/" L I BR AR Y OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.., GIRT OK Received Accessions N\ :__, l88f Shelf NoT w_ (AM, &%& BY THE AUTHOR OF THIS YOLUME. A HISTORY OF THE WAR OF 1812 15, between the United States and Great Britain. " It is the best condensed account of that war of which I have knowledge a compact volume, easy of reference, wonderfully accurate in dates and numbers, grouping the events of the war of 1812 so as to form a strong link in the chain that binds the United States together in everlasting union. Perry s victory on Lake Erie and Harrison s at the Thames gave us possession of the great Northwest, a result mighty in its consequences. Gen. William T. Sherman. <l It is history written like a novel. From the causes of the war and the beginning to the end, the interest is sustained as it were in the development of a plot." Indianapolis News. " The style is clear, the work honest, the sentences concise, and the spirit dispassionate and admirable, though thoroughly American." Philadelphia Times. " While it shows in every chapter the strict accuracy of the most exhaus tive history, it yet presents the story of the war in such attractive shape as to seem quite like a romance." Milwaukee Wisconsin. " It is by an author whose language is free from all superfluity, and who presents dry fact in such a form that it becomes as interesting as fiction." Detroit Commercial A dvertiser. A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH WAR ending in the Conquest of Canada, with a preliminary account of the early attempts at colonization and struggles for the possession of the Continent. " The story of these colonial wars was well worth telling, and Mr. John son has told it clearly and unpretentiously. His book contains all that any one not a specialist in the subject will care to know." Good Literature. " It is not only highly valuable as a historical contribution, but many of its scenes are as interesting as any romance," Lutheran Observer. " A very serviceable book for those who wish for a short, connected account of the relations between the French and English colonies." The Nation. " The story is told in the entertaining and truthful style which has made for him an enviable reputation. Columbus Despatch. " The incidents of the period referred to are found in no other single volume, nor in so concise and satisfactory a form." Ohio State Journal. " A succinct and graphic history of the bloody contests between the Eng lish and the French for the possession of American territory." Chicago Interior. A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WAR OF SECESSION 1861 1865 BY ROSSITER JOHNSON AUTHOR OF " A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH WAR ENDING IN THE CONQUEST OF CANADA," AND " A HISTORY OF THE WAR OF 1812-15 BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND GREAT BRITAIN." BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 1889 COPYRIGHT, 1888, BY TICKNOR & COMPANY. All rights reserved. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. CURRENT literature abounds in minute studies of the separate campaigns and engagements of the great civil war, most of them purely military, and many of them exceedingly valuable ; but the reader finds no ready answer to his question, How did it happen that the war took place at all, what was its general course, and what were the motive forces that brought it on, prolonged it, and finished it ? There seemed to be wanting a his tory neither so extended as to bewilder the reader with multiplicity of details, nor so concise as to preclude all color. To meet this demand with a single compact volume is the purpose of the pres ent effort ; and, though many interesting partic ulars are necessarily omitted, it is hoped that the book presents a fair idea of the great conflict that so nearly wrecked the Republic. Scarcely another war in history has had a theatre so extended, few have called out so large armies, and none have sprung from a more popular cause. There were two thousand four hundred engage ments of sufficient importance to be officially named, and many that were costlier of life, and iV PREFACE. limb than some of the famous battles of the Revolution cannot even find mention in a volume like this. Writers intent upon military details almost ignore the causes of the war, the spirit in which it was conducted, the complications that actually arose or were avoided by skilful diplo macy, and the significance of the results. I have therefore treated these subjects in somewhat larger proportion than the battles and sieges. As the book is intended for easy reading, and not for hard study, I have avoided tripping up the reader on every page with foot-notes and references. In a few cases it seemed desirable to cite an author ity ; but generally the sources of information are such that a reader wishing to pursue the subject more minutely, can readily find them. For some of the important campaigns and actions, it is impossible to obtain undisputed figures as to the numbers engaged and the losses on either side. After the second year of the war, the Confederate commanders appear to have with held all reports of their losses ; and these items have been sedulously written up or written down, in accordance with personal interest or prejudice, though the mournful statistics have little to do with the philosophy of the struggle. In each instance I have given the figures that seem to be most authoritative. R. J. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE THE CAUSES - - - . . j Introduction of Slaves, I. Growth and Protection of the Slave Trade, 2. Invention of the Cotton-Gin, 3. The First Fugi tive-Slave Law^ 4. Liberty Laws, 4. Vesey s Insurrection, 4. Turner s Insurrection, 5. Garrison s Liberator)** 6. Murder of Lovejoy, 6. The Anti-Slavery Society s Publica tions, 7. Extracts from the Slave Laws, 8. Helper s Book, 9. Replies of Southerners, 10. Garbling the Census, 12. The Underground Railroad, 13. The Constitutional Dilemma, 14. Attack on Sumner, 15. The Missouri Com promise, 1 6. Nullification, 17. Texas and Oregon, 17. The Compromises of 1850, 18. The Dred-Scott Decision, 19. The Political Division, 21. The Struggle in Kansas, 22. The Golden Circle, 24. The Secession Crisis, 25. CHAPTER II. THE OUTBREAK 26 Reliance of the South, 26. Encouragement from the North, 27. The Fallacy of Secession, 29. State Allegiance, 31. The Tendency to Centralization, 32. The Question of Justi fication, 33. The Presidential Election of 1860, 35. Seces sion of the Cotton States, 35. Formation of the Confed eracy, 36. Bombardment of Fort Sumter, 40. CHAPTER III. THE BEGINNING OF BLOODSHED r ----- 41 Lincoln s Inaugural Address, 41. Union Sentiment at the South, 43. The Struggle for Virginia, 43. The Vigintal Crop, 44. Dragooned into Secession, 46. Gov. Letcher s Treachery, 46. Farragut s Patriotism, 46. Secession of Arkansas and North Carolina, 46. The First Call for Troops, 47. The Uprising at the North, 48. Map Showing the Area of the Confederacy, 49. Action of Prominent Men, 51. Mob in Baltimore, 52. The First Bloodshed, 53. A VI CONTENTS. PAGE Week of Disasters, 54. Occupation of Arlington Heights, 55. Death of Ellsworth, Winthrop, and Greble, 56. CHAPTER IV. THE FIRST BATTLE OF BULL RUN - -. . - - - -57 More Troops Called for, 57. Blockade of Southern Ports.57. Action of Congress, 57. Confederate Government Re moved to Richmond, 58. The Cry of On to Richmond, 58. Concentration at Bull Run, 59. Spies in Washington, 60. McDowell s Army in Motion, 60. Battle of Blackburn s Ford, 62. Johnston Joins Beauregard, 63. Battle of Bull Run, 64. Effect in Europe, 69. Effect North and South, 70. CHAPTER V. BORDER STATES AND FOREIGN RELATIONS - - - - 71 Answers of the Governors, 71. The Struggle for Missouri, 72. The Capture of Camp Jackson, 74. Exertions of Fran cis P. Blair, Jr., 74. Lyon in Command, 75. Proclamation of Gov. Jackson, 76. Action at Booneville, 76. Action at Carthage, 77. Rise of Gen. Sigel, 77. Death of Gen. Lyon, 78. The Struggle for Kentucky, 78. The Struggle for Maryland, 80. Secession of North Carolina, 82. The Struggle for Tennessee, 83. Actions in Western Virginia, 84. Formation of West Virginia, 85. Capture of Mason and Slidell, 85. Hostility in England, 87. Attitude of Louis Napoleon, 88. Friendship of Russia, 89. CHAPTER VI. THE FIRST UNION VICTORIES - - - - . - - 90 Confederate Blockade-Runners Built in England, 90. The Hatteras Expedition, 92. The Port Royal Expedition, 94. Capture of Hilton Head, 96. Battle of Paintville, 97. Battle of Mill Springs, 98. Forts Henry and Donelson, 99. River Gunboats, 100. Capture of Fort Henry, 101. Battle of Fort Donelson, 103. Siege of Lexington, 106. Affairs in Arkan sas, 107. Battle of Pea Ridge, 108. CHAPTER VII. CAPTURE OF NEW ORLEANS - - - - - - -in Plans for Bombardment, 113. The Fleet and the Commander, . 115. The Sailing-Orders, 116. The Bombardment, 117. Farragut s Orders, 118. The Battle with the Forts, 119. The Battle with the Fleet, 121. Destruction of Confederate Vessels, 122. Surrender of the City, 123. CONTENTS. Vll PAGE CHAPTER VIII. THE MONITOR AND THE MERRIMAC - - - - - 127 The Burned Merrimac Raised and Repaired, 127. Sinking of the Cumberland, 129. The Monitor, 130. Destruction of both Iron-clads, 131. CHAPTER IX. THE CAMPAIGN OF SHILOH 132 Siege of New Madrid, 133. Bombardment of Island Number Ten, 134. Pope s Captures, 135. Battle of Shiloh, 135. Fall of Gen. Johnston,. ,139. The Final Victory, 142. The Turning-point of the War, 144. CHAPTER X. THE PENINSULA CAMPAIGNERS* ~/ J 4 6 Command Given to McClellan, 147. His Plans, 148. Appoint-^ ment of Secretary Stanton, 150. On the Peninsula,- 152. Battle of Williamsburg, 152. On the Chickahominy,.i55. The Battle of FairOaks. 1 56. Erfecfof the SwampSy isS. Lee in "CoTnrnartB" 1 58. Stuart s Raid, 1 59. Nearest Approach to Richmond, 162. Action at Beaver Dam Creek, 163. Battle of Gaines s Mills, 164. Battle of Savage s Station, 166. Battle of Charles City Cross-Roads, 167. Battle of Malvern Hill, 169. CHAPTER XI. POPE S CAMPAIGN * f - . - - 173 Formation of the Army of Virginia, 173. Halleck made General-in-Chief, 174. McClellan Leaves the Peninsula, 175. Battle of Cedar Mountain, 176. Pope and Lee Manoeuvre, 177. Battle of Groveton, 179. The Second Bull Run, 182. Battle of Chantilly, 183. The Porter Dispute, 184. CHAPTER XII. THE ANTIETAM CAMPAIGN - 183 Confederate Advance into Maryland, 185. The Army of the Potomac sent against them, 187. Lee s Plans Learned from a Lost Despatch, 188. Capture of Harper s Ferry, 189. Battle of South Mountain, 189. Battle of Antietam, 192. CHAPTER XIII. EMANCIPATION - -/-... . . .- 200 Lincoln s Attitude toward Slavery, 201. McClellan s Atti- tude,203. The Democratic Party s Attitude, 204. Predic- Vlll CONTENTS. tions by the Poets, 206. Slaves Declared Contraband, 206. Action of Fremont, 208. Hunter s Proclamation, 209. Blacks First Enlisted, 210. Division of Sentiment in the Army, 211. Maryland Abolishes Slavery, 212. The Presi dent and Horace Greeley Correspond on the Subject, 212. Emancipation Proclaimed, 214. Autumn Elections, 216. CHAPTER XIV. BURNSIDE S CAMPAIGN - - -- - - . - -21$ McClellan s Inaction, 219. Visit and Letters of Lincoln to Him, 219. Superseded by Burnside, 221. The Position at Fredericksburg, 223. Attack upon the Heights, 227. The Result, 229. CHAPTER XV. ROSECRANS AND HOOKER 230 Battle of Perryville, 231. Battles of luka and Corinth, 233. Battle of Stone River, 235. Enlistment of Negroes, 238. The Black Flag, 239. Black Men in Former Wars, 240. Letter of the President to Hooker, 241. Burnside Super seded by Hooker, 241. Battle of Chancellorsville, 243. CHAPTER XVI. GETTYSBURG - - - - - - -- - -248 Invasion of the North Determined on, 248. Cavalry Skirmish at Fleetwood, which marks a Turning-Point in that Ser vice, 250. Hooker s Plans, 251. Asks to be Relieved, 253. Meadein Command, 253. Battle of Gettysburg, 254. CHAPTER XVII. THE VICKSBURG CAMPAIGN ----.-.. 270 Operations on the Mississippi, 271. Grant placed in Com mand, 272. Plans the Campaign, 272. Loss at Holly Springs, 273. Sherman and Porter Descend the River, 274. Sherman s Attempt on the Yazoo, 275. At Haines s Bluff, 276. Capture of Arkansas Post, 277. Cutting a Canal, 278. Yazoo Pass Attempted, 279. Steele s Bayou, 280. Grant Crosses the Mississippi, 281. Grierson s Raid, 282. Action at Raymond, 283. Capture of Jackson, 284. Battle of Champion s Hill, 285. Pemberton in Vicksburg, 286. Siege of the City Begun, 287. Surrender, 289. CONTENTS. IX CHAPTER XVIII. THE DRAFT RIOTS 290 Attitude of the Democratic Party, 291. Vallandigham Ban ished, 294. Speech of ex-President Pierce, 294. Speech of Horatio Seymour, 296. Law of Substitutes Persistently Mis interpreted, 297. The Draft in New York, 298. The Riots, 299. The Autumn Elections, 306. CHAPTER XIX. THE SIEGE OF CHARLESTON - 307 Blockade of the Harbor, 308. Du Font s Attack, 309. Defeat, 310. Capture of the Atlanta, 311. Gillmore s Siege, 312. Assault on Fort Wagner, 313. Its Capture, 3 15. The Swamp Angel, 316. Bombardment of Charleston, 317. CHAPTER XX. THE CHATTANOOGA CAMPAIGN ... - .318 Rosecrans and Bragg, 318. Fight at Dover, 318. At Frank lin, 318. At Milton, 320. Morgan s Raid, 321. Manoeu vring for Chattanooga, 323. Battle of Chickamauga, 324. National Forces in the West Reorganized, 329. Battles of Chattanooga, 330. The Battle Above the Clouds, 331. Capture of Mission Ridge, 333. CHAPTER XXI. THE BLACK CHAPTER -------- 334 Persecutions of Union Men, 335. The Black Flag, 336. The Guerillas, 337. Secession from Secession, 338. Riot in Concord, N. H., 339. Massacre . at Fort Pillow, 340. Care of Prisoners, 342. Andersonville, 343. Other Prisons, 345. Suspension of Exchanges, 346. Violation of Paroles, 347. Principles relating to Captures, 349. CHAPTER XXII. THE SANITARY AND CHRISTIAN COMMISSIONS - - - 351 Women in the War, 356. The Sanitary Commission Formed, 352. The Popular Idea about it, 355. Work of the Com mission, 356. Sanitary Fairs, 357. The Christian Commis sion, 358. Volunteer Nurses, 361. CHAPTER XXIII. THE OVERLAND CAMPAIGN - - - .... 362 Grant made Lieutenant-General, with Command of All the X CONTENTS. PAGE Armies, 365. Headquarters with the Army of the Potomac, 365. Plan of the Campaign, 366. Position of the Armies, 367. Relative Numbers, 368. Grant Crosses the Rapidan, 370. In the Wilderness, 371. Battle of the Wilderness, 372. Battle of Spottsylvania, 377. Battle of Cold Harbor, 394. The Losses, 396. Grant moves to the James, 398. Crosses the James, 398. Ewell Sees the End, 399. CHAPTER XXIV. THE CONFEDERATE CRUISERS .-.-.. 400 The Alabama, 400. Sunk by the Kearsarge, 402. The Sumter, 402. Other Cruisers, 403. Protest of the Government, 404. Secretary Seward s Despatches, 405. Privateering, 410. Why England did Not Interfere, 411. Arbitration, 412. CHAPTER XXV. THE ATLANTA CAMPAIGN - - - - - 413 The Meridian Campaign, 414. The Shreveport Expedition, 415. Battle of Sabine Cross-Roads, 416. Battle of Pleasant Hill, 417. Bailey s Dam, 418. Sherman and Johnston, 419. Sherman begins the Campaign, 421. Johnston Abandons Resaca, 422. Fighting at New Hope Church, 424. The Position at Pine Mountain, 425. Johnston at Kenesaw, 426. Fall of Gen. Polk, 426. Sherman Employs Negroes, 427. Battle of Kenesaw, 428. Crossing the Chattahoochee, 429. Hood Supersedes Johnston, 430. Action at Peachtree Creek, 432. Battle of Atlanta, 433. Fall of Gen. McPher- son, 433. The Losses, 435. Cavalry Expeditions, 435. Stoneman s Raid, 436. Fall of Atlanta, 437. CHAPTER XXVI. THE BATTLE OF MOBILE BAY - 438 The Defences, 438. Farragut s Preparations, 439. Passing the Forts, 440. Loss of the Tecumseh, 440. Fight with the Ram Tennessee, 441. Cost of the Victory, 441. Craven s Chivalry, 442. CHAPTER XXVII. THE ADVANCE ON PETERSBURG - 443 Butler s Movement, 443. Beauregard s Counter Movement, 443. Smith s Advance, 444. Hancock s Attack, 445. Cutting off the Railroads, 446. The Fight for the Weldon Road, 446. Burnside s Mine. 447. The Explosion, 448. CONTENTS. XI PAGE The Slaughter at the Crater, 449. Fighting at Deep Bottom, 450. Action at Reams Station, 450. Construction of an Army Railroad, 451. The Siege of Petersburg Begun, 451. Early s Raid toward Washington, 452. Battle of the Monocacy, 453. Engagement at Winchester, 454. Burning of Chambersburg, 454. CHAPTER XXVIII. SHERIDAN IN THE SHENANDOAH ------ 455 Importance of the Valley, 455. Hunter Asks to be Relieved, 455. Sheridan s Career, 456. Grant s Instructions, 457. Interference at Washington, 457. Lincoln Gives Grant a Hint, 458. Sheridan Marches on Winchester, 458. Minor Engagements, 459. Sheridan s Opportunity, 460. Battle of the Opequan, 461. Early goes Whirling through Win chester, 463. Battle of Fisher s Hill, 463. Destruction in the Valley, 465. Action at Tom s Brook, 465. Battle of Cedar Creek, 466. CHAPTER XXIX. THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION - 468 Efforts toward Peace, 468. The Fremont Convention, 469. The Republican Convention, 470. Nomination of Lincoln and Johnson, 471. The Democratic Convention, 472. Its Denunciation of the War, 473. Nomination of McClellan and Penclleton, 474. Fremont Withdraws, 474. Character of the Canvass, 475. The Hope of the Confederates, 477. The Issue as Popularly Understood, 478. Election of Lincoln, 479. Maryland Abolishes Slavery, 480. The Highest Achievement of the American People, 480. CHAPTER XXX, THE NATIONAL FINANCES - - 481 An Empty Treasury, 481. Borrowing Money at Twelve per cent., 481. Salmon P. Chase made Secretary of the Treasuty, 481. The Direct-Tax Bill, 482. Issue of Demand Notes, 483. Chase s Courage, 483. The Banks form a Syndicate, 483. Issue of Bonds, 484. Amount of Coin in Circulation, 484. Suspension of Specie Payments, 484. Pay of Soldiers, 484. Greenbacks, 485. Chase s Plan for a National Banking System, 485. The Fractional Currency, 486. Fluctuations of Gold, 486. The Cost- of the War, 487. Xll CONTENTS. I PAGE CHAPTER XXXI. THE MARCH TO THE SEA - - - - - 488 Sherman makes Atlanta a Military Depot, 488. His Peculiar Position, 489. Disaffection in the Confederacy, 489. Hood Attacks the Communications, 490. Defence of Allatoona, 491. Thomas Organizes an Army, 492. Sherman Deter mines to Go Down to the Sea, 492. Destruction in Atlanta, 493. The Order of March, 404. Sherman s Instructions, 495. The Route, 495. Incidents, 496. Destruction of the Railroad, 497. Killing the Bloodhounds, 497. The Bum mers, 497. Capture of Fort McAllister, 498. Hardee Evac uates Savannah, and Sherman Offers it as a Christmas Present to the President, 499. Battle of Franklin, 500. Battle of Nashville, 501. Hood s Army Destroyed, 502. CHAPTER XXXII. THE FINAL BATTLES ------- 503 Sherman Marches through the Carolinas, 504. Johnston Restored to Command, 505. Columbia Burned, 507. Charleston Evacuated, 508. Capture of Fort Fisher, 509. Battle of Averysboro, 509. Battle of Bentonville, 510. Schofield Joins Sherman, 510. A Peace Conference, 511. Battle of Waynesboro, 511. Sheridan s Raid on the Upper James, 512. Lee Plans to Escape, 512. Fighting Before Petersburg, 513. Battle of Five Forks, 514. Lee s Lines Broken, 515. Richmond Evacuated, 516. Lee s Retreat, 516. His Surrender, 518. Grant s Generous Terms, 519. Surrender of the Other Confederate Armies, 520. CHAPTER XXXIII. PEACE -------- - - - 521 The War Governors, 521. Civilian Patriots, 521. The Sudden Fall of the Confederacy, 522. Capture of Mr. Davis, 523. Character of the Insurrection, 524. Magnanimity of the Vic tors, 525. The Assassination Conspiracy, 526. Lincoln s Second Inaugural Address, 528. Lincoln in Richmond, 529. The Grand Review, 530. The Home-Coming, 530* Lessons of the War, 532. INDEX ------- ...-535 LIST OF MAPS. PAGE CHARLESTON HARBOR - - - - - - - - 39 SHOWING THE AREA OF THE CONFEDERACY ... 49 BATTLE-FIELD OF BULL RUN ------ 61 BORDERS OF KENTUCKY AND TENNESSEE - 100 BATTLE-FIELD OF PEA RIDGE ------ 108 DELTA OF THE MISSISSIPPI - - 112 HAMPTON ROADS -------- 129 BATTLE-FIELD OF SHILOH - - - - - - -137 BATTLE-GROUNDS NORTH OF RICHMOND 155 BATTLE-FIELD OF MALVERN HILL ----- 169 BATTLE-FIELD OF SOUTH MOUNTAIN - ... 189 BATTLE-FIELD OF THE ANTIETAM ----- 193 BATTLE-FIELD OF FREDERICKSBURG 224 BATTLE-FIELD OF PERRYVILLE - - - - - - 231 BATTLE-FIELD OF CHANCELLORSVILLE - - - - 244 VICINITY OF GETTYSBURG - 255 VICINITY OF VICKSBURG 273 XIV LIST OF MAPS. PAGB FORT WAGNER AND APPROACHES 313 BATTLE-FIELD OF CHICKAMAUGA 324 VICINITY OF CHATTANOOGA ,- - - - 332 THE WILDERNESS BATTLE-FIELD 369 BATTLE-FIELD OF SPOTTSYLVANIA - . - - - 377 ROUTE FROM CHATTANOOGA TO ATLANTA - - - 421 MOBILE BAY ---------- 439 DEFENCES OF RICHMOND AND PETERSBURG - - - 445 THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY - 457 SHERMAN S ROUTE TO THE SEA ----- 496 BATTLE-GROUNDS OF NASHVILLE AND FRANKLIN - - 500 SHERMAN S ROUTE THROUGH THE CAROLINAS - - 505 WILMINGTON AND FORT FISHER - - - - - 509 ROUTE OF LEE S RETREAT 517 THE AE OF SECESSION. CHAPTER I. THE CAUSES. WHEN, within a period ot eighteen months, a Dutch vessel entered the James River with a small cargo of African slaves (1619), and the " May flower" landed at Plymouth, Mass., a company of seekers after liberty (1620), the prime conditions were established for one of the mightiest conflicts that the world has ever seen. It is true that some of the descendants of those slaves, while still in bond age under indulgent masters, lived easy, careless, and even slothful lives ; it is true that the Pilgrims themselves had but a narrow definition of liberty ; but none the less the two antagonistic principles were there, and each was working toward an ex treme development. When two centuries had gone by, the sorrowful negro knew the difference between his native Virginia and the horrors of the cotton plantations where he was sent in gangs to be used up in seven years ; while the educational advancement of a people endowed with democratic government, common schools, and a free press, 2 THE SLAVE TRADE. [1772. had slowly expanded the Pilgrim s demand of " lib erty for us" into "liberty for all." The business of buying slaves in Africa and im porting them into America was very profitable, and for a long time its moral character was not questioned. That same monarch by whose name we designate our accepted version of the Scrip tures, chartered companies to carry on the trade, and took stock in them. William of Orange, who invaded England to restore the liberties of Eng lishmen, especially fostered the traffic, and de clared it was "highly beneficial to the nation." A century and a half ago, the great evangelist, George Whitefield, was compelling a company of slaves to work a plantation for the support of an orphan asylum. In 1760, when the colony of South Carolina passed an act prohibiting the fur ther importation of slaves, the British government refused to sanction it, declaring that the trade was not only beneficial but necessary to the mother country. Virginia met with a similar rebuff when she attempted to place a prohibitory tariff on slave importation in 1772. Indeed, the gov ernors of the various colonies, in the West Indies as well as on the continent, were commanded by the home government to sanction no law for the restriction of the slave trade. Such a law was passed in Jamaica in 1765, but was vetoed by the governor, who declared that he acted in accord ance with his instructions. The opposition to the slave trade, which culminated in its abolition by the United States in 1808, has been attributed by 1793.] THE COTTON-GIN. 3 the apologists for slavery solely to motives of hu manity ; by its antagonists, mainly to considera tions of thrift, since that trade diminished the profits of the American slave-breeder. It is probable that it arose from both of these motives. When the Federal Constitution was formed, the word "slave" was carefully excluded from it, al though three of its provisions relate to slaves ; but an attempt was made to protect the interests of slavery with compromises that have proved to be the weakest portions of that great instrument. The institution died out of the Northern States, partly because slave labor was not adapted to their in dustries and mode of life, and partly because of an awakening conscience on the question of its mor ality. On the other hand, the black man could do what the Southern climate almost prohibited white men from doing, and was especially useful in the cultivation of rice, tobacco, sugar, arid cotton. Eli Whitney s invention of the cotton-gin in 1793 a machine that takes the seeds out of 3,000 pounds of cotton in a day, which before had been done by negro women at the rate of one pound a day increased the value of every slave in the country, and gave birth to dreams of empire such as had never before been known in the western world. So quickly was its value seen, that before the model was quite completed the building was broken open at night and the machine stolen. The invention was pirated throughout the cotton States (the legis latures of but two of which, the Carolinas, gave Whitney even a small compensation), and all 4 INSURRECTIONS. [1822. attempts to renew the patent were voted down in Congress by the Southern members. In the same year in which the cotton-gin was in vented, a fugitive-slave law was passed by Con gress, to carry out that provision of the Constitu tion by which the return of runaway slaves was guaranteed. In time, as the anti-slavery sentiment grew in the Northern States, one after another of them enacted what were known as personal lib erty laws, which were calculated, some directly and some indirectly, to prevent the execution of any law for the reclamation of fugitive slaves. That of Ohio prescribed a heavy penalty for kid napping a colored person with the intention of taking him out of the State. That of New Jersey granted a jury trial whenever a negro was claimed as a fugitive slave, and excluded the testimony of the alleged owner. That of Pennsylvania forbade any judge or magistrate to take cognizance of any case under the Federal slave act. And so gener ally of others. Insurrections of a servile population are naturally to be expected, and it was constantly urged by the friends of slavery that agitation of the question of its rightfulness was liable at any time to produce a murderous outbreak. Many who admitted that the whole system was wrong and unfortunate, considered " the horrors of Santo Domingo" a sufficient argument against all discussion. And yet there were but two such affairs of any impor tance in the United States. In 1822 Denmark Vesey, an intelligent and educated free negro in 1831.] INSURRECTIONS. 5 Charleston, planned an insurrection ; but the plot was discovered, and Vesey, with thirty-four of his followers, was hanged. In 1831 Nat Turner, a slave of Southampton County, Virginia, who saw visions and dreamed dreams, conceived that he had been chosen by the Lord to lead the blacks out of bondage. Setting out with six men, he undertook to rouse the entire colored population and kill all the whites. The band of insurgents increased as it went, and in two days fifty-five whites were murdered. But the alarm spread rapidly, the planters came riding in from all direc tions, armed to the teeth, and after a fight the insurgents were overcome. Seventeen negroes were hanged, and others who were suspected were tortured, burned, or shot. In one respect, these two affairs produced pre cisely opposite effects. In South Carolina, after Vesey s insurrection, a law was passed forbidding free negroes to reside in the State, and reducing to slavery any black person that should enter it. In pursuance of this, negro sailors, citizens of Mas sachusetts, employed on vessels entering the port of Charleston, were seized and imprisoned ; and when Massachusetts sent a commissioner to lay her protest before the South Carolina authorities, he was ordered to leave that State at once, on peril of his life. On the other hand, Turner s insurrection was followed by a proposition in the Virginia Legislature to abolish slavery ; and though this was voted down, it received consider able support from able and earnest men. 6 ANTI-SLAVERY PUBLICATIONS. [1837. Almost simultaneously with the Southampton insurrection appeared in Boston the first number of a weekly paper entitled " The Liberator." It was edited by William Lloyd Garrison, whose sole purpose was to declaim constantly against the injustice and sinfulness of slavery, and to demand its immediate abolition. His first words in the cause have become famous : " I am in earnest. I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch ; and I will be heard." Other publications of this character were established within a few years, at various points in the Northern States. Among them were the " Anti- Slavery Standard," New York, edited by Sydney Howard Gay, and the " North Star," at Rochester, edited by Frederick Douglass, a runaway slave from Maryland. The Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy attempted to establish a religious and anti-slavery paper, first at St. Louis and afterward at Alton, Illinois, in 1835-37; but three times a pro-slavery mob threw his press and types into the river, and the last time they murdered Lovejoy, who was defending his property. Anti-slavery societies were formed, public addresses were issued, con ventions were held, and lecturers went through the Northern States, to rouse the public conscience on the subject of the great national wrong, of which they held that the North was almost equally guilty with the South. They were hissed, ridiculed, and often mobbed, and the great political parties Whig and Democratic were very careful not to be identified with the cause. The now venerable 1837.] ANTI-SLAVERY PUBLICATIONS. 7 poet Whittier just escaped death at the hands of a mob in Concord, New Hampshire, when he went there with George Thompson in 1835 to hold an anti-slavery meeting. " They came with guns," said he in speaking of it recently, "though I did n t see the necessity, as we were not armed." The work of the journalists and lecturers was powerfully supplemented by publications in book form. The American Anti-Slavery Society issued compilations of advertisements, news-paragraphs, and other documents from Southern sources, de signed to show that overworking, starving, cruelly flogging, and otherwise maltreating slaves, both men and women, and hunting fugitives with guns and bloodhounds, were common incidents in planta tion life. Here are a few out of thousands : " Com mitted to jail, a negro had on his right leg an iron band with one link of a chain." " Ranaway, the negress Fanny had on an iron band about her neck." " Ranaway, Sam he was shot a short time since through the hand, and has several shots in his left arm and side." " Ranaway, Anthony one of his ears cut off, and his left hand cut with an axe." " Ranaway, a negro woman and two children. A few days before she went off, I burnt her with a hot iron, on the left side of her face. I tried to make the letter M." Mrs. Stowe s " Uncle Tom s Cabin," which some of the great book houses were afraid to publish, lest it should hurt their Southern trade, was brought out by a new Boston house in 1852, created a profound sensa tion, and has proved the most popular of all novels 8 ANTI-SLAVERY PUBLICATIONS. [1849. that were ever written. Two years later Richard Hildreth, the historian, published his " Despotism in America," a learned review of the whole subject of slavery. In 1827 George M. Stroud brought out a compilation of the slave laws of the several States, (of which he issued an enlarged edition in 1856), and found no difficulty in filling many pages with such extracts as these, from the Virginia code of 1849 : " Every assemblage of negroes for the purpose of instruction in reading or writing shall be an unlawful assembly." " Every assem blage of negroes for the purpose of religious wor ship, when such worship is conducted by a negro, shall be an unlawful assembly ; and a justice may issue his warrant to any officer or other person, requiring him to enter any place where such as semblage may be, and seize any negro therein, and he or any other justice may order such negro to be punished with stripes." And this from Kentucky s: "If any negro, mulatto, or Indian, bond or free, shall at any time lift his or her hand in opposition to any person not being a negro, mulatto, or Indian, he or she so offending shall for such offense, proved by the oath of the party before a justice of the peace of the county where such offence shall be committed, receive thirty lashes on his or her bare back, well laid on, by order of such justice." And this from Alabama s : " Any person who shall attempt to teach any free person of color or slave to spell, read, or write, shall be fined not less than two hundred and fifty dollars nor more than five hundred dollars." And 1857.] ANTI-SLAVERY PUBLICATIONS. 9 this from Louisiana s : " Whoever shall make use of language in any public discourse from the bar, the bench, the stage, the pulpit, or in any place whatsoever, or whoever shall make use of language in private discourses or conversations, or shall make use of signs or actions, having a tendency to produce discontent among the free colored popu lation of this State, or to excite insubordination among the slaves, . . . shall suffer imprison ment at hard labor not less than three years nor more than twenty-one years, or death, at the dis cretion of the court." Some of these books had no great popular circulation, but they furnished orators and editors with facts and arguments in a convenient form, which were elaborated and repeated in a thousand ways. Special emphasis was given to the/fact that the slave codes neces sarily ignored the sacredness of the marriage rela tion and practically gave the master power of life and death over his servants. In 1857 Hinton Rowan Helper, a North-Carolinian, published a volume that created almost as much of a sensation as " Uncle Tom s Cabin." It was entitled " The Impending Crisis of the South : how to meet it "- was an argument against slavery not only on moral but on economic grounds, and was crowded with significant facts and statistics. Its author was one of the non-slaveholders at the South, and pleaded for the rights of his class, which he declared were completely and systematically sacrificed for the interests of the three hundred and forty-seven thousand slaveholders. This book was made a IO DEFENCE OF SLAVERY. [1841. subject of warm discussion in the national House of Representatives, and a slaveholding member offered a resolution that it was " insurrectionary and hostile to the domestic peace and tranquillity of the country," and no member who had recom mended it was fit to be Speaker of the House. For answer to all these attacks upon the slave power, there was no lack of pluck and ingenuity. Senator Hayne, of South Carolina, replying to a speech of Daniel Webster s in 1830, said: "We are ready to make up the issue as to the influ ence of slavery on individual and national charac ter on the prosperity and greatness either of the United States or particular States." John C. Calhoun laughed at the idea that the abolitionists wanted to liberate the blacks by force of arms. " The war they wage against us is of a very differ ent character, and far more effective ; it is waged, not against our lives, but our character." The honor of originating and first publishing the theory that slavery, as it existed in the United States, in stead of being a sin, was sanctioned by the laws of God, is claimed for the Rev. James Smylie, a Presbyterian clergyman of Mississippi, about 1833. But others following his lead became more noted as advocates of that doctrine. The Rev. Thornton Stringfellow, of Virginia, wrote in 1841 a pamphlet designed to prove from the Scriptures, " that the institution of slavery has received the sanction of the Almighty in the patriarchal age ; that it was incorporated into the only national constitution which ever emanated from God ; that its legality 1850.] DEFENCE OF SLAVERY. I I was recognized and its relative duties regulated by Jesus Christ in his kingdom ; and that it is full of mercy." It must be acknowledged that from his premises he made a very strong argument. His pamphlet was reprinted in various forms, and widely circulated ; and in current literature the name of Stringfellow became almost as familiar as that of Longfellow. Another elaborate essay, which exhibited vast historical research and had great weight, was by Thomas R. Dew, ex-Presi dent of William and Mary College, who defended the institution on all the counts that had been made against it, and especially argued that slavery had ameliorated the condition of women referring not to the black women, but to the wives and daughters of the slaveholders. Edward Everett, in one of his earliest speeches in Congress, de fended the institution so vehemently that John Randolph, referring to it, said : " I envy neither the head nor the heart of any man from the North who can defend slavery on principle." Among other eminent men at the North who apologized for slavery was Prof. S. F. B. Morse, inventor of the magnetic telegraph. In 1835 the professor wrote a book to show that the American Republic was likely to be destroyed by the Roman Catholic Church ; but he could see no danger lurking in the system of human bondage. The Rev. Joseph C. Stiles, speaking before the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Detroit, in 1850, set forth the astounding proposition that the strong est and purest expression of anti-slavery sentiment 12 . DEFENCE OF SLAVERY. [1858. ever made by man had been uttered by the South, and that the people south of Mason and Dixon s line had done more to convert the heathen than the whole world beside. His proof of the first prop osition lay in a computation of the money value of the total number of slaves, 250,000, that had been manumitted from time to time ; of the second, in estimating the number of converts by all the for eign missions at 200,000, and comparing with it the number of colored members of two denomina tions in the South, Baptist and Methodist 264,000. The Rev. Nehemiah Adams, of Boston, in his " South Side View of Slavery " (1854), arrived at the conclusion that " Religion in the masters de stroys everything in slavery which makes it obnox ious ; and not only so, it converts the relation of the slave into an effectual means of happiness." And the Rev. William G. Brownlow, afterward famous as an upholder of the Union cause among the secessionists of Tennessee, in 1858 maintained in a public debate in Philadelphia, that the insti tution ought to be fostered and extended. Not only did the defenders of slavery seek by all sorts of ingenious arguments and Scripture ci tations to prove that the black man was best off in slavery, while freedom was a curse to him, but in one notable instance they attempted to make statistics corroborate their assertions. Having con trol of all departments of the national government, they were able to edit the census of 1840 to suit themselves. Somewhere between the original manuscripts of the marshals and the final printing 1858.] DEFENCE OF SLAVERY. 13 of the volumes, the figures concerning the insane, deaf and dumb, blind, and idiotic, were changed, so that it was made to appear that these disabili ties were alarmingly prevalent among the colored people of the North, and almost unknown among those of the South. Towns in New England that contained no colored people at all, were put down as having from two to six colored insane. Ex-President John Quincy Adams, then a member of the House of Representatives, made five determined attempts to have the matter investigated by Congress, but every time he was thwarted. The constant discussion and agitation aroused all sorts of fears, distrust, and animosity, especially among Southerners, who believed, or professed to believe, that they were living over a volcano. "Abolitionist" became the severest term of re proach ever used in the South ; and no Northern man, when known to entertain anti-slavery senti ments, was permitted to sojourn there, or even to travel on business. The mails were regularly ex amined in many Southern post-offices, and any thing that appeared to be an " incendiary document " was immediately burned. When it was discovered that a botanist in the District of Columbia had some copies of an anti-slavery journal among the papers in which he preserved his plants, he was mobbed and thrown into prison, where he was kept for six months. At the North there were organizations, nominally secret, but pretty well known, and generally alluded to as "the under ground railroad," for assisting fugitive slaves to 14 THE CONSTITUTION. t 1850 - escape from bondage and reach the Canada line. The churches North and South were violently agitated over the question of slavery, and the re sult was a division of the national organizations of three great denominations Baptist, Presbyterian, and Methodist. Each section accused the other of violating the Constitution, and both accusations were true. The Constitution guaranteed rights of property in slaves, and it provided that the citizens of each State should be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States. But a Southern man could not travel in the North with his slaves, and a Northern man could not travel in the South with his opinions. The fact was, the compromises of the Constitution were an attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable. Slavery anywhere in the land was incompatible with freedom anywhere in the land even freedom of speech. To the abolitionist, the Constitution, as one of them expressed it (borrowing the words of Isaiah), was a covenant with death and an agreement with hell ; to the slaveholder, it was a failure unless it protected slavery. Neither preserved it intact, be cause neither could. The men of the South were not all slaveholders, nor were the men of the North all abolitionists. But the non-slaveholding class in the slave States variously known as " poor whites," " mean whites," " crackers," and "dirt-eaters" had very little to do with public affairs, being almost as poor and ignorant as the bondmen themselves. And when Mr. Seward in 1856.] THE ASSAULT ON SUMNER. 15 1850 proclaimed that there was " a higher law than the Constitution," and a few years later that we were in the midst of "an irrepressible conflict," and Mr. Lincoln said, " I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free," it was evident that the rising party at the North must sooner or later become an abolition party, whether it wanted to or not. Two dramatic episodes intensified the feeling and increased the popular alarm on either side. One, in 1856, was an assault, for words spoken in debate, upon Senator Charles Sumner, of Massa chusetts, by a South Carolina Congressman, who beat him upon the head with a heavy cane in the Senate Chamber, almost destroying his life. The real cause for alarm in this case lay not so much in the fact that an individual had lost his temper and done what he ought not to have done, as in the action of his constituents, who, instead of rebuking their representative, deliberately made his offence their own by unanimously re-electing him when he resigned after a majority (but not the necessary two thirds) had voted to expel him from his seat for the murderous deed. The other was John Brown s raid into Virginia in 1859, f r tne purpose of liberating the slaves by force of arms a project that lacked all justification of possible success. While the contest of opinion and the education of conscience were in progress, politicians and statesmen were working at the same problem on other lines. Alexander Hamilton, in urging the New York Convention to adopt the Federal Con- 1 6 THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. [1820. stitution, said the Convention that had framed it was "governed by the spirit of accommodation," and " it was necessary that all parties should be indulged." The attempt to indulge all parties was kept up for nearly seventy years, and to many of our public men it never occurred that it was possi ble to do anything else. By the Ordinance of 1787, slavery was excluded from the territory northwest of the Ohio River, but as a compromise the slaveholders were permitted to recapture slaves that escaped into it. As the country grew rapidly after the adoption of the Constitution, and the natural antagonism between the two systems of labor was more apparent, each section became fearful of the other s supremacy, and the idea was to some extent established of admitting new States in pairs, a free State and a slave State at the same time. When Missouri applied for admission, in December, 1818, with a slave clause in her Consti tution, the representatives of the free States ob jected. They held that the institution was only tolerated by the Federal Constitution, and should be excluded from the Territories and from new States. The Southerners pointed to the fact that Missouri was not a part of the Northwest Terri tory, but was included in the Louisiana purchase, in which slavery already existed to some extent, and took the ground that Congress had no right to prohibit it in the Territories. After discussing the subject for two years, Congress adopted a compro mise proposed by Henry Clay. This consisted in "admitting Missouri as a slave State, and providing 1832.] NULLIFICATION. 1 7 that all other territory north of the parallel of 36 30 (Missouri s southern boundary) should thence forth be free. Some thought that a greater danger to the Union lay in the opposition of interests on the question of the tariff. Various tariffs were adopted from time to time, but only once did any serious difficulty arise. That was when South Carolina objected to the collection of duties in Charleston harbor, in 1832, and promulgated her doctrine of nullification that any State had a right to nullify such of the laws of the United States as might not be acceptable to her. This, expanded into the bold theory that no State had resigned its sovereignty by accepting the Federal Constitution, and that each was at liberty to with draw from the Union at will, was made the justifi cation for the attempt at secession in 1861; but no such mere abstract principle was the cause of the great insurrection. In the Presidential canvass of 1844 the real issue was the annexation of Texas, which claimed to have established its independence of Mexico. The Democratic party, which favored the scheme, sought to conciliate Northern sentiment by de claring, on the other hand, that the disputed boundary-line of Oregon should be carried up to 54 40 , with or without war with England. This was popularly called the "fifty-four-forty-or-fight " plank. Their candidate, James K. Polk, was elected, Texas was admitted as a slave State, and the Mexican war was fought in consequence. But when 1 8 THE FUGITIVE-SLAVE LAW. [1850. it came to the question of Oregon s boundary (which England wanted to fix at Columbia River), the Administration ignored the fifty-four-forty-or-fight promise, and quietly accepted a compromise at the parallel of 49, which gave away half the harbors of Puget Sound, and but for which we might now practically possess the entire Pacific coast. Still another struggle to maintain the balance of power between free and slave States was carried on over the question of a homestead law. The slaveholders wanted no legislation that would facilitate the peopling of the Territories with small farmers, and every form of homestead law met in Congress not only their opposition but that of their Northern political allies. When at last the Demo cratic members from the free States were afraid to deny any longer to their constituents the oppor tunity to acquire homes in the great West, they voted with the Republican members for such a bill; but James Buchanan, the last of the pro- slavery presidents, vetoed it. In 1850 Mr. Clay brought forward some more compromises, the principal of which were, on the one hand, the admission of California as a free State, and on the other the enactment of a more stringent fugitive-slave law. All of the bills were passed, and received the signature of President Fillmore. The new slave law was denounced at the North as infamous and insulting; and many of the States passed new liberty bills to nullify it. However necessary it might have been for the security of slave property, it certainly was not consistent with 1856.] THE FUGITIVE-SLAVE LAW. 19 the theory of any other kind of property. A Northern man might sit still and see his next-door neighbor s horses and cattle stray away ; but if a Southerner appeared on the scene, pointed at a black man, and said, "That is my runaway slave," the Northerner was required to assist in his cap ture. If the black man replied, " I am no one s slave, I am a free negro," the question could not be tried by a jury, but was submitted to a commis sioner ; and this commissioner s fee was to be twice as great if he decided in favor of the alleged master as if he decided in favor of the negro. When an alleged fugitive had been thus secured, he was to be returned to the master s residence at the expense of the United States Government. Under this law Anthony Burns, a recaptured slave, was marched through the streets of Boston by a strong military guard while they were thronged with excited people, and was placed on board of a revenue cutter and taken back to Virginia. In an attempt to rescue him, one man had been killed. A little before this, a slave named Shadrach had been successfully rescued in Boston, being snatched from the very court-room in a sudden rush. In Philadelphia, a man named Passmore Williamson was imprisoned for attempting to secure the freedom of three slaves accompanying a North Carolinian, John H. Wheeler, who had been ap pointed to a foreign mission and was on his way through that city to embark for his post of duty. Another grievance of the North was furnished by the Supreme Court s decision (December term, 2O THE DRED-SCOTT DECISION. [1856. 1856) in the case of Dred Scott, a negro suing to establish the freedom of himself, his wife, and their two daughters. Chief Justice Taney not only decided the point in issue, that Scott was not a citizen of Missouri and could not sue, but went out of his way to declare also that a person of African blood could not be a citizen of the United States, and that if he were a citizen of a particular State, this would secure him no privileges in any other State ; that, in short, he had " no rights which the white man was bound to respect." To the friends of liberty it seemed that the Court was nullifying the Constitution, instead of interpreting it. But though there was an awakening conscience at the North on the subject of chattel slavery and its sinfulness, there was by no means a majority of her people thus troubled. The thing that alarmed the majority was the aggressive spirit of the institution, its evident determination to ex tend itself. Alexander H. Stephens and other statesmen of the South had declared that if the system was to survive it must have more land, more slaves, and more slaveholders. More land was to be had in the unsettled Territories ; more slaves could be brought from Africa were being brought already ; and when the article was thus cheapened more whites could afford to own slaves and would at once become bound to uphold and perpetuate slavery. Thousands at the North who were perfectly willing to compromise for the con tinuance of slavery as it was, were roused to the point of resistance when they contemplated what it 1856.] THE POLITICAL STRUGGLE. 21 seemed likely to become. They passed no sleep less nights because the laws of their country doomed millions of human beings to perpetual servitude ; but they were both vigilant and valorous when they saw bounds being set to their own spirit of enterprise and the natural expansion of their institutions in serious danger. By this time the Democratic party throughout the country had become the pro-slavery party. In the Southern States it was the only party, and the Dred-Scott decision fairly represented its position on the great question of the day. In all the discus sions-carried on by its orators and journalists, there was a constant underlying assumption that the welfare of the black race was not in any way to be considered, that it was purely a question of satis factory adjustment between the whites of the North and the whites of the South. All attempts to bring any moral arguments to bear were set aside with a sneer at " the everlasting nigger." In the South Jefferson Davis had concisely expressed the sentiment of his party when, after discussing the slave-trade, he said, " The interest of Missis sippi, not the African, dictates my conclusion," and in the North Stephen A. Douglas, still more tersely, when he declared that he " did n t care whether slavery was voted up or voted down." The Whig party had gone to pieces after its disastrous defeat in 1852. The American or Know-Nothing party was but a short episode. The aggressions of the slave power called for an equally spirited, if not equally aggressive, free-soil organi- 22 POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY. [1854. zation at the North, and the exigency was met by the formation of the Republican party in 1854. The first battle-ground, both literally and figu ratively, was Kansas. The doctrine of Popular, or Squatter, Sovereignty, which had been broached as early as 1847, was definitely set forth in 1854 in the Kansas-Nebraska bill. This bill provided for the organization of two Territories west of Missouri, repealed the Missouri Compromise as unconstitutional, and declared that the people of each Territory should determine for themselves whether it should be slave or free. The foremost apostle of this doctrine was Stephen A. Douglas, who reiterated it until he induced a great many people to believe it, and perhaps believed it him self, though its fallacy was perfectly transparent. When a Territory was thrown open for settle ment, it was necessary to determine at once whether it should be slave or free. If it should ultimately become free, a slaveholder who had taken his property into the Territory would lose it ; and if it should ultimately be dedicated to slavery, Northern settlers depending upon free labor would lose their investments. To pour in immigration, and then tell the immigrants to settle the question for themselves, was to make a bloody struggle inevit able ; and this is what really took place. At the election in Kansas, vast numbers of Missourians crossed the border, took possession of the polls, and elected a delegate and legislature to suit themselves. The free-State settlers repudiated the delegate and legislature thus chosen, and chose 1856.] THE WAR IN KANSAS. 23 their own. But Congress admitted the pro-slavery delegate, and President Pierce sustained the pro- slavery legislature with the military power of the United States, while his soldiers dispersed the free- soil legislature and arrested its officers. Armed Southerners came even from South Carolina, and joined the " border ruffians," as they were called, in the attempt to secure Kansas for slavery. At the same time, organizations were formed in the free States to assist the free-soil settlers in that Terri tory, and furnish them with arms. For two or three years (1856-59) there was actual war in Kansas, with burning of houses, sacking of towns, and destruction of life. This bloody drama roused the consciousness of many at the North whose consciences had been appealed to in vain. It was impossible to keep the subject out of the pulpit, and car-loads of improved rifles, paid for by popu lar subscriptions, were sent to the free-State set tlers. The pro-slavery press appeared to be blind to the significance of these facts, could see in the movement nothing but fanaticism, and spent its breath largely in sneering at " freedom- shriekers," "nigger-worshippers," and "political parsons." John C. Fremont, the first Presidential candi date of the Republicans (1856), though defeated, made a magnificent canvass, carrying New York by 80,000. Had he been elected, the war would- probably have broken out then, instead of four years later. The men that were bent upon the perpetuation and extension of slavery at all 24 THE GOLDEN CIRCLE. [1856. hazards, seem to have contemplated secession at least as early as this, and Calhoun had threatened it in the Senate in 1850; but the election of Bu chanan a pro-slavery man, on a pro-slavery plat form left no immediate excuse for the experi ment ; and the South contained large numbers of substantial and influential people that were de votedly attached to the Union. Politics had taken such shape that the most available presidential can didates, indeed the only available ones for the Democratic party, were described as " Northern men with Southern principles." The South, held firmly in the grip of the banded slave-holders, and knowing no such thing as free discussion, was ab solutely solid for any candidate they might name. But to make sure of the necessary Northern votes, they were obliged to name a Northern man ; for in the free States discussion was now free, and in spite of party trammels the vice of political solid ity was impossible. To go on electing Northern men with Southern principles might serve the purpose of the South as a community, but it thwarted the highest ambition of her foremost men, who doubtless were influenced to some extent, in their desire for a new confederacy, by the con sideration that not one of them could ever be president of the whole country. David Christy published his " Cotton is King" in the year in which Buchanan was elected, and the Knights of the Golden Circle appear to have organized about the same time. The Golden Circle had its centre at Havana, Cuba, and with a radius 1859.] APPROACHING THE CRISIS. 25 of sixteen degrees (about 1,200 miles) its circum ference took in Baltimore, St. Louis, about half of Mexico, all of Central America, and the best por tions of the coast along the Caribbean Sea. The project was, to establish an empire with this circle for its territory, and by controlling four great staples rice, tobacco, sugar, and cotton practically govern the commercial world. Just how great a part this secret organization played in the scheme of secession, nobody that was not in its counsels can say; but it is certain that it boasted, probably with truth, a membership of many thousands. The Kansas troubles went on during Buchanan s administration, and that President continued the policy of his predecessor in lending the whole power of the Government to the pro-slavery party, while the best and strongest elements in the Northern States were rapidly moulding them selves into a compact political organization for a definite and determined purpose. The day of compromise was gone by, and John Brown s con spiracy at Harper s Ferry gave a lurid setting to the day of peace. Thus, in a country that boasted popular government and the largest measure of liberty, the times were ripened and the passions heated for a desperate civil war. CHAPTER II. THE OUTBREAK. " BUT what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand ? " This quotation would naturally come to the lips of the student of history if, knowing that the population of all the slave States in 1860 was but ten mill ions, while that of the free States was twenty millions, he should suddenly come upon the fact of the great civil war. But those who led the seces sion movement, and most of their followers, thought there were other circumstances to offset the discrepancy in numbers and wealth. They believed that in the possession of the cotton that was wanted for British looms, and in their readiness to adopt a free-trade policy, they had a guaranty of help from England, if help should be needed. And this belief was not with out reason. They believed that Southern soldiers would be more than a match, man for man, for Northern ones. And this belief, though ridicu lously exaggerated, was based on a certain truth, which was evident at the beginning of the war, but disappeared as the contest proceeded. In I860.] RELIANCE OF THE SECESSIONISTS. 2J most instances, the Northern man had to learn how to manage his horse and fire his gun after he had enlisted ; but the planter s son had been trained to these exercises from boyhood. They counted also on the enormous advantage that earth-works and arms of precision give to men who are fighting on the defensive. More than all, perhaps, they counted on active assistance in the heart of the North itself ; and though this, like all other reli ances, failed them in the test, they had not been unreasonable in expecting it. A great party of the North had for years voted steadily in their interest and at their dictation ; and now some of its leaders, including two of the most eminent, assured them of success. On January 6, 1860, ex-President Franklin Pierce had written to Jefferson Davis (who had been Secretary of War in his Cabinet) a letter in which he said : " Without discussing the question of right of abstract power to secede I have never believed that actual disruption of the Union can occur without blood ; and if through the madness of Northern abolitionists that dire ca lamity must come, the fighting will not be along Mason and Dixon s line merely. It will be within our own borders, and in our own streets, between the two classes of citizens to whom I have referred. Those who defy law and scout con stitutional obligations will, if we ever reach the arbitrament of arms, find occupation enough at home." Horatio Seymour, in a speech at Albany (January 31, 1861), said: "It would be 28 RELIANCE OF THE SECESSIONISTS. [1860. an act of folly and madness, in entering upon this contest, to underrate our opponents, and thus subject ourselves to the disgrace of defeat in an inglorious warfare. Let us also see if successful coercion by the North is less revolutionary than successful secession by the South. ... In what way is this warfare to be conducted ? None have been mad enough to propose to muster armies to occupy their territory ! . . . When unnatural war shall have brought upon our people its ruin, and upon our nation its shame, to what ground shall we be brought at last ? To that we should have accepted at the outset." A South Carolina Congressman, when he read the account of the convention at which this speech was delivered, exclaimed: "There will be more men in New York alone to fight for us than the whole North can put down ! " The secessionists relied also, for an advanta geous start, upon the timidity of President Buchanan and the influence that might be exerted over him by the Southern members of his Cabinet ; and in this at least their expectations were fully met. A favorite argument was made by compari son with the War of Independence. It was con stantly said, " If the thirteen colonies, with fewer than three million inhabitants, established their independence of Great Britain, what shall hinder the South from succeeding, when she has several times that number of people and so much greater resources ? " This appeared to have great popu lar influence, and yet it was the weakest of all the 18CO.] THE FALLACY OF SECESSION. 29 arguments advanced, and is a good illustration of the fallacies that often sway the multitude. It took no account of the fact that in 1776 the enemy had to come across a broad ocean, and steam power had not been thought of, while now the enemy would be at their very doors, and with steamships, locomotives, and telegraphs could bring great resources into rapid action. It ignored the timely and powerful assistance that the colo nies had received from France. Above all, it over looked the fact that<jeorge the Third could lose his American subjects and still have an empire left, while the struggle of our people against seces sion was a question of national life or death. The strangest thing was, not that the secession ists expected to succeed in dividing the country and setting up an independent confederacy, but that they ever persuaded themselves and the Southern people that this, even if it could be ac complished without a war, would be a remedy for their grievance. If slave property was insecure when the fugitive had to traverse hundreds of miles of United States territory to reach Canada, how much more insecure it would have been with the liberty-line brought down to the very door of his cabin, so that he would only have to step over into a free State to find himself safe in a foreign country. Abolitionists and incendiary documents were already as thoroughly excluded from the South as they ever could be under any circum stances. The seceding States certainly could not expect to take more than half of the unsettled 30 THE FALLACY OF SECESSION. [i860. Territories ; and that had been given them by the Missouri Compromise, which their own votes abro gated. They might have gained something by adopting a free-trade policy ; but this would have been largely if not wholly offset by the expense of maintaining a separate government and a separate army and navy, and carrying their own mails. For the postal revenues in the South fell short of the expenditures, and the balance was made up by the excess at the North. One other consideration was discussed at the time ; but it is impossible to say how much influence it exerted. Southern merchants and planters were in debt to Northern manufacturers and jobbers to the extent of many million dollars. No doubt some of them were glad of an opportunity to repudiate those debts, and indeed they avowed it ; but there were also some that paid them twice first to the Confed erate Government, which called for them by an act of confiscation, and after the war to their creditors. Doubtless more would have done so if the war had not thrown them into hopeless bankruptcy. The dream of the Golden Circle was futile ; because such an empire, if it could have been established, would have had no natural boundary, and this, especially for a slaveholding community surrounded by free territory, is absolutely indispensable. There was no ocean, no chain of mountains, no great lakes, not even a large river, to separate the Confederacy from a land where liberty would not only be the lot of every citizen, but be extended also to the stranger within the gates. Possibly I860.] STATE ALLEGIANCE. 3! the more sanguine expected to achieve indepen dence by victories so rapid and overwhelming as to enable them to dictate their own terms to the North, the chief of which should be a treaty equiv alent to the Fugitive-Slave Law. That secession was no remedy, was realized by large numbers of the more thoughtful people of the South. This was acknowledged in Georgia especially, where -the argument, "We can make better terms out of the Union than in it," had to be used the assumption being that the separa tion would be only temporary. Alexander H. Stephens, looked upon by many as the ablest man in that State, made a powerful speech against secession, at the request of members of the Legis lature, November 14, 1860, when the result of the presidential election was known. Amid frequent interruptions by Robert Toombs, who was trying to hurry the State into secession, he set forth the arguments against it with admirable clearness ; but he gave a fatal blow to the efficacy of his plea when he said : " Should Georgia determine to get out of the Union, whatever the result may be, I shall bow to the will of her people. Their cause is my cause, and their destiny is my destiny ; and I trust this will be the ultimate course of all." This was giving notice to the hot-headed seces sionists that if by one means or another they could drag the State out of the Union, they should have him with it, and all his influence ; and he knew they were afraid to submit the question to a con vention chosen by the people, for Mr. Toombs had 32 THE ARGUMENT FROM HISTORY. [1860. just said so. If the prominent men of the South who disapproved of secession, instead of surren dering on the plea that they must go with their States, had declared they would not go under any circumstances, possibly the costly experiment would never have been tried. But perhaps this would have required superhuman courage. Virginia also was reluctant to go, and voted against secession till a peculiarly powerful engine was brought to bear. No slave State wanted to be a border State ; they knew too well what the result would be, though the advocates of secession appeared to have a vague idea that " taking the South out of the Union " would result in lifting the land and carrying it to some remote quarter of the globe. Kentucky refused to leave the Union, and Maryland, after a struggle, was kept in it. One other consideration ought to have occurred to the statesmen of the South, if not to her peo ple. With the advance of civilization, the whole tendency of mankind has been, not toward divis ion and segregation, but toward union and central ization, wherever geographical conditions have in dicated it. Where once was the Heptarchy is now the United Kingdom of Great Britain ; France and Spain each gravitated into a similar consoli dation ; and early in the present century Sweden and Norway became one kingdom. In 1848 the leagued Swiss Cantons set up a central govern ment, making themselves one republic, and the union between Austria and Hungary was per fected. When our war of secession was breaking I860.] THE QUESTION OF JUSTIFICATION. 33 out, the principalities of Italy had just become one kingdom, which in naval power is now among the first in the world ; and since that time we have seen Germany united, the Canadian provinces or ganized as a Federal Dominion, the States of Cen tral America form a league, and Japan adopt a centralized government. Our own Constitution was substituted for the old Articles of Confedera tion because our fathers found it desirable " to form a more perfect union." Three things are necessary for the complete moral justification of war : a righteous cause, a reasonable prospect of military success, and a cer tainty that such success will secure a remedy for the wrong complained of. The righteousness of the Confederate cause depended upon the right eousness of human bondage ; for the purpose of the war on the part of the secessionists was to perpetuate and extend that system. This was so clearly and authoritatively set forth by Mr. Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, and others, as well as indicated unmistakably by the whole course and character of events, that no ar gument is needed to prove it, though some writers have set up the theory that it was merely an ab stract doctrine for which a million men were placed under arms and the entire wealth of the South was squandered. There can be little doubt that, at the outset, the war on the part of the secessionists had, or seemed to have, the justification of proba ble success ; and there can be as little doubt that it lacked the justification of remedy. The official 34 STATE SOVEREIGNTY. [i860. justification for the attempt at secession was pre sented in the doctrine of State sovereignty that every State in the Union retained its sovereignty, and was at liberty to withdraw whenever it chose to do so. John C. Calhoun was rather the devel oper than the originator of this theory. When the Federal Constitution was adopted, it met with strong opposition, through State jealousy and the reluctance of many to give up the supremacy of the local governments. There is a class of minds that never admit an unwelcome fact, and Jacobitism may even become a matter of heredity. In the early days of the Republic there were men in New England, as well as at the South, who clung to the sectional and State idea ; which perhaps only proves that a great government, like all else valu able, must be a thing of growth. There was this difference, however, that in the North there was no serious obstacle to the gradual adoption of the republican idea ; but in the South the institution of slavery created classes and a sort of aristocracy, and the time came when the State-sovereignty idea was revived and emphasized, because it was useful, if not necessary, to the perpetuation of that condition of things. Calhoun taught it con stantly, and his people believed it sincerely. No body denied that certain rights were reserved to the States ; but Unionists held that the powers expressly delegated to the Federal Government included everything that was essential to sover eignty, and that any interpretation of the Consti tution which made it self-destructive was evidently [1860. THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. 35 absurd that there could be no such thing as a Constitutional right to destroy the Constitution. There seemed to be .in the popular mind of the South a confounding of State rights and State sovereignty, just as there had been in the popular mind of the North more or less confounding of the Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution. In the Presidential canvass of 1860 the Demo cratic Convention was sundered in two by the slavery question, the great political wedge that had split every thing it entered. The extreme Southern wing of the party, which wanted that institution carried into all the Territories by act of Congress, nominated John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky. The Northern wing, which relied upon the principle of popular sovereignty, nominated Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois. The Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, on a platform de claring that Congress should forbid slavery in the Territories. The remnant of the American party nominated John Bell, of Tennessee, and adopted a platform that confined itself to such generalities as "the Constitution, the Union, and enforcement of the laws." As soon as it became known that Mr. Lincoln was elected, South Carolina called a convention to consider the question of secession, and on the 2oth of December, 1860, that convention passed unani mously an ordinance declaring that the union between South Carolina and the other States was thereby dissolved. Commissioners were sent from 36 SECESSION OF THE COTTON STATES. 1861.] this State to the other cotton States to urge them to the same course, and six of those States passed ordinances of secession within two months : Missis sippi (Jan. 9, 1861) by a vote of 84 to 15 ; Florida (Jan. 10) by 62 to 7 ; Alabama (Jan. n) by 61 to 39; Georgia (Jan. 19) by 208 to 89; Louisiana (Jan. 26) by 113 to 17; Texas (Feb. i) by 166 to 7. In Texas the ordinance was submitted to a vote of the people. These ordinances were quickly followed by seizures of the United States forts, arsenals, and custom-houses within the seceding States, and by the formation of a Confederate Government, with its capital at Montgomery, Alabama, early in February, 1861 ; Jefferson Davis being provisionally chosen President, and Alex ander H. Stephens Vice-President. With very few exceptions, the prominent men of the South, even those that had opposed the movement, " went with their States," as they expressed it, and the Southern Senators and Congressmen resigned their seats, some of them taking their leave in passion ate and defiant speeches. The Constitution of the Confederate States of America was a close copy of that of the United States, except that it made the Presidential term six years, with ineligibility for a second term, for bade protective tariffs, and was not afraid of the word " slave." It specifically declared that "cit izens of each State shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property ; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby im- 1861.] FORMATION OF THE CONFEDERACY. 37 paired." It contained no recognition of the right of secession, and in its opening sentence declared that the intention was to "form a permanent federal government." In the most important respect of all, the rights of States were more abridged than they were by the old Constitution. For any amendment of the United States Constitu tion, a vote of three fourths of the States is required; but the Confederate Constitution could be amended if two thirds of the States concurred.* Either of these provisions completely destroys the presump tion of State sovereignty ; for when sovereigns enter into a compact, it can be changed only by unanimous consent. Mr. Stephens, in a speech at Savannah, March 22, 1861, expounding the new Constitution, said : " The prevailing ideas entertained by him [Thomas Jefferson] and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the forma tion of the old Constitution were, that the enslave ment of the African was in violation of the laws of nature ; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. . . . Our new govern ment is founded upon exactly the opposite idea. Its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition." Commissioners were now sent to Washington, but President Buchanan refused to receive them. * This made it possible, had the Confederacy been established, for the votes of the cotton States alone to change its constitution so as to permit reopening the African slave trade. 38 BUCHANAN S PARADOX. [isei. Yet all his efforts to stay the progress of secession were paralyzed by the presence of three active secessionists in his Cabinet John B. Floyd, How- ell Cobb, and Jacob Thompson. Buchanan was one of those men that are strong enough so long as precedents are not lacking, but pitifully weak in a new emergency. He declared that States had no right to secede, but the Constitution conferred no power to coerce them. This curious theory he never got rid of, and in writing the history of his administration, after the war, he says : " Happily our civil war was undertaken and prosecuted in self-defence, not to coerce a State, but to enforce the execution of the laws within the States against individuals, and to suppress an unjust rebellion raised by a conspiracy among them against the Government of the United States." Major Robert Anderson, commanding the garri son of Fort Moultrie, Charleston harbor, seeing that he could not hold it against the forces that were being gathered for its capture, on Christmas night, 1860, secretly abandoned it and took posi tion in the stronger Fort Sumter. His men were few, and his stock of provisions was small. The new authorities at Charleston complained of this movement as being virtually the violation of a truce, and requested the Government at Washing ton to order him back to Moultrie, which was re fused. For some time he was permitted to receive his mail as usual, and to buy provisions regularly in the Charleston market. All this time the Con federate forces, commanded by General G. T. 1861.] THE SITUATION AT SUMTER. 39 Beauregard, were erecting batteries for the demo lition of Fort Sumter ; and yet, whenever any Southern officers or citizens chose to visit it, An derson received them cordially, allowed them to inspect all his arrangements for defence, and ac cepted their invitations to dinner. His unaccount able conduct was explained years afterward, when a letter written by him at that time was brought to light in the Confederate archives, in which he said : " I tell you frankly, my heart is not in this war." He was a Kentuckian, and it has been conjectured that he was only waiting to see whether his State would go out of the Union. At last the privileges of communication were withdrawn by the Confederate authorities, and surrender of the fort demanded. The question of reenforcing and provisioning the beleaguered garri- 40 THE BOMBARDMENT. [1861. son then arose, and on this President Buchanan s Cabinet was hopelessly divided and went to pieces. The steamer " Star of the West " was sent in January, 1861, with provisions and troops, but before she could reach the fort she was driven off by the fire of Confederate batteries. Buchanan made no further effort to assert the power and dig nity of the government that had been entrusted to him, but only looked anxiously for the close of his term. Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated on the 4th of March, and early in April gave orders that a fleet be sent to the relief of Fort Sumter. There upon its surrender was again demanded, and when this was refused the Confederate batteries opened fire upon it, April 12. The fire was returned as long as the guns of the fort were serviceable, and the great artillery duel was kept up for two days ; but the red-hot shot burned the buildings inside of the fort, its walls were crumbling under the blows of heavy rifled projectiles, and the garri son at length surrendered, being permitted to march out with the honors of war, Sunday morn ing, April 14. Not a man within the fort was injured by the hostile fire, and it was also re ported officially that the assailants had met with no loss. But the flame of civil war was kindled, the North understood at last that the South was in deadly earnest, and the sections rushed to a conflict in which at least eight thousand million dollars were wasted, American commerce disap peared from every sea, and half a million citizens of the Republic perished. CHAPTER III. THE BEGINNING OF BLOODSHED. ABRAHAM LINCOLN S inaugural address was one of the ablest state papers recorded in American his tory. It argued the question of secession in all its aspects the Constitutional right, the reality of the grievance, the sufficiency of the remedy and so far as law and logic went it left the seces sionists little or nothing to stand on. But nei ther law nor logic could change in a single day the pre-determined purpose of a powerful com bination, or allay the passions that had been roused by years of resentful debate. Some of its sentences read like maxims for statesmen. The central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy." " Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws ? " " Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people ? Is there any better or equal hope in the world ? " With all its conciliatory messages it expressed a firm and unalterable purpose to main tain the Union at every hazard. " I consider," he said, " that, in view of the Constitution and the laws, the Union is unbroken, and to the extent of my ability I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. 42 LINCOLN S INAUGURAL ADDRESS. [1861. Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part ; and I shall perform it, so far as practic able, unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite means, or in some authoritative manner direct the contrary." And in closing he said : " In your hands, my dis satisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Govern ment will not assail you. You can have no con flict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I have the most solemn one to preserve, protect, and defend it We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearth stone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." No such address had ever come from the lips of a President before. Pierce and Buchanan had scolded the abolitionists like partisans ; Lincoln talked to the secessionists like a brother. The loyal people throughout the country received the address with satisfaction. The secessionists bitterly denounced it. Overlooking all its pacific declara tions, and keeping out of sight the fact that a majority of the Congress just chosen was politically opposed to the President, they appealed to the Southern people to say whether they would " sub- 1861.] THE STRUGGLE FOR VIRGINIA. 43 mit to abolition rule," and whether they were going to look on and " see gallant little South Carolina crushed under the heel of despotism." In spite of all such appeals, there was still a strong Union sentiment at the South. Seven slave States had gone out, but eight remained, and the anxiety of the secessionists was to secure these at once, or most of them, before the excitement cooled. The great prize was Virginia, both because of her own power and resources, and because her accession to the Confederacy would necessarily bring North Carolina also. Her Governor, John Letcher, professed to be a Unionist ; but his con duct after the ordinance of secession had been passed appears to prove that this profession was insincere. In electing delegates to a convention to consider the question of secession, the Union ists cast a majority of sixty thousand votes ; and on the 4th of April, when President Lincoln had been in office a month, that convention re fused, by a vote of 89 to 45, to pass an ordi nance of secession. The leading revolutionists of the cotton States were becoming uneasy. Said Mr. Gilchrist, of Alabama, to the Confederate Secretary of War, "You must sprinkle blood in the faces of the people ! If you delay two months, Alabama stays in the Union ! " Hence the attack on Fort Sumter, out of which the garrison were in peril of being driven by starvation. This certainly had a great popular effect in the South as well as in the North ; but Virginia s choice appears to have been determined by a measure that was less 44 THE STRUGGLE FOR VIRGINIA. [1861. spectacular and more coldly significant. The Con federate Constitution provided that Congress should have the power to "prohibit the intro duction of slaves from any State not a member of, or Territory not belonging to, this Confederacy," and at the time when Virginia s fate was in the balance it was reported that such an act had been passed by the Congress at Montgomery.* When Virginia heard this, like the young man in Scrip ture, she went away sorrowful ; for in that line of trade she had great possessions. The cultivation of land by slave labor had long since ceased to be profitable in the border States or at least it was far less profitable than raising slaves for the cotton States, and the acquisition of new territory in Texas had enormously increased the demand. The greatest part of this business (sometimes estimated as high as one half) was Virginia s. It was called " the vigintal crop," as the blacks were ready for market and at their highest value about the age of twenty. As it was an ordinary business of bargain and sale, no statistics were kept ; but the lowest estimate of the annual value * It is now impossible to prove positively that such a law was actually passed ; for the officially printed volume of "Statutes at Large of the Provisional Government of the Confederate States of America " (Richmond, 1861) was evidently mutilated before being placed in the hands of the compositor. The Acts are numbered, but here and there numbers are missing, and in some of the later Acts there are allusions to previous Acts that cannot be found in the book. It is known that on the 6th of March, 1861, the Judiciary Committee was instructed to inquire into the expediency of such prohibition, and it seems a fair conjecture that one of the missing numbers was an Act of this character. In a later edition (1864) the- numbering is made consecutive, but the missing matter is not restored. 1861.] HER SLAVE TRADE. 45 of the trade in the Old Dominion placed it in the tens of millions of dollars. President Dew, of William and Mary College, in his celebrated pamphlet, wrote : " Virginia is, in fact, a negro- raising State for other States." The New York "Journal of Commerce" of October 12, 1835, contained a letter from a Virginian (vouched for by the editor) in which it was asserted that 20,- ooo slaves had been driven south from that State that year. In 1836 the Wheeling (Va.) " Times" estimated the number of slaves exported from that State during the preceding year at 40,000, valued at $24,000,000. The Baltimore "Register" in 1846 said : " Dealing in slaves has become a large business ; establishments are made in several places in Maryland and Virginia, at which they are sold like cattle." The Richmond " Examiner " before the war said : " Upon an inside estimate, they [the slaves of Virginia] yield in gross surplus produce, from sales of negroes to go south, $10,- 000,000." In the United States Senate, just before the war, Hon. Alfred Iverson, of Georgia, replying to Mr. Powell, of Virginia, said Virginia was deeply interested in secession ; for if the cotton States seceded, Virginia would find no market for her slaves, without which that State would be ruined. After Sumter had been fired on, and the Con federate Congress had forbidden this traffic to out siders, the Virginia Convention again took up the ordinance of secession (April 1 7) and passed it in secret session by a vote of 88 to 55. It was not 46 VIRGINIA DRAGOONED. [1861. to take effect till approved by the people ; but the day fixed for their voting upon it was six weeks distant, the last Thursday in May. Long before that date, Governor Letcher, without waiting for the verdict of the people, turned over the entire military force and equipment of the State to the Confederate authorities, and the seat of the Con federate Government was removed from Mont gomery to Richmond. David G. Farragut, after ward the famous Admiral, who was in Norfolk, Virginia, at the time, anxiously watching the course of events, declared that the State " had been dragooned out of the Union," and he refused to be dragooned with her. But Robert E. Lee and other prominent Virginians resigned their commissions in the United States service to enter that of their States or of the Confederacy, and the soil of Virginia was overrun by soldiers from the cotton States. Any other result than a vote for secession was therefore impossible. Arkansas fol lowed with a similar ordinance on the 6th of May, and North Carolina on the 2ist, neither being submitted to a popular vote. Kentucky refused to secede. For Tennessee and Missouri there was a prolonged struggle. When Fort Sumter was surrendered, the Con federates had already acquired possession of Castle Pinckney and Fort Moultrie in Charleston harbor, Fort Pulaski at Savannah, Fort Morgan at the entrance of Mobile Bay, Forts Jackson and St. Philip below New Orleans, the navy-yard and Forts McRae and Barrancas at Pensacola, the 1861.] THE FIRST CALL FOR TROOPS. 47 arsenals at Mount Vernon, Ala., and Little Rock, Ark., and the New Orleans Mint. The largest force of United States regulars was that in Texas, under command of General David E. Twiggs, who surrendered it in February, and turned over to the insurgents $1,250,000 worth of military property. On the day when Sumter fell, President Lincoln penned a proclamation, issued the next day (Mon day, April 15), which declared "that the laws of the United States have been for some time past, and now are, opposed, and the execution thereof obstructed, in the States of South Carolina, Geor gia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, by combinations too powerful to be sup pressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceed ings or by the powers vested in the marshals by law," and called for militia from the several States of the Union to the number of seventy-five thou sand. It also called a special session of Congress, to convene on July 4. He appealed "to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and existence of our National Union, and the perpetuity of popu lar government, and to redress wrongs already long enough endured." Mr. Lincoln s faith in the people had always been strong ; but the response to this proclama tion was probably a surprise even to him, as it certainly was to the secessionists, who had assured the Southern people that the Yankees would not fight. The whole North was thrilled with military ardor, and moved almost as one man. The national 48 THE AWAKENING OF THE NORTH. [1861. flag was thrown to the breeze from nearly every court-house, school-house, college, hotel, engine- house, railway-station, and public building, from the spires of many churches, and from the win dows of innumerable private residences. The fife and drum were heard in the streets, and recruit ing-offices were opened in vacant stores or in tents hastily pitched in the public squares. All sorts and conditions of men left their business and stepped into the ranks, and in a few days the Gov ernment was offered several times as many troops as had been called for. Boys of fifteen sat down and wept because they were not permitted to go, but here and there one dried his tears when he was told that he might be a drummer or an officer s servant. Attentions between young people were suddenly ripened into engagements, and engage ments of long date were hastily finished in mar riages ; for the boys were going, and the girls were proud to have them go, and wanted to send them off in good spirits. Everybody seemed anxious to put forth some expression of loyalty to the national government and the starry flag. School-girls wrote their letters on white paper and used red and blue ink for the alternate lines ; while their mothers made " Havelocks " for the soldiers a sort of cape attachment to a cap, to pre vent sunstroke in a hot climate. A considerable percentage of the letters that passed through the mails bore patriotic devices on the envelopes. The designs were numberless, and collections of them are now looked upon as curiosities. A favorite one 1861.] MAP SHOWING AREA OF THE CONFEDERACY. 49 5O THE AWAKENING OF THE NORTH. [1861. represented a young blue-jacket, with curly hair streaming in the wind, and rolling clouds about him, clinging by his legs and his left hand to the topmast, while with a hammer in his right he nailed the colors to the mast-head. Beneath was the legend, " If any man tries to haul down the Amer ican flag, shoot him on the spot !"- which was a famous despatch sent by General John A. Dix, Secretary of the Treasury in the last days of Buchanan s administration, to a customs officer at New Orleans. The foremost American magazine of that day removed the portrait of a colonial gov ernor that it had borne on its cover from the be ginning, and displayed the stars and stripes in its place ; and many newspapers put a flag at the head of their columns and kept it there. The papers were lively with great head-lines and dou ble-leaded editorials ; and the local poet filled the spare space when there was any with his glow ing patriotic effusions. The closing passage of Longfellow s " Building of the Ship," written a dozen years before, beginning : " Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State ! Sail on, O Union strong and great ! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate ! " was in constant demand, and was recited effect ively by nearly every orator that addressed a war- meeting. Eminent men of all parties and all professions spoke out for the Union. Stephen A. Douglas, 1861.] THE AWAKENING OF THE NORTH. 51 who had long been Lincoln s rival and had op posed the policy of coercion, went to the White House the day before Sumter fell, had a long inter view with the President, and promised a hearty support of the Administration, which was immedi ately telegraphed over the country and had a pow erful effect. Ex-President Pierce (who had made the direful prediction of blood in Northern streets), ex-President Buchanan (who had failed to find any authority for coercion), General Lewis Cass (a Democratic partisan since the war of 1812), Arch bishop Hughes (the highest dignitary of the Rom an Catholic Church in America), and numerous others, all " came out for the Union, "as the phrase went. The greater portion of the Democratic par ty, which had opposed Lincoln s election, also, as individuals, sustained the Administration in its determination not to permit a division of the coun try. These were known as "war Democrats," while those that opposed and reviled the govern ment were called " Copperheads," in allusion to the snake of that name. Some of the bolder ones at tempted to take the edge off the sarcasm by cut ting the head of Liberty out of a copper cent and wearing it as a scarf-pin ; but all they could say was quickly drowned in the general clamor. Town halls, school-houses, academies, and even churches, were turned into temporary barracks. Village greens and city squares were occupied every day by platoons of men, most of them not yet uniformed, marching and wheeling and counter marching, and being drilled in the manual of arms 52 RIOT IN BALTIMORE. [1861. by officers that knew just a little more than they did, by virtue of having bought a handbook of tactics the day before, and sat up all night to study it. There was great scarcity of arms. One regiment were looking dubiously at some ancient muskets that had just been placed in their hands, when the Colonel came up and with grim humor assured them that he had seen those weapons used in the Mexican war, and more men were killed in front of them than behind them. The boys had great respect for the Colonel, but they wanted to be excused from believing his story. In many of the Northern cities small organiza tions of uniformed militia had been kept up for years, and many of them were exceedingly well drilled and fairly armed. New interest had been awakened in militia service only the year before (1860), when a young man named Ephraim E. Ellsworth, who had drilled a Chicago company to perfection in the zouave tactics, exhibited their skill in most of the large cities. The uniformed militia was first ready to respond to the President s proclamation, and within two days the Sixth Massa chusetts, Colonel Edward F. Jones,wason its way to Washington. On the igth (the anniversary of the battle of Lexington) it arrived at Baltimore, where trouble was expected and trouble came. An im mense mob of secessionists that had hooted and stoned an unarmed Pennsylvania regiment passing through the city the previous evening now col lected again in greater force and with deadlier pur pose. A part of the regiment had been taken 1861.] THE FIRST BLOODSHED. 53 across the city in detached cars, when the track was obstructed, and the last four companies at tempted to march across. They encountered a riotous procession that was following a secession flag ; the crowd closed in around them ; such epi thets as " abolitionists," " nigger-thieves," and " black Republicans," were freely hurled at them and emphasized with paving-stones ; pistol-shots were fired from windows and from the side-walk ; several soldiers were struck, and at length orders were given to fire into the mob, when many of the rioters fell. The Mayor of the city pushed through the crowd, and placed himself at the head of the column, hoping that his presence would be some protection. But the rioters still pressed hard upon the little band of soldiers, and the Mayor seized a musket and shot one of the foremost. Soon after ward half a hundred policemen with drawn re volvers were interposed between the mob and the soldiers, who made the remainder of the march without serious difficulty. The bodies of three militiamen that had been killed were sent home to their native State and deposited in the little hillside cemeteries the first of a long procession of young men destined within the next four years to lay down their lives for their country. It was a coincidence that in the last war with Great Britain (i8i2- i5) the first bloodshed had been in this same city of Baltimore, and was also the work of a mob. The New York Seventh Regiment, Colonel Marshall Lefferts, and the Massachusetts Eighth, 54 A WEEK OF DISASTERS. U861. General Benjamin F. Butler, followed close after the Sixth in the march to the national capital ; but they went by way of Annapolis, avoiding Baltimore by request of the State and municipal authorities. Indeed, the chief of police, immediately after the riot, had burned the bridges north and east of the city, so that no more troops could come through. This affair intensified the excitement and the patriotic determination at the North. A monster meeting was held in New York city, and a Union Defence Committee was appointed to facilitate the equipment of troops and the furnishing of ships and money. The effect in Maryland was to in crease the disunion feeling and create a tremendous excitement. Arms were sent from Richmond to the secessionists of that State, and for a time it seemed probable that she would be lost to the Union, and Washington be surrounded by the territory of the enemy. Meanwhile the Virginia troops were moving to capture the United States arsenal at Harper s Ferry and the Gosport navy-yard. The com mandants of both set the buildings on fire and attempted to destroy the machinery and other property, to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Confederates, but only partially succeeded. The loss at the navy-yard, in ships and material, was enormous. All these disasters Sumter, Bal timore, the secession of Virginia, Harper s Ferry, Gosport had occurred within one week, April 12-20; but the Administration, though cut off from communication with the friendly North, was 1861.] TROOPS POURING INTO WASHINGTON. 55 not appalled. The various departments of the Government went on regularly with their duties, and the veteran General Winfield Scott, who had been through two or three wars, and fourteen years before had dictated terms of peace in the capital of Mexico, made the best possible dispo sitions, with the force at his command, for the defence of Washington. Troops in abundance were soon pouring into the city, till the authorities hardly knew what to do with them, and they hardly knew what to do with themselves. They slept on the floors of the Government buildings by night, and swarmed everywhere by day. A regiment of zouaves, recruited from the New York fire department and commanded by Ellsworth, amused them selves and astonished the citizens by scaling the walls of the Capitol, running along the cornices and water-tables, and clambering from window to window. To outward appearance the affair was one vast picnic, and few seemed to realize that desperate and bloody work was to come. On the 24th of May, in the night, four regi ments crossed the Potomac and took possession of Arlington Heights, which commanded Washing ton, and from which shells might have been thrown into the White House. This was called the first invasion of "the sacred soil of Virginia" an expression that became a by-word. One regi ment, Ellsworth s, went by way of Alexandria, where a secession flag had long been flying over the principal hotel. Ellsworth himself, accom- 56 BATTLE OF BIG BETHEL. [1861. panied by two soldiers, went to the top of the house, tore down the flag, and was returning to the street with it, when the proprietor of the hotel suddenly appeared with a shotgun and killed him on the stairs. The next instant the proprietor himself was shot dead by the foremost soldier. This incident produced another shock at the North, and woke the people a little more to the grim realities of war. Ellsworth s picture was displayed everywhere, eulogies were pronounced upon him, and special regiments were recruited in his name and dedicated themselves to the work of avenging his death. In little more than a fortnight the loss was duplicated in the death of another of the notable young men that had rushed to arms. Theodore Winthrop, a writer of considerable achievement and great promise, had accompanied the New York Seventh Regiment to Washington, and pub lished an account of the march that attracted uni versal attention. Afterward he went to Fort Monroe, on the staff of General Butler. In an ill-planned expedition against a secession force at Big Bethel (June 10), both he and Lieutenant John T. Greble, a young West-Pointer, were killed. It was typical of the chances of war that Winthrop, the scholar and literary genius, in the prime of manhood, was said to have been shot by a drummer-boy from North Carolina, then the most illiterate State in the Union. CHAPTER IV. THE FIRST BATTLE OF BULL RUN. THE seventy-five thousand troops called for in President Lincoln s proclamation of April i5th, were three-months men^ On the 3rd of May, 1861, he issued another proclamation, calling for forty-two thousand volunteers for three years, and authoriz ing the raising of ten new regiments for the regular army. He also called for eighteen thou sand volunteer seamen for the navy. The ports of the Southern coasts had been already (April i gth) declared in a state of blockade, and it was not only desirable but absolutely necessary to make the blockade effectual. The Confederate Government had issued letters of marque for privateers almost from the first ; and its Congress had authorized the raising of an army of one hun dred thousand volunteers for one year L When Congress convened on the 4th of July^ President Lincoln asked for four hundred thou sand men and $400,000,000, to suppress the in surrection ; and in response he was authorized to call for five hundred thousand men and spend $500,000,000. What he had already done was approved and declared valid; and on the I5th of July the House of Representatives, with but five dissenting votes, passed a resolution (introduced 58 ON TO RICHMOND. [1861. by John A. McClernand, a Democrat) pledging any amount of money and any number of men that might be necessary to restore the authority of the National Government^ The seat of the Confederate Government was removed from Montgomery, Alabama, to Rich mond, Virginia, on the 2Oth of May, anticipating by a few days the vote of the people of Virginia on the question whether the State should leave the Union ! For a long time volunteers were pouring into Washington at the rate of four thousand a day ; and after a while the press and people began to talk of these raw levies as an army, and to wonder why they were not immediately precipita ted upon the enemy. To the objection that they were green and unskilled in the art of war, it was answered that the Confederates were equally green and unskilled. To most people this consideration seemed perfectly satisfactory ; they did not take into account the fact that it devolved upon the National forces to take the offensive, and an army marching into hostile territory must have acquired considerable discipline in order to be able to keep together, act together, and meet the contingencies of war. So arose a popular demand for imme diate action, which was represented by the catch word " On to Richmond ! " echoed through the newspapers. General Scott was opposed to under taking any large offensive movement with the three-months men. He thought they should only be used to protect Washington, keep Maryland from seceding, and carry on some operations that 1861.J THE POSITION AT BULL RUN. 59 had been begun around Harper s Ferry and in western Virginia. But other than strictly military circumstances had to be considered, and a campaign toward Richmond was determined upon. A Confederate army, commanded by General G. T. Beauregardj had been sent to occupy Manassas Junction, which was important as the railroad centre of northern Virginia. Seeing that it was much easier to hold the natural line of defence formed by Bull Run than to construct earth works around the Junction, he had moved for ward to that stream and posted his troops at the various fords between the Alexandria Railroad and the Warrenton Turnpike, thus occupying a line eight miles long, facing toward Washington. He had about twenty-two thousand men.