Millions who did not see him saw his picture, and this too was a part of the effect. Widely broadcast as it was-the result of recent developments in photography and the process of reproduction-his had become, within two crowded years, the most familiar face in American history. At first sight this might appear to be a liability. The Paris correspondent of the New York Times New York Times, for example, sent home a paragraph t.i.tled "Lincoln"s Phiz in Europe," in which he suggested the wisdom of declaring an embargo on portraits of the President, at least so far as France was concerned: "The person represented in these pictures looks so much like a man condemned to the gallows, that large numbers of them have been imposed on the people here by the shopkeepers as Dumollard, the famous murderer of servant girls, lately guillotined near Lyons. Such a face is enough to ruin the best of causes.... People read the name inscribed under it with astonishment, or rather bewilderment, for the thing appears more like a hoax than a reality." Yet here, too, something worked in his favor. It was as if, having so far overshot the mark of ugliness, the face was not to be judged by ordinary standards. You saw it not so much for what it was, as for what it held. Suffering was in it; so were understanding, kindliness, and determination. "None of us to our dying day can forget that countenance," an infantryman wrote on the occasion of a presidential visit to the army. "Concentrated in that one great, strong, yet tender face, the agony of the life and death struggle of the hour was revealed as we had never seen it before. With a new understanding, we knew why we were soldiers."
Herein lay the explanation for much that otherwise could not be understood-by Jefferson Davis, for one, who had expressed "contemptuous astonishment" at seeing his late compatriots submit to what he called "the mere edict of a despot." They did not see their submission in that light. "I know very well that many others might...do better than I can," Lincoln had told the cabinet in September, "and if I were satisfied that the public confidence was more fully possessed by any one of them than by me, and knew of any const.i.tutional way he could be put in my place, he should have it. I would gladly yield it to him. But...I do not know that, all things considered, any other person has more [of the confidence of the people]; and, however this may be, there is no way in which I can have any other man put where I am. I am here. I must do the best I can, and bear the responsibility of taking the course which I feel I ought to take." Though these words were spoken in private, their import carried over: with the result that such power as he seized-and it was much, far more in fact than any President had ever had before, in peace or war-was surrendered by the people in confidence that the power was not being seized for its own sake, or even for Lincoln"s sake, but rather for the sake of preserving the Union. They gave him the power, along with the responsibility, glad to have a strong hand on the reins.
This fear of weakness had been the source of their gravest doubt through the opening year of conflict, as well as the subject of the editors" most frequent complaint-Lincoln was lacking in "will and purpose." Now they knew that their fears had been misplaced. A Kentucky visitor, turning to leave the White House, asked the President what cheering news he could take home to friends. By way of reply, Lincoln told him a story about a chess expert who had never met his match until he tried his hand against a machine called the Automaton Chess Player, and was beaten three times running. Astonished, the defeated expert got up from his chair and walked slowly around and around the machine, examining it minutely as he went. At last he stopped and leveled an accusing finger in its direction. "There"s a man in there!" he cried. Lincoln paused, then made his point: "Tell my friends there is a man in here."
Something else he was, as well-a literary craftsman-though so far this had gone unrecognized, unnoticed, and for the most part would remain so until critics across the Atlantic, unembarra.s.sed by proximity, called attention to the fact. Indeed, complaints had been registered that he wrote "like a half-educated lawyer" with little or no appreciation for the cadenced beauties latent in the English language, awaiting the summons of the artist who knew how to call them up. That there was such a thing as the American language, available for literary purposes, had scarcely begun to be suspected by the more genteel, except as it had been employed by writers of low dialog bits, which mainly served to emphasize its limitations. Lincoln"s jogtrot prose, compacted of words and phrases still with the bark on, had no music their ears were attuned to; it crept by them. However, an ambiguity had been sensed. Remarking "the two-fold working of the two-fold nature of the man," one caller at least had observed the contrast between "Lincoln the Westerner, slightly humorous but thoroughly practical and sagacious," and "Lincoln the President and statesman...seen in those abstract and serious eyes, which seemed withdrawn to an inner sanctuary of thought, sitting in judgment on the scene and feeling its far reach into the future."
