America. A history

He nominated the members of his Cabinet – most prominent among whom was William H. Seward, his Secretary of State. Mr. Seward had been during all his public life a determined enemy to slavery. He was in full sympathy with the President as to the course which had to be pursued. His acute and vigorous intellect and great experience in public affairs fitted him for the high duties which he was called to discharge.

So soon as Mr. Lincoln entered upon his office the Southern Government sent ambassadors to him as to a foreign power. These gentlemen formally intimated that the six States had withdrawn from the Union, and now formed an independent nation. They desired to solve peaceably all the questions growing out of this separation, and they desired an interview with the President, that they might enter upon the business to which they had been appointed.

Mr. Seward replied to the communication of the Southern envoys. His letter was framed with much care, as its high importance demanded. It was calm and gentle in its tone, but most clear and decisive. He could not recognize the events which had recently occurred as a rightful and accomplished revolution, but rather as a series of unjustifiable aggressions. He could not recognize the new Government as a government at all. He could not recognize or hold official intercourse with its agents. The President could not receive them or admit them to any communication. Within the unimpassioned words of Mr. Seward there breathed the fixed, unalterable purpose of the Northern people, against which, as many persons even then felt, the impetuous South might indeed dash herself to pieces, but could by no possibility prevail. The baffled ambassadors went home, and the angry South quickened her preparations for war.

Within the bay of Charleston, and intended for the defence of that important city, stood Fort Sumpter, a work of considerable strength, and capable, if adequately garrisoned, of a prolonged defence. It was not so garrisoned, however, when the troubles began. It was held by Major Anderson with a force of seventy men, imperfectly provisioned. The Confederates wished to possess themselves of Fort Sumpter, and hoped at one time to effect their object peaceably. When that hope failed them, they cut off Major Anderson’s supply of provisions, and quietly began to encircle him with batteries. For some time they waited till hunger should compel the surrender of the fort. But word was brought to them that President Lincoln was sending ships with provisions. April 11, 1861 A.D. Fort Sumpter was promptly summoned to surrender. Major Anderson offered to go in three days, if not relieved. In reply he received intimation that in one hour the bombardment would open.

About daybreak on the 12th the stillness of Charleston bay was disturbed by the firing of a large mortar and the shriek of a shell as it rushed through the air. The shell burst over Fort Sumpter, and the war of the Great Rebellion was begun. The other batteries by which the doomed fortress was surrounded quickly followed, and in a few minutes fifty guns of the largest size flung shot and shell into the works. The guns were admirably served, and every shot told. The garrison had neither provisions nor an adequate supply of ammunition. They were seventy, and their assailants were seven thousand. All they could do was to offer such resistance as honour demanded. Hope of success there was none.

The garrison did not reply at first to the hostile fire. They quietly breakfasted in the security of the bomb-proof casemates. Having finished their repast, they opened a comparatively feeble and ineffective fire. All that day and next the Confederate batteries rained shell and red-hot shot into the fort. The wooden barracks caught fire, and the men were nearly suffocated by the smoke. Barrels of gunpowder had to be rolled through the flames into the sea. The last cartridge had been loaded into the guns; the last biscuit had been eaten; huge clefts yawned in the crumbling walls. Enough had been done for honour; to prolong the resistance was uselessly to endanger the lives of brave men. Major Anderson surrendered the ruined fortress, and the garrison marched out with the honours of war. Curiously enough, although heavy firing had continued during thirty-four hours, no man on either side was injured!

It was a natural mistake that South Carolina should deem the capture of Fort Sumpter a glorious victory. The bells of Charleston chimed triumphantly all the day; guns were fired; the citizens were in the streets expressing with many oaths the rapture which this great success inspired, and their confident hope of triumphs equally decisive in time to come; ministers gave thanks; ladies waved handkerchiefs; male patriots quaffed potent draughts to the welfare of the Confederacy. On that bright April Sunday all was enthusiasm and boundless excitement in the city of Charleston. Alas for the vanity of human hopes! There were days near at hand, and many of them too, when these rejoicing citizens should sit in hunger and sorrow and despair among the ruins of their city and the utter wreck of their fortunes and their trade.

