Strange and Obscure Stories of the Civil War

by Tim Rowland

  By day’s end, of course, both spectators and the blue-clad main attraction alike were sprinting as one back to safe ground, soldiers chucking their weapons as they ran and carriages jammed together in accordioned waves of horse-drawn panic. In the first major land battle of the war, the novices of the South proved to be better than the novices of the North, and an initially tough contest turned into a rout.

  But De Peyster’s angle (and he was, and is, not alone in his thinking) was this: Bull Run was a cold slap to the psyche of the North, which up to that point had viewed the rebellion as more of an impending nuisance than an impending catastrophe. Bull Run, he said, “ … cemented the free states; it awakened the people to the necessity of organizing a proper army; it taught the government that (it) could no longer trifle with events.”

  Watching from the sidelines at the time, a one-armed, aristocratic soldier of fortune named Philip Kearny wasn’t so sure. One more defeat like Bull Run, he warned, the Union’s flabby goose of a military might just be cooked.

  Kearny was the wealthy son of a New York tycoon who had helped found the New York Stock Exchange. The elder Kearny had groomed his boy to be a force on Wall Street, a life the young man didn’t want. The younger Kearny’s call was to be a force on the field of battle, and despite a law degree and an inheritance of better than $1 million, he joined the U.S. Army and made himself into easily the best military man not to be on the field when the Civil War broke out.

  Sporting an elegant van dyke matted to a hawklike face was Kearny in the saddle, holding his reins in his teeth and waving pistol and/or saber, the sight of which inspired poetry, even among the most well-intentioned writers. De Peyster wrote, but probably shouldn’t have, in part because he was a cousin of Kearny:

  No one who has ever studied the lineaments and expression of Philip Kearny, his carriage, his bearing on foot or seat in the saddle, but must … acknowledge in their hearts that his soldierly face and knightly person would look more appropriate under the morion and the mail of Fra Moreale, of Do Guesclin, or of Batard, or in the plumed hat lined with steel, and polished breastplate of a Rupert, a Montrose, or a Dundee; nor deem him in the saddle unworthy of Sir Richard Vernon’s glowing description of that “Imp of Fame,” who, on the field of Agincourt, so glorious to his manhood, declared …

  We get the idea. What’s harder to understand is why the North, so desperately in need of leadership, ignored such a talent. The North had anticipated that it would crush the South like a bug and get on with business as usual, and with capable leadership this dream might have been achieved. Instead, the North was led by a virtual Who’s Not Who of fighting men, for whom the word “competent” was much yearned for but seldom achieved. The North understood it had lost its best general when, after much tormented soul-searching, Robert E. Lee threw his lot in with his native Virginia. But as fortune would have it, the second-best, third-best, and on down the line had also defected—or so it seemed, as Lincoln discarded general after general, looking for a hand that was at least bluff-worthy in the face of Southern talent.

  Irvin McDowell had just blown an early advantage at the First Battle of Bull Run and almost lost Washington in the process. John Pope would muck up Bull Run redux. Joe Hooker’s name would be remembered not for military skill, but for the ladies of ill repute that lazed around his camp. Ambrose Burnside was praised by contemporary soldier and later historian Ezra Carman as having “a fine row of teeth.” Burnside at least knew his limitations, and repeatedly tried to duck Lincoln’s attempted promotions. Out of options and excuses, Burnside rose to the top and commenced to lead his poor men into one slaughter after another. Wrote Carman, “It is not going too far to say that the Union cause would have received no hurt and (saved) much blood had Burnside’s own estimate of his ability been accepted by the administration.”

  Benjamin Franklin Butler’s occupation of New Orleans was so mean and corrupt that residents of the city had the general’s bald and jowly countenance painted on the bottoms of their chamber pots. George McClellan was a supreme organizer, be it of military ranks or the never-ending oyster and Champagne parties he hosted on the Potomac, an activity he seemed to far prefer to any actual fighting.

