Though undeveloped industrially, the area was of considerable economic value as a grain and cattle country, offsetting the one-crop cotton agronomy farther south, and of even greater strategic importance because of the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad running through Knoxville and Chattanooga, westward to Memphis and the Transmississippi. The insurrection confronted Davis with a problem much like the one that had confronted Lincoln in Maryland immediately after Sumter, and Davis met it with measures even sterner. Troops were sent at once from Memphis and Pensacola. Resistance was quashed and a considerable number of Unionists arrested. Habeas corpus, "so sacred to freedom," went by the board. When the Confederate commander in Knoxville asked what he should do with these men, Davis had the Secretary of War reply that those insurrectionists not actually known to be bridge burners were to be held as prisoners of war. As for the burners themselves, they were "to be tried summarily by drumhead court martial, and, if found guilty, executed on the spot by hanging. It would be well," the Secretary added, "to leave their bodies hanging in the vicinity of the burned bridges."
Five were so hanged, and others were held, including that William G. Brownlow who earlier had said that he would fight secession on the ice in h.e.l.l. Admittedly the leader of regional resistance, he was editor of the Knoxville Whig Whig and formerly had been a Methodist circuit rider; wherefore he was called Parson. An honest, fearless, vociferous man who neither smoked nor drank nor swore, he had courted only one girl in his life "and her I married." Though he was mysteriously absent from home on the night of the burnings, his actual complicity could not be established. He was held in arrest-for a time, at least, until his presence proved embarra.s.sing in the light of Davis" complaint about "upright men...dragged to distant dungeons" in the North. Again through the Secretary of War, under the theory that it was better for "the most dangerous enemy" to escape than for the honor and good faith of the Confederate government to be "impugned or even suspected," Davis directed that the parson-editor be released to enter the Union lines. Though he was thus denied the chance to recite the speech he had memorized for delivery on the gallows, Brownlow went rejoicing. "Glory to G.o.d in the highest," he exclaimed as he crossed over, "and on earth peace, good will toward all men, except a few h.e.l.l-born and h.e.l.l-bound rebels in Knoxville." and formerly had been a Methodist circuit rider; wherefore he was called Parson. An honest, fearless, vociferous man who neither smoked nor drank nor swore, he had courted only one girl in his life "and her I married." Though he was mysteriously absent from home on the night of the burnings, his actual complicity could not be established. He was held in arrest-for a time, at least, until his presence proved embarra.s.sing in the light of Davis" complaint about "upright men...dragged to distant dungeons" in the North. Again through the Secretary of War, under the theory that it was better for "the most dangerous enemy" to escape than for the honor and good faith of the Confederate government to be "impugned or even suspected," Davis directed that the parson-editor be released to enter the Union lines. Though he was thus denied the chance to recite the speech he had memorized for delivery on the gallows, Brownlow went rejoicing. "Glory to G.o.d in the highest," he exclaimed as he crossed over, "and on earth peace, good will toward all men, except a few h.e.l.l-born and h.e.l.l-bound rebels in Knoxville."
Under his reek of fire and brimstone there was much that was amusing about Brownlow. But there was nothing laughable about what he represented. Least of all was there anything comical about the situation he and his followers had created in the mountains of Tennessee. Now it had come to this, that Americans danced at rope ends as a consequence of actions proceeding from their political convictions. The harshest irony of all was that they were hanged by the direction of Jefferson Davis, who loved liberty and justice above all things, and who as a grown man, in a time of sickness, halted a reading of the child"s story "Babes in the Woods" (it was characteristic that he had never heard it) because he would not endure the horror of the tale. The operation on his high-strung nature of such incidents as these in Tennessee caused him to remark long afterward, concerning his northern opponent"s fondness for anecdotes and frontier humor, that he could not "conceive how a man so oppressed with care as Mr Lincoln was could have any relish for such pleasantries."
He was afflicted, however, by troubles both nearer and farther than the stern, unpleasant necessity for jailing, banishing, and hanging insurrectionists in eastern Tennessee. Fire-eaters in Richmond and the Deep South, their claim to the spoils of higher offices denied, their policy of bold aggression rejected, were everywhere disaffected. Vocal in their disaffection, they had now begun to raise a multivoiced outcry like the frantic babble of a miscued chorus. Charging that Davis had "no policy whatever," they represented him as "standing in a corner telling his beads and relying on a miracle to save the country." As caricature, the likeness was not too far-fetched, and the fact that the no-policy charge was true, or nearly true, did not make the barbs of criticism sting one whit the less.
His critics would have had him strip the troops from threatened points and send them marching forthwith against the North, staking everything on one a.s.sault. To Davis, this not only seemed inconsistent with his repeated claim that the South was merely defending herself against aggression, it seemed unnecessarily risky. That way the war might be quickly won, as Beauregard had pointed out; but it also might be quickly lost that way. Davis preferred to watch and wait. He believed that time was with him and he planned accordingly, not yet by any means aware that what he was waiting for would require a miracle. At this stage, in Davis" mind at any rate, nothing seemed more likely, more inevitable, than foreign intervention; as had been shown by his first action in attempting to secure it.
Back in the Montgomery days, a month before Sumter, Barnwell Rhett, chairman of the foreign affairs committee, reported a bill to Congress providing for the dispatch of a three-man mission to secure the recognition of the Confederacy by the European powers. Rhett had certain notions as to what these men should do over there, but he could not give instructions to such emissaries; the making of treaties rested with the President, who seemed to believe that nothing more would be needed than a polite call on the various proper statesmen across the water, whereupon those dignitaries would spread their arms to welcome a new sister bringing a dowry of precious cotton into the family of nations. This belief was emphasized by the fact that the man appointed to head the mission was William L. Yancey, the fieriest fire-eater of them all. For fifteen years the southern answer to the most outspoken of northern abolitionists, the Georgia-born Alabamian extended his defense of the "peculiar inst.i.tution" to include a proposed reopening of the African slave trade-with the result that his name was anathema to every liberal on earth. In selecting Yancey to represent her, it was as if the South said plainly to all Europe: "To get cotton you must swallow slavery."
Nothing in his personality had shown that he would be armed with patience against discouragement or with coolness against rebuff, or indeed that he was in any way suited to a diplomatic post. Discouragement was not expected, however, let alone rebuff. Besides, Yancey having declined the minor cabinet job of Attorney General, the appointment solved the problem of what to do with him. Since that February evening on the gallery of the Exchange Hotel, when he presented "the man and the hour" to the crowd, no fitting use for his talents had been found. Now there was this-though some declared that he was being hustled off the scene as a possible rival before the election of a permanent President came round.
