THE MILITARY SITUATION -- GOES TO ST. LOUIS -- INCEPTION OF THE PLAN
OF THE TENNESSEE CAMPAIGN -- GIVES IN THE PLAN AT THE WAR DEPARTMENT
-- PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S DELIGHT AT THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM --
ACCOUNT WRITTEN IN 1889 -- JUDGE WADE AT BULL RUN -- FORMATION OF THE
COMMITTEE FOR THE CONDUCT OF THE WAR.
Early in the fall of 1861 a gunboat fleet was under preparation to
descend the Mississippi. It was a time of extreme peril, when the
continuance of the Union depended on immediate military success. The
Union armies had met with repeated reverses. The Confederates were
exultant and the European nations were expectant of the approaching
downfall of the United States Government. France had already put forth
her hand to control Mexico, and although in England the Union had warm
friends who still hoped for its success, the general impression was
that its defeat might be considered a foregone conclusion. Financial
ruin also seemed inevitable. The Northern army was costing the nation
two million dollars a day. The Hon. Mr. Dawes, in a speech in
Congress, had declared it "impossible for the United States to meet
this state of things sixty days longer." "An ignominious peace," he
predicted, "was upon the country and at its very doors."
At that time there was nothing in the attitude of the Union cause very
strongly to appeal to English sympathy. It was openly set forth that
the war was not waged for the extermination of slavery. Devotion to
the Union could not excite especial interest in any but an American.
On the contrary, the prevalent opinion in England was that the United
States was a dangerous and rather unscrupulous power, and that it
would be for the interests of humanity that it should be divided;
consequently the general sympathy was largely with the Confederates
and the desires of the governing classes for their success openly
avowed. After the emancipation proclamation it was different. The
Union cause had thereafter the incalculable advantage of a
well-defined moral position--a position always keenly felt by the
English masses. The desires of the governing class at that period and
the dangers of the position from a military point of view are well
indicated in extracts given by Miss Carroll in her successive
memorials from the English journals and from diplomatic
correspondence.
In an extract from the London _Times_, brought to the notice of the
Senate by Mr. Howe, the command of the waters of the southwest is
pointed out as the essential matter, and it is stated by Mr. Grimes
that "the British Government has sent over into all the British
colonies of North America some thirty thousand men."
* * * * *
[London _Times_, September 27, 1861.]
"Whatever may be the assertions of the Northerners, they must look
upon the permanent separation of the Southern States and the
formation of a second republic as at least highly probable, and in the
action of England and France toward Mexico Mr. Lincoln, perhaps, only
sees an intervention in the affairs of a country which is soon to be
divided from his own by the territory of a rival. * * It is said the
three European powers have taken advantage of the dissensions of the
American Union to carry out plans upon a violation of the Monroe
doctrine."
* * * * *
[London _Shipping Gazette_, February 1, 1862.]
"A semi-official note is sent by Napoleon to the British Government
respecting the blockade, to the effect that the Emperor cannot longer
allow French commerce to be injured."
* * * * *
DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE--CLAY[22] TO SEWARD.
_Jan. 24, 1862._
"Prince Gortchakoff expresses his fears should any reverse happen to
us that England would at once make common cause with the South,
acknowledge her independence, and finally break down the power of the
Republic. I must confess I very much fear England's influence. My
first impression is not weakened, but rather strengthened. Nothing but
great and decisive success will save us from foreign war. I would
prepare for war with England as an essential means to prevent the
independence of the South before the first of April."
[Footnote 22: Cassius M. Clay, Minister to St.
Petersburg during the Civil War, has been from
first to last one of Miss Carroll's warm
supporters. He says, "Be that as it may, your case
stands out unique, for you towered above all our
generals in military genius, and it would be a
shame upon our country if you were not honored with
the gratitude of all and solid pecuniary reward."
(See p. 132 of batch of memorials.)]
* * * * *
SEWARD TO DAYTON.
_Jan. 27, 1862._
* * * "You see our army and our fleet are at Cairo. You see another
army and another fleet are behind Columbus, which alone is relied upon
to close the Mississippi against us on the north. Though you may not
see it, another army and another fleet are actually on their way to
New Orleans."
