» ^ » » »■■ Please handle this volume with care. The University of Connecticut Libraries, Storrs <» o o o <>-^> o ^ » » 3 9153 00053398 6 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2009 with funding from Boston Library Consortium IVIember Libraries http://www.archive.org/details/historyofcivilwa11pari HISTORY .f CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. BY THE COMTE DE PAEIS. PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL APPANGEMEXT WITH THE AUTHOR. Volume I. PHILADELPHIA: POr.TER & CORTES. COPYRIGHT, 1875 BY JOSEPH H. COATES. This Volume comprises Volumes I. akd II. or the French Edition, without Abridgment. PREFACE TO THE FRENCH EDITION. Much was said in France about the American civil war while it lasted. But the documents necessary to a full understanding of it as a whole, and to follow it in its details, were then wanting. Since that time public attention has been diverted by the events which have occurred in Europe. Nevertheless, this war in the New World may be useful to study, even after those of which our continent was the theatre in 1866 and 1870. At a -time when labor and contemplation are the duty of all, no page of contemporaneous military history should be neg- lected. Having been kindly received in the armies of the young republic, which remembers the support given by France to the first defenders of its independence, and has not failed to place the name of Bourbon among those who are to perpetuate its memory on its soil, it has been the wish of the author to present his grateful testimony to his late companions in arms. In writing his personal recollections, he has been led to describe a war some incidents of which have come within his own per- sonal observation. Notwithstanding his legitimate preferences for the cause he served, he has endeavored to preserve, through- out his narrative, the strictest impartiality. He has examined, with equal care, the documents that have emanated from both parties; and if his work be a reflex of the vicissitudes in the midst of which it was prosecuted, he believes that it possesses, at least, the merit of precision and sincerity. Paris, September, 1875. Gentlemen : The necessities of an early publication of the trans- lation of my History of the Civil War in America having prevented me from revising that translation before the present issue, I must leave upon Mr. Tasistro the responsibility of his work ; but his abil- ity is a sufficient guarantee that this work has been accomplished with care and accuracy. It has therefore been agreed between my pub- lishers, Messrs. Levy, and myself to grant to the translation, since it is to be published by yourselves, the exclusive copyright in England, according to the forms prescribed by international treaties, and, in America, the right of giving out your edition as the only one author- ized by myself. ]My History has been written rather for the instruction of the European public than for Transatlantic readers, to whom every inci- dent of the war is already familiar. I trust that my account of these great events will, at least, not provoke a too bitter controversy ; for if I have been obliged to judge and to censure, I have done so with- out any personal or jDartial feeling against any one, with a sincere respect for truth and a keen sense of the responsibility which I assumed. I hope, moreover, that your readers will acknowledge that I have tried to make Europe understand the magnitude of the strife which divided the New World, the extent of the sacrifices borne by the American people, and the heroism displayed by both sides on the bloody fields of battle. I should be proud to have my share in rais- ing the monument which is to perpetuate the memory of that heroism and the glory of the American soldier, without distinction between the blue and the gray coats. Believe me, gentlemen, , Yours truly, Iv. p. d'ORLEANS, Comte de Paris. Messrs. J. H. Coates & Co. EDITOR'S PREFACE. When I was called by the publisher to the task of editing this work, I was at first doubtful as to the extent and limit of my labors. The English version of Mr. L. F. Tasistro, an experienced translator, had already been made, and was placed in my hands. After a very careful revision of it, particularly as to military details and technicalities, with which my former life had rendered me more familiar, I found myself really limited to seeing the volume properly through the press, with scarcely a comment. The very few editorial notes are upon points of fact or statistics. It would have been unbecoming in me to argue upon contro- verted questions, national, political, or military, upon which, after careful investigation and mature deliberation, the author has expressed himself decidedly. Least of all have I considered it within my province to say a word as to his estimates of individuals and their relations to the government. He has himself said that his history was written for European readers, who desire to know only his impressions and conclusions. But the book will be largely read in this country by people more capable of judging its facts and its philosophy. This I may be permitted to say : He has produced a book dis- playing careful research, cool judgment, and a manifest purpose to be just to all. It is vigorous in style, scholarly without a touch of pedantry ; his battle-pictures are effective from their great simplicity ; the battle fights itself under the reader's eyes. So varied and skilful is the handling; of the narrative that the vi PREFACE. ^ interest does not flag for a moment, even when he deals with dry statistics. In a large and philosophic view of American institu- tions he has rivalled De Tocqueville. Although his service was short in this country, he gained a full knowledge of the machinery and working of our government, and was a witness of the mar- vellous creation of a colossal army out of nothing. He has thus been enabled to use intelligently the large mate- rials he has collected, and to present the first portion of what must be regarded as an admirable history of the greatest war, as to numbers, extent of territory, and importance of issue, the world has ever seen. ISFot one word has been altered or omitted from the original; the only change is in form. To bring it more readily within the scope of all AA^ho desire to read it, the first two French volumes have been compressed into one of the American edition, and a similar arrangement will be adopted for the folloAving volumes. The maps necessaiy to a clear understanding of the text have been exactly reproduced ; only the general maps of large sections of country have been omitted, as they may be supplied by any good American atlas Avithin the reader's reach. The French metrical system of measurement has been retained in the translation, because it is already greatly used in this coun- try and taught in our schools, and because, although on a scale the transfer is easy from miles to kilometres, etc., it is difficult to make the transfer in decimals throughout the text. For convenience the reader is reminded that a metre = 39.38 American inches ; a centimetre, the one hundredth of a metre, = .3938 of an inch ; hilometi^e = .62 of a mile. It may further be observed that as the map scales are simply fractions of any unit, as 60,000 to 1, etc., distances may be laid off at once in our mea- "oures by assuming our unit. Heney Coppj&e. Fountain Hill, South Bethlehem, Nov. 9, 1875. CONTENTS OF VOL. I. BOOK I.— THE AMERICAN ARMY. CHAPTER I. THE VOLUNTEERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. PAQB Object of this work an essentially military history. — Necessity of a Pre- liminary sketch. — The provincial militia in the Seven Years' War. — The War of Independence. — Difference between the volunteers of 1775 and the Confederates. — Their analogy with the Federals. — Organization of the militia. — Washington. — Formation of the national army in 1776. — Conscription and enlistments. — The national army disappears after the war. — First attempt to establish a regular army. — The War of 1812. — Its character. — Organization of the standing army in 1815 1 CHAPTER II. THE REGULAR ARMY. Organization of West Point Academy. — Its influence. — Promotion and the prerogative of the Senate. — Formation of new regiments. — Life of regular officers. — Discipline. — No retiring pension. — Organization of regiments in the various arms. — Special corps. — The administrative departments.... 16 CHAPTER III. THE ARMY OF OCCUPATION IN MEXICO. The regular officers in the Mexican War. — The volunteers nearly all from the South. — Their character. — Kearny's expedition. — Capture of Santa F^. — Conquest of California by Fremont. — Battle of San Pascual. — Doni- phan's expedition. — His perils. — War in the wilderness. — Fight at E,io Sacramento. — Capture of Chihuahua. — Return. — Battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma. — Capture of Monterey. — Santa Anna. — Battle of Buena Vista 30 Vm CONTENTS. CHAPTEE IV. THE ARMY OF INVASION IN MEXICO. PAGE Landing of the Americans. — Capture of Vera Cruz. — Battle of Cerro Gordo. — Sojourn at Puebla. — March against Mexico. — Campaign of manoeuvres. — Character of the American soldiers in that war. — Battles of Contreras, Churubusco, and Chapultepec. — Battle of Molino del Eey. — Capture of Mexico. — Ehd of the war. — Its influence on the officers. — The future generals of the civil war and General Scott 46 CHAPTER V. THE AMERICAN ARMY AMONG THE INDIANS. The Seminole War. — The officers in the far West. — Their rdle. — The In- dian tribes. — War on the prairies. — Expedition against the Mormons. — Stampedes. — Role of the several arms of the service in that war. — Its in- fluence on the organization of the American army and its mode of flght- ing. — The regular army in Texas. — Tidings of secession. — Defection of Twiggs and Van Dorn. — Loyalty of the soldiers 69 BOOK II.— SECESSION. CHAPTER I. SLAVERY. Slavery the whole cause of the civil war. — Its influence upon the white race. — The whole slavery society rests on a lie. — Slave-pens. — The slavery dogma. — Slavery controls the whole Union. — Organization of society and property in the South. — Planters, slaves, and common whites. — Elements of military organization 76 CHAPTER II. THE CONFEDERATE VOLUNTEERS. The South had Ion? been preparing for war. — Enlistm mts. — Statistics of the white population. — Illusions of the South. — The States and the cen- tral government. — Powers of Mr. Davis. — Provisional army. — Difference between Southern and Northern soldiers. — The infantry, the cavalry, and the artillery. — The partisans ; — Mosby, Morgan, and Forrest 90 CHAPTER III. THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS. Supremacy of slavery. — A possible reconstruction of the Union for its benefit.— The Montgomery Constitution. — King Cotton. — Division of CONTENTS. IX PAGE parties. — Democrats and Kepublicans. — State sovereignty. — Mr. Calhoun. — Falsity of his theory. — The Federal power truly national. — Prelimi- nary convention in 1S60. — A split among Democrats. — Election of Mr. Lincoln. — Meeting of Congress. — Secession movement. — South Carolina. — The President's hesitancy. — Secession of six States in January, 1861. — Attitude of the other States. — Attempts at conciliation: the Peace Congress. — The Montgomery assembly. — Capitulation of San Antonio. — The last measures of Mr. Buchanan. — The Crittenden Compromise re- jected 107 CHAPTER IV. FORT SUMTER. Inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, ]\Iarch 4, ISfil. — The Border States still loyal. — Mr. Seward. — Condition of Fort Sumter. — Attempt at revictualling. — Bombardment and capitulation, April 13. — Excitement in the North. — Call for 75,000 volunteers. — New secession ordinances. — The part played by Virginia. — Destruction of the Norfolk arsenal. — Disturbances in Balti- more. — The War Democrats. — Butler and Annapolis. — A new call for volunteers. — The blockade. — Recapture of Baltimore. — The habeas cor- pus. — Capitulations of Indianola, San Lucas Springs and Fort Fillmore. — Lyon at St. Louis. — Organization of the Confederate government. — Mr. Davis in Richmond. — Military preparations on both sides. — The contrabands. — Beauregard and McDowell. — McClellan and Lee. — Battle of Big Bethel. — Occupation of Booneville and Harper's Ferry 133 CHAPTER V. THE FEDERAL VOLUNTEERS. The enlistment fever. — Personal initiative. — Character of the volunteers. — The true representatives of the nation. — Statistics. — Formation of regi- ments by the States. — Their muster by the central government. — The foot soldier, the mounted man, and the artilleryman. — Their modes of fight- ing, their defects, and their good qualities 172 BOOK III.— THE FIRST CONFLICT. CHAPTER I. RIVERS AND RAILWAYS. Geographical uniformity of North America. — Scattering of the ])opulation — Scarcity of roads in the South. — Want of supplies. — The part played X CONTENTS. PAGB by roads and rivers. — The water systems. — Basins of tlie Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. — The three divisions of the Mississippi basin. — Net- work of railways. — Divided in two. — Impenetrable regions. — Estimate of supplies. — Base of operations 197 CHAPTER II. BULL BUN. Meeting of the Federal Congress, July 4, 1861. — Position of parties and foreign intercourse. — McClellan in East Virginia. — Rich Mountain. — Laurel Hill.- - Combat of Carricksford. — -Consequences of this first success of the Federals. — Movements of Patterson on the Potomac. — McDowell's army. — Impatience at Washington. — Description of Manassas and vicin- ity.-^Beauregard's army. — The Federals begin their march, July 16. — Their plan of campaign. — Difficulties in obtaining supplies on the march. — Fight at Blackburn's Ford, July 18. — Johnston leaves Winchester, July 18. — His arrival at Manassas, July 20. — Position of the Confederates. — McDowell leaves Centreville, July 21. — His plan. — Passage of Bull Run. — Fight at Young's Branch, — Defeat of the Confederate left. — Desperate fight on the Manassas plateau. — Critical position of the Confederates. — The arrival of Kirby Smith assures the victory. — Rout of the Federals. ■ — Flight toward Centreville. — Return of the array to Washington. — Alarm in the capital. — Inaction of the conquerors. — Results of the battle of Bull Run 218 CHAPTER III. PREPARATIONS FOR THE STRIFE. The North stimulated by the defeat. — General McClellan. — Inactivity of both armies. — Organization of the Army of the Potomac. — The general staff and the administration. — Discipline and courts-martial. — The grades ; — election, appointment, and examination. — Organization of the regiment. — Instruction in the different arms. — Mechanical arts and physical labor. — Skill of American soldiers. — Telegraphy. — Signals and balloons. — Winter quarters. — Post-offices, newspapers and their corre- spondents. — Reorganization of the regular army. — Creation of new regi- ments 257 CHAPTER IV. THE 3IATERIEL OF WAR. The quartermaster department and private enterprise. — Equipments. — Fresh horses. — Transportation. — Provisions. — Rations. — Muskets and Ammunition. — Variety of arms. — New systems. — Rifled artillery. — Par- rott guns. — Rodman guns. — The projectiles and their propelling power. CONTENTS. XI PAQB — Tlie fuses. — Various inventions. — Sniootli-bore cannon. — Tlie arma- ment of the South. — She is .supplied from Europe.— Foundries and manufactories of arras. — American and English cannon. — Projectiles. — Powder, Equipments, food 292 BOOK ly.— THE FIRST AUTUMN. CHAPTER I. LEXINGTON. Situation of Missouri. — Cairo and St. Louis. — Generals Lyon and Sterling Price. — Geography of Missouri. — Sedalia. — Kolla, Pilot Knob. — Price at Neosho. — Battle of Carthage, July 5, 18G1. — Lyon at Springfield, July 13. — General Fremont. — His administration. — March of the Confederates against Lyon. — Engagement at Dug Springs, August 2. — Battle of Wil- son's Creek, August 10. — Surprise of the Confederates. — Routof Siegel. — Desperate struggle. — Death of Lyon. — Retreat of the Federals to Rolla. — Proclamation of Fremont, August 30. — March of Price northward. — Engagements at Drywood Creek, September 7 ; at Barnett's Mill, Au- gust 30. — The Confederates occupy Columbus, September 4, — Grant occu- pies Paducah, September 6. — Inaction of Fremont. — Price before Lex- ington, September 13. — Siege and as.saults. — Capitulation of Lexington, September 20. — Fremont marches upon Lexington, September 27. — Re- treat of Price. — Engagements at Lebanon and Lynn Creek. — Engage- ment at Fredericktown, October 16. — Battle of Frcdericktown, October 21. — Battle of Springfield, October 2o. — Fremont occupies Springfield, October 27. — Fremont marches upon Wilson's Creek, November 2. — Fre- mont superseded by Hunter, November 4. — Retreat of Hunter to Rolla. — Columbus. — General Grant. — General Polk. — Battle of Belmont, No- vember 7. — General Halleck. — Engagement at Little Blue, November 10.— Combat at Black Water, December 10 317 CHAPTER II. BALL'S BLUFF. Neutrality of Kentucky. — The militia and the home-guards. — Invasion of Kentucky. — Description of Kentucky. — East Tennessee. — West Virginia. — Generals Wise and Cox. — Generals Floyd and Rosecrans. — Combat at Cross Lanes, August 26, 1861. — March of Rosecrans. — Combat of Carni- fex Ferry, September 10. — Combats of Cheat Summit and Elkwatcr, Se]}- tember 12. — First combat at Buffalo Hill, October 3. — Combat of Romney, xii CONTENTS. PAGH October 26. — Engagement at Chapmansville, September 26. — Sewell's Mountain. — Floyd at Cotton Hill. — FJoyd evacuates Laurel Creek, No- vember 12. — Engagement at Beckley, November 13. — Engagement at Guyandotte, November 9. — Second combat at Buffalo Hill, December 13. — Anderson at Louisville. — Buckner. — ZollicofFer. — Garrard. — Com- bat at Wild Cat Camp, October 21. — Engagement at Hillsborough, Oc- tober 8. — Engagement at Ivy Creek, Nt)vember 9. — General Sherman. — Engagement at Munfordsville, December 17. — The fortifications of Wash- ington. — Formation of divisions. — Position of the two armies. — Evacua- tion of Munson's Hill, September 27. — Blockade of the Potomac. — En- gagement at Bolivar, October 16. — Battle of Ball's Bluff, October 21. — Excitement in the North. — General Stone and Colonel Baker. — Inaction of McClellan.— Combat at Drainesville, December 20. — Strength of the two armies 367 CHAPTER III. PORT ROYAL. The Federal navy. — The Dahlgren howitzer. — Reorganization of the fleet. — Confederate privateers. — The crew of the Savannah. — The rights of bel- ligerents. — The Sumter. — Captain Semmes. — Burning of prizes. — Viola- tion of international law. — Sale of the 'Sumter. — The J. Davis. — The Nashville. — The Beauregard. — Proclamation of the blockade. — England recognizes the Confederates as belligerents. — Effective and paper block- ades. — The blockading squadrons. — The land blockade. — Matamoras. — Effects of the blockade in the South. — The part King Cotton plaj'ed. — Chincoteague, October 5, 1861. — Lynn Haven, October 9. — The Missis- isippi passes. — Commodore Hollins. — The ram llanassas.- — Naval combat of the Head passes, October 12. — The Royal Yacht, Galveston, November 8. — The Patrick Henry, at Newport News, December 2. — The Sea Bird, at Sewall's Point, December 29. — The stone fleet at Charleston, Decem- ber 17. —Mr. Fox. — Pamlico Sound. — The Hatteras forts. — Departure of Stringham and Butler, August 26. — Disembarkation before Fort Clark, August 28. — Bombardment and capitulation of Fort Hatteras, August 29. — Pensacola. — The Jtidah, September 14. — Combat at Santa Rosa, Oc- tober 9. — Bombardment of Forts Pickens and McRae, November 22. — Occupation of Ship Island, December 4.— Ocracocke, September 17. — Combat at Chicomacomico, October 4 and 5. — Dupont's fleet. — The army of W. T. Slierman. — Departure, October 25. — The Sea Islands. — Storm of November 2. — The forts of Hilton Head. — Commodore Tatnall's flotilla. — Battle of Hilton Head and capture of the forts, November 7. — Beaufort, November 11. — Tybee Island, November 25. — The Warsaw Islands.— Ossabaw Sound, December 12. — Edisto Island. — Engagement on the Coosaw River, January 1, 1862. — The Trent affair. — Tlie Confederate com- missioners. — Captain W^ilkes. — Stoppage of the Trent, November 8. — Effect of that stoppage in America. — Efl'ect in England. — Military CONTENTS. xiii PAGB preparations. — Lord Lyons and Mr. Adams. — The question of right. — • Mr. Lincoln. — Kelease of the prisoners. — Mr. Seward's despatch. — Gen- eral satisfaction 422 BOOK v.— THE FIRST AYINTER. CHAPTER I. DONELSON AND PEA EIDGE. Foote's flotilla. — Mill Springs. — Colonels H. Marshall and Garfield. — Com- bat of Middle Creek, January 10, 1862.— Garfield at Prestonburg.— Crit- tenden at Beach Grove. — Schcepf at Somerset. — March of Thomas and Zollicoffer. — Battle of Logan Cross-roads, or Mill Springs, January 19. — Death of Zollicoffer. — Occupation of Beach Grove by the Federals. — • Forts Henry and Donelson. — S. Johnston's army.— Peconnaissances of Columbus and Fort Henry. — Departure of Grant and Foote, February 2. — The iron-clad gun-boats. — Disembarkation of the troops, February 5. — Bombardment and capture of Fort Henry, February 6. — Foote ascends the Tennessee. — Johnston evacuates Bowling Green. — Pillow, Buckner, and Floyd at Donelson, February 12. — Description of the fort. — Fruitless assault by the Federals, February 13. — Their sufferings. — The Federal fleet is repulsed, February 14. — JNIistakes of the Confederates. — Their sortie. — Battle of Donelson. — Fluctuations of the struggle. — First success of Pillow. — Vain efforts of Buckner. — The Federal line, after being driven in, re-forms. — The Confederates are checked. — The offensive taken by Smith. — Defeat of the Confederates. — A council of war. — Capitulation of the Confederate army. — Flight of Floyd and Pillow. — Effect of the capture of Donelson. — Johnston's retreat. — Evacuation of Nashville. — Disorders. — Arrival of Mitchell. — Johnston at Murfrees- borough. — Evacuation of Columbus. — Island Number Ten. — Curtis marches upon Springfield. — Retreat of Price, February 12. — Curtis in Arkansas. — The Ozark Mountains. — March of Van Dorn. — Combat at Bentonville, March 6.— Battle of Pea Ridge. — Check of the Federals on the first day, March 7. — Their victory on the second, March 8. — Re- treat of both armies 473 CHAPTER II. SHILOII. New Mexico. — Generals Canby and Sibley. — Fort Craig. — Flank move- ment of Sibley, February 19, 1862.— Engagement at Fort Craig, February 20.— Combat at Valverde, February 21.— Fight of Apache Pass, March XIV CONTENTS. PAGE 24. — Sibley at Santa Fe.— Sibley leaves New Mexico, April 12. — The course of the Tennessee. — Savannah. — Grant at Pittsburg Landing, March 17. — Johnston at Murfreesborough.— Buell at Nashville. — John- ston reaches Corinth. — Engagement at Pound Gap, March 16. — Morgan at Gallatin, March 16.— Skirmish at McMinnville, March 26.— Island Number Ten. — Landing of Pope, February 28. — Fight at Commerce, March 2. — Beauregard. — HoUins's flotilla. — New Madrid. — Point Pleas- ant. — Bombardment and evacuation of New Madrid, March 12. — Piercing of the New Madrid canal.— The Carondelet forces the Confederate bat- teries, April 5. — General Mackall and General McGown. — Evacuation of Island Number Ten, April 7. — Concentration and plans of the two hos- tile armies. — Arrival of Johnston at Corinth. — Position of Corinth. — Position of Pittsburg Landing. — Want of foresight on the part of the Federals. — Buell's army. — The Confederate army on the march, April 4. — Bivouac of April 5. — First day of the battle of Shiloh, April 5. — Sur- prise of the Federals. — Peabody's brigade dispersed. — Hardee defeats the brigade of Prentiss. — Sherman before the church of Shiloh. — McCler- nand repulsed. — Sherman falls back. — Prentiss is surrounded. — Death of Johnston. — Engagement between the forces of Hurlbut and W. H. Wal- lace. — Movement of the whole Confederate army. — The Federal army is repulsed. — Movements of L. Wallace and Nelson. — The park of siege artillery. — The Confederates checked by the brigade of Ammen. — End of the first day's fighting. — Arrival of L. Wallace and Buell's army. — Re- newal of the battle, April 7. — Nelson's attack. — Cheatham's division. — Buell's army receives a check. — The engagement is renewed along the whole line. — A desperate struggle. — Defeat of the Confederates. — Sher- man occupies Shiloh. — Eetreat of the Confederates. — Losses of both par- ties. — Their errors. — Consequences of the battle of Shiloh. — Enforced rest of the two armies 515 CHAPTER III. EOANOKE. Conflicts of power in the Confederate army. — Beauregard and Hindman.— Triumph of the central authority. — Levies in the South. — Enrolments by the central power. — Organization of the Confederate army. May 9, 1861. — A levy of 400,000 men, August 9. — Measures for increasing the strength of the army. — Expiration of terms of enlistments. — Their re- newal. — The conscription, April 16, 1862. — The able-bodied population of the South. — Extension of the conscription law, November 1, 1862. — Discipline. — Consolidation of regiments. — The depots. — The Army of the Potomac. — General McClellan. — Impatience of the public. — Democrats and Republicans. — Their imprudences and hostility. — Mr. Lincoln's hesi- tations. — Committee of inquiry into the conduct of the war. — Plans of campaign. — Difficulties in attacking Manassas. — Total force of the Con- federate army under Johnston. — Plans of attack by way of Harper's CONTENTS. XV PAQB Ferry or the Occoquan. — Projects for attacking the Confederate batteries along the Potomac. — Lower Virginia. — Plans for landing. — Urbanna and Fort Monroe. — Importance of Yorktown. — Preparatives of Burnside's expedition. — It enters Pamlico Sound, January 24, 1862. — The order of battle. — The island of Eoanoke. — Disembarkation, February 7. — Battle of Koanoke, February 8. — Capture of the island. — Capture of Elizabeth City, February 9. — Landing on the Neuse, March 12. — Confederate works. — Fight at, and capture of, Newberne, March 14. — Occupation of Beau- fort, March 25. — Fort Macon.— Engagement at South Mills, April 19. — Bombardment of Fort Macon, April 25. — Capitulation of the same, April 26. — End of Burnside's campaign .562 CHAPTER IV. HAMPTON EOADS. The iron-clads. — Mr. Ericsson, inventor of the turret system. — Captain Cowper Coles. — -The Galena, Ironsides, and Monitor. — Description of the Monitor. — The Virginia. — Tlieir artillery. — Captains Worden and Bu- chanan. — The morning of March 8, 18G2. — The Confederate naval divis- ion getting under way. — Fight between the Virginia and the Cumberland. — Sinking of the latter. — Heroism of the Federal sailors. — The Virginia attacks the Congress, which is captured and burned. — Buchanan is wound- ed. — The Minnesota and St. Lawrence aground. — End of the first day's battle in Hampton Roads. — Effect produced in America. — Second day, March 9. — Arrival of the Monitor. — Undecided fight with the Virginia. — Retreat of the latter. — Consequences of the battle. — McClellan's plan of campaign. — His relations with Mr. Lincoln. — Crossing the Potomac to Harper's Ferry, February 26. — Preparations for the maritime expedition. — Council of war, March 8. — The army corps. — War orders of the Presi- dent. — Evacuation of Manassas, March 8. — Manassas is occupied by the Federals, March 11. — Skilful retreat of Johnston. — McClellan relieved of the supreme command, March 12. — New plan of campaign, March 13. — Arrival of the transports. — Embarkation of the Army of the Po- tomac. — Jackson in the valley of Virginia. — His fruitless march upon Bath, January 1. — Insubordination in his army. — Engagement at Bloom- ing Gap, February 14. — Jackson returns to Winchester. — He withdraws to Mount Jackson. — Shields follows him, March 18. — He falls back upon Winchester, March 20.— Stratagem to draw Jackson on. — Ashby is de- ceived. — March of Jackson. — He attacks Shields, March 23.— Battle of Kernstown. — Disposition of the troops on both sides.— Jackson attacks the right wing of the Federals. — The Stonewall Brigade. — The Federals resume the offensive. — Complete defeat of Jackson. — He falls back upon Cedar Creek. — Results of his campaign. — Alarms in Washington. — The defence of the tapical. — ^1^'remont and the mountain department. — The division of Blenker. — Banks's army corps. — The garrison of Washington XVI nnwTENTS. PAGE and the independent armies. — Landing of McCIellan at Fort Monroe. — McDowell's army corps. — New dismemberment of the Army of the Potomac 591 NOTES. Note A 631 Note B 635 Note C 636 Note D 636 Note E 637 BlBT.rOGR4.PHICAL NOTE s 638 MAPS. The Field of Bull Etjn 219 Belmont -. 359 Fort Donelson 485 Pea EiDGE 505 Shiloh 523 Hampton Eoads 591 THE GiviL "War in America. BOOK L— THE AMEEICAN ARMY. CHAPTER I. THE VOLUNTEERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. AT the beginning of the year 1861 one of those acts of vio- lence which ambitious men are often able to disguise under names the more attractive in proportion as their motives are most culpable, occurred to rend the republic of the United States, and enkindled civil war. A coup d'etat was attempted against the Constitution of that republic by the powerful oligarchy which ruled in the South and had long controlled in the councils of the nation. On the day when the common law, which guarantees alike to the poor and the outcast respect for their individual rights, and to the majority the full enjoyment of political power, is violated by any portion of the community, if the outrage be not severely repressed, des- potism is established in the land. Beaten in the presidential elections of 1860, the Southern States sought to regain by intimidation or force the influence they had exercised until then in the interest of slavery ; and while shout- ing aloud the words " Independence and liberty," they trampled the solemn contract under foot as soon as the national ballot had declared against their policy. But success, that great apologist of predestinarians, failed them, and victory favored the cause of right and loyalty. Then it was seen what treasures of energy the free and constant practice of liberty hoards up for a people fortunate enough to possess it and sufficiently wise to guard it. 1 2 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. America had already solved one of the most difficult problems of our age by developing free institutions in the midst of a dem- ocratic society ; but no great internal crisis had yet arisen to try their solidity. Many people had asserted that the first storm would wrench this fragile plant from a soil that could not afford it sustenance. The storm-wind of civil war arose, and, contrary to these predictions, the vigorous tree of American institutions, spreading its shadow over the country Avhere it had taken such deep root, saved it from impending destruction. In this crisis, the American people learned to appreciate their Constitution everv more than they had done in the past ; and they proved to the world that the statue of Liberty is not a worthless idol, deaf in the hour of danger, but the holy symbol of a powerful divinity which may be invoked in seasons of adversity. Therefore, although war always presents a cruel aspect, we may, at least, examine the one that has lately rent America with- out experiencing that profound and unmitigated sadness which the triumphs of violence and injustice inspire. It is interesting to observe how that victory, so long disputed, the results of which are patent to every observer, although the causes are difficult to unravel from a distance, was achieved. In this study, as import- ant to the soldier as to the statesman, we should doubtless take into consideration the difference of institutions, customs, and many peculiar circumstances ; but on the other hand, we should not reject without examination precious examples and dearly bought experiences, under the pretext that what has succeeded in America cannot be applied to Europe. The work we have undertaken is essentially a military history. We shall not, therefore, attempt to describe the constitutional struggles and the political events which brought on the war, a nar- rative of which we present in these pages. But at a time when the misfortunes of our own country impart a peculiar importance to all questions of military organization, we have thought this narrative would appear incomplete if we did not begin by placing before the reader a somewhat detailed account of the resources of the two adversaries, how they made use of them, the services rendered to both parties by a corps of regular army officers, well trained and brought up under the influence of excellent traditions, VOLUNTEERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. S and finally the improvisation of the large armies which sustained that long war. This preliminary exposition will show how those armies, finding themselves on both sides in an analogous con- dition, were able to organize and gradually acquire a military character, without being exposed to the disasters which both would have experienced if from the commencement they had had to fight with veteran and disciplined troops. We must, therefore, in the first place, show in a rapid sketch what the American army was previous to 1861. Although the Americans were not a military people, they had had occasion to exhibit certain warlike qualities. During their short history they already had precedents for the organization of their national forces, and a small knot of brave and devoted men had preserved from oblivion the traditions acquired in campaigns instructive if not brilliant. Without dwelling at length on the wars in which the American soldier figured prior to 1861, it is necessary that we should say a few words on the subject. The reader will the better understand the remarkable movement which called large armies into exist- ence at the first rumor of civil war, when he has seen how volun- teer corps were formed at other epochs in the history of the young republic. After having followed the small regular army to the far West and to Mexico, the part it played in the great military organization of the Federals and the Confederates will be under- stood. It was against our soldiers in the Seven Years' War that the American volunteers, then composing the militia of an English colony, made their debut in arms. This fact may be recalled to mind not only without bitterness, since, Heaven be praised ! the flag of the United States, since it has been afloat, has never been found opposed to that of France on the field of battle, but also as a remembrance constituting an additional tie between them and us. For, during the unequal struggle which decided the owner- ship of the new continent, those militia-men received some useful lessons while contending with the handful of heroic men who defended our empire beyond the seas in spite of a forgetful country. The soldiers of the war of independence were formed in that 4 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. school. Montcalm, even more than Wolfe, was the instructor of those adversaries who very soon undertook to avenge him. It was while endeavoring to supplant the French on the borders of the Ohio, by long and frequently disastrous expeditions, that the founder of the American nation gave the first indications of that in- defatigable energy which in the end triumphed over every obstacle. It was the example of the defenders of Fort Carillon, in holding an English army in check from behind a miserable breastwork, which inspired at a later period the combatants of Bunker Hill. It was the surrender of Washington at Fort Necessity, and the disaster of Braddock at Fort Duquesne, which taught the future conquerors of Saratoga how, in those wild countries, to embarrass the march of an enemy, to cut oif his supplies, to neutralize his advantages, until, at last, he was either captured or annihilated. So that, although at first despised in the aristocratic ranks of the regular English army, the provincial militia, as they were then called, soon learned how to make themselves appreciated, and to compel respect from their enemies. In that war, so differ- ent from those waged in Europe, in those conflicts carried on in the midst of a wild and wooded country, they already displayed all the qualities which have since characterized the American — shrewdness, strength, valor, and personal intelligence. These qualities were again displayed when, fifteen years later, they took up arms once more, under the name of volunteers or national militia, in order to shake off the oppressive yoke of the mother-country; but they had no longer the intelligent officers of the English army to direct them, nor the old regular forces to support them at the critical moment. Their rSle of auxiliaries had but poorly prepared them to sustain alone the great struggle which patriotism imposed upon them. Beside Washington no colonial officer had ever figured in a high rank. Consequently, the French who came with Lafayette to place their experience at the service of the young American army brought to the latter most valuable assistance. But their best ally, their greatest strength, M^as that perseverance Avhich enabled them to turn a defeat to advantage instead of succumbing under it. This was demonstrated when the arrival of Rochambeau furnished them the opportunity to undertake that splendid and decisive cam- VOLUNTEERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. C paign which transferred the war from the borders of the Hudson into Virginia, and ended it by out blow in the trenches of York- town. The late events which have steeped the United States in blood impart a peculiar interest to the study of the war of American independence. The theatre is the same, the character of the ^country has changed but little since then, and on both sides the actors are the descendants of the soldiers of Washington. In that first attempt of the young American nation to organize its mili- tary power we shall find precedents for what was done in 1861, and in the meagre armies of the last century the model of those which, in our own day, have participated in the civil war. But we must, first of all, point out certain important differ- ences which mark both wars, and the circumstances under which they were undertaken ; in fact, it is in consequence of not having taken notice of these differences that many people have found their predictions falsified by the results of the late struggle. Be- cause the thirteen colonies had exhausted the efforts of England, they believed that the Confederate States would eventually wear out the strength of the North. Fortunately, the comparison be- tween the generous movement of 1775 and the resort to arms by the slave-owners in 1861 is as false in a military as in a political point of view. On the day when the colonies shook off the authority of the mother-country, all the strategic points of their territory were occupied by the English. It was necessary, therefore, to conquer everything: they had nothing to lose, and could not have con- sidered themselves as beaten, even though the enemy was still in the heart of the country. In 1861, on the contrary, the Confed- erates, masters of all the territory which they sought to alienate from the lawful jurisdiction of the new President, had need of all that vast country, partly for the maintenance of the institu- tion of slavery, and partly for the support of their numerous armies. When that country was invaded, they felt themselves vanquished. What was possible in the war of independence, where the number of combatants was limited, was so no longer. Washington and Gates, Howe and Cornwallis, had, ordinarily, not more than ten or fifteen, and very rarely twenty, thousand 6 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. men undei their command. These little armies could live upon the country which they occupied. It was not always without difficulty, it is true; and the soldiers of Washington suffered cruelly during the winter they passed, at Valley Forge. The English army, passing through a relatively rich country from Philadelphia to New York, was obliged to carry its provisions along with it ; and Cornwallis lost all his baggage in North Caro- lina, even while he was making a conquering march through it. But neither of these had to depend upon that vast system of vic- tualling which relies upon a fixed and certain base of operations, and without which large armies cannot be supported in America. They subsisted, marched, and sojourned for months by the side of an enemy who was master of the country. If we wished to draw a comparison between the two wars, it would be the armies of the North, and not those of the South, that we should have to compare with the volunteers who freed America. The Confederate conscripts — impetuously brave, accus- tomed to obedience, and blindly following their chiefs, but indi- vidually without perseverance or tenacity — were men of different spirit, different habits, and different temperament ; their character had been moulded by the aristocratic institutions founded upon slavery. The Federal volunteer, on the contrary, with his pecu- liarities and his defects, is the direct heir of those Continentals, as they were called, who, difficult to manage, badly organized, and almost always beaten notwithstanding their personal courage, ended, nevertheless, by defeating the English legions. He has, moreover, other claims to be considered their inheritor, for he can recall to mind the fact that it was the Northern States, then sim- ple colonies, which sustained nearly all the brunt of the war of independence, the rewards of which they shared with their asso- ciates of the South. Out of the two hundred and thirty-two thousand men whom that war saw mustered under the Federal flag, Massachusetts alone, always the most patriotic and the most warlike, furnished sixty-eight thousand ; Connecticut, with less population, thirty-two thousand ; Pennsylvania, twenty-six thousand ; New York, almost entirely occupied by the English, eighteen thousand ; to sum up, the States which were faithful to tlie Union in 1861 had given one hundred and seventy-five thou- VOLUNTEERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 7 sand men to fight against England — that is to say, more than three-fourths of the total number. Among those which, at a later period, espoused the Confederate cause, valiant Virginia was the only one which at that time contributed a resjiectable contingent, while South Carolina, so haughty since, could not raise more than six thousand men during the whole war against England. It will thus be seen that the States which defended the Union in 1861 are those that had made the greatest sacrifices to establish it, while those that raised the standard of rebellion agaihst it are also those that had the least right to call themselves its founders. We cannot be astonished, therefore, at finding among the sol- diers who were the first to carry the star-spangled banner to the battle-field the traits which have always characterized the Federal volunteer. These traits have been displayed from the beginning of the struggle with the mother-country. As soon as mustered, they would meet the onset of the English veterans from behind the rudest defences. They defended themselves with extraordinary energy at Bunker Hill, as the improvised soldiers of General Jackson did at a later period, in 1815, at New Orleans, and as, upon a wider field of action, the army of the Potomac did at Gettysburg. They were indefatigable workers : with pick and axe in hand, at the sieges of Boston and Yorktown, like those volunteers who, in the course of four years, covered America with fortifications and trenches, but, at the same time, easily dis- concerted when they felt or fancied themselves surprised by a flank movement, as at Brandywine and Germantown ; difficult to lead to the attack of a strong position, and forgetful of the principle, that there is less danger in rushing upon an enemy than in receiving his fire without stirring. They would then quickly become disorganized, and, more wonderful still, would recover their organization with equal promptness. From their first engagements with the English down to the war which arrayed them against each other, the American volunteers, finding a valu- able auxiliary in their country, covered with forests and interspersed with swamps, seldom allowed a panic to degenerate into a rout, and had the great merit of scarcely ever believing themselves vanquished after a defeat. 8 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. It required, nevertheless, all the organizing mind of Washiiig- ton, all his devotedness, all his tact and patience, to be able, almost without resources and in the midst of a thousand intrigues, to maintain unity among elements so difficult to unite, and to mould them to the hard exigencies of the military profession. The provincial militia which had taken part in the Seven Years' War was formed on the model of those of the English counties. At the beginning of the struggle with England, each colony added to her militia some regiments of volunteers enlisted for a short period, and thus raised a small independent, private army. United by Congress under the authority of Washington, they nevertheless maintained for some time their distinct organ- ization ; and when the first flush of enthusiasm and self-denial was once over, one may imagine the obstacles which such a sys- tem opposed to the zeal of the general-in-chief. He, who never courted popularity by flattering his countrymen, knew how to enforce a severe discipline. " It is necessary,'' he said to them, " that a most perfect despotism should exist in an army." The testimony of that great citizen deserves to be pondered by those who, in the name of liberty, seek to introduce a spirit of criti- cism and independence in the army, which always engenders insubordination. Besides, his despotism was strictly confined to his military character, and tempered by the regard which he inspired among all his inferiors ; it was only, however, by means of seasonable severities and necessary concessions that he was able to maintain that organization in his army which enabled him thoroughly to accomplish his task. The militia, recruited from the lowest dregs of society, as in England, were a perpetual source of anxiety to him. On the field of battle they more than once occasioned disastrous panics ; in camp they frequently fomented a spirit of revolt. The vol- unteer regiments, formed at a moment of patriotic impulse, were composed of far better material ; but they were only enlisted for a few months, and during the early stages of the war the nego- tiations set on foot to prolong their term of service were con- stantly paralyzing military operations. The national army was at last organized in 1776. It has served as the type of all the levies of volunteers whicli have been VOLUNTEERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. S • made since, down to those called for by Mr. Lincoln. This army was placed under the immediate orders of Congress, which shared with the States the costs of pay and equipment. The contingent of each State was fixed at a certain number of battalions, the officers of which were appointed by the local authorities ; and if the voluntary enlistments did not suffice, the total number required was completed by drafting exclusively among the militia. The latter, in reality, was only composed of enlisted volunteers. It is true that in cases of extreme urgency, the number of men required for the militia conld be raised by general draft, as in England. But this experiment had once been tried in Virginia, and had caused so much trouble that it was found necessary to abandon it. Congress, while mindful that the brigades should be formed of battalions from the same State, reserved to itself the organization of the army, the confirmation of inferior grades and the appointment of the general staff. This army was at first composed of eighty-eight battalions of seven hundred and fifty men each ; its organization and the commissions issued were to last as long as the war continued ; but as it was impossible to procure enlistments for such an indefinite period of service, the term had at first to be limited to one year. As the distress of the country contributed to the general embarrassment, the dif- ficulties which it had been sought to avoid very soon reappeared. In order to encourage re-enlistments, the pay was raised, money- bounties were offered on being mustered into service, and land- bounties on being mustered out. Washington pointed out in vain the inconveniences of a system which mingled speculation with the noble and rugged profession of arms. But men were wanted ; and the States, dreading the unpopularity of the draft, instead of listening to his advice, outbid the offers made by Con- gress. The result was that the allurements of the new bounties induced the volunteers to seek opportunities to re-enlist by short- ening their time of service. They eventually entered into an engagement to serve " for three years, or during the war." The three years expired on the first of January, 1781, and the war seemed far from being ended. The Pennsylvania soldiers insisted that they had only enlisted for three years, the words " or during the war" meaning simply, according to their interpretation, that 10 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. if the war was ended before, their time of service would be abridged. The officers, on the contrary, construed these words as implying an engagement to remain under the flag for at least three years, and longer if the war continued for a longer period of time. This question of grammar almost caused the shedding of blood ; it was deemed expedient to yield to the demands of the volunteers, and their interpretation was finally adopted. But the harm done to discipline was great and lasting. Nor did unjust rivalries and petty jealousies spare the most illustrious soldiers of the war of independence ; but these belong to all times and to all countries, and the Americans did not wait long to indemnify those who had been their victims by a spontane- ous reaction in public opinion. In fact, notwithstanding the de- fects of their organization, the American soldiers were animated by that ardent and sincere zeal which carries great men and great nations to the accomplishment of their designs ; and it was owing to their possession of this quality that they finally compelled vic- tory to perch upon their banners. The greater the magnitude of the national effort, the more irre- sistible became the reaction which followed. After so many sac- rifices made for the common good, the spirit of local independence again resumed its empire. The remembrance of the English reg- ulars, the need of economy, and the general exhaustion, caused a universal demand to be made for the disbanding of the national army. Freed from the danger which had brought them together, the old colonies hastened to get rid of all the burdens most neces- sary to their new existence ; they Avasted their energies in quarrels which nearly lost them the regard of their most zealous partisans in Europe, and, being still more jealous of the central power, they left it no authority — no means of action. It M^as the golden age of "States' Rights," the defence of which, at a later day, served as a pretext for the insurrection of 1861. Under this fatal in- fluence the army of the United States gradually disappeared, the entire defence of the extensive frontiers of Canada and the In- dian tribes was entrusted to the militia of each State, and in 1784 the national army found itself reduced to the absurd total of eighty men and officers. When true patriots rescued America from the fatal course she VOLUNTEERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. H was pursuing, and her nationality had been definitely established by that admirable document called the Federal Constitution, it was deemed necessary to confer some authority upon the recon- stituted central power. Yet, between this period, which may be called its first resurrection, and the day when it was definitely or- ganized, the regular army experienced a great many vicissitudes. In fact, when Washington found himself invested, in 1789, with the new title of President and commander of all the military forces of the republic, they amounted only to six hundred men. His authority over the militia was confined to a small number of special cases, and their formation depended exclusively upon each State. Knowing from experience the inconvenience of an im- provised army, he thought of endowing his country with military institutions, and of preparing a few cadres* which would enable him to transform with considerable rapidity such citizens as might be called, by unforeseen danger, to rally around the flag, into effec- tive soldiers. But he could not conquer the pi'ejudices of a people, just enfranchised, against a standing army — prejudices of which Jefferson was the exponent in his own cabinet. Conse- quently, from 1789 till 1815 the regular army — that which was raised and organized directly by the Federal power without the intervention of the States — remained in a provisional condition. When war was imminent, it was immediately swelled by adding to it, for want of established cadres, regiments entirely new, in which all the grades were conferred at random ; and when peace- ful tendencies were again in the ascendant, both officers and men were hastily discharged. In 1790 this army comprised only one regiment of infantry and one battalion of artillery — twelve hundi"ed and sixteen men in all. A second regiment, formed in the following year, in- creased the number to two thousand one hundred and twenty- eight men. In 1793 it was suddenly raised to six thousand men, *The word cadre, which the author frequently uses to designate the frame- work of a regiliient, cannot be satisfactorily rendered into English by any equiv- alent term. The cadres are regimental skeletons or frames, which, in European armies, form the centres of new regiments, into which are incorporated all the raw recruits. Therefore, in all cases where the word cadre is used in the orig- inal, the Frencli word has been retained, since it conveys the idea more di&- titictly than any English equivalent. — Ed. 12 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA to be again reduced in 1796 to two thousand eight hundred men. Each time an act of Cong-ress had authorized the recruiting; of men and the formation of corps, now and then specifying the duration of their existence, and creating the necessary grades for the occasion. But it frequently happened that, by this process, officers were procured more readily than soldiers. Thus, in 1798, apprehending a war with France, Congress ordered a levy of thir- teen thousand regular troops. But two years after, it was found that, while the corps of officers was complete, only three thousand four hundred men had been enlisted ; and in 1802 this ephemeral army was reduced to the total of three thousand men. It will be seen that it scarcely deserved the name of a regular army. Consequently, the more America relied upon her volunteers for defence, the more she needed a permanent school to form a corps of educated officers, possessing traditions and a military spirit, and capable of supplying the wants of an improvised and inex- perienced army. Washington had felt this need, and desired to found a Federal school, upon a sufficiently comprehensive basis, in order that it might render this important service to the nation. But his project, destined to be adopted at a later period, was twice rejected, in 1793 and in 1796. It was deemed sufficient to estab- lish a species of disguised school at West Point {une espece d'ecole deguisee) altogether inadequate to the wants of the country, com- prising a depot of artillery and engineers, with two professors and about forty cadets. It was only in 1812 that the project of Washington was taken up again, and that the West Point acad- emy, of which he was the posthumous founder, became! in reality, the nursery of the regular army. At that period America learned at last, to her own cost, liow much these indecisions and alterna- tions had militated against the development of good military institutions. We have desired to show by these details that the raising of improvised armies, of which the year 1861 has given such a gigantic example, has been at all times the custom of America, and that the measures then adopted upon a large scale have been resorted to since the early times of the republic whenever it has been threatened by ujiforeseen danger. It is easy to understand the inexperience of the whole nation when she tooK up arms VOLUNTEERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 13 against the secessionists ; and in observing the weak part played by the military element in her public life, far from being aston- ished that she did not succeed sooner, one should, on the contrary, admire her for having accomplished so much and created so much without any preparation. We might quote many instances of this contrast, so honorable to her energy, between the organized re- sources that she possessed and the results she attained. Thus the department of war, which in 1865 had control of more than a million of men, was, at the beginning of the present century, amal- gamated with that of the navy, and was composed of one sec- retary and eight clerks. The six thousand men voted by Congress in 1808, when war with England seemed imminent, had never been brought together. Therefore, when, in 1812, after twenty years' peace, that war broke out at last, the traditions of the war of independence had been nearly obliterated. There was no enthusiasm to supply their place : this could not be kindled in behalf of a war in which the national existence was not at stake. We shall not pause to narrate the particulars of that war, for it has left no important traditions behind, and only developed a small number of dis- tinguished men. It presents but few instructive examples of the mode of fighting in the New World, and with the exception of the brilliant affair of New Orleans, it scarcely displayed aught save the ordinary defects of American volunteers, without bring- ing their best qualities into relief. The campaigns in Canada, if such a term may be applied to a series of disjointed operations as insignificant in their results as in the means employed, are utterly destitute of interest. The regular army was hardly in existence. The volunteers, few in number, levied in haste, and generally for the term of a single expedition, confined to the frontier of their own State, could scarcely be considered as part of the army. The militia, more insubordinate still than under Washington, found constitutional reasons for refusing, even in the midst of active operations, to go beyond the frontier to sup- port their comrades in the field. The most bloody affair, perhaps — that of Niagara — was a night skirmish, in which each of the contending parties, believing itself beaten, abandoned the field of battle before the break of day ; while the rout of Bladensburg 14 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. threw a melancholy light upon the demoralization of those impro- vised troops. The name of the young general Scott, lately the illustrious senior of the American army, is alone deserving of being mentioned in the same breath with that of Perry — that sailor who, by dint of audacity, was enabled to secure the naval supremacy of the lakes. Those, however, who followed that war throughout all its chequered fortunes, might already have noticed one fact — a fact which has often been confirmed since — that on the soil of America the defensive is easy, but the offensive difficult, to maintain. Absorbed by their struggle with France, the British, instead of attacking, were obliged to wait for the Americans in Canada ; this necessity constituted their strength. In 1814, peace with France, by restoring to them all freedom of action, seemed to have given them a guaranty of indisputable superiority. The re- verse took place ; for feeling themselves the stronger, they re- sumed the offensive, and the Americans, being attacked in their turn, soon recovered all the advantages they had lost by invading the territory of the enemy. In fact, after having been success- ful at Bladensburg without effort, having burnt one portion of Washington, and occupied the rest, the British could not sustain themselves in that position ; and in vacating the capital of the enemy without a fight, they were obliged to acknowledge how fruitless was the victory which had delivered it to them. At last, the war ended to the advantage of the Americans on the borders of Lake Champlain and at New Orleans, where the Brit- ish were vanquished by a handful of white men and negroes mixed together and armed in haste, to whom Jackson had im- parted his own indomitable energy. These two fortunate affairs could not make America forget the events that had preceded them, and had proved a serious lesson to her. Therefore this war was not altogether useless to her, for it made her feel the necessity of reorganizing her military insti- tutions upon a new basis. From the very beginning, public opinion, that all-powerful judge among free peoples, which pos- sesses perhaps the caprices, but not the fetal infatuations, of des- pots, had promptly recovered from all its prejudices. It was then that the project of a military school, bequeathed by Wash- VOLUNTEERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 15 ington, was adopted. The President asked for ten thousand men for the regular army; he was authorized to raise twenty-five thousand. This actual force, however, was never fully raised, and the new recruits, without established cadres, proved to be quite as inexperienced as any volunteers or militia. But when peace was declared in 1815, instead of disbanding them to the last man, as had been customary, ten thousand men were retained under the flag. They formed the effective total of the Federal troops on the peace footing, which it was finally de- termined to organize in a more definite manner. It is, therefore, from that year that the existence, in America, of a regular army may be dated, comprising corps of all arms, systematically re- cruited, having a fixed system of promotion, and opening a legitimate career to officers, certain, henceforth, of retaining their respective grades. CHAPTER II. THE REOULAB ARMY. A REGULAR standing army, with its discipline and succes- . sive grades, placed in the midst of a society so fluctuating and so jealous of everything which" does not emanate directly from the elective power, must have occupied a singular and dif- ficult position. It did not succumb before the numerous attacks of which it was the object, but that position gave it an original character, and developed in the highest degree an esprit de corps among its members. We must enter into some details concerning its organization, which had changed but little since its creation, and which served as a model to that of the volunteer army, whose campaigns we shall have to narrate. The West Point Academy has exercised a powerful influence upon the character of the American army. Situated on the wooded banks of the Pludson, upon a picturesque site, where interesting historical associations cluster around an important military post, the cradle of the family of regulars is in striking contrast with all its surroundings. At the foot of that peaceful retreat, where military traditions are religiously cherished, the great river which waters New York presents a moving panorama of active industry. By a remarkable exception in that country of perpetual changes, the academy, from its foundation to the period of which we speak, has preserved its early regulations and statutes, and the pupils still wear the gray coat with narrow black lace on the facings which was adopted for the use of the first engineer-cadets in 1802. The system of admission is also in contrast with tlie equalizing customs of the country. It is founded entirely upon favor, and it is only since the war that a 16 THE REGULAR AR3IY. 17 proposition has ])een made, hitherto without success, to open the places to competition. This anomaly, however, is susceptible of explanation ; for the profession of arms was but little courted, and besides, the American people do not consider government offices as public property, for a share in the distribution of which every one has a right to bid, undergoing an examination as to fitness. The system of filling up vacancies in the academy adopt- ed by its founders was devised Avith a view of making that insti- tution as perfect a representation as possible of the confederation of States of which it was the common bond. Ten pupils are appointed every year at large by the President. Moreover, each of the electoral districts which send members to the House of Eejjrcsentatives designates every four years, through the agency of that member, one pupil, who is admitted after an examination which is purely nominal.* As the course of studies embraces a period of four years, each district finds itself thus represented by one pupil, unless the latter should receive a sufficient number of demerits to cause his dismissal. These selections have frequently been the result of good luck rather than of good judgment. As an illustration of these fortunate chances we may quote the case of the young general Kilpatrick, one of the most brilliant cavalry officers in the late war, who was indebted to his precocious elo- quence for his admission to West Point. In 1856, when only eighteen years of age, he was extremely anxious to embrace the profession of arms. The right to nominate a pupil to West Point was about to fall upon the Representative of his district, and, on the other hand, in consequence of the expiration of his term of office, the person who occupied that position was on the eve of entering upon a new canvass for the suffrages of his fel- low-citizens. The candidate for the military academy conceived the idea of laying the political candidate under personal obliga- tions by undertaking the advocacy of his interests. He went from village to village, haranguing the electors, extolling the merits of the individual from whom he expected, in return, to obtain his admission to the academy, and the people were im- * Tlie subjects of examination are very rudimentary — reading, writing, and arithmetic througli decimal fractions ; English Grammar, American Geography, and History ; but the examination is strict, and many are rejected annually. — Ed. Vol. I.— 2 18 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. pressed by his speeches and his youth. The member was re- elected, and Kilpatrick entered West Point. But if the terms of admission do not guarantee the worth of th*? candidate who is admitted, in the school itself the studies are rigorous and prolonged, and the discipline is very severe. All those who have not obtained a certain number of marks are ex- cluded at the annual examinations, and by this means a portion only of the pupils succeed at the expiration of four years in ob- taining admission into the army with the rank of second lieu- tenant. The last two years are devoted alike, by all the pupils, to special studies, and to obtaining a knowledge of engineering and artillery practice ; it is a necessary condition of the profession which awaits them on leaving the academy ; indeed, the greater part of them, before entering a regiment of the line, undergo a probation of some years in the artillery corps,* which is very large compared with the total effective force of the army, in con- sequence of the fortifications which it is necessary to maintain all along the immense frontier. The rest, constantly isolated at dis- tant points among Indians, are obliged, in order to attain efficiency, to acquire a knowledge of every branch of the military profes- sion. This general instruction is, moreover, in harmony with the national spirit, which readily believes in its capacity to do every- thing, and in which the initiative of individual efforts, strongly developed, rectifies the abuses of that system of specialties which is too often fatal to independence of character. A solitary ex- ample will show that, in bestowing this varied instruction, which enables officers to pass from one branch of the service to another, the West Point system does not, on that account, lower the stand- ard of its studies. Only a few years ago all the professors had officers of the army for assistants, who, each in turn, forsook the active and solitary life of the Western prairies, to become, for the term of four years, the scientific instructors of those pupils who had replaced them on the benches of the academy, and who were soon to become their comrades in the ranks of the army. The pupils, instead of paying for the privileges of such excellent ed- * There is an artillery school at Fortress IVfonroe, and some officers of in- fantry and cavalry have attended it at their own request, but it is chiefly de- signed for officers of artillery. — Ed. THE REGULAR ARMY. 19 ucation, receive, on the contrary, a considerable salary. Conse- quently, the Federal government is somewhat entitled to their loyalty, and had the right to prefer charges of ingratitude against those who, in 1861, placed at the service of its enemies the know- ledge they had thus acquired under the auspices of the Federal flag. Thanks to their long and serious studies, which kept th^m aloof from their fellow-citizens, always in a hurry to act and to enjoy — thanks to the bonds of fellowship which the associations of youth implant in the heart of man, and especially to those attacks of which both the academ}^ and the army had been the subject — the West Pointers very soon formed an almost aristocratic and ex- clusive body, all the members of which mutually sustained each other. At the period of which we are speaking, those who re- mained under the flag were animated by a genuine passion for the profession of arms ; for such a feeling alone could have induced men of capacity and energy to lead a rugged and unremunerating life, without even finding the reward of their labors in public sympathy. Those who, tired out by the slowness of promotion, and attracted by more brilliant prospects, quitted the service after a few years (and they were numerous, especially among the young men of the North), did not forget their early education on that account; it was, therefore, among these that the Federal cause recruited its most brilliant defenders. These changes in the pur- suits of life did not break the bonds which united all West Point- ers together. If this coterie — for it was one — could, Math all its defects and partialities, maintain itself and cause itself to be re- spected in the midst of a society so fluctuating, it is because it was governed by the noblest sentiments of honor and military duty. Preserving the most valuable traditions by the side of successive administrations essentially changeable in their character, it was found ready, notwithstanding many desertions, to organize the scattered forces of the nation on the day when the Southern lead- ers gave the signal of civil war. That great task accomplished, the coterie disappeared, even in the midst of the triumph to which it had so powerfully contrib- uted. After such a struggle, it will not be asked of the general who has commanded in twenty battles whether he is or is not a 20 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. "West Pointer. The public, which had regarded the regular officer as a being apart from the rest of mankind, and almost dangerous, has seen him at work, knows his patriotism, and has given him its confidence. And the latter, forgetting the derisive nickname of mustang (Indian name for wild horse), which he was wont to apply to inexperienced volunteers before the advent of the common trial, now respects them, and seeks his associates among them. The great drama in which they have played their respective parts side by side, in breaking down the old barriers and blotting out past distinctions, has created a new fraternity among them. The West Point Academy, since its origin, has always sup- plied the army with the greatest portion of its officers ; but the President has never been restricted in his appointment of officers to selections among the graduates of that institution. As com- mander-in-chief, he is not bound by any law, either as regards admission or j)romotion. "When the number and the various grades have once been defined and settled by Congress, he can distribute them as he thinks proper. But his power is subjected to the will of the Senate — that great political body which plays the principal r6le in the Federal constitution, and whose province it is to confirm every nomination, which otherwise becomes null and void by the tacit operation of the law, at the close of the leg- islative session in which it was presented for consideration. The Senate has always made ample use of this prerogative. From the general to the second lieutenant, each candidate has his claims discussed before this assembly, which, if need be, becomes the interpreter of public sentiment against too glaring acts of favor- itism, but which, under the influence of party spirit, is also sometimes led into error in the exercise of these delicate functions. The executive power, however, took care to impose upon itself a rule, and to fortify the hierarchical spirit by introducing the principle of promotion by seniority. This system of promotion was established through the promulgation of certain ordinances, styled Articles of War, which comprise, at the same time, instruc- tions for the officers, and a series of military regulations which, although liable to be revoked by the President, have, never- theless, come to be considered as a true code of laws for the army. , , THE REGULAR ARMY. 21 Promotion by seniority is a wise rule of action in a republic where the administrative power so frequently changes hands, and where the personnel of the government is almost entirely renewed on the occasion of each change ; for although the President is al- lowed perfect freedom of choice in the formation of new regiments, it secures true independence to the officers. Up to the rank of captain this promotion takes place in the regiment ; to that of colonel, in the arm. Seniority of rank has nothing to do with the appointment of general officers. The President had, nevertheless, numerous occasions for the exercise of his patronage outside of all hierarchical regulations ; indeed, the standing nucleus of the army was so weak that at every sign of war it was necessary to increase it in haste. The value of traditions was as yet so little appreciated in the various branches of the service that more than once, for instance, consid- erations of economy have caused the sudden discharge of all the cavalry. And too often, when new cadres had to be formed, the President, forgetful that young soldiers require experienced leaders, only reserved a few places for the officers taken from the other corps of the army ; the rest were divided among old volunteers, officers who had resigned their respective commissions and were desirous to resume the epaulette, and especially political favorites. Those who attained superior grades assumed at once their senior- ity of rank in that entire branch of the service, and preserved it when the corps to the formation of which they were indebted for their rapid elevation was disbanded. This system, however, oc- casionally gave the army some excellent soldiers, who, although not graduates of West Point, did not the less display great mili- tary talents. Finally, a custom, singular enough in a republic, borrowed from the British army, that of brevet rank, or honorary promotion, enabled the President to confer, in the way of rewards, titles which were wholly independent of the rules of seniority. These, however, only conferred superiority of rank in regard to what was strictly honorary, giving no increase of pay, and serving in no way to assist promotion. The recipient of the brevet con- tinued to perform the functions of the inferior grade ; and one might thus see a simple captain in command of a company wear- ing the insignia of a lieutenant-colonel. This system, so much at 22 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. variance with the spirit of military subordination, was largely in vogue, because, through its operation, the self-love and vanity of many people could be gratified without loosening the purse- strings of the nation. At the close of the civil war, in one regi- ment alone, counting forty-five officers, twenty-one of them re- ceived brevets. By a natural reaction against the spirit of social equality peculiar to the country, an almost impassable barrier had been raised in the regular army between soldiers and officers. It required some splendid achievement to enable the non-commis- sioned officer, ennobled by the epaulettes, to take a seat among his former chiefs, and it was only in 1861 that a commission Avas appointed for the examination and regular admission of a certain number of non-commissioned officers to the rank of officers. The material of which the rank and file was composed did, in fact, justify that exclusiveness ; for it fully deserved the name of mer- cenary, subsequently so unjustly applied to the volunteers of 1861. These troops were recruited among emigrants who had not been able to secure better means of existence ; for that mode of life which required entire submission to the discipline of the barracks, even in the midst of the desert, held out but few inducements to the Americans themselves, who never sought to adopt it unless driven to it by sheer necessity. The regular officer, in short, isolated at some distant post, like a sea-captain on board his vessel, always exposed to the perfidy of the Indian, and obliged to be constantly on his guard, main- tained his authority by means of the strictest discipline. Cor- poral punishments were frequent and severe. When, in 1861, the remnants of the regular army returned to the large cities of the Union from the far West, they brought with them those inflexible regulations, the application of which contrasted so sin- gularly with the customs of the country, and which must have cooled down the enthusiasm of more than one citizen about to enlist. In the fall of 1861 the inhabitants of Washington, passing near the batteries of artillery encamped on their public grounds, saw with astonishment sc^ldiers who had been guilty of some violation of discipline, some of them tied to the carriage of a gun, some THE REGULAR ARMY. 23 half suspended by their thumbs, others compelled to walk with a gag in their mouths or with their heads thrust through a staved-in barrel — emblems of their insolence or their drunk- enness.* A high rate of compensation could alone draw volunteer re- cruits into this army. In 1860 this rate of compensation was as high as eleven dollars, or nearly sixty francs, per month, without any deduction for food or raiment. The disproportion between the salaries of different grades was less than amongst us ; for in America it is not thought that a faithful performance of duty in public offices can be secured by allowing the lower ranks of employes to vegetate under the pressure of insufficient pay, while a few superior officers only enjoy high salaries. A lieu- tenant receives under various forms an annual salary of fifty-five hundred francs ; a colonel, twenty thousand francs ; and a major- general, twenty-five thousand francs. They could undoubtedly, therefore — all of them — economize to some extent, especially when they had to pass half their lives in the wilderness. At all events, it was but little compared with what their former com- rades of West Point earned in the various pursuits of industry and commerce. There is, moreover, a radical difference between the system of public salaries in the United States and our own. Unless ai:^ officer can procure a pension through the instrumentality of hon- orable wounds, it is all over with him on the day he is discharged from active service. In return for his time and trouble he is liberally paid so long as the contract in virtue of which he was mustered into service is in existence ; ])ut this contract between the President and himself is always liable to be revoked by either of the contracting parties, and if one has always the right to tender his resignation, the other is equally entitled to dismiss him whenever he pleases — there is no retiring list, and, consequently, no limit as to age.f The hope of obtaining from the State, by * Such punishments were in defiance of the army regulations and the Articles of War, and must be attributed to the excitement and confusion of the period re- ferred to. — Ed. t The author was probably not aware of the very liberal provisions that have oeen made, since the war, for the retirement and support of officers who ha Pe 24 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. the exercise of patience, on the day when he shall no longer be able to render any service to it, some slender means of existence, does not retain, as it does elsewhere, officers who have grown old or infirm in the service under the flag. If the American officer tenders his resignation or is mustered out, without any previous notice, with the regiment to which he belonged, he launches at once into other pursuits until the formation of some new regi- ment, when he is almost certain, if Avorthy of it, to regain his for- mer position. He who has remained faithful to the profession of arms has laid up something against the day of his possible dis- charge, when he may console himself by saying that it is never too late in life to strive after fortune. Since that time, this sys- tem has been entirely changed by a law on retiring allowances and military pensions. This law seems to have been a necessary one, but it is as yet too early to appreciate its effects. Time alone will show whether legislation, in this case, was a happy inspi- ration. Before concluding this chapter it remains for us to speak of the organization of the different corps which composed the regular army ; for although their effective strength has been subjected to strange vicissitudes, the organization itself has experienced but few changes. J The cavalry Avas disbanded after the war of 1812; and not until 1833 was it revived, in the First Dragoons. The Second Dragoons was created in 1836; the Third in 1846, as also the mounted riflemen, who, notwithstanding their appellation, served as foot-soldiers in the war with Mexico. The Third Dragoons having been disbanded at the close of that war. Congress ordered, in 1855, the formation of two new regiments, bearing the name of 1st and 2d Cavalry. These five regiments, under their dif- ferent designations, were to represent various arms in the service : the two last regiments, composing the light cavalry, the mounted riflemen, were to be simply infantry on horseback. At the very outset of the war of secession, it was evident that the long-range weajjons rendered all such distinctions useless in a contest in become disabled or who have attained a certain specified age in the military oi naval service. — Ed. THE REGULAR ARMY. 25 Avlilcli the dragoon should be the true type of all cavalrymen ; and consequently all five regiments were united, August 3, 1861, under the sole designation of cavalry ; a sixth regiment was added to them under the same law. The number of infantry regiments varied frequently. During the war with Mexico it reached seventeen ; then it was again re- duced, but never below eight. The artillery, on the contrary, consisting of four regiments, preserved that organization until 1861, but the number of com- panies of which they were composed varied according to the exigencies of the service. The places created by the formation of new regiments were not all given to officers of the army ; a certain number of these commissions were always held in reserve for the proteges of the President and of the Secretary of War, and especially of those Congressmen whose votes had contributed to secure this increase of the army, but, it must be admitted, this patronage was judi- ciously bestowed, and among the new officers were generally to be found many former volunteers who had already seen service. We shall mention one instance of the kind which reflects credit on the discernment of Mr. Jefferson Davis, under whose admin- istration of the War Department the 1st and 2d Cavalry were organized. The field officers of these two regiments were taken from the army in active service, as also one half of the whole number of captains and lieutenants ; the remainder were chosen from civil life. Out of these one himdred officers, forty-one became, a few years later, generals in the Northern or in the Southern armies, and six of them held commands-in-chief. All the regiments were organized in the same manner, each being provided with ten captains, whose command took the name of company, even in the cavalry and the artillery, where it cor- responded with the terms squadron and battery. The regiments of infantry, instead of comprising three battalions, were formed, in reality, of but a single one ; but each had a colonel, a lieu- tenant-colonel, and a major, the division of the regiments among the frontier stations and along the coast rendering this large num- ber of superior officers necessary. Their effective total of one thousand to twelve hundred men was seldom attained, recruiting 26 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. being always difficult. A wise ordinance of President Monroe requiring that every reduction of the army should bear equally upon all organized regiments, those only could be discharged whose strength was found to be diminished by more than one- half, in order to preserve complete cadres ready to receive recruits in case of necessity. Unfortunately, however, while the observ- ance of this rule was being enforced, the authorities, in the exercise of an imprudent economy, neglected to fill the vacancies of officers in the regiments thus reduced ; so that in the end the cadres were found to be as insignificant as the total effective force. The proportion of artillery up to 1861, and its immunity from any important reductions, can be explained on the ground of the valuable services constantly required of it. It has always had the charge of occupying, maintaining, and arming the fortified posts which have served, and still serve, as finger-posts to the march of civilization across the prairies of the West. The somewhat numerous body of officers of the engineer corps enjoyed the same immunity, but, generally speaking, it never had but about one hundred soldiers under its command, who were at the same time sappers and pontoniers. As to the general staff, such a branch of the military service has never existed in America. The small regular army having only been brought to- gether once during the first forty-six years of its existence, the want of such a corps was but little felt. During the Mexican expedition the army suffered greatly on account of this blank, but in the corps of engineers it found young and excellent officers who, by their zeal and intelligence, supplied the want of a general staff. It was only, therefore, in 1861, when it was no longer a question of handling twenty thousand regular troops, but one hundred thousand volunteers, that all the inconveniences arising from the absence of such an important machinery were sensibly felt. The functions of the general staff were divided among differ- ent corps. Officers detached from their regiments, and volunteers invested with temporary rank, performed the duties of aides-de- camp to the generals under the name of personal aides. All the topographical, geodetiial, and hydrographical works were en- trusted to the corps of topographical engineers, to whom we are THE REGULAR ARMY. 27 indebted for the liandsome publications of the Co«si Survey, 2i\i^ who, in 1862, were merged into the engineer corps, just as our geographical engineers were formerly merged into the general staff. The other functions of the latter corps, particularly those concerning the personnel of armies in the field, were entrusted to special officers of administration. Any details regarding the administration of military affairs, although greatly abridged, may appear long and tedious. Still they are necessary; for we must know the interior mechanism of an army in order fully to understand its movements, and its organization is a mirror wherein its spirit is reflected. That of the regular army, like one of those diminutive models every part of which is equally enlarged and amplified by some ingenious process, was exactly copied at the time when the hundreds of thousands of volunteers, whose campaigns we shall have to nar- rate, were mustered into service. In this narrative we shall have to use technical English terms in order to designate military func- tions, the exact equivalents of which do not exist among us, and the precise meaning of which it is, therefore, necessary that we should establish. The administration of the American war department is divided into two technical parts. On one hand the body of troops, cav- alry, artillery, and infantry, divided into regiments, depend, with- out intermedium, on the department bureaus, having neither distinctive chief nor separate management ; on the other hand, there are corps comnosed exclusively of officers, each of them under the special direction of a general officer or colonel, almost invariably placed in that position by right of seniority, who takes a large share in all the decisions which affect them, and who is the only medium between them and the department. The latter corps are, in the first place, the engineers and topographical engineers, separated until 1862, and united since that period; and then the various branches of the service, much more inde- pendent of each other, which, with us, constitute the military adminstration. Under the name of departments they perform their functions both in the army and in the War Department, where their hierarchical chiefs have each a separate bureau, which nearly corresponds to our administrative divisions (directions). 28 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. In these varied functions the corps above mentioned partake of the character of our su|)ervising department (intendance), with this important difference, however, that most of them are com- posed of officers in active service. Taken from the army, with the exception of paymasters and surgeons, M'ho have simply an assimilated military rank, they do not leave their army grade on entering upon the discharge of departmental duties, and may, by means of a simple exchange, resume their places in the ranks of combatants. They have therefore the same prospects as the lat- ter, and may, like them, come out of their respective army corps with a general's epaulette. The late war has shown by many examples the advantages of such a system of promotion. Thus, one of the generals who achieved most distinction on the field of battle, Hancock, a simple captain-quartermaster, commanded with success an army corps, and was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general in the regular army for his services. Hence it is that rivalries and jealousies are very rare between officers of the line and those of the staff corps, and the frequency of rota- tion among them, by initiating each in turn into the details of every branch of the service, imparts to them an amount of infor- mation that is found invaluable in the isolated life of the fron- tiers, which entails upon them such manifold duties. Here, again, the Americans have done well in not pushing the system of spe- cial services to excess. The adjutant-general's department, composed of officers from the rank of captain to that of colonel, was, in 1861, commanded by a general of brigade, who combined the functions of superin- tendent of the personnel of the department with those of chief of staff to the army. The assistant adjutant-generals, his subordi- nates, are divided into two classes. Some doing duty in the bureaus, or detached on special service, perform administrative functions ; the others, for the most part, perform the duties of our chiefs and sub-chiefs of staff to the several generals in com- mand. The inspector-general's department, although independent of the adjutant-general's, is, in reality, but a supplementary branch of it; and being composed solely of a few superior officers, it has only the character of a commission to inspect the troops of the line. THE REGULAR ARMY. 29 The quartermaster and subsistence departments resemble in most respects our supervising department [infcndanoe). The former, organized since 1812, besides the duty of provid- ing part of the supplies for tlie army, performs certain functions which, with us, appertain to the departments of engineers, trans- portation, and disbursement of public moneys, and is the most im- portant of all the department bureaus. During the late war it disbursed forty-three per cent, of the total amount required for military expenses. The subsistence department, having charge of the victualling of troops, the purchase of provisions at scattered markets, the preparation, preservation, and distribution of rations among the regiments, is composed of officers styled commissaries ; at the be- ginning of the war a colonel was at the head of this department. The ordnance department exercises the administrative functions which with us belong, for the most part, to the artillery. It has not only charge of the arsenals, of the manufacture of arms and military equipments, of cannon and artillery material, of mus- kets and ammunition of every kind, of side-arms, saddles, and harness accoutrements, but also of their distribution in each corps. We find this department in 1861 under the direction of a brigadier- general. The departments of the adjutant-general, quartermaster, sub- sistence, and ordnance are represented on the staif of each army, army corps, active or territorial division, brigade, and regiment, by officers who, while subject to the authority of the chiefs of those corps, continue nevertheless to maintain direct relations with their respective departments. Finally, the surgeons and paymasters form two civil corps, the members of which, as we have said before, being simply assim- ilated in rank to military grades, cannot be transferred from one corps to another. They follow in their own a regular order of promotion, and each class is placed respectively under the com- mand of a surgeon-general and a paymaster-general.* *See note A, in the Appendix of this volume. CHAPTER III. THE ARMY OF OCCUPATION IN MEXICO. THE organization of the American army was not developed in the midst of absolute peace. The Mexican war and an almost continuous warfare with the Indian tribes justified its ex- istence in the eyes of a jealous public, kept it always in working order, and permitted it to acquire a useful experience. They de- veloped its qualities, while the nature of the country where the American army had to fight, and the enemies it encountered, ex- ercised a powerful influence upon its character and its mode of waging war. The Mexican campaign constitutes the most bril- liant epoch in its history previous to the great struggle of 1861. That campaign was the means of forming nearly all the military chiefs who, on one side or the other, have been noted in the com- bats we shall have to describe. It inspired the stories of the hivouciG fifteen years later, when the captain and the lieutenant of 1847, now in command of volunteer armies or army corps, found themselves opposed to the companions of their early experiences in arms. The war of 1812 had not been a glorious one. That of Mexico, on the contrary, was a series of successes scarcely inter- rupted by a few insignificant checks. It ofl^ered the soldier all the interest of regular warfare, with its pitched battles, the names of which can be mentioned and their trophies shown, and at the same time all the attractions that adventurous spirits find in fighting in a country but half civilized. It was, in short, a decisive trial of the military institutions of America ; if the regular soldiers had already been inured to the privations and fatigues that awaited them in Mexico, if the mongrel race they had to en- counter there was not superior in courage to the Indians of the prairies, they had never before been brouglit together as one army, nor fought otherwise than as partisans. The Mexican war was 30 THE ARMY OF OCCUPATION IN MEXICO. 31 essentially their work; they were in a majority in the array of General Scott, who made the decisive campaign ; the volunteers were only their auxiliaries ; and even where the latter happened to be more numerous than the former, the regular officers retained, nevertheless, the exclusive control of all operations. Those volunteers did not much resemble the class in the same service who, in 1861, truly represented the nation in arms, for no enthusiasm had stimulated their enlistment. The war which was undertaken against Mexico was iniquitous. The men of the South who then governed the Union, President Polk and his agent Mr. Slidell — the same we have subsequently seen in Europe pleading in behalf of the Confederate cause in the name of the riffht of nationalities — alarmed at the increasing influence of the free States, had sought to counterbalance it in the councils of the republic by the creation of new. slave States. To accomplish this it was deemed necessary to dismember Mexico and to intro- duce slavery into the territories that would be taken from her. It was for the purpose of carrying out this political scheme that war was declared, just as at other periods filibusters were encour- aged to carry trouble into Cuba or into Central America. The North repudiated this odious policy ; consequently, it M^as only represented by a contingent of less than twenty thousand volun- teers, and even the majority of these only entered the service to sustain the national honor, when Scott, detained at Puebla for want of troops, found himself seriously compromised. About forty thousand volunteers from the South, a force which was then considered very large, were successively mustered into service: the hope of extending the domain of slavery had fired their ardor. Among those most in earnest might already be noticed Colonel Jeiferson Davis at the head of a regiment of Mississippi volun- teers. Ambitious, impetuous, and eloquent, this old West Pointer was trying to achieve at the same time popularity with his party, and the military reputation which, when the crisis came, was to place him in possession of the War Department. He accom- plished that double object ; and at a later period, when the great rebellion, of which he was the soul, broke out, he received the honors of the first Confederate successes ; but when defeat fol- lowed, his former accomplices accused him of having accelerated 32 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. the common ruin by imperiously trammelling generals abler than himself. But, generally speaking, let us remark again, these Southern volunteers did not resemble those who would have taken up arms in support of a truly national cause. They were, for the most part, adventurers recruited from among that idle, restless, and adventurous population which the Southern leaders had made the pioneers of their institutions and had alternately thrust upon the Antilles and the far West. They were not without military quali- fications : always with rifle in hand, by turns soldiers, colonists, or traders, they had already fought as improvised citizens of Texas at the time when the North and the South were contending for the supremacy of influence in that ephemeral republic. They had already measured strength with the Mexican soldier, and at San Jacinto they had learned to outwit his vigilance and to excel his skill in horsemanship. The Americans, therefore, did not even wait for the declaration of war to launch out into the most haz- ardous expeditions. Between the populated districts of Mexico and the boundaries of Anglo-Saxon civilization, there was then a vast extent of country, almost untenanted, and inhabited only by roving Indians and a few settlers of Spanish origin. At certain periods this desert was ploughed by large armed caravans, which carried on a trade of more than ten millions annually, by follow- ing two routes, equally difficult and dangerous. One, starting from the rich mining districts of Chihuahua, pursued its course by way of El Paso, Santa Fe, and the Rocky Mountains to Fort Leavenworth, on the borders of the Missouri ; the other, leaving Monterey, crossed the Rio Grande and Texas, and finally reached the settlements of Arkansas and Louisiana. Although nominally under the jurisdiction of Mexico, this country, of which all ad- venturers had glimpses in their golden dreams, was in reality the land of God, as the Arabs express it. The first object of the war was to wrest this territory from the feeble hands that were unable to turn it to account. So that, while we find the army which Scott led into Mexico proceeding with great regularity, and only fighting to compel the enemy to come to terms, the troops under Taylor, which attacked Mexico by way of the Rio Grande, were a colonizing army. To distinguish them from the Army THE ARMY OF OCCUPATION IN MEXICO. 33 of Invasion commanded by General Scott, they were called the Army of Occupation, and they took possession of a country already considered as conquered. This country seemed to be protected by its own immensity ; but the Americans, who have been too often accused of tardiness, soon overcame this obstacle. Their columns swept rapidly over the territory, while a few insignificant bands rushed upon it with a degree of audacity which demands our attention for a moment. At the outset of tlie war General Kearny starts from Fort Leavenworth with twenty-seven hundred men, for the purpose of conquering New Mexico, the State of Chihuahua, and California — countries the surface of which is three or four times as larg-e as that of France. This column, however, consists only of three squadrons of regular cavalry, the rest being made up of volun- teers recruited in haste, two regiments of Missouri cavalry, one battalion of Mormons, and some artillery. A considerable train of provisions and ammunition accompanies them, for they have to cross a desert of four hundred leagues in order to reach the capital of New Mexico, Santa Fe, which is situated between two branches of the Cordilleras, upon an elevated plateau parched by drought, and where there is only to be met a narrow strip of grass on the margin of the little river, called even at this point the Rio Grande. At the entrance of this plateau the Mexicans occuj)y a defile of less than twelve metres in width. The Americans enter it with ,all their train, well knowing that in the event of their being driven back into the desert which stretches behind them, they must perish to a man ; but their auda- city disconcerts the Mexicans, who disappear at their approach, and fifty days after quitting the borders of the Missouri, Kearny and his little band enter the capital without striking a blow. But this conquest was only the first stage in the undertaking; it has scarcely been secured when Kearny, with a simple escort of one hundred dragoons and two mountain-howitzers, launches out into a new desert of four hundred leagues in extent to join hands with Colonel Fremont on the shores of the Pacific, and share with him the conquest of California. Fremont, a skilful and intrepid explorer, had preceded him a year before, prosecut- VoL. I.— 3 34 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. ing his scientific researches at the head of a band of Indians, some white hunters, and a few adventurous companions like himself, over whom, thanks to his energy, he exercised an absolute control. They wandered for a considerable time among those immense solitudes, driven by chance or necessity, studying the elements of the future prosperity of those settlers of whom they were the fore- runners, and from time to time making their sudden appearance among the Mexican settlements of California, where they were justly regarded as suspicious visitors. One day they were fired upon, and thus they learned that war had broken out on the Rio Grande. Fremont determined to revenge himself by conquering the province from which the inhabitants had sought to expel him. His boldness and sagacity assured him an easy victory over the ignorant assurance of the Mexicans. His ardor is communicated to all his companions, and he finds powerful allies among the American settlers, who, by crossing the Rocky Mountains, had already, for some years past, penetrated into California. A few days sufficed him to put the Mexican authorities to flight, to pro- claim the independence of California, and annex it to the United States. In the mean time, one of those counter-revolutions so common in Mexico broke out in the southern part of the State, at the very moment when Kearny, who had been travelling with his escort for the last two months without receiving any news from the outside world, was approaching the first California settle- ments. After exploring, in the nydst of unheard-of hardships, the routes to be followed by the caravans, to which he opened new outlets, he was in hopes of finding some rest under the pro- tection of the government founded by Fremont. Instead of this, at the end of his last terrible march of twenty-five leagues across a waterless desert, he encountered, December 6, 1846, a party of hostile cavalry, who disputed his passage. The Mexicans -were not superior in number to the Americans ; but as they carried no baggage and were supplied with fresh horses, they had a great advantage over an adversary who had travelled eight hundred leagues without receiving a single remount. One half of Kear- ny's soldiers were on foot escorting the guns, fifty of them were mounted on mules which had been unharnessed from the wagons in proportion as the train became lightened of iti load, while THE ARMY OF OCCUPATION IN MEXICO. 35 twelve dragoons only had retained their horses. These, with the officers, constituted the light cavalry. The latter, notwithstand- ing their small number, charged the enemy as soon as he came in sight, leaving the rest of the troop behind, who tried in vain to urge their wornout mules forward. At first the Mexicans made a show of resistance, then fled ; subsequently, perceiving by the irregularity of their motions, that their adversaries, like the Cu- riatii, had allowed themselves to become separated, they wheeled round abruptly, and tlieir long lances unhorsed their too confid- ing adversaries one after the other. Kearny himself received sev- eral wounds. Fortunately for him, the heavy cavalry had time to come up ; and notwithstanding the somewhat unmartial ap- pearance of the animals, its approach was sufficient to disperse the Mexicans. If the Americans had been beaten in the battle of San Pascual, they would inevitably have perished of hunger and destitution. Althougli victorious, they were obliged to repel for two days longer the attacks of their adversaries. Fortunately for them, the naval division of Commodore Stockton was waiting for them at San Diego, and a detachment of marines and soldiers, sent by the latter, brought them on the 11th of De(!ember the succor they had so greatly needed. After fifteen days' rest at San Diego, Kearny's small troop, reinforced by more than four hundred and fifty men, resumed their march under the supreme command of Stockton. On the 8th of January, 1847, at the river San Gabriel, the Americans dispersed the hostile forces assembled against tliem, and beat them again the next day before Los Angeles. After a violent quarrel with Stockton, Avho claimed the chief command, Kearny, continuing his march, was joined by a battalion of Mor- mons, which had arrived from the North, and at last occupied Upper California in concert with Lieutenant-Colonel Fremont. During this expedition, which secured to its general the title of governor of the new State, the two regiments of cavalry that Kearny had left at Santa Fe did not remain inactive. One, commanded by Colonel Sterling Price, whom we shall find later in the Confederate army, was making strenuous effi3rts to crush the insurrection of the Mexican settlers. The other, under the command of Colonel Doniphan, traversed, in the heart of winter, the rugged mountains inhabited by the Navajos Indians, the only 36 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. pastoral people on all the continent; and, after concluding a treaty of friendship with them, this little band had taken a southern di- rection toward the distant city of Chihuahua, in the hope of joining Taylor's army, which had crossed the Rio Grande, and had just invaded the province of Monterey. Doniphan had only eight hundred mounted Missourians, who were subsequently reinforced by about one hundred artillerymen, with four pieces of cannon. He was moreover obliged to accept the company of a caravan of American traders, who, after reach- ing Santa Fe by crossing the desert, were only waiting for an opportunity to introduce American goods into Mexico under the protection of the national flag, in spite of custom-house officers, Indians, and brigands. These warlike traders, with their train of three hundred and fifteen wagons, indemnified the troops for whatever trouble they might have caused them, by organizing among their mule-drivers two companies, which rendered essential service to the camp-guard. The little band has scarcely set out when it finds itself assailed by all the dangers which beset the traveller in those inhospitable regions ; in the Jornada del 3£uerto, a vast dried-up plateau of thirty-five leagues in length, it finds neither a drop of water nor a tree ; scarcely a few thorny plants, Avhich, blazing like straw, cannot impart any heat to the soldiers benumbed with cold ; their cinders, quickly cooled off, alone indicate, in the midst of that vast solitude, the track of the detachments which it has been found necessary to separate from the main body in orier to facili- tate the march. Owing to the want of water, the Americans find it impossible to make a halt until they at last reach the boundary of the desert which has been so appropriately denominated the Dead man's halt. But a slight skirmish soon makes them forget their hardships, and delivers to them the defile of JEl Paso del Norte, an import- ant strategic poirt ; it is the southern gate of New Mexico, the only one which opens upon the rich lands of Central Mexico. The Rio Grande, passing through this wild gorge, falls, in a succession of cascades, from the high table-lands into the rich valley, where it serves as the frontier of Texas. From this point the column advances slowly, for it is necessary to feed the animals and to THE ARMY OF OCCUPATION IN MEXICO. 37 reconnoitre a route almost unknown. It has left the fertile bor- ders of the Rio Grande, and the new deserts it has to cross have dangers and sufferings in store of a totally different kind from those it has hitherto encountered. These deserts consist of vast plains of burning sand that rise with the least puff of wind and give way under the footsteps of the soldier exhausted by the heat. The last stage in those dreadful solitudes proved nearly ftital to the Americans ; it was of twenty-five leagues and without water ; the wagons sank into the sand up to the axle-tree ; the drooping animals being no longer able to move them, they were abandoned, and the cares for the morrow were forgotten in the all-absorbing anxiety to reach the nearest water-sources, when a friendly rain- storm suddenly burst forth, and by restoring strength to the beasts of burden, saved the train and the entire force. But this danger was scarcely over when the little army was threatened by another. After the sterile desert comes the prairie with its tall dry grasses. The march has been fatiguing, for the whole day has been wasted in running after large herds of cattle, which, guarded by Mexican vaqueros, have finally disappeared in the distant horizon. They have hardly reached the margin of a lake, near which both men and beasts are endeavoring to procure some refreshing rest, when the most formidable foe to emigrants, the prairie fire, announces its approach. Lighted by the revenge- ful hand of some vaquero, or caused, it may be, by burning cin- ders neglected at the morning halt, the conflagration appears sud- denly above the heights which border the lake, sweeps down rap- idly, and quickly envelops its waters in flames and smoke. The camp is broken up in haste ; every living thing flies helter-skelter before the terrible element which outstrips the swiftest foot in ve- locity with an implacable uniformity of motion. The ammu- nition wagons, covered with sparks which the wind has driven before it, are dragged into the lake (fortunately not very deep), where the drivers sprinkle water over them ; the officers lead their horses into the water and then make them trample the grass with their wetted hoofs. All in vain ; the flames continue to ad- vance. At last a desperate remedy is resorted to ; after cutting down the tall grapses which surround them with their sabres and taking refuge witnin the space thus cleared, the troopers kindle 38 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. another fire all around them. The circle thus formed soon gains in proportions ; on one side this new fire advances slowly toward the great conflagration of the prairie, and stops its progress by interposing an impassable barrier, destroying the food it Avas about to devour. On the other side, driven by the wind, the fire spreads rapidly in advance of the American column, which follows it step by step over the burnt grasses until the fiery tem- pest which had threatened to consume them is left far behind. Findino; themselves at last freed from the embraces of the most cruel of all deaths, men and beasts then sink upon the still smok- ing and parched-up ground, caring for nothing but to procure a little of that repose which is so delightful after a great danger. Watch must be kept, however, for the vicinity of an enemy superior in number, although not yet visible, is made manifest by those multitudinous signs which a prairie life teaches one never to overlook. The vaqueros who have caused all the herds of cattle to disappear from those vast grazing-grounds, and the un- known hand that has kindled the prairie fire so as to carry the conflagration into the American camp, have, no doubt, obeyed the orders of this enemy. The decisive hour has arrived, and the little band prepares for battle. All the wagons of the army, both light and heavy, are formed into four parallel lines at intervals of fifty feet. The artillery is placed in the centre of each inter- vening space ; the mounted men occupy the right and left wings, while the light companies deploy and scout upon the road. In- stead of marching in a single column, easy to be broken, the train forms thus a compact mass, behind which the combatants, concealing their number, can entrench themselves in case of at- tack, and whence it is yet easy for them to emerge to form upon any point of that moving square. At night all the wagons, ranged in a circle and strongly tied together, are formed into a corral, a kind of temporary fortification within which the draught- animals are confined. In the event of a fight, as soon as the troops are engaged outside of the train, the corral is formed, and its defence is entrusted to the traders and the mule-drivers. At last, after a long journey, without water, February 28, 1847, they reach the borders of Rio Sacramento, when, in the place of a\i encampment where it had hoped to find rest, the little THE ARMY OF OCCUPATION IN MEXICO. 