Terrible Swift Sword

by Bruce Catton

  9. The full text of Lincoln’s message to Congress is in Basler, Vol. V, 35–53. It is interesting to study Lincoln’s earlier exploration of the significance of a free labor system and the relationship between labor and capital in speeches he made at Cincinnati and Milwaukee in the fall of 1859; they are in Basler, Vol. III, 459, 477–78.

  10. Diary of Edward Bates, 217; entry for Dec. 31, 1861.

  11. David Davis Papers, Illinois State Historical Library, letter of Joseph Casey dated Dec. 11, 1861.

  6. The Want of Success

  1. New York Tribune for Dec. 31, 1861.

  2. Diary of Fanny Seward, entry for Jan. 1, 1862, in the William H. Seward Collection, Rush Rhees Library, Rochester University; the Diary of Edward Bates, 244; Theodore Calvin Pease and James G. Randall, eds., The Diary of Orville Browning, Vol. I, 521.

  3. Russell, My Diary North and South, 205. McClellan’s famous snub to Lincoln is detailed in John Hay, Lincoln and the Civil War, in the Diaries and Letters of John Hay, 34–35.

  4. O.R., Vol. VII, 524, 526.

  5. J. W. Schuckers, The Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase, 445–46; J. G. Barnard, The Peninsular Campaign and its Antecedents, as Developed by the Report of Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan and Other Published Documents, 51–52, 54.

  6. Congressional Globe, 37th Congress, Second Session, Part One, 194, 200, 206.

  7. Ibid., 440–41.

  8. Basler, Vol. V, 98–99; O.R., Vol. VII, 533.

  9. These odd meetings are described in a memorandum by General McDowell, printed in Henry J. Raymond, The Life and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln, 772–77. See also Gen. Meigs, The Relations of President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton to the Military Commanders in the Civil War, American Historical Review, Vol. XXVI, No. Two, 292–93; Meigs’ Pocket Diaries, Library of Congress; Gen. W. B. Franklin, The First Great Crime of the War, Annals of the War, 73–78; McClellan’s Own Story, 155–58. Lincoln to Halleck and Buell is in Basler, Vol. V, 98–99, as cited in Note 8, above.

  10. Diary of Thomas Bragg, entries for Jan. 14, Jan. 17 and Jan. 21, 1862.

  11. O.R., Vol. VIII, 508.

  12. O.R., Vol. VII, 820; Johnston to Gov. Isham Harris, Dec. 25, 1861, in Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. IV. No. Four, 185–87.

  13. O.R., Series Two, Vol. II, 1169, 1191, 1192.

  CHAPTER THREE: The Military Paradox

  1. Decision in Kentucky

  1. Brig. Gen. J. W. Bishop, “The Mill Springs Campaign,” in Glimpses of the Nation’s Struggle, Second Series, 77–78.

  2. There is a good account of this battle–Somerset, Beech Grove, Logan’s Cross Roads, Mill Springs, or Fishing Creek–in Stanley Horn, The Army of Tennessee, 68–70, and in R. M. Kelly, Holding Kentucky for the Union, in B. & L., Vol. I, 387–91. In February, Secretary of War Judah Benjamin wrote that “rumors industriously circulated to the prejudice of General Crittenden by the first fugitives from the battlefield are now believed to have been without foundation.” (O.R., Series Four, Vol. I, 961.)

  3. Landon C. Haynes to Jefferson Davis, Jan. 29, 1862, in O.R., Vol. VII, 849. Crittenden listed his battle casualties at 533 killed, wounded, and missing. (Ibid., 108.)

  4. O.R., Vol. VII, 102.

  5. Journal of a Trip to Washington in 1862, by R. H. Dana, Jr., in the Dana Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society; Albert Gallatin Riddle, Recollections of War Times, 179–80.

  6. There is an extensive survey of Cameron’s regime in A. Howard Meneely, The War Department, 1861. See especially 252–79.