* * * * *
At this time of intense anxiety it was suggested to Miss Carroll by
the War Department that she should go West and endeavor to form an
opinion as to the probable result of the proposed descent of the
Mississippi by the gunboats, upon the success of which the continuance
of the Union depended. Accordingly she went to St. Louis, and
remaining for a month or more at the Everett House, in that city, by
means of maps and charts procured from the Mercantile Library she made
careful study of the topography of the proposed line of advance. She
became convinced that this intended expedition would result in
disaster, and that the Tennessee river, not the Mississippi, would be
the true pathway to success.
Again we will turn to Miss Carroll's able account in the Congressional
Records of the military position at that time.
"It became evident, in the autumn of 1861, that if the unity of the
United States could be maintained by military force, the decisive blow
upon the Confederate power must be delivered within sixty or ninety
days. To that period the tide of battle had been steadily against the
Union, and the military operations had not met the expectations of the
country. Nothing is more certain than that this rebel power was able
to resist all the power of the Union upon any of the lines of
operation known to the Administration; for operating on any safe base,
on any of these known lines, the Union armies were not numerically
strong enough to reach the vital point in the Confederate power. The
enemy were in strong force on a line extending from the Potomac,
westward through Bowling Green, to Columbus, on the Mississippi, and
was complete master of all the territory to the Gulf. Kentucky and
Missouri had been admitted formally into the Confederacy, and they had
resolved to move the Capital to Nashville and extend their battle
lines to the northern limits of those States, and the Secretary of
War, after a tour of inspection, reported that these States had not
sufficient force to hold them to the Union.
The war had then been waged seven months, and between 700,000 and
800,000 men had been mustered in the field; the public debt aggregated
over $500,000,000; and the daily average expenses of maintaining the
army was upward of $2,000,000, besides the hundreds of precious lives
which were being daily sacrificed.
Thus, while the two armies were confronting each other in sight of
Washington, events were rapidly pressing in the Southwest which, if
unchecked, would change the destiny of the American people for ages to
come.
Thus, in that ominous silence which preceded the shock and storm, the
two sections stood, each watching and awaiting the movements of the
other. Both were confident; the South greatly strengthened from her
successes and impregnable position; the North strong in its large
excess of numbers, wealth, and the justice of its cause.
The Army of the Potomac and the Army of the West were the two
expeditions on which the Administration relied.
All others were auxiliary to these great movements. The first named,
though seeming to the country of such signal moment, occupied a
position of comparative insignificance when contrasted with the army
of the Southwest, and had chance thrown Richmond under national
control at an earlier day it could not have materially affected the
destiny of the war. Capitals in an insurgent and unrecognized power
can have but very little strategic value, and from the geographical
position of Richmond it had none at all, and they were ready to move
it any day.
They could have surrendered all the Atlantic States to Florida and yet
maintained their independence; indeed, it was upon this theory that
the disunion party had ever based its expectations of separate and
independent nationality. Could the Confederates have held their power
over the Mississippi Valley but a few more months they would have so
connected themselves with France through Texas and with England
through the States of the great northwest as not only to have made
good their own independence but to have dwarfed the United States to
the area of their old thirteen and taken the lead as the controlling
political power on this continent.
With the Mississippi in their possession to the mouth of the Ohio,
the presence of the English and French fleets at New Orleans would
have brought about that result.
The Army of the Potomac, after having been put upon a scale of the
rarest magnificence consistent with mobility, and with several changes
of commanders, took three years and a half to reach Richmond, and was
not then half way to a decisive point, and never would have been
strong enough had the expedition to open the Mississippi been executed
on the plan as originally devised.
Strategically an invasion always leads to deep lines of operations
which, on account of the difficulty of maintaining communications with
its base, are always dangerous in a hostile country, and every mile
the national armies advanced, every victory they gained, carried them
farther from their base, and required an increase of force to protect
their communications; while every retreat of the enemy brought him
nearer to his resources, and it is mathematically certain that he
would soon have reached the point on that line where he would have
been the superior power. Nothing but the results of the Tennessee
campaign prevented Lee from recruiting his army and extorted from him
his sword at Appomatox Court-House.
