Reveille in Washington

by Margaret Leech

  The old brick town of Alexandria was another mecca for sightseers. At the Marshall House, where young Ellsworth had been killed, souvenir hunters tore the paper from the walls at the foot of the stairway; and, attacking with their pocketknives the woodwork around the spot where the colonel had fallen, they demolished the stairs, the balustrade and the adjacent doors and door frames. In March, a new life and movement came to Alexandria, for in the Potomac a great fleet was gathering. The warehouses were closed; it was an activity alien to the secessionist town that crowded the shabby wharves. Schooners and brigs, many with stalls fitted for horses on their decks, lay along the shores, or moved from pier to pier in the wake of puffing little tugs. The big river steamboats made a colony of floating houses, white-painted and galleried with decks.

  Under the sullen eyes of the Alexandria inhabitants, the divisions of the Army of the Potomac marched in to make their camps on the bleak hills near the little port. The words of their general’s address rang in their ears, and it would have been hard to convince them that this was the speech of a traitor.

  The moment for action has arrived, and I know that I can trust in you to save our country . . . . I am to watch over you as a parent over his children, and you know that your General loves you from the depth of his heart. . . . I shall demand of you great, heroic exertions. . . . We will share all these together; and when this sad war is over we will return to our homes, and feel that we can ask no higher honor than the proud consciousness that we belonged to the Army of the Potomac.

  Night and day, at Alexandria and at the Washington wharves, the vast quantities of stores, the horses, mules and wagons, the heavy guns, the bales of hay, the pontoon bridges and the telegraphic materials were loaded on the ships. The banks of the river were lined with spectators, staring at the embarkation of an army. Regiment after regiment, the soldiers marched on board the transports; and, as the huge paddle wheels revolved and the steamers turned toward the south, the faces on the river bank were troubled. The great army had been like a burdensome shield before the breast of Washington. When it had sallied to Manassas, it had still been interposed between the city and the enemy. Now it was disappearing down the Potomac, and, for all its new earthworks, the capital felt bereft of protection.

  The advance on Richmond by the water route had taken on new disadvantages since the appearance of the Merrimac. The James River was closed to Federal ships. It had by no means been established that the Monitor could handle the big Confederate ironclad, whose reemergence from Norfolk was awaited with keen apprehension. Fort Monroe had become a precarious base for McClellan’s operations on the Virginia Peninsula—it was, however, the base on which the administration insisted—and the Navy Department sent down a fleet of vessels to protect the Union transports, and prevent the Merrimac from entering the waters of the York River.

  The President and Mr. Stanton were now committed to the business of running the war. Civilians, without the slightest experience in military matters, they felt the need of professional advice; and they turned to a retired Army officer in poor health—Ethan Allen Hitchcock, a grandson of the Revolutionary hero whose name he bore. This clean-shaven old soldier, with bluff and forthright manners, had a record of forty years of honorable service, but he was not primarily interested in military matters. He had gone to West Point because friends of the family thought the career of a soldier an appropriate one for Ethan Allen’s grandson. He was a student of philosophy, a devout pantheist, who delighted in metaphysical researches and wrote fat volumes on alchemy and other recondite subjects. He was obsessed by a belief that many writers clothed their true meaning in symbolism; and in Dante, Shakespeare and the Gospels he had, after much toil, discovered an esoteric philosophy not discernible to the ordinary reader.

  Mr. Stanton’s first interview with Hitchcock took place at the veteran’s bedside. On reaching Washington, he had been prostrated by a severe hemorrhage from the nose, a disability to which he was subject. The War Secretary suggested his serving in an advisory capacity—giving the benefit of his experience. This duty did not sound arduous, and Hitchcock at length decided to accept a commission of major-general of volunteers. A few days later, Stanton abruptly asked him if he would take command of the Army of the Potomac. The invalid student of the occult was amazed, and at once refused. “Now—what is to come of this?” he wrote, in some perturbation, in his diary. “I want no command. I want no department. . . . On the whole, I am uncomfortable. I am almost afraid that Secretary Stanton hardly knows what he wants, himself.”

