The History of the Confederate War, Its Causes and Its Conduct. Volume 1 of 2

In the meanwhile both sides were making every possible preparation for a war that had not been declared, a war that both professed to regard as unnecessary, a war for the outbreak of which each was determined that the other and not itself should bear all the blame.

The Congress at Washington had adjourned at the beginning of March without making any warlike appropriations whatsoever. Forty days of Mr. Lincoln's administration had passed without the calling of a regiment or a company or even a soldier into the field. Congress had indeed passed a resolution declaring its purpose to avoid war and its conviction that every possible concession should be made by Northern sentiment in avoidance of that terrible catastrophe.

It had resolved:

"That the existing discontents among the Southern people, and the growing hostility to the Federal Government among them, are greatly to be regretted; and that whether such discontents and hostility are without just cause or not, any reasonable proper and constitutional remedies and additional and more specific guarantees of their peculiar rights and interests, as recognized by the Constitution, necessary to preserve the peace of the country and the perpetuity of the Union, should be promptly and cheerfully granted."

But how much did this resolution signify? It was passed by more than a two-thirds majority of a rump House of Representatives after the Southern members of that body had withdrawn from it. It therefore seemed to represent Northern and Republican sentiment. But the Senate rejected it and it came to nothing. It was a resolve that concessions should be made and that new guarantees should be given in the interest of the Union's preservation. But, the Southerners pointed out, the concessions were not made and the new guarantees were not given.

It was impossible, in fact, that these things should be done. It was easy for Congress to resolve that "any reasonable, proper and constitutional remedies and additional and more specific guarantees" should be given, but quite another thing to secure the execution of such a program. One house of Congress vetoed the action of the other on every such resolution and both refused to put the guarantees into legal form. Northern sentiment saw and resented in every such proposition a suggestion of still further concession to that slave power which Northern sentiment had come to abhor with all the loathing that is possible to the human mind, and Northern sentiment would have no part or lot in concession to a system which under compulsion of the Constitution it might tolerate but to the perpetuation of which it would on no account lend a hand.

On the other side the extremists of the South asked for no further guarantees and trusted none that might be offered. They contended that the guarantees of the Constitution itself had been nullified by the laws of the Northern States; that every compromise had been broken; that, as they insisted, Northern sentiment had openly and distinctly approved of servile insurrection, with all the horror that it must imply, as a means of abolishing slavery; and that there was no further hope of reconciliation by virtue of paper guarantees which the Federal Government had no adequate power to enforce.

The issue had, in fact, been made up and all attempts at compromise were futile folly. The war to which the country's history and politics for half a century past had been leading had at last come and the only real question that remained to be settled was that of who should begin the actual fighting. That detail was of no real importance.

The South bore its part in all this by-play and coquetry of endeavors at reconciliation. It sent distinguished men as delegates to plead for peace at Washington, either, as some of them urged, upon some basis of compromise or, as others insisted, upon a governmental recognition of secession as a right and a fact, the recognition of which would indeed have furnished a peaceful remedy for ills otherwise irremediable, an easy and peaceful way out of a controversy that otherwise threatened a savage, brutal and peculiarly devastating war. But that remedy was obviously and absurdly impossible of adoption in the circumstances then existing.

Neither side was in the least degree disposed to accept or even seriously to consider the peace proposals of the other. Neither being willing to yield a single item of its contention, there was no ground or chance of compromise. It was clearly understood upon both sides that war was presently to come.

On both sides there was an active sharpening of swords and a diligent rubbing up of guns that might prove serviceable in war.

At the South practically all the able-bodied young men were enlisted in what were then called "volunteer companies," though it did not yet appear in what cause they were supposed to be volunteering. They were drilled and disciplined and made into something at least remotely resembling soldiers. Their familiarity with firearms and their habits of strenuous outdoor life fitted them for comparatively easy transformation into troops.

At the North there was an equally active preparation for war. Among other warlike initiatives a fleet was preparing for the relief of Fort Sumter or at the least for a threatening manifestation off Charleston harbor. It had every equipment – even to surf boats for use in enforced landings – that such a fleet could require, and it presently sailed. Neither mail nor telegraphic communication between the North and the South had as yet been interfered with, and so every detail of preparation made upon either side was instantly reported to the other.

These were the conditions in which the actual struggle approached. When on the night after Christmas Major Anderson transferred his little handful of men under cover of darkness from the hopelessly indefensible works of Fort Moultrie to the seemingly much stronger position at Fort Sumter, the Confederates clamorously contended that the change was a violation of the Buchanan administration's promise to maintain the military status quo. They seized upon the occurrence as an excuse for that erection of batteries around the harbor which has already been spoken of. In the meanwhile they courteously extended the hospitalities of the city of Charleston to Major Anderson, freely permitting him to send men ashore and to supply himself in the Charleston markets with fresh vegetables, butter, eggs, milk and whatever else he needed for the comfort of his command.

