Nothing availed. South Carolina, under the leadership of Robert Barnwell Rhett, called a state convention which met in Columbia, but adjourned to Charleston, and on December 20 severed all connection with the National Government and recalled her Representatives in Congress. President Buchanan did not favor secession, and he hoped that some way might be found to settle the difficulties which underlay the crisis. In his message to Congress he declared that there was no right of secession, but that there was also no authority anywhere to prevent secession. This was at the time the view of most others in the North, perhaps in the South, for Southerners spoke frequently of the "revolution" they were precipitating. When the demand of South Carolina for the surrender of Fort Sumter was presented to the President, he decided to delay action until his successor was inaugurated. This was not irregular nor unusual, but gave the people of the South time to decide what they would do; and before February 1, 1861, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana withdrew from the Union, though not without strenuous resistance by large parties in all these communities, save Florida.
Early in February delegates from these States gathered in Montgomery, Alabama, and organized a Southern Confederacy on the model of the older Union, and made Jefferson Davis President. Alexander Stephens, who had done more than any other Southerner to delay and defeat secession, was elected Vice-President. The new const.i.tution was conservative if not reactionary in character. Slavery was definitely and specifically made a corner-stone of the new government. The foreign slave trade was, in deference to border state opinion, forbidden; but free trade, which had so long been a bone of contention between the planters of the South and the manufacturers of the East, was left to the wisdom of ordinary legislation. In fact many of the ablest Southern leaders foresaw the establishment of a protective system in the South. In the same spirit of statesmanlike compromise, President Davis was careful to fill the Cabinet and other important posts with men who represented all phases of opinion, with former rivals and even decided opponents of the cause he represented. So cautious and considered was this program of the new administration that ardent secessionists declared before the fall of Fort Sumter that a reunion with the older Federal Government was the object. And the mild and conciliatory att.i.tude of William H. Seward, who was considered as a sort of acting president during the winter of 1860-61, strengthened this feeling in the South. The Southern commissioners whom Davis sent to Washington to negotiate with the Federal Government on the subjects of boundaries between the two countries, the division of the public debt, and the surrender of forts within Confederate territory were great favorites in the old national capital. A friendly att.i.tude toward the new South still further found expression in the New York _Tribune_, supposed to speak for Republicans in general, in the Albany _Journal_, Thurlow Weed"s paper, and even in the New York _Times_, Seward"s organ.
In fact the people of the North preferred a permanent disruption of the Union to a great war, the inevitable alternative. Nationalist sentiment was strong in the North, but not strong enough to make men positive and decided in their actions. President-elect Lincoln expressed this state of the public mind in his inaugural, when he said that he would faithfully execute the laws unless the people, his rightful masters, should refuse their support, and he showed it still more clearly when he adopted the policy of delay in determining the status of Fort Sumter which his predecessor had so long followed. The Cabinet of Buchanan had been undecided, that of Lincoln was for a whole month equally undecided.
Men hoped to avoid what all feared, civil war; and it is to the credit of both sections and both cabinets that they hesitated to commit the overt act which was to set free the "dogs of war"; and while public opinion was thus halted at the parting of the ways, Virginia, still thought of as the great old commonwealth and mother of statesmen, called a peace congress of North and South. Delegates from twenty-one States conferred together in Washington for six weeks, seeking a way out of the difficult and perilous situation. Conservative members of Congress, John J. Crittenden, Stephen A. Douglas, William H. Seward, and others, labored in the same cause. It is acknowledged by all that a popular referendum would have brought an overwhelming mandate to let the "departing sisters go in peace," or to accept the former Southern demand of a division of the western territory from Kansas to the Pacific along the line of 36 30".
But stiff-backed Republicans like Senator Chandler, of Michigan, Charles Sumner, and Secretary Chase were unwilling to throw away the results of a victory const.i.tutionally won, even to avoid a long and b.l.o.o.d.y war. And these men brought all the influence they could command to bear upon the President and his Cabinet during the early days of April. They contended that every moment of delay increased the likelihood of Southern success, and they urged that the young Republican party, which was perhaps as dear to them as the country itself, was losing ground. At last President Lincoln yielded, and a relief expedition was ordered to Fort Sumter on April 6, where Major Robert Anderson and his garrison had bravely and cautiously maintained their difficult situation in the face of an angry Southern sentiment for nearly four months. This was recognized as a warlike move; and Secretary Seward was so much opposed to it and, the Southerners contended, so sacredly bound not to allow its departure, that he interfered with the expedition, by sending orders, signed by himself for the President, intended to thwart the move.
Under circ.u.mstances so peculiar and delicate it was of the utmost importance that the Confederate President keep his head. The responsibility for regaining control of Fort Sumter pa.s.sed from South Carolina to the Confederate Government during the early days of February. Major Anderson, who held the fort with a small Federal garrison, was a friend of Jefferson Davis, and was keenly alive to the seriousness of his situation, and while his superiors were in doubt, he maintained the status of things as they were when the negotiations began. But the authorities of South Carolina forbade the sending of fresh supplies of provisions to his men after April 6, and, as there was but a limited amount on hand, it was only a matter of weeks before he must evacuate, if neither the North nor the South decided what should be done. April 15 was the day which he set for giving up his post for the lack of sustenance. If he moved away peacefully, there would be no war, and such was the hope of Seward and the moderates of the North, who thought that a friendly reconstruction would be the result of continued delay.
