Captains of the Civil War; a chronicle of the blue and the gray

Fort Sumter stood about half a mile inside the harbor mouth, fully exposed to the converging fire of four relatively powerful batteries, three about a mile away, the fourth nearly twice as far. At the northern side of the harbor mouth stood Fort Moultrie; at the southern stood the batteries on Cummings Point; and almost due west of Sumter stood Fort Johnson. Near Moultrie was a four-gun floating battery with an iron shield. A mile northwest of Moultrie, farther up the harbor, stood the Mount Pleasant battery, nearly two miles off from Sumter. At half-past four, in the first faint light of a gray morning, a sudden spurt of flame shot out from Fort Johnson, the dull roar of a mortar floated through the misty air, and the big shell—the first shot of the real war—soared up at a steep angle, its course distinctly marked by its burning fuse, and then plunged down on Sumter. It was a capital shot, right on the center of the target, and was followed by an admirable burst. Then all the converging batteries opened full; while the whole population of perfervid Charleston rushed Page 14 out of doors to throng their beautiful East Battery, a flagstone marine parade three miles in from Sumter, of which and of the attacking batteries it had a perfect view.

But Sumter remained as silent as the grave. Anderson decided not to return the fire till it was broad daylight. In the meantime all ranks went to breakfast, which consisted entirely of water and salt pork. Then the gun crews went to action stations and fired back steadily with solid shot. The ironclad battery was an exasperating target; for the shot bounced off it like dried peas. Moultrie seemed more vulnerable. But appearances were deceptive; for it was thoroughly quilted with bales of cotton, which the solid shot simply rammed into an impenetrable mass. Wishing to save his men, in which he was quite successful, Anderson had forbidden the use of the shell-guns, which were mounted on the upper works and therefore more exposed. Shell fire would have burst the bales and set the cotton flaming. This was so evident that Sergeant Carmody, unable to stand such futile practice any longer, quietly stole up to the loaded guns and fired them in succession. The aim lacked final correction; and the result was small, except that Moultrie, thinking itself in danger, Page 15 concentrated all its efforts on silencing these guns. The silencing seemed most effective; for Carmody could not reload alone, and so his first shots were his last.

At nightfall Sumter ceased fire while the Confederates kept on slowly till daylight. Next morning the officers' quarters were set on fire by red-hot shot. Immediately the Confederates redoubled their efforts. Inside Sumter the fire was creeping towards the magazine, the door of which was shut only just in time. Then the flagstaff was shot down. Anderson ran his colors up again, but the situation was rapidly becoming impossible. Most of the worn-out men were fighting the flames while a few were firing at long intervals to show they would not yet give in. This excited the generous admiration of the enemy, who cheered the gallantry of Sumter while sneering at the caution of the Union fleet outside. The fact was, however, that this so-called fleet was a mere assemblage of vessels quite unable to fight the Charleston batteries and without the slightest chance of saving Sumter.

Having done his best for the honor of the flag, though not a man was killed within the walls, Anderson surrendered in the afternoon. Charleston went wild with joy; but applauded the generosity Page 16 of Beauregard's chivalrous terms. Next day, Sunday the fourteenth, Anderson's little garrison saluted the Stars and Stripes with fifty guns, and then, with colors flying, marched down on board a transport to the strains of Yankee Doodle.

Strange to say, after being four years in Confederate hands, Sumter was recaptured by the Union forces on the anniversary of its surrender. It was often bombarded, though never taken, in the meantime.

The fall of Sumter not only fired all Union loyalty but made Confederates eager for the fray. The very next day Lincoln called for 75,000 three-month volunteers. Two days later Confederate letters of marque were issued to any privateers that would prey on Union shipping. Two days later again Lincoln declared a blockade of every port from South Carolina round to Texas. Eight days afterwards he extended it to North Carolina and Virginia.

Fig. 2

GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE Photograph by Brady. In the collection of L. C. Handy, Washington.

