CHAPTER IX

SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR

It is a significant fact that the news of Lincoln's election which

caused so much dismay and searching of heart throughout the Southern and

Border States was received with defiant cheers in Charleston, the chief

port of South Carolina. Those cheers meant that there was one Southern

State that was ready to answer on the instant the whispered question

which was troubling the North, and to answer it by no means in a

whisper.

South Carolina occupied a position not exactly parallel to that of any

other State. Her peculiarity was not merely that her citizens held the

dogma of State Sovereignty. All the States from Virginia southward, at

any rate, held that dogma in one form or another. But South Carolina

held it in an extreme form, and habitually acted on it in an extreme

fashion. It is not historically true to say that she learnt her

political creed from Calhoun. It would be truer to say that he learnt it

from her. But it may be that the leadership of a man of genius, who

could codify and expound her thought, and whose bold intellect shrank

from no conclusion to which his principles led, helped to give a

peculiar simplicity and completeness to her interpretation of the dogma

in question. The peculiarity of her attitude must be expressed by saying

that most Americans had two loyalties, while the South Carolinian had

only one. Whether in the last resort a citizen should prefer loyalty to

his State or loyalty to the Union was a question concerning which man

differed from man and State from State. There were men, and indeed whole

States, for whom the conflict was a torturing, personal tragedy, and a

tearing of the heart in two. But practically all Americans believed

that some measure of loyalty was due to both connections. The South

Carolinan did not. All his loyalty was to his State. He scarcely

pretended to anything like national feeling. The Union was at best a

useful treaty of alliance with foreigners to be preserved only so far as

the interests of the Palmetto State were advantaged thereby. His

representatives in House and Senate, the men he sent to take part as

electors in the choosing of a President, had rather the air of

ambassadors than of legislators. They were in Congress to fight the

battles of their State, and avowed quite frankly that if it should ever

appear that "the Treaty called the Constitution of the United States"

(as South Carolina afterwards designated it in her Declaration of

Independence) were working to its disadvantage, they would denounce it

with as little scruple or heart-burning as the Washington Government

might denounce a commercial treaty with England or Spain.

South Carolina had been talking freely of secession for thirty years. As

I have said, she regarded the Union simply as a diplomatic arrangement

to be maintained while it was advantageous, and again and again doubts

had been expressed as to whether in fact it was advantageous. The fiscal

question which had been the ostensible cause of the Nullification

movement in the 'thirties was still considered a matter of grievance. As

an independent nation, it was pointed out, South Carolina would be free

to meet England on the basis of reciprocal Free Trade, to market her

cotton in Lancashire to the best advantage, and to receive in return a

cheap and plentiful supply of British manufactures. At any moment since

1832 a good opportunity might have led her to attempt to break away. The

election of Lincoln was to her not so much a grievance as a signal--and

not altogether an unwelcome one. No time was lost in discussion, for the

State was unanimous. The legislature had been in session choosing

Presidential electors--for in South Carolina these were chosen by the

legislature and not by the people. When the results of the voting in

Pennsylvania and Indiana made it probable that the Republicans would

have a majority, the Governor intimated that it should continue to sit

in order to consider the probable necessity of taking action to save

the State. The news of Lincoln's election reached Charleston on the 7th

of November. On the 10th of November the legislature unanimously voted

for the holding of a specific Convention to consider the relations of

South Carolina with the United States. The Convention met early in

December, and before the month was out South Carolina had in her own

view taken her place in the world as an independent nation. The Stars

and Stripes was hauled down, and the new "Palmetto Flag"--a palm-tree

and a single star--raised over the public buildings throughout the

State.

Many Southerners, including not a few who were inclined to Secession as

the only course in the face of the Republican victory, considered the

precipitancy of South Carolina unwise and unjustifiable. She should,

they thought, rather have awaited a conference with the other Southern

States and the determination of a common policy. But in fact there can

be little doubt that the audacity of her action was a distinct spur to

the Secessionist movement. It gave it a focus, a point round which to

rally. The idea of a Southern Confederacy was undoubtedly already in the

air. But it might have remained long and perhaps permanently in the air

if no State had been ready at once to take the first definite and

material step. It was now no longer a mere abstract conception or

inspiration. The nucleus of the thing actually existed in the Republic

of South Carolina, which every believer in State Sovereignty was bound

to recognize as a present independent State. It acted, so to speak, as a

magnet to draw other alarmed and discontented States out of the Union.

The energy of the South Carolinian Secessionists might have produced

less effect had anything like a corresponding energy been displayed by

the Government of the United States. But when men impatiently looked to

Washington for counsel and decision they found neither. The conduct of

President Buchanan moved men at the time to contemptuous impatience, and

history has echoed the contemporary verdict. Just one fact may perhaps

be urged in extenuation: if he was a weak man he was also in a weak

position. A real and very practical defect, as it seems to me, in the

Constitution of the United States is the four months' interval between

the election of a President and his installation. The origin of the

practice is obvious enough: it is a relic of the fiction of the

Electoral College, which is supposed to be spending those months in

searching America for the fittest man to be chief magistrate. But now

that everyone knows on the morrow of the election of the College who is

to be President, the effect may easily be to leave the immense power and

responsibility of the American Executive during a critical period in the

hands of a man who has no longer the moral authority of a popular

mandate--whose policy the people have perhaps just rejected. So it was

in this case. Buchanan was called upon to face a crisis produced by the

defeat of his own party, followed by the threatened rebellion of the men

to whom he largely owed his election, and with it what moral authority

he might be supposed to possess. Had Lincoln been able to take command

in November he might, by a combination of firmness and conciliation,

have checked the Secessionist movement. Buchanan, perhaps, could do

little; but that little he did not do.

When all fair allowance has been made for the real difficulties of his

position it must be owned that the President cut a pitiable figure. What

was wanted was a strong lead for the Union sentiment of all the States

to rally to. What Buchanan gave was the most self-confessedly futile

manifesto that any American President has ever penned. His message to

the Congress began by lecturing the North for having voted Republican.

It went on to lecture the people of South Carolina for seceding, and to

develop in a lawyer-like manner the thesis that they had no

constitutional right to do so. This was not likely to produce much

effect in any case, but any effect that it might have produced was

nullified by the conclusion which appeared to be intended to show, in

the same legal fashion, that, though South Carolina had no

constitutional right to secede, no one had any constitutional right to

prevent her from seceding. The whole wound up with a tearful

demonstration of the President's own innocence of any responsibility for

the troubles with which he was surrounded.

It was not surprising if throughout the nation there stirred a name and

memory, and to many thousands of lips sprang instinctively and

simultaneously a single sentence: "Oh for one hour of Jackson!"

General Scott, who was in supreme command of the armed forces of the

Union, had, as a young man, received Jackson's instructions for "the

execution of the laws" in South Carolina. He sent a detailed

specification of them to Buchanan; but it was of no avail. The great

engine of democratic personal power which Jackson had created and

bequeathed to his successors was in trembling and incapable hands. With

a divided Cabinet--for his Secretary of State, Cass, was for vigorous

action against the rebellious State, while his Secretary for War, Floyd,

was an almost avowed sympathizer with secession--and with a President

apparently unable to make up his own mind, or to keep to one policy from

hour to hour, it was clear that South Carolina was not to be dealt with

in Jackson's fashion. Clay's alternative method remained to be tried.

It was a disciple of Clay's, Senator Crittenden, who made the attempt, a

Whig and a Kentuckian like his master. He proposed a compromise very

much in Clay's manner, made up for the most part of carefully balanced

concessions to either section. But its essence lay in its proposed

settlement of the territorial problem, which consisted of a

Constitutional Amendment whereby territories lying south of latitude 36°

30' should be open to Slavery, and those north of that line closed

against it. This was virtually the extension of the Missouri Compromise

line to the Pacific, save that California, already accepted as a Free

State, was not affected. Crittenden, though strenuously supported by

Douglas, did not meet with Clay's measure of success. The Senate

appointed a committee to consider the relations of the two sections, and

to that committee, on which he had a seat, he submitted his plan. But

its most important clause was negatived by a combination of extremes,

Davis and the other Southerners from the Cotton States combining with

the Republicans to reject it. There is, however, some reason to believe

that the Southerners would have accepted the plan if the Republicans had

done so. The extreme Republicans, whose representative on the committee

was Wade of Ohio, would certainly have refused it in any case, but the

moderates on that side might probably have accepted and carried it had

not Lincoln, who had been privately consulted, pronounced decidedly

against it. This fixes upon Lincoln a considerable responsibility before

history, for it seems probable that if the Crittenden Compromise had

been carried the Cotton States would not have seceded, and South

Carolina would have stood alone. The refusal, however, is very

characteristic of his mind. No-one, as his whole public conduct showed,

was more moderate in counsel and more ready to compromise on practical

matters than he. Nor does it seem that he would have objected strongly

to the Crittenden plan--though he certainly feared that it would lead to

filibustering in Mexico and Cuba for the purpose of obtaining more slave

territory--if it could have been carried out by Congressional action

alone. But the Dred Scott judgment made it necessary to give it the form

of a Constitutional Amendment, and a Constitutional Amendment on the

lines proposed would do what the Fathers of the Republic had so

carefully refrained from doing--make Slavery specifically and in so many

words part of the American system. This was a price which his

intellectual temper, so elastic in regard to details, but so firm in its

insistence on sound first principles, was not prepared to pay.

The rejection of the Crittenden Compromise gave the signal for the new

and much more formidable secession which marked the New Year. Before

January was spent Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi were, in their own

view, out of the Union. Louisiana and Texas soon followed their example.

In Georgia the Unionists put up a much stronger fight, led by Alexander

Stephens, afterwards Vice-President of the Confederacy. But even there

they were defeated, and the Cotton States now formed a solid phalanx

openly defying the Government at Washington.

The motives of this first considerable secession--for I have pointed out

that the case of South Carolina was unique--are of great importance, for

they involve our whole view of the character of the war which was to

follow. In England there is still a pretty general impression that the

States rose in defence of Slavery. I find a writer so able and generally

reliable as Mr. Alex. M. Thompson of the _Clarion_ giving, in a recent

article, as an example of a just war, "the war waged by the Northern

States to extinguish Slavery." This view is, of course, patently false.