Jefferson Davis, who was informed daily of every move that was made in Washington, determined to let Anderson quietly evacuate Fort Sumter, having a.s.surances from Seward that no supplies would be sent. In this he was supported by the unanimous opinion of his Cabinet until on April 9, when General P. G. T. Beauregard, who commanded the troops gathering at Charleston, telegraphed that the Federal Government had given formal notice that a.s.sistance would be sent to the starving garrison. Davis still delayed, giving conditional orders to Beauregard; and Beauregard acted in the same spirit when he sent Roger A. Pryor and three other aides to the fort to get definite a.s.surance on the point of Federal surrender. But when Anderson, on the night of April 12, gave a.s.surance that on April 15 he would give up his post if he should not receive contrary orders from Washington prior to that time, the four aides of General Beauregard who had been sent to the fort gave notice to the Confederate artillery commander, without consulting superior authority, that the answer was not satisfactory, and the fatal sh.e.l.ling began. On the next day Anderson and his men, finding the walls of the fort falling about them, surrendered. The war had begun.
The act of South Carolina on December 20 led immediately to the formation of the confederacy of the lower Southern States. The firing on Fort Sumter was followed in a few days by the secession of Virginia, Tennessee, and Arkansas, Texas having already joined the "revolution"; Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri were prevented from joining the new confederacy only by the prompt and extra-legal interference of President Lincoln. The second tier of Southern States thus joined the first, and a confederacy of some ten million people demanded the independence which all agreed had not been forbidden in the Const.i.tution of 1787, and began at once the raising of armies to make good that demand. The boundaries of the new republic were extended to the Potomac; commissioners were sent to the European powers to sue for recognition, and hundreds of the best officers in the United States Army resigned to seek commands under the new flag.
The popular excitement and enthusiasm which followed these events in the South equaled that which marked the early stages of the French Revolution. Party lines and cla.s.s distinctions disappeared. Two hundred thousand volunteers offered their services to Jefferson Davis; confederate and state bonds to meet the expense of the war were taken at par wherever there was surplus money; men met at their courthouses to drill without the call of their officers; and women, even more enthusiastic than the men, urged their "guardians and protectors" to the front to meet and vanquish a foe who threatened to invade the Southern soil. Armories were quickly constructed in a country which knew little of the mechanic arts; guns and ammunition were ordered from Europe and from Northern manufacturers as fast as trusty agents could make arrangements; shipbuilding was resorted to on the banks of the sluggish rivers; and machinists and sailors were imported from the North and from England to guide the amateurish hands of the South. Before midsummer four hundred thousand Southerners were in arms or waiting to receive them. Colonel Robert E. Lee, accounted the first soldier of the country, was made a general in the new army. Joseph E. Johnston, Albert Sidney Johnston, Pierre G. T. Beauregard, and others accepted with confidence the commissions of the South, and set hundreds of younger men, trained at West Point or at the Virginia Military Inst.i.tute, to drilling and organizing the armies rapidly gathering at strategic points along the frontier, which extended from Norfolk, Virginia, to the eastern border of Kansas.
The planters had at last made good their threat, and the aristocratic society of the South was welded together more firmly than it had ever been before. Their leaders frankly stated to the world that their four billions of negro property was of more importance to them than any federal union which threatened the value of that property by narrowing the limits of its usefulness. The negroes knew a great war was beginning and that they were the objects of contention; but long discipline and a curious pride in the prowess of their masters kept them at their lowly but important tasks. They boasted that their masters could "whip the world in arms." Of insurrections and the ma.s.sacre of the whites, which at one time had been a nightmare to the ruling cla.s.ses of the South, there was no rumor. And throughout the four years of war the slaves remained faithful and produced by their steady, if slow, toil the food supplies both for the people at home and for the armies at the front.
The small slaveholder was the most enthusiastic and resolute secessionist and supporter of the Confederacy. He was just rising in the world, and anything which barred the upward way was denounced as degrading and insulting. A larger cla.s.s of Southerners who joined with measured alacrity the armies of defense were the small farmers of the hills and poorer eastern counties; but the "sand-hillers" and "crackers," the illiterate and neglected by-products of the planter counties, were not minded to volunteer, though under pressure they became good soldiers because they dreaded the prospect of hordes of free negroes in the South more than they did the guns of the North. Small farmers and landless whites all felt the necessity of holding the slaves in bondage, and thus a society of sharp cla.s.s distinctions, openly acknowledged by all, was moulded into a solid phalanx by the proposed invasion of the South and the almost certain liberation of the slaves.
Moreover, the churches of the South, including the Catholics in New Orleans, Charleston, and elsewhere, were now at the height of their power. Planters, farmers, and the so-called "poor whites" acknowledged the importance of religious faith and discipline; and the leaders of the churches, from the bishops of the Episcopalians to the humble pastors of negro congregations, freely gave their blessings to slavery and urged their membership to heroic sacrifice for the common cause. Sermons like that of Dr. Palmer, of New Orleans, in November, 1860, were preached all over the South, and they were as effective in stirring the warlike impulses of the people as the fiery addresses of the most enthusiastic statesmen.
