by Alan Axelrod
Had Lincoln lived, there is every indication that he would have moved heaven and earth to hasten the healing of a truly restored Union. But he was dead, and a vengeful Congress found within itself little charity and much malice. Reconstruction, the subject of Lincoln’s final Cabinet meeting, became an instrument for the punishment, humiliation, and economic oppression of the former Confederacy. On account of it, the South, and in particular the black South, would suffer throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth. The shooting ended, but a mutual regional resentment and mistrust smoldered on, long after Appomattox.
10
July 21, 1861
The Rebels Win at Bull Run
Why it’s significant. The victory of Confederate forces at Bull Run (Manassas, Virginia) on July 21, 1861, against a numerically superior Union force revealed not only the depth of the South’s resolve to win its independence from the United States but further suggested that its military, created from scratch, might well have the strategic and tactical skill to achieve this goal. The Union defeat at once shook the North out of its complacency, moved President Lincoln to lead the creation of a military machine unprecedented in North America, and began to convince both sides that the Civil War would be a long, costly, and bitter struggle.
WITH ULYSSES SIMPSON Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman would prove himself one of the fiercest and most efficient of the Union’s warriors. No one, however, could have predicted this on Christmas Eve 1860, when he shared a collegial dinner with the professor of classics at the brand-new Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy, of which Sherman was the first superintendent. He had taken the job in Pineville, Louisiana, because he had given up on the army as a dead-end career and had failed everything else he tried. Like many West Point alumni (he was Class of 1840), Sherman served in the US-Mexican War (1846–1848), but, unlike them, had seen no combat, being assigned instead to dull administrative duties in California. In the 1850s, he tried his hand at banking in San Francisco and failed, along with his bank. He turned next to the law among other enterprises and failed as well at these. In 1859, thanks to his military experience, he was hired by the academy.
His meal was interrupted by the news that South Carolina had just seceded from the Union, the first state of eleven to do so. Sherman stunned his dinner companion by declaring, “This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization!” Fixing his somewhat wild eyes on the classicist, Sherman warned: “You people”—meaning the people of the South—“speak so lightly of war; you don’t know what you’re talking about. War is a terrible thing!”
In truth, he could have said the same about the people of the North. For that matter, since he himself had yet to participate in major combat, much the same might have been said about him. Nobody in 1860 America had an inkling of the horror of all-out war on a mass scale. The United States had never experienced it, not against Mexico in 1846–1848 and not against the British in the War of 1812 or the Revolution in 1775–1783. But what he said next did apply more exclusively to the South, and it expressed the attitude of the North perfectly:
Besides, where are your men and appliances of war … ? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or a pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical and determined people on earth—right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see that in the end you will surely fail.
In 1860, most Northerners were confident that a Southern bid for independence was doomed to fail, to fail quickly, and to fail with little cost to the rest of the nation.
Sherman waited until January 18, 1861, to formally resign from the academy, though it took him another month to arrange his affairs and those of the institution before he actually departed. During this interval, he wrote to his brother John, a senator from Ohio, for advice on his next move. Senator Sherman advised him to call on Abraham Lincoln, inaugurated on March 4 as the sixteenth president, and offer him his services in the Union army.
What Sherman saw in Washington set him back on his heels. The capital, though adjacent to the section of the nation even then rapidly slipping away, appeared like anything but a city on the brink of war. No great armies were assembling, and people went about their business in the same sleepy way they always had. Virginia had not yet seceded when Sherman arrived in DC, but was expected to do so any day. That would instantly put a hostile Confederacy on Washington’s doorstep, and yet the city’s defenses consisted of just one hundred regular army troops, most of them accustomed to military life behind a desk rather than a musket. Another 300 or 400 marines were quartered in the old barracks at the corner of Eighth and I Streets. In addition, a handful of privately organized local militia companies were scattered throughout the town, but these were more in the nature of social clubs than practical military units.
Chagrined though he was, Sherman met with his brother, who took him to the White House. As Sherman recalled in his postwar Memoirs, the senator introduced him to Lincoln as a West Point officer who had just resigned from a post in the South.
“Ah,” Lincoln acknowledged matter-of-factly, “how are they getting along down there?”
Taken aback by the president’s bantering tone, Sherman replied acidly: “They think they are getting along swimmingly.” Then he added a warning: “They are preparing for war.”
“Oh, well, I guess we’ll manage to keep house.”
Sherman confessed in his Memoirs to being utterly “silenced” by this comeback. He said no more to the president and departed with his brother as abruptly as courtesy allowed. Once outside the White House, he exploded to John Sherman: “You have got things in a hell of a fix and you may get them out as best you can.” With that, William Tecumseh Sherman accepted an appointment as president—of a St. Louis streetcar company.
On April 17, the Virginia legislature finally voted to secede, and the Northern public, politicians, and press clamored loudly for President Lincoln to invade the South and give the rebels the comeuppance they so richly deserved. Like Sherman, most Northerners were aware of the economic and industrial weakness of the South. Unlike Sherman, however, they overwhelmingly believed that it would be no great task to crush the rebellion with a blow or two, once and for all. Two days earlier, on April 15, after the fall of Fort Sumter, Lincoln had called for 75,000 three-month volunteers. Lincoln was pressed from all quarters to make decisive use of them before their enlistment terms expired.
