THE WAR DEPARTMENT IN WAR TIMES.
Grant's plans blocked by Halleck--Mr. Dana on duty at
Washington--Edwin McMasters Stanton--His deep religious feeling--His
swift intelligence and almost superhuman energy--The Assistant
Secretary's functions--Contract supplies and contract
frauds--Lincoln's intercession for dishonest contractors with
political influence--A characteristic letter from Sherman.
I reached Washington about the middle of December, and immediately gave
to Mr. Stanton an outline of Grant's plan and reasons for a winter
campaign. The President, Mr. Stanton, and General Halleck all agreed
that the proposed operations were the most promising in sight; indeed,
Mr. Stanton was enthusiastic in favor of the scheme as I presented it to
him. He said that the success of Grant's campaign would end the war in
the Mississippi Valley, and practically make prisoners of all the rebel
forces in the interior of Mississippi and Alabama, without our being at
the direct necessity of guarding and feeding them. But Halleck, as a
_sine qua non_, insisted that East Tennessee should first be cleared out
and Longstreet driven off permanently and things up to date secured,
before new campaigns were entered upon.
The result was that no winter campaign was made in 1863-'64 toward the
Alabama River towns and Mobile. Its success, in my opinion, was certain,
and I so represented to Mr. Stanton. Without jeoparding our interests in
any other quarter, Grant would have opened the Alabama River and
captured Mobile a full year before it finally fell. Its success meant
permanent security for everything we had already laid hold of, at once
freeing many thousands of garrison troops for service elsewhere. As long
as the rebels held Alabama, they had a base from which to strike
Tennessee. I had unbounded confidence in Grant's skill and energy to
conduct such a campaign into the interior, cutting loose entirely from
his base and subsisting off the enemy's country. At the time he had the
troops, and could have finished the job in three months.
After I had explained fully my mission from Grant, I asked the Secretary
what he wanted me to do. Mr. Stanton told me he would like to have me
remain in the department until I was needed again at the front.
Accordingly, an office in the War Department was provided for me, and I
began to do the regular work of an assistant to the Secretary of War.
This was the first time since my relations with the War Department began
that I had been thrown much with the Secretary, and I was very glad to
have an opportunity to observe him.
Mr. Stanton was a short, thick, dark man, with a very large head and a
mass of black hair. His nature was intense, and he was one of the most
eloquent men that I ever met. Stanton was entirely absorbed in his
duties, and his energy in prosecuting them was something almost
superhuman. When he took hold of the War Department the armies seemed to
grow, and they certainly gained in force and vim and thoroughness.
One of the first things which struck me in Mr. Stanton was his deep
religious feeling and his familiarity with the Bible. He must have
studied the Bible a great deal when he was a boy. He had the firmest
conviction that the Lord directed our armies. Over and over again have I
heard him express the same opinion which he wrote to the Tribune after
Donelson: "Much has recently been said of military combinations and
organizing victory. I hear such phrases with apprehension. They
commenced in infidel France with the Italian campaign, and resulted in
Waterloo. Who can organize victory? Who can combine the elements of
success on the battlefield? We owe our recent victories to the Spirit of
the Lord, that moved our soldiers to rush into battle, and filled the
hearts of our enemies with dismay. The inspiration that conquered in
battle was in the hearts of the soldiers and from on high; and wherever
there is the same inspiration there will be the same results." There was
never any cant in Stanton's religious feeling. It was the
straightforward expression of what he believed and lived, and was as
simple and genuine and real to him as the principles of his business.
Stanton was a serious student of history. He had read many books on the
subject--more than on any other, I should say--and he was fond of
discussing historical characters with his associates; not that he made a
show of his learning. He was fond, too, of discussing legal questions,
and would listen with eagerness to the statement of cases in which
friends had been interested. He was a man who was devoted to his
friends, and he had a good many with whom he liked to sit down and talk.
In conversation he was witty and satirical; he told a story well, and
was very companionable.
There is a popular impression that Mr. Stanton took a malevolent delight
in browbeating his subordinates, and every now and then making a
spectacle of some poor officer or soldier, who unfortunately fell into
his clutches in the Secretary's reception room, for the edification of
bystanders. This idea, like many other false notions concerning great
men, is largely a mistaken one. The stories which are told of Mr.
Stanton's impatience and violence are exaggerated. He could speak in a
very peremptory tone, but I never heard him say anything that could be
called vituperative.
There were certain men in whom he had little faith, and I have heard him
speak to some of these in a tone of severity. He was a man of the
quickest intelligence, and understood a thing before half of it was told
him. His judgment was just as swift, and when he got hold of a man who
did not understand, who did not state his case clearly, he was very
impatient.
If Stanton liked a man, he was always pleasant. I was with him for
several years in the most confidential relations, and I can now recall
only one instance of his speaking to me in a harsh tone. It was a
curious case. Among the members of Congress at that period was a Jew
named Strouse. One of Strouse's race, who lived in Virginia, had gone
down to the mouth of the James River when General Butler was at
Fortress Monroe, and had announced his wish to leave the Confederacy.