The Northern States waged no war to extinguish Slavery; and, had they

done so, it would not have been a just but a flagrantly unjust war.

No-one could deny for a moment that under the terms of Union the

Southern States had a right to keep their slaves as long as they chose.

If anyone thought such a bargain too immoral to be kept, his proper

place was with Garrison, and his proper programme the repudiation of the

bargain and the consequent disruption of the Union. But the North had

clearly no shadow of right to coerce the Southerners into remaining in

the Union and at the same time to deny them the rights expressly

reserved to them under the Treaty of Union. And of such a grossly

immoral attempt every fair-minded historian must entirely acquit the

victorious section. The Northerners did not go to war to abolish

Slavery. The original basis of the Republican party, its platform of

1860, the resolutions passed by Congress, and the explicit declarations

of Lincoln, both before and after election, all recognize specifically

and without reserve the immunity of Slavery in the Slave States from all

interference by the Federal Government.

American writers are, of course, well acquainted with such elementary

facts, and, if they would attempt to make Slavery the cause of the

rebellion, they are compelled to use a different but, I think, equally

misleading phrase. I find, for instance, Professor Rhodes saying that

the South went to war for "the extension of Slavery." This sounds more

plausible, because the extension of the geographical area over which

Slavery should be lawful had been a Southern policy, and because the

victory of the party organized to oppose this policy was in fact the

signal for secession. But neither will this statement bear examination,

for it must surely be obvious that the act of secession put a final end

to any hope of the extension of Slavery. How could Georgia and Alabama,

outside the Union, effect anything to legalize Slavery in the Union

territories of Kansas and New Mexico?

A true statement of the case would, I think, be this: The South felt

itself threatened with a certain peril. Against that peril the

extension of the slave area had been one attempted method of protection.

Secession was an alternative method.

The peril was to be found in the increasing numerical superiority of the

North, which must, it was feared, reduce the South to a position of

impotence in the Union if once the rival section were politically

united. Lowell spoke much of the truth when he said that the Southern

grievance was the census of 1860; but not the whole truth. It was the

census of 1860 plus the Presidential Election of 1860, and the moral to

be drawn from the two combined. The census showed that the North was

already greatly superior in numbers, and that the disproportion was an

increasing one. The election showed the North combined in support of a

party necessarily and almost avowedly sectional, and returning its

candidate triumphantly, although he had hardly a vote south of the

Mason-Dixon line. To the South this seemed to mean that in future, if it

was to remain in the Union at all, it must be on sufferance. A

Northerner would always be President, a Northern majority would always

be supreme in both Houses of Congress, for the admission of California,

already accomplished, and the now certain admission of Kansas as a Free

State had disturbed the balance in the Senate as well as in the House.

The South would henceforward be unable to influence in any way the

policy of the Federal Government. It would be enslaved.

It is true that the South had no immediate grievance. The only action of

the North of which she had any sort of right to complain was the

infringement of the spirit of the Constitutional compact by the Personal

Liberty Laws. But these laws there was now a decided disposition to

amend or repeal--a disposition strongly supported by the man whom the

North had elected as President. It is also true, that this man would

never have lent himself to any unfair depression of the Southern part of

the Union. This last fact, however, the South may be pardoned for not

knowing. Even those Northerners who had elected Lincoln knew little

about him except that he was the Republican nominee and had been a

"rail-splitter." In the South, so far as one can judge, all that was

heard about him was that he was a "Black Abolitionist," which was

false, and that in appearance he resembled a gorilla, which was, at

least by comparison, true.

But, even if Lincoln's fairness of mind and his conciliatory disposition

towards the South had been fully appreciated, it is not clear that the

logic of the Secessionist case would have been greatly weakened. The

essential point was that the North, by virtue of its numerical

superiority, had elected a purely Northern candidate on a purely

Northern programme. Though both candidate and programme were in fact

moderate, there was no longer any security save the will of the North

that such moderation would continue. If the conditions remained

unaltered, there was nothing to prevent the North at a subsequent

election from making Charles Sumner President with a programme conceived

in the spirit of John Brown's raid. It must be admitted that the policy

adopted by the dominant North after the Civil War might well appear to

afford a measure of posthumous justification for these fears.

In the North at first all seemed panic and confusion of voices. To

many--and among them were some of those who had been keenest in

prosecuting the sectional quarrel of which Secession was the outcome--it

appeared the wisest course to accept the situation and acquiesce in the

peaceable withdrawal of the seceding States. This was the position

adopted almost unanimously by the Abolitionists, and it must be owned

that they at least were strictly consistent in taking it. "When I called

the Union 'a League with Death and an Agreement with Hell,'" said

Garrison, "I did not expect to see Death and Hell secede from the

Union." Garrison's disciple, Wendell Phillips, pronounced the matter one

for the Gulf States themselves to decide, and declared that you could

not raise troops in Boston to coerce South Carolina or Florida. The same

line was taken by men who carried greater weight than did the

Abolitionists. No writer had rendered more vigorous service to the

Republican cause in 1860 than Horace Greeley of the _New York Tribune_.

His pronouncement in that journal on the Southern secessions was

embodied in the phrase: "Let our erring sisters go."

But while some of the strongest opponents of the South and of Slavery

were disposed to accept the dismemberment of the Union almost

complacently, there were men of a very different type to whom it seemed

an outrage to be consummated only over their dead bodies. During the

wretched months of Buchanan's incurable hesitancy the name of Jackson

had been in every mouth. And at the mere sound of that name there was a

rally to the Union of all who had served under the old warrior in the

days when he had laid his hand of steel upon the Nullifiers. Some of

them, moved by that sound and by the memory of the dead, broke through

the political ties of a quarter of a century. Among those in whom that

memory overrode every other passion were Holt, a Southerner and of late

the close ally of Davis; Cass, whom Lowell had pilloried as the typical

weak-kneed Northerner who suffered himself to be made the lackey of the

South; and Taney, who had denied that, in the contemplation of the

American Constitution, the Negro was a man. It was Black, an old

Jacksonian, who in the moment of peril held the nerveless hands of the

President firm to the tiller. It was Dix, another such, who sent to New

Orleans the very Jacksonian order: "If any man attempts to haul down the

American flag, shoot him at sight."

War is always the result of a conflict of wills.

The conflict of wills which produced the American Civil War had nothing

directly to do with Slavery. It was the conflict between the will of

certain Southern States to secede rather than accept the position of a

permanent minority and the will expressed in Jackson's celebrated toast:

"Our Union, it must be preserved." It is the Unionist position which

clearly stands in need of special defence, since it proposed the

coercion of a recalcitrant population. Can such a defence be framed in

view of the acceptance by most of us of the general principle which has

of late been called "the self-determination of peoples"?

I think it can. One may at once dismiss the common illusion--for it is

often in such cases a genuine illusion, though sometimes a piece of

hypocrisy--which undoubtedly had possession of many Northern minds at

the time, that the Southern people did not really want to secede, but

were in some mysterious fashion "intimidated" by a disloyal minority.

How, in the absence of any special means of coercion, one man can

"intimidate" two was never explained any more than it is explained when

the same absurd hypothesis is brought forward in relation to Irish

agrarian and English labour troubles. At any rate in this case there is

not, and never has been, the slightest justification for doubting that

Secessionism was from the first a genuine popular movement, that it was

enthusiastically embraced by hundreds of thousands who no more expected

ever to own a slave than an English labourer expects to own a carriage

and pair; that in this matter the political leaders of the States, and

Davis in particular, rather lagged behind than outran the general

movement of opinion; that the Secessionists were in the Cotton States a

great majority from the first; that they became later as decided a

majority in Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee; and that by the

time the sword was drawn there was behind the Confederate Government a

unanimity very rare in the history of revolutions--certainly much

greater than existed in the colonies at the time of the Declaration of

Independence. To oppose so formidable a mass of local opinion and to

enforce opposition by the sword was for a democracy a grave

responsibility.

Yet it was a responsibility which had to be accepted if America was to

justify her claim to be a nation. To understand this certain further

propositions must be grasped.

First, the resistance of the South, though so nearly universal, was not

strictly national. You cannot compare the case with that of Ireland or

Poland. The Confederacy was never a nation, though, had the war had a

different conclusion, it might perhaps have become one. It is important

to remember that the extreme Southern view did not profess to regard the

South as a nationality. It professed to regard South Carolina as one

nationality, Florida as another, Virginia as another. But this view,

though it had a strong hold on very noble minds, was at bottom a

legalism out of touch with reality. It may be doubted whether any man

felt it in his bones as men feel a genuine national sentiment.

On the other hand _American_ national sentiment was a reality. It had

been baptized in blood. It was a reality for Southerners as well as for

Northerners, for Secessionists as well as for Union men. There was

probably no American, outside South Carolina, who did not feel it as a

reality, though it might be temporarily obscured and overborne by local

loyalties, angers, and fears. The President of the Confederacy had

himself fought under the Stars and Stripes, and loved it so well that he

could not bear to part with it and wished to retain it as the flag of

the South. Had one generation of excited men, without any cognate and

definable grievance, moved only by anger at a political reverse and the

dread of unrealized and dubious evils, the right to undo the mighty work

of consolidation now so nearly accomplished, to throw away at once the

inheritance of their fathers and the birthright of their children? Nor

would they and their children be the only losers: it was the great

principles on which the American Commonwealth was built that seemed to

many to be on trial for their life. If the Union were broken up, what

could men say but that Democracy had failed? The ghost of Hamilton might

grin from his grave; though his rival had won the laurel, it was he who

would seem to have proved his case. For the first successful secession

would not necessarily have been the last. The thesis of State

Sovereignty established by victory in arms--which always does in

practice establish any thesis for good or evil--meant the break-up of

the free and proud American nation into smaller and smaller fragments as

new disputes arose, until the whole fabric planned by the Fathers of the

Republic had disappeared. It is impossible to put this argument better

than in the words of Lincoln himself. "Must a government, of necessity,

be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to

maintain its own existence?" That was the issue as he saw it, an issue

which he was determined should be decided in the negative, even at the

cost of a long and bloody Civil War.

