vote, but prudence dictated abstention. "At Alexandria," wrote 
a Falls Church man who successfully stood for Congress this spring, "where 
there were really some four hundred Union men, only some forty votes were 
given for the nation"; the others were sullenly silent. 32 Many who voted for 
secession did so with long, sad thoughts. 

North Carolina seceded with a greater outward show of unanimity, but a 
deeper inner division. Even among the Democrats, few had tolerated a spirit 
of fire-eating radicalism. Non-slaveholding groups had long and energetically 
opposed the efforts of slaveholders to pass tax measures favorable to their 
own interests. W. W. Holden, the erstwhile secessionist editor of the North 
Carolina Standard, so changeable that he was called the Talleyrand of the 
State, had come over to the Union position. The proportion of slaveowners 
in the commonwealth was smaller than in its neighbors, and most of them 
held comparatively few hands. Among the Quakers and the small upcountry 
farmers abolitionist sentiment possessed great vigor. No State had more genuine 
reluctance before Lincoln's call for troops, just as none after joining the 
Confederacy contributed more valorously to the cause. 33 

When Lincoln issued his call, Governor John W. Ellis not only denounced 
him for warring upon popular liberties, but seized the arsenal at Fayetteville, 
with 37,000 small arms and 3,000 kegs of powder, the mint at Charlotte, and 
three forts on the coast; asked for the enrollment of 30,000 men; and promised 

31 Beverley B. Munford, Virginia's Attitude Toward Slavery and Secession; C. H. Ambler, 
History of West Virginia. Files of the National Intelligencer throw special light on the 
Virginia struggle. 

32 Letter of Charles H. Upton in N. Y. Tribune, May 28, 1861. 

33 C. C. Norton, The Democratic Party in Ante-Bellum N. C. (1931), passim; Elizabeth 
Y. Webb, "Cotton Manufacturing in North Carolina 1861-65," N. C. Hist. Rev. y (April, 
1932), 117-137. 



THE CONFEDERACY AT WAR 

the Confederacy a regiment. Holden swung back to secession in an editorial, 
"We Must Fight." A special legislative session arranged the election of a 
convention on May 13, which eight days later unanimously passed a seces- 
sion ordinance. For the moment most opposition was overborne, although 
some old Whigs, like George Badger, grumbled over the methods used, and 
would have preferred a declaration of independence to one of secession. 
Here, as in Virginia, true Unionists held their tongues. Jonathan Worth, a 
leader of special elevation who had lately written that nineteen-twentieths 
of the people he saw were for the old national tie, now sadly recorded: 
"The voice of reason is silenced. Furious passion and thirst for blood con- 
sume the air." He still believed that no separate government could ever be as 
good as the united nation men were pulling down. 34 

Tennessee in the last Presidential election had given John Bell, champion of 
the Constitution and the Union, a decisive majority over Breckinridge. At a 
Nashville meeting shortly before Lincoln's inauguration, Bell had expressed 
the hope that all would yet be well with the nation. Large parts of the State 
were as much opposed to a rupture of the national bond as Ohio or Pennsyl- 
vania. The Nashville Democrat, defending the Union to the last, declared that 
leaders of the Deep South had plotted to betray the border. "We must ex- 
pect that the cottonocracy will attempt to precipitate a war with the General 
Government, with the express purpose of dragging Tennessee into their 
meshes." 35 The popular vote taken to elect a convention had indicated that 
approximately 92,000 of those who voted were in favor of the Union, and 
only 25,000 for abandoning it. 

It therefore required determined effort by the secessionist governor, Isham 
G. Harris, a radical proslavery attorney of force and ability, and by the se- 
cessionist majority in the legislature, to carry Tennessee rapidly into the 
Confederacy. When Harris informed Lincoln that the State would raise 
50,000 men, if necessary, to defend Southern rights, influential citizens pub- 
lished an address urging a neutral stand. Harris convoked the legislature only 
to confront a hostile minority. An ordinance for submitting independence 
to popular vote passed the Senate 20 to 4, but the House only 46 to 21, and 
another ordinance for an alliance with the Confederacy met similar dissent. 
Actually Harris was staging a coup d'etat, for the legislature had no authority 
to vote an alliance. This measure (May i) committed Tennessee to the Con- 
federate cause, just as a law to raise an immediate force of 25,000, with a re- 
serve of 30,000, and to issue bonds for $5,000,000, committed it to military 

34 J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, Correspondence of Jonathan Worth, I, 99, 149. Holden in 
the Standard on Feb. 15, 1861, predicted that secession and war would end in abolition of 
slavery, repudiation of debts, general beggary, and military government. 

35 Quoted in Havana, El., Squatter Sovereign^ Feb, 28, 1861. 



I0 6 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

action. When the referendum was taken on June 8, the people went to the 
polls without real power to decide the result. As in Virginia, they could only 
ratify a fait accompli. Nevertheless, 47,238 voted no, as against 104,913 voting 
yes, and in East Tennessee the result was 32,923 for the Union, 14,780 against 
it. 36 

Like Virginia and North Carolina, Tennessee had such strong bonds of 
blood, social similarity, and economic interest with the Lower South that she 
was certain to join it. But East Tennessee, had Northern forces been within 
reach, might well have done what West Virginia did to remain in the Union. 

The situation in Arkansas presented some unusual features. There, as in 
other border States, many slaveholders had been conservative Unionists. It 
was the slaveholding districts that had voted most strongly for Bell or Douglas, 
while northern and northwestern Arkansas, an area of small farmers with few 
slaves, had given Breckinridge his small majority. Among the well-to-do the 
old Whig tradition remained strong, while many believed that secession 
would jeopardize slavery. After Lincoln's election, however, the slaveholding 
counties caught fire from the revolt of the cotton kingdom, while the hillier 
sections showed a strong attachment to the nation. Doubtless the small farmers 
had voted for Breckinridge as an expression of Southern sentiment, but now 
realized that they would fare much worse in a divided than a united coun- 
try; doubtless also the slaveholders, while actuated largely by sectional emo- 
tion, were now inclined to believe that their human property would be safer 
in the Confederacy than in Lincoln's Union. At any rate, the voting on the 
Presidency and then on secession showed that in the two distinct geographical 
areas of Arkansas an abrupt change of alignment took place in the winter and 
spring of 1 860-6 1. The planters who had so largely stood for Bell or Douglas 
now ardently espoused the Confederate cause, while the farmers of north- 
western Arkansas in particular turned to a staunch Federal allegiance. 

The governor of Arkansas bade Lincoln expect no troops, and prepared 
to lead the people in resisting Northern "usurpations." The State convention 
which had recently adjourned was hastily reassembled (May 6). As it passed 
an ordinance of secession with a shout, one former Union delegate after 
another rose to declare his entire loyalty to the South. The convention au- 
thorized the governor to call out 60,000 men (an inflated figure, for the white 
population was under 325,000!), and to issue $2,000,000 in bonds. State troops 
seized Fort Smith. No referendum now being deemed necessary, on May 18 
Arkansas formally joined the Confederacy. But as in Tennessee, a stubborn 
opposition simmered under the surface an opposition that was to make the 

36 J. W. Fertig, The Secession and Reconstruction of Tennessee; J. W. Patton, Unionism 
and Reconstruction in Tennessee; Ann. Cyc. } 1861, pp. 679-683. 



THE CONFEDERACY AT WAR IO? 

area adjoining Kansas a Union stronghold, and that was eventually to rally 
behind the one brave delegate who risked his life by voting no on secession, 
Isaac Murphy, and lift him to the governorship of the reconstructed State. 37 
Altogether, the secession of the Upper South, adding four new stars to the 
Confederate flag, was a very different process from that of the cotton king- 
dom. Instead of a reckless surge of emotion we meet anxious deliberation, 
anguish of heart, a bitter clash of opinion, and dark forebodings of the future. 
We meet men who flung sternly reproachful cries at the North: "We struggled 
so long, we sacrificed so much! and now your measures leave us no choice." 
We meet other men who addressed the Confederate leaders with yet more 
passionate rebukes: "We fought so hard for your rights, we gained so much 
and held such firm expectations of gaining more! and now you drag us into 
a needless war, where we must stand the brunt of invasion, and our sons must 
die for your desperate policies." We meet States almost or quite torn physically 
asunder by the uncontrollable forces of the time. We meet the finest spirits 
and ablest generals of the South, thrust, they believed, into decisions which 
were at once disastrous and unavoidable. Here in the wide borderland lay the 
most poignant tragedy of a tragic period. 

[IV] 

One of the finest spirits who felt constrained to an unhappy choice, Robert 
E. Lee, sent on May 5 a letter to a Northern girl who had requested his 
photograph. "It is painful," he wrote, "to think how many friends will be 
separated and estranged by our unhappy disunion. May God reunite our 
severed bonds of friendship, and turn our hearts to peace! I can say in sincerity 
that I bear animosity against no one. Wherever the blame may be, the fact 
is that we are in the midst of a fratricidal war. I must side either with or 
against my section or country. I cannot raise my hand against my birthplace, 
my home, my children. I should like, above all things, that our difficulties 
might be peaceably arranged, and still trust that a merciful God, who I know 
will not unnecessarily afflict us, may yet allay the fury for war. Whatever 
may be the result of the contest, I foresee that the country will have to pass 
through a terrible ordeal, a necessary expiation perhaps for our national sins. 
May God direct all for our good, and shield and preserve you and yours!" 38 

The tide of secession, running with such fresh force after Sumter, gave 

37 L. L. Harvin, "Arkansas and the Crisis of 1860-61" (MS Master's Essay, Univ. of 
Texas) covers the subject in detail. See also David Y. Thomas, Arkansas in War and Recon- 
struction. The secessionists in Arkansas had been watching events, ready to seize any op- 
portunity. 

38 Private source; not "my section of country," as Freeman, Lee, I, 475, has it. 



I0 8 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

the South many of the ablest officers of the army and navy. In all, nearly 
a third of the nation's commissioned military men, 313 in number, resigned. 
The War Department offices were also partly stripped. Of ninety regular 
employees there in 1860, thirty-four were gone by midsummer of 1861. 
Three had died, and some had perhaps been displaced for age, ill health, 
or political reasons, but most of them had left to join the South. 39 

Among the resignations those of Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, E. 
Kirby-Smith, Franklin Buchanan, and Matthew Fontaine Maury were longest 
remembered. Those of lesser stature included Colonel Samuel E. Cooper, the 
adjutant-general, and Major John Withers, assistant adjutant-general. Cooper's 
course awakened the keenest censure in the North, for he had been born in 
New Jersey; his mother was a New Yorker, his father a Massachusetts man; 
he had entered West Point from New York, had played an efficient part in 
the Seminole and Mexican wars, and had spent nearly ten years in his im- 
portant post. But the influence of his Virginia wife, sprung from the George 
Mason family, his Virginia home, and his close friendship with Jefferson Davis, 
proved paramount. He became adjutant- and inspector-general of the Confed- 
eracy, to serve throughout the war. Colonel Lorenzo Thomas, who took his 
place, was nearly sixty, more experienced, and more energetic, but vain, un- 
stable, and of poor judgment. 

Highly creditable to Joseph E. Johnston was the mental anguish he suffered 
in deciding to resign. This gallant soldier, shrewd, cautious, systematic, was a 
Virginian through and through, his father a soldier under "Light-Horse Harry" 
Lee, his mother a niece of Patrick Henry. But since graduation from West 
Point his whole life had been given to the Union. He had been wounded five 
times in the Mexican War; he had been first to plant a regimental flag on 
the walls of Chapultepec; he had been a staff officer with the Utah expedi- 
tion, and in 1 860 had become quartermaster-general of the army. Officers who 
consulted him in the spring of 1861 found him pacing up and down his 
Washington office in deep thought, his fine head bent forward, his absorption 
so complete that he had to be addressed several times before he awoke. One 
visitor heard him muttering to himself in painful perplexity. Overwrought, 
he exploded at the slightest interruption. Finally, on April 22, when Virginia's 
departure was certain, he closeted himself with Secretary Cameron. 

"I must go with the South," he said, in effect, "though the action is in the 
last degree ungrateful. I owe all that I am to the government of the United 
States. It has educated me and clothed me with honor. To leave the service 
is a hard necessity, but I must go. Though I am resigning my position, I 

39 A. Howard Meneely, The War Department, 2861, 106-109. The Cameron Papers and 
Gideon Welles Papers, LC and NYPL, contain much on the resignations. 



THE CONFEDERACY AT WAR 

trust I may never draw my sword against the old flag." He wept, and tears 
stained his cheeks as he hurriedly left the room. 

Major E. Kirby-Smith, a son of Florida whose army experience and con- 
nections were chiefly in the South and Southwest, had resigned early, but with 
only less travail. He wrote his mother that he had broken all the ties that 
bound him to the army "not suddenly, impulsively, but conscientiously and 
after due deliberation." He was the youngest man in the force to be senior 
major of his regiment, twenty years in advance of his contemporaries. "I sac- 
rifice more to my principles than any other officer in the Army can do." But 
he would rather carry a musket in the cause of the South than be commander- 
in-chief under Mr. Lincoln. He departed with a State that the Union had 
bought with national funds. 40 

Robert E. Lee reached his critical decision much more easily, for as his 
principal biographer writes, it was the product of instinct, not deep reflection. 
He was too clearsighted not to recognize the true character of the movement 
in the cotton kingdom. Writing his wife in January, 1861, he had said that if 
the upper tier of States trusted the Gulf secessionists, they would be "dragged 
into the gulf of revolution." The word "dragged" was deliberately chosen. 
The same month he wrote his son Fitzhugh that secession was naught but 
revolution. "The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor, 
wisdom, and forbearance in its formation and surrounded it with so many 
guards and securities, if it was intended to be broken up by every member of 
the Confederacy at will. It is intended for 'perpetual union,' so expressed in 
the preamble, and for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which 
can only be dissolved by revolution or the consent of all the people in conven- 
tion assembled. It is idle to talk of secession." He had recently been made 
colonel of the First Cavalry, and brought to Washington to be near head- 
quarters. To friends he said that he had a profound contempt for the business 
of secession. 41 

40 On Johnston see Cobb's MS Reminiscences of Washington in 1861, Cameron Papers, 
LC. Johnston wrote in resigning that he hoped some thirty years 7 service, "with as much 
labor, hardship, danger, and loss of blood as the duties of the military service in this country 
often imposed, may be thought to entitle me to early consideration of this communication." 
Letter of April 22, 1861; extra-illustrated set of Battles and Leaders, HL. Johnston was the 
only general officer who went to the South from Federal services; Lee was a colonel. But 
Johnston was a staff, not a field officer, a fact which entered into the subsequent disputation 
about rank. Gov. Letcher made him a major-general of Virginia troops two days after Lee 
got a similar appointment. Kirby-Smith's letters to his mother, written from Texas March 3, 
March 25, 1861, in the Kirby-Smith Papers, Univ. of N. C., are illuminating. While the 
family name appears to have been Smith, I follow the DAB form of Kirby-Smith. 

41 On the events leading up to Lee's resignation the letters in Fitzhugh Lee's life are 
illuminating, but Fitzhugh's comment is misleading, and Long's life is a better guide. Douglas 
Freeman states that Lee decided by instinct, without thought; see both his life and his 
DAB article. Lee's own story is given in his letter to Reverdy Johnson, Feb. 25, 1868, in 



no THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

After this, why did he act (as he measurably did) against his own convic- 
tions? Unquestionably, because of State and local loyalties, family affections 
and interests, and personal ties too strong to be sundered. Winfield Scott, who 
not only thought Lee the ablest officer in the army, but had a warm personal 
fondness for him, openly avowed his desire to have him made the principal 
Union field commander. Lincoln and Cameron were ready to accept this 
judgment, but so uncertain of Lee's fidelity to the Union that they asked old 
Francis P. Blair to talk with him. The two met at Blair's house on April 18. 
Lee's answer was unhesitating. He declined Lincoln's quasi-offer, stating 
frankly that although opposed to secession and deprecating war, he could 
take no part in an invasion of the South. He did consent to discuss the subject 
with Scott, and went directly to his headquarters, but again said no firmly. 42 

Meanwhile, Virginia had left the Union, and the president of the Virginia 
convention informed Lee that, at the instance of Governor Letcher, it wished 
to make him commander-in-chief of the Commonwealth forces. On April 20 
he presented his resignation, writing that it would have been offered earlier but 
for the struggle it had cost him to separate himself from what? Not from the 
Union, of which Virginia had been the strongest pillar in Washington's day, 
but "from a service to which I have devoted the best years of my life and all 
the ability I possessed." Hurrying to Richmond, he received an ovation in 
which all the State leaders joined, and took up his command April 23. 

How tremendous a loss the North incurred in Lee's departure it took time 
to reveal, although many men partly divined it at once. His decision naturally 
aroused intense Northern bitterness. Erstwhile friends renounced him, the press 
compared him with Benedict Arnold, and admirers of his father-in-law, the 
late George Washington Parke Custis, speculated on the grief that his choice 
would have given to that adopted son of Washington. We can easily under- 
stand and sympathize with his course. But it was no allegiance to the Con- 
federacy that he felt, no sympathy with basic Confederate principles; it was 

J. W. Jones, Life and Letters of Robert E. Lee, 131, 132. John Hay heard a friend of Lee's 
say in 1863 that he had expressed utter contempt for secession right up to his departure; 
Diaries and Letters, 70. Other sources of prime value are Nicolay and Hay, IV, 97 ff .; Smith, 
The Blair Family, II; Simon Cameron in Cong. Globe, Feb. 19, 1868; and Montgomery 
Blair's letter to "William Cullen Bryant, National Intelligencer, Aug. 9, 1866. Most lives of 
Lee are less than candid on his deep aversion to secession and to the intrigues of the cotton 
kingdom leaders. 

42 Lee inherited his State loyalty. His father, "Light-Horse Harry," had exclaimed: 
"Virginia is my country. Her I will obey." S. F. Horn, The Robert E. Lee Reader, 1 5. But 
that George Washington would have been horrified by his exaltation of State above nation 
we may feel morally certain. It was perfectly true also that, as Edward Everett wrote, 
officers of the army and navy were servants of the government in a peculiar sense. Unlike 
civil officers, they were engaged and maintained for life, and a State government had no 
more right than the British government to discharge them from the service. Everett to 
Charlotte Wise, April 26, 1861; Everett Papers, MHS. 



THE CONFEDERACY AT WAR lll 

simply loyalty to the proud Old Dominion with which the Lees had for nearly 
two and a half centuries been associated. Nobody today dreams of question- 
ing Lee's sincerity, devotion to duty, or nobility of mind. Winfield Scott had 
said, "He is true as steel, sir! true as steel!" But we may well question whether 
the man who thus preferred State to nation did not lack a certain largeness of 
view, did not respond to a parochial type of patriotism, and did not reveal an 
inadequate comprehension of the American destiny. 43 

Maury was actuated by the same motives that sw r ayed Lee. Loving the 
Union, detesting secession, and hoping to the last for compromise, he believed 
that his primary allegiance lay with his birth State Virginia and his home 
State Tennessee. The line of duty, he had written on March 4, was clear: 
"Each one to follow his own State, if his State goes to war; if not, he may 
remain to help on the work of reunion." ** Three days after Virginia seceded 
he left for Richmond to be commissioned, at fifty-five, commander in the 
Confederate navy. 

Franklin Buchanan showed decidedly less principle. He too loved the 
Union, rejected the doctrine of secession, and condemned the course of the 
cotton kingdom. But he loved his native Maryland, where he had relatives and 
property, felt a horror of abolitionists, freesoilers, and coercionists, and as 
Gideon Welles observes, was much courted and caressed by Southern sym- 
pathizers. As head of the Washington navy yard he had moved in a society 
predominantly slaveholding. The day after the Baltimore riot he handed 
Welles his resignation, saying that he could never stand idly by while Mary- 
land blood flowed in the streets of his native city; and he offered his services 
to Governor Hicks. When it became clear that Maryland was not going out, 
after all, he tried to withdraw his resignation, but Welles curtly informed 
him that it was too late. September found him a captain in the Confederate 
navy. 45 

These accessions greatly strengthened the Confederacy. Lee was worth an 
army in himself. Not all the officers from the Upper South, however, valued 
State above nation. In the most anxious April days a Virginia committee headed 
by the venerable Judge John Robertson called on Winfield Scott at his head- 
quarters. The two men had been fellow students at William and Mary in 1806! 
But Scott instantly stopped his old college mate: "Friend Robertson, go no 
further! It is best that we part here, before you compel me to resent a mortal 
insult." 4e David Glasgow Farragut, a Tennessean by birth and for forty years 

43 See Lossing's caustic personal comment in his Civil War, I, 421, 422; Washington corre- 
spondence in N. Y. Tribune, May 9, 1861. 

44 D. F. M. Corbin, Matthew Fontaine Maury, iS6. 

45 Charles Lee Lewis, Admiral Franklin Buchanan, Ch. 12 ff. 

46 Townsend, Anecdotes of the Civil War, 4, 5. 



I I2 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

a Virginian by residence, kept his uniform, broke with his friends, and sent his 
family North. 

So too, at Carlisle Barracks another Virginian, George H. Thomas, colonel of 
the Second Cavalry, maintained his allegiance. His sisters never forgave him. 
Philip St. George Cooke, colonel of the Second Dragoons, stayed in the Union 
Army with a vitriolic denunciation of the Catilines of the Deep South. The 
oligarchs of South Carolina, he wrote, had made themselves leaders in revolu- 
tion and ruin; aided by demagogues and rebellious spirits, they had dragged 
or dragooned the reluctant voiceless people of six other States into line; and 
now they were lighting the torch of war for the whole South. "I owe Virginia 
little; my country much." 47 John Newton and John W. Davidson, both 
Virginians and both destined to be major-generals, stood fast by the Union. 

For its navy the Confederacy gained less than for its army. Southern youth, 
prizing an army career, had displayed much less taste for the sea. Of all grades 
and branches, 322 naval officers resigned, some of them men of high ability. At 
the Annapolis Academy an assistant professor wrote Welles that he was sure 
of the loyalty of but five men out of forty officers and other gentlemen 
employed there. A great majority stuck with the flag, however, while the 
merchant marine offered a reservoir of experienced captains and mates on 
which the North, but not the South, could draw. 48 

[ V] 

Virginia had hardly seceded when military action began on its borders, 
Washington by late April was too strongly held to be attacked. But State 
troops, under Letcher's orders, at once moved against the valuable Harpers 
Ferry armory and arsenal, and the Gosport Navy Yard near Norfolk, with its 
dock, storehouses, and nine warships. As we have noted, the tiny force 
guarding Harpers Ferry fired the buildings and made a hurried retreat. At 
Gosport the Cutnberland, the only ship in commission, was hastily towed to 
safety. All other property the vessels Neu> York, Pennsylvania., Merrimac, 
and others, with provisions, cordage, and machinery was consigned to flames 
on the zoth in a spectacular conflagration. The most valuable vessel, the 
Merrimac, would have been extricated, for she had steam up ready to move, 
but that the cowardly commandant of the navy yard suddenly revoked his 
permission. While the North felt deep humiliation over these losses, Virginia 
disunionists thrilled with exultation. 

The eight weeks following Sumter witnessed a defiant convergence of 

47 See the long letter by Philip St. George Cooke dated June 6, 1861, in the National In- 
telligencer, June 22, 1 86 1. 

48 J. R. Soley, The Blockade and the Cruisers, 8. 



THE CONFEDERACY AT WAR II3 

Southern troops upon Virginia. When Jefferson Davis installed himself in 
Richmond, armies were assembling at Harpers Ferry, covering the Shenandoah 
Valley, under Joseph E. Johnston; at Manassas, covering the direct approach 
from Washington, under P. G. T. Beauregard; and at Norfolk, covering the 
peninsula between the James and York Rivers, under Benjamin Huger and 
John Magruder. The whole South hummed like a hive of angry bees. Govern- 
ment officers traveling to the new capital wrote that the country seemed one 
vast camp. The main distributing points were Richmond and Lynchburg, 
where troops arrived at the rate of 4000 a week. Every train came laden with 
soldiers and supplies. What was most needed was one directing mind, for 
until June the Virginia army and the Confederate forces had separate heads. 49 

Like the first Northern recruits, the Confederate levies were a motley host. 
Most of them were young, and many mere boys; all but a sprinkling of veterans 
of the Mexican and Indian wars were completely raw; and they were generally 
ill clad, ill armed, and ill disciplined. The gentlemanlike militia companies of 
Charleston, Richmond, and other cities presented the best appearance, and 
volunteers from the backwoods and poor-white areas made the worst. "To see 
from a distance a mass of these dirty, tobacco-chewing, drinking, swearing, 
smoking, fetid troops," wrote one observer, "almost leads one to think that the 
swamps of the Carolinas have become locomotive swamps, as it were, made 
flesh." The rush to arms had carried into the ranks a good many professional 
and businessmen who would tarry there but a short time. One company at 
Harpers Ferry had for captain a Mexican War officer, for first lieutenant a 
former member of Congress, for sergeant a judge, and for corporal a former 
United States consul, while the rank and file included lawyers, physicians, and 
planters. 

Camp Lee on the outskirts of Richmond gathered regiments of weird 
variety, all in exuberant spirits and athirst for battle. The First Texas, flying 
the Lone Star flag, a unit later to grow into Hood's renowned Texas Brigade; 
the New Orleans Tigers under the pelican banner; a Zouave unit from Louisiana 
in scarlet trousers, blue shirts, and richly embroidered jackets; the Third 
Alabama, smartly uniformed, with a hundred body servants and a mountain of 
baggage; Georgia troops in green-trimmed butternut, and Mississippians under 
the magnolia ensign all fraternized with Virginia lads. One regiment aroused 
special enthusiasm: the Maryland Guard, its members straggling in by various 
routes, but all in blue-and-orange Zouave uniforms. Richmond was soon alive 
with lank North Carolinians, longhaired Arkansans, Tennessee mountain- 

49 Files of the Richmond Whig and the Baltimore South; Kirby-Smhh Papers, Univ. 
of N. C. (he was stationed first at Lynchburg and then at Harpers Ferry) ; Richmond corre- 
spondence, N. Y. Daily Tribune, May 27. 



II4 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

eers with fringed leggings, and citified young men from St. Louis and Nash- 
ville. Many carried bowie knives or pistols, nearly all drank, and they made 
fatal duels and affrays commonplace. 

While most officers were of superior character, the coarseness, ignorance, 
and rowdiness of many privates disheartened onlookers. Richmond citizens 
soon grew disillusioned. Ruffians as well as gallants had leaped to the flag. The 
New Orleans Tigers included brass-knuckled, dagger-carrying desperadoes, 
the scourings of the New Orleans levee; the Maryland Guard had some Bal- 
timore plug-uglies; tough frontiersmen and drunken young planters swelled 
the host. As in Washington, so in Richmond saloons, brothels, and gambling 
dens began to flourish as never before. Robberies and assaults swamped the 
police. It was necessary to confine the Tigers to a separate camp. Richmond 
began to realize that if she was the heroine of a rich historical pageant, her 
house was no longer her own, and for better or worse all Virginia was tied to 
the Lower South. 50 

Officers in the Mississippi Valley, refusing to concede that Virginia would 
be the main seat of war, prepared to fight on a broad front. New Orleans built 
a breastwork of cotton bales along the levee, armed and manned 1 2 river steam- 
boats, and by May 15 enlisted 2,000 men. The personnel of a Baton Rouge 
company indicated the popular character of the first response: 25 mechanics, 
24 merchants and clerks, n farmers, 9 planters, 4 engineers, i lawyer, and 
1 1 miscellaneous. More than a third of this company had been born abroad, and 
more than a seventh in the North. Gideon J. Pillow, hero of the Mexican War, 
was expected soon to lead an irresistible army of Valley boys to the rescue of 
Kentucky and the conquest of southern Illinois. By mid-May the Confederate 
forces, moving northward from Memphis to New Madrid and Belmont on the 
Missouri side of the Mississippi, were confronting some 5,000 Union troops 
at Cairo. 

But the South, even more than the North, was fearfully lacking in equip- 
ment. Men cried "To arms!" but there were no arms, no cannon, no uniforms, 
no medical supplies, beyond those hastily and scantily scraped together. Josiah 
Gorgas, a man of quiet resourcefulness amounting to genius, reported on May 
7 that not quite 160,000 small arms of all kinds were available in the various 
public repositories within the seceded or seceding States. This included about 
15,000 rifles and 120,000 muskets stored in various arsenals east of the Mis- 
sissippi, a few thousand more in arsenals west of the Mississippi, and a small 
body of arms belonging to States and military organizations. 51 But many of 

50 Bill, Beleaguered City, 149-152; Richmond correspondence in N. Y. Tribune, May 27, 
1861; Bell I. Wiley, Johnny Reb. 

51 William Watson, Life in the Confederate Army; Report to Chairman F. S. Bartow 
of the Cong. Committee on Military Affairs; Jefferson Davis, North American Review, 
vol. 149 (Oct., 1889)9 p. 476. 



THE CONFEDERACY AT WAR II5 

the arms were defective, many so antiquated that they were more dangerous 
to the holder than the foe, and many out of reach. At Harpers Ferry the 
Virginia troops seized some 5,000 muskets, and what was far more valuable, 
part of the machinery for making more. At the Norfolk navy yard about 500 
cannon, good, poor, or totally unusable, were captured. Of ammunition the 
South was desperately short. 

From every post rose the same complaints. "Words cannot express to you 
our deplorable condition here," wrote Kirby-Smith from Harpers Ferry- 
May 29, "unprovided, unequipped, unsupplied with ammunition and pro- 
visions. . . . The utter confusion and ignorance presiding in the councils of 
the authorities that were is without a parallel." At Pensacola, W. H. Russell 
found ammunition on hand for only one day's firing, and poor stuff at that. 
From Corinth, Mississippi, Julian Alcorn addressed his wife in pathetic terms. 
"My position is most difficult and perplexing, chief in command of five thou- 
sand men, fresh volunteers, poorly clad, rather poorly fed; without a sufficient 
supply of anything." 52 Governor Letcher later extenuated his blunders in try- 
ing to supply the Virginia troops by pointing out that until the arrival of Lee 
in Richmond he had nobody of military capacity to advise him. 

Soldiers from Norfolk to Galveston drilled with every variety of musket, 
shotgun, rifle, carbine, or fowling piece. They drilled in frock coats, swallow- 
tails, jackets, and shirtsleeves. They guarded their powder, for it was too 
scarce for target practice. They sweetened their fare of corncake, fat bacon, 
and peas with molasses fetched in a jug from home. They lightened their 
evening hours with fiddle and accordion. 53 As the first fever for combat sub- 
sided, the impression grew that the great battle to which all looked, and which 
many believed would be final, was several months distant, for it would take 
that long to organize the armies South and North. Throughout June the 
general expectation was still for a short war. Even the perspicacious Judah P. 
Benjamin, changing his mind, now thought it would last only three or four 
months. 54 Of the coming horrors of battlefield mutilation, hospital agonies, 
and home-front exhaustion, few had the slightest premonition. 

The wonder was that under these circumstances, amid hurry, guesswork, 
and reckless expedients, in an atmosphere of shortsighted optimism, so much 

52 Kirby-Smith Papers, Univ. of N. C.; Julian Alcorn, June 6, 1861; Alcorn Papers, Univ. 
of N. C. 

53 See, for example, F. G. DeFontaine's "Personal Reminiscences" in the magazine Blue 
and Gray, June, 1893. The drunkenness and rowdyism of many men and some officers morti- 
fied their fellows. "I cannot and will not stand such association," wrote W. C. Carrington, 
July 4, 1 86 1, from Centreville; Brock Collection, HL. 

54 An account of Benjamin's change of opinion is given by John Slidell in a letter of July 
20, 1861, to S. L. M. Barlow; Barlow Papers. But Slidell, originally confident of a brief con- 
flict, now anticipated a stubborn contest. The fact probably is that many men felt alterna- 
tions of hope and despondency regarding the duration of the conflict. 



n6 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

was accomplished. Many local leaders showed appalling incapacity. "The 
imbecility and inaction of some of our State governments," Kirby-Smith wrote, 
"is and will be almost as disastrous as treachery." 55 Others, however, revealed 
astonishing resourcefulness. 

Virginia was foremost in effective preparation. For this the energy of 
Letcher and quick organizing capacity of Lee were chiefly responsible. An 
estimate of the number of troops required for defense of the important points, 
51,000 men, had been swiftly made. Quotas had been assigned various parts of 
the commonwealth, points of rendezvous established, and mustering officers 
appointed. By mid-June about 40,000 Virginians were in the field. Arms had 
been distributed: about 2,000 rifles and carbines and 41,650 muskets from 
eastern and central Virginia, with 13,000 pieces from Lexington, making 
56,650 in all. Staff officers, including heads of the commissary, quartermaster, 
medical, and engineering departments, were acting with fair efficiency. Lee, 
pleased by the alacrity of the volunteering (except in western counties) was 
equally gratified by the promptness with which arrangements were made for 
instructing, equipping, and provisioning the forces. The State arsenal at Rich- 
mond had been rapidly expanded and the work of preparing munitions ex- 
pedited. It had been found necessary to make carriages, caissons, battery 
wagons, and other items for the artillery, but Lee was able to report on June 
15 that 115 guns for field service had already been provided, from which 20 
light batteries of 4 guns each, with the requisite horses and harness, had been 
organized. 

In addition, a Navy Department, theretofore unknown in Virginia, had 
been created. Defensive works had been built on the Elizabeth, James, York, 
and Rappahannock Rivers, naval batteries numbering some 320 pieces of heavy 
ordnance had been planted, and ammunition prepared while some 120 pieces 
of heavy ordnance had been sent to other parts of the Confederacy. Between 
April 31 and June 14, Virginia expended for war $1,839,000, a sum which 
outstanding bills would bring to nearly $2,000,000. The stores and other prop- 
erty purchased, Letcher boasted, had been paid for as bought, and the credit of 
the State thus fully maintained. 56 

But other States, with weaker executives than Letcher, less gifted military 
leaders than Lee, and populations less ready for mobilization, lagged in the 
rear. Organization for war was much more difficult in Alabama, Mississippi, 
and Arkansas, while the threat of battle seemed less exigent. Nor was Virginia 

55 J. H. Parks, Kirby-Smith, 127. 

56 These facts are drawn from Letcher's message of June 17, 1861; Lee's long report to 
Letcher June 15; the letter of Captain S. Barron, of the Office of Naval Detail, June 10, 
1861, to Letcher; the report of a committee of the Virginia Council June 3, 1861, on a con- 
ference with President Davis, and other documents in the Letcher Papers, Va. State Library. 




Horace Greeley of The Tribune 




Henry J. Raymond of The Times 



THE CONFEDERACY AT WAR ll ^ 

herself without vital deficiencies. J. B. Jones in the War Department wrote 
June 1 8: "We have not enough ammunition to fight a battle. There are not 
percussion caps enough in our army for a serious skirmish." 57 

[ VI ] 

Somewhat belatedly and reluctantly, Virginia transferred her forces to the 
Confederacy on June 8, 1861. Lee, who would have liked to retire to private 
life but who never failed to heed the voice of duty, became in some degree an 
acting assistant Secretary of War, and in part a deputy chief of what would 
later have been termed a general staff. 58 Beauregard, at Manassas, had an army 
of perhaps 20,000, which was steadily being reinforced. Joseph E. Johnston, 
under War Department orders, had taken command at Harpers Ferry, whence 
he was presently to fall back near Winchester to cover the Shenandoah Valley. 
"The want of ammunition," he explained in retreating, "has rendered me very 
timid." 59 Of the 8,000 rough-looking men he found at Harpers Ferry, 1,000 
had not been armed, and he lacked artillery horses. Far across the common- 
wealth, where the hard-cropped tidewater plantations fronted the Atlantic, 
trwo experienced soldiers, Huger and Magruder, occupied positions on both 
sides of Hampton Roads. Huger had been brevetted thrice in the Mexican 
War for gallantry; in the same conflict T. J. Jackson, the future "Stonewall," 
had sought command under Magruder because he knew that if hard fighting 
was to be done, Magruder would be there. Other forces stood at Aquia Creek. 

Most of Virginia, save for the western counties beyond the Allegheny wall, 
was ready to resist a Union onslaught. Along the Mississippi, at Memphis, at 
Island No. 10, at points just below the Kentucky-Tennessee line, at New 
Madrid and other Missouri points, forces of the Confederacy were gathering 
in formidable numbers. Hope rose high in Southern breasts that Missouri and 
Kentucky might soon be detached to strengthen them. Thus June of 186*1 
might be called the honeymoon month of the Confederacy. Eleven States 
seemed solidly inside it. It now held an imperial domain stretching from the 
Chesapeake to the Rio Grande, from the Georgia sea islands to the Indian 
Territory and even the far Southwest, from the frontier settlements of Arkansas 
to the oldest of American buildings in St. Augustine. Everywhere parade 
grounds echoed to the grounding of muskets and the bark of drill sergeants. 

57 Diary of a Rebel War Clerk, I. 

58 Freeman, Lee, I, 515^- 

59 O. R. I, ii, 934. Johnston reached Harpers Ferry as a brigadier-general in the Confed- 
erate service, a post he accepted in preference to that of major-general in the army of 
Virginia. He found T. J. Jackson there, and Jackson, after insisting on seeing documentary 
proof of Johnston's seniority in rank, gave him cordial support. Freeman, Lee, I, 515, 516. 



ng THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Troop trains still moved forward past cheering towns, where women thrust 
knapsacks, flowers, and dainties upon the soldiers. As bands blared, ardent 
youths remembered that theirs was the race of Agincourt, Yorktown, and 
Waterloo, and pulses leaped at the thought of new victories. Swords were 
bright, uniforms were fresh, limbs were unwearied. Despite all the confusion, 
the inadequacies, the clash of rival ambitions, the future looked roseate; beyond 
immediate sacrifice lay independence, and beyond that a resplendent national 
future. 

Yet amid the bugles and roses, the pomp and parade, thousands watched 
what was happening with perturbation and anguish. For every Southerner 
who cheered, another was torn by regret and anxiety. 

The provost-marshal at Cairo arrested a youth of seventeen, obviously 
guileless and of gentle breeding, as a spy. It turned out that the lad was from 
Pittsburgh, had served three months with the Twelfth Pennsylvania Volun- 
teers, and had been honorably discharged. On the entreaty of his heartbroken 
mother he was trying to slip south, braving death to find a brother just 
wounded in Jeff Thompson's Confederate band. 60 A brothers' war indeed! as 
a thousand instances proved; a war sometimes of father against son. It is no 
wonder that a citizen of Memphis wrote across the hostile lines to Horatio 
King in Washington to express his grief at what was going on. "It is a mag- 
nificent day, the sky is without a cloud, the air perfectly charming it is so 
bland, and indeed the city is as quiet as a sabbath in the country; but my God, 
what a contrast does the physical aspect of things present to the state of the 
country. I never have seen any excitement that approached the present in 
intensity. Men's passions seem to be surging and rolling like the billows of a 
storm-lashed ocean. It is terrible, terrible! Where is it to end?" 61 And a million 
women felt, at least intermittently, like John Esten Cooke's niece Nancie, 
who poured out her heart to that cultivated Virginia author: 

tc When will this frightful time be over? Sometimes I think I have gotten 
used to it, and then again when I am by myself, the thought that all I love best 
are in such constant danger almost drives me wild." 62 

60 This episode is related in a communication of the provost-marshal at Cairo to Lincoln's 
friend Gen. John A. McClernand, Oct. 26, 1861; McClernand Papers, HI. State Hist. Lib. 
The boy's name was Charles Shaler. 

61 J. W. Merriam of Memphis, April 21, 1861, to King; King Papers, LC. 

62 Nancie Cooke, June 8, 1861, Cooke Papers, Duke Univ. 




Struggle for the Western Border 

IT WOULD BE erroneous to suppose that in the tense days after mid-April 
all eyes were bent on Washington, Montgomery, and Richmond. Events in 
the Mississippi Valley crowded as thickly on each other, and were of equal 
import to the nation. The Northwest had a body of determined governors 
among others Richard Yates of Illinois, who promptly called out 6000 volun- 
teers, took military possession of Cairo, and inspired the legislature to appropri- 
ate $3,500,000 for war; Oliver P. Morton of Indiana, who believed that the 
conflict should be made "instant and terrible"; and Samuel J. Kirkwood of 
Iowa, who borrowed from his friends to help equip the first levies. They 
looked southward to a closely balanced border. 

Nobody had ever accused the Kentuckians and Missourians of a want of 
fighting temper. The men who had built palisades against the Shawnees with 
Harrod, hewed farms from the forest with Boone, and marched to Chihuahua 
with Doniphan, had bequeathed their children a readiness to face any foe. In 
the convulsion of 1861, however, the overwhelming desire of the borderland 
was to remain neutral. Their attitude suggested the nervousness of the by- 
stander who sees that he may suffer more from a quarrel than either partic- 
ipant; but the paramount fact was that they preferred moderation, for in the 
main they detested as equally repugnant the idea of secession and the idea of 
abolition. The Bell-Everett platform of the Union, Constitution, and com- 
promise had precisely expressed majority sentiment. Here, as in Maryland, 
the spring wrote a record of their all but frantic effort to stay out of a con- 
flict which they thought insane. 

It is also the record of strenuous rival efforts by the Union and the Con- 
federacy to win them to active collaboration. Their assistance might turn the 
scale. In this contest, which side v^ould blunder least? If Lincoln emphasized 
freesoil too much and Union too little, he would certainly fail. If Jefferson 
Davis pressed too hard and stressed ties of blood and institutions too arrogantly, 
he would fail. The struggle for the border, with its general solidarity of out- 
look, its mingled devotion to State Rights and to the nation, and its mixed 

119 



I20 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

economic interests, demanded patience, diplomacy, and psychological under- 
standing as much as the exertion of force. 

[ I ] 

Of cardinal importance to the salvation of the Union was Missouri, by far 
the richest and strongest trans-Mississippi State. Its population was that of 
Massachusetts each had about 1,200,000. It held one of the principal cities of 
the nation, St. Louis, with perhaps 175,000 people, and with factories, ware- 
houses, mercantile establishments, influential newspapers, river shipping, and 
a well-stocked arsenal. If the secessionists could carry Missouri into the Con- 
federacy, they might cut off Kansas, fan smoldering disloyalty in southern 
Illinois, and double the danger of the North's losing precariously-poised 
Kentucky. 

When Sumter fell, the position of Missouri was doubtful. In the recent 
Presidential election Douglas and Bell had run neck and neck, Douglas leading 
by fewer than 500 votes. Both had far outstripped Brecldnridge. If most of 
the aggregate Douglas, Bell, and Lincoln vote were considered a vote for the 
Union, the people stood about four to one against secession. Everyone knew 
the ardent attachment of the large German population in and near St. Louis 
to the Union; everyone knew, too, how much the prestige of the Blair family 
and the memory of the firm nationalism of Thomas Hart Benton counted. 

But Union men who hoped that no attempt would be made to lead the State 
astray soon learned their error. The Missouri Republican, the oldest and long 
the ablest journal in the area, closely connected with the strongest men and 
richest interests of St. Louis, throughout the campaign had exerted its in- 
fluence in favor of the Union. Nobody had supposed it would waver in its 
adherence to the principles of Webster and Clay. Suddenly, however, on 
December 31, 1860, it had carried an editorial addressed to the legislature 
then just assembling which fell upon Union men like a thunderclap. Northern 
wrongs to the South, it declared, demanded redress. The legislature should 
call a convention of all the slave States in Baltimore, and meanwhile assemble 
a State convention to consider such constitutional amendments as Congress 
might submit. If no remedy for the Southern grievances was attained before 
March 4, Missouri should then secede. 

Union men had rubbed their eyes as they read* Their standard bearer had 
deserted to the enemy. "From that hour," writes one of the leaders, Charles D. 
Drake, "the secession conflict raged in Missouri as I believe it never would 
have raged if that paper had kept on the track it trod before." This is an over- 
statement, for the conflict was irrepressible. Nevertheless, the stand taken by 



STRUGGLE FOR THE WESTERN BORDER 



121 



the journal did encourage the proskvery and pro-Southern elements, while it 
discouraged the Yankee freesoilers, liberty-loving Germans, and other groups 
who had organized as Wide-Awakes for Lincoln. Claiborne Jackson, the 
proskvery politician who had helped overthrow Benton and who had been 
elected governor as a Douglas Democrat, now rallied his followers as he hoisted 
a secessionist standard. 

"Probably not one member of either house had, before the people, been 
an avowed disunionist," adds Drake; "but when that body assembled, it soon 
appeared that a majority of men in each house was made up of men of that 
stripe, who were ready to follow Claiborne Jackson's traitorous course." The 
waters had begun to boil like the Mississippi in flood. 1 

The legislature had given disunionists their cry, "No coercion!" by passing 
on February 2 1 a reply to the coercionist resolutions of Ohio and New York: 
"It is the opinion of the General Assembly that the people of Missouri will 
instantly rally on the side of their Southern brethren, to resist the invaders at 
all hazards and to the last extremity." Throughout February a growing bitter- 
ness of feeling was manifest on both sides, which Lincoln's inauguration in- 
tensified. Claiborne Jackson, more and more ardent in the secessionist cause, 
had established a confidential correspondence with Confederate leaders. He 
and his friends had been hopeful that the State convention which, by legislative 
decree, was elected on February 18 to consider Federal relations, would have 
a secessionist character. But by a majority of about 80,000 the State pronounced 
against disunion, choosing not a single secessionist delegate to the convention. 
After a committee had made a moderate, well reasoned report, the convention 
voted 89 to i that Missouri had no adequate cause for dissolving her connec- 
tion with the Union. Before March closed, both the legislature and convention 
adjourned, leaving the State apparently committed to the Union and to peace. 
Only the extremists who rallied about Claiborne Jackson at one pole and 
Nathaniel Lyon and Frank Blair at the other demanded belligerent policies. 

Impromptu military units long before the inauguration had been drilling on 
both sides. Along the Missouri River secessionists organized companies; in St. 
Louis, Unionists formed a strong home guard from the Wide-Awakes. In this 
situation, the Federal arsenal was the natural object of plots and counterplots. 
The secessionists hoped that when Washington took decisive action and war 
began, they could seize the arms and equip their forces to carry Missouri into 
the Confederacy. Had not the convention voted 89 to 6 in favor of evacuating 
national troops from Southern forts? The arsenal held enough war materials to 

i Drake's MS autobiography, Mo. State Hist. Soc., is an enlightening document See 
also Eugene M. Violette, A History of Missouri; Lucy L. Tasher, "The Mo. Democrat and 
the CivS War," Mo. Hist. Review, XXXI, 1937, pp. 402-419. 



122 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

turn the balance in Missouri and perhaps to help the secessionists in Kentucky. 

Late in Buchanan's term the national government had taken some steps to 
protect the arsenal, increasing the garrison to more than 400, with the able, 
moderate, and unquestionably loyal Major Peter V. Hagner in command. Most 
Federal officers thought the position safe. Not so Captain Nathaniel S. Lyon, 
a West Pointer of Connecticut origin and iMexican War experience who was 
assigned to the arsenal early in February. This thin, sandy-haired, red-bearded 
little man, his blue eyes full of fire, had learned on the Kansas border to hate 
proslavery men, and was determined to take every precaution against loss of 
the post. He had wanted the command himself. Impetuous and explosive, he 
possessed highly fanatical traits. 2 He assailed the appointment of Hagner as 
sordid favoritism on the part of General W. S. Harney, head of the Depart- 
ment, declared that Hagner's deliberation in strengthening the arsenal showed 
"imbecility or damned villainy," and indicted Lincoln himself as lacking resolu- 
tion to deal with treason. Backed by Frank P. Blair, Jr., he obtained command 
of the arsenal troops in the middle of March, while Hagner kept control of the 
ordnance stores; and he gave notice that if Hagner in an emergency opposed 
the marshaling of home-guard troops to defend the place, he would pitch him 
into the river. 

The taking of Sumter gave the expected impulse to the secessionist move- 
ment. Governor Jackson met the President's call for troops with an insulting 
rebuff. Missourians in general, declared the St. Louis Republican, "denounce 
and defy the action of Mr. Lincoln." The recent election of D. G. Taylor, a 
wobbly anti-coercionist, as mayor, seemed to enhance the opportunities of 
the pro-Southern elements for seizing the city and State. 

Hungry for the 60,000 muskets, the 90,000 pounds of powder, the 1,500,000 
ball cartridges, and the field guns lying in the arsenal, the secessionist legislators 
bethought themselves of a plan for paralyzing their opponents and making 
the most of their own strength. They passed a law placing the entire St. Louis 
police force, the local militia, and the sheriff under four commissioners, to be 
named by the governor and to sit with the mayor. This meant that Claiborne 
Jackson could manipulate the police, control the disloyal companies, and 
perhaps paralyze the loyal home guard. As police commissioners, Jackson 
promptly appointed three virulent secessionists and one anti-coercionist, who 
countenanced the dressing of the city with Confederate flags. What Southern 
sympathizers might do in St. Louis had just been illustrated at Liberty, near 
Kansas City, where a small arsenal had been seized and the arms distributed 
in seditious Clay County. 

2 The eulogistic tone of Ashbel Woodward, Gen. Nathaniel Lyon, is countered by the 
estimate in L. U. Reavis, Gen. Wtiliwn Selby Harney. 



STRUGGLE FOR THE WESTERN BORDER 

To Union men to the incandescent Lyon, to the tall, lithe, hard-hitting, 
hard-drinking Frank Blair, at forty-one the youngest of the Blair clan and the 
idol of Missouri Republicans, to James O. Rroadhead, a prominent lawyer, it 
seemed time to strike. To lose the arsenal, standing on low ground near the 
river and open to attack by water and land, would be to lose everything. Lyon 
by secret messengers induced Governor Yates of Illinois to put militia, under 
Presidential orders, on the steamboat City of Alton. On the night of April 25 
the boat swiftly crossed the river, the militia swarmed ashore, and the arsenal 
gates were thrown open. Lyon had everything in readiness; 21,000 muskets, 
500 rifle carbines, artillery, and large quantities of cartridges were hurried on 
board. Taken by the steamboat to Alton, where citizens joyously unloaded 
them, they at once went by rail to Springfield. "The secessionists are euchred,'* 
proclaimed the Union men. 3 

[ n j 

Even yet the situation seemed precarious. Lyon, fortifying the arsenal 
grounds, urged the enlistment of loyal men and formation of more home 
guards. Blair was elected colonel of a regiment which occupied Jefferson 
Barracks, about ten miles from the city. But most of the aristocratic older 
families of St. Louis sympathized with the South, a turbulent riverfront element 
might at any moment get out of hand, and much of the interior passionately 
hoped for Confederate success. In Lexington on the Missouri River, seces- 
sionists broke up a Union meeting. Business in Kansas Qty and St. Louis was 
half prostrate, thousands were out of work, and many prudent citizens were 
moving away. Claiborne Jackson actually had little power, but that little he 
used to make trouble. He called a special session of the legislature for May 3 
to consider measures for enabling Missouri to defend herself, and he opened it 
with a message in which he threw himself squarely behind the Confederacy. 
He also gave orders, as was his legal right, for the regular annual brief militia 
encampments. "Our interests and sympathies are identical with those of the 
slaveholding States," he proclaimed, "and necessarily unite our destinies with 
theirs." 4 Such sentiments angered the loyal half of the State, which feared 
that the legislature might really take some provocative step. 

3 Carr, Missouri, 293 F., Galusha Anderson, Border City, 68 fT., Drake, MS Autobi- 
ography, and R. J. Rombauer, The Union Cause in St. Louis, 1861, cover the subject in detail. 
St. Louis contained a subtreasury with Federal money. Blair had led in converting the Wide- 
Awakes into a home guard military organization under a Committee of Safety; James Peck- 
ham, Lyon and Missouri in 1861. 

4 John McElroy, The Struggle for Missouri; Galusha Anderson, Border City; T. L. 
Sneed, The Fight for Missouri; W, B. Stevens, Centennial History of Missouri, I; Drake, MS 
Autobiography. 



I24 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

And fanaticism evoked counter-fanaticism. General D. M. Frost, com- 
mander of the State militia, at the beginning of May formed a camp of about 
700 men in LindelPs Grove on the western margin of St. Louis. He and many 
of his soldiers stood for armed neutrality. They were too weak, too divided in 
sentiment, too open in their movements, to menace the city or the now depleted 
arsenal. Frost, a West Point graduate and responsible man, had in fact offered 
to assist the Federal commanders in making certain of full national control of 
government property; an offer perhaps insincere, but worth receiving toler- 
antly. The governor, who nevertheless hoped that Camp Jackson, as it was 
called, might eventually be used to take the arsenal, saw to it that the men got 
arms and ammunition, partly smuggled from Federal sources. On May 8 a 
steamer from New Orleans brought in cannon and munitions, seized at the 
Baton Rouge arsenal, labeled "marble" and "ale." The governor had just 
written Confederate friends that he was confident the State would secede 
along with Kentucky and Tennessee. "They are all bound to go out and 
should go out together if possible," he declared, stating that this might be 
within a month. "Missouri can put in the field today 20,000 men, better armed 
than our fathers were, who won our independence." 5 

Camp Jackson certainly needed watching, and could not safely be allowed 
to grow. But its situation, commanded by surrounding hills, was weak; its 
force was puny compared with the 10,000 well-armed Union troops and loyal 
volunteers hard by; and all its drills were open to the public. General Harney, 
a loyal veteran of the Seminole and Mexican Wars, and a man who knew 
Missouri well, believed that peace could safely be preserved. Yet Lyon, who 
was new to the State, for he had arrived in February, let his hatred of slavery 
and puritanical zealotry overmaster him; he rushed into inflammatory action 
just when calmness was needed. 

In his eyes, according to his biographer, Camp Jackson was a fearful 
menace. Announcements that it would break up on or about May 10 might 
be only a dark stratagem; and if it did break up, the men might go home to 
enlist in secessionist units. Moreover, reading of the Baltimore riot, Ben Butler's 
seizure of the Annapolis railroad, and the Northern mobilization, Lyon de- 
cided that it was time to strike a hard blow at secession in Missouri and thus 
teach traitors their place. The applause which the Northwest had given his 
raid on the arsenal encouraged him. According to a dramatic but dubious story, 
he had toured the camp disguised as the venerable mother-in-law of Frank 
Blair, peering at the militiamen and their piled arms through a black veil as his 
wheelchair was pushed down the alleyways, and noting indignantly that one 

5 Full text of letter in Loyal Legion Papers, Missouri Cormnandery, I, 23-25. Cf. Smith, 
Borderland^ 2308. 



STRUGGLE FOR THE WESTERN BORDER I2y 

company street was called "Davis," and another "Beauregard." Enlisting the 
support of Blair and three other members of the committee of safety though 
two members objected that a Federal marshal might easily replevin the Baton 
Rouge arms Lyon prepared to attack the camp. He would demolish this nest of 
rebels he would show hesitant neutrals which side to choose! On the loth he 
moved several thousand troops about the camp, summoned its officers to sur- 
render, and made the militia prisoners. 6 

This was reckless enough. Still more injudicious was Lyon's decision not to 
parole the disarmed militia, but to march them into St. Louis as a spectacle. 
Southern sympathizers had poured into the streets, excited and resentful. As 
they saw the dejected prisoners file past under guard of Yankee and German 
volunteers, passions broke loose; they hurled first gibes, then stones; and at a 
point where a unit called Die Schwarze Guard by friends and Dutch Black- 
guards by enemies had halted, a collision occurred. Lyon's forces began firing 
indiscriminately, twenty-eight persons were killed or mortally wounded, scores 
were injured, and the city was thrown into an uproar. 

This was the blackest day in all St. Louis' history. Fear and anger rose on 
both sides to the fever point. Next day a new affray cost six lives. The seces- 
sionists raged against Lyon, German newspapers, and the home guard; loyal 
citizens kept a sullen silence. Inevitably, some Union men in Missouri and many 
readers of brief and distorted accounts of the affair in the Northern press hailed 
Lyon as a hero whose resolute action had saved the State. That legend, popular- 
ized in history and fiction, has survived. 7 But the truth is that Lyon and Frank 
Blair, Jr., both rash, headstrong, and excitable, had dealt an unnecessary stroke, 
aroused emotions better left quiescent, and in one day done far more harm 
to the Union cause and the best interests of Missouri than Frost and Claiborne 
Jackson, left alone, could have accomplished in a month. Their action, under 
the excitement of the time, is understandable, but it was unwise. 

From this moment Missouri was given over to four years of violence and 
a cruel intestine war. As rumors spread that German volunteers were threaten- 
ing to burn the city, a thousand people fled town in a single afternoon. Some 
streets were left entirely deserted. Not until General Harney, returning to 
headquarters, published a reassuring proclamation, was calm partly restored. 
While disloyal elements were only partly cowed in the city, the Missouri River 

6 General Harney, who as departmental commander would certainly have restrained 
Lyon, was temporarily absent from the area; in fact, Lyon deliberately took advantage of 
his absence. Frost, apprised of the coming attack, wrote Lyon declaring he had no disloyal 
designs, and again offering to help preserve peace and order in the area. O. R. I, iii, 7-8. 

7 See the accounts in the Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, pp. 660, 661; in John Fiske, The 
Mississippi Valley in the Civil War (highly misleading) -, in Winston Churchill, The Crisis; 
and in Nicoky and Hay, IV, 198 ff. 



I2 <5 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

belt was vibrant with Southern feeling. Reports reached many towns that 
German troops and antislavery fanatics were butchering men, women, and 
children. Some communities rose en masse, determined to arm themselves with 
pitchforks and scythes, if nothing better, march on St. Louis, and stamp out the 
violence. Only later reports and the news of Harney's judicious measures par- 
tially allayed the anger. That sagacious commander ordered all the German 
volunteers out of the city, replacing them by United States regulars; kept 
riotous groups off the streets; closed political meetings; punished crime; and 
searched the town for arms, confiscating more than a thousand rifled muskets 
and two small cannon. Most of the citizens who had fled soon returned. 8 

However, Harney could not undo the harm wrought by Lyon and Blair; 
for the moment the news of the St. Louis bloodshed reached Jefferson City, 
full civil war in the State lay just ahead. A scene of angry pandemonium in 
the legislature gave way to determined action. The governor's bill to arm the 
State on the Confederate side had till then slept; now it was revived, passed 
with instant speed, and sent to Claiborne Jackson to be signed. Cooperation 
with the Indians was authorized. The members had hardly gone to their lodg- 
ings to sleep when a telegram that Lyon and 2,000 men were marching to 
seize the governor and legislature roused the town. Bells were rung, the 
legislature was convened in midnight session, and new measures were passed 
to arm the State. 9 In the next five days the legislature paid every cent in the 
treasury into the military fund, authorized Jackson to borrow another million 
to equip troops, and empowered him to organize the military forces, seize the 
railroads and telegraphs, lease a foundry at Boonville to manufacture arms, and 
do anything else needful. 

The governor acted with energy to throw Missouri on the Confederate 
side. Secessionists poured into Jefferson City and other mustering points. As 
major-general in command Jackson appointed Sterling Price, a highminded 
man of Virginia birth who had been colonel in the Mexican War, Congressman, 
a courageous Democratic governor, and president of the recent convention. 
He was a conditional Unionist until the aggressive acts of Lyon and Blair con- 
verted him to secession. Another former governor, J. S. Marmaduke, who had 
also been a conditional Unionist, went into the State forces. Secessionist forces 
seemed about to dominate most of the State outside St. Louis. Some of them, 
collecting in irregular bands which drove Union men from their homes, inau- 
gurated the guerrilla activities which in time seemed likely to make half of 

8 St. Louis correspondence dated May 13 in N. Y, Tribune, May 14, 1861. The Columbia 
(Mo.) Statesman, April-June 1861, throws valuable light on events from the Union stand- 
point. On March 28, 1862, the Statesman published revealing letters by Claiborne Jackson 
written during the crisis. 

9 Peckham, op. cit.; W. F. Switzler, Illustrated History of Missouri, 315. 



STRUGGLE FOR THE WESTERN BORDER 

Missouri a desert. 10 On the Confederate side all was unity and determination. 

One result of the reckless Blair-Lyon policy, on the other hand, was to 
divide the Union supporters. General Harney did his utmost to restore con- 
fidence in moderate policies. He of course never wavered in his allegiance to 
the Union cause. Missouri must remain loyal, he declared; he would maintain 
the national authority wherever his arm could reach; and he would never 
tolerate the recent legislative enactments, the fruit of needless excitement. 
Though he endorsed Lyon's coup (a necessary act, despite his private doubts), 
he spoke in what he called "tranquillizing" terms, and asked authority to 
enlist an Irish regiment to mollify the general feeling against Federal forces 
which were composed almost entirely of Germans. Had it been possible, he 
would have dismissed the home guards. Blair and Lyon watched this policy 
with hostility. 11 

What was more serious, Blair and Harney soon clashed on the question of 
a truce. In his sagacious way, the veteran general began negotiations with 
Price, asking him to suspend the recent military act. A meeting followed, at 
\vhich the two agreed on a pacific manifesto (May 21). Both, they said, were 
intent on "restoring peace and good order," and relied on the Federal and 
State governments to effect this. Price would use all his State forces to maintain 
order; Harney would make no military movements likely to create excitement 
or jealousy. Thus was proclaimed an armed truce like that which Lincoln was 
countenancing in Kentucky, a sensible procedure. On May 29, Harney re- 
ported that the State was gradually being pacified, and this was true. 12 

Lyon and Blair, however, outraged by Harney's course, did their utmost to 
bring it into discredit. During May, Blair began pulling wires in Washington 
for Harney's removal and the appointment of Lyon in his stead. The peppery 
soldier from Connecticut reported to Washington on June 3 his belief that a 
Confederate movement into northwestern Arkansas was being coordinated with 
mysterious and industrious shifts of Price's forces toward southwestern Missouri, 
The two collected and made the most of stories of secessionist outrages on 
Unionist farmers and villagers, some true, some untrue. 

Inevitably, conservative Union men aligned themselves behind Harney, 
while radicals took the side of Blair. Among the moderates was Ethan Allen 
Hitchcock, another veteran soldier of honorable record, who later declared 
that he had drafted the Price-Harney agreement. Among the radicals was the 
editor of the Missouri Democrat, the most influential Republican journal in the 

10 Smith, Borderland, 241, states: "Much of the later bitterness with which guerrilla war- 
fare was carried on in Missouri was probably due to the feelings engendered by the oc- 
currences at Camp Jackson." 

1 1 Harney's course may be followed in his letters to the War Department, O. R. I, Hi, 373 ff. 

12 O. R. I, iii, 375-382. 



128 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

State. As Blair made it clear that he must have Harney's head on a platter, the 
schism extended to the Cabinet in Washington. Montgomery Blair exerted 
himself fiercely on the side of the brother he hoped one day to see in the 
White House. Attorney-General Bates took Harney's side, but without energy. 
It became plain, though Lincoln hesitated, that the general's tenure was com- 
ing to a close. 13 

The Blairs had a motto of rule or ruin of fighting to a finish. With clan 
spirit, they fought always for each other. It is evident that Frank Blair intended 
to be the Missouri Warwick, dominating the State politically and militarily. 
Lincoln was unwilling to give Lyon the command, declaring that he seemed too 
rash. Finally, however, he yielded to the pressure and sent Frank Blair an order 
for Harney's removal, to be used only if an emergency arose which justified 
such extreme action. The day after sending it, overcome by doubts of its pro- 
priety, he followed it with another letter, in which he impressed upon Blair 
that it was to be delivered only if Blair thought this "indispensable." Of course 
Blair did think so. In characteristically ruthless fashion, on May 3 1 he gave the 
humiliated Harney the order for dismissal 

Now the path was open for disrupting the truce. On June 11, at a long- 
famous conference in the Planters' House in St. Louis, Blair and Lyon faced 
Price across a table. The Covenanter and the Ironside met the Cavalier. They 
grimly laid down demands that Price, who had long detested Blair, could not 
meet. In fact, they declared they would yield not one inch for the sake of 
State concord. Price strode out to rally his forces, and to begin open war. 

In thus carrying Missouri into full civil war before mid-June, Blair and 
Lyon acted according to their honest conviction and best lights, but with 
rash arrogance. In great part, the horrors and losses from which this unhappiest 
of States was to suffer were traceable to their precipitate, intolerant course. 
Born fighters both, they preferred mortal conflict to a patient reliance on 
compromise and delay. Although the situation was full of danger, the prepon- 
derant evidence indicates that Harney was right in believing that the loyal 
Missourians needed only time and tranquillity to consolidate their position in 
the Union. As he said, Union men outnumbered secession men in the interior 
of the State two to one; in St. Louis, which had nearly one-sixth the popula- 
tion of the State, Union sentiment was not only ascendant, but was bul- 
warked by strong Federal forces; and Missouri was half surrounded by Kansas, 
Iowa, and Illinois, all belligerently devoted to the Union. The truce which 
Hamey had made with Price offered more advantages to the North than the 

13 Smith, Blair Family in Politics, II, Ch. 29; Snead, Fight for Missouri, 100 fiv, E. A. 
Hitchcock, Fifty Years m Camp and Field, 431. Nicolay and Hay, IV, 217 ff., take the side 
of the Blairs, for Lincoln accepted that side; but Lincoln did not yet know how selfishly 
contriving the Blairs often were. 



STRUGGLE FOR THE WESTERN BORDER I2g 

South, for every day of peace fortified loyal sentiment. It is clear that Price, 
an honorable conditional-Union man anxious to see difficulties composed, was 
doing all that he could to restore order. He had kept his promise of dismissing 
his force. 

Blair, however, insisted on having his way. He had exceeded the authority 
which Lincoln entrusted to him in giving Harney his dismissal, for that act was 
by no means indispensable to meet an emergency, as Lincoln had stipulated. 
Lyon was still more insistent on taking his own course. This Yankee captain 
was as intemperate in speech as in action. "Rather than concede to the State of 
Missouri for one single instant the right to dictate to my Government in any 
matter however unimportant," he had told Price, "I would see you . . . and 
every man, woman, and child in the State dead and buried. This means war." 14 

Four days after the conference in the Planters' Hotel, fighting commenced 
at Lexington. It was certain that the Union forces could in time conquer the 
State. But it was also certain that their conquest would leave it seething with 
hatreds, divided county by county, even farm by farm, by the bitterest antagon- 
isms, and racked with internecine war. Of all border States, we repeat, Missouri 
was destined to suffer most, and her suffering was to a great extent the work 
of three men: the fire-eating Claiborne Jackson, the fanatical Lyon, and the 
ambitious Frank Blair. Her strength was to fall mainly on the Union side, but 
it was nothing like the strength she might have exerted. 

[ ni ] 

In Kentucky, Union feeling up to the time of Lincoln's inauguration had 
been strong. The lifelong teachings of Henry Clay still swayed many hearts. 
Kentucky had been the first-born child of the Union, her sons had been na- 
tionalists since the War of 1812, and most of her river counties looked to Cin- 
cinnati and Pittsburgh as their natural gateways. Just before the Presidential 
election the Kentucky and Ohio legislators had held a fraternal gathering at 
Columbus, Ohio. John Bell's Constitutional Union Party had carried the State. 
Many slaveholders believed that the only safety for the peculiar institution, 
which must wither if exposed to the chill blasts of world opinion, lay in the 
Union. Even Paducah, closely connected by trade with the Gulf States and 
the center of a populous slaveholding district, kept a Unionist majority. 

To be sure, Kentuckians were so intimately bound by blood, culture, and 
institutions with Virginia and North Carolina, which had mainly peopled the 
State, that the thought of war with the South was abhorrent. If majority 

14 Quoted by Snead, 199, 200; he was present. See also Smith, Borderland, 253. Lyon's 
aide quotes him in only a slightly less bloody-tongued utterance; Peekham, 248. 



I3 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

sentiment was firmly against secession, it was just as strongly against coercion 
of the secessionists. 15 But in the recent election the vote for Bell, Douglas, 
and Lincoln had totaled 93,073 as against 53,143 for Breckinridge. Kentuckians 
had enthusiastically supported Crittenden's proposals for compromise, as an 
alternative; many looked favorably on Governor Beriah Magoffin's plan for 
guaranteeing slavery within the States, enforcing the return of fugitives, and 
drawing a new territorial line along the 37th parallel. 

The State had its share of able men. Leslie Combs, a veteran of the War 
of 1812, a Whig leader who had once been Clay's ablest lieutenant at the 
State capital, and an inspiring speaker, was as stanch in his devotion to the 
nation as the conscientious, universally respected John J. Crittenden. James 
Guthrie, first citizen of Louisville and the ablest banker and railroad execu- 
tive of the region, was destined to bring- both his influence and his invaluable 

C> 7 O 

Louisville & Nashville Railroad to the Union cause. Kentucky, in contrast 
with her slave neighbor up the river, was happy in having such a trio to battle 
the Southern sympathizers Breckinridge and Magoffin. 

It was an agonizing hour for the fair land of bluegrass and rhododendron. 
Foreseeing that war might soon roll along the Ohio and Cumberland, that 
family might fight against family, that armies from the northern and eastern 
counties might battle against armies from the southern and western, the best 
leaders had looked to compromise, and, if that failed, to neutrality. 16 Combs 
had denounced the "Destructionists" the men North and South w r ho used 
every device to create bitterness. By shrewd action, the moderates had man- 
aged to keep control of the situation. Early in January the Bell-Everett chief- 
tains, meeting in Louisville, had established a Union State Central Committee 
to organize their followers behind a moderate Unionist program, and thus 
had done much to keep in hand the special legislative session which met 
January ij. 17 Possibly Breckinridge hoped that this body would "precipitate" 

15 The Frankfort Commonwealth and Lexington Observer and Reporter, both Union 
Journals, steadily inveighed in March and April, 1861, against secession. The former attacked 
(April 12) the "trickery and cunning of the conspirators" of the Deep South ever since 
they had disrupted the Democratic convention in Charleston. 

16 Many Kentuckians were worried about navigation rights on the Mississippi. C. F. Burn- 
ham, a member of the legislature, wrote James S. Rollins of Missouri March 15, 1861: "We 
will denounce the piratical laws of the Southern Congress on the obstruction of the naviga- 
tion of the Mississippi and the imposing of tariff duties on shipping on that stream. We will 
take nothing from them as a concession, we demand its free navigation as a right which must 
never be interfered with.'* Rollins Papers, Mo. Hist. Soc. 

17 An unsigned memorandum to Lincoln, dated April r, 1861, written probably by 
Green Adams, is in the R. T. L. Papers. "In Kentucky the Union party has a majority of 
about 40,000," it states. "They are faithful and loyal to the general government and the 
Constitution, anxious for its supremacy being maintained and above all are anxious for 
Peace. But the minority, and it is a dangerous minority, are open or disguised disunionists 
according to locality ." 



STRUGGLE FOR THE WESTERN BORDER j.j 

the State into secession. If so, he was foiled. "Thank God," Combs wrote 
later, "there were found loyal and patriotic Democrats who preferred prin- 
ciple to party their country to a selfish and arrogant faction and they united 
with us to save the Union." 1S 

The moderates had no difficulty in defeating Governor Magoffin's scheme 
for a convention to consider the secession issue. Instead, the legislators de- 
manded that the South halt its secession movement, and that the North give 
up all idea of coercion. They also invited the other States to join in a na- 
tional convention. To Breckinridge, who delivered a speech declaring that 
the Union could not be restored, and that Kentucky should mediate for con- 
tinued peace between the two independent confederacies, they listened coldly. 

When Sumter fell, the passionate anxiety of the people to keep their State 
from becoming a battleground for contending armies found immediate ex- 
pression. Governor Magoffin telegraphed Lincoln that Kentucky would fur- 
nish no troops "for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern States," 
but a week later refused a similar call for men from Jefferson Davis. The 
State Union Committee declared that Kentucky could tie herself neither to 
the chariot wheels of the Lincoln Administration nor the Gulf State wagon, 
and should repel any invasion of her sacred soil. Guthrie told a Louisville 
meeting that it would be equally wrong to supply militia for the national 
government or to raise volunteers for the Confederacy. To be sure, plenty 
of excited and bellicose partisans could be found, those for the Union chiefly 
in the cities and eastern Kentucky, those for the cotton kingdom in the 
wealthier agricultural districts. The great majority, however, with a fervor 
which in retrospect appears pathetically sincere, hoped to avoid setting brother 
against brother. They had a premonition of the terrible moment when at 
Missionary Ridge the Fourth Kentucky, U.S.A., lined up in full view of the 
Fourth Kentucky, C.S.A., and kinsmen stared down each others* muzzles. 

Let the war, wrote one editor, the brilliant George D. Prentice of the 
Louisville Journal, find the Transylvania land calm in armed neutrality, an 
asylum for victims of the carnage, "a sublime example to her erring sisters." 
Let her, wrote a poet, rise serene above strife: 

Orbed in order, crowned with olives, there invoking peace, she stands. . . . 

Magoffin by proclamation warned both the Federal and Confederate govern- 
ments not to encroach on Kentucky soil, and forbade citizens to make any 
hostile demonstrations against either side. While he leaned strongly to the 
secessionist position and continued to urge a State convention, Union strength 

1 8 Combs in N. Y. Tribune, May 9, 1861; letter dated Lexington, Ky n April 29. For an 
excellent general account of events see E. M. Coulter, The Civil War and Readjustment in 
Kentucky. 



I32 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

easily sufficed to hold him in check. The governor momentarily believed 
that he might persuade Ohio, Tennessee, Indiana, and Missouri to join Ken- 
tucky in a movement for mediation. Leaders of Tennessee and Missouri, when 
he opened negotiations, seemed responsive, but Governors Morton and Denni- 
son north of the Ohio returned emphatic negatives. 19 

Inevitably, Magoffin seemed to the leaders both in Washington and Rich- 
mond to be playing a double part. For a time after Sumter, he secretly let 
Confederate recruiting agents operate in Kentucky; then, conscious of the 
danger of provoking stern Federal action, he drew back. By April 24, General 
Gideon J. Pillow was warning the Confederate War Office that the governor, 
surrounded by Black Republicans, was undependable. "I condemn and ut- 
terly abhor his neutral policy, or rather his alliance with Lincoln; but yet I am 
satisfied that he will ultimately break the shackles with which he is now 
manacled." 20 Lincoln's informants were equally certain that Magoffin was 
allied with black secessionists and Jefferson Davis. In reality, he was honestly 
torn between his Southern sympathies and his love of the Union. He was 
author of the plan by which six arbiters, chosen by party caucuses, drew up 
a neutrality agreement that had been given approval in advance by the legis- 
lature. Despite his temporary sanction of some secret Confederate recruiting, 
he was substantially loyal to this agreement. 

And secession received a crushing moral blow in Kentucky when on May 
4 voters went to the polls to elect a Border State convention which the legis- 
lature had called to meet later that month in Frankfort. At the last moment 
the Southern Rights party, foreseeing defeat, withdrew its ticket, so that a 
full Union slate was chosen. But it was the size of the vote which counted. 
Two-thirds as many ballots were cast as in the recent Presidential election, and 
the Union vote in Louisville was substantially larger than the Presidential 
vote. 21 Clearly, Kentucky would stand firm unless rash Federal leaders, by 
gratuitous violence, thrust the southern and eastern sections into the arms of 
the Confederacy. The legislature which Magoffin called into a new session 
May 6 found the election results a clear verdict for the Union; and this verdict 

19 National Intelligencer, April 18, 1861. Former Senator Archibald Dixon also stood 
for neutrality; see Coulter, 41 if. Senator Garrett Davis was wholeheartedly for neutrality. 
"Let Kentucky look for herself. . . . Let her stand immovable as a rock peering above the 
tempest-tossed ocean." Frankfort Commonwealth -, May 3, 1861. But the lion-hearted Joseph 
Holt had no use for neutralists. This Kentuckian, now living in Washington, wrote a long 
letter May 31 to J. F. Speed, published in the Louisville Journal^ saying the ship Union must 
be saved; "The man who, in such an hour, will not work at the pumps, is either a maniac or 
a monster." 

20 O. R. I, xlii, pt. 2, 68-70. 

21 Louisville Journal, May 6, 1861; Ann. Cyc., 1861, pp. 396, 397. The border convention 
proved abortive, only Missouri and Kentucky sending delegates. 



STRUGGLE FOR THE WESTERN BORDER 

was presently underwritten by a special election to fill Congressional seats, 
nine of the ten districts selecting stanch Union men. 22 

In this critical hour Lincoln displayed masterly comprehension and alert- 
ness. He believed, as he wrote later, that to lose Kentucky with her 1,200,000 
people and her strategic position on the Ohio and Mississippi would almost 
be losing "the whole game." Avoiding threats, showing a warm feeling for 
his and his wife's birth State, offering promises of kindly treatment, he kept 
the velvet glove over the iron gauntlet. To Garrett Davis he gave the friendliest 
assurances, saying: 

That he intended to make no attack, direct or indirect, upon the institu- 
tions or property of any State; but on the contrary, would defend them. . . . 
And that he did not intend to invade with an armed force, or to make any 
military or naval movements against any State, unless she or her people should 
make it necessary by a formidable resistance of the authority and laws of the 
United States. . . . That he contemplated no military operations that would 
make it necessary to move any troops over her territory though he had an 
unquestioned right at all times. . . . That if Kentucky made no demonstra- 
tion of force against the United States he would not molest her. That he 
regretted the necessity of marching troops across Maryland, but forces to pro- 
tect the seat of the United States Government could not be concentrated 
there without doing so; and he intended to keep open a line of communication 
through that State to Washington City, at any risk, but in a manner less cal- 
culated to irritate and inflame her people. 23 

At once, in mid-May, Kentucky assumed a formal status of neutrality. The 
House voted 69 to 26 that the Commonwealth should take no part in the war 
except as mediators and friends to the belligerents. Governor Magoffin an- 
nounced a strict neutrality in terms that might have been used by Brazil or 
Norway. Good Kentuckians, he declared, should refrain from words or deeds 
likely to "engender hot blood." 

Many Kentucky merchants, busy with invoices and ledgers, continued to 
trade profitably with both North and South. Louisville remained such a great 
collecting center for goods shipped into the Confederacy that she aroused the 
jealous wrath of Cincinnati. Although early in May Union troops blockaded 
the Mississippi at Cairo, trains continued to puff southward on the Louisville & 
Nashville, bulging with provisions, clothing, shoes, and hardware. Even muni- 
tions leaked through. Groaning wagons swelled the flow, for corn that sold 

22 The Congressional elections were held June 30; the vote was Union, 92460; State 
Rights, 37,700. 

23 Garrett Davis' letter describing his interview with Lincoln, written to George D. 
Prentice from Baltimore April 28, was published in the Frankfort Commonwealth, May 3, 
1861, and reprinted in Cong. Globe, 37th Cong., id Sess., Pt. 4, pp. 82, 83. 



I34 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

at twenty cents a bushel north of the Ohio fetched fifty cents farther south. 
This trade had the tacit consent of Lincoln, anxious to keep Kentucky's good 
will, and bitterly did Northwestern governors and editors upbraid him. Not 
until August 1 6, nearly a month after Bull Run, did he bow to recent Con- 
gressional legislation by proclaiming a stoppage of commercial intercourse 
with the South. And even after that, under a liberal permit system instituted by 
Chase in the Treasury, trade with the South continued in Kentucky on a re- 
duced scale. 



[ IV ] 

It was certain that Kentucky, barring some revulsion of sentiment, was 
safe for the Union. It was also certain that neutrality could not permanently 
endure. A sense of tension and imminent conflict pervaded the State. "We 
will remain in the Union," wrote Garrett Davis, "by voting if we can, by 
fighting if we must, and if we cannot hold our own, we will call on the 
General Government to aid us." 24 

The State, everyone agreed, had to be armed. But who would control its 
forces? Magoffin asked the legislature to appropriate $3,000,000 to be used 
by himself and Adjutant- General Simon Buckner in augmenting and arming 
the State Guard, already a strong body. Buckner was in secret correspondence 
with the Confederate leaders. When the governor proclaimed himself com- 
mander-in-chief of all State forces, the legislators took alarm. They placed 
the military under a board of four trusty Union men, created a home guard 
to counteract the State Guard, and required privates and officers of both 
organizations to swear allegiance to the Union. The military board were di- 
rected to take charge of the State arsenal at Frankfort, and of every gun, bullet, 
and pound of powder in State possession anywhere. Thus was Samson shorn 
of his locks. Many communities had been mustering local units. Those which 
stood for the Union now found themselves strongly supported by the board, 
the legislature, and Union leaders who had direct communication with Lincoln 
and Stanton. 25 

By the end of May the Unionists had thus gained decided advantages. 
Lincoln's friend Joshua F. Speed, a wealthy businessman in Louisville, and 
his older brother James Speed, an influential jurist there, threw their energies 
into support of the national government. The President quietly sent out Major 
Robert Anderson and Naval Lieutenant William Nelson, both Kentuckians. 

24 May 16, 1861, to McClelkn; O. R., IH r i, 236. 

25 See the letter of "Union" in Frankfort CoTwnoniveahh, May 29, 1861, describing how 
the legislature "in the name of an outraged people have taken from the hands of the 
Governor all his military power." 



STRUGGLE FOR THE WESTERN BORDER l ^ 

Anderson was directed to establish an office in Gncinnati to recruit Kentucky 
and West Virginia volunteers, while Nelson was to distribute 5000 government 
muskets and bayonets among loyal men. Senator Garrett Davis and various 
associates visited Cincinnati for arms and distributed them to companies far 
and wide. Anderson decided, on the advice of Guthrie, the Speeds, and others, 
that it would be impolitic to try to raise any Kentucky regiments for the Union 
army, for this would break the nominal "neutrality." Organization and arming 
of home-guard units, however, proceeded rapidly. 26 Meanwhile, the loyalty 
oath compelled Simon Buckner to carry a large body of the State Guard into 
Confederate service farther south the Louisville Journal shrieking after him: 
"You are the Benedict Arnold of the day! You are the Catiline of Kentucky! 
Go, thou miscreant!" 27 

As these advantages were gained, however, a sharp difference of opinion 
developed in the North. Lincoln, certain that Kentucky was the very pivot 
of the war, remained willing for the time being to accept her "conditional 
Unionism." That neutral status, he believed, would save the State intact while 
sentiment for full participation developed. The government posted large Union 
forces at Cairo, but did not attempt to enter Kentucky. Early in May, Colonel 
B. M. Prentiss at Cairo felt some fear that Confederate troops might suddenly 
be concentrated at Columbus, the Kentucky terminus of the railroad from 
New Orleans, and attack him. An officer of Kentucky militia therefore called 
to say that he would equally resist a Northern invasion from Illinois, and a 
Southern invasion from Tennessee. Although Lincoln accepted this attitude, 
much Northern sentiment found it intolerable. Who is not for us, many said, 
is against us! 

Lincoln's tolerance of wavering elements, his insistence on a cautious, 
placatory policy, struck aggressive Northerners as both impolitic and ir- 
resolute. To them no Halfway House was permissible; better an open traitor 
than a hypocrite. Governors Morton, Yates, and Dennison asserted that they 
were ready to move forward sufficient troops to support a vigorous Union 
regime in Kentucky. Northern editors began contrasting the decided action 
by which Blair and Lyon had discomfited Claiborne Jackson in Missouri with 
Lincoln's kid-glove handling of Magoffin. A little boldness, they said, will 
bring numerous Kentucky regiments to our colors and shorten the war. When 
Major Anderson, under Administration orders, rejected a regiment raised 
among Kentucky Unionists, and its heads appealed to leading members of 
Congress, their response was emphatic: If Kentucky chooses to leave the 

26 Nicolay and Hay, IV, 234 ff.; Coulter, passim. The Frankfort Commonwealth* June 7, 
1 86 1, carries Garrett Davis' long statement to a legislative committee on the work he had 
done to aid Anderson and Nelson in distributing arms from Cincinnati and Louisville. 

27 September 27, 1861. 



I? 6 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Union because the nation accepts the voluntary service of her sons, let her 
try! Old Tom Ewing, born the year the Constitution went into effect, who 
had read Virgil in the Ohio wilderness, opposed Jackson's financial measures, 
and served in Zachary Taylor's Cabinet, wrote Crittenden: "There can be 
no truce or compromise until the opposites have met in force and measured 
strength and the sooner the better." 28 

Unquestionably, however, Lincoln showed the greater wisdom. While the 
slowly gathering Northern armies were still largely unequipped, Virginia had 
joined the Confederacy, formidable forces had gathered at Richmond, 
Manassas, and Harpers Ferry, and fighting had begun in western Virginia 
and central Missouri. Lincoln did not want the flames to spread as yet to 
Kentucky. He knew how easily a few echoing shots could loose an avalanche 
of passion. One Kentucky Unionist, reporting late in April that every town 
and precinct was organizing military companies, added: "If the war is general 
between the two sections I presume more havoc will be made in this State 
than anywhere else." 29 Men might sneer at what James Russell Lowell termed 
Lincoln's "Little Bo-Peep policy," but he intended to stay that havoc. He 
wanted to see the State kept an integer until its position in the Union column 
was fairly secure. 

The President did allow himself one jest on the subject. A Kentucky State 
senator wrote him a bombastic protest against the stationing of troops in Cairo. 
Lincoln replied, in a letter unfortunately lost, that if he had only known that 
Cairo, Illinois, was in this Kentuckian's senatorial district, he would not have 
sent any soldiers within a hundred miles of the point. 30 But his conviction 
was clear and firm. 

Time proved his sagacity. To the last year of the war Missouri, where 
Blair's rough policy had prevailed, was a source of deep anxiety and a po- 
tential liability; but Kentucky, though much more exposed, soon became one 
of the bastions of the North. She gave in all perhaps 75,000 men to the 
Union armies as against a third that number to the Confederacy, and under 
the shock of invasion, as we shall see, stood firm. 31 

28 Cf . Lossing, Civil War, I, 460 fL; Anderson to J. J. Crittenden, June 25, Thomas Ewing 
July 8, 1861, Crittenden Papers, Duke Univ. 

29 C. F. Bumham of Richmond, Ky., April 22, 1861, to James S. Rollins; Rollins Papers, 
Mo. State Hist. Soc. 

30 Frankfort Commonwealth, May 29, 1861. 

31 J. S. Johnston gives this estimate in Confederate Military History , IX, 201. 




Struggle for the Eastern Border 

THROUGHOUT the early weeks of the war the Stars and Stripes over the 
national capitol were challenged by a Confederate banner in plain view on 
the Virginia hills, a symbol of the proximity of danger not lost upon the 
troops who were fast turning the sleepy town into a busy garrison city. The un- 
finished white obelisk of Washington Monument, a litter of stone blocks, sheds, 
and derricks about its base, and the skeleton Capitol dome, its iron ribs stark 
against the sky, were symbolic too; they seemed eloquent of the incomplete 
national edifice. Washington was full of new sights and sounds; the tramp 
and clatter of regiments drilling; parades with drum and fife; whitish-brown 
camps springing up all along the slopes of the northern outskirts; guns prac- 
ticing at the navy yard. As May and June brought hot, dry days, mule-drawn 
trains of army wagons churned dust into the air "Real estate is high," jested 
the citizens and stenches increased. 

The first strategic necessity, from the Union point of view, was to make 
Maryland secure, seize western Virginia, and fortify the south bank of the 
Potomac. Only when Washington felt that it was safe, could it turn to larger 
tasks. For a time the area within a half-arc drawn fifty miles north and a 
hundred and fifty west of the city was of burning concern. 

Maryland, whose half-million white people could not long ignore the 
facts of geography, was undergoing a rapid change of sentiment. It was more 
fortunate than Kentucky in that a great river was its southern, not northern, 
boundary. Temporarily the confused Governor Hicks talked of neutrality. 
He not only told the legislature when it met April 26th that the State's only 
safety lay in a neutral position, but actually proposed to Lincoln that Lord 
Lyons, the British minister, be asked to mediate between the "contending fac- 
tions"! This chimera of neutrality beguiled the legislators into a denunciation 
of both Southern secession and Northern coercion. The House sent deputies 
to Lincoln to protest against seizure of the Maryland railroads and treatment 
of the State as a conquered province. James M. Mason, recently senator from 
Virginia, had hurried to Baltimore to talk with the speaker, other officers. 



I3 8 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

and many members, whom he reported so "earnest and zealous in the cause 
of the South" that he felt sure they would take steps "to place the authority 
of the State in hands ready and competent to act with Virginia." But beyond 
a few protests, and an academic declaration in favor of Southern independence, 
the Southern sympathizers in the legislature dared not go. 

Dominant sentiment was swinging to the Union side. "A large majority of 
the inhabitants," reported the British consul, "including the wealthy and in- 
telligent portion, are only waiting for sufficient encouragement and protec- 
tion to avow their loyalty"; and a little later Reverdy Johnson, head of the 
Maryland bar, who was denouncing secession as treason and bringing his 
influence as former senator and attorney-general to the support of the Union, 
noted that national sentiment w r as fast increasing. Confederate destruction of 
property of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal and Baltimore & Ohio Railroad 
assisted in the revulsion. When Maryland elected members of Congress early 
in June the Union won the entire slate. 1 

From their fortified position on Federal Hill overlooking Baltimore, the 
Union forces brooked neither open opposition nor covert treachery. Ben 
Butler, arresting the gray-haired ironmaster Ross Winaris on the charge that 
he had made 5000 pikes for rebels and committed other offenses, declared that 
hanging a man worth fifteen millions would teach traitors a lesson. Winans 
was released in chastened mood. Governor Hicks also rapidly saw a new 
light. On May 15, to meet the President's request of a month earlier, he 
called out four regiments; and although they were not accepted, the time for 
ninety-day troops having passed, recruiting stations steadily sent forward 
Union volunteers. Indeed, throughout the war Maryland nearly filled its 
quotas. Before long the governor was collecting arms to keep them out of 
the hands of Southern sympathizers and taking other steps in aid of the Union. 
The adherence of West Virginia to the North naturally strengthened the 
national cause in the State. Replying to secessionist demands that Maryland 
follow her sister Virginia, the novelist John P. Kennedy demanded, "Which 
Virginia?" 2 

Like other border areas, eastern Maryland remained hotly divided in senti- 
ment. Many women flaunted secessionist rosettes; haughty citizens osten- 
tatiously brushed their coats as they passed Union soldiers; heads of the City 
Club shut its doors against Northern officers; newsboys sold Confederate 
songs and caricatures; shop windows carried pictures of Davis and Lee; 
crowded theaters applauded Southern sentiments. On the other side, women 

1 House Document A, 1861; E. M. Archibald (British consul), April 27, 1861, FO/5 
778; G, L. P. RadclirTe, Hicks and the Civil War, 78 nv, James M. Mason, April 25, 1861, to 
the governor of Virginia, Mason Papers, Va. State Library. 

2 RadclirTe, 97-104; Butler's Book, Ch. V; O. R. H, i, 563 ff . 



STRUGGLE FOR THE EASTERN BORDER 

who sympathized with the North presented flags to Union regiments; men 
cheered the national banner; appreciative crowds watched Yankee parades. 
Some families saw brother aligned against brother. But the division and peril 
never approached that in Missouri; like little Delaware with her obstreperous 
slaveholders, Maryland was entirely safe. 3 



On the morning of May 7, 1861, a group representing a recent convention 
of governors in Cleveland called at the White House. Morton of Indiana, 
Yates of Illinois, Dennison of Ohio, Curtin of Pennsylvania, and others had 
met to concert their plans. The deputation told Lincoln that they would 
furnish any number of men required to smash the rebellion if he would only 
press a determined and spirited policy. While they did not defend the impa- 
tience expressed in some quarters, they declared that their states required some 
assurance that the government was in earnest and would go forward ener- 
getically, without compromises. These governors feared Seward's influence 
over Lincoln. 

"A question had arisen," wrote young Nicolay in his diary, "as to how 
these States should protect their borders. If for instance Kentucky should 
secede, as was feared, Cincinnati would be insecure without the possession 
of Covington Heights across the river. Yet if they took them, the whole 
State would be in arms at the pretended invasion. The General Government 
had not indicated what it would do in this case. Ohio desired to know. . . ." 4 

Ohio would have to wait before invading Kentucky, but along another 
broad front Ohio could act at once. Obviously, western Virginia, like Mary- 
land, could never be surrendered to the Confederacy. Its strategic value was 
altogether too vital to the nation. This mountainous district offered a buffer 
zone protecting eastern Ohio, western Pennsylvania (including Pittsburgh), 
and the flank of any Federal army which marched into the Shenandoah Valley. 
It covered a long stretch of the Ohio River. It fairly secured the Baltimore 
& Ohio Railroad, the one line which with its direct links joined Washington 
with Louisville, Indianapolis, and St. Louis; a line enabling the United States 
to transfer troops between the eastern and western theaters much more 
readily than the South could move them. The protection which West Virginia 
gave eastern Kentucky would presently make the invasion of eastern Ten- 
nessee, toward Knoxville, much easier; while it was not actually valuable as 
a base for striking into the Confederacy, it did help protect some of the points 

3 For Delaware see Harold Hancock, "Civil War Comes to Delaware," Civil War 
History, II (Dec., 1956), No. 4. 

4 Nicolay Papers, LC Nicolay does not give us Lincoln's reply. 



I4 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

of debouchment for energetic invasion of the South. Finally, retention of 
these western counties, with more than 350,000 population, kept fully 30,000 
men out of the Confederate army, and at times tied up sizable Confederate 
forces. 

The action taken by western Virginia after Sumter showed how irresistibly, 
in a crisis, popular feeling can burst through all artificial barriers. The people 
beyond the Alleghenies, bound by natural economic ties more closely to their 
northern neighbors than to eastern Virginia, had cared little about the so- 
called wrongs of the South, but very keenly about the maltreatment they 
suffered from the Tidewater and Piedmont. They complained that they were 
grossly underrepresented in the legislature, that the three-fifths rule in count- 
ing slaves deprived them of their share of seats in Congress, that they were 
outrageously overtaxed, and that while very poor in communications they 
got nothing like their share of public improvements. By no means least, they 
felt aggrieved by the disdainful attitude of proud eastern planters and mer- 
chants toward the "mountaineers." 5 

For each of their complaints they could offer substantial evidence. Trans- 
Allegheny Virginia in 1860 had 135,000 more white people than eastern Vir- 
ginia, yet under the constitution the eastern counties held control of the 
Senate. Despite its larger white population, the west had only five Congres- 
sional seats, the east eight. Inasmuch as slaves under twelve years of age were 
exempt from taxation and older slaves were assessed much below their true 
value, the east, according to Francis H. Pierpont, the principal western leader, 
each year escaped paying $900,000 in taxes justly its due; and inasmuch as 
the State had built no railways nor canals west of the Alleghenies, practically 
all of the $30,000,000 by which the State debt had been augmented since 1851 
had gone for internal improvements in the east. 6 

Small wonder that the Morgantown Star declared that the grievances of 
the western folk against Richmond were tenfold greater than those of the 
slaveholders against the Yankees! If Virginia were now to float the cotton 
kingdom kite aloft, the westerners did not mean to be hitched to the extreme 
tail. They knew how vulnerable they were to attack. Cannon on the Ohio 
shore could demolish Wheeling, converging forces could crush the panhandle 
in an iron vise, and troops could sweep up the Monongahela for a hundred 
miles. It is evidence of the astonishing blindness of the leading Virginia se- 
cessionists that they paid no heed to monitions that the westerners would no 
longer be mere hewers of wood and drawers of water. 

5 James C McGregor, Disruption of Virginia, 73-75; and see his maps. 

6 McGregor, 76; E. C. Smith, Borderland, 105. It was one of the weaknesses of slavery 
that it helped breed sectionalism in some States, and encouraged the older and richer sec- 
tions, in general, to discriminate against the newer and poorer. 



STRUGGLE FOR THE EASTERN BORDER 

When the Virginia convention voted its ordinance, the trans-Allegheny 
unionists had already determined to form an independent State. Some of their 
delegates in Richmond, evading arrest, hurried home by way of Washington. 
Others held a hasty consultation in the Powhatan Hotel, decided that as soon 
as they were safe beyond the mountains they would call a convention and 
carve out their new commonwealth, obtained passes from Governor Letcher, 
and took the most direct road back, braving threats of violence. A few days 
later they were inciting their fellow citizens to resolute action. In eloquent 
speeches they explained how the barons of the lowland had swept the State 
into war, expatiated on the insults they had received, and assured the people 
that their only safety lay in separation. In Wheeling, a delegate fresh from 
Richmond exhorted men to enlist so effectively that a week later a regiment 
was ready. The Wheeling Intelligencer argued uncompromisingly for the 
Union and a new mountain star in the flag. In Wellsburg, the citizens, after 
hearing another fiery speaker, hurried a committee to Washington, obtained 
2000 small arms from the War Department, returned to the panhandle, and 
distributed them to eager recruits. 7 

The movement, spontaneous, full of extralegal irregularities, and varying 
from place to place in public support, spread like the wind. Community after 
community held mass meetings. One gathering of special note at Clarksburg, 
the birthplace of Stonewall Jackson, called a convention in Wheeling for May 
13, each county to elect at least five delegates. 8 But this somewhat premature 
summons, carried to every hamlet, met an uneven response, for it stated no 
clear object, and did not intimate that the convention would have any special 
authority. When on the appointed day more than four hundred men met in 
Wheeling, they represented only twenty-five counties, and included few 
persons of note. John S. Carlile, a self-educated, forceful man whose oratorical 
gifts had carried him into Congress, and whose aggressive championship of 
the Union had made some Richmond secessionists thirst for his blood, emerged 
as the leader, but he was overruled when he suggested immediate steps to 
create a new State. 

Northern observers who believed that western Virginia was aflame for 
the nation were only partly right. It was not only love for the Union but re- 
sentment over their special grievances which actuated the majority. Like most 
border people from the Patapsco to the Missouri, West Virginians were ready 
to cry: "A pox upon your warring houses!" This May convention in Wheeling 

7 W. P. Willey, An Inside View of the Formation of the State of West Virginia, 51-53; 
Smith, Borderland, 189. 

8 Virgil A. Lewis, Ho<w West Virginia Was Made, passim. All the 150 counties of 
Virginia were free to send delegates j the only question was how many counties would 
respond. West Virginia later incorporated a half hundred. 



I42 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

voted almost unanimously that secession was intolerable; but, pausing, it then 
took a moderate and prudent course. To plunge forward immediately and 
create a new State, as Carlile suggested, would estrange many conditional 
Union men and drive some into the arms of the rebellion. Western Virginia 
as a whole was unready for so bold a step. Under the shrewd guidance of 
Francis H. Pierpont, an attorney and coal dealer of Wheeling, the delegates 
agreed that if the secession ordinance was approved in the pending referen- 
dum, a special election should be held for a second convention in Wheeling. 9 

This course was sagacious, for probably a majority of the people were 
then equally against a disruption of the Union and a disruption of Virginia. 
A delayed State of fifty counties was certainly better than an immediate 
State of twenty-five. Western leaders did their best to roll up a heavy nega- 
tive vote in the referendum on secession. They succeeded, for although the 
returns have disappeared, it is known that in twelve typical counties of the 
northwest, the vote was nearly ten to one for the Union. 10 They had candi- 
dates for Congress named in three districts. They appealed to Lincoln and the 
governors of Ohio and Pennsylvania for assistance, and Dennison of Ohio 
ordered George B. McClellan, just appointed the State commander, to con- 
centrate his troops on the Ohio ready to cross as soon as Virginia's secession 
was officially declared. Some Northerners were disappointed by the delay; the 
Philadelphia Press, New York Tribme, Cincinnati Gazette, and other journals 
which had been eagerly hailing a new mountain commonwealth dedicated 
to liberty and nationality wrung their hands. But caution afforded time for 
sentiment to harden. 

Hardly was news of Virginia's final decision received before the western 
hills and valleys began to witness stirring scenes. McClellan's glittering col- 
umns swung across the Ohio and pushed on, without him, in a converging 
movement from Marietta and Wheeling. On June 3, in the first real field 
action of the war, a little Confederate command which had been putting the 
torch to railroad bridges was surprised and routed at Philippi. Virginia troops 
had begun moving up from the southern borders of the region. Officers on 
both sides, however, reported that the people were overwhelmingly for the 
North, and as McClellan soon drove the Confederates back, Pierpont and his 
associates could proceed unchecked with the work of political reorganization. 
They had a new plan a better plan. 11 

9 Lewis, op. cit., 34 fF.; Smith, 'Borderland^ 194*?. 

10 J. M. Callahan, History of West Virginia, I, 352. 

ji Pierpont in an autobiographical sketch in the Brock Papers, HL, gives himself entire 
credit for the plan to be adopted. He first explained it to the Committee of Safety which 
had been organized, he states, saying: "When our State is organized and recognized at 
Washington, then we can divide." The Committee and leading men of Wheeling endorsed 



STRUGGLE FOR THE EASTERN BORDER 

Our business, they announced when the second Wheeling convention 
opened a gathering in which thirty-four counties and four-fifths of the trans- 
Allegheny population were represented is not to create a State, but to pre- 
serve one. "Let us save Virginia, and then save the Union." In other words, 
establishment of a new State was postponed in favor of the creation of a gov- 
ernment which purported to speak for all Virginia, and expected to receive 
recognition as such from Lincoln. Under this plan, Union men were to be 
elected to all State offices, and Washington was to treat their regime as 

C3 O 

constitutionally sovereign all the way from Norfolk to Wheeling. A precedent 
for Lincoln's action had been found in President Tyler's decision in 1844, 
later upheld by the Supreme Court, recognizing one of two rival State gov- 
ernments in Rhode Island as valid. 12 

Thus "the Restored Government of Virginia," using the regular seal of 
the Commonwealth with the words "Liberty and Union" added, rose in June 
in opposition to the Virginia of the Confederate sisterhood. The convention 
unanimously elected Pierpont, apparently principal author of the plan, as 
governor. Showing exuberant energy, he helped organize a loyal legislature, 
collected $40,000 from the national government as Virginia's share of public 
land sales since 1841, and within fifty days raised ten regiments of troops, 
nine of them composed of Virginians. The legislature elected two Senators, 
who were at once admitted to Congress along with three Representatives 
against the strenuous protests of James A. Bayard of Delaware. 13 Lincoln, 
in his message opening the new Congress in July, emphatically declared the 
legitimacy of the Wheeling regime: "These loyal citizens this government is 
bound to recognize and protect as being Virginia." It is clear that the Presi- 
dent, as Attorney-General Bates suggests, had helped devise the scheme. 14 
Bates wrote in his diary: 

I have good relations with all the leading men of that region who come 
here. At first, we had some difficulty in weaning them from their long-con- 
ceived thought of a new State, stretching from the Blue Ridge to the Ohio. 
That done, they assumed to be Virginia, and are now represented in both 
Houses and fully recognized. This is "at once an example and fit instrument" 

the plan. When the second Wheeling convention met, the delegates were told of the plan, 
and they "went to work with a will." See also W. P. Willey, Inside View. But he seems to 
have had powerful collaborators in Washington. 

12 Lewis, How West Virginia Was Made, 369-372; O. R. HI, i, 378. This second Wheeling 
convention began June u, 1861. 

13 John S. Carlile and Waitman T. Willey were elected Senators. Bayard was a crypto- 
traitor in thought if not act. He wrote S. L. M. Barlow as late as June 27 arguing for an 
agreed division of the nation on the line of the Potomac and Ohio Rivers, predicting a 
despotic military regime in the North, and declaring that the country was much too large 
anyway for a representative government; Barlow Papers. 

14 Bates, July 14, 1861, to J. O. Broadhead; Broadhead Papers, Mo. Hist. Soc. 



I44 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

for bringing back all the States, and restoring the integrity of the Union. It 
needs but a slight change of circumstances to induce East Tennessee, West 
North Carolina, North Alabama and perhaps North Georgia, to follow the 
example. There is another inducement to this course, of a coarser nature, 
which will have a greater effect in fact than will be openly avowed. By treat- 
ing the proceedings of the Rebel Governments within the States as unau- 
thorized and simply void, they will get rid of enormous debt liabilities with- 
out incurring the odium of downright repudiation. 

This example of Virginia, and its recognition by the General Government, 
has already struck terror into half the insurgent States. Its moral influence in 
settling the contest will be equal to at least 50,000 of our best troops. 

The new plan, which turned out to possess no such political potency as 
Bates hoped, was destined shortly to dissolve into the simple original project 
for a separate State. Creation of the "restored" government thus became a 
roundabout, awkward, perplexing mode of effecting the inevitable partition. 
What was important was the fact that as early as June, 1861, this important 
area xvas detached from Virginia; detached to make an effective shield for 
southeastern Ohio, southwestern Pennsylvania, the Baltimore & Ohio, and the 
armies west of Washington; and detached to be also an effective corridor for 
threatening the Confederacy. 