The Mississippi expedition was designed by the aid of the one from the
Gulf to clear the river to the mouth, etc. Could it succeed? Could it
open the Mississippi to its mouth? These momentous questions and the
military delay were weakening the confidence of the people and
confirming foreign powers in the belief that the Government had
neither the strength nor the ability to conquer the rebellion. And
even could the expedition have opened the river, was there any point
on that river where a decisive blow could have been dealt the
Confederacy? The Memphis and Charleston railroad, the only complete
interior line of communication, would not necessarily have been
touched. So long as the Confederacy could maintain its interior lines
of communication complete, the United States could neither destroy its
armies in the east nor open the Mississippi river. The National
Government could only escape annihilation by reaching the center of
the Confederate power and striking a fatal blow upon its resources.
Geographically, there was but one mode of attack by which this could
be accomplished, and this was unthought of or unknown to all connected
with the prosecution of the war.
Mr. Lincoln saw from the beginning the vital importance of regaining
the Mississippi and controlling the resources of its great valley, and
therefore reserved to himself the direction of this expedition as
Commander-in-chief. He was fully alive to the perils that now
environed the Government, and he and his advisers looked imploringly
to the army for relief as the agency absolutely essential to the
nation's life. This and this only could strike the blow that must then
be struck, if ever.
No display of military genius could have extorted from Lee his sword
so long as his resources were unwasted. No valor on the part of our
navies and armies could have opened the Mississippi so long as the
Confederates could keep open the lines of communication. The Memphis
and Charleston railroad was their only complete bond of connection
between their armies of the east and the armies of the Mississippi
Valley. There was but one avenue by which this bond could be reached
and effectually severed, and that was the Tennessee river. The people
had responded grandly; their uprising in behalf of their endangered
Government had astonished the world. It now remained for the army to
supplement by its valor in the field what the Administration and the
people had done at home.
Never was the stress and strain of a nation more severe; never when
another defeat would have been so perilous and a victory so desirable
as then. So long as the Confederates were undisturbed in the
possession of the southwest, and men and munitions of war sent
uninterruptedly to the east, the Army of the Potomac could not
advance. Something had to be done to cripple or engage the rebel
armies in that section.
As the weary months of October and November wore away, the darkness
grew more and more intense and the anxiety more oppressive. A blow had
to be inflicted quickly that would be sharp and mortal, to ward off
intervention and invasion by European powers, to smother the spirit of
secession in southern Illinois and Indiana, and to prevent financial
bankruptcy, which of itself must destroy the nation.
And yet neither Mr. Lincoln nor his generals knew or had in mind any
plan other than that of forcing a passage down the Mississippi,
bristling with batteries that frowned from its bluffs, while swamps
and bayous skirted and pierced its banks, affording defenses in the
rear little less formidable and forbidding.
And thus the nation stood as in the hush that precedes the storm or
the crash of battle, apprehending not so much any particular movement
of the Confederate armies as the threatening elements generally with
which the air seemed surcharged, and knowing not how or when or where
the blow would fall. Military success was of all things most desired;
military delay of all things most dreaded. With the South to stand
still was their strength; time was power, and every day's delay
increased the thickening dangers that were closing around the Union
cause. With the North not to advance was to recede; not to destroy was
to be destroyed. The exigencies of the situation made it imperative
that the decisive blow should be struck thus early in the war. How to
make that advance and deliver that fatal blow was the great problem to
be solved. Omniscience only was then able to know whether the last sun
had set to rise no more on the Union of these States. The country was
clamorous for military successes, but not half so troubled as was Mr.
Lincoln and his advisers, for the people did not know, as they did,
how much depended thereon; how the beam trembled in the balance and
what irremediable evils were involved in delay.
Congress met; the Committee on the Conduct of the War was at once
created. How great were the dangers which at that supreme moment made
the continued existence of the Government a question of doubt, and the
fact that the military successes in the West which followed were not
achieved a day too soon is made evident by the speeches of many of the
most distinguished statesmen of that period, in both houses of
Congress, some of them occupying positions on the most important
committees connected with the prosecution of the war and necessarily
possessed of the most reliable information. The utterances in the
halls of Congress sustain every fact as here described."