I have endeavoured to state fairly the nature of the conflict of wills

which was to produce Civil War, and to explain how each side justified

morally its appeal to arms. Further than that I do not think it

necessary to go. But I will add just this one historical fact which, I

think, supplies some degree of further justification for the attitude of

the North--that concerning this matter of the Union, which was the real

question in debate, though not in regard to other subsidiary matters

which will demand our attention in the next chapter, the South was

ultimately not only conquered but persuaded. There are among the

millions of Southerners alive to-day few who will admit that their

fathers fought in an unjust cause, but there are probably still fewer,

if any at all, who would still wish to secede if they had the power.

Jefferson Davis himself could, at the last, close his record of his own

defeat and of the triumph of the Union with the words _Esto Perpetua_.

Lincoln took the oath as President on March 4, 1861. His Inaugural

Address breathes the essential spirit of his policy--firmness in things

fundamental, conciliation in things dispensable. He reiterated his

declaration that he had neither right nor inclination to interfere with

Slavery in the Slave States. He quoted the plank in the Republican

platform which affirmed the right of each State to control its own

affairs, and vigorously condemned John Brown's insane escapade. He

declared for an effective Fugitive Slave Law, and pledged himself to its

faithful execution. He expressed his approval of the amendment to the

Constitution which Congress had just resolved to recommend, forbidding

the Federal Government ever to interfere with the domestic institutions

of the several States, "including that of persons held to service." But

on the question of Secession he took firm ground. "I hold that, in

contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution, the union of

these States is perpetual.... It follows from these views that no State

upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that

resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void; and that acts

of violence within any State or States, against the authority of the

United States, are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to

circumstances." He accepted the obligation which the Constitution

expressly enjoined on him, to see "that the laws of the Union be

faithfully executed in all the States." He would use his power "to hold,

occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government

and to collect the duties and imposts," but beyond that there would be

no interference or coercion. There could be no conflict or bloodshed

unless the Secessionists were themselves the aggressors. "In your hands,

my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine is the momentous

issue of Civil War.... You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy

the Government, while I have the most solemn one to 'preserve, protect

and defend it.'"

He ended with the one piece of rhetoric in the whole address--rhetoric

deliberately framed to stir those emotions of loyalty to the national

past and future which he knew to endure, howsoever overshadowed by anger

and misunderstanding, even in Southern breasts. "We are not enemies, but

friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it

must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory,

stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living

heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the

chorus of Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the

better angels of our nature."

But there was not much evidence of the active operation of such "better

angels" at the moment. Half the Southern States had not only seceded,

but had already formed themselves into a hostile Confederacy. They

framed a Constitution modelled in essentials on that of the United

States, but with the important difference that "We the deputies of the

Sovereign and Independent States" was substituted for "We the people of

the United States," and with certain minor amendments, some of which

were generally thought even in the North to be improvements.

They elected Jefferson Davis as President, and as Vice-President

Alexander Stephens of Georgia, who had been a Unionist, but had accepted

the contrary verdict of his State.

The choice was, perhaps, as good as could have been made. Davis was in

some ways well fitted to represent the new Commonwealth before the

world. He had a strong sense of what befitted his own dignity and that

of his office. He had a keen eye for what would attract the respect and

sympathy of foreign nations. It is notable, for instance, that in his

inaugural address, in setting forth the grounds on which secession was

to be justified, he made no allusion to the institution of Slavery.

There he may be contrasted favourably with Stephens, whose unfortunate

speech declaring Slavery to be the stone which the builders of the old

Constitution rejected, and which was to become the corner-stone of the

new Confederacy, was naturally seized upon by Northern sympathizers at

the time, and has been as continually brought forward since by

historians and writers who wish to emphasize the connection between

Slavery and the Southern cause. Davis had other qualifications which

might seem to render him eminently fit to direct the policy of a

Confederation which must necessarily begin its existence by fighting and

winning a great and hazardous war. He had been a soldier and served with

distinction. Later he had been, by common consent, one of the best War

Secretaries that the United States had possessed. It was under his

administration that both Lee and McClellan, later to be arrayed against

each other, were sent to the Crimea to study modern war at first hand.

But Davis had faults of temper which often endangered and perhaps at

last ruined the cause he served. They can be best appreciated by reading

his own book. There is throughout a note of querulousness which weakens

one's sympathy for the hero of a lost cause. He is always explaining how

things ought to have happened, how the people of Kentucky ought to have

been angry with Lincoln instead of siding with him, and so on. One

understands at once how he was bested in democratic diplomacy by his

rival's lucid realism and unfailing instinct for dealing with men as

men. One understands also his continual quarrels with his generals,

though in that department he was from the first much better served than

was the Government at Washington. A sort of nervous irritability,

perhaps a part of what is called "the artistic temperament," is

everywhere perceptible. Nowhere does one find a touch of that spirit

which made Lincoln say, after an almost insolent rebuff to his personal

and official dignity from McClellan: "Well, I will hold his horse for

him if he will give us a victory."

The prize for which both parties were contending in the period of

diplomatic skirmishing which marks the opening months of Lincoln's

administration was the adherence of those Slave States which had not yet

seceded. So far disruptional doctrines had triumphed only in the Cotton

States. In Virginia Secession had been rejected by a very decided

majority, and the rejection had been confirmed by the result of the

subsequent elections for the State legislature. The Secessionists had

also seen their programme defeated in Tennessee, Arkansas, and North

Carolina, while Kentucky, Missouri and Maryland had as yet refused to

make any motion towards it. In Texas the general feeling was on the

whole Secessionist, but the Governor was a Unionist, and succeeded for a

time in preventing definite action. To keep these States loyal, while

keeping at the same time his pledge to "execute the laws," was Lincoln's

principal problem in the first days of his Presidency.

His policy turned mainly on two principles. First, the South must see

that the administration of the laws was really impartial, and that the

President executed them because he had taken an oath to do so; not

because the North wanted to trample on the South. This consideration

explains the extreme rigour with which he enforced the Fugitive Slave

Law. Here was a law involving a Constitutional obligation, which he,

with his known views on Slavery, could not possibly like executing,

which the North certainly did not want him to execute, which he could be

executing only from a sense of obligation under the Constitution. Such

an example would make it easier for moderate Southern opinion to accept

the application of a similar strictness to the seceding States.

The second principle was the strict confinement of his intervention

within the limits presented by his Inaugural. This was calculated to

bear a double effect. On the one hand, it avoided an immediate practical

challenge to the doctrine of State Sovereignty, strongly held by many in

the Middle States who were nevertheless opposed to Secession. On the

other, it tended, if prolonged, to render the Southern assumption of the

_rôle_ of "a people risen against tyrants" a trifle ridiculous. A

freeman defying the edicts of the oppressor is a dignified spectacle:

not so that of a man desperately anxious to defy edicts which the

oppressor obstinately refuses to issue. It was possible for Lincoln to

put the rebels in this position because under the American Constitution

nine-tenths of the laws which practically affected the citizen were

State and not Federal laws. When people began to talk of protesting

against tyranny by refusing to allow the tyrant to deliver their mails

to them, it was obvious how near the comic the sublime defiance of the

Confederates was treading. There were men in the South who fully

realized the disconcerting effect of the President's moderation. "Unless

you baptize the Confederacy in blood," said a leading Secessionist of

Alabama to Jefferson Davis, "Alabama will be back in the Union within a

month."

Unfortunately Lincoln's attitude of masterly inactivity could not be

kept up for so long, for a problem, bequeathed him by his predecessor,

pressed upon him, demanding action, just where action might, as he well

knew, mean a match dropped in the heart of a powder-magazine. On an

island in the very harbour of Charleston itself stood Fort Sumter, an

arsenal held by the Federal Government. South Carolina, regarding

herself as now an independent State, had sent an embassy to Washington

to negotiate among other things for its surrender and transfer to the

State authorities. Buchanan had met these emissaries and temporized

without definitely committing himself. He had been on the point of

ordering Major Anderson, who was in command of the garrison, to evacuate

the fort, when under pressure from Black, his Secretary of State, he

changed his mind and sent a United States packet, called _Star of the

West_, with reinforcements for Anderson. The State authorities at

Charleston fired on the ship, which, being unarmed, turned tail and

returned to Washington without fulfilling its mission. The problem was

now passed on to Lincoln, with this aggravation: that Anderson's troops

had almost consumed their stores, could get no more from Charleston,

and, if not supplied, must soon succumb to starvation. Lincoln

determined to avoid the provocation of sending soldiers and arms, but to

despatch a ship with food and other necessaries for the garrison. This

resolution was duly notified to the authorities at Charleston.

Their anger was intense. They had counted on the evacuation of the fort,

and seem to have considered that they held a pledge from Seward, who was

now Secretary of State, and whose conduct in the matter seems certainly

to have been somewhat devious, to that effect. The Stars and Stripes

waving in their own harbour in defiance of their Edict of Secession

seemed to them and to all their people a daily affront. Now that the

President had intimated in the clearest possible fashion that he

intended it to be permanent, they and all the inhabitants of Charleston,

and indeed of South Carolina, clamoured loudly for the reduction of the

fortress. In an evil hour Jefferson Davis, though warned by his ablest

advisers that he was putting his side in the wrong, yielded to their

pressure. Anderson was offered the choice between immediate surrender or

the forcible reduction of the fortress. True to his military duty,

though his own sympathies were largely Southern, he refused to

surrender, and the guns of three other forts, which the Confederates had

occupied, began the bombardment of Sumter.

It lasted all day, the little fortress replying with great spirit,

though with insufficient and continually diminishing means. It is an

astonishing fact that in this, the first engagement of the Civil War,

though much of the fort was wrecked, no life was lost on either side. At

length Anderson's ammunition was exhausted, and he surrendered at

discretion. The Stars and Stripes were pulled down and the new flag of

the Confederacy, called the Stars and Bars, waved in its place.

The effect of the news in the North was electric. Never before and never

after was it so united. One cry of anger went up from twenty million

throats. Whitman, in the best of his "Drum Taps," has described the

spirit in which New York received the tidings; how that great

metropolitan city, which had in the past been Democrat in its votes and

half Southern in its political connections--"at dead of night, at news

from the South, incensed, struck with clenched fist the pavement."

