The Confederate Union War

by Alan Sewell

  “The notes have been indispensable to my business,” confirmed Burnside. “Our government has contracted to purchase the entire production of the Burnside Rifle Company. They pay me with their notes. I pay my employees and suppliers with the notes I receive from the government. They use them to buy what they need from the merchants. So long as everyone agrees that they are ‘good as gold’ then they are good as gold. The government is creating real wealth with this paper, as much wealth as if it owned a real gold mine.”

  I don’t want to think about what might happen to the value of this paper if the Free States are defeated or even if we should win the war and the patriotism that induces people to accept this paper at par with gold diminishes. If either of those events comes to pass, this paper money will only be good for cleaning our rear ends after we use the stinkpots.

  “I suppose paper currency is a store of real wealth so long as the government declares it to be legal tender and the people agree to accept it as such,” reasoned Cump. “We were going to have to learn to do business with paper currency in any event. The way our economy was growing before the war, we could not have dug enough gold and silver to mint into specie to settle our trade in all the new manufactured goods we were producing. The war is forcing us to rethink a lot of things we were doing. Wars have a way of doing that.”

  Burnside glanced around again in amazement at the many buildings that were being built. “How many Boston refugees have you settled here?”

  “Thirty thousand so far,” answered Sherman with pride evident in his voice. “Thirty thousand more in Northampton. And twenty thousand in Hartford. I’ve sent more than twenty thousand back to Troy, Albany, and Ilion where there’s war work in spades. If the refugees keep coming in at the rate they’ve been entering my lines in recent days then I may have to send them back as far as Cleveland and even Chicago. But I’d prefer to keep them here if I possibly can. I want this department to be self-sufficient in manpower and in all varieties of productions. I am building an unconquerable eastern frontier for the United States of Free America here. I need all the people here to defend it until we grow strong enough to kick the Confederates into the sea.”

  “You’re making magnificent progress in that direction, judging by the number of men you have in uniform,” observed Burnside. Men in uniform were everywhere, though the uniforms were by no means uniform. They consisted of pants of various shades of blue ranging from light to dark topped with shirts ranging in color from brown to gold.

  They entered Cump’s office in the textile owner’s guesthouse. Cump offered Burnside a coffee with a shot of rum.

  “Your work here has been complete,” commented Burnside. “You’ve not only built fortifications to halt the enemy, but also new cities to house the people who choose not to live under the Confederates. Giving our people a refuge in which to shelter while they learn to fight the Confederates is the essential part of your defense. But still you say you have more refugees than you can settle here. May I request that you send some of them to Providence to help me fight the enemy there?”

  Sherman sighed. “Burns, this is difficult for me to say, but I don’t believe that Providence will be defensible with the Confederates holding Boston and Worcester and blockading the coast with their navy.” Cump traced those points on the map on his desk. “McClellan is nothing if not methodical. He’ll capture Providence with an overland attack, like he used to take Portland after our forts defeated his naval expedition. I expect him to make converging attacks from Boston and Worcester. He’ll use his navy to make landings west of Providence to cut the Shoreline Railroad, isolating you from reinforcement and resupply. That’s the way the ‘book’ says to operate, and McClellan goes by the book. It’s what I’d do if I were in his place.”

  “Can Providence not be saved?” implored Burnside. “I don’t know if our cause will stand its loss after all the other towns we’ve had to evacuate.”

  Sherman shook his head. “I don’t underestimate the value of Providence both as a practical point and a symbolic one, but if we fortify it with an army, we’ll lose the city and the army. I’d rather save the people of Providence by bringing them here before the city falls. And I need the machinery from your arms manufactory relocated here as well.”

  “Is there nothing we can do to get the enemy out of Worcester and reopen direct communications with Providence?”

