Davis's Proclamation for Privateers--Lincoln's Proclamation of
Blockade--The Call for Three Years' Volunteers--Southern Military
Preparations--Rebel Capital Moved to Richmond--Virginia, North Carolina,
Tennessee and Arkansas Admitted to Confederate States--Desertion of Army
and Navy Officers--Union Troops Fortify Virginia Shore of the
Potomac--Concentration at Harper's Ferry--Concentration at Fortress
Monroe and Cairo--English Neutrality--Seward's 21st-of-May
Despatch--Lincoln's Corrections--Preliminary Skirmishes--Forward to
Richmond--Plan of McDowell's Campaign
From the slower political developments in the border slave States we
must return and follow up the primary hostilities of the rebellion. The
bombardment of Sumter, President Lincoln's call for troops, the
Baltimore riot, the burning of Harper's Ferry armory and Norfolk
navy-yard, and the interruption of railroad communication which, for
nearly a week, isolated the capital and threatened it with siege and
possible capture, fully demonstrated the beginning of serious civil war.
Jefferson Davis's proclamation, on April 17, of intention to issue
letters of marque, was met two days later by President Lincoln's
counter-proclamation instituting a blockade of the Southern ports, and
declaring that privateers would be held amenable to the laws against
piracy. His first call for seventy-five thousand three months' militia
was dictated as to numbers by the sudden emergency, and as to form and
term of service by the provisions of the Act of 1795. It needed only a
few days to show that this form of enlistment was both cumbrous and
inadequate; and the creation of a more powerful army was almost
immediately begun. On May 3 a new proclamation was issued, calling into
service 42,034 three years' volunteers, 22,714 enlisted men to add ten
regiments to the regular army, and 18,000 seamen for blockade service: a
total immediate increase of 82,748, swelling the entire military
establishment to an army of 156,861 and a navy of 25,000.
No express authority of law yet existed for these measures; but
President Lincoln took the responsibility of ordering them, trusting
that Congress would legalize his acts. His confidence was entirely
justified. At the special session which met under his proclamation, on
the fourth of July, these acts were declared valid, and he was
authorized, moreover, to raise an army of a million men and $250,000,000
in money to carry on the war to suppress the rebellion; while other
legislation conferred upon him supplementary authority to meet the
emergency.
Meanwhile, the first effort of the governors of the loyal States was to
furnish their quotas under the first call for militia. This was easy
enough as to men. It required only a few days to fill the regiments and
forward them to the State capitals and principal cities; but to arm and
equip them for the field on the spur of the moment was a difficult task
which involved much confusion and delay, even though existing armories
and foundries pushed their work to the utmost and new ones were
established. Under the militia call, the governors appointed all the
officers required by their respective quotas, from company lieutenant to
major-general of division; while under the new call for three years'
volunteers, their authority was limited to the simple organization of
regiments.
In the South, war preparation also immediately became active. All the
indications are that up to their attack on Sumter, the Southern leaders
hoped to effect separation through concession and compromise by the
North. That hope, of course, disappeared with South Carolina's opening
guns, and the Confederate government made what haste it could to meet
the ordeal it dreaded even while it had provoked it. The rebel Congress
was hastily called together, and passed acts recognizing war and
regulating privateering; admitting Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee,
and Arkansas to the Confederate States; authorizing a $50,000,000 loan;
practically confiscating debts due from Southern to Northern citizens;
and removing the seat of government from Montgomery, Alabama, to
Richmond, Virginia.
Four different calls for Southern volunteers had been made, aggregating
82,000 men; and Jefferson Davis's message now proposed to further
organize and hold in readiness an army of 100,000. The work of erecting
forts and batteries for defense was being rapidly pushed at all points:
on the Atlantic coast, on the Potomac, and on the Mississippi and other
Western streams. For the present the Confederates were well supplied
with cannon and small arms from the captured navy-yards at Norfolk and
Pensacola and the six or eight arsenals located in the South. The
martial spirit of their people was roused to the highest enthusiasm, and
there was no lack of volunteers to fill the companies and regiments
which the Confederate legislators authorized Davis to accept, either by
regular calls on State executives in accordance with, or singly in
defiance of, their central dogma of States Rights, as he might prefer.