In this same Congressional document of 1878 Miss Carroll thus
describes her inception of the plan of the Tennessee campaign:
"In the autumn of 1861 my attention was arrested by the confidence
expressed by Southern sympathizers in the southwest, that the
Mississippi could not be opened before the recognition of Southern
independence. I determined to inform myself what the pilots thought of
the gunboat expedition then preparing to descend the river. On inquiry
I was directed to Mrs. Scott, then in the hotel, whose husband was a
pilot, and learned from her that he was then with the expedition that
had moved against Belmont; and the important facts she gave me
increased my wish to see Mr. Scott. On his arrival in St. Louis I sent
for him. He said that it was his opinion, and that of all the pilots
on these waters, that the Mississippi could not be opened by the
gunboats. I inquired as to the navigability of the Cumberland and the
Tennessee. He said at favorable stages of water the gunboats could go
up the former as high Nashville, and the latter, at all stages, as
high as the Muscle Shoals in Alabama. The moment he said the Tennessee
was navigable for gunboats the thought flashed upon me that the
strongholds of the enemy might be turned at once by diverting the
expedition in course of preparation to open the Mississippi up the
Tennessee; and having had frequent conversations with Judge Evans on
the military situation, I left the room to communicate this
thought--as he had just then called at the hotel--and asked him if it
would not have that effect. He concurred that it would, and that it
was the move if it was a fact that the Tennessee afforded the
navigation; and he accompanied me to interrogate Mr. Scott, to be
satisfied as to the feasibility of the Tennessee. The interview was
prolonged some time. At the close I told Mr. Scott it was my purpose
to try and induce the Government to divert the Mississippi expedition
up the Tennessee, and asked him to give me a memorandum of the most
important facts elicited in the conversation, as I wished them for
this object. I further stated my intention to pen the history of the
war, and requested him to write from time to time all the valuable
information he might be able, and I would remember him in my work. The
same day I wrote again to Assistant Secretary of War Thomas A.
Scott,[23] to whom I had promised to communicate the result of my
observations while in the West, and also to Attorney General Bates; to
both of whom I urged the importance of a change of campaign."
[Footnote 23: Thomas A. Scott was the great
railroad magnate, was Assistant Secretary of War
when Stanton was Secretary, and was sent by Stanton
to inaugurate the Tennessee campaign which saved
the Union.]
A letter from Judge Evans, who chanced to be in St. Louis on other
business, at the time gives a precisely similar account of this
interview with the pilot, and the ideas then suggested by Miss Carroll
uttered, as he relates, "in a very earnest and animated manner!"
Even though it involves some repetition, we will here give also an
account written by Miss Carroll in the winter of 1889. It will possess
an especial interest, as it may be the last literary exertion that the
invalid authoress will ever be asked to make.
It was called forth by a wish expressed by a leading magazine to have
a fresh account written directly by Miss Carroll. With fingers lamed
by paralysis the following account was written, showing the clearness
of Miss Carroll's memory in her seventy-fifth year.
"In the beginning of the rebellion public opinion gave the victory to
the Southern cause, and no one shared in this conviction to a greater
extent than President Lincoln and the War Department. The first effort
made by me was in an unpretentious pamphlet, which fell into the hands
of Mr. Lincoln and so pleased him (it did not appear with my name)
that he suggested its adoption as a war measure, and the satisfaction
it gave was so general that Governor Bates, then Attorney General,
urged that I should continue to write in the interest of the
Government. Fired by enthusiasm in a noble cause, I accepted the
suggestion, and followed soon with what some have considered my best
work, "The War Powers of the Government," and other pamphlets. About
this time I had thought of visiting St. Louis, and mentioned my
intention to Col. Thomas A. Scott, Assistant Secretary of War. He
urged me to go, asking me to write him fully of every point and fact
investigated. These facts I communicated as requested, both to him and
to Governor Bates.
The clouds were dark and lowering. Despair had well nigh possession
of the bravest hearts. After my arrival I soon saw and felt that the
sentiment of the West was decidedly against the Union, or rather in
favor of the Southern cause.
