THE APPEAL TO ARMS
Though the South had voted as a unit for Buchanan in 1856 and her
leaders had long acted in concert on important matters, the election of
Lincoln by a "solid" North was regarded by most owners of slaves as a
revolutionary act; and the Southern reply to the challenge was
secession. The idea of secession was familiar in 1860. In 1794 New
England leaders in Congress had discussed such a remedy when it seemed
certain that the Southerners would gain permanent control of the
national machinery, and Westerners contemplated the same remedy for ills
they could not otherwise cure during the period of 1793 to 1801. Rather
than submit to the burdensome embargo and the more burdensome second war
with England, most New England men of property seem to have preferred
the dissolution of a union which was formed for commercial purposes; and
we have seen how Webster urged resistance to the national tariff in 1820
even to the point of advising secession. The rightful means of local
self-defense was a break-up of the confederacy, until in 1830 Jackson,
speaking for the West, and Webster, speaking for the rising industrial
group of the Northeast, announced that the Union was indissoluble and
that an attempt to sever it would be accounted treason. A sense of
nationality had come into existence, and a permanent, "sacred" union of
all the States was the corollary of that belief.
Still, when the South, with its resolute program of expansion and the
vigorous national control which characterized the Democratic
Administrations from Polk to Buchanan, made slavery a cardinal tenet of
its faith, legislatures and courts of the East refused to regard either
the Constitution or the federal law as paramount and abiding. Secession
was a common word among the constituents of New England Senators after
1840, and even Northwestern States threatened disruption of the Union as
late as 1859 if the national policy should continue to run counter to
their interests. There was, however, a strong undercurrent of devotion
to the idea of nationality in both North and South[12] in 1860, and when
South Carolina proceeded with her long-contemplated scheme of secession
early in November of that year, Jefferson Davis, who had formerly talked
freely of that "last remedy" of minority interests, advised against the
movement; and everywhere North and South men of great wealth, as well as
the poorer people, who must always bear the heaviest burdens of war,
deprecated and warned against the application of a remedy which all
sections had at one time or another declared right and lawful. As men
came nearer to the application of their "rightful" remedy, the older and
cooler heads urged the leaders of South Carolina not to withdraw from
the national confederation. Republicans like Seward and Weed and
Lincoln exerted themselves to the utmost to dissuade the Southern
radicals; all the influence of the Bell and Everett party was cast into
the same side of the scales; and Congress, when it assembled in
December, 1860, was pressed from every possible angle to arrange some
compromise which would satisfy the angry element in the lower South.
Even Republicans of the more radical type offered to do anything, except
assent to the further expansion of slavery in the Territories, in order
to prevent the formation of a Southern Confederacy and the expected
paralysis of business.
[Footnote 12: Perhaps we may use these terms now to describe the two
great sections of the country as the Civil War approached.]
Nothing availed. South Carolina, under the leadership of Robert Barnwell
Rhett, called a state convention which met in Columbia, but adjourned to
Charleston, and on December 20 severed all connection with the National
Government and recalled her Representatives in Congress. President
Buchanan did not favor secession, and he hoped that some way might be
found to settle the difficulties which underlay the crisis. In his
message to Congress he declared that there was no right of secession,
but that there was also no authority anywhere to prevent secession. This
was at the time the view of most others in the North, perhaps in the
South, for Southerners spoke frequently of the "revolution" they were
precipitating. When the demand of South Carolina for the surrender of
Fort Sumter was presented to the President, he decided to delay action
until his successor was inaugurated. This was not irregular nor unusual,
but gave the people of the South time to decide what they would do; and
before February 1, 1861, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and
Louisiana withdrew from the Union, though not without strenuous
resistance by large parties in all these communities, save Florida.