  Southern generals had such nicknames as “Stonewall” (Thomas Jackson) and “The Gray Ghost” (John Mosby). Northern generals had names like “Old Fuss and Feathers,” (Winfield Scott) “Baldy” (William Smith), and (read into this nickname what you will) “Old Brains” (Henry Halleck). Nathaniel Banks lost so many battles and supply trains to Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley that the Rebels took to calling him “Commissary Banks.” Even the North’s most bellicose nickname, “Fighting Joe” Hooker, was the product of a typo. The dispatch was meant to read: “Fighting—Joe Hooker attacks Rebels.” Hooker in fact was a decent enough commander, who imprudently suggested that the nation needed a dictator, and the sooner the better. Lincoln got wind of the comment and told Hooker that he’d accept a victory and chance the dictatorship.

  Yet the Union ranks were not without talent, and gradually that talent began to rise, even if it seemed at times that the North’s best men were battling against the South and their own commanders at the same time.

  In a war filled with ten million what-ifs, it’s probably best not to dwell too heavily on Kearny’s potential. Study of his career can arouse irrational exuberance in Northern partisans; it is all too easy to get caught up in the excitement and assume, probably wrongly, that with the stroke of a pen placing the army in Kearny’s hands, the war would have been over in the late summer of 1862.

  We see this now. No one saw it back when it mattered.

  Though chivalrous and high-minded, Kearny was not a perfect man. His behavior was manic, his temper was legendary, his wit was acerbic, and his soul was tormented. He could drive most anyone, male or female, to tears with his chronic complaining. Impatient for the birth of his first child, he blew up at the calendar for not allowing the days to pass quickly enough. His psyche skipped from thunderstorm to thunderstorm, with rays of the warmest sunshine and icy currents of depression carving canyons in between the tumult.

  One-armed Philip Kearny was known for holding the reins in his teeth and leading his men into battle—in the middle of a raging storm, often as not. (Courtesy Library of Congress) Note: Kearny’s name is misspelled in the print

  But Kearny was the perfect soldier. Prior to the Civil War, Kearny studied tactics overseas at the famed cavalry school at Saumur, France; he rode gallantly in battle with the Chasseurs d’Afrique, where he earned the name Kearny le Magnifique; he drove Indians out of Oregon settlements; in the Mexican War he became known as the Hero of Churubusco, for a daring cavalry charge that cost him his left arm; and he returned to France and fought the Austrians, helping the French Imperial Guard capture a key spot on the battlefield at Solferino, toward the end of the second War of Italian Independence.

  Kearny had followed and learned from the best commanding officers in the world. He was intensely patriotic to the Union cause and renowned for being able to organize rabble into fine fighting forces. His military genius and his bravery were unquestioned. Kearny had been pinned with the Legion d’honneur twice, once by the duc d’Orleans, and once by the Emperor Louis Napoleon himself.

  With this on his resume, Kearny sailed home from Paris in 1861 and presented himself to the Union for service—and was turned down.

  For all his success on actual battlefields, Kearny’s political pedigree was not in order, and he had a reputation for selling out any commander or politician whom he deemed inadequate—which was just about all of them. Aside from the aging Gen. Winfield Scott, Kearny had few friends in high places. And while the South was basing its military leadership—Lee, Jackson, Stewart, Longstreet, Hill, Early—on merit, the North was basing its military leadership on political party allegiance, congressional friendship, and West Point cliques. It is no overstatement to say that in Kearny’s place among the North’s generals were men whose chief militar
y attribute was that of being, for example, a pro-Union Democrat.

  It wasn’t the first frustration Kearny had felt in the army, his primary quarrel with the institution being that there wasn’t enough quarreling. In peacetime, he had spent dreary months under Scott doing little more than entertaining high-profile dignitaries, there being no hostilities at the time.