  7. Diaries of Fanny Seward, Rush Rhees Library, Rochester University; note dictated by Charles A. Dana in the Ida M. Tarbell Papers, Allegheny College.

  8. McClellan’s Own Story, 153; letter of McClellan to Barlow dated Jan. 18, 1862, and letter of Barlow to Stanton dated Jan. 14, both in the Barlow Papers, Huntington Library.

  9. McClellan’s Own Story, 151–52, 176; letter of Barlow to Stanton dated Dec. 11, 1861, in the Barlow Papers; letter of Ward Hill Lamon to Gen. William Orme of Bloomington, Ill., dated Feb. 10, 1862, in the Chicago Historical Society.

  10. Donn Piatt, Memories of the Men Who Saved the Union, 57–58.

  11. War order and supplement are in Basler, Vol. V, III–12, 115. According to John Hay, Lincoln prepared the order “without consultation.” Gideon Welles asserted that such an order had previously been suggested by the Navy Department, while Congressmen Riddle and James G. Blaine credited the idea to Stanton. (Tyler Dennett, ed., Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letters of John Hay, 36; Diary of Gideon Welles, Vol. I, 61; Riddle, op. cit., 181; James G. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. I, 355.)

  12. Letter of Stanton to the Rev. H. Dyer, dated May 18, 1862, in the Stanton Papers, Library of Congress.

  13. Letter of McClellan to Stanton, Jan. 31, 1862, in the Robert Todd Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress.

  14. McClellan to Buell, Jan. 13, 1862, O.R., Vol. VII, 547; Halleck to McClellan, Jan. 20, O.R., Vol. VIII, 508.

  15. Letters of Scott to Stanton dated Feb. 1, Feb. 2 and Feb. 6, 1862, in the Stanton Papers, Library of Congress.

  16. Letter of Barlow to McClellan, dated Feb. 8, 1862, in the Barlow Papers, Huntington Library; letter of Stanton to Scott, dated Feb. 21, and undated letter of McClellan to Stanton, both in the Stanton Papers. From the context McClellan’s letter appears to have been written early in February.

  2. Unconditional Surrender

  1. Letter of Laurent de Give to Blondeel van Cuelebroeck, Belgian Minister, dated Jan. 4, 1862, and forwarded to Lincoln by Seward on Jan. 18; in the Robert Todd Lincoln Papers.

  2. William Preston Johnston, The Life of General Albert Sidney Johnston, 425–26; Stanley Horn, The Army of Tennessee, 78, 80. Buell’s Jan. 23 return shows a “total present” force of 72,502, of which he listed 41,563 as infantry present for duty and fit for the field. (O.R., Vol. VII, 563.)

  3. Letter of Foote to Gideon Welles dated April 27, 1862, in the Welles Papers, Huntington Library; article in the St. Louis Democrat, quoted in Moore’s Rebellion Record, Vol. IV, Documents, 77; Wilbur G. Crummer, With Grant at Fort Donelson, Shiloh and Vicksburg, 21. There is a graphic, detailed narrative of the engagement in Rear Admiral H. Walke, Naval Scenes and Reminiscences of the Civil War in the United States, 53–65.

  4. Buell’s message to Thomas, dated Feb. 2, 1862, O.R., Vol. VII, 580. For his Feb. 1 message to McClellan, telling why it was impossible to go into East Tennessee, see O.R., Vol. XVI, 26. Halleck’s anxious dispatches are in Vol. VII, 535, 586–87, 590–91, 593–95.

  5. Ibid., 535, 543, 547, 575.

  6. James Mason Hoppin, Life of Andrew Hull Foote, Rear Admiral, United States Navy, 391 ff.; letter of Foote to Welles, cited in Footnote 3.

  7. William Preston Johnston, op. cit., 449; The Missouri Democrat, in Moore’s Rebellion Record, Vol. IV, Documents, 179; Surgeon John H. Brinton in The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, Part One, Vol. I, Appendix, 26–28. Brinton wrote that “thousands of the soldiers were broken down” and had to be sent north to hospitals.