^ Harper s Ferry had been occupied by a Confederate force under General Joseph E. Johnston, who had destroyed the works and retired to Winchester on the approach of a superior force of National troops under General Robert Patterson. General Scott s plan was, to launch an army against Beauregard, turn his right flank, seize the railroads in rear of his position, and defeat him. It was all-important that Johnston s army in the Shenandoah Valley, about nine thousand men, should not be permitted to go to the assistance of Beauregard ; and General Patterson had strict orders to prevent such a movement, either by getting between the two or by closely following and attacking Johnston. The immediate command was intrusted to General Irvin McDowell, then 60 SPIES IN WASHINGTON. [1861. forty-three years of age, who was a graduate of West Point and had seen service in the Mexican war. When the rebellion began he was a major in the regular army, and in May he had been commissioned brigadier-general and placed in com mand of the newly-formed Army of the Potomac. He was unquestionably a good soldier and a skil ful officer. The National Government labored under a serious disadvantage at the begin ning of the war, which was never wholly done away with in the entire four years of the struggle. Washington was full of spies and secession sympathizers, some of whom were well known, while others never could be detected. They swarmed in the Departments, and contrived to know every thing that was going on. Many of them had lived for years on salaries paid by the Government they were trying to destroy. Scarcely a movement of any kind could be planned but the Confederate authorities and commanders were at once apprised of it. Beauregard and Johnston knew what to expect, and prepared for it. McDowell s army moved on the i6th of July. It was in five divisions commanded by Generals Tyler, Hunter, Heintzelman, Runyon, and Miles. Among the brigade commanders that afterward rose to eminence were William T. Sherman, Ambrose E. Burnside, Erastus D. Keyes, and Oliver O. Howard. The total force was some what over thirty-four thousand men ; but Runyon s division was left to guard the line of communi cation with Washington, and the number that 1861.] STRENGTH OF THE ARMIES. 6l actually moved against the enemy was about twenty-eight thousand with forty-nine guns and a battalion of cavalry. So little did strict military discipline as yet enter into the policy of the Government that a large number of civilians, including several members of Congress, obtained passes enabling them to ride out in carriages, close in the rear of the army, to witness the expected battle. A passage from the published journal of one of these, Hon. Alfred Ely, is suggestive. He had called on General Scott, to obtain a pass for a carriage-load of civilians. " I inquired how many men General Beauregard had at Manassas. He replied, about thirty-eight thousand, not to exceed forty thousand, and that General McDowell s plans and move ments had been talked over with him and well considered. On being asked how many troops we had, he gave me this significant reply : Enough. General McDowell will win." One member of 62 ACTION AT BLACKBURN S FORD. Congress, John A. Logan, of Illinois, who had seen service in the Mexican war, left his seat in the Capitol, overtook the army, shouldered a musket, and participated in the battle. The troops marched by the Warrenton turnpike, and found themselves in the presence of the enemy on the banks of Bull Run on the iSth. This was doing pretty well for green soldiers, though McDowell afterward testified his disgust at their want of respect for orders, and their habit of stopping when they pleased, to get water or pick berries. The enemy s outposts had fallen back as the army advanced, and the first serious opposition was met at Blackburn s Ford. Tyler had been ordered forward to make a reconnois- sance, with instructions not to bring on a battle, as it was only intended to make a feint against that part of Beauregard s line, the real attack to be on the south or right wing. But he exceeded his orders, carried on a brisk artillery duel across the stream, brought up first a regiment and then a brigade to support his battery, became engaged with the enemy s infantry, and finally retired after about sixty men on each side had been killed or wounded. The troops opposed to him were com manded by General James Longstreet, and both his force and Tyler s were somewhat broken up. McDowell, finding that Beauregard was very strongly intrenched on his right, and that the roads in that direction were not good, changed his plan and determined to attack on the north or left wing. Another reason for doing this lay in the 1861.] JOHNSTON JOINS BEAUREGARD. 63 fact that McDowell had distrusted Patterson from the first, having no faith that he would hold John ston, and he had declared at the outset that he could not, with his present force, defeat the com bined armies of Beauregard and Johnston. Scott s confident promise that "if Johnston joined Beau- regard he should have Patterson on his heels," had not fully reassured him, and he now planned, by striking the enemy s left flank and turning it, to push forward and seize a point on the Manassas Gap railroad, which would enable him to prevent such a junction of the enemy s forces. At the same time Beauregard was planning a movement with his right to turn McDowell s left, and was afraid Patterson would join him before the move ment could be executed. The action at Black burn s Ford had been fought on Thursday. Fri day and Saturday were consumed in reconnois- sances and searching for a suitable ford on the upper part of the stream, where a column could cross and, marching down on the right bank, uncover the fords held by the enemy and enable the remainder of the army to cross. Such a ford was found at length, and on Sunday morning, the 2ist, the army was put in motion. McDowell did not know that Johnston had easily eluded Patter son and with two fifths of his forces joined Beau- regard on Saturday. A remark in Johnston s " Narrative," taken in connection with an incident of Butler s march to Washington three months before, strikingly illus trates the difference in the material of which the 64 A CONTRAST IN MEN. [1861. two armies were composed. Johnston says: " Enough of the cars, sent down in the morning to convey about two regiments, were brought back before midnight ; but the conductors and engi neers disappeared immediately, to pass the night probably in sleep instead of on the road. And it was not until seven or eight o clock Saturday morning that the trains could be put in motion, carrying the Fourth Alabama and the Second Mississippi regiment, with two companies of the Eleventh. General Bee and myself accompanied these troops." When Butler s force was marching from Annapolis to Washington, repairing the railroad as it went, a locomotive was found over turned in a ditch. The commanding officer expressed a desire to know whether it could be placed on the track again and repaired. " Well," said one of a group of soldiers that had been examining it, " I built her, and I guess I can fix her." No train intended for the transportation of National troops would ever have stood still for want of engineers and conductors. While a part of McDowell s force marched di rectly along the turnpike to the stone bridge, a heavy column turned to the right and crossed the stream at Sudley Ford, two and a half miles above. This column came down upon the Con federate left and began the fighting. Concerning many of the particulars of what took place there after, there is dispute among those who should know best ; but the essential facts are well estab lished. The Confederate commanders had actu- 1861.] THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN. 65 ally ordered a forward movement of their own right wing ; but as they saw the development of McDowell s plan they recalled that, and gradually strengthened their left to meet the onset. Hun ter s attack, as his columns came down the road from Sudley Ford, was conducted with great skill and bravery, and was met with equal courage and skill. Hunter himself was wounded by a fragment of shell, and had to leave the field, his command then devolving on Andrew Porter. The brigades of Sherman and Keyes, which had struck the stream at the stone bridge, found it fordable half a mile above, crossed there, and took part in the conflict. The battle-ground was a plateau, wooded and bro ken, crossed by a small stream that flowed into Bull Run. The enemy was steadily driven back for nearly a mile, but only retired step by step, and the fighting was constant and destructive. Every field-officer of the Fourth Alabama regiment was shot down, leaving it without a commander. General Bernard E. Bee, of South Carolina, who was killed later in the day, rallied his wavering men by appealing to them to follow the example of Jackson s brigade, " standing there like a stone wall" which gave General Thomas J. Jackson the name by which he has since been known. As the Confederate line fell back, it gained higher and more defensive ground, and also re ceived accessions from the right wing.. At the same time, the National army as it advanced became separated and fought in detachments. Batteries were thrown forward, ambushed by sharp-shooters, 66 THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN. P. taken, retaken, and lost again. The commander of one of them, James B. Ricketts, lay wounded under the guns while the fighting was going on above him and the battery changed hands three times. It is said that Capt. Charles Griffin s battery was surprised by the sudden apparition of a regi ment marching down upon it from the right, as openly and regularly as if on parade. The guns were loaded with grape and canister, and could have annihilated the regiment, but Major William F. Barry, chief of artillery, thought it was the National regiment supporting the battery, and ordered the gunners not to fire. Griffin rode forward to ascertain the truth, but learned it too late. It was a Confederate regiment, and when it suddenly levelled its muskets and fired at point- blank range, the battery was completely disabled in an instant, and the surviving horses went dash ing wildly down the hill with the caissons. John ston says : " If the tactics of the Federals had been equal to their strategy, we should have been beaten. If, instead of being brought into action in detail, their troops had been formed in two lines with a proper reserve, and had assailed Bee and Jackson in that order, the two Southern brigades must have been swept from the field in a few minutes, or enveloped. The better ground held by the Confederates, and the concentration of their troops, were already beginning to tell in their favor, when five thousand more of Johnston s men, brought to the Junction on the railroad, were hurried to the field and sent around to the left to form at right angles to the 1861.] THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN. 67 National right and fall upon it. This movement was executed promptly, about four o clock in the afternoon, and was completely successful. The National right became broken and confused, and retreated in disorder. A panic arose, and the re treat became a rout, and the rout a race for Wash ington. Arms and accoutrements were thrown away, drivers of army wagons cut the traces, leaped upon the backs of the horses, and rode through the crowd of fugitives, and guns and trains were abandoned. Portions of the army, however, main tained their organization, and partly successful at tempts were made to stop the flight. The Con federates had but little cavalry, and were in no condition to pursue. There was a black-horse regiment from Louisiana that undertook it, but came upon the New York Fire Zouaves, and in a bloody fight lost heavily. On the other side Jef ferson Davis, riding to the field half an hour after the battle, saw such a stream of Confeder ate fugitives that he supposed the day had gone against them. " Battles are not won," he remarked, " where two or three unhurt men are seen leading away one that is wounded." Nevertheless, in that instance the battle had been won by an army whose rear presented exactly that appearance. General Grant remarks that a position among the stragglers and fugitives in the rear of an army is not a very good place to learn what is going on at the front. The loss of the Confederates was about one thou sand nine hundred; that of the Nationals about one thousand five hundred in killed and wounded, and 68 THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN. [1861. about as many more in prisoners. Among the officers killed were General Bee and Colonel Bartow on one side, and Colonel Cameron, of the New York Highland regiment, on the other. He was a brother of the Secretary of War, Simon Came ron. Among the prisoners taken to Richmond were many of the civilians that had come out in carriages to witness the contest, including the Hon. Alfred Ely, member of Congress. Colonel Corcoran, of the New York 6gih, was a prisoner. A few of the abandoned guns were brought off the next night ; but most of the arms, ammunition, and supplies left on the field and in the roads were secured by the Confederates, who remained in possession of the battle-field for weeks. General Joseph E. Johnston, in many respects the best witness that has spoken on the Southern side, says : " All the military conditions, we knew, forbade an attempt on Washington. The Confed erate army was more disorganized by victory than that of the United States by defeat. The South ern volunteers believed that the objects of the war had been accomplished by their victory, and that they had achieved all their country required of them. Many, therefore, in ignorance of their military obligations, left the army not to return. . . . Exaggerated ideas of the victory, prevail ing among our troops, cost us more than the Fed eral army lost by defeat." In writing this passage, General Johnston probably took no account of the effect produced in Europe. The early narratives sent there, in which the panic of retreat was made 1861.] THE EFFECT IN EUROPE. 69 the principal figure, gave the impression that the result arose from constitutional cowardice in Northern men and invincible courage in Southern ers. They also gave the impression that the Confederates were altogether superior in general ship ; and the effect was deep and long-endur ing. The most notable of these was by a corre spondent of the London " Times," who had appar ently been sent across the Atlantic for the express purpose of writing down the Republic, writing up the South, and enlisting the sympathies of Eng lishmen for the rebellion. In his second letter from Charleston (April 3Oth, 1861) he had written that men of all classes in South Carolina declared to him, " If we could only get one of the royal race of England to rule over us, we should be con tent." "The New Englander must have something to persecute ; and as he has hunted down all his Indians, burnt all his witches, persecuted all his opponents to the death, he invented abolitionism as the sole resource left to him for the gratification of his favorite passion. Next to this motive prin ciple is his desire to make money dishonestly, trickily, meanly, and shabbily. He has acted on it in all his relations with the South, and has cheated and plundered her in all his dealings, by villainous tariffs." Many an Englishman, counting his worthless Confederate bonds, and trying to hope that he will yet receive something for them, knows he would never have made that investment but for such writing as this and the accounts from the same pen of the battle of Bull Run. 7O THE EFFECT NORTH AND SOUTH. L1861. At the North, the spectacle of McDowell s army streaming back in disorder to the National capital produced first a shock of surprise^ then a sense of disgrace, and then a calm determination to begin the war over again. It was well expressed by a Methodist minister at a camp-meeting in Illinois, the Rev. Henry Cox. The news of the battle came while he was preaching, and he closed his sermon with the words : " Brethren, we d better adjourn this camp-meeting, and go home and drill." The effect of this over-discussed battle upon the more confident and boastful of the Southerners was perhaps fairly expressed by an editorial utter ance of one of their journals, the Louisville, Ky., " Courier" : " As our Norman kinsmen in England, always a minority, have ruled their Saxon country men in political vassalage up to the present day, so have we, the slave oligarchs, governed the Yan kees till within a twelve-month. We framed the Constitution, for seventy years molded the policy of the government, and placed our own men, or Northern men with Southern principles, in power. On the 6th of November, 1860, the Puritans eman cipated themselves, and are now in violent insur rection against their former owners. This insane holiday freak will not last long, however ; for, dastards in fight and incapable of self-government, they will inevitably again fall under the control of a superior race. A few more Bull Run thrashings will bring them once more under the yoke, as docile as the most loyal of our Ethiopian chattels." CHAPTER V. BORDER STATES AND FOREIGN RELATIONS. THE disposition of the border slave States was one of the most difficult problems with which the Gov ernment had to deal. When the President issued his call for seventy-five thousand men, the Gover nors of Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee, as well as those of North Carolina and Virginia, re turned positive refusals. The Governor of Mis souri answered, " It is illegal, unconstitutional, rev olutionary, inhuman, diabolical, and cannot be complied with." The Governor of Kentucky said : " Kentucky will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern States." The Governor of Tennessee : " Tennessee will not furnish a single man for coercion, but fifty thou sand, if necessary, for the defence of our rights and those of our brethren." The Governor of North Carolina : " I can be no party to this wicked viola tion of the laws of the country, and to this war upon the liberties of a free people. You can get no troops from North Carolina." The Governor of Virginia : "The militia of Virginia will not be furnished to the powers at Washington for any such use or purpose as they have in view." Every one of these Governors was a secessionist, with a strong and aggressive party at his back ; and yet in each 72 THE STRUGGLE FOR MISSOURI. [1861. of these States the secessionists were in a minority. It was a serious matter to increase the hostility that beset the National arms on what in another war would have been called neutral ground, and it was also a serious matter to leave the Union ele ment in the Northernmost slave States without a powerful support and protection. The problem was worked out differently in each of the States. At the winter session of the Missouri Legisla ture an act had been passed that placed the city of St. Louis under the control of Police Commission ers to be appointed by the Governor, Claiborne F. Jackson. Four of his appointees were secession ists, and three of these were leaders of bodies of " minute-men," half-secret armed organizations. The Mayor of the city, who was also one of the Commissioners, was known as a " conditional Union man." Other acts showed plainly the bent of the Legislature. One made it treason to speak agaist the authority of the Governor, and gave him enlarged powers, while another appropriated $3,000,000 for military purposes, taking the entire school fund for the year, and the accumulations that were to have paid the July interest on the public debt. A State convention called to consider the ques tion of secession met in February, and proved to be overwhelmingly in favor of Missouri s remaining in the Union, though it also expressed a general sympathy with slavery, assumed that the South had wrongs, deprecated the employment of military force on either side, and repeated the suggestion 1861.] THE STRUGGLE FOR MISSOURI. 73 that had been made many times in other quarters for a national convention to amend the Constitu tion so as to satisfy everybody. The State con vention made its report in March, and adjourned till December. This proceeding appeared to be a great disap pointment to Governor Jackson ; but he failed to take from it any hint to give up his purpose of get ting the State out of the Union. On the contrary, he proceeded to try what he could do with the powers at his command. He called an extra ses sion of the Legislature, to convene May 2cl, for the purpose of " adopting measures to place the State in a proper attitude of defence/ and he called out the militia on the 3d of May, to go into en campment for six days. There was a large store of arms (more than twenty thousand stand) in the St. Louis arsenal ; but while he was devising a method and a pretext for seizing them, the greater part of them were suddenly removed, by order from Washington, to Springfield, Illinois. The captain that had them in charge took them on a steamer to Alton, and there called the citizens together by ringing a fire-alarm, told them what he had, and asked their assistance in transferring the cargo to a train for Springfield, as he expected pursuit by a force of secessionists. The many hands that make light work were not wanting, and the train very soon rolled away with its precious freight. The Governor applied to the Confeder ate Government for assistance, and a quantity of arms and ammunition, including several field-guns, 74 CAPTURE OF CAMP JACKSON. [1861. was sent to him in boxes marked " marble." He also ordered a General of the State militia to estab lish a camp of instruction near the city, and gath ered there such volunteer companies as were organ ized and armed. General Scott had anticipated all this by send ing reinforcements to the little company that held the arsenal, and with them Captain Nathaniel Lyon, of the regular army, a man that lacked no element of skill, courage, or patriotism necessary for the crisis. The force was also increased by several regiments of loyal home guards, organized mainly by the exertions of Francis P. Blair, Jr., and mustered into the service of the United States. When the character and purpose of the force that was being concentrated by Jackson became suffi ciently evident -from the fact that the streets in the camp were named for prominent Confederate leaders, and other indications Lyon determined upon prompt and decisive action. This was the more important since the United States arsenal at Liberty had been robbed, and secession troops were being drilled at St. Joseph. With a battalion of regulars and six regiments of the home guard, he marched out in the afternoon of May loth, sur rounded the camp, and trained six pieces of artillery on it, and then demanded an immediate surrender, with no terms but a promise of proper treatment as prisoners of war. The astonished commander, a recreant West-Pointer, surrendered promptly ; and he and his brigade were disarmed and taken into the city. All the " marble " that had come up 1861.] LYON IN COM from Baton Rouge and been hauled out to the camp only two days before was captured and re moved to the arsenal, becoming once more the property of the United States. The outward march had attracted attention, crowds had gathered on the route, and when Lyon s command were returning with their prisoners they had to pass through a throng of people, among whom were not a few that were striving to create a riot. The outbreak came at length ; stones w r ere thrown at the troops and pistol-shots fired into the ranks, when one regiment levelled their muskets and poured a volley or two into the crowd. Three or four soldiers and about twenty citizens were killed in this beginning of the conflict at the West. William T. Sherman (the now famous General), walking out with his little son that afternoon, found himself for the first time under fire, and lay down in a gully while the bullets cut the twigs of the trees above him. Two days later, General William S. Harney arrived in St. Louis and assumed command of the United States forces. He was a veteran of long experience ; but ex-Governor Sterling Price, com manding the State forces, entrapped him into a truce that tied his hands, while it left Jackson and Price practically at liberty to pursue their plans for secession. Thereupon the Government removed him, repudiated the truce, and gave the command to Lyon, now made a Brigadier-General. After an interview with Lyon in St. Louis (June u), in which -they found it impossible to deceive or swerve 76 ACTION AT BOONEVILLE. [1861. him, Price and Jackson went to the capital, Jeffer son City, burning railway bridges behind them, and the Governor immediately issued a proclama tion declaring that the State had been invaded by United States forces, and calling out fifty thousand of the militia to repel the invasion. Its closing passage is a fair specimen of many proclamations and appeals that were issued that spring and sum mer : " Your first allegiance is due to your own State, and you are under no obligation whatever to obey the unconstitutional edicts of the military despotism which has introduced itself at Washing ton, nor submit to the infamous and degrading sway of its wicked minions in this State. No brave- hearted Missourian will obey the one or submit to the other. Rise, then, and drive out ignominiously the invaders who have dared to desecrate the soil which your labors have made fruitful and which is consecrated by your homes." The very next day Lyon had an expedition in motion, which reached Jefferson City on. the I5th, took possession of the place, and raised the Na tional flag over the Capitol. At his approach the Governor fled, carrying with him the great seal of the State. Learning that he was with Price, gathering a force at Booneville, fifty miles farther up Missouri River, Lyon at once reembarked the greater part of his command, arrived at Booneville on the morning of the I7th, fought and routed the force there, and captured their guns and supplies. The Governor was now a mere fugitive ; and the State convention, assembling again in July, de- 1861.] ACTION AT CARTHAGE. 77 clared the State offices vacant, nullified the seces sion work of the Legislature, and made Hamilton R. Gamble, a Union man, provisional Governor. Among the citizens whose prompt personal efforts were conspicuous on the Union side were John M. Schofield and Francis P. Blair, Jr. (afterward Gen erals), B. Gratz Brown (afterward candidate for Vice-President), Rev. Galusha Anderson (after ward President of Chicago University), William McPherson, and Clinton B. Fisk (afterward founder of Fisk University at Nashville). The puzzling part of the difficulty in Missouri was now over, for the contest was well defined. Most of the people in the northern part of the State, and most of the population of St. Louis (especially the Germans), were loyal to the Na tional Government ; but the secessionists were strong in its southern part, where Price succeeded in organizing a considerable force, which was joined by men from Arkansas and Texas, under Generals Ben. McCulloch and Gideon J. Pillow. General Franz Sigel was sent against them, and at Carthage (July 5) with twelve hundred men encountered five thousand and inflicted a heavy loss upon them, though he was obliged to retreat. His soldierly qualities in this and other actions gave him one of the sudden reputations that were made in the first year of the war, but obscured by the greater events that followed. His hilarious popularity was expressed in the common -greeting, " You fights mit Sigel ? Den you trinks mit me ! " Lyon, marching from Springfield, Mo., defeated 78 DEATH OF LYOItf. [1861. McCulloch at Dug Spring, and a week later (Au gust 10) attacked him again at Wilson s Creek, though McCulloch had been heavily reenforced. The National troops, outnumbered three to one, were defeated ; and Lyon, who had been twice wounded early in the action, was shot dead while leading a regiment in a desperate charge. Major S. D. Sturgis conducted the retreat, and this ended the campaign. It was found that General Lyon, who was a bachelor, had bequeathed all he pos sessed (about $30,000) to the United States Gov ernment, to be used for war purposes. In the days when personal leadership was more than it can ever be again, while South Carolina was listening to the teachings of John C. Calhoun, which led her to try the experiment of secession, Kentucky was following Henry Clay, who, though a slaveholder, was a strong Unionist. The prac tical effect was seen when the crisis came, after he had been in his grave nine years. Governor Be- riah Magoffm convened the Legislature in Janu ary, 1861, and asked it to organize the militia, buy muskets, and put the State in a condition of armed neutrality ; all of which it refused to do. After the fall of Fort Sumter he called the Legislature together again, evidently hoping that the popular excitement would bring them over to his scheme. But the utmost that could be accomplished was the passage of a resolution by the lower house (May 1 6) declaring that Kentucky should occupy " a position of strict neutrality," and approving his refusal to furnish troops for the National army. 1861.] THE STRUGGLE FOR KENTUCKY. 79 Thereupon he issued a proclamation (May 20) in which he " notified and warned all other States, separate or united, especially the United and Con federate States, that I solemnly forbid any move ment upon Kentucky soil." But two days later the Legislature repudiated this interpretation of neutrality, and passed a series of acts intended to prevent any scheme of secession that might be formed. It appropriated $1,000,000 for arms and ammunition, but placed the disbursement of the money and control of the arms in the hands of Commissioners that were all Union men. It amended the militia law so as to require the State Guards to take an oath to support the Constitu tion of the United States, and finally the Senate passed a resolution declaring that " Kentucky will not sever connection with the National Govern ment, nor take up arms with either belligerent party." Lovell H. Rousseau (afterward a gallant General in the National service), speaking in his place in the Senate, said : "The politicians are having their day ; the people will yet have theirs. I have an abiding confidence in the right, and I know that this secession movement is all wrong. There is not a single substantial reason for it ; our Government had never oppressed us with a feath er s weight." The Rev. Robert J. Breckinridge and other prominent citizens took a similar stand, and a new Legislature, chosen in August, presented a Union majority of three to one. As a last resort, Governor Magoffin addressed a letter to President Lincoln, requesting that Kentucky s neutrality be 80 THE STRUGGLE FOR MARYLAND. [1861. respected and the National forces removed from the State. Mr. Lincoln, in refusing his request, courteously reminded him that the force consisted exclusively of Kentuckians, and told him that he had not met any Kentuckian except himself and the messengers that brought his letter who wanted it removed. To strengthen the first argument, Robert Anderson, of Fort Sumter fame, who was a citizen of Kentucky, was made a General and given the command in the State in September. Two months later, a secession convention met at Russellville, in the southern part of the State, organized a provisional government, and sent a full delegation to the Confederate Congress at Richmond, who found no difficulty in being admit ted to seats in that body. Being now firmly sup ported by the new Legislature, the National Gov ernment began to arrest prominent Kentuckians who still advocated secession, whereupon others, including ex-Vice-President John C. Breckinridge, fled southward and entered the service of the Con federacy. Kentucky as a State was saved to the Union, but the line of separation was drawn be tween her citizens, and she contributed to the ranks of both the great contending armies. Like the Governor of Kentucky, Governor Thomas H. Hicks, of Maryland, had at first pro tested against the passage of troops, had dreamed of making the State neutral, and had even gone so far as to suggest to the Administration that the British Minister at Washington be asked to medi- o ate between it and the Confederates. But, unlike 1861.] THE STRUGGLE FOR MARYLAND. 8 1 Governor Magoffin, he ultimately came out in favor of the Union. The Legislature would not adopt an ordinance of secession, nor call a conven tion for that purpose ; but it passed a bill establish ing a board of public safety, giving it extraordinary authority over the military powers of the State, and appointed as such board six secessionists and the Governor. A tremendous pressure was brought to bear upon the State. One of her poets, in a ringing rhyme to a popular air, told her that the despot s heel was on her shore, and predicted that she would speedily " spurn the Northern scum," while the Vice-President of the Confederacy felt so sure of her acquisition that in a speech (April 30) he triumphantly announced that she " had resolved, to a man, to stand by the South." But Reverdy Johnson and other prominent Maryland- ers were quite as bold and active for the National cause; a popular Union convention was held in Baltimore ; General Butler with his troops restored the broken communications and held the important centres ; and under a suspension of the writ of habeas corpiis some of the more violent secession ists were imprisoned. The release of the citizens was demanded by Chief-Justice Taney, of the United States Supreme Court, who declared that the President had no right to suspend the writ, but his demand was refused. In May the Governor called for four regiments of volunteers to fill the requisition of the National Government, but re quested that they might be assigned to duty in the State. So Maryland remained in die Union, 82 SECESSION OF NORTH CAROLINA. [1861. though a considerable number of her citizens en tered the ranks of the Confederate army. In the mountainous regions of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, where few slaves were held, there was a strong Union element. In other portions of those States there were many enthusiastic secessionists. But in each State there was a majority against disunion. North Carolina voted on the question of calling a convention to consider the subject, and by a small majority decided for "no convention." Tennessee, on a similar vote, showed a majority of fifty thousand against calling a convention. After the fall of Sumter Governor John W. Ellis, of North Car olina, seized the branch mint at Charlotte and the arsenal at Fayetteville, and called an extra session of the Legislature. This Legislature authorized him to tender the military resources of the State to the Confederate Government, and called a con vention to meet May 20, which passed an ordi nance of secession by a unanimous vote. The conservative or Union party of Tennessee issued an address on the i8th of April, in which they declared their approval of the Governor s refusal to furnish troops for the National defence, and con demned both secession and coercion, holding that Tennessee should take an independent atti tude. This, with the excitement of the time, was enough for the Legislature. In secret session it authorized Governor Isham G. Harris, who was a strong secessionist, to enter into a military league with the Confederate Government, which he 1861.] THE STRUGGLE FOR TENNESSEE. 83 immediately did. It also passed an ordinance of secession, to be submitted to a popular vote on the 8th of June. Before that day came, the State was in the possession of Confederate soldiers, and a majority of over fifty thousand was obtained for secession. East Tennessee had voted heavily against the ordinance ; and a convention held at Greenville, June 17, wherein thirty-one of the eastern counties were represented, declared, for certain plainly specified reasons, that it " did not regard the result of the election as expressive of the will of a majority of the freemen of Tennes see." Later, the people of those counties asked to be separated peaceably from the rest of the State and allowed to remain in the Union ; but the Confederate authorities did not recognize the principle of secession from secession, and the people of that region were subjected to a bloody and relentless persecution, before which many of them fled from their homes. The most prominent of the Unionists were Andrew Johnson and the Rev. William G. Brownlow. That portion of the Old Dominion which lay west of the Alleghany Mountains held in 1860 but one twelfth as many slaves in proportion to its white population as the remainder of the State. And when Virginia passed her ordinance of secession, all but nine of the fifty-five votes against it were cast by delegates from the mountainous western counties. The people of these counties, having little interest in slavery and its products, and great interests in iron, coal, and lumber, the 84 ACTIONS IN WESTERN VIRGINIA. [1861. market for which was in the free States, while their streams flowed into the Ohio, naturally objected to being dragged into the Confederacy. Like the people of East Tennessee, they wanted to secede from secession, and one of their dele gates actually proposed it in the convention. In less than a month (May 13) after the passage of the ordinance, a Union convention was held at Wheeling, in which twenty-five of the western counties were represented ; and ten days later, when the election was held, these people voted against seceding. The State authorities sent recruiting officers over the mountains, but they had little success. Some forces were gathered under the direction of General Robert E. Lee and under the immediate command of Colonel Porterfield, who began burning the bridges on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Meanwhile Captain George B. McClellan had been made a General and placed in command of Ohio troops. With four regiments he crossed the Ohio on the 26th and went in pur suit of the enemy. His movement at first \vas retarded by the burned bridges ; but these were repaired, large reinforcements were brought over, and in a series of small but brilliant engagements at Philippi, at Buckhannon, at Rich Mountain, and at Carrick s Ford he completely routed the Confederates. Delegates from the counties west of the Alle- ghantes met at Wheeling (June 1 1), pronounced the acts of the Richmond Convention null and void, declared all the State offices vacant, and re- 1861.] FORMATION OF WEST VIRGINIA. 85 organized the government, with Francis H. Pier- pont as Governor. A legislature, consisting of members that had been chosen on the 23d of May, met at Wheeling on the ist of July, and on the 9th it elected two United States Senators. The new State of Kanawha was formally declared cre ated in August. Its Constitution was ratified by the people in May, 1862, and in December of that year it was admitted into the Union. But mean while its original and appropriate name had been exchanged for that of West Virginia. France and England had made all haste to rec ognize the Confederates as belligerents, but had not granted them recognition as an established na tion, and never did. There was a constant fear, however, that they would, and the Confederate Government did its utmost to bring about such recognition. Messrs. James M. Mason, of Vir ginia, and John Slidell, of Louisiana, were sent out by that Government, as duly accredited minis ters to London and Paris, in 1861. They escaped the blockaders at Charleston, reached Havana, and there embarked on the British mail steamer " Trent " for Europe. But Captain Charles Wilkes (who had commanded the celebrated exploring expedition in Antarctic waters twenty years be fore) was on the watch for them with the United States steam frigate "San Jacinto," overhauled the "Trent" in the Bahama Channel (November 8), took off the Confederate commissioners, and al lowed the steamer to proceed on her way. He carried his prisoners to Boston, and they were in- 86 THE TRENT AFFAIR. [1861. carcerated in Fort Warren. This action, for which Wilkes received the thanks of Congress, was de nounced as an outrage on British neutrality. The entire British public bristled up as one lion, and their Government demanded an apology and the liberation of the prisoners. The American public was unable to see any way out of the dilemma, and was considering whether it would choose humilia tion or a foreign war, when our Secretary of State, William H. Seward, solved the problem in a mas terly manner. In his formal reply he discussed the whole question with great ability, showing that such detention of a vessel was justified by the laws of war, and there were innumerable British precedents for it ; that Captain Wilkes conducted the search in a proper manner ; that the commis sioners were contraband of war ; and that the com mander of the " Trent " knew they were contraband of war when he took them as passengers. But as Wilkes had failed to complete the transaction in a legal manner by bringing the " Trent " into port for adjudication in a prize court, it must be repu diated. In other words, by his consideration for the interests and convenience of innocent persons, he had lost his prize. In summing up, Mr. Seward said : " If I declare this case in favor of my own Government, I must disavow its most cherished principles, and reverse and forever abandon its most essential policy. . . . We are asked to do to the British nation just what we have always insisted all nations ought to do to us." The com missioners were released, and sailed for England [1862. HOSTILITY IN ENGLAND. 87 in January ; but the purpose of their mission had been practically thwarted. This was a remarkable instance of eating one s cake and keeping it at the same time. But though danger of intervention was thus for the time averted, and the relations between the British Government and our own remained nomi nally friendly, so far as moral influence and bitter ness of feeling could go the Republic had no more determined enemies in the cotton States than in the heart of England. The aristocratic classes rejoiced at anything that threatened to destroy democratic government or make its stabil ity doubtful. They confidently expected to see our country fall into a state of anarchy like that experienced so often by the Spanish-American republics, and were willing to do everything they safely could to bring it about. The foremost En glish journals had been predicting such a disaster ever since the beginning of the century, had an nounced it as in progress when a British force burned Washington in 1814, and now were surer of it than ever. Almost our only friends of the London press were the daily " News " and weekly " Spectator." The commercial classes, in a country that had fought so many commercial wars, were of course delighted at the crippling of a commercial rival whom they had so long hated and feared, no matter what it might cost in the shedding of blood and the destruction of social order. Among the working classes, though they suffered heavily when the supply of cotton was diminished, we had many 88 ATTITUDE OF LOUIS NAPOLEON. [1861. firm and devoted friends, who saw and felt, how ever imperfectly, that the cause of free labor was their own cause, no matter on which side of the Atlantic the battle-field might lie. To those who had for years endured the taunts of Englishmen who pointed to American slavery and its tolerance in the American Constitution, while they boasted that no slave could breathe on British soil, it was a strange sight, when our country was at war over the question, to see almost everything that had power and influence in En gland arrayed on the side of the slaveholders. A few famous Englishmen notably John Bright and Goldwin Smith were true to the cause of liberty, and did much to instruct the laboring classes as to the real nature and significance of the conflict. Henry Ward Beecher, then at the height of his powers, went to England and addressed large audiences, enlightening them as to the real na ture of American affairs, concerning which most of them were grossly ignorant, and produced an effect that was probably never surpassed by any orator. The Canadians, with the usual narrow ness of provincials, blind to their own ultimate interests, were in the main more bitterly hostile than the mother country. Louis Napoleon, then the despotic ruler of France, was unfriendly to the United States, and did his utmost to persuade the English Govern ment to unite with him in a scheme of intervention that would probably have secured the division of the country. How far his plans went beyond that 1864.] * FRIENDSHIP OF RUSSIA. 89 result, can only be conjectured ; but while the war was still in progress (1864) he threw a French force into Mexico and established there an ephem eral empire with an Austrian Archduke at its head. That the possession of Mexico alone was not his object, is suggested by the fact that when the rebellion was subdued and the secession cause extinct, he withdrew his troops from Mexico and left the Archduke to the fate of other filibusters. The Russian Government was friendly to the United States throughout the struggle. The Im perial manifesto for the abolition of serfdom in Russia was issued n March 3, 1861, the day before President Lincoln was inaugurated, and this per haps created a special bond of sympathy. CHAPTER VI. THE FIRST UNION VICTORIES. WHEN the war began, the greater part of the small navy of the United States was in distant waters off the coast of Africa, in the Mediterranean, on the Asiatic station and for some of the ships to receive the news and return, many months were required. Twelve vessels were at home four in Northern and eight in Southern ports. The navy, like the army, lost many Southern officers by resig nation or dismissal. About three hundred who had been educated for its service went over to the Confederacy ; but none of them took with them the vessels they had commanded. The Govern ment bought all sorts of merchant craft, mounting guns on some and fitting up others as transports, and had gunboats built on ninety-day contracts. It was a most miscellaneous fleet, whose principal strength consisted in the weakness of its adversary. The first purpose was to complete the blockade of Southern ports. Throughout the war this was never made so perfect that no vessels could pass through ; but it was gradually rendered more and more effective, till running it became exceedingly dangerous. Large numbers of blockade-runners were captured or driven ashore and wrecked. The profit on a single cargo that passed either way in 1SC1.J ENGLISH EQUIPMENTS. 9 1 safety was very great, and special vessels for blockade-running were built in England. The Confederate Government enacted a law providing that a certain portion of every cargo thus brought into its ports must consist of arms or ammunition, otherwise vessel and all would be confiscated. This insured a constant supply ; and though the Southern soldier was often barefoot and ragged, and sometimes hungry, he never lacked for the most improved weapons that English arsenals could produce, nor was ever defeated for want of powder. A very large part of the bullets that destroyed the lives and limbs of National troops were cast in England and brought over the sea in blockade-runners. Clothing and equipments, too, for the Confederate armies came from the same source. Often when a burial party went out, after a battle, as they turned over one after another of the enemy s slain and saw the name of a Birming ham manufacturer stamped upon his buttons, it seemed that they must have been fighting a foreign foe. To pay for these things, the Confederates sent out cotton, tobacco, rice, and the naval stores produced by North Carolina forests. It was ob vious from the first that any movement that would shut off a part of this trade, or render it more hazardous, would strike a blow at the insurrection. Furthermore, Confederate privateers were already out, and before the first expedition sailed sixteen captured merchantmen had been taken into the ports of North Carolina. Vessels could enter Pamlico or Albemarle Sound 92 THE HATTERAS EXPEDITION. [1861. by any one of several inlets, and then make the port of Newbern, Washington, or Plymouth ; and the first of several naval and military expeditions was fitted out for the purpose of closing the most useful of these openings, Hatteras Inlet, thirteen miles south of Cape Hatteras. Two forts had been erected on the point at the northern side of this inlet, and the project was to capture them ; but, so new was everybody to the art of war, it was not at first intended to garrison and hold them. The expedition, which originated with the Navy Department, was fitted out in Hampton Roads, and was commanded by Flag-officer Silas H. Stringham. It numbered ten vessels, all told, carrying one hundred and fifty-eight guns. Two were transport steamers, having on board about nine hundred troops commanded by General Benjamin F. Butler, and two were schooners carrying iron surf-boats. It sailed on the 26th of August, 1 86 1, with sealed orders, arrived at its destination before sunset, and anchored off the bar. Early the next morning an attempt was made to land the troops through the surf, at a point three miles from the inlet, whence they might at tack the forts in the rear. But it was not very suc cessful. The heavy surf dashed the clumsy iron boats upon the shore, drenching the men, wetting the powder, and endangering everything. About one third of the troops, however, were landed, with two field-guns, and remained there under protection of the fire from the ships. The forts were garrisoned by about six hundred men, 1861.] THE HATTERAS EXPEDITION. 93 and mounted twenty-five guns ; but they were not very strong, and their bomb-proofs were not con structed properly. Stringham s flag-ship, the frigate " Minnesota," led off in the attack, followed by the " Susquehanna" and " Wabash," and the guns of the smaller fort were soon silenced. The frigates were at such a distance that they could drop shells into it with their pivot-guns, while the shot from the fort could not reach them. After ward the larger work, Fort Hatteras, was bom barded, but with -no practical effect, though the firing was kept up till sunset. But meanwhile the troops that had landed through the surf had taken possession of the smaller work, Fort Clark. They also threw up a small earthwork, and with their field-pieces fired upon some Confederate vessels that were in the Sound. The next morn ing (the 28th) the frigates anchored within reach of Fort Hatteras, and began a deliberate and steady bombardment. As before, the shot from the fort fell short of the ships, and neither could that from the smooth-bore broadside guns reach the fort ; but the pivot-guns and the rifled pieces of one vessel wrought great havoc. One plunging shell went down through a ventilator and narrowly missed exploding the magazine. At the end of three hours the fort surrendered. Its defenders, who were commanded by Samuel Barren, formerly of the United States navy, had suffered a loss of about fifty in killed and wounded. They had been reenforced in the night, but a steamer was seen taking away a load of troops just before the sur- 94 THE PORT ROYAL EXPEDITION. [1861. render. The seven hundred prisoners were sent on board the flag-ship and carried to New York. The victors had not lost a man. There had been some intention of destroying the forts and blocking up the channels of the inlet ; but it was determined instead to leave a garrison and establish a coaling station for the blockading fleet. Two of the frigates remained in the Sound, and within a fort night half a dozen blockade-runners entered the inlet and were captured. A much larger expedition sailed from Hampton Roads on one of the last days of October. It con sisted of more than fifty vessels frigates, gunboats, transports, tugs, steam ferry-boats, and schooners carrying twenty-two thousand men. The fleet was commanded by Flag-officer Samuel F. Du Pont, the troops by General Thomas W. Sherman (who must not be confounded with General William T. Sherman, famous for his march to the sea). The expedition had been two months in preparation, and though it sailed with sealed orders and every effort had been made to keep its destination secret, the information leaked out as usual, and while it was on its way the Confederate Secretary of War telegraphed to the Governor of South Carolina and the commander at Hilton Head where to ex pect it. Bull s Bay, St. Helena, Port Royal, and Fernandina had all been discussed, and the final choice fell upon Port Royal. A tremendous gale was encountered on the pas sage, the fleet was scattered, one transport was completely wrecked, with a loss of seven lives, one 1861.] BOMBARDMENT OF THE FORTS. 95 gunboat was obliged to throw her broadside bat tery overboard, a transport threw over her cargo, and one storeship was lost. When the storm was over, only a single gunboat was in sight from the flag-ship. But the fleet slowly came together again, and was joined by some of the frigates that were blockading Charleston harbor, these being relieved by others that had come down for the pur pose. They arrived off the entrance to Port Royal harbor on the 5th and 6th of November. This entrance was protected by two earthworks Fort Walker on Hilton Head (the south side), and Fort Beauregard on St. Helena island (the north side). These forts were about two and a half miles apart, and were garrisoned by South Carolina troops, commanded by Generals Drayton and Ripley. A brother of General Drayton commanded a vessel in the attacking fleet. On the morning of the 7th the order of battle was formed. The bar was ten miles out from the entrance, and careful soundings had been made by two gunboats, under the fire of three Confederate vessels that ran out from the harbor. The main column consisted of ten vessels, led by the flag ship " Wabash," and was ordered to attack Fort Walker. Another column of four vessels was or dered to fire upon Fort Beauregard, pass in, and attack the Confederate craft. All were underway soon after breakfast, and were favored by a tran quil sea. The main column, a ship s length apart, steamed in steadily at the rate of six miles an hour, passing Fort Walker at a distance of eight hundred 96 CAPTURE OF HILTON HEAD. [1861. yards, and delivering a fire of shells and rifled shot. Every gun in the fort that could be brought to bear was worked as rapidly as possible, in a gallant defence. After the line had passed the fort, it turned and steamed out again, passing this time within six hundred yards, and delivering fire from the guns on the other side of the vessels. Three times they thus went around in a long ellipse, each time keeping the fort under fire for about twenty minutes. Then the " Bienville," which had the heaviest guns, and was commanded by Captain Steadman, a South Carolinian, sailed in closer yet and delivered a fire that dismounted several guns and wrought dreadful havoc. Meanwhile two or three gunboats had taken a position from which they enfiladed the work, and the flag-ship came to a stand at short range and pounded away steadily. This was more than anything at that stage of the war could endure, and from the mast-head the troops were seen streaming out of the fort and across Hilton Head Island as if in panic. A flag of truce was sent on shore, but there was no one to receive it, and soon after two o clock the National colors were floating over the fort. The flanking column of vessels had attacked Fort Beauregard ; and when the commander of that work saw that Fort Walker was abandoned by its defenders, he also retreated with his force. The Confederate vessels escaped by running up a shallow inlet. The loss in the fleet was eight men killed and twenty- three wounded ; that of the Confederates, as re ported by their commander, was eleven killed and 1862.] ACTION AT PAINTVILLE. 97 fifty-two wounded or missing. General Sherman said, " Many bodies were buried in the fort, and twenty or thirty were found half a mile distant." The road across Hilton Head Island to a wharf whence the retreating troops were taken to the main land was strewn with arms and accoutrements, and two howitzers were abandoned. The surgeon of the fort had been killed by a shell and buried by a falling parapet. The troops were debarked and took possession of both forts, repaired and strength ened the works, formed an intrenched camp, and thus gave the Government a permanent foothold on the soil of South Carolina. The year 1862 opened with indications of lively and decisive work west of the mountains, and many movements were made that cannot be de tailed here. One of the most gallant was in the region of the Big Sandy River in eastern Kentucky, where Humphrey Marshall had gathered a Con federate force of about two thousand five hundred (mostly Kentuckians) at Paintville. Colonel James A. Garfield (afterward President), in com mand of one thousand eight hundred infantry and three hundred cavalry, drove him out of Paintville, pursued him beyond Prestonburg, came up with him at noon of January loth, and fought him till night, when Marshall retreated under cover of the darkness, leaving his dead on the field. In the autumn of 1861 a Confederate force, under General Felix K. Zollicoffer, had been pushed forward by way of Knoxville to eastern Kentucky, but was defeated at Camp Wildcat, 98 BATTLE OF MILL SPRINGS. [1862. October 2ist, by seven thousand men under Gene ral Schoepff, and fell back to Mill Springs at the head of steamboat navigation on the Cumberland. Zollicoffer soon crossed to the northern bank and fortified a position at Beech Grove, in the angle between the river and Fishing Creek. The Na tional forces in the vicinity were commanded by General George H. Thomas, who watched Zollicof fer so closely that when the latter was told by his superiors he should not have crossed the river he could only answer that it was now too late to re turn. As Zollicoffer was only a journalist, with more zeal than military knowledge, General George B. Crittenden was sent to supersede him. Thomas was slowly advancing through rainy weather, over heavy roads, to drive this force out of the State, and had reached Logan s cross-roads, within ten miles of the Confederate camp, when Crittenden determined to move out and attack him. The battle began early on the morning of January 19, 1862. Thomas was on the alert, and when his outposts were driven in he rapidly brought up one detachment after another and threw them into line. The attack was directed mainly against the Na tional left, where the fighting was obstinate and bloody, much of the firing being at very close quarters. Here Zollicoffer, thinking the Fourth Kentucky was a Confederate regiment firing upon its friends, rode forward to correct the supposed mistake, and was shot dead by its Colonel, Speed S. Fry. When, at length, the right of the Con federate line had been pressed back and broken, a 1862.] FORTS HENRY AND DONELSON. 99 steady fire having been kept up on the centre, the Ninth Ohio Regiment made a bayonet charge on its left flank, and the whole line was broken and routed. The Confederates took refuge in their intrenchments, where Thomas swiftly pursued and closely invested them, expecting to capture them all the next morning. But in the night they managed to cross the river, leaving behind their wounded, twelve guns, all their horses, mules, and wagons, and a large amount of stores. In the further retreat two of the Confederate regiments disbanded and scattered to their homes, while a large number from other regiments deserted in dividually. The National loss in killed and wound ed was 246 ; that of the Confederates, 471. Thomas received the thanks of the President for his victory. This action is variously called the battle of Fishing Creek and the battle of Mill Springs. When General Henry W. Halleck was placed in command of the Department of Missouri, in November, 1861, he divided it into districts, giv ing to General Ulysses S. Grant the District of Cairo, which included Southern Illinois, the coun ties of Missouri south of Cape Girardeau, and all of Kentucky that lies west of Cumberland River. Where the Tennessee and the Cumberland enter Kentucky from the south they are about ten miles apart, and here the Confederates had erected two considerable works to command the rivers Fort Henry on the east bank of the Tennessee, and Fort Donelson on the west bank of the Cumberland. They had also fortified the high bluffs at Colum- 100 RIVER GUNBOATS. [1862. DUS, on the Mis sissippi, twenty miles below the mouth of the Ohio, and Bowl ing Green, on the Big Barren. The general pur pose was to es tablish a milita ry frontier with a strong line of defence from the Alleghany Mountains t o the Mississippi. A fleet of iron clad gunboats had been pre pared by the United States Government for service on the Western rivers, some of them being built new, while others were altered freight-boats. After a recon- noissance in force by General [1862. CAPTURE OF FORT HENRY. IOI C. F. Smith, General Grant asked Halleck s permis sion to capture Fort Henry, and after considerable delay received it on the 3Oth of January. That work was garrisoned by three thousand men under General Lloyd Tilghman. Its position was strong, the ravines through which little tributaries reached the river being filled with slashed timber and rifle-pits, and swampy ground rendering approach from the land side difficult But the work itself was rather poorly built, bags of sand being largely used instead of a solid earth embankment. On the morning of February 2d the fleet of four iron-clad and two wooden gunboats, com manded by Flag-officer Andrew H. Foote, left Cairo, steamed up the Ohio to Paducah, thence up the Tennessee, and by daylight the next morning were within sight of the fort. Grant s land force was to co-operate by an attack in the rear, but it did not arrive in time. The gunboats moved up to within six hundred yards, and opened a bom bardment, to which the guns of the fort immedi ately responded, and the firing was kept up for an hour. The " Essex" received a shot in her boiler by which many men were wounded or scalded, including Captain William D. Porter, son of Commodore David Porter, who had won fame in another " Essex" in the war of 1812-15. Other wise the fleet, though struck many times, was not seriously injured. On the other hand, the fire from the gunboats knocked the sand-bags about, dismounted seven guns, brought down the flag staff, and, together with the bursting of a rifled 102 INVESTMENT OF FORT DONELSON. gun in the fort, created a panic. All but about one hundred of the garrison fled, leaving General Tilghman with the sick and a single company of artillerists, and after serving a gun with his own hands as long as possible, he ran up a white flag and surrendered. The regret of the victors at the escape of the garrison was more than counter balanced by their gratification at the behavior of the gunboats in their first serious trial. After the surrender, three of the gunboats proceeded up the Tennessee River to the head of navigation, de stroyed the railroad bridge, and captured a large amount of stores. In consequence of the battle of Mill Springs and the fall of Fort Henry, the Confederate Gen eral Simon B. Buckner, who was at Bowling Green with about ten thousand men, abandoned that place and joined his forces to those in Fort Donel- son. General Ormsby M. Mitchel, by a forced march, promptly took possession of Bowling Green with National troops ; and General Grant immedi ately made dispositions for the capture of Fort Donelson. This work, situated at a bend of the river, was on high ground, enclosed about a hun dred acres, and had also a strong water-battery on the lower river front. The land-side was protected by slashed timber and rifle-pits, as well as by the naturally broken ground. The gunboats went down the Tennessee, and up the Cumberland, and with them a portion of Grant s force to be used in attacking the water front. The fort contained about twenty thousand men, commanded by Gen- 1862.] SIEGE OF FORT DONELSON. 103 eral John B. Floyd, who had been President Bu chanan s Secretary of War. Grant s main force left the neighborhood of Fort Henry on the morn ing of February i2th, a portion marching straight on Fort Donelson, while the remainder made a slight detour to the south, to come up on the right, strike the Confederate left, and prevent escape in that direction. They chose positions around the fort unmolested that afternoon, and the next morning the fighting began. After an artillery duel, an attempt was made to storm the works near the centre of the line, but it was a failure and entailed severe loss. The gunboats and the troops with them had not yet come up, and the attack was suspended for the day. A cold storm set in, with sleet and snow, and the assailants spent the night without shelter and with scant rations, while a large part of the defenders, being in the trenches, were equally exposed. Next morning the fleet appeared, landed the troops and supplies three miles below the fort, and then moved up to attack the batteries. These were not so easily disposed of as Fort Henry had been. It was a desperate fight. The plunging shot from the fort struck the gunboats in their most vulnerable part, and made ugly wounds. But they stood to the work manfully, and had silenced one battery when the steering apparatus of two of the gunboats was shot away, while a gun on another had burst and the flag-officer was wounded. The flag-ship had been struck fifty-nine times, and the others from twenty to forty, when they all IO4 SIEGE OF FORT DONELSON. [1862. dropped down the stream and out of the fight. They had lost fifty-four men killed or wounded. But the naval attack had served to prevent an immediate sortie, and so perhaps ultimately saved the victory for Grant. That night a council of war was held within the fort, and it was determined to attack the besiegers in the morning with the entire force, in hopes either to defeat them completely or at least to turn back their right wing, and thus open a way for retreat toward the south. The fighting began early in the morning. Grant s right wing, all but surprised, was pressed heavily and borne back, the enemy passing through and plundering McCler- nand s camps. Buckner sallied out and attacked on the left with much less vigor and with no suc cess but as a diversion, and the fighting extended all along the line, while the Confederate cavalry were endeavoring to gain the National rear. Grant was imperturbable through it all, and when he saw that the attack had reached its height, he ordered a counter attack and recovery of the lost ground on the right, which was executed by the division of Lew Wallace, while that of C. F. Smith stormed the works on the left. Smith rode beside the color-bearer, and, in the face of a murderous fire that struck down four hundred men, his troops rushed forward over every obstruction, brought up field guns and enfiladed the works, drove out the defenders, and took possession. Another bitterly cold night followed, but Grant improved the time to move up reinforcements to [1862. BUCKNERS SURRENDER. 105 the positions he had gained, while the wounded were looked after as well as circumstances would permit. Within the fort another council of war was held. Floyd declared it would not do for him to fall into the hands of the Government, as he was accused of defrauding it while in office. So he turned over the command to General Gideon J. Pillow. But that General said he also had strong reasons for not wanting to be a prisoner, so he turned it over to General Simon B. Buckner. With as many of their men as could be taken on two small steamers, Floyd and Pillow embarked in the darkness and went up the river to Nashville. The cavalry, under General N. B. Forrest, also escaped, and a considerable number of men from all the commands managed to steal away unob served. In the morning Buckner hung out a white flag, and sent a letter to Grant, proposing that commissioners be appointed to arrange terms of capitulation. Grant s answer not only made him famous, but gave an impetus and direction to the whole war : " No terms other than an uncondi tional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works." Buckner, in a petulant and ill-considered note, at once surrendered the fort and his entire command. This numbered about fourteen thousand men ; and four hundred that were sent to reenforce him were also captured. General Pillow estimated the Confederate loss in killed andwounded at two thousand. No undis puted figures are attainable on either side. Grant 106 SIEGE OF LEXINGTON. [1862. began the siege with about fifteen thousand men, which re-enforcements had increased to twenty- seven thousand at the time of the surrender. His losses were about two thousand, and many of the wounded had perished of cold. The long, arti ficial line of defence, from the mountains to the Mississippi, was now swept away, and the Con federates abandoned Nashville, to which Grant might have advanced immediately, had he not been forbidden by Halleck. When the news was flashed through the loyal States, and bulletins were posted up with enumer ation of prisoners, guns, and small arms captured, salutes were fired, joy-bells were rung, flags were displayed, and people asked one another, " Who is this Grant, and where did he come from ? "- - for they saw that a new genius had suddenly risen upon the earth. Both before and after the defeat and death of General Lyon at Wilson s Creek (August, 1861), there was irregular and predatory warfare in Mis souri. Especially in the western part of the State half-organized bands of men would come into exis tence, sometimes make long marches, and on the approach of a strong enemy disappear, some scat tering to their homes and others making their way to and joining the bodies of regular troops. Among the minor engagements, one at Lexington in September was notable, where twenty-eight hun dred men, commanded by Colonel James A. Mul ligan, gallantly held the place against a Confeder ate force of more than fourteen thousand, com- CONCENTRATION AT PEA RIDGE. 1 07 manded by General Price, until the water-supply was cut off and surrender became inevitable. Price s force then crossed the State, to the south west corner. General John C. Fremont, who com manded the department, believing that Price was near Springfield, gave orders for the concentration at that place of all the National forces in Missouri. But Price was not there, and in November Fr- mont was superseded by General Halleck, some of whose subordinate commanders, especially General John Pope, made rapid movements and did good service in capturing newly recruited regi ments that were on their way to join Price. Late in December General Samuel R. Curtis took command of twelve thousand National troops at Rolla, and advanced against Price, who re treated before him to the northwestern corner of Arkansas, where his force was joined by that of General McCulloch, and together they took up a position in the Boston Mountains. Curtis crossed the line into Arkansas, chose a strong place on Pea Ridge, in the Ozark Mountains, intrenched, and awaited attack. Because of serious disagree ments between Price and McCulloch, General Earl Van Dorn, who ranked them both, was sent to take command of the Confederate force, arriving late in January. There is no authentic statement as to the size of his army. He himself declared that he had but fourteen thousand men, while no other estimate gave fewer than twice that number. Among them was a large body of Cherokee In dians, recruited for the Confederate service by io8 BATTLE OF PEA RIDGE. [1862. Albert Pike, who thirty years before had won reputation as a poet. On March 5, 1862, Van Dorn moved to attack Curtis, who knew of his coming and formed his line on the bluffs along Sugar Creek, fac ing southward. His divisions were commanded b y Generals Franz Sigel and Alexan der S. Asboth and Colonels Jefferson C. Davis and Eu gene A. Carr, and he. had somewhat more than ten thousand men in line, with forty- eight guns. The Confederates, find ing the position too strong in front, made a night march to the west, with the intention of striking the Nationals on the right flank. But Curtis discovered their movement at dawn, promptly faced his line to the right about, and executed a grand left wheel. His army was looking westward toward the approach ing foe, Carr s division being on the right, then Davis, then Asboth, and* Sigel on the left. But they were not fairly in position when the blow fell. BATTLE OF PEA RIDGE. 1 09 Carr was struck most heavily, and, though re-en forced from time to time, was driven back a mile in the course of the day. Davis, opposed to the corps of McCulloch, was more successful ; that General was killed and his troops were driven from the field. In the night Curtis re-formed and strengthened his lines, and in the morning the battle was renewed. This day Sigel executed some brilliant and characteristic manoeuvres. To bring his division into its place on the left wing, he pushed a battery forward, and while it was firing rapidly its infantry supports were brought up to it by a right wheel ; this movement was repeated with another battery and its supports to the left of the first, and again, till the whole division had come into line, pressing back the enemy s right. Sigel was now so far advanced that Curtis s whole line made a curve, enclosing the enemy, and by a heavy concentrated artillery fire the Confederates were soon driven to the shelter of the ravines, and finally put to rout. The National loss in this action killed, wounded, and missing was over thirteen hundred, Carr and Asboth being among the wounded. The Confederate loss is unknown. Generals McCulloch and .Mclntosh were killed, and Generals Price and Slack wounded. Owing to the nature of the ground, any effective pursuit of Van Dorn s broken forces was impracticable. The Confederate Government had made a treaty with some of the tribes in the Indian Territory, and had taken into its service more than four thou sand Indians, whom the stories of Bull Run and IIO INDIANS AND GUERILLAS IN WARFARE. [1862. Wilson s Creek had apparently impressed with the belief that they would have little to do but scalp the wounded and rob the dead. At Pea Ridge these red men exhibited their old-time terror of artillery, and though they took a few scalps they were so disgusted at being asked to face half a hundred well-served cannon that they were almost useless to their allies, and thenceforth they took no further part in the war. It is a notable fact that in the wars on this continent the Indians have only been employed on the losing side. In the French and English struggle for the country, which ended in 1763, the French had the friend ship of many of the tribes, and employed them against the English settlers and soldiers, but the French were conquered nevertheless. In the Revolution and the war of 1812, the British em ployed them to some extent against the Americans, but the Americans were victorious. In the great Rebellion, the Confederate Government attempted to use them as allies in the West and Southwest, and in that very section the Confederate cause was first defeated. All of which appears to show that, though savages may add to the horrors of war, they cannot determine its results for civilized people ; nor can irresponsible guerilla bands, of which there were many at the West, all in the service of the Confederacy. CHAPTER VII. THE CAPTURE OF NEW ORLEANS. THE Crescent City was by far the largest and richest in the Confederacy. In 1860 it had a pop ulation of nearly 170,000, while Richmond, Mobile, and Charleston together had fewer than two thirds as many. In 1 860-61 it shipped $25,000,000 worth of sugar and $92,000,000 worth of cotton, its export trade in these articles being larger than that of any other city in the world. Moreover, its strategic value in that war was greater than that of any other point in the Southern States. The many mouths of the Mississippi, and the frequency of violent gales in the Gulf, rendered it difficult to blockade commerce between that great river and the ocean ; but the possession of this lowest com mercial point on the stream would shut it off effectively, and would go far toward securing pos session all the way to Cairo. This would cut the Confederacy in two, and make it difficult to bring supplies from Texas and Arkansas to feed the armies in Tennessee and Virginia. Moreover, a great city is in itself a serious loss to one belligerent and a capital prize to the other. As soon as it became evident that war was being waged against the United States in dead earnest, and that it was likely to be prolonged, these con- I 12 DEFENCES OF THE CITY. siderations presented themselves to the Govern ment, and a plan was matured for capture of the largest city in the territory of the, insurgents. The defences of New Orleans against an enemy approaching from the sea consisted of two forts, on SAL OUTRE either side of the stream, thirty miles above the head of the five great passes through which it flows to the Gulf. The smaller, Fort St. Philip, on the left bank, was of earth and brick, with flanking bat teries, and all its guns were en barbette on the top, in plain sight. These numbered about forty. Fort Jackson, on the right bank, mounted seventy- five guns, fourteen of which were in bomb-proof casemates. Both of these works had been built by the United States Government. They were 1862.] PLANS FOR BOMBARDMENT. 113 now garrisoned by about one thousand five hun dred Confederate soldiers, commanded by General Johnson K. Duncan. Above them lay a Confed erate fleet of fifteen vessels, including an iron-clad ram and a large floating battery that was covered with railroad iron. Just below the forts a heavy chain was stretched across the river perhaps sug gested by the similar device employed to keep the British from sailing up the Hudson during the Revolutionary war. And it had a similar expe rience; for, at first supported by a row of enormous logs, it was swept away by the next freshet. The logs were then replaced by hulks anchored at intervals across the stream, and the chain ran over their decks, while its ends were fastened to great trees. One thing more completed the de fence, two hundred sharp-shooters patrolled the banks between the forts and the head of the passes, to give warning of an approaching foe and fire at any one that might be seen on the decks. The idea at Washington, probably originated by Commander (now Admiral) David D. Porter, was that the forts could be reduced by raining into them a sufficient shower of enormous shells, to be thrown high into the air, come down almost per pendicularly, and explode on striking. Accord ingly, the first care was to make the mortars and shells, and provide the craft to carry them. Twenty-one mortars were cast, which were mounted on twenty-one schooners. They threw shells thir teen inches in diameter, weighing two hundred and eighty-five pounds ; and when one of them was dis- 114 THE FLEET. [1862. charged, the concussion of the atmosphere was so great that no man could stand close by without being literally deafened. Platforms projecting beyond the decks were therefore provided, for the gunners to step out upon just before firing. The remainder of the fleet, as finally made up, consisted of six sloops of war, sixteen gunboats, and five other vessels, besides transports carrying fifteen thousand troops commanded by General B. F. Butler. The whole number of guns was over two hundred. The flagship " Hartford" was a wooden steam sloop of war, one thousand tons burden, with a length of two hundred and twenty-five feet, and a breadth of forty-four feet. She carried twenty-two nine-inch guns, two twenty-pounder Par- rott guns, and a rifled gun on the forecastle, while her fore and main tops were furnished with howit zers and surrounded with boiler iron to protect the gunners. The " Brooklyn," " Richmond," " Pensa- cola," " Portsmouth," and " Oneida," were similar to the " Hartford." The " Colorado " was larger. The " Mississippi "was a large side-wheel steamer. This was the most powerful expedition that had ever sailed under the American flag, and the man that was chosen to command it, Captain David G. Farragut, was as unknown to the public as Ulys ses S. Grant had been. But he was not unknown to his fellow-officers. Farragut was now sixty years of age, being one of the oldest men that took part in the war, and he had been in the navy half a century. He sailed the Pacific with Commodore Porter years before Grant and Sherman were 1862.] ITS COMMANDER. 115 born, and participated in the bloody encounter of the " Essex " and " Phoebe" in the harbor of Val paraiso. He was especially familiar with the Gulf of Mexico, and had pursued pirates through its waters and hunted and fought them on its islands. There was nothing to be done on ship board that he could not do to perfection, and he could have filled the place of any man in the fleet except perhaps the surgeon s. He was born in Tennessee, and married twice in Virginia ; and if there had been a peaceable separation he would probably have made his home in the South. He was at Norfolk, waiting orders, when Virginia se ceded, but he considered that his first duty was to the National Government, which had educated him for its service and given him rank and employ ment. When he said that "Virginia had been dragooned out of the Union," and that he thought the President was justified in calling for troops after the firing on Sumter, he was told by his angry neighbors that a person holding such senti ments could not live in Norfolk. " Very well, then," said he, " I can live somewhere else." So he made his way North with his little family, and informed the Government that he was ready and anxious for any service that might be assigned to him. This was in April, 1861 ; but it was not till Jan uary, 1862, that he was appointed to command the New Orleans expedition and the Western Gulf blockading squadron. He sailed from Hampton Roads, February 2d, in the flag-ship " Hartford." Il6 THE SAILING-ORDERS. Some sentences from the sailing-orders addressed to him by the Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, are significant and suggestive. " As you have expressed yourself perfectly satisfied with the force given to you, and as many more powerful vessels will be added before you can commence operations, the Department and the country re quire of you success. . . . There are other opera tions of minor importance which will commend themselves to your judgment and skill, but which must not be allowed to interfere with the great ob ject in view, the certain capture of the city of New Orleans. . . . Destroy the armed barriers which these deluded people have raised up against the power of the United States Government, and shoot down those who war against the Union ; but cul tivate with cordiality the first returning reason which is sure to follow your success." In a single respect Farragut was not satisfied with his fleet. He had no faith in the mortars, and would rather have gone without them ; but they had been or dered before he was consulted, and were under the command of his personal friend Porter. Perhaps his distrust of them arose from his knowledge that in 1815 a British fleet had unavailingly thrown a thousand shells into a fort at this very turn of the river where he was now to make the attack. The mortar schooners were to rendezvous first at Key West, and sail then for Ship Island, off Lake Borgne, where the transports were to take the troops and the war-vessels were to meet as soon as possible. 1862.] THE BOMBARDMENT. I I 7 A considerable portion of March was gone be fore enough of the fleet had reached the rendez vous to begin operations. The first difficulty was to get into the river. The Eads jetties did not then exist, and the shifting mud-banks made con stant soundings necessary for large vessels. The mortar schooners went in by Pass a 1 Outre without difficulty ; but to get the " Brooklyn," " Missis sippi," and "Pensacola" over the bar at South west Pass required immense labor and occupied two or three weeks. The " Mississippi " was dragged over with her keel ploughing a furrow a foot deep in the river bottom, and the " Colorado " could not be taken over at all. The masts of the mortar schooners were dressed off with bushes, to render them indistinguishable from the trees on shore near the forts. The schooners were then towed up to a point within range, and moored where the woods hid them, so that they could not be seen from the forts. Lieu tenant F. H. Gerdes, of the Coast Survey, had made a careful map of that part of the river and its banks, and elaborate calculations by which the mortars were to be fired with a computed aim, none of the gunners being able to see what they fired at. They opened fire on April i8th, and kept up the bombardment steadily for six days and nights. Six thousand enormous shells eight hundred tons of iron were thrown high into the air, and fell in and around the forts. For nearly a week the garrison saw one of Porter s aerolites dropping upon them every minute and a half. n8 FARRAGUT S ORDERS. They demolished buildings, they tore up the ground, they cut the levee and let in water, and they killed and mangled men ; but they did not render the forts untenable nor silence their guns. The return tire sank one of the mortar boats and disabled a steamer. Within the forts about fifty men were killed or wounded one for every sixteen tons of iron thrown. While the fleet was awaiting the progress of this bombardment, a new danger appeared. The Con federates had prepared several flat-boats loaded with dry wood smeared with tar and turpentine ; and they now set fire to them one after another, and let them float down the stream. But Farragut sent out boats crews to meet them, who grappled them with hooks and either towed them ashore or conducted them past the fleet and let them float down through the passes and out to sea. In his General Orders Farragut gave so many minute directions that it would seem as if he must have anticipated every possible contingency. Thus: Trim your vessel a few inches by the head [that is, place the contents so that she will sink a little deeper at the bow than at the stern], so that if she touches the bottom she will not swing head down the river." " Have light Jacob-ladders made, to throw over the side for the use of the carpenters in stopping shot-holes, who are to be supplied with pieces of inch-board lined with felt, and ordinary nails." " Have a kedge in the mizzen chains on the quarter, with a hawser bent and leading through in the stern chock, ready for any emergency ; also 1862.] BREAKING THE CHAIN. I 19 grapnels in boats, ready to tow off fire-ships." " Have many tubs of water about the decks, both for extinguishing fire and for drinking." " You will have a spare hawser ready, and when ordered to take in tow your next astern do so, keeping the hawser slack so long as the ship can maintain her own position, having a care not to foul the propel ler." It was this minute knowledge and fore thought, quite as much as his courage and deter mination, that insured his success. In addition to his own suggestions he called upon his men to ex ercise their wits for the occasion, and the crews originated many wise precautions. As the attack was to be in the night, they painted the decks white to enable them to find things. They got out all the spare chains, and hung them up and down the sides of the vessels at the places where they would protect the machinery from the enemy s shot. Farragut s plan was to run by the forts, damaging them as much as possible by a rapid fire as he passed, then destroy or capture the Confederate fleet, and proceed up the river and lay the city under his guns. The time fixed upon for starting was just before moonrise (3:30 o clock) in the morning of April 24th. On the night of the 2oth two gunboats went up the river, and a boat s crew from one of them, under Lieutenant Charles H. B. C aid well, boarded one of the hulks and cut the chain, under a heavy fire, making an opening sufficient for the fleet to pass through. Near midnight of the 23d the Lieutenant went up again in a gunboat, to I2O THE BATTLE WITH THE FORTS. [1862. make sure that the passage was still open ; and this time the enemy not only fired on him but sent down blazing rafts and lighted enormous piles of wood that they had prepared near the ends of the chain. The question of moonrise was no longer of the slightest importance, since it was as light as day for miles around. Two red lanterns dis played at the peak of the flag-ship at two o clock gave the signal for action, and at half-past three the whole fleet was in motion. The sloop " Portsmouth" and Porter s gunboats moved up to a point where they could engage the water-battery of Fort Jackson while the fleet was going by. The first division of eight vessels, com manded by Captain Theodorus Bailey, who was almost as old and as salt as Farragut, passed through the opening in deliberate fashion, unmind ful of a fire from Fort Jackson, ran over to the east bank and poured grape and canister into Fort St. Philip as they sailed by, and ten minutes after ward found themselves engaged at close quarters with eleven Confederate vessels. Bailey s flag ship, the " Cayuga," was attacked by three at once, all trying to board her. He sent an eleven- inch shot through one of them, and she ran aground and burst into a blaze. With the swivel gun on his forecastle he drove off the second ; and he was preparing to board the third when the "Oneida" and "Varuna" came to his assistance. The " Oneida " ran at full speed into one Confed erate vessel, cutting it nearly in two and in an in stant making it a shapeless wreck. She fired into 1862.] THE BATTLE WITH THE FLEET. 121 others, and then went to the assistance of the "Varuna," which had been attacked by two, rammed by both of them, and was now at the shore, where she sank in a few minutes. But she had done effective work before she perished, crippling one enemy so that she surrendered to the " Onei- da," driving another ashore, and exploding a shell in the boiler of a third. The " Pensacola " steamed slowly by the forts, doing great execution with her rifled guns, and in turn sustaining the heaviest loss in the fleet thirty-seven men. In an open field men can dodge a cannon-ball ; but when it comes bouncing in at a port-hole unannounced, it sometimes destroys a whole gun s-crew in the twinkling of an eye. In such an action men are under the highest possible excitement ; every nerve is awake, and every muscle tense ; and when a ball strikes one it completely shatters him, as if he were made of glass, and the shreds are scat tered over the ship. The " Mississippi" sailed up in handsome style, encountered the Confederate ram " Manassas," and received a blow that disabled her machinery. But in turn she riddled the ram and set it on fire, so that it drifted away and blew up. The other vessels of this division, with vari ous fortune, passed the forts and participated in the naval battle. The second division consisted of three sloops of war, the flag-ship leading. The " Hartford" re ceived and returned a heavy fire from the forts, got aground on a shoal while trying to avoid a fire-raft, and a few minutes later had another raft 122 DESTRUCTION OF CONFEDERATE VESSELS. [1863. pushed against her, which set her on fire. A por tion of the crew was detailed to extinguish the flames, and all the while her guns were loaded and fired as steadily as if nothing had happened. Presently she was got afloat again, and proceeded up the river, when suddenly through the smoke, as it was lighted by the flashes of the guns, she saw a steamer filled with men bearing down upon her, probably with the intention of carrying her by boarding. But a ready gun planted a huge shell in the mysterious stranger, which exploded, and she disappeared going to the bottom, for aught that anybody knew. The " Brooklyn," after get ting out of her course and running upon one of the hulks, finally got through, met a large Con federate steamer and gave it a broadside that set it on fire, and then poured such a rain of shot into St. Philip that the bastions were cleared in a min ute, and in the flashes the gunners could be seen running to shelter. A Confederate gunboat that attacked her received eleven shells from her, all of which exploded ; and it then ran ashore in flames. The " Richmond " sailed through steadily and worked her guns regularly, meeting with small loss because she was more completely provided with splinter-nettings than her consorts, as well as be cause she came after them. The third division consisted of six gunboats. Two of them became entangled among the hulks, and failed to pass. Another received a shot in her boiler, which compelled her to drop down stream and out of the fight. The other three went 1862.] CAPTURE OF NEW ORLEANS. 123 through in gallant style, both suffering and inflict ing considerable loss from continuous firing, and burned two steamboats and drove another ashore before they came up with the advance divisions of the fleet. The entire loss had been thirty-seven killed and one hundred and forty-seven wounded. Captain Bailey, in the " Cayuga," still keeping the lead, found a regiment encamped at Quaran tine Station, and compelled its surrender. On the morning of the 25th the Chalmette batteries, three miles below the city, were silenced by a fire from the sloops, and a little later the city itself was at the mercy of their guns. At noon Captain Bailey, accompanied only by Lieutenant George H. Perkins, with a flag of truce, went ashore, passed through an excited crowd that appa rently only needed a word to be turned into a mob, and demanded of the Mayor that the city be surrendered unconditionally and the Louisiana State flag at once hauled down from the staff on the City Hall. Bailey raised the stars and stripes over the Mint ; but the Mayor at first refused to strike his colors, and set out upon an elaborate course of letter-writing, which was of no consequence except as it furnished another instance of the fatuity that grasps at a shadow after the substance is gone. A letter written by Lieutenant Perkins at the time gives a vivid description of this incident, which is interesting in that it exhibits the effect upon the first people of the South who realized the possibility of their being conquered. " Among the 124 CAPTURE OF NEW ORLEANS. crowd were many women and children, and the women were shaking rebel flags and being rude and noisy. As we advanced, the mob followed us in a very excited state. They gave three cheers for Jeff. Davis and Beauregard, and three groans for Lincoln. Then they began to throw things at us, and shout Hang them ! Hang them ! We reached the City Hall in safety, and there found the Mayor and Council. They seemed in a very solemn state of mind ; though I must say, from what they said, they did not impress me as having much mind about anything. The Mayor said he had nothing to do with the city, as it was under martial law, and we were obliged to wait till Gen eral Lovell could arrive. In about half an hour this gentleman appeared. He was very pompous in his manner, and silly and airy in his remarks. He had about fifteen thousand troops under his command, and said he would never surrender, but would withdraw his troops from the city as soon as possible, when the city would fall into the hands of the Mayor, and he could do as he pleased with it. The mob outside had by this time become perfectly infuriated. They kicked at the doors, and swore they would have us out and hang us. Every person about us who had any sense of responsibility was frightened for our safety. As soon as the mob found out that General Lovell was not going to surrender, they swore they would have us out any way; but Pierre Soule and some others went out and made speeches to them, and kept them on one side of the building, while 1862.] CAPTURE OF NEW ORLEANS. 12$ we went out at the other and were driven to the wharf in a close carriage. The Mayor told the Flag-officer this morning that the city was in the hands of the mob, and was at our mercy, and that he might blow it up or do with it as he chose." Farragut appointed an hour for prayer and thanksgiving on the 26th, and while the services were being conducted in the fleet four citizens mounted to the roof of the Mint, tore down the United States flag, and dragged it through the streets. The leader in this exploit was afterward tried for it, by order of General Butler, and hanged, the gallows being a beam run out from one of the windows in the highest story of that building. On the night of the 24th, by order of the author ities in the city, the torch was applied to every thing, except buildings, that could be of use to the victors. Fifteen thousand bales of cotton, heaps of coal and wood, dry-docks, a dozen steamboats and as many cotton-ships, and an unfinished iron clad ram, were all burned. Barrels were rolled out and broken open, the levee ran with molasses, and the poor people carried away the sugar in their baskets and aprons. The Governor called upon the people of the State to burn their cotton, and two hundred and fifty thousand bales were destroyed. Butler had witnessed the passage of the forts, and he now hurried over his troops and invested St. Philip on the land side, while Porter sent some of his mortar-boats to a bay in the rear of Fort Jackson, and in a few days both works were sur- 126 CAPTURE OF NEW ORLEANS. rendered. Farragut sent two hundred and fifty marines into the city to take formal possession and guard the public buildings. Butler arrived there with his forces on the ist of May, and it was then turned over to him, and it remained in Federal possession throughout the war. His ad ministration of the captured city, from May to December, was the subject of much angry contro versy ; but no one denies that he reduced its tur bulence to order, made it cleaner than it had ever been before, and averted a pestilence. Of his famous " woman order," issued when the annoy ances of the women had culminated in their spit ting in the faces of two officers, he was afterward able to write : " From that day, no woman has either insulted or annoyed any live soldier or offi cer, and of a certainty no soldier has insulted any woman." At the first news of this achievement the people of the North hardly appreciated what had been accomplished ; many of their newspapers told them that the fleet " had only run by the forts." But as they gradually learned the particulars, and saw that in fighting obstructions, fire-rafts, forts, rams, and fleet, and conquering them all, Farragut had done what neither Nelson nor any other great admiral had ever done before, they felt that the country had produced a worthy companion for the victor of Donelson, and was equal to all emerg encies, afloat or ashore. CHAPTER VIII. THE MONITOR AND THE MERRIMAC. WHILE the great naval expedition was approach ing New Orleans, the waters of Hampton Roads, from which it had sailed, were the scene of a battle that revolutionized the naval armaments of the world. When at the outbreak of the war the navy-yard at Norfolk, Va., was abandoned, with an attempt at its destruction, the steam-frigate " Merrimac " was set on fire at the wharf. Her upper works were burned, and her hull sank. There had been long hesitation about removing any of the valuable property from this navy-yard, because the action of Virginia was uncertain, and it was hoped that a mark of confidence in her people would tend to keep her in the Union. The day that Sumter was fired upon, peremptory orders had been issued for the removal of the " Merrimac " to Philadelphia, and steam was raised and every prep aration made for her sailing. But the officer in command, for some unexplained reason, would not permit her to move, and two days later she was burned. Within two months the Confederates were at work upon her. They raised the hull, repaired the machinery, and covered it with a steep roof of wrought iron five inches thick, with a lining 128 THE MERRIMAC. of oak seven inches thick. The sides were also plated with iron, and the bow was armed with an iron ram, something like a huge ploughshare. In the water she had the appearance of a house sub merged to the eaves, with an immense gun looking out at each of ten dormer windows. But all this could not be done in a day, especially where skilled workmen were scarce, and it was March, 1862, before she was ready for action. The command was given to Franklin Buchanan, who had resigned a commission in the United States navy. On the 8th of March, accompanied by two gunboats, she went out to raise the blockade of James and Elizabeth rivers by destroying the wooden war-vessels in Hampton Roads. Her first victim was the frigate " Cumberland," which gave her a broadside that would have riddled a wooden vessel through and through. Some of the shot entered her open ports, killed or wounded nineteen men, and broke two of her guns; but all that struck the armor bounded off like peas. Rifled shot from the " Merrimac" raked the "Cumber land," and then she ran into her so that her iron prow cut a great gash in the side. The " Cumber land " at once began to settle ; but the crew stood by their guns, firing broadside after broad side without producing any impression on the iron monster, and receiving in return shells and solid shot that made sickening havoc. The commander, Lieutenant Morris, refused to sur render ; and at the end of forty-five minutes, when the water was at the gun-deck, the crew leaped 1862.] SINKING OF THE CUMBERLAND. I2 9 overboard and with the help of the boats got ashore, while the frigate heeled over and sank to the bottom. Her topmasts projected above the surface, and her flag was flying. While this was going on, three Confederate steamers came down and attacked the " Congress " with such effect that her commander tried to run her ashore. Hav ing finished the "Cumberland," the " Merrimac " came up and opened a deliberate attack on the " Congress," and finally set her on fire, when the crew escaped in their boats. She burned for several hours, and in the night blew up. Of the I3O THE MONITOR. [1862. other National vessels in the Roads, one got aground in water too shallow for the " Merrimac " to approach her, and the others were not drawn into the fight. The next morning the " Merrimac " came down from Norfolk again, to finish up the fleet, but found that a new antagonist had just arrived. When they first saw it, her men called it " a cheese box on a raft." The idea of a revolving tower or turret for heavy guns was at -least half a century old, and had been set forth by several inventors. But it was never put into practical use till the National Government contracted with John Erics son to build an iron-clad with such a turret and a deck rising hardly more than a foot above the water. She was built in about a hundred days, at Brooklyn, N.Y., was named " Monitor," and was placed under the command of Captain John L. Worden. He hurried her down to Hampton Roads, in a stormy and dangerous passage, and on the very morning after his arrival met and fought the " Merrimac." Buchanan had been wounded in the action of the previous day, and Lieutenant Jones now commanded the Confederate iron-clad. The " Monitor " placed herself between the wooden ships and their enemy, and a fight of four hours ensued. The shot of the " Merrimac " glanced off as harmlessly from the " Monitor s" turret and decks as the " Cumberland s " broadsides had from hers. One shell, however, struck the little square pilot-house at an instant when Captain Worden had his eyes at the sight-hole. The explosion tem- DESTRUCTION OF BOTH IRON-CLADS. 