But when an attempt was made during the Buchanan administration to provision Fort Sumter for a siege, the steamer Star of the West, which carried the supplies, was forbidden to approach the fort and compelled to put again to sea.

Then followed negotiations which were marked by all that suave and gentle courtesy which characterizes the preliminary communications between duelists who intend presently to shoot one another.

The state of South Carolina, claiming to be an independent sovereignty and a member of a new and sovereign confederacy, courteously asked the United States Government to withdraw its military force from Charleston Harbor. The state represented that the military occupation of a fortress within its domain by another sovereign power was derogatory to the dignity and independence of the state. It courteously offered adequate compensation to the United States for any property that might be involved in the change but politely insisted that the United States Government should cease to trespass upon the dignity of a sister nation.

To all this the Buchanan administration with equal courtesy replied, declining to recognize in South Carolina the status it claimed as an independent state, but seemingly at least promising the early evacuation of Fort Sumter.

All this was "play for position" on both sides and it produced the desired effect. It put South Carolina and the seceding states "right upon the record." That is to say, it enabled them to avoid even the appearance of recognizing the existence of Federal authority within their borders and on the other hand it gave to the more or less friendly administration of Mr. Buchanan the opportunity it desired to finish its term without armed conflict and without the necessity of assuming any positive and pronounced attitude toward secession.

But even after Mr. Lincoln came into office the clash of arms was postponed. Neither side was as yet ready for it, and each earnestly desired to throw upon the other the responsibility of precipitating a conflict which was clearly inevitable and for which each must account as best it could to that "opinion of mankind" to which the American Declaration of Independence had been reverently addressed as an act of "decent respect."

So for forty days or so after Mr. Lincoln assumed office there was nothing done, except in the way of preparation for emergencies. In the meanwhile Virginia still held aloof from the secession movement and five other border states – the chief sources of that military strength which resides in a food supply – were waiting for the word from the mother state.

It began to be understood in South Carolina that something must be done to compel Virginia to take her stand one way or the other. There was little if any doubt that upon the abstract right of any state to secede, Virginia stood firmly with the South. But her protest was resolute against the contention that secession was at that time either necessary or politic. It was necessary, therefore, to "force Virginia's hand," as whist players say, to do something which might leave to that state no choice but that between secession on her own part and consent, on the other hand, to the doctrine that the National Government was possessed of a right to coerce, and by military force to subdue, states that had assumed to act upon what they claimed to be and what Virginia freely recognized as the right of each state to withdraw from the Union at its own good pleasure. It was plain that the war must be hurried into being if the new Confederacy, composed exclusively of the cotton states, was to ally Virginia and the other food-producing states of the South with itself and thus secure any hope or even any chance of success in its effort to maintain itself.

Accordingly General Beauregard, who was in command at Charleston, was ordered to demand the surrender of Fort Sumter, and upon refusal to reduce that work. This was a ridiculously easy task. But its execution was a thing of momentous consequence.

Major Anderson, who commanded the fort with its mere handful of men, was himself a man of Southern extraction, as were Farragut, George H. Thomas, Winfield Scott and even Lincoln himself. But Anderson was a soldier in the United States Army and while he freely declared that his heart was not in a war against the South, he had no thought of failing in his soldierly duty.

When on the eleventh of April, 1861, he was summoned to surrender, he refused, as it became a brave officer to do. He knew perfectly well that Beauregard had force enough and cannon enough and ammunition enough to reduce a dozen such forts as that which he commanded, but in that spirit which throughout the war animated every good soldier of whatever rank in both armies, he refused to yield until such time as physical force should overcome his powers of resistance and compel his surrender. There was a relieving fleet in the offing, but, though it drew near enough during the action for Major Anderson to salute it, it rendered him no assistance and indeed made no attempt to do so.

Beauregard opened fire upon the fort at 4:20 A.M. on the twelfth of April, from batteries located at every available range point. The unfitness of the antiquated masonry work to endure a bombardment was quickly and, to Major Anderson, disastrously demonstrated, but in spite of all he heroically held out until on the next day his men were literally driven from their guns by the smoke of the burning quarters within the fortification. Unable to make further resistance and obviously hopeless of assistance even from that fleet in the offing which had been elaborately equipped and sent to effect his reinforcement and rescue, he at last capitulated.

He was permitted to salute his flag before lowering it, to march his command out of the fort with military honors, and to sail North with his men.