Early in February delegates from these States gathered in Montgomery,
Alabama, and organized a Southern Confederacy on the model of the older
Union, and made Jefferson Davis President. Alexander Stephens, who had
done more than any other Southerner to delay and defeat secession, was
elected Vice-President. The new constitution was conservative if not
reactionary in character. Slavery was definitely and specifically made a
corner-stone of the new government. The foreign slave trade was, in
deference to border state opinion, forbidden; but free trade, which had
so long been a bone of contention between the planters of the South and
the manufacturers of the East, was left to the wisdom of ordinary
legislation. In fact many of the ablest Southern leaders foresaw the
establishment of a protective system in the South. In the same spirit of
statesmanlike compromise, President Davis was careful to fill the
Cabinet and other important posts with men who represented all phases of
opinion, with former rivals and even decided opponents of the cause he
represented. So cautious and considered was this program of the new
administration that ardent secessionists declared before the fall of
Fort Sumter that a reunion with the older Federal Government was the
object. And the mild and conciliatory attitude of William H. Seward, who
was considered as a sort of acting president during the winter of
1860-61, strengthened this feeling in the South. The Southern
commissioners whom Davis sent to Washington to negotiate with the
Federal Government on the subjects of boundaries between the two
countries, the division of the public debt, and the surrender of forts
within Confederate territory were great favorites in the old national
capital. A friendly attitude toward the new South still further found
expression in the New York _Tribune_, supposed to speak for Republicans
in general, in the Albany _Journal_, Thurlow Weed's paper, and even in
the New York _Times_, Seward's organ.
In fact the people of the North preferred a permanent disruption of the
Union to a great war, the inevitable alternative. Nationalist sentiment
was strong in the North, but not strong enough to make men positive and
decided in their actions. President-elect Lincoln expressed this state
of the public mind in his inaugural, when he said that he would
faithfully execute the laws unless the people, his rightful masters,
should refuse their support, and he showed it still more clearly when he
adopted the policy of delay in determining the status of Fort Sumter
which his predecessor had so long followed. The Cabinet of Buchanan had
been undecided, that of Lincoln was for a whole month equally undecided.
Men hoped to avoid what all feared, civil war; and it is to the credit
of both sections and both cabinets that they hesitated to commit the
overt act which was to set free the "dogs of war"; and while public
opinion was thus halted at the parting of the ways, Virginia, still
thought of as the great old commonwealth and mother of statesmen, called
a peace congress of North and South. Delegates from twenty-one States
conferred together in Washington for six weeks, seeking a way out of the
difficult and perilous situation. Conservative members of Congress, John
J. Crittenden, Stephen A. Douglas, William H. Seward, and others,
labored in the same cause. It is acknowledged by all that a popular
referendum would have brought an overwhelming mandate to let the
"departing sisters go in peace," or to accept the former Southern demand
of a division of the western territory from Kansas to the Pacific along
the line of 36° 30'.
But stiff-backed Republicans like Senator Chandler, of Michigan, Charles
Sumner, and Secretary Chase were unwilling to throw away the results of
a victory constitutionally won, even to avoid a long and bloody war. And
these men brought all the influence they could command to bear upon the
President and his Cabinet during the early days of April. They contended
that every moment of delay increased the likelihood of Southern success,
and they urged that the young Republican party, which was perhaps as
dear to them as the country itself, was losing ground. At last President
Lincoln yielded, and a relief expedition was ordered to Fort Sumter on
April 6, where Major Robert Anderson and his garrison had bravely and
cautiously maintained their difficult situation in the face of an angry
Southern sentiment for nearly four months. This was recognized as a
warlike move; and Secretary Seward was so much opposed to it and, the
Southerners contended, so sacredly bound not to allow its departure,
that he interfered with the expedition, by sending orders, signed by
himself for the President, intended to thwart the move.
Under circumstances so peculiar and delicate it was of the utmost
importance that the Confederate President keep his head. The
responsibility for regaining control of Fort Sumter passed from South
Carolina to the Confederate Government during the early days of
February. Major Anderson, who held the fort with a small Federal
garrison, was a friend of Jefferson Davis, and was keenly alive to the
seriousness of his situation, and while his superiors were in doubt, he
maintained the status of things as they were when the negotiations
began. But the authorities of South Carolina forbade the sending of
fresh supplies of provisions to his men after April 6, and, as there was
but a limited amount on hand, it was only a matter of weeks before he
must evacuate, if neither the North nor the South decided what should be
done. April 15 was the day which he set for giving up his post for the
lack of sustenance. If he moved away peacefully, there would be no war,
and such was the hope of Seward and the moderates of the North, who
thought that a friendly reconstruction would be the result of continued
delay.