It is important to the true comprehension of the motive power behind the

war to remember what this "news from the South" was. It was not the news

of the death of Uncle Tom or of the hanging of John Brown. It had not

the remotest connection with Slavery. It was an insult offered to the

flag. In the view of every Northern man and woman there was but one

appropriate answer--the sentence which Barrère had passed upon the city

of Lyons: "South Carolina has fired upon Old Glory: South Carolina is no

more."

Lincoln, feeling the tide of the popular will below him as a good

boatman feels a strong and deep current, issued an appeal for 75,000

militia from the still loyal States to defend the flag and the Union

which it symbolized. The North responded with unbounded enthusiasm, and

the number of volunteers easily exceeded that for which the President

had asked and Congress provided. In the North-West Lincoln found a

powerful ally in his old antagonist Stephen Douglas. In the dark and

perplexing months which intervened between the Presidential Election and

the outbreak of the Civil War, no public man had shown so pure and

selfless a patriotism. Even during the election, when Southern votes

were important to him and when the threat that the election of the

Republican nominee would lead to secession was almost the strongest card

in his hand, he had gone out of his way to declare that no possible

choice of a President could justify the dismemberment of the Republic.

When Lincoln was elected, he had spoken in several Southern States,

urging acquiescence in the verdict and loyalty to the Union. He had

taken care to be present on the platform at his rival's inauguration,

and, after the affair of Sumter, the two had had a long and confidential

conversation. Returning to his native West, he commenced the last of his

campaigns--a campaign for no personal object but for the raising of

soldiers to keep the old flag afloat. In that campaign the "Little

Giant" spent the last of his unquenchable vitality; and in the midst of

it he died.

For the North and West the firing on the Stars and Stripes was the

decisive issue. For Virginia and to a great extent for the other

Southern States which had not yet seceded it was rather the President's

demands for State troops to coerce a sister State. The doctrine of State

Sovereignty was in these States generally held to be a fundamental

principle of the Constitution and the essential condition of their

liberties. They had no desire to leave the Union so long as it were

understood that it was a union of Sovereign States. But the proposal to

use force against a recalcitrant State seemed to them to upset the whole

nature of the compact and reduce them to a position of vassalage. This

attitude explains the second Secession, which took Virginia, Tennessee,

North Carolina, and Arkansas out of the Union. It explains also why the

moment the sword was drawn the opinion of these States, strongly divided

up to that very moment, became very nearly unanimous. Not all their

citizens, even after the virtual declaration of war against South

Carolina, wanted their States to secede, but all, or nearly all, claimed

that they had the _right_ to secede if they wanted to, and therefore

all, or nearly all, accepted the decision of their States even if it

were contrary to their own judgment and preference.

It is important to understand this attitude, not only because it was

very general, but because it was the attitude of one of the noblest sons

the Republic ever bore, who yet felt compelled, regretfully but with

full certitude that he did right, to draw the sword against her.

Robert Lee was already recognized as one of the most capable captains in

the service of the United States. When it became obvious that General

Scott, also a Virginian, but a strong Unionist, was too old to undertake

the personal direction of the approaching campaign, Lee was sounded as

to his readiness to take his place. He refused, not desiring to take

part in the coercion of a State, and subsequently, when his own State

became involved in the quarrel, resigned his commission. Later he

accepted the chief command of the Virginian forces and became the most

formidable of the rebel commanders. Yet with the institution, zeal for

which is still so largely thought to have been the real motive of the

South, he had no sympathy. Four years before the Republican triumph, he

had, in his correspondence, declared Slavery to be "a moral and

political evil." Nor was he a Secessionist. He deeply regretted and so

far as he could, without meddling in politics--to which, in the fashion

of good soldiers, he was strongly averse--opposed the action which his

State eventually took. But he thought that she had the right to take it

if she chose, and, the fatal choice having been made, he had no option

in his own view but to throw in his lot with her and accept his portion

of whatever fate might be in store for her armies and her people.

Virginia now passed an Ordinance of Secession, and formed a military

alliance with the Southern Confederacy. Later she was admitted to

membership of that Confederacy, and the importance attached to her

accession may be judged by the fact that the new Government at once

transferred its seat to her capital, the city of Richmond. The example

of Virginia was followed by the other Southern States already

enumerated.

There remained four Southern States in which the issue was undecided.

One of them, Delaware, caused no appreciable anxiety. She was the

smallest State in the Union in population, almost the smallest in area,

and though technically a Slave State, the proportion of negroes within

her borders was small. It was otherwise with the three formidable States

which still hung in the balance, Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland. That

these were saved to the Union was due almost wholly to the far-sighted

prudence and consummate diplomacy of Abraham Lincoln.

Missouri was the easiest to hold. Geographically she was not really a

Southern State at all, and, though she was a Slave State by virtue of

Clay's Compromise, the institution had not there struck such deep roots

as in the true South. The mass of her people were recruited from all the

older States, North and South, with a considerable contingent fresh from

Europe. Union feeling was strong among them and State feeling

comparatively weak. Her Governor, indeed, was an ardent Southern

sympathizer and returned a haughty and defiant reply to Lincoln's

request for soldiers. But Francis Blair, a prominent and popular

citizen, and Captain Lyon, who had raised and commanded a Union force

within her borders, between them carried the State against him. He was

deposed, a Unionist Governor substituted, and Missouri ranged herself

definitely with the North.

The case of Maryland was much more critical, for it appeared to involve

the fate of the Capital. Washington lay between Maryland and Virginia,

and if Maryland joined Virginia in rebellion it could hardly be held.

Yet its abandonment might entail the most serious political

consequences, certainly an enormous encouragement to the seceding

Confederacy, quite probably its immediate recognition by foreign Powers.

At first the omens looked ugly. The populace of Baltimore, the capital

of the State, were at this time pronouncedly Southern in their

sentiments, and the first Massachusetts regiment sent to the relief of

Washington was hustled and stoned in its streets. The soldiers fired on

the mob and there were casualties on both sides. Immediately afterwards

the legislature of Maryland protested against the violation of its

territory. Lincoln acted with admirable sense and caution. He pointed

out that the Federal armies could not fly, and that therefore to reach

Washington they must pass over the soil of Maryland; but he made no

point of their going through Baltimore, and he wisely provided that

further contingents should, for a time, proceed by water to Annapolis.

Meanwhile he strained every nerve to reassure and conciliate Maryland

with complete success. Within a month or two Federal troops could be

brought to Baltimore without the smallest friction or disturbance. Later

the loyalty of Maryland was, as we shall see, put to a much more

critical test and passed it triumphantly.

The President naturally felt a special interest in the attitude of his

native state, Kentucky. That attitude would have perplexed and

embarrassed a less discerning statesman. Taking her stand on the dogma

of State Sovereignty Kentucky declared herself "neutral" in the

impending war between the United and Confederate States, and forbade the

troops of either party to cross her territory. Lincoln could not, of

course, recognize the validity of such a declaration, but he was careful

to avoid any act in open violation of it. Sometimes openly and sometimes

secretly he worked hard to foster, consolidate, and encourage the Union

party in Kentucky. With his approval and probably at his suggestion

loyalist levies were voluntarily recruited on her soil, drilled and

prepared for action. But no Northern troops were sent across her

frontier. He was undoubtedly working for a violation of Kentuckian

"neutrality" by the other side. Circumstances and geographical

conditions helped him. The frontier between Kentucky and Tennessee was a

mere degree of latitude corresponding to no militarily defensible line,

nor did any such line exist to the south of it capable of covering the

capital of Tennessee. On the other hand, an excellent possible line of

defence existed in Southern Kentucky. The Confederate commanders were

eager to seize it, but the neutrality of Kentucky forbade them. When,

however, they saw the hold which Lincoln seemed to be acquiring over the

counsels of the "neutrals," they felt they dared not risk further delay.

Justifying their act by the presence in Kentucky of armed bodies of

local Unionists, they advanced and occupied the critical points of

Columbus and Bowling Green, stretching their line between them on

Kentuckian soil. The act at once determined the course of the hesitating

State. Torn hitherto between loyalty to the Union and loyalty to State

rights, she now found the two sentiments synchronize. In the name of her

violated neutrality she declared war on the Confederacy and took her

place under the Stars and Stripes.

The line between the two warring confederations of States was now

definitely fixed, and it only remained to try the issue between them by

the arbitrament of the sword.

At first the odds might seem very heavy against the Confederacy, for its

total white population was only about five and a half million, while the

States arrayed against it mustered well over twenty million. But there

were certain considerations which tended to some extent to equalize the

contest.

First there is the point which must always be taken into consideration

when estimating the chances of war--the political objective aimed at.

The objective of the North was the conquest of the South. But the

objective of the South was not the conquest of the North. It was the

demonstration that such conquest as the North desired was impracticable,

or at least so expensive as not to be worth pursuing. That the Union, if

the States that composed it remained united and determined and no other

factor were introduced, could eventually defeat the Confederacy was from

the first almost mathematically certain; and between complete defeat and

conquest there is no such distinction as some have imagined, for a

military force which has destroyed all military forces opposed to it can

always impose its will unconditionally on the conquered. But that these

States would remain united and determined was not certain at all. If the

South put up a sufficiently energetic fight, there might arise in the

dominant section a considerable body of opinion which felt that too high

a price was being paid for the enterprise. Moreover, there was always

the possibility and often the probability of another factor--the

intervention of some foreign Power in favour of the South, as France had

intervened in favour of the Americans in 1781. Such were the not

unlikely chances upon which the South was gambling.

Another factor in favour of the South was preparation. South Carolina

had begun raising and drilling soldiers for a probable war as soon as

Lincoln was elected. The other Southern States had at various intervals

followed her example. On the Northern side there had been no preparation

whatever under the Buchanan _régime_, and Lincoln had not much chance of

attempting such preparation before the war was upon him.

Further, it was probably true that, even untrained, the mass of

Southerners were better fitted for war than the mass of Northerners.