The secession of the Southern States not only strengthened the rebellion
with the arms and supplies stored in the various military and naval
depots within their limits, and the fortifications erected for their
defense: what was of yet greater help to the revolt, a considerable
portion of the officers of the army and navy--perhaps one
third--abandoned the allegiance which they had sworn to the United
States, and, under the false doctrine of State supremacy taught by
Southern leaders, gave their professional skill and experience to the
destruction of the government which had educated and honored them. The
defection of Robert E. Lee was a conspicuous example, and his loss to
the Union and service to the rebel army cannot easily be measured. So,
also, were the similar cases of Adjutant-General Cooper and
Quartermaster-General Johnston. In gratifying contrast stands the
steadfast loyalty and devotion of Lieutenant-General Winfield Scott,
who, though he was a Virginian and loved his native State, never wavered
an instant in his allegiance to the flag he had heroically followed in
the War of 1812, and triumphantly planted over the capital of Mexico in
1847. Though unable to take the field, he as general-in-chief directed
the assembling and first movements of the Union troops.
The largest part of the three months' regiments were ordered to
Washington city as the most important position in a political, and most
exposed in a military point of view. The great machine of war, once
started, moved, as it always does, by its own inherent energy from
arming to concentration, from concentration to skirmish and battle. It
was not long before Washington was a military camp. Gradually the
hesitation to "invade" the "sacred soil" of the South faded out under
the stern necessity to forestall an invasion of the equally sacred soil
of the North; and on May 24 the Union regiments in Washington crossed
the Potomac and planted themselves in a great semicircle of formidable
earthworks eighteen miles long on the Virginia shore, from Chain Bridge
to Hunting Creek, below Alexandria.
Meanwhile, a secondary concentration of force developed itself at
Harper's Ferry, forty-nine miles northwest of Washington. When, on April
20, a Union detachment had burned and abandoned the armory at that
point, it was at once occupied by a handful of rebel militia; and
immediately thereafter Jefferson Davis had hurried his regiments thither
to "sustain" or overawe Baltimore; and when that prospect failed, it
became a rebel camp of instruction. Afterward, as Major-General
Patterson collected his Pennsylvania quota, he turned it toward that
point as a probable field of operations. As a mere town, Harper's Ferry
was unimportant; but, lying on the Potomac, and being at the head of the
great Shenandoah valley, down which not only a good turnpike, but also
an effective railroad ran southeastward to the very heart of the
Confederacy, it was, and remained through the entire war, a strategical
line of the first importance, protected, as the Shenandoah valley was,
by the main chain of the Alleghanies on the west and the Blue Ridge on
the east.
A part of the eastern quotas had also been hurried to Fortress Monroe,
Virginia, lying at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, which became and
continued an important base for naval as well as military operations. In
the West, even more important than St. Louis was the little town of
Cairo, lying at the extreme southern end of the State of Illinois, at
the confluence of the Ohio River with the Mississippi. Commanding, as it
did, thousands of miles of river navigation in three different
directions, and being also the southernmost point of the earliest
military frontier, it had been the first care of General Scott to occupy
it; and, indeed, it proved itself to be the military key of the whole
Mississippi valley.
It was not an easy thing promptly to develop a military policy for the
suppression of the rebellion. The so-called Confederate States of
America covered a military field having more than six times the area of
Great Britain, with a coast-line of over thirty-five hundred miles, and
an interior frontier of over seven thousand miles. Much less was it
possible promptly to plan and set on foot concise military campaigns to
reduce the insurgent States to allegiance. Even the great military
genius of General Scott was unable to do more than suggest a vague
outline for the work. The problem was not only too vast, but as yet too
indefinite, since the political future of West Virginia, Kentucky, and
Missouri still hung in more or less uncertainty.
The passive and negligent attitude which the Buchanan administration had
maintained toward the insurrection during the whole three months between
the presidential election and Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, gave the
rebellion an immense advantage in the courts and cabinets of Europe.
