For the Common Defense
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The Union had not only saved the capital but gained western Virginia. In late May General George B. McClellan, commanding the Department of the Ohio, ordered a force to aid the area’s Unionists and protect the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. In a six-week campaign, McClellan’s men maneuvered the Confederates out of western Virginia. McClellan’s reputation soared, and with Federal guns inspiring confidence, the loyal mountaineers eventually formed a separate state (West Virginia), which entered the Union in 1863. Three months of war produced no big battles, and neither side gained an appreciable advantage. The preservation of Washington and the occupation of western Virginia counterbalanced the South’s successes at Fort Sumter, Harpers Ferry, and Norfolk. However, within a three-week midsummer span the Confederacy won two stunning victories, one on the banks of a meandering Virginia stream, the other 800 miles to the west along a Missouri creek. Yet in 1861 the South would lose the most important struggle, the struggle for the border states.
Early Battles
General Irvin McDowell, a husky man with a prodigious appetite, was not yet hungry for a battle. He had never commanded so much as a regiment in action, yet he now led 35,000 officers and men stationed at Alexandria. Organizing the mixture of militia, three-year volunteers, and a few regulars took time, and like most professional soldiers, McDowell believed troops should be thoroughly trained and disciplined. The general did not want to fight, but he could not avoid it. Sentiment increased daily for an offensive, and Lincoln felt the pressure. The ninety-day militia enlistments expired soon, a demonstration of northern vigor would discourage European intervention, and northern morale needed a boost. Although General Scott supported his subordinate in counseling delay, general impatience overrode the generals’ prudence. The president ordered McDowell to advance, resulting in the First Battle of Bull Run (or First Manassas) on July 21.
McDowell’s objective was Richmond, but first he had to get through Manassas Junction, where Beauregard had 22,000 Confederates posted behind Bull Run. The southerners had several advantages. First, the rebel general learned when Lincoln had ordered McDowell to move forward. Thus alerted, Beauregard received reinforcements from Joseph E. Johnston’s Army of Shenandoah, which was able to elude a larger Union army commanded by Robert Patterson and withdraw from the valley via the Manassas Gap Railroad. This was the first time railroads played an important role in a strategic maneuver. Although the Confederates were as untrained as their opponents, they fought on the defensive. Tired and thirsty after their long march, northern troops became disorganized as they attacked. Despite these southern advantages, McDowell’s battle plan almost produced a Union victory. An assault on the enemy left flank initially drove the gray line back. But resistance stiffened around the Henry House Hill, where one of Johnston’s brigades, commanded by Thomas J. Jackson, fought ferociously. “Look!” cried a fellow general to rebel stragglers. “There is Jackson standing like a stone wall! Rally behind the Virginians!” Jackson bought enough time for Beauregard to bring reinforcements from his right flank and for Johnston’s last brigade to arrive. Literally stepping out of the railroad cars and into the battle, Edmund Kirby Smith’s troops spearheaded a counterattack. The bluecoats gave ground grudgingly at first, but the retreat became a rout, the jaded men fleeing toward Washington. Disorganized by their own attack, the Confederates could not immediately pursue. That night it rained, turning the roads to mud and making an advance toward Washington impossible.
While Confederates in Virginia were mired in mud and dispirited Yankees huddled behind the capital’s defenses, armies were on the move in Missouri. A whirlwind campaign by Nathaniel Lyon, the commander of the St. Louis federal arsenal, saved St. Louis from militia raised by secessionist Governor Claiborne Jackson and drove an enemy army commanded by Sterling Price out of Jefferson City. Retreating into the southwest corner of the state, Price received reinforcements and turned northward. Having advanced to Springfield with 6,000 men, Lyon found himself outnumbered at least two to one. Rather than retreat, he launched a dawn attack on August 10. Catching the Confederates by surprise along Wilson’s Creek, Union forces achieved initial success. However, the Confederates rallied, and when Lyon took a bullet through his heart the leaderless bluecoats retreated. Lacking sufficient strength to attack St. Louis, Price marched due north, placing the western half of Missouri in Confederate hands.
The casualty figures from the war’s first major battles sent a shudder across the land. At Bull Run the North had about 3,000 casualties, the South 2,000. Wilson’s Creek produced another 1,317 Union and 1,230 Confederate casualties. Small by later standards, these figures seemed ghastly. For southerners, success took the sting out of the losses, and they crowed about their martial ability. But the Confederacy was unable to capitalize on its victories. The capture of Washington and St. Louis might have produced a decisive political and diplomatic impact, but tactical battlefield successes without permanent strategic implications did not shatter northern morale or earn European recognition. Although some northerners believed Bull Run proved enemy invincibility, the defeat spurred Congress to greater war preparations. It passed a bill for another 500,000 volunteers. Added to the 500,000 authorized earlier in the month, Congress had voted for a million-man volunteer army! In response, Confederate legislators authorized 400,000 volunteers.