Although there was a unity and a cooperation among all cla.s.ses of people from Washington City to southwestern Texas, there were certain areas in which volunteers, even during the early days of excitement, were not readily forthcoming. In the pine woods of the Carolinas and the Gulf States, where nine tenths of the soil was still covered by primeval forests, and among the high mountains of Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee, many people resisted the authority of the Confederacy pa.s.sively or actively from the beginning. From the southern Appalachian region the Union armies drew at least 200,000 recruits, and in certain counties of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee more soldiers per thousand of the population volunteered for the Federal service than could be found in the most enthusiastic communities of the North. Western Virginia revolted in 1861, and in 1863 she was received into the Union as a loyal State, in spite of the absence of all const.i.tutional authority or precedent. Eastern Tennessee might have pursued the same course if it had been possible for President Lincoln to lend military a.s.sistance at the proper moment. Except in the valley and southwestern counties of Virginia, most of the grain and cattle-producing area of the South was indifferent to the cause of the Confederacy. This was a serious handicap, for troops must be stationed in many localities to maintain order, and the resistance to the foraging agents of the Southern armies frequently became serious. From the summer of 1863 to the end of the struggle the home guards of the various disaffected districts required many men who might otherwise have been with Lee or Joseph E. Johnston.
But the better parts of the South, the tobacco and cotton belts, with their annual output of three hundred millions" worth of exportable commodities, their high-strung, well-bred gentry accustomed to outdoor life and horseback riding and devoted to the idea of local autonomy in government, were behind the Confederate movement. The people had been better trained in their local militia than their Northern brethren, their greatest families had long been accustomed to send cadets to West Point, and in several States there were excellent military schools where the best of training was given to young men who looked forward with a vague expectation to careers in the army. If we add to these considerations the fact that the rural aristocracy, whether secessionist or unionist in politics in 1860, regarded the movements of the North in the spring of 1861 as ruthless attacks upon their ideals and their homes, we shall understand how the Confederates were able to organize a powerful and efficient army so early in the struggle.
The Confederate seat of Government was removed in May, 1861, from Montgomery to Richmond. The old Virginia capital, always the center of strong unionist feelings, became the scene of cabinet meetings, of sessions of Congress, and military conferences. The easy-going tobacco gentry who had grown up with the little city on the James welcomed the invasion of generals, politicians, and army contractors, and saw with pleasure the population swell from some twenty-five thousand to a hundred thousand souls. The "White House" became the center of a society which, as Mrs. Pryor and others insisted, was really aristocratic. The first families of Virginia became hosts to the statesmen who had gathered there from all the Southern States; there were "heroes from the wars" to grace the salons of Mrs. Stannard, Mr. William H.
McFarland, banker to the new government, and others who, but for the disastrous turn of the conflict, would have become well-known figures in history. The social life which was adorned by the presence of Mrs.
Jefferson Davis, Mrs. James Chesnut, and Mrs. Joseph E. Johnston was, however, after one short winter of pleasure and buoyant expectation, overcast with sorrow and even scattered abroad by the close approach of the armies of the North, the hated Yankees who had not been expected to fight.
The serious and all-absorbing business of the South was therefore to repel invasion. Armies ranging from 5000 to 15,000 troops were stationed at Norfolk, Williamsburg, Fredericksburg, northern Virginia, Harper"s Ferry, c.u.mberland Gap, Bowling Green and Columbus, Kentucky, and even in Missouri. General A. S. Cooper, of New Jersey, became adjutant-general and the senior officer in the Confederate Army; Robert E. Lee organized and drilled the Virginia forces; Joseph E. Johnston, his rival in the old United States Army, commanded at Harper"s Ferry; and Beauregard, the hero of Fort Sumter, was at the head of the army which was expected to resist and defeat the first invasion from Washington. Behind these various gatherings of soldiers were hundreds of thousands of others, waiting to be supplied with arms and ready to learn the ways of war.
Editors, preachers, and orators heralded with unanimous voice the new nation, and predicted speedy recognition by the powers of Europe and a permanent peace with their long-time rivals. Three months, six months, or a year were the various estimates of the duration of the war for independence. Some planters followed the counsel of President Davis and planted corn and wheat instead of the accustomed cotton and tobacco, in order to be able to feed their armies and "their people," but others were so certain that another autumn would reopen the channels of commerce to all that they continued their large acreage in their favorite staples. It was not to be a long struggle like that which Washington had led. The conditions were different. Both England and France would intervene when the cotton famine began to press. Even so sober a man as General Lee expected success and thought of his role as like that of Washington, who was now the Southern model and ideal.
Davis"s friends also spoke and wrote of him as the "second Washington."
Thus filled with the highest hopes and reminded daily of the heroic traditions of the former revolution, the Southerners began their battles. President Lincoln, loath to admit that war was upon him, called out 75,000 three months" men when the news of Fort Sumter reached him.