They were, as a community, agrarian, accustomed to an open-air life,

proud of their skill in riding and shooting. The first levies of the

North were drawn mostly from the urban population, and consisted largely

of clerks, artisans, and men of the professional class, in whose

previous modes of life there was nothing calculated to prepare them in

any way for the duties of a soldier. To this general rule there was,

however, an important reservation, of which the fighting at Fort

Donelson and Shiloh afforded an early illustration. In dash and

hardihood, and what may be called the raw materials of soldiership the

South, whatever it may have had to teach the North, had little to teach

the West.

In the matter of armament the South, though not exactly advantageously

placed, was at the beginning not so badly off as it might well have

been. Floyd, at one time Buchanan's Secretary for War, was accused, and

indeed, after he had joined the Secessionists, virtually admitted having

deliberately distributed the arms of the Federal Government to the

advantage of the Confederacy. Certainly the outbreak of war found some

well-stocked arsenals within the grasp of the rebellion. It was not

until its later phases that the great advantage of the industrial North

in facilities for the manufacture of armaments made itself apparent.

But the great advantage which the South possessed, and which accounts

for the great measure of military success which it enjoyed, must be

regarded as an accidental one. It consisted in the much greater capacity

of the commanders whom the opening of the war found in control of its

forces. The North had to search for competent generals by a process of

trial and error, almost every trial being marked by a disaster; nor till

the very end of the war did she discover the two or three men who were

equal to their job. The South, on the other hand, had from the beginning

the good luck to possess in its higher command more than one captain

whose talents were on the highest possible level.

The Confederate Congress was summoned to meet at Richmond on July 20th.

A cry went up from the North that this event should be prevented by the

capture before that date of the Confederate capital. The cry was based

on an insufficient appreciation of the military resources of the enemy,

but it was so vehement and universal that the Government was compelled

to yield to it. A considerable army had by this time been collected in

Washington, and under the command of General McDowell it now advanced

into Virginia, its immediate objective being Manassas Junction. The

opposing force was under the Southern commander Beauregard, a

Louisianian of French extraction. The other gate of Eastern Virginia,

the Shenandoah Valley, was held by Joseph Johnstone, who was to be kept

engaged by an aged Union general named Patterson. Johnstone, however,

broke contact and got away from Patterson, joining Beauregard behind the

line of a small river called Bull Run, to which the latter had retired.

Here McDowell attacked, and the first real battle of the Civil War

followed. For a time it wavered between the two sides, but the arrival

in flank of the forces of Johnstone's rearguard, which had arrived too

late for the opening of the battle, threw the Union right wing into

confusion. Panic spread to the whole army, which, with the exception of

a small body of regular troops, flung away its arms and fled in panic

back to Washington.

Thus unauspiciously opened the campaign against the Confederacy. The

impression produced on both sides was great. The North set its teeth and

determined to wipe out the disgrace at the first possible moment. The

South was wild with joy. The too-prevalent impression that the "Yankees"

were cowards who could not and would not fight seemed confirmed by the

first practical experiment. The whole subsequent course of the war

showed how false was this impression. It has been admitted that the

Southerners were at first, on the whole, both better fitted and better

prepared for war than their opponents. But all military history shows

that what enables soldiers to face defeat and abstain from panic in the

face of apparent disaster is not natural courage, but discipline. Had

the fight gone the other way the Southern recruits would probably have

acted exactly as did the fugitive Northerners. Indeed, as it was, at an

earlier stage of the battle a panic among the Southerners was only

averted by the personal exertions of Beauregard, whose horse was shot

under him, and by the good conduct of the Virginian contingent and its

leader. "Look at Jackson and his Virginians," cried out the Southern

commander in rallying his men, "standing like a stone wall." The great

captain thus acclaimed bore ever after, through his brief but splendid

military career, the name of "Stonewall" Jackson.

Bull Run was fought and won in July. The only other important operations

of the year consisted in the successful clearing, by the Northern

commander, McClellan, of Western Virginia, where a Unionist population

had seceded from the Secession. Lincoln, with bold statesmanship,

recognized it as a separate State, and thus further consolidated the

Unionism of the Border. In recognition of this service McClellan was

appointed, in succession to McDowell, to the command of the army of the

Potomac, as the force entrusted with the invasion of Eastern Virginia

was called.

At the first outbreak of the war English sympathies, except perhaps for

a part of the travelled and more or less cosmopolitan aristocracy which

found the Southern gentleman a more socially acceptable type than the

Yankee, seem to have been decidedly with the North. Public opinion in

this country was strong against Slavery, and therefore tended to support

the Free States in the contest of which Slavery was generally believed

to be the cause. Later this feeling became a little confused. Our people

did not understand the peculiar historical conditions which bound the

Northern side, and were puzzled and their enthusiasm damped by the

President's declaration that he had no intention of interfering with

Slavery, and still more by the resolution whereby Congress specifically

limited the objective of the war and the preservation of the Union,

expressly guaranteeing the permanence of Slavery as a domestic institution.

These things made it easy for the advocates of the South to maintain that

Slavery had nothing to do with the issue--as, indeed, directly, it had

not. Then came Bull Run--the sort of Jack-the-Giant-Killer incident which

always and in a very human fashion excites the admiration of sportsmanlike

foreigners. One may add to this the fact that the intelligent governing

class at that time generally regarded the Americans, as the Americans

regarded us, as rivals and potential enemies, and would not have been

sorry to see one strong power in the New World replaced by two weak ones.

On the other hand, the British Government's very proper proclamation of

neutrality as between the United States and the Confederacy had been

somewhat unreasonably criticized in America.

Yet the general sympathy with the Free as against the Slave States might

have had a better chance of surviving but for the occurrence in

November, 1861, of what is called the "Trent" dispute. The Confederacy

was naturally anxious to secure recognition from the Powers of Western

Europe, and with this object despatched two representatives, Mason of

Virginia and Slidell of South Carolina, the one accredited to the Court

of St. James's and the other to the Tuileries. They took passage to

Europe in a British ship called the _Trent_. The United States cruiser

_San Jacinto_, commanded by Captain Wilkes of the American Navy,

overhauled this vessel, searched it and seized and carried off the two

Confederate envoys.

The act was certainly a breach of international law; but that was almost

the smallest part of its irritant effect. In every detail it was

calculated to outrage British sentiment. It was an affront offered to us

on our own traditional element--the sea. It was also a blow offered to

our traditional pride as impartial protectors of political exiles of all

kind. The _Times_--in those days a responsible and influential organ of

opinion--said quite truly that the indignation felt here had nothing to

do with approval of the rebellion; that it would have been just as

strong if, instead of Mason and Slidell, the victims had been two of

their own Negro slaves. Indeed, for us there were no longer Northern and

Southern sympathizers: there were only Englishmen indignant at an insult

openly offered to the Union Jack. Northerners might have understood us

better, and been less angry at our attitude, if they had remembered how

they themselves had felt when the guns opened on Sumter.

The evil was aggravated by the triumphant rejoicings with which the

North celebrated the capture and by the complicity of responsible and

even official persons in the honours showered on Captain Wilkes. Seward,

who had a wild idea that a foreign quarrel would help to heal domestic

dissensions, was somewhat disposed to defend the capture. But the

eminently just mind of Lincoln quickly saw that it could not be

defended, while his prudence perceived the folly of playing the Southern

game by forcing England to recognize the Confederacy. Mason and Slidell

were returned, and the incident as a diplomatic incident was closed. But

it had its part in breeding in these islands a certain antagonism to the

Government at Washington, and thus encouraging the growing tendency to

sympathize with the South.

With the opening of the new year the North was cheered by a signal and

very important success. In the course of February Fort Henry and Fort

Donelson, essential strategic points on the front which the Confederate

invaders had stretched across Southern Kentucky, were captured by

General Ulysses Grant, in command of a Western army. The Confederate

forces were compelled to a general retirement, sacrificing the defensive

line for the sake of which they had turned the "neutral" border State

into an enemy, uncovering the whole of Western Tennessee, including the

capital of Nashville, and also yielding the Upper Mississippi. The

importance of the latter gain--for the Mississippi, once mastered, would

cut the Confederacy in two--was clearly apparent to Beauregard, who at

once marched northward and attacked Grant at Shiloh. The battle was

indecisive, but in its military effect it was a success for the North.

Grant was compelled to abandon the ground upon which his army stood, but

he kept all the fruits of his recent campaign.

Another incident, not only picturesque in itself but of great importance

in the history of naval war, marks the opening months of 1862. After the

failure of the first attempt to take Richmond by a _coup de main_ the

war became in its essence a siege of the Confederacy. To give it this

character, however, one thing was essential--the control of the sea by

the Union forces. The regular United States navy--unlike the regular

army, which was divided--was fully under the control of the Federal

Government, and was able to blockade the Southern ports. Davis had

attempted to meet this menace by issuing letters of marque to

privateers; but this could be little more than an irritant to the

dominant power. It so happened, however, that a discovery had recently

been made which was destined to revolutionize the whole character of

naval war. Experiments in the steel-plating of ships had already been

made in England and in France, but the first war vessel so fitted for

practical use was produced by the Southern Confederacy--the celebrated

_Merrimac_. One fine day she steamed into Hampton Roads under the guns

of the United States fleet and proceeded to sink ship after ship, the

heavy round shot leaping off her like peas. It was a perilous moment,

but the Union Government had only been a day behind in perfecting the

same experiment. Next day the _Monitor_ arrived on the scene, and the

famous duel between the first two ironclads ever constructed commenced.

Each proved invulnerable to the other, for neither side had yet

constructed pieces capable of piercing protection, but the victory was

so far with the North that the hope that the Confederacy might obtain,

by one bold and inventive stroke, the mastery of the sea was for the

moment at an end.

Meanwhile all eyes were fixed on McClellan, who was busy turning the mob

that had fled from Bull Run into an army. His work of organization and

discipline was by common consent admirable; yet when the time came when

he might be expected to take the field, that defect in his quality as a

commander showed itself which was to pursue him throughout his

campaigns. He was extravagantly over-cautious. His unwillingness to

fight, combined with the energy he put into bringing the army into an

efficient state and gaining influence over its officers and men, gave

rise to the wildest rumours and charges. It was suggested that he

intended to use the force he was forming, not against Richmond but

against Washington; to seize supreme power by military force and

reconcile the warring States under the shadow of his sword. It is

certain that there was no kind of foundation for such suspicions. He was

a perfectly patriotic and loyal soldier who studied his profession

diligently. Perhaps he had studied it too diligently. He seems to have

resolved never to risk an engagement unless under conditions which

according to the text-books should assure victory. Ideal conditions of

this sort were not likely to occur often in real war, especially when

waged against such an antagonist as Robert Lee.