However that might have been, when he and his a.s.sociates, Pierre A. Rost and A. Dudley Mann, received their instructions from the State Department, something came over Yancey that seemed to come over all fire-eaters when they were abruptly saddled with the responsibility for using more than their lungs and tongues-something akin to the sinking sensation that came over Roger Pryor, for example, when he was offered the honor of firing the first shot of the war. Returning from the conference, Yancey went to Rhett and told him of the instructions. They had agreed at the outset that the power to make commercial treaties was necessary to the success of the mission. However, the commissioners had not been given such power. All they were to do was explain the conflict in terms of the rightness of the southern cause, point out the Confederacy"s devotion to low tariffs and free trade, and make a "delicate allusion" to the probable stoppage of cotton shipments if the war continued without European intervention. Hearing this, Rhett shared his friend"s dismay. "Then," he told Yancey, "if you will take my advice as your friend, do not accept the appointment. For if you have nothing to propose and nothing to treat about, you must necessarily fail. Demand of the President the powers essential to your mission, or stay at home."
Whatever his qualms and misgivings, Yancey did not take his friend"s advice. Sailing on the eve of Sumter, the commissioners reached England in late April to discover that the nation they represented was in the process of being increased from seven states to eleven, doubled in size east of the Mississippi and more than doubled in wealth and population. Soon afterwards, May 3, they secured an interview with Lord John Russell, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, who had replied to their request for an audience that he would be pleased to hear them, but that "under present circ.u.mstances. I shall have but little to say."
The interview was as one-sided as his lordship predicted. Having heard the envoys out, he replied-without committing his government in the slightest-that the Confederacy"s request for recognition would be placed before the Cabinet at an early date. Six days later there was a second, briefer meeting; and that was all. In Paris, Napoleon III was more genial and less forthright, though he did make it clear in the end that, however much he wished to intervene, France could not act without England. So Yancey and Mann, leaving Rost to watch Napoleon, returned to London to try again.
Their hopes were higher now, and with good cause. When Lincoln announced a blockade of the southern coast, Britain-in accordance with international law, since obviously no nation would blockade its own ports-issued in mid-May a proclamation of neutrality, granting the Confederacy the rights of a belligerent, and the other European powers followed suit. That was much, and when more followed, Mana.s.sas enhancing the dignity of southern arms, Yancey thought the time was ripe for recognition. Accordingly, another note was sent to Russell, requesting another interview. The reply came back: "Earl Russell presents his compliments to Mr W. L. Yancey, Mr A. Dudley Mann, and would be obliged to them if they would put in writing any communications they wish to make to him."
This was something of a shock; yet they smothered their anger and complied, writing at length and basing their claims for recognition on recent Confederate triumphs. The reply to this was a bare acknowledgment of receipt; which in turn was another shock, for they knew that an English gentleman was never rude except on purpose. Again they swallowed their pride, however, and, Rost having recrossed the channel to lend what weight he could, continued to send letters until early December, when the Foreign Secretary added the last straw: "Lord Russell presents his compliments to Mr Yancey, Mr Rost and Mr Mann. He has had the honour to receive their letters of the 27th and 30th of November, but in the present state of affairs he must decline to enter into any official communication with them."
That broke the camel"s back, for Yancey anyhow, whose pride had been subjected to a good deal more than it could bear. He resigned and sailed for home. Arriving he went straight to Rhett, whose advice he had not taken. "You were right, sir," he declared. "I went on a fool"s errand."
Davis might continue to comfort despair with hope; Yancey himself had none. "While the war which is waged to take from us the right of self-government can never attain that end," Davis a.s.serted at the final session of the Provisional Congress-knowing the "delicate allusion" would be heard across the Atlantic-"it remains to be seen how far it may work a revolution in the industrial system of the world, which may carry suffering to other lands as well as our own." It did not remain to be seen as far as Yancey was concerned. He had been there; he had seen already. He put no faith in anything that might happen in those nations whose statesmen had galled his pride.
Speaking in New Orleans in the spring, soon after his return, he told the people outright what he had told Davis earlier in private: "You have no friends in Europe.... The sentiment of Europe is anti-slavery, and that portion of public opinion which forms, and is represented by, the government of Great Britain, is abolition. They will never recognize our independence until our conquering sword hangs dripping over the prostrate heads of the North.... It is an error to say, "Cotton is King." It is not. It is a great and influential factor in commerce, but not its dictator. The nations of Europe will never raise the blockade until it suits their interests."
Thus Yancey, who had failed. How much his words were influenced by the fact that he had failed, his pride having been injured in the process, Davis could not know. At any rate, having spoken from the outset scarcely a public word that was not designed for foreign as well as domestic ears, the southern President had banked too heavily on European intervention to turn back now. The pinch of a cotton shortage not yet having been felt, the jennies and looms were running full-speed in England and France, and whether such a pinch, even if it eventually came, would "work a revolution," as Davis remarked in his mid-November speech, "remain[ed] to be seen."
Nor for that matter could he know how much of this initial failure had been due to ineptness. Yancey was many things, including a brilliant orator, but he was obviously no diplomat. Even before the final rebuff, which prompted his departure, Davis had moved to replace him, and the other two commissioners as well. Yancey would be recalled, his talents given a fitter scope, and Mann and Rost "disunited," one being sent to Spain and one to Belgium, their places to be taken at London and Paris by men whose gifts and reputations were more in keeping with the weight of their a.s.signments: James M. Mason and John Slidell, former U.S. senators from Virginia and Louisiana.
The Virginian was the more prominent of the two. Grandson of George Mason of Gunston Hall (framer of the Bill of Rights) and withal an able statesman on his own, at sixty-three he had rather a ferocious aspect, with "burning" eyes and a broad, fleshy nose, a mouth drawn down at the corners, and brown, gray-shot hair bushed out around a large, pale, smooth-shaven face. His name, like Yancey"s, was anathema to abolitionists, for he was the author of the Fugitive Slave Law and also of a public letter eulogizing Preston Brooks for caning their common adversary Sumner. Though he had got both his schooling and his wife in Philadelphia, Mason was an ardent secessionist and disapproved in general of things northern. He had been to New England once, to dedicate a monument, and found it quite distasteful. Invited to return, he replied that he would never visit that sh.o.r.e again, "except as an amba.s.sador." Which was what he was now, in effect: on his way to the Court of St James"s, however, not to the northern republic.