39 American army beholds four lines of redoubts erected upon pre- cipitous heights and occupied by four or five thousand Mexicans. True to their customs, the Mexicans were thus compelling the Americans to fight after a fiitigaing march; but if it be consid- ered clever tactics to force an adversary to assume the offensive under such circumstances, the party thus acting should at least have made sure of being able to withstand the ardor which the sight of the refreshing stream infused into those whom it was in- tended to drive from its approaches. The inhabitants of the neighborino; haciendas had g-athered in groups on the heights which border the Sacramento, some merely to look at those foreigners who had come from such a long dis- tance; others to aid in crushing them as soon as victory had declared against them. They followed with astonishment the movements of the American column, which, enveloped by its long lineS" of wagons, had abandoned its original direction in order to describe a large circuit upon its right. When the Mexicans understood the intentions of the Americans, the first line of redoubts had been turned and the second vigorously charged. They had yet time, however, to change front and advance en masse to the defence of this second line. The Americans were exposed to a slanting fire ; but the Mexicans having placed their guns on the summit of the hill, in the belief that the higher the position the stronger it must be, their plunging shots killed but one man among the assailants. The latter, however, were checked for a moment by a deep ravine. The first battalion of Doniphan, protected by two howitzers that had arrived at a gallop to come into battery fifty paces from the Mexican works, attempted to carry them without dismounting, and was firing in vain upon their defend- ers. But the second battalion, having dismounted, dislodged the enemy, who abandoned all his entrenchments and allowed himself to be driven from post to post until his retreat became a perfect rout. The Missouri volunteers had fought equally well on foot and on horseback ; but the success was chiefly due to the officer who had so boldly brought up his two howitzers. The Mexi- cans left behind them three hundred wounded and ten pieces of cannon, and on the following day the victors entered Chihuahua. But in this town Doniphan received news which rendered lis 40 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. position singularly perilous. General Wool, who had left Texas with a considerable force for the purpose of joining him, had failed to make his appearance. A mountain too steep for his train, the existence of which he had not known, had obliged him to abandon the direction of Chihuahua, and he had retraced his steps towards the encampments of Taylor on the lower Rio Grande. That general, weakened by the departure of his best troops for Vera Cruz, and himself greatly exposed, had detained him at Saltillo. Wool thus found himself at more than one hundred and fifty leagues from Doniphan, and utterly unable to effect a junction with him. Isolated in a town of twenty-six thousand inhabitants, in the heart of a hostile country, having received neither succor nor a dollar since the commencement of the campaign, those eight hun- dred men, whose term of enlistment had only two months more to run, had some cause to fear that they might find themselves in some Mexican prison when their time of service expired. To beat a retreat would have been to acknowledge their weakness, and to draw upon themselves an adversary whose forces increased at the slightest indication of success. They settled down in the city with a degree of assurance which disconcerted their enemies, avowed or concealed. The traders unloaded their wagons and opened a fair. Strict police regulations, an entirely new thing in Chihuahua, were maintained by the Americans. Men and animals thus rested themselves for two months, and prepared for the new haraships they would have some time to encounter. At last, one day some bold troopers who had succeeded in reach- ing the headquarters of General Wool brought back an order to re- join the army of occupation at Saltillo. The column took up once more the line of march, leaving behind it the towu of Chihua- hua, where they had lived in peace and plenty, together with its listless population, which looked upon their departure with the same emotions with which it had witnessed their arrival, consid- ering them as powerful travellers whose visit, if not too long, presented a curious spectacle, with opportunities of profit. After another march of one hundred and fifty leagues, they encamped near their comrades at Saltillo and Monterey; but their term of enlistment having expired, they proceeded toM'ards the Rio THE ARMY OF OCCUPATION IN MEXICO. ■ 41 Grande ; and, unmolested by any enemy, they went to embark in the vicinity of Matamoras for New Orleans On their return to Missouri they were discharged, having travelled more than two thousand leagues during their one year's service. Like those torrents which rush down from the Rocky Mountains in the neighborhood of Santa F^, some running into the Pacific Ocean and others into the Gulf of Mexico, so did the small band which had started from Fort Leavenworth become divided in the capital of New Mexico ; and while Kearny was making his entry into San Francisco, Doniphan, after traversing all the north of Mexico, had reached the shores of the great Gulf with his troops. When he rejoined Taylor at Saltillo, the army of occupation had already fought several important battles in the vicinity of the Rio Grande and at Monterey. But although the troops of Taylor were more numerous than those whose adventurous march we have just been following, the study of their campaign does not afford the same interest in a military point of view. In that campaign, however, the Americans received a few les- sons which they subsequently turned to account. Thus, for in- stance, at the outset, a squadron of regular cavalry allowed itself to be drawn into a corral, or hacienda stable-yard, where the half wild horses of the country are confined and tamed, and the whole party was captured like a herd of cattle which a blind terror de- livers to the lasso of the vaquero. Their first important operations came also very near terminating in a disaster. The line which connected their cantonments on the Rio Grande with their dep6ts at Point Isabel, near the mouth of that river, ran along the left bank, in sight of the enemy's posts situated on the opposite bank. The Mexican general Arista de- termined to pierce it by a sudden attack. The Americans, warned in time by a fortunate chance, fell back upon their depots thus menaced. When they attempted afterward to go to extricate the little garrison that had been left in their cantonments, they found Arista barring their passage at Palo Alto (May 8, 1846). Al- though this general had so entirely lost all presence of mind that his countrymen accused him of treason, the Americans would have been compelled to beat a retreat before the superior number 42 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. and position of the enemy, but for the steadfastness of their old battalions of regular troops. These did not allow themselves to be shaken by the impetuous charge of the Mexican lancers. At the risk of seeing their caissons blown up, the artillery, always well served, rush into the prairie, which has been on fire since the beginning of the engagement. Masked by the thick smoke, which the wind blows into the Mexican ranks, it takes a position so as to enfilade their lines, and thus obliges the enemy to beat a hasty retreat. The INIexican rear-guard, making a stand at Resaca de la Palma,, tries in vain to cover the passage of the Rio Grande. The American artillery is the first to attack it ; the regular dra- goons charge and disperse it; and finally the infantry drives it into the stream in the midst of the greatest disorder. The Mex- ican army, completely disorganized, sought refuge in the interior, where it suffered the most terrible privations before it could reach the quiet and wealthy districts where it could reorganize. Never- theless, a few months later (August, 1846) the important city of Monterey, which they had left behind with a feeble garrison, was able to repel for two whole days, while inflicting heavy losses upon the assailants, all the attacks of those regular troops, accustomed to victory in an open field, whatever might be the numerical force of the Mexicans. The armistice which the commander, Ampudia, obtained, for the purpose of evacuating the city, when he found himself threatQned with famine, was an homage paid to the cour- age of his soldiers. Both parties had been too sanguine of easy victory. Owing to this excess of confidence, the Mexicans were beaten, and the Americans were not in a condition to follow up their success. It was necessary to prepare for a new campaign. The Americans organized a naval expedition ; the Mexicans made a revolution. Not being able to clear a way across the immense tract of country which separates Saltillo, where Taylor was encamped with the army of occupation, from ihe, city of Mexico, where the treaty of cession which the Americans wanted to wrest from their ad- versary had to be sought, they determined to attack the enemy at the most vulnera])le point on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Some troops had been collected at New Orleans for this pur- . pose, but it was deemed necessary to take away from Taylor his THE ARMY OF OCCUPATION IN MEXICO. 43 best soldiers to form the principal nucleus of the new expedition. These preparations occupied a portion of the winter, and at the beginning of 1847, nearly all the regular troops that Taylor had under his command were proceeding toward Matamoras, where they were to join the fleet, which had left New Orleans, and em- bark with General Scott for Vera Cruz. In the mean time, the jNIexicans, under the pretext of a political revolution called federalist, had called into power a soldier, the most able to cope with the invaders. When, ten years before, at San Jacinto, a trick of fortune delivered President Santa Anna into the hands of the warlike American settlers in Texas, instead of shooting him, they had set him free, thinking, as they said, that they could not bestow a more fatal gift upon their enemies. In fact, his restless ambition, capricious and fertile in expedients, did not permit him in time of peace either to submit to a regular government, or to become himself the founder of one ; but in time of war, his failings as much as his talents secured him a powerful influence over his countrymen. He alone could organize a resist- ance and create unlooked-for resources to sustain it. He gave evidence of his foresight by taking advantage of the moment when a portion of his adversaries had already abandoned their positions beyond the Rio Grande and were sailing in the Gulf of Mexico, to attack those that had remained with Taylor before the naval expedition, the object of which a fortunate accident had revealed to him, should call him back to the defence of Vera Cruz. He had re-created an army ; and the battle which he fought with Taylor at Buena Vista (on the 23d of February, 1847) was cer- tainly the best contested of the entire war. The American army had lost even more in quality than in quantity through the rein- forcements that had been sent to Scott ; with the exception of the artillery and some cavalry, it consisted only of volunteers who had not seen one year's service. It is therefore of interest to us to see them at work on the only occasion when, in the whole course of that war, they were left to themselves. It is impossible to find in the official accounts of that battle the least evidence of any concerted movement ; the action once commenced, each officer acts upon his own impulses. The gen- eral-in-chief, not depending upon the execution of his orders, goes 44 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. in person, on the evening of the first day's battle, to visit hi£ depdts, several leagues in the rear of the army. Returned to the field of battle, he braves the enemy's fire without thinking of di- recting the movements of his various corps, which have become engaged at hap-hazard. The Mexicans, on this occasion, being well handled, vigorously assume the offensive. Some of the American regiments repel the first shock, while others, on the contrary, instantly disperse, deaf to every appeal to hold their ground. The entire line, thus outflanked at several points, wavers ; isolated groups of soldiers are trying to secure the best positions for holding in check the Mexican cavalry, which is driving: before it all whom it has thrown into confusion. The artillery, abandoned by those whose duty it was to suj)port it, continues to fight heroically, thereby delaying the success of the Mexicans. But the latter, trusting to their numbers (they were twenty-two thousand against six thousand*), captured several guns, notwithstanding the efforts of the regular officers, and of Colonel Jefferson Davis, who was seriously wounded at the head of his regiment. This handful of men would have been anni- hilated but for the timely arrival of Captain Braxton Bragg, who, crossing: tlie field of battle from one side to the other with his bat- tery, saved them from utter destruction. Jefferson Davis never forgot this service, and ever after showed great favor to Bragg, for which he was severely blamed when this officer had attained the highest ranks in the Confederate army. Among the other officers who distinguished themselves on that memorable occa- sion, mention has been made of the names of Sherman, Thomas, Reynolds, and French, all of whom became celebrated afterward in the Federal ranks. In the mean time, the artillery on one side, two regiments of cavalry and three battalions of infantry on the other, continued alone to make resistance, and the Mexicans, notwithstanding their losses, might, by a final effort, have secured the victory. Their mounted men, bestriding horses caparisoned in all that gorgeous- ness of colors which is so attractive to southern people, and bran- dishing their lances with long streamers, were advancing in ser- * Tlie disparity was even greater. The American army did not number quite five tliousiind men. — Ed. THE ARMY OF OCCUPATION IN 3IEXIC0. 45 ried columns and in the best of order, despite the roughness of the ground. But as they neared that portion of the American line of infantry which was still making resistance, their motions were seen to slacken ; the grape-shot had begun to reach them. They came to a full stop, and a few volleys of musketry sufficed to make them wheel about in quick time. The American mounted volunteers on their part, under the command of a rough but brave Kcntuck- ian, Humphrey Marshall, behaved handsomely. At first they occupied, as sharpshooters and on foot, a crest inaccessible to horses ; then, at the moment of the great disorder, they fell back gradually without allowing themselves to be broken. Reduced finally to four hundred men, they waited, without flinching and in line of battle, the attack of a brigade of the enemy, which they received at sixty paces with a volley fired from their saddles. Then, seeing the Mexicans waver and halt, they flung their car- bines over their shoulders, and charging the enemy with their sabres, put them to flight after a bloody conflict, in Avhich many of their men, and one of their colonels, were left upon the ground. Disorganized by the very effort which had seemed to render success certain, the Mexican army gave up the struggle ; but it was only on the following day, when they were preparing for a new effort to sustain the unequal contest, that, finding no longer any enemy in front, the Americans, as it has often happened to them since, learned that they had gained the victory. Having failed on this side, Santa Anna unhesitatingly turned towards Vera Cruz, where his presence was needed, and where we shall again shortly find him. He left the army of occupation in quiet possession of the country it had conquered, but too far re- mote from the new theatre of war to exercise any influence over tlio events of which we have yet to speak. CHAPTER IV. THE ARMY OF INVASION IN MEXICO. ON the 9th day of March, 1847, thanks to the skill of tlw American navy, twelve thousand men were landed on the beach of Vera Cruz without striking a blow. The operations of this little army, which, although never amounting to more than fourteen thousand men, was nevertheless able to open for itself a triumphant passage to the city of Mexico, deserve all our attention. It passed through a country which is now familiar to those who have become interested in the labors of our own soldiers in the same localities ; and the obstacles which it encountered, the skilful and successful manner in which it Avas handled, while they earned for it well-deserved glory, also proved to be the best of schools. Santa Anna had preceded it to Vera Cruz, his real capital, which had so often seen him retire like a hermit to his vast haci- enda, or appear suddenly among the barracks to issue some pro- nunciamiento. The recollection of that night in 1838, when he was surprised and wounded by a handful of our bold sailors, had not discouraojed him. But while giving directions for the defence of the place where he intended to cause the success of our arms to be forgotten, he took care not to shut himself up within its walls in the presence of the Americans. He dreaded with just cause the superiority of their discipline, of their military spirit, of their maUriel, and, above all, of their perseverance. In spite of one of those terrible northers so common and so dangerous in the harbor of Vera Cruz, which interrupted all communication with the fleet, and which by demolishing the hills of moving sand levelled the first works of the engineer, the siege progressed rapidly. The city surrendered three days after the trenches were opened, and after one day's bombardment, which only disabled sixty-four Americans. THE ARMY OF INVASION IN MEXICO. 47 But all the advantages accruing from this rapid success were lost in consequence of the difficulty of transportation, which is the great problem of war in regions destitute of resources, and which becomes still more difficult when, the base of operations being purely maritime, the supplies are slow in reaching their des- tination. The horses and draught mules had perished in the gale, and three weeks elapsed before the army could take up its line of march. Fortunately for it, the Mexicans did not know how to take advantage of this delay. If they had confined themselv^es to the defence of cities and forts like Puebla and Perote, and to harassing the Americans with their numerous cavalry, the latter, not being then provided with the means for transporting their siege guns, would have found a resistance in those localities which they could not have overcome. But despite the teachings of the Spanish war, the Mexicans forgot Saragossa, to imitate Ocana and Rio Seco. They had not the incentives of popular passions and national hatred to lead them to resort to that terrible street-figlit- ing in which the Spanish race excels. The Americans had avoided all occasions of stirring up their animosities, by not meddling with their intestine quarrels. Scott, who had no more idea of their regeneration than Santa Anna himself, had taken sides with none of the parties which divided them ; he was most anxious not to overthrow the government he had come to fight ; for he wanted to be able to treat with it on the day after the victory. Besides, it was not the sacrifice of some distant portions of the territory which could rouse a population accustomed to see half these prov- inces in arms against each other. Therefore, during that cam- paign the cities themselves offered no resistance to the little for- eign army. The inhabitants, crowded upon the balconies to see the American soldiers pass, wondering 'at their haggard looks, their tattered garments, and disappointed in their expectations of a brilliant pageant, asked each other how such men could have vanquished the national troops, but left to those troops the care of fio-hting them. Santa Anna committed an error of frequent occurrence in those half-civilized countries, where generals with scarcely any military experience command troops tliat have but the outward appearance of our organized armies. Always anxious to fight pitched battles, 48 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. they impose a discipline upon their soldiers which embarrasses without sustaining them ; they encumber themselves with materiel which they know not how to use, and thus lose all their natural advantages. "When he took up his position at Cerro Gordo — a position skilfully chosen and strongly entrenched, for the purpose of preventing the Americans from reaching the table-lands by the Jalapa road — he sustained, on the 18th of April, 1847, a crushing defeat. Of his twelve thousand men, three thousand were taken prisoners, and the remainder took to flight, leaving behind them four thousand muskets and forty-three guns. He had again committed the mistake which, at the beginning of the war of Mexican inde- pendence, had proved so fatal to Hidalgo. But at Cerro Gordo one did not see, as at Calderon Bridge, entire populations of In- dians almost unarmed given up to useless and inevitable slaughter. The courageous defence of the Mexicans was, on the contrary, a useful lesson to the Americans. In fact, Scott had charged the enemy in front and in flank at the same time. The first of these two attacks cost the Americans dear, and was productive of no results ; while the other, boldly led, succeeded in taking the army of Santa Anna in rear and throwing it into irretrievable con- fusion. These flank movements, often tried afterward, always proved successful before an enemy who weakened his wings for the sake of extending his lines. The success of this flank movement had, besides, been carefully planned. They had scarcely emerged from their open trenches among the moving sands and fever-breeding swamps which sur- round Vera Cruz, when the American soldiers took up once more the shovel and pick, for three days, to cut a passage through a rock, which allowed the artillery to take up a position within range of the Mexican works at Cerro Gordo, and to support the assault which carried them. It was owing to this patient labor that the defences erected in front of the enemy's army were avoided, and that, at the critical moment, the latter found its re- treat cut ofP. Scott's troops showed their valor, not only by resolutely charg- ing positions bristling with guns, but especially in pursuing the enemy after his defeat with a degree of vigor which prevented him from rallying again. This pursuit, difficult when the ques- THE ARMY OF INVASION IN MEXICO. 49 tion of supplies embarrasses every movement, would have been impossible with new troops, who are always exhausted at the end of a conflict by the very effort which has secured the victory. Perote and Puebla fell into the hands of the Americans with- out a struggle. It was very fortunate for them that they had so crippled the Mexican army that their entrance into those towns could not be opposed ; for their number had been greatly reduced, and they were beginning to experience those vexations which render a campaign in the New World so troublesome. A month of inactivity in the fatal climate of tropical lands, followed by long and fatiguing marches, the scorching days and cold nights of the table-lands, had developed many diseases in that little army, which only numbered forty-five hundred men when it entered Puebla. The large train, from which it could not sepa- rate itself, had been equally diminished. Admirably adapted for long expeditions in the vast prairies of the far West, it was poorly organized for the purpose of following an army over the rugged soil of Mexico. The wagons were too hea\y, the teams, already much reduced in numbers during the sea voyage, were falling in their traces, and the mules of the country were restive in harness. The few remaining vehicles were encumbered with the sick that could not be left behind. There also occurred in this army, composed as it was of men of such various nation- alities, too many desertions. Finally, the four thousand volun- teers who followed Scott as far as Jalapa had only a few weeks longer to serve ; for at the time of their enlistment they did not count on so long a war. Although this corps constituted more than one-third of his army, the American general would not take them along with him in his march upon Mexico, as it would have rendered it impossible for tlicm to leave him when their term of enlistment should expire. That high-toned commander, a scru- pulous observer of the requirements of law, like the people whom he represented, made it a point to fulfil the obligations which the State had assumed in regard to them, and at the end of April he sent them back to Vera Cruz, before the yellow fever scourged the coast. The Federal government had committed a grave error, and had greatly deceived itself regarding the facility of reaching Mexico ; Vol. I.— 4 • 50 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. for that strange capital is surrounded by a kind of mirage which dazzles all those whose cupidity it excites. But when free gov- ernments, acting under the influence of popular impressions, com- mit such errors, to which absolute powers are not less liable, they generally find in public opinion itself the means of rectifying them. Congress, in fact, in its session of 1846, had failed to vote the formation of ten new regiments of regulars which had been proposed at the last moment ; and the President was not author- ized to raise them until the time when tliey should already have been landed at Vera Cruz to reinforce Scott, who was condemned to inactivity on the table-lands of Puebla. But this want of foresight was soon followed by action. The smallest detach- ments of the regular army were called in from every part of the country to constitute cadres for the new regiments, which, thanks to the rapidity of enlistments, swelled to more than ten thousand men during the year ; and as the question now was to sustain the national honor, the North furnished volunteers with as much eagerness as the South. Finally, after a tedious inactivity of three months and a half, the American army found itself increased to the total of four- teen thousand five hundred men. This was not enough, however, to maintain communications with the sea while the principal column Avas marching upon Mexico. Scott resorted to a bold expedient: all the garrisons, except those of Vera Cruz and Perote, were gathered together in Puebla, where six hundred able-bodied men and six hundred convalescents were shut up with twenty-five hundred sick confided to their care. The American general, having given up his base of operations, took up his line of march with ten thousand seven hundred and thirty-eight men, and every available means of transportation. The total amount of regular troops in this force was eighteen regiments, a number altogether unusual, some of which had been reduced, it is true, to less than five hundred men during the campaign ; they comprised twelve regiments of the line, one of voltigeurs, one of dismounted rifles, and four regiments of foot artillery, taken from the various Federal fortresses, which per- formed infantry duty. Tlie regulars formed three divisions, to which was added one division of volunteers, each comprising two THE ARMY OF INVASION IN MEXICO. 51 brigades and one regular field battery. The cavalry, in conse- quence of the difficulty of maritime transportation, was reduced to five hundred horses, a most insignificant nunqiber compared with that of the Mexicans. The American heavy wagons hav- ing failed for the transportation of provisions and ammunition, a convoy of the sumpter animals of the country was substituted. The circumstances which obliged the Americans to abandon their communications with Puebla rendered it necessary for them to keep their lines as close during their march as the difficulties of the roads and the necessity of collecting provisions permitted. The divisions were kept apart at intervals of three leagues, so as to be able mutually to support each other. The park with the large impedimenta followed first. The dragoons, well officered, scouted the roads sufficiently, notwithstanding the smallness of their numbers. It was in this order that the Americans crossed the table-lands and the high chain of mountains which separate Puebla from the interior basin of Mexico. The heavy rains of that year had swelled the torrents and damaged all the roads. The American soldier does not possess the art of procuring food in a poor or exhausted country. The administrative department, accustomed to campaigns in which the troops carried everything with them, did not know how to make a country contribute to the necessary wants of the army, while lightening as much as possible the burdens of war. Provisions were scarce. Invisible but stubborn g-uerillas surrounded the Americans like an elusive mist; and they advanced rapidly to escape from their clutches. It was especially around the large supply-train, the preservation of which was a matter of vital importance, that it became neces- sary to be doubly vigilant. Consequently, when the mules, strung along like a chaplet of beads, pricked up their ears, and shaking the little bells attached to their parti-colored trappings, entered one of those defiles favorable to ambuscades, the alarms were fre- quent ; the least impediment, the shouts of the Mexican arrieros, of doubtful fidelity, the very echo of the animals' feet striking against the rocks, seemed to the officers charged with this heavy responsibility the signal of some treachery. The Americans, however, arrived without fight or accident in the valley of Mexico, where Santa Anna, with an army which 52 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. four months' respite had enabled him to reorganize, offered them another chan«?e in the game he had once lost at Cerro Gordo — double or quits. This time, profiting by experience, he fully in- tended to take advantage of those solid buildings which the Spaniards had scattered around Mexico. The position of Scott's army was a difficult one. In sacrificing his communications, he ' had deprived the enemy of one of his principal resources — the attack of isolated detachments — but at the sight of the prepara- tions for defence made by the latter, he must have acknovs^ledged that he had not brought one man too many with him, in order to avoid a disaster the gravity of which no line of posts established en echelon on the route could have lessened. His troops, full of confidence in him, had not been in the least alarmed at a step which would have disconcerted less experienced soldiers. It was necessary at all hazards for them to conquer this for- midable adversary in the positions he had chosen. They fortu- nately passed through this ordeal so trying to the morale of the soldier, and success justified the daring of their chief. They may probably have been sustained by the example of that adven- turous genius who was the first to subjugate Mexico; for the Americans, who are far from wanting in imagination when the greatness of the nation is in question, were no doubt incited by the remembrance of Cortes and the hope of equalling his exploits. Nature has done everything to render the approaches to Mexico difficult : — On one part, lakes and marshes intersected by narrow causeways, which the redoubts erected by Santa Anna fully com- manded. On the other, along the mountain sides which surround this interior basin, a ground singularly uneven, traversed by im- mense petrified streams of ancient lava, in which enormous blocks with sharp angles are piled up in heaps. These streams of lava, called pedregales, were impracticable for cavalry and artillery; the infantry even could not keep their ranks ; and the small but com- pact villages of Contreras, San Antonio, and Churubusco formed a line on that same ground difficult to carry. Nearer the capital rose the rock of Chapultepec (the " hill of locusts "), crowned with strong Spanish fortifications of the seventeenth century which command all its approaches. Finally, the city itself, THE ARMY OF INVASION IN MEXICO. 53 owing to an unusual rainy season, was then surrounded by ground deeply gullied. A series of combats which occupied three days, from the 18 th to the 20th of August, and which conjointly constituted an im- portant battle, as much on account of the price it cost as for its results, delivered up to the Americans the first line of defences. The decisive blow was delayed for two weeks by an armistice, of which the Mexicans alone derived the benefit. But the two bloody days of the 7th and 13th of September caused the fall of Chapultepec, and secured to the Americans, with that final vic- tory, possession of the great city of Mexico. These two operations deserve to be commented upon in detail, for they reflected as much honor upon the commander who con- ducted them as upon the army that executed them. The limits of this historical sketch, however, do not allow us to do more here than point out the principal features of the struggle, and the military qualities to which the Americans were indebted for their success against an enemy superior in numerical strength and mas- ter of strong defensive positions. They knew how to work, march, and fight at the same time. "With pick in hand, they opened for themselves a passage across the peclregal to avoid some of the strongest positions of the enemy. Sometimes in his very presence, at other times concealing their movements, and often even dispensing with the support of tlieir artillery, it was always by some flanking manoeuvre that they prepared for their successes ; and if it happened more than once that in the midst of some movement executed under the fire of the enemy, or in the darkness of the night, their battalions, little used to act in concert, were thrown into confusion, the zeal and intelligence of the officers always repaired these accidents in time. It was by their courage, in short, and their stubbornness, that the American troops achieved victory when it became necessary to attack positions in front which could no longer be turned. He had hardly set foot upon the direct road from Vera Cruz to Mexico, which runs between the lakes Tezcuco and Chalco, when Scott perceived that he could not open himself a passage on that side. Renewing on a larger scale the manoeuvre of Cerro Gordo, he determined to attempt an attack by way of the south 54 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. after having turned Lake Chalco. Between this lake and the adjacent mountains, it was found necessary to cut a road several leagues in length, enabling the artillery to come within range of Contreras, and securing at the same time the communications of the army with the depots that had been left east of Lake Chalcp. This turning movement, thus commenced at the entrance into the basin of Mexico, was continued until the taking of the capi- tal. It always proved successful in the face of an enemy unable to make any sudden movement without falling into the greatest disorder. When arrived in front of Contreras and San Antonio, the Americans meet with a more vigorous resistance than they had anticipated. Their first attack is repulsed; their artillery, too weak to have any effect upon houses solidly roofed, is crushed by the superior calibre of the Mexican guns. They at once make a new flank movement. One division proceeds under cover of the night to place itself in the very rear of the position of Contreras, and the defenders of the place only become aware of this bold manoeuvre when they find them- selves attacked and surrounded on every side. This point d'oppui once carried, the Americans concentrate their efforts successively upon each of the positions which formed the too extended line of the enemy. This is entirely broken, and the Mexicans only re- tain the massive walls of the convent of San Pablo de Churu- busco, with the adjoining tSte de pont, which, being in the rear of that line, could not be turned with it. This time it was found necessary to attack the position in front, which the regular troops vigorously carried, not without sustaining serious losses, thus showing that if they knew how to manoeuvre under an able com- mander, the latter could also rely upon them at that critical mo- ment in all battles when the personal courage of the soldier de- cides the victory. The successes which after the expiration of the armistice opened the gates of Mexico to the Americans were obtained in the same manner. Always manoeuvring by their left, after having passed from the eastern to the southern part of the city, they extended their lines from south to west, and when they appeared before its walls they were exactly facing Vera Cruz. In order to capture the castle of Chapultepec, they sought to surround that formid- THE ARMY OF INVASION IN MEXICO. 55 able position by forcing the extremity of the line of which it waa the key. But the success of this movement was purchased at a great sacrifice. At the extreme left, three hundred dragoons, under the command of Major Sumner, undergo the most difficult ordeal that can be conceived for cavalry, and keep that of the enemy in check by remaining immovable under a murderous fire. In the mean while, the regular foot-soldiers make an assault upon the works which form the Mexican line. Although they suc- ceed in piercing the centre, the most important entrenchments which support its two extremities resist all their efforts. A single regiment loses eleven of its fourteen officers before Molino del Rey. But, as it happened at Contreras, this check is soon turned into a victory. Seeing their line broken, and perceiving farther off on the plain Sumner, who is with his few dragoons and a bat- tery of artillery driving the Mexican lancers before him, the defend- ers of ]\Iolino del Rey and of Casa de Mata, fearing to be hemmed in, abandon their positions in great haste. The American army lost in that battle (September 7, 1847) one-fourth of its effective force. Nevertheless, on the following day, they must go to work to demolish the fortifications evacuated by the enemy, and to erect batteries in front of Chajudtepec : they must place there the siege-guns brought from Vera Cruz or captured at Contreras, whose fire is to batter down the thick walls of the castle. De- spite the murderous fire of the besieged, all the preparatory works are speedily completed, and Chapultepec is bombarded during two days. At last, on the 13th of September, the American troops scale the steep acclivities and surmount the various obstacles of every sort by which the ancient residence of the viceroys of New Spain is surrounded. The garrison, which numbers among its best combatants the pupils of the military school, makes a brave defence, but, exhausted and decimated, it can no longer resist the concentrated effort of the Americans, who make themselves mas- ters of the whole castle. The war was virtually ended. A clever feint which drew the attention of the Mexicans to one of the gates of the capital, while the army completed its great flank movements at the west, enabled the latter to take possession of another entrance to the city, and thus spared its adversaries an effusion of blood thereafter useless. 56 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. There were very few men on that side, and not a single gun, tc take advantage of the obstacles that Nature has placed there. Only a few muskets were fired to cover the retreat of Santa Anna. Notwithstanding his defeats, he could go out of the capital he had so ably defended with head erect, nor had he yet given up the game. His sudden attack upon Puebla is an evidence of his daring and of the resources of his genius, and it was only after the conflict at Huamantla that, forsaken by his most trusty com- panions, he was compelled to submit to the decrees of fate. In the battles fought around the capital, the American army took thirty-seven hundred prisoners, thirteen of whom were gen- erals and three ex-presidents; and among its trophies were found seventy-five cannons. The army itself lost in those conflicts twenty-seven hundred and three men, or the fourth part of all its effective force ; so that, notwithstanding the genial climate of those high table-lands, the sound constitution of the soldier, in- ured to military life, and the precautions which saved them from much sickness, their number was reduced to about six thousand men when they occupied Mexico. But this small body of troops, composed of the ^lite of the American forces, had acquired, together with the consciousness of its prowess, an experience in the art of war which proved ben- eficial to all the regular army, and which was not lost in the great struggle of 1861. It was among the young generation who learned their trade so well under Scott, that both Federals and Confed- erates sought the leaders to whom they confided the control of their respective armies. Thus, to mention some names we sliall find again presently in every page of this narrative, it was at the siege of Vera Cruz that Lee, McClellan, and Beauregard, all three officers of engineers, made together their d&}ut in arms. Lee, who, through his ability as a staff* officer, soon afterward gained the entire confidence of General Scott, directed at Cerro Gordo and Contreras the construction of the roads which secured the victorious movements of the army. After his name, which was destined to a much greater celebrity, those of Sumner and of Kearny, both serving in the small corps of dragoons which had such a hard task to perform throughout that campaign, were the most frequently mentioned by their commanders. Sumner, THE AR3IY OF INVASION IN MEXICO. 57 formed to lead a charge of cavalry straight to the point of attack, courageous, stubborn, and as inflexible in matters of discipline as he was unsparing toward himself, had been surnamed by his sol- diers "the Bull of the Woods." Always keeping clear of politics and faithful to his flag, we find him in 1857 dispersing the legis- lature of Kansas in the name of the then pro-slavery government of Washington, with as much ardor as he displayed in defending the national cause in the army of the Potomac in 1862. Kearny, chivalrously brave and passionately fond of the military profes-' sion, always discontented with his superior officers, except when ordered to attack the enemy, had accompanied our army to Alge- ria in 1840, in the Medeah expedition, and had subsequently re- turned to Europe to follow that army in the campaign of Italy. At the battle of Contreras, rushing with one hundred horse in pursuit of the fleeing Mexicans, he followed them as far as the gates of the city, where he lost an arm. Of all the officers of his squadron, one only, not less brave than himself, but more favored by fortune than the rest — Lieutenant Ewell — returned without a wound ; and by another strange fatality, fifteen years later almost to a day, Kearny and himself were found each in a command of a division in the two contending armies on the battle-field of Chan- til ly, where the former was killed while vainly endeavoring to remedy the mistakes of his general; whilst the latter, always more fortunate, only lost a leg in that bloody conflict. In order to show how useful the Mexican campaign was in training gen- erals for the civil war, it will suffice to say that among those offi- , cers who had the honor of receiving special mention in the des- patches of General Scott, sixteen became generals in the Federal army, and fourteen in that of the Confederates. Tlie American army remained some time longer in Mexico ; it even received a reinforcement of twelve or fifteen thousand men, and these reserves, drilled and instructed under the assiduous care of Scott, soon rivalled in ardor and soldierly bearing the troops who had passed through all the trials of the campaign. The conqueror of Mexico was as much admired as he was envied. Some personages of distinction in the country, already in search of a foreign monarch, offered him the imperial crown of the Aztecs ; and it is even asserted that this idea was for a 68 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. time popular in Mexico, where the name of Scott represented at once strength and moderation. But he was not tlie man to barter away the title of citizen in a free country for the false glitter of such an offer ; for he well knew that the satisfaction which an honest man can find in public life depends not on the greatness of his personal position, but on the character and ripe political judgment of the people whose destinies he shares. Respected by those he had vanquished, worshipped by his sol- diers and officers, his relations with the generals of divisions soon became embittered by jealousy. Politics interfered ; he was re- called, and had to return to the United States alone, in advance of the troops he had so well commanded. But with a truly free people injustice is seldom of long duration. The Americans, far from adopting the miserable prejudices of those who were then in power, felt that they had cause to be proud of their general. He had infused new life into the regular army ; he had given it traditions, and, above all, he had inspired it with confidence in itself. Consequently, knowing how to conquer love as well as to enforce obedience, he was regarded from that time as the father of the family of officers reared in his school. CHAPTER Y. THE AMERICAN ARMY AMONG THE INDIANS. niHE Mexican war was the only brilliant epoch in the annals J- of the American army from its actual formation in 1815 down to the breaking out of the civil war in 1861. But the remainder of that long period was not a time of peace and rest for it, inasmuch as it was occupied by incessant conflicts with the descendants of the ancient possessors of America. "When this army was charged with the protection of the fron- tiers of the newly-settled States, the Indians living east of the Mississippi had not yet been driven into the far West, nor politi- cally absorbed by the white race. But the latter was already crowding upon them, stifling them within narrow limits, and in proportion as its settlements extended, it successively despoiled them of their domains, and removed them, partly with their con- sent and partly by force, to some district yet too far distant to excite the cupidity of the whites, where a new place of exile was assigned them under the name of Indian Reservation. The abo- .riginal race, which often submitted to these sad migrations with the indifference of fatalism, would also at times resist the con- querors who imposed them with all the energy of despair. When the struggle between the pioneer abusing his superior intelligence, and the savage trying to find in the expedients of cunning some help for his weakness, became embittered, the little American army, summoned to the assistance of the settlers or the Federal agents, found itself engaged in a murderous, toilsome, and obscure war. Sometimes it had to take part in skirmishes which were important only on account of the magnitude of the losses it sus- tained in them. Thus, in 1814, a conflict took place on the yet unfrequented borders of the Tallapoosa, in which the American cavalry lost over two hundred men, and the Creek tribe, van- 59 60 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. quished after a desperate struggle, left more than one thousand warriors on the battle-field. The tribe which offered the longest resistance was that of the Seminoles, once a powerful nation, always haughty and warlike, gradually driven by the whites into the low lands which form the peninsula of Florida, in the south-eastern portion of the United States. There, under a tropical sun and amidst impene- trable thickets, two enemies, both alike invisible and unrelenting — the fever and the Indian — awaited the American soldier, who, bending under the weight of his arms and his provisions, had exhausted all his strength in contending against the obstackrf of Nature. The Florida war, often rekindled after deceitful attempts at pacification, was long and cruel. The Indians, exasperated by repeated instances of bad faith on the j)art of the whites, gave no quarter. Reduced in number by the unequal contest, they sought shelter among the inaccessible recesses of the Everglades — vast woody swamps where the cypress, the magnolia, and the palmetto preserve an eternal verdure — and at the approach of the whites they would disappear with their light canoes in a labyrinth of channels of which they alone knew the secret. The Americans, taking: advantage of their divisions and the exhaustion of all their resources, went at last to find them in this last refuge. It was a trying campaign for the soldier. Water and the forest interposed a double obstacle to his progress. The ground gave way under his feet, and he was alternately obliged to creep slowly across the swamps, or to get into some fragile canoe and open himself a passage between the trees, each of which might conceal a foe. He had nothing to guide him but the track left on the muddy bottom by the Indian in his flight towards his secret place of refuge. This refuge generally consisted of an elevated piece of ground called a hummock, covered with thick vegetation, in the midst of which the indigenous families were sheltered in a rude village. This islet was usually surrounded by open lagoons, and the moment the whites emerged from the forest they were exposed to a well-sustained fire from a concealed enemy, who was determined to die ratiier than give up his possessions. Finally, however, tracked from islet to islet, abandoned or betrayed by thei'^ allies, deprived of arms and ammunition, the most deter- THE AMERICAN AR3IY AMONG THE 'INDIANS. 61 mined among the Seminoles, after a truly heroic resistance, had to submit, or were made prisoners by stratagems little creditable to their conquerors. Decimated by sickness, hunger, and, above all, by the fatal abuse of fire-water, the sad remnants of this proud race embarked for New Orleans, and thence proceeded to the prairies of Arkansas, where that civilization which they only knew as an inveterate foe was soon again to find them. This struggle had lasted thirteen years, and although the Amer- ican army always endeavored to mitigate the evils of that cruel policy of which it was the instrument, the remembrance of the valiant resistance of those poor savages, of the losses they inflicted upon that army, and, above all, of their miserable end, remained as a gloomy recollection among military traditions. Three years later, when the smoke of the log hut, that rustic citadel of the frontier settler, rising in the place of the camp-fires above the forests of Florida, had scarcely proclaimed the return of peace, a new career was opened to the Federal army on the dis- tant shores of the Pacific. The annexation of Texas after an ephemeral independence, that of New Mexico and of Upper California, hastened by the cam- paign of Scott, which rendered that ingenious transition useless, were sanctioned by the treaty signed at Guadalupe Hidalgo. Half the continent was embraced within the new frontiers of the Union. Mountains and deserts, forests, rivers, and prairies, all the space of land comprised between the last settlements of the basin of the Mississippi and the almost uninhabited coasts of California, where the gold-fever was not yet raging, became part of the domain of the American people. In thus extending the boundaries of tht field open to their ambitious activity, the latter pledged themselves, in the eyes of the world, to conquer that territory in the interest of civilization ; their little army, through its intelligence and per- sevt ranee, was to be one of the principal instruments in that en- terprise. Such conquests constitute the noblest mission of the soldier. Abounding in useful lessons, thanks to the varied labors and the individual responsibility they impose upon every man, they form an excellent school for an army. Colonization, which, under the powerful influence of true and rational liberty, pro- gresses rapidly in America, asks no power, civil or military, to 62 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. direct it or to think for it. But the squatter, who will not sepa- rate the rifle from the axe, sometimes carries the love of inde- pendence to excess, and in the struggle of the new civilization against Nature and against the imperfect society of the Indians, the intervention of a superior power, strong and impartial, often becomes necessary. This was the part the American officers were called upon to play. They alone represented the Federal government, which was at once the ruler and sole proprietor of those vast tracts of country ; they entered into a contest Avith the still virgin nature, very differ- ent from those conflicts in which they had been engaged with the Indians, for it had the happy privilege of leaving no captives in its train ; but the victory had to be purchased at the price of patient efforts that can only be expected from military devotion. Their splendid geodetical labors were intermingled with some of the strangest adventures. We have shown how one of the most distinguished among them, Colonel Fremont, while simply en- gaged in exploring the Rocky Mountains, had conquered, on his passage, a province as large as France. Although a quarrel with General Kearny, induced by party spirit, deprived the army of his valuable services, his example was followed. Demarkations of frontier lines, hydrographical surveys of coasts and rivers, ge- ological inquiries, researches in natural history, were at once un- dertaken by those indefatigable pioneers of science. Their re- ports, published by the War Department, notwithstanding their length, form the most complete and interesting collection of his- torical records of colonization in America. The solitary life they led induced many who had not even received an official appoint- ment to join in these pursuits. It is true that at times some un- toward accident interfered with their peculiar tastes ; a geologist would be stationed in a plain where he could not find a single stone ; a botanist in a sterile desert ; but nearly all of them found some opportunity to help the march of progress in the study of the new countries which had been acquired. They had, however, other duties to perform besides these peaceful labors. The Indians of the West, although not cor- nered, like the Seminoles, and obliged to fight or to surrender, did not give way without resistance before the never-ebbing tide THE AMEBICAN ARMY AMONG THE INDIANS. 63 of the white race. The extent of their territoiy, wliicli enabled them to refuse or to accept a combat, and ahvays to select the mo- ment and the place favorable for the attack, rendered it much more difficult to conquer them. By a wise precaution against local outbreaks, all relations with the Indians were confided to the President, who styled himself their great father at Washing- ton ; and the lands which they occupied, not belonging to any State, were under the immediate jurisdiction of his government. The management of these relations was divided among Indian agents in the civil employ of the government, who had charge of all fiscal matters, the distribution of lands, and the collection of taxes ; while the army, as the guardian of public order, made use both of diplomacy and the force of arms to maintain it. It had a difficult part to perform, for it Avas placed between the new civilization — represented by the squatter, who pretends to exercise the right of prior occupancy over all the lands where he finds only red-skins ; by the dealer in ardent spirits, who carries his fatal poison to the very wigwam — and the Indian tribe, which requires vast uncultivated spaces for its existence, and a degree of independence incompatible with an improved state of society. Although the. Americans have been accused of systematically destroying the Indian race, their army, on the contrary, has fre- quently assumed the defence of these unfortunate people against the destructive contact with the white man. It has endeavored to smooth the way for their adoption of civilized customs, -with- out, however, seeking to perpetuate the rude organization of the system of tribes, which it rather sought to destroy, as opposed to every kind of progress, by favoring those who renounced their wandering modes of life. The Indian tribe, in fact, resembles greatly the Arab tribes, but more particularly those tribes — no- madic as in the times of Abraham — which inhabit the deserts of Africa and of Syria, than those we have found in the Tell of Algeria, possessing already a limited territory, portions of which they cultivate. The latter, although they represent a more ad- vanced condition of society, or rather on account of that fact, are much more antagonistic to modern civilization ; their system, in short, is founded on a i-eligion exclusive and political, and on ter- ritorial regulations which admit community cf property. The 64 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. religion of the Indian, like that of the Bedouin, is, on the con- trary, so simple and so vague, that it does not repel as an enemy the religion we bring to him ; while the property of both — con- sisting only in tents, arms, and horses in the New World, of herds of cattle in the Old — is essentially individual. The tribe-system, therefore, is only a weak political tie — a simple extension of the family. In their intercourse with these primitive people, the Americans have always taken care that their progress should not result in consolidating the organization of the tribes, but have rather tried to merge its elements into the great modern society which is rapidly spreading all over the continent. Therefore, under the influence of the examples of civilization, a great num- ber of Indians have abandoned the nomadic ways of life, and, casting aside the traditions of the past, have ceased their hostility to the whites when they have become tillers of the soil. American policy has devised various means to win their attachment, either through interest or fear. After taxing them at first, the Federal government changed its mode of proceeding, and bought their lands, giving them annuities in exchange. It thus made them submissive pensioners, while it narrowed the limits of the tribe's hunting-grounds, which were a barrier against colonization ; and in order that this domain might not become, in the hands of tho tribes, a real collective property, it imposed upon them the alter- native, as soon as the tide of civilization began to approach, either to emigrate en masse, or to divide their lands among themselves, by securing a lot to every Indian who desired to become a tiller of the soil. In thus destroying the social organization of the tribes, the government, however, still respected their political sys- tem, with a view of imposing upon them a collective responsi- bility for all the crimes which might be committed by their mem- bers — the only effective guarantee of the police of the desert. This process of primitive justice was abandoned as soon as the division and individual cultivation of the lands had rendered the change of customs permanent, and the political system of the tribe gradually gave place to an ordinary municipality, while its mem- bers became citizens of the United States. No prejudice of color interposed any obstacle to this work of absorption, which is still carried on to this day, and the State of THE AMERICAN ARMY AMONG THE INDIANS. 65 Kew York iiself has several villages of civilized Indians who, although preserving the type and the traditions of their race, are in every respect the equals of the old settlers around them. Thirty years ago a regiment of Federal cavalry was raised entirely among the Creeks, and Indians of pure blood have left the West Point Academy with the rank of officers in the regular army. ]\Iore than this, in the South, where they are treated as the equals of the whites, where the Confederate Congress admitted their dele- gates to its deliberations, they had become, in their turn, the owners of slaves and fanatic partisans of the enslavement of the black race. The American army had, therefore, a double task to perform. On the one hand, it had to maintain the national authority over the Indian tribes, to see that the treaties concluded with them were faithfully executed, and to impress them with the wholesome conviction that from one end of the continent to the other all the whites would take up arms, if necessary, to avenge any outrage committed on a single individual belonging to their class ; and, in order to accomplish this, the army had occasionally to resort to force, and sometimes to negotiations, in which the sword gave them, in the eyes of those savages, great advantages over the civil agents. On the other hand, it was frequently obliged to interfere against the white adventurers, either to pro- tect the ancient owners of the soil from their violence, or to restore order in the midst of a new community where the most antagonis- tic elements were at work ; or, finally, to enforce respect for the superior authority of the Federal government, which was easily disregarded amid the vehement quarrels of those distant regions. Consequently, the army was always, if not in war, at least in watchful anxiety. Having to watch the Apaches and the Co- manches, who infested the passes of the Rocky Mountains on the side of New Mexico, the Sioux on the Upper Missouri, the Nez Percys and the Coeur d^ Aline — warlike tribes from the shores of Oregon — it was scattered over an immense territory, and had, besides, to hold itself always in readiness to repel a sudden attack or to punish the first act of hostility committed against any new set- tlement. This rough and adventurous life gave to the American officer the habit of command, of responsibility, and of individual Vol. I.— 5 66 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. enterprise — qualities which go to form the warrior. Most of them became passionately attached to it, for the life of the desert has for the soldier, as well as for the traveller, an attraction which those who have once tasted it nevei cease to regret. The story of Kearny and of Doniphan has already shown us some of the difficulties that surround an expedition in those dis- tant regions. Those two chieftains, however, had a settled (s6den- taire) enemy to contend with in the Mexicans, whose territory of- fered certain resources to the invader. But these resources were altogether lacking- when the Americans had to fight nomadic tribes. Launching into the wilderness, the troops required to be well supplied with provisions, so as to be able to follow them a long distance after the first encounter, and also to be sufficiently strong not to fear a check, almost always irreparable. The supply-train, that ball-and-chain which every civilized army has to drag along, carried all that it could need during the expedition ; for among a hunting people like the Indians there could not be found even such feeble resources as our razzias pro- cured among the Arab shepherds. The train consisted of heavy emigrant wagons, each carrying a load of more than eight hundred kilogrammes weight, and drawn by mules admirably trained. The team, controlled by a single rein, obeyed the voice of the teamster. The country is everywhere open, and the ground sufficiently even to admit of the passage of those heavy vehicles. Among the isolated masses of rock in tlie Rocky Mountains there are no abrupt defiles to mark the separation of the watersheds of the two oceans, and it is only at certain points on the Pacific slope that steep mountains and dense forests have compelled the Americans to imitate the conductns of mules they had seen in Mexico, and to substitute beasts of burden for their wagons. The longer and the more toilsome the expedition, the more it became necessary to enlarge the train ; and its very magnitude, by obstructing the march of the soldiers, multiplied the evils attend- ing the campaign. Difficulties of this nature came near causing the loss of the largest body of troops that ever ventured to cross the Rocky Mountains, although commanded by an experienced officer — Sidney Johnston, who would undoubtedly have played a dis- THE A3IERICAN ARMY A3I0NG THE INDIANS. 67 tinguished part in the Confederate .wmies, if he had not met with a premature death at the outset of the war on the battle-field of Shiloh. This little army, sent by President Buchanan in 1857 to reinstate the Federal authority among the Mormons, which they had disregarded, numbered twenty-five hundred combatants ; but being obliged to carry eighteen months' provisions, it had more than four thousand wagons in its train. With such a train its march was delayed by tlie least obstacle. At the crossing of every deep river, all the wagons had to be unloaded and set afloat, so as to be drawn to the opposite shore by ropes ; then the provisions had to be carried by hand over the bridges constructed for the use of the infantry, like rafts, of trunks of trees tied to- gether. After a march of two months, the Americans reached the upper passes of the Rocky Mountains in the middle of Novem- ber, when they were overtaken by an early winter. Hemmed in by a snowdrift, the animals perished of cold and hunger. Each day lessened their number by hundreds, and the shivering sol- diers set fire to the wagons which were abandoned with their pre- cious supplies. For fifteen days this little band, strewing with the debris of its train the frozen mantle of the desert, continued its terrible march with more perseverance than prudence. But it could only accomplish fourteen leagues, at the end of which it had to styp from exhaustion, and was compelled to establish its winter quarters in the gloomy region where it found itself block- aded. The greatest part of the provisions having been lost, all had to live upon mule flesh. Finally, this last resource having failed. Captain Marcy — who afterwards became a general in the Federal army — undertook the perilous task of going to solicit a fresh supply of provisions and conveyances among the settlements of New Mexico. He lost nearly all his companions on the route, and only accomplished the mission, on the success of which the salvation of the army depended, after unheard-of sufferings. Thanks to him, the fresh supplies arrived in time, and Johnston was able to reach Great Salt Lake City in the spring. When hostilities broke out with any of the Indian tribes, it was necessary, in the midst of these difficulties, to go in search of a vigilant enemy, who, born in the wilderness, was not encum- bered with supply-trains. Always on horseback, the Indians 68 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. were indebted to their animals for that rapidity of movement which constituted their strength in attack and their safety in flight, and which, even when they had not yet adopted the use of the rifle, comj)ensated more than once for the inferiority of their arrows as compared with the firearms of the Americans. It was at the moment when the white race came to dispute the possession of the new continent, that a just Providence placed in their hands this precious and powerful auxiliary. When the European landed in their midst, he brought them, at the same time, implacable and endless war, and the means of waging it. He gave them the horse, without which they could not even have lived in peace on the plains to which they were about to be driven. The horse became the indispensable companion of their new existence. Living solely by hunting, they made themselves absolute masters of the art of surprises and ambuscades. Fear- ing neither to risk their lives in the most dangerous enterprises, nor to seek refuge in flight when their attack had failed, rather than wait for an irreparable defeat by keeping their ground, their bands alternately increased and disappeared in the twinkling of an eye, like one of those light fogs which rise from the prairie wet with dew, and which are condensed and dissolved by turns under the influence of an early morning sun. It has often happened to a column to march for we§ks with- out seeing an enemy, who, however, has been following it step by step, ready to spring upon it at the least sign of weakness. Woe, then, to him who, through an imprudent confidence, strays too far from his comrades ! he never again makes his appear- ance. After a day's march, which the want of water has pro- longed, when the camp-fires, smouldering in their ashes, are dying out, and silence and darkness prevail everywhere, a strange cry is sometimes heard, which is responded to by other cries in opposite directions. While the men are Avaking up and making inquiries, a confused noibC comes from the corral where the artil- lery horses and the train mules are picketed. Some Indians, creep- ing in unnoticed, have adroitly cut their fastenings, and, taking advantage of the confusion they have created, have dashed off" on their own horses to stampede the drove of frightened animals and direct their course. These rush off at once like a whirlwind, tram- THE A3IERICAN ARMY AMONG THE INDIANS. 69 pling down every obstacle in their way ; and, still guided by their savage leaders, soon disappear, leaving the whites stupefied and powerless as boatmen without oars on a stormy sea. The word stampede, used to designate a panic among horses, was applied during the civil war to those commotions which too often led undiscijjlined troops into a disorderly flight. But these surprises were of rare occurrence with officers accus- tomed to the tactics of the wilderness. They opposed vigilance to cunning, tenacity to agility, and, finally, friendly Indians to hostile Indians. These native allies accompanied the column in the capacity of guides, and frequently as scouts, fighting in a half- civilized fashion — handling their rifles skilfully, but furtively taking off" the scalp of the vanquished when they coidd do so without being seen by their allies. In short, while they would discover, with the instinct of a hunting-dog, the coAihe (hiding- place) where the hostile tribe had deposited their winter provis- ions, the American cavalry rivalled them in dexterity, and suc- ceeded at times, by a bold stroke, in capturing, in their turn, droves of half-wild horses which the Indian chiefs always kept in reserve to remount their warriors. In one of the last expeditions that went out before the civil war, in 1858, a party which left Fort Vancouver on the Pacific coast, after dispersing the Pelouse tribe, captured their horses in this manner. The Indians, know- ing the untamable nature of those animals, and full of confidence in their own skill, relied upon being able to steal them again from their new masters by means of a stampede, and to make use of them in a few days to resume hostilities ; so that when, on the following day, surveying the American camp from a distance with a spy-glass, taken from an officer who had been killed the pre- ceding year, they saw the ground covered with the carcases of their seven hundred and seventy horses, they felt so discouraged that they acknowledged themselves conquered. The commander of the expedition, divining their intention, had called a council of war, and the latter — not without much regret, for men who have lived long in the desert cannot be cruel to animals — had or- dered the poor beasts to be shot. Notwithstanding all these surprises, the Indian and the white man almost always ended by measuring strength in an open and 70 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. decisive battle. For if the former accepted war, it was because lie felt sure of victory ; and as soon as he saw his stratagems baffled by his enemy, the same confidence impelled him to attempt an attack by main force ; then, in almost every instance, the cool courage of the white man, his discipline, and the superiority of his arms made his success certain, although he seldom obtained it until after a long and bloody struggle. The various arms of the service had each a share in the hard- ships and dangers of these incessant wars; through them they preserved their activity and their military traditions, and acquired a new experience. The task of the foot-soldier was the hardest. The fine rivers which furrow the prairie are separated by intervals of from ten to twelve leagues, which had to be travelled in a single stage, by forcing a passage through the tall grasses, without a tree to shelter the soldier for an instant from the burning heat of the sun, or a drop of water to slake his thirst. On the morrow, before being able to resume his march, he had to cut the necessary materials for the construction of floating bridges along the steep banks of the river ; or, if the expedition was lightly equipped, to cross a deep river by riding double behind the mounted men. To the burning heat of a summer, which no sea-breezes temper, were added the prairie-fire, the sudden storms of wind and rain so terrible on the Plains, where there is nothing to allay their violence ; then the cold and the snow followed in quick succession, bringing new sufferings to the troops they overtook, like those of Johnston. Such a life formed marchers trained to long stages; but cam- paigning in a desert, where they carried everything with them, and unable to separate themselves for more than two or three days from their train, they were accustomed to a certain abundance of food and regular supplies. Consequently, when, in 1861, war was to be waged in a country not altogether destitute of resources, the officers who had been brought up in that school did not dream of turning those resources to account, so as to render themselves inde- pendent of the supply-trains, until Sherman had abandoned this system. In regard to the cavalry, this Indian war was an excellent preparation for the part it was soon called upon to play. These THE AMERICAN ARMY A3I0KG THE INDIANS. 71 American dragoons, who for so many years had lived scattered among the Indians, were not indeed elegant horsemen, nor even good mauoeuvrers on field parade, and did not understand war as our soldiers do, who, whether in line or as foragers, only depend upon the point of their sabres or the swiftness of their horses. But the necessities of a special war had taught them to vindicate their name, by performing the complicated duties for which, in the seventeenth century, the first regiments of mounted infantry were formed. In order to reach the Indians in their last retreats, and deal rapid chastisement to the minor tribes, they frequently undertook short campaigns without taking any supply- trains with them. Carrying their ammunition, biscuits, coiFee, etc., on their animals, they were followed only by a few led horses laden with a reserve of provisions. The marches were long and the rations small. When the enemy was at last reached, he was almost invariably attacked with firearms, for he did not allow himself to come within reach of sidearms, any more than the wild bird allows himself to be taken by the sportsman with the hand. The use of the rifle, moreover, gave the Americans great advantage over their adversaries, who, for the most part, had nothing but bows and arrows or very poor muskets. They omitted no opportunity to use that weapon ; and whether for the purpose of striking the enemy in his too precipitate flight, or to keep him at bay, they fired without leaving the saddle, for amid the immensity of the prairies man does not like to separate him- self from his horse ; if, however, it became necessary to attack an Indian camp or to defend a corral, if the enemy occupied a posi- tion too difficult of access, the dragoons, leaving their horses in charge of one-fourth of their number, formed and fought like infantry. Therefore, despite their awkward appearance and their long legs dangling by the sides of their little horses, despite their large wooden stirrups which they had brought from Mexico, and the weapons of every kind attached to their saddles, those bronze- faced men, with their sky-blue cloaks with fur collars, had the easy and resolute air which betokens the well-trained soldier. From the manner in which they led their horses, it was easy to perceive that more than one day's journey performed on foot by 72 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. the side of a limping animal had taught them to be mercifid Let us say that they would have proved themselves ungrateful if they had failed to appreciate the good qualities of those faith- ful companions of their toils. All those who have gone through a campaign in the New World have often had occasion to admire the sagacity of the American horse and his sure footing in the middle of the darkest nights. Able, though small, io carry a great weight ; gentle and intelligent, enduring fatigue, rain, cold, neglect, and want of food, he seemed in every way adapted for that rough life of the prairie which man could not face without his aid. In the evening, after a long day's march, his only meai would be the wild plants of the prairie in the midst of which the bivouac had been made. But in the morning, instead of being saddled at sunrise, he was allowed to browse the herbage made tender by the heavy dews of the desert during the first two hours of the day ; and for every three days' march he was generally granted one of rest. In short, when, after serving at this rate for many months, carrying both his master and his baggage, he re-entered the rude stable of the frontier post, he found means to regain strength and to forget his privations by munching ears of corn, the grains of which he picked out for himself. The artillery had also a large share in the common hardships. The mere changes of garrison between the distant posts, the defences of which it had charge, were equivalent at times to reg- ular campaigns. It, moreover, made part of every important expedition, for the sound of cannon reverberating in the wilder- ness produces a profound impression upon the Indian. The prairie, though passable for wagons, does not, however, much resemble a turnpike ; the long marches over that rough ground^ the crossing of rivers, the necessity of cutting a passage with the axe through the forests that are occasionally met with, kept both men and teams constantly at work. Sometimes they were obliged to keep up with the pace of the cavalry, for the light expeditions undertaken by the latter were frequently accompanied by from two to four guns. It is true that the artillery interfered but sel- dom, and only when the conflict was sufficiently equal to give it time to reach the field of battle, and when it was necessary to tlirow some shells into the midst of the mounted Indians, to make THE AMERICAN ARMY AMONG THE INDIANS. 73 up for the numerical inferiority of the whites. But while wait- ing for this oj)portunity the gunners would take up the musket or the carbine, and, fighting either on foot or on horseback, share all the dangers of their companions. Finally, the artillery officers found themselves frequently invested, either by choice or the chances of seniority, with the command of important expeditious ; and they gave ample proof of having lost none of the traditions of the Mexican war, where we have seen them play such a bril- liant part. We have already mentioned the great scientific labors of the officers of the engineer and topographical engineer corps. In the war-expeditions they occupied the post of honor, for they per- formed the functions of staff-officers and had charge of clearing the route for the army, and of directing its march. The administrative branches of the service had an important task to perform in those campaigns where it was necessary to pre- pare everything in advance that the army could require. The reader will understand this when he recalls the fact of Johnston's army being followed by a train of four thousand wagons. It is not astonishing, therefore, that when it became necessary to pro- vide for a million of volunteers, there should have been found among the various corps, quartermasters and commissaries of sub- sistence possessed of the required experience for directing every part of such a vast administration. It was in the midst of this active and instructive life that the news of the disruption of the Union reached the American array. The perfidious foresight of the late Secretary of War, Mr. Floyd, had removed almost the whole of this army far from the States which his accomplices in the South were preparing to rise against the Federal authority. The soldiers had been honored with the be- lief that they would remain faithful to their flag. Under a mul- titude of pretexts the Federal forts and arsenals had been dis- mantled by the very men whose first duty was to watch over the general interests of the nation, and the garrisons which had been withdrawn from them long before, to be scattered over Texas, found themselves under the command of an officer, who seemed to have received no other orders than to betray them. But thus removed from the haunts of civilization, the regular 74 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. officers hiid remained utter strangers to the turbulent quarrels which it engenders, and had paid but little attention to the move- ment which divided their country into two hostile camps. Con- sequently, no class of men suffered more keenly, when the citizens armed themselves against each other, than that military family whose members were united by so many ties. All those belong- ing to the North, notwithstanding the great diversity of opinions on the questions of the day, prepared to respond to the appeal of their government. Among those who adhered to the Southern States on account of their birth or connections, there were some who, like the veteran Scott, remained faithful to their oath, be- lieving that the insurrection, far from releasing them from it, obliged them to defend the threatened life of their country. The greatest portion of them, however, controlled by the influence of party spirit and imbued with the fatal doctrine of the absolute sovereignty of the States, which had come to be a kind of dogma among them, abandoned the Federal flag en masse to go and organ- ize the infant forces of the rebellion. Many among them did not adopt this course, so much at variance with the common notions of military honor, without regret. These regrets, well known to their old comrades, contributed to mitigate the horrors of war, by re- moving from it all bitterness and passion ; and their recollection actuated General Grant when, four years later, he extended a friendly hand to his conquered adversary. There were some, however, who by their conduct aggravated I:he always painful spectacle of military defection. General Twiggs, who commanded the troops in Texas, was seen conniving at the success of the rebellion while still wearing the Federal uni- form, and delivering into the hands of the rebels the depots of provisions and ammunition of his own soldiers, in order to take away from the latter every means of resistance. Abandoned by a portion of their officers, destitute of resources, finding only ene- mies among the ungrateful population they had protected during so many years, these brave soldiers Avere further obliged to resist the flattering representations of those who promised them a bril- liant future in the ranks of the insurgents. One of their old cliiefs. Van Dorn, had the sad hardihood to reappear among them, to support these propositions with the influence which his rare THE AMERICAN ARMY AMONG THE INDIANS. 7o military qualities had given him. He made no converts ; and the remnants of his regiment, obliged to enter into an agreement for evacuating the place with the enemies who surrounded them on every side, returned to the cities of the North, where they met the comrades so long separated from them, who were flocking to the defence of the national cause. New dangers had in fact sought out, in the bosom of civiliza- tion, these men thus once more brought together by the same sen- timent of duty. The national cause needed all their devotion, for the evil which had sown such seeds of treason in an army must have been deeply rooted, and those sad examples of desertion were but a symptom of the blindness and self-deception which precipitated the South into civil war. BOOK IL— SECESSION. CHAPTER I. SLA VEB Y. BEFORE exhibiting the American Republic divided into two hostile factions, and describing the organization of the forces that were about to fight on its soil to secure the supremacy either of the slave institutions of the South or the free society of the North, it is proper that we should answer the questions which every reader must ask: How could such a war break out? What radical causes could thus divide a great nation throughout the whole extent of her territory, disrupt her armies, and put arms in the hands of citizens whom so many ties, so many in- terests, and so many common memories should keep united? They were brethren; they had lived together and had been reared in the same school ; they resembled each other in all the prominent traits of their character ; they had the same political institutions, the same military traditions. Their leaders had served under the same flag, and had sat in the same council- chambers. There did not exist any real difference of origin between the North and the South. All those that the South alleged to exist when, despairing of her ability to extort aid from Europe by threatening to deprive her of cotton, she sought to arouse the sympathies of the latter, were purely imaginary. She merely 76 SLAVERY. 77 pretended to genealogical affinities to serve her own purpose, when, pointing to her old colony of New Orleans, she called her- self half French ; and when, turning to the English aristocracy, she evoked the memory of the Cavaliers driven out by Cromwell, in order to array that aristocracy against the Yankees, whom she represented as a gathering of Germans and Irishmen. In point of fact, the Anglo-Saxon race ruled equally in the South and in the North. It rapidly absorbed the races that had preceded it, as well as those which supplied it with a contingent of emigrants. In taking part in its work, those races also adopted its customs and its character. In the first city of the South, New Orleans, there did indeed exist a nucleus of population which by its language and associa- tions clung to the country that had basely sold it. But that islet, already half submerged under the rising tide of another race, did not constitute a nationality. As to the Irish emigrant, far from resisting this tide, he rather followed it ; for although differing widely from the Anglo-Saxon, he goes in search of a new country only where the latter is already firmly established. He resembles those plants, difficult of acclimation, which only thrive upon a soil already prepared by other and more vigorous vegetation. By another contradiction to his primitive habits, becoming in America a denizen of cities rather than a tiller of the soil, the barriers which slavery had raised against the settling of husbandmen did not exist for him. Consequently, the Irish element had spread equally over the South and over the North. With that pliability of mind peculiar to the race, Irishmen adopted all the prejudices of those among whom they lived ; and when the war broke out, they were seen to enlist in the cities of the South, where they were very numerous, with as much eagerness as their brethren living in the North displayed in defence of the Federal flag. No commercial interest separated the South from the aggregate interests of the Northern States. Large rivers formed a single basin of all the centre of the continent, and all its products con- verged into the main artery of the Mississippi, of which the Southern States held the lower course. Exclusively occupied with the culture of cotton and sugar-cane, they asked from the West- 78 THE CIVIL WAR IN A3IERICA. ern States meat and flour, which they could not produce in suffi- cient quantities for their own consumption^ The North supplied them with the necessary capital for all their industrial enterprises. It is true that the South sought in these very circumstances a pre- text for a new grief, by pretending to be the victim of specula- tion on the part of those who brought her, together with their wealth, the means of fertilizing her soil ; and when the day of se- cession came, all the debts contracted by the merchants and plant- ers of the South toward Northern creditors, amounting, it is said, to one billion of dollars, were repudiated, after the Confederate government had tried in vain to confiscate them to its own benefit. But this complaint, which is that of all countries in arrears against their more prosperous neighbors, cannot aifect any serious mind. The complaints of Southern planters against the Northern States in regard to the protective tariffs, which favored the manufactures of the latter, Avere more plausible ; but, in point of fact, they had no better foundation. If the commercial question had had anvthing to do with the political struggle which brought on the civil war, the Western States would have had as much cause as those of the South to separate themselves from the manufacturing dis- tricts of New York, Pennsylvania, and New England, whose foundries and mills dread English competition, and they would have joined the .South in defence of the system of free trade. The landholders of the West, in fact, also derived their wealth from the cultivation of the soil, the products of which were yearly exported in increasing quantities. In spite of the scarcity of labor, the absence of land taxes, together with the cheapness and fertility of the land, afforded an outlet for their wheat to all the markets of the world. Commercial protection, there- fore, which raised the price of all European commodities for the benefit of their associates of the North-eastern States, was only a burden to them ; and if, while complaining of this protection, they made com mon cause with those States, it is because they fully understood the sole motive of the war, and did not in any way deceive themselves as to the only social difference which divided America into two hostile factions — North and South. This difference was not occasioned either by diversity of origin or by antagonistic commercial interests. It had a much deeper SLAVERY. 79 foundation. It was a ditch dug between slavery and free labor, which was becoming wider every day. It was slavery, prosperous in one half of the republic and abolished in the other, which had created in it two hostile communities. It had greatly modified the customs of the one where it was in the ascendant, while leaving the outward forms of government intact. It was, indeed, not the pretext nor the occasion, but the sole cause of that antag- onism, the inevitable consequence of which was the civil war^ Therefore, in order to demonstrate the differences of character which the war revealed between the combatants, we must show the constant and fatal influence which the servile institution ex- ercised over the habits, the ideas, and the tastes of those who lived in contact with it. Proteus-like, the question of slavery assumes every variety of form ; it insinuates itself everywhere, and always reappears most formidable where one least expects to encounter it. Notwithstanding all that has been said on the sub- ject, our people, who fortunately have not had to wrestle with it, are not a^vare how much this subtle poison instils itself into the very marrow of society. It was, in fact, in the name of the rights of the oppressed race that tliey condemned slavery. It Avas the sentiment of justice in behalf of this race which inspired religious England when, in response to the appeals of Buxton and Wilber- force, she proclaimed emancipation ; and which actuated our great National Assembly when it abolished slavery for the first time in our colonies, and those who again prepared for its suppression after the extraordinary act by which the First Consul re-estab- lished it upon French soil. It was the picture of the unmerited sufferings of our fellow-beings which stirred up the whole of Europe at the perusal of that romance, so simple and yet so elo- quent, called Uncle Torn's Cabin. But the effects of the servile institution upon the dominant race present a spectacle not less sad and instructive to the histo- rian and philosopher; for a fatal demoralization is the just pun- ishment that slavery inflicts upon those who expect to find nothing in it but profit and power. In order to demonstrate more clearly to what extent this de- moralization is the inevitable consequence of slavery, and how, by an inexorable logic, the simple fact of the enslavement of the 80 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. black corrupts, among the whites, the ideas and morals which are the verj foundation of society, we will pass over the long mar- tyrdom of bad treatment daily inflicted by brutal masters upon their slaves. It is among those who before the war were called good slave-owners that we must inquire into the pretended moral perfection of slavery, in order to understand all its flagrant im- morality. This slave-owner possesses the same principles as our- selves, but he is obliged to obey the laws of necessity. He knows what protection and respect are due to the family tie ; but as the negro population in the United States, employed in the cultivation of the cotton and sugar, does not multiply fast enough to supply the exigencies of this kind of labor, he goes into the markets of Virginia to procure a contingent of young laborers. After having thus torn them from their relatives, their affections, and the land of their birth, he will certainly not break up the new ties that are forming under his own eyes ; but this is owing to the fact that, as an economical manager, he finds in their fecun- dity a direct source of revenue. He does not desire to humiliate, to cause suffering by unnecessary castigations, but the negro who fails to perform his duties must be punished, and these duties are obedience and labor. The negro must forget that he is a man — to remember only that he is a slave, and to work without choice of occupation, without remuneration, without hope of a better future. In short, his owner will take care of him, will not im- pose any labor above his strength, and will administer to his ma- terial wants in a satisfactory manner, precisely as he will do for the animals that are working by his side under one common lash. But, in order that he may enjoy this pretended good fortune, he has to be reduced to the moral level of his fellow-slaves, and have the light of intelligence within him extinguished for ever ; for if he carries that divine spark in his bosom, he will be unhappy, for he will feel that he is a slave. And when the good master, sat- isfied with his own virtues, points to his slaves, saying, " They are happy ; they have no care for the morrow ; they are lodged, fed, and clothed, and would not accept their freedom," it is the bitterest of self-accusations, for it is the same as if he said, " I nave so completely stifled in them every feeling that God has im- planted in the heart of man, that the word freedom, which we SLAVERY. 81 might hear pronounced by every creature that has breath, if we understood all the languages of Nature, has no longer any mean- ing for them." It might so happen, in extreme cases, that even in the midst of his surroundings, his conscience rebels against this degradation of his fellow-beings, but then he will blame the cus- toms which sanction this systematic degradation, and the severe and peculiar laws, enacted in almost all the Southern States, which render it nearly impossible for him to grant individual emanci- pation, and which even subject him to severe penalties if he should teach his own negroes to read and write. Shall he protest against this hateful law which confines the intelligence of* the slave within the narrow dungeon of perpetual ignorance? He cannot do so, because the moral degradation of the latter is the only guarantee for his physical submission : if he were to witness too frequently the liberation of his fellow-beings from bondage as an act of favor, he would wish for it in his turn ; and if he received the least education, he would rise in his own estimation, the abyss which separates him from his master would appear less difficult to cross, and he would emerge satisfied from the brutal condition in which it is necessary to keep him in order to make him the docile instrument of a lucrative traffic. But, again, the servile institution, in violating the supreme law of liumanity, which links indissolubly together those two words, labor and progress, and in making labor itself a means for brutalizing man, not only degraded the slave, but it also engendered depravity in the master ; for the despotism of a whole race, like the absolute power of a single individual, or an oligar- chy, always ends by disturbing the reason and the moral sense of those who have once inhaled its intoxicating fragrance. Nothing was more calculated to develop this kind of depravity than the high qualities, and the virtues even, which existed in the community founded upon such a despotism. It is precisely because that com- munity was enlightened and religious, because it had produced men, in every other respect, of irreproachable character, because it had given birth to heroic soldiers who had followed a Lee and a Jackson to the battle-field, that it was the more revolting to see slavery, with its odious consequences, prosper in its midst. That this community should have exhibited such a shocking contrast Vol. I.— 6 82 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. to the world without being itself conscious of the fact, the moral sense must have been perverted in the child, surrounded from its birth by flattering slaves; in the man, absolute master of the labor of his fellow-beings ; in the woman, accustomed to relieve the distress around her, in obedience, not to the dictates of duty, but to a mere instinct of humanity and pity ; in everybody, in short, through the exaggerations of declamatory appeals intended to stifle the voice of upright consciences. What a deeply sorrow- ful spectacle for any one who wishes to study human nature to see every sense of righteousness and equity so far perverted in a whole populatioh by the force of habit, that the greatest portion of the ministers of all denominations were not ashamed to sully Christianity by a cowardly approval of slavery; and men who bought and sold their fellow-beings took up arms for the express purpose of defending this odious privilege, in the name of liberty and property !* This falsehood having become the basis of society, its influence increased and gathered strength from prosperity. The founders of the American nation regarded slavery as a social sore, and trust- ed to the enlightenment and patriotism of their successors to heal it; but as this institution was productive of considerable profit, it was soon viewed in a different light. The Middle States (Vir- ginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee) were ready to abolish it, in imitation of their neighbors of the North, when the suppression of the slave trade gave a new impulse to slave pro- duction among them, by protecting it against the competition pf negro-traders, who formerly brought cargoes of slaves from Guinea under the name of ebony. They soon developed this new branch of industry; and the planters of the South, being always able to procure fresh and hardy laborers in their own markets, found it economical to spare their slaves no longer, but to subject them to excessive labor which wore them out in a few years. This abundance of hands giving an extraordinary im- pulse to the cultivation of the sugar-cane and the cotton-plant, slavery, which the authors of the American Constitution had not even dared to mention by name, was thenceforth honored, recog- nized, and considered as the corner-stone of the social edifice. * See in the Appendix to this volume, Note B. S1.AVERY. 83 But the uph3lders of slavery did not stop here; after having declared it to be profitable and necessary, they proceeded to pro- claim its moral excellence. A new school, of which Calhoun was the principal apostle, the teachings of Avhich were accepted by all the statesmen of the South, assumed the mission of holding up the social system founded upon slavery as the highest state of perfec- tion that modern civilization had reached. It was to this system that America was destined to belong, and its adherents anticipated for it the empire of the world. There was a time when these frightful dreams cast a sinister light upon the future of the new continent, for it seemed as if their realization was within the scope of possibility. In fact, the slave-power could only exist by enlarging its do- main and absorbing everything around it. Reckless and violent in its modes of proceeding, compelling the Union to become the docile instrument of its policy, it had conquered immense terri- tories in the interest of servitude, sometimes in the wilderness, more frequently in Mexico or among the Northern settlements, and it already extended its hand towards Cuba and the isthmus of Nicaragua — positions selected with the instinct of control. If the North had carried patience and forbearance much further, the day when the decisive crisis arrived, this power might possibly have been able to impose its fatal yoke upon all America. In proportion as slavery thus increased in prosperity and power, its influence became more and more preponderant in the commu- nity which had adopted it. Like a parasitical plant which, draw- ing to itself all the sap of the most vigorous tree, covers it grad- ually with a foreign verdure and poisonous fruits, so slavery was impairing the morals of the South, and the spirit of her institu- tions. The forms of liberty existed, the press seemed to be free, the deliberations of legislative bodies were tumultuous, and every man boasted of his independence. But the spirit of true liberty, tolerance towards the minority, and respect for individual opin- ion, had departed, and those deceitful appearances concealed the despotism of an inexorable master, slavery — a master before whom the most powerful of slaveholders was himself but a slave, as abject as the meanest of his laborers. No one had a right to question its legitimacy, and like the Eumenides, which the ancients 84 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. feared to offend by naming them^ so wherever the slave power was in the ascendant, people did not even dare to' mention its name, for fear of touching upon too dangerous a subject. It was on this condition only that such an institution could maintain it- self in a prosperous and intelligent community. It would have perished on the very day when the people should be at liberty to discuss it. Therefore, notwithstanding their boasted love of free- dom, the people of the South did not hesitate to commit any vio- lence in order to crush out, in its incipiency, any attempt to dis- cuss the subject. Any one who had ventured to cast the slightest reflection upon the slavery system could not have continued to live in the South ; it was sufficient to point the finger at any stranger and call him an abolitionist to consign him at once to the fury of the populace. One of the best citizens of the United States, Mr. Sumner, who had pleaded in behalf of emancipation with equal courage and eloquence on the floor of the Senate, was struck down with a loaded cane in the very midst of that assem- bly,* by one of his Southern colleagues, and left half dead ; and not only did this crime go unpunished, the tribunals of Washing- ton being then occupied by slaveholders, but the assassin received a cane of honor from the ladies of the South as a reward for his exploit. In short, the mere fact that a simple Kansas farmer named John Brown, who had been ruined and persecuted by the slaveholders, sought to wreak his revenge upon them in Virginia, and had gathered together a dozen of fugitive slaves at Harper's Ferry, was sufficient to arouse a terrible sensation in the South. It was thought that a civil war had broken out, preparations were made for a great uprising, and it was found necessary to send regular troops from Washington to seize this man, who ex- piated upon the gallows the crime of having frightened the proud Virginians. It was not enough, however, thus to protect slavery on its own domain ; the acknowledgment of its supremacy had to be enforced in all the neighboring States in order to protect it from all out- ward attacks. The North, through an imprudent exercise of the spirit of conciliation, had allowed the Constitution to be violated * The act was perpetrated in the Senate chamber, where Mr. Sumner was seated at his desk, but the Senate was not in session at the time. — Ed. SLAVERY. 85 by shameful compromises. The barriers of the free States had been lowered that the fugitive slave might be restored to the planter. The national policy was entirely subservient to the in- terests of the slave-power. Its demands, in short, became the more pressing and excessive that it felt itself on the point of losing the control of that policy. It could permit neither the ter- ritorial extension of the North nor the criticisms of a free press beyond its boundaries. Therefore, it was fully determined not to give up its supremacy in the councils of the Union without a struggle. Its newspapers and orators inflamed the public mind, and prepared it for the coming conflict; prophetic romances, so- called, shadowed forth the triumphs it would achieve ; and, at the first appeal of the secession leaders, the whole Southern commu- nity, seized with a raging fever, severed without the least regret all the ties which the day before had bound it to those whom it thought to insult by styling them abolitionists. The diflerences which slavery had engendered between the South and the North were not confined to this political antagonism; they affected the very constitution of society. Under its influence there had sprung up in the South classes more and more widely separated from each other — a division which greatly facilitated at first its military organization. Work, being considered an act of servitude, could not be resorted to without disgrace. This rule, enforced by public opinion, kept Dut of the Southern territories that immense tide of emigrants from Europe and the Eastern States which spreads over the vast prairies of the West, to form a population of landholders work- ing their own fa'rms — a population whose industry, energy, and intelligence constitute the strength and respectability of the free- soil States. The whole system of Southern agriculture had been affected by this exclusion, and America thus presented in its two sections a nearly exact picture of the Latin territory at the two extreme epochs of Roman history ; at the North, the land par- celled out, cultivated by the citizen himself, who was at once pro- prietor, husbandman, and soldier in case of need ; at the South, the latifundia, or large domains, peopled by slaves and divided among a few masters. The social system of the South was founded upon large do- 86 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. mains, the inconveniences of which are especially felt in a region of country yet half wild, but which were the inevitable result of the servile institution. It alone, in fact, admitted of turning to advantage the expensive, insufficient, and uncertain labor of the slave. This labor is costly, for the profits accruing from it must not only cover the maintenance of the slave during his lifetime, but also the interest on, and the redemption in a few years of, the capital invested in his purchase ; and the amount of these costs being always in excess of the yearly wages paid to the best white laborer, the employment of free labor is, all things considered, the most economical. It is insufficient, because, the intelligence of the slave being sys- tematically suppressed, his work is always clumsy, and the same care cannot be expected from him as from the laborer who is mas- ter of himself. It is uncertain, because the harvest season requires a great num- ber of hands which the proprietor is unable to hire in a free mar- ket ; and he is therefore obliged to maintain upon his plantation throughout the year the number of slaves he may then require, without being able, by any amount of foresight, to make an exact calculation in advance ; having, moreover, to take all the chances of sickness and stoppage of work, among his best laborers. Under such circumstances the cultivation of the land could only be undertaken on a large scale and with considerable capital. On the large plantations, the absence of those resources affi^rded by free competition could be supplied by having special slaves taught different trades, and the variety of labor required by such opera- tions always admitted of the employment of a large portion of the slaves — sometimes upon one kind of work, sometimes upon another ; in short, the capital invested was divided among a suffi- cient number of negroes to enable the proprietor, by means of a sinking fund and an insurance system well managed, to meet the accidents which are the ruin of small slaveholders. Owing to this peculiar condition of landed property, the South- ern States were almost exclusively occupied by three classes. At the foot of the social ladder was the negro, bowed down upon the soil he alone had to cultivate, forming a population of SLAVERY. 87 about four million souls — that is to say, one-third of the inhabit- ants of the South. At the top, the masters, too numerous to constitute an aristoc- racy, yet forming, nevertheless, a real caste. They owned the land and the slaves who cultivated it ; and each of them living in the midst of an entirely servile population whose labor was under their control, they disdained every other kind of occupa- tion. Consequently, being more intelligent than educated, brave but irascible, proud but overbearing, eloquent but intolerant, they devoted themselves to public affairs — the exclusive direc- tion of which belonged to them — with all the ardor of their temperament. The third class — that of poor whites, the most important on account of its numbers — occupied a position below the second, and far above the first, without, however, forming an intermediate link between them, for it was deeply imbued with all the preju- dices of color. This was the plebs romana, the crowds of clients who parade with ostentation the title of citizen, and only exercise its privileges in blind subserviency to the great slaveholders, who M'ere the real masters of the country. If slavery had not existed in their midst, they would have been tillers of the soil, and might have become farmers and small pro])rietors. But the more their poverty draws them nearer to the inferior class of slaves, the more anxious are they to keep apart from them, and they S|)urn field-labor in order to set off more ostentatiously their qual- ity of free men. This unclassified population, wretched and rest- less, supplied Southern policy with the fighting vanguard which preceded the planter's invasion of the West with his slaves. At the beffinnino; of the war the North believed that this class would join her in condemnation of the servile institution, whose ruinous competition it ought to have detested. But the North was mis- taken in thinking that reason would overcome its prejudices. It showed, on the contrary, that it was ardently devoted to the maintenance of slavery. Its pride was even more at stake than that of the great slaveholders ; for, while the latter were always sure of remaining in a position far above the freed negroes, the former feared lest their emancipation should disgrace the middle white classes by raising the blacks to their level. 88 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. This division of classes facilitated the organization of the forces of the South. Each of them had its part in the drama laid out, and the transition from a state of peace to one of war was eifected with so little trouble, that the very ease with which it was accom- plished proved to be a dangerous temptation, which contributed to drag the South into the fatal path where it was destined to find defeat and ruin. The negroes naturally remained attached to the soil, and by continuing their forced labors, they saved the agricultural inter- ests of the South from those serious troubles which the prepara- tions for war inflicted upon those of the North, and thereby sustained the cause of those who riveted their chains. While at the North every soldier who donned the uniform left some em- ployment useful to society, in the South the truly productive population never ceased for a moment to contribute to the com- mon wants. The common white people, who, doomed to idleness on account of their social position, had never contributed to the national wealth in a manner proportionate to their number, willingly ex- changed the leisure of their poverty for the occupations of mili- tary life. They constituted the principal element of the South- ern armies. Useless and dangerous in a well-regulated commu- nity, they were fully prepared for this new role. Habituated to the privations of a precarious existence, accustomed from in- fancy to handling arms, which they considered a sign of nobility, zealous in defending the privileges and the superiority of their race, they could not fail to become formidable soldiers if placed under able leaders. They found these leaders among the superior class of slave- holders, from whom they were already accustomed to receive directions. Therefore, although grades of every description were made elective, the new soldiers, faithful to their habits, almost invariably selected members of this superior class to command them ; and if any slaveholders, during the first outbursts of en- thusiasm, set them the example by shouldering the musket, none of them ever remained in the ranks. It followed that the fatal system of electing officers was not productive of the same evil SLAVERY. 89 effects in the South as in the North, and was continued much longer. We have not, as yet, spoken of the population of the cities, because it had not felt so directly the effects of the servile institu- tion as those living in the country, and because, moreover, it was too small to exercise much influence. Much inferior to the slave- holders, but superior to the common whites, this population was recruited from among the latter class and European emigrants, especially the Irish, who seldom get beyond the walls of Amer- ican cities. Therefore, although noisily in favor of the slave- system, they did not look upon it as the very basis of society, nor did they defend the institution with as much zeal as did the whites who lived in the country in the midst of negro laborers. The Confederate States had but one cit}-, New Orleans, which could rival the great cities of the North, and only two others, Richmond and Charleston, the two political centres of secession, with a population of more than thirty thousand inhabitants. Among these there were negro slaves, and free mulattoes, a pretty large class exclusively devoted to city life, and the more hostile to the whites because it was more intelligent, and the ban under which it lay was less justified by the color of its skin. The white population of the cities could not be estimated at more than two hundred thousand souls.