But in the meantime Lincoln had been himself marooned in Washington. On the nineteenth of April, the day he declared his first blockade, the Sixth Massachusetts were attacked by a mob in Baltimore, through which the direct rails ran from North to South. Baltimore was full of secession, Page 17 and the bloodshed roused its fury. Maryland was a border slave State out of which the District of Columbia was carved. Virginia had just seceded. So when the would-be Confederates of Maryland, led by the Mayor of Baltimore, began tearing up rails, burning bridges, and cutting the wires, the Union Government found itself enisled in a hostile sea. Its own forces abandoned the Arsenal at Harper's Ferry and the Navy Yard at Norfolk. The work of demolition at Harper's Ferry had to be bungled off in haste, owing to shortness of time and lack of means. The demolition of Norfolk was better done, and the ships were sunk at anchor. But many valuable stores fell into enemy hands at both these Virginian outposts of the Federal forces. Through six long days of dire suspense not a ship, not a train, came into Washington. At last, on the twenty-fifth, the Seventh New York got through, having come south by boat with the Eighth Massachusetts, landed at Annapolis, and commandeered a train to run over relaid rails. With them came the news that all the loyal North was up, that the Seventh had marched through miles of cheering patriots in New York, and that these two fine regiments were only the vanguard of a host.

Page 18 But just a week before Lincoln experienced this inexpressible relief he lost, and his enemy won, a single officer, who, according to Winfield Scott, was alone worth more than fifty thousand veteran men. On the seventeenth of April Virginia voted for secession. On the eighteenth Lee had a long confidential interview with his old chief, Winfield Scott. On the twentieth he resigned, writing privately to Scott at the same time: "My resignation would have been presented at once but for the struggle it has cost me to separate myself from a service to which I have devoted the best years of my life. During the whole of that time I have experienced nothing but kindness from my superiors and a most cordial friendship from my comrades. I shall carry to the grave the most grateful recollections of your kind consideration, and your name and fame shall always be dear to me. Save in the defense of my native State I never desire again to draw my sword."

The three great motives which finally determined his momentous course of action were: first, his aversion from taking any part in coercing the home folks of Virginia; secondly, his belief in State rights, tempered though it was by admiration for the Union; and thirdly, his clear perception that Page 19 war was now inevitable, and that defeat for the South would inevitably mean a violent change of all the ways of Southern life, above all, a change imposed by force from outside, instead of the gradual change he wished to see effected from within. He was opposed to slavery; and both his own and his wife's slaves had long been free. Like his famous lieutenant, Stonewall Jackson, he was particularly kind to the blacks; none of whom ever wanted to leave, once they had been domiciled at Arlington, the estate that came to him through his wife, Mary Custis, great-granddaughter of Martha Washington. But, like Lincoln before the war, he wished emancipation to come from the slave States themselves, as in time it must have come, with due regard for compensation.

On the twenty-third of this eventful April Lee was given the chief command of all Virginia's forces. Three days later "Joe" Johnston took command of the Virginians at Richmond. One day later again "Stonewall" Jackson took command at Harper's Ferry. Johnston played a great and noble part throughout the war; and we shall meet him again and again, down to the very end. But Jackson claims our first attention here.

Like all the great leaders on both sides Jackson Page 20 had been an officer of regulars. He was, however, in many ways unlike the army type. He disliked society amusements, was awkward, shy, reserved, and apparently recluse. Moderately tall, with large hands and feet, stiff in his movements, ungainly in the saddle, he was a mere nobody in public estimation when the war broke out. A few brother-officers had seen his consummate skill and bravery as a subaltern in Mexico; and still fewer close acquaintances had seen his sterling qualities at Lexington, where, for ten years, he had been a professor at the Virginia Military Institute. But these few were the only ones who were not surprised when this recluse of peace suddenly became a very thunderbolt of war—Puritan in soul, Cavalier in daring: a Cromwell come to life again.