His companion Slidell was five years older and looked it, with narrowed eyes and a knife-blade nose, his mouth twisted bitterly awry and his pink scalp shining through lank white locks that clamped the upper half of his face like a pair of parentheses. He was New Yorkborn, the son of a candlemaker who had risen, but he had removed to New Orleans as a young man to escape the consequences of debt and a duel with a theatrical manager over the affections of an actress. Importing the methods of Tammany Hall, he prospered in Louisiana politics. Though not without attendant scandal, he won himself a fortune in sugar, a Creole bride, three terms in Congress-one in the House and two in the Senate-and an appointment as Minister to Mexico on the eve of war with that nation, which event prevented his actual service in that capacity. He was aptly named, being noted for his slyness. At the outbreak of hostilities, back in the spring, an English journalist called him "a man of iron will and strong pa.s.sions, who loves the excitement of combinations and who in his dungeon, or whatever else it may be, would conspire with the mice against the cat rather than not conspire at all." Possessing such qualities, together with the ability to converse in French, New Orleans-style, and also in Spanish, Empress Eugenie"s native tongue, Slidell seemed as particularly well suited for the atmosphere of the City of Light as Mason, with his rect.i.tude and cavalier descent, was for London.
Davis and the nation expected much from this second attempt at winning foreign recognition and a.s.sistance. By early October the two were in Charleston with their secretaries and Slidell"s wife and daughters, awaiting a chance to run the blockade. At first they intended to take the Confederate cruiser Nashville Nashville, being outfitted there as a commerce raider. That would have been to arrive in a style which the British, as a naval people, could appreciate. Unwilling to wait, however, they booked pa.s.sage instead an a small private steamer, the Gordon Gordon, and at 1 o"clock in the morning, October 12, slipped out of the harbor and crossed the bar in a driving rain, bound for Na.s.sau. From there, having found no steamer connection with England, the Gordon Gordon sailed for St Thomas, a regular port for transatlantic packets. Running low on coal, her captain put into Cardenas, on the north coast of Cuba, whence the commissioners made their way overland to Havana. November 7 they boarded the British mail steamer sailed for St Thomas, a regular port for transatlantic packets. Running low on coal, her captain put into Cardenas, on the north coast of Cuba, whence the commissioners made their way overland to Havana. November 7 they boarded the British mail steamer Trent Trent, which cleared for Southampton that same day. Thus, the blockade having been run without incident, themselves securely quartered on a ship that flew the ensign of the mightiest naval power in the world, the risky leg of the journey was behind them.
So they thought until noon of the following day, when the Trent Trent, steaming through the Bahama Pa.s.sage, 240 miles out of Havana, sighted an armed sloop athwart her course at a point where the channel narrowed to fifteen miles. The Trent Trent broke out her colors and continued on her way; whereupon the sloop ran up the union jack-and put a shot across her bow. After a second shot, which was closer, the broke out her colors and continued on her way; whereupon the sloop ran up the union jack-and put a shot across her bow. After a second shot, which was closer, the Trent Trent stopped engines. stopped engines.
"What do you mean by heaving my vessel to in this way?" the British captain shouted through a trumpet.
For answer the sloop put out two boats, which as they drew nearer were seen to be loaded with sailors, armed marines, and a naval officer who identified himself as he came aboard: Lieutenant D. MacNeill Fairfax of the screw sloop San Jacinto San Jacinto, Captain Charles Wilkes, U.S.N., commanding. Having information that Confederate Commissioners James M. Mason and John Slidell were aboard, he demanded the pa.s.senger list. At this, Slidell came forward. "I am Mr Slidell. Do you want to see me?" Mason stepped up, too, but no introduction was necessary, he and the lieutenant having met some years ago. (For that matter, Slidell and Captain Wilkes, waiting now aboard the sloop, had been boyhood friends in the old First Ward, back in their New York days, though they had had a falling out before Slidell"s departure.) Their ident.i.ties thus established, together with those of their secretaries, Lieutenant Fairfax informed the British captain, who all this time had scarcely ceased objecting, that he was seizing the four men for return to the United States and trial as traitors. When the captain continued to object-"Pirates! Villains!" some of the pa.s.sengers were crying; "Throw the d.a.m.ned fellow overboard!"-the lieutenant indicated the San Jacinto San Jacinto, whose guns were bearing on the unarmed Trent Trent. The captain yielded, still protesting; Mason and Slidell and their secretaries were taken over the side.
"Goodbye, my dear," the Louisianian told his wife on parting. "We shall meet in Paris in sixty days."
The two ships drew apart and continued on their separate courses, northward and northeastward toward their two countries, bearing their respective emotional cargoes of exultation and outrage: cargoes in each case large enough, and fervent enough, to be shared by all the people who, off on those different points of the compa.s.s, awaited their arrival all unknowing.
Davis in Richmond was scantly braced for such a smile of fortune. After so many disappointments, he hardly presumed even to hope for such news as this which now was coming his way across the water. Here was a ready-made, bona fide international incident, brought about not by the machinations of cloak-and-dagger agents sent out by the Confederate secret service, but by a responsible northern naval officer who had taken unto himself the interpretation of law on the high seas and who in his rashness had inforced that interpretation against the flag which admittedly ruled those seas.
The news would be no less welcome for being unexpected; Davis was badly in need of encouragement at this point. At the outset he had predicted a long war. Now he was showing the erosive effects of living with the fulfillment of his prediction. He was thinner, almost emaciated; "gaunted" was the southern word. His features were sharper, the cheeks more hollow, the blind left eye with its stone-gray pupil in contrast to the l.u.s.trous gleam of the other-a "wizard physiognomy," indeed. The lips were compressed and the square jaw was even more firmly set to express determination, as if this quality might prove contagious to those around him. Under the wide brim of a planter"s hat, his face had lost all signs of youth. It had become austere, a symbol; so that a North Carolina soldier, seeing him thus on the street one day, walking unaccompanied as was his custom, stopped him and asked doubtfully, "Sir, mister, be"ent you Jefferson Davis?" And when Davis, employing the careful courtesy which was habitual, admitted his ident.i.ty: "Sir, that is my name"-"I thought so," the soldier said. "You look so much like a Confederate postage stamp."
Lincoln, too, was showing the strain, but unlike Davis he found his worries concentrated mostly on one man: Major General George B. McClellan. Since saying that he could "do it all," McClellan had found that "all" involved a great deal more than he had intended or suspected at the time. It included, for instance, the task of pacifying Ben Wade and Zachariah Chandler, members of the joint committee investigating the Ball"s Bluff fiasco: men whom the youthful general considered "unscrupulous and false," but who, regardless of what he thought of them, were determined to have a voice in how the war was fought before they would vote the money needed to fight it.
