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

Grant's achievements in the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson were so far recognized at Washington that he was presently raised from the rank of brigadier to that of major-general of volunteers. But he was still denied even a junior second lieutenant's place in the regular army, and in the meantime an officer in the regular army was authorized and entitled not only to order him to do things – a small matter to a man disposed and accustomed to do things but to forbid him to do things – a matter of much greater consequence to such a man.

General Halleck's official position was immeasurably superior to that of Grant – at best a mere major-general of volunteers – while his military capacity was in an equal degree inferior to Grant's. Grant habitually won battles. Halleck never did. Grant conducted campaigns to success. Did Halleck? It has already been shown for how long Halleck restrained Grant from undertaking his expedition against Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. When that campaign resulted in such a success as had not before been anywhere achieved by the Federal arms, Grant very naturally wanted to follow it up in ways calculated speedily to break the Confederate resistance, to occupy the commanding positions in the Confederacy and to push Federal columns southward through the seceding states, cutting them in twain and making an end of their unity. It seemed to him when Forts Henry and Donelson were in his possession quite a matter of course that he should move with his 27,000 men upon Nashville and other strategic points further south, and that all available forces, including Buell's strong and steadily increasing army, should be ordered to join him and assist him in the execution of this enterprise before the Confederates could organize effective resistance. In brief it seemed to Grant, simple soldier that he was, that the purpose of the organization of the Federal forces was to win the war as quickly as possible and with the smallest possible sacrifice of life and treasure. The shortest road to that end was to follow up his victory by the capture of other Confederate positions, the conquest of which was then easy and the possession of which seemed to promise that result.

But Grant had already offended his superior officer, not only by proposing operations which should have been suggested – as they were not – from "regular" headquarters, but still more by carrying such amateurish operations to a successful conclusion and by winning, without any sort of credit to headquarters, the first conspicuous and country-inspiriting victory that the Federal arms could claim. The land was resounding with Grant's praises even while Halleck was putting him under virtual arrest, and not a word was said in extolment of the genius of Halleck who had so reluctantly consented to this volunteer officer's enterprise. Manifestly this ex-Galena clerk who had a genius for doing things must be restrained. Otherwise he would presently run away with all the glory that belonged by prescriptive right to his superiors in the regular army, and particularly to General Halleck, in his cushioned quarters at St. Louis.

Accordingly General Grant was censured for his unauthorized advance upon Nashville, and instead of proceeding against Confederate strongholds further South which were easily within his vigorous and resolute grasp, was peremptorily ordered to return to the forts which he had captured with such splendor of success and there to sit still till released from what amounted to arrest.

It was the story of Manassas over again, except that it was reversed in its application. As after Manassas Washington lay an easy prey to the Confederates, which by reason of incapacity they did not grasp, so, and in like measure, the central strongholds of the Confederacy lay, after the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson, within the easy grasp of Grant's army. The only difference was that in the one case it was the inexperience of the general in the field that forbade, while in the other it was the paralyzing prohibition of the general in a secure headquarters that stood in the way of achievement.

In the one case it was the predestined men of action who faltered and failed of their opportunity. In the other the man of action was restrained by "orders" which he dared not disobey.

Thus by the paralysis of Halleck's official hand, Grant was restrained from pushing the war to results – possibly even to a conclusion – prompt, certain and immediate.

General Halleck, who never in all his life commanded an army in battle, was by the pure unreason of military law and etiquette officially authorized to restrain the military impulse of Grant toward manifestly right ends.

Grant had neglected, or was accused of having neglected, some technical formality as to details in making his report of the actions which had made him master of the forts. To ordinary common-sense it would seem that the only important facts which he was called upon to report on that occasion were that he had certain forces under his command; that after three days of hard fighting in rain and sleet and indescribable mud his enemy had surrendered the forts with 14,623 men, 65 pieces of artillery and 17,000 stands of small arms; that he had made himself master of the two strongholds and now completely commanded both rivers, having thus opened a double river route into the heart of the Southern Confederacy, which he proposed to make still further available by an immediate advance upon Nashville and other strategic points the possession of which would give him an open pathway to the Gulf itself.

This was all that common-sense required Grant to report for the information of his superiors, and he reported precisely that. But those office-housed superiors held him guilty of neglect in that he had not given in detail the position of every regiment and brigade and battery that had helped to win the victory. In punishment of this neglect of infinitely petty detail – and also in emphasis of the fact that Grant was after all only a general of volunteers who had presumed to win unauthorized victories in no way assigned to him to win – Grant was called back from his advance for the conquest of those strategic points that lay so easily within his grasp and ordered instead to remain where he was and to let slip from his hands the ripe fruits of his victory.

Was there ever anything so absurd as this, outside of comic opera – this and the extraordinary reign of incapacity in the Confederate army and Government? That was of like kind and quality.