I visited the various encampments en route and in St. Louis and found
but little difference among leading minds as to the result
anticipated. All in a measure believed the struggle useless.
Finding the sentiment prevalent that the Union must fall and feeling
in my soul that it _must not_ fall, I began revolving an escape from
the threatened doom. Just then, while I was in St. Louis, the battle
of Belmont was fought. When I saw the dead and dying as they lay upon
that field and witnessed the sad sight of the ambulance wagons bearing
the wounded to the hospitals, my heart sank within me. The future of
the war with these awful scenes repeated was a picture not to be
endured, and my anxiety as to the result grew still more intense.
In reflecting upon the dangers of the proposed expedition it came upon
me, as by inspiration, that the sailors--the pilots--might offer some
suggestion. I knew that the military leaders would never avail
themselves of this humble source of information. I thought the pilots,
of all others, should know the strategic points. Sending for the
proprietor of the hotel where I was stopping, I asked him how I could
get into contact with any of these men. He told me that the wife of a
pilot named Scott was then in the house. I called on her at once and,
finding her well informed, I questioned her as to the harbors, coast
defenses, etc. Mrs. Scott was just about to leave the city, but she
promised to send her husband to me. I could not wait for this chance,
but wrote to him for the information I desired. He called upon me in
response, and during our conversation he said it would be "death to
every man who attempted to go down the Mississippi." Yet no other
route had been dreamed of. I then asked him, "What about the
Cumberland and Tennessee rivers;" whether they were fordable for
gunboats? He replied, "Yes, the Tennessee especially." Of course, he
did not at first know of any ulterior purpose in the questions which I
was asking, other than the information of an ardent lover of our
country. As he mentioned the Tennessee it flashed upon me with the
certainty of conviction that I had seen my way to the salvation of my
country.
I left the pilot and sent immediately for Judge Evans, of Texas, who
was stopping at the same hotel. I was almost overcome with excitement
and shall never forget the moment that I rushed to him exclaiming,
"What do you think of diverting the army from the Mississippi to the
Tennessee!"[24]
[Footnote 24: Judge Evans himself, describing this
eventful scene, said "that for a moment it seemed
as if a halo of glory surrounded Miss Carroll, and
that she looked like one transfigured." One
hesitates in these matter-of-fact days to repeat
such words as these, but as my reliable informant,
to whom they were addressed, assures me that such
were his words it seemed worth while to record
them. In all times it has seemed that the human
countenance wholly possessed by a great idea could
assume a radiance only to be described by the
spectator by some such words as these, and the fact
was so symbolized in ancient art. The human soul is
no less potent in these days than in the times of
old.]
I waited breathlessly for his reply. It came in measured tones. "It
may be so. I had never thought of it."
That night I wrote to Governor Bates, who had planned the Mississippi
gunboat scheme. He presented the letter at once to the Acting
Secretary of War, Mr. Scott. They both opposed it at first as
impracticable. I returned immediately to Washington, prepared a paper
on that basis and took it to Mr. Scott, who was really Acting
Secretary of War, General Cameron's time being largely consumed in
Cabinet meetings. After reading my plan and hearing my verbal
arguments, Mr. Scott's countenance brightened and he exclaimed, "Miss
Carroll, I believe you have solved the question." He hurried at once,
with the plan in his hands, to the White House and with much
excitement gave it to the President. Mr. Lincoln read it with avidity,
and when he had finished it Mr. Scott told me that he had never
witnessed such delight as he evinced.
General McClellan was then in command. He opposed the plan, but Mr.
Lincoln quietly gave the orders himself for a change of base as soon
as possible. Up to that time no plan for the close of the struggle,
except down the Mississippi, had ever occurred to the mind of any
living man or woman, as far as known; but from that moment Mr. Lincoln
thought of nothing else. He hastened to send Mr. Scott to investigate,
and went himself at once to St. Louis to aid in putting the plan in
motion.
Just after the fall of Fort Henry I called at the War Department and
saw Mr. Tucker, then Assistant Secretary of War. He told me that Mr.