They did not like the way it was being fought at present; or, rather, the way it was not being fought at all. Above Harpers Ferry the Confederates had cut the B & O, one of the main arteries of supply, while down the Potomac they had established batteries denying the capital access to the sea. "For G.o.d"s sake," Wade cried, infuriated by such effrontery, "at least push back the defiant traitors!" It did no good to explain that such outposts would crumble of their own accord, once the main attack was launched, and that meanwhile, undeterred by incidentals, the proper course was to concentrate on building up the force with which to launch it. The congressmen saw only that the rebels were holding such positions unmolested. Or if McClellan"s thesis was true, as to what the rebel reaction would be, they wanted to see it demonstrated. They had had enough of delay.
A Ma.s.sachusetts Adams declared in August, "We have now gone through three stages of this great political disease. The first was the cold fit, when it seemed as if nothing would start the country. The second was the hot one, when it seemed almost in the highest continual delirium. The third is the process of waking to the awful reality before it. I do not venture to predict what the next will be."
McClellan had already ventured a prediction: "I shall...crush the rebels in one campaign." That was still his intention. Yet now, with the war still in the waking stage, all that he was truly sure of was that he did not want this phase to end as the first two had done, at Sumter and Bull Run. In spite of which, to his dismay-with those examples of unpreparedness stark before him-he was being prodded by rash counselors to commit the selfsame errors. Adams had seen the nation struggling for its life as if in the throes of breakbone fever; the war was "this great political disease," attacking the whole organism. But McClellan, who was a soldier, not a politician or a diplomat, could not or would not see that the contest was political as well as military, that the two had merged, that men like Wade and Chandler were as much a part of it as men like Johnston and Beauregard-or McClellan himself, for that matter. Given the time, he believed he could get over or around the enemy intrenched across the Potomac; he could "crush" them. He could never get over or around men like Wade and Chandler, let alone crush them, and he knew it. And knowing it he turned bitter. He turned peevish.
"The people think me all-powerful," he wrote in one of the nightly letters to his wife. "Never was there a greater mistake. I am thwarted and deceived...at every turn." At first it was the politicians: "I can"t tell you how disgusted I am becoming with these wretched politicians." Next it was the Administration itself: "I am becoming daily more disgusted with this Administration-perfectly sick of it. If I could with honor resign I would quit the whole concern tomorrow." "It is sickening in the extreme, and makes me feel heavy at heart, when I see the weakness and unfitness of the poor beings who control the destinies of this great country." "I was obliged to attend a meeting of the cabinet at 8 p.m., and was bored and annoyed. There are some of the greatest geese in the cabinet I have ever seen-enough to tax the patience of Job."
So far, the President was not included in the indictment. McClellan wrote, "I enclose a card just received from "A. Lincoln"; it shows too much deference to be seen outside." Having come to know Lincoln better, he found he liked him, or at any rate thought him amusing. One day as he was writing he had callers, and when he resumed his letter he wrote, "I have just been interrupted here by the President and Secretary Seward, who had nothing very particular to say, except some stories to tell, which were, as usual, very pertinent, and some pretty good. I never in my life met anyone so full of anecdote as our friend."
It was not all anecdote. One day a division commander came to see the general and found Lincoln with him, poring over a map of Virginia and making operational suggestions, to which McClellan listened respectfully but with obvious amus.e.m.e.nt. At last the amateur strategist left. Returning from seeing him to the door, McClellan looked back over his shoulder and smiled. "Isn"t he a rare bird?" he said.
Lincoln had been boning on the science of war, borrowing military treatises from the Library of Congress and reading them in the small hours of the night. He took a particular pleasure in discussing strategy with his young general-in-chief, who had been so good at such studies himself. McClellan saw no harm in all this. He viewed Lincoln"s efforts with that air of amused tolerance reserved by professionals for amateurs, and the visits afforded relaxation from the daily round. Besides, such studies and discussions were leading the President toward a better comprehension of the military problem: especially of the necessity for protecting the commanding general from the interference of politicians.
"I intend to be careful and do as well as possible," McClellan said earnestly one night as they parted after such a conference. "Don"t let them hurry me, is all I ask."
"You shall have your own way in the matter, I a.s.sure you," Lincoln told him.
Whereupon-as if, having gotten what he wanted in the way of a.s.surance, he could move on now to other things; or perhaps because his tolerance or his capacity for amus.e.m.e.nt was exhausted-McClellan changed his tone. Now he wrote, "I have not been at home for some three hours, but am concealed at Stanton"s to dodge all enemies in the shape of "browsing" presidents, etc."
The friend affording sanctuary was Edwin M. Stanton, the attorney who had snubbed Lincoln four years ago when the gangling Springfield lawyer came to Chicago to a.s.sist in a patents case. Irascible and sharp-tongued, a leading Democrat, Stanton was even more important now. Having served as Attorney General during Buchanan"s last four months, he had gone on to become chief legal adviser to the present Secretary of War. His first impression of "that long-armed creature" had not changed, but now at least he took the trouble to exercise his wit at his expense. Du Chaillu, for example, had not needed to go all the way to the Congo in search of the missing link; there was an excellent specimen here in Washington. "The original gorilla," he called Lincoln, and McClellan took up the phrase in letters to his wife. They laughed together at a perspiration splotch on the back of Lincoln"s shirt, Stanton remarking that it resembled a map of Africa.
If he noticed this at all, Lincoln took it calmly. He was accustomed to being laughed at, and had even been known to encourage laughter at his own expense. Such friends as he cared about had a deep appreciation of humility, and he could afford to let the others go. Attracted, however, as so many were, by McClellan"s forthright air of youthful manliness, he did not want to lose him as a friend. Then one mid-November night he drew the rebuke humility must always draw from pride. He and Seward, accompanied by Lincoln"s young secretary John Hay, went over to McClellan"s house. When the servant told them the general was attending a wedding but would be back presently, they said they would wait. They had waited about an hour when McClellan returned. The servant told him the President and the Secretary of State were there, but he seemed bemused as he went past the door of the room where they were waiting. They waited another half hour, then once more sent the servant to inform the general that they were there. The answer came-"coolly," Hay recorded-that McClellan had gone to bed.
On the way home, when the secretary broke out angrily against what he called the "insolence of epaulets," Lincoln, though he was saddened by this final indication that he had lost a friend, quietly remarked that this was no time for concern over points of etiquette and personal dignity. "I will hold McClellan"s horse if he will only bring us success," he said soon afterward. But Hay observed with satisfaction that from then on, when the President wanted to see McClellan, he summoned him to the White House.