Congress, too, was called in extra session for July 4 to devise ways and means of compelling the South to return to the fold. These warlike acts, to those who did not understand the long sectional rivalry, were supported by an almost unanimous North. The Northwest, led by Douglas, was prompt to support their first real President and to hasten their quota of volunteers to the front. In the older sections of the East the latent hostility toward the people of the South flamed out as never before, proclaiming a devotion to the Union and to the ideals of the Fathers which had widespread effect. Even in the great cities, where the prevailing sentiment in the preceding winter had been for peace and a permanent disruption of the Union, men rallied to the national standards with unexpected enthusiasm. The Astors, Belmonts, and Drexels raised regiments or offered loans to the Administration. If the South was united and ready to defend their homes, the North seemed equally united upon a program of invasion and subjection. A solid South had begotten a solid North. The sh.e.l.ls which burst over Fort Sumter had called the North to arms as effectively as they had banished the hesitation of the Southern border States.
An army of invasion gathered rapidly in Washington, seized Arlington, General Lee"s ancient family estate, on the Virginia sh.o.r.e of the Potomac, for a drill ground, took possession of recalcitrant Maryland, and made of all railroads entering the capital the highways and instruments of war. Winfield Scott, the old and vacillating general of the regular army, was quickly set aside, and the able General Irvin McDowell took his place. Thirty thousand troops moved slowly into Virginia under the pressure of public opinion stimulated by newspaper editors, ministers of the Gospel, and stiff-backed Republicans, who, like similar cla.s.ses in the South, declared that the war was to be over in three months. Other armies collected at Cincinnati under young George B. McClellan, soon to be major-general, at Louisville under Don C. Buell, and at St. Louis under the erratic John C. Fremont. When Congress met, all these movements were quickly ratified, and the two sections of a country of more than thirty million people, all supposed to be devotees of commerce, industry, and agriculture, "worshipers of money," entered with unparalleled eagerness upon a war which was soon to surprise and even appall the world. What industry lost in the North by secession of the South was regained in the manufacture or preparation of military supplies for soldiers who fought the South; and in the Confederacy men who knew little of industry and of seafaring soon established great plants where the munitions of war were readily made, or they turned with a strange facility to improvising gunboats and blockade runners. Within a year or two the people of the North showed the most bitter hatred of the South and everything Southern, and in the South women sold their hair for the common cause, and sent their gold and silver ornaments to the Government to be converted into implements of war. Such results could hardly have been the outcome of a hasty decision on either side. The long-nursed dislike of the people of each section now became a consuming hatred; it was a mighty struggle for the mastery of the Government which had been founded in 1787-89, for the control of the vast territory which composed the heart of North America.
One party or the other must be vanquished, one section or the other must become a second Ireland.
On July 20, General McDowell attacked the army under General Beauregard near Centreville, a Virginia village to the northward of a little stream which gave its name to the battle that ensued,--Bull Run. About 35,000 Northerners made up the army of invasion; Beauregard commanded less than 20,000, but Joseph E. Johnston brought his army of 15,000 from the Valley of Virginia in time to decide the fortunes of that hot summer day. After stout fighting on both sides during the earlier part of the onset, these fresh troops of the Valley were seen marching into action.
To Union eyes the 15,000 easily appeared to be 30,000. Panic seized men and officers alike, and a stampede for Washington and safer ground followed. Arms, provisions, horses, even, and the carriages of stiff-backed Republican Congressmen, who had left their posts to see the fun, were left upon the field and along the wayside as memorials of the first battle. At the close of the day Jefferson Davis, Beauregard, Johnston, and "Stonewall" Jackson, who won his proud soubriquet on that famous field, held a conference and decided not to follow the Federals to Washington that evening. On the morrow a heavy rain fell and the roads of northern Virginia became impa.s.sable for a week. The defeated forces had time to regain their composure while the people of both sections began to see what war meant.
The Southerners rejoiced and celebrated, even relaxed their preparations, thinking their valor vastly superior to that of their enemies. President Davis was less confident, and pressed upon his Congress the better organization of the armies, whose numbers now mounted to 400,000 men; he sent James M. Mason and John Slidell as commissioners to Europe, and ordered troops under Robert E. Lee to West Virginia to save that recalcitrant region to Virginia and the Confederacy. In the absence of a revenue, and already shut off from the markets of both the North and Europe, the Confederates resorted to loans and the issue of paper money to meet the enormous expenses of war. The Confederate Government borrowed hundreds of millions from the planters, and the States likewise piled up debts in unprecedented fashion in maintenance of the same great cause. Of gold and silver there was little; the banks had long since suspended specie payments, but increased their issues of notes. The cotton crop, then being harvested by the negroes, and the grain and cattle of the hill country were the chief resources. The paper money of the Government was paid to soldiers, farmers, and planters for their services and supplies, and this was given back to the Government in exchange for interest-bearing bonds that were issued. With a European market for the planters" products the system might easily have been successful; but this one essential to victory failed, or waited upon military success.