Those were the mild-mannered, courteous, drawing-room days of war. The butchery and brutality were to come later. Nobody had been killed by the fire of either side, and nobody wounded. The courtesy which had marked all relations between Major Anderson and the Carolinians was maintained to the end. Major Anderson left Charleston as any honored guest might have left a hospitable mansion in Charleston Neck after entertainment, with the good wishes, the friendship, and the godspeed of his hosts. Nothing could have been pleasanter or more exquisitely courteous than this encounter and this parting. But it was the preface to a war which sent brave men by scores of thousands to their graves, desolated thousands of homes, North and South, made widows of loving wives and orphans of unoffending children.

So far as the direct effect of the spectacular but bloodless bombardment of Fort Sumter was concerned it failed of its purpose. Even such an event did not prompt the Virginia convention, as had been hoped and confidently anticipated, to adopt an ordinance of secession. On the day after news of it was received in Richmond the representatives of the mother state stood as resolutely as ever in opposition to a secession program, which they deemed at once impolitic and unjustified by anything in the situation of affairs.

But the bombardment accomplished its intended effect by indirection. It gave Mr. Lincoln occasion to call for a volunteer army with which to meet what had thus assumed the character of a war upon the United States. As has been already related he called for seventy-five thousand men and demanded of Virginia that she should furnish her proportional part of that force. After many weeks of resolute resistance to what the Virginians regarded as a policy of quixotic folly and certain destruction, the Virginia convention on the seventeenth of April, 1861, adopted an ordinance of secession. From that hour war was on in earnest, as both sides quite clearly understood.

CHAPTER XII

The Attitude of the Border States

With the secession of Virginia on the seventeenth of April, 1861, there came a final end to all hope of finding a way out. The active border states did not immediately declare their secession indeed, but that was a foregone conclusion so far as Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee were concerned, and military proceedings did not wait for the formal act. That came on the sixth of May, in Arkansas, on the twentieth of May in North Carolina, and on the eighth of June in Tennessee. Kentucky and Missouri were so divided in sentiment that no united action for or against the Union could be secured.

Kentucky officially assumed an attitude of neutrality to which neither side paid the smallest attention then or later. That indeed was the most impossible of all conceivable attitudes. It assumed to the state all the independent right of action that secession itself implied, without asserting a claim to the right of secession. It proclaimed Kentucky to be so far out of the Union as to demand respect for its neutrality and so far in the Union as to exercise its full voice in Congress. It warned the armies of both sides to avoid trespass upon Kentucky's territory, a warning which, if Kentucky had undertaken to enforce, it would have involved that state in immediate war with both the combatants at one and the same time. The thing was ridiculous from the beginning, absurd in conception and a ludicrous failure in execution. There was later a pretense of secession by a so-called convention in that state, but it was not taken seriously on either side, and in the end the state furnished volunteers to both the contending armies in substantially equal numbers.

Tennessee did much the same thing but in a different fashion. That state's adoption of an ordinance of secession was quite regular in form. It had all the validity that the like ordinance adopted by any other state had or could have. But it did not and could not command the obedience of Tennessee's people in anything like the degree in which secession ordinances in other states had commanded the obedience of the people of those states. The advocates of secession had secured a majority vote in Tennessee, but it was not a very pronounced majority. Still more important, the division of sentiment there was mainly geographical. In the mountainous eastern part of the state and in the adjacent mountains of North Carolina where slavery scarcely at all existed and where little mountain farms and hunters' log cabins stood in the place of plantations and stately mansions, the sentiment was overwhelmingly in favor of the Union. This was perhaps scarcely more largely due to a feeling of loyalty to the Union, though that was strong, than to a still more active sentiment of hostility and antagonism to the wealth and social pretensions of the cotton and tobacco planters whose more fruitful fields lay farther to the west.

The often illiterate but shrewdly intelligent mountaineers, to whom education had offered few and very meager advantages and with whom fortune had dealt rather harshly, were very naturally jealous of their better educated, better fed, and altogether more prosperous neighbors. It is hard for the man who trudges afoot or rides astride an underfed mule for which his forage supply is scant, to entertain kindly feelings toward the man who goes about in his carriage drawn by sleek and negro-groomed horses. It is not easy for the man who houses his family in a mud-daubed log hut and feeds his half-clad wife and children upon corn pone and an often uncertain ration of bacon or salt pork, to avoid sentiments of discontent when he realizes how much easier and more luxurious is the lot of those who "wear purple and fine linen and fare sumptuously every day."

So, in the mountain regions of Tennessee, among the stalwart six-footers who were inured to hardship, and who knew all there was to know about using a rifle with effect, there was a very general impulse to join the Union armies and fight against the slave-holding class, whom they regarded as hereditary enemies.