Harper's Ferry was a strategic point in northern Virginia. It was the gate to the Shenandoah Valley as well as the point where the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad crossed the Potomac some sixty miles northwest of Washington. Harper's Ferry was known by name to North and South through John Brown's raid two years before. It was now coveted by Virginia for its Arsenal as well as for its command of road, rail, and water routes. The plan to raid it was arranged at Richmond on the Page 21 sixteenth of April. But when the raiders reached it on the eighteenth they found it abandoned and its Arsenal in flames. The machine shops, however, were saved, as well as the metal parts of twenty thousand stand of arms. Then the Virginia militiamen and volunteers streamed in, to the number of over four thousand. They were a mere conglomeration of semi-independent units, mostly composed of raw recruits under officers who themselves knew next to nothing. As usual with such fledgling troops there was no end to the fuss and feathers among the members of the busybody staffs, who were numerous enough to manage an army but clumsy enough to spoil a platoon. It was said, and not without good reason, that there was as much gold lace at Harper's Ferry, when the sun was shining, as at a grand review in Paris.

Into this gaudy assemblage rode Thomas Jonathan Jackson, mounted on Little Sorrel, a horse as unpretentious as himself, and dressed in his faded old blue professor's uniform without one gleam of gold. He had only two staff officers, both dressed as plainly as himself. He was not a major-general, nor even a brigadier; just a colonel. He held no trumpeting reviews. He made no flowery speeches. He didn't even swear. The armed mob at Harper's Page 22 Ferry felt that they would lose caste on Sunday afternoons under a commandant like this. Their feelings were still more outraged when they heard that every officer above the rank of captain was to lose his higher rank, and that all new reappointments were to be made on military merit and direct from Richmond. Companies accustomed to elect their officers according to the whim of the moment eagerly joined the higher officers in passing adverse resolutions. But authorities who were unanimous for Lee were not to be shaken by such absurdities in face of a serious war. And when the froth had been blown off the top, and the dregs drained out of the bottom, the solid mass between, who really were sound patriots, settled down to work.

There was seven hours' drill every day except Sunday; no light task for a mere armed mob groping its ignorant way, however zealously, towards the organized efficiency of a real army. The companies had to be formed into workable battalions, the battalions into brigades. There was a deplorable lack of cavalry, artillery, engineers, commissariat, transport, medical services, and, above all, staff. Armament was bad; other munitions were worse. There would have been no chance whatever of holding Harper's Ferry unless the Northern Page 23 conglomeration had been even less like a fighting army than the Southern was.

Harper's Ferry was not only important in itself but still more important for what it covered: the wonderfully fruitful Shenandoah Valley, running southwest a hundred and forty miles to the neighborhood of Lexington, with an average width of only twenty-four. Bounded on the west by the Alleghanies and on the east by the long Blue Ridge this valley was a regular covered way by which the Northern invaders might approach, cut Virginia in two (for West Virginia was then a part of the State) and, after devastating the valley itself (thus destroying half the food-base of Virginia) attack eastern Virginia through whichever gaps might serve the purpose best. More than this, the only direct line from Richmond to the Mississippi ran just below the southwest end of the valley, while a network of roads radiated from Winchester near the northeast end, thirty miles southwest of Harper's Ferry.

Throughout the month of May Jackson went on working his men into shape and watching the enemy, three thousand strong, at Chambersburg, forty-five miles north of Harper's Ferry, and twelve thousand strong farther north still. One day he Page 24 made a magnificent capture of rolling stock on the twenty-seven miles of double track that centered in Harper's Ferry. This greatly hampered the accumulation of coal at Washington besides helping the railroads of the South. Destroying the line was out of the question, because it ran through West Virginia and Maryland, both of which he hoped to see on the Confederate side. He was himself a West Virginian, born at Clarksburg; and it grieved him greatly when West Virginia stood by the Union.

Apart from this he did nothing spectacular. The rest was all just sheer hard work. He kept his own counsel so carefully that no one knew anything about what he would do if the enemy advanced. Even the officers of outposts were forbidden to notice or mention his arrival or departure on his constant tours of inspection, lest a longer look than usual at any point might let an awkward inference be drawn. He was the sternest of disciplinarians when the good of the service required it. But no one knew better that the finest discipline springs from self-sacrifice willingly made for a worthy cause; and no one was readier to help all ranks along toward real efficiency in the kindest possible way when he saw they were doing their best.

