McClellan, which embraced both Porter’s and Franklin’s corps] been
brought to co-operate with the Army of Virginia [under the command of
Pope] with the utmost energy that circumstances would have permitted,
in your judgment as a military man, would it not have resulted in our
victory instead of our defeat?
Answer. I thought so at the time, and still think so.”
And this is the opinion of all military critics who have pronounced
judgment in the case. It is also certainly true that Halleck’s own
orders and telegrams prove that he himself, and apparently purposely,
prevented such co-operation, and it throws a peculiar significance on
Pope’s charge in his letter to Halleck, dated November 20, 1862, before
quoted, “_It is quite certain that my defeat was predetermined, and I
think you must now be conscious of it_.”[26]
The consequences which followed the defeat of Pope were not immediately
and fully appreciated at the time in the North, on account of the
censorship of the press, nor do they seem to be so at this day. Orders
were given to prepare for the evacuation of Washington; vessels were
ordered to the arsenal to receive the munitions of war for shipment
northward; one warship was anchored in the Potomac, ready to receive
the President, the Cabinet and the more important archives of the
Government: Secretary Stanton advised Mr. Hiram Barney, then Collector
of the Port of New York, to leave Washington at once, as communication
might be cut off before morning;[27] Stanton and Halleck assured
President Lincoln that the Capital was lost.
Singularly enough the designs against Washington in the East were
at the same time and in the same manner being duplicated against
Cincinnati, then the “Queen City of the West.”
On August 30, while Pope was fighting the second Bull Run battle in
Virginia, the Confederate Major-General, E. Kirby Smith, was fighting
the battle of Richmond, Ky. In his report to General Braxton Bragg,
Smith says:
“The enemy’s loss during the day is about 1400 killed and wounded,
and 4000 prisoners. Our loss is about 500 killed and wounded. General
Miller was killed, General Nelson wounded, and General Manson taken
prisoner. The remnant of the Federal force in Kentucky is making its
way, utterly demoralized and scattered, to the Ohio. General Marshall
is in communication with me. Our column is moving upon Cincinnati.”
On September 2, Lexington was occupied by Kirby Smith’s infantry. He
reports to General Cooper that the Union killed and wounded exceed
1000; “the prisoners amount to between 5000 and 6000; the loss--besides
some twenty pieces of artillery, including that taken here (Lexington)
and at Frankfort--9000 small arms and large quantities of supplies.”
The Confederate cavalry, he reports, pursued the Union forces to within
twelve miles of Louisville; and, he adds: “I have sent a small force to
Frankfort, to take possession of the arsenal and public property there.
I am pushing some forces in the direction of Cincinnati, in order to
give the people of Kentucky time to organize. General Heth, with the
advance, is at Cynthiana, with orders to threaten Covington.”
This invasion of Kentucky was due to Halleck, as was proved before
the military court appointed “to inquire into and report upon the
operations of the forces under command of Major-General Buell in the
States of Tennessee and Kentucky, and particularly in reference to
General Buell suffering the State of Kentucky to be invaded by the
rebel forces under General Bragg,” etc.
That court was in session from November 27, 1862, until May 6, 1863,
with the gallant Major-General Lew Wallace presiding. Its opinion
recited that Halleck had ordered General Buell to march against
Chattanooga and take it, with the ulterior object of dislodging Kirby
Smith and his rebel force from East Tennessee; that General Buell had
force sufficient to accomplish the object if he could have marched
promptly to Chattanooga; that the plan of operation prescribed by
General Halleck compelled General Buell to repair the Memphis and
Charleston railroad from Corinth to Decatur, and put it in running
order; that the road proved of comparatively little service; that
the work forced such delays that a prompt march upon Chattanooga
was impossible, while they made the rebel invasion of Tennessee and
Kentucky possible. Our forces were driven northward to the Ohio,
leaving the Memphis and Charleston railroad in excellent condition for
the use of the Confederates. Strangely enough, Halleck’s orders to
Buell had inured to the benefit of the Confederates in the West, in the
same manner and along the same lines as his orders to McClellan and to
Pope had inured to the benefit of the Confederates in the East.
