by Bruce Catton
5. White Flag on a Sword
1. Wilmot Gibbes De Saussure, Order Book, in the Southern Historical Collection.
2. Diaries of Edmund Ruffin, Vol. IV, 797–98; Avery Craven, Edmund Ruffin, Southerner, 215–17, 219; Dickert, History of Kershaw’s Brigade, 29.
3. Dickert, 17–21.
4. Major Anderson’s testimony before the retirement board in the Massachusetts Commandery papers, Houghton Library.
5. The figures for the Fort Sumter garrison are Major Anderson’s; a return dated April 4, 1861, in the Anderson Papers, Library of Congress. Accuracy in regard to the Confederate figures is impossible. The Charleston Mercury on May 14, 1861, used the figure of 7000; Gov. Pickens, shortly before the battle, estimated Beauregard’s strength at 6000 (O.R., Vol. I, 292); Rhodes, Vol. III, 355, quotes Russell of the London Times as putting the total at 7025. For a good description of Fort Sumter, see John Johnson. The Defense of Charleston Harbor, Including Fort Sumter and the Adjacent Islands, 17. The fort’s guns are listed in the report of Capt. J. G. Foster, O.R., Vol. I, 18–19. See also B. & L., Vol. I, 58–60.
6. B. & L., Vol. I, 67–68.
7. Ibid, 60–70.
8. Major Anderson’s testimony, Massachusetts Commandery papers, Houghton Library; B. & L., Vol. I, 71.
9. Fox’s report, N.O.R., Vol. IV, 249.
10. Ibid, 240–50.
11. Major Anderson gives a graphic account of all of this—with due emphasis on the role of Sergeant Hart—in his testimony in the Massachusetts Commandery papers.
12. Diary in the Stephen Dill Lee Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina.
13. Report of Capt. J. G. Foster, O. R., Vol. I, 22–24; Crawford, 441–42; B. & L., Vol. I, 71–73. Russell gives a fine picture of the ineffable Wigfall in My Diary North and South, 46.
14. Crawford, 446–47; diary in the Stephen Dill Lee Papers; Charleston Daily Courier, April 15, 1861; Miss A. Fletcher, Within Fort Sumter, 64–66.
6. The Coming of the Fury
1. Letter of W. S. Rosecrans to Gen. Marcus J. Wright, March 1, 1892, in the Eldridge Collection, Huntington Library.
2. George Ticknor, Life, Letters and Journals of George Ticknor, Vol. II, 433; John B. McMaster, A History of the People of the United States During Lincoln’s Administration, 35; Russell, My Diary North and South, 41–42.
3. John Hay, Lincoln and the Civil War, 14; McPherson, Political History of the United States, 114; Carl Schurz, The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, Vol. II, 223; Russell, 42.
4. Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 71; Basler, Vol. IV, 330.
5. Basler, Vol. IV, 331–32.
6. Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 80–84; letter of Congressman George Ashmun to Isaac N. Arnold, printed in the Cincinnati Daily Commercial, Oct. 28, 1864. Ashmun was present when Lincoln and Douglas had their talk, and he wrote a clear and complete account of it.
7. Mrs. D. Geraud Wright, A Southern Girl in ’61, 52–53. The author, a daughter of Senator Wigfall, quotes from a letter written by a friend in Providence, R.I.
8. McMaster, Lincoln, op cit, 35.
9. For the replies of the governors, see O.R., Series Three, Vol. I, 70–83.
10. Appleton’s Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 735; Moore’s Rebellion Record, Vol. I, Documents, 70; letter of W. C. Rives to Robert C. Winthrop, April 19, 1861, in the Robert C. Winthrop Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.
11. O.R., Vol. II, 3–4; John D. Imboden, Jackson at Harper’s Ferry in 1861, in B. & L., Vol. I, 111–18; Charlotte Judd Fairbarn, “Historic Harpers Ferry,” pamphlet, 41–42.
12. Douglas Southall Freeman, Robert E. Lee, in D.A.B., Vol. XI, 122; diary of Cornelius Walker, D.D., entry for April 15, 1861, in the Confederate Memorial Literary Society, Richmond.
13. Capt. Robert E. Lee, Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee, 24–28; letter of Mrs. Lee to Mrs. G. W. Peter, written apparently in April, 1861, on deposit in the Maryland Historical Society. Lee’s account of his talks with Blair and Scott is set forth in memoranda by Col. William Allan, who discussed the matter with Lee in 1868 and 1870, in the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina.
14. Ticknor, op. cit., 434.
CHAPTER SIX: The Way of Revolution
1. Homemade War
1. Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States of America, Vol. I, 89, 93, 114–15; N.O.R., Series Two, Vol. III, 191–95; R. Barnwell Rhett, The Confederate Government at Montgomery, B. & L., Vol. I, 109–10.
2. Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States of America, Vol. I, 160–69.
3. Varina Howell Davis, Jefferson Davis: a Memoir, Vol. II, 80; Basler, Vol. IV, 345.
4. O.R., Series Three, Vol. I, 79–80; Appleton’s Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 444.
5. Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 105; O.R., Vol. II, 577; George William Brown, Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April, 1861, 43. Brown was mayor of Baltimore at the time and he says that notice of the coming of the troops was “purposely withheld” from the city authorities. Two days before the Baltimore riot, General Scott and Secretary of War Cameron sent an unidentified agent north to speed the dispatch of troops and to take measures to safeguard Washington’s railroad connections, which, the agent was told, were liable to be broken in Baltimore. Reaching Baltimore, the agent was told by loyalist citizens that the passage of state troops would almost certainly cause a riot but that regulars could go through Baltimore without difficulty; “They could not see or admit that, when sworn into the service of the United States, they were no longer State troops but U.S. troops—or militia in the service of the Government.” This agent’s report is in the Cameron Papers, Library of Congress.
Incidentally, John Hay seems to have done the Pennsylvania contingent an injustice in his remark about “unlicked patriotism.” This contingent was composed of five militia companies—from Lewistown, Allentown, Pottsville, and Reading—which were well-trained and disciplined, by the standards of that day, and which on their arrival in Washington mounted guard around the Capitol after being greeted by President Lincoln. In its march across Baltimore this battalion was hooted and stoned by a mob; it is asserted that the first blood shed in the Civil War was shed by Nicholas Biddle, a former slave serving as an officer’s orderly, who was hit in the head by a brick-bat. I am indebted to Dr. S. K. Stevens, executive director of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, and to Mr. Charles McKnight of Fork, Maryland, for information about these troops.
6. George William Brown, op. cit., 44–46, 49–53; Col. Edward F. Jones in O.R., Vol. II, 7–9.
7. Appleton’s Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 56–57; O.R., Vol. II, 9–11; Basler, Vol. IV, 340–42.
8. Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 107–8, quoting Taylor but giving no source; Memoirs of Henry Villard, Vol. I, 170.
9. Report of War Department agent in the Cameron Papers, as cited in Note Five, above; Appleton’s Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 752; Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 106–7; John Hay, Lincoln and the Civil War, 6–11.
10. Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 144–45; Appleton’s Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 535; Diary of Gideon Welles, Vol. I, 43–44.
11. Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 146–47; N.O.R., Vol. IV, 288–90; New York Times, April 26, 1861; Welles, Vol. I, 45–47; John Sherman Long, “The Gosport Affair, 1861,” Journal of Southern History, Vol. XXIII, No. 2, 169.
12. N.O.R., Vol. IV, 306–9; J. Thomas Scharf, History of the Confederate States Navy from Its Organization to the Surrender of Its Last Vessel, 132.
2. Arrests and Arrests Alone
1. “A Page of Political Correspondence: Unpublished Letters of Mr. Stanton to Mr. Buchanan,” North American Review, November 1879. On April 26, 1861, just after the tension was relieved, John G. Nicolay wrote to his wife that for some days after the Baltimore riot “Our intercourse with the outside world was cut off. We heard frequently from Baltimore and different parts of Maryland, but the news had little of encouragement in it. Uniformly, the report was that all heretofore Union men
had at once turned secessionists, and were armed and determined to the death to prevent a single additional northern officer crossing the soil of Maryland.… We were not only surrounded by the enemy but in the midst of traitors.” (John G. Nicolay Papers, Library of Congress.)
2. Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 135; Letter of Gov. Hicks to Secretary Seward, April 22, 1861, in the William H. Seward Collection, University of Rochester.
3. Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 155–57; unsigned article apparently by Theodore Winthrop, “The New York Seventh Regiment: Our March to Washington,” Atlantic Monthly, June 1861.
4. Appleton’s Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 444–46; Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States, Vol. I, 589; New York Times, April 30, 1861; Rhodes, Vol. III, 388.
5. McPherson, A Political History of the United States of America During the Great Rebellion, 9.
6. Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 166; Basler, Vol. IV, 344.
7. George William Brown, Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April, 1861, 94–95; O.R., Vol. II, 29–30.
8. Carl Schurz, Reminiscences, Vol. II, 223–25.
9. O.R., Vol. II, 28–30; Butler, Ben Butler’s Book, 237, 240.
10. Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 174; Basler, Vol. IV, 429–30. For an excellent discussion of this case, see James G. Randall, Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln, 84, 120–21, 161–62. The Merryman case was eventually transferred to civil authority and at last was dropped. (O.R., Series Two, Vol. II, 226.)