Page 25 At the end of May Johnston took over the command of the increasing force at Harper's Ferry, while Jackson was given the First Shenandoah Brigade, a unit soon, like himself, to be raised by service into fame.

On the first and third of May Virginia issued calls for more men; and on the third Lincoln, who quite understood the signs of the times, called for men whose term of service would be three years and not three months.

Just a week later Missouri was saved for the Union by the daring skill of two determined leaders, Francis P. Blair, a Member of Congress who became a good major-general, and Captain Nathaniel Lyon, an excellent soldier, who commanded the little garrison of regulars at St. Louis. When Lincoln called upon Governor Claiborne Jackson to supply Missouri's quota of three-month volunteers the Governor denounced the proposed coercion as "illegal, unconstitutional, revolutionary, inhuman, and diabolical"; and thereafter did his best to make Missouri join the South. But Blair and Lyon were too quick for him. Blair organized the Home Guards, whom Lyon armed from the arsenal. Lyon then sent all the surplus arms and stores across the Page 26 river into Illinois, while he occupied the most commanding position near the arsenal with his own troops, thus forestalling the Confederates, under Brigadier-General D. M. Frost, who was now forced to establish Camp Jackson in a far less favorable place. So vigorously had Blair and Lyon worked that they had armed thousands while Frost had only armed hundreds. But when Frost received siege guns and mortars from farther south Lyon felt the time had come for action.

Lyon was a born leader, though Grant and Sherman (then in St. Louis as junior ex-officers, quite unknown to fame) were almost the only men, apart from Blair, to see any signs of preëminence in this fiery little redheaded, weather-beaten captain, who kept dashing about the arsenal, with his pockets full of papers, making sure of every detail connected with the handful of regulars and the thousands of Home Guards.

On the ninth of May Lyon borrowed an old dress from Blair's mother-in-law, completing the disguise with a thickly veiled sunbonnet, and drove through Camp Jackson. That night he and Blair attended a council of war, at which, overcoming all opposition, answering all objections, and making all arrangements, they laid their plans for the Page 27 morrow. When Lyon's seven thousand surrounded Frost's seven hundred the Confederates surrendered at discretion and were marched as prisoners through St. Louis. There were many Southern sympathizers among the crowds in the streets; one of them fired a pistol; and the Home Guards fired back, killing several women and children by mistake. This unfortunate incident hardened many neutrals and even Unionists against the Union forces; so much so that Sterling Price, a Unionist and former governor, became a Confederate general, whose field for recruiting round Jefferson City on the Missouri promised a good crop of enemies to the Union cause.

Lyon and Blair wished to march against Price immediately and smash every hostile force while still in the act of forming. But General Harney, who commanded the Department of the West, returned to St. Louis the day after the shooting and made peace instead of war with Price. By the end of the month, however, Lincoln removed Harney and promoted Lyon in his place; whereupon Price and Governor Jackson at once prepared to fight. Then sundry neutrals, of the gabbling kind who think talk enough will settle anything, induced the implacables to meet in St. Louis. The Page 28 conference was ended by Lyon's declaration that he would see every Missourian under the sod before he would take any orders from the State about any Federal matter, however small. "This," he said in conclusion, "means war." And it did.

Again a single week sufficed for the striking of the blow. The conference was held on the eleventh of June. On the fourteenth Lyon reached Jefferson City only to find that the Governor had decamped for Boonville, still higher up the Missouri. Here, on the seventeenth, Lyon attacked him with greatly superior numbers and skill, defeated him utterly, and sent him flying south with only a few hundred followers left. Boonville was, in itself, a very small affair indeed. But it had immense results. Lyon had seized the best strategic point of rail and river junction on the Mississippi by holding St. Louis. He had also secured supremacy in arms, munitions, and morale. By turning the Governor out of Jefferson City, the State capital, he had deprived the Confederates of the prestige and convenience of an acknowledged headquarters. Now, by defeating him at Boonville and driving his forces south in headlong flight he had practically made the whole Missouri River a Federal line of communication as well as a barrier between Page 29 would-be Confederates to the north and south of it. More than this, the possession of Boonville struck a fatal blow at Confederate recruiting and organization throughout the whole of that strategic area; for Boonville was the center to which pro-Southern Missourians were flocking. The tide of battle was to go against the Federals at Wilson's Creek in the southwest of the State, and even at Lexington on the Missouri, as we shall presently see; but this was only the breaking of the last Confederate waves. As a State, Missouri was lost to the South already.