131 i porarily blinded him, and the command fell upon Lieutenant Greene. It was not known how much damage, if any, the great guns, fired sometimes when the vessels almost touched each other, had inflicted upon the " Merrimac"; but she withdrew that afternoon to Norfolk, and did not come down to fight again. It was said that before she met the " Monitor " she was crippled, having broken off her prow when she rammed the " Cumberland," and that but for this she might have proved a more formidable antagonist to the novel little craft, and perhaps could have sunk her; though the " Monitor " had the advantage of drawing less water, and in some parts of the Roads could steam quite around the " Merrimac." In May, when Norfolk was captured, an attempt was made to take the "Merrimac" up the James River ; but she got aground, and was finally aban doned and blown up. When the Confederates re fitted her they re-christened her " Virginia," but the original name sticks to her in history. In Decem ber of that year the "Monitor" attempted to go to Beaufort, N. C., towed by a steamer; but she foundered in a gale off Cape Hatteras and went to the bottom, carrying with her a dozen of the crew. CHAPTER IX. THE CAMPAIGN OF SHILOH. WHEN the first line that the Confederates had at tempted to establish from the mountains to the Mississippi was broken by the battle of Mill Springs and the fall of Forts Henry and Donelson, their forces at Columbus were withdrawn down the river to the historic latitude of 36 30 . Here the Mississippi makes a great sigmoid curve. In the first bend is Island No. 10 (the islands are numbered from the mouth of the Ohio southward) ; and at the second bend, on the Missouri side, is New Madrid. Both of these places were fortified, un der the direction of General Leonidas Polk, who had been Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal diocese of Louisiana for twenty years before the war, but entered the military service to give the Confeder acy the benefit of his West-Point education. A floating dock was brought up from New Orleans, converted into a floating battery, and anchored near the island ; and there were also eight gunboats commanded by Commodore George N. Hollins. The works on the island were supplemented by batteries on the Tennessee shore, back of which were impassable swamps. Thus the Mississippi was sealed, and a position established for the left (or western extremity) of a new line of defence. 1862.] SIEGE OF NEW MADRID. 133 Early in March, 1862, a National army com manded by General John Pope moved down the west bank of the Mississippi against the position at New Madrid. A reconnoissance in force de monstrated that the place could be carried by storm, but could not be held, since the Confed erate gunboats were able (the river being then at high water) to enfilade both the works and the approaches. General Pope went into camp two miles from the river, and sent to Cairo for siege-guns, meanwhile sending three regiments and a battery, under General J. B. Plummer, around to a point below New Madrid, where in the night they sunk trenches for the field-guns and placed sharpshoot ers at the edge of the bank, and next day opened a troublesome fire on the passing gunboats and trans ports. Four guns were forwarded promptly from Cairo, being taken across the Mississippi and over a long stretch of swampy ground where a road had been hastily prepared for the purpose, and arriv ing at dusk on the i2th. That night Pope s forces crowded back the Confederate pickets, dug trench es, and placed the guns in position. The ene my s first intimation of what was going on was obtained from a bombardment that opened at day light. The firing was kept up through the day, and some damage was inflicted on both sides ; but the next night, in the midst of a heavy storm, New Madrid was evacuated. The National forces took possession, and immediately changed the positions of the guns so as to command the river. On the 1 6th five Confederate gunboats attacked these bat- 134 BOMBARDMENT OF ISLAND NUMBER TEN. [1862. teries ; but after one boat had been sunk and some of the others damaged, they drew off. On the 1 6th and i7th the National fleet of gunboats, un der Commodore Andrew H. Foote, engaged the batteries on Island No. 10, and a hundred heavy guns were in action at once. The ramparts in some places had been weakened by the wash of the river, and the great balls went right through them. But the artillerymen stood to their work manfully, many of them in water ankle deep, and though enormous shells exploded within the forts, and one gun burst and another was dismounted, the works were not reduced. A gun that burst in the fleet killed or wounded fourteen men. The attack was renewed from day to day, and one of the batteries was cleared of troops, but with no decisive effect. At the suggestion of General Schuyler Hamil ton, a canal was cut across the peninsula formed by the bend of the river above New Madrid. This task was confided to a regiment of engineers com manded by Colonel Josiah W. Bissell, and was completed in nineteen days. The course was some what tortuous, and the whole length of the canal was twelve miles. Half of the distance lay through a thick forest standing in deep water ; but by an ingenious contrivance the trunks of the trees were sawed off four and a half feet below the surface, and a channel fifty feet wide and four feet deep was secured, through which transports could be passed. On the night of April 4th the gunboat " Caron- delet," Commander Henry Walke, ran down past POPES CAPTURES. . 135 the batteries of Island No. 10, escaping serious damage, and in the night of the 6th the " Pitts burgh " performed the same feat. With the help of these to silence the batteries on the opposite shore, Pope crossed in force on the 7th, and moved rapidly down the little peninsula. The greater part of the Confederate troops that had been hold ing the island now attempted to escape southward, but were caught between Pope s army and an im passable swamp, and surrendered. General Pope s captures in the entire campaign were three gener als, two hundred and seventy-three officers, and six thousand seven hundred men, besides one hundred and fifty-eight guns, seven thousand mus kets, one gunboat, a floating battery, six steamers, and a considerable quantity of stores. On the very day of this bloodless victory, alittle log church in southwestern Tennessee gave name to the bloodiest battle that has been fought west of the Alleghanies Chickamauga being rather in the mountains. At Corinth, in northern Mis sissippi, the Memphis and Charleston railroad crosses the Mobile and Ohio. This gave that point great strategic importance, and it was forti fied accordingly and held by a large Confederate force, which was commanded by General Albert Sidney Johnston (who must not be confounded with the Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston). His lieutenants were Generals G. T. Beauregard, Braxton Bragg, and William J. Hardee. Gen eral Grant, who had nearly forty thousand men un der his command, and was about to be joined by 136 THE POSITION AT SHILOH. General Don Carlos Buell coming from Nash ville with as many more, proposed to move against Corinth and capture the place. On Sunday, April 6th, Grant s main force was at Pittsburgh Landing, on the west bank of the Tennessee, twenty miles north of Corinth. One division under General Lew Wallace was at Crump s Landing, five miles farther north. The advance division of Buell s army had reached the river, opposite the landings, and the remainder was a march behind. For some days Johnston had been moving northward to attack Grant, and there had been skirmishing between the outposts. Early on the morning of the 6th he came within striking distance, and made a sudden and heavy at tack. Grant s line was about two miles long, the left resting on Lick Creek, an impassable stream that flows into the Tennessee above Pittsburgh Landing, and the right on Owl Creek, which flows in below. General Benjamin M. Prentiss s division was on the left, General John A. McClernand s in the center, and General William T. Sherman s on the right. General Stephen A. Hurlbut s was in reserve on the left, and General C. F. Smith s (now commanded by W. H. L. Wallace) on the right. There were no intrenchments. The ground was undulating, with patches of woods al ternating with cleared fields, some of which were under cultivation and others abandoned and over grown with bushes. A ridge, on which stood Shi- loh church, formed an important key-point in Sher man s front. 1862.] JOHNSTON S ATTACK, 137 General Grant, in his headquarters at Savan nah, down the river, heard the firing while he was at breakfast, and hurried up to Pittsburgh Land ing. He had ex pected to be at tacked, if at all, at Crump s Land ing, and he now ordered Lew Wallace with his five thousand men to leave that place and march at once to the right of the line at Shiloh ; but Wal lace took the wrong road, and did not arrive till dark. Neither did General Wil liam Nelson s ad vance division of General Buell s army cross the river till evening. The attack began at daybreak, and was made with tremendous force and in full confidence of success. The nature of the ground made regular ity of movement impossible, and the battle was rather a series of assaults by separate columns, now at one part of the line and now at another, 138 THE FIRST DAY S BATTLE OF SHILOH. which were kept up all day with wonderful persis tence. Probably no army ever went into action with more perfect confidence in itself and its leaders than Johnston s. Beauregard had told them they should sleep that night in the camps of the enemy, and they did. He also told them that he would water his horse in the Tennessee, but he did not. The heaviest attacks fell upon Sherman and McClernand, whose men stood up to the work with unflinching courage and disputed every inch of ground. But they were driven back by over whelming numbers, which the Confederate com manders poured upon them without the slightest regard to losses. The Sixth Mississippi regiment lost three hundred men out of its total of four hundred and twenty five, and the Eighteenth Louisiana lost two hundred and seven. Sher man s men lost their camps in the morning, and retired upon one new line of defence after an other, till they had been crowded back more than a mile ; but all the while they clung to the road and bridge by which they were expecting Lew Wallace to come to their assistance. General Grant says of an open field on this part of the line, overwhich repeated charges were made, that it was " so cov ered with dead that it would have been possible to walk across the clearing in any direction, stepping on dead bodies, without a foot touching the ground. On our side National and Confederate troops were mingled together in about equal proportions ; but on the remainder of the field nearly all were Confederates. On one part, which had evidently 1862.] DEATH OF GENERAL JOHNSTON. 139 not been plowed for several years, bushes had grown up, some to the height of eight or ten feet. Not one of these was left standing unpierced by bullets. The smaller ones were all cut down." Many of the troops were under fire for the first time ; but Sherman s wonderful military genius largely made up for this deficiency. One bullet struck Sherman in the hand, another grazed his shoulder, another went through his hat, and sev eral of his horses were killed. A bullet struck and shattered the scabbard of General Grant s sword. General W. H. L. Wallace was mortally wounded. On the other side, Generals Adley H. Gladden and Thomas C. Hindman were killed ; and about half-past two o clock General Johnston, placing himself at the head of a brigade that was reluctant to attempt another charge, was struck in the leg by a Hiinie ball. The wound need not have been mortal ; but he would not leave the field, and after a time bled to death. The command then devolved upon General Beauregard. In the afternoon a gap occurred between Gen eral Prentiss s division and the rest of the line, and the Confederates were prompt to take advan tage of it. Rushing with a heavy force through this gap, and at the same time attacking his left, they doubled up both his flanks, and captured that General and two thousand two hundred of his men. On this part of the field the day was saved by Colonel J. D. Webster, of General Grant s staff, who rapidly got twenty guns into position and checked the Confederate advance. I4O STRAGGLERS AND DESERTERS. [1862. They then attempted to come in on the extreme left, along the river, by crossing a ravine. But more guns were brought up, and placed on a ridge that commanded this ravine, and at the same time the gunboats Tyler "and "Lexington" moved up to a point opposite and enfiladed it with their fire. The result to the Confederates was nothing but a useless display of valor and a heavy loss. The uneven texture of Grant s army had been shown when two green colonels led their green regiments from the field at the first fire ; and the stragglers and deserters, having no opportunity to scatter over the country, necessarily huddled them selves together under the bank of the river at the landing, where they presented a pitiful appear ance. General Grant says there were nearly five thousand of them. There was about an equal number of deserters and stragglers from John ston s army ; but the nature of the ground was not such as to concentrate them where the eye could take them all in at one grand review. With the exception of the break when Prentiss was cap tured, Grant s line of battle was maintained all day, though it was steadily forced back and thirty guns were lost. Beauregard discontinued the attack at nightfall, when his right was repelled at the ravine, intend ing to renew it and finish the victory in the morn ing. He knew that Buell was expected, but did not know that he was so near. Lew Wallace was now in position on the right, and Nelson on the left, and all night long the ;862.J THE SECOND DAYS BATTLE OF SHILOH. 141 boats were plying back and forth across the Ten nessee, bringing over Buell s army. A fire in the woods, which sprang up about dusk, threatened to add to the horrors by roasting many of the wounded alive ; but a merciful rain extinguished it, and the two armies lay out that night in the storm. A portion of the Confederates were shel tered by the captured tents, but on the other hand they were annoyed by the shells constantly thrown among them by the gunboats. At daylight Grant assumed the offensive, the fresh troops on his right and left moving first to the attack. Beauregard now knew that Buell had arrived, and he must have known also that there could be but one result ; yet he made a stubborn fight, mainly for the purpose of holding the road that ran by Shiloh church, by which alone he could conduct an orderly retreat. The complete upsetting of the Confederate plans caused by the death of Johnston, the arrival of Buell, and Grant s promptness in assuming the offensive is curiously suggested by a passage in the report of one of the Confederate brigade commanders : " I was ordered by General Ruggles to form on the extreme left, and rest my left on Owl Creek. While proceed ing to execute this order, I was ordered to move by the rear of the main line to support the extreme right of General Hardee s line. Having taken my position to support General Hardee s right, I was again ordered by General Beauregard to advance and occupy the crest of a ridge in the edge of an old field. My line was just formed in this position 142 THE FINAL VICTORY. when General Polk ordered me forward to support his line. When moving to the support of General Polk, an order reached me from General Beaure- gard to report to him with my command at his headquarters." The fighting was of the same general description as on the previous day, except that the advantage was now with the National troops. Sherman was ordered to advance his command and recapture his camps. As these were about Shiloh church, and that was the point that Beauregard was most anxious to hold, the struggle there was intense and bloody. About the same time, early in the afternoon, Grant and Beauregard did the same thing : each led a charge by two regiments that had lost their commanders. Beauregard s charge was not successful ; Grant s was, and the two regiments that he launched with a cheer against the Confed erate line broke it, and began the rout. Beaure gard posted a rearguard in a strong position, and withdrew his army, leaving his dead on the field, while Grant captured about as many guns on the second day as he had lost on the first. There was no serious attempt at pursuit, owing mainly to the heavy rain and the condition of the roads. The losses on both sides had been enormous. On the National side the official figures are : 1,754 killed, 8,408 wounded, 2,885 missing; total 13,047. On the Confederate side they are : 1,728 killed, 8,012 wounded, 957 missing; total, 10,699. General Grant says : " This estimate must be incorrect. We buried, by actual count, more of the enemy s dead 1862.] THE LOSSES. 143 in front of the divisions of McClernand and Sher man alone than are here reported, and 4,000 was the estimate of the burial parties for the whole field." At all events, the loss was large enough to gratify the ill-wishers of the American people, who were looking on with grim satisfaction to see them destroy ,one another. The losses \vere the same, in round numbers, as at the historic battle of Blen heim, though the number of men engaged was fewer by one fourth. If -we should read in to-mor row s paper that by some disaster every man, woman, and child in the city of Concord, New Hampshire, had been either killed or injured, and in the next day s paper that the same thing had happened in Montgomery, Alabama, the loss in life and limb would only equal what took place on the mournful field of Shiloh. After the battle, General Hallecktook command in person, and proceeded to lay siege to Corinth, to capture it by regular approaches. Both he and Beauregard were reenforced, till each had about one hundred thousand men. Halleck gradually closed in about the place, till in the night of May 29th Beauregard evacuated it, and on the morning of the 3oth Sherman s soldiers entered the town. Some military critics hold that the fate of the Confederacy was determined on the field of Shiloh. They point out the fact that after that battle there was nothing to prevent the National armies at the West from going all the way to the Gulf, or as they ultimately did to the sea. In homely phrase, the back door of the Confederacy was broken down, 144 THE TURNING-POINT OF THE WAR. [1862. and, however stubbornly the front door in Virginia might be defended, it was only a question of time when some great army, coming in by the rear, should cut off the supplies of the troops that held Richmond, and compel their surrender. Those who are disposed to give history a romantic turn narrow it down to the death of General Johnston, declaring that in his fall the possibility of Southern independence was lost, and if he had lived the result would have been reversed. General Grant appears to dispose of their theory when he points out the fact that Johnston was killed while leading a forlorn hope, and remarks that there is no victory for anybody till the battle is ended, and the battle of Shiloh was not ended till the close of the second day. But, indeed, there is no reason why the fatal moment should not be carried back to the time when the line of defence from the mountains to the Mississippi was broken through at Mill Spring and Fort Donelson, or even to the time when the Confederates, because of Ken tucky s refusal to leave the Union, were prevented from establishing their frontier at the Ohio. The reason why progress in conquering the Confed eracy was more rapid at the West than at the East is not to be found so much in any difference in men as in topography. At the West, the armies moving southward followed the courses of the rivers, and their opponents were obliged to maintain artificial lines of defence ; but the East ern armies were called upon to cross the streams and attack natural lines of defence. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF DEFENCE. 145 Back of all this, in the logic of the struggle, is the fact that no defensive attitude can be main tained permanently. The belligerent that can not prevent his own territory from becoming the seat of war must ultimately surrender his cause, no matter how valiant his individual soldiers may be, or how costly he may make it for the invader ; or, to state it affirmatively, a belligerent that can carry the war into the enemy s country, and keep it there, will ultimately succeed. In most wars, the side on whose soil the battles were fought has been the losing side ; and this is an important les son to bear in mind when it becomes necessary to determine the great moral question of responsi bility of prolonging a hopeless contest. CHAPTER X. THE PENINSULA CAMPAIGN. WITHIN twenty-four hours after the defeat of McDowell s army at Bull Run (July 21, 1861) the Administration called to Washington the only man that had thus far accomplished much or made any considerable reputation in the field. This was General George B. McClellan. He had been graduated at West Point in 1846, standing second in his class, and had gone at once into the Mexican war, in which he acquitted himself with distinction. After that war the young captain was employed in engineering work till 1855, when the Government sent him to Europe to study the movements of the Crimean war. He wrote a report of his observations, which was published under the title of " The Armies of Europe," and in 1857 resigned his commission and became chief engineer of the Illinois Central Railroad, and afterward President of the St. Louis and Cincinnati. He had done good work in northwestern Virginia in the early summer, and now at the age of thirty-five was com missioned Major-General in the regular army of the United States, and given command of all the troops about Washington. For the work immediately in hand, this was probably the best selection that could have been 1862.] M CLELLAN IN COMMAND. 147 made. Washington needed to be fortified, and he was a master of engineering ; both the army that had just been defeated and the new recruits that were pouring in needed organization, and he proved pre-eminent as an organizer. Three months after he took command of fifty thousand uniformed men at the capital, he had an army of more than one hundred thousand, well organized in regiments, brigades, and divisions, with the proper proportion of artillery, with quartermaster and commissary departments going like clockwork, and the whole fairly drilled and disciplined. Everybody looked on with admiration, and the public impatience that had precipitated the disastrous " On to Rich mond " movement was now replaced by a marvel lous patience. The summer and autumn months went by, and no movement was made ; but McClel- lan, in taking command, had promised that the war should be " short, sharp, and decisive," and the people thought, if they only allowed him time enough to make thorough preparation, his great army would at length swoop down upon the Con federate capital and finish everything at one blow. At length, however, they began to grow weary of the daily telegram, " All quiet along the Potomac," and the monotonously repeated information that " General McClellan rode out to Fairfax Court- Houseand back this morning." The Confederacy was daily growing stronger, the Potomac was being closed to navigation by the erection of hostile batteries on its southern bank, the enemy s flag was flying within sight from the capital, and the 148 M CLELLAN S PLANS. question of foreign interference was becoming exceedingly grave. On the ist of November General Scott, then seventy-five years of age, retired, and McClellan succeeded him as General- in-Chief of all the armies. Soon after this his plans appear, from subsequent revelations, to have undergone important modifi cation. He had undoubtedly intended to attack by moving straight out toward Manassas, where the army that had won the battle of Bull Run was still encamped, and was still commanded by General Joseph E. Johnston. He now began to think of moving against Richmond by some more easterly route, discussing among others the ex treme easterly one that he finally took. But, what ever were his thoughts and purposes, his army appeared to be taking root. The people began to murmur, Congress began to question, and the President began to argue and urge. All this did not signify ; nothing could move McClellan. He wanted to wait till he could leave an enor mous garrison in the defences of Washington, place a strong corps of observation along the Potomac, and then move out with a column of one hundred and fifty thousand men against an army that he believed to be as numerous as that, though in truth it was then less than half as large. It is now known that, from the beginning to the end of his career in that war, General McClellan constantly over-estimated the force opposed to him. On the loth of January, 1862, the President held a long consultation with Generals McDowell and 1862.] MOVEMENT BY THE PENINSULA. 149 Franklin and some members of his Cabinet. General McClellan was then confined to his bed by an illness of a month s duration. At this con sultation Mr. Lincoln said, according to Gen. Mc Dowell s memorandum, " If something was not soon done, the bottom would be out of the whole affair ; and if General McClellan did not want to use the army, he would like to borrow it, provided he could see how it could be made to do something." Immediately upon McClellan s recovery, the President called him to a similar council and asked him to disclose his plan for a campaign, which he declined to do. Finally the President asked him if he had fixed upon any particular time for setting out ; and when he said he had, Mr. Lincoln ques tioned him no further. A few days later, in a let ter to the President, he set forth his plan, which was to move his army down the Potomac on trans ports, land it at or near Fort Monroe, march up the peninsula between York and James rivers, and attack the defences of Richmond on the north and east sides. The President at first disapproved of this plan, largely for the reason that it would require so much time in preparation ; but when he found that the highest officers in the army favored it, and considered the probability that any general was likely to fail if sent to execute a plan he did not originate or believe in, he finally gave it his sanction, and once more set himself to the difficult task of inducing McClellan to move at all. And yet the President himself still further retarded the I5O THE CORPS COMMANDERS. [1862. opening of the campaign by delaying the order to collect the means of transportation. Meanwhile General Johnston quietly removed his stores, and on the 8th of March evacuated Centreville and Man- assas, and placed his army before Richmond. This reconciled the President to McClellan s plan of cam paign, which he had never liked. The order for the transportation of McClellan s army was issued on the 27th of February, and four hundred vessels were required; for there were actu ally transported one hundred and twenty-one thou sand men, fourteen thousand animals,forty-four bat teries, and all the necessary ambulances and bag- gage-wagons,pontoons,and telegraph material. Just before the embarkation, the army was divided into four corps, the commands of which were given to Generals McDowell, Edwin V. Sumner, Samuel P. Heintzelman, and Erasmus D. Keyes. High au thorities say this was one of the causes of the fail ure of the campaign ; for the army should have been divided into corps long before, when McClellan could have chosen his own lieutenants instead of having them chosen by the President General Hooker said it was- impossible for him to succeed with such corps commanders. But his near ap proach to success rather discredits this criticism. Another element of the highest importance had also entered into the problem with which the na tion was struggling. This was the appointment (January 21,1862) of Edwin M.Stanton to succeed Simon Cameron as Secretary of War. Mr. Stan- ton, then forty-seven years of age, was a lawyer by 1862.] THE GREAT WAR MINISTER. 151 profession, a man of great intellect, unfailing nerve, and tremendous energy. He had certain traits that often made him personally disagreeable to his subordinates ; but it was impossible to doubt his thorough loyalty, and his determination to find or make a way to bring the war to a successful close as speedily as possible, without the slightest regard to the individual interests of himself or anybody else. He was probably the ablest war minister that ever lived with the possible exception of Car- not, the man to whom Napoleon said, " I have known you too late." It is indicative of Mr. Lin coln s sagacity and freedom from prejudice, that his first meeting with Mr. Stanton was when he went to Cincinnati, some years before the war, to assist in trying an important case. He found Mr. Stanton in charge of the case as senior counsel, and Stanton was so unendurably disagreeable to him that he threw up the engagement and went home to Springfield. Yet he afterward gave that man the most important place in his cabinet, and found him its strongest member. One division of the army embarked on the I7th of March, and the others followed in quick suc cession. General McClellan reached Fort Mon roe on the 2d of April, by which time fifty-eight thousand men and one hundred guns had arrived, and immediately moved with this force on York- town, the place made famous by the surrender of Cornwallis eighty years before. The Confederates had fortified this point, and thrown a line of earth works across the narrow peninsula to the deep 152 ON THE PENINSULA. [1862. water of Warwick River. These works were held by General Magruder with thirteen thousand ef fective men. General Johnston, who was in com mand of all the troops around Richmond, says he had no expectation of doing more than delaying McClellan at Yorktown till he could strengthen the defences of the capital and collect more men ; and that he thought his adversary would use his transports to pass his army around that place by water, after destroying the batteries, and land at some point above. McClellan, supposing that Johnston s entire army was in the defences of Yorktown, sat down before the place and constructed siege works, ap proaching the enemy by regular parallels. As the remaining divisions of his army arrived at Fort Monroe, they were added to his besieging force ; but McDowell s entire corps and Blenker s division had been detached at the last moment and retained at Washington, from fears on the part of the ad ministration that the capital was not sufficiently guarded, though McClellan had already left sev enty thousand men there or within call. The fears were increased by the threatening move ments of Stonewall Jackson in the Shenajidoah valley, where, however, he was defeated by Gen eral James Shields near Winchester, March 23. General Johnston had to contend with precisely the same difficulty that McClellan complained of. He wanted to bring together before Richmond all the troops that were then at Norfolk and in the Carolinas and Georgia, and with the large army 1862.] BATTLE OF WILLIAMSBURG. 153 thus formed suddenly attack McClellan after he should have marched seventy-five miles up the peninsula from his base at Fort Monroe. But in a council of war General Lee and the Secretary of War opposed this plan, and Mr. Davis adopted their views and rejected it. Johnston therefore undertook the campaign with the army that he had, which he says consisted of fifty thousand effective men. McClellan spent nearly a month before York- town, and when he was ready to open fire with his siege guns and drive out the enemy, May 3d, he found they had quietly departed, leaving " Quaker guns " (wooden logs on wheels) in the embrasures. There was no delay in pursuit, and the National advance came up with the Confederate rear guard near Williamsburg, about twelve miles from York- town. Here, May 4th, brisk skirmishing began, which gradually became heavier, till reenforce- ments were hurried up on the one side and sent back on the other, and the skirmish was developed into a battle. The place had been well fortified months before. The action on the morning of the 5th was opened by the divisions of Generals Hooker and William F. Smith. They attacked the strongest of the earthworks, pushed forward the batteries, and silenced it. Hooker was then heavily attacked by infantry, with a constant men ace on his left wing. He sustained his position alone nearly all day, though losing one thousand seven hundred men and five guns, and was at length relieved by the arrival of General Philip 154 BATTLE OF WILLIAMSBURG. [1862. Kearny s division. The delay was due mainly to the deep mud caused by a heavy rain the night before. Later in the day, Hancock s brigade made a wide circuit on the right, discovered some unoc cupied redoubts, and took possession of them. When the Confederates advanced their left to the attack, they ran upon these redoubts, which their commanding officers knew nothing about, and were repelled with heavy loss. Hancock s one thou sand six hundred men suddenly burst over the crest of the works, and bore down upon the enemy with fixed bayonets, routing and scattering them. McClellan brought up re-enforcements, and in the night the Confederates in front of him moved off to join their main army, leaving in Williamsburg four hundred of their wounded, because they had no means of carrying them away, but taking with them about that number of prisoners. The National loss had been about two thousand two hundred, the Confederate about one thousand eight hun dred. This battle was fought within five miles of the historic site of Jamestown, where the first per manent English settlement in the United States had been made in 1607, and the first cargo of slaves landed in 1619. General William B. Franklin s division of McDowell s corps had now been sent to McClel lan, and immediately after the battle of Williams- burg he moved it on transports to White House, at the head of York River, where it established a base of supplies. As soon as possible, also, the main body of the army was marched from Wil- ON THE CHICKAHOMINY. 155 liamsburg to White House, reaching that place on the 1 6th of May. From this point he moved westward toward Richmond, expecting to be joined by a column of forty thousand men under McDowell, which was to move from Sf CHICKAHOMINY RIVER Fredericksburg. On reaching the Chickahominy, McClellan threw his left wing across that stream, and sweeping around with his right fought small battles at Mechanicsville and Hanover Junc tion, by which he cleared the way for McDowell to join him. But at this critical point of time Stone wall Jackson suddenly made another raid down the Shenandoah Valley, and McDowell was called back to go in pursuit of him. 156 THE BATTLE OF FAIR OAKS. [1862. Johnston resolved to strike the detached left wing of the National army, which had crossed the Chickahominy and advanced to within half a dozen miles of Richmond, and his purpose was seconded by a heavy rain on the night of May 3Oth, which swelled the stream and swept away some of the bridges, thus hindering reinforcement from the other wing. The attack, May 3ist, fell first upon General Silas Casey s division of Keyes s corps, which occupied some half-finished works. It was bravely made and bravely resisted, and the Con federates suffered heavy losses before these works, where they had almost surprised the men with the shovels in their hands. But after a time a Con federate force made a detour and gained a position in the rear of the redoubts, when of course they could no longer be held. Reinforcements were very slow in coming up, and Keyes s men had a long, hard struggle to hold their line at all. They could not have done so if a part of Johnston s plan had not miscarried. He intended to bring in a heavy flanking force between them and the river, but was delayed several hours in getting it in mo tion. Meanwhile McClellan ordered Sumner to cross the river and join in the battle. Sumner had anticipated such an order as soon as he heard the firing, and when the order came it found him with his corps in line, drawn out from camp, and ready to cross instantly. He was the oldest officer there (sixty-six), and the most energetic. There was but one bridge that could be used, many of the supports of this were gone, the approaches were THE BATTLE OF FAIR OAKS. 157 under water, and it was almost a wreck. But he unhesitatingly pushed on his column. The frail structure was steadied by the weight of the men ; and though it swayed and undulated with their movement and the rush of the water, they all crossed in safety. Sumner was just in time to meet the flank attack, which was commanded by Johnston in person. The successive charges of the Confederates were all repelled, and at dusk a counter-charge cleared the ground in front and drove off the last of them in confusion. In this fight General Johnston re ceived wounds that compelled him to retire from the field, and laid him up for a long time. The battle which is called both Fair Oaks and Seven Pines cost the National army over five thousand men, and the Confederate nearly seven thousand. For some time after the battle of Fair Oaks heavy rains made any movement almost impos sible for either of the armies that confronted each other near Richmond. General Alexander S. Webb says : " The ground, which consisted of alternate layers of reddish clay and quicksand, had turned into a vast swamp, and the guns in battery sank into the earth by their own weight." Mc- Clellan kept his men at work, intrenching and strengthening his position, while he himself seems to have been constantly occupied in writing des patches to the President and the Secretary of War, alternately promising an almost immediate advance on Richmond and calling for reinforce ments. He wanted McDowell s corps of forty 158 THE DEADLY SWAMPS. [1862. thousand men, and the authorities wanted to give it to him if it could be sent by way of Fredericks- burg and united with his right wing in such a way as not to uncover Washington. But in one des patch he declared he would rather not have it at all unless it could be placed absolutely under his command. His position was in several respects very bad. The Chickahominy was bordered by great swamps, whose malarial influences robbed him of almost as many men as fell by the bullets of the enemy. His base was at White House, on the Pamunkey ; and the line thence over which his supplies must come, instead of being at right angles with the line of his front and covered by it, was almost a prolongation of it. It was impossible to maintain permanent bridges over the Chicka hominy, and a rain of two or three days was liable at any time to swell the stream so as to sweep away every means of crossing. He could threaten Richmond only by placing a heavy force on the right bank of the river ; he could render his own communications secure only by keeping a large force on the left bank. When it first occurred to him that his true base was on the James, or how long he contemplated its removal thither, nobody knows ; but he received a startling lesson on the 1 2th of June, which seems to have determined his apparently indeterminate mind. When General Joseph E. Johnston was wounded at Fair Oaks, the command devolved upon General G. W. Smith ; but two days later General Robert E. Lee was given the command of the Confederate 1862.] STRENGTH OF THE ARMIES. 159 forces in Virginia, which he retained continuously till his surrender brought the war to a close. The plan that he had opposed, and caused Mr. Davis to reject, when Johnston was in command of bringing large bodies of troops from North Caro lina, Georgia, and the Shenandoah valley, to form a massive army and fall upon McClellan- he now adopted and proceeded at once to carry out. Johnston enumerates reinforcements that were given him aggregating fifty-three thousand men, and says he had then the largest Confederate army that ever fought. The total number is given officially at 80,762. This probably means the number of men actually carrying muskets, and excludes all officers, teamsters, musicians, and mechanics ; for the Confederate returns were generally made in that way. McClellan s total effective force, including every man that drew pay the last week in June, was 92,500. His constant expectation of reinforcements by way of Fredericksburg was largely, if not wholly, what kept him in his false position, and it is fair to presume that but for this he would have swung across the peninsula to the new base on the James much sooner and under more favorable circumstances. Wishing to know the extent of McClellan s earth works on the right wing, Lee, on June I2th, sent a body of twelve hundred cavalry, with two light guns, to reconnoitre. It was commanded by the dashing General J. E. B. Stuart, commonly called " Jeb Stuart,"who used to dress in gay costume, with yellow sash and black plume, wore gold spurs, and 160 STUART S RAID. rode a white horse. He was only ordered to go as far as Hanover Old Church; but at that point he had a fight with a small body of cavalry, and as he supposed dispositions would be made to cut him off, instead of returning, he kept on and made the entire circuit of McClellan s army, rebuilding a bridge to cross the lower Chickahominy, and reached Richmond in safety. The actual amount of damage that he had done was small ; but the raid alarmed the National commander for the safety of his communications, and was probably what determined him to change his base. Stonewall Jackson, if not Lee s ablest lieutenant, was certainly his swiftest, and the one that threw the most uncertainty into the game by his rapid movements and unexpected appearances. At a later stage of the war his erratic strategy, if persisted in, would probably have brought his famous corps of " foot cavalry " (as they were called from their quick marches) to sudden destruction. An opponent like Sheridan, who knew how to be swift, brilliant, and audacious, without transgressing the funda mental rules of warfare, would have been likely to finish him at a blow. But Jackson did not live to meet such an opponent. At this time the bug bears that haunt imaginations not inured to war were still in force, and the massive thimble-rigging by which he was made to appear before Richmond, and presto ! sweeping down the Shenandoah Valley, served to paralyze large forces that might have been added to McClellan s army. The topography of Virginia is favorable to an 1862.] JACKSON S MYSTERIOUS MOVEMENTS. 161 army menacing Washington, and unfavorable to one menacing Richmond. The fertile valley of the Shenandoah was inviting ground for soldiers. A Confederate force advancing down the valley came at every step nearer to the National capital, while a National force advancing up the valley was carried at every step farther away from the Confederate capital. The Confederates made much of this advantage, and the authorities at Washington were in constant fear of the capture of that city. Soon after Stuart s raid, Lee began to make his dispositions to attack McClellan and drive him from the peninsula. He wrote to Jackson : " Un less McClellan can be driven out of his intrench- ments, he will move by positions, under cover of his heavy guns, within shelling distance of Rich mond." To convey the impression that Jackson was to move in force down the valley, Lee drew two brigades from his own army, placed them on the cars in Richmond in plain sight of some prison ers that were about to be exchanged, and sent them off to Jackson. Of course the released prison ers carried home the news. But Jackson returned with these reinforcements and Ewell s division of his corps, joined Lee, and on the 25th of June con certed a plan for immediate attack. Secretary Stanton appears to have been the only one that saw through the game ; for he telegraphed to McClellan that while neither Banks nor McDowell nor Fremont could ascertain anything about Jack son s movements, his own belief was that he was 1 62 NEAREST APPROACH TO RICHMOND. going to Richmond. Yet the impression was not strong enough in the mind of the Secretary of War (or else the secretary could not have his own way) to induce the appropriate counter-move of immediately sending McDowell s whole corps to McClellan. McCall s division of that corps, how. ever, had been forwarded, and on the i8th took a strong position on McClellan s extreme right, near Mechanicsville. On the 25th McClellan had pushed back the Confederates on his left, taken a new position there, and advanced his outposts to a point only four miles from Richmond. But he began his movements too late, for the Confederates were already in motion. Leaving about thirty thousand men in the immediate defences of Richmond, Lee crossed the Chickahominy with about thirty-five thousand under Generals A. P. Hill, D. H. Hill, and Longstreet, intending to join Jackson s twenty- five thousand, and with this enormous force make a sudden attack on the twenty thousand National troops that were on the north side of the river, commanded by General Fitz John Porter, destroy them before help could reach them, and seize Mc Clellan s communications with his base. Jackson, who was to have appeared on the field at sunrise of the 26th, was for once behind time. The other Confederate commanders became nervous and im patient ; for if the movement were known to Mc Clellan, he could, with a little boldness and some fighting, have captured Richmond that day. In deed, the inhabitants of the city expected nothing IYERSITT; ACTION AT BEAVER DAM CREEK. II else, and it is said that the archives of the Confed erate Government were all packed and ready for instant removal. At midday General A. P. Hill s corps drove the small National force out of Mechanicsville, and advanced to McCall s strong position on Beaver Dam Creek. This they dared not- attack in front ; but they made desperate attempts on both flanks, and the result was an afternoon of fruitless fighting, in which they were literally mown down by the well-served artillery and lost upward of three thousand men, while Mc- Call maintained his position at every point and lost fewer than three hundred. That night, in pursuance of the plan for a change of base, the heavy guns that had thwarted Lee in his first attack were carried across the Chicka- hominy, together with a large part of the baggage train. On the morning of the 2 7th Porter fell back somewhat to a position on a range of low hills, where he could keep the enemy in check till the stores were removed to the other side of the river, which was now his only object. McClellan sent him five thousand more men in the course of the day, being afraid to send any greater number, because he believed that the bul^ of the Confed erate army was in the defences on his left, and a show of activity there still further deceived him. On the morning of the 27th Porter had eighteen thousand infantry, two thousand five hundred artil lerymen, and a small force of cavalry, with which to meet the attack of at least fifty-five thousand. Longstreet and the Hills had followed the retreat 164 BATTLE OF GAINES s MILLS. [1862. closely, but, warned by the experience of the day before, were not willing to attack until Jackson should join them. The fighting began about two o clock in the afternoon, when A. P. Hill assaulted the centre of Porter s position, and in a two-hours struggle was driven back with heavy loss. Two attacks on the right met with no better success. The effect on the new troops that had been hur ried up from the coast was complete demoraliza tion. The Confederate General Whiting says in his report : " Men were leaving the field in every direction, and in great disorder. Two regiments, one from South Carolina and one from Louisiana, were actually marching back from the fire. Men were skulking from the front in a shameful manner." But at length Jackson s men arrived, and a de termined effort was made on all parts of the line at once. Even then it seemed for a time as if vic tory might rest with the little army on the hills ; and in all probability it would, if they had had such intrenchments as the men afterward learned how to construct very quickly ; but their breastworks were only such as could be made from hastily felled trees, a few rails, and heaps of knapsacks. The Confederates had the advantage of thick woods in which to form and advance. As they emerged and came on in heavy masses, with the Confeder ate yell, they were answered by the Union cheer. Volley responded to volley, guns were taken and re-taken, and cannoniers that remained after the infantry supports retired were shot down ; but it CROSSING THE CHICKAHOMINY. 165 was not till sunset that the National line was fairly disrupted, at the left centre, when the whole gave way and slowly retired. Two regiments were cap tured, and twenty-two guns fell into the hands of the enemy. In the night Porter crossed the river with his remaining force, and destroyed the bridges. This was called by the Confederates the battle of the Chickahominy ; but it takes its better known name from two mills (Gaines s) near the scene of action. The total National loss was six thousand men. The Confederate loss was never properly ascertained, which renders it probable that it was much larger. Some of the wounded lay on the field four days uncared for. This action is sometimes called the first battle of Cold Harbor. The armies under Grant and Lee fought on the same ground two years later. Lee and Jackson believed that they had been fighting the whole of McClellan s forces, and an other mistake that they made secured the safety of that army. They took it for granted that the National commander, driven from his base at White House, would retreat down the peninsula, taking the same route by which he had come. Consequently they remained with their large force on the left bank of the Chickahominy, and even advanced some distance down the stream, which gave McClellan twenty-four hours of precious time to get through the swamp roads with his immense trains. He had five thousand loaded wagons, and two thousand five hundred head of cattle. General Silas Casey s division, in charge of the stores at 1 66 BATTLE OF SAVAGE S STATION. [1862. White House, loaded all they could upon trans ports, and destroyed the remainder. Trains of cars filled with supplies were put under full speed and run off the tracks into the river. Hundreds of tons of ammunition, and millions of rations, were burned or otherwise destroyed. At the last mo ment Casey embarked his men, and with what he had been able to save steamed down the Pamun- key and York rivers and up the James to the new base. At the close of a long despatch to the Sec retary of War on the 28th, General McClellan said : " If I save this army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you or to any other persons in Washington. You have done your best to sacrifice this army." When Gen. John B. Magruder, who had been left in the defences of Richmond, found that the National army was retreating to the James, he moved out to attack it, and struck the rear guard at Allen s farm. His men made three assaults, and were three times repelled. Magruder com plained that he lost a victory here because Lee had left him but thirteen thousand men. The National troops fell back to Savage s Sta tion, where later in the day Magruder attacked them again. He had a rifled cannon mounted on a plat form car, with which he expected to do great exe cution. But there was an ample force to oppose him, and it stood unmoved by his successive charges. About sunset he advanced his whole line with a desperate rush in the face of a continu ous fire of cannon and musketry ; but it was of no BATTLE OF CHARLES CITY CROSS-ROADS. 167 avail, and half an hour later his own line was broken by a counter charge that closed the battle. He admitted a loss of four thousand men. Sum- ner and Franklin, at a cost of three thousand, had thus maintained the approach to the single road through White Oak Swamp, by which they were to follow the body of the army that had already passed. But it was found necessary to burn an other immense quantity of food and clothing that could not be removed, and to leave behind two thousand five hundred sick and wounded men. Jackson, after spending a day in building bridges, crossed the Chickahominy, and attempted to fol low McClellan s rear guard through White Oak Swamp; but when he got to the other side he found a necessary bridge destroyed and National batteries commanding its site, so that it was im possible for his forces to emerge from the swamp. But meanwhile Hill and Longstreet had crossed the river farther up stream, marched around the swamp, and struck the retreating army near Charles City Cross-Roads on the 3Oth. There was terrific fighting all the afternoon. There were brave charges and bloody repulses, masses of men mov ing up steadily in the face of batteries that tore great gaps through them at every discharge, crossed bayonets, and clubbed muskets. Only on that part of the line held by McCall did the Con federates, with all their daring, succeed in breaking through. McCall, in his report, describes the suc cessful charge : " A most determined charge was made on Randol s battery by a full brigade, ad- 1 68 BATTLE OF CHARLES CITY CROSS-ROADS. [1862. vancing in wedge shape, without order, but in per fect recklessness. Somewhat similar charges had been previously made on Cooper s and Kern s bat teries by single regiments, without success, they having recoiled before the storm of canister hurled against them. A like result was anticipated by Randol s battery, and the 4th Regiment was re quested not to fire until the battery had done with them. Its gallant commander did not doubt his ability to repel the attack, and his guns did indeed mow down the advancing host ; but still the gaps were closed, and the enemy came in upon a run to the very muzzles of his guns. It was a perfect tor rent of men, and they were in his battery before the guns could be removed." General McCall him self, endeavoring to rally his men at this point, was captured and carried off to Richmond. In Kearny s front a similar charge was made three times ; but every time a steady musketry fire drove back the enemy that had closed up its gaps made by the artillery. Darkness put an end to the fight ing, and that night McClellan s army continued its retreat to Malvern Hill, where his advance guard had taken up the strongest position he had yet oc cupied. The battle just described has several names Glendale, Frazier s Farm, Charles City Cross-Roads, Newmarket, Nelson s Farm. Mc- Clellan here lost ten guns. The losses in men can not be known exactly, as the reports group the losses of several days together. Longstreet and the two Hills reported a loss of 12,458 in the fight ing from the 27th to the 3Oth. 1862.] BATTLE OF MALVERN HILL. 169 The last stand made by McClellan for deliver ing battle was at Malvern Hill. This is a plateau near Turkey Bend of James River, having an ele vation of sixty feet, and an extent of about a mile and a half in one direction and a mile in the other. It is so bordered by streams and swamps as to leave no practicable ap proach except by the narrow north west face. Here McClellan had his entire army in position when his pursuers came up. It was disposed in the form of a semi- circle, with the right wing " re- fused " (swung back) and pro longed to Haxall s Landing, on the James. His position was peculiarly favorable for the use of ar tillery, and his whole front bristled with it. There were no intrenchments to speak of, but the natural inequalities of the ground afforded considerable shelter for the men and the guns. It was as com plete a trap as could be set for an army, and Lee walked straight into it. Under ordinary circum- I7O BATTLE OF MALVERN HILL. [1862. stances, both commander and men would properly hesitate to attack an enemy so posted. But to the confidence with which the Southerners began the war was now added the peculiar elation produced by a week s pursuit of a retreating army ; and ap parently it did not occur to them that they were all mortal. In the first contact seven thousand Confederates, with six guns, struck the left of the position. They boldly advanced their artillery to within eight hundred yards of the cliff ; but before they could get at work a fire of twenty or thirty guns was con centrated upon their battery, which knocked it to pieces in a few minutes ; and at the same time some huge shells from a gunboat fell among a small detachment of cavalry, threw it into confu sion, and turned it back upon the infantry, break ing up the whole attack. Lee was not ready to assault with his whole army till the afternoon of July ist. An artillery duel was kept up during the forenoon ; but the Confederate commander did not succeed in de stroying the National batteries as he hoped to ; on the contrary, he saw his own disabled, one after another. The signal for the infantry attack was to be the usual yell, raised by Armistead s division on the right and taken up by the successive divis ions along the line. But the Confederate line was separated by thick woods, there was long waiting for the signal, some of the generals thought they heard it, and some advanced without hearing it. The consequence was a series of separate attacks, 1862.] M CLELLAN REACHES THE JAMES. 17! some of them repeated three or four times, and every time a concentrated fire on the attacking column and a bloody repulse. The men themselves began to see the hopelessness of it, while their officers were still urging them to renewed efforts. " Come on, come on, my men," said one Confed erate colonel, with the grim humor of a soldier ; " do you want to live forever ?" There were some brief counter-charges, in one of which the colors were taken from a North Carolina regiment ; but in general the National troops only maintained their ground, and though fighting was kept up till nine o clock in the evening, the line as General Webb, then assistant chief of artillery, tells us was never for one instant broken or the guns in danger. This battle cost Lee five thousand men, and at its close he gave up the pursuit. The National loss was less than one third as great. That night McClellan withdrew his army to Har rison s Landing, on the James, where he had fixed his base of supplies and where the gunboats could protect his position. This retreat is known as the Seven Days, and the losses are figured up at 15,249 on the National side, and somewhat over 19,000 on the Confederate. From this time there was an angry controversy as to the military abilities of General McClellan and the responsibility for the failure of the cam paign, and partisanship was never more violent than over this question. The General had won the highest personal regard of his soldiers, and they were mostly unwilling or unable to look at 172 THE M CLELLAN CONTROVERSY. the matter in the cold light of the criticism that simply asks What was required? and What was accomplished ? The truth appears to be, that General McClellan, like most men, possessed some virtues and lacked others. He organized a great army, and to the end of its days it felt the benefit of the discipline with which he endowed it. But with that army in hand he did not secure the pur pose of its creation. He was an accomplished engineer, and a gigantic adjutant, but hardly the general to be sent against an army that could move and a commander that could think. There can be no doubt that the Administration was over anxious about the movements in the Shenandoah, and should have sent McDowell s corps to McClel lan at once ; but neither can there be much doubt that if Little Mac, the Young Napoleon, as he was fondly called, had been a general of the highest order, he would have destroyed Lee s army and captured the Confederate capital with the ample forces that he had. It was not General McClellan alone that was in a false position when his army was astride the Chickahominy, but the Adminis tration and the people of the loyal States as well. Their grand strategy was radically vicious, for they stood astride of the great central question of the war itself. CHAPTER XI. POPE S CAMPAIGN. WHILE McClellan was before Richmond, it was determined to consolidate in one command the corps of Banks, Fremont, and McDowell, which were moving about in an independent and ineffec tual way between Washington and the Shenandoah Valley. General John Pope, who had won con siderable reputation by his capture of Island No. 10, was called from the West and given com mand (June 26, 1862) of the new organization, which was called the Army of Virginia. Fremont declined to serve under a commander who had once been his subordinate, and consequently his corps was given to General Sigel. General Pope, on taking command of this force, which numbered all told about thirty-eight thousand men, and also of the troops in the fortifications around Washing ton, had the bad taste to issue a general order that had three capital defects : it boasted of his own prowess at the West, it underrated his enemy, and it contained a bit of sarcasm pointed at Gen eral McClellan, the commander of the army with which his *own was to co-operate. Pope says in his report, that he wrote a cordial letter to McClellan, asking for his views as to the best plan of campaign, and offering to render him any 174 HALLECK MADE GENERAL-IN-CHIEF. needed assistance ; and that he received but a cold and indefinite reply. It is likely enough that a courteous man and careful soldier like McClellan would be in no mood to fall in with the sugges tions of a commander that entered upon his work with a gratuitous piece of bombast, and seemed to have no conception of the serious nature of the task. When it became evident that these two commanders could not act sufficiently in harmony, the President called General Henry W. Halleck from the West to be General-in-Chief, with head quarters at Washington, and command them both. Halleck had perhaps more military learning than any other man in the country, and his patriotic in tentions were unquestionably good ; but in practi cal warfare he proved to be little more than a great obstructor. He had been the bane of the Western armies, preventing them from following up their victories, and had almost driven Grant out of the service ; and from the day he took command at Washington (July 12) the troubles in the East be came more complicated than ever. McClellan held a strong position at Harrison s Landing, where, if he accomplished nothing else, he was a standing menace to Richmond, so that Lee dared not withdraw his army from its defence. He wanted to be heavily reenforced, cross the James, and strike at Richmond s southern com munications, just as Grant actually did two years later; and he was promised reinforcements from the troops of Burnside and Hunter, on the coast of North and South Carolina. Lee s anxiety was 1862] M CLELLAN LEAVES THE PENINSULA, 175 to get McClellan off from the peninsula, so that he could strike out toward Washington. He first sent a detachment to bombard McClellan s camp from the opposite side of the James; but Mc Clellan crossed the river with a sufficient force and easily swept it out of the way. Then Lee sent Jackson to make a demonstration against Pope, holding the main body of his army ready to follow as soon as some erratic and energetic movements of Jackson had caused a sufficient alarm at Wash ington to determine the withdrawal of McClellan. The unwitting Halleck was all too swift to co operate with his enemy, and had already deter mined upon that withdrawal. Burnside s troops, coming up on transports, were not even landed, but were forwarded up the Potomac and sent to Pope. McClellan marched his army to Fort Mon roe, and there embarked it by divisions for the same destination. Pope s intention was to push southward, strike Lee s western and northwestern communications, and cut them off from the Shenandoah Valley. He first ordered Banks (July 14) to push his whole cavalry force to Gordonsville, and destroy the railroads and bridges in that vicinity. But the cavalry commander, General Hatch, took with him infantry, artillery, and a wagon train, and conse quently did not move at cavalry speed. Before he could get to Gordonsville, Jackson s advance reached it, and his movement was frustrated. He was relieved of his command, and it was given to General John Buford, an able cavalry leader. 176 BATTLE OF CEDAR MOUNTAIN. [186S. As soon as Jackson came in contact with Pope s advance, he called upon Lee for reinforcements, and promptly received them. On the 8th of Au gust he crossed the Rapidan, and moved toward Culpeper. Pope, who had but recently taken the field in person, having remained in Washington till July 29, attempted to concentrate the corps of Banks and Sigel at Culpeper. Banks arrived there promptly on the 8th ; but Sigel sent a note from Sperryville in the afternoon, asking by what road he should march. " As there was but one road between those two points," says Pope, " and that a broad stone turnpike, I was at a loss to un derstand how General Sigel could entertain any doubt as to the road by which he should march." On the morning of the 9th Banks s corps went out alone to meet the enemy at Cedar Mountain. Banks had eight thousand men (Pope says he had supposed that corps numbered fourteen thousand), and attacked an enemy twice as strong. He first struck Jackson s right wing, and afterward furi ously attacked the left, rolled up the flank, opened a fire in the rear, and threw Jackson s whole line into confusion. It was as if the two commanders had changed characters, and Banks had suddenly assumed the part that, according to the popular idea, Jackson was always supposed to play. If Sigel had only known what road to take, that might have been the last of Jackson. But Banks s force had become somewhat broken in its advance through the woods, and at the same time the Con federates were reenforced, so that Jackson was 1862.] POPE AND LEE MANOEUVRE. 177 able to rally his men and check the movement. Banks in turn was forced back a short distance, where he took up a strong position, and Jackson, unwilling to attack him there, fell back in the night of the nth to Gordonsville. In this engagement Jackson lost thirteen hundred men, and Banks eighteen hundred. Within a week after the battle of Cedar Moun tain, Lee, seeing that McClellan was leaving the peninsula, forwarded Longstreet s division and a part of Hood s to Gordonsville, and prepared to follow with his entire army. Pope had concentrated his forces and advanced his line so that his cen tre rested on Cedar Mountain, his left on the Rap- idan, and his right on Robertson s River ; and when Jackson and Longstreet advanced across the Rap- idan, he fell back beyond the Rappahannock. By this time he was reenforced by a portion of Burn- side s troops, and others were on the way. When Lee came up with the remainder of his army, and found it impossible to cross the Rappa hannock in front of Pope, he sent Jackson to make a flank march westward along that stream, cross it at Sulphur Springs, and come down upon Pope s right. But when Jackson arrived at the cross ing, he found a heavy force occupying Sulphur Springs and ready to meet him. Meanwhile Gen eral James E. B. Stuart, with fifteen hundred cavalrymen, in the dark and stormy night of August 22, had ridden around to the rear of Pope s position, to cut the railroad. He struck Pope s headquarters at Catlett s Station, captured 178 PAPERS CAPTURED. [1862. three hundred prisoners and all the personal bag gage and papers of the commander, and got back in safety. These papers informed Lee of Pope s plans and dispositions. On the other hand, a cavalry expedition sent out by Pope a few days before had captured Stuart s adjutant, and with him a letter from Lee to Stuart, which largely revealed Lee s plans to his opponent. Jackson, being thwarted at Sulphur Springs, moved still farther up the south bank of the Rap- pahannock, crossed the headwaters, and turned Pope s right. He passed through Thoroughfare Gap in the Bull Run Mountains on the 26th, de stroyed Bristoe Station on the Orange and Alex andria Railroad, and sent out Stuart to Manassas Junction, where prisoners were taken and a large amount of commissary stores fell into his hands. Pope knew exactly the size of Jackson s force, and the direction it had taken in its flank march ; for Colonel J. S. Clark, of Banks s staff, had spent a day where he had a plain view of the enemy s moving columns, and carefully counted the regi ments and batteries. But from this point the National commander, who had hitherto done rea sonably well, seemed suddenly to become bewil dered. Lee, whose grand strategy was correct, had here blundered seriously in his manoeuvres, dividing his army so that the two parts were not within supporting distance of each other, and the united enemy was between. An ordinarily good general, standing in Pope s boots, would naturally have fallen in force upon Jackson, and could have 1862.] BATTLE OF GROVETON. 179 completely destroyed or captured him. But Pope out-blundered Lee, and gave the victory to the Confederates. He began by sending forty thousand men under McDowell, on the 2;th, toward Thoroughfare Gap, to occupy the road by which Lee with Longstreet s division was marching to join Jackson ; and at the same time he moved with the remainder of his army to strike Jackson at Bristoe Station. This was a good beginning, but was immediately ruined by his own lack of steadiness. The advance guard had an engagement at that place with Jack son s rear guard, while his main body retired to Manassas Junction. Pope became elated at the prospect of a great success, and ordered a retro grade movement by McDowell, telling him to march eastward on the 28th, adding, " If you will march promptly and rapidly at the earliest dawn upon Manassas Junction, we shall bag the whole crowd." McDowell obeyed, the way was thus left open for Jackson to move out to meet his friends, and Jackson promptly took advantage of the opportunity and planted himself on the high land around Groveton, near the battle-field of Bull Run. Here King s division of McDowell s corps came suddenly in contact with the enemy, and a sharp fight, with severe loss on either side, ensued. Among the Confederate wounded was General Richard S. Ewell, one of their best commanders, who lost a leg. In the night, King s men fell back to Manassas ; and Ricketts s division, which Mc Dowell had left to delay Longstreet when he 180 BATTLE OF GROVETON. should attempt to pass through Thoroughfare Gap, was also retired. All apprehensions on the part of the lucky Jackson were now at an end. His enemies had removed every obstruction, and he was in posses sion of the Warrenton turnpike, the road by which Longstreet was to join him. The cut of an aban doned railroad formed a strong, ready-made in- trenchment, and along this he placed his troops, his right flank being on the turnpike and his left at Sudley Mill. Longstreet reached the field in the forenoon of the 29th, and took position at Jackson s right, on the other side of the turnpike, covering also the Manassas Gap Railroad. He was confronted by Fitz John Porter s corps, which with Hooker s had arrived from McClellan s army. McDowell says he ordered Porter to move out and attack Long- street ; Porter says he ordered him simply to hold the ground where he was. At three o clock in the afternoon Pope ordered Hooker to attack Jackson directly in front. Hooker, who was never loath to fight where there was a prospect of success, re monstrated ; but Pope insisted, and the attack was made. Hooker s men charged with the bayonet, had a terrific hand-to-hand fight in the cut, and actu ally ruptured Jackson s seemingly impregnable line ; but reinforcements were brought up, and the assailants were at length driven back. Kearny s division was sent to support Hooker, but too late, and it also was repelled. An hour or two later, Pope, who did not know that Longstreet had 1862.] BATTLE OF GROVETON. l8l arrived on the field, sent orders to Fitz John Por ter to attack Jackson s right, supposing that was the right of the whole Confederate line. There is a dispute as to the hour at which this order reached Porter. But it was impossible for him to obey it, since he could not move upon Jackson s flank without exposing his own flank to Longstreet. About 6 o clock, when he imagined Porter s attack must have begun, Pope ordered another attack on the Confederate left. It was gallantly made, and in the first rush was successful. Jackson s extreme left was doubled up and broken by Kearny s men, who seized the cut and held it for a time. At this point a Confederate regiment that had exhausted its ammunition fought with stones. There were plenty of fragments of rock at hand, and several men were killed by them. Again the Confederates, undisturbed on their right, hurried across re- enforcements to their imperilled left ; and Kearny s division, too small to hold what it had gained, was driven back. This day s action is properly called the battle of Groveton. Pope s forces had been considerably cut up and scattered, but he got them together that night, re formed his lines, and prepared to renew the attack the next day. Lee at the same time drew back his left somewhat, advanced and strengthened his right, and prepared to take the offensive. Each intended to attack the other s left flank. When Pope moved out the next day (August 30) to strike Lee s left, and found it withdrawn, he imagined that the enemy was in retreat, and im- 1 82 THE SECOND BULL RUN. [1862. mediately ordered McDowell to follow it up and " press the enemy vigorously the whole day." Porter s corps the advance of McDowell s force had no sooner begun this movement than it struck the foe in a strong position, and was sub jected to a heavy artillery fire. Then a cloud of dust was seen to the south, and it was evident that Lee was pushing a force around on the flank. McDowell sent Reynolds to meet and check it. Porter then attempted to obey his orders. He advanced against Jackson s right in charge after charge, but was met by a fire that repelled him every time with bloody loss. Moreover, Long- street found an eminence that commanded a part of his line, promptly took advantage of it by plac ing a battery there, and threw in an enfilading fire. It was impossible for anything to withstand this, and Porter s corps in a few minutes fell back de feated. The whole Confederate line was advanced, and an attempt was made, by still further extend ing their right, to cut off retreat ; but key-points were firmly held by Warren s brigade and the brig ades of Meade and Seymour, and the army was withdrawn in order from the field whence it had retired so precipitously a year before. After dark it crossed the stone bridge over Bull Run, and en camped on the heights around Centreville. The corps of Sumner and Franklin here joined Pope, and the whole army fell back still further, taking a position around Fairfax Court House and Germantown. Lee meanwhile ordered Jackson to make another of the flank marches that he was so 1862.] BATTLE OF CHANTILLY. 183 fond of, with a view of striking Pope s right and perhaps interrupting his communication with Washington. It was the evening of September ist when he fell heavily upon Pope s flank. He was stoutly resisted, and finally repelled by the commands of Hooker and Reno, and a part of those of McDowell and Kearny. General Stevens, of Reno s corps, was killed, and his men, having used up their ammunition, fell back. General Kearny sent Birney s brigade into the gap, and brought up a battery. He then rode forward to reconnoitre, came suddenly upon a squad of Con federates, and in attempting to ride away was shot dead. Kearny was one of the most experienced and efficient soldiers in the service. He had lost an arm in the Mexican war, was with Napoleon III. at Solferino and Magenta, and had just passed through the peninsula campaign with McClellan. Lee made no further attempt upon Pope s army, and on September 2, by Halleck s orders, it was withdrawn to the fortifications of Washington, where it was merged in the Army of the Potomac. The losses in the campaign are unknown. Lee claimed that he had captured nine thousand prison ers and thirty guns, and it is probable that Pope s killed and wounded numbered at least ten thou sand. Pope maintained that he would have won the battle of Groveton and made a successful cam paign, if General Porter had obeyed his orders. Porter for this supposed disobedience, was court- martialed in January, 1863, and was condemned and dismissed from the service, and forever dis- 184 THR PORTER DISPUTE. [1862. qualified from holding any office of trust or profit under the Government of the United States. Thousands of pages have been written and printed to prove or disprove his innocence, and the evi dence has been reviewed again and again. It ap pears to be established at last that he did not dis obey any order that it was possible for him to obey, and that he was blameless except, perhaps, in having exhibited a spirit of personal hostility to General Pope, who was then his superior officer. General Grant, reviewing the case finally in 1882, came to the conclusion that Porter was innocent, and gave his reasons for it in a magazine article, significantly remarking that " if he was guilty, the punishment awarded was not commensurate with the offence committed." But some other military authorities still believe that his sentence was just. Grant seems to make the question perfectly clear by drawing two simple diagrams. This is what Pope supposed to be the position of the armies when he ordered Porter to attack : JACKSON POPE But this is what the situation really was. JACKSON POPE CHAPTER XII. THE ANTIETAM CAMPAIGN. AFTER his success in the second battle of Ma- nassas, and the retirement of Pope s army to the defences of Washington (September 2, 1862), General Lee pushed northward into Maryland with his whole army. His advance arrived at Frederick City on the 8th, and from his camp near that place he issued a proclamation to the people of Maryland, in which he recited the wrongs they had suffered at the hands of the National Government, and told them "the people of the South have long wished to aid you in throwing off this foreign yoke, to enable you again to enjoy the inalienable rights of freemen and restore the independence and sovereignty of your State." At the same time he opened recruiting-offices, and appointed a provost marshal of Frederick. The reader of the classics will perhaps be reminded of the shrewd advice that Demosthenes gave the Athenians, when he counselled them not to ask the assistance of the Thebans against Philip of Macedon, but to bring about an alliance by offering to help them against him. But the Confederate chieftain was sadly disappointed in the effect of his proclama tion and his presence. When his army marched into the State singing " My Maryland," they were 1 86 INVASION OF MARYLAND. [1862. received with closed doors, drawn blinds, and the silence of a graveyard. In Frederick all the places of business were shut. The Marylanders did not flock to his recruiting-offices to the extent of more than two or three hundred, while on the other hand he lost many times that number from strag gling, as he says in his report. Several reasons have been assigned for the failure of the people to respond to his appeal, in each of which there is probably some truth. One was, that it had always been easy enough for Marylanders to go to the Confederate armies, and those of them that wished to enlist there had done so already. Another and probably the principal one was, that Mary land was largely true to the Union, especially in the western counties ; and she furnished many ex cellent soldiers to its armies almost fifty thou sand. Another was, that the appearance of the Southern veterans was not calculated either to en tice the men or to arouse the enthusiasm of the women. The Confederate General Jones says, " Never had the army been so dirty, ragged, and ill-provided for, as on this march." General Lee complained especially of their want of shoes. It is difficult to understand why an army that claimed to have captured such immense supplies late in August should have been so destitute early in September. On the 2d of September the President went to General McClellan s house in Washington, asked him to take command again of the Army of the Potomac, in which Pope s army had now been 1862.] THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC IN PURSUIT. 187 merged, and verbally authorized him to do so at once. The first thing that McClellan wanted was the withdrawal of Miles s force, eleven thou sand men, from Harper s Ferry where, he said, it was useless and helpless and its addition to his own force. All authorities agree that in this he was obviously and unquestionably right ; but the marplot hand of Halleck intervened, and Miles was ordered to hold the place. Halleck s principal reason appeared to be a reluctance to abandon a place where so much expense had been laid out. Miles, a \vorthy subordinate for such a chief, inter preted Halleck s orders with absolute literalness, and remained in the town, instead of holding it by placing his force on the heights that command it. As soon as it was known that Lee was in Mary land, McClellan set his army in motion northward, to cover Washington and Baltimore and find an opportunity for a decisive battle. He arrived with his advance in Frederick on the I2th, and met with a reception in striking contrast to that accorded to the army that had left the town two days before. Nearly every house displayed the National flag, the streets were thronged with peo ple, all the business places were open, and every body welcomed the Boys in Blue. But this flattering reception was not the best fortune that befell the Union army in Frederick. On his arrival in the town, General McClellan came into possession of a copy of General Lee s order, elated three days before, in which the whole campaign was laid out. By this order, 1 88 LEE S PLANS. Jackson was directed to march through Sharps- burg, cross the Potomac, capture the force at Mar- tinsburg, and assist in the capture of that at Ha r- per s Ferry ; Longstreet was directed to halt at Boonsboro with the trains; McLaws was to march to Harper s Ferry, take possession of the heights commanding it, and capture the force there as speedily as possible ; Walker was to in vest that place from the other side and assist Mc Laws ; D. H. Hill s division was to form the rear guard. All the forces were to be united again at Boonsboro or Hagerstown. General Lee had taken it for granted that Martinsburg and Har per s Ferry would be evacuated at his approach (as they should have been); and when he found they were not, he had so far changed or suspended the plan with which he set out as to send back a large part of his army to capture those places and not leave a hostile force in his rear. On the approach of Jackson s corps, General White evacuated Martinsburg and with his garri son of two thousand men joined Miles at Harper s Ferry. That town, in the fork of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, can be bombarded with the greatest ease from the heights on the opposite sides of those streams. Miles, instead of taking possession of the heights with all his men, sent a feeble detachment to those on the north side of the Potomac, and stupidly remained in the trap with the rest. McLaws sent a heavy force to climb the mountain at a point three or four miles north, whence it marched along the crest through the 1862.J CAPTURE OF HARPERS FERRY. 189 woods, and attacked three or four regiments that Miles had posted there. This force was soon driven away, while Jackson was approaching the town from the other side, and a bombardment the next day compelled a surrender when Jackson was about to attack. General Miles was mortally wounded by one of the last shots. About eleven thousand men were included in the capitulation, with seventy-three guns and a consid erable amount of camp-equipage. A body of two thou sand cavalry, com manded by Col onel Davis, had been with Miles, but had escaped the night before, crossed the Poto mac, and by morn ing reached Green- castle, Pa. On the way they captured Long- street s ammunition train of fifty wagons. Jackson, leaving the arrangements for the surrender to A. P. Hill, hurried with the greater part of his force to rejoin Lee, and reached Sharpsburg on the morning of the i6th. The range known as the South Mountain, which is a continuation of the Blue Ridge north of the Potomac, is about a thousand feet high. The two principal gaps are Turner s and Crampton s, each HARPER^ FERRY BATTLE OF SOUTH MOUNTAIN. [1862. about four hundred feet high, with the hills tow ering six hundred feet above it. When McClellan learned the plans of the Con federate commander, he set his army in motion to thwart them. He ordered Franklin s corps to pass through Crampton s Gap and press on to relieve Harper s Ferry; the corps of Reno and Hooker, under command of Burnside, he moved to Tur ner s Gap. The movement was quick for McClel lan, but not quite quick enough for the emergency. He might have passed through the Gaps on the I3th with little or no opposition, and would then have had his whole army between Lee s divided forces, and could hardly have failed to defeat them disas trously and perhaps conclusively. But he did not arrive at the passes till the morning of the I4th ; and by that time Lee had learned of his move ment and recalled Hill and Longstreet, from Boons- boro and beyond, to defend Turner s Gap, while he ordered McLaws to look out for Crampton s. Turner s Gap was flanked by two old roads that crossed the mountain a mile north and south of it ; and using these, and scrambling up from rock to rock, the National troops worked their way slowly to the crests, opposed at every step by the Con federate riflemen behind the trees and ledges. Reno assaulted the southern crest, and Hooker the northern, while Gibbon s brigade gradually pushed along up the turnpike into the Gap itself. Reno was opposed by the Confederate brigade of Garland, and both these commanders were killed. There was stubborn and bloody fighting all day, BATTLE OF SOUTH MOUNTAIN. IQI with the Union forces slowly but constantly gain ing ground, and at dark the field was won. The Confederates withdrew during the night, and in the morning the victorious columns passed through to the western side of the mountain. This battle cost McClellan fifteen hundred men, killed or wounded. Among the wounded was the lieuten ant-colonel in command of the 23d Ohio regiment Rutherford B. Hayes, afterward President who was struck in the arm by a rifle-ball. The Confederate loss in killed and wounded was about fifteen hundred, and in addition fifteen hundred were made prisoners. The fight at Crampton s Gap to defend which McLaws had sent back a part of his force from Harper s Ferry was quite similar to that at Turner s, and had a similar re sult. Franklin reached the crests after a fight of three hours, losing five hundred and thirty-two men, inflicting an equal loss upon the enemy, and capturing four hundred prisoners, one gun, and three battle-flags. These two actions (fought September 14, 1862) are designated as the battle of South Mountain. In that the enemy was driven away, the ground held, and the passes used, it was a victory, and a brilliant one, for McClellan. But in that Lee, by delaying the advance of his enemy a whole day, thereby gained time to bring to gether his own scattered forces, it was strategically a victory, though a costly one, for him. But then again it might be argued that if Lee could have kept the four thousand good troops that McClellan deprived him of at South Mountain, it might have 1 92 LEES POSITION AT SHARPSBURG. [1863. fared better with him in the struggle at Antietam, three days later. When Lee retired his left wing from Turner s Gap, he withdrew across the Antietam, and took up a position on high ground between that stream and the village of Sharpsburg. His right, under McLaws, after detaining Franklin till Harper s Ferry was surrendered, crossed the Potomac at that place, re-crossed it at Shepherdstown, and came promptly into position. Lee now had his army together and strongly posted. But it had been so reduced by losses in battle and straggling that it numbered but little over forty thousand combatants. The effect upon the army itself of invading a rich country with troops so poorly sup plied had probably not been anticipated. Lee complained bitterly that his army was " ruined by straggling," and General Hill wrote in his report, " Had all our stragglers been up, McClellan s army would have been completely crushed or annihi lated. Thousands of thievish poltroons had kept away from sheer cowardice." General Hill, in his anger, probably overestimates the effect ; for Me- Clellan had somewhat over seventy thousand men, and though he used but little more than half of them in his attacks, there is no reason to suppose he would not have used them all in a defence. The men that Le.e did have, however, were those exclusively that had been able to stand the hard marching and resist the temptation to straggle, and were consequently the flower of his army ; and they now awaited, in a chosen position, a battle 1862.] THE BATTLE-GROUND. 193 that they knew would be decisive of the campaign, if not of the war. The ground occupied by the Confederate army, with both flanks resting on the Potomac, and* the Antietam flowing in front, was advantageous. The creek was crossed by four stone bridges and a ford, and all except the northernmost bridge were strongly guarded. The land was occupied by 194 BATTLE OF THE ANTIETAM. meadows, cornfields, and patches of forest, and was much broken by outcropping ledges. McClel- lan only reconnoitered the position on the I5th. On the 1 6th he developed his plan of attack, which was simply to throw his right wing across the An- tietam by the upper and unguarded bridge, assail the Confederate left, and when this had suffi ciently engaged the enemy s attention and drawn his strength to that flank, to force the bridges and cross with his left and centre. Indeed, this was obviously almost the only practicable plan. All day long an artillery duel was kept up, in which, as General Hill says, the Confederate batteries proved no match for their opponents. It was late in the afternoon when Hooker s corps crossed by the up per bridge, advanced through the woods, and struck the left flank, which was held by two brig ades of Hood s men. Scarcely more than a skir mish ensued, when, darkness came on, and the lines rested for the night where they were. If Lee could have been in any doubt before, he was now told plainly what was to be the form of the contest, and he had all night to make his dispositions for it. The only change he thought it necessary to make was to put Jackson s fresh troops in the position on his left. Before morning McClellan sent Mans field s corps across the Antietam to join Hooker, and had Sumner s in readiness to follow at an early hour. Meanwhile, all but two thousand of Lee s forces had come up. So the I7th of Sep tember dawned in that peaceful little corner of the world with everything in readiness for a great 1862.] BATTLE OF THE ANTIETAM. 195 struggle in which there could be no surprises, and was to be scarcely any thing more than wounds for wounds and death for death. In the vicinity of the little Dunker church, the road running northward from Sharpsburg to Ha- gerstown was bordered on both sides by woods, and in these woods the battle began when Hooker as saulted Jackson at sunrise. There was hard fight ing for an hour, during which Jackson s lines were not only heavily pressed by Hooker in front, but at length enfiladed by a fire from the batteries on the eastern side of the Antietam. This broke them and drove them back ; but when Hooker attempted to advance his lines far enough to hold the road and seize the woods west of it, he in turn was met by fresh masses of troops and a heavy artillery fire, and was checked. Mansfield s corps was moving up to his support when its commander was mor tally wounded. Nevertheless it moved on, got a position in the woods west of the road, and held it, though at heavy cost. At this moment General Hooker was seriously wounded and borne from the field, while Sumner crossed the stream and came up with his corps. His men drove back the defeated divisions of the enemy without much dif ficulty, and occupied the ground around the church. His whole line was advancing to ap parent victory, when two fresh divisions were brought over from the Confederate right, and were immediately thrust into a wide gap in Sumner s line. Sedgwick, whose division formed the right of the line, was thus flanked on his left, and was 196 BATTLE OF THE ANTIETAM. [1862. easily driven back out of the woods, across the clearing, and into the eastern woods, after which the Confederates retired to their own position. Fighting of this sort went on all the forenoon, one of the episodes being a race between the 5th New Hampshire regiment and a Confederate force for a commanding point of ground, the two marching in parallel lines and firing at each other as they went along. The New Hampshire men got there first. But while this great struggle was in progress on McClellan s right, his centre and left, under Por ter and Burnside, did not make any movement to assist. At noon Franklin arrived from Cramp- ton s Gap, and was sent over to help Hooker and Sumner, being just in time to check a new advance by more troops brought over from the Confederate right. At eight o clock in the morning Burnside had been ordered to carry the bridge in his front, cross the stream, and attack the Confederate right. But, though commanded and urged repeatedly, it was one o clock before he succeeded in doing this, and two more precious hours passed away before he had carried the ridge commanding Sharpsburg and captured the Confederate battery there. Then came up the last division of Lee s forces (A. P. Hill s) from Harper s Ferry, two thousand strong, united with the other forces on his left, and drove Burnside from the crest and re-took the battery. Here ended the battle ; not because the day was closed, or any apparent victory had been achieved, 1862.1 CONDUCT OF THE BATTLE. 1 97 but because both sides had been so severely pun ished that neither was inclined to resume the fight. Every man of Lee s force had been actively en gaged, but not more than two thirds of McClellan s. The reason why the Confederate army was not annihilated or captured must be plain to any intel ligent reader. It was not because Lee, with his army divided for three days in presence of his enemy, had not invited destruction, nor because the seventy thousand, acting in concert, could not have overwhelmed the forty thousand even when they were united. It was not for any lack of courage, or men, or arms, or opportunity, or day light. It was simply because the attack was made in driblets, instead of by heavy masses on both wings simultaneously ; so that at any point of actual contact Lee was almost always able to pre sent as strong a force as that which assailed him. The losses on both sides were fully equal to those of Shiloh. Whatever had been the strag gling on the march, none of the commanders com plained of any flinching after the fight began. They saw veterans taking, relinquishing, and re taking ground that was soaked with blood and covered with dead ; and they saw green regiments " go to their graves like beds." There had been a call for more troops by the National Administra tion after the battles on the Peninsula, which was responded to with the greatest alacrity, men of all classes rushing to the recruiting-offices to enroll themselves. It was a common thing for a regi ment of a thousand men to be raised, equipped, 198 THE LOSSES. [1862. and sent to the front in two or three weeks. Some of these new regiments were suddenly introduced to the realities of war at Antietam, and suffered frightfully. For example, the i6th Connecticut, which there fired its muskets for the first time, went in with nine hundred and forty men, and lost four hundred and thirty-two. On the other side, Lawton s Confederate brigade went in with eleven hundred and fifty men, and lost five hundred and fifty-four, including five out of its six regimental commanders, while Hays s lost three hundred and twenty-three out of five hundred and fifty, including every regimental commander and all the staff officers. Three Confederate generals were killed, and eight were wounded. General McClellan reported his entire loss at twelve thou sand four hundred and sixty-nine, of whom two thousand and ten were killed. General Lee re ported his total loss in the Maryland battles as fifteen hundred and sixty-seven killed and eighty- seven hundred and twenty-four wounded, saying nothing of the missing ; but the figures given by his division commanders foot up eighteen hun dred and forty-two killed, ninety-three hundred and ninety-nine wounded, and twenty-two hundred and ninety-two missing total, thirteen thousand five hundred and thirty-three. If McClellan s report is correct, even this statement falls short of the truth. He says : " About twenty-seven hundred of the enemy s dead were counted and buried upon the battle-field of Antietam. A portion of their dead had been previously buried by the enemy. * THE RESULTS. 1 99 If the wounded were in the usual proportion, this would indicate Confederate casualties to th^ extent of at least fifteen thousand on that field alone. But whatever the exact number may have been, the battle was bloody enough to produce mourn ing and lamentation from Maine to Louisiana. Nothing was done on the i8th, and when Mc- Clellan determined to renew the attack on the I9th, he found that his enemy had withdrawn from the field and crossed to Virginia by the ford at Shepherdstown. The National commander re ported the capture of more than six thousand prisoners, thirteen guns ; and thirty-nine battle- flags, and that he had not lost a gun or a color. As he was also in possession of the field, where the enemy left all their dead and two thousand of their wounded, and had rendered Lee s invasion fruitless of anything but the prisoners carried off from Harper s Ferry, the victory was his. CHAPTER XIII. EMANCIPATION. THE war had now (September, 1862) been in prog ress almost a year and a half ; and nearly twenty thousand men had been shot dead on the battle field, and upward of eighty thousand wounded, while an unknown number had died of disease con tracted in the service, or been carried away into captivity. The money that had been spent by the United States Government alone amounted to about one billion dollars. All this time there was not an intelligent man in the country but knew the cause of the war ; and yet more than a hundred thousand American citizens were killed or man gled before a single blow was delivered directly at that cause. General Fremont had aimed at it ; General Hunter had aimed at it ; but in each case the arm was struck up by the Administration. One would naturally suppose, from the thorough ness with which the slavery question had been dis cussed for thirty years, that when the time came for action there would be little doubt or hesitation on either side. On the Confederate side there was neither doubt nor hesitation. On the Na tional side there was both doubt and hesitation ; and it took a long time to arrive at a determina tion to destroy slavery in order to preserve the 1862.] LINCOLN S ATTITUDE TOWARD SLAVERY. 2OI Union. The old habit of compromise and concili ation half paralyzed the arm of war, and thou sands of well-meaning citizens were unable to com prehend the fact that we were dealing with a ques tion that it was useless to compromise and a force that it was impossible to conciliate. Mr. Lincoln had hated slavery ever since, when a young man, he made a trip on a flat-boat to New Orleans, and there saw it in some of its more hideous aspects. That he realized its nature and force as an organized institution and a power in politics, appears from one of his celebrated speeches, delivered in 1858, wherein he declared that as a house divided against itself cannot stand, so our Government could not endure permanently half slave and half free. " Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the be lief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall be come alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South." Why then, hating slavery personally, and understanding it politi cally, and knowing it to be the cause of the war, did he not sooner declare it abolished ? On the one hand, he was not, like some of our chief magistrates, under the impression that he had been placed in office to carry out irresponsibly a personal policy of his own ; and on the other he was shrewd enough to know that it would be as fu tile for a president to place himself far in advance of his people on a great question, as for a general 2O2 THE COST OF EMANCIPATION. [1862. to precede his troops on the battle-field. Hence he turned over and over, and presented again and again, the idea that the war might be stopped and the question settled by paying for the slaves and liberating them. It looked like a very simple cal culation to figure out the cost of purchased eman cipation and compare it with the probable cost of the war. The comparison seemed to present an unanswerable argument, and in the end the money cost pf the war was more one thousand dollars for every slave emancipated, while in the most profit able days of the institution the blacks, young and old together, had not been worth over half that price. The fallacy of the argument lay in its blindness to the fact that the Confederates were not fighting to retain possession of their actual slaves, but to perpetuate the institution itself. The unthrift of slavery as an economic system had been many times demonstrated, notably in Helper s " Impending Crisis," but these demonstrations, in stead of inducing the slaveholders to seek to get rid of it on the best attainable terms, appeared only to excite their anger. And it ought to have been seen that a proud people with arms in their hands, either flushed with victory or confident in their own prowess, no matter where their real in terests may lie, can never be reasoned with except through the syllogisms of lead and steel. Perhaps Mr. Lincoln did know it, but was waiting for his people to find it out. The Louisville, Ky., " Courier," in a paragraph quoted on page 70 of this volume, had told a great M CLELLAN S POSITION. 203 deal of bitter and shameful truth ; but when it entered upon the prophecy that the North would soon resume the yoke of the slaveholders, it was not so happy. And yet it had strong grounds for its confident prediction. Not only had a great Peace Convention been held in February, 1861, which strove to prevent secession by offering new guarantees for the protection of slavery, but the chief anxiety of a large number of Northern citi zens and officers in the military service appeared to be to manifest their desire that the institution should not be harmed. The most eminent of the Federal generals, McClellan, when he first took the field in West Virginia, issued a proclamation to the Unionists, in which he said : " Notwithstanding all that has been said by the traitors to induce you to believe our advent among you will be signalized by an in terference with your slaves, understand one thing clearly : not only will we abstain from all such in terference, but we will, on the contrary, with an iron hand crush any attempt at insurrection on their part." In pursuance of this, he returned to their owners all slaves that escaped and sought refuge within his lines. It was an every-day occur rence for slaveholders who were in active rebellion against the Government that he was serving to come into his camps under flag of truce and de mand and receive their runaway slaves. The Hutchinsons, a family of popular singers, by per mission of the Secretary of War, visited his camp in the winter of 1861-2, to sing to the soldiers. 