Here was a clew; but it went uninvestigated. Apparently it was miracle enough that a prairie lawyer had become President, without pressing matters further to see that he had also become a stylist. In fact, so natural and unlabored had his utterance seemed, that when people were told they had an artist in the White House, their reaction was akin to that of the man in Moliere who discovered that all his life he had been speaking prose. "I am here. I must do the best I can," Lincoln had said, and that best included this. Natural perhaps it was; unlabored it was not. Long nights he toiled in his workshop, the "inner sanctuary" from which he reached out to the future, and here indeed was the best clew of all. For he worked with the dedication of the true artist, who, whatever his sense of superiority in other relationships, preserves his humility in this one. He knew, as a later observer remarked, "the dangers that lurk in iotas." There were days when callers, whatever their importance, were turned away with the explanation that the President was at work: which meant writing.
A series of such days came in November, and the occasion was the preparation of a message to Congress, which would convene December 1. Lincoln saw already what would later become obvious, but was by no means obvious yet: that the war had ended one phase and was about to enter another. This message was intended to signal that event, bidding farewell to the old phase and setting a course for the new. Basically it was dedicatory, for there was need for dedication. The fury of Perryville, the blood that had stained the Antietam and sluiced the ridge in front of Sharpsburg, had reemphasized the fact disclosed on a smaller scale at First Bull Run and Wilson"s Creek, then augmented at Shiloh and the Seven Days, that both armies were capable of inflicting and withstanding terrible wounds. Though it was incredible that the ratio of increase would be maintained, there would be other Shilohs, other Sharpsburgs, other terrors. Men in their thousands now alive would presently be dead; homes so far untouched by sorrow would know tears; new widows and new orphans, some as yet unmarried or unborn, would be made-all, as Lincoln saw it, that the nation might continue and that men now in bondage might have freedom. In issuing the Preliminary Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation he had made certain that there would be no peace except by conquest. He had weighed the odds and made his choice, foreseeing the South"s reaction. "A rest.i.tution of the Union has been rendered forever impossible," Davis said. Lincoln had known he would say it; the fact was, he had been saying it all along. What he meant, and what Lincoln knew he meant, was that the issue was one which could only be settled by arms, and that the war was therefore a war for survival-survival of the South, as Davis saw it: survival of the Union, as Lincoln saw it-with the added paradox that, while neither of the two leaders believed victory for his side meant extinction for the other, each insisted that the reverse was true.
On the face of it, Davis had rather the better of his opponent in this contention, since the immediate and admitted result of a southern defeat would be that the South would go out of existence as a nation, however well it might survive in the sense that Lincoln intended to convey. The threat of national extinction was a sharper goad than any the northern leader could apply in attempting the unification he saw was necessary; therefore he determined to try for something other than sharpness. It was here that his particular talent, though so far it had gone unrecognized in general, could most effectively be brought to bear. As he had done against Douglas in the old days, so now in his long-range contest with Davis he shifted the argument onto a higher plane. Douglas had wanted to talk about "popular sovereignty," the right of the people of a region to decide for themselves the laws and customs under which they would live, but Lincoln had made slavery the issue, to the Little Giant"s unavoidable discomfort. Similarly, in the present debate, while Davis spoke of self-government, Lincoln-without ever dropping the pretense that Davis was invisible, was in fact not there at all-appealed to "the mystic chords of memory" and "the chorus of the Union," then presently moved on to slavery and freedom, which Davis could no more avoid than Douglas had been able to do. Lincoln tarred them both with the same brush, doing it so effectively in the present case that the tar would never wear off, and managed also to redefine the Davis concept of self-government as destructive of world democracy, which was shown to depend on survival of the Union with the South as part of the whole. In thus discounting the claims of his opponent, he rallied not only his own people behind him, but also those of other lands where freedom was cherished as a possession or a goal, and thus a.s.sured nonintervention. Davis in time, like other men before and since, found what it meant to become involved with an adversary whose various talents included those of a craftsman in the use of words.