By many of the Southern people war was eagerly desired. The Confederacy was already established for some months, and yet it included only six States. There were eight other Slave States, whose sympathies it was believed were with the seceders. These had been expected to join, but there proved to exist within them a loyalty to the Union sufficiently strong to delay their secession. Amid the excitements which war would enkindle, this loyalty, it was hoped, would disappear, and the hesitating States would be constrained to join their fortunes to those of their more resolute sisters. The fall of Fort Sumpter was more than a military triumph. It would more than double the strength of the Confederacy, and raise it at once to the rank of a great power. Everywhere in the South, therefore, there was a wild, exulting joy. And not without reason; for Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas now joined their sisters in secession.

In the North, the hope had been tenaciously clung to that the peace of the country was not to be disturbed. This dream was rudely broken by the siege of Fort Sumpter. The North awakened suddenly to the awful certainty that civil war was begun. There was a deep feeling of indignation at the traitors who were willing to ruin their country that slavery might be secure. There was a full appreciation of the danger, and an instant universal determination that, at whatever cost, the national life must be preserved. Personal sacrifice was unconsidered; individual interests were merged in the general good. Political difference, ordinarily so bitter, was for the time almost effaced. Nothing was of interest but the question how this audacious rebellion was to be suppressed and the American nation upheld in the great place which it claimed among men.

Two days after the fall of Fort Sumpter, Mr. Lincoln intimated, by proclamation, the dishonour done to the laws of the United States, and called out the militia to the extent of seventy-five thousand men. The Free States responded enthusiastically to the call. So prompt was their action, that on the very next day several companies arrived in Washington. Flushed by their easily-won victory, the Southerners talked boastfully of seizing the capital. In a very short space there were fifty thousand loyal men ready to prevent that, and the safety of Washington was secured.

The North pushed forward with boundless energy her warlike preparations. Rich men offered money with so much liberality that in a few days nearly five million sterling had been contributed. The school-teachers of Boston dedicated fixed proportions of their incomes to the support of the Government, while the war should last. All over the country the excited people gathered themselves into crowded meetings, and breathed forth in fervid resolutions their determination to spend fortune and life in defence of the Union. Volunteer companies were rapidly formed. In the cities ladies began to organize themselves for the relief of sick and wounded soldiers. It had been fabled that the North would not fight. With a fiery promptitude unknown before in modern history the people sprang to arms.

Even yet there was on both sides a belief that the war would be a short one. The South, despising an adversary unpractised in war, and vainly trusting that the European powers would interfere in order to secure their wonted supplies of cotton, expected that a few victories more would bring peace. The North still regarded secession as little more than a gigantic riot, which she proposed to extinguish within ninety days. The truth was strangely different from the prevailing belief of the day. A high-spirited people, six million in number, occupying a fertile territory nearly a million square miles in extent, had risen against the Government. The task undertaken by the North was to conquer this people, and by force of arms to bring them and their territory back to the Union. This was not likely to prove a work of easy accomplishment.

CHAPTER II

THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN

When the North addressed herself to her task, her own capital was still threatened by the rebels. Two or three miles down the Potomac, and full in view of Washington, lies the old-fashioned decaying Virginian town of Alexandria, where the unfortunate Braddock had landed his troops a century before. The Confederate flag floated over Alexandria. A rebel force was marching on Harper’s Ferry, forty miles from Washington; and as the Government works there could not be defended, they were burned. Preparations were being made to seize Arlington Heights, from which Washington could be easily shelled. At Manassas Junction, thirty miles away, a rebel army lay encamped. It seemed to many foreign observers that the North might lay aside all thought of attack, and be well pleased if she succeeded in the defence of what was still left to her.