2O4 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY S POSITION. But when the General found them singing some stanzas of Whittier s that spoke of slavery as a curse to be abolished, he forthwith issued an order that their pass should be revoked and they should not sing any more to the troops. And even after his retreat on the Peninsula, McClellan wrote a long letter of advice to the President, in the course of which he said : " Neither confiscation of prop erty . . . nor forcible abolition of slavery should be contemplated for a moment. . . . Military power should not be allowed to interfere with the relations of servitude, either by supporting or im pairing the authority of the master, except for repressing disorder." In all this, General McClellan was only clinging blindly and tenaciously to the idea that had under lain the whole administration of the government while it was in the hands of his party : that the perpetuation of slavery, whether against political opposition or against the growth of civilization and the logic of political economy, was the first purpose of the Constitution and the most impera tive duty of the Government. Democratic politi cians had never formulated this rule, but Demo cratic Presidents had always followed it. Presi dent Polk had obeyed it when with one hand he secured the slave State of Texas at the cost of the Mexican War, and with the other relinquished to Great Britain the portion of Oregon north of the 49th parallel, but for which we should now possess every harbor on the Pacific coast. President Pierce had obeyed it when he sent troops to Kansas to 1862.] EFFECT T/PON ELECTIONS. assist the invaders from Missouri and overawe the free -State settlers. President Buchanan had obeyed it when he vetoed the Homestead Bill, which would have accelerated the development of the northern Territories into States. And in numerable other instances might be cited. The existence of this party in the North was the most serious embarrassment with which the Administra tion had to contend in the conduct of the war- not even excepting the border States. As individ uals, its members were undoubtedly loyal to the Constitution and Government as they understood them, though they wofully misunderstood them. As a party, it was placed in a singular dilemma. It did not want the Union dissolved ; for without the vote of the slave States it would be in a hope less minority in Congress and at every Presiden tial election ; but neither did it wish to see its strongest cohesive element overthrown, or its natural leaders defeated and exiled. What it wanted was " the Union as it was," and for this it continued to clamor long after it had become as plain as daylight that the Union as it was could never again exist. Whenever the National armies met with a reverse, if an election was pending, this party was the gainer thereby ; if they won a victory, it became weaker. Whenever a new measure was proposed, Congress and the Presi dent were obliged to consider not only what would be its legitimate effect, but whether in any way the Democratic press could use it as a weapon against them. Hence the idea of emancipation, though 2O6 PREDICTIONS BY THE POETS. [1842. not altogether slow in conception, for many of the ablest minds had leaped at it from the beginning, was tardy in execution. As early as 1836 John Quincy Adams, speaking in Congress, had said : " From the instant that your slaveholding States become the theatre of war, from that instant the war-powers of the Con stitution extend to interference with the institution of slavery in every way in which it can be inter fered with." And in 1842 he had expressed the idea more strongly and fully : " Whether the war be civil, servile, or foreign, I lay this down as the law of nations I say that the military authority takes for the time the place of all municipal insti tutions, slavery among the rest. Under that state of things, so far from its being true that the States where slavery exists have the exclusive manage ment of the subject, not only the President of the United States, but the commander of the army has power to order the universal emancipation of the slaves." The poets, wiser than the politicians, had long foretold the great struggle and its results. James Russell Lowell, before he was thirty years of age, wrote : " Out from the land of bondage tis decreed our slaves shall go, And signs to us are offered, as erst to Pharaoh. If we are blind, their exodus, like Israel s of yore, Through a Red Sea is doomed to be, whose surges are of gore." Twenty years later he saw his prediction fulfilled. But generally the anticipation was that the insti tution would be extinguished through a general 1861.] SLAVES DECLARED CONTRABAND. 2C7 rising of the slaves themselves. Thus Henry W. Longfellow wrote in 1841 : " There is a poor, blind Samson in this land, Shorn of his strength, and bound in bonds of steel, Who may, in some grim revel, raise his hand, And shake the pillars of this commonweal, Till the vast temple of our liberties A shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies." It seems a singular fact that throughout the war there was no insurrection of the slaves. They were all anxious enough for liberty, and ran away from bondage whenever they could ; but, except by regular enlistment in the National army, there never was any movement among them to assist in the emancipation of their race. The first refusal to return fugitive slaves was made as early as May 26, 1861, by General B. F. Butler, commanding at Fort Monroe. Three slaves, who had belonged to Colonel Mallory, com manding the Confederate forces near Hampton, came within Butler s lines that day, saying they had run away because they were about to be sent south. Colonel Mallory sent by flag of truce to claim their rendition under the Fugitive Slave Law, but was informed by General Butler that, as slaves could be made very useful to a belligerent in working on fortifications and other labor, they were contraband of war, like lead or powder or any other war material, and therefore could not and would not be delivered up. He offered, however, to return these three if Colonel Mallory would come to his headquarters and take an oath to 208 FREMONT S ACTION. obey the laws of the United States. This declara tion at once a witticism, a correct legal point, and sound common sense was the first practical blow that was struck at the institution ; and it gave us a new word, for from that time fugitive slaves were commonly spoken of as "contrabands." They came into the National camps by thousands, and commanding officers and correspondents fre quently questioned the more intelligent of them, in the hope of eliciting valuable information as to the movements of the enemy ; but so many apoc ryphal stories were thus originated that at length " intelligent contraband " became solely a term of derision. The next step was the passage of a law by Congress (approved August 6, 1861), wherein it was enacted that property, including slaves, actually employed in the service of the rebellion with the knowledge and consent of the owner, should be confiscated, and might be seized by the National forces wherever found. But it cautiously provided that slaves thus confiscated were not to be manu mitted at once, but to be held subject to some future decision of the United States courts or action of Congress. General John C. Fremont, the first Republican candidate for the Presidency (1856), who has had a more romantic life than any other living Ameri can, and in whose administration, instead of Lincoln s, the war would have occurred if he had been elected, was in Europe in 1861, and did the Government a timely service in the purchase of HUNTERS PROCLAMATION. 2CX) arms. Hastening home, he was made a Major- General, and given command in Missouri. On the 3Oth of August he issued a proclamation placing the whole State under martial law, confiscating the property of all citizens who should take up arms against the United States or assist its enemies by burning bridges, cutting wires, etc., and adding, " their slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared free men." The President called General Fre mont s attention to the fact that the clause relating to slaves was not in conformity with the act of Congress, and requested him to modify it ; to which Fremont replied by asking for an open order to that effect in plain words, that the President should modify it himself, which Mr. Lincoln did. On the 6th of March, 1862, the President, in a special message to Congress, recommended the adoption of a joint resolution to the effect that the United States ought to co-operate with, and ren der pecuniary aid to, any State that should enter upon a gradual abolition of slavery ; and Congress passed such a resolution by a large majority. General David Hunter, who commanded the National forces on the coast of South Carolina, with headquarters at Hilton Head, issued a gen eral order on April 12, 1862, that all slaves in Fort Pulaski and on Cockspur Island should be confis cated and thenceforth free. On the gih of May he issued another order, wherein, after mentioning that the three States in his department Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina had been declared under martial law, he proceeded to say : " Slavery 2IO FIRST ENLISTMENT OF BLACKS. [1862. and martial law, in a free country, are altogether incompatible. The persons in these three States heretofore held as slaves are therefore declared forever free." On the igth of the same month the President issued a proclamation annulling General Hunter s order, and adding that the question of emancipation was one that he reserved to himself, and could not feel justified in leaving to the decis ion of commanders in the field. General Hunter also organized a regiment of black troops, desig nated as the ist South Carolina Volunteers, which was the first body of negro soldiers mustered into the National service during the war. This pro ceeding, which now seems the most natural and sensible thing the General could have done, created serious alarm in Congress. A Representative from Kentucky introduced a resolution asking for information concerning the " regiment of fugitive slaves," and the Secretary of War referred the in quiry to General Hunter, who promptly answered: " No regiment of fugitive slaves has been or is being organized in this department. There is, however, a fine regiment of persons whose late masters are fugitive rebels, men who everywhere fly before the appearance of the National flag, leaving their servants behind them to shift as best they can for themselves. In the absence of any fugitive-master law, the deserted slaves would be wholly without remedy, had not their crime of treason given the slaves the right to pursue, cap ture, and bring back these persons of whose pro tection they have been so suddenly bereft." 1862.] DIVISION OF SENTIMENT IN THE ARMY. 211 Fremont s and Hunter s attempts at emancipa tion created a great excitement, the Democratic journals declaring that the struggle was being "turned into an abolition war," and many Union men in the border States expressing the gravest apprehensions as to the consequences. The com manders were by no means of one mind on the subject. General Thomas Williams, commanding in the Department of the Gulf, ordered that all fugitive slaves should be expelled from his camps and sent beyond the lines ; and Colonel Halbert E. Paine, of the 4th Wisconsin regiment, who refused to obey the order, on the ground that it was "a violation of law for the purpose of returning fu gitives to rebels," was deprived of his command and placed under arrest. Colonel Daniel R. An thony, of the 7th Kansas regiment, serving in Ten nessee, ordered that men coming in and demand ing the privilege of searching for fugitive slaves should be turned out of the camp, and that no officer or soldier in his regiment should engage in the arrest and delivery of fugitives to their mas ters ; and for this Colonel Anthony received from his superior officer the same treatment that had been accorded to Colonel Paine. The division of sentiment ran through the entire army. Soldiers that would rob a granary, or cut down trees, or re duce fences to firewood without the slightest com punction, still recognized the ancient taboo, and expressed the nicest scruples in regard to property in slaves. On the I4th of July the President recommended 212 MARYLAND ABOLISHES SLAVERY. [1864. to Congress the passage of a bill for the payment, in United States interest-bearing bonds, to any State that should abolish slavery, of an amount equal to the value of all slaves within its borders according to the census of 1860; and at the same time he asked the Congressional representatives of the border States to use their influence with their constituents to bring about such action in those States. The answer was not very favorable ; but Maryland did abolish slavery before the close of the war, in October, 1864. On the very day in which the popular vote of that State decided to adopt a new constitution without slavery, October 12, died Roger B. Taney, a native of Maryland, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, who had been appointed by the first distinctly pro-slavery President, and from that bench had handed down the Dred-Scott decision, which was calculated to render forever impossible any amel ioration of the condition of the negro race. On July 22, 1862, all the National command ers were ordered to employ as many negroes as could be used advantageously for military and naval purposes, paying them for their labor and keeping a record as to their ownership, "as a basis on which compensation could be made in proper cases." Thus events were creeping along toward a true statement of the great problem, without which it could never be solved, when Horace Greeley, through the columns of his " Tribune," addressed an open letter to the President (August 19), 1862.] GREELEY AND LINCOLN CORRESPONDENCE. 213 entitling it " The Prayer of Twenty Millions." It exhorted Mr. Lincoln, not to general eman cipation, but to such an execution of the ex isting laws as would free immense numbers of slaves belonging to men in arms against the Government. It was impassioned and power ful ; a single passage will show its character : "On the face of this wide earth, Mr. President, there is not one disinterested, determined, intelli gent champion of the Union cause who does not feel that all attempts to put down the rebellion, and at the same time uphold its exciting cause, are preposterous and futile ; that the rebellion, if crushed out to-morrow, would be renewed within a year if slavery were left in full vigor ; that army officers who remain to this day devoted to slavery can at best be but half-way loyal to the Union ; and that every hour of deference to slavery is an hour of added and deepened peril to the Union." Any one less a genius than Mr. Lincoln would have found it difficult to answer Mr. Greeleyat all, and his answer was not one in the sense of being a refutation, but it exhibited his view of the ques tion, and is perhaps as fine a piece of literature as was ever penned by any one in an official capacity: " If there be perceptible in it [Mr. Greeley s letter] an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in def erence to an old friend whose heart I have always supposed to be right. . . . As to the policy I seem to be pursuing, as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt. . . . My paramount ob ject is to save the Union, and not either to save or 214 EMANCIPATION PROCLAIMED. [1862. destroy slavery. If I could save the Union with out freeing any slave, I would do it ; if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it ; and if could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. I have here stated my purpose according to my views of official duty ; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed per sonal wish that all men everywhere could be free." In truth, the President was already contemplat ing emancipation as a war measure, and about this time he prepared his preliminary proclamation; but he did not wish to issue it till it could follow a triumph of the National arms. Pope s defeat in Vir ginia in August set it back ; but McClellan s suc cess at Antietam, though not the decisive victory that was wanted, appeared to be as good an oppor tunity as was likely soon to present itself, and five days later (September 22, 1862) the proclamation was issued. It declared that the President would, at the next session, renew his suggestion to Con gress of pecuniary aid to the States disposed to abolish slavery gradually or otherwise, and gave notice that on the ist of January, 1863, he would declare forever free all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State,the people whereof should then be in rebellion against the United States. On that day he issued the final and decisive proclamation, as promised, in which he also announced that black men would be received into the military and naval service of the United States. The immediate effect of this action was what 1862.] HOW IT WAS RECEIVED. 215 had been expected. The friends of liberty, and supporters of the Administration generally,rejoiced at it, believing that the true line of combat had been drawn at last. Robert Dale Owen probably expressed the opinion of most of them when he wrote, " The true and fit question is whether, with out a flagrant violation of official duty, the Presi dent had the right to refrain from doing it." The effect in Europe is said to have been decisive of the question whether the Confederacy should be recognized as an established nation ; but as to this there is some uncertainty. It is certain, however, that much friendship for the Union was won in England, where it had been withheld on account of our attitude on the slavery question. In Man chester, December 31, a mass-meeting of factory operatives was held, and resolutions of sympathy with the Union, and an address to President Lin coln, were voted. The full significance of this can only be understood when it is remembered that these men were largely out of work for want of the cotton that the blockade prevented the South from exporting. The Confederate journals chose to interpret the proclamation as nothing more than an attempt to excite a servile insurrection. The Democratic editors of the North assailed Mr. Lin coln with every verbal weapon of which they were masters, though these had been somewhat blunted by previous use, for he had already been freely called a usurper, a despot, a destroyer of the Con stitution, and a keeper of Bastiles. They declared with horror (doubtless in some cases perfectly sin- 2l6 THE POLITICAL EFFECT. [1862. cere) that the proclamation had changed the whole character of the war ! And this was true, though not in the sense in which they meant it. When be gun, it was a war for a temporary peace ; the proc lamation converted it into a war for a permanent peace. But the autumn elections showed how near Mr. Lincoln came to being ahead of his people af ter all ; for they went largely against the Adminis tration, and even in the States that the Democrats did not carry there was a falling-off in the Repub lican majorities; though the result was partly due to the failure of the Peninsula campaign, and the escape of Lee s army after Antietam. Yet this did not shake the great emancipator s faith in the justice and wisdom of what he had done. He said on New Year s evening to a knot of callers, " The signa ture looks a little tremulous, for my hand was tired, but my resolution was firm. I told them in September, if they did not return to their alle giance and cease murdering our soldiers, I would strike at this pillar of their strength. And now the promise shall be kept, and not one word of it will I ever recall." If we wonder at the slowness with which that great struggle arrived at its true theme and issue, we shall do well to note that it has a close parallel in our own history. The first battle of the Revo lution was fought in April, 1775, but the Declara tion of Independence was not made till July, 1776 a period of nearly fifteen months. The first battle in the War of Secession took place in April, 1861, and the Emancipation Proclamation was 1862.] AN HISTORICAL PARALLEL. 21 7 issued in September, 1862 seventeen months. In the one case, as in the other, the interval was filled with doubt, hesitation, and divided counsels ; and Lincoln s reluctance finds its match in Washing ton s confession that when he took command of the army (after Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill had been fought) he still abhorred the idea of independence. And again, as the great Procla mation was preceded by the attempts of Fremont and Hunter, so the great Declaration had been preceded by those of Mendon, Mass., Chester, Penn., and Mecklenburg, N. C., which anticipated its essential propositions by two or three years. A period of fifteen or seventeen months, however slow for an individual, is perhaps for an entire peo ple as rapid development of a radical purpose as we could have any reason to expect. CHAPTER XIV. BURNSIDE S CAMPAIGN. AFTER the battle of the Antietam, Lee withdrew to the neighborhood of Winchester, where he was reenforced till at the end of a month he had about sixty-eight thousand men. McClellan fol lowed as far as the Potomac, and there seemed to plant his army, as if he expected it to sprout and increase itself like a field of corn. Ten days after he defeated Lee on the Antietam, he wrote to the President that he intended to stay where he was, and attack the enemy if they attempted to re-cross into Maryland ! At the same time, he constantly called for unlimited reinforcements, and declared that, even if the city of Washington should be captured, it would not be a disaster so serious as the defeat of his army. Apparently it did not occur to General McClellan that these two contin gencies were logically the same. For if Lee could have defeated that army, he could then have marched into Washington ; or if he could have captured Washington without fighting the army whose business it was to defend it, the army would thereby be substantially defeated. On the ist of October the President visited General McClellan at his headquarters, and made himself acquainted with the condition of the army. 1868.] M CLELLAN S INACTION. 219 Five days later he ordered McClellan to " cross the Potomac, and give battle to the enemy, or drive him south." The despatch added, " Your army must move now, while the roads are good. If you cross the river between the enemy and Washington, and cover the latter by your opera tion, you can be reenforced with thirty thousand men." Nevertheless, McClellan did not stir. In stead of obeying the order, he inquired what sort of troops they were that would be sent to him, and how many tents he could have, and said his army could not move without fresh supplies of shoes and clothing. While he was thus paltering, the Con federate General Stuart, who had ridden around his army on the Peninsula, with a small body of cavalry rode entirely around it again, eluding all efforts for his capture. On the I3th the President wrote along, friendly letter to General McClellan, in which* he gave him much excellent advice that he, as a trained soldier, ought not to have needed. A sentence or two will suggest the drift of it : " Are you not overcautious when you assume that you cannot do what the enemy is constantly doing ? ... In coming to us, he [the enemy] tenders us an advantage which we should not waive. We should not so operate as to merely drive him away. . . . It is all easy if our troops march as well as the enemy, and it is unmanly to say they cannot do it." The letter had outlined a plan of campaign, but it closed with the words, characteristic of Lin coln s modesty in military matters, " This letter is in no sense an order." Twelve days more of fine 220 LINCOLN TO M CLELLAN. weather were frittered away in renewed complaints, and such inquiries as whether the President wished him to move at once or wait for fresh horses, for the General said his horses were fatigued and had sore tongue. Here the President began to show some impatience, and wrote : " Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the battle of Antietam that fatigues anything ? " The General replied that they had been scouting, picketing, and making reconnoissan- ces, and that the President had done injustice to the cavalry. Whereupon Mr. Lincoln wrote again : " Most certainly I intend no injustice to any, and if I have clone any I deeply regret it. To be told, after more than five weeks total inaction of the army, and during which period we had sent to that army every fresh horse we possibly could, amount ing in the whole to 7,918, that the cavalry horses were too much fatigued to move, presented a very cheerless, almost hopeless, prospect for the future, and it may have forced something of impatience into my despatches." That day, October 26, McClellan began to cross the Potomac ; but it was ten days (partly owing to heavy rains) before his army was all on the south side of the river, and meanwhile he had brought up new questions for discussion and invented new excuses for delay. He wanted to know to what extent the line of the Potomac was to be guarded ; he wanted to leave strong garrisons at certain points, to prevent the army he was driving southward before him from rushing northward into Maryland again ; he dis- 1868.] BURNSIDE IN COMMAND. 221 cussed the position of General Bragg s (Confeder ate) army, which was four hundred miles away beyond the mountains ; he said the old regiments of his command must be filled up with recruits be fore they could go into action. McClellan was a sore puzzle to the people of the loyal States. But large numbers of his men still believed in him, and as is usual in such cases intensified their personal devotion in proportion as the distrust of the people at large was increased. After crossing the Potomac, he left a corps at Har per s Ferry, and was moving southward on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge, while Lee moved in the same direction on the western side, when, on November 7, the President solved the riddle that had vexed the country, by relieving him of the command. The successor of General McClellan was Am brose E. Burnside, then in his thirty-ninth year, who was graduated at West Point fifteen years before, had commanded cavalry during the Mex ican war, had invented a breech-loading rifle, which was commercially unsuccessful, and at the break ing out of the rebellion was treasurer of the Illi nois Central Railroad. When the ist Rhode Island regiment went to Washington, four days after the President s first call for troops, Burnside was its colonel. He commanded a brigade at the first battle of Bull Run ; led an expedition that captured Roanoke Island, New Berne, and Beau fort, N.C., in January, 1862 ; and commanded one wing of McClellan s army at South Mountain and 222 BURNSIDE IN COMMAND. [1862. Antietam. Whether he was blameworthy for not crossing the Antietam early in the day and effect ing a crushing defeat of Lee s army, is a disputed question. It might be worth while to discuss it, were it not that he afterward accepted a heavier responsibility and incurred a more serious accusa tion. The command of the Army of the Potomac had been offered to him twice before, but he had refused it, saying that he " was not competent to command such a large army." When the order came relieving McClellan and appointing him,, he consulted with that general and with his staff offi cers, making the same objection ; but they took the ground that as a soldier he was bound to obey without question, and so he accepted the place, as he says, " in the midst of a violent snow-storm, with the army in a position that I knew little of." These two generals were warm personal friends, and McClellan remained a few days to put Burn- side in possession, as far as possible, of the essential facts in relation to the position and condition of the forces. At this time the right wing of Lee s army, under Longstreet, was near Culpeper, and the left, under Jackson, was in the Shenandoah Valley. Their separation was such that it would require two days for one to march to the other. McClellan said he intended to endeavor to get between them and either beat them in detail or force them to unite as far south as Gordonsville. Burnside not only did not continue this plan, but gave up the idea that the Confederate army was his true objective, 1862.] THE POSITION AT FREDERICKSBURG. 223 assumed the city of Richmond to be such, and set out for that place by way of the north bank of the Rappahannock and the city of Fredericks- burg, after consuming ten days in reorganizing his army into three grand divisions, under Sumner, Hooker, and Franklin. On the i5th of November he began the march from Warrenton ; the head of his first column reached Falmouth on the 1 7th, and by the 2Oth the whole army was there. By some blunder (it is uncertain whose) the pontoon train that was to have met the army at this point, and afforded an immediate crossing of the river, did not arrive till a week later ; and by this time Lee, who chose to cover his own capital and cross the path of his enemy, rather than strike at his communica tions, had placed his army on the heights south and west of Fredericksburg, and at once began to for tify them. His line was about five and a half miles long, and was as strong as a good natural position, earthworks, and an abundance of artillery could make it. He could not prevent Burnside from crossing the river ; for the heights on the left bank rose close to the stream, commanding the inter mediate plain, and on these heights Burnside had one hundred and forty-seven guns. What with waiting for the pontoons and establishing his base of supplies at Acquia Creek, it was the loth of De cember before the National commander was ready to attempt the passage of the stream. He planned to lay down five bridges three opposite the city and the others two miles below and depended upon his artillery to protect the engineers. 224 LAYING THE BRIDGES. 1862.] Before daybreak on the morning of the nth, in a thick fog, the work was begun ; but the bridges had not spanned more than half the dis tance when the sun had risen and the fog lifted sufficiently to reveal what was going on. A de tachment of Mississippi riflemen had been posted in cellars, behind stone walls, and at every point where a man could be sheltered on the south bank ; and now the incessant crack of their 1862] CROSSING THE RAPPAHANNOCK. 225 weapons was heard, picking off the men that were laying the bridges. One after another of the blue-coats reeled with a bullet in his brain, fell into the water, and was carried down by the current, till the losses were so serious that it was impossible to continue the work. At the lower bridges the sharpshooters, who there had no shelter but rifle-pits in the open field, were dislodged after a time, and by noon those bridges were completed. But along the front of the town they had better shelter, the National guns could not be depressed enough to shell them, and the work on the three upper bridges came to a standstill. Burnside tried bombarding the town, threw seventy tons of iron into it, and set it on fire ; but still the sharpshooters clung to their hid ing-places, and when the engineers tried to renew their task on the bridges, under cover of the bom bardment, they were destroyed by the same mur derous fire. At last General Hunt, chief of artillery, sug gested a solution of the difficulty. Three regi ments that volunteered for the service --the 7th Michigan and the iQth and 2Oth Massachusetts crossed the river in pontoon boats, under the fire of the sharpshooters, landed quickly, and drove them out of their fastness, capturing a hun dred of them, while the remainder escaped to the hills. The bridges were then completed, and the crossing was begun ; but it was evening of the 1 2th before the entire army was on the Freder- icksburg side of the river. 226 BURNSIDE S PLANS. On the morning of the I3th Burnsidewas ready to attack, and Lee was more than ready to be at tacked. He had concentrated his whole army on the fortified heights, Longstreet s corps forming his left wing and Jackson s his right, with every gun in position and every man ready and knowing what to expect. The weak point of the line, if it had any, was on the right, where the ground was not so high, and there was plenty of room for the de ployment of the attacking force. Here Franklin commanded, with about half of the National army; and here, according to Burnside s first plan, the principal assault was to be made. But there ap pears to have been a sudden and unaccountable change in the plan ; and when the hour for action arrived Franklin was ordered to send forward a division or two, and hold the remainder of his force ready for " a rapid movement down the old Richmond road," while Sumner on the right was ordered to send out two divisions to seize the heights back of the city. Exactly what Burn- side expected to do next, if these movements had been successful, nobody appears to know. The division chosen to lead Franklin s attack was Meade s. This advanced rapidly, preceded by a heavy skirmish line, while his batteries, firing over the heads of the troops, shelled the heights vigorously. Meade s men crossed the railroad under a heavy fire that had been withheld till they were within close range, penetrated between two divisions of the first Confederate line, doubling back the flanks of both and taking many prison- 1862.] THE ATTACK ON THE HEIGHTS. 22 7 ers and some battle-flags, scaled the heights, and came upon the second line. By this time the mo mentum of the attack was spent, and the fire of the second line, delivered on the flanks as well as in front, drove them back. The divisions of Gib bon and Doubleday had followed in support, which relieved the pressure upon Meade ; and when all three were returning unsuccessful and in consider able confusion, Birney s moved out and stopped the pursuing enemy. Sumner s attack was made with the divisions of French and Hancock, which moved through the town and deployed in columns under the fire of the Confederate batteries. This was very destruc tive, but was not the deadliest thing that the men had to meet. Marye s Hill was skirted near its base by an old sunken road, at the outer edge of which was a stone wall ; and in this road were two brigades of Confederate infantry. It could hardly be seen, at a little distance, that there was a road at all. When French s charging columns had rushed across the open ground under an artillery fire that ploughed through and through their ranks, they suddenly confronted a sheet of flame and lead from the rifles in the sunken road. The Confederates here were so numerous that each one at the wall had two or three behind to load muskets and hand them to him, while he had only to lay them flat across the wall and fire them as rapidly as possible, exposing scarcely more than his head. Nearly half of French s men were shot down, and the remainder fell back. Hancock s 228 THE LOSSES. five thousand charged in the same manner, and some of them approached within twenty yards of the wall ; but within a quarter of an hour they also fell back a part of the distance, leaving two thou sand of their number on the field. Three other divisions advanced to the attack, but with no better result ; and all of them remained in a posi tion where they were just out of reach of the rifles in the sunken road, but were still played upon by the Confederate artillery. Burnside now grew frantic, and ordered Hooker to attack. That officer moved out with three divisions, made areconnoissance, and went back to tell Burnside it was useless and persuade him to give up the attempt. But the commander insisted, and so Hooker s four thousand rushed forward with fixed bayonets, and presently came back like the rest, leaving seventeen hundred dead or wounded on the field. The entire National loss in this battle was 12,353 m killed, wounded, or missing, though some of the missing afterward rejoined their com mands. Hancock s division lost one hundred and fifty-six officers, and one of his regiments lost two thirds of its men. The Confederate loss was 5,309. In the night the Union troops brought in their wounded and buried some of their dead. Severe as his losses had been, Burnside planned to make a fresh attempt the next day, with the Ninth Corps (his old command), which he proposed to lead in person ; but General Sumner dissuaded him, though with difficulty. In the night of the 1862.] SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BATTLE. 22$ 1 5th, in the midst of a storm, the army was with drawn to the north bank of the Rappahannock, and the sorry campaign was ended. If it had been at all necessary to prove the courage and discipline of the National troops, Fredericksburg proved it abundantly. There were few among them that December morning who did not look upon it as hopeless to assault those forti fied slopes ; yet they obeyed their orders, and moved out to the work as if they expected victory, suffering such frightful losses as bodies of troops are seldom called upon to endure, and retiring with little disorder and no panic. The English correspondent of the London " Times," writing from Lee s headquarters, exultingly predicted the speedy decline and fall of the American Republic. If he had been shrewd enough to see what was indicated, rather than what he hoped for, he would have written that with such courage and discipline as the Army of the Potomac had displayed, and superior resources, the final victory was certain to be theirs, however they might first suffer from in competent commanders ; that the Republic that had set such an army in the field, and had the material for several more, was likely to contain somewhere a general worthy to lead it, and was not likely to be overthrown by any insurrection of a minority of its people. CHAPTER XV. ROSECRANS AND HOOKER. THE year 1863 began with several events of the first importance. On December 31 and January 2 there was a great battle in the West. On New Year s day the final proclamation of emancipation was issued, and measures were taken for the im mediate enlistment of black troops. On that day, also, in the State of New York, which furnished one sixth of all the men called into the National service, the executive power passed into hands un friendly to the Administration. The Confederate Congress in 1862 passed a sweeping conscription act, forcing into the ranks every man of military age. Even boys of sixteen were taken out of school and sent to camps of in struction. This largely increased their forces in the field, and at the West especially they exhibited a corresponding activity. General Beauregard, whose health had failed, was succeeded by General Braxton Bragg, a man of more energy than ability, who, with forty thousand men, marched northward into eastern Kentucky, defeating a National force near Richmond, and another at Mumfordsville. He then assumed that Kentucky was a State of the Confederacy, appointed a provisional Governor, forced Kentuckians into his army, and robbed BATTLE OF PERRYVILLE. 231 the farmers, not only of their stock and provisions, but of their wagons for carrying away the plunder, paying them in worthless Confederate money. He carried with him twenty thousand muskets, expect ing to find that number of Kentuckians who would enroll themselves in his command ; but he con fessed afterward that he did not even secure enough recruits to take up the arms that fell from the hands of his dead and wounded. With the supplies collected by his army of " liberators," as he called them, in a wagon-train said to have been forty miles long, he was moving slowly back into Ten nessee, when General Buell, with about fifty-eight thousand men (one third of them new recruits), marched in pursuit. Bragg turned and gave battle at Perryville (October 8), and the fight lasted nearly all day. At some points it was desperate, with hand-to- hand fighting, and troops charging upon batteries where the gunners stood to their pieces and blew 232 BATTLE OF FERRYVILLE. them from the very muzzles. The National left, composed entirely of raw troops, was crushed by a heavy onset ; but the next portion of the line, com manded by General Philip H. Sheridan, not only held its ground and repelled the assault, but fol lowed up the retiring enemy with a counter attack. Gooding s brigade (National) lost five hundred and forty-nine men out of fourteen hundred and twenty-three, and its commander became a prisoner. When night fell, the Confederates had been repelled at all points, and a portion of them had been driven through Perryville, losing many wagons and prisoners. Buell prepared to attack at daylight, but found that Bragg had moved off in the night with his whole army, continuing his retreat to east Tennessee, leaving a thousand of his wounded on the ground. He also abandoned twelve hundred of his men in hospital at Harrods- burg, with large quantities of his plunder, some of which he burned, and made all haste to get away. Buell reported his loss in the battle as forty, three hundred and forty-eight, which included Generals James S. Jackson and William R. Ter- rill killed. Bragg s loss was probably larger, though he gave considerably smaller figures. General Halleck, at Washington, now planned for Buell s army a campaign in east Tennessee ; but as that was more than two hundred miles away, and the communications were not provided for, Buell declined to execute it. For this reason, and also on the ground that if he had moved more rapidly and struck more vigorously he might have 1862,] BATTLES OF lUlvA AND CORINTH. 233 destroyed Bragg s army, he was removed from command, and General William S. Rosecrans suc ceeded him. In September, when Bragg had first moved northward, a Confederate army of about forty thousand men, under Generals Price and Van Dorn, had crossed from Arkansas into Mississippi, with the purpose of capturing Grant s position at Corinth, and thus breaking the National line of defence and cooperating with Bragg. Price seized luka, southwest of Corinth, and Grant sent out against him a force under Rosecrans. They fought a battle, on September 19, with a loss of about seven hundred men on each side, and in the night Price retreated and joined Van Dorn. The combined force afterward (October 3) attempted the capture of Corinth, where Rosecrans was in immediate command with about twenty thousand men. The place was especially tempting to the Confederates because of the enormous amount of supplies in store there. Rosecrans had taken a position three miles from the city, and in the first day s fighting the enemy forced him back to his intrenchments and captured two guns. Van Dorn entertained no doubt of taking both the place and its defenders, and early the next morning assaulted the intrenchments. His men were fearfully cut down by discharges of grape and canister, but suc ceeded in breaking through the line of works, and even made their way into the city, where there was desperate fighting in the streets. Reinforcements were brought up for Rosecrans, the tide was turned, 234 ROSECRANS SUPERSEDES BUELL. and the Confederates were driven out again and repelled all along the line, after which they re treated in great haste, leaving their dead and wounded on the field. Their loss was about six thousand ; that of the National forces was twenty-three hundred and fifty-nine. The re treat began about noon ; but Rosecrans did not begin pursuit till the next morning, when it was too late, and then he took the wrong road. Grant had expected him to gain a victory, and ordered him in that event to pursue without the loss of an hour ; and to make sure of crushing Van Dorn s army, Grant at the same time sent a force to strike it in flank. He was greatly displeased at the dila- toriness of Rosecrans, the more so as it was an exact repetition of a mistake made at luka, and for this reason that general was soon relieved from further service under Grant. The Confederate authorities were also dissatisfied with their general, for they accounted the defeat at Corinth a heavy disaster, and Van Dorn was soon superseded by General John C. Pemberton. When Rosecrans superseded Buell, his army thenceforth called the Army of the Cumberland- was at Bowling Green, slowly pursuing Bragg. Rosecrans sent a portion of it to the relief of Nashville, which was besieged by a Confederate force, and employed the remainder in repairing the railroad from Louisville, over which his supplies must come. This done, about the end of Novem ber he united his forces at Nashville. At the same time, Bragg was ordered to move forward again, BATTLE OF STONE RIVER. 235 and went as far as Murfreesboro, forty miles from Nashville, where he fortified a strong position on Stone River, a shallow stream, fordable at nearly all points. There was high festivity among the secessionists in Murfreesboro that winter ; for Bragg had brought much plunder from Kentucky. No one dreamed that Rosecrans would attack the place before spring, and several roving bands of guerilla cavalry w r ere very active, and performed some exciting if not important exploits. The leader of one of these, John H. Morgan, was mar ried in Murfreesboro, the ceremony being per formed by Bishop and General Leonidas Polk, and Jefferson Davis being present. It is said that the floor was carpeted with a United States flag, on which the company danced, to signify that they had put its authority under their feet. The revelry was rudely interrupted when Rose crans, leaving Nashville with forty-three thousand men, in a rain-storm, the day after Christmas, en camped on the 3Oth within sight of Bragg s in- trenchments. He intended to attack the next day ; but Bragg anticipated him, crossed the river before sunrise, concealed by a thick fog, reached the woods on the right of the National line, and burst out upon the bank in overwhelming force. Mc- Cook s command, on the extreme right, was crum bled and thrown back, losing several guns and many prisoners. Sheridan s command, next in line, made a stubborn fight till its ammunition was nearly exhausted, and then slowly retired. General Thomas s command, which formed the centre, now 236 BATTLE OF STONE RIVER. [1862. held the enemy back till Rosecrans established a new line, nearly at right angles to the first, with artillery advantageously posted, when Thomas fell back to this and maintained his ground. Through the forenoon the Confederates had seemed to have every thing their own way, and they had inflicted grievous loss upon Rosecrans, besides sending their restless cavalry to annoy his army in the rear. But here, as usual, the tide was turned. The first impetuous rush of the Southern soldier had spent itself, and the superior staying qualities of his Northern opponent began to tell. Bragg hurled his men again and again upon the new line ; but as they left the cedar thickets and charged across the open field they were mercilessly swept down by artillery and musketry fire, and every effort was fruitless. Even when seven thousand fresh men were drawn over from Bragg s right and thrown against the National centre, the result was still the same. The day ended with Rosecrans immovable in his position ; but he had been driven from half of the ground that he held in the morning, and had lost twenty-eight guns and many men, while the enemy s cavalry was upon his communications. Finding that he had ammunition enough for an other battle, he determined to remain where he was and sustain another assault. His men slept on their arms that night, and the next day there was no evidence of any disposition on either side to attack. Both sides were correcting their lines, constructing rifle-pits, caring for their wounded, and preparing for a renewal of the fight. 1862] BATTLE OF STONE RIVER. 237 This came on the second day of the new year, when there was some desultory fighting, and Rose- crans advanced a division across the stream to strike at Bragg s communications. Breckenridge s command was sent to attack this division, and drove it back to the river, when Breckenridge sud denly found himself subjected to a terrible artillery fire, and lost two thousand men in twenty minutes. Following this, a charge by National infantry drove him back with a loss of four guns and many pris oners, and this ended the great battle of Stone River, or Murfreesboro. After the repulse of Breck enridge, Rosecrans advanced his left again, and that night occupied with some of his batteries high ground, from which Murfreesboro could be shelled. The next day there was a heavy rain-storm, and in the ensuing night the Confederate army quietly retreated, leaving Murfreesboro to its fate. Rose crans reported his loss in killed and w r ounded as eighty-seven hundred and seventy-eight, and in prisoners as somewhat fewer than twenty-eight hundred. Bragg acknowledged a loss of over ten thousand, and claimed that he had taken over six thousand prisoners. There was great disappointment and dissatisfac tion among the secessionists at the failure of Lee s invasion of Maryland and Bragg s of Kentucky. Pollard, the Southern historian, wrote, " No sub ject was at once more dispiriting and perplexing to the South than the cautious and unmanly recep tion given to our armies both in Kentucky and Maryland." They seemed unable to comprehend 238 ENLISTMENT OF NEGROES. [1863. how there could be such a thing as a slave State that did not want to break up the Union. The part of President Lincoln s proclamation that created most excitement at the South was not that which declared the freedom of the blacks for the secessionists professed to be amused at this as a papal bull against a comet but that which announced that negroes would thenceforth be re ceived into the military service of the United States. Whatever might be said of the powerless- ness of the Government to liberate slaves that were within the Confederate lines, it was plain enough that a determination to enlist colored troops brought in a large resource hitherto un touched. Military men in Europe, having only statistical knowledge of our negro population, and not understanding the peculiar prejudices that hedged it about, had looked on at first in amaze ment and finally in contempt at its careful exclu sion from military service. The Confederates had no special scruples about negro assistance on their own side ; for they not only constantly employed immense numbers of blacks in building fortifica tions and in camp drudgery, but had even armed and equipped a few of them for service as soldiers. In a review of Confederate troops at New Orleans, in the first year of the war, appeared a regiment of free negroes, and early the next year the Legisla ture of Virginia provided for the enrolment of the same class. But the idea that emancipated slaves should be employed to fight against their late masters and 1863.] THE BLACK FLAG. 239 for the enfranchisement of their own race, ap peared to be new, startling, and unwelcome ; and the Confederates, both officially and unofficially, threatened the direst penalties against all who should lead black soldiers, as well as against such soldiers themselves. General Beauregard wrote to a friend in the Congress at Richmond : " Has the bill for the execution of Abolition prisoners, after January next, been passed ? Do it, and England will be stirred into action. It is high time to pro claim the black flag after that period. Let the execution be with the garrote." Mr. Davis, late in December, 1862, issued a proclamation outlaw ing General Butler and all commissioned officers in his command, and directing that whenever cap tured they should be reserved for execution, and added "That all negro slaves captured in arms be at once delivered over to the executive authorities of the respective States to which they belong, to be dealt with according to the laws of said States," and " That the like orders be executed with respect to all commissioned officers of the United States, when found serving in company with said slaves." The Confederate Congress passed a series of reso lutions in which it was provided that on the cap ture of any white commissioned officer who had armed, organized, or led negro troops against the Confederacy, he should be tried by a military court and put to death or otherwise punished. Democratic journalists and Congressmen at the North were hardly less violent in their opposition to the enlistment of black men. They denounced 240 BLACK MEN IN FORMER WARS. [1863. the barbarity of the proceeding, declared that white soldiers would be disgraced if they fought on the same field with blacks, and anon demon strated the utter incapacity of negroes for war, and laughed at the idea that they would ever face an enemy. Most of the Democratic Senators and Representatives voted against the appropriation bills, or supported amendments providing that " no part of the moneys shall be applied to the raising, arming, equipping, or paying of negro sol diers," and the more eloquent of them drew pitiful pictures of the ruin and anarchy that were to ensue. Representative Samuel S. Cox, then of Ohio, said : " Every man along the border will tell you that the Union is forever rendered hopeless if you pursue this policy of taking the slaves from the masters and arming them in this civil strife." Nevertheless, one hundred and eighty thousand negroes were enlisted, and many of them performed notable service, displaying, at Fort Wagner, Olus- tee, and elsewhere, quite as much steadiness and courage as any white troops. If the expressions of doubt as to the military value of the colored race were sincere, they argued inexcusable igno rance ; for black soldiers had fought in the ranks of our Revolutionary armies, and Perry s victory on Lake Erie in 1813 which, with the battle of the Thames, secured us the great Northwest was largely the work of colored sailors. The President recognized the obligation of the Government to protect all its servants by every means in its power, and issued a proclamation 1863.] LINCOLN S LETTER TO HOOKER. 24! directing that " for every soldier of the United States killed in violation of the laws of war, a rebel soldier shall be executed ; and for every one enslaved by the enemy or sold into slavery, a rebel soldier shall be placed at hard labor on the public works." But such retaliation was never resorted to. After Burnside s failure at Fredericksburg, he was superseded, January 25, 1863, by General Joseph Hooker, who had commanded one of his grand divisions. Hooker, now forty-eight years old, was a graduate of West Point, had seen ser vice in the Florida and Mexican wars, had been through the Peninsula campaign with McClellan, was one of our best corps commanders, and was a favorite with the soldiers, who called him " fighting Joe Hooker." In giving the command to General Hooker, President Lincoln accompanied it with a remarkable letter, which not only exhibits his own peculiar genius but suggests some of the compli cated difficulties of the military and political situation. He wrote : " I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac. Of course I have done this upon what appear to me sufficient reasons, and yet I think it best for you to know there are some things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you. I believe you to be a brave and skilful soldier, which of course I like. I also believe you do not mix politics with your pro fession, in which you are right. You have confi dence in yourself, which is a valuable if not indispensable quality. You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than 242 HOOKER IN COMMAND. [1863. harm ; but I think that during General Burnside s command of the army you have taken counsel of your ambition, and thwarted him as much as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country and to a most meritorious and honorable brother officer. I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the army and the government needed a dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in spite of it, that* 1 ! have given you the command. Only those generals who gain successes can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The Government will support you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done and will do for all com manders. I much fear that the spirit which you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticising their commander and withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall assist you as far as I can to put it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, were he alive again, could get any good out of any army while such a spirit prevails in it. And now, beware of rashness ! Beware of rashness ! But with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories." Hooker restored the discipline of the Army of the Potomac, which had been greatly relaxed, re organized it in corps, and opened the spring cam paign with every promise of success. The army was still on the Rappahannock, opposite Freder- icksburg, and he planned to cross over and strike Lee s left. Making a demonstration with Sedg- 1863.] BATTLE OF CHANCELLORSVILLE. 243 wick s corps below the town, he moved a large part of his army up stream, crossed quickly, and had forty-six thousand men at Chancellorsville be fore Lee guessed what he was about. This " ville " was only a single house, named from its owner. Eastward, between it and Fredericksburg, there was open country ; west of it was the great thicket known as The Wilderness, in the depths of which, a year later, a bloody battle was fought. Instead of advancing into the open country at once, and striking the enemy s flank, Hooker lost a day in inaction, which gave Lee time to learn what was going on and to make dispositions to meet the emergency. Leaving a small force to check Sedgwick, who had carried the heights of Fredericksburg, he moved toward Hooker with nearly all his army, May i, and attacked at various points, endeavoring to ascertain Hooker s exact position. By nightfall of this same day, Hooker appears to have lost confidence in the plans with which he set out, and been deserted by his old-time audacity ; for instead of maintaining a tactical offensive, he drew back from some of his more advanced positions, formed his army in a semicircle, and awaited attack. His left and his centre were strongly posted and to some extent intrenched ; but his right, consisting of Howard s corps, was " in the air," and moreover, it faced the Wilderness. When this weak spot was discovered by the enemy, on the morning of the 2d, Lee sent Jackson with twenty-six thousand men to make a long detour, pass into the Wilderness, and, emerg- 244 BATTLE OF CHANCELLORSVILLE. [1863. ing suddenly from its eastern edge, take Howard by surprise. Jackson s men were seen and counted as they passed over the crest of a hill, they were even attacked by detachments from Sickles s corps, and Hooker sent orders to Howard to strengthen his position, advance his pickets, and not allow himself to be surprised. But Howard appears to have disregarded all precautions, and in the afternoon the enemy came down upon him, preceded by a rush of frightened wild animals driven from their cover in the woods by the advancing battle-line. Howard s corps was doub led up, thrown into confusion, and completely routed. The enemy was coming on exultingly, when General Sickles sent General Alfred Pleason- ton with two regiments of cavalry and a battery to occupy an advantageous position at Hazel Grove, which was the key-point of this part of the battle field. Pleasonton arrived just in time to see 1863.] KEENANS CHARGE. 245 that the Confederates were making toward the same point and were likely to secure it. There was but one way to save the army, and Pleasonton quickly comprehended it. He ordered Major Peter Keenan, with the 8th Pennsylvania cavalry regiment, about four hundred strong, to charge im mediately upon the ten thousand Confederate infantry. " It is the same as saying we must be killed," said Keenan, "but we ll do it." This charge, in which Keenan and most of his command were slain, astonished the enemy and stopped their onset, for they believed there must be some more formidable force behind it. In the precious min utes thus gained, Pleasonton brought together twenty-two guns, loaded them with double charges of canister, and had them depressed enough to make the shot strike the ground half-way between his own line and the edge of the woods where the enemy must emerge. When the Confederates resumed their charge they were struck by such a storm of iron as nothing human could withstand, other troops were brought up to the support of the guns, and what little artillery the Confederates had advanced to the front was knocked to pieces. Here, about dusk, General Jackson rode to the front to reconnoitre. As he rode back again with his staff, some of his own men, mistaking the horsemen for National cavalry, fired a volley at them, by which several were killed. Another volley inflicted three wounds upon Jackson ; and as his frightened horse dashed into the woods, the General was thrown violently against the limb of a 246 BATTLE OF CHANCELLORSVILLE. [1863. tree and injured still more. Afterward, when his men were bearing him off, a National battery opened fire down the road, one of the men was struck, and the General fell heavily to the ground. He finally reached the hospital, and "his arm was amputated, but he died at the end of a week. Jackson s corps renewed its attack, under General A. P. Hill, but without success, and Hill was wounded and borne from the field. The next morning, May 3, it was renewed again under Stuart, the cavalry leader, and at the same time Lee attacked in front with his entire force. The Confederates had sustained a serious disaster the evening before, in the loss of Lee s ablest lieutenant ; but now a more serious one befell the National army, for General Hooker was rendered insensible by the shock from a cannon-ball that struck a pillar of the Chancellor house against which he was leaning. After this there was no plan or organization to the battle on the National side though each corps commander held his own as well as he could, and the men fought valiantly -while Lee was at his best. The line was forced back to some strong intrenchments that had been prepared the night before, when Lee learned that Sedgwick had defeated the force opposed to him, captured Fredericksburg heights, and was promptly advancing upon the Confederate rear. Trusting that the force in his front would not advance upon him, Lee drew off a large detachment of his army and turned upon Sedgwick, who after a heavy fight was stopped, and with some difficulty sue- 1863.] THE NUMBERS AND LOSSES. 247 ceeded in crossing the river after nightfall. Lee then turned again upon Hooker ; but a great storm suspended operations for twenty-four hours, and the next night the National army all recrossed the Rappahannock, leaving on the field fourteen guns, thousands of small-arms, all their dead, and many of their wounded. In this battle, or series of battles, the National loss was about seventeen thousand men, the Confederate about thirteen thousand. Hooker had commanded about one hundred and thirteen thousand five hundred, to Lee s sixty-two thousand (disregarding the differ ent methods of counting in the two armies) ; but as usual they were not in action simultaneously ; many were hardly in the fight at all, and at every point of actual contact, with the exception of Sedgwick s first engagement, the Confederates were superior in numbers. CHAPTER XVI. GETTYSBURG. AFTER the battles of Fredericksburg and Chancel- lorsville, public opinion in the South began to de mand that the army under Lee should invade the North, or at least make a bold movement toward Washington. Public opinion is not often very dis criminating in an exciting crisis ; and on this occa sion public opinion failed to discriminate between the comparative ease with which an army in a strong position may repel a faultily planned or bad ly managed attack, and the difficulties that must beset the same army when it leaves its base, launches forth into the enemy s country, and is obliged to maintain a constantly lengthening line of communication. The Southern public could not see why, since the Army of Northern Virginia had won two victories on the Rappahannock, it might not march forward at once, lay New York and Philadelphia under contribution, and dictate peace and Southern independence in the Capitol at Washington. Whether the Confederate Govern ment shared this feeling or not, it acted in accord ance with it ; and whether Lee approved it or not, he was obliged to obey. Yet, in the largest con sideration of the problem, this demand for an in- 1863.] THE TURNING-POINT OF THE WAR. 249 vasion of the North was correct, though the result proved disastrous. For experience shows that purely defensive warfare will not accomplish any thing. Lee s army had received a heavy ree n- forcement by the arrival of Longstreet s corps, its regiments had been filled up with conscripts, it had unbounded confidence in itself, and this was the time, if ever, to put the plan for independence to the crucial test of offensive warfare. Many subsid iary considerations strengthened the argument. About thirty thousand of Hooker s men had been enlisted in the spring of 1861, for two years, and their term was now expiring. Vicksburg was besieged by Grant, before whom nothing had stood as yet ; and its fall would open the Mississippi and cut the Con federacy in two, which might seal the fate of the new Government unless the shock were neutral ized by a great victory in the East. Volunteering had fallen off in the North, conscription was re sorted to, the Democratic party there had become more hostile to the Government and loudly abusive of President Lincoln and his advisers, and there were signs of riotous resistance to a draft. Final ly, the Confederate agents in Europe reported that anything like a great Confederate victory would secure immediate recognition, if not armed inter vention, from England and France. Hooker, who had lost a golden opportunity by his aberration or his accident at Chancellorsville, had come to his senses again and was alert, active, and clear-headed. As early as May 28, 1863, he in formed the President that something was stirring 250 LEE MOVES NORTHWARD. [1863. in the camp on the other side of the river, and that a northward movement might be expected. On the 3d of June Lee began his movement, and by the 8th two of his three corps (those of Ewell and Longstreet) were at Culpeper, while A. P. Hill s corps still held the lines on the Rappahannock. It was known that the entire Confederate cav alry, under Stuart, was at Culpeper, and Hooker sent all his cavalry, under Pleasonton, with two brigades of infantry, to attack it there. The as sault was to be made in two converging columns, under Buford and Gregg ; but this plan was dis concerted by the fact that the enemy s cavalry, in tent upon masking the movement of the great body of infantry and protecting its flank, had advanced to Brandy Station. Here it was struck first by Buford and afterward by Gregg, and there was bloody fighting, with the advantage at first in favor of the National troops, but the two columns failed to unite during the action, and finally withdrew. The loss was over five hundred men on each side, including among the killed Colonel B. F. Davis, of the 8th New York cavalry, and Colonel Hamp ton, commanding a Confederate brigade. Both sides claimed to have accomplished their object Pleasonton to have ascertained the movements of Lee s army, and Stuart to have driven back his opponent. Some of the heaviest fighting was for possession of a height known as Fleetwood Hill, and the Confederates name the action the battle of Fleetwood. It is of special interest as marking the turning-point in cavalry service during the war. 1863.] HOOKER FOLLOWS. 251 Up to that time the Confederate cavalry had been generally superior to the National ; this action - a cavalry fight in the proper sense of the term, be tween the entire mounted forces of the two armies was a drawn battle ; and thenceforth the National cavalry exhibited superiority in an accelerating ratio, till finally nothing mounted on Southern horses could stand before the magnificent squadrons led by Sheridan, Custer, Kilpatrick, and Wilson. Hooker now knew that the movement he had anticipated was in progress, and he was very de cided in his opinion as to what should be done. By the I3th of June, Lee had advanced E well s corps beyond the Blue Ridge, and it was marching down the Shenandoah valley, while Hill s was still in the intrenchments on the Rapidan, and Long- street s was midway between, at Culpeper. Hooker asked to be allowed to interpose his whole army be tween these widely separated parts of its antago nist and defeat them in detail ; but with a man like Halleck for military adviser at Washington, it was useless to propose any bold or brilliant stroke. Hooker was forbidden to do this, and ordered to keep his army between the enemy and the capital. He therefore left his position on the Rappahan- nock, and moved toward Washington, along the line of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad. Ewell moved rapidly down the Shenandoah valley, and attacked Winchester, which was held by General Milroy with about ten thousand men. Milroy made a gallant defence ; but after a stubborn fight his force was broken and defeated, and about four 252 THE ARMIES CROSS THE POTOMAC. [1868. thousand of them became prisoners. The survivors escaped to Harper s Ferry. The corps of Hill and Longstreet now moved, Hill following Ewell into the Shenandoah valley, and Longstreet skirting the Blue Ridge along its eastern base. Pleasonton s cavalry, reconnoitering these movements, met Stuart s again at Aldie, near a gap in the Bull Run Mountains, and had a sharp fight ; and there were also cavalry actions at Mid- dleburg and Upperville. Other Confederate cav alry had already crossed the Potomac, made a raid as far as Chambersburg, and returned with supplies to Ewell. On the 22d, Swell s corps crossed, at Shepherdstown and Williamsport, and moved up the Cumberland valley to Chambersburg. A panic ensued among the inhabitants of that region, who hastened to drive off their cattle and horses, to save them from seizure. The Governors of New York and Pennsylvania were called upon for militia, and forwarded several regiments, to be interposed between the enemy s advance and Philadelphia and Harrisburg. The other two corps of Lee s army crossed the Potomac on the 24th and 25th, where Ewell had crossed ; and Hooker, moving on a line nearer Washington crossed with his whole army at Edward s Ferry, on the 25th and 26th, marching thence to Frederick. He now proposed to send Slocum s corps to the western side of the South Mountain range, have it unite with a force of eleven thousand men under French, that lay useless at Harper s Ferry, and throw a powerful column upon Lee s communications, cap- 1863.] MEADE IN COMMAND. 253 ture his trains, and attack his army in the rear. But again he came into collision with the stubborn Halleck, who would not consent to the abandon ment, even temporarily, of Harper s Ferry, though the experience of the Antietam campaign, when he attempted to hold it in the same way and lost its whole garrison, should have taught him better. This new cause of trouble, added to previous disa greements, was more than Hooker could stand, and on the 27th he asked to be relieved from com mand of the army. His request was promptly complied with, and the next morning the command was given to General Meade, only five days before a great battle. George Gordon Meade, then in his forty-ninth year, was a graduate of West Point, had served through the Mexican war, had done engineer duty in the survey of the great lakes, had been with McClellan on the peninsula, and had commanded a corps in the Army of the Potomac at Antietam, at Fredericksburg, and at Chancellorsville. The first thing he did on assuming command was what Hooker had been forbidden to do ; he ordered the evacuation of Harper s Ferry, and the movement of its garrison to Frederick as a reserve. At this time, June 28, one portion of Lee s army was at Chambersburg, or between that place and Gettysburg, another at York and Carlisle, and a part of his cavalry was within sight of the spires of Harrisburg. The main body of the cavalry had gone off on a raid, Stuart having an ambition to ride a third time around the Army of the Poto- 254 CONCENTRATION AT GETTYSBURG [1863. mac. This absence of his cavalry left Lee in ig norance of the movements of his adversary, whom he appears to have expected to remain quietly on the south side of the Potomac. When suddenly he found his communications in clanger, he called back Ewell from York and Carlisle, and ordered the concentration of all his forces at Gettysburg. Many converging roads lead into that town, and its convenience for such concentration was obvi ous. Meade was also advancing his army toward Gettysburg, though with a more uncertain step as was necessary, since his object was to find Lee s army and fight it, wherever it might go. His cavalry, under Pleasonton, was doing good service, and that General advanced a division un der Buford on the 2Qth to Gettysburg, with orders to delay the enemy till the army could come up. Meade had some expectation of bringing on the great battle at Pipe Creek, southeast of Get tysburg, where he marked out a good defensive line ; but the First Corps, under General John F. Reynolds, advanced rapidly to Gettysburg, and on the ist of July encountered west of the town a portion of the enemy coming in from Chambers- burg. Lee had about seventy-three thousand five hundred men (infantry and artillery), and Meade about eighty-two thousand, while the cavalry num bered about eleven thousand on each side, and both armies had more cannon than they could use.* * Various figures and estimates are given as representing the strength of the two armies, some of which take account of detach ments absent on special duty, and some do not. The figures here given denote very nearly the forces actually available for the battle. 1863.] GETTYSBURG BATTLE-FIELD. 255 256 THE FIRST DAY S BATTLE. [1863. When Reynolds advanced his own corps (the First) and determined to hold Gettysburg, he ordered the Eleventh (Howard s) to come up to its support. The country about Gettysburg is broken into ridges, mainly parallel and running north and south. On the first ridge west of the village stood a theological seminary, which gave it the name of Seminary Ridge. Between this and the next is a small stream called Willoughby Run, and here the first day s battle was fought. Buford held the ridges till the infantry arrived, climbing into the belfry of the seminary and look ing anxiously for their coming. The Confeder ates were advancing by two roads that met in a point at the edge of the village, and Reynolds dis posed his troops, as fast as they arrived, so as to dispute the passage on both roads. The key-point was a piece of high ground, partly covered with woods, between the roads, and the advance of both sides rushed for it. Here General Reynolds, going forward to survey the ground, was shot by a sharpshooter and fell dead. He was one of the ablest corps commanders that the Army of the Potomac ever had. The command devolved upon General Abner Doubleday, who was an experi enced soldier, having served through the Mexican war, been second in command under Anderson at Fort Sumter, and seen almost constant service with the Army of the Potomac. The Confeder ate force contending for the woods was Archer s brigade ; the National was Meredith s " Iron Brig ade." Archer s men had been told that they 1863.] THE FIRST DAYS BATTLE. 257 would meet nothing but Pennsylvania militia, which they expected to brush out of the way with little trouble ; but when they saw the Iron Brig ade some of them were heard saying : " Taint no militia; there are the- -black-hatted fellows again ; it s the Army of the Potomac ! " The result here was that Meredith s men not only secured the woods, but captured General Archer and a large part of his brigade, and then advanced to the ridge west of the run. On the right of the line there had been bloody fighting, with unsatisfactory results, owing to the careless posting of regiments and a want of con cert in action. Two National regiments were driven from the field and a gun was lost, while on the other hand a Confederate force was driven into a railroad cut for shelter, and then subjected to an enfilading fire through the cut, so that a large portion were captured and the remainder dispersed. Whether any commander on either side intended to bring on a battle at this point, is doubtful. But both sides were rapidly and heavily reenforced, and both fought with determination. The struggle for the Chambersburg road was obstinate, especially after the Confederates had planted several guns to sweep it. " We have come to stay," said Roy Stone s brigade, as they came into line under the fire of these guns to support a battery of their own, and " the battle afterward became so severe that the greater portion did stay," says General Doubleday. A division of Ewell s corps soon arrived from Carlisle, wheeled into position, and 258 THE FIRST DAY S BATTLE. struck the right of the National line. Robinson s division, resting on Seminary Ridge, was promptly brought forward to meet this new peril, and was so skilfully handled that it presently captured three North Carolina regiments. General Oliver O. Howard, being the ranking officer, assumed command when he arrived on this part of the field ; and when his own corps (the Eleventh) came up, about one o clock, he placed it in position on the right, prolonging the line of battle far around to the north of the town. This great extension made it weak at many points ; and as fresh divisions of Confederate troops were constantly arriving, under Lee s general order to concentrate on the town, they finally became powerful enough to break through the centre, rolling back the right flank of the First corps and the left of the Eleventh, and throwing into con fusion everything except the left of the First corps, which retired in good order, protecting artillery and ambulances. Of the fugitives that swarmed through the town, about five thousand were made prisoners. But this had been effected only at heavy cost to the Confederates. At one point Iverson s Georgia brigade had rushed up to a stone fence behind which Baxter s brigade was sheltered, when Baxter s men suddenly rose and delivered a volley that struck down five hundred of Iverson s in an instant, while the remainder, who were sub jected also to a cross-fire, immediately surrendered all but one regiment, which escaped by raising a white flag. 18G3.J HANCOCK CHOOSES THE GROUND. 259 In the midst of the confusion, General Winfield S. Hancock arrived, under orders from General Meade to supersede Howard in the command of that wing of the army. He had been instructed also to choose a position for the army to meet the great shock of battle, if he should find a better one than the line of Pipe Creek. Hancock s first duty was to rally the fugitives and restore order and confidence. Steinwehr s division was in reserve on Cemetery Ridge, and Buford s cavalry was on the plain between the town and the ridge ; and with these standing fast he stopped the retreat and rapidly formed aline along that crest. The ridge begins in Round Top, a high, rocky hill ; next north of this is Little Round Top, smaller but still bold and rugged ; and thence it is continued at a less elevation, with gentler slopes, northward to within half a mile of the town, where it curves around to the east and ends at Rock Creek. The whole length is about three miles. Seminary Ridge is a mile west of this, and nearly parallel with its central portion. Hancock without hesitation chose this line, placed all the available troops in position, and then hurried back to head quarters at Taneytown. Meade at once accepted his plan, and sent forward the remaining corps. The Third Corps, commanded by General Sickles, being already on the march, arrived at sunset. The Second (Hancock s) marched thirteen miles and went into position. The Fifth (Sykes s) was twenty-three miles away, but marched all night and arrived in the morning. The Sixth (Sedg- 260 THE SECOND DAY S BATTLE. [1863. wick s) was thirty-six miles away, but was put in motion at once. At the same time Lee was urging the various divisions of his army to make the concentration as rapidly as possible, not wishing to attack the heights till his forces were all up. It is said by General Longstreet that Lee had promised his corps commanders not to fight a bat tle during this expedition, unless he could take a position and stand on the defensive ; but the excitement and confidence of his soldiers, who felt themselves invincible, compelled him. While he was waiting for his divisions to arrive, forming his lines and perfecting a plan of attack, Sedgwick s corps arrived on the other side, and the National troops were busy constructing rude breastworks. Between the two great ridges there is another ridge, situated somewhat like the diagonal portion of a capital N. The order of the corps, begin ning at the right, was this : Slocum s, Howard s, Hancock s, Sickles s, with Sykes s in reserve on the left and Sedgwick s on the right. Sickles, think ing to occupy more advantageous ground, instead of remaining in line, advanced to the diagonal ridofe, and on this hino-ed the whole battle of the O O second day. For there was nothing on which to rest his left flank, and he was obliged to " refuse" it turn it sharply back toward Round Top. This presented a salient angle (always a weak point) to the enemy ; and here, when the action opened at four o clock in the afternoon, the blow fell. The angle was at a peach-orchard, and the refused line stretched back through a wheat field ; General 1863.] THE STRUGGLE FOR ROUND TOP. 26 1 Birney s division occupying this ground, while the right of Sickles s line was held by Humphreys. Longstreet s men attacked the salient vigor ously, and his extreme right, composed of Hood s division, stretched out toward Little Round Top, where it narrowly missed winning a position that would have enabled it to enfilade the whole National line. Little Round Top had been occu pied only by signal men, when General Warren saw the danger, detached Vincent s brigade from a division that was going out to reenforce Sickles, and ordered it to occupy the hill at once. One regiment of Weed s brigade (the i4oth New York) also went up, dragging and lifting the guns of Hazlett s battery up the rocky slope ; and the whole brigade soon followed. They were just in time to meet the advance of Hood s Texans, and engage in one of the bloodiest hand-to-hand con flicts of the war. Bayonets, clubbed muskets, and even stones were used, officers and all joining in the melee, and at length the Texans were hurled back and the position secured. But dead or wounded soldiers, in blue and in gray, lay everywhere among the rocks. General Weed was mortally wounded ; General Vincent was killed ; Colonel Patrick H. O Rorke, of the i4Oth, a recent graduate of West Point, of brilliant promise, was shot dead at the head of his men ; and Lieutenant Charles E. Hazlett was killed as he leaned over General Weed to catch his last words. " I would rather die here," said Weed, " than that the rebels should gain an inch of this ground ! " Hood s men 262 THE FIGHT AT THE SALIENT. [1863. made one more attempt, by creeping up the ravine between the two Round Tops, but were repelled by a bayonet charge, executed by Chamberlain s 2Oth Maine regiment, and five hundred of them, with seventeen officers, were made prisoners. Meanwhile terrific fighting was going on at the salient in the peach-orchard. Several batteries were in play on both sides, and made destructive work ; a single shell from one of the National guns killed or wounded thirty men in a company of thirty-seven. Here General Zook was killed, Colonel Cross was killed, General Sickles lost a leg, and the Confederate General Barksdale was mortally wounded and died a prisoner. There were repeated charges and counter-charges, and numerous bloody incidents ; for Sickles was con stantly reenforced, and Lee, being under the impression that this was the flank of the main line, kept hammering at it till his men finally possessed the peach-orchard, advanced their lines, assailed the left flank of Humphreys, and finally drove back the National line, only to find that they had forced it into its true position, from which they could not dislodge it by any direct attack, while the guns and troops that now crowned the two Round Tops showed any flank movement to be impossible. About sunset Ewell s corps assailed the Union right, and at heavy cost gained a portion of the works near Rock Creek. One of the most dramatic incidents of this day was a charge on Cemetery Hill by two Confeder ate brigades led by an organization known as the 1863.] A COUNCIL OF WAR. 263 Louisiana Tigers. It was made just at dusk, and the charging column immediately became a target for the batteries of Wiedrick, Stevens, and Rick- etts, which fired grape and canister, each gun making four discharges a minute. But the Tigers had the reputation of never having failed in a charge, and in spite of the frightful gaps made by the artillery and by volleys of musketry, they kept on till they reached the guns and made a hand-to- hand fight for them. Friend and foe were fast becoming mingled when Carroll s brigade came to the rescue of the guns, and the remnants of the Confederate column fled down the hill in the gathering darkness, hastened by a double-shotted fire from Ricketts s battery. Of the seventeen hundred Tigers, twelve hundred had been struck down, and that famous organization was never heard of again. While the actions of the first two days were complicated, that of the third was extremely simple. Lee had tried both flanks, and failed. He now determined to attempt piercing the centre of Meade s line. Longstreet, wiser than his chief, protested, but in vain. On the other hand, Meade had held a council of war the night before, and in accordance with the vote of his corps commanders determined to stay where he was and fight it out.* * Whether General Meade contemplated a retreat, has been dis puted. On the one hand, he testified before the Committee on the Conduct of the War that he never thought of such a thing ; on the other, General Doubleday, in his " Chancellorsville and Gettys burg," presents testimony that seems to leave no reasonable doubt. There is nothing intrinsically improbable in the story. Meade s ser- 264 THE THIRD DAY S BATTLE. [1863. Lee s first intended movement was to push the success gained at the close of the second day by Ewell on the National right ; but Meade antic ipated him, attacking early in the morning and driving Ewell out of his works. In preparation for a grand charge, Lee placed more than one hun dred guns in position on Seminary Ridge, converg ing their fire on the left centre of Meade s line, where he intended to send his storming column. Eighty guns (all there was room for) were placed in posi tion on Cemetery Ridge to reply, and at one o clock the firing began. This was one of the most terrific artillery duels ever witnessed. There was a con tinuous and deafening roar, which was heard forty miles away. The shot and shells ploughed up the ground, shattered gravestones in the cemetery and sent their fragments flying among the troops, ex ploded caissons, and dismounted guns. A house used for Meade s headquarters, in the rear of the line, was completely riddled. Many artillerists vice in that war had all been with the Army of the Potomac, and it was the custom of that army to retreat after a great battle. The only exception thus far had been Antietam ; and two great battles, with the usual retreat, had been fought since Antietam. Meade had been in command of the entire army but a few days, and he cannot be said to have been the master-spirit at Gettysburg. It was Rey nolds who went out to meet the enemy, and stayed his advance on the first day ; it was Hancock who selected the advantageous position for the second day ; it was Warren who secured the neglected key-point. The fact of calling a council of war at all, implies doubt in the mind of the commander. But after all the question is hardly important, so far at least as it concerns Meade s place in history. He is likely to be less blamed for contemplating retreat at the end of two days fighting, when he had the worst of it, than for not contemplating pursuit at the end of the third day, when the enemy was defeated. 1863.] THE FINAL CHARGE. 265 and horses were killed ; but the casualties among the infantry were not numerous, for the men lay flat upon the ground, taking advantage of every shelter, and waited for the more serious work that all knew was to follow. At the end of two hours General Henry. J. Hunt, Meade s chief of artillery, ordered the firing to cease, both to cool the guns and to save the ammunition for use in repelling the infantry charge. Lee supposed that his object which was to demoralize his enemy and cause him to exhaust his artillery had been effected. Fourteen thousand of his best troops including Pickett s division, which had not arrived in time for the previous day s fighting now came out of the woods, formed in heavy col umns, and moved forward steadily to the charge. Instantly the National guns reopened fire, and the Confederate ranks were ploughed through and through ; but the gaps were closed up, and the columns did not halt. There was a mile of open ground for them to traverse, and every step was taken under heavy fire. As they drew nearer, the batteries used grape and canister, and an infantry force posted in advance of the main line rose to its feet and fired volleys of musketry into the right flank. Now the columns began visibly to break up and melt away ; and the left wing of the force changed its direction somewhat, so that it parted from the right, making an interval and exposing a new flank, which the National troops promptly took advantage of. But Pickett s diminishing ranks still pushed on, till they passed over the 266 PICKETT S REPULSE. tises. outer lines, fought hand-to-hand at the main line, and even leaped the breastworks and thought to capture the batteries. The point where they penetrated was marked by a clump of small trees on the edge of the hill, at that portion of the line held by the brigade of General Alexander S. Webb, who was wounded ; but his men stood firm against the shock, and, from the eagerness of all to join in the contest, men rushed from every side to the point assailed, mixing up all commands, but making a front that no such remnant as Pickett s o could break. General Lewis A. Armistead, who led the charge and leaped over the wall, was shot down as he laid his hand on a gun, and his sur viving soldiers surrendered themselves. On the slope of the hill many of the assailants had thrown themselves upon the ground and held up their hands for quarter ; and an immediate sally from the National lines brought in a large number of pris oners and battle-flags. Of that magnificent column which had been launched out so proudly, only a broken fragment ever returned. Nearly every officer in it, except Pickett, had been either killed or wounded. Armistead, a prisoner and dying, said to an officer who was bending over him, " Tell Hancock I have wronged him and have wronged my country." He had been opposed to secession, but the pressure of his friends and relatives had at length forced him into the service. Hancock had been wounded and borne from the field, and among the other wounded on the National side were Generals Doubleday, Gibbon, Warren, But- 1863.] LEE S RETREAT. 267 terfield, Stannard, Barnes, and Brook. General Farnsworth was killed, and General Gabriel R. Paul lost both eyes. Among the killed on the Confederate side, beside those already mentioned, were Generals Garnett, Fender, and Semmes ; and among the wounded Generals Hampton, Jenkins, Kemper, Scales, J. M. Jones, and G. T. Anderson. While this movement was in progress, Kilpat- rick with his cavalry rode around the mountain and attempted to pass the Confederate right and capture the trains, while Stuart with his cavalry made a simultaneous attempt on the National right. Each had a bloody fight, but neither was successful. This closed the battle. Hancock urged that a great return charge should be made immediately with Sedgwick s corps, which had not participated, and Lee expected such a movement as a matter of course. But it was not done. That night Lee made preparations for retreat, and the next day which was the 4th of July the retreat was begun. General Imboden, who con ducted the trains and the ambulances, describes it as one of the most pitiful and heartrending scenes ever witnessed. A heavy storm had come up, the roads were in bad condition, few of the wounded had been properly cared for, and as they were jolted along in agony they were groaning, curs ing, babbling of theirhomes, and calling upon their friends to kill them and put them out of misery. But there could be no halt, for the Potomac was rising, and an-attackwas hourly expected from the enemy in the rear. 268 THE LOSSES. [1863, Meade, however, did not pursue for several days, and then to no purpose ; so that Lee s crippled army escaped into Virginia, but it was disabled from ever doing anything more than prolong ing the contest. Gettysburg was essentially the Waterloo of the war, and there is a striking paral lel in the losses. The numbers engaged were very nearly the same- in the one battle as in the other. At Waterloo the victors lost twenty-three thousand one hundred and eighty-five men, and the van quished, in round numbers, thirty thousand. At Gettysburg the National loss was twenty-three thousand one hundred and ninety killed, wounded, and missing. The Confederate losses were never officially reported, but estimates place them at nearly thirty thousand. Lee left seven thousand of his wounded among the unburied dead, and twenty-seven thousand muskets were picked up on the field. The romantic and pathetic incidents of this great battle are innumerable. John Burns, a resident of Gettysburg, seventy years old, had served in the war of 1812, being one of Miller s men at Lundy s Lane, and in the Mexican war, and had tried to enlist at the breaking out of the Rebellion, but was rejected as too old. When the armies approached the town, he joined the 7th Wisconsin regiment and displayed wonderful skill as a sharp-shoot er ; but he was wounded in the afternoon, fell into the hands of the Confederates, told some plausible story to account for his lack of a uniform, and was finally carried to his own house. Jenny 1863.1 INCIDENTS. 269 Wade was baking bread for Union soldiers when the advance of the Confederate line surrounded her house with enemies ; but she kept on at her work, in spite of orders to desist, until a stray bul let struck her dead. An unknown Confederate officer lay mortally wounded within the Union lines, and one of the commanders sent to ask his name and rank. " Tell him," said the dying man, " that I shall soon be where there is no rank " and he was never identified. Lieutenant Alonzo H. Cushing commanded a battery on General Webb s line, and in the cannonade preceding the great charge on the third day all his guns but one were disabled, and he was mortally wounded. When the charging column approached, he ex claimed : " Webb, I will give them one more shot ! " ran his gun forward to the stone wall, fired it, said " Good-bye ! " and fell dead. Barksdale, of Mississippi, had been an extreme secessionist, and had done much to bring on the war. At that part of the line where he fell, the Union commander was General David B. Birney, son of a slaveholder that had emancipated his slaves, had been mobbed for his abolitionism, and had twice been the Presi dential candidate of the Liberty party. A general of the National army, who was present, remarks that Barksdale died " like a brave man, with dig nity and resignation." On that field perished also the cause that he represented ; and as Americans we may all be proud to say that, so far as manly courage could go, it died with dignity, if not with resignation. CHAPTER XVII. THE VICKSBURG CAMPAIGN. IN the autumn of 1862, after the battles of luka and Corinth, the National commanders in the West naturally began to think of further move- ments southward into the State of Mississippi, and of opening the great river and securing unob structed navigation from Cairo to the Gulf. The project was slow in execution, principally from division of authority, and doubt as to what general would ultimately have the command. John A. McClernand, who had been a Democratic member of Congress from Illinois, and was what was known as a "political general," spent some time in Wash ington, urging the plan upon the President (who was an old acquaintance and personal friend), of course in the expectation that he would be en trusted with its execution. But he found little favor with General Halleck. At this time Gen eral Grant hardly knew what were the limits of his command, or whether indeed he really had any command at all. Vicksburg is on a high bluff overlooking the Mississippi, where it makes a sharp bend enclosing a long, narrow peninsula. The railroad from Shreveport, La., reaches the river at this point, and connects by ferry with the railroad running 1862.] OPERATIONS ON THE MISSISSIPPI. 2jl east from Vicksburg through Jackson, the State capital. The distance between the two cities is forty-five miles. About a hundred miles below Vicksburg is Port Hudson, similarly situated as to river and railways. Between these two points the great Red River, coming from the borders of Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana, flows into the Mississippi. As the Confederates drew a large part of their sup plies from Texas and the country watered by the Red River, it was of the first importance to them to retain control of the Mississippi between Vicks burg and Port Hudson, especially after they had lost New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Memphis. After taking New Orleans, in April, 1862, Far- ragut had gone up the river with some of his ships, in May, and demanded the surrender of Vicksburg; but though the place was then but slightly fortified, the demand was refused, and without a land force he could not take the city, as it was too high to be damaged by his guns. He ran by the batteries in June, and communicated with the river fleet of Captain Charles H. Davis. But all the while new batteries were being planted on the bluffs, and after a time it became exceed ingly hazardous for any sort of craft to run the gauntlet under their plunging fire. In August, a Confederate force, under General John C. Breckin- ridge, attempted the capture of Baton Rouge, ex pecting to be assisted in the assault by an immense iron-clad ram, the "Arkansas," which was coming down the river. The city was occupied by a force under General Thomas Williams, who made a 2/2 GRANT PLANS THE CAPTURE OF VICKSBURG. [1862. stubborn and bloody fight, driving oil* the enemy. General Williams was killed, as were also the Con federate General Clarke and numerous officers of lower rank on either side, and more than six hun dred men in all were killed or wounded. The ram failed to take part in the fight, because her machin ery broke down. She was attacked next day by two or three vessels commanded by Captain (now Admiral) David D. Porter, and when she had been disabled her crew abandoned her and set her on fire, and she was blown into a thousand fragments. After this defeat, General Breckinridge turned his attention to the fortification of Port Hudson, which was made almost as strong as Vicksburg. On the 1 2th of November, 1862, General Grant received a despatch from General Halleck placing him in command of all troops sent to his depart ment, and telling him to fight the enemy where he pleased. Four days later Grant and Sherman had a conference at Columbus, and a plan was ar ranged and afterward modified, by which Grant (who then had about thirty thousand men under his personal command) was to move southward and confront an equal force, commanded by Gene ral John C. Pemberton, on the Tallahatchie ; while Sherman, with thirty thousand, was to move from Memphis down the eastern bank of the Mis sissippi, and, assisted by Porter and his gunboats, attempt the capture of Vicksburg from the rear. If Pemberton moved toward that city, Grant was to follow and engage him as soon as possible. Sherman and Porter, with their usual energy, 1862.1 LOSS OF HOLLY SPRINGS. 273 went to work with all speed to carry out their part of the programme. Grant moved more slowly, because he did not wish to force his enemy back upon Vicksburg, but to hold him as far north UB2gSS5^ as possible. He established his depot of supplies at Holly Springs, and waited for Sherman s move ment. But the whole scheme was ruined by the activity of two Confederate cavalry detachments under Generals Van Dorn and Forrest. On the 20th of December Van Dorn made a dash at Holly Springs, which was held by fifteen hundred men 274 SHERMAN AND PORTER DESCEND THE RIVER. [1862. under a Colonel Murphy, and captured the place and its garrison. Grant had more than two mil lion dollars worth of supplies there, and as Van Dorn could not remove them he burned them all, together with the storehouses and railroad build ings. Forrest, making a wide detour, tore up a portion of the railroad between Jackson, Tenn., and Columbus, Ky., so that Grant s army was cut off from all communication with the North for more than a week. It had not yet occurred to anybody that a large army could leave its com munications and subsist on supplies gathered in the enemy s country ; so Grant gave up this part of his plan and moved back toward Memphis. But Sherman and Porter, not hearing of the disaster at Holly Springs, had proceeded with their preparations, embarked the troops, and gone down the river in a long procession, the gunboats being placed at intervals in the line of transports. Sher man says : " We manoeuvred by divisions and brigades when in motion, and it was a magnificent sight. What few of the inhabitants remained at the plantations on the river bank were unfriendly, except the slaves. Some few guerilla parties in fested the banks, but did not dare to molest so strong a force as I then commanded." The guerilla bands alluded to had been a serious annoyance to the boats patrolling the river. Besides the sharp shooters with their rifles, small parties would sud denly appear at one point or another with a field gun, fire at a passing boat, and disappear before any force could be landed to pursue them. Far- 1862.] SHERMANS ATTEMPT ON THE YAZOO. 275 ragut had been obliged to destroy the town of Donaldsonville, in order to punish and break up this practice on the lower reaches of the river. The expedition arrived at Milliken s Bend on Christmas, where a division was left, and whence a brigade was sent to break the railroad from Shreveport. The next day the boats, with the three remaining divisions, ascended the Yazoo thirteen miles to a point opposite the bluffs north of Vicksburg, where the troops were landed. They were here on the low bottom-land, which was crossed by numerous bayous, some parts of it heavily wooded, the clearings being abandoned cotton plantations. The bluffs were crowned with artillery, and along their base was a deserted bed of the Yazoo. Most of the bridges were destroyed, and the whole district was subject to inundation. It was ugly ground for the operations of an army ; but Sherman, confident that Grant was holding Pemberton, felt sure there could not be a heavy force on the heights, and resolved to capture them without delay. The 27th and 28th were spent in reconnoitering, selecting points for attack, and placing the troops. On the 29th, while the gun boats made a diversion at Raines s Bluff, and a part of Steele s division made a feint on the right, near Vicksburg, the main force crossed the inter vening bayous at two points and attacked the centre of the position. The battle was begun by a heavy artillery fire, followed by musketry, and then the rush of the men. They had to face guns, at the foot of the bluff, that swept the narrow ap- 276 ACTION AT THE BLUFFS. [1862. preaches, and at the same time endure a cross-fire from the heights. Blair s brigade reached the base of the hills, but was not properly supported by Morgan s, and had to fall back again, leaving five hundred of its men behind. The 6th Missouri regiment, at another point, had also gone forward unsupported, reached the bluff, and could not re turn. The men quickly scooped niches in the bank with their hands and sheltered themselves in them, while many of the enemy came to the edge of the hill, held out their muskets vertically at arms -length, and fired down at them. These men were not able to get back to their lines till nightfall. This assault cost Sherman eighteen hundred and forty-eight men, and inflicted upon the Confederates a loss of but two hundred. He made arrangements to send a heavy force on the transports to Haines s Bluff in the night of De cember 30, to be debarked at dawn and storm the works there, while the rest of the troops were to advance as soon as the defences had been thus taken in reverse. But a heavy fog prevented the boats from moving, and the next day a rain set in. Sherman observed the water-marks on the trees ten feet above his head, and a great deal more than ten feet above his head in the other direction he saw whole brigades of reinforcements marching into the enemy s intrenchments. He knew then that something must have gone wrong with Grant s cooperating force, and so he wisely reembarked his men and munitions, and steamed down to the mouth of the Yazoo. 