The simple fact, of which the historian is obliged to take account, is that if ordinary common-sense and the commonest forms of military sagacity had been in control on either side at the beginning of the war – if the men able to do things had been permitted to do them – the struggle must almost certainly have ended within a few months after its beginning; tens, yes, scores and hundreds of thousands of lives must have been spared and multitudes of millions in expenditure and in the destruction of property would have been saved to the American people.

That however was not to be. It was written in the Book of Fate that for a time incapacity, self-seeking, narrow-minded, jealousy of rank, and other like forces of the coarse and the commonplace were to rule about equally on the one side and on the other, and that thus the war was to be prolonged at terrible cost of sorrow and suffering and slaughter.

This was the situation in the West at the time when McClellan was drilling his men around Washington, while Beauregard and Johnston were futilely fortifying at Centreville to meet an assault that only the writer of nonsense rhymes could at that time have regarded as possible, and the victorious Federal forces on the Carolina coasts were succumbing to the lassitude which that climate invites, making no vigorous efforts to conquer the exposed and indefensible Confederate lines of communication in that quarter.

Grant had a force of commanding numbers in the neighborhood of Forts Henry and Donelson. His army had been swelled to 27,000 men. Buell had as many more men – some of them battle-seasoned – at Louisville and south of that city. There were other forces in eastern Kentucky under capable commanders, which could easily have been brought to bear, forming an army of more than 100,000 men in support of any southward movement that might be undertaken. The movement which naturally suggested itself to an aggressive military mind was one against Nashville, with an eye to the penetration of the South from that point as a base of supplies. The "march to the sea" was as easy a possibility then as when Sherman made it years later.

This was Grant's idea, and it had behind it the eminent common-sense which usually inspired and informed that very practical general's plans. His purpose was to march with an overwhelming force, from Nashville to the Gulf. He could have done this easily and certainly, had he been permitted to undertake it with the forces then available. But, as we have seen, his purpose was brought to naught by the veto of General Halleck, whose notion of strategy seems to have been to let his enemy determine where and when the fighting should occur.

Nevertheless the Southerners, seeing the strategic situation far more clearly than Halleck did, abandoned Nashville and Federal troops of Buell's army promptly occupied that city. Thus Grant's success was saved to the country in some small and insignificant measure, though Grant was himself suspended from command and compelled to wait in inglorious ease until the Confederates by ceaseless and heroic efforts got together a great army in northern Mississippi, to meet which General Halleck found it necessary to call upon his most capable lieutenant, Ulysses S. Grant.

CHAPTER XXII

Between Manassas and Shiloh – The Situation in Virginia

It is necessary now to record what had meanwhile been going on in Virginia and elsewhere. At the beginning of November General George B. McClellan was placed in supreme command subject only to the President – of all the armies of the United States. He was called "the young Napoleon," though upon what grounds of achievement that characterization was based it is difficult to conjecture. He was thirty-five years of age, and therefore young. He was a West Point graduate and an accomplished officer of engineers. He had been sent during the Crimean war to observe and report upon the organization and conduct of European armies. He had made a report admirable in its literary quality and expert in its observations. Later he had won distinction by his very capable conduct of that campaign in western Virginia which resulted in the division of the "pivotal" border state, and the arraying of its western half upon the Federal side. But neither in his deeds nor in the temper of his mind was there aught that could with propriety be called Napoleonic. He was given from first to last, as will appear hereafter, to the temperamental fault of exaggerating his enemy's strength and to a shrinking from conflict with a foe whose forces he thus overestimated.

Nevertheless, when McClellan was appointed to the supreme command of the Union armies after his months of organizing at Washington it was expected of him that he should at once advance upon Richmond and dictate terms of surrender in the Confederate capital itself.

He had found around Washington in the summer a state of affairs which must have hopelessly discouraged any commanding officer not altogether given over to optimism. It sadly discouraged McClellan. In words of his own he found at Washington "no army to command – a mere collection of regiments cowering on the banks of the Potomac, some perfectly raw, others dispirited by recent defeat, some going home. There were," he added, "no defensive works on the southern approaches to the capital. Washington," he officially reported, "was crowded with straggling officers and men absent from their stations without authority." Is there any wonder that McClellan found it necessary to devote many months to the task of creating an effective army out of such stuff as this? Is there any escape from wonder that with the national capital thus hopelessly undefended, Beauregard and Johnston failed to advance upon and capture it?

This matter has been discussed in sufficient detail already in these pages. But it is worthy of note that the Confederate commanders who so strangely neglected their opportunities after the battle of Manassas, were not restrained by higher authority from the activity that was so obviously called for by the circumstances of the case, as Grant was after Donelson. They were free to act upon their own initiative, and had they been at that time, as they afterwards became, generals of fair military capacity they would have acted with vigor and promptitude and the future history of the war would very certainly have been quite other than it was.