The first general election came on in the late autumn. Under the stimulus of the victory at Mana.s.sas, or Bull Run, Davis and Stephens were elected President and Vice-President without opposition for terms of six years. New Senators and Representatives were chosen, generally from the ranks of conservative politicians, for the sessions of the regular Confederate Congress, which was to supersede the provisional congress and government on Washington"s birthday, 1862. The judiciary of the Confederacy was regularly organized except as to the Supreme Court; the adjustments of national and state relations were all rapidly and easily made; while the selection and appointment of high officers in the army and civil administration went steadily on at Richmond, under the relief from military pressure which the success of Beauregard and Johnston in northern Virginia had secured. In the general security some of the ablest officers of the army, especially Joseph E. Johnston, felt free to attack the President in the newspapers because of the failure to give the highest commands according to rank of officers in the former United States Army,--a quarrel which was destined to have a fatal influence in the final overthrow of the new government. There was also an attempt to fix upon Davis the blame for not capturing Washington City the day after the Bull Run _debacle_. However, these were as yet but ripples of discontent which only proved the general confidence of the people in their final triumph.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
F. E. Chadwick"s _The Causes of the Civil War_ (1906) and J. K. Hosmer"s _The Appeal to Arms_ (1906) are the best brief and recent accounts of the events of 1859 to 1862. But Rhodes, McMaster, and Schouler cover the period to 1876, each after his distinctive method. John C. Ropes"s _The Story of the Civil War_ (1894), continued by W. R. Livermore, treats the military history in the most critical and fair-minded way, though Wood and Edmonds"s _The Civil War in the United States_ (1905), and G. P. R.
Henderson"s _Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War_ (1900), are equally good, if somewhat briefer.
Of original material there is no limit, and the student is compelled to find his way through the uncharted wilderness of evidence in the _Rebellion Records_, already cited, and the thousands of volumes of memoirs and special contemporary narratives of which U. S. Grant"s _Personal Memoirs_ (1886), Joseph B. Johnston"s _Narrative of Military Operations_ (1874), Nicolay and Hay"s _Abraham Lincoln: a History_ (1890), and _Battles and Leaders of the Civil War_ (1887-89), are perhaps the most important. Almost all the officers of both the Union and Confederate armies, with the unique exception of General Lee, left published or unpublished narratives of their roles in the great struggle which help to clear up most disputed episodes, though they complicate the task of the historian.
The estimates of the numbers of men engaged on both sides by Ropes, Rhodes, and especially T. L. Livermore in his _Numbers and Losses_, are most trustworthy, though this is a subject still hotly controverted in both North and South. Each of the great battles has its historian: H. V.
Boynton, _The Battle of Chickamauga_, and Morris Schaff, _The Battle of the Wilderness_, being the best examples.
CHAPTER XV
ONE NATION OR TWO?
The distressing news of Bull Run brought home to the North the awful realities of war. Men who had all along distrusted the Republican party now denounced a war waged for the emanc.i.p.ation of the South"s slaves.
Both the President and Congress formally announced that it was a struggle for the maintenance of the Union and not a war on behalf of the slaves. It was well that this position was taken, else the North might have broken into impotent factions. The East hated the South and warred upon their ancient rivals, the planters; the border States owned slaves, disliked the Republican party, and feared the purposes of those in power; while the West loved the Union, held the negro in contempt, and was committed to the party in power on the smallest possible margin.
None but Lincoln seemed to possess the tact and the ability necessary to hold together these dissolving elements of a country never yet thoroughly united; and even he was long doubted and distrusted by many good men. Strange as it may seem, Douglas had been, until his death, June 3, 1861, his right arm. Douglas"s last speeches and dying words urged upon the millions of his followers the necessity of giving their lives to the cause of the Union. So critical was the situation that when nominations were made for elective office in the Middle States or the West in 1861, the Administration party took pains to disavow its former att.i.tude and put forward candidates who had been regular Democrats, thus following the same compromising policy which Davis inaugurated in the South. Daniel S. d.i.c.kinson, a member of the old Polk and Pierce party of ruthless expansion, was made leader of the Administration forces in New York in 1861, and David Tod, a stanch Douglas man in 1860, was elected Governor of Ohio the same year by Republican votes. John C. Fremont was removed from the command of the Federal army in St. Louis because he undertook to emanc.i.p.ate the slaves in his department. The people of the North were not willing to invade the sister States of the South for any other cause than to restore the Union. Wealthy bankers, industrial leaders, and railway magnates might be kept together on a platform of enlarging the area of their operations, but never on a program which proposed the confiscation of billions of dollars" worth of property, which the slaves represented. In this hour of trial the supreme need was cooperation and union among the diverse elements of the North, for in 1862 another Congress would be chosen, and if party lines were suffered to be drawn, the South would certainly gain her independence.
[Ill.u.s.tration: One Nation, or Two?]
With this Unionist program perfectly understood, Lincoln asked Congress for 400,000 men. Congress gave him 500,000. A second wave of warlike enthusiasm swept over the North, and men enlisted not for three months, but for three years. The zeal and _abandon_ of the South was hardly matched, but there was no lack of men or support. With a few exceptions the newspapers, the pulpits, and the lecture platforms urged most ardent support of the common cause. But the more difficult problem of finding money for the vast armies that moved upon the South was not so quickly solved. Secretary Chase reported the expenditure in the three months of June, July, and August of a hundred millions--an amount greater far than the total national debt. Before another three months had pa.s.sed this expenditure had doubled, and the Secretary estimated that $500,000,000 would be needed before the end of June, 1862! These were astounding figures to a country whose normal annual income was about $50,000,000.
