The Confederate Union War

by Alan Sewell

  “We would have bagged the whole lot of them if I hadn’t been knocked off my horse by that rock the Confeds threw at me,” Fremont boasted.

  “What rock?” Lincoln asked. “I thought you were unhorsed by a shell splinter.”

  “That’s what I thought too,” explained Fremont. “But it turned out to be a piece of stone that they cut out of my arm. The Confederates were in such a rush to attack us that their ordnance people forgot to pack ammunition for their cannons. One of their officers ordered his men to bust off the ornamental stone balls on the fence posts and shoot them at us. The stone balls busted up inside the cannon. Cut our men to pieces and broke up our attack. I’ve read in the Confederate press that they’ve taken to calling the Colonel who pulled that stunt ‘Stoneballs Jackson!’”

  Lincoln laughed. “Well, keep a sharp lookout for old ‘Stoneballs’ in your next battle. A man with that moniker is bound to be dangerous! Who knows what he might think of next to shoot at you!”

  “That’s right!” echoed Governor Curtin who had become tipsy on the wine. “Next time it might be horse turds they let loose at you!”

  Fremont thought that was hilarious. Lincoln laughed too.

  With that the discussion concluded and the men retired to their rooms. They would be rising early in the morning to take the stage into Gettysburg thirty miles south of town.

  When the Lincolns closed the door Mrs. Lincoln began gossiping about the Fremonts. “Be careful what you say around those Fremonts. I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could throw them. You know they’re in a free love marriage. Mr. Fremont goes tomcatting around with whomever he pleases, and Mrs. Fremont doesn’t mind it a bit. Mr. Fremont lets her handle the business and she lets him handle the affairs.”

  Lincoln chuckled. What Mrs. Lincoln said had been substantiated by others. Lincoln suspected that the Fremonts’ unconventional marriage was one of the many irritants that had had caused the Free State Congress to declare him the “Provisional” President then boot him out of the office.

  “Well, Dear,” said Mr. Lincoln. “Perhaps we’d best tend to our own marriage and let the Fremonts tend to theirs.”

  Mrs. Lincoln snarled at the implication that their marriage was less than perfect, but her husband cut her off before she could cast one of her barbs. He smiled. “Not that we have much tending to do, Mother. Our marriage has brought us across a lifetime together. It has brought us a long way from that little frontier town of Springfield. It has brought us all the way to this new country.”

  Mrs. Lincoln was charmed. “Yes, Father, you have become our Moses to lead us out of wilderness.” She took off her dress, loosened her corset, and sat down on the bed. “Would you mind reading me the speech you will make tomorrow?”

  “I will be glad to,” said Mr. Lincoln, “as long as you promise not to heckle!”

  Mr. Lincoln took his Gettysburg Address from out of his pocket and read it aloud.

  Four score and several years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

  Now we are engaged in a Second War of Independence, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated may long endure. We are met on a battlefield of that war guarding the approaches to the Cradle of Liberty where that nation was conceived. We have come to honor those who here gave their lives so that the Lamp of Liberty lit by our fathers shall continue to illuminate the world unto the latest generation.

  We may be certain that our dedication to the principles of 1776 will be tested as surely today as they were tested then. They were tested at Delphi, as surely as they were tested at Lexington and Concord. They were tested here again at Gettysburg as surely as they were tested at Bunker Hill. Now, as then, the embattled citizens of a Free Republic stood their ground and turned back the armies sent forth by the tyrant to conquer them.

  We may also be certain that we have the means to secure our independence from those who seek to conquer us:

  We are superior in numbers of free citizens to the Slave States styling themselves the Confederate Union. We far surpass them in manufactories and agricultural productions. We have a preponderance of mechanics, industrial workers, railroad engineers, and men possessing all the other inventive skills that modern warfare requires.

  We are the Forge of Liberty.