  There was one thing that Stanton wanted, and knew very well that he wanted. Behind closed doors, he apprehensively breathed into Hitchcock’s ear “the most astounding facts” about General McClellan’s incompetency. When the recital was ended, Hitchcock “felt positively sick.” He shared to the full the fears of disaster. “I do not wonder, now,” he wrote, “that the Secretary offered even me the command of this Army of the Potomac.” The details of the sickening revelations he did not commit to paper; but Stanton, with dark references to the influence of Jeff Davis, was making no secret of his fears that McClellan would not be willing to do anything “calculated greatly to damage the cause of secession.”

  The extent of political interference in army affairs was drastically conveyed to McClellan by the depletion of his command. As he was on the point of sailing, he learned that Blenker’s German division had been transferred to General Frémont. That staunch, if somewhat tarnished Republican had been given another chance to win honors in the war. A new command had been created for him, the Mountain Department in western Virginia. Since this loyal section had been abandoned by the Confederates, it was arranged that Frémont was to undertake a campaign across the mountains into eastern Tennessee. He had many supporters in the Republican party, and the President wrote of “pressure,” when he notified McClellan of the loss of ten thousand men.

  McClellan was already in the field when he received the news that he was to be deprived of a full army corps, on which he was counting for a flank movement on Yorktown. To the capital’s politicians, the protection of Washington was of paramount importance, overshadowing all questions of military strategy; and recent events in the Valley had served to quicken their anxiety. McClellan had intended to interpose Banks’s corps between Washington and the enemy. The main body of this force was to be stationed at Manassas, with infantry guards and cavalry detachments posted in the surrounding country. The railway was to be repaired from Alexandria to Manassas, and thence to the Shenandoah Valley, thus giving the Federals the advantageous communications which had proved so useful to the Confederates at Bull Run. It was a good plan, but, before McClellan sailed, it was upset by General Thomas J. Jackson, already known by the sobriquet of Stonewall, whose rebel command had been left in the Valley. Jackson made a daring attack on the Federal troops at Kernstown, near Winchester. It was repulsed, but the noise of battle beyond the Blue Ridge frightened Washington. McClellan, forced to detain Banks in the Valley, made no further effort to reinforce Manassas, guarded only by insignificant detachments.

  The President had repeatedly stipulated that a sufficient force should be left behind to ensure the safety of Washington. The number and character of the troops thus vaguely defined had not been settled by a definite agreement; but McClellan’s corps commanders, meeting in council soon after their appointment, had required full garrisons in the forts on the Virginia side (some twelve thousand men), the occupation of the forts on the District side (about three thousand men), and a covering force of twenty-five thousand. The total was not greatly in excess of the estimate of thirty-five thousand men made by McClellan himself in the preceding autumn. However, in his overmastering desire to perfect an army for the field, McClellan neglected the claims of Washington. In its growing apprehensions he had no interest at all. They were the apprehensions of unmilitary persons, and, as an expert, he was sure that his campaign against Richmond constituted the best defense of the capital. Mr. Lincoln’s secretaries obse
rved that McClellan never feared an attack on Washington, unless he happened to be there himself. He had ringed it with fortifications, but he had never provided enough artillerymen to handle the ordnance; and, in preparing to advance, he had withdrawn regiment after regiment from the disciplined troops stationed there.

  Nevertheless, McClellan believed that the command of Washington was of primary importance. Mansfield had gone to serve in the Department of Virginia, centered at Fort Monroe. A military District of Washington had been created, under command of a military governor, and McClellan had suggested his great friend, General Franklin, for the place. Franklin was a capable officer, who enjoyed McClellan’s confidence, and would have worked in full co-operation with him. Political considerations, however, determined the selection of the rich and influential Republican, James S. Wadsworth, to whom McClellan made the single, but insuperable objection that he was not a trained soldier. From the outbreak of war, Wadsworth had been notable for his patriotism. At fifty-three, he was still lean and active. Snowy hair and side whiskers framed his narrow, handsome face, and he wore the carved saber of antique pattern which his grandfather had carried in the Revolutionary War. To his new career of soldier, he had brought the qualities of energy, honor and courage. A landed proprietor of political interests, he resembled in many ways the Southern planters who had dominated Washington before 1861. There was one conspicuous difference. Wadsworth was an ardent abolitionist, unsympathetic to the slaveholding population of the capital. From the moment of taking command, he showed an intense distrust of McClellan—who expressed the opinion that Stanton had inspired this antagonism. On the other hand, Major Doster gathered from Wadsworth and his staff that there had been ill feeling for some months between the New Yorker and McClellan, because Wadsworth, officially and in conversation, had expressed himself in favor of an advance in Virginia.

