The Confederate Union War

by Alan Sewell

  “Now, to pull Mitchel’s men out of the line we’ll have to make use of the reserves we’ve been training near Chicago.” Sherman placed two fingers on Chicago and then spread them in a “V” towards the fronts in Illinois and Indiana.

  “We have four divisions at Chicago. I’d recommend sending two of them to Grant to replace the losses in his line. Send the other two to Indiana to relieve the positions that Mitchel’s army is holding on the Wabash. As soon as they’re in line, pull Mitchel’s men out and use them for the attack into Southern Indiana! With luck we’ll push the Confederates clear back to Louisville.”

  Lincoln stretched out his legs as he leaned back and relaxed.

  “Sherman, your brother was right. I sorely needed the advice of a military professional such as yourself --- a man who can think through the strategic picture of how to win a war as well as a battle. Most of those men, like McClellan, Lee, and Winfield Scott, stayed loyal to the Confederate Union or have proclaimed their neutrality. You’re the only one who remains loyal to us that I’ve found who can competently advise me at the higher levels of strategy.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President. I’m sorry it took me so long to declare my loyalty to the Free States. It required much persuasion from my brother --- and several of your stirring speeches --- to convince me of the rightness of the cause.”

  Lincoln laughed. “Well I am glad to contribute my poor mite to the cause that others have so nobly advanced. You know, Sherman, you came to my attention at exactly the right time. If it had been any earlier we would have assigned you to command a division, because that’s what we needed at the beginning of the war. You might never have come to my attention as an advisor on the higher aspects of military strategy.”

  Sherman nodded. Lincoln leaned forward and spoke earnestly.

  “I’d like you to write the orders up just as you suggested. Promote Schofield to take McDowell’s place. Instruct Mitchel’s men on your plan to attack the enemy through Cincinnati. Divide the army at Chicago into two parts and send half to Grant and half to Schofield. Write the orders and bring them to me to sign. I’d like you to deliver these orders to our commanders in Indiana and Illinois and make sure they’re understood by all concerned. Then return here to meet with my War Cabinet and the Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War. Now that we’ve settled our dispositions in the West, we’ve got to decide what to do about Fremont. He wants to take his army offensives into the Delmarva and the Shenandoah. He wants to liberate the slaves and induct them into our army. What do you think about his proposal?”

  Sherman was careful not to express an opinion on liberating the slaves within any Confederate territory that passed under their control. Freeing slaves wasn’t an issue that he cared anything about. Nor did he wish to encourage the idea that Fremont was qualified to command an entire army on the offensive. Fremont had fought superbly with his thousand-man cavalry detachment at Gettysburg, but that had been against poorly trained Confederate militias thrown hastily forward on the opening day of hostilities. Taking the offensive against the kind of military machine that McClellan had organized during the last ninety days would be an entirely different matter.

  “Fremont must defeat the Confederate offensive towards Philadelphia before he can even begin to think about taking the offensive,” Sherman replied carefully. “How many men does he have available to repel the Confederate offensive?”

  “About two hundred thousand,” answered Lincoln. “Fifty thousand are containing the Confederates around New York City and its suburbs. Another fifty thousand are in the Delaware and Susquehanna valleys. And about one hundred thousand are in front of Philadelphia. Those numbers include some state militia regiments.”

  “That’s barely enough to cover all the ground that has to be defended,” said Sherman. “The Confederates will have the initiative in choosing where to attack us. They can concentrate their men against any point they choose. And with McClellan in command they’ll have even more men and equipment to throw against Philly than they did against the Wabash. Fremont will have to be as agile as Grant in moving his men around to the precise points of enemy concentration.”

  “He did accomplish that at Gettysburg.”

  “Yes, he showed an instinct for anticipating where the Confederates would attack,” Sherman agreed. “Let’s hope that instinct proves true at Philadelphia. Do we have any definite news of any units from McClellan’s army arriving on the Philadelphia front?”