  “I’d hoped there might be,” answered Sherman grimly. “It was the first thing I looked at when I came out here. But after observing their lines I don’t think it can be accomplished, not at an acceptable cost, and not with the men we have available. I’m afraid McClellan understands Worcester’s value as a rail center as well as we do. He’s ringed it with fortifications and put an army corps commanded by Hooker in there to defend it. The railroad going back into Boston is garrisoned too heavily to break. Taking Worcester by direct assault or forcing the enemy to evacuate by attacking his lines of communications is beyond our means.”

  “What about the people in Providence?” Burnside asked. “It will crush their spirit to be moved here before the Confederates approach the city. I can tell you that they’d rather fight for Providence than surrender it. And you’re having trouble handling the refugees just from Boston. Providence will give you fifty thousand more.”

  “I don’t doubt your people’s bravery for a second. But with their control of the land and sea, the Confederates can put a siege perimeter around them and starve them out. Even the bravest people can’t fight starvation.”

  Burnside drained the cup of coffee and rum.

  “Let me evacuate the women and children and anybody else who either can’t or doesn’t want to fight for the city. That’ll leave five to seven thousand men. We can put in enough rations to feed them for sixty days. I will supply them with arms and ammunition from my company’s stock. We’ll bleed the Confederates who try to get into the city, the same as Lyon’s men did in St. Louis. I know you want the rifle factories relocated here, but you’re already backlogged with the work you have restoring the Springfield Armory and the Colt Works. We’d be taking my company out of production for months, with no good result. Allow my company to continue in production for the local defense of Providence and I promise you we will use the weapons to best effect.”

  Sherman poured more coffee and rum. He got up and paced around the office. “I won’t order you to evacuate the city if you’ll raise at least five thousand men to defend it, and if you’ll promise to put in enough arms and victuals before the Confederates cut you off from resupply. If your men prove to be as committed as you, I believe you can make the Confederates pay dearly to take the city. I might even me able to gather enough men here to strike them from the rear if they become bogged down in street fighting. They’ll poke their snouts in a trap that we can spring on them!”

  “Then Providence will be defended!” vowed Burnside.

  29

  Covington Kentucky, December 10, 1861

  Robert E. Lee looked down on Cincinnati from the heights above Covington, Kentucky. Swirls of vapor eddied up out of the Ohio. The river was still warm at this time of early winter, while the air was chilled by an early frost. Hazy sunlight passing through the vapor cast dancing shadows on the ripples of the slow-moving river.

  Dick Taylor, Lee’s adjutant, observed the river too. The current of war is moving so much faster than the current of this river!

  “The war’s moving fast isn’t it,” Taylor commented. “In just a couple weeks it’s shifted two hundred miles from the Wabash to the Ohio.”

  “It was that rickety bridge that you and Bragg built to bypass Terre Haute that got us here,” replied Lee with a smile. “I thought we were going to shake that track into the Wabash when we passed, but by some miracle it has held.”

  “Bragg’s a crusty old jackass,” said Taylor, “but he’s a first rate railroad bridge engineer. A first rate general too, I might add, even if hard on the men.”

  Lee, knowing that Taylor wa
s one of the very few people who got on well with Bragg, interpreted “crusty old jackass” to be a term of endearment.

  “He’s a thorough man,” Lee replied. “He’ll keep an eye on Grant while we take care of business here. And he’s got Stoneballs with him. I would like to have Stoneballs here, but with his wounds it is best that he should recuperate on a quiet front. If Grant does take a notion to go on the offensive he’ll encourage Bragg to be aggressive on the counterattack. Grant might just do it too, given the mastery of railroad logistics he demonstrated at The Salient.”

  “The railroads and telegraphs have speeded the tempo of war for sure,” interjected 26-year-old Major Porter Alexander, commanding the more than two hundred guns emplaced on the Kentucky ridges. “My artillery battalions got here from the Philadelphia front in less than two weeks, and that was on the roundabout route through Chattanooga, Nashville, and Louisville. We’ve reinforced them with heavy guns from the forts at Mobile and New Orleans. Couldn’t have done any of that without the railroads.”

