The Confederate Government Organized--Fort Sumter--President Lincoln
Calls for 75000 Men--Command of the Union Forces offered to Robert E.
Lee--Lee Joins the Confederacy--Missouri Saved to the Union--Battle of
Bull Run--Union Successes in the West--General Grant Captures Fort
Donelson--"I Have No Terms but Unconditional Surrender"--The Monitor and
Merrimac Fight--Its World-Wide Effect--Grant Victorious at Shiloh--Union
Naval Victory Near Memphis--That City Captured--General McClellan's
Tactics--He Retreats from Victory at Malvern Hill--Second Bull Run
Defeat--Great Battle of Antietam--Lee Repulsed, but Not Pursued--
McClellan Superseded by Burnside--Union Defeat at Frederickburg--
Union Victories in the West--Bragg Defeated by Rosecrans at Stone River
--The Emancipation Proclamation.
The new Confederate Government was organized at Montgomery, Ala.,
February 4, 1861, by delegates from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida,
Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi,
was elected President and Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia,
Vice-President. The border States, which would be the battlefield of war,
still hoped for peace, and hesitated to yield to the importunities of
those who had already crossed the Rubicon. In Charleston harbor, the
American flag floated over a little fortress called Sumter, so named
after the "South Carolina Gamecock" of the Revolution, and commanded by
Major Robert Anderson. In the gray of the morning on April 12, the
Confederate batteries opened fire on the fort. For nearly two days the
Stars and Stripes waved defiantly amid the storm of shot and shell. Then
further resistance being useless and hopeless, the brave garrison
evacuated the fort, carrying away the flag which they had so resolutely
defended. Two days later President Lincoln called for 75,000 men to put
down armed resistance to national authority. The North sprang to arms,
and from East and West regiments started on their way to Washington. The
governors of Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia and
Missouri declined to obey the call of the President, and the secession of
all these States from the Union followed, except Kentucky and Missouri.
On April 17, the Virginia Convention passed the Ordinance of Secession.
President Lincoln had desired to give the command of the troops to be
called into the field to Colonel Robert E. Lee, of the First United
States Cavalry, but that officer declined to accept the offer, resigned
his commission, and joined the Confederacy. It should be needless to say
that the qualities displayed by Lee, at the head of the Army of Northern
Virginia, amply justified President Lincoln's measure of his capacity.
The seat of the Confederate Government was removed from Montgomery to
Richmond, and the latter city was thenceforward the headquarters of the
rebellion.
Of the other border States Maryland remained in the Union, and Kentucky,
after an attempt to maintain an impossible neutrality, yielded to the
influence of mountain air, and espoused the cause of freedom. Missouri's
disloyal government sought to drag the State into secession, but Francis
Preston Blair, a lawyer of St. Louis, and Captain Nathaniel Lyon,
commandant of the United States Arsenal in that city, took vigorous
action against the rebel sympathizers, and saved the State to the Union.
The German element in Missouri was so loyal to the old flag that
"Unionist" and "Dutchman" were synonymous terms in that region during the
war. Captain Lyon, promoted to brigadier-general, was defeated and killed
at the battle of Wilson Creek. It is believed that he resolved to win the
battle or die. Of such stuff were the men who rescued the Southwest.
The battle of Bull Run, when General Joseph E. Johnston, commanding the
Confederates, defeated General McDowell with serious loss, and sent the
Union army in disorderly retreat toward Washington, taught the Northern
people that the war was not a parade, and that the overthrow of the
Confederacy would tax all the energies of the loyal States. Fortunately,
General George H. Thomas won an important victory for the Union at Mill
Spring, Kentucky, in January, 1862, and the capture of Fort Henry and
Fort Donelson, in the following month, by General Ulysses S. Grant, aided
by Commodore Foote and his gunboats, tended to efface the depression
caused by defeat in Virginia. General Grant's reply to the Confederate
General Buckner, when the latter wished to make terms for the surrender
of Fort Donelson, was on every tongue in the North. "I have no terms but
unconditional surrender. I propose to move immediately upon your works,"
was a message that spoke the man. Nearly sixteen thousand prisoners were
captured. They belonged mostly to the working classes of Missouri,
Tennessee and Arkansas.
