Terrible Swift Sword

by Bruce Catton

  As professionals, Mr. Lincoln’s generals were falling short in their own field of competence; they were failing to see that they had gained a great advantage and that it was supremely important to press the advantage while it still existed. On top of this they were quite unable to realize that the political reasons for energetic action were irresistible. General McClellan had been helped into his position as general-in-chief by the very men who now were most insistent on action; he had taken office, in short, on the implicit understanding that he would make things happen quickly. In addition, the war was not being fought in a vacuum. There was Europe to think about.

  The administration right now was being warned that British intervention—so narrowly averted by the settlement of the Trent affair—was highly probable unless the North began to win decisive victories.

  From London, Mr. Adams had written early in January that “one clear victory at home might save us a foreign war,” and on January 24 he amplified the warning in a letter to Secretary Seward: “I will venture to say that the course of events in America during the next six weeks must in great measure determine the future of the Government of the United States. For it is they and they only which can control the manner in which foreign nations will make up their minds hereafter to consider them. And in this sense the absence of action will be almost equally decisive.” From far-off St. Petersburg, Minister Cassius Clay wrote that Prince Gortchakoff had warned him that a decisive reverse would quickly lead England to make common cause with the South, and he said: “Nothing but quick and effective success will save us from foreign enemies.” Washington, Mr. Clay concluded, ought to prepare for war with England “as an inevitable result of any reverses which would prevent a subjection of the South before the 1st of April next.”13

  That these diplomats may have been taking too dark a view is beside the point. This was the advice Mr. Lincoln was getting, and if he was impatient with generals reluctant to strike hard and quickly there was reason for it. Back of his clumsy White House conferences and his almost frantic messages to the generals in the west lay the conviction that time was running out. The government could win the war if it struck immediately. If it did not, the future was all but unimaginable.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Military Paradox

  1: Decision in Kentucky

  A year later the march could have been made in half the time, with a third of the equipment. Now the soldiers were learning their trade, and they gained wisdom by doing things the hard way. When General Thomas marched his division out of its camp at Lebanon, Kentucky, to go down to the Cumberland River and attack General Zollicoffer’s Confederates, he had nearly one hundred miles to go; the way went roundabout through the hills, and as the cold January rains continued the roads grew very bad indeed so that the little army moved at a crawl. General Thomas had some 5000 men in his column, each regiment had thirteen baggage wagons, the mud was axle-deep, and the march went on for more than two weeks—it took eight days to cover the last forty miles. Boys who had not yet been hardened to march and sleep in the winter rain fell sick, many of them died, many more were sent home with medical discharges; an officer in the 2nd Minnesota estimated after the war that this march cost the army 20 per cent of its numbers.1 But the men who were not sick kept on going, and, shortly after the middle of January, Thomas had his troops in camp near Logan’s Cross Roads, ready for battle.

  Zollicoffer’s Confederates were camped on the north side of the Cumberland, six or eight miles away, in a bad spot—a swollen river at their backs and the enemy in their front, no room to maneuver, no good way to retreat if things went badly. More than a month earlier General Zollicoffer, who had been guarding Cumberland Gap seventy miles to the southeast, had moved up to the town of Mill Springs, safely south of the river, so that he could keep an eye on the Federals, whom he suspected of planning to march into eastern Tennessee. Being both zealous and inexperienced he had ignored General Johnston’s warning and had come north of the river, and when Richmond, worried by this move, sent Major General George B. Crittenden down to take top command Zollicoffer talked him into holding the exposed position now threatened by the Federals.

  Crittenden was a West Pointer, who had fought for Texas in the days of the Lone Star Republic, had served in the Mexican War and had campaigned against the Indians on the frontier; a good man who had made a good record but who did not, in this month of January, have any luck at all. He was son of the famous John J. Crittenden, who had tried to work out a compromise to avert war just a year ago, and his younger brother, Thomas Crittenden, was now a brigadier general in the Union Army; the divided sentiments which tore Kentucky apart had split the compromiser’s own family. As the Federals neared Logan’s Cross Roads, Crittenden planned to stay where he was and await attack, but the unending rains led him to change his mind. A Union division under Brigadier General Albin Schoepf was known to be posted at no great distance from Logan’s Cross Roads, on the far side of a stream known as Fishing Creek, and it seemed likely that the rains would have made this stream impassable, so Crittenden concluded to move out and smash General Thomas while Schoepf was immobilized. In the pre-midnight blackness of the night of January 18 he and Zollicoffer got their men into column and moved forward to make a surprise attack at dawn.

  It was a bad night to march with inexperienced troops. The roads were almost impossible, the artillery got hopelessly mired down, and the infantry floundered inexpertly along in the downpour, moving with nightmare slowness. It was daylight before the advance guard stumbled up to the Yankee picket line, and only two Confederate regiments were on hand, the rest being far behind. No surprise was possible; the advance regiments got into line of battle as best they could (while the Federal drums beat Thomas’s sleeping men out of their bivouacs) and the battle began.

