by Bruce Catton
8. E. F. Ware, The Lyon Campaign in Missouri, Being a History of the First Iowa Infantry, 339–40, gives an interesting picture of Lyon: “Lyon was a small man, lean, active and sleepless. He was not an old man, although he had wrinkles on the top of his nose. He had a look of incredulity; he did not believe things.… I never liked him, nor did any of us as far as I could see, but we did believe that he was a brave and educated officer. He struck us also as a man devoted to duty, who thought duty, dreamed duty and had nothing but duty on his mind.”
9. The estimate of numbers is McCulloch’s, O.R., Vol. III, 622–23.
10. A most engaging description of Price’s army is Thomas L. Snead’s The First Year of the War in Missouri, B. & L., Vol. I, 269–71. The description of Price is from John Crittenden, Civil War Letters to His Wife, Vol. I, 114, in the Eugene C. Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas; original in the possession of Miss Frances Harvey of Arlington, Texas.
11. O.R., Vol. III, 563–64.
12. Thomas L. Snead, The Fight for Missouri, 255–57. Snead was present when Price talked to McCulloch, and although his account of the conversation was written after the war, from memory, it probably conveys the substance of what was said.
13. Reminiscences of N. B. Pearce, mss. in the files of the Arkansas History Commission; McCulloch’s report, O.R., Vol. III, 104.
14. Ware, The Lyon Campaign in Missouri, 310–11; L. E. Meador, pamphlet, History of the Battle of Wilson Creek; O.R., Vol. III, 98; Diary of John T. Buegel, 3rd Missouri Volunteers, in the J. N. Heiskell Collection, Little Rock.
15. Sigel’s report, O.R., Vol. III, 86–88; Schofield’s account of the repulse, 94–95. After the war Sigel wrote that he probably escaped capture on his flight because he wore a blanket over his uniform and had a yellow slouch hat on his head; the Confederates, he believed, mistook him for a Texas Ranger. (Letter of Aug. 10, 1895, to Walter L. Howard, in the Franz Sigel Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland.) In his article The Flanking Column at Wilson’s Creek (B. & L., Vol. I, 306) Sigel vigorously denied that he became separated from his men after his flanking movement gave way.
16. B. & L., Vol. I, 296, footnote; Snead, The Fight for Missouri, 275–76, 285–86; O.R., Vol. III, 57–64; Joseph A. Mudd, “What I Saw at Wilson’s Creek,” in the Missouri Historical Review, January 1913; Ware, op. cit., 323; Schofield, Forty-six Years in the Army, 45.
17. Oddly enough, each side claimed that its opponents had been routed. Schofield wrote, “Finally the enemy gave way and fled from the field.” Sturgis said that his men held their ground to the last and then “Withdrew at their leisure to return to their provisions and their water.” Price asserted that “the enemy retreated in great confusion” and McCulloch said the Federals were last seen, at noon, “fast retreating among the hills in the distance.” (O.R., Vol. III, 57–64, 64–71, 98–102, 104–7.) Apparently the battle simply sputtered out, but however it ended it is impossible to interpret it as anything but a Confederate victory.
18. The figures for this battle, as for all others in the Civil War, vary considerably depending on the source used. The writer has followed Snead, The Fight for Missouri, 310, 312. Somewhat different totals are in O.R., Vol. III, 72, 101, 106. See also T. L. Livermore, Numbers and Losses in the Civil War, 76.
19. William Watson, Life in the Confederate Army, 222–23.
3. The Hidden Intentions
1. Letter of Price to Jefferson Davis, Nov. 10, 1861, O.R., Vol. III, 734–36.
2. There are many descriptions of the atmosphere at Frémont’s headquarters. See, for instance, Galusha Anderson, A Border City in the Civil War, 206–7; John Raymond Howard, Remembrance of Things Past, 144; Ida M. Tarbell, The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. III, 63–64, quoting from accounts by Col. George E. Leighton and General B. G. Farrar; Lieut. Col. Camille Ferri Pisani, Prince Napoleon in America, 238–39. (This latter book gives an engrossing picture of Frémont at the height of his power; it is cited hereafter as Ferri Pisani.)
3. Diary of John Hay, quoted in Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 414.
4. Cf. Montgomery Blair’s testimony, C.C.W., 1863, Part III, 154–55.
5. William T. Sherman, Memoirs, Vol. I, 195–97; testimony of Frank Blair, C.C.W., 1863, Part III, 182–83, naming the men who, in Blair’s not unprejudiced opinion, were “in the worst possible repute in California” and denouncing McKinstry as “the worst man that Frémont had about him.”