* * *
John Ericsson's Monitor, in March, 1862, sent a thrill of relief and joy
through the North by its wonderful victory over the Merrimac. The
Confederates cut down a United States frigate at the Norfolk navy yard,
and transformed it into an ironclad ram, with a powerful beak. This
monster they sent against the Union fleet of wooden warships in Hampton
Roads. Broadsides had no effect on the Merrimac. The floating fortress
attacked the Cumberland, ramming that vessel, and breaking a great hole
in its side. The Cumberland sank with all on board. The Congress was
driven aground and compelled to surrender. Then the monster rested for
the night, intending to continue its mission of destruction on the
morrow. It seemed that not only the Union fleet, but the ports and
commerce of the North would be at the mercy of this novel and terrible
engine of destruction. The telegraph carried the news everywhere, and in
dread and anxiety the people awaited the fate of another day. When
morning came at Hampton Roads a small nondescript vessel, looking like an
oval raft with a turret, interposed between the Merrimac and its prey. It
was the Monitor, the invention of Captain John Ericsson, and it had
arrived during the night of March 8. The Monitor had been constructed at
Greenpoint, Long Island, and was towed to Hampton Roads by steamers. Her
turret was a revolving, bomb-proof fort, in which were mounted two
11-inch Dahlgren guns. As the turret revolved the great guns kept up a
steady discharge, battering the sides of the Merrimac. The latter hurled
enormous masses of iron on the Monitor, but made no impression whatever
on the little craft, and the duel continued until the Merrimac gave up
the fight, and ran back to shelter at Norfolk. Ericsson's praise was on
every tongue. The great Swedish engineer whose sanity had been questioned
when he submitted his ideas to the Navy Department, not only saved the
Union navy from destruction, and Northern harbors from devastation, but
he also revolutionized naval warfare.
* * *
Their first line broken in the Southwest, and now compelled to fight
within secession territory, the Confederates made a stand along a second
line from Memphis to Chattanooga, their forces being massed at Corinth.
In the great battle of Shiloh (April 6 and 7) 100,000 men were engaged;
the National loss in killed, wounded and prisoners was about 15,000, and
that of the Confederates over 10,000. The latter fought more desperately
than on any previous field, and for a time they had the advantage. The
usual ethics of defeat had, however, no place in General Grant's military
education, and the enemy were at length forced to give way. General
Albert Sydney Johnston, one of the ablest Confederate commanders, was
killed, and General Beauregard retreated, leaving his dead and wounded in
Union hands. The second line of defence was broken. An amusing incident
of this battle--if anything can be amusing in war--was a message sent by
General Beauregard to General Grant explaining why he had withdrawn his
troops. General Grant was strongly tempted to assure Beauregard that no
apologies were necessary.
The capture of New Orleans in the latter part of April, and of Island
Number Ten in the same month gave the National forces control of the
Mississippi nearly up to Vicksburg and down to Memphis. The Confederate
flotilla was defeated and destroyed in a sharp engagement by the Union
river fleet, two miles above Memphis, on June 6, the battle occurring
in full view of that city. It was one of the most dramatic spectacles
of the war. The combat lasted just one hour and three minutes, and as
the Union fleet landed at Memphis, a number of newsboys sprang on shore
from the vessels, shouting: "Here's your New York _Tribune_ and
_Herald_!"--before the city had been formally surrendered. The Unionists
received the National troops like brothers, and one lady brought out from
its hiding place in her chimney a National flag concealed from the
beginning of the war. "We found Memphis," wrote a correspondent, "as
torpid as Syria, where Yusef Browne declared that he saw only one man
exhibit any sign of activity, and he was engaged in tumbling from the
roof of a house." Salt was rubbed into the wounds of the vanquished by
the military assignment of Albert D. Richardson and Col. Thomas W. Knox,
representatives of the _Tribune_ and _Herald_, to edit the bitterest
secession newspaper in the town.
* * *
In the East the Union cause made no progress. General George B.
McClellan, in command of the Army of the Potomac, was endeavoring to play
the part of a Turenne in a field utterly foreign to European strategy.