McClellan remained in front of the Confederate positions throughout the

winter and early spring. In reply to urgent appeals from Washington he

declared the position of the enemy to be impregnable, and grossly

exaggerated his numbers. When at last, at the beginning of March, he was

induced to move forward, he found that the enemy had slipped away,

leaving behind, as if in mockery, a large number of dummy wooden guns

which had helped to impress McClellan with the hopelessness of assailing

his adversaries.

The wooden guns, however little damage they could do to the Federal

army, did a good deal of damage to the reputation of the Federal

commander. Lincoln, though pressed to replace him, refused to do so,

having no one obviously better to put in his room, and knowing that the

outcry against him was partly political--for McClellan was a Democrat.

The general now undertook the execution of a plan of his own for the

reduction of Richmond. Leaving McDowell on the Potomac, he transported

the greater part of his force by water and effected a landing on the

peninsula of Yorktown, where some eighty years before Cornwallis had

surrendered to Washington and Rochambeau.

The plan was not a bad one, but the general showed the same lack of

enterprise which had made possible the escape of Johnstone. It is

probable that if he had struck at once at the force opposed to him, he

could have destroyed it and marched to Richmond almost unopposed.

Instead of striking at a vulnerable point he sat down in a methodical

fashion to besiege Yorktown. While he was waiting for the reinforcements

he had demanded, the garrison got away as Johnstone had done from before

Manassas, and an attempt to push forward resulted in the defeat of his

lieutenant, Hooker, at Williamsburg.

McDowell, who was at Fredericksburg, was ordered to join and reinforce

McClellan, but the junction was never made, for at the moment Jackson

took the field and effected one of the most brilliant exploits of the

war. The Union troops in the Shenandoah Valley were much more numerous

than the force which Jackson had at his disposal, but they were

scattered at various points, and by a series of incalculably rapid

movements the Southern captain attacked and overwhelmed each in turn.

The alarm at Washington was great, and McDowell hastened to cut him off,

only to discover that Jackson had slipped past him and was back in his

own country. Meanwhile McClellan, left without the reinforcements he had

expected, was attacked by Lee and beaten back in seven days' consecutive

fighting right to Harrison's Landing, where he could only entrench

himself and stand on the defensive. Richmond was as far off as ever.

One piece of good news, however, reached Washington at about this time,

and once again it came from the West. Towards the end of April Farragut,

the American admiral, captured the city of New Orleans. The event was

justly thought to be of great importance, for Grant already dominated

the Upper Mississippi, and if he could join hands with a Union force

operating from the mouth of the great river, the Confederacy would be

cut in two.

Perhaps the contrast between the good fortune which had attended the

Federal arms in the West and the failure of the campaign in Eastern

Virginia was responsible for the appointment of a general taken from the

Western theatre of war to command the army of the Potomac. Lincoln,

having supported McClellan as long as he could, was now obliged to

abandon his cause, and General Pope was appointed to supreme command of

the campaign in Eastern Virginia.

The change brought no better fortune; indeed, it was the prelude to a

disaster worse than any that McClellan had suffered. Pope advanced by

the route of the original invasion, and reached exactly the point where

McDowell's army had been routed. Here he paused and waited. While he lay

there Jackson made another of his daring raids, got between him and

Washington and cut his communications, while Lee fell upon him and

utterly destroyed his army in the second battle of Bull Run.

Lee's victory left him in full possession of the initiative, with no

effective force immediately before him and with a choice of objectives.

It was believed by many that he would use his opportunity to attack

Washington. But he wisely refrained from such an attempt. Washington was

guarded by a strong garrison, and its defences had been carefully

prepared. To take it would involve at least something like a siege, and

while he was reducing it the North would have the breathing space it

needed to rally its still unexhausted powers. He proposed to himself an

alternative, which, if he had been right in his estimate of the

political factors, would have given him Washington and much more, and

probably decided the war in favour of the Confederacy. He crossed the

Potomac and led his army into Maryland.

The stroke was as much political as military in its character. Maryland

was a Southern State. There was a sort of traditional sisterhood between

her and Virginia. Though she had not seceded, it was thought that her

sympathies must be with the South. The attack on the Union troops in

Baltimore at the beginning of the war had seemed strong confirmation of

this belief. The general impression in the South, which the Southern

general probably shared, was that Maryland was at heart Secessionist,

and that a true expression of her will was prevented only by force. The

natural inference was that when a victorious Southern commander appeared

within her borders, the people would rally to him as one man, Washington

would be cut off from the North, the President captured, the Confederacy

recognized by the European Powers, and the North would hardly continue

the hopeless struggle. This idea was embodied in a fierce war-song which

had recently become popular throughout the Confederate States and was

caught up by Lee's soldiers on their historic march. It began--

"The despot's heel is on thy shore,

Maryland! My Maryland!"

And it ended--

"She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb!

Hurrah! She spurns the Yankee scum!

She breathes! She lives! She'll come! she'll come!

Maryland! My Maryland!"

But Maryland did not come. The whole political conception which underlay

Lee's move was false. It may seem curious that those who, when

everything seemed to be in favour of the North, had stoned Union

soldiers in the streets of the State capital, should not have moved a

finger when a great Southern soldier came among them with the glamour of

victory around him and proclaimed himself their liberator. Yet so it

proved. The probable explanation is that, Maryland lying under the

shadow of the capital, which was built for the most part on her

territory, Lincoln could deal with her people directly. And wherever he

could get men face to face and show the manner of man he was, he could

persuade. Maryland was familiar with "the despot" and did not find his

"heel" at all intolerable. The image of the horrible hairy Abolitionist

gloating constantly over the thought of a massacre of Southerners by

Negroes, which did duty for a portrait of Lincoln in the South, was not

convincing to Marylanders, who knew the man himself and found him a

kindly, shrewd, and humorous man of the world, with much in his person

and character that recalled his Southern origin, who enforced the law

with strict impartiality wherever his power extended, and who, above

all, punctiliously returned any fugitive slaves that might seek refuge

in the District of Columbia.

Lee issued a dignified and persuasive proclamation in which he declared

that he came among the people of Maryland as a friend and liberator. But

Maryland showed no desire to be liberated. He and his soldiers were

everywhere coldly received. Hardly a volunteer joined them. In many

towns Union flags were flaunted in their faces--a fact upon which is

based the fictitious story of Barbara Fritchie.

The political failure of the move led to considerable military

embarrassments. Lee met with no defeat in arms, but his difficulties

increased day by day.

Believing that he would be operating among a friendly population he had

given less thought than he would otherwise have done to the problem of

supplies, supposing that he could obtain all he needed from the country.

That problem now became acute, for the Marylanders refused to accept the

Confederate paper, which was all he had to tender in payment, and the

fact that he professed to be their liberator actually made his position

more difficult, for he could not without sacrificing a moral asset treat

them avowedly as an enemy people. He found himself compelled to send

Jackson back to hold Harper's Ferry lest his communications might be

endangered. Later he learnt that McClellan, who had been restored to the

chief command after Pope's defeat, was moving to cut off his retreat. He

hastened back towards his base, and the two armies met by Antietam

Creek.

Antietam was not really a Union victory. It was followed by the

retirement of Lee into Virginia, but it is certain that such retirement

had been intended by him from the beginning--was indeed his objective.

The objective of McClellan was, or should have been, the destruction of

the Confederate army, and this was not achieved. Yet, as marking the end

of the Southern commander's undoubted failure in Maryland, it offered

enough of the appearance of a victory to justify in Lincoln's judgment

an executive act upon which he had determined some months earlier, but

which he thought would have a better effect coming after a military

success than in time of military weakness and peril.

We have seen that both the President and Congress had been careful to

insist that the war was not undertaken on behalf of the Negroes. Yet the

events of the war had forced the problem of the Negro into prominence.

Fugitive slaves from the rebel States took refuge with the Union armies,

and the question of what should be done with them was forced on the

Government. Lincoln knew that in this matter he must move with the

utmost caution. When in the early days of the war, Frémont, who had been

appointed to military commander in Missouri, where he showed an utter

unfitness, both intellectual and moral, for his place, proclaimed on his

own responsibility the emancipation of the slaves of "disloyal" owners,

his headstrong vanity would probably have thrown both Missouri and

Kentucky into the arms of the Confederacy if the President had not

promptly disavowed him. Later he disavowed a similar proclamation by

General Hunter. When a deputation of ministers of religion from Chicago

urged on him the desirability of immediate action against Slavery, he

met them with a reply the opening passage of which is one of the world's

masterpieces of irony. When Horace Greeley backed the same appeal with

his "Prayer of Twenty Millions," Lincoln in a brief letter summarized

his policy with his usual lucidity and force.

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not

either to save or to destroy Slavery. If I could save the Union without

freeing any slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing

some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about

Slavery and the coloured race, I do because I believe it helps to save

the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it

would help to save the Union."

At the time he wrote these words Lincoln had already decided on a policy

of military emancipation in the rebel States. He doubtless wrote them

with an eye of the possible effects of that policy. He wished the

Northern Democrats and the Unionists of Border States to understand that

his action was based upon considerations of military expediency and in

no way upon his personal disapproval of Slavery, of which at the same

time he made no recantation. On the military ground he had a strong

case. If, as the South maintained, the slave was simply a piece of

property, then the slave of a rebel was a piece of enemy property--and

enemy property used or usable for purposes of war. To confiscate enemy

property which may be of military use was a practice as old as war

itself. The same principle which justified the North in destroying a

Southern cotton crop or tearing up the Southern railways justified the

emancipation of Negroes within the bounds of the Southern Confederacy.