11. Congressional Globe, 37th Congress, Third Session, Part 2, 1372–73, 1376.
12. Cited in Moore’s Rebellion Record, Vol. I, Diary, 61.
3. Diplomacy Along the Border
1. Russell, My Diary, 65–68; letter of Varina Howell Davis to Clement C. Clay, in the Clay Papers at the Duke University Library.
2. O.R., Vol. II, 39.
3. O.R., Vol. II, 23–27.
4. Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States, Vol. I, 180–81, 188.
5. Moore’s Rebellion Record, Vol. I, Documents, 193.
6. J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, ed., The Correspondence of Jonathan Worth, Vol. I, 143; Joseph Carlyle Sitterson, The Secession Movement in North Carolina, 239 if.
7. Appleton’s Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 676–77, 680; Chase C. Mooney, “Some Institutional and Statistical Aspects of Slavery in Tennessee,” in the Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Vol. I, 228; Moore’s Rebellion Record, Vol. I, Documents, 72, 137.
8. Appleton’s Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 22–23; O.R., Series Four, Vol. I, 294; Series One, Vol. I, 687; Ted R. Worley, “The Arkansas Peace Society of 1861; a Study in Mountain Unionism,” in the Journal of Southern History, Vol. XXIV, No. 4, 445.
9. Moore’s Rebellion Record, Vol. I, Documents, 264–65. Gov. Magoffin’s course in the spring and summer of 1861 was perhaps as unsatisfactory to the governor himself as it was to the partisans who tugged at him so violently. E. Merton Coulter (The Confederate States of America, 45) considers Magoffin “a thorough-going Secessionist” who did his level best to take Kentucky out of the Union; James G. Randall, on the other hand, felt that Magoffin “may be described as anti-Lincoln rather than fully pro-Confederate.” (Lincoln the President, Vol. II, 4.)
10. Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Vol. I, 386.
11. Letter of Garrett Davis to George D. Prentice, in the Congressional Globe, 37th Congress, Second Session, Appendix, 82–83.
12. Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 235–36; O.R., LII, Part One, 140–41. There is an illuminating examination of the confusing Kentucky situation in Edward Conrad Smith, The Borderland in the Civil War, 263 ff.
4. Collapse of Legalities
1. Letter of Gov. Jackson to Jefferson Davis, April 17, 1861, in the Jefferson Davis Papers, Duke University Library.
2. Thomas L. Snead, The First Year of the War in Missouri, B. & L., Vol. I, 264 ff; O.R., Vol. I, 688.
3. Letter of Gov. Jackson to J. W. Tucker, April 28, 1861, in the James O. Broadhead Papers, Missouri Historical Society. For the May 3 message to the legislature, see Moore’s Rebellion Record, Vol. I, 55.
4. The characterization is William Tecumseh Sherman’s, in his Memoirs, Vol. I, 172.
5. There is an engaging and sharply critical sketch of Lyon written by a former trooper in the 1st U. S. Cavalry, Robert Morris Peck, Rough Riding on the Plains. Trooper Peck remarks that when this regiment learned, late in the summer of 1861, that Lyon had been killed in action, “the almost invariable verdict was ‘Well, the old son of a gun is “punished properly” at last.’ ” I am indebted to Mrs. Raymond Millbrook of Detroit for calling this little-known book to my attention.
6. Rhodes, Vol. III, 393–94; Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 208–9; O.R., Vol. I, 669–70.
7. Chicago Tribune, April 29, 1861; letter of William Hyde of the St. Louis Republican to William McKendree Springer, in the Springer Papers, Chicago Historical Society.
8. Thomas L. Snead, op. cit., 264–65; John Fiske, The Mississippi Valley in the Civil War, 13–15; O.R., Vol. III, 4.
9. The story is given in detail in Fiske, 16–17. After the war, Sherman wrote to John G. Nicolay expressing deep skepticism about the entire episode and remarking that although he himself had been in St. Louis at the time he had heard nothing about it. Nicolay’s answer apparently satisfied him, however, for he wrote “Your proof is conclusive.” (Letters of W. T. Sherman dated Feb. 4 and April 2, 1882; letter of Nicolay dated March 24, 1882; in the John G. Nicolay Papers.) The story obviously can be taken or left alone, at the reader’s option.
10. O.R., Vol. III, 4–6; Sherman, Memoirs, Vol. I, 172; Snead, 265; Francis Grierson, The Valley of Shadows, 225–26. This seems as good a place as any to remark that the Grierson book is a little classic which deserves a wider reading than it has been getting.