6. Blair was vocal about the contracts. His testimony is in C.C.W., 1863, Part III, 178–80. There is a vast amount of material on procurement practices at St. Louis, indicating pretty clearly the existence of extensive irregularities, in the report of the commission set up by Congress to investigate Frémont’s regime. See “War Claims at St. Louis,” No. 94 in Executive Documents of the House of Representatives, Second Session, 37th Congress, 1861–62. The commissioners–David Davis, Joseph Holt, and Hugh Campbell–examined 1200 witnesses and concluded that Frémont “virtually ignored the existence of the quartermaster’s and the commissary’s departments, and of the Ordnance Bureau, and necessarily that of the government at Washington.” It added that “the most stupendous contracts, involving an almost unprecedented waste of the public money, were given out by him in person to favorites, over the heads of the competent and honest officers appointed by law.” (Op. cit., 34.)
7. Letter of Frank Blair to “Dear Judge,” dated Sept. 7, 1861, in the Blair Family Papers, Library of Congress.
8. For a good discussion of the disagreement between Price and McCulloch, and the consequences it entailed, see Snead, The Fight for Missouri, 293–97. Snead, who was present as an officer on Price’s staff, asserted that the Confederates could easily have captured the Federal army, and estimated that at least 10,000 Missourians could have been armed for Confederate service with the military equipment that could have been taken.
9. Frémont Memoirs, typescript, in the Bancroft Library; Jessie Benton Frémont, The Story of the Guard, 84–85.
10. Frémont Memoirs, 240–41. The best account of Grant’s trials and lapses in the pre-war years is Lloyd Lewis’s in Captain Sam Grant.
11. Frémont, In Command in Missouri, B. & L., Vol. I, 286.
12. Basler, Vol. IV, 470–71; Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America, Vol. I, 338; statement of George W. Fishback, managing editor and part owner of the Missouri Democrat, in the Ida M. Tarbell Papers, Allegheny College. (From Allan Nevins’s notes.)
13. Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 411–12; Diary of Edward Bates, 217; Letter from “S. S.” to “Dear Judge,” dated Sept. 3, 1861, in the Blair Family Papers, Library of Congress.
14. Ferri Pisani, 238–46.
15. The text of Frémont’s proclamation is in O.R., Vol. III, 466–67. The description of his meeting with Mrs. Frémont and Davis is Jessie Frémont’s, in a portion of the Frémont Memoirs headed “The First & Second Emancipation Proclamations,” in the Bancroft Library.
4. End of Neutrality
1. Basler, Vol. IV, 506–7. For the Act of Congress (a copy of which Lincoln thoughtfully enclosed for Frémont’s guidance) see the Congressional Globe, First Session, 37th Congress, 1861, Appendix, 42.
2. Letter of Frémont to Lincoln dated Sept. 8, 1861, O.R., Vol. III, 477–78.
3. Mss. diary of John Hay, quoted in Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 414. It should be noted that in the Frémont Papers at the Bancroft Library there is a document in Mrs. Frémont’s handwriting denying that she ever made any such remark.
4. Jessie Frémont wrote three accounts of her interview. Differing in minor details but making essentially the same statement of material facts, they are with the Frémont Papers in the Bancroft Library. Allan Nevins, in his extremely thorough study, Frémont, Pathmarker of the West, (503) holds that “beyond question” Frémont got out his proclamation “simply as a war measure in Missouri, and with little if any thought of its effect outside that state.” It takes a brash man to disagree with one of Nevins’s considered findings on Fré
mont, but it is extremely hard to believe that the general did not intend the proclamation to be to at least some extent a political maneuver.
5. Basler, Vol. IV, 531–32.
6. American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 396–97.
7. There are interesting references to Buckner in McClellan’s Own Story, 48–49, and in a dispatch he sent to the War Department from Cincinnati on June 11 (O.R., Vol. II, 674). General Robert Anderson said that Buckner, who had made many “strong attachments” in the officer corps of the pre-war army, did much to win “many young men of the best families and highest influence” in Kentucky to the Confederate cause. (Testimony of Robert Anderson before an army retirement board, in the Papers of the Massachusetts Commandery, Military Order of the Loyal Legion; in the Houghton Library, Harvard University.) For Nelson, see Col. R. M. Kelly, Holding Kentucky for the Union, B. & L., Vol. I, 375.