In consonance with this principle Lincoln issued on September 22nd a

proclamation declaring slaves free as from January 1, 1863, in such

districts as the President should on that date specify as being in

rebellion against the Federal Government. Thus a chance was deliberately

left open for any State, or part of a State, to save its slaves by

submission. At the same time Lincoln renewed the strenuous efforts which

he had already made more than once to induce the Slave States which

remained in the Union to consent voluntarily to some scheme of gradual

and compensated emancipation.

One effect of the Emancipation Proclamation upon which Lincoln had

calculated was the approval of the civilized world and especially of

England. This was at that moment of the more importance because the

growing tendency of Englishmen to sympathize with the South, which was

largely the product of Jackson's daring and picturesque exploits, had

already produced a series of incidents which nearly involved the two

nations in war. The chief of these was the matter of the _Alabama_. This

cruiser was built and fitted up in the dockyards of Liverpool by the

British firm of Laird. She was intended, as the contractors of course

knew, for the service of the Confederacy, and, when completed, she took

to the sea under pretext of a trial trip, in spite of the protests of

the representative of the American Republic. The order to detain her

arrived too late, and she reached a Southern port, whence she issued to

become a terror to the commerce of the United States. That the fitting

up of such a vessel, if carried out with the complicity of the

Government, was a gross breach of neutrality is unquestionable. That

the Government of Lord Russell connived at the escape of the _Alabama_,

well knowing her purpose and character, though generally believed in

America at the time, is most unlikely. That the truth was known to the

authorities at Liverpool, where Southern sympathies were especially

strong, is on the other hand almost certain, and these authorities must

be held mainly responsible for misleading the Government and so

preventing compliance with the quite proper demands of Adams, the

American Ambassador. Finally, an International Court found that Great

Britain had not shown "reasonable care" in fulfilling her obligations,

and in this verdict a fair-minded student of the facts will acquiesce.

At a later date we paid to the United States a heavy sum as compensation

for the depredations of the _Alabama_.

Meanwhile, neither Antietam nor the Proclamation appeared to bring any

luck to the Union armies in the field. McClellan showed his customary

over-caution in allowing Lee to escape unhammered; once more he was

superseded, and once more his supersession only replaced inaction by

disaster. Hooker, attempting an invasion of Virginia, got caught in the

tangled forest area called "the Wilderness." Jackson rode round him,

cutting his communications and so forcing him to fight, and Lee beat him

soundly at Chancellorsville. The battle was, however, won at a heavy

cost to the Confederacy, for towards the end of the day the mistake of a

picket caused the death by a Southern bullet of the most brilliant, if

not the greatest, of Southern captains. As to what that loss meant we

have the testimony of his chief and comrade-in-arms. "If I had had

Jackson with me," said Lee after Gettysburg, "I should have won a

complete victory." This, however, belongs to a later period. Burnside,

succeeding Hooker, met at Lee's hands with an even more crushing defeat

at Fredericksburg.

And now, as a result of these Southern successes, began to become

dangerous that factor on which the South had counted from the first--the

increasing weariness and division of the North. I have tried in these

pages to put fairly the case for the defeated side in the Civil War. But

one can have a reasonable understanding of and even sympathy with the

South without having any sympathy to waste on those who in the North

were called "Copperheads." A Northerner might, indeed, honestly think

the Southern cause just and coercion of the seceding States immoral. But

if so he should have been opposed to such coercion from the first. The

Confederate case was in no way morally stronger in 1863 than it had been

in 1861. If, therefore, a man had been in favour of coercion in 1861--as

practically all Northerners were--his weakening two years later could

not point to an unwillingness to do injustice, but only to the operation

of fear or fatigue as deterrents from action believed to be just.

Moreover, the ordinary "Copperhead" position was so plainly in

contradiction of known facts that it must be pronounced either imbecile

or dishonest. If these men had urged the acceptance of disunion as an

accomplished fact, a case might be made out for them. But they generally

professed the strongest desire to restore the Union, accompanied by

vehement professions of the belief that this could in some fashion be

achieved by "negotiation." The folly of such a supposition was patent.

The Confederacy was in arms for the one specific purpose of separating

itself from the Union, and so far its appeal to arms had been on the

whole successful. That it would give up the single object for which it

was fighting for any other reason than military defeat was, on the face

of it, quite insanely unlikely; and, as might have been expected, the

explicit declarations of Davis and all the other Confederate leaders

were at this time uniformly to the effect that peace could be had by the

recognition of Southern independence and in no other fashion. The

"Copperheads," however, seem to have suffered from that amazing illusion

which we have learnt in recent times to associate with the Russian

Bolsheviks and their admirers in other countries--the illusion that if

one side leaves off fighting the other side will immediately do the

same, though all the objects for which it ever wanted to fight are

unachieved. They persisted in maintaining that in some mysterious

fashion the President's "ambition" was standing between the country and

a peace based on reunion. The same folly was put forward by Greeley,

perhaps the most consistently wrong-headed of American public men: in

him it was the more absurd since on the one issue, other than that of

union or separation, which offered any possible material for a

compromise, that of Slavery, he was professedly against all compromise,

and blamed the President for attempting any.

Little as can be said for the "Copperhead" temper, its spread in the

Northern States during the second year of the war was a serious menace

to the Union cause. It showed itself in the Congressional elections,

when the Government's majority was saved only by the loyalty of the

Border Slave States, whose support Lincoln had been at pains to

conciliate in the face of so much difficulty and misunderstanding. It

showed itself in the increased activity of pacifist agitators, of whom

the notorious Vallandingham may be taken as a type.

Lincoln met the danger in two fashions. He met the arguments and appeals

of the "Copperheads" with unanswerable logic and with that lucidity of

thought and expression of which he was a master. One pronouncement of

his is worth quoting, and one wishes that it could have been reproduced

everywhere at the time of the ridiculous Stockholm project. "Suppose

refugees from the South and peace men of the North get together and

frame and proclaim a compromise embracing a restoration of the Union: in

what way can that compromise be used to keep Lee's army out of

Pennsylvania? Meade's army can keep Lee's out of Pennsylvania, and, I

think, can ultimately drive it out of existence. But no paper

compromise, to which the controllers of Lee's army are not agreed, can

at all affect that army." Reasoning could not be more conclusive; but

Lincoln did not stop at reasoning. Now was to be shown how powerful an

instrument of authority the Jacksonian revolution had created in the

popular elective Presidency. Perhaps no single man ever exercised so

much direct personal power as did Abraham Lincoln during those four

years of Civil War. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended by executive

decree, and those whose action was thought a hindrance to military

success were arrested in shoals by the orders of Stanton, the new

energetic War Secretary, a Jacksonian Democrat whom Lincoln had put in

the place of an incompetent Republican, though he had served under

Buchanan and supported Breckinridge. The constitutional justification of

these acts was widely challenged, but the people in the main supported

the Executive.

Lincoln, like Jackson, understood the populace and knew just how to

appeal to them. "Must I shoot a simple-minded boy for deserting, and

spare the wily agitator whose words induce him to desert?" Vallandingham

himself met a measure of justice characteristic of the President's

humour and almost recalling the jurisprudence of Sir W. S. Gilbert's

Mikado. Originally condemned to detention in a fortress, his sentence

was commuted by Lincoln to banishment, and he was conducted by the

President's orders across the army lines and dumped on the Confederacy!

He did not stay there long. The Southerners had doubtless some reason to

be grateful to him; but they cannot possibly have liked him. With their

own Vallandinghams they had an even shorter way.

The same sort of war-weariness was perhaps a contributory cause of an

even more serious episode--the Draft Riots of New York City. Here,

however, a special and much more legitimate ground of protest was

involved. The Confederacy had long before imposed Conscription upon the

youth of the South. It was imperative that the North should do the same,

and, though the constitutional power of the Federal Government to make

such a call was questioned, its moral right to do so seems to me

unquestionable, for if the common Government has not the right in the

last resort to call upon all citizens to defend its own existence, it is

difficult to see what rights it can possess. Unfortunately, Congress

associated with this just claim a provision for which there was plenty

of historical precedent but no justification in that democratic theory

upon which the American Commonwealth was built. It provided that a man

whose name had been drawn could, if he chose, pay a substitute to serve

in his stead. This was obviously a privilege accorded to mere wealth,

odious to the morals of the Republic and especially odious to the very

democratic populace of New York. The drawing of the names was there

interrupted by violence, and for some days the city was virtually in the

hands of the insurgents. The popular anger was complicated by a

long-standing racial feud between the Irish and the Negroes, and a good

many lynchings took place. At last order was restored by the police, who

used to restore it a violence as savage as that of the crowd they were

suppressing.

We must now turn back to the military operations. Lee had once more

broken through, and was able to choose the point where a _sortie_ might

most effectually be made. He resolved this time to strike directly at

the North itself, and crossing a strip of Maryland he invaded

Pennsylvania, his ultimate objective being probably the great bridge

over the Susquehanna at Harrisburg, the destruction of which would

seriously hamper communication between North and West. At first he met

with no opposition, but a Federal army under Meade started in pursuit of

him and caught him up at Gettysburg. In the battle which followed, as at

Valmy, each side had its back to its own territory. The invader, though

inferior in numbers, was obliged by the conditions of the struggle to

take the offensive. The main feature of the fighting was the charge and

repulse of Pickett's Brigade. Both sides stood appalling losses with

magnificent steadiness. The Union troops maintained their ground in

spite of all that Southern valour could do to dislodge them. It is

generally thought that if Meade had followed up his success by a

vigorous offensive Lee's army might have been destroyed. As things were,

having failed in its purpose of breaking the ring that held the

Confederacy, it got back into Virginia unbroken and almost unpunished.

Gettysburg is generally considered as the turning-point of the war,

though perhaps from a purely military point of view more significance

ought to be attached to another success which almost exactly

synchronized with it. The same 4th of July whereon the North learnt of

Lee's failure brought news of the capture of Vicksburg by Grant. This

meant that the whole course of the Mississippi was now in Federal hands,

and made possible an invasion of the Confederacy from the West such as

ultimately effected its overthrow.