But the Northern people, never doubting either their right or their strength, put their hand boldly to the work. The first thing to be done was to shut the rebels in so that no help could reach them from the world outside. They could grow food enough; but they were a people who could make little. They needed from Europe supplies of arms and ammunition, of clothing, of medicine. They needed money, which they could only get by sending away their cotton. To stop their intercourse with Europe was to inflict a blow which would itself prove almost fatal. Four days after the fall of Fort Sumpter, Mr. Lincoln announced the blockade of all the rebel ports. It was a little time after till he had ships enough to make the blockade effective. But in a few weeks this was done, and every rebel port was closed. The grasp thus established was never relaxed. So long as the war lasted, the South obtained foreign supplies only from vessels which carried on the desperate trade of blockade-running.

Virginia completed her secession on the 23rd April. Next morning Federal troops seized and fortified Alexandria and the Arlington Heights. In the western portions of Virginia the people were so little in favour of secession that they wished to establish themselves as a separate State, loyal to the Union. With no very serious trouble the rebel forces were driven out of this region, and Western Virginia was restored to the Union. Desperate attempts were made by the disloyal Governor of Missouri to carry his State out of the Union, against the wish of a majority of the people. It was found possible to defeat the efforts of the secessionists and retain Missouri. Throughout the war this State was grievously wasted by Southern raids, but she held fast her loyalty.

Thus at the opening of the war substantial advantages had been gained by the North. They were not, however, of a sufficiently brilliant character fully to satisfy the expectations of the excited people. A great battle must be won. Government, unwisely yielding to the pressure, ordered their imperfectly disciplined troops to advance and attack the rebels in their position at Manassas Junction.

General Beauregard lay at Manassas with a rebel force variously estimated at from thirty thousand to forty thousand men. In front of his position ran the little stream of Bull Run, in a narrow, wooded valley – the ground rising on both sides into “bluffs,” crowned with frequent patches of dense wood. General M’Dowell moved to attack him, with an army about equal in strength. July 21, 1861 A.D. It was early Sunday morning when the army set out from its quarters at Centreville. The march was not over ten miles, but the day was hot, and the men not yet inured to hardship. It was ten o’clock when the battle fairly opened. From the heights on the northern bank of the stream the Federal artillery played upon the enemy. The Southern line stretched well nigh ten miles, and M’Dowell hoped, by striking with an overwhelming force at a point on the enemy’s right, to roll back his entire line in confusion. Heavy masses of infantry forded the stream and began the attack. The Southerners fought bravely and skilfully, but at the point of attack they were inferior in number, and they were driven back. The battle spread away far among the woods, and soon every copse held its group of slain and wounded men. By three o’clock the Federals reckoned the battle as good as won, for the enemy, though still fighting, was falling back. But at that hour railway trains ran close up to the field of battle with fifteen thousand Southerners fresh and eager for the fray. This new force was hurried into action. The wearied Federals could not endure the vehemence of the attack; they broke, and fled down the hill-side. With inexperienced troops a measured and orderly retreat is impossible; defeat is quickly followed by panic. The men who had fought so bravely all the day now hurried in wild confusion from the field. The road was choked with a tangled mass of baggage-waggons, artillery, soldiers and civilians frenzied by fear, and cavalry riding wildly through the quaking mob. But the Southerners attempted no pursuit, and the panic passed away. Scarcely an attempt, however, was made to stop the flight. Order was not restored till the worn-out men made their way back to Washington.

This was the first great battle of the war, and its results were of prodigious importance. By the sanguine men of the South it was hailed as decisive of their final success. President Davis counted upon the immediate recognition of the Confederacy by the Great Powers of Europe as now certain. The newspapers accepted it as a settled truth that “one Southerner was equal to five Yankees.” Intrigues began for the succession to the presidential chair – six years hence. A controversy arose among the States as to the location of the Capital. The success of the Confederacy was regarded as a thing beyond doubt. Enlistment languished; it was scarcely worth while to undergo the inconvenience of fighting for a cause which was already triumphant.

