AT ANTIETAM AND FREDERICKSBURG.
The opening of the battle-summer of 1862 found the seat of war in the
East, in the tidewater region of Virginia. These were the days when
"strategy" was the word. General George B. McClellan's leading idea
was to capture Richmond rather than destroy the Confederate army. His
own forces lay on both sides of the Chickahominy, in the peninsula
below Richmond. The series of five battles had already begun when
Carleton arrived in Baltimore, July 2d. A peremptory order from
Washington having stopped every one from reaching Fortress Monroe, he
had therefore to do the next best thing as collector and reviser of
news. After studying the whole situation, he wrote a long and detailed
letter from Baltimore.
Spending most of the summer at home, he was able to rejoin the army
early in September, when Lee began his daring invasion of the
North,--a political even more than a military move. Then Confederate
audacity was fully matched by Pennsylvania's patriotism. Although the
State had already one hundred and fifty regiments in service, Governor
Andrew D. Curtin called for fifty thousand more men. Within ten days
that number of militia were armed and equipped, and in the field.
Millionaires and wage-earners, professors and students, ministers and
their congregations were in line guarding the Cumberland Valley.
Neither disasters nor the incapacity of generals chilled the fierce
resolve of Pennsylvania's sons, who were determined to show that the
North could not be successfully invaded, even by veterans led by the
bravest and most competent generals of the age.
Carleton was in the saddle as soon as he learned that Lee had moved.
From Parkton to Hanover Junction, to Westminster, to Harrisburg, to
Green Castle, to Hagerstown, to Keitisville he rode, and at these
places he wrote, hoping to be in at the mightiest battle which, until
this time, had ever been fought on American soil. For many days it was
a mystery to the Washington authorities, and to the Army of the
Potomac, where Lee and his divisions were; but, with his usual good
fortune, Carleton was but nine miles distant, at Hagerstown, when the
booming of the cannon at Antietam roused him from his sleep. It was
not many minutes before he was in saddle and away. Instead of the ride
down the Sharpsburg pike that would have brought him in rear of the
enemy, he rode down the Boonsboro road, reaching the right wing of the
Union army just as Hooker was pushing his columns into position.
Striking off from the main road, through fields and farms, he came to
Antietam creek. He found a ford, and reached a pathway where a line of
wagons loaded with the wounded was winding down the slope. On the
fields above was a squadron of cavalry to hold back stragglers. In the
first ambulance he descried a silver star, and saw the face of the
brave General Richardson, dead, with a bullet through his breast. At
the farmhouses, rows of men were already lying in the straw, waiting
their turn at the surgeon's hands, while long lines of men were
bringing the fallen on stretchers. With hatred of war in his heart,
but with faith in its stern necessity, Carleton rode on to see the
fight which raged in front of Sumner, noticing that the cannon of
Hooker and Mansfield were silent, cooling their lips after the
morning's fever. Of the superb Pennsylvania Reserve Corps, which he
had seen a year ago at review, there was now but a remnant. He
ascended the ridge, where thirty pieces of cannon were every moment
emptying their black mouths of fire and iron.
All day long Carleton was witness of the battle, and then sent home
from Sharpsburg, September 19th, in addition to his preliminary
letter, a long and comprehensive account in five columns of print. It
was so animated in style, so exact in particulars, and so skilful and
clear in its general grouping, that its writer was overwhelmed with
congratulations by the best of all critics, his fellow correspondents.
In two other letters from Sharpsburg, he reviewed the whole subject
judicially, and then returned home for a few days' recuperation.
From Philadelphia we find two of his letters, one describing the
transport of troops and the monitors then on the stocks, or in the
Delaware, and another reviewing the account of Antietam which he had
read in the Charleston _Courier_. Indeed, all through the war, Mr.