And what was worse, the financial men refused to take government bonds at par, as they had done during the war with Mexico, although they were now offered interest at the rate of six to eight per cent. The country had recovered from the panic of 1857, and as business activity increased and the general prosperity became certain, it was more difficult for the Government to borrow money. The suspension of specie payments by all the banks before the end of the year did not mean panic or severe economic crisis, as had hitherto been the case; rather, a change from metallic to paper money. Secretary Chase was told by New York leaders in December, 1862, that government bonds bearing six per cent interest would hardly bring sixty cents on the dollar. Yet business men borrowed money at four per cent and the wheels of industry and commerce were moving at full speed. Prosperity in the North was thus almost as fatal to the Union as adversity in the South was to the Confederacy. Rather than advertise a collapse of the federal credit by selling bonds at a discount of twenty to forty per cent the guiding spirits at Washington decided to issue notes as legal tender to the amount of $150,000,000, increased to $300,000,000 a little later. Immediately, bankers and business men who refused to take bonds protested with such vigor and resolution that Chase and Lincoln, unlearned in the ways of finance, knew not what course to take. To sell bonds at enormous discounts and high rates of interest was bad; to tax the people directly for the needs of the Government would have ruined the party in power; and to issue fiat money was equivalent to forcing the poor to lend what the rich refused. But the emergency was great. It was decided to issue and float "greenbacks"
and also to sell bonds in unprecedented numbers. Though the markets of the world were open to the North and business was as active as ever in the history of the country, the Federal Government was thus reduced, like the Confederacy, to the use of paper money, and, surprising as it may appear, the securities of the latter sold in Europe at a higher price than those of the former. Gold and silver disappeared entirely in both sections.
But the eyes of the public were fixed on military movements, not finance, and as the winter of 1861-62 wore on an army of a hundred thousand men gathered around Washington for the second invasion of Virginia. George B. McClellan, the "young Napoleon," drilled and organized the raw recruits while public opinion began to urge another march upon Richmond. Other armies nearly a hundred thousand strong spread over Kentucky and threatened Tennessee at c.u.mberland Gap, Bowling Green, and Forts Henry and Donelson. In February Ulysses S. Grant saw the strategic importance of the forts on the c.u.mberland and Tennessee Rivers, and before the first of March he had captured both, and the whole of West Tennessee lay open to him. Nashville fell as he moved up the Tennessee, and Commodore Foote opened the Mississippi River almost to Vicksburg during the early spring. Meanwhile Albert Sidney Johnston had retreated to northern Mississippi. Finding Grant in a weak position on the southern bank of the Tennessee near Shiloh Church, he hastily gathered his discouraged troops about him for a sudden attack upon the invaders. Grant had nearly 45,000 men and he knew that General Buell was only a few miles away with 37,000 more. Johnston had 40,000. The purpose of the Confederate general was known to his men, and all were inspired with the determination of striking a blow before the two armies of the enemy could unite. Johnston"s a.s.sistants in command were Beauregard and Bragg, both able and experienced officers. On the morning of April 6, the Confederates fell upon Grant"s outposts and drove them headlong against the main body. Desperate valor was shown in the ensuing attack, and before the afternoon it seemed that nothing could save the Union army and its commander from complete disaster. The river was in high flood, two impa.s.sable creeks flanked the Federals, while the victorious Confederates held the fourth side of the field. At two o"clock Johnston fell mortally wounded; Beauregard succeeded to command, and about four o"clock the attack slackened; at six it ceased altogether, though the Union forces were demoralized and expecting to be captured. Grant was saved. With the support of Buell at hand he attacked Beauregard on the morrow and regained some of his lost prestige. The "promenade" up the Tennessee had been halted; but the loss of Johnston was equal to the loss of an army. This fighting of South and West was of the most desperate character, for Grant lost more than 10,000 in killed and wounded, while Johnston and Beauregard lost 9700.
The march of Grant and Buell across middle and western Tennessee and the opening of the Mississippi to Memphis was accompanied by the loss to the Confederates of Missouri and a part of Arkansas. Grant"s objective in the summer and autumn of 1862 was Vicksburg, but the Confederates held him fast in the neighborhood of Corinth, Mississippi. Buell withdrew from middle Tennessee in the late summer, when Bragg, commander of a second Confederate army in the West, moved through eastern Tennessee into Kentucky, threatening Lexington and Louisville. But Bragg failed after some successes in September to carry the tide of war back toward the Ohio, and he was followed in October by the army of the Ohio, now under the command of General W. S. Rosecrans, toward Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where another sanguinary battle was fought on the last day of December, 1862. Rosecrans now had 43,000 men, Bragg 38,000. After a desperate encounter in which the honors inclined to the Confederate side, Bragg withdrew toward Chattanooga, his base of operations, and Rosecrans encamped at Murfreesboro. The Federal losses in this engagement were more than 13,000, the Confederate somewhat over 9000, and the only advantage was the gaining of a few miles of territory. The war in the West which began so brilliantly for the Federals at Forts Henry and Donelson seemed to have come to a halt. Grant was unable to penetrate the lower South, and Rosecrans was content to leave Bragg in undisturbed possession of the region between Murfreesboro and Chattanooga.