In Kentucky, the next border State, opinions were likewise divided; and Kentuckians fought each other with help from both sides. Anderson, of Fort Sumter fame, was appointed to the Kentucky command in May. But here the crisis did not occur for months, while a border campaign was already being fought in West Virginia.

West Virginia, which became a separate State during the war, was strongly Federal, like eastern Tennessee. These Federal parts of two Confederate States formed a wedge dangerous to the whole South, especially to Virginia and the Carolinas. Each side therefore tried to control this area itself. The Federals, under McClellan, of whom we shall Page 30 soon hear more, had two lines of invasion into West Virginia, both based on the Ohio. The northern converged by rail, from Wheeling and Parkersburg, on Grafton, the only junction in West Virginia. The southern ran up the Great Kanawha, with good navigation to Charleston and water enough for small craft on to Gauley Bridge, which was the strategic point.

In May the Confederates cut the line near Grafton. As this broke direct communication between the West and Washington, McClellan sent forces from which two flying columns, three thousand strong, converged on Philippi, fifteen miles south of Grafton, and surprised a thousand Confederates. These thereupon retired, with little loss, to Beverly, thirty miles farther south still. Here there was a combat at Rich Mountain on the eleventh of July. The Confederates again retreated, losing General Garnett in a skirmish the following day. This ended McClellan's own campaign in West Virginia.

But the Kanawha campaign, which lasted till November, had only just begun, with Rosecrans as successor to McClellan (who had been recalled to Washington for very high command) and with General Jacob D. Cox leading the force against Gauley. The Confederates did all they could to Page 31 keep their precarious foothold. They sent political chiefs, like Henry A. Wise, ex-Governor of Virginia, and John B. Floyd, the late Federal Secretary of War, both of whom were now Confederate brigadiers. They even sent Lee himself in general commend. But, confronted by superior forces in a difficult and thoroughly hostile country, they at last retired east of the Alleghanies, which thenceforth became the frontier of two warring States.

The campaign in West Virginia was a foregone conclusion. It was not marked by any real battles; and there was no scope for exceptional skill of the higher kind on either side. But it made McClellan's bubble reputation.

McClellan was an ex-captain of United States Engineers who had done very well at West Point, had distinguished himself in Mexico, had represented the American army with the Allies in the Crimea, had written a good official report on his observations there, had become manager of a big railroad after leaving the service, and had so impressed people with his ability and modesty on the outbreak of war that his appointment to the chief command in West Virginia was hailed with the utmost satisfaction. Then came the two affairs at Page 32 Philippi and Rich Mountain, the first of which was planned and carried out by other men, while the second was, if anything, spoiled by himself; for here, as afterwards on a vastly greater scene of action, he failed to strike home at the critical moment.

Yet though he failed in arms he won by proclamations; so much so, in fact, that Words not Deeds might well have been his motto. He began with a bombastic address to the inhabitants and ended with another to his troops, whom he congratulated on having "annihilated two armies, commanded by educated and experienced soldiers, intrenched in mountain fastnesses fortified at their leisure."

It disastrously happened that the Union public were hungering for heroes at this particular time and that Union journalists were itching to write one up to the top of their bent. So all McClellan's tinsel was counted out for gold before an avaricious mob of undiscriminating readers; and when, at the height of the publicity campaign, the Government wanted to retrieve Bull Run they turned to the "Man of Destiny" who had been given the noisiest advertisement as the "Young Napoleon of the West." McClellan had many good qualities for organization, and even some for strategy. An excited press and public, however, would not Page 33 acclaim him for what he was but for what he most decidedly was not.