In the region a little farther west this class antagonism was intensified by a closer contact and one often more exasperating. Between these two classes there was instinctive and implacable war already; and when the time came for the poorer Tennesseans to choose on which side they would fight, they very generally elected to fight against and not for an institution which they believed to be the source and origin and ultimate cause of that social inferiority which so galled and irritated and angered them.

Let us not misunderstand. These people had no theories on the subject of slavery. The few of them who could in any wise come into the ownership of a negro held to that property possession as resolutely as they would have held to the ownership of a mule or an ox. They were not troubled by any scruples of conscience concerning the ownership of human beings or beset in their minds by any abstractions as to human rights. They no more regarded the negro as the equal of the white man than did their plantation owning neighbors. A negro was in their eyes a "nigger," to be worked to his utmost capacity and mercilessly lashed when guilty of any insolence. They were even less ready than their wealthier neighbors to tolerate any assumption of equality on the part of a negro. They were quicker even than the planters to see and resent such assumptions because their own social status as the superiors of black men was less marked and less secure than that of the planters. A very small concession on that point would have obliterated the only social distinction that these poor cabin dwellers enjoyed.3

But these mountain dwellers – these children of poverty and hardship – saw no reason why they should fight for a system which they resented with every impulse of their minds; a system which somehow – they could not reason out how – created the disparity of fortune and social status and personal comfort which existed between themselves and their plantation-owning neighbors.

In Missouri the situation was different. There too the population was divided in sentiment but not upon strictly geographical lines, in any pronounced way at least. In Missouri more than anywhere else, the war took on the character of a true civil war. There was a pretense of secession there also, but it represented only a part of the population and amounted only to a declaration in favor of the South by what may or may not have been a majority of the people. It led instantly to war, but it did not distinctly place Missouri either in the list of seceding states or in that of states that adhered to the Union.

Thus the issue was made up. Eleven states, namely, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee and Florida, had formally seceded. Kentucky had absurdly and futilely declared an impossible neutrality, Missouri had entered upon a program of civil war within her own borders. Maryland adhered to the Union but sent the flower of her young manhood into the rival camps with an almost equal hand. Delaware, though nominally a slave state, was so situated as to be out of the reckoning of secession. The rest of the states adhered to the Union and were prepared to support its cause with unnumbered men and unstinted means.

It is true nevertheless that in most of the Northern States there was a strongly hostile and pro-Southern sentiment that must be reckoned with, and in New York and some other states the reckoning was a difficult one, but in no state did that sentiment at any time during the war so far secure control of affairs as to produce disastrous results to the Federal arms or cause.

Yet how dangerously and threateningly strong that sentiment was, is easily illustrated by statistics. In the presidential election of November, 1864, after the war had been in active and very bloody progress for more than three years and a half, and after the power of the Confederates to resist had been enormously reduced by battle, by blockade and by the wearing lapse of time, there was a comparatively narrow majority of votes cast in the Northern States in behalf of the Union cause.

McClellan was the Democratic candidate for president. He was running upon a platform the dominant note of which was a declaration that the war for the restoration of the Union had proved itself a failure and should be brought to an end. This could mean only that the United States Government should recognize the Confederate Government as a separate, independent and equal power, and make peace with it on such terms as could be secured. There is no other construction possible that would be accepted anywhere outside the pages of Alice in Wonderland. It was a distinct and definite proposal that the United States Government should give up all its contentions, withdraw its armies from the South, raise its blockade, admit that its efforts had failed, recognize the independent sovereignty of the Confederate States, and make the best peace it could with that Republic as a conquering power. Yet so strong was the anti-war sentiment at the North that, with only the people of the Northern States voting, the Democratic candidate received no less than 1,808,795 votes against 2,216,067 for his adversary. In other words the proposal to abandon the struggle, recognize Confederate independence and acknowledge the United States beaten after three and a half years of strenuous, costly and very bloody war, was defeated by only 407,349 votes in the Northern States, in a total vote in those states of no less than 4,024,865.

This is a fact of the utmost historical significance which may perhaps be better appreciated if put in another form. This was an election in which only the Northern States participated. The Union cause was supported by all of Mr. Lincoln's personal popularity; by all the influence of an administration in possession and with the whole patronage of the Government at its disposal; by all the sentiment of the army and the fathers and brothers of the men in the army; by every influence in short – personal, political and patriotic – that could be brought to bear. Yet the declaration that the war for the Union was a failure and the proposal to abandon all that had been fought for, was defeated by a majority of scarcely more than ten per cent. of the total vote cast in the states that remained professedly loyal to the Union cause.