  “Am I to spend my military career,” he moaned, “as a highly placed flunky looking to floral decorations in banquet rooms, escorting visiting bores and dancing with the ugly wives and the clumsy daughters of foreign diplomats?” For the sake of Kearny and clumsy daughters everywhere, the Mexican War was about to commence.

  This theater was vintage Kearny, as he led a daring, marginally irresponsible dragoon charge up to the gates of Mexico City. It was a fine sight. He’d raised the force of men himself and paid for their elegant attire and weaponry out of his own deep pockets. With the help of a Midwestern attorney he had outfitted them with one hundred twenty matching gray horses. As the charge played out, the commanding officer eventually called Kearny and his men back with a bugle—a serenade apparently heard by most all the horsemen but Kearny. (Kearny did admit later that he heard the bugle call, but frankly, waving his pistol and swinging his sword in a sea of enemy infantry was just too much fun.) Without his mates, of course, the action went against him, and as he was riding away, a cannon shot tore off his arm. Semiconscious, Kearny, asked which arm was gone. Informed that it was his left, Kearny nodded and said, “I envisioned this.”

  But despite this heroism, Kearny couldn’t even get a gig with an outfit from his home state of New York a dozen years later. If the military establishment couldn’t see Kearny’s worth (in one instance he was told he could not be the leader of young men because he was divorced), the leading newspapers and citizens of the state could. “The lives of our fine young men are of less importance than the wishes of ward heelers and political leaders whose protégés have to be given consideration,” said one frustrated New Yorker.

  If Kearny was hated by the politicians, he hated them right back, loudly and publicly—which was part of the problem, truth be told. He raged at the “nincompoops and incompetents” who were chosen as officers, and he bellowed even more loudly at the men who were doing the choosing. Finally, a frustrated and disillusioned Kearny retired to his New Jersey mansion. “I have been traduced by intriguers,” he said glumly. “What am I to do?”

  If Kearny was disillusioned, so was anyone who had ever tried to lead the drunken, ragtag band of hoodlums and slackers that were collectively known as the First New Jersey, a military brigade in name only. Kearny’s friends made a case to the governor that the one-armed solder might be the one person who could out-ornery the First New Jersey, but a number of political favorites were already in line.

  Fortunately, for Kearny at least, the governor’s decision was influenced and expedited by the Bull Run debacle. Suddenly the great soldier’s marital status was irrelevant; Kearny was nominated to the command of the First New Jersey, but he needed the affirmation of the president. As it turned out this was not an issue, since the Midwestern attorney who had worked with Kearny to round up one hundred twenty gray horses many years before was a man by the name of Lincoln.

  As brigadier general of the First New Jersey, Kearny took a gang of drunks and turned them into a ferocious fighting machine. Now they just needed someone to fight, which, given the paralysis of McClellan, was not a sure thing. Kearny spent the fall of 1861 drilling his New Jersey volunteers into one of the army’s finest brigades, and wondering why no one else—notably McClellan—seemed to understand that there was a war going on. Where Kearny loved to brainstorm with his colleagues about great European battles and tactics, it seemed, as one officer wrote, that McClellan “acts as if he had taken the oath to some hidden and veiled deity … not to ascertain any thing about the condition of the enemy.”

  Kearny, by contrast, drew up multiple plans of battle that concentrated on booting the Confederates from the steps of the Northern capitol and pushing on to Richmond.

  But, writes De Peyster, “Kearny’s soldiership was always too prompt and energetic, not only for McClellan, but for those immediately over him in command. Had Kearny’s advice been followed, Kearny’s ‘practical strategy’ would have maneuvered the Rebels out of their insulting positions in front of Washington … ” and pressed the battle southward.

  Kearny relished warfare, which he viewed as a divine form of high culture. He was hard on his men, but he made sure they got the best food and equipment. He himself traveled in a carpeted wagon stocked with fine French wines and his own personal French chef. All was in ready for a glorious campaign.