A case in point was this December message. It was a long one, nearly fifty thousand words, and it covered a host of subjects, all of them connected directly or indirectly with the war. "Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives," it opened. "Since your last annual a.s.sembling another year of health and bountiful harvest has pa.s.sed, and while it has not pleased the Almighty to bless us with a return of peace, we can but press on, guided by the best light he gives us, trusting that in his own good time and wise way all will yet be well.... The civil war, which has so radically changed, for the moment, the occupations and habits of the American people, has necessarily disturbed the social condition and affected very deeply the prosperity of the nations with which we have carried on a commerce that has been steadily increasing throughout a period of half a century. It has at the same time excited political ambitions and apprehensions which have produced a profound agitation throughout the civilized world.... We have attempted no propagandism and acknowledged no revolution; but we have left to every nation the exclusive conduct and management of its own affairs. Our struggle has been, of course, contemplated by foreign nations with reference less to its own merits than to its supposed and often exaggerated effects and consequences resulting to those nations themselves. Nevertheless, complaint on the part of this government, even if it were just, would certainly be unwise."
After this rather mild and dry beginning, he pa.s.sed at once-or the clerk did, for Lincoln did not deliver the message in person-to matters drier still. A new commercial treaty had been arranged with the Sultan of Turkey, while similar arrangements with Liberia and Haiti were pending. Financially, he was pleased to report, the country was quite sound. Treasury receipts for the July-through-June fiscal year were $583,885,247.06, and disburs.e.m.e.nts totaling $570,841,700.25 had left a balance of $13,043,546.81 to be carried over. Restlessness among the frontier tribes perhaps indicated that the Indian system needed to be remodeled. The Pacific Railway was being pushed toward completion. A Department of Agriculture had been established.... The clerk droned on, advising the squirming congressmen that these details "will claim your most diligent consideration," though this could hardly have been easy, comprising as they did nearly half of the long doc.u.ment. By now, the a.s.sembled politicians were nearly as restless as the red men on the frontier. Presently, however, approaching its mid-point, the message changed its tone.
"A nation may be said to consist of its territory, its people, and its laws. The territory is the only part which is of certain durability. "One generation pa.s.seth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever." It is of the first importance to duly consider and estimate this ever-enduring part. That portion of the earth"s surface which is owned and inhabited by the people of the United States is well adapted to be the home of one national family, and it is not well adapted for two or more.... There is no line, straight or crooked, suitable for a national boundary upon which to divide. Trace through, from east to west, upon the line between the free and slave country, and we shall find a little more than one-third of its length are rivers, easy to be crossed, and populated, or soon to be populated, thickly upon both sides; while nearly all its remaining length are merely surveyors" lines, over which people may walk back and forth without any consciousness of their presence."
Such an argument might have been advanced in support of the unification of Europe or the annexation of Canada, but presently the listeners saw what Lincoln was getting at. He was talking to the inhabitants of the region to which he himself was native, "the great interior region, bounded east by the Alleghenies, north by the British dominions, west by the Rocky Mountains, and south by the line along which the culture of corn and cotton meets.... Ascertain from the statistics the small proportion of the region which has as yet been brought into cultivation, and also the large and rapidly increasing amount of its products, and we shall be overwhelmed with the magnitude of the prospect presented. And yet this region has no seacoast, touches no ocean anywhere. As part of the nation, its people now find, and may forever find, their way to Europe by New York, to South America and Africa by New Orleans, and to Asia by San Francisco.... These outlets, east, west, and south, are indispensable to the well-being of the people inhabiting, and to inhabit, this vast interior region. Which of the three may be the best is no proper question. All are better than either, and all of right belong to that people and to their successors forever. True to themselves, they will not ask where a line of separation shall be, but will vow rather that there shall be no such line." After a pause, he added: "Our national strife springs not from our permanent part, not from the land we inhabit, not from our national homestead.... Our strife pertains to ourselves-to the pa.s.sing generations of men; and it can without convulsion be hushed forever with the pa.s.sing of one generation."