While weathering battlefield setbacks, the North achieved an important strategic victory by keeping the three crucial border states out of the Confederacy. The Lincoln administration prevailed in each state by a different course of events. The government used drastic measures in Maryland, suspending the writ of habeas corpus in parts of the state, occupying Baltimore and other pro-South areas, and arbitrarily arresting hundreds of citizens. If Lincoln’s iron hand grasped Maryland, the president put on a velvet glove for Kentucky. Hoping to avoid a painful choice between North and South, Kentucky formally proclaimed neutrality in mid-May. Initially both belligerents respected Kentucky’s neutrality. But a Union force at Cairo under Ulysses S. Grant alarmed Confederate General Leonidas Polk, who feared the Federals would occupy the strategic bluffs at Columbus, Kentucky. Grant had orders to take the city on September 5, but Polk moved faster, occupying it on September 3. Grant then took Paducah and Smithland at the mouths of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. In rapid sequence both sides had violated Kentucky neutrality, but the South had done so first. The angry state legislature demanded Confederate withdrawal and openly sided with the Union.
Lyon’s offensive had shattered Missouri’s efforts to achieve a Kentucky-like neutrality and plunged the state into four years of civil war within the larger Civil War. When Lyon drove Confederate forces into the state’s far corner, a Unionist-dominated state convention met in Jefferson City and appointed Hamilton R. Gamble as governor. In retaliation, Governor Jackson’s government passed a secession ordinance—and in November the Confederacy admitted Missouri—but the secessionists lacked sufficient military power to control the state. Baffled by Missouri’s politics, distracted by its rampant lawlessness, and surrounded by a fawning staff, John C. Fremont, who commanded the Western Department, brought little stability to the chaotic situation. The renowned Pathfinder was also unable to launch a thrust down the Mississippi as Lincoln had hoped, but in October he finally mounted an offensive that pushed Price toward the Arkansas border. As in Maryland, superior military strength kept Missouri in the Union.
Union control could not save the border areas from the special agony of a true brothers’ war, as approximately 160,000 whites from Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri served in Union blue and perhaps 85,000 in Confederate gray. Moreover, especially in regions where Unionists and secessionists lived side by side, guerrilla warfare ravaged the land as both vied for control over local communities. Although few in numbers, the irregulars cast a squalid pall of barbarism wherever they roamed, fighting with malignant fury for the Union or the Confederacy but also for personal gain, revenge, and other parochial agendas. The guerrilla conflict blurred the distinc
tion between war and murder and soldier and civilian and brought terror and misery to those caught in its path.
Guerrillas were of two types. The Confederacy organized some units under the Partisan Ranger Act of April 1862. With a guerrilla warfare tradition dating from the Revolution and an exaggerated notion of the romanticism associated with irregular operations, southerners formed dozens of ranger units. The most famous was John S. Mosby’s. Operating in Union-occupied areas of Virginia, the “Gray Ghost” kept his men under military discipline and bedeviled the Yankee invaders. But most rangers were less disciplined and less effective. Other guerrillas arose spontaneously in response to local conditions, especially in the Kansas-Missouri region. For the Confederacy William C. Quantrill deservedly earned an infamous reputation. But he was not alone. Among many others, “Bloody Bill” Anderson rode with enemy scalps dangling from his horse’s bridle, and Coleman Younger and Frank and Jesse James displayed the thuggery that made them postwar outlaws. Nor did southern supporters have a monopoly on bestiality. Unionist Jayhawkers such as James H. Lane, Charles R. Jennison, and James Montgomery and Tennessee loyalists under Fielding Hurst matched them atrocity for atrocity. Other irregulars like Champ Ferguson, “Tinker Dave” Beatty, and Martin Hart terrorized enemy soldiers and civilians alike and brought the war to doorsteps far removed from conventional battlefields.
Although they maintained a rebel presence in border areas, Confederate guerrillas could not win Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, or western Virginia for the South, and this northern domination of the border had momentous consequences. It deprived the South of men and resources. Washington remained linked with the North, and southern armies were stretched across southern Kentucky and northern Tennessee rather than along the Ohio River’s south bank, which would have been a more easily defended border. Had the South controlled Missouri, it would have outflanked the Old Northwest and dominated a much longer stretch of the Mississippi. In winning the border, the Union established essential preconditions for ultimate success.
By late fall the North also had an array of new commanders. McDowell’s defeat, Patterson’s incompetence, and Fremont’s ineptitude demanded changes. The day after Bull Run a telegram summoned McClellan to Washington to succeed McDowell; Nathaniel Banks soon replaced Patterson; and in late October David Hunter took Fremont’s place. After his ungracious maneuvering forced Winfield Scott’s retirement, McClellan also became commanding general. When Lincoln wondered whether his duties as an army commander and as the commanding general of the army might be too burdensome, McClellan assured him that “I can do it all.” One of his first acts was to reorganize the high command west of the Appalachians. Henry W. Halleck replaced Hunter in the Department of the West, and Buell assumed command of the Department of the Ohio. Their principal subordinates were, respectively, Grant at Cairo and George H. Thomas at Lebanon, Kentucky.