  8. William Preston Johnston gives a good picture of the odd Floyd-Pillow-Buckner relationship, op. cit., 454–55. See also Buckner’s report, O.R., Vol. VII, 330–31, and Arndt M. Stickles, Simon Bolivar Buckner, 136–38, 151–56. There is a good description of the fighting in Lew Wallace, The Capture of Fort Donelson, in B. & L., Vol. I, 398–428. Johnston’s Feb. 15 telegram to Richmond, announcing “Our forces attacked the enemy with energy and won a brilliant victory,” is in the Ryder Collection, Tufts University Library.

  9. Adam R. Johnson, The Partisan Rangers of the Confederate States Army, 67–68; John Allan Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 40, 50–51.

  3. The Disease Which Brought Disaster

  1. O.R., Vol. VII, 418; William Preston Johnston, 495.

  2. William Preston Johnston, 496–97; dispatch to the Mobile Tribune, printed in Moore’s Rebellion Record, Vol. IV, Documents, 211–12; Adam R. Johnson, The Partisan
Rangers, 71–72; dispatch from Nashville, apparently written Feb. 23, in the Richmond Dispatch for Feb. 27, 1862; O.R., Vol. VII, 427-28.

  3. O.R., Vol. VII, 429–31; William Preston Johnston, 496.

  4. Letter of Foote to Gideon Welles dated Nov. 13, 1862, summarizing his operations in the campaign, in the Welles Papers, Huntington Library; Hoppin, Life of Admiral Foote, 236–38; Halleck to Grant, Feb. 18, and to Stanton, Feb. 21, O.R., Vol. VII, 633, 655; Buell to Halleck, Feb. 21, ibid., 650.

  5. Letter of Stanton to the New York Tribune, as revised, dated Feb. 19, 1862, in the Stanton Papers, Library of Congress.

  6. David Davis, who was investigating army supply and procurement problems, wrote at this time: “Nobody thinks much of Grant. He is in luck, however.” (Letter to Leonard Swett dated Feb. 23, 1862, in the David Davis Papers, Illinois State Historical Library.) The sequence in which Halleck tried to put Hitchcock over Grant, and complained about Grant’s alleged misconduct, is detailed in this writer’s Grant Moves South, 193–97.

  7. Apparently it is impossible to get a satisfactory figure for the number of prisoners taken at Fort Donelson. Grant strangely enough seems not to have counted them, and estimates range all the way from 8000 to 15,000. John Allan Wyeth made a careful analysis in That Devil Forrest, 55. He believed that there were about 15,000 Confederates in Fort Donelson when the battle began, that 400 were killed, 1134 wounded and sent away, and 3000 taken out by Floyd, Pillow, and Forrest. This would make a total of 4534 “not captured” and the number of prisoners would stand at slightly more than 10,000. The Fort Donelson National Military Park pamphlet suggests a figure somewhere between 12,000 and 15,000.

  8. Johnston to Davis, March 18, 1862, in O.R., Vol. VII, 260.

  9. Ibid., 672, 899–900; letter of Beauregard to Roger Pryor dated at Nashville Feb. 14, in the P. G. T. Beauregard Papers, Duke University Library.

  10. Letter of Stanton to Assistant Secretary of War Scott dated Feb. 21, 1862, in the Stanton Papers.

  11. John S. Wise, The End of an Era, 175–78; O.R., Vol. IX, 111, 114.

  12. Burnside’s Testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War (C.C.W. Report, Part III, 1863; 333–34, 337; McClellan’s Report on the Organization and Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac, 85–86; Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America, Vol. I, 581–82).

  13. Comte de Paris, op. cit., 583–85; D. H. Hill, Jr., in Confederate Military History, Vol. IV, North Carolina, 34–37; Wise, The End of an Era, 179–81; O.R., Vol. IX, 76.