This brought him at last to what he considered the nub of the issue. "Without slavery the rebellion could never have existed; without slavery it could not continue." So far, he had not mentioned the Preliminary Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation except to note that it had been issued; nor did he return to it now. What he returned to, instead, was his old plan for compensated emanc.i.p.ation, the one way he saw for bringing the war to an end "without convulsion." His plan, as expanded here, would leave to each state the choice of when to act on the matter, "now, or at the end of the century, or at any intermediary time." The federal government was to have no voice in the action, but it would bear the total expense by issuing long-term bonds as payment to loyal masters. To those critics who would complain that the expense was too heavy, Lincoln replied beforehand that it was cheaper to pay in bonds than in blood, as the country was doing now. Besides, even in dollars and cents the cost would be less. "Certainly it is not so easy to pay something as it is to pay nothing; but it is easier to pay a large sum than it is to pay a larger one. And it is easier to pay any sum when we are able, than it is to pay it before we are able. The war requires large sums, and requires them at once. The aggregate sum necessary for compensated emanc.i.p.ation of course would be large. But it would require no ready cash, nor the bonds even, any faster than the emanc.i.p.ation progresses. This might not, and probably would not, come before the end of the thirty-seven years."
At this point, apparently-at any rate, somewhere along the line-the President had done some ciphering. By 1900, he predicted, "we shall probably have 100,000,000 of people to share the burden, instead of 31,000,000 as now." This was no wild guess on Lincoln"s part; or as he put it, "I do not state this inconsiderately. At the same ratio of increase which we have maintained, on an average, from our first national census of 1790 until that of 1860, we should in 1900 have a population of 103,208,415. And why may we not continue that ratio far beyond that period? Our abundant room-our broad national homestead-is our ample resource." The past seventy years had shown an average decennial increase of 34.6 percent. Applying this to the coming seventy years, he calculated the 1930 population at 251,680,914. "And we will reach this, too," he added, "if we do not ourselves relinquish the chance by the folly and evils of disunion, or by long and exhausting war springing from the only great element of national discord among us."
Descending from these rather giddy mathematical heights, Lincoln continued his plea for gradual emanc.i.p.ation, not only for the sake of the people here represented, but also for the sake of the Negroes, whom it would spare "the vagrant dest.i.tution which must largely attend immediate emanc.i.p.ation in localities where their numbers are very great." Whatever objections might be raised, he wanted one thing kept in mind: "If there ever could be a proper time for mere catch arguments, that time surely is not now. In times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and in eternity." And having thus admonished the a.s.sembly, after forcing it to accompany him on an excursion into the field of applied mathematics, he thought perhaps some note of apology-if not of retraction-was in order. "I do not forget the gravity which should characterize a paper addressed to the Congress of the nation by the Chief Magistrate of the nation. Nor do I forget that some of you are my seniors, nor that many of you have more experience than I in the conduct of public affairs. Yet I trust that in view of the great responsibility resting upon me, you will perceive no want of respect to yourselves in any undue earnestness I may seem to display." Apparently, however, this was intended not only to make amends for what had gone before, but also to brace them for what was to come. Nor was it long in coming. Hard on the heels of this apology for "undue earnestness," he threw a cl.u.s.ter of knotty, rhetorical questions full in their faces: "Is it doubted, then, that the plan I propose, if adopted, would shorten the war, and thus lessen its expenditure of money and of blood? Is it doubted that it would restore the national authority and national prosperity, and perpetuate both indefinitely? Is it doubted that we here-Congress and Executive-can secure its adoption? Will not the good people respond to a united and earnest appeal from us? Can we, can they, by any other means so certainly or so speedily a.s.sure these vital objects? We can succeed only by concert. It is not "Can any of us imagine better?" but "Can we all do better?" Object whatsoever is possible, still the question recurs, "Can we do better?""
As the long message approached its end, Lincoln asked that question: "Can we do better?" Oratory was not enough. "The North responds...sufficiently in breath," he had said of the reaction to the September proclamation; "but breath alone kills no rebels." He knew as well as Sherman the need for the nation to be "born again," and he would also have agreed with the New England major who this month wrote home that he sometimes felt like changing the old soldier"s prayer into "O G.o.d, if there be a G.o.d, save my country, if my country is worth saving." A majority of 100,000 voters in Lincoln"s own state, fearing the backwash of liberated slaves that would result from Grant"s advance, had approved in November the adoption of a new article into the Illinois const.i.tution prohibiting the immigration of Negroes into the state. He knew, too, the reaction of most of the lawmakers to the proposal he was now advancing-including that of Senator Orville Browning, his fellow Illinoisan and confidant, who would write in his diary of his friend"s plea when he went home tonight: "It surprised me by its singular reticence in regard to the war, and some other subjects which I expected discussed, and by the hallucination the President seems to be laboring under that Congress can suppress the rebellion by adopting his plan of compensated emanc.i.p.ation." Yet according to Lincoln it was not he, but they, who were hallucinated and enthralled, and he told them so as the long message wore on toward a close: "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."