[ II ] 

Suddenly the military border moved south; the secession of Virginia met 
a sharp counter-stroke. On May 24, ten thousand Union troops breakfasted 
on the soil of the Old Dominion. Richmond's adherence to the Confederacy 
having become effective the day before, it was now constitutional for Lin- 
coln to use force to repossess the national property in the State. 

The troops found this march a poetic experience. Before officers of the 
New York Seventh dismissed parade on May 23, the privates saw their colonel 
parleying with others. Something was in the wind! Soon irrepressible cheers 
from the company streets greeted orders that the men be ready to march at 
a moment's notice. "Alexandria!" "Harpers Ferry!" "Richmond!" they exulted. 
It was a clear night of full moon, refulgent, mild, and dewy. At an hour past 
midnight the drums beat; the men fell into column, tramped through the 
shadowy trees to the highroad, and soon swung through outer Washington. 
A pause ensued while a Jersey brigade, 3000 strong, passed them, the troops 
chaffing each other gaily. Then they resumed the march, till they saw a broad 
pathway of reflected moonlight shining on the Potomac, and opening their 
files, rumbled out on the Long Bridge. As they reached the Virginia shore, 
dawn was breaking. Directly in front of them stood the sinking moon, bright 



STRUGGLE FOR THE EASTERN BORDER 

and handsome as a new twenty-dollar gold piece, a splendid oriflamme. On 
they went past a racecourse to a ridge, where the Jersey boys, their picks and 
spades ringing amid abundant profanity, were constructing a tete-du-pont to 
protect the bridgehead. As the sun rose some New Yorkers took a hand. 
Others curiously inspected Lee's Arlington House, its paint fading, its yard 
weedy, its propylaeum of stuccoed columns crumbling a little, and its interior 
presenting to Theodore Winthrop "a certain careless, romantic, decayed- 
gentleman effect, wholly Virginian." 15 

General Scott had planned to have the 75,000 three-months men, once 
Washington was safe, entrench themselves on Arlington Heights, and then 
move against Harpers Ferry, while nine or ten regiments meanwhile made a 
thrust against Fort Monroe. He acted none too soon. Confederate pickets had 
been seen on the Heights, and engineers were surveying positions for batteries. 
At Alexandria, Lieutenant-Colonel A. S. Taylor of the Virginia forces had 
orders to defend the town unless overwhelmingly outnumbered. 16 Cannon 
planted at Alexandria could close the river and batter the public buildings 
of Washington. But now, as strong forces of Union infantry, artillery, and 
cavalry crossed the Long Bridge and the Aqueduct Bridge at Georgetown, 
only a few shots were fired. Staking out lines, throwing up earthworks, 
posting cannon, the Union troops immediately built Fort Corcoran on the 
Arlington estate and Fort Runyon not far away, the first strong points in a 
system of Virginia fortifications which ultimately became ten miles long. 
The North was elated. It applauded Irvin McDowell, whom Secretary 
Cameron much to the irritation of Winfield Scott, who had other plans 
had ordered to head the movement. 17 

Yet the blundering confusion inseparable from hasty Federal improvisa- 
tion was at once evident. Five days later McDowell reported that Alexandria 
remained almost totally unfortified because the men had no transportation 
to the hills, no tools, and worst of all, no plans; that horses were starving; 
and that many of the scattered troop units were getting insufficient food be- 
cause they lacked wagons, established lines of communication, and officers 
with enough experience to look after them. 

One incident of the occupation had a poignant meaning to both North 
and South. Of the young Northern officers none was better known than 

15 Theodore Winthrop, "Washington As a Camp," Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8 (July, 1861), 
105-118. 

16 O. R. IE, i, 233; O. R. I, ii, 24. 

17 Scott had opposed the rapid promotion of McDowell because he thought it injured 
General J. K. F. Mansfield, who, distinguished as chief engineer under Zachary Taylor in the 
Mexican War, had been appointed to command the Department of Washington, and had 
been foremost in urging the seizure and fortification of Arlington. See Cormnittee on the 
Conduct of the War, II, 37. 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Colonel Elmer Ellsworth of Illinois, head of a Zouave regiment which he had 
drilled into remarkable efficiency. Lincoln and others knew that his life had 
been a heavy struggle against poverty, a model of stainless virtue, and an 
example of burning ambition channeled into public service. He had long since 
dedicated himself to an important cause, the complete reorganization of the 
militia system of the United States. He had studied every branch of military 
science; and to illustrate his principles, he had organized in May, 1859, a com- 
pany which he drilled to such discipline, endurance, skill, and energy that 
when taken on an eastern tour, it aroused the admiration of all beholders. 
Nominally a law student in the Lincoln-Herndon office, he had traveled to 
Washington with the President-elect's party. Then, working night and day, 
he had gone to New York to enlist his model regiment. 

Springing up the stairs of the Marshall House in Alexandria to haul down 
the Confederate flag, he was shot on his descent by the proprietor. This Vir- 
ginian, James W. Jackson, knew that his action meant instant death, but as 
devoted as the youthful Illinoisan he never hesitated. Flags South and North 
went to half-mast. Jackson's body was carried to an obscure grave, while 
Elsworth's was taken to lie in state in the East Room of the White House and 
to become the center of a memorable funeral demonstration in New York. 18 

Scott's blow heartened the North, which a month earlier had seen Wash- 
ington threatened and now could claim a small corner of Confederate soil. 
Nevertheless, to carry Southern outposts on the fringe of the capital was no 
great feat. The really important point before Washington was Manassas 
Junction, twenty-five miles southwest of Alexandria, which Ben Butler had 
already urged Scott to take by storm. 19 Here, where the railroad running 
south from Alexandria to Richmond joined a line from the Blue Ridge, Con- 
federate forces had collected in such strength that a heavy price would have 
to be paid for gains. 

[ in ] 

On the whole, the North had achieved a great deal in holding most of the 
debatable borderland. To protect Washington, it had to use military force 
to keep the whole upper Chesapeake region safe; to protect Ohio, it had to 
gain the strategic prize of West Virginia. Although the Western borderland 
was too new to have reared many true statesmen, Kentucky had produced 

1 8 Ellsworth's death probably inspired John Hay's poem written long after, "Thanatos 
Athanatos" (Deathless Death) on "Soldier boys who snatched death's starry prize": 

"Their memories hold in death's unyielding fee 
The youth that thrilled them to the fingertips." 

19 Parton, Butler in New Orleans, 105. 



STRUGGLE FOR THE EASTERN BORDER 

in Henry Clay an illustrious apostle of nationalism and moderation, and had 
raised up lesser men who shared his pride in the republic and faith in compro- 
mise. These successors, whose spirit harmonized with Lincoln's, now kept 
the commonwealth in the Union, and prevented angry factions from flying 
at each other's throats. Missouri alone represented a partial failure. Its one 
eminent leader, Benton, had left no inheritors; rather, the angry partisans, 
the David Atchisons, Trusten Polks, and Henry T. Blows, had found equally 
intemperate successors. The State had been saved to the Union, which had 
every geographical advantage in taking it, but saved only in a feverishly 
diseased condition which was certain to grow worse. A Southern historian 
remarks that the Confederacy lost Kentucky because it was too impatient to 
be tolerant, and too impetuous to be tactful. The North had lost the best 
possibilities in the iMissouri situation by the same errors. 

Strategically, the North held the entrances to the Shenandoah Valley, the 
Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers, and the Lower Mississippi. In population 
it had much the greater part of some thirty-four million people; in resources, 
it had grain, meat, minerals, factories, and shipping in abundance. Many vital 
parts of the Confederacy lay in a comparatively narrow strip along the Atlantic 
and Gulf, from Norfolk at one extremity to the Rio Grande at the other- 
exposed everywhere to attack by sea. Of the remainder, the interior States 
of Tennessee and Arkansas w^ere vulnerable by river invasions. Far different 
would have been the situation had the Confederacy rounded out its domains 
by seizing Kentucky, Missouri, and western Virginia. The balance then would 
have swayed against the Union. 




Grandiose Plans and Blundering 

Leaders 



WHEN SENATOR HENRY WILSON and Judge Rockwood Hoar spent 
May i paying calls on Lincoln and every Cabinet member to urge aggressive 
fighting, they spoke for millions of fellow citizens. In a war of the people, 
the masses always chafe for headlong action. Like a sluggish river which a 
thunderstorm has made swift and angry with rising water, the feeling of the 
North since Sumter had become fierce and impatient. Wait until Jefferson 
Davis' legions rolled over the Potomac to tweak the noses of the Northern 
garrison? Never! In the East the cry was for an early seizure of Richmond, 
in the Northwest for a rapid march down the Mississippi Valley, and every- 
where for the resolute suppression of rebellion and punishment of traitors. 
It would cost something, but even editors who dilated on practical difficulties 
believed with Greeley that when Lincoln had 30,000 brave men in Wash- 
ington, 45,000 more ready for the field, and 500,000 at home biting their nails 
for service, Virginia might as well surrender. 1 

In this hour of indignant emotion the voice of dissent was largely drowned. 
Fervent supporters of the Union were cheered by the emergence of a strong 
party of war Democrats under Stephen A Douglas. The moment he heard of 
Sumter, the Illinois Senator abandoned his attacks on the Administration and 
began urging it to grimmer effort. "What would I do with the traitors left 
in Washington?" he said to an inquirer. "If I were President, I'd convert or 
hang them all within forty-eight hours." 

He was quick to call at the White House. Lincoln later said that he was 
the first to warn him of impending trouble in Maryland, to point out the 
advantages of the Chesapeake-Annapolis route, and to emphasize the im- 
portance of holding Fort Monroe. The Associated Press at once announced 
that he had pledged the fullest support to the Union. Hastening west, he 

i N. Y. Tribune, May 2, 1861. 

148 



GRANDIOSE PLANS AND BLUNDERING LEADERS 

spoke in Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Chicago, and above all, in the 
Springfield so familiar with his voice. 

An audience tense with anticipation jammed the State capitol as the Speaker, 
young Shelby M. Cullom, introduced Douglas. He rose magnificently to the 
occasion, presenting himself as no mere baiter of the South, but an earnest patriot 
determined to fortify his people. That experienced political reporter, Horace 
White, wrote later that he could not imagine any orator, ancient or modern, 
exhibiting greater power. 2 The idol of Midwestern Democrats clearly thought 
the nation in terrible peril. He addressed a vast unseen audience as he appealed 
for unity, disclaimed any personal ends "There is no path of ambition open 
to me in a divided country" and urged a mighty effort. "The shortest way 
to peace," he said, "is the most stupendous and unanimous preparation for 
war. The greater the unanimity the less blood will be shed. The more prompt 
and energetic the movement, and the more important it is in numbers, the 
shorter will be the struggle." 

Though the Illinois legislature had already proved its determination, 
Douglas' influence was much needed to win over one section of the Demo- 
cratic press and politicians. Newspapers like the Cincinnati Enquirer, In- 
dianapolis State Sentinel, and Chicago Times and Herald^ along with some 
hesitant members of Congress, awoke to a new sense of duty under his 
prodding. The National Intelligencer shortly published a letter by Douglas, 
dated May 10, recalling the wholehearted backing that Clay and Webster 
had given Jackson in the nullification crisis. 

When Douglas penned this letter he was prostrated in his Chicago home 
by inflammatory rheumatism and other ailments. He had long overworked, 
drunk too much, and generally neglected his health. His death on June 3 was 
mourned even by journals that had opposed him for years as nothing short 
of a national calamity. Had he lived he would doubtless have resumed his 
partisanship on many questions of policy, but his scorn for copperheadism 
would have been bitingly expressed. He would have been a constant advo- 
cate of energetic war measures, would have cooperated warmly with such 
old-time Democrats as Gideon Welles, whose appointment to the Cabinet he 
had applauded, and would have lifted his voice across the battle lines to as- 
sure former followers in the South that peace might be had on the basis of 
a restored Union, but with nothing less. He had already told Lincoln that 
Seward was too moderate, and was exerting too much influence on the Ad- 
ministration. 

2 White, Lyman Tnembull, 153. Cullom wrote later that he had never been so impressed 
by oratorical genius; March 19, 1883, to * ^- Arnold, Arnold Papers, Chicago Hist. Soc. 
See also the Atlantic, Reminiscences of Stephen A. Dougks," vol 8 (August, 1861), 205-213, 



I5 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

"Who can take his placer" lamented Representative S. S. Cox of Ohio. 
Had he continued to lead the War Democrats, then men like Fernando Wood, 
Vallandigham, and Bayard would have played a lesser role, and the party 
would have exercised a healthier influence in national affairs. One lack which 
Lincoln felt sorely was a cooperative yet critical Democracy. 3 



The question of the grand strategy to be pursued by the growing Federal 
armies had to be determined at least roughly before Henry Wilson's ag- 
gressive war could be begun. The atmosphere of haste, ignorance, and make- 
shift fostered a variety of conflicting plans. Not only did the country have 
nothing remotely resembling a general staff, but its military leaders had 
never given the slightest attention to problems of an intersectional war. 
Cameron, however expert in political intrigue, had neither the technical 
knowledge nor imagination to devise broad war plans. From the outset, divi- 
sions on strategy were evident in the Cabinet, the army, and the public. Three 
main proposals soon emerged: Blair's, Scott's, and McClellan's. 

Montgomery Blair's proposal was for quick hard blows in Virginia, based 
on the theory that the Southern masses were not behind the Confederate 
government and would soon forsake it. Thus the conflict, waged also with 
psychological weapons, might be short. He wrote Governor Andrew of 
Massachusetts on May 1 1 : 

I have great difficulty in impressing my policy upon the Administration 
in the condition of things here. The great obstruction in the way in the past 
and in the present is Gen. Scott. He does not appreciate as I do the condition 
of things at the South. He regards the whole Southern people as consolidated 
in hostility to the North and thinks of making war upon them as if making 
war upon a foreign government whereas the truth is that the conspirators who 
have got arms in their hands under color of state authority are scarcely more 
obnoxious to the North than they are to the great masses of people at the 
South, but they have armed themselves under color of one pretext or another, 
so that even the armed men who would desert from their policy have no 
longer any election, and the unarmed masses the Union men of the South 
are overawed by the armed marauders that Jeff Davis has sent throughout the 
country. 

3 The fullest inheritor of Douglas' mantle was James W. Sheahan, editor of the Chicago 
Morning Post, an able, intelligent, and patriotic Democratic organ. It is a misfortune that 
Douglas' letters to Sheahan, a hundred or more, seem to have perished. In his obituary 
editorial in the Post, Sheahan wrote, "He poured forth his opinions respecting men and 
measures with the utmost freedom." L W. Morris, of the Democratic House delegation, de- 
clared that Douglas had no confidence in Vallandigham, "as I know from frequent con- 
versations with him," either as a man or a politician. Chicago Morning Post, July 12, 1862. 
The Post of July 22, 1862, has the best text of the Chicago and Springfield speeches. 



GRANDIOSE PLANS AND BLUNDERING LEADERS I5I 

It would require but a very inconsiderable part of the forces at our com- 
mand to put down this band of plunderers, if used vigorously, and as soon as 
they are put down, the deliverers will be welcomed in Virginia, as they now 
are in Maryland. ... 

It would be hard to say which was the more fatuous, Blair's belief that 
the South would at once turn against Davis' government, or his illusion that 
Union forces could strike a powerful blow before May 22. He w r ent on: 

My suggestion has been that we should at once organize a Southern Army. 
To do this we should select a leader for the Southern Army, give him his 
staff, select the best, the most accomplished of our officers to surround him, 
detail troops, procure transports, and organize a great army that should 
rendezvous at Hampton Roads and menace Norfolk and Richmond. The band 
of marauders that now pervade the State of Virginia would then rush to 
meet the threatened invasion, the people of Virginia would speak their real 
sentiments at the approaching election, and their votes if not our ballots would 
drive the marauders out of the State on the 22d instant. 4 

More realism underlay Scott's famous anaconda plan for crushing Southern 
resistance by combining a naval blockade with concentric military pressures. 5 
In outlining this scheme for enveloping the Confederacy by tight cordons on 
its northern frontier, the Mississippi, and the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, Scott 
emphasized his conviction that it would bring the secessionists to terms with 
minimal losses. He even thought that an invading army of 60,000 volunteers 
and 25,000 new regulars could take possession of the Mississippi. He pro- 
posed, while sealing up the Atlantic and Gulf ports, and using one large 
force to hold the rebels in Virginia, to organize this striking army of per- 
haps 85,000 on the Ohio River, give them four or five months' hard drill, and 
then, when frost had killed "the virus of malignant fevers below Memphis," 
to move them and a flotilla of gunboats rapidly down the Mississippi to New 
Orleans, garrisoning towns and posts at proper points. 

Scott assumed that the great majority of Southerners supported the Con- 
federate government, and would fight hard. He believed that they could 
muster a main army of 100,000 to 150,000 men to defend Richmond. Rather 
than attack this array, he thought it good policy by cordon and blockade 
to starve the South into submission. He told August Belmont that he was 
confident of achieving a peace by the spring of i86z. 6 

Scott's plan was radically defective in concentrating attention on the ter- 

4 Andrew Papers, MHS. Blair's knowledge of Southern sentiment was pure divination or 
guesswork; he thought the Blair family necessarily understood Southerners. 

5 For Scott's plan see O. R. I, li, pt. i, pp. 338, 339, 369, 370, 387. 

6 Scott's correspondence with McClellan's O. R. I, li, pt. i, 338, 339, 369, 370, 387, is 
supplemented by material in Elliott, Scott, 720 fL, and Swinton, Army of the Potomac,, 41, 
42. For the statement to Belmont see Belmonfs letter of June 7, 1861, to the Rothchilds in 
A Few Letters and Speeches, 47. 



1 5 2 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

ritory of the Confederacy and the weakening of its people, when the Con- 
federate armies were the true objects of attack. An amateur could point out 
objections. How could Scott keep the large Confederate army in Virginia 
immobile? What if Southerners took the offensive in the Ohio and Mississippi 
valleys before Union forces moved? What if 80,000 men were totally inade- 
quate, if the fortresses on the Mississippi held out, and if the blockade proved 
leaky? These objections all stemmed from Scott's inattention to Southern 
armies as the true centers of operations. An antogonist is not knocked out by 
blows on his extremities. 

Nevertheless, Scott's plan had great merits. He precisely identified a number 
of cardinal factors in the war: the importance of blockade, the need for 
careful labor in drilling and equipping armies, the value of cool weather for 
Southern operations, and the priority to be given recovery of the Mississippi. 
In the end, the South was actually to be largely paralyzed by a combination 
of pressures. He showed insight, too, in warning everybody against the im- 
patience of Northern politicians and public, when hasty action might mean 
disaster. When on May 3 he formed the Department of the Ohio and appointed 
McClellan its commander and the leader of the projected invading force, he 
urged the young general to emphasize preparation: "Lose no time, while 
necessary preparations for the great expedition is in progress, in organizing, 
drilling, and disciplining your three months' men, many of whom, it is hoped, 
will ultimately be found enrolled under the call for three years' volunteers. 
Should an urgent and immediate occasion arise meantime for their services, 
they will be the more effective." The slow, inexorable strangulation of the 
Confederacy by the coils of an anaconda represented by the blockade, the 
capture of coastal strips and ports, the conquest of the Mississippi, and the 
advance of encircling armies, was indeed when joined with field victories 
to be the main road to victory. 

Scott's plan also evinced a grasp of the strategic fact that large armies in- 
vading the South would have to get their supplies by river or rail, and be 
tied to these facilities. Until Sherman marched to the sea through one of the 
few areas which produced a rich food surplus, the river and railway map 
was to be pretty much the map of war. 7 It is curious to note, however, that 
Scott's proposals for seizing the Mississippi rested entirely on a campaign 
downriver; the naval conquest of New Orleans from the Gulf was not pro- 
posed until much later. 

McClellan himself, only a fortnight after the war began, had prepared an 
all too impetuous plan. When promoted from his State position in Ohio to be 
department head and major-general in the regular army, he learned con- 
7 On this fact see Spenser Wilkinson, War and Policy, 37. 



GRANDIOSE PLANS AND BLUNDERING LEADERS , .-. 

fidentially of Scott's plan for marching "an iron band" of 60,000-85,000 troops 
along the Mississippi River, supplied by boats. He did not like it; indeed, 
when he wrote his memoirs long after, he remained convinced that occupa- 
tion of the Appalachian chain early in the war would have yielded more 
rapid and decisive results than any thrust down the Mississippi. He at once 
laid before Scott two other proposals for using an army of 80,000 North- 
western troops as soon as it could be mustered and disciplined. One plan was 
for throwing it across the Ohio River at Gallipolis, marching it up the Great 
Kanawha Valley, and deploying it to capture Richmond. Promptly executed, 
wrote McClellan, this movement would not fail to relieve Washington, and 
if aided by a decided advance in the east, "secure the destruction of the 
southern army." A cooperating column could occupy Louisville and prevent 
any interference by Southern troops operating from Kentucky. McClellan's 
alternative proposal was to move the 80,000 men across the Ohio at Cincinnati 
or Louisville, march straight to Nashville, "and thence act according to 
circumstances." 8 

Scott demurred, and found no difficulty in explaining to Lincoln the 
weakness of the two schemes. What about enlisting and equipping the men 
McClellan wanted in such a hurry? What about the difficulty of overland 
transport across such great distances and rough terrain? What about angering 
western Virginia and Kentucky by thus invading them? Scott contrasted 
McClellan's strategy of dagger blows with his own over-all strategy of en- 
circling pressures. "For the cordon a number of men equal to one of the 
general's columns would probably suffice, and the transportation of men and 
all supplies by water is about a fifth of the land cost, besides an immense 
saving in time." 9 

That Lincoln at first leaned toward Scott's faith in deliberate anaconda 
pressures is evident from a number of facts: His continued deference to 
Scott's military experience and wisdom, his restriction of the May call for 
troops to some 42,000 volunteers and some 22,700 regulars, his statement to 
Congress when it met in July that he hoped for a speedy termination of the 
war, and his letter to Simon Buckner declaring that he wished to suppress 
the insurrection with the least possible annoyance to well-disposed people 

8 O. R. HI, K, pt. i, pp. 338, 339. A Swiss observer later propounded the curious theory 
that it was an error to make Washington^ which could be amply covered by gunboats on the 
Potomac and by forts, the mam Eastern base. Instead, a great fortified camp should have 
been created at Harpers Ferry, giving Washington flank protection, and offering opportunity 
to advance on Richmond, the Shenandoah, and western Virginia. Lieut.-Col. Ferdinand 
Lecomte, The War in the U. S^ A Report to The Swiss Military Dept., Aug., 1862 (N. Y^ 
1863). 

9 May 2, 1861; O. R. HI, li, pt. i, p. 339 (Scott's endorsement on McClellan's letter of 
April 27, 1861). 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

everywhere. Seward of course continued to shrink from bloody battle and 
hold to his faith in reconciliation. Even Chase, dismayed by his financial prob- 
lems, was in no mood to press for large-scale aggressive war. Attorney-General 
Bates assured a Missouri friend that he would rather save the nation by over- 
awing all opposition than by fighting, and would as far as possible avoid 
bloodshed. The Administration, he explained, was convinced that the Chesa- 
peake and the central Mississippi were the two controlling areas that must 
be held with massive grip. The first w r ould dominate the Maryland-Virginia 
region, and the second with the ocean blockade would shut the South in an 
iron prison. 

Thus the w r hole Cabinet, except Montgomery Blair, down to midsummer 
of 1 86 1 accepted Scott's belief that a systematic tightening pressure all round 
the South would swiftly bring its people to terms. A happy dream! 10 

Indeed, the central defect of all Northern thought in these months was a 
gross underestimation of difficulties and dangers. Scott underestimated the 
power of the South to strike while his "cordon" was being knotted. McClellan 
who actually asserted that his columns, after taking Richmond and Nash- 
ville, could rapidly converge on Pensacola, Mobile, and New Orleans under- 
estimated the Confederate ability to halt his march. Blair underestimated 
Southern devotion and tenacity. Impatient editors and politicians forgot Daniel 
Webster's dictum that, in war, if there are blows to be given there are also 
blows to be taken. The few who foresaw a protracted conflict founded their 
ideas on wrong premises, though Scott showed more wisdom than most men 
in saying the struggle might take two or three years because its weapons would 
be as much economic as military. 11 



[ II ] 

Scott, as the architect of grand strategy, maintained a firm grip on the 
military helm. He labored under various maladies of age. After dinner he 
would call his body servant to wheel his roomy armchair around and put his 
feet up for a nap; sometimes he fell asleep in the midst of a conference. He was 

10 Scott wished to divide his 85,000 troops into two bodies. The smaller would board 
river transports, headed and flanked by powerful gunboats; the larger would march by land 
as nearly abreast as practicable, supplied by heavy freighters. They would begin somewhere 
on the Ohio and proceed "on the first autumnal swell in the rivers." O. R. Ill, i, 177 nv, El- 
liott, Scott, 722. General John A. Dix had a somewhat similar plan. He would make no offen- 
sive move until November; use the summer to train troops in camps of instruction; garrison 
Washington with 50,000 men; and in autumn launch two invading columns of 100,000 men 
each, one in Virginia, the other in the West. Morgan Dix, Memoir of John A. Dix, n, 28, 29. 

u Scott predicted to Seward, Chase, and Cameron a three-year war: "For a long time 
thereafter it will require the exercise of the full powers of the Federal Government to 
restrain the fury of the non-combatants!" Marcus J. Wright, General Scott, 330. 



GRANDIOSE PLANS AND BLUNDERING LEADERS 

nevertheless capable, if some crisis arose, of twelve or fourten hours' work a 
day. His headquarters in a shabby brick building on Seventeenth Street were 
crowded with officers, politicians, contractors, newpapermen, and railway 
officials. An unending stream of mail and telegrams poured in on him. 12 
Experienced, systematic, and conscientious, he had a much better grasp of 
business than Secretary Cameron. An Ohioan who brought McClellan's special 
scheme for ending the war to Scott learned that many radical politicians were 
impatient of the general's anaconda plan. But he found Scott's headquarters a 
busy place where decisions were quick and clear, and the atmosphere electric; 
when he called on Cameron he found an aimless, cluttered, evasive office. 13 

Scott had to sustain the first Southern strokes, the loss of Norfolk and 
Harpers Ferry blows that more vigilance on the part of the Administra- 
tion might have blocked. 

The navy yard opposite Norfolk, three-quarters of a mile long and a 
quarter-mile wide, contained riches at which we have already glanced: Ma- 
chine shops, foundries, an ordnance building, a sawmill, sail lofts, and at least 
2000 cannon, 300 of them new Dahlgren guns. Among the warships were the 
huge three-decker Pennsylvania of 120 guns, and the steam-frigate Merrimac, 
its engines in need of repairs. Nothing had ever been done to fortify the 
navy yard, and the nearest troops were at Fort Monroe, separated by many 
miles and much water. The failure of the Lincoln Administration to garrison 
the place of course arose from its unwillingness to give offense to Virginia 
or provoke the Confederacy. Not until more than a month after the inaugura- 
tion was the commodore in charge of the yard ordered to get the ships and 
other movables ready to be taken beyond danger, and even then he was 
warned to take no steps that would give needless alarm. 14 

A single regiment at Norfolk, supported by the warships anchored at the 
yard, could have held both places until reinforcements arrived; and with 
Fort Monroe at their backs, the Union forces could have dominated that 
whole corner of Virginia. But as matters stood, when a Virginia officer arrived 
on the scene April 18, he was able to take rapid action for the seizure of 
invaluable materials. Bringing up the Richmond Grays and six hundred men 

12 E. D. Keyes, Fifty Year? Observation; Elliott, Scott, 724. The general fell asleep while 
talking to an Iowa delegation tinder Senator Grimes. 

13 A. F. Perry, A Chapter in Interstate Diplomacy, Papers, Ohio Commandery Loyal 
Legion, in, 353-363. 

14 Gideon Welles treats the question of the capture of Norfolk at length in his Diary, 
I, 41-54. He admits that the local commander showed feebleness and incapacity, while some 
associates were treacherous. But Welles says in his own defense: "In repeated verbal applica- 
tions to General Scott in the months of March and April, as a precautionary measure, I 
met a refusal, on the ground of military necessity and inability to comply. He had not, he 
said, troops to defend Harper's Ferry. . . ." 



I5 6 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

from Petersburg, he called out the military companies of Portsmouth and 
Norfolk. The Northern commodore had delayed until too late in getting the 
Merrimac into the safety of Hampton Roads. An engineer from Washington 
had repaired the machinery and gotten up steam, and explicit orders had 
come to put all the more valuable ships in safety. But the fatuous commodore 
listened to junior officers who told him that no danger existed. "How could 
I expect treachery on their part?" he asked later. "The mere fact of their 
being Southern men was not surely a sufficient reason for suspecting their 
fidelity!" 15 

Too late Washington awoke to the situation, and replaced the commodore 
by the vigorous Captain Hiram Paulding, who made a frenzied attempt on the 
night of April 20-2 1 to destroy everything at the yards. Much of the property, 
however, survived his torch and dynamite. Taking possession of the smoking 
premises at dawn on the zist, the Confederates were able to salvage the dry- 
dock, foundry, ordnance building, and other structures, much of the ma- 
chinery, and hundreds of good cannon. 16 They soon began shipping ordnance 
to other places. Before long, heavy guns with fixed ammunition had been 
placed at almost every exposed point on the entire Southern coast, and at 
numerous entrenched camps inland. The Confederates simultaneously seized 
Fort Norfolk near the city, with about 150 tons of powder and many loaded 
shells. Of the warships, the Merrimac and the "Plymouth were raised, and the 
former was converted into an ironclad of formidable strength. Besides gain- 
ing all this, the Southerners were able to intrench themselves in a position 
that would cripple any future Union movements in the region of the lower 
York and James. Warships issuing from Norfolk could attack along a wide 
coasriine. 17 

Harpers Ferry lay within a short march of Washington and southern 
Pennsylvania, and by prompt action it also might have been held. The cap- 
ture of the armory and arsenal was later described by one of the principal 
Confederate officers engaged as a purely impromptu affair. From the begin- 

15 This officer, Charles S. McCauley, had received his orders April 10. See also Lossing, 
Civil War, I, 393, for details. 

1 6 See report of a Virginia officer sent to inventory the place; Richmond Enquirer, Feb. 
4, 1862, quoted in Lossing, I, 397, 398. 

17 John A. Dahlgren, an inventive officer who had given the country an efficient ordnance 
workshop, and who took command of the Washington navy yard when Franklin Buchanan 
joined the Confederacy, wrote in his diary, Feb. 3, 1862: "It is now evident that the pivot 
of affairs lay in the period beginning at the time when the attack on Sumter was decided, 
and the abandonment of Norfolk. The loss of Norfolk was almost fatal; could that have 
been held, the fate of Virginia might have been otherwise. The Department had one month 
to send there a suitable Commandant and officers, which was not done. So the latter de- 
serted and the former was helpless. How much it has cost, only to ward off the consequences 
of this mistake. . . ," M. V. Dahlgren, Memoirs of John A. Dahlgren, 355. 



GRANDIOSE PLANS AND BLUNDERING LEADERS 

ning of the year the superintendent had warned the Ordnance Bureau that 
an attack might be imminent. Yet only a tiny force was sent to guard the 
machinery, the ammunition, and the 20,000 rifles, and by April 18 it was re- 
duced to forty-five men. Though at that moment 20,000 rifles were absolutely 
priceless to the Union, the War Department had half a company to watch them! 

This rash exposure invited attack. Ex-Governor Henry A. Wise laid the 
plans; volunteer officers at a night meeting April 16 at the Exchange Hotel 
in Richmond worked out the details; the railroads of northern Virginia 
promised transport; and volunteer companies were alerted for orders from 
Governor Letcher. Troop units from Staunton, Charlottesville, Culpeper, and 
other points gathered in Winchester, and on the night of the ijth marched 
to the Ferry. Expecting a sharp battle, they were astonished when they 
found the arsenal blazing but deserted, for the little Union guard, warned 
that the enemy were at hand, had destroyed the munitions and stolen away. 
The novelist Hawthorne later described the ruins as dismal piles of broken 
bricks and smashed pillars, amid which lay gunbarrels in heaps of hundreds, 
twisted by the flames and rusted by weather. 18 

Had only a fighting regiment been there! During the first week the Con- 
federates kept but 1300 raw recruits at the place. This force stopped a train 
which was carrying General William S. Harney, just humiliated by Frank 
Blair, from St. Louis to Washington. As sympathetic Confederate officers es- 
corted the captured officers to a Richmond train, Harney gazed at the few 
hundred soldiers in sight, and with a twinkle inquired of the commander: 
"Where is your army encamped, general?" 19 Three batteries that the Southern- 
ers brought up had no caissons and no horses. 

Within the next month, however, the Confederates raised their detach- 
ments at or near Harpers Ferry, commanding the confluence of the Shenandoah 
and Potomac, to the 8,000 men already noted. Still more important, they sent 
a Mexican Wax veteran to take command the first appearance of Thomas J. 
Jackson on the stage where he was to become immortal. In the worn, dingy 
blue uniform of a professor at the Virginia Military Institute, Jackson instituted 
a rigid discipline and brought system into all the camp arrangements. With his 
six feet of height, powerful limbs, and strongly marked features set off by a 
heavy beard, he was an impressive figure. The troops quickly learned that he 
was gentle with the ignorant but unsparing with shirkers. Alert, energetic, a 
master of quick military movement, he merited his future sobriquet only in 
that his large frame and determined air gave him a rocklike firmness. "The 

1 8 Statement by Col. Roger Jones, Battles and Leaders, I, 125; Hawthorne, "Chiefly About 
War Matters," Atlantic, vol. 10 (July, 1862), 43-61. 

19 Battles and Leaders, 1, 1 19, 1 20. 



I5 8 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

presence of a master mind," writes a subordinate, "was visible in the changed 
condition of the camp"; and this influence persisted after the command was 
transferred on May 23 to Joseph E. Johnston. 

And who faced Johnston? A soldier near seventy, who after fighting in the 
War of 1812 and Mexican War, and spending decades in business, had been 
mustered into service as a ninety-day major-general of volunteers Robert 
Patterson of Pennsylvania. On June 3 he took command at Chambersburg, 
Pennsylvania, of a little army consisting chiefly of Keystone militia. He at 
once proposed an advance against the Confederates on Maryland Heights, a 
sound strategic move. Scott approved the undertaking and sent him reinforce- 
ments, merely enjoining him to attempt nothing without a clear prospect of 
success, for the enemy would profit from even a drawn battle. When Patterson 
advanced with about 15,000 men, Johnston not only abandoned the Heights, 
destroyed the railroad bridge, and retreated south of the Potomac, but fell back 
to a point near Charlestown, Virginia. On June 16, Patterson repossessed 
Harpers Ferry after the Confederates had carried off all the valuable arsenal 
machinery. 20 

But what then? He telegraphed Scott, saying that he wished to make the 
Ferry his base and march on Winchester. Scott quite properly asked the reason, 
writing him: "The enemy is concentrating upon Arlington and Alexandria, and 
this is the line first to be looked to." He was right, for the Confederates were 
gathering their forces at Manassas, hoping to advance on Alexandria; and 
Jefferson Davis had written Beauregard on June 13 that he planned soon to 
unite Johnston's troops with Beauregard's to give the advance impressive 
strength. Patterson remained where he was. 

Although Scott had lost important pawns in the Norfolk naval base and 
Harpers Ferry arsenal, he had high hopes of the larger game. 

[in ] 

On May 28, four days after troops moved across the Potomac to seize 
Alexandria, Brigadier-General Irvin McDowell was appointed head of the 
Department of Northeastern Virginia. This alert, capable officer, tall, deep- 
chested, and strong-limbed, had a reputation for efficiency, but in singularly 
limited fields. An Ohioan of Scotch-Irish family, a West Pointer in the class of 
1838, a man of cultivation and foreign travel, he had served almost exclusively 
in staff positions. Duty at the Military Academy, in Mexico as adjutant-general 

20 See Robert Patterson, A Narrative of the Campaign in the Valley of the Shenandoah. 
Scott's letter of instruction to Patterson was dated June 8, 1861; O. R. I, ii, 694. John Sherman 
served briefly on Patterson's staff. 



GRANDIOSE PLANS AND BLUNDERING LEADERS l - Q 

to Wool, on various departmental staffs and at army headquarters such was 
his record. He was liked by Scott, who had known him since he entered the 
army, and by Secretary Chase, influenced by the fact that McDowell came 
from his own town of Columbus. But AlcDowell was a man of distinct faults. 
He talked unguardedly, and was given to sharp sayings which helped make him 
one of the most unpopular officers of the army. He was a gargantuan feeder, 
who would soon show a portly figure and puffy face. And even Chase, while 
lauding him as brave, truthful, able, and intensely earnest, criticized his brusque 
aloofness. "He is too indifferent in manner," commented Chase. "His officers 
are sometimes alienated by it. He is too purely military in his intercourse with 
his soldiers." 21 

McDowell, as he later testified, never believed in Scott's march down the 
Mississippi. But he did agree with Scott that they must drill a large army, work 
which would take four or five months at least, and he contemplated no early 
battle. 

Unit after unit was sent across the Potomac, until on June 24 McDowell 
was able to report that he had twenty infantry regiments, "good, bad, and in- 
different," of nearly 14,000 men, with 250 cavalry and one serviceable field 
battery of 6 rifled guns. As more troops were steadily arriving, he hoped soon 
to have a field army of 25,000 men, leaving 10,000 in the Washington fortifica- 
tions. McDowell held the sound conviction that long wagon trains groaning 
with impedimenta were unsoldierly. 

It is difficult to describe the levies assembled under McDowell except in 
terms of a rabble. The peasants who milled about Wat Tyler with clubs and 
pitchforks were little inferior in equipment and training. To be sure, a few 
regulars theoretically seasoned the mass with some discipline and experience 
one infantry battalion, a few cavalry and the single battery 22 but actually 
they had no effect upon it; for the army was really made up of ninety-day 
militia, eager for discharge in July, and the first of the green three-year men 
who had responded to Lincoln's call in early May. Many Johnny Raws did 
not know how to fold their blankets properly, handle firearms safely (Senator 
Wilson, appalled by the accidents, urged that they be deprived of revolvers), 

21 James Harrison Wilson, dining with McDowell, was impressed by his vigor. But noting 
that he gobbled up every dish within reach, finishing with an entire watermelon, he agreed 
with Gen. J. B. McPherson that he was too greedy a gourmand to be a good general. Under 
the Old Flagy I, 66. Carl Schurz writes that his censorious temper made him by the fall of 
1862 the most hated officer in the entire army. But Chase, while granting his faults, attributed 
his unpopularity partly to the fact that he turned a harsh face toward all marauding and 
looting, and that he worked his troops down to Spartan fighting trim. Schurz, Renuwscences, 
II, 382, 383; Chase, Sept. 4, 1862, in Chase Papers, Pa. Hist. Soc. 

22 This on June 24; three additional companies of regular artillery were in the Wash- 
ington intxenchments. O. R. I, ii, 718 ff. 



X<5o THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

dig intrenchments, or otherwise take cover under fire. 23 The two inveterate 
camp enemies mentioned by Defoe in Memoirs of a Cavalier, idling and sotting, 
stalked through the Union lines. Later one commander explained a disaster by 
saying that although the men had not marched enough to tire them, "They 
had been loafing around a great deal; had been out a great deal of nights, and 
had been broken of their rest, and had not had full rations." 

Reluctance to drill, an insubordinate temper, and a tendency to shirk hard- 
ship were general. W. H. Russell saw camps which stank abominably be- 
cause the men had dug no latrines. He saw a soldier, diving into an earth-pit, 
halted by a sergeant's yell: "Dempsey, is that you going into the magazine wid 
yer pipe lighted?" On the march the recruits stopped to pick blackberries, re- 
fill their canteens, and lounge. Many officers, petty politicians or local digni- 
taries, were so incompetent that the story of captains ordering their companies 
to "Swing around like a barn door" were not wholly apocryphal. 24 The 
Massachusetts businessman, J. M. Forbes, transacting military business in Wash- 
ington early in June for Governor Andrew, was alarmed by what he saw. 
One stupid officer infuriated him: "Of such materials is the U. S. Quarter- 
master's Department now composed!" He wrote prophetically: "I shall be 
surprised if they don't get a big scare at Washington one of these days, and 
should be glad to see our [Massachusetts] preparations of all essentials so com- 
plete that we could on a pinch hurry off our six Regiments at short notice. 
Tents and wagons in such a case might follow later." 25 

Nor was this amateur army given proper headquarters organization. Mc- 
Dowell, who had been partly educated in France and had spent 1859 traveling 
and studying there, knew the paper requirements of an army. His motley force 
was grouped in five divisions of 2,000 to 3,600 men each, but the five brigadiers, 
Samuel P. Heintzelman, Theodore Runyon, D. S. Miles, Daniel Tyler, and 
David Hunter, were poorly acquainted with their duties, with their subordi- 
nates, and with their own capacities. Nobody, not even McDowell, had ever 
handled a division before; Hunter and Heintzelman, both West Pointers, had 
been majors before the war, but Hunter only as paymaster in Mexico. For 
staff work McDowell assembled the proper number of quartermasters, com- 
missary officers, and medical officers, and assigned men to ordnance, signal 
service, inspection, and engineering, but regulars were so few that he had to 
employ many novices. 

McDowell's own headquarters was lamentably under-officered. He had no 
chief of staff to help him take comprehensive views and to catch up his work if 

23 Henry Wilson, June 27, 1861, to Governor Andrew; Andrew Papers, MHS. 

24 George W. Bicknell, Hist. $th Maine; Samuel Merrill, The *joth Indiana, etc.-, Committee 
on the Conduct of the War, II, 182. 

25 Forbes to Andrew, June 9, 186*1; Andrew Papers, MHS, 



GRANDIOSE PLANS AND BLUNDERING LEADERS l ^ l 

he were disabled; nor did he have any group to help him make plans, move 
forces, and see that his orders were executed. W. H. Russell, breakfastino- with 
him on July 6, found him unaccompanied by any aide. When they walked 
later through the Washington streets, not one of the many soldiers they passed 
saluted. No military police or provost guard was available to keep order among 
the troops, who bought liquor at will and at night became drunkenly riotous. 
Some days later, Russell on reaching Washington from Annapolis found 
McDowell alone on the station platform, peering anxiously into the cars for 
two batteries that had gone astray. Russell expressed astonishment to find an 
army commander running such errands. "I am obliged to look after them my- 
self," sheepishly explained McDowell, "as I have so small a staff, and they are 
all engaged out at my headquarters." But he had no real staff at all, observed 
Russell; just some plodding pedants to write memoranda and ignorant young 
fellows to strut about. 26 

His intelligence service was practically nonexistent. Telling Russell that a 
decent map of Virginia was unprocurable, he admitted that he knew little 
or nothing of the country in front, and had no cavalry officer capable of mak- 
ing a reconnaissance. 

For these defects McDowell was far from being solely responsible. Win- 
field Scott, irritated when Cameron ordered McDowell across the river, had 
vainly urged the general to protest. In his displeasure he treated McDowell 
coldly, impeded the flow of troops to his camps, and denied him expert assist- 
ance. Clinging to his Mississippi plan, Scott wanted nothing but a holding 
operation in Virginia. "No additions were made to the force at all," testified 
McDowell later. "With difficulty could I get any officers." In vain did Mc- 
Dowell tell Secretaries Cameron and Chase that his burden was too great for 
one man, and that he could not organize, discipline, and lead his army without 
trained aides. 

Scott's irritation increased when McDowell felt it necessary to argue be- 
fore a Cabinet meeting against the Mississippi expedition on the ground that it 
would encounter excessive obstacles and perils. To capture New Orleans, said 
the general, the North should take Pakenham's short route. The head of the 
new Department of Washington, General J. K. F. Mansfield, also showed 
jealous chilliness toward McDowell. 27 

It could not justly be said that McDowell and his five division commanders 

26 Russell, My Diary, July 16. Gurowski, Diary 1861-62, p. 61, says he saw McDowell do 
detail work which even in a half -organized army belonged to the chief of staff. Russell's 
opinions, corroborated by testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, 
are expert, for he had seen much of armies and campaigns, and edited in London the best 
military periodical in the world. 

27 Committee on the Conduct of the War, H 37 ff. 



KS2 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

gave their troops insufficient drill; the difficulty rather was in the wrong kind 
of drill. Numerous parades in June found the troops marching with increased 
precision. When on the i-th Cameron and McDowell reviewed eight infantry 
regiments, with some cavalry and artillery, in the most imposing military 
display vet made, spectators voiced a lively admiration. But of long route 
marches, charges, scaling exercises, and target practice there was almost none. 
Had the war been a contest in drill-ground evolutions, the army would have 
dune well. As it was, McDowell shortly had to explain that his men were so 
unused even to light marching-order loads that a force which should have 
covered a six-mile road in four hours without strain actually took eleven hours 
and arrived in exhaustion. Though by June 20 his lines extended twenty miles 
along the Potomac and at some points reached ten miles into Virginia, offer- 
ing room for businesslike maneuvers, his idea was to break in his troops grad- 
ually. 

By that date three armies had taken shape in Virginia: Patterson's at ruined 
Harpers Ferry, Ben Butler's at Fort Monroe, and McDowell's. McCIellan had 
largely completed his successful West Virginia campaign. 28 Lyon commanded 
a small force in Missouri with which he hoped to purge the State. But what 
armies! The authors of over-all strategic plans talked of sweeping marches to 
New Orleans, to Nashville, to Richmond, to Mobile and Pensacola; and here 
were crude, poorly armed cohorts that for the most part could not be trusted 
to march twenty miles in hostile territory. Any dream can be indulged by 
men who plan in the supramundane spirit of Simon the Magician. It is now 
time to turn to an examination of realities, and measure the discipline, equip- 
ment, morale, and cohesion of the legions that had been assembled to vindicate 
the unity of the republic. 

28 One of McClellan's subordinates on June 3, with a small Indiana brigade, routed a 
Confederate force with such hot pursuit that the event was termed "the Philippi races." 
Then on July n, W. S. Rosecrans, second in command, defeated the Confederate forces on 
Rich Mountain led by John Pegram and W. S. Garnett. Credit for the West Virginia 
campaign lay as much with the subordinate officers, including the able Jacob D. Cox, as 
with MeQelian. 




The Greenhorn Armies 

THE TRADITIONAL DISTRUST of Anglo-Americans for military estab- 
lishments had long been reflected in their treatment of regular troops. In 
America as in Britain the army had been starved. Captain Jenks of the Horse 
Marines had been as much a figure of fun as Tommy Atkins. The American 
regular force, absurdly small for its severe duties on the Indian frontier, and 
totally inadequate as a nucleus in the event of foreign collision, nevertheless 
satisfied the nation. After the Mexican War its strength had been fixed at 
10,120. Later its numbers were enlarged, especially when in 1855 four regi- 
ments were added; but just before the Civil War it barely exceeded 16,000. 
This, as one administrator after another pointed out, was insufficient to keep 
the western tribes in order. 

The flames of Indian hostilities had flickered up at many points in the West 
during the 'fifties, falling and rising again, but never quite being extinguished. 
One reason for adding the four new regiments in the middle of the decade 
was that a detachment of troops had just been murdered by the Sioux. In Texas 
and New Mexico punitive expeditions were needed to suppress Indians guilty 
of outrages on the settlers and the emigrant trains. A considerable force under 
Harney had to invade the Sioux country, partly to protect western Kansas 
and Nebraska, and partly to keep the Oregon Trail clear. In the Territories of 
Washington and Oregon sharp fighting took place. The line of the Indian 
frontier in the Far West grew more perilous as emigration and settlement 
thickened. In 1857 the Secretary of War, reckoning that an aggregate of 6700 
miles of emigrant roads had to be watched, declared that his forces found ade- 
quate protection impossible. The country had sixty-eight forts of a large and 
permanent character and seventy less substantial posts where garrisons were 
needed. They were scattered over three million square miles, so that a visit even 
to a dozen of the most important required a long, arduous journey. Down to 
1 86 1 the War Department constantly besought Congress for more mm, and 
a better system of strongholds. 



164 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 



I I ] 



The organization of the army was manifestly defective. Its basis was in part 
the British army system as it had existed in the colonies, and it retained many 
defects which the British army had pruned away. The several grades of gen- 
erals were appointed by the President, but below this rank, promotion by 
seniority was the inflexible rule, so that no matter how incompetent the officer, 
he was steadily pushed up the ladder. As Secretary of War Floyd remarked, 
"The "jzorst officer of any army must, if he lives, come to be one of the most 
important and responsible officers under the government," a regimental head. 
An almost insurmountable wall separated line officers from the staff (that is, 
medical, quartermaster, commissariat officers), who constituted an independent 
corps. Seldom serving in the field, the staff could not gain an adequate fund 
of observation and experience, while their independent status deprived them of 
proper opportunities as aides to the commanders. The system also begot an 
unhappy accumulation of red tape and prerogative of general stuffiness. 1 

When we add that the pennypinching national economy kept the army 
ill paid, so that a major-general received only $3480 a year, a brigadier $2112, 
and colonels from $1332 in the infantry to $1512 in the cavalry, we can under- 
stand why so many able men left the service. (The Chief Justice was paid 
$8500; Cabinet members and Associate Justices got $8000, Senators and Rep- 
resentatives $5000.) Lower officers were worse off still. After long, arduous 
waiting, a captain of infantry had to rear his family on $768 a year, and a 
major on $888, with small contingent allowances. Although no prudent British 
father would allow his son to enter the army without private means, in general 
the British pay was fully double the American scale. 2 

One branch, the engineers' corps, an exception to the general rule, did offer 
scope to energetic and ambitious young men. For one reason, its activities lay 
mainly outside the tribal country. ''Service in the Indian campaigns," Secretary 
Jefferson Davis remarked, "though little calculated to excite the military ardor 
of the soldier, is attended by equal hazard and even by greater privation than 
belongs to warfare with a civilized foe." It was dirty, exhausting, risky work; 
icy blizzards, burning heat, raging streams, blinding dust storms, were com- 
monplace incidents of duty; long periods of loneliness and monotony, demor- 
alizing in the extreme, were followed by fierce spasms of hardship and peril. 

1 See the annual Reports of the Secretaries of War, 1850-60, particularly those of Jeffer- 
son Davis and John B. Floyd. 

2 Harper's Afagazme, Vol. 1 1 (Sept., 1855), 552-555. It was generally agreed that a captain 
ought for the good of the service to get at least $1800, a colonel $3000. The pay schedule 
adopted early in the century had been continued without regard to rising costs. The base 
pay of $7 a month for privates explained in part the general American contempt for "sogers. n 



THE GREENHORN ARMIES I( j- 

In the engineering service, however, officers might distinguish themselves by 
road building, dam construction, harbor work, exploration, or erection of 
public buildings, becoming as famous as Lee or Montgomery C. Aleigs. 

Throughout the iSjo's the army engineers were busy making military roads 
in the West. They surveyed the Great Lakes, gathering materials for accurate 
charts and marking reefs and shoals with buoys. Military parties were sent to 
survey unknown areas and explore the most practicable railroad routes be- 
tween the Mississippi and Pacific. This was suitable work, for the defense of 
the Pacific Coast in war would require a railroad, and it was also work which 
army engineers could best perform. Robert E. Lee found no satisfaction in 
routine garrison duty, but when assigned to the problem of removing some 
bars in the Mississippi opposite St. Louis which threatened to destroy the 
usefulness of the port, he delighted in a task worthy of his best efforts. From 
beginning to end, Lee's labors had carried him over much of the nation. He 
improved the channel of the upper Mississippi at Keokuk rapids. He performed 
engineering work at Cockspur Island near Savannah. In New York Harbor 
he saw to the making of elaborate changes in Fort Lafayette and Fort Hamil- 
ton. Other engineers dealt with assignments just as complex; for example, Cap- 
tain Randolph B. Marcy, who by 1861 was a veteran of western exploration, 
skilled in road-marking, fort-placing, and guidebook-writing. 

That the regular army was on the whole well officered its severest critics 
seldom denied. Its leaders had received their training in three schools: West 
Point, the Mexican War, and various branches of civil life. Many of the best 
officers of the conflict now beginning had enjoyed a combination of all three. 

West Point, as founded in the Jefferson Administration, was originally a 
school for training military engineers, with a plan based largely upon that of 
the Royal Military Academy of Woolwich. But under the farsighted, meticu- 
lously careful, and progressive administration of Sylvanus Thayer, who in 
1817 began re-creating the institution, its course was broadened while its dis- 
cipline became more severe. "Sylvanus Thayer is a tyrant," Andrew Jackson 
ejaculated in 1832. "The autocrat of all the Russias couldn't exercise more 
power!" But he was a wise, benevolent autocrat, and when he left in 1833 the 
academy had a growing reputation. 

Some capable teachers came; Dennis Hart Mahan, for example, whose book 
on strategy and military history, Outpost (1847), proved that he was the best 
military scientist of his time in America. 5 In 1854 Colonel William J. Hardee, 
asked by the government to prepare a system of drill which would permit 
of quicker evolutions, compiled a handbook of tactics based primarily on 

3 R. E, Dupay, Where They Have Trod, and Schaff, The Spirit 0f Old West Pomf, 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

French practice. 4 Immediately introduced at West Point, his tactics became 
standard in the army. Under Lee, who was superintendent 1853-55, the course 
was lengthened to five years to make room for English, military law, and more 
of practical training. 

The active service of the Mexican War gave many young officers useful 
lessons not only in handling- troops, but in resourcefulness and persistence. 
Robert E. Lee was only a captain when, during the march on Mexico City, he 
made a perilous night journey to headquarters with news of an enemy concen- 
tration which Scott called "the greatest feat of moral and physical courage 
performed by any individual during the campaign." Grant was but a lieutenant 
when at Cerro Gordo he helped lead the advance over chasms so steep that his 
men could barely climb the precipices. Robert Anderson was a captain of 
artillery when, accompanying Scott, he penned the letters to his wife which 
furnish the most charming and graphic account of the campaign. At Buena 
Vista, Captain Braxton Bragg fought gallantly to convert defeat into victory, 
and at the most desperate moment Jefferson Davis did turn the balance with 
his regiment of Mississippi Rifles. The poo-mile march of John E. Wool from 
San Antonio to Saltillo, the yet longer march of A. W. Doniphan to Chihuahua, 
the surprise attack of Persifor F. Smith which destroyed a Mexican army at 
Contreras, the assault of Joseph E. Johnston on Chapultepec, and the varied 
service seen by T. J. Jackson and McClellan, all counted as tuition for an in- 
finitely more grueling contest. 

Both before and after the Mexican War, West Point men who would later 
play large parts in the conflict of North and South steadily left the regular 
army for civil employ. In a country so rich in opportunity, the wonder is that 
so many Thomas, Ewell, Lee, Pope, Sheridan, Buell stayed. Meade, who 
graduated from West Point in 1835, resigned the next year, but came back to 
the army in 1842, Hooker, who graduated in 1837, kft m l8 53 to see ^ his 
fortune in California. Sherman, of the class of 1840, forsook the army in 1853 
to give restless trials to banking, law, and the management of a military col- 
lege. Grant, taking his West Point degree in 1843, was out of the army eleven 
years later, drifting from occupation to occupation. William S. Rosecrans, of 
the class of 1842, stayed in military life but a dozen years before engineering, 
coal mining, and oil refining engaged his talents. McClellan thirteen years after 
he quit West Point was chief engineer of the Illinois Central. All these men 
learned much from their wide experience of both civil and military affairs. 5 

4 The Washington National, Intelligencer, Nov. 2, 1854, states that Har dee's text was 
taken from the system of the Chasseurs <k Vincennes in France. 

5 Nearly 300 West Point graduates became Northern generals in the war, and about 150 
became Southern generals; E. C. Boynton, History of West Point. Sixty-five Southern cadets 
resigned from West Point to take Confederate commissions. 



THE GREEXHQRX ARMIES j 7 

But the fact remains that the regular army was a poor nucleus for a rapidly 
expanding force in a great conflict. The limited scale upon which its various 
branches operated made for inertia, narrowness, and slackness. The medics! 
department, for example, had been organized by Secretary John C. Calhoun 
in 1818 under an excellent plan. The first surgeon-general, a capable, energetic 
man, had required every post surgeon to keep full and accurate records upon 
everything pertaining to climate, disease, and "medical topography 1 ' and to 
forward them to the Medical Bureau in Washington. The next incumbent 
utilized these records to publish two useful volumes in 1856, one on medical 
statistics, the other an army meteorological register. But beyond collecting 
some illuminating if limited information, the Medical Bureau thereafter 
achieved almost nothing. 

Its officers were mere post doctors, who, with one brilliant exception later 
to be noted, lacked not only experience in the problems of a large medical 
establishment, but capacity to organize a service to meet these problems. No- 
body had really studied camp sanitation; nobody, despite the ghastly lessons 
taught the British and French in the Crimea, really understood hospital re- 
quirements. The same stagnation, hidebound worship of routine, and pettiness 
of outlook obtained among the rank and file of the quartermaster and com- 
missary departments. 

All the principal army services, in short, would have to be rebuilt on a new 
basis. The regulars were only a trickling little stream which would soon be 
merged with the plunging waters of a river of volunteers. 

[ n 3 

What were the principles and methods by which the construction of a great 
volunteer army in the North began? We have seen how Eastern governors 
hurriedly sent the first militia regiments to Washington. But the 75,000 ninety- 
day men constituted the merest stopgap. 6 

In the initial emergency Lincoln, incessantly busy with other matters, had 
to depend on the Cabinet. So far as Cameron went, this meant depending on a 
reed, for that fumbling Secretary let delays, confusion, and blundering over- 
master him. Salmon P. Chase provided the first clear guidance. 

On May 3, as we have noted, Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 
42,034 volunteers to serve three years or the duration, and next day Cameron 
in General Order No. 15 specified that they should be organized in forty regi- 
ments. Lincoln simultaneously directed a small augmentation of the regular 

6 The three-month men on July i actually numbered 77,875; Am. Qyc. TTie 16^00 rege- 
krs were partly needed in the West to hold the Indians in check. 



!<58 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

army. It was Chase who inspired these steps. That energetic, ambitious leader 
while governor of Ohio had carried through a reorganization of the military 
establishment of the State, lifting it to a new plane of efficiency; he had many 
military friends; and once war began, he was anxious to see it waged with 
implacable resolution. If he had had his way, the government would have 
called for 6^000 more men instead of 42,000. And it was Chase who, by Lin- 
coln's express direction and with Cameron's consent, took up the problem of 
organizing the new levies. 

Just how this astonishing delegation of powers of the War Department 
to the head of the Treasury took place we do not know. Perhaps at some 
Cabinet meeting Chase pointed to his experience with military administration 
in Ohio. Everyone knew that Scott specially respected him, and that McDowell 
was a protege; the overworked Cameron was ready to agree; and Lincoln, 
who had a low opinion of Cameron and was impressed by Chase's masterful, 
dynamic ways, gladly assented. The moment Chase entered a room energy, 
system, rapidity (and grasping ambition) entered with him. He asked Mc- 
Dowell, who in the beginning was assistant adjutant-general, and W. B. Frank- 
lin, a West Point graduate who was superintending architect of the Treasury, 
to draw up a basic plan which he revised. 7 

The first question before these men was vital. Should they make a bold 
new plan for a consolidated national army, or should they accept the traditional 
reliance on State regiments, State officered and largely State-equipped, to be 
slowly and imperfectly welded into a national force? In short, should purely 
military considerations rule, or political and popular pressures be dominant? 
From the standpoint of professional military men, a dazzling opportunity 
presented itself. The Administration might use the crisis to demand a unitary 
national army, its officers to be appointed by Washington; its men to be re- 
cruited not by States but by regions or departments; and each regiment to be 
divided into three battalions, one regularly posted to a home base to enlist and 
drill recruits so that the command would always be kept full. 8 If Chase and his 
advisers had asked for this and for a general conscription act, they would have 
offered the country a military plan which French or Prussian officers could 
applaud a plan not tuilike that which later enabled the country to fight two 
world wars with signal efficiency. 

But even McDowell and Franklin dared not go so far. They recommended 
that the three-year regiments be made part of the regular army, with national 

7 Schuckers, Chase, 183-186; Meneely, War Department, iS6i y 137 fL; Upton, Military 
Policy of the U. S. T 234. Franklin had graduated at the head of his class (1843) an< ^ fought 
at Buena Vista; the fact that his father was long clerk of the House of Representatives helped 
him take national views. 

8 Upton, 234. 



THE GREENHORN ARMIES 

numerals, and with officers commissioned by the President on nomination bv 
the governors. They suggested that the regiments be apportioned among the 
States according to their representation in Congress, that the three-battalion 
system be adopted, and that each Congressional district be required to keep 
its regiment full. This was a hybrid national-State system. And Chase rejected 
even this mild advance. He knew that to put boys from Connecticut, New 
York, or Wisconsin into units designated simply by regular-army numbers, 
not by State names, would kindle a mighty popular revolt. For himself, he said, 
he would "rather have no regiments raised in Ohio than that they should not be 
known as Ohio regiments." He was against the three-battalion plan for volun- 
teers (though not for the regulars), arguing that it would be unwise to aban- 
don a regimental organization with which all State militia were familiar; and 
he thought that to avoid too great a centralization of authority in the Federal 
Government, the States should appoint the regimental officers. 

In thus sticking to the old-fashioned system, Chase gauged public sentiment 
well. However great a price that system had cost the nation in the Revolution 
and the War of 1812, the people would not abandon it. Congress had to ratify 
his plan, which we shall consider in detail later, and Congress would have 
balked at a consolidated army. All Illinoisans wanted to speak of "The Fifty- 
fifth Illinois"; all New Yorkers of "The Eighty-eighth New York." 

The next two problems were interrelated: How should the forty volunteer 
regiments be apportioned among the States, and how rapidly should they be 
sent to the front? These questions were bound to bring the State and Federal 
authorities into collision. Aflame with patriotic zeal, a number of governors 
had encouraged the enlistment of troops beyond reasonable limits, and were 
under pressure to put them on a firing line. Legislatures had created camps of 
instruction; State executives had hurried troops to these camps and were feed- 
ing and drilling them at great expense; the men were eager to fight, and other 
groups at home were eager to take their places. 

In his general order for the forty regiments, Cameron did not specify State 
quotas, so that a vast deal of confusion and uncertainty ensued all over the 
North. The companies drilling in a thousand communities and coalescing into 
regiments hoped for prompt acceptance by Washington. Their officers besieged 
the governors, who in turn bombarded Washington for instructions and con- 
cessions. Representatives and Senators hurled themselves upon the War De- 
partment. As day after day no orders came, the companies continued to drill, 
parade, and swear, and to write angry letters to political friends. 

When the Union Defense Committee of New York found that conflicting 
laws and orders interfered with the prompt use of fourteen regiments it was 
equipping, a committee hurried to the capital and held an impatient interview 



I70 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

of several hours with Lincoln on May 15. The President agreed that the four- 
teen regiments might forthwith be moved to Washington. 9 At once jealous 
Pennsylvanians expressed great indignation. Chiefly from units already drilling, 
Governor Curtin formed a reserve of fifteen regiments under a new military 
bill which he pushed through the legislature. These reserve regiments, destined 
to honorable fame in a dire national crisis, demanded that they get just as fair 
treatment as the New Yorkers. 

Belatedly, Cameron on May 15 did write a letter, not received by some 
governors for a week, announcing to each State its quota. The one sent to 
John A. Andrew in Boston was typical of all. Cameron informed the impatient 
Andrew, who knew that more than ten thousand men were drilling and fuming 
in the Bay State, that he could send forward only six new regiments. "It is im- 
portant," wrote the Secretary, "to reduce rather than to enlarge this number, 
and in no event to exceed it. Let me earnestly recommend to you, therefore, to 
call for no more than eight regiments, of which six only are to serve for three 
years, or during the war, and, if more are already called for, to reduce the 
number by discharge." 10 In State after State, Cameron's strict limitations, and 
his admonitions to keep recruiting and mobilization down, fell on the public 
zeal like a chilling f ogbank. 

Nearly all the principal governors continued to strain at the leash, eager to 
move further and faster than the War Department thought feasible. Bucking- 
ham of Connecticut, for example, had made an agreement in Washington with 
General Scott (sanctioned, he thought, by Cameron) for acceptance of some 
extra regiments which were imploring active duty. Returning to Connecticut, 
he was outraged to find this agreement canceled by Cameron's new action on 
State quotas. Curtin was similarly incensed when Cameron notified him that 
the government would accept only ten three-year regiments from Pennsyl- 
vania, for this meant sending large bodies of enthusiastic Keystone volunteers 
home. Curtin exploded in an angry letter to Cameron: "It would be well for 
me to understand how authority is divided, so we can move with certainty, 
and the ardor of the people of this State should not be again cooled by 
changes." Yates thought that Lincoln's own State was very shabbily treated. 11 

Austin Blair of Michigan, too, a man of radical temper who favored prompt, 
sweeping, and aggressive policies, condemned the Administration policy of 
limiting the troops to be accepted. He predicted that the nation would soon 
rue it. After putting the First Michigan early on the scene in Washington, he 

9 N. Y. Tribune, May i6 f 1861. 

jo Schouler, Mass, in the Civil War, I, 167. 

n Meneely, 146, 147. Governor Buckingham's troops were to include a regiment armed 
free of charge by Colonel Colt with Colt's revolving breech-loading rifles (an arm by no 
means perfected); Buckingham, Buckingham, 163, 164. 



THE GREENHORN ARMIES I7I 

had pressed forward the preparation of three additional regiments. When the 
War Department sent him word that it would be better to reduce than increase 
that number, numerous additional companies drilling throughout Michigan 
either broke up or found service under the banners of other States. Governor 
Blair indignantly kept on with his program of training, and had the satisfaction 
of seeing the Fifth Michigan leave Detroit for Virginia late in the summer. He 
wished to see overwhelming Union forces hurled upon the enemy like Caesar's 
legions "pay them out of his property, feed them from his granaries, mount 
them upon his horses, and . . . let him feel the full force of the storm of 
war." 12 

[ HI ] 

The fact was that the War Department wished to avoid explaining publicly 
the chief reason for limiting the armies. This was that to hurry masses of men 
to Washington before uniforms, arms, camps, and hospitals were ready would 
be a calamity. Arsenals and armories were half -empty; few depots of military 
stores existed; tents and uniforms could not be made overnight, or good drill- 
masters supplied. Of the 30,000 volunteers in Washington, wrote a well- 
informed journalist on May 15, not more than 2000 would be called soldiers by 
a British or French general. 

When the emergency first developed, Scott thought that troops need be 
given only a gun and ammunition before going to Washington for full equip- 
ment; Chase and Cameron wished to see the States furnish them a full outfit for 
field and camp before they came. Lincoln at first tended to take Scott's side, 
but as the dispute persisted saw that his Cabinet officers had the greater reason. 
The shortage of equipment could be far better understood in Washington than 
in Indianapolis or Boston, where many imagined that the government had vast 
storehouses full of everything. Actually, the supply of arms alone was partially 
adequate, and difficulties of distribution hindered their use. The government 
had no foundry for cannon. Uniforms, blankets, tents, medicines, all were 
grossly deficient. Hence it was that Cameron wrote Lincoln as late as July i 
that one of the main difficulties was to keep down the size of the army; hence 
Lincoln finally informed Congress on July 4: "One of the greatest perplexities 
of the government is to avoid receiving troops faster than it can provide for 
them." 13 

The commissary officers in Washington, purchasing large quantities of food 

12 Message to the legislature, Jan. 2, 1862. 

13 O. R. IH, i, 303. Chase was of course partly actuated by his dread of unnecessary ex- 
pense while the Treasury was still ill served. Oft this see W. P. Fessenden, Aug. 27, 1861; 
Fessenden MSS, Columbia Univ. 



I72 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

for the incoming troops, found themselves without organization to distribute 
it properly. They had insufficient horses and wagons; they had no cooking 
facilities in many of the buildings where thousands of men were housed. Not 
only stoves and utensils, but blankets, cots, mattresses, and tents were urgently 
needed. Forehanded commanders tried to provide for their troops before ar- 
rival at the capital. For example, Colonel H. W. Slocum, the popular head of the 
New York Twenty-seventh, had sent his lieutenant-colonel in advance to see 
that victuals were ready; but the officer could do nothing, and the men found 
only two barrels of salt pork. They went to bed supperless and angry. The 
First Massachusetts, miraculously reaching Washington some two hours ahead 
of schedule, also found no provisions ready. Those who had no money went 
hungry the first night. Next morning they rustled up some boxes of salt red 
herring, soda crackers, and a quantity of wormy, sour ship-bread, and with 
coffee made in two rusty caldrons found in a hardware store, got the semblance 
of a meal. 14 In a day when most families breakfasted on stewed fruit, oatmeal, 
meat or eggs, potatoes, and bread and butter, this was sorry fare. 

Such shortages were virtually nation-wide. The governors, so creditably 
anxious to raise heavy armies and deal stout blows, learned this as soon as they 
went into the national market for necessaries. 

Buckingham of Connecticut, for example, at once found a shortage of arms. 
His State had a thousand muskets of Mexican War age, and two thousand 
smoothbore percussion muskets that were practically useless. It owned thirty 
pieces of artillery, but no caissons or harness. He had money aplenty, but to 
find good arms to buy was another matter. The difficulties of transport were 
highly irritating. The First Connecticut left New Haven by sea May 9, a 
thousand men jammed on a little steamer that could scarcely accommodate 
two hundred in comfort; no food, little water, and practically no plumbing. 
He met another shortage in uniforms. The quartermaster-general, paying $7.50 
each for a supply, had to take many made of blue satinet, this being a eupho- 
nious term for shoddy, a cotton warp filled with reclaimed wool. A New 
Haven Congressman later charged that many of the uniforms were not worth 
eighty cents, but shortages had driven the price high. No attention was paid 
to the size and measurements of the volunteers; and men in uniforms too short 
or too long, falling into shreds before a month expired, were as ludicrously 
pathetic as circus clowns. 15 

Yet the governors still insisted on drilling troops, doing their best to equip 
them, and if possible getting them sent off to some front. Well it was that they 

14 Leech, Reveille in Washington, Ch. V; C B. Fairchild, Hist, of the 2rjih Regt. N. Y. 
Volunteers; W. H. Cudworth, Hist, of the First Regt. Mass. Infantry. 

15 See Buckingham's Annual Message to the Leg. (May Session), 1861; New Haven 
Register, Journal, and Courier, June 13-15, 1861; Hartford Courant, June 17, 1861. 



THE GREENHORN ARMIES 

did so! Anxious to fight a hard war, they were wiser than those who like 
Montgomery Blair expected a short, easy conflict; wiser by far than Seward, 
who on April 28 told a New Yorker that the Administration wished to preserve 
the Union by winning the disloyal to loyalty, not by waging aggressive war- 
fare. Curtin's fourteen reserve regiments were to do some of the best fighting 
of the war. Buckingham's extra regiments battled on bloody fields, and Con- 
necticut flags were the first planted on the soil of South Carolina and Mis- 
sissippi. 16 

Even more impatient and aggressive than these men was the redoubtable 
John A. Andrew of Massachusetts, a host in himself when the war began. "We 
wish to go onward ,, not to stand still" he exhorted a Cabinet member, adding 
that in defense of the Union, "We relent at no sacrifice." When Cameron on 
May 15, informing him of the Massachusetts quota of three-year volunteers, 
earnestly recommended that he furnish no more than eight regiments in all, 
of whom only six would be three-year men, Andrew was bitterly disappointed. 
Six regiments! Three had already gone to the. camps, leaving only three more 
to be supplied. Yet at that time more than ten thousand men in Massachusetts 
were organized into companies, hot for service. 17 How could he select fifty 
companies from two hundred demanding action? He would not! The legisla- 
ture had created camps for five volunteer regiments, and, defying Cameron's 
instructions, Andrew filled them, making these five commands a reserve. How- 
ever, about three thousand ardent Massachusetts men at once enlisted elsewhere 
six companies in New York alone and others went back to their homes. 
The general feeling was of chagrin and bitterness, and Andrew shared it. 

He continued to press on the Administration the importance of using more 
men and making war more aggressively, thus shortening the conflict. Visiting 
Washington, the short, stout, bustling governor, his curling hair disordered, 
his eyes gleaming behind his spectacles, began to snap at Cameron like a per- 
tinacious airedale. "I shall give you ten regiments fully equipped within forty 
days!" he exclaimed. Horace Greeley helped to publicize his demands in the 
press. General Hiram Walbridge of New York, busy to the same end, spoke 
to Lincoln in Andrew's behalf. At last, in mid-June, Cameron consented to re- 
ceive ten additional regiments from Massachusetts. By the middle of July the 
six regiments originally bargained for had all marched off to the front; Fletcher 
Webster's regiment, which in honor of an illustrious name had been given 
independent acceptance by the Department, followed on June 24; and before 

1 6 George L. Clark, Hi ft. of Conn., 391. On Friday, May 10, Governors Dennison (Ohio), 
Curtin, Blair, and Randall (Wisconsin) spoke from a hotel balcony in Cleveland. Austin 
Blair said they were daily telegraphing the President, "Call on us for more troops." Cleve- 
land Leader, N. Y. Tribune, May 9. 

17 Pearson, Andrew^ I, 2^; Schouler, Mass, in the Civil War, I, 165. 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

the close of the first week in August three more regiments had gone. This left 
seven still recruiting. 

Thus the little Bay State, with a population of a million and a quarter, was 
assigned seventeen regiments in all, far more than her due proportion. Despite 
the governor's forty-day pledge, September arrived before the last regiment 
was moved forward. But Andrew's radical aggressiveness was unabated. Speak- 
ing to this last regiment at a dinner given it on its passage through New York, 
he demanded relentless military action and hailed the coming day when South- 
erners would find slavery falling beneath their own parricidal stroke. 18 

The geographical situation of Ohio gave special importance to the zeal of 
Governor William Dennison, a former Cincinnati attorney who displayed un- 
expected grasp and energy. It was he who, hearing from friends of the high 
capacity of AlcClellan, sent for him, talked with him, and had him made major- 
general commanding all the State militia. He also sent James A. Garfield to 
Illinois for 5000 arms, and hurried another agent to New York who got about 
an equal quantity there and ordered more from England. Dennison took prac- 
tical control of the railways, telegraphs, and express lines for war purposes; he 
besought the governors of Indiana and Illinois to join him in invading Ken- 
tucky, a proposal vetoed by Lincoln; he argued the thesis that the proper line 
of defense was not the Ohio River but the mountains below it; and he per- 
suaded the War Department to extend the boundaries of the department as- 
signed to McClellan so that thev covered that area. It was Dennison who on 

D j 

May ii telegraphed Secretary Chase asking him to see that McClellan got a 
three-year commission, so that he would outrank all others in that theater. 
"Ohio must lead throughout the war." And it was mainly because of Denni- 
son's preparations that before June two Northern columns were marching into 
Virginia beyond Parkersburg. Ohio had gone far toward justifying Dennison's 
insistence on a preeminent role in the war, and her military sons Hayes, Gar- 
field, McKinley were to make her a new Mother of Presidents. 19 

New York, too, refused to accept the limits that Cameron tried to place on 
her efforts. Here the problem of troop supply gave rise to a three-cornered 
quarrel, sustained with acrid intensity and opera bouffe drama by Governor 
E. D. Morgan, the Union Defense Committee of the metropolis, and Secretary 
Cameron. We need sketch only its outlines. 

The legislature, thinking Lincoln's call for seventy-five thousand militia 
inadequate, not only hastened their dispatch, but under a hurried law of April 

1 8 Pearson, Andrew, I, 250. 

19 Whitelaw Reid, Ohio in the War, I, 53-57. By the end of 1861 the attorney-general of 
Ohio was able to report that the State had furnished, beyond its 22,580 three-month men, 
no fewer than 77,844 men enlisted for three years. If Dennison had been given his way, he 
would have raised more, and have sent them more rapidly to the front. 



THE GREENHORN ARMIES 

1 8 authorized the raising of thirty-eight volunteer regiments for two years' 
service. One two-year regiment had left for the front, and companies of the 
other thirty-seven were moving to the rendezvous points when Lincoln issued 
his call on May 3 for three-year troops! Cameron then fixed the New York 
quota at only ten regiments. He and Morgan forthwith began exchanging 
angry epistles over the questions whether ten or more should be accepted, and 
whether for two or three years. The dispute was complicated by a confusing 
series of War Department dispatches May 13-15 to Morgan, speaking of ten, 
eleven, and fourteen regiments, and of terms of two years, three years, and 
"two or three years." Cameron and his chief clerk were themselves confused. 

Meanwhile, Cameron wrote the Union Defense Committee that, needing 
nine regiments "to serve during the war," he hoped the Committee would 
supply them if Morgan refused to do so. This accentuated a conflict which 
had rapidly developed between Morgan, who insisted that he and his State 
military board should keep firm control of military affairs, and the Committee, 
which after busily organizing regiments wished to get them off its hands and 
off the expense accounts of the metropolis. 20 

Lincoln himself had to intervene to help arrange a workable compromise. 
In mid-May, after talking with anxious members of the Defense Committee, he 
gave them a decision supported by General Scott: he would take fourteen regi- 
ments from them if the men would serve three years. In this decision Lincoln 
was moved by the praiseworthy energy the Committee had displayed when 
Washington stood in peril, by its subsequent enterprise, and by his realization 
that its influential members would be most useful to the government in the 
flotation of loans. 21 Both he and Seward, however, were anxious not to offend 
Morgan, or to create a situation in which the governor and committee would 
give more time to fighting each other than to defeating the Confederacy. They 
hastily assured Morgan that the fourteen city regiments were not to be de- 
ducted from the thirty-eight State regiments that Albany was offering, but 
were to be added. 

Seward wrote Thurlow Weed in Albany to this effect. "Tell the Governor 
in God's name to send on the whole quota," he enjoined Weed. "I will take 
care of it." Lincoln had General Scott convey the same message to Morgan. 
Simultaneously, the President warned the Defense Committee that he felt real 
concern "lest a seesawing commence, by which neither your troops nor the 
governor's will get along in any reasonable time." ^ 

Unfortunately, friction between Governor Morgan, an earnest, businesslike 

20 Meneely, 157-160; E. D. Morgan to Cameron, May 10, 1861, Morgan Papers, N. Y. 
State Library. See James Rawley, Edwin D. Morgan, 1811-1883: Merchant in Politics. 

21 Chase to Dennison, May 16, 1861, cited in Meneely, 160. 

22 Weed, Life of Tburlo<w Weed, II, 333; Hist. Union Defense Committee, 185, 186. 



I7 <J THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

man with a rigid sense of the dignities of his office, and the Defense Committee, 
which was determined to extend its proud record, persisted and grew. While 
the President and Seward wished fourteen Committee regiments added to the 
thirty-eight State regiments, Chase and Cameron wished them subtracted. "It 

is the P , General S , and I against the two C's," Seward had written 

Weed. When the Committee pressed for assurances that it might act independ- 
ently of Morgan, Cameron on May 18 telegraphed a pointed refusal. He and 
the President were at partial cross-purposes in the matter. It appears that they 
were not even well informed of each other's views and actions. While Lincoln 
on May 22 asked Morgan to come to Washington for a face-to-face discussion, 
with Committee members present, Cameron the same day dispatched an aide 
northward to talk with the governor and Committee, and give them a fresh 
summary of the War Department's position. It turned out that Morgan could 
not take time to visit Washington. 

It also turned out that the Defense Committee, so clamorous for furnish- 
ing fourteen regiments, actually had fit recruits for only eight! 23 And Cam- 
eron's assistant found that it was by no means certain Morgan could furnish 
his thirty-eight. It is no wonder that this assistant reported that he had become 
suspicious of all promises and believed that a high Federal officer should take 
charge of the whole New York situation. 24 

Ultimately, all the New York agencies that were pressing regiments upon 
the reluctant War Department won at least a partial victory. That of Morgan 
might be termed complete. Cameron, after fresh protestations that he would 
take none but three-year men, finally capitulated and accepted the full thirty- 
eight regiments of two-year men. The last regiment left the State July 12. But 
still, in this era of improvisation, confusion waved its scepter. Several of the 
thirty-eight, unfortunately, had been recruited for three months of Federal 
service, and two years of State service, so that the men naturally supposed that 
at the end of ninety days they would be returned to their New York homes. 
When the War Department ruled that they must complete two full years and 
held them for the national army, mutinies developed in four regiments, and 
were not suppressed without great vexation. 25 These thirty-eight volunteer 
regiments aggregated some 37,000 men. The Defense Committee stuck to its 
insistence on fourteen regiments. And the noisy, unprincipled Daniel Sickles, 
who had received special Administration permission to raise a brigade, filled 
up three regiments by mid-July and soon afterward partially recruited two 
more. 

23 O R. HI, i, 226; four regiments had already gone forward and 4500 men were ready to 
make up four more. 

24 Meneely, 163, 164. 

25 Special Orders 322, Aug. 2, 1861; Report, Bureau of Military Record 1865, pp. 



THE GREENHORN ARMIES 

Altogether, New York during 1861 led the nation by raising more than 
120,000 men, distributed among 125 regiments, battalions, and batteries. Of 
these, not far from half were ready before Bull Run produced a new situation 
and an urgent new call for troops. 26 

t IV ] 

Altogether, it was a remarkable chapter of headlong action which the 
Northern governors wrote in the three months following Sumter. As yet, the 
republic had more vigor in its State governments than in its still unorganized 
national departments, headed by inexperienced, overworked, and sometimes 
weak men. The determined war spirit of the North was far better exemplified 
by the ablest State executives Morton, Dennison, and Austin Blair in the Mid- 
dle West, Buckingham, Andrew, Morgan, and Curtin in the East than by 
the uncertain Cameron, the cautious Bates, the conservative Caleb B. Smith, 
or even Montgomery Blair with his bemused trust in Southern Unionism. To 
be sure, the governors often moved all too heedlessly and hastily, but they 
moved with unflinching resolution. 

The story in other States was in general outline much like that in Ohio, 
Massachusetts, and New York. Nearly everywhere, enthusiastic agencies or 
ambitious men were pressing military units on the governors, sometimes real 
companies and battalions, sometimes mere paper plans for companies. Nearly 
all the governors, beset by a thousand local pressures, urged on by newspapers 
and politicians vocal for aggressive war, and coping with legislatures which 
were much more ready to provide camps of instruction than to appropriate 
money for keeping bodies of troops in them for any period, pressed the nation 
to take troops off their hands more troops yet more troops. They were 
impatient of delays. As Andrew wrote of his own action, they moved "as if 
there was not an inch of red tape in the world." The governors believed that 
the Administration was underestimating the task ahead, and the people would 
have pressed them on from behind even if they had not so believed. 

Inevitably, the Administration, with Cameron wringing his hands over 
chronic deficiencies in supplies, and Chase tormented by financial exigencies, 
tried first to stem the torrent of proffered troops, then in May and early June 
partially yielded, and soon thereafter tried again to build cofferdams. As the 
special Congressional session called for July 4 drew near, Cameron's reluctance 
to accept troops increased. He already had in national camps a far larger ag- 
gregate of ninety-day militia and long-term volunteers than he had ever ex- 
pected. He, Chase, and several Congressional leaders had been toiling long 

26 Report, Bur. Mil. Record, 39 ff.; O. R. HI, i, 344, 345* 483, 494- 



I 7 8 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

hours on a comprehensive plan to meet the situation. He wanted to accept no 
more responsibility until Congress had given its approval. 

With all real fighting still ahead, the soldiers could take their shortages and 
privations with summer insouciance. The war was yet in its gala period of 
cheers, music, exciting new scenes, and exalted patriotism, and a happy release 
from humdrum toil. 

We may take the First New Hampshire as an example. When it struck its 
tents near Concord at the end of May it rolled southward through green fields, 
burgeoning woods, and a continuous ovation. Crowds assembled at every sta- 
tion to cheer the special train. At Norwich, Connecticut, the columns, smart 
in dark gray with red-cord facings, marched aboard two Sound steamers. At 
dawn next morning they found waiting on the Hudson River pier a Granite 
State committee with a presentation flag, a bevy of ladies, and a speech. Headed 
by their band, they marched across Manhattan, impressing spectators with 
their four w r omen nurses for each company, shining arms, and seventeen four- 
horse wagons carrying camp equipment, provisions, and ammunition. They 
dined at the large New York hotels, and as the sun sloped westward marched 
through more cheering crowds to take their twenty-car train to Washington. 27 
Many a farm lad and mechanic in that regiment had never before been twenty 
miles from home, never ridden on train or steamboat, never seen a city or 
glittering hotel. The war was romance, the muskets and bayonets were for 
parade, and the nurses were proof of home solicitude, not a portent of wounds 
and disease. 

In short, confusion, improvisation, and deficiencies that under a grimmer 
war test would have been intolerable could be grimacingly endured, while 
excitement and exaltation fixed the mood of the day. On May 26 a frothy wave 
of emotion surged through Washington. Three guns suddenly boomed from 
the War Department, the signal that fighting had begun across the Potomac 
and that all troops must move across the bridge to participate. Dragoons clat- 
tered past the Treasury; batteries tore down the Avenue; the Fifth Massachu- 
setts double-quicked toward the Potomac, followed by a Connecticut regiment 
and District volunteers. Soldiers yelled, civilians cheered, women screamed, 
and a general uproar foUowed the yellow coil of dust that marked the onrush. 
For half an hour Washington was bedlam. Congressmen, buckling pistols to 
their waists, shook hands and offered jubilant bets on victory. Then, as troops 
reached the Long Bridge, came word that it was a false alarm growing out of 
some target practice. 

Still the Administration clung to the theory that the Confederacy could 
best be crushed by anaconda pressures from every side. Lincoln during April 
27 N. Y. Tribune, May 27, i8<5i. 



THE GREENHORN ARMIES 

had proclaimed the blockade of all Confederate ports, and Scott had written 
that the government relied greatly on its "sure operation." 28 As rapidly as 
possible, vessels had been posted outside the chief southern ports. The wife of 
Senator James Chesnut, living in Richmond and seeing Jefferson Davis fre- 
quently, noted on his authority July 16: "We begin to cry out for more am- 
munition and already the blockade is beginning to shut it all out." 

But as news came of the fortification of the Mississippi, and the mustering 
of formidable Confederate forces in Tennessee and southeastern Missouri, it 
became plain that Scott's dream of a great amphibian expedition proceeding 
relentlessly down the Father of Waters would have to be qualified. Seizure of 
the Mississippi was sound, but it would take time. It also became evident that 
the large Confederate army gathering under Beauregard at Manassas might 
have to be attacked shortly lest it attack Washington; that, in short, Con- 
federate movements would do much to determine the grand strategy of the 
war. On July i, 1861, the total strength of the Union forces was placed at 
186,000. Of these, McDowell had about 30,000 facing Beauregard. 

The nation waited. North and South, a sense that the ominous pause of 
late June and early July preluded fateful scenes of action grew deeper. The 
armies, excited by small clashes in West Virginia and Missouri, waited. Busi- 
ness, depressed from Maine to Texas by the innumerable derangements of the 
crisis, waited. Anxious wives and mothers, torn between pride and grief, 
waited. Throughout the wide South four million Negroes, feeling emotions of 
w r onderment and hope they had never before known, waited. Not since 
Naseby and Sedgmoor, Camden and Kong's Mountain, had an English-speaking 
people, a people above all others used to compromise and hostile to fanaticism, 
been called upon to understand the tragedy of a civil conflict. 

The leaders of the now divided peoples waited too, each resigned, but each 
apprehensive and sorrowiul. When Mrs. James Chesnut talked to Davis, she 
was impressed by his melancholy outlook, and recorded that throughout all he 
said ran "a sad refrain." A sculptor friend of Lincoln has written that about 
two weeks before he left Springfield for Washington "a deepseated melancholy 
seemed to take possession of his soul." Lincoln had felt a pang of personal 
grief in the death of Elmer Ellsworth, to whose parents he had written a 
sorrow-sharing letter. His secretaries were growing used to his smile, "in which 
there was so much of sadness." 29 Nevertheless, each leader in his own way 
faced the terrible situation with fortitude. 

28 O. R. in, i, 122. 

29 Mrs. Chesnut, Diary, 1905 edition, 71; John Hay, "Life in the White House," Century 
Uagazme^ Vol. 41, Old Series (Nov., 1890), 33-37. T. D. Jones, Cincinnati Commercial, Oct. 
18, 1871. 




The Union Leaders 



BECAUSE THE national organization for waging a great war was wretchedly 
rudimentary, Congress, though half deluded by the idea of a short conflict, 
now had to follow Lincoln's first steps by beginning to construct a system to 
meet the task which lay before the North. The brunt of the labor fell on 
Republican veterans whom seniority gave important committee positions. 

At high noon on July 4, 1861, portly Hannibal Hamlin let his gavel fall in 
the Senate, while the brisk, wiry John W. Forney as clerk rapped for order 
in the House. Both men gazed on sadly depleted chambers. In the Senate, even 
after Orville H. Browning had taken the vacant seat of Douglas, and two mem- 
bers had been sworn in from newly admitted Kansas, the roster reached only 
forty-four. For all eleven States of the Confederacy a solitary man, Andrew 
Johnson of Tennessee, answered the roll. In the House, after the chaplain had 
instructed God on the realities of the crisis, 159 responded, but two from 
western Virginia were at once challenged. Everybody anticipated a brief ses- 
sion, and many predicted that it would last only a fortnight, for little beyond 
initial measures to carry on the war would be discussed. 

The organization of the House at this opening of the Thirty-seventh Con- 
gress was quickly completed. After one ballot Galusha A. Grow was chosen 
Speaker over Frank Blair, his nearest competitor, while Emerson Etheridge 
was elected clerk. Grow, a tall Pennsylvanian of dynamic aspect, with a dome- 
like forehead and intense steely eyes, was not yet thirty-eight. His rapid rise 
was attributable partly to talent, partly to the assistance of his law partner 
David Wilmot, and partly to his zealous championship of homestead legisla- 
tion. A man of homespun simplicity, a working and not a talking leader, and 
a former Democrat who had been quick to join the new Republican Party, he 
was popular both at home and in the House. This former bark spudder of the 
Tunkhannock frontier, in fact, represented the best type of self-made Amer- 
ican. Etheridge, an uncompromising Unionist, had been one of the nine slave- 
State members of Congress who had fought the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Himself 
from western Tennessee, he had come to Washington a few weeks earlier to 

i So 



THE UNION LEADERS 



181 



plead for aid to the terrorized Unionists of East Tennessee. His election was a 
tribute to a courageous man who, his friends said, would be murdered if he 
returned home. 

Frank Blair's appointment as chairman of the House Military Affairs Com- 
mittee, a post in which he would collaborate with Henry Wilson of the Senate 
Committee, gave promise of energetic action. Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsyl- 
vania, beginning his fourth term, took the powerful and thankless chairmanship 
of Ways and Means. His senatorial counterpart was William Pitt Fessenden 
of Maine, equally shrewd but far milder in temper. The wise, equable old 
John J. Crittenden of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs had the task 
of working with the strong-willed Charles Sumner of the similar Senate body. 
These chairmanships would carry throughout the war, except that Blair, en- 
tering the army, would give way to William A. Richardson of Illinois, and 
Crittenden, dying in 1863, to Daniel W. Gooch of Massachusetts. It will be 
noted that Crittenden, the Nestor of Congress, whose national service had be- 
gun as Jefferson left the White House, had gladly taken a House seat at the 
end of his Senatorial term. 1 

In the Senate, New England was now clearly dominant. The departure of 
Seward and Chase for Cabinet posts had given Sumner, Fessenden, Henry 
Wilson, and John P. Hale of New Hampshire greater prestige than ever. Hale 
was head of the naval affairs committee. Westerners grumbled over the fact 
that Yankees also held the chairmanships of the committees on postoffice, 
claims, patents, printing, and public buildings. 2 Sumner, by virtue of his real if 
stilted oratorical power, literary talent, pedantic learning, friendships among 
the principal intellectual luminaries of England and America, and record as 
an implacable warrior against slavery, loomed highest among the members. 
Even on the Republican side many distrusted his fanaticism, egotism, and 
harshness of language, and all were irritated by his pomposity, which led Lin- 
coln to remark that although he had seen little of bishops, "Sumner, you know, 
is my idea of a bishop." To border members his puritanical intolerance often 
seemed edged with malice, as if in assailing Southern institutions he was as 
much interested in injuring white men as in helping blacks. But nobody of 
sense ever questioned his ability, integrity, or elevation of purpose. His critical 
attitude toward Seward, though their disagreements impeded the conduct of 
foreign affairs, was well warranted. 3 

1 Crittenden had accepted a Federal post in Illinois as early as 1809. 

2 The only New England Senator who did not have a chairmanship was the newcomer 
Lot M. Morrill of Maine. One House observer later wrote that New England's <juasi- 
monopoly of posts "created no small degree of jealousy and ill-feeling in otdier sections"; 
Elaine, Twenty Years, I, 323. 

3 C. F. Adams, R. H. Dtma, n, 253, 258. Dana believed that Sumner in his large and 
influential correspondence with Britons denounced Seward freely, but this was untrue. 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Most of the prominent Midwesterners in the Senate were of New England 
derivation. Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, Lincoln's friend, came of the famous 
Connecticut family. Ben Wade of Ohio had been reared in western Massachu- 
setts on a poverty-stricken hill farm, never outgrowing its rough vocabulary. 
Zack Chandler of Michigan, a man of unbounded self-confidence, aggressive- 
ness, and radicalism, sprang from a rural New Hampshire township; and so did 
James W. Grimes of Iowa, a leader of iron independence and shrewd judg- 
ment. Timothy O. Howe of Wisconsin, who had courageously insisted that 
the Fugitive Slave Act ought to be obeyed, could speak of his Maine origins. 
On sectional questions all these descendants of New England tended toward 
a certain uniformity of view. Trumbull, for example, for all his general mod- 
eration, often voted with his radical colleagues. 

The House, far more than the Senate, had an acknowledged chieftain. 
When James G. Elaine in 1881 undertook to name three parliamentary leaders 
in America who had taken positions comparable with that of Chatham in the 
British legislature, he listed Clay, Douglas, and Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsyl- 
vania. Here again was a son of New England, for Stevens came from Vermont, 
and had graduated from Dartmouth. Close thought, wide reading, and grim 
conviction, with long practice at the bar, gave him an unrivaled power in de- 
bate. His broad shoulders, pushed up in a perpetual shrug, bore a tremendous 
head of peculiar shape broad at the back and high in front, with a heavy ridge 
above the deep-set, lustrous eyes. His strongly-marked features were formi- 
dable, for the stubborn chin and projecting lower lip, beetling eyebrows, and 
ready frown gave him a pugnacious appearance. His large frame was ungainly, 
and his walk, since he had a clubfoot, lumbering. When he spoke, his high- 
keyed voice flung out his crisp, sententious, neatly turned sentences with 
belligerent decision. Humor, picturesqueness of language, and literary elo- 
quence he seldom employed, but he possessed a dry wit of Damascene sharp- 
ness with which, his face solemnly impassive, he would sometimes take off an 
opponent's head so dexterously that he convulsed the House. 

Above all, however, his lucidity, force, and grasp of fact and principle 
made him feared. He remembered dates, figures, and precedents with invari- 
able exactness. Those who were stung by his brusque manner and savage sallies 
to grapple with him were usually swiftly downed by his battering-ram mind 
and devastating use of his tenacious memory. In conducting House business, he 
detested technicalities, tricks, and trifles; by a few whip-crack sentences he 
would bring members back to the main point. He had an overmastering sense 
of the magnitude of the issues confronting the republic, which made him scorn- 
ful of defenders of slavery or palterers with treason. He demanded that the 
war be fought with unrelenting vigor, he insisted on extirpating the taproot of 



THE UNION LEADERS 

secession, and just now he meant to keep the House hard at work until an 
effective Administration program had been enacted. In this determination he 
had efficient aides. One was Elihu B. Washburne of Illinois, the most vigilant 
and conscientious of the western members, whose eight years' experience made 
him an expert in the rules of the House; another was Owen Lovejoy of the 
same State, fierily eloquent for the emancipation cause for which his brother 
had died; and a third was the hardworking Justin S. Morrill of Vermont, 4 

Both House and Senate leaders were anxious to work with Lincoln in 
prosecuting the w r ar effort, but both were already determined to move further 
and faster than he thought wise. Between Sumner and Lincoln useful friend- 
ship was destined in time to develop, founded on a mutual esteem which over- 
rode their immense incompatibility of temperament. Sumner, who had enough 
of an uncertain, flickering greatness of his own to divine the far deeper, more 
stable greatness of Lincoln, had quickly made himself a familiar of the White 
House. He was learning to admire Lincoln's patient sagacity, his passion for 
justice, and the Euclidean precision of his intellectual processes, even though 
the President's magnanimity seemed weakness to him, and the President's 
humor (a quality of which Sumner had none) quite incomprehensible. 

Thaddeus Stevens kept away from the White House and the departmental 
offices. Stubbornly, even belligerently, independent, he would have regarded 
friendly calls on the President as a fawning on power. He wished to be free 
to attack Cabinet officers with incisive criticism. 5 He had bitterly resented the 
appointment of Cameron to the War Department, regarding himself as better 
Cabinet material and coveting the Treasury. He thought Lincoln too tardy, 
too ready to temporize and compromise, too anxious to consult public senti- 
ment. As yet, however, he was willing to restrain his impatience and cooperate 
energetically with Administration leaders. 6 

For the time being the Republicans, so new to power, had real unity. For 

4 Here are more Yankees of rural origin; Washburne, like the Lovejoys (both Owen 
and the martyred Elijah) came from Maine. 

5 Because Stevens made many enemies, cared litde for appearances or public opinion, 
and drew a saturnine mask over his private life, dubious gossip and legend clustered about 
him. But beyond a propensity to gambling, no important dereliction was ever proved by real 
evidence. He had many kindly traits, including a warm liking for young men, a passionate 
sympathy for the handicapped and abused (to whom he gave freely) , and great devotion to 
his mother. He visited her annually, and said that it was the greatest joy of his life that he 
was able to present her "a well-stocked farm and an occasional bright gold-piece which she 
loved to deposit in the contribution of the Baptist church which she attended." Josiah Bush- 
nell Grirmell, who knew him well, credited him with a character of great sensibility. "On a 
reverse in business partial friends proposed a gift of one hundred thousand dollars a gift 
delicately declined in further proof of a sensitive rather than of a sordid nature." Men and 
Events of Forty Years, 189. 

6 A. K. McClure, Lincoln and Men of War-Times, includes a discerning chapter, pp. 277- 
295, on Lincoln and Stevens. 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

that matter, there was temporarily much truth in what one member said, that 
Congress had only two parties, Union and anti-Union. Most of the true War 
Democrats aligned themselves with War Republicans. Lincoln was urging 
formation of a Union Party, which duly appeared this summer in New York 
and other States. No trouble would be encountered in carrying the needed 
measures. 

Among Lincoln's many worries, however, one was the question of the real 
extent of Democratic support. He eagerly questioned members and scanned 
the early debates. In the Senate the worst Border dissenters, notably James A. 
Bayard of Delaware, James A. Pearce of Maryland, Trusten Polk of Missouri, 
and most hostile of all, John C. Brecldnridge, he thrust outside serious con- 
sideration. Representing the hard-shell slaveholders, they held ideas that had 
been antiquated in Monroe's day. Polk, Brecldnridge, and Jesse D. Bright of 
Indiana were later to be expelled for disloyalty, and Breckinridge was to com- 
mand Confederate troops. 

It was the Douglas Democrats who counted, and happily for the Adminis- 
tration, they showed the right mettle. Had their leader been present he would 
have differed from the Republicans on important issues, but he would have 
been a very Hampden in national patriotism. The brilliant E. D. Baker of Ore- 
gon, Lincoln's beloved friend, evinced the same militant spirit that had made 
him colonel of a regiment in the Mexican War. James A. McDougall of Cali- 
fornia, another old friend, John R. Thompson of New Jersey, and that stanch 
Jacksonian Unionist, Andrew Johnson, who had risked his life in opposing the 
Tennessee secessionists, were all dependable. Determined to crush the Con- 
federacy, these Valiants-for-Truth despised any Faint-Heart. They would fight 
to the last against what McDougall called "the mad assault of misguided men 
on the integrity of the Union." 

In the House some Douglasites threatened to show a more lukewarm spirit. 
The rhetorical S. S. Cox of Ohio, from the Cincinnati district, who touched a 
hornet's nest by accusing the Western Reserve of being slow to answer the 
war trumpet, declared that he would fight to restore the Union, but for nothing 
beyond that goal. "I will vote for what is required to enable the Executive to 
sustain the Government not to subjugate the South, but to vindicate the 
honor, peace, and power of the Government." His whole attitude was wittily 
equivocal; but then Cox, a graduate of Brown and a former editor of the Ohio 
Statesman might be trusted not to go too far in defending the South. His worst 
offense was a resolution suggesting that Lincoln should appoint seven con- 
servative Northerners, including Van Buren, Filmore, and Pierce, to confer 
with seven Southern commissioners on peace and Union; an effort to muddy 
the waters, but not so bad as Clement L. Vallandigham's resolution forbid- 



THE UNION LEADERS jg ? 

ding the President to call out more troops until he named peace commissioners 
to accompany them to the South. 7 Cox was more than offset by a bold Doug- 
las man from the Springfield district in Illinois, another of Lincoln's friends, 
John A. McClernand, who made speeches with a Jacksonian ring. Still another 
Democrat, H. B. Wright of Wilkes-Barre, replied to Vallandigham as to a 
Catiline: 

I want to see no peace that is established upon the overthrow and disinte- 
gration of the republic. . . . When they come to us and ask terms for these 
unholy and unrighteous acts, I am willing to say to them that we will take 
your terms into consideration when you lay down your arms and abandon 
the project of a southern confederacy. . . . The offenses have been too severe 
and too great to go unpunished. . . , The kind of subjugation about which I 
speak is the subjugation of traitors, in order that patriots may live, and in order 
that the benefits of our laws and institutions shall prevail. If the gentleman from 
Ohio calls that subjugation, I tell him I am in favor of such subjugation. 8 

The shades of Jackson, Polk, and Douglas, which throughout the session 
seemed to cheer on the Unionist Democrats, were certainly present when 
one of the memorable scenes of senatorial history took place on August i. From 
the first day the former Vice-President, Breckinridge, had flown one poisoned 
shaft after another into Northern ranks. He had charged the Republicans 
with guilt for the war, had accused Lincoln of hasty, arbitrary passion in 
calling forth the largest army ever seen in the hemisphere, and had predicted 
that a year of fighting would bury all constitutional liberty. The feeling that 
this Kentuckian, with all his dignity, grace, and felicitous diction, was as 
deadly an enemy of the Union as Jefferson Davis, had grown until an ex- 
plosion came. The topic under debate was a bill to use martial law to suppress 
insurrection and sedition. 9 

Breckinridge, his face flushed with emotion, gained the floor. "The drama, 
sir, is beginning to open before us," he declaimed, "and we begin to catch 
some idea of its magnitude." Under this demand for the regulation of mili- 
tary affairs, he went on, lurked a sinister plot for the confiscation of Southern 
property and emancipation of Southern slaves. Every day, the Constitu- 
tion was being trodden more brutally under foot. Public and personal liberties 

7 Cong. Globe> jyth Congress, ist Session, 28 (McDougall); 96 (Cox). 

8 Idem, p. 98. 

9 Breckinridge, just forty, had studied at Center College, the College of New Jersey, 
and Transylvania, and had gained renown at the Lexington bar. He had held that after 
Sumter the Union no longer existed, and favored the secession of Kentucky, but tempo- 
rarily accepted the neutral status of his State. Southerners now expected him to act as 
defender of the Confederacy, and he did so. A speech he made July 16 assailing Republicans 
for not accepting the Crittenden Compromise was called "treasonable sophistry" by the 
N. Y. Tribune. 



WAR FOR THE UNION 

were dying. Ruin, utter ruin, awaited the South, North, and West alike; heavy 
contending armies might desolate the whole continent, and what would be 
the result? two enfeebled and implacably hostile nations. He quoted Cal- 
houn's assertion: "War is disunion, eternal and final disunion." 

During this tirade Baker, who had raised a regiment of volunteers now 
in camp near Washington, entered the chamber in his colonel's uniform, 
carrying his fatigue cap and riding whip. He gained the floor. As a boy he had 
seen the brilliant London pageant with w r hich Nelson was carried to his grave, 
and he was the more fervently American because he was an adopted citizen. 
He began calmly, putting Breckinridge some searching questions. But his 
feelings quickly carried him away. The nation was waging war, he said; its 
armies must advance beyond the jurisdiction of civil courts; the commanders 
must therefore exercise authority over life, liberty, and property. Breckin- 
ridge wished to halt the armies and yield to rebellion. What, then, were the 
pleas he was making? Were they not intended to blunt the Northern weapons 
and animate Southern fighters? "Sir, are they not words of brilliant, polished 
treason, even in the very Capitol?" The galleries broke into applause, but he 
continued: 

What would have been thought if, in another Capitol, in another Republic, 
in a yet more martial age, a senator as grave, not more eloquent or dignified 
than the Senator from Kentucky, yet with the Roman purple flowing over 
his shoulders, had risen in his place, surrounded with all the illustrations of 
Roman glory, and declared that advancing Hannibal was just, and that 
Carthage ought to be dealt with in terms of peace? What would have been 
thought if, after the battle of Cannae, a senator there had risen in his place, 
and denounced every levy of the Roman people, every expenditure of its 
treasure, and every appeal to its old recollections? ... It is a grand com- 
mentary upon the American Constitution that we permit these words to be 
uttered. 