Winfield Scott, the aged and obese general-in-chief of the army, believed the raw recruits who had answered the president’s call for volunteers would not be ready for a major battle for some time. His first war had been the War of 1812, and it had taught him a bitter lesson about the unreliability of militiamen—which, practically speaking, was what the current crop of volunteers were. While he understood the urge to invade the Confederacy and take Richmond, he counseled against it, arguing that even if the currently available troops managed to take Richmond, the Confederates would still hold all their most important military assets and would have plenty of room to maneuver and remain on the defensive. Taking Richmond, he said, would not mean a quick end to the war. On the contrary, a strategy that depended on capturing that city would require years to execute. Scott proposed instead to outflank the Confederate forces. The first step would be to impose a naval blockade of all Southern harbors. More troops would be needed. Simultaneously with the naval blockade, he proposed deploying a force of about 100,000, not against Richmond directly, and not even to fight elsewhere in the eastern portion of the Confederacy. While maintaining an army suffi
cient to defend Washington and the rest of the North against Confederate attack, Scott wanted to send the 100,000-man offensive force on an overland course paralleling the Mississippi River to fight along that river in concert with a great riverine naval flotilla (yet to be built). Scott believed the operation could begin by early November 1861 and would, in the space of a year, penetrate from Cairo, Illinois, in the North to the mouth of the Mississippi at New Orleans in the South, cutting the Confederacy in half, stopping most of its shipping, and bringing about the collapse of the rebellion within a year. It was a version of the strategy by which he had led the US Army to victory against Mexico some fifteen years earlier. It consisted of seizing control of the key strategic places on which the enemy, both civilian and military, depended.
When members of Lincoln’s cabinet objected on the grounds that the American people would never stand for such an inglorious approach to rebellion—a delay in acting followed by the most roundabout action—Scott agreed that the strategy would be unpopular. He pointed out, however, that, throughout history, almost every plan that involved outflanking the enemy army and attacking it from the rear produced victory. He did not address the more serious problem with what the press would soon mock as “Scott’s Anaconda,” a great snake that was supposed to constrict the South. The US Navy had fewer than forty warships. Not only would it need several hundred to effectively blockade some 2,500 miles of Southern seacoast, a whole new class of shallow-draft ironclad gunboat would have to be innovated, designed, and built to operate on the shallow Mississippi for the riverine portion of the operation.
It was President Lincoln who had the final word and made the final decision. He authorized the blockade. Navy ships and revenue cutters would attempt to interdict Southern trade. But Lincoln would not authorize a major offensive in the Western and Trans-Mississippi Theaters at the expense of offensive action in the Eastern Theater. The “Western Theater” was somewhat misleadingly named, since it encompassed the area west of the Appalachians but east of the Mississippi River, which included all of the southeast except Virginia. The Trans-Mississippi Theater included Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana, as well as other areas west of these. The Eastern Theater, which consisted of Virginia (and, after 1863, West Virginia), Maryland, and Pennsylvania, was nearest to where most Americans lived, including those in loyal states. The president believed that the people would simply never stand for deferring action in the Eastern Theater and that the war effort would suffer a blow to morale from which it could not recover.
Having made his decision to conduct an immediate offensive against Virginia, Lincoln had only to glance at a map to see that Manassas Junction on the banks of Bull Run, thirty miles southwest of Washington, was a likely objective to attack and seize. Two important Southern railroads, the Manassas Gap and the Orange & Alexandria, crossed here. Moreover, the Manassas Gap currently split the Confederate army in half, 11,000 troops under Joseph E. Johnston were in the Shenandoah Valley and 22,000, commanded by P. G. T. Beauregard, were concentrated west of them at Manassas, Centreville, and Fairfax Court House. Thus divided, the Confederates were vulnerable to defeat in detail—provided the Union forces made haste to attack and prevented their consolidation.
Major General Irvin McDowell, US Military Academy Class of 1838, had a reputation as a highly competent staff officer, and it was in this capacity that Scott had come to know and admire him. Even though he had no experience as a combat leader—he was aide-de-camp to Brigadier General John E. Wool during the US-Mexican War—Scott recommended him to lead the offensive Lincoln demanded. His force consisted of 35,000 troops, the vast majority the brand-new volunteers in whom Scott had such little faith. While McDowell led these men against Beauregard, another force, 18,000 men at the head of the Shenandoah Valley under Major General Robert Patterson, would deal with Johnston’s 11,000 and prevent their linking up with Beauregard’s command. Thus, on both fronts, Union forces outnumbered Confederate—an advantage that would hold as long as the two Southern armies were not allowed to join forces.
Per Lincoln’s direct order, McDowell led his army south out of Washington on July 16. His plan was to move against Centreville and then advance to Manassas Junction. Here, he would attack and sever the rail line that connected the Shenandoah Valley—and Johnston’s army—with Beauregard’s. To take the two objectives, McDowell relied on Patterson to hold Johnston, to block him, and to pin him down.