* ^ When, therefore, the Southern leaders, beaten at the elections, were about to resort to arms in order to re-establish the suprem- acy of slavery among them, public opinion, long prepared for the occasion, was ready to applaud their action and to second their efforts with energy ; while the various classes of society tendered them all the necessary means for speedily organizing their armies. * See Appendix to this volume, Note C. CHAPTER II. THE CONFEDERATE VOLUNTEERS. WE have shown how the influence of slavery, which dragged the Southern States into civil war, had also created certain classes among them ready to furnish all the elements of an army, the organization of which had long been in contemplation. Consequently, while the North was sincerely trying to effect some kind of political compromise, companies of volunteers were seen assembling and arming in haste throughout the whole of the slave States. Their minds were bent upon war, and they went to work with the greatest energy. The zeal of the women stim- ulated that of the men; and in that population, essentially indo- lent, whoever hesitated to don the uniform was set down as a cow- ard. The planters, being at all times in dread of servile insur- rections, had given to the local militia an eifective organization whicli it did not have in the North. They had cadres sufficiently trained and instructed to receive volunteers at once. Finally, the West Point Academy and the military colleges founded by sev- eral States had contributed to disseminate a knowledge of mil- itary aifairs among the better classes. The volunteers who took up arms at the first signal of their leaders did not wait for the announcement of the act of separa- tion to assemble. In the border States, where, public opinion being divided, the Federal authority was at first able to sustain itself in the midst of the political convulsion, the future soldiers of the Confederacy met and organized under the very eyes of its agents. Wherever the pro-slavery element, essentially intolerant, was in the majority, it exercised the same despotism over the minor- ity that its leaders imposed upon it. Those who regretted the national flag, ^ho questioned the constitutionality of the princi- 90 THE CONFEDERATE VOLUNTEERS. ' 91 pie which had been invoked to justify the separation, or who did not consider its application well timed, were reduced to silence ; and even this silence soon ceased to give satisfaction. As it hap- pens in all revolutions, professions of devotion to the new order of things were exacted from those who were suspected of luke- warmness. Among the Northern men settled in the South, some embraced the cause of slavery with the ardor of neophytes, but those who did not atone for the crime of having been born in the free States, by this method, became the victims of popular hatred and violence. In the South-western States, where the manners are rough, they were subjected to downright persecution. In each of the growing centres of civilization, where farmers came from afar across the forests to attend to their political and commercial affairs, vigilance committees were formed, composed of men who had been conspicuous for their excesses during the electoral struggles. Assuming unlimited power without author- ity, they united in themselves the attributes of a committee of public safety with the functions of a revolutionary tr'bunal. The bar-room was generally the place of their meetings, and a revolting parody of the august forms of justice was mingled with their noisy orgies. Around the counter, on which gin and whisky circulated freely, a few frantic individuals pronounced judgment upon their fellow-citizens, whether present or absent ; the accused saw the fatal rope being made ready even before he had been interrogated ; the person in contumacy was only in- formed of his sentence when he fell by the bullet of the execu- tioner, stationed behind a bush for that purpose. Personal ani- mosities were at the bottom of the greater part of these decrees. In order to punish the workman or the settler from the North for his intelligence and success, his envious neighbors called him an abolitionist. If some courageous friend did not answer for his admiring approval of slavery, he was lost. At times, how- ever, the fumes of alcohol, mounting to the heads of the judges, would enkindle quarrels between them, soon ending in bloodshed, in the midst of which both the trial and the accused were equally forgotten. But if the latter was spared his life, it was only that he might devote it to the service of the Confederacy. He was to consider 92 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. himself fortunate in being able to prove his devotion, without whicli he would have deserved death. He therefore went to en- list as a volunteer at the nearest recruiting-office ; and, by a bitter irony of fortune, he would sometimes find himself enrolled in some such regiment as the Louisiana Tigers or the llisslssippi In-' vinciblcs, names in singular contrast with his gloomy thoughts. A few executions and a considerable number of forced enlist- ments sufficed to crush out every expression of Union sentiments. Vigilance committees were formed in all the Southern States; and if they did not everywhere ])roceed to the extremes of violence, they everywhere trampled under foot all public and individual liberties, by resorting to search-warrants and other vexatious pro- ceedings, which, by intimidating the weak and stimulating the irresolute, contributed to fill up the cadres of the voluuteer regi- ments rapidly. The burden of the war was to fall exclusively upon the white population of those States which at the commencement of 1861 had set aside the Federal authority ; this population, according to the census of 18G0, amounted to 5,449,463 souls — or nearly five millions and a half- — out of which number 690,000 men able to bear arms were to be raised. This last figure represents the total of all the forces that the Confederacy was at any time able to command. Owing to the social causes we have mentioned, and the conviction of every person who played a decided part, there were enlisted in the course of the year 1861 nearly 350,000 men; that is to say, more than one-half of the adult and eligible male population. This first effort of the South was, in proportion to her resources, much greater than that of the North ; and the mil- itary power she dis})laycd so rapidly, added to all the advantages of a defensive position, could not fail to give her a superiority at the outset of the war. But while the North, slow in making use of her resources, found in every disaster the occasion for increasing her amny, which, by this means, was at the close of the war twice as large as it was at the beginn'jig, the South Avas not in a condition to sustain the ex- traordinary effort she had made at the outset. Notwithstanding the idleness of her wliite population, Avhich favored the adoption of military service, it was found necessary to resort to conscrip- THE CONFEDERATE VOLUNTEERS. 93 tion as soon as the conflicts had thinned the ranks of the first en- listed vohmteers. The longer the war is continued, the more we shall find the Confederate government resorting to all sorts of violent expedients in order to drain an already exhausted country of the little strength it yet possessed. The despotic system which had so rapidly brought all its resources into operation will then have no other effect than to destroy irretrievably whatever is left ; and if it compel all able-bodied men to don the uniform, it will not prevent one-half of the surviving soldiers from deserting their ranks at the end of the war, to return secretly to their homes, or to seek liberty among the forests. At this period of intoxication which precipitated them into civil war, nothing could convince the men of the South of the fragility of their new political edifice. Although used to biblical citations, they had forgotten the history of that miraculous tree which grew up in one night to shield the prophet Jonah, but which the sting of an invisible worm destroyed as rapidly within the space of a single day. Their Confederacy had grown in the same way, and they already saw it spreading its shadow over the whole of America, little dreaming that it also bore within its roots a gnawing worm, slavery, and that its institutions, founded upon despotism and contempt for humanity, would be withered by the burning blast of civil war. Everything was the subject of illusions in the South — illusions concerning the weakness of her adversary, illusions in regard to her own perseverance. Accustomed to look upon Northern men, the Yankees, as peaceful merchants, the caste which had arrogated to itself the title of Southern chivalry would not believe that they could ever become soldiers. The grossest calumnies circulated by the ncAvs- papers about them remained uncontradicted, and after having been so long connected in politics as well as in business with their brethren of the North, the people of the South were absolutely ig- norant of the resources of their character and their manly qualities. It is true that they did not possess a better knowledge of them- selves. The inflammatory speeches of their stump orat)rs, called in AvLMiYxcdi fire-eaters, although usually appreciated by the good sense of the public, had, in this instance, over-excited the pas- 94 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. sions of the multitude, and only reflected wliat the majority thought and what every one said. No one was doubtful of success ; everybody was convinced that, despite all the obstinacy of which the Yankees were capable, the independence of the South would eventually be secured. No efforts would be spared to wear out the enemy and compel him to recognize it. If the organized armies should be destroyed, guer- illa bands would be formed, which, hoisting the black flag and giving no quarter, should perpetuate the war through every avail- able means, and fight as long as they could handle a knife. Events were destined to frustrate, in the most striking manner, these projects of war to the death ; instead of sheltering guerillas, as we have already stated, the virgin forests only became the refuge of deserters. But the illusions which inspired the people of the South Avith such blind confidence were sincere ; the harsh condemnation of history must be reserved for the leaders who flattered them, who kept up those illusions, and who were yet too well acquainted with the character of their countrymen, and saw too clearly the consequences of a defeat, to share them. The volunteers repaired to the recruiting-ofiices which had been opened by the initiative action of the most zealous and am- bitious persons in every district. The formation of regiments which were thus spontaneously called into existence throughout the Southern States was generally the private work of a few indi- viduals, associated together for that purpose in their respective villages or quarters. One would collect a squad, another a com- pany ; parish associations, coteries, and individual influence con- stituted the early ties among the soldiers thus recruited. The different detachments, once assembled, were grouped by counties or by towns to be formed into regiments ; all the higher grades were conferred, by election, upon those who by their birth, wealth, or recent services in the matter of enlistments were thought to be entitled to the choice of their future subordinates. This first organization, an entirely spontaneous creation of the national movement, often preceded the legal call for volunteers. Presently, the governors of States intervened for the purpose of regulating the organization, by fixing the number of men to be raised and the quota of each county. The legislatures of the THE CONFEDERATE VOLUNTEERS. 95 States that had just voted in favor of separation confirmed the action of the governors by authorizing the necessary appropriations for the support of the troops destined to sustain their rebellion against the Federal authority. The regiments were then mus- tered into the service of the several States. The officers already elected were confirmed in their respective grades ; brigades were formed, to which staff officers were assigned ; a large number of generals were appointed, and the particular army of each State found itself thus constituted. This organization by States, in conformity with the principle of their independence, would have been kept up in the new Con- federacy, if the principle itself had been the cause, and not the mere pretext, of the war. But although useful at first, it proved subsequently to be only an encumbrance to the Southern leaders, who hastened to get rid of it. In order to succeed, they needed a despotic central power, capable of pushing the war to extremes, whose iron hand should be able to supply the want of popular enthusiasm when, as was to be expected, it should become weary. Such was the dominant idea of the delegates who established a provisional government at Montgomery, a small town in Alabama. In confiding the executive power to Mr. Davis, who had been the soul of the rebellion, they united into one solid whole the scat- tered forces of the Confederacy. While they inserted in their frail constitution a guarantee for all their new constitutional theories, they practically tightened the bonds of centralization; and defer- ring the fulfilment of their promises, which were all destined to be blown away by the same puff of wind, to a more auspicious sea- son, they hastened to give the absolute control of all their re- sources to the pilot who was to guide the skiff, upon which they had rashly embarked their fortunes, through the storm. Conse- quently, without wasting time in the preparation of organic laws, of which it knew the weakness, the provisional government devoted all its attention to the consolidation of the military forces of the South. It was well aware of the necessity of making preparations for a serious war, and, in view of that fact, of embodying all the inde- pendent regiments it had under its control into one homogeneous army. Congress had hardly assembled, the Confederacy only 96 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. counting seven stars on its new escutcheon, when it assisted Mr Davis in this work. It entrusted him with the supreme manage- ment of military operations, with authority to muster into the service of the central government the volunteers of the several States. On the 6th of March, 1861, the number of these volun- teers was fixed at one hundred thousand, and their term of enlist- ment for one year, and, at the same time, orders were issued di- recting the formation of a general staff for the provisional army, and the organization of a regular army. The provisional army was to be reorganized as soon as the adopted Constitution should be put in force, and it was decided that all the State troops of which it was composed should then be re-enlisted in the service of the Confederacy for a period fixed by Congress. Contrary to what had hitherto been the practice in the United States, where the Federal compact vested the right of maintaining troops in time of peace exclusively in the central authority, there were seen, among the particular contingents of the several States, what were called regular troops, intended to be kept in service after the end of the Avar and the recognition of their independence. But in the mean time, the Confederate gov- ernment took them into its service and pay, and provided them with staff officers and administrative departments, either by ap- pointing new officers or by confirming the appointments already made by the governors of the States. In both cases these officers held their commissions from the President, and retained them during the entire war. We shall not now enter into details as to the recruiting and organization of the Confederate army. In this matter the men of the South, true to American customs and traditions, took for their model the levies of other periods, especially those of the Mexican war, under the Union flag ; and their organization was precisely the same as that of the armies of the North, of which we shall speak more at length hereafter. The habits, the modes of thought and of action were so similar throughout every section of the republic that, in spite of their desire to be considered a separate nation, the people of the South could not disclaim the traditions they held in common with their brethren of the North, to preserve a distinct character. When they sought to enact laws THE CONFEDERATE VOLUNTEERS. 97 for themselves, they took the Federal Constitution, and altered the sense, without modifying its form. They selected for their new flag that which most resembled the banner of 1776. Finally, in their efforts to raise volunteers, and to organize the interior mechanism of their armies, they scrupulously jjreserved and applied the system which had prevailed before secession, and which we shall see put into practice by the North on a very large scale. They pursued this course so far as to organize a corps of regular troops, independent of the authority of so-called sovereign States, and they copied the old army of the United States so ex- actly that they limited its strength to the insignificant figure of ten thousand men. But this army, unable to compensate for its numerical weakness either by its traditions or the elements that composed it, was not in any way distinguished from the other Confederate troops, and had no special part to play in the war. Never, perhaps, since the time of Csesar, could the sad words of Lucan have been applied with so much truth to any civil war as to this one : Pares aquilas et pila minantia pilis. This war, however, developed important differences of charac- ter between men composing armies so similar in their organiza- tions. Those of the South became good soldiers more rapidly than those of the North. They were more accustomed to follow leaders ; their life was rouglier than that of the Eastern farmers, and more adventurous than that of the Western pioneers. Inured to privations, they were satisfied with rations which the Federal soldier looked upon as insufficient. Hence that rapidity of move- ment which was one of the principal causes of all their successes. Rarely paid by the government, which, unable to solve its finan- cial difficulties, fairly ignored their claims, they never asked for the depreciated paper which was due to them, except when they thought their officers better treated than themselves, and then it was sufficient to lead them against the foe to pacify them. Nearly all of them were practiced in the use of fireams, and one might see them enter the recruiting-offices with the rifle on their shoul- ders and the revolver at the belt — weapons which they never laid aside, and without which they would not have considered them- VoL. I.— 7 98 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. selves safe. In fine, they carried into the war more pafesion than their adversaries ; the Federals to them were invaders who had always been painted in the blackest colors, and who, in coming to free the negroes, intended to make them the equals of the common whites, and consequently to humble the jealous caste to which those whites belonged. On the other hand, the Confederate soldier was inferior, in point of intelligence and information, to that of the North. Southern society being divided into very distinct classes, the elite of the population only were cultivated ; the rest had no education what- ever. While primary schools were universal in the North, pro- found ignorance reigned among most of the inhabitants of the slave States. This difference, which the census tables of 1860 exhibit in a striking manner, had a great bearing on the issues of the conflict ; for the nations that are really strong are not those which possess a few distinguished men, but those in Avhich the moral and intellectual standard of the greatest number is most elevated. In the knapsacks of the Confederate soldiers there were found more playing-cards than books or writing materials, while the use of strong drinks was much more prevalent among them than among those of the North. Whether this vice >vas more congenial to their tastes, or whether it was' deemed expedient to tolerate it as a kind of compensation for all their privations, the Confederate officers were unable strictly to enforce the rules which prohibited the use of spirituous liquors among their troops. Nor did the Southern armies have in their ranks any of those artisans skilled in all the mechanical trades that were to be found in the armies of the North, whose craft enabled every Federal regiment to supply the necessary men for the reconstruction of railroads, the repairing of locomotives, or for running a train ; so that the Confederates were more than once under the necessity of applying to Northern men, forcibly enlisted, for this kind of service, or of confiding the task to their own officers, whose inexperience cost them dear. To the common whites, in short, taught to despise every kind of manual labor, the soldier's trade was, what used to be called formerly, a noble profession, and they felt degraded when called upon to handle the shovel. They often refused to work in those trenches which played such a conspicuous part THE CONFEDERATE VOLUNTEERS. 99 during the war. A few requisitions for negro help made ujion the large slaveholders supplied this want, and, by sparing the free men a certain amount of hard work, enabled them to devote more time to their military training. They were not, however, relieved entirely from these labors ; the authority of their chiefs succeeded in conquering their repugnance, and in cases of great urgency they constructed with their own hands the works which indicate to this day the progress of their campaigns. The character of the soldiers and the composition of the Con- federate armies had much to do with the manner in which the war was waged by the latter, and the part which the various arms played in it. The Confederate foot-soldier, easier to manage and more excit- able than his adversary, would rush to the charge with savage yells, and, in this way, he frequently carried positions which the latter, with equal courage, could not have captured. But on the other hand, possessing neither his patience nor his tenacity under a murderous fire, he was much less able to defend them. So that, in the course of the war, we shall always find the Southern officers trying to surprise some point or another of the Federal lines with heavy masses. This infantry, which M^ould not have cut a very brilliant figure at a review by the precision of its move- ments, possessed the art of marching through the densest forests in good order, deployed in such a manner as to avoid trees, and yet without becoming separated. This art rendered those sur- prises easy of achievement, by enabling a body of infantry to hide within the depths of the forest without being preceded by any line of skirmishers, and to approach the enemy with suf- ficient rapidity to attack him suddenly in the clearing where he was encamped. The history of the war will show how useful this kind of tactics was to the Confederate generals — how they availed themselves of it to compel the enemy to extend his lines so as to cover all his positions at once ; in this manner they fre- quently obtained advantages upon the point of attack with infe- rior forces ; and if their columns were repulsed, they were quickly withdrawn and led elsewhere to attack some other position. We shall also find, however, that they did not apply these tactics to advantage when they found themselves among the un wooded hills 100 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. of Pennsylvania ; there they could not avail themselves of the skill of their soldiers by deploying them as sharpshooters to cover their attacks against open positions defended by artillery. These soldiers, more practiced in the use of the rifle than those of the North, were well adapted for such service ; they proved this dur- ing the sieges and those slow operations where the two armies, after having both fallen back into their respective entrenchments, reconnoitred each other in turn, and drew their lines closer by degrees without daring to charge each other openly. Posted behind breastworks, or in a rifle-pit, they would watch the Federal works with the cool vigilance of a hunter who has passed many days motionless by the side of some deserted lake, watching for the stag that is sure to come to quench his thirst at sunset ; and it only required to place a hat on the point of a bayonet and raise it slowly above the Federal parapets to see all the bushes, which seemed to have been innocently planted in front of the enemy's line, enveloped in smoke, and that improvised target pierced by as many balls. During the first campaigns, the habits and education of the Confederate soldiers gave to their cavalry a still more marked superiority over that of their adversaries. This superiority was wrongly attributed to the merit of the chiefs who commanded it ; for if Ashby, Stuart, and all those brilliant officers who organ- ized the cavalry of the South won at first the respect and admi- ration of their enemies, they found in front of them generals equally expert in the art of handling that arm of the military service : Sheridan, Stoneman, Kilpatrick, and many others demon- strated this as soon as they had good troops to command. The severe discipline which had been introduced into the Confederate army was the means of moulding those cavalrymen to the dif- ficult task they had to accomplish; but their superiority was chiefly owing to the fact that they had been recruited at the out- set among the better classes of the population — among those coun- trymen who, before the war, were in sufficiently easy circum- stances to own a horse, and who, on enlisting, had brought it with them. Inured to bodily exercise, and having learned horse- manship in a country where the roads really accessible to car- riages were scarce, they formed a class of mounted men already THE CONFEDERATE VOLUNTEERS. 101 well trained, which did not exist in the North. They were more- over to have the advantage of almost invariably fighting on their own soil, of being well acquainted, tlierefore, with the minutest details of the ground on which they were to operate, and of being assisted by the connivance of the sympathizing inhabitants, ready to assume the character of volunteer spies in order to serve their cause. In the war they had undertaken, they were sure to meet at every stage with provisions and aid of all kinds, together with valuable information and the necessary guides to enable them to avoid the enemy or to surprise him as they saw fit. The negroes themselves, notwithstanding their sympathies for the cause of the Union, became the involuntary auxiliaries of the cavalrymen of +he South, who, long accustomed to live among them, knew better than the Federals how to make allowances for their lively imagi- nations, and to winnow out the truth from the exaggerated or contradictory reports which they hardly ever dared to withhold. It will be seen from the narrative of the war how much this ele- ment of success contributed to build up the superiority of the Con- federate cavalry ; for it lost this sui)eriority whenever it ventured upon the soil of the free States, and it failed miserably in all the expeditions which it undertook in the midst of hostile populations. In organizing their army the Confederates were unable to sup- ply it with a field artillery equal to that of their adversaries. They had undoubtedly many able and well-trained officers ; but as a general thing, their soldiers did not possess that intelligence and taste for the mechanical arts which, in a short time, converted the volunteers of the North into excellent artillerymen. As will be seen further on, their materiel was also of an inferior quality ; and it required the courage and the daring of a few men like Pendleton, Stuart's chief of artillery, to compensate in part for this inferiority. This was not the case with the Confederate ar- tillery in position. That portion of it which had charge of the defences of their seaports was mostly recruited in the cities, among men Avho, from their education, resembled more the ar- tisans of the North than the common whites of the South. We shall see them, therefore, acquiring under able instructors a great precision of aim, and holding out in all the forts along the coast, especially at Charleston, against the Federal armies and the iron- 102 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. clad fleets that laid siege to them. But these men, who so coolly handled guns whose field of fire had long been studied, had a much easier task to perform than fell to the lot of those who, in the field artillery, had to place their guns in battery amid the confu- sion of battle, and to judge, by a single glance, of the exact dis- tances on an unknown ground, in order to regulate the elevations and graduate the fuses. The South had always regarded a partisan war as one of its principal elements of defence in the struggle for which it had long been preparing. As soon as it broke out bands were seen forming by the side of the regularly organized army, who declared their intention of fighting on their own account. The independ- ence they expected to find in this mode of warfare, the hope of plunder, and the attractions of an adventurous life drew into their ranks the most desperate characters. The remembrance of the Mexican brigands had remained in the South surrounded in a kind of romantic halo since the conquerors of Texas had fought them and adopted their customs ; and the men who only a few years before had attempted to wrest Kansas by violence from the Northern settlers, in defiance of all laws, set an example, which was promptly followed, by organizing armed bands destined to become very popular in the South under the Spanish name of guerillas. It will be seen, as we have already stated, how much the Confederates deceived themselves in relying upon these irreg- ular troops to render it impossible for their adversaries to occupy any portion of the territory they might conquer, and in believing that they would persevere in the work of self-devotion when the cause should suffer on the field of battle. But if they never succeeded in playing more than an accessory part in regular war- fare, that part was none the less an important one ; and so long as the Confederate armies held out, despite the ground they were losing, the guerillas, by their daring attacks upon the invader, were of immense assistance to them. Appreciating the services that such combatants were able to render, the Confederate Congress gave them an organization and an official character, which were to secure them the treatment of prisoners of war on the part of the enemy. They signed the en- listment papers like other volunteers, their leaders were bre vetted, THE CONFEDERATE VOLUNTEERS. 105 and placed under the authority of a few generals, who, nominally at least, had the supreme control of their movements. In reality, however, they preserved a perfect independence, and became, ac- cording to their respective characters and the qualities of their chiefs, either formidable soldiers, animated by a true military spirit, or merely armed marauders, who knew nothing of war except its most melancholy excesses. Accordingly, the partisans who were organized in Virginia, the most ardent, but also the noblest and most disinterested of the Southern States, were nearly all animated by sincere zeal, earnest devotion to their cause, and a sentiment of honor incompatible with such excesses. Young men of wealth and of good family enrolled themselves among them, certain of finding, in the hum- blest positions, an opportunity for acquiring that quickness of perception, that knowledge of the country, and that foresight into details which form the warrior. The landowners and farmers, more numerous in Virginia than in the other slave States, who formed a large portion of these independent organizations, scarcely changed their habits on entering this new career. They had been acquainted from their infancy with the vast forests where they were going to make war. All able-bodied men left the few vil- lages scattered among these forests to enlist, and there was not a solitary house where some soldier of these bands was not sure of meeting some female relative or friend, where indeed all could not be greeted with a few words of sympathy, so calculated to add fresh courage to the wearied soldier when they fall from the lips of a woman. Such troops, so adapted for intercepting the de- f,patches of an enemy, for picking up his stragglers, or attacking his convoys, for cutting railways and telegraph lines in his rear, were to form an excellent body of scouts to the regular army about to defend Virginia against the Federal invasion. It must be admitted that the conduct of the Virginians was not always imitated by the other Confederate partisans, who were induced by less worthy motives to enrol themselves under the banner of the guerilla chiefs. The reputation of the latter prom- ised them, with great fatigue, equally great plunder. Conse- quently, the volunteers who gathered in crowds around them soon formed into bands which at times numbered several thousand 104 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. horse. We shall see these bands constantly at work during those campaigns which desolated the Western States, destroying everything on their way, inflicting as much injury upon the most peaceful inhabitants of those regions as upon the Federal soldiers they came to fight, and getting so far from the regular armies, on which they were supposed to depend, that they were very seldom of any assistance in their operations. A minority, more or less numerous, in those States, being secretly hostile to the Confeder- ate cause, this circumstance was made the pretext for offering, as an inducement to adventurers who abounded in the West, a regu- lar system of pillage. All who joined these organizations were authorized to take whatever might be useful to the band — horses, arms, equipments, etc. — from those inhabitants who were sus- pected of entertaining Union sentiments, and the soldiers who brought their booty to headquarters were promised the full value of the articles thus stolen. The result might easily have been foreseen. No partisan could fail of finding some cause for pre- ferring charges of sympathy with the North against any one who was worth the trouble of being robbed. This premium upon pillage necessarily rendered those soldiers who had to pass final judgment on the political opinions of those whose property they coveted very little scrupulous, and their number increased with their im- punity. In short, they became a subject of so much dread to their own friends that, had the war ended in the recognition of the Confederate government, the latter would have been obliged to inaugurate a new civil war, to get rid of those guerillas who had become regular gangs of bandits. One may form an opinion of the value of such soldiers by tak- ing into consideration the character of their chiefs, and also by taking as a type of whatever there was of good and of evil among them, the three men who contributed most to their organiza- tion, and whose names will most frequently occur in the course of what we shall have occasion to say regarding these corps of free- booters — Mosby, Morgan, and Forrest. Mosby was a Virginia lawyer, endowed with the instinct of that partisan war, so difficult in an almost uncultivated country. His character and political passion drew around him men full of the same zeal as himself. Consequently, he received from them THE CONFEDERATE VOLUNTEERS. 105 the most unbounded obedience and absolute devotion. A wary politician and a loyal citizen of his own State, when he saw, after the capitulation of the regular armies, that any further resist- ance would only unnecessarily increase the suiferings of his countrymen, he discharged his men with a few words full of noble sentiments, and with a pliability of mind peculiarly Amer- ican, he quietly went back to his office and resumed his former life. John Morgan, a daring horseman and a genial companion be- fore the war, possessed all the necessary attributes for exercising an unbounded influence over the youth of Kentucky, his native State. Fiery before the conflict, but calm in action, of a gener- ous disposition, but inflexible as a disciplinarian, he was better able than any other man to curb the brutal passions and develop the best instincts of the rough troopers who responded to his call. Although their number allowed him occasionally during the war to direct long and complicated operations, he preserved through- out his career that love of personal adventure which had made him so popular ; and thanks to the presence of mind which en- abled him to get out of the most perplexing difficulties, he soon became one of those heroes that abound in legendary story. We shall relate his campaigns, but it would fill a volume to enumerate all the daring exploits by means of which he set an example to his soldiers from the very beginning of the war, riding among the Federal posts in order to ascertain their positions by personal ob- servation, sometimes in the garb of a farmer, sometimes in the uniform of a Union officer, taking advantage of the former dis- guise to draw the enemy into the ambuscade he had prepared for him, and of the second, to issue, with imperturbable assurance, orders which would throw the enemy's movements into confusion. Like a true Kentuckian, horses were his ruling passion ; and if in the course of this narrative we shall find him attempting im- possible enterprises, or suddenly diverting any of his expeditions from their apparent purpose, it is likely that the hope of carry- ing off some blood horses — the only booty he ever allowed him- self to take — may have exercised an irresistible influence over his action^* * See Appendix to this volume, Note D. 106 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. Differing widely from the other two chiefs, who, w^hen hostili- ties commenced, gathered the greatest number of partisans around them, Forrest tarnished his undisputed military qualities by the appeals he made to the brutal passions of those he enrolled under his standard. Though never imitating the excesses of Quantrell — that brigand whose boast it was, throughout the war, that he never spared a single human being he met in whole counties of Missouri — this true captain of banditti, resembling those that infested Germany during the Thirty Years' War, used to en- courage his men to acts of pillage, and would close his eyes to deeds of cruelty of which they were often guilty. And thus we find Forrest, after distinguishing himself by remarkable military achievements, signalizing himself at last by a sinister exploit — the massacre of the negro garrison of Fort Pillow. He organ- ized the band under his command into a corps of mounted in- fantry, in which every man was provided with a horse — less for the purpose of fighting than for executing rapid marches, at the end of which the men would dismount, take up their muskets, and carry the enemy's positions, thus suddenly attacked, at the point of the bayonet. He found these tactics the more successful that he was not ashamed — no more than the Indian — to beat a hasty retreat whenever he found his adversary on his guard. HLs corps increased rapidly by the addition of other partisan bands, w^hose cliiefs had acquired less celebrity than himself. He soon grew tired of being only a guerilla chief like Mosby and Morgan : the Confederate government testified their sense of his services, and of his own importance to themselves, by investing his band with the attributes of regular troops, and by conferring on him- self the rank of general. This reorganization and these new titles, however, produced no change either in the leader or in his men : the latter still pursued, on a wider field, their adventurous career, alternating between battle and rapine, and the former slave-dealer, now commanding an army corps, too often behaved as if, instead of wielding a sword, he still flourished the blood stained whip of the dealer in human flesh. CHAPTER III. THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS. WE have shown in a former chapter the great and real cause of the civil war, and in another the military resources which the South called to its aid in order to sustain it. In this and the following chapter we propose to point out the principal features of the political crisis which preceded the civil war, and to relate the occurrences in the midst of which the United States became divided into two hostile camps. We have stated that slavery had become the basis of the entire politico-economical edifice of the South ; the servile institution must be placed beyond the reach of danger in order that this edifice might run no risk of falling to pieces, for, even though the institution itself was universally respected in the South, the mere vicinity of the free States was a perpetual menace to it. The prosperity of these States, the rapid increase of their popula- tion, which absorbed nearly all the emigration from Europe, and their still more rapid extension of territory, secured to them a daily growing influence in the councils of the Republic. The slave States had sought to balance this influence by extending the servile institution into the yet uncultivated sections of the conti- nent, by disputing the territories recently opened to civilization with the settlers from the North, by wresting from Mexico some of her most valuable provinces ; and they thought of further in- creasing the number of their States by seizing Cuba and the whole coast of the Gulf of Mexico. They had succeeded, by means of a shrewd policy, in creating for themselves a considerable party in the North, whose support had long given them a preponderance in the Federal elections, and had enabled them to govern the Union in the interest of their policy. The advocates of this pol- icy had unscrupulously taken advantage of the deep attachment 107 108 THE CIVIL WAR IN A3IERICA. which the great majority of the American people entertained f(>r their Constitution, and, by constantly threatening to break it up, by re- course to the most violent measures, they had obtained from them all the concessions necessary for the maintenance and development of their system. But a day came when these concessions were no longer sufficient. Despite all their eiforts, the slave-owners saw themselves outstripped — conquered by the progress of free labor. In order to secure the adherence of their partisans in the North, which alone could give them the control of public affairs, they were also obliged to make certain concessions in return. They could not impose upon the Kepublic, to its full extent, the policy on the success of which they had staked their fortunes. In 1860 it was easy to foresee that their rule would not be of long dura- tion, and that even if they succeeded in legally securing a govern- ment of their choice, that government could not prevent free labor from planting itself in the best portions of the continent. Two alternatives, both equally violent, presented themselves to them for shielding the servile institution from the danger which threat- ened it. They must either separate entirely from the free States, and found a new republic of slave States, freed from the control of their former associates ; or forcibly extort from the latter the guarantees henceforth indispensable to the institution of slavery, and thus make sure of their supremacy over all the continent. The aversion and jealousy entertained for the North led the ma- jority of Southern slaveholders to adopt the idea of founding a separate Republic, in which they could, at their option, consoli- date the servile institution. But clear-sighted politicians, while commending this project, which favored their designs, foresaw the danger for the future, and fully understood that, in order to exist, a community founded upon slavery must not only be inde- pendent, but mistress of America. In fact, the maintenance of the Union, even under the Presi- dency of the most zealous abolitionist, would have been less dan- gerous to the Southern community than separation, pure and sim- ple, dividing the United States into two unequal parts ; one of these parts, supposing it to comprise all the slave States, without excepting those which remained faithful to the Federal flag, would have had a population of eight million whites and four THE FRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS. 109 million blacks ; the other wonld have been composed of the rest of the Union — that is to say, of the great body of the free States, continuing to form, under the Federal compact, a single nation from the Atlantic to the Pacific. From amiable, or at least tol- erant, associates, the latter would have become formidable rivals ani implacable enemies. Finding in their numerous population, in the productive system of free labor, and their vast financial re- sources, an irresistible element of colonization, they would have successfully competed with the Southern States, already fettered by slavery, divided into hostile castes, and deprived of the re- sources that emigration brings to the new continent. In a few years, the free States would have completely surrounded the ter- ritory occupied by the servile institution, and by thus closing the avenues of future expansion against it, they would have dealt it a mortal blow. Their vast frontiers would have been opened to fugitives from slavery, as soon as the shameful compact by which those neighboring States had pledged themselves to return the fugitive slave had been torn to pieces, with the very Union in whose name it had been procured. In spite of all artificial bar- riers, a double contraband, favoring the escape of the slave on one hand, would, on the other, have carrried into the South those abolition publications so much dreaded by the latter, which a secret but irresistible propagandism would have circulated among enslaved populations whom the faintest glimpse of liberty was sufficient to excite. This inevitable consequence of separation was predicted long ago by the sagacious mind of De Tocqueville, who foresaw the day when slavery would bring on a terrible crisis, in the midst of which it would disappear, and which even seemed to him destined to prove fatal to one of the two races. He had therefore counselled the men of the South to remain faith- ful to the Union at all hazards, because, sustained by the numer- ous white population of the North, he told them, they would be able to abolish slavery slowly without subverting the order of things, and still preserving their social superiority ; whereas, if they made an enemy of that population, the latter would soon find a way of freeing their slaves in spite of them and against them. A war of races, which the defeat of the South has rendered 110 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. unnecessary, would have been the certain result of the separation. Consequently, the leaders of the slavery party needed the support of the people of the North. But it was for the purpose of main- taining and fortifying slavery, and not with a view of abolishing it gradually, that they asked for this support. There were two ways of obtaining it : either by reconstructing the Union to suit themselves ; or, by dividing the North in such a manner that it would no longer have formed a compact nation by their side, the slave power would have found among its ruins a few weak States always ready to sue for protection. In either case, the servile institution would have secured its necessary ascendency over the w^hole continent. The reconstruction of the Union for their own benefit was the first thought of Southern politicians. The capital of the Union was surrounded by slave States, inhabited by slave- holders, and the Federal laws sanctioned the existence of the peculiar institution of the South within its territory ; they made sure, therefore, of its possession, and once assembled in the Cap- itol, they fully hoped that the necessity of forming one great nation, that fidelity to the Federal Constitution itself, would rally around them the majority of the Northern States. The Union would thus be reconstituted under their auspices, and New Eng- land, that focus of abolition, would perhaps alone be excluded from it, and . left to vegetate in obscure mediocrity. The Mont- gomery Congress, therefore, in drawing up the new Constitution of the Confederate slave States, took care to adopt, purely and simply, the old compact of the United States, with two im- portant modifications-^one, to justify the past, the other, to guarantee the future. The first recognized the right of seces- sion as a principle ; the . second proclaimed slavery as a fund- amental institution of society. Through this deceptive resem- blance to the Federal Constitution, it w^as hoped that all the States of the old Union would the more readily group themselves around the new Confederacy. In order to effect this, it was necessary either to intimidate them by a bold cowp d'itat, or to win them back, one by one, by dividing them, by wearying them out, and by showing them, in a manner calculated to impress them, the unanimous determination of the South. We have shown by what violent means this apparent unanimity of the Southern people waa THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS. Ill procured; there was no more respect paid to the doctrine of State rights^ the very foundation of the Confederacy, than to the pri- vate rights of individuals ; and, at a later period, an attempt on the part of North Carolina to get rid of the despotism of Mr. Davis was treated as treason. If the re-establishment of the Union was not practicable, it was at least important to secure the supremacy of the new Confederacy by surrounding it with neigh- bors at once weak and divided. In order to accomplish this, war with the North was necessary, because a peaceful sej)aration would have left her united under the old Federal Constitution. All the slave States, without exception, must be brought into the Con- federacy; the Mississippi must be closed against the Western States, and this outlet, so necessary for their produce, should only be opened in exchange for an alliance which would have reduced them to a state of vassalage. It was important, above all, to make the Northern merchants feel the superiority of the military power of the Southern States, in order to secure to the latter the role of arbitrators among their neighbors, ruined by war and dis- couraged by defeat. To realize this project, the leaders of the slave States counted chiefly upon the influence which the exclu- sive cultivation of cotton gave them. They were convinced that neither America nor Eurojje could dispense with an article which they alone could supply, and they saw in it a guarantee for the maintenance of slavery, of which it was the fruit. They did not believe that the working classes, in England and in France, would have the courage to undergo the severest privations, rather than give a word of encouragement to the cause of slavery, and they fully expected that these classes would compel the European governments to restore cotton to their looms, by intervening in behalf of the Confederates. Forgetting that the exports of the agricultural products of the North exceeded those of the South, they fancied that the whole world was dependent upon them, and, in their presumptuous language, they already announced the ac- cession of King Cotton, before whom the sovereigns and the republics of the two worlds would have to bow. Such were the views of the ambitious men who controlled the policy of the South. At the opposite extreme were the aboli' tionists, who, with the foresight and the logic of champions of 112 TEE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. positive ideas, felt, like them, that slavery must either rule or perish, and who, resolved to contest its power, were not afraid of attacking it in front. Equally enthusiastic and ardent in the struggle, they made light of the Constitution in their harangues whenever it seemed to them to favor the propagation of slavery. Justly convinced of the rectitude and sacredness of their cause, persuaded also that, in combating the servile institution without intermission or compromise, they were saving their country from shame and ruin, they entered the political arena with the courage, the faith, and the sternness of their ancestors the Puritans. So long as the struggle which they had foreseen was deferred, they did not number many adherents, but a day came when the whole nation rallied around the abolition flag, which they had carried so loftily and firmly, and when they had the satisfaction of wit- nessing the triumph of the principles of truth and justice, which they had never sacrificed to the exigencies of politics. Between these two extreme parties there were the masses of the people, loyal above all to the Union, loyal to the Constitu- tion, the benefits of which they enjoyed. These masses were divided into two parties, called Democrats and Republicans, according as they favored or opposed the slave policy. The Republicans, who were in the majority in most of the Northern States, did not attack slavery directly where it existed, and, respecting the right of every State to preserve it, they confined themselves to the task of restricting its extension. The Demo- cratic party was composed, in the first place, of a large portion of the Northern population, which desired to maintain the Union by making concessions to the servile institution and by tolerating its development; and secondly, of the immense majority of the Southern people who believed in their ability to retain the guar- antees of slavery without resorting to illegal means or violating the Constitution. The alliance between the Northern and Southern Democrats and the extreme slave party had given, at all the general elec- tions, an important majority to the politicians who defended the servile institution over the Republican party, which was solely sustained by a small fraction of abolitionists. They might still have possessed such majority in 1860. But, as we have already THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS. US stated, this advantage no longer satisfied them ; they now wanted to establish their supremacy in a way not to be disputed, by a bold stroke of policy ; and they preferred threats of war, and even war itself, to compromises henceforth insufficient. They only required a pretext to draw after them their fellow-citi- zens who were yet faithful to the Union. We shall show how they sought this pretext in the Presidential elections of 1860. They had long used the entire power of the Federal government for the protection and extension of slavery ; they had introduced it into a great number of territories which had been acquired by that government in the name of the whole community ; sometimes protecting, in the name of the independence of the new States, those which, under their influence, admitted slavery ; at other times, causing the central power to trace an imaginary line, south of which all the territories were to belong to the servile institu- tion. But when they thought of separating from the North, or at least threatened the North with violent separation, they denied that the Federal government had any right to interfere in the matter. This threat was a powerful political argument, and separation seeming to be the last resort when slavery should be in danger, a constitutional theory was needed to justify it. This was found in the dogma of the absolute sovereignty of the States — a doctrine which had for its apostle, between the years 1830 and 1840, Mr. Calhoun, the foremost statesman of South Caro- lina, who soon came to be considered as the palladium of the peculiar institutions of the Southern States. It is sufficient to sum up this doctrine in a few words, to show how specious and dangerous it was. The object of the Federal compact, between the colonies that had been freed by the war of independence, was to protect them against the divisions which weakened them, to unite them into one indestructible group or cluster, and to make of them a single nation, while leaving them a local independence sufficient to pro- tect them against the despotism of centralization. Each colony, in adopting this compact, made a perpetual cession of a portion of its sovereignty in favor of the new community. The rights which M'Cre thus ceded constituted the prerogatives of the Federal power. We cannot enumerate them here, but in order to show their im- VoL. I.— 8 114 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. portancG; it Is sufficient to mention the right of waging war and making peace, the right of coining money, of collecting custom- house duties, and of representing the commonwealth in foreign countries. The flag was national ; civil and political rights were enjoyed in common by the citizens of all the States ; no custom- house could be established in the interior; the Federal govern- ment had exclusive jurisdiction over certain questions of general interest ; it was the sovereign arbiter both between States and be- tween such States and private individuals aggrieved by them. Finally, besides its limited jurisdiction in the States, it exercised a sovereign authority over the Federal possessions and the new territories acquired by the Republic. The forts, the arsenals, and the District of Columbia, which contained the seat of government, had been ceded to it with full right of property ; the immense uncultivated regions where colonization daily extended were be- coming peopled under its protection ; and it alone could impart political life to territories sufficiently civilized to claim the right of adding another star to the azure field of the national flag. The very manner in which the national power was constituted proved that it represented one single nation, and not an agglomeration of independent States. This power was composed of a Senate and a House of Representatives, invested conjointly with political and legislative sovereignty ; of a President, constituting the executive power ; and finally, of a Supreme Court, whose province was to enforce the superior authority of the national laws, and to pass judgment as a court of final appeal upon all constitutional ques- tions. With the exception of this tribunal, appointed by the President, the other powers (executive and legislative) were elec- tive. While the Senate represented in a proper measure the au- tonomy of the States, and comprised Avithin its organization two members sent by each of those political bodies, whatever their size or importance, the House of Representatives was the direct product of popular suffrage ; the entire surface of the Union was divided into districts equal in population, each of which elected one member. The election of the President, although nominally of a twofold character, was also essentially national and proportioned to the population. Each State designated as many special electors as it sent Representatives and Senators to Congress, and these THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS. 115 electors assembled in an electoral college, which in 1860 was com- posed of three hundred and three members, whose only mission was to vote for a President. With the exception of South Caro- lina, which left the right of their selection to the legislature, these electors were chosen by popular vote, and all were positively in- structed to vote for such or such candidate ; the result of the vote for President was thus known at the same time as the names of the electors designated by the ballot, and the election was thus practically reduced to a single point. The Federal law gave to the slave States an unjustifiable advantage in the formation of the electoral districts, by taking into account the servile population, which did not however possess any political rights, and by count- ing five negroes as equivalent to three white men. This advan- tage was also granted to them in the Presidential elections, and they were more than once indebted to it for successes which the free States only accejoted out of respect for the Constitution. Strong party organizations, which are indispensable in proportion as the institutions are more democratic, could alone carry such an election into effect, and give to the choice of electors the character of a national manifestation. Accordingly, each party held free meetings or conventions, composed of distinguished men selected in all the States by permanent party committees. It was in these preliminary assemblies that the merits of the various candidates for the Presidency were discussed ; and, the choice once made, the whole party, owing to its innumerable ramifications and its per- manent committees, went to work with the utmost harmony to se- cure the election of the delegates pledged beforehand to vote in favor of their candidate. Such was the entire national edifice — an edifice founded on Fed- eral institutions, on the common interest which they guaranteed and the public life they had developed — which the doctrine of State sovereignty was seeking to undermine. Those who had adopted it pretended that each State was at all times at liberty to resume the sovereignty it had ceded to the Commonwealth, in vir- tue of the Federal compact ; that the States which had been cre- ated since the Union had an equal right to do the same ; and that the powerful Republic, the unity of which had benefited each of them in turn, was thus to be dismembered at the first sign of local 116 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. opposition that the constitutional enactments and the voice of the majority might encounter. Such a theory, logically applied, would lead to endless divisions and to the destruction of all na- tionality, for no confederation could have existed under such con- ditions ; the States themselves would soon have been broken up by the claims of the counties of which they were composed to separate from them ; and if the Northern States had sanctioned this theory by allowing the slaveholders quietly to withdraw from the Union, they could not have prevented other secessions from taking place in their midst, at the first symptom of those inevit- able differences the solution of which had hitherto been left to the popular vote. We have already shown how little the Southern leaders thought of State sovereignty as soon as they had organized their new Confederacy ; but at the time of which we speak this fatal doctrine had taken a strong hold of the public mind in all the slave States, and it dragged the most loyal citizens into the rebel- lion, as soon as the usurping legislatures had declared in favor of separation. The various parties went to work early in the spring of 1860 to prepare for the Presidential elections which were to take place in November. On the 23d of April all the delegates of the Democratic party met in convention at Charleston. The draw- ing up of a programme or jplaiform — to use the popular term — - was the first task of those preliminary assemblies, after which, the choice of candidates destined to carry out that programme was more easy and had a more definite meaning ; for the Americans have acquired the habit in political life of attaching more import- ance to principles than to persons. The Democratic party in the free States, so far as any calculations could be made, was nearly as numerous as the Republican party ; it had adopted for its pro- gramme, under the name of Popular Sovereignty, the right of every new State or Territory to adopt or to exclude slavery. Its alliance with the Democrats of the South had already triumphed in many elections ; this alliance had only to be continued to secure the nomination of Mr. Doug-las, the recomized chief of the North- ern Democrats. But the slaveholders of the South, as it has already been stated, desired to push matters to extremes. They demanded THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS. 117 a programme implying the right of secession, and imposing upon the Federal government the official recognition of slavery as a national institution. This was to render their union with the ma- jority of their former allies impossible. In consequence of these conflicting pretensions, the convention accomplished nothing, and from that moment the success of the Republican candidate ap- peared certain. Those who had brought about this result were not afraid of the consequences ; they preferred it to the surrender of the least portion of their imperious programme. They had thrown off the mask. In the mean time, the party of concilia- tion which never fails to come to the surface during a great polit- ical crisis — but whose good intentions are almost always power- less, because it seeks to remedy an evil by ignoring it — had been long in existence under the name of the Whig party. It had thought to be able to remove the evil by adopting a ])rogramme full of protestations in favor of the Constittition, in which slavery was not even mentioned ; it held a convention in Baltimore on the 9th of May, and selected Mr. Bell as its candidate. A few days after, ]\Iay 16th, the Republican convention which assembled ajt Chicago adopted for its platform the maintenance of the Union, a denial of the right of secession, a guarantee of the principle of free labor as the basis of the Constitution, and the restriction of slavery to the States or Territories where it already existed. The care of presenting this platform to the voters of the country — the only one honest, just, and Avorthy of the great Republic — was en- trusted on the 19th to INIr. Lincoln, already known for his up- rightness, his legal acquirements, and his political experience. After several attempts at reconciliation between the various fractions of the Democratic party, its division became final. The Charleston convention was followed by two hostile conventions sitting at the same time in Baltimore — one of which, on the 21st of June, selected Mr. Douglas as its candidate, and the other, on the 23d, Mr. Brecken ridge. Tlie latter, who was at that time Vice-President of the United States, represented the ultra slave policy of the South. On the 6th of November, 4,680,180 American citizens elected delegates : the Presidential electors pledged to vote for Mr. Lin- coln received 1,866,452 votes; those representing the two frac- 118 THE CIVIL WAR AY AMERICA. tions of the Democratic party, personified by Douglas and Breck- enridge, received, respectively, 1,375,144 and 847,933 votes ; and the Whig party, personified by Bell, 590,631 votes. The Eepub- lican candidate had only a relative majority, but it was consider- able ; and, thanks to the machinery of the double vote, this ma- jority was made absolute in the electoral college. He was elected by one hundred and eighty votes, whilst his three competitors, although strengthened by the eight electors from South Carolina, jnly received one hundred and twenty-three votes between them. The Republican party had carried the day ; the Federal execu- tive power, which was to assume its functions on the 4th of March of the following year, had received the nation's mandate to oppose the extension of slavery; but it was also pledged to make no attempts against that institution where it already existed. The two fractions of the Democratic party and the Whigs, being in the majority in both houses of Congress, had it always in their power to unite in opposing constitutionally any infringements that might be attempted against what the South considered as her rights. The leaders of the slaveholding States, who had rejected every compromise with their partisans of the North, were fully deter- mined not to rest satisfied with this guarantee. They had loudly proclaimed the right of secession ; they had announced their inten- tion to avail themselves of that right if the entire nation did not submit to their demands ; and they had prepared the Southern people, by their violent attacks upon the Republican candidate, whom they styled an abolitionist, to repudiate his authority and to set aside the national verdict. These people were not to be allowed time for reflection, lest love for the Union should resume its empire over them. It was necessary to stir uj) the timid a.nd to persuade the wavering, either by fair means or by force ; it was important, above all, to take advantage of the hour Avhen the North was powerless and the Federal authority undecided, in order that secession might become an accomplished fact on the day when honest Mr. Lincoln should be installed into power. Consequently, the signal of separation was given several months in advance of his inauguration. The joy of those who had been anxious for the struggle mani- THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS. 119 fested itself tliroughout the South on the receipt of the news of the election, while the llepublicans, although happy in their suc- cess, surveyed the future of the republic with feelings of uneasi- ness. The Democrats of the North, forsaken by their allies, could not believe these allies capable of tearing the Constitution asunder, and the border States, equally attached to the Union and to slavery, already foresaw that if the war broke out it would be waged on their own soil and at their expense. Not a moment was lost in giving the secession movement a decisive impulse. The popular mind was everywhere excited by inflammatory speeches. Some resistance was, however, met with ; Mr. Stephens, who was soon to become the Vice-President of the Confederacy, was then opposed to separation ; but his protests against that measure had no effect, inasmuch as they were accom- panied by reservations in favor of State sovereignty, and because the defenders of the Union in the South declared themselves ready to follow the fortunes of their own States if they should withdraw from it. The legislatures of the cotton States were immediately assembled to consider the situation and issue calls for conventions to proclaim the act of secession. Without even waiting for this proclamation, the national authority was openly set aside, and from the day following the election of Mr. Lin- coln, the judge of the District Court of the United States in Charleston, devoted to Southern interests, refused to take his seat on the Bench. Finally, the principal leaders of the movement met at Milledgeville to consult upon the subject of separation, and the military measures required to ensure success. One month after the election — the 3d of December — the Fed- eral Congress met in its turn. The President's message set forth the uncertainties and the weakness of the Washino-ton govern- ment. Elected by the coalition of Democrats, Mr. Buchanan did not dare to break with his former allies. He affected to see in the choice of his successor an act of aggression against them, and sought in vain to find means of conciliation. He did not admit the possibility of secession. He condemned it, and yet did not consider himself justified in taking any steps for its repres- sion. The partisans of the South were in the majority in his cabinet, and filled the greatest portion of the Federal offices. 120 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. They had taken advantage of this to facilitate, in a thousand ways, the designs of their accomplices, and were throwing impedi- ments in the way of every measure proposed by those of tlieir colleagues who were devoted to the Union. One of them, Mr. Floyd, Secretary of War, had sold in the Southern markets a portion of the arms belonging to the nation, and had forwarded nearly all the remainder to the arsenals situated on the soil of the States ready for insurrection. General Scott, commander-in- chief of the Federal array, had asked in vain before the election that some measures might be adopted to place the army once more on a respectable footing. Instead of this, it had been pur- posely weakened and nearly annihilated. The Federal govern- ment possessed a great number of fortifications along the coast — ■ most of them constructed upon the plans of the French general Bernard — which commanded the ports and the most important positions to be defended in case of war. These forts were national property. The most important were Fort Monroe in Virginia, on the borders of the Chesapeake ; Fort Macon in North Caro- lina ; Forts Moultrie and Sumter in the bay of Charleston, South Carolina ; Fort Pulaski in Georgia, near Savannah ; Forts Key West and Garden Key on two small islands at the extremity of Florida; Forts McRae and Pickens at the entrance of the bay of Pensacola in the same State; Forts Morgan and Gaines in front of Mobile, in Alabama ; and Forts Jackson and St. Philip on the Mississippi, below New Orleans. The garrisons of these forts had been so much reduced that they were all liable to be captured by a sudden attack. The excitement in Congress was great. With the exception of the secession leaders, all parties were working sincerely to devise means for maintaining the Union. Committees were appointed for that purpose. The compromise measure which received the most serious consideration, and which seemed at one time to be favored by the majority of the conciliation party, was proj osed by a venerable Senator from Kentucky — Mr. Crittenden. He wanted to divide the Republic by a line drawn from east to west as far as the Pacific, which would secure to the slave interest all the Territories situated south of thirty-six and a half degrees north. But the time for compromises had passed ; the Republicans THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS. 121 could not accept them, and those who desired separation were fully determined to reject them. The entire South was already in motion ; sj)ecial sessions of legislatures had assembled and called for conventions. Other conventions, held in the border States of both North and South, appealed in vain for conciliatory measures. In the North, im- mense meetings declared themselves ready to support the Union and the government that Mr. Lincoln was about to form. Con- gress, acting under the pressure of public opinion, authorized the issue of ten millions of dollars in Treasury bonds, to meet the most urgent national expenses, but the President refused to take any steps to sustain the Federal authority, and the loyal members of his cabinet — his Secretary of State, General Cass, among others — withdrew, because they would have no connection with a gov- ernment which delivered up the country to its enemies. South Carolina was the first to set up openly the standard of rebellion, and on the 20th of December her convention passed an ordinance of secession, declaring the Union severed, and demand- ing at the same time all the Federal property situated on its S(»il. This demand was a declaration of open war, unless the President, L y complying with it, should himself sanction the right of separation. The signal was given, and preparations were made in the other cotton States to follow the example of South Carolina. How- ever, while the most zealous partisans were in favor of proclaiming the secession of every State at once, moderate j^eople, with a view of delaying action, insisted that, before proceeding farther, all the Southern States should come to an understanding in order to act in concert. But the co-operationists, as they were called, were forcibly carried along by the revolutionary current. Moreover, the instigators of the rebellion understood each other but too well. Each man had his part laid out. Some, delegated by their own States, constantly visited the neighboring States in order to secui'e that unanimity to the movement which was to constitute its strength ; others were endeavoring to win over the powerful bor- der States, such as Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, as well as North Carolina and Tennessee, which stood aghast, terrified at the ap- proach of the crisis brought on by their associates ; some, again, were even pleading their cause in the North, in the hope of re- 122 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. CTuiting partisans among those Democrats whom they had for- saken at the last election ; while others kept their seats in Con- gress in order to be able to paralyze its action, forming, at the same time, a centre whence they issued directions to their friends in the South to complete the dismemberment of the Republic. Jefferson Davis himself continued to take part in the delibera- tions of the Senate, and four days after the insurrection of South Carolina, he boldly presented the programme of his party — a programme which must be adopted in full in order to bring back the South into the Union — the basis of which was a consti- tutional amendment sanctioning for all time the recognition of slavery. South Carolina did not wait for the reply of the President to her demands as to the possession of the Federal property. Mr. Buchanan gave the rebels indirect encouragement by his vacillat- ing course. The Charleston arsenal was already in the possession of the secessionist authorities of the city ; the commandant of the forts, which guarded the entrance of the port, fully expected to see their demands backed by a sufficient force of militia to render all resistance impossible. Major Anderson had only eighty soldiers to garrison three forts intended for an armament of more than one hundred guns. Fort Moultrie and Castle Pinckney were situated on the main land ; Sumter, the most important of the three, was an enormous mass of masonry erected upon a small island in the centre of the bay. It was dismantled in 1860, and Anderson with his little band only occupied Moultrie, which he had labored hard to put in a state of defence. Well aware that he would not be able to defend himself with his little garrison, encumbered as it was with women and children, the Charleston authorities as- sured the President that they would let him alone for the time, provided no reinforcements Avere sent to him. The Secretary of War, feigning to accept these hypocritical promises from men with whom he was secretly in accord, gave Anderson no instructions, intending thereby to make him an easy prey for his friends. But this officer had the courage — a rare thing in revolutionary times — to take the responsibility of a step which was to ensure his safety, and which his superiors had not dared to suggest. On the 26th of December, during the darkness of the nigtt, he evacuated THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS. 123 Fort Moultrie and occupied Fort Sumter with all bis people. Rage and vexation rose to a high pitch in Charleston when, on the morning of the 27th, the Federal flag was seen hoisted over the walls of Sumter. The rebel authorities began hy taking posses- sion of the abandoned forts; great military preparations were ordered; the militia redoubled their activity, and the arms taken from the arsenal were distributed among them ; the guns of Moul- trie were turned ag-ainst the fort which sheltered the little Federal garrison, and new batteries were begun on the beach to support their fire ; finally, the commissioners appointed by South Carolina were instructed to again demand of the President the restoration of the fort, which was no longer in danger of a sudden attack. Notwithstanding Mr. Buchanan's weakness, it was too much to exact from him the surrender of Fort Sumter ; public opinion in the North was unanimous in reminding him that it was his duty to protect the Federal property. He refused to comply with the demands of the commissioners, contrary to the advice of his Sec- retary of War, who, thinking that he had done enough in that capacity for the cause of the South, availed himself of this dis- agreement to tender his resignation, on the 31st of December. The year 1861 began under the gloomiest auspices. South Carolina had shown that secession was not an idle threat. Six of the Southern States were preparing to follow her example ; the others, while deploring the dismemberment of the Union, declared themselves opposed to any energetic measures against the seceders. The North — divided into two parties, one of which looked upon the election of Mr. Lincoln as a victory, the other as a defeat — could not realize the magnitude of the danger, and was wasting precious time in idle declarations of attachment to the Constitu- tion. The President, sincere but weak, oscillating between his public duties and party obligations, surrounded by traitors to the Republic, found himself isolated, forsaken by those who might liave given him judicious advice, and reduced to the most de- plorable helplessness. He could not, however, bear the arrogance of the Carolina com- missioners, and on the 1st of January he broke off all intercourse with them. The leaders of the slave party had only M-aited for this explosion to cause the rebellion to take another step. Those 124 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. who were in Washington formed a cabal, and on the 5th of Jan- uary they advised their associates in the various Southern States to follow the example of South Carolina, and to proclaim the act of separation without delay. These States had taken in advance all precautions against the slightest opposition that might be offered on the part of the President ; they had already seized all the Federal arsenals within their reach, and especially the forts which might be turned against them in the coming struggle. On the 3d of January the militia of Alabama occupied the Mount Yernon arsenal, and, without striking a blow, walked into Forts Morgan and Gaines, which their respective garrisons surrendered to them ; on the same day, the Georgians took possession of Forts Pulaski and Jackson, and on the 6th the arsenals of Fayetteville and Chattahoochee fell into the hands of the authorities of North Carolina and Florida. A few militia troops of the latter State assembled at Pensa- cola ; the commandant of the arsenal allowed himself to be cap- tured by them on the 12th, but an energetic officer. Lieutenant Slemmer, was in command of Forts McRae and Pickens. Not being able to defend both with a handful of men, he followed the example of Anderson, eluded the vigilance of the enemy who was watching him, and abandoned the first to retire into the second, which was thus wrested for ever from the hands of the Confed- erates. On the same day Forts Jackson and St. Philip on the Mississippi were delivered up to the authorities of Louisiana, and on the following day they took possession of the arsenal at Baton Eouge. On the 18th, in order to close the Upper Mis- sissippi against any possible attacks from the north, the seceders began erecting around Vicksburg the first of those batteries which were destined to keep the Federal armies so long in check, but, on the other hand, and on the same day, an attempt by the Floridians to capture Fort Jefferson at Garden Key was frustrated by the timely arrival of reinforcements brought by Captain Meigs. We shall see this officer at a subsequent perijod occupying at Washington the important post of quartermaster- general of the army. The secission excitement had even invaded Maryland, where the partisans of the South, although possibly in the minority, THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS. 125 were very active in organizing regiments of volunteers M'ith the avowed intention of menacing Washington, and of separating the Federal capital from the North. While the insurrection was thus progressing, the conventions which had been called together throughout the South were already assembled or preparing to meet ; in the Northern States the legislatures were all in session, and the Federal Congress continued to be the scene of the most exciting discussions. All these assemblies imparted a feverish activity to political life during the month of January, and dis- tinctly demonstrated the position of the different parties that were contending for the possession of the Republic. The word of command issued by the committee at Washington was promptly obeyed. Secession was proclaimed by the several conventions — in Mississippi on the 9th of January, in Florida on the 10th, in Alabama on the 11th, in Georgia on the 19th, and in Louisiana on the 26th. The secession intriguers had not achieved such an easy success in Texas, where they encountered a strong opposition on the part of the men who surrounded Governor Houston, the real founder of that State. Nevertheless, even there, their machinations succeeded in the end, thanks to a for- midable association which inspired and directed them. The Knights of the Golden Circle constituted throughout the South a vast secret society, whose object was to extend the confederacy of slave States in a circle all around the Gulf of Mexico, and to found a great power comprising, besides the cotton States, the greatest portion of Mexico and the Antilles. This devoted and unscrupulous organization was one of the principal instruments used by Southern intriguers. It had spread especially all over Texas. By means of intimidation it overcame the resistance of the Unionists, and on the 1st of February a convention, irregularly organized, drew that State into the rebellion. In the mean time, South Carolina, always anxious to be in ad- vance of the other States, had not waited for their co-operation to consummate the rebellion by an overt act of hostility. On the 9th of January a merchant vessel, freighted by the Federal gov- ernment with provisions for Fort Sumter, appeared in Charles- ton harbor. The new batteries that had been erected on the beach fired into her and obliged her to put back. Americans had fired 126 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. for tlie first time upon the Federal flag; the civil war had commenced. Such acts could not fail to dispel any doubt that might still exist as to the intentions of the political leaders of the South. The States in wliich the Republican party was in the ascendant, those under Democratic rule, the border slave States, and the Federal government, while perfectly unanimous in condemning these provocations, took very different ways of resenting the outrage. The first, on receiving the news of the rupture between the President and the commissioners from South Carolina, emphat- ically declared at their meetings, through the medium of their leading statesmen, in favor of maintaining the Union, whatever the cost might be. But at the same time, in order to prove to the South how little they had thought of making war upon her, they referred to the laws they had passed for the surrender of fugitive slaves — laws just in themselves, but unfortunately un- constitutional. The most zealous among them — who were also the most clear-sighted — followed the example of Massachusetts, who, since the 3d of January, had been busy in making military preparations. The outrage committed at Charleston against the national flag had caused a profound sensation throughout the great States of the West. The fate of the Union was in their hands ; if they had hesitated to defend it, the Union was lost. The Southern leaders counted upon this hesitation, and in order to lead them to adopt their views, they announced that the navi- gation of the Mississippi — the necessary outlet for all Western produce — should be for ever free from all obstructions. But these precautionary measures had no effect ; those States declared against them with a degree of unanimity and energy which foreshadowed from that moment the immense sacrifices they would make for the Federal cause. Nor were the efforts of the seceders more successful in shaking the loyalty of those States where the Democrats were in the ma- jority. The mayor of New York, Mr. Wood — ^whf» was indebted for his position to intrigues but little creditable to that great city — tried in vain to seduce her from her allegiance to the Ur'on, by holding out the flattering prospect of making her a THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIC iVS. 127 free city. Tlie legislature of that State — the most powerful in the Republic — although in favor of an attempt at impossible con- ciliation, declared, on the 11th of January, its unalterable attach- ment to the Union. That of Pennsylvania having followed its example on the 24th, all danger of secession in the North finally disappeared. Delaware, who preserved in her constitution the principle of slavery, although slavery itself was virtually abol- ished in her territory,, repelled the Southern emissaries ; and the legislature of New Jersey, while recommending the adoption of Mr. Crittenden's compromise measure, declined to separate from her neighbors who were faithful to the Constitution. The slave States known by the name of border States were the theatre of bitter contests between the two hostile parties. But their old attachment to the Constitution got also the better of their sympathies for their neighbors engaged in rebellion. Gov- ernor Hicks of Maryland resisted every attempt to drag that State into secession. The legislature of Kentucky and the elec- toral colleges of Tennessee and North Carolina refused to call a convention at the bidding of the seceders, and the voters of Vir- ginia sent to the convention of that State a majority of delegates favorable to the Union. These demonstrations, however, only occasioned a little delay, obtained by the partisans of the Federal authority, which did not prove of essential service to their cause. In fact, those States simply offered their mediation, but their offers, although sincere for tlie most part, were only a disguised support to the pretensions of the slaveholders ; their professions of fidelity to the Constitution lost all their value in consequence of the restrictions which surrounded them; for, while acknow- ledging that Mr. Lincoln's election was no valid cause for sepa- ration, and while submitting to his authority themselves, tliey denied the President's right to compel the rebel States to submit to it likewise. They proclaimed the doctrine of State sover- eignty, and thus pursued a course which irresistibly led them to make common cause with the insurrection on the day when the war should break out. Congress was the arena where the antagonistic passions which developed themselves on every side struggled for the mastery, and attempts at conciliation were only brought forward to be defeated 128 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. through the absolute pretensions of the Southern leaders. The latter vacated their seats as the States which they represented proclaimed the act of separation ; thus carrying out the policy through which the election of Mr. Lincoln had been effected ; and by abandoning in Congress, as they had done in the electoral col- leges, their former allies, the Democrats, who were still working to eifect compromises, they secured a majority for the Republi- cans, who had bravely resolved not to make any further con- cessions. The latter rejected Mr. Crittenden's compromise, for the first time, on the 9th of January, declaring that the Constitu- tion should be maintained as it was ; thus answering the argu- ments of the instigators of the rebellion, who, even in the Fed- eral legislature, attacked that Constitution in virtue of which they held their seats in Congress. The mission of the South Carolina delegates had, somewhat late it is true, recalled President Buchanan to a sense of his pub- lic duties. On the 8th of January he sent a message to Congress in which he announced his firm determination to perform them. A few days before — the 5th of January — he resolved to revictual Fort Sumter. But instead of openly sending some vessels of war, he had despatched a simple transport-ship, which, as Ave have stated, was stopped by a few cannon-shots at the entrance of the bay of Charleston. Always tardy in his action, on the 18 th he dismissed General Twiggs, who, on the 16 th, had sur- rendered the troops under his command to the insurgents of Texas ; and on the 22d he caused the seizure of a cargo of arms in New York, intended for the militia of the South, which had already received vast supplies through the same channel. Such was the situation at the beginning of February. In response to an invitation from Virginia, a Peace Congress com- posed of official delegates from twenty-one States assembled at Washington on the 4th, under the direction of a former President of the republic, Mr. Tyler. This assembly would have exercised a large influence, if :.onciliation had been practicable ; but a sim- ple coincidence of dates demonstrated, by a striking contrast, the uselessness of its efforts. On the very day when it began its labors, the delegates from the rebel States were assembling at Montgomery to seal their alliance by the formation of a new THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS. 129 Confederacy. "While the pacificators were wasting time iu use- less speeches, the secession leaders were acting and preparing for the struo'o-le. On the 8th of February the assembly at Montgomery decreed the Constitution of the Confederate States, and on the following day, the man who, through his talents and audacity, had been the soul of secession, Mr. Jefferson Davis, was chosen President. In order to conciliate those who still cherished a lingering attachment to the Union, the Vice-Presidency was conferred upon their chief, Mr. Stephens of Georgia, who, after fighting secession, had fol- lowed the fortunes of his State. The first bond which was to unite all the insurgents of the South together was thus formed. These provisional appointments, limited to one year, were made by the delegates without any intervention of the popular vote. The Southern leaders had deemed it more prudent thus to dis- pose of the principal offices without consulting those whom they l^recipitated into civil war, lest a speedy repentance among some, and a desire to leave at least the door of conciliation open among a large class of the community, might interpose obstacles to their designs. They at once invested their new President with the powers which enabled him to give a vigorous and unique impulse to the secession movement, and entrusted him, as has already been shown, with the supreme control of military affairs and all the necessary means for organizing an army. Mr. Davis was installed into office on the 18th of February, and set to work without being troubled by the empty protests of Mr. Buchanan. The latter had yet fifteen days to remain in power. This was precious time, of which the seceders availed themselves to prepare for the coming conflict, hot only in the States already in rebellion, but also in the border States, where, under various pre- texts, they organized the militia which Avere subsequently to be embodied in the Confederate army. A disaster, which had long been brewing through their contrivances, contributed to weaken the power of the Federal government in their estimation, and to increase their faith in its helplessness. General Twiggs, who com- manded the regular troops stationed in Texas, w^as in accord with the rebels. He suffered himself to be surrounded, in the city of San Antonio, by the militia under the command of McCulloch, Vol. I.— 9 130 IHE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. and, biding his treason under a shameful capitulation, on the 16th of February, he surrendered to the latter the troops he had brought together for that express purpose. By a fatal coincidence, his successor, Colonel Waite, who had hurried from the depths of the wilderness to save this precious nucleus of an army, only arrived in time to share the captivity of those he was coming to command. The leaders of the secession movement, being still obliged to conceal their design to a certain extent, in order not to jeopardize their success, at first treated these troops like those of a foreign power with which they were not at war: the agree- ment by which they had been delivered up was called a treaty of evacuation, and Waite was conveyed, with about twelve hundred of his men, to Indianola, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, where, although promised permission to ship for any of the Northern ports, he was detained under various pretexts. The capitulation of San Antonio was not long in bringing forth its fruit; by intimidating the Unionists of Texas it enabled their adversaries to secure the popular vote in favor of the separation of that State. The 4th of March, which was to witness the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, was approaching, and that prospective event stimu- lated the audacity of the seceders. While Virginia was protesting against the presence in Washington of a few companies of regular troops, which through the foresight of General Scott had been ordered there, certain conspirators were planning to prevent the installation of the new President by means of a contemplated out- rage upon his person, on his passage through Baltimore, which, as they hoped, might end in assassination. He frustrated tliis murder- ous scheme by assuming a disguise, and arrived in Washington on the 23d of February, where Mr. Buchanan, faithful to his trust, notwithstanding his inexcusable weaknesses, hastened to put himself in relation with him. The withdrawal from the Cabinet of those who favored slavery had left an open field to men at- tached to the Union, and one among them, Mr. Dix, Secretary of the Treasury, had even the courage, on being informed of the seizure of the mint in New Orleans, to reply by an order to shoot down on the spot the first man who should touch the American flag. Unfortunately, there was nobody left in that great city who would THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS. 131 dare to execute such instructions. The financial measures of Mr. Dix were more successful ; it was easy to foresee large expendi- tures ; the first issue of eight millions of dollars, j^^^t of the loan of twenty-five millions voted for by Congress on the 8th of February, were immediately subscribed for. The North was de- sirous to prove that she would sustain the necessary measures for defending the Constitution with all her resources. This, however, was but an insignificant sum ; Congress, therefore, feeling that it would soon be necessary to consolidate the national credit, and secure to Mr. Lincoln's government the means of paying the in- terest on the loans which it would be obliged to issue, raised the rates of custom-house duties, which until then had almost sufficed to meet the necessities of the national treasury. We have already stated that the leaders of the secession move- ment who held seats in the national Legislature had followed the example of the members of the Cabinet, and left the Capitol the moment that their respective States had broken the Union com- pact. Consequently, Congress, whose powers expired on the 4th of INIarch with those of Mr. Buchanan, found itself, during the last days of its existence, suddenly ruled by the Republicans, who had previously been in the minority. They took advantage of this circumstance to raise the character of Congress in the eyes of the nation by an act which was at once patriotic and fore- seeing. The Democrats of the North and of the border States made a last attempt to induce the Senate to adopt their plans of pretended conciliation. They endorsed at first the propositions of the Peace Congress, which, under their influence, had prepared a programme openly sanctioning the right of secession. Beaten on this ground, they again brought forward Mr. Crittenden's compromise. The adoption of this measure, which misled many timid minds on account of its specious promises to ward off civil war, would, in reality, have secured the triumph of the slavery principle. This fatal concession, by dividing the North, by taking from her all faith in the justice of her cause, would have prepared an easy victory for the seceders. After a long and grave discussion, it was rejected on the night of the 2d-3d of March. With this vol/e terminated the existence of Congress, which the enemies of 132 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. the Republic asserted loudly would be the last convened uudef the old Constitution. • On the following day Mr. Buchanan ceased to be the chief of that nation he had been called upon to govern four years before, when she was yet united and prosperous. The end of his adminis- tration had been disastrous. He had tolerated everything; he had done nothing to crush out the rebellion in its inception, and had left his successor without the means of fulfilling the task entrusted to him. He delivered into his hands the government of a shat- tered country ; and if civil war had not yet drenched America in blood, it was simply because the rebellion was being organized with impunity on its soil. The accession of Mr. Lincoln to power was destined to mark a new era in these events, and to precipitate the crisis of which his election had been the pretext. CHAPTER IV. FORT SUMTER. THE inauguration of Mr. Lincoln at Washington on tlie 4th of March, 1861, will remain a memorable epoch in the his- tory of the United States. The solemnity of that ceremony was due to the imposing gravity of concurring circumstances, and not to the mediocre pageantry with which traditionary custom sur- rounded it. When ]\Ir. Lincoln, accompanied by Mr. Buchanan, his predecessor, and by his loyal competitor Mr. Douglas, his tall form towering above all those around him, appeared upon the portico of the Capitol to take the constitutional oath and to ad- dress the assembled multitude, every one felt that the time for fatal concessions had passed. The address of the new President, written in practical language and shorn of all rhetorical flourishes, ended with an appeal to the Union, the source of national great- ness and dear to every patriotic heart — an appeal which, notwith- standing its strange and mystic form, must have been understood by all who heard it. The Republic had now a chief determined to defend it, while respecting the constitutional rights and liberties of all : those who regarded the principle of free labor as the es- sential basis of a free and democratic society saw at last the man of their choice regularly invested with the insignia of the chief magistracy ; those who, notwithstanding their affinities with slave- holders, considered the maintenance of the Union as the first article of political faith for every good citizen, could rally around him without fear. The situation was clearly defined, and the re- bellion was thenceforth without cause or excuses. Its leaders fully understood this; accordingly, they no longer sought to shel- ter themselves under the cover of false pretences. Secession was an accomplished fact. The militia of the South were getting ready in every direction, while the North, scarcely 133 134 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. yet recovered from her first astonishment, was completely tinarme on the Missouri. Lyon piu'sues them on board his vessels, reaches the positions occupied by the enemy on the 18th, lands his soldiers, and vigorously leads them! to the attack; after a short engagement he throws the rebel troo] s into confusion and disperses them. The losses at the battle of Booneville were insignificant on both sides, but the Confederates^' being utterly disorganized, were obliged to retreat southAvard intc the interior of the State of Missouri, leaving Lyon in possessioi of both sides of the river. FORT SUMTER. 169 In West Virginia and on the Upper Potomac both parties were keeping up the war. The battle of Philippi had freed the north- western districts, and a convention assembled at Wheeling in West Virginia for the purpose of organizing that section of country into an independent State. In the mean time, the Confederates, having taken courage, were again endeavoring to intercept the great Ohio line of railway. A small body of troops had been collected at Romney to menace Cumberland station, on that line. The Fed- eral Colonel Wallace, Avho occupied this place, went to attack those troops at Eomney, took them by surprise, after a long and difficult night-march, and returned after having dispersed them. A little more to the eastward, at Harper's Ferry, Johnston's forces were increasing at a rate to cause great uneasiness to the Federals. In the beginning of June, he occupied, with more than twelve thousand men, the formidable position of Maryland Heights, on the opposite bank of the Potomac, which enabled him, while covering the entrance of the Shenandoah Valley, to extend his lines into Maryland and menace Washington or Penn- sylvania. In order to protect the latter State, General Patterson had assembled all the available volunteers and militia at Cham- bersburg. When his forces numbered about fifteen thousand men he marched toward the Potomac, for the purpose of disturbing Johnston at Harper's Ferry in his turn. The little confidence that generals like Johnston then placed in their troops was the cause that, during the early stages of the conflict, marches and counter-marches played a more important part than actual en- gagements, which were gladly avoided on both sides. Fearing to be turned, the Confederate general evacuated Maryland Heights and Harper's Ferry on the 13th of June, and retired to Charles- ,town, a short distance from the place last mentioned, after de- stroying the Ohio canal, the great railway bridge, and all that had escaped the conflagration of the 18th of April in the arsenal. Patterson, hastening his march, with nine thousand men, forded the Potomac on the 16th of June near Williamsport, above Har- per's Ferry, which he occupied shortly afterwards. This move- ment should have enabled the Federals to take possession of the whole line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway, which, at Harper's Ferry, crosses to the right bank of the Potomac. In order to 170 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. effect tills, it would have been sufficient to drive Johnston into Winchester and to join hands, by means of a few posts, Avith Wallace's troops at Cumberland; but the hesitations and con- tradictory orders of the government at Washington, which so frequently embarrassed the operations of the Federal generals, caused the loss of all the advantages that had been gained by the occupation of Harper's Ferry. Patterson had scarcely reached this place when Scott, always anxious for the safety of the cap- ital, ordered him to send the greatest portion of his forces to Washington. Obeying this untimely order with regret, Patterson was obliged to recross the Potomac on the 18th, and to fall back upon Mary- land, by way of Williamsport, with about ten thousand men scarcely armed, without artillery, and without cavalry. His re- treat left Wallace at Cumberland in a difficult position, and em- boldened the Confederates who had assembled in the Alleghany valleys, which open on the Upper Potomac. Four thousand of them again occupied Romney, and destroyed the bridge of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway at New Creek they thus cut oflP all communication between Wallace and Mc- Clellan, who had come to Grafton on the 23d to prepare for the serious campaign, of which West Virginia was to witness the inauguration fifteen days later. But although threatened on all sides, Wallace succeeded in keeping the enemy in check and in maintaining his position. In the vicinity of Washington, the two armies watched each other at a distance so effectively that during the whole month of June, they only once exchanged musket-shots. On the 17th, an Ohio regiment, commanded by Colonel McCook, who subsequently became a Federal general, was making a reconnaissance in the. direction of the village of Vienna, but instead of scouting the road, the whole regiment got into open cars and started for Vi- enna by rail. It so happened that a Confederate regiment, com- manded by Colonel Gregg, who also attained the rank of a gen- eral afterwards, was passing by precisely at that time, and on hearing the whistle of the locomotive, he formed an ambuscade. Just as the train was turning a curve, it received a discharge of grape-shot fired by two guns which had been placed on the track. FORT SUMTER. 171 Fortunately, the aim of the guns was too high ; the Federals sprang to the ground, formed under the enemy's fire, and, although taken by surprise, finally compelled the Confederates to retire, leaving several dead and many more wounded behind them. One may judge from this incident how little military experience there was on either side. On the Lower Potomac, a naval officer. Captain Ward, was en- deavoring to erect a battery at Mathias Point, a long promontory on the Virginia side, from which the Confederates fired constantly upon vessels going up the river, either with rifle or cannon ; but he was driven off, and finally lost his life in the attempt. With the 4th of July we shall conclude this chapter, which is to serve as a transition epoch between the political events which followed the presidential elections and the veritable acts of war, the narrative of which will commence presently. The new Congress had been convened for the 4th, and at the time it Avas assembling, the volunteers who had responded to Mr. Lincoln's calls already numbered 300,000 men. Throughout the Northern States regiments were being recruited and organized. A military ardor had seized all minds. Before taking a surv^ey of these soldiers at their work, avc pro- pose to show, in the following chapter, what were the predominant characteristics of the movement which improvised the Fe^leral armies. CHAPTER X. THE FEDERAL VOLUNTEERS. IN one of his poetic visions, the Prophet Ezekiel describes a plain, deserted and silent, on which lie innumerable scattered and dry bones. At the sound of his voice those shapeless remains come spontaneously together; the skeletons resume their forms and are covered anew with flesh ; finally, a divine word from the lips of the inspired spectator restores them to life ; and that wil- derness, till then shrouded in the darkness of death, becomes peopled with an animated host. The rapidity with which bat- talions of volunteers were recruited, assembled, and organized in the North may be likened to the sudden uprising of those mys- terious legions taking form and life in the presence of the He- brew prophet. The hasty creation of large armies among the States loyal to the Union w^as no less strange and unlooked for than the miracle in Holy Writ. Indeed, the little army which we have seen mak- ing war in the Western wilds alone preserved military traditions ; the American people were ignorant of their labors and showed themselves indifferent to their successes. The inhabitants of the great Eastern cities had never seen a company of regular troops, and all they knew of the national army was a handful of inva- lids, the solitary guardians of the Federal forts. All that related to the army had fallen into neglect, and while the other branches of the government at Washington occupied marble palaces, the offices of the War Department were huddled in a miserable tene- ment. On national holidays, however, there was no scarcity of uni- forms. On such occasions the veterans of 1812 would parade in their motley costumes, followed by militia regiments with enor- mous bands of music and a superfluity of officers. But these 172 THE FEDERAL VOLUNTEERS. 173 troops, which at a later period ^vere to impart lustre to the numbers which they wore, were then only fit for parade-duty and utterly inexperienced in military matters. French wit, ever facetious, had seized the ludicrous side of these useless displays of epaulets and drums, and the officers of the Fifty-fifth New York, who in the hour of danger freely shed French blood in the cause of their adopted country, under the command of a brave and able chief, M. de Trobriand, had dubbed themselves at one of the regimental banquets which always followed such demonstrations, Gardes Lofourchettes, or Knife and Fork Guards. Charmed by a showy procession, the multitude mechanically rehearsed the official statis- tics, according to which the strength of the national troops might reach the total of three million and seventy thousand men. If some now and then called to mind the behavior of the militia of 1776 and 1812, this idea was as quickly dismissed under the conviction that the troops then marching past would never have to face the dangers of the field. Those who felt a natural desire for a military vocation were obliged, like Sherman, to seek, as 2)rofessors in the special schools founded by the Southern States, an opportunity for placing their knowledge to account. But when the events we have just related had opened the eyes of the least clear-sighted, the formation of an army for the de- fence of the Constitution was regarded as a national affair. Every- body set to work under the impression that the part of duty was to act, and not to wait for instructions. The adminstrative system of America leaves a large part to the initiative of localities and individuals, seldom trammelled by governmental restrictions. The central power has not at its command an army of public functionaries invested, in the eyes of a docile population, with an almost sacred character ; it does not possess the thousands of arms which, among us, stretch forth at a given signal to knock simultaneously at every citizen's door, and, if need be, to push him forcibly by the shoulder. A levy being once sanctioned by Congress or proclaimed by the President in virtue of extraordinary powers, the Federal author- ities interfere no further in the enlistments, and have only to receive the regiments formed in the several States according to the quota assigned to each. Nor is the administrative machinery 174 TEE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. of the States themselves more complicated. The constant control exercised by the citizens, from whom the magistrates everywhere hold their authorityj moderates the corrupting influence of favor- itism — disguised under the English name of patronage — which the continual changes of elective functionaries tend to develop. So that, while the central power does not trammel the liberty of the local authorities, the latter, in their turn, only interfere to direct the citizen where his individual action is no longer suf- ficient. The President's first call, therefore, addressed to the dif- ferent States of the Union, after the taking of Fort Sumter, was promptly responded to by all. Patriotism, ambition, vanity, and the spirit of speculation, entered at once into competition and contributed, though unequally, to stimulate the national move- ment. The ingenious, practical, and calculating mind of the American neglected no means to hasten the organization of the volunteer corps so imperatively demanded by the national danger. Recruiting-offices were opened in the very smallest villages, and soon became the daily rendezvous for the entire population ; some from love of adventure, others from attachment to the Con- stitution, others still from a desire to signalize their strong anti- slavery proclivities, registered their names as common soldiers. Those who possessed sufficient influence undertook to raise com- panies, sometimes a regiment, and not unfrequently a whole bri- gade. The governor, as the chief of the executive power in each State, would promise to this or that lawyer or merchant the rank of colonel if he should within a stipulated period of time succeed in raising a regiment. The latter, thus provided with the simple authority for an operation which elsewhere would have required the concurrence of a multitude of different functionaries, commu- nicates with his friends and appeals to the public according to the custom of the country. By holding out the promise of an epaulet or the lucrative monopoly of a sutlership, he easily finds co-opera- tors, each of whom undertakes to raise him a certain number of men. Gigantic placards posted on tlie walls, or stretched across the streets, enumerating the advantages of the regiment whose ranks are to be filled, or representing on canvas amid smoke and carnage some heroic deed proposed for their imitation, invite the public gaze. But the martial instincts of the people are not the only passions THE FEDERAL VOLUNTEERS. 