These officers represented almost a typology of Civil War generalship. All but Banks were West Pointers, and Academy-trained officers dominated high command positions, North and South. Although some officers of southern background put nation above state—Scott and Thomas were Virginians—many resigned their United States commissions to receive new ones from the Confederate States. Lee was only the most famous of 313 regular Army officers (and more than 300 Navy officers) who joined the Confederacy. While professionals monopolized the highest levels of command, the majority of generals were nonprofessionals appointed for their political influence or—at least in the North, with its more heterogeneous population—their leadership of ethnic groups. For the Union, Banks, Butler, and John A. McClernand were powerful politicians, Franz Sigel and Carl Schurz were prominent German-Americans, and Thomas Meagher was an important Irish-American. Confederate politician-generals included John Floyd, Gideon Pillow, and Robert Toombs. West Pointers detested the nonprofessionals. As Halleck wrote, “It seems but little better than murder to give important commands to such men.” Although most nonprofessional generals were inept, this had not always been true: Pepperrell, Washington, Greene, Jackson, Taylor—none had professional training. Furthermore, numerous Civil War professionals were also incompetent, while some amateurs, such as John A. Logan and Benjamin M. Prentiss for the North and Nathan B. Forrest for the South, performed creditably. Even had the failure of many nonprofessionals been predictable, neither Lincoln nor Davis would have dispensed with them. In a people’s war requiring mass armies and high morale, using popular leaders made military and political sense. Rallying diverse constituencies, they strengthened national cohesion and determination.
Broadly speaking, two types of Union generals emerged. Some emphasized their difficulties and the enemy’s opportunities and had little stomach for fighting. They often made their opponents look better than they were. Although unique in several respects—no other general had such a well-developed messianic complex or such an aura of patronizing arrogance—McClellan epitomized this category. McClellan was generally overcautious. A superb organizer and administrator, he strove for perfect arrangements down to the last percussion cap before beginning a campaign. Since perfection could never be achieved, he always planned to move but rarely did so—and then only slowly. McClellan chronically overestimated enemy strength, another deterrent to precipitate activity. He seemed to believe that the South, being more militant and led by a West Pointer, must be better prepared than the North.
McClellan was also reluctant to fight battles. Perhaps he recognized that technological developments made battlefield decisiveness difficult. Maybe he sincerely believed that maneuvering against the enemy’s communications and occupying enemy terrain would win the war without much fighting. More likely McClellan feared taking risks and was paralyzed by the prospect of carnage. As he wrote to his wife, “I am tired of the sickening sight of the battlefield, with its mangled corpses and poor suffering wounded!” Although admirable humanity, this attitude often makes for poor generalship. Finally, the “Young Napoleon” despised political “interference” in military affairs, especially by such amateurs as Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. By mid-1862 McClellan regarded both men with contempt. Ignoring the nation’s civilian leadership as much as possible, he misunderstood the political currents that drove and shaped a people’s war, especially when Lincoln considered adding the destruction of slavery as an official Union war aim. Rejecting any shift toward a “hard war” policy of confiscation and emancipation, McClellan remained wedded to a war of moderation and conciliation toward the South, even as events were revealing the inadequacies of that approach.
In his defense, McClellan may have suffered from rising too high too fast. Caught in the transition from the limited war of 1861 to the total war of 1862 and organizing a truly large army for the first time, he lacked precedents. Staff, communications, and logistical techniques had not yet adjusted to the new complexities posed by mass and distance. Only trial and error, under circumstances in which error could be fatal, produced the necessary adjustments. Furthermore, he commanded at a time when Confederate armies were at their peak in strength and spirit.
Generals in the second category, personified by Grant, saw their opportunities and their opponent’s problems and, while not exactly relishing battle, never hesitated to fight. Grant had the advantage of moving gradually up the chain of command, but he also exhibited intellectual flexibility and learned from mistakes, including his own. He realized that only complete conquest—including the destruction of slavery—would subdue the South, and he was determined to get on with the task. His philosophy left little time for perfecting arrangements. What counted was marching and fighting, even if it involved great risks. Unlike McClellan, who fluctuated between excessive optimism and acute pessimism in a crisis, Grant remained calm. His humility equaled McClellan’s arrogance. He engaged in none of McClellan’s peacock-like displays, preferring to sit quietly on a stump whittling sticks or smoking a cigar. Yet this ordinary-looking midwesterner waged war with a relentlessness beyond McClellan’s ken.