  Wadsworth’s new duties included the command of all troops stationed in and about the capital, and he had promptly ridden out to make an inspection. Ten days before McClellan sailed, the military governor reported to Mr. Stanton that the force was “amply sufficient.” But a belated letter from McClellan—who did not make a statement of the troops he intended to leave behind, until he was on board the steamer, ready to depart—changed Wadsworth’s opinion, and drove him to indignant remonstrances that the capital had only a bare nineteen thousand soldiers, many of them entirely untrained. Stanton’s worst suspicions were confirmed. General Hitchcock and Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas agreed that the force was inadequate. Other War Department generals shook their white heads and concurred. Ben Wade’s committee, starved since the Quaker guns of Manassas for a definite grievance, raised an outcry. McDowell’s corps of thirty-five thousand men had not yet sailed, and an order, detaching it from the Army of the Potomac and retaining it for the defense of Washington, was issued by Stanton under the direction of the President.

  A wiser and less arrogant man than McClellan might have anticipated this result. He had not done so. His plans were disarranged, and he indignantly protested that it would now be necessary to lay siege to Yorktown. The War Office saw only that McClellan still had an army of over one hundred thousand men. Smaller armies, with vastly inferior equipment, had been winning important victories, and this fact Stanton proceeded to emphasize in an order giving thanks for the successes of the Union arms. Thanks were due, specifically, to General Henry W. Halleck, commanding the Department of the Mississippi, in which the territory from the Allegheny to the Rocky Mountains had been unified, for the success of all the military operations in the West; to Generals Samuel R. Curtis and Franz Sigel and their forces for their gallantry at Pea Ridge, Arkansas, where they had won a decisive victory; to Generals Ulysses S. Grant and Don Carlos Buell and their forces for the repulse of the rebels at Pittsburg Landing; to General John Pope and his officers and soldiers for their bravery and skill in the operations which had captured Island Number 10 in the Mississippi. From this roster, General McClellan and his officers and soldiers, beginning to sicken in the swamps before Yorktown, were conspicuously absent.

  There was a latent irony in the gratitude expressed for the repulse at Pittsburg Landing, better known to the Union as bloody Shiloh. The slaughter of two days of fighting had appalled a nation unprepared for long casualty lists. On the first day the Federals had been driven back; it was said that Grant had been taken by surprise, and that only the arrival of reinforcements under Buell had saved him from a disastrous defeat. Sherman emerged with brightened fame from the engagement; but Grant was no longer hailed as the hero of Fort Donelson. The news of Shiloh enraged the country, and Grant was denounced as incompetent in the press and in Congress. For a second time, the President jeopardized his popularity by retaining a general whose removal was vehemently demanded. There had been reports from Halleck that Grant was drinking, that he was negligent and disobedient. Sitting before the fire in his office, with his feet on the marble mantel, Lincoln listened to the Pennsylvania Republican, McClure, pleading with him that, in justice to himself, he must immediately relieve Grant from command. “I can’t spare this man; he fights,” Lincoln told McClure at last.