Fessenden replied in a stage whisper to the question about the Roman 
traitor: "He would have been hurled from the Tarpeian Rock." The speech, 
made so impressive by Baker's sudden striking appearance on the scene in 
military uniform, so filled with fire and logic, reverberated throughout the 
country. What does it matter, asked Baker, if we expend materials and money 
without measure? "In a year's peace, in ten years at most of peaceful progress, 
we can restore them all" and as guerdon of their toils, they would have the 
reunited nation, the Union, the Constitution, and a free government, unvexed 
by the treason which Breckinridge was preaching. 10 

10 This scene, rendered more memorable by the fact that Baker soon sealed his fealty 
to the flag with his death, was later described by many who saw it. See the accounts in 
Blaine, Twenty Years, I, 344, 345; Forney, Anecdotes of Public Men, I, 42 fL; Henry L. 



THE UNION LEADERS 

[I 3 

The atmosphere of Washington as Congress sat was hardly conducive to 
thoughtful debate. Regiments steadily streamed into the capital Through the 
open windows members heard the blare of bands and stentorian commands of 
officers, and caught the gleam of gun barrels and gay colors, as troops marched 
from the trains. With a hundred thousand soldiers in the Washington area, 
the city seemed an ever vaster camp. Pennsylvania Avenue had been so 
cut up by Army wagons that riding over it was like traversing a corduroy 
road. The streets were thronged every afternoon and night by tipsy, quarrel- 
some troops, who crowded the saloons, brawled on corners, or stood lone- 
somely in doorways. Bloody altercations were frequent, for drunken men 
flourished bayonets and revolvers without rebuke. The Washington police 
consisted of a day force of only sixteen men and an auxiliary night guard of 
fifty paid by the national government. Though the mayor had fixed 9:30 P.M. 
as closing hour for saloons, the rule was widely disregarded. On July 4 most 
proprietors shut their drinking places because they feared the soldiers would 
get out of hand, as many did. Among the troops swarmed undesirables of 
many kinds. The city, wrote one private, "is lousy with secessionists, and is 
the den, the very lair, of swindlers." 

Washington shops were filled with martial trappings swords, epaulets, 
dirks, pistols, and spurs. Bookstores displayed volumes on infantry tactics, 
artillery drill, and camp management, along with titles like Count Gasparin's 
Uprising of a Great People, and patriotic sheet music. One officer bought 
for twenty-seven dollars books whose titles he loosely recorded: 

Callan's Military Laws Mahan's Out Posts 

Halleck's Military Art Standing Orders Seventh Regiment 

Nolan's Cavalry Horse School of the Guides 

Maxims, etc., on the Art of War Benet's Court Martial 

The Art of War Ordnance Manual 

Casey's Tactics Field Manual Battalion Drill 
Field Manual on the Evolutions of the Line n 

All the hotels and boardinghouses were now jammed, with rooms renting 
at premium prices. "Soldiers are cheated here most unmercifully," wrote one. 
Lobbies were crowded with generals (Lincoln told of a boy who threw a stick 



Dawes, "Two Vice-Presidents, John C. Brecldnridge and Hannibal Hamlin," Century 

tme^ July, 1895. Breckinridge, thinking that Sumner had uttered the remark on the Tarpeian 

Rock, at once scathingly denounced him; Cong. Globe, 3yth Cong., ist Sess., 376 ff. 

1 1 See the statement by the Commissioner of Public Building in the Report of the Secre- 
tary of the Interior, Nov. 30, 1861; Washington newspapers; and the MS Diary of Colonel 
J. A. Mulligan in the Chicago Hist. Soc. Mulligan bought the books listed. 



j88 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

at a dog and hit five brigadiers), colonels, and majors in every variety of uni- 
form; with Zouaves in red, blue, and gray; with men of crack militia regi- 
ments, sailors in bell-bottom trousers, and cavalrymen in boots. Among the 
epaulets moved women flaunting their finery. "Hoops and buttons have the 
highways and byways, ogling each other," wrote a disgusted Western officer. 
"Beauty and sin done up in silk, with the accompaniment of lustrous eyes and 
luxurious hair, on every thoroughfare offer themselves for Treasury notes." 

Of all the hotels, WillarcTs stood preeminent. It was more clearly the center 
of the Union, observed Hawthorne a little later, than the Capitol or White 
House. "You are mixed up with office-seekers, wire-pullers, inventors, artists, 
poets, prosers (including editors, army correspondents, attaches of foreign 
journals, and long-winded talkers), clerks, diplomatists, mail contractors, rail- 
way directors, until your own identity is lost among them." Political mendi- 
cants were irrepressible once more, for the business depression had augmented 
their numbers. They swarmed into departmental offices, pursued Congress- 
men to their rooms, and thrust letters of application into reluctant hands on 
the streets. The hot, dingy city gave the general impression of a vast miscel- 
laneous disorder. It was little wonder that visitors took refuge from its stench 
and struggle in juleps, gin slings, whiskey-skins, and brandy smashes. 12 

As the place grew more crowded, its sanitary condition became worse. 
The medical authorities had good reason to fear an outbreak of typhoid among 
civilians and troops. Even yet the Washington aqueduct to bring water from 
Great Falls was unfinished, for much grading and facing with masonry re- 
mained to be done on the tunnels, while work on the distributing basin had 
been interrupted when laborers w^ere hurried off to erect intrenchments on 
the Virginia shore. The Washington canal in the heart of town, constructed 
at great cost and regarded at first as a valuable improvement, had become an 
intolerable nuisance. It was a grand open receptacle for nearly all the filth of 
the city. The sewage from public buildings, hotels, and many private residences 
drained into it, and had filled it in many places with accumulations of of- 
fensive soil and rank vegetation above the water level. This sewer stretched 
within almost a stone's throw of the Capitol, Treasury, and White House. 
As an official report declared: 

The accumulated filth and excrement of the city is constantly held in a 
state of semi-solution in this hotbed of putrefaction, by means of the ebb and 
flow of the tides, over a surface of more than a million square feet. And what- 
ever portion of it ultimately finds its way into the Potomac River is spread 

12 Mulligan, MS Diary; Hawthorne, "Chiefly About War Matters," vol. 10, Atlantic 
(July 1862), 43-61, 



THE UNION LEADERS 

out in thinner proportions over several hundred acres of flats immediately in 
front of the city, the surface of which is exposed to the action of the sun at 
intervals during the day, and the miasma from which contaminates every 
breath of air which passes, from that direction, through or over the city, 13 

The unfinished state of the Capitol pained many of its occupants. Though 
government provision for work on the dome had stopped a fortnight after 
Sumter, the contractors had decided to go ahead at their own risk. The por- 
ticoes and steps of the Capitol wings had still to be completed; part of the 
interior of the wings was unfinished; and the bronze statute of Freedom to 
rise over the whole was still in progress. It was painful, also, to have the en- 
tire basement of the Capitol devoted to a huge army bakery. Fat bakers in 
white aprons and paper caps busied themselves in rooms once sacred to clerks 
and committees. The crypt under the rotunda was used for storing flour. 
Army wagons clattered over the lawns and walks, and smoke from the ovens 
drifted into the rooms where Congress sat. When flues were installed, they 
discharged the smoke into the hot air pipes for warming the Congressional 
Library, so that it was impossible to make winter use of the books until the 
bakery was removed. 

Happily, however, most Capitol rooms had been so thoroughly renovated 
that few traces remained of its brief use as a barracks. Buchanan's portrait had 
been removed from the rotunda, and the names of secessionist Senators erased 
from their desks. The shrubbery had been renewed, the walls repainted or 
whitewashed, the floors polished, and the chambers carpeted with a cool mat- 
ting. The White House, too, had been refurnished though Lincoln rather 
liked the battered furniture which remained in various rooms. To a fashion- 
able New Yorker who condoled with him for dwelling in so dilapidated a 
mansion, he dryly replied: "All I know is that it is much the nicest house I 
have ever lived in." 14 

It was well for everyone in the government to realize that the nation's 
business was now war. The day Congress met, a parade of New York troops 
swept along Pennsylvania Avenue. Lincoln, the Cabinet, and other dignitaries 
watched it from a pavilion near the White House, and later he, Scott, and 
others spoke briefly to the throng. 

13 Commissioner of Public Buildings in Interior Dept. Report, Nov. 30, 1861; Report of 
R. Seymour, Senate Misc. Doc. 83, Thirty-eighth Cong., ist Sess M 20. 

14 See Senate Exec. Docs. Nos. i and 2, 3yth Cong., 2d Sess. on the state of the public 
buildings, and the Washington aqueduct. The Treasury had also been entirely renovated 
after troop occupancy, the soldiers at one time having used every room from basement to 
attic. 



I90 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

[ II ] 

If Republican feeling was adamant for the Union, it had not yet hardened 
into a demand for action against slavery. The venerable Crittenden offered 
on July 19 a long- famous resolution on the objects of the war. It declared: 

. , . that this war is not waged, upon our part, in any spirit of oppression, 
nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrow- 
ing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of these States, 
but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and to preserve 
the Union, with all the dignity, equality, and rights of the several States un- 
impaired; that as soon as these objects are accomplished, the war ought to cease. 

This Crittenden resolution carried in the House 117 to 2, the dissenters 
being Charles J. Biddle of Philadelphia, Democrat, and A. G. Riddle of Ohio, 
Republican. In the Senate the resolution passed 30 to 5. Southern leaders, who 
had frequently accused the Republican Party of intending to destroy their 
institutions, might have found in it a proof of forbearance, and it unquestion- 
ably helped placate border sentiment. 15 

Lincoln's message to Congress was calm and mild, addressed to reason 
and not passion. Its most caustic passages related to Virginia, whose leaders, he 
believed, had tricked him by pretending adherence to the Union at the very 
time that they were concerting aid to the Confederacy. Now war would 
sweep over them: "The people of Virginia have thus allowed this giant in- 
surrection to make its nest within her borders, and this government has no 
choice left but to deal with it where it finds it." Much of the message was 
devoted to a justification of his course in the Sumter crisis. If he had yielded, 
he wrote, the Union would have gone to pieces, and republican government 
would have tottered. He could not betray so vast and sacred a trust. He and 
those supporting him had chosen their course "without guile, and with pure 
purpose," and they must press forward with manly hearts to victory. But he 
uttered not a single harsh word upon the Southern people. 

The President's request that Congress give the government at least 400,000 
men and $400,000,000 precipitated a debate as hot as the July sun that swung 
over Washington. Not that anybody doubted that the great new volunteer 
army must and would be created without delay. The three-month men would 
be returning home immediately; the forces under McDowell, McClellan, and 
Lyon were obviously insufficient to sweep through the South; and the country 
was eager for decisive action. Congress was actually determined to give Lincoln 
not less that 500,000 men. But the mode of organizing this force, the system 
of choosing, measuring, and replacing its officers, the standards of pay and 

15 Cong. Globe, 37th Cong., ist Sess., 222, 223. Passage took place in the House July 22, 
in the Senate July 25. It was by no means a firm commitment. 



THE UNION LEADERS l()l 

subsistence, and several lesser questions, excited grave differences. The War 
Department, too, would have to be strengthened, and members differed about 
the means. 

Every effort was made by Administration leaders to expedite action. The 
very first bill introduced in the Senate was Henry Wilson's measure for the 
new volunteer army. Reported out of committee within a week, on July 10, 
it was passed after rapid discussion before the day closed, 34 to 4. It provided 
the 500,000 troops that Senate leaders thought necessary. Unfortunately, the 
Senate's action had been too hasty; a day later Wilson called the measure back 
from the House for changes, some of them important. On the izth he pre- 
sented it again, and it at once passed in amended form, 35 to 4. The House 
that same day took up a measure of its own, whipped into shape by Frank 
Blair and his committee, which it passed without delay. A conference com- 
mittee ironed out the differences, and on July 18, only a fortnight after Con- 
gress met, an act was ready for Lincoln's signature. He signed it July 22. 16 

Quick work! but in this brief period some interesting questions had been 
discussed. One was the length of service. An Ohio Democrat in the House, ob- 
jecting to the three-year term fixed by Republican leaders, which he said 
proved that the government had no faith in its ability to quell the rebellion 
promptly, argued for one year on the ground that volunteers would be much 
more easily found for a short term. The majority insisted on three years or 
the duration of the war. A minority also opposed the figure of 500,000 fixed 
by the two military committees. Surely, declared McClernand of Illinois, 
Lincoln and Scott had known the number actually needed when they pro- 
posed 400,000. Various border members, notably Senator Saulsbury of Dela- 
ware and Representative Burnett of Kentucky, went further. Half a million 
men smelled to them of a war of subjugation, and Saulsbury proposed 200,000, 
which he thought enough to defend Washington and the North while a 
peaceful solution was being arranged. The angry majority voted him and four 
other border Senators down. 17 



[ m ] 

Sitting until August 6 and its pace was soon accelerated by Bull Run 
Congress in twenty-nine working days passed seventy-six public acts, ranging 
from the volunteer army bill to the creation of a better police force for Wash- 

id Cong. Globe, 37th Cong., ist Sess., 50-54, 64, 147, 194, 205. The nation now stood at 
much the point in this war which it had reached in the Revolution when Congress, under 
date of September, 1776, provided for the enlistment of 88 battalions of 750 men each to 
serve for the duration. 

17 The men who voted with Saulsbury were Trusten Polk (Mo.), W. P. Johnson (Mo.), 
Anthony Kennedy (Md.), and Lazarus Powell (Ky.) 



I92 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

ington. A great increase in the navy was authorized, and eleven regiments 
were added to the regular army. 

The augmentation of the regular army provoked much opposition, for 
as we have said, most Americans regarded the regular establishment with con- 
tempt. Many of the soldiers were misfits, w r ho had enlisted more often from 
love of adventure, idleness, drunken impulse, or fear of civil punishment 
than from patriotism. A majority of them lived the sullen, stupid lives of 
men without wives or family, and without ambition. They usually served in 
lonely, uncomfortable frontier posts, spending most days in monotonous drill 
and evenings in dull vacuity. Bad officers tyrannized over them, and good 
officers gave them no comradeship. Naturally, they turned to drink, gambling, 
and horseplay, their privations proving less hurtful than their degradations. 
Although the army held a better position than in Europe, parallels for 
Thackeray's picture in Barry Lyndon were easily found, and many American 
captains would have echoed Lord Melbourne's statement that the worst men 
make the best soldiers. The Anglo-Saxon distrust of standing armies in time 
of peace was reinforced by the special American feeling that in a land so full 
of opportunity, something was wrong with a man who found refuge in the 
military. 

The Administration proposal to add 24,000 men to the regulars there- 
fore elicited a variety of adverse arguments. Some in both houses, including 
Lovejoy, Trumbull, and E. D. Baker, thought that in view of the great new 
volunteer army, more regulars were unnecessary, and that once added, it 
would be hard to reduce their numbers. Senator Grimes believed that good 
men had too great a prejudice against the regulars to enlist, that a large stand- 
ing army was unrepublican, and that after the war it would be an intolerable 
expense. In the House, Blair's Military Affairs Committee took the position 
that the volunteer army would be adequate to win the war, and that if the 
regulars were to be strengthened, it should be at the end of the conflict. Bluff 
Henry Wilson supported the expansion that Scott and the War Depart- 
ment asked. 18 However, he blurted out that if he had his own way, he would 
disband the regulars entirely and distribute their officers among the incoming 
volunteers: 

The truth is, that this army of ours is paralyzed toward the head. Your 
ablest officers are young captains and lieutenants; and if I wished today to 
organize a heavy military force, such as we are calling into the field ... I 
would abolish the [regular] army as the first act, and I would then take officers 

1 8 Cong. Globe, $jth Cong., ist Sess n 40-49, 124, 125, 148-154. Much of the account of the 
British regular army in Dr. John Brown's paper on Dr. Henry Marshall in Horae Subsecivae 
might be applied to its American counterpart. For a later phase of the bad situation see 
R. de Trobriand's Army Life in Dakota, Lakeside Press ed., xxii, xxiii. 



THE UNION LEADERS 

from the Army, and place them where their talents fit them to go, without 
reference to the ranks they occupied in the old regiments. 

The augmentation passed only with a proviso that when the war ended 
the regular army should be reduced to 25,000 men. Another amendment, po- 
tentially important, authorized the high command to assign regular officers 
to the volunteers to heighten their efficiency, guaranteeing them their old 
army positions when peace came. Thus a halting step was taken toward merg- 
ing some of the experienced officers into the raw army. 

Despite this new legislation, the standing army really gained little in 
strength. By the end of the year, when hundreds of thousands had entered 
the volunteer forces, only about 7,000 had joined the regulars. They preferred 
the citizen army partly for its more genial, tolerant discipline, and partly 
for its better name, but most of all because of State loyalty. Lincoln, signing 
the bill July 29, thought it in the main good; but actually it had both good 
and bad sides. The new regiments of regulars proved, on the whole, better 
officered and disciplined than the volunteers, and w r hen scattered among the 
Eastern and Western armies, set an example of cleanliness in camp and steadi- 
ness in battle. But they absorbed a body of regular captains and lieutenants 
who, distributed through the volunteers, might have done much to improve 
their fighting quality. 19 

Already a new star, dimming the luster of Scott's name, was rising fast 
and influencing Congress. McCIellan, against the opposition of the old general, 
swiftly wrote into law his demand for adequate staffs. On July 30 he penned 
the measure; next day Henry Wilson introduced it; and McCIellan took pains 
to lobby for it showered, as he moved through the Capitol halls, with con- 
gratulations on his West Virginia feats. Scott's opposition to large staffs was 
grounded largely on the fact that he had managed affairs in Mexico with 
only two aides! The new law, signed by Lincoln on August 5, authorized 
the President to appoint such a number of aides as might be requested by all 
major-generals and commanders of higher rank (Scott being a brevet lieuten- 
ant-general). The immediate object was to give McCIellan, previously re- 
stricted to three aides, as large a staff as he wanted, but other general officers 
also profited. Later on Cameron, troubled by a thousand politicians, journal- 
ists, and excitement hunters who wanted to get on somebody's staff, thought 

19 The regulars by the end of 1861 had a strength of only 22,425; Report of the Provost- 
Marshal General, I, 102; cf. Upton. McCIellan thought that either the regular army should 
have been broken up temporarily, and its members sprinkled among the regiments and staffs 
of the volunteer army to instruct and discipline that body, or it should have been built up 
to real strength, and used as a select reserve for critical junctures. Own Story, 97. Part of 
the regulars had to be kept in the West. Thus the Ninth Infantry remained in California to 
control Indians during the war, and the Fifth Infantry was busy with Indians in New Mexico. 



I94 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

that the law should be amended to fix some limitation. By and large, how- 
ever, the Act was a necessity. 20 

One additional measure, the enlargement of the War Department, had 
the greatest urgency. The personnel with which Cameron was trying to manage 
the greatest war effort of the century was hardly strong enough to deal with 
a sizable Indian outbreak. 

The department occupied a drab little two-story brick structure adjoining 
the White House grounds, its gaunt homeliness slightly relieved by a colon- 
nade of white Corinthian pillars occupying about one-third of the elevation. 
Here in a narrow office the intellectual-looking Cameron, his forehead wide 
and high, his eyes gleaming under his frosted brow, moved nervously about, 
seeing the endless stream of army men, commission hunters, and contractors, 
jotting down memoranda which he instantly lost, and jerking out directions 
to assistants. Crowded into the same building were the adjutant-general, quarter- 
master-general, commissary-general, chief engineer, and chief of ordnance. 
The offices of the surgeon-general and paymaster-general had been placed in 
another small building at E and Fifteenth. The whole War Department per- 
sonnel had numbered but ninety when Lincoln was elected, and so many ex- 
perienced men were lost during the secession upheaval that only fifty-six were 
still serving in the late summer of 1861, the harassed bureaus being com- 
pelled to take on assistants without legal authority. In passing judgment on 
Cameron, we must bear in mind that for nearly four months after Sumter 
he had to struggle along with a creaky, antiquated administrative mechanism, 
operated by a mere handful of men. 

Under the new legislation a War Department of decent strength became 
possible. Cameron had been helped from the start by his tireless friend Thomas 
A. Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad; and Scott was now made Assistant 
Secretary in charge of all government transportation lines. The adjutant- 
general, Lorenzo Thomas, promoted to be brigadier-general, was given an 
assistant adjutant-general with a colonel's rank, and eighteen other assistants 
with ratings from captain to lieutenant-colonel. The office of commissary- 
general had been in particularly bad shape, for its two aged heads had been 
quite unequal to their mounting duties, and it was of the first importance to 
strengthen them with capable helpers. The overburdened quartermaster-gen- 
eral, Montgomery G Meigs, who would eventually prove one of the principal 
architects of Northern victory, received twenty-seven new staff officers, all 
soon as busy as beavers. And so it went down the line. The surgeon-general's 
office, headed by the feeble, stubborn Clement A. Finley, an ill-educated army 

20 McClellan, Own Story, 82, 114, 136; Cong. Globe, 37th Cong., ist Sess., 361, 385, 441; 
O. R. Ill, i, 705. 



THE UNION LEADERS 

surgeon who had risen to his place by seniority, was beyond rescue by any 
effort that Congress could yet make, but it was somewhat improved by the 
provision of new medical personnel. 

One striking provision of the new legislation permitted the use of women 
nurses in the general permanent army hospitals. Another gave each regiment 
a chaplain, who must be an ordained clergyman of some regular Christian de- 
nomination for an effort by Vallandigham of Ohio to obtain recognition for 
the Jews unhappily failed. 

[ IV ] 

To wage the war, greater financial resources were an urgent necessity. 
Chase had estimated that not less than $320,000,000 would be needed in the 
next year; but because he thought the conflict would be short, and wished to 
find out how much the tariff law of March would yield, he proposed raising 
only $80,000,000 by taxation. Congress therefore passed an act authorizing him 
to borrow a quarter of a billion dollars during the year by the sale of treasury 
notes, in denominations of not less than $50, bearing interest at the rate of 7.3 
per cent, a $5,ooo-dollar note thus returning its holder a dollar a day; or by 
the sale of coupon bonds at 7 per cent, not redeemable for 20 years. A direct 
tax of $20,000,000 a year was levied in fixed proportions on the States and 
territories, ranging from $2,604,000 for New York to $3,240 for Dakota Ter- 
ritory. Congress also imposed a few new tariff duties for revenue, notably on 
sugar, tea, and coffee; and voted an income tax which was not to be effective 
for ten months. On its final day it enacted a confiscation law, declaring that 
all property used in supporting the Confederate cause was a lawful subject of 
prize and capture. 

In debating the direct tax, sectional feeling naturally flared high. Middle 
Western members vigorously denounced the basis of assessment, which was 
real estate alone, asserting that while their farms would be heavily burdened, 
the mortgages, bank and corporation stock, and manufacturing property of 
the East would be taxed lightly if at all. Representative Isaac N. Arnold of 
Illinois computed that his State would pay practically 7 mills on its property, 
while Massachusetts would escape with 2.6 mills. To these complaints Thad- 
deus Stevens answered that while the direct tax would indeed fall most 
heavily on the New States, any internal revenue taxes on horses, carriages, 
watches, liquors, and so on, would be paid chiefly by the large cities and older 
States. The new income tax, which on British experience Stevens thought 
might be the most equitable of all, would also eventually rest hard on the 
East, The bill passed the House 77 to 60, with prominent Westerners of both 



I9< 5 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

parties Arnold, Frank Blair, William S. Holman, S. S. Cox, George Pendle- 
ton opposing it. The vote in the Senate was 34 to 8, and of the 8 no fewer 
than 6 were openly or covertly hostile to the whole war effort. 21 

The creation of a large public debt at the high interest rate of 7 per cent 
or more a year provoked astonishingly little debate for so portentous a meas- 
ure. The sum authorized exceeded any previous total of national indebted- 
ness. But Congress agreed with Chase that for a short war borrowing was 
a sound principle; and it accepted the view of financial leaders that the loan 
could not be floated with a lower interest return. Banks of New York, Boston, 
and Philadelphia, rallying at once to the task of distributing treasury notes 
to the public, found it far from easy. 

Debate raged fiercely, however, around the confiscation bill. John J. Crit- 
tenden threw his great prestige against it. Since Congress had no power to 
touch slavery within the States, he argued, when it undertook to confiscate 
slave property used in aid of the rebellion it performed an unconstitutional 
act. Thaddeus Stevens retorted that this constitutional argument would come 
HI from rebels who were seeking to overthrow the Constitution. A better re- 
joinder was made by William Kellogg of Illinois. True, we have no power 
to legislate on slavery, he declared. But we do have power to punish treason 
by confiscation, taking a man's house, land, and furniture; and we can similarly 
take his right to service in another, for the penalty operates on the individual, 
not the institution. 

In the course of debate Lyman Trumbull added an amendment under 
which any slave who was permitted by his owner to work on any Confederate 
fort, navy yard, dock, ship, or intrenchment, or to give any military or naval 
service whatever to the rebellion, was set free. Breckimidge raged against 
this amendment. 22 Although the bill was fought to the end by most Democrats 
and Border members, it passed the House 60 to 48, and the Senate 24 to u. 

The slavery question in one form or another, in fact, kept cropping up 
throughout the session. The general feeling of Republicans was expressed 
by Senator Henry S. Lane of Indiana, who stood by the Crittenden resolu- 
tion. "But let me tell you gentlemen, that although the abolition of slavery is 
not an object of the war, they may, in their madness and folly and treason, 
make the abolition of slavery one of the results of this war." 

Another dramatic scene took place in the Senate when Andrew Johnson 
rose to plead for the rescue of his people of eastern Tennessee. This stout 

21 John A. Bingham of Ohio clashed with Roscoe Conkling of New York, and Schuyler 
Coif ax of Indiana with Justin S. Morrill of Vermont, on this sectional issue. Cong. Globe, 
37th Cong,, ist Sess., 325 if. 

22 "I tell you, sir," declared Breckinridge, "that amendment is a general act of emancipa- 
tion." Cong. Globe, 37th Cong., ist Sess., 262. 



THE UNION LEADERS 

champion of the common man, self-taught or rather wife-taught but a power- 
ful debater, had escaped the Confederacy through the Cumberland Gap, leav- 
ing his people enduring an Iliad of wrongs: houses broken open, property 
pillaged, leaders arrested, and unoffending citizens murdered. He did not beg 
help as a suppliant, he said; "I demand it as a constitutional right." Had his rugged 
mountain folk been given 10,000 stand of arms when the contest began, they 
would have asked no further assistance. 

Drama also attended the vehement clash between John C. Ten Eyck of 
New Jersey, demanding that Congress appropriate a million and a half for 
one or more armored ships or floating batteries, and various opponents 
who talked of naval "jobs." The debate showed that French and British ex- 
periments with armored ships had attracted wide attention, and that the French 
ironclad La Gloire and British ironclad Warrior were regarded as potential 
threats to American ports. Out of this debate was to come the means of build- 
ing in the very nick of time the armored Monitor?* 

Inevitably, and healthfully, the short session mustered a thin battle line 
of defenders of civil liberty. Congress just before adjourning passed an act 
punishing with fine and imprisonment those who conspired to overthrow the 
government or resist its authority. This was mild enough, and far more alarm 
justly sprang from Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus within 
definite geographical limits. He had begun with a proclamation covering the 
Washington-Philadelphia lines of communication (April 27). Senator James 
A. Pearce of Maryland condemned not the suspension, but the unguarded 
nature of the step and the arbitrary acts committed under its shelter. 

In Great Britain, as he and others pointed out, martial law had been very 
sparingly used not in the Gordon riots, nor in the Chartist disturbances, nor 
in grave Irish troubles. When used, it had carried a careful limitation of the 
period during which persons arrested might be held without bail or main- 
prize. But in Maryland, a State predominantly loyal and now perfectly quiet, 
troops had marched into various towns to search for arms, had forcibly en- 
tered houses, had seized men without any decent ground for suspicion, and 
had imprisoned them without orders from superior authority. The police com- 
missioners of Baltimore, said Pearce, had been jailed without any grand-jury 
indictment or specification of illegal conduct by any other agency, simply 

23 Ten Eyck was specially interested in the ironclad vessel called the Stevens Battery 
lying incomplete at Hoboken, with $812,000 necessary to finish it. The eminent Robert L, 
Stevens had modeled and constructed it without a dollar of compensation, and his brother 
Edwin Augustus Stevens, his executor and heir, had now offered to give his skill and services 
free to make the ship available. Most naval experts, while uncertain of the value of such craft 
as cruisers, agreed on their importance for harbor defense. Cong. Globe, 37th Cong., ist 
Sess,, 345-347. The Senate passed the measure Ten Eyck desired by the close vote of 18 
to 16. 



I9 8 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

because General N. P. Banks had accused them of "some purpose not known 
to the Government" and they were still imprisoned! 

When the Senate Judiciary Committee under Lyman Trumbull brought 
in a bill to authorize, define, and regulate the use of martial law, a chorus 
of dissent broke forth. It would be tiresome to trace the debate, and it suffices 
to say that both advocates and antagonists realized that the subject was ex- 
tremely delicate. Everyone agreed that in suppressing rebellion the military 
authorities needed large powers and would certainly take them; but nearly 
everyone agreed that to define these powers was a dangerous matter too 
much might be granted, or too much withheld. Loyal and disloyal men were in- 
termingled in many communities; suspicion often fell on the wrong person; 
oaths meant little to scoundrels; and in some areas patriots had less trust in 
the regular courts than in military tribunals. "There is difficulty environing us 
everywhere," said Senator Edgar Cowan of Pennsylvania. Trumbull regarded 
his bill as the most important of the session. "I think that the idea that the 
rights of the citizen are to be trampled upon and that he is to be arrested by 
military authority, without any regulation by law whatever, is monstrous 
in a free government." Yet he admitted that the measure might not accomplish 
its object. 24 

Thus it was that the bill, opposed by some because it limited existing 
powers too much, and by others because it extended them too far, was post- 
poned from day to day until it failed. On the final Senate vote for post- 
ponement, radical Republicans like Fessenden, Collamer, and Wade stood 
alongside balky conservatives like Bayard and Saulsbury. The sphere of mili- 
tary control remained undefined. 25 

[V ] 

Congress adjourned on August 6 in a very different mood from that in 
which it had first met, for military disasters soon to be described had chastened 
it. It had accomplished the legislation generally expected of it; now the 
executive branch had to make the most of the new laws. The President 
and Cabinet probably drew a breath of relief when it rose, for they felt freer. 
Power was steadily passing from the legislative to the executive, and the coun- 
try looked to Lincoln for action. 

Though generally cooperative, Congress had shown a natural jealousy 
of its functions. One of the first measures wanted by the Administration was 

24 This subject is fully covered in Cong. Globe, 3yth Cong., ist Sess., 332-343. McDougall 
of California, for the Douglasite wing of the Democracy, advocated throwing out almost the 
whole bill. 

25 Cong. Globe, 37th Cong., ist Sess., 374 ff. 



THE UNION LEADERS 

a resolution validating all Lincoln's acts, orders, and proclamations, includ- 
ing his suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. Because Congress believed 
that it alone had power to suspend the writ, this ran into heavy opposition. 
All efforts to carry it failed until the end of the session, when the validation, 
shorn of any mention of habeas corpus, was tacked to a bill increasing the 
pay of army privates, and thus smuggled through. 26 

For three reasons the President had not attempted to exert much direct 
influence on the activities of Congress. The first w r as that he had full con- 
fidence in such leaders as Henry Wilson and Frank Blair in military affairs, 
and Thaddeus Stevens in finance; the second that he was preoccupied with 
the army movements in front of Washington; and the third that he was also 
engrossed in the politico-military affairs of Kentucky and Missouri. So long 
as this short session gave him the men and money he needed, and did not 
move too harshly in confiscating Southern property, he was content to let 
it alone. He disliked even the mild confiscation act passed, and doubtless 
grimaced over Thaddeus Stevens* vituperation in the debate: "If their whole 
country must be laid waste and made a desert, in order to save this Union 
from destruction, so let it be." 2T But he signed the act without protest. Lin- 
coln was never a leader of Congress in the sense in \vhich Woodrow Wilson, 
Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin D. Roosevelt later often led it, and now, 
as a novice in the Presidential chair, he was specially hesitant. Later on, the 
bungling military and financial legislation might have been improved had 
he played a prime minister's part; but that time had not yet come, and nobody 
was disturbed because his message contained not a single proposal for legisla- 
tion beyond the curt request for troops and money. 

Lincoln did not yet loom up the colossal central figure in Washington 
which he was subsequently to become. Intimates saw him in various lights, 
but not yet as a great man. All Presidents grow in office, but he was to grow 
far more than most of them. 

The glimpses that soldiers and public got of him were of a pleasant, honest- 
minded, awkward man. Troops saw him at parades, looking kindly and a bit 
absent; once holding his two little boys by the hand; taking off his hat clumsily 
at the salute to the flag and putting it on again country-fashion, gripped by 
the rear rim; stooping as a boy came by with a pail of water to take a great 
swig. When Francis Lieber, the German-American expert on international 
law, was taken by Seward to call, he decided that Lincoln was belter than 
people thought him, "but oh, so funny!" Seward in departing said, "I shall 
immediately return with Lord Lyons; you had better put on your black 

26 N. Y. Tribune, Aug. 7-10, 1861. 

27 Cong. Globe, 37th Cong., ist Sess., 415. 



200 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

coat you ought to have put it on for Dr. Lieber." To this jocular remark 
Lincoln replied: "I intended to do so, but the doctor will excuse me; I was 
not aware it was so late." It was easy for prejudiced men to make cutting re- 
marks. 'That sand-hill crane in the Presidential chair," wrote one corres- 
pondent; "the joking machine men call Abraham Lincoln." 28 Himself unas- 
suming, he was no respecter of persons. One reason why Charles Francis 
Adams, Sr., carried from the White House so unfavorable an impression was 
perhaps that Lincoln showed no awe of Adamses, and half-ignored the Quincy 
man to talk about political appointments with Seward. Robert Gould Shaw, 
calling in all the hurly-burly a fortnight after Sumter, formed a truer im- 
pression: 

We were shown into a room where Mr. Lincoln was sitting at a desk, per- 
fectly covered with papers of every description. He got up and shook hands 
with us in the most cordial way, asked us to be seated, and seemed quite glad 
to have us come. It is really too bad to call him one of the ugliest men in the 
country, for I have seldom seen a pleasanter or more kind-hearted looking one, 
and he has certainly a very striking face. His voice is very pleasant; and though, 
to be sure, we were there only a few minutes, I didn't hear anything like 
Western slang or twang in him. He gives you the impression, too, of being a 
gentleman. 29 

His sense of the tremendous responsibility on his shoulders deepened his 
natural melancholy. Above all, it deepened his thoughtfulness. What casual 
callers could not see beyond the kindness, honesty, and sadness that shone 
from his angular, furrowed countenance was this ingrained thoughtfulness. 
They would depart impressed by the wonderful mobility of his face, which 
could be grimly uncompromising, touchingly careworn, or infectiously mirth- 
ful. They could not see, when the door shut, the quick change to intense 
earnestness as he studied papers, or to concentration as, in the words of 
Nicolay, "he would sometimes sit for an hour in complete silence, his eyes 
almost shut, the inner man apparently as far from him as if the form in his 
chair were a petrified image." 30 Habituated to meditation from his lonely 
frontier boyhood, trained to precise logical processes by the law, he brought 
to the Presidency a capacity for intense lucid thinking matched by no other 
executive. His mind was slow and cautious, but in clarity it excelled Hamil- 
ton's, in penetration Madison's, and in weight Webster's. One of his greatest 

28 The N. Y. Tribune correspondent Samuel Wilkinson so called Lincoln in letters to 
S. H. Gay; Gay Papers, Columbia University. 

29 C. F. Adams, Sir., MS Diary, MHS; MS Diary of Robert Gould Shaw, May 2, 1861. 

30 Helen Nicolay, "Characteristic Anecdotes 01 Lincoln," Century Magazine, vol. 84 
(August, 1912), 699. 



THE UNION LEADERS 2OI 

gifts as President, to be revealed in due time, was his ability to think problems 
through to irresistible conclusions. 

His other great qualification was his intuitive understanding of the popu- 
lar mind, and of political necessities and possibilities. He knew that to be a 
great statesman he had to be a great politician, like Jefferson and Jackson be- 
fore him. More than these men, he believed in the goodness and wisdom of 
the whole people; they could not be fooled long, and he was the last man to 
wish to fool them. The aggressive Thaddeus Stevens thought that he ought 
to have led opinion more trenchantly, even recklessly; but Stevens closed his 
career saying, "My life has been a failure." 31 The patient, watchful Lincoln 
knew that it was better to be accused of tardiness than to be rash in policy or 
impracticable in method. He, not Stevens, was the true Commoner, He had 
no excessive regard for Congressmen, among whom he had once sat, and not 
only usually resisted any Congressional encroachment on his sphere of action, 
but w r as ready at need to invade what Congress deemed its sphere. But his 
regard for the people never failed. 

The Whig tradition, which so many Republicans inherited, regarded Con- 
gress as the prime seat of national power, and Clay, Webster, and Seward had 
labored to make it just that. Lincoln, however, shared the Democratic view 
the Jackson-Polk view that the President as the direct representative of the 
people should be the vital source of governmental energy. Serving in Congress 
and later watching affairs closely, he had seen how efficiently Polk acted 
as commander-in-chief, and how he managed the Mexican War in all its details, 
administrative, fiscal, and military. He saw Polk, even more effectively than 
Jackson, tell Congress what to do; he was unquestionably aware that Polk 
drove his Cabinet with tighter rein, than any former President, and the lesson 
was not lost on him only he substituted tact for dictation. 

He was always ready to manage Congress by giving its members jobs, let- 
ting them romp a little with contracts and appropriations, and lending them 
a hand at logrolling. He specially valued his Congressional spokesmen, like 
faithful William Kellogg of Illinois and headlong Frank Blair. Nobody showed 
more consummate skill in dealing with politicians of varied types, often crass, 
selfish, vain, or corrupt. In time he was to exercise this skill masterfully in 
handling the ambitious Chase, the unscrupulous Ben Butler, the self-centered 
Sumner, and the dictatorial, tempestuous Stanton. His magnanimity never 
failed he gave even his sleepless rival and frequent detractor, Chase, the 



Quoted by A. K. McClure, Lincoln and Men of War-Times, 286. McClure writes that 
}ln "never cherished resentment even when Stevens indulged in his bitterest sallies of 
wit or sarcasm at Lincoln's expense." 



3* 
Lincoln 



202 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Chief Justiceship but neither did his skill. When he turned from the politi- 
cians to the people, however, his attitude was one of deference to a higher 
power. While he knew that he must take the responsibility for decisive enun- 
ciations of policy, and did so, he also knew that he did not manage the people: 
in the last analysis, they managed him. 

During this spring and summer of 1861, people poured through the White 
House in a steady stream. They numbered old Illinois intimates kden with 
advice, politicians bearing opinions and demands, contractors, youths seeking 
commissions, inventors, adventurers anxious to raise irregular commands, 
officers after promotion, governors, Congressmen. "It would be hard to 
imagine a state of things less conducive to serious and effective work," writes 
John Hay, "yet in one way or another the work w r as done. In the midst of 
a crowd of visitors who began to arrive early in the morning and who were 
put out, grumbling, by the servants who closed the doors at midnight, the 
President pursued those labors which will carry his name to distant ages. 
There was little order or system about it; those around him strove from begin- 
ning to end to erect barriers to defend him against constant interruption, but 
the President himself was always the first to break them down. He disliked 
anything that kept people from him who wanted to see him, and ... he 
would never take the necessary measures to defend himself." And his time was 
not all wasted. He gained much information, some ideas, a good deal of cheer, 
and above all steady inspiration, from the thronging callers. 32 

Ideally, the Northern war effort should have been run with consistent 
system, energy, and flair for organization; but this was quite outside Lincoln's 
nature. Nor was the country ready for this. It needed a half-century of na- 
tional growth to enable Wilson to organize his Cabinet, the War Industries 
Board, the War Labor Board, the General Staff, and other agencies for ef- 
ficient centralized control of a great war. 

Lincoln's principal failure in the first half of 1861 was his neglect to create 
some group or agency to collect facts and analyze opinions bearing upon 
national war resources, on men, munitions, and manufacturing capacity, on 
enemy strength, and on the best fields of military action. With a fumbling, 
nerveless Secretary of War, no General Staff, no office in Washington ac- 
quainted with industry, commerce, and labor, and no intelligence bureau, 
such an advisory agency would quickly have become invaluable. Sir William 
Robertson, when made Chief of the Imperial General Staff in 1915, outlined 

32 See James G. Randall, Lincoln the President, Vols. I and II, passim; John Hay, "Life 
in the White House in the Time of Lincoln," ut supra; Charles A. Dana's dictated notes on 
Lincoln in Ida M. Tarbell Papers, Allegheny College; William O. Stoddard, Inside the White 
House in War Times; Tyler Dennett, Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diary and Letters 
of John Hay; David Donald, The Enduring Lincoln. 



THE UNION LEADERS 203 

to the War Office under Kitchener what he thought was the nation's cardinal 
need. It was "a supreme directing authority whose function is to formulate 
policy, to decide on the theatres in which military operations are to be con- 
ducted, and to determine the relative importance of these theatres." This au- 
thority, civilian in personnel, was to gather information through many chan- 
nels, chiefly military. It was to suggest the men to carry out policy, and under 
the Prime iVlinister "exercises a general supervision over the conduct of the 
war." 33 The United States needed something of the kind in 1861. 



o 



[VI ] 

Nobody could expect Lincoln's relationship with his constitutional ad- 
visers, the Cabinet, to be systematic, nor to find him making the Cabinet an 
effective, coherent body. He expected each Cabinet member to "run his own 
machine," as he put it. But in the summer of 1861 it was already clear that 
his relations with the Cabinet would never be satisfactory. The executive group 
showed nothing of the unselfish cooperation, the earnest association and con- 
sultation for the public good, the cordial unity in dealing with Congress, that 
have marked many Cabinets; and the nation thereby lost heavily. 

In part the difficulty lay with the peculiar constitution of the Cabinet. Made 
up largely of men who had been eager rivals for the Presidency, and who 
headed special factions in the Republican Party, it lacked basic harmony. Deep 
personal antagonisms marred relations between Montgomery Blair and Chase, 
between Welles and Seward. 34 But beyond this, the President was too careless, 
independent, and busy, after the first weeks, to attempt to create executive 
unity. "Why do you talk about a Cabinet?" presently burst out Chase to a 
friend. "There is no Cabinet to be member of." This was precisely the com- 
plaint of Greeley's Tribune. Lincoln had so withdrawn himself from those to 
whom he should be closest, grumbled Greeley, and had formed such a set 
habit of acting or not acting just as his own judgment dictated, that "the im- 
pression has become almost universal in the popular mind . . . that he has no 
Cabinet, in the true sense of that term." Attorney-General Bates felt himself 
an outsider; I am merely a Law Officer, he declared. Secretary Welles, too, 
was outspoken in censuring the lack of any system: 

I have administered the Navy Department almost entirely independent of 
Cabinet consultations, and I may say almost without direction of the Presi- 
dent, who not only gives me his confidence but intrusts all naval matters to 

33 Sir Frederick Maurice, Atlantic Monthly, vol. 137 (June, 1936), 772 if. 

34 Welles writes: "Between Seward and Chase there was perpetual rivalry and mutual 
but courtly distrust. Each was ambitious. Both had capacity. Seward was supple and dexter- 
ous; Chase was clumsy and strong." Diary, I, 139. 



204 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

me. This has not been my wish. Though glad to have his confidence, I should 
prefer that every important naval movement should pass a Cabinet review. 
... So in regard to each and all the Departments; if I have known of their 
regulations and instructions, much of it has not been in Cabinet consultations. 35 

Welles' statement was quite valid for the first part of the war. Governor 
Dennison of Ohio returned from a trip to Washington reporting that the 
departments were little governments in themselves. Lincoln had said to him: 
"Now, Dennison, if Jeff Davis was to get me and I told him all I know, I 
couldn't give him much information that w r ould be useful to him." 36 

In the absence of general Cabinet consultation, Welles specially resented 
the opportunity thus given the wily, experienced Seward to push himself 
forward as chief adviser to the President. Lincoln, he thought early in the war, 
lacked self-reliance. Perplexed by events, the President relied too much on 
the far wider knowledge of Seward, whose self-confidence, talkativeness, and 
easygoing geniality had a ready appeal. No one else, Welles jealously noted, 
attempted to obtrude himself, or even to suggest that other Cabinet members 
should be consulted on some of the important measures of the government. 
Chase alone, greatly irritated by Seward's presumptions, made an occasional 
effort to talk intimately with Lincoln, learn what was going on in other de- 
partments, and offer counsel. Later in the war Welles and Chase were to 
transfer their antagonism for a time from Seward to Edwin M. Stanton, for 
the Secretary of War then seemed nearest the seat of power. Wrote Chase: 

The President decides all questions concerning the war either by himself 
or with the advice of the Secretary of War and Commander in Chief [Stanton 
and Halleckj. The Heads of other Departments, unless perhaps that of the 
State, are so rarely consulted that they might as well not be consulted at all. 
Of course being intensely interested in what goes on I can't help saying what 
I think occasionally; but I do not see good enough come of it to make me 
vain of my influence. 37 

As this statement suggests, Lincoln was determined to manage the war 
effort himself, and the determination grew as he increased in wisdom and 
power. He was not going to let the Cabinet direct any considerable part of it. 
He had emphatically put Seward in his place on April i, although retaining 
him as a close friend and adviser. He overruled Cameron in the matter of the 
Massachusetts and Pennsylvania regiments. He got General Scott to support 
him in overruling Cameron again in the critical step of making the able 

35 Chase to E. D. Mansfield, Oct. 27, 1863, Chase Papers, Pa. Hist. Soc.; N. Y. Tribune, 
Jan. 27, 1865 (editorial); Bates, Aug. 13, 1864, to J. O, Broadhead; Broadhead Papers, Mo. 
State Hist. Soc. 

36 MS Diary of Win. T. Coggeshall, Military Secretary to Dennison, Foreman Lebold Coll. 

37 Welles, Diary, I, 131-139 (Sept. 16, 1862); Chase to Hiram Barney, July 21, 1863, Chase 
Papers, Hist. Soc. of Pa. 



THE UNION LEADERS 2cr 

Montgomery C. Meigs quartermaster-general. 38 Generals were soon to be 
as great a problem to him as politicians. At first he deferred too much to Scott, 
as he did to Seward, but he was sufficiently vigilant to refuse to let the hot- 
headed Nathaniel Lyon take command in Missouri. The self-distrust of which 
Welles speaks was partly a mask. He had a w r ay of drawing out interlocutors 
with questions, as if still undecided, when his mind was quite made up. 

"Mr. Lincoln was always the master," said Charles A. Dana later, "and he 
did not put on the appearance of it at all. He never gave a hair's breadth, 
never gave way he always had his own way. The relations between him and 
all the Secretaries were perfectly cordial always and unaffected, and without 
any appearance of his thinking himself the boss, but it was always his will, his 
order, that determined a decision." This is an overstatement, especially for 
Lincoln's first year, but it has essential truth. Edward Everett Hale shortly 
described Lincoln's combination of firmness and tact in different terms. "Noth- 
ing shows the power of the President more at the present moment," he wrote 
after visiting the White House early in 1862, "than the way in which every 
person you meet thinks and gives you to think that he and the President are 
hand in glove, and indeed, quite agree." 39 

The inadequacies of the White House secretarial staff were numerous. One 
observer remarked caustically of John Hay: "As he looks like seventeen, he 
is under the necessity of acting like seventy." Its main defect, however, was 
that it was too small. Time quickly developed one specially grievous need: A 
fact-finding agency responsive to the President's special demands. A single 
efficient man with reference books and filing cabinets might have done much. 
Lincoln could not depend on his Cabinet members for many facts about their 
spheres of concern; on Stanton for exact figures of army strength, for example. 
He could not depend on anybody for good material on geography and topog- 
raphy; when the main Eastern army went to Harrison's Landing, nobody could 
tell him what the Landing was like. He could never depend on generals for 
reliable data on enemy strength. Most of all, he needed more information on 
the men he appointed to military and civil office. Often he groped in the dark. 
Somebody to sift official reports, run through newspapers, and approach poli- 
ticians for critical and confidential judgments would have been invaluable. 
Of course Lincoln would still have made mistakes. But he would not so readily 
have appointed John Pope to a command in which he almost ruined the Union 
cause, or have sent the feeble Dayton as minister to France. 

In the summer of 1861, however, both President and Cabinet were yet un- 

38 Lincoln, Collected Works, IV, 394, 395. 

39 Dana's Memoranda, Ida M. Tarbell Papers, Allegheny College; Hale's Memorandum 
April 26, 1862, in E- E. Hale, Memories of a Hundred Years, II, 189, 190. 



20 6 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

tried. The quality of the statesmanship possessed by Lincoln, Chase, Seward, 
and their associates remained to be tested. The sculptor L. W. Volk had made 
a life mask of Lincoln in Chicago in the spring of 1860; the sculptor Clark 
Milles was to make another in the spring of 1865. The contrast between the 
two faces would measure the ordeal through which the President was to pass, 
and the growth he would attain, in four of the most harrowing years of our 
history. 




The First Test of Strength 

BY THE TIME Davis reached Richmond and Beauregard partly organized 
his command at Manassas, the grand strategy of the Confederacy had taken 
shape. On land, a generally defensive policy was to be pursued while the new 
nation awaited aid from cotton-starved Europe. The Confederate Congress 
declared a defensive attitude by resolution just after Sumter, Jefferson Davis 
proclaimed it in his message to Congress, and Robert E. Lee as head of the 
Virginia forces asserted it in special orders: "The policy of the State, at present, 
is strictly defensive." Since the Confederacy as yet lacked strength to invade 
the North, the defensive policy, despite Beauregard's protests, was inescapable. 
It imposed on the South a manifest disadvantage in the loss of the initiative. 
While the North could choose its point of attack, the Confederacy was like 
a wary duelist, waiting to parry a lunge or a slash. One countervailing ad- 
vantage was the ability to use distance for defense, transferring troops by in- 
side lines, so far as transport facilities permitted for inside lines are useless 
without traffic arteries while the Union was making long outside marches. 
Another advantage was the power of awaiting attack behind entrenchments. 
The defensive military policy of the South would have had far greater 
effectiveness if the section had been buttressed by natural physical barriers. 
Unhappily for its generals, the Confederacy had no Pyrenees, no Vosges, no 
Carpathians, while the South found it utterly impossible to gain and hold the 
Ohio, which might have been a real rampart. West and northwest the section 
was pierced by great rivers: the Mississippi, the Red, the Tennessee, the Cum- 
berland. From Ohio, the Monongahela led southward; from Pennsylvania the 
Shenandoah Valley opened a corridor. Eastern Virginia was singularly ex- 
posed. The Potomac tributaries and the York, Rappahannock, and James, all 
admitted hostile armies well within the Old Dominion. From the sea, Wilming- 
ton. Charleston, Mobile, and above all New Orleans seemed readily assailable. 
The Confederates lay in a besieged fortress with many entry-ports open. 
Nevertheless, the principal Southern leaders believed they could withstand all 

207 



208 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Union attacks until the Yankees grew tired of the butchery, or Europe inter- 
vened. 1 

The energy that the South might have put into a rapid exchange of cotton 
for arms while the seas remained fairly open went instead into a brisk but 
essentially futile campaign of privateering. 2 Davis' proclamation (April 17) 
that all who wished to use privately armed ships to resist Northern aggression 
might apply for letters of marque sent a spasm of activity through Southern 
ports. Tw r o days later Lincoln proclaimed that any Southerner molesting 
American commerce under such authority would be subject to the penalties 
for piracy; but of course the North could not hang captured privateersmen, 
for instant retaliation would have followed. Southern leaders being eager to 
get the "militia of the sea" into action, the rebel Congress passed compre- 
hensive legislation, signed by Davis early in May, which secured to holders of 
letters of marque and reprisal practically the whole proceeds of their captures. 
The same law gave Northern merchantmen in Southern ports thirty days to 
get home, a privilege which the North did not extend to Southern ships. 
Bounties were oif ered for the destruction of enemy warships of superior force, 
and for every naval rating taken prisoner. 3 

The enthusiasm in Southern seaports for the combined opportunity of 
striking the Yankees and pocketing a neat profit was feverish. Wharves, 
counting-rooms, and hotel lobbies responded with talk of Drakes to sweep the 
ocean. The New Orleans Daily Crescent dreamed that within 4 months at 
least 750 swift vessels averaging 4 mighty guns apiece would be crippling the 
Northern strength. Unhappily for the Confederacy, some of the best Southern 
ships were seized in Northern harbors. Three fine vessels of the Charleston 
line, the South Carolina, Massachusetts, and ]ames Adger, with the Eienville 
of the New Orleans line, were soon Northern cruisers. What they might have 
done for the South is suggested by the feats of the Nashville, also of the 
Charleston line, which served the Confederacy as transport, privateer, and 
warship. However, despite the Southern lack of good shipyards and mechanics, 
some busy hornets were soon sent out. 

1 On Confederate strategic policy see Davis, Rise and Fall, I, Ch. VI; Clifford Dowdey, 
The Land They Fought For, 126; Eaton, Southern Confederacy, 124, 125. John M. Daniel 
in the Richmond Examiner inveighed against the "policy of retreat"; see editorials June 12, 
June 15, July 2, etc., and F. S. Daniel, The Richmond Examiner 'During the War. 

2 The exchange of cotton for arms at this date could not have been large, nearly all the 
1860 crop having been exported or sent to New England, but it might have been useful. 
See Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy, 25 F.; Coulter, Confederate States, Ch. X; J. H. Reagan, 
Me?;zoir$, 113; Schwab, Confederate States, 13-16, 233, 234. 

3 Statutes, Provisional Govt. CSA, 2d Sess., Ch. Ill; Richardson, Messages and Papers of 
the Confederacy, I, 60-62; Robinson, The Confederate Privateers, 17-20, 30 fL; and on Wash- 
ington's belated offer to adhere unconditionally to the Declaration of Paris outlawing priva- 
teers, 64th Cong., ist Sess., Senate Doc. 332. For fundamental material on the Confederate 
privateers see O. R. Union and Conf. Navies, Series II, i, 247-249. 



THE FIRST TEST OF STRENGTH 2Q() 

New Orleans on May 16 dispatched the little steamer Calhoun, which that 
same evening captured a Maine bark with 3,000 barrels of lime. She was im- 
mediately joined by two other New Orleans privateers which began cruising 
the Gulf. Beauregard had urged Louisiana to fortify the Mississippi below the 
city, arming Forts Jackson and St. Philip with the heaviest guns to be found, 
and constructing heavy booms, one of timber and one of barges, across the 
river. This was delayed, but the privateers delighted Creole hearts. Charleston, 
meanwhile, had her first privateer active June 2, when the schooner Savannah, 
armed with one i8i2-style eighteen-pounder, put to sea on a brief and un- 
fortunate cruise. After capturing a Maine brig laden with Cuban sugar, she 
was seized by a Union warship. Landed in New York, the small crew were 
ironed, confined in the Tombs, and tried for piracy, with the death penalty 
staring them in the face until the jury happily disagreed. 4 Another Charleston 
privateer named for Jefferson Davis, a brig armed with five English guns of 
1 80 1 vintage, went to sea in June, and soon captured a Philadelphia freighter 
and a Massachusetts schooner. A third, the Dixie, sailed in July and within 
four days placed a prize crew aboard a Yankee bark full of coal. 

By this time merchants and shipowners in all North Atlantic ports were 
clamorous for an immediate intensification of the blockade. Even if the Con- 
federacy could place only a few dozen privateers on the ocean, unless its ports 
were quickly sealed it would deal Northern commerce a staggering blow. 
Steamship companies, shippers, and insurance interests demanded that the 
government put guns and gunners on important steamers like those which 
brought forty millions in gold from San Francisco to New York every year, 
furnish convoys on dangerous routes, and station warships in such busy sea 
lanes as Vineyard Sound. 5 

Even during May, blockading vessels trailed their smoke across the skies 
outside Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, and New Orleans. But no Yankee ever 
uttered a frostier understatement than Secretary Welles's remark that the navy 
was "not as powerful or in numbers as extensive as I wished." When Sumter 
fell, only forty-two ships, including tenders and storeships, were in commis- 
sion. Six were in Northern ports, four at Pensacola, one on the Great Lakes, 
and the others dotted over the globe from the Mediterranean to the East 
Indies. With authority from Lincoln, Welles instantly ordered the buying or 
leasing of twenty vessels. 6 He assigned an Atlantic force the task of closing 

4 Four of the twelve jurors stood for acquittal; see Robinson, Privateers, 135-147, for 
details. 

5 Nineteen New York insurance companies demanded that the navy give immediate pro- 
tection to commerce; O. R. I, i, 9. 

6 Welles established in New York an advisory board of five, including Governor E. D. 
Morgan, William M. Evans, and Moses Grinnell, to assist in forwarding men and supplies. 

contains some matter not in the published version. 



2IO THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Confederate ports from the Chesapeake to Key West, and shortly divided it 
into North Atlantic and South Atlantic squadrons under Louis M. Golds- 
borough and Samuel F. Du Pont respectively. A Gulf squadron was instructed 
to shut every port in that area. Blockade runners were soon being captured. 
The seizure of three British ships off Charleston on May 22 posed a difficult 
diplomatic question, which was settled when the government, after Seward 
appealed to Welles, released them. 7 

It was soon evident that no exterior patrol would suffice to shut the South- 
ern ports. Along such an extended coast, with so many inlets, harbors, and 
bays, it was easy for blockade runners and privateers to slip in and out. Only 
when some of the major ports had been captured could the movement of ships 
be brought under control. By July conversations were under way between 
the army and navy upon an amphibious expedition against Wilmington. Mean- 
while, the navy had let contracts for the hurried construction of warships. 
The sloop Tuscarora was launched at Philadelphia on August 22. "Her keel 
was growing in the forest three months ago," boasted Welles. Vessels of every 
size and shape were also bought for refitting and arming. "Alas! It is like 
altering a vest into a shirt to convert a trading steamer into a man of war," 
lamented Du Pont, but the work went on. Although summer found the block- 
ade still highly ineffective, naval officers could reflect that the war was young. 

The South, indeed, by midsummer had a premonition of the days when 
imports would cease, and shortages become crippling. Northern commercial 
interests equally felt a foreboding of grave damage to the American merchant 
marine. Long so proud, it might be swept from the seas or compelled to take 
refuge under foreign flags. 



[ I ] 

On land, meanwhile, the time had come for harder blows. North and South, 
the clamor for fighting grew ever more strident. In Richmond the rebel war 
clerk Jones wrote in his diary for June 12: "The vast majority of our people 
are for 'carrying the war into Africa' without a moment's delay." 8 From 
Washington a gallant New York soldier, Francis Barlow, destined to become 
known as the boy general and to have his monument reared at Gettysburg, 
wrote that the demand for crushing the enemy made a campaign so imperative 
that if Lincoln objected, he might be replaced by a military dictatorship. 9 
"Already the murmurs of discontent are ocean-loud against the slow and cau- 

7 West, Welles, 117; J. R. Soley, The Blockade and the Cruisers, 8, 9. 

8 Jones, Rebel War Clerk's Diary, I, 51. 

9 Francis Barlow had enlisted as a private April 19, married the next day, and left his bride 
at the church to go to the front. His letter of May 27, 1861, is in the S. L. M. Barlow Papers. 



THE FIRST TEST OF STRENGTH 2II 

tious courses of the war. I see this in the files of responsible and pervading 
correspondence which crowd the Secretaries' mails, and I know it from the 
President himself." 

The sight of troops pouring to the front gave people on each side a false 
impression of strength. When Beauregard left Montgomery for the Virginia 
front on May 29 his train, according to a Boston-born physician aboard, 
counted 148 cars, all filled with troops bound for Augusta and points north, 
and drawn by two locomotives. 10 This may be an exaggeration, but it is true 
that Southerners who cheered massive troop trains expected a prompt advance. 
Jefferson Davis explained to Joseph E. Johnston on July 13 that a North 
Carolinian who accused the government of wantonly holding back 17,000 eager 
men from his State was writing nonsense. Volunteers swarmed everywhere, 
but Davis had to tell these eager units: "I have not arms to supply you." n 
In Washington, it w r as assuredly a mistake to show members of Congress on 
July 4 an imposing military pageant, some 25,000 troops filling Pennsylvania 
Avenue like a blue river, while their tread sounded like dull thunder, for the 
spectacle made many members recklessly impatient. "This was war," wrote 
one. "We should bring on the battle." ^ 

Each side underrated the need for preparation, and undervalued the fight- 
ing quality of its opponents. "It w r as a favorite notion," wrote General Barnard 
later, "with a large class of Northern politicians (and the people too) that 
nothing but an imposing display of force was necessary to crush the rebel- 
lion." 13 Surely, since pioneers had fought under Andrew Jackson at the wave 
of a hat, a regiment hardly needed three months' drill! Why wait, when only 
a thirty-mile march was needed to overwhelm the enemy? 

Both the Confederate camp at Manassas and the Union camps before Wash- 
ington were slovenly. Neither army had properly assembled and organized its 
baggage trains, tents, food arrangements, or medical supplies. Beauregard could 
have said precisely what McDowell did say later: "I had no opportunity to 
test my machinery, to move it around and see whether it would work smoothly 
or not." Yet each section waved aside reasons for delay. "True enough, you are 
green," men admitted. "But the enemy is green too you are all green alike." 14 

The North had a taste of the bloody realities of war on June 10. Ben Butler 
urged on by Montgomery Blair, who denounced the "miserable do-nothings" 
in Washington and expressed confidence that a march to Richmond would be 
easy moved that day to capture two Confederate posts, Big and Little Bethel, 

10 Dr. Martin McQueen in Syracuse Journal, May 27, 1861. 

11 O. R. I, ii, 976-977. 

12 A. G. Riddle, Recs. of War Times, 29. 

13 Barnard, The C. S. A. and the Battle of Butt Run, 42. 

14 Hurlburt, McClelltm and the Conduct of the War, 103. 



212 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

a few miles from Fort Monroe. The command was given to an incompetent. 
He used faulty old maps, sent out two columns on a night march w T hich, in- 
stead of joining hands and cooperating, actually fired into each other, and by 
this tragic mishap gave the alarm to the Confederates at Little Bethel, who fell 
back on Big Bethel. He then completely botched an attempt to flank this 
well-chosen position, where the enemy was protected by a swampy creek 
and a battery of guns. As Butler later wrote, "Everything was mismanaged." 
The Union forces withdrew just as the Confederate leader, fearing reinforce- 
ments from Fort Monroe, himself retreated! The reason which the Northern 
commander later offered for retiring was that his troops were hungry from 
long marching. Actually they had covered about eleven miles, and if they had 
halted to eat lunch from their haversacks, they could have kept the position 
the enemy was abandoning! 15 

It was evident, meanwhile, that the Northern forces were loose, clumsy, 
and inharmonious. The aged Scott reigned without actually ruling. He had 
three armies, Patterson's in the Harpers Ferry area, McDowell's at Alexandria, 
and Ben Butler's at Fort Monroe, which he failed to coordinate, and whose 
commanders all distrusted him. 16 

Patterson, who on June 28 had 14,350 men facing Joe Johnston's 10,700, 
made a series of erratic movements. Elated by his success in driving Johnston 
from Harpers Ferry, he thought that with Scott's support he could win a 
brilliant victory; but Scott, with superior insight, disapproved of his plans, 
and withdrew some of his troops. The result was that the Pennsylvania gen- 
eral believed that he had been checked just as he was on the point of seizing 
a bright advantage. Had he held Charlestown just south of the Potomac, he 
would have been in a position to strike at Winchester, intercept Johnston if 
that general suddenly moved to join Beauregard at Manassas, or himself march 
rapidly to reinforce McDowell. Instead, he put himself in a remoter position 
at Martmsburg. 17 Relations between Scott and McDowell continued bad, with 
Scott petulant and McDowell resentful. By July 16-17, returns for the 
McDowell-Mansfield command in the Washington-Alexandria area showed 

15 On the two Bethels, see Butlers Book, 266-270; Swinton, Army of the Potomac, 31. 
The saddest loss at Big Bethel was that of Theodore Winthrop, a more than promising 
American man of letters. 

1 6 Lossing, Civil War, I, 525, 526; Swinton, 33, 34; O. R. I, ii. 

17 For Patterson's Shenandoah operations see O. R. I, ii, 156-187, 607, 694; his own Nar- 
rative is best read in the light of T. L. Livermore's careful paper on the campaign in Military 
Hist. Soc. of Mass., I, Campaigns in Virginia 1861-62. Alonzo H. Quint's The Second Mass. 
Infantry gives an interesting view. Patterson when forced to retreat had to endure silently a 
great deal of public criticism. "Great injustice is done you and your command here," John 
Sherman, who had been on his staff, wrote from Washington June 30, "and by persons in 
the highest military position." When Patterson placed his forces at Martinsburg they were 
behind Johnston, who was thus free to move to Manassas at any time with Patterson trailing 
in his rear. 




T Arm 



THE FIRST TEST OF STRENGTH 2l ^ 

37,321 officers and men present for duty, but McDowell felt that Scott had 
denied him the staff, equipment, and latitude in training which he needed. 

If Patterson and McDowell distrusted the head of the armies, Butler's 
opinion was scorching. The day he was appointed major-general, May 16, he 
called on Scott to exchange angry accusations. Scott accused him of running 
terrible risks in Baltimore, thwarting the government's pacific plans, and show- 
Ing general highhandedness. Butler retorted that Scott knew nothing of the 
situation, had made dangerous concessions to the disloyal mayor, and should 
have helped him suppress the murderous plug-uglies. Though Cameron and 
Chase urged the indigant Butler to stay in the service, and Montgomery Blair 
assured him he was entirely right, his irritation grew when he found Fort 
Monroe shockingly ill equipped. It had no horses, no proper water supply, no 
provisions but hardtack and meat; the seven or eight thousand men he com- 
manded were insufficient to do more than keep Magruder at bay. The sym- 
pathetic Blair, who had hoped to see Butler march direct on Richmond, wrote 
Cameron on June 22 in high dudgeon. Instead of 20,000 men with proper 
artillery, cavalry, and wagon trains, Butler had less than half that force, no 
transport, no cavalry, and few guns. Blair added: 

My want of confidence in the enterprise of the General-in-Chief grows. 
Besides, he does not approve our policy and is not heartily with us. He means 
to play Pacificator. I counsel you to take these matters into your own charge, 
seeing that you have the responsibility. 18 

The West Virginia campaign furnished new evidence of want of plan and 
liaison in Washington. McClellan exaggerates the facts when he declares that 
from first to last he had no "advice, orders, or instructions from Washington or 
elsewhere," and acted on his own initiative; for actually he got some helpful 
information from Scott. But he was left altogether too much to his own re- 
sources. He issued a proclamation to the people of West Virginia of strong 
political tinge, and an equally political address to his soldiers. When he sent 
Lincoln copies, with a letter explaining his reasons for the invasion, he got no 
comment from President, Secretary of War, or General Scott. It was unfor- 
tunate that Cameron and Scott did not fully and promptly inform McClellan 
of their plan of action in front of Washington. Had they done so, the troops 
flushed with victory at Rich Mountain might have marched, as McClellan 
suggested, toward the Shenandoah to help Patterson pin down Joseph E. 
Johnston. 19 

1 8 See Butler's Book. Blair in the rough draft of his letter to Cameron included a sentence 
later deleted: "As our friend Chase even has fallen out with the Genl I hope we will pluck 
up courage to take our affairs into our own hands." Blair Papers, LC. 

19 See McClellan's published Report, 15-17, 51, 52; for Scott's advice see O. R. I, ii, 648, 
743, etc. 



2I4 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

[ II ] 

Like two wrestlers glowering at each other across the ring, McDowell and 
Beauregard early in July faced each other across twenty miles of broken Vir- 
ginia countryside. The Union commander, after detaching about 6,000 men 
to protect his communications, had 30,000 troops with 49 guns; the Con- 
federate general had some 22,000 men with 29 guns. Both might be rapidly 
reinforced the Southern army by Johnston's Shenandoah force, which at the 
beginning of July comprised about 11,000 men with 20 guns, and the army of 
McDowell by Patterson's larger force. 20 In this matter of reinforcing Beaure- 
gard and McDowell the Confederacy held the advantage, partly because 
Johnston could use the railroad from Winchester to Manassas, while Patterson 
had no ready means of reaching the area. 

The Administration had good reasons for wishing to see McDowell offer 
battle. One was that the ninety-day men were soon to quit, they hoped to see 
action before they left, and obviously they ought to be used. Another was that 
European governments might be impressed by Northern vigor. The most im- 
portant, however, was that Northern morale must be sustained. 

Impatient Congressmen varied their debates by grumbling loudly about 
procrastination. Wagons and horses were needed? Well, buy them! Regiments 
had to be organized into brigades and divisions? Well, shove them in! Zack 
Chandler, who came to the Senate full of plans for seizing rebel property, 
thought that Scott could avoid hard fighting just by showing a little energy: 
he could simply surround the scoundrels, make their case hopeless, and compel 
them to retreat to Richmond. Chandler and others were talking about hanging 
the worst traitors as soon as they were caught 21 Half of the press was ringing 
with demands for hard blows. As an echo of Horace Greeley's suggestions, 
Fitz-Henry Warren, a Washington correspondent of the Tribune, wrote his 
famous "Forward to Richmond 5 ' article; Greeley allowed Charles A. Dana to 
repeat and reinforce it in subsequent issues; and other newspapers caught it up. 
"Torward to Richmond! Forward to Richmond! The Rebel Congress must 
not be allowed to meet there on the 2oth of July!" so from June 26 onward 
ran the Tribune's daily iteration of "The Nation's Battle-Cry ." 22 

20 On numbers see Ropes, I, 127, 128; Battles and Leaders, I, 175; O. R. I, ii, 309, 487. A 
few ninety-day men did quit just before the battle, and the position of the whole body 
affected Union morale, 

21 Chandler to his wife, Washington, June 27, 1861, Chandler Papers, LC; F. W. Banks, 
Washington, July 9, 1861, to S. L. M. Barlow, Barlow Papers; Washington correspondence 
dated July n, 12, in N. Y. Tribune, July 13, 1861. 

22 Cf. Charles A. Dana, "Greeley as a Journalist," N. Y. Sun, Dec. 5, 1872; and Dana's 
dictated statement to Ida M. Tarbell in Tarbell Papers, Allegheny College. Dana had been 
with the Tribune since 1847 and in some of Greeley's absences had taken full charge. 



FIELD OF OPERATIONS 
IN VIRGINIA 




On the Confederate side various prodders, including the Richmond Exam- 
iner, had made Jefferson Davis nearly as anxious to hazard battle as Beauregard. 
Davis wrote Johnston July 13 that the one great object was to give the South- 
ern columns capacity to take the offensive and prevent the junction of the 
enemy's forces. 23 

Nothing could have been more haphazard than the way in which Mc- 
Dowell's forward thrust was determined upon. First, Scott orally asked him to 
submit a plan of operations against Manassas, with an estimate of the men 
needed. Second, McDowell sent his plan to Scott, who read and approved it. 
Third, a council was held June 29 in the East Room of the White House at- 
tended by Cabinet members and leading officers. McDowell read his plan, 

25 O. R. I, ii, 976, 977. 



216 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

on which nobody made any comment except Mansfield, commanding in Wash- 
ington, who said that he had not thought about the matter, knew nothing about 
it, and was unprepared to speak! The relation of Patterson's army to the move- 
ment was discussed, and one participant states that Scott explicitly promised 
to have it keep the Confederates in the Shenandoah engaged: "I assume the 
responsibility for having Johnston kept off McDowell's flank." Finally, Mc- 
Dowell submitted his plan to the army engineers, who made no constructive 
suggestion. In short, no real debate on the wisdom or mode of the attack took 
place. 

Once the plan was accepted, McDowell had great difficulty in implement- 
ing it. Some regiments crossed the Potomac late, and a few not till the very- 
day he was to start his army. He set out with no baggage trains, and though 
he possessed ammunition wagons and ambulances, had no facilities to carry 
food or tents. The men carried three days' rations in their haversacks. Said 
the jealous Mansfield, in effect, < I have no transportation to give you." Said 
Meigs, head of the quartermaster arrangements: "I have transportation, but 
Mansfield does not want me to supply it until the troops move." Said the 
overburdened McDowell: "I agree to that, but between you two I get noth- 
ing." So he set off, telling Scott he was not really ready to go: "So far as 
transportation is concerned, I must look to you behind me to send it forward." 
The egregiously bad marching of his troops McDowell explained by saying 
that Americans were unused to foot travel. Starting on Tuesday morning, 
July 1 6, the army did not reach Centerville until Thursday afternoon, when it 
camped until the battle advance began Sunday morning the 2ist. Why? 
partly because its provisions had not come up. 24 

Actually, McDowell's plan was well conceived and well drafted. By de- 
feating Beauregard at Manassas, he would not only dispel the threat to Wash- 
ington, but seize the important junction between the Orange & Alexandria 
Railroad and its lateral branch to the Shenandoah. He had the advantage of 
superior numbers, better ordnance, about 1600 regular soldiers, and the pros- 
pect of a timely reinforcement by Patterson. But a sharp check at Blackburn's 
Ford on the Bull Run July 18 discouraged his men, who wondered whether 
the Confederate line could really be penetrated. He and the army engineers 
used the next two days trying to discover the best place for attack. Meanwhile 
Patterson, whose duty was to hold Joseph E. Johnston, marched in precisely 
the wrong direction. He had been alarmed by vague reports that he had 30,000 
to 40,000 troops before him. In a half-hearted demonstration, he moved toward 

24 McDowell dates the East Room conference June 29; Montgomery C. Meigs says the 
beginning of July. See McDowell's testimony, Comm. on Conduct of the War, II, 35 fL; 
Meigs Papers, Box IV, LC; and O. R. I, ii, passim, full of material on the campaign. 



THE FIRST TEST OF STRENGTH 2l j 

Winchester and Johnston on July 16, but then next day retreated to Charles- 
town, and a little later pulled still farther back to Harpers Ferry. Johnston 
no sooner learned that Patterson had fallen back than he exultantly set his 
troops in motion, hurrying them on as fast as he could to join Beauregard. 

The result was that on July 20 the main body of Johnston's force joined 
Beauregard. His intelligence service, for he had /Major J. E. B. Stuart's cavalry 
to scout for him, was as superb as Patterson's was worthless. While Patterson 
was asking Scott for aid at Harpers Ferry, Johnston's command was fraterniz- 
ing with the defenders of Manassas. This, said McDowell later, was "the fatal 
thing" that decided Bull Run. 

Yet it was not the only fatal element. At first the Union advance on the 
2ist seemed victorious. Pressing against the Confederate left, McDowell's raw 
volunteers threw the Southerners back in some disorder. The main fighting 
began about ten; at noon the battle was raging heavily beyond Bull Run, 
around and on the hill capped by the Henry farmhouse; reports of a disaster 
swept Richmond. The gallant James S. Wadsworth of New York thought at 
two o'clock that the Union army had won the field. But command liaison on 
the Union side was very poor, so that troops moved in piecemeal and raggedly. 
Then, soon after three, a new part of Johnston's army, fresh from the trains, 
arrived on the scene the brigade of E. Kirby-Smith. That force, delivering 
a severe discharge of musketry 7 , followed it with a hot charge. Some Union 
elements stampeded, and as Beauregard ordered an attack along the whole line, 
the Union troops were swept back. By five they were in full retreat. 

Beauregard had possessed complete warning of the Federal advance, for at 
8:00 P.M. on July 1 6 a sealed letter, brought him by relays from the Con- 
federate spy Mrs. Greenhow in Washington, had announced in cipher that 
McDowell had been ordered to move. Early next morning he telegraphed the 
news to Jefferson Davis. On the i7th the Richmond authorities had been able 
to order Johnston's Army of the Shenandoah to join Beauregard, and T. J. 
Jackson's brigade had forthwith led the van in the march to the nearest railroad 
station. Scott, meanwhile, had failed to give Patterson positive orders. 25 

Not only were the Southern forces better coordinated, but they had belter 
officers and showed superior morale. During the battle the Confederate gen- 
erals kept close under fire. Johnston and Beauregard were in the front lines at 
critical moments, Brigadier-General B. E. Bee was mortally wounded, Colonel 

25 See CoL Alfred Roman's Beauregard, I, 71 ff. (practically an autobiography) j Johnston's 
Narrative, 50 ff.j Gen. James Wadsworth's testimony In Committee on the Conduct of the 
War, II; Swinton, Army of the Potomac, 58, 59; Ropes, I, 131 ff. Swinton and Ropes empha- 
size the defective leadership and uneven fighting on both sides. Comm. on Conduct oj the 
War, II, 103. By Patterson's own statement, he could have held Johnston with 8,000 men; 
op. cit^ 107. A mass of military dispatches may be found in O. R. I., li, pt. 2. 



218 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

J. F. Thomas, chief ordnance officer, fell while leading broken troops back 
into battle, and Jubal Early was equally intrepid. It was while Bee was ap- 
pealing to his South Carolinians to sustain the honor of their State that he 
pointed to a brigade of the Army of the Shenandoah standing on the Henry 
house hilltop awaiting the Northern onslaught: "Look, there is Jackson with 
his Virginians standing like a stone wall against the enemy." 26 The men re- 
sponded by a spirited charge. Young Jeb Stuart, leading two companies of 
cavalry, made his first appearance on a battlefield by a timely onslaught against 
the Union right flank, sweeping through the supports of two Federal batteries 
and leaving the guns an easy prey to an advancing regiment of Virginians. 
Throughout the hottest part of the battle the Confederate morale rose. 

The Union troops had the disadvantage of advancing over unknown ter- 
rain against a foe of unknown strength. Raw troops fight more steadily when 
stationary, as most of the Confederate units were; in attacking they become 
confused and disorganized. Many Northerners entered the fight hot, tired, and 
thirsty from previous marching. Sights of wounds and agony frightened the 
green men. General William B. Franklin went forward with the Fifth and 
Eleventh Massachusetts to try to extricate an exposed battery. The infantry- 
men could not be brought up to the mark: they would rush forward, deliver a 
volley, and then, instead of taking hold of the guns, fall back to a safe place 
to reload. The Union artillery was badly served, and Griffin's expert West 
Point Battery showed the usual contempt of regulars for volunteers. Early in 
the combat it tore through the New York Seventy-first at top speed for a 
front-line position, cutting the regiment in two. Later, it ran out of ammuni- 
tion. The caissons tore recklessly back for a fresh supply, scattering the units in 
their path, and men who saw the horses and gunners madly ripping out for the 
rear, thought all was lost and ran too. 

The Union retreat, at first orderly, quickly became a disgraceful rout. As 
Beauregard's lines swept forward, the panic grew, and soon men were in head- 
long flight, amid heat, dust, anguish, and terrific profanity. W. H. Russell, 
riding forward on horseback, found himself among the first fugitives. "What 
does this mean?" he demanded, and an exhausted officer gasped: "Why, it 
means that we are pretty badly whipped." 27 

The scene between Manassas and Alexandria that evening was never to be 
forgotten. The fields were dotted with fugitives, mounted officers outstripping 

26 Century, XL VIII, vol. 48 (May, 1894), 155, 156. 

27 Russell's vivid description, My Diary, Ch. 50, is corroborated by the photographer 
Mathew Brady, caught in the flight; Representative A. O. Riddle, quoted in S. S. Cox, Three 
Decades, 158; Horace White, Lyman Trumbull, 165-168. Trumbull, who had gone to the 
battle with Senator Grimes and others, wrote: "Literally, three could have chased ten 
thousand." 



BULL RUN 

THE FIELD OF STRATEGY 




privates afoot. Down the Centreville highway poured a river of wagons, am- 
bulances, soldiers belaboring mules, and dirty, disheveled troops. Every vehicle 
was jammed with men, who threw out even ammunition to make room. The 
ground was covered with provisions, overcoats, knapsacks, blankets, muskets, 
canteens, and cartridge boxes. Drivers whipped their teams; reeling soldiers 
clung to stirrups and wagon gates; and at every interruption of traffic masses 
of troops yelled frantically with rage: "The cavalry is on us! Get along, get 
along!" Over the crossroads rose columns of dust, for here, too, masses of 
troops were fleeing as from some unknown terror. As the flight roared north- 
ward, its noise like that of a great river, more and more men fell out from 
exhaustion. At Centreville some fresh reserve regiments formed line on a good 
defensive slope, and the fleeing forces might well have considered themselves 
safe. 28 But when a neighboring battery opened fire, the thud and flash pre- 
cipitated a fresh panic. 

It was the familiar story whose moral Kipling later compressed into three 
lines: 

Ye pushed them raw to the battle as ye plucked them raw from the street, 
And what did ye look they should compass? War-craft learned in a breath 
Knowledge unto occasion at the first far view of Death? 

In Washington that Sunday intense suspense had gripped everyone. Scott, 
anxious to allay men's anxiety, talked confidently of success and went to 

28 A reserve brigade under Miles and a brigade under Richardson, in and just beyond 
Centerville, had taken no part in the fighting, maintained good order, and served as a de- 
pendable rear guard; Ropes, I, 153. 



2 2o THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

church at eleven. Early in the afternoon the President began receiving tele- 
grams every quarter hour from Fairfax Court House, three or four miles from 
the battlefront. They at first gave the impression that the Union forces were 
retiring, and Lincoln, alarmed, went to see Scott, whom he found asleep. The 
General explained that the noise of battle was often misleading, for the wind 
made the firing seem first near, then far. Lincoln, returning to the White 
House, found news that the battle still raged, but that McDowell now seemed 
to be winning. Pleased by word that the Confederates had been driven back, 
he went for a ride. His secretary Nicolay records: 

At six o'clock . . . Mr. Seward came into the President's room with a 
terribly excited and frightened look, and said to John [Hay] and I, who were 
sitting" there, "Where is the President?" "Gone to ride," we replied. 

"Have you any late news?" said he. 

I began reading Hanscom's dispatch to him. 

Said he: "Tell no one. That is not so. The battle is lost. The telegraph says 
that McDowell is in full retreat, and calls on General Scott to save the capital, 
etc. Find the President and tell him immediately to come to General Scott's." 29 

[ HI ] 

The Confederates made no real pursuit. By a determined thrust from either 
the east or west, they might have turned the small reserve force at Centreville. 
Some regiments on the Confederate left did ford Bull Run and set out to 
follow the fleeing troops, but were recalled by a staff command given in error. 
That night President Davis and the principal Confederate generals held a 
battlefield conference. 30 Davis was at first willing to send the freshest units, 
the brigades of Ewell, D. R. Jones, and Longstreet, in pursuit, but because 
doubts were thrown upon a major's report that he had seen a wild flight, with 
abandoned wagons and choked roads, he finally decided against the step. 
Johnston believed that his raw troops, poorly supplied with food and ammuni- 
tion, could not execute forced marches and attack the fortified lines before 
Washington. He thought his troops more disorganized by victory, indeed, than 
the Union forces by defeat. Beauregard also opposed an attempt at pursuit. 
Previously hot to take the offensive and advance on Washington, he now de- 
clared that the prostration of the men, the shortage of supplies the Manassas 
army had never possessed food for more than two days, and sometimes no 
rations at all, while it now held only enough ammunition for half a battle and 
the general confusion, forbade a forward thrust. 

29 Nicolay to his wife, July 27, 1861* Nicolay Papers, LC. 

30 Davis had reached the battlefield just in time to witness the rout of the Union forces, 
and at once exultantly telegraphed his War Department that 15,000 Confederates had de- 
feated 35,000 Federal troops. Roman, Beauregard, I, nj. 



THE FIRST TEST OF STRENGTH 22I 

This decision deeply disappointed both Richmond and the many South- 
ern sympathizers in Washington. Mrs. Greenhow, who had repeatedly assured 
Beauregard that the Union works south of the Potomac had been barely com- 
menced and mounted few guns, and that a Confederate advance was greatly 
dreaded in the capital, ended more than one dispatch after Manassas: "Come 
on! Why do you not come?" But Johnston and Beauregard made a correct 
decision. By an implacable pursuit, flogging on their tired soldiers, the Con- 
federates could have taken more prisoners and stores, making the defeat still 
more humiliating. But as they approached Washington they would have met 
the reserves from Centreville, the divisions of Mansfield and Runyon, some 
11,000 Pennsylvania troops who arrived on Monday, and perhaps Patterson's 
force. Beyond the fortifications lay the Potomac. The night after the battle a 
dull, drenching rain began which continued all next day, turning the roads into 
mud. The railroad bridge across Bull Run had been destroyed. And the Con- 
federates were hungry. Their commissary service, in the hands of the ill- 
tempered, inept Colonel Lucius B. Northrop, who had refused to let Beaure- 
gard sweep the area south of Washington clean of provisions, was distressingly 
inefficient. 31 

Even without pursuit, the Confederates claimed fully 1200 prisoners; 28 
fieldpieces of good quality, 8 of them rifled, with more than 100 rounds for 
each gun; some 500 muskets and 500,000 rounds of ammunition; and horses, 
wagons, caissons, and ambulances. Losses on both sides have been variously 
computed, but the best source places the Union killed at 481, the Confederate 
at 3 87. 32 

The exultation of part of the Southern press and public was not only un- 
restrained, but tinged with an arrogant tone. "The breakdown of the Yankee 
race, their unfitness for empire," declared the Richmond Whig, "forces do- 
minion on the South. We are compelled to take the sceptre of power. We must 
adapt ourselves to our new destiny. We must elevate our race, every man of 
it, breed them up to arms, to command, to empire." 33 The Louisville Courier- 
Journal was equally insolent. The South, remarked the editor, had until a few 

31 "The want of food and transportation has made us lose all the fruits or our victory," 
wrote Beauregard, July 29. "We ought at this moment to be in or about Washington, but 
we are perfectly anchored here, and God only knows when we will be able to advance; with- 
out these means we can neither advance nor retreat." Roman, op. cit., 121, 122. George Gary 
Eggleston in A Rebel's Recollections emphatically states the view of those who thought the 
army should have pursued. Jubal Early in his reminiscences emphatically agrees that advance 
was impracticable and impolitic; Narrative, 43-46. 

32 O. R. I, ii, 327, gives Union killed 481, wounded ion, and missing 1216; the Confederate 
killed at 387, wounded at 1582. 

33 July 23, 1861. One able Southerner, the engineer R. H. Lucas, said he would not give 
ten cents on the dollar for New York property; Manigault, MS Recollections, Univ. of 
N. C, 326, 327. 



222 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

weeks since governed the North as its Norman ancestors had governed the 
Saxon churls. The Yankee revolt would not last long, for, "dastards in fight 
and incapable of self-government, they will inevitably fall under the control 
of a superior race. A few more Bull Run thrashings will bring most of them 
once more under the yoke, as docile as the most loyal of our Ethiopian chat- 
tels." 34 DeBo^s Review, picturing the North as divided and half -prostrated, 
predicted that the battle would confirm the independence of the South. 35 

Needless to say, responsible men like Davis and Lee knew that the test had 
only begun. 

34 Quoted in Rossiter Johnson, War of Secession, 70. 

35 September, 1861. 




A Resurgent North 



THE EFFECT of Bull Run at the North, as its meaning sank in, was as stimu- 
lating as a whiplash. It blew away illusions like rags of fog in a northwest gale. 
Andrew D. White, a young upstate New Yorker already winning prominence 
as an educator, heard of the battle as he was entertaining Charles Sumner's 
younger brother, fresh from Washington. White was angry over a recent 
statement by Seward that the Administration had determined to end the re- 
bellion even if it took 50,000 men to capture Richmond and dictate terms that 
summer. In what kind of dreams was Seward indulging? White and George 
Sumner agreed that defeat was healthy if it stopped such fatuous miscon- 
ceptions. 1 

The defeat brought Northern dissidents to better support of the war, and 
stimulated every State to intensified effort. Illinois telegraphed the War De- 
partment offering seventeen regiments. Indiana telegraphed offering ten. As 
regiments of ninety-day men were mustered out in New York, the rank and 
file showed a strong desire to reenlist but with the stipulation that they must 
have officers of real capacity. The first shock in Washington had been ap- 
palling. To see McDowell's rabble, a host of dirty, ragged, hungry men, come 
pouring in to beg food from door to door and sink to sleep on pavements and 
doorsteps; to see the hotels crowded with road-stained officers, some brazen, 
some ashamed this disheartened loyal citizens. But the National Intelligencer, 
indignant over reports North and South that the city was frightened, published 
a front-page editorial August 3 to declare that the capital remained undaunted, 
undiscouraged, and confident of ultimate success. 

A second Northern uprising was at once evident. Governor Curtin, now 
justified in his insistence on a State reserve of fifteen regiments fully armed and 
ready for an emergency, could claim first place in the movement. The arrival 
of his troops in Washington just after the battle heartened the North. Volun- 
teers thronged forward. Seward five days after the battle wrote Charles Fran- 
cis Adams in London that military and civil panic had quickly ceased, and the 

i White, Autobiography, I, 87-8$. 

223 



224 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

true result was already seen in a vigorous reconstruction of the war effort on 
an expanded scale. 2 Within a fortnight a strong new army of more than 75,000 
men, enlisted for three years or the duration, was in the training camps. 

A complete reorganization of command was clearly necessary. At the very 
moment that public confidence in McDowell fell to zero, the press was spread- 
ing broadcast a Napoleonic proclamation from McClellan: 

Soldiers of the Army of the West! 

I am more than satisfied with you. 

You have annihilated two armies, commanded by educated and experienced 
soldiers, intrenched in mountain fastnesses fortified at their leisure. You have 
taken five guns, twelve colors, fifteen hundred stand of arms, one thousand 
prisoners, including more than forty officers one of the two commanders 
of the rebels is a prisoner, the other lost his life on the field of battle. You have 
killed more than two hundred and fifty of the enemy, who has lost all his 
baggage and camp equipage. All this has been accomplished with the loss of 
twenty brave men killed and sixty wounded on your part. 3 

These statements were the more impressive because their author had served 
with distinction in Mexico, had been an official observer of the Crimean War, 
and combined a West Point education with managerial experience in business. 
McClellan was careful to point out that he had inspired his men: "I have not 
hesitated to demand this of you, feeling that I could rely on your endurance, 
patriotism, and courage." The New York Herald led the press in extolling him. 
"The name of General McClellan is upon every lip," it declared July 15. 
Cabinet members, military men, and the universal populace joined in his 
praise; "Hurrah for McClellan!" men even shouted in the streets. His energy, 
skill, and organizing efficiency delighted everybody. 

His one-month campaign to conquer northwestern Virginia indeed ap- 
peared to be brilliant. Nobody could deny his high administrative capacity. A 
critical scrutiny, however, would have demolished some of his eloquent pre- 
tensions. He had possessed a heavy preponderance in numbers, and one still 
heavier in firepower, for the Confederates were poorly equipped. He had 
marked advantages of transport in the use of the Baltimore & Ohio on the north 
and the Great Kanawha on the south. He operated in a friendly country. At 
Parkersburg, for example, his troops had met a general ovation, "gray-headed 
old men and women, mothers holding up their children to take my hand, girls, 
boys, all sorts, cheering and crying, 'God bless you! 7 " The campaign hardships 
of which he spoke feelingly ("long and arduous marches," "insufficient food," 
"inclemency of the weather") did not bother a young Ohio officer named 

2 Diplomatic Correspondence, 1861. 

3 This pronunciamento was dated July 16; O. R. I, ii, 205-208. All the younger generals 
then fancied themselves embryo Napoleons, and cultivated Napoleonic rescripts; except a 
few who thought themselves Wellingtons. 



A RESURGENT NORTH 22 - 

Rutherford B. Hayes serving with him. On the contrary, Hayes exulted in the 
fine mountain scenery, clear streams, wooded slopes, and generally warm, clear 
weather. 

McClellan's handsome, soldierly presence, kind, modest manners, and evi- 
dent care for his troops, made a happy impression. The obverse of the medal 
was his readiness to lay claim to credit belonging to others, to depreciate and 
rebuke subordinates publicly, and to exaggerate the enemy strength. A colonel 
had won Philippi while McClellan sat at his office desk in Cincinnati. At Cor- 
rick's Ford, General T. D. Morris, with 1800 men, had routed the enemy and 
killed Robert S. Garnett, the Southern leader (July 13). Two days earlier 
Union forces had been aided in the most important battle, Rich Mountain, 
by a lucky accident. General W. S. Rosecrans was to attempt to turn the 
Confederate flank and attack the heights from the rear while McClellan as- 
saulted in front. As Rosecrans advanced, his pickets seized a farm youth who 
led them by a secret way directly behind Colonel John Pegram's entrench- 
ments on the mountain, where they won an overwhelming success. McClellan, 
by contrast, did badly; he failed to attack at the proper time, scaled the moun- 
tain late, and lost the chance of completely crushing the enemy. 

While understating the forces opposed to subordinate officers like Jacob 
D. Cox and Rosecrans, McClellan constantly overstated those facing himself. 
Cox complained later that the general had systematically depreciated him. He 
had similarly written General Morris a series of insulting reprimands, cul- 
minating in the statement that if Morris asked for any more reinforcements, 
"I shall take it as a request to be relieved from your command and return to 
Indiana." When McClellan publicly castigated Rosecrans, that general sent him 
a reasoned justification closing with a spirited rebuke: "Review, if you please, 
that letter which you have put on record, and say whether, after you receive 
this, both private feelings and public interest are likely to be the better for it." 4 

McClellan's official Rich Mountain report seemed to give all the credit to 
himself. Yet J. D. Cox could truthfully assert that Rich Mountain disclosed 
some characteristics of McClellan that were destined later to come out more 
fully. "There was the same overestimate of the enemy, the same tendency to 
interpret unfavorably the sights and sounds in front, the same hesitancy to 
throw in his whole force when he knew that his subordinate was engaged." 5 

On the very Sunday night of Bull Run Lincoln began to draft new plans. 

4 For this West Virginia campaign see O. R. I, ii, 194 ff .; McClellan's Report, and his Otvn 
Story; Ambler, History of West Virginia, 335 ff.; J. M. Callahan, Semi-Centennial History 
of West Virginia, 1541!.; Festus P. Summers, The Baltimore & Ohio in the Civil War, 69-89; 
J. W. Thomas, "Campaigns of McClellan and Rosecrans in West Virginia, i8<5i-62," West 
Virginia History, vol. 5 (July, 1944), 245-308; and Jacob D. Cox, Reminiscences, I, 64 ff. 
Cox was one of the first (but far from the last) of talented officers from civil life to feel 
the enmity of West Point leaders. 

5 Cox, Reminiscences, I, 58. 



22 6 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

When two days later he finished this private memorandum of nine points of 
military policy, he said nothing about a changed military leadership; this was 
not necessary. His program embraced the strengthening of the blockade, of 
Butler's force, and of the Shenandoah army; it called for reorganizing Mc- 
Dowell's army, and pushing operations in the West; and it demanded the rapid 
dispatch of the new volunteer recruits to the Washington camps. A few days 
later Lincoln added that Manassas Junction and Strasburg should be seized and 
permanently held, with an open line from Washington to Manassas. 6 He was 
planning a fresh advance on that route. Nobody now talked of an easy march 
down the Mississippi, or from Cincinnati across country to Mobile, or even, as 
Montgomery Blair had done, from Fort Monroe to Richmond. The main ob- 
ject was to strike the formidable Southern armies, and in Washington, one 
voice chose the leader: McClellan. 

Hot July days; hot contentions wherever Congressmen gathered; hot 
letters passing back and forth, like E. M. Stanton's denunciation of Administra- 
tion "imbecility" to Buchanan; mint juleps and gin slings pouring down hot 
throats. On July 26, McClellan reached the city. Ambition burned in his brain 
as, calling on Scott, he heard that he was now where Napoleon had stood after 
Arcola: "Soldiers, like a torrent you have rushed down from the heights of 
the Apennines!" Next morning brought a call on Lincoln their first meeting. 
He met the President coolly and confidently, and was invited to attend the 
Cabinet meeting at one. Scott was jealous of that invitation, declaring, "You 
shall not go when 7 am not asked," and he detained McClellan. The general 
had to explain this later to Lincoln, who was wryly amused. 7 

Within ten days after Bull Run, nearly the whole high command under 
Scott was changed. Patterson, his term of service expiring, gave way to N. P. 
Banks on July 27. In West Virginia, Rosecrans took McClellan's place. Fre- 
mont was just settling himself in Missouri. McClellan at once set about reor- 
ganizing his forces. He found on arrival at his Washington headquarters that 
he had about 50,000 infantry, less than 1000 cavalry, 650 artillerymen, and 30 
cannon. He also found that the streets, hotels, and barrooms were full of 
drunken officers and men absent without leave from their units, "a perfect 
pandemonium"; that not a single regiment was properly encamped; that no 
preparations had been made for defense, not even to the placing of troops in 
military positions; and that the forts on the Virginia side lay detached, with 
no real defensive line. 8 McClellan further discovered that Scott was not the 

6 Lincoln, Collected Works, IV, 457, 458; Nicolay and Hay, IV, 368. 

7 McClellan, Own Story y 66, 67. 

8 McClellan's dark picture in his Own Story, 66, 67, which enhances the magnitude 
of his achievement in reorganization, is to be taken with some reserve. Progress had been 
made in manning the fortifications; O. R. I, ii, 755, 756. 



A RESURGENT NORTH 22 ~ 

only officer with an excessive jealousy of his own position; neither McDowell 
nor Mansfield was cordial to the young officer now placed over them. 
At any rate, the holiday was over. Grim war had begun. 



[ I ] 

The North was now busy raising its great new volunteer army of 500,000. 
The spirit needed was that of Tom Paine in an earlier crisis: "I call not upon 
a few, but upon all; not on this State or that State, but on every State; up and 
help us; lay your shoulder to the wheel; better have too much force than too 
little, when so great an object is at stake. Say not that thousands are gone, turn 
out your tens of thousands." But more than a determined spirit was required. 

This really tremendous Union task of the summer and fall, the raising, 
equipping, and organizing of some 500 regiments, the greatest citizen army in 
history, demanded a careful Federal plan. This plan should have comprehended 
five desiderata which were not met: a close Federal control of the work, with 
due regard for State pride; an accurate determination of the State quotas; full 
use of regular army officers and men, widely distributed, to help train and 
command the new army; careful selection among both civilians and regulars 
for officers; and an end to the use of independent private recruiters in raising 
companies and regiments. 

Congress was partly at fault for the lack of realistic plan, but the larger 
blame falls on Secretary Cameron, of whom a wrong view has been taken. He 
was not dishonest, for no proof exists that as Secretary he took a penny not 
his own. This veteran spoilsman was not a whit more inclined to play politics 
with his high office than Chase or Blair. But he was an incompetent adminis- 
trator; flustered, inexact, forgetful, he had no ability to organize an efficient 
War Office as Chase and George Harrington organized an efficient Treasury, 
and Welles and Gustavus V. Fox organized an efficient Navy Department. He 
lacked vigilance in guarding against contract abuses; and worst of all, he was 
totally unable to plan. 

The Military Act which became law on the morrow of Bull Run was a 
curious mixture of merits and defects. It did provide for a three-year army, 
the President to call forth the men as needed and apportion them among the 
States on the basis of population. It did provide that the President might ap- 
point major-generals and brigadier-generals from the regular army. It did take 
a few precautions to ensure greater efficiency among subordinate officers than 
they had shown at Big Bethel and Bull Run. From colonels down, they were 
to be chosen as before under State laws, the higher officers in the main to be 
appointed by the governors, and the lower elected by the men; but every 



22 g THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

general commanding a separate department or army was authorized to create 
a board to examine the qualifications and conduct of any officer. If the board's 
report was unfavorable, the officer's commission would be canceled. The mere 
existence of this provision did something to improve the character of the army. 

The faults of the Act, however, were glaring. It would have been wise to 
scatter officers and carefully picked men of the regular army widely among the 
incoming volunteers to leaven the whole lump with their sound ideas of disci- 
pline. General Scott, however, insisted on maintaining the regular army prac- 
tically intact, and Cameron supported him. Nor was Congress inclined to dif- 
fer from them. Most members at this stage of the war distrusted West Point 
as a school of Southern, aristocratic, snobbish flavor, and believed that gifted 
amateurs could quickly become efficient generals; that men like Ormsby 
Mitchel, Lew Wallace, Fremont, Jacob D. Cox, and Carl Schurz were quite as 
good as the McDowells, Mansfields, Lyons, and McClellans. Senators John 
Sherman and Ben Wade merely expressed a general prejudice this summer in 
assailing West Point. "I know," said Fessenden in replying to Sherman, "that 
the Senator from Ohio has peculiar views about this institution. He thinks 
commanders are born, not made. I do not. I think they are made. I think edu- 
cation is necessary." 9 Greater seminal use of the best regulars, say one to 
every twenty-five volunteers, would not only have promoted efficiency, but 
would have had a nationalizing tendency; yet it was never tried. 

Under the new law, as under the old, recruiting was by States and locali- 
ties, with provision for reimbursing them for the costs of raising, arming, pay- 
ing, and transporting troops to the point where they entered Federal service. 
This was an irresponsible, extravagant, and confused method. 10 Regimental 
officers were commissioned by the governors, not the President. Naturally 
privates thought of themselves as Vermont men, Wisconsin men, and Pennsyl- 
vania men, not as national troops; and colonels and majors looked to Yates, 
Morgan, and Andrew for control and support, not to Washington. The provi- 
sion that regimental vacancies should be filled by letting the men elect lieu- 
tenants and captains while officers chose majors and colonels added to the 
decentralizing tendencies of the system. Congress, in this plan, seized on what 
Emory B. Upton later termed the worst vice in State practice; fortunately, it 
was short-lived. 

A few farsighted men perceived that ideally the North needed a national 
army. Early in the summer of 1861, ex-Governor Rodman Price of New 
Jersey, James L. Curtis of New York, and John C Fremont held a conference 
at the Astor House in New York, where they drew up a plan for the free 
interchange of Eastern and Western troops. Curtis went to Washington, and 

9 Cong. Globe) 37th Cong., ist Sess. 
10 Emory B. Upton, Military Policy of the U. S., 260. 



A RESURGENT NORTH 22<) 

persuaded Frank Blair to lay the proposal before Cameron. The Secretary ap- 
proved of it, as Curtis wrote Fremont, "and advised my proceeding forthwith 
to raise regiments and send them forward to St. Louis. Mr. Blair, Sr., suggested 
that he (Frank) should see President Lincoln and ask his approval. The Pres- 
ident said, after reading the paper, that it was a grave and important suggestion, 
that he would submit it to the Cabinet." Though Attorney-General Bates 
termed it the best idea of the day, the Cabinet failed to approve it. Curtis re- 
mained hopeful, believing that if Cameron assented, Fremont might take ten 
thousand Pennsylvania troops west. 11 However, the plan came to nothing, for 
it conflicted with State pride and the regional prejudices of many people. To 
the end of the war the Western forces remained largely of Western origin, 
the Eastern forces of Eastern antecedents. John Pope actually wanted a com- 
plete Illinois army, kept intact, moved as a body, and officered by Illinoisans 
from corporals to major-general. 12 And as a second consideration, the War 
Department was totally unequipped to raise a national army. State adjutant- 
generals and other officers had to shoulder the task of preparing forces. 