Both Washington and Cincinnati were imperiled at the same time, and by
the same officer, General-in-Chief Halleck, and in the same way--by a
succession of steps that appear to have been carefully planned.
Now, mark what follows.
On March 1, 1872, the House of Representatives called upon the
Secretary of War for a copy of the proceedings of that military
court; and on April 13 the Secretary reported to the House, “that
a careful and exhaustive search among all the records and files in
this Department fails to discover what disposition was made of the
proceedings of the Commission,” etc.
But though the records of those proceedings which fix the blame for
that campaign upon Major-General Halleck were lost or stolen from the
archives of the War Department, Benn Pitman, the phonographic reporter
of the court, had possession of a report of those proceedings. And,
by Act of Congress, approved by President Grant on June 5, 1872, the
Secretary of War was “directed to employ at once Benn Pitman to make
a full and complete transcript of the phonographic notes taken by him
during the said investigation, and to put the same on file among the
records of the War Department, and to furnish a copy of the same to
Congress.”
The report of those proceedings may now be found in “Official
Records,” Series I, Vol. XVI, Part I, pp. 6 to 726, inclusive. The
most melancholy part of the story lies in the fact that Porter, who
certainly helped to save Washington from falling into Lee’s hands, had
his life blasted by Halleck, and died without knowledge that Halleck,
not Pope, was really guilty of the disaster which so nearly resulted in
the abandonment of the Capital to the Confederates, and while Halleck
was directing affairs in the West in such a manner as to imperil
Cincinnati.
The remarkable co-operation between Pope and Buell for the surrender
of those cities, and which was attempted by Halleck, does not look
like a concatenation of accidental circumstances. This is accentuated
by the charge against Halleck’s loyalty to the Republic which was made
by the gallant Wallace after he had presided over that Buell military
court. He was a careful man; and, being a good lawyer, he understood
the laws and effect of evidence. Porter, who prevented the surrender
of Washington, and Buell, who saved Cincinnati, were both punished.
It looks as if they had interfered with Halleck’s plan of a general
surrender.
L’ENVOI
In January, 1899, the writer commenced to unravel the mystery
surrounding the battle of Harper’s Ferry, which culminated in the
surrender of that post September 15, 1862. He was a member of that
garrison, and he knew that history had not truthfully recorded the
defense, some chronicles reading that “Harper’s Ferry fell without a
struggle,” others that “there was no defense”; in the main, historians
were a unit.
Such reports are wholly false. The defense of that post was stubborn
and prolonged, lasting from September 11, when the Confederates showed
themselves in Pleasant Valley, until the 15th, when the garrison was
subjected to one of the fiercest bombardments of the Civil War. Never
was hope abandoned until the last shell was expended, though the
little garrison of 12,500 men was besieged by what was practically the
whole of Lee’s army. Starting on a new line of research, and abandoning
the path beaten by others, he found many battles lost in the same
manner, and the responsibility shifted from the shoulders of the guilty
and carefully loaded upon those of the innocent, and all by the use of
the same means, a false report by General-in-Chief Halleck, and a bogus
trial by a military court.
Conspicuous among these was the battle of Second Bull Run, followed
by the trial of Fitz-John Porter. That battle was certainly lost by
Halleck, as shown by documents over that general’s own signature. And
Pope knew it, and charged that it was premeditated. To avoid the odium
which some papers were attaching to his name, the latter applied the
whip and spur to the former, who, under threat of exposure, ordered
the court-martial of the innocent and gallant Major-General Fitz-John
Porter. The battle of Harper’s Ferry followed; the result was the
same; lost by Halleck; responsibility lifted from his shoulders,
and carefully divided between General McClellan (for not relieving
the post) and Colonel Dixon S. Mills (for not defending it). After
that came Fredericksburg, with similar results; lost by Halleck;
responsibility lifted from his shoulders, and divided between Burnside
and Franklin.
Study the plans adopted in one instance; the plans adopted in the
others become manifest. The losing of the battles to the Union arms
was accomplished by carefully prepared plans, and reduced to an exact
science.
R. N. ARPE.
NEW YORK CITY.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[13] November 20, pp. 825-6.
[14] P. 818
[15] Page 817
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid.