  Let us ask ourselves: When have superior numbers fighting bravely to maintain their freedom ever been defeated by lesser numbers fighting to conquer them? We need merely to unite ourselves, putting aside all partisan factions. Is it not better that those who voted for both parties in the last election should fight together as free citizens of a free country, than that any should side with a government that seeks to return some of them to slavery?

  Also know that we do not fight alone. The Friends of Liberty in all parts of the world hear us, just as they heard us in 1776. They will come to our aid in our Second War of Independence just as Lafayette, Von Steuben, Kosciusko, Pulaski, and Thomas Paine, came to aid us in our first. And let us not forget our fellow citizens who, though they sympathize with our cause, reside in territory beyond our lines. Nor let us forget the friends we may have even in the Slave States, who, though accepting the existence of slavery in their states, do not seek to force it upon people who are free.

  And also know that we are heard on a higher plane, by that Providence that never failed our fathers. Does any thoughtful man question whether Providence destines men to be slaves or to be free? Our Founders answered that question for us: “All men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.”

  Let us now dedicate ourselves to the great tasks remaining before us: of liberating New York and reopening our Gateway to the World; of restoring the territorial integrity of our Free States; of liberating the Free States on the Pacific Coast that are held by the carry-overs of pro-slavery territorial governments; and of re-establishing our authority over the Free Territories of the West. All of these things we will do if we continue to fight as we have done at Delphi and Gettysburg.

  And after vindicating our independence through our courage in battle let us vindicate by our example that freedom is the natural condition of men. If we will do that the country we used to call ‘The United States’ will be reunited when our late fellow citizens now calling themselves ‘The Confederate Union’ will choose to join us in freedom rather than insist upon coercing us to join them in slavery.

  If we shall continue to do that which we have already shown we can do, here on this battlefield and elsewhere, then this new nation, under God, shall carry forth its birthright of freedom --- so that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.

  “You are a poet!” exclaimed Mrs. Lincoln. “If words can win us our Independence, then consider it to have been won!”

  Mr. Lincoln took his wife’s hand. “Thanks to all you have done for me and for the cause. Tonight you charmed Governor Curtin and Fremont, just as you have made friends with many others who dismissed me as a backwoods Illinois sucker. I would not be here without you.”

  “All I’ve ever wanted to do is help you to become President.” Mrs. Lincoln laughed. “I just didn’t expect it to be President of a new country!”

  “Perhaps it is not really so much a new country, as it is the old country that our Founders bequeathed to us,” suggested Mr. Lincoln. “At least it is so in spirit. We may not have title to all the territory of the old Union, but we do have a pretty fair claim upon its founding principles. The fate of our true American Republic depends on what we do now, on what we do together.”

  Mr. Lincoln smiled. Then he kissed his wife with an affection that he hadn’t felt in years.

  5

  Edgar County, Illinois, August 15, 1861

  Colonel Thomas J. “Stoneballs” Jackson gazed out the train windows, awestruck by the endless expanses of the Illinois prairie. Acres of wheat and corn, bending in a wind t
hat blew a scent of rain, filled the view to the horizon.

  “A most productive country,” he observed. “Like the Shenandoah would be if it was all bottomland.”

  “This is only the edge of it,” replied General of the Western Armies Robert E. Lee, equally awestruck. “I understand the land becomes even richer as one gets closer to Chicago. They say the topsoil goes down thirty feet.”

  Stoneballs shook his head in amazement. “Ohio and Indiana are like that too, aren’t they?”

  Lee nodded. “So are Iowa and Minnesota and Kansas and Nebraska. This Northwest, when brought fully under cultivation, will become the garden of this continent, perhaps of the entire world.”

  Lee’s gaze followed Stoneballs’ out the window. On the horizon, past the fields and copses of trees, he saw church steeples marking the towns.