  Kearny waited. And stewed. His own personal water kettle of a temper was always on simmer, and it took little flame to boost it to a rolling boil. When he caught some of his men stealing chickens, an awestruck private observed that “the general cussed us out for ten minutes, maybe longer—and he never repeated himself once.” Kearney stalked back to his headquarters grumbling that the one sure way to whip the South was to strategically place Richmond between his men and a henhouse.

  To his credit, McClellan had taken the scared rats of Bull Run and turned them into a well-organized and well-drilled army “whose equal has never been seen in the Western world,” said the general himself. Kearny wondered how he could know that this was true without seeing it under fire. If McClellan had a plan, he wasn’t letting anyone in on it. Secrecy, Kearny noted dryly, was an asset in men of genius, but in McClellan it was “most unfortunate … Talent he has; genius he has not.”

  McClellan, stationed in Northern Virginia, was convinced the Rebel army just to the south was superior in numbers and artillery strength; rows of big guns poked out from fortifications near Centerville. Kearny received a directive to protect a railroad crew but not to approach Southern lines. He circumvented this restriction by leading his brigade toward enemy lines, only on the grounds that it was a necessary part of protecting the railroad crew. Amazingly enough, Kearny received information from an escaped slave that the Rebels were planning to evacuate their position. Kearny spread his brigade to make the Confederates think the army as a whole was approaching, and the South’s orderly withdrawal developed an atmosphere of panic. Kearny’s brigade captured rich caches of Confederate gear, which had been left behind as the South beat a more hasty retreat than it had originally planned. As Kearny’s men sorted through the loot, it was the left-behind artillery that captured the volatile general’s attention. They were nothing but logs painted black, known in the parlance of the day as “Quaker guns.”

  Kearny understood the truth; McClellan had been duped into thinking the South was dealing from a position of strength, when in fact, divisive action might have resulted in a swift Union victory. Short of that, Kearny believed that it was not too late for the North to catch up with the retreating Confederates and beat them all the way back to Richmond, using Virginia’s wide, easterly flowing rivers to supply the army along the way. This was the point, in March of 1862, when a bold move (before Robert E. Lee had been elevated to lead the Southern army) might have had interesting consequences. But it was not to be. Wrote Kearny:

  Instead of letting me and others push on after the panic-stricken foe and forcing him to fight a big battle and probably ending the war … McClellan has brought us all back. The result will be that the Rebels, thinking us afraid of a real, stand-up fight … will take daring action against us, while we strike timidly at them.

  McClellan, of course, didn’t see it this way. His plan was for a tortured aquatic troop movement in the spring of 1862 (“conceived in weakness and crippled at birth,” Kearny believed) to a finger of Virginia land flanked to the north by the York River and to the south by the James. The army was to eventually work its way up this peninsula to Richmond, but even getting troops to the drop-off point at Fort Monroe on the Chesapeake Bay proved to be a long, logistical nightmare. The inaction had Kearny toggling between deep bout
s of depression (exacerbated by the death of his two-year-old boy back home) and volcanic disgorgements of hatred, generally directed at McClellan, although whoever was close by would serve. He had been promised that his brigade would lead the charge off the boat to capture Yorktown. Instead, Kearny disembarked to find a lot of men milling around and a lot of equipment hung up in the mud; McClellan, fearful of being outnumbered, had called off the frontal attack.

  This was bad enough in Kearny’s view, but worse was the revelation that once again the South had only a small defending garrison that, on the approach of the North, slipped away, no damage done. McClellan called this a “shattering victory,” and doubtless there was more shattering going on at Kearny headquarters, where he had now been promoted to division commander but again found nothing to lead a command against. Kearny would not have been surprised to learn that Confederate commander Joseph Johnston had clucked to Lee that “only McClellan” would have failed to attack.

  A cartoon lampoons McClellan as viewing the Peninsula campaign through a telescope from his safe perch. He calls to the troops, “Fight on my brave Soldiers and push the enemy to the wall, from this spanker boom your beloved General looks down upon you.” (Courtesy Library of Congress)