175 appealed to. The new recruits are paraded in the streets to daz- zle and attract by their showy uniforms ; that of the zouaves — - although often unseemly when hanging ungracefully on the bony frames and lank limbs of some stalwart American — having the greatest success. A certain regiment of heavy artillery, which proved afterwards one of the most efficient at the terrible battle of Gettysburg, sought to increase the number of its recruits by an announcement which, although not to be taken in a literal sense, is nevertheless worthy of record as offering the strangest of all inducements to future soldiers. It ran thus : " As this regiment is to be constantly garrisoned in the forts around Wash- ington, those anxious to enter the military service will find in it the inestimable advantage of exemption from the hardships and privations incidental to camp-life." On the contrary, the remem- brance of the panic which overtook some Indiana troops at the battle of Buena Vista having always been preserved in that State, which has often been taunted with it, several volunteer regiments inscribed the following words on their programmes, " Remember Buena Vista !" thereby promising to wipe out that stigma by their conduct on new battle-fields. Individual initiative at times sought to act independently even of the feeble control of the State authorities. Some regiments were offered directly to the President by those who had raised them. Such was the Excelsior Brigade, composed of five regi- ments raised in New York in the course of a few weeks by Mr. Sickles, a former diplomat. The governor of the State insisted upon their forming a part of his contingent, but Mr. Sickles, in order to evade his authority, assembled his brigade in a fort then under the Federal jurisdiction, and set out shortly afterward for Washington. The quarrel was of long duration, but Mr. Lincoln was at last induced by general representations to incorporate all independent troops into the particular contingents of the States in which they had been raised. This was but justice; for if those regiments had not been included in the quota of each of those States, their competition would have raised the enlistment boun- ties, lessened the number of available men, and thus hastened the period when it would have been necessary to resort to conscrip- tion. But by the time this question was settled, the Excelsior 176 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. Brigade had already been reduced by the enemy's fire and the hardships of war to one-half of its original strength. A few days sufficed to prove that the generous indignation aroused in the North by the tidings of the capture of Fort Sum- ter was not a mere momentary effervescence, but the firm resolve of the people to sustain their words by deeds. Thanks to the different simple and expeditious methods of pro- ceeding we have just described, soldiers were pouring in from all parts. As may well be supposed, the most varied specimens of civilized humanity presented themselves at the recruiting-offices ; but, generally speaking, the volunteers who responded to Mr. Lincoln's first call for troops were very inferior in quality to those who composed the subsequent levies. As the middle or working classes of the North had not yet recognized the duty of quitting their respective occupations for the battle-field, these volunteers were for the most part picked up among the unem- ployed, both in town and country. They were without discipline, for their too brief term of enlistment prevented them from en- tering seriously into the spirit of their profession, and they had no idea of the trials and hardships for which a soldier should always be prejDared. They greatly resembled, in short, those militia troops that had caused so much anxiety to General Wash- ington during the War of Independence. Some even went so far as to abandon their posts on the eve of an engagement, because the precise hour at which their term of enlistment expired had struck. The army assembled at Washington under McDowell in June, 1861, was mainly composed of such men. The magnitude of the danger, at last apparent, called out a second levy, which rallied around the flag a very different class of men. It was no longer a matter of three months' excursion or a mere military demonstration ; those who then enlisted for three years were fully aware of the sort of life they were entering upon, and what perils they would have to encounter. Whether actuated by patriotism or the love of adventure, or influenced by the hope of gain, they one and all embraced their new profession with a firm and jesolute determination. Good soldiers they were not — indeed, they were scarcely soldiers — but they were honest in their THE FEDERAL VOLUNTEERS. 177 desires to become such, and this was the surest way of attaining that end. The enh'stment fever, as it was called in America, had spread all over the country, and the recruiting-agents appointed every- where to receive enlistments, stimulated by the spirit of competi- tion, vied with each other in zealous endeavors to complete the contingents of their respective districts. The city artisan and the husbandman laid down their implements to put on the uniform, nor did the aristocratic hands of the man born in affluence fear to handle a musket in defence of the laws. Side by side with these M'ere assuredly other men who had enlisted from motives less pure. The reaction of the political crisis upon commercial enter- prise had caused the suspension of certain industries, and as we have observed before, the Confederate government, whose chief had already become notorious through the great bankruptcy of the State of Mississippi, had repudiated all indebtedness to the North, to the ruin of numerous families whose sons had no other means left tliem for earning a livelihood but to enlist. Besides the pay, which was enormous, the volunteers were promised, as in former times, land bounties at the expiration of their term of service — a wise measure which induced many workingmen to enter the army by ensuring to them the certain means of existence at the end of the war. Lastly, the recruiting-office opened a new field to that unfortunate, restless, and ambitious population which America renders Europe the good service to absorb as fast as she receives it, and which, like foam upon the waters, floats for a time in the large cities of the Union, and is ultimately lost in the great cur- rent which bears it towards the far West. In the same city, each class of volunteers would adopt particu- lar regiments by preference. The Irish, pugnacious by instinct, organized several of them in the seaboard cities, it being natural that the same inclination which prompts so many of them to enter the British army should have been even more potent in drawing them into the service of the country they had adopted of their own free will. While serving it, however, they were in- fluenced by strange delusions artfully encouraged by designing men, who took advantage of their credulous imaginations. A great many Irishmen, in fact, looked upon the war as nothing Vol. I.— 12 178 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. more than a favorable opportunity for preparing to crush England. The more enlightened among them were doubtless aware of the fallacy of such dreams, and, on the other hand, the Constitution they were about to fight for could scarcely be an object of such devotion for them as for citizens of American birth. But the green flag of old Erin, given to them as a distinguishing mark, proved a powerful attraction, and the sight of it on the battle- field had the effect of adding fresh vigor to their courage. It is necessary to have passed through the trials of exile to com- prehend the magic influence exercised on the heart of man by every symbol of his distant native land, and among them the most expressive of all, the national flag. In like manner, citizens of German descent or of German birth, still adhering to their mother-tongue, although identified with America, without any intention of ever returning to their native lan^, and generally without regrets, grouped together in special regiments where they could foster the traditions and usages which life in the New AVorld never caused them to forget. The French, comparatively few in that land which is overrun by the Anglo-Saxon, and Germanic races, swelled the ranks of the La Fayette Guards, and subsequently of the Enfants Perdus, in both of which organizations they worthily sustained the honor of the red pantaloons, the distinguishing mark of our army. A few of our compatriots, driven to America either by the chance of revolutions, or by a desire to serve the cause of liberty, had rank conferred upon them in the Federal army, which enlisted all their sympathies ; they were thus able, under the protection of a flag ever friendly to the France of other days as to the France of the present time, to forget the quarrels by which they were divided. The contingent of the Latin races was completed, without being much increased, by the addition of a small number of Spaniards, Portuguese, and Italians. The dregs of the large cities were gathered into a few regiments with brilliant costumes, but somewhat lax in discipline if report may be credited. It was observed that the average of crime in the great city of New York decreased by one-half after the de- parture of the Wilson Zouaves. The volunteer fire companies of New York, proverbial for their turbulence, quitted for a time THE FEDERAL VOLUNTEERS. 179 the service of the corporation to organize a regiment of Fire Zouaves. But let us hasten to reduce to their proper j^roportions these details, which, striking the eyes of Europeans recently landed, may have led them to form erroneous opinions of the American army. In spite of all they could say, it was an essentially national army, both in sentiment and in the materials of which it was com- posed. The soldiers for the most part were animated by a sincere desire to serve the national cause, and the proportion of different elements which constituted its strength accurately represented the whole American nation. A thousand examples might be cited of soldiers and officers who sacrificed lucrative positions to join the regular army. The records of war-victims abound with the names of wealthy and honored citizens, not a few of whom were advanced in years and surrounded by a numerous family. Side by side with the old West Pointers who had resumed the military harness were men possessed of no practical military knowledge, but who, like Wads- worth, Shaw, and many others, were at least determined to set an example of the cause which finally cost them their lives. Many American villages displayed the same disinterestedness as Phoenix- ville, in Pennsylvania, which, almost exclusively inhabited by blacksmiths, the least skilful of whom could, during the war, earn in a week more than a soldier's pay for a month, alone furnished an entire company. Individual examples may always be set aside, yet it would be easy to prove, in a general way, that the rapidity of enlistments is to be attributed, not to want of work, but to earnest patriotism. If a few branches of industry had to suspend operations, busi- ness in general was but little affected by the shock of the war ; if the Federal flag experienced reverses, the chief occupation of the laboring population of America — the cultivation of cereals — con- tinued to flourish; and although a few families were ruined, the New World was not afflicted for a single day with the pauperism which stalks abroad in the most civilized States of Europe. Wages, al- ready very high, increased in proportion as the ranks of the army were filling up, rendering workmen scarce. The constant increase in the rate of bounties shows that, in a purely business point of 180 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. view, the salaries paid in civil employments competed favorably with army enlistments, while the bounties themselves, so far as regarded the immense majority of volunteers, afforded but a meagre compensation for the sacrifices they made. In a country where every able-bodied man can easily earn a living, and where the products of the soil are so abundant as to admit of an almost indefinite advance in wages, the government could never have held out sufficient inducements to attract the six hundred thousand men who in a single year responded to its call, if a large majority of them had not been actuated by sterling patriotism. This army was as national in its composition as it was in spirit, representing in due proportion the various elements of the Amer- ican population. It has indeed been urged that foreigners pre- dominated in its ranks ; this is a great mistake, but easily suscep- tible of explanation, from the fact that the German accent and the Irish brogue frequently struck upon the ear wherever the volun- teers were collected. Yast regions in Pennsylvania were settled by Germans even be- fore the War of Independence, and its inhabitants to this day speak a Germanic patois; but notwithstanding their nickname of Dutch- men, applied to them by their Anglo-Saxon neighbors, they are just as much Americans, in every sense of the term, as the latter. Those who still continue to emigrate for the purpose of clearing the virgin forests of the New World become Americans while engaged in fertilizing the soil, precisely as their predecessors did long ago. The hundreds of thousands of emigrants who arrive yearly, and who by their labor increase the wealth of the country and extend the boundaries of civilization, acquire thereby the rights of citizenship, and are as much interested in the greatness and good government of their adopted country as the descendants of the old colonists. And yet, notwithstanding the ties which bound the emigrant to that country, the foreign element was not proportionately represented in the composition of the national army. The soldiers born on American soil were more numerous than if the army had been recruited by a draft bearing equally on all the citizens of the Union. A few figures will suffice to confirm this assertion. Of the volunteers who enlisted during the first year, only one-tenth were THE FEDERAL VOLUNTEERS. 181 foreigners ; of the remainder, two-thirds were born on American sc'A, and seven-thirtieths, or rather less than one-fourth, were nat- uralized Europeans. By examining separately the contingents of the Eastern States, where but a small number of emigrants settle, we find a still larger proportion of natives — a proportion which in 1864, when conscription was partially resorted to, reached as high as eighty per cent. This army, two-thirds of which con- sisted of native Americans, and only one-third of foreigners, was raised out of a population of about 19,000,000 souls. In order to ascertain which of these two elements supplied the largest pro- portion of men, we have only to compare the. number of able- bodied men that each of them was able to contribute. The statis- tics of 1860 render this comparison impracticable; but the census of 1863, taken in the loyal States preparatory to the conscription, gave upwards of 3,100,000 as the number of men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five years. By adding 900,000 more, the maximum number of soldiers then in actual service or dis- abled, it may safely be affirmed that the class which in 1861 con- tributed exclusively to the recruitment of the army did not ex- ceed 4,000,000. With the help of the emigrant rolls, it is easy to calculate how many of these were born in America and how many in Europe. During the decade from 1849 to 1858 the United States received 3,000,000 new-comers, 1,200,000 of whom were women and 1,800,000 men; 1,370,000 of the latter being over fifteen and under thirty-five years of age. Deducting 8000 from this number, which, according to the tables of mortality, is the decrease of that population since its arrival in America, we find that emigration had, in the course of ten years, brought over to that country 1,362,000 men, who, when the levies of volunteers took place, were still living and between the ages of eighteen and thirty-eight, and, consequently, forming part of the 4,000,000 among whom the American army was recruited. This number already exceeds by 31,000 the third of those 4,000,000 ; but in order to make our statement complete, we should add thereto the number of Europeans who in 1861 were between thirty-eight and forty-five years, as well as those who at the time of their landing before 1849 were under thirty-three years of age, inasmuch as both categories were comprised in the 4,000,000. We see, there- 182 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. fore, that those of European birth constituted considerably more than one-third of the effective male population of the Northern States, while they only entered in just the same proportion of one- third into the composition of the army, thus leaving to the native Americans the largest proportion in the aggregate representation of races. We are not in possession of the necessary documents to con- tinue this comparison by ascertaining the number of those emi- grants who became naturalized, and those who retained their con- dition of aliens ; such a comparison would, however, be of little value. Naturalization is so easily obtained in the United States that after a few years' residence in the country nearly every per- son settled in business exercises the rights of citizenship. It was only when the conscription attached onerous duties to the exercise of these rights that people who had enjoyed them en- deavored to discover informalities in their naturalization papers, in order to get rid of the obligations devolving upon Americans. All emigrants who have left Europe without any intention of re- turning — sans esprit de retour, as the French law tersely expresses it — should, in reality, be reckoned as Americans, the number of those who persist in preserving their nationality unimpaired being altogether insignificant. Strictly speaking, those belonging to the latter category alone, and the recruits obtained from outside the territory of the Repub- lic, could be considered as foreigners, among the Federal soldiers. The Federal government could only have introduced a large for- eign element into the ranks of its army by enticing volunteers from Europe or from countries adjacent to the United States. Now, notwithstanding the close vigilance with which all the ac- tions of that government were watched, its enemies never could prove that such enlistments had been made on its account upon any large scale ; there was seen nothing in America to be com- pared with the foreign legion organized by England for the Crimean War. The navy may indeed have picked up a handful of sailors from the coasts of France or England, or it may have received a few of the deserters which every European ship drops into the ports of the New World. Doubtless, also, some English soldiers from the garrisons of Canada may have crossed the fron- THE FEDERAL VOLUNTEERS. 183 tier, allured not only by the bounties and high pay, but also by the hope that their military ex^jerience would secure them posi- tions among such raw troops. It was easy to recognize under the Federal uniform the old English soldier by his unexception- able bearing, his polished arms, and the precision of his move- ments. If not disqualified by drunkenness, he soon became drill- sergeant or sergeant-major ; if able to read and write, the epaulet was within his easy reach. These, however, were only isolated instances. It is true that recruiting agents, hoping to make a profit on the bounties, went to Canada and Ireland to decoy re- cruits in spite of the Federal government, and that they engaged emigrants to come over in the name of fictitious industrial asso- ciations, expecting to entice them into the service after they had landed, partly of their own free will, partly by force ; but the measures taken in New York and elsewhere to protect these emi- grants against the impositions of which they were formerly the victims enabled them to free themselves as soon as the fraud was discovered. This was the case with most of them ; and although the recruiters were always on the watch to entrap the most des- titute among those whom want had driven from Europe to the American shores, they were less successful with these new-comers than with those who had been for some time settled in the United States. We may therefore sum up all these details by affirming that, from the native-born American down to the latest-landed Euro- pean, the proportion of volunteers furnished to the Federal gov- ernment by the different classes of the community was in a direct ratio to the interest that each took in the affairs of the Republic, and that the longer the emigrant had lived upon its soil, the more largely did he contribute toward its defence. It must not be imagined, therefore, that the increase of emi- gration, so remarkable during the war, was a means of directly supplying the Federal armies. It was an indirect result due ta the sudden advance in the price of labor occasioned by the war. The difference in the rate of wages between the two contineuts is the sluice which regulates with precision the current of emigra- tion; and the new-comers, instead of swelling the ranks of the army, went for the most part to fill, either at the plough or in 184 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. the factories, the places of the Americans Avho had put on the uniform. It is by the average age of the soldiers that national armies are most readily distinguished from mercenary troops. An army of mercenaries is made up of men who make a trade of warfare, serving for a livelihood and enlisting from motives of interest ; the larger their number the higher the average of age. A na- tional army, on the contrary, is recruited in equal proportions among all the youth of the country, as well from voluntary as from forced service. Now, the average age of the volunteers who enlisted in America before any conscription had taken place was between twenty-four and twenty-five years, or the same as that of our own soldiers before it was raised above this figure by the exoneration law and the multiplicity of substitutes. The larger or smaller proportion of Europeans, or at least of men recently from Europe, in the contingents of the several States, was made manifest in the military statistics by a remark we may be allowed to quote, as throwing a curious light upon the movements of the populations that elbow one another for a long time in America before they become finally mingled. Nothing, in fact, appears more strange, at first sight, than the comparison of the average statures in the contingents of the several States, as shown by the tables published at the end of the war, at a time when the con- scription necessitated a scrupulous examination of all the men enrolled. Neither climate nor latitude can explain why that average varied so strangely from one State to another, in the Middle as well as in the Northern and Western States ; or why Pennsylvania and Kentucky, for instance, furnished the highest average, while, after the State of New York, those of the far "West, such as Minnesota and Michigan, sent the smallest men to the army. This last result is all the more striking because in those new States, where the human race seems to develop with greater freedom, there exists a truly athletic population of lum- bermen, living from generation to generation in the virgin forest, who, when formed into companies and at times into regiments, presented a line of perfect grenadiers that struck the officers of the British Guards with admiration. The reason is that alongside of them, in the same contingent, there was a race whose inferiority THE FEDERAL VOLUNTEERS. 185 was but poorly compensated by the former, namely, that of the German emigrants and their descendants down to the second gen- eration. These strange variations are all explained by the move- ments of emigration on the soil of America, and the average stature of each contingent was in inverse ratio to the number of emigrants who had settled in the State that furnished it. The current of emigration emptied itself at New York and certain points of the northern coast, where the weakest and the least robust took up their residence, while the others, passing through the Middle States, where the population was comparatively numerous, and shut out from tlie South by the insurmountable barrier of slavery, went to seek their fortunes in those vast Western States that are watered by the Upper Mississippi, the Missouri, and the great lakes. This current leaving Vermont at the north and Ken- tucky at the south, and traversing Pennsylvania too rapidly to leave traces of its passage beliind, these States possessed therefore a population which, for the most part, had ah-eady become Amer- ican for two or three generations back. It is from this time that the beneficent influence of the New World upon the European races is felt ; hence the physical superiority, seemingly inexplic- able, of the contingents furnished by these three States. The elements of a truly national army were therefore assem- bling in the recruiting-offices which had been opened from one end to the other of the States loyal to the Union ; we must now show how this improvised army was organized. A certain number of these offices would co-operate to form a regiment, the effi3ctive strength of which, as in the regular army, was usually fixed at a minimum of 850 men. As soon as this figure wis reached the regiment entered in numerical order into the contingent of its State, and nothing remained to be done in order to establish it but to arrange its list of officers and give it a regimental cadre. In all the States of the Union, the governor is the commander- in-chief of all the local armed forces, as the President is of the Federal troops, and he has the disposal of all the grades apper- taining to those local forces. But custom prevails everywhere over law, and so inveterate is the habit of electing nearly all pub- lic functionaries, that in several States the governors had to con- fine themselves to the confirmation of the choice already made by 186 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. the soldiers themselves. During the Mexican campaign the vol- unteers, being far away from their respective States, had already fallen into the habit of replacing such of their officers as had fallen in battle by improvised elections held around the camp- fires. But in the formation of the new regiments of which we are now speaking, there were certain circumstances which inter- fered with the choice of the soldiers as well as that of the gov- ernor. Whether it was owing to some tacit agreement, or a posi- tive contract between the governor, the new soldiers, and the principal recruiting-agents, the latter were generally made sure in advance of grades proportionate to the importance of the services rendered. Thus the application of the extreme principles of democracy revived the system of proprietary colonels, and the course pursued by American communities for the prompt organ- ization of their military forces resembled in many respects the formation of those independent companies of cavalry {compagnies d'ordonnances) which in the Middle Ages constituted the nucleus of standing armies. Indeed, the man who by his activity and in- fluence, and the expenditure of his time and money, succeeded in raising a regiment, and had perhaps even given his name to it, occupied quite a different position from that of an officer in the regular army, who can only rise to superior rank in the order of seniority. He became colonel of that regiment by right, and, with- out positive proof of un worthiness, he could not be deprived of its command, unless, indeed, the difficulty was compromised by mak- ing him a general. Besides these volunteer regiments formed for the occasion, the greatest portion of the old militia organizations, filled up by new enlistments, were incorporated in like manner into the contingent of each State. As soon as organized they were all received by the Federal agents and regularly mustered into the service of the Republic, without, however, breaking off their connection with the authorities of their respective States, who reserved to them- selves certain important rights in their administration. The in- tervention of these two different powers, at the beginning of the war, was productive of more advantage than inconvenience. In- stances of conflict between them were rare and insignificant ; and this system, by making a division of labor, and encouraging a THE FEDERAL VOLUNTEERS. 187 wholesome rivalry between the States, enabled the army to acquire a much more rapid organization than it would have done if the Federal government had undertaken this formation alone. In those critical moments when a nation's life depends, not upon the perfection of the means employed for saving lier, but upon their prompt application, people accustomed to leave individual action entirely unfettered well know how to turn all their resources to immediate account, whereas a centralized administration, accus- tomed to do everything itself, has but too often to struggle in hopeless incapacity. The Federal government, therefore, was required by law to arm and equip the volunteers ; but as it stood in need of every- thing at the very moment when all had to be created at once — as its arsenals, which would have been insufficient for the emergency even if well supplied, had been emptied by the instigatoi's of rebellion, most of the States themselves undertook to furnish those outfits for troops which they raised. The small State of Rliode Island, whose specialty has always been the manufacture of ordnance, sent to Wasliington several batteries provided with horses, and all the necessary accoutrements for taking the field at once. The day when a new regiment was delivered over to the Fed- eral authority and took the oath of allegiance to the Union, that authority took it under pay, and assumed the responsibility of providing for its maintenance ; each soldier received an entrance bounty, and the promise of a land-grant on the day of his dis- charge. This promise secured to him a fixed and certain remu- neration at the close of his term of service ; for if his bounty, paid in paper money, decreased in value in consequence of the depreciation of the currency, the nominal price of the land, hav- ing increased in like proportion, enabled him to gain on one hand what he lost on the other. The depreciation of paper money, however, weighed but lightly upon the volunteer, even during his term of service, for from 1861 to 1865 his pay was gradually raised from eleven to sixteen dollars per month, and the value of bounties given by the Federal government was increased in like manner. Here again the independent initiative already referred 188 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. to is seen lending a helping hand to the central authority ; States, large cities, individual corporations, and even private subscrip- tions, would occasionally swell the amount of those bounties by direct contributions of more or less importance, and, either by donations or fixed pensions, secure the means of existence to the wife and children, of the soldier, who was thus enabled to face death without fear of leaving his family in want. Although mustered into the service of the Federal government, the regi- ment was still subject to the authority of the State whose name it bore, in all matters affecting its personnel ; and if the process of recruiting continued, which was unfortunately rarely the case, it could only be within the limits of that State. Each governor had under his control a sort of miniature war department called the adjutant-general's office, which kept up relations with the regiments scattered throughout the Federal armies, and de- spatched special inspectors to watch over them and inquire into their wants ; in short, it continued to exercise the exclusive right of filling up vacancies among the officers, from the rank of second lieutenant to that of colonel. The central government, in taking these officers into its service, had, it is true, reserved to itself the right of dismissing such as were deemed incapable, and even of withdrawing their commissions and suspending their pay at will, without any explanation ; but it had not the power to replace them itself; generals commanding in the field had to apply to the adjutant-general of each State for the promotion of any officers belonging to the contingent of that State. These rights once reserved to the local authorities of the States, the volunteer regiments only obeyed the Federal authority. They were governed by the military code of the United States; the government at Washington alone directed their movements, and could send them at will from one extremity of the continent to the other ; it could separate them from those who had originally formed the same contingent with themselves, and distribute them among armies, divisions, and even brigades, where they would meet with soldiers belonging to another section of the Union. Finally, it had the direct appointment of generals, staff officers, and of the administrative departments in the armies thus consti- tuted. THE FEDERAL VOLUNTEERS. 189 Besides these national troops, tlie States more immediately threatened by their proximity to the seat of insurrection, also organized forces for the defence of their respective territories ; and in order to attaiji this end more effectually, they sometinjes formed nmtual associations Avithout the intervention of the central power. Wherever danger appeared imminent, the spirit of local initiative called into existence new and sudden resources. "When, in July, 1861, for instance. Congress voted the levy of five hundred thousand men, of which we shall speak in proper time, the States adjoining the frontier of slavery had anticipated the call, and organized forces for their own protection against the insurgents, who, as we have seen, were arming in INIaryland, Vir- ginia, and Kentucky. These troops had their own generals and staff officers, whose rank was confined to the State that had con- ferred it upon them. Numerous regiments were thus raised in Pennsylvania. Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, united under the aus- pices of a free association, organized a provisional army, and had the good fortune to entrust its command to Captain McClellan, whom the regard of his former companions in arms had unani- mously designated for that arduous position. Thanks to his exertions, this preliminary organization had the advantage of serving as a school for those troops which were soon to enter the Federal service, and with which, shortly afterwards, he achieved in West Virginia the first success of the war. We shall see it again on all critical occasions during; the struocffle, and especially when the territory of the free States was invaded by the Confederate armies. These militia troops thus assembled in haste may occasionally from a distance have deceived those armies and retarded their movements, by making them believe in the presence of a powerful force, but they were more frequently a source of embarrassment than of support to the generals of the Union, and the insignificant part they played on all occasions was the only one suited to troops so utterly destitute of all the quali- ties that constitute a true soldier. Before we follow to the field the armies whose improvised organization we have just described, it is proper that we should point out the peculiar characteristics which, in every branch of the service, distinguished them from the regular troops whose bat- 190 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. ties aie closely watched by Europe; this is necessary to a proper understanding of the first events of the war which we are about to relate. In order to form a correct judgment of the military commanders who directed that war, it is necessary, to have a per- fect knowledge of the good qualities and defects of the instru- ment they had to handle. The American foot-soldier displayed from the very first a great deal of personal bravery. The conflicts among the woods, where he was to fall unnoticed and to die without help, afforded the strongest evidence of this kind of courage, for they deprived him of that powerful incentive of all human action, the hope that his name would not die with him ; it was nevertheless in these en- counters, under the green shroud of the forest, that he exhibited all his firmness. He very soon acquired a remarkable skill in firing, and quickly learned to hit his mark as a skirmisher. While fighting in line, his fire had not the regularity of the drill-ground, but every sol- dier, using his weapon as he pleased, would hide behind a tree ; and picking out the enemy from under the foliage as soon as he partially exposed himself, he knew how to aim with fatal pre- cision. One fact which was brought to light by the report of the surgeon-general on the war demonstrates this peculiar skill of the combatants on both sides, and throws a curious light on the nature of the struggle of which the American forests were the theatre; it shows that in a certain number of Federal hospitals there were under treatment more than thirty-six thousand wounds in the head and arms, against only twenty-nine thousand in the legs ; and this is easily explained by the position of the soldier, who, concealed behind the trunk of a tree, only exposed his head and arras when he discharged his piece. But these personal qualities are not sufficient to impart to a body of troops that collective courage which inspires every man with the same spirit, and enables it to undertake wdth unanimity of purpose what no individual among those composing it could have attempted by himself. This distinctive trait of well-trained armies, which constitutes their superiority, is the result of long habits of discipline, and the influence of old and experienced cadres. THE FEDERAL VOLUNTEERS. 191 Indeed, -svhatever may be his personal courage, the soldier who is unaccustomed to being under fire, placed between comrades who are as great novices as himself, and opposite to a large body of the enemy, very soon persuades himself that every mus- ket in the enemy's ranks is levelled at his breast, forgetting that as many friendly weapons are by his side to sustain him. He may brave his peril, but will lack that entire confidence in the courage of his neighbors and the skill of his chiefs which tends to draw closer the ranks of a broken force, and urges the soldier to follow the lead of his officers in a desperate effort. The con- trolling influence of a severe discipline could not be felt among armies entirely new, where the epaulet did not carry with it that moral authority which is acquired by long service, and where the soldiers did not possess the assurance of men who have seen each other under trial. Easily impressed, like all multitudes, these men, accustomed to complete freedom of action, went into battle in a spirit of obedience which is rather rational than passive, and were actuated more by a sense of duty as citizens than by the habitude of the disciplined soldier, who forgets his own voli- tion to follow that of his chief. Consequently, notwithstanding their bravery, it took them a long time to learn that, upon ground where the fighting had to be done at short distances, it was almost always less dangerous to rush upon the enemy than to be decimated by his fire while standing still. For want of that mechanism which, in well-regu- lated armies, communicates the will of the directing power to each man, as rapidly as the nerves in the human body, they were frequently to lose the opportunity of turning a first advantage into a decisive victory. When certain death awaited those occu- pying the first ranks, when it was so easy to march with less rapidity than the rest, personal courage could not be displayed to the same extent by all ; if a single man hesitated or was allowed to hesitate with impunity, it was enough to render that hesitation contagious, causing the bravest soldier to lose his dash, and the most resolute chief all his daring. So long as that absolute despotism alluded to by Washington did not impose the same obligations upon the timid, to be found everyAvhere, as upon the 192 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. bravest, the American volunteers could not escape those inevitable consequences of the human character. Encounters with sword and bayonet, which seldom occur even between well -trained troops, Avere consequently very rare in Amer- ican battles. Besides, infantry charges could only take place in open spaces or clearings, which form a kind of oasis in the forest, too dense for troops to march in serried ranks and suddenly to charge the enemy with the bayonet. In those close fights every- thing was in favor of the party acting on the defensive. The as- sailant was openly exposed to the fire of an adversary hidden along the skirt of the wood ; if he reached the spot, the density of the forest rendered all pursuit impossible. A barricade of fallen trees enabled the party assailed to rally and to drive the aggressor back into the clearing, more dangerous to cross a second time than the first ; finally, if the latter had not well reconnoitred his flanks resting on the sides of the clearing, he was liable at any time to be exposed to an oblique fire from artillery concealed under the foliage ; we shall see how this fear of masked batteries played upon the imagination and colored the stories of the Federal sol- diers in the beginning of the war. These forest conflicts, however, possessed a great advantage for new troops ; the view being intercepted, panics could not be prop- agated, and the firing of the soldiers was slower, and consequently much better, than when they found themselves in an open space, where the terrible sights which surrounded them disturbed their equanimity. A curious circumstance mentioned in the official ac- counts of the battle of Gettysburg, which was fought upon ground comparatively little wooded, shows to what extent, on both sides, the excitement of the conflict caused the loss of self-possession among soldiers who had been accustomed for some time to hand- ling their arras. Among twenty-four thousand loaded muskets picked up at random on the field of battle, one- fourth only werft properly loaded ; twelve thousand contained each a double charge, and the other fourth from three to ten charges; in some there were six balls to a single charge of powder ; others contained six cartridges, one on the top of the other without having been opened ; a few more, twenty-three complete charges regularly inserted ; and finally, in the barrel of a single musket there were found con- THE FEDERAL VOLUNTEERS. 193 fusedly jumbled together twenty-two balls, sixty- two buck-shot, witli a proportionate quantity of powder. These souvenirs of the battle admirably depict the confusion ; we can easily imagine the soldier stopping to load his gun while his companions are advan- cing, and instead of stepping to the front and firing off his piece, rene^ving the operation of loading until the weapon becomes a use- less instrument in his hands ; but we should not severely criticise the American soldier on this account, for it appears that an ex- amination of the battle-fields of the Crimea gave similar results. In consequence of the independent character of the Federal vol- unteers, more than one general saw, in the battles we shall have to describe, a certain victory turned into defeat, while on the other hand, the most disastrous checks could almost always be remedied ; a sort of public opinion existing among them even in the midst of conflicts, we shall find them stoically suffering themselves to be killed at their post so long as they are actuated by a spirit of rivalry ; then, suddenly persuading themselves that further resist- ance is useless, at the very moment perhaps Avhen it would have decided the fate of a battle, they fall back to the rear in search of a better position. This retreat, which no effort on the part of the officers can prevent, is however effected Avithout hastening their pace, in spite of a shower of balls, and with a degree of coolness Avhich would be admirable under other circumstances. And, what is still more remarkable, this temporary disorder seldom degenerated into a rout ; a few minutes would often suffice to stop the fugi- tives, restore confidence among them, re-form their ranks, and re- store all the authority of their chiefs. A moment after, these soldiers, so suddenly discouraged, would refuse to believe them- selves beaten, and this conviction would be almost equivalent to a victory. At the very outset of the campaign, the inexperience of the Fed- eral volunteers was made evident, even more on the march than on the battle-field. In fact, a body of troops which has had no practice cannot, with the best intentions in the world, make a long march without straggling on the road. We shall see at the end of the war Sherman's soldiers traversing the half of a continent and conquering success through the vigor of their legs, while those of Grant carried a load of forty-five pounds on their shoul- VoL. I.— 13 194 THE CIVIL WAR IN A3IERICA. ders. But at the time of which we speak, they had not yet acquired that great art of the soldier which consists in bearing fatigue and taking rest in a systematic manner. They ate a great deal, did not know how to economize their food, adjusted their knapsacks clumsily, and could only carry two days' rations. The first day's march, which used up a great number, although very short, already filled the road with stragglers, who, while directing their steps towards the place assigned for the halt, did not con- sider themselves bound to keep up with their comrades, and whom a fresh spring of water or a shady spot would keep back ; fortu- nately for the Federal armies, the Confederate guerrillas, in pick- ing up such stragglers, did more towards putting a stop to this fatal habit than the severest orders of the day. The mounted volunteers naturally took the regular cavalry for their model, and imitated their mode of fighting, which, as we have already observed, recalled that of the old dragoons of the seventeenth century — a curious comparison between the ancient military customs of Europe and those of modern America. If those troopers borrowed the carbine of the regulars, it was not because they had to fight an enemy as swift in flight as the Indian of the prairies, but that every inexperienced soldier, when he can choose between side-arms and firearms, always prefers the latter, which does not compel him to come to close quarters with the enemy. Besides, in order to handle a sabre or a lance, one should be fully able to manage a horse, and the horsemanship of the Federal volunteers at the beginning of the war was deplorable. They did not fire from their saddles like the troopers of the times of Louis XIV., but got into the habit of fighting on foot, leaving their horses in charge of one-fourth of their number. The wooded and rugged character of the country was suited to this mode of warfare, but would not have admitted of those great and rapid evolutions of a cavalry relying solely on the swiftness of their horses, if such cavalry had existed in America. The cavalry, however, at the outset of the war, confined itself to the complicated task of scouting for the armies, and acting as ekirmishers. This service, although difficult for young troops, was not altogether new to American horsemen, accustomed to an adventurous life which suited their spirit of personal enterprise. THE FEDERAL VOLUNTEERS. 195 If they did not always possess the just instinct of war, nor that abiding vigilance indispensable in the presence of an enemy, they made up these deficiencies by their intelligence and daring ; a great number of little engagements, which cannot find a place in our nar- rative, afforded them opportunities to show that the inventive mind of the Americans was never at fault when it became necessary to devise a stratagem or to make combinations for some bold stroke. At a later period the importance of the cavalry was developed by the new part assigned to it in those raids or large independent expeditions, of which we shall speak hereafter. The artillery could not find amid the American forests favor- able ground and those large open spaces Mdiere it can operate with most effect. It was, however, from the first day in large force and constantly employed, because this arm of the service had, from the very first, been highly popular among the volunteers, while the infantry, before it had been well trained, did not like to move without feeling itself supported by some guns, even for a simple reconnaissance. As we have seen at Big Bethel, field- pieces were placed as vedettes near the most advanced sentinels of those new armies. This practice, common to both parties, fre- quently led to a noisy kind of artillery duel rarely bloody. If the position of one of those advanced batteries displeased the enemy, or if one of the two adversaries desired to try some newly invented projectile, the first fire was sure to bring on a lively cannonade, which the distance and the small number of combat- ants generally rendered harmless. But when the rattling peals of musketry announced a serious engagement, the artillery of the volunteers, worthy rival of that of the regulars, would always rush across woods and swamps to seek a position where the dan- ger was greatest, even at the risk of being abandoned by the raw troops who were its only support. We have dwelt upon the defects of the American volunteers because they were the cause of their first reverses, and because, in exposing them, we are only exalting the merit of those men who had so much to learn, in order to become capable of accomplish- ing the great task they had undertaken, and who succeeded by dint of perseverance and devotion. One trait in their character redeemed all these defects, and already displayed, under the garb 196 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. of these inexperienced men, those valiant champions who, at the end of the war, carried the enemy's strong works by assault : they went under fire more resolutely the second time than th^ first. Bad soldiers, if unconscious of the impression which the reality of war will produce upon them, are apt to rush into the fight with as much daring and resolution as veteran troops, and once engaged they will sometimes continue to behave well ; but experience makes them timid, and their courage fails them afterwards, when called upon to face a danger they have learned to appreciate. On the contrary, participation in those dangers, the loss of their com- rades, the sufferings and hardships of ithe war, were to strengthen the courage and increase the self-possession of the volunteers whom a patriotic duty had taken from the occupations of civil life. Iron, when pure and of good quality, acquires shape and strength under the repeated blows of the blacksmith's hammer, while metal adul- terated with bad alloys splits and soon flies in pieces. BOOK III.— THE FIRST CONFLICT. CHAPTER I. RIVERS AND RAILWAYS. THE modes of warfare vary in every country according to the nature of the ground. What is possible on the wide plains of Germany or in the rich provinces of Italy becomes impracti- cable among the mountains of Switzerland or on the parched and rugged joil of Spain. It follows, therefore, that in this recital, which takes us upon another continent, before we judge men, and compare what they have done with what might be accomplished in any stated part of Europe, we must consider the conditions im- posed upon them by the physical characteristics of the country in which they had to operate. Let us therefore begin by casting a glance over the map of that vast country where, for the last half century, modern civilization, taking a marvellous flight, has developed itself amid the grandeurs, almost intact, of virgin Nature. What strikes the observer at first is the simplicity of the geographical configuration of the United States. We set aside the Pacific basin, which, closely connected with the other sections of the confederation by political and social affinities, is separated from them by the Rocky Moun- tains and the plains which guard the approaches of that wild and desolate chain to the eastward. Those spacious deserts, which the emigrant crosses without settling, envelop the new States, where he goes to seek his fortune, with a belt that is impassable for large arm-es. No great natural divisions are to be met between the foot of the Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic borders. There is but one solitary range of mountains to be seen — that of the Alle- ghanies, of great length, but deficient in altitude, extending from north-east to south-west, and consequently not presenting diver- sities of climate ; intersected by numerous rivers of considerable size, divided throughout its whole extent by large and fertile val- 197 198 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. leys, but without the snowy crown of the Alps and the Pyrenees, and devoid, therefore, of all that can render a chain of mountains a real barrier and a political boundary. The American rivers, slow and deep, easily navigable, instead of being an obstacle, are so many open highways for war as well as for commerce. The geun-al aspect of America, therefore, is grand and imposing, but singularly monotonous and uniform, and very different from that of Europe, where Nature and man have vied with each other in producing striking varieties of form. It is easy to take in at one glance the collective features of that country ; but the details of its different parts are so much alike that the observer can with difficulty identify any of them. Under the artificial divisions of States and counties traced by rule and line across hundreds of leagues, where no historical associations exist, and which make a perfect checker-board of the map ; between towns and villages whose names, by turns classical and vulgar, are so frequently repeated that they become a useless embarrassment to the memory, nothing can be distinguished but a network of water-courses more en- tangled than the blood-vessels of the human body. It is a country possessing an even surface, with equal undulations throughout its whole extent, and covered with forests that collect the dampness and stock it in a multitude of valleys. Except among the Alle- ghanies, no clearly defined division of waters occurs, no large table-lands nor open spaces, no deep depressions, so that on Hear- ing the Atlantic the level of the ground gradually -lowers, until land and sea become interlaced ; the smallest valleys are trans- formed into estuaries and the faintest undulations into long pe- ninsulas. It is not a part of our subject to point out the effect of this configuration upon the political condition of America. Being without the long and bloody history of Europe, and not divided between different races or hostile civilizations, she has not wit- nessed the formation of artificial frontiers upon her soil, to take the place of those natural divisions that are at variance with them. The same single people have spread over a uniform ter- ritory, and have everywhere implanted the same institutions. And by a truly providential coincidence, the day when the im- mensity of her domain might have weakened the bonds of her unity, railways were introduced which averted the impending RIVERS AND RAILWAYS. 199 danger. Thanks to them, New Orleans is to-day noarer New York than JNIarseilles was to Havre forty years ago, wlien France could count as many inhabitants as constitute the population of the United States at the present time. It is wrong, therefore, to suppose that the extent of their territory is an obstacle in the way of their commercial development and a cause for political dissolution. But it is otherwise in a military point of view. The distances, the nature of the country, and the condition of its settlements, in- terpose extraordinary difficulties to the great movements of armies and their manoeuvres on the battle-field. The population is dis- tributed very differently from what it is in Europe. While cen- turies of war, of violence, and oppression have concentrated the inhabitants of the Old World in cities and villages, peace, safety, and freedom have induced the settlers of America to spread them- selves over the surface of the country ; and each of them settling down upon' the patch of land which he has undertaken to clear with his individual resources, the rural families, instead of draw- ing near their neighbors and forming small straggling towns, have preferred an isolated country life. Since then, immense cities have undoubtedly sprung up in the free States — not as a consequence of public danger, but, on the contrary, as the nat- ural results of accumulated wealth and powerful commerce; but in the matter of social organization, these cities play a totally different part from that of our great European centres. In America it is not the man from the country who goes to seek his fortune in the city ; it is, on the contrary, the city people whom the hope of higher wages or of rapid profits draws into the country. Far from absorbing the vital forces of the nation, the city is only a vast reservoir from which they are poured over the whole country. Nor must it be forgotten that these great cities only exist in the Northern States. In the slave States, which have been the exclusive theatre of the war, pru- dence on one side, the demands for field-labor on the other, caused the servile population to be distributed among the vast planta- tions of their respective masters. So that in those States there are neither large cities nor villages ; small towms are scarce, the chief county place being designated by a solitary building, generally situated at the intersection of two roads, and the Federal armies 200 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. had frequently to march for many long days without meeting with more than four houses together in the same clearing. Essentially expansive in its tendencies, the population of the United States, like a liquid which nothing can keep within bounds, has always spread itself over new tracts of land before it has completely settled those already occupied. Thus, in the slave States this slight sprink- ling of white population represented in 1860 less than six inhab- itants to every square kilometre, and the proportion of cultivated lands to the entire surface of the territory was only 16.07 per cent, in the South-eastern States and 10.17 per cent, in those of the South-west. During the eighty years which followed the war of Independence, this proportion was scarcely increased, while dur- ing the same period of time, the total population of the Republic increased tenfold. Forest and swamp are yet in exclusive posses- sion of the eight or nine-tenths still undisturbed by man — the forest, ordinarily an assemblage of lofty trees mixed with coppice ; the swamp, a woody marsh where the combined action of sun and water develops a powerful vegetation, the thickness of which in- terposes serious obstacles to the movements of armies. To the natural difficulties which a too scanty population has not yet been able to overcome, there was added in the South the enervating influence of slavery. This fatal institution paralyzes that spirit of enterprise which, in the North, produces a striking contrast between the triumphs of industry and the splendors of a yet rebellious Nature only half conquered by civilization. Turn- pikes are few and poorly kept. The roads, laid out at random from clearing to clearing, over a rich soil easily softened, be- come impassable at the first rainfall. Magnificent rivers roll their unexplored waters through the great shadows of the virgin forest, as in the days Avhen the canoe of the Indian was gently wafted upon their currents. There were no maps, or at least bad maps, which is even worse yet for the purposes of war. It appears that the drawings made by Washington during the leisure hours of his youth still constitute the best topographical charts of Virginia, and the only States which possess correct drawings of land-surveys are those most recently admitted into the Union, which, as Territories, were for some time under the jurisdiction of the Federal government and surveyed by Federal officers. RIVERS AND RAILWAYS. 201 Those portions of America which were the earliest colonized are those whose geography is the most imperfect. Another capital difficulty in the way of military operations arose from the fact that the products of the Southern States, especially during the early stages of the war, were not adapted for the subsistence of armies. The cotton-plant and the sugar- cane reigned without rivals in the extreme South, and, more to the northward, tobacco. Virginia alone cultivated wheat to a great extent in the elevated valleys of the Alleghanies, but like the neighboring State of Kentucky, her principal jjroduct was the slave himself. She took him out of her infamous pens to supply the sugar and cotton plantations, and to repair the ravages of forced labor and an insatiable climate. This interior traffic, which an odious application of the politico-economical principle of the relations between supply and demand had developed since the sujiprcssion of the African slave-trade, had by a just retalia- tion struck a death-blow to the prosperity of those States. The production and raising of slaves, to which everything was sacri- ficed, had ruined agriculture by multiplying the number of useless mouths, without increasing the number of strong arras, which were constantly being exported into other markets. Conse- quently, at the opening of the war, the Southern States depended entirely for their flour and salt meats upon enormous importations from the "Western States. The vast blockade in which the North held them shackled during the war compelled them at last to make their own soil yield * them the necessary means for sustaining life. Cotton, sugar, and tobacco, having lost their value, gave place to cereals, the cultivation of which, contrary to many predictions, spread and prospered as far as the warm plains of Georgia. It was alone owing to this change in the cultivation of the soil that the Confederate armies were able to subsist, but, at the same time, it deprived the South of one of her strongest defences, by rendering invasion easier. Sherman understood this, and attempted, in 1865, that de- cisive march which, all other things being equal, he could not have undertaken two or three years before, across those States then exclusively devoted to the cultivation of cotton. And yet 202 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. his example aiFords no proof that an army can subsist in America upon the resources of the country it occupies. It was only by avoiding all stoppages, by always marching on, and constantly occupying a new section of country, that Sherman was able to get along for some time without the supplies forwarded from the i^orthern States. When the large American armies, propor- tioned not to the density of the population, but to its entire num- ber, found themselves, with all the requirements of a refined civ- ilization, in the midst of a country yet so little cultivated, they encountered difficulties unknown in our European wars, and which Washington, Rochambeau, and Cornwallis had formerly escaped, owing to the small number of their soldiers. The popu- lation is too limited to supply, out of its husbanded resources, the wants of such masses of men gathered together within a narrow space by the chances of war. We have shown that this population does not form any agglom- erated centres, where the products of the country are naturally brought together, and where armies can easily obtain suppljies. The raihvays, which facilitate the circulation of such products and favor their exchange, have rendered d6p6ts where capital remains inactive — a thing always repugnant to an American — unnecessary, by carrying off at once all the fruits of the soil except what is strictly necessary for local consumption. Armies, therefore, except under peculiar and fleeting circumstances, are obliged to draw the largest portion of their supplies from sections of country remote from the seat of war. To concentrate provisions in the quiet and productive districts, to have these provisions safely forwarded to the depots stationed en echelon in the rear of the army, and by means of these depots to issue daily supplies to all the corps on their march, — such is the first requirement for conducting a cam- paign in America, and one of the most difficult problems which a general-in-chief has to solve. The almost entire absence of turn- pikes, the necessity of subjecting the thousands of tons of j)ro- visions consumed daily by a large army to such long and com- plicated transits, limits the transportation by wagons considerably, and venders the powerful assistance of steam indispensable both by water and by rail. These fruitful arteries, which have permitted the concentration, EIVEES AND RAILWAYS. 203 at different points, of the resources of an immense ttrritorj, and whose life-bearing current has alone been able to feed those arti- ficial and unproductive masses of humanity called armies, are S3 important that the Southern Confederacy died of inanition the very day it was deprived of their help. Hence the decisive in- fluence of the combined system of these river and iron highways upon the conduct of the war ; it traced in advance, so to speak, the route of armies, and indicated the points the possession of which they contended for. It is important, therefore, to a proper understanding of the manner in which the war ^yas conducted, that we should offer a few remarks regarding this system, not- withstanding the little attraction geographical descriptions possess in general. All travellers have vaunted the majesty of American rivers, but have failed to present an idea of their number. These rivers pen- etrate the continent in every direction, and are navigable at all times for a certain distance ; but when the rainy season comes, the shallows disappear, the smallest tributaries are rapidly swollen, extending the limits of navigation to the very heart of the Union, and opening thereby an easy way of access to the steamboats that have come from the remotest parts of the continent. It is for this reason that the American journals always published a register of the water-marks of their great rivers as among the most important news-items of the war. The American steamboat, a huge flat-bottomed structure resembling a castle many stories high, with its strong engine and powerful wheels, can transport, in a single trip, enormous cargoes of pro- visions, ammunition, and even soldiers. An army appui/ee upon one of these rivers can easily receive all the supplies it needs. So long as it controls the waters its resources are unlimited. Piers can easily be improvised from the forests which border the banks; upon this level highway no impediments are ever met with, no intermediate loadings or unloadings ; the cargoes can be transported directly from the large cities of Cincinnati or St. liOuis to the vicinity of the Federal camps on the banks of the Tennessee or the Mississippi, a distance of three or four hundred leagues from the point of departure. ^iCt us, in a few words, give an outline of the general configu 204 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. ration and the ensemble of those rivers in the States that were the theatre of the war. The whole system of water-courses in that vast region of country may be divided into two parts, entirely distinct and sep- arated by a long line, which, broken at a single point, extends from the banks of the Mississippi to those of the Potomac. Formed at first by an insignificant chain of hills, this line runs from west to east, from the great river to a point south of Chatta- nooga ; leaving this point, it follows the chain of the AUeghanies, from south-west to north-east as far as the gap made by the Poto- mac, and to the boundary of the free States. To the south and south-east of this great division, the waters flow directly into the sea, emptying either into the Atlantic or into the Gulf of Mexico. On the opposite slope, these waters rush from every point of the horizon to meet again in the Mississippi, that immense and only drainage of half a continent. This dividing line, uninterrupted by any w^ater communication, proved a very serious obstacle throughout the entire war. The Atlantic basin is an elongated triangle extending between the AUeghanies and the sea, its highest elevation being on the estuary of the Potomac at Washington, and the base lying from Chattanooga to the peninsula of Florida, comprising the States that were the earliest colonized. The James, the Poanoke, the Savannah, the Altamaha, and other streams which descend from the mountains to lose themselves in deep bays or vast swamps, intersect this triangle perpendicularly to the coast. A slight undulation of surface, connecting the AUeghanies with Florida, separates the Atlantic slope from that portion of the basin of the Gulf of Mexico which lies east of the Mississippi ; it is a fertile country, very well watered, but more recently set- tled and less populated. Consequently, its importance in con- nection with the war was only secondary. Although Sherman crossed, near their sources in Georgia, the three large rivers which flow through the State from north to south, the Chattahoochee, the Alabama, and the Tombigbee, the fantastic names of the first and the last are still as little known as when they were only uttered by Indian warriors. The Alabama owes its celebrity, not to the insignificant battles fought upon its banks, but to the RIVERS AND RAILWAYS. 205 chance which caused the same name to be bestowed upon the famous Confederate pirate whose fragments lie at tiie bottom of the sea not far from Cherbourg. There are two not far apart points in the very centre of the continent, both situated on the borders of the Mississippi, which in their combination constitute one of those exceptional locations which, like the Bosphorus, seem to have been intended by a special favor of Nature for an extraordinary destiny. We allude to that magnificent rendezvous of the waters, descending from all the cardinal points, and forming between St. Louis and Cairo an immense river which afterwards runs into the sea without gather- ing any tributary of importance from the east, and only two from the west. St. Louis, whose French name recalls the period of our brief sway over those vast regions, and whose present prosperity reflects honor upon those sturdy colonists who had the sagacity to select that site on the very day following our disasters in Canada, — St. Louis is situated at the confluence of the Missouri, the INIississippi, and the Illinois, flowing from the west, the north- west, and the north. At Cairo, her unfortunate rival, infected with fever, these riv- ers connect with the Ohio, the " Beautiful River, ^' swelled by the Tennessee and other tributaries which pour into it from the south. This wonderful concourse of waters greatly facilitates commu- nications of all kinds, commercial intercourse as well as military operations. The regions watered by these rivers were differently affected by the war; the borders of some were devastated, their hills made to bristle with cannon, their waters ploughed by armed vessels, and many lives sacrificed ; while others had to supply the combatants with provisions and gather together the produce of rich and undisturbed districts for the use of the army. The events we have narrated, which marked the line of separa- tion between the belligerents, divided this vast basin into three parts. One, situated north of the Ohio, that boundary between free- dom and slavery so admirably described by De Tocqueville, com- prised the rich Middle States, the granaries of America, and soon to be those of the whole world. It was to know nothino; of the 206 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. war except tlirough the accounts given by its sons, and by the absence of those who were doomed never again to revisit the domestic hearth. The second extended along the right bank of the Mississippi, the home of the Indian and the buffalo, and the new country of the pioneer, the eternal enemy of both — a country the immensity of which seems to stimulate individual energy, and where the laws are as vague as its boundaries. There, under the influ- ence of violent passions, the legal struggle which was going on elsewhere between slavery and free labor had already for some time assumed a fierce and sanguinary character, and the outposts of two hostile institutions, constantly facing each other, had antici- pated tlie declaration of war by many years. So, no doubt, we shall see the still burning embers of that great conflagration lurk- ing in their ashes for a long time to come. But, at the critical moment, the irregular warfare of which those too spacious regions were the theatre exercised no influence upon the great plan of military operations. Finally, the third part, bounded on the west by the Mississippi, and on the north by the Ohio, comprising West Virginia, Ken- tucky, Tennessee, and portions of the neighboring States, was the territory the possession of which the Federals, taking the ofl'en- sive, disputed with their adversaries. This almost virgin soil was to be trodden by the largest armies that were ever assem- bled on either side, and witnessed such torrents of human blood as it is the sad privilege of an advanced civilization to shed. In those vast regions, some of the most decisive blows of the war have brought into unexpected notice the name of some hum- ble settler of the wilderness who had helped to clear it with his own hands; while, by some singular coincidence, the mysterious meaning of some curious appellation, the only legacy left by an unhappy race, as a fatal prophecy to the country it had been dis- possessed of, has been unravelled. When the Indian called one of the thousand rivulets which meander across the upper ridges of Georgia, Chickamauga, or "The River of Deatli," could he have foreseen, by a secret instinct, the fratricidal war which was to strike down the white men in expiation of their past crimes, and the autumnal evenino; which was to witness the destruction RIVERS AND RAILWAYS. 207 of thirty thousand of his future enemies w^on the borders of that insignificant stream? The waters of this third part, th(^ only one that has any interest for us, are all tributaries of the Ohio. Among all the import- ant streams of this basin, however, two only, the Great Kanawha and the Kentucky, descend directly from the Alleghanies towards this river, and yet, their currents being too raj^id to be long navigable, they possess no military importance. All the others begin by diverging from the course of the "Beautiful River," and meeting again in two large streams, the Cumberland and the Tennessee, Mhich envelop the whole basin in two concentric curves at the south, only empty into the Ohio just before it loses itself in the Father of Waters. Thence extends a vast space with- out any rivers, separating the course of the Ohio and its fertile borders from the neighboring regions of the Alleghanies, and obliging those who desire to reach that country by water to fol- low the immense circuit of the Tennessee, the length of which is greater and navigable for a longer distance than the Cum- berland. There remains the great line, sinuous in its details, but straight in its general direction, which the Mississippi traces from the cen- tre of the continent to the Gulf of Mexico, and the waters of which may mark a geographical division, but really constitute a powerful link between the Northern States whence they flow, and those of the South, in the centre of which they have opened a gap abundantly fertile. Let us sum up in a few words this general view of American rivers. They may be divided into two parts — those that flow directly into the sea, and those which unite in forming the Mis- sissip})i. The former are divided into two distinct basins, that of the Atlantic and that of the Gulf of Mexico ; the one of pecu- liar importance, the other comparatively insignificant in con- nection with the late war. In the vast basin of the Mississippi, composed of the latter, three regions may be observed — one to northward, whose territory was respected by the war ; another to westward, yet almost a desert; and a third to south-eastward, which alone was the theatre of the great military operations. The war we are about to describe has shown what great advan- 208 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. tage an army could derive from these rivers, especially when used in combination with railways ; nor has the part of the latter been an unimportant one. In those sections of America which Nature has not supplied with navigable rivers, railways have been substi- tuted to a certain extent, but they are far from possessing the same advantages. On the one hand, being constructed on principles of economy, they have only a single track, and consequently can only transport a limited amount of material ; and besides their innumerable bridges and long viaducts being frail wooden struc- tures, always at the mercy of a single spark, travel is liable to constant interruptions. An army in retreat easily destroys them in its rear, and compels the invader who wishes to pursue to re- construct them under great disadvantages. In short, a happy coup-de-main is sufficient to cut them in the rear of an enemy even superior in numbers. But as these modes of conveyance for forwarding supplies are indispensable, the more precarious they are, the more carefully they require to be guarded, and con- sequently the greater their bearing upon the entire conduct of the war. It is necessary, in order to render the narrative explicit, to ex- plain the system of railways in the Southern States, which form three distinct groups in the three basins of the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mississippi, with scarcely any connec- tion between them. In the first group we find three principal lines running nearly parallel to the coast. One, following the Alleghanies along their whole range, belongs strategically to this group, although its prin- cipal portion is situated ujx)n the opposite slope of these moun- tains ; isolated among their elevated valleys, it runs for a distance of nearly two hundred leagues between Lynchburg, where it con- nects with the Virginia lines, and Chattanooga, where it strikes again the railways of the Ohio basin ; its length and direction prevent its being an effectual link between the two groups. The other two lines, on the contrary, are intersected by cross-roads forming numerous junctions, the names of wliich have nearly all fissured in the war. Alono^ the line which runs close to the shore, rounding the gulfs and striking the sea from port to port, it is sufficient to mention Richmond, Petersburg, Goldsborough, "Wil- RIVERS AND RAILWAYS. 209 mington, Charleston, and Savannah, wliore the track leaves the Atlantic basin to connect with that of the Mexican Gulf at Macon. A-long the intermediate line between the mountains and the sea, we find the names of Manassas, Gordons ville. Burkes ville, Greens- borough, Columbia, Augusta, and finally Atlanta, which is its terminus. At Atlanta, the central point between the three groups, we also find, in another direction, the principal artery of the Gulf basin, together wath an important branch which, availing itself of a gap in the Alleghanies, runs direct from Chattanooga to connect the group of the Ohio basin with the other two groups. The States bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, more recently settled and less populated than those of the East, are naturally ill supplied with railways. Yet two lines contiguous to the Mississippi, and running parallel with its course, connect the great ports of Mobile and New Orleans with the Middle States ; whilst another, having one terminus at Vicksburg on the Missis- sippi, and built during the war, for the purpose of opening easy communications with Texas, extends as far as Atlanta. In the Ohio basin, the western part, already exclusively favored by water-courses, is alone in possession of railways. One line, single at first, which runs southward from Cincinnati and Lou- isville, forks successively at Bowling Green and Nashville, and further on at Hardinsville, and spreading out like an immense fan south of Cumberland, extends its numerous arms from the foot of the high cliffs which terminate the Alleghany range, at the very point where the navigation of the Tennessee commences — so appropriately called Lookout 3Iountain — as far as the banks of the Mississippi, to Columbus at the west, and to Memphis at the south. A transversal line connecting the latter city with Chattanooga, and uniting the extremities of five branches of this fan, was not of the same importance for military operations as it had been before in a commercial point of view ; being exposed in flank, it could easily be cut and rendered equally useless to both bel- ligerents. More to eastward, the vast region of country com- prised between the Ohio and the Alleghanies, already without navigable rivers, is also deprived of railways ; it is the same with the section of country extending from the railway running Vol. I.— 14 210 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. parallel with the Mississippi to the Chattanooga gap, and sepa- rating the Ohio basin from that of the Mexican Gulf. Consequently, the raihvays found in that part of America which was the theatre of the war, form three groups correspond- ing with the three basins of the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico and the Ohio respectively. They are only connected by a few lines located at great distances from each other, leaving vast intervening spaces equally inaccessible to the locomotive and to the steamboat. These spaces, destitute of all means of com- munication, extend through the whole length of the Southern States, and separate them completely, dividing the waters into two great basins and the railways into two independent systems. It is easy to conceive the bearing they had upon the war. They present, in fact, an insurmountable obstacle to the march of an army anxious to preserve its communications. From the vicinity of the Mississippi to the borders of the Potomac they form one continuous line, only once broken, in the centre, between Chatta- nooga and Atlanta. This was the weak point in the Southern armor which, after the loss of the Ohio basin, could have protected the heart of the rebel States, by compelling the Federals to attack them at either of the two extremities, through the borders of the Mississippi and the Chesapeake, or by landing upon an inhospit- able coast. It was through this flaw in the cuirass that we shall see Sherman thrustino; his formidable sword. It was owino- to this railway from Chattanooga to Atlanta that he was able not only to reach the latter place, but to establish himself in it and make it the point of departure for his decisive campaign in Georgia. But at the time of which we are speaking, it was in the vicinity of the Ohio that the conflict Avas about to begin, and the division we have laid down in the network of rivers and rail- ways will share in the first military operations in three distinct zones, each of which will have the banks of one of these rivers as the scene of action. As we progress with our narrative, the very examples it fur- nishes will demonstrate more clearly than anything we could say in this place, the importance and the sj^ecial use to be made ©f the ways of communication both by water and rail. We shall therefore confine ourselves to a few words in justification of the RIVERS AND RAILWAYS. 211 foregoing lengthy description, and to show that !t M'as an indis- pensable introduction to the history of the war. We shall see the rivers performing a double part in the strategic movements. On the one hand, they secure unlimited resources for revictualling the armies, being accessible to an in- definite number of steamers, which can convey the supplies and reinforcements that are needed. On the other hand, they afford armies powerful means for assuming the offensive, by enabling ships of war to support their movements and protect their lines of communication in proportion as they are extended. Rail- ways, on the contrary, with their limited capacity for transporta- tion, are an instrument purely defensive; they cannot support the movements of an aggressor, who is obliged to regulate his march according to the greater or lesser rapidity with which they can be reconstructed. The two essential requisites, therefore, for directing the move- ments of an army are — first, to secure a safe channel of transporta- tion for its supplies, and then to know how far it can venture from the river or the railway by means of which those supplies are received. Consequently, while in those countries that abound in provisions, like Europe, an army extends its lines for the purpose of procuring sustenance, and concentrates to fight, in America, the larger the army, the greater the necessity for concentration in order to obtain provisions; because, being able to procure scarcely anything from the country it occupies, the more its lines are extended, the more difficult it becomes for those who are at a distance from their only sources of supply to procure food. In order to calculate the distance to which an army may ven- ture from the dep6ts established at the railway stations or river landings which constitute the base of its operations, we must begin by premising that there are no roads, in the European sense of the term, which can connect this base with the various posi- tions occupied by the army. Cross-roads disappear rapidly under the combined effects of the first rain and the incessant passing of wagons ; nev/ ones have to be opened across fields and woods, and these must be kept constantly in order, to prevent their being rendered impassable at the end of a few days. The number of mouths to be fed is the criterion by which to determine this dis- 212 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. tance; for, on the one hand, a road can only be made available for a certain number of wagons, while on the other, even if several practicable roads be opened, an army cannot be accompanied by an unlimited number of wagons without embarrassing all its movements. At the beginning of the war the American soldier consumed nearly three pounds of food per day; if to this we add ammuni- tion of every kind, personal accoutrements, and all that is neces- sary for the maintenance of troops, it will be readily admitted that the average weight of articles to be transported for the necessities of a large American army is about four pounds daily to each man, without counting the food for horses and mules, which amounts to about twenty-five pounds for each animal. The American wagon, drawn by six mules, carries a load of 2000 pounds, sufficient, therefore, to supply 500 men, provided it can make the trip daily, going and returning, between the army and its depots. If the distance to be traveled is such as to re- quire a whole day's march, one day being lost in returning empty, it will only be able to supply 500 men every other day, or 250 daily. To go a distance of two days' march from its base of operations is a very small matter for an army that is manoeu- vring in front of the enemy, and yet, according to this computa- tion, it will require four wagons to supply 500 men with provis- ions, or eight for 1000, and consequently 800 for 100,000 men. If this army of 100,000 men has 16,000 cavalry and artillery horses, a small number comparatively speaking, 200 more wagons will be required to carry their daily forage, and, there- fore, 800 to transport it to a distance of two days' march. These 1600 wagons are, in their turn, drawn by 9600 mules, which, also consuming twenty-five pounds during each of the three days out of four they are away from the depot, require 360 wagons more to carry their forage ; these 360 wagons are drawn by 2400 animals, and in order to transport the food required by the latter, 92 additional wagons are necessary. Adding twenty wagons more, for general purposes, we shall find that 2000 wagons, drawn by 12,000 animals, are strictly necessary to victual an army of 1(^0,000 men and 16,000 horses at only two days' march from its base of operations. In the same proportion, if RIVERS AND RAILWAYS. 213 this army finds itself separated from its base of operations by three days' march, 3760 wagons, drawn by 22,000 animals, will be found indispensable for that service. This calculation does not take into account the difficulties in the way of transportation; for if these wagons are necessary to convey the materials as far as the depots of the division, the others are required to distrib- ute them afterwards among the regiments ; an army, in fact, is obliged to keep a number of such wagons constantly with it in order to secure a certain degree of mobility and to be able to send a few detachments forward, accompanied by a wagon-train car- rying several days' provisions. Thus an American army of 100,000 men with nearly 4000 wagons, from 2000 to 3000 of which pass and repass over three or four parallel roads, the dis- tance of two days' march, or about forty or fifty kilometres, had established for it, during the war, the utmost distance to which it could venture from its base of operations, while continuing to receive its supplies from that source. In an offensive campaign, therefore, an army cannot go beyond two days' march without at the same time removing its depots. If it follows a line of railway, it must stop and wait for the re- pairing of the track as far as the new point where it wishes to establish them. If its line of march lies contiguous to a river, it is generally accompanied by a fleet of transports, which, by reason of their flat bottoms, can be run upon any beach and their cargoes speedily landed. If it has to pass through a country deprived of easy communications, it may abandon the base of operations upon which it has rested and go in search of another ; this apparently bold movement proved successful with all those who tried it, either for the purpose of striking the head of some railway already occu- pied by friendly troops, or for securing new positions on the margin of some distant river, where the fleet could again overtake the army and revictual it. By thus advancing its base of operations on the same line, or by changing from one line to another, the wagons were relieved of two trips; and by taking them along loaded with provisions, it doubled the number of days during which the troops could march in an enemy's country. A certain number of rations in the haversack of each soldier increased the number of days, while herds of cattle, at the season of the 214 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. year when they could find pasturage in the vicihity of the army, afforded a supplementary resource. In proportion as he ac- quired experience in war, the Federal soldier became more sober, more sparing of his rations, and learnt at the same time to carry a heavier load on his shoulders. Among the necessary ele- ments for calculating the number of days he could remain separated from his depots, there are some, as will be seen, which are essen- tially variable. We shall confine ourselves, in regard to these, to the figures furnished by the experience of the same army at two different epochs of the war. In October, 1862, McClellan being desirous to move his quarters from the head of one line of railway to another, as we will show presently, with an army of 122,000 men — an operation which might oblige him to subsist for ten days without any other supplies than those he carried with him, — these supplies were transported by a train of 1830 wagons. These wagons were drawn by 10,980 animals ; there were besides 5046 cavalry horses, and 6836 belonging to the artillery ; in order to carry ten days' complete rations of forage for these animals, it re- quired a second train, with an addition of 17,832 beasts, which had to supply the 40,664 horses or mules which in some capacity or other thus followed the army, with half rations, the country through which that army passed having to furnish the rest. This enormous figure only comprised the transportation of provisions, exclusive of ammunition and of the sick and wounded. In May, 1864, this same army was of nearly the same strength, num- bering 125,000 men, 29,945 cavalry horses, and 4046 belonging to officers, 4300 wagons, and 835 ambulances — 56,499 animals in all — when it took the field under the command of Grant, pre- pared to fight and march for three weeks, if necessary, before re- joining any of its depots. The rations had been greatly diminished, and the soldiers were accustomed to carry heavy loads ; they had three full rations in their knapsacks and three days' allowance of biscuits in their haversacks ; each wagon having capacity for 1400 small rations, the train could furnish ten days' provisions and forage, while the droves of beef-cattle that accompanied the army provided for three more. So that, while McClellan had only pro- visionfc for ten days at the utmost, two years later. Grant, with the same army and the same resources, was able to take with him RIVERS AND RAILWAYS. 215 sixteen days' supply. These figures fully show that experience iu the war had succeeded in rendering certain operations possi- ble which, in the beginning, were not so with the improvised troops whose first campaigns we are about to narrate. The amount of transportation that can be effected by means of railways enters as a no less important element in the movements of armies, and will prove a source of embarrassment when those armies are large and depend upon a single line for their supplies. Frequent examples of this will appear in our narrative ; conse- quently, the organization of the railway service, and the skill with which all its details were regulated, contributed essentially to success during this difficult war. We will only cite one in- stance at present — that of Hooker's army, 23,000 strong, which in 1863 was transported with all its materiel, its horses and wagons, from the Rapidan to Stevenson in Alabama, a distance of nearly 2000 kilometres, by rail in seven days. This shows the great services railways were able to render by concentrat- ing an army on any given point of the continent; but it was much easier to accomplish a movement of this kind than to supply a large army daily with provisions at the terminus of one of those long sino-le-track lines which run throug-h the South- ern States; in fact, their rude construction required constant repairs, and consequently occasioned frequent interruptions, so that beyond a certain distance, varying naturally according to circumstances, they were not sufficient to transport the re- quired supply without the aid of another line, or, better still, of a river. Naturally, the amount of transportation that could be made by water was only limited by the number of vessels at hand. But, as we have said before, the rivers afford at once the best means lor provisioning an army, and a powerful auxiliary for all offensive operations. We shall always find, therefore, that whenever the Federals were supported by a river, their progress was certain and their conquests decisive; whilst the successes they obtained by following a simple line of railways were always precarious, new dangers springing up in their rear in proportion as they advanced. The revictualling of an army in sight of the enemy 216 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. by a fleet of transports, the bombardment of fortified places, constructed for the purpose of impeding navigation, and the naval battles fought upon the rivers will occujDy so considerable a space in the history of this war, that the combined operations by land and water may be regarded as imparting to it an entirely distinctive character among all modern wars. The appellation of fresh-water sailor, instead of being a term of contempt, should be in America a mark of honorable distinction. A few words at the conclusion of this chapter will suffice to convey an idea of the causes which imparted a strategic import- ance to certain points situated along the water-courses or line of railways. The latter being everywhere vulnerable, and not ad- mitting of defence by means of posts throughout their whole ex- tent, it was found necessary to fortify stations at the intersection of several lines, chosen because they were the most convenient places for depots, and because whoever was in possession of them could at once intercept all the lines which crossed at such points. The great American rivers, on the contrary, being never liable to obstruction, the most important points to occupy along their courses were those where it was most easy to erect batteries which could, by their fire, interrupt the navigation ; these were gen- erally the cliifs which rise in certain localities above the low flats yrhich border nearly all the rivers of the new continent, for, from their height, they protected the batteries which crowned their sum- mits, from the fire of gun-boats. It will be seen, in short, that the most important points were those at which one or more lines of railway crossed a navigable river or were arrested by its banks ; for it was at such points that those immense supplies which were afterwards to be conveyed by rail to the armies in the interior were to arrive by water. These two modes of communication, which we may be pardoned for having dwelt upon at such length, were therefore so combined and perfected as to render possible the concentration of such armies as America had never before seen. Consequently, these armies could not separate themselves from these points of com- munication for any length of time — a singular circumstance which was to exercise a powerful and abiding influence on the war. BIVERS AND RAILWAYS. 217 We have shown in advance how the combatants learnt by de- grees to take the greatest possible advantage of these ways of communication. It will be seen a little later how dearly that experience cost them. After this necessary digression, we resume our narrative at the moment when the conflict is about to commence in earnest. CHAPTER II. BULL BUN. ON the 4th of July, 1861, the anniversary of the founda- tion of the United States, an extra session of the new Con- gress which had been elected a few months before was convened by Mr. Lincoln, and assembled in the Capitol at Washington. Never had the representatives of the nation met under such grave circumstances. Four months had elapsed since Mr. Lincoln had taken the constitutional oath in that same edifice, and the sad forebodings which at that time alarmed all true patriots had been realized. The insurgents had fired the first shot; they had carried with them nearly all the slave States; their sentinels, stationed in the woods adjoining the Potomac, watched the capital ; war had commenced, and it imposed upon the Federal government the colossal task of reconquering one-third of the national territory. But, on the other hand, the States loyal to the Union had not been shaken either by the solicitations of the insurgents or by their constitutional theories ; they had displayed a determination to undergo every sacrifice in defence of the Republic, and had already raised 300,000 men for that object ; they had found a chief who loyally represented their sen- timents, and whose only care was to perform the duties incum- bent upon him with firmness. Mr. Lincoln had shown no weakness when treason surrounded him on every side. Having measured the magnitude of the danger, he had taken extraordinary steps to avert it; he had issued two calls for volunteers, and had authorized expenses for their equipment which the budget had not contemplated ; he had, in short, yielded to the necessity of suspending the ordinary guaran- tees of personal liberty in order to maintain his authority in cities like Baltimore and St. Louis, where it had been assailed by armed force. Owing to these measures, the insurrection had been limited and deprived of some of the most imj)ortant strategic positions. 218 LD OF BULL IVUN. e Scale of „i'ooo Scale; T^in=lMile. Bark t.j\rFetndge lilh PM'!- 6 Miles. BULL RUN. 219 The armies destined to participate in this struggle were being rapidly organized, and 50,000 soldiers already protected the capital. But the President made haste to have his acts legalized by the national representatives, and to ask for additional means to meet the exigencies of a war the proportions of wdiich could not then be realized. The insurgent States having sent neither Senators nor Repre- sentatives to Washington, only twenty-three States were repre- sented in the Senate, and twenty-two, with one Territory, in the other house. The Unionists, composed principally of Republicans and a small number of "War Democrats, were therefore absolutely in the ascendant in both of these assemblies, and assured the President of the energetic support and co-operation of Congress. The accord between these two parties was the best refutation of the sinister predictions gratuitously circulated by the enemies of the great American democracy, who announced its impending dissolution to the Old World. It was, above all, the best answer to the attitude assumed by most of the European govern- ments, who, before the commencement of hostilities, had with unseemly haste exercised their right to proclaim their neutrality. In reference to a civil war such as we are about to describe, this right was certainly unquestionable; the importance of that war rendered it incumbent upon them to prescribe and point out to their citizens the duties of neutrality. But the real wrong committed by them towards America was in openly tolerating a violation of that neutrality. In recognizing the belligerent rights of the insurgents even before the latter had become bel- ligerents, they had prejudged a question which did not lie within their province; they had exhibited feelings of hostility to- wards a great nation ; they had distrusted her at a moment when she was making patriotic efforts to preserve her unity ; and if they did not overstep the limits prescribed by the strict re- quirements of international law, they had nevertheless made a great political mistake. The French government Avas to find a powerful argument in favor of Csesarism in the misfortunes of a liberal democracy, and its wishes for the success of the insurgents were not a matter of secret to any one. Public opinion in England was very much 220 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. divided; the great majority of the higher classes and most of the public journals, actuated by old antipathies and dreading the triumph of democratic ideas, were openly hostile to the cause of the North; the radical party, on the contrary, and all the working classes, manifested the liveliest sympathy for it. The attitude of the radicals and the workingmen prevented the Eng- lish government from recognizing the independence of the new Confederacy, notwithstanding the solicitations of France, who, it is said, was even ready to propose to interfere conjointly with Great Britain in American affairs. But the latter power hastened to issue a proclamation of neutrality on the 13th of May, a few days before the arrival in London of the new representative of the United States, and as if to prevent any explanations which Mr. Adams might have wished to offer. The French government followed this example on the 11th of June. America, therefore, who had a right to rely upon the sympathies of abolitionist England in her struggle with slavery, and upon those of the land of Rochambeau and La Fayette, in her efforts to preserve the work of Wash- ington, only found in the governments of those two countries doubting spectators, who like the friends of Job were ready to take advantage of her misfortunes in order to teach her a lesson. Russia, on the contrary, being more shrewd, hastened to tender her those assurances of deep interest to which, in the hour of great trial, nations are as sensitive as individuals, and showed thereby a political foresight in striking reproof of the other Eu- ropean powers. The partisans of the insurgents, who under the name of Peace Democrats followed the lead of Mr. Breckenridge in the Senate, and of Mr. Vallandigham in the other house, formed only a small minority in Congress. Their efforts, therefore, to thwart the meas- ures of the government in support of the war were to prove fruitless. The Senators from the rebel States, who, instead of repairing to Washington, had entered the service of the insurrection, were de- prived of their seats ; the extraordinary measures adopted by Mr. Lincohi were sanctioned; the increase of the regular army and navy and the necessary expenses for constructing railways and military telegraphs were approved; a loan of two hundred and fifty million dollars was authorized, pending the aloption of BULL RUN. 221 more complete fiscal measures; and on the 13th of July, Congress began to discuss the most important of all the laws which the urgency of the situation required — that authorizing a large ad- ditional levy of volunteers. In the second volume we shall re- turn to the legislative labors of this session and of those which followed. Setting aside for the present the discussion of the military law, which was to occupy Congress for some time, although the issue had never been doubtful, we shall now follow the mil- itary operations to which, since the early part of July, McClellan had given a fresh impulse in West Virginia. This region is divided into two sections — on one side, an un- dulating plateau, fertile and well watered, extending between the Ohio and the mountains ; on the other, the region of the Alle- ghanies, composed of long parallel ridges, enclosing deep valleys — a wild country, without roads and easy to defend. As we have already stated, the troops sent by the State of Ohio had, after a few skirmishes, occupied all the northern part of the plateau, and covered the line of railways wliich crosses it. But the Confederates were preparing to dispute once more the pos- session of this region of country. They had massed tronjrs along the lower course of the Great Kanawha, a river which, running from east to west, divides the plain into two ])arts, and General Garnett, while waiting for reinforcements from Richmond, had posted him- self along the westernmost ridge of the mountain region ; he thus faced to the west, occupying the i:)asses whence he could descend upon his adversary, and resting his rear upon a country easily defended. This ridge, which extends from south to north, separates the large and rich valley of the upper Monongahela from two of the principal tributaries of its loM-er course — the Tygart Valley River and the Cheat River — and bears successively the names of Rich Mountain at the south and Laurel Hill at the north: the general direction of all these waters is from south to north. The great turnpike, which runs through the centre of Virginia and descends afterward into the valley of the Monongahela, passes behind the Rich Mountain and Laurel Hill ridge, first through the two villages of Beverly, and of Leedsville more to northward. This is the turnpike which Garnett under- took to cover, and he occupied the only two passes where roads 222 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. starting from these two villages cross Rich Mountain an.l Laurel Hill to descend into the plain. These passes were defended by abatis and earthworks furnished with artillery. Garnett had sta- tioned Colonel Pegram with 2000 men in the first of these passes, and had himself taken a position in the second with the rest of his forces, amounting to about 3000 men. This position, naturally very strong, had the disadvantage of lying parallel with the road it had to cover ; to pierce it at a single point, therefore, sufficed to cut off the retreat of the troops who occupied it. McClellan determined to do this as soon as he had a sufficient force to take the offensive. Toward the end of June he found himself at the head of five brigades, composed, it is true, of entirely new troops, whose organization left much to be desired. It was, however, neces- sary to act; Cox's brigade was sent to the lower Kanawha to watch the enemy massed on that side, with whom it only had some trifling engagements; Hill's brigade remained to guard the railways and the posts which connected West Virginia with the troops stationed along the upper Potomac; finally, McClellan divided the forces with which he intended to attack Garnett and Pegram into two columns. The first, composed of Morris's brigade, » occupied Philippi, on the road leading to Leedsville by way of Laurel Hill : it was determined that this column should make a demonstration against that position so as to draw Garnett's attention, while the other was to cut off his retreat by taking possession of Rich Mountain, where he had committed the error of not concentrating the bulk of his forces. McClellan intended to conduct this operation in person with the brigades of Schleich and Rosecrans ; these brigades were posted at Buckannon, a vil- lage where the road running from Beverly through the defile of Rich Mountain crosses that branch of the Monongahela which lower down waters the towm of Philippi. This small army, num- bering about 10,000 men, took up its line of march on the 6th of July, and on the 10th, after some insignificant encounters, McClellan, whose troops were ranged along the slo])es of Rich Mountain, found himself before the works occupied by Pegram. Not wishing to attack them in front with inexperienced soldiers, he detached Rosecrans upon his right, on the morning of the 11th, to turn their flank and take them in rear. BULL RUN. 223 A path, only accessible to foot-soldiers, wound up the sidea of Rich Mountain, south of the defile where the road from Beverly to Buckannon passes. Rosecrans, leaving his artillery behind him, was to follow this path — which the enemy would not probably dream of defending — with 2000 men, and, once on the summit of the ridge, was to proceed in a northerly direction to the defile in order to descend by the road and attack Pegram's positions in rear. As soon as the sound of musketry was heard, the troops stationed at the foot of those positions were to attack them in front, thus hemming in the enemy on all sides. After a very fatiguing march the young soldiers of Rosecrans reached the summit of the mountain without striking a blow ; but before they had time to gain the defile, they were atta,cked by the enemy, to whom an intercepted dispatch had revealed their movement, and who had sent five or six hundred men to stop them. They fought this detachment, but, being exhausted by fatigue, they re- mained on the spot where the conflict had taken place, and allowed the whole day to pass without availing themselves of the advan- tage thus gained in order to complete the prescribed movement. McClellan, whom Rosecrans had neglected to inform of this delay, waited the whole day in vain for the signal agreed upon, and, on the following morning, all that he found before him were the deserted intrenchments. On finding himself taken in flank, Pegram had sought the means of escape from the danger that threatened him in a hasty retreat; but most of his soldiers disbanded, and he wandered about during two days with the remnants of his brigade, trying in vain to effect a junction with Garnett. Finally, McClellan, having preceded him to Beverly, on the Leedsville road, occupied the former village on the 12th of July, and on the following day Pegram and six hundred of his companions were compelled to lay down their arms. While his lieutenant was beino; dislodo-ed from Rich Mountain, Garnett allowed himself to be amused by Morris at Laurel Hill, little dreaming of the danger that threatened him. Fortunately for him, he was informed by Pegram of the evacuation of Rich Mountain on the very night it took place. Without losing a minute, he abandoned Laurel Hill in his turn before daybreak, and proceeded in great haste towards Beverly, where he hoped to 224 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. join Pegram and find the southern route still open to him. But McClellan had preceded him there by a few hours with a force which the Confederate general did not deem it prudent to attack. The position of the latter was critical in the extreme. He had become entangled in a narrow pass between the two impassable ridges of Rich Mountain and Cheat Mountain ; he found its southern extremity, through which he might have reached the interior of Virginia, in possession of the enemy, while the trocps who watched him at Laurel Hill had only to follow in his tracks in order to surround him completely. He could find no means of escape except to the northward, by descending the valley of Cheat River through difi&cult roads, and striking the frontier of Maryland in order to force his way into the upper gorges of the Alleghanies. Retracing his steps as soon as he was apprised of the presence of McClellan at Beverly, he had the good fortune to pass once more through Leedsville before Morris, who had not watched him sufficiently, had arrived there from Laurel Hill. But his troops, exhausted by the rapid countermarch, soon fell into disorder. Morris, who had reached Leedsville shortly after him, harassed his retreat, and finally overtook him at Carricks- ford, twelve kilometres below St. George, just as he was crossing Cheat River. The Confederates succeeded in placing the river between them and their assailants, but left in their hands all their artillery, their baggage, and about fifty prisoners. Garnett himself M^as killed while bravely endeavoring to repair the disaster. This old regular officer was the first general who lost his life in the war. After his death his soldiers dispersed, thus baf- fling the efforts of the Federals, who were too much fatigued to con- tinue long in pursuit; and afc the end of an eight days' campaign, McClellan was able to announce to his government that the Fed- eral authority was re-established in West Virginia, and that the Con- federates had even abandoned the borders of the Great Kanawha. This campaign had moreover delivered into his hands more than one thousand prisoners and all the war-material of the enemy, and had only cost him a few hundred men. His plan had been well conceived, vigorously executed, and a complete success had crowned this first essay in strategy. He had the good fortune to have a rather meagre army to manage, although supe- BULL RUN. i 225 rior in number to that of the enemy : its sraallness enabled it to subsist in a very poor country, and he had the rare merit of leading; inexperienced troops successfully through marches and countermarches. We have seen, however, that these troops, in consequence of their having halted too soon for rest, came near losing him all the fruits of the campaign. The possession of West Virginia could have no important bear- ing upon the war, because that country, having neither water- courses nor railways, was inaccessible to large armies ; but Mc- Clellan's successes had a great moral effect ; they stimulated the ardor of the North, while contributing at the same time to create certain illusions in regard to the speedy termination of the war. During this short campaign, Patterson, whom we have left in Maryland in front of the Shenandoah Valley, had resumed the offensive, in pursuance of instructions from Scott, and had thus detained the forces which the Confederates might have detached from Johnston's corps stationed at Winchester, to send them to Garnett's assistance. The best portion of his small army, as we have already stated, having been ordered to Washington towards the middle of June, he was compelled to evacuate Harj)er's Ferry and recross the Poto- mac. But he was speedily rejoined by several newly-formed regiments, with the promise of additional reinforcements, which would increase his army to a total of 20,000 men. Al- though these troops were badly organized, poorly disciplined, and entirely inexperienced, their numerical superiority over the forces opposed to them enabled Patterson to retake possession of the important line of railway he had abandoned a short time before, together with the positions of Harper's Ferry and Mar- tinsburg. On the 2d of July he forded the Potomac at Wil- liamsport, and, eight kilometres beyond that point, on the borders of the stream of Falling Waters, his advance-guard met a brigade of the enemy's infantry commanded by General Jackson, who was subsequently to acquire such great celebrity, and the cavalry of Stuart, a friend of the latter, doomed to perish like him, while leaving a reputation almost equal to his own. The first feats of arms of these two illustrious officers in behalf of the cause they had just espoused were not fortunate. Vol. L— 15 226 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. Cut up by the Federal artillery, which was better served than their own, they were obliged, on the arrival of Abercrombie's brigade, to beat a speedy retreat, only stopping at Bunker's Hill, between Marti nsburg and Winchester, where they found rein- forcements forwarded in haste by Johnston. Patterson, on his part, was satisfied with this advantage, and did not advance be- yond Martinsburg. His forces, unprovided with means of trans- portation, were in no condition to continue the campaign. Some of his artillerymen openly declared it was their intention to leave him at the end of their term of service, which was about to ex- pire in a few days. At length, on the 14th, having been apprised by Scott of McDowell's intended movement, he advanced, at the head of about 14,000 men, on Bunker's Hill and Charlestown. Not venturing to attack Johnston, who was intrenched at Win- chester with forces outnumbering his own, he hoped at least to oc- cupy the latter's attention, and so prevent him from joining Beau- regard. In this he succeeded for a few days, until the 18th, which was the date fixed by Scott for the attack on Manassas ; and, as the sequel will show, if that attack had not been postponed, the Southern generals would not have been able to effect their junction. The combats we have hitherto described w^ere evidently the mere preludes to those more serious conflicts which public opinion at the North w^as impatient to see commence. It had been ex- asperated at first by the check experienced at Big Bethel; then McClellan's campaign supervened to inspire it with overweening confidence ; it believed that a single victory would suffice to bring back the repentant South into the bosom of the Union. This de- lusion regarding the possible duration of the war was shared, moreover, by the Confederates themselves, and the volunteers who were rushing from every quarter of the South to rally around the standard of Beauregard entertained no doubt but that one great eiFort would suffice to open to them the gates of Washington and secure the recognition of their new republic; they little foresaw the harassing campaigns that w^ere in store for them, or the de- feats that brought ruin to their cause, and which very few among them lived to witness. The small armies of Butler, McClellan, and Patterson having already fought the enemy, the North could not understand the BULL RUX. 227 inactivity of the much larger forces assembled at Washington un- der the command of McDowell. No one suspected then that, at no distant day, it would require 200,000 combatants to ensure the safety of the capital ; and yet, in the estimation of some people, 35,000 men seemed already to constitute a considerable army. Confidence, which, when pushed to excess, does not allow the dif- ficulties of an undertaking to be duly weighed, had contributed to the rapid formation of this army, and stimulated the ardor with which the North called her military forces into existence. This extreme confidence was certainly the cause of more than one reverse and many illusions to the American nation, and if it had not rested upon manly virtues, it would have been both ridiculous and fatal; but, sustained as it was in America by indomitable will and perseverance, it commands respect, for it creates great nations. The troops gathered in haste around Washington were com- posed of most heterogeneous elements ; they were volunteers some 3f whom had already been for two mouths and a half under drill with only fifteen days longer to serve; others who were enlisted for three years, but utterly ignorant of their trade; there were one battalion and three batteries belonging to the regular army, a certain number of batteries attached to volunteer regiments, with only a few squadrons of cavalry, mostly regulars. The five small divisions into which these troops had been apportioned were scarcely formed, notwithstanding the efforts of Generals Tyler and Runyon and Colonels Hunter, Heintzelman, and Miles, who had been placed in command of them; the administrative de- partments were being slowly organized, the chiefs having had no time to become acquainted with their subordinates; the stafP, which was the more necessary because no reliance could be placed upon the personal experience of regimental officers, was scarcely *n existence. The regular officers, who filled the most important positions, could not attend to all the details of the ser- vice nor correct the ignorance of an entire army. They fully understood, therefore, how little that army was able to undertake an offensive campaign, and no one felt this more keenly than Mc- Dowell himself, upon whom the responsibility of such an under- taking was about to rest. But public opinion was an inexorable 228 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. master who commanded him to march on to Richmond, and he had to obey. Neither the good sense nor the experience of General Sc«)tt had any power to resist the impetuous current. The government of the White House, beset by impatient members of Congress, feared lest further temporizing should chill the military ardor of the North, and preferred the chances of a disaster to the political difficulties that inaction created. When McDowell alleged the greenness of his troops, as they say in English, the reply was, "You are green, undoubtedly, but the enemies are green also, — you are all green."