Coffin took pains to inform himself as to Southern opinion, and the
methods of its manufacture and influence by the press. He was thus
able to correct and purify his own judgments. He preserved his copies
of the Southern papers, and gradually accumulated, during and after
the war, a unique collection of the newspapers of the South. His first
opinion about the battle of Antietam, written October 8, 1862, is the
same as that which he held thirty years later:
"In reviewing the contest, aided by the Southern account, it seems
that all through the day, complete, decisive, annihilating victory lay
within our grasp, and yet we did not take it."
Let us read further from the closing paragraph of that letter, which
he wrote in Philadelphia, before moving West to the army in Kentucky:
"In saying this, I raise no criticism, make no question or blame, but
prefer to look upon it as a controlling of that Providence which
notices the fall of every sparrow. The time had not come for complete
victory,--for annihilation of the rebel army. We are not yet over the
Red Sea. The baptism of blood is not yet complete. The cause of the
war is not yet removed,--retribution for crime is not yet finished. We
must suffer again. With firmer faith than ever in the ultimate triumph
of right, truth, and justice, let us accept the fiery ordeal."
Like the pendulum of an observatory clock, the bob-point of which
touches at each vibration the mercury which transmits intelligence of
its movements to distant points, Carleton now swung himself to
Cincinnati. In Louisville he gave an account, from reports, of the
battle of Perryville. It was written in the utmost haste, with one eye
upon the hands of his watch moving on to the minute of the closing of
the mail. In such a case, according to his custom, he wrote a second
letter, when possessed with fuller data from eye-witnesses. In the
heart of Kentucky he was able to see the effects of the President's
Emancipation Proclamation, which had been issued but three weeks
before. He described the coming of the Confederate army into Kentucky
as "the Flatterer, dressed in a white garment, who with many fair
speeches would have turned Christian and Faithful from the glittering
gates of the Golden City, shining serene and fair over the land of
Beulah." The robe having dropped from Flatterer's limbs, the
Kentuckian saw that the reality was hideous, and that to follow him
was to go back again to the City of Destruction. The Confederates
moved southward, laden with plunder, while General Buell, with his
army of one hundred and forty thousand men, after having mildly
pursued them for twenty-one days, returned to Louisville. Carleton's
comment upon these movements is, "Such is strategy."
Finding himself again in the trough of inactivity, and ever ready to
mount on the wave of opportunity, Carleton moved again to the East,
writing in the cars while whirling to Virginia. His first letters from
the East were penned at Harper's Ferry. Then began his zigzag
movements, like a planet. We find his pen active at Berlin, Md.,
Purcellville, Va., Upperville, Va., where, beside the cavalry battles
between Pleasanton and Stewart, he saw that seven corps were in
motion. From Gainesville, Warrenton Junction, Orleans, Warrenton,
Catlett's Station, and again and often from Washington, and from
Falmouth, he sent his letters, which, if not always full of battle,
kept the heart of New England patient and courageous.
McClellan had been removed, and Burnside, taking command, led his army
to the riverside before Fredericksburg. Carleton was witness of the
bombardment of the city by the Federal artillery. From his coign of
vantage at General Sumner's headquarters, on the piazza of an elegant
mansion, one hundred feet above the Rappahannock, and about
three-quarters of a mile from it, he could see, as though it were a
great cartoon and he a weaver of the Gobelins tapestry of history, the
awful pattern of war. Beyond the sixteen rifled Rodman guns of large
calibre and long range, mounted on the river bluff and thrust out
through sand-bags, behind the masses of infantry, the pontoon and
artillery trains, Carleton stood and saw the making of a bridge in
fifteen minutes, in the face of a terrific musketry fire from the
opposite shore. Then followed views of the street fight in the doomed
city, the shattered houses, the cloudless sky, the setting sun, the
gorgeous sunset dyes, the deepening shadows, the masses of men upon
the opposite hills, the screaming shells, the puffs of white smoke,
the bursting storms of iron, the blood-red flames illuminating the
ruin of dwellings, the battle smoke settling in the valley, so densely
as to obscure or hide the flashes. All this was before Carleton on
that afternoon and evening of that winter's day, December 11th. Then
he spread his blanket for a little sleep, expecting to awake to behold
one of the greatest battles of modern times; but the sun set without
the two great armies coming to close quarters.