Jefferson Davis, who was informed daily of every move that was made in
Washington, determined to let Anderson quietly evacuate Fort Sumter,
having assurances from Seward that no supplies would be sent. In this he
was supported by the unanimous opinion of his Cabinet until on April 9,
when General P. G. T. Beauregard, who commanded the troops gathering at
Charleston, telegraphed that the Federal Government had given formal
notice that assistance would be sent to the starving garrison. Davis
still delayed, giving conditional orders to Beauregard; and Beauregard
acted in the same spirit when he sent Roger A. Pryor and three other
aides to the fort to get definite assurance on the point of Federal
surrender. But when Anderson, on the night of April 12, gave assurance
that on April 15 he would give up his post if he should not receive
contrary orders from Washington prior to that time, the four aides of
General Beauregard who had been sent to the fort gave notice to the
Confederate artillery commander, without consulting superior authority,
that the answer was not satisfactory, and the fatal shelling began. On
the next day Anderson and his men, finding the walls of the fort falling
about them, surrendered. The war had begun.
The act of South Carolina on December 20 led immediately to the
formation of the confederacy of the lower Southern States. The firing on
Fort Sumter was followed in a few days by the secession of Virginia,
Tennessee, and Arkansas, Texas having already joined the "revolution";
Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri were prevented from joining the new
confederacy only by the prompt and extra-legal interference of President
Lincoln. The second tier of Southern States thus joined the first, and a
confederacy of some ten million people demanded the independence which
all agreed had not been forbidden in the Constitution of 1787, and began
at once the raising of armies to make good that demand. The boundaries
of the new republic were extended to the Potomac; commissioners were
sent to the European powers to sue for recognition, and hundreds of the
best officers in the United States Army resigned to seek commands under
the new flag.
The popular excitement and enthusiasm which followed these events in the
South equaled that which marked the early stages of the French
Revolution. Party lines and class distinctions disappeared. Two hundred
thousand volunteers offered their services to Jefferson Davis;
confederate and state bonds to meet the expense of the war were taken at
par wherever there was surplus money; men met at their courthouses to
drill without the call of their officers; and women, even more
enthusiastic than the men, urged their "guardians and protectors" to the
front to meet and vanquish a foe who threatened to invade the Southern
soil. Armories were quickly constructed in a country which knew little
of the mechanic arts; guns and ammunition were ordered from Europe and
from Northern manufacturers as fast as trusty agents could make
arrangements; shipbuilding was resorted to on the banks of the sluggish
rivers; and machinists and sailors were imported from the North and from
England to guide the amateurish hands of the South. Before midsummer
four hundred thousand Southerners were in arms or waiting to receive
them. Colonel Robert E. Lee, accounted the first soldier of the country,
was made a general in the new army. Joseph E. Johnston, Albert Sidney
Johnston, Pierre G. T. Beauregard, and others accepted with confidence
the commissions of the South, and set hundreds of younger men, trained
at West Point or at the Virginia Military Institute, to drilling and
organizing the armies rapidly gathering at strategic points along the
frontier, which extended from Norfolk, Virginia, to the eastern border
of Kansas.
The planters had at last made good their threat, and the aristocratic
society of the South was welded together more firmly than it had ever
been before. Their leaders frankly stated to the world that their four
billions of negro property was of more importance to them than any
federal union which threatened the value of that property by narrowing
the limits of its usefulness. The negroes knew a great war was beginning
and that they were the objects of contention; but long discipline and a
curious pride in the prowess of their masters kept them at their lowly
but important tasks. They boasted that their masters could "whip the
world in arms." Of insurrections and the massacre of the whites, which
at one time had been a nightmare to the ruling classes of the South,
there was no rumor. And throughout the four years of war the slaves
remained faithful and produced by their steady, if slow, toil the food
supplies both for the people at home and for the armies at the front.
The small slaveholder was the most enthusiastic and resolute
secessionist and supporter of the Confederacy. He was just rising in the
world, and anything which barred the upward way was denounced as
degrading and insulting. A larger class of Southerners who joined with
measured alacrity the armies of defense were the small farmers of the
hills and poorer eastern counties; but the "sand-hillers" and
"crackers," the illiterate and neglected by-products of the planter
counties, were not minded to volunteer, though under pressure they
became good soldiers because they dreaded the prospect of hordes of free
negroes in the South more than they did the guns of the North. Small
farmers and landless whites all felt the necessity of holding the slaves
in bondage, and thus a society of sharp class distinctions, openly
acknowledged by all, was moulded into a solid phalanx by the proposed
invasion of the South and the almost certain liberation of the slaves.
Moreover, the churches of the South, including the Catholics in New
Orleans, Charleston, and elsewhere, were now at the height of their
power. Planters, farmers, and the so-called "poor whites" acknowledged
the importance of religious faith and discipline; and the leaders of the
churches, from the bishops of the Episcopalians to the humble pastors of
negro congregations, freely gave their blessings to slavery and urged
their membership to heroic sacrifice for the common cause. Sermons like
that of Dr. Palmer, of New Orleans, in November, 1860, were preached all
over the South, and they were as effective in stirring the warlike
impulses of the people as the fiery addresses of the most enthusiastic
statesmen.