  “We fought a naval battle with the Confederates in Delaware Bay yesterday,” replied Lincoln “I’m told it was inconclusive. We sank one of their ships. They damaged three of ours. They seem to be planning an amphibious landing at Philadelphia or maybe above the city to try to break our hold on its supply lines running through the Delaware Valley. They are active on the New York City front, testing our lines for weak points. Perhaps they are planning a breakout from New York to link up with an amphibious landing north of Philly We won’t know what they’re going to do until they do it.”

  “Is Fremont aware of all that? Does he understand that he may be hit from several directions at once as we were in the Northwest? Does he know that some of those attacks may be feints designed to deceive him into concentrating his men at the wrong point?”

  “He is telegraphing situation reports almost every day that cover all those fronts. I take that as a sign that he’s keen to know what the Confederates are up to. He’s commissioned cavalry units, like the one that fought so well for him at Gettysburg. And he’s got Meade, Reynolds, Hancock, and Warren with him. I’ve been told they’re some of the best division commanders in our army.”

  “I know those officers and they are among the best we have,” confirmed Sherman. “They’ll have their chance to prove their mettle. The Confederates will go whole hog in attacking Philadelphia. They want to make up for what they failed to accomplish in the Northwest. I must confess that the fact that they are attacking Philadelphia worries me. They were unsuccessful when they had the element of surprise. They have no hope of surprising us this time and they know it. They must be bringing stupendous numbers of men and ships to bring to bear against us.”

  Lincoln leaned forward and spoke in a quiet voice, as if conveying confidential information.

  “That’s what worries me too, Sherman. Are we fully prepared for every contingency the Confederates might throw at us? We have that other reserve army of New York and New England men being trained at Albany. I’m thinking of giving you command of that army so that you can bring it into New York or Philadelphia if the Confederates throw more at Fremont than he is able to handle. The reserve army that you and Mitchel brought in from Ohio prevented a serious defeat in Indiana. It got there at exactly the right time to have the most effect.”

  Sherman began to compose his reply that this would be a sound plan, so long as Lincoln made clear to Fremont that Sherman’s army was as independent of his command as Mitchel’s had been independent of McDowell’s. Before Cump could speak there came a knock on the closed pocket doors. Lincoln opened the doors to find John Hay and Secretary of War Simon Cameron.

  “Excuse me, sir,” said Cameron in a state of visible excitement. “The evening telegrams from the East Coast have just come in. The enemy attack is reported to have commenced, but it is not at Philadelphia.”

  Lincoln and Sherman looked at Cameron astonishment.

  “It’s Boston,” said Cameron. “The Confederates are reported to have arrived outside the harbor with a fleet estimated to comprise over one hundred ships.”

  24

  Boston Harbor, October 16, 1861

  From the bridge of the flagship Cumberland McClellan watched the sunrise illuminate the smoke rising over Boston Harbor. The smoke issued from the half-dozen forts on the islands in the harbor and from the return fire of the fast moving Confederate “decoy ships” orbiting the forts. The “decoy ships” were drawing the fire of the forts while doing their share to smoke up the harbor to mask the in-bound troop tran
sports. The light and variable winds dispersed the smoke just enough to cover the harbor.

  “Time to run in the transports,” said McClellan.

  “I’ll have the captain raise the signals,” replied Rear Admiral David Farragut. He went to give the order to the captain. The signals to send in the transports went up and fluttered overhead, casting their wobbling shadows on the bow.

  Secretary of the Navy Franklin Buchanan stood next to Farragut, watching the ships of the transport fleet align on the harbor. “Front row seats, eh, Mac?”

  “And no waiting in line at the box office!” retorted McClellan.

  The warships of the Home Squadron led the way in. McClellan watched Cumberland’s sister ship Savannah enter the harbor with Constellation, Saratoga, Macedonian, and Portsmouth following behind in a “V.” Their mission was to engage and destroy any Rebel warships lying in wait inside the harbor and to pound any on-shore resistance into submission. The St. Louis and Germantown stood outside the harbor, on guard against any Rebel warships that might attempt to interfere with the landings from the high seas. In between the warships came the transports. From McClellan’s viewpoint it looked like the fleet covered the ocean horizon to horizon.