  “McClellan saw what railroads could accomplish when he was sent by our government to observe the Crimean War,” explained Lee. “He took that lesson to heart when he planned our mobilization for this war. He called upon the railroads to move our men from the training camps to the battlefields and overwhelm the Rebels before they had time to organize their defenses. That’s what we’ve been trying to do with these rapid movements --- bring superior forces to bear at our points of attack before the Rebels have time to react.”

  Lee sighed and rubbed his beard. “Unfortunately the Rebels have learned the tactic. Grant and Sherman used it to good effect in concentrating their defenses during the Battle of the Salient. Schofield’s mastered it too, and has used it here at Cincinnati. If the Rebels keep replacing their weak commanders with strong ones we will see a lot more of it. We will have to run faster and faster to stay a step ahead of them.”

  “McClellan stayed a step ahead of them in New England,” said Taylor. “A masterful deception!”

  Lee smiled. “Masterful it was! I only wish I were half so clever as Mac. And I just might be when Stoneballs gets off his sore tail and returns to enlighten me with his strategic genius. But in the meantime we’ll have to make do as best we can between ourselves.”

  “Don’t underestimate yourself,” Taylor replied. “You took five divisions out of the line and moved them here in a week. I know you hated to give up the Salient, but Cincinnati will be worth many times more to us than all those cornfields in the Wabash Valley.”

  “I had no choice,” replied Lee. “We must take Cincinnati away from those people. Schofield is transiting Ormsby Mitchel’s men through it. He’s trying to cut in behind Harney’s line and force us out of Indiana. If the Rebels get to New Albany they’ll put their guns up on the high ground and make Louisville untenable. The only way we can stop Mitchel from getting past Madison is to occupy his base here. Louisville must be defended here.”

  Lee sighed. “Try explaining that necessity to the people, though. They’re madder than a wet hen in a crocus sack with me for giving up the gains that cost us the lives of so many of our best men. ‘Evacuating Lee’ --- that’s what the papers have taken to calling me.”

  Taylor guffawed. “Well, now, if newspapermen knew as much about war as they think they know, then they’d be the generals, wouldn’t they? Pay no attention. You’ll be their conquering hero again when you enter Cincinnati.”

  Lee looked across the river and into the city again.

  “I won’t be a conquering hero, Dick. It will be the men who do the fighting who deserve that honor. Taking Cincinnati is going to be hard on them, especially coming so soon after the fighting in the Salient. Logan’s and Cleburne’s divisions lost half their men. I would have liked to take them out of the line to rest them for the winter so we’d have them fresh for next year’s offensives. But they’re the knife edge of this army. If the Rebels don’t comply with our ultimatum to evacuate Cincinnati, and I have little reason to believe that they will, then I’ll have to engage them in another hard battle without rest or refit. They’ll take the city, but they’ll be worn down to nubs in house-to-house fighting like our men were in St. Louis. We are fortunate that your Louisiana men got here in time to help them.”

  “Why are you so certain the Rebels will refuse your ultimatum?” asked Alexander.

  “Because they’ll refer the question to Mr. Lincoln and he’s a lawyer,” answered Lee. “The first thing he’ll think of is precedence. If he pulls his army out of Cincinnati the Free Staters will expect him to evacuate all other cities that come within range of our guns, including Philadelphia. He’ll be telling his people that sparing their cities is more important than preserving their independence. It’s the same calculation I’d make if the Free Staters were trying to fight their way through Virginia. No matter how much it pained me, I wouldn’t accept an ultimatum to evacuate Alexandria or Fredericksburg or even Richmond. I’d fight for them house to house.”

  Lee returned his gaze to Cincinnati, visible through the foggy haze rising from the river.

  “Barring a miracle my ultimatum will be shown to be a useless exercise, but I had to make it in order to remove the opprobrium of destroying this city from my shoulders --- and from the shoulders of the Confederate Union. If the Rebels refuse the ultimatum they’ll be held accountable in the public mind for causing the battle to be fought here. That will be an important consideration in making us seen as the conductors of civilized warfare in the eyes of the world.”