The defeat at Manassas taught the people of the North that the task they had undertaken was a heavier task than they supposed, but it did not shake their steady purpose to perform it. On the day after the battle – while the routed army was swarming into Washington – Congress voted five hundred million dollars, and called for half a million of volunteers. A few days later, Congress unanimously resolved that the suppression of the rebellion was a sacred duty, from the performance of which no disaster should discourage; to which they pledged the employment of every resource, national and individual. “Having chosen our course,” said Mr. Lincoln, “without guile, and with pure purpose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward without fear and with manly hearts.” The spirit of the North rose as the greatness of the enterprise became apparent. No thought was there of any other issue from the national agony than the overthrow of the national foe. The youth of the country crowded into the ranks. The patriotic impulse possessed rich and poor alike, and the sons of wealthy men shouldered a musket side by side with the penniless children of toil. Once, by some accident, the money which should have paid a New England regiment failed to arrive in time. A private in the regiment gave his cheque for a hundred thousand dollars, and the men were paid. The Christian churches yielded an earnest support to the war. In some western churches the men enlisted almost without exception. Occasionally their ministers accompanied them. Sabbath-school teachers and members of young men’s Christian associations were remarkable for the eagerness with which they obeyed the call of their country. It was no longer a short war and an easy victory which the North anticipated. The gigantic character of the struggle was at length recognized; and the North, chastened, but undismayed, made preparations for a contest on the issue of which her existence depended.

CHAPTER III

“ON TO RICHMOND.”

General M’Dowell had led the Northern army to a defeat which naturally shook public confidence in his ability to command. A new general was indispensable. When the war broke out, a young man – George B. M’Clellan by name – was resident in Cincinnati, peacefully occupied with the management of a railroad. He was trained at West Point, and had a high reputation for soldiership. Several years before, Mr. Cobden was told by Jefferson Davis that M’Clellan was one of the best generals the country possessed. He was skilful to construct and organize, but his power to direct successfully the movements of great armies engaged in actual warfare was still unproved.

General M’Clellan was appointed to the command of the army a few days after the defeat at Bull Run, and sanguine hopes were entertained that he was about to give the people victory over their enemies. He addressed himself at once to his task. From every State in the North men hastened to his standard. He disciplined them and perfected their equipment for the field. In October he was at the head of two hundred thousand men – the largest army ever yet seen on the American continent.

The rebel Government, which at first chose for its home the city of Montgomery in Alabama, moved to Richmond so soon as Virginia gave in her reluctant adherence to the secession cause. Richmond, the gay capital of the Old Dominion, sits queen-like upon a lofty plateau, with deep valleys flanking her on east and west, and the James river rushing past far below upon the south – not many miles from the point where the “dissolute” fathers of the colony had established themselves two centuries and a half ago. To Washington the distance is only one hundred and thirty miles. The warring Governments were within a few hours’ journey of each other.

The supreme command of the rebel forces was committed to General Robert E. Lee – one of the greatest of modern soldiers. He was a calm, thoughtful, unpretending man, whose goodness gained for him universal love. He was opposed to secession, but believing, like the rest, that he owed allegiance wholly to his own State, he seceded with Virginia. It was his difficult task to contend nearly always with forces stronger than his own, and to eke out by his own skill and genius the scanty resources of the Confederacy. His consummate ability maintained the war long after all hope of success was gone; and when at length he laid down his arms, even the country against which he had fought was proud of her erring but noble son.