At first, the Union forces made good progress—though McDowell’s undisciplined troops often behaved as if the march were a summer outing rather than a deadly serious military expedition. Men would frequently fall out of line to pick blackberries along the way. Civilians from Washington trailed the march, hoping to get an entertaining glimpse of combat. Some even brought picnic supplies. On July 17, Beauregard telegraphed President Jefferson Davis that “the enemy have assailed my outposts in heavy force” and that he had been compelled to fall back from Centreville toward Bull Run. Beauregard also sent another telegram, this one to Joe Johnston, telling him that McDowell was advancing and fighting had begun. Johnston saw that Patterson was making no advance toward him. The Union commander’s evident absence of initiative was an opportunity Johnston jumped at. He replied to Beauregard’s message, telling him that he would transport his troops by train to Manassas. He was convinced that Patterson presented no threat.
On July 18, Union Brigadier General Daniel Tyler marched through Centreville, from which Beauregard had withdrawn. McDowell had ordered him to do no more than this, but Tyler took it upon himself to engage Confederate forces at Blackburn’s Ford, due south of Centreville. Here, troops under Confederate Major General James Longstreet lay in ambush. The resulting skirmish stopped Tyler cold, though it did not produce heavy casualties. What the attack did do, however, is persuade McDowell to avoid engaging Longstreet’s large force at Blackburn’s Ford. He changed course, making a sharp turn to the west, and advanced toward Sudley Ford, where he intended to cross Bull Run well beyond the Confederate left flank. If he could make a crossing here, he could then wheel around to attack Beauregard from behind. On paper, it was a very reasonable plan; in reality, however, it required a great deal of marching, maneuvering, and speed, which his ill-disciplined troops were not entirely up to.
While the main portion of his army was concentrated in what was now a flanking column, McDowell tasked other detachments to make diversionary “demonstrations”—shows of force intended to misdirect the enemy—at Blackburn’s Ford and Stone Bridge. Unknown to McDowell, however, Johnston had given Patterson the slip and telegraphed Beauregard that he was en route by rail. This maneuver made military history as the first time—anywhere in the world—troops were transported by train directly into battle. The Civil War would emerge as a war of an industrial age.
At this point, the Confederate strategy called for Beauregard to pin down McDowell’s demonstration at Blackburn’s Ford while Johnston’s forces arrived and began maneuvering around the Union right flank. In effect, the Confederates would turn McDowell’s demonstration against his own forces, distracting them from the all-important movement of Johnston’s 11,000 reinforcements.
Johnston’s men began arriving at Manassas Junction on July 19, with the commanding officer himself joining them on July 20. Now that the Confederate forces had consolidated, it became imperative for Johnston and Beauregard to counterattack McDowell quickly. The two Confederates agreed that, sooner or later, Patterson would realize that Johnston’s army had evaded him. Once that epiphany struck, he would link up with McDowell, and the numerical superiority the Confederates currently enjoyed would evaporate in the blink of an eye. Accordingly, Beauregard and Johnston thought better of the original plan, by which Johnston was going to march around the Union flank. This would take far too much time, they decided. The imperative was to strike now, before Patterson arrived. Instead of attacking, therefore, the combined Confederate force would concentrate at Blackburn’s Ford and wait for McDowell to attack, knowing that he was
not expecting the presence of Johnston. When the attack came, Johnston and Beauregard would overwhelm and destroy it. Then Johnston would send his troops across Bull Run and advance to Centreville. This would block McDowell’s line of retreat. Having destroyed McDowell’s attack, the combined Confederate forces would aim to destroy McDowell’s army. This sequence would constitute the First Battle of Bull Run proper.
Early on the morning of July 21, Johnston moved two brigades toward his left to shore up that position. One brigade was commanded by South Carolina’s Barnard Bee, the other by Virginia’s Thomas J. Jackson. While this was taking place on the Confederate side, McDowell’s troops began to move into their positions for battle. At 6 a.m., Tyler’s soldiers descended from the east to attack Stone Bridge. It was a demonstration designed to draw and hold Confederate attention while McDowell’s main flanking column continued its advance on Sudley Ford, where they planned to cross Bull Run in order to flank the Confederates and, ultimately, attack from the rear.
At Stone Bridge, Confederate Colonel Nathan Evans—nicknamed “Shanks” by his West Point classmates on account of his long, spindly legs—hid most of his command, openly deploying only pickets to fire on the first arrivals from Tyler’s contingent. From either bank, the two sides traded shots across Bull Run. In the meantime, at nine o’clock, a Confederate signal officer, E. Porter Alexander, spotted McDowell’s flanking column crossing Sudley Ford. Using “wigwag” signals (handheld flag signaling that employed a Morse-like code), he warned Shanks Evans that he was being “turned” on his left—in other words, that he was about to be attacked on his vulnerable flank. This was the battle’s second military first; while Johnson’s arrival by train was the first-ever instance of troops being transported directly into battle via rail, Alexander’s warning was the first use of wigwag signaling in combat. It would eventually become a mainstay of the Civil War and would be used in future combat prior to the development of field telephones and portable radio communication.