Now, the orders were that when a man came to a commanding officer with a
request to go through the lines, he was to be examined and all the money
he had was to be taken from him. General Butler had taken from this
Virginian friend of Strouse between fifty thousand and seventy-five
thousand dollars. When a general took money in this way he had to
deposit it at once in the Treasury; there a strict account was kept of
the amount, whom it was taken by, and whom it was taken from. Butler
gave a receipt to this man, and he afterward came to Washington to get
his money. He and Strouse came to the War Department, where they
bothered Mr. Stanton a good deal. Finally, Mr. Stanton sent for me.
"Strouse is after me," he said; "he wants that money, and I want you to
settle the matter."
"What shall I do?" I asked; "what are the orders?" He took the papers in
the case and wrote on the back of them:
Referred to Mr. Dana, Assistant Secretary of War, to be settled as
in his judgment shall be best.
E. M. STANTON.
The man then turned his attention from the Secretary to me. I looked
into the matter, and gave him back the money. The next day Mr. Stanton
sent for me. I saw he was angry.
"Did you give that Jew back his money?" he asked in a harsh tone.
"Yes, sir."
"Well," he said, "I should like to know by what authority you did it."
"If you will excuse me while I go to my room, I will show my authority
to you," I replied.
So I went up and brought down the paper he had indorsed, and read to
him:
"Referred to Mr. Dana, Assistant Secretary of War, to be settled as in
his judgment shall be best." Then I handed it over to him. He looked at
it, and then he laughed.
"You are right," he said; "you have got me this time." That was the only
time he spoke to me in a really harsh tone.
At the time that I entered the War Department for regular duty, it was a
very busy place. Mr. Stanton frequently worked late at night, keeping
his carriage waiting for him. I never worked at night, as my eyes would
not allow it. I got to my office about nine o'clock in the morning, and
I stayed there nearly the whole day, for I made it a rule never to go
away until my desk was cleared. When I arrived I usually found on my
table a big pile of papers which were to be acted on, papers of every
sort that had come to me from the different departments of the office.
The business of the War Department during the first winter that I spent
in Washington was something enormous. Nearly $285,000,000 was paid out
that year (from June, 1863, to June, 1864) by the quartermaster's
office, and $221,000,000 stood in accounts at the end of the year
awaiting examination before payment was made. We had to buy every
conceivable thing that an army of men could need. We bought fuel,
forage, furniture, coffins, medicine, horses, mules, telegraph wire,
sugar, coffee, flour, cloth, caps, guns, powder, and thousands of other
things. Sometimes our supplies came by contract; again by direct
purchase; again by manufacture. Of course, by the fall of 1863 the army
was pretty well supplied; still, that year we bought over 3,000,000
pairs of trousers, nearly 5,000,000 flannel shirts and drawers, some
7,000,000 pairs of stockings, 325,000 mess pans, 207,000 camp kettles,
over 13,000 drums, and 14,830 fifes. It was my duty to make contracts
for many of these supplies.
In making contracts for supplies of all kinds, we were obliged to take
careful precautions against frauds. I had a colleague in the department,
the Hon. Peter H. Watson, the distinguished patent lawyer, who had a
great knack at detecting army frauds. One which Watson had spent much
time in trying to ferret out came to light soon after I went into
office. This was an extensive fraud in forage furnished to the Army of
the Potomac. The trick of the fraud consisted in a dishonest mixture of
oats and Indian corn for the horses and mules of the army. By changing
the proportions of the two sorts of grain, the contractors were able to
make a considerable difference in the cost of the bushel, on account of
the difference in the weight and price of the grain, and it was
difficult to detect the cheat. However, Watson found it out, and at once
arrested the men who were most directly involved.
Soon after the arrest Watson went to New York. While he was gone,
certain parties from Philadelphia interested in the swindle came to me
at the War Department. Among them was the president of the Corn
Exchange. They paid me thirty-three thousand dollars to cover the sum
which one of the men confessed he had appropriated; thirty-two thousand
dollars was the amount restored by another individual. The morning after
this transaction the Philadelphians returned to me, demanding both that
the villains should be released, and that the papers and funds belonging
to them, taken at the time of their arrest, should be restored. It was
my judgment that, instead of being released, they should be remanded to
solitary confinement until they could clear up all the forage frauds and
make complete justice possible. Then I should have released them, but
not before. So I telegraphed to Watson what had happened, and asked him
to return to prevent any false step.
Now, it happened that the men arrested were of some political importance
in Pennsylvania, and eminent politicians took a hand in getting them out
of the scrape. Among others, the Hon. David Wilmot, then Senator of the
United States and author of the famous Wilmot proviso, was very active.
He went to Mr. Lincoln and made such representations and appeals that
finally the President consented to go with him over to the War
Department and see Watson in his office. Wilmot remained outside, and
Mr. Lincoln went in to labor with the Assistant Secretary. Watson
eloquently described the nature of the fraud, and the extent to which it
had already been developed by his partial investigation. The President,
in reply, dwelt upon the fact that a large amount of money had been
refunded by the guilty men, and urged the greater question of the safety
of the cause and the necessity of preserving united the powerful support
which Pennsylvania was giving to the administration in suppressing the
rebellion. Watson answered:
"Very well, Mr. President, if you wish to have these men released, all
that is necessary is to give the order; but I shall ask to have it in
writing. In such a case as this it would not be safe for me to obey a
verbal order; and let me add that if you do release them the fact and
the reason will necessarily become known to the people."