* And when he assembled his troops for the purpose of manoeuvring them, cries rose on every side against the general whom they accused of seeking to pave the way for a dicta- torship. Unable to persuade his superiors that with troops in- capable of regular marches, and without sufficient means of trans- portation, all the advantage would be on the side of the party that could wait for his adversary in a defensive position, he made up his mind to execute the orders given him with as much zeal as if he had counted on success. No one was better able to render that success possible than himself, in spite of so many disadvantages. Partly educated in France and perfectly acquainted with our literature, he had thoroughly studied the military profession, and, since the Mexican campaign, had shown excellent administrative talents on General Scott's staff. Possessed of indefatigable energy, his creative mind made up, to a certain extent, for the inefficiency of the instruments he had to handle, and the plan he had formed for attacking the Confederates at Bull Run shows, despite the results of that disas- trous campaign, the correctness of his military eoup-d'oeil. A few words are necessary in this place to describe the ground upon which the first pitched battle of the war was fought. The parallel ridges of the Alleghanies, which extend from south-west to north-east, crossing the whole of Virginia and Mary- land, are divided by two deep gaps, through which the waters from the mountains force a j)assage, forming two rivers, both of which empty into the large bay of the Chesapeake; north- ward, the Potomac waters the gorges of Harper's Ferry, * Beport on the Conduct of the War, vol. ii. p. 38. BULL RUN. 229 in Tvhich we shall see more than one combat take place, and thence runs down to Washington ; the James River, winding round the high mountains called Beaver Peaks, crosses Appomat- tox county, where Lee will capitulate, and after passing Richmond, falls into the Chesapeake, near Fortress Monroe. The Valley of Virginia, already frequently mentioned, an open and well-culti- vated country, between two parallel chains of the Alleghanies, extends from the vicinity of the James to the banks of the Potomac. The eastern barrier of this valley, known by the name of the Blue Ridge, is intersected by deep defiles called gaps, situ- ated at about equal distances from each other, and all traversed by good roads. The country extending eastward, between the Blue Ridge and the Chesapeake, is undulating, covered with old forests or young pine trees, the only produce that a soil, exhausted by the cul- tivation of the tobacco-plant, is now able to bring forth ; the popu- lation is thinly scattered ; the soil, clayey and impermeable, is easily converted by the action of vehicles into mud, both soft and sticky, which was to be one of the most formidable enemies to the armies having to campaign in Virginia ; a multitude of water- courses wind among the wooded ravines, between hillocks, the highest of which have been for the most part cleared; all these water-courses finally form two rivers, the Rappahannock and the York, which run in a parallel course towards the Potomac, and, like the latter, fall into Chesapeake Bay. The nature of the ground, the absence of turnpikes, the small quantity of arable lands, and the very direction of the waters — everything, in short, renders an offensive campaign especially difficult in that country. There are very few railways. Two lines run from the shores of the Potomac to Richmond. One, starting from Aquia Creek, halfway between Washington and the mouth of the river, runs direct to the capital of Virginia, after crossing the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg. The other leaves Alexandria, opposite Washington, and running south- westerly reaches Gordonsville, where it forks. One branch, fol- lowing the same direction along the foot of the Blue Ridge, connects with the great Tennessee line at Lynchburg by way of Charlottesville ; the other branch, bending to the east and run- 230 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. ning parallel with the tributaries of York River, strike? the first line again near one of these tributaries, and without merging into it, never leaves it until Richmond is reached. Two branches of the Alexandria and Lynchburg line switch off to enter the Vallev of Virginia; one at Charlottesville, which debouches at kStauaton, near the sources of the Shenandoah, and breaks off a little beyond that point ; the other, much more to the north, at about forty-five kilometres from Alexandria, which ascends the valley after crossing the Blue Ridge at Manassas Gap. Hence the name of Manassas Junction, which is applied to the little plateau where this junction occurs near the stream of Bull Run. This plateau of Manassas had been selected as the concsntra- ting point of the Confederate troops that were to cover Virginia and menace Washington. The importance of railways and their various points of intersection was thus being made manifest even before the armies had taken the field. At Manassas Junction, Beauregard had two lines of railway behind him, which brought him supplies and secured him tAvo means of retreat in case of necessity, while the Manassas Gap Junction enabled him to estab- lish rapid communications with Johnston and the troops stationed at Winchester in front of Patterson's army. The stream called Bull Run covered the positions occupied by Beauregard on the plateau of Manassas. This plateau slopes gently down to the north-west, in a direction contrary to the course of Bull Run, so that this little river becomes gradually more deeply embanked in the ravine which borders the plateau to the north-west. In this lower part of its course we find, first, the rail- way bridge at Gordon Mills, and above only two fords — Mitchell's Ford and Blackburn's Ford, both difficult of access. Higher up, the declivities are less abrupt, the fords become more numerous, and the main road from Alexandria to Warrenton crosses the river over a stone bridge. Beyond this bridge, ascending the course of Bull Run, the country is flat, intersected with woods and small clearings ; and in the vicinity of Sudeley Springs, this stream, fordable at every point, is no longer a serious obstacle. The stone bridge is situated at a distance of eight kilometres from Manassas Junction; the space between those two points is rather open, and the waters that flow through it are not very BULL RUN. 231 deep. The course of Bull Eun, on the contrary, lies between thickly wooded banks, while the slopes which terminate the Manassas plateau on that side are more and more precipitous. This plateau is bounded on the north-west by a small stream, Young's Branch; beyond it stretch the flat lands of Sudeley Springs, and along this latter stream the main road follows a line as straight as a Roman causeway. On the opposite side of Bull Run, and almost to the north of Manassas, the ground rises in the shape of a circular mound, upon which stands the little village of Centreville, surrounded by cultivated fields and trav- ersed by the high road ; this j)lace is seven kilometres from the stone bridge. Such was the ground on which the first army organized by the Confederates had been posted; its camps occupied the Manassas plateau, where it had open spaces for drilling, and where it was covered by line of Bull Run. A few earthworks sur- rounded the railway station, and a portion of its artilleiy was in position at the various fords of Bull Run, forming batteries skilfully masked by the foliage. A detachment of considerable size was stationed at Centreville, another farther on at Fairfax Court-house, and Beauregard's cavalry pushed their pickets to within sight of Washington. It was in these positions that McDowell was to seek his adversary. The railway which starts from Alexandria, and on the line of which lies Manassas Junc- tion, offered him little resource, for it passes through wooded ravines, far from any road, and is intersected by numerous wooden bridges that a retreating enemy could easily destroy. In order to follow this direction, therefore, there only remained to him, besides cross-roads, the turnpike from Alexandria to "VYarrenton, which, running from east to west, passes through the villages of Annandale and Fairfax Court-house before it reaches Centreville. It became necessary, therefore, to move the greatest portion of the army with its baggage on a single route, leaving the remainder to follow by diverging lines, so as to reduce the amount of incumbrances — a double difficulty added to those we have already mentioned. On the 9th of July, McDowell was ordered to make prepara- tions for assuming the oiFensive in eight days, and at the same 232 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. time G(3neial Scott gave him formal assurance that Patterson shouki keep Johnston so occupied in the Shenandoah Valley that he would find it impossible to go to the assistance of Beauregard ; that if he attempted to do so, the forces opposed to him would follow so close that they would reach the banks of Bull Run at the same time. On the 16th, the day fixed for the movement, there was nothing ready to transport the necessary provisions for the army. McDowell was nevertheless obliged to begin his march. He had four divis- ions with him — the fifth, Runyon's, remaining behind to protect the positions that the army was about to leave. Tyler's division, four brigades strong, was ordered to incline to the right by the Leesburg road, and encamp at Vienna, in order to fall back, by a cross-movement, on Fairfax Court-house the following day; Miles's division was to follow the turnpike as far as Annandale, then to turn to the left into an old road called Braddock Road, because it had been constructed, as was said, by the British general Braddock. Hunter followed Miles, Annandale being designated as his first halting-place. Heintzelman, with the strongest divis- ion, was directed to proceed by certain cross-roads which, passing south of the line of railway, led to the bank of a stream called Pohick Creek. The soldiers carried three days' rations in their haversacks. The supply-trains were to leave Alexandria on the following day, and join the army on the turnpike between Fair- fax and Centreville. McDowell's plan was to surprise Bonham's brigade of the enemy stationed at Fairfax by causing it to be attacked on the 17th at the same time by Miles in front and by Hunter in flank. He intended afterwards to make a demonstration by way of Cen- treville, and lead the bulk of his forces with Heintzelmp-n along the course of Bull Run, below Union Mills, to pass the river at a dash and turn Beauregard's position by the right. The troops started at the appointed time, but the heat was ex- treme; covered with dust, little accustomed to march and to carry knapsack and musket, too poorly disciplined to remain in the ranks when they felt fatigued or came upon some fresh spring of water, the soldiers soon spread themselves upon the roads in long columns, in which the regiments were confounded, BULL RUN. 233 and Avhicli were followed without order by rapidly increasing groups of stragglers. Most of them only reached the encamp- ments which had been designated for them in the middle of the night; others stopped on the road, and only the heads of columns were able to resume their march on the morning of the 17th. The remainder, already prostrated by fatigue, slowly followed in their tracks. Bonham's briijade was thus allowed time to fall . . . . I back quietly by way of Centreville, and to take position at Mit- chell's Ford, on the line of Bull Run, where Beauregard was post~ ing his troops. On the evening of the 17th three divisions of the Federal army were in the neighborhood of Fairfax, while Heintzel- man, with the fourth, occupied Sangster's Station on the railway. They had marched about twenty-four kilometres in two days; but this march, too severe for a beginning, had proved very ex- haasting; the soldiers, improvident in their inexperience, had wasted the rations they carried ; the supply-trains had not come up, and most of them lay down that night under the leafy cover of the forest without even a biscuit to eat. The provisions, which only left Alexandria when they should already have arrived at Fairfax, required time to reach the army. Having ordered Tyler simply to occupy Centreville, which was only eight kilometers distant from the point where he had passed the night, McDowell proceeded to his left to pre- pare for the movement he had planned by way of Union Mills. On that side, while his troops were rallying, resting, and still waiting for supplies, Heintzelman was reconnoitring the course of Bull Run and trying to find a passage suitable for the attack. But none was found ; the approaches to the river were almost everywhere impracticable ; and, giving up his project, McDowell determined to try the enemy in another direction. But the impatience and unreflecting confidence of a few chiefs, which w^ere as much the natural result of inexperience as the slowness and disorder of the march on the part of the soldiers, were to compromise the success of the campaign from the outset. Having found Centreville evacuated, Tyler thought, no doubt, that the whole expedition would amount to nothing more than a mere military promenade, and was anxious to secure for him- self, in the eyes of the public, the cheap merit of having been 234 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. the first to occupy the positions of Manassas. Having arrived at Centreville on the morning of the 18th, he proceeded with Richardson's brigade, a part of Sherman's, and a battery of artillery towards Blackburn's Ford, in the hope of being able to cross Bull Run with these forces. Beauregard was waiting for him there with a large portion of his army, and everything was ready for a vigorous defence of the line of that river against the Federal attacks. Seven brigades were in position : Ewell at Union Mills, Jones a little higher up, Longstreet at Blackburn's Ford, Bonham at Mitchell's Ford, Cocke between that point and the stone bridge, and Evans near this bridge, while Early remained in reserve in rear of Jones and Longstreet; some few troops with artillery were posted on the left bank of Bull Run in advance of Mitchell's Ford. It was with the latter troops that the engagement commenced ; but as they soon recrossed the river, Tyler merely tried to engage Bonham's attention by the fire of a few guns, and leaving Sherman in reserve, he proceeded with Richardson's four regi- ments in the direction of Blackburn's Ford. Longstreet held the skirts of a wood extending along the right bank of Bull Run; his sharpshooters were posted at the water's edge, his artillery was a little in the rear, and, as we have said, masked by trees. The left bank was higher than the other, and formed a crest terminating in a precipitous slope. The Confeder- ates allowed their opponents to advance without molestation as far as the ridge, and when the 12th New York appeared among the thinly scattered trees which crowned the summit, it was received by a murderous fire of musketry and artillery. Staggered by this unexpected resistance, it was almost immediately thrown into con- fusion by a few sharpshooters of the enemy who crossed the water and took them in flank ; the soldiers, becoming bewildered and thinking they were pursued, ran for more than half a league, firing in the air or upon each other. Richardson soon came into line with his other three regiments, but, at the same time. Early came to the assistance of Longstreet, thus giving the Confeder- ates a great numerical superiority, and the combat was renewed with spirit. The Confederate batteries did great damage to the Fed- erals, and the latter, after having manned the ridge, did not ven- BULL RU^. 235 lure near the edge of the river. Tyler, having no desire to continue the engagement, A^hich only exposed his troops unnecessarily, and being convinced of the error he had committed, brought them back in good order to Sherman's line, and the two brigades regained the neighborhood of Centreville in the evening. The losses on each side only amounted to one hundred or one hundred and twenty men ; but this encounter, which would have been a trifling affair in the midst of a regular campaign, was an unfortunate beginning for new troops; the sudden unmasking of batteries by the enemy, the unexpected firing of musketry in the woods, had produced a powerful impression upon them ; the demoralization of the 12th New York was unfortunately a far more contagious example than the good behavior of the three other regiments. The mwale of the army was deeply affected by it. This first encounter naturally stimulated the ardor of the Confederates, and a timely reinforcement increased their confidence still further. As early as the 17th, recognizing the importance of the movement that was being prepared against him, Beauregard had applied to Johnston for assistance. The latter started on the following day, and taking advantage of the neglect of Patterson, who had remained inactive at Martinsburg, he left Winchester quietly, and led his 8000 men by rajiid marches to near Manassas Gap. As fast as they arrived there, he placed them on the cars, which landed them almost in the centre of the battle-field, where we shall soon see them make their appearance before an enemy -who did not even suspect their departure. Beauregard had 21,833 men and 29 pieces of artillery : thus, including a few troops which had been forwarded in liaste from Richnn)nd, and which were expected to arrive during the night, the army of the Shenandoah augmented his numbers to 30,000 men. McDowell, on tiie contrary, who liad taken tiie field with 30,000 soldiers, had already seen their number reduced by the departure of one regiment and a battery of artillery, whose term of service had expired, and who shamefully left him at Centreville. On the 19tli he found himself in the vicinity of this village with 28,000 men at the utmost; and although only ten leagues from Wash- ington, he was in a strange country without maps or reliable guides to shape his course; before he could form his new plan of attack, he was obliged to spend two entire days in having the 236 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. ground studied by his topographical officers. These two days, which were moreover required to complete the organization of his array, gave the enemy time to concentrate his forces. Finally, the arrival, on the 20th, of the supply-trains so long expected allowed the issue of three days' rations, and the Federal army got in readiness for the movement it was about to undertake. The right and centre of the Confederates being covered by for- midable obstacles, McDowell determined to turn their extreme left, where Bull Run, fordable and badly guarded, no longer afforded them sufficient protection ; and on the evening of the 20th he ordered an attack to be made the next mornino;. Miles remained at Centreville in order to draw the attention of the enemy towards Blackburn's Ford ; Tyler was ordered to advance along the high road as far as the stone bridge, and to force a passage as soon as the left of its defenders had been turned. The flank attack was entrusted to Hunter's and Heintzelman's divisions, forming a corps of 12,000 men, and the Sudeley fords, situated above the stone bridge in the centre of a M^ood extending along both sides of Bull Run, were designated as the points at which to cross. In the mean time, Johnston's troops, numbering 8334 men, re-divided into five small brigades, had made a forced march; the infantry, passing the Blue Ridge at Ashby's Gap, had taken the cars a little to the east of Manassas Gap; the artillery and cavalry had continued their march along the main road. A por- tion of these forces, about 3000 men, had reached the Manassas plateau on the evening of the 20th ; the remainder were to arrive on the morning of the 21st. Johnston himself had gone in ad- vance of his array corps to consult with Beauregard in regard to their moveraents ; and although he was Beauregard's senior in rank, he left him at full liberty to make the necessary preparations for the battle. The forces assembled at Manassas, before his arrival, were designated by the name of Army of the Potomac, and consisted of eight brigades of infantry, which were not formed into divisions. Six of them had occupied the line of Bull Run, since the 17th, in the positions we have indicated; the other two, those of Holmes and Ewell, were held in reserve. It was agreed that Johnston's troops should come to reinforce the former in these positions, and that all the brigades of the two armies should be BULL RUN. 237 united two by two into temporary divisions. Johnston's army, as we have stated, gave the Confederate generals a numerical force at least equal to that of their opponents, but they might fear lest Patterson should in turn come to reinforce the latter. The inaction of McDowell for the last two days seemed to justify this apprehension. The impression was that, having been informed of Johnston's movements, he had halted to wait in his turn for reinforcements from the upper Potomac, which would have restored to him the advantage in point of numbers. It was important to forestall him, and Beauregard determined to assume the offensive and proceed to attack him at Centreville. While McDowell was issuing orders for putting his troops in motion on the 21st, the Confederate army was preparing to cross Bull Pun on the same day, and by an inverse movement to attack the extreme left of the Federals. This plan was perhaps a rash one, for if the latter had remained stationary, confining their operations to a defence of the positions they occupied, we may believe that the battle would have resulted to their advantage. McDowell, it is true, relying upon the assurances he had re- ceived, knew nothing of the arrival on the ground of Johnston's troops, and instead of remaining on the defensive he was hasten- ing to operate on the enemy's left in order to take possession of the line of railway by which those troops might be brought over. But the arrangements made by Beauregard for an offensive move- ment gave the Federals, if they became the assailants, great chances of success. He had in fact w^cakened his left in order to concentrate his forces upon the opposite wing, and the tardy arrival of Johnston's last brigades, which had been delayed by the bad condition of the railroad, rendering it impossible for him to begin that movement at an early hour, the left of the Confederates, if INIcDowell's orders had been punctually executed, would have been crushed and their entire position turned, before the last soldiers from Winchester would have had time to spring out of the cars that brought them over, or the troops posted on the right could have been able to go to the assistance of the other extremity of the line. It will be seen how the chances of war, which have so much to do in deciding the fate of battles, favored Beauregard and prevented the disaster which the disposition of 238 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. his army seemed to have drawn upon it. He had posted the first division, consisting of Holmes's and Ewell's brigades, on his extreme right at Union Mills; the second, comprising those of Jones and Early, a little above, at the difficult ford called McLean's Ford; the brigades of Jackson, Bartow, and Elzey, brought over by Johnston, were to join those of Longstreet, Bonham, and Cocke, to form the third, fourth, and fifth divis- ions ; Evans's brigade remained alone at the stone bridge, which it had occupied for some days. The brigades of Bee and Wilcox, with Stuart's cavalry, the greatest portion of which was only expected to arrive during the 21st, were to be held in reserve. The fourth and fifth divisions, commanded by Johnston himself, were to cross Bull Run between Mitchell's Ford and the stone bridge, and masking their movements behind a dense forest, were to attack Centreville, while the right, by a flank movement, would come to their assistance or strike the enemy in the rear on the Fairfax road. It will be seen that Beauregard, being exclusively preoccupied with his plans for offensive operations, had made no arrangements for covering his left flank, which was, however, the most exposed. The Federals had commenced their march before daylight; but Tyler, although he had an excellent road to follow, did not reach the stone bridge until half-past six, where he found Evans in position with 12,000 or 13,000 men. The exchange of a few cannon-shots across the river announced the commencement of the battle. This, however, was only a demonstration, its object being to conceal the flank movement of the main column formed by Hunter's and Heintzelman's forces, and intended for the principal attack. After having marched for some time in the rear of Tyler, these two generals struck into the narrow roads leading from Cen- treville to Sudeley Ford, which being much longer than they had anticipated, it was half-past nine when Hunter's division reached the ford it was to cross. Heintzelman had been ordered to cross the river a little below, at a point guarded by a detachment of the enemy, as soon as Hunter, taking the latter in flank, should have dislodged it. Precious time had already been wasted, and McDowell must have bitterly regretted having yielded to the advice of some BULL RUN. 239 of his generals, who had dissuaded liim from beginning his movement on the evening of the previous day, as he had origi- nally intended. In the mean while, Beauregard had no suspicion of what was passing on his extreme left. Tyler's cannon had informed him that the Federals were in motion, but, deceived by this demon- stration, he was led to suppose that the attack would be directed upon the stone bridge and the fords below, and he persisted in his design of menacing Centreville, thinking that he should thus check the Federals and throw their columns into disorder. He there- fore sent only Cocke's brigade to the assistance of Evans, recom- mending the latter to confine himself to the task of stubbornly defending the passage of the stone bridge, upon which he believed the main efforts of the Federals would be directed. McDowell had more thoroughly fathomed the intentions of his opponent. Evans's artillery had not felt strong enough to reply to Tyler's heavy cannon, and his infantr}'', concealed in the woods, only exchanged a few musket-shots with the brigades of Sherman and Schenck posted in front of it both above and below the bridge. From the feebleness of this resistance the Federal general became at once convinced that Beauregard had weakened his left wing, and understood that he was preparing to make an attack upon Centreville with his right. He immediately took the necessary steps to repel it; Keyes' brigade was detached from Tyler's division and ordered to join Richardson, who was already posted opposite Blackburn's Ford, and to assist Miles in covering the fords of Bull Run below the stone bridge. After remaining two or three hours in front of Tyler, Evans at last perceived that the stone bridge was not the real point of attack, and the movement of troops he had observed on the other side of the river, toward nine o'clock, made him suspect the dan- ger that threatened his flank. A good road leads from Sudeley Ford to the Warrenton turnpike ; the point at which the former connects with the latter is 2500 metres from the ford, and 2000 from the stone bridge. By reason of a deflection in Bull Run to the southward, in the direction of Sudeley, it hardly required more time for the Federals to reach the turnpike, in the rear of Evans, than it took the latter to reach it and to dispute its pos- 240 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. session. He had therefore not a moment to lose ; he adopted his course with decision and acted promptly. Leaving onlj^ four companies near the stone bridge, he fell back, with about one thousand remaining men, as far as the intersection of the turn- pike and the Sudeley road, making a change of front to the left, in order to form his line a little in advance of the road, along the slopes of a hill which is rounded at the north by the stream called Young's Branch, and rested his left upon the Sudeley- Springs road. By this movement he succeeded in forestalling the Federals. Hunter's first brigade, commanded by Burnside, being fatigued by seven hours' march, had rested near the fresh waters of Bull Run. McDowell, impatient at the delay of this brigade, proceeded in advance of it, and debouched into the fields which extend beyond Sudeley Springs, where his skirmishers ex- changed the first shots with Evans's sharp-shooters. The latter had found a position on the hill he occupied which compensated for his numerical inferiority. It is nearly ten o'clock Avhen the heads of Burnside's column appear on the opposite slopes, and they are immediately saluted by a well-sustained fire. In their inexperience they return the fire without taking time to form ; being young troops, who had never manoeuvred, they do not know how to deploy rapidly in face of the enemy, so that their first attack, which is merely a brisk discharge of musketry, is not successful in dislodging Evans. The combat lasts nearly three-quarters of an hour, during which time the other brigade of Hunter's division, under An- drew Porter, hastens to get into line. At last the Confederates, who, with only 1000 men, are defending the extreme left of their army, which a well-concerted movement might have crushed, are also about to receive reinforcements. Beauregard, still believing that the attack of the Federals was directed against the stone bcidge, had sent the two small brigades of Bee and Bartow, numbering 2800 men, with a field-battery, to join the defenders of that point, while Jackson proceeded to take position upon Bull Run, be- tween Cocke and Bonham. But, warned by the distant rattling of musketry and subsequently by Evans himself, Bee and Bartow change their direction, and arrive in time to assist the latter just when his soldiers are beginning to fall back before Burnside, BULL RUN. 241 who was supported on his left by a battalion of regular troops from Porter's brigade, and on his right by Griffin's regular bat- tery of artillery. Bee, forming his line with admirable judgment, soon changes the aspect of the combat and checks the Federals, who are already attacking Evans's positions. The battle was at its height; there were many killed and wounded on both sides. Hunter was among the first to be struck down ; and the loss of a considerable number of superior officers, who were obliged to expose themselves in order to urge their troops forward, caused trouble and hesitation in the Federal movements. If at this moment Tyler had shown some of that daring he had so uselessly displayed at Blackburn's Ford, he might have seized a fine opportunity for striking a blow at the enemy which might have proved decisive. In fact, some spectators who had climbed the trees signalled to him the movements of Hunter and the combat that was going on at Young's Branch. He had four or five thousand men, and there were only two hundred riflemen of the enemy before him to dispute the passage of Bull Run. The military instinct of one of his lieutenants, who was destined for a glorious career, had discovered a ford. Colonel Sherman had seen in the morning a Confederate horseman plunge into the woods which skirt the left bank of Bull Run above the bridge, and shortly after had perceived him galloping across a field on the other side of the stream. There was, consequently, a practicable ford at that point ; but Tyler, fearing that he could not cross with his artillery, did not dare to venture to pass the river. Richardson's division and a portion of Miles's occupied the Confederate troops posted in the vicinity of Blackburn's Ford, while the Federal artillery, ably handled by Major Hunt, kept up a vigorous cannonade. It was half-past ten in the morning. The staif of the Confederate army, however, was so poorly organized that Beauregard, posted in person in the rear of his long army line along Bull Run, was not aware of the attack tliat had been made upon Evans ; for the slopes of the Manassas plateau concealed it from sight, and did not allow him to distin- guish whence catne the sound of cannon that he heard on that side; moreover, the orders he had sent to his right wing had Vol. I.— 16 242 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. either not reached tlieir destination or been misconstrued; he had directed that wing to cross the river and attack Centreville, and Beauregard was still waiting for the moment when that attack should arrest the progress of McDowell, whom he still believed to be on the left bank of Bull Run ; the failure to carry- out these mstractions proved the salvation of his army. When, towards eleven o'clock, he learned that his right was about to move at last, he issued a counter-order, for he had just learned the dano-er which threatened him and had become convinced that instead of taking; the offensive he ouo;ht to detach from his ri2;ht all available troops, in order to keep the victorious Federals in check. The latter, in fact, were rapidly gaining ground in spite of the obstinate resistance'they encountered. Porter had deployed his brigade to the left of Burnside ; Heintzelraan, who, not hav- ing been able to find the ford indicated in his instructions, had been obliged to cross Sudeley Ford in the rear of Burnside, had in his turn got into line, while Tyler was pushing forward Sher- man's brigade. The latter had crossed Bull R,un at the ford he had discovered without striking a blow; leaving his artillery behind, he was advancing with that precision and method which already denoted the true man of war : as the curtain of trees did not permit him to follow the battle Avith his eyes, he directed his march by its sound ; Keyes, who had been recalled by Tyler to take Sherman's place, was in readiness to follow. The Confederates had taken position on an open height form- ing the first tier of the Manassas plateau, which commanded the course of Bull Run, by an elevation of from forty to fifty metres, and was surrounded from north-east to west by an elbow of Young's Branch. The chord of the semicircle described by this stream was the straight line of the Warrenton turnpike, Avhich intersects it in two places, and the culminating point of which was indicated by the house of the negro Robinson. To the left, those heights terminated above the junction of the turnpike and the Sudeley-Springs road, and then extended to the south-east- ward in a line parallel with this road towards Manassas. These slopes, commanded by the house of the widow Henry, mingled a little farther on with those of the main plateau, which rose like a second tier, separated from the first counterforts by a slight BULL RUN. 243 depression in the ground and a thick coppice. Two small pine woods, one situated to the right of the Robinson house, the other on the left, extending to the other side of Young's Branch, connected by numerous enclosures, covered the position of the Confederates. But the new^ troops who were about to attack it were sufficiently numerous to surmount these obstacles. Porter's troops, having taken the place of Burnside's soldiers, who had been severely tried, were advancing on the right against Evans's brigade, and Hampton's Legion which had arrived that very morning from Richmond. It was half-past twelve o'clock. At the same moment Sherman's first regiment, commanded by Corcoran, charged the left flank of the enem;)^s position, which was defended on that side by the brigades of Bee and Bartow. This vigorous attack threw^ their ranks instantly into confusion, exhausted as they were by the too unequal struggle ; the whole Federal line took advantage of this to advance at once against the Confederates, who gave w^ay and were driven out of the woods and beyond the river and the road in great disorder. The remnants of the three brigades which had bravely sustained the combat during three hours were nothing more than a disorderly crowd. Hampton's Legion alone kept its ranks in the midst of the general stampede, but it could not check the advance of the Fed- erals, who w^ere already within reach of the Robinson house and rapidly becoming masters of the position, the acclivities of which they were scaling from every side. The Confederate artillery, which had suffered greatly, rallied near the Henry house, where it engaged in a combat with the Federal guns posted on the other side of the Sudeley-Springs road. Fortune smiled upon McDowell. He had turned, surprised, and routed the left wing of his adversary before the latter could bring forward a sufficient force to check his progress or recall the troops concentrated along the line of Bull Run, which were no longer Avanted in that direction. By this move- ment he had captured the defences of the stone bridge, while Tyler, clearing away the abatis which obstructed the road, was about to establish d'rect communications between tliq Federal army and Centreville. McDowell had already 18,000 men en- gaged on the right bank of Bull Run ; in a few hours he could 244 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. be joined by all the rest of the available troops that had remained on the other side of the river. It was at this moment that Beauregard, after ordering the bri- gades from liis right to the field of battle, proceeded in person to the scene of action. He met on the road a multitude of fugitives, whose stories exaggerated the magnitude of the dis- aster. The left wing of the Confederates had lost all the positions along which it had ranged en potence; the turnpike was in the hands of the Federals. It was in vain that Beauregard sent Hampton to dispute the intersection of this turnpike and the Sudeley road; they quickly seized it, and, extending their lines on the right, they w^ere already threatening the railway, the control of which would have been of so much importance to them, while on the left and centre they appeared ready to pur- sue the routed Confederates as far as the Manassas plateau. Once established on the crest of this plateau, they could easily have swept it with their artillery; and, meeting with no further serious obstacles on that open ground, they would have pre- vented a junction of the brigades which Beauregard had placed in echelon in the morning along the too extended line of Bull Run. At half-past ten o'clock the Confederate general had ordered the brigades of Holmes and Early and half of Bonham's to re- inforce Evans's, while the other troops posted along the river were to make demonstrations in order to conceal that movement. But some time was required before these reinforcements could reach the scene of conflict. Fortunately for the Confederates, Jackson, the man of prompt and energetic inspirations, had pre- viously been sent to fill a gap in the line formed upon Bull Run, not far from the stone bridge, with his fine and large brigade of 2600 Virginians. While he was making this move- ment, the sound of cannon on his left revealed to him the gravity of the situation, and without waiting for orders he changed the direction of his column. He arrived a little in advance of Beauregard, just as the rout of the Confederates had com- menced. Seeing that he was too late to save the positions oc- cupied up to that time, he deployed in the rear of the Henry house, and waited quietly for the fugitives, who were coming BULL RUN. 245 in from every direction. Bee, who was struggling in vain to stop the rout, exclaimed, it is said, on seeing him, "Look at Jackson, as solid as a stone wall!" and from that day dates the surname of Stonewall, which Jackson was to render immortal. The well-sustained fire of these fresh troops at once arrested the pursuit of the Federals, and gave the Confederate officers time to rally their soldiers. Besides, McDowell's men were tired out by the very eifort which had given them the advantage ; they - had been marching and fighting since daybreak ; they had seen a large number of their comrades fall, a certain amount of disorder had crept into their ranks, and they no longer possessed the dash necessary to complete their success. At that decisive moment they lost much precious time in resting and re-forming. John- ston and Beaureo;ard took advantage of this, and succeeded in restoring order among the fugitives. The reinforcements they had called from the right wing came in slowly, regiment by regiment. Whilst Johnston returned to the rear to hasten their march, Beauregard posted them to the east beyond the Sudeley and Manassas road. A portion of Cocke's and Bonham's brigades and the whole of Holmes's thus arrived successively, and increased the Confederate forces concen- trated at that point to a total of about 10,000 men. During this time the Federals, who had remained on the other side of Bull Run, were trying to keep as many of the enemy's troops in front of them as possible. Schenck kept up a brisk engagement with the remainder of Bonham's brigade, and for a long time prevented Beauregard from completely strip- ping that line in order to strengthen his left. At last, a little before two o'clock, McDowell, having succeeded in re-forming his line of battle, gave the signal for a general attack, which was chiefly directed against the Henry house. The three brigades of Heintzelman's division formed on the extreme right, and those of Porter and Sherman, which were nearer the centre, made a flank movement by way of the Sudeley and Manassas road in order to fall upon Beauregard's left; the cavalry and three batteries of artillery supported them. While they were deploying on both sides of the road and climbing the gentle acclivities where an 246 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. hour before Jackson had checked the pursuit, Keyes was directed to operate at the other extremity of the heights, and take pos- session of the Robinson house, which had been lying between the two parties without either of them having been able to hold it. The greatest portion of the Confederate artillery, about fourteen or fifteen pieces, had been posted on the crest of a hill situated 600 metres in rear of the Henry house, which terminated the heights on that side, and defended the approaches of the second tier of the plateau, from which it was only separated by a wooded hollow. This crest commanded all the surrounding points, and was the position which the Federals proposed to seize. They advanced as far as the Henry house several times, but only to be promptly driven back. At the outset of the attack, the Fire Zouaves, having scattered upon the extreme right, only escaped the charge of Stuart's cavalry by the timely and vigorous inter- vention of two squadrons of regulars led by Captain Colburn. Heintzelman, arriving in his turn, posted his batteries on the extreme right so as to enfilade those of the enemy, but he was himself suddenly attacked by troops that had just emerged from a wood adjoining the Sudeley road, whom he had permitted to approach, believing them to be friends ; his soldiers, thus taken by surprise, hesitated and fell back, leaving in the hands of the Confederates three field-pieces, the horses of which had been killed. Keyes, on his side, after taking possession of the Robinson house, had been compelled to abandon it by the heavy fire from a bat- tery of the enemy ; and was trying in vain to advance upon the summit of the heights which extended from that place to the Henry house. It was now about half-past two o'clock; Beauregard had just summoned to his assistance the greatest portion of the troops that were yet posted along the line of Bull Run — Ewell's and the remainder of Bonham's brigade — leaving only Long- street's and Jones's to defend the river against Miles and half of Tyler's division, which was still on the other side. Having received, at the same time, reinforcements of some regiments that had been several hours on the march to join him, he availed him- self of their arrival to resume the oifensive, and the Confederate line, to which Jackson had imparted the stamina of his excellent brigade, for a time dislodged the Federals from all the positions BULL RUN. 247 they had conquered since noon ; but the latter soon returned to the charge. Jackson had found in Sherman, then a simple chief of brigade like himself, a foeman worthy of his steel ; part of the Federal artillery had been captured — it was recaptured; that of the Confederates was next in jeopardy, and Sherman once more reached the Henry house ; but he was unable to pro- ceed farther, and found himself again checked in front of the positions where, three hours before, Jackson had so opportunely established himself. His soldiers, worn out by fatigue, oppressed by a burning sun, distracted by the excitement of the conflict, which was new to them, made only a feeble resistance; many of them left their ranks, and regiments were seen firing upon each other; at last, the discharges of musketry became less frequent, and presently ceased entirely. It was three o'clock ; both parties felt that the decisive moment had arrived. On the side of the Federals, the regiments which had been suc- cessively esigaged without order or method had all suffered; their organization was affected, their last reserves had been in action, their ammunition was beginning to give out, and they had long since thrown away the three days' rations which they carried in their haversacks in the morning. They felt, moreover, that an interrupted success is almost invariably the prelude to a defeat. Still, nothing was yet lost; it only required a final effort to wrest the approaches of the Manassas plateau from tlie troops who had so persistently defended it. The effort could be made. Howard's brigade of Heintzelman's division, which had scarcely been in action, passed to the front on the right and reoj^ened the fighting. During this time, the turnpike having been cleared of all the obstacles which obstructed it as far as the stone bridge, McDowell ordered Schenck to cross Bull Run and strike the extreme right of the enemy in flank. This manoeuvre might have secured the victory, and Burnside, who had not been in action since noon, was in a condition to support him and take part once more in the conflict. Beauregard also fully appreciated the increasing danger of his position. Death was striking down one after another nearly all the chiefs whose example had until then stimulated his troops. 248 THE CIVIL WAR IN A3IERICA. Bee and Bartow had been killed near the Henry house ; Hainpton was wounded ; most of the colonels were disabled ; Beauregard and Jackson had been both slightly wounded while putting them- selves at the head of their soldiers to bring them back into line; the Confederate artillery had suffered cruelly; many of their guns had been dismounted, and the officers themselves were obliged to take the places of those who had served the otlier pieces. The general-in-chief had not a single fresh regiment at his disposal; Ewell and Bonham had not yet had time to arrive, while Early, whom he had summoned to the field of battle at eleven o'clock in the morning, had not yet made his appearance. At this moment Howard recommenced the attack. The Confederate general was watching him anxiously when he perceived in the prolongation of the Federal lines a great cloud of dust rising above the tree-tops. It was evidently a body of troops which, not having yet taken part in the conflict, was com- ing to decide, by its intervention, the issue of the battle. To which of the two armies did it belong? Its position led Beau- regard to believe for an instant that they were the heads of Patterson's column coming from the Valley of Virginia, and he was already preparing to cover his retreat, wliich seemed inevitable, when he thought he recognized friendly colors in the flags that were floating in the breeze. A moment after, sudden discharges of musketry informed him that these troops brought him victory. They were in fact the 3000 soldiers of the army of the Shenan- doah for which he had been impatiently looking since morning. Bee's brigade of that army having alone arrived during the night. Johnston, who had gone to the rear of the array to hurry forward and organize the reinforcements, had joined tliose troops that had arrived, shortly after noon, at Manassas Junction, and leading them in person, had brought them into the woods which extend westward of the Sudeley road, on which the Federals confidently rested their extreme right. Without waiting for their comrades, 1700 men of the brigade, headed by Kirby Smith, one of the best officers in the Confederate army, fell suddenly upon this flank at the moment when Beauregard was watching- their movements from a distance with so much uneasiness. Smith was woumled, but his fall did not check his soldiers, who were supported by a BULL RUN. 249 battery of artillery, led on by Colonel Elzey, and the Federals, surprised and disconcerted, were thrown into confusion. At the same time. Early, who had only received Beaure- gard's orders at noon, approached the field of battle ; Johnston took advantage of his arrival to complete the success he had already achieved against the Federal right. In pursuance of his instructions, Early made a detour to the left, and, deploying beyond the line of Kirby Smith, took the enemy, already seriously shaken, in the rear. Under the fire of his three regi- ments the whole riorht wino; of the Federals fell back in the greatest disorder upon the centre, which it carried along with it. The nearer McDowell's army had been to victory the more irreparable was its defeat ; its strength was all exhausted ; it might have followed up a success, but it no longer possessed the physical and moral energy necessary to sustain a reverse; the bonds of discipline had gradually relaxed in the excitement of the battle, or rudely snapped through the death of chiefs who had not been replaced. The Sudeley road and the slopes adjoining the Henry house, where, a quarter of an hour before, a whole army was fighting so fiercely, were instantly covered with fugitives ; the field-pieces were abandoned, and the whole first tier of the plateau was occupied by the Confederates, whose lines, though much thinned, advanced with the ardor that certain victory inspires. The battle w^as lost to the Federals. Schenck, who had not yet commenced his movement, Davies and Richard- son, who had resisted many attempts on the part of the Confed- erates to cross Bull E,un, could do nothing to change this result ; Burnside, whose brigade was held in reserve, could not arrive in time to prevent the disintegration (debandade) from becoming general. The Confederate regiments of Cocke and Bonham, which had remained until then upon the line of Bull E,un, came up to com- ])lete the rout of the Federal left. Holmes pressed the centre. In the midst of this confusion, the battalion of regulars was almost the only one to preserve good order, thus showing what discipline can accomplish and of what importance it is under such circumstances. The combined efforts of McDowell and his g<;nerals succeeded at last in rallying around this battalion some 250 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. determined men and the nucleus of a few regiments whrdi had been less under fire or better handled during the battle. A line was thus formed on the ground where the conflict had commenced, which temporarily overawed the enemy, while the rest of the army was flying everywhere, across roads and fields, in the direc- tion of the fords it had crossed in the morning, between Sudeley Springs and the stone bridge. Fortunately for McDowell, the Confederates were scarcely in a condition to follow up their success; their losses had been so heavy, their efforts so protracted, and they had seen themselves so near an irreparable defeat, that victory found them almost broken down. They halted on the field of battle which they had so dearly won, too well satisfied wnth their victory to seek to pro- voke an adversary of whose utter helplessness they had no know- ledge. Consequently, the line formed by McDowell to cover his disaster was only molested by a few volleys of musketry fired at a distance ; the battle ceased as soon as the Federals had dis- appeared behind the woods where Burnside had commenced the attack in the morning. When the Confederates bethought them- selves at last of pursuit, the remnant of the Federal army had crossed Bull Run at the various fords that are to be found above the stone bridge, leaving behind them all the cannon posted upon the right bank, a large number of muskets, almost all their wounded, and a multitude of stragglers wandering in the woods. The crossing of Bull Run, of which the approaches are diflfi.- cult, entirely dissolved the few corps which had remained united until then. Fragments of regiments and isolated companies soon became broken up among the fugitives who encumbered the narrow roads followed in the morning by Hunter and Heintzelman on the other side of the river. Their columns, which a common impulse drove towards Centreville, successively emerged into the "Warren ton turnpike, and, crowding on a single road, increased the disorder still more. During this time, the Confederates on the battle-field, following the main road, which Tyler had cleared a few hours before, got as far as the stone bridge, and not daring to venture on the other side, they sent a few cannon- balls into the midst of that dense tide of fugitives. One of BULL RUN. 251 these pr )jectiles demolished a caisson on the bridge where the road crosses a little tributary of Bull Run, which threw ad- ditional confusion into the ranks of the vanquished. This road forms a long straight line, ascending by gentle acclivities froir Bull Eun to Centreville. It thus presented excellent points oi view for observing what was passing on the other side of the river, and a crowd of curious spectators had gathered there since morning to enjoy the novel spectacle of a real battle. There had followed in the train of McDowell's army from Alexandria, mem- bers of Congress, men of all parties and professions, journalists from every country, photographers with their instruments — all assembled to witness the defeat of the rebels. Although out of reach of cannon-shot, and frequently prevented by the woods from seeing the battle, this crowd actually imagined that they were participating in it, and this thought long afforded them a foolish satisfaction. It finally moved off slowly in the direction of Alexandria, on receiving the first tidings of the check experienced by the Federals. But when the fugitives came crowding into the road they were following, and the balls began to whistle close to the ears of those men harassed by fatigue and fright, a wild panic seized both soldiers and spectators. The most fiery street-orators were seen leading the way in a rapid flight, and journalists who pretended to describe the battle from a distance outstripped the whole senseless crowd in swiftness. Miles had done nothing to check the disaster which the ap- pearance of the Confederates on the left bank of Bull Run had increased. Instead of occupying the crossings of that river, which he had been ordered to watch, he had hastened to summon all the troops under his command to Centreville, where he had himself remained. McDowell, who displayed great energy and self-possession in that terrible emergency, hastened to remedy the error. While the regulars and the cavalry were covering the flight of the army, and were the last to cross the little river which was to give its name to that fatal battle, Blenker's German brigade, w^hich had not been in action, took a position on Cub Run, to the right and left of the road followed by the fugitives, whom it could not hope to arrest. Its excellent behavior succeeded, toward 252 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. twilight, in checking the parties of Confederate cavalry who were pursuing the retreating Federals, and picking up prisoners and trophies of every kind, which were abandoned to them without any attempt at resistance. When night came at last to the assistance of the vanquished, this brigade fell back upon Centreville, where the whole of Miles's division, and the brigades of Schenck and Eichardson, which had not been in the fights on the right bank of Bull Run, had assembled in good order. The condition of the army, however, did not admit of its remaining in that position; there w^ere only five brigades left in fighting order ; all the troops who had participated in the combats on the Warrenton turnpike had dispersed, and were proceeding, without order or leaders, in isolated groups, toward the fortifications of Arlington and Alexandria, under the shelter of which they hoped to find some safety. It was necessary to follow and protect them. The troops left Centreville during the night with the greatest part of the supply-trains that had gathered there; Richardson was the last to leave. During the whole of the 22d, fugitives were constantly arriving upon the borders of the Potomac ; fear doubling their strength, they had marched all night long. The five brigades which formed a sad escort to these returning parties arrived also in the course of the evening, and on the fol- lowing morning ; on the 23d the remnants of the army which seven days before had taken the field with such imprudent con- fidence, gathered around the forts behind which they were to be reorganized. The dissolution of this army, too newly organ- ized to resist the shock it had encountered, was almost com- plete. Nothing could repress the crowds of soldiers collected upon the right bank of the Potomac ; they inundated Wash- ington, and many of them found means to go as far as New York. They could talk of nothing else but the masked bat- teries that had decimated them, and of the formidable obstacles which had stopped them ; they muttered treasonable words and cursed their leaders. The latter flung bitter reproaches at each other, and the ex- citement in Washington w^as at its height; the spectators, who had only witnessed the panic, forgot the brave struggle sus- tained by the army, and ended by persuading the public that BULL RUN. 253 there had been no battle, but simply a rout. Finally, the gov- ernment, more uneasy than it had been during the first days of its installation, expected to see the Confederate artillery come to bombard Washington. These fears were vain. Beauregard had no idea of threat- ening the capital of the enemy. Mr. Davis, who had ar- rived on the field of battle just in time to be present at the victory, had returned to Richmond in order to communicate the news to his Congress, which had just assembled ; and in spite of the representations of a few officers it had been decided that no oifensive movement should take place for the present. This determination was severely criticised in the South. First, John- ston, and then Beauregard, was accused of having neglected the opportunity to carry tlie war into Pennsylvania, and of ending it perhaps by a single blow, at the same time installing the Con- federate Congress in the Capitol of Washington. But this city was surrounded by works behind which the poorest troops could make a good fight ; those of the Confederate general had not yet been tried in making attacks upon such positions ; besides, the want of sufficient means of transportation rendered it almost impossible for him to undertake an offensive campaign. This inaction, fatal to their cause, should only be attributed to the circumstances which surrounded the army; but its chiefs may be blamed for not having at least detached a few brigades to worry the Federals and harass them in Maryland by crossing the Poto- mac. We have also seen that this was not their only mistake, and that had it not been for some fortunate chances the disposition they had made of their troops along Bull Pun, the length of time it took them to discover McDowell's movement, and their obstinacy in persisting to attack with their right, would inevitably have caused their defeat. The only error of McDowell consisted in having relied too much on the perseverance of his soldiers and the promises of General Scott. He would, in fact, have achieved a certain victory if, as he believed, he had only had to contend with Beauregard's army. The Federal general-in-chief must have been perfectly well aware that Johnston, having a railroad at his service, could at any time slip away from Patterson and reach Manassas, witli. 254 THIl CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. out Patterson's being able to pursue him to any serious purpose. "While recommending the utmost caution to the latter/ he never could have supposed that Patterson would have indetinitely de- tained forces whose presence was imperatively demanded else- where. Still, Johnston did not move until the 18th, the day on which, as Scott informed his lieutenant, the attack on Manassas was to take place. The Federal general-in-chief committed the twofold error of not notifying Patterson that McDowell's move- ment had been postponed, and of not transmitting to the latter the important despatch by which, on the 20th, Patterson informed him of Johnston's departure.* Public opinion, imperfectly en- lightened, condemned both Patterson and Scott: the former re- tired to private life, whither Scott, who was no longer the brilliant general of the Mexican war, but an infirm old man, was to follow him a few months afterwards. McDowell also suffered for the faults of others by seeing himself reduced to the simple command of a division. The battle of Bull Run was a misfortune, and not a disgrace, to the Federal arms ; the reports of losses on both sides prove that it was bravely disputed. The Confederates acknowledged 378 killed and 1489 wounded ; the Federals, 481 killed and 1011 wounded ; the latter, moreover, left in the hands of the enemy 1216 prisoners, 28 pieces of cannon, and 10 flags; but the rout — or, in other words, the panic — in the midst of which that enemy picked up most of his trophies, was one of those accidents to which even victorious armies are sometimes liable, and against which old troops are not always able to guard. The importance of the battle of Bull Run cannot be measured by the amount of losses sustained by the two contending parties — losses almost insia-nificant, even with reference to the small number of com- batants, when compared with those sustained in the great battles we shall yet have to describe. Its immediate effect upon military operations was to produce a sudden change in the attitude of the belligerents. The possession of Virginia, with the exception of that portion which had been recaptured by McClellan, was secured to the Confederates. Rich- * The reader is referred to an able pamphlet issued by General Patterson in vindication of his conduct in this campaign. — Ed. BULL RUN. 255 moiid was beyond danger of any attack, and Washington was threatened anew. We shall see the Federal government organize a powerful army within its capital ; but its opponents, also taking advantao-e of the respite which the victory gave them, will increase their forces almost as rapidly, so as to keep those of the enemy constantly hi check ; and they remained quiet during a period of nine months on the field of battle conquered on the 21st of July. But it was chiefly through its moral effect that this first encoun- ter was to exercise a powerful influence upon the war of which it was only the prelude. The South saw in this victory a kind of ratification of her claims. It was not only the Federal sol- diers who were vanquished on that day, but with them all who had remained more or less openly loyal to the Union in the Southern States. They had protested against a simple insur- rection ; but success imparted to the government of Mr. Davis, in their estimation, an authority before which they all bowed ; if a few secretly preserved their old attachment for the national flag, most of them fully submitted to the new power which had just achieved so complete a triumph. None of the enemies of the great Republic any longer feared to express their sympa- thies for a cause which seemed to prosper, or to give it moral and material aid. It required at this moment an unbounded faith in the energy of the American people to refute the arguments of those who believed that their ruin was already consummated ; most of the European governments, who should then have exacted from their citizens a strict observance of the duties of neutrality, allowed from that moment naval expeditions to be fitted out in their ports, which were to give such powerful aid to the Confed- erate cause. In short, this victory inspired the South with unlim- ited confidence in her own resources and the conviction that she could never be vanquished. At the outset this conviction was a great element of success ; it inspired her soldiers, already impressed with a sense of their superiority over their adversaries, with that daring which frequently determines the fate of battles. But at the same time it also rendered her improvident, and made het neglect many details the importance of which she felt too late; it prevented her, at this critical hour, from availing herself of all her resources, from calling together all able-bodied men, from 256 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. organizing the interior defence of the States, which she thought could never be invaded ; and, in this manner, it prepared the way for the disasters she met with in the West the following year. So that some of the military writers favorable to her cause have gone so far as to say that a defeat would have been more bene- ficial to her than the victory to which she was indebted for this dangerous assurance. This disaster, which might have discouraged the North, proved, on the contrary, a salutary lesson. Far from dividing the States faithful to the Union, as the Confederate leaders had anticipated, it only had the effect of stimulating their patriotism and of ren- dering them more clear-sighted. At the news of the defeat, they appreciated at last the difficulty of the task they had undertaken, but they never shrank from it. They understood that in order to obtain success in a great war, it is not sufficient to have a great number of soldiers — it is necessary that they should be well trained ; that armies are complicated machines which require as much science as care in their construction, and that if popular enthu- siasm and personal courage supply its materials, it requires dis- cipline to combine them. From that day the North submitted patiently and with determination of purpose to all that was re- quired to organize her forces and to put them in a condition to undertake long and fatiguing campaigns. Although the soldiers composing the national armies still bear the name of volunteers, the aim of all their efforts will henceforth be to acquire that in- struction and that experience which cause the superiority of reg- ular troops. The improvised generals will give place to those who are brought up in the military career; the officers who seriously try \o learn their profession will be greatly encouraged by the confidence of the public and of the army. It is not, therefore, to this American democracy, which is essentially practical and profits by experience, that the partisans of levies en masse and improvised armies must look for confirmation of their theories.* * See Appendix to this volume, Note E, CHAPTER III. PREPARATIONS FOR THE STRIFE. IN the midst of the excitement that prevailed in Washington on the mom'nful day of July 22d, Congress set an example of courage to the American people. While the remnants of the army defeated on the previous day were beginning to crowd the streets of the capital, and everybody looked at Arlington Heights with a feeling of uneasiness, expecting to see the enemy's artillery make its appearance, and while the military chiefs were endeavor- ing to reorganize their respective forces, the two Houses assembled at the Capitol. Grief was portrayed on every countenance, but it had not destroyed the determination of those who supported the President's policy. A few days before they had responded to his call for a levy of 400,000 volunteers and the issue of four hundred million dollars for their support, by a resolution increasing both these numbers and authorizing the enlistment of 500,000 volunteers and an ex- penditure of five hundred million dollars. This resolution was first presented in the Senate on the 10th of July, and on the 13th in the House of Representatives. But the amendments introduced by the partisans of peace-at-any-price, who were al- lowed a perfect freedom of speech, and who desired to prevent the President from employing these resources to put down the rebel- lion, had delayed the final vote on the resolution. By a singular coincidence, this debate had been fixed for the 22d of July, when the impending disaster was scarcely con- templated. This disaster, so far from embarrassing the debate, only served to impart to it a peculiar solemnity, and the eager- ness with which the resolution was passed showed that the repre- sentatives of the American people fully appreciated the duties devolved upon them by such grave circumstances. The Federal Congress had often been the hot-bed of miserable Vol. I.— 17 257 258 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. intrigues ; this is a reproach which attaches not only to all polit- ical assemblies, but to every human power. By their impatience and unseasonable interference in military matters, they sometimes jeopardized success; but to make up for this they gave to the nation, at every critical period of the war, the example of perse- verance, and manifested that true patriotism which is stimulated more by defeat than by victory, and Avhich after each reverse resolutely imposes upon itself new and heavier sacrifices. If the check of Bull Run demonstrated the inexperience of the American soldiers, it also proved that the people to whom they belonged possessed that manly temperament which gathers strength from adversity, and that constancy which, after many delays and fruitless efforts, succeeded at last in rendering available resources ignored by their adversaries. It is an error, we believe, to attribute the honor of this quality exclusively to the Anglo-Saxon race ; we should rather attribute it to the working of free institutions. A people living under such institutions do not prepare for war after the manner of conspira- tors; hence the frequent checks that are experienced at the outset; but they profit by experience, their courage increases in proportion to the magnitude of the struggle, they persevere in it because they have voluntarily assumed its responsibilities, and every citi- zen, making it a personal matter, sustains the common cause with a zeal which develops the national strength at the very moment when a despotic government would already have been struck powerless before a wearied and unsympathizing public. Hence it is that the creation of those large armies which carried the national flag during a period of four years dates from the 22d of July. The imperfect organization Avhich united the heterogeneous elements led by McDowell to the field of Manassas had not been able to withstand the first shock, and his army had melted away like a lump of ice before the fire of the battle. On that day all America understood that an army cannot subsist and move about like an individual ; that there should be, on the one hand, an active and educated staff to regulate its movements — on the other hand, an experienced administrative department to provide for its daily wants ; and that without these appliances it becomes an inert and lifeless body in the hands of the ablest PREPARATIONS FOR THE STRIFE. 259 chief. The people learned that it was not sufficient to have placed 500,000 men at the disposal of the President, but that it was necessary to aid him in converting those men into sol- diers ; they cast aside all their prejudices and gave up all their illusions. "Drill and organize" was the watchword on every lip. Instead of casting a stone at the regular officers who had had the misfortune of being vanquished, but who had bravely performed their duty, justice was meted out to them, and they were entrusted with the task of repairing the disaster. Almost all the principal commands in the Federal army were bestowed upon them, and the States contended for the privilege of con- fidino; the new regiments that were being organized to these officers. Nay more, their advice, when they asked the country to renounce that fatal impatience which had brought on the Bull Run campaign, was listened to, and public opinion accepted with- out a murmur the long inaction which was deemed necessary to organize the national forces. This inaction, which lasted until the year 1862, was interrupted from time to time only by combats of little importance. The principal occupation of the chiefs of the Federal armies during the six months succeeding the battle of Bull Run was to prepare the instruments they were to use at a later period. The order of our narrative itself, therefore, leads us to say a few words in this place concerning the great task they had to accomplish before they could take the field in earnest. The most important thing to be done was to reconstruct the army which had been beaten at Bull Ran. General McClellan was summoned in great haste on the 22d of July by Mr. Lincoln, and entrusted with this duty. McDowell, who had been offi^red an independent command in the West, preferred to remain at the head of a simple division among the companions of his defeat. General McClellan had made himself known by the successful and rapid campaign which three weeks before had freed West Virginia, but he happily possessed also organizing talents which he had not been able to display in that small command. His laborious character, his precise, methodical mind, and his vast military knowledge peculiarly fitted him for the ungrate- ful and difficult work which had fallen to his lot. He was 260 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. the creator of the army of the Potomac — of that army placed at the most vulnerable point, which, although paralyzed by the necessity of covering the capital, served as the principal pivot of military operations ; that army which, often unfortunate, was never discouraged, and was rewarded at the end of the struggle by attaining the honor of striking the decisive blow. In the Western States, the war, which was only a continuation of the quarrel, already often a bloody one, between abolitionists and pro-slavery men, had been carried on until then from town to town, from farm to farm, and from man to man, according to the old-fashioned mode of fighting — a civil war par exoellenee, as indecisive as it was bitter. But, in order to obtain important results in those vast regions, it was necessary to undertake much longer campaigns than in the East, where the vicinity of hostile capitals placed the two opponents forcibly face to face. It was therefore still more important that the armies destined to operate in that quarter should receive the organization without which they could not move over great distances. These armies, which the volunteers from the Western States swelled so rapidly, contained a large number of stalwart men, better inured to hardships than those of the East, but they were poorer in materials of war than the army of the Potomac, which was within reach of the principal arsenals and the industrial cities of the Union. Before describing the slow organization of the Federal forces which preceded the serious resumption of hostilities, we has- ten to remark that the Confederates were the unwilling accom- plices in that inaction which enabled their adversaries to make their preparations at leisure. The opportunity of marching upon Washington the day following their first victory having once been suffered to slip, the commonest prudence compelled them to remain in the defensive attitude which had been the cause of their success. If the Federals had been confronted by an enemy better prepared to take the offensive, neither patriotism nor the number of their soldiers would have been of any avail. This is a consideration which Europeans, whose States are surrounded by powerfully armed neighbors, should never lose sight of when they study the manner in which America, after having been. PREPARATIONS FOR THE STRIFE. 261 taken unawares, was able to improvise her large armies of vol- unteers. We may be permitted to recall here a personal reminiscence showing how diiFerent were the circumstances which alone favored the formation of these armies, from those presented in the wars of which our continent is too often the theatre. The author arrived in Washington and had the honor to enter the army of the Potomac two months after the battle of Bull Run. Not a musket-shot had been exchancred durino- that time between the two hostile forces, which in the mean while watched each other a short distance aj)art between Arlington and Fairfax Court-house. A balloon in the service of the army rose every evening to reconnoitre the surrounding country; an ascension was proposed and accepted; it M-as then the only means of seeing the enemy. Scarcely had we risen above the ancient trees which surround the former residence of General Lee, when the prospect was extended over an undulating yet uniform country covered with woods, spotted here and there with small clearings, and bounded on the west by the long chain of the Blue Ridge, which recalls to mind the first lines of the Jura. Thanks to the brilliant light which illumines the last hours of an autumn day in America, the ob- server can distinguish the smallest details of the country beneath him like a plan in relief. But his eye seeks in vain for apparent signs of war; peace and tranquillity seemed to reign everywhere. It requires all his attention to detect some recent clearings, at the edge of which a line of reddish earth indicates the new fortifica- tions. Meanwhile, as the day sinks, he sees at the southward small fleeces of bluish smoke breaking gently above the trees; they are multiplied by groups in a vast semicircle. These are the Confederates cooking their soup. The number of their army can almost be counted, for each line of smoke betrays the ket- tle of a platoon. Further in the distance the vapor of a locomotive rushing toward the mountains traces by its wake above the trees the line by which the enemy is provisioned. At the same moment a military band is heard directly under the balloon. All the clear- ings in which we have sought in vain to discover the Federal 262 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. camps are filled with a crowd issuing from the surrounding woods. This crowd falls into line and forms battalions, the band passing before the ranks with that peculiar gait which the English have denominated "goose-step." Each regiment has two flags — one being the national colors, the other bearing the de- vice of the State to which it belongs, together with its regimental number. These flags are lowered ; the officers salute ; the colonel takes the command; and a moment after the soldiers all disperse, for it is neither a surprise nor the prelude of a forward march which has thus called them together, but the ordinary "evening parade." It was in the midst of this absolute calm that General McClellan organized the army of the Potomac. Congress on the 22d of July had correctly expressed the senti- ments which animated the entire North at the news of McDowell's defeat. The loyal States understood at last the magnitude of the undertaking they had before them, and determined to neglect nothing that could compass its success. Everybody set to work; patriotic donations flowed in; subscription funds were opened for the benefit of the soldiers ; women manifested as much zeal to induce men to enlist as in the South; the largest iron mills in the United States were turned into cannon foundries or into outfitting establishments; finally, enlistments became more and more numerous. The three months' volunteers raised on the first call of April 15th were discharged, but a great many of them re-enlisted. Those who had responded to the second call of May 4th, instead of the forty battalions asked for, already formed 208 battalions on the 21st of July. In order to complete the effective force of 250,000 men authorized by Congress, it was only neces- sary to encourage this movement and to receive into the service of the Union all the new battalions thus created. We have already described the manner in which they were recruited and organized in each State. As soon as they were received into the Federal service by the mustering-officer, who had charge of tl e recruiting, they were forwarded to the armies of the West or to the army of the Potomac, which were ratlier vast camps of instruc- tion than armies in the field ; and as soon as they were able to defile without too much confusion they were formed into brigades PREPARATIONS FOR THE STRIFE. 263 of one or twc battalions somewhat less inexperienced than them- selves, whose example could be of use to them. The interior orgauizaton of the armies thus formed was modelled precisely upon that of the old regular army, which we have described elsewhere in full. The duties pertaining to the various branches of the service were distributed in the same way, and this old army ceased to have a separate existence except in the annual Army Register. It saw its administrative departments, with their personnel, blended with those that had been created for the army of volunteers ; it saw the majority of its officers enter that army with new rank, and its infantry and cavalry regiments, together with its batteries, were scattered among the various armies and formed into divisions with the volunteers. The appointment of all generals, their aides-de-camp, and all the officers and employes of the administrative departments be- longed to the President, subject to the confirmation of the Senate. But the rank thus conferred was merely temporary, and expired by limitation on the disbandment of the volunteer armies for whose special wants they had been created. The first thing required was the appointment of a certain num- ber of generals to assume the commands indispensable to such a large assemblage of troops; for the regular army only con- tained about a dozen, nearly all new, and yet two or three amono; them too much disabled to take the field. But none of those who could aspire to that rank possessed antecedents of sufficient importance to entitle them to the choice of the President, and the latter was reduced to the alternative either of encumber- ing the cadres with men whose incapacity might be found out too late, or of suffering the most important posts to remain unfilled. He had the merit of listening to the opinions ex- pressed by the comrades of every old officer, and his first list of generals, composed almost entirely of West Pointers, furnished him, together with a few chiefs who were to play a distinguished part in the war, a considerable number of educated and industrious men, who contributed powerfully to the organization of the volun- teers. Selections were unquestionably made which were dictated either by political influence or personal favor; and among the first major-generals appointed by Mr. Lincoln we find two — 264 THE CIVIL WAR IN A3IERICA. Messrs. Banks and Butler — who are the two types of the class then styled political generals : Banks, a former workingman of Massa- chusetts, who through his intelligence had attained the highest civil positions, of a loyal character and universally esteemed, but totally ignorant of military matters — who, although fully aware of this fact, was nevertheless anxious to obtain a command, aggravating his first error in action by mistrust of himself and untoward hesitations, and who did not always succeed in staving off, by his great personal courage, the disastrous results of enter- prises he had imprudently undertaken ; Butler, a shrewd lawyer, a bold politician, without scruples, who had rendered a great ser- vice to his country by taking upon himself the responsibility of occupying Baltimore, but who was afterwards to injure his caiLse by resorting to unnecessary severities in New Orleans, found himself, by a singular coincidence, chief in command at Big Bethel and at the first attack on Fort Fisher, and was thus both the first and the last general beaten by the Confederates. But, on the other hand, the names of Grant, Sherman, Meade, Kear- ny, Hooker, Slocum, and Thomas, which were among the first promotions, show that Mr. Lincoln knew from the outset how to select men worthy of his entire confidence. The personal aides-de-camp of the generals in command, from the rank of lieutenant to that of colonel, did not appertain to any contingent ; they received their rank directly from the President, without any reference to the sanction of the Senate; but these grades, whether conferred on persons belonging to the regular army or to the volunteer staff, according as the general himself might belong to either of these corps, were merely temporary, and expired, by limitation, with the command of the general to whom they were attached. In the staffs of the armies in the field the chiefs of the different services were regular officers, invested with a rank commensurate with the importance of their functions. Thus, at the general head-quarters of the army of the Potomac or of the armies of the West the chiefs of cavalry, of artillery, of engineers, of topo- graphical engineers, and in the administrative departments the as- sistant adjutant-general and the quartermaster-general, ranked as brigadier-generals ; others — such as the cliief of ordnance, the com- PREPARATION FOR THE STRIFE. 265 missary of subsistence, and the inspector-general — held the inferior and temporary rank appertaining to the title of aides-de-camp. All the administrative branches of the service were reinforced, both in the war department and in the armies in the field, by large promotions of officers appointed by the President, like the generals of volunteers, to serve during the war. But, notwith- standing their number, the personnel of all these corps, like that of the staffs, was always found insufficient for the task imposed upon it by the necessity of providing for the support and man- agement of an army of 500,000 men, which at the end of the war was to number nearly 1,000,000 ; most of these officers, besides, were utterly unaccustomed to the duties confided to them. A thousand examples might be cited of difficulties which their inexperience, aggravating that of the soldiers and officers of the line, threw in the way of the organization of the armies, their arma- ment, their outfits, and even their subsistence in their canton- ments. Thus, for instance, a regiment recently encamped received its rations in flour, and for want of cooking utensils found itself, in fact, without food, whilst biscuits were distributed to its neighbor, which, being provided with portable ovens, might have contributed through them to relieve the common wants to a considerable extent. The variety of firearms was so great that the cartridges first distributed scarcely ever suited the calibre of the muskets. It required months of assiduous labor to introduce order and method in this vast administrative machinery. There was con- stantly occasion to regret the absence of a general staff, such as is to be found in European armies, serving as a direct medium between the chief and all the subordinate agents placed under his conmiand, and enabling him to enforce the execution of his wishes at all times. When General McClellan commanded an army of 150,000 men, he had only about him, besides four topographical engineers especially detailed to study the ground, concerning which no map gave any precise information, eight aides-de-camp to carr/ his orders, to ascertain the position of the several army corps, to accompany important reconnoissances, to convey directions to a general on the day of battle, and to receive despatches during the night at general head-quarters and during the day, the generals, 266 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. civil functionaries, bearers of flags of truce from the enemy, and, finally, to question the inhabitants or prisoners of importance from whom information might be obtained. An exception should be made in favor of the medical branch of the service ; for, if officers were scarce, physicians before the war were numerous, America being the country which, in propor- tion to her population, possesses the greatest number of them. The spirit of personal independence and the absence of all con- trol on the part of the state, so far from being detrimental to the cause of medical science in the New AVorld, has given it an ex- traordinary impulse; and the Americans quote with just pride, besides such names as those of Jackson and Mott, the reports of their principal surgeons relative to the innumerable experiments which the war enabled them to make. The progress of medical science resulting from these reports may perhaps aflPord some com- pensation to humanity for all the blood shed during that cruel war. It may be said that there was no branch of the service in the whole army, unless it be that of the chaplains, which un- derstood and performed its duties so well as the regimental sur- geons — all physicians by profession. The composition of the personnel of an army, notwithstanding its importance, is not, however, either the first element of mili- tary organizations or the most difficult to create : the most im- portant is discipline, that moral force without which no army can exist. When it is established by tradition the new-comers sub- mit to it without difficulty. But the Federal government had not only to introduce it among a vast multitude of men, all equally strangers to its severe requirements, but it did not possess any really effective means to enforce respect for it. In the first place, if the government had the right to deprive officers of their rank, it had not the power to replace them. It could only punish regimental officers by dismissing them, and had no rewards to •^ffer them. The States, fearing lest the Federal government should possess too much influence, had, in refusing the right of appointment and promotion, deprived it of the best guarantee of good service. On the other hand, there being no rule in force regulating the promotion of officers appointed by the States and enrolled PREPARATIONS FOR THE STRIFE. 267 In the service of the Federal government, or in the general staff of the army of volunteers, and the latter being considered as a merely temporary organization, discipline could not find that sup- port which the respect inspired by a strongly constituted hierarchy obtained for it in permanent armies. We have already stated how the ranks were distributed among those who had mostly contributed to the recruiting of regiments. But among those who thus attained the summit of the ladder at the outset there were some who voluntarily descended it just as quickly. More than one subaltern officer of the regular army, placed in command of a regiment with the rank of colonel, be- came disgusted with that position and went to resume a modest place in his old company. There were others who, having held no previous rank in the standing army, had to undergo even greater trials; and we might mention a few instances of officers who, after leaving one regiment in order to assume the position of colonel in another, found themselves reduced to the ranks by the disbanding of the latter, and returned to take their places as common soldiers in their former regiment. But the most serious obstacle against the maintenance of disci- pline was to be found in the law which, by an inexcusable anom- aly in a democratic country, conferred upon the chiefs a discre- tionary authority over the soldiers for the punishment of simple military misdemeanors, and did not permit them to exercise the same in regard to officers. The latter had to be tried by court- martial for the slightest infringement of military rules, and they could not be subject to two days' confinement without a formal sentence. In consequence of this system, borrowed from the regular army, upon which it had been grafted in days when the execu ive power was mistrusted, the trial, the prosecution and the defence — in short, all the guarantees required by law in cases of grave offences — became a parody to secure immunity for the officers accused of insubordination towards their su- periors. All these difficulties, however, did not discourage those who had undertaken the organization of the Federal armies, and they succeeded at last in introducing order and discipline among them. The rules established for determining the right to a command 268 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA being as precise and as scrupulously observed in America as in Europe, served as a corrective to the accidents which converted the superior officer of to-day into a subordinate of to-morrow. These rules assigned the command among t.fficers of the same grade to the senior of those who held their commissions from the President, whether they belonged to the regular army or to the volunteer staff, in preference to those who had been appointed by the governors of States, in special contingents. With regard to the law instituting courts-martial to pronounce upon the slightest breaches of discipline, it met with the fate of all laws that are too bad to be applied ; a thousand ways were found to evade it. The officer who neglected his duty was placed under arrest, as if to prepare for trial, and at the end of eight days he was released and told that the matter should not be pursued any further — a decision in which he naturally hastened to acquiesce. Or in more serious cases he was to be put in arrest for three or four weeks within his tent, and warned that if he made any complaints against such illegal proceeding the Presi- dent would be requested to dismiss him. Being thus relieved from matters of which they should never have taken cognizance, the courts-martial had yet another laborious duty to perform. Their functions were of a double character, according to the gravity of the charges brought before them. As simple courts they recommended the President to suspend or dismiss the party accused. As military tribunals, invested by the Constitution itself with judiciary power to try special cases, they imposed pecuniary fines and corporal penalties extending even to death, such sentences being subject to the revision of the Presi- dent. In these courts-martial the volunteers were tried by vol- unteers, the regulars by regulars ; but they were all subject to the same military code, the Articles of War, a small collection, rather vague, which, like nearly all Anglo-Saxon laws, leave a great deal to jurisprudence. The establishment of examining commissions operated largely in favor of discipline, and raised the dignity of the epaulette in the estimation of the soldiers by purging the personnel of the list of officers. It was impossible to confer all the ranks upon educated officers, as there were very few such ; but all the PEEPABATIONS FOR THE STRIFE. 269 others could be divided into two classes. The first, who were by far the most numerous, being conscious of their deficiencies, desired to improve themselves, and had all the intelligence neces- sary for learning their profession even in the midst of the diffi- culties of the war; such must be retained. The others, as pre- sumptuous as they were incapable, set a fatal example in the positions they had courted only to gratify their cupidity or vanity; the examining commissions were directed to rid the army of them. They were instructed to subject all the officers of the various contingents to a rigid examination before they were finally accepted by the President. These examinations only took place several months after those contingents had been formed into divisions, so that the generals who had them under their re- spective commands were able to furnish the commissioners with suggestions in regard to the officers about to be examined, which more or less controlled their decisions. The examiners always favored those who were known to be disposed to learn their profession, but those convicted of down- right ignorance had no mercy shown to them. During the early stages of the war, those who found themselves thus deprived of their rank begged for favor, threw themselves at the feet of their judges ; for, apart from the disgrace, it was a great pecuniary loss to them. They were told in reply to go and learn, and a few rigorous examples determined a large number of officers to avoid the disgrace of failure at a public examination in the presence of their comrades and their subordinates by a prompt resignation. This summary mode of proceeding may have caused some in- justice, but the most cruel injustice would have been to expose the lives of soldiers by allowing the army to be filled with men incapable of commanding. It was thus that discipline and respect for authority began to take root in the army, and their salutary influence was soon felt, although the observer, judging only from appearances, might net yet have been able to realize the fact. Indeed, what may be called the hierarchical sentiment has never existed in the United States, where the uncertain rounds of the social ladder offer to no one a pedestal so high but that a man may descend from it without ruin, Avhere the citizen who has deserved well of his 270 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. country in a high position does not think it derogatorj to his dignity to serve that country in a more modest capacity. Even in the regular army the rank which, acquired with difficulty, had been the aim and the reward of a whole career has never elicited the same respect as amongst us. The power it confers, the obedience it ought to secure within the limits of military com- mand, lost nothing thereby, but it did not of itself create those social distinctions which are carefully kept up elsewhere, even by persons occupying inferior positions with the secret hope of being able at some future day to take the places of their supe- riors and to receive the same marks of respect. In the volunteer army, for stronger reasons, no prestige could attach to the mere epaulette, for the soldier was the more able to criticise the ignor- ance of his immediate chiefs because he almost always belonged to the same county or village and had long known them person- ally. The absence of that moral authority which is based upon length of service and superior experience was still more unfor- tunate among the non-commissioned officers, to whom it was even more indispensable in order to enforce obedience from the soldier. But, on the other hand, the intelligence and education which lifted most of the privates to a level with their superiors inspired them with a natural respect for those among their chiefs in Avhom they recognized the necessary qualities for command, and induced them to accept, without a murmur, the obligations and restraints of military life when they were made to understand the necessity. Leaving the entire monopoly of insubordination to a few regi- ments, mostly composed of European adventurers, they exhibited none of that turbulence which is frequently associated with the name of volunteers. A few words of caution were sufficient to remind them that, having once taken the oath, there were no longer amateurs in the ranks of the army. During the whole period of organization in the army of the Potomac, General McClellan had but once an occasion to rebuke any attempt to resist his authority This occurred shortly after the battle of Bull Run, the memories of which had not yet been effaced. The soldiers of a volunteer regiment, considering them- selves aggrieved in a matter affecting their pay and term of enlistment, refused to obey their officers. Their camp, situated PREPARATIONS FOR THE STRIFE. 271 on one of the squares of Washington," was immediately sin- rounded by a detachment of regular troops, infantry and artil- lery, and this display of force sufficed to bring them to obedience. In granting them pardon the general-in-chief took away their flag, with the promise to return it to them on the field of battle ; and the zeal which these troops displayed to atone for their error soon made them one of the best regiments in the army. The acts of severity necessary for the maintenance of disci- pline were generally approved by public opinion, which was deter- mined to sustain the authority of the chiefs from whom they expected the salvation of the country. But it was repugnant to the American people to shed, even by judicial process, the blood of a guilty man when that of a victim did not cry for vengeance ; and to render possible the execution of deserters to the enemy it was necessar}'^ to bring forward material proof of the great dan- ger to which the army was exposed if capital punishment, that indispensable penalty of the military code, was not inflicted upon traitors. The first execution took place in December, 1861 ; it was an event in the Federal army. The best example that can be given of the docility M'ith which the volunteers submitted to all the regulations, the necessity or advantages of which they understood, is to be found in the man- ner in which the absolute prohibition of fermented liquors was accepted by them. In a country where the use of ardent spirits is so universal, where the bar-room or drinking-shop plays so great a part, so severe a restriction could not have been imposed upon the soldiers if nearly all of them had not cheerfully recog- nized its necessity with a firmness of purpose more meritorious than many acts of heroism. The commissaries of subsistence alone had in store a detestable brandy distilled from grain, which they distributed parsimoniously to the sick and to the soldiers employed at hard labor, or to those encamped in malarious local- ities. It is true that during the early stages of the war the low drinking-shops of Washington and St. Louis were crowded with soldiers whose trembling hands brandished the terrible boAvie- knife, or who staggered to the sidewalk to end their quarrels with the revolver. But it may be asserted that no drunken man was ever seen in camp ; and even in the cities these disorders ceased as 272 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. soon as the military police, better organized, prevented soldiers from leaving their tents to visit the bar-rooms. The sutlers, licensed smugglers, were subjected to the supervision of the pro- vost-marshal, and no strong liquor was tolerated at their stores. It was the Europeans who most strongly resisted this regulation — the Germans from pure loyalty to their lager-hiov, the Southern- ers to drink in secret an alcoholic compound which in America is called brandy (whisky). The personnel of staffs and administrative departments being once organized and that of the contingents purified, and the first principles of discipline established among the officers, as well as among the soldiers, the great task "of drilling the army had yet hardly begun. Indeed, a great assemblage of men resembles a statue of clay, unable to move without breaking and having no vital breath. In order that it may acquire suppleness and agility the recruits must go through a series of exercises and evolutions equally irksome to the teachers and the taught — first singly, then by platoons, by battalions next, and finally by brigades. This task was the more difficult in the American army because instruc- tion was as necessary for the officers as for the men, and because the latter, having no example to encourage them, did not under- stand the utility of so long an apprenticeship. Their intelligence, however, which rendered them submissive to the voice of chiefs really worthy to command them, soon made them undertake it with ardor. Full of confidence in themselves, they made up their minds, not that it was useless to learn, but that it would be very easy for them to learn anything they wished, the trade of war as well as any other ; having enlisted voluntarily, they were de- termined to do everything in their power to become good soldiers capable of victory. They wer.e, therefore, of as much value as their chiefs, whose examples exercised an all-powerful influence over the collective spirit, if we may use such an expression, which animates a body of troops. A rapid change took place in those regiments in which the superior officers went assiduously to work and began by learn- ing themselves what they desired to teach their inferiors. There were three of these superior officers to every regiment, or rather battalion, whose effective force numbered from eight to nine hun- PREPARATIONS FOR THE STRIFE. 273 dred men at the utmost — one colonel, a lieutenant-colonel, and a major. This number would have been excessive in a standing army, l)ut at a time when it was necessary to organize everything it offered great advantages ; for there were many chances that among these three officers one would be found capable of assum- ing the management of aifairs in the regiment, whatever his rank ; his superiority over his two colleagues very soon placed the di- rection of affairs in his hands. Most of these officers applied themselves with zeal to the novel task they had accepted. Very often, after a day of drill and manoeuvres, when the soldier was resting without care, the colonel would call all his officers together in his tent. There, by the light of an unsteady lamp, he would lecture them upon certain manoeuvres, at first in the capacity of teacher, then freely discuss with them sundry points in tactics ; and when the latter had retired, he would still continue to study, with his lieutenant-colonel and major, the French regulations (infantry tactics), translated by Scott, in order to expound them on the following day. One of the most important duties in the organization of the army, and the most difficult to have well performed, Avas the management of regimental accounts. In the absence of an ad- ministrative staff the keeping of these accounts devolved entirely upon the colonel and captains of companies. For those who had not been engaged in mercantile affiiirs it was a labyrinth from which they could not extricate themselves without close applica- tion ; and one should have inspected some of the American regi- ments in person in order to form an idea of the worriments en- tailed upon thousands of officers by the necessity of keeping four official account-books in order — the descriptive-book, the morning- return-book, the account-book, and the order-book. In all the details we have given concerning the formation and organization of volunteer regiments we have said nothing of the measures taken to fill the gaps occasioned by sickness and the bullets of the enemy. The fact is that such measures had not been deemed necessary at the outset of a war which it was thought would only last ninety days. It was soon found that when a regi- ment had once set out to join the army, nobody any longer ap- plied to the recruiting depots ; the good places had been taken ; Vol. I.