  14. O.R., Vol. IX, 112, 121, 190.

  4. Time for Compulsion

  1. Diary of Thomas Bragg, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, entry for Feb. 22, 1862; diary of Henry Robinson Berkeley, in the Virginia State Historical Society, entry for the same date.

  2. J. William Jones, Christ in the Camp, or Religion in the Confederate Army, 148; Varina Davis, Jefferson Davis, a Memoir, Vol. II, 180, 182–183.

  3. Dunbar Rowland, Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist, Vol. V, 198–202.

  4. Diary of Henry Robinson Berkeley, as cited in Footnote 1, above; John B. Jones, A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary, edited by Earl Schenck Miers, 67–68; Richard Malcolm Johnston and William Hand Browne, Life of Alexander Stephens, 413.

  5. Diary of Thomas Bragg, entries for Feb. 10, Feb. 19, and Feb. 20, 1862.

  6. Dunbar Rowland, Vol. V, 203–5; Robert Garlick Kean, Inside the Confederate Government, edited by Edward Younger, 24–26; O.R., Vol. V, 1015, 1086.

  7. Joseph E. Johnston, Narrative of Military Operations, 89–91; O.R., Vol. V, 1057–58; Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, Vol. I, 122–30.

  8. Johnston’s meetings with Mr. Davis and the Cabinet are described in Thomas Bragg’s Diary, entries for Feb. 19 and Feb. 20.

  9. Joseph E. Johnston, op. cit., 96; O.R., Vol. V, 1097, 1083; Davis to James Phelan dated March 1, 1865, in Dunbar Rowland, Vol. VI, 493–94.

  10. Johnston’s Narrative, 97.

  11. Editorial from the Washington (Ark.) Telegraph for Feb. 26, 1862, in the files of the Arkansas History Commission.

  12. Dunbar Rowland, Vol. VI, 216–18.

  13. Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States of America, 1861–1865, Vol. II, 37, 72–74; H. S. Foote, The War of the Rebellion, 356; O.R., Vol. V, 1099; Diary of Thomas Bragg, entry for March 17, 1862; letter of General Lee to Mrs. Lee dated March 14, in the R. E. Lee Papers, Library of Congress; The Correspondence of Robert Toombs, Alexander Stephens and Howell Cobb, Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1911, Vol. II, 590.

  14. O.R., Series Four, Vol. I, 986.

  15. James D. Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Confederacy, Vol. I, 205–6; O.R., Series Four, Vol. I, 1081, 1095–97.

  16. O.R., Series Four, Vol. I, 1116–17, 1138; Johnston and Browne, Life of Alexander H. Stephens, 414; O.R., Series Four, Vol. II, 43.

  17. Dunbar Rowland, Vol. V, 209.

  5. Contending with Shadows

  1. Basler, Vol. V, 144–46.

  2. Ibid., 152–53, 160–61.

  3. Edward McPherson, The Political History of the United States of America During the Great Rebellion, 210–11, quoting from a memorandum written by one of the participants in the conference, J. W. Crisfield of Maryland.

  4. Congressional Globe, 37th Congress, Second Session, Part II, 1154; Part IV, appendix, 412–13. Shortly after they approved the plan for compensated emancipation, the two Houses of Congress voted to emancipate the slaves in the District of Columbia. Signing the act on April 16, Mr. Lincoln said he was gratified that “the two principles of compensation, and colonization, are both recognized and practically applied” in this act. (Basler, Vol. V, 192.)

  5. Letter of McClellan to S. L. M. Barlow dated Nov. 8, 1861, in the Barlow Papers, Huntington Library.

  6. Russell, My Diary North and South, 210; C.C.W. Reports, 1863, Part I, 129–30.

  7. Basler, Vol. V, 88.

  8. Russell, My Diary North and South, 208; Harper’s Weekly for Nov. 9, 1861; Congressional Globe, 37th Congress, Second Session, Part II, 1662; Richard B. Irwin, Ball’s Bluff and the Arrest of General Stone, B. & L., Vol. II, 132–33.