Finally Mr. Lincoln took up his hat and went out. Wilmot was waiting in
the corridor, and came to meet him.
"Wilmot," he said, "I can't do anything with Watson; he won't release
them."
The reply which the Senator made to this remark can not be printed here,
but it did not affect the judgment or the action of the President.
The men were retained for a long time afterward. The fraud was fully
investigated, and future swindles of the kind were rendered impossible.
If Watson could have had his way, the guilty parties--and there were
some whose names never got to the public--would have been tried by
military commission and sternly dealt with. But my own reflections upon
the subject led me to the conclusion that the moderation of the
President was wiser than the unrelenting justice of the Assistant
Secretary would have been.
Not a little of my time at the department was taken up with people who
had missions of some kind within the lines of the army. I remember one
of these particularly, because it brought me a characteristic letter
from General Sherman. There was much suffering among the loyal citizens
and the Quakers of East Tennessee in the winter of 1863-'64, and many
relief committees came to us seeking transportation and safe conduct for
themselves and their supplies into that country. Some of these were
granted, to the annoyance of General Sherman, then in command of the
Military Division of the Mississippi. The reasons for his objections he
gave in this letter to me:
HEADQUARTERS MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI,
NASHVILLE, TENN., _April 21, 1864_.
C. A. DANA, Esq., Ass't Sec. of War, Washington.
MY DEAR FRIEND: It may be parliamentary, but is not military, for
me to write you; but I feel assured anything I may write will only
have the force of a casual conversation, such as we have indulged
in by the camp fire or as we jogged along by the road. The text of
my letter is one you gave a Philadelphia gentleman who is going up
to East Tennessee to hunt up his brother Quakers and administer the
bounties of his own and his fellow-citizens' charity. Now who would
stand in the way of one so kindly and charitably disposed? Surely
not I. But other questions present themselves. We have been working
hard with tens of thousands of men, and at a cost of millions of
dollars, to make railroads to carry to the line of the Tennessee
enough provisions and material of war to enable us to push in our
physical force to the next stop in the war. I have found on
personal inspection that hitherto the railroads have barely been
able to feed our men, that mules have died by the thousand, that
arms and ammunition had [have] laid in the depot for two weeks for
want of cars, that no accumulation at all of clothing and stores
had been or could be moved at Chattanooga, and that it took four
sets of cars and locomotives to accommodate the passes given by
military commanders; that gradually the wants of citizens and
charities were actually consuming the real resources of a road
designed exclusively for army purposes. You have been on the spot
and can understand my argument. At least one hundred citizens daily
presented good claims to go forward--women to attend sick children,
parents in search of the bodies of some slain in battle, sanitary
committees sent by States and corporations to look after the
personal wants of their constituents, ministers and friends to
minister to the Christian wants of their flocks; men who had fled,
anxious to go back to look after lost families, etc.; and, more
still, the tons of goods which they all bore on their merciful
errands. None but such as you, who have been present and seen the
tens, hundreds, and thousands of such cases, can measure them in
the aggregate and segregate the exceptions.
I had no time to hesitate, for but a short month was left me to
prepare, and I must be ready to put in motion near one hundred
thousand men to move when naught remains to save life. I figured up
the mathematics, and saw that I must have daily one hundred and
forty-five car loads of essentials for thirty days to enable me to
fill the requirement. Only seventy-five daily was all the roads
were doing. Now I have got it up to one hundred and thirty-five.
Troops march, cattle go by the road, sanitary and sutler's stores
limited, and all is done that human energy can accomplish. Yet come
these pressing claims of charity, by men and women who can not
grasp the great problem. My usual answer is, "Show me that your
presence at the front is more valuable than two hundred pounds of
powder, bread, or oats"; and it is generally conclusive. I have
given Mr. Savery a pass on your letter, and it takes two hundred
pounds of bread from our soldiers, or the same of oats from our
patient mules; but I could not promise to feed the suffering
Quakers at the expense of our army. I have ordered all who can not
provide food at the front to be allowed transportation back in our
empty cars; but I can not undertake to transport the food needed by
the worthy East Tennesseeans or any of them. In peace there is a
beautiful harmony in all the departments of life--they all fit
together like the Chinese puzzle; but in war all is ajar. Nothing
fits, and it is the struggle between the stronger and weaker; and
the latter, however it may appeal to the better feelings of our
nature, must kick the beam. To make war we must and will harden our
hearts.
Therefore, when preachers clamor and the sanitaries wail, don't
join in, but know that war, like the thunderbolt, follows its laws,
and turns not aside even if the beautiful, the virtuous, and
charitable stand in its path.
When the day and the hour comes, I'll strike Joe Johnston, be the
result what it may; but in the time allotted to me for preparation
I must and will be selfish in making those preparations which I
know to be necessary.
Your friend,
W. T. SHERMAN, _Major General_.