Then came the end, the turn of a page that opened a new chapter. And now, through the droning voice of the clerk, the Lincoln music sounded in what would someday be known as its full glory: "Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pa.s.s will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We-even we here-hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we a.s.sure freedom to the free-honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall n.o.bly save or meanly lose the last, best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just-a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and G.o.d must forever bless."
List of Maps Bibliographical Note
LIST OF MAPS.
The Waves of Secession.
Situation: Virginia, mid-July.
Mana.s.sas, 21Jul61.
Wilson"s Creek, 10Aug61.
Port Royal, 7Nov61.
Johnston"s Long Kentucky Line.
Fort Donelson, 14-16Feb62.
Roanoke Island and the Sounds.
Elkhorn Tavern, 7-8Mar62.
The Rio Grande.
New Madrid, Island Ten.
Johnston"s Advance.
Shiloh, 6-7Apr62.
Forts Jackson and St Philip.
East Virginia, Arc and Chord.
The Peninsula: Three Lines.
The Shenandoah Valley.
Seven Pines, 31May62.
Cross Keys, Port Republic.
Lee"s Intended Convergence.
Gaines Mill, 27Jun62.
McClellan Shifts, Pursued.
Glendale, 30Jun62.
Malvern Hill, 1Jul62.
Grant"s Dispositions.
Region of Buell"s Advance.
Bragg Shifts to Chattanooga.
Situation: Virginia, August.
Pope in the V.
Stuart"s Raid on Catlett"s.
Jackson Swings Around Pope.
Second Mana.s.sas, 29-30Aug62.
Kirby Smith"s Advance.
Bragg"s Advance.
Bragg, Buell Go Their Ways.
Convergence on Harpers Ferry.
McClellan"s Advance.
Sharpsburg, 17Sep62.
Iuka, 19Sep62.
Van Dorn"s Advance.
Corinth, 3-4Oct62.
Buell"s Advance.
Perryville, 8Oct62.
Situation: December 1862.
Maps drawn by George Annand, of Darien, Connecticut, from originals by the author. All are oriented north.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.
Many books by many men, predominantly military experts or professional historians, went into the making of this one book by one man who is neither, and of these the most useful, as well as the largest, were the 128-volume War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies and the 30-volume and the 30-volume Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, issued by the government in 1880-1901 and 1897-1927 respectively. There you hear the live men speak-there and in their diaries and letters, their newspapers and periodicals-although not always as they spoke in later life, when they got around to writing their memoirs, regimental histories, and a host of articles such as the ones collected in four large volumes and published in 1887 under the t.i.tle Battles and Leaders of the Civil War Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. Early or late, taken in conjunction with the diplomatic correspondence and the congressional transcripts, these complete the first-hand testimony by soldiers and civilians, some of high rank, some of low rank, some of no rank at all. The evidence is in. All else is speculation or sifting, an attempt to reconcile differences and bring order out of multiplicity by sorting the fruits that have poured from this horn of plenty.
Biographies of the partic.i.p.ants and studies of the war itself, in part or as a whole, make up the secondary sources. These are not only interesting and rewarding in their own right, filling in and deepening the over-all impression, but they also serve as a guide through the labyrinth. I found them invaluable on both counts: so much so, indeed, that while this narrative is based throughout on the original material referred to above, my obligations are equally heavy on this side of the line where it leaves off. The present is the first of three intended volumes-Fort Sumter to Perryville, Fredericksburg to Meridian, Red River to Appomattox-and though the last will include a complete bibliography, I want to state here at the outset my chief debts, particularly to those works still available in bookstores. These include the following biographies, of and by the following men: of Lee by Douglas Southall Freeman, Scribner"s, 1934-35: of McClellan by Warren W. Ha.s.sler, LSU Press, 1957: of Beauregard by T. Harry Williams, LSU Press, 1954: of Sherman by Lloyd Lewis, Harcourt, Brace, 1932: of Joe Johnston by G. E. Govan and J. W. Livingood, Bobbs-Merrill, 1956: of Sheridan by Richard O"Connor, Bobbs-Merrill, 1953: of Jackson by Burke Davis, Rinehart, 1954: of Kirby Smith by Joseph H. Parks, LSU Press, 1954: of Davis by William E. Dodd, Jacobs, 1907, and Hudson Strode, Harcourt, Brace, 1955: of Lincoln by Carl Sandburg, Harcourt, Brace, 1939; J. G. Randall, Dodd, Meade, 1945-55; and Benjamin P. Thomas, Knopf, 1952.
