ARMY ORGANIZATION NORTH AND SOUTH.
CONFEDERATE ADVANTAGES--THE LEADING GENERAL OFFICERS--GRADUATES OF
WEST POINT JOIN THE CONFEDERACY--CAPITAL REMOVED FROM
MONTGOMERY--PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S CALL FOR SOLDIERS AND
SAILORS--SOUTHERN PRIVATEERS--"ON TO RICHMOND!"
Although up to this time no important engagements between the troops
had taken place, the war was actually begun. The Sumter affair had
been the signal for both sides to throw away subterfuge and disguise,
and it became thenceforth an open struggle for military advantage. The
South no longer pleaded State rights, but military necessity, for
seizing such Government posts and property as were within reach; the
North no longer acted under the restraint of hesitation to commit an
open breach, for the peace was broken irrevocably, and whatever it was
possible to do, in the way of defence or offence, was now become
politic.
The two contending powers were entering on the struggle under very
different conditions and with unequal advantages. Before taking up the
military operations which ensued, it will be interesting to look at
these conditions.
On both sides there were many experienced army and navy officers, who
had seen service, had been educated at the United States Military and
Naval Academies, and had either remained {48} in the service or,
having withdrawn to civil life, were prompt to offer their swords to
the side to which they adhered. Assuming the number and quality of
these officers to have been equally divided, there were several
respects in which the Confederates had the advantage in their
preliminary organization, apart from the studied care with which
disloyal cabinet officers had scattered the Federal regular army and
had stripped Northern posts of supplies and of trustworthy
commandants. President Lincoln came on from his Western home without
knowledge of war, acquaintance with military men, or familiarity with
military matters, and was immediately plunged into emergencies
requiring in the Executive an intimate knowledge of all three. He
became the titular commander-in-chief of an army already officered,
but not only ignorant as to whether he had the right man in the right
place, but powerless to make changes even had he known what changes to
make, by reason of the law and the traditions governing the
_personnel_ of the service, in which promotion and personal relations
were fixed and established. He found a military establishment that had
been running on a peace footing for more than a decade and was not
readily adaptable to war conditions; and officers in high command,
who, as their States seceded, followed them out of the Union, carrying
with them the latest official secrets and leaving behind them
vacancies which red-tape and tradition, and not the free choice of the
commander-in-chief, were to fill. His near advisers, particularly
those in whose hands were the details of military administration, were
scarcely better informed than himself, possessing political shrewdness
and undoubted loyalty, but none of the professional knowledge of which
he stood so sorely in need.
The President of the Southern Confederacy, on the other hand, was
Jefferson Davis, a man whose personal instrumentality in bringing
about the rebellion gave him both knowledge and authority; an educated
soldier and veteran of the Mexican war, in which he held a high
command; familiar, through long service as Secretary of War and on the
Senate Military Committee, not only with all the details of military
administration, but with the points of strength and weakness in the
military establishment of the enemy he was about to grapple with.
Placed at the head of a new government, with neither army nor navy,
nor law nor tradition for their control, he was free to exercise his
superior knowledge of military matters for the best possible use of
the men at his command in organizing his military establishment. None
of the political conditions surrounding him forced on President Davis
the appointment of political generals--an unavoidable evil which long
postponed the effectiveness of President Lincoln's army
administration. Whatever his judgment, guided by his professional
military experience, approved of, he was free to do. It was President
Lincoln's difficult task to learn something about military matters
himself, and then to untie or cut the Gordian knot of hampering
conditions; and if, in doing this, an occasional injustice was done to
an individual officer, it is a cause for wonder far less significant
than that by the exercise of his extraordinary faculty of common-sense
he progressed as rapidly as he did toward the right way of
accomplishing the ends he had in view.
[Illustration: FRANCIS H. PIERPONT, Governor of West Virginia.]
[Illustration: CAMP OF THE FORTY-FOURTH NEW YORK INFANTRY, NEAR
ALEXANDRIA, VA.]
The beginning of trouble in 1861 found the administration of the War
Department in the hands of Secretary Joseph Holt, who had succeeded
the secessionist Floyd, and was in turn succeeded by Simon Cameron,
the war secretary of Lincoln's first cabinet, who remained there until
the appointment of Edwin M. Stanton, the great "war secretary" of the
remaining years of the struggle. Cameron was a shrewd politician, but
was uninformed on military matters, for advice on which President
Lincoln relied principally on other members of the cabinet and on
General Scott. The cabinet of 1861 contained also John A. Dix, in the
Treasury--whence issued his celebrated "shoot him on the spot" {49}
despatch--who took a general's commission when he retired in favor of
Salmon P. Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury during most of the war.