8. Basler, Vol. IV, 497; O.R., Vol. IV, 378, 396–97.
9. O.R., Vol. IV, 179–81. Frémont’s orders to Grant, dated Aug. 28, are explicit: “It is intended in connection with all these movements” (i.e., operations in southeastern Missouri) “to occupy Columbus as soon as possible.” (O.R., Vol. III, 141–42.) In the Frémont mss. at the Bancroft Library, Jessie Frémont remarks that by the end of August Frémont felt that it was time either to take Kentucky “or relinquish it into the hands of the rebels,” and mentions “the plans with which General Grant had been made acquainted at his interview with General Frémont on the 28th of August.” Strangely enough, Grant makes no mention of this in his Memoirs.
10. O.R., Vol. IV, 180–81, 189.
11. O.R., Vol. III, 149–50; Vol. IV, 196–97; Grant’s Memoirs, Vol. I, 264–66.
12. American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 399; Moore’s Rebellion Record, Vol. III, Document No. 45, 129.
13. Nicolay & Hay, Vol. V, 49–50.
14. Basler, Vol. IV, 534, 549; O.R., Series Two, Vol. II, 805–6, 808–9, 812, giving entries from the State Department Record Book, “Arrests for Disloyalty.”
15. Buckner to Adjutant General Samuel Cooper, Sept. 13, 1861, O.R., Vol. IV, 189–90.
16. Polk to Davis, Sept. 14, 1861, ibid., 191.
17. William Preston Johnston, The Life of Albert Sidney Johnston, 290–91, 306; William M. Polk, Leonidas Polk, Bishop and General, Vol. II, 1–3.
18. Johnston to Davis, Sept. 16, 1861, O.R., Vol. IV, 193. As late as mid-November, Johnston’s returns show that there were 13,142 present for duty at Columbus and 12,500 at Bowling Green. An earlier return shows 3549 present for duty at Cumberland Gap. On Nov. 10, the Federal returns for the Department of the Cumberland show an “aggregate present and absent” of 49,586, of which more than 23,000 were listed as present for duty. (O.R., Vol. IV, 349, 425, 554, 557.) For details on Johnston’s problems and expectations, see William Preston Johnston, op. cit., 316, 333.
5. Mark of Desolation
1. The Virginia convention adopted the ordinance of secession on April 17. What is now West Virginia had 46 members in the convention; 9 voted for the ordinance, 7 were absent, one was excused and 29 voted against it. A Unionist meeting at Clarksburg on April 22 summoned a general convention to meet at Wheeling on May 13. This convention was followed by a second, which performed the acts referred to in the text; and by Aug. 20 arrangements were made for a popular vote on the formation of a new state. At a popular election on Oct. 24, the new state was approved, 18,408 to 781. For a résumé of the whole operation, see West Virginia, a Guide to the Mountain State, 48–49.
2. Maj. Gen. Jacob Cox, Reminiscences of the Civil War, Vol. I, 144–45: “It was easy, sitting at one’s office table, to sweep the hand over a few inches of chart, showing next to nothing of the topography, and to say, ‘We will march from here to here’; but when the march was undertaken, the natural obstacles began to assert themselves, and one general after another had to find apologies for failing to accomplish that which ought never to have been undertaken.” (This work is cited hereafter as Cox’s Reminiscences.)
3. Jefferson Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Vol. I, 434.
4. Statement by General Rosecrans, C.C.W., 1865, Vol. III, 7–8. The best detailed account of the 1861 western Virginia campaign, that of Douglas Southall Freeman in R. E. Lee, Vol. I, 541–604, stresses the great difficulty in getting reliable figures for Confederate strength in this campaign.
5. A. L. Long, Lee’s West Virginia Campaign, in The Annals of the War Written by Leading Participants, North and South, 87–88. The pre-war rank of Loring is set forth in Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, Vol. I, 625, 642. Walter H. Taylor, in Four Years with General Lee, 15–16, remarks that Lee did not assume personal command of the army, “although it was understood that Brigadier General Loring was subject to his orders.”
6. Long, loc. cit.; Walter Taylor, op. cit., 17; Cheat Mountain; or, Unwritten Chapter of the Late War, by a Member of the Bar, Fayetteville, Tenn., 40, 45.
7. Ambrose Bierce, Ambrose Bierce’s Civil War, 3–7.
8. Jacob Cox, McClellan in West Virginia, B. & L., Vol. I, 142–45; Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America, Vol. I, 376–80. Carnifix is Carnifex on modern maps. Floyd’s report (O.R., Vol. V, 146–49) gives a long explanation for his retreat from Carnifix, where, with a force which he puts at 1800 men, his total casualties were 20 men wounded.
9. For a fascinating study of Lee’s battle plan and its development the reader is again referred to Freeman. See also Taylor’s Four Years with General Lee, 20–28. General Reynolds’s report is in O.R., Vol. V, 184–86.