  “You don’t see any way of breaking their communications to Cincinnati indirectly, such as by cutting their line of communications at Lawrenceburg?” asked Alexander.

  “Dick and I considered it,” Lee replied. “The deficiency in that idea is that we don’t have a railhead on our side of the river anywhere near Lawrenceburg. We can’t possibly bring up troops rapidly enough to bridge the river on the march like we did at the Wabash. These indirect attacks don’t seem to come to much in the face of an aggressive defense anyway. Fremont made fools of us at Gettysburg, and McClellan’s divisions were halted on the outskirts of Providence last week. That’s why you’re here. McClellan advised me not to attack the city until we had destroyed its communications by artillery bombardment. We must destroy every canal, railroad, and telegraph office in town before sending our men in there.

  “After we take Cincinnati I expect Mac to call you to Providence to disable its railroad and telegraph communications before he sends his men in there again. So learn all you can about managing your fire control in this bombardment.”

  Lee took the map of Cincinnati from his pocket and unfolded it. Before the war it had been the fifth or sixth largest city in the old United States, with around 160,000 people. Except for Rebel soldiers it was almost empty now. Fremont’s bombardment during the Partisan War followed by the destruction of St. Louis had shown its inhabitants that a river port on the border between the Free States and the Confederate Union was bound to see a heavy share of fighting. The arrival of Free State soldiers in the city and the sight of the glistening barrels of Confederate Union siege guns on the heights above Covington had convinced most of them that the time had come to skedaddle.

  Lee looked at the points in the city that were marked as targets of the bombardment. They were identified on the map by x’s.

  Oh, how my scale of operations has shrunk! Two weeks ago my map was the states of Illinois and Indiana, and my divisional fronts were counties. Now, I am planning my operations using a city map of Cincinnati where by divisional fonts are wards!

  “Major Alexander, there’s to be no promiscuous firing into the city. Do your men have their assignments as to the specific targets they are authorized to fire on?”

  “Yes, sir, the men know that their targets are confined to points of communications and transit: railroad stations, canal locks, bridges, telegraph offices, and the piers and warehouses on the river. Those targets plus counter-battery fire. But you do
know, sir, that we’re using batches of gunpowder that were manufactured at many different places without uniform potency. Some batches are older than others, and that will further vary their potency. At this range our shots will carry long and short for dozens of yards. And the city is full of Rebels. I’ve told the men to fire on Rebel batteries that return our fire.”

  “No needless destruction, though!” Lee reminded him.

  “Sir,” said Taylor, “we won’t be doing anything that Fremont didn’t do when he shot the Douglas men out of there. He’s already made a good start at the work of destruction.”

  Lee could see that this was true. The commercial district by the river had burned during Fremont’s bombardment. The crude rebuilding in the months since then had erected flimsy structures made of roughhewn logs and shingles. A few consisted only of canvas and rope. Some were warehouses used to supply the Rebel soldiers pushing through Madison. Others were taverns and bordellos frequented by the stevedores and the soldiers transiting the city.

  “Fremont had a few batteries of field artillery that he used to chase a few hundred drunken rioters out of town,” replied Lee. “We’ve got siege guns up there that will be firing on a city garrisoned by a dozen full-strength Rebel regiments equipped with their own artillery.”

  Lee looked over his shoulder at the guns that were positioned in tiers on the heights over Covington. The two biggest, emplaced at the military crest were fearsome rifled cannon named Lilly Belle and Lady Kate, brought up from the forts at New Orleans. They fired 128 pound shells and solid shot bolts. Below them, guns were arranged in tiers of decreasing bore. The bottom tier held 120 32-pound smoothbore cannons, potent weapons in their own right. Alexander had organized these in groups of ten. The gunners of each group were trained to salvo in unison on a single target. A salvo from ten of these 32 pound smoothbore cannons would demolish any structure in town just as thoroughly as a shot from the big rifled guns higher up.