Generals Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston and Thomas Jonathan
("Stonewall") Jackson, the three great Confederate commanders in
Virginia, proved themselves easily the superiors of their antagonists in
the tactics best fitted for American warfare, and but for the stubborn
valor of the Union soldiers at Fair Oaks and in the seven days' battles
ending at Malvern Hills, the Army of the Potomac would probably have been
destroyed. When Malvern Hills was won by the splendid fighting of the
National troops, without any agency of their commander, and when they
were enthusiastic for a forward movement upon Richmond, McClellan
consulted his tactical horoscope, and ordered them to retreat just as if
they had been beaten. The second battle of Bull Run, with General John
Pope in command on the Union side, and Generals Lee, "Stonewall" Jackson
and James Longstreet leading the Confederates, stopped short of being as
disastrous a defeat for the National arms as the first Bull Run, but that
was all.
Lee pushed into Maryland with about 45,000 troops, and encountered
McClellan at Antietam, on September 17, with 85,000. McClellan was
"cautious," as usual, but fighting had to be done, and the rank and file
of the Union forces were, as ever, anxious to fight. Lee was repulsed
after a fearful conflict, in which about 20,000 men were killed and
wounded. General Joseph Hooker, known as "Fighting Joe Hooker," was under
McClellan at Antietam, and behaved most gallantly. Wounded before noon,
Hooker was carried from the field. "Had he not been disabled," wrote a
war correspondent, "he would probably have made it a decisive conflict.
Realizing that it was one of the world's great days, he said: 'I would
gladly have compromised with the enemy by receiving a mortal wound at
night, could I have remained at the head of my troops until the sun went
down.'" McClellan neglected to take advantage of the success achieved at
the cost of so many brave lives, and Mr. George W. Smalley, then of the
_Tribune_, who was on the field, is authority for the statement that
General Hooker was privately requested in behalf of a number of Union
officers, to assume command and follow up the victory. In Hooker's
condition this was impossible, even had he been inclined to take a step
so serious in its possible consequences for himself.
McClellan was superseded in November by General Ambrose E. Burnside, who
had distinguished himself at Antietam, as he always did in a subordinate
command. On December 13, General Burnside suffered a fearful defeat at
Fredericksburg, with a loss of 12,000 men. It was one of Lee's most
brilliant victories, and on the Union side it was a useless sacrifice of
life. "Lee's position," says General Fitzhugh Lee, "was strong by nature
and was made stronger by art. No troops could successfully assail it, and
no commanding general should have ordered it to be done."[1] Burnside was
superseded by Hooker, and the armies in Virginia did but little more
until spring.
[1] Life of General Robert E. Lee. D. Appleton & Co.
* * *
After the battle of Shiloh the Confederates made Chattanooga, Tenn., the
base of their operations in the Southwest. General Braxton Bragg, who
succeeded Beauregard in command in that region, invaded Kentucky, and
sought to drive the inhabitants into the Confederate service. A
sanguinary battle at Perryville resulted in the complete repulse of the
Confederates, who retreated into Tennessee, carrying with them a vast
quantity of plunder. General William Starke Rosecrans now came to the
front as a successful Union commander. With Grant's left wing he defeated
the Confederates at Iuka, September 19, and Corinth, October 3 and 4, and
as chief of the Army of the Cumberland, he fought one of the great
battles of the war with General Bragg at Murfreesboro, or Stone River,
December 31 and January 2. Never during the four years of conflict did
the troops on both sides fight more resolutely. The first day was rather
favorable to the Confederates. Little was done on New Year's Day, but on
January 2 the struggle was renewed more fiercely than before. The western
armies had caught Grant's instinct of never recognizing defeat. Charge
after charge was made, first by the Confederates, then by the Union
troops, and at length the Confederate line fell back, and did not charge
again. At midnight of January 4 Bragg retired in the direction of
Chattanooga. The killed, wounded and missing numbered over 20,000,
probably about evenly divided.
* * *
The Emancipation Proclamation, issued by President Lincoln on New Year's
Day, 1863, was in every sense a statesmanlike and justifiable measure. It
aroused the powerful anti-slavery sentiment of England in support of the
Union, and neutralized Tory sympathy with the Confederacy; it
strengthened the Union cause at home, and it showed that the National
Government was not afraid to punish, and was resolved to weaken its
enemies by the confiscation of their property.