Among the more general works, my chief debts are to the following: Lincoln Finds a General Lincoln Finds a General by Kenneth P. Williams, Macmillan, 1949-56: by Kenneth P. Williams, Macmillan, 1949-56: Lee"s Lieutenants Lee"s Lieutenants by Douglas Southall Freeman, Scribner"s, 1942-44: by Douglas Southall Freeman, Scribner"s, 1942-44: The Army of Tennessee The Army of Tennessee by Stanley F. Horn, Bobbs-Merrill, 1941: by Stanley F. Horn, Bobbs-Merrill, 1941: Civil War on the Western Border Civil War on the Western Border by Jay Monaghan, Little, Brown, 1955: by Jay Monaghan, Little, Brown, 1955: Mr. Lincoln"s Army Mr. Lincoln"s Army and and This Hallowed Ground This Hallowed Ground by Bruce Catton, Doubleday, 1951 and 1956: by Bruce Catton, Doubleday, 1951 and 1956: Guns on the Western Waters Guns on the Western Waters by H. Allen Gosnell, LSU Press, 1949: by H. Allen Gosnell, LSU Press, 1949: Lincoln and His Generals Lincoln and His Generals by T. Harry Williams, Knopf, 1952: by T. Harry Williams, Knopf, 1952: Statesmen of the Lost Cause Statesmen of the Lost Cause and and Lincoln"s War Cabinet Lincoln"s War Cabinet by Burton J. Hendrick, Little, Brown, 1939 and 1946: by Burton J. Hendrick, Little, Brown, 1939 and 1946: The North Reports the Civil War The North Reports the Civil War by J. Cutler Andrews, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1955: by J. Cutler Andrews, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1955: The Railroads of the Confederacy The Railroads of the Confederacy by Robert C. Black, UNC Press, 1952: by Robert C. Black, UNC Press, 1952: The Life of Johnny Reb The Life of Johnny Reb and and The Life of Billy Yank The Life of Billy Yank by Bell Irvin Wiley, Bobbs-Merrill, 1943 and 1952: by Bell Irvin Wiley, Bobbs-Merrill, 1943 and 1952: Reveille in Washington Reveille in Washington by Margaret Leech, Harper, 1941: by Margaret Leech, Harper, 1941: The Beleaguered City The Beleaguered City by Alfred Hoyt Bill, Knopf, 1946: by Alfred Hoyt Bill, Knopf, 1946: Experiment in Rebellion Experiment in Rebellion by Clifford Dowdey, Doubleday, 1946: by Clifford Dowdey, Doubleday, 1946: The Civil War and Reconstruction The Civil War and Reconstruction by J. G. Randall, Heath, 1937: by J. G. Randall, Heath, 1937: The Story of the Confederacy The Story of the Confederacy by Robert S. Henry, Bobbs-Merrill, 1931: by Robert S. Henry, Bobbs-Merrill, 1931: The American Civil War The American Civil War by Carl Russell Fish, Longmans, Green, 1937: by Carl Russell Fish, Longmans, Green, 1937: The Confederate States of America The Confederate States of America by E. Merton Coulter, LSU Press, 1950. There were others but these were the main ones, and to each I owe much. by E. Merton Coulter, LSU Press, 1950. There were others but these were the main ones, and to each I owe much.
Other obligations, of a more personal nature, I also incurred during the five years that went into the writing of this first volume: to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, for an extended fellowship which made possible the buying of books and bread: to the superintendents, historians, and guides of the National Park Service, for unfailing industry and courtesy in helping me to get the look and feel of the various battlefields: to Robert N. Linscott and Robert D. Loomis of Random House, for combining enthusiasm and patience: to Mrs. O. B. Crittenden of the William Alexander Percy Memorial Library, Greenville, Mississippi, for the continuing loan of that inst.i.tution"s set of the Official Records Official Records. To all these I am grateful, as well as to friends in Memphis who had the out-of-hours grace to refrain from mentioning the Civil War.