  9. Testimony given by Stone in February 1863, in C.C.W. Reports, 1863, Part II, 489.

  10. James G. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. I, 393; Irwin, op. cit., 132; O.R., Vol. LI, Part One, 517.

  11. C.C.W. Reports, 1863, Part II, 295 et seq. For a review of the committee’s attitude and methods of operation see T. Harry Williams, Investigation: 1862, American Heritage, Vol. VI, No. One, 19–20.

  12. C.C.W. Reports, 1863, Part II, 427–29.

  13. Edward Bates’ Diary, 229, entry for Feb. 3, 1862.

  14. C.C.W. Reports, 1863, Part II, 510; O.R., Vol. V, 341, 345.

  15. C.C.W. Reports, 1863, Part II, 505–9. The messages exchanged by McClellan and Stone on Oct. 21, 1861, the day of the battle, give the story a slightly different cast than the one given in McClellan’s testimony before the committee. Informed that Stone’s troops had crossed at Ball’s Bluff and Edwards Ferry, McClellan wrote: “I congratulate your command”; a little later he asked Stone how big a force would be needed to take Leesburg, adding, “I may require you to take it today” and saying that he could support such a move “on the other side of the river from Darnestown.” Later in the day McClellan sent the order, “Take Leesburg,” after which he ordered Stone: “Hold your position on the Virginia side of the Potomac at all hazards.” (O.R., Vol. LI, Part One, 498–500.)

  6. Forward to Richmond

  1. Diary of Gilbert Thompson, U. S. Engineer Battalion, Army of the Potomac, entry for Feb. 27, 1862, in the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

  2. McClellan, Report on the Organization and Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac, 113–15; J. W. Shuckers, The Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase, 446; O.R., Vol. V, 727–28, 730.

  3. Helen Nicolay, Lincoln’s Secretary: a Biography of John G. Nicolay, 142–43.

 
4. McClellan wrote to Barlow that the Harper’s Ferry move led Johnston to evacuate his Centreville-Manassas line, and felt that history “will, when I am in my grave, record it as the brightest passage of my life that I accomplished so much at so small a cost.” (Letter dated March 16, 1862, in the Barlow Papers, Huntington Library.)

  5. The cabinet meeting on March 6, at which the use of the new iron-clad was discussed, is from a memorandum by John G. Nicolay in Nicolay & Hay, Vol. V, 221–22. McClellan tells of his interview with Lincoln in his Own Story, 195–96.

  6. Diaries of Marsena Patrick, Vol. I, entry for March 6, 1862, in the Library of Congress.

  7. John Hay, Lincoln and the Civil War, 36.

  8. Basler, Vol. V, 149–51, for the text of the two war orders. It is significant that none of the new corps commanders was a McClellan man. McDowell had preceded him in command of the Army of the Potomac, and distrusted him; General Marsena Patrick wrote at this time that in a long talk with McDowell he found that McDowell “believes McClellan to be very insincere.” (Patrick Diaries, entry for Feb. 28, 1862, Library of Congress.) Heintzelman was a stiff old regular who had fought at Bull Run, and Sumner was even older and stiffer. He had a long service record in the Mexican War and in various frontier posts in the West. Keyes had been Winfield Scott’s military secretary, and Wadsworth was a political general in whom McClellan had little confidence. For McClellan’s attempts to get Stanton to suspend the order on corps commanders, see O.R., Vol. V, 739, 740–41.

  9. Johnston’s Narrative, 96–97, 101–6; Jubal Early, Autobiographical Sketch and Narrative of the War between the States, 53–55; O.R., Vol. V, 1086; Lieut. Col. W. W. Blackford, War Years with Jeb Stuart, 59–60; Dunbar Rowland, Vol. VI, 494.

  10. Prince de Joinville, The Army of the Potomac; Its Organization, Its Commander and Its Campaign, 24.