When the Comte de Paris after service on McClellan's staff came to explain 
the organization of the huge volunteer army to Frenchmen, he found much 
to censure. To him the fundamental weakness of the system so hurriedly de- 
vised this summer was the want of any means by which the national govern- 
ment could enforce discipline. Having no power to appoint or demote officers 
below the rank of brigadier-general, the Federal authorities possessed but a 
nerveless grasp of the army. From colonels down, the great host of officers 
looked to the State capitals; all arrangements were temporary, and nearly all 
were tinged with politics; the troops never felt the insistence on efficiency 
which a firmly constituted hierarchy of command, exempt from party pull 
and push, could offer. Many politically favored officers shot rapidly to a col- 
onelcy, brigadiership, or, like Ben Butler, still higher, simply for lending their 
influence and bringing forward a body of troops. More than one subaltern of 
the regular army, made a colonel, grew disgusted with volunteers and politics, 
and returned to minor rank in his old regiment. When regiments disbanded, 
officers lost their places. A sense of uncertainty pervaded the whole officer 
corps. 13 

The Comte also specially censured the failure to provide a vigorous system 
of recruitment to fill vacancies caused by battle, sickness, and desertion. Once 
a regiment left its State, no more men applied to its recruiting office if it had 
any. The influential leaders who had formed it were far away in camp; the 
choice places had all been filled; and public sentiment was interested in raising 

11 Curtis, N. Y^ Aug. 6, 1861, to Fremont; Blair-Lee Papers. 

12 Pope to Yates, Yates Papers, 111. State Lib. 

13 Upton, 258; Comte de Paris, Civil War t I, 266, 267, 273, 274. 



2 3 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 



new units, not in strengthening old ones. A sharp battle, or a week in a 
malarial area, might cut an outfit in half, but the new regiments coming in 
furnished it no reinforcement. These fresh regiments brought all the inex- 
perience that had cost their predecessors so dear, while the example and tuition 
of the veterans, which might have been so useful under a process of consolida- 
tion, were left unused. Meanwhile, the old skeleton regiments were often too 
weak to be effective in battle. Some army commanders tried to repair this 
defect. McClellan, for example, shortly issued General Order No. 105 requir- 
ing that volunteer regiments should immediately report deficiencies in strength 
to the Adjutant-General, and that incoming men should be requisitioned to 
fill the gaps. In practice, however, these orders were but partially executed. 14 

The volunteer army, as the war proceeded, thus became filled with regi- 
ments of three-quarters, half, or quarter strength, sometimes given good re- 
placements, sometimes weak ones, and sometimes none at all. They were offi- 
cered by men selected sometimes for capacity, but frequently for family in- 
fluence, militia experience, or personal or political reasons; more often than not, 
by aggressive men whose organizing enterprise or community popularity 
brought them to the front. Promotions and replacements of officers were often 
arbitrary, and sometimes the morale of a regiment was ruined for months by 
a single wretched choice; the Tenth Massachusetts Volunteers from the Berk- 
shire area, for example, almost went to pieces when it got an incompetent 
major. 15 The first Massachusetts three-year men marched off under a colonel 
whom Charles Francis Adams, Jr., termed "a notorious incompetent"; and 
Adams assured his father that all the Bay State regiments but one were so 
wretchedly officered this summer that it would be a miracle if they did not 
disgrace themselves. At Big Bethel, indeed, a brigadier did disgrace Massa- 
chusetts. 

In the West, Joseph Medill begged Senator Tnimbull to see that Brigadier- 
General S. A. Hurlbut was denied confirmation. He had been drunk in Chi- 
cago every day for a week; he led his Zouave regiment off for Missouri still 
so drunk he could hardly walk; and the city, with 1500 sons under his com- 
mand, felt outraged by his appointment. Nevertheless, he stayed. Half the 
good volunteer colonels could have echoed the plaint of the head of the Eight- 
eenth Illinois: "I have some 4 or 5 officers in my regt who are utterly worth- 
less." 16 

14 Cf. Shannon, Organization, I, 190. A typical regiment reduced to a shadow of its old 
strength was the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteers, whose historian, George A. Bruce, 
states that after Mine Run late in 1863 it mustered but 150 officers and men present for duty, 
having suffered to that date 745 war casualties. 

15 J. K. Newell, The Tenth Mass. Volunteers, passim. 

16 W. C. Ford, ed., Cycle of Adams Letters, I, 12, 13; Medill, July 13, 1861, Trumbull 



A RESURGENT NORTH 2JI 

Privates could be punished summarily for any misdemeanor. But officers, 
as the Comte de Paris noted, had to be brought before a court-martial for even 
small offenses, and could not be given as much as two days' confinement with- 
out formal sentence. The trial process, borrowed from the little regular army 
with its high sense of officers' prerogatives, thus became a shield to protect 
officers guilty of neglect, misconduct, or even gross insubordination. 

Fortunately, the legislation for the new army did contain provisions which 
made it possible to strengthen the higher command. Representative A. S. Diven 
of New York wished to write into it a requirement that the President must 
select the six new major-generals and eighteen new brigadiers from West Point 
graduates, or officers who had spent at least five years in the regular army, or 
men whose war service had proved their ability to command. 17 Since this was 
felt to be too restrictive, it failed. But Senator James W. Nesmith of Oregon, 
who held enlightened views upon military management, fared better with a 
permissive amendment, allowing the President to select general officers from 
the line or staff of the regular army. 

Saying that he knew major-generals and brigadiers who could not pass an 
examination as first lieutenant in any militarily advanced country, Nesmith 
spoke feelingly of the murderous results of appointing politicians and other 
upstarts, totally ignorant of the art of war, as ranking commanders. It was not 
true, he declared, that men would be happier under amateurs of popular repute 
from their own States; when shells burst and bullets hissed, they preferred an 
officer who knew his profession. Henry Wilson warmly seconded him, and 
the amendment passed. 18 

t n ] 

Just how was the new army of half a million raised? On the morrow of 
Bull Run no spur was necessary, for the people felt a grim determination to get 
the war fought and won. The governors, telegraphing offers of fresh troops, 
asked how many would be accepted. The War Department's invariable answer 
was, "Send them all"; and thus by noon of July 24, fully 75,000 had been 
taken, with more coming. 19 

Lincoln thought it unnecessary to issue a new proclamation calling for 
volunteers, and unwise for the moment to apportion quotas among the States. 
The policy of the War Department was to accept, under blanket authority of 

Papers, LC; Col. H. R. Lewis, Mound City, BL, Sept. 7, 1861, to McClernand, McQernand 
Papers, 111. State Hist. Lib. 

17 Cong. Globe, $jth Cong., ist Sess., 95-100. 

18 Cong. Globe, 37th Cong., ist Sess., 52. 

19 O. R. Ill, i, 140 ff.; N. Y. Herald, July 25, 1861. 



232 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

the half -million bill of July 22, all the troops the governors believed they could 
raise, just as fast as they could muster them. Throughout the late summer and 
fall Cameron periodically besought the governors to send on all the regiments 
they had organized. Sometimes he engaged to supply arms and other equip- 
ment, but more frequently he suggested that the States provide their own 
muskets, uniforms, and the like, sending the bills to the Treasury. 

Lincoln made requests on the same basis. He asked Governor Morgan to 
provide 25,000 three-year men, for example, but in such informal fashion that 
the request does not appear in the records; and it was not until nearly a year 
later, when it became necessary to determine what New York's quota should 
have been in order to reach a basis for determining the size of a fresh demand, 
that the proper share of the Empire State was fixed. 20 Morgan was quick to 
comply with Lincoln's request and to do more. Four days after Bull Run he 
issued his own proclamation for the 25,000 men, and almost immediately added 
an extra four regiments. 

Other governors showed equal alacrity in meeting the nation's demands. 
It soon became clear that the half -million men, and more, would be obtained 
without difficulty. The real question was whether the troops would be raised 
efficiently, equitably, and under the best organization permitted by the new 
law. As we might expect, hurry and improvisation answered this query with 
an emphatic No. 

While the States were raising their fresh regiments, the ninety-day men 
were returning home. The governors, heartily abetted by the War Depart- 
ment, hoped to induce many to reenlist. In numerous instances, however, these 
short-term veterans set something like an adverse backfire blazing. They 
brought home shocking stories of weak officers, bad camps, and uncoordinated 
army movements. Thousands, too, became rebellious over the delay and 
sometimes the total failure to pay them for their services. Several Pennsyl- 
vania regiments which reached camp near Harrisburg and found no provision 
whatever made for their shelter, subsistence, or compensation, grew mutinous. 
They filled the city with men searching for quarters and means of cooking 
rations, threatened to seize the money in the Adams Express office, and fright- 
ened citizens with angry talk of breaking open the shops. Governor Curtin 
had to detail a regiment of three-year troops to protect the capital, while 
young Don Cameron begged his father to send the troops at once to camps 
nearer their homes. In the end they were moved to encampments scattered 
over the State, where paymasters pacified them. 

20 Phisterer, N. Y. in the War of the Rebellion, I, 22, 23. An Act signed by Lincoln July 
31 gave him power to accept volunteers without previous proclamation and in whatever 
numbers he thought desirable; O. R. Ill, i, 372. 



A RESURGENT NORTH 

Similar episodes took place in Ohio, though Governor Dennison had gone 
to Washington especially to make sure that the troops would be promptly 
paid and mustered out. In New York, too, Governor Morgan complained to 
the War Department that failure to recompense the old regiments discouraged 
new enlistments. 21 

Much worse were the confusions and jealousies created everywhere by the 
readiness of the War Department to permit and even encourage recruiting 
by individuals and irregular groups. For this practice, which angered the 
governors, burdened the army with many deplorable officers, and produced 
widespread confusion, Lincoln as well as Cameron was to blame. 

A chorus of protest came from the State capitals. "I hope," Morton of 
Indiana telegraphed Cameron July 25, "the War Department will accept of 
regiments only through me." The same day Governor Kirkwood of Iowa 
informed the Department that he would countenance no more regiments 
raised by individuals. A Pennsylvania official who indignantly inquired whether 
it was not now illegal to accept troops otherwise than through the governors 
could hardly have been calmed by the assurance that it was entirely legal, and 
that the Department had accepted twice as many from ambitious colonels as 
from State executives. Yates of Illinois was particularly exasperated. Telegraph- 
ing the Department repeatedly for exclusive authority to handle all State 
recruits, he got no answer until on August 14 he burst out to Cameron: "1 
could have had troops today sufficient to have opposed any force but for the 
interference from Washington in accepting independent regiments without 
notice to me, breaking up our organization." The Secretary at once gave him 
the desired authority. But five days later Austin Blair was making the same 
indignant protest. "I will furnish all the troops you call for," wrote Blair, 
"much sooner and in better order than these independent regiments can." 22 

The intentions of Lincoln and Cameron were good. They wished to ex- 
pedite recruiting, fan the war spirit, and strengthen the impression of govern- 
ment eagerness to accept all the men who crowded forward. The Secretary 
seems to have surmised that all objection would be removed if the regimental 
officers were required to apply to their governors for commissions, and then 
ordered to report in Washington as soon as possible. 23 

This, of course, was far from the fact. Industrious village Hampdens, and 
budding Harrisons and Houstons, donning their sashes, duplicated State re- 

21 O. R. Ill, i, 358-366 for Pennsylvania; Ibid., 357, for Ohio, and Reid, Ohio in the War, 
I, 56; O. R. IH, i, 415, for New York. The Paymaster-General himself went to Harrisburg 
late in July to iron out the difficulties. 

22 O. R. Ill, i, 350, 390, 409 ff., 410, 428. 

23 Cameron to O. P. Morton and Edwin Morgan, Aug. 29, 1861, O. R. HI, i, 465; Austin 
Blair to Cameron, August 19, 1861, Austin Blair Papers, 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

cruiting efforts. They drained more troops from one area than another, with 
resultant ill feeling. They demanded colonelcies and captaincies. Meanwhile, 
they created an apparent competition between State and Federal recruiting. 
In New York, for example, Dan Sickles, the murderer of Philip Barton Key, 
used his characteristic swagger and impudence to organize his own brigade. 
He and his officers were contemptous of State authority, holding themselves 
quite above it. It required a general order from Cameron, placing all inde- 
pendent regiments in New York under Morgan, and emphasizing the gover- 
nor's authority to reorganize, officer, and equip such regiments in the way he 
thought best, to bring Sickles down to earth. This order ended a highly em- 
barrassing situation; and as it placed no fewer than sixteen independent regi- 
ments under clear State authority, Albany greeted it with profound relief. 24 

Other States, however, continued to suffer. The much-harassed Dennison 
of Ohio telegraphed Cameron on August 25 asking whether he had empowered 
a certain man to raise an artillery regiment. "If so, for God's sake withdraw 
the authority. Such a commission will make a farce of the public service." 
It was impossible to pursue any system in organizing Ohio troops, he added, 
so long as these irregular units raised their heads from Ashtabula to Hamilton. 
Ohio was actually raided from outside, two regiments being offered to Oliver 
P. Morton in Indiana. When Morton hesitated to accept them, the War De- 
partment wired him: "Lay aside etiquette. Organize soldiers as rapidly as you 
can. Get them, no matter where from, so they are good, loyal men." Not until 
September 10 did the outraged Dennison obtain authority to reorganize and 
equip all regiments. 25 

But even he had less to endure than Governor Curtin of Pennsylvania, a 
party rival of Cameron's. Stung beyond endurance, Curtin finally made a fer- 
vent plea to Lincoln. After pointing out that the new military law permitted 
the President to accept independent units only when the States failed to re- 
spond, he went on: 

On the z6th day of July last a requisition was made on the Executive of 
this State for ten regiments of infantry in addition to the forty-four already 
furnished. . . . Active measures were immediately taken to comply with the 
requisition, but unfortunately the Government of the United States went on 
to authorize individuals to raise regiments of volunteers in this State. Fifty- 
eight individuals received authority for this purpose in Pennsylvania. The 
direct authority of the Government of the United States having been thus 
set in competition with that of the State, acting under its requisition, the 

24 S. W. Burt, Memoirs, 46, 47; O. R. HI, i, 483, 484. 

25 Fremont had empowered John A. Gurley to send him volunteers from Ohio, and some 
recruits were actually sent to Missouri from the State; O. R. Ill, i, 466, 473 (Indiana), 519, 
520 (Missouri). The authority on Sept, 10 was Special Order No. 243; O. R. Ill, i, 495, 496. 



A RESURGENT NORTH 23$ 

consequence has been much embarrassment, delay, and confusion. . . . The 
result is what might have been expected that after a lapse of twenty-six days 
not one entire regiment has been raised in Pennsylvania since the last requisi- 
tion. There are fragments of some seventy regiments, but not one complete; 
yet men enough have been raised to form near thirty complete regiments. 26 

Yet a week after Curtin's appeal, the War Department was authorizing 
James S. Negley of Pittsburgh to finish organizing an independent brigade of 
three or more regiments, thus piling confusion on confusion. When Cameron 
finally acted on Curtin's protest, he rebuked the governor for having written 
directly to the President. He also explained that Lincoln had never received 
the letter, for it had been filed in the War Department without having been 
read by anybody which under Cameron seems to have been standard de- 
partmental practice for countless papers; and Cameron himself had not seen 
it until a messenger from Curtin brought him a copy! Cameron forthwith 
issued another special order placing all independent units in Pennsylvania 
under full authority of the governor; and the department took steps to chase 
out of the State some zealous recruiters from New York, Illinois, and Cali- 
fornia complete outsiders and interlopers. 27 

Much more might be said on this strange tolerance of independent re- 
cruiting. Ben Butler and John A. Andrew became combatants in the most 
complex, protracted, and celebrated case of individual interference with State 
recruiting, which shook all New England, and supplied enough tragi-comic 
episodes for an opera bouffe. 28 A President more exact, systematic, and vigilant 
than Lincoln, a Secretary more alert and clearheaded than Cameron, would 
have prevented these difficulties. It was bad enough, though unavoidable, to 
put recruiting under twenty-odd States, not the nation; it was far worse to 
let hundreds of ambitious men, some patriotic, some selfish, and most of them 
unfit, romp about the field. 

However, despite all vexations, the recruits, from farm, forge, factory, 
store counter, and professional desk, rolled in. The initiative was taken by 
communities, local leaders, or both interacting. Village or town authorities 
would hold a mass meeting; politicians would deliver stump speeches, ministers 
would pray, the local editor would read the peroration of Webster's Reply 
to Hayne, the crowd would sing "America" and young men would enroll 
their names. Or the local militia company would form a nucleus, or some 
burning patriot would raise an oriflanune. 

A typical piece of New England recruiting is described by Thomas W. 
Hyde, a Maine lad who was soon brevettcd a brigadier in his middle twenties. 

26 Ibid., 439, 440. 

27 O. R. Ill, i, 491-534- 

28 Meneely, 213-221; Schouler, Mass, m the Rebellion, I, 275-281; O. R. IE, i, 810-866. 



23 <5 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

He heard the news of Bull Run in the shipbuilding town of Bath. Together 
with Senator Fessenden's son, he got State authority to raise men, opened an 
office, and advertised that soldiers would receive $22 bounty, $15 a month with 
full equipment, and $100 with lifelong glory when mustered out. Before long 
squads of eager young men were housed in Sibley tents dotting the beauti- 
ful green slopes between the State House at Augusta and the Kennebec. The 
officers of the various companies, summoned to ballot for regimental leaders, 
chose a regular-army captain for colonel, a three-month sergeant for lieutenant- 
colonel, and the reluctant Hyde for major. "I did not know then," he writes, 
"that the principal duties of a major were to ride on the flank of a rear di- 
vision, say nothing, look as well as possible, and long for promotion." Off 
they went the band playing them to the train, handkerchiefs waving from 
every farmhouse, cheers at every station, and lunch in Faneuil Hall. 

Meanwhile, a typical piece of big-city, large-scale recruiting was furnished 
by the Fifty-fifth Illinois in Chicago. The attorney David Stuart, a friend 
of Douglas, obtained Cameron's direct authority to raise the 2,000 men of 
the Douglas brigade, put his own money and best energy into the effort, 
secured the aid of Democratic politicians and several Methodist ministers, 
and with the magic name of Douglas to assist him, had the brigade ready for 
service before October ended. 29 

The now rampant war spirit overcame every impediment: the high cost 
of getting and initially maintaining the recruits, for the nation reimbursed 
the States and the individuals concerned for only a part of their expenses; the 
want of a proper allotment system to provide for soldiers' families; the lack 
of arms; the irritations of dealing with hidebound, narrow-minded, arrogant 
fossils in the national quartermaster and commissary establishments, and end- 
less departmental red tape. Senator Grimes wrote Cameron in mid-September 
that if the government would adopt the allotment-ticket system used in the 
navy, Iowa would soon send him 4,000 men even better than those already ac- 
cepted; and before the close of the month, the War Department did belatedly 
set up home-allotment procedures. State complaints, fervent and long-con- 
tinued, also got rid of an asinine War Department rule that no fewer than 
a company minimum, sixty-four men, could be mustered into service at 
one time. Recruits sometimes had been kept waiting six or eight weeks, with- 
out uniforms, blankets, or rations, and with not even a lieutenant sworn 
in to command them, until they reached the magic total of sixty-four. But 
after Cameron, responding to the protests of Morgan and Dennison, abolished 

29 See Thomas W. Hyde, Following the Greek Cross; A Committee of the Regiment, 
The Story of the Fifty-fifth Illinois. Stuart, who was under a cloud because he had been 
involved in a notorious divorce case, proved a good officer; Hyde became one of great 
distinction. Fessenden's son was slain at Second Boll Run. 



A RESURGENT NORTH 

the rule, volunteers were sent, as fast as their names could be signed on muster 
rolls, to convenient camps, and set to drilling. A first lieutenant would take 
charge of half a company, and a captain and second lieutenant were added 
when full strength was reached. This new plan worked well. 30 

Still the men came in: a rush in late July, a new flood in August, and 
fresh hosts in early fall. They came in spite of a fundamental change in 
the economic situation. Business all summer had been depressed, but the 
harvest season and the letting of innumerable contracts created an autumn 
boom. Farms, shops, and war industries drained away the surplus labor supply. 
Skilled hands in particular thought twice before taking army pay, even after 
it had been lifted to what some foreign observers deemed an exorbitant figure. 
As the cost of living rose, men with family responsibilities could not be happy 
about a wage of $i i a month, even with a bounty of $100, as authorized by the 
military act, superadded. 31 Inevitably, such social and economic pressures made 
for an army of youths and young men. Veterans later used to say, "The war 
was fought by boys," and although this was not true, a little more than 13 per 
cent of the enlistments were 18 and almost 30 per cent were under 21. Officers, 
too, were generally young; in the volunteer army the mean age at entrance 
into service was found to be 30.44. 



t in ] 

The gathering of the huge volunteer forces in and about Washington was an 
inspiring sight, which gave many who witnessed it an exultant confidence. 
The new volunteers, though even by fall far from being well-taught soldiers, 
were much superior to the ninety-day men. "Finer material could not be found 
in physique," wrote W. H. Russell after seeing a review held by McClellan 
and McDowell, marred by only one tatterdemalion unit sent from New York 
City. He thought no division of the regular army line in any country of the 
globe could show a greater number of tall, robust men in fine physical trim. 
The big, hearty, outdoor recruits who composed so great a part of the popu- 
lar host the lumberjacks, fishermen, hardfisted young fanners, stevedores, 

30 New York State by November had main recruiting depots in the metropolis, Albany, 
and Elmira, and not fewer than twenty regimental camps in the interior of the State. These 
tent camps had been created to make it more convenient for recruits to assemble for drill, 
and to gain the active aid of prominent citizens. Morgan to Cameron, Nov. 4, 1861; Morgan 
Papers, N. Y. State Lib. 

31 Governor Morgan was so much impressed by these high costs that he tried to give 
a premium of $2 a recruit to anyone who brought in not less than 32 acceptable men to one 
or the main depots. This special bounty he thought would not cost more than $25,000 for 
the State's 25 new regiments, and would do much to stimulate enlistments. But Cameron 
refused to foot the bill, and the governor revoked his order in mid-October. O. R. HI r i, 
452, 453, 46^; Burt, Memoirs, 54. 




WASHINGTON AND 
ITS ULTIMATE 
DEFENSES 



and draymen stood hardship well; but it was soon noted that the clerks, 
bookkeepers, schoolmasters, and mechanics from the towns, even the men 
most delicately nurtured, stood it rather better. As greater precautions were 
taken, and as crisp autumn weather came on, the health of the army, in the 
East more rapidly than in the West, improved. 32 

While Washington had still all the confusion of a great armed camp, the 
military elements had become more orderly. The surrounding hills were whiter 
than ever with tents, for the reinforcements had spread over them, but the 
camps showed system and cleanliness. One observer, standing on an eminence 
at sunset, saw with his spyglass the evening parades of 34 regiments. On another 
occasion he counted 150 army wagons in line on Pennsylvania Avenue, and 
an hour later saw a drove of 700 fine cavalry horses clattering over the Long 
Bridge. But the barrooms were empty of army blue, roistering soldiers had 
disappeared from the streets, and officers in hotel lobbies were few. Their 
places had been taken by hundreds of sad-eyed citizens come to look for 

32 Russell, My Diary, Aug. 26, 1861; Following the Greek Cross, 21, 22; Adams, Doctors 
in Blue, chapters 3, 10. The Sanitary Commission with incomplete data found that in the 
first year Western troops had a much higher sick rate than Eastern, and enlisted men one 
much higher than officers. For age of the troops, see the Sanitary Commission pamphlet, 
"Ages of U. S. Volunteer Soldier" (1866), which abounds in interesting facts. It gives the 
average age of 1,012,273 volunteers at date of enlistment as 25.8. 



A RESURGENT NORTH 

relatives lost since the battle or lying in hospitals. The new provost guard was 
so efficient that it stopped Ben Butler as he was getting into his carriage at 
the National Hotel, and held him until he was identified. 

The numbers, energy, and determined spirit of the host seemed to promise 
great victorious movements to come, perhaps ending in the lightning flash of 
a new Solferino. Captain J. R. Hawley of Connecticut, later to become editor, 
governor, and Senator, reached the capital late in September. He breakfasted 
at the Soldiers' Retreat, a large rough new building for feeding troops, washed 
in another big structure hard by fitted with tanks and troughs, and, march- 
ing with his regiment two miles up Fourteenth Street, encamped in an open 
field. 

"Oh, but this is grand!" he wrote his wife. "Troops, troops, tents, the 
frequent thunder of guns practising, lines of heavy baggage wagons, at reveille 
and tattoo the air filled with the near and distant roll of drums and the notes 
of innumerable bugles all the indications of an immense army, and yet no 
crowding, no rabble. Nobody knows how many there are, but I guess from 
certain facts that there must be over 200,000 in all including those across 
the river and in General Banks's division. Indeed, I have good evidence that 
there are about 275,000, not including Gen. Dix's command at Baltimore." 33 
Although this was an overestimate, already many believed that the new army 
was a formidable human machine that should soon roll inexorably and vic- 
toriously southward. 

33 Hawley, Sept. 25, 1861; Hawley Papers, LC 




Giant in Swaddling Clothes 

ANXIOUS though the people were to get on with the war, the late summer 
lull had at least this important effect: It gave North and South a pause to assess 
their situation. They began to comprehend that they were locked in a life-and- 
death grapple. Ex-Senator John Slidell of Louisiana wrote S. L. M. Barlow just 
before Bull Run that in all the South he did not know a solitary man who 
would reestablish the Union on any terms. "You can scarcely hope to subju- 
gate us. We know that you cannot, and if your views prevail, there can be 
no other termination of the war than by the mutual exhaustion of both 
parties." * The idea bit deep that the war must be fought to a devastating con- 
clusion. Assistant-Secretary of War P. H. Watson told McClellan that the 
rebels would persist to the death gasp. 2 Though great numbers on both sides 
still looked forward to 1862 as the year of victory, most men of sense knew 
that the contest might be protracted, that it would test the people to the ut- 
most, and that it would produce a new America. 

Lincoln sat daily for long hours in his office on the south side of the White 
House; the kind of office that a county judge or prosperous doctor might be 
expected to have. Its furnishings were a large cloth-covered table for Cabinet 
meetings, a smaller table where the President usually wrote, a high wall desk 
with pigeonholes for papers, two horsehair sofas, an armchair, and some straight- 
backed chairs. Over the marble mantel of the brass-fendered fireplace hung a 
faded steel engraving of Jackson. Elsewhere on the wall were a photograph of 
John Bright, and a number of framed military maps. His secretaries, Nicolay 
and Hay, gave him efficient help, and a young Illinois newspaperman, W. O. 
Stoddard, went through the mail to sort out trivial or offensive letters. Other 
assistants he had none except an occasional clerk lent from some department. 
The offices of Cabinet members were equally primitive. They had changed 
little since 1800. The same wooden tables, desks, pigeonholes, and ledger- 
size copybooks as in John Adams* day, the same quill pens and scuffed carpets, 

1 July 20, 1 86 1, Barlow Papers. 

2 Chase, Diary and Corr., 50, 51; this talk was Nov. n, 1861. 

240 



GIANT IN SWADDLING CLOTHES 

and the same anemic staffs docketing papers, surrounded Chase, Welles, 
Cameron as they struggled with visitors. 3 

These executives looked out on a nation which seemed as vertebrate as a 
jellyfish. They could ask for aid from individuals, but not from capable as- 
sociations or societies, which hardly existed. The war necessarily had to be 
a vast social and economic as well as military effort. But where were the leaders 
trained in social and economic organization? The nation had only small mana- 
gerial groups and little skill in cooperative effort. Of the 8,200,000 people 
whose occupations were noted by the recent census, 3,300,000 were farmers, 
planters, and farm laborers, and many more were indirectly connected with 
agriculture. A shrewd observer, Sir Morton Peto, shortly estimated that 
seven-eighths of the population was engaged in tillage or the callings materially 
dependent thereon; an understandable exaggeration. 

This agricultural country, just passing through a transportation revolution, 
was fairly well organized for farming and for all kinds of communication 
by railways, canals, telegraphs, and express systems. The manufacture of 
farm machinery, the handling of farm products, the milling of grain, the 
packing of meats, the sending of a new host of settlers westward every year, 
and the supply of this host with consumption goods, were all competently 
done. As yet, however, they did not carry the country far from the old order 
of small enterprises, local outlooks, and unrestricted individualism. 

A war machine can be built quickly and efficiently only if many com- 
ponents already exist. The Department in 1861 had no difficulty in making 
decisions. It soon found that the half-million volunteers embodied under the 
July legislation would wear out shoes in two months and uniforms in four; 
they therefore needed 3,000,000 pairs of shoes and 1,500,000 uniforms a year. 
It was easy to decide that they must have mountains of arms, a hundred miles 
of wagons, great base hospitals, and incredible miscellaneous supplies. The dif- 
ficulty lay in implementing the decisions. 

Problems of selection became acute; which firm could really fill the orders? 
Problems of scheduling were even more perplexing; how could everybody 
down the line of supply be told just what was needed, and when, and where? 
Industrial discipline was as important as military discipline; factories, con- 
tractors, and agents had to be held to rigid performance. And nobody knew 
the indispensable facts! Figures of industrial capacity, lists of companies, 
data on car supply, information on the ability of heads of firms all this was 
beyond the reach of the tiny Washington departments. Such terms as "co- 
ordination," "priorities," "allocation of materials," and "flow of supplies" 
lay far in the future; the idea of "production management" was beyond human 

3 Leonard D. White, The Jacksoitians, 548. 



242 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

ken. The realities which such words represented could no more exist in 
America of 1861 than the roof of an unbuilt house could float in mid-air, for 
no supporting structure existed. 

The government which was now girding itself for war labored under the 
sharpest limitations. It had always been a government of noninterference, 
made for the freedom of the individual; of calculated inaction, to give State and 
local agencies the fullest scope; of economy, passivity, and short views. 

No national banking system existed. Washington paid no real attention to 
agriculture; a weakly supported, feebly administered bureau in the new In- 
terior Department represented the only Federal provision for the funda- 
mental industry of the land. So important a subject as public health had never 
engaged the attention of any national bureau, or for that matter, of any State. 
In Europe the English sanitarian Edwin Chadwick, the French pathologists, 
and the new school of medical statisticians had spurred the leading govern- 
ments into at least elementary attention to public sanitation. But Americans 
were stone deaf to their one eminent figure in the field, Lemuel Shattuck, 
whose report on conditions in Massachusetts (1850) had met blank indif- 
ference. 4 So, too, the transportation revolution which was remolding America 
proceeded without any attention in Washington save for land-grant legis- 
lation and a few Far Western surveys. Any proposal that government 
guidance should accompany government subsidies would have met a hostile 
wall. 

One significant index of the weakness of the central government was the 
deficiency of trustworthy statistical data. The national censuses were ample 
in numerical facts, decently accurate, and issued with really useful inter- 
pretation. A few cities and one State, Massachusetts, had systems of vital 
registration; New York took an efficient census of its own in 1855. As yet, 
however, the country was without the great mass of trustworthy data, later 
to be gathered continuously by numerous Federal agencies. 5 

Statistics are a function of complexity in government as of society, for 
whenever new problems demand new solutions it becomes necessary to probe 
into exact conditions and measure precise results. For want of an apparatus of 
consistent fact-finding, Americans groped in the dark in meeting the crisis 
of 1 86 1. When armies had to be raised, for example, it was important to 
know the ages of the male population. The census merely furnished facts on 
the population, male and female, in each five-year bracket to the age of 
twenty, and each ten-year bracket thereafter; all this set down by counties. 

4 John Keren, History of Statistics; and see the article on statistical needs by ABC in 
National Intelligencer, May 29, 1856. 

5 Such as the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, Interstate Commerce Commission, 
Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Bureau of In- 
ternal Revenue, to name but a few. 



GIANT IN SWADDLING CLOTHES 

Hence in the fifteen-nineteen age bracket, the government did not know how 
many were boys of fifteen, and how many young men of nineteen. In the suc- 
ceeding age bracket, it did not know how many \vere twenty, and how many 
were twenty-nine. Yet by the date of the Civil War, all important Euro- 
pean nations but Switzerland had permanent statistical bureaus under pro- 
ficient management. The proposals for such a bureau in Washington, made 
by S. B. Ruggles and others, had met stubborn opposition from state-rights 
quarters. 

In short, Lincoln presided over a weak government which suddenly had 
to be made strong. And behind the government lay a largely inchoate society; 
a society \vhich believed in accomplishing the impossible, but whose libertarian 
bent made accomplishment terribly difficult. A tremendous gulf separated 
the unformed nation of the Civil War from the nation that in the next great 
conflict was to mobilize its energies so massively under the Council of National 
Defense. Where were the technicians in 1861? Where were the efficient busi- 
ness administrators? Where were the thousand organizations, industrial, com- 
mercial, financial, professional, to lend them support? Where were the princi- 
ples and precedents? 

If we briefly examine this society, we shall see that Great Britain in the 
first throes of the Napoleonic struggle had been better adapted to wage war 
than the shambling, uncertain American giant of 1861. "Organization" is 
a key word, and from one point of view the transformation of an unorganized 
land into an organized nation was the key process of the Civil War. 



The country we have called invertebrate, and this invertebracy reflected a 
deeply ingrained spirit. "In the United States," wrote August Laugel during 
the conflict, "there is a horror of all trammels, systems, and uniformity." 6 
Americans were hostile to discipline and jealous of every encroachment on 
personal freedom. As autumn leaves fell on drilling soldiers and thickening 
lines of factory hands, some observers saw that old ways were falling too. 
"The Great Rebellion a Great Revolution" so ran the title of a Herald edi- 
torial on November 24, 1861. Our manufactories have been revolutionized, said 
the paper, our mode of living has been changed, and "everything the finger 
of war touches is revolutionized." A few discerning men saw the essence 
of this revolution. It was the conversion of a loose, inchoate, uncrystallized 
society into one organized for a mighty and many-sided effort. 

6 Laugel, The Vinted States During the War. The roots of individualism ran deep into 
frontier experience, and deep also into the Protestant emphasis on individual interpretation 
of truth and the individual will; deep too into Nonconformist tradition, Lockean and Jeffer- 
sonian ideas of the right of revolution, and egalitarian principles. 



244 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Crevecceur in delineating the American had emphasized his love of in- 
dependence and impatience of control. Cooper and Melville depicted a popu- 
lation of unfettered, self-assertive character. "Call me Ishmael!" even that 
was better than repression. Emerson's chapter on "Solidarity" in English Traits 
contrasted British unity "marching in phalanx, lock-step, foot after foot, 
file after file of heroes, ten thousand deep" with American separatism. 
Thoreau, living on a patch of ground, experimenting with civil disobedience, 
and giving up his little pencil factory to preach an ideal society of noble vil- 
lagers, and Cooper crying, "God protect the country that has nothing but 
commercial towns for capitals," 7 appealed in different ways to deep American 
instincts. 

Most people instinctively veered away from strong social and economic 
combinations just as they veered away from strong government. John Taylor 
of Caroline, sharing Jefferson's idealism, inveighed against "monopoly and 
incorporation," and argued that capitalist combinations went arm-in-arm with 
a powerful centralized government, both fostering caste rule, the exploitation 
of farmers and laborers, and social injustice. Such doctrine, like the appeals of 
William Leggett and George Henry Evans to radical workmen, harmonized 
with the natural attitude of millions. Horace Greeley, anxious to better both 
the farmers and city wage earners, and striving to democratize the land system, 
was too wise to attack industry. Like a good Whig, he wished to see it grow. 
But he never lost his suspicion of the larger forms of business organization. 
In the midst of war the Tribune published long indictments of corporations: 
their profiteering, mismanagement, nepotism, and the tyrannies of their agents 
and officers. They were "heartless," wrote Greeley. 8 

Reared in an ungirt, unplanned society, Americans since the seventeenth 
century had been busy improvising. The first demand of the frontier, farm, 
and small shop was for such improvisations as the log cabin, the long rifle, the 
hand-hewn chest, the Conestoga wagon, and the overshot water wheel. The 
term "homemade" had a wider application in America than elsewhere. An in- 
genious people not only respected the amateur but belittled the expert. Peter 
Cooper building his engine Tom Thumb, Lincoln patenting his device for 
lifting boats over shoals, Goodyear spilling his rubber on a stove, Ezra Cornell 
wrecking his pipe-laying machine so that he could string his telegraph on 
poles, all believed that an amateur could do anything, and many concluded 
that organization would inhibit the gifted amateur. Generations later, Henry 
Ford reflected this attitude by shunning organizational charts, destroying 
business forms, and refusing to assign fixed duties to officers of the huge Rouge 
plant. 

7 Cooper, Correspondence, II, 404. 

8 See, for example, the long editorial April 3, 1863, entitled "Manufacturing Mismanage- 
ment." 



MMCIHCCUN C 

RlCHMOtD ARMORY 




Making Gun Carriages at the Richmond Armory 



GIANT IN SWADDLING CLOTHES 

Even in old Eastern cities, experts commanded little regard. Young James 
B. Angell, entering the office of the Chief Engineer of Boston in 185 1, found that 
the staff had worked their way up from rodmen's jobs by rule-of-thumb methods. 
Work was under way on the Cochituate water system. It turned out that 
Angell was the only man in the whole office who had studied calculus and 
could deal with the involved formulae for water problems. This went to 
prove the force of Francis Wayland's argument that it was high time Ameri- 
can colleges dealt less in theology, and more in science and technology. 9 

The nation was full of good craftsmen and husbandmen, able to work 
alone or in small groups. Company B of the Tenth Massachusetts, a Berkshire 
regiment, contained a typical array: 23 farmers, 3 merchants, 2 teamsters, 2 
shoemakers, 2 hostlers, 2 carpenters, a seaman, laborer, clerk, bookkeeper, 
painter, peddler, blacksmith, calico printer, cloth manufacturer, and cheese- 
factory superintendent. 10 Such men, facing ordinary problems, could improvise 
with happy dexterity. But war presents innumerable large-scale problems, 
which demand experts supported by large-scale organizations. In time both 
the experts and the organizations were to appear and with them would emerge 
a new nation. 

As they appeared, the country lost a certain freshness and bucolic charm, 
and the strength which it gained was a coarser strength; but the gain was 
greater than the loss. The dynamism of national life, with population moving 
westward, new towns shooting up, and immigration combining with a high birth 
rate to stimulate growth, had kept life plastic and full of picturesque novelty. 
Successive frontiers had meant successive rerootings, seldom deep or strong. 
American life was to remain dynamic, but it would soon be dynamic in a dif- 
ferent way, with larger elements of a disciplined, hardened kind. Its roots 
were to go deeper, and the plastic freshness was to be exchanged for well- 
planted power. 

Much of the lack of organization was basically immaturity. The nation had 
no standard time, so that New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and Pitts- 
burgh kept what time each city or its railroads liked. Only two American 
cities in 1860 had paid fire departments; all the others New York until 1865, 
Philadelphia until 1870 depended on volunteers. All New England in 1860 
had only three hospitals; the entire South had one in Charleston, one in Savan- 
nah, one in Mobile, "perhaps one" in Richmond, and one in New Orleans 
renowned for its wretchedness. 11 

Only an immature country would have endured the wretched postal fa- 
cilities against which New York and Boston committees had protested in 
1856. James Harper, Peter Cooper, and others that year pleaded for a uniform 

9 Angell, Reminiscences, 78; Wayland, Thoughts on the Present Collegiate System (1842) . 

10 J. K. Newell, The Tenth Mass. Volunteers. 

11 E. W. Martin, The Standard of Living in 1860, 233-236. 



246 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

two-cent rate on letters, for in all large cities private carriers profitably dis- 
tributed mail at that rate, and in New York about ten million letters were 
privately carried as against a million sent by post. The committees asked for 
compulsory prepayment by stamps, and free letter delivery in all large tow T ns. 
In Europe dead letters were returned to senders; in the United States they 
were simply burned four to five millions yearly. Though some reforms 
were adopted, the situation continued wretched. Although in 1860 the Ameri- 
can population materially exceeded the British, the number of letters posted 
in the United States was only 184,000,000, one-third the 564,000,000 posted 
in Britain. The post office had three regular rates on letters, five surcharges, 
and forty-nine rates on papers and periodicals. Drop letters in New York 
numbered 1,500,000 in 1860; in London, 63,2oo,ooo. 12 "We are now enduring 
a postal system," remarked Putnanfs Magazine, "which worries government, 
vexes and injures the public, demoralizes the officials, and pleases nobody." 
Bryant's Evening Post asserted that a barrel of flour could be sent by an ex- 
press company from New York to New Orleans more quickly than the govern- 
ment could transport a letter over the same ground. 13 

The horror of all trammels, system, and uniformity, to use Laugel's phrase, 
prevented farmers from associating in production or marketing. Rural co- 
operation had taken firm root on the European continent immediately after 
the Napoleonic wars, and by 1860 was gaining maturity in Denmark, Ger- 
many, Switzerland, and other lands. New Zealand was soon to show how 
strong it could become in a pioneer community. The large size of American 
farms, mobility of the population, and individualistic temper of rural areas 
prevented any similar growth in the United States; nor did the government 
offer the slightest encouragement. Similarly, national labor unions as yet 
counted for almost nothing. In 1857 ^ nt or ten sac ^- unions had been gaining 
vigorous stature when the panic felled all but three, the typographers', the hat 
finishers', and the journeymen stonecutters'. Before Sumter a few others, in- 
cluding the iron-molders' union under the indomitable William H. Sylvis, 
emerged. None had much vigor, for a half-dozen environing forces were 
unfavorable: the steady immigration of unskilled labor, lingering public hos- 
tility toward "conspiracy" in the labor market, the adolescent character of 
the factory system, the ruthlessness or paternalism of employers, and again 
the strong individualism of native Americans. 14 

12 Representative Hutchins of Ohio in 1862 vigorously attacked the postal abuses in Con- 
gress; see editorial, N. Y. Tribune, June 25, 1862. 

13 Dec. 13, 1855; and still true in 1860. The government had issued its first stamps in 1847. 

14 Commons, et al^ I, 335-453, gives the history of unions destroyed in the panic of 1857, 
and of the revival down to the war; see also George R. Taylor, The Transportation Revolu- 
tion, 252 ff^ 283 fT. 



GIANT IN SWADDLING CLOTHES 

Thus neither agriculture nor labor when the war began was able to speak 
with united voice, furnish the government trained administrative talent, 
or lend any organized assistance to the war effort. Business and finance of 
course offered more resources, for they could not exist without some degree 
of organization. Nevertheless, it was a rudimentary degree, with short- 
comings more conspicuous than strength; as we shall see if we examine even 
the best-developed field, that of transportation. 

E II ] 

Transportation could be expected to make comparatively rapid progress 
in systematization, for it was nurtured by the vast American distances, the 
irresistible westward movement, and the general American restlessness. The 
development of the West had seemed the nation's great primary task. The 
building of turnpikes, canals, and railroads to carry people across mountains, 
prairies, and plains, the shipment of crops eastward and a thousand varieties 
of commodities westward, and the necessity for extending the commercial 
and cultural interchanges of new and old states, had required careful planning 
and administration of communications. 

The east-west railroads, particularly north of the Ohio, were in 1860 
the country's most imposing business creations, their securities the very core 
of the investment market. National expansion had required an increasing con- 
solidation of railway controls. The Pennsylvania, for example, had attained 
a more extensive dominion than most people realized. Its main Philadelphia- 
Pittsburgh line, with branches and leased strips, covered 423 miles, of which 
250 were double-tracked. This, however, was but the beginning. In 1856, 
three lines westward, in Ohio, Indiana, and northern Illinois, had merged as 
the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago. The Pennsylvania, which had in- 
vested substantial sums in building the three lines, received nearly $770,000 
in stock. Thomas A. Scott, the Pennsylvania's vice-president and general super- 
intendent, was appointed to the board of the new company; George W. Cass, 
a director of the Pennsylvania, was made president. For all practical purposes 
the Pennsylvania thereafter controlled an additional 465 miles of railroad in 
the Middle West. Before 1860, the Pennsylvania had come to dominate about 
165 miles of railroad reaching to the Ohio River and through southern Ohio, 
and about 200 miles running northwest from Pittsburgh to Cleveland. Thomas 
A. Scott again appeared on the boards of the tributary roads. 15 

The same process which gave the Pennsylvania an imperial system could 

15 H. V. Poor, History of the Railroads and Canals of the U. &, I, 470 ff.; H. W. Schotter, 
Pennsylvania Railroad Company., 1846-1926. 



248 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

be traced in the development of the New York Central At the outbreak of 
the war, this line from Albany to Buffalo, and the connecting Lake Shore and 
Michigan Southern, gave a group headed by Erastus Corning control over 
650 miles of continuous rail into Chicago. The Erie, a hill-and-valley line from 
New York (Piermont) to Dunkirk on the lakes, was as yet still seeking a west- 
ward extension. But the Baltimore and Ohio, which ran to Parkersburg, made 
connections there to Cincinnati, and thence extended to St. Louis by a controll- 
ing arrangement with the Ohio and Mississippi, was very powerful indeed, and 
thirty-eight year-old John W. Garrett, its recently elected head, was a man 
of wide influence. Paralleling the early boundary between the Union and 
Confederacy, the B. & O. was to play an important role in the conflict. It 
was a source of great strength to the North by 1861 that three strong trunk 
lines, obviously soon to be joined by a fourth, connected the northern sea- 
board with the midwest. 16 

Other remarkable achievements in organization were the anthracite rail- 
roads, with their docks, freight yards, and coal trestles. Of the north-south 
lines the Illinois Central, as yet terminating at Cairo, and the Louisville & 
Nashville, a 1 85-mile road completed on the eve of conflict, had great im- 
portance. In the South the Memphis & Charleston, finished in 1857 on a line 
through Atlanta, cherished dreams of a grandeur it was never to attain. 17 
Since every isolated community longed for the scream of a locomotive, ideas 
of growth animated the whole railroad world. Superintendent J. G, Kennedy 
of the Census, announcing that the railways of the nation had hauled 26,000,000 
tons on their 30,800 miles of track in 1860, declared that three-quarters of 
this bulk had been created in the previous decade. 

Yet from the standpoints of management and equipment, the railroads had 
a rudimentary aspect. The British expert S. F. Van Oss, writing much later, 
remarked on their adolescent traits. "Englishmen live in a country which has 
arrived at maturity; America still is in its teens." 1S Slow wood-burning loco- 
motives ran all too often over rickety tracks on erratic schedules. The existence 
of at least eight different gauges required frequent loading and unloading. Most 
railway heads were less interested in methodical organization and progress 
than in slapdash policies and quick returns. Management tended to be autocra- 
tic, one man or a small clique controlling lines large or small. Speculation 
exulted in almost unchecked license. Few large roads had arrived at a scientific 
allocation of functions among their officers; the B. & O. was in fact conspicuous 

1 6 Festus P. Summers, The Baltimore and Ohio in the Civil War. 

17 A Confederate quartermaster officer testified that Southern railroad managers showed 
"the best business talent" in the South; O. R. IV, ii, 882. 

1 8 Van Oss, American Railroads as Investments, 10. 



GIANT IN SWADDLING CLOTHES 

for its well-planned departmentalization. 19 Still fewer lines had heads of pre- 
eminent ability. The two strongest executives were Garrett, trained in his 
father's commission house, and J. Edgar Thomson of the Pennsylvania, a 
proficient engineer w r ho had studied railroad practice in Europe. The mere 
promoter was much more common. 

The rule of small business salaries applied to railroads as to other establish- 
ments. In 1856 the Illinois Central cast about for a chief engineer. As its 
officers had seen George Brinton McClellan's report on his survey of a rail- 
way route across the Cascade Mountains, they selected him. His captain's pay 
had totaled $1,326 a year. President W. H. Osborn offered him $3,000 a year 
for three years. He showed marked administrative enterprise. Before long 
he was in general charge of railroad operation in Illinois, and by the end of 
1857 was vice-president. He helped meet the depression that winter by har- 
vesting Lake Michigan ice to be sold by the carload all the way to Cairo 
when summer became torrid. Early in 1858 he contracted with a group 
of steamboat owners to establish an Illinois Central line of packets to New 
Orleans, thus for the first time linking Chicago and the Gulf by scheduled 
year-round transportation. Yet his salary remained $3,000, a proof of the low 
esteem for managerial talent. 20 

The fact was that the transportation revolution presented some remarkable 
feats in organization alongside glaring gaps and failures. No pageantry of the 
time excelled that of the western rivers. The mile-long line of boats smoking 
and throbbing at the St. Louis levee, surpassed by a still longer line at New 
Orleans; the floods of pork, tobacco, corn and cotton that the Ohio, the Cum- 
berland, the Arkansas, and the Red poured into the central Mississippi stream; 
the motley passengers fur traders, immigrants, Indians, soldiers, cotton 
planters, land speculators, gamblers, politicians, British tourists; the inter-city 
rivalries, the desperate races these made the steamboat world a tremendous 
spectacle. The 1600 steamboats which plied the Mississippi before the war 
had cost perhaps $60,000,000; the 900 steamboats, barges, and flatboats which 

19 As early as 1848 it had a master of transportation, a master of the road, a master of 
machinery, and a general superintendent, along with division superintendents; Hungerford, 
The Baltimore & Ohio. Centralized purchasing by large roads, even the B. & O., was un- 
known; each large department purchased for itself. 

20 33rd Cong., ist Sess,, House Exec. Doc. 129; C. J. Corliss, Main Line of America, 90, 91. 
It need not be said that the broad foundation of all transport in the republic was the ox, 
mule, and horse, the cart and wagon. Between 1850 and 1860 the number of horses rose 
from 4,337,000 to 6,249*000, giving an average of one horse to each family of five. The num- 
ber of asses and mules rose from 559,000 to 1,151,000, predominating in the South; a pan- 
egyric of the mule may be found in the census volume on Agriculture, p. cxiii. It is significant 
of the survival of primitive rural conditions that the number of working oxen rose from 
1,701,000 to 2,255,000, the South having 858,500 and the Middle West 820,000. Ibid^ cviii-cxv. 



250 WAR FOR THE UNION 

plied the Ohio carried an annual Cincinnati-Louisville commerce valued at 
$35,000,000. This traffic on the great water highways, creating cities wealthier 
than Venice or Shanghai, represented no inconsiderable planning and organiz- 
ing. Packet owners made various attempts at combination, but they were loose 
and abortive. During the war, the immense flotillas were to prove invaluable 
to the Northern armies. But the railroads already threatened them, the con- 
flict strengthened the railroad lines, and before long the gaudy steamboat 
commerce was to prove as evanescent as the caravel. 

In maritime commerce, meanwhile, defects of American planning and 
enterprise cost shipowners dear. The beautiful clipper ships, the transatlan- 
tic packets flying the Black Ball flag, and the coastal vessels had written proud 
pages in the American record. But on the Atlantic, the British-owned Cunarders 
showed better organization and safer management than their Yankee rivals 
operated by Edward Knight Collins, naval architect and shipping merchant. 
In twenty-six transoceanic passages in 1852 the Collins ships made much the 
faster time; but a strain of American recklessness appeared in the exclama- 
tion of Captain Asa Eldridge of the Pacific, "If I don't beat the Persia, I will 
send the Pacific to the bottom." Successive misfortunes, including the loss 
of the Arctic in 1854 with more than 300 dead, the foundering of the Pacific, 
and the withdrawal of the government subsidy, were too disastrous to be 
survived. Meanwhile, American shipbuilders clung tenaciously to wooden 
vessels propelled by sails or paddle-wheels, though British builders were turn- 
ing to iron ships and screw propellers. Even the boasted Vanderbilt was a 
wooden ship with two walking-beam engines and two great paddle-wheels 
forty-two feet in diameter. The emigrant business began passing to British ves- 
sels. In the summer of 1857 ^e National Intelligencer carried a significant ar- 
ticle, "Losing Our Carrying Trade." It pointed to reports that the better 
organized British yards were building 300 oceangoing steamboats: 21 

What are to become of sailing vessels when these 300 ocean steamers, or 
even one-half of them, shall be navigating the Atlantic Ocean? Already sailing 
vessels have to content themselves with the most bulky and least profitable 
freight; passengers, specie, light and costly goods, and so on being carried al- 
most exclusively by steamers. The mode of travel and transportation upon the 
ocean is undergoing the same change that has already taken place on land; 
the old slow coach or vessel is being cast aside for the rapid rail-car and the 
storm-defying steamer. England, seeing this inevitable change, has, with the 
sagacity, prescience, and bold energy which characterize her, thrown her- 

21 Louis C. Hunter's admirable Steamboats on the Western Rivers, 237-240, 508-357, 
covers organization and disorganization in the river steamboat business in careful detail. 
On Atlantic shipping see R. G. Albion, The Rise of New York Port, 1815-60; George W. 
Sheldon, "Old Shipping Merchants of New York," Harper's Monthly, vol. 84 (Feb., 1892), 
457-471; National Intelligencer, July 25, 1857, 



GIANT IN SWADDLING CLOTHES 2gl 

self forward in this revolution, and has covered, and is covering, the great 
highways of commerce with her steamers, and taking from all other nations, 
and especially from us, the most profitable portion of the carrying trade of 
the world. 

New England might have been expected to organize large-scale transporta- 
tion with special acumen. Instead, the section conspicuously failed in farsighted 
organization. The Boston & Worcester was completed in 1835, an d ^e West- 
ern, from Worcester to the Hudson opposite Albany, in 1842. But down to 
the war the two railroads had not been united, though of course through 
trains were run over them. Moreover, Boston had no connecting railroad across 
upper New York to the lakes. The Boston- Albany line was fifty miles longer 
then the rival New York-Albany line, and had to traverse the rough Berkshires, 
while New York City offered a much better port and a far more magnetic 
shipping center. Hence, as C. F. Adams, Jr., pointed out, New York railroads, 
merely by intersecting any line that Boston tried to build across New York State, 
could draw down its traffic to the metropolis. 

Meanwhile, in southern New England unification proved equally unat- 
tainable. The Hartford & New Haven was completed during Van Buren's 
Presidency, and the New York & New Haven was finished in Taylor's, but 
it was not until a decade after Sumter that they were consolidated. Thus the 
regime of small affairs continued dominant on the New England railroad scene 
even while J. M. Forbes was mobilizing Boston capital to help build the Michi- 
gan Central, the future Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, and the Hannibal & 
St. Joseph. 22 

Unevenness ragged, sporadic action in a desert of individualism was 
the keynote of the country's organizational activity. That handmaiden of 
transport, the telegraph system, was in its way astonishing. From a swarm of 
small companies a number of large concerns was presently born; and then by 
a program of consolidation carried out in the fall of 1857, ^e American Tele- 
graph Company became dominant in the East, while the Western Union held 
a similar primacy in the West. The American, when Lincoln was elected, had 
nearly 300 offices and 13,500 miles of wire, controlling the business from Hali- 
fax to New Orleans. Over it and all the remaining companies the North Ameri- 
can Telegraph Association held a loose control. 

The country, which had long suffered from a jumble of little precarious 
companies, hoped for a reign of order. That might indeed have been the 
result but for the covert mutual enmity between the American and the Western 
Union. While the former wished to support Cyrus W. Field's Atlantic cable 

22 C. E. Kirkland, Men } Cities, and Transportation, I, 127 ff^ H, 72 ff.; Van Oss, American 
Railroads. 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

project, the latter was much more interested in a telegraph line to California. 
They were rivals in absorbing the surviving independents, and they quarreled 
violently over relations with the Associated Press, which the Western Union 
befriended and the American attacked as a dangerous news-gathering monopoly. 
The telegraph war which loomed up in 1860 showed that organization had gone 
far, but not far enough. 23 

That other handmaiden of transport, the express system, a uniquely Ameri- 
can growth, had been somewhat more completely organized. So efficient were 
the various express companies that a Boston gentleman who wished to give a 
dinner party with Western buffalo hump, Ozark wild turkey, New Orleans 
shrimp, Minnesota wild rice, Georgia scuppernongs, and Shenandoah apples 
could command them all. The large sums the government used throughout the 
country were safely handled by express; all the long-distance financial ex- 
changes of the country were conducted in the same way. Consolidation had 
been nearly as important in this industry as in the telegraph business. A union 
of two older companies had given birth in 1850 to the American Express, 
guided by Henry Wells and William G. Fargo, and this in turn soon organized 
Wells, Fargo to carry on the Western business, and the United States Express 
Company as an Eastern subsidiary. Various smaller concerns survived. In 
monetary terms the business was small; but the speed, economy, safety, and 
responsibility with which the agencies delivered letters, money, and parcels 
all over the continent made them invaluable to the country, and illustrated 
organizational enterprise at its best. 24 

The trunk-line railroads, steamboat interests, and telegraph and express 
companies were well enough organized to serve the Northern war effort ef- 
fectively. But could as much be said of the equally important manufacturing 
industries? 

[in ] 

Any reader of the massive report on manufactures in the census of 1860 
is struck by the smallness of the units listed. Generally speaking, production 
rested on a multiplicity of petty establishments. The nation's pig iron came 
from 286 furnaces, with an average invested capital of about $14,000 each, and 
an average annual product much below that figure. Pennsylvania, the most 

23 Robert L. Thompson, Wiring a Continent, 310-342. 

24 Alvin S. Harlow, Old Wayvilh, passim. Henry Wells published in the N. Y. Tribune, 
Feb. 20, 1864, a complete account of his and his companies' achievements. The earliest im- 
portant line had been W. F. Hamden's Boston-New York package express; Wells had been 
the first to suggest and execute an express business to Buffalo, then Chicago, and ultimately 
the Far West. Total operating costs of the three corporations in 1864 were only about 
ten millions. 



GIANT IN SWADDLING CLOTHES 

important iron State, had an industry of small furnaces widely scattered. In 
the Lehigh Valley gangs of smoke-grimed, hard-muscled men operated about 
twenty anthracite furnaces, in the Schuylkill Valley as many more, and in the 
Susquehanna Valley twenty-five. A westward drift had spawned iron-making 
centers in the Juniata, Johnstown, and Lewisburg districts, but they too were 
small; the four furnaces of the noted Cambria works could not average 10,000 
tons apiece. 

And the manufactories which took the iron? The firearms of the country 
came in 1860 from 239 establishments, with an average invested capital of 
less than $11,000. Connecticut, thanks to the Colt, Winchester, and other 
plants, was the main seat of fabrication, yet the 9 factories at work there em- 
ployed fewer than 900 people in 1860, and the value of their product fell 
below $1,200,000. Smallness was equally characteristic of the sewing-machine 
industry, based upon American ingenuity and readily adapted to war work. 
Isaac M. Singer had founded his company only in 1851, and was still working 
hard to effect a pooling of patents and a union of enterprises. The census re- 
ported sewing machines made by 74 companies in a dozen States; and the 5 
factories of Connecticut, which held the lead, divided an output of some 
24,000 machines valued at just over a million. 

Some industries of wide fame worked on a surprisingly modest scale. 
Though John A. Roebling was already well known for his wire-rope and 
suspension bridges, his Trenton factory had a capital of only $100,000, and 
its 70 hands made rope worth only $70,000 annually. And though Richard 
M. Hoe had revolutionized the printing of large newspapers by his rotary 
presses, the country had 14 press manufacturers, all small, with an aggregate 
yearly product of less than a million dollars. 25 

Surely, it would be said, the manufacturers who supplied agriculture and 
transportation had organized large enterprises; and it was true that important 
foundations had been laid. The largest manufacturer of locomotives, at Pater- 
son, N. J., however, employed only 720 men in 1860 to build 90 engines. The 
largest car-wheel factory in the country, at Wilmington, Delaware, employed 
only 200 hands to cast 30,000 car wheels annually. One of the best-known in- 
dustries in the land was the shovel factory of Oliver Ames & Sons in Mas- 
sachusetts; running 26 tilt-hammers in 4 plants, it made 250 dozen spades and 
shovels a day, still rather a small-scale operation. Yet more famous was 
Cyrus H. McCormick's factory in Chicago, which produced 4,131 reapers and 
mowers in 1860. To meet varying regional needs, farm-implement manufac- 
turing was widely distributed. In this field several corporations were achiev- 
ing an impressive capital and a fairly complex organization. Nevertheless, the 

25 Census of 1860, Manufactures; see the long introduction. 



254 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

rule of smallness still had general validity. In the single county of which Can- 
ton, Ohio, was seat, the aggregate product of fifteen firms or individuals was 
worth more than twice as much as McCormick's whole output. 26 

New York City and its vicinity had a variety of machine shops which had 
sprang up principally to furnish iron forgings and castings, together with 
marine engines, to shipbuilders. They included the Fulton, the Allaire, the 
Neptune, the Morgan, the Delamater, and the Novelty iron works, with 
several more in Brooklyn. The works of the Stevens family in Hoboken and 
the Continental Iron Works at Greenpoint, Long Island, fell into the same 
category. Nearly all were destined to become important during the war. The 
Allaire establishment, successor to Robert Fulton's Jersey City shop, dated 
back to 1816, the Novelty Works to 1830, and the Morgan Works to 1838. 
At Cold Springs on the Hudson the West Point Foundry also had vigorous 
engineering facilities, and later planted branch machine shops in New York 
City. Other sturdy engine-building plants were found on Western waters, at 
Pittsburgh, Steubenville, Cincinnati, and Louisville. Undertakings of consider- 
able size did not daunt the major shops. The Novelty Works had cast a 
sixty-ton bedplate for the engine of Collins's ship Arctic, the Corliss Engine 
Works at Providence turned out flywheels 25 feet in diameter, and a Philadel- 
phia machine shop bored castings 18 feet long and 16 feet in diameter. 

Yet these machine shops, however ambitious some of their undertakings, 
were small compared with British works and primitive in organization. They 
were obviously expansible, but when war demands came nobody knew how 
fast or effectively they could expand. Although they were becoming more 
specialized, they offered no products comparable with the finer parts of the 
reaper or sewing machine. 27 

Of all American manufactures, none had grown so strikingly during the 
previous half-century as textiles. The first complete textile factory, the 
Boston Manufacturing Company at Waltham, had been born of war in Madi- 
son's day. It had paved the way for the larger factories in the Merrimac Valley, 
and demand had grown so heavily that the country now had 1,091 cotton 
factories alone, more than half of them in New England. Massachusetts alone 

26 The manufacture of labor-saving farm machinery, naturally one of the greatest branches 
of American endeavor, had given some men and firms nation-wide renown. S. M. Osborne & 
Co. in Auburn, N. Y., Adrian Plart & Co. in Poughkeepsie, R. L. Howard in Buffalo, and 
C. Aultman & Co. in Canton had a general fame. H. & C. Studebaker had begun their wagon 
business at South Bend in 1852. Already in 1860 a machine bound grain by wire. The census 
report stated that four-horse harvesters with two men to bind and two to shock could 
harvest twenty acres of grain a day, "we shall soon have machines that will cut, gather, and 
bind up the grain in one operation." Manufactures, cciv et seq. 

27 For the machine shops see N. Y. Tribune ', Feb. 7, 1863, an informative article; Clark, 
History of Manufactures, 1075.; Bishop, History of American Manufactures, III, 112. 



GIANT IN SWADDLING CLOTHES 2 -- 

counted 217 cotton factories; New England employed nearly three-fourths 
of the capital and made two-thirds of the product in the cotton industry. 
Some mills, like those of the Sprague family in Rhode Island, were imposing. 
It was in woolens, however, that the highest degree of concentration had been 
effected. Worsted manufacture was conducted mainly by three establish- 
ments, the Pacific Mills at Lawrence, Massachusetts, the Manchester Print 
Works at Manchester, New Hampshire, and the Hamilton Woolen Company 
works at Southbridge, Massachusetts. These three organizations loomed up 
as giants on the flat American scene with their total of 3,400 hands. The largest, 
the Manchester mill owned by the Merrimac Mills Corporation, which also 
made cotton prints in large quantities, was one of the few industrial wonders 
of the land. At Lawrence a fourth enterprise, the Bay State Mills, had become 
the world's leading makers of cashmeres, shawls, and other fine woolens. The 
census commented on the completeness and order of the large New England 
woolen factories. 

A nation needing mountains of uniforms could take encouragement from 
the vigor of the ready-made clothing industry. It had grown up with demo- 
cratic mass demand, cheap cloth, and the sewing machine until 3,800 firms 
with a capital of nearly $25,000,000 were engaged in it. A silent revolution was 
merging many small shops into large wholesale establishments. The average 
product was largest in the Middle Atlantic and Yankee shops, approaching 
$25,000 a year. East of the Alleghenies female hands were giving way to men. 
The principal cutters and salesmen in the bigger shops were often former 
merchant tailors, glad to invest their capital and influence in the large units. 
Thus, "with all the advantages of large capital and machinery," remarked the 
census, they could "supply every town and village with ready-made clothing 
at the lowest prices." 2S 

Though in a hundred areas industry was forming larger units, even the 
biggest were still usually ill organized and amateurishly administered. One- 
man supervision predominated, and managerial problems were solved by trial 
and error. The McCormick factory was managed by Leander McCormick, 
Cyrus's brother, and four foremen. The Cooper & Hewitt iron works at Tren- 
ton were directed by Abram S. Hewitt, with advice from Peter Cooper and 
assistance from Edward Cooper. Erastus B. Bigelow, founder of a thriving 
carpet business, a determined enemy of corporate as distinguished from indi- 
vidual management in manufactures, published in 1858 a testy pamphlet on 

28 Census, Manufactttres, xxxii, Ix, etc. The making of boots and shoes had grown into a 
large industry in Massachusetts, which by the State census of 1855 turned out nearly 12,- 
000,000 pairs of boots and some 17,000,000 pairs of shoes. The whole number of shops in the 
country making boots and shoes in 186*0 was 2,439. ^ ut ^ 7 et t ^ ie industry was poised be- 
tween the domestic and factory systems. 



256 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

the subject. 29 Businesses should not be controlled from commercial and finan- 
cial centers, he argued, but on the spot; for unity of purpose, one head was 
worth far more than the divided responsibilities of a large corporate organiza- 
tion. Isaac Singer, Samuel Colt, and Oakes Ames would have agreed. So long 
as the controlling brain was as keen as McCormick's, Hewitt's, or Bigelow's, 
it might well be superior to group management. Some industries were specially 
adapted to one-man control, and some business geniuses had to rule alone. 

The most typical American manufactory in 1860 was the property of a man 
or family who had founded it, ownership passing from father to sons. This 
was true even of the older houses. The varied enterprises of Phelps, Dodge & 
Company, for example, were carried on by a close-knit group, members of 
the Dodge, Phelps, Stokes, and James families. Five men in 1860, of whom "the 
Christian merchant" William E. Dodge was the best-known, held total owner- 
ship and direction. From their Cliff Street offices in New York they managed 
the largest metals business in the country, a New Jersey bank, railroad inter- 
ests, wide tracts of timber, iron, and coal lands about Scranton, and other 
undertakings with quiet efficiency. 30 But incompetents could wreck a busi- 
ness as easily as talented creators could make it. No New England textile mill 
was more noted than that of the Middlesex Company in Lowell, but its heads 
lost the entire capital by appalling "mistakes and irregularities." 31 And the 
trend of the times was toward multiple ownership and management. 

As concentration gave birth to larger units, control by individuals and 
families declined. To reduce costs by standardization of product and improve- 
ment of methods; to stimulate or seize upon changes in market demand; to 
hold orders by prompt delivery of excellent goods this, no less than growth 
in size and capital, required a more elaborate managerial organization. Larger 
buildings, larger stocks of materials, larger working forces, and more complex 
machinery meant expert planning and supervision. This fact was being illus- 
trated by the shoe industry on the eve of the war. Amid a multitude of domestic 
producers and tiny cobbler shops, factories of real size had emerged primarily 
because customers had to be sought, materials purchased cheaply, labor super- 
vised vigilantly, and innovations rapidly adopted. By 1860 steam power was 
being introduced into the larger manufactories, making the hand power of 
small shops seem pitifully slow. 32 Lyman Blake's machine for stitching uppers 
to soles had been invented, and would at once accelerate the tendency toward 
big and complex shops, with more and more elaborate staffs. 

29 Entitled "Depressed Condition of Manufactures in Massachusetts." 

30 R. G. Cleland, Phelps-Dodge 1834-19^ Ch. IE. The Connecticut shops of the Ansonia 
Brass and Copper Company made a wide variety of products. 

3 1 Crowley, History of Lowell. 

32 Blanche E. Hazard, Origin of the Boot and Shoe Industry in Mass., 123 fL 



GIANT IN SWADDLING CLOTHES 

This change in corporate administration, however, was in 1860 still slow 
and gradual. After all, in most areas the shift from small to large units had to 
wait on the progress of railroad facilities, and the consequent rise of regional 
or national markets. State impediments to large-scale organization were for- 
midable. Without notable exception, State laws forbade corporations to hold 
property in other States, or stock in other companies, except under special 
charter. It was with great difficulty that legislators grasped the fact that it 
might serve the general good to encourage companies to undertake broad inter- 
state activities. General incorporation laws were themselves recent, the Con- 
necticut statute of 1837 being the first of broad character. Chief Justice Lemuel 
Shaw of Massachusetts did an important work 1830-60 in adapting the law of 
partnerships to corporations, and sheer economic necessity widened the in- 
fluence of his decisions. 

Until after the war, however, joint stock corporations were restricted 
mainly to railroads, banks, and insurance companies; State and railroad securi- 
ties remained the staple of the stock exchanges. Manufacturing was not to 
adopt the corporate form on a broad scale until after Appomattox, and not to 
own interstate properties until still later. One reason for the formation of the 
Standard Oil trust as late as 1881 was that State kws blocked such interstate 
ownership. 33 

[IV ] 

Of the great range of organized activity among the churches, the educa- 
tional bodies, the professional groups, the publishers, the writers, the social 
service societies, and lesser participants in voluntarism, how much was likely 
to aid a government at war? How much of this activity encouraged the prin- 
ciple of cooperative effort? Very little. 

All the powerful church organizations, with two exceptions, had split in 
two on the sectional issue. The Catholics, an ecumenical body under foreign 
governance, remained ostensibly united. So, formally, did the Episcopalians, 
for even after communicants in the Confederacy established a separate church, 
the General Convention called the roll of the Southern dioceses. The other 
denominations rallied with fervor to the conflict Quoting "The Lord thy God 
is a God of war," Southern Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists, as sects, 
as earnestly aligned themselves with their chosen cause as Northerners of the 
same churches supported the Union. Probably most Americans gained their 

33 F. H. Chase, Lemuel Shaw; Arthur H. Dean, William Nelson Crojnwell, 18. New York 
by an act of 1811 had permitted incorporation by general law rather than by special enact- 
ment, but the authority had strict limits. 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

first lessons in organization and cooperation from their church bodies. These 
great agencies enrolled millions who knew no society, club, or company, they 
enlisted men in active continuous work to an extent never equalled even by the 
political parties, and they touched life at more points than any other body. For 
women they furnished the one great means of organized expression. 

But although the churches were in fact multifariously useful for the war, 
they w r ere dismayingly limited in their usefulness. North and South, they 
undertook a great variety of labors. They supplied chaplains for the armies; 
they distributed Bibles, devotional books, and tracts; they supported revivals 
in camp; they helped meet problems of poverty and home relief behind the 
lines. Northern church leaders formed societies to assist the freedmen, inspired 
the Christian Commission, sent leaders (rather unsuccessfully) to occupy pul- 
pits in conquered areas, and furnished spokesmen to plead the Northern cause 
abroad. Yet the central purpose of the churches debarred them from intensely 
practical activity. Their primary concern was with the other world, not with 
this. After an immemorial concentration upon extramundane activities one day 
out of seven, they could not give full w r eekly labor to mundane concerns. 

Nor had the concept of social Christianity, as preached in England by 
Kingsley and Maurice, in France by Lamennais and Buchez, yet reached Amer- 
ica. In 1857 t ^ e Y. M. C. A. in New York had been torn apart by a secession 
of nearly 200 members, including prominent clergymen, who asserted that 
political and social topics, including slavery, were too much discussed, and 
that the society had wandered from its original objects. 34 This small but sig- 
nificant event emphasized the doctrine that the central business of the church 
was to save souls and quicken the spiritual life of the people. Any wide de- 
parture from that path beyond, say, raising the $2,500,000 collected by the 
Christian Commission would have aroused condemnation. 

As for education, it had a far more uneven and precarious organization 
than religion. When Henry Barnard established his American Journal of Edu- 
cation at Hartford in 1855, the principle of a unified system of public schools 
under State control was fairly well rooted in the North. To implant it had re- 
quired a long battle against penny-pinching enemies of public expenditures, 
religious bodies which wished to fractionize the educational system, and fossil 
obstructionists of "book learning." Associations of teachers and friends of 
education, fighting this battle, had founded numerous societies all over the 
East and Middle West. 

Yet the results were so uneven and new that no powerful educational 
bodies useful for war work yet existed. New York and Illinois had not gained 
separate State superintendents on a permanent basis until 1854, an ^ Pennsyl- 
34 National Intelligencer, April 30, 1857. 



GIANT IN SWADDLING CLOTHES 

vania until 1857. I* 1 l8<5 i a belt of States reaching from Maine and New Jersey 
to the far borders of Kansas had permanent State school officers, but only nine, 
including California and Alabama, possessed regularly organized combinations 
of State and county administrators. 35 Teachers' organizations had narrow scope 
and slight vigor. The one important national agency, the American Associa- 
tion for the Advancement of Education, was ten years old; but however com- 
mendable, it was unable to rally the nation's teachers in united effort. 

Significantly, no educator made an effort to form classes in army camps, 
convalescent hospitals, or prison camps. The Northern volunteer regiments 
were full of youths torn from academy or college, of semi-illiterates, and of 
half-Americanized aliens, apt material for teaching. But no body capable of 
implementing an educational plan, had one been broached, existed. 

The medical profession, like the ministers and teachers, had the aid of 
schools, journals, and societies in fostering its special aims. But standards of 
training were so low, quacks and charlatans were so abundant, and public in- 
terest in medical advancement was so slight, that the profession lacked organ- 
ized power. 36 In Great Britain and Europe, S. Weir Mitchell later wrote, 
medicine by 1861 held places of trust in the government, but in America it 
was neglected. "Our great struggle found it, as a calling, with little of the na- 
tional regard. It found it more or less humble, with reason enough to be so." 37 
General medical societies had a history running back into colonial days, and 
before 1861 State-wide societies overspread the whole map east of the Missis- 
sippi, save in Louisiana, which left the field to a New Orleans association. 

Most early medical societies, however, both State and local, were primarily 
social organizations of scant authority or prestige. For a time some State 
governments clothed specified societies with power to license physicians, 
regulate fees, and punish malpractice. Such authority was in general ill exer- 
cised, and the State tended to turn instead to special medical boards. Several 
close-knit, well-led urban societies gained more repute and influence than the 
loose State associations. In Philadelphia the College of Physicians, dating from 
1789, in Boston the Society for Medical Improvement, from 1838, and in 
New York the Academy of Medicine, from 1846, all had a distinguished 
membership, listened to papers of merit, and commanded public respect. 
Societies in Cincinnati, St. Louis, and one or two Southern cities had dignity. 
The membership, however, was always smaller than it should have been. Their 
interest in medical education did not lead in the best direction, and when much 
later university medical schools of adequate standards came into existence, it 

35 Cubberley, Public Education in the U. S^ 122 &.+ 246 ff.; Cubberley and Elliott, State 
and County School Administration Source Book, 283 ff. 

36 H. B. Shafer, The American Medical Profession, 1783-1850, pp. 169-173. 

37 In War Time, Ch. IV. 



260 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

was from other impulses and indeed against the opposition of some leading 
medical organizations. 38 

On the initiative of New York physicians, the American Medical Associa- 
tion was founded in 1846. Its committee on education did effective work to 
improve medical training within the old pattern, urging lengthened terms of 
study, the use of hospitals for clinical teaching, higher admission requirements, 
and stricter examinations. It labored also to improve American drugs, incul- 
cate higher ethical principles, and stimulate original research and writing. 
Holding annual conventions in different cities, it enlisted adherents in each, 
until by 1856 it had more than 3,000 members. 39 

But on the whole, medical organization when the war broke was in its 
groping initial stages. Most societies were social or amateurish, and not one had 
produced a great administrator or initiator. They held banquets, combated 
quacks, and passed resolutions, but they did much more to promote esprit de 
corps than to increase medical knowledge or influence public opinion. Ham- 
pered by financial difficulties, languid interest, factional squabbles, and lack 
of professional dignity, many of them kept up but an intermittently active 
existence. The American Medical Association was as yet so narrowly profes- 
sional, deficient in broad social interests, and fluctuating in strength, that it was 
of slender general value. Medical education would have to be revitalized be- 
fore medical associations could grow powerful. 40 No society was able to give 
the government important aid during the conflict. The chief wartime organ- 
izers of medicine, surgery, and nursing were to be a clergyman, a landscape 
architect, a frontier army doctor, an attorney, and a woman clerk in the 
Patent Office. 41 

Of all the great professions, that most glaringly deficient in organization 
was the bar. When the nation sprang to arms, no legal society worth mention- 
ing existed North or South. Although Philadelphia laid claim to a city associa- 
tion founded in 1802, it was nothing more than a lawyers' social club. Even 
New York Qty had no bar association until Samuel J. Tilden, under stress of 
a dire civic emergency in Tweed days, led the way in founding one, and the 
American Bar Association did not arise till some years later. The earliest State 
association seems to have been one which led a precarious life in Iowa for 
some years after 1874. Lawyers with an instinct for leadership or a cause to 

38 W. F. Norwood, Early History of American Medical Societies, CIBA Symposia, 1947, 
No. 9. 

39 Shafer, 232 fT.; John Shaw Billings, "Literature and Institutions," in E. H. Clarke, et al. 

40 F. R. Packard, History of Medicine in the 17. S.; W. D. Postell, The American Medical 
Association, CIBA Symposia, 1947, No. 9; F. C. Stewart, On the Medical Schools and the 
Conditions of the Medical Profession in the USA (1856), 116. 

41 Bellows, Olmsted, Hammond, George T. Strong, and Clara Barton; but mention 
might also be made of three physicians, Drs. Tripler, Van Buren, and Agnew, and a scientist, 
Wolcott Gibbs. 



GIANT IN SWADDLING CLOTHES 

promote turned naturally to political parties. For improvements in the effi- 
ciency and ethics of the bar they looked to legislatures, the State attorneys- 
general, and the courts. 42 If any officer of the national government wished legal 
advice in making appointments to the bench, in drafting legislation, in search- 
ing for precedents, in dealing with questions of constitutionality he could 
apply to individuals; but help from associations he could not get. 

One of the greatest indirect contributions to the war strength of the nation 
was made by the press, both daily and periodical. It kept the people informed, 
it more than any other agency molded public sentiment, and despite shrill 
dissident voices and conflicting policies, it crystallized a spirit of national unity. 
Daily journalism was competitive in the extreme. In New York City the coarse, 
fickle Herald, the enterprising, solidly informative, and socially radical Trib- 
une, the eloquent and cultivated Evening Post, and the moderate, judicious 
Times contended for leadership. While their daily circulation was almost 
wholly metropolitan, by weekly and semi-weekly editions they reached the 
entire North. Every city had its daily, almost every county seat its weekly. 

The country was full of newspapers, read more voraciously, perhaps, than 
in any other land. New York State had more dailies than all Great Britain. A 
current story told of a minister who preached hell-fire without effect; but his 
announcement that the godless went to a land without newspapers made his 
congregation turn pale and profess conversion. 43 

While outwardly newspapers seemed to illustrate the essence of individ- 
ualism, actually they possessed a remarkable solidarity. The practice of ex- 
changing subscriptions was universal. A country editor might get twenty or 
fifty exchanges from all parts of America; he produced a better journal by 
swift use of the scissors than by laborious employment of the pen, with the 
result that the content of many newspapers was much the same. The govern- 
ment subsidized this system of exchanges by special postal concessions. A re- 
markably telling editorial by Greeley, Bryant, or Raymond, by Samuel Bowles 
or John W. Forney, was certain in the end to appear in many journals. A strik- 
ing piece of special correspondence in the Chicago Tribune or Springfield 
Republican would be widely clipped. The Associated Press, originally a com- 
bination of New York dailies to collect news, had by 1860 taken almost com- 
plete control of news-gathering in the United States and Canada. Though 
bitterly assailed as a ruthless monopoly after it defeated the effort of the tele- 
graph companies to establish separate news services, it did its work efficiently 
and cheaply. 44 

42 Charles Warren, History of the American Bar; M. Louise Rutherford, Influence of the 
American Bar Assn. 

43 D. Macrae, The Americans at Home, Ch. 31. 

44 Victor Rosewater, History of Cooperative News-gathering in the U. Sj Oliver Gram- 
ling, The A. ?. 



2< 5 2 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Indeed, the diffusion of intelligence was one of the best-organized branches 
of national endeavor. The New York Tribune or Herald published every night 
55,000 copies, with each department European correspondence, Washington, 
Albany, and metropolitan news, editorials, Wall Street article, agricultural 
column, produce and shipping news, letters to the editor copiously filled; it 
dealt systematically with advertisements, legal printing, and birth, marriage, 
and death notices; it provided for paper supply, street sales, local deliveries, 
and subscriptions all through carefully coordinated activity. This was possi- 
ble because each journal had a body of trained employees, an eye to system, 
and an instinct for the latest inventions. Stereotyping, for example, developed 
by Charles Craske of New York, came into use just in time for the large war 
editions. The Tribune boasted that in the spring of 1862 its weekly edition 
circulated more than 150,000 copies, and its semi-weekly 18,000; its consoli- 
dated circulation of more than 220,000 copies was, it declared, much the largest 
in the world. 45 Altogether, it reached fully one-twentieth of the whole 
newspaper-reading public of the North. Such a feat was impossible without 
careful organization. 46 

The publication of books and magazines was likewise a vigorous depart- 
ment of American life, for mass education meant mass reading. The Scottish 
publisher William Chambers, looking primarily at New England, wrote that 
every American bought and read books a gross exaggeration; Anthony Trol- 
lope declared that Americans were the greatest consumers of literature on 
earth, taking 10,000 copies of a book where Englishmen took one. 47 Although 
the invention of electrotyping ten years before the war had reduced costs, 
during the 1850*5 the annual dollar value of books trebled. Harper Brothers 
just before the panic of 1857 turned out 3,000,000 volumes in a single year. To 
be sure, the purchase of books hardly averaged a dollar a year for adults, but 
the market well repaid the largest firms. The houses of Appleton, Lippincott, 
Harper, Ticknor & Fields, Putnam's, and Scribner's flourished while they hon- 
orably allied their names with the best literature. Harper's Monthly Magazine 
before the war attained a circulation of more than 100,000; farm journals, 
religious journals, and women's magazines like Godey's Lady's Book were 
widely read; Robert Bonner's New York Ledger was reputed to sell 400,000 
copies a week; and the two important illustrated journals, Harper's Weekly 
and Frank Leslie's, overcoming their initial crudities, were reaching and in- 
structing great bodies of readers. 48 

45 N. Y. Tribune, April 10, 1862. 

46 The census reported that in 1860 the nation had 383 daily newspapers, and more than 
3250 weekly or semi-weekly newspapers. The totals were steadily growing. 

47 Chambers, 219; Trollope, North America (1862), I, 271. 

48 Martin, Standard of Living in 1860, 324, 325. 



GIANT IN SWADDLING CLOTHES 

The largest book-and-magazine houses, like Harper's and Ticknor & Fields, 
were organized on a sturdy scale. But book-publishing in general was as much 
decentralized as most manufacturing, for prosperous firms were found all the 
way from Albany and Richmond to St. Louis and Nashville. Equally note- 
worthy was the wide diffusion of bookshops; just before the panic at least 
three thousand shops dealt exclusively in books and periodicals, while nearly 
seven thousand more sold them in connection with other wares. The book 
trade was not efficiently managed or systematized, for it perhaps never can be. 
The American Publishers' Association had recently been founded to bring 
publishers and booksellers into better relations, and its weekly organ, the 
Publishers' Circular, carried full information on the trade. But as of news- 
papers, it could be said that the seemingly chaotic book business had more 
internal solidarity and coordination than men supposed. It was well arranged 
to stimulate literature, and to keep the nation fairly informed upon events and 
forces. 

While in a narrow view the manysided publishing activities of the North 
were of limited value to the war effort, in any broad view they were of priceless 
utility. The press kept the country informed of every phase of government ac- 
tivity, offered a free forum of discussion which was indispensable to the 
healthy workings of democracy, and through its best journals gave the nation 
encouragement and inspiration. "We cannot too often repeat that the first duty 
of the citizen at this juncture is to give the President a generous, confiding, and 
cordial support," said Harpefs Weekly just after Bull Run, 49 and most pub- 
lishers took a similar view in dark hours. One influential pamphlet on the na- 
tion's resources, scattered broadcast late in the conflict, was worth a small 
army. 50 It was unfortunate that in some other areas the national energies were 
not equally well organized. 



[V ] 

The lack of associative elements, the plastic state of society, and the prev- 
alent individualism, had their compensation. They fostered self-reliance, enter- 
prise, and ingenuity. Blessed with great natural wealth, and "aided by capital 
accumulations, energetic Americans wrought great achievements. "The period 
following California gold," writes one historian of technology, "developed 
an apex of individualism perhaps never before and certainly never since at- 
tained in the world's history." 51 The ingenuity was as striking as the energy. 

49 August 3, 1861 (V, 482). 

50 "Our Burden and our Strength," by David A. Wells (1864). 

51 Roger Burlingame, March of the iron Men, 312, 313. 



264 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Repeatedly a lonely experimenter who knew little of the general state of the 
arts would devise some memorable improvement. John Deere thus produced 
his self -scouring plough, Robert L. Stevens his T-rail, Linus Yale, Jr., his famous 
pin-tumbler cylinder hook, and Crawford W. Long, in an isolated Georgia 
village, his anaesthetic. Elias Howe thus solved the problem of devising a 
needle which, working from the top plane only of a piece of cloth, would 
stitch both its top and bottom. 

Herman Haupt, a young Pennsylvania West Pointer, who went into rail- 
way construction, was suddenly faced twenty years before the war with the 
necessity of finding the laws by which the transmission of strains in a trussed 
bridge was governed. He sat down in a country town in Pennsylvania with- 
out books of reference or scientific apparatus, and by experiments on the 
resistance of timbers, and his own methods of obtaining mathematical formulae, 
met the exigent requirements of the York & Wrightsville Railroad. He did 
more; he arrived at some valuable new principles of bridge building. Just be- 
fore the war, helping direct the boring of the Hoosac Tunnel, and confronted 
with the task of piercing strange rock strata, he devised drilling machinery 
comparable with that used in piercing Mont Cenis. In short, without sup- 
porting organizations, he repeatedly displayed a triumphant inventiveness. 
Brought into the army in 1862, Haupt showed his ingenuity in building bridges 
of novel materials (beanpoles and cornstalks, said Lincoln), making implements 
for twisting and straightening rails, devising torpedoes, and so on; while his 
skill in helping several generals move troops and meet fast-changing strategic 
situations was equally notable. 52 

But were these empiric methods good enough? A significant contrast might 
be drawn between Charles Goodyear in America and Charles Mackintosh in 
Scotland. While the Connecticut experimenter, without scientific training or 
advice, hit on the vulcanization of rubber by stubborn plodding and luck, the 
systematic Glasgow manufacturer arrived at great results by well-considered 
steps. He obtained the guidance of the brilliant chemist-surgeon James Syme 
of Edinburgh, dissolved raw rubber in coal-tar naphtha, and applied the solu- 
tion as a varnish to cloth. While Goodyear sank into debt, Mackintosh became 
rich. It was only when well-organized groups placed themselves behind Good- 
year's discovery that American rubber products far outstripped the British 
goods. There could be no question in 1860 that the inexorable process of busi- 
ness consolidation, the steady growth of industrial undertakings in size, and 
the new scientific knowledge, demanded group activity in place of individual 
enterprise; but individualism still reigned supreme. 

52 See Haupt's pamphlet, "Hints of Bridge Construction," 1841; Frank A. Flower's use- 
ful preface to Haupt's Reminiscences. 



GIANT IN SWADDLING CLOTHES 

Very different was the situation in England. John Stuart Mill, commenting 
on the intellectual progress of the working classes, remarked that their ad- 
vance in the habit of cooperation was equally surprising. "At what period were 
the operations of productive industry carried on upon anything like their 
present scale? Were so many hands ever before employed at the same time, 
upon the same work, as now in all the principal departments of manufactures 
and commerce? To how enormous an extent is business carried on by joint 
stock companies. . . . The country is covered by associations." 53 

America was now ready to take wide and rapid strides on the same road. 
The transportation revolution was creating national markets; they in turn 
would help create the industrial revolution, with large national agencies of 
manufacture. Business giants governing huge combinations would soon arise. 
But as matters stood in 1861, Lincoln never thought of summoning a group of 
business leaders to assist him in wartime administration; the businessmen had no 
faculty of cooperation. Except for the Sanitary Commission, the government 
made practically no use of professional groups in war work; it picked men 
here and there, but in haphazard fashion. In short, it used little organized ma- 
chinery, for the machines had never been created. Lincoln might well have 
found valuable assistance, for example, in a board of transportation. But how 
was such a board possible in a country where the first through train of freight 
cars did not pass from the State of New York into the State of Ohio until 
January n, 1863? 54 

53 Mill, Dissertations and Discussions, I, 196, 197 (Boston, 1864). 

54 Edwin A. Pratt, The Rise of Rail Power in War and Conquest, 22, 23. 




McClellan and the Tasks 
of Organization 



LINCOLN was quick to ask McClellan for a memorandum on his proposed 
mode of using the new volunteer forces. He replied on August 4 that he 
would need for his main army of operations about 273,000 men, with 20,000 
more for defending Washington and smaller forces to protect Baltimore, Fort 
Monroe, and the Baltimore & Ohio. His army would require 600 guns, twenty- 
five regiments of cavalry, proper engineering and pontoon trains, and adequate 
means of transport, while effective naval cooperation would have to be ar- 
ranged. Still other troops would be needed to occupy West Virginia, Ken- 
tucky, and Missouri, while the size of the army to go down the Mississippi 
would have to be determined by its commander and the President. Admitting 
that the total force seemed large and its cost would be heavy, McClellan urged 
that it would be cheaper to crush the rebellion at one blow, and terminate the 
war in a single campaign, than to leave the conflict a legacy to the next gen- 
eration. 

Thus something of the optimism of the first months survived even Bull 
Run. One campaign, one blow! and McClellan spoke not merely of driving 
the enemy from Virginia, but of occupying Charleston, Savannah, Montgom- 
ery, and New Orleans; in short, moving this great army into the heart of the 
Confederacy and stamping out resistance at its center. He was soon to tell a 
group of Philadelphians: "The war cannot be long, though it may be des- 
perate." His memorandum said nothing about the time required for preparing 
the blow, but it was evident that he wanted plenty of it. He and Scott imme- 
diately disagreed as to the first army formations, McClellan insisting that bri- 
gades be rapidly united into divisions, while Scott declared this unnecessary, 
for in Mexico he had used brigades alone. McClellan cut through the dispute 
by obtaining a War Department order August 20 constituting the Army of the 
Potomac under his full and direct command. 

266 



McCLELLAN AND THE TASKS OF ORGANIZATION 

"I at once designated an efficient staff, afterwards adding to it," McClellan 
later wrote. His chief of staff, a position new in America, was his father-in-law 
Colonel Randolph B. Marcy, a West Pointer now nearly fifty who had served 
on the northern frontier, fought in Mexico, and taken part in the so-called 
Mormon War; a big, soldierly man of moderate abilities. His adjutant-general 
was Seth Williams, a brigadier, assisted by Lieutenant Colonel James A. Hardie, 
both good officers, and the latter especially capable and industrious. As head 
of engineers McClellan kept the exceptionally clearheaded and experienced 
Major John G. Barnard, who later completed the Washington defenses and in 
time wrote a caustic analysis of his chiefs generalship. The topographical en- 
gineers soon passed under Brigadier-General A. A. Humphreys, remembered 
as a military historian. As quartermaster-general McClellan appointed Captain 
(later Brigadier-General) S. Vliet, who loved his wine, but to whose efficiency 
he paid high tribute. 1 

Army health offered an appalling problem. Typhoid and other fevers raged 
in the camps. The sick took refuge in improvised general hospitals in and about 
Washington, some, like the deadly hospital at Cumberland, Maryland, so bad 
that they became a public scandal. Incoming regiments brought volunteer 
surgeons ignorant of army methods and sometimes of everything else. To 
replace chaos by order McClellan appointed Charles S. Tripler as medical 
director, an officer who with the general's support did good work, but whose 
preparations for active campaigning proved inadequate. 

As the staff steadily grew to sixty-five in the spring of 1862, it enlisted 
other notable men. The provost-marshal-general, Andrew Porter, soon halted 
the straggling, disorder, and criminality which made the Washington camps a 
byword. Major Albert J. Myer, who had been made head of the signal corps 
before McClellan assumed control, devised a good system of torch-and-flag 
signaling, and introduced an insulated telegraph wire which could quickly be 
strung; indeed, he was the father of the signal service. McClellan's telegrapher, 
Major Thomas T. Eckert, also organized a service of notable efficiency. This 
Ohioan, long an expert in telegraphy, was to rise rapidly to the position of 
general superintendent of military telegraphs in Washington, where he saw 

i O. R. I, v, 5#.; McClellan's O<wn Story, 113; McClellan, Report on the Org. and 
Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac, 39 ff., 51 ff.; Swinton, Army of the Potomac, 62 ff.; 
Kenneth Williams, Lincoln finds a General, I, 103 fF. When McClellan took command July 
27 the forces around Washington numbered perhaps 53,000. He insisted that his command 
be termed and organized as an army, while Scott clung to the idea that McClellan ought 
to head a geographical department. McDowell had already organized brigades south of the 
Potomac. Under McQellan, a division consisted (ideally) of three infantry brigades of 
four regiments each, four batteries, and one cavalry brigade. For McClellan to the Phila- 
delphians see Philadelphia Evening Journal, Nov. 5, 1861. Gen. Peter S. Michie, an expert, 
speaks slightingly of Marcy's capacities, but Marcy's books indicate a likely intelligence. 



268 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

much of Lincoln. The work of his men in the field was as dangerous as it was 
arduous. The balloonist T. S. Lowe was another young man who had impressed 
the government before McClellan took charge in Washington. Cameron, after 
Lowe had made some spectacular ascents, and had sent Lincoln the first tele- 
gram ever transmitted from the upper air, made him head of the new aero- 
nautics section of the army. McClellan was glad to encourage him, and al- 
though the heavily wooded nature of the country and the difficulty of 
transporting and flying balloons limited his usefulness, he sometimes obtained 
information of value. 2 

The general's aides included several striking figures. John Jacob Astor was 
ultimately to inherit one of the great American fortunes. Richard B. Irwin 
in time became adjutant-general and historian of the nineteenth army corps. 
Louis Philippe d'Orleans, the Comte de Paris, saw hard fighting at first hand, 
which later aided him in the production of a masterly four-volume history 
of the war. His brother the Due de Chartres also served on the staff through a 
long, hard campaign. Altogether, McClellan listed a personal entourage of 
nineteen, or, if he added the Prince de Joinville, who accompanied his two 
nephews of the Orleans family to headquarters and stayed for a time, twenty. 

The young general stood almost alone in his early recognition of the vital 
importance of apportioning precise duties among a large body of staff officers, 
and in this respect showed a more modern understanding of command proce- 
dures than Robert E. Lee. His comprehensive grasp of administrative work in 
general made a startling contrast with the confused, nerveless methods of 
Cameron's War Department and Scott's headquarters. Although he often 
played favorites and unjustly criticized subordinates whom he disliked, he 
cultivated a real esprit de corps in his staff family. His faith in the special 
equipment and all-sufficing capacity of professional military men to win the 
war was accompanied by an unhappy contempt for politicians, and, since he 
was very much a Democrat, a strong dislike of Republican politicians. Indeed, 
he believed and openly declared that a military elite, to the great benefit of the 
nation, would thereafter play a larger part in public affairs. He was much 
more like a French or German general than those of the traditional American 
variety. 3 

2 Myer, who later established the U. S. Weather Bureau, is commemorated by Fort 
Myer. Eckert wrote a valuable book, Recollections of the L7. S. Military Telegraph Corps 
During the Civil War. Mt. Lowe near Pasadena is named for T. S. Lowe, who built an 
observatory on it. 

3 As we shall see, he had a Colonel Blimp attitude toward slavery. Irwin was another 
staff member later to pen a scathing review of McClellan's command; see his article on the 
Peninsular Campaign in Battles and Leaders, II, 435 ff. Dahlgren reported McClellan's views 
on the military in the nation's future; John A. Dahlgren, by his daughter, 344, 345. 



McCLELLAN AND THE TASKS OF ORGANIZATION 

[ I ] 



269 



McClelkn struck everyone by his air of energy, confidence, and address. 
W. H. Russell, hard to please, liked the serenity of his dark blue eye, the firm- 
ness of his mouth, and the animation of his features; he liked the general's 
compact, powerful frame, massive throat, and well-shaped head. Dr. Henry 
W. Bellows of the Sanitary Commission wrote a more observant description. 
He too noted the muscular figure, well-knit and perfectly balanced, the hand- 
some regular features, topped by dark, short hair, the calm, direct, and power- 
ful eye. What seemed to him more remarkable was McClellan's leopard sup- 
pleness, as graceful as if his movements were controlled by some inner rhythm. 
"His manner," added Bellows, "is self-possessed, unaffected, though remarkably 
self-complacent, with natural dignity and frankness. His talk, to the point, 
earnest, honest, and intelligent. He is not afraid of responsibility; he knows 
his place, assumes its rights and an interest in meeting its requirements. While 
I should say that balance, availability of every talent, promptness, superiority 
to routine, and willingness to stand in the gap were more conspicuous in him 
than ingenuity, brilliancy, or originality, yet there is an indefinable air of suc- 
cess about him and something of the 'man of destiny.' " 

It was this aura of destined greatness, this assurance radiated by a man not 
yet thirty-five, which made Napoleonic comparisons inevitable. "He looked 
like one who always had succeeded and always will succeed." Already men 
talked of him as the next President. 4 

A man of resolution, force, and belief in his star, but of more self-esteem 
than of absolute self-confidence; a soldier of long training, keen observation, 
and settled convictions, but not of imagination, depth, or subtle analysis this 
was McClellan. His early environment had not been altogether fortunate. He 
had been all too carefully reared in Philadelphia, his father an active, prosper- 
ous, disputatious physician; the city was conservative, and the rather aristo- 
cratic circles in which he received his education and formed his social tastes 
were distinctly so. He was contemptuous in early years of "these wretched 
Dutch and Irish immigrants." The Mexican War and his regular army ex- 
perience had confirmed his natural distrust of volunteers, an attitude un- 
fortunate in the head of the greatest volunteer army in history. There was 
something decidedly spoiled in the temper of this proud, ambitious, inwardly 
haughty leader. As A. K. McClure, who knew him well, remarked, he would 
have taken the rough buffets of war better had he once been a ragged alley 

4 H. W. Bellows to his wife Sept. 12, 1861, Bellows Papers, MHS; when the Prince 
Napoleon in August, 1861, repeated to McClellan Lord Lyons* remark that he would be 
the next President, the general "answered with a fine, modest, and silent smile"; "The Tour 
of the Prince Napoleon," American Heritage, August, 1957. 



2 7 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 



urchin, used to playing and fighting with other boys of tough material. From 
the time he was admitted to West Point by special permission at the age of 
fifteen and a half, until he was made vice-president of the Illinois Central at 
thirty-one, he had too easily won success after success. His lucky appointment 
in 1855 as an army observer in the Crimean War enabled him not only to study 
military affairs in Europe, but to talk with dignitaries of the highest rank, in- 
cluding the French and Austrian emperors. 5 

Being spoiled, he could be arrogant when given full rein, and petulant when 
crossed. Already his treatment of Jacob D. Cox in the West Virginia cam- 
paign had been unfair, and that of W. S. Rosecrans, whom he termed a silly, 
fussy goose, ungenerous. To cooperative subordinates and to admirers he 
showed a natural affability and kindliness. As Dr. Bellows put it: "His voice 
is sweet, his address affectionate, his manner winning." Because of this, of his 
leaderlike qualities, of his real mastery of the minor arts of war, and of his 
solicitous care of his troops, officers and men came to adore him. "How those 
brave fellows love me," one officer reports his saying, "and what a power 
their love places in my hands." A better man would have emphasized obliga- 
tion rather than power. 6 

Behind the mask of seeming serenity and self-confidence, however, lay a 
great deal of self -distrust; behind the apparent energy, dynamism, and bold- 
ness lay caution and timidity. His services in Mexico had been those of an 
engineer. At Sevastopol he had stayed only two weeks (October 16-Novernber 
2, 1855), all in the British camp, and at the beginning of a siege that was 
destined to endure almost a year; he spent most of his time inspecting the 
Russian defensive works and measuring the Allied difficulties, and departed 
full of admiration for the fortifications erected by Todleben and the valor of 
the Russian defenders. It was the belief of the best authorities (Marshal Niel, 
General Wolseley, and Todleben himself) that a fierce, determined attack 
on Sevastopol late in September, 1855, would have carried that fortress, and 
that by declining to attempt it and cautiously sitting down to a prolonged siege, 
the Allies played into the Russian hands; but if McClellan knew this fact, he 
does not mention it in his reports. 7 

During his European tour he carefully inspected various military works in 
Austria, Prussia, and other countries; but it seems significant that he lingered 
over defensive positions, evincing no interest in the study of offensive strategy 
or tactics. In the West Virginia campaign his dispositions had been excellent, 

5 W. S. Myers, McClellan, 16; McClure, Recollections of Half a Century, 316. 

6 Myers, 190-194; Donn Piatt, Memories of Men Who Saved the Union, 295. 

7 McClellan, Reports (35th Cong., Special Session, Senate Exec. Doc. No. i). The 
British in the Crimea gave McClellan every possible facility, but the Russians and French 
refused him any; Own Story, 2. 



McCLELLAN AND THE TASKS OF ORGANIZATION 

but all the boldness in executing them was displayed by his subordinates. Short 
as the campaign was, it showed that he united a hard-headed, practical sagacity 
about some matters with an astonishing capacity for self-deception in others. 
He probably really believed, after Morris and Rosecrans had won Corrick's Ford 
and Rich Mountain respectively, two minor encounters involving minor losses, 
that he was justified in boasting that he had "annihilated two armies." 

McClellan's intensity of purpose was as creditable as his integrity, industry, 
ability, and constancy to duty. Combined with his singular charm of manner, it 
diffused an impression of pleased, and even exalted, consecration to his great 
task, and recalled Wordsworth's portrait of the happy warrior. He could labor 
with tremendous fixity to reach the objects he had set himself, and at the same 
time show a warmhearted cheeriness to all associates. He had a sense of mission, 
a clear understanding of the means to be employed in reaching his goal, and a 
determination not to be swerved from his direct line. These commendable 
traits come out clearly in a letter he shortly wrote his wife: 

I shall take my own time to make an army that will be sure of success. 
... I do not expect to fight a battle near Washington; probably none will be 
fought until I advance, and that I will not do until I am fully ready. My plans 
depend on circumstances. So soon as I feel my army is well-organized and well- 
disciplined, and strong enough, I will advance and force the rebels to a battle 
in a field of my own selection. 8 

Unfortunately, this resolution of temper was lamed by several defects. One 
was his inveterate perfectionism; all preparations must be complete to the last 
detail, and all controllable conditions must be just right, before he would make 
a decisive move. As one Senatorial critic said, he would hesitate to order an 
advance if he learned that a part of his wagons lacked the extra linchpin 
required by army rules for each wheel. 

Another crippling trait was stated by an observant subordinate in terms 
of pre-Freudian simplicity his readiness to seek scapegoats for the inevitable 
mischances of war: "There are men so peculiarly constituted that when they 
have once set their hearts on any project, they cannot bear to consider the 
facts that militate against their carrying it out; they are impatient and intolerant 
of them; . . . inasmuch as it is impossible for any man to get angry with facts, 
such men instinctively fix upon certain individuals whom . . . they always 
accuse ... of hostility or deception." McClellan, when his plans began to go 
wrong, wrote his wife: "History will present a sad record of those traitors who 
are willing to sacrifice the country and its army for personal spite and personal 
airs." When they had gone further wrong he was writing her: "I arn tired of 

8 O*wn Story; letter of Oct. 6, 1861. 



272 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 



serving fools." 9 But then his whole attitude toward his superiors was peculiar. 
He did not regard himself as the servant of the American people, or the sub- 
ordinate of Lincoln or of Scott. He thought of himself as a man entrusted 
with a colossal task, under which he staggered; so that any criticism, any inter- 
ference, even any advice, was an absolutely unforgivable wrong. 

Finally, the worst evidence of his self-distrust was his inveterate disposition 
to exaggerate the magnitude of his difficulties. No matter how large his army, 
that of the enemy was always greater; no matter how formidable his guns, the 
opposing fortifications were always stronger. Of these traits we shall find 
abundant illustrations. The Polish diarist Gurowski, the Thersites of Washing- 
ton, wrote that his imagination so overrode his sense of fact that he had a faculty 
for "realizing hallucinations." Charles Russell Lowell, who was on his staff, 
declared that he was like the Duke of Wellington in that he got everything 
completely ready, and then unlike the Iron Duke in that, once ready, he did not 
strike hard. Still another close observer, the w T ar correspondent George W. 
Smalley, remarked that when the pinch came, McClellan was not a general but 
a council of war, and it was an axiom that a council of war never fights. 10 

McClellan's intensity of purpose, frequent arrogance in hours of prosperity, 
tendency to propound a devil-theory for failure, resentment of interference, 
and egotistic vein, are characteristics not understood in isolation. They are 
bound together and measurably explained by his conviction that he was under 
the finger of God. The war produced a number of generals, including Lee, 
Stonewall Jackson, Rosecrans, and O. O. Howard, of as profound religious 
fervor as McClellan, but he alone had a Cromwellian sense of selection for 
God's purposes. Dr. Bellows showed keen insight when he spoke of the general's 
natural faith in divine protection. This faith supplied a foundation for his loft- 
iness of outlook, personal purity, integrity, and sincerity, qualities which kept 
for him to the end of his life the esteem of the country. It also gave him, once 
he had been made the foremost general, a delusion that God had chosen him to 
be the shield of the Republic; him alone. His Messiah complex was half piety 
and half disdainful pride. 