A word I suppose is in order as to the use I made of these materials, original and secondary, not only because it is customary but also because it appears to be necessary, at least in certain eyes. One of the best of the latter-day authorities, in the course of his carefully doc.u.mented exegesis, cautions against accepting the testimony of Lew Wallace as to what took place at a council of war preceding the march on Donelson. "Recollections of events long past are always to be suspected," he explains, "and especially when set down by a writer of fiction." Wallace then was doubly suspect. He had waited, and he had written The Fair G.o.d The Fair G.o.d and and Ben-Hur Ben-Hur. He was a novelist.
Well, I am a novelist, and what is more I agree with D. H. Lawrence"s estimate of the novel as "the one bright book of life." I might also agree with the professor quoted above, but only by considering each witness on his merit, his devotion as a writer to what should be his main concern. The point I would make is that the novelist and the historian are seeking the same thing: the truth-not a different truth: the same truth-only they reach it, or try to reach it, by different routes. Whether the event took place in a world now gone to dust, preserved by doc.u.ments and evaluated by scholarship, or in the imagination, preserved by memory and distilled by the creative process, they both want to tell us how it was: how it was: to re-create it, by their separate methods, and make it live again in the world around them. to re-create it, by their separate methods, and make it live again in the world around them.
This has been my aim, as well, only I have combined the two. Accepting the historian"s standards without his paraphernalia, I have employed the novelist"s methods without his license. Instead of inventing characters and incidents, I searched them out-and having found them, I took them as they were. Nothing is included here, either within or outside quotation marks, without the authority of doc.u.mentary evidence which I consider sound. Although I have left out footnotes, believing that they would detract from the book"s narrative quality by intermittently shattering the illusion that the observer is not so much reading a book as sharing an experience, I have thought it proper to employ the three dots of elision to signify the omission of interior matter from quotations. In all respects, the book is as accurate as care and hard work could make it. Partly I have done this for my own satisfaction; for in writing a history, I would no more be false to a fact dug out of a valid doc.u.ment than I would be false to a "fact" dug out of my head in writing a novel. Also, I have tried for accuracy because I have never known a modern historical instance where the truth was not superior to distortion, by any standard and in every way. Wherever the choice lay between soundness and "color," soundness had it every time. Many problems were encountered in the course of all this study, but lack of color in the original materials was never one of them. In fact, there was the rub. Such heartbreak as was here involved came not from trying to decide what to include, but rather from trying to decide what to omit, and in the end the omissions far outnumbered the inclusions.
One word more perhaps will not be out of place. I am a Mississippian. Though the veterans I knew are all dead now, down to the final home guard drummer boy of my childhood, the remembrance of them is still with me. However, being nearly as far removed from them in time as most of them were removed from combat when they died, I hope I have recovered the respect they had for their opponents until Reconstruction lessened and finally killed it. Biased is the last thing I would be; I yield to no one in my admiration for heroism and ability, no matter which side of the line a man was born or fought on when the war broke out, fourscore and seventeen years ago. If pride in the resistance my forebears made against the odds has leaned me to any degree in their direction, I hope it will be seen to amount to no more, in the end, than the average American"s normal sympathy for the underdog in a fight.
- S.F.
COMPREHENSIVE TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Volume One I.
CHAPTER 1. PROLOGUE-THE O OPPONENTS.
1. Secession: Davis and Lincoln 2. Sumter; Early Maneuvers 3. Statistics North and South
CHAPTER 2. FIRST B BLOOD; NEW C CONCEPTIONS.
1. Mana.s.sas-Southern Triumph 2. Anderson, Fremont, McClellan 3. Scott"s Anaconda; the Navy 4. Diplomacy; the Buildup
CHAPTER 3. THE T THING G GETS U UNDER W WAY.
1. The West: Grant, Fort Henry 2. Donelson-The Loss of Kentucky 3. Gloom; Mana.s.sas Evacuation 4. McC Moves to the Peninsula II.
CHAPTER 4. WAR M MEANS F FIGHTING....