  “This land is well suited for cultivation, settlement, and transportation,” Lee mused. “It’s bound to become the commercial center of the continent. It is the intersection of waterways between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Valley. The Ohio River runs to the base of the Alleghenies. The Missouri is the highway to the Rockies. Man’s ingenuity has improved upon nature’s highways. Look how they’ve crisscrossed the land with railroads. The east-bound railroads connect it with our most populated districts on the Eastern Seaboard. The southbound routes have their outlets on the Gulf of Mexico. The Pacific Railroads will be coming soon too.”

  “A most blessed land,” agreed Stoneballs. “I wouldn’t call it pretty, not like Virginia, but it is inspiring in its immensity. One can only imagine how much corn, wheat, and livestock can be raised on forty acres.”

  “Coal and limestone lie beneath it,” Lee elaborated. “Iron and copper are mined further north around the Lakes.”

  Lee contemplated the future.

  “This Northwest is destined to become not only the garden, but also the manufactory of the continent. Its cities will grow large from the processing of iron and coal into steel, and the manufacture of steel into railroads and locomotives and steamships and telegraphs. It will attract the ambitious peoples of all the states and foreign nations to farm and labor here. The people of these Inland States will multiply their numbers and grow their wealth. They will become a mighty people who will decide the destiny of this continent by choosing to join with us or with the Abolitionists. If we allow the Abolitionists to take it from us now they will in time grow strong enough to contest us for the rest of this continent.”

  Lee sighed. “And if the Abolitionists contest us for the continent in combination with the Northwest they will prevail. Lacking the Northwest, the Confederate Union is strategically indefensible. Look at how much difficulty we’ve had in getting from Maryland to Illinois. The Appalachians divide the Southern States in twain. We’ve had to follow the circuitous route all the way down into Alabama, six hundred miles further than the direct route across the Northwest. If we do not retain possession of the Northwest the Abolitionists will use it as the wedge to split our East from our West. They will conquer the Mississippi Valley then subdue us piece by piece.”

  “Until I heard your explanation to the contrary, I had been inclined to favor letting the Yankee States go,” replied Stoneballs. “Had it been up to me I would have told them: ‘Good riddance and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.’”

  Lee smiled broadly. “Yes, I expect a lot of Southerners would be glad to shoo the Yankees off into their own country. But that wouldn’t bring peace. It would be the beginning of never-ending war until one side subjugated the other. By saving our Confederate Union now, we will prevent the scourge of civil war from roiling us down the generations.”

  Jackson reflected on that for a few minutes.

  “I wonder what would have happened if the election had gone the other way and Lincoln had been elected President?” He looked at Lee with a puzzled expression. “He’d have been sure to put the Abolitionists in charge of his government. And we’d of been just as sure to leave the Union. The Yankees would be making the same arguments for returning us to the Union by force as we are making for returning them, wouldn’t they?”

  “We should thank Providence that the people wisely elected Douglas and Davis,” Lee said after a moment of his own reflection. “They threw a wet blanket over the Fire Eaters before they could wreck the Union from the South. They’ve shown equal vigilance in suppressing the Rebels at the North. Their single principal has been to preserve the Constitution and the Union, no matter from which direction it is threatened.”

  Stoneballs decided to bring the subject back to war, which always animated his spirits.

  “It will be a different kind of war out here than what we had in Pennsylvania,” he said gazing out on the flatlands. “The kind of war we want.” His eyes shone luminous blue as if he could already envision war raging across the Illinois prairies. “It will be a campaign of maneuver. There isn’t a ridge of hills for the enemy to conceal himself behind, and not A river east of the Mississippi or North of the Ohio that can’t be forded, or at least bridged impromptu, on the march.”

  “That’s why we’re here,” said Lee. “Let’s eyeball the Wabash to make sure that we can get our men across it rapidly. I’m expecting that Grant and McDowell will not have realized the necessity of fortifying it. Middling rivers provide the illusion of security. But they are usually easy to cross, especially now at autumn’s low water mark.”

  “On the maps the Wabash looks to be about the size of the Upper Potomac,” Stoneballs replied. “Should be fordable every other mile or so. To speed the crossing our engineers can cobble together a pontoon bridge from small boats and barnyard lumber.”