  This is how the British must have felt when they saw the Spanish Armada bearing down on them. But we’ll have better luck with the Rebels than the Dagos did against the British!

  Brigadier General Benjamin Butler, soon to become the Confederate Union’s Military Governor of New England, was thinking the same. “I would not have imagined there were so many ships in all the world! You must have chartered every steamer from New York to New Orleans.”

  “We just about did,” McClellan remarked. “We fooled the Rebels about where they were going, too. The Rebs must have sent whatever ships they could sortie to Delaware Bay. Fooling them into thinking we were going to land in Philly was no small trick, let me assure you.”

  McClellan wondered if the other landings would go so well, now that the Rebels were alert that New England, not Philadelphia, would be the Eastern Campaign’s objective. After the first thirty thousand men were landed in Boston the invasion would shift northward to Portsmouth, New Hampshire and Portland, Maine. After the ports were secured McClellan planned to build up an army of a quarter-million men in New England.

  McClellan planned to use those reinforcements to complete the capture of New England’s other cities. Worcester, Providence, Hartford, Springfield, Newport, and Augusta were his priorities for what was left of this year’s campaigning season. Then, next spring he planned to move the army inland to take possession of the industrialized area around Albany and the Mohawk Valley that contained most of what was left of the Rebels’ armament manufactories.

  This advance would uncover the rear of the Rebels maintaining their cordon around New York City and allow McClellan to establish a continuous front from Metro New York to the Canadian border south of Montreal. After securing that front he would position his army astride the Erie Canal and follow it westward to Buffalo. He would then swing down to destroy whatever was left of the Rebellion around Cleveland while Robert E. Lee approached from the West.

  McClellan’s attention was drawn to the thick clouds of black smoke that began to rise from the starboard side of the harbor, soaring high above the thick white gunpowder smoke from the forts and decoy ships. The black smoke flattened out and began blowing inland.

  “Our ships are approaching the Charlestown docks,” said Buchanan. “According to our reports the Vincennes and Preble are in ordinary there. The Rebels must be burning them to prevent their capture.”

  From time to time McClellan, Buchanan, Farragut, and Butler heard the thunderous broadsides from the Savannah and the other warships operating close in echo across Boston Harbor. Other palls of black smoke closer to the city center began to appear above the white smoky mist. Farragut kept his spyglass trained on the harbor but didn’t see far enough through the smoke to give any definite reports.

  In early afternoon the transports began returning from the smoke-filled harbor after unloading the troops. Farragut examined each one carefully through his spyglass as they cleared the smoke. “None of our ships have signaled damage yet,” he said after a while. “An amazing operation --- over a hundred ships running past the harbor forts without being hit. I wish my brother could be here to see this.”

  “Your brother?” asked Butler.

  “He means his adoptive brother Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter,” explained McClellan. “He’s supervising the construction of the Western Gunboat Flotilla at the Mississippi and Ohio River ports. He’s going to give Bobby Lee some help with his webfeet out there during next year’s scrimmage with the Rebels.”

  If Lee can get to Chicago by next summer, while I am occupying the Rebel’s economic heartland in New York and New England, it will seal the doom of the Rebellion. But can he get there, even with Admiral Porter’s gunboats helping him to keep the Rebels away from the rivers? He surely didn’t accomplish much in the Northwest in this years’ campaign. Will I have to go to the Northwest and help Bobby Lee get to Chicago?

  The men stayed out on deck until sunset then adjourned to the captain’s quarters for dinner. They discussed the military and civil governments they would be establishing in Boston and the other New England ports. None of them had ever thought of becoming occupation authorities on American soil.