10. Taylor, op. cit., 32–33. Anyone who wishes to study the charges and countercharges made by Wise and Floyd (and it is pretty difficult going) will find the dreary record in O.R., Vol. V., 146–49, 149–50, 150–65.
11. E. A. Pollard, The First Year of the War, 168. It is interesting to observe that civilian critics, in the North and South alike, grew impatient at any talk of strategy, feeling apparently that all a general needed was a taste for getting close to the enemy and slugging it out. This trait, incidentally, Lee had in full measure, but he had other assets which the civilian critics were slow to recognize.
12. Pollard, op. cit., 168.
13. Robert E. Lee, Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee, 51.
14. John S. Wise, The End of an Era, 172.
15. Mulligan’s account of all of this is in an article, The Siege of Lexington, adapted from a lecture he delivered during the war (he was killed in action in 1864) and printed in B. & L., Vol. I, 307–13. Price’s report on the campaign is in O.R., Vol. III, 185–88. There is an engaging description of Mulligan and the siege in the History of Lafayette County, Missouri, by an unidentified author, 337–55. Being scrupulously honest, Price turned the captured money over to the banks from which it had been taken. It seems a pity; his army needed a war chest very badly.
16. Scott to Frémont, O.R., Vol. III, 185. Blair’s criticism–voiced some time after the event–can be found in the Congressional Globe, 2nd Session, 37th Congress, Part II, 1121–22. A spirited reply to Blair by Schuyler Colfax, asserting that in mid-September Frémont had, in St. Louis, fewer than 8000 men, is in the same section of the Globe, 1128–29.
17. McElroy, The Struggle for Missouri, 192; John C. Moore, Missouri, in Confederate Military History, Vol. IX, 69.
18. New York Times for Nov. 4, 1861, printing a dispatch from Warsaw, Mo., dated Oct. 23.
19. O.R., Vol. III, 196, 529–30; American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 394; McElroy, op. cit., 187, 232–33, 235–36; Jay Monaghan, Civil War on the Western Border, 195–96; Harper’s Weekly, Nov. 23, 1861, 738.
20. Letters of Mrs. Margaret J. Hays, written from Westport, Mo., in the fall of 1861 and the fall of 1862; in the Civil War Papers of the Missouri Historical Society.
6. The Road to East Tennessee
1. American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 682–83.
2. O.R., Vol. IV, 365–67, 369–70; W.
G. Brownlow, Sketches of the Rise, Progress and Decline of Secession, passim.
3. Ibid., 374, 382; D.A.B., Vol. XX, 659–60; William M. Polk, op. cit., Vol. II, 3–4.
4. Oliver P. Temple, East Tennessee and the Civil War, 366–67; Gilbert E. Govan and James W. Livingood, The Chattanooga Country, 1540–1951, from Tomahawks to TVA, 170–72. See also E. M. Coulter, The Confederate States of America, 1861–1865, 84–85, 96.
5. Richmond Dispatch for Nov. 15, 1861.
6. Basler, Vol. IV, 458, 544–45.
7. The narrative here follows the account given by Temple, op. cit., 370–77. In a footnote Temple says he got the details orally from William B. Carter. General McClellan was enthusiastic about the project, writing that Federal occupation of east Tennessee “would soon render the occupation of Richmond and Eastern Virginia impossible to the Secessionists.” (McClellan’s Own Story, 49.)
8. O.R., Vol. IV, 404, 412. In a return dated Sept. 15, Zollicoffer reported 8549 men present for duty. (Ibid., 409.)
9. Notebooks of hearings of Robert Anderson before an Army Retirement Board, in the Papers of the Massachusetts Commandery, the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, 9–12, in the Houghton Library, Harvard University; General Orders No. 6, Department of the Cumberland, Oct. 8, 1861, O.R., Vol. IV, 296–97.
10. Sherman to Garrett Davis, Oct. 8, 1861, O.R., op. cit., 297.
11. Sherman frankly confessed that at this time “I had no confidence in my ability,” admitting that he bluntly told Secretary of War Cameron that “Sidney Johnston was a fool if he did not move from Bowling Green and take Louisville; that our troops could not prevent it.” (Inserted comment by Sherman in an extra-illustrated edition of Sherman and his Campaigns, by Col. S. R. Bowman and Lt. Col. R. B. Irwin, in the Sherman Collection at the Northwestern University Library.) For an appraisal of Johnston’s course, see William Preston Johnston, 362.
12. William Preston Johnston, 362–63; Cleburne to Gen. Hardee, Nov. 13, 1861, O.R., Vol. IV, 545–46.