"I feel sure that God will give me the strength and wisdom to preserve this 
great nation," he wrote his wife August 9, 1861, adding: "I feel that God has 
placed a great work in my hands." A little later he writes her of the tremendous 
responsibility God has laid upon him. "I was called to it; my previous life 
seems to have been unwittingly directed to this great end; and I know that 
God can accomplish the greatest results with the weakest instruments therein 

9 James B. Fry, "McClellan and his Mission," Century, vol. 48 (Oct., 1894), 931-946; 
McClellan, O t wn Story, 310, 453. 

10 Gurowski, Diary, I, 99; Bliss Perry, Life of T. W. Higginson, 169; Smalley, Anglo- 
American Memories, 123, 124* 



McCLELLAN AND THE TASKS OF ORGANIZATION 

lies my hope." In November, busy drilling his army, he repeats: "I still trust 
that God will support me and bear me out. He could not have placed me here 
for nothing." 

Those other exalted military organizers, the Emperor Constantine and the 
Caliph Omar, could not have been more certain of the mstinctu divinitatis. 
It was as the instrument of God that he felt he had a right to be loftily con- 
temptuous of older associates, so that the daughter of General James M. Wads- 
worth, long eminent in New York affairs, indignantly resented his haughtiness 
to her father. It was this sense of divine selection which enabled him to write 
his wife so scornfully of Lincoln as a "browsing President," of the Cabinet as 
"geese," and of the Administration as one which in general made him "perfectly 
sick." It enabled him to write (August 14) that "General Scott is the most 
dangerous antagonist I have." As a divine appointee, he had a right to expect 
his every demand to be met without demur. 

Men of such intense religious justification commonly possess a martyr 
complex, and when hard trials came McClellan was quick to adopt the martyr 
pose: "I feel that the fate of the nation depends on me, and I feel that I have 
not a single friend at the seat of government." In all his trials he nevertheless 
remained confident of his destiny: "I believe in my heart and conscience . . 
that all I have to do is to try to keep the path of honor and truth, and that 
God will bring me safely through." This piety, kept within limits, should 
have been an added source of strength; but when he carried it to the extreme 
point of regarding himself as God's lieutenant rather than servant, it became 
a grave defect. Unlike Cromwell, unlike Stonewall Jackson, who did their 
best and let Providence do the rest, he alternated between a sense of infallibility 
when God-inspired, and total fallibility when the inspiration failed. As William 
H. Russell was quick to perceive, moments of cocky self-certainty were fol- 
lowed by periods of hesitation, timidity, and irresolution. 11 

All in all, splendid gifts were mated with terrible handicaps. And the worst 
of the handicaps was revealed in the before-quoted letter to his wife in which 
he spoke of forcing the Confederates to a battle on a field of his own selection. 
"A long time must elapse before I can do this," he wrote (it was already 
October 6), "and I expect all the newspapers to abuse me for delay, but I will 
not mind that." A natural patrician, with little knowledge of or feeling for the 
plain people, he did not understand that this was a people's war, and that the 
people's will had constantly to be consulted to ensure popular support. 

n Own Story, 168, 175, 176, 316, 317 (see also die biographical introduction by W. C 
Prime) ; Russell, Diary North and South, Chs. 55-57. W I lie the man,' 7 wrote Russell Oct. 
10, i86i t "but I do not think he is equal to his occasion or his place." The fact of McClellan's 
sense of mission under God that astute soldier James B. Fry (op. cit.) specially emphasizes. 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 



[II ] 

All summer and fall new levies of infantry poured into Washington. Mc- 
Clellan dealt with them systematically. As each regiment arrived it was care- 
fully equipped, drilled, and disciplined as part of a provisional brigade, this 
work being assigned first to Fitz-John Porter, then to Ambrose E. Burnside, 
and later still to Silas Casey. Artillery and cavalry units were assigned to other 
officers for equipment and training. As the troops were made ready, they were 
transferred to permanent brigades on the south side of the Potomac, consisting 
of four regiments apiece. Then as the drill and field maneuvers progressed, the 
brigades were formed into divisions three brigades, meaning twelve regiments, 
to each division. McClellan had in view a larger unit still, familiar to military 
men since Napoleon's time, the corps, but he postponed its creation until ex- 
perience had given the division commanders familiarity in handling large bodies 
of troops, and until he could determine by actual trial the best generals. Two 
divisions would theoretically contain 24,000 men, an adequate number for an 
army corps, and McClellan knew that not many officers are capable of com- 
manding so large a body. 12 

It w r as part of McClellan's plan that he should command a large force of 
artillery. Inheriting from McDowell a pitiable 9 batteries, totaling 30 guns, he 
raised the total to 92 batteries of 520 guns; and he gave each division 4 field 
batteries, one of them taken from the regular army. McClellan also decided to 
create a reserve force of 100 guns, and a siege-train of 500. By the time his 
army was ready to move the amount of ordnance and ordnance stores, far su- 
perior to that possessed by the South, sufficed to satisfy even him. 13 

Cavalry presented both a special problem, arising from the fact that army 
officers had always regarded three years' training as a minimum; it also pre- 
sented a special opportunity in that it could have been the best intelligence 
arm of the service as well as a a unique striking force. 14 McClellan put Brig- 
adier-General George W. Stoneman in charge, telling him to whip the volun- 
teers into shape within six months. Stoneman, a West Pointer from upper New 
York who had been captain in command of Fort Brown, Texas, and had 

12 McQellan's Report, 53, 57. The corps by McClellan's plan was to have 3 infantry 
brigades of 4 regiments each, 4 batteries of artillery, and i regiment of cavalry, giving it a 
nominal strength of 12,000 infantry, 1000 cavalry, and 24 guns; an effective strength of 
10,000 infantry, 700 cavalry, and 24 guns. Own Story, 114. The Confederate army formed 
no corps in the Army of Northern Virginia until it had received eighteen months of 
service. 

13 Swinton, Army of the Potomac, 65. A shrewd Confederate officer, D. H. Hill, later 
wrote that the Federal artillery was always the most effective arm of the service; Battles and 
Leaders, II, 355. 

14 W. W. Averell, in Battles and Leaders, II, 429. 



McCLELLAN AND THE TASKS OF ORGANIZATION 

escaped with part of his men when Twiggs joined the Confederacy, had 
gained McClellan's confidence in the West Virginia campaign. He was destined 
to write his name large in the history of the war. With great rapidity, all ob- 
stacles considered, he organized and trained a division of fourteen regiments, 
with two independent squadrons. To take raw recruits, often unused to arms 
or horses, and turn them into a disciplined, effective cavalry force was a task of 
complex difficulty; while they had also to be schooled in meeting problems of 
the Virginia terrain, with its forest, thickets, rivers, swamps, and hills, its 
deep mud after rains, and its burning midsummer sun. 

Generally speaking, it was impossible to use cavalry as full regiments in 
Virginia; squadrons w r ere the most efficient unit. When Stoneman got his di- 
vision into shape it was distributed among the army, with a small body at head- 
quarters, and a special reserve force under Philip St. George Cooke, a former 
colonel of dragoons who had commanded the Mormon Battalion in Kearny's 
historic march to California. Stoneman had been quartermaster of the battalion. 
Cooke, who had later fought the Sioux and Apaches, and had devised an im- 
proved system of cavalry tactics, was a stiff disciplinarian. He had the poignant 
task of fighting a Southern army which contained both his son John and son- 
in-law J. E. B. Stuart. Beyond hard drill this year Stoneman and Cooke did 
not go. McClellan by fall might have used the cavalry constantly in recon- 
naissance raids, but he showed no interest in risking them to gain information. 15 

"Squads right!" "Right oblique, march!" "Hep, hep, hep!" The immemorial 
bark of sergeants, the rattle of arms, the swirl of dust from red-clay fields 
trampled to powder, the clamor of fife and drum, encircled Washington 
north, west, and south. On some clear afternoons the breeze, bringing the fitful 
strains of massed bands, reported a grand parade in the distance. Visitors 
glimpsed McClellan galloping hard from post to post, a very Kleber in his hard- 
bitten, keen-eyed aspect, his staff following breathless and jaded behind. Sel- 
dom indeed now did a dirty, drunken soldier stain the Washington streets, for 
military police snapped such ragamuffins under stringent arrest. Colonel 
Andrew Porter, whom McClellan had appointed provost-marshal-general, 
used squads of regulars to close disorderly saloons, clear streets and hotel lob- 
bies of loiterers, arrest every man absent without written leave, and put de- 
serters in fear of their lives. He prohibited civilians from visiting camps or 
crossing the Potomac without permits. McClellan credited Porter with making 
Washington one of the quietest cities in the Union. Troop morale rose as men 
felt that they had both a master and friend at the head of the army. 16 

15 Battles and Leaders, II, 429 ff. Cooke was raised from the rank of colonel to that of 
brigadier-general in the regular army, Nov. 12, 1861. 

16 O. R. I, ii, 769; McClellan's Report, 55; O c um Story, 69; Shannon, I, 183; Ropes, 1, 163. 



276 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

The most difficult problems of discipline were presented by several mutinous 
regiments. Although they had considerable reason for discontent, McClellan 
properly made an example of them by prompt and severe action. He sent sixty- 
three men of the Second Maine to the Dry Tortugas for the remainder of the 
war. Their grievances were probably not unlike those of the Fourth Con- 
necticut at Frederick, Maryland (outside McClellan's purview), who rebelled 
because of bad officers, bad fare, and such total lack of uniforms that none had 
coats, few had matching hats, and many appeared even on dress parade in 
underclothing. Fomenters of revolt in the Connecticut regiment were im- 
prisoned. When the New York Seventy-ninth Highlanders rebelled, McClellan 
dealt summarily with them. He sent out a force of infantry, cavalry, and 
artillery to quell them. "The gentlemen at once laid down their arms," he wrote 
his wife, "and I have the ringleaders in irons. They will be tried and probably 
shot tomorrow." 1T 

Such sternness was indispensable, even though the Highlanders had been 
badly treated. They had fought bravely at Bull Run, where their colonel, 
Secretary Cameron's brother, lost his life. After the battle they had been 
refused permission to return briefly to New York to recruit their ranks, al- 
though Secretary Cameron, the commander of the New York militia, and 
the engineering department of the army had all supported their petition. Later 
they had been outraged by news that they would be placed in the division of 
Dan Sickles, whose disreputable record decent men despised. Finally, while 
preparing to hold elections for a new colonel and other officers, they had 
suddenly been put under the command of a stranger, Colonel 1. 1. Stevens of the 
regular army; whereupon the major, senior captain, and four lieutenants sum- 
marily resigned. To cap their discontent, McClellan told them he would not 
inquire into their "frivolous and unfounded" complaints, and that their be- 
havior laid them open to a charge of "the basest cowardice." 

Nobody was shot. Ringleaders were sent briefly to the Dry Tortugas, and 
the regimental colors still more briefly taken away. Stevens won the devotion 
of all the men, who served with distinction. The happy subsequent history of 
the regiment indicated that mismanagement, at a higher level than that of its 
own officers, had been responsible for the trouble. Nevertheless, McClellan's 
peremptory course taught the whole army a salutary lesson. 18 He deserves the 
greatest credit for his insistence on discipline and order. 

17 Own Story, 86 t 99, 100; the Comte de Paris, I, 270, attributes the trouble in the 7 9 th 
largely to grievances about pay and terms of enlistment. W. H. Russell says "the President 
was greatly alarmed" by the mutiny. 

18 William Todd, The 7 $>th Highlanders, N. Y. Vols. (1866), is a superior regimental 
history; see pp. 56-88. 



McCLELLAN AND THE TASKS OF ORGANIZATION 



( HI ] 

The principal impediment McClellan met in bringing his army into efficient 
discipline arose from the poor quality of many officers, high and low. At a later 
date it was fashionable to say that no civilian should have been given an im- 
portant command. 19 This was folly. The regular army simply did not have 
enough officers to go around. Of its small list, many lacked zeal, some shrank 
from responsibility, sticking to petty regular army posts when they might have 
had high volunteer rank, and many were needed in staff rather than field 
commands. It was out of the question to officer 500,000 men from the army 
register of 1860, and had it been possible, it would have been unwise. 

Anglo-American history gave weighty arguments for using civilians in 
high posts. Cromwell and Hampden had left Parliament to fight. In colonial 
days Pepperell of the New England militia had captured Louisbourg from 
French professional soldiers. During the Revolution, Washington, Greene, and 
Knox, all with little or no military experience, had bested veteran British sol- 
diers. In the War of 1812, Andrew Jackson, Jacob Brown, and Winfield Scott 
had all been appointed from civil life, and the two former were militia generals. 
During and after the French Revolution officers sprang from every walk of 
life to become generals and marshals. 

Moreover, in so vast a people's war as this now beginning, with the armies 
on both sides representing almost a levee en masse, much was to be said for 
using popular leaders. The idea was to give talent a chance to rise to the top, 
as it did. Nobody could say in after years that John A. Logan, Jacob D. Cox, 
Carl Schurz, Benjamin Harrison, Lew Wallace, Joshua Chamberlain and 
James A. Garfield were not capable generals. On the Confederate side Na- 
thaniel Bedford Forrest showed real distinction. After all, West Point did not 
differ materially from other good colleges except in a greater study of math- 
ematics, engineering, and drill; the drill there and at army posts never went 
beyond company and regimental tactics; and Grant, Sherman, and others 
learned much more outside the army than in. 

Yet the process of letting talent rise and incompetence fall took time, and 
was both painful and debilitating while it lasted. Too often the State author- 
ities evinced an imbecile carelessness in putting the lives of their young men in 
the hands of stupid, ignorant, and irresponsible leaders. Much depended on 
the State system, the State adjutant-general, and the fiber of the governor. 
Ohio had allowed its regiments to choose their higher officers with some appal- 
ling results, for competition among aspirants produced neglect of discipline, 

19 Ropes takes this view, and naturally some West Point officers always held it. 



27 8 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

cheap electioneering, and occasional bribery. A few lucky regiments like the 
Twenty-third Ohio, with Rosecrans for colonel and Rutherford B. Hayes for 
lieutenant-colonel, obtained admirable officers. But repeatedly some local 
politician, an aspiring lawyer or slick talker, took the lead and held it until 
resignation or removal furnished relief. It was soon noted that cities and large 
towns monopolized the Ohio commissions at the expense of rural areas. 20 In 
other States the governors, acting hurriedly under heavy pressures, chose men 
sometimes well, sometimes ill. 

Morgan in New York shrewdly called on local leaders for advice, and ap- 
pointed committees to investigate candidates and counsel him. In the three 
counties of Chenango, Cortland, and Madison, for example, a committee of 
forty-five unanimously designated Elisha B. Smith, who admirably led the local 
regiment until he was mortally wounded at Port Hudson in 1863. Andrew in 
Massachusetts showed equal sagacity, scouring the State for men of West Point 
education, and next them giving preference to seasoned militia officers. He 
refused, despite pertinacious demands, to grant a commission to sly Caleb 
Gushing. Under still fiercer assaults, he stubbornly declined to make a colonel 
of a Democratic politician who had a large following among the Boston Irish. 
"I would not commission him," thundered Andrew, "if he was as good a sol- 
dier as Julius Caesar, and you should bring an angel from heaven to endorse 
him." 

But even Andrew blundered in making a colonel out of a militia strutter 
who promptly led his men through Boston under the summer sun in a long- 
famous "overcoat march." This appointment, he confessed to Sumner, was 
inexcusable; but he made others nearly as bad one hapless regiment getting a 
superannuated head who was both dishonest and cowardly r and a lieutenant- 
colonel who was an excitable Italian adventurer. The best governors could not 
avoid error. 21 

Cameron in a circular letter tried to inculcate greater care. After wisely 
urging the governors to commission nobody of doubtful health, morals, or 
patriotism, he unwisely suggested that they fix age limits for officers: nobody 
over twenty-two to be a lieutenant, nobody over thirty a captain, nobody 

20 This was true of other States; see Wm. CrofTut and John Morris, Mil. and Civil His- 
tory of Connecticut, 75. Urban leadership was accelerated on a wide front by the war. We 
may repeat that officers were everything to morale. The Second Michigan, for example, 
did admirably until its colonel was made a brigadier-general, and its lieutenant-colonel took 
a post in the regular army. The new lieutenant-colonel and the major being poor heads, 
it went to pieces. "The regiment," wrote a Michigan veteran, Wm. W. Duffield, to Gover- 
nor Austin Blair, "is very much disorganized, and it would be a work of great labor to 
bring it up." Aug. 23, 1861; Austin Blair Papers, Burton Hist. Coll. 
21 Pearson, Andrew, I, 233-235. The colonel who marched his men on a hot day through 
the Hub wearing their overcoats, and soon repeated the performance in hotter Washington, 
declared that their shoddy uniforms had to be covered up. 



McCLELLAN AND THE TASKS OF ORGANIZATION 

over thirty-five a major, and nobody over forty-five a colonel, except when 
special circumstances dictated a qualification of the rule. Governor Andrew 
contemptuously declared that he would appoint a good man anywhere short of 
Methuselah's age. As a matter of fact, an excellent officer might be as old as 
Wadsworth, who was approaching sixty when slain, or as youthful as Nelson 
A. Miles, who formed a company but was deemed too immature by his su- 
periors to command men in battle. Beginning with a minor staff position at 
twenty-two, Miles was major-general four years later. George A. Custer, a 
graduate of West Point in 1861, earned his spurs as lieutenant at twenty-one 
and was a general before the war closed. Arthur MacArthur, carrying the flag 
of his Wisconsin volunteers up Missionary Ridge at eighteen, commanded a 
regiment before he was twenty. And Thomas W. Hyde of Maine, making a 
report in Virginia to Major-General Sumner, startled that officer by his juvenile 
look. "You a major!" exclaimed Sumner, then in his mid-sixties. "My God, 
sir! You will command the armies of the United States at my age." 22 

Gradually the quality of the officers w T as bettered, though the work of 
providing an efficient body of regimental commanders was to take a long time. 
As one factor, Scott's objections to assigning regular army officers to volunteer 
units, supported by Cameron, were broken down. As another, the soldiers 
themselves forced many unfit men to quit. As a third, the examining boards 
authorized by Congress wielded an effective broom. 23 

Scott gave way slowly. He stood out against a plea by Governor Dennison 
that he provide five regular army officers, if possible West Pointers, to head 
five Ohio regiments. Olden of New Jersey met better fortune, however, when 
he sent an agent to Lincoln with a letter arguing that as he could not find men 
competent to lead his new regiments, the general government ought to provide 
at least the colonels. The President asked Scott to see what could be done, and 
in due course New Jersey got two regular officers as heads of her two newest 
regiments. 24 

Apparently Cameron did not bestir himself in such matters. Governor 
Andrew tried in vain to obtain an answer to his plea that Captain T. J. C. 

22 DAB; Hyde, Following the Greek Cross, 45, 46. 

23 Scott believed the integrity of the litde regular army must be protected against all 
hazards and got Cameron to agree. Under the pleas of Governor Andrew, both Massachu- 
setts Senators and Henry Wilson and Charles Sumner were powerful men tried earnestly 
but in vain to let the Bay State select a few regular army officers for colonels. Adjutant- 
General Lorenzo Thomas, a narrow bureaucrat, said that more than a hundred such appli- 
cations had been made, that if- they yielded in one instance they must do so in all, and that 
this would sorely damage the army, already hurt by the resignation of so many Southern- 
ers. "Your only hope is to obtain if you can the services of some experienced officers now 
out of the Army. . . ." wrote Wilson sadly to Andrew. June 27, 1861; Andrew Papers, 
MHS. 

24 O. R. Ill, i, 380, 387; 451, 452. Olden's letter was dated Aug. 24, 1861. 



2 g THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Amory of the regular army should take charge of the Seventeenth Massachu- 
setts. Finally, late in August, he appealed to McClellan. The general thereupon 
gave Cameron some common-sense advice. "I do not think it possible to employ 
our Army officers to more advantage than in commanding divisions, brigades 
and regiments of new troops," he wrote, "particularly when it is remembered 
that we have almost none of the old troops at our disposal." Amory was ap- 
pointed. 

Similarly, Fremont in the West made a test case of a regular-army lieutenant 
who had been sent to St. Louis by Governor Morton of Indiana in command 
of a regiment, but had been told by the War Department that he could not 
keep that position. Wishing to retain him and other regular officers, Fremont 
appealed to Montgomery Blair. The postmaster-general prevailed upon Cam- 
eron to agree that as many as a hundred regular-army officers of the grade 
of captain or lieutenant might be allotted to the volunteers, their places to be 
partially filled by commissioning the two upper classes at West Point as lieu- 
tenants, and Lincoln endorsed this plan. It went a long way toward making 
effective the stipulation in the new army law that the commanding general 
might detail any regular army officer to field service with volunteer regiments. 
From this time forward an increasing number of veterans of the Western posts 
began to appear in colonelcies of the new army. 25 The total, however, could 
not be large among the five hundred and more regiments. 

The troops themselves had to take a hand in weeding out misfits and pro- 
moting able subordinates, and a half -thousand regimental histories prove that 
they were merciless in exerting pressure. An efficient officer had to have much 
more than some fair knowledge of tactics, strategy, and camp management; 
he had above all to be apt in commanding men. This aptitude could neither be 
acquired by study nor imparted by older officers it was mainly inborn. One 
military chronicler speaks of "that rare faculty of enforcing rigid discipline 
without severity, and of exerting the most absolute command without harshness 
or arrogance." In unit after unit, the volunteers by giving evidence to examin- 
ing boards, by letters to Congressmen, or by sharp indications of disapproval 
brought a bad major or captain down; and good sergeants and lieutenants 
moved up. Some troop choices were bad, but more were sound. 

Thus Edward S. Bragg of Wisconsin wrote his wife from Arlington, 
October 26, 1861: "Our regiment has taken a purge this week. We have 
forced ten resignations from officers, and put better men in their place." He 
added: "The men who resigned, did not have our confidence, and we placed 
the dose to their lips, and made them swallow it." If an officer could not handle 
his men expertly on the drill ground, their contempt became patent. If he 
25 Ibid.) 427, 444; F. B. Heltman, ed, Hist. Register and Dictionary of U. S. Army. 



McCLELLAN AND THE TASKS OF ORGANIZATION 2 gi 

treated subordinates arbitrarily, flinched in battle, idled, or drank to excess, 
the contempt became intolerance. 26 

When Cameron appointed the examining boards authorized by Congress, 
incompetent officers fled like rabbits escaping a meadow before a pack of 
hounds. In one division two colonels and twenty-five other officers, summoned 
to appear, incontinently resigned. By the end of the first week in November, 
1 86 1, nearly 150 had thus severed their connections. To get rid of such men 
for good, the War Department lost no time in decreeing that resigned officers 
would not again receive commissions. 27 Probably more colonels would have 
gone but for the fact that many were so important politically that they felt 
well protected. McClellan speeded the work not only of examining boards 
but of courts-martial, which were specially useful because they were immune 
from the political pressures which the boards often felt. Having a deep West 
Point contempt for "scrub" officers, McClellan handled them without gloves. 
His discharge of one junior commander brought him into conflict with Lincoln 
himself. Altogether, within eight months after the establishment of the boards, 
310 officers were dismissed or resigned to avoid dismissal. 28 

The indirect effect of the board examinations in deterring governors from 
rash appointments and in stimulating officers to hard study and vigilant effort 
was doubtless even greater than the direct results. McClellan notes how many 
of his junior officers taught themselves while teaching their men. They read 
Hardee, Mahan, Napier, Kinglake, Jomini, and other texts, keeping a few 
jumps ahead of their subordinates. The Comte de Paris also describes the labor- 
ious effort of unschooled officers to educate themselves. Often after a hard day 
of drill the colonel would first give his juniors a careful lecture on strategy, 
tactics, and camp management, and then, long after most men were asleep, 
he, his lieutenant-colonel, and his major would burn their desk lamps far into 
the night. L. A. Grant of the Fifth Vermont was typical of scores of officers 
who, entering with no military training whatever, by hard application to details, 
books, and operations, made themselves into generals. The striking fact is not 
that failures appeared, but that the citizen army produced so many admirable 
leaders, brave, conscientious, and resourceful. 29 

Public opinion after Bull Run also had a marked effect on the efficiency of 

26 On forced resignations, see Burt, Memoirs, 56; Augustus Buell, "The Cannoneer:" 
Recollections of Service in the Army of the Potomac, 24; History of the Fifty-Fifth Illinois, 
170, 465; Bragg Papers, Wis. State Hist. Soc. Charges against an officer were often tried 
before a regimental court of other officers; see Henry Lee Papers, MHS, for instances, 

27 O. R. Ill, i, 411; General Order No. 57, Aug. 15, 1861. 

28 Shannon, I, 186, 187; Eckenrode and Conrad, McClellan, 28; Swinton, Army of the 
Potomac. 

29 Own Story, 97; Comte de Paris, I, 272, 273; G. G. Benedict, Vermont in the Civil War, 

I 35 2 > 353- 



2 g 2 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

officers. New York newspapers on August i published a telling memorandum 
by some of the most influential men of the city. It complained of the govern- 
ment's failure to supervise the selection of officers closely; of the wretched 
intrusion of political, local, and personal considerations into the appointments 
by various governors; of the bad consequences of company elections of lower 
officers, and officer elections of colonels; of the lax discipline throughout the 
volunteer organization, generals hesitating to jerk up weak colonels and 
colonels to castigate inept captains; and of the reluctance of the government to 
remove incompetent generals. In dealing with officer efficiency, the people 
were plainly in advance of Washington. Indeed, they would have supported 

Lincoln and Cameron in much more vigorous measures than the Administration 

>j 

took. Public sentiment was strongly behind all McClellan's energetic steps in 
organizing and disciplining the army. 30 



[ IV ] 

In still other ways the steadily increasing army about Washington was 
made ready for combat. McClellan gave careful attention to provisions, cloth- 
ing, and health. In this he had willing assistance from that conscientious ad- 
ministrator, Quartermaster-General Montgomery C. Meigs, whose zeal and 
skill were invaluable. The Secretary of the Sanitary Commission very justly 
wrote the editors of the National Intelligencer August 12 commending "the 
prompt and generous action of the enlightened head of the Quartermaster's 
Department, to whose energetic and comprehensive views of duty the nation 
has yet to be informed in what innumerable ways it is indebted." 

Down to Bull Run the diet of the Union troops had been ill balanced, ill 
prepared, and ill served. After the first confusions of the spring, abundant 
supplies of bread, pork, and beef were available in most camps, but army 
regulations permitted no green vegetables, and except by gift or foraging the 
soldiers got none. Even when food of proper variety was at hand, bad cooking 
often ruined it. The army that marched to Manassas was on the verge of severe 
losses by scurvy and dysentery. But after McClellan took charge, the subsist- 
ence department under Colonel H. F. Clarke and the quartermaster's depart- 
ment under Van Vliet acted with energy. They brought in ample stores, 
established depots, and trained distributing officers. Both had to attend in per- 
son to innumerable details, and the reports they soon submitted were not only 
a story of heavy labors well performed, but a shrewd guide for other officers 
bearing similar responsibilities. Not once during his command of the army, 

30 S. S. Cox, Three Decades, 159-162. 



McCLELLAN AND THE TASKS OF ORGANIZATION 

McClellan later declared, did troops go without rations from any fault of the 
commissary officers. 31 

Though the sanitary and medical system of all American forces remained 
weak, Surgeon Charles S. Tripler, who in August became medical director of 
the Army of the Potomac, was able, with the aid of the Sanitary Commission, to 
effect many improvements. One of his first acts was to move the men camping 
on Arlington flats, a third of whom were sick with typhoid, malaria, or dysen- 
tery. The eagle-eyed Frederick Law Olmsted, famous for his volumes of 
Southern travel, was secretary of the Commission. Making an inspection just 
before Bull Run, he had found the captains specially indifferent to foul latrines, 
garbage-littered camp streets, crowded tents shut tight against "night air," and 
unbathed men. They tolerated such filthy violations of the most elementary 
health rules that he called the whole system pestilential. 32 Now they, and 
colonels and generals above them, were made to understand that discipline 
included minute attention to cleanliness, fresh air, good water, and recreation. 

In September, Olmsted reported that sanitary regulations w r ere being en- 
forced with ten times the old rigor, that even the regiments most demoralized 
two months earlier were now hardy and cheerful, and that the best-disciplined 
units were the most contented units. Improvement continued steadily. During 
the fall and winter (September-February), the number of sick fell to 6.18 per 
cent, more than half the cases being slight illnesses under treatment in quarters. 
Meanwhile the Sanitary Commission had launched a determined drive to re- 
form the medical department of the army and oust its feeble head, the aged 
Surgeon-General C A. Finley. 

Measles, which many regiments brought with them when they left home, 
was prevalent throughout the camps. Tripler knew of no way to prevent its 
ravages. Other causes of illness, which Tripler was powerless to remedy, were 
shoddy blankets, poor tents, and inadequate clothing. On November 8 the 
surgeon of the Eighth Illinois Cavalry reported that 200 of his men had received 
no overcoats from the government, and that many of them were reduced to 
their drawers. The historian of the First Massachusetts Infantry recorded much 
sickness in their Washington camp because the men's clothing did not protect 
them from variations of temperature; "when darkness came, instead of sleep, 
there was a perpetual shiver." Medical men knew how to prevent smallpox, 
and Tripler recorded with pride that though it was prevalent in many regions 

31 See the Olmsted-Harris Report on Washington camps, 14 n\; Sanitary Commission, 
"Document No. 28; McClellan, Report, 69. 

32 Adams, Doctors in Blue, 18, correctly attributes much of the bad sanitation to the 
"incorrigible individualism" of American recruits. Men whose position in society would 
have demanded cleanliness and decorum washed neither their persons nor their clothes in 
camp. 



284 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

from which the army drew its men, vaccination and other precautions kept it 
from gaining a foothold in the army. They did not know how to prevent ty- 
phoid, and in October and November, with an army averaging 130,000 men, 
there were 7,932 cases of fever of all sorts, about 1,000 of them with a typhoid 
listing. 33 

The sicklists of regiments from different parts of the country varied greatly. 
For example, in November, with a mean ratio of 6.5% sick in the whole army, 
12 Massachusetts regiments had an average of 50 sick each; 5 Vermont reg- 
iments, an average of 144 each; 35 Pennsylvania regiments, an average of 61 
each. In January, 1862, the Twelfth Massachusetts, 1005 strong, had only 4 
sick; the Thirteenth Massachusetts, 1008 strong, n sick; the Fifteenth Mas- 
sachusetts, 809 strong, had 68; the Fifth Vermont, 1000 strong, had 271 sick; 
and the Fourth Vermont, 1047 strong, 244. Mortality rates for enlisted men 
ran twice as high as for officers. 

The diseases from which the men suffered most were fevers, measles, various 
catarrhal complaints, and chronic diarrhea and dysentery. The two last 
maladies had always been the greatest plagues of armies. In November the 
Army of the Potomac reported only 280 cases of chronic diarrhea and 69 of 
chronic dysentery the best record of any army in the world, Tripler be- 
lieved. Of the 1331 cases of measles that month, nearly all were of a mild 
form, and the ailment soon ran its course. 

Each regiment had its surgeons who had to be carefully instructed, often 
in the very rudiments of camp requirements, and kept in hand. Tripler as- 
signed the responsibility for this to the brigade surgeons, competent medi- 
cal men who had in large part seen the battlefield of Bull Run. Each was re- 
quired to inspect brigade camps, maintain adequate medical supplies, send 
Tripler a weekly health report from regimental surgeons, and furnish cas- 
ualty lists after battle. The improvised base hospitals first used about Wash- 
ington were a disgrace to the country. Occupying old houses, shops, barns, 
and schools, with poor plumbing or none and poor ventilation, they literally 
murdered many a soldier. Their attendants, nurses, and general staff were 
as green, slipshod, and ignorant as if they had stepped from the pages of 
Tobias Smollett. When the Sanitary Commission insisted that well-designed 
new hospitals must be built and competently equipped, Tripler gladly en- 
dorsed the demand. 34 

33 Though an English doctor had announced in 1854 the theory that intestinal dis- 
charges, carried by flies or other agencies, cause typhoid, and the theory had been proved 
valid, most Americans still attributed it to "miasmas," fatigue, poor food, and whatnot. 
Troops refused to believe that it was a filth disease. Adams, Doctors in Blue, 203. 

34 Stille, Hist, of the Sanitary Commission^ 95; McClellan, Report, 65-68. The general 
hospitals in Maryland and about Washington by September had 2700 beds; William Q. 
Maxwell, Lmcoltfs Fifth Wheel, 53. 



AtcCLELLAN AND THE TASKS OF ORGANIZATION 2 g 5 

Two able officers of the Sanitary Commission, after due investigation, 
brought forward a plan for building new base hospitals on the pavilion system, 
each ward to be a self-sufficient structure for forty or fifty patients. The first 
proposals were modest, providing merely for fifteen thousand sick and wounded. 
Tripler, Quartermaster-General Meigs, Van Vliet, and others worked out 
the details. In October Cameron approved them, and asked the Commission 
to help select five sites. Thus was inaugurated a great hospital system which 
became one of the noblest triumphs of the war even though the five build- 
ings were temporarily reduced to two, partly because Tripler did not have 
enough medical officers for more, partly because McClellan feared graft in 
hasty construction. 35 

McClellan had laid a sound foundation for future activity. The army was 
far better organized, officered, equipped, and trained than when he had 
taken charge, and its morale was infinitely improved. A new sense of con- 
fidence spread in early autumn from Washington throughout the North. Men 
waited eagerly for the young general to deliver an overwhelming blow; for 
the kind of battle that ends a war a Ramillies, an Austerlitz. 



[ V] 

As Northerners plucked up confidence in their armies, a piece of happy 
news from the navy burst upon the nation. On September 2 the press blazed 
with headlines that sent everybody looking for maps. "Brilliant Naval Vic- 
tory," ran the captions. "Hatteras Inlet Forts Captured: 730 Prisoners, 35 
Cannon Taken." Gideon Welles's department had for the first time seized 
national attention. 

This surprise blow was delivered at a strategic spot. A long thin shield 
of outlying sea-banks, a prolonged wall flung eastward in bluntly triangular 
form, protects the Southern coast from Cape Henry, opposite Newport News, 
Va., down to Cape Lookout, opposite Beaufort, N. C. This sea-wall is com- 
posed of pebbly beaches, dunes that shift except where pinned down by wire- 
grass, and some clay stretches bearing loblolly pine, live oak, and holly. At 
the apex of the triangle lies Cape Hatteras, the boss of the shield fronting 
the stormy Atlantic. Here the treacherous Diamond Shoals extend twenty- 
five miles out to sea, a graveyard strewn with the skeletons of ships. Outside 
the sea-wall the roaring Atlantic is hag-ridden with fog, winter sleet, autumn 
hurricane, and year-long tempests; eagles and ospreys soar above the flashing 
waves. Inside are the calm waters of Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds, where 

35 Maxwell, 54, 55. Regimental hospitals, usually made of three hospital tents, offered 
temporary accommodation for small numbers of men. 



2 86 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

sailboats glide safely, and ducks, geese, and gulls feed in peace. Hatteras Inlet, 
ten miles below the cape, opens into these inland seas. Noted in peace-time 
for its tarpon, dolphin, marlin, and swordfish, it was now the exit from a 
hornet's nest. Raiders sped out it to harass Union merchantmen; blockade- 
runners moved in and out. Fort Hatteras and its flank defense, Fort Clark, 
protected the inlet. 

The Union expedition seized these forts in a foray so sudden and easy 
that it seemed an adventurous lark. General Ben Butler and Commodore Silas 
Stringham commanded the amphibious force. Their flotilla of some fifteen craft 
left Hampton Roads August 25, and at sundown next day anchored at the 
rendezvous. Butler landed a small force of troops at the inlet; Stringham turned 
the Dahlgren guns of his larger ships the Minnesota., W abash, Susquehanna 
on the defenses, easily outranging their smooth-bores. As shells burst inside 
Fort Hatteras, its commander saw that the place would soon be a shambles. 
He surrendered to save needless bloodshed, and the Union commanders de- 
cided to hold and garrison the position. On August 30 Ben Butler sent a jubi- 
lant official report to his superior: se 

The importance of this point cannot be overrated. When the channel is 
buoyed out any vessel can carry 15 feet of water over it with ease. Once in- 
side there is a safe anchorage in all weathers. From thence the whole coast of 
Virginia and North Carolina from Norfolk to Cape Lookout is within our 
reach by light-draft vessels which cannot possibly live at sea during the winter 
months. ... In my judgment it is a station second in importance only to 
Fortress Monroe on this coast. As a depot for coaling and supplies for the 
blockading squadron it is invaluable. 

No immediate steps, however, were taken to utilize the advantages which 
the Union had so swiftly gained. The stroke galvanized the Confederates into 
hurried action to strengthen their coastal defenses. While they did this, the 
North, it would seem, might have found it easy to land troops on Roanoke 
Island, forty miles north of Cape Hatteras, a gateway to all southeastern 
Virginia. But in fact nothing was done in this direction for three months. 
Why? One reason lay in diversionary action by McClellan. Just after the 
capture of Fort Hatteras, he obtained permission from the War Department 
to organize an amphibious force of ten regiments with a fleet of light vessels, 
of which Ambrose E. Burnside was appointed head. This force, under Mc- 
Clellan's direct command as part of the Army of the Potomac, was to operate 
in Chesapeake and Virginia waters as might best assist his main array. Before 
1 86 r ended, Burnside had assembled 20,000 men and a hundred small craft 
but McClellan made no use of this potentially quick-striking body. 

36 To Gen. John E. Wool; Private and Official Corr. of Butler, I, 229-235. 



COAST AND SOUNDS 
or 

XTOBZH CAROLINA. 




Ben Butler and Commodore Silas Stringham, Driving Through Hatteras 
Inlet, Seemed to Confederates to Menace Richmond's Southeastern 

Connections, 



288 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

If the list of naval achievements was still short, it was clear that the govern- 
ment had capable administrators in the vigilant, hot-tempered Gideon Welles 
and his chief assistant, the cheerful, robust, self-confident Gustavus Vasa Fox, 
whose long naval experience gave him sureness of touch. 37 They had to deal 
with a tremendous complex of problems. When the war began only twenty- 
four steam-driven vessels were in active service; they were scattered all over 
the globe; only the newest ships were equipped with powerful guns; although 
France and Britain had experimented with armored vessels, and such warships 
had proved their effectiveness in the attack on the Russian works at Kinburn 
in the Crimea in 1855, the United States had no ironclads; and the supply of 
trained seamen was inadequate for a sudden expansion of the fleet. But though 
Welles became a target for acrid criticism, the two men grappled doughtily 
with their difficulties. 

They augmented the naval force at hand by four obvious measures. That 
is, they recalled all the ships on foreign stations but three; they refitted all 
the usable vessels laid up in docks or harbors; they began constructing new 
warships in the navy yards; and they purchased or chartered good vessels 
w r herever they could be found. They gradually put a construction program 
of fast steamers and ironclads under way. They resisted all efforts to institute 
State navies, and insisted on the strict equality of the naval establishment with 
the military establishment. It soon became plain that naval fighting would 
take place not on the high seas, but in coastal and river waters. It also be- 
came evident that the principal contribution the navy could make toward 
victory would lie in a steady constriction of the blockade. In the end this 
blockade, colossal and unremitting, was to be one of the greatest naval under- 
takings of all history. 

An impossible task it at first seemed. The Confederate coast line came to 
3000 or 3500 miles; it was pierced by innumerable bays, inlets, and rivers; and 
a considerable part of it, like that bordering the Virginia-Carolina sounds, 
was really a double line of coast. When Lincoln proclaimed the blockade 
(April 19, 27, 1861) few ships were available to enforce it. But Welles and 
Fox persevered. By July in 1861 they had sent 21 purchased or chartered 
steamers to join the blockade service; and these, with regular naval vessels, 
made forty-two steamships for the cordon. The list by the closing days of the 
year rose to about 150 ships. And though Confederates derided the blockade, 
it was already showing some results; it cut off much of the expected European 
aid in rearming and refitting the Southern forces after Bull Run. 38 

37 Fox, chief clerk of the Navy Department, May 9, Assistant Secretary, Aug. i, 1861. 

38 Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy, 250-253; J. R. Soley, The Blockade and the Cruisers, 
jiff. 



McCLELLAN AND THE TASKS OF ORGANIZATION 

When the Confederate envoy Slidell held his first interview with high 
French officials they asked why it was that, if so many vessels had broken 
the blockade, very little cotton had reached neutral ports. The Foreign 
Minister was especially inquisitive. "I told him," writes Slidell, "that they were 
generally of small burden and that spirits of turpentine offered greater profits 
than an equal volume of cotton. That, although a very large proportion of 
the vessels that attempted to run the blockade, either to or from our ports, 
had succeeded in passing, the risk of capture was sufficiently great to deter 
those who had not a very adventurous spirit from attempting it." 39 A few ex- 
cerpts from the diary kept by Jacob F. Schirmer in Charleston show how the 
pinch began to be felt: 40 

May 31 (1861). News. The war steamers have again appeared for a block- 
ade, and today they stopped a British schooner going out and ordered her 
back, the British consul has required an explanation. 

June i. Schooner Mary Clinton: news today that she has been captured by 
a U. S. man of war and sent to New York, she sailed from here on the loth 
from New Orleans with 814 casks of rice 285 of which was shipped by H. 
Corbin & Co. 

June 23. The men of war are still on the blockade, no arrivals of vessels, 
no more privateers have gone out from here, it is feared that Capt. Welsman's 
ship Amelia has been captured. 

July 3 1 . Our privateers appear to be doing something on the wide ocean 
and in several cases are successful. Our blockade is still carried on and every 
article of consumption particularly in the way of groceries are getting very 
high. 

September 9. Our privateeers appear to have made a close of their business 
as all of the ports are closed against us. 

September 17. Arrival. The secession gun was fired this morning as a salute 
to the news of the arrival of a large English steamship owned by John Fraser & 
Co. into Savannah from Liverpool with a large cargo for our city. 

September 25. The blockade is still an eyesore. Every arrangements were 
made to send the Nashville to Europe, but there is no doubt the news have 
reached the blockade and they have been reinforced, and the experiment is 
partly abandoned. 

October 16. Ship Thomas Watson from Liverpool for this port went 
ashore on Folly Island. The blockaders raced her, the crew left the ship in 
boats and reached the shore, the ship was eventually burnt by the Lincoln 
rascals. 

November 30. Business perfectly prostrated everything enormously high 
salt selling at 15 and 20 cents a quart hardly any shoes to be had dry goods of 
every kind running out. 

39 Undated MS entitled "Notes of Interview with Messrs. Thouvenel, Persigny, Baroche, 
and Fould" in George Eustis Papers, LC. 

40 Joseph F. Schirmer Diary, Charleston Hist. Soc. The punctuation has been mended 
for clarity. 



290 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

The blockade would have been stronger had it not been necessary to de- 
tach war ships at times to pursue Confederate cruisers. Thus when Captain 
Raphael Semines with the armed steamer Sumter escaped from New Orleans 
to the high seas late in June, 1861, half a dozen blockading vessels were sent 
off in a vain effort to seize her. No form of service was more disagreeably 
monotonous and confined than that on a blockading squadron; its boredoms 
seemed endless. But no sendee was more important than this strangling hold 
on the economy of the South. 




The General Who Would Not Dare 



AN EXPERT German officer who acted as observer with General Kuropatkin 
in the Russo-Japanese War was inspired by his irresolution to write that no 
worse commander can be found than "the leader who does not dare." 1 By 
late fall of 1861 many Washington observers feared that the North had such 
a commander. McClellan had properly insisted that thorough preparation must 
precede his stroke; but how did he define thoroughness? 

The first great requisite was to make sure of Washington's defenses. Mc- 
Dowell had begun to build fortifications, and McClellan with General J. G. 
Barnard as chief engineer rapidly pressed the work until about fifty posts, 
mounting three hundred guns, surrounded the capital. The initial redoubts 
and forts were thrown up to protect particular points. Then, as the engineers 
found time, additional works were built here and there. The main forts, 
placed about a half-mile apart, had parapets eleven or twelve feet thick, sur- 
rounded by an abattis, but without a glacis; the guns were fired through em- 
brasures, or from barbettes. No continuous entrenchments connected the 
posts. 

South of the Potomac the first line of forts reached from Georgetown to 
Alexandria in an arc about fourteen miles long and ten miles in radius. Here, 
before offensive operations opened, the line included eighteen strong posts, 
extending from the Virginia end of the chain bridge opposite Georgetown 
(Fort Mary) past Arlington Heights, past the Virginia end of the Long Bridge, 
and on to Forts Ellsworth and Lyon in front of Alexandria. A similar chain 
of forts also extended around Washington on the north side of the Potomac, 
at distances of four to eight miles from the city. Farther south in Virginia 
the government commenced a second line by building forts at Munson's and 
Upton's Hills, but when the Confederates retreated from Manassas it decided 
not to extend this outer arc. British officers who inspected the fortifications 
were impressed by their strength and by the fact that it would require a large 
i Colonel Gaedke quoted in N. Y. Nation, vol. 80 (March 16, 1905), 205. 

291 



2 92 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

number of troops to man them efficiently. It was plain that unless kept well 
garrisoned, they might be quickly penetrated and overrun. 2 

With these fortifications at his back, McClellan intended to make his army 
complete in all respects, perfecting its arrangements with a thoroughness that 
von Moltke later taught the world to call Prussian. Everywhere improvisation 
must give way to plan. Each item of equipment arms, munitions, tents, 
blankets, clothing, food, medicines, ambulances, entrenching tools, pontoon 
bridges, depots of supplies, transport was given meticulous attention. Wash- 
ington marveled at the endless trains of wagons, mountainous stores, and 
ever finer tenue of the soldiers. It was McClellan's ambition to put into the 
field the best-organized, best-trained, best-armed, best-fed, and best-uniformed 
army the hemisphere perhaps the world had ever seen. 

By fall he was well on the way to his goal With two glaring exceptions, 
the surgical and hospital arrangements, and the information system, his fore- 
sight covered every prime requirement. Part of the drill he instituted was 
highly specialized. The engineers, for example, were taught to make trust- 
worthy reconnaissances of the roads in front, to fix the best lines for en- 
trenchments, to choose the most advantageous positions for battle, and to build 
defensive works and siege lines in the most efficient fashion. The topographi- 
cal corps, starting without reliable maps of any part of Virginia, became so 
expert that when heavy fighting took place before Richmond, they knew as 
much about some of the terrain though not about the way in which weather 
affected it as the Confederates. 3 The nation was to pay heavily, however, 
for lack of good intelligence agencies to collect data on enemy numbers 
and movements, for ignorance of streams and floods, and for lack of facilities 
to deal with an avalanche of battle casualties. 

The army reviews, held primarily to inspire confidence among the men, 
became more and more imposing. They impressed Americans, who traveled 
even from New York to see them, more than experienced European observers. 
Regis de Trobriand, for example, son of one of Napoleon's generals and a 
cosmopolite, thought that the 3000 cavalry who were reviewed September 24 
were indifferently mounted, and amateurish in the formation columns and 
other evolutions; W. H. Russell, looking at several parades, judged the men 
superior to the three-month militia, but still far from being soldiers. The 
Washington correspondent of the New York Times., describing an artillery- 

2 See the confidential report of Captains T. Mahon and R. Grant, and Lieutenant T. C. 
Price, Aug. i, 1862, to the British Commander in Chief, Canada; War Office Files, London. 
These officers visited the United States May 12 to July 7, 1862, spending much time with 
McClellan. A map of the fortifications is in Battles and Leaders, I, 172. 

3 General J. G. Barnard not only took able charge of the Washington fortifications, 
but looked after the training of volunteer engineer forces. Brigadier-General A. A. Hum- 
phreys, succeeding J. W. Macomb, was chief of topographical engineers. 



THE GENERAL WHO WOULD NOT DARE 

cavalry review October 8 on the plain east of the Capitol, praised the troops 
but criticized the "dull, heavy" way McClellan managed them: "It is a stupid 
performance generally, and today's was an aggravation of all previous de- 
fects." Most observers, however, were delighted, and some journalists, the 
New York Herald heading the McClellan claque, were ecstatic. Bayard Taylor 
gives us a spirited picture of the general and troops at a late September 
review: 

There were McDowell, Porter, Keyes, Blenker, Smith, and Marcy, all 
manly, gallant faces and figures of true military bearing: Cols. De Trobriand 
and Salm-Salm, with their dashing, chivalresque air; the Prince de Joinville, 
twisted and stooping, lounging on his horse; the Orleans princes with their 
mild, amiable faces and aspect of languid interest in all, a most remarkable 
group of figures. A horse's length in advance sat the smallest man of the party, 
broadshouldered, strong-chested, strong-necked, and strong-jawed, one hand 
upon his hip, while the other, by an occasional rapid motion, flung some com- 
munication to the passing squadrons of cavalry. The visor of his cap was well 
pulled down over his eyes, yet not a man in the lines escaped his observation. 
His glance seemed to take in at once the whole spectacle, yet without losing 
any of its smallest details. . . . Something in his figure, his attitude, and the 
square, tenacious set of his jaws reminded me strikingly of Field Marshal 
Radetzsky. I scanned the lines of his face. ... All was cool, prompt, de- 
termined, and self-reliant. 4 

On November 20, McClellan staged his grandest exhibition. On a broad 
plain eight miles from Washington in the direction of Fairfax Court House, 
he gathered the entire Army of the Potomac. The long columns and solid 
squares, a hundred thousand men marching and countermarching under waving 
banners as bands played, made the brightest military pageant ever seen in 
America. Lincoln, the Cabinet, the diplomatic corps, and thousands of spec- 
tators watched. McClellan, escorted by a staff glittering with gold lace, a 
bodyguard, and two regiments of regular cavalry, radiated confidence. Count- 
less recruits that autumn day, anticipating early victory, had not the slightest 
premonition of the terrible years of alternate defeat and victory that were to 
turn the glittering volunteer force into a tougher body of veterans than 
Hannibal's at Cannae or Frederick's at Leuthen. Yet had they been able to 
look ahead, few would have quailed, and not many would have repined. Word 
had run through the army that the review heralded an early advance, and if 
they were ready to give blows, they were also ready to receive them. 5 

4 Russell, My Diary North and South; De Trobriand, Four Years with the Army of the 
Potomac, 89-92; N. Y. Herald, Oct. 9; Taylor's letter Sept. 24, 1861, in N. Y. Weekly 
Tribune, Oct. 5, 1862. W. H. Beach, The First New York (Lincoln) Cavalry, 50, 51, says 
the reviews "excited the greatest enthusiasm" among troops. 

5 Theodore B. Gates, The War of the Rebellion, 165; N. Y. Herald, Times, Nov. 21, ^^. 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

( I ] 

While McClellan was thus imparting vigor and firmness to the army, 
he was making two blunders, one in his treatment of Scott, and one in his 
mishandling of Congressional and public opinion. 

No real evidence supports McClellan's subsequent complaint that Scott 
regarded him jealously. It is true that the old general would have preferred 
the appointment of Henry W. Halleck, disapproved of McClellan's large 
staff, and thought an army organization by brigades sufficient. But these were 
the legitimate views of an old-fashioned commander, whose jealousy was 
for his opinions and dignity only, and whose conservative nature opposed 
innovation. It is also true that he doubted McClellan's scares about rebel at- 
tack. By birth and training a Southerner, he was usually more courteous to 
men of his own section than to Northerners. But if sensitive and irascible, he 
was always large-hearted; he felt a high regard for McClellan's abilities, and 
gave him an honest welcome to his high post. 6 

Had McClellan remembered this fall that he was technically subordinate 
to Scott, that with all his fussy pomposity the old general had performed un- 
forgettable services, and that courtesy evokes courtesy, friction might have 
been avoided. He needed but to keep the deferential spirit of his message to 
Scott during the West Virginia campaign: "All that I know of war I have 
learned from you. ... It is my ambition to merit your praise and never 
to merit your censure." He had arrived in the capital convinced that he would 
soon supplant Scott. Had he waited patiently, the old general's infirmities 
would soon have removed him but, too impatient to wait, he first began lec- 
turing his superior, then openly ignored him, and finally affronted him. 

Spoiled by years of quick success, McClellan was made more cockily self- 
assertive by the adulation Washington gave him. "I find myself in a new and 
strange position," he wrote his wife: "President, Cabinet, General Scott, and 
all deferring to me. By some strange operation of magic I have become the 
power of the land." Not a power, but the power! Visiting the Senate to 
press his staff bill, he was "quite overwhelmed by the congratulations I re- 
ceived and the respect with which I was treated." While beseeching God 
for wisdom, he evinced a self-confidence more than superb. "I ... am con- 
fident that I can lead these armies to victory once more," he wrote the day 
after reaching Washington. A week later he was more boastful: "I shall carry 
this thing en grand and crush the rebels in one campaign." 7 

6 Elliott, Scott, 733. For the West Virginia campaign, Scott even wanted McClellan 
given a gold medal; McClellan's Own Story, 82. E. B. Keyes, Fifty Years Observation, 407, 
calls Scott haughty to Yankees. 

7 McClellan's Otun Story, Ch. 5, with similar statements. Students of history must 



THE GENERAL WHO WOULD NOT DARE 

As scores of important men spoke to him as the leader who could save 
the country, suggesting the Presidency or even a dictatorship, his complacency 
mounted to arrogance. When Scott offered his own choice for inspector- 
general of the army, McClellan petulantly wrote that the old general was 
trying "to work a traverse." A few days later, on August 8, he pushed their 
differences to an open breach. Mistakenly convinced that Beauregard's forces 
at Manassas could and would try to overwhelm the capital, he sent Scott a 
description of the danger and a domineering lecture on what to do about it. 
McClellan in fact thought that Beauregard might attack that very night, 
though Beauregard was completely immobilized by insufficient subsistence and 
want of transport. 8 Scott resentfully called McClellan in and rebuked his im- 
pertinence. From this "row" the young general strode away angrily. Scott "is 
always in the way," he wrote his wife; "he understands nothing, appreciates 
nothing." At once seeking an interview with Seward, who offered sympathy 
and support, McClellan followed this by visits to other Cabinet officers. 
Lincoln, whom he held in low esteem, he ignored. 9 

Repeating that Scott was the great obstacle, McClellan wrote his wife on 
August 9 (only a fortnight, be it remembered, after he reached Washington): 
"Tomorrow the question will probably be decided by giving me absolute 
control independently of him." But if he expected his Cabinet friends to pro- 
duce so abrupt a dismissal of Scott, he counted without the President of the 
United States. 

Lincoln, dismayed by this sudden quarrel, intervened. He induced Mc- 
Clellan to withdraw his pert letter and write Scott a conciliatory note; he in- 
duced Scott to withdraw in part a very hurt letter of August 9 to Secretary 
Cameron complaining bitterly of McClellan's insubordination and proffering 
his resignation. Had the quarrel broken into the open with publication of the 
two letters, it would have done Northern morale grievous damage. Scott, 
withdrawing his offer to resign, refused, however, to abandon his charges of 
insubordination and in fact added to them. The young commander, he de- 
clared, had made arrangements with some members of the Cabinet (he meant 
Seward, Chase, and Blair) "by whom all the greater war questions are to be 
settled, without report to or consultation with me, the nominal General-in- 

always be grateful that McClellan so frankly exposed his own weaknesses in this posthumous 
book. 

8 Beauregard, with Johnston's approval, early in August moved some brigades to the 
Fairfax Court House area, some advance guards even reaching the heights south of Washing- 
ton. But Johnston disapproved of his idea of harassing the Union forces in order to provoke 
them into an attack on ground chosen by the Confederates. Roman, Beauregard, I, 131-134. 
It was doubtless these movements which frightened McClellan. 

9 McClellan's Own Story, 84 ff. 



20( 5 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Chief of the Army." McClellan, he added, had failed to keep him informed 
of troop arrivals and movements, and had frequently talked with Cabinet 
members on matters pertaining to Scott himself. This was true. Because Mc- 
Clellan had received his appointment direct from Cameron, without Scott's 
official endorsement, he felt that he could by-pass the usual army channels 
of correspondence, 10 

For weeks the bickering continued. When in mid-September the irate 
Scott issued a general order restricting army correspondence with the Presi- 
dent or Secretary of War to proper channels, 11 McClellan ignored it, con- 
tinuing to write directly to Cameron. He also ignored a direct order from 
Scott calling for returns of troops with a specification of their stations. At a 
later date an anonymous friend explained that he did this because he had 
discovered that Scott's son-in-law, Colonel Henry Lee Scott of North Caro- 
lina, serving as the general's aide, had conveyed information to the enemy; 
but of this grave allegation no proof was ever presented. 12 The old com- 
mander, after waiting eighteen days for a response to his order for troop- 
returns, sent Cameron a pathetic protest. McClellan had furnished returns to 
the President and some cabinet officers, he wrote, but withheld them from 
his military superior; he deserved court-martialling. 

It is not difficult to comprehend why Scott placed so high a valuation on 
the abilities of Halleck, which had more than a superficial glitter. While this 
fifty-one-year-old officer, with degrees from Union College and West Point, 
had never enjoyed an opportunity to show what he could do in field command, 
he had distinguished himself as a military theorist, an attorney, and a business 
administrator. Scott knew that he had talked with two of Napoleon's marshals, 
had studied military arrangements in France, and had written authoritatively 
on defense and the art of war. He knew that Halleck, quitting the army because 
years of effort had brought only the starvation salary of a captain of engineers, 
had risen so high at the California bar that he might have become judge of the 
State supreme court. He knew also that Halleck had dexterously seized his 

10 Scott's letters of Aug. 9, 12, are in O. R. I, xi, pt. 3, pp. 4-6. 

11 O. R. HI, i, 382. 

12 The text of Scott's letter is in Townsend, Anecdotes. The accusation against Henry L. 
Scott, signed "Smith" and published in the N. Y. Tribune of March 12, 1862, declares that 
the young general learned of the colonel's misconduct. "General McClellan went to the 
President about the extraordinary denouement, and Col. Scott and Adjt.-General Thomas, 
who was also suspected of treachery, were summoned to the White House to be con- 
fronted on the charge. Colonel Scott confessed his guilt! What was done? Why, Colonel 
Scott, instead of being shot for his treason, was allowed to be placed on the retired list for 
life, and to receive the pay and emoluments of a lieutenant-colonel of cavalry! He im- 
mediately went to Europe, where he is doing all he can for secession!" An anonymous 
charge has no weight. C. W. Elliott, W infield Scott, 716, asserts the patriotic constancy of 
the son-in-law. McClellan, Own Story, does not mention him. 



THE GENERAL WHO WOULD NOT DARE 

business opportunities, becoming head of the New Almaden quicksilver mine, 
and of a railroad from San Francisco to San Jose. When the war began he was 
appointed major-general of the California militia, a position from which Scott 
lifted him to the same rank in the regular army (August 19, 1861). Of course 
the old general knew nothing about his personal traits. He did not know that 
Halleck was essentially a manager and not a leader, a bureaucrat and not a 
general, whose nerve in any crisis had the strength of a frayed cobweb. 13 He 
devoutly hoped that Halleck would succeed him, leaving McClellan the Eastern 
field command. 

The controversy was finally ended by Scott's continued decline in health. 
As his dropsy, vertigo, and paralysis increased, he became unable to attend 
to business for more than two hours without sleep, and was hardly able to 
totter from his home. 14 To the approving Cabinet on October 18 Lincoln 
read a delicately-phrased letter notifying Scott that although he had thus 
far opposed any request for retirement, he would no longer object; adding 
that he would sometimes apply to the general for advice, and would deal 
generously with his official family. It is clear that some Cabinet member told 
McClellan of this, for next day the young general wrote his wife that although 
Scott was proposing to retire in favor of Halleck, the Administration had 
decided to accept his resignation without that condition. McClellan had been 
talking about forcing the issue, and was jubilant. He, of course, as the seem- 
ingly indispensable field general, had held all the trump cards. 15 

The final scene had poignant qualities. The cabinet at an early morning 
meeting on November ist agreed to a formal request from Scott to be placed 
on the retired list. In the afternoon it accompanied Lincoln to Scott's lodgings, 
where, as the general lay on his couch, the President read the formal order 
that was required. Helped to his feet, Scott responded, and all shook hands 
with emotion. That night Lincoln called on McClellan to notify him of his 
promotion to the post of General-in-Chief. When the President expressed 
the hope that the vast increase of responsibility would not be embarrassing, 
McClellan buoyantly assured him that it would not. 

A private car was provided by the Philadelphia, Wilmington, & Baltimore 
for Scott, who wished to go to Europe to consult medical specialists. Next 
morning at four, in pitch darkness amid a drenching downpour, a distinguished 
group headed by Cameron and Chase came to the station to see Scott off. 
Among them was McClellan, to whom Scott gave polite messages for his 
wife and baby. In a set piece of verbal pyrotechnics, McClellan showered 

13 See the estimate of Halleck in J. D. Cox, Military Reminiscences, I, 248-262. 

14 W. H. Russell had found Scott visibly weakening before Bull Run. 

15 Own Story, 170; see the N. Y. Times October 24, N. Y. Herald Oct. 30, 1861, as 
reflecting the general sentiment for McClellan. 



g THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

because General N. P. Banks had accused them of "some purpose not known 
to the Government" and they were still imprisoned! 

When the Senate Judiciary Committee under Lyman Trumbull brought 
in a bill to authorize, define, and regulate the use of martial law, a chorus 
of dissent broke forth. It would be tiresome to trace the debate, and it suffices 
to say that both advocates and antagonists realized that the subject was ex- 
tremely delicate. Everyone agreed that in suppressing rebellion the military 
authorities needed large powers and would certainly take them; but nearly 
everyone agreed that to define these powers was a dangerous matter too 
much might be granted, or too much withheld. Loyal and disloyal men were in- 
termingled in many communities; suspicion often fell on the wrong person; 
oaths meant little to scoundrels; and in some areas patriots had less trust in 
the regular courts than in military tribunals. "There is difficulty environing us 
everywhere," said Senator Edgar Cowan of Pennsylvania. Trumbull regarded 
his bill as the most important of the session. "I think that the idea that the 
rights of the citizen are to be trampled upon and that he is to be arrested by 
military authority, without any regulation by law whatever, is monstrous 
in a free government." Yet he admitted that the measure might not accomplish 
its object. 24 

Thus it was that the bill, opposed by some because it limited existing 
powers too much, and by others because it extended them too far, was post- 
poned from day to day until it failed. On the final Senate vote for post- 
ponement, radical Republicans like Fessenden, Collamer, and Wade stood 
alongside bailey conservatives like Bayard and Saulsbury. The sphere of mili- 
tary control remained undefined. 25 

[V] 

Congress adjourned on August 6 in a very different mood from that in 
which it had first met, for military disasters soon to be described had chastened 
it. It had accomplished the legislation generally expected of it; now the 
executive branch had to make the most of the new laws. The President 
and Cabinet probably drew a breath of relief when it rose, for they felt freer. 
Power was steadily passing from the legislative to the executive, and the coun- 
try looked to Lincoln for action. 

Though generally cooperative, Congress had shown a natural jealousy 
of its functions. One of the first measures wanted by the Administration was 

24 This subject is fully covered in Cong. Globe, 3yth Cong., ist Sess., 332-343. McDougall 
of California, for the Douglasite wing of the Democracy, advocated throwing out almost the 
whole bill. 

25 Cong. Globe, 37th Cong., ist Sess., 374 ff 



THE GENERAL WHO WOULD NOT DARE 

Ball's Bluff, with its sickening scene of Union troops falling back under 
relentless fire in the dusk, half-scrambling, half -tumbling down the steep clay 
hillside to the water, shot, bayonetted, and clubbed as they searched vainly 
for the few boats, fell on Northern hearts like a knell of woe. Those who saw 
Lincoln emerge from the War Department after learning that the beloved 
"Ned" Baker, one of his staunchest friends, his happy, openhearted Spring- 
field neighbor, his firm Senate ally, was dead, never forgot the moment. The 
President, his face streaming with tears, groped his way through the door, 
stricken with griefs both private and public. Stone paid a fearful penalty as 
scapegoat; while criticism also fell heavily upon McClellan for the vagueness 
of his orders, which some thought a factor in the defeat. 

The army steadily gathered strength. By late November the Union volun- 
teer forces as a whole, east and west, all along the great front from Norfolk 
to Leavenworth, were surpassing the authorized level of 500,000. On the zyth 
of that month the War Department, which had so recently been prodding the 
governors to lift their enlistment levels, began sending out word that all was 
well. You should make no plans for more regiments, it telegraphed Morgan 
of New York. "When those that have been authorized are filled we will be 
fully supplied." Cameron in a report of December i to Lincoln placed the 
total volunteer and regular strength at 660,971; and by General Order No. 135 
on December 3 he made the slowing of recruitment official throughout the 
North. The great feat undertaken in July seemed achieved. This new national 
army of half a million, moreover, was no product of thoughtless enthusiasm, 
of heady emotion, but a force of remarkable toughness and determination. 
Every volunteer of common sense now knew that he was committed to a 
grueling, exhausting, nerve-racking conflict of uncertain duration, in which 
he must run a terrible gauntlet of bullets, disease, military folly, poor food, 
ignorant surgeons, and traitorous equipment. But to countless young men, 
gladly baring their breasts to the storm of war, the perils were a challenge 
of which patriotic devotion made light. 18 

Actually, nobody in the War Department knew the precise number of men 
enlisted, and it was presently found that Cameron had seriously overestimated 
the total. The stoppage of enlistments was a mistake for which the country 
would pay dearly. But the forces in hand seemed at the moment all that could 
be easily raised or effectively managed. 

wrote: "As gentle and pure and unselfish and generous and eloquent and valiant a man as 
ever cheerfully gave his life for a noble cause." Elijah R. Kennedy, The Contest for Cali- 
fornia in 1861, pp. viii, 274-275. 

1 8 O. R. Ill, i, 553-616, covers Cameron's efforts to stimulate recruiting, and later to slow 
it down. At the beginning of October he wanted New York to bring its force up to 
100,000, and later to 125,000. His report of Dec. i is in O. R. HI, i, 699. 



300 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Of the formidable national army, McClellan held by far the greatest 
single part. On October 15, his rolls listed 152,051 men. Of these, the men 
absent, sick, and under arrest totalled 18,850, while about 12,000 more were 
awaiting arms and equipment. This left 121,201 present for duty; but as about 
20,000 were on "extra duty" only a little more than 100,000 were ready for use 
in active campaigning. Even so, this was a formidable force. Moreover, the 
totals rose during December, so that by Christmas Day the whole number of 
officers and men in the Army of the Potomac was not far from 220,000. This 
w r as within hailing distance of the figure of 273,000 which McClellan had 
stipulated as desirable in his midsummer memorandum to Lincoln. 19 

Even in early fall a fall of warm, dry, pleasant weather prolonged till 
Christmasthe Northern public began to expect McClellan to .use his army, 
and radical politicians, journalists, and businessmen, growing restive, spoke 
out bluntly. Montgomery Blair became suspicious of the general. He wrote 
his father October i that the cabinet were perplexed by enemy movements, 
that he and his friends suspected the Confederates had little force in Virginia 
but made the utmost show of what they had, and that "Lincoln himself be- 
gins to think he smells a rat." Zack Chandler, his irritation rising until he 
concluded that McClellan was utterly incompetent, descended on Washington 
late in October to try either to spur the general into action, or to induce 
Lincoln to replace him. "Trumbull, Wade, and myself have been busy night 
and day since my arrival," he wrote his wife October 27, "but whether our 
labor has been in vain or not, time alone must disclose. ... If Wade and I fail 
in our mission, the end is at hand." And in mid-December a friend of Wade's 
wrote him from Indianapolis: " 'Young Napoleon' is going down as fast as 
he went up." 20 

McClellan, however, still working like a man possessed to bring his army 
to a higher pitch of efficiency, now regretted his earlier intimations that he 
might end the war in the autumn by a single blow. Though it would seem 
that by the shrewd use of spies, Virginia Unionists, and Negroes he could 
have collected trustworthy information, he possessed no accurate intelligence 
service. Instead, letting himself be deceived by the reports of his friend 
Allan Pinkerton, an energetic Scot who had established one of the nation's 
first private detective agencies in Chicago eleven years earlier, and whose 
services the general had transplanted from business to war, he grossly exag- 
gerated the strength of Johnston's army at Manassas. The alarmist exaggerations 
of Pinkerton in handling the so-called Baltimore plot against Lincoln the 

19 See Ropes, I, 258, 259, with references. 

20 Blair Oct. r, 1861, Blair-Lee Papers; Chandler Oct. 27, Chandler Papers, LC; A. Denny, 
Indianapolis, Dec. 16 1861, to Wade, Wade Papers, LC. 



THE GENERAL WHO WOULD NOT DARE 

previous February showed that the reports of his operatives required much 
closer analysis than they received. In public and private affairs alike they 
tended to earn their pay by exaggerated statements of peril. 21 General James 
M. Wadsworth, whose force lay at Centreville, had a much better intelligence 
system, for he interviewed Confederate fugitives, and cultivated Negro spies. 
All fall and early winter he begged McClellan to strike and crush the rebels 
before him. They numbered only about 50,000, he correctly declared, and 
could be swept back like chaff. General Daniel Sickles, stationed after October 
on the lower Potomac, also obtained "valuable and reliable" information on 
the enemy from Negroes, whom he found faithful and sometimes remarkably 
intelligent as scouts; but McClellan distrusted Negroes and refused to meddle 
with slaves. 

McClellan now believed, too, that he would have to leave at least 30,000 
men to guard Washington, with another 30,000 on the upper and lower 
Potomac and at Baltimore. He believed that troops who have not been given 
fully three months of vigorous camp drill could not be trusted to behave with 
discipline in offensive operations, and knew that a large part of his army was 
too new to possess any such preparation. Altogether, he was positive that he 
must wait! 

In actual fact, Johnston's army even by the end of the year amounted only 
to 57,337 men, of whom some 10,200 were kept in the Valley, and 6250 in 
the Aquia district. Thus only about 41,000 were posted at Manassas. His 
army was subject to the same deductions of men sick, absent, confined, and 
on extra-duty as McClellan's. 22 It was far more poorly equipped. We find 
D. H. Hill writing the Confederate War Department on Christmas Day that 
poor shells and an entire lack of ammunition for his best gun, a captured 
piece, made the artillery of his little force at Leesburg "very deficient." The 
Confederate troops captured at Fort Hatteras late in August had been armed 
with old pattern muskets, many of them roughly altered from flintlock to per- 
cussion, and had used home-made caps and ammunition of poor quality. 23 

Down to the end of December, hard ground and fair skies made military 
movements quite practicable. With real wonderment, Johnston later wrote 
that although McClellan had a much superior force near at hand, he never 

21 See on Pinkerton the matter in McClellan's Report; R. W. Rowan, The Pinkertons; 
and Allan Pinkerton, The Spy of the Rebellion. For Wadsworth see Pearson, Wadstuorth, 
90-103; for Sickles, Committee on the Conduct of the War, 1863, Pt. 3, pp. 632-643. 

22 On October 23, Confederate General Order No. 15 established the Department of 
Northern Virginia in three districts, the Valley (Jackson), Potomac (Beauregard), and 
Acquia (Holmes), with Joseph E. Johnston as head of the Department. He remained with 
the army based on Manassas. 

23 D. H. Hill, Leesburg, Dec. 25, 1861, to Adjutant-Gen. Thomas Jordan, extra-illustrated 
edition Battles and Leaders, HL; Hatteras correspondence N. Y. Tribune dated Aug. 31, 



302 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

interrupted the Confederate military exercises; and as the Southern cavalry 
was bolder than the Northern, the ground between the two armies was much 
more open to the Confederates. Johnston was always uneasy over his com- 
parative weakness. 24 Had McClellan advanced with energetic celerity from 
Arlington against Manassas, or had he made a thrust, as Lincoln proposed, 
from the mouth of the Occoquan against Johnston's communications, he 
might have forced the main Confederate army to retreat behind the Rappa- 
hannock. In doing so, the Southerners would probably have lost guns and 
stores which they could ill spare, and would have had to abandon the bat- 
teries they had erected on the lower Potomac positions from which the navy 
had been anxious to dislodge them. These batteries were in various ways a 
thorn in the Union flesh. They blockaded an important river channel, raised 
fears of an incursion into Maryland, threw an additional strain upon the rail- 
ways reaching Washington, and flaunted Confederate energy in the face of 
Washington. 

It would have been impossible for McClellan to advance farther than the 
Rappahannock. But even this limited success would have quieted the rising 
criticism of his inaction, and put heart into the Northern people. The clearing 
of the Potomac could have been followed, too, by an autumn expedition to 
capture Norfolk, and thus to put an end to the Confederate refitting of the 
Merrimac. But still McClellan did nothing but drill. Even the New York 
Herald, his special champion, demanded that the Potomac "the grand high- 
way for stores and reinforcements for the Federal army in front of Wash- 
ington" be opened, but the demand was coldly ignored. 25 

The degree to which McClellan was culpable for excessive hesitancy must 
not be exaggerated. A grave impediment to movement was the shortage of 

24 Johnston, Narrative, 845.; Ropes, I, 260 fL 

25 N. Y. Herald, October 23, 1861. The Navy Department, as Gustavus V. Fox later 
testified, had proposed to the War Department in June that joint measures be taken to 
seize the key position of Matthias Point and so assure the navigation of the Potomac. 
Nothing was done. In August the Navy Department renewed its proposals, but again 
nothing was done. In October Welles and Fox once more urged the matter, for the Port 
Royal expedition was soon to start, and the navy wished to send the greater part of the 
Potomac flotilla with it. If anything was to be done to secure the free navigation of the 
Potomac, it must be before the flotilla left. The navy assured Lincoln and McClellan that 
its gunboats would take and destroy the rebel batteries then beginning to appear on the 
river. This effected, a sufficient number of troops should be landed at Matthias Point to 
fortify and hold it. 

McClellan at first promised to cooperate with 4,000 men, and the navy provided the 
transports, and assembled its Potomac flotilla at Matthias Point. But twice after agreeing 
on a date McClellan disappointed the navy. The first time his excuse was that his engi- 
neers believed so large a body of men could not be landed so he did not send them. 
The navy promised it would get them landed. The second time he gave Fox to under- 
stand that he feared the landing might bring on a general battle. Fox Papers, N. Y. Hist. 
Soc.; Committee on the Conduct of the War, 1863, Pt. I, pp. 5-9. 



THE GENERAL WHO WOULD NOT DARE 

good officers. Many regimental and some division heads were feeble reeds, 
and most of the men he was considering as corps commanders had never 
handled a thousand troops before the war. Another impediment was the raw- 
ness of numbers of the volunteers, who as W. H. Russell flatly put it, were 
not yet soldiers. Finally, the question of arms was paramount. Many muskets 
and part of the ammunition were more dangerous to the holder than to the 
enemy, while down to December the quantities of both were insufficient. 
McClellan might well decline any large-scale movement, especially as winter 
mud and snow could arrive any day. Nevertheless, he should have marched 
to Manassas, should have cleared the Potomac, and should have forced the 
enemy out of Norfolk. John G. Barnard, chief of engineers, was as emphatic 
on this as General James M. Wadsworth. General John E. Wool at Fort 
Monroe was equally realistic. 26 

As the opening of Congress approached in December the grumbling deep- 
ened. Senators Chandler, Wade, and Trumbull, whom John Hay already 
termed the heads of a Jacobin Club, had been badgering Lincoln to insist on 
a battle. They felt betrayed, for when they had assailed Scott as feeble, they 
had promised their friends that McClellan would move promptly. National 
morale, they told Lincoln, required a show of energy; delay would be as bad 
as defeat. Greeley was thundering in the Tribune that McClellan's inaction 
had allowed the rebels to close the Potomac east of Washington, and disrupt 
the Baltimore & Ohio west of the city. Already these Republicans had a sus- 
picion that McClellan was letting politics color his military policy. They 
perhaps heard reports of such letters as that which he wrote his Democratic 
friend S. L. M. Barlow on November 8 a missive of the first importance in 
the light it throws on his thinking. After expatiating on Confederate strength 
and Union weakness, and declaring that he would "pay no attention to popular 
clamor," he went on: 

I expect to fight a terrible battle. I know full well the capacity of the 
generals opposed to me, for by a singular chance they were once my most 
intimate friends. tho' we can never meet except as mortal foes hereafter. I 
appreciate too the courage and discipline of the rebel troops. . . . When I am 
ready I shall move without regard to season or weather I can overcome these 
difficulties. . . . But of one thing you may rest assured when the blow is 
struck it will be heavy, rapid, and decisive. 

26 Barnard wrote in his report at the close of the Peninsular campaign: "In the winter 
of 1 86 1 and 1862, Norfolk could and should have been taken. The navy demanded it, 
the country demanded it, and the means were ample.'* Wool wrote Stanton February 27, 
1862, that Fort Monroe was the proper base from which to assail Richmond. "The rebel 
army at Manassas ought not to escape capture. It does not amount to more than 30,000 
men at most 35,000 at both Manassas and Centreville." Copy in Hay Papers, Illinois State 
Hist. Library. 



34 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 



Help me to dodge the nigger we want nothing to do with him. 7 am 
fighting to preserve the integrity of the Union and the power of the Govt 
on no other issue. To gain that end we cannot afford to mix up the negro ques- 
tion it must be incidental and subsidiary. The President is perfectly honest 
and is really sound on the nigger question. I will answer for it now that things 
go right with him. 

As far as you can, keep the papers and the politicians from running over 
me that speech that some rascal made the other day that I did not dare to 
advance, and had said so, was a lie. I have always said, when it was necessary 
to say anything, that I was not yet strong enough, but did the public service 
require it, I would dare to advance with 10,000 men and throw my life in the 
balance. 27 

Already Zack Chandler and Ben Wade were urging the enlistment of 
Negroes as soldiers; already they and others were hoping to make the ex- 
tirpation of slavery a primary result of the war. The press was beginning to 
debate these demands. Bryant, Greeley, and Medill were urging emancipation; 
on the other side, the Philadelphia Evening Journal, a moderate Democratic 
sheet, was indicting the Abolitionists as men whose views would lengthen and 
embitter the conflict. The real struggle in the South, it declared, would be 
between aristocracy and democracy, not between slavery and freedom. "As 
affairs have now turned, the disenthralment of the poor white people of the 
slaveholding States has thrown entirely into the shade the worn-out question 
of Negro emancipation. ... It is now becoming apparent that the popula- 
tion of Haiti by the colored people of the country will prove the ultimate 
and practical solution of the question." 2S 

To the Chandlers and Wades such talk was unreal. They meant by hard 
blows military and political to revolutionize the South. Their violence of 
language was outrageous and inexcusable. 29 Much saner men, however, were 
convinced that the high financial costs, the danger of foreign intervention, 
and the importance of removing the sting of recent defeats, made bold aggres- 
sive action imperative. "Let us end the war!" cried the New York Tribune 
on December 18, declaring that winter was the best fighting season in the 
South. "The offensive," later wrote General Fry, "was demanded from all 
quarters, and in all ways." 30 

27 Barlow Papers. 

28 October 21, 1861. 

29 Chandler's letters this fall approached hysteria. "If we fail in getting a battle here 
now all is lost," he wrote his wife October 27, "and up to this time a fcght is scarcely 
contemplated. Washington is safe. . . . therefore let the country go to the devil. If the 
South had one-tenth our resources Jeff Davis would today be in Philadelphia." In another 
letter he remarked that it might be better if the rebels really took Washington, President, 
Cabinet, and all, for then the true men would make proper use of the nation's powers' 
Chandler Papers, LC. v 

30 Century Magazine, vol. 48 (Oct., 1894), 931-946. 



THE GENERAL WHO WOULD NOT DARE 

It was not only McClellan's caution, his perfectionism, and his readiness 
to exaggerate enemy strength while underrating his own, that was responsible 
for his immobility, for an even more important factor was involved. Already 
he was displaying a myopic indifference to those great forces of politics and 
public opinion which no democratic commander can neglect save at his 
peril. In a letter the day before he replaced Scott he lashed out at "the im- 
patience of the people, the venality and bad faith of the politicians, the gross 
neglect that has occurred in obtaining arms, clothing, etc." But in a people's 
war, the people and their political delegates must be regarded. As they must 
not make excessively severe demands on military leadership, so military leaders 
must not make excessively severe demands on them. 

In a public speech soon after reaching Washington, McClellan had prom- 
ised a war short, sharp, and decisive. During his early rides south of the 
Potomac, he used to point toward the flank of Manassas and say to General 
McDowell: "We shall strike them there." 31 It was his duty to take account 
of the morale of the country as well as of the army. By Thanksgiving and 
still more by Christmas, the nation which had put such implicit faith in him 
felt it had a right to ask some justification for their faith. For the people were 
not content, any more than their British cousins in the Crimean conflict had 
been, to leave all decisions blindly to their military captains; as the historian 
of the Crimea had written, they "thronged in, and made their voice heard, and 
became partakers of the councils of state." 

But while the East waited, in the Western theater a yet more remarkable 
series of events had been taking place; events both dramatic and momentous. 
31 Swinton, Army of the Potomac, 69; McClellan's Own Story y 166-177. 




Fremont and the Impossible Task 

THE NORTH by the summer of 1861, as we have seen, had done more than 
enter upon a grim war effort. It and indeed the whole country had entered 
upon a revolution. Never before had the American people dreamed of such 
a mighty effort of organization as that required by the mustering of a volunteer 
army of half a million, and the commissioning of a tremendous fleet. No 
government, after such an effort, could ever sink back to the old level of 
small enterprises pettily pursued. Behind the drilling troops and scurrying 
ships new industries were taking form, new factories were belching smoke, 
banks, stores, and warehouses were being enlarged to seize new opportunities, 
and the wheels of transport were turning with new speed. Novel sources 
of credit, novel government contracts, and novel concepts of large-scale effort 
were transforming business and society. 

Had some miracle of compromise ended the war in the summer of 1861, 
the country would have emerged with but minor changes in non-political 
fields. Bull Run had made it certain that a considerable socio-economic revolu- 
tion would occur. If the mighty military effort planned for 1862 succeeded, 
it would be merely considerable. But if it failed, and the conflict continued, 
the country would face a major revolution, altering many of the organic 
functions of society. How deep such a revolution might reach, and what social 
agonies it might involve, first became evident to observers of events in the 
Western theatre, and especially in Missouri. 

The Western situation differed completely from the Eastern in a half- 
dozen respects. Fighting raged in States Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee 
whose people were implacably divided; in areas, therefore, where searing 
hatreds soon generated a vicious guerrilla warfare. In this region long Union 
lines had to be held: the Missouri River from Kansas City to its mouth, the 
Mississippi from Quincy to Cairo, the railroad from St. Louis to Rolla, and 
the Ohio River. The theatre was distant from Washington, the major arsenals, 
and the centers of greatest population and wealth. Here was the area where 
commanders first had to come to real grips with slavery. Here, military 

306 



FREMONT AND THE IMPOSSIBLE TASK 307 

jealousies showed their worst early forms, and here politics most seriously 
complicated the military effort. A rougher, harsher temper, derived partly 
from frontier individualism, pervaded the struggle. 

The West required a commander who possessed great political skill as well 
as military ability. In Missouri he would have to rally loyal elements while 
repressing the disloyal men intermingled with them; in Kentucky he would 
have to evince a scrupulous respect for those who supported State neutrality. 
He would have to deal with difficult political leaders one in particular. 
Frank P. Blair, who had thus far led the Union movement in Missouri with 
more drive than discretion, cherished high political ambitions. Valuing greatly 
his seat in Congress and chairmanship of the military affairs committee, he 
did not yet aim at a military command, for w r hich he had no experience 
whatever. He expected, however, to be the main power in Missouri; and as 
the first freesoil man elected to Congress from a slave State, co-leader with 
Edward Bates of the Republican Party there in 1860, and the most brilliant 
orator of the area, he already possessed national renown and influence. The 
commander would have to defer to him, or risk the consequences and he had 
a most imperious temper. The commander would also have to get along with 
governors of complex psychology, like Yates of Illinois and Kirkland of Iowa, 
keeping their confidence, meeting their wants, and enlisting their aid. Nathaniel 
Lyon had made so many enemies both in Washington and Missouri that he was 
impossible. 

McClellan despised politicians, but the Western commander could afford 
no such attitude. 



[ I ] 

For this post of double danger Lincoln, pressed by the Blair family, se- 
lected a man of few military and no political qualifications John C. Fremont. 
That Fremont had never commanded more than the few hundred men of his 
California Battalion, and they briefly and controversially, might not be a 
crippling disability; very few American officers had led a larger body. That 
as Senator from California and first Republican Presidential candidate he had 
shown no political flair was not important; he had been a novice. What did 
matter was that Lincoln should ignore Fremont's erratic career. 

Fremont had indubitably proved himself an explorer of high distinction. 
Brilliantly intelligent, energetic, daring, and able to inspire expeditions with 
his own enthusiasm, he had united scientific skill with the ability to endure 
prolonged hardship. A pathmarker, not pathfinder, he had traversed, mapped, 
and described great areas of the West in a way that did the nation important 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

service. His knowledge of mathematics, zoology, botany, astronomy, and 
geology outran that of other famous Western explorers; he wrote with a 
color and narrative interest that his best rivals hardly approached. The man 
who had climbed the Wind River Range, discovered Lake Tahoe, scaled the 
Sierras in midwinter, given the Golden Gate its name, and penned a book 
which guided the Mormons into Salt Lake Valley, deserved his first fame. 
The role he had played in the conquest and early government of California, 
while often indiscreet and at times calculating, contained some heroic pages; 
and his Presidential candidacy emphasized his rigid freesoil principles. 1 

Close scrutiny of his career, however, disclosed an impetuosity that had 
repeatedly brought him to the verge of disaster, a want of judgment that dis- 
turbed his friends, and a willingness to invade dubious ground for personal 
advantage. Although cultured, sensitive, and quietly attractive, he had made an 
equivocal impression. Because he grasped at prizes, such as the civil governor- 
ship of California, which he had not honestly earned, he appeared a little the 
charlatan; because he tempted fortune in so many fields, sometimes failing 
tragically, as in the fifth expedition, and sometimes succeeding magnificently, 
as when he emerged from his famous court-martial to find the California 
senatorship and rich Mariposa estate in his hands, he seemed a little the 
adventurer. Though he did useful work in helping open the West, all his other 
labors had an illusory value. While some intimates of great discernment and 
honesty, like Jessie Benton, Horace Greeley, and Kit Carson, felt a lifelong 
devotion to him, other people thought that his character was au -fond ques- 
tionable. In 1860 he was still a hero to millions of Americans, the recent titular 
leader of the Republican Party, and a figure of international renown. The 
Lincoln Administration had to employ him; but why in a post of such multi- 
farious difficulties? 

Fremont would have preferred the ministership to France, where his knowl- 
edge of the country, fluency in its tongue, and social brilliancy, with the 
charm of his wife Jessie, would have made him far more successful than the 
political hack whom Lincoln appointed. The Blairs, after failing to get Lyon 
the chief command, could have found a West Point man for Missouri. But 
Fremont and Jessie were old favorites whom they expected to control in 
Frank's interest and therefore pushed forward. Eager to serve, and convinced 
that his Western marches qualified him for command, he accepted. When 
war began he had been in Europe on business, and had shown creditable 
energy by contracting for $75,000 worth of ordnance and shells and 10,000 

i See the author's volumes on Fremont, and especially the third edition of the biography, 
with the new material on the Civil War in the terminal chapter. 



FREMONT AND THE IMPOSSIBLE TASK 309 

rifles at his personal charge if necessary. He reached Boston June 27 and re- 
ported forthwith to Lincoln. 

Within less than a week after he landed, on July 3, the government created 
the Western Department, including not only Illinois and all the States and 
Territories between the Mississippi and Rockies, but Kentucky as soon as it 
was safe. 2 It should have taken this action at an earlier date. The fact was 
that Washington showed a censurable myopia concerning the West, and per- 
sisted in it. Once Fremont was appointed he might well have hurried West 
more promptly. He had his reasons for tarrying he could learn more about 
the huge department, covering a third of the nation, in Washington than in 
St. Louis; when he was about to leave on July i6th or lyth he was told that 
Scott had further instructions for him; he talked with Governor Yates in Wash- 
ington, learning that 7000 Illinois infantry were totally unarmed, the cavalry 
without mounts, and the artillery with few guns; he labored to assemble 
a staff, and obtain firearms and stores for his destitute forces. But Lincoln 
became disturbed by the delay. In the end he went West with vague orders 
and inadequate resources. 

The President, Scott, and he agreed that the grand objective, once Missouri 
was cleared, would be a movement down the Mississippi to Memphis. Lincoln, 
after consulting with him in the kindliest way, escorted him down the White 
House steps, saying: "I have given you carte blanche; you must use your own 
judgment and do the best you can." Thus blithely did the overburdened gov- 
ernment entrust the heaviest responsibilities to an untried man, and speak 
of seizing a river which it was to take two years of heavy fighting to clear! 3 

When Fremont reached Missouri on July 25 he found the Western De- 
partment boiling with confusion, shortages, dissension, and perils. The State 
had far more white manpower of military age than Virginia, and as much as 
Kentucky and Arkansas combined. It was more fiercely divided among 

2 From July 3 to Nov. 9, 1861, the Western Department comprised Illinois, Missouri, 
Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Arkansas, Nebraska Territory, Colorado Territory, Dakota Ter- 
ritory and for a time a portion of Kentucky. Indiana and Ohio were in the Department of 
Ohio; Wisconsin temporarily in no department. Frederick Phisterer, Statistical Record, 
24-49. 

3 Fremont, MS Memoirs, Bancroft Library. Fremont told the Committee on the Con- 
duct of the War that his instructions were vaguely broad, embracing "full discretionary 
powers of the amplest kind," and that "when I was ready to descend the river I was to 
let the President know." Montgomery and Frank Blair, though suspect witnesses, doubtless 
testified correctly to the Committee on Lincoln's uneasiness over Fremont's delay; Report, 
1863, Ft- 3 PP- *54-i86. Rutherford B. Hayes's impressions of Fremont, who reviewed Ohio 
troops at Camp Chase on his way west, suggest why a high appointment for the explorer 
was a political necessity. "All his words and acts inspire enthusiasm and confidence," wrote 
Hayes after a chat, adding: "He is loyal, brave, and persevering beyond compare"; Diary 
and Letters, II, 43. 



3IO THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Southern-born, Northern-born, and foreign-born than any other in the coun- 
try. Largely ignored by the War Department, it was slipping into a dangerous 
set of complications. 

We have seen that full war had begun in Missouri before mid-June, when 
General Nathaniel Lyon had arrogantly told Sterling Price that before he 
made a single concession to the rebels, he would see every man, woman, and 
child in the State buried. Lyon immediately sent Colonel Franz Sigel to occupy 
southwestern Missouri, while he himself marched to Jefferson City, the capital, 
on June 15, and two days later took Boonville in an almost bloodless skirmish. 
But the Confederates showed equal energy. Governor Claiborne Jackson, 
resolute and resourceful, issued a call for fifty thousand volunteers to resist the 
Union "invasion." At Carthage on July 5 his gathering volunteers repulsed 
Sigel and forced him to retreat. Price, who had been a brigadier-general in 
the Mexican War, was ready to take the field with the State troops, reinforced 
by several thousand Confederate soldiers from Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas 
under Ben McCulloch, a hard-riding, quick-shooting Texas ranger who had 
also served in Mexico. Encouraged by the smart victory at Carthage and the 
news of Bull Run, the Confederate and State forces by the time of Fremont's 
arrival raised their main army to 10,000 or 11,000 men. 

Meanwhile irregular warfare covered half the State. The precipitate ac- 
tions of Frank Blair and Lyon exposed the loyal population to guerrilla 
bands and marauders. Some 300 home guard men, driven from Knox and Lewis 
Counties into Hudson City at the beginning of July, reported that a force 
of 2700 rebels, chiefly mounted, were seizing food, arms, livestock, and cloth- 
ing. In other areas Union men were being expelled from their homes. Small, 
undisciplined, badly-led bands of secessionists, animated by implacable hatred 
of the North, roved the countrysides. When Union forces appeared, they 
would separate; little groups would shoot stray soldiers, burn bridges, or 
waylay loyal farmers; then they would reunite. Particularly in the proslavery 
counties belting the Missouri River all the way across the State, the most 
ferocious feeling reigned. Neighbor armed against neighbor in an atmosphere 
of spreading terror. 

The tension laid an iron grip on St. Louis, a Southern city which had re- 
cently become a metropolis of freedom for the State. Of its 160,000 people, 
more than one in four had been born in Germany, more than 30,000 in Ire- 
land, and more than 21,000 in the free States; most of the forces of industry, 
commerce, and finance were inimical to slavery. Nevertheless, the old aristo- 
cratic families, Southern-born men of social position, and some wealthy busi- 
ness leaders, were Confederate in sentiment.- Either openly or secretly seces- 
sionist, they gave their tone to clubs, restaurants, and drawing-rooms, lent 



FREMONT AND THE IMPOSSIBLE TASK 311 

business support to their kind, and influenced their employees. Since the 
breakup of Camp Jackson and the clashes between German recruits and the 
people, the malignity of some Southern sympathizers broke all bounds. Women 
were more rancorous than the men, and even ministers of the gospel spread 
hatred. After the victory at Carthage one secessionist jubilantly told a free- 
soil leader: "There is a bullet moulded for every Yankee sympathizer in St. 
Louis." 4 

Over the Berthold mansion in late July, conspicuous in the heart of the 
city, flew a Confederate flag, beneath whose folds recruits openly enlisted 
for the Confederate cause. The streets were bare of Union banners; city authori- 
ties were afraid to intervene against rebel activities; danger that the roughest 
of the unemployed Irish, aided by Southerners, would mount an insurrection, 
impressed all observers. The German and Yankee volunteers, a determined 
but undisciplined body of men, would have met such a rising implacably. 
"Arouse their enthusiasm," Gustave Koerner had written Lyman Trumbull, 
"and they are uncontrollable." 5 As Lyon had kindled their fervor, so later 
would Fremont. But bloody civil commotions in St. Louis, the principal Union 
base for the whole region, were at all costs to be avoided. 



[ n ] 

To this angrily divided city and State, humming like a hornet's nest, 
Fremont was ferried across the Mississippi at nine A.M. on July 25, to convoke 
a staff meeting at noon. It gave him alarming intelligence. The enemy had 
their troubles: their State and Confederate troops were separate and often 
discordant forces, they were ill-armed, and they suffered from Richmond's 
neglect as the Unionists suffered from Washington's. But Price and Mc- 
Culloch could concentrate their growing forces in a way that kept the Union 
commands, necessarily scattered, on the defensive. Lyon was at Springfield 
with about 7800 men, including SigePs defeated troops; Brigadier-General John 
Pope commanded most of the troops north of the Missouri River; and 
Brigadier-General Benjamin M. Prentiss, a Mexican War veteran, had a weak 
contingent at Cairo. All three badly wanted reinforcements and supplies. On 
Fremont's desk lay a telegram from Prentiss, for example, reciting that he had 
only eight regiments, six of them three-months' men whose term was then 

4 The MS Autobiography of Charles D. Drake, later Senator from Missouri, is indis- 
pensable (Mo. Hist. Soc.). W. L. Broaddus, Hudson City, July 5, describes the situation 
there; Broaddus Papers, Duke Univ. See also Snead, The Fight for Missouri, 99 ff. (anti- 
Blair) ; W. G. Eliot in Nevins, Fremont, 542 ff\; R. J. Rombauer, The Union Cause in St. 
Louis, 1861, passim; Galusha Anderson, The Story of a Border City. 

5 Koerner, May 31, Trumbull Papers, LC. 



3I2 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

expiring, and desperately needed more to hold his vital point. Lyon's force, 
rapidly diminishing, also threatened to disappear if the three-months' men 
left; he was naturally anxious to fight before they quit. Many were without 
shoes. Food, wagons, medicines, uniforms, but above all arms were wanting. 
"Our troops have not been paid," Fremont wrote Lincoln July 30, "and 
some regiments are in a state of mutiny, and the men whose term of service 
is expired generally refuse to enlist." 

Had Washington created its Western Department as soon as hostilities 
opened, by June 20; had it brought Fremont home earlier, or put someone 
else in St. Louis betimes; had it paid closer attention to the West, the lower- 
ing storm might have been met. Yates, Morton, and other governors had been 
quite as strenuous as their Eastern compeers in getting men enlisted and 
brought into State camps; but up to the belated hour of Fremont's arrival 
too little had been done to assemble, arm, and drill them. 

It may seem anomalous that the Confederates in Missouri were able to 
concentrate more efficiently than the Union forces. The explanation lies 
partly in the geographical situation of Missouri as an exposed salient, partly 
in the fierce secessionist passions that Blair and Lyon had aroused, and partly 
in confused Northern leadership. From southern Kansas, Arkansas, Tennessee, 
and Kentucky, all contiguous, the Confederates could bring what troops they 
had which were few to aid the Missouri volunteers. Meanwhile, the Union 
command had, as we have noted, to hold the Missouri River and its hostile 
belt, the Mississippi to Cairo, the Ohio to Louisville, and three railways, one 
running to Sedalia three-fourths of the way across the State, one southwest 
to Rolla, almost halfway across, and a third south to Ironton, also halfway 
across. It had to hold three vital centers, Jefferson City, St. Louis, and Cairo. 
All this meant overextended lines. And between Frank Blair's departure for 
Congress about July i and Fremont's arrival three weeks later, Lyon had done 
nothing to pull the situation together, for he was preoccupied with his own 
little army. Washington looked on aloof. 6 

Rather, Washington looked the other way! Fremont, rebuffed July 29 
when he asked the Treasury office in St. Louis to allot his paymaster some 
funds, sent urgent telegrams to Montgomery Blair. Reaching Washington just 
after Bull Run, they fell on deaf ears. "I ... find it impossible now to get 
any attention to Missouri or western matters from the authorities here," wired 
Blair. Jessie Fremont begged permission to hurry to the capital and tell Lincoln 
of the defenseless condition of the West, but her husband refused. Coming 
through Ohio, they had met Western troops on their way to the Potomac. 

6 Battles and^ Leaders, I, 278 if.; Nicolay and Hay, IV, Ch. 23; Smith, Blair Family, II, 
59 ff.; O. R. I, iii, 617 flf.; Nevins, Fremont, Ch. 29; Drake, MS Autobiography. 



THE FIELD 

OF OPERATIONS 

IN MISSOURI 



"l ureenutitu f \'-:V*. o e v . s -. < 

i ., i^V:S SPR , NGP1 p,n ' r-' 1 ' - ^-ManOifu 

/*^?W v- 5^ ' - y { SrKlNGFItLD XV-ji?^ -*, J ^' - '" 

/T ctt s X^5'^^j(^jJf(i v; ? /; />^;"; 

1 i ^%^^>^t 

-i J.eoeho ^^-g' .itif & 




In St. Louis she found troops only on paper, an arsenal without arms or am- 
munition, the enemy thick and unremitting as mosquitoes. If only she could 
get to the President! "a Western man and not grown in red tape." But her 
letters to Washington accomplished nothing. She wrote Montgomery Blair 
four days after reaching St. Louis that her husband was overwhelmed: 

He is doing the best he can without money without arms without moral aid. 
This city needs a force to repress it. All the arms and well equipped men of 
Ohio and Indiana we met moving to the East. Mr. Fremont says send anything 
in the shape of arms but arms we must have. Send money, and both arms and 
money by the most rapid conveyance. 

Fremont sounded the same desperate note in a letter to Blair July 31: 

I begin to move today but am distressed by singular inadequacy and scarcity 
of equipment and great want of arms. At this moment I learn from the Ad- 
jutant that two regiments are refusing to move refusing pay unless they get 
the whole. My boats have fires up and my movements are checked by this 
most inopportune lack of money. . . . One regiment had to be compelled to 
go to Ironton today by arresting officers it had been in a state of mutiny all 
day. 7 

7 Jessie Fremont, July z8, Fremont July 31, to Montgomery Blair, Blair Papers, LC. 



3 ! 4 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Fremont had not only to make bricks without straw, but to throw these 
bricks into hastily improvised walls. Into his first ten days he crowded a series 
of urgent measures. He policed St. Louis thoroughly, stopping Confederate 
enlistments at the Berthold mansion, clearing the saloons of soldiers, giving 
Union residents security, and enforcing rigid drill. Booksellers reported a ris- 
ing demand for Hardee's Tactics and like books. He reorganized the home 
guard in St. Louis, enlisting men for the war in infantry, cavalry, and artillery 
divisions. He seized possession of the railroads to Rolla and Ironton, and sent 
small detachments to protect them. He garrisoned Ironton with a force under 
Colonel B. Gratz Brown, secured Cape Girardeau, and ordered Pope to or- 
ganize local committees of safety north of the Missouri to stop guerrilla activi- 
ties. He took from the paralyzed Treasury office in St. Louis $100,000 needed 
to pay troops. "I have infused energy and activity into the department," he 
wrote Lincoln, praising the spirit of his forces. 8 

At the outset he had to make a momentous decision. Imminent danger 
threatened both Lyon at Springfield in southwestern Missouri, and Prentiss 
at Cairo; he could not adequately reinforce both; and he chose to help Pren- 
tiss. Beyond question Cairo was the more important position. Real danger 
existed that the rebels would sweep all lower Missouri, seize Cairo by a sudden 
stroke, carry Kentucky into the Confederacy, and rally their sympathizers 
in southern Illinois and Indiana. If they succeeded in this, they might vir- 
tually win the war. Major-General Leonidas Polk, commanding the Con- 
federates at Memphis, had prepared early in July to invade Missouri for a 
broad-fronted campaign. While McCulloch proceeded against Lyon at Spring- 
field, columns under General Gideon Pillow and W. J. Hardee were to march 
up the Mississippi, cut off Lyon's retreat, take St. Louis if possible, and on 
their return to enter Illinois and capture Cairo. This was too grandiose a plan 
to be practicable. Nevertheless, at the very time Fremont arrived in St. Louis, 
Polk moved 6000 troops up to New Madrid, Missouri, full of enthusiasm and 
eager to attack. On July 29, the frightened Prentiss informed Fremont that 
more than 12,000 Confederates lay within fifty miles of his puny force. On 
August i he telegraphed that Pillow had 11,000 men at New Madrid and was 
about to be reinforced by 9000 more. 

Even if these figures were cut in half, or in three, Cairo was in peril. Lyon 
was also telegraphing that he wanted "soldiers-soldiers-soldiers." But Lyon 
could retreat, and Prentiss with his little force could not. 

Sending word to Lyon that he had best fall back to his railhead at Rolla, 
Fremont correctly decided to hurry reinforcements to the vital confluence 
of the Ohio and Mississippi. Amid the other labors of this first week, he char- 
8 O. R. I, iii, 416 ff.; Fremont wrote Lincoln July 30. 



FREMONT AND THE IMPOSSIBLE TASK 315 

tered eight steamboats, loaded them with soldiers, artillery, and stores, and 
set off down the river. He had hardly slept. Five P.M. on August 2 found his 
4000 men landing amid wild cheers at the Cairo wharves. They had come in 
the nick of time, for Prentiss's force was fast disintegrating. Poorly fed, badly 
clothed, and only partially supplied with tents, it was suffering from the 
malarial fever and dysentery that ran rife in its swampy position. Now they 
could be paid, properly armed (for Fremont was able to bring west some of 
the equipment he had bought in Europe) and reenlisted. From that hour 
Cairo was never again in danger. 9 

But Lyon had been left unaided. Fremont was able to order two regiments 
from Rolla and Boonville, with James Montgomery's small force in Leaven- 
worth, to join him, but their arrival would take time. The consequence was 
that little over a fortnight after Fremont took up his duties, Lyon came to 
disaster and Lyon was a favorite of Frank Blair. 