Although there was a unity and a coöperation among all classes of people
from Washington City to southwestern Texas, there were certain areas in
which volunteers, even during the early days of excitement, were not
readily forthcoming. In the pine woods of the Carolinas and the Gulf
States, where nine tenths of the soil was still covered by primeval
forests, and among the high mountains of Virginia, North Carolina,
Georgia, and Tennessee, many people resisted the authority of the
Confederacy passively or actively from the beginning. From the southern
Appalachian region the Union armies drew at least 200,000 recruits, and
in certain counties of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee more
soldiers per thousand of the population volunteered for the Federal
service than could be found in the most enthusiastic communities of the
North. Western Virginia revolted in 1861, and in 1863 she was received
into the Union as a loyal State, in spite of the absence of all
constitutional authority or precedent. Eastern Tennessee might have
pursued the same course if it had been possible for President Lincoln to
lend military assistance at the proper moment. Except in the valley and
southwestern counties of Virginia, most of the grain and
cattle-producing area of the South was indifferent to the cause of the
Confederacy. This was a serious handicap, for troops must be stationed
in many localities to maintain order, and the resistance to the foraging
agents of the Southern armies frequently became serious. From the summer
of 1863 to the end of the struggle the home guards of the various
disaffected districts required many men who might otherwise have been
with Lee or Joseph E. Johnston.
But the better parts of the South, the tobacco and cotton belts, with
their annual output of three hundred millions' worth of exportable
commodities, their high-strung, well-bred gentry accustomed to outdoor
life and horseback riding and devoted to the idea of local autonomy in
government, were behind the Confederate movement. The people had been
better trained in their local militia than their Northern brethren,
their greatest families had long been accustomed to send cadets to West
Point, and in several States there were excellent military schools where
the best of training was given to young men who looked forward with a
vague expectation to careers in the army. If we add to these
considerations the fact that the rural aristocracy, whether secessionist
or unionist in politics in 1860, regarded the movements of the North in
the spring of 1861 as ruthless attacks upon their ideals and their
homes, we shall understand how the Confederates were able to organize a
powerful and efficient army so early in the struggle.
The Confederate seat of Government was removed in May, 1861, from
Montgomery to Richmond. The old Virginia capital, always the center of
strong unionist feelings, became the scene of cabinet meetings, of
sessions of Congress, and military conferences. The easy-going tobacco
gentry who had grown up with the little city on the James welcomed the
invasion of generals, politicians, and army contractors, and saw with
pleasure the population swell from some twenty-five thousand to a
hundred thousand souls. The "White House" became the center of a society
which, as Mrs. Pryor and others insisted, was really aristocratic. The
first families of Virginia became hosts to the statesmen who had
gathered there from all the Southern States; there were "heroes from
the wars" to grace the salons of Mrs. Stannard, Mr. William H.
McFarland, banker to the new government, and others who, but for the
disastrous turn of the conflict, would have become well-known figures in
history. The social life which was adorned by the presence of Mrs.
Jefferson Davis, Mrs. James Chesnut, and Mrs. Joseph E. Johnston was,
however, after one short winter of pleasure and buoyant expectation,
overcast with sorrow and even scattered abroad by the close approach of
the armies of the North, the hated Yankees who had not been expected to
fight.
The serious and all-absorbing business of the South was therefore to
repel invasion. Armies ranging from 5000 to 15,000 troops were stationed
at Norfolk, Williamsburg, Fredericksburg, northern Virginia, Harper's
Ferry, Cumberland Gap, Bowling Green and Columbus, Kentucky, and even in
Missouri. General A. S. Cooper, of New Jersey, became adjutant-general
and the senior officer in the Confederate Army; Robert E. Lee organized
and drilled the Virginia forces; Joseph E. Johnston, his rival in the
old United States Army, commanded at Harper's Ferry; and Beauregard, the
hero of Fort Sumter, was at the head of the army which was expected to
resist and defeat the first invasion from Washington. Behind these
various gatherings of soldiers were hundreds of thousands of others,
waiting to be supplied with arms and ready to learn the ways of war.