[19] P. 817.
[20] P. 818.
[21] Ibid.
[22] P. 921.
[23] Ibid.
[24] P. 822
[25] Vol. II, Part I, p. 454
[26] O. R., Vol. XII, Part III, p. 825.
[27] See Warden’s Chase, p. 415.
THE NORTHERN NECK OF VIRGINIA
PRESENT-DAY ASPECTS OF WASHINGTON’S BIRTHPLACE
Five Virginia counties lying between the Potomac and the Rappahannock
constitute the Northern Neck, the region in which George Washington,
Light Horse Harry Lee, and his more famous son were born and bred.
There are a scant thousand square miles in these counties of King
George, Westmoreland, Richmond, Northumberland, and Lancaster, and
the population of the five is under fifty-five thousand. At no
point are the rivers much more than thirty miles apart, and near
the northern boundary line of King George the harbors on the two
streams are only nine miles apart. Washington was born on a lonely
plantation in Westmoreland County, bordering the beautiful Bridges
Creek, within sight of the Potomac. At Colonial Beach, two or three
miles across the mouth of Monroe Creek, also in Westmoreland County,
stands a house in good repair, which is declared to have been the
residence of Light Horse Harry Lee before he removed to Fairfax County.
Washington as an infant was taken by his parents to their new home
opposite Fredericksburg, in Stafford County, and at the age of twenty
he inherited from his half-brother Lawrence the fine estate of Mount
Vernon, in Fairfax County. Lawrence had named his estate in honor of
Admiral Vernon, with whom the young Virginian had served as an officer
in the campaign against the Spanish-American stronghold of Cartagena.
It was Lawrence’s acquaintance with Admiral Vernon that won for George
Washington the offer of a midshipman’s commission in the royal navy, an
appointment that only his mother’s strong objection prevented him from
accepting.
From the birthplace of Washington to his second home opposite
Fredericksburg is hardly more than fifty-five miles as the crow flies,
and from the birthplace to the scene of his death at Mount Vernon is
under seventy miles. The triangle enclosed by the lines connecting
these points includes a tract of Virginia that is full of historic
interest, and singularly rich and beautiful as an agricultural region.
Most of the counties of the Northern Neck are increasing in population,
but they lie far from railways, and their mode of communication with
the outside world is the steamboats that ply from Baltimore up and down
the two rivers.
In spite, therefore, of the rolling years, and of civil war, and
emancipation, the Northern Neck of Virginia is in many respects much
what it was when George Washington and Light Horse Harry Lee were born
a month apart in the quaint and lovely old Westmoreland of the year
1732. The visitor to Mount Vernon comes away with a strong impression
of Washington, the local magnate and world-wide hero. But Mount Vernon,
in spite of its tomb and its relics, many of them actually used and
handled by Washington himself, can hardly give one the eighteenth
century atmosphere. To obtain that one must make a pilgrimage to the
region of Washington’s birth. A fair shaft erected by the Federal
Government now stands on the spot occupied by the homestead of
Augustine Washington, the birthplace of his mighty son. The spot is
as remote and lonely as it was when Washington’s eyes first saw the
light, and the aspect of the region must be much what it was in that
day. Doubtless the woodland has shrunk in area and the plowed land has
widened. But there, in full view from the monument, are the land-locked
tidal waters of the little stream, and eastward lies the broad lazy
flood of the Potomac, idly moving beneath the soft overarching sky.
Everywhere are the marks of an old civilization. The road that leads
from the wharf at Wakefield on Monroe Creek to the monument is lined
with cherry trees escaped from the old orchards of the neighborhood.
The mockingbird sings in all the woodlands as it must have sung in the
ears of Augustine Washington as he moved about his fields, and gray
old log granaries of the eighteenth century pattern still stand amid
piles of last year’s corncobs. Even to-day brand-new corn cribs are
built in the same fashion of partly hewn logs. The crops are also those
of the earlier century. The monument itself stands in the midst of a
waving wheat field, and acres of Indian corn rustle green and rich as
they must have rustled in the first hot summer of George Washington’s
infancy.