1863.] CAPTURE OF ARKANSAS POST. 277 On the 4th of January, 1863, General McCler- nand assumed command of the two corps that were commanded by Generals Sherman and George W. Morgan. A fortnight before, a Con federate boat had come out of Arkansas River and captured a mail-boat, and it was known that there was a Confederate garrison of five thousand men at Fort Hindman, or Arkansas Post, on the Arkansas. It occurred to Sherman that there could be no safety for boats on the Mississippi near the mouth of the Arkansas till this post was captured or broken up ; and accordingly he asked McClernand to let him attack it with his corps, assisted by some of the gunboats. McClernand concluded to go himself with the entire army, and Porter also accompanied in person, They landed on the roth below the fort, and drove in the pick ets. That night the Confederates toiled all night to throw up a line of works reaching from the fort northward to an impassable swamp. On the nth the whole National force moved forward simultaneously to the attack, the gunboats steam ing up close to the fort and sweeping its bastions with their fire, while Morgan s corps moved against its eastern face, and Sherman s against the new line of works. The ground to be passed over was level, with little shelter save a few trees and logs ; but the men advanced steadily, lying down behind every little projection, and so annoying the artil lerymen with their sharpshooting that the guns could not be well served. When the gunboats ar rived abreast of the fort and enfiladed it, the gunners 278 CUTTING A CANAL. [1863. ran down into the ditch, a man with a white flag appeared on the parapet, and presently white flags and rags were fluttering all along the line. Firing was stopped at once, and the fort was surrendered by its commander, General Churchill. About one hundred and fifty of the garrison had been killed, and the remainder, numbering forty-eight hun dred, were made prisoners. The National loss was about one thousand. The fort was dismantled and destroyed, and the stores taken on board the fleet. McClernand conceived a vague project for ascend ing the river farther, but on peremptory orders from Grant the expedition returned to the Missis sippi, steaming down the Arkansas in a heavy snow-storm. In accordance with instructions from Washing ton, Grant now took personal command of the operations on the Mississippi, dividing his entire force into four corps, to be commanded by Gene rals McClernand, Sherman, Stephen A. Hurlbut, and James B. McPherson. Hurlbut s corps was left to hold the lines east of Memphis, while the other troops, with reinforcements from the North, were united in the river expedition. McClernand and Sherman went down to the peninsula enclosed in the bend of the river oppo site Vicksburg, and with immense labor dug a canal across it. Much was hoped from this, but it proved a failure, for the river would not flow through it. Furthermore, there were bluffs com manding the river below Vicksburg, and the Con federates had already begun to fortify them ; so 1863.] YAZOO PASS ATTEMPTED. 279 that if the canal had succeeded, navigation of the stream would have been as much obstructed as before. Still, the work was continued till the 7th of March, when the river suddenly rose and overflowed the peninsula, and Sherman s men barely escaped drowning by regiments. Grant was surveying the country in every direc tion, for some feasible approach to the flanks of his enemy. One scheme was to move through Lake Providence and the bayous west of the Mississippi, from a point far above Vicksburg to one far below. This involved the cutting of another canal, from the Mississippi to one of the bayous, and McPherson s corps spent a large part of the month of March in digging and dredging ; but this also was a failure. On the eastern side of the Mississippi there had once been an opening, known as Yazoo Pass, by which boats from Mem phis made their way into Coldwater River, thence into the Tallahatchie, and thence into the Yazoo above Yazoo City ; but the pass had been closed by a levee or embankment. Grant blew up the levee, and tried this approach. But the Confeder ates had information of every movement, and took prompt measures to thwart it. The banks of the streams where his boats had to pass were heavily wooded, and great trees were felled across the channel. Worse than this, after the boats had passed in and removed many of the obstructions, it was found that the enemy were felling trees across the channel behind them, so that they might not get out again. Earthworks also were thrown 28O AN ATTEMPT BY STEELED BAYOU. [1868. up at the point where the Yallabusha and Talla- hatchie unite to form the Yazoo, and heavily manned. Here the advance division of the expe dition had a slight engagement, with no result. Reinforcements arrived under General Isaac F. Quinby, who assumed command, and began opera tions for crossing the Yallabusha and rendering the Confederate fortification useless, when he was recalled by Grant, who had found that the neces sary light-draft boats for carrying his whole force through to that point could not be had. One more attempt in this direction was made before the effort to flank Vicksburg on the north was given up. It was proposed to ascend the Yazoo a short distance from its mouth, turn into Steele s bayou, ascend this, and by certain passes that had been discovered get into Big Sunflower River, and then descend that stream into the Yazoo above Haines s Bluff. Porter and Sherman took the lead in this expedition, and encountered all the difficulties of the Yazoo Pass project, mag nified several times the narrow channels, the felled trees, the want of solid ground on which troops could be manoeuvred, the horrible swamps and canebrakes, through some of which they picked their way with lighted candles, and the an noyance from unseen sharpshooters that swarmed through the whole region. Porter at one time was on the point of abandoning his boats ; but finally all were extricated, though some of them had to back out through the narrow pass for a distance of thirty miles. 1863.] GRANT CROSSES THE MISSISSIPPI. 28 1 In March, Farragut with his flagship and one gunboat had run by the batteries at Port Hudson, but the remainder of his fleet had failed to pass. Several boats had run by the batteries at Vicks- burg ; and Grant now turned his attention to a project for moving an army by transports through bayous west of the Mississippi to a point below the city, where Porter, after running by the batteries with his iron-clads, was to meet him and ferry the troops across to the eastern bank. The use of the bayous was finally given up, and the army marched by the roads, following the route indicated by the dotted line on the map (page 273). The fleet ran by the batteries on the night of April 16. As soon as it was discovered approaching, the Confederates set fire to immense piles of wood that they had prepared on the bank, the whole scene became as light as day, and for an hour and a half the fleet was under a heavy fire, which it returned as it steadily steamed by ; but beyond the destruction of one transport there was no serious loss. Bridges had to be built over bayous, and a suit able place discovered for crossing the Mississippi. New Carthage was tried, but found impracticable, as it was nearly surrounded by water. Grand Gulf was strongly fortified, and on the 2Qth of April seven of Porter s gunboats attacked it. They fired five hundred shots an hour for five hours, and damaged the works somewhat, but only killed or wounded eighteen men, while the fleet lost twenty- six men, and one boat was seriously disabled. Grant therefore gave up the project of crossing 282 GRIERSON S RAID. [isea. here, moved his transports down stream under cover of darkness, and at daylight on the 3Oth began the crossing at Bruinsburg. McClernand s corps was in the advance, and marched on Port Gibson that night. At dawn the enemy was found in a strong position three miles west of that place. There was sharp fighting all day, the Confederate force numbering about eight thousand, and con testing every foot of the ground ; but the line was finally disrupted, and at nightfall they made an or derly retreat, burning bridges behind them. The National loss had been eight hundred and forty- nine men killed, wounded, or missing; the Con federate about one thousand. Grant s movements at this time were greatly assisted by one of the most effective cavalry raids of the war. This was conducted by Colonel Benjamin H. Grierson, who, with seventeen hundred men, set out from La Grange, Tenn., on the i7th of April, and rode southward through the whole State of Mississippi, tearing up railroads, burning bridges, destroying supplies, eluding every strong force that was sent out to stop him, defeating several small ones, floundering through swamps, swimming rivers, spreading consternation by the celerity and un certainty of his movements, and finally riding into Baton Rouge at the end of sixteen days with half his men asleep in their saddles. He had lost but twenty-seven. The fortifications at Grand Gulf were aban doned, Porter took possession of them, and Grant established his base there. A bridge had to be re- 1863.] ACTION AT RAYMOND. 283 built at Port Gibson, and then Crocker s division pushed on in pursuit of the retreating Confeder ates, saved a burning bridge at Bayou Pierre, came up with them at Willow Springs, and after a slight engagement drove them across the Big Black at Hankinson s Ferry, and saved the bridge. There was a slight delay, for Sherman s corps and the supplies to arrive, and then Grant pressed on reso lutely with his whole army. He had with him about forty-one thousand men, subsequently in creased to forty-five thousand ; and Pemberton at this time had about fifty thousand. Grant moved northeasterly, toward Jackson, and on the I2th of May found a hostile force near Raymond. It numbered but three thousand, and was soon swept away, though not until it had lost five hundred men and inflicted a loss of four hun dred and thirty-two upon the National troops. It was the purpose of the Union commander to move swiftly, and beat the enemy as much as possible in detail, before the scattered forces could concen trate against him. Believing there was a consid erable force at Jackson, which he would not like to leave in his rear, he marched on that place, and the next conflict occurred there, May 14. Gen eral Joseph E. Johnston (whom we took leave of when he was wounded at Seven Pines, nearly a year before) had just been ordered by the Con federate Government to take command of all the forces in Mississippi, and arrived at Jackson in the evening of the i3th, finding there about twelve thousand men subject to his orders. Pemberton 284 CAPTURE OF JACKSON. [1863. was at Edwards Station, thirty miles westward, and Grant was between them. Johnston tele graphed to Richmond that he was too late, but took what measures he could for defence. It rained heavily that night, and the next morning, when the corps of Sherman and McPherson marched against the city, they travelled roads that were a foot under water. McPherson came up on the west, and Sherman on the southwest and south. The enemy was met two miles out, and driven in with heavy skirmishing. While manceu- vering was going on before the intrenchments, the Union commanders seeking for a suitable point to assault, it was discovered that the enemy was evac uating the place, and Grant and his men went in at once and hoisted the National colors. They had lost two hundred and ninety men in the skir mishing ; the enemy eight hundred and forty-five, mostly captured. Seventeen guns were taken, but the Confederates burned most of their stores. Leaving Sherman at Jackson to destroy the railroad and the factories that were turning out goods for the Confederacy, which he did very thoroughly, Grant ordered all his other forces to concentrate at Bolton, twenty miles west. March ing thence westward, keeping the corps well to- together, and ordering Sherman to send forward an ammunition-train for he knew that a battle must soon be fought Grant found Pemberton with twenty-three thousand men waiting to re ceive him at Champion s Hill, on high ground well selected for defence, which covered the three roads 1863.J BATTLE OF CHAMPION S HILL. 285 leading westward. The battle, May 15, lasted four hours, and was. the bloodiest of the campaign. The brunt of it, on the National side, was borne by the divisions of Hovey, Logan, and Crocker ; and Hovey lost more than one third of his men. Logan s division pushed forward on the right, passed Pemberton s left flank, and held the only road by which the enemy could retreat. But this was not known to the Union commander at the time, and when Hovey, hard pressed, called for help, Logan was drawn back to his assistance, and the road uncovered. A little later Pemberton was in full retreat toward the crossing of the Big Black River, leaving his dead and wounded and thirty guns on the field. Grant s loss in the action killed, wounded, and missing was twenty-four hundred and forty-one. Pemberton s was over three thousand killed and wounded (including Gen eral Tilghman killed), besides nearly as many more captured in battle or on the retreat. The enemy was next found at the Big Black River, where he had placed his main line on the high land west of the stream, and stationed his ad vance (or, properly speaking, his rear guard) along the edge of a bayou that ran through the low ground on the east. This advanced position was attacked vigorously on the 1 7th, and when Law- ler s brigade flanked it on the right, that General leading a charge in his shirt-sleeves, the whole line gave way, and Pemberton resumed his retreat, burning the bridge behind him and leaving his o o o men in the lowland to their fate. Some swam the 286 PEMBERTON SHUT UP IN VICKSBURG. [1863. river, some were drowned, and seventeen hundred and fifty were made prisoners. Eighteen guns were captured here. The National loss was two hundred and seventy-nine. Sherman now came up with his corps, and Grant ordered the building of three bridges. One was a floating or raft bridge, one was made by felling trees on both sides of the stream and letting them fall so that their boughs would interlace over the channel, the trunks not being cut entirely through, and so hanging to the stumps. Planks laid cross wise on these trees made a good roadway. The third bridge was made by using cotton bales for pontoons. Sherman s troops made a fourth bridge farther up the stream ; and that night he and Grant sat on a log and watched the long proces sion of blue-coated men with gleaming muskets marching across the swaying structure by the light of pitch-pine torches. All the bridges were fin ished by morning, and that day, the i8th, the en tire army was west of the river. Pemberton marched straight into Vicksburg, which had a long line of defences on the land side as well as on the water front, and shut himself up there. Grant, following closely, invested the place on the iQth. Sherman, holding the right of the line, was at Raines s Bluff, occupying the very ground beneath which his men had suffered defeat some months before. Here, on the Yazoo, Grant established a new base for supplies. McPherson s corps was next to Sherman s on the left, and McClernand s next, reaching to the river below 1863.1 AN UNSUCCESSFUL ASSAULT. 287 the city. Sharp skirmishing went on while the armies were getting into position, and an assault in the afternoon of the iQth gained the National troops some advantage in the advancement of the line to better ground. Grant s army had been living for three weeks on five days rations, with what they could pick up in the country they passed through, which was not a little, and his first care was to construct roads in the rear of his line, so that supplies could be brought up from the Yazoo rapidly and regularly, He had now about thirty thousand men, the line of defences before him was eight miles long, and he expected an attack from Johnston in the rear. At ten o clock on the 22d, therefore, he ordered a grand assault, hoping to carry the works by storm. But though the men at several points reached the breastworks and planted their battle-flags on them, it was found impossible to take them. McClernand falsely re ported that he had carried two forts at his end of the line, and asked for reinforcements, which were sent to him, and a renewal of the assault was made to help him. This caused additional loss of life to no purpose, and shortly afterward that general was relieved of his command, which was given to General E. O. C. Ord. After this assault, which had cost him nearly twenty-five hundred men, Grant settled down to a siege of Vicksburg by regular approaches. The work went on day by day, with the usual incidents of a siege. There was mining and counter-mining, and two large mines were exploded under angles 288 INCIDENTS OF THE SIEGE. of the Confederate works, but without any practi cal result. The great guns were booming night and day, throwing thousands of shells into the city, and more than one citizen picked up and threw into a heap hundreds of pounds of the iron frag ments that fell into his yard. Caves were dug in the banks where the streets had been cut through the clayey hills, and in these the people found ref uge from the shells. A newspaper was issued regularly even to the last day of the siege, but it was printed on the back of wall-paper. Provisions of course became scarce, and mule-meat was eaten. Somebody printed a humorous bill of fare, which consisted entirely of mule-meat in the various forms of soup, roast, stew, etc. All the while the besiegers were digging away, bringing their trenches closer to the defences, till the soldiers of the hostile lines bandied jests across the narrow intervening space. At the end of forty-seven days the works arrived at the point where a grand assault must be the next thing, and at the same time famine threatened and the National holiday was at hand. After some negotiation General Pemberton unconditionally surrendered the city and his army of thirty-one thousand six hundred men on the 4th of July, 1863, one day after Lee s defeat at Gettysburg. Port Hudson, which Banks with twelve thou sand men and Farragut with his fleet had besieged for weeks, was surrendered with its garrison of six thousand men five days after the fall of Vicksburg. The entire Confederate loss in Mississippi, from 1863.] PEMBERTON S SURRENDER. 289 the time Grant entered the State at Bruinsburg to the surrender, was about fifty thousand ; Grant s was about nine thousand. But the great triumph was in the opening of the Mississippi River, which cut the Confederacy completely in two. By Grant s orders there was no cheering, no firing of salutes, no expression of exultation at the surrender ; because the triumph was over our own countrymen, and the object of it all was to estab lish a permanent Union. In his correspondence with Pemberton, while demanding an unconditional surrender, Grant had written : " Men who have shown so much endur ance and courage as those now in Vicksburg will always challenge the respect of an adversary, and I can assure you will be treated with all the re spect due to prisoners of war. I do not favor the proposition of appointing commissioners to arrange the terms of capitulation, because I have no terms other than those indicated above." As soon as the surrender was effected, the famished Confederate army was liberally supplied with food, Grant s men taking it out of their own hav ersacks. All the prisoners at Vicksburg and Port Hudson were immediately paroled and fur nished with transportation and supplies, under the supposition that they would go to their homes and remain there till properly exchanged. CHAPTER XVIII. THE DRAFT RIOTS. WHEN Lee s second attempt at invasion had ended at Gettysburg even more disastrously than his first, and he returned to Virginia at the head of hardly more than half of the army with which he had set out, and on the next day Vicksburg fell, the Mis sissippi was opened, and Pemberton s entire army stacked their muskets and became prisoners, the war should have ended ; for the question on which the appeal to arms had been made was practically decided. Four great slave States Maryland, Ken tucky, Tennessee, and Missouri had never really joined the Confederacy, though some of them were represented in its Congress ; and the terri tory that it actually held was steadily diminishing. The great blockade was daily growing more effect ive, the largest city in the South had been held by National troops for fifteen months, and the Fed eral authority was maintained somewhere in every State, with the sole exception of Alabama. The delusion that Southern soldiers would make a bet ter army, man for man, than Northern, had long since been dispelled. The nation had suffered from incompetent commanders ; but time and ex perience had weeded them out, and the really able ones were now coming to the front. The taboo 1863.] WHY THE WAR WAS CONTINUED. 2QI had been removed from the black man, and he was rapidly putting on the blue uniform to fight for the enfranchisement of his race. Lincoln with his proclamation, and Meade and Grant with their victories, had destroyed the last chance of foreign intervention. In the military situation there was nothing to justify any further hope for the Confed eracy, or any more destruction of life in the vain endeavor to disrupt the Union. If there was any justification for a continuance of the struggle on the part of the insurgents, it was to be found only in a single circumstance the attitude of the Demo cratic party in the Northern States ; but it must be confessed that this was such as to give consider able color to their expectation of ultimate success. The habitual feeling of antagonism to the oppo site party, from which few men in a land of popular politics are ever wholly free, was reenforced by a , sincere belief on the part of many that the Gov-\ ernment, in determining to crush the rebellion, had undertaken a larger task than it could ever accom- rlish. This belief was born of an ignorance that it was impossible to argue with, because it sup posed itself to be enlightened and fortified by great historical facts. Both conscious and unconscious demagogues picked out little shreds of history and formulated phrases and catch-words, which village newspapers and village statesmen confidently re peated as unanswerable arguments from the expe rience of nations. Thus Pitt s exclamation during the war of American independence, "You cannot conquer America ! " was triumphantly quoted thou- ARGUMENTS OF THE OPPOSITION. [1863. sands of times, as an argument for the impossibility of conquering the South. Assertions were freely made that the despotism of the Administration (in trying to save the National armies from useless slaughter, by arresting spies arid traitors at the North) exceeded anything ever done by Caesar or the Russian Czar. The word " bastile " was given out, without much explanation, and was echoed all along the line. The war-Governors of the free States, and especially the provisional military Gov ernors in Tennessee and Louisiana, were called Lincoln s satraps; and " satraps," with diverse pronunciations, became a popular word. The fathers of the Republic were all mentioned with sorrowful reverence, and it was declared that the Constitution they had framed was destroyed not by the secessionists, but by Mr. Lincoln and his advisers. Somebody invented a story that Secre tary Seward had said he had only to reach forth his hand and ring a bell, and any man in the coun try whom he might designate would at once be seized and thrown into prison; whereupon "the tinkle of Seward s little bell " became a frequent head-line in the Democratic journals. The army before Vicksburg was pointed at in derision, as be sieging a place that could never be taken.. It did not occur to any of these orators and journalists to explain the difference between an ocean three thousand miles wide and the Rappa- hannock River ; or the difference between an ab solute monarch born to the purple and a president elected by a free vote of the people ; or even the 1863.] ARGUMENTS OF THE OPPOSITION. 293 difference between a state of peace and a state of war. None of them told their hearers that, only eight years before, the city of Sebastopol had withstood the combined armies of England and France for almost a year, while the city of Vicks- burg, when Grant besieged it, fell on the forty- seventh day. Nor did any of them ever appear to consider what the probable result would be if the entire Democratic party in Northern States should give the Administration as hearty support as it received from its own. It is easy to see the fallacy of all those argu ments now, and the unwisdom of the policy from which they sprang ; but they were a power in the I land at that time, and wrought unmeasured mis chief. The most conspicuous opponent of the Government in the West was Clement L. Vallan- digham, of Ohio, whose position will be understood most readily from a few of his public utterances. He wrote in May, 1861 : " The audacious usurpa tion of President Lincoln, for which he deserves impeachment, in daring, against the very letter of the Constitution, and without the shadow of law, to raise and support armies, and to provide and I maintain a navy, for three years, by mere execu tive proclamation, I will not vote to sustain or rat ify never." Speaking in his place in the House of Representatives in January, 1863, he said : " I have denounced, from the beginning, the usurpa tions and infractions, one and all, of law and Consti tution, by the President and those under him ; their repeated and persistent arbitrary arrests, the sus- 294 VALLANDIGHAM BANISHED. [isd3. pension of habeas corpus, the violation of freedom of the mails, of the private house, of the press and of speech, and all the other multiplied wrongs and out rages upon public liberty and private right, which have made this country one of the worst despo tisms on earth for the past twenty months. To the record and to time I appeal for my justification." In proposing conciliation and compromise as a substitute for the war, he said, borrowing the lan guage of the Indiana Democratic platform, " In considering terms of settlement, we will look only to the welfare, peace, and safety of the white race, without reference to the effect that settlement may. have upon the condition of the African." For these and similar utterances, especially in regard to a military order that forbade the carrying of fire arms and other means of disturbing the peace, and for the effect they were having upon his followers, Mr. Vallandigham was arrested in May, 1863, by the military authorities in Ohio, tried by court martial, and sentenced to imprisonment during the war. The President commuted the sentence to banishment beyond the lines, and the prisoner was taken south through Kentucky and Tennessee, and sent into Confederate territory under a flag of truce. This of course placed him in the light of a martyr, and a few months later it made him the Democratic candidate for Governor of Ohio. In the East, ex-President Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire, loomed up as a leader of the opposition. His famous letter to Jefferson Davis, predicting bloodshed in Northern cities, has been 1863.] PIERCE S SPEECH. 295 quoted in a previous chapter. In an elaborate Fourth-of-July oration at Concord he said: " No American citizen was then [before the war] subject to be driven into exile for opinion s sake, or arbi trarily arrested and incarcerated in military bastiles even as he may now be not for acts or words of imputed treason, but if he do but mourn in silent sorrow over the desolation of his country. Do we not all know that the cause of our calamities is the vicious intermeddling of too many of the citizens of the Northern States with the constitutional rights of the Southern States, cooperating with the discontents of the people of those States ? We have seen, in the experience of the last two years, how futile are all our efforts to maintain the Union by force of arms ; but, even had war been carried on by us successfully, the ruinous result would exhibit its utter impracticability for the attain ment of the desired end. With or without arms, with or without leaders, we will at least, in the ef fort to defend our rights as a free people, build up a great mausoleum of hearts, to which men who yearn for liberty will in after-years, with bowed heads and reverently, resort, as Christian pilgrims to the sacred shrines of the Holy Land." This was long referred to, by those who heard it, as " the mausoleum-of-hearts speech." In the great State of New York the Democratic leader was Horatio Seymour, who had been elected Governor in the period of depression that followed the military defeats of 1862. While Pierce was speaking in Concord, Seymour was delivering in 296 SEYMOUR S SPEECH. New York a carefully written address, in which like Pierce and Vallandigham he complained, not of the secessionists for making war at the South, but of the Administration for curtailing the liberty of the Government s enemies at the North. He said : " When I accepted the invitation to speak at this meeting, we were promised the downfall of Vicksburg [the telegraph brought news of it while he was speaking], the opening of the Mississippi, the probable capture of the Confederate capital, and the exhaustion of the rebellion. When the clouds of war overhung our country, we implored those in authority to compromise that difficulty; for we had been told by that great orator and statesman, Burke, that there never yet was a re volution that might not have been prevented by a compromise opportunely and graciously made. Until we have a united North, we can have no suc cessful war ; until we have a united, harmonious North, we can have no beneficent peace. Re member this, that the bloody and treasonable and revolutionary doctrine of public necessity can be proclaimed by a mob as well as by a government." The practical effect of all these protests, in the name of liberty, against arrests of spies and traitors, and suspension of the habeas corpus^ was to assist the slave-holders in their attempt to make liberty forever impossible for the black race, in pursuance of which they were willing to destroy the liberties of the white race and sacrifice hundreds of thou sands of lives, most of which were valuable to their country and to mankind, being lives of men 1863.] CAUSES OF RIOT. 297 who earned a living by the sweat of their own faces. All the abridgment of the liberties of Northern citizens, in time of war, by Presi dent Lincoln s suspension of the writ, and by arbi trary arrests, was not a tithe of what those same citizens had suffered in time of peace from the existence of slavery under the Constitution. Yet neither President Pierce, nor Chief Justice Taney, nor Horatio Seymour, nor Mr. Vallandigham, had ever uttered one word of protest against the denial of free speech in criticism of that insti tution, or against the systematic rifling of mails at the South, or against the refusal to permit Ameri can citizens to sojourn in the slave States unless they believed in the divine right of slavery. It was no wonder that such utterances as those quoted above, by the leaders of a party, at such a time, should be translated by its baser followers into reasons for riot, arson, and butchery. Another exciting cause was found in the persistent misinter pretation of what was meant to be a beneficent provision of the conscription law. Drafts had been ordered in several of the States to fill up quotas that were not forthcoming under the volunteer system. The law provided that a man whose name was drawn, if he did not wish to go into the service himself, might either procure a substitute orpay three hundred dollars to the Government and be released. In the North, where there were no slaves to do the necessary work at home, it was absolutely essential to have some system of substitution ; and the three-hundred-dollar clause 298 THE DRAFT IN NEW YORK. [1863. was introduced, not because the Government wanted money more than it wanted men, but to favor the poor by keeping down the price of sub stitutes, for it was evident that that price could never rise above the sum necessary for a release. Yet this very clause was attacked by the journals that assumed to champion the cause of the poor, as being a discrimination in favor of the rich ! Mr. Vallandigham said in a speech at Dayton : " The three-hundred-dollar provision is a most unjust discrimination against the poor. The Administra tion says to every man between twenty and forty- five, Three hundred dollars or your life. When the clause had been repealed, in consequence of the ignorant clamor raised by this persistent mis representation, the price of substitutes rapidly went beyond a thousand dollars. A new levy of three hundred thousand men was called for in April, 1863, with the alternative of a draft if the quotas were not filled by volunteer ing. The quota of the city of New York was not filled, and a draft was begun there on Saturday, the nth of July. There had been premonitions of trouble when it was attempted to take the names and addresses of those subject to call, and in the tenement-house districts some of the marshals had narrowly escaped with their lives. On the morning when the draft was to begin, several of the most widely read Democratic journals contained edi torials that appeared to be written for the very purpose of inciting a riot. They asserted that any draft at all was unconstitutional and despotic, and 1863.] THE RIOTS. that in this case the quota demanded from the city was excessive, and denounced the war as a " mere abolition crusade." It is doubtful if there was any well-formed conspiracy, including any large number of persons, to get up a riot ; but the excited state of the public mind, especially among the laboring population, inflammatory handbills displayed in the grog-shops, the presence of the dangerous classes, whose best opportunity for plunder was in time of riot, and the absence of the militia that had been called away to meet the invasion of Pennsylvania, all favored an outbreak. It was unfortunate that the draft was begun on Saturday, and the Sunday papers published long lists of the names that were drawn an instance of the occasional mischievous results of journalistic enterprise. Those interested had all Sunday to talk it over in their accus tomed meeting-places, and discuss wild schemes of relief or retaliation ; and the insurrection that fol lowed was more truly a popular uprising than the rebellion that it assisted and encouraged. When the draft was resumed on Monday, the serious work began. One provost-marshal s office was at the corner of Third Avenue and Forty-Sixth street. It was guarded by sixty policemen, and the wheel was set in motion at ten o clock. The building was surrounded by a dense, angry crowd, who were freely cursing the draft, the police, the National Government, and " the nigger." The drawing had been in progress but a few minutes when there was a shout of " Stop the cars ! " and at once the cars were stopped, the horses re- 300 THE RIOTS IN NEW YORK. [1863 leased, the conductors and passengers driven out, and a tumult created. Then a great human wave was set in motion, which bore down everything before it and rolled into the marshal s office, driv ing out at the back windows the officials and the policemen, whose clubs, though plied rapidly and knocking down a rioter at every blow, could not dis pose of them as fast as they came on. The mob destroyed everything in the office, and then set the building on fire. The firemen came promptly, but were not permitted to throw any water upon the flames. At this moment Superintendent John A. Kennedy, of the police, approaching in cautiously and unarmed, was recognized and set upon by the crowd, who gave him half a hundred blows with clubs and stones, and finally threw him face downward into a mud-puddle, with the inten tion of drowning him. When rescued, he was bruised beyond recognition, and was lifted into a wagon and carried to the police headquarters. The command of the force now devolved upon Commissioner Thomas C. Acton and Inspector Daniel Carpenter, whose management during three fearful days was worthy of the highest praise. Another marshal s office, where the draft was in progress, was at Broadway and Twenty-Ninth street, and here the mob burned the whole block of stores on Broadway between Twenty-Eighth and Twenty-Ninth streets. At Third Avenue and Forty-Fourth street there was a battle between a small force of police and a mob, in which the police were defeated, many of them being badly wounded 1863.] THE RIOTS IN NEW YORK. 30! by stones and pistol-shots. Some of them who were knocked down were almost instantly robbed of their clothing. Officer Bennett fell into the hands of the crowd, and was beaten so savagely that no appearance of life was left in him, when he was carried away to the dead-house at St. Luke s Hos pital. Here came his wife, who discovered that his heart was still beating ; means of restoration were used promptly, and after three days of un consciousness and a long illness he recovered. Another officer was stabbed twice by a woman in the crowd ; and another, disabled by a blow from an iron bar, was saved by a German woman, who hid him between two mattresses when the pursuing mob was searching her house for him. In the af ternoon a small police force held possession of a gun-factory in Second Avenue for four hours, and was then compelled to retire before the persistent attacks of the rioters, who hurled stones through the windows and beat in the doors. Toward evening a riotous procession passed down Broadway, with drums, banners, muskets, pistols, pitchforks, clubs, and boards inscribed "No Draft!" Inspector Carpenter, at the head of two hundred policemen, marched up to meet it. His orders were, " Take no prisoners, but strike quick and hard." The mob was met at the corner of Amity (or West Third) street. The police charged at once in a compact body, Carpenter knocking down the foremost rioter with a blow that cracked his skull, and in a few minutes the mob scattered and fled, leaving Broadway strewn 3<D2 THE RIOTS IN NEW YORK. [1863. with their wounded and dying. From this time, the police were victorious in every encounter. During the next two days there was almost con stant rioting, mobs appearing at various points, both up-town and down-town. The rioters set upon every negro that appeared whether man, woman, or child and succeeded in murdering eleven of them. One they deliberately hanged to a tree in Thirty-Second street, his only offence being the color of his skin. At another place, seeing three negroes on a roof, they set fire to the house. The victims hung at the edge of the roof a long time, but were obliged to drop before the police could procure ladders. This phase of the outbreak found its worst expression in the sacking and burning of the Colored Orphan Asylum, at Fifth Avenue and Forty-Fourth street. The two hundred helpless children were with great difficulty taken away by the rear doors while the mob were battering at the front. The excitement of the rioters was not so great as to prevent them from coolly robbing the building of everything valuable that could be removed, before they set it on fire. Bed-clothing, furniture, and other articles were passed out and borne off (in many cases by the wives and sisters of the rioters) to add to the com fort of their own homes. Several tenement-houses that were occupied by negroes were attacked by the mob with a determination to destroy, and were with difficulty protected by the police. The office of the "Tribune" was especially ob noxious to the rioters, because that paper was fore- 1863.] THE RIOTS IN NEW YORK. 303 most in support of the Administration and the war. Crowds approached it, singing " We ll hang old Greeley on a sour-apple-tree," and at one time its counting-room was entered by the mob and a fire was kindled ; but the police drove them out and quickly extinguished the flames. The printers were then supplied with a quantity of muskets and bomb-shells, and long board troughs were run out at the windows ; so that in case of an attack a shell could be lighted and rolled out, dropping from the end of the trough into the crowd, where its explosion would produce incalculable havoc. Happily the ominous troughs proved a sufficient warning. A small military force was brought to the aid of the police ; and whenever an outbreak was reported, a strong body was sent at once to the spot. The locust clubs, when wielded in earnest, proved a terrible weapon, descending upon the heads of rioters with blows that generally cracked the skull. A surgeon who attended twenty-one men reported that they were all wounded in the head, and all past recovery. One of the most fearful scenes was in Second Avenue, where the police and the soldiers were assailed with stones and pistol-shots from the windows and the roofs. Dividing into squads, they entered the houses, which, amid the cries and curses of the women, they searched from bottom to top. They seized their cowering assail ants in the halls, in the dark bedrooms, wherever they were hiding, felled them, bayoneted them, hurled them over the balusters and through the 304 THE RIOTS IN NEW YORK. [1863. windows, pursued them to the roof, shot them as they dodged behind chimneys, refusing all mercy, and threw the quivering corpses into the street as a warning to the mob. It was like a realization of the imaginary taking of Torquilstone. One of the saddest incidents of the riot was the murder of Colonel Henry J. O Brien, of the nth New York Volunteers, whose men had dispersed one mob with a deadly volley. An hour or two later the Colonel returned to the spot alone, when he was set upon and beaten and mangled and tor tured horribly for several hours, being at last killed by some frenzied women. Page after page might be filled with such incidents. At one time Broad way was strewn with dead men from Bond street to Union Square. A very young man, dressed in the working-clothes of a mechanic, was observed to be active and daring in leading a crowd of riot ers. A blow from a club at length brought him down, and as he fell he was impaled on the picket of an iron fence, which caught him under the chin and killed him. On examination, it was found that under the greasy overalls he wore a costly and fashionable suit, and there were other indica tions of wealth and refinement ; but the body was never identified. Three days of this vigorous work by the police and the soldiers brought the disturbance to an end. About fifty policemen had been injured, three of whom died ; and the whole number of lives destroyed by the rioters was eighteen. The exact number of rioters killed is unknown, but it 1863.] THE RIOTS IN NEW YORK. 395 was more than twelve hundred. The mobs burned about fifty buildings, destroying altogether between two million and three million dollars worth of property. Governor Seymour incurred odium by a speech to the rioters, in which he addressed them as his friends, and promised to have the draft stopped ; and by his communications to the Presi dent, in which he complained of the draft, and asked to have it suspended till the question of its constitutionality could be tested in the courts. His opponents interpreted this as a subterfuge to favor the rebellion by preventing the reenforce- ment of the National armies. The President answered, in substance, that he had no objection to a testing of the question, but he would not imperil the country by suspending operations till a case could be dragged through the courts. Fourteen of the Northern States had enacted laws enabling the soldiers to vote without going home. In some of the States it was provided that commissioners should go to the camps and take the votes ; in others the soldier was authorized to seal up his ballot and send it home to his next friend, who was to present it at the polls and make oath that it was the identical one sent to him. The enactment of such laws had been strenuously opposed by the Democrats, on several grounds, the most plausible of which was, that men under military discipline were not practically free to vote as they pleased. The most curious argument was to this effect: A soldier that sends home his ballot may be killed in battle before that ballot reaches 306 THE RIOTS IN NEW YORK. [1863. its destination and is counted. Do you want dead men to decide your elections ? These were the darkest days of the war ; but the riots reacted upon the party that was supposed to favor them, the people gradually learned the full significance of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, and at the autumn election the State of New York, which a year before had elected Governor Seymour, gave a handsome majority in favor of the Administra tion. In Ohio, where the Democrats had nominated Vallandigham for Governor, and made a noisy and apparently vigorous canvass, the Republicans nominated John Brough. When the votes were counted, it was found that Mr. Brough had a majority of one hundred thousand, the largest that had ever been given for any candidate in any State where there was a contest. Politically speak ing, this buried Mr. Vallandigham out of sight forever, and delivered a heavy blow at the ob structive policy of his party. CHAPTER XIX. THE SIEGE OF CHARLESTON. As Charleston was the cradle of secession, there was a special desire on the part of the Northern people that it should undergo the heaviest penalties of war. They wanted poetic vengeance to fall upon the very men that had taught disunion, fired upon Sumter, and kindled the flames of civil strife. And there were not a few at the South who shared this sentiment, believing that they had been dragged into ruin by the politicians of South Carolina. Many would have been glad if the whole State could have been pried off from the rest of the Union and slidden into the depths of the sea. But there was a better than sentimental reason for directing vigorous operations against Charleston. Its port was exceedingly useful to the Confeder ates for shipping their cotton to Europe and re ceiving in return the army clothing, rifles, and ammunition that were produced for them by En glish looms and arsenals. Early in the war the Gov ernment attempted to close this port with obstruc tions. Several old whale-ships were loaded with stone, towed into the channel, and sunk, at which there was a great outcry, and the books were searched to see whether this barbarous pro ceeding, as it was called, was permissible under the 308 BLOCKADE OF CHARLESTON HARBOR. [1863. laws of war and of nations. In 1854 the harbor of Sebastopol had been obstructed in the same way ; but that was done by the Russians, whose harbor it was, to prevent the enemy from coming in. The strong currents at Charleston soon swept away the old hulks or buried them in the sand, and a dozen war-vessels had to be sent there to maintain the blockade. This was an exceedingly difficult task. The main channel ran for a long dis tance near the shore of Morris Island, and was pro tected by batteries. The westward-bound blockade- runners commonly went first to the British port of Nassau, in the West Indies, and thence with a pilot sailed for Charleston. After the main chan nel had been closed in consequence of the occupa tion of Morris Island by National troops, steamers of very light draft, built in England for this spe cial service, slipped in by the shallower passes. A great many were captured for theblockaders de veloped remarkable skill in detecting their move ments but the practice was never wholly broken up till the city was occupied by the National forces in February, 1865. In January, 1863, two Confederate iron-clads steamed out of the harbor, on a hazy morning, and attacked the blockading fleet. Two vessels, by shots through their steam-drums, were disabled, and struck their colors ; but the remainder of the fleet came to their assistance, and the iron clads were driven back into the harbor, leaving their prizes behind. General Beauregard and Captain Ingraham (commanding the military and 1863.] DU FONTS ATTACK. 309 naval forces of the Confederacy at Charleston) formally proclaimed this affair a victory that had " sunk, dispersed, and driven off or out of sight the entire blockading fleet," and consequently raised the blockade of the port. These assertions, re peated in foreign newspapers, threatened fora time to create serious complications with European powers, by raising the question whether the block ade (supposed to be thus broken) must not be re- proclaimed, and notice given to masters of mer chant vessels, before it could be reestablished. But the falsity of the claim was soon shown, and no foreign vessels accepted the invitation to de mand free passage into the port of Charleston. This affair increased the desire to capture the port, put an absolute end to the blockade-running there, and use it as a harbor of refuge for National vessels. Accordingly a powerful fleet was fitted out for the purpose, and placed under the command of Rear-Admiral S. F. Du Pont, who had reduced the forts of Port Royal in November, 1861. It consisted of seven monitors, an iron-clad frigate, an iron-clad ram, and several wooden gun boats. On the 7th of April, 1863, favored by smooth water, Du Pont steamed in to attack the forts. But most extraordinary precautions had been taken to defend the city. The special desire of the Northern people to capture it was offset by an equally romantic determination on the part of the secessionists not to part with the cradle in which their pet theory had been rocked for thirty years. Besides the batteries that had been erected 3IO DU FONTS DEFEAT. [1863. for the reduction of Fort Sumter, they had estab lished others, and they occupied that fort itself. All these works had been strengthened, and new guns mounted, including some specially powerful ones of English manufacture. All ithe channels were obstructed with piles and chains, with innu merable torpedoes, some of which were to be fired by electric wires from the forts, while others, were arranged to explode whenever a vessel should run against them. The main channel, between Fort Moultrie and Fort Sumter, was crossed by a heavy cable supported on empty barrels, with which was connected a network of smaller chains. In the south channel there was a tempting opening in the row of piles ; but beneath this were some tons of powder waiting for the electric spark. The monitor " Weehawken " led the way, push ing a raft before her to explode the torpedoes. Not a man was to be seen on any of the decks, and the forts were ominously silent. But when the " Weehawken " had reached the network of chains, and had become somewhat entangled therein with her raft, the batteries opened all around, and she and the other monitors that came to her assistance were the target for a terrible con centric fire of bursting shells and solid bolts. The return fire was directed principally upon Sumter, and was kept up steadily for half an hour, but seemed to have little effect ; and after trying both the main and the south channel, the fleet retired. The monitor " Keokuk," which had made the nearest approach to the enemy, was struck 1863.] CAPTURE OF THE ATLANTA. 3! I nearly a hundred times. Shots passed through both of her turrets, and there were nineteen holes in her hull. That evening she sank in an inlet. Most of the other vessels were injured, and some of the monitors were unable to revolve their tur rets because of the bending of the plates. Du Font s defeat was offset two months later, when the Confederate iron-clad " Atlanta" started out on her first cruise. She was originally an English blockade-runner, and as she was unable to get out of the port of Savannah after the fall of Fort Pulaski, the Confederates conceived the idea of iron-plating her after the fashion of the " Mer- rimac," and sending her out to sink the monitors and raise the blockade of Charleston. It was said that the ladies of Savannah contributed their jewel ry to pay the expenses ; and after fourteen months of hard labor she was ready for action. But Du Pont had heard the story, and sent two monitors to watch her. On the i7th of June, early in the morning, she dropped down the channel, followed by two steamers loaded with citizens, including many ladies, who anticipated a great deal of pleas ure in seeing their powerful iron-clad sink the mon itors. These came up to meet her, the " Wee- hawken," Captain Rodgers, taking the lead. Rodgers fired just five shots, from his enormous eleven-inch and fifteen-inch guns. One struck the shutter of a porthole and broke it, another knocked off the "Atlanta s" pilot-house, another struck the edge of the deck and opened the seams between the plates, and another penetrated the iron armor, 312 GILLMORES SIEGE. [1863. splintered the heavy wooden backing, and disabled forty men. Thereupon the " Atlanta " hung out a white flag and surrendered, while the pleasure- seekers hastened back to Savannah. It is said that the vessel might have been handled better if she had not run aground. She was carrying an im mense torpedo at the end of a boom thirty feet long, which projected from her bow under water. She was found to be provisioned for a long cruise, and was taken to Philadelphia and exhibited there as a curiosity. The city of Charleston, between its two rivers, with its well-fortified harbor, bordered by miles of swampy land, was exceedingly difficult for an en emy to reach. General Quincy A. Gillmore, being sent with a large force to take it, chose the approach by way of Folly and Morris islands, where the monitors could assist him. Hidden by a fringe of. trees, he first erected powerful batteries on Folly Island. On the northernmost point of Morris Island (Cummings Point) was the Confed erate battery Gregg, the one that had done most damage to Sumter at the opening of the war. South of this was Fort Wagner, and still farther south were other works. On the morning of July loth, Gillmore suddenly cut down the trees in his front and opened fire upon the most southerly works on Morris Island, while at the same time the fleet commandecl by Admiral Dahlgren, who had succeeded Du Pont, bombarded Fort Wagner. Under cover of this fire, troops were landed, and the earthworks were quickly taken. 1863.] ASSAULT ON FORT WAGNER. 313 The day being terribly hot, the advance on Fort Wagner was postponed till the next morning, and then it was a failure. A week later a determined assault was made with a force of six thousand men, the advance being led by the first regiment of colored troops (the 54th Massa chusetts) that had been raised under the authorization that accompanied the Emancipation Proclamation. They marched out under a concentra ted fire from all the Confederate bat teries, then met sheets of musketry fire that blazed out from Wagner, then crossed the ditch waist-deep in wat er, while hand-gre nades were thrown from the parapet to explode among them, and even climbed up to the rampart. But here the surviving remnant met a stout resist ance and were hurled back. General Strong, Colonel Chatfield, Colonel Putnam, and Robert 314 THE PARALLELS. [1863. G. Shaw, the young commander of the black regi ment, were all killed, and a total loss was sustained of fifteen hundred men, while the Confederates lost but about one hundred. In burying the dead, the Confederates threw the body of Colonel Shaw into the bottom of a trench, and heaped upon it the bodies of black soldiers, whose valor, no less than their color, had produced an uncontrollable frenzy in the Confederate mind. When it was inquired for, under flag of truce, word was sent back : " We have buried him with his niggers." Those who thus tried to cast contempt upon the boyish colonel were apparently not aware that he was braver than any of his foes. In ad vancing along that narrow strip of land, every foot of which was swept by a deadly fire, crossing the ditch, and mounting the parapet, Colonel Shaw exhibited a physical courage that it was impos sible to surpass ; while in organizing and leading men of the despised race that was now struggling toward liberty, he showed a moral courage such as the rebels neither shared nor comprehended. General Gillmore now resorted to regular ap proaches for the reduction of Fort Wagner. The first parallel was soon opened, and siege guns mounted, and the work was pushed as rapidly as the unfavorable nature of the ground would admit. By the 23d of July a second parallel was estab lished, from which fire was opened upon Fort Sumter, two miles distant, and upon the interven ing earthworks. As the task proceeded the diffi culty increased, for the strip of land grew narrower 1863.] CAPTURE OF FORT WAGNER. 315 as Fort Wagner was approached, and the men in the trenches were subjected to cross-fire from a battery on James Island, as well as from sharpshooters and from the fort itself. A dozen breaching batter ies of enormous rifled guns were established, most of the work being done at night, and on the i7th of August all of them opened fire. The shot and shell were directed mainly against Fort Sumter, and in the course of a week its barbette guns were dismounted, its walls were knocked into a shape less mass of ruins, and its value as anything but a rude shelter for infantry was gone. The parallels were still pushed forward toward Wagner, partly through ground so low that high tides washed over it, and finally where mines of torpedoes had been planted. When they had ar rived so near that it was impossible for the men to work under ordinary circumstances, the fort was subjected to a bombardment with shells fired from mortars and dropping into it almost vertically, while the great rifled guns were trained upon its bomb-proof at short range, and the iron-clad frigate "New Ironsides" came close in shore and added her quota in the shape of eleven-inch shells fired from eight broadside guns. Powerful calcium lights had been prepared, so that there was no night there, and the bombardment went on inces santly. At the end of two days, three columns of infantry were ready to storm the work, when it was discovered that the Confederates had suddenly abandoned it. Battery Gregg, on Cummings Point, was also evacuated. The next night a few hundred 316 THE SWAMP ANGEL. [1863. sailors from the fleet went to Fort Sumter in row- boats and attempted its capture. But they found it exceedingly difficult to climb up the ruined wall ; most of their boats were knocked to pieces by the Confederate batteries, they met an unexpected fire of musketry and hand-grenades, and two hundred of them were disabled or captured. While all this work was going on, General Gill- more thought to establish a battery near enough to Charleston to subject the city itself to bombard ment. A site was chosen on the western side of Morris Island, and the necessary orders were issued. But the ground was soft mud, sixteen feet deep, and it seemed an impossible task. The cap tain to whom it was assigned was told that he must not fail, buthe might ask for whatever he needed; whereupon he made out a formal requisition for " a hundred men eighteen feet high," and other things in proportion. Piles were driven, a plat form was laid upon them, and a parapet was built with bags of sand, fifteen thousand being required all of which had to be done after dark, and occu pied fourteen nights. Then, with great labor, an eight-inch rifled gun was dragged across the swamp and mounted on this platform. It was nearly five miles distant from Charleston, but being fired at a high elevation was able to reach the lower part of the city. The soldiers named this gun the " Swamp Angel." Late in August it was ready for work, and, after giving notice for the removal of non-combatants, General Gillmore opened fire. A few shells fell in the streets and produced great 1863.] BOMBARDMENT OF CHARLESTON. 317 consternation, but at the thirty-sixth discharge the Swamp Angel burst, and it was never replaced. Gillmore had supposed that when Sumter was silenced the fleet would enter the harbor, but Ad miral Dahlgren did not think it wise to risk his vessels among the torpedoes, especially as the batteries of the inner harbor had been greatly strengthened, and would still remain to be reduced if he had passed the obstructions in safety. As Fort Wagner and Battery Gregg were nearer the city by a mile than the Swamp Angel, Gillmore repaired them, turned their guns upon Charleston, and kept up a destructive bombardment for weeks. As a protection to the city, under the plea that its bombardment was a violation of the rules of war, the Confederate authorities selected from their prisoners fifty officers and placed them in the district reached by the shells. Captain Wil- lard Glazier, who was there, writes : " When the distant rumbling of the Swamp Angel was heard, and the cry Here it comes ! resounded through our prison-house, there was a general stir. Sleep ers sprang to their feet, the gloomy forgot their sorrows, conversation was hushed, and all started to see where the messenger would fall. At night we traced along the sky a slight stream of fire, similar to the tail of a comet, and followed its course until whiz ! whiz ! came the little pieces from our mighty two-hundred-pounder, scattering themselves all around." By placing an equal num ber of Confederate officers under fire, the Govern ment compelled the removal of its own. CHAPTER XX. THE CHATTANOOGA CAMPAIGN. WHILE Grant s army was pounding at the gates of Vicksburg, those of Rosecrans and Bragg were watching each other at Murfreesboro, both com manders being unwilling to make any grand move ment. General Grant and the Secretary of War wanted Rosecrans to advance upon Bragg, lest Bragg should reenforce Johnston, who was a con stant menace in the rear of the army besieging Vicksburg. The only thing Grant feared was, that he might be attacked heavily by Johnston before he could capture the place. But Rosecrans refused to move, on the ground that it was against the principles of military science to fight two de cisive battles at once, and that the surest method of holding back Bragg from reenforcing Johnston was by constantly standing ready to attack him, but not attacking. As it happened that Bragg was very much like Rosecrans, and was afraid to stir lest Rosecrans should go to Grant s assistance, the policy of quiet watchfulness proved successful - so far at least as immediate results were con cerned. Bragg did not reenforce Johnston, John ston did not attack Grant ; and besiegers and be sieged were left, like two brawny champions of two great armies, to fight it out, dig it out, and starve 1863.] MINOR ENGAGEMENTS. 319 it out, till on the 4th of July the city fell. Whether it afterward fared as well with Rosecrans as it might if he had attacked Bragg when Grant and Stanton wanted him to, is another question. But though the greater armies were quiescent, both sent out detachments to make destructive raids, and that season witnessed some of the most notable exploits of the guerilla bands that were operating in the West, all through the war, in aid of the Confederacy. Late in January, 1863, a Confederate force of cavalry and artillery, about four thousand men, under Wheeler and Forrest, was sent to capture Dover, contiguous to the site of Fort Donelson, in order to close the navigation of Cumberland River, by which Rosecrans re ceived supplies. The place was held by six hun dred men, under command of Colonel A. C. Hard ing, of the 83d Illinois regiment, who with the help of gunboats repelled two determined attempts to storm the works (February 3), and inflicted a loss of seven hundred men, their own loss being one hundred and twenty-six. Early in March a detachment of about twenty- five hundred National troops, under Colonels Co- burn and Jordan, moving south of Franklin, Tenn., unexpectedly met a force of about ten thousand Confederates under Van Dorn, and the stubborn fight that ensued resulted in the surrounding and capture of Coburn s entire force, after nearly two hundred had been killed or wounded on each side. A few days later, Van Dorn was attacked and driven southward by a force under General 32O MINOR ENGAGEMENTS. [1863. Gordon Granger. Still later in the month a de tachment of about fourteen hundred men under Colonel Hall went in pursuit of the guerilla band commanded by John Morgan, fought it near Mil ton, and defeated it, inflicting a loss of nearly four hundred men. Early in April, another detach ment of National troops, commanded by General David S. Stanley, found Morgan s men at Snow Hill, and defeated and routed them so thoroughly that it was two weeks before the remnants of the band could be brought together again. In that same month, Colonel A. D. Streight, with eighteen hundred men, was sent to make a raid around Bragg s army, cut his communications, and destroy supplies. This detachment was pur sued by Forrest, who attacked the rearguard at Day s Gap, but was repelled, and lost ten guns and a considerable number of men. Streight kept on his way, with continual skirmishing, destroyed a depot of provisions at Gadsden, had another fight at Blount s Farm, in which he drove off Forrest again, and burned the Round Mountain Iron Works, which supplied shot and shell to the Con federates. But on the 3d of May he was con fronted by so large a force that he was compelled to surrender, his men and horses being too jaded to attempt escape. These are but examples of hundreds of engage ments that took place during the War of Seces sion and are scarcely known to the general reader because their fame is overshadowed by the magni tude of the great battles. Had they occurred in MORGAN S RAID. 321 any of our previous wars, every school-boy would know about them. In Washington s celebrated victory at Trenton, the number of Hessians sur rendered was fewer than Streight s command cap tured by Forrest ; and in the bloodiest battle of the Mexican war, Buena Vista, the American loss (then considered heavy) was but little greater than the Confederate loss in the action at Dover, related above. The armies surrendered by Bur- goyne and Cornwallis, if combined, would consti tute a smaller force than the least of the three that surrendered to Grant. One of these affairs in the West, however, was so bold and startling that it became famous even among the greater and more important events. This was Morgan s raid across the Ohio. In July he entered Kentucky from the south, with a force of three thousand cavalrymen, increased as it went by accessions of Kentucky sympathizers to about four thousand, with ten guns. He captured and robbed the towns of Columbia and Lebanon, reached the Ohio, captured two steamers, and crossed into Indiana. Then marching rapidly to ward Cincinnati, he burned mills and bridges, tore up rails, plundered right and left, and spread alarm on every side. But the Home Guards were gathering to meet him, and the great number of railways in Ohio and Indiana favored their rapid concentration, while farmers felled trees across the roads on hearing of his approach. He passed around Cincinnati, and after much delay reached the Ohio at Buffington s Ford. Here some of his 322 ROSECRANS CROWDING BRAGG. [1863. pursuers overtook him, while gunboats and steam boats filled with armed men were patrolling the river, on the watch for him. The gunboats pre vented him from using the ford, and he was obliged to turn and give battle. The fight was se vere, and resulted in Morgan s defeat. Nearly eight hundred of his men surrendered, and he with the remainder retreated up the river. They next tried to cross at Belleville by swimming their horses ; but the gunboats were at hand again, and made such havoc among the troopers that only three hundred got across, while of the others some were shot, some drowned, and the remnant driven back to the Ohio shore. Morgan with two hun dred fled still farther up the stream, but at last was compelled to surrender at New Lisbon. He was confined in the Ohio Penitentiary, but escaped a few months later by digging under the walls. A pathetic incident of this raid was the death of the venerable Daniel McCook, sixty-five years old. He had given eight sons to the National service, and four of them had become generals. One of these was deliberately murdered by guerillas, while he was ill and riding in an ambulance in Tennes see. The old man, hearing that the murderer was in Morgan s band, took his rifle, and went out to join in the fight at Buffington s Fcird, where he was mortally wounded. When at last Rosecrans did move, by some of the ablest strategy displayed in the whole war he compelled Bragg to fall back successively from one position to another, all the way from Tulla- 1863.] MANOEUVRING FOR CHATTANOOGA. 323 homa to Chattanooga. This was not done with out frequent and heavy skirmishes, however, but the superiority of the National cavalry had now been developed at the West as well as at the East, and they all resulted in one way. Colonel (after ward Senator) John F. Miller was conspicuous in several of these actions, and in that at Liberty Gap one of his eyes was shot out by a rifle-ball. The purpose of Rosecrans was to get possession of Chattanooga ; and when Bragg crossed the Ten nessee and occupied that town he set to work to manoeuvre him out of it. To effect this, he moved southwest, as if he were intending to pass around Chattanooga and invade Georgia. This caused Bragg to fall back to Lafayette, and the National troops took possession of Chattanooga. But at this time Rosecrans was for a while in a critical situation, where a more skilful general than Bragg would probably have destroyed him ; for his three corps commanded by Thomas, Crittenden, and McCook were widely separated. The later movements of this campaign had been rendered tediously slow by the heavy rains and the almost impassable nature of the ground ; so that although Rosecrans had set out from Murfreesboro in June, it was now the middle of September. Supposing that Bragg was in full retreat, Rose crans began to follow him ; but Bragg had received large reinforcements, and turned back from Lafayette, intent upon attacking Rosecrans. The two armies, feeling for each other and ap proaching somewhat cautiously for a week, met at 324 BATTLE OF CHICKAMAUGA. [1863. last, and there was fought, September 19 and 20, 1863, a great battle on the banks of a creek, whose Indian name of Chickamauga is said to signify " River of Death." Rosecrans had about fifty-five thousand men ; Bragg, after the arrival of Longstreet at midnight of the 1 8th, about seventy thousand. The gen- 1863.] BATTLE OF CHICK AM AUGA. 325 eral direction of the lines of battle was with the National troops facing southeast, and the Confed erates facing northwest, though these lines were variously bent, broken, and changed in the course of the action. Thomas held the left of Rosecrans line, Crittenden the centre, and McCookthe right. Bragg was the attacking party, and his plan was, while making a feint on the National right, to fall heavily upon the left, flank it, crush it, and seize the roads that led to Chattanooga. If he could do this, it would not only cut off Rosecrans from his base and insure his decisive defeat, but would give Bragg possession of Chattanooga, where he could control the river and the passage through the mountains between the East and the West. The concentra tion of the National forces in the valley had been witnessed by the Confederates from the mountain height southeast of the creek, who therefore knew what they had to meet and how it was disposed. The battle of the iQth began at ten o clock in the forenoon, and lasted all day. The Confederate army crossed the creek without opposition, and moved forward confidently to the attack. But the left of the position, the key-point, was held by the command of General George H. Thomas, who for a slow and stubborn fight was perhaps the best corps commander produced by either side in the whole war. Opposed to him, on the Confederate right, was General (also Bishop) Leonidas Polk. There was less of concerted action in the attack than Bragg had planned for, partly because Thomas unexpectedly struck out with a counter- 326 BATTLE OF CHICKAMAUGA. [1863, movement when an opportunity offered ; but there was no lack of bloody and persistent fighting. Brigades and divisions moved forward to the charge, were driven back, and charged again. Batteries were taken and re-taken, the horses were killed, and the captains and gunners in some instances, refusing to leave them, were shot down at the wheels. Brigades and regiments were shat tered, and on both sides many prisoners were taken. Thomas s line was forced back, but before night he regained his first position, and the day closed with the situation practically unchanged. During the night both sides corrected their lines and made what preparation they could for a renewal of the struggle. Bragg intended to attack again at daybreak, his plan (now perfectly evident to his opponent) being substantially the same as on the day before. He wanted to crush the Na tional left, force back the centre, and make a grand left wheel with his entire army, placing his right firmly across the path to Chattanooga. But the morning was foggy, Polk was slow, and the fighting did not begin till the middle of the fore noon. Between Polk and Thomas the edge of battle swayed back and forth, and the Confederates could make no permanent impression. Thomas was obliged to call repeatedly for reinforcements, which sometimes reached him and sometimes failed to, but whether they came or not, he held manfully to all the essential portions of his ground. Rosecrans was constantly uneasy about his right centre, where he knew the line to be weak ; 1863.1 BATTLE OF CHICKAMAUGA. 327 and at this point the great disaster of the day began, though in an unexpected manner. It arose from an order that was both mis-written and mis interpreted. This order, addressed to General Thomas J. Wood, who commanded a division, was written by a member of Rosecrans staff who had not had a military education, and was not suffi ciently impressed with the exact meaning of the technical terms. It read: "The General com manding directs that you close up on Reynolds as fast as possible, and support him." It was impos sible to obey both clauses of this order ; since to " close up" means to bring the ends of the lines together so that there shall be no gap and they shall form one continuous line, while to " support," in the technical military sense, means to take a position in the rear, ready to advance when or dered. The aide that wrote the order evidently used the word " support " only in the general sense of assist, strengthen, protect, encourage, and did not dream of its conflicting with the command to " close up." General Wood, a West-Point gradu ate, instead of sending or going to Rosecrans for better orders, obeyed literally the second clause, and withdrew his command from the line to form it in the rear of Reynolds. Opposite to the wide and fatal opening thus left was Longstreet, the ablest corps commander in the Confederate ser vice, who instantly saw his advantage and prompt ly poured his men, six divisions of them, through the gap. This cut off McCook s corps from the rest of the army, and it was speedily defeated and 328 BATTLE OF CHICK AM AUGA. [1863. routed in confusion. The centre was crumbled, and it looked as if the whole army must be de stroyed. Rosecrans, who had been with the de feated right wing, appeared to lose his head com pletely, and rode back in all haste to Chattanooga to make arrangements for gathering there the fragments of his forces. At nightfall he sent his chief of staff, General James A. Garfield (after ward President) to find what had become of Thomas, and Garfield found Thomas where not even the destruction of three fifths of the army had moved or daunted him. When Thomas s right flank was exposed to as sault by the disruption of the centre, he swung it back to a position known as Horseshoe Ridge, still covering the road. Longstreet was pressing forward to pass the right of this position, when he was stopped by Gordon Granger, who had been with a reserve at Rossville Gap, but was wiser and bolder than his orders, and, instead of remain ing there, moved forward to the support of Thomas. The Confederate commander, when complete victory was apparently so near, seemed reckless of the lives of his men, thrusting them forward again and again in futile charges, where Thomas s batteries literally mowed them down with grape and canister, and a steady fire of mus ketry increased the bloody harvest. About dusk the ammunition was exhausted, and the last charges of the Confederates were repelled with the bayonet. Thomas had fairly won the title of " the rock of Chickamauga." In the night he fell 1863.] BATTLE OF CHICKAMAUGA. 329 back in good order to Rossville, leaving the ene my in possession of the field, with all the dead and wounded. Sheridan, who had been on the right of the line and was separated by its disrup tion, kept his command together, marched around the mountain, and before morning joined Thomas at Rossville, whence they fell back the next day to Chattanooga, where order was quickly restored and the defences strengthened. The National loss in the two-days battle of Chickamauga killed, wounded, and missing was sixteen thousand three hundred and thirty-six. The Confederate reports are incomplete and un satisfactory ; but estimates of Bragg s loss make it at least eighteen thousand, and some carry it up nearly to twenty-one thousand. With the excep tion of Gettysburg, this was thus far the most de structive action of the war. Tactically it was a victory for Bragg, who was left in possession of the field ; but that which he was fighting for, Chattanooga, he did not get. He advanced, how ever, to positions on Lookout Mountain and Mis sion Ridge, and put the town into a state of siege, managing to stop the navigation of the river be low and cut off all of Rosecrans routes of supply, except one long and difficult wagon-road. A month after the battle of Chickamauga, the National forces in the West were to some extent reorganized. The departments of the Ohio, the Cumberland, and the Tennessee were united under the title of Military Division of the Missis sippi, of which General Grant was made com- 33O GRANT AT CHATTANOOGA. [1863. mander, and Thomas superseded Rosecrans in com mand of the Army of the Cumberland. General Hooker, with two corps, was sent to Tennessee. Grant arrived at Chattanooga on the 23d of October, and found affairs in a deplorable condi tion. It was impossible to supply the troops prop erly by the one wagon-road, and they had been on short rations for some time, while large num bers of the mules and horses were dead. Grant s first care was to open a new and better line of sup ply. Steamers could come up the river as far as Bridgeport, and he ordered the immediate con struction of a road and bridge to reach that point by way of Brown s Ferry, w r hich was done within five days, the " cracker line," as the soldiers called it, was opened, and thenceforth they had full rations and abundance of everything. The enemy attempted to interrupt the work on the road ; but Hooker met them at Wauhatchie, west of Lookout Mountain, and after a three-hours action drove them off. Chattanooga was now no longer in a state of siege ; but it was still seriously menaced by Bragg s army, which held a most singular posi tion. Its flanks were on the northern ends of Lookout Mountain and Mission Ridge, the crests of which were occupied for some distance, and its centre stretched across Chattanooga valley. This line was twelve miles long, and most of it was well intrenched. Grant ordered Sherman to join him with one corps, and Sherman promptly obeyed, but as he 1863.] HOOKERS BATTLE ABOVE THE CLOUDS. 33! did considerable railroad repairing on the way, he did not reach Chattanooga till the I5th of Novem ber. Meanwhile, Longstreet with twenty thou sand troops had been detached from Bragg s army and sent against Burnside at Knoxville. After Sherman s arrival, Grant had about eighty thou sand men. He placed Sherman on his left, on the north side of the Tennessee, opposite the head of Mission Ridge ; Thomas in the centre, across Chat tanooga valley ; and Hooker on his right around the base of Lookout Mountain. He purposed to have Sherman advance against Bragg s right and capture the heights of Mission Ridge, while Thomas and Hooker should press the centre and left just enough to prevent any reinforcements from being sent against Sherman. If this were successful, Bragg s key-point being taken, his whole army would be obliged to retreat. Sher man laid two bridges in the night of November 23, and next day crossed the river and advanced upon the enemy s works ; but he met with unex pected difficulties in the nature of the ground, and was only partially successful. Hooker, who had more genius for fighting than for strictly obeying orders, moved around the base of Lookout Moun tain, and attacked the seemingly impregnable heights. His men climbed the steep in the rain, clearing away abatis as they went, disappeared in a zone of mist or cloud that hung around the mountain, and made their way to its very summit, where they routed the enemy, taking many guns and prisoners. This action is famous as Hooker s 332 BATTLES OF CHATTANOOGA. [1863. " battle above the clouds." That night battalions were seen crossing the disk of the rising moon. The next day, the 25th, Hooker was to pass down the eastern slope of Lookout Mountain, cross Chattanooga valley, and strike the left of Bragg s position as now held on the crest and western slope of Mission Ridge. But the destruc- 1863.] CAPTURE OF MISSION RIDGE. 333 tion of a bridge by the retreating enemy delayed him four hours, and Grant saw that Bragg was weakening his centre to mass troops against Sher man. So without waiting longer for Hooker, he ordered an advance of the centre held by Thomas. Under the immediate leadership of Generals Sheri dan and Wood, Thomas s men crossed the valley, walked right into the line of Confederate works at the base of Mission Ridge, followed the retreating enemy to a second line half-way up the slope, took this, and still keeping at the very heels of the Con federates, who thus shielded them from the batteries at the top, reached the summit and swept everything before them. Bragg s army was completely de feated, and its captured guns were turned upon it as it fled. He himself, after vainly trying to rally the fugitives by riding among them and shouting, " Here s your commander ! " being answered deris ively, " Here s your mule ! " was obliged to join in the flight. In these battles the National loss was nearly six thousand men. The Confederate loss was about ten thousand, of whom six thousand were prisoners, and forty-two guns. Bragg established the remainder of his army in a fortified camp at Dalton, Ga., and was soon superseded in command by General Joseph E. Johnston. Granger and Sherman were sent to the relief of Burnside at Knoxville, and Longstreet withdrew to Virginia. The Chattanooga campaign was perhaps the most picturesque of any in the war, and was full of romantic incidents. CHAPTER XXI. THE -BLACK CHAPTER. So far as the military situation was concerned, the victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg wrote the doom of the Confederacy, and there the struggle should have ended. That it did not end there, was due partly to a hope that the Democratic party at the North might carry the next presidential election, but more largely to the temper of the Southern people, which had been concentrated into an intense personalized hatred. This began before the war, was one of the chief circumstances that made it possible to carry the conspiracy into execu tion, and seemed to be carefully nursed by Mr. Davis and his ministers. General Andrew J. Hamilton, who had been Attorney-General of Texas, in a speech delivered in New York in 1863, declared that two hundred men were hanged in Texas during the presidential canvass of 1860, because they were suspected of being more loyal to the Union than to slavery. Judge Baldwin, of Texas, speaking in Washington in October, 1864, said: "The wrongs inflicted on the Union men of Texas surpass in cruelty the horrors of the Inquisition. From two to three thousand men have been hanged, in many cases without even the form of a trial, simply and solely 1863.] PERSECUTION IN TEXAS. 335 because they were Union men and would not give their support to secession. Indeed, it has been, and is, the express determination of the seces sionists to take the life of every Union man. Nor are they always particular to ascertain what a man s real sentiments are. It is sufficient for them that a man is a d d Yankee. One day a secessionist said to the Governor of Texas, There is Andrew Jackson Hamilton suppose I kill the d d Unionist. Said the Governor, * Kill him or any other Unionist, and you need fear nothing while I am Governor. As I was passing through one place in Texas, I saw three men who had been hanged in the course of the night. When I inquired the cause, I was told in the coolest man ner that it was to be presumed they were Union men." In Grayson county, a man named Hillier, who had come from the North, was forced into the Confederate army. Soon afterward his wife was heard to remark that she wished the Union army would advance and take possession of Texas, that her husband might return and provide for his family. This being reported to the Provost Marshal, he sent six men dressed in women s clothes, who dragged her to the nearest tree and hanged her in the sight of her little children. In the mountainous portions of Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina, where compara tively few slaves were kept, large numbers of the people were opposed to secession, and for their devotion to the Union they suffered such persecu tion as had never been witnessed in this part of 336 THE BLACK FLAG. [1863. the world. It was perhaps most violent in east Tennessee. Among the numerous deliberate and brutal murders, committed by men in Confederate uniform, were those of the Rev. L. Carter and his son, in Bradley county, the Rev. M. Cavander, in Van Buren county, the Rev. Mr. Blair, of Hamil ton county, and the Rev. Mr. Douglas all for the simple reason that they were Unionists. Many of the outrages upon the wives and children of Union men were such as any writer would shrink from recording. Those who could get away fled north ward, often after their homes had been burned and their movable property carried off, and became subjects of charity in the free States. In Virginia, Governor Letcher wrote to a man named Fitzgerald, who had been arrested on sus picion of Unionism, and asked to be released : " In 1856 you voted for the abolitionist Fremont for President. Ever since the war, you have maintained a sullen silence in regard to its merits. Your son, who, in common with other young men, was called to the defence of his country, has escaped to the enemy, probably by your advice. This is evidence enough to satisfy me that you are a traitor to your country, and I regret that it is not sufficient to justify me in demanding you from the military authorities, to be tried and executed for treason." The Lynchburg " Republican " said, " Our people were greatly surprised, on Saturday morning, to see the black flag waving over the depot of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad Company. We are for displaying that flag throughout the whole 1862.] THE GUERILLAS. 337 South. We should ask no quarter at the hands of the vandal Yankee invaders, and our motto should be, an entire extermination of every one who has set foot upon our sacred soil." And the Jackson " Mississippian " said, in the summer of 1862, " In addition to pitched battles upon the open field, let us try partisan ranging, bushwhacking, and hence forward, until the close of this war, let our sign be the black flag and no quarter." According to Governor Letcher, as quoted in Pollard s " Secret History of the Confederacy," Stonewall Jackson was, from the beginning of the war, in favor of raising the black flag, and thought that no prison ers should be taken. The same historian is authority for the story that once when an inferior officer was regretting that some National soldiers had been killed in a display of extraordinary cour age, when they might as readily have been captured, Jackson replied curtly, " Shoot them all; I don t want them to be brave." The Confederate Congress passed an act, ap proved April 21, 1862, authorizing the organization of bands of partisan rangers, to be entitled to the same pay, rations, and quarters as other soldiers, and to have the same protection in case of capture. These partisan rangers were popularly known as guerillas, and most of them were irresponsible marauding bands, acting the part of thieves and murderers until captured, and then claiming treat ment as prisoners of war, on the ground that they were regularly commissioned and enlisted soldiers of the Confederacy. 338 SECESSION FROM SECESSION. [1863. Some of the devices that were resorted to for the purpose of intensifying the hatred of North ern people and Unionists now appear ludicrous. Thousands of people in the South were made to believe that Hannibal Hamlin, elected Vice- President on the ticket with Mr. Lincoln, was a mulatto ; that Mr. Lincoln himself was a monster of cruelty ; and that the National army was made up largely of Irish and German mercenaries. As Mr. Lincoln predicted, and as every reflecting citizen must have known, those who attempted to carry out the doctrine of secession -from the United States were obliged to confront its corollary in a proposal to secede from secession. In North Carolina a convention was held to nominate State officers, with the avowed purpose of asserting North Carolina s sovereignty by withdrawing from the Confederacy on the ground that it had failed in its duties as agent for the sovereign States composing it and making peace with the United States. The convention was largely attended, and included many of the most intelligent and wealthy men in the State ; but the Confederate Govern ment sent an armed force to break up the meeting and imprison the leaders. In the Confederate Congress there were forty members who always voted in a body, in secret session, as Mr. Davis wanted them to. They were commonly known as " the forty thieves." When the war began to look hopeless, a popular movement in favor of peace resulted in the choice of other men to fill their places ; but before their terms expired a law was RIOT IN CONCORD. 339 passed which made it treason to use language that could be construed as a declaration that any State had a right to secede from the Confederacy. The people of southwestern North Carolina, like those of east Tennessee, were mostly small, industrious farmers, without slaves, living in a secluded valley. They knew almost nothing of the political turmoil that distracted the country, and did not wish to take any part in the war. They had voted against disunion, and asked to be exempted from the Con federate conscription law. When this was denied, they petitioned to be expatriated ; and when this also was refused, they resorted to such measures as they could to avoid conscription. Thereupon the Con federate Government sent North Carolina troops to subdue them ; and when these were found to fraternize with the people, troops from other States were sent ; and when they also failed to do the re quired work, a brigade of Cherokee Indians was turned into the valley, who committed such atroci ties as might have been expected.* There were instances of intolerance and outrage at the North, but they were comparatively few. One of the most notable occurred in Concord, N. H., in August, 1863, where a newspaper that had been loud in its disloyalty was punished by a mob, mainly of newly recruited soldiers, who gutted the office and threw the type into the street. The sheriff s reading of the Riot Act consisted in climbing a lamp-post, extending his right arm, and * See report of a speech by the Hon. C. J. Barlow, of Georgia, de livered in Cooper Institute, New York, Oct. 15, 1864. 340 MASSACRE AT FORT PILLOW. [1864. saying persuasively to the rioters, " Now, boys, I guess you d better go home." The resentment excited by the enlistment of black troops, and the determination not to treat them in accordance with the rules of civilized war fare, were most notably exemplified at the capture of Fort Pillow, April 12, 1864. This work was on the bank of the Mississippi, about forty miles above Memphis, on a high bluff, with a ravine on either side. In the lower ravine were some Gov ernment buildings and a little village. The fort, under command of Major L. F. Booth, had a gar rison of about five hundred and fifty men, nearly half of whom were colored. The Confederate General Forrest, with about five thousand men, at tacked the place at sunrise. The garrison made a gallant defence, aided by thegunboat " New Era," which enfiladed the ravines, and after half a day s fighting, though the commander of the fort was killed, the besiegers had made no progress. They then resorted to the device of sending in flags of truce, demanding a surrender, and took advantage of the truce to move up into positions near the fort, which they had vainly tried to reach under fire. As soon as the second flag of truce was withdrawn, they made a rush upon the fort, passed over the works, and with a cry of " No quarter ! " began an indiscriminate slaughter, though the garrison threw down their arms and either surrendered or ran down the river bank. Women and children, as well as men, were delib erately murdered, and the savagery continued for 1864.] MASSACRE AT FORT PILLOW. 34! hours after the surrender. The sick and the wounded were butchered in their tents, and in some cases tents and buildings were set on fire after the occupants had been fastened so that they could not escape. In one instance, a Confederate officer had taken up a negro child behind him on his horse. When General Chalmers observed this, he ordered the officer to put the child down and shoot him, and the order was obeyed. Major W. F. Brad ford, on whom the command of the fort had de volved, was murdered the next day, when he was being marched away as a prisoner. Fewer than a hundred of the garrison were killed in the battle, and about three hundred were butchered after the surrender. Forrest s loss is unknown. His early reports of the affair were exultant. In one he wrote, " We busted the fort at ninerclock and scatered the niggers. The men is still a cillanem in the woods. . . . Them as was cotch with spoons and brestpins and sich was cilled and the rest of the lot was payrold and told to git." Again he or his adjutant wrote : " The river was dyed with the blood of the slaughtered for two hundred yards. ... It is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that negro soldiers cannot cope with Southerners." Forrest had been a slave- trader before the war, and did not know that there could be any such thing as cruelty or treach ery in dealing with black men. When he found that the civilized world was horrified at what he had done, he attempted to palliate it by saying that the flag at the fort had not been hauled down 342 CARE OF PRISONERS. [1863. in token of surrender when his men burst over the works, and that some of the garrison retreating down the river bank fired at their pursuers. But his argument is vitiated by the fact that, three weeks before, in demanding the surrender of a force at Paducah, he notified the commander that if he had to carry the place by storm no quarter need be expected. There had been from the beginning a difficulty about the care of prisoners in the hands of the Confederates, which arose chiefly from the incom petence and brutality of Commissary-General Northrop. Once when Captain Warner, who had charge of the prisoners in Richmond, was directed to make a requisition on Northrop for subsistence, he was answered, " I know nothing of Yankee prisoners throw them all into the James River!" " But," said the Captain, " at least tell me how I am to keep my accounts for the prisoners subsist ence." " Sir," said Northrop, " I have not the will or the time to speak with you. Chuck the scoundrels into the river ! " This man was main tained in the post of Commissary-General through out the war, though his maladministration of the office many times produced a scarcity of food in the Confederate camps, and in the last year the subsistence of prisoners was also intrusted to him. Of the prisoners captured by the Confederate armies, most of the commissioned officers were confined in the Libby warehouse (thenceforward known as Libby Prison) in Richmond, and at Columbia, S. C. The non-commissioned officers 1864.] THE HORRORS OF ANDERSONVILLE. 343 and privates were kept in camps on Belle Isle, in the James River at Richmond ; at Salisbury, N. C. ; at Florence, S. C. ; at Tyler, Texas ; and at Andersonville and Millen, Georgia. Most of these were simply open stockades, with little or no shelter. That at Andersonville enclosed about twenty acres, afterward enlarged to thirty. The palisade was of pine logs, fifteen feet high, set close together. Outside of this, at a distance of a hundred and twenty feet, was another palisade, and between the two were the guards. Inside of the inner stockade, and about twenty feet from it, was a slight railing known as the " dead-line," since any prisoner that passed it, or even ap proached it too closely, was immediately shot. A small stream flowed sluggishly through the en closure and furnished the prisoners their only sup ply of water for washing, drinking, or cooking. The cook-houses and camp of the guards were placed on this stream, above the stockade. There was plenty of timber in sight from the prison, yet no shelter was furnished inside of the stockade, except such as the prisoners could make with the few blankets they possessed. Their rations were often issued to them uncooked, and they burrowed in the ground for roots with which to make a little fire. The stream was soon polluted, and its banks became a mass of mire and filth. A common exclamation of newly-arrived prisoners, as they entered the appalling place, was, "Is this hell?" It was said that the Confederate General John H. Winder, under whose direction the stock- 344 WINDERS SAVAGERY. [1864. ade was built, was asked to leave a few trees inside of it, and erect some sheds for the shelter of the prisoners, but he answered " No ! I am going to build the pen so as to destroy more Yankees than can be destroyed at the front." Winder s well-known character, the place chosen for the stockade, all its arrangements, and the manner in which it was kept, leave no reasonable doubt that such was the purpose. When Mr. Davis and his Cabinet were appealed to by the Confederate inspector of prisons and others, to replace Gen eral Winder by a more humane officer, they an swered by promoting Winder to the place of Commissary-General of all the prisoners. One of the prisoners, Robert H. Kellogg, Ser geant-major of the 1 6th Connecticut regiment, who was taken to Andersonville when it had been in use about two months, says in his diary : " As we entered the place, a spectacle met our eyes that almost froze our blood with horror and made our hearts fail within us. Before us were forms that had once been active and erect, stalwart men, now nothing but mere walking skeletons, cov ered with filth and vermin. In the centre was a swamp occupying three or four acres of the nar rowed limits, and a part of this marshy place had been used by the prisoners as a sink, and excre ment covered the ground, the scent arising from which was suffocating. The ground allotted to our ninety was near the edge of this plague-spot, and how we were to live through the warm sum mer weather in the midst of such fearful surround- 1864.] MURDER OF PRISONERS. 345 ings, was more than we cared to think of just then. No shelter was provided for us by the rebel au thorities, and we therefore went to work to pro vide for ourselves. Eleven of us combined to form a family. For the small sum of two dollars in greenbacks we purchased eight small saplings, eight or nine feet long. These we bent and made fast in the ground, and, covering them with our blankets, made a tent with an oval roof, about thirteen feet long. We needed the blankets for our protection from the cold at night, but con cluded it to be quite as essential to our comfort to shut out the rain. There were ten deaths on our side of the camp that night. The old prison ers called it being exchanged, and truly it was a blessed transformation." At one time there were thirty-three thousand pris oners in the stockade, which gave a space about four feet square to each man. The whole number sent there was about forty-nine thousand five hundred, of whom nearly thirteen thousand died. At Salisbury prison the deaths were thirteen per cent, a month, and at Florence twelve per cent. Most of the deaths were from disease and starva tion, but there were numerous murders. It was said that every sentry, on shooting a prisoner for violation of rules, received a month s furlough ; and this was corroborated by the alacrity with which they seized any pretext for firing. In Libby, men were often shot for approaching near enough to a window for the sentry to see their heads. In Andersonville one was shot for crawling out to 346 SUSPENSION OF EXCHANGES. [1864. secure a small piece of wood that lay near the dead-line ; and there were many incidents of that kind. Some of the men became deranged or des perate, and deliberately walked up to the dead line for the purpose of being put out of their mis ery. There were many escapes from these pris ons ; but the fugitives were generally soon missed and were followed by fleet horsemen and often tracked by blood-hounds, and though they were always befriended by the negroes, who fed them, concealed them by day, and guided them at night, but few ultimately reached the National lines. The crowded condition of the prisons in 1864 was owing to the fact that exchanges had been discontinued. A cartel for the exchange of pris oners had been in operation for some time ; but when it was found that the Confederate authori ties had determined not to exchange any black soldiers, or their white officers, captured in battle, the United States Government refused to exchange at all, being bound to protect equally all who had entered its service. Paroling prisoners on the field was also discontinued, because the Confeder ates could not be trusted to observe their parole. There had been much -complaint that Confederate officers and soldiers violated their word in this respect, either because in their intense hatred of the North they could not realize that they were bound by any promise given to it, or because their own Government forced them back into its ser vice. Many of them were captured with arms in their hands, while they were still under parole 1864.] VIOLATION OF PAROLES. 347 from a previous capture. The thirty thousand taken by Grant at Vicksburg and the six thousand taken by Banks at Port Hudson, in July, 1863, were released on parole, because the cartel desig nated two points for delivery of prisoners Vicks burg in the West, and Aiken s Landing, Va., in the East and Vicksburg, having been captured, was no longer available for this purpose, and Aiken s Landing was too far away. Three months later, the Confederate armies being in want of reenforce- ments, Colonel Ould, Confederate commissioner of exchange, raised the technical point that the prisoners captured by Grant and Banks had not been delivered at a place mentioned in the cartel, and therefore he declared them all released from their parole, and they were restored to the ranks. At Chattanooga, in November, Grant s army cap tured large numbers from Bragg s army whom they had captured in July with Pemberton and had released on a solemn promise that they would not take up arms again until properly exchanged. Other difficulties arose to complicate still further the question of exchanges. At one time the Confederate authorities refused to make any but a general exchange all held by either side to be liberated ; which the National Government declined, since it held an excess of about forty thousand. It was observed, also, when partial exchanges were effected, that the men returning from Southern prisons were nearly all wasted to skeletons and unfit for further service, while the Confederates returning from Northern prisons 348 STARVATION OF PRISONERS. [1864. were well clothed, well fed, and generally in good health. Photographs of the emaciated men from Andersonville and Belle Isle were exhibited throughout the North, and caused more of horror than the report from any battle-field. Engravings from them were published, in the summer of 1864, by newspapers of both parties, for opposite pur poses the Republican, to prove the barbarity of the Confederate authorities and the atrocious spirit of the rebellion ; the Democratic, to prove that President Lincoln was a monster of cruelty in that he did not waive all questions at issue and consent to a general exchange. At a later period, the Confederate authorities, being badly in need of men to fill up their depleted armies, offered to give up their point about black soldiers, and ex change man for man or rather skeleton for man without regard to color. But as the war was nearing its close, and to do this would have reenforced the Southern armies with some thou sands of strong and well-fed troops, and pro longed the struggle, the National Government refused. Efforts were made, both by the Govern ment and by the Sanitary Commission, to send food, clothing, and medical supplies to those con fined in the Confederate prisons ; but only a small portion of these things ever reached the men for whom they were intended. At Libby prison, at one time, boxes for the prisoners arrived at the rate of three hundred a week; but instead of be ing distributed they were piled up in warehouses in sight of the hungry and shivering captives, 1864.] RATES OF MORTALITY. 