  Right at first, the Federals gave ground. But Thomas was able to get his men into position quickly, and a great many of the Confederates were armed with old-fashioned flintlock muskets which could not be fired in the rain; and just as the battle became general, Zollicoffer was killed. (Pathetically nearsighted, he had ridden up to a Union regiment under the impression that it was one of his own, and he was shot dead before he could get away.) News of his death demoralized the Confederates, whose spirits had been badly dampened anyway by the miserable night march, and just then Thomas struck with a massive counterattack. The Confederates resisted briefly, then broke and ran for it, with the Federals in full pursuit. By midday, Crittenden’s army simply dissolved. Most of the fugitives managed to get back across the river, but they had to abandon their artillery, their wounded, their camp with all of its supplies, their wagon train, and the body of the lamented Zollicoffer. For the immediate future this army was out of existence, and when the depressing news reached Tennessee the unhappy Crittenden found that he was being blamed for everything. It was charged that he had been drunk, which was not true at all, and his reputation, like his army, evaporated.2

  It had been a small battle, as such things went—each side probably brought about 4000 men to the field—but it was of much importance. The right end of Albert Sidney Johnston’s line had been destroyed, once and for all; the actual casualty list had not been excessive, but for the time being at least he had lost 4000 men whom he could by no means afford to lose, and as a Tennessee patriot wrote to Mr. Davis, “there is now no impediment whatever but bad roads and natural obstacles to prevent the enemy from entering East Tennessee and destroying the railroads and putting East Tennessee in a flame of revolution.”3 For future reference, too, it might have been noted that General George Thomas, who looked so ponderous, could strike swiftly and powerfully once battle had been joined. His whole campaign, as a matter of fact, had been well handled, despite the wastage of the hard march down from Lebanon. Far from Washington, the Union Army had come up with one very solid soldier.

  So the North had something to cheer about, and from the War Department there came a formal note of congratulation, issued, “by order of the
President,” by the Secretary of War, praising the troops for their courage and fidelity and going on to underline the moral: “The purpose of the war is to attack, pursue and destroy a rebellious enemy, and to deliver the country from danger menaced by traitors. Alacrity, daring, courageous spirit and patriotic zeal on all occasions, and under every circumstance, are expected from the Army of the United States.”4 This of course was routine. What made the bulletin notable was the name signed at the bottom: Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War.

  Mr. Lincoln had made the first change in his cabinet. Simon Cameron was out: Cameron, with the unhappy reputation and the face of a sad, rather sensitive fox, who had pressured his way into the cabinet and now was pressured out by the intolerable demands of war. His departure surprised no one and apparently pleased everybody except Cameron himself. Richard Henry Dana, Jr., wrote that “the relief of getting rid of Cameron is unspeakable,” and predicted that the stock market would go up. Thaddeus Stevens, who had feuded with Cameron for years and had a low opinion of the man’s integrity, grunted sardonically when he learned that Cameron was to be the new Minister to Russia, and remarked: “Send word to the Czar to bring in his things of nights.”5

  Cameron’s trouble was much like the trouble that had befallen General Frémont in Missouri. He had been responsible for the spending of enormous sums of money, under circumstances which made it inevitable that there would be a good deal of graft, and he had neither the administrative ability to run the business efficiently nor the personal standing that would induce people to overlook the inevitable wastage and corruption. As a matter of fact the huge new armies were by now fairly well supplied and armed, and the flagrant abuses in purchasing (which Congress had already started to look into) apparently never enriched Cameron personally; but it had been obvious for some time that if the government proposed to win the war it had better get a new head for the War Department, and Cameron’s last-minute attempt to win abolitionist support by urging the use of Negro troops had done no more than harden Mr. Lincoln’s determination to replace him.6 Now Stanton was in his place, his appointment confirmed by the Senate on January 15.

  Stanton brought to the War Department everything Cameron lacked—executive ability of a high order, much driving energy, a hound dog’s nose for tracking down irregularities and a furious insistence on removing them when they had been found. He was rude, dictatorial, abusive, a man who could be outrageously blunt and incomprehensibly devious at the same time. When he chose to be (which was not often) he could be charming. Fanny Seward felt that he had a cheery manner, a merry twinkle in his eye and an air of hearty warmth, and Charles A. Dana, the newspaper editor who later would become an assistant secretary of war, wrote that “Stanton had the loveliest smile I ever saw on a human face” and felt that he was most companionable.7 Not many people saw him this way, and before the winter was out there would be many who felt that they had been profoundly deceived by him.

  Among these would be General McClellan. When Stanton took office McClellan considered him one of his best friends. Stanton went around to see McClellan the day his appointment as Secretary of War was announced, saying that if he took the job it would be solely on McClellan’s account: Did McClellan want him to take it? McClellan assured him that he did, writing to his friend S. L. M. Barlow that “Stanton’s appointment was a most unexpected piece of good fortune,” and Barlow in turn assured Stanton that “nothing since the war began with the exception of your appointment & that of General McClellan has seemed to me to be right.”8 During the fall, when the struggle to replace Scott was going on, McClellan had found Stanton his most trusted counselor. Once, when President Lincoln was more than usually a burden to him, McClellan wrote that he had taken refuge in Stanton’s house “to dodge all enemies in the shape of ‘browsing’ Presidents, etc.” At that time the general felt that the most unfortunate thing about Stanton was “the extreme virulence with which he abused the President”; he never spoke of him, McClellan said, except as “the original gorilla.”