The reality of it all is increased by the bodily presence of
Washington’s own kin, men and women bearing his name, the descendants
of his collateral relatives. A little boat rocking at anchor off the
wharf at Wakefield is the fishing dory of Lawrence Washington, commonly
called “Lal” Washington by his neighbors. He is a man of substance and
dignity. But he takes delight in fishing his own pound nets, and the
unpretentious fishermen of the region tell how the old man’s enthusiasm
was such that he rushed waist deep into the water to help three or four
young fellows drag ashore a heavily laden seine. His brother was for
years State’s Attorney of a neighboring county, and other members of
the family are landholders in Westmoreland. Their neighbors accept
these families of historic name in a simple, matter-of-fact fashion,
and with no humiliating sense of inferiority. “They’re all smart
people,” said the young fisherman that sailed us across Monroe Creek to
the wharf at Wakefield, and that is what Westmoreland expects of the
Washingtons.
Neighboring plantations are stocked with fine old European nut and
fruit trees, such as the colonists with the increasing wealth of the
third and fourth generations were accustomed to import. In some places
the fig is cultivated, and within the shadow of the birthplace monument
is a dense colony of young fig shoots which have sprung and resprung
after every severe winter for perhaps more than a century and a half.
The steep bank of Bridges Creek to the southeast of the monument is
lined with cherry trees that to this day bear excellent fruit, to be
had merely for the picking. One gathers from all the surroundings
of the place a strong sense of the dignity and simplicity that mark
plantation life in Virginia.
It is a quiet life, indeed, that the people of these Westmoreland
plantations lead. Even to this day sailing craft slowly worm their
way far into the deep navigable inlets of the region, and carry
freight to Baltimore and Washington. Each plantation has its own
wharf, and each planter keeps a lookout for the coming schooner, just
as their ancestors of Washington’s day must have watched for the
slow and patient craft that plied up and down the Potomac, and away
to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, or across the Atlantic to
England, a voyage that might stretch out for six or eight, ten, or even
twelve weeks.
The very speech of the people has a slightly archaic flavor, and
family names are redolent of old English ancestry. Here still are
the Kendalls, who like to boast that one of their ancestors was the
earliest mail contractor in Virginia. The elder Kendall, a man of
substance and fair education, found satisfactory reasons for selling
all that he had and coming to Jamestown with Captain John Smith. In
coming away he left behind a son just grown to manhood and some debts
owing to the estate. The son was instructed to collect what he could of
the proceeds, invest it in blankets and trinkets such as the Indians
liked, and to follow the father to Jamestown. The young man obeyed the
paternal instructions, but in sailing up the Potomac with his freight
of gewgaws he mistook the Potomac for the James. After vainly looking
for Jamestown, he concluded that the settlement had been destroyed
by the Indians, and, having reached the present site of Alexandria,
he made a settlement and called it Bell Haven. Some months later an
Indian who visited Bell Haven made the settlers to understand that
there were white men on a river further south. Young Kendall knew then
that Jamestown was still in being. So he wrote a letter to his father
and entrusted it to the Indian to be delivered at Jamestown, paying him
for the service one gay woolen blanket. Father and son thus came into
communication, but the son remained at Bell Haven, and from him are
descended the Kendalls of the Northern Neck.
The whole region teems with traditions of Washington. Down in
Northumberland County, the lovely little harbor of Lodge is named from
the fact that here stood the Masonic lodge that Washington used to
attend. The British destroyed the house during the Revolutionary War,
but the cornerstone was found and opened not many years ago, and some
of its treasures of old English money were placed in the cornerstone of
the Masonic lodge at Kinsale, another charming little Virginia harbor.
It is at Lodge that the maker of canceling dies for the Post Office
Department, exiled from Washington because of the climate, has for
nearly twenty years carried on his business with the aid of country
youths trained for the purpose.