Thomas Jackson – better known as “Stonewall Jackson” – was the most famous of Lee’s generals. In him we have a strange evidence of the influence which slavery exerts upon the best of men. He was of truly heroic mould – brave, generous, devout. His military perception was unerring; his decision swift as lightning. He rose early in the morning to read the Scriptures and pray. He gave a tenth part of his income for religious uses; he taught a Sunday class of negro children; he delivered lectures on the authenticity of Scripture; when he dropped a letter into the post-office, he prayed for a blessing on the person to whom it was addressed. As his soldiers marched past his erect, unmoving figure, to meet the enemy, they saw his lips move, and knew that their leader was praying for them to Him who “covereth the head in the day of battle.” And yet this good man caused his negroes – male and female – to be flogged when he judged that severity needful. And yet he recommended that the South should “take no prisoners” – in other words, that enemies who had ceased to resist should be massacred. To the end of his life he remained of opinion that the rejection of this policy was a mistake. So fatally do the noblest minds become tainted by the associations of slave society.

During the autumn and early winter of 1861 the weather was unusually fine, and the roads were consequently in excellent condition for the march of an army. The rebel forces were scattered about Virginia – some of them within sight of Washington. Around Richmond it was understood there were few troops. It seemed easy for M’Clellan, with his magnificent army, to trample down any slight resistance which could be offered, and march into the rebel capital. For many weeks the people and the Government waited patiently. They had been too hasty before; they would not again urge their general prematurely into battle. But the months of autumn passed, and no blow was struck. Winter was upon them, and still “all was quiet on the Potomac.” M’Clellan, in a series of brilliant reviews, presented his splendid army to the admiration of his countrymen; but he was not yet ready to fight. The country bore the delay for six months. Then it could be endured no longer, and in January Mr. Lincoln issued a peremptory order that a movement against the enemy should be made. M’Clellan now formed a plan of operations, and by the end of March was ready to begin his work.

South-eastward from Richmond the James and the York rivers fall into Chesapeake bay at a distance from each other of some twenty miles. The course of the rivers is nearly parallel, and the region between them is known as the Peninsula. M’Clellan conveyed his army down the Potomac, landed at Fortress Monroe, and prepared to march upon Richmond by way of the Peninsula.

Before him lay the little town of Yorktown – where, eighty years before, the War of Independence was closed by the surrender of the English army. Yorktown was held by eleven thousand rebels. M’Clellan had over one hundred thousand well-disciplined men eager for battle. But he deemed it injudicious to assault the place, and preferred to operate in the way of a formal siege. The rebels waited till he was ready to open his batteries – and then quietly marched away.

M’Clellan moved slowly up the Peninsula. In six weeks he was within a few miles of Richmond, and in front of the forces which the rebels had been actively collecting for the defence of their capital. These forces were now so strong that M’Clellan deemed himself outnumbered, and sought the protection of his gunboats on the James river. The emboldened rebels dashed at his retreating ranks. His march to the James river occupied seven days, and on every day there was a battle. Nearly always the Federals had the advantage in the fight. Always after the fight they resumed their retreat. Once they drove back the enemy, inflicting upon him a crushing defeat. Their hopes rose with success, and they demanded to be led back to Richmond. M’Clellan shunned the great enterprise which opened before him, and never rested from his march till he lay in safety, sheltered by the gunboats on the James river. He had lost fifteen thousand men; but the rebels had suffered even more. It was said that the retreat was skilfully conducted, but the American people were in no humour to appreciate the merits of a chief who was great only in flight. Their disappointment was intense. The Southern leaders devoutly announced “undying gratitude to God” for their great success, and looked forward with increasing confidence to their final triumph over an enemy whose assaults it seemed so easy to repulse.

Nor was this the only success which crowned the rebel arms. The most remarkable battle of the war was fought while M’Clellan was preparing for his advance; and it ended in a rebel victory.

At the very beginning of the war the Confederates bethought them of an iron-clad ship of war. They took hold of an old frigate which the Federals had sunk in the James river. They sheathed her in iron plates; they roofed her with iron rails. At her prow, beneath the water-line, they fitted an iron-clad projection, which might be driven into the side of an adversary. They armed her with ten guns of large size.