Meanwhile the eyes of the two warring powers were concentrated on the operations in Virginia. McClellan moved in March, 1862, upon Richmond by way of the Yorktown Peninsula, a swampy wild region over which it was difficult, indeed, to move an army. He commanded 125,000 men, and 40,000 more were in the neighborhood of Washington to make a diversion in his favor in case of necessity. Joseph E. Johnston, who had held chief command in Virginia since Bull Run, shifted his position promptly from northern Virginia to Richmond to meet the threatened attack. He had no more than 55,000 men. As McClellan worked his way slowly up the peninsula Johnston fortified his position along the ridges east and north of the Confederate capital, which stood on the hills just above tidewater. From Hanover Court-House to Malvern Hill, a distance of some twenty-five miles, the two armies confronted each other in irregular lines conforming to the topography of the region. Late in May, Johnston attacked McClellan on the Union right, and the fighting continued two or three days, now at one point, now at another of the long lines. On May 31, in the battle of Fair Oaks, Johnston was severely wounded and the command devolved upon Robert E. Lee, whose failure to hold West Virginia against McClellan during the preceding autumn had temporarily eclipsed his growing reputation. Lee"s management of his forces during the early days of his new command was faulty; but before the 23d of June he had received reinforcements from the Carolinas and Georgia which brought his total almost to 60,000; and he relied on "Stonewall" Jackson, who was just concluding a wonderful campaign in the Valley of Virginia, to come to his a.s.sistance with his corps of 16,000. But McClellan still had 105,000 fairly trained soldiers, and there was no reason to doubt that a second Union army was forming near Alexandria. It was a critical moment.
Meanwhile, Jackson"s operations in the Shenandoah Valley had so startled and astounded the Federals that he was able to march, June 20-25, un.o.bserved, over the pa.s.ses of the Blue Ridge Mountains to Lee"s a.s.sistance. A series of battles began June 26 at Mechanicsville on McClellan"s right, near where Johnston had fought. But the failure of Jackson to arrive and begin the attack, according to agreement, caused the first Confederate onset to fail, with heavy losses to the South. The next day, however, the tide turned the other way and Lee routed McClellan at Gaines" Mill. McClellan now retreated across White Oak Swamp towards Harrison"s Landing on the James. The weather was hot, the ground soft from rains, and the underbrush so thick and tangled that men could not see each other at a distance of ten paces, save in the narrow roads or small clearings. Realizing the difficulties under which his opponent labored, Lee ordered hasty pursuit, and ineffective blows were struck at Savage"s Station and in White Oak Swamp. Jackson again failed to maintain the great reputation he had won in the Valley, and Magruder, Holmes, and Huger, other lieutenants of Lee, not knowing their own country as well as did the Federals, suffered their commands to be lost in the wilderness and thus aided McClellan in his escape from a dangerous situation. On July 1 the retreating Union army gathered, still devoted to its commander, on Malvern Hill, within support of the Federal gunboats in the James River below. The Confederates, confident and expectant, poured out of the woods from every direction, formed in battle array, and charged over open fields and rising ground toward the two hundred and fifty great guns which had been dragged for weeks through the swamps in the hope of just such an opportunity. The attempt of Lee to carry this impregnable position lost the Confederates as many brave men as all the other six days of unremitting warfare. McClellan held his own till night; Lee withdrew to the neighboring thickets, surprised at the resolute strength of an opponent who had avoided battle at every turn since June 26.
The week of fighting and scouring the woods had cost the North nearly 16,000 men; the South, 20,000. The retreat on July 2 to Harrison"s Landing was McClellan"s confession of failure, which sorely distressed his superiors in Washington and greatly depressed the spirits of the North. Lee"s first essay at war on a large scale had saved the Confederate capital, though at fearful cost, and he was everywhere regarded as a great general. From this time Davis and the Confederate Government gave him the fullest confidence, and the people of the South came to think of him as almost superhuman. Though he was bold in action and even reckless of human life, his soldiers gave him an obedience and a reverence which no other commander in American history has ever received. Jackson, Longstreet, and D. H. and A. P. Hill had also won fame in this baptism of blood. To the average Southerner the outlook was once more exceedingly bright. Richmond breathed freely, and the Government bent its energies to the task of supplying its able officers with men and means.
While the Federal Government was deciding what to do with McClellan and his army, still almost twice as large as Lee"s, the Confederate commander sent Jackson with some 20,000 men to the neighborhood of Bull Run, where the commands of McDowell, Banks, and Fremont had been united to make a third army of invasion. General John Pope was brought from successful operations in the West to Washington, where Secretary Edwin M. Stanton, a.s.suming more and more the directing authority of the Government, prepared, with the a.s.sistance of Senator Benjamin F. Wade, a proclamation which Pope was to distribute among the troops. "I come from the West, where we have always seen the backs of our enemies," ran this remarkable admonition to Eastern, officers and men. "Let us look before us and not behind." Most of the 50,000 men who were soon to meet Jackson and Lee resented the comparison and the affront. On August 9 a sharp encounter at Cedar Mountain showed how resolute and real was the purpose of Lee to drive this army out of Virginia. When President Lincoln removed McClellan and ordered the Army of the Potomac in part to Washington, in part to Acquia Creek, near Fredericksburg, to support Pope, and gave the command of all the armies of the East to General H.