— 18 274 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. the men of influence who had contributed to the formation of the regiments were in camp; and if others appealed in their turn to the public, it was in behalf of new regiments. Under such a system it was impossible to establish depots; the numerical strength of the regiments was greatly diminished during their stay in camps, and it only required a single battle or a few nights passed in a malarious locality to reduce them to skeletons. In the mean while, the new levies which swelled the ranks of the armies brought no direct reinforcement to those regiments. In order to procure a rapid supply of men it was necessary constantly to create new regiments. These regiments brought with them all the inexperience which had cost so dear to their predecessors, without deriving any profit from the experience acquired by the latter, while the number of officers and soldiers belonging to the old regiments, whose example and teachings might have been so useful to the new comers if they had been thrown together under the same colonels, was too much reduced to play an im- portant, part unaided in the field. It may be that in trying to remedy this evil the source itself had been exhausted from which the ranks of the Federal armies had been filled when they were so fearfully decimated. But this system was one of the principal causes of their weakness, and its consequences became more and more injurious until the day when, the conscrption law having at last given the Federal government the means for securing enlistments, the formation of new regi- ments was prohibited, and General Grant infused new vigor into the army by the consolidation of two or three regiments into one. Such was the general condition of affairs in the midst of which the organization of the Federal armies was being effected. Each branch of the service was naturally organized and perfected with more or less rapidity according to the particular difficulties that this labor expects to encounter. In the infantry the soldiers were vigorous, but did not under- stand how to husband their strength for a long march. They did not know how to buckle on their knapsacks ; they clumsily car- ried very light weights on their shoulders ; they had no idea how to take care of their arms. Most of them were bad marksmen when they enlisted, and the first muskets which were put in their PREPARATIONS FOR THE STRIFE. 275 hands were so defective that they could not at first practice at a target. The infantry regiments, modelled upon those of the regu- lar army, were composed of ten companies, each having a nominal strength of ninety-six men, one captain, one first lieutenant, and one second lieutenant. It was upon these ten companies, formed in two ranks, that all the manoeuvres by battalion were based. The artillery branch of the service was especially in favor with the American volunteers. It suited their taste for the mechanical arts, and they felt, moreover, like all new soldiers, a certain degree of confidence on finding themselves near those powerful weapons, with a longer range than musketry. In short, the regular artil- lery, having always been very numerous, supplied the volunteers with a proportionally larger number of able instructors than any other arm. Consequently, in the army of the Potomac, General McClellan was able to supply each division with a regular battery destined to serve as a model for the others, and the captain of which exercised a superior command over the latter. We shall speak presently of the material they had in their hands. The volunteer artillery, furnished by the several States, was only organized into batteries, having no officer above the rank of captain. The superior officers of that arm of the service all be- longed to the regular army, or had received from the President a temporary rank, with the title of aides-de-camp, on the staif of the general commanding the corps to which they were attached. The cavalry was slower in acquiring the knowledge which alone could render it really useful. It required the experience of sev- eral campaigns to enable them to learn fully the special part which the nature of the country imposed upon them, and to exer- cise a serious influence upon the military operations. The strength of the volunteer regiments of cavalry varied according to the States which furnished them. Some of them, following the ex- ample of the new regular regiments, numbered as many as twelve hundred horses, and the three majors had each a command of four squadrons or companies. Most of them, however, formed upon the old model, were composed of ten companies, each about one hundred strong, without any intermediate field-officer between the colonel and the captains. These regiments, of one thousand horses each, presented a front too extended for the word of command, 276 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. thereby increasing the difficulties of drill. These difficulties were great and numerous. The men arrived on foot ; it was the duty of the Federal government to equip and mount them. The duties of horsemen were new to them. The North American had lost some of the good traditions of horsemanship pertaining to the Anglo-Saxon race. In the eastern part of the Union the saddle- horse has been supplanted by the light vehicle called " buggy ;" in the West the farmer is more of a husbandman than a stock- raiser ; and the pioneer of the border States relies only upon his rifle to contend with mounted Indians. Nevertheless, these regi- ments were generally very popular among the volunteers. For- getting that the mounted man has to be the slave of his horse, they thought that because they could perform a day's march on horseback less labor would be required. The number of cavalry regiments increased to such a degree that, in order to curtail the useless expense imposed upon the treasury, it was found necessary to leave a portion of the men dismounted. We shall show here- after, when we shall have occasion to speak of the maUriel of war, how fearfully horses were used up by the cavalry regiments dur- ing the early stages of the war. Owing to ignorance of the carfe necessary to preserve the animals, the soldiers found themselves dismounted after a few days' campaign, and even obliged to go into cantonments. This was the principal cause of the protracted inefficiency of the Federal cavalry. Besides, the difference be- tween the regiments commanded by an experienced colonel and those whose chiefs were ignorant of their profession was, at first, even greater in the cavalry than in the infantry ; and officers like Averell, Gregg, Buford, and Farnsworth in the army of the Poto- mac, and Sheridan, Kautz, and Kilpatrick in the West, who sub- sequently achieved so much distinction, became at first noted for the excellent condition of the cavalry troops placed under their respective commands. The division formation of these various arms was effected in a nearly uniform manner. In the army of the Potomac four regi- ments, or battalions, constituted a brigade, with an effective force of from 3200 to 3500 men on taking the field. A division was composed of three brigades of infantry, one regiment of cavalry, and four batteries of artillery, one of which belonged to the PREPARATIONS FOR THE STRIFE. 277 regular service. The surplus of cavalry and artillery remained separate. The special services found great resource in the aptitude of the American to pass from one trade to another. This is a great and valuable quality which the practice of true liberty engenders by protecting the individual against excesses in the pursuit of special- ties which confine the faculties of man within a narrow prison. The part of siege artillery in the army of the Potomac was en- trusted to a Connecticut regiment not a soldier or officer of which, except the colonel, had ever before handled a cannon. They learned their new duties, escorted that heavy artillery tln-oughout all tlie marches of the army, and served it with great ability dur- ing the most distressing retreats, while more than once, when their pieces were in safety and the din of battle was heard in the dis- tance, they threw aside rammer and sponge to take part in the con- flict with muskets as foot-soldiers. In order to organize the engineer service it was also found necessary to appeal to the ardor of volunteers who had no military instruction. The officers of that arm scattered among the various corps were not sufficiently numerous to direct in person all the works required by the military operations, nor to instruct the sol- diers employed in them. But there were found, on the one hand, useful auxiliaries among civil engineers, a large and educated class, composed of practical men accustomed to struggle with the difficul- ties of the virgin soil of America ; while, on the other hand, a rapid course of special instruction imparted to a few regiments sufficed to qualify them for the most important works of engineering art, while the rougher work was entrusted indiscriminately to the various regiments of volunteers, among whom some skilful artisans were always sure to be found. The construction of these works was never entirely new to them. Even the most populous States, which still possessed vast forests, all furnished a considerable contingent of woodmen or lumbermen and pioneers, inured from their infancy to the use of the axe, the pick, and the spade, and one regiment a thousand strong might be seen felling more than eighty acres {qnarantes hectares) of tall forests in a single day. Sometimes an unfair advantage was taken of the aptitude of the volunteers for this kind of work. They had scarcely been mus- 278 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. tered into service when a great portion of the time which should have been devoted to drilling was employed in the formation of artistically constructed abattis and in making large en- trenched camps in all the positions which it was suspected the enemy intended to attack in the vicinity of Washington, Louis- ville, Paducah, and St. Louis. These works, at first, were only simple breastworks (ipaulements), formed of trunks of trees and earth, on the skirts of clearings which had been made for the pur- pose of freeing the approaches of the positions to be defended, and were protected by abattis of from ten to forty feet in thickness, where all the branches, skilfully turned outward, sharpened at the points, and hardened by fire, were inextricably intertwined. It was soon rendered necessary to construct improved redoubts for field artillery on the strongest positions along the line ; the very nature of the ground rendered it necessary to multiply their number, and in the end they became veritable citadels, intended for guns of the heaviest calibre. There were thus erected at every available point on the large Western rivers, especially along the Mississippi, either level or plunging batteries, intended to intercept naviga- tion. When these works constituted regular systems of defence, it was deemed expedient to connect them by means of causeways constructed with trunks of trees placed close to each other, such as pioneers build in marshy forests, and which, under the name of corduroy roads, marked the passage of the Federal armies through- out the South. Logs of the same length, and placed crosswise alongside of each other over the miry soil of the forest, constituted the original corduroy, the pieces of which, having become disjointed by the passage of the first troops, fatigue the foot-soldiers, bruise the horses, and jar the wagons, but an entire army sometimes suc- ceeded, nevertheless, in passing thus over many leagues of morass. In roads for permanent use the improved corduroy was com|)Osed of large trunks placed lengthwise, supporting logs laid crosswise ; pieces of timber of smaller diameter filled up the interstices of these cross-logs, and the whole was covered by alternate layers of earth and branches. The variety and simplicity M'hich characterize the mechanic arts of the Americans were first manifested in the construction of the biido;es thrown over the innumerable ravines in the vicin- PREPARATIONS FOR THE STRIFE. 279 ity of Wasliingto 1, forming a connection between all the army encampments. The piers of these bridges were constructed of unhewn logs placed against a slope and laid upon each other hori- zontally in cross directions, resembling those pyramids of three or four faces which may be seen in wood-yards. They supported a platform of trestle-work composed of the same materials, and the whole presented a timber-work of the greatest solidity, not- withstanding its fragile appearance. Skilful from the beginning in this kind of construction, the volunteers continued to improve during the war — so much so that in the Georgia campaign we shall see Sherman's soldiers throw over the Chattahoochee a bridge thirty metres high and two hundred and ninety long in less than five days. In the army of the Potomac two regiments were detailed for this kind of work, and the bridge-equipage was placed in their hands ; they combined the duties of pontoniers with those of sappers. They commenced operations in the former capacity in the beginning of 1862 ; and in a single day they built a bridge across the Potomac at Harper's Ferry in spite of the obstacles presented by a rapid current, a water-depth of seven metres, and the width of the river, which is more than three hun- dred metres. Three years and a half after, at the passage of the James, they gave evidence of the progress they had made in the art of throwing with great rapidity a bridge of boats over a large river. In six hours a bridge six hundred and fifty metres long was made fast in the river in water twenty-eight metres deep, which sustained without accident the passage of an army of more than 100,000 men, 6000 wagons, and 3000 head of cattle. The large number of mechanics found among the volunteers was on more than one occasion the means of repairing and run- ning the locomotives which the enemy had left behind him after disabling them, until a special corps of engineers could be formed t») pur the military railways in working order. This corps, as we shall see presently, rendered the greatest service by introdu- cing a methodical system in the management of railways which doubled their usefulness. Among all the applications of modern science in the interest of wai", the most valuable was the military telegraph, which was opportunely introduced to supply the insufficiency of general 280 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. staffs, and wns the most active aide-de-camp to the American generals. As soon as a marching army had gone into bivouac the tele- graphic wires established a connection between all the general headquarters ; the tent where Morse's battery was hastily set up became the rendezvous of all who under any pretext whatever could obtain access to procure the latest news. It is stated that some newspaper correspondents found means to possess them- selves of important secrets by learning to distinguish the words through the clickings, more or less repeated, of the instrument while it was printing its lines and points upon a strip of paper. A corps of employes was organized for this service, selected with care and sworn to secrecy, for upon their discretion depended the fate of the armies. In the army of the Potomac it was placed under the direction of Major Eckert, who by his intelli- gence rendered the most important services. The field-telegraph was composed of a few wagons loaded with wire and insulators, which were set up during the march, some- times upon a pole picked up on the road, sometimes on the trees themselves Avhich bordered it ; and the general's tent was hardly raised when the operator was seen to make his appearance, hold- ing the extremity of that wire, more precious than that of Ari- adne in the labyrinth of American forests. An apparatus still more portable was used for following the troops on the day of battle. This was a drum, carried on two wheels, around which was wound a very slender copper wire enveloped in gutta-percha. A horse attached to the drum unwound the wire, which, owing to its wrapper, could be fastened to the branches of a tree, trailed on the sTOund, or laid at the bottom of a stream. A wav-station was established wherever the drum stopped, even in the centre of the battle-field, and placed the troops engaged in the conflict in direct communication with the general-in-chief. These field- telegraphs, established at the rate of three kilometres per hour, generally extended to a distance of from eight to ten, and some- times even to thirty-two, kilometres. A single example will show the importance of the military telegraph. Without counting the lines already in existence of which possession was taken, the employes of the government con- PREPARATIONS FOR THE STRIFE. 281 structed five thousand two hundred kilometres during a single year of the Mar, and they forwarded nearly one million eight hundred thousand despatches ; and sufferings and dangers were not spared those men whose merit was the greater in that it was less conspicuous. More than one among them, shivering with fever in an unheal- thy station, lay down with his ear against the instrument to write with a trembling hand under dictation some important despatches whose secret he would confide to no one. Many paid M'ith their lives for their boldness in setting up their instruments under, the very fire of the enemy ; and one fact almost incredible bears testimony to the dangers to which they were thus exposed. Dur- ing the siege of Charleston the wire which connected the be- sieging batteries ran so close to the rifle-pits of the Confed- erate skirmishers that it was frequently cut by their balls. The telegraph Avas, however, at times a perfidious messenger. Bodies of partisans would suddenly take possession of an intermediate station and throw the Federal staffs into confusion by sending false despatches destined to upset their plans. One day the guerilla ]\Iosbv, having performed an exploit of this kind, took an impudent advantage of it to send to the office of the Secretary of War, Mr. Stanton, a despatch full of insults addressed to that high functionary. The Confederates, on their part, charged one of their employes with having by his disloyalty contributed to the loss of Fort Donelson by delaying instead of accelerating the arrival of the reinforcements which were to relieve that place. If this fact has not been positively proved, there is nothing improbable in it, and it shows that, with all its advantages, the use of the telegraph in war is not without its dangers. In the American armies there was also organized an aerial tel- egraph by means of flags raised upon a long pole, which were waved to right and left over the stations in sight of each other. Sometimes perched on the top of a tree, sometimes sitting astride over the roof of a house, the employes of the signal corps, who performed this duty with untiring patience, transmitted the news to the general-in-chief and his orders to his subordinates. The coolness and promptitude with which they performed this task was often of great service to the armies at critical moments. 282 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. Two balloons were connected with the army of the Potomac ; and during the long inaction which its organization around Wash- ington caused, they only contributed to the amusement of those who w^ere allowed the privilege of an ascension. When the army found itself in presence of the enemy, the latter honored the bal- loons with numerous cannon-shots, especially during the siege of Yorktown, but they never succeeded in hitting them ; and the greatest danger that ever threatened the aeronaut was that which he incurred in the beginning, when, as he made his first ascensions .above the Federal camps, some stupid sentinel, ignorant whether the aerial voyager was friend or enemy, would be sure to fire at the indiscreet individual who thus hovered over their heads. A gas generator, a heavy machine composed of ovens, retorts, and pipes, which it required twenty trucks to carry, followed the army at a distance, and the already inflated balloons, which a whole com- pany controlled by means of strong ropes and strove to direct along the winding roads of Virginia. At the least puff of wind each of these monsters would give a sudden jerk, compelling those who held them captive to stand on tip-toe, and to perform, in spite of themselves, some of the strangest evolutions. Although ex- pensive, difficult of transportation, and of doubtful service, this instrument was not without its usefulness, especially during a siege, when, elevated at leisure, it could communicate the most val- uable information concerning the enemy's works. Thus, before Yorktown, Mr. Lowe, the operator, who carried an electric ap- paratus in the car and communicated by means of a wire with the Federal batteries, could indicate the result of their fire and enable them to correct their aim. At the same time he discerned the position of 'all the enemy's pieces with a precision which an inspection after the evacuation of the place fully confirmed. But it would be wrong to rely upon so capricious an auxiliary ; for on the day of battle, when its assistance is needed to discover the enemy's reserves, a puff of wind will suffice to prevent its as- cent, and the aide-de-camp sent in haste to make in that elevated observatory a reconnaissance, on which may depend the fate of a day's battle, is obliged to wait in vain for a favorable state of the atmosphere to render an ascension possible. The electric and aerial telegraphs, the balloons, and other en- PREPARATIONS FOR THE STRIFE. 283 giues of that description should certainly not be despised; but they are fatal boons to the general whom they keep inside of his tent at a moment when nothing can replace the coup-cVosil of the master and the jDresence of the chief among his soldiers. In speaking of the organization of the American armies, we cannot omit to mention a few of the distinctive features of the vi.lunteers who composed them. These armies differed from ours in the large number of mar- ried men they contained. In America there are no military laws to interfere with marriage, and the American, who is but little addicted to domestic habits and is the artificer of his own fortune, does not enter into those calculations concerning family expenses which stifle the spirit of enterprise in a nation, and eventually impoverish its population both morally and numerically. The war acted as a stimulus to marriage — among the officers, in the hope of being cared for by female hands if wounded ; among the soldiers, because the States had assured a certain indemnity to their wives and a liberal pension to their widows. Excellent workmen wherever there was any engineering work required, the volunteers were to show themselves industrious in mitigating the rigors of camp and bivouac, as they had learned from infa"ncy to improvise among the forests light shelters or solid dwellings. From the first day's halt the tents were replaced by roofs made of the boughs of trees, generally pitched on the skirts of a wood ; for experience soon demonstrated how unhealthy it is to encamp under the thick foliage, which does not allow the air to circulate freely. When snow and ice came to surprise the army of the Potomac encamped around Washington, the soldiers did not wait for orders to go into winter quarters to provide against these new enemies — orders which a general never issued, except to deceive the enemy and when he has determined to break up the camp suddenly. As soon as the first cold weather made itself felt through the tents every one set his ingenuity to work to devise means of warmth. Only a few tents, conical ly shaped, with a hole at the top, like Indian huts, admitted the introduction of cast-iron stoves. In tlie others they constructed a hearth of hardened clay or of wood covered with mud ; barrels placed one on the top of another served as chimneys ; an excavation running the length of 284 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. the tent, covered over with large stones which retained the heat and communicated with a fire deeply set in the earth, warmed the whole interior. The tents, at first surrounded with boughs, were raised upon a wooden foundation, which resulted in forming real walls ; the canvas which had done service for roof disappeared in turn, and the whole gave way to the classic log hut, with its walls of unhewn logs and its floor of rammed earth, that rustic edifice which designates the site of the future cities of the New World in the midst of the virgin forests. The soldiers of the two armies left everywhere where they passed the winter entire villages of these primitive dwellings ; but these villages, not the fruits of civilization, but of war, being abandoned as suddenly as they had been constructed, were destined to disappear rapidly without being replaced by either brick or stone. "Vigor and skill among the volunteers did not exclude instruc- tion. Active citizens in their respective counties and States, and identified with either of the political parties, they were fully ac- quainted with public affairs and could not dispense with news- papers. With scarcely any exception, they had all received that primary education which, without initiating the man into all the discoveries of science, teaches him to make use of his intelligence, which awakens a desire for knowledge, and which, when it jper- vades a whole population, imparts to it as much power as a sim- ple unit placed before any number of zeros. It is owing to this general svstem of education that the New World may be called the country of progress, and that its institutions are founded upon the regular and conscientious practice of universal suffrage. The New England States are entirely exempt from those twin scourges inseparable from our old social systems, ignorance and pauj)er- ism. The illiterate minority of the army was almost exclusively composed of European emigrants. On opening the knapsack of the American soldier one was almost sure to find in it a few books, and generally a Bible, which he read in the evening without hiding from his comrades. An inkstand, a piece of blotting-paper, some envelopes orna- mented with monograms, badges, and portraits completed the assortment. He made, in fact, abundant use of the liberality of the government, which transported all his letters postage-free. PREPARATIONS FOR THE STRIFE. 285 A large carpet-bag, hung up against the tent of the adjutant of each regiment, served as a letter-box ; and a few hours of rest suf- ficing to fill it, it was often necessary to empty it twice a day. Tlie 11th Massachusetts, numbering only eight hundred and sixty-three officers and men, has been cited as having sent off ^rom its camp near Washington an average of four thousand five hundred letters weekly — that is to say, each soldier wrote from five to six letters in seven days. Consequently, the arrival and departure of the mail played a great part in camp-life. Together "with the correspondence, the mail brought enormous packages of newspapers, which ragged boys, both on foot and on horseback, distributed in great haste, even to the remotest corners of the camp. They were frequently seen crying their papers on the very field of battle, and selling them to the wounded scarcely able to rise. In every tent the latest news brought by the Herald or the Tribune was read in the evening and eagerly discussed, while the soldier on duty, if he thought himself unobserved, walked up and down with his musket in one hand and his newspaper in the other. It may not be irrelevant in this place to say a few words as to the means employed by journals to render them interesting to their numerous readers iii the towns and in the camps, and to maintain constant communication between the peojjle of the JSTorthern States and the armies in the field. Greatly in demand, less on account of their abstract opinions than for the news they promulgated, and aiming at no political propagandism except through the manner they represented facts, the principal object of each was to gather as much information as possible and to be the first to place it before the public. No efforts were spared to attain this object; and their correspondents, who were to be found in all the armies, formed a staff (this was the acknowledged name), entitled to a place alongside of the regu- larly organized corps of which we have spoken. The great journals were represented in each army corps by an accredited correspondent, whose duty it was to see everything, to take part in every expedition, and to allow no incident of the war to pass without reporting it. This staff comprised the greatest va- riety of characters and peculiarities of life. In its ranks were 286 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. MTiters of positive merit and men who, animated by a real passion for war, ended by exchanging the pen for the sword. The life which circumstances compelled these correspondents to lead ex- acted special qualities — tact, daring, and a great deal of assurance, a still greater amount of patience and robust health. When a secret was divulged, the first suspicions fell upon them. In con- sequence of a few lamentable indiscretions, the government ex- acted a promise from all those engaged in writing for the news- papers not to publish what it was important to conceal from the enemy. They were therefore obliged to distinguish, among all interesting facts they were the first to learn, such as could lawfully be communicated to the public. More than once they had to re- sort to stratao;em in order to evade the order of some incensed general who had forbidden their stay among his troops. One day Sherman drove off all the correspondents from his army. They all left, for his orders could not be defied with impunity, but at the end of one month they were all back. Another gen- eral, while preserving a friendly aspect toward them, found means to prevent them from seeing anything, and confined them to the simple task of reporting stenographically the prearranged state- ment which he gave them. Under such circumstances, to become a close observer and an agreeable reporter, to be tolerated by the generals and welcomed by the subordinates, to know how to re- pay each item of information with a kind and flattering word, and in case of necessity to enforce respect through the redoubt- able influence which is derived from the support of a great jour- nal, — certainly required, to say nothing of mental qualifications, a character at once sprightly and tempered. A private individual in the midst of a large army, having neither the shoulder-straps of the officer nor the musket of the soldier with which to influ- ence others, or even to justify his presence there; obliged to share the dinner of one man or to ask a ration of forage for his horse from another ; always on the watch not to miss the hour of de- parture, which the jealous mistrust of the chief of staff carefully kept from his knowledge ; always ready to throw his wallet upon his horse — a wallet oftener empty than full ; sleeping wherever he could, behind a tent, in a wagon, or under a tree, — the correspond- ent, worn out with fatigue, was obliged every night, whilst all PREPABATIONS FOR THE STRIFE. 287 around were reposing near the expii'ing camp-fires, to take out his pen and compose upon his knees, by the light of a wretched lan- tern, a letter capable of entertaining a public difficult to please and greedy for sensations. Real dangers frequently caused these hardy pioneers of the press to share the glory of the soldiers. The New York Herald had in its service, with the fleets and armies, as many as sixty-three correspondents at once. One of them was killed on the field of battle, another was present in twenty-seven combats and was six times Avounded, five others were wounded, and two died of exhaustion, while seven or eight fell into the hands of the enemy. The latter were rather mildly treated in consequence of the opinion of the journal they repre- sented, but the Confederates deemed no severity too great for those who happened to be connected with abolition papers ; and the picture drawn by INIr. Richardson, a correspondent of the Tribune, of his sufferings in Southern prisons is one of the most affecting narratives that one can read. Before concluding this chapter we must devote a few pages to the regular army, which was being reorganized at the same time that the volunteer regiments were forming. This reorganization, which was rendered indispensable by the defection of a portion of the officers, by the high positions to which others had been promoted, and by the loss of soldiers who had capitulated in 'J^>y'\^. \v;is decreed by the joint resolution of May 4, 18G1, and which Congress had passed on the 29th of July. To the five regiments of cavalry which received a uniform designation a sixth was added ; the number of artillery regiments was increased from four to five, and that of the infantry regiments from ten to nineteen. These eleven new regiments were much stronger numer- ically than the old ones : the Sixth Cavalry, raised to twelve squad- rons, numbered 1189 officers and men; the Fifth Artillery, also divided into twelve batteries of six field-pieces each, commanded by twelve captains and three majors, comprised a total force of 1919 men. Finally, instead of a single battalion of ten com- panies, the new infantry regiments were composed of three bat- talions of eight companies each, and their effective force, as regu- lated by law, was 2452 men. These new regiments, having once received their full comple- 288 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. ment, added 25,000 men to the regular army, and thus made up the total of 42,000 men fixed by the law of July 29th. But it was so difficult to obtain recruits that in December, 1861, when the enlistment of volunteers had reached the figure of 640,637 men, this army had not yet enrolled- under its banners more than 20,334 men, not quite one-half the number prescribed by law. The small number of enlistments in the regular army was due, first of all, to the fact that these enlistments were for a definite period, while the volunteers were to be discharged at the end of the war, and everybody believed that it could not last three years ; then to the retention of two dollars per month from the pay of the regular soldier, while the volunteer drew his compensation in full, and the States granted him additional bounties and secured a pension to his family ;. and, finally, to the spirit of comrade- ship which influenced the organization of volunteer companies, whilst the reputation for severe discipline which the regular army had gained kept many young men aloof from it. This army was not only compelled to play an insignificant part in the new forces of the republic, but the elements of which it was composed were another cause of weakness. Out of its 20,000 soldiers more than half, collected with so much difficulty, were entirely raw, and their instruction was the more difficult because the most intelligent, the strongest, and the most disinterested men were immediately prevented from joining their ranks. In conse- quence of the prejudices above mentioned, the proportion of new comers was even larger among the officers than among the sol- diers. The drafts which the volunteers had made upon the per- sonnel of the regular army had diminished their number even more than this defection. Twenty-two superior officers had thus left their respective commands to become generals, and officers of inferior grade had likewise been called to fill positions of trust elsewhere — so that out of the eleven new regiments there were eight whose nominal colonels exercised other commands as gen- erals of volunteers, while the greatest part of their officers had received no military education whatever. In fact, the vacan- cies had been so numerous that the West Point Academy, already reduced by the withdrawal of the Southern cadets, was not able to fill them, and it was found necessary to distribute the lo^ver PREPARATIONS FOR THE STRIFE. 289 grades among young men fresh from civil life, who filled the subaltern positions in the new regiments. Nevertheless, the esprit de corps, that moral influence which attaches to a word, a number, or a sign, which has the power of transforming men, soon imparted habits of steadiness and discipline to the new comers, who, after the first combats, rivalled their older brethren in courage and sustained the credit of the regular troops. It was especially the regular infantry which, in consequence of its reduced strength, had to play an insignificant part among the divisions of the volunteer infantry. Yet in the army of Ken- tucky, where it was only represented by a single battalion belong- ing to the Eighteenth Regiment, that detachment distinguished itself in the first battle fought by that army at Mill Springs. In the army of the Potomac it was represented by eight battal- ions, or a little over five thousand men ; these were not enough for a reserve destined to strike a decisive blow, but this corps, under able command, served as a model to the others and constantly encouraged them by its example, whereas, if it had been scattered, its traditions would have been destroyed and its efficiency neutral- ized. Formed into a single brigade, these eight battalions were at first entrusted with the delicate duty of protecting the city of Washington ; we shall find them again among the volunteers, suffering themselves to be cut to pieces rather than fall Ijack on the battle-fields of Virginia. The regular cavalry had a more important part to play at the beginning than the infantry, for it was proportionally more numerous, and the inexperience of the mounted volunteers compelled it to perform during a certain period of time all the duties pertaining to that arm. In order to accomplish this and to recover its morale, which had been affected by the capitulations in Texas, the defection of four col- onels out of five, and the changes of regimental numbers. Gen- eral McClellan hastened to annex two-thirds of them to the array of the Potomac, which only contained seven squadrons when he assumed the command. From that time they found themselves sufficiently strong to teach the volunteers their business by fighting in front of them and making them gradually participate in the work, the burden of which they had hitherto borne alone. We shall frequently meet them in the course of our narrative; but in Vol. I.— 19 290 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. proportion as the volunteers who fought by their side acquired experience, the particular importance of the regulars will dimin- ish, and will disappear altogether when, after the reorganization of the Federal cavalry, the regulars will be distributed among the various corps whose long expeditions we shall have occasion to relate. The artillery force was increased by the creation of the fifth regiment, and the garrisons required by the armament of fortifi- cation, to a total of fifty-two batteries. Although the effective force of these batteries was far from being complete, their number gave them a preponderance in the new armies, because either the regular artillery was kept united for the purpose of forming powerful reserves, or it was divided among the various corps to instruct the volunteers. This twofold duty was assigned to them in the army of the Potomac. Out of seventy-three batteries or four hundred and seven pieces which that army had at the begin- ning of 1862, there were twenty-nine regular batteries, compris- ing one hundred and sixty-six pieces ; eighteen batteries formed a corps of reserve, and one of the remaining batteries was attached to each division of the army. As we have stated, the eleven captains who commanded these last batteries had in addition three volunteer batteries under their orders ; and thanks to their instructions, the new artillery after one or two campaigns equalled the regulars who had been given them as models. The formation of a strong reserve of artillery was a wise precaution in an army composed entirely of young soldiers. In the army of the Potomac it was organized by the brave Colonel Hunt, under the supervision of General Barry, and comprised three divisions, one of heavy artillery, another of light batteries on foot, and a third of horse-batteries. The latter, four in number, armed with three-inch cannon, solid and light, well provided with horses, and perfectly handled, accompanied the cavalry, which they frequently assisted in an effective manner without ever impeding its movements. These are the last lines we shall devote, by way of s})ecial mention, to the little regular army which we have followed since its formation ; for after having preserved its military traditions and supported, in the hour of danger, the tottering edifice of the PREPARATIONS FOR THE STRIFE. 291 Federal Constitution, it was absorbed into the improvised armies to the creation of which we have just referred. But if it ceased to have a separate existence, its spirit still survived and continued to control the action of the new comers; the influence and the im- portance of the regular officers will increase in proportion as the volunteers acquire more military experience ; and when at the end of the struggle the regular army shall once emerge to view, we shall find five hundred and fifty of its officers detached among the volunteers, one hundred and fifteen of whom were generals and sixty commanders of regiments. Let us add, however, that this regular army, such as we shall then see it reappear, will no longer be the same we have known before the war, constituting a kind of isolated corporation, and the jealous guardian of its traditions; it will, in fact, have opened its doors to all merit displayed on the field of battle; and numbering in its ranks all those who after achieving distinction have desired to continue in the mili- tary career, it will have the rare good fortune to combine the best qualities of the volunteers wdth the noble attributes of the old regulars. CHAPTER ly. THE MATERIEL OF WiiE. BEFORE we resume the narrative of military operations we must close our inquiry into the organization of the two con- tending armies with a few words regarding the manner in which they were equipped ; the creation of the maUriel, so varied, so ex- tensive, and so indispensable to both parties, was as difficult a problem for their chiefs as the reunion of the personnel of which they were composed. The almost inexhaustible industrial resources of the North gave her a great advantage in this respect, but it required time to bring this materiel together, to transport and distribute it. It required time, above all, to introduce order and method into those opera- tions, and to teach the armies the practical value of the instru- ments placed in their hands. In the Federal army the duty of organizing this materiel, as we have said before, was divided among three branches of the administration — the departments of the quar- termaster, the commissary of subsistence, and the ordnance ; the first charged with equipment and transportation, the second with the provision of food, and the third with arming troops. As soon as the volunteers were called out the quartermaster's department entered into contracts with home manufacturers and a few foreign merchants, which enabled it to clothe the soldiers as fast as they presented themselves, and to supply them with all the necessaries of personal outfit. Notwithstanding some defective lots and a few very exorbitant bargains, this mercantile operation was successfully carried out. No one was troubled at the thought of spending a few millions more than was strictly necessary in order to induce persons engaged in private business to change their opera- tions at once, so as to meet the new demands made upon the industry of the country. This transformation was effected in a remarkable manner. Thus nearly all the accoutrements for the cavalry of 292 THE MATERIEL OF WAR. 293 the army of the Potomac were supplied by a firm largely engaged in the manufacture of trimming-laces {'passementerie) in Philadel- phia, which in a few days threw aside their bobbins to engage in the manufacture of leather belts and sabres. During the first fourteen months of the war the administrative department fur- nished the army with three million coats and nearly two million five hundred thousand blankets. It supplied two hundred and forty thousand tents for the first winter's encampments. AA^ien the armies took the field, they were naturally obliged to leave all these tents behind them, with the exception of a certain number for the officers. The quartermaster's department then substituted shelter-tents, of which they distributed more than three hundred thousand in one year. These were soon improved by the use of india-rubber cloth ; and the advantages of this system to the health of the soldiers in the marshy forests of America were so great that by degrees all the coverlets of the army were replaced by the waterproof poncho, a square piece of cloth with a hole in the centre for the head, worn over the shoulders when it rained, and in the evening spread out upon the damp ground, over which the shelter-tent was pitched. Consequently, the number of these india- rubber garments, which in 1861 was forty thousand, rose to one million five hundred thousand in 18B4 ; and it has been estimated that, placed alongside of each other, they would have presented a surface of one mile and a quarter square — that is to say, four times as large as the gardens of the Tuileries. The uniforms furnished to the volunteers of various arms were nearly all alike, and this similarity increased in proportion as the outfits which the first regiments had brought from their respective States were replaced by the issues of the government departments. Their color of deep blue distinguished them from the gray coats of the Confederates. The felt hats and the regulation coat of the regular army, which the generals and their staffs adopted almost everywhere, were replaced by the kepi and the blouse, a sack which had the inconvenience of being too loose to fit well about the shoulders. A canvas haversack, a belt to which was fastened the cartridge-box and the bayonet, completed the accou- trement of the foot-soldier. The equipment of the mounted men was also copied from that 294 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. of the regular cavalry, althougli they had to wage war in a country very diflPerent from the Western plains. The regulation saddle, called the McClellan saddle, was light and comfortable, and did not hurt the withers of the animal, but the wooden stirrups with leather coverings to protect the feet against the tall grass of the prairie were heavy and inconvenient. The cavalry soldier carried a revolver at his belt ; the regulations required that he should also attach his sabre to it, but by degrees he acquired the habit of sus- pending it to the pommel — an excellent idea ; for if the soldier, when dismounted, should never be separated from his pistol, the side-arm, on the contrary, only embarrasses his movements the moment he quits the saddle. The mounted men were moreover provided with a short musket, or even an infantry carbine, which greatly increased the weight of the burden of their horses, but of which they made frequent use in those engagements where they were obliged to fight on foot. All the personal effects of the soldiers, coats, linen, shoes, and boots, were furnished directly by the administrative departments. No reduction was made from their pay to constitute a regimental fund. The system of making clothing in the regiments, which has enabled certain armies to practice economy, has never existed in America. It was looked upon as calculated to greatly increase the number of non-combatants in the personnel of a regiment, and it was deemed best to adopt the system of general contracts, more in harmony with the process of modern industry, even at the risk of furnishing the soldiers with uniforms not as well fitting as might be desired. By this means the functions of the administrative departments and the system of regimental accounts were simplified, whereas it would have been often difficult to discriminate between proper economy and illegal profits. It was the enterprise of private individuals, under the supervision of special officers of the administrative departments, which furnished the soldiers with everything. Of all the operations entrusted to the quartermaster's depart- ment the most important, as well as the most difficult, was that of supplying fresh horses for the cavalry, the artillery, and the transportation departments. The consumption of draught animals by the armies was to affect seriously the agricultural THE MATERIEL OF WAR. 29£ interests of the country. The breeds of American horse;-: are generally small. The fatal habit of putting them too soon under the saddle interferes with their growth. The regulations which forbade their being accepted into the service under five years of age and less than fifteen hands high (five feet at the withers) could not be complied with, for it was necessary to take all that could be found ; and the sorrier the horses the greater the con- sumption, and consequently the larger the amount of fresh horses required to replace them. During the first year of the war the number of horses procured for the cavalry and the artillery alone was one hundred and ten thousand. Immense corrals were established among the vacant lots in the neighborhood of Washington and of the Western cities to re- ceive droves of animals emaciated by long journeys which the horse-contractors brought from Vermont and Kentucky. Taken a few days previously from the farm upon which they were grazing at liberty, never having been broken, these horses were crowded in a too narrow space, carelessly picketed, baidly fed, seldom groomed, and without any shelter. Their power of endurance under so many trials showed what robust constitutions they possessed in spite of their appearance, and the impunity with which the contractors, horse-dealers, inspectors, and the officers authorized to make their own selections moved about among them was the best proof of their docility. Occasionally, however, some unforeseen accident would create disorder at the depot. Tims, for instance, one evening the prin- cipal stable in Washington caught fire, and six hundred horses maddened with terror rushed through the badly-lighted streets of the capital, upsetting pedestrians and carriages on their way and spreading trouble and confusion everywhere. Notwithstanding the enormous supply of fresh horses, the gov- ernment could hardly replace the lame and foundered animals which filled the large infirmaries established specially for their reception. During the first year of the war there were no less than fifty-seven thousand cured; in the course of those twelve months more than one regiment used up three horses to every man; and it was only through the severest discipline that the mounted men were taug-ht at last to take care of their horses. 296 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. Thus it happened that one of them was killed in the streets of Washington by a sentinel who had in vain ordered him to slacken his pace, in order to prevent them from madly galloping about the capital. We have already shown by a few figures the importance of the transportation service; this importance will become more and more appparent as we proceed with the narrative of the cam- paigns in which this branch of the service exercised a decided influence. It will suffice to say in this place that during the first year, which alone occupies our present attention, the govern- ment was obliged to furnish more than twenty thousand wagons and eighty-four thousand mules, without counting the wagons brought by the soldiers themselves from their respective States. The military transportation was effected exclusively by means of wagons, pack-horses being seldom employed in the United States. The officers who had made use of them in Mexico, while recognizing the advantages of their employment in certain cases, did not deem it expedient to recommend their adoption in a coun- try where wagon-roads are so easily constructed. This system would be attended by the very great inconvenience of making each animal carry a lighter load than if in harness ; moreover, it would have been impossible to find experienced drivers to man- age these pack-animals. A large establishment was established at Perryville, on the Susquehanna, where mules were trained to work in teams of six, driven by word of command with the aid of a single loose rein. The construction of bridge-equipages, which, once collected, were placed under the care of volunteer troops specially selected for that service, belonged also to the quartermaster's department. The maUriel of these equipages varied frequently. One experi- ment was made, and then abandoned as too complicated, with iron pontons, which in the water served as boats, and on land were placed on wheels to form trucks to bear the roadway. In the armies of the West large bags of gutta-percha or india-rubber were substituted for boats, but were rejected by the army of the Poto- mac, as they were too easily torn. The materials most generally in use were either simple wooden barges that could easily be THE MATERIEL OF WAR. 297 repaired or tubular pontons of sheet iron, which had the advan- tage of being much lighter. It will be enough to mention the regulation ration of the American soldier to convey an idea of the importance of the subsistence department, whose duty it was to provide food for the armies, which on the 1st of December, 1861, numbered six hundred thousand men. To the commissary of subsistence there were no "dead-heads" (non-valeurs). All those who were prevented by special assignment from appearing on the field of battle, and whom the general must deduct from his fighting force, seated themselves in the evening with the rest around the mess-table, which the commissary had to supply. One pound of biscuit or twenty-two ounces of bread or floiJr, one pound and a quarter of fresh or salt beef or three-quarters of a pound of bacon — a favor- ite food with soldiers — constituted the bulk of the ration ; but to this was added for every division of one hundred men by the regulations eight gallons of beans, ten pounds of rice or of hominy, an American dish made from the grains of corn,* ten pounds of coffee, fifteen of sugar, four gallons of vinegar and two of salt, one pound and a quarter of candles, and four pounds of soap. Consequently, notwithstanding the appetite of the American soldier and his want of economy in cooking, it would have been no easy matter for him to consume such a ration ; and the forty-seven or forty-eight men composing a company would form a mess which enabled them to get along without drawing their full quantity of rations from the commissary. The difference was paid to them in money, and generally formed a common fund for the company, controlled by it without the interposition of their superior officers. Occasionally a regiment would undertake a similar economy in regard to the supply of flour. A consider- able number of those encamped around Washington constructed earthen ovens similar to those in use among Western settlers and made their own bread, thereby realizing the double advantage of substituting fresh bread for biscuit and realizing the profits accruing from the economy of their flour rations. One regiment alone, the * Hominy is made of dried corn, but green corn played a great pait as food during the war. — Ed. 298 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. third of Sickles' brigade, was thus enabled to save thirteen hun- dred dollars in less than two months. The task of supplying the Federal troops with arms and ammu- nition, which devolved upon the ordnance department, was the most difficult of all. In fact, both the government armories and private manufactories were insufficient to meet the demand, and it required time to establish additional ones. The wonderful machines by which the most complicated rifles now in use through- out Europe are constructed almost without the aid of man are of American invention, and have given a well-deserved reputation to the expansion rifles manufactured at the government armory in Springfield. But this establishment had only capacity for pro- ducing from ten to twelve thousand yearly, and the supply could not be increased except by constructing new machines. The private workshops were equally insufficient ; the Federal factory at Harrier's Ferry had been destroyed by fire, and the depots were empty. It was important, however, to supply the most pressing of all the wants of the soldier, that of having a weapon in his hands. During the first year of the war the ordnance department suc- ceeded in furnishing the various armies in the field, not counting what was left at the depots, one million two hundred and sev- enty-six thousand six hundred and eighty-six portable firearms (muskets, carbines, and pistols), one thousand nine hundred and twenty-six field- or siege-guns, twelve hundred pieces for batteries in position, and two hundred and fourteen million cartridges for small-arms and for cannon. But it was obliged to apply to Europe for muskets and ammunition ; this was the only war commodity that America procured in considerable quantities from the Old World, and it was this supply which proved to be the most defective. Agents without either experience or credit, and sometimes unscrupulous, bought in every part of Europe, on account of the Federal government, all the muskets they could pick up, without any regard to their quality or price. The Eng- lish and Belgian manufactories not being able to satisfy their demands fast enough, they procured from the little German states all their old-fashioned arms, which those states hastened to get rid of at a price which enabled them to re^^lace them with needle- THE MATMiEL of WAR. 299 guns. In short, the refuse of all Europe passed into the hands of the American volunteers. A portion of the muskets being unfit for use, the few that were serviceable had to be kept for the soldiers doing guard duty in each company. The calibres were all mixed up ; conical balls were issued for the large German smooth-bore muskets, while the old American cartridge, containing one ball and four buckshot, was given to those who had the good fortune to possess a minie rifle. The defective armament of the infantry would have been suf- ficient to delay the opening of the campaign for several months. In order to remedy this it was found necessary, in the first instance, to classify the calibres of the muskets by regiments, then gradually to throw aside the most worthless. After a while the American factories, both national and private, were able to furnish a sufficient quantity of new arms to justify this process. While willing to encourage private enterprise to a great extent, the Federal government determined to control it ; and in order to avoid being at its mercy, it largely extended its own establish- ments. Thus, in 1862, the Springfield manufactory delivered two hundred thousand rifles, while in the year 1863, during which there were manufactured two hundred and fifty thousand there, the importation of arms from Europe by the Northern States ceased altogether. The rifle which bore the name of the Federal manufactory had the advantage of not requiring heavy charges, of giving a great precision of aim at a distance of from six to seven hundred metres, and of being easily loaded and man- aged. It was therefore introduced throughout the army as fast as the ordnance department was able to meet the demands that were made for that arm from every quarter. But, at the same time, a great number of new inventions were tried upon a scale which enabled the authorities to test their merits. Some were even adopted by whole regiments of cavalry ; and the practice of breech-loading, which was common to all the systems, contrib- uted greatly to their efficiency in the numerous engagements in which those regiments had to fight on foot. With the exception of this mode of loading, they differed greatly in their construc- tion ; it would be impossible for us to describe all, for tliere were no less than eleven of the first class. We shall only mention two 300 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. belonging 'o the class called repeating-rifles — that is to say, arms which fire a certain number of shots without being reloaded. The Colt rifle is a long-barrelled revolver with five or six cham- bers, and the ball is forced into seven grooves forming a spiral which grows more and more contracted. This heavy weapon was formidable in practiced hands, but it required considerable time to reload it. The second was the Spencer rifle, an excellent arm, the use of which became more and more extended in the Federal army. The butt is pierced, in the direction of the length, by a tube containing seven cartridges, which are deposited successively, after each fire, in the chamber, replacing in turn those which, when discharged, are thrown out by a very simple mechanism. This magazine, entirely protected, is very easily recharged. Many extraordinary instances have been cited of successful personal defence due to the rapidity with which this arm can be fired, and some Federal regiments of infantry which made a trial of it were highly pleased with the result. Most of these rifles were of two models — one for the use of the infantry, the other, lighter and shorter, for the cavalry. The materiel of the artillery, which had to be created, was as extensive as the armament of the infantry, and its construction was also new to American manufactories. Nevertheless, the great workshops for smelting iron and steel were so rapidly transformed into cannon foundries that the ordnance department was not obliged to depend on Europe for a supply. At the time when the war broke out none of the systems of rifle cannon invented a few years before had ever been adopted, or even seriously experimented upon, by the officers of the regu- lar army. But the latter, while adhering to the brass smooth-bore cannon, had studied these difierent inventions, and did not conceal their preference for the rifled system, by which the ball, like the minie bullet, inserted through the mouth of the cannon, is driven into the grooves under the pressure of the gases which propel it forward. The impression obtained from these inquiries in com- mon was never forgotten by the officers who were placed in posi- tions of command in the two hostile armies ; and notwithstanding the diversity of details, the guns of those two armies always bore a strong family resemblance. But nothing could limit the THE MATERIEL OF WAR. 301 fertility of inventors stimulated by the war. A few among them were men of real ability and skill, but those who indulged in chimerical speculations were more numerous. Some of them were visionary and ridiculous, and there were a few to whom their in- ventions brought disaster, as, for example, Mr. James and Major Hunt, the former of whom was killed by the explosion of his gun and the latter asphyxiated by his submarine battery.* None of these inventions were subjected to the polygon proof. There was no time for that kind of experiments which alone en- abled the expert fully to ascertain the real value of an arm before it is exposed to all the vicissitudes of war. The materiel of the army was thus suddenly encumbered with a mass of different models, all equally new to those who had to handle them on the field of battle. In fact, every inventor who had any patronage could easily manage to have a few of his guns recommended to the principal of some foundry, who was generally his partner. A few shots fired in the neighborhood of the factory were deemed sufficient to determine the strength of the guns ; and if chance favored them, the piece was immediately received and added to the diversified assortment Mdiich already existed in the Federal artillery. This very variety, however, was at times the means of procuring the opportunity for remarkable inventions to obtain a striking confirmation of their merits on the field of battle. American genius, quick to turn everything to account, under- stood at once that, at a time when any delay might prove fatal, it was not expedient to look for a weapon too frail and difficult to repair. It studied, above all, simplicity in regard to the four es- sential parts in the manufacture of artillery — the founding, the system of rifling, the mode of projDelling balls and shells. There were wanting field-pieces that could be rapidly constructed at a moderate cost, easily loaded, so as to be handled by inexperienced hands, and projectiles that could be carried to great distances without injury to the parts intended to be forced into the grooves. Two guns were adopted which amply satisfied these require- ments — the Parrott gun, made of cast iron, secured with iron- plated bands at the breech, and one gun constructed at the iron- works of Phoenixville, designated by its calibre, from three to * Major E. B. Hunt, of tlie Engineers. — Ed. 302 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. four and a half inches in diameter, and made of wrought-iron bars. The problem regarding the construction of guns of large calibre was solved by Captain Rodman, whose process imparted such strength to those guns, although made of cast iron, that it only required the application of the Parrott system of plate bands to enable them to discharge conical projectiles of the gi-eatest weight. U]) to that time the guns had been cast solid, and bored after- wards ; thus the exterior of the piece, touching the sides of the mould, was the first to solidify, and the interior, still half liquid, not able to contract regularly, became crystallized, leaving here and there in the mass hollows or flaws which caused the metal to lose its uniformity. Kodman reversed the operation, and caused the piece to cool from the interior. A hollow cylinder, contain- ing a spiral tube through which a current of cold water was kept passing, surrounded with cords and with sand to protect it from the metal in fusion, was placed in the mould to designate the bore ; the gases escaped by means of longitudinal flutings in the cylinder and through the spaces left by the cords, which were constantly consumed. Whilst the interior was the first portion solidified, through contact with the cylinder so constantly kept cool, the furnaces burning under the mould kept up the heat on the outside. The intensity of this heat was then gradually dimin- ished until the entire mass had lost its redness — an operation which, for the largest guns, lasted several weeks. The metal, by con- tracting without interference, possessed a greater density, a finer and more uniform grain ; and crystallizing thus, its fibre oifered the greatest possible resistance to pressure upon the bore. A long experience has fully confirmed the princij)les upon which Captain Rodman had based his new process, which is now applied on a large scale in America. The depth and the number of the rifle- grooves varied according to the calibres, but the relation between these three elements was constant, and the same system of grooves, deep and few in number, was applied to guns of diiferent con- structions. In the Parrott guns the spiral of the grooves was closer near the muzzle than at the bottom of the bore ; it was hoped that by this means the ball would have an increased rotary motion : but this was the cause of numerous accidents and of great THE MATERIEL OF WAR. 303 irregularity in ilie fire, as the projectile frequently refused to fol- low the last turn of the groove. At the beginning of the war the precipitate haste with which it was necessary to manufacture guns was especially felt in its effects on the system of rifling, which was very defective ; thus at the siege of Yorktown a hun- dred-pounder Parrott gun, which had attracted attention by the irregularity of its fire, was examined after some time, when it was discovered that those in charge had forgotten to clean the rifle- grooves, the roughness of which disturbed the course of the pro- jectiles. The form and the mode of impulsion both gave rise to a great number of different systems. INIr. Parrott placed upon the base of the ball a sort of reversed cup of soft iron, in which the ex- pansion of the gases determined the impulsion. For large cal- ibres he substituted for this cup a copper ring enveloping the base of the projectile, which under the pressure of the same gases took form as a packing {hourrelei) in the grooves ; this process being found insufficient, projections were cut on the ring to facilitate the impulsion, a sort of medium between the system of expansion and that of flanges {ailettcs). Mr. Schenkl gave to the base of his projectile the form of a fluted cone and covered it with a piece of papier-mach6, which stretched in slipping upon the cone, and was forced thus very ex- actly into the grooves. This papier-mach6, having more tenacity • than lead, gave to the projectile its rotary movement, after which it might fall to the ground without danger to those near the gun, or it remained attached to the projectile without affecting its equilibrium. Owing to the conical form of its base, the centre of gravity of the projectile was in front of the centre of the long axis, which secured the steady and exact flight of a well-feathered arrow. The only fault of the papier-mache was that it swelled with dampness, but an envelope of zinc remedied that completely ; and the Schenkl projectile is the one to which the experience of the war was most favorable. Many systems were tried to use lead in the form of an envelope, ring, or ailette, but they all failed from the impossibility of making the metal adhere uniformly to the surface of the ball. During the first stag-es of the war it was difficult to distinguish 304 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. between the relative merits of different projectiles, the defects in the construction of most of them not allowing any satisfactory experiment to be made. Thus, in the army of the Potomac, when after several months of campaigning an inspection was made of the shells which had been furnished in enormous quantities by private establishments, it was found that the inside of a large portion of them was defective ; the cavity containing the powder not being in the middle, the centre of gravity was displaced and imparted an irregularity of motion to the projectile which deprived the gun of all precision of aim. This carelessness, which should not be severely criticised when it is considered what efforts it required to create such vast ma- terials within a few months, and which was moreover soon rem- edied, was especially felt in the construction of the fuse, the most delicate of all the engines of war. The importance of the fuse has increased with that of the shell ; it imparts to this projectile all its effectiveness ; if the fuse is defective, the shell becomes powerless. The solid ball is of but little importance on a battle- field, and in our thin order of ranks makes no more victims than a simple rifle bullet. The case is very different with hollow pro- jectiles, especially the formidable Shrapnell shell, which was universally adopted by both Federals and Confederates. There is no doubt that at a short distance nothing is more effective than the grape-shot, but its field of operation is too limited to be often of decided importance in a battle. The Shrapnell shell, when it bursts at the right time, propel- ling all the bullets it contains in the shape of a fan before it, is the most terrible instrument of war that modern artillery pos- sesses, and will always secure a great advantage to those who know best how to handle it ; for it produces all the effects of grape-shot at the extreme range of ordinary projectiles. But all its effectiveness depends upon the precision with which the fuse is regulated, so as to cause it to burst in the air at the dis- tance of a few metres in front of the line of the troops to be reached. In fact, the percussion fuse, which takes fire on coming in con- tact with a hard substance and is easily constructed, cannot be advantageously used with the Shrapnell ; for if those projectiles THE MATERIEL OF WAR. 305 only burst on touching the ground, most of the shot they contain would bury itself in the earth instead of opening upon the enemy's lines like a sheaf. The graduated fuse, the only eifective one in guch a case, must be both sufficiently delicate to burn regularly during the desired number of seconds, and yet simple enough to be regulated amid the excitement of the battle. When spherical projectiles are employed, or conical shells with flanges {ailettes), which have a certain play in the bore of the piece, the flame of the powder itself, enveloping the ball, lights the end of the fuse graduated according to the distance. But this cannot be for projectiles which exactly fill all the grooves and do not permit the flame to reach the head of the fuse. It was tried in vain to envelop them in collodion to carry the flame to that part of the shell : this preparation was stripped oiF before it could be set on fire. Recourse was then had to the English system, called the concussion system : the shock caused by the departure of the projectile detaches a small piece of metal, which, slipping into a tube placed within the fuse, strikes and fires a fulminating primer. The fuse is thus completely closed on the outside ; but it must be seen how difficult it is to make, in impro- vised factories, millions of such complicated instruments, and how defective, before some experience is gained in making them, they must be as to precision. Besides practical inventions, there were also seen some fantasti- cal machines, such as the cannon-revolver, which will probably figure one of these days in our own armies, but which at that time was only dangerous to those who served it. There were seen some ridiculous specimens, as, for instance, a gun lighter than its own ball, made out of an enormous ingot, whose recoil was con- sequently greater than the motion of the projectile itself. We will mention, finally, a new engine of destruction, which received the nickname of coffee-mill, and which may be regarded as the first attempt at making mitrailleuses. This was a large rampart- gun, whose open breech was surmounted by a funnel, which was filled with cartridges; these cartridges were composed of solid steel tubes containing the charge, which were successively dropped into the open space of the breech by means of a crank ; a hammer, moved by this crank, struck a percussion-cap i)laced at the bottom Vol. I.— 20 306 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. of the cartridge, and caused the discharge ; after this discharge the tube fell into a box, from which it was taken to reload. This machine fired one hundred shots per minute, and threw ounce balls, with great precision, to a distance of seven or eight hundred metres ; it was drawn with its caisson by a single horse. By means of a j)ivot like a pump-handle the gun was aimed without interrupting the continuous stream of balls ; and this arm, handled by two cool-headed men, might have proved very effective in de- fendino; a breach or defile. But althouo-h Mr. Lincoln recom- mended its adoption, and had even made a trial of it with his own hands, it was never used during the war ; and the coffee-mills, which, with a few alterations, might have taken the place of our mitrailleuses, were sold after the peace as old iron, for eight dol- lars each. We have only spoken of rifle cannon ; they were the only guns in fashion, like the zouaves' uniforms for infantry. The imagina- tion of the volunteers exaggerated their importance, and their very novelty inspired the inexperienced soldiers of the American armies with confidence. Fortunately, the artillery officers did not share this excessive infatuation, and they retained for the service of the army a certain number of brass field howitzers, smooth bore, which rendered the utmost service during the entire war. In fact, as the wooded country, where the fighting had to be done, rendered it almost impossible for the artillery to become engaged at long distances, the rifle cannon was frequently deprived of its advantages. On the battle-fields of America the gun easiest to handle, the strongest, and the most readily loaded, which, at a moment's notice, could substitute grape-shot for the shell, was also the most effective. An experience differing from that of European wars, where armies can ordinarily fight at a distance, showed that smooth-bore guns satisfied all these conditions; a large number of them were cast, and no general ever had occa- sion to regret having secured them for his artillery. The field materiel was thus found to be composed of smooth- bore twelve-pounders, of three-inch wrought-iron guns, and of bar-guns three to four and a half inches in diameter. The greatest variety was to be found in guns of heavy calibre. Be- sides the old mortars, forty-eight pounders, and large cast-iron IHE MATERIEL OF WAR. 307 howitzers, called columbiads, or Dalilgren guns, there were seen rifled cannons constructed in the manner we have already stated. These were wrought-iron guns, four inches and a half in diam- eter of bore, much heavier than the hooped guns of the same diameter, and throwing forty-pound balls. There were Parrott guns, one hundred and two hundred pounders ; and, finally, some enormous cast-iron guns, intended for forts and for the navy, cast on the Rodman plan, with a diameter of fifteen, and even of twenty, inches. By means of iron carriages running over in- clined planes, controlled by brakes and a strong pivot fastened to the platform, these gigantic machines could easily be managed by five or six men. We shall indicate the effect they produced in telling of the numerous sieges which characterized that war. It will be sufficient to state here that in calculating the relations existing between the calibre of their heaviest guns, the weight of the ball, and that of the charge of powder, the Americans departed from the principles adopted in Europe, and particularly in Eng- land. Having neither the time nor the means to give their heavy rifled guns the strength of those of Armstrong or of Krupp, but being able to construct them of as large a calibre as they desired, they reduced the charges of powder to an eighth, and even a tenth, of the weight of the ball. Owing to the large dimensions of their guns, they were able to produce results then entirely new, although they have been surpassed since. Thus, Avith a gun not able to bear more than one-fourth of the charge of an Armstrong gun, and throwing the same ball, tliey obtained for this ball a velocity only one-half less than that which the latter piece would have given; and to batter a wall in breach, they suc- ceeded, by means of very large projectiles impressed with a less initial velocity, in bringing to the work of destruction a force equal to that of a ball of smaller calibre impressed with a greater velocity. In this chapter it has been our purpose to show the material resources which the two armies were going to put in operation. We have now seen those of the Federal army. The Confederate government could not count upon the industry and commerce of the rebel States to supply its troops with provisions, equipments, and arms to the same extent as its adversary. But at the outset 308 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. of the war they possessed a very great advantage. As we have stated elsewhere, Mr. Floyd, Secretary of War under President Buchanan, had taken care to send to the South one hundred and fifteen thousand muskets, which, being added to the one hundred and twenty thousand already in the arsenals of Charleston, Fayetteville, Augusta, Mount Vernon, and Baton Rouge, secured a complete armament for the first Confederate armies sufficient both in quantity and quality.* If the mobiliza- tion of the first levies was sometimes delayed, this was caused either by impediments arising in an administration as yet deficient in ex- perience, or by the rival claims of the States to the distribution of the arms, and also by the want of certain details, especially percussion-caps, the manufacture of which had not as yet been organized. But the war once begun, the Confederate government — thanks to the activity of its administrative departments, the zeal of private individuals, and the supplies of materials it re- ceived from Europe, notwithstanding the blockade — never found itself short either of muskets, cannons, ammunition, or military accoutrements. The North, which always cherished the hope that this indispensable material would not reach her adversary, and that the want of it would prevent him from continuing the struggle, became convinced of her error when the latter had laid down his arms. We have stated that in the South every man who had the means was in possession of a gun or a revolver. On their enlist- ment the volunteers brought their arms with them ; those who did not join the army either gave or sold them to the govern- ment; everything was turned to account, and even double bar- relled shot-guns were provided with bayonets. There were no private establishments for manufacturing arms in the South; the industry of the North had hitherto supplied the whole Union ; the Federal government, which possessed two establishments of this kind, had conformed to the constant traditions by placing one at Springfield, in the North, and the other at Harper's Ferry, * The conduct of Secretary Floyd is referred to at the close of General J. E. Johnston's " Narrative," with a view to exonerate him from these charges. See pp. 426 and 427 of that work.— Ed. THE MATMiEL of WAR. 309 in the South. The latter establishment was, thej-efore, the only one to be found in the insurgent States, which gave it a great importance in the estimation of the Confederate leaders, and which accounts for the haste with which they sought to seize it at the moment when Virginia seceded. We know how it w'as snatched from them by fire. The destruction of that fine estab- lishment was a great loss to the government of Washington, but a still greater loss to the Confederates, who had expected to find there considerable supplies, and especially all the necessary implements for the manufacture of muskets. A few machines only were saved from the fire and forwarded to Richmond, where they were soon put in use. The Confederates set to work without delay to establish such factories as they stood in need of. Nearly all the States erected some at their own expense, which, although at first simply under the general control of the central govern- ment, were eventually placed under its exclusive direction. Work- shops for the remodelling of old guns and the manufacture of minie rifles were soon established in Memphis, New Orleans, Nashville, Gallatin, and finally at Richmond and in many other south-eastern cities. The Southern States obtained, moreover, supplies of arms and ammunition from Europe. During the first months of the war they were enabled to accomplish this without any great difficulty, notwithstanding the blockade of their coasts which had been ordered by Mr. Lincoln. By degrees this blockade became more effective, but the extent of the Southern coasts, their numerous ports, and the facilities afforded by steam to blockade-runners of light draught, which took advantage of a dark night to slip between the Federal cruisers, never allowed it to become abso- lute. The enormous difference in value between the cotton accu- mulated in the depots of the South and the small quantities which reached the Liverpool market on the one hand, and be- tween ordinary commodities in Europe and in the Confederate ports on the other, is a conclusive proof of the efficacy of that blockade; but as the high protective tariff favored the growth of smuggling, so in the same manner the difference above men- tioned was the most powerful incentive to the hazardous traffic which was carried on in spite of the blockade. In reserving to 310 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. itself the monopoly of cotton the Confederate government had secured the means of regulating and entirely controlling the contraband trade thus established with England. It compelled all the blockade-runners to supply it with arms by refusing cot- ton to those who did not bring over a quantity of that material proportionate to their tonnage, cotton being the only article that could assure them considerable profit in their perilous return trips. These arms, purchased with the money obtained through the loan negotiated in England, and for which this very cotton was a guarantee, were entrusted to them by the agents of the Confederate government in Europe. The exact amount of these importations will never be known, for the transactions were con- ducted with great secrecy ; but it was currently reported in the South that during the first year of the war three hundred thou- sand muskets were brought over from Europe, with one thousand charges for each musket, and that one single ship, the Bermuda, had a cargo of sixty-five thousand. Those muskets manufactured either at Liege or at Birmingham were selected with much more care than the arms destined for the Federals, for in tlie struggle between the agents of the two parties to secure the best materials the Confederates had generally the advantage. The maUriel of the artillery was obtained in the same manner. Mr. Floyd had not forgotten the armament of the Federal forts situated in the South, while leaving garrisons in them too weak for their defence. Different cities furnished cannon which had been in their possession since the Mexican war. In short, a few months sufficed to enable the State governments to organize foun- dries, the management of which was entrusted to foremen of Northern -birth, a certain number of whom had not left the work- shops of the South at the time of secession, native mechanics not having the requisite skill for that task. Among these foremen some had adopted the prejudices of the slaveholders or yielded to the temptation of enormous wages ; others were kept in the places they were doomed to occupy by fearful threats. In the mean time, spies were sent to visit the manufactories of the North for the purpose of making drawings of the machines used in the construction of cannon, so as to set up similar ones in the estab- lishments which had just been erected. A certain number of THE MATERIEL OF WAR. 311 machines were also brought from England ; and one of tlie prin- cipal manufacturers of that country actually presented to the Confederacy on one occasion a complete cargo of those precious implements. Unfortunately for his proteges, that v.!argo fell into the hands of the Federals, who used it for their own profit. New Orleans had its own foundry of brass guns. Messrs. Street & Hungerford of Memphis manufactured Parrott guns of every calibre. At Nashville the iron-mills of Brannan & Co., con- structed on the plan of those of Fort Pitt in the North, manu- factured field-pieces of cast iron. The large and costly machines of this establishment followed the Confederate armies in their successive retreats, accompanied by the printing-presses of the secession journals, and were stationed first at Chattanooga, then at Atlanta, and finally at Augusta. The most important iron- mills in the South were the Tredegar works, near Richmond ; at this establishment cannon and projectiles of every calibre were manufactured. Brass guns were rare and greatly in demand; cities and churches contributed their bells ; private houses were stripped of every article of copper they possessed, from a boiling- pot to a brass candlestick. Cannon from England were also imported to a considerable extent. A few Armstrong guns which had run the blockade were used in arming the batteries along the coast ; and Mr. Whitworth manufactured a large number of his beautiful hexagonal guns of cast steel for the Confederates, pre- tending that he was executing an order for the emperor of China, so as not to excite the suspicions of the Federal cruisers. The greatest part of the artillery which the Confederates received from Europe, however, issued from the workshoi>s of Captain Blakeley, of whom we shall speak presently. Some time after, at the conclusion of the war, there were still to be seen in those establishments immense piles of projectiles, of which, during the prosperous period of blockade-running, every vessel sailing for Southern ports carried a number as ballast. This establishment had become one of the principal depots and the best arsenal of the Confederates. The cannon used in the Southern armies were generally con- structed on the same model as those of the Federal artillery. The Confederates displayed the same preference for the expan- 312 THE CIVIL WAR IN A3IERICA. sion system as their adversaries. But their most experienced oificei-s also adhered to the brass twelve-pounder howitzer with smooth bore; these cannon, taken from the arsenals or cast since the breaking out of the rebellion, formed an important part of their field artillery. The remainder, with the exception of a few Whitworth guns, was composed of pieces constructed on the Parrott model. The maUrid of heavy calibre was more varied; there were to be found all the old smooth-bore brass guns, the Dahlgren howitzers, and the rifled cannon of Brooke and Blakeley. The Brooke guns, so called after their inventor, only differed in one single particular from the Parrott gun : the wrought-irou jacket which enveloped it extended to the muzzle instead of stopping at the trunnions. These guns were rapidly and easily constructed and very cheap. The combination of two metals, one ductile and the other brittle, sometimes caused them to explode, but this defect was not sufficient to cause their condem- nation, because, in view of the extraordinary difficulties which surrounded the Confederacy, it was important above all to create an immense armament. The entire coast bristled with fortifica- tions ; batteries were erected at the entrance of the smallest creeks and all along the line of the large rivers ; in short, strong earth- works, entrenched camps, and defensive lines of every description sprang up wherever the two armies found themselves in presence of each other; each detachment surrounded its positions with works ; every town needed its fortified enclosure, and new points requiring to be defended were daily discovered. As fast as these works were completed it was necessary to find heavy guns with which to arm them. The South possessed no-^metallurgical department of industry like the North to meet such a demand. Out of 841,550 tons of iron produced by the United States in 1856, the slave States only contrilnited about 80,000 tons, and nearly one-half of this por- tion, or 36,563 tons, were produced by Kentucky, which the Con- federates never occupied in peace for a sufficient length of time to turn her mineral wealth to account. The portion of iron pro- duced by the insurgent States, therefore, only amounted to 42,952 tons, or the twentieth part of the total production of the Union. But this iron, smelted with wood, was of a superior quality, THE 3iat£:riel of war. 313 M^hicli, fortunately for tlie Confederate artillery, compensated for the carelessness in the manufacture of cannon and the inexperi- ence of those who directed the operations. The Blakeley guns, on the contrary, which had come from England, were not only constructed of superior materials, but with the greatest care, and were held in high repute, even in Eng- land, for their excellent qualities. Before landing at Charleston they had passed through many hands. The metal was prepared at Sheffield, where the Swedish iron, after having been melted in the furnace and then run into troughs [creusets), was then cast into rings, which were forged by the immense trip-hammers of Firth. Then taken to London, in the Blakeley shops these rings were put together, carefully fitted, turned, bored, and finally rifled ; they thus combined the strength of a homogeneous metal like soft steel with the perfection of construction of cannon com- posed of several pieces. Those of large calibre were loaded at the muzzle, and their grooves were adapted to various kinds of projectiles. These grooves had only a slight twist and a medium depth ; their number, varying according to the calibre, did not ex- ceed twelve in pieces seven inches and a half in diameter. In some of the Brooke guns the grooves were cut in inclined planes. The variety of the projectiles used with these guns was very great. A single Federal regiment — the First Connecticut Artillery — picked up, among the batteries in which it served in 1864 near Richmond, thirty-six different kinds of balls fired by the Confed- erates. Durino; the long; sie<>;e of Charleston the defenders of that place loaded their old smooth-bore brass pieces with projectiles of an elongated shape. Although the precision of aim of these enor- mous cylindrical missiles was not remarkable, yet, at short dis- tances, their initial velocity gave them considerable force of pene- tration, and at times they did great harm to the iron-clad vessels of the Federals. But these cannon could not always bear the strain required to throw off such heavy balls, and in the long run many of them burst. The projectiles manufactured in the South for rifled guns re- sembled those of the Parrott model ; the Confederates also fre- quently used Parrott projectiles, obtained from some captured ammunition train or park of artillery carried off after a victory. 314 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. The Blakeley projectile, Avhich greatly resembled them in its construction, produced the best results. It has at its base a plate of copper, fastened by three screws, the sides of which, bent inward, give way, and are crushed into the grooves by the expan- sive force of the gases. 'In spite of the small surface which the parts thus forced present, it is sufficient to give the rotary motion to the entire mass. This projectile can thus adapt itself to differ- ent kinds of grooves, is easily introduced into the gun, and can bear the jolting of transportation with impunity. Its excellent qualities w^ere demonstrated from the beginning of the war, at the siege of Yorktown, where an old cast-iron sixty-four pounder rifled, and placed in barbette upon one of the bastions, was used in firing Blakeley shells weighing one hundred and fifty pounds to a distance of more than three thousand metres, upon the Federal line of batteries. Those who serve as a target to the fire of the enemy have ample opportunities to judge of the precision of his aim. As soon as Yorktown was evacuated the besiegers went to look at the cannon whose power they had tested, but which had been silent for two days. It was found lying on the ground broken to pieces ; it had ended its career by an explosion, after demonstrating how skilful mechanics and resolute soldiers can utilize old pieces which would otherwise have been condemned as unfit for service. The rest of the military materiel of the Confed-. erates, ammunition, equipments, etc., was, like their cannon, partly produced at the South and partly imported from Europe. The chief thing required was powder. Charcoal was not want- ing ; the caves of the Alleghanies abounded in saltpetre ; the re- fineries of Louisiana furnished sulphur, Avhich they used in re- fining sugar, and of which they had large stores. With these materials the government w^as able to manufacture an article of powder somewhat coarse, but of a sufficiently good quality. Its principal powder-mill was at Dahlonega, in Georgia ; its manu- factories of percussion-caps in Richmond ; its cartridge-factory first in Memphis and then at Grenada. Thanks to the activity of these establishments, the Confederate armies were never in want of ammunition. The government never thought of making use of the cotton which it controlled for war purposes. It could not procur<\ the different materials necessary for the manufacture THE MATERIEL OF WAR. 315 of gun-cotton (pyroxyle), and especially of nitric acid ; nor had it time to make experiments upon that powerful but dangerous agent. Nor were the means wanting for clothing the soldiers. Texas furnished leather. Foreign cloth being scarce, its absence was amply supplied by a coarse but strong stuff called homespun, made on the plantations and exclusively worn by the blacks. This cloth, of gray verging on brown, was the color of the Con- federate uniform, and was the origin of the name gray-ba.c]erto caused all his operations to miscarry. He aimed at nothing less than to invade Arkansas, and to descend with his army as far as New Orleans ; so little value was then placed upon the capacity of the Confederacy for resistance. But a single march to the southern frontier of the State of Missouri was a laborious enterprise for that army, whose provisions were nearly exhausted and whose administrative service was yet so very defective. Its greatest difficulty was to overtake an enemy who knew how to disperse, and who, certain of finding means of subsistence in the midst of a sympathizing population, could always elude him. Moreover, Price and McCulloch had not considered tbemselve&^ safe at Vol. 1,-23 354 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. Neosho. They had at first retired to Pineville, only a few miles from Arkansas ; but the Missourians having refused to leave their own State, Price had brought them back to Cassville, from which place he watched the movements of the Federals at a distanje. Deceived by exaggerated rumors, Fremont had thought himself menaced by this force, and had sent in great haste for Pope's division, which had been kept back by the difficulties of the route, as well as that of Hunter. At the same time, he had or- dered Grant to make some strong demonstrations in front of Cairo, on the left bank of the Ohio, for the purpose of preventing the Confederate general Polk from sending reinforcements to Price from Columbus across the Mississippi. Pope having at last arrived, Fremont resolved, on the 3d of November, to march upon Wilson's Creek, and give battle to Price, whom he had expected to find on the very ground where Lyon had perished three months before. This was a serious mis- take, for the Missouri general was then quietly established at Cassville. In the midst of these preparations he received intelli- gence that the President had recalled him and appointed General Hunter in his place. Being too imaginative to make a good ad- ministrative officer, he had allowed malpractices to be committed by those around him, which justified this severe measure. Foresee- ing the chance of his displacement, threats had been uttered against the government by those about his person, which the chief magis- trate of a free and faithful people could not tolerate. On the other hand, nearly all his lieutenants were in open hostility against him. In short, he had on many occasions usurped politi- cal powers. The disavowal of his proclamation by Mr. Lincoln had been no lesson to him, and he had again overstepped his pre- rogatives by a strange convention negotiated with Price. He had agreed with the general against whom he was waging war to sign a proclamation binding both contracting parties to prohibit the formation of partisan bands, and promising to all those who might be willing to return to their homes that they should not be disturbed for any part they had taken in the war. Fremont thus fell into the opposite extreme of the error he had committed in his proclamation of August 30th, which had called forth Mr. Lin- coln's condemnation. This arrangement was altogether to the LEXINGTON. 355 advantage of Price, who, being on the point of quitting Missouri, thus secured to his soldiers the means of quietly returning to their homes to wait for a better opportunity. It is needless to say that Hunter promptly repudiated that instrument. Fremont was popular among his soldiers. The conqueror of California, by his good qualities, as well as his defects, pleased those rugged and adventurous men of the "West, and was a fair representative of their ardent views in all political matters. Con- sequently, the news of his recall created much excitement among the encampments which surrounded Springfield. But no one ventured to call into question the supreme authority of the Presi- dent. Among the many expressions of deep regret, not a disloyal word was uttered either by the chief or his soldiers. Those American armies were the offspring of a people too law-abiding for sentiments of that description to find vent. On the evening of the 3d, Hunter not having yet rejoined the army, Fremont, at the request of several officers, made all his arrangements for the battle which, hie persisted in thinking, was to be fauffht on the following dav- But his successor having; arrived during the night, he left for St. Louis, carrying with him the sympa- thies of the largest portion of the troops. By an order which may seem to have been too severe, his body-guards were disbanded ; that ridiculous appellation proved a misfortune to them, and made people forget their brilliant charge at Springfield. On the morn- ing of the 4th Hunter sent out reconnoitring parties, who failed to meet the enemy, and on the day following he went himself to visit the battle-field of Wilson's Creek in person. Price had never gone beyond Cassville. Although Fremont had enjoined his soldiers to obey his successor as himself. Hunter did not fail to perceive that there was much feeling among the troops, and less confidence ; he did not think, moreover, that the army supplies were sufficient to begin a new campaign against an enemy who appeared determined not to be overtaken. Not being able any longer to procure means of subsistence for all his soldiers at Springfield, he fell back upon Rolla, followed at a distance by Price, who halted at the first of the former towns. In the mean time, Grant prepared to execute the orders of Fremont, notwithstanding the recall of this chief, to whom it is 356 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. but just to attribute a portion of the responsibility for the reverse which was the consequence of his last instructions. Fremont, as we have stated, desired to prevent the enemy from sending rein- forcements from Kentucky and Tennessee into Missouri by way of Columbus. The Confederates had surrounded the latter place with vast fortifications, in order to render themselves absolute masters of that locality, and to close the navigation of the Mis- sissippi against the Federals; batteries armed with a powerful artillery were erected at every point which commanded the course of the river, and the defenders of that place, considering it im- pregnable, had called it the Gibraltar of the West. Supplies and ammunition of every kind had been accumulated there, and the troops who had assembled there since the beginning of Novem- ber had formed at last a veritable army. The opposite bank was absolutely commanded by the batteries of Columbus. In order to intercept any reinforcements on their way to join Price, it required a large number of troops to operate upon both banks of the Mississippi. On the Missouri side a force could proceed a long distance from the river, and attack all the troops which might be on the march to effect a junction with Price ; on the Kentucky side it was sufficient to make a serious demonstration against Columbus, to oblige the enemy to hold all his forces there. On the 2d of November, Grant was ordered by Fremont to send a few troops in pursuit, of a detachment of three thousand men, who, it was reported, were on their way to Cassville and had reached the St. Francis River, in Missouri. Grant despatched Colonel Oglesby with four regiments, also numbering about three thousand men, to look for it in that direction. But on the 5th, he received new instructions, directing him to make a demonstration against Belmont, a landing-place situated opposite Columbus, in order to prevent the garrison of the latter place from crossing the river to go to Price's assistance. Grant hastened to obey these instructions. But before describ- ing the battle of Belmont we must say a few words concerning the two generals who were about to be brought in contact, and the condition of the two armies placed under their respective com- mands. The name of General Grant, who had been in command at Cairo and the neighboring posts since the 1st of September, LEXINGTON. 357 was then as unknown in America as in Europe. Laborious, persevering, and reticent, he had displayed great personal bravery during the Mexican war. After attaining the rank of captain of infantry, he had left the army, and when the war broke out was engaged in the leather trade. Without personal ambition, but convinced that it was the imperative duty of those who had received a military education at the expense of the State to rally around the national flag, he entered a regiment from Illinois, his native State, and soon became a colonel. He was to have the good fortune of not attaining the highest positions too soon, but he exercised from the besinnino; of the war commands almost independent. He was thus able to profit by the experience of those who were at first his superiors ; and when he attained the highest rank, he had already acquired a profound knowledge of the war which he was to be called upon to conduct. Almost in front of him, at Columbus, were the headquarters of the ranking: commander of all the Confederate forces in the AYest. The person who exercised these high functions would have been more at home at the head of some feudal bands of the IMiddle Ages, than as commander of an American army in the nineteenth century. This was the Right Reverend Doctor Leonidas Polk, Protestant Episcopal bishop of Louisiana. Educated at West Point, Polk had left the army after serving two years, and had entered the Church. But when the South took up arms, he re- membered his military education ; and after having refused the rank of brigadier-general, he could not resist the offer of a major- general's epaulettes. Nevertheless, in donning the uniform, the warlike prelate took care to declare that he did not renounce either his holy calling or his episcopal functions, and he in- formed his flock that he should return to his diocese as soon as he had performed what he called his duties as a citizen. But he was destined to die as a soldier, and not as a bishop. He was killed by a cannon-ball on one of the battle-fields of Georgia in 1864, at the very moment when fortune was declaring in favor of his enemies. At the time of which we are speaking, Grant had been invested with a command altogether distinct from that of the Missouri — ■ one which placed the rivers that unite near Cairo under his special 358 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. charge. He occupied Cape Girardeau, Commerce, and Bird's Point, on the right bank of the Mississippi. His base of opera- tions was at Cairo, in Illinois. After the neutrality of Kentucky had been violated he had taken possession of the following points in that State : Fort Holt, opposite Cairo, at the confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi ; Paducah, at the confluence of the Ten- nessee and the Ohio ; and Smithland, at the confluence of the last-named river and the Cumberland. He thus commanded the mouths of the three river lines which penetrated into the South. A certain number of wooden gunboats, old merchant-vessels armed in haste, and some large steamers, with several decks, turned into transports, constituted a flotilla which connected these different posts with each other. The Confederates, on their side, had closed the three navigable routes, whicli their adversaries had not yet any serious intention of disputing, by means of well-armed works, of which Columbus was then the most important. On receiving the last instructions from Fremont, Grant imme- diately sent an additional regiment to Oglesby, with orders to fall back upon New Madrid, a little below Belmont, so as to threaten that position, against which he was himself preparing to operate directly. The attack was fixed for the 7th of November. On the 6th, Grant embarked upon three transport-ships, with five regi- ments of infantry, one of cavalry, and a section of artillery, three thousand one hundred and fourteen men in all, forming two small brigades, under General McClernand and Colonel Dougherty. In the mean while, demonstrations were made upon both sides of the river, one from Bird's Point and the other from Fort Holt, but they were undertaken by such small parties, obliged to stop at a distance so remote from the enemy, that they were without results. Pursuing his course on the Mississippi, Grant left his adver- saries in a state of uncertainty as to which side of the river he would select for landing. In order to deceive them a little longer, ho stopped, the evening of the 6th, on the left bank ; and on the morning of the 7th, his transport-ships were moored to the right bank at a place called Hunter's Landing, situated above Colum- bus, eight kilometres by water, but only five in a direct line, for between these two jDoints the river makes an elbow to eastward, '■■ •'^' ^* p ■-;') 't('/','^^ •-?■ :--^ ^ 'tyrp'A c' i~ • •! rT?ji".-i'' -. '^l i.i >-.,''-->i'^ /'^r^-^ ^"X^/ he Catoctin. The main body of that division occupied the central point of Frederick, and by means of extended posts, watched a part of the Potomac in the neighborhood of Harper's Ferry and the crest of the Blue Ridge. It was thus able to defend the mountain passes against any en- emy who should venture to make a descent upon Baltimore and Washington, or threaten its rear if it advanced towards Pennsyl- vania. Shortly afterwards. Stone's division, lately organized, made a connection with Banks at Washington, by taking a posi- tion at Poolesville, on the road leading from the capital to the mouth of the Monocacy. On the left, to watch the Lower Poto- mac, a division, also new, was sent under General Hooker to take position among the almost impenetrable forests which border that arm of the sea on the Maryland side. This division was en- camped on some high hills, from which it could see the bivouac fires of the enemy, from which it was separated by an insurmount- able obstacle. The two armies, thus situated, could only be disturbed in their inaction by accidents or by insignificant encounters. Banks's advanced posts, taking advantage of low water in the month of August, frequently crossed the Potomac to reconnoitre the Vir- ginia side below Harper's Ferry. They exchanged a few shots BALL'S BLUFF. 403 with tlie enemy on the 5tli and 12th of August, in the vicinity of the C'atoctin River and the village of Lovettsville, and each time brought back a few prisoners. One month later, September 11th, one of the new brigades of the army of the Potomac, com- manded by General Smith, who was encamped on the right side of the river near the suspension bridge, was sent to make a re- connaissance in the direction of Lewinsville, a village situated be- tween the two hostile lines of outposts. The object of this move- ment was to teach the inexperienced soldiers of General Smith to march and scout in presence of the enemy, to make topographical drawings of a district of which there was no correct map in ex- istence, and to prevent the enemy from obtaining supplies in it. Having been informed of this movement, the Confederate gen- eral Stuart, who was then in command of the outposts on that side, started with a regiment of infantry, a detachment of cav- alry, and a battery of artillery, for the purpose of surprising the Federals, whose force consisted of two thousand men and six guns. He deemed it more prudent, however, to attack them from a distance, and the fire of his artillery threw at first some con- fusion into their ranks. But the Federal guns soon obtained the advantage, and without coming to closer quarters both parties retired, each on his own side, with trifling losses. Sometimes it was the Confederates who assumed the offensive ; as, for instance, on the 15th of September a detachment of their cavalry, numbering about four hundred and fifty horses, boldly crossed the Potomac and came in turn to attack the Federal posts near Darnestown, between Poolesville and Rockville ; but it was repulsed, and left about a dozen wounded behind. Two months had elapsed since the battle of Bull Run. The Confederate chiefs, in view of the increase of the Federal forces at Washington, could no longer entertain the idea of an offensive campaign. The ardor with which they had fired the South, by pushing their outposts in sight of the capital, had swelled the number of their soldiers ; the result which they had sought was accomplished. These outposts, having ventured very far from the main army, were then drawn back. On the 27th of September they evacuated a small work situated on an isolated height called Munson's Hill, which soldiers in the Union army were in the 404 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. habit of pointing out from a distance to visitors and journalists, who came from the North to say that they had seen the enemy. The Federals entered the work on the following day, and after- wards successively took possession of the villages of Lewiusville, Vienna, and even Fairfax Court-house, on the 9th, 16th, and 17th of October. In the absence of more important military events, this movement, which had not cost a drop of blood, was made the subject of comment in the North, both by the press and the pub- lic, for several weeks. McClellan contented himself, nevertheless, with extending his positions, and laying out a plan for a new line of works two or three kilometres in advance of the old one. He thus left a space between the two armies which was to render their encounters still rarer than before. The inaction which fortified his position above and around Washington was soon, however, the means of causing him a great deal of trouble on the Lower Potomac. The line of railway not being sufficient to transport all the supplies intended for Washington, part of that service was performed by Avater. From the time that a large army had begun to collect in that city the Lower Potomac was ploughed by a considerable number of sailing- vessels coming from Baltimore, Havre-de-Grace, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, carrying, at reduced prices, the materiel of war and the necessary provisions for the military and civil population of the capital. The Confederates, being masters of all the right bank, resolved to balk their operations. The wooded hills which rise along the borders of the Lower Potomac aiforded excellent positions for intercepting the navigation of that arm of the sea. They erected earthworks, in some of which they placed navy guns, whilst others were prepared to receive field-pieces. Towards the middle of September they began by firing a few shells upon the vessels that were coming up the Potomac, and a fortnight after, their batteries were so well posted between the mouth of the Occoquan and Mathias Point, that merchant- vessels dared no longer to brave them, and navigation was almost entirely suspended. It was not long before the capital began to suffer for want of provisions ; the trains engaged in the transportation ser- vice of the government encumbered the railroad, and the price of all commodities was immediately raised. The material damage BALL'S BLUFF. 