11. Grierson, 228. For a discussion of Frost’s course, see Col. John C. Moore, “Missouri,” in Vol. IX, Confederate Military History, 32–33.
12. O.R., Vol. III, 4–5.
13. Sherman, Memoirs, Vol. I, 173; Robert J. Rombauer, The Union Cause in St. Louis, 223. One of the German soldiers wrote: “When the hauty young Americans were taken into custody by the second regiment, composed of Germans, and as prisoners were marched to the arsenal, their rage knew no bounds. But to no avail. They simply were prisoners, and the Dutch, as we were generally called, were masters of the situation.” (Diary of John T. Buegel, 3rd Missouri Volunteer Infantry, in the J. N. Heiskell Collection, Little Rock, Ark.) Shortly after Lyon’s exploit an ardent St. Louis secessionist wrote: “My blood boils in my veins when I think of the position of Missouri—held in the Union at the point of Dutchmen’s bayonets. I feel outraged—you may imagine how hard it is for men to endure it.” (Letter signed A L to “Dear Sister”, dated May 20, 1861, in the Civil War Papers of the Missouri Historical Society.)
14. Galusha Anderson, A Border City During the Civil War, 98–99; Rachel Sherman Thorndike., ed., The Sherman Letters: Correspondence Between General and Senator Sherman from 1837 to 1891, 119–20; Rombauer, The Union Cause in St. Louis, 233.
15. Rombauer, 234; Thomas L. Snead, The Fight for Missouri, 171; Grierson, 230–31.
16. Moore’s Rebellion Record, Vol. I, Documents, 234–36; Rombauer, 239; James Peckham, Gen. Nathaniel Lyon, 162.
5. Symbolism of Death
1. William Ernest Smith, The Francis Preston Blair Family in Politics, Vol. II, 47–48; Rombauer, 243; Fiske, op cit, 21.
2. Snead, The First Year of the War in Missouri, B. & L., Vol. I, 266; D.A.B., Vol. XV, 216–17; Rombauer, 258; letter of Jeff Thompson to Charles M. Thompson, May 29, 1861, Civil War Papers Mo. Hist. Soc.
3. Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 216; Basler, Vol. IV, 372–73, 387; O.R., Vol. III, 375.
4. Francis P. Blair, Jr., to Lincoln, May 30, 1861, in Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 222; O.R., Vol. III, 383; Letter from A L to “Dear Sister,” in the Civil War Papers of the Missouri Historical Society; James Peckham, General Nathaniel Lyon, 226. On May 17, Montgomery Blair wrote to his broth
er about the prospective removal of Harney and the promotion of Lyon: “I have had great difficulty in accomplishing these matters.… The Secy of War was against both.” (Francis P. Blair, Jr., Papers, Library of Congress.)
5. Snead, The First Year of the War in Missouri, B. & L., Vol. I, 267; Moore’s Rebellion Record, Vol. I, 363–64.
6. There is a thoughtful discussion of the Missouri situation in Edward Conrad Smith, The Borderland in the Civil War, 221–240. Smith inclines to the view that it was Gen. Harney who blocked out the most practical policy for this troubled state, and he feels that Lyon’s seizure of the militia camp in St. Louis was an expensive mistake: “No one can know what would have happened if the camp had been allowed to continue until the close of the day, or if the men had been allowed to go to their homes to spread secessionist propaganda and later to enlist with the armies of the South. But from the events which immediately followed the affair, one is forced to the conclusion that it was a political blunder of the first magnitude, which occasioned inestimably more damage to the cause of the Union than could have resulted from allowing it to continue.” (The Borderland, 238.)
7. Appleton’s Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 140; Montgomery Weekly Advertiser, May 11, 1861. For a discussion of the pros and cons of the move to Richmond, see E. Merton Coulter, The Confederate States of America, 100–2.
8. Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 310–12; O.R., Vol. II, 40–42; B. & L., Vol. I, 179, editor’s footnote on Ellsworth; New York Tribune, May 26, 1861; John Hay, “A Young Hero: Personal Reminiscences of Col. E. E. Ellsworth,” in McClure’s Magazine, March 1896; Ellsworth’s letter to his parents, Harper’s Weekly, June 8, 1861, 357; Basler, Vol. IV, 385–86. In the Ellsworth Papers at the Chicago Historical Society there is an account of Ellsworth’s death written by George H. Fergus, who was a lieutenant in Company E of the Fire Zouaves. Fergus insists that Ellsworth did not enter the hotel to take down the flag; “He went in so that he could get a view of the situation from the cupola.” According to Fergus, Ellsworth made his survey and then, almost as an afterthought, cut down the flag before he returned to the street.