Gideon Welles was Secretary of the Navy.
Among the staff officers of the army were Lorenzo Thomas,
Adjutant-General; E. D. Townsend, who as Assistant Adjutant-General
was identified with this important office throughout the war;
Montgomery C. Meigs, Quartermaster-General; and Joseph G. Totten,
Chief of Engineers.
The general in command of the army was Winfield Scott, whose conduct
of the Mexican war had made him a conspicuous military and political
figure, an able officer and a most loyal Unionist, but already
suffering from the infirmities of age, which soon compelled him to
relinquish to younger hands the command of the army. But until after
the battle of Bull Run, his was the directing mind. His immediate
subordinates were Brig.-Gens. John E. Wool, also a veteran in service;
William S. Harney, whose reluctance to take part in civil war soon
terminated his usefulness; and David E. Twiggs, who surrendered his
command to the Confederates in Texas, and going with the South, was
replaced by Edwin V. Sumner.
The command of the main Union force, organized from the volunteers who
were pouring into Washington, devolved on Irvin McDowell, a major in
the regular army, now promoted to be brigadier-general, who
established his headquarters at Alexandria, across the Potomac from
Washington, there directing the defence of the capital, and thence
advancing to Bull Run. In this command he succeeded Gen. Joseph K. F.
Mansfield. Under him, during this campaign, were many officers who
rose to eminence during the war. His corps commanders at Bull Run were
Gens. Daniel Tyler, David Hunter, Samuel P. Heintzelman, Theodore
Runyon, and D. S. Miles; and among the brigade commanders were Gens.
Erasmus D. Keyes, Robert C. Schenck, William T. Sherman, Israel B.
Richardson, Andrew Porter, Ambrose E. Burnside, William B. Franklin,
Oliver O. Howard, Louis Blenker, and Thomas A. Davies. Threatening the
approach to Richmond from the lower Chesapeake, was Gen. Benjamin F.
Butler, at Fortress Monroe.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL W. B. FRANKLIN.]
[Illustration: GENERAL DAVID HUNTER.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOSEPH K. F. MANSFIELD.]
[Illustration: GENERAL GEORGE H. THOMAS.]
[Illustration: GENERAL SAMUEL P. HEINTZELMAN.]
Among the Confederate generals who prepared to defend Virginia, were
Robert E. Lee, then in command of the Virginia State troops, Samuel
Cooper, Joseph E. Johnston, P. G. T. Beauregard, James Longstreet,
Jubal A. Early, Richard S. Ewell, Thomas J. ("Stonewall") Jackson,
Robert S. Garnett, John C. Pegram, Benjamin Huger, John B. Magruder,
and others.
The seventy-five thousand troops called for in President Lincoln's
proclamation of April 15th, were three-months men. On the 3d of May,
1861, he issued another proclamation, calling for forty-two thousand
volunteers for three years, and authorizing the raising of ten new
regiments for the regular army. He also called for eighteen thousand
volunteer seamen for the navy. The ports of the Southern coasts had
been already (April 19th) declared in a state of blockade, and it was
not only desirable but absolutely necessary to make the blockade
effectual. The Confederate Government had issued letters of marque for
privateers almost from the first; and its Congress had authorized the
raising of an army of one hundred thousand volunteers for one year.
When Congress convened on the 4th of July, President Lincoln asked for
four hundred thousand men and four hundred million dollars, to
suppress the insurrection; and in response he was authorized to call
for five hundred thousand men and spend five hundred million dollars.
What he had already done was approved and declared valid; and on the
15th of July the House of Representatives, with but five dissenting
votes, passed a resolution (introduced by John A. McClernand, a
Democrat) pledging any amount of money and any number of men that
might be necessary to restore the authority of the National
Government.
The seat of the Confederate Government was removed from Montgomery,
Ala., to Richmond, Va., on the 20th of May.
{50} [Illustration: BATTLE OF BULL RUN, JULY 21, 1861.]
{51} [Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL McDOWELL AND STAFF.]