405 was not great, but this partial blockade of the capital was regarded in the North as a new humiliation, and for the first time General McClellan was taken to task. These reproaches were unjust. It was impossible to prevent the Confederates from erecting bat- teries along a coast eighty kilometres in length, of which they were absolute masters. The war flotilla, stationed on the waters of the Potomac, could act as a police force, intercept all communi- cations between the two banks, protect merchant-vessels against sudden attacks, throw shells into one and another of the enemy's works, but it could not entirely silence batteries the armament of which it was always easy for the Confederates to renew. In order to break up the blockade it would have been necessary to effect the military occupation of the right bank of the Lower Po- tomac ; but such an operation could not be undertaken with an arm of the sea in the rear and the whole of the enemy's army encamped at Manassas in front. To break the blockade of the Potomac, therefore, dependj^d upon the retreat of that army, and could only be an incident in the new campaign which was being prepared. Everything seemed to indicate to the Federals that the moment for undertaking this campaign had at last arrived. We have stated that by the end of September the Confederates were con- centrated around Centre vi He and Manassas. Their outposts, wherever they had been maintained, appeared ready to fall back, and the lukewarmness they exhibited on the occasion of a trifling engagement at Harper's Ferry encouraged McClellan to draw his lines closer upon his adversaries. A detachment of Geary's bri- gade, which guarded the Potomac in front of Harper's Ferry, had crossed the river on the 8th of October a little above that village, and taken possession of a few mills from which the enemy had procured considerable supplies. The Confederate general Eyans, who was at Leesburg with his brigade, having sent a few troops to worry that detachment, Geary crossed the Potomac and posted himself, with six hundred men and a few pieces of artillery, at Har- per's Ferry, to cover the retreat of the soldiers who were carrying back the flour taken from the mill. On the 16th he was prepar- ing to recross the river, when the Confederates attacked him. At a distance of four kilometres from Harper's Ferry his outposts 406 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. were stationed along a ridge called Bolivar Heights, which com- mands the approaches to that village, and extends from the Potomac to the Shenandoah. The Confederates took possession of it with- out any difficulty, and began to cannonade the Federals posted on a plateau extending from the foot of the hill to a point above Harper's Ferry, while one of their batteries, placed on Loudoun Heights, on the other side of the Shenandoah, took them in flank. Geary's soldiers made a brave resistance. At last the detach- ment which had left the mill in the morning, and recrossed the Potomac, came to their assistance, and, following the line of the Shenandoah, turned the extreme right of the Confederates. Geary, who until then had contented himself with repulsing the charges of Ashby's cavalry, took the offensive in turn, and ascending the hill under the fire of the enemy, drove him back in disorder to the other side. The Confederates were not able to rally, and they left in the hands of the Federals a few prisoners, a large amount of arms and ammunition, and a gun of heavy calibre. Geary, satisfied with a success which had only cost him about a dozen men, returned to the left bank of the river in the evening. It was now the middle of October ; the oppressive heat of sum- mer had been succeeded by those lovely autumnal days in which a peculiar haze like a thin smoke marks the early hours — days calm and balmy, followed by nights marvellously bright and clear. At that season, known by the name of Indian summer, the dryness renders the worst roads passable, and reduces the streams to their smallest volume. Three months of labor had brought forth their fruits; a line of fortifications, all capable of sustaining a siege and connected by great military roads, surrounded Washington, affording an efficient protection to the capital. The forts on the right side of the river were nearly all armed, and their garrisons had been designated. General McClellan had at last seven strong divisions on the right bank of the Potomac and four on the left. The former, commanded respectively by Generals McCall, Smith, Fitz John Porter, McDowell, Blenker, Franklin, and Heintzel- mann, were encamped, in the order in which we have enumerated them, along the line of defence from the suspension bridge to Alexandria. The others, under Generals Banks, Stone, Keyes, and Hooker, were stationed en echelon in the valley of the Monoc- BALL'S BLUFF. 407 acy at Poolesville, near Georgetown, and along the Lower Poto- mac. The regular infantry, several regiments not formed into brigades and several brigades not formed into divisions, occupied Washington. On the 15th of October, these troops, including the garrisons of Baltimore and Annapolis, presented a total force of one hundred and fifty-two thousand fifty-four men, of whom, after deducting nine thousand sick, one thousand unfit for service, and eight thousand absentees, there remained one hundred and thirty-three thousand two hundred and one, ready for active ser- vice, together with two hundred and twenty-eight field-pieces. General McClellan deemed it expedient to leave thirty-five thou- sand men and forty cannon in AVashington, ten thousand men and twelve cannon in Baltimore and Annapolis, five thousand men and twelve cannon on the Upper Potomac, and eight thousand men with twenty-four cannon on the Lower Potomac. He found himself, therefore, at the head of a perfectly available force of seventy-five thousand men and one hundred and forty guns. These troops were thoroughly equipped, well armed, and provided with sufficient means of transportation. There was doubtless something in their bearing which struck the practiced eye unfavor- ably ; doubtless also they did not present that compactness and precision of movement which long practice in manceuvring can alone impart to an army, but it seemed as if henceforth they only required some practical experience in warfare to improve greatly. The people of the North were waiting w'ith great anxiety, and a degree of impatience difficult to control, for the first movement of that army to which such vast interests had been entrusted. Unfortunately, General McClellan, besides the very natural anxiety he felt on account of the inexperience of his troops, sin- gularly overrated the strength and discipline of those of John- ston, who had superseded Beauregard in the command of the Confederate army — the army of Northern Virginia. He had given to that army a total force of one hundred and fifty thou- sand men, whereas, in reality, on the 31st of October it only numbered sixty -six thousand two hundred and forty-three men in all, of whom only forty-four thousand one hundred and thirty- one were present in the field. One-third of this army was com- posed of non-combatants, sick men disabled by change of climate. 408 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. and especially absentees without leave. The number of these last mentioned was sufficient to show that the Federal general was equally mistaken in regard to the discipline of his adver- saries, Avho, while full of ardor on the battle-field, submitted with great reluctance to the regular life and monotonous duties of the camp. Nevertheless, the movement in retreat indicated by the enemy decided him to feel the ground upon which he was prob- ably about to undertake a fall campaign. ■ On the 19th of October he placed the three divisions forming his rio-lit wins: on the other side of the Potomac under arms, and made them reconnoitre the whole line in front of them. Only some cavalry pickets were found, and it was ascertained that the enemy was nowhere in force in front of Centreville. McCall, v/ho was at the extreme right, advanced along the road parallel to the river ; and placing two of his brigades en echelon, in order to cover his communications, he passed through the village of Drainesville with the third, proceeding as far as within fifteen miles of Leesburg, while his staff officers were engaged in making a sketch of the country. McClellan justly thought that he had gone too far, and fearing lest he should expose his flank to an attack on the part of the Confederates posted at Centreville, or- dered him to fall back as far as Drainesville. But struck with the absence of the enemy in that direction, and deceived by a false report from Banks, he concluded that the Confederates had n>o intention of defending Leesburg. He wished to assure him- self of the fact, without, however, bringing on a battle for the pos- session of that eccentric point, or placing McCall's column in a dangerous position between the enemy and a deep river. With this object in view, on the evening of the 19th he ordered Stone, who was guarding the Potomac in front of Leesburg, to watch the movements of the Confederates on the opposite bank, and, if necessary, to accelerate their retreat by a slight demonstration. In the same despatch he informed him that McCall had gone be- yond Drainesville without seeing the enemy, and that strong reconnaissances would be made all along the line. Stone's skirmishers occupied a long island on the Potomac ealled Harrison's Island, situated as far up as Lee-^burg. This island lies under the south bank of the river, which rises and BALL'S BLUFF. 409 forms the cliffs of Ball's Bluff, the precipitous acclivities of which are nearly twenty metres high. At the upper extremity of the island there is a crossing called Conrad's Ferry, and a few kilo- metres below the lower extremity, fronting the mouth of Goose Creek, the crossing called Edward's Ferry. Conformably to the instructions he had received, Stone made some feints to induce the enemy to show his strength. Six regiments, under General Gor- man, were sent to Edward's Ferry, and the greatest portion of a brigade, temporarily commanded by Colonel Baker, was colled ed at Conrad's Ferry. In the afternoon of the 20th Gorman made a show of embarking, and in the evening he sent a few mounted men across the river, while a party of skirmishers, crossing the stream in front of Harrison's Island, climbed up the acclivities of Ball's Bluff. The latter proceeded as far as the outskirts of Lees- burg without finding any trace of the enemy ; but, deceived by the reflection of moonlight upon an orchard, they mistook the sur- rounding objects for an encampment, and reported back that the imaginary enemy was very carelessly guarded. This report, trifling in itself, was the origin of a succession of blunders, which were eventually the cause of a serious disaster to the Federals. Stone, convinced that the enemy was not in force at Leesburg, thought he might make a demonstration in that direc- tion corresponding with those which McClellan had mentioned in his despatch, and thus take possession of that town without in- volving himself in a serious engagement. He ordered Colonel Devens, who occupied Harrison's Island with the Fifteenth Mas- sachusetts, to cross the river above Ball's Bluff, to proceed as far as Leesburg and surprise the enemy's camp, while the Twentieth of the same State, under Colonel Lee, should take its ]ilace on the island, and he authorized Baker either to support Devens with the rest of his brigade or to recall him, abandoning Ball's Bluff, according to circumstances. At the same time, a few companies of the Gorman brigade crossed the Potomac at Edward's Ferry to make a similar reconnaissance on the banks of Goose Creek. Stone thereby transcended the instructions of McClellan. His imprudence was aggravated by the evident insufficiency of his means for crossing the river. The waters, whi(;h had risen very high during the last week, rendered that operation extremely dif- 410 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. ficult. In order to cross the two arms of the Potomac at Har- rison's Island the Federals had only one flat-boat, capable of car- rying about forty men, two barges, each of which would hold about thirty, and a small iron launch. Nor were they better pro- vided at Edward's Ferry, whither Stone had repaired in person, leaving the entire control of the movements at Conrad's Ferry to Baker. Devens, having crossed the Potomac with a portion of his regi- ment during the night, advanced, early in the morning of Octo- ber 21st, upon Leesburg, at the head of four or five hundred men, and reached the point which had been reconnoitred on the previous day without meeting a single adversary. He had, how- ever, before him a powerful and vigilant enemy, who was watch- ing his every step, and who was preparing to punish him for his rashness. Evans, who had already given evidence of his mili- tary skill at the battle of Bull Run, had been on his guard since the occupation of Drainesville by McCall. Having transferred all his materiel into the woods, he had concealed himself, with his three thousand men, in the village of Leesburg ; and when at last Devens approached, he sallied out to meet him. But being ignor- ant of the strength of the Federals, he attacked them very cau- tiously, and after a brief engagement allowed them to fall back upon Ball's Bluff without harassing them. The reconnaissance was finished even before the skirmish had revealed the presence of the enemy, and all the Federal detachments should immedi- ately after have been brought back from the other side of the river. But at that moment General Stone, who had just wit- nessed the passage of a portion of Gorman's brigade at Edward's Ferry, full of confidence in the success of his manoeuvre, sent the Twentieth Massachusetts to Ball's Bluff, together with the de- tachment of the Fifteenth which had remained at Harrison's Island. At the same time he gave the fatal order to Devens to wait on the right side of the river for these reinforcements. It was eight o'clock in the morning. Evans, not supposing that the Federals could have committed the imprudence of throwing a few hundred men on the Virginia shore without the means of rein- forcing them or of promptly withdrawing them, was advancing cautiously. In the mean time, Colonel Baker had arrived with BALL'S BLUFF. 411 his regiment at Conrad's Ferry, and had assumed the command conferred upon him by the instructions of Stone. A senator from Oregon and a personal friend of Mr. Lincoln, an orator of talent and respected by all for his nobility of character, Baker was an officer as brave as he was inexperienced. Learning that Devens had exchanged a few shots with the enemy, his only thought was to renew the fight and to mass as many men as possible on the right bank of the river, without troubling himself about the means of retreat in case of a reverse. On the top of the cliif of Ball's Bluff there is a clearing a little less than a kilometre in length, following the course of the river, and from four to five hundred metres in width. It is surrounded on three sides by thick .woods ; the fourth, overlooking the Poto- mac, is formed by the crest of the steep acclivity which slopes down to the shore. Nothing intervenes between the foot of this acclivity, which is thickly covered with copse-wood, and the rapid waters of the stream below, but a kind of banquette t^-enty metres wide. It M^as impossible to select a worse place for land- ing. The troops, having reached the clearing after a perilous ascent, found themselves without protection and surrounded by M'oods which concealed the ajiproach of the enemy. The precipi- tous character of the acclivity did not admit of falling back in good order as far as the river, while the impossibility of effecting a rapid embarkation would doom those detained on its banks to certain disaster. To establish himself without danger in that position, Baker should at least have possessed a sufficient number of boats and been able to convey with rapidity all his forces from one side of the river to the other. But as we have stated, he had only three boats at his disposal for this important service. Stone, in allow- ing him entire freedom of action, had not troubled himself about the matter, and had even aggravated that fault by his inconsider- ate zeal. The crossing of three guns, which he sent to Ball's Bluff, with their horses, also occasioned much loss of time, and diminished by several hundreds the number of combatants wham he might have massed in season on the right side of the river. In the mean while, Evans, who had been advancing with great caution, at last reached the line occujjied by Devens's five com- 412 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. panics in advance of the clearing at Ball's Bluif about two o'clock. His brigade, numbering about three thousand two hundred men, consisted of the Eighth Virginia and the Thirteenth, Seven- teenth, and Eighteenth Mississippi. This last regiment was di- rected upon the extreme right in order to attack the Federals in flank. The first two regiments charged Devens and drove his little band back upon the rest of the T'ederals, who were posted in the clearino;. At the sound of cannon Baker crossed the river without leaving any officer to superintend the embarkation of his soldiers, which was, therefore, eifected amid the greatest confu- sion. At Ball's Bluff he found about one thousand nine hundred men crowded in a narrow space, without any means of deploying, and forming an irregular line, having Ijehind it almost every- where the abrupt edge of the cliff. The combat was vigorously engaged along the centre and right of his troops when he ar- rived, about three o'clock in the afternoon. The Confederates were superior in numbers, full of ardor, well handled, and pro- tected by the woods, which concealed their movements and kept their reserves out of sight. The Federals, however, made at first a good resistance, and their artillery, which was well served, in- flicted some losses upon the assailants. But these inexperienced soldiers, who had never been under fire with their officers, began to feel disconcerted on beholding the ravages caused in their ranks by the fire of the Confederates. Most of the cannoneers had been wounded, and the guns were silent for want of men to serve them. A few officers made an effort to manoeuvre them. Baker himself, who sought the post of danger, and who, not knowing how to command, could at least risk his person fear- lessly, joined them in the attempt; but it soon became necessary to drag the guns by hand back to the edge of the acclivity. After an hour's fight, disorder began to show itself among the Federals. The many wounded were joined by a still larger number of fugi- tives, who accompanied them to the river, and tried to get on board the boats which were to convey them back to the island. The officers, who had been obliged to expose themselves rashly in order to set an example to their soldiers, fell in great numbers. Baker was killed almost at the cannon's mouth (d, bout portanf) just as he was endeavoring to hold a portion of his line which BALL'S BLUFF. 413 was jn the point of breaking. On the Confederate right the Eighteenth Mississippi had commenced the action, and threat- ened the left flank of the Federals. The latter had found some shelter in a narrow edge of wood, which, skirting the forest to the southward, prolonged it for a distance of about one hundred metres ; the open space between them also separated the combatants. Baker was killed at four o'clock ; the Federals were evidently beaten. Colonel Cogswell, upon whom the command devolved, tried to extricate them by falling back with his left upon Ed- ward's Ferry along the river, where he would have found reinforce- ments. But just as he was stripping his right for the purpose of effecting this movement the soldiers who occupied the piece of wood on the left imprudently came out ; a well-sustained fire threw them into confusion, and the Confederates took' advantage of their disorderly condition to seize the position they vacated. All retreat was noAV cut off on that side. Only a handful of men continued to offer any resistance at the top of the acclivity, which their comrades were descending in great haste. A final charge of the Eighth Virginia drove them, in turn, into that abyss, where further struggle was impossible. One of the cannon, which was flung from the summit of the cliff, rolled down to the water's edge and was broken in pieces. The battle was ended. The Confederates had nothing to do but to complete their vic- tory by firing upon opponents who were no longer able to retaliate. The crowd of fugitives clung to the brushwood which covered the acclivities of Ball's Bluff, and, finding no shelter, sought their last chance of safety in the only boat which remained moored to the shore. The other two, which were filled with wounded men, were already far off, and being overloaded, as is always the case under such circumstances, soon sank with all those who were congratu- lating themselves upon having been able to get on board. A large number of officers and soldiers threw themselves into the river to cross by swimming. Most of these were drowned, and a few were killed by the balls of the enemy, who pursued them without mercy. Some, however, succeeded in reaching Harrison's Island and even the other side of the Potomac ; among the latter was Colonel Devens. At last darkness came to put an end to that "ecene of horror ; it enabled some of the fugitives to hide 414 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. near the shore or to slip into the woods out of reach of the vic- tors. The disaster was complete; out of one thousand nine hundred Federals who had landed at Ball's Bluff, scarcely eight hlindred recrossed the Potomac ; they left behind them two hun- dred and twenty-three dead, two hundred and fifty wounded, more than five hundred prisoners, and their three guns. Their com- mander and most of the officers were either killed or in the hands of the enemy. The Confederates, proud of their success, but astonished at its importance, encamped on the heights they had so bravely won ; their loss amounted to about three hundred men, one hundred and fifty-three of whom were killed ; among the latter was the colonel of the Eighteenth Mississippi. In the mean while, great confusion prevailed among the Federals, who expected to be attacked at Harrison's Island and at Edward's Ferry. Part of the Gorman brigade occupied the right bank of the Potomac at the last-mentioned point ; on being apprised of Baker's defeat, Stone made preparations for bringing his troops back to the left bank. But in the middle of the night the movement was countermanded by McClellan, and the whole brigade crossed into Virginia. To- wards four o'clock in the afternoon of the 22d, this brigade, num- bering about four thousand men, was attacked by a portion of Evans's forces. The latter had proceeded as far as Goose Creek, in the hope of meeting with some isolated detachments which he could still crush ; but having discovered that he had to deal with an adversary superior in numbers, he lost no time in retir- ing. On the 23d McClellan went to visit Stone's troops, which had been so cruelly tried, and gave them the encouragement of which they stood in need. But being convinced that he could not undertake any serious operation in that part of his line, he brought back into Maryland all the troops which still occupied the right bank of the Potomac. The simple narrative of the Ball's Bluff disaster has demon- strated its causes — the point selected for the landing of troops, the imprudence which ventured two thousand men beyond a river without any possible means of retreat, the tardiness which enabled the enemy to reconnoitre its movements and to strike a vigorous blow. The discussion of these causes gave rise to bitter and end- BALL'S BLUFJ^. 415 less reciiminations ; indeed, everybody concerned was deserving of blame. In his instructions McClellan had allowed too great a latitude to Stone, by directing him to keep a watch over Lees- burg, which could not have been done without crossing the Poto- mac ; he should perhaps have more thoroughly impressed on his mind the isolation in which any troops sent to operate on the right borders of the river would find themselves. The errors committed by Stone were more serious ; putting too much faith m the reports of his scouts, he persuaded himself that a demon- stration would be sufficient to cause the evacuation of Leesburg, and he combined all the movements of his troops as if he were sure of being able to occupy that town. After having given Baker the option of either withdrawing his detachments from Ball's BluiF or of following them with the rest of his brigade, he formally approved his action in adopting the latter course. On being informed that there were nearly four thousand Con- federates between Leesburg and the two thousand men of Baker, he gave himself no uneasiness on account of the latter, but merely pointed out to them the means of pursuing the enemy, instead of guarding against his attack, as he should have done. The despatch of Stone in which he approved of the crossing of the river only became known some time after Baker's death, and by a chance which was truly providential. That unfortunate officer had placed the despatch inside of his cap; one of his officers, who picked up Baker's body, found the despatch ; it was stained with blood, Baker having been shot in the head. He made a copy of the despatch, which he sent to Baker's family, before transmitting the original to the War Department, where it was buried in oblivion. The publication of the copy of the des- patch so fortunately recovered for Baker's memory put a stop to most of the severe criticisms which had been the more readily made against him because he was not able to reply to them ; it could not, however, entirely exonerate him. Indeed, he executed, without having received formal instructions', an operation contrary to all the principles of war, the dangers attending which, had he been more experienced, he ought to have been better able to appreciate than any one else ; anxious to distinguish himself in behalf of a cause he had espoused with the zeal of a martyr, he atoned by a glorious 416 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. deatli for the error he had committed, but he could not repair it. There are few men capable of such devotion ; and one who blames them for a technical error must at the same time pay due homao-e to their valor. Baker's subordinates were also them- selves to blame for not having made a more thorough reconnais- sance, and for having allowed the enemy to come upon them without even suspecting his approach; they thus lost the last chance of recrossing the river in good order. We have dwelt upon the causes which brought on the defeat of the Federals because the eifect of that disaster was deeply felt among them. The soldiers of the army of the Potomac under- stood that their comrades had been the victims of misunderstand- ings among their commanders ; the latter no longer possessed that entire confidence in their management of the army which is every- where the first element of success ; and General McClellan, for his part, caught the first glimpse of many difficulties which he had not suspected before. It was the first time that he had put his hand to the tiller, and the cumbrous vessel had not obeyed the helm as the pilot had expected. Congress itself was affected by the rout of Ball's Bluff. A committee formed for the purpose of watching the military op- erations, and of which we shall have to speak hereafter, made it the subject of a long investigation, which resulted in the sacrifice of General Stone to appease the dissatisfied public. This officer, who had shown great determination of purjjose during the early stages of the rebellion, when he found himself alone in "Wash- ington with his company of regulars, was accused of being in communication with the enemy. His tolerance, perhaps exag- gerated, for the rebel inhabitants of Maryland, was charged against him before the committee, and on a certain day he was arrested by order of the Secretary of War, and secretly confined in Fort Lafayette. He was kept there like a forgotten man for six months ; the committee pretended to be ignorant of his arrest, which was not justified by any conclusive evidence ; no written order of the Secretary of War concerning him has been discovered ; and General McClellan, being absorbed by other cares, or thinking probably that this subordinate, against whom he had himself signed the order of arrest, deserved such severe BALL'S BLUFF. 417 jiunishraent, did not deem it proper to interest himself in his behalf. The check of Ball's Bluff cut short all the projects for the cam- paign which the organization of the army, the season, and the condition of the ground seemed to impose on General McClellan. That incident satisfied his mind as to the false estimate he had formed of the strength of his adversary ; notwithstanding the re- ports of all the reconnoitring parties he had sent out on the 20th, who had not seen the enemy in force anywhere, he did not dare to put his army in motion, and thus lost the best opportunity he ever had of beginning a successful and decisive campaign. Other duties were soon added to those appertaining to the com- mand of the army of the Potomac, which, by absorbing his whole activity, diverted his attention for a time from those plans of cam- paign for the execution of which the public was waiting so impa- tiently. On the 31st of October General Scott, urged by numer- ous solicitations, and himself convinced that he had arrived at an age which required rest, tendered his resignation ; and on the fol- lowing day General McClellan, without, however, receiving a new grade, was invested by the President with the chief command of all the armies of the republic. From that moment he applied himself to the task of combining the movements of those armies, and determined not to put that of the Potomac in motion until the organization of all the forces entrusted to his care should be sufficiently advanced to enable him to undertake offensive opera- tions on all points at once. Halleck was sent to St. Louis to prepare for the campaign ou the banks of the Missouri, and Sherman was set aside to give place to General Buell, in whom his friend McClellan placed en- tire confidence. The fine weather, which that year continued for an extraordinary length of time, in vain seemed to invite the Fed- erals to emerge from their long inaction on the borders of the Po- tomac. The end of the year on that side was only marked by in- significant encounters. The Confederates having once more taken possession of Fairfax Court-house after the affair of Ball's Bluff, a patrol of cavalry crossed swords with them, on the 17th of November, in the neighborhood of that village; both sides came out of the encounter with only a few wounded, and Vol. I.— 27 418 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. on the 26th another party had a similar engagement at Drains- ville. A month later this village was the scene of a more serious fight, in which the advantage was on the side of the Federals. During a considerable period of time the village had been aban- doned by both Federals and Confederates. At last, towards the middle of December, the latter having again established their outposts in that locality, General McCall, who, as we have stated, was encamped on the Leesburg road, in the vicinity of the sus- pension bridge, was ordered to disperse them, and to seize the sup- plies of forage they had collected. On the morning of the 20th McCall set in motion the brigade of Ord, with a battery of artillery. Notwithstanding the season of the year, the weather was beautiful, and the roads, hardened by a long dry spell,' were in a better condition than in the middle of summer. By a singular coincidence, General Stuart left his camp in the neighborhood of Centreville on the evening of the preced- ing day, and also took the road to Drainesville with a brigade composed of about two thousand five hundred men, six pieces of artillery, and two hundred wagons, intended for the convey- ance of the forage which he expected to procure between the lines of outposts. These two bodies, about to encounter at Drainesville, each being under the impression that they should only meet with small detachments during their expedition, pro- ceeded at a rapid rate, with very little order and without scouting to any great distance. The Federals were the first to reach the village with one regiment, and drove oif the few skirmishers found there. They had scarcely taken up their quarters when, towards two o'clock, the Confederates made their appearance. The Centreville road falls off at a right angle into the main road from Washington to Leesburg about one hundred feet to the east- ward of Drainesville. Two other roads, to the right and left of the first, converge towards that same point of intersection, and all three, before reaching it, pass through two woods separated by a clearing where a few houses stand. The junction of all these roads is in the northernmost wood. The other concealed the movements of the Confederates from view. The latter, deploy- ing their line under the trees, rested upon the three roads, while BALL'S BLUFF. 419 their artillery followed the middle one. Having reached the edge of the plain, they found themselves facing one of the Federal regiments, which had been placed in advance of the junction of the roads in order to guard their approaches. The others were drawn up en echelon a little further off around Drainesville. The first attack of Stuart's troops throws some disorder into the ranks of the Federals, and they take advantage of it to occupy the houses in the clearing. But the presence of General Ord soon retrieves the fortunes of the day. He forms three of his regiments into line, availing himself of all the irregularities of the ground to cover them, and disposing them in such a manner as to prevent the enemy from cutting oif his retreat by turning his left. Then he places his cannon on the Centreville road, where the enemy's artillery is posted ; and pointing the first piece himself, he fires a shell into the midst of the Confederate bat- tery. The firing is thus kept up at a distance for three-quarters of an hour. Stuart, in spite of two or three fruitless attempts, fails to carry the positions of the Federals. Two of his regiments, meeting in the woods, fire upon each other; and this accident throws his whole line into confusion. His artillery is soon silenced ; one of the caissons explodes, killing nearly all the horses ; he extri- cates his guns with difficulty, closely followed by the Federals, who have assumed the offensive, and capture several prisoners. This check cost him forty-three killed, one hundred and forty-three wounded, and forty-three prisoners. The Federals had only six killed and sixty wounded. Although the success thus obtained was insignificant in itself, in a battle where the two adversaries were of equal strength., it raised the courage of the soldiers and restored to their commanders a little of that confidence which they had lost since the affair of Ball's Bluff. This was, however, only an incident of little importance, which afforded no criterion for estimating the difficulties which awaited the army of the Poto- mac when the whole of it should be put in motion. The inaction which followed the battle of Ball's Bluff had not only had the effect of tiring out the patience of the public, and of depriving General McClellan of a portion of that moral influence which his success at Cheat Mountain had given him over all his subordinates ; it had also enabled the Confederates to render the 420 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA! blockade of the Lower Potomac more stringent. They multi- plied their batteries, and finally rendered the navigation of that arm of the sea almost impossible for merchant- vessels. The Fed- eral fleet made several unsuccessful attempts to dislodge them. Every time that the Federals, landing in force, destroyed a bat- tery which had been abandoned on their approach, another would immediately spring up in its vicinity, and take up the scarcely interrupted fire upon Northern vessels. Thus an expedition to Mathias Point on the 11th of November, and a vigorous cannon- ade between the Federal flotilla and the batteries of Shipping Point on the 9 th of December, produced no serious results. The Potomac remained closed, and the humiliation of seeing the capi- tal thus blockaded towards the sea was deeply felt in the North. Cold and foggy weather, however, succeeded at last to the mildness of the Indian summer. Then winter spread her snowy mantle over all that section of the continent which was the thea- tre of the war, and towards the "last days of the year 1861, that season, so severe in that part of America, rendered any great movement of troops absolutely impossible. The drilling of the soldiers was likewise interrupted. Although they were told from day to day that they were about to take the field, they prepared of their own accord to go into winter quarters. In the place of tents, which afforded them no protection either against the snow or the blast, there rose up throughout all the encampments huts rudely constructed with unhewn logs from the neighboring forest, but warm and solid. The Confederates imitated them ; and being thenceforth pro- tected against all attacks, they settled down as well as they could into their winter cantonments around Centreville. The two months which had thus elapsed had been of more profit to them than to their adversaries ; notwithstanding the numerous maladies en- gendered among them by a climate whose rigors they had never before experienced, they had seen, thanks to the activity of the central government and of their military leaders, the army then commanded by Johnston increased by one-third, and raised from sixty-six thousand two hundred and forty-three men, forty- four thousand one hundred and thirty-one of whom were under arms, to a total of ninety-eight thousand and eighty-eight, of whom BALL'S BLUFF. 421 sixty-two thousand one hundred and twelve were present for ac- tion. The instruction of these soldiers had made great progress, and a severe discipline had been introduced among them, through their energetic commanders. But the first months of 1862 were not of equal advantage to them. Inaction, depression, and sick- ness thinned off their ranks and impaired the morale of those soldiers of ardent temperament; moreover, the term of a large number of enlistments expired before the return of pleasant weather ; and notwithstanding the rigorous measures which, as we shall see, were adopted in order to fill up the ranks of the Con- federate armies, we shall find that of Johnston reduced, on the 1st of March, to forty-seven thousand six hundred and seventeen combatants, out of a total force of eighty-four thousand two hun- dred and twenty-five men. Both sides are now going to prepare for the new campaign. To bring the year 1861 to a close, it only remains for us to speak of the naval operations, or the combined operations of the fleet and the army, of which the extensive coast of the Confederate States was the theatre. CHAPTER III. PORT BOYAL. THE navy of the United States, improvised at the time of the war of independence, had not experienced during the long period of peace which followed that war the same vicissitudes as the regular army. Its maintenance had been necessary to enforce respect for the star-spangled banner on every sea ; and the im- mense development of American commerce had given it an im- portance which screened it from the economical or political mea- sures which had affected the land forces. The crews were obtained by voluntary enlistments, and were liberally paid. The officers were all pupils of the Naval Acad- emy at Annapolis ; being admitted, as at West Point, upon the presentation of members of Congress, or by appointment of the President, they received at that institution a thorough scientific and practical education;* they thus formed an educated, distin- guished, almost aristocratic body, quite exclusive, and ardently devoted to the flag whose honor they worthily sustained. The extreme neatness and strict discipline which prevailed on board American vessels had long been observed in all the ports of Eu- rope ; there had also been occasion to admire frequently in these ships the new models the appearance of which had produced a real revolution in the art of naval construction. The Americans had early abandoned high-decked ships and substituted frigates, which, in dimensions and sailing qualities, were superior to any found in Europe. When steam was adopted as the chief motor in the navy, they persevered in that direction until their large * The Naval Academy was established by the Hon. George Bancroft, Secre- tary of the Navy, in 1845, It had long been a desideratum, but before tliat time midshipmen were only instructed on board ship on regular cruises. The reader might be misled by the author's language into thinking that the school was as old as the navy. — Ed. 422 PORT ROYAL. 423 screw frigates, like the Merrimack, presented one of the most perfect models of a war-vessel of the time. After having secured superiority in speed for their ships, noth- ing was neglected that could contribute to the perfection of their armament. They early appropriated the invention of General Paixhans. The substitution of the shell for the solid ball im- parted to the naval artillery a destructive power unknown until then, which soon required the construction of iron-clad vessels. They applied themselves to manufacturing guns of heavier calibre and longer range than those in use on European ships. They succeeded ; and the howitzer to which Captain Dahlgren gave his name was in 1861 the most powerful arm afloat. Thanks to the invention of Rodman, the Americans had been able to cast iron guns which, notwithstanding a calibre of twenty-eight or thirty- one centimetres, had a remarkable power of resistance. They could throw without eiFort, and by means of very light charges of powder in proportion to their calibre, a heavy weight of iron in the form of hollow projectiles of enormous size, whereas no cast-iron gun could have overcome the inertia of a solid ball of the same weight without the risk of bursting. The Dahlgren shell possessed an ordinary initial velocity and a trajectory but slightly curved ; it nevertheless fired to a great distance and pene- trated the thickest planking of vessels. When Mr. Lincoln came into power, he found the Federal navy scattered over all parts of the globe. The occupation or destruction by the Confederates of all the arsenals situated in the Southern States, with their d6p6ts, their dock-yards, and their materiel, and finally the burning of the vessels collected at Nor- folk, deprived it of its principal resources. But the defection of two hundred and fifty-nine officers, natives of the rebel States, was even a more fatal blow, which, for some time at least, rendered it absolutely powerless. Everything, therefore, had to be created and improvised, in order that the navy might be able to render effective service in the great struggle which was about to take place. Promotion was not sufficient to fill up the disorganized cadres ; they were thrown open to merchant-captains, who received temporary appointments. Generally speaking, these were excel- lent sea-officers; but having none of the traditions of the military 424 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. marine, they were unable to maintain that strict discipline on board their vessels without which commanders soon lose a part of their authority. As to the crews, they continued to be recruited, like the land troops, by voluntary enlistments. High pay and constantly increasing bounties succeeded in attracting them in nearly sufficient numbers ; more than one vessel, however, ready to sail, remained for weeks in port in consequence of not having been able to obtain a full complement of men. In the same manner that improvised officers had been obtained from the merchant service, vessels were also procured and fitted out for war purposes, pending the completion of the ships which had been placed upon the stocks. All the large establishments of the North had received orders and had gone actively to work, but none of the new vessels could be equipped before the early part of 1862. Fortunately, among her numerous steam-vessels America possessed vessels perfectly adapted to the service which the navy was at first required to perform — the maintenance of the block- ade. Indeed, to give chase to smugglers required vessels of rapid speed, and capable of holding their place in all weathers upon a difficult coast, but two or three guns of long range were sufficient for their armament. The conversion of steam-packets into war vessels was therefore easy. Some were hired, others were bought; a few even were given to the government as patriotic offi3rings : among: the latter the finest and fastest of all was The Vander- bilt, presented to the government by the wealthy merchant whose name it bore. Besides this fleet of fast vessels, there was collected by the same process a fleet of transports consisting of vessels of less speed, river steamboats whose hulls had been more or less strengthened to enable them to live in a heavy sea, and finally . sailing vessels intended for the subsistence department. At the end of the year the Secretary of the Navy had bought and equipped one hundred and thirty-seven vessels of all kinds, car- rying five hundred and eighteen guns and representing seventy-one thousand two hundred and ninety-seven tons. Fifty-two new vessels, with an armament of two hundred and. fifty-six guns and registering forty-one thousand four hundred and forty-eight tons, were either in process of construction or already completed. The war was about to impose a triple task upon the Federal PORT ROYAL. 425 navy — the protection of merchant-vessels against privateers, the maintenance of the blockade, and a share in the operations of the land forces on the enemy's coast. We proceed to show how it performed these three divisions of its task in the course of the year 1861. As we have stated elsewhere, Mr. Davis had encouraged the equipment of privateers, immediately after the capture of Fort Sumter, on April 17th, and had oifered letters of marque to those who were willing to cruise under the Confederate flag. The Con- gress at Montgomery, on its part, had promised to the crews of privateers a premium of twenty-five dollars for every prisoner, and for every Federal vessel which should be destroyed in a naval combat a sum equal to as many times one hundred francs as the vessel had men on board. At the same time, the Southern gov- ernment set to work to fit out vessels destined to cruise under its war-flag against the commerce of the Northern States. The Confederates had no merchant fleet in their ports that could supply them with the large vessels required for cruising on the high seas. They did not lack materials for their construction, but they needed experienced mechanics. They confined them- selves, therefore, to arming vessels of which surprise or treason had given them possession. These consisted at first of six cut- ters belonging to the Federal revenue service, which happened to be in Southern ports at the time when the rebellion broke out. To these were added about a dozen small steamers purchased by the government. In short, during the six weeks following the proclamation of Mr. Davis, private individuals responded to that call by equipping as privateers about twenty vessels of the same pattern, nearly all of which had previously been employed in the coasting trade or as pilot-boats along the Southern coasts. The merchant-vessels of the North, overtaken in Southern porta by the ordinances of secession, or sailing peaceably in the neigh- boring seas without any suspicion of danger, offered a rich prize to the privateers, which captured a large number of them. The time came, however, when the boldest among them learned to their cost that they could not pursue with impunity the adven- turous career which exceptional circumstances had favored during a few weeks. At the end of May a small schooner of fifty-four 426 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. tons, called jTJie Savannah, formerly a pilot-boat, armed with an eighteen pounder, went out of the port of Charleston under the Confederate flag ; on the 3d of June, after securing a few prizes, the privateer, deceived by appearances, approached the brig-of-war Perry, and discovering her mistake too late was obliged to strike her colors after having vainly attempted to effect her escape. Her crew of twenty men were landed at New York to be tried for the crime of piracy. This trial, which was to last for a considerable time, gave rise to questions of the gravest importance regarding public law. The Federal government, never having recognized tlie insurgents of the South as belligerents, could not, strictly speaking, consider them in any other light than that of malefactors. Every Con- federate soldier who killed a Federal was in its estimation simply a murderer; every privateer which captured a merchant- vessel carrying the Federal flag was nothing but a robber and a pirate. But it was indispensable that there should be complete assimila- tion between the acts committed on the sea and on the land. As the government of the United States had declined in 1856 to participate in the declarations of the congress of Paris, it could not have questioned the right of its adversaries to cruise against its commerce, if it had recognized them in the capacity of bel- ligerents ; and having denied that character, it could not prosecute the sailors of the Savannah as pirates except by instituting simi- lar criminal proceedings against every prisoner taken on land. It was sufficient to enunciate such a proposition to show its absurd- ity ; the magnitude of the rebellion, the fear of inevitable repri- sals, humanity, policy — in fine, good sense — forbade the Federal government from pursuing such a course ; nor was the idea even contemplated. From the moment that Confederate soldiers cap- tured on land were considered as prisoners of war, the same im- munity from all personal prosecution had to be extended to the crews of Southern privateers. The government at Washington, bound by Mr. liincoln's proclamations and pressed by public opinion, did not at first understand this. But the battle of Bull E,un soon gave Mr. Davis the means of enabling his opponents to form a more correct estimate of the situation, by delivering a laroe number of Federal officers into his hands. He had Colonel PORT ROYAL. 427 Corcorau and some of his companions in captivity put in irons, and declared that their lives should answer for those of the sail- ors of the Savannah. The proceedings against the latter were immediately suspended ; no sentence was pronounced, and the pri- vateers-men were finally included in the cartels for the exchange of prisoners. A few days after the battle of Bull Run another vessel, called the Petrel, was getting ready for sea; two whole months had elapsed since the Savannah had left Charleston, so great was the inability of the Confederates to create a navy. The career of the new privateer, which got under way on the 28th of July, was to be of even shorter duration than that of her predecessor. She had scarcely left the port when she was discovered by the Federal frigate the St. Law7^enee, which was stationed on the coast ; the crew of the latter vessel concealed themselves between-decks ; the yard-arms and rigging were reduced, so that the Petrel thought she had to deal with a large three-masted merchant-vessel, and gave her chase. The frigate, running with calculated slowness, enticed her imprudent pursuer away from the coast ; and when the latter was within good range, the Federals suddenly opened three port-holes. Three projectiles, one of which was a shell of twenty centimetres, struck the privateer, and that frail vessel sank in- stantly. All her crew, with the exception of four men, were taken on board the St. Laim'ence. In the mean while, a far more formidable adversary, and one destined to inflict cruel losses on American commerce, had just put to sea from another quarter. The Ilarques de la Uabana was a screw steamer of about six hundred tons, an excellent sailer and staunch sea-boat. She w^as plying between Havana and New Orleans, and happened to be at the latter port when secession was proclaimed ; the Confederate government purchased her, put a few guns of heavy calibre on board, gave her, with the name of Sumter, a crew composed of adventurers from every part of the world, and placed her under the command of Raphael Semmes. This person, formerly an officer of the Federal navy, a bold and energetic sailor, was well chosen for the task imposed upon him, and during the four years of his privateer life he acquired, if not glory and honor, one of those European celebri- 428 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. ties wliich form the highest reward of certain ambitious men. On the 30th of June the Sumter left the Mississippi by way of the Passe-di-Loutre, eluding the Federal blockader, the Brooklyn, a sailing sloop-of-war, who gave her chase without effect. Once on the high sea, the privateer had certain advantages over her adversaries of which she cleverly availed herself. Owing to her great speed, every sailing-vessel was at her mercy, and she could easily avoid nearly all the Federal men-of-war that were sent in pursuit of her. The immensity of the sea was her safest refuge ; just heard of in one port, all she had to do was to resume her cruise, to hide in the midst of the ocean, and reappear sud- denly at the point where she Avas least expected. All the vessels sailing under the Federal flag from the Bermudas to the mouth of the Amazon might fear to become her prey. Every time that a light smoke was descried in the horizon everybody tried to guess by the slightest indications the character of the vessel that was rapidly approaching, for the loss of a few minutes might deprive the heavy three-master laden with a rich cargo of her last chance to escape from the terrible privateer. Conformably to international regulations, the first vessels cap- tured by Semmes were sent to New Orleans in charge of some of his men. But these prizes having again fallen into the hands of the Federals, he soon threw aside all consideration of the rules prescribed by the law of nations ; and instead of being everywhere treated as a pirate on that account, he was sustained and encouraged through the connivance of the authorities in almost all European colonies, and in some of. the American States. International law, such as it has been established for more than two centuries by treaties and usages, in sanctioning the capture on the high seas, by a belligerent, of the merchant- vessels sailing under the flag of his adversary, has subjected this right of capture to restrictions which are a strong guarantee against the abuse of a power so excessive. The commander of the vessel effecting the capture cannot him- self determine the validity of the prize ; he is obliged to send her to one of the ports of his country, before a prize court, which, if proper, adjudges the vessel to him and declares the validity of her capture. The adjudications of this special tribunal are precisely what distinguish lawful captures from acts of piracy. But when PORT ROYAL. 429 Semmes saw that the blockade interfered with the )bservance of these protective formalities, he took upon himself to institute a prize court on board his own vessel ; and as he had no other ob- ject than to injure and intimidate the commerce of the North, he adopted the barbarous system of destroying every vessel which fell into his hands, after having himself decided upon the validity of the prize. As soon as captured the vessel was set on fire, the crew was landed, without resources, at the nearest port, Semmes only retaining as a souvenir the chronometers of his victims ; he made a collection of them ; they were his trophies. He was even accused, although he always denied the charge, of having refused, at times, to examine the bills of lading of American vessels with neutral cargoes on board, in order to prevent their escape. Not- withstanding the just indignation caused by such acts among those who regarded international law as one of the most precious acquisitions of a civilized age, in spite of the protests of the Fed- eral authorities, the Sumter, far from being treated as a pirate, met with such a reception in most of the neutral ports she visited as no belligerent man-of-war could have expected. Contrary to all usages, he was allowed to take all such prizes as were too pre- cious to be burnt, although not legally adjudicated, into neutral ports on the coasts of New Grenada. In the English and French colonies he was permitted, still contrary to international regula- tions, to provide himself with supplies of coal far beyond what was absolutely necessary to enable him to reach a Confederate port, and he thus found all the resources he needed to continue his depredations. The authorities of Cuba were more scrupu- lous, it is true, and restored all the prizes, illegally brought into Spanish waters, to their legitimate owners. Many Federal vessels were sent in pursuit of the Sumter, but they rarely met with her, and she always succeeded in getting away from them. Sometimes sailing under one flag, sometimes under another, which, for a vessel of war, was a violation of the rights of those powers whose ensign she borrowed, Semmes em- ployed all the autumn of 1861 in scouring the Atlantic, carrying everywhere terror and distress to American commerce. After taking seventeen prizes he arrived at last, in the early part of 1862, at Gibraltar, where he intended to establish the base of his 430 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. operations in European seas, but where his exploits, contrary to his expectations, were suddenly interrupted, as we shall show in our narrative of the maritime events of that new year. The other war-vessels equipped by the Confederates, not pos- sessing the same nautical qualities as the Sumter, did not meet with the same success. All those who ventured upon any daring en- terprise were soon punished by the Federal navy, which, in the fall of 1861, had finally succeeded in collecting a sufficient num- ber of fast vessels to scour the seas and protect the commerce of the nation. The brig Jefferson Davis, fitted out as a privateer in the Gulf of Mexico by private individuals, had put to sea in the beginning of August. After having made several prizes, which she burnt, after the fashion of the Sumter, she was obliged, in order to escape from the Federal cruisers, to seek refuge at St. Augustine, in Florida, where she ran aground at the entrance of the port, and was lost. The NasJiville, a side-wheel steamer and packet belonging to the New York and Charleston line, had been converted into a war- vessel by the Confederate government in the latter port. On the 26th of October she went to sea under the command of Captain Pegram, formerly an officer of the Federal navy, who, even be- fore cruising in the Atlantic, repaired to the English station at the Bermudas, where he procured fresh provisions and obtained, still in violation of international law, a sufficient supply of coal to take him into European waters. He arrived there, after having burnt a merchant-vessel on his way, but did not leave English ports again, where the Nashville had undergone repairs, until the following year, to return to the American coast, where, as we shall presently see, his ship was destroyed, not long after, by a Federal cruiser. Finally, on the 12th of November a schooner of a hundred tons, called the Beauregard, which had been fitted out for privateering purposes and had taken a few prizes in the Bahama waters, M^as captured by the Anderson, a sailing-vessel, which had been fitted out by the Washington government and was employed in cruising on the coast of Florida. The efforts of the Federal navy had therefore partially sue- PORT ROYAL. 431 ceeded in freeing American commerce from the clangers which had beset it during the first months of the war. But this danger was soon to reappear, thanks to the assistance which the Confed- erates found in England. Having become convinced of the im- possibility of creating a naval force at home able to cruise in every sea without risk of becoming the prey of Federal cruisers, the Confederate authorities had sent several agents to Europe about the middle of the year 1861, with instructions to fit out vessels of war, which, by fraudulently hoisting the Southern flag, should resume the work of destruction which they were unable to continue themselves. The cotton which the secessionists possessed enabled them to obtain the required amount of money to purchase these vessels. Those agents had found in England a favorable reception. Captain Bullock, foremost among them, an able offi- cer, full of resources, assisted by the firm of Eraser & Trenholm, w^ho represented the financial interests of the Richmond govern- ment, knew well how to avail himself of these dispositions, and by the end of the year several privateers were preparing to put to sea. We shall speak hereafter of the war they waged against American commerce. The maintenance of the blockade was another and a no less difficult part of the task so suddenly imposed upon the Federal navy. As we have stated above, the blockade, which was pro- claimed on the 19th of April, after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, against all the maritime States which had just entered into confederacy at Montgomery, was shortly after extended to the coasts of Virginia and North Carolina. This proclamation of the President gave rise to questions of international law of the gravest character. In the first place, had a government the right of blockading, as a mere measure of policy, a portion of its own coasts, and of seiz- ing all neutral vessels which should attempt to violate it? or did not an act of so grave a character imply a formal recognition of the quality of belligerents in the insurgents, against whom the Federal government was obliged to employ such measures ? The latter interpretation was the most rational, yet the Federal gov- ernment could sustain the former by alleging that, in the Presi- dent's proclamation itself, the blockade was represented as a 432 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. means for collecting custom-house duties, which the insurgent States sought to get rid of. Indeed, the question was never thor- oughly discussed. The English government, with a malevolent haste which the American people regarded as a cruel wrong, took advantage of the first news of the blockade proclamation to recog- nize the belligerent rights of the insurgents, and to publish in its turn a declaration of neutrality. In performing an act of so much importance it did not even wait for the full text of the proclamation, which the . despatches had abbreviated, so that the Washington government was justified in stating that iho, blockade was only a pretext by which England sought to disguise a pre- conceived purpose, prompted by the first success of the rebellion in the harbor of Charleston. The Federals, on their part, with- out ever recognizing in plain words all the belligerent rights of their opponents, had never disputed them, in fact, except in the case of the crew of the Savannah, above mentioned. The second question raised by Mr. Lincoln's proclamation was yet more serious ; it concerned the efficiency of the blockade it- self. Paper blockades, against which neutrals so justly and so energetically protested during the wars in the beginning of the present century, are no longer countenanced by international usage. The right in virtue of which a belligerent can confiscate all neutral vessels who shall attempt to enter a blockaded port becomes, in the hands of a great naval power, an instrument of tyranny and oppression unless it be limited by the strictest rule. This rule does not admit of fictitious blockades, and requires that the cruisers of a belligerent, to enable them to exercise the right of capture, shall be sufficiently numerous to keep a constant and effective watch over the port, or over the whole extent of the coast under blackade. If the blockade is not maintained in con- formity with these conditions — if it can be proved that it is easy to elude it — then neutrals are justified in not respecting it. When Mr. Lincoln proclaimed the blockade of the coasts of the Confederate States, the Federal navy was not in a condition to ex- ercise a surveillance over their whole extent. Those coasts, in fact, from the mouth of the Potomac to that of the Rio Grande, extended to a distance of more than four thousand five hundred kilometres. Deeply indented with bays, arms of the sea, and estuaries, they PORT ROYAL. 433 afforded innumerable places of refuge to vessels arriving from the open sea, and an excellent shelter to those who desired to fit out their vessels without being observed. The Atlantic coasts, low and difficult to watch, were swept by terrible tempests ; those of the Gulf of Mexico bristled with reefs and rocks. England possessed two naval stations admirably situated for reyictualling and outfitting vessels intended for the contraband trade with Southern ports ; these were the Bermudas, in the Atlantic, and the Bahama Islands, opposite Florida, at the entrance of the Gulf of Mexico. No maritime power had ever yet attempted to effectively block- ade a coast of such extent. Consequently, it would have been more prudent on the part of Mr. Lincoln to have limited his dec- larations to the measure of his resources, and to have only block- aded at first a few of the principal ports, such as Charleston, Sa- vannah, and New Orleans, before which it was easy to station a line of cruisers. He could not justify a fictitious blockade of the Southern States by invoking the rights of the Federal sovereignty over those States; for an analogous case had occurred in 1822, and on that occasion the Washington government had refused to recognize the right of Spain to declare a paper blockade of her own American colonies, then engaged in the war of independence. But these theoretical difficulties were avoided in practice. The American government, which contented itself at first with the effective blockade of a few ports, prevented any misunderstanding, by only making prizes off those ports, and every time that its ac- tion was extended to some new point, it granted the same delays to neutrals, in regard to such point, as it had accorded at the lime of the proclamation of the blockade. At last, after months of incessant efforts, the Federal navy suc- ceeded, as we have seen, in reconstructing both its personnel and materiel. As the season advanced, and the inclement weather ren- dered it more difficult and troublesome to maintain the blockade, the number of vessels employed in that service was increased. Consequently, at the end of a year, at the period when the At- lantic coast is incessantly lashed by a raging sea and the north- ern gales sweep the Gulf of Mexico, the blockade was effectually established from the vicinity of Washington to the mouth of the Vol. I.— 28 434 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. Rio Grande. Two squadrons, which were each to be subdivided at the commencement of 1862, had been formed in the month of July, 1861. One, called the Atlantic blockading squadron, con- sisted of twenty-two vessels, carrying two hundred and ninety-six guns and three thousand three hundred men, and was commanded by Coramgdore Stringhara. The other, under Commodore Mer- vine, known as the blockading squadron of the Gulf of Mexico, was composed of twenty-one ships, with an armament of two hundred and eighty-two guns and a force of three thousand five hundred men. We cannot enter into a detailed account of the incidents which marked the last six months of the year as regards the Federal sailors. Their task was the more onerous on account of its ex- treme monotony. To the watches and fatigues of every kind which the duties of the blockade service involved there were added difficulties of another character. It was necessary to in- struct the newly-recruited crews, to train officers who had been taken from the merchant navy, and to ascertain, under the worst possible circumstances, the good and bad qualities of merchant- vessels too quickly converted into men-of-war. In these junc- tures the Federal navy displayed a perseverance, a devotion, and a knowledge of its profession, which reflect as much honor upon it as its more brilliant feats of arms. A few days after the dis- aster of Bull Run these fleets, then scarcely organized, began to make the victorious Confederates feel the dangers to which their maritime inferiority exposed them. Numerous prizes soon taught the commerce of neutrals that the blockade, thenceforth effective, must be respected. The rapid rise in the prices of all imported commodities in the insurgent States presented the exact measure of the efficiency of that blockade, and furnished an irrefutable proof against those who disputed its legality. The almost abso- lute commercial isolation of so vast a country as the Confederate States is an extraordinary fact which it is interesting to study in its various phases. It took a considerable time to establish this isolation on land along the line which separated the two belligerents from east to west. In sj)ite of the war, relations were not abruptly suspended ; the importation of manufactured goods and of pork, together PORT ROYAL. 435 with the exportation of cotton, continued for some time, even in the vicinity" of battle-fields, notwithstanding all the prohibitions of the combatants. In the West the Confederacy was surrounded by immense deserts, which presented an impassable barrier against commerce from the borders of the Arkansas to the mouth of the Rio Grande, where the frontier of Texas and Mexico comes down to the sea. It was only at this point that the neighborhood of a neutral State could offer an always oj)en breach in the block- ade. At the enti'ance of the river, on the Mexican side, is the small port of Matamoras, where foreign vessels could laud their merchandise under the very eyes of American cruisers. These goods, for their better safety, were then taken up the Rio Grande, or crossing the river directly were accumulated in the little American town of Brownsville. But inasmuch as, before the war, all the carrying trade in Texas was effected by coasting- vessels, that State had remained entirely without roads, and the journey from Brownsville to the Mississippi, being too difficult for any extensive trade, reduced the breach to the proportions of a mere fissure. The maritime blockade from Matamoras to the Potomac completed that immense circumvallation. Its first ob- ject, leaving out of consideration the obstacle it placed to the egress of Confederate privateers, was to prevent the exportation of cotton in the interest of the Richmond government, and on the other hand the introduction of arms and war materiel, which were brought over in exchange. Cotton was the element of wealth which the Confederates sought to turn to advantage, and which their adversaries determined either to render useless in their hands or to appropriate to themselves. Every blockade-runner leaving Southern ports had her hold filled with that precious commodity, while on land, whenever the hostile armies found an opportunity, they contended for the possession of the depots where it was stored. The Federal government confiscated the cotton to sell it and cause the price to be lowered in the European markets ; the Confederates destroyed it rather than see it fall into the hands of their adversaries ; they wanted to compel neutrals to apply to them alone for supplies of that article, and, if need be, to inter- fere in their behalf. In proportion as the blockade is prolonged the cultivation of th( soil will undergo a change, and cotton will 436 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. give place to cereals, which will secure sufficient means of sub- sistence to the blockaded populations ; but, on the other hand, all manufactured goods will become more and more scarce, and at- tain prices as fabulous as those paid in Europe for colonial com- modities during the continental blockade. This commercial isolation of the insurgent States did not pro- duce all the results which had been anticipated in the North : the people of the South were not starved, nor did the want of arms and ammunition put an end to the struggle ; but the blockade caused incalculable injury to the Confederates by depriving them of all the resources which they might have derived from E-urope, and by preventing them from waging war on the sea, which would have ruined the commerce of the North. If this block- ade had not been rigidly maintained, the Federals would probably never have been able to subdue their adversaries. The Confederates, notwithstanding the feeble means at their dis- posal, naturally made every effort to break through the restraints of the blockade. We shall briefly indicate here, following the chronological order, these various attempts, the measures adopted by the Federals to baffle them, and the principal incidents which marked the operations of the blockade until the end of the year 1861. On the 5th of October a boat belonging to the Federal vessel Louisiana penetrated into one of the large lagoons on the Vir- ginia coast by the pass called Chincoteague Inlet, and destroyed a schooner which the Confederates were fitting out for a cruise. This affair cost them a few wounded. On the 9th one of the large Federal transport-ships anchored in Hampton Roads, having been driven upon the enemy's beach in Lynn Haven Bay, fell under the fire of one of the Confederate batteries at Sewell's Point ; she was about to be captured, when the little steamer Daylight went to her assistance, and after a brisk cannonade succeeded in silencing the guns of her adversaries. On the 12th of October the Confederates tried, for the first time, to force the blockade. The Federal division which guarded the entrances of the Mississippi was attacked and nearly dis- persed by an unlooked-for adversary, fitted out by the authorities of New Orl(\ans for the purpose of reopening their port, which PORT ROYAL. 437 Lad been closed fc;? six months. It is necessary to cast a glance over the map to form an idea of the extraordinary configura- tion of the mouths of the Mississippi. The great river, which empties its muddy waters into the Gulf of Mexico, not only forms a delta like the Nile, the work of a long series of centuries, but also two natural embankments, which confine its waters and extend with them to the sea. At a certain distance from the coast, the river, thus prolonged, becomes divided; it takes the shape of a half-closed fan, each branch lying between two similar dykes. Its depth diminishes gradually with the rapidity of its current, and it drives slowly before it, like a moving barrier, an accumulated mass of mud which interposes a serious obstacle to navigation ; its waters no longer advance, but from the pressure of the mass which follows them they finally mingle with that sea which seems to shrink from their contact. Two important forti- fications. Fort Jackson and Fort St, Philip, command the course^ of the river near the point where it leaves the coast, to discharge into the open sea, the basis of the new delta which has been per- ceptibly forming around. The point where the waters divide is called La Tete-des-Passes, and among tliese channels there are only three practicable for vessels of great draught — on one side the south-west pass, and in an entirely opposite direction La Passe-a-Lovtres and the north-east pass. The Confederates occupied the forts, but it was impossible to construct any forti- fication lower down the Mississippi, as the water penetrated everywhere the spongy soil of the levees which border the river. The Federals, therefore, had found no difficulty in entering these passes ; and at the TMe pass they had established a naval station consisting of the sloop-of-war Richmond, the two war-steamers Preble and Vineennes, and the Waterwitch, order-boat. Every outlet was thus effectually closed by a fleet which had no fear of stormy weather. In order to disperse that fleet the Confed- erates determined to cover with sheathing (6/mc?er), on the plan of those floating-batteries tried in 1855 in the attack on Kinburn, a vessel which should defy the Federal artillery. Captain Hol- lins, a former officer of the regular navy, was entrusted with the task of thus transforming a high-pressure steamer witli double engines which lay in the port of New Orleans. The deck was 438 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. cut away and replaced by an iron-plated roof, into which were introduced a few port-holes. The bow was remodelled above the water-line, and so shaped as to leave room for a gun firing point blank, while below the water-line she was armed with a powerful iron spike. This vessel, called the Manassas, was to serve as a model to the famous Merrimac, of which we shall soon have to speak. A flotilla of seven small armed steamers was collected to support her operations. Hollins had been for some days Avatching the movements of the Federals, who were beginning to lose faith in the existence of that Manassas which had been so long talked about. Finally, on the 12th of October, taking advantage of a very dark night, he moved oif. The Manassas led the way with all her port-holes carefully closed ; having no masts and presenting only a low back, she glided upon the water like a marine monster. The fleet, fol- lowing at a considerable distance, had some fire-ships in tow, with orders to launch them as soon as a rocket from the Manassas should announce the commencement of the battle. Hollins's ram arrived unperceived at the THe-des-Passes in the midst of the Federal vessels. Passing close to the Preble too rapidly to damage her with the spike, she directed her course towards the Richmond, then in the act of taking in coal from a brig grap- pled alongside of her ; a moment after, she struck the side of that sloop, causing a leak of no great accouut below the water-line, shattering everything on board, and breaking the fastenings of the brig, which was carried oif by the current. This was the time for the Manassas to try and sink her adversary by another stroke; but the first shock had deranged her engine, and, before it could be put in order, she had drifted to leeward, while the Richmond, breaking off from her moorings and quickly tacking (virant a bard), was ready for battle. This vessel opened fire, but her pro- jectiles and those of the Preble could make no impression upon the sheathing of the Confederate ram. In the mean time, the fleet which accompanied the fire-ships, having noticed the signal agreed upon, advanced towards the scene of action, and moving fires soon lighted up the tall trees which skirted the river, threat- ening the Federal squadron with a new danger. That danger, however, was more apparent than real, for the Confederate steam- PORT ROYAL. 439 ers, kept at. a distance by the heavy guns of the Richmond, could not direct the movements of the fire-ships ; the Manassas had gone up the river and disappeared. But it was difficult for a long sloop like the Richmond to come about in so narro^y a strait as the south-west pass, and her commander, Pope, doubting his ability to make her head the current again, gave the signal for the three other vessels to retire beyond the bar. The fire-ships soon ran aground, with the coaling-brig, which had been separated from the Richmond; and the flotilla of Hollins followed the enemy at a distance. Everything seemed to be in his favor ; the Preble ran aground on nearing the bar, and was almost thrown on her beam-ends, while the Richmond was stranded a little lower down ; and if Hollins had been bolder, he could probably have destroyed both vessels. Fortunately, the Richmond, her broad- side facing the enemy's ships, was able to keep them at a distance with her guns. The commander of the Preble had abandoned his ship with unseemly haste, but by a lucky chance the match he applied to the powder magazine was extinguished some minutes before causing an explosion, and the Confederates, giving up the game at the decisive moment, withdrew without doing aaght to secure the victory. The Richmond was speedily got off; the crew of the Preble again got on board, and succeeded in raising her. The damages sustained by the Federal squadron were promptly repaired, and it resumed its place at the TMe-des-Passes, while Hollins was pompously announcing a victory, the worthlessness of which was soon felt by the inhabitants of New Orleans, for the blockade continued in force as strictly as before. A few weeks after, upon another point in the Gulf of Mexico, at Galveston, in Texas, the Federals by a bold stroke destroyed one of the vessels which the Confederates were preparing to break the blockade. During the night of November 7th two. armed launches were sent by the frigate Santee, stationed outside of Gal- veston, to attack the steamer General Rusk, which was being fitted out for war purposes. The boats entered the port ; but being dis- covered, they abandoned their original intention, seized the schooner Royal Yacht, which was also armed as a privateer, and were able to set her on fire before leaving. This expedition, which gave the Federal navy a fe^» prisoners, cost them seven men. 440 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. At the same period, the 9th of November, a slight engage- ment took place in the estuary of the Rappahannock. A Federal transport-ship having run aground at Corrotowan Creek, the Con- federates were going to seize her, when a detachment from the cruiser Carabridge set her on fire, after exchanging a few shots with the enemy. On the following day the same Federal cruiser bombarded the town of Urbanna, which served as a depot for the contraband trade with Maryland. In the mean time, the Confederates had armed the Patrick Henry on the James River, a steamer which formerly plied in Chesapeake Bay, and of which they had taken possession. On the 2d of December they wished to try her strength against the small vessels which came up the James from the anchoring- grounds at Newport News to make reconnaissances. But those vessels having fallen back at her approach on the large ships at anchor in the harbor, the Patrick Henry only exchanged a few cannon-shots with them, and then disappeared without making any further demonstration. A few weeks after, the Confederates were more fortunate. Captain Lynch, formerly an officer in the Federal navy, who had acquired some distinction before the war by his hydrographical exploration of the Dead Sea, had been placed in command of a small steamer, the Sea-Bird, carrying two guns, which was then at Norfolk. He was to take her by way of the Albemarle Canal into the inland waters of South Carolina, in order to watch the Federals stationed at Hatteras. The condition of the canal having delayed his passage, he went to take position near the Sewall's Point batteries, erected at the entrance of James River, fronting those of Fortress Monroe, but out of reach of the latter. Being always on the watch and in search of opportunities to surprise the enemy, he perceived, on the 29th of December, a Federal steamer towing a schooner which was carrying drinking-water to the garrison of Fortr(!SS Monroe, the sandy soil of the Virginia peninsula furnishing but a small supply of that article. Starting with a full head of steam in pursuit, he compelled the Federal steamer to cast the schooner loose, took possession of her, and brought her back under shel- ter of the Confederate batteries, in spite of the efforts of the Mdiole Federal fleet, which chased him in vain, and Avas finally com- PORT ROYAL. 441 pelled to give up the pursuit among the shallow waters in the vicinity of Sewall's Point. We shall close this somewhat monotonous sketch of the opera- tions of the blockade in 1861 with a few words on the subject of an enterprise which must be classed in the same category, although of a very peculiar character. We allude to the attempt on the part of the Federals to place obstructions in the harbor of Charles- ton — a fruitless attempt, which had no other result than to pro- voke the most severe criticisms from the English press. As we shall show hereafter, the Federal fleet had taken possession of Port E,oyal, an important position on the coast of South Carolina, between Savannah and Charleston. But notwithstandino: the facilities which that station offered, the fleet found it very diffi- cult to maintain the blockade of Charleston in an effective man- ner. That port had become the principal focus of the contraband trade with Europe, because it was the best situated for distributing the commodities brought over by the blockade-runners through all the Confederate States, and because the configuration of its entrance afforded to such vessels great chances of eluding the blockade. It forms, in fact, a vast basin, the entrance of which was commanded by the batteries of Moultrie and Cumming's Point on either side, and by the guns of Fort Sumter, occupying a small island in the bay. Outside of this strait the sea is not open, and not far off lies a large sand-bank, always covered, extending in a line parallel to the coast southward to a distance of nine kilometres. It joins the coast to the north, near which there are three outlets, or nar- row passes, only practicable fcjr vessels of small size. The prin- cipal channel bends to the south after passing the narrow en- trance, and runs between the coast and the bank. At the ex- treme point of this bank the shock of the ebb and flow has formed a bar across the cliannel, which presents only an elevation of five metres and a half at high water. The intervening spae repeated, and without taking into consideration the moral effect of the memories it had left behind? should they go and attack the Confederates in front in their newly-fortified positions of Manassas ? This would have Vol. I.— 37 578 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. been taking the bull by the horns. But to storm such entrenched positions with an army that had never yet been under fire would have been to expose it to probable defeat. In short, even if this army should be successful, it could not gather the fruits of vic- tory, because, having no rivers whereby to obtain its supplies, it would not have been able to pursue the enemy as he disappeared in the forest after having destroyed the railways behind him. Should an attempt be made to turn the Confederate positions on either flank ; — in order to flank them on the west, it would have been necessary to take the main portion of the army to Harper's Ferry and proceed by following the line of the Shenandoah. This large and fertile valley afforded great facilities for subsisting and marching, but its direction would have taken the Federals too far from Richmond, exposed their own line of communication, and unnecessarily uncovered Washington. Notwithstanding these drawbacks, this plan was commenced, as we shall presently see. To the east the courses of the Potomac and the Occoquan did not admit of manoeuvring for the purpose of turning the Con- federate right. But the batteries which blockaded the approaches of the capital had to be got rid of at any cost. The navy had declared that it could not undertake that task alone. The chief of the Federal corps of engineers, after reconnoitring the enemy's positions, had asked for three divisions to carry them. Yet even this force was too small ; for it was evident that to destroy them effectually it was essential to occupy them permanently, and to be prepared, therefore, to withstand the shock of all the enemy's forces. Accordingly, it was proposed to employ the entire army massed around Washington in this operation. While a portion of it, crossing the Lower Potomac, should engage the batteries, the rest were to attack the Confederates in front, and join hands with the troops that should have landed. This was risking a great deal for the sake of a trifling result ; for the batteries that blockaded the Potomac were merely an accessory destined to fall whenever the Confederates should lose Manassas. It was to divide the Federal troops and place the enemy between the two fractions. In short, it was to attempt a landing, under the most unfavorable circumstances, in the presence of the enemy at a point where the latter could easily concentrate all his forces. ROANOKE. 579 So that, whether the attack was made upon the centre, the left, or the right of the Confederates, it was still an extremely hazard- ous enterprise. But could they not find, in seeking to reach Richmond, the capture of which was the sole aim of the cam- paign, a more vulnerable point than Manassas ? Since the Fed- erals had control of the sea, could not this advantage be turned to account to transfer the theatre of war elsewhere, and strike the enemy far from a battle-field of his own choosing and haunted by sad memories? Such, from the end of 1861, were the reflections of General McClellan. His attention had been directed to the facilities afforded by the numerous steamers which ploughed the large American rivers for the transportation of troops for a short time, and by the peculiar conformation of the Virginia coast for the debarkation of an army. We have already mentioned that south of the Potomac three deep bays, known by the names of Rappahannock, York, and James River, empty into the Chesa- peake, a vast inland sea, which runs parallel with the Atlantic to a distance of nearly two hundred and fifty miles. These estuaries are separated by long peninsulas very favorable for landing : the army which makes one of those peninsulas the base of operations can rest its two flanks upon arms of the sea which ensure for it the protection of the navy. General McClellan conceived the idea of embarking all the available portion of the army of the Potomac at Annapolis, at the extremity of the Chesapeake, to convey it to the borders of one of these estuaries, and thence to march upon Richmond, availing himself as much as possible of the water- courses. This plan was in conformity with the military rule which counsels that the enemy should be sought where he does not expect to be attacked. It lessened to a considerable extent the distance to be marched in order to reach Richmond ; the rivers, instead of being formidable obstacles, became powerful auxiliaries ; while the difference of climate would enable the com- mander-in-chief to begin the campaign fifteen days sooner than in the neighborhood of Washington. Owing to the maritime resources at the disposal of the army, the enemy could be fore- stalled along the coast, and several days' march be accomplished before meeting with any serious resistance ; in short, by menacing Richmond directly, without exposing their own communications, 580 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. whose base rested on the sea, the Federals would compel their adversaries to evacuate Manassas without a fight, that they might hasten to the assistance of their capital. Fort Monroe, situated at a point which divides the James from the York River, seemed to be the most natural landing-place for the Federals, who were already masters of it. Nevertheless, Gen- eral McClellan had various reasons for preferring the village of Urbanna, on the right side of the Rappahannock ; it was nearer both to Annapolis and to Richmond ; the landing could be effected with more speed, and the campaign by land occupy less time. The Confederates had made preparations for resistance along the peninsula at the extremity of which stands Fort Monroe; but there were no fortifications between Richmond and Urbanna. The landing at the latter place, however, also presented some difficul- ties. The approaches were not so easy as those of Fortress Mon- roe ; once landed, the army must turn its back uj^on the Rappa- hannock and proceed in the direction of York River or its tribu- taries ; during this march a river very difficult of access, called the Dragon Swamp, must be crossed; it was also necessary to find a new revictualling point on York River, and this estuary was closed to navigation by the famous stronghold of Yorktown, which could not be taken except by investing it on the side of Fort Monroe. Consequently, whatever was done, the possession of Yorktown, which commanded both York River and the penin- sula — called by pre-eminence the Peninsula of Virginia — was essential in any campaign undertaken by resting on the Chesa- peake. From that moment the most rational course was to begin by laying siege to that place. Such were the various combinations which offered themselves to the choice of General McClelMn in the month of February. It will be seen in the following chapter how his plans were frus- trated by the vacillations of the executive power. But while he was waiting for the opportune moment to take the field, he had prepared an expedition which was brilliantly carried out by one of his lieutenants, and caused a fortunate di- version in the public mind by showing for the third time what results the Federals might obtain by combining their land and naval forces. ROANOKE. 581 The successes obtained at Hatteras and Hilton Head had se- cured to them the possession of two important points on the enemy's coast, and had greatly facilitated for the blockading squadron the accomplishment of their task. The intention was to turn these first successes to greater account, and to make Hat- teras the base of operations for a new expedition more powerful than the preceding ones. The object was not merely to occupy one of the passes leading into the inland sea of iN^orth Carolina Mdiich we have already compared with the lagoons of Venice, but to establish the Federal authority in all those waters and in the small towns . situated along their borders. A twofold ad- vantage was anticipated from this expedition ; on one hand, it ^vould be the means of destroying root and branch the contra- band trade, which, owing to the numerous channels and sinuosities of the coast, was kept up in spite of the blockading fleet and the occupation of the Hatteras passes ; on the other hand, it would keep the partisans of the Union in countenance, who were be- lieved to be very numerous in North Carolina, and detach at least a portion of that State from the rebel Confederacy. Annapolis was again the point of rew(?e;:;yoMS for this expedition, which was fitted out with the utmost care during the early part of January, 1862, It was composed of three strong brigades of infantry, forming a division of sixteen thousand men, under com- mand of General Buruside, and a fleet of twenty-nine gunboats or merchant steamers fitted out for war purposes, commanded by Commodore Goldsborough. More than fifty transport-ships had been assembled for the embarkation of the land forces and their materiel. The fleet, after descending the Chesapeake, sailed from Hampton Roads on the 12th of January. It was a great risk to send such a fleet to sail along those inhospitable coasts in the depth of winter, for it was suifcring from the effects of a too hasty preparation ; many of the vessels were in a bad condition ; some of the transport-ships were mere river boats, most of them overloaded and all of light draught, an indispensable quality for getting through the inlets of Hatteras, but dangerous on the open sea. Consequently, when this numerous squadron was struck by one of those terrible south-easterly storms so common on the American coasts at that season, it was thought that the fleet was 582 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. about to meet the fate of the great Armada. It got through, how- ever, with considerable damage, and only lost two small vessels, which were driven ashore on the coast. All the rest of the fleet rallied in a few days in sight of the Hatteras lighthouse, the point designated as their rendezvous. But there were fresh dan- gers in store : the storm prevented the large transport-ships from venturing among the difficult passes of Hatteras, and for more than a week they were exposed, with their precious human cargo, to all the violence of the wind and sea. Thanks to the untiring zeal of the navy, the disaster which had seemed imminent was avoided, and on the 24th of January the whole fleet, favored by an extraordinary tide, raised by the end of the gale entered the. calmer waters of Pamlico Sound. The first object of the expedition was to take possession of Roanoke Island, situated at sixty kilometres to the north, which, as we have already men- tioned, commands the entrance of Albemarle Sound. It required some time, however, for the fleet to repair its damages, and it was not until the 5th of February that it was enabled to put itself in motion. The sixty-five vessels of all kinds of which it was composed formed a column of more than two miles in length, which, as it followed the devious course of the only practicable channel, described some curious gyrations upon the glassy surface of the waters. Nothing could be seen from the low and humid beach of North Carolina but the large forests of pine which pro- duce turpentine, whose trunks, enveloped by the mirage, seemed to be looming up from the sea. An altogether novel experiment on this continent Avas about to be tried — the use of modern improvements for landing the whole of a small army in the presence of the enemy ; for on this occa- sion it was not intended that the naval forces should bear all the brunt of the battle, as they had done at Hatteras and Hilton Head. Nothing had been neglected to secure the prompt execu- tion of this delicate operation. The troops are embarked with their matenel, partly upon steamers of light draught, partly upon lighters towed by them. The transports preserve the order of march of the troops they carry. They follow each other by brigades ; each brigade di- vided into th'^ee columns, which pursue a parallel course, or follow ROANOKE. 583 each other according to the nature of the ground, is led by the vessel that has hoisted the flag of its general at the mizzenraast, whence that officer directs the movements of the train. The ffun- boats take the lead ; the smaller vessels of war, carrying one or two guns, guard the flanks ; and when night compels the fleet to cast anchor, they perform the duties of outposts. Burnside and Goldsborough, stationed on board a light steamer of great speed, pass along the whole line. Particular instructions have been issued regarding the manner of manning and loading the launches and the position that each is to occupy when the signal for land- ing shall be given. But if the Federals were well prepared, they could not flatter themselves with the idea of taking the enemy by surprise. In fact, since the arrival of the fleet in the vicinity of the Hatteras lighthouse, the Confederates had had more than three weeks to prepare for the defence of the island of Roanoke, which was the evident aim of the expedition. The Croatan channel, west of the island, which is the only practicable one, had been obstructed by the submersion of old hulls fastened together with piles. Strong batteries, constructed of earth and sand, occupied the extremities of this stockade on both sides. Advantage had been taken of a winding formed by a re-entering in the island shore to erect other batteries in the rear for cannonading any vessel that should at- tempt to pass through the channel. Abreast of the stockade, the island, long and narrow, was shut in between two swampy bays, which rendered its defence easy; for the Union troops, after landing on the southern part of the island, which the Confeder- ates had no intention of disputing, were obliged to pass between these two bays in order to reach the forts which commanded the Croatan channel. A fortification, surrounded by abatis, had been erected on the only road that ran across this isthmus, and the three guns with which it was mounted commanded all its approaches at short range. These positions were guarded by five or six thousand men, part of whom were quartered on the island. Wise's Virginia Legion was encamped on a sand-bank which separates the inland sea from the Atlantic. A small fleet of seven gua- boats, that had been morchant steamers, the armament of which 584 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. had been hastily improvised, Avas assembled behind the stockade^ under the command of Commodore Lynch. On the 4th of February the whole expedition entered the nar- row passes of the Croatan channel ; and Golclsborough, leaving behind him the transport-ships, ready to effect a landing on some quiet spot, advanced against the enemy's batteries at the head of his gun-boats. An engagement at once commenced with Lynch's fleet and a fortified work called Fort Bartow, situated on Roan- oke Island, at the point where the extremity of the stockade rested. The other redoubts had been constructed to cover the middle of the channel ; but their embrasures being too narrow, Goldsborough was able to avoid an enfilading fire by hugging the Roanoke coast. The cannonading was brisk, but the losses were but few on either side. The fleet, however, had a decided advantage, and accomplished the double object it had proposed to itself. The strongest of the Confederate ships, the Curlew, was sunk by one of those large hundred-pound shells which were so destructive to wooden vessels. Another was disabled ; and Lynch, fearing to lose the rest, disappeared during the night, leaving the defenders of Roanoke to their own resources. The latter had been entirely absorbed by the bombardment of the fleet. Fort Bartow, enveloped in the burning of its barracks, had kept up . the fight with difficulty ; while some ten thousand men, favored by this diversion, landed during the night in a solitary creek of Roanoke Island. The operation had been conducted with great method and speed, demonstrating the special fitness of the Amer- icans for this kind of enterprises. The next morning, February 8th, the troops started for the redoubt situated in the centre of the narrowest part of the island. Burnside's three brigades, although without their full comple- ment, were all represented in the body of troops just landed. Having reached, by the only practicable road in the place, the edge of a clearing which widens to the right and left, and is bounded on both sides by deep swamps, the Federals perceive at the other extremity the enemy's battery, which immediately opens fire upon them. Some howitzers, served by sailors, I'eply to it, while Foster's brigade deploys along the skirt of the wood near the road. The other two brigades form also, Reno to the left ROANOKE. 585 and Parke to the right, but the character of the ground does not allow them to place more than their heads of column in line. The firing of musketry commences. The Fedei'als, huddled to- gether within a narrow and exposed space, suffer greatly. They return the fire, but in doing so they shelter themselves behind the trees or among some breaks in the ground, instead of charging the enemy. The latter, believing his flanks Avell protected by the swamps, concentrates all his fire upon the clearing, into which nobody dares to venture. In the mean while, Reno and Parke, unable to charge the en- emy in front, try a double flank movement across these swamps, where they hope to find a passage. On the right, Parke is stopped by an impenetrable thicket, but his soldiers, once in mo- tion, precipitate themselves into the clearing and continue to ad- vance against the enemy. The Ninth New York, being the most exposed, as it forms the left of the brigade, rushes to the charge in obedience to the call of its officers, and approaches the enemy's guns. At the same instant, Reno's column, having overcome the obstacle the enemy had relied upon as a protection, bursts sud- denly upon the right flank of the Confederates. A few volleys then suffice to put the defenders of the work to flight. This combat cost the Federals thirty-five killed and two hundred wounded. Among the former there were many superior officers, who had exposed themselves personally to encourage their soldiers, as yet unused to the ordeal of fire — among them a Frenchman, Colonel V. de Monteil. He was present in the fight as a volun- teer, his regiment not having been engaged; hanging his coat upon a tree, he had seized a rifle, which he used as a common soldier. When the Ninth New York charged the enemy's works, he joined that regiment, and was killed at its head, worthily sus- taining the honor of his country. The Confederate forces held in reserve in the rear of the redoubt numbered about two thousand or two thousand five hun- dred men, including a portion of Wise's legion. Seeing that this work had been turned, they fled and ran across the Avoods towards the shore, in hopes of being able to get on board some vessel; but only a small number of fugitives succeeded in doing so. Although scarcely one-third of these soldiers had been under fire, 586 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. the whole force surrendered without the slightest attempt at re- sistance. The island of Roanoke, the key of the inland sea, with all its works, together with about twenty cannon and more than two thousand prisoners, fell into the hands of Burnside. The fruits of this victory were promptly and easily gathered. Two days after, Elizabeth City, the most important town in that part of the country, with the abandoned hulls of Lynch's fleet, fell into the power of the Federal navy after a brief engagement. In a few days the latter acquired absolute control of the whole coast of Albemarle Sound and the mouth of the principal rivers which empty into it. Burnside then directed his attention to the city of Newberne, seated on the borders of the Neuse, toward the south of the in- land sea. Following the course of this navigable river is a rail- way which runs from Raleigh and Goldsborough to Newberne, touching the Atlantic at Beaufort, near one of the passes which fall into the ocean from the inland sea. This double line of com- munication gave considerable importance to Newberne, and it was then thought that it might be made the base of operations in a campaign directed against the network of railways in North Carolina. This campaign was in fact undertaken, and Newberne played an important part in it ; but the first attempt was only made the following year, to be again renewed three years later, during the closing hours of the war. The Federal fleet left Hatteras on the 12th of March, and on the day following, the transport-ships landed Burnside's three brio-ades in one of the creeks of the estuary of the Neuse, situated near the Newberne and Beaufort road, about twenty-eight kilo- metres from each of those towns. A battery of naval howitzers, served and drawn by sailors, still accompanied the little army. The spongy ground on that alluvial coast greatly impeded the progress of the Federals, who, as soon as landed, proceeded to- wards Newberne, following the right bank of the Neuse. The artillery was dragged along with the utmost difiiculty, the supe- rior officers, almost all on foot, with the mud up to their knees, setting an example to their soldiers. Night obliged them to bivouac before they had met the enemy. They had travelled about sixteen miles and crossed many lines ROANOKE. 587 of entrenchments, abandoned on their approach. The Confed- erates, numbering about five or six thousand, were waiting for them nearer Newberne, inside of better constructed works, mount- ing a large number of heavy guns, which, placed across the rail- way, rested on the right bank of the river; these works extended to a distance of more than four kilometres, but could only be ap- proached at certain points, in consequence of impassable swamps. The principal defences of this line were along the edge of the river — a hexagonal, covered work mounting thirteen guns, and a large redoubt of an irregular form, partly constructed in the railroad embankment, with a strong redan between the two, — the whole being connected by breastworks built of wood and earth, protected by strong abattis. To the right of the railroad, the line, running back across a country full of ravines, was continued by a succession of thirteen small redans, placed along the ridges which intersected it perpendicularly. To the left of the covered work it was prolonged by a kind of stockade, intended to block the passage of the Xeuse to the Federal fleet. This obstacle con- sisted of schooners sunk in the river, with the masts projecting obliquely, according to the current of the water, the tops of which were either pointed with iron or surmounted by a shell ready to explode as soon as brought into contact with any hard substance. The Confederate artillery at this point consisted of forty-six guns of large calibre and a great number of field-pieces. The Federals appeared before these Avorks on the morning of the 14tli of March, when, deploying along the edge of the woods w^hich had concealed them until then from the enemy, the fight- ing at once commenced along the whole line. The firing thus continued for more than two hours without results. The assail- ants, being obliged to uncover themselves, and exposed to the fire of a numerous artillery, sustained more loss than their adver- saries. The naval howitzers kept up the unequal fight with diffi- culty, and those Avho served them had to be constantly replaced, while the Confederates fought from behind their parapets with scarcely any risk. But the recollection of the victory of Roanoke imparted to the Federals that assurance which is a great element of success; they knew that a battery could be taken by storm; they had already seen the Carolinians abandon works which 588 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. seemed formidable, and experience was beginning to teach tliem that it is less dangerous to rush uj)on the enemy than to remain immovable under his fire; consequently, they did not wait for a signal from their chiefs to charge the Confederate works. One regiment gets over the parapet first ; it is not well supported, and is soon repulsed ; but immediately after, the Fourth Rhode Island penetrates into the railroad redoubt, followed by the whole of Parke's brigade. On the right, Foster's brigade, taking advan- tage of the enemy's' confusion, carries the central redan, and soon after, being supported by the rest of the army, takes possession of the small works which covered the right of the Confederates. The latter fled in disorder towards Newberne, leaving two hun- dred prisoners and sixty-four guns (eighteen of which were field- pieces) in the works they had so poorly defended. This brilliant and decisive success cost the Federals ninety-one killed and four hundred and sixty-six wounded. Their losses would probably have been less if they had determined sooner to make a vigorous attack. Burnside arrived in time to stop the fire which the Confederates had lighted in Newberne on retreating towards Goldsborough. At Newberne he joined the fleet, which had so skilfully and suc- cessfully overcome the obstacles placed on its route, and took pos- session of large depots which the Confederate army found it diffi- cult to replace. Commanding the mouths of the Neuse, he was able to menace the most important railway lines of North Carolina, cutting off, at the same time, all communication with the port of Beaufort ; this place, Avliich was of great use to the contraband trade the Southern States were carrying on with England, was occupied on the 25th of March. Moorehead City, situated opposite, and Washington, on Tar River, had already been similarly occupied a few days before. But the Beaufort inlets were commanded by an old Federal fort contemporary with Fort Warren, Fort Monroe, and all the casemated works constructed on the American coast on the plans of General Bernard ; tliis was Fort Macon, situated at the ex- tremity of a long sand-bank similar to that of Hatteras. It was occupied by rebel troops, and could only be reduced by a regular ROANOKE. 589 siege. More than fifteen days were consumed in preparing for this operation, which did not commence until the lltli of April. Besides, owing to the nature of the ground, a few regiments were sufficient to invest it. The rest of the troops were occupied, for the most part, in serving as garrisons, small but numerous. Reno's brigade, being available, was sent by Burnside to land at Eliza- beth City, on the north, whence it was to make a demonstration against Norforlk which should prevent the enemy from attempt- ing a diversion to save Fort Macon. On the 19th of April Reno met a small body of Confederate troops, accompanied by a few guns, at South Mills. He attacked it, and after a brisk engage- ment, during which he lost fifteen killed and ninety-eight wounded, compelled it to retreat. He liimself re-embarked on the following day. Washed on three sides by the sea, Fort Macon was only ap- proachable by the narrow strip of land the extremity of which it occupied. It was a polygonal work of masonry, surrounded by a ditch and a glacis, having one casemated battery and one en barbette. When the government of North Carolina took posses- sion of it at the breaking out of the rebellion, it was only occu- pied by a single non-commissioned officer of the regular army. The Confederates had entrusted its defence to five companies, numbering about four hundred and fifty men. On the 25th of April, in spite of the fire of the fort, which did them but little harm, the besiegers had erected their batteries at a distance of a few hundred metres from the walls ; eight ten-inch mortars and three Parrott guns (hundred-pounders) opened fire ; and in ten hours seventeen of the enemy's guns were dismounted, including all those that were serviceable. Out of eleven hun- dred projectiles, five hundred and sixty had reached the fort ; the embrasures were destroyed and the magazines riddled. The gar- rison capitulated the next day ; it had eight men killed and twenty wounded. The capture of Fort Macon gave the Federals the best access to the inland sea, and completed the land blockade of all that part of the coast. Fort Pulaski, in Georgia, had been reduced a fortnight before ; and as the operations which caused its fall were on a much larger scale, we propose to relate them in detail 590 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. hereafter, iu order to show the first efforts of the Americans in sieges. The object of Burnside's expedition was accomplished. The results achieved, in a military point of view, were considerable ; those of a political character did not answer the expectations of the Federal government. Not that North Carolina was as ar- dently devoted to the Confederate cause as her southern sister, for in reality she did not care much for either party, but that, while a large number of her inhabitants would have liked to wait for the issue of the struggle to declare their preferences, those even who at heart had remained loyal to the flag of the Union were too much afraid of a turn of fortune to avow their sentiments openly. To go in search of new successes it would have been necessary to penetrate into the interior of the land. A large army, and not a single division, would be necessary for such a task. But on the other hand, the fifteen thousand or sixteen thousand men composing Burnside's division were not required to guard this new conquest. In leaving those troops as garrisons of the inland sea the Wash- ington government committed a serious mistake, for, scattered along those sterile coasts, they were useless to their cause at a time when they might have rendered valuable services in the cam- paign of which the peninsula of Virginia was about to become the theatre. One might even criticise the plan of the expedition, which had deprived the army of the Potomac of a strong divis- ion on the eve of a decisive struggle ; the diversion, however, was justified by the success that attended it; but this success should at least have been taken advantage of to bring Burnside back promptly to other battle-fields. Plaving once obtained the most considerable results, his protracted absence was a fatal and inex- cusable error. t u 'S p.. \ 'K^^'^ O 71 (n r c z ^?:iSI 7 ■n O r r CHAPTER IV. HAMPTON ROADS. BURNSIDE'S expedition was but an episode quite secondary as compared with the great struggle that was about to take place between the army of the Potomac and that of Northern Virginia in the early part of April. This struggle opens the second year of the war, counting from the 14th of April, 1862, the first anniversary of the bombardment of Fort Sumter. Be- fore closing the narrative of the first year with this volume, we must show what had been the preparations for this campaign, and go back to the beginning of 1862 to speak of the different events that occurred during this period of comparative rest to both armies, which had such an important bearing on their destinies. Among these events there is one which it behooves us to men- tion in this place, as being intimately connected with the history of the army of the Potomac, although, from its peculiar import- ance, it is proper to separate it in our recital from the simple mil- itary incidents that filled up the first months of that year. It was indeed productive of much more lasting effects, and caused in Europe as well as in America a far greater sensation than a bloody battle. We allude to the naval combat of which the har- bor of Hampton Roads was the theatre on the 8th and 9th of March, 1862, and which marks the greatest and most sudden of all the revolutions that have been effected in the science of mari- time warfare. It is not necessary for us to enumerate all the studies that had been made within the last few years by naval constructors of different nations to protect war-vessels by means of iron armor from the terrible effects of hollow projectiles fired horizontally. As we have before stated, these studies had not as yet produced, up to 1861, any experiment which could be considered decisive. 