The chief hope of the Confederates lay in the recognition of their independence by foreign governments and in a presumably probable alliance between themselves and the powerful nations of Europe. To promote that result they sent out two duly accredited ministers, the one to Great Britain and the other to France. The men selected for this service were James M. Mason of Virginia and John Slidell of Louisiana.

These envoys escaped through the blockade to Havana. There they embarked on the British mail steamer Trent. Captain Charles Wilkes, commanding the United States steam frigate San Jacinto, overhauled the Trent at sea, on November eight, and made prisoners of Mason and Slidell and their secretaries.

There is no doubt now that the act of Captain Wilkes was utterly lawless. But there is equally no doubt that it was dictated by a patriotic purpose. It was instantly and enthusiastically applauded throughout the North, and the Federal Congress, inattentive to international law or consequences, voted thanks to Wilkes for his conduct in the matter. However, there was the offended British government still to be reckoned with, and that government was at that time not very reluctant to pick a quarrel with the United States or to find a substantial excuse for recognizing Southern independence, and perhaps lending aid to the Southern arms.

The act of Captain Wilkes was denounced by the British Government, as an outrage upon British neutrality and a wanton trespass upon British sovereignty as represented by the Union Jack afloat over a British mail steamer. A demand was promptly made for the surrender of Mason and Slidell, and for an apology. There is no possible room for doubt that that demand was justified under the laws of nations and peculiarly so by the precedents of American contention, for it was in protest against precisely such sea seizures that this country had made war in 1812. But the people of the North were tremendously excited over an incident in which they greatly rejoiced, and it was in an extreme degree dangerous for the administration to contravene popular sentiment and to undo Captain Wilkes's work, by yielding to Britain's demands for the surrender of Mason and Slidell.

From beginning to end of the war there was perhaps no problem so perplexing as that which this controversy presented to Mr. Lincoln's administration to solve. To refuse Britain's demands was to invite instant war with the greatest naval power in the world, with the certainty that France, already eager, would join forces with Great Britain in recognizing the Southern Confederacy and supporting it in its assertion of independence. In that case all that the United States had done toward the establishment of a blockade of Southern ports would have been quickly undone by the appearance of overmastering British and French fleets on the Southern coasts, and very probably by the landing of British and French forces to aid the Confederates in their war against the Union. For when war is on nations do not stop at technical interference. They are apt to furnish men and guns in aid of the cause they have espoused. In any case a declaration of war between Great Britain and the United States – a declaration of war which the capture of Mason and Slidell very narrowly threatened – would have resulted in the raising of the blockade of every Southern port and the opening of the South to that free traffic in arms, ammunition and supplies which chiefly the South needed in order to accomplish its purposes.

Should the Government, on the other hand, yield to the British demand, it must encounter that highly inflamed popular sentiment which had compelled a congressional resolution of thanks to Captain Wilkes, and which – sanely or insanely – was disposed to twiddle its fingers at British or any other intervention in American affairs.

Mr. Seward, as Secretary of State, solved the matter by one of the most adroit diplomatic quibbles ever invented by an ingenious mind. He must surrender Mason and Slidell of course, otherwise war was on with England and France, the blockade was broken, the Confederacy was recognized and the establishment of a Southern Republic was an accomplished fact. On the other hand Mr. Seward must not without good and sufficient excuse yield one jot or tittle to English demands – even though those demands were supported by American precedents – lest he offend the "whip all creation" sentiment of the country.

Probably in all history no diplomat ever managed so delicate or so difficult a matter so skilfully as Mr. Seward did this. He carefully set forth the war rights of his country. He contended that Captain Wilkes had a right to capture the Trent as a vessel knowingly carrying contraband of war. But he explained that, as Captain Wilkes had released the vessel instead of bringing her into port as a prize, he had lost his rights and forfeited his claims. In summing up Mr. Seward said: "If I declare this case in favor of my own Government I must disavow its most cherished principles and reverse and forever abandon its most essential policy. We are asked to do to the British nation just what we have insisted all nations ought to do to us."

Mr. Seward's plea was a specious one, but it answered its purpose. It enabled him to avoid war with Great Britain and France without alienating from the administration the support of that sentiment of confident self-reliance in the country upon which enlistments and the success of the war depended. He surrendered Mason and Slidell, but he adroitly managed to represent his action rather as a new assertion of the old 1812 doctrine of American rights than as in any sense a surrender to a foreign nation's demand. Thus peace abroad was secured and popular sentiment at home was appeased; and after all the temporary detention of the two Confederate ministers had fully accomplished its purpose. By the time that they reached Europe official and public opinion in that quarter had so far changed that neither France nor England was any longer disposed to recognize the independent nationality of the Confederacy which had so conspicuously neglected its easy opportunity to compel recognition by an advance upon Washington after Manassas.