That this disaster was wholly needless there can be little question. Though 
the Confederate army which marched on Lyon numbered only 13,000 ill- 
trained, poorly armed men, it was far stronger than his own force of about 
5000. It included a large mounted force which fetched it fresh horses and 
provisions without interference. Lyon's duty, as Ben McCulloch approached 
Springfield, was to retreat and save his army. His second in command, John 
M. Schofield, argued this with almost insubordinate vehemence. As he pointed 
out, while a victory was possible, it was not probable; defeat would sacrifice 
many lives and much valuable material; and the road back to Rolla was open 
and safe as late as the night of August 9th. Once Lyon joined the Union 
troops at Rolla, he could soon build up a strength sufficient to drive Mc- 
Culloch out of the State. "This, I doubt not," wrote Schofield years later, 
"must be the judgment of history." Fremont for his part expected Lyon to 
fall back to meet his reinforcements. On August 6 he sent him instructions 
that if he were not strong enough to maintain his position, he should retreat 
until met by fresh detachments; and to a messenger from Lyon he said bluntly, 
"If he fights, it will be upon his own responsibility." 

But Lyon was proud, pugnacious, and headstrong. He exaggerated both the 
perils of the retreat, and the disaster to loyal citizens if he abandoned them 
to Confederate wrath; and, stung by being passed over for the chief command, 

9 O. R. I, Hi, 416-437, cover the main Missouri events; Comm. on the Conduct of the 
War, 1863, PP- 3> 35 ^-i Fremont, MS Memoirs, Bancroft Library; Nevins, Fremont; Blair 
Papers, LC. News of Confederate movements toward Cairo reached the North through 
the New Albany (Indiana) Ledger, which had correspondents in Tennessee, Arkansas, 
and Southern Missouri. It reported in late July that 12,000 troops had crossed the Mis- 
sissippi to New Madrid, where they would be joined by others from the three States 
named, with artillery, to make a swift attack on Cairo. The National Intelligencer of 
August 6 congratulated Fremont on opportunely rescuing Cairo. 



3I <5 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

he indulged an unworthy jealousy of his superior his failure to get reinforce- 
ments seemed to him, says Schofield, "due to a plan to sacrifice him to another." 
Of course Fremont might have sent him a peremptory order. But the newly- 
arrived general deferred to Lyon's West Point education, knowledge of the 
local situation, and superior information on the enemy's capacities. On the loth 
Lyon attacked at Wilson's Creek. 

It was a characteristically confused, disorganized battle, the encounter of 
two badly armed mobs. McCulloch and Price had barely completed the dis- 
tribution of their men into companies and regiments. Their troops were in 
great part armed only with the hunting rifles and shotguns they had brought 
from home. "We have an average of only twenty-five rounds of ammuni- 
tion to the man," later wrote McCulloch, "and no more to be had short of 
Fort Smith and Baton Rouge." Not one Confederate in four had anything 
better than a cotton bag for his ammunition, so that a good shower would 
almost have disarmed the troops. They had to live on the country. Lyon, 
deciding to move upon the Confederates in their positions at dawn, lost the 
advantage of his long-range rifled muskets, and of the fact that later in the 
day thousands of Confederates would have been absent from the camp forag- 
ing. He used a bad battle plan devised by Sigel. Even so, the Union troops 
seemed winning until a Confederate battery opened on Sigel with heavy 
effect. Long lines of men battled at close range amid clouds of billowing 
smoke. In the melee a Confederate ball pierced Lyon's breast, and a few 
minutes later the surviving Union officers, after a hasty council, ordered a 
retreat. 10 Colonel John M. Palmer delivered his verdict in a letter to his wife: 
"The truth is that the battle of Wilson's Creek was a folly which the gallant 
death of Gen. Lyon does not atone for." n 

The immediate result was an intensification of guerrilla warfare in central 
and northern Missouri, and an augmentation of Confederate strength. Fremont 
at once telegraphed Yates, Morton, and Dennison, with the adjutant-general 
of Iowa, to send him all their disposable forces. He pushed forward plans to 
fortify St. Louis so that smaller forces might hold it. From New York he 
ordered arms by fast freight "without further bargaining." He planned that 
while the remnants of Lyon's army rested and recruited at Rolla, he would 
occupy all the principal Missouri River towns by the new volunteer army, 
fortify Ironton, and garrison Warsaw on the Osage River. As soon as he 
could collect a strong army, he meant to march on Springfield again, and 
drive the Confederates out of southwestern Missouri into Arkansas. Lincoln, 

10 Scofield, Forty-Six Years, 40 ff.; Fremont, MS Memoirs; McCulloch, Report dated 
Dec. 22, 1861, Mo. Hist. Review, Vol. XXVI, 354 ff.; Snead, 253. 

11 Palmer August 15, 17, 1861, to his wife, describes the battle, Palmer Papers III. State 
Hist. Lib, 



FREMONT AND THE IMPOSSIBLE TASK 317 

.the War Department, and Montgomery Blair, shocked by Lyon's defeat, 
promised to do everything possible in his behalf. 12 

[ HI ] 

It is clear that Fremont found rough work in his first twenty days in Mis- 
souri and his road got rougher and stonier at every step. His initial hardships 
grew out of the fact that Blair and Lyon had pushed Missouri into full war 
prematurely, that Washington had made practically no preparations in the 
West, that the War Department continued to think primarily of the East, 
and that in Lyon he had a rash subordinate. Thus far the story was simple, 
but now it grew fearfully, weirdly, calamitously complicated. To comprehend 
it we must understand the greenness of the troops, the lack of supplies, the 
difficulties of the contract problem, the bad officer morale, and the political 
aims of the Blairs. All these difficulties were heightened by his own blunders 
and miscalculations. 

When appointed, Fremont was allowed only three aides from the army 
line, but the law of August 5 permitted him as major-general to nominate 
as large a staff as he needed. Lacking McClellan's advantages in choosing old 
regular-army friends, he gradually assembled a competent group of men, 
largely of foreign experience. 13 His chief of staff was Brigadier-General A. 
Asboth, a veteran of Kossuth's revolt, whom John A. Dix pronounced "a 
very able man as an engineer," and a good planner, "very intelligent on 
general subjects." He was hardworking and systematic. Asboth chose as 
personal aid Colonel Anselm Albert, an officer of fourteen years' experience 
in the Austrian army, of sound executive ability. The duties of adjutant were 
entrusted to Chauncey McKeever, and those of quartermaster-general to 
Major Justus McKinstry. The chief topographical engineer was Colonel John 
T. Fiala, capable in his field. The military secretary was a young chaplain, 
John H. Eaton, who would later make a creditable record in care of the 
freedmen and in education. A Cincinnati attorney of note, R. M. Corwine, joined 
Fremont as judge-advocate, to pass on the many arrests in Missouri, high 
and low, for disloyalty; and Lincoln himself later assured Stanton that he had 
done valuable service. 

Competent as it was, the staff had in its foreign coloration one pronounced 
defect: It could give Fremont, himself unfamiliar with many sides of Ameri- 

12 Comm. on Conduct of the War, Report, 1863, Pt. 3, pp. 110-114. One regiment 
Fremont wanted was stopped at Louisville as needed there, and another sent to Virginia; 
Ibid.) 117. 

13 General Orders No. 15 announced to the staff, St. Louis, September 20; copy in 
McClernand Papers, HI. State Library. 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

can life, little practical counsel in a situation full of political problems. Nor 
were the civilian aides who nominated themselves to his staff much more help- 
ful. One was Owen Love joy, an abolitionist clergyman who had been a 
Republican member of Congress from northern Illinois since 1857; able, ideal- 
istic, and full of learning, humor, and eloquence, but fanatical on slavery. 
Another was Gustave Koerner, who had fled from the Frankfurt revolt of 
1833 to become one of the founders of the "Latin settlement" (he held a 
Heidelberg doctorate) at Belleville, Illinois, and who after a term on the 
State supreme court had been elected lieutenant-governor. Still another was 
William Dorsheimer of Buffalo, a bright young German-American lawyer. 
Most important of all was Jessie, indefatigably busy, full of ideas, and as im- 
petuous as her husband. This group had an earnest, radical, and impractical 
stamp. 

The new commander toiled day and night, shutting himself all too rigidly 
away from time-wasting callers. While McClellan spent whole days in the 
saddle, Fremont stuck closely to his desk, for he had no War Department at 
hand to assist him, and no such experienced officer as Montgomery C. Meigs to 
lift part of his burden. For five weeks, according to one of his best aides, he 
never went farther from the door of his combined residence and headquarters 
than the sidewalk. 14 

Volunteer regiments swept into St. Louis by train, by steamboat, and 
afoot, as they swept into Washington. Their greenness was incredible. "The 
new levies," lamented Fremont, "are literally the rawest ever got together." 
Officers reported them "entirely unacquainted with the rudiments of mili- 
tary exercises." How could he drill the mob? When he asked permission to 
scour the nation for veteran officers, Cameron gave it. Not only did he 
collect a considerable number of drillmasters, but he created a special infantry 
unit, the Benton Cadets, which he expected to make a school for infantry 
officers just as his so-called Fremont bodyguard was a school for cavalry of- 
ficers. Asboth was highly efficient in seeing that the new regiments drilled 
hard, steadily, and with growing precision. One of Fremont's plans was to 
form in each regiment a company of sharpshooters which would include the 
best marksmen, and a company of pioneers to include the most skilled me- 
chanics. 

Yet as the flood of volunteers rolled in from all parts of the Northwest, 
the difficulties grew. Confusion, wrote John Pope from St. Louis August 22, 
"is worse confounded every moment by the arrival without previous notice 
of regiments from every Western State in a condition of ignorance and 

14 Comm. on the Conduct of ^ the War, ut supra, 20 if. See the National Intelligencer, 
August 20, 1 86 1, for some of Fremont's organizational plans. 



FREMONT AND THE IMPOSSIBLE TASK 319 

greenness altogether appalling. They are sent out to camp on the outskirts 
of the city without knowledge of their duties and with no one to instruct 
them in even the most ordinary details of service." 15 Other regiments went 
to interior railheads. These termini, Pope continued, "have become the seat 
of a struggling, disorganized mass of men who are swarming among and 
over each other like ants, and who are organized with the title of a 'military 
force.' What will be the result when it is attempted to move these disorderly 
bands forward for action will be hard to say." The Northwestern States had 
less of a militia tradition than the East, and no such venerable regiments as 
New York and New England had cherished. Its sons were rougher and more 
individualistic. Fremont, like McClellan, was determined not to move until 
his men were partly trained and fairly armed. 

Shortages, shortages, shortages! When B. Gratz Brown was first sent to 
Rolla he had found no provisions, no water, no tents, no cartridge boxes 
nothing. He telegraphed that supplies were "absolutely necessary." Lyon's 
troops had reached Springfield unpaid, ill-fed, in dilapidated clothing, and in 
part shoeless. S. A. Hurlbut, the drunken brigadier ordered to hold the Han- 
nibal & St. Joe Railroad, had telegraphed July 17 that one of his regiments was 
wholly unarmed, and he could get weapons neither in St. Louis nor Springfield. 
And these shortages stubbornly persisted. Fremont had expected to draw arms 
from the St. Louis arsenal, but found that it afforded no more than 1 300 pieces, 
good and bad. 

Of his initial Western strength of perhaps 25,000 men before the three 
months' militia departed, as we have seen, 7000 Illinoisans had no weapons at 
all. When Fremont's messages to Montgomery Blair and Major P. V. Hagner 
gained him nothing, he made an emergency purchase of 25,000 Austrian mus- 
kets, 13,000 new and 12,000 old, for whose quality Asboth vouched. While in 
New York he had ordered 23,000 guns, but Hagner explained that after Bull 
Run the Administration directed all arms diverted to the Potomac, and the 
23,000 went thither! The Hungarian muskets at least gave the incoming volun- 
teers something with which to drill. For a time Fremont in desperation sought 
weapons wherever he could find them. Naturally, when an Eastern arms dealer 
telegraphed August 5 that he had 5000 Hall's rifled carbines new cast-steel 
breechloaders Fremont replied that he would take them all at the $22 rate 
demanded, and wished them shipped by express. This order, later vindicated by 
a government inquiry, was filled by mid-September, and gave real aid to the 
West. 16 

15 To Lyman Trumbull; Illinois State Hist. Library. 

16 See Comrn. on the Conduct of the War, III, 78-88, for a full record of the shortages. 
Hagner, a conscientious officer, had been given charge of War Department purchases from 



320 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Nevertheless, Western troops had to continue using whatever arms, if any, 
they possessed. Three officers who examined John A. McClernand's brigade 
at Cairo shortly reported that the queer melange of weapons included Prussian 
muskets, English Tower muskets, French Minie rifles, three patterns of Amer- 
ican muskets, and English muskets by Lacy & Company; of which all the Prus- 
sian and English muskets, and part of the American arms, were so defective 
that the men had no confidence whatever in them. McClernand told Fremont 
that little over half his force was armed at all, and they with dangerous and 
insufficient weapons, lacking a supply of available ammunition. One colonel 
said he would regard himself as a murderer if he took his defenseless men into 
battle. As late as October 6, McClernand, who had sent a purchaser of his own 
to Washington for supplies, was frantically writing this agent that he must get 
his requisition filled: 

Master its contents and urge upon the Quartermaster-General the neces- 
sity of prompt and favorable action. Urge that justice, if not gratitude to Illi- 
nois, who has led the way in making pecuniary advances, requires such action. 
Urge that the faith of the Federal Government requires it. Urge that the public 
service requires it. If my brigade had been equipped with the expedition con- 
templated by the letter of the Secretary of War to Governor Yates, I would 
have routed or captured Jeff Thompson's force at Belmont last week. I would 
have done it with my own brigade. If necessary, show the accompanying com- 
munication to President Lincoln, who I am convinced will favor the most 
speedy outfit of my brigade. 

Persevere! Persevere! Persevere! 17 

Horses, wagons, ambulances, and medical supplies were in equally short 
supply. Fremont made the error of suggesting that his former attorney Fred- 
erick Billings, of the California law firm once headed by Halleck, be empow- 
ered to buy horses in Canada. The War Department, holding that they could 
be obtained more cheaply in the Middle West, peremptorily stopped Billings, 
and this caused delay. Many of the medical wants went unfilled. At the be- 
ginning of July the head of the Sanitary Commission, after making a round 
of camps in Missouri, Illinois, and Ohio, reported: "We saw no ambulances 
in any Western camp, and no stretchers." Lyon went into the bloody action 
at Wilson's Creek with just two ambulances in service, so that it took nearly 
a week to transport some 700 wounded, suffering in the August heat, to 
hospitals. Even in November the troops gathering in great masses at Cairo 

private sources in New York. For light on purchases in general and War Department 
confusion as well as a justification of Fremont's course see Gordon Wasson, The Hall 
Carbine Affair, passim; the pamphlet, "Vindication of Quartermaster-General McKinstry"; 
and the inquiry report in House Exec. Doc. No. 94, 37th Cong., zd Sess. 
17 Report of John A. Logan, et al., Camp Cairo, Sept. 30, 1861; McClernand to Fremont, 
Sept. 17, 30, and to Colonel P. B. Fouke, Oct. 6, McClernand Papers. 



FREMONT AND THE IMPOSSIBLE TASK 321 

possessed only two ambulances, and had done nothing to drill ambulance de- 
tails for the battlefield. St. Louis organized its own Western Sanitary Com- 
mission under W. G. Eliot, and it rather than the Federal Government fur- 
nished the western troops their first real facilities for the sick and wounded. 18 

[ IV ] 

The officer problem, as grave in the West as the East, was aggravated by 
two facts: Western officers, remote from Washington, less closely watched by 
newspaper correspondents, and working in a freer, bolder atmosphere than 
Eastern- men, showed more carelessness and more aggressiveness; while Fre- 
mont's lack of West Point training, and memories of his oldtime troubles in 
the regular army his quarrel with S. W, Kearny, court-martial, and popular 
vindication fostered a strong antagonism among West Point graduates. 

The new volunteer regiments about St. Louis and Cairo had as many 
wretched colonels, majors, and lieutenants as those about Washington. One 
reason why many ninety-day men refused to reenlist, West as well as East, 
was that they could not endure their regimental heads and demanded a com- 
plete new reshuffle. Gustave Koerner told Senator Trumbull that more than 
half the six regiments at Cairo would continue in the army, but never under 
their old colonels. He predicted that the thirteen new regiments which Yates 
was offering would be "officered in the usual way by incompetents." 19 More 
serious, however, was the exceptional degree of insubordination among the 
higher officers in the West. 

John Pope, for example, talked and wrote in the most reckless fashion. An 
August letter to an Ohio friend foully abused Secretary Cameron: "Everybody 
in this wide land knows him to be corrupt and dishonest, a public plunderer 
and an unprincipled politician ... a man notoriously plundering the Govt 
betraying his trust and neglecting every vital interest under his charge, cannot 
be gotten rid of except by public clamor." We have noted his favorite idea 
that Illinois troops should be formed into an Illinois army under an Illinois 
general; and he encouraged his men to display their resentment because Illinois 
units were mingled with Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan units, 
heaped confusedly together. In the same letter, pouring out venom upon 
Lincoln, he actually threatened a mutiny of troops: 

1 8 Adams, Doctors in Blue; Nevins, Fremont, 491. Frederick Billings, a Vermonter and 
a graduate of the State university, had been attorney-general of California, and an influen- 
tial Union leader there. He was destined in time to be the principal builder of the Northern 
Pacific, and a notable philanthropist; Billings, Montana, is named for him. 

19 Koerner, Belleville, 111., July 29, 1861, to Trumbull; Trumbull Papers, 10. Koerner's 
chief complaint was that some officers treated German-American recruits "like dogs." 



322 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 



They find themselves neglected, abandoned, and humiliated by the Presi- 
dent they have themselves put into the White House, and they have resolved 
to endure it no longer. A deputation reached Washington yesterday [August 
21 ] representing the State authorities and the military which will force upon 
Mr. Lincoln either an open rupture or a redress of their wrongs. They warn 
him that neither Banks nor Hunter will be suffered to take command of Illi- 
nois troops, and that if it is attempted the whole of the Illinois forces will 
march back into the State and have no more to do with the war. 

We are certainly cursed with rulers in this country and especially at such 
a time. This Administration will do in a different manner what Jeff Davis is do- 
ing directly. I mean that by neglect, corruption, and outrage, the States of the 
West will be driven to group together and act without reference to the author- 
ity of the General Government. You would be surprised to find how prevalent 
this idea is today. . . . 20 

These vaporings ill befitted an officer whose father, once territorial secre- 
tary of Illinois, had been a friend of Lincoln; and the same irresponsible temper 
characterized his relations with Fremont. Vain, boastful, ambitious, Pope re- 
sented the fact that Lincoln had not made him brigadier-general in the regular 
army. "The injustice of overslaughing me in this way," he wrote Senator 
Trumbull, "needs no comment." 21 Brigadier-General Hurlbut was arrested 
early in September, along with an Iowa colonel, for drunkenness. "I hope it 

20 Pope to V. B. Horton, Aug. 22, 1861; Civil War MSS, N. Y. Hist. Soc. 

21 Pope to Trumbuil June 16, 1861; Trumbull Papers LC. Pope's later epistle to Trum- 
bull, July 6, 1 86 1, deserves quotation at length. He wrote: "Illinois, if properly cared for, 
occupies today a most peculiar and commanding position in this country. On the one 
side Missouri has as much as she can do to take care of herself, while Iowa, Minnesota, 
and Wisconsin have had their troops drawn off for service eastward. On the other hand, 
Ohio and Indiana have been depleted of their volunteers for service in Western Virginia. 
Illinois so far stands nearly intact with a powerful force of nearly 20,000 men in the field. 

"If this force can be kept together and properly officered and commanded, upon Illinois 
will devolve largely the reconquest of the Valley of the Mississippi. Where she moves, 
with such a force, she will of necessity stand first and hers will be the voice which con- 
trols the warlike operations in this valley. 

"If we can be kept together we shall constitute two-thirds of any army sent south from 
this region and our position and influence will cominate in any settlement of affairs west of 
the AUeghenys. To secure this vital object to our State I have been working from 
the beginning for some head to our troops, even if it be a wooden one some commander 
who shall be a citizen and native of this State, and who shall move to the execution of 
any great military operation, with the concentrated forces of Illinois. 

"For this reason I have also objected, whenever I could exercise any influence, to the 
separation of any isolated regiments from our troops. I deem this object vital to our mili- 
tary efficiency and reputation, and I appeal to you to interfere against this system which 
is now demoralizing us frittering away our strength subjecting our volunteers to the 
most obscure and odious service and absolutely destroying the identity of the State. We 
want a military commander of our own troops, who shall have full authority in this State. 

". . . Give us a Major-General and one of our own people to whom the welfare and 
reputation of our State are dear, and who can enable us to move with the whole military 
force of Illinois. I feel deeply on the subject and perhaps write too strongly." Trumbull 
Papers, LC. 



FREMONT AND THE IMPOSSIBLE TASK 323 

will not be long until some of the rest of our drunken officers will have to 
walk the plank," a private wrote home. Still another brigadier, S. D. Sturgis, 
was infected by the prevalent West Point animosity toward Fremont as a 
major-general appointed for political reasons. His temper approached insub- 
ordination, so that he was as ready as Pope to impede Fremont's plans; and as 
the new commander of Lyon's army he occupied a position of critical im- 
portance. 

Several volunteer officers destined to play striking roles were making their 
Western debuts. Franz Sigel, after organizing a Missouri regiment, became a 
brigadier-general in May. A sincere devotee of liberty, this romantic hero of 
the Baden revolt, still in his late thirties, had led 4000 troops and gained an in- 
ternational name before landing in America to become a humble teacher. The 
Germans of St. Louis greatly exaggerated his military proficiency. Another 
striking figure was John M. Palmer. Once a Jacksonian Democrat, he had 
broken with Douglas in 1854 on the Kansas-Nebraska bill, taken a prominent 
part in organizing the Republican Party, and supported Lincoln in the Chicago 
Convention. He was among the first to leap to arms. If the Middle West had a 
man of Hampden's principle, it was he. He shrewdly remarked of Fremont 
that he had lived much on the plains without becoming broad, but he was en- 
tirely loyal to the major-general. 22 

More important was the before-mentioned John A. McClernand, whose 
career had touched Lincoln's at many points. A Kentuckian by birth; a fighter 
in the Black Hawk War; in Congress 1843-51, covering Lincoln's years in the 
House; a Jacksonian who had turned against Douglas in 1854 as violently as 
Palmer did; an ardent war Democrat, anxious to mobilize men and money in 
overwhelming strength here was an intrepid man who offered much that 
Lincoln could use. And right ready the President was to employ his services. 
Leaving Congress, McClernand had raised a brigade in central and southern 
Illinois. Inasmuch as he and the State authorities were anxious that it should 
not be sent off until prepared to take the field as an entirety, he lingered in 
Springfield and Jacksonville till the end of August. Then, as Fremont wished 
him to go into camp at Cairo for the moral effect his brigade would produce, 
he got his 2500 men thither at the beginning of September. 

In short, McClernand really had a separate command, with its own com- 
missary and quartermaster service and its own objectives. He wished a separate 
department established with headquarters in Cairo under his charge, coequal 
in authority with Fremont at St. Louis. Before long he and John A. Logan were 

22 Palmer, Personal Recollections (1901), passim. His letters to his wife in Palmer Papers, 
111. State Lib., reveal fine traits. He read all Scott once a year! 



3 2 4 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

pressing this idea on the semi-acquiescent Lincoln. Fremont could expect no 
aid from this independent brigadier, a man with a beak of a nose and a head- 
long, testy, irascible manner. 23 

[ V ] 

While the Western theater was still ill organized, badly equipped, and 
poorly officered, Frank Blair immediately after the adjournment of the House 
on August 6 complicated matters by returning to Missouri. Just forty this 
year, and midway in his second term in Congress, he was anything but radical 
on the slavery question, for he was one of the chief advocates of gradual 
emancipation by colonization abroad, but flamingly violent in his demands for 
a rapid prosecution of the war. He proposed that the government accept all 
volunteers, take over railroads and telegraphs, and build a ship canal from 
Lake Michigan to the Illinois River to serve both military and commercial 
purposes. Seeing everything in black and white, he used language that never 
lacked heat or pungency. He reached St. Louis expecting to resume the reins 
of power he had held in June, and from that moment difficulties increased. 

A clash between Blair and Fremont between the attorney-politician who 
with Nathaniel Lyon had practically ruled St. Louis that spring, and the gen- 
eral who was now winning the warm loyalty of the German population was 
almost inevitable. Blair's self-confidence brooked no opposition to his demands. 
He had broken General Harney, and was ready to break another commander. 
By his impetuous strokes, forcing premature warfare in Missouri, he had 
created many of the emergencies against which Fremont contended; and 
blinded by his affection for Lyon, he blamed Fremont for the recent disaster 
which was Lyon's own fault. Like Wade and Chandler in their attacks on 
McClellan, he could not understand military delay. 

Seventy-year-old Francis P. Blair of Jacksonian fame and Montgomery 
Blair, both able to gain Lincoln's ear at a moment's notice, were certain to take 
Frank's side in any dispute. They hoped to see Frank, who in Lincoln's words 
was their joy and pride, reach the Presidency; and for that reason they wished 
him to hold Missouri as a political enclave which he could use as Andrew 
Jackson had used Tennessee. Montgomery termed his brother the greatest 
man in the country. Seeing Fremont's energetic acts win over the German 
population as the potential nucleus of a powerful State party, the Blairs took 
alarm, while they resented Fremont's apparent disregard of Frank's political 
henchmen in the letting of war contracts. 

Frank Blair asked Major Justus McKinstry, Fremont's quartermaster- 
23 See the full letters in McClernand Papers, 111. State Hist. Lib., Aug.-Dec. 1861. 



FREMONT AND THE IMPOSSIBLE TASK 325 

general, to "give Jim Neal a chance" at supplying horses Neal being later 
termed a swindler by a Congressional committee. He urged a firm of wagon- 
makers on the quartermaster-general, unjustly attacking a rival firm as seces- 
sionists. He even sent a would-be contractor to McKinstry with the dictatorial 
command: "See that he is attended to." He was specially aggrieved when his 
friend ex-mayor John How, a leather dealer who had allied himself with Walter 
S. Burnee of Chicago in offering the Western Department clothing, shoes, and 
other equipment for forty thousand men, was turned away by McKinstry 
on the ground the order was too large and should be thrown open to com- 
petition. Blair naturally distrusted the men who got contracts from McKinstry, 
some of whom he later described as "obscene birds of prey." 24 

When Frank expressed his irritation to his father, the old Jacksonian de- 
cided to take the situation in hand. He wrote Fremont bluntly suggesting "a 
co-partnership in the West." He and his sons would do everything possible 
to aid the commander, he said, if Fremont would "exert your utmost influence 
to carry my points." To begin with, "I want to have Frank made a militia 
major-general for the State of Missouri." Fremont should induce the new 
provisional governor, Hamilton R. Gamble, to arrange the appointment for 
Fremont. The elder Blair had lived in an atmosphere of intrigue and bargain 
so long that he saw no impropriety in this proposal. Fremont on August 18 
duly asked Gamble, as a special favor, to make Frank a brigadier-general at 
once. When Gamble replied that the State Constitution required the election 
of brigadiers by subordinate officers, Fremont accepted his statement, but he 
tried to cushion the blow to the Blairs by explaining that the colonelcy which 
Frank held, a place which he had gained by election of the regiment, would 
amount to a brigadiership. This was unsatisfactory to Frank and to his father. 25 

By late August the dispute was serious. Among its origins was of course 
a fundamental incompatibility of temper, for Frank was shrewd, practical, ag- 
gressive, and domineering, while Fremont was erratic, impulsive, and visionary. 
Both men were proud and hot-tempered. Frank, pluming himself on his repu- 

24 For treatment of contracts, see McKinstry's "Vindication"; Fremont's defense in 
Committee on the Conduct of the War, Report, 1863, Pt. 3, 44 ff.; Nevins, Fremont, Chs. 
29, 30; 37th Cong., zd Sess., House Report No. 2 on "Government Contracts"; House 
Exec. Doc. No. 94 on "War Claims in St. Louis." The St. Louis correspondent of the 
N. Y. Tribune wrote in that paper of July 30, 1868: "It was freely asserted, and is believed 
to this day by thousands, that if the How-Gurnee contract had not failed, then Blair 
and Fremont would have remained friends." McKinstry wrote How in scathing terms on 
August 25: "The acceptance of your proposition would involve the expenditure of at least 
three-fourths of a million dollars an enormous amount of money to be expended for a 
public object without throwing open the door to public competition." N. Y. Herald, 
September 23, 1861. 

25 The letter of F. P. Blair is in the Fremont Papers, Bancroft Library, Univ. of Cali- 
fornia; see Nevins, Fremont, 310. See also Gamble Papers, Mo. State Hist. Soc., for Fremont- 
Gamble letters, August-September. 



32 <5 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

tation as savior of the Union in Missouri, believed that he had a right to control 
the State; Fremont, as departmental chief, was determined not to let his own 
authority be weakened. 

Frank honestly convinced himself that Fremont lacked the high military 
talents his position required. Regarding St. Louis as overwhelmingly loyal, he 
objected to the measures which Fremont and McKinstry took to police it 
under martial law. Favoring the offensive against the defensive, he condemned 
Fremont's employment of large bodies of laborers to fortify the city. Later, 
he declared that Fremont's acts were "the offspring of timidity," an attempt to 
parry "imaginary dangers." Fremont, on the other hand, knew that his force 
of effective troops was much smaller than it appeared, and that he might have 
to denude the city of most of them to meet some urgent demand from the 
East or the West. He prosecuted his defensive works, including ten forts, 
until the War Department ordered them stopped in the middle of October. A 
year later he had the satisfaction of seeing the government order them put in 
complete readiness for service against attack. 26 

Conferences between the two officers led to no understanding. The tone 
of Frank's letters to his father and brother changed, as Lincoln recalled later, 
from doubt to condemnation. Late in August he and Colonel John T. 
Schofield, a West Pointer recently Lyon's chief of staff, went to Fremont's 
headquarters. The general, at a map-strewn table, devoted more than an hour 
to his plan for leading a well-equipped army through southwestern Missouri 
into Arkansas, and thence descending the Arkansas River to the Mississippi. On 
their departure, Blair inquired, "Well, what do you think of him?"; and 
Schofield replied in terms too strong to print. Said Blair, "I have been suspect- 
ing that for some time." It is difficult to follow Schofield's condemnation of 
Fremont's strategic plan. Before many months passed a Union army was to 
march through southwestern Missouri, defeat the Confederates at Pea Ridge, 
traverse Arkansas without material opposition, and emerge at Helena on the 
Mississippi. But it is not difficult to comprehend Blair's ready acceptance and 
perhaps partial inspiration of Schofield's opinion. 27 

The quarrel rapidly widened into a complete breach. Two political fac- 
tions, destined to affect deeply the progress of the war, were crystallizing 
among Missouri Unionists: a conservative, moderate party, the Claybanks, 
who believed in gradual action against slavery; and a radical, uncompromising 
body, the Charcoals, ready for vigorous and implacable attacks on it. The 
Claybanks looked to Blair, Attorney-General Bates, and Provisional-Governor 
Gamble for leadership, while the Charcoals looked to Fremont and to Benton's 

26 See Fremont's St. Louis speech in N. Y. Weekly Tribune, November i, 1862. 

27 Schofield, Forty -six Years, 48 ff. 



FREMONT AND THE IMPOSSIBLE TASK 327 

old-time political lieutenant B. Gratz Brown. Thus began an alignment which 
would shortly divide Missouri into two implacable camps, open a battle run- 
ning into Reconstruction years, and seriously affect national history. 

The North as August ended could find even less comfort in the Western 
than in the Eastern military situation. The army on the Mississippi, as a result 
of many circumstances, but especially of Washington's neglect, was much less 
well prepared than that on the Potomac; the quarrel between Fremont and 
Frank Blair was much more ominous than that between McClellan and Scott; 
the first offensive would have to move from angrily divided Missouri into 
angrily divided Kentucky. Then just as the Blair-Fremont quarrel was break- 
ing into the open, the Western commander took a step which electrified the 
country. 




New Star., New Issue 

LOW ON the horizon, late this summer, a small dim star began slowly to 
arise. It was the star of an Ohioan of Puritan ancestry, thirty-nine years of 
age, who had followed a variety of humble occupations and till lately had been 
regarded as a rather seedy failure, at times addicted to drink. Indeed, the use 
of liquor to alleviate homesickness and despondency had caused his resignation 
of a captaincy in the regular army nearly ten years earlier. He was Ulysses 
Simpson Grant, of West Point 1839-43, the Mexican War 1845-48, a Missouri 
farm 1854, and a Galena leather store 1 860-61. 

The adjutant-general of Illinois when the crisis came was so totally devoid 
of military experience and organizing capacity that the rush of troops to Spring- 
field threw his office into chaos. The confusion became intolerable. One day 
Governor Yates exploded with chagrin. "In this bedlam," he said, "we must 
find somebody who can organize regiments." When a friend suggested Captain 
Sam Grant, who had just arrived in Springfield with the Jo Daviess Guards from 
Galena, Yates made him mustering officer at $4.20 a day to handle the incom- 
ing three-months men. Instantly a change overtook the adjutant-general's office. 
"In a corner," writes a State functionary, "at a small writing table, might have 
been seen a man of moderate stature, of exceeding gravity; modest, shy; speak- 
ing only when addressed; working busily all day long, making out muster rolls, 
writing orders, filing papers, bringing order out of confusion, with so little 
friction and noise that it required a second look to be sure he was doing anything 
at all." * 

Grant's clerical duties ended May 22. He vainly wrote to Lorenzo Thomas, 
an old acquaintance who had become adjutant-general in Washington when 
Joseph E. Johnston left, and vainly visited McClellan's headquarters in Cincin- 
nati. On the way back from this futile visit he stopped in Lafayette, Indiana, 
for dinner with several officers. One of them remarked that if he were about 

i MS Reminiscences of Mason Brayman, Chicago Hist. Soc.; see also Lloyd Lewis, 
Captain Bam Grant; Cole, The Era of the Civil War; James Grant Wilson, Life of Grant, 

20 ff. 

328 



NEW STAR, NEW ISSUE 

to give battle to a Southern force, and heard that the Negroes were in insur- 
rection, he would join the Confederates in putting down the slaves. Grant's ire 

flared. "Colonel W ," he said, "I don't wish to hurt your feelings, but I 

must say that any officer who can make such a declaration is not far from being 
a traitor!" Their friends had trouble averting an encounter. Then suddenly the 
grateful Yates offered Grant a regiment and on June 15 he accepted. 

Though soldiers called him "the quiet man," within a few days he had re- 
duced a semi-mutinous camp to order. He marched his command from Spring- 
field much of the way to Quincy on the Mississippi. Before Fremont arrived 
he reported to Pope, who stationed him at the town of Mexico, about fifty 
miles north of the Missouri River. 2 

It was on a hot day at Mexico that Grant received an unexpected telegram 
notifying him that he had been appointed brigadier-general. He knew that this 
was the work of his Galena Congressman, Elihu B. Washburne, although since 
Washburne was a Republican and Grant a man of no particular party allegiance 
they had only a nodding acquaintance. He rose, related his chaplain, pulled his 
black felt hat nearer his eyes, gave a few extra strokes to his whiskers, and 
walked off as unconcernedly as if he had been called to supper. One of Fre- 
mont's early acts was to order him to Ironton, which he reached August 8. As 
he totally lacked artillery and cavalry, and did not have enough force to drive 
away the guerrillas in the area, Fremont suggested that he fortify the town. But 
Grant objected that he had no engineer officer, while anyway, "drill and disci- 
pline are more necessary to the men than fortifications." A collision over rank 
and authority shortly developed between Grant and General Prentiss, in which 
Grant was clearly right. Fremont resolved the quarrel by giving him command 
(August 28) of southeastern Missouri and southern Illinois, with headquarters 
at Cairo, while sending the irate Prentiss to northern Missouri, which the guer- 
rilla fighting made an uncomfortable place. 3 On September 3 Grant was able to 
write Washburne a grateful letter from Cairo, announcing that he had decided 
on John A. Rawlins, a Galena attorney who had helped raise the Forty-fifth 
Illinois, as chief of staff, and adding: 

2 Brayman, MS Reminiscences, tells the traitor story. A clear indication of Grant's 
quality as an officer is given in his letter to his father from Mexico, Mo., August 3: "My 
services with the regiment I am now with have been highly satisfactory to me. I took it 
in a very disorganized, demoralized, and insubordinate condition and have worked it up 
to a reputation equal to the best, and, I believe, with the good will of all the officers and 
all the men. Hearing that I was likely to be promoted, the officers, with great unanimity, 
have requested to be attached to my Command." John H. Gundlach Collection, sold 
January 5, 6, 1927, Amer. Art Assn. 

3 This violent quarrel of Prentiss and Grant, which almost came to fisticuffs, is vigor- 
ously described by General B. H. Grierson in his MS autobiography, "The Lights and 
Shadows of Life/' 111. State Hist. Lib. 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

I have been kept actively moving from one command to another, more so 
perhaps than any other officer. So long as I am of service to the cause of our 
country I do not object, however. . . . 

Gen. Fremont has seen fit to entrust me with an important command here, 
my command embracing all the troops in South East Missouri and at this 
place. . . . 

I can assure you my whole heart is in the cause which we are fighting for 
and I pledge myself that if equal to the task before me you shall never have 
cause to regret the part you have taken (in my behalf) . 

When Grant discovered great abuses in the quartermaster's department at 
Cairo, he exerted himself so resolutely to correct them that he made enemies 
both open and secret. One of the bitterest, he thought, was Leonard Swett, 
Lincoln's old intimate. Swett was hostile, Grant informed Washburne, because 
of "the course I pursued whilst at Cairo towards certain contractors and specu- 
lators who wished to make fortunes off of the soldiers and Government and in 
which he took much interest whether a partner or not." 4 

Beyond doubt, Grant was the type of officer willing to run risks. Fremont, 
some of whose associates wished him to send John Pope to Cairo, named Grant 
instead because he saw in him a man of iron will, dogged determination, great 
activity, and "promptness in obeying orders without question." Of his power 
of decision he soon gave a memorable illustration. All summer Kentucky was 
still "neutral." Neither the national government nor Fremont was anxious to 
make any movement against the State. It was the Confederacy which first vio- 
lated its neutrality, General Leonidas Polk on September 3 sending General 
Gideon J. Pillow to seize Columbus, Kentucky, which was regarded as the key 
to the Mississippi. Late on the 5th, Grant, without permission, made the appro- 
priate counter-move, capturing Paducah without firing a shot. Intestinal war 
at once began in the State, the legislature declaring for the Union while Con- 
federate sympathizers summoned a secessionist convention. Had he been per- 
mitted, Grant would have tried to take Columbus, for by the end of September 
he had nearly 20,000 men. 5 

In the preference he showed for Grant, Fremont confirmed Pope's enmity, 
and made Prentiss violently hostile. But for once his judgment had guided him 
aright, and he did the country great service by his choice. More even than 
Washburne or Yates, he saw the qualities of the "quiet man." In his Missouri 
area of operations, with Hurlbut, Pope, Prentiss, and S. O. Sturgis, the West 

4 See Grant to Washburne Sept. 3, 1861, and later letters in 1862, Grant-Washburne 
Papers, HI. State Hist. Lib. 

5 See Fremont, MS Memoirs, Bancroft Library, for comment on Grant. The first slight 
technical violation of Kentucky's "neutrality" was John M. Palmer's seizure of a steamer; 
but Pillow moved in force. 



NEW STAR, NEW ISSUE 

Pointer who had taken over Lyon's force, all holding important commands, 6 he 
was far more unfortunate in his subordinates than McClellan; and unlike Mo 
Clellan, he had to fight at once, for the situation would not wait. He had invad- 
ing armies and guerrilla bands in his midst. 



Unlike McClellan, moreover, Fremont had to face complex political problems. 
Against military difficulties he might have made headway, but in the political 
field he was crippled by his comparative inexperience (for this former Senator 
and Presidential candidate had done no sustained political work), impetuosity, 
and excessive readiness to listen to radical advisers. His ripening quarrel with 
Blair demanded a discretion which he did not possess. 

Just as this quarrel, as we have said, was about to become public property, 
Fremont took his rashest step. Frank Blair wrote Montgomery September i 
that affairs were growing worse in north Missouri; that an army of 10,000 
rebels might soon be collecting there; that he had warned Fremont and got 
no satisfaction; and that the discipline of troops in St. Louis was bad. u He talks 
of the vigor he is going to use," wrote Blair, "but I can see none of it, and I fear 
it will turn out to be some rash and inconsiderate move adopted in haste to 
make head against a formidable force which could not have been accumulated 
except through gross and inexcusable negligence." It was Blair's and Lyon's 
springtime violence which had done most to galvanize this force into action. 
"My decided opinion," he went on, "is that he should be relieved of his com- 
mand and a man of ability put in his place." 7 

At that moment Fremont had determined on an ill-considered move. He 
felt driven to desperation by the guerrilla warfare a warfare by which, wrote 
James O. Broadhead, "the Union sentiment was being crushed out and the Union 
men overwhelmed by the tide of rebellion, rapine, and plunder which has 
literally swept over the State. 57 One loyal man in a loyal district wrote: "All we 
can hope to do is to escape with our lives." 8 

Fremont's rash step was the first resounding Northern attack upon slavery. 
The two radical advisers at his elbow, Representative Owen Love joy and Jessie, 

6 The N. Y. Tribune later said editorially that Sturgis was accustomed to declare that 
the only gentlemen in the country were those of the South. In 1862 he denounced the 
radical Senator Zack Chandler of Michigan as "liar, scoundrel, and coward." N. Y. Tribune, 
June 30, 1862. 

7 Blair-Lee Papers, Princeton University. Blair had been in the State a little over a fort- 
night when he made these charges. 

8 The Carthage, 111., Republican, Aug. 29, 1861, describes the exodus from Missouri 
into Illinois as astonishing. "Long trains of wagons pass our office almost daily, conveying 
families who have hastily gathered up a few of their household goods." The Broadhead 
Papers, Mo. Hist. Soc., contain vivid accounts of the terror by J. O. Broadhead and others. 



332 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

had been reinforced by John A. Gurley, Representative from the Cincinnati 
district, a minister, journalist, and politician of strong antislavery views, who 
had arrived as aide August 6. He was persuasive and earnest. John P. Shanks, 
an Indiana Congressman of like opinions, had just come or announced his com- 
ing. These counselors urged him to fight fire with fire. 9 Slavery nourished the 
guerrillas; he should strike at slavery. 

No doubt Fremont regarded the startling proclamation which he issued 
under date of August 30 as primarily a military measure. He had placed St. 
Louis under martial law on August 14; now he extended the regime over the 
whole State, assuming the administrative powers theretofore exercised by the 
flabby Gamble. He drew a diagonal line from Leavenworth through Jefferson 
City, Rolla, and Ironton to Cape Girardeau as separating the areas of Unionist 
and secessionist control; declared that all civilians caught in arms north of that 
line should be tried by court-martial and if found guilty, shot; and prescribed 
the extreme penalty for all persons found guilty of destroying railway tracks, 
bridges, or telegraph lines. He further announced that the real and personal 
property of Missourians who actively aided the enemies of the United States 
was confiscated to public use, and that their slaves would be freed. The geo- 
graphical distribution of slaveowners in Missouri was peculiar. Of the total of 
115,000 slaves listed in the 1860 census, the 31 counties contiguous to the Mis- 
sissippi and Missouri Rivers north and west of St. Louis held almost 77,000. It 
was in these counties, and especially in the belt stretching along the Missouri 
across the State, that guerrilla warfare had its deepest roots. This belt, lying 
largely along Fremont's line, was subjected to his severe punitive order. 10 

Fremont might well feel desperate. He faced enemies in the field, covert 
treason within his lines, and insubordination behind his back. The warfare, as the 
St. Louis Republican said, was becoming atrociously savage; both sides killed 
without quarter, and looted with greedy eagerness. Grant had just written his 
father from Jefferson City that the country west of that point would be in a 
starving condition the next winter, for all Unionists were fleeing penniless, leav- 
ing farms, crops, and stock to be ravaged by the enemy. Secessionist guerrillas, 
after firing into many passenger trains, on September 6 weakened a i6o-foot 
bridge over the Little Platte so that at midnight it collapsed under a train loaded 
with 80 or 90 men, women, and children. Martial law had become a necessity, 
and to that point Fremont was justified; it was when he went beyond that he 
invaded a sphere of policy belonging to Lincoln. 

9 Shanks's official service as aide began Sept. 20, but he may have arrived in St. Louis 
earlier. Gurley sat in Congress 1859-63, Shanks 1861-63. 

10 Frank Moore, Rebellion Record, III, 10, 26, Documents, pp. 33-71, gives the proclama- 
tion with some press opinion. Fremont's reasons, as stated in his MS Memoirs, are quoted 
in Nevins, Fremont, 500. 



NEW STAR, NEW ISSUE 

A wiser man would have telegraphed Lincoln in advance concerning the 
proclamation. Fremont instead followed it with a letter which, however placa- 
tory, gave the President no real explanation. He wrote of the enemy (Septem- 
her 3): 

He has been fortifying new places, and creeping covertly forward into 
Kentucky lately, and I have been very anxious to anticipate him, but not quite 
able yet. Still, I am moving, and we are beginning to roll the war backward. I 
think the preparation in the South much greater than we had thought, and 
I believe that you will soon be compelled to exert the whole power of the 
nation and use every means of aggressive war. Here, I have been compelled to 
move fast and act with my best judgment as the occasion rose. I trust that the 
proclamation which I judged it right to issue on the 30th will meet with your 
approval and support. . . . 

Gov. Gamble visits you at Washington. He has been professedly friendly 
but has shown no real disposition to cooperate. His inefficiency is quite re- 
markable, and in my judgment he had neither courage nor capacity for his 
position. . . . You notice that we are driving Pillow back, and you will in a 
short time see some changes for the better. . . ." 

Union leaders believed at the time that the Confederacy had 60,000 or 
70,000 armed men in Missouri, of whom 40,000 were Missourians. 12 Leonidas 
Polk had laid plans to hold a great part of the State while attempting to seize 
control of Kentucky. Nobody knew when Sterling Price and Ben McCulloch 
would make another attack from the southwest, or Pillow a move from the 
southeast. 



t ii i 

Even as a military measure, Fremont's proclamation was open to sharp ob- 
jection. To put Confederate guerrillas to death would simply invite reprisals. 
To begin the sweeping confiscation of secessionist property would create em- 
bittered resistance, not quiet it. And it was far more than a military measure; 
it was a sharp intrusion into the political field. Already Abolitionists and radical 
freesoilers of the North were loudly demanding that the war be expanded into 
a conflict for emancipation as well as Union. Joshua Giddings had published a 
flaming letter dated June 6 in the New York Tribune demanding just such 
action as Fremont now took; Gerrit Smith, in a letter of July 12 to Owen 
Love joy, had asked why the government took a costly, weary way to suppress 

11 Grant's letter on the guerrillas, dated Aug. 27, was in the Gundlach Collection before 
its sale. Fremont's letter to Lincoln is in the Seward Collection, Rochester University. 
Lincoln must have referred it to Seward, who kept it. 

12 An over-estimate, as subsequent events demonstrated. Military and political conditions 
are discussed in S. B. Laughlin, "Missouri Politics During the Civil War/' Missouri His- 
torical Review, v. 23 (AprU, 1929), 400-26. 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

the rebellion when a cheap, direct one was at hand. Liberation of slaves had 
obviously become a necessity, wrote Smith. "Let the President, in his capacity 
as commander of the army, proclaim such liberation and the war would end in 
thirty days." Moncure D. Conway was putting through the press a book, The 
Great Method of Peace, which urged emancipation as the key to victory. 
Charles Sumner was demanding an end to halfway measures. Greeley's Tribune 
declared it was time to stop handling traitors with kid gloves. 13 Fremont's 
proclamation, followed as it was by his creation of a commission to take evi- 
dence and issue deeds of manumission, reverberated on the sounding board these 
radicals furnished. 

If Fremont was rash in issuing this proclamation without prior consultation 
of the War Department and President, he was to commit a worse folly. Lin- 
coln could never countenance his step, and on September 3rd the President sent 
him a kindly letter, pointing out his objections. He ordered Fremont to shoot 
no Confederate without Presidential approbation or consent, for if he did "the 
Southerners would very certainly shoot our best men in their hands in retalia- 
tion"; and he instructed the general to modify his paragraph on the confiscation 
of property and liberation of slaves so as to conform to the recent Confiscation 
Act, which sanctioned the seizure of property only when actually used for 
insurrectionary purposes. It would have hurt Fremont's pride and sense of con- 
viction to yield, and he refused. In a stiff-necked letter he requested Lincoln 
to direct the modification by open order which Lincoln in a courteous letter 
of September 1 1 did. 

Fremont was doubtless influenced in this not only by his radical advisers 
but by the enthusiastic reception of the proclamation in certain quarters. Ap- 
proval came from a long list of the nation's most important newspapers; not 
merely radical journals like the Chicago Tribune, New York Evening Post, and 
Springfield Republican, but moderate papers like the Washington National 
Intelligencer and New York Times. In Lincoln's own State it was vigorously 
applauded. From New England to Kansas most of the clergy, all belligerent 
haters of slavery, and all citizens who thought Lincoln slow and Seward an 
evil influence, greeted it jubilantly. Representative George W. Julian of Indiana 
wrote later that it stirred and united the people of the North during the ten 
days of life allowed it by the Government far more than any other event of 
the war. Two Cabinet members approved of it. Secretary Cameron, at home 
ill, telegraphed his congratulations to Fremont before he found that Lincoln 
was hostile, and Montgomery Blair thought the emancipation provision justi- 
fied. In Missouri the effect on loyal and disloyal was all that Fremont had 

13 Gerrit Smith Papers, Syracuse University; Clarke, Julian, 217-20; N. Y. Tribune, Sept. 
i, 1861. 



NEW STAR, NEW ISSUE 

hoped or so at least he believed. "The Union people rejoiced openly," he 
states in his unpublished memoirs. "To the rebels everywhere it was a blow. 
It aff ected not only their principles but their property." 14 

Doubtless Fremont believed that a seemingly voluntary retraction would 
draw upon his head the censure of all the groups now applauding him, and 
would send a wave of disappointment and anger directed against him 
through much of the North. Though ready to let Lincoln overrule him, he 
was unwilling to overrule himself. In this he was stubbornly wrongheaded, 
for it was his duty to obey the Commander-in-Chief without demur, and he 
could have made it clear that he was yielding to higher authority. 

Lincoln, who had to think of the whole country, was fearful of the effect 
of the proclamation on Kentucky, just now brought to the very crisis of deci- 
sion as Leonidas Polk invaded her from the South, and Grant followed his 
example by occupying Paducah. Long poised on the knife edge of neutrality, 
most Kentuckians were at last coming down on the Northern side. The Frank- 
fort Kentucky Statesman termed Fremont's proclamation "infamous"; the 
Louisville Courier thought it "abominable." These journals leaned to secession, 
but even the loyal Louisville Journal thought the general's action deplorable. 
Joseph Holt wrote Lincoln that while sound Kentuckians accepted the Con- 
fiscation Act as a necessary measure, the proclamation transcended and vio- 
lated it. "You may well judge," he went on, "of the alarm and condemnation 
with which the Union-loving citizens have read this proclamation." They 
could not believe that Lincoln would let it be enforced; and anxious that noth- 
ing should chill the fervor of loyal citizens at this crucial moment, he asked 
for Presidential intervention. Condemnatory resolutions were introduced in 
the legislature. Fremont had some defenders even in Kentucky, but they were 
few. 

Unquestionably, Lincoln was right as to the paramount importance of 
nurturing loyal sentiment in Kentucky. On the very day that he set aside the 
objectionable features of the proclamation, the legislature by overwhelming 

14 Among the newspapers endorsing the proclamation were Bennett's New York Herald, 
the Chicago Times, a violently Democratic organ, and the Chicago Morning Post, a 
Douglasite journal. The measured praise of the "National Intelligencer, always conservative, 
was especially notable (Sept. 7). So was the approval given by the St. Louis Republican, 
a Democratic paper highly critical of the Administration and of most of its Missouri 
measures. The Cnase, Wade, Chandler, and Sumner papers contain much enthusiastic 
comment from a variety of correspondents. Orville H. Browning, Lincoln's old friend 
of Quincy, Illinois, a highly conservative man, wrote the President on Sept. 30: "His 
proclamation in my opinion embodies a true and important principle which the govern- 
ment cannot afford to abandon. . . ." Browning Papers, 111. State Hist. Lib. He added 
that it rested "upon the well ascertained and universally acknowledged principles of inter- 
national law," and would greatly weaken the enemy. For Montgomery Blair's approval see 
Dennett, Dairies and Letters of John Hay, 219. 



33 <5 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

majorities called on Governor Magoffin to demand the immediate withdrawal 
of the Confederates from the Commonwealth, and when Magoffin vetoed this 
resolution, the legislature repassed it over his veto. 15 "The mountains are alive 
with zeal for the Union," declared the Frankfort Commonwealth. "Come, 
then, let us gird up the whole strength of our bodies and souls!" exhorted 
young John M. Harlan as he began raising a Union regiment. Emancipationist 
activity would have paralyzed this enthusiasm. 

And at this critical moment the Fremont-Blair quarrel burst dramatically 
into public view. While the press discussed it, Frank had every advantage in 
laying his side of the dispute before Lincoln. He was effectively abetted by 
Missourians of the Claybank faction. The impression they made in the White 
House is reflected by some notes of John G. Nicolay dated September 17: 

It is now about in the third week since the Blair family . . . who were 
mainly instrumental in urging his [Fremont's] appointment upon the Prest., 
came to him and with many professions of humility and disappointment said 
they were compelled by the indisputable evidence of experience to confess that 
in regard to his capabilities for the very important duties to which he had been 
assigned, he had to their perfect satisfaction proved himself a complete failure, 
and that they now urged his immediate removal, as strenuously as they had 
formerly urged his appointment. Their testimony was supported by Governor 
Gamble of Mo. who came on purpose to Washington to inform the Presi- 
dent that he had gone to St. L. to confer with the genl. about the defence of 
the State, and that after waiting patiently for two days, he was utterly unable 
to obtain an interview with or admittance to him, and that his necessity had 
compelled him to come here. A Mr. Broadhead, State Senator of Mo., also 
travelled all the way here with a similar complaint. Letters were also received 
from other parties making similar statements, and particularly one from L.I.G., 
Esq., an eminent lawyer and citizen of St. Louis. The substance of the various 
statements seemed to be that the Genl. had placed on his staff and surrounded 
himself with a set of men who had been with him in California and elsewhere 
and who made it entirely impossible for anyone except his pets to gain access 
to him etc. 16 

Edward Bates, a Claybank sympathizer, and a rooted conservative on the 
slavery issue, joined the Blairs in pronouncing Fremont a disaster. 

15 For the situation in broad outline see E. M. Coulter, The Civil War in Kentucky, 
in, 112. The Frankfort Commonwealth said editorially: "However objectionable the 
course of Fremont is in relation to slaves, one fact stands out conspicuously worthy of 
attention, and it is that rebellion is attended with eminent peril, while loyalty deserves and 
will receive all the security and protection of life, liberty, and property which the Govern- 
ment can give. Each daynay, each hour of the revolution now going on, and which 
threatens Kentucky, shows the utter recklessness and ruin which must inevitably follow 
the destruction of our Government. . . ." Sept. 11. The Louisville Journal, while regretting 
Fremont's willingness to give freedom to slaves, compared his proclamation with the far 
harsher confiscation law of the Confederacy j Sept. 3. 

1 6 Nicolay Papers, LC. 



NEW STAR, NEW ISSUE 

Fremont's view of the quarrel was that Frank's passion had broken all bounds 
when he found that the general could not be made a tool, that he had laid un- 
just and unsupported charges before Lincoln through Montgomery Blair, and 
that the three Blairs were now engaged in a conspiracy to displace him. 
Gamble had been censured by Fremont for refusing active cooperation in 
certain measures; Broadhead had been a member of Blair's Committee of 
Safety. Both the Missouri Democrat (Republican) and Missouri Republican 
(Democrat) took Fremont's side, and the German press was strongly with 
him. 17 But these voices were not heard in Washington. 

What could Fremont do to reach the White House? "I began to feel the 
withdrawal of the confidence and support of the Administration," he wrote 
later. In his anxiety he allowed Jessie Benton Fremont, gifted, high-strung, and 
impulsive, to carry a letter to Lincoln. He could have found no worse emis- 
sary, for it was in a mood of fierce resentment, steeled by the iron Benton 
determination, that Mrs. Fremont descended on Washington. 

Of the ensuing interview we have two strikingly different accounts, the 
more authentic her own undated memorandum, and the less trustworthy John 
Hay's record of a discursive evening talk by Lincoln some two years after the 
event. Immediately on her arrival in the capital on the evening of September 10 
Mrs. Fremont sent a note to the White House explaining that she had come 
with a letter from the general, and inquiring when she might deliver it. The 
messenger brought back a card with the reply, "Now, at once, A. Lincoln." She 
was disconcerted by this, for she had travelled two days and two nights in a 
hot, dirty day coach and was exhausted. But with Judge Edward Coles of New 
York accompanying her, she went to the mansion, where she had often played 
as a little girl in Jackson's day. She was shown into the red room, and after a 
short wait, Lincoln entered. It was soon plain that the overwrought woman 
and the anxious, harried President were at cross purposes. Lincoln later said 
that she taxed him violently with many things, and this is no doubt true. On 
her way east she had passed a train carrying Montgomery Blair and Mont- 
gomery C. Meigs going west to inquire into Missouri affairs; and she doubtless 
said just what she thought about the Blairs and about the government's neglect 
of the West. Both she and Coles thought Lincoln's voice hard, his manner re- 
pellant, and his anxiety to get rid of her plain. She writes: 

It was clear to Judge Coles as to myself that the President's mind was made 
up against General Fremont and decidedly against me. . . . Briefly, in an- 
swer to his u Well?" I explained that the general wished so much to have his 

17 Bates to Chase, Sept. u, 1861; Chase Papers, Pa. Hist. Soc. Broadhead in a letter of 
Sept. 17 to the editors of the St. Louis Democrat protested against their espousal of 
Fremont against Blair; Broadhead Papers. On the visit of Meigs see Russell F. Weigley, 
Quartermaster General of the Union Army, A Biography of Montgomery C. Meigs, 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

attention to the letter sent, that I had brought it to make sure it would reach 
him. He answered, not to that, but to the subject his own mind was upon, 
that "It was a war for a great national idea, the Union, and that General Fre- 
mont should not have dragged the negro into it that he never would if he 
had consulted 'with Frank Blair. I sent Frank there to advise him" The words 
italicized are exactly those of the President. 

He first mentioned the Blairs, in this astonishing connection. 

It was a parti pris, and as we walked back Judge Coles, who heard every- 
thing, said to me, "This ends Fremont's part in the war. Seward and Mont- 
gomery Blair will see to reports against him made by a man authorized to do 
so, and as everyone knows, with his mind often clouded by drink and always 
governed by personal motives." 18 

A later statement by Mrs. Fremont 19 discloses that she lectured Lincoln 
on the difficulty of conquering the South by arms alone, and the importance 
of appealing to British and world sentiment by a blow against slavery; express- 
ing ideas that Owen Love joy and Gurley cherished, but that Fremont never 
alleged as a reason for his proclamation. The irritated President remarked, 
"You are quite a female politician." It was at this point that he emphasized 
Fremont's error in converting a war for the Union into a war against slavery. 
She also spoke of Fremont's special position as former head of the Republican 
Party, apparently in terms that heightened Lincoln's irritation. 

When old Francis P. Blair saw her next day he was irate. "Look what you 
have done for Fremont; you have made the President his enemy!" He could 
not forgive her opposition to Frank. Montgomery would talk with Fremont, 
he scolded, and bring him to his senses. One account quotes him as saying: 
"Madam, / made your husband what he is, and / will unmake him; 7 nominated 
him for the Presidency in '56, and / will defeat him in the future." 20 She sent 
her husband a cipher message warning him against any advice from Mont- 
gomery. Then, having done the general irreparable harm, she returned to St. 
Louis headquarters. 

Fremont, hoping to remain head of the Western Department and soon 
move forward with his army, took the one step which he believed might ap- 
peal to public sentiment. On September 18 he arrested Frank Blair for insub- 
ordination, and notified Secretary Cameron that he would submit charges for 
his trial. Frank had used his family position, he later declared, "to lay private 

1 8 Jessie Benton Fremont MSS, Bancroft Library. She referred to Frank Blair. See Ap- 
pendix III for details of this interview, 

19 In an unpublished- biographical section on the explorer written by Mrs. Fremont and 
her son; Bancroft Library. Her undated memorandum was apparently written just after 
the interview. Hay's record of Lincoln's talk was made Dec. 9 or 10, 1863, after Lincoln 
had joined Norman Judd, J. P. Usher, Nicolay, and Hay as they sat "talking politics and 
blackguarding our friends." Such a record has dubious historical value. 

20 So states W. M. Davis of St. Louis in a letter Sept. 17, 1861, to his wife, doubtless 
quoting Jessie; Davis Papers, Penna. Hist. Soc. 



NEW STAR, NEW ISSUE 

letters with unsustained accusations before the President, disturbing the Pres- 
ident's confidence in the Commanding General and seriously impairing the 
efficiency of this Department." Mrs. Fremont, Montgomery decided, had 
prompted him "it was General Jessie's doing." The Postmaster-General tele- 
graphed him asking Frank's release, sensibly adding: "This is no time for strife 
except with the enemies of the country." When Fremont complied, Frank 
at first refused to accept a release, for he would have preferred a trial, and he 
was more implacably hostile than ever. 21 

Western affairs had thus been thrown into a crisis which damaged army 
morale, and aroused mixed feelings throughout the North. Would Frank Blair 
break Fremont as he had broken Harney? Or would Fremont redeem himself 
by a brilliant fall campaign? For the confusion, the resentments, and the em- 
barrassment to military movements it is perhaps less profitable to seek out 
personal culprits than to analyze general causes. Although Fremont and Frank 
Blair divide a large culpability, the greater explanation of the sad situation of 
Missouri affairs lies in the factors already noted the deep social divisions of 
the State, half slave and half free; its refractory geography, tying Union de- 
fenses to long lines of river and rail; Washington's inexcusable neglect of the 
trans-Mississippi region; and the readiness of men reared on the frontier to fly 
to violent measures. 



[ HI ] 

One development, however, overshadowed all others the new issue of 
emancipation. The vigor with which Lincoln rejected the concept of a war 
fought not only to save the Union but to destroy slavery reflected his concern 
over a growing public radicalism. He believed in evolution, not revolution; 
he wished to shorten the conflict, not lengthen it. He knew that to win the 
war he must keep Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and radicals, 
reasonably united, and that he must hold the Borderland behind the govern- 
ment. He wished to maintain conditions favorable to a fraternal reunion of 
North and South after the war. Throughout life Lincoln followed the precepts 
of the Epistle to the Philippians: "Let your moderation be known to all men." 
He was pondering his own plan of gradual compensated emancipation in the 
border area, and Fremont's action threatened to destroy its chances. 

But while he rightly insisted that this was a war for a grand national idea, 
powerful elements now regarded it also as a war for a grand humanitarian 
ideal. 

As a host of liberal citizens had risen to applaud Fremont's proclamation, so 

21 Smith, The Blair Family, II, 77; Nevins, Fremont, 520; see Blair-Lee Papers, Princeton, 
for the order of release. 



34 o THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

a host received Lincoln's modification with anger and disappointment, de- 
nouncing it as a fearful blunder. Since Fremont issued his paper, they declared, 
public credit had improved, recruiting had increased, and patriots had felt 
greater elation and confidence. The nation could believe, for the first time, 
that it was fighting for not only a great patriotic object, but a splendid moral 
goal. Lincoln's action takes away the penalty for rebellion, declared the Chi- 
cago Tribune of September 16. "How many times," asked James Russell 
Lowell, "are we to save Kentucky and lose our self-respect?" Judge George 
Hoadly of Cincinnati reported that indignation in that city had risen to fury, 
and Moncure D. Conway asserted that if a cheer for Lincoln were proposed 
to a crowd there, the response would be a groan. 22 A new Philadelphia 
monthly, the Continental, with Charles Godfrey Leland for editor, raised the 
cry: "Emancipation for the Sake of the White Man." Senator Ben Wade wrote 
from his northern Ohio home in bitter execration: 

What do you think of Old Abe's overruling Fremont's proclamation? So 
far as I can see, it is universally condemned and execrated in the North, and I 
have no doubt that by it he has done more injury to the cause of the Union 
by receding from the ground taken by Fremont than McDowell did by re- 
treating from Bull Run. I shall expect to find in his first annual message a 
recommendation to Congress to give each rebel who shall serve during the war 
a hundred and sixty acres of land. Unless the President shall divest himself of 
such squeamishness, all the mighty exertions of the North to subdue this rebel- 
lion will be paralyzed. . . . The President don't object to Genl Fremont's 
taking the life of the owners of slaves, when found in rebellion, but to con- 
fiscate their property and emancipate their slaves he thinks monstrous. . . . 
Such ethics could come only of one born of "poor white trash" and educated 
in a slave State. 23 

Beyond question, the war, whatever happened to Fremont, had taken a new 
turn. His impulsive stroke had crystallized a mass of latent sentiment, and for 
the first time the idea that the conflict might result in a socio-economic revolu- 
tion began to grip men's minds. 

Meanwhile, Grant was having an interesting time at Cairo headquarters, 
and showing remarkable decision. He put a popular Illinois colonel, Richard 
J. Oglesby, in command at Bird Point just across the Mississippi in Missouri. 

22 Chase Papers, LC, for Hoadly's letter; Lowell to Sibyl Norton, Sept. 28, 1861 in 
Letters, I, 314; Leland, Memoirs, 242-244; Conway to Greeley, Sept. 18, 1861, Greeley 
Papers, NYPL. Much rejoicing was aroused in radical Northern quarters by news that 
Fremont had by public advertisement freed two male slaves of Thomas L. Snead, who 
had taken an active part against the Union. William Pitt Fessenden wrote James S. Pike 
on Sept. 8 that Fremont's proclamation had had an electrifying effect on the country, 
and proved him a statesman; he believed that Fremont rather than McClellan might be 
the coming man. Pike Papers. 

23 Wade, Jefferson, Ohio, Sept. 23, 1861, to Zack Chandler; Chandler Papers, LC. 



NEW STAR, NEW ISSUE 

He sent General C. F. Smith, one of the ablest regular army officers, to com- 
mand at Paducah. A detachment occupied the mouth of the Cumberland hard 
by. Once he had a narrow escape from capture; while some Confederate 
prisoners under exchange were in his office for credentials to pass through the 
lines, somebody mentioned that he was going to Cape Girardeau next day 
and though chance prevented his trip, a Union boat in the area was halted by 
Confederate artillery, and searched by a major confident he had bagged Grant. 
The general heard that an old acquaintance, the forty-one-year-old brigadier 
William Tecumseh Sherman, first-year man at West Point in Grant's last year, 
had arrived in Louisville to assist General Robert Anderson of Sumter fame. 
He knew that a blue-water naval captain, Andrew H. Foote, had reached St. 
Louis to take charge of naval operations on the western rivers under Fremont 
and the War Department. Foote's first task was to hasten the building of gun- 
boats and mortarboats. "Spare no effort to accomplish the object in view with 
the least possible delay," ordered Fremont. 24 

Plainly, the western theater would soon see action. Whether Fremont 
realized his plans for clearing Missouri and swinging through Arkansas to the 
Mississippi, or Grant his plans for moving down that river, large movements 
impended. They would inevitably have a large influence on wartime policy 
respecting the slaves. 

24 Grant, Memoirs, I, 264-268; Lewis, Sherman, 181, 182; Hoppin, Foote, 




The Firepower of the North 

THE FIRST battle autumn saw fully three-quarters of a million men ranked 
and accoutered on the American continent. Never in history had such a host 
been raised so quickly; but east and west on both sides, under McClellan and 
Johnston, Fremont and Price, troops complained of inadequate and defective 
arms. The Confederate need was desperate. Governor Isham G. Harris of 
Tennessee on November 2 earnestly entreated citizens of every county to 
deliver to his agents "every effective double-barrel shotgun and sporting rifle 
which they may have." Union troops in the West continued to suffer from 
crippling shortages, while even in the Washington camps some regiments were 
kept chafing for weapons. A decent uniformity of pieces and ammunition 
was beyond the dreams of the most ambitious commander. The world was 
in the midst of a small-arms revolution, and many problems would have to be 
solved before men could agree on standard requirements and learn to meet 
them. 1 

Nothing did more to expose the gangling, adolescent state of American 

i The arms revolution now slowly under way had two main parts: Acceptance of 
rifling (the Enfield standard was three grooves with a spiral twist of one inch in seventy- 
two to rotate a heavy conical bullet) in place of the old smoothbore; and the gradual 
acceptance of breechloaders in place of muzzle-loaders. Rifles (that is, guns spirally 
grooved to give the projectile a rotation which increases the accuracy of its flight) had 
been invented soon after Columbus discovered America; breechloaders had appeared in 
the first half of the sixteenth century. During the Revolution Major Patrick Ferguson 
invented a breechloading rifle used by some British troops. But in 1861 the infantry of 
practically all nations was still familiar with smoothbore muzzle-loading muskets; direct 
descendants of the "smoky muskets" of Shakespeare's All's Well. Rifles, and muskets 
converted by rifling, were steadily displacing the inaccurate smoothbores. The United States 
had adopted a muzzle-loading Springfield rifle for its tiny force of regular infantry 
in 1855. In various countries limited bodies of troops had been given superior equipment; 
the French chasseurs, for example, rifles which threw the bullet invented by Captain 
Minie, an elongated projectile with an iron cup fitting into a hollow cone at the base 
this cup, when driven forward by the explosion, expanding the bullet into the grooves. 
Cavalry, who could not manage ramrods, had to have breechloading carbines or short 
guns. The Prussians early in the 1 840*5 adopted the needle gun, a breechloader using a 
cartridge detonated by a spring-driven needle, and slowly improved it. The triumph of 
this rifle in the war with Austria in 1866 caused all civilized powers to rearm with similar 
weapons. 

34* 



THE FIREPOWER OF THE NORTH 

society than the effort to arm the swiftly gathered hosts. Both sections con- 
fronted an urgent industrial problem without the technological skills, manu- 
facturing resources, and organizational experience required to master it. In 
no field were both the faults and virtues of large-scale improvisation more 
strikingly exhibited. 



When Sumter fell the American stock of arms was at the ebb-tide level 
to be expected in a nation which had never put 50,000 men in the field and 
never expected to do so. The United States at the beginning of 1861 had in all 
its forts, arsenals, and armories, North and South, about 600,000 small arms, 
antique and new, wretched and passable. Of these 35,335 were rifles or rifled 
muskets, the latest improved arms; 42,000 were older percussion rifles; and 
about 500,000 were percussion smoothbore muskets. 2 These figures, however, 
are deceptive, for a great part of the muskets were unserviceable. Not un- 
typical was the Thirtieth Illinois Infantry, which took the field this year armed 
with 90 "good" Enfield rifles, 183 serviceable American and English muskets, 
and 357 unserviceable muskets; a total of 357 bad as against 273 good pieces. As 
this regiment numbered 773 men, 121 possessed no arms at all. 3 Probably half 
of the 500,000 smoothbore muskets owned by the government were not worth 
carrying into battle. The other half would be useful, and some Union soldiers 
carried smoothbores without complaint to the end of the war. They fired 
an ounce ball at low velocity to a distance of some 600 feet, and could be lethal 
at nearly that distance; whereas a rifled musket fired a bullet at a velocity of 
960 feet a second with a range of 3300 feet. The rifled Springfields and En- 
fields were usually sighted at 900 feet, and at any distance much above that 
figure the "drift" of the projectile made accurate sighting impossible. 

Just what part of this stock was held in the seceding States it is difficult 
to say. Lincoln's message to Congress July 4, 1861, stated that a dispropor- 
tionately large number had been sent to the South, and both Cameron and 
Scott lent their authority to the charge that Buchanan's Secretary of War, 
Floyd, had thus denuded Northern repositories. Floyd himself, on returning 
to Virginia, boasted that he had done so, and absurd assertions on this head 
crept into the Southern press. The Richmond Enquirer declared that by a 
single order in 1860 Floyd had sent 115,000 improved rifles and muskets from 
Northern to Southern arsenals; while the Memphis Appeal improved on this 

2 H. K. Craig to Joseph Holt, Jan. 22, 1861; O. R. Ill, i, 42. 

3 Acting adjutant Dec. 6, 1861, to McClernand; McClernand Papers, 111. State Li- 
brary. 



344 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

by asserting that his transfers, with seizures from Federal posts and purchases 
abroad, had given the Confederacy more than 700,000 small arms and 200,000 
revolvers. The fact is that Floyd had made no exceptional transfers of weapons 
to the South. 4 

Our best figures on arms allocation indicate that early in 1861 about 
336,500 government muskets and rifles were deposited in the free area as 
against 273,500 in the slave States. Many in the second category, however, 
were in forts which the Union continued to hold, or in Missouri, Maryland, 
and the District of Columbia. Another official statement places the number of 
small arms in Union repositories at the beginning of 1861 at 422,500, a figure 
which includes deductions for weapons in arsenals already seized or soon to 
be taken. It did not, however, allow for losses shortly sustained in the capture 
of Harpers Ferry and the secession of Virginia and Tennessee. 5 Altogether, 
we are safe in saying that the small arms on hand for Union troops did not ex- 
ceed 350,000 pieces, of which not more than 250,000 were fit for battle use; 
while the Confederates could hardly have had more than 200,000 government 
arms. 

Thus the statement of one historian that the United States possessed in its 
arsenals and posts in April, 1861, enough muskets and rifles for an army of 
half a million, 6 is simply nonsense. It would, however, have had more than 
enough for the first armies called up had they been distributed fairly, and 
cared for efficiently. Unfortunately, systematic allocation was impossible dur- 
ing the first frenzied months, many arms were ruined by misuse, and some were 
captured at Bull Run, Wilson's Creek, and Ball's Bluff. Viewed broadly, 1861 
was a year of distress, search, and complaint among Northern as among South- 
ern officers. 

And the armories? When fighting began, the United States had but two, 
at Harpers Ferry and Springfield, Massachusetts, and the first was immediately 
lost, with the destruction of all its manufacturing facilities. The nation's fab- 
rication of small arms was therefore confined to one establishment. This 
armory, planted by Congress on the Connecticut in 1791, had never really 
emerged from infancy. Consisting of some small buildings on a hilltop, and 
"water-shops" for heavier operations on a branch of the river, its most impos- 
ing structure was the arsenal celebrated by Longfellow, where "from floor to 
ceiling, like a huge organ" rose the tiers of burnished arms. 

4 Meneely, War Department, 1861, 41; T. B. Gates, The War of the Rebellion, 14; 
CX R. Ill, i, 311. 

5 O. R. Ill, i, 321, 322; see the figures also of Craig to Holt, Jan. 21, 1861, O. R. Ill, 
ibid. The deduction is for weapons seized in arensals in South Carolina, Louisiana, and 
Alabama, already gone, and in Augusta, Ga., and Fayetteville, N. C., soon to go. 

6 Shannon, Organization and Administration of the Union Army, I, 1 10. 



THE FIREPOWER OF THE NORTH 

When Sumter was taken, only a thousand muskets a month were being 
made at Springfield. Indeed, in recent years production had fallen to a lower 
point than that reached in 1815. The government tried to speed up the work, 
but such bottlenecks developed that even in July only 3000 arms were made. 
Skilled workmen were hard to find, and the use of machine tools was still 
rudimentary. Of the 49 parts in the standard Springfield musket many had 
to be subjected to elaborate processing. The hammer alone, for example, had 
to be forged, dropped, trimmed, punched, drifted, milled, turned, filed, and 
finally case-hardened. 7 

Enough guns for only one regiment a month! This April rate meant that 
both State and Federal authorities had to turn elsewhere in frenzied haste. 



First, let us look at the States. 

From the Kennebec to the Sangamon, they sprang forward in a confused 
melee, characterized by inefficiency, duplication, and waste. They and the 
Washington authorities hurriedly placed contracts with the score of plants 
capable of producing arms, all concentrated in New England and the Middle 
Atlantic States, for the West had none. Arms could be made in quantity at 
Providence, R. L, Worcester, Mass., and Manchester, N. H.; at Hartford, 
Meriden, Norwich, Norfolk, Windsor Locks, Middletown, and Whitneyville, 
Conn.; at Watertown, Ilion, and in New York, N. Y.; at Trenton, N. J., at 
Bridesburg, Pa., and some other places. 8 Contracts were given foreign brokers 
and manufacturers, but we may first analyze the activities of Federal and State 
agents in the home markets. 

The three principal mistakes made in home arms procurement, broadly 
considered, were the initial want of system, so that many agencies bid fran- 
tically against each other; the excessive orders, for down to July i, 1862, these 
agencies contracted for 1,164,000 rifles or rifled muskets of Springfield pattern; 
and the exorbitant prices paid, averaging fully $20 a gun with appendages. 9 
The first error was a product of haste, the second of panic, and the third of a 
general uncertainty as to costs. In quite a different category stood a more crip- 
pling mistake, the failure of the Federal Government to make the most of 
recent advances in arms design. 

7 See description of Springfield armory, Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12 (October, 1863), 
436-451, and in Springfield Republican, April 22, 1861. 

8 Felicia Deyrup, Arms Makers of the Connecticut Valley; W. W. Greener, The Gun 
and its Development (6th ed., 1897). 

9 Meneely, War Department, 1861, 253-254, 262-263; 37th Cong., Sen. Exec. Doc. 72, pp. 
15-20 ff. 



34 6 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

In the initial scramble for arms on hand, Connecticut and Massachusetts 
fared especially well, partly because their governors had foreseen the emer- 
gency, partly because of their proximity to sources of supply. As early as 
January, 1861, Buckingham at Hartford had taken personal responsibility for 
purchasing knapsacks, bayonets, and other equipment for 5000 men. The 
State owned more than 1000 regular army rifled muskets, and more than 2000 
smoothbores good for temporary service, while its factories could quickly 
turn out supplementary weapons. On Lincoln's first call, Buckingham decided 
to equip Connecticut forces only with good rifles. State banks furnished 
money. The first regiment received excellent Sharps rifles, the second Sharps 
and Enfields, and the third rifled Springfields. Thus a month after Sumter 
fell the State had sent three well-armed regiments into service. When the first 
reached Washington May 13, with shining barrels, ample ammunition, tents, 
and a baggage train, General Scott exclaimed: "Thank God, we have one regi- 
ment ready to take the field!" 10 

Before Sumter, William Schouler, the Massachusetts adjutant-general, had 
begun to press Cameron for arms. The Bay State already had 3000 rifled mus- 
kets, and he wished the national government to give it 2000 more. Governor 
Andrew made still more urgent pleas, demanding arms first from Springfield, 
and later from the Watertown arsenal. He obtained a supply that gave Mas- 
sachusetts' early contingents a superior equipment, many of her troops boast- 
ing excellent rifles. 11 

In the West, Illinois alone, by dint of luck and enterprise in getting hold 
of so large a part of the contents of the St. Louis arsenal, was able to equip 
her early regiments fairly well. We have seen how, late in April, Captain James 
H. Stokes of Chicago, cooperating with Nathaniel Lyon, seized 2 1,000 muskets, 
500 rifled carbines, 110,000 cartridges, and several cannon, which were 
promptly moved to Springfield. 12 While Illinois troops were benefited, those 
of neighboring states suffered. Only 7,000 muskets were left in St. Louis to 
equip the Union volunteers there. When Governor Dennison of Ohio com- 
plained and sent an emissary to Springfield with a requisition which the de- 
partmental commander supported by a telegram, Yates with bad grace allowed 
Ohio 5000 arms. He had good reason to hold on to all the equipment possible, 
for the State repositories had contained only 362 altered muskets, 105 rifles, 

10 CrofTut and Morris, Military and Civil Hist. Conn., 67, 83-85. 

11 O. R. in, i, 66, 71, 85, 93; Wm. Schouler, Massachusetts in the Civil War, I, 219, 220 ff. 
But some later Bay State regiments were badly armed. At Ball's Bluff the Fifteenth 
Massachusetts, carrying smoothbores useful only at short range, suffered heavily from 
Confederates armed with long-range rifles; C. F. Walcott, Hist, of the 21 st Massachusetts, 
141!. 

12 Report Adjutant-General of 111., I, 241. 



THE FIREPOWER OF THE NORTH 

133 musketoons (short, large-bore muskets used by artillery and cavalry), 
and 297 horse-pistols! Of course his St. Louis spoils did not carry Illinois very 
far, and the later regiments were as poorly provided as the others of the 
Northwest. Some got no arms at all until Christmas. 13 

The story of other States may be summed up in the experience of Penn- 
sylvania and her eager, efficient executive Andrew Curtin. At the outbreak 
of war the authorities found that they had just about 4200 efficient small 
arms. The totals were much larger, to be sure, coming to 14,700 pieces on 
paper, but many were antique smoothbores with broken locks or rust-eaten 
barrels, and some were actually flintlocks that veterans of Valley Forge 
would have recognized as old friends. As unarmed volunteers fell into line 
in every town, Curtin sent a wild appeal to Secretary Cameron. Major-Gen- 
eral Patterson, just made head of the department embracing Pennsylvania, 
made similar appeals. They sent demands not only to the War Department 
but to General Wool in New York. 

In response, the War Department ordered Federal arsenals to supply 
weapons, for as General Scott wrote Patterson, Washington wished no troops 
sent away unarmed. General Wool also did his best, ordering some 26,000 mus- 
kets and more than a million cartridges sent to Pennsylvania. Replying to a 
special request for 10,000 guns for the 15 reserve regiments which the State was 
organizing on her own account, Cameron on June 13 announced that the Ord- 
nance Bureau had been told to send them enough smoothbores. 14 Arms did 
trickle in, but they were never adequate in quantity. The Pennsylvania colonels 
and General Patterson also protested that many were worthless, and that much 
of the ammunition was of the wrong caliber. Like other States, Pennsylvania 
had to make efforts to obtain arms abroad. 

The most hot-tempered of all the governors, Oliver P. Morton in Indi- 
anapolis, naturally raised the loudest uproar. He had scented approaching 
danger as soon as the Confederacy was formed. No governor hated slavery 
more than this explosive man who had walked angrily out of the Indiana 
Democratic convention the moment it endorsed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and 
none stood up more sturdily for his State. "What does this mean? Why this 
discrimination against Indiana?" he blazed in a telegram to Washington when 
he thought it slighted. Before Sumter, he had demanded that the War De- 

13 Ibid., 6fL Illinois made vain attempts to buy arms in the East this summer, finding 
prices too high. When the Fifty-fifth Illinois, recruited during the summer, went to Missouri 
to fight, it did not draw arms until late December; and they were so wretched that a 
sergeant wrote Governor Yates that the regiment might better use alder popguns. A Com- 
mittee of the Regiment, The Story of the $$th Illinois. 

14 Egle, Curtm, 208 ff.; F. H. Taylor, Philadelphia in the Civil War, 17 ff .; O. R. HI, i, 
179-181, 256, 270. 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

partment store 5,000 small arms and other materials in Indiana in anticipation 
of trouble. He got approval of the idea, but no shipments. Just after Sumter, 
while hurrying two agents East and one to Canada to buy arms, he telegraphed 
Washington that of his 2,400 volunteers in camps, less than half had weapons: 
"Not a pound of powder or a single ball sent to us, or any sort of equipment." 
He hastened to Washington, obtained promises, returned home, and then 
posted to Washington again because the promises were broken. Ten thousand 
men, he rambled, were awaiting equipment. 15 

When Cameron explained that a part of the arms ordered to Indiana had 
been destroyed at Harpers Ferry, Morton refused to be mollified. Nor did 
Cameron placate him by authorizing Indiana to draw 1500 pieces from the 
St. Louis arsenal, that arsenal which the Illinoisans had just emptied. Some 
rifled muskets did arrive from the Pittsburgh arsenal and other points. A pep- 
pery debate ensued between Morton and Cameron. Indiana, wrote the Secre- 
tary, was unjustified in her bitter scolding, for she had received 3000 new per- 
cussion smoothbores, 5000 flintlock muskets altered to percussion, and 1000 
Maynard rifled muskets, along with some minor driblets. Altogether, the 
government had given Indiana 9500 arms for the 5000 men for which it had 
asked the State. Why, then, the Hoosier ululations? But this was not at all 
Morton's view. He pointed out that a great part of the arms were abominable, 
and that he had actually quelled something like a mutiny in the Twelfth In- 
diana because the men wished to reject unusable old smoothbores. Other 
troops grumbled that they were given muskets a century old. 

The irritated Morton on May 30 appointed Robert Dale Owen the State 
agent to procure implements of war, and Owen left to join a clamorous group 
of similar agents in New York. Finally the governor established his own State 
ammunition manufactory in Indianapolis, which throve so well that in time 
it sold its surplus to the nation. 

So the story went all over the map. New York made appeal after appeal, 
search after search. Her defeat in getting immediate supplies was writ large 
in newspaper advertisements on June i asking for bids to supply 10,000 Minie 
rifled muskets and 2000 Minie rifles, with ammunition to equip a force of 
12 to 15 regiments of infantry, cavalry and artillery. 16 Iowa, after rebuffs 
from Cameron and Yates the latter unwilling to spare any of the St. Louis 

15 W. D. Foulke, O. P. Morton, I, 38, 39, 82, 113-117, 129; O. R. Ill, i, 64, 65, 89, 93, 
116, 122, 149; Anon., The Soldier of Indiana, passim. Morton appointed Lewis Wallace 
the State adjutant-general. He and the quartermaster-general reported many of the Federal 
arms to be very inferior. 

1 6 Rawley, E. D. Morgan; N. Y. Tribune, June i; Burt, Memoirs; Capt. C E. Minie of 
Vincennes had gained fame by his elongated bullet, widely used throughout the world. 
On Robert Dale Owen see the biography by Richard Leopold, 



THE FIREPOWER OF THE NORTH 

booty appealed to the governor of Connecticut, to Simeon Draper of the 
New York Defense Committee, and to arms manufacturers, all without result. 
The first four Iowa regiments stayed in camp waiting for arms, which finally 
came as a mixture of antiquated and rubbishy pieces. 17 

To each worried governor, the War Department in the spring and summer 
of 1 86 1 appeared obtuse and indifferent. Arms were lying at Watertown, 
Springfield, Pittsburgh: "Why don't they send the arms?" Harassed men in 
the little War Department took a different view. "It is not possible," James 
W. Ripley of the Ordnance Bureau wrote the Ohio governor in May, u to 
meet demands for arms to be distributed among the people without very soon 
exhausting our entire supplies, and making disproportionate distributions to 
different parts of the country. There are no Harper's Ferry rifles on hand, 
and the small supply of rifles should be reserved for the troops of the longer 
period of service." 1S As national forces grew, the States had to be kept 
rigorously stinted. As late as the autumn of 1862 Ripley was writing Yates: 19 

I regret very much that it is not within the power of the Ordnance De- 
partment to supply to all new troops, such arms as it would afford me pleasure 
to furnish, if we had or could by any means obtain them; but your Excellency 
is well aware of the utter impossibility of procuring a sufficient supply of first- 
class arms to supply to our large armies, and we are therefore compelled to 
issue the best to be had. In doing this the just rights of the different States are 
considered. The available arms are arranged in classes and distributed pro rata 
to the troops called for from each State. 

The more energetic States quickly sent arms-buyers abroad. Massachusetts 
acted with special promptness. On legislative authority given April 20, Andrew 
appointed F. B. Crowninshield as State agent to procure muskets, rifles, and 
pistols overseas, and four days later, with a credit of ,50,000 and an expert 
assistant from Springfield, he sailed from New York. His instructions were 
to buy 25,000 stand of the best quality, as nearly as possible like the guns used 
in the regular army. Maine and New Hampshire, hearing of his errand, com- 
missioned him to buy for them 3000 and 2000 rifles respectively, and a little 
later credits came from Connecticut and Ohio. On arriving in London May 
6 Crowninshield found that, early as he was, he had to compete with Southern 
emissaries and buyers from other Northern States, and that speculators were 
forcing up prices. His assistant, hurrying to Birmingham, where 25,000 first- 
class Enfield rifles were reported available at 3, found a Southern agent 
ready to pay ^5 apiece for the whole lot, and thought himself lucky to buy 

17 Upham, "Arms and Equipment for the Iowa Troops." la. Journal of Hist., XVI, 3 fL 

18 Endorsement on letter of Gov. Dennison May 9, 1861; Ordnance Letters, War Dept. 

19 Oct. 24, 1862; Ordnance Bureau, Misc. Letterbooks, No. 56, pp. 396, 397. 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

20oo. 20 It was clear to Crowninshield that he should not haggle over prices; 
and before he sailed back, he obtained 19,380 good Enfield rifles for Mas- 
sachusetts and shipped part of them, while he also bought 10,000 sets of 
knapsacks and cartridge boxes, with other equipment. 

Leaders in New York meanwhile urged Governor Morgan to buy arms 
in Europe, and at their suggestion he sent over George L. Schuyler of Schuyler, 
Hartley & Graham, with authority to obtain about a million dollars' worth of 
small arms and ordnance. The anxious governor equipped him with a letter 
to Prime Minister Palmerston which obviously should have gone through the 
American legation. 21 Rowland and Aspinwall also bought arms abroad. 



t HI ] 

All this work, however, was swiftly taken over by larger authority; and 
now we must turn to the national government. We may first summarize its 
action 1861-62 in two paragraphs. 

Clearly, Washington alone could introduce order in place of the confusion 
and frustration produced by the competing States. As the great new volunteer 
army came into being, Federal authorities had to accept full responsibility 
for equipping the men. As fast as possible, they had to take over contract- 
letting at home and abroad, provide for rigid arms inspection, and accelerate 
manufacturing at Springfield. Step by step, they gained mastery of the chaotic 
field, making the Ordnance Bureau one of the nation's most powerful agencies. 

Before the end of 1861, War Department contracts had been standardized 
and a good inspection service created. State purchasing for the national govern- 
ment was permitted only by specific War Department authorization. In many 
instances the Department refused to compensate States for high-cost purchases 
in the first months of the conflict, alleging loose methods and disregard of 
government price specification; in many other instances it reduced the valua- 
tion on purchases. Naturally the States were angry, and it was a relief all 
around when State buying on national account ceased. 22 Federal purchasing 

20 Schouler, Mass, in Civil War, I, 219, 220; Pearson, Andrew, I, 192; Reports of the 
Master of Ordnance in Mass. Adjutant-General's Reports, 1861, 1862. The Master states 
that Crowninshield bought in all 20,380 rifled Enfield muskets for 73, 900. 

21 Schuyler bought for New York troops 25,080 rifled Enfields at $16.70 delivered 
in New York city. He was an able agent, and though his authority to act for the State 
was suspended in July, on the 29th of that month Cameron authorized him to 'purchase 
large consignments for the United States. Rawley, Morgan; Burt, Memoirs; N. Y. Bureau 
of Mil. Statistics, ist Ann. Report (1863); O- & HI, i, 355. The reports of the New York 
adjutant-general are singularly unenlightening, and that State lacks a sound history of its 
war effort. Morgan's 72-page message of January, 1862, contains valuable information. 

22 Ripley endorsement on letter of J. N. Ray. March 13, 1862, Ordnance Letters to War 
Dept.; Cameron to Ripley, War Office Military Bk., No. 47, Jan. 10, 1862; Ripley to Curtin, 
Oct. 2, 1 86 1, Ordnance Misc. Letterbook No. 55, p. 160. 



THE FIREPOWER OF THE NORTH 

of arms abroad slackened in the spring of 1862, when everyone hoped for 
the capture of Richmond, and began again on an improved basis. Government 
manufacture meanwhile rose until by the spring of 1863 the national armories 
were producing 30,000 first-class Springfield rifles a month. 23 

But this systematization of arms delivery was not achieved without blunders, 
delays, and failures of the most disheartening kind. What were they? 

War Department confusion at the outset was staggering. Cameron, not 
allowed before Sumter to prepare for war lest he anger the South, remained 
ill-prepared because he lacked foresight and energy. When the aging Colonel 
H. K. Craig had to be dropped as head of the Ordnance Bureau, the Secretary 
appointed another infirm, incompetent veteran, Lieut.-Colonel James W. 
Ripley, whom the press soon dubbed Ripley Van Winkle. The bureau staff 
was so inadequate that extra clerks had to be employed on daily wages. 24 It 
was a signal misfortune to the North that its supply of arms and munitions 
was not controlled by a man as able, clearheaded, and progressive as the quarter- 
master chief, Montgomery C. Meigs. 

Ripley was slow, unenterprising, and loath to accept responsibilities. As 
late as June 3, 1861, possessing no information about the size of the anticipated 
military force, he asked whether Cameron would approve of provision for 
250,000 men in all branches. This was less than half the number envisaged 
by Congressional leaders, and little over half of what was in Lincoln's mind. 
Five days later he reported that the government had as yet purchased no 
muskets, that the Springfield armory was making only 2500 arms a month, 
and that the service lacked rifled muskets, accoutrements, artillery, and am- 
munition. But he optimistically declared that supplies on hand would meet 
all exigencies save the want of rifled muskets, that serviceable smoothbores 
could be used in their place, and that the Springfield armory and private es- 
tablishments would maintain the supply and gather a reserve. No need to 
worry! no reason even to hurry! Smoothbores would do! 25 A Pennsylvania 
regiment which compared its Harpers Ferry muskets with Enfield rifles found 
that the Enfields hit targets at 1000 yards which the muskets missed at 400, 
and that a mark at 500 yards was riddled by the Enfields while the "buck and 
ball" of the Harpers Ferry pieces (a ball topped by three buckshot) all fell 
ignominiously short. 

Had the War Department moved with celerity in April-May, 1861, to 
buy the whole European supply of sound arms and contracted for the whole 

23 For a time in the spring of 1862 the Ordnance Bureau refused even the best offers of 
new contracts like that by Lubback & Co., London, of 100,000 Enfields; Ripley to C. A. 
Field, April 30, 1862, Ordnance Misc. Letterbook No. 55, p. 160. 

24 Meneely, War Department, 1861, 112-113. 

25 O. R. Ill, i, 245* 26 * 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

available output that year, it would not only have acquired an ample store, 
but would have severely crippled the unindustrialized Confederacy. Such 
action would have made State buying abroad unnecessary. A few shrewd 
men urged this. But the whole government, and indeed the American people, 
underrating the effort ahead and unused to large-scale Federal action, shared 
the blame. Ripley did not press his early suggestion that a Federal agent be 
sent abroad to obtain from 50,000 to 100,000 small arms and eight batteries 
of rifled cannon. He was unduly worried about uniformity of ammunition 
supply and red-tape standards of quality and cheapness. Cameron also was 
slow, partly because, like Seward and others, he hoped the war could be 
quickly ended, and partly because his protectionism made him insist on favor- 
ing home industry. Rebuffing Ripley's proposal, as late as July i he wrote 
Lincoln that it was important to encourage domestic manufactures by placing 
orders in America rather than abroad especially as war with some Euro- 
pean power was a possibility. General Scott and several Cabinet members sup- 
ported this view. 26 

Two men saw the need of the hour more plainly. One was Henry S. San- 
ford, minister to Belgium, who tossed on his bed at night worrying about arms. 
"It distresses me," he wrote Seward a month after Sumter, "to think while we 
are in want of them, Southern money is to take them away to be used against 
us." The other was Fremont, who as we have noted had the courage to make 
provisional contracts. Sanford could merely exhort action; merely urge that 
because all Europe was arming, because every progressive nation was dis- 
carding smoothbores for rifles, because of the machinery shortage, and 
because supplies were low and prices rising, the United States should move 
instantly. He begged Seward to send agents to search England and France, to 
ransack Belgium, and to see if Sweden and Prussia would not sell arms. 27 He 
himself had no power to act. But Fremont, dropping his European business, 
did buy. The explorer overcame the Yankee caution of Charles Francis Adams, 
who reluctantly drew on Treasury funds for $75,000 worth of cannon and 
shells and $125,000 worth of rifles Fremont had ordered. Fremont, who had 
been willing to pledge his private means, never forgave Adams for refusing 
to do the same. A cold, selfish, heartless man, he wrote, who would see the 
republic sink before he would risk a penny of the Adams fortune! 

Adams assured Seward that only his sense of the terrible emergency led 
him to approve of Fremont's purchases. Lincoln at once ordered the War De- 

26 Ibid., 263; Meneely, War Department, 1861, 285. 

27 See Report of Committee on Ordnance and Ordnance Stories," July i, 1862, 37th Cong., 
2d. Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 72; Sanford's warning letter of May 12, 1861, is in O. R. Ill, i, 

277, 278. 



THE FIREPOWER OF THE NORTH 

partment to honor the drafts, and all the arms were later shipped to the front. 
But the State Department, agreeing with Cameron, wrote Adams in June that 
the government would authorize no more foreign contracts. Indeed, except 
for allowing Sanford to buy 10,000 pieces, Washington temporarily shut down 
on all purchases abroad, while Cameron and Ripley sat on their hands. 28 

Until Bull Run! for that thunderclap awakened everybody. It was while 
its first echoes resounded that Cameron wrote the New York agent, Schuyler, 
to buy with all speed 100,000 foreign rifled muskets, 10,000 carbines, 20,000 
cavalry sabres, and 10,000 revolvers; on July 29 his formal appointment came; 
and by mid-August, with a $2,ooo,ooo-credit at Baring Brothers, he was rum- 
maging the British warehouses. No more home-market coddling! 

Unfortunately, Schuyler came too tardily on the scene. He at once found 
that the Northern States and the Confederacy had almost completely cleared 
the market of the best rifles, and tied up the best arms factories by their con- 
tracts. Prices had risen to double their usual level. Of course antiquated arms, 
the refuse of decades, in all types, patterns, and calibres, could be had in un- 
limited quantities, but his instructions and good sense forbade his taking them. 
When he turned to government arsenals, he found that the British authorities 
interdicted any sales, but that he might get 45,000 to 48,000 French rifles of 
an 1853 model. At about the same time he persuaded the Birmingham manu- 
facturers, who were united in a powerful association and had been busily 
engaged in filling Southern and State contracts, to agree to deliver 35,000 
Enfields in New York within six months. Then he was suddenly tripped up 
by bad luck. He met trouble in getting his money sent from New York to 
Baring Brothers; the French transaction became public knowledge and Na- 
poleon III forbade it; and Confederate agents snapped up the Birmingham 
contract at a high price per gun. 

In the end, Schuyler did buy a large quantity of arms: 15,000 Enfield 
rifles in Birmingham at an average price of $18.45 apiece, 4000 French rifles at 
$17.60, and more than 97,000 good rifles from the government arsenals in 
Dresden and Vienna at slightly lower prices. These, with 10,000 cavalry car- 
bines and a quantity of revolvers and sabres, cost slightly more than his two 
millions. His principal purchases were made possible by the friendly attitude 
of the Austrian Government. Throughout his mission Schuyler, working 
for only $10 a day and expenses, conducted his affairs with exemplary care, 
system, and dispatch. He and the expert armorer with him, who meticulously in- 

28 Nevins, Fremont, 3rd ed., 474, 475; O. R. Ill, i, 293. Fremont bought cannon and shells 
in England, rifles in France. The Belgian muskets mentioned by Sanford were poor, and 
Prince Napoleon told D. D. Field they were not worth buying. Cf. T. F. Upson, With 
Sherman to the Sea, 27. 



354 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

spected all purchases, were repeatedly insulted by men who offered them 
heavy bribes if they would take inferior equipment. 29 

In his letters home, Schuyler vainly tried to awaken the Ordnance Bureau 
to the realities of the foreign situation. He emphasized the fact that really 
excellent arms could not be obtained at any price, even $100 apiece, except 
from government arsenals, or from private manufacturers already busy with 
American orders. But Cameron and Ripley, never quite grasping this, con- 
tracted with dealers often mere speculators for extensive deliveries of 
foreign arms. They did not comprehend that the government was merely bid- 
ding against itself or the States. 

The heavy War Department buying of foreign arms through dealers began 
just after Bull Run with such orders as that to C. K. Garrison, an American, 
for 10,000 rifled Liege muskets at $27. Ripley agreed in August to accept 
4000 foreign rifles from John Fender of Philadelphia at $18.50. The same month 
J. P. Fitch of New York agreed to deliver 50,000 Enfield rifles at $20, a total 
later raised to 75,000, while another dealer contracted to bring over 26,000 
Enfields at $20. The department bought some Vincennes rifles, a superior arm, 
at $23.50 delivered in the fall of 1861. This list might be much extended. Such 
emergency purchases, it will be seen, were at levels materially above those 
paid by Schuyler in his careful bargaining. He obtained 4000 rifles of Vin- 
cennes pattern at almost $6 less than the War Department, and Enfields at 
$1.55 less, though he gave them a much more rigorous inspection. The alert 
New Yorker was the keenest businessman abroad. 30 

Altogether, foreign purchases of the Federal Government mounted until 
by June 30, 1862, they totaled nearly 727,000. Of these Schuyler procured 
116,000. Probably if the whole effort had been put in the hands of a purchas- 
ing commission directed by Schuyler, he could have obtained much greater 
firepower at less cost; that is, as many arms, of better quality, at lower rates. 
At that, the Federal acquisitions were in general better than those of the 
States. Schuyler kept pointing out how wretched were the weapons shipped 
to fill State orders, and pleading that State agents be called home and kept 
there. 31 

Alongside Schuyler labored Minister Sanford, the principal agent in pre- 

29 For Schuyler's operations see O. R. Ill, i, 355, 418, 484-486, 581, 640, etc. See also 
bcnuylers Report, April 8, 1862, published as a pamphlet. The Chase Papers contain an 
interesting letter by John J. Cisco, Sept. 24, 1861, on possibilities of buying from Napoleon 
III; Pa. Hist. Soc. / & r 

30 For typical contracts see Ripley to Garrison, July 26, i8<5r, Ordnance Misc. Letterbook 
No. 53, p 280; to Mitchell & Jones, Ibid., 286, 287; to N. V. Barkalow, Letterbook No. 54, 
p. 42; and see T. A. Scott to Ripley Aug. 5, 1861, War Dcpt. Military Book No. 45. 

31 O. R. Ill, u, 855. Asst.-Secretary Peter H. Watson wrote early in 1862 that many arms 
had been obtained by State agents against the advice of the War Department: to Henry 
Wilson, Feb. 20, 1862, War Dept. Military Book No. 47 



THE FIREPOWER OF THE NORTH 

elusive buying. This bustling, indefatigable, resourceful Connecticut Yankee, 
not yet forty, with a degree from Heidelberg, found Belgium all too tiny 
a sphere, and loved to keep an eye on all Western Europe, popping in and out 
of half the capitals. With insatiable zest, he applied himself to running down 
Confederate contracts and obstructing or destroying them. 

In a single month, with generous credits from the War Department, San- 
ford obtained 40,000 stand of arms about to go off in a blockade runner, and 
gobbled up a Confederate contract for 72,000 other arms of low price and 
quality. He chartered special vessels, in one instance paying a Hamburg com- 
pany $40,000 for a single voyage, to get his war materials to the United States. 
After the Trent affair ended, he hurried forward some cargoes which the 
British had prudently embargoed. 32 All this was in addition to his unwearied 
prosecution of secret service work and propagandist activities in Europe 
activities which, extending to England, gave Charles Francis Adams, jealously 
sensitive to meddling, acute pain. 

As the foreign arms sent across the Atlantic by State agents, reputable 
dealers, shady speculators, and others were distributed, a roar of indignation 
and recrimination went up. The best Enfield, Vincennes, and Austrian Govern- 
ment rifles were dependable, but many other pieces were more horrendous to user 
than to foe. American orders had been a boom to European arsenals anxious to 
sweep away a clutter of antique and damaged pieces, some of them older 
than Austerlitz. Newspapers told of regiments taking foreign pieces out to 
practice, blazing away at the woods, and falling back in disorder with burst 
barrels and wounded men. Then, too, the conglomeration of arms made re- 
placement of parts difficult, and use of uniform ammunition impossible. A 
letter which Ripley presently wrote a Pennsylvania officer tells the whole story: 

The parts of foreign arms do not interchange. They cannot, therefore, be 
repaired in the way usual with American arms. It is the practise with some 
regiments, and should be the case with all regiments armed with foreign arms, 
to have a mechanic detailed to keep the arms of the regiment in good order. 
This Dept. will furnish the necesary tools and materials on requisition. If the 
bayonets do not fit, it is probable that they have been allowed to be mixed 
up in unpacking the boxes which contained them. In arming the new troops 
it has been necessary to issue supplies from different points, and in great haste. 33 

tiv ] 

The War Department's early purchasing of arms from home factories was 
as blundering and wasteful as the foreign buying. These contracts were chiefly 

32 Sanford's papers are not yet available. See Meneely, op. cit., 297 ff.; Moran Diary. 

33 Ripley to Casey Aug. 25, 1862, Ordnance Misc. Letterbook No. 56, p. 50. 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

for Springfield pattern rifles, of a quality, if specifications were met, beyond 
question. Theoretically, they were regulated by laws requiring government 
advertising for bids, open competition, and systematic inspection. But the 
emergency was so severe and industrial facilities so weak that at the outset the 
laws counted for little. The government was no more able to wait than Britain 
was when Hitler invaded the Low Countries. 