If the shore is much what it was in Washington’s infancy, the river
and its tributaries are even more so. Those who know the Potomac at
Washington or amid the mountains that hem it in further west and north,
may well have no suspicion of the vast flood which it becomes in the
lower part of its course. Fifty miles below Washington the river is
from four to six miles wide. Sixty miles below the capital it has
spread to a width of ten miles, and in the lower forty miles of its
course it is from ten to eighteen miles wide, a great estuary of the
Chesapeake, with tributaries, almost nameless on the map, that fairly
dwarf the Hudson. The busy steamers plying these waters to carry the
produce of the plantations to the markets of Baltimore and Washington
leave the Potomac from time to time to lose themselves in its tortuous
tributaries. Cape on cape recedes to unfold new and unexpected depths
of loveliness; little harbors sit low on the tidal waters backed by
wooded bluffs, behind which lie the rich plantations of Northumberland
and Westmoreland. A soft-spoken race of easy-going Virginians haunts
the landing-places. Fishermen, still pursuing the traditional methods
of the eighteenth century, fetch in sea trout and striped bass and
pike to sell them at absurdly low prices, and for nine months of the
year oystermen are busy. Every planter who will can maintain his
pound net in the shallows of the Potomac or one of its tributaries,
and all along the lower course of the stream the planter may secure
his own oysters almost without leaving the shore. The dainties that
filled colonial larders in Washington’s youth are still the food of the
region--oysters and clams, soft-shell crabs, wild duck, geese, and swan
in winter, and a bewildering variety of fish.
Just across the Potomac from Washington’s birthplace is old Catholic
Maryland of the Calvert Palatinate, settled almost exactly a century
before his birth, and still rich in the names and traditions of that
earlier time. The great width of the separating flood makes one shore
invisible from the other, and the only means of communication are
either the local sailing craft or the steamers that weave from side to
side of the river and lengthen the voyage from Baltimore to Washington
to a matter of thirty hours. Communication between Maryland and
Virginia was almost as easy in Washington’s day, for the steamboats
have an annoying habit of neglecting many miles of one shore or the
other, and there are days when no steamer crosses the stream. A man
living in one of the little harbors of the Northern Neck, being in a
hurry to travel northward, found his most expeditious mode of travel
to be a drive of seventy miles to a railway at Richmond. Shut in thus,
the people of the Northern Neck have nursed their traditions and held
hard by their old family names, so that the visiting stranger, if he
have any touch of historic instinct, finds himself singularly moved
with a sense of his nearness in time to George Washington and his
contemporaries. The telephone, indeed, has brought these people into
tenuous communication with the modern world, but he that looks out upon
the sea-like flood of the Potomac from the mouth of one of its many
navigable tributaries in the Northern Neck can hardly persuade himself
that the capital of 80,000,000 people lies less than a hundred miles
up stream. Washington the man seems vastly more real and present than
Washington the city.
E. N. VALLANDIGHAM.
_Evening Post_, N. Y.
FANCIES AT NAVESINK
(The original manuscript of this unpublished poem by Walt Whitman, was
sold in New York recently. Apparently it was never finished; which is
to be regretted, as its few lines are in Whitman’s best manner. The
scene is on the hill by the twin lighthouses at Navesink, N. J., near
the entrance to New York harbor.--ED.)
FANCIES AT NAVESINK--THE PILOT IN THE MIST
(Steaming the Northern Rapids--an old St. Lawrence Reminiscence.)
A sudden memory-flash comes back, I know not why,
Here waiting for the sunrise, gazing from the hill.
Again ’tis at morning--a heavy haze contends with daybreak.
Again the trembling, laboring vessel veers me--we press through
foam-dash’d rocks that almost touch.
Again I, turning, mark where aft the small, thin Indian helmsman
Looms in the mist, with brow elate and governing hand--
[Illustration]
THE FIGHT AT DIAMOND ISLAND
Standing upon one of the heights near the head or southern end of Lake
George, the tourist looks down on the placid waters, and sees at his
feet a little island covered with verdure, and glowing like an emerald
in the summer sheen. This is Diamond Island,[28] one of the best known
of the many exquisite isles that gem the little inland sea.
From time immemorial it has borne its present name, derived from the
exquisite crystals with which the underlying rock abounds. Here is
the scene of the fight which took place on this lake, September 24,
1777, an occurrence that appears to have been purposely overlooked
by the Americans at the time, and which has since failed to find a
chronicler.[29]
But before proceeding to give the narrative of this event it may be
well to speak of several other points, and to make a brief statement of
the military situation at that time.