  “The farmers won’t appreciate your men demolishing their barns,” said Lee in a chiding but amused tone.

  “Or flirting with their daughters,” added Stoneballs in a tone that sounded serious.

  “Armies never leave the land or the people undisturbed,” answered Lee. “The way to disturb them least is to make this campaign sufficiently decisive to end the war in one bold stroke. We have planned for sixty days to reach the winter stop-line of Chicago --- Fort Wayne --- Indianapolis --- Cincinnati .”

  Stoneballs was duly impressed. “If we do get that far it will be an epic march in the annals of military history.”

  “We have to make sure it gets off to a good start, here on the Wabash,” Lee explained. “McClellan’s plan calls for us to concentrate 120 regiments on a five-mile front and move them across the river before the enemy knows we’re there.

  “Thirty regiments will move south to encircle the enemy’s garrison at Terre Haute. Thirty regiments will attack Indianapolis from the west. The other sixty regiments --- that will be your command --- will move north to re-cross the Wabash at Williamsport, Indiana. That’s about thirty miles northeast of Danville. You will roll up Grant’s line in your drive west to the Illinois River. That will bag us about sixty thousand prisoners and bust the door to Chicago wide open.”

  “The logistics of this operation will be formidable,” observed Stoneballs. “Feeding and equipping 120 regiments on a campaign to advance three hundred miles deep into enemy territory will strain the railroads and shipping companies of the entire Mississippi Valley.”

  “Our commissary agents will be scouring the Mississippi Valley,” answered Lee. “But our men will also be able to subsist on the harvest from Illinois and Indiana. There’ll be plenty of roasting ears and pork on our way up to Chicago.”

  “Hadn’t thought of that,” said Stoneballs. “Living off the land as we advance will help ease our supply situation. We’ll be able to move all the faster if our resupply is limited to ammunition.”

  Stoneballs contemplated the immensity of the planned conquest of Rebel-held Illinois and Indiana in silence. His gaze remained fixed out the window as the train rolled along the Terre Haute and Alton Railroad toward Paris, Illinois, the last town on the route inside Confederate Union lines.

  The train stopped, as planned, at th
e tiny farming community called Kansas. Lee had not wanted to detrain at the Paris station in case it was under surveillance by Free State spies. He and Stoneballs had taken the precaution of travelling unannounced in civilian clothes.

  Colonel of Volunteers John Logan, who commanded the militia forces in Illinois, was duly waiting as instructed beside the station for the arrival of “unnamed Confederate Officers.” He sat the seat of a nondescript covered army wagon. But there was nothing at all nondescript about “Blackjack” Logan. In his early thirties, with a dashingly handsome face and abundant curls of think black hair, and possessed of a confident manner, he was the very persona of command presence.

  “Welcome home!” exclaimed Logan as soon as he recognized Lee. “Our army longs to hear the voice of its master!”

  Lee smiled and put his finger to his mouth. “Shhhhh! I do not want it widely known that Stoneballs and I have arrived here! Please make sure you and your driver keep your lips sealed.”

  “My driver is my nephew,” replied Logan. “He’s a card sharp. His left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is holding. He’ll keep his mouth shut.”

  Lee introduced Stoneballs. “I’m sure you already know him by reputation.”

  “Indeed I do,” replied Logan. “We heard all about Stoneballs’ breakthrough at Gettysburg that relieved our men of their predicament.” He extended his hand. “Welcome to the West.” He winked and added, “We don’t have any stone balls out here, but we do have plenty of corn cobs if you run short of shot and shell to fire off at the Rebels.” Logan laughed at his joke, then cut it short when he saw Lee was rolling his eyes.

  “I understand that our logistics will be sufficient to carry us to Chicago,” said the humorless Stoneballs. “If your quartermasters do their jobs properly there will be no need for heroic improvisations.”