BETWEEN MANASSAS AND SHILOH--THE SITUATION IN VIRGINIA
It is necessary now to record what had meanwhile been going on in
Virginia and elsewhere. At the beginning of November General George
B. McClellan was placed in supreme command subject only to the
President--of all the armies of the United States. He was called
"the young Napoleon," though upon what grounds of achievement that
characterization was based it is difficult to conjecture. He was
thirty-five years of age, and therefore young. He was a West Point
graduate and an accomplished officer of engineers. He had been sent
during the Crimean war to observe and report upon the organization
and conduct of European armies. He had made a report admirable in its
literary quality and expert in its observations. Later he had won
distinction by his very capable conduct of that campaign in western
Virginia which resulted in the division of the "pivotal" border state,
and the arraying of its western half upon the Federal side. But neither
in his deeds nor in the temper of his mind was there aught that could
with propriety be called Napoleonic. He was given from first to last,
as will appear hereafter, to the temperamental fault of exaggerating
his enemy's strength and to a shrinking from conflict with a foe whose
forces he thus overestimated.
Nevertheless, when McClellan was appointed to the supreme command
of the Union armies after his months of organizing at Washington it
was expected of him that he should at once advance upon Richmond and
dictate terms of surrender in the Confederate capital itself.
He had found around Washington in the summer a state of affairs which
must have hopelessly discouraged any commanding officer not altogether
given over to optimism. It sadly discouraged McClellan. In words of
his own he found at Washington "no army to command--a mere collection
of regiments cowering on the banks of the Potomac, some perfectly raw,
others dispirited by recent defeat, some going home. There were," he
added, "no defensive works on the southern approaches to the capital.
Washington," he officially reported, "was crowded with straggling
officers and men absent from their stations without authority." Is
there any wonder that McClellan found it necessary to devote many
months to the task of creating an effective army out of such stuff as
this? Is there any escape from wonder that with the national capital
thus hopelessly undefended, Beauregard and Johnston failed to advance
upon and capture it?
This matter has been discussed in sufficient detail already in these
pages. But it is worthy of note that the Confederate commanders who so
strangely neglected their opportunities after the battle of Manassas,
were not restrained by higher authority from the activity that was so
obviously called for by the circumstances of the case, as Grant was
after Donelson. They were free to act upon their own initiative, and
had they been at that time, as they afterwards became, generals of fair
military capacity they would have acted with vigor and promptitude and
the future history of the war would very certainly have been quite
other than it was.
The chief hope of the Confederates lay in the recognition of their
independence by foreign governments and in a presumably probable
alliance between themselves and the powerful nations of Europe. To
promote that result they sent out two duly accredited ministers, the
one to Great Britain and the other to France. The men selected for this
service were James M. Mason of Virginia and John Slidell of Louisiana.
These envoys escaped through the blockade to Havana. There they
embarked on the British mail steamer _Trent_. Captain Charles Wilkes,
commanding the United States steam frigate _San Jacinto_, overhauled
the _Trent_ at sea, on November eight, and made prisoners of Mason and
Slidell and their secretaries.
There is no doubt now that the act of Captain Wilkes was utterly
lawless. But there is equally no doubt that it was dictated by a
patriotic purpose. It was instantly and enthusiastically applauded
throughout the North, and the Federal Congress, inattentive to
international law or consequences, voted thanks to Wilkes for his
conduct in the matter. However, there was the offended British
government still to be reckoned with, and that government was at that
time not very reluctant to pick a quarrel with the United States or to
find a substantial excuse for recognizing Southern independence, and
perhaps lending aid to the Southern arms.
The act of Captain Wilkes was denounced by the British Government, as
an outrage upon British neutrality and a wanton trespass upon British
sovereignty as represented by the Union Jack afloat over a British mail
steamer. A demand was promptly made for the surrender of Mason and
Slidell, and for an apology. There is no possible room for doubt that
that demand was justified under the laws of nations and peculiarly so
by the precedents of American contention, for it was in protest against
precisely such sea seizures that this country had made war in 1812.
But the people of the North were tremendously excited over an incident
in which they greatly rejoiced, and it was in an extreme degree
dangerous for the administration to contravene popular sentiment and to
undo Captain Wilkes's work, by yielding to Britain's demands for the
surrender of Mason and Slidell.
From beginning to end of the war there was perhaps no problem so
perplexing as that which this controversy presented to Mr. Lincoln's
administration to solve. To refuse Britain's demands was to invite
instant war with the greatest naval power in the world, with the
certainty that France, already eager, would join forces with Great
Britain in recognizing the Southern Confederacy and supporting it in
its assertion of independence. In that case all that the United States
had done toward the establishment of a blockade of Southern ports
would have been quickly undone by the appearance of overmastering
British and French fleets on the Southern coasts, and very probably
by the landing of British and French forces to aid the Confederates
in their war against the Union. For when war is on nations do not
stop at technical interference. They are apt to furnish men and guns
in aid of the cause they have espoused. In any case a declaration of
war between Great Britain and the United States--a declaration of war
which the capture of Mason and Slidell very narrowly threatened--would
have resulted in the raising of the blockade of every Southern port
and the opening of the South to that free traffic in arms, ammunition
and supplies which chiefly the South needed in order to accomplish its
purposes.