Buying had to be done by hurried emergency action outside the law. We 
have seen how Lincoln had three members of the Union Defense Committee 
of New York allowed $2,000,000 for immediate war expenditures. As part of 
this frenzied initial effort Cameron gave his old political supporter Alexander 
Cummings, now briefly editor of the New York World, free rein to make 
some preposterous purchases. Among other items, Cummings spent $21,000 
on straw hats and linen trousers for troops, and bought large quantities of ale, 
porter, pickles, and tongue. He might have been planning a picnic! 

The War Department was at once besieged by contractors and politicians. 
Its rule was that the Secretary must not directly concern himself with con- 
tracts, and Cameron strictly obeyed it. "I had really hoped," he wrote Horace 
Greeley at the beginning of 1862, "that you had long ago become convinced, 
from what you have often heard me say, that I have never made any contracts 
in connection with this Department." But Congressmen were besieged by 
manufacturers, and wirepulling unquestionably affected contract policy. Even 
Lincoln was teased into writing a letter for a good Western friend who desired 
some contracts for building river gunboats. 34 Some of the lesser contract ir- 
regularities concerned arms. 

As no manufacturer was able to furnish a huge quantity of weapons, and 
as even the most efficient works often had to erect buildings and install ma- 
chinery, the contracts had to be scattered in small orders among a variety of 
suppliers. The Starr Arms Company at Binghamton, New York, got a contract 
for 80,000 Springfield-pattern muskets, rifled; the Providence Tool Company 
for 50,000; Eli Whitney of Whitney ville, Connecticut, a son of the inventor, 
for 40,000; C. B. Hoard of New York for 50,000; and so on. By the spring of 
1862 fully a score of orders for small arms had been let. Ripley was scrupulous 
in insisting that the rifles must conform strictly in design, materials, and work- 
manship to those made in the Springfield armory, and be subjected to the same 
inspection. He was rigid about delivery dates. Some manufacturers signed 
rashly on the dotted line. 

Too rashly for again and again they encountered unforeseen difficulties. 
Hardworking Eli Whitney, for example, had to build a new factory, and install 
a new outfit of machinery. He had to prepare four kilns to dry his gun-stocks, 

34 Cameron to Greeley, Jan. 15, 1862, Cameron Papers; Lincoln to Commissioner Smith 
and others, March 28, 1862, Collected Works, V, 174. 



THE FIREPOWER OF THE NORTH 

and order his gun-barrels from another maker. He found it necessary to em- 
ploy 200 new hands, and might need 325. Even then he was uncertain whether 
accidents might not prevent his making the first delivery when promised. "I 
do not think the price, $20, too high, considering the expedition required and 
the conditions of payment. I do not think the government will obtain more 
than one quarter of the guns ordered, taking all together, and enforcing stipu- 
lations as to time." 35 Whitney's contract, when delays actually occurred, was 
cut back to 25,000 rifles with a resultant loss. 

Similar difficulties were encountered by Lamson, Goodnow & Yale of 
Windsor, Vermont. They received a government contract in July, 1861, for 
25,000 rifled muskets and appendages, which was doubled within three months. 
At Windsor they had a large plant which had manufactured some 35,000 
muskets of the model of 1842, and had furnished a good deal of machinery to 
the Enfield plant in England. Here they set two hundred men to work making 
gun machinery and finishing gun parts. They ordered barrels, bayonets, and 
ramrods from the Bay State works at Northampton, Massachusetts, and a 
Worcester factory; they forged locks, mountings, and other parts at their own 
cutlery works in Shelburn Falls; they bought gunstocks. But they, too, met 
unavoidable delays. After they had invested from $100,000 to $150,000, they 
plaintively wrote the War Department that they hoped to deliver guns soon, 
though the contract date had expired; "and now if, for any reason, the gov- 
ernment will not receive the fifty thousand, we desire to be informed imme- 
diately." They were accepted. 36 

Even so efficient an establishment as Colt's Arms Company, with a factory 
in Hartford that contained some of the most ingenious machinery in the world, 
was unable to meet its contract dates. Samuel Colt agreed in July, 1861, to 
furnish 25,000 rifled muskets of Springfield pattern at $20, the first thousand to 
be ready in six months. He erected new buildings, installed machinery, and 
let sub-contracts for barrels, locks, and other parts. Troubles, however, soon 
thickened about his head a shortage of skilled labor, the sudden demand of 
the War Department for special attention to holster pistols, and the tardiness 
of parts suppliers. The situation was complicated by his long illness, ending 
in death January 10, 1862. The government recognized that the Colt Company 
not only had a just claim to some modification, but was too useful to be 
treated harshly. With a two-million-dollar factory, 1500 employees working 
day and night shifts, and appliances for making 1000 guns a week, it stood in 
advance of every other private arms establishment in the land, 37 

35 37th Cong., zd Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 72, p. 386; testimony April n, 1862. 

36 Ibid., p. 1 60. 

37 Ibid., 59-61. The destruction of the Colt factory by fire February 10, 1864, was felt 
as a national blow and caused arms prices to rise. See N. Y. Tribune, Feb. 10, 1864, and 
picture in London Illustrated News, April 16. It was at once rebuilt. 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

In general, however, Ripley pursued a severe policy in enforcing contract 
provisions. The department refused price readjustments, declined to make any 
allowance to Remington when new Federal taxes imposed a totally unforeseen 
expense, would not compensate arms importers for fluctuations in international 
exchange, and brusquely rejected Whitney's anguished appeals for a little more 
time. 38 Yet these severe policies were coupled, as we have noted, with the two 
prime errors of ordering too many arms, and paying excessive prices for many 
of them. 

A cost plus system, had Congress been willing to authorize it and the Ord- 
nance Bureau able to police it, would have been better than the allocation of 
so many hit or miss contracts at hit or miss prices. The before-noted total of 
1,164,000 Springfield-type rifled muskets for which the War Department con- 
tracted by the summer of 1862 was about twice the amount of home deliveries 
required; the average price of $20 a gun, with appendages, was about twenty 
per cent above the proper level. It took time for both government and manu- 
facturers to learn that on bargains for 25,000 rifled muskets or more, $16 
would afford a fair profit to efficient makers. Remington & Sons, contracting 
for a large quantity at that price, gave the Ordnance Bureau its first trust- 
worthy data on costs. 39 The War Department could then regret its numerous 
$20 contracts, and such orders as that to the Burnside Carbine Company for 
7500 carbines at $35 each. 40 

By the summer of 1862 the errors mentioned were cured. The Congres- 
sional committee on ordnance reported that it had reduced the domestic orders 
for Springfields to 473,000, had revised prices, and by other steps had saved 
the government about $17,000,000. Ripley, in view of the urgent need for 
arms after the failure of McClellan's advance on Richmond, relaxed the more 
senseless inspection requirements. The main point, he wrote the Secretary of 
War, was to secure arms "of the prescribed calibre, of good strong barrels, 
stocks, and locks, and in all respects serviceable as military weapons." Blemishes 
could be overlooked. 41 

Disregard of the advertising requirement had not only permitted exorbitant 
prices, but offered contract jobbers an opportunity to peddle their influence. 
When the Savage Arms Company failed to get an order, it hired Thomas Dyer, 
who said he could manage it, and who collected $10,000 for obtaining a pistol 
contract. Later the same firm employed the adventurer Henry Wikoff, who 

38 Ripley's Endorsement Sept. i, 1863, Ordnance Letters to War Dept., No. 14, pp. 321-323. 

39 Report, 37th Cong., id Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 72, pp. 15-18. 

40 These were, however, a special weapon weighing 7 pounds, of .54 caliber. Ripley to L. 
Hartshorne, August 27, 1861; Ordnance Misc. Letterbook No. 53, pp. 307, 308. Senate Exec. 
Doc. 72, ut sup. 

41 Ripley to Stanton August 8, 1862. Ordnance Letters to War Dept. Bk. 13, pp. 464, 465. 



THE FIREPOWER OF THE NORTH 

actually urged the Savage Company to charge $22.50 for a $19 pistol just be- 
cause he had filed an application for a contract on which he asked that amount! 
A specially scandalous offense was proved against Senator James F. Simmons 
of Rhode Island, a yarn-manufacturer and politician approaching seventy, who 
introduced a Providence manufacturer to the War Department, helped him 
get an order for 50,000 rifled muskets, and charged $10,000. As the Congres- 
sional committee on ordnance scorchingly put it, he sold his supposed influ- 
ence; and public opinion forced him to resign in humiliation. 42 

By the end of 1862, but not until that time, the Northern need for proper 
quantities of weapons as good as the rifled Springfield or Enfield was being 
met. The helplessness of Fremont's command in Missouri the first war summer, 
or Sherman's at Louisville that fall, now seemed but a bad dream. 43 Yet it 
must be remembered that at all times the North had been far better provided 
with arms and ammunition than the South. When the war began the South, 
scouring all sources, found that the total number of usable guns for infantry 
in the Confederacy did not exceed 150,000, and only 20,000 of these were rifles. 
Several Southern States contracted for Northern arms before Sumter, but ship- 
ments were cut off by that event. European purchases brought in but small 
supplies. General Josiah Gorgas as head of the Ordnance Bureau revealed some- 
tiling like genius in establishing powder mills, arsenals, and arms factories. 
Weapons were made, altered, repaired, and stored at Richmond, Selma, 
Macon, Atlanta, Montgomery, Jackson, Little Rock, and other places. The in- 
genuity and persistence of Southern arms-makers must command the highest 
admiration. Yet receipts during the first year were negligible, and some Southern 
boys had to bear shotguns into the battle of Shiloh. Only the tremendous cap- 
tures of Northern arms during 1862, placed at fully 100,000 pieces, kept the 
South weaponed. 

Southern leaders, in fact, wrung their hands over the situation. When 
Gorgas on June 29, 1861, reported on all the arms in the Confederacy not in 
the hands of troops, he found but 15,000 available. The Richmond armory, 

42 Report, 37th Cong., zd Session, Senate Exec. Doc. 72, pp. 515 ff. 

43 In fact, from this time surplus stocks began to accumulate. Ripley wrote September i, 
1863, that the government had on hand a very large supply of first-class arms, that monthly 
receipts from manufacturers constantly increased that stock, and that the Springfield armory 
alone was now supplying 20,000 arms monthly. Now and then a shortage of special parts 
appeared, as of gunstocks at the Springfield armory late in 1863, but this was transient. At 
the beginning of 1864 Assistant-Secretary Watson wrote that in view of the stored surplus 
and the unfilled contracts, the Springfield Armory could supply every musket needed even 
if the war continued for years. In the last year of the war the Ordnance Bureau was buying 
only revolvers and carbines, and it had contracted with the Remington Company, the best 
private supplier, for quantities of both. Ripley, endorsement on Whitney letter September i, 
1863, Ordnance Letters to War Dept. Book No. 14, pp. 321-323; Watson to Wheelock, Jan. 
28, 1864, War Dept. Military Book No. 54b, p. 174; Ramsay to Stanton, Sept. 23, 1864, 
Ordnance Letters to War Dept., Book No. 15, pp. iSoff. 



3 <5 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

beginning late that summer, could supply only a thousand small arms a month; 
the Fayetteville armory, beginning in March, 1862, could produce only about 
five hundred. That was the whole domestic picture for the South in the early 
part of the war! Down to August 16, 1862, the Confederate agent abroad, 
Caleb Huse, was able to land fewer than 50,000 arms in Southern ports. The 
Union by comparison held a position of growing wealth; and as the months 
passed the North also had an advantage in the rising superiority of much of 
its arms. 

The obstacles met by the Confederates in getting arms from abroad were 
especially frustrating in the first year of the war, for after the foothill difficulties 
of purchasing came the high cliff of making shipments. Blockade running did 
not mean much to the arms trade until special steamers of great speed and low 
visibility were built for the purpose. Huse sent President Davis a gloomy letter 
from London just after Christmas in 1861, saying that he was miserable in 
having to look at the immense pile of packages on St. Andrew's Wharf with- 
out the power of sending anything: 25,000 rifles, 2,000 barrels of powder, 
500,000 cartridges, and 13,000 accoutrements, besides great heaps of miscel- 
laneous supplies. It took time, endless ingenuity, and worry to make inroads 
on this accumulation. Northern armies met no such frustrations. 

The quality of the rifled muskets had steadily improved. Better machine 
tools counted for a great deal in this advance. Thus the Lamson, Goodnow & 
Yale Company of Connecticut used the Ball precision lathe machine, previously 
employed in making sewing-machine needles, the Robbins & Lawrence Com- 
pany produced an efficient new rifling machine, and Brown & Sharpe of 
Providence brought on the market a universal milling machine that could be 
adapted to many purposes other than gun-making. Another important con- 
tribution, attributable to the Trenton ironmaster Abram S. Hewitt, was an 
ample supply of good American gun-metal, of the same quality as the famous 
Marshall iron imported from England. Hewitt, tremendously aroused by the 
war peril, did not hesitate to smuggle a spy into the Marshall plant to learn its 
secret. For this and other services, the Cooper, Hewitt works at Trenton re- 
ceived a glowing War Department citation. Finally, workers in the arms plants 
everywhere were gaining skill from experience. 44 

With stocks rising, with the Springfield armory getting under such head- 
way that it alone would soon be able to meet national needs, and with prices 
falling, no more imported arms were needed after 1862. The firepower of the 

44 Mechanics Magazine^ VII, 105 (Feb. 14, 1862), 105. Guy Hubbard, series on "Develop- 
ment of Machine Tools in New England," American Machinist, vol. 60 (1924); Nevins, 
Abram S. Hewitt. 



THE FIREPOWER OF THE NORTH ^61 

North had at all times been greater than that of the South, and the dispropor- 
tion inexorably increased. Even when due weight is given the facts that the 
South fought mainly on the defensive, initially possessed better marksmen, and 
captured great quantities of Northern arms, this disparity was an important 
element in deciding the outcome of the war. It might have been made greater. 

[V] 

The principal indictment against the Ordnance Bureau remains to be stated, 
and can be summed up in the current press reproach of "old-fogyism," Critical 
newspapers delighted to picture Ripley Van Winkle asleep in the Ordnance 
Bureau guarded by two giants, Red Tape and Routine. When disturbed his 
face would assume a disgusted frown, he would turn uneasily, and his lips 
would mutter: "Keep him out! inventor! new idea! can't come in here! 
Routine! Red Tape!" By the summer of 1862 an ambitious, hard-driving 
junior, George T. Balch, was laboring to displace him. But he held power 
until September 15, 1863, and continued to offer an unbreachable wall to 
progress. In especial, his policy fatally impeded the large-scale adoption of 
breechloading rifles. 45 

For the first two years of the war the use of muzzle-loading Springfields 
and Enfield rifled muskets as standard patterns was absolutely unavoidable. 
Thereafter, however, breechloaders might steadily have been introduced, and 
larger and larger bodies of troops might have been equipped with repeating 
breechloaders. Their use would have shortened the conflict. 

The Springfield and Enfield rifles were effective weapons which used inter- 
changeable ammunition, and thus simplified the problem of cartridge supply. 
They were made in much the same way, for the Springfield plant had imported 
sets of English rolling machines to make gun barrels, with English mechanics, 
while the Enfield plant had bought much larger quantities of American ma- 
chinery. The Springfield caliber was .58, the Enfield .57 plus; as the Spring- 
fields tended to foul after twenty-five rounds and become hard to reload, 
many soldiers liked then to turn to the slightly smaller Enfield cartridge. 
American factories could readily be tooled and manned to make Springfields 
in quantity. 

Breechloaders, however, posed a far more difficult problem. A number of 
usable American models had been devised before 1861, notably the Colt, the 
Hall, the Burnside, and the Sharps. Specific offers of the Spencer, Henry, and 

45 N. Y. Tribune, Feb. 21, editorial "Rip Van Winkle in the Army Ordnance Bureau"; 
Bruce, Lincoln and the Tools of War ? 260 ff. 



3 <5 2 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Schenck breechloaders were made the War Department in that year. But as 
patterns varied greatly and the parts were difficult, breechloaders could at 
first be made only in small quantities and with excruciating delays. 46 

No two breechloaders, in fact, were constructed alike in 1861, so that the 
replacement of parts would soon have become a Chinese puzzle. Once the 
armies had been equipped with Springfields, Enfields, Vincennes, and other 
muzzle-loaders, as they had to be in 1 86 1, it was impossible to arrange for any 
wholesale replacements before 1863. It can be argued that some buildings of the 
Springfield Armory might have been set aside to fix standard breechloading 
designs, to which private manufacturers could have been made to conform. 
But considering the crushing early demands, paucity of skilled workmen, and 
undeveloped character of machine tools, the equipment of such a branch would 
have been a slow task, carried out at the expense of more urgent requirements. 
When we say that the Colt, Hall, and other existing breechloaders were usable, 
we do not mean that they did not need great improvement. Army officers ob- 
jected that they allowed an escape of gas at the junction of barrel sections 
where they were loaded, that the percussion powder needed for their car- 
tridges was dangerous in jolting wagons, that they were not staunch enough for 
rough field service, and that troops in the excitement of battle would jam the 
delicate breech mechanism. 47 

This does not signify, however, that the Ordnance Bureau could not have 
provided great quantities of good breechloaders in 1863, for by energetic ac- 
tion it could. Not only had the cavalry used breechloading carbines for years, 
but American seamen and marines had employed them since 1858. The British 
navy was experimenting with them. Late in 1861 the government placed an 
order for 10,000 (later 16,000) Gibbs breechloading carbines at $28 each, with 
appendages. 48 

But this small order, with a delivery schedule of only 500 a month, was 
not followed up. At the end of 1862 the Ordnance Bureau was still experi- 
menting cautiously with small orders let in a wide variety of quarters. When 
one contractor asked to have his new type of breechloader tested, Ripley 
objected on the ground that ten patterns of such arms were already being 
made, for eight of which tiny government contracts were in course of execu- 
tion. This multiplicity of designs had caused so much confusion that he could 
not bear the thought of another. 49 From the ruck two superior arms decisively 

46 S. B. Smith, "Military Small Arms," Papers, Ohio Commandery Loyal Legion, I, 174 ff . 
When the British had established their arms factory at Enfield in 1855 they were advised by 
officers who had carefully inspected American arms factories, and especially Springfield. 

47 Ripley endorsement on Schenck's letter, Ordnance Letters to War Dept. Book No. 13, 
p. 170. ^ 

48 Ripley to W. F. Brooks, Dec. 13, 1861; Ordnance Misc. Letterbook No. 54, p. 215. 

49 Ripley to Stanton, Jan. 9, 1863, Ordnance Letters to War Dept., Book 14, p. 55, National 



THE FIREPOWER OF THE NORTH 

emerged: one the Sharps carbine, a familiar single-shot breechloader specially 
adapted to cavalry, and the other the Spencer repeating rifle, a highly lethal 
weapon in the hands of infantry. With boldness and vigor, Ripley could have 
made both of them standard army equipment during the year of Gettysburg 
and Vicksburg. Had he done so, that might have been the war's last year. 

The famous Sharps plant at Hartford was ready for a rapid expansion. Its 
single-shot breechloader, the most popular such rifle in the war, was especially 
liked by those who prided themselves on marksmanship. Hiram Berdan, a 
New York engineer of repute who had Lincoln's encouragement in organizing 
a famous sharpshooter regiment, did much to advertise it by his warm praise. 
The Ordnance Bureau placed contracts, especially late in the war, which 
eventually aggregated more than 100,000 pieces, so that in the last year the 
Sharps plant, greatly expanded, was employing 500 men day and night. It 
made more than 30,000 rifles that year. R. S. Lawrence, the master armorer, 
who under Sharps's direction had full charge of the factory, improved the arm 
in various ways during the conflict. Perhaps the first highly paid plant manager 
in the country, he wrote afterward with naive satisfaction: "With my salary, 
speculations on machinery, etc., I found myself worth over $i 00,000." 50 

A good many telescope rifles for sharpshooters like Berdan, it may be in- 
terjected, were made by village blacksmiths and gunsmiths in the North. In- 
deed, telescope rifles had been frequently ordered before the war for the 
traditional Thanksgiving Day turkey-shoots and other matches. Weighing up 
to twenty pounds, they were necessarily fired from rests. In New England 
and the Middle States a village would sometimes not only denude itself of 
young men, but energetically forge weapons for the best marksmen. One 
Massachusetts company, going to war in 1861 with telescopic rifles, met first 
ridicule and then admiration. A member wrote back that the results were 

Archives, explains his objection to the multiplicity of designs. Christian Sharps had patented 
his single-shot breechloading rifle in the i84o's. Christopher Spencer, who had worked in 
Colt's Hartford factory, patented his seven-shot repeating breechloader early in 1860. 
50 American Machinist, vol. 60 (Jan. 31, 1924), 172. The Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Com- 
pany made a variety of patent breechloading and self -priming arms rifle, carbine, shotgun, 
and pistol. The superiority of the rifle had been established as early as 1850, when a board of 
ordnance officers under Major R. L. Baker made a report (Nov. 27), stating that of five 
makes of rifle and one of carbine presented, the Sharps was much the best. It was loaded 
with Mr. Sharps' special cartridge, and could be fired several hundred times without cleaning. 
The Sharps Company, using cast steel, boasted that their arms combined simplicity of de- 
sign, rapidity of firing, extraordinary range, and perfect accuracy. See advertising circulars, 
NYPL. 

Berdan asked the men he recruited to bring their own rifle with telescopic glass-sight or 
plain open sights. He wrote one of his enlistment agents, A. B. Stuart, Aug. 22, 1861, "You 
will see that no man is enlisted who cannot when firing at rest at a distance of 200 yards 
with a patent sighted rifle put ten consecutive shots in a target the average not to exceed 
five inches center to center, or with the plain open sight a distance of 300 feet same average." 
Austin Blair Papers, Burton Hist. Coll. 



364 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

devastating. "They do good service at a mile, and are certain death at half a 
mile." At Edwards' Ferry, October 22, 1861, 70 men of this company repelled 
an advance of 1500 Confederates and drove them from the field with a loss of 
more than 100 killed, the Yankees suffering not a scratch: "The whistle of 
every bullet was the death knell of one." Tiffany's in New York offered some 
very fine and very costly telescopic rifles, among them the imported Whit- 
worth target rifle, which soon sold out at $i25o. 51 

Single-shot rifles were all very well, but a good repeating breechloader was 
something about which soldiers really dreamed. When Rosecrans took over 
Buell's army in the fall of 1862, he found his cavalry force low, and to com- 
pensate for this applied for 5000 Colt's repeating rifles. Raw recruits, he be- 
lieved, if armed with repeaters that shot five times as fast as Springfields, would 
be superior to the toughest veterans using the old arms. 52 But while both Colt's 
and Henry's repeaters had merit, the Spencer carbines and rifles emerged as 
the cheapest, most durable, and most efficient of such weapons. They could 
sweep the ground with a deadly hail, and pick out men far beyond Confederate 
range. All the troops who saw the Spencer repeating rifle became clamorous 
for it. 

That the armies preferred breechloaders, and that officers would have been 
glad to see at least picked companies in every regiment armed with repeating 
rifles, there can be no question. Had the soldiers determined Ordnance Bureau 
policy, they would soon have been adopted. The muzzle-loading smoothbores, 
which all too closely resembled the Brown Bess of Queen Anne's day, did 
execution only against masses of men, for they had to be aimed in barn-door 
fashion. Though troops who had rifled Springfields could pick out distant 
marks, they found it no fun to stand under fire loading them with ramrod and 
wad. Ripley's more energetic successor, Brigadier-General George D. Ramsay, 
grasped the rising demand for quick-firing weapons. He reported to Assistant- 
Secretary Watson early in 1864 that "repeating arms are the greatest favorite 
with the army, and could they be supplied in quantities to meet all requisi- 
tions, I am sure that no other arm would be used." He wrote again that summer 
in praise of the Spencer repeater: "It is, to a great extent, the only arm now 
asked for." 53 

The deadly effect of the repeating rifles used by some Union troops at the 

51 American Machinist, vol. 59 (Oct. 18, 1923) 580, 581; "The Use of the Rifle," Atlantic, 
vol. 9 (March, 1862), 300-306. 

52 W. D. Bickham, Rosecrans' Campaign, 25; Bruce, Lincoln and the Tools of War, 114, 
115. 

53 Endorsement on Applications of Sharps Co. and Burnside Co., Ordnance letters to 
War Dept. Book No. 14, p. 46; Brigadier-General George D. Ramsay to Stanton, July 14, 
1864, Ibid., Book 15, p. 98. 



THE FIREPOWER OF THE NORTH 

battle of Franklin this year appalled the Confederates who faced them; they 
were absolutely irresistible in repelling assaults. 

After considering all excuses, we must pronounce the Ordnance Bureau 
under Ripley egregiously slow and cautious in providing both single-shot and 
repeating breechloaders. In 1861 it had to concentrate on muzzle-loading 
Springfields, Enfields, and the like. But in 1862 it could have encouraged 
capable arms manufacturers like the Remington, Colt, Sharps, and Whitney 
companies like Merwin & Bray in New York, who made Ballard's very suc- 
cessful breechloading rifles and carbine, and like the New Haven Arms Com- 
pany, which under Oliver F. Winchester made a variety of arms, including 
B. Tyler Henry's steadily improved repeater to press their experiments. They 
could have agreed upon a standard breechloader design, and soon thereafter 
have commenced quantity production. By 1864, if not in 1863, it should have 
been possible to furnish the Northern armies wholesale as good an arm as the 
famous Prussian needle-gun which played so devastating a part in the Austrian 
War of 1866. This supply, and even a limited number of repeating rifles, would 
have transformed the military scene. 54 

What was needed was foresight, energy, and a planned effort to stimulate 
the great inventive capacity of Americans; what Ripley gave was stubborn 
caution. It was in spite of his objections that the army in 1863-64 finally con- 
tracted for some 41,000 Spencer repeaters too late. When American makers 
exhibited arms at the Paris Exhibition of 1867 they gave breechloaders a 
dominant place, and among them were two magazine guns, the Spencer firing 
seven shots in twelve seconds, and a rifle made by the Windsor Manufacturing 
Company (Vermont) firing nine shots in eleven seconds. Of fourteen guns 
selected for the British breechloading competition in 1867, s ^ were American 
and two more were made on American principles. 55 

The day of rapid-fire machine guns had not yet arrived. British officers 
inspecting McClellan's army in the Peninsular campaign found that he had 
fifty small "repeating guns," each drawn by a horse, but they were unsatis- 
factory. They were mounted on light wooden carriages. Two dozen car- 
tridges at a time were placed in a hopper, they fell through its bottom into a 

54 Cf. N. Y. Tribune, Jan. 30, 1864, "Improvements in Fire- Arms"; H. F. Williamson, 
Winchester, The Gun That Won the West, passim. 

55 Ripley objected that magazine guns were too heavy, required special cartridges that 
might explode in transit, and were too costly; see his letter of Dec. 9, 1861, quoted in 
Williamson, ut sup. His attitude remained apparently unchanged until June, 1863, when he 
put in a trifling order for some 250 Henry repeaters. A British officer who saw seven-shot 
repeating rifles being made at the Parrott Works at Cold Spring, N. Y., late in 1864, thought 
them astonishing. He was told that although in action raw troops wasted much ammunition 
with them, cool marksmen made them very destructive, and a few men armed with them 
could hold a host at bay on a narrow front. Letter in London Star, Dec. 20, 1864, quoted in 
Scientific American, XII, Jan. 21, 1865. 



3 <56 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

revolving chamber, the gunner turned this chamber by a handle which also 
worked a percussion hammer, and as fast as he turned, the gun fired. The 
British observers were told that a hundred shots could be fired a minute; but 
in some practice at two hundred and fifty yards they observed that most of 
the ammunition was too small to take the rifling, the gun made few hits, and it 
soon got out of order. A mechanic, they thought, was needed to keep it in 
trim, and even then it might prove of little field utility. 56 

Here again, Ripley's disinclination to encourage experiment was unfortu- 
nate. Benjamin B. Hotchltiss, who filled war orders for projectiles and other 
munitions at his New York city factory, and who a decade later designed a 
five-barrelled weapon which quickly won worldwide adoption, might have 
been stimulated to devise an efficient rapid-fire piece. McClellan's hopper-and- 
handle contraption was at best defensive, useful only to hold a narrow bridge; 
Hotchkiss's gun was suited to offense. Richard J. Catling, an inventive manu- 
facturer of farm implements in the Middle West, patented a crude rapid-fire 
gun late in 1862. His first model, with ten revolving barrels, each with its own 
loading and ejecting mechanism, delivered 200-250 shots a minute. The Ord- 
nance Bureau regarded the weapon with such chilliness that Gatling had to hire 
his own men to give several battlefield demonstrations during the war. Not 
until he made important improvements, took out a second patent in May, 1865, 
and got a Philadelphia arms company to manufacture twelve guns, did the 
War Department become keenly interested. Had he been given early aid, he 
might have had the Gatling gun, which the army adopted in 1866, ready for 
the campaigns of 1864. 

[VI ] 

Ammunition was at first a perplexing problem, since the issuance of a weird 
variety of arms gave the officers who were responsible for providing it a mad- 
dening task. Powder was supplied by a number of firms, but by far the largest 
shipments came from the E. I. DuPont Company of Wilmington and the 
Hazard Company at Hazardville, Conn. The brilliant Lammot Du Pont shortly 
before the war had gone to Europe, inspected foreign powder mills, taken note 
of improvements resulting from Crimean experience, and returned home to 
begin a fruitful collaboration with Captain Thomas J. Rodman, ballistics en- 
gineer of the Ordnance Bureau. But British observers in 1862 thought the 
Du Pont method of manufacture inferior to their own. 57 

56 Report of Captains Thomas Mahon and R. Grant and Lieut. T. C. Price, August 1862, 
to Commander-in-Chief in Canada; Confidential Documents, British War Office. 

57 See McClellan's Report, pp. 71, 72; William S. Dutton, Du Pont: One Hundred and 
Forty Years, passim; Report of Mahon, Grant, and Price, ut sup, Dutton estimates that Du 



THE FIREPOWER OF THE NORTH 

For muzzle-loaders the standard cartridge was a paper cylinder holding a 
soft-lead bullet and a charge of powder. Soldiers bit open the cartridge, poured 
the powder down the barrel, rammed home the ball (with a wad and some 
extra buckshot in smoothbores), and placed a percussion cap on the nipple to 
explode the charge. In the fever and noise of battle recruits often failed to 
notice that a weak hammer had failed to ignite the powder, and rammed down 
charge after charge until the gun was more dangerous to its holder than to the 
foe. 

Breechloaders of course required a special cartridge. When the war began 
a number of metallic cartridges for them were available. They included the 
Burnside, invented by the versatile Ambrose E. Burnside, a percussion-cap 
cartridge for the Burnside carbine; the Maynard, a reloadable brass percussion 
cartridge invented by a dentist; and the Smith, with a brass foil or (experi- 
mentally) a rubber case. The most popular cartridge for cavalry was the 
Sharps, originally made of linen with a paper base nitrated for quick ignition, 
but later of metal. Part of the range, accuracy, and hitting power of the Sharps 
was attributable to its superior ammunition. The Spencer rifles, which were 
made in a distinctive bottleneck shape, used a rim-fire cartridge in which the 
priming charge was placed around the edge rather than in a central core. For 
all cartridges in all countries, the most troublesome problem was that of check- 
ing the escape of gas and fire at the breech, and Britons, Frenchmen, and 
Americans all toiled to solve it. Wesson of Smith & Wesson, revolver makers, 
had blazed a hopeful path by giving his rim-fire cartridge a projecting flange 
around the base. 58 

As the war continued and breechloaders became less rare, the brass or 
copper rim-fire cartridge became the universal favorite. It was manifestly 

Pont furnished between 3.5 and 4 million pounds of powder to the Union army and navy, 
or probably i million pounds more than the plant which the Confederacy hurriedly built at 
Augusta supplied. The Du Pont business, struggling for a solid place, had been put firmly on 
its feet by the Crimean War, sending Britain and France huge shipments which wiped its 
books clear of debt. When war came in 1861 the Du Pont mills in Delaware constituted 
more than a third of the powdermaking capacity of the United States. Lammot Du Pont, the 
inventor of a new and excellent formula for blasting powder which had swept the markets, 
was at thirty the nation's leading expert in the chemistry of explosives. The North did not 
suffer from powder shortages. The South, on the other hand, dependent on its new Augusta 
mill and a small older establishment at Nashville, was soon paying an average of $3 a pound 
(more than ten times the normal price) for British powder shipped through the blockade; 
and seldom during the war was the Confederacy able to supply its infantry with more than 
90 rounds a man, though the ordnance manual called for 200 rounds. 
58 Leonard Davis, MS Paper on "Cartridges and the Civil War"; Williamson, Winchester, 
the Gun That Won the West. Leonard Davis states that the War Department bought 
58,238,924 Spencer cartridges during the war. In spite of a growing uniformity of cartridges, 
the variety of missiles used remained preposterously wide. On Gettysburg battlefield one 
collector, J. M. Bush, picked up 125 different kinds of bullets, Union and Confederate, 
which may now be seen in the Gettysburg Museum. 



368 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

superior to paper or linen types. As Ramsay wrote in the early summer of 
1864, it was waterproof, a great consideration; holding its shape, it was easily 
inserted; it required no cap; the charge got the full force of the fulminate in 
the circular ring; and the flanged copper case, a perfect gas-check, gave the 
powder greater force. Manufacture was then in the hands of three firms, who 
charged what the Ordnance Department regarded as an excessive price, $28 a 
thousand. As the government would need 42,350,000 cartridges as a year's 
supply for the breechloading carbines on hand at the end of 1864, Ramsay 
proposed the erection of a special mill at the Frankfort Arsenal. So far as war 
needs went, this was a belated demand, for ere the mill could be put in running 
order, the war would be in its last stage. 59 

The South did not stand at such a disadvantage in ammunition as in small 
arms. Thanks to the energy of sleepless Confederate patriots, even in the 
summer of 1861, a stream of material for troops was coming from various 
sources: 50,000 to 100,000 rounds of ammunition a day from the Richmond 
ordnance laboratory, 20,000 to 30,000 rounds daily from the Augusta arsenal, 
15,000 to 20,000 from the Charleston arsenal, and 30,000 to 40,000 from the 
Baton Rouge arsenal with small amounts from other shops. But the quality of 
the ammunition fell below the Northern standard, battlefield shortages re- 
peatedly tortured various commanders, and Gorgas and his able lieutenant in 
this field, G. W. Rains, worried constantly over the desperate need of the 
South for niter and other essentials. It was marvelous that the Confederacy did 
as well as it did. 60 

The Civil War was primarily an infantrymen's war, in which artillery 
played but a secondary part. Being a war of movement over great distances 
and rough terrain, so that the transport even of light fieldpieces like the popular 
Napoleon gun often involved great difficulty, it was best suited to mobile 
forces. Moreover, the rifled Springfields and Enfields had an effective range 
equal to that of field guns using canister, so that infantrymen could usually 
silence all but the best sheltered batteries and largest ordnance. 

Artillery, like the small firearm, was undergoing a revolution. An English 
inventor of genius, William Armstrong, reading how the battle of Inkerman 
(November, 1854) was largely decided against the Russians by two eighteen- 
pounder guns which almost superhuman effort brought on the field at a late 
hour, asked himself whether lighter artillery might not be given equal range. 
When he prepared a design for rifled wrought-iron guns, the first in the world, 
obtained a contract from the War Office and set about improving his new 

59 Ramsay to Stanton, June 25, 1864, Ordnance Letters to War Dept. Book No. 15, pp. 76, 
77. Peter Peckham, an Illinois inventor, gained Lincoln's ear for a cartridge never adopted. 

60 Frank E. Vandiver, Ploughshares Into Swords, 55-117, covers the subject admirably. 



THE FIREPOWER OF THE NORTH 

ordnance, the artillery revolution was under way. With the precise role played 
by artillery on American battlefields, however, we shall deal later. 

It was a characteristic chapter of the times, this arms story. Initial bewilder- 
ment, hurry, confusion, improvisation, streaked with loss and disaster; a hectic 
meeting of immediate demands; the gradual emergence of a loose system 
including termination of foreign orders, coordination of domestic contracts, and 
increased reliance on the Springfield armory; and finally a successful system. 
The arms story helps explain McClellan's delays, and Fremont's misfortunes. 
The steady improvement of arms supply underlay the partial successes of 1862. 
Only a long array of studies of individual effort, too numerous for general 
history, could do justice to the enterprise, resourcefulness and determination 
which dozens of able men, like Whitney, Colt, Winchester, Hewitt, Henry, 
and DuPont, brought to the service of the country; men far more anxious to 
save the Union than to promote their individual fortunes. The story of indus- 
trial mobilization has color and gallantry, and it touches the very heart of the 
developmental forces of the nation. 

Yet, in the broad view, this chapter also records a very characteristic 
failure of vision and planning. Only halting, unimaginative use was made of the 
wide industrial superiority of the North, its fast-awakening energies in busi- 
ness and manufacture. Had the government looked ahead and taken suitable 
measures, had it by the end of 1863 given the armies a half -million good single- 
shot breechloaders and a quarter-million repeating rifles, the war might have 
ended far earlier, with a proportionate diminution of the misery and exhaustion 
that attended it. 61 

6 1 Kenneth P. Williams, Lincoln Finds a General, II, 782-785, explains the difficulties 
of introducing breech-loaders; but these difficulties could have been overcome. 




December Gloom 



IT WAS AN anxious autumn upon which the North entered in 1861. The 
weather in the Middle States and Virginia continued singularly bright, dry, 
and balmy; day after day throughout November and December the sun shone, 
mild breezes tossed the many-hued leaves, vehicles raised lines of dust, and 
men worked outdoors. But a leaden weight lay on the hearts of those who had 
hoped that the New York bells might ring peace. In the East, McClellan's army 
quivered and lay still like a basking crocodile. Although public sentiment could 
not easily forget the October whiplash of Ball's Bluff, McClellan made no 
response; and in the West, Fremont and Blair seemed more intent on fighting 
each other than on defeating Price and McCulloch. 

Hope for quick action, inspired by McClellan's own words, had risen like 
a released fountain the moment he replaced Scott. Our young commander, 
confidentially wrote the Washington correspondent of the Chicago Tribune, 
will put a stop to all Sewardish schemes for paralyzing the war effort. "Look 
for an advance soon, for it will come, and we shall have some stiff fighting 
before winter sets in." * But still McClellan devoted himself to sedulous drill, 
admonishing Cameron that the Army of the Potomac should reach 300,000 
to ensure decisive success; still the Confederates wondered why he did not 
move against their puny lines. 

Under the delusion of heavy enemy superiority, McClellan believed con- 
centration and caution the only safe policy. Any diversionary movement, 
any thrust, was too dangerous to be weighed. On August 25 he had written 
his wife that by the end of the week he would have 75,000 men and feel 
safer. "Last week he [Beauregard] certainly had double our force/' On Sep- 
tember 8 he had reported to Cameron that the Confederates meant to take 
Washington, but would probably move on Baltimore first. That is, they would 
engage Union pickets on the Potomac and make other demonstrations to 
draw off McClellan's forces, and then suddenly cross above Washington to 

i Henry Smith, Nov. 4, 1861, to the Tribune editors; C. H. Ray Papers, Huntington 
Library. 

370 



DECEMBER GLOOM 

pour their main army direct on Baltimore. "I see no reason to doubt the pos- 
sibility of his attempting this with a column of at least 100,000 effective 
troops." 2 

In other words, the Confederates had the power to launch an attack, but 
McClellan's army was too weak for one! Actually, the Johnston-Beauregard 
forces in front of McClellan on October 31 comprised 44,131 men present for 
duty. These two commanders would have been glad to invade the North with 
60,000 seasoned, well-armed, properly wagoned troops, but lacked the men, 
weapons, and transport. They and General W. H. Smith, at a pivotal field 
conference attended by President Davis, agreed that the only course was to 
take a defensive position. Yet weak as they were, the Confederates considered 
attacking Union forces along the north bank of the Potomac, and rejected the 
idea because Federal warships controlled the river. McClellan, who enjoyed 
this control, sabotaged the navy's plan for clearing the south bank. 3 

Allan Pinkerton as McClellan's "chief of the secret service" made army 
headquarters blench by reporting October 4 that the Confederates in Virginia 
had the fearful total of 184 regiments, numbering 126,600 men. Of this mythi- 
cal array, 98,400 under Johnston and Beauregard lay at Fairfax Court House 
and vicinity, 1 1,000 under Lee, Floyd, and Wise in western Virginia, 10,400 
at Norfolk and Portsmouth, and 6800 under Winder in the Richmond area. 
The Johnston-Beauregard troops retired to Centerville on October 19, when 
McClellan's growing army became capable of maneuvering. (Not that Mc- 
Clellan had any intention of maneuvering!) Pinkerton painted another Mun- 
chausen picture on November 15 in a memorandum placing Confederate 
strength (after a deduction of 5 per cent to be conservative) at 1 16,430. He had 
founded his first report on information from deserters, contrabands, and 
his own agents, and the second mainly on the observations of a detective who 
had visited Manassas, Centreville, and Warrington. This operative declared 
that the rebels were well armed, well fed, and well furnished with ammunition, 
but "dam'd badly off for winter clothing." Although McClellan should have 
realized that deserters would lie, that refugee Negroes could unconsciously 
exaggerate, and that one operative might be a fool or cheat, he made no real 
effort at verification. 4 

The pressure for an offensive in these autumn weeks, mistaken insofar as 
men like Ben Wade and Zack Chandler demanded a major battle, was justified 

2 Swinton, Army of the Potomac, 72. 

3 J. G. Barnard, The Peninsular Campaign, 12 ff.; Roman, Beauregard, I, 142-145; J. E. 
Johnston, Narrative of Military Operations; Davis Papers (President Davis called the Smith- 
Johnston-Beauregard council), Duke University; McClellan, Own Story, 196-197; Official 
Report (1864), rio-m. 

4 Pinkerton Papers, courtesy of the late Howard Swiggett; J. E. Johnston, Narrative, 77. 



372 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

insofar as it sought bold preparatory action. To clear the south bank of 
the Potomac and capture Norfolk, we repeat, were objects of prime im- 
portance, feasible enough for the hero of West Virginia. Even the mild Sena- 
tor Foster of Connecticut begged for "energy" along these lines. Union 
forces held Fort Monroe, Newport News, and Hampton, the Union fleet 
patrolled Hampton Roads, and the army in this area, well intrenched by con- 
traband labor, was reinforced from time to time. An amphibious assault might 
have driven the Confederates from Norfolk and compelled the destruction 
of the Merrimac. 

For the navy was a fast-growing power, and early in November it once 
more gave the Union a transient gleam of sunshine. To maintain the blockade, 
bases not too distant from the Southern ports were required; and the wide, 
deep Port Royal Sound, lying squarely between Charleston and Savannah, 
seemed ideal for an establishment. A fleet of seventy ships, carrying soldiers, 
sailors, marines 15,000 men, with heavy guns and six months' stores, put into 
the Atlantic October 29, bands playing, banners flying, and Flag-Officer S. F. 
Du Pont in the W abash leading the way. Though it encountered a heavy storm, 
November 4 found it anchored off its goal, "the water as smooth as a pan of 
milk." Here two forts at Bay Point and Hilton Head, with a trio of weak 
Confederate gunboats, guarded the entrance to the Sound. The works were 
scientifically constructed and heavily armed; it was said that the Confederates 
had hoped to disable their assailants in half an hour. But by fine management 
of his ships on a semi-circular course and beautifully accurate fire, Du Pont in 
less than five hours' bombardment forced an evacuation. The Wabash alone 
fired 440 shells. General Thomas W. Sherman's troops took possession of the 
posts and all the surrounding country. 5 

The Union thus gained a foothold near two of the chief Southern ports, 
where it could plant a depot for coaling and supplying blockade vessels. The 
sea islands, lying like peas in the pod of the Sound Parris, Hilton Head, Port 
Royal, St. Helena were perfectly secure. Du Pont reported, "The negroes 
are wild with joy and revenge," and the Union plainly faced a new problem 
in administering freedmen. The President was delighted. He was pleased, too, 
by simultaneous news that General William Nelson, formerly of the navy, 
had won a fight at Pikesville, Kentucky, taking about a thousand prisoners. 

Lincoln had talked frankly with McClellan about the impatience of the 
radical leaders for action. While public sentiment had to be taken into account, 
he said, "at the same time, general, you must not fight until you are ready." 
He had assured McClellan his full support, remarking November i: "Draw 

5 For Port Royal, see H. A. Du Pont, Samuel Francis Du Pont, ch. VII; Daniel Ammen, 
Battles and Leaders, I, 671-691; Dudley W. Knox, Hist, of the U. S. Navy, 202-205. Lincoln's 
words to McClellan are given in Dennett, Diary and Letters of John Hay, Oct. 26, 1861, p. 31. 



THE SOUTH 

AND OK 
SOUTH ATLANTIC COAST 

Scale of Miles 




on me for all the sense I have, and all the information." Noting the flurry of 
alarm which Du Font's expedition sent over the South, he called at McCleUan's 
house the evening of November 1 1 to say that it seemed a good time to "feel" 
the Confederate forces. McClellan answered: "I have not been unmindful of 
that. We will feel them tomorrow." 6 General S. P. Heintzelman indeed made 
a reconnaissance on the mh. 

When the following day brought news of the capture of Beaufort, South 
Carolina, it was natural that Lincoln and Seward, attended by John Hay, 
should pay another evening call on McClellan. The sequel was a disturbing 
incident. They found the general out at a wedding. Hay records: 

6 Ibid., 33. 



WAR FOR THE UNION 

We went in, and after we had waited about an hour, McC. came in and 
without paying any particular attention to the porter, who told him the Presi- 
dent was waiting to see him, went upstairs, passing the door of the room where 
the President and Secretary of State were seated. They waited about half an 
hour, and sent once more a servant to tell the General they were there, and 
the answer coolly came that the General had gone to bed. . . . 

Coming home I spoke to the President about the matter but he seemed not 
to have noticed it, specially, saying it was better at this time not to be mak- 
ing points of etiquette and personal dignity. 7 



[I ] 

At this moment the Western drama reached its shabby, destructive climax. 

The shortage of arms, equipment, and transportation in Missouri remained 
lamentable. "It becomes daily plainer that the Mississippi Valley is to be the 
greatest theatre of the war," wrote the St. Louis correspondent of Greeley's 
Tribune in mid-October; yet "the government fails to comprehend the magni- 
tude of this department, and the extent of its absolute necessities." The West- 
ern people, who had poured out their sons generously, felt this bitterly, "and 
it is engendering a spirit which will prove disastrous if it is not removed." 8 
General David Hunter, sent from the East to advise and aid Fremont, was 
given command of a division which Fremont ordered to move from Jefferson 
Qty to Tipton. He reported October 4 that for his forty wagons he had only 
forty mules; next day that his men had been without rations for twenty-four 
hours; the day afterward that two regiments had no transportation at all and 
two only sixteen teams between them, while another lacked side arms, car- 
tridge boxes, gun slings, ammunition, and greatcoats. From Tipton he wrote 
October 18 that the division would soon be destitute. At Warsaw he found 
a hospital with 300 sick men who had gone without food for two days. 9 Even 
making some allowance for exaggeration, since Hunter, a harsh, morose, 
gloomy man, habitually saw the worst, it is clear that the situation remained 
painful. 

It is unquestionably true that Washington, preoccupied with McClellan's 
front, still neglected the whole West. William Tecumseh Sherman, command- 
ing in Louisville, raised precisely the same complaints as Fremont and Hunter 
in Missouri. Early in November he wrote Governor Dennison that the West- 

7 Ibid., 34, 35. Apparently something nearly as bad happened earlier. W. H. Russell 
recorded in his diary Oct. 9 that calling on McClellan a few nights earlier, he was told by 
the orderly: "The General's gone to bed tired, and can see no one. He sent the same 
message to the President, who came inquiring after him ten minutes ago." 

8 Letter dated Oct. 17 in N. Y. Weekly Tribune, Oct. 26, 1861. 

9 Committee on the Conduct of the War, III, 236-238. 



DECEMBER GLOOM 

ern State governments, except Ohio and Indiana, were slack, that inexperi- 
enced men were put in dangerous places, and that some officers were insubor- 
dinate, railing at him and each other. Worst of all was the Federal neglect: 10 

The requisitions made for ordnance and stores have yet been unfulfilled. 
Some Rifled Guns ordered last August are just received, boxed up and no sol- 
diers to manage them. In like manner wagons came in pieces and time is neces- 
sary to set them up. Mules are wild and horses distempered, and worst of all 
no captains and lieutenants to teach the details never before was such a body 
of men thrust headlong into such danger. I will not conceal from you that there 
is danger. I pointed it out in advance to the Sec'y of War, and wrote to Mr. 
Chase and the President who paid no attention to any of my warnings and 
appeals. The people of the country take advantage of our necessities and de- 
mand pay in good gold or Kentucky money for everything we want, besides 
the rails and damage sustained by their fields, and their claims would exhaust 
any Treasury. Now the Ohio Regiments just arriving come so late that I have 
no General to command them. These numbers unsupported and uncommanded 
will accomplish no result. 

No one or a half dozen men can attend to all the wants of these new-raised 
levies, with all their tents and paraphernalia. 

Competent observers believed that one main cause of the shortages, confu- 
sion, and excessive costs in the Western Department lay in the failure of 
Washington to provide adequate funds. When the terms of the ninety-day 
men expired Fremont had kept many of them only by a personal guarantee 
of their fourth month's pay. He had to buy large quantities of material on 
credit. Colonel I. G Woods of his staff estimated that for every dollar lost 
through the collusion of suppliers, ten dollars were sacrificed for want of ready 
money. As soon as the department had to buy on credit, control over prices 
passed from the government into the hands of banks, brokers, moneyed mer- 
chants, and speculators, who made themselves intermediaries. In the purchase 
of mules and horses, waste resulted from want of funds to provide proper 
corrals, feed, shoeing, and care in St. Louis, and in the purchase of wagons, 
from want of funds for repairs. Treasury policy was responsible. 11 

"Chase," Montgomery Blair explained to Fremont on August 24, "has more 
horror of seeing Treasury notes below par than of seeing soldiers killed, and 
therefore, has held back too soon, I think. I don't believe at all in that style 
of managing the Treasury. It depends on the war, and it is better to get ready 
to beat the enemy by selling stocks at fifty percent discount than wait to 
negotiate and lose a battle." 12 

10 Sherman, Louisville, Nov. 6, 1861, to Dennison; Dennison Papers, Ohio Arch, and Hist. 

Soc. 

11 See Woods' vigorous statement in Committee on the Conduct of the War, 1863, pt. 3, 

pp. 222, 223. 

12 Quoted Ibid., 115, 116. 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Violent feeling was aroused in Missouri by a War Department order in 
mid-October that all claims for supplies sold to the army must be sent to 
Washington for scrutiny and approval. Both the St. Louis Republican and the 
Democrat denounced this action. The government, they declared, had been 
outrageously slow and parsimonious in doling out funds to the Western army. 
Since Fremont's arrival his quartermaster's department had received only 
$1,153,000, not enough to pay for even the army horses. Merchants, manufac- 
turers, and contractors who had furnished supplies and taken vouchers would 
now have to drop all business, go to Washington, and hang around offices for 
days. "Our business men," said the Democrat, "came forward with great 
promptness, and have given their time and capital to the proper aiding and 
equipping of the army." The banks had been equally generous. What was 
the result? "The Government, after crippling the Department by keeping its 
officers destitute of funds," now issued this decree, "an outrage on our busi- 
ness community, and an insult to the Commanding General." 13 

The Fremont-Blair quarrel meanwhile had the most unhappy consequences. 
The two made formal charges against each other. Montgomery Blair took his 
brother's allegations to the White House, reading them to the President and 
then handing them to General Scott. He pressed Lincoln for Fremont's re- 
moval; "but," he wrote his father October i, "I think the President does not 
think it quite fair to squander Fremont until he has another chance." 14 

One of the consequences, an impairment of troop morale, was heightened 
when the Administration early in October sent out Lorenzo Thomas, the 
adjutant-general, to review Fremont's activities. His record was that of a 
mediocre West Pointer who had risen by routine, and was himself under 
sharp criticism from some governors for delays in furnishing enlistment quotas; 
an obfuscated and garrulous man, Gideon Welles wrote later. 15 "Fremont 
ought to be let alone and have full confidence of the government or be re- 
moved," Colonel John M. Palmer told Senator Trumbull. "This halfway state 
is embarrassing. Even private soldiers can sniff trouble in the breeze if it 
exists." 16 This was the view of a prominent Missourian, J. S. Rollins, who from 
Columbia inquired of Frank Blair who was commander, and where were his 

13 St. Louis Republican, Democrat, Oct. 17. 

14 Both sets of charges are unimpressive. Fremont accused Frank Blair of using family 
position to lay unsustained accusations before the President; Blair accused Fremont of 
misfeasance in vague general terms. Montgomery Blair's letter to his father is in Blair-Lee 
Papers, Princeton. 

15 C. Cadwalader, N. Y. Herald correspondent with Grant, termed Thomas an obstinate, 
intractable man, long a proslavery Democrat. His unsavory part in the events leading to 
Andrew Johnson's impeachment belongs to later history. 

16 Palmer from Tipton, Mo., Oct. 13, 1861, to Trumbull; Trumbull Papers, LC. 



DECEMBER GLOOM 

headquarters. "Half of our people are ruined, and the rest will be, and all for 
the want of a single head." 17 

[II ] 

Hampered by deficiencies of means and equipment, acutely aware that 
Montgomery Blair and Bates in the Cabinet were hostile, and certain in advance 
that Lorenzo Thomas would write an adverse report, Fremont knew that his 
continued tenure hung by a thread. He later bitterly declared that he had en- 
joyed barely a month of real command the month between his arrival in St. 
Louis and Frank Blair's advent on the scene. He was now blamed for another 
disaster which, as he protested, was not his fault. Colonel J. A. Mulligan's 
brigade from Chicago, with enough Illinois and Missouri troops to make a total 
of 3500 men, had taken an advanced position at Lexington, far up the Missouri 
River near the Kansas boundary. The indefatigable Price saw his opportunity 
and advanced. Fremont on September 13-14 ordered Generals Pope, Sturgis, 
and Jefferson C. Davis at Palmyra, Mexico, and Jefferson City respectively 
to march to Mulligan's assistance; but not one of them showed the requisite 
energy and determination. Pope was especially remiss. After promising that by 
the 1 8th he would have two infantry regiments, some cavalry, and four guns 
in Lexington, and that by the i9th he would have 4000 troops there, he com- 
pletely failed to reach the point. So did the others. 18 Fremont himself on 
September 15 possessed in St. Louis only 6900 men, including home guards, 
and had just received imperative orders from Washington to detach 5000 
infantry for the East. On September 21 Mulligan's whole force, with seven 
guns and large stores, was captured. 19 

A bright young New Yorker, George E. Waring, who had managed 
Greeley's farm at Chappaqua and been drainage engineer for Central Park, 
and who was soon to become colonel of cavalry in Missouri, gave Frederick 
Law Olmsted his frank opinion that the regular army generals, including Pope 

17 Rollins to Blair, Oct. 18, Blair-Lee Papers. 

1 8 For Fremont's orders to these generals see Fremont Order Book, Bancroft Library; 
also O. R. I, iii. 

19 For Fremont's small numbers, and the Washington demand for 5000 troops, see O. R. 
I, iii, 493, 494; Schuyler Colfax in Cong. Globe, March 7, 1862, p. 1128. Jefferson C. Davis, 
who had 9700 troops, including home guards, at Jefferson City on the Missouri, might have 
sent a relieving force upstream, Fremont, however, chiefly blamed Pope, who was strategi- 
cally placed; O. R. I, iii, 495. The Washington demand for 5000 men reflected McClellan's 
flurry of panic lest Beauregard attack. Cameron telegraphed for them "without a moment's 
delay," and Scott wired, 'The President dictates." Fremont spared 2000 troops from St. 
Louis, 2000 from Kentucky, and 1000 from other sources. This order, Sept. 14, was later 
countermanded, but not before it had done its harm. 



378 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

and Hunter, deliberately acted against Fremont, an outsider, through jealousy. 
Fremont himself was convinced of John Pope's treachery. That leader had a 
force of 5500 men, ample for Mulligan's relief, which could readily be moved 
westward by the Hannibal & St. Joe, which he himself had just reported open. 
He stood inert. Actually, incompetence and timidity offer a better explana- 
tion of Pope than treachery, though he certainly showed an insubordinate 
spirit. 

Determined to vindicate himself, Fremont by strenuous efforts concen- 
trated what he thought an adequate army to march through southwestern 
Missouri against Price and McCulloch. He and his staff reached Jefferson City 
on September 27. Although the breakdowns among a thousand rotten wagons 
sent him from the East impeded his march, by October 7 all his troops were 
on the road to Tipton. Herds of cattle were collected by foraging parties, and 
grain was fetched in and ground by portable mills, for while he had gathered 
three million rations in supply depots at Jefferson City and Tipton, he ex- 
pected to subsist largely on the country, paying loyal citizens for impressed 
commodities and confiscating produce from the disloyal. The shortage of 
horses and wagons was partially cured by impressments. He hoped by rapid 
movement to bring Price and McCulloch to battle. "The army is in the best 
of spirits, and before we get through I will show you a little California prac- 
tise," he wrote Jessie "that is, if we are not interrupted." 20 

This march of some 30,000 men, including 5000 cavalry, with eighty-six 
guns, was the first formidable aggressive movement yet made by a Northern 
army. The army furnished evidence that Fremont and his staff had exercised 
greater organizing power in St. Louis than his critics admitted, and unques- 
tionably its movement was well planned. The commander had divided his 
force into five divisions headed respectively by Generals Hunter, Pope, 
Sigel, McKinstry, and Asboth. 21 The proportions of infantry, cavalry, and 

20 For Fremont's Missouri campaign see O. R. I, iii, passim; his MS Memoirs, Bancroft 
Library; Jessie B. Fremont, The Story of the Guard; Jacob Picard, MS Life of Franz Sigel, 
kindly lent to author; J. R. Howard, Remembrance of Things Past, Ch. 19; and files of the 
Missouri Democrat, leading Republican daily, stanchly on Fremont's side. See also Asa 
Mahan, Critical History of the American War, Ch. 3. 

21 Pope revealed his spirit in a letter to his friend V. B. Horton, an Ohio Congressman, 
Oct. i (N. Y. Hist. Soc., Civil War Colls.), and one to General Hunter, Oct. 18 (Fremont 
MSS, Bancroft Library). The first, written from Boonville, declared that he was at the 
mercy of Price, with "fifteen or twenty thousand men," if Price advanced. Price, with 
barely thirteen thousand, was marching the other way. Pope added: "There is a state of 
dissatisfaction and discouragement among the troops which borders on mutiny." All 
good accounts agree that the morale of Fremont's troops was exceptionally high. After 
abusing Fremont roundly, Pope told Horton that since the surrender of Lexington, Price's 
army had swollen "to 40,000 men." This was more than three times its actual number. In 
the letter to Hunter, Pope renewed his abuse of Fremont, declared his conviction that half 
the army would be lost if they went south of the Osage (i.e., south of central Missouri), 
and asserted that although Fremont had ordered him to bring his whole command to assist 



DECEMBER GLOOM 

artillery were excellent. The cavalry demonstrated its sound training when a 
select troop of "prairie scouts" recaptured Lexington with some prisoners and 
stores, releasing a number of men taken with Mulligan, and when later another 
force under the Hungarian Charles Zagonyi routed some of the enemy at 
Springfield. The cardinal source of weakness was the spirit exhibited by Pope 
and Hunter; a spirit which they would have called distrust of Fremont's 
capacity, but which Fremont's friends termed one of rank betrayal. 

From Tipton, Fremont's march took him south across the Osage, where 
his engineers laid an 8oo-foot pontoon bridge in thirty-six hours. His troops 
advanced rapidly on Springfield, the center of predominantly loyal south- 
western Missouri and key to northwestern Arkansas. Here lay an Ozark region 
antipathetic to slavery. With characteristic exuberance, he spoke of joining 
Commodore Foote's gunboats on the Mississippi to advance southward. "I 
think it can be done gloriously, especially if secrecy be kept," he wrote his 
wife. 22 Late in October he reached Springfield, where by November i four 
of his divisions encamped. From information furnished by his scouts he con- 
cluded that a little beyond this town Price and McCulloch would face about 
and give battle. 23 

He was correct about the decision to fight but mistaken about the position. 
Price wrote Albert Sidney Johnston on November 7 that although Fremont's 
army far outnumbered his own, he and McCulloch had agreed to halt and give 
battle at Pineville, hoping the rugged country would favor them. In fact, they 
had to fight, for Price's Missouri State troops would not move across the 
boundary, and would shortly disintegrate. But Pineville was not just ahead; 
it lay deeper in southwest Missouri, seventy-odd miles away. 

Fremont was also correct in believing that the chances favored Union 
victory. "Our combined forces," Price admitted, "cannot cope with them [the 
Unionists] in numbers." As he informed Jefferson Davis, his Missourians were 
half-fed, half-clothed, and half-supplied. Ben McCulloch has recorded that 
they were also undisciplined, officered largely by incompetent politicians, and 
furnished with an incredible conglomeration of weapons; that five thousand 
of them, their time up, were anxious to go home; and that cooperation between 
the Missourians and Arkansans was feeble "but little cordiality of feeling be- 
in the movement, he would take only five regiments. Altogether, these utterances fortify 
Frank Blair's subsequent statement: "Pope is a braggart and liar, with some courage, per- 
haps, but not much capacity." Welles, Diary , I, 104. They should be remembered in their 
bearing on Pope's subsequent career as head of the Army of the Potomac. As for Hunter, 
that capable but grimly sour-tempered leader was well aware that the moment Fremont 
lost the command, he would succeed to it. 

22 Jessie B. Fremont, The Story of the Guard, 72 ff., 85. 

23 See O. R. I, iii, 731, for statements by both Price and McCulloch on their resolve 
to risk a battle. But Fremont would have had to advance fully four more days to fight it. 



? 8o THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

tween the two armies." It was with high hopes that Fremont's army, bands 
pounding, arms glittering, moved out of Springfield. On November 6 Price 
was near Cassville, fifty miles away. Fremont could get his much-wanted battle 
only with more time and more marching and he would be allowed neither. 24 

For while he advanced his critics had been busy. Lorenzo Thomas and 
Secretary Cameron, visiting Missouri simultaneously, brought back unfavorable 
impressions. Cameron, talking with Fremont at Tipton on October 14, showed 
him an order for his removal that Lincoln had authorized him to use at discre- 
tion. 25 It is not astonishing that Fremont, as the Secretary wrote, was "very 
much mortified, pained, and, I thought, humiliated." The explorer made an 
earnest appeal. He had come to Missouri, he said, at the government's request; 
he had found his department without troops, preparations, or money; he had 
organized an efficient army, with which he was in pursuit of the foe; and to 
recall him at that moment would not only destroy him, but defeat his whole 
promising campaign. Cameron promised to withhold the order until after he 
returned to Washington, giving the general time to realize his hope, and 
Fremont for his part promised to resign if he failed. This was fair enough 
but it left Fremont with a concentrating sense of what Damocles suffered. 

Lorenzo Thomas made an incredibly hurried Western tour, devoting the 
single week of October 11-18 to Missouri and Kentucky, heard but one side, 
and wrote a highly critical report in which the press at once noted inaccuracies. 
In his loose way this veteran bureaucrat, who had been at West Point with 
David Hunter, let his supposedly secret statement reach the press. 26 

Raymond of the New York Times characterized Thomas' report as the 
most disastrous blow that the national cause had yet received. Its exposition 
of the confusion in the Missouri army, the lack of equipment, arms, and trans- 
port, and General Hunter's conviction that Fremont was incompetent, all in 
minute detail, was released "so as to reach Ben McCulloch, Sterling Price, and 

24 Ibid., 732 fT.; Ben McCulloch, "Memoirs," Mo. Hist. RevieiVy 1932, pp. 354 ff.; Franz 
Sigel, "The Military Operations in Missouri in the Summer and Autumn of 1861," Mo. Hist. 
Review, 1932 (a view favorable to Fremont); John Hume, The Abolitionists (also favor- 
able), 184, 185. At a later date Fremont erroneously claimed that he had been removed in 
the immediate front of the enemy, about to fight a battle; it was much less than immediate. 

25 For Cameron's report see Nicolay & Hay, IV, 430; the N. Y. Tribune at once scored 
it. While Fremont marched, Montgomery Blair was laboring to mobilize opinion against 
him. "I am hurrying off"," he wrote his father Oct. 4, "to see such men as Greeley, Sumner, 
Andrew, etc. to give them our views and to get them to sustain the Administration. I shall 
stop in New York and Boston for a day each en route for this purpose probably shall 
stay longer in those cities. I saw the President this morning and told him what I intended 
and he approved. Seward also very cordial." Blair-Lee Papers, Princeton Univ. 

26 O. R. I, iii, 540 ff.; N. Y. Tribune, Oct. 30, 1861; the two principal dailies, like the 
German papers, still stood firmly behind Fremont. The Republican declared that Lincoln 
had been deceived by statements wholly ex pane, and that the general had exhibited won- 
derful forbearance during his persecution. The Democrat severely condemned Thomas' 
report, both for its content and for the impropriety of its publication. 



DECEMBER GLOOM 3 8l 

A. S. Johnston, and nerve them for the coming fight." Equally injudicious, said 
the Times, was Thomas' account of the situation in Kentucky. "The Southern 
Confederacy is distinctly told that General Sherman is not sustained by the 
people of Kentucky; that he has no hope of saving that State to the Union; 
and that he is preparing only for a hopeless fight before that State is given 
up." This would indeed be happy news to the rebels! As a matter of fact, 
Sherman, talking with Cameron and Thomas in a Louisville hotel, had told 
them in his vehement and excited manner that he would need 200,000 men 
to drive the Confederates from Kentucky, a statement which led them to con- 
clude that he was insane! 27 

Naturally, Lincoln was deeply impressed by the statements of Cameron 
and Thomas, concurring with what the Blairs and Bates had told him, and 
quoting Hunter and other Missouri officers. Brigadier-General S. R. Curtis in 
St. Louis, for example, gave it as his opinion that Fremont lacked the intelli- 
gence, experience, and sagacity necessary to his command. Elihu B. Wash- 
burne, visiting St. Louis as head of a Congressional subcommittee on govern- 
ment contracts, was shocked by stories of fraud and extravagance. The Cabinet 
was divided, for Cameron honestly believed that the government should await 
the outcome of Fremont's campaign, and the Cabinet meeting on October 22 
found Seward and Chase earnestly for delay. The President was then still in 
painful doubt; but Montgomery Blair and Bates maintained their steady pres- 
sure for removal, which Lincoln had to give special weight because of their 
Missouri connections. On the 24th Lincoln yielded. He wrote an order reliev- 
ing Fremont, whose command was to be given to Hunter, and sent it to Gen- 
eral Curtis for delivery. However, he cautioned Curtis that the order must 
not be handed to Fremont, if, when the messenger reached him, "he shall then 
have, in personal command, fought and won a battle, or shall then be in the 
immediate presence of the enemy in expectation of a battle." 28 

Eight days after Lincoln wrote out the order in Washington it was given 
to Fremont just beyond Springfield. He believed himself then in the immediate 
presence of the enemy, for Sigel and Asboth had reported the Confederate 

27 Thomas' report went to Cameron Oct. 21. Attorney-General Bates had made sure that 
the side unfavorable to Fremont should be presented to Thomas with emphasis. He wrote 
James O. Broadhead on Oct. 9: "Genl. Cameron is gone to St. Louis. Be sure to see him. 
Talk freely. You need not waste your delicacy nor be baulked by etiquette." Broadhead was 
Frank Blair's chief lieutenant. A complete text of the report was not made public until 
given to the Committee on the Conduct of the War (March, 1862), which controverted it. 
For Sherman's exchanges with Thomas and Cameron see Lloyd Lewis, Sherman: Fighting 
Prophet, 192 ff. Cameron on Nov. 9 appointed Buell to Sherman's place in Kentucky. Pro- 
ceeding to Missouri, Sherman at once quarreled with Pope and Halleck. His wife took him 
home amid army reports that he was mad, and at home he frankly told friends: "Sometimes 
I felt crazy in Kentucky; I couldn't get one word from Washington." Lewis, Sherman, 
200. 

28 Collected Works, IV, 562. 



3 g 2 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

advance guard nine miles distant; and he had made all dispositions for an 
immediate advance and battle. His conviction that Hunter, greedy for com- 
mand, had hurried the messenger forward, did that high-minded officer injus- 
tice. But it was unfortunate that Lincoln had not waited. Sigel believed that if 
the Union army had pushed onward against McCulloch's position at Cassville, 
it would have separated him from Price, cut his natural line of retreat, and 
smashed his force. 29 

The Missouri chapter thus remained a dreary series of blunders and mis- 
chances to the end. The Administration was blameworthy for not doing far 
more to supply arms and money to the West; Fremont was to blame for polit- 
ical if not military ineptness; Frank Blair, who had needlessly accentuated the 
schism in the State, was blameworthy for his selfish, domineering attempt to 
exploit the situation; and the Blairs in Washington could be blamed for im- 
petuously taking up the quarrel. It was no real loss that Fremont, like Harney, 
had been broken. In fact, it was a gain, for the way lay open to abler men. 
Nor was it any real loss that Frank Blair, whose course decisively lost him the 
support of the German-Americans, could no longer hope for political control 
of the State. But the needless deepening of animosities in Missouri, which lay 
henceforth in a feverish, disordered condition, full of hatreds and violence, was 
much to be deplored. And had the country peered closely into events, it would 
have seen displayed in Missouri the frightening fact which Gideon Welles 
shortly enunciated with reference to the Virginia theater: "Personal jealousies 
and professional rivalries, the bane and curse of all armies, have entered deeply 
into ours." 30 



t in ] 

The immediate results of the Missouri fiasco were bad; the larger and re- 
moter results were worse. 

Lincoln, in assigning the command to Hunter, had left him free to deter- 
mine future operations, but had expressed his own opinion that the best plan 
would be to give up the pursuit, divide the main army into a corps at Sedalia 
and another at Rolla (the two rail terminals), and push on the work of drilling 
and equipping troops. Hunter consulted his subordinates. While Pope was 

29 Ibid., 562, 563. Fremont, anxious to fight his battle, fruitlessly tried to obstruct delivery 
of the order, which was sent into his lines by stratagem. He promptly relinquished the 
command to Hunter on Nov. 2, and forbade troop demonstrations; O. R. I, in, 559. Mont- 
gomery Blair expressed great satisfaction. "If Rosecrantz [sic] could also be dropped," he 
wrote, "the people would have some idea we are in earnest, care for the Public not for 
men." Oct. 4; Blair-Lee Papers, Princeton. 

30 Diary, I, 104. 



DECEMBER GLOOM 

noncommittal, McKinstry, Asboth, and Sigel were for advancing. Hunter de- 
cided to turn back. A pursuit and victory would of course vindicate Fremont's 
planning. 

Sigel later stigmatized this decision as "an outrage without parallel in his- 
tory," and it did result in terrible human suffering. 31 No sooner did the retreat 
of Hunter and Pope become known than the Unionists of southwest Missouri 
were struck with terror and despair. From a radius of more than fifty miles, 
abandoning their property, they flocked into Springfield and the Union lines. 
Then, as SigePs and Asboth's troops reluctantly completed the evacuation of 
Springfield, the impoverished, woebegone mass of fugitives, including nearly 
every family in the city who had sympathized with the Union cause, took to 
the roads with the troops, condemned to the life of refugees and beggars. 

After Hunter's superior army fell back, the Confederate forces which had 
been dispiritedly retreating to a point where they could make their last stand 
faced about and reoccupied all southwest Missouri. Lincoln had written that 
the enemy would probably not return to the State from Arkansas, and if they 
did could easily be repelled. 32 The fact was that they never left Missouri, oc- 
cupied Springfield and the adjacent country throughout the winter, threatened 
even Rolla and Jefferson City, and were able to lay waste the country up to the 
Union encampments. Not until the new year did the Union forces advance 
again. This time they did not stop halfway, but completed their task as Sigel 
believed they might have done under Fremont. Lincoln had been actuated, 
very reasonably, by a fear that Hunter's communications would become too 
attenuated, and by his conviction that the Western invasion of the South 
should be directed down the Mississippi. But after all, Washington was a poor 
vantage point from which to direct field strategy in Missouri. 

Much more important than the Missouri results of Fremont's removal were 
its national repercussions. The anger in St. Louis spread through wide circles 
of the East. In New York the Evening Post declared that the government's 
action "smote the community like the loss of a battle." A mass meeting at 
Cooper Institute on November 27, addressed by Senator Sumner, eulogized 
Fremont and adopted resolutions defending him and his antislavery measures. 
Henry Ward Beecher spoke for his large Brooklyn congregation in incensed 
language. "The North is ripening every day for an abolition war," wrote 
Ethan Allen Hitchcock from New York on November 15. Whittier penned 
a poem hailing Fremont's trumpet peal for the emancipation of slaves as a 
Roland-blast "heard from the van of freedom's hope forlorn." And Thaddeus 

31 "Military Operations in Mo. in the Summer and Autumn of 1861," Mo. Hist. Review, 
vol. 26 (July, i93 2 X 367* 

32 O. R. I, iii, 241. 



384 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Stevens bade his fellow radicals in Congress rally to the cause: "Who are you 
that you let the hounds run down your friend Fremont?" 

While public indignation was probably strongest in New England, it was 
stormily evident in many Western centers. The editor of the Cincinnati 
Gazette believed that the region was threatened with a revolution. "Could 
you have been among the people yesterday, and witnessed the excitement," he 
wrote Chase just after Fremont's removal; "could you have seen sober citizens 
pulling from their walls and trampling underfoot the portrait of the President; 
and could you hear today the expressions of all classes of men, of all political 
parties, you would, I think, feel as I feel . . . alarmed." The Treasury agent 
in St. Louis declared that if the President had emptied the government arsenals 
into the rebel camps, he could not have better strengthened them. The Pitts- 
burgh agent reported that enraged capitalists had stopped their subscriptions 
for government securities. Another Treasury correspondent, returning from a 
tour as far west as Iowa, reported: "I never have seen such excitement, such 
deep indignant feeling everywhere I have travelled." 

Fremont had in a double sense made himself a symbol. Neither his effort 
to free the slaves of those whom Lincoln called "traitorous owners" nor his 
exhibition of martial energy could be forgotten. While McClellan sat still, 
he had organized an army of more than 30,000, marched it hundreds of miles, 
and tried to throw it into battle. 33 

For the Administration the skies were growing dark. Irritation with it ran 
high as members of Congress gathered in Washington in late November: 
irritation, anxiety, and discouragement. One disturbing piece of news after an- 
other contributed to this. 

At Belmont on the Mississippi on November 7, Grant met a check which 
was accepted quietly only because it might have been much worse. On 
November 16 the country learned that Captain Charles Wilkes of the warship 
San Jacinto had seized two Confederate envoys to Europe, James M. Mason 
and John Slidell, aboard the British steamer Trent, and although the thoughtless 
rejoiced, judicious men knew that the stroke portended grave trouble. General 

33 Zack Chandler expressed a widespread view when he wrote his wife: "Fremont has 
accomplished something with eight or ten millions, McL. has accomplished nothing with 
ten times that amount." Oct. 27, 1861; Chandler Papers, LC. General B. H. Grierson, serv- 
ing in Missouri at the time, wrote long afterward of Fremont: "I considered him in the 
midst of his adventures as being, with all his failings, head and shoulders above many of 
his enemies and traducers. I believed then that he merited, and still think he deserves, a 
warm place in the hearts of all lovers of freedom, of which he was an earnest, constant, and 
fearless advocate." MS Autobiography, 111, State Hist. Lib. Among contemporary defenders 
of Fremont were William T. Harris, later eminent as an educator, and John F. Hume. Hume 
believed that if Fremont had commanded a little longer, "he would have achieved a 
brilliant military success"; that he might have terminated hostilities in Missouri three years 
earlier than they actually ended. Hume, The Abolitionists, 184, 185; Leidecker, Harris, 202. 



DECEMBER GLOOM 3 5 

Halleck, who had just replaced Hunter in the chief Western command on No- 
vember 20, issued an order from St. Louis that no fugitive slaves should thereafter 
be admitted within Union lines, alleging that Southerner sympathizers used 
them as spies. This so angered the radicals that when Congress met Love joy 
introduced a resolution of censure, which was defeated by only the close vote 
of only 78 to 64. The section of opinion for which Ben Wade spoke was 
bluntly expressing despair of quelling the rebellion under the Administration 
leaders. "They are blundering, cowardly, and inefficient," Wade confided to 
Zack Chandler. "I fear the evil is irremediable, having its seat in the very nature 
of the persons composing the Administration. You could not inspire Old Abe, 
Seward, Chase, or Bates with courage, decision, and enterprise with a galvanic 
battery." 34 

Democracy is unhappily prone to demand immediate results, or if unat- 
tainable, a dramatic show of action. Many Americans who hoped that they had 
elected a President of Jacksonian temper began to fear they had gotten a 
J. Q. Adams, his resolution sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. It was 
impossible as yet to measure the executive stature of Lincoln, for neither by 
dramatic act nor eloquent word had he illustrated his true qualities. To mil- 
lions he seemed drifting. That was the precise term a citizen of Freeport, 
Illinois, writing Elihu Washburne, used: a We of this vicinity feel deeply in- 
terested for the welfare of our common country and the way affairs have 
been drifting our faith in the Administration begins to fail us." So felt G H. 
Ray of the Chicago Tribune, declaring that although party harmony was im- 
portant, "when the necessity for maiding progress is upon us we are ready to 
quarrel with Lincoln, the Cabinet, McClellan, and anybody else." Neither 
Lincoln nor McClellan had explained to the country why the troops on the 
Potomac attempted not even a minor blow. Lincoln did not know why, and 
in any event had not yet learned to reach the public by effective speech and 
letter; while McClellan was contemptuous of public opinion. Lost in a fog, 
the people wondered if they really had a pilot. 35 

Had McClellan dealt a blow to clear the Potomac, successful or unsuccess- 
ful, the country would have rejoiced in action. Had Lincoln let Fremont fight 
the battle which Price awaited at Pineville, win or lose, people would have felt 
refreshed. Chances of success in both instances were good, but even defeat 
would have been better than inaction. In war a nation must be ready to meet 
many defeats; what is important is that it should fight. Thus Americans 
dumbly, anxiously felt. While radical freesoil and abolitionist sentiment caught 

34 Wade to Chandler, Jefferson, Ohio, Oct. 8, 1861; Chandler Papers, LC. 

35 Wm. H. Wilson, Freeport, Jan. n t i8<5i, to Washburne, Washburne Papers, LC. Ray, 
Chicago, Dec. 5, 1861, to Washburne Papers, Ibid. 



WAR FOR THE UNION 

up the fallen Fremont banner, it must not be supposed that many people of 
moderate views did not share the rising distrust. Inside Lincoln's Cabinet both 
Chase and Bates deemed the President unequal to his duties, Bates writing that 
he lacked firmness, decision, and grasp. Meanwhile, one of the harshest in- 
dictments of Lincoln ever penned came from Frank Blair. The nation in De- 
cember waited for a sign: either martial action, or an aggressive change of 
policy. 36 

If the people had pinned high expectations to Lincoln's first annual mes- 
sage, they were disappointed. That long, dull document, dated December 3, 
holds a place among the more commonplace Presidential papers. 37 It was ill 
organized, for it unnecessarily summarized materials in the reports of the 
Cabinet officers. It warily said nothing of the burning question of the moment, 
the Mason-Slidell affair, nor of the situation in Mexico or Santo Domingo. In 
dealing with Negroes liberated under the Confiscation Act it took pains not to 
use the word "slaves," substituting the locution "certain persons." Paying 
tribute to Scott, Lincoln wrote that the general had repeatedly expressed him- 
self in favor of McClellan as his successor, but did not mention that at the end 
Scott had earnestly preferred Halleck. The President expressed just satisfac- 
tion that Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri had already furnished 40,000 sol- 
diers to the Union, but he was much too optimistic in pronouncing Missouri 
comparatively quiet. To the factions of radical and conservative Republicans 
which were now fast taking shape, by far the most significant passages were 
his vague proposals for colonizing freedmen abroad, and the statements which 
followed: 

In considering the policy to be adopted for suppressing the insurrection, 
I have been anxious and careful that the inevitable conflict for this purpose 
shall not degenerate into a violent and remorseless revolutionary struggle. I 
have, therefore, in every case, thought it proper to keep the integrity of the 
Union prominent as the primary object of the contest on our part, leaving all 
questions which are not of vital military importance to the more deliberate 
action of the legislature. . . . 

We should not be in haste to determine that radical and extreme measures, 
which may reach the loyal as well as the disloyal, are indispensable. 

36 Frank Blair's letter to Montgomery, Oct. 7, 1861, was a characteristic eruption. He 
wrote that the only way to save the nation was "to kick that pack of old women who com- 
pose the Cabinet into the sea"; that he had never dreamed "that such a lot of poltroons 
and apes could be gathered together from the four quarters of the globe as Old Abe has 
succeeded in bringing together in his Cabinet"; that the first duty of every patriot "is 
to stop fighting Jeff Davis and turn in on our own Government and make something out 
of it"; and that Davis and his whole crew had not done half the harm inflicted "by the 
cowardice, ignorance, and stupidity of Lincoln's Administration." Smith, Blair Family, II, 
83, 85. Bates' acrid comments on Lincoln are in his Diary, 218-220, 223-226, etc. 

37 Text in Collected Works, V, 35-53. Only at the close, though failing of eloquence, 
did Lincoln strike a high note. The nation relied on Providence, he wrote, and "the struggle 
of today, is not altogether for today it is for a vast future also." 



DECEMBER GLOOM 

Before Congress met, Chandler, Wade, and Trumbull, the three Senators 
who had been badgering Lincoln to insist on a battle, had adumbrated a plan. 
They would create a Congressional committee which would both cany on a 
continuous investigation of the war effort and apply frequent pricks of the 
goad. The session no sooner began than Chandler proposed a Senate committee 
of three to inquire into Bull Run and Ball's Bluff. Grimes of Iowa substituted 
a broader resolution for a House-Senate committee of five to explore the 
causes of the disasters that had attended the public arms, with power to send 
for person and papers. Further amendments enlarged the committee to three 
Senators and four Representatives, and stated the mandate in a single compre- 
hensive phrase: "To inquire into the conduct of the present war." 

Thus, with nearly unanimous approval, originated the most powerful par- 
liamentary engine of the time, the Committee on the Conduct of the War. 
This body was not tardy in proceeding to work. Under Wade as chairman, 
with Zack Chandler, Senator Andrew Johnson, and Representatives Daniel W. 
Gooch, John Covode, George W. Julian, and Moses F. Odell as members, it 
began sitting before Christmas. Within a few days this able group ascertained 
that McClellan's Army of the Potomac had present for duty on December 10 
approximately 134,000 equipped infantry, 10,000 equipped cavalry, 10,350 
equipped artillery, and 6850 officers. 

The establishment of the committee served explicit notice that if the 
President had war powers, Congress possessed them too, and would jealously 
assert them. But a majority did not share the Wade-Chandler animosity toward 
Lincoln. The committee later asserted that it took care to aid and cooperate 
with the overburdened Chief Executive. Summoning in their first fortnight a 
series of generals, they made it plain that their inquisitorial gaze would be bent 
on laggard and incompetent field commanders. This was wise; while interfer- 
ence with President or Cabinet would have been a disaster, the military needed 
a searching scrutiny. 38 

[ IV ] 

With reason, Lincoln felt much more worry over the Mason-SIidell affair 
than over the Congressional committee. When the appointment of Captain 
Charles Wilkes to command an American cruiser with a commission to search 
for privateers was first announced, a shrewd officer of the Treasury, George 

38 See introductory matter, 3yth Cong., 3rd Sess., Report of the Joint Committee, Vol. I 
(1863). The committee has been treated with undue severity by historians biased in favor 
of Executive or army. Actually it brought to light much that it was healthful for the public 
to know, and kept the military arm well reminded of civilian supremacy. In all, it was to 
issue eight volumes. W. W. Pierson, American Historical Review, v. 23 (April, 1918), 550- 
576, takes a fairer view of it. 



3 88 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Harrington, had urged Seward to get the mandate revoked. "He will give us 
trouble," said Harrington. "He has a superabundance of self-esteem and a 
deficiency of judgment. When he commanded his great exploring expedition 
he court-martialled nearly all his officers; he alone was right, everybody else 
was wrong." 39 The captain was grandnephew of the fiery John Wilkes famous 
in the days of Burke, Fox, and Dr. Johnson. 

A scene in the Bahama Channel on November 8 verified Harrington's 
prophecy. Gray sea and gray skies; black smoke from the little warship San 
Jacmto and white smoke from one of her guns trailing across the waves; the 
jaunty mail-steamer Trent lying hove to, her British ensign flapping; a boat 
filled with armed marines rowing across this scene heralded trouble. From the 
Trent's deck the protesting James M. Mason of Virginia and John Slidell of 
Louisiana, Confederate special commissioners to London and Paris respectively, 
were haled by Union officers, to be clapped into prison at Fort Warren near 
Boston. 

Fervent Northern jubilation at first greeted this capture of two arch-rebels 
and this challenge to British insolence. Most newspapers published exultant 
editorials, Boston tendered Wilkes a banquet, and Secretary Welles rumbled 
an approval which he was later anxious to forget. The House of Representa- 
tives voted Wilkes a gold medal. While the applause still echoed, arrival of the 
news in Britain on November 28 set off an explosion of resentment. The press 
blazed with denunciation, influential men expressed indignation over the af- 
front, and talk of possible war at once sprang up. Prime Minister Palmerston 
blazed to the Cabinet, "You may stand for this but damned if I will!"; and the 
Ministry, which shared the popular anger, inevitably took steps to meet any 
eventuality. It ordered a steam squadron made ready, gathered 8000 troops 
with a supply of munitions for immediate transfer to Canada, and prohibited 
the export of war materials. That the British Government could easily have 
used the incident to open hostilities if it wished, there can be no doubt; and 
Confederates of course ardently hoped it would. 

Happily, members of the British Cabinet wished to avoid war with the 
United States. Palmerston's rapid steps to strengthen Britain's military position 
were prompted partly by a wish to prepare for the worst, but also partly (as 
he told Parliament later) by his conviction that the demand for a peaceable 
restoration of the two prisoners would have to be supported by military 
strength. Six weeks earlier, he had written the Foreign Minister, Lord John 
Russell, reaffirming a policy of strict neutrality; British policy must be "to 
keep quite clear of the conflict between North and South," he declared, inter- 
fering only if the American conflagration threatened danger to Europe. Hap- 
39 Undated memorandum, Harrington Papers, Mo. Hist. Society. 



DECEMBER GLOOM 

pily also, the American minister was a man of rare experience, sagacity, and 
restraint. Charles Francis Adams knew very well that the United States was in 
the wrong. This son of John Quincy Adams had an inherited animus against 
Great Britain. He was naturally combative he had run for the Vice- 
Presidency on the Freesoil ticket in 1848, and had lately been one of the most 
active Republican leaders in the House; but he was also naturally cautious, and 
he possessed shrewd self-control. Realizing the gravity of the crisis, he now 
waited gloomily and taciturnly. Before news was received of Wilkes's act, 
Palmerston had spoken at a Lord Mayor's dinner, with Adams present, saying 
flatly that he was against intervention for the sake of cotton, and treating the 
American conflict with marked delicacy. Both men could be trusted to show 
discretion and moderation; and although Palmerston was determined to stand 
up for British rights, the gouty veteran had too keen a suspicion of Napo- 
leon III his mind u as full of schemes as a warren is of rabbits" to care to em- 
broil himself in the New World. 

Indeed, Palmerston had foreseen the possibility of just such an incident as 
this, and had given Adams a hint that it should be avoided. In a friendly private 
conversation with the American minister on November 15 he had referred to 
the reckless utterances of Captain John B. Marchand of the U. S. S. James 
Adger, lying at Southampton, who while tipsy had said that he was going to 
watch for Mason and Slidell and capture them even in sight of the British 
shore if he could. Palmerston's remark that two additional Southern agents 
could scarcely make any difference in the course of the British Government 
once it had made up its mind gave Adams a clear hint (which he failed to 
take) that it had made up its mind adversely to any arguments the Southerners 
might present. 40 

The Prime Minister had in fact been so disturbed by the possibility of an 
incident that he had consulted the Crown's law officers on the legality of a 
possible American seizure of the Confederate envoys. This opinion, dated 
November 12, 1861, stated that an American warship would have the right to 
stop and search an English ship, and to take her into port for adjudication of 
the charge that she carried contraband goods or improper personnel, but 
would not have any right to remove the diplomatic agents and then allow 
the ship to proceed. Provision for adjudication was the crux of the matter. 
When news of the actual happening reached London, the law officers reaf- 
firmed their view of the illegality of Captain Wilkes's step. It was unfortunate 
for the American position that Wilkes failed to bring the Trent into a North- 

40 Cambridge History of Br. Foreign Policy, II, passim; E. D. Adams, Great Britain and 
the Amer. Civil War, I, Ch. VII; S. F. Bemis, ed., Amer. Secretaries of State, VII, 61-70; 
Diplomatic Correspondence, 1861, pp. 105 ft. 



390 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

ern port, for if he had done so, the British Government would have been 
legally disabled from protesting. Palmerston deserved great credit for arming 
himself with a statement of the law, and for giving Adams an amicable admoni- 
tion. Seward across the Atlantic had failed to look up any precedents or 
rulings in advance! 41 

That Wilkes had committed a grave infraction of international law there 
could be no question. He had a perfect right to search any suspected ship for 
goods contraband of war, and to take a vessel carrying contraband into port 
to await the verdict of a prize court. But he had no right to decide the question 
of a violation of neutrality by personal fiat on the spot, without judicial 
process. Moreover, it was extremely doubtful whether persons, as distinguished 
from goods, could ever be deemed contraband. In impressing men from the 
deck of a neutral ship, Wilkes had committed precisely the kind of act that did 
so much to provoke the United States to fight the War of 1812. Lord John 
Russell did not overstate the case when he called it a violent affront to the 
British flag and a violation of international law. No wonder that the frigid 
Charles Francis Adams, learning of the exultation of Americans, fell into in- 
describable sadness, or that the more emotional Henry Adams wrote home that 
the applauders were "a bloody set of fools." 42 

The situation was rendered more difficult by the fact that British ministers 
regarded the State Department with a mordant suspicion. They were well 
aware of Seward's devious ways, remembered some of his recent irresponsible 
statements, and suspected that just before Sumter he had played with the idea 
of provoking a conflict with England as a means of gaining Canada. C. F. 
Adams, Jr., understates the fact when he writes that in 1861 Seward com- 
manded the confidence of no European foreign secretary; Seward in fact had 
the active distrust of most foreign offices. Dealing with him, the Liberal Cabi- 
net naturally made their note stiff. They avoided an ultimatum, but they did 

41 C. F. Adams, Jr., C. F. Adams, Ch. XII; J. P. Baxter, "The British Government and 
Neutral Rights," Amer. Hist. Review, v. 34 (October, 1929), 9-29. Palmerston did, however, 
believe that a division of the American republic would make Britain safer, for he disliked 
Yankee aggressiveness. He wrote Russell on Jan. 19, 1862, that he liked the scheme of a 
monarchy in Mexico. "It would also stop the North Americans whether of the Federal or 
Confederate states in their proposed absorption of Mexico. If the North and South are 
definitely disunited, and if at the same time Mexico could be turned into a prosperous 
monarchy, I do not know any arrangement that would be more advantageous for us." 
Harold Temperley and Lillian M. Fenson, Foundations of Br. Foreign Policy, 1792-1902, 
pp. 219, 220. 

42 Russell's statement is quoted in John Bassett Moore, Principles of Amer. Diplomacy, 
114-118; for the views of the Adamses, see W. C. Ford, ed., A Cycle of Adams Letters, I, 
70 ff. The Journal of Benjamin Moran, II, 904 ff., is useful. Seward had sent Thurlow Weed 
abroad, and shortly after the Trent affair broke, Weed lunched with Russell at Pembroke 
Lodge. He found the foreign secretary as chilly as Adams himself always was, but he learned 
that Queen Victoria was anxious for a friendly settlement. 



DECEMBER GLOOM 

demand the surrender of the envoys, and an apology. Lord John Russell re- 
garded Wilkes's seizure as a continuation of the old unfriendly American 
policy, now carried to the point of a direct slap in the face. 

However, the language of the ministerial instructions to Lord Lyons was 
kept within moderate bounds. It was agreed at the Cabinet meeting of Novem- 
ber 29 that Russell should draft these instructions, while Palmerston reported 
all the facts to the Queen. Next day the Cabinet met again, and both shortened 
and softened Russell's severe language. The revised draft was then sent to 
Windsor, where Queen Victoria (who had been touched by the cordial Amer- 
ican reception of her eldest son the previous year) and Prince Albert were 
much distressed by the evident danger of war. They realized that the crisis 
needed emollients, not excitants. 

Prince Albert, then in his final illness, could hardly hold a pen. Neverthe- 
less, he wrote for the Queen an earnest memorandum to be laid before Lord 
Russell his last political paper. In this document the Queen declared that she 
would like to have the Government take the position that while it could not 
allow its flag to be insulted or its mails endangered, it did not believe that the 
United States intended any insult, or wished to add to the American troubles 
by a dispute with the British nation; and that London hoped to learn that the 
American captain had acted without any instructions, or had misunderstood 
them. Palmerston and Russell immediately made the desired changes. The offi- 
cial biographer of Albert credits him with trying to remove from the dispatch 
to Lyons everything that could irritate the American people, and to offer them 
a full opportunity of receding honorably from the position in which Wilkes's 
indiscretion had placed them. 43 

The fact is that the Palmerston Ministry was so composed as to find a con- 
ciliatory policy natural. Such members as Gladstone, Newcastle, and Gran- 
ville had an ingrained love of peace. The principal ministers, each representing 
his own group in the Liberal Party, carried on their special work much as they 
pleased. Palmerston, who had the deciding word in council, was chiefly con- 
cerned with keeping the governmental machine running smoothly, avoiding 
factional rows, and giving the Conservative Opposition few opportunities for 
attack. He and Russell, who represented different wings of the Liberal Party, 
curbed each other. Both well remembered the recent Russian war which Brit- 
ain had entered so insouciantly, and in which victory proved so costly. It is 
true that the Prime Minister enjoyed living dangerously, or as Cobden put 
it: "Palmerston likes to drive the wheel close to the edge, and show how 

43 Theodore Martin, Life of His Royal Highness the Prince Consort. V. A. W. Tilby, 
Russell, 208, 209, credits Gladstone with influencing the Queen and Prince in favor of 
peace. 



39 2 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

dexterously he can avoid falling over the precipice. Meanwhile, he keeps peo- 
ple's attention employed, which suits him politically." Adams, nervous over 
this precipice-walking, feared that some sudden misstep might send him over 
the edge, but the old curmudgeon's foot was sure. 

Not only was the dispatch to Lyons watered down, but it was accompanied 
by two private communications from Russell to the British Minister in Wash- 
ington which lessened the tension. One of them instructed Lyons to see Seward 
informally before taking him the official paper, prepare him for the demands, 
and ask him to thresh out the matter with the President and Cabinet before 
the dispatch was formally read. The other authorized Lyons to give Seward 
seven days to formulate a reply. If the Secretary rejected the British demands, 
Lyons was to leave Washington, but from the outset he was to make it plain 
that he desired to abstain from anything like a menace. No minister could have 
been happier to pursue a conciliatory line than Lord Lyons. The previous 
spring, in delivering a Foreign Office dispatch to Seward, he had changed 
certain expressions to avoid offending the American Government striking 
out "measures either by the Northern or Southern Confederacies of North 
America," for example, and substituting "measures by America." He under- 
stood and liked Seward, while he was learning to admire Lincoln. 44 

An unfriendly analyst of the British attitude might describe it as an effort 
to browbeat the United States by military preparations while privately paving 
the way for a termination of the quarrel without resort to arms. A truer esti- 
mate would credit the British with wishing to uphold their national dignity 
while giving Americans every opportunity for a graceful retreat. Russell wrote 
the pacific Gladstone on December 13 that if Washington would liberate the 
Confederate envoys, he would be glad to make a treaty giving up the British 
pretensions of 1812 and securing immunity from seizure to unarmed persons 
aboard neutral vessels. "This would be a triumph for the U. S. in principle, 
while the particular case would be decided in our favor." Soon afterward he 
informed Palmerston that if the United States wished to argue the matter, he 
would allow Washington more time for compliance, adding: "I do not think 
the country would approve an immediate declaration of war." 

The United States, meanwhile, proved very reluctant to back down. The 
public and official praise of Wilkes was hard to disclaim. Seward, more regard- 
ful of public opinion than learned in international law, or skilled in diplomacy, 
had lost a golden opportunity in not promptly restoring Mason and Slidell on 
the ground of historic American belief in the illegality of such seizures. Lin- 
coln, however, though at first pleased by the capture, was soon overcome by 
doubts, "I fear the traitors will prove to be white elephants," he said and 
44 Lyons, June 17, 1861, to Russell; FO 84/1137. 



DECEMBER GLOOM 

again impressed on Seward the fact that one war at a time was enough. Charles 
Sumner, exchanging anxious letters with his friends Richard Cobden and John 
Bright, told Washington leaders that the government should recede. Edward 
Everett, former Secretary of State, Thurlow Weed, and numerous business 
leaders, swung to the same view. The assertion of the French advocate of the 
Union cause, Count Gasparin, that the Confederate envoys were a hundred 
times more dangerous in Fort Warren than they would be walking the streets 
of London and Paris, was echoed by August Belmont, staying in Nice: 
"Neither the violent and clumsy representations of the demagogue Mason nor 
all the energy and astuteness of your fierce Slidell could have changed the 
settled policy of England and France in this controversy." 

At the end of November, Seward sent word to Adams that Wilkes had 
acted without orders, that he hoped the Ministry would consider the question 
in a friendly temper, and that the United States would show a conciliatory 
disposition. When Lincoln sent his annual message to Congress at the beginning 
of December, he wisely ignored the subject. From the moment that Adams on 
December 19 imparted the contents of Seward's letter to Russell, the situation 
brightened. Popular feeling on both sides had grown calmer, and the psycho- 
logical reasons for American sensitivity to British antagonism made also, as 
Whittier wrote, for a rapid restoration of friendly feeling: 

O Englishmen! in hope and creed, 

In blood and tongue our brothers! 

We too are heirs of Runnymede; 

And Shakespeare's fame and Cromwell's deed 

Are not alone our mother's. 

Lincoln thought for a time that the question might be arbitrated, and his 
Cabinet remained divided. But at a meeting on Christmas day, with Sumner 
present to read letters from Bright and Cobden, they agreed to admit that 
Wilkes had committed a wrong, and to restore the two envoys. As Attorney- 
General Bates put it, all yielded to the logic of the situation. Seward composed 
a note in his smartest Auburn-attorney vein, castigating British policy past and 
present even while he apologized for the violation of British rights; and his 
impudent irrelevances lent comfort to many Yankee jingoes. The peaceful 
outcome of the dispute gave general gratification on both sides of the water. 
In America, Everett wrote that a strong feeling of relief pervaded the com- 
munity; in England, Adams recorded a striking revulsion "The current which 
ran against us with such extreme violence six weeks ago now seems to be going 
with equal fury in our favor." 

Dr. Whewell, master of Trinity College, Cambridge, made the right ironic 
comment: "According to American principles Mason and Slidell ought not 



394 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

to have been seized, but according to English principles their surrender ought 
not to have been asked." 45 What was perhaps the most perilous moment of the 
Civil War had been passed. It was already clear that when Mason reached 
London, he would accomplish unless some new squall blew up precious 
little. W. L. Yancey, Pierre A. Rost, and A. Dudley Mann, whom the Con- 
federate government had sent to Europe as special commissioners just after 
Sumter, had been received very coldly by the British Foreign Office. In fact, 
they had hardly been received at all. After a first frigid interview, Lord John 
Russell had refused to see them again, requesting them to put in writing any 
communications they wished to make to him. And when they wrote, they got 
no reply to their letters until early in December the Foreign Minister crushed 
their hopes with two curt sentences: "Lord Russell presents his compliments 
to Mr. Yancey, Mr. Rost, and Mr. Mann. He has had the honour of receiving 
their letters of the 2jth and 3oth of November, but in the present state of 
affairs he must decline to enter into any official communication with them." 
It seemed certain Mason would fare no better. 

While the excitement of the Trent affair hung over the country, much 
more stubborn problems were claiming attention. Lincoln's annual message 
had hardly reached Congress when an irreparable breach between him and the 
Secretary of War, touching the most sensitive point of national policy, came 
to light. 

45 See MS Diary of Edward Everett, Nov. i, i86i-Feb. 2, 1862, for comments on the 
affair. Gasparin wrote in the Journal des Debats. The fullest general treatment, T. L. Harris's 
The Trent Affair, is marked by bias. See also the able essay "The Trent Affair, 1861," by 
Charles Francis Adams, Jr., in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, v. 45 (1911), 35-148. Not only 
Edward Everett but Sumner at first held the seizure justified, Sumner sending the State 
Department some citations of favorable precedents; but both changed their minds. 




fe The Bottom Out of the Tub" 

THE MOOD of the nation as it came to the end of a year barren of signal 
victory or real advance was expressed by the long speech of J. A. Gurley of 
Ohio in the House on the conduct of the war. Men generally felt, he said, that 
an active policy must be adopted or the conflict would drag on for years and 
acquire international scope. The army was ready, the troops were eager for 
action, the country was looking for a commander with the will, enterprise, 
and skill to gain victories; but where was the leader? More men had been lost 
by sickness in the past five months than a half-dozen battles would have 
claimed. The expense had been enormous. An occasional reverse would be 
better than this inaction, this waste of opportunity, this dreary disappointment. 

Gurley had the clerk read an excerpt from the Richmond Dispatch which 
bit deeper than his own acid words. It declared that from the beginning of 
December the Yankees had possessed on the Potomac the best army on the 
continent, 200,000 strong, with formidable forces elsewhere. The weather had 
been favorable-, they could have struck at numerous points; their blows could 
have done the Confederacy serious injury. Instead, they had given the South 
time to make itself safe at every point where it had been vulnerable. Why? 
Because, declared the writer, the Yankees enlist not to fight, but only to draw 
pay. Their factories being closed for want of Southern trade, the men had 
gone into the army to live, well fed, well clothed, and safe. The war was 
practically closed. 

W. D. Kelley of Pennsylvania was soon making the House echo to a sterner 
indictment. The public mind and heart were sick, he said, that after all the 
sacrifices for war, no progress had been made: "Washington is beleaguered 
and Richmond is not." Even a leader less sensitive to the national mood than 
Lincoln was would have felt the importance of action to revitalize the War 
Department, spur McClellan into movement, and place a constructive solution 
for the problem of slavery among the objects of the war. Within the space of a 
few weeks the President, awakening to his authority and his capacities, had 
dealt with all three subjects. 

395 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

[ I ] 

Lincoln's distrust of Cameron's capacity, irritation with his methods, and 
hostility to his ideas, had steadily grown. From the first, the two had disliked 
each other. Lincoln had resented the apparent necessity, under half-promises 
which his friends had given at the Chicago Convention, of putting Cameron 
in his Cabinet. 1 He had been warned by various people that Cameron had a 
corrupt record. As early as May, 1861, one politician judged from separate 
conversations with both President and Secretary that "much feeling" existed 
between them. The President heard tales that some of the Pennsylvania con- 
tracts of the War Department were dishonest, and told callers that he meant 
to have them examined. By October, convinced that the Secretary was at least 
incompetent, he spoke of the man to young Nicolay with unwonted asperity. 
Cameron, he declared, was "utterly ignorant" of his proper affairs; "selfish and 
openly discourteous to the President"; "obnoxious to the country"; and "in- 
capable of either organizing details or conceiving and advising general plans." 2 

Incompetent Cameron was; corrupt he was not, save in the sense that he 
kept a keen eye out for political profit. He made bad appointments, as other 
executives did. One man was privately denounced by Gideon Welles as infa- 
mous; another, placed in an investigative capacity, was assailed by the writer 
Epes Sargent as unfit save on the theory that one might set a thief to catch 
a thief. In the unavoidable hurry and confusion of equipping the troops, 
Cameron often signed bad contracts. But Lincoln himself defended him in the 
employment of Alexander Cummings to buy military supplies, and William 
Pitt Fessenden was quite right, as inquiry proved, in saying that much of the 
clamor against the Secretary was baseless. Rascals who offered regiments and 
demanded funds when they had no men, contractors disappointed in their 
hope of plundering the government, and rival politicians with old scores to 
pay, were prominent among the assailants. Chase defended Cameron's integrity 
earnestly. Charles A. Dana, who knew him well and was impressed by his 
personal force, warmth of heart, and literary cultivation, did the same. 3 

His abysmal lack of business capacity and incredible laxity, however, cost 
the country more than petty dishonesties might have done. Dozens of men 

1 Ben P. Thomas, Lincoln, 234. Cameron equally resented Lincoln's post-election efforts 
(as he saw it) to wriggle out of a fair political bargain. 