349 where they were plundered by the guards and by the poorer inhabitants of the city. In one case a lieutenant among the prisoners saw his own home made suit of clothes on a prison official, and pointed out his name embroidered on the watch- pocket.* The total number of soldiers and citizens cap tured by the Confederate armies during the war was 188,145, and it is estimated that about half of them were actually confined in prisons. The num ber of deaths in those prisons was 36,401. The number of Confederates captured by the National forces was 476,169, of whom 22 7,5 70 were actually confined. The percentage of mortality in the Confederate prisons was over 38 ; in the National prisons it was 13.5. There has been much acrimonious controversy over this question of the prisoners, and attempts have been made, by juggling with the figures, to prove that they were as badly treated in Northern as in Southern prisons. The most reasonable excuse for the starving of captives at the South is in the assertion that the Confederate army was on short allowance at the same time. It is a sorrowful sub ject in any aspect, and presents complicated ques tions ; but if it is to be discussed at all, several principles should be kept in view, some of which * See " Narrative of Privations and Sufferings of United States Officers and Soldiers while Prisoners of War in the Hands of the Rebel Authorities. Being- the Report of a Commission of Inquiry Appointed by the United States Sanitary Commission. With an Ap pendix Containing the Testimony." (1864.) Valentine Mott, M.D., was chairman of the commission. 35O PRINCIPLES RELATING TO CAPTURES. [1864. appear to have been lost sight of. No belligerent is under any obligation to enter into a cartel for the exchange of prisoners. In the war of 1812-15, between the United States and Great Britain, there were no exchanges till the close of the con test. Every belligerent that takes prisoners is bound by the laws of war to treat them well, since they are no longer combatants. A belligerent that has not the means of caring properly for pris oners is in so far without the means of carrying on civilized warfare,and therefore comes so far short of possessing the right to make war at all. Every time a soldier is put out of the combat by being made a prisoner instead of being shot, so much is gained for the cause of humanity ; and if all pris oners could be cared for properly, the most humane way of conducting a war would be to make no ex changes, since these reenforce both sides, prolong the contest, and increase the mortality in the field. CHAPTER XXII. THE SANITARY AND CHRISTIAN COMMISSIONS. THE ancient sarcasm that women have caused many of the bloodiest of wars was largely disarmed by the part they played in the War of Secession. Their contribution to the comfort and efficiency of the armies in the field, and to the care of the sick and wounded soldiers, was on the same vast scale as the war itself. Their attempts to assist the cause began with the first call for volunteers, and were as awkward and unskilled as the green regi ments that they equipped and encouraged. But as their brothers learned the art of war, they kept even pace in learning the arts that alleviate its suf ferings. When the President issued the first call o for troops, in April, 1861, the women in many places held meetings to confer as to the best methods by which they could assist, and to organ ize their efforts and resources. The statement of the objects of one of these organizations suggests some conception of the contingencies of war in a country that for nearly half a century had known almost unbroken peace : " To supply nurses for the sick ; to bring them home when practicable ; to purchase clothing, provisions, and matters of comfort not supplied by Government regulations ; to send books and newspapers to the camps ; and to hold constant communication with the officers 352 THE SANITARY COMMISSION. [1861. of the regiments, in order that the people may be kept informed of the condition of their friends." On one of the last days in April, the Rev. Dr. Henry W. Bellows and Dr. Elisha Harris met casually in the street in New York, and fell into conversation concerning 1 the evident need of sani tary measures for the armies that were then mus tering. They agreed to attend a meeting of women that had been called to discuss that subject, and from that meeting a call was issued to all the existing organizations of women for a general meet ing to be held in Cooper Union. This invitation, which furnished the basis on which the Sanitary Commission was afterward formed, was signed by ninety-two women. The hall was crowded, and the Women s Central Association of Relief was organ ized, under a constitution written by Dr. Bellows, who was chosen its president. A committee was sent to Washington to offer the services of the or ganization to the Government, and learn in what way they could be most effective. This committee, consisting of Dr. Bellows and three eminent physi cians Drs. Van Buren, Harsen, and Harris pre sented to the War Department an address whose suggestions were based largely upon the experi ence of the British forces in the Crimean war of 1854-5. Being sent by women who were overflow ing with patriotic enthusiasm, to officials who were jealous and distrustful of everything outside of the regulations, they had a difficult and delicate task. The Government was already embarrassed somewhat in the adjustment of authority between 1861.] THE SANITARY COMMISSION. 353 regular and volunteer officers, and dreaded a fur ther complication if a third element of civilian authority should be introduced. Even Mr. Lin coln is said to have spoken slightingly of their prop osition as a fifth wheel to a coach. General Scott received the committee kindly, but was not willing to give the proposed commission any authority. He would, however, consent to their acting in an advisory capacity, provided the head of the medical bureau agreed. After an interview with acting Surgeon-General Wood, they obtained his consent to the formation of a " commission of inquiry and advice in respect to the sanitary interests of the United States forces," and he also wrote a let ter commending the project to the other officers whose consent was necessary. Most of these offi cers looked upon the project with distrust and sus picion, and at length the committee were asked to "tell outright what they really did want, under this benevolent disguise." After fighting their way through these obstacles, the committee met with a misfortune in the death of Surgeon-General Lawson. His successor, Dr. Clement A. Finley, frowned upon the whole matter, but after a long struggle was induced to tolerate a commission that should not be clothed with any authority, and should act only in connection with officers of the volunteer army. Finally, on June 13, 1861, the committee re ceived from President Lincoln and Secretary of War Simon Cameron an order authorizing them to form an association for " inquiry and advice in 354 THE SANITARY COMMISSION. 1861.] respect to the sanitary interests of the United States." Their first work was to bring about a re-inspection of the volunteer forces, which resulted in the discharge of many boys and physically unsound men who had been accepted and mus tered in through carelessness. When the com mittee returned to New York, the fact that there was a wide popular demand for the establishment of such an organization as they had proposed was made evident through articles in the newspapers, opinions of physicians, and a multitude of letters from all parts of the country. Dr. Bellows was made president of the Commission, Frederick Law Olmsted secretary, and George T. Strong treasurer, and with them were associated a score of well- known men, including several eminent physicians. In the organization, the first division of the duties of the Commission was into two depart ments those of Inquiry and Advice. The depart ment of Inquiry was sub-divided into three the first to have charge of such immediate aid and obvious recommendations as an ordinary knowl edge of the principles of sanitary science would enable the board to urge upon the authorities ; the second to have charge of the inspection of recruiting-stations, transports, camps, and hospi tals, and to consult with military officers as to the condition and wants of their men ; the third to investigate questions of cleanliness, cooking, cloth ing, surgical dressings, malaria, climate, etc. The department of Advice was also subdivided. The general object was, " to get the opinions and con- 1862.] THE SANITARY COMMISSION. 355 elusions of the Commission approved by the Medical Bureau, ordered by the War Department, and acted upon by officers and men." One sub committee was in direct communication with the War Department, another with army officers, and a third with the State governments and the local associations. The popular idea of the Sanitary Commission seemed to be, that its chief purpose was to form depots for receiving supplies of clothing, medicines, and delicacies, for the camps and hospitals, and forwarding them safely and speedily. And this part of the work soon grew to proportions that had never been contemplated. The Commission issued an address " to the loyal women of Amer ica," urging the formation of local societies for providing these articles, and in response more than seven thousand such societies were organized. They were managed entirely by women, and were all tributary to the Sanitary Commission. Of the fifteen million dollars worth of articles received and distributed, more than four fifths came from these local societies. The Commission was man aged as nearly as possible in accordance with mili tary ideas of discipline and precision. Every request that the stores furnished by a State or city might be conveyed to its own regiments was met with the answer that all was for the nation and must be turned in to the general store. The Commission rapidly disarmed prejudice, and won the admiration of everybody in the military ser vice. It employed skilled men to cooperate with 356 THE SANITARY COMMISSION. the regimental surgeons in choosing sites for camps, regulating the drainage, and inspecting the cooking. It constructed model pavilion hospitals, to prevent the spread of contagion. It established a system of soldiers homes, where the sick and the convalescent could be provided for on their way back and forth between their homes and the front, and where whole regiments were sometimes fed when their own commissariat failed them. It fitted up hospital steamers on the Mississippi and its tributaries, with surgeons and nurses on board, to ply between the seat of war and the points from which Northern hospitals could be reached. Dr. Elisha Harris, of the Commission, invented a hospital car, in which the stretcher on which a wounded man was brought from the field could be suspended and thus become a sort of hammock. The cars were built with extra springs, to dimin ish the jolting as much as possible, and trains of them were run regularly, with physicians and stores on board, until the plan was adopted by the Government Medical Bureau. Supplies were con stantly furnished in abundance, and the Commis sion established depots at convenient points, where the articles were assorted and labelled, and the army officials were kept constantly informed that such and such things, in such and such quan tities, were subject to their requisition. When it was found difficult to transport fresh vegetables from distant points, the Commission laid out gar dens of its own, where vegetables were raised for the use of the soldiers in the field. The Commis- 1863.] THE SANITARY COMMISSION. 357 sion also had its own horses and wagons, which followed the armies to the battle-field, carrying supplies that were often welcome when those of the medical department were exhausted or had gone astray. After the battle of the Antietam, when ten thousand wounded lay on the field, the train con taining the medical stores was blocked near Balti more ; but the wagon-train of the Sanitary Com mission had been following the army, and for four days the only supplies were those that it furnished. On this occasion it issued over twenty-eight thou sand shirts, towels, pillows, etc., thirty barrels of lint and bandages, over three thousand pounds of farina, over two thousand pounds of condensed milk, five thousand pounds of beef stock and canned meats, three thousand bottles of wine and cordial, several tons of lemons, and crackers, tea, sugar, rubber cloth, tin cups, and other conven iences. In the course of the war, the Commission furnished four million five hundred thousand meals to sick and hungry soldiers. In many instances, notably at the second battle of Bull Run and at the assault on Fort Wagner, the agents of the Commission were on the actual battle-field with their supplies and were close at the front rescuing the wounded. At Fort Wagner they followed up the storming-party to the moat. A large part of the money and supplies was raised by means of fairs held in nearly every city, and the generosity exhibited in a thousand differ ent ways was something for the nation to be for ever proud of. Those who could not give cash 358 THE SANITARY COMMISSION. [1864. gave all sorts of things horses, cows, carriages, watches, diamonds, books, pictures, curiosities, and every conceivable article. The managers would be informed that a farmer was at the door with a cow, which he wished to give, and some person would be deputed to take the cow and find a stable for her until she could be sold. Another would appear with a portion of his crops. Men and women of note were asked to furnish their autographs for sale, and papers were printed, made up of original contributions by well-known authors. The sales were largely by auction, and rich men would bid off articles at high prices, and then give them back to be sold over again. The amount of cash received by the Commission was over four million nine hundred thousand dollars. The State of California, which was farthest from the seat of war, and contributed but few men to the armies, sent more than one million three hun dred thousand dollars. The value of articles received by the Commission was estimated at fif teen million dollars. It established convalescent camps, which were afterward taken by the Govern ment, and a system of hospital directories and a pension bureau and claim agency, by which soldiers claims were prosecuted free of charge. From beginning to end, there was never a deficit or irregularity of any kind in its finances. At the beginning of the war, many of the vol unteers were members of the Young Men s Chris tian Association, and through these an especial solicitude was felt in that organization for the 1862.] THE CHRISTIAN COMMISSION. 359 spiritual needs of the soldiers. Almost as soon as the first call for troops was made, measures were taken to supply every regiment with religious reading-matter, prayer-meetings were held at the recruiting-stations, and a soldier s hymn-book was compiled and printed by thousands. When the army began to move, men volunteered to go with it, at their own expense, and continue this work. One of these was Vincent Colyer, the artist, who, after spending ten weeks in the field, wrote to the chairman of the National Committee of the Asso ciation, urging the formation of a Christian Com mission to carry on the work systematically. As a result, such a commission was organized on No vember 14, 1 86 1. The approval of the President and the War Department was obtained more read ily than in the case of the Sanitary Commission, but the appeal to the people did not elicit any im mediate enthusiasm. Even the religious press was in some instances distrustful and discourag ing. For nearly a year the means of the Commis sion were limited, and its work was feeble. In May, 1862, after an earnest address to the public, it was enabled to equip and send out fourteen del egates, as they were called, ten of whom were clergymen. By the end of that year, they had sent four hundred to the army, and had more than a thousand engaged in the home work. They had distributed in the armies more than a hun dred thousand Bibles, as many hymn-books, tens of thousands of other books, ten million leaflets, and hundreds of thousands of papers and maga- 360 THE CHRISTIAN COMMISSION. [1863-5. zines ; they had formed twenty-three libraries, ex pended over a hundred and forty thousand dollars in money, and distributed an equal value in stores. At the close of the second year, the Commis sion had one hundred and eleven auxiliary associa tions, and the work in the field was more perfectly organized. General Grant, then in command in the West, issued a special order giving the Com mission every opportunity for the prosecution of its work, and tried, but in vain, to obtain permis sion for its delegates to visit the National soldiers in Confederate prisons. George H. Stuart, of Philadelphia, was chairman of the executive com mittee, Joseph Patterson treasurer, and Lemuel Moss secretary. The work increased rapidly. Chapel tents and chapel roofs were furnished to the armies, diet kitchens were established in the hospitals, the service called " individual relief" was extended, and schools were opened for chil dren of colored soldiers. Thousands of letters were written for disabled men in the hospitals, and thousands of packages forwarded to the camps. Jacob Dunton, of Philadelphia, invented a " coffee wagon " and presented it to the Commission. Cof fee could be made in it in large quantities, as it was driven along. Like the Sanitary Commission, the Christian Commission had its own teams and followed the armies with medical supplies. In the course of its existence, it sent out in all six thousand delegates, none of whom received any pay. One hundred and twenty of these were women employed mainly in the diet kitchens. 1861-5.] VOLUNTEER NURSES. 361 There were also many women in the service of the Government as volunteer nurses. The first of these was Miss Dorothea L. Dix, who offered her services eight days after the call for troops in April, 1 86 1, and was accepted by the Surgeon- General, who requested that all women wishing to act as nurses report to her. Miss Dix served through the war. Miss Amy Bradley, besides hav ing charge of a large camp for convalescents near Alexandria, Va., assisted twenty-two hundred men in collecting arrears of pay due them, amounting to over two hundred thousand dollars. Arabella Griffith Barlow, wife of the gallant General Francis C. Barlow, spent three years in hospitals at the front, and died in the service. Miss Clara Barton entered upon hospital work at the begin ning of the war, had charge of the hospitals of the Army of the James during its last year, and after the war undertook the search for the miss ing men of the National armies. Many other women, less noted, performed long and arduous service, which in some cases cost them their lives, for which they live in the grateful remembrance of those who came under their care. CHAPTER XXIII. THE OVERLAND CAMPAIGN. AT the close of the third year of the war the winter of 1863-4 it was evident to all thought ful citizens that something was lacking in its con duct. To those who understood military opera tions on a large scale, this had been apparent long before. It was true that there had been great successes, as well as great failures. Both of Lee s attempts at invasion of the North had resulted disastrously to him the one at the Antietam, the other at Gettysburg ; and when he recrossed the Potomac the second time with half of his army disabled, it was morally certain that he would invade no more. Grant, first coming into notice as the captor of an army in February, 1862, had captured another, more than twice as large, in the summer of 1863, thus securing the stronghold of Vicksburg, and enabling the Mississippi, as Lincoln expressed it, to flow unvexed to the sea. Later in the same year he had won a brilliant victory over Bragg at Chattanooga, securing that important point and relieving east Tennessee. New Orleans, by far the largest city in the South, had been firmly held by the National forces ever since Farragut captured it, in April, 1862. There were also numerous points on the coast of the Carolinas, Georgia, and 1864.J THE OUTLOOK IN THE LAST YEAR. 363 Florida where the stars and stripes floated every day in assertion of the nation s claim to supreme authority. Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, West Virginia, and Tennessee all confidently counted upon by the Confederates at the outset were now hopelessly lost to them. Though it had seemed, from the reports of the great battles, and the manner in which they were discussed, that the Confederates must be making headway, yet a glance at the map showed that the territory covered by Confederate authority had been steadily dimin ishing. Only one recapture of any consequence had taken place, and that was in Texas. Faulty though it was, if the military process thus far pursued by the Administration had been kept up, it must ultimately have destroyed the Confederacy. And there was no military reason (using the word in its narrow sense) why it could not be kept up ; for the resources of the North, in men and material, were not seriously impaired. All the farms were tilled, all the workshops were busy, the colleges had almost or quite their usual number of students ; and there were not nearly so many young women keeping books or standing behind counters as now. Moreover, the ports of the North were all open, and the markets of the world accessible. It is true that the currency and the national securities were at a discount, and it was certain that their value would be diminished still further by the prolongation of the war ; but this was not fatal so long as our own country produced everything essential, and it was equally certain that with a 364 NEED OF CONCERTED ACTION. [1864. restored Union the national credit would be so high that we could take our own time about pay ing the debt, distributing the burden over as many generations as we chose. The necessity for a swifter process was more political than military. There was a half-informed populace to be satisfied, and a half-loyal party to be silenced. The subtlest foe was in our own household ; and the approach of the Presidential and Congressional elections, unless great National victories should intervene, might bring its oppor tunity and seal the fate of the Republic. The one thing required was a single supreme military head for all the armies in the field. The faulty disposition by which, in many of the great battles, the several parts of an army had struck the enemy successively, instead of all at once, existed also on the grander scale. There was no concert of action between the armies of the East, the West, and the Southwest ; so that large detachments of the Confederate forces were sent back and forth on their shorter interior lines, to fight wherever they were most needed. Thus Long-street s powerful corps was at one time engaged in Pennsylvania, a little later besieging Burnside in Tennessee, and again with Lee in Virginia. Not only was the need for a supreme commander apparent, but it was now no longer possi ble to doubt who was the man. We had one general that from the first had gone directly for the most im portant objects in his department, and thus far had secured everything he went for. Accordingly 1864.] GRANT MADE LIEUTENANT-GENERAL. 365 Congress passed a bill reviving the grade of lieu tenant-general in February, 1864, and President Lincoln promptly conferred that rank upon Gen eral Ulysses S. Grant. Only Washington and Scott had previously borne this commission in the United States service, and through three years of the war we had nothing higher than a major-gen eral in the field. Rank was cheaper in the Con federacy, where there were not only lieutenant- generals but several full generals. Some of the corps commanders in Lee s army, at the head of ten thousand or fifteen thousand men, had nomi nally the same rank (lieutenant-general) as Grant when he assumed command of all the National forces in the field. When Lincoln handed Grant his commission, they met for the first time. A year and a month later, the war was ended, Grant was the foremost soldier in the world, and Lincoln was in his grave. When the question of head quarters arose, General Sherman, who was one of the warmest of Grant s personal friends as well as his ablest lieutenant, besought him to remain in the West, for he feared the Washington influences that had always been most heavily felt in the army covering the capital. General Sherman, never afraid of anything else, was always in mortal terror of politicians. Grant appears not to have feared even the politicians ; for he promptly fixed his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac ; thus placing himself where, on the one hand, he could withstand interference that might thwart the opera tions of a subordinate, and where on the other he 366 THE GRAND CAMPAIGN. [1864. would personally conduct the campaign against the strongest army of the Confederacy and its most trusted leader. He planned a campaign in which he considered the Army of the Potomac his centre ; the Army of the James, under General Butler, his left wing ; the Western armies, now commanded by Sherman, his right wing; and the army under Banks in Louisiana a force operating in the rear of the enemy. In its great features, the plan was this: that all should move simultaneously Butler against Petersburg, to seize the southern commu nications of the Confederate capital ; Sherman against Johnston s army (then at Dalton, Georgia), to defeat and destroy it, if possible, or at least to force it back and capture Atlanta with its work shops and important communications ; Banks to set out on an expedition toward Mobile, to cap ture that city and close its harbor to blockade- runners ; Sigel to drive back the Confederate force in the Shenandoah valley, and prevent that fertile region from being used any longer as a Confederate granary ; while the Army of the Po tomac, taking Lee s army for its objective, should follow it wherever it went, fighting and flanking it until it should be captured or dispersed. South of the Rapidan is a peculiar region twelve or fifteen miles square, known as the Wilderness. Some of the earliest iron-works in the country were here, and much of the ground was dug over for the ore, while the woods were cut off to sup ply fuel for the furnaces. A thick second growth 1864.] POSITION OF THE ARMIES. 367 sprang up, with tangled underbrush, the mines were deserted, the furnaces went to decay, and the whole region was desolate, save a roadside o tavern or two and here and there a little clearing. Chancellorsville, where a great battle was fought in May, 1863, was upon the eastern edge of this Wilderness. The bulk of Lee s army was now (May, 1864) upon its western edge, with a line of observation along the Rapidan, and head-quarters at Orange Court-House. The Army of the Poto mac was north of the Rapidan, opposite the Wil derness, where it had lain since November, when it had crossed to the south side with the purpose of attacking the Army of Northern Virginia, but found it too strongly intrenched along Mine Run, and so recrossed and went into winter quarters. It was now organized in three infantry corps, the Second, Fifth, and Sixth commanded respectively by Generals Winfield S. Hancock, Gouverneur K. Warren, and John Sedgwick and a cavalry corps commanded by General Philip H. Sheridan ; General George G. Meade being still in command of the whole. Burnside s corps, the Ninth, nearly twenty thou sand strong, was at Annapolis, and nobody but General Grant knew its destination. President Lincoln and his Cabinet thought it was to be sent on some duty down the coast ; and so perhaps did the enemy. Grant knew too well that there was a leak somewhere in Washington, through which every Government secret escaped to the Confeder ates ; and he therefore delayed till the last moment 368 THE RELATIVE NUMBERS. [1864. the movement of Burnside s corps to a point from which it could follow the Army of the Potomac across the Rapidan within twenty-four hours. The Army of Northern Virginia consisted of two infantry corps, commanded by Generals Rich ard S. Ewell and Ambrose P. Hill, with a cavalry corps commanded by General James E. B. Stuart ; the whole commanded by General Robert E. Lee ; while, as an offset to Burnside s corps, General James Longstreet s was within call. The exact number of men in either army cannot be told, as reports and authorities differ ; nor can the approxi mate numbers be mentioned fairly, unless with an explanation. The method of counting for the official reports was different in the two armies. In the National army, a report that a certain number of men were present for duty included every man that was borne on the pay-rolls, whether officer, soldier, musician, teamster, cook, or me chanic, and also all that had been sent away on special duty, guarding trains and the like. This was necessary, because they were all paid regu larly, and the money had to be accounted for. In the Confederate army there was no pay worth speaking of, and the principal object of a morning report was to show the exact effective force availa ble that day ; accordingly, the Confederate re ports included only the men actually bearing mus kets or sabres, or handling the artillery. Counted in this way, Lee had sixty thousand or perhaps sixty-five thousand men for exact reports are wanting, even on that basis. If counted after the 1864.] THE WILDERNESS BATTLE-FIELD. 369 fashion in the National army, his men numbered about eighty thousand. Grant puts his own num bers, everything included, at one hundred and six teen thousand, and thinks the preponderance was fully offset by the fact that the enemy was on the 370 GRANT CROSSES THE RAPIDAN. [1864. defensive, seldom leaving his intrenchments, in a country admirably suited for defence, and with the population friendly to him. As each side received reinforcements from time to time about equal to its losses, the two armies may be considered as having, throughout the campaign from the Rapi- dan to the James, the strength just stated. It was clearly set forth by General Grant at the outset that the true objective was the Army of Northern Virginia. In that lay the chief strength of the Confederacy ; while that stood, the Confed eracy would stand, whether in Richmond or out of it ; when that fell, the Confederacy would fall. To follow that army wherever it went, fight it, and destroy it, was the task that lay before the Army of the Potomac ; and every man in the army, as well as most men in the country, knew it was a task that could be accomplished only through im mense labor and loss of life, hard marching, heavy fighting, and all manner of suffering. The intention was to have the simultaneous movement of all the armies begin as near the ist of May as possible. It actually began at midnight of the 3d, when the Army of the Potomac was set in motion and crossed the Rapidan, which is there about two hundred feet wide, on five pontoon bridges near Germania, Culpeper Mine, and Ely s fords. On crossing, it plunged at once into the Wilderness, which is here traversed from north to south by two roads, a mile or two apart. And these roads are crossed by two the Orange turn pike and Orange plank road running nearly east 1864.] IN THE WILDERNESS. 371 and west. Besides these, there are numerous cross-roacls and wood-paths. It would have been easy for the army to pass through this wooded tract in a very few hours, and deploy in the open country ; but the supply and ammunition train con sisted of four thousand wagons, and the reserve artillery of more than one hundred guns all of which must be protected by keeping the army be tween them and the enemy. Consequently the troops remained in the Wilderness during the whole of the 4th, while the long procession was filing across the bridges and stretching away on the easternmost roads. And after this the bridges themselves were taken up. Grant s headquarters that night were at the old Wilderness Tavern, on the Orange turnpike, near the intersection of the road from Germania ford. It had been supposed that Lee would either dispute the passage of the river, or (as he had done on previous occasions) await attack on some chosen ground that was suitable for fighting. As he had not disputed the passage, the army now expected to march out of the Wilderness the next day, thus turning the enemy s right flank, and placing itself between him and his capital. But Grant kept pickets out on all the roads to the west ; and it cannot be said that he was sur prised, though he was probably disappointed, when he found his lines attacked on the morning of the 5th. The movement was believed at first to be only a feint, intended to keep the Army of the Po tomac in the Wilderness, while the bulk of the 372 THE FIRST DAYS BATTLE. [1864. enemy should slip by to the south and take up a position covering the approach to Richmond. But it was developed rapidly, and it soon became evi dent that the Confederate commander had resorted to the bold device of launching his whole army down the two parallel roads, with the purpose of striking the Army of the Potomac when it was ill- prepared to receive battle. Under some cir cumstances he would thus have gained a great ad vantage ; as it was, the army was clear of the river, with all its trains safe in the rear, was reasonably well together, had had a night s rest, and was not in any proper sense surprised. Hancock s corps, which had the lead and was marching out of the Wilderness, was quickly recalled, Burnside s was hurried up from the rear, and a line of battle was formed so far as there could be any line of bat tle in a jungle. Neither artillery nor cavalry could be used to any extent by either side, and the contest was little more than a murdering-match between two bodies of men, each individual hav ing a musket in his hand, and being unable to see more than a few of his nearest neighbors. This went on all day, increasing hourly as more of the troops came into position, with no real advan tage to either side when night fell upon the gloomy forest, already darkened by smoke that there was no breeze to waft away. Lee s attack had been vigorous on his left, but imperfect on his right, where Longstreet s corps did not get up in time to participate in the fighting that day. No sooner had the battle ended than both sides began to in- 1864.] THE SECOND DAYS BATTLE. 373 trench for the struggle of the morrow, and they could hear the sound of each other s axes, only a few rods distant, as they worked through the night, cutting down trees, piling up logs for breastworks, and digging the customary trench. Grant intended to take the initiative on the morning of the 6th, and gave orders for an at tack at five o clock. But Lee, who did not want the real battle of the day to begin till Longstreet s corps should be in place on his right, attacked with his left at a still earlier hour. Grant recog nized this as a feint, and went on with his purpose of attacking the enemy s right before Longstreet should come up. This work devolved upon Han cock s corps, which as usual was ready to advance at the hour named ; but just then came rumors of a flank movement by Longstreet, and Hancock, de taching troops to meet it, greatly weakened the blow he was ordered to deliver. This was all a mistake, as there was no enemy in that direction, save Rosser s Confederate cavalry, which Sheri dan s defeated that day in three encounters. But Hancock s advance was powerful enough to drive the enemy before him for more than a mile. At that juncture Longstreet came up, the broken Confederate line rallied on his corps, and Hancock was in turn driven back. Here the fighting was stubborn, and the losses heavy. Gen eral James S. Wadsworth, one of the most pat riotic men in the service, was mortally wounded and died within the Confederate lines. The Con federate General Jenkins was killed, and Long- 374 THE STRUGGLE IN HANCOCKS FRONT. [1864. street was seriously wounded in almost exactly the same way that Stonewall Jackson had been, a year and three days before, on nearly the same ground. As he was returning from the front with his staff, some of his own men mistook them for National cavalry, and fired upon them. Longstreet was shot through the neck and shoulder, and had to be carried from the field. His men had been thrown into great confusion, and General Lee, who now took command of them in person, found it impos sible to rally them for an attack on Hancock s in- trenchments, or at least deferred the attack that had been planned. But late in the afternoon such an assault was made, and met with a little tempo rary success. The Confederates burst through the line at one point, but were soon driven back again with heavy loss. At this time a fire broke out in Hancock s front, and soon his log breast works were burning. His men were forced back by the heat, but continued firing at their enemy through the flame. Large numbers of the dead and wounded were still lying where they fell, scat tered over the belt of ground, nearly a mile wide, where the tide of battle had swayed back and forth, and an unknown number of the wounded perished by the fire and smoke. Burnside had come into line during the day, and fighting had been kept up along the entire front, but it was nowhere so fierce as on the left or southern end of the line, where each commander was trying to double up the other s flank. At night the Confederates with drew to their intrenchments, and from that time 1864.] THE LOSSES. 375 till the end of the campaign they seldom showed a disposition to leave them. The losses in this great two-days battle cannot be stated accurately. The best authorities vary as to the National loss, from fewer than fourteen thousand killed, wounded, and missing to about fifteen thousand four hundred. As to the Confederate loss, the figures can only be made up from partial reports, estimates, and inferences. According to these, it did not differ materially from the National loss, and in the circumstances of the battle there was no reason for thinking it would. Among the officers lost, besides those already mentioned, were, on the National side, General Alexander Hays killed ; Generals Getty, Baxter, and McAllister, and Colonels Carroll and Keifer wounded; and Generals Seymour and Shaler captured ; on the Confederate side, Gen erals Pegram and Benning wounded. If General Lee supposed that the Army of the Potomac, after a sudden blow and a bloody battle, would turn about and go home to repair damages as it had been in the habit of doing he omitted from his calculation the fact that it was now led by a soldier who never did anything of the sort. Indeed, he is reported to have said to his lieuten ants, after this costly experiment, " Gentlemen, at last the Army of the Potomac has a head." Tact ically, it had been a drawn battle. Grant accounts it a victory, which he says " consisted in having successfully crossed a formidable stream, almost in the face of an enemy, and in getting the army FORWARD BY THE LEFT FLANK. [1864. together as a unit." It was also a National victory, in a certain dismal sense, from the fact that in changing off man for man to the extent of twelve or fifteen thousand that had been done which the enemy could least afford. There was no fighting on the yth except a cav alry engagement at Todd s Tavern, by which Sheridan cleared the road for the southward movement of the army ; and in the afternoon Grant gave the order to move by the left flank toward Spottsylvania. One who would perhaps be recognized as the highest of living military authorities says, in a private letter, " It was then probably that General Grant best displayed his greatness. Forward by the left flank ! that set tled that campaign." Grant s general purpose was to place his army between the enemy and Richmond, interfering with the communications and compelling Lee to fight at disadvantage. The immediate purpose was a rapid march to Spottsylvania Court House, fifteen miles southeast of the Wilderness battle-field, and a dozen miles southwest of Fredericksburg, to take a strong position covering the roads that radiate from that point. Warren s corps was to take the advance, marching by the Brock road, to be followed by Hancock s on the same road. Sedgwick s and Burnside s were to take a route farther north, through Chancellorsville. The trains were put in motion on Saturday, May 7, and Warren began his march at nine o clock that evening. To withdraw an army in this manner, 1864.] SPOTTSYLVANIA BATTLE-FIELD. 377 in the presence of a powerful enemy, and send it forward to a new position, is a difficult and deli cate task, as it may be attacked after it has left the old position and before it has gained the new. The method adopted by General Grant was re peated in each of his flanking 1 movements between the Wilderness and the James. It consisted in withdrawing the corps that held his right flank, and passing it behind the others while they main tained their position. Four small rivers rise in this region the Mat, the Ta, the Po, and the Ny which unite to form the Mattapony. Spottsyl- vania Court House is on the ridge between the Po and the Ny. The country around it is heavily wooded, and somewhat broken by ravines. The distances that the two armies had to march 378 THE MARCH TO SPOTTSYLVANIA. [1884. to reach Spottsylvania Court House were very nearly the same ; if there was any difference, it favored the National ; but two unforeseen circum stances determined the race and the form of the ensuing battle. The Brock road was occupied by a detachment of Confederate cavalry, and War ren s corps stood still while the National cavalry undertook to clear the way. This was not done easily, and the road was further obstructed where the Confederates had felled trees across it. After precious time had been lost, Warren s corps went forward and cleared the way for itself. The other circumstance was more purely fortuitous. Ander son s division of Longstreet s corps led the Con federate advance, and Anderson had his orders to begin the march early on Sunday morning, the 8th. But from the burning of the woods he found no suitable ground for bivouac, and consequently marched all night. The National cavalry were in Spottsylvania Court House Sunday morning, and found there but a slight force of cavalry, easily brushed away ; but they had to retire before the Confederate infantry when Anderson came down the road. Consequently, % when Warren came within sight of the Court House, he found the same old foe intrenched in his front. Still, if Hancock had come up promptly, the works might have been carried by a rapid movement, and held till the army should be where Grant wanted it, in position between the enemy and their capital. But Hancock had been held back, because of apprehensions that the Confederates would make 1864.] ENGAGEMENT AT YELLOW TAVERN. 3/9 a heavy attack upon the rear of the moving col umns. So the remainder of Longstreet s corps, and finally all of Lee s troops, poured into the rude sylvan fortress, and once more the Army of Northern Virginia stood at bay. At this point of time, May 8, Grant sent Sheridan with his cavalry to do to the Confederate army what in previous campaigns its cavalry had twice done to the Army of the Potomac to ride entirely around it, tearing up railroads, destroying bridges and depots, and capturing trains. Sheri dan set out to execute his orders with the energy and skill for which he was becoming famous. He destroyed ten miles of railroad and several trains of cars, cut all the telegraph wires, and recaptured four hundred prisoners who had been taken in the battle of the Wilderness and were on their way to Richmond. As soon as it was known which way he had gone, the Confederate cavalry set out to intercept him, and by hard riding got between him and Richmond. Sheridan s troops met them at Yellow Tavern, seven miles north of the city, and after a hard fight defeated and dispersed them, General J. E. B. Stuart, the ablest cavalry leader in the Confederacy, being mortally wounded. Sheridan dashed through the outer defences of Richmond, and took some prisoners, but found the inner ones too strong for him. He then crossed the Chickahominy, and rejoined the army on the 25th. As the National army came into position before the intrenchments of Spottsylvania, Hancock s 380 FALL OF GENERAL SEDGWICK. [1864. corps had the extreme right, or western end of the line ; then came Warren s, then Sedgwick s, and on the extreme left Burnside s. While Sedg wick s men were placing their batteries, they were annoyed by sharpshooters, one of whom, appar ently posted in a tree, seemed to be an unerring marksman. He is said to have destroyed twenty lives that day. The men naturally shrank back from their work ; when General Sedgwick, coming up, expostulated with them, remarking that " they could n t hit an elephant at this distance." As he stepped forward to the works, a bullet struck him in the face, and he fell dead. In his fall the army lost one of its best soldiers, and the country one of its purest patriots. Sedgwick had been offered higher command than he held, but had firmly de clined it, from a modest estimate of his own pow ers. General Horatio G. Wright succeeded him in the command of the Sixth Corps. On the evening of the Qth, Hancock s corps moved to the right, with a view to flanking and attacking the Confederate left, and made a recon- noissance at the point where the road from Shady Grove church crosses the Po on a wooden bridge. A brigade of Barlow s division laid down bridges and crossed the stream, but was confronted by intrenchments manned by a portion of Early s corps. It was now seen that the Confederate left rested on the stream at a point above, so that Hancock by crossing would only have isolated himself from the rest of the army and invited de struction. But before he could withdraw Barlow, r U!TIVEESIT7 1864.1 THE SALIENT AT SPOTTSYLVANIA. 381 the enemy sallied out from their intrenchments and attacked that brigade in heavy force. The assault was met with steady courage and repelled with considerable loss to Barlow, but with much greater loss to the assailants. After a short inter val, the experiment was renewed, with precisely the same result ; and Barlow then re-crossed, under cover of a supporting column, and took up his bridges. The weak point in the Confederate line was the salient at the northern point of their intrench- ment. A salient is weak because almost any fire di rected against it becomes an enfilading fire for one or another part of it. But the National army were not up in balloons, looking down upon the earth as a map ; and they could only learn the shape of the Confederate intrenchments after traversing thick woods, following out by-paths, and scrambling through dark ravines. As soon as "the salient was discovered, preparations were made for assaulting it. The storming party consisted of twelve regi ments of Wright s corps, commanded by Colonel Emory Upton, .and was to be supported by Mott s division of Hancock s, while at the same time the remainder of Wright s and all of Warren s corps were to advance and take advantage of any oppor tunity that should be made for them. While a heavy battery was firing rapidly at the salient and enfilading one of its sides, Upton s men formed under cover of the woods, near the enemy s line, and the instant the battery ceased firing, about six o clock in the evening, burst out with a cheer, 382 UPTON S CHARGE. [1864. swept over the works after a short hand-to-hand fight, and captured more than a thousand prison ers, and a few guns. Mott, forming in open ground, did not move so promptly, suffered more from the fire of the enemy, and effected nothing. Warren s corps moved forward, but was driven back with heavy loss. In a second assault, they reached the breastworks and captured them after fierce fighting, but were not able to hold them when strong Confederate reinforcements came up, and retired again. Upton, who had broken through a second line of intrenchments, seemed to have opened a way for the destruction of the Con federate army ; but the difficulties of the ground and the lateness of the hour made it impracticable to follow up the advantage by pouring a whole corps through the gap and taking everything in reverse. After dark, Upton s men withdrew, bringing the prisoners and the captured battle- flags, but leaving the guns behind. For this ex ploit, in which he was severely wounded, Colonel Upton was made a brigadier-general on the field. While this was going on, Burnside, at the extreme left of the line, had obtained a good position from which he could have assaulted advantageously the Confederate right, which he overlapped. But this was not perceived, and as there was a dangerous gap between his corps and Wright s, he was drawn back in the night, and the advantage was lost. On the nth it rained heavily, and there was no fighting ; but there were reconnoissances and prep arations for a renewal of the battle on the next 1864.] HANCOCK CARRIES THE SALIENT. 383 day. Grant determined to make a heavier and more persistent assault upon the tempting salient, and moved Hancock s corps by a wood-road, after dark, to a point opposite the apex. The morning of the 1 2th was foggy, but by half-past four o clock it was light enough, and Hancock s men advanced, some of them passing through thickets of dead pines. When they were half-way across the open ground in front of the salient, they burst into a wild cheer and rushed for the works. Here they were met by a brave and determined resist ance on the part of the half-surprised Confeder ates, who fought irregularly with clubbed muskets. But nothing could resist the impetus of Hancock s corps, which was over the breastworks in a few seconds. Large numbers of Confederates were killed, mostly with the bayonet. So sudden was Hancock s irruption into the enemy s works, that he captured General Edward Johnson s entire division of nearly four thousand men, with its commander and also Brigadier-General Steuart. "How are you, Steuart?" said Hancock, recog nizing in his prisoner an old army friend, and extending his hand. " I am General Steuart, of the Confederate army," was the reply, " and under the circumstances I decline to take your hand." "Under any other circumstances," said Hancock quietly, " I should not have offered it." Han cock s men had also captured twenty guns, with their horses and caissons, thousands of small arms, and thirty battle-flags. The guns were im mediately turned upon the enemy, who was fol- 384 THE BLOODIEST FIGHTING IN THE WAR. [1864. lowed through the woods toward Spottsylvania Court House till the pursuers ran up against another line of intrenchments, which had been constructed in the night across the base of the salient. At the same time that Hancock assaulted at the apex, Warren and Burnside had assaulted at the sides, but with less success, though their men reached the breastworks. Lee understood too well the danger of having his line thus ruptured at the centre, and poured his men into the salient with a determination to retake it, for which some of his critics have cen sured him. Hancock s men, when the pressure became too great for them, fell back slowly to the outer intrenchmants, and turning used them as their own. Five times the Confederates attacked these in heavy masses, and five times they were repelled with bloody loss. Before they had been at disadvantage from defending a salient, and now they were at equal disadvantage in assailing a reentrant angle. To add to the slaughter, Han cock had established several batteries on high ground, where they could fire over the heads of his own men and strike the enemy beyond. Here and along the west face of the angle the fighting was kept up all day, and was most desperate and destructive. Field guns were run up close to the works and fired into the masses of Confederate troops within the salient, creating terrible havoc ; but in turn the horses and gunners were certain to be shot down. There was hand-to-hand fight ing over the breastworks, and finally the men of 1864.] CARNAGE AT THE SALIENT. 385 the two armies were crouching on either side of them, shooting and stabbing through the crevices between the logs. Sometimes one would mount upon the works and have loaded muskets passed up to him rapidly, which he would fire in quick succession till the certain bullet came that was to end his career, and he tumbled into the ditch. In several instances men were pulled over the breast works and made prisoners. One doughty but diminutive Georgian officer nearly died of morti fication when a huge Wisconsin colonel reached over, seized him by the collar, and in a twinkling jerked him out of the jurisdiction of the Confed eracy and into that of the United States. The fighting around the " death-angle," as the soldiers called it, was kept up till past midnight, when the Confederates finally withdrew to their interior line. The dead were not only literally piled in heaps, but their bodies were terribly torn and mangled by the shot. Every tree and bush was cut down or killed by the balls, and in one instance the body of an oak tree nearly two feet in diameter was completely cut through by bullets, and in falling injured several men of a South Carolina regiments Not even Sickles s salient at Gettysburg had been so fatal as this. If courage were all that a nation required, there was courage enough at Spottsylva- nia, on either side of the intrenchments, to have made a nation out of every State in the Union. It was extremely difficult for either side to res cue or care for any of the wounded. A note from Colonel Leander W. Cogswell, of the gth New 386 INCIDENTS IN FRONT AND REAR. [1864. Hampshire regiment, gives a suggestive incident : " During the night of the i3th, as officer of the day, I was ordered to take a detail of men from our brigade and if possible find the dead bodies of members of the Qth regiment. We went over the intrenchments and into that terrible darkness, un der orders to strike not a match, nor speak above a whisper. When near the spot where they fell, we crawled upon our hands and knees, and felt for the dead ones, and in this manner suc ceeded in finding upwards of twenty, and con veyed them within our lines, where, with a few others, they were buried the next morning in one trench." Thus far we have looked only at what was go ing on in front. A few sentences from the diary of Chaplain Alanson A. Haines, of the I5th New Jersey regiment, will give the reader an idea of the rear at Spottsylvania : " With Dr. Hall, our good and brave surgeon, I found a place in the rear, a little hollow with grass and a spring of water, where we made hasty preparations to re ceive the coming wounded. Those that could walk soon began to find their way in of them selves, and some few were helped in by their com rades as soon as the charge was over and a por tion withdrawn. It was a terrible thing to lay some of our best and truest men in a long row on the blankets, waiting their turn for the surgeon s care. Some came with body wounds, and arms shattered, and hands dangling. At ten o clock, with the drum corps, I sought the regiment to 18G4.J THE LOSSES. 387 take off any of our wounded we could find. On my way, met some men carrying orderly-sergeant Van Gilder, mortally wounded, in a blanket. With his hand all blood, he seized mine, saying, Chaplain, I am going. Tell my wife I am happy. At two o clock A.M., I lay down amid a great throng of poor, bleeding sufferers, whose moans and cries for water kept me awake. At four o clock got up and had coffee made, and going around among the wounded found a Pennsylvanian who had lain at my feet dead. At noon the regiment moved off to the right. I retained five drummers to bury sergeants Schenck and Rabadon. A number of men from several regiments were filling their can teens at the spring. I asked them if they could come for a few moments around a soldier s grave. Most of them came, and uncovered their heads. I repeated some passages of Scripture, and offered a short prayer. Drum-sergeant Kline filled up the grave, nailing to two posts which he planted a piece of cracker-box, on which I cut the names of the dead. While he was doing this, with my other men I gathered the muskets and accoutre ments left by the wounded. Laying the muskets with the muzzle on a stump, one heavy stamp of the foot bent the barrel, broke the stock, and made the piece useless. The accoutrements we heaped together and threw on the fire, and with hasty steps sought the regiment." The National losses in the fighting around Spottsylvania, from the 8th to the 2ist of May, were thirteen thousand six hundred killed, 388 FIGHTING IT OUT ON THIS LINE. [MM. wounded, and missing. Somewhat over half of this loss occurred on the I2th. There are no ex act statistics of the Confederate loss ; but it ap pears to have been ten thousand on the I2th, and was probably about equal in the aggregate to the National loss. The losses were heavy in general officers. In the National army, besides Sedgwick, Generals T. G. Stevenson and J. C. Rice were killed, and Generals H. G. Wright and Alexander S. Webb, and Colonel Samuel S. Carroll were wounded ; the last named being promoted to brig adier-general on the field. Of the Confederates, Generals Daniel and Perrin were killed, Generals R. D. Johnston, McGowan, Ramseur, and Walker wounded, and Generals Edward Johnson and Steuart captured. General Grant had written to Halleck on the nth: "We have now ended the sixth day of very hard fighting. The result up to this time is much in our favor. But our losses have been heavy, as well as those of the enemy. ... I am now sending back to Belle Plain all my wagons for a fresh supply of provisions and ammuni tion, and purpose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." A week was spent in manoeu vring to find a new point of attack that promised success, but without avail, and at the end of that time it was determined to move again by the left flank. The movement was to the North Anna river ; again it was a race, and this time the Con federates had the shorter line. The distance from Spottsylvania Court House 1864.] MOVEMENT TO THE NORTH ANNA. 389 to Richmond is a little more than fifty miles. About midway between them is Hanover Junction, where the railroad from Richmond to Fredericks- burg is crossed by the Virginia Central road. Grant did not wish to conceal his movement al together. He was anxious to induce the enemy to fight without the enormous advantage of in- trenchments. So he planned to send one corps toward Richmond, hoping that Lee would be tempted to attack it with all his army, whereupon the other corps might follow up sharply and attack the Confederates before they had time to intrench. When the movement was begun, Lee, instead of moving at once in the same direction, sent Ewell s corps to attack the National right. It happened that six thousand raw recruits, under General R. O. Tyler, were on their way to reenforce the Army of the Potomac,and had not quite reached their place in line, when they were struck by Ewell s flank movement. Grant says they maintained their po sition in a manner worthy of veterans, till they were reenforced by the divisions of Birney and Crawford, which promptly moved up to the right and left, and Ewell was then quickly driven back with heavy loss. This was on the iQth of May. The corps thrown forward as a bait was Han cock s, and it marched on the night of the 2Oth, going easterly to Guinea Station, and then south erly to Milford. Warren s corps followed twelve hours later, and twelve hours later still the corps of Burnside and Wright. Some tri fling resistance was met by the advance ; but 3QO THE POSITION ON THE NORTH ANNA. [1864. the Confederates had no notion of taking any risk. They made a reconnoissance to their left, to be sure that Grant had not kept a corps at Spott- sylvania to fall upon their rear, and then set out by a shorter line than his to interpose themselves once more between him and their capital. The new position that was taken up after some tentative movements was one of the strongest that could have been devised. The Confederate left stretched in a straight line, a mile and a half long, from Little River to the North Anna at Oxford. Here, bending at a right angle, the line followed the North Anna down stream for three quar ters of a mile, thence continuing in a straight line southeastward, to and around Hanover Junction. The North Anna here makes a bend to the south, and on the most southerly point of the bend the Confederate line touched and held it. If we imagine a ring cut in halves, and the halves placed back to back, in contact,and call one the line of Confederate intrenchments and the other the river, we shall have a fair representation of the essential features of the situation. It is evident that any enemy approaching from the north and attempting to envelop this position, would have his own line twice divided by the river, so that his army would be in three parts. Any reinforcements passing from one wing to the other would have to cross the stream twice, and long before they could reach their destination the army holding the intrenchments could strengthen its threatened wing. The obvious point to assail 1864.] BY THE LEFT FLANK AGAIN. 39! in such a position would be the apex of the salient line where it touched the river ; and Burnside was ordered to force a passage at that point. But the banks were high and steep, and the passage was covered by artillery. Moreover, an enfilading fire from the north bank was thwarted by traverses intrenchments at riodit anodes to the main line. o o Wright s corps crossed the river above the Con federate position, and destroyed some miles of the Virginia Central Railroad; while Hancock s crossed below, and destroyed a large section of the road to Fredericksburg. By this time they had learned the effective method of not only tearing up the track, but piling up the ties and setting them on fire, heating the rails, and bending and twisting them so that they could not be used again. These operations were not carried on without frequent sharp fighting, which cost each side about two thousand men ; but there was no general battle on the North Anna. Before the next flank movement was made by the Army of the Potomac, General James H. Wilson s cavalry division was sent to make a demonstration on the right, to give the enemy the impression that this time the turning movement would be in that direction. In the night of May 26, which was very dark, the army withdrew to the north bank of the North Anna, took up its pontoon bridges, destroyed all the others, and was put in motion again by the left flank. Sheridan s cavalry led the way and guarded the crossings of the Pamunkey, which is formed by the junction of the North and 392 ENGAGEMENT AT HAWES S SHOP. [1864. South Anna rivers. The Sixth Corps was the advance of the infantry, followed by the Second, while the Fifth and Ninth moved by roads farther north. The direction was southeast, and the dis tance about thirty miles to a point at which the army would cross the Pamunkey and move south west toward Richmond, the crossing being about twenty miles from that city. But between lie the swamps of the Chickahominy. In the morning of the 28th the cavalry moved out on the most direct road to Richmond, and at a cross-roads known as Hawes s Shop encountered a strong force of Con federate cavalry, which was dismounted and in trenched. After a bloody fight of some hours duration, the divisions commanded by Generals David M. Gregg and George A. Custer broke over the intrenchments and forced back the enemy ; the other divisions came up promptly, and the po sition was held. Soon after noon of that day three fourths of the army had crossed the Pamunkey, and the remaining corps crossed that night. Here were several roads leading to the Confederate capital ; but the Confederate army, as soon as it found the enemy gone from its front, had moved in the same direction, by a somewhat shorter route, and had quickly taken up a strong position across all these roads, with flanks on Beaver Dam and Totopoto- moy creeks. Moreover, at this time it was heavily reenforced by troops that were drawn from the defences east of Richmond. The next day the opposing forces were in close proximity, each trying to find out what the other 1864.] THE POSITION AT TOTOPOTOMOY. 393 was about, and all day the crack of the skirmisher s rifle was heard. Near Bethesda church there was a small but bloody engagement, where a portion of Early s corps made an attack on the National left and gained a brief advantage, but was soon driven back, with a brigade commander and two regimental commanders among its killed. At dusk, one brigade of Barlow s division made a sudden rush and carried a line of Confederate rifle-pits. But it was ascertained that the position offered no chance of success in a serious assault. Furthermore, Grant was expecting reinforcements from Butler s Army of the James, to come by way of White House, at the head of navigation on York River, and he feared that Lee would move out with a large part of his army to interpose between him and his reinforcements and over whelm them. So he extended his left toward Cold Harbor, sending Sheridan with cavalry and artil lery to secure that place. Sheridan was heavily attacked there on the morning of June i, but held his ground, and twice drove back the assail ants. In the course of the day he was relieved by the Sixth Corps, to which the ten thousand ree n- forcements under General William F. Smith were added. At the same time the Confederate line had been extended in the same direction, so as still to cover all roads leading to Richmond. The Army of the Potomac, in its movement down the streams, was now at the highest point that it had reached in its movement up the peninsula, when led by McClellan two years before. 394 AT CO LD HARBOR. [1864. At six o clock in the evening, Smith s and Wright s corps attacked the Confederate intrench- ments. Along most of the front they were obliged to cross open ground that was swept by artillery and musketry ; but they moved forward steadily, in spite of their rapid losses, and everywhere carried the first line of works, taking some hun dreds of prisoners, but were stopped by the second. They intrenched and held their advanced position ; but it had been dearly bought, since more than two thousand of their men were killed or wounded, including many officers. When the other corps had followed the Sixth, and the entire army was in its new position at Cold Harbor, eight or ten miles from Richmond, with its enemy but a little distance in front of it, an attack was planned for the morning of the 3d. The Confederate position was very strong. The line was from three to six miles from the outer defences of Richmond, the right resting on the Chickahominy, and the left protected by the woods and swamps about the head-waters of several small streams. The Chickahominy was between it and Richmond, but the water was low and everywhere fordable. The only chance for attack was in front, and it remained to be demonstrated by experiment whether anything could be done there. If Lee s line could be disrupted at the centre, and a strong force thrust through, it would for the time being disorganize his army, though a large part of it would undoubtedly escape across the river and rally in the intrenchments nearer the city. 18M.] A FUTILE ATTACK. 395 At half-past four o clock on the morning of the 3d, the Second, Sixth, and Eighteenth (Smith s) corps began the attack as planned. They moved forward as rapidly and regularly as the nature of the ground would admit, under a destructive fire of artillery and musketry, till they carried the first line of intrenchments. Barlow s division of Hancock s corps struck a salient, and after a des perate hand-to-hand contest captured it, taking nearly three hundred prisoners and three guns, which were at once turned upon the enemy. But every assaulting column, on reaching the enemy s first line, found itself subjected to cross-fires from the enemy s skilfully placed artillery, and not one of them could go any farther. Most of them fell back speedily, leaving large numbers prisoners or bleed ing on the ground, and took up positions midway between the lines, where they rapidly dug trenches and protected themselves. General Grant had given orders to General Meade to suspend the attack the moment it should appear hopeless, and the heavy fighting did not last more than an hour, though firing was kept up all day. A counter attack by Early s corps was as unsuccessful as those of the National troops had been ; and one or two lighter attacks by the Confederates, later in the day, were also repelled. The entire loss of the National army at Cold Harbor in the first twelve days of June including the battles just described and the almost constant skirmishing and minor engagements was ten thousand and fifty-eight ; and among the dead and 396 THE LOSSES. [1864. wounded were many valuable officers. General Tyler and Colonel Brooke were wounded, and Colonels Porter, Morris, Meade, and Byrnes were killed.* The Confederate loss which included Brigadier-General Doles among the killed and Brigadier-Generals Kirkland, Lane, Law, and Fin- ne^an amonor the wounded is unknown ; but o o it was much smaller than the National. The attack of June 3 is recognized as the most serious error in Grant s military career. He himself says in his " Memoirs " that he always regretted it was ever made. It was as useless, and almost as costly, as Lee s assault upon Meade s centre at Gettysburg. But we do not read that any of Grant s lieuten ants protested against it, as Longstreet protested against the attack on Cemetery Ridge. For some days Grant held his army as close to the enemy as possible, to prevent the Confederates from detaching a force to operate against Hunter in the Shenandoah Valley. General Halleck now proposed that the Army of the Potomac should invest Richmond on the north. This might have prevented any possibility of Lee s launching out toward Washington, but it * The lines of the two armies were so close to each other that it was impossible, to care for the wounded that lay between them, except by a cessation of hostilities. As the National forces had been the assailants, most of the wounded were theirs. General Grant made an immediate effort to obtain a cessation for this humane pur pose, but General Lee delayed it with various trivial excuses for forty- eight hours, and at the end of that time all but two of the wounded were dead. See a part of the correspondence in Grant s "Memoirs," vol. ii. pp. 273 et seq. As to the losses here and at Spottsylvania, authorities differ. The figures given above are from a statement com piled in the Adjutant-General s office. IS.] MOVEMENT TO THE JAMES. 397 could hardly have effected anything else. The Confederate lines of supply would have been left untouched, while the National troops would have perished between impregnable intrenchments on the one side and malarious swamps on the other. Grant determined to move once more -by the left flank, swing his army across the James, and invest the city from the south. A direct investment of the Confederate capital on that side was out of the question, because the south bank of the James is lower than the city ; and the movement would therefore resolve itself into a struggle for Peters burg, thirty miles south of Richmond, which was its railroad centre. To withdraw an army from so close contact with the enemy, march it fifty miles, cross two rivers, and bring it into a new position, was a very deli cate and hazardous task, and Grant performed it with consummate skill. He sent a part of his cavalry to make a demonstration on the James above Richmond and destroy portions of Lee s line of supplies from the Shenandoah ; he had a line of intrenchments constructed along the north bank of the Chickahominy, from his position at Cold Harbor down to the point where he expected to cross ; and directed General Butler to send two vessels loaded with stone to be sunk in the channel of the James as far up stream as possible, so that the Confederate gunboats could not come down and attack the army while it was crossing. A large number of vessels had been collected at Fort Monroe, to be used as ferry-boats when 398 GRANT CROSSES THE JAMES. [1864. the army should reach the James. The so-called " bridges " on the Chickahominy were now only names of geographical points, for all the bridges had been destroyed ; but each column was to carry its pontoon train. The march began in the evening of June 12, and at midday of the I3th a pontoon was thrown across at Long Bridge, fifteen miles below the Cold Harbor position, and Wilson s cavalry crossed and immediately moved out a short distance on the roads toward Richmond, to watch the move ments of the enemy and prevent a surprise. The Fifth corps followed quickly, and took a position covering these roads till the remainder of the army could cross. The Second, Sixth, and Ninth corps crossed the Chickahominy a few miles farther down ; while the Eighteenth had em barked at White House, to be sent around by water. In the evening of the I3th, the Fifth reached Wilcox s Landing on the James, ten miles below Haxall s, where McClellan had reached the river at the close of his peninsula campaign. The other corps reached the landing on the i4th. The river there is more than two thousand feet wide; but between four o clock P.M. and midnight a pontoon was laid, and the crossing began. The artillery and trains were sent over first, and the infantry followed in a long procession that oc cupied forty-eight hours, the rear guard of the Sixth corps passing over at midnight of the i6th. Thus an army of more than one hundred thou sand men was taken from a line of trenches 1864.] EWELL SEES THE END. 399 within a few yards of the enemy, marched fifty miles, and with all its paraphernalia carried across two rivers and placed in a position threaten ing that enemy s capital, without a serious col lision or disaster. General Ewell said that when the National army got across the James River he knew that the Confederate cause was lost, and it was the duty of their authorities to make the best terms they could while they still had a right to claim concessions. CHAPTER XXIV. THE CONFEDERATE CRUISERS. WHILE the Army of the Potomac was putting itself in fighting trim after its change of base, a de cisive battle of the war took place three thousand miles away. A vessel known in the builders yard as the " 290," and afterward famous as the "Ala bama," had been built for the Confederate Govern ment in 1862, at Birkenhead, opposite Liverpool. She was of wood, a fast sailer, having both steam and canvas, was two hundred and twenty feet long, and rated at one thousand and forty tons. She was thoroughly fitted in every respect, and cost nearly a quarter of a million dollars. The Ameri can Minister at London notified the British Gov ernment that such a ship was being built in an English yard, in violation of the neutrality laws, and demanded that she be prevented from leaving the Mersey. But either through design or stupid ity the Government moved too slowly, and the cruiser escaped to sea. She went to Fayal, in the Azores, and there took on board her guns and coal, sent out to her in a merchant ship from Lon don. Her commander was Raphael Semmes, who had served in the United States navy. Her crew were mainly Englishmen. For nearly two years she roamed the seas, traversing the Atlantic and 1864.] CAREER OF THE ALABAMA. 40 1 Indian oceans and the Gulf of Mexico, and cap tured sixty-nine American merchantmen, most of which were burned at sea. Their crews were sent away on passing vessels, or put ashore at some convenient port. Several war-vessels were sent out in search of the " Alabama," but they were at constant disadvantage from the rule that when two hostile vessels are in a neutral port, the first that leaves must have been gone twenty-four hours before the other is permitted to follow. In French, and especially in British ports, the " Alabama" was always welcome, and enjoyed every possible facility, because she was destroying American commerce. In June, 1864, she was in the harbor of Cher bourg. France. The United States man-of-war > " Kearsarge," commanded by John A. Winslow, found her there, and lay off the port, watching her. By not going into the harbor, Winslow escaped the twenty-four-hour rule. Semmes sent a note to Winslow, asking him not to go away, as he was coming out to fight ; but no such challenge was called for, as the " Kearsarge" had come for that purpose, and was patiently waiting for her prey. She was almost exactly the size of the " Alabama," and the armaments were so nearly alike as to make a very fair match. But her crew were altogether superior in gun-practice, and she had protected her boilers by chains " stoppered" up and down the side amidships, as had been done in the fights at New Orleans and elsewhere. On Sunday morning, June 19, the Alabama " steamed out of the har- 4O2 THE KEARSARGE SINKS THE ALABAMA. [1864. bor amid the plaudits of thousands of Englishmen and Frenchmen, who had not a doubt that she was going 1 to certain victory. The "Kearsarge" steamed away as she approached, and drew her off to a distance of seven or eight miles from the coast. Winslow then turned and closed with his enemy. The two vessels steamed around on op posite sides of a circle half a mile in diameter, firing their starboard guns. The practice on the " Alabama" was very bad; she began firing first, discharged her guns rapidly, and produced little or no effect, though a dozen of her shots struck her antagonist. But when the "Kearsarge" began firing there was war in earnest. Her guns were handled with great skill, and every shot told. One of them cut the mizzenmast so that it fell. An other exploded a shell among the crew of the " Alabama s" pivot gun, killing half of them and dismounting the piece. Balls rolled in at the port-holes and swept away the gunners ; and several pierced the hull below the water line, making the ship tremble from stem to stern, and letting in floods of water. The vessels had described seven circles, and the " Alabama s " deck was strewn with the dead, when at the end of an hour she was found to be sinking, her colors were struck, and her officers, with a keen sense of chivalry, threw into the sea the swords that were no longer their own. The "Kearsarge" lowered boats to take off the crew ; but suddenly the stern settled, the bow was thrown up into the air, and down went the "Ala bama " to the bottom of the British Channel, car- 18M.] CAREER OF THE SUMTER. 403 rying an unknown number of her men. An Eng lish yacht picked up Semmesand about forty sailors and steamed away to Southampton with them ; others were rescued by the boats of the " Kear- sarge," and still others were drowned. In January, 1863, the "Alabama" had fought the side-wheel steamer " Hatteras," of the United States navy, off Galveston, Texas, and injured her so that she sank soon after surrend-ering. The remainder of the "Alabama s" career, till she met the " Kearsarge," had been spent in capturing merchant vessels and either burning them or releas ing them under bonds. Before Captain Semmes received command of the " Alabama," he had cruised in the " Sumter" on a similar mission, cap turing eighteen vessels, when her course was ended in the harbor of Gibraltar, in February, 1862, where she was blockaded by the United States steamers " Kearsarge" and "Tuscarora," and as there was no probability that she could escape to sea, her captain and crew abandoned her. A score of other Confederate cruisers roamed the seas, to prey upon United States commerce, but none of them became quite so famous as the "Sumter" and the "Alabama." They included the " Shenandoah," which made thirty-eight cap tures ; the " Florida," which made thirty-six ; the " Tallahassee," which made twenty-seven ; the " Tacony," which made fifteen ; and the " Georgia," which made ten. The " Florida" was captured in the harbor of Bahia, Brazil, in October, 1864, by a United States man-of-war, in violation of the 404 RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE CRUISERS. [1863. neutrality of the port. For this the United States Government apologized to Brazil and ordered the restoration of the " Florida" to the harbor where she was captured. But in Hampton Roads she met with an accident and sank. It was generally believed that the apparent accident was contrived with the connivance, if not by direct order, of the Government. Most of these cruisers were built in British ship yards, and whenever they touched at British ports to obtain supplies and land prisoners, their com manders were ostentatiously welcomed and lionized by the British merchants and officials. The English builders were proceeding to con struct several swift iron-clad cruisers for the Con federate Government, when the United States Government protested so vigorously that the British Government prevented them from leaving port. One or two passages from Secretary Seward s despatches to Charles Francis Adams, the American Minister at London, contain the whole argument that was afterward elaborated before a high court of arbitration, and secured a verdict against England. More than this, these passages contain what probably was the control ling reason that determined England not to try the experiment of intervention. Secretary Seward wrote, under date of October 5-6, 1863 : " I have had the honor to receive and to submit to the President your despatch of the i7th of September, which relates to the iron-clad vessels built at Laird s ship-yards for war against the 1863.] SECRETARY SEWARD s DESPATCHES. 405 United States, which is accompanied by a very interesting correspondence between yourself and Earl Russell. The positions you have taken in this correspondence are approved. It is indeed a cause of profound concern that, notwithstanding an engagement which the President has accepted as final, there still remains a doubt whether those vessels will be prevented from coming out, accord ing to the original hostile purposes of the enemies of the United States residing in Great Britain. " Earl Russell remarks that her Majesty s Gov ernment, having proclaimed neutrality, have in good faith exerted themselves to maintain it. I have not to say now for the first time, that, how ever satisfactory that position may be to the Brit ish nation, it does not at all relieve the gravity of the question in the United States. The proclama tion of neutrality was a concession of belligerent rights to the insurgents, and was deemed by this Government as unnecessary, and in effect as unfriendly, as it has since proved injurious to this country. The successive preparations of hostile naval expeditions in Great Britain are regarded here as fruits of that injurious proclamation. . . . It is hardly necessary to say that the United States stand upon what they think impregnable ground, when they refuse to be derogated, by any act of British Government, from their position as a sovereign nation in amity with Great Britain, and placed upon a footing of equality with domestic insurgents who have risen up in resistance against their authority. 406 RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE CRUISERS. [1863. " It does not remain for us even to indicate to Great Britain the serious consequences which must ensue if the iron-clads shall come forth upon their work of destruction. They have been fully revealed to yourself, and you have made them known to Earl Russell, within the restraints which an honest and habitual respect for the Government and the people of Great Britain imposes. It seems to me that her Majesty s Government might be expected to perceive and appreciate them, even if we were henceforth silent upon the subject. When our unhappy civil war broke out, we distinctly con fessed that we knew what great temptations it offered to foreign intervention and aggression, and that in no event could such intervention or aggres sion be endured. It was apparent that such aggression, if it should come, must travel over the seas, and therefore must be met and encountered, if at all, by maritime resistance. We addressed ourselves to prepare the means of such resistance. We have now a navy, not indeed as ample as we proposed, but yet one which we feel assured is not altogether inadequate to the purposes of self- defence, and it is yet rapidly increasing in men, material, and engines of war. Besides this regular naval force, the President has asked, and Congress has given him, authority to convert the mercantile marine into armed squadrons, by the issue of letters of marque and reprisal. All the world might see, if it would, that the great arm of naval defence has not been thus invigorated for the mere pur pose of maintaining a blockade, or enforcing our 1863.] SECRETARY SEWARD S DESPATCHES. 407 authority against the insurgents ; for practically they have never had an open port, or built and armed, nor could they from their own resources build and arm, a single ship-of-war. - " Thus the world is left free to understand that our measures of maritime war are intended to resist maritime aggression, which is constantly threat ened from abroad and even more constantly appre hended at home. That it would be employed for that purpose, if such aggression should be at tempted, would seem certain, unless, indeed, there should be reason to suppose that the people do not in this respect approve of the policy and sym pathize with the sentiments of the executive gov ernment. But the resistance of foreign aggres sion by all the means in our power, and at the hazard, if need be, of the national life itself, is the one point of policy on which the American people seem to be unanimous and in complete harmony with the President. " The United States understand that the Alabama is a pirate ship-of-war, roving over the seas, capturing, burning, sinking, and destroying American vessels, without any lawful authority from the British Government or from any other sovereign power, in violation of the law of nations, and contemptuously defying all judicial tribunals equally of Great Britain and all other states. The United States understand that she was purposely built for war against the United States, by British subjects, in a British port, and prepared there to be armed and equipped with a specified armament 408 RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE CRUISERS. [1863. adapted to her construction for the very piratical career which she is now pursuing ; that her arm ament and equipment, duly adapted to this ship- of-war and no other, were simultaneously prepared by the same British subjects in a British port, to be placed on board to complete her preparation for that career ; that when she^was ready and her armament and equipment were equally ready, she was clandestinely and by connivance sent by her British holders, and the armament and equipment were at the same time clandestinely sent through the same connivance by the British subjects who had prepared them, to a common port outside of British waters, and there the armament and equip ment of the Alabama as a ship-of-war were com pleted, and she was sent forth on her work of de struction with a crew chiefly of British subjects, enlisted in and proceeding from a British port, in fraud of the laws of Great Britain and in violation of the peace and sovereignty of the United States. 11 The United States understand that the pur pose of the building, armament and equipment, and expedition of the vessel was one single crimi nal intent, running equally through the building and the equipment and the expedition, and fully completed and executed when the Alabama was finally despatched ; and that this intent brought the whole transaction of building, armament, and equipment within the lawful jurisdiction of Great Britain, where the main features of the crime were executed. The United States understand that they gave sufficient and adequate notice to the 1863.] SECRETARY SEWARD S DESPATCHES. 409 British Government that this wrongful enterprise was begun and was being carried out to its com pletion ; and that upon receiving this notice her Majesty s Government were bound by treaty obli gations and by the law of nations to prevent its execution, and that if the diligence which was due had been exercised by the British Government the expedition of the Alabama would have been pre vented, and the wrongful enterprise of British subjects would have been defeated. The United States confess that some effort was made by her Majesty s Government, but it was put forth too late and was too soon abandoned. Upon these principles of law and these assumptions of fact, the United States do insist, and must continue to insist, that the British Government is justly respon sible for the damages which the peaceful, law-abid ing citizens of the United States sustain by the depredations of the Alabama. " Though indulging a confident belief in the correctness of our positions in regard to the claims in question, and others, we shall be willing at all times hereafter, as well as now, to consider the evidence and the arguments which her Majesty s Government may offer, to show that they are invalid ; and if we shall not be convinced, there is no fair and just form of conventional arbitrament or reference to which we shall not be willing to submit them." In 1856 the great powers of Europe signed at Paris a treaty by which they relinquished the right of privateering, and some of the lesser powers 4IO THE RIGHT OF PRIVATEERING. [1861. afterward accepted a general invitation to join in it. The United States offered to sign it, on con dition that a clause be inserted declaring that o private property on the high seas, if not contraband of war, should be exempt from seizure by the public armed vessels of an enemy, as well as by private ones. The powers that had negotiated the treaty declined to make this amendment, and therefore the United States did not become a party to it. When the war of secession began, and the Confederate authorities proclaimed their readiness to issue letters of marque for private vessels to prey upon American commerce, the United States Government offered to accept the treaty without amendment; but England and France declined to permit our Government to join in the treaty then, if its provisions against priva teering were to be understood as applying to vessels sent out under Confederate authority. There the subject was dropped, and while the insurgents were thus left at liberty to do whatever damage they could upon the high seas, the United States Government was also left free to send not only its own cruisers but an unlimited number of privateers against the commerce of any nation with which it might become involved in war. When at the beginning of President Lincoln s administration Mr. Adams was sent out as Minis ter at London, he carried instructions that included this passage : " If, as the President does not at all apprehend, you shall unhappily find her Majesty s Government tolerating the application of the so- 1861-5. J WHY ENGLAND DID NOT INTERVENE. 4! I called seceding States, or wavering about it, you will not leave them to suppose for a moment that they can grant that application and remain the friends of the United States. You may even assure them promptly, in that case, that if they determine to recognize, they may at the same time prepare to enter into alliance with the ene mies of this republic." England had had a costly experience of Ameri can privateering under sail in the war of 1812-15, and she now saw what privateering could become under steam power. While she was rejoicing at the destruction of American merchantmen, she knew what might happen to her own. Let her become involved in war with the United States, and not only a hundred war-ships but a vast fleet of privateers would at once set sail from American ports, and in a few months her commerce would be swept from every sea. The fisherman on the coast of Maine would carpet his hut with Persian rugs of the rarest patterns, and the ship-carpenter s children would play with baubles intended to deco rate the Court of St. James.* The navies of England and France combined could not blockade o the harbors of New England ; and from those harbors, where every material is at hand, might have sailed a fleet whose operations would not * See lists of goods captured by American privateers in the war of 1812 " Eighteen bales of Turkish carpets, forty-three bales of raw silk, twenty boxes of gums, a hundred and sixty dozen swan-skins, six tons of ivory, $40,000 in gold dust, $80,000 in specie, $20,000 worth of indigo, $60,000 in bullion, $500,000 worth of dry goods, seven hundred tons of mahogany/ etc. in Coggeshall s " History of Ameri can Privateers." 412 THE SETTLEMENT BY ARBITRATION. [1872. only have impoverished the merchants of London, but called out the wail of famine from her popu lace. Other considerations were discussed ; but it was doubtless this contingency that furnished the controlling reason why the British Govern ment resisted the tempting offers of cotton and free trade, resisted the importunities of Louis Napoleon, resisted the clamor of its more reck less subjects, resisted its own prejudice against republican institutions, and refused to recognize the Southern Confederacy as an independent nation. It may have been this consideration also that induced it, after the war was over, to agree to exactly that settlement by arbitration which was suggested by Secretary Seward in the despatch quoted above. In 1872 the international court of arbitration, sitting in Geneva, Switzerland, decided that the position taken by the United States Government in regard to responsibility for the Confederate cruisers was right ; and that the British Government, for failing to prevent their escape from its ports, must pay the United States fifteen and a half million dollars. So far as settle ment of the principle was concerned, the award gave Americans all the satisfaction they could desire ; but the sum named fell far short of the damage that had been wrought. Charles Sumner, speaking in his place in the Senate, had contended with great force for the exaction of what were called " consequential damages," which would have swelled the amount to hundreds of millions, but in this he was overruled. CHAPTER XXV. THE ATLANTA CAMPAIGN. AT the West, the first important movements in 1864 were for the purpose of securing the Missis sippi River, possession of which had been won by the victories of Farragut at New Orleans and Grant at Vicksburg, and setting free the large garrisons that were required to hold the important places on its banks. On the 3d of February General Wil liam T. Sherman set out from Vicksburg with a force of somewhat more than twenty thousand men, in two columns commanded respectively by Generals McPherson and Hurlbut. Their des tination was Meridian, over one hundred miles east of Vicksburg, where the Mobile and Ohio Railroad is crossed by that from Jackson to Selma. The march was made in eleven days, without nota ble incident, except that General Sherman nar rowly escaped capture at Decatur. He had stopped for the night at a log house, Hurlbut s col umn had passed on to encamp four miles beyond the town, and McPherson s had not yet come up. A few straggling wagons of Hurlbut s train were attacked at the cross-roads by a detachment of Confederate cavalry, and Sherman ran out of the house to see wagons and horsemen mingled in a cloud of dust, with pistol bullets flying in every 414 THE MERIDIAN EXPEDITION. [1864. direction. With the few orderlies and clerks that belonged to head-quarters, he was preparing to barricade a corn-crib where they could defend themselves, when an infantry regiment was brought back from Hurlburt s corps and quickly cleared the ground. General Grant had an equally narrow escape from capture just before he set out on his Virginia campaign. A special train that was taking him to the front reached Warrenton Junc tion just after a detachment of Confederate cavalry, still in sight, had crossed the track at that point. General Leonidas Polk, who was in command at Meridian, marched out at the approach of Sher man s columns, and retreated into Alabama per haps deceived by the report Sherman had caused to be spread that the destination of the expedition was Mobile. The National troops entered the town on the i4th, and at once began a thorough destruction of the arsenal and storehouses, the machine-shops, the station, and especially the rail roads. Miles of the track were torn up, the ties burned, and the rails heated and then bent and twisted, or wound around trees. These were popularly called " Jeff Davis s neckties," and " Sher man s hair-pins." Wherever the columns passed, they destroyed the mills and factories and sta tions, leaving untouched only the dwelling-houses. Sherman was determined to disable those railroads so completely that the Confederates could not use them again, and in this he succeeded, as he did in everything he undertook personally. But another enterprise, intended to be carried out at the same 1864.] THE SHREVEPORT EXPEDITION. 415 time, was not so fortunate. He sent General W. Sooy Smith with a cavalry force to destroy For rest s Confederate cavalry, which was very auda cious in its frequent raids, and liable at any time to dash upon the National railroad communication in middle Tennessee. Smith had about seven thousand men, and was to leave Memphis on the ist of February and go straight to Meridian, Sher man telling him he would be sure to encounter Forrest on the way, and how he must manage the fight. But Smith did not leave Memphis till the nth, and, instead of defeating Forrest, allowed Forrest to defeat him and drive him back to Memphis ; so that Sherman waited at Meridian till the 2Oth, and then returned with his expedition to Vicksburg, followed by thousands of negroes of all ages, who could not and would not be turned back, but pressed close upon the army, in their firm be lief that its mission was their deliverance. While the gap that had been made in the Con federacy by the seizure of the Mississippi was thus widened by destruction of railroads east of that river, General Banks, in command at New Orleans, attempted to perform a somewhat similar service west of it. With about fifteen thousand men he set out in March for Shreveport, at the head of steam navigation on Red River, to be joined at Alexandria by ten thousand men under General A. J. Smith (loaned for the occasion by Sherman from the force at Vicksburg) and by Commodore David D. Porter with a fleet of gunboats and transports. Smith and Porter arrived promptly at 41 6 BATTLE OF SABINE CROSS-ROADS. [1864. the rendezvous, captured Fort DeRussey below Alexandria, and waited for Banks. After his arrival, the army moved by roads parallel with the river, and the gunboats kept even pace with them, though with great difficulty because of low water. Small bodies of Confederate troops appeared fre quently, but were easily brushed aside by the army, while the fire from the gunboats destroyed a great many who were foolhardy enough to attack them with musketry and field guns. So used had the troops become to this proceeding that common precautions were relaxed, and the army jogged along strung out for twenty miles on a single road, with a small cavalry force in the advance, then the wagon-trains, and then the infantry. As they approached Sabine Cross Roads, April 8, they were confronted by a strong Confederate force commanded by General Richard Taylor, and sud denly there was a battle, though neither com mander intended it. Taylor, before camping for the night, had sent out troops merely to drive back the advance guard of the expedition. But the men on both sides became excited, and the Nationals fought persistently for an hour and a half to save their trains, while Banks tried to bring forward his infantry, but in vain, because his wagons blocked the road. At the end of that time the line sud denly gave way, and the cavalry and teamsters rushed back in a disorderly mass, followed closely by the victorious enemy. Banks s personal efforts to rally them were useless, and he was borne away by the tide. Three miles in the rear the Nine- 1864.] BATTLE OF PLEASANT HILL. 417 teenth corps was drawn up in line, and here the rout was stayed. The Confederates attacked this line, but could not break it, and at nightfall retired. Banks had lost over three thousand men, nineteen guns, and a large amount of stores. He fell back a short distance, to Pleasant Hill, where the Six teenth and Seventeenth corps came up, and next day he had nearly his whole force in line. Here the Confederates, after spending most of the day in skirmishing and in gathering up the plunder, made a determined assault late in the afternoon, but were repelled, and, being attacked in return, lost many men and several guns, some of those captured the day before being recaptured. But Banks, instead of following up his victory, fell back to the river at Grand Ecore, partly for the reason that he had been ordered to return Smith s bor rowed troops. Then a new difficulty arose. The water in the river had fallen so that the fleet, taken up over the rapids with difficulty, could not pass down again. The boats appeared to be in imminent danger of capture, and it was seriously proposed to abandon and destroy them. But a genius came to the front in the person of Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Bailey, who said he could build dams across the river, and raise the water enough to float the fleet. He was laughed at by the regulation army engineers, but got permission to try the experiment, and set to work with three thousand men, cutting down trees, hauling stone, and building cribs. In eight days the work was done, the water had risen 4i 8 BAILEY S DAM. [1864. sufficiently, and the gunboat "Lexington" took the lead in the passage through the narrow open ing that had been left in the dam. Here the water rushed like a mill-race, and as she swung into the current with a full head of steam on, probably few of the thousands of witnesses expected to see her make the passage unharmed. But though she rolled heavily, and seemed to hang for a moment on the edge of the rocks, she passed down without accident, and was quickly followed by three other gunboats. Within a few days the whole fleet was thus rescued, and steamed down into the Missis sippi. Bailey s dam most of which is said to be standing to this day was one of the most unique feats of engineering ever attempted. General Steele had marched with fifteen thou sand men from Little Rock toward Shreveport, to cooperate with Banks s expedition. But after the battles of Sabine Cross-Roads and Pleasant Hill the Confederates turned upon him and drove him back to Little Rock, capturing several of his guns and hundreds of wagons. All these expeditions were preliminary to the great campaign that General Grant had designed for an army under Sherman, simultaneous with that conducted by himself in Virginia, and almost equal to it in difficulty and importance. The object was to move southward from Chattanooga, cutting into the heart of the Confederacy where as yet it had been untouched, and reach and capture Atlanta, which was important as a railroad centre and for its manufactures of military supplies. This in- 1864.] SHERMAN AND JOHNSTON. 419 volved conflict with the army under General Joseph E. Johnston, by some esteemed the ablest general in the Confederate service. If he was not the ablest in all respects, he was certainly equal to the conducting of a defensive campaign with great skill. There could be no running over an army com manded by him ; it must be approached cautiously and fought valiantly. The distance from Chatta nooga to Atlanta, in a straight line, is a hundred miles, through a country of hills and streams, with a great many naturally strong defensive positions. Johnston was at Dalton, with an army which he sums up at about forty-three thousand, infantry, cavalry, and artillery. But this (according to the Confederate method of counting) means only the men actually carrying muskets or sabres or hand ling the guns, excluding all officers, musicians, teamsters, etc. If counted after the ordinary method, his army probably numbered not fewer than fifty-five thousand. To contend with this force, Sherman had about a hundred thousand men, consisting of the Army of the Cumberland, commanded by General George H. Thomas, the Army of the Tennessee, com manded by General James B. McPherson, and the Army of the Ohio, commanded by General John M. Schofield. The discrepancy in numbers seems very great, until we consider that Sherman was not only to take the offensive, but must constantly leave detachments to guard his communications ; for he drew all his supplies from Nashville, over one single-track railroad, and it was liable to be 42O SHERMAN AND JOHNSTON. [1864. broken at any time by guerilla raids. As he ad vanced into the enemy s country, this line would become longer, and the danger of its being broken still greater. Johnston, on the contrary, had noth ing to fear in the rear, for he was fighting on his own ground, and could bring his entire force to the front at every emergency. All things consid ered, it was pretty nearly an even match. In one respect, however, Sherman had a decided advan tage ; he possessed the confidence of the Govern ment that he served, while Johnston did not. At least, Johnston complains that Mr. Davis did not trust him as he should, and thwarted him in many ways; and in this the General appears to be corrob orated by the circumstances of the campaign. When Sherman concentrated his forces at Chat tanooga, and considered the means of supply, he found that about one hundred and thirty cars loaded with provisions must arrive at that point every day. But that railroad had not cars and locomotives enough for such a task, and so he sent orders to Louisville for the seizure of trains arriving there from the north, and soon had rolling-stock in great abundance and variety. While he thus provided liberally for necessary supplies, he excluded all luxuries. Tents were taken only for the sick and wounded. The sole exception to this was made in favor of General Thomas, who needed a tent and a small wagon-train, which the soldiers immedi ately christened " Thomas s Circus." Sherman had no tent or train. Every man, whether officer or private, carried provisions for five days. 1864.] SHERMAN BEGINS THE CAMPAIGN. 