Should the Government, on the other hand, yield to the British demand,
it must encounter that highly inflamed popular sentiment which had
compelled a congressional resolution of thanks to Captain Wilkes, and
which--sanely or insanely--was disposed to twiddle its fingers at
British or any other intervention in American affairs.
Mr. Seward, as Secretary of State, solved the matter by one of the
most adroit diplomatic quibbles ever invented by an ingenious mind.
He must surrender Mason and Slidell of course, otherwise war was on
with England and France, the blockade was broken, the Confederacy
was recognized and the establishment of a Southern Republic was an
accomplished fact. On the other hand Mr. Seward must not without good
and sufficient excuse yield one jot or tittle to English demands--even
though those demands were supported by American precedents--lest he
offend the "whip all creation" sentiment of the country.
Probably in all history no diplomat ever managed so delicate or so
difficult a matter so skilfully as Mr. Seward did this. He carefully
set forth the war rights of his country. He contended that Captain
Wilkes had a right to capture the _Trent_ as a vessel knowingly
carrying contraband of war. But he explained that, as Captain Wilkes
had released the vessel instead of bringing her into port as a prize,
he had lost his rights and forfeited his claims. In summing up Mr.
Seward said: "If I declare this case in favor of my own Government I
must disavow its most cherished principles and reverse and forever
abandon its most essential policy. We are asked to do to the British
nation just what we have insisted all nations ought to do to us."
Mr. Seward's plea was a specious one, but it answered its purpose.
It enabled him to avoid war with Great Britain and France without
alienating from the administration the support of that sentiment of
confident self-reliance in the country upon which enlistments and the
success of the war depended. He surrendered Mason and Slidell, but he
adroitly managed to represent his action rather as a new assertion
of the old 1812 doctrine of American rights than as in any sense a
surrender to a foreign nation's demand. Thus peace abroad was secured
and popular sentiment at home was appeased; and after all the temporary
detention of the two Confederate ministers had fully accomplished
its purpose. By the time that they reached Europe official and
public opinion in that quarter had so far changed that neither France
nor England was any longer disposed to recognize the independent
nationality of the Confederacy which had so conspicuously neglected its
easy opportunity to compel recognition by an advance upon Washington
after Manassas.
One other event of importance remains to be recorded in this chapter.
When the Confederates seized upon the Navy Yard at Portsmouth, opposite
Norfolk, Virginia, the Federal forces there destroyed all they could
of valuable materials and adjuncts of war. But there was left a ship,
the _Merrimac_, burned in part and sunk. The Confederates raised this
ship, cut her down and armored her with railroad iron. She was the
first iron-clad ship that ever assailed other ships, the pioneer of all
modern naval armaments. At the same time Captain John Ericsson at the
North was experimenting upon somewhat similar lines and producing the
_Monitor_, the first iron-clad, turreted ship ever built.
On the eighth of March the Confederate iron-clad ram the _Merrimac_--or
the _Virginia_ as the Confederates had newly named her--steamed out
into Hampton Roads and promptly destroyed two United States ships of
war, the _Congress_ and the _Cumberland_. Her performance created the
greatest consternation. It was obvious that no wooden ship could live
in conflict with such a craft as this. With such guns as were then in
use her sides were impenetrable by shot or shell. With her steel nose
it was easily possible for her to ram and sink any ship of any type
then in use without danger to herself.
It was the plan of the Confederates to have this ironclad destroy the
wooden fleet in Hampton Roads, as it was obviously and easily possible
for it to do, proceed at once to New York and work havoc there, and
then steam south to raise the blockade by sinking, one after another,
the wooden ships of the blockading fleet.
But just after the _Virginia's_ first success was achieved, there
steamed into Hampton Roads Captain Ericsson's iron-clad, turreted ship,
the _Monitor_. The next day these two armored vessels tried conclusions
with each other. At the end of the fight the _Virginia_ retired to
Portsmouth damaged and discredited. The _Monitor_ had proved to be more
than her match, and while it had not succeeded in destroying her it had
demonstrated its own superiority as a marine fighting machine.
More important still was the fact that while the South had no shipyards
in which new and improved _Virginias_ could be built, the North was
abundantly able to reproduce the _Monitor_ in other ships of like kind
without number or limit and to better her type and construction in the
light of experience.
This conflict is historically interesting as the birth scene of modern
naval armaments. It was the first direct conflict of armored ships.
It was the first instance in history in which ironclad met ironclad.
It marked the dawn of a new era in naval construction, the natal day
of all modern navies. It was the beginning from which have sprung the
battleship, the armored cruiser, the protected cruiser, the gunboat and
the torpedo-boat destroyer, as we know them now.
The fight between the Southern ironclad and the ships it destroyed, and
the contest next day between it and the _Monitor_, have been widely
celebrated in song and story. But the real significance of those
contests lies rather in that to which they gave birth than in that
which in themselves they were.