2 W. W. Orme, Washington, May 14, 1861, to Leonard Swett, David Davis Papers, 111. 
State Hist. Lib.; Helen Nicolay, Lincoln's Secretary, 125. 

3 Lincoln declared that Cameron's emergency steps in war purchasing "were not moved 
nor suggested by himself, and that not only the President but all the other heads of depart- 
ments were at least equally responsible"; Collected Works, VII, 193, 194. Fessenden wrote 
his defense of Cameron Aug. 27, 1861; Fessenden Papers. See Dana's comment to Ida M. 
Tarbell, Tarbell Papers, Allegheny College. 



"THE BOTTOM OUT OF THE TUB" 

who did business in the War Department have left us pictures of its bumbling 
clutter. Cameron refused to protect his time, saw everybody, forgot every- 
thing, established no routines, and deputed little to subordinates. "What was 
the last action I took on your case?" he asked an importunate caller. "You 
borrowed my pencil, took a note, put my pencil in your pocket, and lost the 
paper," replied the suitor. In July Trumbull had the Senate call on Cameron 
for information as to war contracts, but with little result. That same month 
the House appointed a committee under G H. Van Wyck of New York to 
investigate the subject, and most of the evidence it collected of irregularities 
naturally pertained to the War Department. In August a group of bankers 
urged Lincoln to get rid of the Secretary. This deputation did not impress the 
President, who realized that if he yielded to them, they would shift the attack 
to some other Cabinet member; but even Cameron's best friends grew impa- 
tient with his slack, haphazard methods. 4 

Chase, for example, informed John Sherman in the fall that some remedy 
must be found for the absence of system and economy in war expenditures, 
and suggested various reforms. When in November he decided that the War 
Department bills were exorbitant, he refused to accept Cameron's estimates for 
the next year to lay before Congress. Returning them, he declared in a sting- 
ing letter, aimed at the whole executive branch, that both the failures of the 
armies and the financial difficulties of the nation had been traceable neither 
to want or an excess of men, but to the lack of systematic administration. 5 

Even more irritating to Lincoln than Cameron's woolly-minded lack of 
system was his meddling with the sensitive issue of slavery. Although initially 
Cameron had been under the influence of his conservative friend Seward, 
early in the war he shifted ground and became more intimate with Chase, who 
assisted him in military affairs. Already, what Montgomery Blair called a hard 
underground war had begun between Chase and Seward, and before long, 
Seward was quite willing to get rid of Cameron as a punishment for his de- 
fection. Chase was of course fundamentally hostile to slavery; and two of 
Cameron's old personal friends, Colonel John Cochrane, a New York Con- 
gressman who became colonel of chasseurs, and Samuel Wilkeson, of Greeley's 
Tribune, also used their influence to give the Secretary a growing anti-slavery 
tendency. The War Department, like the Navy Department, had to deal with 
innumerable pitiful cases of slaves who escaped into the Union lines, and both 
Cameron and Welles took the position that they should not be returned to their 
masters, Cameron sent Ben Butler a letter, written in part by Chase, approving 

4 A. G. Riddle, Recollections of War Times, is the basis of the pencil anecdote; see also 
Cong. Globe, July 21, 1861; Meneely, War Department in 1861. 

5 To Cameron Nov. 27, 1861; Schuckers, Chase, 279-281. 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

of that general's "contraband" policy. 6 This was unexceptionable. But the 
Secretary, who now honestly believed that slavery was the tap-root of rebel- 
lion, soon went further. 

When General Thomas W. Sherman was preparing for his part in the 
Du Pont expedition against Port Royal, Cameron had drafted a comprehensive 
letter of instructions to govern him in the treatment of slaves. Laying down the 
principle that those who entered the Union lines might be used in government 
service, it was so worded that the general could have armed them; and it gave 
assurances that slaves employed by the army would never be sent back to 
bondage. Cameron had entrusted this letter, just before he left for his Missouri 
trip on October 9, to Assistant Secretary Thomas A. Scott for issuance. Lin- 
coln saw it, struck out the pledge that slaves would never be returned to their 
masters, and limited the passage respecting government service by a dozen 
pregnant words: "This, however, not to mean a general arming of them for 
military service." As Thomas A. Scott pointed out in reply to an inquiry, this 
still left the door open, in great emergencies, to the arming of colored men by 
irregular enrollment; and the New York Tribune commented that it went be- 
yond Fremont's proclamation in that it permitted the use of arms, in such 
emergencies, by slaves who had fled from loyal as well as disloyal masters. But 
Cameron's effort to commit the army to a radical position on slavery, probably 
abetted by Chase, had been defeated. 7 

Unquestionably he was sincere in his repeated assertions that to strike at 
slavery was to strike at the root of insurrection. The theory that he was taking 
an abolitionist stand in order to gain Radical protection against dismissal is 
unjust. For one reason, he was aware by October that his fate was determined. 
"I knew I was doomed when I consented to go to St. Louis," he shortly as- 
sured old F. P. Blair, "and was not altogether clear of suspicion that it was 
intended I should be by one of my associates [Seward], but having determined 
to shrink from no duty I went cheerfully, only taking care to let the President 
know my belief, and to get his promise that I should be allowed to go abroad 
when I left the Department." He knew Lincoln well enough to understand 
that no Radical intervention could help him. Moreover, this vigorous Jack- 
sonian (now sixty-two, he was destined to live to ninety) had long detested 
slavery, and believed that blows at it would shorten the war. "I can safely 
say," he told Blair, "that I have not done an official act that I would not do 
again, under the same circumstances. But there are many things I would have 

6 Welles, Diary, I, 127; see also Welles, "Narrative of Events," Amer. Hist. Review, 
XXXI, 486 ff.; Benjamin F. Butler, Autobiography (Butler's Book), 259-261. 

7 Meneely, 341-343; Nicolay and Hay, V, 123, 124; N. Y, Tribune, Nov. 25, 1861, 



"THE BOTTOM OUT OF THE TUB" 

done, which were omitted only because my associates were not as advanced as 
I was in hostility to the rebellion." 8 

In mid-November, when the issue was sharply joined between those who 
would accept restoration of the Union with slavery and those who demanded 
the Union with emancipation, Cameron took a further step. He visited Spring- 
field, Massachusetts, with Colonel John Cochrane. There he told numerous 
citizens privately that in outfitting T. W. Sherman's expedition he had included 
extra guns to be placed in the hands of any men who could use them. At a 
parade of Cochrane's regiment in Washington a few days later the colonel 
declared in the Secretary's presence that arming the slaves did not diifer from 
utilizing other captured enemy resources: "We should take the slave by the 
hand, place a musket in it, and bid him in God's name strike for the liberty 
of the human race." Cameron, amid cheers by the regiment, stated his hearty 
approval of every sentiment uttered by Cochrane. This episode provoked a 
hot discussion in high military and political circles. McClellan, tender toward 
slavery, and already irritated because Cameron held a strong belief in the 
immediate striking-power of the volunteer army while the general distrusted 
the volunteers, became hostile. The conservative Caleb B. Smith lashed out at 
Cameron in Cabinet meeting, and Lincoln himself was much displeased. 9 

Yet Cameron, applauded by many Radical voices, stuck to his guns. At a re- 
ception which John W. Forney gave at his Washington home for George D. 
Prentice of the Louisville Journal, he bluntly reiterated his views. Speaking 
informally, and belligerently facing Caleb B. Smith, he again declared that he 
would arm any able-bodied men in the South who offered their services. 
Smith, who followed him, vehemently condemned any such policy. Reports 
of this clash appeared in the newspapers, and the New York Times advised 
Cabinet members to push on with the war instead of quarreling in public over 
controversial issues. Meanwhile, Montgomery Blair, always sensitive to Border 
State opinion, took sides with Bates and Smith. He found opportunity to twit 
Cameron upon a newspaper remark that the Secretary had now elbowed 
Fremont out of the abolitionist boat, and taken the tiller in the stern-sheets. 10 

Something of the temper of the Highland Scot, of the Cameronians who 

8 From his home, "Lochiel," Feb. 8, 1862; Blair-Lee Papers, Princeton. A. K. McClure, 
who differed radically from Cameron in politics, gives a fair estimate of him in Lincoln and 
Men of War Times, 147-168; correctly stating that the most upright and sagacious statesman 
of the nation could not have administered the War Department in 1861 without flagrant 
abuses and errors. 

9 N. Y. Herald, Nov. 14, N. Y. Tribune, Nov. 14, 15, 1861; Flower, Stanton, 115; Amer, 
An. Cyc., 1861, p 645; Bates, Diary, Nov. 20, 1861. 

10 N. Y. Times, Nov. 20, 22, Dec. 2, 1861; Bates, Diary, Nov. 20, 27; Smith to Barlow, 
Nov. 22, 23, Barlow Papers. Prentice at once published a long attack on Cameron. 



4 0o THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

had battled to the hopeless end at Aird Moss, crying, "Lord, spare the green 
and take the ripe," had been aroused in Cameron. He defiantly told at least 
one Cabinet meeting how firmly he believed in arming and organizing Negro 
soldiers. 11 He also let friends know that his annual report would deal em- 
phatically with the subject. This announcement startled conservative Pennsyl- 
vanians, and the editor Forney headed a delegation which late in November 
bearded Cameron at his house to remonstrate. He read them what he intended 
to say. "It will never do!" exploded Forney. "I beg of you not to press so 
certain a firebrand." Wilmot defended the passage. All night the angry 
debate raged. Then, as early daylight struggled through the curtained win- 
dows, Cameron rose, went to the sideboard, filled a glass with whiskey and 
water, and holding it aloft, declared: "Gentlemen, the paragraph stands." 12 

[ II ] 

Seldom had patriotic Americans passed more anxious days. As December 
drew in the whole North knew that financial difficulties were thickening and 
the suspension of specie payments was at hand, that the Mason-Slidell affair 
held dire potentialities, and that radicals and conservatives would be at each 
others' throats throughout the session of Congress. No state paper would 
arouse more interest than the report of the Secretary of War. On November 
25th Washington correspondents began announcing that Cameron would ad- 
vocate the arming of slaves. The Secretary had not only shown his paragraph 
to intimates, but laid it before the new special counsel for the War Depart- 
ment, Edwin McMasters Stanton, who made changes to strengthen it from 
a legal standpoint, and gave it full approval. The key sentences ran: 13 

"Those who make war against the Government justly forfeit all rights of 
property. ... It is as clearly a right of the government to arm slaves, when 
it may become necessary, as it is to use gunpowder taken from the enemy. 
Whether it is expedient to do so is purely a military question. ... If it shall 
be found that the men who have been held by the rebels as slaves are capable 
of bearing arms and performing efficient military service, it is the right, and 
may become the duty, of the Government to arm and equip them, and employ 
their service against the rebels, under proper military regulations, discipline, 
and command." 

This was a threat, not a statement of immediate intent, and within a year 

ir Hugh O'Reilly, "Arming the Slaves for the Union,'* pamphlet published 1875; O'Reilly 
was secretary of the Association for Promoting the Organization of Colored Troops, one 
of various abolitionist bodies already demanding such action. 

12 Idem. The MS Reminiscences of X. X. Cobb, NYPL, give a slightly different version. 

13 Nicolay and Hay, V, 125, 126; Cong. Globe, Dec. 12, 1861. The N. Y. Tribune's 
Washington correspondent sent out word of Cameron's intention Nov. 25. 



"THE BOTTOM OUT OF THE TUB" 

events were to make the threat good. But the expediency of arming the Ne- 
groes was not a purely military question it was equally a political question; 
and the nervous condition of the Borderland made such an utterance highly 
indiscreet. 

Why did Lincoln so lose touch with Cameron that the Secretary could pen 
this paragraph? For one reason, he always drove his Cabinet with slack rein, 
and often with no rein at all, a matter of frequent complaint by businesslike 
members. For another, he was engrossed with a multiplicity of urgent affairs, 
including the Trent dispute, Mexico, a memorandum on the military offensive 
which he sent McClellan about December i, a plan for compensated emancipa- 
tion in the Border States, and final touches on his own message. For a third 
reason, he had asked Cabinet members for an abstract of essential parts of 
their reports, and Cameron's had apparently given him no uneasiness. Yet all 
these reasons are unsatisfactory; Lincoln did find time in these days for com- 
parative trifles, and he betrayed a lack of proper vigilance. Perhaps he would 
not have been so supremely great a man had he been a highly circumspect and 
efficient administrator. But we cannot excuse his secretaries for not reading the 
newspapers, listening to Washington talk, and seeing that he was warned 
betimes. 14 

The sequel was an unfortunate exposure of Administration differences. 
On Saturday, November 30, Cameron presented his report to Lincoln, who 
was too busy to read it that day. Next morning the Secretary mailed copies to 
postmasters in leading cities, to be delivered to newspapers as soon as Lincoln 
had sent his message to Congress. He also gave confidential copies to Washing- 
ton correspondents. Sometime on Sunday Lincoln read the report. Astonished 
and dismayed, he at once called Cameron to the White House. Here two con- 
ferences took place in rapid succession, other Cabinet members participating 
in the second. The President insisted that Cameron suppress the paragraph on 
arming slaves. As Lincoln was presenting in his message some vague ideas on 
colonizing freedmen abroad, and was about to attempt to persuade Border 
State Congressmen to support a plan for compensated emancipation, he could 
permit no such untimely declaration. Cameron expostulated. His statement 
contained nothing especially novel, he argued, and it ran parallel with equally 
explicit and radical, though briefer, statements in Welles's reports. 

It appears that Chase outspokenly and Welles at least tacitly supported 
him. 15 But Bates, Seward, Smith, and Montgomery Blair stood on the other 

14 Mrs. Stephen A. Douglas, one of the many visitors, called Nov. 27 for advice on the 
property of her minor children in the South; Collected Works, V, 32. 

15 Welles, "Narrative of Events," Amer. Hist. Rev., XXXI, 486 fT.; Flower, Stanton, 116; 
N. Y. Times, Herald, Dec. 3-6; N. Y. Tribune, Dec. 4, a very full account probably in- 
spired by Cameron or Chase; Nicolay and Hay, V, 126, 127. 



402 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

side, and of course Lincoln's word was final. Cameron either gave way, or was 
overruled despite continued protestations; at any rate, he had to submit. 16 

But the mischief had been done. On Monday, December 2, Montgomery 
Blair telegraphed postmasters to return the packages containing Cameron's 
report. Congress met at noon buzzing with rumors about the dispute between 
Lincoln and Cameron, for Cabinet officers on both sides had talked excitedly 
to friends. The legislative branch had expected to receive the President's mes- 
sage, but this was withheld. The House at once showed its temper by passing 
a resolution for the emancipation of slaves of rebels within all military juris- 
dictions; that is, endorsing Fremont's policy. Many predicted an early breakup 
of the Cabinet and general confusion. On the 3rd Lincoln's message went to 
Congress unaccompanied by any departmental reports. Though moderate 
members liked it, radicals greeted it with little bursts of derisive laughter. 17 
The press meanwhile took positions on Cameron according to its predilections. 
Greeley's Tribune of course doggedly supported him, while Raymond's Times 
stood doggedly with Lincoln. And to the amazement of millions of citizens 
who had not heard of the dispute, the newspapers began publishing Cameron's 
report in two versions! 

The inevitable had happened. In some cities postmasters did not receive 
Montgomery Blair's order for withdrawal, and in others it was not heeded. 
The Cincinnati Gazette, for example, got Cameron's report unaltered. The 
editors immediately printed it on the front page of the next morning's paper; 
then, late that night, they got the version as modified under Lincoln's orders, 
and printed the changes on the inside pages. The New York Times and 
Herald on December 4 carried the report as amended, while the Tribune that 
day published it in the Secretary's original form. The Congressional Globe 
of December 12 printed the suppressed portion. Naturally all radicals were 
enraged. "What a fiasko!" C. H. Ray of the Chicago Tribune wrote Elihu 
Washburne. "Old Abe is now unmasked, and we are sold out." For the moment 
Cameron was the toast of all men who hoped for hard blows at slavery. 18 

1 6 Nicolay and Hay, and Flower, say Cameron declined to yield and was overruled; 
A. K. McClure, in Lincoln and Men of War Times, 162, 163, states he "submitted as grace- 
fully as possible," the view taken by Meneely. That he did submit is indicated by the fact 
that he wrote a substitute passage. 

17 Washington corr. in N. Y. Tribune, Dec. 5, 1861. 

1 8 Washburne Papers, LC. The Cincinnati Gazette published an explanatory editorial 
Dec. 6, with a long news article from Washington narrating the whole dispute. This article 
declared that Cameron had refused to budge, but that Lincoln had compelled the change. 
The revision struck out Cameron's matter on the treatment of Negroes, and substituted 
a single paragraph. This, after stating that many slaves were in military hands and consti- 
tuted a military resource which should not be turned over to the Confederacy, went on: 
"The disposition to be made of the slaves of rebels after the close of the war can be safely 
left to the wisdom and patriotism of Congress. The representatives of the people will, un- 
questionably, secure to the loyal slaveholders every right to which they are entitled under the 
Constitution of the country." 



"THE BOTTOM OUT OF THE TUB" 

A deputation of Congressional leaders which included Vice-President 
Hamlin, Owen Lovejoy, John A. Bingham, and other antislavery men de- 
scended enthusiastically on the Secretary's house as he entertained W. H. 
Russell of the London Times at dinner, and acclaimed him in fervent speeches. 
At the next caucus of Republican Representatives others earnestly upheld him. 
Thaddeus Stevens, long a bitter political antagonist, wholeheartedly endorsed 
his course. And Stevens had a sensational bit of news. McClellan, he said, had 
come to Lincoln and threatened to resign if the offensive passages were not 
struck out. For this assertion he gave no proof. 19 

[ HI ] 

Lincoln hesitated to dismiss Cameron summarily because abrupt action 
would anger the Radical war party. Cameron, for his part, wished to make 
his now inevitable exit with dignity, taking a foreign post, and hoped to have 
a voice in selecting his successor. As he knew, he had few friends in Washing- 
ton. Sumner stood firmly by him in the Senate, and Chase in the Cabinet, but 
many even of the extreme antislavery group had been alienated by his bad 
administration and his adroit haste in getting his report before the country. 
Much of the press comment on his recommendations was scathing; for ex- 
ample, Raymond's Times remarked that it was odd to talk of arming the slaves 
when the War Department had not yet succeeded in properly arming white 
men. 20 His position was worsened when late in December the House investiga- 
tive committee under C. H. Van Wyck of New York submitted a report 
which, published in full by the press, dealt unsparingly with frauds practiced 
upon the War Department. 

A new Secretary had to be chosen, but in a way that would spare Cameron's 
feelings, respect the growing war party which demanded advanced measures, 
and persuade the country that a truly constructive step was being taken. He 
must be acceptable to the editors, governors, Congressmen, and plain citizens 
who thought aggressiveness the cardinal need. By Christmas Lincoln realized 
that he and the country were in serious straits. One piece of news after 
another dampened Northern spirits: General Albin Schoepf s deplorable re- 
treat from the neighborhood of Cumberland Gap, exposing the brave Union- 
ists of east Tennessee; the loss of ground in Missouri, and Halleck's hostility 
there to Negro refugees; the sudden, one-sided communication of the French 
foreign minister, E. Thouvenel, taking part with the British in the Trent af- 
fair; Greeley's declaration that the country could not go on spending its 

19 See N. Y. Tribune, Dec. 5, and Russell's diary Dec. 4 for the Congressional call; N. Y. 
Weekly Tribune, Dec. 14, 1861, for caucus. 

20 Dec. 6, 1 86 1. 



4 4 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

colossal sums for another six months; and the unescapable humiliation of sur- 
rendering Mason and Slidell. 

Union fortunes were in fact at a desperate point. The Treasury was al- 
most empty, high new taxes were a necessity, and on December 28 the princi- 
pal New York banks decided to stop specie payments. Many were asking 
with Chase how it was that when the War Department reported 660,000 men 
under arms, the armies of the Potomac, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Mis- 
souri did not contain more than half that many. Congress, President, and a 
great majority of thoughtful citizens had a fast-ebbing faith in McClellan. 
The Western army was essentially leaderless. "Our only hope now," General 
James Wadsworth wrote Sumner, "is in the legislative branch. If you are 
competent to the crisis you may save the country; but you must do it soon or 
be too late!" 21 And to cap other misfortunes McClellan fell ill of typhoid. On 
December 20 he failed to appear at headquarters, next day it was learned he 
was very sick, and by Christmas staff intimates (but not the President!) knew 
that his life was in danger. 22 

His illness was disastrous because it paralyzed all military planning. Mc- 
Clellan had never delegated his principal powers, so that Marcy, head of his 
staff himself recently ill dared make no decisions whatever. The general, 
confined to his bed during some three weeks, saw nobody and kept his con- 
dition largely secret from the press. Lincoln lost practically all communication 
with him. Calling sometimes when McClellan was asleep, the President was 
denied entrance and given no trustworthy news. As the general later wrote, 
Lincoln's anxiety induced him to fear that the disease was so acute that it 
would terminate fatally. Not until January 10, 1862, was McClellan really 
alert again. 

All the while, with a formidable groundswell of opinion demanding action, 
the leaderless armies stood immobile, giving the country only a few slight suc- 
cesses in Missouri and Kentucky. Perforce, the anguished Lincoln had to step 
into the breach. In St. Louis Halleck did little beyond oversee Pope, Schofield, 
and Prentiss in trying to halt marauding and bridge-burning; in Louisville 
Don Carlos Buell, who had taken command of the Department of the Ohio 
November 15, was concentrating his troops and eying Nashville as an objec- 
tive. Hoping some large result could be achieved in the West, Lincoln tele- 

21 Jan. 10, 1862; Pearson, Wadsworth, 102, 103. 

22 The Comte de Paris, of McClellan } s staff, in Battles and Leaders, II, 120, says his life 
was in danger. McClellan in My Own Story, 155, asserts that "although very weak and ill, 
my strong constitution enabled me to retain a clear intellect" and make decisions. A man 
very weak and ill of typhoid is not a good judge of his own clarity of intellect, and Mc- 
Clellan had reason to gloss over his disability. The N. Y. Herald on Friday, Dec. 27, said he 
was better, was transacting business, and would be in the saddle again on Monday; he was 
not in the saddle for at least two weeks more. 



"THE BOTTOM OUT OF THE TUB" 

graphed Halleck on New Year's eve asking whether he and Buell were act- 
ing in concert. He followed this with a message to both generals: "Delay is 
ruining us, and it is indispensable for me to have something definite." The 
generals responded that they were not cooperating with each other, that some 
of their regiments were unarmed, and that Halleck opposed any immediate 
movement. On a letter from that tactician the President wrote despairingly: 
"It is exceedingly discouraging. As everywhere else, nothing can be done." 

And Lincoln had reason for depression! He had just presided over a joint 
meeting of the Cabinet and the Committee on the Conduct of the War, at 
which the radicals Zach Chandler, Ben Wade, and John Covode bitterly 
denounced McClellan, and clamored for giving McDowell charge of the Army 
of the Potomac. 23 

On January 10 Lincoln, in gloom and perplexity, sought out one of the 
few administrators who was demonstrating high capacity, Quartermaster- 
General Meigs. He seated himself before the blazing office grate. "What shall 
I do? 7 ' he demanded. "The people are impatient; Chase has no money and he 
tells me he can raise no more; the general of the Army has typhoid fever. 
The bottom is out of the tub." 24 

Meigs had a ready suggestion: As it was evident that McClellan would be 
incapacitated for some weeks, Lincoln should call a conference of the higher 
officers to talk over plans. The same night, January 10, what amounted to an 
Emergency War Cabinet Lincoln, Chase, Seward, T. A. Scott, and Gen- 
erals McDowell and Franklin met in the first of four sessions. The President 
was in such a mood of desperation that he even spoke of taking the field him- 
self. He voiced his anxiety over the exhausted finances, the impatient temper 
of Congress, the want of liaison between Halleck and Buell, and above all, 
McClellan's illness. He must talk to somebody, he said. "If General McClellan 
does not want to use the army, I would like to borrow it, provided I could 
see how it could be made to do something." While the civilians listened eagerly, 
he asked Generals McDowell and Franklin what military plans they would 
advise. McDowell proposed that the Army of the Potomac make a frontal 
advance in Virginia, moving against Aquia, Centre ville, and Manassas; Frank- 
lin, who knew something of McClellan's ideas, proposed a lateral movement 
on Richmond from the head of the York River. 

Next evening, the nth, the group met again, augmented by Montgomery 
Blair. They debated the two plans, Chase arguing for the frontal movement, 
and Blair for an attack from the upper York. Lincoln wished that Meigs be 

23 Collected Works, V, 86, 87; O. R. I, vii, 532-535; Meneely, 359; McClellan, My Own 
Story, 155 ff. 

24 See Meigs's narrative in American Hist. Review, XXVI, 292, 293, and MS Diary, Meigs 
Papers, LC; Swinton, Army of the Potomac, 79-85. 



406 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

consulted and that officers gather information on the transportation needed to 
carry troops down the Potomac and up the York. Much perplexed, he made 
no decision between the two plans, but arranged for a third meeting. To some 
observers in the group, a struggle for power between McDowell as backed 
by Chase, and McClellan as supported by Blair and Meigs, seemed emerging; 
but the President was thinking of the war, not of rival generals. 25 On Sunday 
afternoon, the izth, they met again with Meigs present, and after some dis- 
cussion agreed that as McClellan was better, they would consult with him 
next day. 

Of course McClellan soon learned what was afoot, and to Lincoln's jubilant 
relief, he was on hand at a fourth White House meeting Monday afternoon. 
Apparently he was galvanized into action by a warning from the subtle Edwin 
M. Stanton, who had reasons of his own for wishing to curry favor with the 
general, and who warned him: "They are counting on your death and are al- 
ready dividing among themselves your military goods and chattels." If Stan- 
ton could ally himself with McClellan, he would stand in a more powerful 
position. 26 McClellan at once leaped at the conclusion that a plot had been 
formed to get rid of him and put McDowell in his stead, and that Chase and 
McDowell were at the bottom of it. He appeared at the White House in a 
truculent mood. The President opened the meeting by explaining why he 
had called the Cabinet members and generals together, and then innocently 
asked McDowell to explain the plan for a direct forward movement. While 
McClellan glared angrily, McDowell argued that this march could be started 
in three weeks, whereas a transfer of the army to the peninsula between the 
York and James Rivers could not be begun, for lack of transports, for a month 
or six weeks. 

Disconcerted by McClellan's haughty stare, McDowell added an excusing 
sentence about the urgent situation in which the government stood. To this 
the general replied coldly if not sharply, "You are entitled to have any opinion 
you please!" and said no more. He regarded the whole affair the con- 
ferences, the inquiries, the plans as a treacherous effort to supersede him 
while ill. He was not advising the President of the United States, but foiling 
a group of conspirators! 27 

Finally the anxious Lincoln asked, in effect: "What and when can any- 

25 Meigs, loc. cit.; McDowell's memorandum on the meeting, Swinton, 79, 80; McClellan, 
Own Story, 155 ff .; T. H. Williams, Lincoln and the Radicals, 84-86. 

^26 Chase had told Stanton, who told McClellan. But we must not do Stanton the in- 
justice of attributing to him a purely selfish motive. He was already sure of the Secretary* 
ship of War; he and McClellan, as fellow Pennsylvanians, were warm friends. Others, in* 
eluding perhaps Meigs, must have told McClellan as soon as he began to get up, which was 
Jan. nth. 

27^ McClellan had the impression that Lincoln had directed McDowell, Franklin, and 
Meigs to make a "secret examination" into the state of the army, which he says was un- 



"THE BOTTOM OUT OF THE TUB" 

thing be done?" The surly general at last spoke up. "The case is so clear a 
blind man could see it," he snapped. Without explaining, he said he did not 
know what force he could count on: how many men Burnside would take 
for a projected attack on Roanoke Island, and Ben Butler for the proposed 
descent on New Orleans. Finally Secretary Chase, out of patience with him, 
brought the talk back to the main point by repeating Lincoln's question: "What 
do you intend doing with your army, and when do you intend doing it?" 

A sullen silence ensued. McClellan, who regarded Chase as his principal 
enemy, ignored him. Finally he unbent enough to offer some remarks about 
Western operations. An advance in Kentucky was to precede that in Virginia, 
he remarked, and he had directed General Buell to take wagons if he could 
not hire them. Another pause followed. All were plainly waiting for an an- 
swer to Lincoln's and Chase's queries. At last the commander made the evasive 
statement that he was most unwilling to divulge his plans, always believing 
that in military matters the fewer people who knew his secrets the better. "I 
will tell them if I am ordered to do so." Lincoln then inquired whether the 
general had fixed any particular time, which he need not state. "Yes," re- 
sponded McClellan. "Then," said the President, "I will adjourn this meeting." 
Already Seward had commented in his amiable way that they had better 
break up: "I don't see that we are likely to make much out of General McClel- 
lan." Chase, previously distrustful, thereafter detested the general. 

A wiser leader would at once have gone privately to Lincoln, and given 
him his full plans and time-schedule, but McClellan remained sullen. During 
another fortnight he did nothing, keeping Lincoln still in the dark. The worried 
President thereupon felt himself provoked to a decisive and unhappy step. 
On January 27, yielding to pleas by the War and Navy departments, but 
consulting nobody and reading it to the Cabinet for information only, he 
issued General War Order No. i. It directed a general movement of land 
and naval forces against the enemy February 22. The Secretaries of War and 
the Navy, all officers in national service, and their subordinates, would be held 
strictly responsible for executing the order. Four days later the President's 
Special War Order No. i, addressed to McClellan, bade him use the Army 
of the Potomac, after safeguarding Washington, in a flanking movement to 
the southwest of the Confederate position at Manassas to begin not later 
than February 22. 28 

necessary, for his staff could have informed the President of the "exact condition" of every 
branch. My Own Story, 156. Why the staff never did so is a puzzle. Nothing is more dis- 
creditable to McClellan than his willingness to believe that the transparently honest Lin- 
coln, so patient and long-suffering, could be capable of double-dealing. 
28 See text in O. R. I, v, 41 ff., and with previously unpublished passages, in Lincoln, 
Collected Works, V, npff. Welles says in his Diary, I, 61, that he and Stanton had pressed 
for such an order. Both were preparing for the New Orleans expedition. Both wished the 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

It was obvious that General War Order No. i was intended primarily 
for popular effect. Political rather than military, it was expected to protect 
the Administration from accusations of inaction rather than to inaugurate a 
series of battles. Even so, it was unwise. Lincoln would have to learn to handle 
Congress and public opinion more adroitly. His order seemed impatient, his 
idea of a "general movement" was amateurish, and his choice of Washington's 
birthday was undignified. The Special Order to McClellan, however, evinced 
real sagacity, for it was well devised to make him show his hand. Lincoln 
waited to see how soon his reply would come and how much of his plans it 
would reveal. 

[ IV ] 

Meanwhile, Cameron's exit had been managed, his successor installed, and 
an initial effort made to fit a bottom into the tub. We must reemphasize the 
fact that the central reason for Cameron's dismissal was not his antislavery 
position, which counted for little, but his lack of grasp, foresight, administra- 
tive energy, and organizing power. However numerous, fierce, and well- 
founded the charges brought against his successor, Stanton clearly possessed 
these particular qualities. 

Lincoln knew that Cassius M. Clay was anxious to drop his place as minister 
to Russia and accept an army command. He ascertained through Thurlow 
Weed that Cameron would be glad to take the post. As the new Secretary, 
Lincoln thought of naming Joseph Holt, the stanch Kentucky Unionist 
who had done so much to put courage into the last acts of the Buchanan Ad- 
ministration. But Cameron believed that Stanton, who also had given iron 
resolution to Buchanan's last months, and who had assiduously curried favor 
at the War Department, was an abler man. Cameron had urged him on the 
radicals, introducing him to Zack Chandler at a breakfast party as the best 
choice, and making the same recommendation to Ben Wade. 29 

"I called on Mr. Lincoln," Cameron later wrote, u and suggested Edwin 

Confederates driven from the south bank of the Potomac, their batteries demolished, and 
the river fully opened. Welles writes that "we united in requesting President Lincoln to 
issue his celebrated order of the zyth of January." 

29 Years after, when Cameron was Senator, Charles F. Benjamin saw the ex-Secretary, 
Cameron told him "that soon after he became Secretary of War he received a call one 
evening from Stanton, who was cordial and effusive, and fervidly eloquent on the subject 
of depriving the Confederacy of its slave property and putting it to the use of the Union. 
Thenceforward, as he told me, Stanton was his confidant and adviser, and when he saw 
that his days in the Cabinet were numbered he set every agency at work that he could 
command to make sure of Stanton as his successor, and when he knew he had succeeded he 
was glad to get out." Charles F. Benjamin, Washington, June i, 1914, to Horace White; 
White Papers, 111. State Hist. Lib. 



"THE BOTTOM OUT OF THE TUB" 

M. Stanton to him as my successor. He hesitated; but after listening to me for 
a time, he yielded, and sent me to offer the place of Secretary of War to 
him, and added: 'Tell him, Cameron, if he accepts, I will send his nomination 
as Secretary, and yours as minister to Russia, to the Senate together.' " This 
may be accurate as to Cameron's action, but the story is more complicated. 
Seward, as Gideon Welles, Montgomery Blair, and others assert, was the 
prime mover in bringing Stanton forward. He knew the man's strength and 
was impressed by Assistant-Secretary Peter H. Watson's warm endorsement. 
It is said that while Lincoln hesitated over Holt, who might have struck some 
radicals as being too much a Border State man, Winfield Scott, Ben Wade, 
and Sumner also urged the claims of Stanton. Lincoln of course consulted 
numerous men. 30 He did not know, and Cameron did not tell him, that Stan- 
ton had helped write the antislavery passage in Cameron's report. 

The final stroke was not without drama. Lincoln on January 10, by Chase's 
hand for Lincoln in his politic way wished Chase to think he had a prime 
part in the matter sent a note to Cameron. It reached the Secretary late 
in the evening, and he was staggered to see that it was so worded as to give 
the public the impression of a curt discharge. At midnight he sought Thomas 
A. Scott's house in high emotion. Showing Scott and McClure the note, he 
wept as he said that it meant his personal and political destruction. They as- 
sured him of what seems to have been the fact, that Lincoln then distracted 
over McClellan's condition had dashed off the note without perceiving its 
implications. All agreed that next day they should ask the President to with- 
draw it, allow Cameron to submit his resignation, and accept it graciously. 
Speaker after speaker in Congress this month, using the Van Wyck report 
as ammunition, was assailing the Secretary, and Lincoln must not seem to throw 
him to the wolves. The result was that the President sent Cameron two let- 
ters dated January u. One was a notification that as Cameron had more 
than once expressed a wish for another office, he could now gratify him with 
St. Petersburg; the other was a generous personal communication, declaring 
his personal esteem and his confidence in the Secretary's ability, patriotism, 
and fidelity. 

Cameron departed with pride in the work he had done to raise and train 
the great volunteer army. "No man ever served with more disinterested in- 
tegrity than I did, and I am sure in the end all will say so." In actual fact, 
the next generation criticized him more harshly than he deserved. The greatest 
of war ministers, confronted with his staggering tasks, and given the meagre 

30 Different views on Stanton's appointment are given in Welles, Diary, I, 57-59, 127, 
128; Bates, Diary; Chase, Diary, Jan. 12, 1862; Henry Wilson, "Je rei m a ri S. Black and Edwin 
M. Stanton," Atlantic, XXVI, 474 fi\; Maunsell B. Field, Memories, 267-269; Flower, Stanton, 
116, 117, and A. G. Riddle, Benjamin F. Wade. 



4IO THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

resources the government could then muster, would have blundered. In this 
office he was honest, and he did his best. But he was a misfit, whom Lincoln ap- 
pointed against his best judgment; clumsy, forgetful, unsystematic, he failed 
to adapt himself to his responsibilities as Chase and Seward did; and his execu- 
tive feebleness soon made him a sore clog upon the administration. The War 
Department, enlarged by Congress in late summer and now shaken down, 
gave Stanton a far more efficient agency than Cameron had found. Contract 
letting had been systematized, trustworthy manufacturers had been separated 
from cheats, and half a thousand regiments had been put in fair order. 

The first drivers of the military machine, the men who jerked it into 
gear, were penalized by circumstance. The nation had to regard them as ex- 
pendable, and they were all broken. 31 

In choosing Stanton, Lincoln took a man of whose true capacities or 
character nobody was informed. But he knew well that Stanton had been a 
Jacksonian Democrat, had held the Attorney-Generalship under Buchanan 
as a Union Democrat, and had other Union Democrats as his chief friends. 
He understood his well-earned eminence at the bar. No other aspirant com- 
bined so much executive support, Meigs alone disliking the appointment, with 
so much Congressional approbation. His public reputation overtopped that of 
Holt. With characteristic magnanimity, Lincoln dismissed any recollection 
of the slights Stanton had put upon him when they were fellow-counsel 
in the reaper-patent case in Cincinnati in 1855. He could not know that in 
recent letters, Stanton had violently abused him and his Administration, and 

31 Cameron delivered a long defense of his record at a public dinner in Harrisburg just 
before sailing for Europe (N. Y. Herald, May 8, 1862). As a young man, he said, he had 
often worked twenty hours out of the twenty-four, "but that labor was nothing in com- 
parison with the overpowering toil which I underwent at Washington." He found the 
Ordnance Department without a head, the man in charge being too old to be competent, 
and he appointed Colonel Ripley, who was believed capable, "but who soon proved, in 
the opinion of my associates, to be unequal to the crisis." To safeguard the Department, 
he directed Thomas A. Scott, his assistant, to see that every contract had a thirty-day 
cancellation clause to be invoked in case of failure to meet requirements. Cameron revealed 
that Lincoln had specifically approved one large arms contract. When on Sept. 4 Herman 
Boker & Co. of New York had offered upwards of more than 100,000 rifled percussion 
muskets, subject to departmental inspection, at not more than $18 each, Lincoln had en- 
dorsed on the letter or offer: "I approve the carrying this through, carefully, cautiously, 
and expeditiously. Avoid conflicts and interference." The Secretary defended his railroad 
arrangements to carry Eastern soldiers to Washington in the April crisis when the bridges 
of the Wilmington & Baltimore were destroyed. Massachusetts capitalists, he asserted, con- 
trolled that road, and their resentment when he arranged with the rival Harrisburg, Read- 
ing, and New Jersey roads to reduce the New York-Baltimore fare from $6 to $4 inspired 
the attack by Dawes. Cameron also charged that some of his Congressional assailants, who 
had passed a vote of censure in the House, had asked him for improper contract favors. 
"Having my whole time occupied in preparing an army out of raw and undisciplined 
soldiers, of course I may have run counter to the desires of such gentlemen." 



"THE BOTTOM OUT OF THE TUB" ^ II 

had even advised the violent overthrow of the government, to be replaced 
by a military dictatorship under McClellan. If he had, he would have ignored 
the fact. Lincoln was willing to pay any personal price to obtain a powerful 
organizer of victory. 

The transfer of the War Department to Stanton was widely hailed as a 
great national victory. 32 Its moral effect was tremendous. Senators and Repre- 
sentatives who in the dark winter of 1 860-61 had seen how Stanton nerved 
the weak Buchanan to duty, and had exposed the dark purposes of Floyd 
and Cobb, particularly rejoiced. They recalled how fierily he had risen to 
meet the crisis, what iron resolution, industry, and vigilance he had brought 
to this task, and how carefully, using Howard of Michigan and Sumner of 
Massachusetts as intermediaries, he had kept the Republicans informed of 
every movement tending to endanger the nation. They remembered grate- 
fully how he had decided that his fellow Cabinet-member, Isaac Toucey, 
ought to be arrested, and had inspired a House resolution on that subject. 
Henry Wilson, as member of a Republican committee of vigilance, had re- 
ceived almost daily warnings and suggestions from Stanton. Sometimes they 
had conferred at one in the morning on the secession crisis. The Congressional 
radicals were also aware that for months now, Stanton had chafed over the 
seeming inaction of the army, and in intimate talk had berated the Adminis- 
tration for not pursuing a more determined and aggressive policy. 33 

The fact that Stanton was no politician, but simply a leader of the bar 
noted for his prodigious industry and powerful argument, pleased the public. 
The press drew the portrait of a man of large brain, complete absorption in 
any task he undertook, and absolute fearlessness. Greeley's Tribune credited 
him with "the highest qualities of talent, courage, and uncompromising pa- 
triotism." He told Winfield Scott that he would give the public but one pledge, 
to throttle treason, and everybody knew that he brought to his work no com- 
mitments, attachments, or predilections that could embarrass it. Joseph Holt 
wrote a friend that he found everybody rejoicing; "but that rejoicing would 
be far greater did the people know, as I do, the courage, the loyalty, and the 

32 The Washington correspondent of the N.Y. Times wrote (issue of Jan. 14) that the 
capital was stunned by the news, and the Washington correspondent of the Tribune called 
it a bombshell. 

33 McClellan, a friend of Stanton, was astonished but delighted, writing S. L. M. Barlow, 
the Democratic leader in New York City, that the nomination was an unexpected bit of good 
fortune. Stanton had been on the point of going to New York to become law partner of 
Barlow. Jan. 18, 1862, Barlow Papers. The rejoicings of the radicals in Congress are de- 
scribed by Henry Wilson, "Edwin M. Stanton," Atlantic, Feb. 1870. The Cleveland Plain 
Dealer said: "We know Edwin M. Stanton well. He has more of the Bonaparte in his 
composition than any other man in America. The army will move on now, even if it goes 
to the devil," 



4I2 THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

genius of the new secretary. ... He is a great man intellectually and morally 
a patriot of the true Roman stamp, who will grapple with treason as the 
lion grapples with his prey." 34 

And the first steps of the Secretary showed that his earnestness had method. 
He asked the Senate to postpone further consideration of military nominations 
till he could scrutinize the list. He had a frank talk with the Committee on 
the Conduct of the War, getting their views and making suggestions for 
further legislation. He rearranged his office space. He laid down firm rules 
of business: 35 

1. He would receive nobody at his house and transact no business there 
(Cameron had been overrun at home with callers). 

2. The Department would attend to letters and other written communica- 
tions the first thing each morning, this taking precedence of other business. 

3. Instead of giving six days a week to members of Congress, as Cameron 
had done, he would give them one day, Saturday. 

4. He would give all other callers one day, Monday. 

5. The other days, Tuesday to Friday inclusive, he would give to the war, 
and only to business pertaining to the armies in the field. 

Finally, Stanton announced he would strike from the Army rolls all of- 
ficers found in Washington except those ordered there by superiors on mili- 
tary business. 

[V] 

The bottom had indeed seemed nearly out of the tub in this midwinter 
crisis. But early in the year the North could feel a greater firmness and con- 
fidence; the tub was being strengthened. 

Not Chase's financial measures, nor Seward's surrender of Mason and Slidell, 
nor the new War Department administration, did this. The central fact was 
that Lincoln, on whom all the fortunes of the Union depended, had begun 
to lead firmly. In his early months he had shown sagacity, moderation, poise 
but not a strong captaincy. He had frequently fumbled. He had hesitated 
to call out the full strength of the North, so that Zack Chandler had some 
grounds for declaring the Administration timid, vacillating, and inefficient. 
Not a single public utterance, not one letter, not even a dramatic act, had 
been stamped with the qualities men later learned to term Lincolnian. But in 
the last weeks of the year he faced the bluster of Wade and Chandler, the 

34 Flower, Stamen, quoting E. D. Townsend on Stanton's remark to Scott; Curtis, 
Buchanan, II, 480, for Holt's letter; -N. Y. Tribune, Feb. 12, 1862, for Greeley's opinion. A 
full treatment of Stanton's character, resources, and limitations will appear later in this 
narrative, as will a study of Chase's financial policies, 

35 N. Y. Weekly Tribune, Jan. 25, 1862. 



"THE BOTTOM OUT OF THE TUB" 

suaver pressures of Sumner and Trumbull, without yielding an inch. Zack 
Chandler dared to tell him: "I am in favor of sending for Jeff Davis at once, 
if your Administration views are carried out!" But the Washington cor- 
respondent of the Times correctly reported just before Christmas that Lin- 
coln was adamant, "All thought of overruling the policy of President Lincoln 
in regard to the war is now virtually abandoned. After full consideration of 
all the reasons that have been presented to induce him to modify his plans to 
please the radicals, the President has firmly resolved to stand by his original 
purpose to regard the Union as unbroken, to restore the national laws over 
the seceded States as rapidly as possible, and to protect the lives and property 
of all loyal men." He had his own proposals for slavery, his first great con- 
structive plan, which he was now about to present to the Border States, and 
which fitted his fundamental policy of the restoration of a truly fraternal 
Union. 

This was the firmness of a strong leader, a chieftain who grew with the de- 
mands laid upon him. And the appointment of Stanton was the first great decided 
step, showing real statesmanship, which Lincoln had taken in front of the 
embattled nation. The President was beginning to feel his strength; to ride 
in the tempest, and direct the storm. 



EPILOGUE 



THE FIRST and worst year of the war, 1861, was over; an unhappy year, 
that upon a casual review seemed to contain far more of Union failure than 
achievement. It had been a year of hysterical excitements and skin-deep pa- 
triotism, of contract grabbing, office mongering, and political jobbery, of 
shortages, shoddy, and corruption. In foreign affairs it had been a year of 
humiliation: of Seward's wayward hankerings for war, of Napoleon Ill's sly 
meddling in Mexico and Spain's greedy intervention in Santo Domingo, and 
of America's chagrined surrender of Mason and Slidell. In the military sphere 
it had been stained with the blood of Bull Run, Ball's BlufT, and Wilson Creek, 
with the failure of McDowell, Patterson, and Lyon, with the dramatic col- 
lapse of Fremont, and with a widespread loss of faith in McClellan. 

It had been a year of improvisation, and of the errors inseparable from 
haste, amateurishness, and disorganization. The loose, irresponsible manage- 
ment of half the recruiting had been almost incredibly faulty; the selection of 
untested incompetents to hold the lives of hundreds in their hands and spend 
enormous sums had often been shocking. Some new functions of the national 
government had never gained efficiency. The paymaster service in the army, 
for example, continually broke down. It was shameful that soldiers who risked 
their lives for a paltry thirteen dollars a month should not receive that sum; 
disgraceful that their families should often suffer for want of part of it. Yet 
it was a fact, and army morale felt its effects. Some weakness in the national 
character seemed involved in the early deficiencies of camp sanitation, the 
ill-checked indulgence of officers and men in drink, the easy habit of going 
absent without leave, and the general antipathy to discipline. 

Yet on careful view the Northern achievement seemed more impressive. 
When in history had a people of twenty-five millions, so unused to martial 
pursuits and completely devoted to tasks of peace, compressed so mighty a 
war effort into nine months? To enlist nearly 700,000 men, soldiers, sailors, 
and marines; to clothe, arm, and train them, however roughly; to collect power- 
ful naval squadrons out of nothing, and institute a new era of armored steam 

414 



EPILOGUE 

warships this was a prodigious feat. As 1861 ended, Northern hosts were 
poised on the Potomac, Ohio, and Mississippi to march southward. Already 
they had made West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri seemingly secure, 
if but half pacified, for the Union. The navy had seized two footholds on 
the South Atlantic coast, had begun a blockade whose effectiveness was 
evidenced by the price of Southern products on the world market, and 
was preparing to strike at New Orleans. The Monitor was building. For 
the whole effort money and materials had been found in sufficiency, if not 
in abundance. 

The war had shown that the North was still under-developed industrially; 
but it had demonstrated that the Union had a wide advantage over the South 
little Massachusetts alone manufactured sixty per cent more goods in 1860 
than the entire Confederacy, and New York more than twice as much. The 
North was actually overbuilt in railroads, and events already proved that this 
would be the first great railway war of history, the Northern lines carrying 
armies and material to every invasion point. Economically and militarily, they 
knit the North into a compact whole. Already perceptive men saw that the 
four trunk lines which bridged the Allegheny barrier guaranteed a closer 
union of East and Northwest, and a steady growth of population and power 
while the battle raged. 

Like a tocsin awakening a lethargic giant, the war had brought into play 
unsuspected powers of mobilization and administration. Against the ineptness 
of Cameron could be set the proved resourcefulness of the shrewd, untiring 
Connecticut Yankee, Gideon Welles, in making the most of scattered ships 
and neglected yards. If Chase at the Treasury as yet offered only promise, 
that was because the formidable difficulties would have baffled a Hamilton. 
A chaotic, ramshackle structure of State banks; a body of investors too small, 
too unused to Federal securities, and too cautious to give the government 
proper aid; House and Senate committees which even under strong men like 
Thaddeus Stevens and William Pitt Fessenden were clumsy in framing large- 
scale financial legislation; a steady march of inflation these difficulties were 
compounded by the general belief in a short war. But Chase had grasp, earnest- 
ness, and courage. Among the men of lesser prominence who proved the 
nation's latent organizational capacities stood Montgomery C. Meigs as head 
of the all-important quartermaster services, Gustavus V. Fox as the efficient 
second leader at the Navy Department, and, now emerging, Thomas A. Scott 
as Stanton's invaluable aid. Of each, observers could say what one Congress- 
man wrote of Scott: "What a relief to deal with him, with his electric brain 
and cool, quiet manner." 

Amid the confusion, blundering, and selfishness patriots could also find 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

cheer in the unanticipated resourcefulness of the State governments. Generally 
regarded as weak, shackling mechanisms corroded by politics, they had shown 
both zeal and power. Three war governors in especial, Andrew of Massa- 
chusetts, Curtin of Pennsylvania, and Oliver P. Morton of Indiana, had earned 
honorable places in the nation's history. When the War Department telegraphed 
its first call for troops Andrew made instant reply: "Dispatch received. By 
what route shall we send?" He proved his acumen by a following letter 
stuffed with shrewd suggestions. This trio of governors had a special capacity 
for enlisting business and financial talent, and for arousing popular deter- 
mination. Curtin in his insistence on a body of trained reserve regiments saw 
further ahead than Washington. Morton helped kindle a fervor which brought 
out 150,000 volunteers in Indiana, making the draft practically a superfluity. 
Other governors Yates, Kirkwood, Morgan, Buckingham did well, but 
these three proved the resilient strength of a union of States. 

All over the map, too, voluntary effort had exhibited a vision and strength 
which shamed inertia and self-seeking. It was already clear that women could 
write a lustrous page in public affairs. Partly from the foresight of one feminine 
organization the Women's Central Association of Relief in New York 
was born a body which finely typified the possibilities of expert private en- 
deavor: the United States Sanitary Commission. Its two principal founders, 
Dr. Henry W. Bellows, a Unitarian minister, and Dr. Elisha Harris, a prominent 
New York physician, rallied a devoted group of men: A. D. Bache, Wolcott 
Gibbs, Cornelius R. Agnew, George Templeton Strong, and others. They 
made felicitous choice of an executive secretary in Frederick Law Olmsted. 
This body had a rough road just ahead. But nothing quite like it, in its com- 
bination of specialized skill, sturdy common sense, and consecrated devotion 
to a great aim, had previously been known in American annals ; and its success 
was to show that a new era of national organization was opening. 

As mid-January brought news of the victory of George H. Thomas, with 
4000 effective troops, over an equal force of Confederates at Mill Spring, 
Kentucky, Northerners hoped for a turning of the tide. Most people ardently 
wished that McClellan, Buell, and Grant would make the war short; some 
hoped it would be prolonged sufficiently to ensure the downfall of slavery. 
Actually the year of improvised war was giving way to a year in which the 
war would become revolution; for the nation had been deeply aroused, and 
it would not stop. 



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THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

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THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

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BIBLIOGRAPHY AND APPENDICES 

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ernment, Federal and State, 1861-1865 (Boston, 1906); Welles, Gideon, The Diary of 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson, ed. by John T. Morse 
( 3 vols., Boston, 1911), "Narrative of Events," American Historical Review, vol. 31 (April, 
1926), 486-494, Lincoln and Seward: Remarks upon the Memorial Address of Charles F. 
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1829-1861 (New York, 1954); Wiley, Bell I., The Life of Johnny Reb, The Common 
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(New York, 1900); Willey, W. P., An Inside View of the Formation of West Virginia 
(Wheeling, 1901); Williams, Kenneth, Lincoln Finds a General: A Military Study of the 
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Won the West (Washington, D. C., 1952); Wilson, Henry, "Jeremiah S. Black and 
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New York, 1912); Wilson, W. B., A Few Acts and Actors in the Tragedy of the CM 
War in the U. S. (Philadelphia, 1892); Winthrop, Theodore, "Washington as a Camp," 
Atlantic Monthly, vol. 8 (July, i860, 105-118; Wise, John S., The End of an Era (Bos- 
ton, 1902); Woodward, Ashbel, The Life of General Nathaniel Lyon (Hartford, 1862); 
Wright, Marcus J., General Scott (New York, 1897) 

A full list and description of manuscript sources will be published in the next volume of 
this work. It should be noted here that HL refers to Huntington Library, MHS to Massa- 
chusetts Historical Society, and NYPL to New York Public Library. 

APPENDIX I 
Northern and Southern Resources, 1860 

I. WHITE POPULATION NORTH AND SOUTH 

It is roughly correct to say that the Northern States had a white population of twenty 
millions, while the Southern white population was about five and a half millions. An accurate 
picture, however, requires a somewhat fuller statement. 

The white population of New England by the census of 1860 was 3,110,000; that of New 
York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware was 8,745,000; that of Ohio, 
Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas was 6,126,000; and that of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minne- 
sota, and Nebraska was 1,708,000. The total white population in this area, where strength 
could most effectively be mobilized and deployed by the Federal Government, was 
19,689,500. In the Far Western area California, Oregon, Washington, Dakota, New 
Mexico, Utah, Nevada, and Colorado the white population was 587,500. This gave the 
North a total white population of approximately 20,275,000. 

The border States of Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee, whose strength was divided 
between North and South, had a white population of 2,810,000. Of this the population of 
Tennessee, a member of the Confederacy, was 827,000. 

The census of 1860 gave the white population of the ten Confederate States excluding 
Tennessee as 4,622,000. If the white population of Tennessee is added, the whole number of 
whites in the eleven Confederate States falls barely short of 5,500,000. 

Looking at whites alone, the population odds against the Confederacy were thus almost 
four to one. The South, however, had an immense asset in its Negro population. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY AND APPENDICES 

H. COLORED POPULATION NORTH AND SOUTH 

Speaking in rough terms, the North had fewer than a half million colored people 
available for the war effort, while the South had not far from three and three-quarters 
millions. Again a fuller array of statistics is required for an accurate picture of the situation. 

The colored population of New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey by 
the census of 1860 was 153,983. That of the eight Middle Western States from Ohio and 
Michigan to Kansas, together with Nebraska Territory, came to 65,642. The total for these 
seventeen Northern States and one Territory was 221,625. If we add the Negro population 
of Delaware, Maryland, and the District of Columbia, the aggregate is almost 430,000. The 
Far Western States and Territories would add fewer than 5,000, nearly all of whom lived in 
California. 

The colored population of the ten Confederate States excluding Tennessee, which was 
invaded and partly occupied in 1862, came to 3,371,000. If we add the 289,000 colored people 
of Tennessee, the eleven Confederate States had in all 3,654,000 Negroes and mulattoes. 

III. POPULATION TOTALS 

Missouri and Kentucky were so divided between North and South that an accurate brief 
comparison of strength is furthered by their omission. Leaving them out, the North had 
a combined white and colored population of approximately 20,700,000 just over that total. 
The eleven States of the Confederacy had a combined white and colored population of 
approximately 9,105,000. The North therefore had an advantage of more than two to one, 
even reckoning the colored population on a parity with the white. The Union, moreover, 
had the assistance of unrestricted immigration from Europe. 

IV. POPULATION OF MILITARY AGE 

The census of 1860 lists white males in two age categories, one 15 to 20, and the other 
20 to 30, but does not break them down by years. The total white male population 15 to 30 
in the seventeen Northern States of New England, the Middle Atlantic area, and the 
Middle West, with Nebraska, the main reservoir of manpower, was 2,582,678. But the whole 
number of white males 15 to 30 in the Confederate States came only to 791,000. This omits 
from computation on either side Missouri, which had 166,000 white males of 15 to 30 years, 
and Kentucky, which had 134,000. The whole number of white males in this age group 
available to the North was certainly a good deal more than three times the number in the 
South. 

V. MANUFACTURES IN i860 

The census credited New York with 22,624 establishments holding a capital, in round 
numbers, of $172,896,000. It gave Pennsylvania 22,363 establishments, with a capital of 
$190,056,000. Ohio had 11,123 establishments of $57,295,000 capital, while Massachusetts was 
listed as possessing 8,176, with a capital of $132,792,000. In round numbers the North had 
110,000 manufacturing establishments, with 1,300,000 industrial workers. 

The South fell far behind. Virginia had 5,385 manufacturing establishments with a 
capital of $30,840,500; Alabama had 1,459, w ^ a capital of less than $9,100,000; Louisiana 
had 1,744 with a capital of only $7,151,000; and Mississippi had 976, with a capital of but 
$4,384,500. The total number of manufacturing establishments in the Confederacy was about 
18,000, with 110,000 industrial workers. 

The value of the product of manufacturing in the four Southern States named in 1860 
did not reach $85,000,000. But that of New York was placed at $379,000,000, and that of 
Massachusetts at $255,500,000. 



426 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 



VI. IRON MANUFACTURES 

In 1860 the United States had 286 iron furnaces scattered through 18 States. Pennsylvania 
led with 125. Tennessee was the largest Southern producer of pig iron, with 17 furnaces, 
and Virginia came next with 16. 

The number of forges and rolling mills in the country, producing bar, sheet, and railroad 
iron, was 256, in twenty States. Pennsylvania was by far the largest manufacturer, with 87 
forges or rolling mills, employing more than half the whole capital investment of the 
country in this line. The value of its product amounted to between $15,000,000 and 
$16,000,000 a year. New York was the second largest producer. Virginia had 20 establish- 
ments with a product valued at $1,667,000, and Tennessee was proud of 35, with a product, 
however, of only a little over a half -million dollars. 

Of 470 locomotives built in the United States in the year ending June i, 1860, Virginia 
made 19, and no other Southern State any. In the manufacture 'of agricultural implements 
in 1860, the aggregate Southern production was worth a little over $1,000,000. But during 
the previous decade the Western States had raised their production from $1,900,000 to 
$8,700,000. 

Firearms in 1860 were manufactured in 239 establishments, New England being far in 
the lead. Of the whole product, worth $2,342,700, the Southern States made less than 
$73,000 worth. One county in Connecticut Hartford valued its product at well over a 
million dollars. 

VII. DRAFT ANIMALS 

The dependence upon horses and mules in transporting troops and supplies makes 
statistics upon them important. The Middle and Western States in 1860 had more than 
4,000,000 horses. The Southern States had less than one and three-quarters millions, of 
which more than one-sixth were in remote Texas, and nearly one-sixth in vulnerable 
Tennessee. But in the number of asses and mules the South had a distinct advantage. Its 
total for the eleven States of the Confederacy was 822,047; the total of the Middle and 
Western States was only a little over 310,000, while New England had practically none. 

The eleven Confederate States had approximately 2,566,000 horses, asses, and mules 
combined, while the Northern States, excluding the Far West, had almost 4,600,000. The 
South had about one horse to every five inhabitants; the Middle Western States, about two 
horses to every seven inhabitants. 

VIII. RAILROADS 

Of the total railroad mileage in the United States in 1861, which by Poor's Manual was 
31,256, the South contained 9,283, or less than 30 per cent. Federal inroads soon reduced 
this to something over 6,000 miles (J. C. Schwab, Confederate States, 273). 



APPENDIX II 
Documents on Mrs. Fr'emont's Interview With Lincoln 

The Fremont Papers in the Bancroft Library of the University of California contain a 
copy, undated, of a letter which Montgomery Blair sent the general in St. Louis soon after 
his arrival, when Blair was still supporting him. This is the letter in which he criticized 
Secretary Chase for his parsimony, writing: "Chase has more horror of seeing Treasury 
notes below par than of seeing soldiers killed." (Nevins, Fremont, third edition, 509). He 
also criticized Lincoln in a passage worth quoting in full: 

"I showed the President, Billings' letter, and read him yours about Adams. He says that 
you were right in saying that Adams was devoted to his money-bags. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY AND APPENDICES 

"Schuyler had already gone to Europe about arms when I wrote and telegraphed you, 
and your letter in reply was handed to Mr. Seward, to be forwarded to him. . . . The main 
difficulty is, however, with Lincoln himself. He is of the Whig school, and that brings him 
naturally not only to incline to the feeble policy of Whigs, but to give his confidence to 
such advisers. It costs me a great deal of labor to get anything done, because of this inclina- 
tion of mind on the part of the President or leading members of the Cabinet, including 
Chase, who never voted a Democratic ticket in his life. But you have the people at your 
back, and I am doing all I can to cut red tape and get things done. I will be more civil and 
patient than heretofore, and see if that won't work." 

The MS continuation of Fremont's published volume of Memoirs (1887) which Mrs. 
Fremont and her son Frank wrote, partially from his dictation, contains a full account of 
the circumstances in which he prepared his proclamation of military emancipation. This is 
given almost in full in Kevins, Fremont, 500. It emphasizes the fact that, with an insufficient 
number of troops, ill-armed and unpaid, to repress guerrilla warfare, he felt that sharp 
measures were necessary to deal with the great numbers of secessionist sympathizers who 
would flock almost overnight to the Confederate camps, assist in some sudden stroke, and 
then return to their farms and villages. "He determined to force the rebel sympathizers, who 
did not join the rebel armies as soldiers, to remain at home, and to make them feel that 
there was a penalty for rebellion, and for aiding those who were in rebellion." When Judge 
Edward Davis warned him that "Mr. Seward will never allow this," for he wished to wear 
down the South not by blows but by steady pressure, Fremont persisted. "The time has 
come for decisive action; this is a war measure, and as such I make it." (Op. cit., 503.) Then 
as relations between Fremont and Frank Blair worsened, and he felt that Lincoln did not 
understand his position, he agreed to Mrs. Fremont's taking a letter to the White House. 
She was not only the wife of the departmental commander; she was daughter of a great 
American Senator. 

Jessie Benton Fremont left St. Louis the evening of September 8 with the letter, dated 
that day. It dealt exclusively with strategic movements. The most significant passage con- 
cerned advances which Fremont wrote that he contemplated ordering in Kentucky and 
if possible Tennessee. On August 28 he had placed Grant in command in southeast 
Missouri, and had declared his intention of occupying Columbus, Ky. On September zd 
Union forces had occupied Belmont just across the river from this place; and immediately 
thereafter Folk's Confederates had seized Columbus, while Grant had occupied Paducah. 
Fremont's letter to Lincoln looked to the future, not the past, and to the taking of strong 
Kentucky positions. He wrote: 

"I have reinforced, yesterday, Paducah with two regiments, and will continue to 
strengthen the position with men and artillery. As soon as General [C. F.] Smith, who 
commands there, is reinforced sufficiently to enable him to spread his forces, he will have 
to take and hold Mayfield and Lovelaceville, to be in the rear and flank of Columbus, and 
to occupy Smithland, controlling in this way the mouths of both the Tennessee and Cum- 
berland Rivers. At the same time, Colonel Rousseau should bring his force, increased, if 
possible, by two Ohio regiments, in boats to Henderson, and, taking the Henderson & Nash- 
ville Railroad, occupy Hopkinsville, while General Nelson should go with a force of 5,000 
by railroad to Louisville and from there to Bowling Green." 

Already Fremont had sent a spy, Captain Charles D'Arnaud, recommended to him by 
Colonel Lovell Rousseau and Judge Corwine of Cincinnati, to map the principal highways, 
bridges, and forts of Kentucky and western Tennesee, a mission from which D'Arnaud re- 
turned with maps showing the construction work the Confederates were doing on Forts 
Henry and Donelson. In this, and in his emphasis on securing the mouths of the Cumber- 
land and Tennessee, Fremont showed foresight. 

He wrote Lincoln that the movements he outlined were readily feasible, for the popu- 
lation in the area was predominantly loyal. If all went well, subsequent movements could 



428 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 



be made against Columbus, Hickman, and eventually Nashville. He wished to have the 
bounds of the Western Department enlarged to cover Indiana, and, contemplating their 
partial occupation, Kentucky and Tennessee. 

But while this letter carried by Mrs. Fremont treated military matters alone, Fremont 
had sent a separate letter by mail dated September 8 to Lincoln explaining his proclamation 
at some length, and asking Lincoln to send him an open order for its modification. It may 
have arrived on the afternoon of the loth. When Lincoln answered it on the nth he wrote 
that it was "just received." If it did arrive just before Mrs. Fremont descended upon the 
White House, that fact might account for the curtness of the reception he gave her, his 
failure to ask her to sit down, and his evident desire to cut the visit short. He did not wish 
to argue with her about the stubborn position of the general. If he had read the New York 
Herald's Washington correspondence published the previous day (September 9) it would 
not have soothed his feelings. For it asserted that the Cabinet had been taken aback by the 
proclamation; that for twenty-four hours they discussed it fully; and that then "it was 
finally unanimously determined that the proclamation was just the right thing made at 
precisely the right time, in exactly the right manner, and by the right man." The Herald was 
criticizing the Administration savagely for its dilatoriness in reinforcing the Western army. 

But if Lincoln was abrupt in receiving Mrs. Fremont, a partial explanation might be 
found in physical fatigue. He had spent the greater part of the day with the troops. Early 
in the morning he had gone with Cameron and McClellan to attend a tedious ceremony at 
a camp beyond Georgetown where Governor and Mrs. Curtin presented Pennsylvania flags 
to the regiments of the reserve corps of that State, and had reviewed the ten thousand 
troops. Then he, Cameron, McClellan, the Curtins, and others had crossed the Chain Bridge 
to Virginia, where he saw McClellan restore the colors to the Seventy-ninth New York, 
heard Cameron make a speech, reviewed more troops, and inspected some of the new 
fortifications. He did not regain the White House until dusk. 

It is certain that in this interview Mrs. Fremont exceeded her commission. Fremont, as 
he insisted in his letter to Lincoln and later said in his MS memoirs, had been inspired by 
military motives alone in writing his proclamation. But Mrs. Fremont, after referring to 
the opposition of the Blair family, began to talk about the political value of the proclama- 
tion, speaking of the difficulty of conquering by arms alone, and of the importance of 
appealing to public sentiment in Britain and France by a stroke against slavery. This justified 
Lincoln's remark: "You are quite a female politician." Some of the ideas that were in her 
head are disclosed by an undated letter which she wrote later, apparently just before 
Fremont's removal, to Dorothea Dix, an old friend. It is not certain she sent it, for the 
letter is in the Fremont papers, but it is revealing. It reads: 

"I can but think that if the President had had an interview with Mr. Fremont there 
never would have grown up this state of injury to the public service -two honest men can 
quickly understand each other but the same good brain and bad heart that made the 
President so unjust and deaf to me has influenced not only the President but the news- 
papers of the kind that daren't offend Govt patronage. The truth has to come out victorious 
finally. Mr. Fremont can well afford to wait, but this lost time can never be regained for 
the country. Soon the river will be filling with ice and land work will be harder than the 
Valley Forge records. While it is yet day the work should be done. 

"All we knew in the early summer, of the intrigue with France is becoming more and 
more sorrowfully apparent. If the South can bring themselves to play that last card and 
you know as I do that Mr. Slidell is a gambler every way politically as well as with 
money then recognition by both England and France is very near. The worst would be 
that with all their enormities they would have the moral triumph too. You know from long 
experience abroad that America was neither loved nor hated, but very much feared and 
very much resented. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY AND APPENDICES 



429 



"Their chance has come to push us back and they will not lose it. The double bait of 
free trade and gradual emancipation (very gradual it will be) but enough to make a pretext 
for England, will not be repulsed by them, and Slidell has the backing of the Rothschilds. 
Their feelings have been sufficiently shewn by the Times. This is our last chance it is a 
very hard pull but a strong pull, above all a pull altogether, will bring us through. My 
dear chief is doing his duty .... but it is a shame and a crime to hamper and as far as they 
can disable him." 

APPENDIX ffl 

The Newspaper Press and the Impact of War 

The country in 1860 had slightly more than 3,000 newspapers, and a decade of stormy 
political agitation had raised their influence to an unprecedented height. Their editors dis- 
played a considerable amount of independence and courage. In August, 1861, the New York 
Herald was at pains to collect the names of "secession papers" in the North, and "Union 
papers" in the South, with some information on what had happened to them. 

The phrase "secession paper" did not necessarily mean a newspaper giving outright and 
disloyal support in the North to the Confederacy, though a few of them ventured beyond 
that line. It meant rather a newspaper which, like the Daily News in New York or the Times 
in Chicago, had wished to see the erring sisters depart in peace; objected vehemently to 
any enlargement of war objectives beyond the restoration of the Union; and criticized 
Administration measures in terms so harshly as to lower the morale of their readers. The 
New York Tribune at this very time was denouncing the Courrier des Etats Unis, which 
stood for peaceable separation, as traitorous, and calling for its suppression. Most of the 
journals here listed did not go so far as this French-language paper. It will be noted that 
surviving "Union papers" in the South were all actually in the border States, and with few 
exceptions, like the Knoxville Whig, were safe under the protection of the Union flag. 



SECESSION PAPERS YBT IN EXISTEKCE Df THE NORTH. 

MEW YORK. 

Argus, Albany. Republican , Saratoga. 

News, New York. Democrat, Hhica. 

Journal of Commerce, N. Y. Gazette , Hudson. 

Day Book, New York. Union, Watertown. 

Freeman's Journal ,N. York. Gazette , Geneva. 

Prattsville NewSjPrattsr'le. American Union ,Ellicotville. 

Budget, Troy. Herald. Yonkers. 

Observer, Utiea. Franklin Gazette. 

Watchman, Groeoport, L. X. Democrat, Niagara, 

Courier, Syracuse. Democrat, Schenectady. 

Advertiser. Lockport, Gazette, Malone. 

"* " " Sentinel, May ville. 



Union, Troy. 
Herald, Sandy Hill 

Begister,Patorson. 
Journal, Newark. 
Republican Farmer. 
Journal, Belvi&re. 

Valley Spirit . Chambersb'g. Democrat, Coshoctoo. 



FEW JERSEY. 

Democrat, Honterdon. 
Herald, Newton. 
Gazette, Plainflold. 



Republican, Pitteburg. 
Union. Wilkeebarre. 
Herald, Honesdale. 
Bepublikaner (German), 
AUentown. 



Patriot, Harrteburg. 
Catholic Herald, Pn.Ua. 
Examiner, Washington. 
Star, Easton. 
Democrat, AHentown. 
Christian Observer, Phllft. 

COKZOBCTICUTi. 

Times, Hartford. Register, Xew Haven. 

Mercury, Middletown. Sentinel, Middle town. 

Advertiser, Bridgeport. 

IOWA. 

Bugle, Council Bluflh, State Journal, Iowa City, 

Herald, Bubuqpo, Citizen. 



Patriot, Concord. 
Democrat, Kenoena, 
Argus, Portland. 

Enquirer, Cmcinnatl. 
Crisis, Columbus. 

State, Winona. 
Poet, Providence. 

Union , Cass county. 
Democrat, Alton, 



JWf H1MP8HJB*. 

Gazette. 



See Bote (Gcr.) , Milwaukee. 
XADOL 

Watchman, 
omo. 

Democrat, Galien. 
e, Dayton. 



SHOPS BLAJSD* 
ILLINOIS. 

Times, BIoomingtOA* 
Signal, JoUet. 



Sentinel, 



Gazette, Evansville. 
Journal, Terre Haute. 

TXBJCOIlT* 

Spirit of the Age, Woodstock. 

CALKOfiNXA* 

Express, Varysrille. 



Bulletin, Atchison. 



SECESSION PAPERS IN THB JLOYAL SOUTHERN SEC- 
TIONS. 

Sun , Baltimore. Yeoman , Frankfort, Ky. . 

Exchange, Baltimore. Statesmnn, Lexington, Ky. 

South, Baltimore. Gazette* Wimiington. Del. 

Courier, Louisville. Mail,Hagorstown,Md. 

Argus, Weston, Mo. News, Cynthiana, Ky. 



430 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 



UNION PAPERS IN THE SOUTH. 
American, Baltimore. Journal, St. Joseph, Mo. 

CoraraonwealthjFrankf fc,Ky. Journal, Wilmington, DeL 



SOUTHERN SECESSION PAPERS DIED. 



Clipper, Baltimore. 
Citizen, Centreville.Md. 
Democrat, St. Louie. 
'Democrat, Louisville. 
Examiner, Frederick, Md* 
Eagle, Maysville, Ky-. 
Herald , TMsburg, Va. 
Herald, Eagerstown, M<L 



News, Milford, Del. 
NationalUn ion ,Winc'ter ,Ky. 
Observer, Lexington, Ky. 
Patriot, Baltimore. 
Press, Wheeling ,Va. 
Republican, St. Joseph, Mo. 
Star, Morgantown, Va. 
Union, Frederick, Md. 



Intelligencer, Wneeliug, Va. Whig, Knoxville, Tena. 
Journal, LouisviUo, Ky. 



EFFECT OF THE WAR ON SECESSION 
JOTJENALS. 

NORTHERN SECESSION PAPERS DESTROYED BT MOBS. 
Jeffflrsonian, < Westchester,P. Standard, Concord, N. H. 
Sentinel, Easton, Pa. Democrat, Bangor, Me. 

Farmer, Bridgeport, Oonn. Clinton Journal, Kansas. 
Democrat, Canton, Ohio. 

NORTHERN SECESSION PAPERS SUPPRESSED BY CIVIL 
AUTHORITY 

Catholic Herald , Phil'a. Christian Observer, Phil'a. 

NOETHERN SECESSION PAPERS DEED. 
Herald, Leavenworth. American, Trenton. 



NOBTHEBN SECESSION PAPERS DENIED 
TION IN THE MAILS. 

Journal of Commerce, New Day Book, Now York. 

York, Freeman's Journal, New 

News, New York, York. 

SECESSION PAPERS CHANGED TO UNION* 
Kaglft, Brooklyn, N. Y. *Democrat, Havcrhill, Mass. 
Republican, St. Louis. 
^Editor tarred and feathered and rodo on a rail, 



News, Charleston, S. C. 
Tribune, Mobile. 
Register. Mobile. 
News* Mobile. 
Courier, New Orleans. 
Union, Wheeling, Va, 
Herald, Paducah,Ky. 



Herald, Norfolk. 
Crescent, Columbus, K/, 
Courier, Hickman, Ky. 
Telegraph , Putherford ,Tenn. 
Courier, Gallatin, Tenn. 
Confederation, Montgomery, 
Ala. 



SOUTHERN SECESSION PAPERS SUSPENDED BY MILI- 
TARY AUTHORITY. 

State Journal , St. Louis. Democrat , Savannah ,Mo. 
Observer, Booneville, Mo. Gazette, Alexandria, Va. 
Bulletin, St. Louis. Register, Macon, Mo. 

Missourian, St. Louis. Paper in Weeton, Va. 

Sentinel, Alexandria, Va. 

SOUTHERN SECESSION JOURNAL CLEANED OUT BY A 

MOB. 
AUeghanian, Cumberland, Md. 



BECAPITULATIO^. 

Northern secession papers * 73 

Union papers South 23 

Secession papers in loyal Southern sections 10 

Northern secession papers mobbed 7 

Northern secession papers stopped by civil authority. 2 

Northern secession papers died 2 

Northern secession papers denied mail facilities.. . /. . 4 

Northern secession papers changed to Union 3 

Southern secession papers died 13 

Southern secession papers suppressed by military au- 
thority 9 

Southern secession papers mobbed i 



FROM N. Y. Herald) AUGUST 29, 1861 



Index 



Abolition (see slavery) 

Adams, Charles Francis, on southern griev- 
ances, 20; on Douglas' plan, 29; ambassa- 
dor to London, 33; on diehards, 45; and 
Lincoln, 72, 200; Seward to, 223-4; on 
army officers, 230; arms purchases, 352-5; 
Trent affair, 389-93 

Adams, Charles Francis, Jr., 251, 390 

Adams, Henry, 390 

Albert, Prince Consort of England, 391 

Alcorn, Julian, 115 

Anderson, Robert, 4, 30-1, 41-4, 48, 65, 69, 
74,76, 134-5, 1 66 

Andrew, John A., 77-80, 150-1, 170, 173-4, 
177,278-80, 346-9,416 

Arkansas, secession in, 106-7 

Arms and munitions, Confederates seize ar- 
senals, 18, 114-7; distribution of, 89-91; in 
Missouri, 122-4; in Norfolk, 155-6; at Har- 
per's Ferry, 156-8, 171-4, 214, 221; McClel- 
lan and, 266, 274; in West, 308-9, 316-20; 
in Union army, 61-6, 342-59; in Confed- 
erate army, 359-61; ammunition supply, 
366-9, 373-4 

Army (of Confederacy), organization of, 
17-18; recruitment of, 67-70, 92-5, 98-101; 
morale and equipment of, 113-8, 211-4; 
at Manassas, 179, 207, Bull Run, 214-22; 
numbers, 301; in Missouri, 312-5; arms, 
359-61 

Army (of Union), numbers, 70, 75-8, 86-90, 
108, i i 1-2, 138, 148, 167-79, 191-5* 22 9- 
39, 299-303; at Washington, 144-6; morale 
in, 158-60, 187, 404-6, 412-4; organization 
of, 160-2; equipment, 171-3, 189, 211-7, 3 12 - 
9; at Bull Run, 214-22; in Washington, 
226-7; Military Act, 226-8; recruitment of, 
229-39; under McClellan, 266-85, 291-9; 
firepower of, 342-69 

Arthur, Chester A., 89 

Asboth, A., 317, 37 8 >38i 

Bache, A. D., 41, 416 

Badger, George, 105 

Baker, Edward D., 61, 184-6, 298, 299 

Baldwin, John B., 64, 103 

Ball's Bluff, battle of, 298-9 



Baltimore, secession in, 80-3, 87 

Bancroft, George, 23, 75-6 

Banks, Nathaniel P., 12, 198, 226, 322 

Barlow, Francis, 210 

Barlow, S. L. M., 24, 30, 49, 240, 303-4 

Barnard, John Gross, 211, 267, 291, 303 

Barney, Hiram, 33 

Bates, Edward, 32, 37, 42, 45-6, 55-6, 128, 

143-4, 154* 203, 229, 307, 326, 336, 377, 381, 

386, 393 

Bayard, James A., 143, 184 
Beauregard, Pierre G. T., 17, 30-2, 41, 59, 68- 

9, 73, 95, 113, 117, 158, 179, 207-9, 2 1 1-2 1, 

2 95> 37-i 

Bee, B. E., 217-8 

Bell, John, 23, 105-6, 120, 129-30 

Bellows, Henry W., 269-70, 272, 416 

Benjamin, Judah P., 2, 30, 40, 49, 68, 115 

Benton, Thomas Hart, 26, 120 

Biglow Papers, 75 

Blair, Austin, 170-1, 177, 233 

Blair, Francis P., Sr., and son's plan to resign, 
47-8; and Lincoln, 229; and Missouri affair, 
324-5; and Fremont, 338, 370, 375-6; and 
Cameron, 398 

Blair, Frank P., Jr., and secession in Missouri, 
88, 121-9, 157, 180-1; resolution of, 191; 
and Lincoln, 199-203, 386; and Butler, 213; 
and Curtis, 229, 295-8, 307-12; and Lyon, 
315; returns to Missouri, 324-7; and Fre- 
mont, 331-9, 375-7, 382 

Blair, Montgomery, in cabinet, 32, 42-58; 
and Lincoln, 72-3; Missouri conflict, 128; 
proposal on strategy, 150-4; on union, 
173-7; and Butler, 211; and army, 226; and 
Fremonts, 280, 313-9, 334-8, 375-7; and 
McClellan, 300; and Frank Blair, 324, 331; 
and Cameron, 399-402; in Emergency war 
cabinet, 405-6; on Stanton, 409 

Blockade, 151, 178-9, 209-10, 226, 288-90, 372, 

4i5 

Bocock, Thomas, 98 
Border states, secession in, 52, 59, 77, 80-3, 

93, 101-7, 119-44 
Botts, John Minor, 27 
Bragg, Braxton, 166 
Breckinridge, JohnC., 106, 130-1, 184-6 



432 



INDEX 



Broadhead, James O., 123, 331 

Brown, George W., 82-3 

Brown, John, 10, 25 

Browne, William M., 24, 49 

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 35 

Browning, Orville H., 76, 180 

Bryant, William Cullen, 4, 33, 57, 304 

Buchanan, Franklin, 108, in 

Buchanan, James, 3-4, 12, 16, 24, 31, 43, 71, 

74, 226, 343, 408, 411 

Buckingham, William A., 170-7, 346, 416 
Buckner, Simon, 134-5, 153 
Buell, Don Carlos, 404-7, 416 
Bull Run, battle of, 177, 191, 214-223, 276 
Burnside, Ambrose E., 86, 274, 286, 367, 407 
Butler, Benjamin F., 80-7, 124, 138, 146, 162, 

201, 2 1 1-2, 226-9, 2 39 2 $6, 397-8, 407 

Cameron, Simon, in cabinet, 22, 32; and Blair, 
44; and Lincoln, 48, 55, 395-400; on Sum- 
ter, 65-7, 85, 87, 89-90; confers with John- 
son, 108-10; as war secretary, 150, 155, 167; 
and McDowell, 161-77; anc * McClellan, 
193-4; overruled, 204; and Butler, 213; as 
administrator, 227-41; 268-85; and Scott, 
295-9; an< 3 Fremont, 318, 334-8, 380-1; and 
Pope, 321; arms supply, 343-70; on arming 
slaves, 400-3; replaced, 408-15 

Campbell, John A., 22, 50, 59, 72 

Carlile, John S., 103, 141-2 

Carnegie, Andrew, 85 

Cass, Lewis, 62 

Chandler, Zachariah, 15, 57, 59, 182, 214, 
300-4, 371, 385-7,^ 405, 408, 412-3 

Charleston, description of in 1861, 3, 30-1, 67, 
70 

Chase, W. H., 18-9 

Chase Salmon P., in cabinet, 4, 22, 32, 37, 
45-6, 50, 56, 86; harassed for funds, 91; 
permit system, 134; military effort, 154, 
159, 161, 167, 170-7; and Lincoln, 201-6; 
and Butler, 213; and McClellan, 295-8, 375; 
and Fremont, 381-6; and Cameron, 227, 
396-8, 401-10; finances, 195-6, 375, 412-5, 
426 

Chesnut, Harriet, 179 

Chesnut, James, 69, 179 

Cheves, Langdon, 18 

Churches, in Civil war, 257-8 

Clay, Cassius M., u, 33, 79, 408 

Clay, Henry, 26, 38, 58, 129-30, 147 

Clemens, Jeremiah, 68 

Cobb, Ho well, 98, 101 
Coles, Edward, 337-8 

Committee on Conduct of War, 387, 405, 412 
Confederacy, constitution of, 3; northern es- 
timate of, 20, 91; determination of, 24; 
Congress of, 27, 39, 94, 98; sentiment in, 



52-3; Sumter crisis, 68 fly, Virginia in, 
93-4; and the war, 94-8; union officers join, 
108-12; resources of, Appendix I, 424-6 

Con way, Moncure, 334, 340 

Cooke, John Esten, 94, 118 

Cooke, Philip St. George, 112, 275 

Cooper, Samuel F., 108 

Cotton, as king, 97-8; embargo on, 99-100 

Cox, Jacob D., 225, 270, 277 

Cox, S. S., 150, 184-5, 196 

Crawford, Martin J., 32, 40, 49, 50 

Crittenden Compromise, 13-4, 130, 196 

Crittenden, John J M 40, 130, 136, 181, 190, 196 

Crowninshield, F. B., 349-50 

Cuba, 62-3 

Cullom, Shelby M., 149 

Curtin, Andrew G., 57, 77, 139, 170, 173, 177, 
223, 232-5, 347, 416 

Curtis, James L., 228-9 

Dana, Charles A., 205, 214, 396 

Davis, Garrett, 133-5 

Davis, Jeff erson, on states rights, 2 ; inaugural 
address, 5; as President, 30-9, 50; Sumter 
crisis, 67-73, 93-5; on cotton, 97; predicts 
long war, 99; export embargo, 100-1; 
reaches Richmond, 102; and Cooper, 108; 
western border, 119, 131-2; to Beauregard, 
158; Indian fighting, 164; Mexican war, 
166; blockade, 179; proclamation, 207-8; 
as war leader, 211, 215, 220-2, 322, 360, 
371, 379-80, 413 

Dayton, W. L., 33, 205 

Democratic party, 10, 16, 28, 34-5, 52 

Dennison, William, 174, 177, 204, 233-6, 279, 
316,346,374 

Dix, John A., 31, 43, 89, 317 

Douglas, Stephen A., Senate speech, 15, 
slavery, 19, customs union, 20-1; on divid- 
ing the Mississippi, 27; southern strategy, 
29; harasses Lincoln administration, 34-5; 
on Seward, 39; and xenophobia, 60; call 
for troops, 90; vote for in 1860, 106, 120, 
130; Springfield address, 148-9; death of, 
149-50 

Drake, Charles D., 120-1 

Du Pont, Lamrnot, 366, 367^, 369 

Du Pont, Samuel F., 210, 372-3 

Early, Jubal, 218 

Eckert, Thomas T., 267-8 

Ellis, John W,, 104-5 

Ellsworth, Elmer, 86, 146, 179 

Embargo, on cotton exports, 98-100 

Enlistments and recruiting, 67-70, 75-8, 86-7, 

92-5, 98-101, 108, 111-3, l 3%-> * 67-79* 229- 

39, 299-303, 314 



INDEX 



433 



Farragut, David Glasgow, 112 

Fessenden, William Pitt, 35, 91, 181, 186, 
^228, 396,415 

Finances (Union), 91, 116, 195-6, 374-5, 404, 
412-5 

Finley, Clement A., 194-5 

Floyd, John B., 343-4 

Foote, Andrew H., 341 

Forney, John W., 20, 57, 180, 399-400 

Forsyth, John, 32, 40 

Fox, Gustavus V., 42, 44, 48, 53, 57-60, 65, 
72, 227, 288, 415 

France, relations with, 61-3, 69, 403 

Franklin, William B., 218, 405 

Fremont, Jessie Benton, 308, 312-3, 318, 
331-2, visits White House, 337-9; Appen- 
dix II, 426-9 

Fremont, John Charles, in Missouri, 226-9; 
and officers, 280; gets Western command, 
307-27, 329-30; proclamation of, 331-6; 
quarrel with Blair, 331, 336-41; and arms, 
352,369-83,402 

Gamble, Hamilton R., 325-6, 332-3, 336-7 

Garfield, James A., 174 

Garrett, John W., 82 

Gatling, Richard J., 366 

Giddings, Joshua, 333 

Goodyear, Charles, 264 

Gordon, John B., 92, 95 

Gorgas, Josiah, 114-5, 359, 368 

Grant, Ulysses S., in Mexican war, 166; ex- 
perience of, 277; rise to power, 328-31, 
33^ 335, 340-1; checked at Belmont, 384; 
and short war, 416 

Great Britain, relations with, 384-94; in 1861, 
7-8; Confederate hopes for recognition of, 
69 

Greeley, Horace, and Lincoln, 4; urges de- 
lay, 22-3; on Union, 43; on Sumter, 57; 
clamors for large army, 90, 173; and cabi- 
net, 203, 214; on industry, 244, 261; on 
McClellan, 303; emancipation, 304; Fre- 
mont, 308; slavery, 334; Cameron to, 356; 
on Cameron's report, 402-4 

Greenhow, Mrs. Rose O'Neal, as confederate 
spy, 217, 321 

Grimes, James W., 182 

Grow, Galusha A., 180 

Gurley, John A., 332,395 

Guthrie, James B., 46, 130-1, 135 

Gwin, William M., 32, 39-40, 51 

Hagner, Peter V., 122, 319 

Hale, Edward Everett, 205 

Hale, John P., 181 

Halleck, Henry W., 294-9, 385-6, 403-5 

Hamlin, Hannibal, 180 



Hammond, James H., 18, 97 

Harlan, James, 2 

Harney, William S., 122-9, J 57* J 63, 324 

Harper's Ferry, 77, 81, 115, 117, 156-8 

Harris, Elisha, 416 

Harris, Isham G., 105-6, 342 

Haupt, Herman, 264 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 188 

Hay, John, 32, 147, 202, 205, 220, 240, 303, 

337 373 

Heintzelman, Samuel P., 160, 373 
Hewitt, Abram S., 360 
Hicks, Thomas H., 13, 17, 80-7, in, 137-8 
Hill, Benjamin H., 97-8 
Hilliard, Henry M., 25-6 
Hitchcock, Ethan Allen, 127, 383 
Holden, W. W., 104 
Holt, Joseph, 4, 31, 41, 76, 408-11 
Hooker, Joseph, 166 
Hopkins, Johns, 80 
Houston, Sam, 29 
Howe, Timothy O., 182 
Huger, Alfred, 54, 92 
Huger, Benjamin, 113, 117 
Hunter, David, 160, 322, 374-83 
Hunter, R. M. T., 4, 32, 39-40 
Hurlbut, Stephen A., 48, 53-4, 230, 319, 330 
Huse, Caleb, 360 
Hyde, Thomas W., 235-6, 279 

Jackson, Claiborne, 121, 125-6, 310 

Jackson, Thomas J. (Stonewall), seeks com- 
mand, 117; at Harper's Ferry, 157; in 
Mexican war, 166; at Bull Run, 217 

Johnson, Andrew, 180, 184, 196-7, 387 

Johnson, Herschel V., 3 

Johnson, Reverdy, 138 

Johnston, Albert Sidney, 379-80 

Johnston, Joseph E., quartermaster general, 
32; resigns from U.S. army, 108-9; army 
of, 113, 117, 158; in Mexican war, 166; 
Davis to, 2 u; troops under, 212, 213, 301-2, 
371; at Bull Run, 214-21 

Jones, John B., 210 

Judd, Norman, 33 

Julian, George W., 5, 334, 387 

Kane, George P., 82-3 
Kansas Nebraska Act, 75 
Kellogg, William P., 33, 196, 201 
Kendall, Amos, 27 
Kennedy, John P., 93, 138 
Kentucky, 119, 129-36, 335, 381 
King, Horatio, 118 
Kirby-Smith, E., 108-9, "5-^ 217 
Kirkwood, Samuel J., 119 
Koerner, Gustave, 318, 321 



434 



INDEX 



Lamon, Ward Hill, 49, 54 

Lane, Henry S., 196 

Laugel, August, 243 

Lee, Fitzhugh, 109 

Lee, Robert E., letter to a northern girl, 107; 
resignation from U.S. Army, 108-11; Vir- 
ginia army, 116-7; as army engineer, 165-6; 
mentioned, 222; contrasted with McClellan, 
268, 272; army of, 371 

Letcher, Robert, 77, 93, 103, no, 115-6, 141, 

i57 

Lieber, Francis, 199 

Lincoln, Abraham, and Sumter crisis, 3-14, 
19-20, 26-36; and Seward, 37-42; indecision 
on Sumter, 43-58; and cabinet, 54-60; 
Seward's Memorandum, 60-6; purpose, 
71-4; reviews troops, 83-91, 293; and West, 
119, 127-36; border states, 137-43; anci 
Douglas, 148-9; as war leader, 153, 167-77; 
blockade, 178-9, 288; and Sumner, 181-3; 
Union party, 184-5; anecdote, 187-8; mes- 
sage to Congress, 189-90; and army, 191-3; 
habeas corpus, 197-8; characterized, 199- 
206; privateering, 208; military operations, 
210-26; recruiting, 233-4; Curtin to, 234-5; 
office, 240-1, 265; and McClellan, 266, 
272-3, 281-2; 295-9, 372-4; pressure of 
Senate, 303; Fremont, 307-40, 352-6, 376- 
83; Wade comment, 385-6; Trent affair, 
392-3; problems of war, 395-413 

Logan, John A., 323-4 

Lovejoy, Owen, 57, 59, 318, 331, 333, 33^- 8 5 

Lowe, T. S., 268 

Lowell, James Russell, 340 

Lyon, Nathaniel S., 122-9, 162, 205, 307-17, 
324, 331, 346, 414 

Lyons, Lord John, 62-3, 78, 137, 199, 391-2 

McClellan, George B., Ohio commander, 
142; promoted, 152-3; as military leader, 
154, 162, 166, 174, 193, 213; characterized, 
224-6; army of, 237; on South, 240; as rail- 
road engineer, 249; organizes army of 
Potomac, 266-85; 2 9 I ~35') an ^ politicians, 
307; contrasted with Fremont, 318, 384; 
and Grant, 328, 330-1; and Army, 369-74, 
385, 395; and Scott, 386; and Cameron's 
report, 403; illness, 404; pressure to replace, 
405-11, 416 

McClernand, John A., 185, 191, 320, 323 

McClure, A. K., 269-70 

McCormick, Cyrus H., 16 

McCulloch, Benjamin, 310-6, 333, 370, 378- 

83 

McDougall, James A., 184 

McDowell, Irvin, and defense of Washing- 
ton, 145-6; characterized, 158-9; organizes 
army, 160-2; and Scott, 168; number of 



forces, 179; mentioned, 211-3; faces 
Beauregard, 214-20; loses public confi- 
dence, 223-4; an d McClellan, 227; armies 
of, 237, 291, 305; recommended for pro- 
motion to McClellan's command, 405-6, 
414 

McKinstry, Justus, 317, 3*4- 6 37 8 , 3 8 3 

McLane, Louis M., 80 

McNeil, George, 102-3 

Mackintosh, Charles, 264 

Magofrm, Beriah, 130-5, 336 

Magruder, Allan B., 64 

Magruder, John, 113, 117 

Mallory, Stephen R., 2, 18 

Manufacturing, 252-7, 265, 415, Appendix I, 



. . 

Maryland, secession in, 80-3; union sentiment 

,in, J 37-9 

Mason, James M., 104, 137-8, 384, 388, 392-4 
Maury, Matthew Fontaine, 108, in 
Meade, George G., 166 
Medary, Samuel, 16 
Medicine and Health (in army), 167, 178, 

188-9, *95 259-60, 267, 292, 315, 320-1 
Meigs, Montgomery C., and Seward, 56, 60, 

165; staff, 194; McDowell's campaign, 216; 

and McClellan, 282; and hospitals, 285, 318, 

337, 351; Lincoln consults, 405-6; on Stan- 

ton, 410; and quartermaster corps, 415 
Memminger, Christopher G., 2, 68, 99-100, 

102 

Miles, William Porcher, 2, 28, 30, 98 
Missionary Ridge, 131, 279 
Missouri, and neutrality, 119-20; secession in, 

120-9, J 3^' J 47 I( ^ 2 ' an ^ Fremont, 306-27, 

33 I ~9> 374-84 

Montgomery, description of, 2, 28, 73 
Morgan, Edwin D., 12, 85, 87-8, 174-7, 232-6, 

280, 299, 350 
Morse, S. F. B., 23 
Morton, Oliver P., 88, 119, 132-5, 139, 233, 

312, 316, 347-8,416 
Murphy, Isaac, 107 
Myer, Albert J., 267 

Navy (of Confederacy), department organ- 
ized, 116; wins Norfolk yard, 155-6, 209-10 

Navy (of Union), 197, 209-10, 285-90, 372, 
414-5 

Nelson, Samuel, 50 

Nelson, T. A. R., 13-4 

Nelson, William, 134-5 

New York, troop quota, 174-7, 232 

Nicolay, John G., 32, 139, 200, 220, 240, 336 

North Carolina, secession in, 101 

Norton, Charles Eliot, 19 

Olmsted, Frederick Law, 283, 377, 416 



INDEX 



435 



Palmer, John M., 323, 376 

Palmerston, Lord, 388-9, 391 

Paris, Louis Philippe, Comte de, 229-31, 268, 
281 

Patronage, 32-4 

Patterson, Robert, 87, 158, 162, 212-7, 221, 
226, 347, 414 

Pearce, James A., 197-8 

Petigru, James Louis, 48, 54 

Peto, Sir Morton, 241 

Phillips, Wendell, 52 

Pickens, Francis W., 3, 30-1, 41, 54, 73 

Pierpont, Francis H., 140-2 

Pillow, Gideon J., 114, 132, 314, 330, 333 

Pinkerton, Allan, 300-1, 371 

Polk, Leonidas, 314, 330, 333, 335 

Pope, John, 205, 229, 311, 314, 318-9, 321-2, 
329-30, 377-9, 382-3 

Population, white, north and south, Appen- 
dix I, 424-5; colored in north and south, 
425; total, 425; of military age, 425 

Porter, Andrew, 267, 275 

Potter, David M., 29 

Prentiss, Benjamin M., 311-5, 329-30 

Prentice, George D., 131 

Price, Sterling, 126-9, 37> 377~ 82 

Privateering, 208-10 

Pryor, Roger A., 51, 69-70 

Railroads, 130, 139, 247-52, 265, 312, 415, 

Appendix I, 426 
Rawlins, John A., 329 
Raymond, Henry J., 56-7, 380 
Reagan, John H., 2, 96 
Republican party, 9, 33-4, 52 
Rhett, Barnwell, 15, 24, 28, 71 
Rice, Henry M., 16 
Rich Mountain, battle of, 225 
Richmond, 101-2 
Ripley, James W., 349, 351-66 
Rives, William C., 46-7 
Robertson, John, in 
Robertson, Sir William, 202-3 
Roman, A. B., 40, 49-51 
Rosecrans, William S., 166, 225-6, 270-8, 364 
Ruffin, Edmund, 70 
Russell, Lord John, 388-94 
Russell, William H., 20, 78, 97, 115, 160-1, 

218, 237, 269, 273, 292-3, 303, 403 

Sanford, Henry S., 352-5 

Sanitary Commission, U.S., 265, 283-5, 320-1, 

416 

Schofield, John T., 315-6, 326 
Schouler, William, 346 
Schurz, Carl, 57 
Schuyler, George L., 350-4 
Scott, Thomas A., 85, 194, 405, 409, 415 



Scott, Winfield, as general, 4, 15-6, 27; Lin- 
coln consults, 32, 40-1; and Seward, 39; on 
Sumter, 42; Blair on, 44, 48; Fox on, 53; 
Sumter crisis, 54-60; as military leader, 72, 
79, 83-90, 1 10, 145-6, 150-9; and McDowell, 
159-61; on Lee, 166; on Chase, 168; and 
recruits, 170-9; staff, 193; Meigs appoint- 
ment, 204-5; mistrust of, 212-3; Bull Run, 
215-20; and McClellan, 226-8, 266, 272-9, 
294-8; and arms, 343-7, 352; and Blair 
quarrel, 376; Lincoln on, 386; and Stanton, 
409, 41 1 

Seward, William H., 1-4; on war, 21-2, 32; 
struggle with Lincoln for power, 36-66; 
on Lincoln, 72, 91, 139; Douglas on, 149; 
faith in conciliation, 154; New York 
troops, 175-6; and Sumner, 181; in cabinet, 
199-210, 220, 223; and McClellan, 295, 373- 
4; mentioned, 334, 352; and Fremont, 381; 
Trent affair, 390-97, 412; Wade on, 385; 
and Cameron, 397, 401-2; emergency cabi- 
net meeting, 405-7; and Stanton, 409-10 

Shaw, Robert G., 200 

Sherman, John, 228 

Sherman, Thomas W., 372, 398-9 

Sherman, William Tecumseh, 341, 374-5; 381 

Sickles, Daniel, 301 

Sigel, Franz, 310-6, 323, 378, 381-3 

Slavery, 1-2, 9-10, 19, 106, 130, 196-9, 303-4, 
331-40, 395-403* 4 I( 5 

Slidell, John, 24, 240, 289, 384, 388, 392-4 

Slocum, H. W., 172 

Smith, Caleb B., 44-5, 55-6, 399 

Smith, Gerritt, 333-4 

Sprague, William, 86 

Stanton, Edwin M., in Buchanan cabinet, 31; 
and Kentucky, 134; and Lincoln, 201-5; 
denounces administration, 226; on Cor- 
wine, 317; and Cameron, 400, 408-12; and 
McClellan, 406 

Stephens, Alexander H., 2, 19, 73, 77, 93-99, 
1 02 

Stevens, Thaddeus, 181-3, 195-201, 383-4, 
403,415 

Stoneman, George W., 274-5 

Stringham, Silas H., 44, 286 

Strong, George Templeton, 89, 416 

Stuart, J. E. B., 217-8, 275 

Sumner, Charles, 5, n, 95, 181-3, 201, 278, 
334,393,403-4,409,412 

Sumners, George W., 46, 64, 223 

Sumter, Fort, 3-4, 21, 30-2, 40-76 

Taylor, Bayard, 293 
Taylor, Zachary, 21, 37 
Tennessee, secession, 105-6, 196-7 
Textiles, 254-5 
Thayer, Sylvanus, 165 



INDEX 



Thomas, George H., 1 12, 416 

Thomas, Lorenzo, 108, 194, 328, 376-82 

Thompson, Jeff, 118 

Thomson, J. Edgar, 85, 249 

Tocqueville, Alexis de, 6-7 

Toombs, Robert, 2, 10, 24, 39-40, 49-51, 59, 

68, 102 

Totten, J. G., 41, 53 
Transportation, 247-52, 426 
Tredegar Iron works, 41, 101 
Trent affair, 384-94, 400-4, 412-4 
Tripler, Charles S., 260, 267, 283-5 
Trobriand, Regis de, 292-3 
Trumbull, Lyman, 2, 4, 16, 33, introduces 

resolution, 54-5, 57-9, 182, 192, 196-8, 230, 

300-3,321-2,376,387,397,412 
Twiggs, David E., 18 
Tyler, John, 93 

Union Defense Committee, 88 

Vallandigham, Clement L., 184-5 

Victoria, Queen, 391 

Virginia, convention in, 46; secession in, 52, 

59, 64, 71, 77; joins Confederacy, 93-4; 

organization of army in, 116-7; Lincoln 

on, 190 

Wade, Benjamin, 4, 43, 57-9, 182, 300-4, 311, 

340,371,385-7,405-9,412 
Wadsworth, James J., 217, 301-3, 404 
Walker, Leroy P., 2, 18, 31, 59, 68-70, 78, 

99, 1 02 

Ward, J. H., 44 
Ward, Samuel, 39-40, 53, 66 
Waring, George E., 377-8 



Washburne, Elihu B., 33, 59, 183, 329-30, 

381, 385, 402 

Washington, D.C., defenses of, 79-86 
Washington, George, quoted, 1 1 ; as southern 

general, 15 

Webster, Daniel, 26, 38, 154 
Weed, Thurlow, 57, 66, 175-6, 393, 408 
Welles, Gideon, on Seward plan, 21; in cabi- 
net, 32; diary of, 37; Sumter crisis, 42-8, 
56, 60; quarrel with Seward, 65-7; Bu- 
chanan, 1 1 1-2; and Douglas, 149; in 
cabinet, 203-10, 227; and Hatteras, 28^-8; 
on Thomas, 376; quoted, 382; Trent affair, 
388; on Cameron, 398, 401; on Stanton, 
409; ability of, 415 

Welling, J.C., 43 

West Point, U.S. Military academy at, 165-6 

West Virginia, 103, 139-44 

White, Andrew D., 223 

White, Horace, 32, 149 

Whitney, Eli, 356-7 

Wigfall, Louis T., 24, 57, 98 

Wilkes, Charles, 384-93 

Wilson, Henry, 148-50, 159, 181, 191-3, 199, 

231. 4" 

Winans, Ross, 80, 138 
Winthrop, Theodore, 83, 87 
Wise, John S., 92 
Wool, John E., 88-9, 166, 303, 347 
Worth, Jonathan, 105 

Yancey, William L., 28, 71 
Yates, Richard, 12, 88, 119, 135, 139, 328-30, 
346-9, 416 

Zouaves, 86-8 




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