Editors, preachers, and orators heralded with unanimous voice the new
nation, and predicted speedy recognition by the powers of Europe and a
permanent peace with their long-time rivals. Three months, six months,
or a year were the various estimates of the duration of the war for
independence. Some planters followed the counsel of President Davis and
planted corn and wheat instead of the accustomed cotton and tobacco, in
order to be able to feed their armies and "their people," but others
were so certain that another autumn would reopen the channels of
commerce to all that they continued their large acreage in their
favorite staples. It was not to be a long struggle like that which
Washington had led. The conditions were different. Both England and
France would intervene when the cotton famine began to press. Even so
sober a man as General Lee expected success and thought of his rôle as
like that of Washington, who was now the Southern model and ideal.
Davis's friends also spoke and wrote of him as the "second Washington."
Thus filled with the highest hopes and reminded daily of the heroic
traditions of the former revolution, the Southerners began their
battles. President Lincoln, loath to admit that war was upon him, called
out 75,000 three months' men when the news of Fort Sumter reached him.
Congress, too, was called in extra session for July 4 to devise ways and
means of compelling the South to return to the fold. These warlike acts,
to those who did not understand the long sectional rivalry, were
supported by an almost unanimous North. The Northwest, led by Douglas,
was prompt to support their first real President and to hasten their
quota of volunteers to the front. In the older sections of the East the
latent hostility toward the people of the South flamed out as never
before, proclaiming a devotion to the Union and to the ideals of the
Fathers which had widespread effect. Even in the great cities, where the
prevailing sentiment in the preceding winter had been for peace and a
permanent disruption of the Union, men rallied to the national standards
with unexpected enthusiasm. The Astors, Belmonts, and Drexels raised
regiments or offered loans to the Administration. If the South was
united and ready to defend their homes, the North seemed equally united
upon a program of invasion and subjection. A solid South had begotten a
solid North. The shells which burst over Fort Sumter had called the
North to arms as effectively as they had banished the hesitation of the
Southern border States.
An army of invasion gathered rapidly in Washington, seized Arlington,
General Lee's ancient family estate, on the Virginia shore of the
Potomac, for a drill ground, took possession of recalcitrant Maryland,
and made of all railroads entering the capital the highways and
instruments of war. Winfield Scott, the old and vacillating general of
the regular army, was quickly set aside, and the able General Irvin
McDowell took his place. Thirty thousand troops moved slowly into
Virginia under the pressure of public opinion stimulated by newspaper
editors, ministers of the Gospel, and stiff-backed Republicans, who,
like similar classes in the South, declared that the war was to be over
in three months. Other armies collected at Cincinnati under young
George B. McClellan, soon to be major-general, at Louisville under Don
C. Buell, and at St. Louis under the erratic John C. Frémont. When
Congress met, all these movements were quickly ratified, and the two
sections of a country of more than thirty million people, all supposed
to be devotees of commerce, industry, and agriculture, "worshipers of
money," entered with unparalleled eagerness upon a war which was soon to
surprise and even appall the world. What industry lost in the North by
secession of the South was regained in the manufacture or preparation of
military supplies for soldiers who fought the South; and in the
Confederacy men who knew little of industry and of seafaring soon
established great plants where the munitions of war were readily made,
or they turned with a strange facility to improvising gunboats and
blockade runners. Within a year or two the people of the North showed
the most bitter hatred of the South and everything Southern, and in the
South women sold their hair for the common cause, and sent their gold
and silver ornaments to the Government to be converted into implements
of war. Such results could hardly have been the outcome of a hasty
decision on either side. The long-nursed dislike of the people of each
section now became a consuming hatred; it was a mighty struggle for the
mastery of the Government which had been founded in 1787-89, for the
control of the vast territory which composed the heart of North America.
One party or the other must be vanquished, one section or the other must
become a second Ireland.
On July 20, General McDowell attacked the army under General Beauregard
near Centreville, a Virginia village to the northward of a little stream
which gave its name to the battle that ensued,--Bull Run. About 35,000
Northerners made up the army of invasion; Beauregard commanded less than
20,000, but Joseph E. Johnston brought his army of 15,000 from the
Valley of Virginia in time to decide the fortunes of that hot summer
day. After stout fighting on both sides during the earlier part of the
onset, these fresh troops of the Valley were seen marching into action.