W. Halleck, for whom Grant had won high reputation earlier in the year, Lee hastened northward to defeat Pope before these reinforcements could arrive. The Union forces north of Bull Run amounted now to nearly 75,000 men; Lee had 55,000, but there was no thought of delay. On the 29th and 30th Pope was crushed and routed completely in a series of maneuvers and battles which have been p.r.o.nounced the most masterly in the whole war.
For four days the discouraged and baffled troops and officers of the Union retreated or ran pell-mell across the northern counties of Virginia into Washington, to the dismay of Lincoln and the friends of the Federal cause. It was at this moment, too, that Bragg was advancing, as already described, into Kentucky and threatening to seize Lexington and Louisville. It was a dark hour to the patient and patriotic Lincoln, who had never dreamed that such catastrophes could be the result of his reluctant decision, in early April, 1861, to hold Fort Sumter.
General Halleck proved uncertain and dilatory; the Army of the Potomac was generally dissatisfied and clamoring for the restoration of McClellan, who, like Joseph E. Johnston, of the South, was always popular with his men; the Cabinet, too, was uncertain and hopelessly divided in its counsels. The cause of the Union was exceedingly doubtful in September, 1862, as Lee entered Maryland, publishing abroad his call to the Southern element of that State to rise and join their brethren of the Confederacy. Public opinion in the North was divided and depressed.
The abolitionists of the East were pressing every day through Sumner and Chase for a proclamation emanc.i.p.ating the slaves, which might have driven Maryland and Kentucky into the arms of the enemy; the Northwest was in turmoil, for there abolitionism was as unpopular as slavery itself, and leading men declared that it was a war for the Union, for a great common country, not a struggle to overthrow the inst.i.tutions of the South. There was still no great party, sure of a majority in the coming elections, upon which the President could rely, and the loss of a majority in Congress would have been fatal.
Under these circ.u.mstances Lee, Longstreet, and Jackson entered Maryland at a point some fifty miles above Washington, with their army enthusiastic and self-confident because of recent victories. It seemed almost certain that another victory, and this on the soil of the North, would secure Confederate recognition in Europe. Reluctantly Lincoln restored McClellan to the command of the Union army which was moving northwestward to confront Lee. An accident, one of those small things in war which sometimes determines the fate of nations, put into McClellan"s hands the orders of Lee for the Maryland campaign. General D. H. Hill dropped his copy of these important and highly confidential instructions upon the ground as he was breaking camp on the morning of the 12th of September. On the same day this tell-tale doc.u.ment was handed to the Federal commander. Almost a third of Lee"s army was on its way to Harper"s Ferry, many miles to the west, to seize that post, which McClellan thought had already been evacuated. McClellan began to press upon the Confederates as they retired from their advanced position to the valley of Antietam Creek. South Mountain, a spur of the Blue Ridge, lay between the armies. On September 16, McClellan crossed the pa.s.ses and confronted Lee, who was now on the defensive. A most sanguinary battle followed on the 17th, and the Confederates, having suffered losses of nearly 12,000 men, retired to northern Virginia. The campaign was closed, for McClellan was too cautious to risk a second attack, and Lee retired to a safe position south of the Potomac. The consternation of the North subsided and President Lincoln gave out the announcement that if war continued till January he would emanc.i.p.ate the slaves by executive order in all the States which at that time refused to recognize the Federal authority.
The elections which came in October and November following ran heavily against the Administration. New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, Republican States in 1860, went Democratic. Only in States where the war upon the South, as the ancient enemy, was popular did the Administration receive hearty support. In the moderate States like Pennsylvania and the border States like Kentucky, the Republican party had practically ceased to exist. The Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation had served to emphasize the almost fatal cleavage in Northern public opinion.
But the fortunes of both sides depended on victory in the field as well as votes in Congress, and all eyes turned again to the movements of Lee.
The failure of McClellan to follow Lee and deliver battle led to his second removal from command. Ambrose E. Burnside, a corps commander who had done good work at Antietam, succeeded, and in obedience to the orders of the War Department moved directly upon Richmond by way of Fredericksburg, with an army of 122,000. But Lee confronted him on the south bank of the Rappahannock, and though his forces were only a little more than half as strong, there was no uneasiness at Confederate headquarters. On the 12th of December Burnside crossed the Rappahannock and attacked Lee, who held the formidable hills on the southern bank of that stream. Another b.l.o.o.d.y battle ensued. After a vain and hopeless sacrifice of 12,000 men, Burnside withdrew to the northern bank of the river. The active fighting of 1862 had come to a close. In northern Mississippi Grant and Sherman were blocked; at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the armies of Rosecrans and Bragg were about to make their fruitless onsets already mentioned, and in Virginia the Union outlook was quite as dark as it had been after the first unfortunate trial at arms in July, 1861. Lincoln thought of removing Grant because of the failure of the campaign in northern Mississippi, but gave him another opportunity; Burnside resigned a command he had not sought, and Joseph Hooker took up the difficult problem of beating Lee.