The Young Napoleon had changed. "We shall strike them there," he used to say, gesturing toward the eastern end of the rebel lines at Centerville when he rode out on inspection. After inching some troops forward "by way of getting elbow-room," he gaily told his wife: "The more room I get the more I want, until by and by I suppose I shall be so insatiable as to think I cannot do with less than the whole state of Virginia." He did not talk that way now, or write that way either. That was in the past. Bored, annoyed, disgusted, sick, thwarted and deceived at every turn, he no longer gestured aggressively toward the Centerville-Mana.s.sas lines. According to Pinkerton, 90,000 gray-clad soldiers, superbly equipped and thirsty for blood, with one Mana.s.sas victory already blazoned on their battleflags, were behind those earthworks praying for McClellan"s army to advance and be wrecked, like McDowell"s, on those same plains. All that stood between the army and catastrophe was Little Mac, resisting the unscrupulous men who would hurl it into the furnace of combat before the mold had set.
By now, though, more than the frock-coated congressmen were urging him forward against his will. While the clear bright days of autumn declined and the hard roads leading southward were about to dissolve into mud, the public was getting restless, too, wondering at the army"s inaction. The soldiers loved and trusted him as much as ever; Our George, they called him still. But to the public he seemed overcautious, like a finicky dandy hesitating to blood a bright new sword, either because he did not want to spoil its glitter, or else because he did not trust its temper. Horace Greeley, the journalistic barometer, had recovered from his fright and recommenced his Forward-to-Richmond chant. Other voices swelled the chorus, while shriller cries came through its pulse to accuse the young commander of vacillation. McClellan was reduced to finding consolation in the approval of his horse, Dan Webster: writing, "He, at least, had full confidence in his master."
Affairs were progressing no better in the West. Politically, though the storm still raged from point to point and fugitive secessionist legislatures were a.s.sembling, Missouri and Kentucky had been secured to the Union. Militarily, however, little had been done since Wilson"s Creek and Fremont"s feverish southward march into the vacuum created by that explosion. a.s.suming the supreme command on the day the Pathfinder received Lincoln"s order deposing him, McClellan promptly reorganized that vast, conglomerate area into two departments.
The first, Fremont"s old Department of the West, to which was added that part of Kentucky west of the c.u.mberland River, was under Henry W. Halleck; while the second, the Department of the Ohio, including the rest of Kentucky and Tennessee, had Don Carlos Buell for commander. Both were responsible to McClellan, but neither was accountable to the other. Each in fact saw the other as his rival for the future command of the whole. And therein lay the seeds of much mischief. Admittedly, ambition and rivalry were the stimuli that made the military organism tick. But in this case, with McClellan racked by problems of his own in Washington, the result was that there was not only little coordination of effort between theaters, East and West; there was also little cooperation between the armies resting flank to flank on opposite banks of the c.u.mberland.
A major general at forty-six, three years older and one rank higher than his rival, Halleck had the advantage at the outset. Buell was generally considered one of the best officers in the service, particularly as an organizer and disciplinarian; yet Halleck was not only senior in age and grade, he was by far the more distinguished in previous accomplishments. Author of Elements of Military Art and Science Elements of Military Art and Science, a highly respected volume issued fifteen years before, translator of Jo-mini"s Napoleon Napoleon, authority on international law, on which he had published a treatise just before the war began, he was called Old Brains by his fellow officers, not altogether jokingly. In the shadow of all this, even as a result of it, Buell had one not inconsiderable advantage: Halleck had been McClellan"s rival for the post of general-in-chief-old Winfield Scott had favored him, for one-and Little Mac, perhaps somewhat influenced by this, considered Buell the superior in practical ability as a soldier in the field. That was arbitrary, though, or anyhow problematical, since the two West Pointers had been promoted equally for gallantry in the Mexican War and had had no such opportunity for distinction since.
In another direction, there was little room for doubt. Both were more impressive in the abstract than prepossessing in the flesh; but here the advantage clearly pa.s.sed to the junior, if only by default. Of average height, inclined toward fat and flabbiness, Halleck had an unmilitary aspect. Balding, he wore gray mutton-chop side whiskers and looked considerably older than his years. The olive-tinted flesh of his face hung so loosely that it quivered when he moved, particularly his double chin, and he had a strangely repellent habit of crossing his arms on his lower chest to scratch his elbows when he was worried or plunged in thought. In manner he was irritable and sometimes harsh, not inclined to allow for the smaller brains of lesser men. Interviewed, he would hold his head sideways and stare fishily, directing one goggle eye toward a point somewhere beyond his interviewer. This caused one disconcerted officer to remark that conversing with Halleck was like talking to someone over your shoulder.
No one ever said this about Buell. His glance was piercing and direct: too much so, perhaps, for he was even harsher in manner than Halleck. Dark-skinned, with a scraggly, gray-shot beard, close-set eyes, and a hawk-beak nose, Buell maintained an icy reserve, engaged in no small talk, and brooked no difference of opinion from subordinates. Despite his operatic name, Don Carlos, there was nothing flamboyant in his nature. Like McClellan he was an excellent disciplinarian, robust of physique, and a hard, methodical worker round the clock; but he had scarcely a vestige of McClellan"s charm, none of his glamor, and therefore none of his popularity, either. He never expressed the least regret at this, however. Apparently he never believed that popularity could be a useful factor in turning farmboys into soldiers. Or if so, not by him; he never sought it.
Instructions given the two commanders on setting out were similar as to policy. Both were told to hold firmly onto all that had been gained in Missouri and Kentucky, meanwhile impressing on the people of the area that the army"s purpose was the restoration of the Union, not the abolition of slavery, which was not even incidentally on the agenda. In addition, Halleck was to a.s.semble his troops "on or near the Mississippi, prepared for such ulterior operations as the public interests may demand," while Buell ma.s.sed for an advance into the loyalist mountain region of eastern Tennessee. The former plan had reference to Fremont"s dream of a lopping descent of the Father of Waters. The latter was Lincoln"s fondest project. He hoped that Buell would accomplish there what McClellan had accomplished in western Virginia under similar conditions, the people having voted five-to-one against secession back in June. Nothing vexed the President more than the fact that this Union stronghold was in southern hands. "My distress," he wrote, "is that our friends in East Tennessee are being hanged and driven to despair, and even more, I fear, are thinking of taking rebel arms for the sake of personal protection." Besides, he saw great strategic profit in an advance through c.u.mberland Gap, since taking Knoxville would cut the northernmost east-west Confederate railroad, thus coming between the secessionists and what Lincoln called their "hog and hominy."