421 Thus equipped and disciplined, the army set out from Chattanooga on the 5th of May (the day on which Grant entered the Wilderness), following the line of the railroad south toward Atlanta. A direct approach to Dalton was impossible, be cause of John ston s fortifica tions at Tunnel Hill. So Sher man made a feint of attack ing there, and sent McPherson southward t o march through the gap in the mountains, strike Resaca, and cut the rail road over which Johnston drew all his supplies. Here at the very outset was the brilliant opportunity of the cam paign, not to occur again. McPherson reached Resaca, but found fortifications and an opposing force there, and just lacked the necessary boldness to attack promptly and vigorously, thrusting his army into a position \vhere it would have made the destruction of Johnston s almost certain. In stead of this, he fell back to the gap, and waited for the remainder of the army to join him 422 JOHNSTON ABANDONS RESACA, [1864. there. But this enabled Johnston to learn what was going on, and when Sherman had passed down to the gap with his entire army, he found, of course, that his antagonist had fallen back to Resaca and concentrated his forces there in a strong position. On the 1 4th of May, Sherman s army was in posi tion around Resaca on the north and west, and on that and the next day there was continual skirmish ing and artillery firing, though nothing like a great battle. Neither general was willing to fight at disadvantage ; Sherman would not attack the intrenchments, and Johnston would not come out of them. McPherson, on the right, advanced his line of battle till he gained an elevated position from which his guns could destroy the railroad bridge over the Oostenaula in the Confederate o rear, and all attempts to drive him out of this position ended only in bloody repulse. On the left of the line, Hooker exhibited something of his usual dash by capturing a small portion of the enemy s intrenchments, with four guns and some prisoners. Meanwhile, Sherman had thrown two pontoon bridges across the river three miles below the town, so that he could send over a detachment to break the railroad, and had also sent a division of cavalry down the river, to cross at some lower point for the same purpose. Johnston, therefore, seeing his communications threatened so seriously, and having no good roads by which he could retreat eastward, did not wait to be cooped up in Resaca, but in the night of the I5th retired south ward across the river, following the railroad, and 1864.] AND CROSSES THE ETOWAH. 423 burned the bridges behind him. Sherman thus came into possession of Resaca, but Resaca was not what he wanted, and without the slightest delay he started his entire army in pursuit of the enemy. Hooker crossed the river by fords and ferries above the town, Thomas and Schofield repaired the half-burned bridges and used them, McPherson crossed by the pontoons. The enemy was found, on the iQth, in position at Cassville, just east of Kingston, and apparently ready to fight ; but when Sherman s columns con verged on the place the Confederates, after some sharp skirmishing, retreated again in the night of the 2Oth, and crossed Etowah River. Johnston had really intended to fight here, and he explains his refusal to do so by saying that Hood and Polk told him their corps could not hold their positions, as a portion of each was enfiladed by the National artillery. Hood s version of the mysterious retreat is to the effect that he wanted to assume the offen sive, marching out with his own corps and a part of Folk s to overwhelm Schofield, who was sepa rated from the remainder of the National army. Here Sherman halted for a few days, to get his army well together, re-provision it, and repair the railroad in his rear. Twenty years before, when he was a young lieutenant, he had ridden through the country from Charleston, S. C., to northwestern Georgia, and he still retained a good recollection of the topography. Knowing that Allatoona Pass, through which runs the rail road south of Kingston, was very strong and would 424 FIGHTING AT NEW HOPE CHURCH. [1864. probably be held by Johnston, he diverged from the railroad at Kingston, passing considerably west of it, and directed his columns toward Dallas ; his purpose being to threaten Marietta and Atlanta so as to cause Johnston to withdraw from Alla- toona and release his hold on the railroad, which became more and more necessary to the invading army as it advanced into the country. Johnston understood this manoeuvre, and moved westward to meet it. The armies, in an irregular way - for each was somewhat scattered and uncertain of the other s exact position came into collision at the cross-roads by New Hope Church. Around this place for six days there was continuous fight ing, sometimes mere skirmishing, and sometimes an attack by a heavy detachment of one party or the other, but all such attacks, on either side, were costly and fruitless. The general advantage, how ever, was with Sherman ; for as he gradually got his lines into proper order, he strengthened his right, and then reached out with his left toward the railroad, secured all the wagon-roads from Allatoona, and sent out a strong force of cavalry to occupy that pass and repair the railroad. Johnston then left his position at New Hope Church, and took up a new one. Thus ended the month of May in this campaign, where each commander exercised the utmost skill, neither was guilty of anything rash, and the results were such as would naturally follow from the military conditions with which it began. The losses on each side, thus far, were fewer than ten 1864.] THE POSITION AT PINE MOUNTAIN. 425 thousand men killed, wounded, and missing ; but strong positions had been successively taken up, turned, abandoned; and Sherman was steadily drawing nearer to his goal. Johnston s new position was on the slopes of Kenesaw, Pine, and Lost mountains, thus cross ing the railroad above Marietta. It had the advan tage of a height from which everything done by Sherman s approaching army could be seen ; but it had the disadvantage of a line ten miles long, and so disposed that one part could not readily reenforce another. Though heavy rains were falling, the National army kept close to its antag onist, and intrenched at every advance. The railroad was repaired behind it, and the trains that brought its supplies ran up almost to its front. In one instance an engineer detached his locomotive and ran forward to a tank, where he quietly took in the necessary supply of water, while a Con federate battery on the mountain fired several shots, but none of them quite hit the locomotive, which woke the echoes with its shrill whistling as it ran back out of range. When the rain was over, Sherman occupied a strongly intrenched line that followed the contour of Johnston s and was at nearly all points close to it. Both sides maintained skirmish-lines that were almost as strong as lines of battle, and occupied rifle-pits. From these the roar of musketry was almost unceasing, and there was a steady loss of men. On June 14, while General Sherman was reconnoitering the enemy s position, he observed 426 JOHNSTON AT KENESAW. [1864. a battery on the crest of Pine Mountain, and near it a group of officers with field-glasses. Ordering a battery to fire two or three volleys at them, he rode on. A few hours later, his signal officer told him that the Confederates had signalled from Pine Mountain to Marietta, " Send an ambulance for General Polk s body." The group on the moun tain had consisted of Generals Johnston, Hardee, and Polk, and a few soldiers that had gathered around them. One of the cannon-balls had struck General Polk in the chest and cut him in two. He was fifty-eight years old at the time of his death, had been educated at West Point, but after ward studied theology, and at the outbreak of the war had been for twenty years the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Louisiana. The next day Sherman advanced his lines, intending to attack between Kenesaw and Pine Mountain, but found that Johnston had withdrawn from Pine Mountain, taking up a shorter line, from Kenesaw to Lost Mountain. . Sherman promptly occupied the ground, and gathered in a large number of prisoners, including the I4th Alabama regiment entire. The next day he pressed forward again, only to find that the enemy had still further contracted his lines, abandoning Lost Mountain, but still occupying Kenesaw, and covering Marietta and the roads to Atlanta with the extension of his left wing, The successive positions to which Johnston s army had fallen back were prepared beforehand by gangs of slaves impressed for the purpose, so that his soldiers had little digging 18W.] SHERMAN IN CLOSE CONTACT. 427 to do, and could save their strength for fighting. After a time Sherman adopted a similar policy by setting at work the crowds of negroes that flocked to his camp, feeding them from the army supplies, and promising them ten dollars a month, as he was authorized to clo by an act of Congress. The fortifications consisted of a sort of framework of rails and logs, covered with earth thrown up from a ditch on each side. When there was opportunity, they were finished with a heavy head-log laid along the top, which rested in notches cut in other logs that extended back at right angles and formed an inclined plane down which it could roll harmlessly if knocked out of place by a cannon- shot. Miles of such works were often constructed in a single night; and they were absolutely necessary, when veteran armies were facing each other with weapons of precision in their hands. Sherman was now facing a little south of east, and kept pressing his lines closer up to Johnston s, with rifle and artillery firing going on all the time. On the 2 ist the divisions of Generals Wood and Stanley gained new positions, on the southern flank of Kenesaw, where several determined assaults failed to dislodge them ; and the next day the troops of Hooker and Schofield pressed for ward to within three miles of Marietta, and with stood an attack by Hood s corps, inflicting upon him a loss of a thousand men. As the National line was now lengthened quite as far as seemed pru dent, and still the Confederate communications were not severed, Sherman determined upon the 428 BATTLE OF KENESAW. [1864. hazardous experiment of attacking the enemy in his intrenchments. He chose two points for assault, about a mile apart, and on the morning of the 2 /th launched heavy columns against them, while firing was at the same time kept up all along the line. He expected to break the centre, and with half of his army take half of Johnston s in reverse, while with the remainder of his troops he held the other half so close that it could not go to the rescue. But his columns wasted away before the fire from the intrenchments, and, as in Pickett s charge at Gettysburg and Grant s assault at Cold Harbor, only a .remnant reached the enemy s works, there to be killed or captured. Among those sacri ficed were Brigadier-Generals Daniel McCook and Charles G. Harker, both of whom died of their wounds. This experiment cost Sherman over two thousand five hundred men, while Johnston s loss was but little over eight hundred. It was evident that any repetition would be use less, and the approved principles of warfare seemed to supply no alternative. What General Sherman therefore did was to disregard the maxim that an army must always hold fast to its communications ; and by doing the same thing on a grander scale six months later he won his largest fame. He determined to let go of the railroad north of Ken- esaw, take ten days provisions in wagons, and move his whole army southward to seize the road below Marietta. This would compel Johnston either to fall back farther toward Atlanta, or come out and fight him in his intrenchments which, as 1864.] CROSSING THE CHATTAHOOCHEE. 429 both commanders well knew, was almost certain destruction to the assaulting party. In the night of July 2, McPherson s troops, who had the left or north of the line, drew out of their works and marched southward, passing behind the lines held by Thomas and Schofield. This was the same manoeuvre as that by which Grant had carried his army to its successive positions between the Wil derness and the James River, except that he moved by the left flank and Sherman by the right, and Grant never had to let go of his communica tions, being supplied by lines of wagons from vari ous points on the Potomac. When Johnston saw what Sherman was doing he promptly abandoned his strong position at Kenesaw, and fell back to the Chattahoochee ; but he did not, as Sherman hoped, attempt to cross the stream at once. Intrenchments had been pre pared for him on the north bank, and here he stopped. Sherman, expecting to catch his enemy in the confusion of crossing a stream, pressed on rapidly with his whole army, and ran up against what he says was one of the strongest pieces of field fortification he has ever seen. A thousand slaves had been at work on it for a month. And yet, like many other things in the costly business of war, it was an enormous outlay to serve a very brief purpose. For Sherman not only occupied ground that overlooked it, but held the river for miles above and below, and was thus able to cross over and turn the position. Johnston must have known this when the fortifications were in process 430 HOOD SUPERSEDES JOHNSTON, [1864. of construction, and their only use was to protect his army from assault while it was crossing the river. On the gth of July, Schofield s army crossed above the Confederate position, lay ing two pontoon bridges, and intrenched itself in a strong position on the left bank. Johnston, thus compelled to surrender the stream, crossed that night with his entire army, and burned the railroad and other bridges behind him. Sherman was almost as cautious in the pursuit, wherever there was any serious danger, as Johnston was in the retreat ; and he not only chose an upper crossing, farther from Atlanta, but spent a week in prepa rations to prevent disaster, before he threw over his entire army. This he did on the 1 7th, and the next day moved it by a grand right wheel toward the city of Atlanta. The Chattahoochee was the last great obstruc tion before the fortifications of the Gate City were reached, and on the day that Sherman crossed it something else took place, which, in the opinion of many military critics, was even more disastrous to the fortunes of the Confederacy. This was the supersession of the careful and skilful Johnston by General John B. Hood, an impetuous and some times reckless fighter, but no strategist. The con troversy over the wisdom of this action on the part of the Confederate Government will probably never be satisfactorily closed. The merits of it can be sufficiently indicated by two brief extracts. The telegram conveying the orders of the War Department said : "As you have failed to arrest 1864.] AND ASSUMES THE OFFENSIVE. 43! the advance of the enemy to the vicinity of At lanta, far in the interior of Georgia, and express no confidence that you can defeat or repel him, you are hereby relieved from the command of the Army and Department of Tennessee, which you will immediately turn over to General Hood." General Johnston said in his reply : " As to the alleged cause of my removal, I assert that Sher man s army is much stronger compared with that of Tennessee than Grant s compared with that of Northern Virginia. Yet the enemy has been com pelled to advance much more slowly to the vicin ity of Atlanta than to that of Richmond and Petersburg, and penetrated much deeper into Vir ginia than into Georgia. Confident language by a military commander is not usually regarded as evidence of competence." Within twenty-four hours the National army learned that its antagonist had a new commander, and there was eager inquiry as to Hood s charac ter as a soldier. Schofield and McPherson had been his classmates at West Point, and from their testimony and the career of Hood as a corps com mander it was easily inferred that a new policy might be looked for, very different from John ston s. Sherman warned his army to be con stantly prepared for sallies of the enemy, and his prediction did not wait long for fulfilment. On the 2Oth, at noonday, as his army was slowly clos ing in upon the city, the Confederates left the intrenchments that Johnston had prepared for them along the line of Peachtree Creek, where he 432 ACTION AT PEACHTREE CREEK. [1864. would have awaited attack, and made a heavy assault upon Thomas, who held the right of the National line. The weight of the blow fell mainly upon Hooker s corps, and the attack was so furi ous and reckless that in many places friend and foe were intermingled, fighting hand to hand. A heavy column of Confederates attempted to fall upon an exposed flank of the Fourth Corps ; but Thomas promptly brought several batteries to play upon it, and at the end of two hours the enemy was driven back to his intrenchments, leav ing hundreds of dead on the field. Hooker also lost heavily, because his men fought without in trenchments or cover of any kind. A day or two later the line of works along Peachtree Creek was abandoned, and the Confederates fell back to the immediate defences of the city. On Sherman s left, which crossed the line of the railroad to Augusta, there had been some fighting for the possession of a hill and other ad vantageous positions ; but though these were gained, that flank was still without proper protec tion, and on the 22d Hood moved out with a part of his army and attacked it. He marched by a road parallel with the railroad, and the contour of the ground and the forests hid him until his men burst in upon the rear of Sherman s extreme left, seized a battery that was moving through the woods, and took possession of some of the camps. But McPherson s veterans were probably in ex pectation of such a movement, and under the direc tion of Generals Logan, Charles R. Wood, and 1864.] BATTLE OF ATLANTA. 433 Morgan L. Smith, quickly formed to meet it. That flank of the army was "refused" -turned back at a right angle with the main line and met the onsets of the Confederates with steady cour age from noon till night. Seven heavy assaults were made, resulting in seven bloody repulses, guns were taken and retaken, and finally a counter attack was made on the Confederate flank by Wood s division, assisted by twenty guns that fired over the heads of Wood s men as they ad vanced, which drove back the enemy, who retired slowly to their defences, carrying with them some of the captured guns. It had been intended that Wheeler s Confederate cavalry should capture McPherson s supply-trains, which were at Decatur ; but the troopers were fought off till the trains could be drawn back to a place of safety, and Wheeler only secured a very few wagons. The National loss in this battle was three thousand five hundred and twenty-one men killed, wounded, and missing, and ten guns. The total Confeder ate loss is unknown, but it was very heavy ; Gen eral Logan reported thirty-two hundred and twenty dead in front of his lines, and two thousand prisoners, half of whom were wounded. The most grievous loss to Sherman was General McPherson, who rode off into the woods at the first sounds of battle, almost alone. His horse soon came back bleeding and riderless, and an hour later the General s dead body was brought to headquarters. McPherson was a favorite in the army. He was but thirty-four years old, and 434 SHERMAN MOVES AGAIN BY THE RIGHT. [1854. with the exception of his error at the outset of the campaign, by which Johnston was allowed to escape from Dalton, he had a brilliant military record. General Oliver O. Howard, who had lost an arm at Fair Oaks and was now in com mand of the Fourth Corps, was promoted to McPherson s place in command of the Army of the Tennessee ; whereupon General Hooker, com manding the Twentieth Corps, who believed that the promotion properly belonged to him, asked to be relieved, and left the army. His corps was given to General Henry W. Slocum. Sherman now repeated his former manoeuvre, of moving by the right flank to strike the enemy s communications and compel him either to retreat again or fight at a disadvantage. The Army of the Tennessee was withdrawn from the left on the 27th, and marched behind the Army of the Cum berland to the extreme right, with the intention of extending the flank far enough to cross the rail road south of Atlanta. The movement was but partially performed when Hood made a heavy attack on that flank, and for four or five hours on the 28th there was bloody fighting. Logan s men hastily threw up a slight breastwork, from which they repelled six charges in quick succession, and later in the day several other charges by the Con federates broke against the immovable lines of the Fifteenth Corps. Meanwhile Sherman sent General Jefferson C. Davis s division to make a detour, and come up into position where it could strike the Confederate flank in turn ; but Davis 1864.] CAVALRY EXPEDITIONS. 435 lost his way and failed to appear in time. In this battle Logan s corps lost five hundred and seventy- two men ; while they captured five battle-flags and buried about six hundred of the enemy s dead. The total Confederate losses during July, in killed and wounded, were reported by the Sur geon-General at eighty-eight hundred and forty- one, to which Sherman adds two thousand prison ers. Sherman reports his own losses during that month killed, wounded, and missing at ninety- seven hundred and nineteen ; but this does not include the cavalry. Johnston s estimate of Sherman s losses is so enormous that if it had been correct his Government would have been clearly justified when it censured him for not driv ing the National army out of the State. Sherman had sent out several cavalry expe ditions to break the railroads south of Atlanta, but with no satisfactory results. They tore up a few miles of track each time, but the damage was quickly repaired. The marvellous facility with which both sides mended broken railroads and re placed burned bridges is illustrated by many anecdotes. Sherman had duplicates of the im portant bridges on the road that brought his sup plies, and whenever the guerillas destroyed one, he had only to order the duplicate to be set up. On the 26th General George Stoneman had set out with a cavalry force to break up the railroad at Jonesboro, with the intention of pushing on rapidly to Macon and Andersonville, and releas ing a large number of prisoners that were con- 436 STONEMAN S RAID. [1864. fined there in stockades ; while at the same time another cavalry force, under McCook, was sent around by the right to join Stoneman at Jones- boro. They destroyed two miles of track, burned two trains of cars and five hundred wagons, killed eight hundred mules, and took three or four hun dred prisoners. But McCook was surrounded by the enemy at Newnan, and only escaped with a loss of six hundred men ; while Stoneman de stroyed seventeen locomotives and a hundred cars, and threw a few shells into Macon, but was surrounded at Clifton, where he allowed himself and seven hundred of his men to be captured in order to facilitate the escape of the remainder of his command. Perhaps it was quite as well that he did not reach Andersonville, for General Winder, in com mand there, had issued this order on July 27th : " The officers on duty and in charge of battery of Florida artillery will, on receiving notice that the enemy has approached within seven miles of this post, open fire on the stockade with grape-shot, without reference to the situation beyond this line of defence." The conduct of those on guard duty at the prison leaves little doubt that this order would have been obeyed with alacrity. Two or three weeks later, Wheeler s Con federate cavalry passed to the rear of Sherman s army, captured a large drove of cattle, and broke up two miles of railroad ; and about the same time Kilpatrick s cavalry rode entirely round At lanta, fought and defeated a combined cavalry 1884.] FALL OF ATLANTA. 437 and infantry force, and inflicted upon the railroad such damage as he thought it would take ten days to repair ; but within twenty-four hours trains were again running into the city. Finding that cavalry raids could effect nothing, Sherman posted Slocum s corps at the railroad bridge over the Chattahoochee, and, moving again by the right rapidly but cautiously, concealing the movement as far as possible he swung* all the remainder of his army into position south of At lanta, where they tore up the railroads, burning the ties and twisting the rails, and then advanced toward the city. There was some fighting, and Govan s Confederate brigade was captured entire, with ten guns; but the greater part of Hood s forces escaped eastward in the night of Septem ber i. They destroyed a large part of the Gov ernment property that night, and the sound of the explosions caused Slocum to move down from the bridge, when he soon found that he had nothing to do but walk into Atlanta. A few days later Sherman made his headquarters there, dis posed his army in and around the city, and pre pared for permanent possession. CHAPTER XXVI. THE BATTLE OF MOBILE BAY. THE capture of Mobile had long been desired, both because of its importance as a base of opera tions, whence expeditions could move inland, and communication be maintained with the fleet, and because blockade-running at that port could not be entirely prevented by the vessels outside. Grant and Sherman had planned to have the city taken by forces moving east from New Orleans and Port Hudson ; but everything had gone wrong in that quarter. The principal defences of Mobile Bay were Fort Morgan, on Mobile Point, and Fort Gaines, three miles northwest of it, on the extremity of Dauphin Island. The passage between these two works was obstructed by innumerable piles for two miles out from Fort Gaines, and from that point nearly to Fort Morgan by a line of torpedoes. The eastern end of this line was marked by a red buoy, and from that point to Fort Morgan the channel was open, to admit blockade-runners. Farragut s fleet had been for a long time pre paring to pass these forts, fight the Confederate fleet inside (which included a powerful iron-clad ram), and take possession of the bay. But he wanted the cooperation of a military force to cap- 18C4.] THE FLEET IN LINE OF BATTLE. 439 ture the forts. This was at last furnished, under General Gordon Granger, and landed on Dauphin Island August 4. Farragut had made careful preparations, and, as at New Orleans, given mi nute instructions to his captains. The attacking column consisted of four iron-clad moni tors and seven wooden sloops-of- war. To each sloop was lashed a gun boat on the port (or left) side, to help her out in case she was disabled. The heaviest fire was expected from Fort Morgan, on the right or star board side. Before six o clock in the morning of the 5th all were under way, the monitors forming a line abreast of the wooden ships and to the right of them. The " Brooklyn " headed the line of the wooden vessels, because she had an apparatus for pick ing up torpedoes. They steamed along in beautiful style, coming up into close order as they neared the fort, so that there were spaces of but a few yards from the stern of one vessel to the bow of the next. The forts and the Confed erate fleet, which lay just inside of the line of tor pedoes, opened fire upon them half an hour before >EXICO 440 LOSS OF THE TECUMSEH. [1864. they could bring 1 their guns to answer. They made the " Hartford," Farragut s flag-ship, their especial target, lodged a hundred-and-twenty- pound ball in her mainmast, sent great splinters flying across her deck, more dangerous than shot, and killed or wounded many of her crew. One ball from a Confederate gunboat killed ten men and wounded five. The other wooden vessels suffered in like manner as they approached ; but when they came abreast of the fort they poured in rapid broadsides of grape-shot, shrapnel, and shells, which quickly cleared the bastions and silenced the batteries. The captains had been warned to pass to the east of the red buoy. But Captain T. A. M. Cra ven, of the monitor " Tecumseh," eager to engage the Confederate ram " Tennessee," which was be hind the line of torpedoes, made straight for her. The consequence was that his vessel struck a torpedo, which exploded, and she went down in a few seconds, carrying with her the captain and most of the crew. The " Brooklyn " stopped when she found torpedoes, and began to back. This threatened to throw the whole line into confusion while under fire, and defeat the project ; but Far- ragut instantly ordered more steam on his own vessel and her consort, drew ahead of the " Brook lyn," and led the line to victory. All this time he was in the rigging of the " Hartford," and a quarter master had gone up and tied him to one of the shrouds, so that if wounded he should not fall to the deck. As the fleet passed into the bay, 1864.] THE FIGHT WITH THE TENNESSEE. 441 several of the larger vessels were attacked by the ram " Tennessee " and considerably damaged, while their shot seemed to have little effect on her heavy iron mail. At length she withdrew to her anchor age, and the order was given from the flag-ship: " Gunboats chase enemy s gunboats," whereupon the lashings were cut and the National gunboats were off in a flash. In a little while they had de stroyed or captured all the Confederate vessels save one, which escaped up the bay, where the water was too shallow for them to follow her. But as the fleet was coming to anchor, in the belief that the fight was over, the " Tennessee" left her anchorage and steamed boldly into the midst of her enemies, firing in every direction and attempting to ram them. The wooden vessels stood to the fight in the most gallant manner, throwing useless broad sides against the monster, avoiding her blows by skilful maneuvering, and trying to run her clown till some of them hammered their bows to splinters. The three monitors pounded at her to more pur pose. They fired one fifteen-inch solid shot that penetrated her armor, they jammed some of her shutters so that the portholes could not be opened, they shot away her steering-gear, and knocked off her smoke-stack, so that life on board of her be came intolerable, and she surrendered. Her com mander, Franklin Buchanan, formerly of the United States navy, had been seriously wounded. This victory cost Farragut s fleet fifty-two men killed and one hundred and seventy wounded, besides one hundred and thirteen that went down in 442 INCIDENTS. 1864.] the "Tecumseh." Knowles, the same old quarter master that had tied Farragut in the rigging, says he saw the Admiral coming on deck as the twenty- five dead sailors of the " Hartford " were being laid out, " and it was the only time I ever saw the old gentleman cry, but the tears came into his eyes like a little child." The Confederate fleet lost ten men killed, sixteen wounded, and two hundred and eighty prisoners. The loss in the forts is unknown. They were surrendered soon afterward to the land forces, with a thousand men. One incident of this battle suggests the thought that many of the famous deeds of old-world chiv alry have been paralleled in American history. When the " Tecumseh " was going down, Captain Craven and his pilot met at the foot of the ladder that afforded the only escape, and the pilot stepped aside for his superior officer. " After you, pilot," said Craven, drawing back, for he knew it was by his own fault, not the pilot s, that the vessel was struck. " There was nothing after me," said the pilot, in telling the story; " for the moment I reached the deck the vessel seemed to drop from under me, and went to the bottom." Another Confederate iron-clad, the "Albemarle," was destroyed in October. Lieutenant William B. Cushing, of the navy, ascended Roanoke river in the night, with a volunteer crew, in a small steam launch, placed a torpedo under her over hang, exploded it, and sent her to the bottom. The launch was destroyed, and Cushing and one of his companions escaped by swimming. CHAPTER XXVII. THE ADVANCE ON PETERSBURG. IT had been a part of Grant s plan, in opening the campaign of 1864, that General B. F. Butler, with a force that was called the Army of the James, should march against Richmond and Petersburg. He moved promptly, at the same time with the armies led by Grant and Sherman, embarking his forces on transports at Fortress Monroe, and first making a feint of steaming up York River. In the night the vessel turned back, and steamed up the James. Early the next day, May 6, the troops were landed at City Point, at the junction of the James and the Appomattox, and intrenchments were thrown up. Detachments were sent out to cut the railroads south of Petersburg, and between that city and Richmond ; but no effective work was done. General Butler was ordered to secure a position as far up the James as possible, and ad vanced to Drury s Bluff, where he was attacked by a force under General Beauregard and driven back to Bermuda Hundred. At the point where the curves of the James and the Appomattox bring those two streams within less than three miles of each other, Butler threw up a line of in trenchments, with his right resting on the James at Dutch Gap and his left on the Appomattox at 444 THE ADVANCE ON PETERSBURG. [1864. Point of Rocks. The position was very strong, and it would be hopeless for the Confederates to assault it. The disadvantage was, that Beauregard had only to throw up a parallel line of intrench- ments across the same neck of land, and Butler could not advance a step. What he had secured, however, was afterward valuable as a protection for City Point, when Grant swung the Army of the Potomac across the James, which became thence forth the landing-place for supplies. Grant had reenforced Butler with troops under General William F. Smith, and planned to have an immediate advance on Petersburg while the Army of the Potomac was crossing the James (June 14, 1864.) The work was entrusted to Smith, who was to get close to the Confederate intrenchments in the night, and carry them at daybreak. He unexpectedly came upon the enemy fortified be tween City Point and Petersburg, and had a fight in which he was successful, but it caused a loss of precious time. Grant hurried Hancock s troops over the river, to follow Smith. But this corps was delayed several hours waiting for rations, and finally went on without them. It appears that Hancock s instructions were defective, and he did not know that he was expected to take Peters burg till he received a note from Smith urging him to hurry forward. Smith spent nearly the whole of the 1 5th in reconnoitering the defences of Pe tersburg, which were but lightly manned, and in the evening carried a portion of them by assault, the work being done by colored troops under ASSAULTING THE INTRENCHMENTS. 445 General Edward W. Hincks. In the morning of the 1 6th Hancock s men captured a small ad ditional portion of the works ; but here that General had to be relieved for ten days, be cause of the break ing out of a griev ous wound that he had received at Gettysburg. Gen eral David B. Bir- ney succeeded him in the command of the corps. Gen eral Meade came upon the ground, ordered another assault, and car ried another por tion. But by this time Beauregard had thrown more men into the forti fications, and the fighting was stub born and bloody. It was continued through the 1 7th, with no apparent result, except that at night the Confederates fell back to an inner line, and in the morning the National line was correspondingly advanced. In these preliminary operations against 446 THE FIGHT FOR THE WELDON RAILROAD. [1864. Petersburg the National loss was nearly ten thou sand men. There is no official statement of the Confederate loss, but the indications were that it was about the same. When Lee found where Grant was going, he moved east and south of Richmond, crossing the James at Drury s Bluff, and presently confronting his enemy in the trenches east and south of Peters burg. The country is well adapted for defence, and the works were extensive and very strong. Seeing that the city itself could not be immediately captured, Grant endeavored to sever its impor tant communications. The Norfolk Railroad was easily cut off ; and the Army of the Potomac, which for some time had hardly known any differ ence between day and night, was allowed a few days of rest and comparative quiet. But the most important line was the Weldon Railroad, which brought up Confederate supplies from the south, and Grant and Meade made an early attempt to seize it. On the 2ist and 226. Birney s corps was pushed to the left, extending south of the city, while Wright s was sent by a route further south to strike directly at the railroad. Wright came into a position nearly at right angles with Birney, facing west toward the railroad, while Birney faced north toward the city. They were not in connection, however, and did not sufficiently guard their flanks. A heavy Confederate force under General A. P. Hill, coming out to meet the movement, drove straight into the gap, turned the left flank of the Second Corps, threw it into 1864.1 MINING THE WORKS. 447 confusion, and captured seventeen hundred men and four guns. The fighting was not severe ; but the movement against the railroad was arrested. Hill withdrew to his intrenchments in the evening, the Second Corps reestablished its line, and the Sixth intrenched itself in a position facing the rail road and about a mile and a half from it. On this flank, affairs remained substantially in this condi tion till the middle of August. But meanwhile something that promised great results was going on near the centre of the line, in front of Burnside s corps. A regiment composed largely of Pennsylvania miners dug a tunnel un der the nearest point of the Confederate works. These works consisted of forts or redans at inter vals, with connecting lines of rifle-pits, and the tunnel was directed under one of the forts. The digging was begun in a ravine, to be out of sight of the enemy, and the earth was carried out in barrows made of cracker-boxes, and hidden under brushwood. The Confederates learned what was being done, and the location of the tunnel, but did not succeed in striking it by countermining. They came to have vague and exaggerated fears of it, and many people in Petersburg believed that the whole city was undermined. The work occu pied nearly a month, and when finished it consist ed of a straight tunnel five hundred feet long, ending in a cross-gallery seventy feet long. In this gallery was placed eight thousand pounds of powder, with slow matches. The day fixed for the explosion was the 3Oth of July. To distract 448 THE EXPLOSION. [1864. attention from it and diminish if possible the force that held the lines immediately around Petersburg, Hancock was sent across the James at Deep Bot tom, where an intrenched camp was held by a force under General John G. Foster, to make a feint against the works north of the river. This o had the desired effect, as Lee, anxious for the safety of Richmond, hurried a large part of his army across at Drury s Bluff to confront Hancock. With this exception, the arrangements for the en terprise were all bad. The explosion of the mine alone would do little or no good ; but it was ex pected to make such a breach in the enemy s line that a strong column could be thrust through and take the works in reverse. For such a task the best of troops are required ; but Burnside s corps was by no means the best in the army, and the choice of a division to lead, being determined by lot, fell upon General James H. Ledlie s, which was probably the worst, and certainly the worst commanded. Furthermore, the obstructions were not properly cleared away to permit the rapid deployment of a large force between the lines. A few minutes before five o clock in the morn ing, the mine was exploded. A vast mass of earth, surrounded by smoke, with the flames of burning powder playing through it, rose two hundred feet into the air, seemed to poise there for a moment, and then fell. The fort with its guns and garri son about three hundred men of a South Caro lina regiment was completely destroyed, and in place of it was a crater about thirty feet deep and 1864.] THE SLAUGHTER AT THE CRATER. 449 nearly two hundred feet long. At the same moment the heavy batteries in the National line opened upon the enemy, to protect the assaulting column from artillery fire. Ledlie s division pushed forward into the crater, and there stopped. General Ledlie himself did not accompany the men, and there seemed to be no one to direct them. Thirty golden minutes passed, during which the Confederates, who had run away in terror from the neighboring intrenchments, made no effort to drive out the assailants. At the end of that time they began to rally to their guns, and presently directed a heavy fire upon the men in the crater. Burnside tried to remedy the difficulty by pushing out more troops, and at length sent his black division, which charged through the crater and up the slope beyond, but was there met by a fire before which it recoiled ; for the Confederates had constructed an inner line of breastworks command ing the front along which the explosion had been expected. Finally, both musketry and artillery were concentrated upon the disorganized mass of troops huddled in the crater, while shells were lighted and rolled down its sloping sides, till those who were left alive scrambled out and got away as best they could. This affair cost the National army about four thousand men many of them prisoners while the Confederate loss was hardly a thousand. Soon after this General Burnside was relieved, at his own request, and the command of his corps was given to General John G. Parke. On the 1 3th of August, Hancock made another 45O ENGAGEMENT AT REAMS STATION. [1864. and more serious demonstration from Deep Bottom toward Richmond. He assaulted the defences of the city, and fighting was kept up for several days. He gained nothing, for Lee threw a strong force into the intrenchments and repelled his attacks. But there was great gain at the other end of the line ; for Grant took advantage of the weakening of Lee s right to seize the Weldon Railroad. Warren s corps was moved out to the road on the i8th, took a position across it at a point about four miles from Petersburg, and intrenched. On the iQth, and again on the 2ist, Lee made determined attacks on this position, but was repelled with heavy loss. Warren clung to his line, and made such dispositions as at length enabled him to meet any assault with but little loss to himself. A day or two later, Hancock returned from the north side of the James, and was rapidly marched to the extreme left, to pass beyond Warren and destroy some miles of the Weldon Railroad. He tore up the track and completely disabled it to a point three miles south of Reams Station, and on the 25th sent out Gibbon s division to continue the work some miles farther. But the approach of a heavy Confederate force under General A. P. Hill caused it to fall back to Reams Station, where with Miles s division (six thousand men in all) and two thousand cavalry it held a line of intrench ments. Three assaults upon this line were repelled, with bloody loss to the Confederates. General Hill then ordered Heth s division to make another assault and carry the works at all hazards. Heth 18C4.J SIEGE OF PETERSBURG BEGUN. 45 1 found a place from which a part of the National line could be enfiladed by artillery, and after a brisk bombardment assaulted, carried the works, and captured three batteries. Miles s men were rallied, retook a part of the line and one of the batteries, and formed a new line, which they held, assisted by the dismounted cavalry, who poured an effective fire into the flank of the advancing Con federates. At night both sides withdrew from the field. Hancock had lost twenty-four hun dred men, seventeen hundred of whom were prisoners. The Confederate loss is unknown, but it was severe. From that time Grant held possession of the Weldon Railroad, and whatever supplies came to the Confederate army by that route had to be hauled thirty miles in wagons. The National army constructed for its own use a railroad in the rear of and parallel with its long line of intrench- ments, running from City Point to the extreme left flank. This road was not particular about grades and curves, but simply followed the natural contour of the ground. Then began what is called the siege of Petersburg, which was not a siege in the proper sense of the word, because the Con federate communications were open ; but the military preparations and processes were identical with those known as siege operations. Partly to check the movements of General Hunter in the Shenandoah valley, and partly with the hope that an attack on Washington would cause Grant to withdraw from before Richmond 45 2 EARLY S RAID. [is&4. and Petersburg, Lee sent Early s corps into the valley. Hunter, being out of ammunition, was obliged to retire before the Confederates, and Early marched down to the Potomac unopposed, and threatened the national capital. Serious fears were entertained that he would actually enter the city, and all sorts of hurried preparations were made to prevent him, Department clerks being under arms and every available man pressed into the service. General Lew Wallace, in command at Balti more, gathered a body of recruits and went out to meet Early, not with the hope of defeating him, but only of delaying him till a sufficient force could be sent from the Army of the Potomac. Ricketts s division of the Sixth Corps had already set out for Baltimore, and on arriving there immediately followed Wallace. They met the enemy at the Monocacy, thirty-five miles from Washington, July 9, and took up a position on the left bank of the stream, covering the roads to the capital. Wallace had six field guns and a small force of cavalry, and disposed his line so as to hold the bridges and fords as long as possible. The Confederates attacked at first in front, with a strong skirmish line and sixteen guns, and there was bloody fighting at one of the bridges. Then they changed their tactics, marched a heavy force down stream, crossed at a ford out of range of the National artillery, and then marched up stream again to strike Wallace s left flank. That part of the line was held by Ricketts, who changed front 1864.] BATTLE OF THE MONOCACY. 453 to meet the attack, and was promptly reenforced from Wallace s scanty resources. Two assaults in line of battle were repelled, after some destructive fighting, and Wallace determined still to hold his ground, as he was hourly expecting three additional regiments. But the afternoon wore away without any appearance of assistance, and when he saw preparations for another and heavier assault he determined to retreat. While the left was being withdrawn, the right, under General Tyler, was ordered to prevent the remaining Confederate force from crossing at the bridges. The wooden bridge was burned, and the stone bridge was held to the last possible moment, when Tyler also re treated. The missing regiments were met on the road, and there was no pursuit. This action was not important from its magnitude ; but in that it probably saved the city of Washington from pillage and destruction, it was of the first impor tance. Wallace has received high praise for his promptness and energy in fighting a battle of great strategic value when he knew that the immediate result must be the defeat of his own force. He lost about fourteen hundred men, half of whom were prisoners. The Confederates admitted a loss of six hundred. Early now marched on Washington, and on the 1 2th was within half a dozen miles of it, where some heavy skirmishing took place with a force sent out by General Christopher C. Augur. But by this time veteran troops were pouring into the defences of the city, and the Confederate leader 454 BURNING OF CHAMBERSBURG. [1864. wisely retreated, carrying" considerable plunder that he had gathered in his advance. A part of his force was struck at Winchester, July 12, by one under General Averell, and defeated, losing four guns and three or four hundred men. Three days later, Early defeated a force under General George Crook, and drove it across the Potomac, after which he sent his cavalry, under Generals McCausland and Bradley T. Johnson, to make a rapid raid through Maryland into Pennsyl vania. McCausland visited Chambersburg, and demanded of the citizens the immediate payment of one hundred thousand dollars in gold, or five hun dred thousand dollars in United States currency, with a threat of burning the town. The money was not forthcoming, the torch was promptly applied, about two thirds of the buildings were destroyed, and three hundred families found themselves shel terless. Early, who ordered the burning and as sumes all responsibility, justifies it on the ground that it was in retaliation for the burning of the houses of well-known secessionists in Virginia. This raid created a panic among the inhabitants of western Maryland and southern Pennsylvania, many of whom fled from their homes, driving off their cattle and carrying whatever they could. There was no lack of troops to send against Early, the difficulty was to find him or get accurate information as to his movements. The pursuit began to be effective only when Grant sent Sheri dan, in August, to command in that department. CHAPTER XXVIII. SHERIDAN IN THE SHENANDOAH. IT had become plainly evident that something must be done to cancel the whole Shenandoah Valley from the map of the theatre of war. The mountains that flanked it made it a secure lane down which a Confederate force could be sent at almost any time to the very door of Washington ; while the crops that were harvested in its fertile fields were a constant temptation to those who had to provide for the necessities of an army. General Grant took the matter in hand in earnest after Early s raid and the burning of Chambersburg. His first care was to have the separate military de partments in that section consolidated, his next to find a suitable commander, and finally to send an adequate force. He would have been satisfied with General Hunter, who was already the ranking officer there ; but Hunter had been badly ham pered in his movements by constant interference from Washington, and knowing that he had not the confidence of General Halleck, he asked to be relieved, since he did not wish to embarrass the cause. In this, Grant says, Hunter "showed a patriotism that was none too common in the army. There were not many major-generals who would voluntarily have asked to have the command of a 456 SHERIDAN IN COMMAND. [1864. department taken from them on the supposition that for some particular reason, or for any reason, the service would be better performed." Grant ac cepted his offer, and telegraphed for General Sheridan to come and take command of the new department. Sheridan was on hand promptly, and was placed at the head of about thirty thousand troops, including eight thousand cavalry, who were named the Army of the Shenandoah. Sheridan was now in his thirty-fourth year ; and Secretary Stanton, with a wise caution, made some objection, on the ground that he was very young for a command so important. He had not stood remarkably high at West Point, being ranked thirty-fourth in his class when the whole number was fifty-two ; but he had already made a brilliant record in the war, winning his brigadier-general ship by a victory at Booneville, Mo., and being conspicuous for his gallantry and skill at Perryville, Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, and Mission Ridge, and for his bold riding around Lee s army in the spring campaign of 1864. Under him and Custer, Crook, Merritt, and Kilpatrick, the cavalry arm of the National service, weak and inefficient at the opening of the war, had become a swift and sure weapon against the now declining but still defiant Confederacy. It had been noted by everybody that Grant exhibited an almost unerring judgment in the choice of his lieutenants. In his instructions, which were at first written out for Hunter and afterward transferred to Sheri dan, Grant said : " In pushing up the Shenandoah 1864.] HIS INSTRUCTIONS. 457 Valley, where it is ex pected you will have to go first or last, it is desi rable that nothing should be left to invite the enemy to return. Take all pro visions, forage, and stock wanted for the use of your command. Such as cannot be consumed, de stroy. It is not desirable that the buildings should be destroyed they should rather be pro tected ; but the people should be informed that so long as an army can subsist amonor them re- o currences of these raids must be expected ; and we are determined to stop them at all hazards." The condition of things at Washington where Halleck always, and Stan- ton sometimes, inter- fered with orders passing that way is vividly sug gested by a despatch sent in cipher to Grant at this time, August 3. Mr. Lincoln wrote: "I 458 LINCOLN S CRITICISM. [ISM. have seen your despatch, in which you say, I want Sheridan put in command of all the troops in the field, with instructions to put himself south of the enemy and follow him to the death. Wherever the enemy goes, let our troops go also. This I think is exactly right, as to how our forces should move. But please look over the despatches you may have received from here, even since you made that order, and discover, if you can, that there is any idea in the head of any one here of putting our army south of the enemy, or of following him to the death in any direction. I repeat to you it will neither be done nor attempted unless you watch it every day and hour, and force it/ This caused Grant to go at once to Maryland and put things in train for the vigorous campaign that he had planned in the valley of the Shenandoah. Perhaps Mr. Lincoln had found a way to give Halleck also an impressive hint ; for the very next day that general telegraphed to Grant, " I await your orders, and shall strictly carry them out, what ever they may be." Early, whose main force was on the south bank of the Potomac, above Harper s Ferry, still had a large part of his cavalry in Maryland, where they were loading their wagons with wheat on the battle-field of Antietam, and seizing all the cattle that the farmers had not driven off beyond their reach. But these were now recalled. As soon as Sheridan could get his force well in hand, he moved it skilfully southward toward Winchester, in order to threaten Early s communications and 1864.] POSITIONS AT WINCHESTER. 459 draw him into a battle. Early at once moved his army into a position to cover Winchester, but was unwilling to fight without the reinforcements that were on the way to him from Lee s army ; so he retreated as far as Fisher s Hill to meet them, and was followed by Sheridan, who was about to attack there when warned by Grant to be cautious, as the enemy was too strong for him. He therefore with drew to his former position on Opequan Creek, facing west toward Winchester and covering Snicker s Gap, through which reinforcements were to come to him. Here he was attacked, August 21, and after a fight in which two hundred and sixty men on the National side were killed or wounded, he drew back to a stronger position at Halltown. He had complained, in a letter to Grant, that there was not a good military position in the whole valley south of the Potomac. In his retrograde movement, as he reported, he " de stroyed everything eatable south of Winchester." Early reconnoitred the position at Halltown and found it too strong to be attacked, but for three or four weeks remained with his whole force at the lower end of the valley, threatening raids into Maryland, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, break ing the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the Chesapeake Canal, keeping the authorities at Washington in a constant state of anxiety, and all the time inviting attack from Sheridan. There were frequent minor engagements, mainly by cavalry, with varying results. In one, Custer s division only escaped capture by crossing the 460 SHERIDAN GOES IN. [1864. Potomac in great haste. In another, a force under General John B. Mclntosh captured the 8th South Carolina infantry entire though that regiment now consisted of but one hundred and six men. It had probably consisted of a thousand men at the outset, and the wear and tear of three years of constant warfare had reduced it, like many others on either side, to these meagre pro portions. Grant and Sheridan were in perfect accord as to the best policy, and they pursued it steadily, in spite of the uneasiness at Washington, the com plaints of the Maryland farmers, and the criticisms of the newspapers. They knew that with the Army of the Potomac constantly busy in his front, feeling out for new positions beyond Petersburg, or massing north of the James in close proximity to Richmond, or threatening to break through his centre, the time must come when Lee would recall a part of the forces that he had sent to the valley, and that would be the moment for Sheridan to spring upon Early. The opportunity arrived on the i Qth of September, when Lee had recalled the command of R. H. Anderson, with which he had reenforced Early in August, and Early, as if to double his danger, had sent a large part of his remaining troops to Martinsburg, twenty miles away. Grant s order to Sheridan at this juncture was " Go in," and Sheridan promptly went in. The various movements of the two armies had brought them around to substantially the same positions that they held in the engagement of 1864.] BATTLE OF THE OPEQUAN. 461 August 21 Early east of and covering Winches ter, Sheridan along the line of Opequan Creek, which is about five miles east of the city. Sheri dan s plan was to march straight on Winchester with his whole force, and crush Early s right before the left could be withdrawn from Martins- burg to assist it. He set his troops in motion at three o clock in the morning, to converge toward the Berryville pike, a macadamized road crossing the Opequan, passing through a ravine, and lead ing into Winchester. Wilson s cavalry secured the crossing of the stream, and cleared the way through the ravine for the infantry ; but there was, as usual, some difficulty in moving so many troops by a single road, and it was midday before the battle began. This delay gave Early an oppor tunity to bring back his troops from Martinsburg and unite his whole force in front of Winchester. Sheridan s infantry deployed under a heavy artil lery fire from Early s right wing, and advanced to the attack, when the battle began almost simul taneously along the whole line, and was kept up till dark. There were no field-works, the only shelter being such as was afforded by patches of woodland and rolling ground, and the fighting was obstinate and bloody. The usual difficulty of preserving the line intact while advancing over broken ground was met, and wherever a gap appeared it was promptly taken advantage of. In one instance, a Confederate force led by General Robert E. Rodes .drove in between the Sixth and Nineteenth corps, crumbled their flanks, and 462 BATTLE OF THE OPEQUAN. [1864. turned to take the Nineteenth in reverse ; but at this juncture a division of the Sixth Corps under General David A. Russell, coming forward to fill the gap, struck the flank of the intruding Con federate force in turn, enfiladed it with a rapid fire of canister from the 5th Maine battery, and, sent it back in confusion, capturing a large number of prisoners. In this movement Generals Rodes and Russell were both killed. On the National right the fighting was at first in favor of the Con federates, and that wing was temporarily borne back some distance. Sheridan now brought up his reserves, which he had intended to move south of Winchester to cut off retreat, and sent them into the fight on his right flank, while the cavalry divisions of Merritt and Averell, under Torbert, came in by a detour and struck Early s left, pushing back his cavalry and getting into the rear of a portion of his in fantry. From this time Sheridan drove every thing before him. The Confederates found some shelter in a line of field-works near the town, but were soon driven out, and fled through the streets in complete rout and confusion. But darkness favored them, and most of them escaped up the valley. Their severely wounded were left in Winchester. The National loss was nearly five thousand men. The Confederates lost about four thousand including two Generals, Rodes and Godwin with five guns and nine battle-flags. Early established a strong rearguard, and managed to save his trains. The news of this battle was 1864.] EARLY AT FISHERS HILL. 463 received with unmeasured enthusiasm in the Army of the Potomac, in Washington, and at the North, where every newspaper repeated in its bold head lines Sheridan s expression that he had " sent Early whirling through Winchester." When Early retreated southward after this battle of the Opequan (or battle of Winchester, as the Confederates called it), he took up a posi tion at Fisher s Hill, where the valley is but four miles wide. As Sheridan had said, there was no really good military position in the valley, unless for a much larger army than either he or Early commanded. At Fisher s Hill, the Confederate right rested on the North Fork of the Shenandoah and was sufficiently protected by it; but for the left there was no natural protection. Early s men set to work vigorously constructing intrenchments and preparing abatis. Sheridan followed promptly, his advance guard skirmishing with the Confeder ate pickets and driving them through Strasburg. There was an eminence overlooking the Confed erate intrenchments, and after a sharp fight this was gained by the National troops, who at once began to cut down the trees and plant batteries. When Sheridan had thoroughly reconnoitered the position, he planned to send the greater part of his cavalry through the Luray Valley to get into the rear of the Confederates and cut off retreat, then to attack in front with the Sixth and Nineteenth corps, while Crook with the Eighth Corps should make a detour and come in on the enemy s left flank. The ground was so broken that the man- 464 BATTLE OF FISHER S HILL. [1864. ceuvres were necessarily slow, and it was almost sunset when Crook reached Early s flank. But the little daylight that remained was used to the utmost advantage. Crook came out of the woods so suddenly and silently that the Confederates at that end of the line were simply astounded. Their works were taken in reverse, and their dismounted cavalry was literally overrun. The forward move ment of the troops in front was prompt, the right of the Sixth Corps joining properly with the left of Crook s, and everywhere Sheridan and his lieu tenants were with the men, repeating the com mand to push forward constantly, without stop ping for anything. The result was a complete rout of the Confederates, who fled in confusion once more up the valley, leaving sixteen of their guns behind. But Sheridan s plan for their capture was foiled because his cavalry, meeting a stou,t resist ance from Early s cavalry, failed to get through to their rear. Pursuit was made in the night, but to no purpose. In this battle, which was fought on the 22d of September, the National loss was about four hundred, the Confederate about four teen hundred. For the next three days the retreat was contin ued, Sheridan s whole force following rapidly, and often being near enough to engage the skirmishers or exchange shots with the artillery. Early went to Port Republic to meet reinforcements that were on the way to him from Lee s army, and there stopped. Sheridan halted his infantry at Harri- sonburg, but sent his cavalry still farther up the 1864.] DESTRUCTION IN THE VALLEY. 465 valley. The column under Torbert reached Staunton, where it destroyed a large quantity of arms, ammunition, and provisions, and then tore up the track of the Virginia Central Railroad eastward to Waynesboro, and pulled down the iron bridge over the stream at that point. Here it was attacked in force, and retired. Grant wanted the movement continued to Charlottesville ; but Sheridan found serious difficulties in his lack of supplies and transportation so far from his base. He adopted the alternative of rendering the valley untenable for any army that could not bring its provisions with it, and Grant had repeated his early instructions, saying, " Leave nothing for the subsistence of an army on any ground you aban don to the enemy." On the 5th of October the march down the valley was begun. The infantry went first, and the cavalry followed, being stretched entirely across the valley, burning and destroying, as it w T ent, everything except the dwellings. Sheridan said in his report : " I have destroyed over two thousand barns filled with wheat, hay, and farming implements ; over seventy mills filled with flour and wheat ; have driven in front of the army over four thousand head of stock, and have killed and issued to the troops not less than three thousand sheep." Early, being reenforced, now turned and pur sued Sheridan. At Tom s Brook, on the 7th, the National cavalry under Torbert, Merritt, and Custer engaged the Confederate cavalry under Rosserand Lamont. After a spirited engagement, Rosser was 466 BATTLE OF CEDAR CREEK. [1864. driven back twenty-five miles, and Torbert captured over three hundred prisoners, eleven guns, and a large number of wagons or, as was said in the report, " Everything they had on wheels." Sheridan halted at Cedar Creek, north of Stras- burg, and put his army into camp there, while he was summoned to Washington for conference as to the continuation of the campaign, leaving Gen eral Wright in command. Early, finding nothing in the valley for his men and horses to eat, was obliged to do one thing or another without delay - advance and capture provisions from the stores of his enemy, or retreat and give up the ground. He chose to assume the offensive, and in the night of the i8th moved silently around the left of the National line, taking the precaution to leave behind even the soldiers canteens, which might have made a clatter. In the misty dawn of the 1 9th the Confederates burst upon the flank held by Crook s corps, with such suddenness and vehe mence that it was at once thrown into confusion and routed. They were among the tents before anybody knew they were coming, and many of Crook s men were shot or stabbed before they could fairly awake from their sleep. The Nine teenth Corps was also routed, but the Sixth stood firm, and the Confederates themselves became somewhat broken and demoralized by the eager ness of the men to plunder the camps. Wright s Sixth Corps covered the retreat ; and when Sheri dan, hearing of the battle and riding with all speed from Winchester, met the stream of fugitives, he 1864.] BATTLE OF CEDAR CREEK. 467 deployed some cavalry to stop them, and in spired his men with a short and oft-repeated ora tion, which is reported as " Face the other way, boys ! We are going back to our camps ! We are going to lick them out of their boots ! " This actually turned the tide, a new line was quickly formed and intrenched, and when Early attacked it he met with a costly repulse. In the afternoon Sheridan advanced to attack in turn, sending his irresistible cavalry around both flanks, and after some fighting the whole Confederate line was broken up and driven in confusion, with the cav alry close upon its heels. All the guns lost in the morning were retaken, and twenty-four be sides. In this double battle the Confederate loss was about thirty-one hundred; the National, fifty- seven hundred and sixty-four, of whom seven teen hundred were prisoners taken in the morn ing and hurried away toward Richmond. The campaign in the valley was now practically ended. CHAPTER XXIX. THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. THE length of time that the war had continued, the drain upon the resources of both belligerents, and especially the rapidity and destructiveness of the battles in the summer of 1864, had naturally suggested the question whether there were not some possibility of a satisfactory peace without further fighting. In each section there was a party, or at least there were people, who believed that such a peace was possible, and the loud ex pression of this opinion led to several efforts at negotiation, as it also shaped the policy of a great political party. In July Colonel James F. Jacques, of the 73d Illinois regiment, accompanied by James R. Gilmore (known in literature, by his delineations of Southern life just before the war, under the pen-name of " Edmund Kirke"), went to Richmond under flag of truce, where they were admitted to a long interview with the chief officers of the Confederate Government. They had gone with Mr. Lincoln s informal sanction, but had no definite terms to offer; and if they had, Mr. Davis s remarks show that it would have been in vain. At the close he said : "Say to Mr. Lincoln, from me, that I shall at any time be pleased to receive proposals for peace on the basis of our 1864.] THE FREMONT CONVENTION. 469 independence. It will be useless to approach me with any other." In that same month of July, three Southerners of some note created a great sensation by a conference at Niagara Falls, with Horace Greeley, on the subject of peace ; but the affair came to nothing. The first Presidential convention of the year met at Cleveland, Ohio, on the last day of May, in response to a call addressed " to the radical men of the nation." The platform declared, among other things, " that the rebellion must be sup pressed by force of arms, and without compro mise ; that the rebellion has destroyed slavery, and the federal Constitution should be amended to pro hibit its^reestablishment ; that the question of the reconstruction of the rebellious States belongs to the people, through their representatives in Con gress, and not to the Executive ; and that confis cation of the lands of the rebels, and their distri bution among the soldiers and actual settlers, is a measure of justice." General John C. Fremont was nominated for the Presidency, and General John Cochrane for the Vice-Presidency. Though this was the least of the conventions, yet in all the points here quoted from its platform, with the exception of the last, it indicated the policy that was ultimately pursued by the nation ; and it is a singular fact that the exceptional plank (confisca tion) was objected to by both candidates in their letters of acceptance. The Republican National Convention met in Baltimore on the 7th of June. It dropped the 47O THE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM. [1864. word " Republican " for the time being, and simply called itself a Union Convention, to accommodate the war Democrats, who were now acting with the Republican party. Not only the free States were represented, but some that had been claimed by the Confederacy and had been partially or wholly recovered from it,including Tennessee, Louisiana, and Arkansas. The platform, reported by Henry J. Raymond, one of the ablest of American journal ists, was probably written largely if not entirely by him. Its most significant passages were these : " That we approve the determination of the Government of the United States not to compro mise with the rebels, nor to offer them any terms of peace except such as may be based upon an un conditional surrender of their hostility and a re turn to their full allegiance to the Constitution and the laws of the United States. " That as slavery was the cause and now con stitutes the strength of this rebellion, and as it must be always and everywhere hostile to the principles of republican government, justice and the national safety demand its utter and complete extirpation from the soil of the Republic. . ... We are in favor, furthermore, of such an amend ment to the Constitution, to be made by the people in conformity with its provisions, as shall terminate and forever prohibit the existence of slavery within the limits of the jurisdiction of the United States. "That we approve and applaud the practical wisdom, the unselfish patriotism, and unswerving 1864.] RE-NOMINATION OF LINCOLN. 471 fidelity to the Constitution and the principles of American liberty, with which Abraham Lincoln has discharged, under circumstances of unparal leled difficulty, the great duties and responsibilities of the Presidential office ; that we approve and indorse, as demanded by the emergency and essential to the preservation of the nation, and as within the Constitution, the measures and acts which he has adopted to defend the nation against its open and secret- foes ; that we approve espe cially the Proclamation of Emancipation, and the employment as Union soldiers of men heretofore held in slavery, " That the National faith, pledged for the re demption of the public debt, must be kept inviolate; that it is the duty of every loyal State to sustain the credit and promote the use of the National currency." On the first ballot all the delegations voted for Mr. Lincoln, except that from Missouri, whose vote was given to General Grant. According to the official report of the proceedings, the first bal lot for a candidate for Vice-President resulted in two hundred votes for Andrew Johnson, one hundred and eight for Daniel S. Dickinson (a war Democrat), one hundred and fifty for Hannibal Hamlin (who then held the office), and fifty-nine scattering ; several delegations changed their votes to Johnson, and he was almost unanimously nomi nated. But according to the testimony of one who was on the floor as a delegate, the nomination of Mr. Lincoln was immediately followed by an 472 THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION [1864. outburst of cheering, yelling, and the wildest ex citement, and in the confusion and uproar it was declared that Mr. Johnson had somehow been nominated. He had been a poor white in the South, and a life-long Democrat, but had done some brave things in withstanding secession, and some bitter things in thwarting the slave-holders. Mr. Lincoln had appointed him Military Governor of Tennessee in March, 1862, and he was still act ing in that capacity. Whatever may have been the wisdom of nominating a war Democrat when the war was so near its close, the Republican party found reason in the next four years to repent its choice of Andrew Johnson as bitterly as its prede cessor the Whig party had repented the choice of John Tyler, a life-long Democrat, in 1840. But the nominating conventions that have sufficiently considered the contingent importance of the Vice- Presidency have been exceedingly few. The Democratic National Convention, called to meet in Chicago, did not convene till nearly three months after the Republican, August 29. In the mean time the hard fighting around Richmond and on Sherman s road to Atlanta, the fruits of which were not yet evident, the appearance of Confederate forces at the gates of Washington, and the delay of Sheridan s movements in the Shenandoah Valley, had produced a more gloomy feeling than had been experienced before since the war began; and this feeling, as was to be expected, operated in favor of whatever opposed the National administration. The suffering and the discon- 1864.] AND PLATFORM, 473 tented are always prone to cry out for a change, without defining what sort of change they want, or considering what any change is likely to bring. Seizing upon this advantage, the Democratic Con vention made a very clear and bold issue with the Republican. It was presided over by Horatio Seymour, then Governor of New York, while Clement L. Vallandigham was a member of the committee on resolutions, and is supposed to have written the most significant of them. The plat form presented these propositions : " That this Convention does explicitly declare, as the sense of the American people, that, after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war, during which, under the pre tence of military necessity, of a war power higher than the Constitution, the Constitution itself has been disregarded in every part, and public liberty and private right alike trodden down, and the material prosperity of the country essentially im paired justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view to an ultimate convention of all the States, or other peaceable means, to the end that, at the earliest practicable moment, peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union of the States. " That the aim and object of the Democratic party is to preserve the Federal Union and the rights of the States unimpaired." On the first ballot General George B. McClellan was nominated for 1 President, receiving two hun- 474 FREMONT S WITHDRAWAL. [ISM. dred and two and a half votes, against twenty-three arid a half for Thomas H. Seymour, of Connecti cut. George H. Pendleton, of Ohio, an ultra peace man, was nominated for Vice-President. General McClellan, in his letter of acceptance, vir tually set aside a portion of the platform, and said : " The reestablishment of the Union, in all its integ rity, is and must continue to be the indispensable condition in any settlement. . . . No peace can be permanent without Union." The declaration that the war had been a failure received a crushing comment the day after the Convention adjourned ; for on that day Sherman s army marched into Atlanta. And this success was followed by others, notably Sheridan s brilliant movements in the valley all of which, when heralded in the Republican journals, were accom panied by the quotation from the Democratic plat form declaring the war a failure. General Fre mont withdrew from the contest in September, saying in his published letter : " The policy of the Democratic party signifies either separation, or reestablishment with slavery. The Chicago platform is simply separation ; Gen eral McClellan s letter of acceptance is reestablish ment with slavery. The Republican candidate is, on the contrary, pledged to the reestablishment of the Union without slavery; and, however hesitat ing his policy may be, the pressure of his party will, we may hope, force him to it. Between these issues, I think no man of the Liberal party can remain in doubt ; and I believe I am consistent 1804.] THE CANVASS. 475 with my antecedents and my principles in with drawing not to aid in the triumph of Mr. Lin coln, but to do my part toward preventing the election of the Democratic candidate." The canvass was exceedingly bitter, especially in the abuse heaped upon Mr. Lincoln. The undig nified and disgraceful epithets that were applied to him by journals of high standing were not such as would make any American proud of his coun try. This course had its culmination in the pub lication of certain ghastly pictures of returned prisoners, to show what Lincoln the usurper, despot, and tyrant, as they freely called him was doing by not disregarding " nigger soldiers " and continuing the exchange of whites. They con stantly repeated the assertion with which they had greeted the Emancipation Proclamation, that the war had been wickedly changed from one for the preservation of the Union into one for the aboli tion of slavery. On the other hand, the Republi can press freely accused the Democratic party of desiring the success of secession which was not true. Aside from all patriotic considerations, that party had the strongest reasons for wishing to per petuate the Union, because without the Southern vote it was in a minority. There were many members of that party, however, who, while they by no means desired the destruction of the Union, believed it was inevitable, and thought the sooner the necessity was acknowledged the better. One of the most effective arguments of the can vass was furnished in a condensed form bv one of 476 POPULAR SONGS. [1864. Mr. Lincoln s famous little stories, and in that form was repeated thousands of times. Answer ing the address of a delegation of the Union League, a day or two after his nomination, he said : " I have not permitted myself to conclude that I am the best man in the country ; but I am reminded in this connection of the story of an old Dutch farmer, who once remarked to a compan ion that it was not best to swap horses when crossing streams. There was singing- in the o o o canvass, too, and some of the songs rendered by glee-clubs every evening before large political meetings were very effective. One of the most notable had been written in response to the Presi dent s call for tjiree hundred thousand volunteers, and bore the refrain, "We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more ! " Much of the popular parlor music of the time con sisted of songs relating to the great struggle, prominent among which were " Tenting on the old camp-ground," and " When this cruel war is over." At the South, as at the North, there had been an outburst of lyric enthusiasm at the be ginning of the war, which found expression in " My Maryland," the " Bonnie Blue Flag," and "Dixie"; but the spirit that inspires such poems seems to have died out there after the war had been in progress two or three years, when its ter rible privations were increasing every day. The Confederates were now looking eagerly for 1864.] THE HOPE OF THE CONFEDERATES. 477 the result of the Presidential election as a possible solution of the great question in their favor. John B. Jones, who was a clerk in the Confederate War Department, recorded in his published diary that Mr. Vallandigham, when banished to the South, had assured the officers of the Government at Richmond that " if we [the Confederates] can only hold out this year, the peace party of the North would sweep the Lincoln dynasty out of political existence." This was now their strongest hope, and it was common talk across the lines, between the pickets, that in the event of McClellan s elec tion the Confederates expected a speedy cessation of hostilities and ultimately their independence. And such is the unaccountable elasticity of the human mind in dealing with facts and principles, that a large number of the bravest and most devoted soldiers in the National service, knowing this, were preparing to cast their ballots in a way to give the utmost assistance and encouragement to the very enemy into the muzzles of whose guns they were looking. Whether General Fremont s arraignment of the Administration as " politically, militarily, and financially a failure " was just or unjust, whether it was true or not that the triumph of General McClellan and his party would result in a final dis ruption of the country, before the canvass was over the land had settled down to the belief that the only way to secure the continuance of the war to a successful termination was to reelect Mr. Lin coln, while a vote for General McClellan meant 478 THE REALITIES OF WAR. [1864. something else nobody knew exactly what. The solemnity of the occasion appeared to be universally appreciated, and though a heavy vote was polled the election was the quietest that had ever been held. The citizens were dealing with a question that, in most of its aspects at least, they by this time thoroughly understood. When they sprang to arms in 1861, they did not know what war was ; but now they had had three years of constant schooling to its burdens and its hor rors. They had seen regiment after regiment march away to the music of drum and fife, with a thousand men in the ranks, and come back at the end of two years service with perhaps two hun dred bronzed veterans to be mustered out. They had read in their newspapers, after every great battle, the long lists of killed and wounded, which the telegraph was quick to report. Every city had its fair for the relief of the widows and orphans, every hamlet its two or three crippled soldiers hobbling about in their faded blue overcoats, almost every house its incurable sorrow. They had seen the wheel turning in the provost-marshal s office, in places where volunteering was not suffi ciently rapid, and knew that their own names might be the next to be drawn for service at the front. They knew how many graves there were at Gettysburg, how many at Shiloh, how many at Stone River ; they knew what was to be seen in the hospitals of every Northern city, and something of the unspeakable horrors of captivity. They saw the price of gold go beyond two hundred, 18M.] THE ELECTION. 479 while the Government was spending between two and three millions of dollars a day, piling up a national debt in undreamed-of proportions, for which they were already heavily taxed, and which must some day be paid in solid coin. Seeing and understanding all this, and having the privilege of a secret and unquestioned ballot, they quietly walked up to the polls and voted for a vigorous prosecution of the war, reelecting Mr. Lincoln by a popular majority of more than four hundred thousand, and giving him the votes of all the States excepting Delaware, New Jersey, and Kentucky two hundred and twelve against twenty-one. The vote of the soldiers in the field, so far as it could be counted separately (for in some States it was sent home sealed, and mingled with the other ballots in the boxes), showed about one hundred and nineteen thousand for Lincoln, and about thirty-four thousand for McClellan. The soldiers confined in some of the Confederate prisons held an election at the suggestion of their keepers, who were exceedingly curious to see how the prisoners would vote. Sergeant Robert H. Kellogg tells us that in the stockade at Florence, S. C., where he was confined, two empty bags were hung up, and the prisoners were furnished with black and white beans and marched past in single file, each depositing a black bean for Lin coln, or a white one for McClellan. The result was in the proportion of two and a half for Lincoln to one for McClellan. In the prison at Millen, Ga., Sergeant W. Goodyear tells us, the vote was 480 THE HEROISM OF IT. U864. three thousand and fourteen for Lincoln, and one thousand and fifty for McClellan. In Congress the number of Republican members was increased from one hundred and six to one hundred and forty-three, and the number of Democratic mem bers reduced from seventy-seven to forty-one. Meanwhile, in October, Maryland had adopted anew constitution, in which slavery was prohibited. In answer to serenades after the election, Mr. Lin coln made some of his best impromptu speeches, saying in one : " While I am duly sensible to the high compliment of a reelection, and duly grateful, as I trust, to Almighty God for having directed my countrymen to a right conclusion, as I think, for their good, it adds nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be disappointed by the result. May I ask those who have not differed with me to join with me in this same spirit toward those who have ? " If there is any one act of the American people that above all others, in the sober pages of history, reflects credit upon them for correct judgment, determined purpose, courage in present difficulties, and care for future interests, that act, it seems to me, was the reelection of President Lincoln. CHAPTER XXX. * THE NATIONAL FINANCES. WHEN President Lincoln came into office he found the treasury empty, and the public debt somewhat over seventy-six million dollars. In the last days of President Buchanan s administration the Gov ernment had been borrowing money at twelve per cent, per annum. In December, 1860, Congress passed a bill for the issue of ten million dollars in one-year treasury notes. Half of this amount was advertised, and offers were received for a small por tion, at rates of discount varying from twelve to thirty-six per cent. The twelve per cent, offers were accepted, and subsequently a syndicate of bankers took the remainder of the five millions at that figure. The other five millions were taken a month later at eleven per cent, discount. In Feb ruary, 1 86 1, Congress authorized a loan of twenty- five millions, to bear interest at six per cent, and to be paid in not less than ten nor more than twenty years. The Secretary succeeded in negotiating one third of the amount at rates from 90 to 96. In Mr. Lincoln s Cabinet, Salmon P. Chase (for merly Governor of Ohio, and then United States Senator) was made Secretary of the Treasury. Under the existing acts he borrowed eight millions in March at 94 and upward rejecting all offers 482 INCREASE OF TAXES. |18M. under 94 and early in April issued at par near ly five millions in two-year treasury notes, receiv able for public dues, and also convertible into six- per-cent. stocks. On the I2th of that month the war was begun by the firing on Fort Sumter^ In May seven millions more of the six-per-cent. loan were issued at rates from 85 to 93, and two and a half millions in treasury notes at par. These trans actions were looked upon as remarkably successful, for many considered it questionable whether the Government would survive the blow that was aimed at its life, and be able to redeem any of its securi ties. The existing tariff, which was low, produced an annual income of not more than thirty millions. Congress met, at the call of the President, on the 4th of July, 1861, and on the I7th passed a bill (with but five dissenting votes in the House of Rep resentatives) for the issue of bonds and treasury notes to the amount of two hundred and fifty mill ions. It also increased the duties on many articles, passed an act for the confiscation of the property of rebels, and levied a direct tax of twenty millions, apportioned among the States and Territories. The States that were in rebellion of course did not pay. All the others paid except Delaware, Colorado, Utah, Oregon, and the District of Co lumbia. The law provided for collection by United States officers in such States as should not formally assume and pay the tax themselves. In some of the seceding States lands worth about seven hun dred thousand dollars were seized and sold for non-payment. 1861.] THE SEVEN-THIRTIES. 483 In August the first demand notes were issued as currency, being paid to clerks in the departments for their salaries. Though these were convertible into gold, there was at first great reluctance to re ceive them, but after a little time they became popular, and in five months about thirty-three mill ions were issued. In August also Mr. Chase held a conference with the principal bankers of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, to negotiate a national loan on the basis of the recent acts of Congress. Most of them expressed their desire to sustain the Govern ment, but they made some objections to the terms and rates of interest. When it looked as if the negotiation might fail, the Secretary assured the bankers that if they were not able to take the loan on his terms, he would return to Washington and issue notes for circulation, " for it is certain that the war must go on until the rebellion is put down, if we have to put out paper until it takes a thou sand dollars to buy a breakfast." The banks agreed to form a syndicate to lend the Government fifty million dollars in coin, to pay which the Secretary was to issue three-year notes bearing seven and three-tenths per cent, interest, convertible into six- per-cent. twenty-year bonds. These were popularly known as " seven-thirties." The peculiar rate of interest was made both as a special inducement and for ease of calculation, the interest being two cents a day on each hundred dollars. They were issued in denominations as low as fifty dollars, so that people of limited means could take them, and 484 SUSPENSION OF SPECIE PAYMENTS. [1861. were very popular. The coupon and registered bonds that were to run not less than five years nor more than twenty were popularly known as five- twenties." Subscription-books were opened in every city, and the people responded so promptly that the Government was soon enabled to repay the banks and make another loan on similar terms. But a third loan was refused, and Secretary Chase then issued fifty millions in " five-twenties," bearing interest at six per cent., but sold at such a discount as to make a seven-per-cent. investment. Of all the agents employed to dispose of these bonds, Jay Cooke, of Philadelphia, was the most successful. They were paid one fifth of one per cent, for the first hundred thousand dollars, and one eighth of one per cent, for all in excess of that sum. The amount of coin in circulation in the United States at this time was estimated at about two hundred and ten million dollars. Before the war had been in progress one year, the operations of the Government had become so vast that this did not furnish a sufficient volume of currency for the transactions. On December 30, 1861, the banks suspended specie payments, and the Government was then obliged to do likewise. There were now over half a million men in the field, and the navy had been increased from forty-two vessels to two hundred and sixty-four.. The pay of a private sol dier was thirteen dollars a month, with food and clothing. The total cost to the Government for each soldier maintained in the field was about a thousand dollars a year two and a half times 1362.1 LEGAL-TENDER NOTES. 485 the cost of a British soldier, and twelve times the cost of a French soldier. Early in 1862 even the smallest coins disap peared from circulation, and some kinds of busi ness were almost paralyzed for want of change. Tokens and fractional notes were issued by pri vate firms, and various expedients were resorted to, a favorite one being the enclosure of specified amounts of postage-stamps in small envelopes properly labeled. Thaddeus Stevens, member of Congress from Pennsylvania, proposed that the Government should issue notes for circulation, to any amount that might be required, and make them legal tender for all debts, public and private. Secretary Chase opposed this, and proposed in stead a national banking system, which should embrace an issue of notes bearing a common im pression and a common authority, the redemp tion of these notes by the institutions to which the Government should deliver them for issue, and a pledge of United States stocks as security for such redemption. This scheme was opposed by the State banks, and Mr. Chase gave a reluctant con sent to the legal-tender measure, which was then carried through Congress, and the " greenbacks " became payable for everything except duties on imports. Subsequently, Mr. Chase s plan for a national banking system was also adopted, sub stantially as we have it now. In the loyal States the greenbacks were popular from the first, and the large amount in circulation led to general ex travagance in expenditures. In the insurrection- 486 FRACTIONAL CURRENCY. [1862-5. ary States they were at first refused with scorn. But when the secessionists found that these notes had a purchasing-power vastly superior to those of their own Government, they soon became reconciled to them. When soldiers of the National army were made prisoners of war, they were almost immediately requested by their cap tors to exchange any greenbacks they might have for Confederate money, and some show of fair ness was made by the allowance of a heavy dis count, seldom less than seven for one. The Con federate currency was redeemable " six months after the ratification of a treaty of peace with the United States." The Government supplemented the greenbacks with fractional paper currency in denominations of fifty, twenty-five, ten, and five cents ; and in this money the war bills were paid and all business transacted, except at the custom houses. The daily quotations of gold were looked to as an indication of the prospects of the war. Gold itself did not materially change in value, but the premium on it represented the depreciation of the greenbacks with which it was purchased. At the beginning of 1862 there was a premium of about two per cent, on gold. This-fluctuated from day to day, but the general tendency was upward till at the end of that year the premium was 33. By the end of 1863 gold had risen to 151 ; and on June 21, 1864, just after the Army of the Potomac crossed the James, it touched 200. In other words, the United States paper dollar was then 1860-8.] THE TOTAL COST OF THE WAR. 487 worth half a dollar. On the nth of July, 1864, gold reached its highest point, 285. Confederate paper money had been at par until November, 1861 ; but from that time its value diminished steadily and rapidly until at the close of 1864 five hundred paper dollars were worth but one dollar in gold, and three months later six hundred. Most of the funded debt of the United States was represented by five-twenty bonds. An act was passed authorizing the issue of ten-forties, but they were not popular and comparatively few were taken. The total assessed value of all the property in the United States, real and personal, by the census of 1860, was somewhat over sixteen thou sand million dollars. The cost of the war to the Government has been nearly if not quite half that amount or about equal to the value in 1860 of all the real estate in the loyal States. The amount of the Confederate debt is unknown. If that and the incidental losses could be ascertained, the cost of the war would probably make a grand total almost equivalent to a wiping out of all values in the country as they were estimated in the year of its beginning. The fourteenth amendment to the Constitution proposed in 1866, and declared in force in 1868 provides on the one hand that the validity of the public debt shall not be questioned, and on the other that neither the United States nor any State shall ever pay any debt or obligation that has been incurred in aid of insurrection against the United States. CHAPTER XXXI. THE MARCH TO THE SEA. BEFORE Sherman s army had been a week in Atlanta, he determined to send away all the in habitants of the city, giving each the choice whether to go south or north, and furnishing trans portation for a certain distance. His reason for this measure is given briefly in his own words : " I was resolved to make Atlanta a pure military garrison or depot, with no civil population to influ ence military measures. I had seen Memphis, Vicksburg, Natchez, and New Orleans, all captured from the enemy, and each at once was garrisoned by a full division of troops, if not more ; so that success was actually crippling our armies in the field by detachments to guard and protect the in terests of a hostile population." Of course this action met with a vigorous protest from the people themselves, from the city authorities, and from General Hood, between whom and General Sher man there was a sharp correspondence discussing the humanity of the measure and to some extent the issues of the war. Among the considerations that influenced Gen eral Sherman s action at that time, two appear to have been paramount one a hope, the other a fear. The fear was that some portion of Hood s 1884.] DISAFFECTION IN THE CONFEDERACY. 489 army would make a serious break in his communi cations by destroying portions of the long, single- track railroad over which he drew all his supplies from Chattanooga. The hope was, that Georgia, seeing any further prosecution of the war to be useless, would withdraw her troops from the Con federate armies and practically secede from the Confederacy. Some color was given to this from the fact that Governor Joseph E. Brown had re called the Georgia militia from Hood s army, while Mr. Davis, on a flying visit to that army, had made a speech in which he threw the blame for the recent disasters upon General Johnston and Governor Brown, and told the soldiers they were about to set out on a campaign that would carry them to Tennessee and Kentucky. Sherman sent word to Governor Brown that if Georgia s troops were withdrawn from the Confederate service, he would pass across the State as harmlessly as pos sible, and pay for all the corn and fodder that he took ; but if not, he would devastate the State through its whole length and breadth. In North Carolina there had been a strong movement for peace this year, the only difference of opinion being as to the method in which peace should be sought. The governor, Zebulon B. Vance, as a candidate for reelection, represented those who held that the State should only act in cooperation with the other States that were en gaged with her in the war. The other party, whose candidate was William W. Holden, held that North Carolina should assert her sovereignty 4QO HOOD MOVES NORTHWARD. [1864. and negotiate peace directly and alone with the United States. Governor Vance probably pre sented the decisive argument when he said : " Se cession from the Confederacy will involve us in a new war, a bloodier conflict than that which we now deplore. So soon as you announce to the world that you are a sovereign and independent nation, as a matter of course the Confederate Government has a right to declare war against you, and President Davis will make the whole State a field of battle and blood. Old Abe would send his troops here also, because we would no longer be neutral, and so, if you will pardon the expression, we would catch the devil on all sides." At the election in August, Governor Vance received fifty- four thousand votes, against twenty thousand for Mr. Holden. Georgia did not secede from the Confederacy, but Hood did attack the communications. At every important point on the railroad there was a strong guard, and at the bridges there were block houses with small but well-appointed garrisons. About the ist of October Hood crossed the Chat- tahooche, going northward to strike the railroad. Sherman hurried after him, and on the 5th looked down from Kenesaw Mountain upon the fires that were burning the ties and heating the rails of a dozen miles of his road. Anticipating an attack on Allatoona, which was held by a small brigade under command of Lieut. Col. John E. Tourtellotte, he signaled over the heads of the enemy a mes sage to Allatoona conveying an order for General 1864.] DEFENCE OF ALLATOONA. 49! John M. Corse, then at Rome, to go to the relief of Tourtellotte with a strong force. Corse obeyed promptly, going down with all the men he could obtain transportation for, and arriving at mid night. In the morning the garrison, now nearly two thousand strong, was summoned to surrender immediately, to avoid a needless effusion of blood. General Corse answered, "We are prepared for the needless effusion of blood whenever it is agreeable to you," and at once his men were at tacked from all sides. They were driven into their redoubts, and there made so determined a resistance that after five hours of desperate fighting the Confederates withdrew, leaving their dead and wounded on the field. Corse had lost seven hun dred and seven men out of his nineteen hundred and forty-four, including Colonel Redfield, of the 39th Iowa, killed, and had himself suffered the loss of an ear and a cheek-bone. The total Confeder ate loss is unknown ; but Corse reported burying two hundred and thirty-one of their dead and tak ing four hundred and eleven prisoners, which would indicate a total loss of sixteen hundred. This successful defence of Allatoona was one of the most gallant affairs of the kind in history. General Thomas had previously been sent to Nashville with two divisions, General Slocum was left in Atlanta with the Twentieth Corps, and with the remainder of his forces Sherman pursued Hood through the country between Rome and Chattanooga and westward of that region. But he could not bring the Confederates to battle, and 492 THOMAS ORGANIZES AN ARMY. [1864. had little expectation of overtaking them. He thinks he conceived of the march to the sea some time in September ; the first definite proposal of it was in a telegram to General Thomas, on the 9th of October, in which he said : " I want to destroy all the road below Chattanooga, including Atlanta, and to make for the sea-coast. We can not defend this long line of road." In various despatches between that date and the 2d of No vember, Sherman proposed the great march to Grant and to the President. Grant thought Hood s army should be destroyed first, but finally said : " I do not see that you can withdraw from where you are, to follow Hood, without giving up all we have gained in territory. I say, then, go on as you propose." This was on the understand ing, suggested by Sherman, that Thomas would be left with force enough to take care of Hood. o Sherman sent him the Fourth and Twenty-third corps, commanded by Generals Stanley and Scho- field, and further reenforced him with troops that had been garrisoning various places on the rail road, while he also received two divisions from Missouri and some recruits from the North. These, when properly organized, made up a very strong force ; and, with Thomas at its head, neither Sherman nor Grant felt any hesitation about leaving it to take care of Tennessee. Sherman rapidly sent north all his sick and dis abled men, and allbaggage that could be spared. Commissioners came and took the votes of the soldiers for the Presidential election, and de- 1864.] DESTRUCTION IN ATLANTA. 