A DIFFICULT DUTY.
Having made up his mind to serve his country in the field, Garfield
immediately wrote to the Governor accepting the appointment.
The regiment to which he was assigned was recruited from the same
counties which he represented in the State Senate. A large number of the
officers and privates had been connected as students with Hiram College,
and were personally known to Garfield.
His first step was to qualify himself for his new position. Of the art
and mystery of war the young scholar knew little, but he was no worse
off than many another whom the exigencies of his country summoned from
peaceful pursuits to the tented field and the toilsome march. It was
probably the only office which he ever assumed without suitable
qualifications. But it was not in his nature to undertake any duties
without endeavoring to fit himself for their discharge.
His method of studying the art of war was curious and original. Falling
back on his old trade of carpenter, he brought "his saw and jack-plane
again into play, fashioned companies, officers and non-commissioned
officers out of maple blocks, and with these wooden-headed troops he
thoroughly mastered the infantry tactics in his quarters." There was
this advantage in his method, that his toy troops were thoroughly
manageable.
The next step was to organize a school for the officers of his regiment,
requiring thorough recitation in the tactics, while their teacher
illustrated the maneuvers by the blocks he had prepared for his own
instruction. He was obliged to begin with the officers, that they might
be qualified to assist him in instructing the men under their command.
He was then able to institute regimental, squad, skirmish, and bayonet
drill, and kept his men at these exercises from six to eight hours daily
till the Forty-second won the reputation of being the best drilled
regiment to be found in Ohio.
My boy readers will be reminded of the way in which he taught geometry
in one of his winter schools, preparing himself at night for the lesson
of the next day. I would like to call their attention also to the
thoroughness with which he did everything. Though previously ignorant of
military tactics he instructed his regiment in them thoroughly,
believing that whatever was worth doing at all was worth doing well.
He was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel, but by the time his organization
was completed he was promoted to the Colonelcy.
At last the preliminary work was completed. His men, an undisciplined
body when he took them in hand, had become trained soldiers, but as yet
they had not received what Napoleon III. called the "baptism of fire."
It is all very well to march and countermarch, and practice the ordinary
evolutions like militia-men at a muster, but how was the regiment, how
was its scholarly commander likely to act in the field?
On the 14th of December orders for the field were received by Colonel
Garfield's command, stationed at Camp Chase.
Then came the trial of parting with wife and mother and going forth to
battle and danger. To his mother, whose highest ambition had been that
her son should be a scholar, it was doubtless a keen disappointment that
his settled prospects should be so broken up; but she, too, was
patriotic, and she quietly said: "Go, my son, your life belongs to your
country."
Colonel Garfield's orders were to report to General Buell at Louisville.
He moved his regiment by way of Cincinnati to Catlettsburg, Kentucky, a
town at the junction of the Big Sandy and the Ohio, and was enabled to
report to his commander on the 19th of December.
Then, for the first time, he learned what was the nature of the duty
that was assigned to him. It was no less than to save Kentucky to the
Union. A border State, with an interest in slavery, public opinion was
divided, and it was uncertain to which side it would incline. The
Confederates understood the value of the prize, and they had taken
measures, which promised to be successful, to wrest it from the Union.
The task had been committed to Gen. Humphrey Marshall, who had invaded
Eastern Kentucky from the Virginia border, and had already advanced as
far north as Prestonburg.
Gen. Marshall fortified a strong natural position near Paintville, and
overran the whole Piedmont region. This region contained few slaves--but
one in twenty-five of the whole population. It was inhabited by a brave
rural population, more closely resembling their Northern than their
Southern neighbors. Among these people Marshall sent stump orators to
fire them with enthusiasm for the Confederate cause. Such men would make
valuable soldiers and must be won over if possible.
So all that portion of the State was in a ferment. It looked as if it
would be lost to the Union. Marshall was daily increasing the number of
his forces, preparing either to intercept Buell, and prevent his advance
into Tennessee, or, cutting off his communications, with the assistance
of Beauregard, to crush him between them.
To Colonel Garfield, an inexperienced civilian, who had only studied
military tactics by the aid of wooden blocks, and who had never been
under fire, it was proposed to meet Marshall, a trained soldier, to
check his advance, and drive him from the State. This would have been
formidable enough if he had been provided with an equal number of
soldiers; but this was far from being the case. He had but twenty-five
hundred men to aid him in his difficult work, and of these eleven
hundred, under Colonel Craven, were a hundred miles away, at Paris,
Kentucky, and this hundred miles was no level plain, but a rough,
mountainous country, infested with guerrillas and occupied by a disloyal
people.
Of course, the first thing to be done was to connect with Colonel
Craven, but, considering the distance and the nature of the country to
be traversed, it was a most difficult problem. The chances were that
Gen. Marshall, with his vastly superior force, would attack the two
bodies of soldiers separately, and crush them before a union could be
effected.
Gen. Buell explained how matters stood to the young colonel of
volunteers, and ended thus:
"That is what you have to do, Colonel Garfield--drive Marshall from
Kentucky, and you see how much depends on your action. Now go to your
quarters, think of it overnight, and come here in the morning and tell
me how you will do it."
In college Garfield had been called upon to solve many difficult
problems in the higher mathematics, but it is doubtful whether he ever
encountered a more knotty problem than this one.
He and Colonel Craven represented two little boys of feeble strength,
unable to combine their efforts, who were called upon to oppose and
capture a big boy of twice their size, who knew a good deal more about
fighting than they did.
No wonder the young colonel felt perplexed. But he did not give up. It
was not his way. He resolved to consider whether anything could be done,
and what.
My chief object in writing this volume being to commend its subject as
an example for boys, I think it right to call attention to this trait
which he possessed in a conspicuous degree. Brought face to face with
difficulty--with what might almost be called the impossible, he did not
say, "Oh, I can't do it. It is impossible." He went home to devise a
plan.
First of all, it was important that he should know something of the
intervening country--its conformation, its rivers and streams, if there
were any. So, on his way to his room he sought a book-store and bought
a rude map of Kentucky, and then, shutting himself up in his room, while
others were asleep, he devoted himself to a lesson in geography. With
more care than he had ever used in school, he familiarized himself with
the geography of the country in which he was to operate, and then set
himself to devise some feasible plan of campaign.
It was a hard problem, and required still more anxious thought, because
the general to whom he was to report it, was, unlike himself, a man
thoroughly trained in the art of war.
The next morning, according to orders, he sought again his commanding
officer.
Gen. Buell was a man of great reticence and severe military habits, and
if the plan were weak or foolish, as might well be from the utter lack
of experience of the young officer who was to make it, he would
unhesitatingly say so.
As Garfield laid his rude map and roughly outlined plan on the table,
and explained his conception of the campaign, he watched anxiously to
see how Gen. Buell was impressed by it. But the general was a man who
knew how to veil his thoughts. He waited in silence till Garfield had
finished, only asking a brief question now and then, and at the end,
without expressing his opinion one way or the other, merely said:
"Colonel Garfield, your orders will be sent you at six o'clock this
evening."
Garfield was not compelled to wait beyond that hour.
Promptly the order came, organizing the Eighteenth Brigade of the Army
of the Ohio, under the command of Colonel Garfield, with a letter of
instructions, embodying essentially the plan submitted by the young
officer in the morning.
When Garfield set out with his command the next morning, Gen. Buell said
to him at parting:
"Colonel, you will be at so great a distance from me, and communication
will be so difficult, that I must commit all matters of detail and much
of the fate of the campaign to your discretion. I shall hope to hear a
good account of you."