Buell, who had helped to frame his own instructions, saw it that way, too, on setting out. Soon after he reached Louisville, however, peering southeast across the barrens in the direction of the Gap, which he saw now as a natural fortress straddled athwart his path, he changed his mind. For him, as for McClellan-whom he addressed as "My dear Friend" in official dispatches-obstacles loomed more starkly at close range. Features that seemed innocuous on a two-dimensional map could dominate a three-dimensional landscape. Even the absence of some feature, whether natural or man-made, could prove ruinous: as for instance a railroad. From his base on the Ohio he observed that there were no railroads by which he could haul supplies to feed and equip an army moving directly upon East Tennessee. He would have to depend on a wagon train, grinding weary distances over wretched roads and vulnerable to raiders throughout its length. The more he looked the more impossible it seemed, until presently he abandoned it altogether.
He did not abandon his offensive plans, however. Buell was nothing if not thorough. Turning his mind"s eye westward along a sixty-degree arc, he perceived that Nashville, the Tennessee capital on the c.u.mberland, a manufacturing center and a transportation nexus, was not only closer than Knoxville, it was even a bit closer than c.u.mberland Gap. The way led through a land far richer in supplies, with no natural fortress at the end, and best of all there was a railroad all the way. Nashville taken, the Confederates defending East Tennessee would be outflanked; when they fell back he could march in unopposed. This might take a bit longer, but it was surer. As for the Unionists awaiting his advance into the mountains, Buell believed their constancy would "sustain them until the hour of deliverance." Thus he wrote in mid-December, by which time five had already been "sustained" by the necks after drumhead trials for arson.
Before occupying Nashville he would have to cross the c.u.mberland River, but he did not consider this a drawback. He counted it a positive advantage, since it meant that he could secure the cooperation of Union gunboats on that stream. This in turn meant securing the cooperation of Halleck, and now that his mind had turned that way, Buell went on to essay grand strategy. He proposed nothing less than an all-out concerted drive by both Kentucky armies, with Nashville as the objective: Halleck to advance from the northwest in "two flotilla columns up the Tennessee and the c.u.mberland," and himself from the northeast, down the railroad. The result would be to penetrate, and thereby outflank, the whole Confederate line; whereupon the Federals could occupy not only East Tennessee, his original objective, but the entire state, along with whatever parts of Kentucky remained in enemy hands. In his enthusiasm, which somewhat resembled the elation of a poet just delivered of an ode, he wrote McClellan of his plan, remarking incidentally that he feared no advance by the rebels at Bowling Green ("I should almost as soon expect to see the Army of the Potomac marching up the road") and closing with a light-hearted request for a few high-ranking officers, "not my seniors," to a.s.sist him in carrying out his plan: "If you have any unoccupied brigadiers...send six or eight, even though they should be no better than marked poles."
Far from being elated, or even amused, McClellan was chagrined and upset by the proposal. He saw the soundness of this subst.i.tute plan-which, moreover, had the sort of strategic brilliance he admired-yet he hated to lose the advantages of the first. Invading eastern Tennessee, Buell"s army would not only sever one of the arteries supplying the Confederates in northern Virginia; it would also be poised on their flank, and could then be angled forward to maneuver them out of their intrenched position and a.s.sist in the taking of Richmond. For this reason, as well as the political ones, McClellan replied that he still considered "a prompt movement on eastern Tennessee imperative," but "if there are causes which render this course impossible," he regretfully allowed, "we must submit to the necessity." All the same, he did not submit without frequent backward glances. By the end of November he was hoping Buell would attempt both movements, one on East Tennessee, "with say 15,000 men," and one on Nashville "with, say, 50,000 men." He added, by way of encouragement, "I will at once take the necessary steps to carry out your views as to the rivers."
This meant that he would urge Halleck to undertake the advance from western Kentucky. When he did so, in a telegram sent December 5, Halleck replied from St Louis the following day: "I a.s.sure you, General, this cannot be done with safety at present. Some weeks hence I hope to have a large disposable force for other points; but now, dest.i.tute as we are of arms, organization, and discipline, it seems to me madness to remove any of our troops from this State."
In all conscience, McClellan had to admit that Old Brains had his hands full already. Charged with restoring order to the chaos Fremont left-"a system of reckless expenditure and fraud, perhaps unheard of before in the history of the world," his instructions warned him-he had to attend at once to the guerilla bands marauding in his rear, to Price and McCulloch, reported marching against his front, as well as to the enormous task of preparing for the descent of the Mississippi. As if all this was not enough, he was having to deal at the same time with a mentally upset brigadier, red-haired Tec.u.mseh Sherman, who was bombarding headquarters with reports of rebel advances from all directions. "Look well to Jefferson City and the North Missouri Railroad," Sherman would wire; "Price aims at both."
Succeeding Anderson when the Sumter hero"s health broke, Sherman earnestly told the Secretary of War that 200,000 troops would be needed to put down the rebellion in the Mississippi Valley alone, and when this "evidence of insanity" was reinforced by other alarming symptoms reported in the papers-a brooding melancholy broken only by intermittent fits of rage and fright-he was relieved of his command. Superseded by Buell, he was sent to serve under Halleck in Missouri, where his fidgety manner and tocsin-shrill dispatches presently served to verify the suspicions which had followed him from Kentucky. He appeared thoroughly demoralized: "stampeded," Halleck called it, but McClellan put it simpler, saying, "Sherman"s gone in the head." In hopes that a few weeks" rest would restore his faculties, Halleck gave an indefinite leave of absence to the distraught Ohioan, whose wife then came down and took him home.
Not all of Halleck"s personnel problems could be handled so easily. As a sort of counterbalance to the highly nervous Sherman, he had another brigadier who seemed to have no nerves at all. The trouble with U.S. Grant was that, for all Halleck knew, he might have no brains either.
There were indications of such a lack. Grant was a West Pointer and had been commended for bravery in Mexico, but since then his reputation had gone downhill. Stationed out in California, he had had to resign his captain"s commission because of an overfondness for the bottle, and in the seven following years he had been signally unsuccessful as a civilian. Commissioned a colonel of Illinois volunteers, he had won promotion to brigadier by a political fluke, his congressman claiming it for him as a due share of the spoils. Since then he had done well enough in a straightforward, soldierly way; he had not panicked under pressure, and best of all he had worked with what he had instead of calling for help in each emergency. Aware of his unsavory past, however, Halleck could never be sure when a relapse might come, exposing the basic instability of Grant"s character and leaving the army commander to take the blame for having reposed the nation"s trust in such a man.