493 parted. Paymasters came and paid off the troops, and went back again. Wagon trains were put in trim and loaded for a march. Every detachment of the army had its exact orders what to do ; and as the last trains whirled over the road to Chat tanooga, the track was taken up and destroyed, the bridges burned, the wires torn down, and all the troops that had not been ordered to join Thomas concentrated in Atlanta. From the i2th of November nothing more was heard from Sher man till Christmas. The depot, machine-shops, and locomotive-house in Atlanta were all torn down, and fire was set to the ruins. The shops had been used for the manufacture of Confederate ammunition, and all night the shells were exploding in the midst of the ruin, while the fire spread to a block of stores, and finally burned out the heart of the city. With every unsound man and every useless article sent to the rear, General Sherman now had fifty-five thousand three hundred and twenty- nine infantrymen, five thousand and sixty-three cavalrymen, and eighteen hundred and twelve artillerymen, with sixty-five guns. There were four teams of horses to each gun, with its caisson and forge ; six hundred ambulances, each drawn by two horses ; and twenty-five hundred wagons, with six mules to each. Every soldier carried forty rounds of ammunition, while the wagons contained an abundant additional supply and twelve hundred thousand rations, with oats and corn enough to last five days. Probably a more 4.94 THE MARCH BEGUN. [1864. thoroughly appointed army was never soen, and it is difficult to imagine one of equal numbers more effective. Every man in it was a veteran, was proud to be there, and felt the most perfect confidence that under the leadership of " Uncle Billy " it would be impossible to go wrong. On the 1 5th of November they set out on the march to the sea, nearly three hundred miles dis tant. The infantry consisted of four corps. The Fifteenth and Seventeenth formed the right wing, commanded by General Oliver O. Howard ; the Fourteenth and Twentieth the left, commanded by General Henry W. Slocum. The cavalry was under the command of General Judson Kilpatrick. The two wings marched by parallel routes, gen erally a few miles apart, each corps having its own proportion of the artillery and trains. General Sherman issued minute orders as to the conduct of the march, which were systematically carried out. Some of the instructions were these : " The habitual order of march will be, wher ever practicable, by four roads, as nearly parallel as possible. The separate columns will start habitually at 7 A.M., and make about fifteen miles a day. Behind each regiment should follow one wagon and one ambulance. Army commanders should practice the habit of giving the artillery and wagons the road, marching the troops on one side. The army will forage liberally on the country during the march. To this end each brig ade commander will organize a good and sufficient foraging party, who will gather corn or forage of 1864.] SHERMAN S INSTRUCTIONS. 495 any kind, meat of any kind, vegetables, corn meal, or whatever is needed by the command, aiming at all times to keep in the wagons at least ten days provisions. Soldiers must not enter dwellings or commit any trespass; but, during a halt or camp, they may be permitted to gather turnips, potatoes, and other vegetables, and to drive in stock in sight of their camp. To corps commanders alone is entrusted the power to destroy mills, houses, cotton-gins, etc. Where the army is unmolested, no destruction of such property should be permit ted ; but should guerillas or bushwhackers molest our march, or should the inhabitants burn bridges, obstruct roads, or otherwise manifest local hostility, then army commanders should order and enforce a devastation more or less relentless, according to the measure of such hostility. As for horses, mules, wagons, etc., belonging to the inhabitants, the cavalry and artillery may appropriate freely and without limit ; discriminating, however, be tween the rich, who are usually hostile, and the poor and industrious, usually neutral or friendly. In all foraging, the parties engaged will endeavor to leave with each family a reasonable portion for their maintenance." Thus equipped and thus instructed, the great army moved steadily, day after day, cutting a mighty swath, from forty to sixty miles wide, through the very heart of the Confederacy. The columns passed through Rough and Ready, Jones- boro, Covington, McDonough, Macon, Milledge- ville, Gibson, Louisville, Millen, Springfield, and 49 6 THE ROUTE. [1864. many smaller places. The wealthier inhabi tants fled at the ap proach of the troops. The negroes in great numbers swarmed after the army, believing the long-promised day of jubilee had come. Some of them seemed to have an intelligent idea that the success of the Na tional forces meant des truction of slavery, while most of them had but the vaguest notions as to the whole movement. One woman, with a child in her arms, walking along among the cattle and horses, was accosted by an officer, who asked her, " Where are you going, aunty?" " I se gwinewhar you s gwine, massa." One party of black men, who had fallen into line, called out to another who seemed to be asking too many questions, " Stick in dar! It s all right. 1884.] INCIDENTS OF THE MARCH. 497 We se gwine along ; we se free." Major George Ward Nichols describes an aged couple whom he saw in a hut near Milledgeville. The old negress, pointing her long finger at the old man, who was in the corner of the fireplace, hissed out, " What fer you sit dar? You s pose I wait sixty years for nutten ? Don t yer see de door open ? I se follow my child, I not stay, I walks till I drop in my tracks." The army destroyed nearly the whole of the Georgia Central Railroad, burning the ties and heating and twisting the rails. As they had learned that a rail merely bent could be straight ened and used again, a special tool was invented with which a red-hot rail could be quickly twisted like an auger, and rendered forever useless. They also had special appliances for tearing up the track methodically and rapidly. All the depot buildings were in flames as soon as the column reached them. As the bloodhounds had been used to track escaped prisoners, the men killed all that they could find. The foraging parties or "bummers," as they were popularly called went out for miles on each side, starting in advance of the organizations to which they belonged, gathered immense quantities of provisions, and brought them to the line of march, where each stood guard over his pile till his own brigade came along. The progress of the column was not allowed to be interrupted for the reception of the forage, everything being loaded upon the wagons as they moved. The "flankers" 498 CAPTURE OF FORT M ALLISTER. [1864. were thrown out on either side, passing in thin lines through the woods to prevent any surprise by the enemy, while the mounted officers went through the fields to give the road to the troops and trains. The only serious opposition came from Wheeler s Confederate cavalry, which hung on the flanks of the army and burned some bridges, but was well taken care of by Kilpatrick s, who generally de feated it when brought to an encounter. There was great hope that Kilpatrick would be able to release the prisoners of war confined in Millen, but when he arrived there he found that they had been removed to some other part of the Con federacy. When the advance guard was within a few miles of Savannah, there was some fighting with infantry, and a pause before the defences of the city. Fort McAllister, which stood in the way of communication with the blockading fleet, was elaborately protected with ditches, palisades, and chevaux-de-frise ; but General William B. Hazen s division made short work with it, going straight over everything and capturing the fort on the i3th of December, losing ninety-two men in the assault, and killing or wounding about fifty of the garrison. That night General Sherman, with a few officers, pulled down the river in a yawl and visited a gun boat of the fleet in Ossabaw Sound. Four days later, having established full communication, Sher man demanded the surrender of the city of Savan nah, which General William J. Hardee, who was 1864.] SHERMAN OCCUPIES SAVANNAH. 499 in command there with a considerable force, refused. Sherman then took measures to make its investment complete ; but on the morning of the 2 ist it was found to be evacuated by Hardee s forces, and General John W. Geary s division of the Twentieth Corps marched in. The next day Sherman wrote to the President : " I beg to pre sent you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton." Sherman s entire loss in the march had been seven hundred and sixty-four men. That phase of war which reaches behind the armies in the field and strikes directly at the sources of supply, bringing home its burdens and its hardships to men who are urging on the con flict without participating in it, was never exhibited on a grander scale or conducted with more com plete success. This in fact is the most humane kind of war, since it accomplishes the purpose with the least destruction of life and limb. Sher man s movement across Georgia naturally brings to mind another famous march to the sea ; but that was a retreat of ten thousand, while this was a victorious advance of sixty thousand, and it was only in their shout of welcome, Thalatta ! thalatta ! " The sea ! the sea ! " that the weary and disheartened Greeks resembled Sherman s triumphant legions. When Hood found that he could not lure Sher man away from Atlanta, or make him loose his hold upon that prize of his long campaign, he 500 BATTLE OF FRANKLIN. [1864. turned toward Nashville, under orders from Rich mond, hoping to destroy the army that Thomas was organizing. He was hindered by heavy rains, and it was late in November when he arrived at Duck River, about forty miles south of the city. Here he found a force under General John M.Schofield, which was easily flanked by crossing the river, whereup on Schofield fell back to Frank lin, on Harpeth River, eighteen miles from Nashville, intrenched a line south and west of the town, with both flanks resting on bends of the river, and got his artillery and trains across the stream, placing the guns where they could play upon any attacking force. Schofield had about twenty-five thousand men, and Hood over forty thousand. In the afternoon of November 30, the attack was made. Schofield s rear guard, con sisting of Wagner s brigade, instead of falling back to the main body, as ordered, so as to permit the fire of the whole line to be poured into the advanc ing enemy, attempted to withstand the Confeder ate onset. Of course it was quickly swept back, and as the men rushed in confusion into the lines 1864.] BATTLE OF NASHVILLE. 50! they were closely followed by the enemy, who captured a portion of the intrenchments. From a part of the line thus seized they were driven in turn, but they clung tenaciously to the remainder, and Schofield established a new line a few rods in the rear. Here the fight continued long after dark, with no special advantage to either side. Hood lost six thousand three hundred men, and Schofield twenty-five hundred. At midnight Schofield crossed the river and retreated to Nashville. Hood followed him, and there con fronted Thomas s whole army. Everybody complained of Thomas s slowness, and he was in imminent danger of being super seded ; but he would not assume the offensive till he felt that his army was prepared to make sure work. When all was ready, he still had to delay because of bad weather; but on the i5th of December (one day after Sherman reached the sea) the long-meditated blow was given. Thomas s army advanced against Hood s, striking it simul taneously in front and on the left flank. The weight of the attack fell upon the flank, which was completely crushed, and a part of the intrench ments with their guns fell into the hands of the National forces. In the night Hood retreated a mile or two, to another line on the hills, made some new dispositions, and awaited attack. He was seriously embarrassed by the absence of a large part of Forrest s cavalry, which should have been protecting his flanks. In the afternoon of the 1 6th, Thomas, having sent Wilson s cavalry 5<D2 HOOD DESTROYED. [1864. around the enemy s left flank, attacked with his whole force. He made no headway against Hood s right, but again he crushed the left flank, and followed up the advantage so promptly and vigorously that all organization in the Confederate army was lost, and what was left of it fled in wild confusion toward Franklin, pursued by Wilson s cavalry. Thomas captured all their artillery, and took forty-five hundred prisoners. The number of their killed and wounded was never reported. His own loss was about three thousand. CHAPTER XXXII. THE FINAL BATTLES. AFTER Sherman s army had marched through Georgia and captured Savannah, he and Gen eral Grant at first contemplated removing it by water to the James, and placing it where it could act in immediate connection with the Army of the Potomac against Petersburg and Richmond. But several considerations soon led to a different plan. One was, the difficulty of getting together enough transports to carry sixty-five thousand men and all their equipage without too much delay. A still stronger one was the fact that in a march through the Carolinas General Sherman s army could probably do more to help Grant s and bring the war to a speedy close than if it were suddenly set down beside it in Virginia. The question of supplies, always a vital one for an army, had be come very serious in the military affairs of the Confederacy. The trans-Mississippi region had been cut off long ago, the blockade of the seaports had been growing more stringent, Sheridan had desolated the Shenandoah Valley, Sherman had eaten out the heart of Georgia. And now if that same army, with its increased experience and confidence, should go through South and North Carolina, living on the country, Lee s position in 504 SHERMAN MOVES NORTHWARD. [1865. the defences of Richmond would soon become un tenable from mere lack of something for his army to eat. Sherman s military instinct never failed him ; and after tarrying at Savannah three weeks, he gathered up his forces for another stride to ward the final victory. Turning over the city on January 18, 1865, to General JohnG. Foster, who was in command on the coast, he issued orders on the i gth for the movement of his whole army. The right wing was concentrated at Pocotaligo, about forty miles north of Savannah, and the left at Robertsville, twenty miles west of Pocotaligo. After some delay caused by the weather and the necessity for final preparations, the northward march was begun on the ist of February. Sher man had sent out rumors that represented both Charleston and Augusta as his immediate goal ; but instead of turning aside for either of those cities, he pushed straight northward, on a route midway between them, toward Columbia. This march, though not so romantic as that through Georgia, where a great army was for several weeks hidden from all its friends, was really much more difficult and dangerous, and required greater skill. In the march from Atlanta to the sea, the army moved parallel with the courses of the rivers, and found highways between them that it was not easy for any but a large force to obstruct or destroy. But in the march through the Carolinas all the streams, and some of them were rivers, had to be crossed. A single man could burn a bridge and stop an army for several hours. Moreover, after 1865.] JOHNSTON RESTORED TO COMMAND. 505 the disasters that befell General Hood at Franklin and Nashville, public sentiment in the Confeder acy had demanded the reinstatement of General Joseph E. Johnston, and that able soldier had been placed in command of whatever remained of 506 THE MARCH THROUGH THE CAROLINAS. [1865. Hood s army, to which were added all the scat tered detachments and garrisons that were avail able, and with this force he took the field against his old antagonist. Of course he was not able now to meet Sherman in anything like a pitched battle ; but there was no telling how a sud den blow might fall upon an army on the march. Another danger, which was seriously contemplated by Sherman, was that Lee, instead of remaining in his intrenchments while his source of supply was being cut off, might with his whole army slip away from Grant and come down to strike Sherman somewhere between Columbia and Raleigh. With a caution that admirably balanced his boldness, Sherman arranged to have the fleet cooperate with him along the coast, watching his progress and establishing points where supplies could be reached and refuge taken if necessary. He even sent engineers to repair the railroads that, starting from the ports of Wilmington and Newbern, unite at Goldsboro, and to collect rolling-stock there. He intended, when once under way, to push through to Goldsboro, four hundred and twenty- five miles, as rapidly as possible. Wheeler s cavalry had been considerably reduced by its constant efforts to delay the march through Georgia, and Wade Hampton s, heretofore with the Army of Northern Virginia, was now sent down to its assistance. They felled trees in the roads, and attempted to make a stand at Salke- hatchie River; but Sherman s men made nothing of picking up the trees and casting them one side, 18C5.] COLUMBIA BURNED. 507 while the force at the river was quickly brushed away. The South Carolina Railroad was soon reached, and the track was destroyed for miles. Then all the columns pushed on for Columbia. Sherman expected to meet serious opposition there, for it was the capital of the State; but the Confederate leaders were holding their forces at Charleston and Augusta, confidently expecting those cities to be attacked, and nothing but Hamp ton s cavalry was left to take care of Columbia. The main difficulty was at the rivers, where the Confederates had burned the bridges, which Sher man s men rapidly rebuilt, and on the i;th the National troops entered the city as Hampton s cavalry left it. Bales of cotton, piled up in the streets, were on fire, there was a high wind, and the flakes of cotton were flying through the air like a snow-storm. In spite of all efforts of the soldiers, the fire persistently spread at night, several buildings burst into a blaze, and before morning the heart of the city was a heap of ruins. There has been an acrimonious dispute as to the respon sibility for this fire. It seems probable that Hamp ton s soldiers set fire to the cotton, perhaps with out orders, and it seems improbable that any one would purposely set fire to the city. At all events, Sherman s men did their utmost to extinguish the flames, and that General gave the citizens five hundred head of cattle, and did what he could to shelter them. He did destroy the arsenal pur posely, and tons of powder, shot, and shell were taken out of it, hauled to the river, and sunk in 508 CHARLESTON EVACUATED. [18(55. deep water. He also destroyed the foundries and the establishment in which the Confederacy s paper money was printed, large quantities of which were found and carried away by the soldiers. That same day, the i8th, Charleston was evacu ated by the Confederate forces under General Hardee, and a brigade of National troops com manded by General Schimmelpfennig promptly took possession of it. On the 2Oth, leaving Columbia, Sherman s army bore away for Fayetteville, the right wing going through Cheraw, and the left through Lancaster and Sneedsboro, and threatening Charlotte and Salisbury. The most serious difficulty was met at Catawba River, where the bridges were destroyed, the floods interfered with the building of new ones, and there was a delay of nearly a week. In Cheraw was stored a large amount of valuable personal property, including fine furniture and costly wines, which had been sent from Charleston for safe keeping. Most of this fell into the hands of the invading army. Here also were found a large number of arms and thirty-six hundred barrels of powder ; and here, as at Columbia, lives were lost by the carelessness of a soldier in exploding the powder. Fayetteville was reached on the nth of March, and here communication was opened with General Alfred H. Terry, whose men had captured Fort Fisher, below Wilmington, after a gallant fight, in January, and later the city itself, thus closing that harbor to blockade-runners. In taking the fort, 1865.] CAPTURE OF FORT FISHER. 509 Terry s men had fought their way from traverse to traverse, and the stubborn garrison had only yielded when they literally reached the last ditch. All this time the Con federate forces, somewhat scattered, had hung on the flanks of Sherman s column or disposed themselves to pro tect the points that were threatened. But now they knew he was going to Golds- boro, and according ly they concentra ted in his front, be tween Fayetteville and that place. At Averysboro, thirty- five miles south of Raleigh, on the 1 6th of March, the left wing sudden ly came upon Har- dee s forces intrenched across its path. The left flank of the Confederates was soon turned, and they fell back to a stronger position. Here a direct attack was made, but without success, and Kilpatrick s cavalry was roughly handled by a G^ i ><&P * V APE FEAR 510 BATTLE OF BENTONVILLE. L1865. division of Confederate infantry. General Slocum then began a movement to turn the flank again, and in the night Hardee retreated. Each side had lost five hundred men. Averysboro is about forty miles west of Golds- boro. Midway between is Bentonville, where on the i Qth the left wing again found the enemy in trenched across the way, this time in greater force and commanded by General Johnston. Thickets of black-jack protected the flanks, and it was ugly ground for fighting over. Slocum s men at tacked the position in force as soon as they came upon it. They quickly broke the Confederate right flank, drove it back, and planted batteries to com mand that part of the field. On the other flank the thickets interfered more with the organization of both sides, the National troops threw up in- trenchments, both combatants attacked alternately, and the fighting was very bloody. After nightfall the Confederates withdrew toward Raleigh, and the road was then open for Sherman to march into Goldsboro. At Bentonville, the last battle fought by this army, the National loss was sixteen hun dred and four men, the Confederate twenty-three hundred and forty-two. At Goldsboro Sherman was joined by Schofield s corps, which had been transferred thither from Thomas s army. Several attempts to negotiate a peace were made during the winter of 1864-5, the most notable of which took place early in February, when Alexan der H. Stephens, Vice-President of the Confed eracy, accompanied by John A. Campbell and 1865.] A PEACE CONFERENCE. 511 Robert M. T. Hunter, applied for permission to pass through Grant s lines for the purpose. They were conducted to Fort Monroe, met President Lincoln and Secretary Seward on a steamer in Hampton Roads, and had a long and free discus sion. The Confederate commissioners proposed an armistice, with the hope that after a time, if trade and friendly relations were resumed, some sort of settlement or compromise could be reached without more fighting. But Mr. Lincoln would consent to no peace or armistice of any kind, except on condition of the immediate disbandment of the Confederate armies and government, the restor ation of the Union, and the abolition of slavery. With these points secured, he was willing to con cede everything else. Mr. Stephens, trying to convince Mr. Lincoln that he might properly recognize the Confederacy, cited the example of Charles I. of England negotiating with his rebel lious subjects. " I am not strong on history," said Lincoln, " I depend mainly on Secretary Seward for that. All I remember about Charles is, that he lost his head." The Confederate commis sioners were not authorized to concede the restor ation of the Union, and thus the conference ended with no practical result. Late in February General Sheridan, at the head of ten thousand cavalry, moved far up the Shenan- doah Valley, and at Waynesboro his Third Division, commanded by General Custer, met Early s force on the 2d of March. In the engagements that ensued, Early was completely defeated, and 512 LEE PLANS TO ESCAPE. U865. about fifteen hundred of his men were captured, together with every gun he had, and all his trains. Sheridan then 1 ruined the locks in the James River Canal, destroyed portions of the railroads toward Lynchburg and Gordonsville, and rode down the peninsula to White House, crossed over to the James, and joined Grant, taking post on the left of the army, and occupying Dinwiddie Court House on the 2Qth. Grant and Lee had both been waiting impa tiently for the roads to dry, so that wagons and guns could be moved Lee because he saw that Richmond could not be held any longer, and was anxious to get away ; Grant because he was anxious to begin the final campaign and prevent Lee from getting away. The only chance for Lee to escape was by slipping past Grant s left, and either join ing Johnston in North Carolina or taking a position in the mountainous country to the west. But Grant s left extended too far westward to permit of this without great hazard. To compel him to contract his lines, drawing in his left, Lee planned a bold attack on his right, which was executed in the night of the 24th. Large numbers of deserters had recently left the Confederate army and walked across to Grant s lines, bringing their arms with them, and this circumstance was now used for a ruse. At a point where the hostile lines were not more than a hundred yards apart, some of General Gordon s men walked out to the National picket-line as if they were deserters, seized the pickets, and sent them back as prisoners. 1865-] FIGHTING BEFORE PETERSBURG. 513 Then a column charged through the gap, surprised the men in the main line, and captured a section of the works. But General Parke, commanding the Ninth Corps, where the assault was delivered, promptly made dispositions to check it. The Confederates were headed off in both directions, and a large number of guns were soon planted where they could sweep the ground that had been captured. A line of intrenchments was thrown up in the rear, and the survivors of the charging column found themselves where they could neither go forward nor retreat nor be reenforced. Con sequently they were all made prisoners. This affair cost the Confederates about four thousand men, and inflicted a loss of two thousand upon the National army. Grant, instead of contracting his lines, was making dispositions to extend them. Three divis ions under General E. O. C. Ord were brought from his right, before Richmond, in the night of the 2 ;th, and placed on his extreme left, while a movement was planned for the 2Qth by which that wing was to be pushed out to the Southside Rail road. When the day appointed for the movement arrived, heavy rains had made the ground so soft that the roads had to be corduroyed before the artillery could be dragged over them. But the army was used to this sort of work, and performed it with marvellous quickness. Small trees were cut down, and rail fences disappeared in a twink ling, while the rude flooring thus constructed stretched out over the sodden road and kept the 514 BATTLE OF FIVE FORKS. [1865. wheels of the guns from sinking hopelessly in the mire and quicksands. Grant s extreme left, where the critical move ment was to be made, was now held by his most energetic lieutenant, General Sheridan, with his magnificent cavalry. By Grant s orders, Sheridan made a march through Dinwiddie Court House, to come in upon the extreme Confederate right at Five Forks, which he struck on the 3ist. He had no difficulty in driving away the Confederate cavalry; but when a strong infantry force was en countered he was himself driven back, and called upon Grant for help. Grant sent the Fifth Corps to his assistance ; but it was unusually slow in moving, and was stopped by the loss of a bridge at Gravelly Run, so that it was midday of April ist before Sheridan began to get it in hand. Lee had strengthened the force holding Five Forks ; but Sheridan was determined to capture the place, and when his troops were all up, late in the after noon, he opened the battle on a well-conceived plan. Engaging the enemy with his cavalry in front, he used the Fifth Corps as if it were his immense right arm, swinging it around so as to embrace and crush the Confederate force. With bloody but brief fighting the manoeuvre was suc cessful ; Five Forks was secured, and more than five thousand prisoners were taken. Sheridan s loss was about one thousand. In the hour of vic tory came orders from Sheridan relieving Warren of his command, because of that officer s slowness in bringing his corps to the attack. Whether this 1835.] LEES LINES BROKEN. 515 harsh action was justified or not, it threw a blight upon the career of one of the best corps com manders that the Army of the Potomac ever had, and excited the regret, if not the indignation, of every man that had served under him. Judging that Lee must have drawn forces from other parts of his line to strengthen his right, Grant followed up the advantage by attacking Lee s centre at daybreak the next morning, Sun day, April 2, with the corps of Wright and Parke, the Sixth and Ninth. Both of these broke through the Confederate lines in the face of a musketry fire, took large portions of them in reverse, and captured three or four thousand prisoners and several guns. The Second Corps under General Andrew A. Humphreys, and three divisions under General Ord, made a similar move ment, with similar success, Sheridan moved up on the left, and the outer defences of Petersburg were now in the possession of the National forces, who encircled the city with a continuous line from a point on the Appomattox River above to one below. Two strong earthworks, Forts Gregg and Whitworth, salient to the inner Confederate line, still held out. But Foster s division of the Twenty-Fourth Corps carried Fort Gregg after a costly assault, and Fort Whitworth then surren dered. In the fighting of this day the Confed erate General A. P. Hill was killed. General Lee now sent a telegram to Richmond, saying that both cities must be evacuated. It was received in church by Mr. Davis, who quietly 516 RICHMOND EVACUATED. [1865. withdrew without waiting for the service to be finished. As the signs of evacuation became evi dent to the people, there was a general rush for means of conveyance, and property of all sorts was brought into the streets in confused masses. Committees appointed by the city council at tempted to destroy all the liquor, and hundreds of barrelfuls were poured into the gutters. The great tobacco warehouses were set on fire, under military orders, and the iron-clad rams in the river blown up ; while a party of drunken soldiers began a course of pillaging, which became con tagious and threw everything into the wildest confusion. The next morning a detachment of black troops from General Godfrey Weitzel s command marched into the city, and the flag of the 1 2th Maine regiment was hoisted over the Capitol. When Lee, with the remnant of his army, with drew from Richmond and Petersburg, he fled westward, still keeping up the organization, though his numbers were constantly diminishing by deser tion, straggling, and capture. Grant was in close pursuit, striving to head him off, and determined not to let him escape. He moved mainly on a parallel route south of Lee s, attacking vigorously whenever any portion of the hostile forces ap proached near enough. Some of these engage ments were very sharply contested, and as the men on both sides had attained the highest per fection of destructive skill, and were not sheltered by intrenchments, the losses were severe, and the 11865. MAP SHOWING LINE OF LEE s RETREAT. 517 518 LEE SURRENDERS. [1865. seventy miles of the race was a long track of blood. There were collisions at Jetersville, Deton- ville, Deep Creek, Sailor s Creek, Paine s Cross Roads, and Farmville ; the most important being that at Sailor s Creek, where Custer broke the Confederate line, capturing four hundred wagons, sixteen guns, and many prisoners, and then the Sixth Corps came up and captured the whole of Ewell s corps, including Ewell himself and four other generals. Lee was stopped by the loss of a provision train, and spent a day in trying to col lect from the surrounding country something for his famished soldiers to eat. When he arrived at Appomattox Court House, April 9, a week from the day he set out, he found Sheridan s dismounted cavalry in line across his path, and his infantry advanced confidently to brush them away. But the cavalrymen drew off to the right, and disclosed a heavy line of blue- coated infantry and gleaming steel. Before this the weary Confederates recoiled, and just as Sheridan was preparing to charge upon their flank with his cavalry a white flag was sent out, and hostilities were suspended on information that negotiations for a surrender were in progress. Grant had first demanded Lee s surrender in a note written on the afternoon of the 7th. Three or four other notes had passed between them, and on the Qth the two commanders met at a house in the village, where they wrote and exchanged two brief letters by which the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia was effected ; the terms 1865.] GRANTS GENEROUS TERMS. 519 being simply that the men were to lay down their arms and return to their homes, not to be molested so long as they did not again take up arms against the United States. The exceeding generosity of these terms, to an army that had exacted almost the last life it had power to destroy, was a sur prise to many who remembered the unconditional surrender that General Grant had demanded at Vicksburg and Fort Donelson. But he considered that the war was over, and thought the defeated insurgents would at once return to their homes and become good citizens of the United States. In pursuance of this idea, he ordered that they be permitted to take their horses with them, as they " would need them for the ploughing." The starving Confederates were immediately fed by their captors, and by General Grant s orders cheering, firing of salutes, and other demonstra tions of exultation over the great and decisive victory, were immediately stopped. The number of officers and men paroled, according to the terms of the surrender, was twenty-eight thousand three hundred and sixty-five. The next day General Lee issued, in the form of a general order, a farewell address to his army, in which he lauded them in unmeasured terms, to the implied disparagement of their conquerors, and assured them of his " unceasing admiration of their constancy and devotion to their country." It seems not to have occurred to the General that he had no army, for it had been taken away from him, and no right to issue a military document of 52O SURRENDER OF THE OTHER ARMIES. [1865. any kind, for he was a prisoner of war ; and he certainly must have forgotten that the costly court of last resort, to which he and they had appealed, had just decided that their country as he defined it had no existence. General Johnston, who was confronting Sher man in North Carolina, surrendered his army to that commander at Durham Station, near Raleigh, on the 26th of April, receiving the same terms that had been granted to Lee ; and the surrender of all the other Confederate armies soon followed, the last being the command of General E. Kirby Smith, at Shreveport, La., on the 26th of May. The number of Johnston s immediate command surrendered and paroled was thirty-six thousand eight hundred and seventeen, to whom were added fifty-two thousand four hundred and fifty-three in Georgia and Florida. CHAPTER XXXIII. PEACE. No account of the war, however brief, can prop erly be closed without some mention of the forces other than military that contributed to its success. The assistance and influence of the " war Gover nors," as they were called including John A. Andrew of Massachusetts, William A. Bucking ham of Connecticut, Edwin D. Morgan of New York, William Dennison of Ohio, and Oliver P. Morton of Indiana was vital to the cause, and was acknowledged as generously as it was given. There was also a class of citizens who, by reason of age or other disability, did not go to the front, and would not have been permitted to, but found a way to assist the Government perhaps even more efficiently. They were thoughtful and scholarly men, who brought out and placed at the service of their country every lesson that could be drawn from history ; practical and experienced men, whose hard sense and knowledge of affairs made them o natural leaders in the councils of the people ; men of fervid eloquence, whose arguments and appeals aroused all there was of latent patriotism in their younger and hardier countrymen, and contributed wonderfully to the rapidity with which quotas were filled and regiments forwarded to the seat of war. 522 THE SUDDEN END. [1865. There were great numbers of devoted women, who performed uncomplainingly the hardest hospital service, and managed great fairs and relief socie ties with an enthusiasm that never wearied. And there were the Sanitary and Christian Commis sions, whose agents went everywhere between the depot in the rear and the skirmish-line in front, carrying not only whatever was needed to alleviate the sufferings of the sick and wounded, but also many things to beguile the tedious hours in camp and diminish the serious evil of homesickness. It was a common remark, at the time, that the Confederacy crumbled more suddenly in 1865 than it had risen in 1861. It seemed like an empty shell, which, when fairly broken through, had no more stability, and instantly fell to ruins. It was fortunate that when the end came Lee s army was the first to surrender, since all the other command ers felt justified in following his example. To some on the Confederate side, especially in Vir ginia, the surrender was a surprise, and came like a personal and irreparable grief. But people in other parts of the South, especially those who had seen Sherman s legions marching by their doors, knew that the end was coming. Longstreet had pronounced the cause lost by Lee s want of generalship at Gettysburg ; Ewell had said there was no use in fighting longer when Grant had swung his army across the James ; Johnston and his lieutenants declared it wrong to keep up the hopeless struggle after the capital had been aban doned and the Army of Northern Virginia had 1866.] CAPTURE OF MR. DAVIS. 523 laid down its weapons, and so expressed them selves to Mr. Davis when he stopped to confer with them, in North Carolina, on his flight south ward. He said their fortunes might still be re trieved, and independence established, if those who were absent from the armies without leave would but return to their places. He probably understood the situation as well as General John ston did, and may have spoken not so much from judgment as from a consciousness of greater re sponsibility, a feeling that as he was the first citi zen of the Confederacy he was the last that had any right to despair of it. Nevertheless, he continued his flight through the Carolinas into Georgia ; his Cabinet officers, most of whom had set out with him from Rich mond, leaving him one after another. When he had arrived at Irwinsville, Ga., accompanied by his family and Postmaster-General Reagan, their little encampment in the woods was surprised, on the morning of May 11, by two detachments of Wilson s cavalry, and they were all taken prisoners. In the gray of the morning the two detachments, approaching from different sides, fired into each other before they discovered that they were friends, and two soldiers were killed and several wounded. Mr. Davis was taken to Savannah, and thence to Fort Monroe, where he was a prisoner for two years, after which he was released on bail his bondsmen being Cornelius Vanderbilt, Horace Greeley, and Gerrit Smith, a life-long abolitionist. He was never tried. 524 CHARACTER OF THE INSURRECTION. [1865. The secession movement had been proved to be a rebellion and nothing else although the mightiest of all rebellions. It never rose to the character of a revolution ; for it never had pos session of the capital or the public archives, never stopped the wheels of the Government for a single day, was suppressed in the end, and attained none of its objects. But although it was clearly a rebellion, and although its armed struggle had been maintained after all prospect of success had disappeared, such was the magnanimity of the National Government and the Northern people that its leaders escaped the usual fate of rebels. Except by temporary political disabilities, not one of them was punished neither Mr. Davis nor Mr. Stephens, nor any member of the Con federate Cabinet or Congress ; neither Lee nor Johnston nor any of their lieutenants, not even Beauregard, who advocated the black flag, nor Forrest, who massacred his prisoners at Fort Pil low. Most of the officers of high rank in the Confederate army were graduates of the Military Academy at West Point, and had used their mili tary education in an attempt to destroy the very government that gave it to them, and to which they had solemnly sworn allegiance. Some of them, notably General Lee, had rushed into the rebel service without waiting for the United States War Department to accept their resignations. But all such ugly facts were suppressed or forgot ten, in the extreme anxiety of the victors lest they should not be sufficiently magnanimous toward 1865.] OTHER REBELLIONS. 525 the vanquished. There was but a single act of capital punishment. The keeper of the Anderson- ville stockade was tried, convicted, and executed for cruelty to prisoners. His more guilty superior, General Winder, died two months before the sur render. Two months after that event, the seces sionist that had sought the privilege of firing the first gun at the flag of his country, com mitted suicide rather than live under its pro tection. The popular cry that soon arose was " Universal amnesty and universal suffrage !" No such exhibition of mercy has been seen be fore or since. Four years previous to this war, there was a rebellion against the authority of the British Government ; six years after it, there was one against the French Government ; and in both instances the conquered insurgents were punished with the utmost severity. In our own country there had been several minor insurrections preceding the great one. In such of these as were aimed against the institution of slavery-- Vesey s, Turner s, and Brown s the offenders suffered the extreme penalty of the law; in the others - Fries s, Shays s, Dorr s, and the whiskey war they were punished very lightly or not at all. The general feeling in the country was of relief that the war was ended hardly less at the South than at the North. After the surrender of the various armies the soldiers so recently in arms against each other behaved more like brothers than o like enemies. The Confederates were fed liberally from the abundant supplies of the National com- 526 DEATH OF THE PRESIDENT. [1865. missariat, and many of them were furnished with transportation to their homes in distant States. Some of them had been absent from their families during the whole war. If the people of the North had any disposition to be boisterous over the final victory, it was com pletely quelled by the shadow of a great sorrow that suddenly fell upon them. A conspiracy had been in progress for a long time among a few half- crazy secessionists in and about the capital. It culminated on the night of Good Friday, April 14, 1865. One of the conspirators forced his way into Secretary Seward s house and attacked the Secretary with a knife, but did not succeed in killing him. Mr. Seward had been thrown from a carriage a few days before, and was lying in bed with his jaws encased in a metallic framework, which probably saved his life. The chief con spirator, an obscure actor, made his way into the box at Ford s Theatre where the President and his wife were sitting, witnessing the comedy of " Our American Cousin," shot Mr. Lincoln in the back of the head, jumped from the box to the stage with a flourish of bravado, shouting "Sic semper tyrannisJ" and escaped behind the scenes and out at the stage door. The dying President was carried to a house across the street, where he expired the next morning. As the principal Confederate army had already surrendered, it was impossible for any one to suppose that the killing of the President could affect the result of the war. Furthermore, Mr. Lincoln had long been in the habit of going 1865.] LINCOLN S GREATNESS. 527 to the War Department in the evening, and return ing to the White House, unattended, late at night ; so that an assassin who merely wished to put him out of the way had abundant opportunities for doing so, with good chances of escaping and con cealing his own identity. It was therefore perfectly obvious that the murderer s principal motive was the same as that of the youth who set fire to the temple of Diana at Ephesus. And the newspapers did their utmost to give him the notoriety that he craved, displaying his name in large type at the head of their columns, and repeating about him every anecdote that could be recalled or manu factured. The consequence was that sixteen years later the country was disgraced by another Presidential assassination, mainly from the same motive ; and as the journalists repeated their folly on that occasion, we shall perhaps have still an other by-and-by. Mr. Lincoln had grown steadily in the affections and admiration of the people. His state papers were the most remarkable in American annals ; his firmness where firmness was required, and kindheartedness where kindness was practicable, were almost unfailing ; and as the successive events of the war called forth his powers, it was seen that he had unlimited shrewdness and tact, statesmanship of the broadest kind, and that honesty of purpose which is the highest wisdom. Moreover, his lack of all vindictive feeling toward the insurgents, and his steady endeavor to make the restored Union a genuine republic of equal 528 LINCOLN S SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS, rights, gave tone to the feelings of the whole nation, and at the last won many admirers among his foes in arms. In his second inaugural address, a month before his death, he seemed to speak with that insight and calm judgment which we only look for in the studious historian in after- times. " Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men s faces. But let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayer of both could not be an swered ; that of neither has been answered fully. If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to re move, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a loving God always ascribe to him ? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all 1865. HIS LAST DAYS. 529 the wealth piled by the bondman s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to seethe right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." A day or two after the evacuation of Richmond, Mr., Lincoln walked through its smoking and dis ordered streets, where the negroes crowded about him and called down all sorts of uncouth but sincere blessings on his head. He had lived to enter the enemy s capital, lived to see the author ity of the United States restored over the whole country, and then was snatched away, when the people were as much as ever in need of his genius for the solution of new problems that suddenly confronted them. The funeral train retraced the same route over which Mr. Lincoln had gone to Washington from his home in Springfield, Illinois, four years before, and to the sorrowful crowds that were gathered at every station, and even along the track in the country, it seemed as if the light of the nation had gone out forever. 53O THE GRAND REVIEW. [1865. The armies returning from the field were brought to Washington for a grand review before being mustered out of service. The city was decorated with flags, mottoes, and floral designs, and the streets were thronged with people, many of whom carried wreaths and bouquets. The Army of the Potomac was reviewed on May 23, and Sherman s army on the 24th, the troops march ing in close column around the Capitol and down Pennsylvania Avenue to the music of their bands. As they passed the grand stand at the White House, where President Johnson and his Cabinet reviewed them, the officers saluted with their swords, and commanders of divisions dismounted and went upon the stand. The armies were quickly disbanded, and each regiment, on its arrival home, was given a public reception and a fitting welcome. The men were well dressed and well fed, but their bronzed faces and their tattered and smoky battle-flags told where they had been. It was computed that the loss of life in the Confederate service was about equal to that in the National. Their losses in battle, as they were generally on the defensive, were smaller, but their means of caring for the wounded were inferior. Thus it cost us nearly six hundred thousand lives and more than six thousand million dollars to destroy the doctrine of State sovereignty, abolish the system of slavery, and begin the career of the United States as a nation. The home-coming at the North was almost as sorrowful as at the South, because of those that 1865.] THE HOME-COMING. 531 came not. In all the festivities and rejoicings there was hardly a participator whose joy was not sad dened by missing some well-known face and form now numbered with the silent three hundred thous and. Grant was there, the commander that had never taken a step backward ; and Farragut was there, the-sailor without an equal ; and the unfailing Sherman, and the patient Thomas, and the intrepid Hancock, and the fiery Sheridan, and the brilliant Custer, and many of lesser rank, who in a smaller theatre of conflict would have won a larger fame. But where was young Ellsworth ? Shot dead as soon as he crossed the Potomac. And Winthrop killed in the first battle, with his best books unwritten. And Lyon fallen at the head of his little army in Missouri, the first summer of the war. And Baker sacrificed at Ball s Bluff. And Kearny at Chantilly, and Reno at South Mountain, and Mansfield at Antietam, and Reynolds at Get tysburg, and Wadsworth in the Wilderness, and Sedgwick at Spottsylvania, and McPherson before Atlanta, and Craven in his monitor at the bot tom of the sea, and thousands of others, the best and bravest, all gone all, like Latour, the immor tal captain, dead on the field of honor, but none the less dead and a loss to their mourning country. The hackneyed allegory of Curtius had been given a startling illustration and a new significance. The South, too, had lost heavily of her foremost citizens in the great struggle Bee and Bartow at Bull Run ; Albert Sidney Johnston, leading a desperate charge at Shiloh ; Zollicoffer, soldier and jour- 532 LESSONS OF THE WAR. nalist, at Mill Spring; Stonewall Jackson, Lee s right arm, at Chancellorsville ; Polk, priest and warrior, at Lost Mountain ; Armistead, wavering between two allegiances and fighting alternately for each, and Barksdale and Garnett all at Get tysburg ; Hill at Petersburg ; and the dashing Stuart, and Daniel, and Perrin, and Bearing, and Doles, and numberless others. The sudden hush and sense of awe that impresses a child when he steps upon a single grave, may well overcome the strongest man when he looks upon the face of his country scarred with battle-fields like these, and con siders what blood of manhood was rudely wasted there. And the slain were mostly young, unmar ried men, whose native virtues fill no living veins, and will not shine again on any field. It is poor business measuring the mouldered ramparts and counting the silent guns, marking the deserted battle-fields and decorating the grassy graves, unless we can learn from it all some nobler lesson than to destroy. Men write of this as of other wars as if the only thing necessary to be impressed upon the rising generation were the virtue of physical courage and contempt of death. It seems to me that is the last thing that we need to teach; for since the days of John Smith in Virginia and the men of the " Mayflower" in Mas sachusetts, no generation of Americans has shown any lack of it. From Louisburg to Petersburg a hundred and twenty years, the full span of four generations they have stood to their guns and been shot down in greater comparative numbers LESSONS OF THE WAR. 533 than any other race on earth. In the War of Secession there was not a State, not a county, probably not a town, between the great lakes and the Gulf, that was not represented on fields where all that men could do with powder and steel was done, and valor was exhibited at its Jiighest pitch. It was a common saying in the Army of the Potomac that courage was the cheapest thing there ; and it might have been said of all the other armies as well. There is not the slightest neces sity for lauding American bravery or impressing it upon American youth. But there is the gravest necessity for teaching them respect for law, and reverence for human life, and regard for the rights of their fellow-men, and all that is significant in the history of our country lest their feet run to evil and they make haste to shed innocent blood. I would be glad to convince my compatriots that it is not enough to think they are right, but they are bound to know they are right, before they rush into any experiments that are to cost the lives of men and the tears of orphans, in their own land or in any other. I would warn them to beware of provincial conceit. I would have them compre hend that one may fight bravely, and still be a per jured felon ; that one may die humbly, and still be a patriot whom his country cannot afford to lose; that as might does not make right, so neither do rags and bare feet necessarily argue a noble cause. I would teach them that it is criminal either to hide the truth or to refuse assent to that which they see must follow logically from ascertained 534 LESSONS OF THE WAR. truth. I would show them that a political lie is as despicable as a personal lie, whether uttered in an editorial, or a platform, or a president s message, or a colored cartoon, or a disingenuous ballot ; and that political chicanery, when long persisted in, is liable to. settle its shameful account in a stop page of civilization and a spilling of life. These are simple lessons, yet they are not taught in a day, and some whom we call educated go through life without mastering them at all. It may be useful to learn from one war how to conduct another ; but it is infinitely better to learn how to avert another. I am doubly anxious to impress this consideration upon my readers, because history seems to show us that armed con flicts have a tendency to come in pairs, with an interval of a few years, and because I think I see, in certain circumstances now existing within our beloved Republic, the elements of a second civil war. No American citizen should lightly repeat that the result is worth all it cost, unless he has considered how heavy was the cost, and is doing his utmost to perpetuate the result. To strive to forget the great war, for the sake of sentimental politics, is to cast away our dearest experience and invite, in some troubled future, the destruction we so hardly escaped in the past. There can be remembrance without animosity, but there can not be oblivion without peril. INDEX. Acton, Thomas C., in the New York riots, 300 Adams, Charles Francis, U. S. minister at London, 404 Adams, John Quincy, action on mutilated census, 13; quoted on the slavery question, 206 Adams, Nehemiah, on slavery, 12 Alabama secedes, 36 Alabama, the, her career, 400- 403 ; Sec. Seward s argument concerning, 407 Albemarle, the, iron-clad ram, de stroyed, 442 Alclie, cavalry fight at, 252 Allatoona, defence of, 491 Allen s Farm, action at, 166 American party, the, 21 Anderson, Galusha, service in Missouri, 77 Anderson, Gen. G. T., wounded, 267 Anderson, Gen. Robert, at Forts Moultrie and Sumter, 38-40 ; commands in Kentucky, 80 Anderson, Gen. R. H., his night march, 378 Andersonville prison, 343-346 ; the keeper executed, 525 Andrew, Gov. John A,, 521 Anthony, Col. Daniel R., refuses to return slaves, 211 Antietam campaign, the, 185, et seq. ; battle of the, 194, et seq. Anti-slavery work, 6, et seq. Appomattox Court House, sur render at, 518 Arbitration, international, 412 Archer, Gen., at Gettysburg, 256 Arkansas, secession of, 46 Arkansas, the, iron-clad ram, de stroyed, 272 Arkansas Post, capture of, 277 Arlington Heights, occupied, 55 Armistead, Gen. Lewis A., killed, 266 Asboth, Gen. A. S., at Pea Ridge, 1 08 Atlanta campaign, the, 418-437 ; battles around the city, 433, 434 ; fall of, 437 ; inhabitants sent away, 488 ; shops and depots destroyed, 493 Atlanta, the, iron-clad, captured, 3ii 312 Augur, Gen. C. C., in defence of Washington, 453 Averell, Gen. William W., at Winchester, 454 ; at the Ope- quan, 462 Averysboro, battle of, 509 Bailey, Lieut-Col. Joseph, his Red River dam, 417 Bailey, Capt. Theodoras, at New Orleans, 120, 123 Baker, Col. Edward D., men tioned, 530 Baldwin, Judge, quoted, 334 Baltimore, riot in, 53 Banking system, national, 485 Banks, Gen. N. P., 173; attacks Jackson at Cedar Mountain, 176 ; receives the surrender of Port Hudson, 288 ; his Shreve- port expedition, 415-418 Barksdale, Gen. Wm., killed, 269 Barlow, Arabella G., hospital services, 361 Barlow, C. J., quoted, 339 Barlow, Gen. Francis C., 361 ; at Spottsylvania, 380 ; at the To- topotomoy, 393 ; at Cold Har bor, 395 536 INDEX. Barnes, Gen. James, wounded, 267 Barren, Samuel, at Hatteras, 93 Barry, Major Wm. F., at Bull Run, 66 Barton, Clara, hospital services, 361 Bartow, Col., killed, 68 Bastiles, talk of, 292 Baxter, Gen. Henry, at Gettys burg, 258; wounded, 375 Beauregard, Gen.G. T., bombards Fort Sumter, 39, 40; in com mand at Manassas Junction, 59 ; at-Shiloh, 135, et seq.\ suc ceeded by Bragg, 230 ; calls for execution of prisoners and pro clamation of the black flag, 239; in command at Charles ton, 308, et seq. ; in defence of Petersburg, 443, et seq. Beaver Dam Creek, action at, 163 Bee, Gen. Bernard E., at Bull Run, 64 ; killed, 65 Beecher, Henry Ward, addresses in England, 88 Bell, John, nominated for Presi dent, 35 Bellows, Henry W., organizes the Sanitary Commission, 352 Bennett, officer, in New York riot, 301 Benning, Gen., wounded, 375 Bentonville, battle of, 510 Bethesda Church, action at, 393 Big Bethel, action at, 56 Birney, Gen. David B., at the second Bull Run, 183 ; at Fredericksburg, 227; at Gettys burg, 261, 269; at Spottsyf- vania, 389 ; commands the Second Corps, 445 Bissell, Col. Josiah W., constructs a canal, 134 Blackburn s Ford, action at, 62 Black flag displayed, 336 ; advo cated by Beauregard, 239; by Stonewall Jackson, 337 Blair, Gen. Francis P., Jr., his patriotic efforts in Missouri, 74 ; in Vicksburg campaign, 276, ct seq. Blair, Rev, Mr., murdered, 336 Blenker, Gen. Louis, 152 Blockade, the, 90 Blockade-runners, 308 Bloodhounds, used for tracking prisoners, 346 ; killed by Sher man s men, 497 Blount s Farm, action at, 320 Bonds, issue of, 483 et seq. Booneville, Mo., action at, 76 Booth, Major L. F., killed, 340 Botanist, imprisonment of a, 13 Bowling Green, Ky., occupied by national forces, 102 Bradford, Major W. F., murdered, 341 Bradley, Amy, hospital services, 361 Bragg, Gen. Braxton, at Shiloh, 135; takes command in the west, 230 ; at Stone River, 235 ; in Chickamauga campaign, 323 -329 ; defeated by Grant, 331- 333 ; superseded, 333 Brandy Station, cavalry engage ment at, 250 Breckinridge, Gen. John C, nomi nated for President, 35 ; enters the Confederate service, 80 ; at Stone River, 237; attacks Baton Rouge, 271 Breckinridge, Robert J., opposes secession, 79 Bright, John, friendly to the United States, 88 Bristoe Station, action at, 179 Brooke, Gen. John R., wounded, 267, 396 Brough, John, elected Governor of Ohio, 306 Brown, B. Gratz, service in Mis souri, 77 Brown, John, his raid, 15 Brown, Gov. Joseph E., at odds with Jefferson Davis, 489 Brownlow, William G., on slavery, 12 ; opposes secession, 83 Buchanan, Capt. Franklin, com mands the Merrimac, 128; wounded at Mobile, 441 Buchanan, James, vetoes the Homestead bill, 18 ; elected President, 24 ; his paradox, 38 ; comes out for the Union, 51 INDEX. 537 Buckhannon, action at, 84 Buckingham, Gov. Wm. A., 521 Buckner, Gen. S. B., at Fort Donelson, 102 Buell, Gen. Don Carlos, at Shi- loh, 136, et seg. , fights Bragg at Perry ville, 231 Buffington s Ford, engagement at, 321, 322 Buford, Gen. John, given com mand in Virginia, 175; at Brandy Station, 250; at Gettysburg, 254, et seg. Bull Run, first battle of, 59, et seg.; second, 180, et seg. Bummers, Sherman s, 497 Burke, Edmund, quoted, 296 Burns, Anthony, rendition, 19 Burns, John, at Gettysburg, 268 Burnside, Gen. Ambrose E., at Bull Run, 60 ; at South Moun tain, 190; at the Antietam, 196; appointed to command the Army of the Potomac, 221 ; his career, 221; his Fredericks- burg campaign, 222, et seg.; at Knoxville, 331, 333; in the overland campaign, 367, et seg.\ at crater, 449 ; relieved, 449 Butler, Gen. Benjamin F., takes a regiment to Washington, 54 ; in Maryland, 81 ; in Hatteras expedition, 92 ; at New Or leans, 114, ef seg.\ refuses to return slaves, 207 ; proclaimed an outlaw, 239 ; commanding Army of the James, 443, et seg. Butterfield, Gen. Daniel, wound ed, 266 Byrnes, Col., killed, 396 Calcium lights employed, 315 Caldwell, Lieut. C. H. B., at New Orleans, 119 Calhoun, John C., quoted, 10; threatens secession, 24; teaches State sovereignty, 34 California, contribution to the Sanitary Commission, 358 Cameron, Col. James, killed, 68 Cameron, Simon, resigns sec retaryship of war, 150; author izes Sanitary Commission, 353 Campbell, John A., in the Hamp ton Roads conference, 510 Canals, at Island No. 10, 134 ; at Vicksburg, 278, 279 Carpenter, Daniel, in the New York riots, 300, 301 Carr, Col. Eugene A., at Pea Ridge, 1 08 Carrick s Ford, action at, 84 Carroll, Gen. Samuel S., at Get tysburg, 263 ; wounded, 375, 388 ; promoted, 388 Carter, L., murdered, 336 Carthage, Mo., action at, 77 Casey, Gen. Silas, at Fair Oaks, 156 Cass, Gen. Lewis, comes out for the Union, 51 Causes of the war, i Cavalry service, turning-point in, 250 Cavander, M., murdered, 336 Cedar Creek, battle of, 466 Cedar Mountain, battle of, 176 Census of 1840 tampered with, 12 Chalmers, Gen., at Fort Pillow, 341 Chamberlain, Gen. Joshua L., at Gettysburg, 262 Chambersburg, Pa., reached by Confederate forces in 1863, 252 ; burned, 454 Champion s Hill, battle of, 285 Chancellorsville, battle of. 243 Chantilly, battle of, 183 Charles City Cross Roads, battle of, 167 Charleston, S. C., siege of, 307- 317 ; destruction of the harbor, 307; bombarded, 317; occu pied by National forces, 508 Chase, Salmon P., his manage ment of the finances, 481, et seg. Chatfield, Col., killed, 314 Chattanooga, besieged by Bragg, 329 ; relieved by Grant, 330 Cheraw, captures at, 508 Cherokee Indians, atrocities in North Carolina, 339 Chickamauga, battle of, 324-329 Christian Commission, 358-360 533 INDEX. Christy, David, his book, 24 Churches divided on slavery, 14 Churchill, Gen., at Arkansas Post, 278 Civilians, services of, 521 Clark, Col. J. S., counts Jackson s forces, 178 Clarke, Gen., killed, 272 Clay, Henry, proposes the Mis souri compromise, 16 Clouds, battle above the, 331 Cobb, Howell, plots secession, while in the Cabinet, 38 Coburn, Col, defeated, 319 Cochrane, Gen. John, nominated for vice-president, 469 Coffee-wagon, Dunton s, 360 Cogswell, Col. L. W., quoted, 385 Cold Harbor, first battle of, 165 ; second battle of, 394-396 Colored troops, enlistment of, 230-238 ; Confederate procla mation concerning, 239 ; Lin coln s retaliatory proclamation, 241 Columbia, Ky., captured by Mor gan, 321 Columbia, S. C., captured by Sherman, 507 Colyer, Vincent, originates the Christian Commission, 359 Comparison with actions in pre vious wars, 321 Concentration, the natural result of civilization, 32 Concord, N. H., pro-slavery mob in, 7 ; riot in, 339 Confederacy, formation of the, 36 ; Government, removed to Richmond, 58 Confiscation of slaves, 208 Congress, the, destroyed, 129 Conscription, Confederate, 230 Constitution, U. S., opposed, 34 Contraband, the term, 208 Cooper, Capt., commanding bat tery, 1 68 Copperheads, 51 Corcoran, Col. Michael, captured, 68 Corinth, Miss., importance of, 135 ; siege and capture of, 143 ; battle of, 233 Corse, Gen. John M., defends Allatoona, 491 Cost of the war, 487 Cotton-gin, invention of, 3 Cotton is king, 24 Counting troops, the two methods of, 159, 368 Courier, Louisville, quoted, 70 Cox, Rev. Henry, quoted, 70 Cox, Samuel S., quoted, 240 Crampton s Gap, 190 Crater, by mine explosion, 449. Craven, Capt. T. A. M., in battle of Mobile Bay, 440, 442 Crawford, Gen. Samuel W., at Spottsylvania, 389 Crittenden, Gen. George B., at Mill Springs, 98 Crittenden, Gen. Thomas L., at Chickamauga, 325, ct seq. Crocker, Gen. Marcellus M., in Vicksburg campaign, 283 Crook, Gen. George, defeated by Early, 454 ; at Fisher s Hill, 464 ; at Cedar Creek, 466 Cross, Col. Edward E., killed, 262 Cruisers, Confederate, 400, et seq. Cumberland, destruction of the, 128 Curtis, Gen. Samuel R., at Pea Ridge, 107 Cushing, Lieut. Alonzo H., at Gettysburg, 269 Cushing, Lieut. Wm. B., destroys the Albemarle, 442 Custer, Gen. George A., at Hawes s Shop, 392 ; narrow escape of his division, 459; defeats Early at Waynesboro, 511 ; his captures at Sailor s Creek, 518 Dahlgren, Admiral John A., bombards Fort Wagner, 312 Dam in Red River, Bailey s, 417 Daniel, Gen., killed, 388 Davis, Capt. Charles H., at Vicks burg, 271 Davis, Col., at Harper s Ferry, 189 Davis, Col. B. F., killed, 250 Davis, Jefferson, on the slave- trade, 21 ; chosen President of INDEX. 539 the Confederacy, 36 ; at Bull Run, 67 ; at Murfreesboro, 235 ; proclaims Gen. Butler an out law, 239; at odds with Gen. Johnston and Gov. Brown, 489 ; leaves Richmond, 515; captur ed, 523 ; bailed, 523 Davis, Gen. Jefferson C., at Pea Ridge, 1 08 ; at Atlanta, 434 Day s Gap, engagement at, 320 Dearing, Gen. James, mentioned, 53 2 Death-angle, the, 381-385 Debts, due from Southern men to Northern, 30 Deep Bottom, fighting at, 448,450 Democratic party, becomes the pro-slavery party, 21 ; divided by the slavery question, 35 Demosthenes quoted, 185 Dennison, Gov. William, 521 Despotism in America, 8 Dew, Thomas R., his pamphlet on slavery, 1 1 Dickinson, Daniel S., proposed for Vice-president, 471 Dix, Dorothea L., hospital servi ces, 361 Dix, Gen. John A., his patriotic order, 50 Dog Spring, Mo., action at, 78 Doles, Gen. George P., killed, 396 Donaldsonville destroyed, 275 Doubleday, Gen. Abner, at Fred- ericksburg, 227 ; at Gettys burg, 256, et seq. ; quoted, 263 ; wounded, 266 Douglas, Rev. Mr., murdered, 336 Douglas, Stephen A., on slavery, 21 ; advocates popular sover eignty, 22 ; nominated for President, 35 ; supports Lin coln s administration, 51 Douglass, Frederick, edits the North Star, 6 Draft riots, 290-306 Draytons, the two, 95 Dred Scott, case of, 20 Duncan, Gen. Johnson K., com mands the defences of New Orleans, 113 Dunton, Jacob, invents a coffee- wagon, 360 Du Pont, Flag-officer S. F., in Port Royal expedition, 94 ; at tacks Charleston, 309 Early, Gen. Jubal A., sent to the Shenandoah valley, 452 ; threat ens Washington, 453 ; burns Chambersburg, 454; in the Shenandoah campaign, 458- 467; at Waynesboro, 511. Election, presidential, 468 et seq. Ellis, John \V., action as Gover nor of North Carolina, 82 Ellsworth, Ephraim E., teaches zouave drill, 52 ; recruits a reg iment, 55 ; killed, 56 Ely, Alfred, at Bull Run, 61, 68 Emancipation, 200, et seq. English sentiment in regard to the war, 87 Ericsson, John, builds the Moni tor, 130 Everett, Edward, on slavery, 11 Ewell, Gen. Richard S., wound ed, 179; in Gettysburg cam paign, 250, et seq. ; defeats Milroy at Winchester, 251 ; in the overland campaign, 368, et seq. ; quoted, 399 ; captured with his corps, 518 Fair Oaks, battle of, 156 Farragut, Admiral David G., his loyalty, 46; captures New Orleans, 114, et seq.\ at Vicks- burg, 271 ; destroys Donald sonville, 275 ; runs by the bat teries at Port Hudson, 281 ; his battle in Mobile Bay, 438, et seq. Fifty-four-forty or fight, 17 Fillmore, Millard, signs the com promise measures, 18 Finances, the national, 481-487 Finley, Clement A., opposes the Sanitary Commission, 353 Finnegan, Gen., wounded, 396 Fisher s Hill, engagement at, 463 Fishing Creek (or Mill Springs), battle of, 98 Fisk, Clinton B., service in Mis souri, 77 Five Forks, battle of, 514 Flag, the American, Gen. Dix s 540 INDEX. order concerning, 50 ; dancing on, 235 Fleetwood, battle of, 250 Florida secedes, 36 Florida, the, captured, 403 Floyd, John B., plots secession, while in the Cabinet, 38 ; at Fort Donelson, 103 Foote, Flag-officer A. H., at Fort Henry, 101; at Island No. 10, 134 Forrest, Gen. N. B., at Fort Don elson, 105 ; at Holly Springs, 273; attacks Dover, 319; de feated by Streight, 320 ; cap tures Fort Pillow, 340, et seq. ; defeats Smith, 415 Fort de Russey, captured, 416 Fort Donelson, investment and capture of, 102, et seq. Fort Fisher, capture of, 508 Fort Henry, capture of, 101 Fort Hindman, capture of, 277 Fortifications, construction of, 427 Fort McAllister, captured, 498 Fort Pillow, massacre at, 340 Fort Sumter, investment and cap ture of, 38-40 Fort Wagner, assaulted, 313; evacuated, 315 Forty thieves, the, 338 Foster, Gen. John G., at Deep Bottom, 448 ; at Savannah, 504 Foster, Gen. Robert S., captures Fort Gregg, 515 Fractional currency, 486 Franklin, battle of, 500 Franklin, Gen. Win. B., in the Peninsula campaign, 154; at the second Bull Run, 182 ; at South Mountain, 190; at the Antietam, 196; in the Freder- icksburg campaign, 223, et seq. Frazier s Farm, battle of, 168 Fredericksburg, battle of, 223, et seq. Fremont, John C., candidate for President, 23 ; in command in Missouri, 107 ; declines to serve under Pope, 173 ; attempts to emancipate slaves in Missouri, 209 ; nominated for president, 469 ; withdraws, 474 French, Gen. W 7 illiam H., at Fredericksburg, 227 ; at Har per s Ferry, 252 Fry, Col. Speed S.,at Mill Springs, 98 Fugitive-slave advertisements, 7 Gaines s Mills, battle of, 164 Gamble, Hamilton R., provisional governor of Missouri, 77 Garfield, Gen. James A., defeats Marshall at Paintville, 97 ; at Chickamauga, 328 Garland, Gen. Samuel, killed, 190 Garnett, Gen. R. B., killed, 267 Garrison, William Lloyd, estab lishes the Liberator, 6 Gay, Sydney Howard, edits the Anti-slavery Standard, 6 Geary, Gen. John W., occupies Savannah, 499 Georgia secedes, 36 ; hopes of her secession from the Confed eracy, 489 Gerdes, Lieut. F. H., service at New Orleans, 117 Getty, Gen. George W., wounded, 375 Gettysburg campaign, 248, et seq. Gibbon, Gen. John, at South Mountain, 190; at Fredericks burg, 227 ; wounded, 266 ; at Reams Station, 450 Gilchrist, of Alabama, quoted, 43 Gillmore, Gen. Quincy A., be sieges Charleston, 312, etseq. Gilmore, James R., his peace mis sion, 468 Gladden, Gen. A. H., killed, 139 Glazier, Capt. W., quoted, 317 Glenclale, battle of, 16.8 Goodwin, Gen., killed, 462 Gold quotations, 486 Golden Circle, the, 24 Goodyear, W., quoted, 479 Gordon, Gen. John B., at Peters burg, 512 Gosport navy- yard burned, 54 Govan s brigade captured, 437 Governors, war, 521 Granger, Gen. Gordon, defeats Van Dorn, 319 ; at Chickamau ga, 328 ; at Mobile, 439 Grant, Gen. Ulysses S., quoted, INDEX. 541 67 ; in Fort Donelson campaign, 99, et seq.\ Shiloh, \^,et seq.\ his judgment on the Fitz-John Porter dispute, 184; placed in command of the department of the Mississippi, 272 ; makes the Vicksburg campaign, 272-289; in command at Chattanooga, 329 ; aids the Christian Com mission, 360 ; his overland cam paign, 362, et seq.\ made lieu tenant-general, 365 ; his cam paign against Petersburg, 443, et seq.; sends Sheridan to the Shenandoah Valley, 456 ; his judgment on Cold Harbor, 396 ; final assaults on Petersburg, 512-515; pursuit of Lee, 516- 518; receives his surrender, 519 Greble, Lieut. John T., killed, 56 Greeley, Horace, correspondence with President Lincoln, 212; in the Niagara Falls conference, 469 ; signs Mr. Davis s bail- bond, 523 Greene, Lieut. Samuel D., com mands the Monitor, 131 Gregg, Gen. David M., at Brandy Station, 250; at Hawes s Shop, 39 2 Grierson, Col. Benjamin H., his raid in Mississippi, 282 Griffin, Capt. Charles, at Bull Run, 66 Groveton, battle of, 179 Guerillas, in Missouri, 106 Gunboats on western rivers, loo Haines, Alanson A., quoted, 386 Hall, Col., defeats Morgan, 320 Hall, Dr., mentioned, 386 Halleck, Gen. Henry W., in com mand in Missouri, 99, 107 ; be sieges Corinth, 143 ; made General-in-Chief, 174 ; and passim Halltown, Sheridan at, 459 Hamilton, Alexander, on the Constitution, 15 Hamilton, Gen. Andrew J., quoted, 334 ; in Texas, 335 Hamilton, Gen. Schuyler, sug gests a canal, 134 Hamlin, Hannibal, vice-president, 471 Hampton, Col., killed, 250 Hampton, Gen. Wade, wounded, 267 ; sent to assist Wheeler, 506 Hampton Roads Conference, the, 5io, 511 Hancock, Gen. Winfield S., in the Peninsula campaign, 154, et seq.\ at Fredericksburg, 227; at Gettysburg, 259, et seq.\ wounded, 266; in overland campaign, 367, et seq.\ meeting with Gen. Steuart, 383 ; before Petersburg, 444, et seq.\ attacks at Deep Bottom, 450 Hardee, Gen. William J., at Shi loh, 135 ; evacuates Savannah, 498, 499 ; evacuates Charles ton, 508 ; at Averysboro, 509 Harding, Col. A. C., defends Dover, 319 Harker, Gen. Charles G., killed, 428 Harney, Gen. William S., in Mis souri, 75 Harper s Ferry, arsenal burned, 54; Johnston and Patterson successively occupy, 59 ; cap tured by Jackson, 188 Harris, Elisha, connection with the Sanitary Commission, 352 ; invents a hospital car, 356 Harris, Isham G., action as Gov ernor of Tennessee, 82 Harsen, Dr., connection with the Sanitary Commission, 352 Hatch, Gen. J. P., in Virginia, 175 Hatteras expedition, the, 92 Hatteras, the, sunk, 403 Hawes s Shop, action at, 392 Hayne, Robert Y., quoted, 10 Hayes, Col. Rutherford B., wounded, 191 Hays, Gen. Alexander, at the An- tietam, 198 ; killed, 375 Hazen, Gen. William B., captures Fort McAllister, 498 Hazlett, Lieut. Charles E., killed, 261 Heintzelman, Gen. S. P., at Bull Run, 60 ; in Peninsula cam paign, 150, et seq. 542 INDEX. Helper, Hinton R., his Impending Crisis, 9 Heth, Gen. Henry, at Reams Station, 450 Hicks, Thomas H., action as Governor of Maryland, 80 Higher law, the, 15 Hiklreth, Richard, his Despotism in America, 8 Hill, Gen. Ambrose P., service before Richmond, 162, et seg.\ in the Antietam campaign, 189, et se.q.; at Chancellorsville, 246 ; in Gettysburg campaign, 250, et seq.\ in the overland cam paign, 368, et seg.\ in fight for the Weldon Railroad, 446 : as saults at Reams Station, 450 ; killed, 515 Hill, General Daniel H., service before Richmond, 162, et seq.\ in the Antietam campaign, 188, et seg.] quoted, 192 Hillier, case of, 335 Hilton Head, action at, 95 Hincks, Gen. Edward W., before Petersburg, 445 Hindman, Gen. T. C., killed, 139 Holden, William W., candidate of peace party, 489 Hollins, Com. George N., at Is land No. 10, 132 Holly Springs, Miss., supply de pot destroyed, 273-274 Hood, Gen. John B., at Gettys burg, 261 ; in Atlanta cam paign, 423, et seg. , supersedes Johnston, 430; attacks Sher man s communications, 490 ; marches on Nashville, 499 ; fights Schofield at Franklin, 500 ; defeated by Thomas, 501 Hooker, Gen. Joseph, in the Pen insula campaign, 153,^ seq. ; in the second Bull Run cam paign, 1 80, et seg. ; at South Mountain, 190; at the Antie tam, 194; wounded, 195; in the Fredericksburg campaign, 223, et seq.\ takes command of the Army of the Potomac, 241 ; Lincoln s letter to him, 241 ; at Chancellorsville, 243 ; in pur suit of Lee, 251 ; resigns com mand of the Army of the Poto mac, 253 ; at Lookout Moun tain, 331 ; in Atlanta cam paign, 422, et seg.\ relieved, 434 Hospital-car, invented, 356 Hovey, Gen. Alvin P., in Vicks- burg campaign, 285, et seq. Howard, Gen. Oliver O., at Bull Run, 60; at Chancellorsville, 243 ; at Gettysburg, 256, et seq.\ given command of Army of the Tennessee, 434 ; in the march to the sea, 494, et seq. Hughes, Archbishop John, comes out for the Union, 51 Humphreys, Gen. Andrew A., at Gettysburg, 261; before Peters burg, 515 Hunt, Gen. Henry J., at Freder icksburg, 225 ; at Gettysburg, 265 Hunter, Gen. David, at Bull Run, 60 ; wounded, 65 ; attempts to emancipate slaves, 209; organ- . izes black troops, 210 ; relieved, 455 Hunter, R. M. T., in Hampton Roads conference, 511 Hurlbut, Gen. Stephen A., at Shiloh, 136, et seg,; in Vicks- burg campaign, 278, et seq.; in Meridian campaign, 413 Hutchinson family, forbidden to sing anti-slavery songs, 203 Imboden, Gen. J. D., at Gettys burg, 267 Impending Crisis, Helper s, 9 Indians, in Confederate service, 107, 109 Ingraham, Capt. Duncan N., in command in Charleston harbor, 308 Insurrections, of slaves, 4, 5 J early ones in the United States, 52.5 Irrepressible conflict, the, 15 Island No. 10, capture of, 132- 135 luka, battle of, 233 Iverson, Gen. Alfred, at Gettys burg, 258 INDEX. 543 Jackson, Claiborne F., Governor of Missouri, his efforts to take the State out of the Union, 71, et seq. Jackson, Gen. James S., killed, 232 Jackson, Gen. Thomas J., re ceives the name of Stonewall, 65 ; defeated at Winchester, 152; movements between Richmond and the Shenandoah Valley, 160, et seq.; at Cedar Mountain, 176; at Groveton, 179 ; captures Harper s Ferry, 188; at the Antietam, 194 ; in the Fredericksburg campaign, 222, et seq.; at Chancellorsville, 243 ; killed, 245 ; advocates the black flag, 337 Jackson, Miss., captured, 284 Jackson Mississippian, quoted, 337 Jacques, Col. J. F., his peace mission, 468 Jenkins, Gen. Albert G. f wound ed, 267 ; killed, 373 Johnson, Andrew, opposes seces sion, 83 ; nominated for vice- president, 471 ; at the grand review, 530 Johnson, Gen. Bradley T., in Maryland raid, 454 Johnson, Gen. E., captured, 383 Johnson, Reverdy, patriotism, 81 Johnston, Gen. Albert Sidney, at Corinth, 135; at battle of Shi- loh, 136, et seq .\ killed, 139 Johnston, Gen. Joseph E., in the Bull Run campaign, 59, et seq.; quoted, 63, 68 ; in command before Richmond, 150 ; wound ed, 157; assumes command in Mississippi, 283 ; supersedes Bragg, 333; in Atlanta cam paign, 419, et seq.; superseded by Hood, 430 ; reinstated, 505 ; opposes Sherman at Averys- boro, 509; at Bentonville, 510; surrenders, 520. Johnston, Gen. R. D. wounded, 388 Jones, Gen., quoted, 186 Jones, Lieut., commands the Merrimac, 130 Jones, Col. Edward F., takes his regiment to Washington, 52 Jones, Gen. J. M., wounded, 267 Jones, John B., quoted, 477 Jordan, Col., defeated, 319 Justification, the question of, 33 Kansas, the struggle over, 22, 23 Kearny, Gen. Philip, in Penin sula campaign, 154, et seq.; at the second Bull Run, 180; killed, 183 Kearsarge, fight with the Ala bama, 401 Keenan, Major Peter, his charge at Chancellorsville, 245 Keifer, Col. Joseph W., wound ed, 375 fCellogg, R. H., quoted, 344,479 Kemper, Gen. James L., wound ed, 267 Kenesavv, fighting at, 425-428 Kennedy, John A., in the New York riots, 300 Kentucky, the struggle for, 78, et seq.; Bragg s attempt to force her into the Confederacy, 230 Keokuk, monitor, destroyed, 311 Kern, Capt., commanding bat tery, 1 68 Keyes, Gen. Erastus D., at Bull Run, 60 ; in Peninsula cam paign, 150 Kilpatrick, Gen. Judson, at Gettysburg, 267 ; rides around Atlanta, 436 ; in the march to the sea, 494 ; at Averysboro, 509 King, Gen,, at Groveton, 179 Kirkland, Gen., wounded, 396 Kline, sergeant, 387 Knowles, quartermaster, on the Hartford, 442 Know-Nothing party, the, 21 Knoxville besieged, 331, 333 Lane, Gen., wounded, 396 Law, Gen., wounded, 396 Lawler, Gen. Michael K., in Vicksburg campaign, 285 Lawson, Surgeon-General, death of, 353 Lawton, Gen. A. R., at the An tietam, 118 544 INDEX. Lebanon captured, 321 Ledlie, Gen. James H., at mine explosion, 448 Lee, Gen. Robert E., goes with his State, 46 ; commands in Western Virginia, 84; given command of the Confederate forces in Virginia, 158; en deavors to get McClellan away from Richmond, 175 ; cam paign against Pope, 17 5, et seq .; marches into Maryland, 185 ; at South Mountain and the Antietam, 190-199; position of his army after Antietam, 218- 222 ; at Fredericksburg, 223 - 228 ; at Chancellorsville, 243 ; in Gettysburg campaign, 2 50, et seq.\ in the overland cam* paign, 362, et seq.\ his action in regard to the wounded at Cold Harbor, 396; moves to Pe tersburg, 446; evacuates Peters burg, 515, et seq.\ surrenders, 519; Longstreet s criticism, 522 Lefferts, Col. Marshall, takes his regiment to Washington, 53 Legal-tender notes, 485 Letcher, John, Governor of Vir ginia, his professed Unionism, 43 ; his disloyalty, 46 ; letter to a Unionist, 336 ; cited, 337 Lexington, Mo., siege of, 106 Libby prison, 342 Liberator, establishment of, 6 Liberty-laws, 4 Lieutenant-General, grade of, .365 Lincoln, Abraham, speech on slavery, 15 ; nominated for President, 35 ; inaugurated, 40 ; first inaugural address, 41 ; first call for troops, 47 ; his difficulties with Gen. McClel lan, 149, et seq.\ reinstates Gen. McClellan, 186; his hatred of slavery, 201 ; modifies Gen. Fremont s order, 209; annuls Gen. Hunter s, 210; recom mends payment for slaves, 212; correspondence with Horace Greeley, 213 ; proclaims eman cipation, 214; his letter to Gen. Hooker, 241 ; his criti cism of the War Department, 458 ; renominated for president, 471 ; re-elected, 479; his anec dote of swapping horses, 476 ; his speech after election, 480; in the Hampton Roads confer ence, 511; assassinated, 526; his second inaugural address quoted, 528 ; his visit to Rich mond, 529 Logan, Gen. John A., at Bull Run, 62 ; in Vicksburg cam paign, 285 ; in Atlanta cam paign, 432 Longfellow, Henry W., quoted, 50, 207 Longstreet, Gen. James, at Bull Run, 62; before Richmond, 162, et seq.\ in second Bull Run campaign, 177, et seq.\ in Fredericksburg campaign, 222, et seq. , in Gettysburg cam paign, 257, et seq.; quoted, 260; at Chickamauga, 324, et seq.\ at Knoxville, 331 ; in the overland campaign, 368, et seq.\ wound ed, 374 Lookout Mountain, battle, 331 Lost despatch, Lee s, 187 Louis Napoleon, unfriendly to the United States, 88 Louisiana secedes, 36 Lovejoy, Elijah P., murdered, 6 Lovell, Gen. Mansfield, at New Orleans, 124 Lowell, James R., quoted, 206 Lynchburg Republican, quoted, 336 Lyon, Gen. Nathaniel, sent to Missouri, 74 ; placed in com mand, 75 ; occupies Jefferson City, 76 ; fights at Booneville 76; defeats McCulloch, 78; killed, 78 McAllister, Gen., wounded, 375 McCall, Gen. George A., in Pen insula campaign, 162 ; cap tured, 168 McCausland, Gen., burns Cham- bersburg, 454 INDEX. 545 McClellan, Gen. George B., cam paign in Western Virginia, 84; his history, 146 ; made Gen eral-in-Chief, 148; his Penin sula campaign, 149, et seq.\ takes possession at Harrison s Landing, 174; leaves the pen insula, 175 ; reinstated in com mand, 1 86; pursues Lee into Maryland, 187 ; fights the bat tles of South Mountain, 190; defeats Lee at the Antietam, 192-199; his relations to slav ery, 203, 204 ; movements after Antietam, 218-221 ; discussion with the President, 219, 220; re lieved of command, 221 : nomi nated for president, 473 McClernand, Gen. John A., sup ports Lincoln s administration, 58 ; at Fort Donelson, 104 ; at Shiloh, 136, et seq.\ plans open ing the Mississippi, 270; in Vicksburg campaign, 277, et seq. McCulloch, Gen. Ben, in Missou ri, 77 ; at Pea Ridge, 107 ; killed, 109 McCook, Gen. Alexander McD., at Stone River, 235 ; at Chick- amauga, 325, et seq.\ in Stone- man s raid, 436 McCook, Daniel, Sr., killed, 322 McCook, Gen. Daniel, Jr., killed, 428 McDowell, Gen. Irvin, in com mand at Bull Run, 59 ; his memorandum quoted, 149 ; in Peninsula campaign, 148, et seq.\ in the second Bull Run campaign, 173, 179, et seq. McGowan, Gen., wounded, 388 Mclntosh, Gen. J. M., killed, 109 Mclntosh, Gen. John B., captures a regiment, 460 McLavvs, Gen. Lafayette, in Antietam campaign, i88,<?/ seq. McPherson, Gen. James B., in Vicksburg campaign, 278 ; in Meridian campaign,4i3; in At lanta campaign, 419, et seq.\ his mistake at Resaca, 421 ; killed, 433 McPherson, William, service in Missouri, 77 Magoffin, Beriah, Governor of Kentucky, refuses to assist the Government, 71 ; attempts to make Kentucky neutral, 78, 79 Magruder, Gen. John B., at Yorktown, 152; at Allen s Farm, 166 Malvern Hill, battle of, 169 Manassas, first battle of, 59 et seq. ; second, 180, et seq. Mansfield, Gen. J. K. F., at the Antietam, 194; killed, 195 March to the sea, the, 488-499 ; first proposed by Sherman, 492 Marshall, Gen. Humphrey, de feated at Paintville, 97 Mason, James M., sent by the Confederate Government to London, 85 Maryland, the struggle for, 80, et seq.\ invasion of, 185, et seq.\ abolishes slavery, 212,480 Meade, Gen. Geo. G., at the sec ond Bull Run, 182 ; at Freder- icksburg, 226, et seq.\ assumes command of the Army of the Potomac, 253 ; at Gettysburg, 254, et seq.\ council of war, 263 ; in the overland campaign, 367, et seq. Meade, Col., killed, 396 Meredith, Gen. Solomon, at Get tysburg, 256 Meridian campaign, the, 413, 414 Merritt, Gen. Wesley, at the Opequan, 462 Mexican war, the, 17 Mexico, French forces in, 89 Middleburg, cavalry fight at, 252 Miles, Gen. Dixon S., at Bull Run, 60; defeated at Harper s Ferry, 187 ; killed, 189 Miles, Gen. Nelson A., at Reams Station, 450 Miller, Col. J. F., wounded, 323 Mill Springs, battle of, 98 Milroy, Gen. Robert H., at Win chester, 251 Milton, engagements near, 320 Mine, at Petersburg, 447, et seq. Mine Run, 367 546 INDEX. Mission Ridge, battle of, 333 Mississippi secedes, 36 Missouri, the struggle for,72, et seq. Missouri Compromise, the, 16; repealed, 22 Mitchel, Gen. O. M., occupies Bowling Green, 102 Mobile Bay, battle of, 438-442 Monitor and Merrimac, battle of, 127, et seq. Monocacy, battle of the, 452 Montgomery, Ala., made capital of Confederacy, 36 Morgan, Gov. Edwin D., 521 Morgan, Gen. Geo. W., in Vicks- burg campaign, 276, et seq. Morgan, Gen. John H., at Mur- freesboro, 235 ; defeated by Hall, 320 ; by Stanley, 320 ; his raid across the Ohio, 321 Morton, Gov. Oliver P., 521 Morris, Col., killed, 396 Morris, Lieut., commanding the Cumberland, 128 Morse, S. F. B., on slavery and Catholicism, 11 Mortar-boats, used at New Or leans, 113 Mott, Gen. Gershom, at Spottsyl- vania, 381 Mott, Valentine, chairman of commission of inquiry, 349 Mulligan, Col. James A., at Lex ington, 106 Mumsfordsville, action at, 230 Munitions supplied by England to the Confederates, 91 Murfreesboro (or Stone River), battle of, 235 Nashville, battle of, 501 Navy, the, condition at the open ing of the war, 90 Nelson, Gen. Wm., at Shiloh, 137 Nelson s Farm, battle of, 168 New Hope Church, engagement at, 424 New Madrid, military movements around, 132, 133 New Market, battle of, 168 Newnan, engagement at, 436 New Orleans, capture of, in, et seq. Nichols, Major George Ward, quoted, 497 Norfolk, Va., captured, 131 North Anna, manoeuvres on the, 390 North Carolina, secession of, 46, 82 ; proposing to secede from the Confederacy, 338 ; move ment for peace, 489 Northrop, Gen. Lucius B., action as commissary-general, 342 Northwest Territory, ordinance concerning, 16 Nullification, 17 O Brien, Col. Henry J., killed, 304 Olmsted, Frederick Law, secre tary of Sanitary Commission, 354 On to Richmond, popular catch word, 58 Opequan Creek, engagements at, 459, 461 Ord, Gen. E. O. C., in Vicksburg campaign, 287 ; before Peters burg, 513 Oregon boundary, 17 O Rorke, Col. P. H., killed, 261 Ould, Col. Robert, action in re gard to prisoners, 347 Overland campaign, the, 362-399 Owen, Robert Dale, quoted, 215 Paine, Col. Halbert E., refuses to return slaves, 2 1 1 Paintville, battle of, 97 Parke, Gen. John G., commands the Ninth Corps, 449; before Petersburg, 513 Paroles, violation of, 347 Partisan rangers authorized, 337 Paterson, Joseph, treasurer of Christian Commission, 360 Paul, Gen. Gabriel R., wounded, 267 Pea Ridge, battle of, 108 Peace convention, 203 Peace, efforts for, 468, 489, 510 Peachtree Creek, action at, 431 Perkins, Lieut. George H., at New Orleans, 123; letter quoted, 124 Pegram, Gen. John, wounded, 375 INDEX. 547 Pemberton, Gen. John C, super sedes Van Dorn, 234; in Vicks- burg campaign, 272-289 Fender, Gen. Wm. D., killed, 267 Pendleton, George H., nominated for vice-president, 474 Perrin, Gen. A. M., killed, 388 Perryville, battle of, 231 Persecution of Unionists, 335, 336, 339 Petersburg, siege of, 451, 512-515 Philippi, action at, 84 Pierce, Franklin, his letter en couraging secession, 27 ; comes out for the Union, 51 ; his oration at Concord, 295 Pierpont, Francis H., made Gov ernor of West Virginia, 85 Pickett, Gen. George E., at Get tysburg, 265 Pike, Gen. Albert, recruits In dians, 108 Pillow, Gen. Gideon J., in Mis souri, 77 ; at Fort Donelson, 105 Pittsburgh Landing, 136 Pleasant Hill, battle of, 417 Pleasonton, Gen. Alfred, at Chan- cellorsville, 244 ; at Brandy Sta tion, 250; at Gettysburg, 254, et seq. Plummer, Gen. J. B., at Island No. 10, 133 Polk, James K., elected President, 17 ; violates his pledges, 18 Polk, Gen. Leonidas, at New Madrid, 132; at Murfreesboro, 235 ; at Chickamauga, 325, et seq.\ evacuates Meridian, 414 ; killed, 426 Pollard, E. A., quoted, 237, 337 Pope, Gen. John, in Missouri, 107; at Island No. 10, 133; his campaign in Virginia, 173, et seq. ; his papers captured and plans revealed, 178 Popular sovereignty, 22 Port Hudson, surrender of, 288 Port Royal expedition, the, 94 Porter, Gen. Andrew, at Bull Run, 65 Porter, Admiral David D., at cap ture of New Orleans, 113, et seq.\ before Vicksburg, 272, et seq.\ in Shrevcport expedition, 415 Porter, Gen. Fitz John, in Penin sula campaign, 162, et seq.; in the second Bull Run campaign, i So, et seq.\ court-martialed, 183 ; Grant s judgment on, 184 Porter, Col. Peter A., killed, 396 Porter, Capt. Wm. D., at Fort Henry, 101 Porterfield, Col., commands in western Virginia, 84 Prentiss, Gen. B. M., at Shiloh, 1 36, et seq. Price, Gen. Sterling, traps Gen. Harney, 75 ; at Lexington, 107; at Pea Ridge, 107 ; at luka and Corinth, 233 Prisoners placed under fire, 317 ; cruelty to, 342-346 Privateering, 409, et seq. Privateers, Confederate, 91 Property in the United States, value of, 487 Putnam, Col., killed, 314 Quaker guns, 153 Quinby, Gen. Isaac F., in Vicks burg campaign, 280, et seq. Rabadon. sergeant, killed, 387 Railroad, military, 451 Ramseur, Gen. Stephen D., wounded, 388 Randol, Capt., commanding bat tery, 167 Randolph, John, on slavery, II Raymond, battle of, 283 Raymond, Henry J., in Republi can convention, 470 Reagan, John H., captured, 523 Reams Station, action at, 450 Redfield, Col., killed, 491 Reno, Gen. Jesse L., at the sec ond Bull Run, 183 ; killed, 190 Republican party, organized, 22 Resaca, operations at, 422 Review, grand, 530 Reynolds, Gen. John F., at the second Bull Run, 182 ; at Get tysburg, 254 ; killed, 256 548 INDEX. Reynolds, Gen. Joseph J., at Chickamauga, 327 Rice, Gen. J. C., killed, 388 Rich Mountain, action at, 84 Richmond, Ky., action at, 230 Richmond, Va., made the seat of the Confederate Government, 58 ; evacuated by the Confed erates, 515 Ricketts, Gen. James B., at Bull Run, 66 ; at the second Bull Run, 179; at Gettysburg, 263 ; at the Monocacy, 452 Riots, in Baltimore, 52 ; in New York, 290-306 ; in Concord, N. H., 339 Ripley, Gen. Roswell S., at Hil ton Head, 95 Robinson, Gen., at Gettysburg, 258 Rock of Chickamauga, the, 328 Rocles, Gen. Robert E., at the Opequan, 461 ; killed, 462 Rodgers, Capt. John, captures the Atlanta, 311 Rosecrans, Gen. William S., takes command in Kentucky, 233 ; at luka and Corinth, 233; at Stone River, 235 ; his inac tion at Murfreesboro, 318; drives Bragg from Tullahoma to Chattanooga, 322 ; at Chick amauga, 324; superseded, 330 Rosser, Gen. Thomas L., defeated by Sheridan, 373 ; at Tom s Brook, 465 Rousseau, Gen. Lovell H., opposes secession, 79 Ruggles, Gen. Daniel, men tioned, 141 Runyon, Gen. Alexander N., at Bull Run, 60 Russell, Gen. David A., killed, 462 Russell, Earl, Seward s reply to, 404, et seq. Russia, relations with the United States, 89 Sabine Cross-Roads, battle of, 416 Sacred soil, origin of the expres sion, 55 Sailor s Creek, engagement at, 518 Sanitary Commission, 351-358 Satraps, talked of, 292 Savage s Station, action at, 166 Savannah, captured, 499 Scales, Gen. Alfred M., wounded, 267 Schenck, sergeant, killed, 387 Schimmelpfennig, Gen. Alexan der, occupies Charleston, 508 Schoepff, Gen. Albin, at Mill Springs, 98 Schofield, Gen. John M., service in Missouri, 77 ; in Atlanta cam paign, 419, etseq.\ with Thomas at Nashville, 492 ; fights Hood at Franklin, 500; joins Sher man, 510 Scott, Gen. Winfield, prepares defence of Washington, 55 : re tires, 148 Secession, contemplated and threatened, 23 ; reliance of the secessionists, 27 ; fallacy of their doctrine, 29 ; opposed to natural laws, 32 ; begun by South Carolina, 35 ; ordinances passed by other States, 36; secession from secession, 338 Sedgwick, Gen. John, at the Antietam, 195; at Chancellors- ville, 243 ; at Gettysburg, 259; in overland campaign, 367 ; killed, 380 Semmes, Gen. killed, 267 Semmes, Capt. Raphael, his cruises, 400403 Seven Pines, battle of, 156 Seward, William H., his Higher Law and Irrepressible Conflict speeches, 1 5 ; Secretary of State, 86 ; action in the Trent affair, 86 ; the story of his little bell, 292 ; his discussion of the Confederate cruisers, 404,^^^.; in the Hampton Roads con ference, 511 ; attacked by an assassin, 526 Seymour, Horatio, speech against the war, 28 ; elected Governor of New York, 295 ; his oration in New York, 295, 296 ; pre- INDEX. 549 sides over the Democratic con vention, 473 Seymour, Gen. Truman, at the second Bull Run, 182 ; captured, 375 ; proposed for president, 474 Shadrach, slave, rescued. 19 Shaler, Gen. Alex., captured, 375 Sharpsburg (or the Antieiamj, battle of, 192, et seq. Shaw, Col. Robert G., killed, 314 Shenandoah valley, the strategic peculiarities of, 161 ; Sheridan s campaign in, 455467 Sheridan, Gen. P. H., at Perry- ville, 232 ; at Stone River, 235 ; at Chickamauga, 329; in the overland campaign, 367, et seq.\ his raid toward Richmond, 379; his campaign in the Shenan doah valley, 455467; his ca reer, 456 ; moves up the Shenan doah, 511 ; rejoins Grant, 512; at Five Forks, 54 ; at Appomat- tox, 518 Sherman, Gen. William T., at Bull Run, 60 ; first under fire, 75; at Shiloh, 136, et seq.\ in Vicksburg campaign, 2j2,etseg.\ at Chattanooga, 330, et seq, his advice to Grant, 365 ; his Me ridian campaign, 413 415 ; his Atlanta campaign,4i 8-437; pur sues Hood, 491 ; his march to the sea, 488499 ; his instruc tions for the march, 494 ; his march through the Carolinas, 504, et seq.\ receives Johnston s surrender, 520 Sherman, Gen. Thomas W., 94 Shields, Gen. James, defeats Jackson, 152 Shiloh campaign, 132, et seq. Shreveport expedition, 415-418 Sickles, Gen. Daniel E., at Chan- cellorsville, 244 ; at Gettysburg, 259, et seq. Sigel, Gen. Franz, at battle of Carthage, 77 ; at Pea Ridge, 108 ; commands a corps in Virginia, 173 Slack, Gen., wounded, 109 Slavery, first cargo of slaves, i ; profits of the trade, 2 ; forced upon the colonies, 2 ; oppo sition to the trade, 3 ; the word " slave " excluded from the Constitution, 3 ; fugitive slave laws, 4 and 18 ; slave insurrections, 45 ; the oppo sition to slavery, 6, et seq.\ barbarism of, 7 ; special slave laws, 8 ; Helper s economic condemnation of, 9 ; defence of, 10; excluded from the Northwest Territory, 16 ; re turn of fugitives, 19; Dred Scott decision, 19; general dis cussion, 6-21 ; Confederate Constitution on, 44 ; domestic slave-trade, 44, et seq.\ gradual abolition recommended, 209; abolished by Maryland, 480 ; (see Emancipation, 200, et seg.) Slaves, confiscation of, 208 Slave-trade, possibility of its revival, 37 Slidell, John, sent by the Confed erate Government to Paris, 85 Slocum, Gen. Henry W,, in Gettysburg campaign, 252 ; given command of the Twentieth Corps, 434; in the march to the sea, 494, et seq.; at Averysboro, 510 Smith, Gen. A. J., in Shreveport expedition, 415 Smith, Gen. C. F., at Fort Henry, 101 ; at Fort Donelson, 104 Smith, Gen. E. Kirby, surrenders, 520 Smith, Gerrit, signs Mr. Davis s bail-bond, 523 Smith, Goldwin, friendly to the United States, 88 Smith, Gen. G. W., in command before Richmond, 158 Smith, Gen. Morgan L., in At lanta campaign, 433 Smith, Gen. William F., in Pe ninsula campaign, 153,^/5^; at Cold Harbor, 393 ; advances on Petersburg, 444 Smith, Gen. W. Sooy, defeated by Forrest, 415 550 INDEX. Smylie, James, his theory of slavery, 10 Snow Hill, engagement at, 320 Soldiers, cost of maintaining, 484 Songs, martial and political, 476 Soule, Pierre, at New Orleans, 124 South Carolina, nullification attempted by, 17; secedes, 35 Southampton insurrection, the, 5 South Mountain, battle of, 190 Specie payments, suspension of, 484 Spottsylvania, battle of, 377-388 Squatter sovereignty, 22 Stanton, Edwin M., made Secre tary of War, 1 50 Stanley, Gen. David S., defeats Morgan, 320 ; in Atlanta cam paign, 427 ; with Thomas at Nashville, 492 Stannard, Gen. George J., wound ed, 267 Star of the West, fired upon, 40 State sovereignty, 34 ; a clause of the Constitution that precludes it, 37 Steadman, Capt., at Port Royal, 96 Steele, Gen. Frederic, in Vicks- burg campaign, 275, et seq. ; defeated in Arkansas, 418 Steinwehr, Gen. Adolph W. F., at Gettysburg, 259 Stephens, Alexander H., on slavery, 20 ; speech against secession, 31 ; chosen Vice- President of the Confederacy, 36 ; expounds its constitution, 37 ; in the Hampton Roads conference, 510 Steuart, Gen., captured, 383 Stevens, Capt., at Gettysburg, 263 Stevens, Gen. Isaac I., killed, 183 Stevens, Thaddeus, proposes legal-tender notes, 485 Stevenson, Gen. T. G., killed, 388 Stiles, Joseph C., on slavery, n Stone, Gen. Roy, at Gettysburg, 257 Stoneman, Gen. George, his cav alry raid, 435 Stone River, battle of, 235 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, her anti- slavery novel. 7 Streight, Col. A. D., his raid, 320 Stringfellow, Thornton, his pam phlet on slavery, 10 Stringham, Flag-officer Silas H., in Hatteras expedition, 92 Strong, Gen. Geo. C., killed, 314 Strong, George T., treasurer of Sanitary Commission, 354 Stroud, George M., his compila- lation of the slave laws, 8, et seq. Stuart, George H., president of Christian Commission, 360 Stuart, Gen. J. E. B., rides around McClellan s army, 160; cap tures Pope s headquarters, 177; at Chancellorsville, 246; at Brandy Station, 250; at Gettysburg, 267 ; in the over land campaign, 368, et seq. ; killed, 379 Sturgis, Major S. D., at Wilson s Creek, 78 Sumner, Charles, assaulted, 15; advocates claim for conse quential damages, 412 Sumner, Gen. Edwin V., in Penin sula campaign, 150, et seq. ; at the second Bull Run, 182; in the Fredericksburg campaign, 223, et seq. Sumter, the, her career, 403 Swamp Angel, the, 316 Sykes, Gen. Geo., at Gettysburg, 259 Taney, Roger B., his Dred Scott decision, 20; opposes President Lincoln s suspension of habeas corpus, 8 1 ; death of, 212 Tariff, dissatisfaction with, 17 Taxes, increase of, 482 Taylor, Gen. Richard, at Sabine Cross-roads, 416 Tennessee, the struggle for, 82, et seq. ; terrorism in, 336 Tennessee, iron-clad ram, cap tured, 441 Terrill, Gen. Wm. R., killed, 232 Terry, Gen. Alfred H., captures Fort Fisher, 508 INDEX. 551 Texas, annexation of, 17 ; secedes, 36; terrorism in, 334, 335 Thomas, Gen. George H., at Mill Springs, 98; at Stone River, 235 ; at Chickamauga, 325, et seq. ; takes command of the Army of the Cumberland, 330; in Atlanta campaign, 419, et seq. ; organizes an army at Nashville, 492 ; defeats Hood, 501 Tourtellotte, Lieut.-Col. John E., at Allatoona, 490 Thompson, Geoige, mobbed, 7 Thompson, Jacob, plots secession while in the Cabinet, 38 Three-hundred-dollar exemption clause, the, 297 Tigers, Louisiana, destroyed, 263 Tilghman, Gen. Lloyd, at Fort Henry, 101 ; killed, 285 Times, London, correspondent of, quoted, 69 Todd s Tavern, action at, 376 Tom s Brook, engagement at, 465 Toombs, Robert, urges Georgia to secede, 31 Torbert, Gen. A. T. A., at the Opequan, 462 ; at Staunton, 465 ; at Tom s Brook, 465 Totopotomoy, position on, 393 Trent affair, the, 85 Tribune office assaulted, 303 Turner, Nat, leads an insurrec tion, 5 Turner s Gap, 190 Turning-point of the war, opinions as to, 522 Twiggs, Gen. David E., his sur render, 47 Tyler, Gen. R. O., at Bull Run, 60; at Spottsylvania, 389; wounded, 376 ; at the Mono- cacy, 453 Uncle Tom s Cabin published, 7 " Unconditional surrender " at Fort Donelson, 105 Underground railroad, the, 13 Upperville, cavalry fight at, 252 Upton, Gen. Emory, at Spottsyl vania, 381 Vallandigham, Clement L., his opposition to the Government, 293 ; his arrest and banish ment, 294 ; defeated by Brough, 306 ; in the Democratic conven tion, 473 ; his assurances to the South, 477 Van Buren, Dr., connection with the Sanitary Commission, 352 Vance, Gov. Z. B., quoted, 490 Vanderbilt, Cornelius, signs bail- bond, 523 Van Dorn, Gen. Earl, at Pea Ridge, 107; at Corinth, 233; at Holly Springs, 273 ; defeats Col. Coburn, 319; defeated by Gen. Granger, 319 Van Gilder, sergeant, wounded, ^87 Vesey, Denmark, plans an insur rection, 4 Vicksburg campaign, the, 270, et seq.\ the city besieged, 286; captured, 288 Vigintal crop, the, 44 Vincent, Gen. Strong, killed, 261 Virginia, the struggle for, 43 ; secession of, 45 Wade, Jenny, at Gettysburg, 269 Wadsworth. Gen. James S., killed, 373 Wagner, Gen. George D., at Franklin, 500 Walker, Com. Henry, at Island No. 10, 135 Walker, Gen., at Harper s Ferry; 1 88; wounded, 388 Wallace,Gen. Lew, at Fort Donel son, 104 ; at Shiloh, 136, et seq. ; at the Monocacy, 452 Wallace, Gen. W. H. L., at Shiloh, 136; killed, 139 Wauhatchie, engagement at, 330 War Democrats, 51 Warner, Capt., in charge of prisoners, 342 Warren, Gen. Gouverneur K., at the second Bull Run, 182 ; at Gettysburg, 261 ; wounded, 266 ; overland campaign, 367, et seq. ; seizes the Weldon Rail- 55 2 INDEX. road, 450 ; relieved by Sheridan, 5H Washington threatened byEarly s raid, 453 Waterloo compared with Gettys burg, 268 Waynesboro, engagements at, 465, 511 Webb, Gen. Alexander S., quoted, 157, 171 ; at Gettysburg, 266; wounded, 388 Webster, Col. J. D., at Shiloh, 139 Weed, Gen. Stephen H., killed, 261 Weitzel, Gen. Godfrey, marches into Richmond, 516 Weldon Railroad, fight for the, 446 ; seized by Warren, 450 \Vest Virginia, formation of, 83, et scq. Wheeler, Gen. Joseph G., attacks Dover, 319; commanding Con federate cavalry, 433; en counters with Kilpatrick, 498 Wheeler, John H., mentioned, 19 Whig party, goes to pieces, 21 White, Gen., evacuates Martins- burg, 1 88 Whitefielcl, George, working slaves, 2 White House, destruction of stores at, 166 Whiting, Gen., quoted, 164 Whitney, Eli, invents the cotton- gin* 3 Whittier, John G., mobbed, 7 Wiedrick, Capt., at Gettysburg, 263 Wilderness, the, description of, 366; battle of, 371, et seg. Wilkes, Charles, captures Mason and Slidell, 85 William of Orange fosters the slave-trade, 2 Williams, Gen. Thomas, expels fugitive slaves from his lines, 21 1 ; defends Baton Rouge, 271 ; killed, 272 Williamsburg, battle of, 153 Williamson, Passmore, impris oned, 19 Wilson, Gen. James H., in the overland campaign, 391 ; at crossing of the James, 398 ; at the Opequan, 461 ; at Nash ville, 501 Wilson s Creek, battle of, 78 Winchester, battles at, 251,454, 461 ; Sheridan and Early ma noeuvre around, 458, et seg. Winder, Gen. John H., cruelty to prisoners, 343, 344 ; his order to fire on prisoners, 436 ; death, 525 Winslow, Capt. John A., com mands the Kearsarge, 401 Winthrop, Major Theodore, killed, 56 Women in hospital service, 361 Wood, Surgeon-General, connec tion with the Sanitary Commis sion, 353 Wood, General Thomas J., at Chickamauga, 327 ; at Mission Ridge, 333 ; m Atlanta cam paign, 427 Woods, Gen. Charles R., in the Atlanta campaign, 432 Worden, Capt. John L., com mands the Monitor, 130 Wright, Gen. Horatio G., takes command of Sixth Corps, 380; wounded, 388 ; at Cedar Creek, 466; before Petersburg, 515 Yellow Tavern, engagement at, 376 Yorktown, siege of, 152 Zollicoffer, Gen. Felix K., defeated at Camp Wildcat, 97 ; killed, 98 Zook, Gen. Samuel K., killed, 262 Zouaves, first drilled, 52; New York firemen as, 55 A* Ml v - . M 2J-95m.7, 37 YC 510)3