The next day was a hard one, for Carleton was in the field until
night, now watching a bombardment, now a charge, and again a long and
stubborn, persistent musketry fire. The shells sang near him, and at
one time he was evidently the target for a whole Confederate battery;
for, within a few seconds, a round shot struck a few rods in front of
him, a second fell to the right, a third went over his head, a fourth
skimmed along the surface of the ground, just over the backs of a
regiment, lying flat on their faces. As he moved to the shelter of the
river bank, a shot dropped obligingly in the water before him. All day
long the lines of batteries on the hills smoked like Etna and
Vesuvius. Sometimes, between ordnance and musketry, there were twenty
thousand flashes a minute. Carleton thus far had seen no battles where
the fire equalled that which was poured upon Sumner's command during
the last grand, but hopeless, charge at sunset. At nightfall, when the
wearied soldiers could lie down for rest, Carleton began the work of
writing his letter. Among other things he said:
"With the deference to military strategics, my own common sense
deprecated attempting the movements which were made, as unnecessary
and unwise,--which must be accomplished with fearful slaughter, and
which I believed would be unsuccessful....
"It is a plain of Balaklava, where the Light Brigade, renowned in
song, made their fearful charge."
Then follows a simple but sufficient diagram of the Confederate
impregnable position, where, with only common printer's type, and the
"daggers" of punctuation standing for Blakesley and Armstrong guns,
printer's ink told the story. Though nearly exhausted by his manifold
labors of brain and muscle, Carleton, on the 15th, visited the
battle-field, which did not exceed one hundred acres, and the city in
which the troops were quietly quartered, but in which a Confederate
shell was falling every ten minutes. After surveying the near and
distant scenes from the cupola of an already well-riddled house,
Carleton followed the army when it withdrew to Falmouth, seeing
through his glass the Confederates leaping upon the deserted
entrenchments and staring at the empty town.
Returning to Washington, he reviewed as usual the battle, and then
returned homeward, according to his wont, for three weeks of rest and
refreshment. His last letter, before leaving the front, was a noble
and inspiriting plea for patience and continuance. He wrote: "The army
is ready to fight, but the people are despondent. The army has not
lost its nerve, its self-possession, its balance; it is more powerful
to-day than it has ever been. It has no thought of giving up the
contest. The cause is holy. It is not for power or dominion, but for
the rich inheritance decreed by our fathers."
The same bugle call of inspiration sounded from his lips and pen, when
he rejoined the army on the Rappahannock, and Hooker was in command.
He wrote: "The army needs several things; first, to be supported by
the people at home. There is nothing which will so quickly take the
strength out of the soldier as a blue letter from home, and on the
other hand there is nothing which would give him so much life as a
cheerful, hopeful letter from his friends. Let every one look beyond
the immediate present into the years to come, and think of the
inheritance he is to bequeath to his children. Let him see the coming
millions of our people on this continent; let him lay his ear to the
ground, and hear the tread of that mighty host which is to people the
Mississippi Valley; which will climb the mountains of the West, to
coin the hidden riches into gold; let him see the great cities
springing up on the Pacific Coast; let him understand that this nation
is yet in its youth; that this continent is to be the highway between
China and Europe; let him behold this contest in its vast proportion,
reaching through all coming time, and affecting the entire human race
forever; let him resolve that, come weal or come woe, come life or
come death, that it shall be sustained, and it will be."
Another letter deals in rather severe sarcasm with a friend who
belonged to "the Nightshade family," one of those individuals who
thrive on darkness. He wrote: "People of New England, are you not
ashamed of yourselves? Away with your old womanish fears, your
shivering, your timidity, your garrulousness.... Sustain your sons by
bold, inspiring, patriotic words and acts; act like men.... This army,
this government must be sustained. It will be."