Despite his seedy appearance (he was five feet eight inches tall and weighed 135 pounds; one eye was set a trifle lower than the other, giving his face a somewhat out-of-balance look; he walked with a round-shouldered slouch, pitching forward on his toes, and paid as scant attention to the grooming of his beard as he did to the cut and condition of his clothes) Grant had proved himself a fighter. But that could have its drawbacks when it included, as it seemed to do in this case, a large element of rashness. Halleck did not want to be embarra.s.sed by Grant, the way Fremont had been embarra.s.sed by the ill-fated Lyon: with whom, for that matter, in spite of his lack of surface fire, the thirty-nine-year-old Illinois brigadier had shown a disturbing degree of kinship. Wilson"s Creek had come within three weeks of Bull Run, and had been fought to the same pattern. Then on the eve of Halleck"s arrival, within three weeks of Ball"s Bluff, came Belmont. Even apart from the balanced chronology, East and West, the resemblance was much too close for comfort.
Though Bishop Polk had won the race for Columbus, Grant had been by no means willing to admit that this gave the Confederates any permanent claim to the place. Within the week, having occupied Paducah, he had written Fremont: "If it were discretionary with me, with a little addition to my present force I would take Columbus." The Pathfinder made no reply to this, but when he took the field at last, marching against the victors of Wilson"s Creek, he had his adjutant order Grant to feint against Polk to prevent that general from reinforcing Price. In doing this Grant was to make a show of aggression along both sides of the Mississippi, keeping his troops "constantly moving back and forward...without, however, attacking the enemy." Also in accordance with orders, on November 3-the day Fremont left Springfield, relieved of command, and Winfield Scott left Washington, retired-Grant sent a column southward, west of the river, to a.s.sist in an attempt to bag or destroy a force under M. Jeff Thompson, reported down near the Missouri boot-heel, in the St Francis River area. Two days later a dispatch informed him that Polk was definitely sending reinforcements to Price. Marching "back and forward" not having sufficed to immobilize the bishop, Grant now was ordered to make a demonstration against Columbus itself.
Accordingly, on the 6th he loaded five infantry regiments, supported by two cavalry troops and a six-gun battery, onto four transports-3114 men in all-and steamed down the river, protected by two gunboats. Nine miles below Cairo, tied up for the night against the eastern bank, he received a report that Polk had ordered a strong column to cut off and destroy the troops Grant had sent to do the same to Thompson. The message arrived at 2 o"clock in the morning, and within the hour Grant made his decision. Instead of a mere demonstration, he would launch a direct, all-out attack on Belmont, the steamboat landing opposite Columbus, where the enemy column was reported to be a.s.sembling.
At dawn the downstream approach got under way, the troops experiencing the qualms and elation of facing their first test under fire. Their emotions perhaps would have been less mixed, though probably no less violent, if they had known that none of the conditions their commander a.s.sumed existing at or near Columbus was true. Polk had no intention of reinforcing Price, nor was he preparing a column to bag the force that supposed itself to be pursuing Thompson, who for that matter had retired from the field by now. Far from being a staging area, Belmont was only an observation post, a low-lying, three-shack hamlet dominated by the guns on the tall bluff across the river and manned by one regiment of infantry-half of which was on the sick list-one battery of artillery, and a scratch collection of cavalry. Unaware that the drama in which they were taking part was in fact an Intelligence comedy of errors, Grant"s men came off their transports at 8 o"clock, three miles above Belmont, their debarkation concealed by a skirt of timber. While the gunboats continued downstream to engage the batteries on the Columbus bluff, the troops formed a line of battle and marched southward toward the landing, skirmishers out. Presently, the guns of the naval engagement booming hollow across the water to their left, they came under heavy musket fire from out in front.
By now there was more to oppose them than one half-sick infantry regiment. Polk, having learned of the attack, had reinforced the Belmont garrison with four regiments under Brigadier General Gideon Pillow, the Tennessean who had preceded him in command. Ferried across the river, they hurried northward from the landing, scorning the protection of previously constructed fortifications, and took position in the path of Grant"s advance. It was hard, stand-up fighting, the forces being about equal, five regiments on each side, each force being supported by a battery of light artillery. The Federals had the initiative, however, and also they had Grant, who was something rare in that or any war: a man who could actually learn from experience. Three months before, he had made a similar advance against an enemy position reported held by Colonel Thomas Harris and his command, and as Grant drew closer, mounting the ridge that masked the camp, "my heart kept getting higher and higher until it felt to me as though it was in my throat." He kept his men going, he said, because "I had not the moral courage to halt and consider what to do." Then, topping the rise, he found the camp deserted, the enemy gone. "My heart resumed its place. It occurred to me at once that Harris had been as much afraid of me as I had been of him. This was a view of the question I had never taken before; but I never forgot it afterwards."
He did not forget it now. Leaving five companies near the transports as rear guard, he put the rest in line and pushed straight forward, his six guns barking busily all the while. Under such pressure, the Confederates gave ground stubbornly-until, after about two hours of fighting, the Federals roaring down upon them in the vicinity of the camp, they broke, giving way completely, and took off for the rear in headlong panic. Here, on a narrow mud-flat left by the falling river and protected by a steep low bank, they found shelter from the humming bullets. "Don"t land! Don"t land!" they called out to reinforcements arriving by boat from Columbus. "We are whipped! Go back!"
They spoke too soon. Grant"s men, having overrun the camp, had stopped to loot, and their officers, elated by the rout, "galloped about from one cl.u.s.ter of men to another," according to Grant, "and at every halt delivered a short eulogy upon the Union cause and the achievements of the command." Like the whipped men under the river bank, they thought the battle was over. This was by no means the case, as they presently discovered. Now that their own men were out of the way, the artillerists on the Columbus bluff could bring their guns to bear: particularly one big rifled Whitworth, which began to rake the captured campsite. What was more, the reinforcements arriving by boat ignored the cries, "Don"t land! Go back!" and coming up during the lull, formed a line of battle, preparing to attack. Disgusted, Grant ordered the camp set afire to discourage the looters and orators, and did what he could to rea.s.semble his command. Meanwhile other Confederate reinforcements were pouring ash.o.r.e to the north, between Belmont and the transports. When an aide rode up, exclaiming, "General, we are surrounded!"-"Well," Grant said, "we must cut our way out as we cut our way in."