  In other words, Stanton was typed as a good conservative Democrat, taking office at a time when the abolitionists badly needed curbing. In December, Barlow had written to him, predicting that “the whole abolition pack” would soon be snapping at McClellan’s heels and remarking that this might be just as well; sooner or later the Democrats, the reasonable and responsible men who could fight for the Union without running a fever over slavery, would have to take control of the government’s war policy, and the more rapidly the abolitionists discredited themselves, the better off everyone would be. Ward Hill Lamon, the good friend whom Lincoln had made marshal of the District of Columbia, feared that the anti-slavery faction would presently be attacking the President, and to a friend back home he was writing dolefully: “I wish you and some other honest men from Illinois would come here and go with me away down on the banks of the old Potomac and there sit down on a moss covered log and help me God Damn these Abolitionists—for if they ever get hold of the reins of this Govt the Govt is gone to Hell by a very large majority.”9

  What Stanton might have done if he had entered the war at a quieter time is an open question. He did come in, however, just when the hinges were turning. His temper fitted the requirements of the moment: he would be a dynamic Secretary of War, and he would begin by setting a new pace for his old friend General McClellan.

  Journalist Donn Piatt, an intimate of Stanton, asserted after the war that he talked with the new Secretary at the time of the appointment and asked him what he was going to do in his new job. “Do?” cried Stanton. “I intend to accomplish three things. I will make Abe Lincoln President of the United States. I will force this man McClellan to fight or throw up; and last but not least I will pick Lorenzo Thomas up with a pair of tongs and drop him from the nearest window.” (Lorenzo Thomas was Adjutant General of the Army, a crusty old paper-shuffler who was widely considered a substantial handicap to the war effort. Oddly enough, he turned out to be Stanton-proof; he never was removed, serving in his high position to the end of the war and beyond.) Piatt’s understanding of the declaration, “I will make Abe Lincoln President” was that the new Secretary intended to teach all generals that they were subject to the orders of the civil authorities. The President was commander-in-chief: this, the Army must understand, was a statement to be taken literally.10

  It would be taken literally, to begin with, by the President himself, and before long this was made clear.

  Whether on Stanton’s urging, on someone else’s, or on his own initiative, Mr. Lincoln on January 27 issued a strange, comprehensive and rather baffling paper which bore the heading, “President’s General War Order No. One.” It began: “Ordered that the 22nd. day of February 1862, be the day for a general movement of the Land and Naval forces of the United States against the insurgent forces.” It directed that the armies in Virginia, in western Virginia, in Kentucky and in Illinois, along with the gunboat flotilla on the Mississippi, be ready to move on that day, and that all other contingents stand by in a condition of expectant readiness; and it specified that the general-in-chief and all of his subordinates “will severally be held to their strict and full responsibilities, for the prompt execution of this order.” A supplementary order, four days later, said that the Army of the Potomac would march down to cut the railroad southwest of Manassas Junction.11

  On the surface, this accomplished nothing whatever. When February 22 came the various armies went on doing just what they had been doing before, even (in some cases) to the point of continuing to do nothing at all. It is possible that the order was not really intended to get specific action. It was a goad for the sluggish and a warning to the heedless, it reflected Secretary Stanton’s belief that “the armies must move or the Government perish,” and it was a reminder that the threads of power ran finally to the White House.12 In any case, it quickly drew from General McClellan a detailed, carefully reasoned statement of his own immediate plans. On the final day of January, McClellan signed a lengthy letter
to Secretary Stanton, telling the Secretary and the President exactly what he proposed to do and how he proposed to do it.

  He began by arguing vigorously against the movement on Joe Johnston’s position at Manassas Junction. He reverted to the Urbanna plan, and he projected this with a wealth of detail which showed that the idea had been getting some careful study. In substance, McClellan wanted to flank the Rebels out of northern Virginia and to carry the war at once to the region of the Confederate capital. This thrust would be co-ordinated with advances by Buell and Halleck in the west; further, McClellan saw all of these steps, in Virginia and in Kentucky alike, as parts of a great encircling movement by which the Confederacy would be hemmed in and constricted by a huge crescent, going counterclockwise all the way from Port Royal around to New Orleans. In each segment of this crescent the Federals would be on the offensive.13

  It was a solid program, not altogether unlike the essence of old General Scott’s Anaconda Plan, if anyone had stopped to think about it; surprisingly in harmony with the strategic concept which Mr. Lincoln had tried so vainly to impress on General Buell and General Halleck; and General McClellan presented it persuasively and with much clarity. In the end the general would have his way; that is, he would take the water route when he moved against Richmond, although he would find it necessary first to make at least a token advance toward Manassas Junction. But in presenting this paper he had in effect endorsed the demand that the Army of the Potomac move at once. He had outlined a program which called for concerted movements, and in the west the movements were already under way. Any army which lagged would call attention to itself in the most unmistakable way. Henceforward all generals were apt to be judged by comparison with the one who had the most energy.