Until within three days of the end of Buchanan's term not a word of
protest or even explanation was sent to counteract the impression that
disunion was likely to become permanent. Indeed, the non-coercion
doctrine of Buchanan's message was, in the eyes of European statesmen,
equivalent to an acknowledgment of such a result; and the formation of
the Confederate government, followed so quickly by the fall of Fort
Sumter, seemed to them a practical realization of their forecast. The
course of events appeared not merely to fulfil their expectations, but
also, in the case of England and France, gratified their eager hopes. To
England it promised cheap cotton and free trade with the South. To
France it appeared to open the way for colonial ambitions which Napoleon
III so soon set on foot on an imperial scale.
Before Charles Francis Adams, whom President Lincoln appointed as the
new minister to England, arrived in London and obtained an interview
with Lord John Russell, Mr. Seward had already received several items of
disagreeable news. One was that, prior to his arrival, the Queen's
proclamation of neutrality had been published, practically raising the
Confederate States to the rank of a belligerent power, and, before they
had a single privateer afloat, giving these an equality in British ports
with United States ships of war. Another was that an understanding had
been reached between England and France which would lead both
governments to take the same course as to recognition, whatever that
course might be. Third, that three diplomatic agents of the Confederate
States were in London, whom the British minister had not yet seen, but
whom he had caused to be informed that he was not unwilling to see
unofficially.
Under the irritation produced by this hasty and equivocal action of the
British government, Mr. Seward wrote a despatch to Mr. Adams under date
of May 21, which, had it been sent in the form of the original draft,
would scarcely have failed to lead to war between the two nations. While
it justly set forth with emphasis and courage what the government of the
United States would endure and what it would not endure from foreign
powers during the Southern insurrection, its phraseology, written in a
heat of indignation, was so blunt and exasperating as to imply
intentional disrespect.
When Mr. Seward read the document to President Lincoln, the latter at
once perceived its objectionable tone, and retained it for further
reflection. A second reading confirmed his first impression. Thereupon,
taking his pen, the frontier lawyer, in a careful revision of the whole
despatch, so amended and changed the work of the trained and experienced
statesman, as entirely to eliminate its offensive crudeness, and bring
it within all the dignity and reserve of the most studied diplomatic
courtesy. If, after Mr. Seward's remarkable memorandum of April 1, the
Secretary of State had needed any further experience to convince him of
the President's mastery in both administrative and diplomatic judgment,
this second incident afforded him the full evidence.
No previous President ever had such a sudden increase of official work
devolve upon him as President Lincoln during the early months of his
administration. The radical change of parties through which he was
elected not only literally filled the White House with applicants for
office, but practically compelled a wholesale substitution of new
appointees for the old, to represent the new thought and will of the
nation. The task of selecting these was greatly complicated by the sharp
competition between the heterogeneous elements of which the Republican
party was composed. This work was not half completed when the Sumter
bombardment initiated active rebellion, and precipitated the new
difficulty of sifting the loyal from the disloyal, and the yet more
pressing labor of scrutinizing the organization of the immense new
volunteer army called into service by the proclamation of May 3. Mr.
Lincoln used often to say at this period, when besieged by claims to
appointment, that he felt like a man letting rooms at one end of his
house, while the other end was on fire. In addition to this merely
routine work was the much more delicate and serious duty of deciding the
hundreds of novel questions affecting the constitutional principles and
theories of administration.
The great departments of government, especially those of war and navy,
could not immediately expedite either the supervision or clerical
details of this sudden expansion, and almost every case of resulting
confusion and delay was brought by impatient governors and State
officials to the President for complaint and correction. Volunteers were
coming rapidly enough to the various rendezvous in the different States,
but where were the rations to feed them, money to pay them, tents to
shelter them, uniforms to clothe them, rifles to arm them, officers to
drill and instruct them, or transportation to carry them? In this
carnival of patriotism, this hurly-burly of organization, the weaknesses
as well as the virtues of human nature quickly developed themselves, and
there was manifest not only the inevitable friction of personal rivalry,
but also the disturbing and baneful effects of occasional falsehood and
dishonesty, which could not always be immediately traced to the
responsible culprit. It happened in many instances that there were
alarming discrepancies between the full paper regiments and brigades
reported as ready to start from State capitals, and the actual number of
recruits that railroad trains brought to the Washington camps; and Mr.