All this time, Grant"s faulty intelligence having made the Federal plans impenetrable, Polk had refused to believe that the action across the river was anything more than a feint to distract his attention from the main effort, which he believed would come from the Kentucky side. Columbus was a prize worth bleeding for, but it made no sense, as far as he could see, for the enemy to launch a serious attack against Belmont, a place not only worthless in its own right, but obviously untenable, even if taken, under the frown of the batteries on the bluff across the river. Therefore, after sending the four regiments at the outset, he had refused to be distracted. Now, though, the attack from the east not having developed and Pillow having been flung back to the landing, Polk sent Brigadier General B. F. Cheatham with three more regiments and crossed the river himself to see how they fared. With 5000 angry, vengeful Confederates on the field, including those who had rallied after cowering under the bank, Grant"s elated but disorganized 3000 were going to find it considerably harder to "cut our way out," no matter how bravely the words were spoken, than they had found it to "cut our way in."
In the end, however, that was what they did, though at the cost of abandoning most of their captured material, including four guns, as well as many of the non-walking wounded and one thousand rifles, which the defenders afterwards garnered from the field. Grant had held back no reserves to throw into the battle at critical moments, but he performed more or less as a reserve himself, riding from point to point along his line to direct and animate his troops. Except for one regiment, which was cut off in the fighting and marched upstream to be picked up later, he was the last man aboard the final transport.
The skipper had already pushed off, but looking back he recognized the general on horseback and ran a plank out for him. (Polk saw him, too, though without recognition. From the nearby skirt of timber which had screened the debarkation, the bishop, seeing the horseman, said to his staff, "There is a Yankee; you may try your marksmanship on him if you wish." But no one did.) Grant had already had one mount shot from under him today, and when he chose another he chose well. The horse-which, Grant said, "seemed to take in the situation"-put its forefeet over the lip of the bank, tucked its hind legs under its rump, and "without hesitation or urging," slid down the incline and trotted up the gangplank.
That ended the Battle of Belmont, and though the casualties were about equal-something over 600 on each side, killed, wounded, and captured-it followed in general the pattern of all the battles fought that year, the attackers achieving initial success, the defenders giving way to early panic, until suddenly the roles were reversed and the rebels were left in control of the field, crowing over Yankee cowardice. At Belmont as at Bull Run-and especially as at Ball"s Bluff, which it so much resembled, the repulsed troops having narrowly missed annihilation at the end-there were indications of blundering and ineptness. "The victory is complete," Grant a.s.serted in dispatches, but two days after the battle the Chicago Tribune Tribune editorialized: "The disastrous termination of the Cairo expedition to Columbus is another severe lesson on the management of this contest with the rebels. Our troops have suffered a bad defeat.... The rebels have been elated and emboldened while our troops have been depressed, if not discouraged." The following day, in printing the casualty lists, the editor added: "It may be said of these victims, "They have fallen, and to what end?"" editorialized: "The disastrous termination of the Cairo expedition to Columbus is another severe lesson on the management of this contest with the rebels. Our troops have suffered a bad defeat.... The rebels have been elated and emboldened while our troops have been depressed, if not discouraged." The following day, in printing the casualty lists, the editor added: "It may be said of these victims, "They have fallen, and to what end?""
To what end, indeed. And now began the talk of Grant the butcher. This was no victory; not a single tactical advantage had been won; he just went out and came back, losing about as many as he killed. Yet certain facts were there for whoever would see them. He had moved instead of waiting for fair weather, had kept his head when things went all against him, and had brought his soldiers back to base with some real fighting experience under their belts. They were having none of the butcher talk. They had watched him alongside them where bullets flew the thickest and had cheered him riding his trick horse up the gangplank, the last man to leave the field. What was more, they knew the expedition had been designed in the first place to save the lives of their friends in the supposedly threatened column out after Thompson, and they knew now that if ever they they were thought to be so trapped, Grant himself would come to get them out. Best of all, they had met the rebels in a stand-up fight which proved, for one thing, that blue-bellied Yankees were not the only ones who would panic and scatter and take off for defilade, crying, "We are whipped! Go back!" were thought to be so trapped, Grant himself would come to get them out. Best of all, they had met the rebels in a stand-up fight which proved, for one thing, that blue-bellied Yankees were not the only ones who would panic and scatter and take off for defilade, crying, "We are whipped! Go back!"
Appointed to the western command two days after the battle, Halleck, who had been a civilian as well as a soldier, could see both points of view as to Belmont and the general who fought it. However, in spite of his qualms about Grant"s rashness and the chances for being embarra.s.sed by it, he was mainly glad to have him. Experienced leaders were all too few in the West. "It is said, General," he told McClellan, "that you have as many regular officers on your personal staff as I have in this whole Department." He had, in fact, hardly an army at all, he protested, "but rather a military rabble," and upon arriving he wired Washington: "Affairs in complete chaos. Troops unpaid; without clothing or arms. Many never properly mustered into service and some utterly demoralized. Hospitals overflowing with sick."
Burdened as he was with such problems-far too little of what he wanted, far too much of what he didn"t-it was no wonder that he declined to aid his rival Buell by advancing southeast up the rivers, saying quite plainly: "It seems to me madness." Nor was it any wonder that Buell, similarly laden and thus denied a.s.sistance, saw no chance of advancing in any direction, either toward Knoxville, as Lincoln and McClellan kept urging, or toward Nashville, as he himself preferred. Both generals promised results as soon as conditions permitted. Meanwhile they did what they could to improve what they had inherited from Fremont and from Sherman.
To this task they brought their skill as organizers, disciplinarians, and administrators, building a war machine for the West comparable to the one McClellan was forging in the East. Not even their worst enemies denied their considerable talents along these lines, Jefferson Davis remarking before the year"s end: "The Federal forces are not hereafter, as heretofore, to be commanded by path-finders and holiday soldiers, but by men of military education and experience in war."
McClellan drew from this what solace he could, knowing it was much. Meanwhile, preparing for the great day if the great day ever came, he continued to drill and train his army, staging large and ever larger reviews, until at last, near Bailey"s Crossroads, November 20, he put on the largest one of all.
Seven full divisions-70,000 riflemen and cannoneers and troopers, equipped to the limit of the nation"s purchasing and manufacturing power-swung in cadenced glitter past the reviewing stand, where ladies fluttered handkerchiefs and politicians swelled their chests with pride, covering their hearts with their hats as the colors rippled by. And yet, while the dust settled, while the troops filed off to their encampments and the civilians rode in their carriages back to Washington, there was a feeling that all this panoply, grand and enjoyable as it was, did not make up for the Quaker-gun humiliation of Munson"s Hill or erase the shame of Bull Run, which still rankled. Nor, for that matter, did it reopen the Potomac or chase the rebels off the B & O. In fact, looking back on the daylong surge of armed might past the grandstand, the politicians were reinforced in their opini