Lincoln, whose judgment in such matters was exceptionally keen for a

civilian, had long had his eye on Grant. He had noted his successes and

his failures, and he had noted especially in him the quality which he

could not find in McClellan or in Meade--a boldness of plan, a readiness

to take risks, and above all a disposition to press a success vigorously

home even at a heavy sacrifice. "I can't spare that man; he fights," he

had said when some clamoured for Grant's recall after Shiloh. For those

who warned him that Grant was given to heavy drinking he had an even

more characteristic reply: "I wish I knew what whisky he drinks: I would

send a cask to some of the other generals."

Meade's hesitation after Gettysburg and Grant's achievement at Vicksburg

between them decided him. Grant was now appointed to supreme command of

all the armies of the Union.

Ulysses S. Grant stands out in history as one of those men to whom a

uniform seems to be salvation. As a young man he had fought with credit

in the Mexican war; later he had left the army, and seemingly gone to

the dogs. He took to drink. He lost all his employments. He became to

all appearances an incorrigible waster, a rolling stone, a man whom his

old friends crossed the road to avoid because a meeting with him always

meant an attempt to borrow money.

Then came the war, and Grant grasped--as such broken men often do--at

the chance of a new start. Not without hesitation, he was entrusted with

a subordinate command in the West, and almost at once he justified those

who had been ready to give him a trial by his brilliant share in the

capture of Fort Donelson. From that moment he was a new man, repeatedly

displaying not only the soldierly qualities of iron courage and a

thorough grasp of the practice of fighting, but moral qualities of a

high order, a splendid tenacity in disaster and hope deferred, and in

victory a noble magnanimity towards the conquered. One wishes that the

story could end there. But it must, unfortunately, be added that when at

last he laid aside his sword he seemed to lay aside all that was best in

him with it, while the weaknesses of character which were so conspicuous

in Mr. Ulysses Grant, and which seemed so completely bled out of General

Grant, made many a startling and disastrous reappearance in President

Grant.

Grant arrived at Washington and saw the President for the first time.

The Western campaign he left in the hands of two of his ablest

lieutenants--Sherman, perhaps in truth the greatest soldier that

appeared on the Northern side, and Thomas, a Virginian Unionist who had

left his State at the call of his country. There was much work for them

to do, for while the capture of Vicksburg and its consequences gave them

the Mississippi, the first attempt to invade from that side under

Rosecrans had suffered defeat in the bloody battle of the Chickamauga.

Sherman and Thomas resolved to reverse this unfavourable decision and

attacked at the same crucial point. An action lasting four days and full

of picturesque episodes gave them the victory which was the

starting-point of all that followed. To that action belongs the strange

fight of Look Out Mountain fought "above the clouds" by men who could

not see the wide terrain for the mastery of which they were contending,

and the marvellous charge of the Westerners up Missionary Ridge, one of

those cases where soldiers, raised above themselves and acting without

orders, have achieved a feat which their commander had dismissed as

impossible. To the whole action is given the name of the Battle of

Chattanooga, and its effect was to give Sherman the base he needed from

which to strike at the heart of the Confederacy.

Grant in Virginia was less successful. An examination of his campaign

will leave the impression that, however superior he was to previous

Northern commanders in energy, as a strategist he was no match for Lee.

The Southern general, with inferior forces, captured the initiative and

did what he chose with him, caught him in the Wilderness as he had

previously caught Hooker, and kept him there on ground which gave every

advantage to the Confederate forces, who knew every inch of it, where

Grant's superiority in numbers could not be brought fully into play, and

where his even greater superiority in artillery was completely

neutralized. At the end of a week's hard fighting, Grant had gained no

advantage, while the Northern losses were appalling--as great as the

total original numbers of the enemy that inflicted them. At

Spottsylvania, where Grant attempted a flanking movement, the same

tactics were pursued with the same success, while a final attempt of the

Northern general at a frontal assault ended in a costly defeat.

In the darkest hour of this campaign Grant had told the Government at

Washington that he would "fight it out on that line if it took all the

summer." It was, however, on another line that the issue was being

fought out and decided against the Confederacy. From Chattanooga

Sherman moved on Atlanta, the capital of Georgia. Joseph Johnstone

disputed every step of the advance, making it as costly as possible, but

wisely refused to risk his numerically inferior army in a general

engagement. He fell back slowly, making a stand here and there, till the

Northern general stood before Atlanta.

It was at this moment that the leaders of the Confederacy would have

acted wisely in proposing terms of peace. Their armies were still in

being, and could even boast conspicuous and recent successes. If the war

went on it would probably be many months before the end came, while the

North was bitterly weary of the slaughter and would not tolerate the

refusal of reasonable settlement. Yet, if the war went on, the end could

no longer be in doubt. Had that golden moment been seized, the seceding

States might have re-entered the Union almost on their own terms.

Certainly they could have avoided the abasement and humiliation which

was to come upon them as the consequence of continuing their resistance

till surrender had to be unconditional. It might seem at first that

Emancipation Proclamation had introduced an additional obstacle to

accommodation. But this was largely neutralized by the fact that every

one, including Jefferson Davis himself, recognized that Slavery had been

effectively destroyed by the war and could never be revived, even were

the South victorious. The acceptance by the Confederacy of a policy

suggested by Lee, whereby Negroes were to be enlisted as soldiers and

freed on enlistment, clinched this finally. On the other hand, Lincoln

let it be clearly understood that if the Union could be restored by

consent he was prepared to advocate the compensation of Southern owners

for the loss of their slaves. The blame for the failure to take

advantage of this moment must rest mainly on Davis. It was he who

refused to listen to any terms save the recognition of Southern

independence; and this attitude doomed the tentative negotiations

entered into at Hampton Roads to failure.

Meanwhile, in the North, Lincoln was chosen President for a second term.

At one time his chances had looked gloomy enough. The Democratic Party

had astutely chosen General McClellan as its candidate. His personal

popularity with the troops, and the suggestion that he was an honest

soldier ill-used by civilian politicians, might well gain him much

support in the armies, for whose voting special provision had been made,

while among the civil population he might expect the support of all who,

for one reason or another, were discontented with the Government. At the

same time the extreme Anti-Slavery wing of the Republican Party,

alienated by the diplomacy of the President in dealing with the Border

States, and by the moderation of his views concerning the Negro and his

future, put forward another displaced general, Frémont. But in the end

circumstances and the confidence which his statesmanship had created

combined to give Lincoln something like a walk-over. The Democratic

Party got into the hands of the "Copperheads" at the very moment when

facts were giving the lie to the "Copperhead" thesis. Its platform

described the course of the war as "four years of failure," and its

issue as hopeless, while before the voting began even a layman could see

that the Confederacy was, from the military point of view, on its last

legs. The War Democrats joined hands with the Republicans, and the

alliance was sealed by the selection of Andrew Johnson, a Jacksonian

Democrat from Tennessee, as candidate for the Vice-Presidency. The

Radical Republicans began to discover how strong a hold Lincoln had

gained on the public mind in the North, and to see that by pressing

their candidate they would only expose the weakness of their faction.

Frémont was withdrawn and McClellan easily defeated. A curious error has

been constantly repeated in print in this country to the effect that

Lincoln was saved only by the votes of the army. There is no shadow of

foundation for this statement. The proportion of his supporters among

the soldiers was not much greater than among the civil population. But

in both it was overwhelming.

Meanwhile Atlanta had fallen, and Davis had unwisely relieved Johnstone

of his command. It was now that Sherman determined on the bold scheme

which mainly secured the ultimate victory of the North. Cutting himself

loose from his base and abandoning all means of communication with the

North, he advanced into the country of the enemy, living on it and

laying it waste as he passed. For a month his Government had no news of

him. Ultimately he reached the sea at Savannah, and was able to tell his

supporters that he had made a desert in the rear of the main Confederate

armies. Thence he turned again, traversed South Carolina, and appeared,

so to speak, on the flank of the main Confederate forces which were

holding Grant.

The ethics of Sherman's famous March to the Sea have been much debated.

He was certainly justified by the laws of war in destroying the military

resources of the Confederacy, and it does not seem that more than this

was anywhere done by his orders. There was a good deal of promiscuous

looting by his troops, and still more by camp followers and by the

Negroes who, somewhat to his annoyance, attached themselves to his

columns. The march through South Carolina was the episode marked by the

harshest conduct, for officers and men had not forgotten Sumter, and

regarded the devastation of that State as a just measure of patriotic

vengeance on the only begetter of the rebellion; but the burning of

Columbus seems to have been an accident, for which at least Sherman

himself was not responsible. It is fair to him to add that in the very

few cases--less than half a dozen in all--where a charge of rape or

murder can be brought home, the offender was punished with death.

As a military stroke the March to the Sea was decisive. One sees its

consequences at once in the events of the Virginian campaign. Lee had

suffered no military defeat; indeed, the balance of military success, so

far as concerned the army directly opposed to him, was in his favour.

Sheridan's campaign in the Shenandoah Valley had delighted the North as

much as Jackson's earlier exploits in the same region had delighted the

South; but its direct military effect was not great. From the moment,

however, of Sherman's successful completion of his march, the problem of

the Southern general becomes wholly different. It is no longer whether

he can defeat the enemy, but whether he can save his army. He determined

to abandon Richmond, and effect, if possible, a union with Johnstone,

who was again watching and checking Sherman.

Did space permit, it would be a noble task to chronicle the last

wonderful fight of the Lion of the South; how, with an exhausted and

continually diminishing army, he still proved how much he was to be

feared; how he turned on Sheridan and beat him, checked Grant and broke

away again only to find his path barred by another Union army.

At Appomattox Court House the end came. The lion was trapped and caught

at last. There was nothing for it but to make the best terms he could

for his men. The two generals met. Both rose to the nobility of the

occasion. Lee had never been anything but great, and Grant was never so

great again. The terms accorded to the vanquished were generous and

honourable to the utmost limit of the victor's authority. "This will

have the happiest effect on my people," said Lee, in shaking hands with

his conqueror. They talked a little of old times at West Point, where

they had studied together, and parted. Lee rode away to his men and

addressed them: "We have fought through this war together. I did my best

for you." With these few words, worth the whole two volumes of Jefferson

Davis's rather tiresome apologetics, one of the purest, bravest, and

most chivalrous figures among those who have followed the noble

profession of arms rides out of history.