Lincoln several times ironically compared the process to that of a man
trying to shovel a bushel of fleas across a barn floor.
While the month of May insensibly slipped away amid these preparatory
vexations, camps of instruction rapidly grew to small armies at a few
principal points, even under such incidental delay and loss; and during
June the confronting Union and Confederate forces began to produce the
conflicts and casualties of earnest war. As yet they were both few and
unimportant: the assassination of Ellsworth when Alexandria was
occupied; a slight cavalry skirmish at Fairfax Court House; the rout of
a Confederate regiment at Philippi, West Virginia; the blundering
leadership through which two Union detachments fired upon each other in
the dark at Big Bethel, Virginia; the ambush of a Union railroad train
at Vienna Station; and Lyon's skirmish, which scattered the first
collection of rebels at Boonville, Missouri. Comparatively speaking all
these were trivial in numbers of dead and wounded--the first few drops
of blood before the heavy sanguinary showers the future was destined to
bring. But the effect upon the public was irritating and painful to a
degree entirely out of proportion to their real extent and gravity.
The relative loss and gain in these affairs was not greatly unequal. The
victories of Philippi and Boonville easily offset the disasters of Big
Bethel and Vienna. But the public mind was not yet schooled to patience
and to the fluctuating chances of war. The newspapers demanded prompt
progress and ample victory as imperatively as they were wont to demand
party triumph in politics or achievement in commercial enterprise.
"Forward to Richmond," repeated the "New York Tribune," day after day,
and many sheets of lesser note and influence echoed the cry. There
seemed, indeed, a certain reason for this clamor, because the period of
enlistment of the three months' regiments was already two thirds gone,
and they were not yet all armed and equipped for field service.
President Lincoln was fully alive to the need of meeting this popular
demand. The special session of Congress was soon to begin, and to it the
new administration must look, not only to ratify what had been done, but
to authorize a large increase of the military force, and heavy loans for
coming expenses of the war. On June 29, therefore, he called his cabinet
and principal military officers to a council of war at the Executive
Mansion, to discuss a more formidable campaign than had yet been
planned. General Scott was opposed to such an undertaking at that time.
He preferred waiting until autumn, meanwhile organizing and drilling a
large army, with which to move down the Mississippi and end the war with
a final battle at New Orleans. Aside from the obvious military
objections to this course, such a procrastination, in the present
irritation of the public temper, was not to be thought of; and the old
general gracefully waived his preference and contributed his best
judgment to the perfecting of an immediate campaign into Virginia.
The Confederate forces in Virginia had been gathered by the orders of
General Lee into a defensive position at Manassas Junction, where a
railroad from Richmond and another from Harper's Ferry come together.
Here General Beauregard, who had organized and conducted the Sumter
bombardment, had command of a total of about twenty-five thousand men
which he was drilling. The Junction was fortified with some slight
field-works and fifteen heavy guns, supported by a garrison of two
thousand; while the main body was camped in a line of seven miles'
length behind Bull Run, a winding, sluggish stream flowing southeasterly
toward the Potomac. The distance was about thirty-two miles southwest of
Washington. Another Confederate force of about ten thousand, under
General J.E. Johnston, was collected at Winchester and Harper's Ferry
on the Potomac, to guard the entrance to the Shenandoah valley; and an
understanding existed between Johnston and Beauregard, that in case
either were attacked, the other would come to his aid by the quick
railroad transportation between the two places.
The new Union plan contemplated that Brigadier-General McDowell should
march from Washington against Manassas and Bull Run, with a force
sufficient to beat Beauregard, while General Patterson, who had
concentrated the bulk of the Pennsylvania regiments in the neighborhood
of Harper's Ferry, in numbers nearly or quite double that of his
antagonist, should move against Johnston, and either fight or hold him
so that he could not come to the aid of Beauregard. At the council
McDowell emphasized the danger of such a junction; but General Scott
assured him: "If Johnston joins Beauregard, he shall have Patterson on
his heels." With this understanding, McDowell's movement was ordered to
begin on July 9.