To Union eyes the 15,000 easily appeared to be 30,000. Panic seized men
and officers alike, and a stampede for Washington and safer ground
followed. Arms, provisions, horses, even, and the carriages of
stiff-backed Republican Congressmen, who had left their posts to see the
fun, were left upon the field and along the wayside as memorials of the
first battle. At the close of the day Jefferson Davis, Beauregard,
Johnston, and "Stonewall" Jackson, who won his proud soubriquet on that
famous field, held a conference and decided not to follow the Federals
to Washington that evening. On the morrow a heavy rain fell and the
roads of northern Virginia became impassable for a week. The defeated
forces had time to regain their composure while the people of both
sections began to see what war meant.
The Southerners rejoiced and celebrated, even relaxed their
preparations, thinking their valor vastly superior to that of their
enemies. President Davis was less confident, and pressed upon his
Congress the better organization of the armies, whose numbers now
mounted to 400,000 men; he sent James M. Mason and John Slidell as
commissioners to Europe, and ordered troops under Robert E. Lee to West
Virginia to save that recalcitrant region to Virginia and the
Confederacy. In the absence of a revenue, and already shut off from the
markets of both the North and Europe, the Confederates resorted to loans
and the issue of paper money to meet the enormous expenses of war. The
Confederate Government borrowed hundreds of millions from the planters,
and the States likewise piled up debts in unprecedented fashion in
maintenance of the same great cause. Of gold and silver there was
little; the banks had long since suspended specie payments, but
increased their issues of notes. The cotton crop, then being harvested
by the negroes, and the grain and cattle of the hill country were the
chief resources. The paper money of the Government was paid to soldiers,
farmers, and planters for their services and supplies, and this was
given back to the Government in exchange for interest-bearing bonds that
were issued. With a European market for the planters' products the
system might easily have been successful; but this one essential to
victory failed, or waited upon military success.
The first general election came on in the late autumn. Under the
stimulus of the victory at Manassas, or Bull Run, Davis and Stephens
were elected President and Vice-President without opposition for terms
of six years. New Senators and Representatives were chosen, generally
from the ranks of conservative politicians, for the sessions of the
regular Confederate Congress, which was to supersede the provisional
congress and government on Washington's birthday, 1862. The judiciary of
the Confederacy was regularly organized except as to the Supreme Court;
the adjustments of national and state relations were all rapidly and
easily made; while the selection and appointment of high officers in the
army and civil administration went steadily on at Richmond, under the
relief from military pressure which the success of Beauregard and
Johnston in northern Virginia had secured. In the general security some
of the ablest officers of the army, especially Joseph E. Johnston, felt
free to attack the President in the newspapers because of the failure to
give the highest commands according to rank of officers in the former
United States Army,--a quarrel which was destined to have a fatal
influence in the final overthrow of the new government. There was also
an attempt to fix upon Davis the blame for not capturing Washington City
the day after the Bull Run _débâcle_. However, these were as yet but
ripples of discontent which only proved the general confidence of the
people in their final triumph.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
F. E. Chadwick's _The Causes of the Civil War_ (1906) and J. K. Hosmer's
_The Appeal to Arms_ (1906) are the best brief and recent accounts of
the events of 1859 to 1862. But Rhodes, McMaster, and Schouler cover the
period to 1876, each after his distinctive method. John C. Ropes's _The
Story of the Civil War_ (1894), continued by W. R. Livermore, treats the
military history in the most critical and fair-minded way, though Wood
and Edmonds's _The Civil War in the United States_ (1905), and G. P. R.
Henderson's _Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War_ (1900), are
equally good, if somewhat briefer.
Of original material there is no limit, and the student is compelled to
find his way through the uncharted wilderness of evidence in the
_Rebellion Records_, already cited, and the thousands of volumes of
memoirs and special contemporary narratives of which U. S. Grant's
_Personal Memoirs_ (1886), Joseph B. Johnston's _Narrative of Military
Operations_ (1874), Nicolay and Hay's _Abraham Lincoln: a History_
(1890), and _Battles and Leaders of the Civil War_ (1887-89), are
perhaps the most important. Almost all the officers of both the Union
and Confederate armies, with the unique exception of General Lee, left
published or unpublished narratives of their rôles in the great struggle
which help to clear up most disputed episodes, though they complicate
the task of the historian.
The estimates of the numbers of men engaged on both sides by Ropes,
Rhodes, and especially T. L. Livermore in his _Numbers and Losses_, are
most trustworthy, though this is a subject still hotly controverted in
both North and South. Each of the great battles has its historian: H. V.
Boynton, _The Battle of Chickamauga_, and Morris Schaff, _The Battle of
the Wilderness_, being the best examples.