  The President had issued a proclamation recommending that at their places of public worship the people should thank their Heavenly Father for the signal victories of the land and naval forces, and the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Maryland backed this up by a letter to the clergy under his charge. In the Washington churches, the suggestion was not universally welcomed. Secesh were numerous among the capital’s Episcopalians, and feeling was running high on the subject of giving thanks. A few weeks before, the Bishop had transmitted a special prayer to be used by his clergy, blessing and magnifying the name of the Lord “more especially for the deliverance of this city and district from the terrors of blockade and siege.” The Reverend Doctor Pinckney of the Church of the Ascension, the Reverend Mr. Syle of Trinity, and the Reverend Mr. Morsell of Christ Church at the Navy Yard, to the high indignation of their unionist communicants, had all omitted the prayer. At the Ascension, things came to such a pass that the church was closed by order of the provost marshal, and the embattled congregation was obliged to disperse. The vestry of Trinity was split into two factions, one of which clamored for the severance of Mr. Syle’s connection with the church. After the President’s proclamation, Syle ventured to give thanks for the western victories, omitting, as unnecessarily exasperating, the reference to the blockade and siege of the District. The mention of Union successes, however, proved too much for a portion of his congregation, and several irate secessionists swept from the church, “head and tail up,” as the prayer was being delivered. The Reverend Dr. Hall of Epiphany Church, who had complied with the bishop’s instructions, told his congregation that he had urged his superior not to compose any more forms of prayer without a consultation. He concluded his remarks by “a hasty and dainty allusion to loyalty as the abstract duty of all of us.”

  “Glorious news come borne on every wind but the South Wind,” wrote John Hay. “. . . The little Napoleon sits trembling before the handful of men at Yorktown afraid either to fight or run. Stanton feels devilish about it.”

  Word of the devilishness of Stanton’s feelings was all abroad. Late in March, he had sent for the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, arraigning General McClellan’s blunders to sympathetic ears and declaring that among his commanders there were traitors, eight of whom should have been dismissed on the discovery of the Quaker guns at Manassas. On a Sunday in mid-April, there was another conference, in which Mr. Stanton included Senators Wilson and Fessenden, and Congressmen Stevens and Blair. Frank Blair, Junior, had been made chairman of the House Military Committee. He was a tall, soldierly-looking man, with reddish hair and heavy mustache, who early in the war had taken a leading part in saving Missouri for the Union. He found himself in hostile company at Stanton’s conference of radical leaders. Old Thad Stevens, a gaunt, spectral figure in a dark-brown wig, dragging his club foot, and embellishing his comme
nts with profanity, remarked to Stanton that “not a man in the Cabinet, the present company excepted, was fit for his business.” Fessenden heartily endorsed this statement, and all glanced slyly at Frank, to observe his reception of this hit at his brother, Montgomery. Thad Stevens went on to say that he was tired of hearing damned Republican cowards talk about the Constitution. He was in favor of stripping the rebels of all their rights, and giving them a reconstruction that would end treason forever. Stanton assured Stevens that this had been his policy from the beginning. Save for the outsider, Blair, the radicals had a love feast, denouncing slave catching in the army and McClellan’s refusal to listen to information brought in by Negroes. McClellan was still king, remarked Ben Wade, and the country was a long way yet from a vigorous war policy.

  While Stanton’s conferences with the radicals were held in secret, the trend of his opinions was well understood. Democratic newspapers, sympathetic to McClellan and his faction, had not failed to turn to political advantage the War Secretary’s enmity. It was intimated that the movement at Yorktown was imperiled by interference from Washington. There were also rumors that Stanton would resign; and some newspapers suggested that General Hitchcock should be appointed in his place. Soon after, Stanton for the first time became “a little impatient” with Hitchcock. The Secretary’s bullying of army officers was notorious. His low, musical voice could send white-haired generals flushed and trembling from his presence. But Hitchcock was the grandson of the hero of Ticonderoga, and he had not come to Washington to be insulted. When Stanton spoke rudely to him, he sat down and wrote out his resignation. It precipitated “a scene of it.” As always, when people defied him, Stanton backed down. “If you send in that paper,” he cried to Hitchcock, “you will destroy me.” He reproached himself, lamented his faults of temper, and pleaded his overwhelming responsibilities. In the end, Hitchcock went up to Stanton’s room, and put his resignation in the fire; but he was far from satisfied. Though he was publicly regarded as the military adviser of the War Department, both Stanton and Lincoln ignored his suggestions. As time went on, he was mortified at being associated with the strategy which emanated from the White House and the War Office. At length, he was permitted to take a long leave of absence, and returned for the summer to “the tranquility of hermetic speculation.”