Scott stated to him on leaving for the West, "This is Miss Carroll's
plan, and if it succeeds the glory is hers."
General Wade, then chairman of the Committee on the Conduct of the
War, was consulted in the matter. He recognized it at once as the
right move and openly and boldly approved the plan. Every effort was
made to hasten the completion of the gunboats. As soon as they were
finished, which was not until February, action was commenced on the
Tennessee line. Mr. Wade at the same time, made it known to Hon. Wm.
Pitt Fessenden, chairman of the Finance Committee in the Senate, that
there was then a movement on foot, to be executed as soon as the
gunboats, then building at St. Louis, were ready, which would satisfy
the entire country and astound the world; and he so reassured the
Senate that they calmly waited until the time arrived for the
execution of the plan.
Colonel Thomas A. Scott was sent to the West to make all things ready
and expedite the movement.
He gave his orders from one point to another, so that when General
Halleck, who was then in military command, was notified by Mr. Lincoln
that the whole force was to be moved from the Mississippi up the
Tennessee river he stood ready for the movement. In February, 1862,
the armies moved up the Tennessee, then to Fort Donelson, and then
back up the Tennessee to Hamburgh, and two miles from there they
fought the battle of Pittsburgh Landing, as pointed out in my plan.
Had the movement been strictly carried out from the foot of the Muscle
Shoals, in Alabama, Vicksburgh could have been reduced, or Mobile, and
the whole thing ended in the spring of 1862 as easily as in 1865, and
with the same result. In a recent publication General Sherman has
admitted this fact. At the fall of Fort Henry the country was
thoroughly aroused as it never had been before. It was clearly seen
that the end was approaching. Richmond was then within reach through
Tennessee. For this General McClellan had been waiting. Before this no
power on earth could have captured Richmond, and no one knew this
better than General McClellan. When the National armies had penetrated
into the heart of the South, within two miles of the Memphis and
Charleston railroad, the result was plain to every mind.
The old flag displayed in the presence of a million of slaves, who had
before been necessarily on the side of their owners, made the fact
doubly secure. All hearts were jubilant, and Roscoe Conkling then
offered his celebrated resolutions in the House of Representatives to
ascertain who it was that had designed these military movements so
fruitful in great results; whether they came from Washington or
elsewhere; by whom they were designed and what they were intended to
accomplish. Judge Olin replied that if it was Mr. Conkling's design to
find out who had done this work he could learn by inquiring at the War
Department, for certainly the Secretary of War or the President must
know all about it; but it was sufficient for the present to know that
some one had designed these movements, and that the country was now in
the enjoyment of the blessings that had resulted from them. Hon.
Thaddeus Stevens moved that the resolutions of Mr. Conkling, making
inquiry, be referred to the Military Committee of the House. During
the discussion the plan was attributed to one person and another, but
no satisfactory proof could be given on any side. I was present
through it all and could at any moment have satisfied Congress and the
world as to the authorship of the plan, but from prudential reasons I
refrained from uttering a word. It was decided to refer the question
to the Military Committee of the House, and there the matter slept."
It is worth while to pause for a moment in our narration to introduce
upon the scene one of the most useful and remarkable men of the time,
who became one of Miss Carroll's principal coadjutors; this was
Senator Wade, of Ohio. He was successively justice of the peace,
prosecuting attorney, State senator, judge of the circuit court, and
United States Senator for three terms; he was also Acting
Vice-President of the United States after Lincoln's death. If
President Johnson's impeachment had been carried through he would have
been the President for the rest of the term, and it was feared by his
opponents that in that case he would have secured the Chicago
nomination for the coming term, of which he was one of the candidates.
The first encounter of the Union army, a crowd of raw, undisciplined
recruits, under new and inexperienced officers, with the better
prepared Confederate army naturally resulted in a tremendous panic.
Two carriages were present on the battlefield; one contained Senators
Wade, Chandler, and Brown, Sergeant-at-arms of the Senate, and Major
Eaton; in the other was Tom Brown, of Cleveland, Blake, Morris, and
Riddle, of the House. Near the extemporized hospital, Ashley's Black
Horse sweeping down on the recruits caused the panic. One of the
gentlemen present thus described the scene. (The description can be
met with in Coxe's Three Decades and in Riddle's Life of Wade, a work
that should be more widely published.)