One other event of importance remains to be recorded in this chapter. When the Confederates seized upon the Navy Yard at Portsmouth, opposite Norfolk, Virginia, the Federal forces there destroyed all they could of valuable materials and adjuncts of war. But there was left a ship, the Merrimac, burned in part and sunk. The Confederates raised this ship, cut her down and armored her with railroad iron. She was the first iron-clad ship that ever assailed other ships, the pioneer of all modern naval armaments. At the same time Captain John Ericsson at the North was experimenting upon somewhat similar lines and producing the Monitor, the first iron-clad, turreted ship ever built.

On the eighth of March the Confederate iron-clad ram the Merrimac– or the Virginia as the Confederates had newly named her – steamed out into Hampton Roads and promptly destroyed two United States ships of war, the Congress and the Cumberland. Her performance created the greatest consternation. It was obvious that no wooden ship could live in conflict with such a craft as this. With such guns as were then in use her sides were impenetrable by shot or shell. With her steel nose it was easily possible for her to ram and sink any ship of any type then in use without danger to herself.

It was the plan of the Confederates to have this ironclad destroy the wooden fleet in Hampton Roads, as it was obviously and easily possible for it to do, proceed at once to New York and work havoc there, and then steam south to raise the blockade by sinking, one after another, the wooden ships of the blockading fleet.

But just after the Virginia's first success was achieved, there steamed into Hampton Roads Captain Ericsson's iron-clad, turreted ship, the Monitor. The next day these two armored vessels tried conclusions with each other. At the end of the fight the Virginia retired to Portsmouth damaged and discredited. The Monitor had proved to be more than her match, and while it had not succeeded in destroying her it had demonstrated its own superiority as a marine fighting machine.

More important still was the fact that while the South had no shipyards in which new and improved Virginias could be built, the North was abundantly able to reproduce the Monitor in other ships of like kind without number or limit and to better her type and construction in the light of experience.

This conflict is historically interesting as the birth scene of modern naval armaments. It was the first direct conflict of armored ships. It was the first instance in history in which ironclad met ironclad. It marked the dawn of a new era in naval construction, the natal day of all modern navies. It was the beginning from which have sprung the battleship, the armored cruiser, the protected cruiser, the gunboat and the torpedo-boat destroyer, as we know them now.

The fight between the Southern ironclad and the ships it destroyed, and the contest next day between it and the Monitor, have been widely celebrated in song and story. But the real significance of those contests lies rather in that to which they gave birth than in that which in themselves they were.

CHAPTER XXIII

Shiloh

McClellan's advance upon Richmond, in its beginnings at least, antedated the great conflict at Shiloh. But its crisis did not come until much later, nor did it in its early progress involve aught that was of significance in its bearing upon the conduct and outcome of the war.

It seems proper therefore to discuss Shiloh and other operations in the Mississippi Valley first, leaving the campaign in Virginia for later consideration.

The Confederates, before the fall of Fort Donelson and Fort Henry, were maintaining a line of offensive defense in Kentucky. This line extended from the Big Sandy in the eastern part of the state to Columbus on the Mississippi river in the extreme west.

The line was in many respects defective. The Confederate center of operations was at Bowling Green, while the two ends of the defensive line lay much farther north than that. The line thus constituted what in military parlance is known as a reëntering angle. The enemy pushing into such an angle with forces greater than those that defended it or even with an inferior force, had easy choice to attack on either side as he pleased, concentrating at will, while compelling the Confederates to scatter their forces along the whole of an extensive line by way of defending all parts of it equally.

It was the original purpose of those who devised this defensive system to correct the fault by pushing their center forward from Bowling Green to Paducah on the Ohio river, nearly fifty miles above the mouth of that stream. Had this been accomplished, it would have made the angle of defense a salient instead of a reëntering one.

Let us explain the advantage of this for the benefit of the non-military reader. If the Confederates could have established themselves at Paducah with their lines trending off to the southeast on the one side and to the southwest on the other, they, instead of their enemies, would have had choice of positions in which to concentrate. Assailed at any point it would have been easy for them to throw all possible force quickly to the defense of the threatened position.

Grant interfered with all this planning when he moved up the Ohio, and seized upon Paducah, which was quickly fortified so strongly as to render the execution of the scheme thereafter impracticable. From that time forward it was clear that the Confederates must either maintain their line of defense by means of a vast and dangerously unmanageable reëntering angle, or they must withdraw from their two advanced wing points. To do this latter thing would have been to abandon Kentucky completely, and it was no part of the Confederate program to do that.