591 692 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. The floating-batteries which had been used in the attack upon Kilburn were condemned as incapable of exact steering. Thanks to M. Dupuy de Lome, France had the honor of possessing the first real war-vessel Avith iron-plated sides; but the Gloire, in 1861, had not accomplished anything beyond simple efforts at navigation. In England the Warrior was not launched until the close of that same year. Among the inventions of all kinds elicited by the new problem proposed to naval architecture, there was one which, although still confined to the sphere of models, nevertheless already attracted the attention of the most competent men. The honor of this invention is shared between Captain Cowper Coles, a man of fertile resources and daring enterprise, who was doomed to perish in so unfortunate a manner with the vessel he had looked upon as his master-piece, and the Swede Erics- son, who had long been a naturalized citizen of the United States, where he had already become celebrated for his construction of the Princeton, the first war-ship provided with a screw-propeller, and by important improvements in steam machinery. This inven- tion, now familiar to everybody, is that of vessels with revolving turrets, which Ericsson had submitted to the French government as early as 1854, during the siege of Sebastopol. He was aware that, in order to solve so novel a problem, it would be necessary to discard all traditions regarding naval architecture, to aban- don the system of high-decked ships, as the engineers of the sixteenth century had given up the castellated forts of the Mid- dle Ages for the low profiles of modern fortifications ; then the necessity of encasing the sides of vessels with heavy iron armor introduced a complete change in the conditions of the equilibrium which establish their water-line. This armor, in order to afford efficient protection, had to be of such thickness that it greatly over- weighted vessels of moderate size ; and in order to reduce the pro- portional relations between the weight of the armor and that of the volume of water displaced by the hull to a figure compatible with the essential conditions of navigation, it was necessary to build vessels of enormous tonnage. The Warrior was then the type of such vessels, to which European navies have persistently ad- hered, notwithstanding the fact that the increasing thickness which it has been found indispensable to impart to their sheathing no HAMPTON ROADS. 593 longer admits of protecting every part effectively. Ericsson, on the contrary, sought to solve the j)roblem by reducini^, so far as it could be done, the surfaces exposed to the fire of the enemy, and presenting them under an angle which gave them the great- est possible capacity of resistance. Pie discarded the system of vertical sides, concentrated the guns upon the axis of the ship, and placed them inside of one or more turrets. He was thus enabled to increase both the calibre of the guns and the thickne&s of the sheathing which sheltered them, without overloading the hull. "While the curved faces of the turrets presented but one mathematical line where a cannon ball could strike them normal to the surface, the deck, lowered nearly to a level with the water, could not be reached by projectiles except under an extremely sharp angle. The turret, supported at once upon rollers placed under the base and by a central axis put in motion by a cog-wheel, turned easily with the two guns it contained. They could thus point in every direction, and a prismatic glass permitted this to be done without opening the port-holes. Thus the ship projected by Ericsson could easily be constructed, and at a moderate expense ; in case of a reverse, but few lives were exposed, as it only presented a small number of surfaces to the enemy ; with the whole hori- zon as the range of shot for each of the guns she carried ; in short, this vessel combined the double advantage of being encased in a thicker armor and of carrying more powerful guns than the largest high-decked vessels. It is true that her flat bottom and slight elevation would not permit her to make long voyages on the high sea ; and Captain Coles had intended to remedy this difficulty by proposing a ship with a keel, whose inclined sides should be surmounted by the turrets. But we believe that Ericsson was right in designing iron-clad vessels exclusively for the coast service. He saw, what experience will demonstrate more and more conclusively, that a mixed vessel, built to carry an armor and at the same time to undertake long voyages, will always be less powerful in a fight than the coasting- vessels she will find at the entrance of the enemy's ports, and less buoyant on the waters than the wooden or plated vessels that will elude her to scour the seas. "When the civil war broke out, it was as easy for both parties Vol. I.— 38 594 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. to foresee the great part reserved for iroa-clad vessels as it was difficult to make a definite choice among the opposite systems, none of which had as yet received the sanction of experience. It was important, in the first place, that their construction should be rapid and easy. There were no American establishments at that time able to build vessels that could compare with those of France and England. Workmen and materials were wanting in the dock-yards of the South, time was lacking in those of the North, occupied with more pressing labors. Consequently, the first rudely- constructed iron-clads which figured in the war before the end of 1861 met with but little success. We have seen how Hollins could attempt nothing serious with the Manassas at New Orleans, and that Foote's gun-boats were not protected by their armor against the plunging fire of Fort Donelson. In the mean while, more formidable adversaries were prepar- ing on both sides to enter the lists. As early as the month of July, 1861, the Federal Secretary of War had appointed a com- mittee to examine all the plans that had been submitted to him for building iron-clads. A few months after, this committee rec- ommended the construction of three vessels, expressing, at the same time, very serious doubts as to the advantage to be derived from them. The first two, with bulwarks, named respectively the Galena and Ironsides, played but an insignificant part during the Avar ; the third was Mr. Ericsson's. The Swedish engineer engaged to construct, in less than four months, and at a cost of two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars, a vessel of nine hundred tons, forty metres in length, eleven in width, whose deck, covered with iron plates of fourteen centimetres in thickness, should jut out beyond the hull to protect it, drawing three metres twenty centimetres of water, and carrying a single turret, tlu'ee metres in height and six metres fifty centimetres interior diameter, formed of plates laid upon each other, the entire thickness being eighteen centimetres. This vessel was to carry two Dahlgren guns of thirty centimetres calibre. Entrusting the execution of his work to three diiferent private establishments, Ericsson set to work to superintend the details with ardent solicitude, foresee- ing the services his invention might render to his adopted country. The prospect of a war with England arising out of the Trent HAMPTON ROADS. 595 affair contributed to hasten the completion of the Monitor. It was by this name that Ericsson's vessel became famous. At the time it seemed especially intended for the protection of the port of New York against British squadrons. On the 30th of January, after three months' work, she was launched in the presence of a curious and incredulous crowd, that flocked to see if the strange machine would not sink in the water under the weight of her armor. It required four weeks more to complete her interior arrangements. The Confederate government did not lag behind its adver- saries. Even if it had been able to command the services of an Ericsson, it did not possess, as we have stated, the necessary workshops for building a Blonitor, and it saw at once that it must limit itself to making the most of the vessels in its possession. A distinguished officer, late of the Federal navy. Captain Brooke, had proposed to the government the construction of a vessel with inclined sides. He borrowed one-half of Cowper Coles's plan, while the Federals made use of the other half. At the end of June, 1861, he was directed to modify the hull of the 3Terrimac in accordance with this plan. The reader will recollect that this fine frigate, which was partially burned, had been sunk in the port of Norfolk at the moment the Confederates took possession of it. After many efforts she was finally raised, and her ma- chinery put in order. The lower part of the hull was uninjured, and was razeed one metre below the water-line; she measured sixty metres in length and nineteen in width. A kind of large casemate was constructed upon her new deck, which was of great strength, in the form of a roof with a flat top, presenting at both stern and bow two inclined faces, each sheltering two heavy guns. Eight port-holes were opened in the sides of the casemate, which formed an angle of only thirty-five degrees with the decks. Rail- road iron, passed through the plate-rolls at the Tredegar iron- works, near Richmond, were formed into long plates sixteen centimetres broad, some forty and some sixty-eight millimetres in thickness. Her bow was armed with a steel beak, the govern- ment being unable to procure the construction of such a machine in iron. The sides were strengthened by large beams to protect them against any concussion. Vast compartments had been intro- duced at both ends, where it was sufficient to let in the water to 596 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. submerge tlie vessel up to the line of the casemates. Finally, the armament of the side batteries was composed of eight Dahlgren howitzers of twenty-four centimetres calibre ; and four rifled guns of nineteen centimetres calibre were placed at both stern and prow. These pieces, constructed by Captain Brooke, as we have said elsewhere, on the Parrott plan, carried a ball of nearly fifty kilogrammes in weight. We shall be excused for having entered into these details re- garding the construction "of two vessels destined to make the first trial of two systems so entirely new, and in so singular a combat. By an extraordinary coincidence, they were both ready on the same day ; their armament was completed on the 5th of March, one at Norfolk, the other in New York. Both were manned by crews who were going to take them under fire without having had time to learn how to manoeuvre them ; but the courage and intelligence of their commanders were to make up for their want of experience. The Ilonitor was com- manded by Lieutenant Worden ; the Merrimae, which had just been named the Virginia, by Captain Buchanan, a former officer of the Federal navy. On quitting the mouth of the James River with Barnside, Commodore Goldsborough had left there, under Captain Marston, the largest ships of his squadron, whose draught of water pre- vented them from steering through the Hatteras passes. This division, which was very strong, from the number of its guns, but not on account of their calibre, and which was moreover unable to perform any evolution, consisted of two old sailing frigates, the Congress and St. Lawrence, the sailing sloop of war Cumber- land, and the two steam frigates Roanoke and Minnesota, sisters of the Merrimac. But the Roanoke, which carried Captain Marston's pennant, was deprived, by the breaking of her hori- zontal shaft, of the use of her machinery. The last three vessels alone were well armed with Dahlgren howitzers of tAventy-four centimetres calibre. For some time past the Federals had been apprised of the work undertaken on the Merrimac, but they believed themselves able to cope with that vessel, and her forthcoming had so fre- quently been announced in vain that they had ended in not be- HAMPTON ROADS. 597 lieving In it. Accordingly, the 8th of March found them in perfect security. The Congress and the Cumberland, riding at anchor near the tall pines of Newport News, had not even a soli- tary tug to enable them to move about, M^iile the commander of the latter vessel had gone to attend a court-martial on board the Roanoke. The other three frigates were anchored several miles from there, in sight of the sandy shore of Fortress Monroe, in the rear of muddy banks which are only ploughed by narrow and difficult channels. In the mean while, during the calm of a beautiful spring morn- ing, the Confederates were making active preparations for battle. Five steamers, formerly employed as packets on the Chesapeake, had been armed, the Patrick Henry with six guns, the Jamestown with two, and each of the other three with one. This flotilla had descended the James River, and passing off Newport News during the night stood in for the Virginia, which, on the morn- ing of the 8th, was coming out of the port of Norfolk, near Nansemond River, under the command of Captain Buchanan. At one o'clock in the afternoon the lookout on the Congress discovered the Confederate steamers descending with the tide to- wards Newport News ; in their midst the armored hull of the Virginia was perceived. The enemy so long expected was easily recognized, and orders were immediately given to clear the decks for action. But the Cumberland and the Congress were out of reach of all assistance and unable to manoeuvre by themselves. Buchanan took advantage of the opportunity offered, without losing a moment, and steered direct for the Congress, which was nearest to him. The latter vessel has commenced firing upon the strange craft, which is only within three hundred metres of her, without pro- ducing the slightest perceptible effect. At this moment the Vir- ginia opens her two forward portholes, fires two shells, which burst between-decks of the Congress ; then, turning away from the frigate, she heads straight for the Cumberland, whose large missiles are beginning to fall upon her roof. Her first object is to silence the more powerful artillery of this second adversary. The crew of tlie Cumberland see the danger, but cannot avoid it, for it is too late to put the vessel under sail. All her fire is concentrated 598 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. upon the Virginia, aud the small steamers which follow Buchan- an's flag have not even the honor of attracting a Federal shot. Everybody feels that the few minutes during which the iron- clad vessel wiH be exposed at short range to the balls of the Cumberland's guns of twenty-four centimetres must decide one of the most important questions of the war ; if these guns do not succeed in penetrating the armor of tlie Virginia at such a dis- tance, she will secure the mastery of the James River and the Chesapeake, and wooden vessels will be definitively condemned. By some unaccountable neglect, the Cumberland, it is true, was only supplied with shells, being without a single solid ball in her magazines ; but the weight of the former was already such that the trial could be considered as sufficient. It was indeed decisive ; the large round projectiles of the Cumberland rebounded from the inclined sides of the Virginia " like india rubber balls," as the official reports said. Thousands of spectators witnessed this strange and unequal duel between the graceful but powerless champion of sailing-vessels, and the mastless monster whose iron scales alone were visible above the surface of the water — a com- bat resembling a conflict between a swan and an alligator. On the part of the Confederates, the garrison of Norfolk, the inhab- itants of the city and the suburbs, as soon as they saw the Virginia in motion, rushed in crowds to the beach, whence they could see the Federal fleet in the distance, and anxiously waited for the issue of the struggle. On the other side, the news of the appear- ance of the Virginia was quickly spread. While the Roanohe, the St. Lawrence, and the Minnesota were proceeding towards Newport News, and the tugs were hastening to proffer their val- uable assistance to the sailing-vessels already engaged in the action, an extraordinary excitement prevailed on land ; everybody wanted to see the famous Virginia. At last the troops encamped in the vicinity of Newport News came to range themselves along the shore with some field artillery, in the hope of being able to salute the Confederate vessel with a few shots. The latter, in the mean while, continued to advance slowly and regularly towards the Cumberland, for the condition of her machinery, which was somewhat out of repair, did not allow her to proceed at a faster rate than three knots. But this very slownf-ss rendered her attack HAMPTON ROADS. 599 still more terrible ; from time to time her port-holes would open and a few shells be discharged against the sides of the Cumber- land. During the manoeuvre one of her guns was broken, and many of those serving them, by a shot in the embrasure, were wounded. This accident did not stop her progress. Having at last arrived within a few metres of the Cumberland, Buchanan ordered all the port-holes to be closed, and steered right for the enemy's vessel. A moment after, the beak of the Virginia penetrated slowly but surely into the hull of the Federal sloop ; then, imme- diately reversing her engines, she withdrew, leaving an enormous gash in the side of her adversary, into which the water rushed with great violence. On her part, the Virginia had sustained some serious injuries; the point of her steel beak was broken, and the engines, which had not been stopped in time before the en- counter took place, received such a concussion as to render their management extremely difficult. But these accidents did not at first attract any notice. As soon as he had drawn oif, Buchanan, placing his vessel at a distance of a few metres from the Cumber- land, and presenting her broadside toward the latter, poured a vol- ley from his four large howitzers into her. This was more than enough to destroy that unfortunate vessel, which the water was already filling, while the enemy's shot carried death and destruc- tion into every part of her hull that still floated above the waves. Braving this twofold danger, her valiant crew worked at the pumps, in order to keep the vessel, which was pitching heavily and ready to sink, at least a little while longer afloat. Without allowing themselves to be discouraged by the uselessness of their fire, which could not pierce the armor of the Virginia, the gun- ners suffered themselves to be killed one after another by the side of their guns ; the dead were immediately replaced. In the mean time, the water was gaining; it had filled the powder magazine, drowning several cannoneers who would not abandon their posts ; the space between decks was submerged, and all the wounded who happened to be there met with a frightful death. Shortly after, the battery placed on deck was submerged ; a single gun still rose above the water ; it was fired by the last surviving gunner, and the ball, skimming the surface of the sea, had scarcely struck the sides of the Virginia, when the Cmnberland, with one hundred 600 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. and twenty of her heroic defenders, went down in eighteen metres of water. The rest reached the shore by swimming. The top of the mainmast alone remained above water ; and the flag of the United States, which had been nailed to it during the height of the battle, floated for several years a mournful and glorious emblem, marking the spot of the submerged hull which had served as the grave of so many brave men. On perceiving the disaster of the Cumberland, the Congress took advantage of the respite granted her to weigh anchor and run upon tlie muddy banks adjoining the beach of Newport News. She was thus sure to avoid being sunk ; but the same act also doomed her to remain motionless, and the Virginia could henceforth cannonade her at leisure. This is what Buchanan did as soon as he saw the Cumber land disappear. It was half-past two ; while the small Confederate steamers were exchanging shots with the Congress from a considerable distance, the Virginia, ap- proaching within two hundred metres of that vessel, took a posi- tion so as to enfilade the whole of her battery without being her- self exposed to the fire of more than three or four guns. Her first discharge produced a terrible effect on board the Congress, most of the gunners being entirely disabled by it. Although the Fed- erals had already sufficient proof of the inefficiency of their guns against the iron plates of the Virginia, they continued the fight with that self-devotion and determination of purpose which esprit de corps imparts to select troops. The field-artillery massed on the shore tried in vain to take part in the combat ; but the fire of the infantry was more effective. The Virginia having ap- proached the shore, a few well-directed bullets penetrated through the open port-holes, and among the persons struck by them was the brave Buchanan, who was severely wounded in the thigh. For an hour and a half the Congress kept up the fight, the issue of which could no longer be doubtful ; she had lost all hope of assistance on seeing the Minnesota stranded in the distance upon a sand-bank, as she was coming from Fortress Monroe to take part in the conflict. Nevertheless, amid the dead and wound- ed who encumbered the decks, her gunners continued to fire upon such of the enemy's steamers as happened to be within reach of their guns. Resistance, however, could be prolonged no further ; HAMPTON ROADS. 601 the commander had been killed, about one hundred men were disabled, and, according to eye-witnesses, "the deck was slippery with the blood that had been shed." The Congress struck her colors, and several boats came alongside to take possession of her. But while these boats were taking a portion of the frigate's crew as prisoners of war on board the Confederate steamers, the troops stationed along the shore poured a volley of musketry into the Virginia^ which wounded some of the men who had ventured out of the casemate. Suspecting treachery, Buchanan immediately began to cannonade the Congress again ; and the Federal sailors who were still on board took advantage of this attack to jump into the sea and save themselves by swimming. The vessel, being thus abandoned, was fired by the Confederates, who proceeded at once in search of another adversary. The Minnesota seemed to offer them a new and easy success. On her way to Newport News she had run into a channel which was only navigable for her at high water, but through whicli she hoped, by tlie combined aid of sail and steam, to be yet able to open herself a passage. She did not succeed ; and the receding tide left her completely stranded three miles below the Congress. Near her lay the St. Lawrence, which, having tried to follow her under sail, had also run aground. The MoanoJce also had run upon a bank, but had floated off again and had retired towards Fort Monroe. The Virginia, having been delayed in consequence of her injuries, arrived at last within reach of cannon-shot of the two motionless vessels waiting for her in the mud. Their destruction seemed inevitable ; but fortunately the state of the tide at that moment did not allow the Virginia to approach them nearer than sixteen hundred metres. Buchanan opened fire at that distance, while at the same time the Patrick Henry and the Jamestown, favored by their light draught of water, took position nearer to the 3Iin- nesota, and commenced cannonading her with their rifled pieces. Many people on board this vessel were killed and wounded ; but the game between them was equal, and the Dahlgren howitzers of the Federals soon compelled the two i-ebel steamers to seek their safety in retreat. The Virginia could render them no assistance ; either through the fault of her gunners, or some defect in her guns, or rather because she could not elevate hei pieces suffi- 602 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. ciently high, her fire was extremely uncertain. Only one missile reached the Minnesota ; another struck the St. Lawrenoe : it was tlie last shot fired on that memorable day. It was seven o'clock in the evening ; the Confederate squadron retired for the night to the vicinity of Norfolk, to prepare for a renewal of the work of destruction as soon as daylight should appear. It seemed as if no human precaution could snatch the prey from the grasp of the Virginia, and spare from the fate of the Cum- berland and the Congress the three frigates which night alone had saved from her attack. The high tide would, in fact, enable her to approach them much nearer the following morning than she had done the day previous. The Federal fleet once annihilated, Buchanan could proceed to bombard Fort Monroe, drive all the enemy's transports from Old Point Comfort, thus obliging the troops to evacuate the peninsula, and, after freeing the James Hiver, himself blockade the whole of the Chesapeake. The Virginia was not enough of a sea vessel and carried too little coal to venture upon the high sea, and, as it was then thought, to carry dismay even into the port of New York ; but she could take advantage of a calm to go and recapture Pamlico Sound from Goldsborough's fleet ; or, better still, she could ascend the Potomac as far as in front of Washington and throw bomb-shells into the capital of the Union. The parts would then have been reversed ; it would no longer have been the part of the Federals to attack Richmond by resting on the sea, but the turn of the Confederates, who, once masters of the inland waters, would have had the powerful co-operation of naval forces in resuming the offensive. All the previsions of the Federals, founded upon the superiority of their magnificent fleet of wooden vessels, would have disappeared with the Cumberland and the Congress. The war would have changed front, and the Confederate flag, open- ing a new era in maritime warfare, would easily have raised the blockade which prevented the slave States from freely procuring supplies in Europe. This was enough to excite the lively imagi- nations of Southern people. The Federals, on the contrary, were filled with consternation and dismay. The Congress was burn- ing slowly, casting a lurid glare upon the tranquil waters of New- port News, while her guns, which were still loaded, went ofl" in HAMPTON ROADS. 603 proportion as the flames reached them ; their fire, which no gun- ner had directed, resounded like a funeral knell amid the silence of the night. At midnight she blew up with a terrific crash, and everything was again enveloped in darkness. But this mournful sight did not for an instant divert the Federals from their work of restoring the glacis of Fort Monroe to a proper condition ; for old General Wool, who commanded that place, was of the opinion, and not without reason, that the Federal fleet would henceforth be unable to protect it. While the telegraph was spreading throughout the Union a degree of anxiety which it would be impossible to conceive with- out having witnessed it, day had dawned upon the waters that had been the scene of the previous day's battle, and at six o'clock the Virginia left her anchorage at Craney Island. Her sides had been greased in order to facilitate the ricochet of the enemy's jsro- jectiles, and she was accompanied by five transports loaded with troops destined to take possession of the Minnesota as soon as the guns of that vessel should have been silenced. The realization of this hope could not long be delayed ; indeed, all the eflbrts of her crew and the tugs that surrounded her had not been able to set the stranded frigate afloat, while the recoil of her heavy guns, by throwing her on one side, had driven her deeper and deeper into the mud, where she was completely imbedded. Fearing lest she should also run aground, and wishing at the same time to cut off her retreat, the Virginia, instead of attacking her directly, ran into the deep waters which surround the Rip Raps in the harbor of Old Point Comfort ; thence the Confederate ram entered the channel in which the Minnesota was stranded, to come upon her by following the same direction she had herself taken the day before. But as the Confederate gunners were about to open their port- holes at the prow to reply to the fire of the pivot gun placed at the stern of the Federal frigate, a strange diminutive machine was seen to move off from her side and insolently place herself between the Virginia and the victim she already felt sure of having. " It was like a cheese-box,',' observed the Confederate sailors after- wards, " placed on a raft." This machine, however, moved about like a real vessel ; she had hoisted tlie Federal flag ; and if the 604 7'HE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. Bailors who brought her into the fight were not crazy, they must certainly have been courageous adversaries. The inteiloper who had thus come to meddle with the conflict must be got rid of with- out delay. Two empty shells, each weighing fifty kilogrammes, were sent after the intruder from a distance of a few hundred metres. What was the general astonishment when these shells were seen to rebound and fall harmless into the sea. "The cheese-box is an iron tower," they exclaimed on board the Vh^- ginia. It was, in fact, the Ilonitor, which, having been completed on the same day as the latter vessel, had, by a second chance, not less strange, just reached the battle-field of Hampton Roads at the moment when her presence alone could change the aspect of the fight. It was not for the purpose of holding the Virginia in check that she had been brought into the waters of the Chesapeake. As we shall show hereafter, the Washington government had pre- j)ared a plan of attack against the batteries which blockaded the Potomac, and the Secretary of the Navy had promised the co- operation of the Monitor in carrying out this project. The latter vessel was scarcely finished when she left the port of New York in tow of a steamer, and after encountering a gale of wind, during which she behaved well, she had entered the waters of the Chesa- peake on the 8th of March. She had strict orders to touch only at Fort Monroe, and to ascend the Potomac at once, where she was anxiously looked for. But as she was approaching the en- trance of the James, the booming of cannon at Newport News apprised her commander. Lieutenant Worden, that a naval battle was being fought in those waters. Suspecting the danger, he in- creased the speed of the vessel, whose capacities he had not even yet tested, when he was boarded by a pilot, who informed him of the disaster that had just occurred. For all answer Worden quietly requested him to take his vessel straight against the Vir- ginia. The unfortunate pilot, seized with terror, preferred leav- ing him rather than execute an order which seemed so preposter- ous. In the mean time, night had come. . As soon as he had cast anchor, Worden, taking apon himself the responsibility of violat- ing the letter of his instructions, made up his mind to take a hand HAMPTON ROADS. 605 in the battle of the next clay, and went to hide himself behind the large hull of the Minnesota, in order to fall suddenly upon the Virginia as soon as the latter should reappear. The system of revolving turrets had never been tried, and all was as new to the gunners as to the engineers of the 3Ionitor. For his two guns of twenty-nine centimetres calibre Worden had shells weighing sev- enty-two kilogrammes, cast-iron l)alls weighing eighty-four, and wrought-iron balls weighing ninety-two. He decided to use pro- jectiles of the second class, as the shells would certainly break against the iron plates of the Virginia, while his wrought-iron balls seemed too heavy for his cast-iron guns, which might burst and damage every part of his vessel. At a later period these same guns, loaded with wrought-iron balls and a charge of powder weighing fifteen kilogrammes, were fired without accident, but in this first trial the decision of the Federal captain was the wisest. The Confederate officers undei*stood that a foeman worthy of their steel had come to play with them, double or quits, in the game Avhich the star-spangled banner had lost the day before. Letting alone the large Federal frigate, which, unable to defend herself, was to be the prize of the contest, their present thought was only to fight the Monitor. Being both impatient to achieve a victory, and each confiding in the powerful armor of his vessel, the two iron-clads rapidly approach each other and exchange shots from their tremendous guns at a few metres distance. The confi- dence felt on both sides was fully justified. The crew of the Minnesota beheld with admiring wonder the enormous balls which their own vessel could not have withstood glancing off or break- ing against the armor of the two combatants. The fight, which began at eight o'clock, was long continued without either of them having been able to effect a breach in the armor of his antagonist. At last. Captain Jones, who succeeded Buchana"n in the command of the Virginia, after the latter had been wounded, determines to apply the same tactics against the 3Ionitor which have pre ved so fatal to the Cumberland. She steers with direct aim toward her in order to strike her with the beak, but the point of this weapon w^as broken the day previous ; and a clever shifting of the helm causing the Monitor to sheer off at the critical moment, the prow of the Virginia only touched the edge of her deck, and turned 606 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. her around without inflicting any damage. Once apprised of this new danger, the Federal vessel, which is swifter and more skil- fully handled than her heavier adversary, continues to manoeuvre so as to avoid coming in contact with her, and keeps turning round, firing through the embrasures, in hope of disabling her. The two vessels are only ten metres apart. The balls, failing to penetrate their armor, fly in every direction ; some of them strike the Minnesota ; another bursts the boiler of a steam-tug fastened to her sides ; the little Confederate steamers have deemed it prudent to withdraw from this dangerous locality. At last, after four hours' fighting, a shot from the Monitor strikes the Vir- ginia near the water-line, and opens a dangerous leak in her. Al- most at the same moment one of the enemy's balls strikes against the small observatory within shelter of which Worden is directing his vessel. This was a square box composed of iron ingots thirty- two centimetres in thickness, with small crevices between them, through which the captain could observe all that was going on outside, for the whole interior of the ship, with the exception of the turret, lighted from above, was enveloped in utter darkness. The shock detached some splinters, which severely wounded the brave Worden in the eyes. He was struck at the moment of his triumph. The ' Virginia, being in danger from the leak, para- lyzed by the condition of her engines, which were working worse and worse, despairing, in short, of getting the upper hand of her invulnerable antagonist, gave up the game and slowly retired in the direction of Norfolk. The Monitor remained on the battle-field near the ships she had just saved ; but the service she had rendered them was but a small matter compared with the other results of her victory. All the fears that had sprung up in consequence of the previous day's battle were dissipated. The Virginia was not able to come out of the James River. The Chesapeake, the Potomac, the high sea, in short, were under the control of the Federals ; and if the latter had been taught to feel that their wooden fleet could not with- stand a single iron-clad vessel of the enemy, they had also found an engine of destruction superior in every respect to that which the Confederates had just put on trial against them. The battle of Hampton Roads will continue to be one of the HAMPTON ROADS. 607 most memorable events in modern warfare ; never were so many- new inventions exposed at once to the practical ordeal of battle. "Wooden vessels of every class, together with iron-clads, some with batteries, others with turrets, were all put upon trial at the same time. It was the first time that, besides su(*h vessels, screw- propellers — which, however, had been in existence for twenty- years — had been seen to figure in a naval corabftt. The propel- lers were found to be as powerless in this kind of warfare as the old sailing-vessels. The iron-clads, on the contrary, showed themselves to be invulnerable to shells; the deep indentations made upon the armor of the Ilonitor and the Virginia, however, proved that they might be penetrated by heavy- cannon-balls fired from land-batteries, where the weight of the gun is not subser- vient to the exigencies of the floating surface. Finally, the de- struction of the Cumberland demonstrated the power of the sharp beak, forgotten since the days of the Romans, this last and for- midable resource of resolute sailors, the use of which the two greatest naval commanders of our own times, Farragut and Tegethoff, as well as Buchanan, have again taught us. The Virginia had suffered from the engagement, but her in- juries were of such a character as to admit of being promptly- repaired. If she should succeed in acquiring a rate of speed equal to that of the Monitor, which was an easy matter, with an engine as powerful as hers, might she not reappear in Hampton Roads, and, taking no notice of the adversary whose attack had probably occupied her too exclusively, renew her work of destruc- tion upon the wooden vessels? In that case, the Monitor, having no beak, would be reduced to the use of her guns, the effect of which the Virginia had already borne without much damage. The Federal naval authorities fully appreciated all the drawbacks to the success of March the 9th ; and in order to avert the danger of another attack from the enemy's iron-clad, they hastened to sta- tion several large vessels at the mouth of the James, which were tc board the Virginia and sink her as soon as she should appear. But the latter vessel did not avail herself of the chances she still possessed on the 10th of March. "Were her injuries more serious than had at first been supposed ? Was much precious time lost in reconstructiuG: her beak, or in increasing; the calibre of her ar- 608 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. tilleiy ? Was her inaction to be attributed to the timidity of the Richmond government, unwilling to jeopardize a vessel whose presence alone closed to the Federals the maritime approaches to their capital ? It is difficult to say. It may be that the Vir- ginia lost all her efficiency with the loss of the brave commander who had so skilfully handled her on the first day, and who would doubtless not have accepted the combat of the day following as a final defeat. Before proceeding any further, we must go back to the period when we left General McClellan planning the operations upon which the battle of Hampton Roads was to have such an import- ant bearing. We have indicated the combinations among which he could make a choice, and the difficulties that each of them presented. His plan was determined upon by the end of Jan- uary. He only took into his confidence the President, a few cabinet ministers, and his principal generals ; and while the con- struction of his bridge equipages was being completed, he devoted all his time to devising the necessary means of transportation in order to carry out with precision and promptitude the bold move- ment he had conceived. Unfortunately for his army, a violent sickness, as we have already stated, came to interrupt these labors, and for a time to paralyze his faculties at the moment when they would have been of the utmost value. The fever had seized him before he had time to transfer the command to one of his lieu- tenants. Seniority would have designated McDowell. The staff did not deem it proper to recommend the vanquished soldier of the 21st of July for so important an interim, and they continued to exercise the command in the name of the sick chief. The President, on his part, did not dare to strike at the power of a general whose convalescence Avas announced to him from day to day ; but at last, on the 10th of January, having become im- patient at not being able to confer with him, he sent for two generals of the army of the Potomac and bluntly requested them to furnish him with a plan of campaign which could be carried out with the least possible delay. The next day, the 11th, these generals proceeded to institute inquiries into the condition of the army, through the administrative bureaux, and requested the Secretary of the Treasury to confide to them all the plans of HAMPTON ROADS. 609 General McClellan, which were immediately revealed, and ex- amined before a council in which there sat, besides themselves, the President, the Secretaries of State and Treasury, the Postmaster- General and an Assistant Secretary of War. On the 13th, after a few more conferences, this same council, increased in numbers, met at the house of General McClellan, who was scarcely convalescent. He refused to discuss his plans in the presence of an assemblage the composition of which seemed to him somewhat whimsical, and the President sustained his objec- tion by breaking up the meeting. Fifteen days elapsed, during which the severity of the weather rendered it impossible to put the troops in motion, and which General McClellan employed in re-examining the plan he had to submit to the President ; but suddenly the latter decided to exer- cise the supreme command, w^hich the Constitution conferred upon him, in person. Without even consulting the man whom he had appointed commander-in-chief of his armies, he published, on the 27th of January, under the title of " First general orders of the President," a document which will ever be regarded as one of the strangest monuments of that epoch. This order directs all the land and naval forces of the Republic to attack the enemy on the same day, and to this effect he destignates the 22jd of February, the anniversary of Washington's birth-day. Generals, heads of departments, and their employes, are each to be held responsible for the non-execution of this order, although none of them have been consulted, and although the date of this simultaneous move- ment has been fixed without any regard to the differences of cli- mate, the positions of the enemy, and the peculiar circumstances under which each army may happen to be placed. Soon after this General McClellan submits to the President, in detail, his plan for landing the troops at Urbanna. But on the 31st of January the latter refuses to endorse it. Penetrated by the ne- cessity to begin the campaign at once, unwilling to belie the order by which he had directed a general movement on the 22d of Feb- ruary, and dreading the delays which a naval operation would occasion, Mr. Lincoln substituted another plan for that which had been proposed to him. Leaving to General McClellan the respon- sibility of carrying out this new plan, he directed him to attack Vol. I,— 39 610 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. the enemy by menacing Manassas on the west — that is to say, on the side of the Shenandoah valley. On the 3d of Febrnaiy, after a verbal discussion, the President propounded to him a series of questions in writing upon the relative merits of the two plans, and the general replied on the same day, in the shape of a memorial addressed to the Secretary of War, wherein the advantages of his project were clearly and irrefutably set forth. Mr. Lincoln, without being convinced, felt nevertheless that it would be dangerous to compel the general to execute an operation he had pronounced impracticable, and sus- pended the order he had given him to attack Manassas. But he insisted that the army of the Potomac should, before moving away, completely ensure the communications of Washington with the Western and Northern States; to accomplish this the army had to reopen the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which had been interrupted at Harper's Ferry since the beginning of the war, and to destroy the batteries which blockaded the Lower Potomac. This preliminary task was not easy to accomplish ; neverthe- less, as soon as the weather permitted, General McClellan set him- self to work. On the 24th of February Banks's division, en- camped on the left borders of the Upper Potomac, and that of Sedgwick, the same which, under Stone, had experienced the re- verse of Ball's Bluff, made a demonstration against Harper's Ferry. A few companies crossed the river in boats ; they found no enemy among the desolate ruins of that charming little town, and they occupied the surrounding heights. A bridge equipage, forwarded from Annapolis by rail during the night of the 25th— 26th, was unloaded at ten o'clock in the morning. Four hours later the last boat was fastened to the Virginia shore, and the gen- eral-in-chief was the first to cross from one side to the other, with the heads of column of several divisions concentrated in haste on the left bank. At this place the river was three hundred metres wide, seven metres deep, with a rapid current, a rocky bottom, and scarped banks. Nevertheless, this delicate operation, so entirely new to an American army, was accomplished with great celerity and success. Encouraged by such a beginning. General McClel- lan thought for a moment of turning the simple demonstration he had just made into a decisive operation, of which the valley of HAMPTON ROADS. 611 Virginia would liave been the theatre. He had already issued orders, directing the greatest portion of his army to proceed to- wards Harper's Ferry, when one of those incidents which make so hazardous a game of war compelled him, in spite of himself, to adopt once more the project M'hich had so long had his prefer- ence. The bridge of boats thrown, on the 26th, over a river so wide and so subject to sudden risings as the Potomac could not suffice for the communications of a large army. Accordingly, in order to establish a more solid crossing, a large number of barges, M'hich were to debouch into the river through a lock situated in front of Harper's Ferry, were assembled in the Ohio Canal. But when everything was ready, and an attempt made to bring down these barges into the waters of the Potomac, above the rapids which obstruct its course, it was found that they were too broad for the lock, the latter being especially intended to allow the en- trance into the canal of the small boats which ply on the Shenan- doah. It would have required several days to widen the passage ; the army would have lost all the advantages that a rapid move- ment might have secured, and would have found itself in a per- ilous position. General McClellan gave up the plan he had just formed, but did not return to Washington until he had secured the restoration of the railway, which Mr. Lincoln considered so important. The latter at last decided to furnish the commander of the army of the Potomac the means for undertaking his maritime expedition. On the 27th of February the first orders for char- tering numerous vessels to transport the army were received at the War Department. The government, notwithstanding its impa- tience to act, had thus wasted six weeks, during which all the necessary preparations might easily have been completed. In the mean while, before taking the field. General McClellan was obliged, in compliance with the orders of the President, to raise the Poto- mac blockade. Any attempt at disembarkation or movement of his army on that side might have brought on a general engage- ment under the most unfavorable circumstances. The naval force, being otherwise engaged, had not the means to attempt such a dif- ficult enterprise. Tt could only promise him for the 10th or 12th of March, an auxiliary which might prove useful, but upon which 612 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. it would have been imprudent to rely absolutely. This was the Monitor. We have seen how from her entrance into the Chesa- peake she found a better opportunity for making a successful trial of her qualities as a man-of-war. The battle of the 8th of March deranged all the plans that had been formed for the future cam- paign of the army of the Potomac ; and by a new coincidence, as strange as the meeting of the two iron-clads at the mouth of the James, it was precisely on the 8th of March that these plans had been definitely determined upon. In fact, after having ordered the preparations which McClellan had so long solicited, Mr. Lincoln relapsed into hesitancy, and insisted that the general-in-chief should submit his project to the examination of a council of war. Twelve generals* assembled on the 8th of March, not to receive the instructions of their chief, but to constitute a tribunal for passing judgment on his plans ; these were approved by a majority of eight to four. Bound by a decision he had himself courted, the President accepted it with a bad grace ; and being still under some fatal influence, he published two orders which indirectly interfered with its execution. The first of these orders divided the army of the Potomac into five army corps ; and regardless of McClel- lan's opinion as to the qualifications of his subordinates, it gave the command of these army corps to five of the oldest generals of division. Among these officers there were three who had just condemned the plan of their chief in a council of war. This was to substitute oligarchy for that despotism which Washington considered indispensable in an army. McClellan might have prevented this fatal decision by forming the army corps himself, but he had preferred to wait for the trial of the first campaign, in order to bestow the distinction upon those most worthy of it. The second order directed him to leave such a number of troops in Washington as the majority of his corps commanders should deem necessary to secure the safety of the capital ; not to transport more than fifty thousand men, and to wait for a new order from * This council was composed of McDowell, Sumner, Heintzelman, Keyes, F. J. Porter, Franklin, McCall, Blenker, division commanders ; Naglee, repre- senting Hooker, chief of the tenth division ; A. Porter, provost-marshal-gen- eral ; and Barnard, commander of engineers. The three first named and the last voted against General McClellan's plan. HAMPTON ROADS. 613 the Presideut to embark the remainder ; to begin the movement not later than the 18th of March, and finally to make an effort,. with the co-operation of the navy, to put an end to that blockade of the Potomac which was the source of so much alarm to the inhabitants of the capital. This was to divide the army into three parts : one to embark at Annapolis, the second to attack the batteries on the Lower Potomac, the third to keep guard over Washington ; it was, in short, to fix a specified date for an operation which did not depend alone upon General McClellan, as he could not embark on the 18 th of March unless the War and Navy Departments should furnish him in time with transports, the chartering and equip- ment of which had been taken from his control. The news of the destruction of the Congress and the Cumber- kind, which was received on the morning of the 9th, caused all these preparations to be suspended, for it was no longer Pich- mond but Washington that was menaced. On the same evening, however, a despatch from Mr. Fox, who had gone to meet the Monitor, announced the success of that vessel and the retreat of the Virginia. The immediate result of this second day's fight was to render the navigation of the Chesapeake once more safe. If the James River remained closed by the presence of the Vir- ginia at Norfolk, Urbanna and Fortress Monroe were both acces- sible, and could yet afford a solid base for the great operation which the army of the Potomac was about to undertake. But the plans of McClellan, already so frequently frustrated, as if by a kind of fatality connected with the dates of the 8th and 9th of March, were again seriously compromised by an event which was almost as unexpected as the battle between the iron-clads ; we allude to the evacuation of Manassas by the Confederates. Was this evacuation, which had long since been contemplated and in active preparation for more than a week, has- tened by some criminal indiscretions ? There are many indica- tions which would seem to justify such a conclusion, although not affording positive proof of the fact. Whatever the case may be, on the very day following that when the maritime expedition was determined upon by a council of war, the Confederates, by a rapid retreat, escaped the most serious dangers they would have 614 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. encountered from this expedition. Now they had time to reach Richmond even before the Federal army could embark upon the transports, whose arrival was delayed from day to day. The long-debated question, however, relative to the raising of the Po- tomac blockade was solved by the abandonment of the enemy's batteries. Instead of going to Annapolis in search of the vessels which were to convey his soldiers to the coasts of the Chesapeake, McClellan would see them arrive in front of his encampments at Alexandria. The famous redoubts at Manassas were invaded by a crowd of curious persons who could without danger underrate their importance and criticise the general whose prudence did not allow him to sacrifice the elite of his young army for the sake of carrying them. But the moral eifect which the retreat of the Confederates would have produced a few days later was wanting. If so much time had not been wasted in indecision, the evacuation of Manassas would have coincided with the disembarkation of the first Federal soldiers at Urbanna or Newport News, and every- body would have attributed it to the bold movement of McClellan. The army of the Potomac left its quarters to take possession of the enemy's works. On the 10th of March it occupied Cen- treville; on the 11th Manassas Junction. Large quantities of stores, burnt or scattered in the mud, storehouses still in flames, the smoking debris of numerous trains, traces of destruction everywhere, imparted a lugubrious and sinister aspect to the cele- brated plateau. Although the Federal army was to encounter no adversary, this movement was useful to the soldiers as a marching exercise. It was, moreover, necessary in order to occupy the po- sitions which were to cover Washington during the future cam- paign. It was at Manassas that the' garrison of the capital ought to be placed, for it could thence command the whole surrounding country ; but this was the extreme scope of the aggressive move- ment so suddenly undertaken. The enemy had disappeared ; and although the smoke of burning bridges behind him still rose above the forest which greets the eye at Manassas Junction, all serious pursuit was impossible. The troops had no means of ob- taining supplies ; the roads were broken up, and the water courses, swollen by the rains, were no longer practicable. General Joseph Johnston, who, since the battle of Bull Run, HAMPTON ROADS. 615 had commanded all the Confederate forces at Manassi,s in the valley of Virginia and on the Lower Potomac, had conducted the delicate operation which transferred the greatest portion of his army to the new battle-field selected by his adversary with equal ability and success. His own soldiers only learned on the 7th of March, on receiving marching orders, that the evacuation of Manas- sas had been secretly going on for several weeks. Not a single cannon nor gun-carriage nor projectile had been left in the vast depots the Confederates had established at the intersection of the two railways. With regard to the batteries which blockaded the Potomac, the difficulties were much greater, owing to the distance of the Acquia Creek station ; stores, ammunition, and even a few pieces of artillery had to be left behind. In order to keep these objects from falling into the hands of the enemy, the Confederates buried them in the ditches, to which they gave the appearance of newly-dug graves by means of crosses and other devices ; but they carried the joke a little too far. The inscriptions which adorned the false graves, invoking, with much affectation, respect for the dead, excited the suspicion of the Yankees, who were not long in discovering the trick. Leaving Jackson in the valley of Virginia, free to act in ac- cordance with his judgment, Johnston fell back upon the Rap- pahannock with little less than fifty thousand able-bodied men. Resting his right on Fredericksburg, and taking his left to the rear of the Rapidan, he waited in these positions, destined to be- come so celebrated at a later day, for McClellan to define his movement either by laud or water. The choice of the Federals had long since been madej and a reconnaissance undertaken by General Stoneman with a brigade of cavalry and a regiment of infantry only served to demonstrate the impossibility of pursuit. Stoneman followed the enemy across a country absolutely destitute of resources, from Manassas to Cedar Creek, exchanging a few musket-shots with the Confed- erate rear-guard. Menaced by the rapidly swelling streams be- hind him, he hastened to retrace his steps ; and although perfectly unmolested, he had much trouble in bringing back his soldiers, whose provisions were exhausted, to the vicinity of the Federal d6p6ts. 616 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. In the mean while, politics continued to interfere in military affairs. On the 12th of March a Washington journal published an order of Mr. Lincoln depriving General McClellan of the supreme command of the armies, and limiting his authority to the army of the Potomac. The other armies were to form inde- pendent commands, under the immediate control of the President, who claimed the right of directing their collective operations in future. It was through this journal that General McClellan was informed of his removal from the command-in-chief. Mr. Lin- coln had not the courage to notify him of the fact, and only signed the order after he had seen him leave Washington to take the field. The general bore this insult with patriotic resignation. The evacuation of Manassas had changed the relative position of the two armies. On the 13th, McClellan submitted the plan for disembarking on the shore of Fortress Monroe to a council composed of four of his corps commanders, who, on this occa- sion, adopted it unanimously, provided that there should be noth- ing to fear from the Virginia, that the transportation should be effected rapidly, that the naval force should co-operate in the at- tack upon the batteries of York River, and that the garrison of Washington should be sufficiently strong to secure the entire safety of that city. The President confirmed this decision ; and the War Department, until then paralyzed by so much indecision, applied at last all its energy to collect the immense materiel re- quisite for the transportation of the army. Positive orders were forwarded to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and especially to New York ; and the Potomac was soon seen swarm- ing with steamers of every description, from the Transatlantic packets down to flat-bottomed boats intended exclusively for river service. The latter could carry as many as one thousand four hundred men in a single trip, navigation on the tranquil waters of the Chesapeake occupying only from twelve to fifteen hours. They had large barges and tenders in tow for conveying horses and artillery. It was expected that fifty thousand men, with their materiel, could be transported in a single trip ; but the flo- tilla assembled below Washington could scarcely accommodate one-half of that number, which was a new cause of delay in the opening of the campaign. Nevertheless, on the 16th of March, HAMPTON ROADS. 617 the whole array was massed in tlie neighborhood of Alexandria, where the embarkation was to take place. Near this city eigh- teen wooden piers jut out into the waters of the Potomac, many of which have wharf accommodations for three large steamers. The transports come alongside, and the quartermaster on duty immediately telegraphs to headquarters the number of men, horses, and materiel that can be embarked at each wharf. In accordance with this information. General McClellan also trans- mits orders by telegraph to such and such corps, directing them to repair to the piers whose number he specifies, and in a few hours a whole division is thus embarked without confusion or accident. The steamers are immediately unmoored, actually swarming with human ants, and with scarcely a revolution of their immense wheels suffer themselves to drift down the current like a swimmer who is afraid of fatiguing himself. In their midst may be seen several diminutive steam-tugs, broad and short, constantly in motion, going by twos and threes to give a shoulder lift as it were to some large craft that has run aground, or descending the river with a long string of barges and schoon- ers in tow. At last, on the 18th and 19th, the first division of the army of the Potomac disembarks at Fortress Monroe, the operation having been retarded in consequence of the small num- ber of landing-places to be found about this locality. The second division left Alexandria on the 22d. A little later two divisions could be conveyed at once. While the army of the Potomac was thus temporarily turning its back upon the enemy, in order to go and attack him on a differ- ent ground, the latter, in falling back upon the Rappahannock, entirely destroyed all the lines of railway which separate this river from Washington, thereby debarring himself from every chance of making an aggressive retrograde movement. But the valley of Virginia was occupied by an intrepid soldier, T. J. Jackson, who, since the battle of Bull Eun, was only known by the name of Stonewall Jackson. The military genius of this man made ample amends for the eccentricity of his character; his humanity tempered the zeal of his religious enthusiasm, which at times partook of the fanaticism of the old Puritans, while his strict sense of justice and equitable dealings made the most reck- 618 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. less tamely submit to his unbending severity, lie had accord- ingly acquired a prodigious influence over his soldiers, and from the first day he led them into battle, the old professor of chem- istry in the military college of Virginia displayed that quickness of perception, that decision, that energy in the execution of his plans, which constitute the true man of war. Since the battles of which West Virginia had been the theatre at the close of 1861, the Confederates, weakened and discouraged, had made no attempt to recover the ground they had lost in that part of the country. All their forces were concentrated in the Alleghanies ; and Lee, having been summoned to Richmond, had been succeeded, in December, in the Shenandoah valley, by Jack- son, who was appointed to the command of the so-called army of the Monongahela. Soon after. General Garnett came to join this army with Jackson's old brigade, from which the latter had separated with great reluctance, thus increasing the number of his forces to about ten thousand men. The Confederate general determined to assume the offensive at once. He left Winchester on the 1st of January with Garnett's troops and two brigades commanded by General Loring. The weather was beautiful and mild, and Jackson's soldiers crossed the gorges of the Alleghanies with a firm step, in the hope of surprising the Federal garrison of Bath, a small town situated near the Potomac, on the line of the Ohio Railway. But the next day they were overtaken by a snow-storm ; winter, after having long held back, had at last arrived in all its rigor, and surprised them in the midst of a diffi- cult march. They suffered terribly, and only reached Bath to see the Federals, who had received timely warning of their ap- proach, stationed on the other side of the river. Jackson, in- flexible of purpose, would not yield to the cold. After destroying the railroad-track, he led his soldiers to Romney, which General Kelly evacuated without waiting for him ; and leaving a portion of Loring's troops in this town, he returned to Winchester with the remainder of his army. The soldiers he brought back were exhausted, discouraged, and discontented. The effects of the severe cold had reduced his effective force one-half. The volun- teers whose teim of service was about to expire no longer obeyed their commanders; those who re-enlisted claimed the right to HAMPTON ROADS. 619 elect new officers ; and as the merits of the candidates were freely- discussed, drunkenness and want of discipline prevailed every- where. Finally, the officers who served under Jackson, en- couraged by Loring's example, no longer hesitated to criticise his acts openly. So loud were their complaints that Mr. Da\is, imi- tating the government of Washington, ordered Loring to evacuate Eomney without even apprising Jackson of his intention. The latter had need of all his patriotism to continue in the service of those who so poorly appreciated the difficulties of the task they had laid upon him when they entrusted him wth the defence of that important section of country. General McClellan, being desirous to protect the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad from any further attack, had, during the short cam- paign of Jackson, united all the small bodies of troops scattered along that line, between Hancock and Cheat River, in a single com- mand. These troops, to which were added a few reinforcements, were formed into a division under the orders of General Lander, his personal friend and an extremely brave officer, who had been wounded in a skirmish at EdAvards's Ferry a few days after the battle of Ball's Bluffi Lander did not remain inactive. The portion of the railroad most exposed to the enemy was that which follows the right bank of the Potomac between Hancock and Cumberland. It never had been entirely reopened, the section between Hancock and Harper's Ferry being still in the hands of the Confederates. Lander undertook to reconstruct the Cacapon bridge near Bath, and to open the railroad between Cumberland and Hancock, in order to establish a line of communication be- tween the latter point and the borders of the Ohio. With a view jf protecting the laborers, he determined to dislodge the Confed- erate brigade of Carson from the Blooming Gap passes, above the Cacapon valley, whence they could come down at any time and interrupt their work. He arrived on the 14th of February, at daybreak, with five hundred horsemen, at a little village situated at the foot of the passes, where he hoped to surprise a detachment of the enemy. The latter, being warned in time, had retired to- wards the mountain. Lander followed them ; but when he sought to attack the position occupied by the Confederates, his troopers .refused to follow him. Then the brave Lander, charging upon 620 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. the enemy, followed only by his staff, made a rebel colonel prisoner witli his own hand. Fortunately for him, he had only a small detaohment of Carson's brigade to deal with, the brigade itself having fallen back towards Winchester ; and the approach of two regiments of Federal infantry was sufficient to put the Confederates to flight, who, without the arrival of this reinforce- ment, having fully recovered from their first surprise, would have made Lander pay dear for his audacity. They left in his hands seventy-five prisoners, seventeen of whom were officers. In the mean time, a small body of troops had hoisted the , Federal flag at Moorefield, above Romney, among the gorges of the Upper Potomac, and this last town, having been evacuated by Loring, was at once occupied by Lander. Jackson, who attached the greatest importance to its possession, was contemplating its re- capture, when his attention was diverted by other duties. In- deed, the arrival of two Federal divisions at Harper's Ferry on the 26th looked like the prelude to a great campaign in the valley of Virginia. McClellan was at Charlestown in person. Jackson brought back his troops to Winchester in great haste. He lingered there for the purpose of watching the movements of the Federals ; but at the same time he was preparing to go up the Shenandoah as soon as Johnston should give him the signal ; for the evacua- tion of Manassas, which was then in course of execution, once accomplished, would necessarily involve that of Winchester. In the mean while, Lander had died ; he was succeeded by Gen- eral Shields, a gallant officer,* who had already distinguished himself in the Mexican campaign, and his division, united to that of Banks, formed the fifth army corps, under command of the latter general. When Johnston evacuated Manassas, Jackson, leaving Winchester, proceeded to Strasburg, thence to Woodstock, and only stopped at Mount Jackson, the terminus of the Manassas Gap Railway, situated on the north branch of the Shenandoah. This movement towards the south was followed by all the small bands operating among the Alleghanies ; and the railroad between Cumberland and Hancock being entirely open. Shields proceeded * James Shields was a brigadier-general of volunteers during the Mexican war. He was brevetted a major-general, and was twice severely woun led. Ha was mustered out of service at tlie close of the war. — Ed. HAMPTON ROADS. 621 to Winchester with his division, to join the first division of Banks, of which General Williams had assumed the command. Spurred on by his ardor, and encouraged by his chief, who did not much relish the defensive role allotted to him in McClellan's programme, Shields, on the 18th of March, pushed forward in the track of Jackson as far as beyond Strasburg, pressing close upon his rear- guard. But he could neither continue this eccentric movement nor remain in the isolated position in which he found himself. Indeed, the army of the Potomac, when it embarked, had left all the care of covering the line of the Potomac, against any demon- stration on the part of the enemy, to Banks's corps. The two fine divisions of which it was composed were amply sufficient for this purpose, provided they were exclusively devoted to such service. The division of Williams was to leave Winchester on the 21st for Centreville and Manassas, to replace the troops about to embark at Alexandria. Shields, left alone in the valley of Virginia, Avas obliged to shut himself up in the lower part of this valley, and on the 20th of March, early in the morning, he left Strasburg, with all his forces, to return the same day to Winchester, which Banks had directed him to hold. Shields knew the ardent tem- perament of his adversary ; and since he could not come up with him in order to attack him, he determined to lay a trap for him, so as to induce him to follow in pursuit, by giving to his retreat the appearance of a precipitate flight. His pickets were suddenly withdrawn ; and when, after a long march, his worn-out troops reached Winchester, he hurried them through the town and made them encamp a few kilometres to the north, on the Martinsburg road. On the morning of the 22d Williams's division left Win- chester, where there only remained a few companies, and took up its line of march through Berry ville, towards the Snicker Gap pass, in the chain of the Blue Ridge. The inhabitants of Win- chester, nearly all secessionists, hastened to send word to Ashby's cavalry, which had followed in the wake of the Federals, to let them know that their town was evacuated. This information was immediately forwarded to Jackson by means of signal-fires kindled on the mountain-fops. When Shields saw thick columns of smoke rising above the woods, he understood that his manoeuvre had suc- ceeded, and prepared to receive the enemy on the ground he had 622 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. Belectecl. Asliby, expecting to find an easy prey in Winchester, did not wait for Jackson, but vigorously attacked the Federal out- posts a few kilometres south of the town. In order to hold them in check, Avithout, however, revealing his strength, Shields sent the brigade of Kimball to take position near the village of Kerns- town, but only brought two regiments into action, with which Ashby kept skirmishing until night, believing that he had all the available forces of the Federals before him. In placing these two regiments in position, Shields had an arm shattered by a splinter from a shell, but he continued to give his orders without even allowing his wound to be dressed, and on the following day, despite his sufferings, he directed all the movements of his division from his bed. Jackson had reluctantly abandoned a portion of the Virginia valley and slowly fallen back before an enemy greatly superior in number. As soon as he was apprised of the retreat of the Fed- erals towards Winchester he could not resist the desire to retrace his steps. In the course of a single day, March 2d, he travelled, with his small army, the distance of forty kilometres, which sep- arates Mount Jackson from the borders of Cedar Creek, where he encamped for the night. He had^with him the three brigades of Garnett, Burks, and Fulkerstone ; Ashby's brigade of cavalry, to- gether with a light battery, was already near Winchester ; his ar- tillery consisted of twenty-seven field-pieces ; but the infantry was so much reduced that his forces did not amount to more than four thousand two hundred, or four thousand three hundred at the ut- most. On the morning of the 23d he resumed his march, having yet nearly forty kilometres to travel before he could reach Win- chester. On the same morning the three brigades of Shields's division took position five kilometres in advance of this town. The turn- pike road leading southward divides into three branches on the summit of a hill situated this side of KernStown village, and sloping down gradually to the edge of a ravine running from west to east. The left branch leads to Front Royal, the right to a ford of Cedar Creek at the foot of North Mountain ; the principal road in the centre runs to Strasburg. The country, highly culti- vated and intersected with wall fences and small woods, is one of HAMPTON ROADS. 623 the richest in the valley of Virginia. In the absence of Shields, who was kept in Winchester by his wound, Colonel Kimball had assumed command of the three brigades. His own was drawn up in front across the turnpike road, his right wing extending opposite a wooded hill among the recesses of which the ravine buried itself; still more to the right there were several large stubble-fields. The brigade of Sullivan was drawn u]"> on the left, a little in rear, and Tyler's was massed on the Winchester road. A reconnaissance made in the mornino- had demonstrated to the Federals that they had only some cavalry and a few pieces of artillery before them ; and Banks, convinced that Jackson, when better informed, would not dare to attack his seven or eight thou- sand men, had just left for Washington when Ashby's artillery opened the fight along the Strasburg road. The latter, having been informed of the near approach of Jackson, and wishing to test the strength of his adversaries, began the attack upon the left wing of the Federals, and soon compelled them to bring a portion of Sullivan's brigade into line. But the remainder of their forces being concealed by a rise in the ground, Ashby still believed that there were only four or five regiments before him, and forwarded this false information to Jackson Avhen the latter reached the village of Kernstown, about two o'clock in the afternoon. The Confederate foot-soldiers were worn out by their long and rapid march, but their commander was in the habit of not considering their fatigue. Believiuij he has a chance of crushinsr a detach- ment of fifteen hundred or two thousand of the enemy's troops^ he alloA\"S his soldiers but a few moments' rest, and immediately after leads them into action. Fulkerstone, on the left, Garnett, in the centre, and Burks, on the right, are all deployed in a single line of battle, which Jackson leads against the position occupied by Kimball's brigade, leaving to Ashby the care of holding the left wing of the Federals in check. His batteries occupy the wooded hill we have mentioned, and open a murderous fire, to which the Federal artillery, being more exposed, replies with dif- ficulty. Fulkerstone stretches out into the fields which open on his left, and threatens to flank the extremity of the Union line. It is four o'clock. Kimball, in order to parry this danger, sum- mons Tyler's brigade, some of whose regiments take position 624 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. on his right. The battle rages along the whole line. Garnett, with the celebrated brigade he has the honor of commanding, emero;es from the wood alons; the edo-e of which the Confed- erate artillery is posted. Kimball causes his brigade to make an analogous movement, and these two forces, both uncovered, obsti- nately fire at each other at a distance of two hundred metres. On the right of the Federals, Tyler has not only checked the movement of Fulkerstone's brigade, but outflanks it in his turn ; on the left, Sullivan easily keeps Ashby in check, although com- pelled to send two regiments to support the centre, which is closely pressed. At this place the two lines are separated by a large stone wall. Each party is endeavoring to take possession of this sheltering parapet ; but Garnett, with his Virginians, is the first to reach it. The Eighty-fourth Pennsylvania, led by the brave Colonel Mur- ray, tries to take it from him, and rushes to the charge despite a terrific fire; it arrives within twenty metres of the prize; but Murray is shot dead; his soldiers reel, fall back, and scatter, leaving the ground covered with the dead and wounded. Jackson has at last discovered his error ; but still retaining full confidence in his soldiers, he hopes to be yet able to wrest the victory from an enemy vastly superior in number. But while he brings his last reserves into action, Sullivan's troops and the remainder of Tyler's brigade come into line. Kimball makes one more effort to carry the position occupied by Garnett. His artillery covers the Confederate line with shells, and the second charge succeeds better than the first. The Stonewall brigade, being out of cartridges, abandons the wall it has so well defended. The Federals take possession of it, rush past it, and penetrating the enemy's line threaten to entirely cut off Fulkerstone, who is becoming more and more compromised. It is in vain that Jack- son leads his soldiers back to the charge, accustomed as they are to follow him through every danger; he cannot recover the ground lost. A piece of artillery has remained in the enemy's hands, and Fulkerstone, who is falling back in his turn, is also obliged to abandon one ; finally, at the extremity of the line, the Federals under Sullivan have assumed the offensive, and are driv- ing Ashby before them, whose guns, falling back farther and far- HAMPTON ROADS. G25 ther, announce to Jackson that the turnpike will soon be cut off from him. It is near six o'clock ; night comes on, and the Con- federates have lost the battle. Jackson ling-ers amono; the last combatants, but cannot prevent his soldiers from giving way in every direction before the efforts of the Federals. They fall back while still preserving their ranks, and often facing about to fire, then soon disappear in the darkness, leaving the battle-field cov- ered with their wounded. The bloody battle of Kernstown, which did honor to the two small armies, cost both parties dear. The Federals had one hun- dred and three men killed and four hundred and forty-one wounded ; the Confederates lost four hundred and seventy-five men in all. Jackson bivouacked not far from the field of battle. His cour- age had raised him still higher in the estimation of his troops ; but he was inconsolable on account of his reverse and the error that had caused it. He was not, however, in a condition to resume the fight, and on the following day he reached once more the bor- ders of Cedar Creek. On the same clay Banks returned to Win- chester with a portion of Williams's division, but had no idea of pursuing Jackson. The vigor displayed by the Confederates led him to believe that he had about ten thousand men in front of him. He could not believe that his adversary would have ven- tured so far without some reinforcement within his reach ; and after following him for a few kilometres, he brought back his troops to Winchester, beyond which his instructions did not per- mit him to go. Notwithstanding this reverse, Jackson's movement was not without results. It compelled Banks to concentrate once more his two divisions in the valley of the Shenandoah, and to leave the care of defending Manassas to other troops. The Confederate general was thus preluding the operations in which a few months after, and on the same ground, he was to distinguish himself. It was, in fact, by a series of bold moves in the valley of Virginia that Jackson first, and others after him, menaced the Federals and filled the government of Washington with alarms that in- variably betrayed it into the adoption of unfortunate measures. These alarms, as we have observed before, were exhibited at Vol. I.— 40 626 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. the bare idea of the army of the Potomac contemplating a depart- ure for a theatre of action remote from the capital. General McClellan, although determined to guarantee the safety of Wash- ington as fully as possible, could never come to an understanding with the strategists of the cabinet, whose advice controlled Mr. Lincoln, as to the manner of defending the capital. From the moment that the army of the Potomac concentrated all its avail- able forces upon any given point for the purpose of undertaking some great offensive movement, its detachments and accessory corps had to confine themselves to the strictest defensive every- where else. When, therefore, this army embarked for Fortress Monroe, all that the home troops had to do was to prevent any aggressive movement of the enemy against Washington or the Maryland frontier. West Virginia, being impracticable for large armies, could take care of herself. In order to close the Virginia valley, to protect the crossings of the Potomac at Harper's Ferry and Williamsport, and to cover the Ohio Railway, it was sufficient to occupy strongly the central position of Winchester. In short, in order to afford entire security to the capital, it was necessary, without counting depots and non-combatants, to establish two strong garrisons, one in the powerful works on the right bank of the Potomac, and the other in the Manassas lines of defences, re- constructed and turned round, so as to cover the approaches to Washington. But no personal or party considerations should have been allowed to interfere with what ought to be the sole and paramount object of war, the destruction of the enemy. There should have been no desire for compromise between men or their different plans of campaign. The satisfaction of occupying the whole country south of Washington should have been fore- gone for a while longer, and the Confederate guerillas allowed to remain in possession of it. The President, who, six months before, had suddenly taken away the command of the great department of the Missouri from General Fremont, had just created a new one in West Virginia expressly for him, called " the Mountain Department." This de- partment had been so curiously marked out that Fremont was unable to find an enemy within its prescribed limits, and yet the President could not withstand the representations of those who HAMPTON ROADS. 627 M-^ere urging him to dismember the army of the Potomac for the purpose of adding unnecessary strength to this new army. Blenk- er's strong division, composed exclusively of German soldiers or men of German origin, was, for no other reason, taken away from General McClellan on the eve of his departure for Fort Monroe, and transferred to Fremont. General Banks, with his twenty-five thousand men of the fifth corps, wa^ kept in the valley of Virginia by the fears which Jackson and his eight thousand soldiers created in Washington, and the authorities only waited for the departure of McClellan to convert this corps into another independent army. And yet neither Fremont's troops, with no enemy in front of them, nor Blenker's ten thousand men, sent in search of the for- mer, nor Banks's twenty-five thousand, to whom Jackson could only oppose eight thousand soldiers shaken and demoralized by unsuccessful fighting, were considered by the President as forming part of the defenders of Washington. He regarded them as sepa- rate armies, destined to wage war on their own account, and de- sired to provide for the protection of the capital from forces out- side their organization. General McClellan had not foreseen these new military com- binations. He thought that, at a time when the entire nation was giving so many proofs of patriotism, those who governed it would be able to resist the influence of idle fears and intrio-uino; ambition. The troops he left behind him on the day of his embarkation, within reach of and ready to defend Washington, amounted to seventy-three thousand four hundred and fifty-six men and one hundred and nine pieces of field-artillery, including Banks's corps and Blenker's division. It is true that out of this number were to be deducted the non-combatants, who always detract from the real strength of a large army. There were nearly three thou- sand five hundred recruits from New York and Pennsylvania who had not yet left their respective States ; and about five thousand men were engaged in keeping guard over the raihvays. The twenty-two thousand men comprising the garrison of Washington had nearly all recently enlisted, and were quite inexperienced. In short, out of the twenty-nine thousand or thirty thousand men constitutino; the active forces of Banks and Blenker, from fifteen thousand to eighteen thousand had to be left in the valley of Vir- 628 THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. ginia. Nevertheless, after making all these deductions, it was easy to mass a corps of from twenty thousand to twenty-five thou- sand well-trained soldiers at Manassas, and to place in second line, in the fortifications of Washington, twenty-five thousand or thirty thousand soldiers, raw, no doubt, but quite able to make a good figure behind a parapet. These were more than were needed to protect the capital until the day when, like an electric cloud which attracts another of an opposite character, the army of the Potomac should have drawn the Confederate army to itself, when all dan- ger to the Federal capital would have ceased. This moment once arrived, Blenker's division could have been removed without in- convenience from Washington, and sent as a reinforcement to Fremont's army. General McClellan was obliged to submit to the new require- ments of the government. On leaving Alexandria the 1st of April for Fortress Monroe, he left eighteen thousand five hundred men as a corps of observation between Manassas and Warrenton, and one thousand five hundred on the Lower Potomac ; the garrison of Washington was soon to be raised to eighteen thousand men, with twenty-two pieces of field-artillery. He had not dared to strip the valley of the Shenandoah, where thirty-five thousand men, comprising the reserves, were massed ; but these troops, al- ready organized and partly trained, could, at the slightest intima- tion of danger, be summoned to Washington if the inexperienced soldiers forming its garrison were not deemed sufficient by the mil- itary authorities. The government decided otherwise. The President again com- mitted the wrong of allowing McClellan to depart with assurance!" which he immediately falsified. While the army of the Potomac was embarking, full of confidence and hope, and happy at being delivered from a long-protracted inaction, many people in Wash- ington still felt, or pretended to feel, seriously alarmed on seeing the capital of the Union thus stripped. It was an easy matter to revive the old objections of the President against the plan which was at last being executed by his orders. There happened to be two generals in whom he reposed the utmost confidence, who declared that, in case of an attack, the garrison of Washington would not be sufficient ; and although they had added that the HAMPTON ROADS. 629 ca])ital was not menaced, ]\Ir. Lincoln determined to ward oft' this imaginary danger by an act of authority. On the 3d of April the great operation of transporting the army of the Potomac was considerably advanced, and promised entire success. With the exception of a few belated regiments, no troops remained in the neighborhood of Alexandria but Mc- Dowell's corps ; but this corps was the finest in the army ; it pre- sented an effective force of thirty-eight thousand four hundred and fifty-four soldiers of all arms, well drilled, thoroughly equipped, admirably commanded, divided into three divisions of infantry, four regiments of cavalry, and twelve batteries of ar- tillery. Embarked entire and at once upon transports which had at last been collected in sufficient number, while the remainder of the army was advancing through the peninsula, between the James and the York Rivers, it was to land on the north bank of that arm of the sea, so as to cause the fall of all the defences erected for the purpose of closing its entrance. The fulfilment of the task assigned to this corps was, in the judgment of General Mc- Clellan, indispensable to secure the success of a rapid campaign. Yet just as he was about to embark, McDowell received an order from the President directing him to remain, with all his forces, in the neighborhood of Washington ; while a laconic despatch in- formed McClellan that these troops, for whose arrival he had been waiting so impatiently, were taken from his command. Since the operations had commenced he had thus been deprived of nearly one-third of that army he had formed with so much care, and for the perfect organization of which he had even sacrificed a portion of his popularity. The government of Washington, by its want of skill, from the outset compromised the success of the decisive campaign for which the patriotic people of the North had begrudged it neither men nor money. In the next volume the reader will see how dearly this error cost. APPENDIX TO VOL. I. IN'OTES. NOTE A, Page 29. We append here, for the benefit of those who may feel interested in the subject, a more detailed description of the functions of the various departments and their respective positions in the staffs of the Ameri- can armies. The province of the adjutant-general comprised ; — the recruiting of regiments, their organization, their interior movements, their rela- tions with the special authoi'ities of States, the enrolling of militia and volunteers in the Federal service, the condition of the men and officers, the promotions, casualties, and resignations, and, finally, the creation and distribution of commands. All correspondence with bodies of troops in the field was conducted by him ; he transmitted the orders of the President and the Secretary of War to the generals in command, and the latter addressed all their reports to him. The assistant adjutant-generals, besides special duties which might be entrusted to them — such as the organization of new regiments — were attached to the staffs of the army or army corps of every division and brigade. They prepared, received, and classified all the reports, regulated the commands, transmitted all the records relating to the personnel of the army corps, and kept up with them the general cor- respondence ; they thus descended from oi'ganization to organization, until the regiment itself was reached, the adjutant of which, having control of all administrative operations, was in direct communication with the assistant adjutant-general of brigade. The functions of the quartermaster's department, which at a later period were distributed among nine offices into which the department was subdivided, comprised the following services : the purchase and distribution among the army corps of all the effects of the men, equip- 631 632 APPENDIX. ments, tents, tools, gamp furniture, cooking utensils, transportation by land and water — that is to say, the hiring or purchase of vessels con- veying troops, war material, or provisions on the high seas, lakes, or rivers, and even the equipment of military flotillas on inland waters independently of the navy ; the direction of the several maritime services, of all telegraph lines and railways which the armies had taken possession of; contracts with other railways for every kind of transportation ; the construction and distribution of all wagons, field- forges, ambulances, and harness ; the purchase of all animals required for that service, and the repairing of roads ; the purchase and distri- bution of fuel, forage, straw, and stationery ; the construction and supervision of barracks, hospitals, stables, bridges, magazines, and wharfs for lauding ; the renting of army quarters ; in short, all the expenditures of the armies not under the special care of some other department. All these operations were effected by means of contracts with private individuals, through the medium of the department at Washington, or the various quartermasters who exercised a control- ling authority in that branch of the service, either at the headquarters of an army or at a central depot, for that department had no work- shops under its direction. The superintendence of these operations was entrusted to special officers, who acted, some as inspectors to verify accounts, and others in the capacity of paymasters. The latter, having to settle all the authorized expenses in the different branches of that department, had to give bonds as a guarantee for the proper disbursement of the large sums of money which they received directly from the government at Washington. The ordnance and subsistence departments, Avhose functions we have already sufiiciently described, were organized in the same man- ner as the preceding, the inspection and disbursements being made in the corps itself by officers especially detailed for that service. The principal officer who represented each of these three branches of the service at the War Department attained that position by regular pro- motion, and could not be deprived of it at the pleasure of the Secre- tary like a simple employe. A portion of the officei's of this corps negotiated the contracts and saw to their proper execution, inspected and received the supplies, and took charge of the Federal arsenals. The others were attached to the armies in the field and to their depots, forming, from the regiment up, an official bond of communi- cation through which all matters connected with their departments passed before reaching their chief at Washington, under the simple supervision of the commander of each body of troops. APPENDIX. • 633 These three branches of the admiuistrative department were alone empowered to conclude heavy contracts. The surgeons, taken from the doctors already possessed of diplomas, were fittached to the regiments, but did not constitute a component part of their staffs ; at all the general headquarters there were brigade and division surgeons above them ; and, finally, the surgeon -general of the army. Those placed in attendance in hospitals were under their direction, and received their supplies partly from the quarter- master and partly from the commissary of subsistence. The paymasters were employes of the War Department, and not of the Treasury, inasmuch as each administrative department kept sepa- rate accounts, and was itself the disburser of the funds required to pay the expenses it had authorized ; they had only to settle the pay, the bounties, and a few trifling expenses ; consequently none of them re- mained with the army ; mere birds of jiassage, they made their appearance at certain stated periods, settled the pay-accounts accord- ing to the company-rolls, and disappeared immediately after. We will sum up this sketch by showing, first, what the composition of the headquarters of a general-in-chief, such as that of Scott in Mexico, is, and then the organization and interior administration of the regiment. We will thus be spared the necessity of recurring to these details when we shall have to speak of the volunteer armies which were foi'med on the same model. All the members of the headquarters were designated as aides-de- camp, and were distinguished by the addition to their titles of the three letters A. D. C, although their functions differed. Near the general there was, first of all, the chief of staff, the inter- mediate agent between the former and his principal officers, but hav- ing no particular command himself. Under his immediate direction there were the personal aides to the general, who, apart from the special missions entrusted to them, had no other duties to perform than the name indicated, to accompany him, carry his orders, observe what he could not see for himself, and receive all the communications addressed directly to him. All that depends upon the chief of staff with us was left to the care of the assistant adjutant-general, and, in a small portion, to the inspector-general of the army. The administrative personnel was represented by the quartermaster- general, the chief officer of ordnance, the chief commissary, and the surgeon-general. These heads of the administrative branches of the service had under their respective commands some officers (or physi- 634 APPENDIX. cians) and non-commissioned officers, but no troops. The teamsters, laborers, and hospital nurses were civilians hired for that purpose, or soldiers temporarily detached from their regiments. At headquarters the special arms of the service had each a chief surrounded by his own particular staff, such as the chief of artillery, the chief of engineers, and the chief of topographical engineers. Sometimes, with armies in the field, the cavalry were also under a special commander, called the chief of cavalry. The police of the army was under the supervision of a provost- marshal, while the management of courts-martial and the examina- tion of all legal questions were sometimes delegated to a lawyer styled judge-advocate, who was invested with provisional military rank. Let us now proceed from the first to the last degree, from the gen- eral headquarters to the regimental, or rather the battalion staff; we shall find that their administrative functions were very limited, which increased so much the importance and the duties of the special corps of the service detailed to assist in all that concerns the interior regi- men — a service from which such officers are excluded in the organiza- tion of the French regiment. In the American regiment there are no regimental accounts, no fond, no council of administration. There are only two employes of the administrative department, the ordnance- sergeant, whose duty was not only to attend to the repairing of arms, but also to ascertain their number and condition, to address all re- quests for arms and ammunition to the officials of the department, who were his immediate superiors, and to deliver them to the regi- ment. The other was the quartermaster of the regiment, who, acting under the immediate authority of the brigade-quartermaster, delivered to the regiment the personal effects, all made up, which he had re- quested and received from the central depot. The regiment, unless it formed no part of a brigade, had no commissary of subsistence, the commanders of companies keeping direct accounts with the commis- sary of brigade. If, at any time, the opportunity presented itself for practicing certain economies in the expenses of the regiment, especially as regarded the companies' rations, the officers had absolute control of the matter. All the records, writings, reports of condition and administrative control, were in the custody of the adjutant of the regiment, whose functions resembled those of our major ; he had charge of all the regimental accounts. On one hand, he had to verify the reports for- nished by the commanders of companies, and to examine their several books ; on the other hand, he had to check and register the operations APPENDIX. 635 of the quartermaster, the ordnance sergeant, and the supplies fur- nished by the brigade commissary of subsistence for the mess of companies and the hospital. In an administrative point of view, the regiment had no separate existence ; there was no community of interest except in the compa- nies among the men who were fed from the same camp-kettle. NOTE B, Page 82. • If any one wishes to form an idea of the irremediable demoraliza- tion that slavery entails, there is no necessity to read romances or pleadings, but only the simple diary kept in Georgia, on the planta- tion of her husband, by an author who bears a name illustrious in the dramatic annals of England, Miss Kemble. It is the naked truth, such as would strike an observer free from local prejudices ; the as- tonishments and the hopes, even, expressed by the author, are evidences of her good faith. She was struck at first by the contrast between the magnificence of nature and the human wretchedness to be seen there. It was only by degrees, however, that she found out all the evils of which slavery was the source. Being seized with charitable enthusi- asm at each sight of the picture, she wished to apply some remedy to it, but each time she stumbled against some new obstacle. It appeared to her that, the power of the master being so great, he might have used it in correcting the abuses of slavery ; but on the one hand, the prejudices, the interests, the institutions, which fettered the hands of the masters, and on the other the despondency which has a pros- trating effect upon the strongest minds when doomed to a hopeless life of servitude, neutralized all her best intentions. She acknow- ledged at last that slavery is almost as wretched under a good master as under a bad one. She became convinced, by constantly-recurring examples, of the intelligence of the negro and his aptitude for intel- lectual improvement, which place him on the same level with our- eelves. The moral degradation attributed to him, which was made the miserable pretext for his servitude, was only the natural consequence, as may be seen in every page of the journal, of the condition to which he had been reduced. A single word placed at the beginning of the book allows us to guess what was the cause which induced the frightful denouement of the pictures, which the author brings abruptly to a close when leaving the plantation for ever. An unholy day arrived when all the slaves were 636 APPENDIX. sold at auction. All the families who had become attached to that estate through their very sufferings, which the authoress has made us acquainted with, were scattered under the hammer of the auctioneer. This simple book bears most conclusive evidence that all that has been said in Europe about the horrors of slavery, and of its influence upon the morals of the whites, was far below the truth ; and if we have not dwelt more at length upon this subject, it is because it seemed useless to us to plead in favor of a cause already triumphant. NOTE C, Page 89. Below is a table, in round numbers, according to the census of 1860, of the population of the principal cities in the slave States. In esti- mating the forces of the Confederacy, it will be necessary to omit from this list four of the, five first-mentioned cities, which were never beyond the Federal authority. They are marked with asterisks : * Baltimore 212,000 inhabitants. New Orleans 169,000 " * St. Louis 152,000 " * Louisville 70,000 " ■^Washington . . . ... . 61,000 " Charleston 51,000 " Eichmond 38,000 " Mobile 29,000 " Memphis 23,000 " Savannah 22,000 " Wilmington 21,000 " Petersburg 18,000 " Nashville 17,000 NOTE D, Page 105. These details, with many others relative to the Confederate army, are taken from a book entitled " Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army," by W. G. Stevenson, published in 1863. It describes most vividly the situation of the South at the commencement of the war. The author relates, with a degree of simplicity which saves him from all suspicion of exaggeration, his forced enlistment in the Confederate army, the positions he filled, willingly or unwillingly, in the infantry, APPENDIX. 637 the administrative departments, the cavalry, the hospitals, and finally the adventures through which he escaped from those who compelled him to fight against relatives and friends. Notwithstanding the awk- ward position in which he found himself, and his legitimate aversion for the government whose tyranny he had to undergo, he does not cherish ill feelings against any one, and pays a tribute of respect to the personal qualities of the generals whom he had known. Fai from despising the South, he makes known to his fellow-countrymen the resources, the courage, and the energy of their adversaries, in order that they may redouble their efforts to put an end to the war. NOTE E, Page 256. It would fill an entire library to collect together all that has been written in America on the battle of Bull Run ; its slightest incidents have been discussed, commented upon, and presented under the most different phases. It has called forth the most fantastic descriptions on the part of a crowd of eye-witnesses whose judgment and vision had been singularly affected by the excitement of the combat so novel to them. It would be impossible to unravel the truth from among so many contradictory assertions if we had not as guides the official reports of both parties, remarkable for their completeness and the manner in which they agree with each other. This labor has been facilitated for us by the works of two American writers, Mr. Swin- ton, who has written two accounts of the battle of Bull Run with his wonted sagacity, and Mr. Lossing, the prolific draughtsman and scru- pulous narrator. Finally, the author himself accompanied McDowell a few months after the battle, when the latter visited for the first time since the action the scene of his defeat ; and he thus received on the spot, from the mouth of the principal actors, who recognized, with emotions easy t(-~ understand, here the route on which they had at first been vic- torious, there the point where some of their bravest companions had fallen, and farther on a trifling break in the ground, insignificant in appearance, wliich marked the spot where the rout of their troops had commenced. 638 APPENDIX. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL I^OTE RELATIVE TO THE PRINCIPAL WORKS CONSULTED BY THE AUTHOR. ' Without pretending to give a complete list of the sources from which the author has derived his information in writing the first volume of this history, it is proper to mention the principal publica- tions by which he has been guided in the composition of his work. We will quote, in the first place, " The Rebellion Record," a vast collection of reports, narratives, correspondence, newspaper extracts, prepared at intervals during the war ; it requires a certain degree of familiarity with -the subject to find out precisely what you are in search of, but it abounds in valuable information. The ofiicial docu- ments of both parties are almost invariably distinguished for their general correctness, although frequently too pompous in their style ; it would not be safe, however, to rely upon the statements they con- tain of certain conditions of affairs, except when they bear a con- fidential character. Unfortunately, these documents are far from being complete. The Navy Department of the Union has published the reports of all its ofiicers in extenso ; the War Department has only given abstracts of the reports of the Secretary and the com- mander-in-chief, and only the full reports of the quartermaster-general, which, in a statistical point of view, afford some curious information. A large number of the reports of both parties are to be found in the " Rebellion Record ;" there were published besides, in Richmond, in 1864, two volumes of the reports of General Lee and his subordinates, and a few official Confederate documents were reprinted in New York in 1865. Among the numerous documents contained in the Richmond archives, subsequently taken to Washington after the war, there are several of which the author possesses copies, for which he is indebted to the kindness of General Grant. All the depositions received by the " Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War" have been collect- ed into nine volumes which, among interminable repetitions, present some interesting views and much information not to be found else- where. As to the principal works which the author has consulted l^esides these different collections, he will simply mention their titles, begin- ning with four publications from which he has borrowed more than from APPENDIX. 639 any other ; the first commends itself to our special consideration on account of the conscientious impartiality with which it was written ; the others, by the judicious care with which their respective authors made use of the published and unpublished documents they had on hand. These are, "The Pictorial History of the Civil War," by Mr. Lossing; "The American Civil War," three volumes; "Life of General Grant," by his former aide-de-camp, General Badeau, of which only the first volume has appeared ; the two books of Mr* Swinton, entitled, respectively, " Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac," one volume, and " The Twelve Decisive Battles of the War," one volume. To continue the list of works written from a Union point of view, we will mention, without attempting to classify them, " History of the Rebellion," by Tenney, one volume ; " Life of General Grant," by Coppee, one volume ; " Life of General Sherman," by Bowman and Irwin, one volume ; " Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army,'' by Ste- venson, one volume ; " The Volunteer Quartermaster," one volume ; " History of the United States Cavalry," by Brackett, one volume ; a large number of technical papers in the " American Cyclopredia," a work in four volumes ; " Political History of the Rebellion," by McPher- son, one volume ; " Life of Abraham Lincoln," by Raymond, one vol- ume ; " The American Conflict," by Horace Greeley, two volumes. Among the Confederate publications to which we are indebted we must mention, above all, the works of E. A. Pollard : " The First, Second, and Third Year of the War," three volumes, " The Lost Cause," one volume, and " Lee and his Lieutenants," one volume ; the works of J. Esten Cooke : " Life of General Lee," one volume, "Life of Stonewall Jackson," one volume, and "Wearing of the Gray," one volume ; and, finally, " The Southern Generals," W. P. Snow, one volume. The number of works published by Europeans possessing real inte- rest is very limited ; it will be enough to mention the remarkable work of M. Vigo Roussillion on " The Military Power of the United States," and the writings of three officers with whom the author had the good fortune to serve in the campaign against Richmond in 1862: " History of the War of Secession," by the Swiss Federal colonel F. Lecomte, two volumes; " History of the American War," by Lieu- tenant-colonel Fletcher of the British Guards, three volumes ; and " Four Years in the Army of the Potomac," by General Regis de Trobriand, two volumes, Paris, 1867. This last work, French in lan- guage, in spirit, and in the place of its publication, possesses at the 640 APPENDIX. " Four Years in the Army of the Potomac," by General E^gis de Trobriand, two volumes, Paris, 1867. This last work, French in lan- guage, in spirit, and in the place of its publication, possesses at the same time, in an historical point of view, all the value of a narrative ■written by one of the eye-witnesses and actors in the great American drama. We shall conclude this note with a final reference, which will convey to the reader an idea of the multitude of documents of varied import- ance and value that have been published on the subject of which we are treating ; this is a large quarto volume entitled " Bartlett's Litera- ture of the Eebellion," which appeared in 1866, and is simply a cata- logue of all the works relating to the civil war ; it contains more than six thousand numbers, and during the last six years the quantity of these works has probably doubled. In the succeeding pages of our history we shall indicate whatever sources worthy of mention we may have occasion to consult in any subsequent portion of the narrative. END OF VOLUME I. ^.^ University of Connecticut Libraries 39153028552745