"It seemed as if the very devils of panic and cowardice had seized
every mortal officer, soldier, teamster, and citizen. No officer tried
to rally a soldier or do anything but spring and run toward
Centerville. There was never anything like it for causeless, sheer,
absolute, absurd cowardice--or rather panic--on this miserable earth
before. Off they went, one and all--off down the highway, across the
fields, towards the woods, anywhere, everywhere, to escape. The
further they ran the more frightened they grew, and though we moved as
fast as we could the fugitives passed us by scores. To enable
themselves better to run they threw away their blankets, knapsacks,
canteens, and finally their muskets, cartridge-boxes--everything. We
called to them; told them there was no danger; implored them to stand.
We called them cowards; denounced them in the most offensive terms;
pulled out our heavy revolvers, threatened to kill them--in vain. A
cruel, crazy, hopeless panic possessed them and infected everybody,
front and rear."
The two carriages were blocked up in the awful gorge of Cub's Run and
were for a time separated. When they again met, Mr. Wade shouted,
"Boys, we'll _stop_ this damned runaway!"
They found a good position, where a high wall on one side and a dense
impassable wood secured the other side. The eight gentlemen leaped
from their carriages and put Mr. Wade in command. Mr. Wade, with his
hat well back and his famous rifle in his hand, formed them across the
pikes all armed with heavy revolvers and facing the onflowing torrent
of runaways, who were ghastly sick with panic, and this little band,
worthy of the heroes of Thermopylæ, actually kept back the runaway
army, so that "for the fourth of an hour not a man passed save
McDowell's bearer of dispatches, and he only on production of his
papers. The rushing, cowardly, half-armed, demented fugitives stopped,
gathered, crowded, flowed back, hedged in by thick-growing cedars that
a rabbit could scarcely penetrate. The position became serious. A
revolver was discharged, shattering the arm of Major Eaton, from the
hand of a mounted escaping teamster" (who had cut loose from his
wagon).
"At that critical moment the heroic old Senator and his friends were
relieved and probably saved by Colonel Crane and a part of the Second
New York, hurrying toward the scene of the disaster, and then the
party proceeded. Naturally the exploit of Mr. Wade in stopping a
runaway army caused much talk at Washington and increased the great
confidence and admiration with which he was already regarded.[25]
[Footnote 25: A few days ago the present writer was
conversing with one of the survivors of the party
and received from him a detailed account of this
singular episode.]
"In consequence of this disaster and the following one at Ball's
Bluff, it was evident that both soldiers and officers would have to be
created, and that we were without a military commander competent to
direct so vast a war. This led to the formation by Congress of a
Committee for the Conduct of the War. It consisted of seven members,
three from the Senate and four from the House; Wade, Chandler, and
Andrew Johnson from the Senate; Julian, Covode, Gooch, and Odell from
the House. (Johnson seems never to have acted.) Nobody but Wade was
thought of for chairman. Mr. Wade was absolutely fearless, physically
and morally; absolutely regardless of self; absolutely devoted to his
country. All parties agreed in boundless admiration and confidence in
the heroic old Senator. "It is said that Wade seldom missed a session
of the committee. The most conscientious of known men; never ill; he
never neglected a duty; failed of an engagement; was never waited for,
and never failed to meet his foe, one or many."
"The committee, by Mr. Wade, omitting Mr. Johnson's name, made their
first report soon after the close of the 37th Congress, in April,
1863, which made three heavy volumes of over 2,000 printed pages.
Their second report was made May 22, 1865, a trifle more in bulk, six
volumes in all." (Very valuable for future historians.)--_Life of
Benjamin F. Wade by A. G. Riddle._
President Lincoln, as Commander-in-Chief, with the assistance of this
committee, thereafter directed the movements of the war, all the
generals being subordinate and only enlightened step by step as to the
accepted plan of campaign, great secrecy being, as Mr. Wade testifies,
necessary or the plan would have been frustrated.