  “We’ll follow the same benign policies of occupation that old Winnie Scott established down in Mexico,” advised McClellan. “You know, the Mexicans offered to elect ‘Old Fuss and Feathers’ president of their country.”

  “That’s because he paid the Mexicans fairly for what his army used and wouldn’t tolerate any corruption,” said Buchanan. “It’s the only honest government the Mexicans ever had.”

  “I intend to govern in the same spirit,” said Ben Butler. “I’ll let the New Englanders know that the Confederate Union is their country too and that their rights under the Constitution will be respected. We already have the loyalty of thirty-five percent of their people. If I can obtain the loyalty of half the other half, then I will have obtained the loyalty of the majority.”

  It took McClellan a few seconds to grasp what Butler meant, but he finally decided that it made sense. McClellan concluded that Butler was not anywhere near as stupid as his corpulent, balding, cock-eyed appearance made him appear.

  “We’d best take our rest,” said Farragut. “Tomorrow will be a very long day.”

  At first light McClellan and Butler bade farewell to Buchanan and Farragut. The Cumberland and all but two other ships of the Home Squadron headed up the coast to support the landings at Portsmouth and Portland. McClellan and Butler transferred to a steamer and waited for the decoy ships to engage the forts again and blind the defending batteries with smoke.

  Getting into Boston this day was not as easy as the day before. The Rebel gunners in the harbor forts had wised up. Instead of smoking up the harbor with massed indiscriminate firing they were aiming two or three of their guns at specific targets then waiting for the smoke to clear before firing again.

  “If they don’t run out ammunition soon they’ll learn how to lead their shots,” McClellan said to Butler. “Then it will only be safe to come in at night.” He wondered if he should change his mind and engage the forts with the two ships of the Home Squadron that had remained on station outside Boston Harbor.

  No, that won’t do any good. The forts are sure to inflict more damage on the ships than they could inflict on the forts. We will just have to accept our losses until the forts fire down their ammunition to the point where they don’t have enough left to harm us.

  McClellan saw that some of the decoy ships were still putting out smoke, but others were shot up and drifting with the tide. Two were awash to their gunwales. McClellan hoped their crews had been able to swim free. One of the outbound transport steamers passed close enough by for McClellan to observe it through the smoke. It showed a hole of blown-out timbers, fortun
ately above the water line. Suddenly a solid shot came screaming out of the smoke about twenty feet over the deck. It passed before McClellan had time to duck. He thanked the fates that the fort had only fired a single shot instead of a volley. Perhaps they were already starting to feel the pinch of an ammunition shortage.

  I hope those devils run out of ammunition before they learn how to lead for deflection and to shoot to hole our ships below the waterline.

  The smoke thinned as they neared the docks. McClellan saw the Statehouse, or rather what was left of it, on the hill in the center of town. In happier days it had reminded him of the “City on the Hill” as the Puritan founders had thought of Boston. Today it was a smoking hulk. The Rebels must have holed up inside and tried to make a stand, causing his men to signal for broadsides from the warships to knock it down. The fire from the warships had ripped through some of the adjoining residences and commercial buildings as well, leaving them in ruins.

  The good news for the Confederates was that the Rebels had not had time to burn the commercial docks or the dozens of ships moored to them.

  We were right to run the risk of seizing Boston Harbor by a coup de main! We have captured at least half the ships in New England!

  “What shall we do with all these captured vessels?” McClellan asked Butler. “I don’t think I want to leave them in the hands of the Rebels. They’ll move them off to Halifax and go on conducting trade through the Canadas with their friends in the Free States.”

  “Why don’t we wait to see how the people of Boston behave?” suggested Butler. “Let’s judge them by their conduct. Let’s allow those who take the Oath of Loyalty to the Confederate Union to resume their trade. Those who won’t take their pledge will have their ships sold at auction to those who will.”

  “Yes,” agreed McClellan. “I expect that the opportunity to resume commerce will persuade most merchants to see things the right way. Business interest is a powerful persuader, especially to New England merchants!”