2. The War in the West Up to May, 1862.
The pressure upon McClellan to move grew stronger and indeed more justifiable month after month, and when at last, in March, 1862, McClellan did move, the story of the severest adversity to the North, of Lincoln's sorest trials, and, some still say, his gravest failures, began. Its details will concern us more than those of any other part of the war. But events in the West began earlier, proceeded faster, and should be told first. Buell could not obtain from McClellan permission to carry out his own scheme. He did, however, obtain permission for Halleck, if he consented, to send flotillas up the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers to make a diversion while Buell, as Lincoln had proposed and as McClellan had now ordered, marched upon Eastern Tennessee. Halleck would not move. Buell prepared to move alone, and in January, 1862, sent forward a small force under Thomas to meet an equally small Confederate force that had advanced through Cumberland Gap into Eastern Kentucky. Thomas won a complete victory, most welcome as the first success since the defeat of Bull Run, at a place called Mill Springs, far up the Cumberland River towards the mountains. But at the end of January, while Buell was following up with his forces rather widely dispersed because he expected no support from Halleck, he was brought to a stop, for Halleck, without warning, did make an important movement of his own, in which he would need Buell's support.
The Cumberland and the Tennessee are navigable rivers which in their lower course flow parallel in a northerly or north-westerly direction to join the Ohio not far above its junction with the Mississippi at Cairo. Fort Henry was a Confederate fort guarding the navigation of the Tennessee near the northern boundary of the State of that name, Fort Donelson was another on the Cumberland not far off. Ulysses Simpson Grant, who had served with real distinction in the Mexican War, had retired from the Army and had been more or less employed about his father's leather store in Illinois and in the gloomy pursuit of intoxication and of raising small sums from reluctant friends when he met them. On the outbreak of the Civil War he suddenly pulled himself together, and with some difficulty got employment from the Governor of Illinois as a Major-General in the State Militia (obtaining Army rank later). Since then, while serving under Halleck, he had shown sense and promptitude in seizing an important point on the Ohio, upon which the Confederates had designs. He had a quick eye for seeing important points. Grant was now ordered or obtained permission from Halleck to capture Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. By the sudden movements of Grant and of the flotilla acting with him, the Confederates were forced to abandon Fort Henry on February 6, 1862. Ten days later Fort Donelson surrendered with nearly 10,000 prisoners, after a brilliant and nearly successful sortie by the garrison, in which Grant showed, further, tenacity and a collected mind under the pressure of imminent calamity. Halleck had given Grant little help. Buell was reluctant to detach any of his volunteer troops from their comrades to act with a strange army, and Halleck had not warned him of his intentions. Halleck soon applied to Lincoln for the supreme command over the two Western armies with Buell under him. This was given to him. Experience showed that one or the other must command now that concerted action was necessary. Nothing was known at Washington to set against Halleck's own claim of the credit for the late successes. So Lincoln gave him the command, though present knowledge shows clearly that Buell was the better man. Grant had been left before Fort Donelson in a position of some danger from the army under Albert Johnston; and, from needless fear of Beauregard with a Confederate force under him yet further West, Halleck let slip the chance of sending Grant in pursuit of Johnston, who was falling back up the Cumberland valley. As it was, Johnston for a time evacuated Nashville, further up the Cumberland, the chief town of Tennessee and a great railway centre, which Buell promptly occupied; Beauregard withdrew the Confederate troops from Columbus, a fortress of great reputed strength on the Mississippi not far below Cairo, to positions forty or fifty miles (as the crow flies) further down the stream. Thus, as it was, some important steps had been gained in securing that control of the navigation of the river which was one of the great military objects of the North. Furthermore, successful work was being done still further West by General Curtis in Missouri, who drove an invading force back into Arkansas and inflicted a crushing defeat upon them there in March. But a great stroke should now have been struck. Buell, it is said, saw plainly that his forces and Halleck's should have been concentrated as far up the Tennessee as possible in an endeavour to seize upon the main railway system of the Confederacy in the West. Halleck preferred, it would seem, to concentrate upon nothing and to scatter his forces upon minor enterprises, provided he did not risk any important engagement. An important engagement with the hope of destroying an army of the enemy was the very thing which, as Johnston's forces now stood, he should have sought, but he appears to have been contented by the temporary retirement of an unscathed enemy who would return again reinforced. Buell was an unlucky man, and Halleck got quite all he deserved, so it is possible that events have been described to us without enough regard to Halleck's case as against Buell. But at any rate, while much should have been happening, nothing very definite did happen till April 6, when Albert Johnston, now strongly reinforced from the extreme South, came upon Grant, who (it is not clear why) had lain encamped, without entrenching, and not expecting immediate attack, near Shiloh, far up the Tennessee River in the extreme south of Tennessee State. Buell at the time, though without clear information as to Grant's danger, was on his way to join him. There seems to have been negligence both on Halleck's part and on Grant's. The battle of Shiloh is said to have been highly characteristic of the combats of partly disciplined armies, in which the individual qualities, good or bad, of the troops play a conspicuous part. Direction on the part of Johnston or Grant was not conspicuously seen, but the latter, whose troops were surprised and driven back some distance, was intensely determined. In the course of that afternoon Albert Johnston was killed. Rightly or wrongly Jefferson Davis and his other friends regarded his death as the greatest of calamities to the South. After the manner of many battles, more especially in this war, the battle of Shiloh was the subject of long subsequent dispute between friends of Grant and of Buell, and far more bitter dispute between friends of Albert Johnston and Beauregard. But it seems that the South was on the point of winning, till late on the 6th the approach of the first reinforcements from Buell made it useless to attempt more. By the following morning further large reinforcements had come up; Grant in his turn attacked, and Beauregard had difficulty in turning a precipitate retirement into an orderly retreat upon Corinth, forty miles away, a junction upon the principal railway line to be defended. The next day General Pope, who had some time before been detached by Halleck for this purpose, after arduous work in canal cutting, captured, with 7,000 prisoners, the northernmost forts held by the Confederacy on the Mississippi. But Halleck's plans required that his further advance should be stopped. Halleck himself, in his own time, arrived at the front. In his own time, after being joined by Pope, he advanced, carefully entrenching himself every night. He covered in something over a month the forty miles route to Corinth, which, to his surprise, was bloodlessly evacuated before him. He was an engineer, and like some other engineers in the Civil War, was overmuch set upon a methodical and cautious procedure. But his mere advance to Corinth caused the Confederates to abandon yet another fort on the Mississippi, and on June 6 the Northern troops were able to occupy Memphis, for which Lincoln had long wished, while the flotilla accompanying them destroyed a Confederate flotilla. Meanwhile, on May 1, Admiral Farragut, daringly running up the Mississippi, had captured New Orleans, and a Northern force under Butler was able to establish itself in Louisiana. The North had now gained the command of most of the Mississippi, for only the hundred miles or so between Vicksburg far south and Port Hudson, between that and New Orleans, was still held by the South; and command by Northern gunboats of the chief tributaries of the great river was also established. The Confederate armies in the West were left intact, though with some severe losses, and would be able before long to strike northward in a well-chosen direction; for all that these were great and permanent gains. Yet the North was not cheered. The great loss of life at Shiloh, the greatest battle in the war so far, created a horrible impression. Halleck, under whom all this progress had been made, properly enough received a credit, which critics later have found to be excessive, though it is plain that he had reorganised his army well; but Grant was felt to have been caught napping at Shiloh; there were other rumours about him, too, and he fell deep into general disfavour. The events of the Western war did not pause for long, but, till the end of this year 1862, the North made no further definite progress, and the South, though it was able to invade the North, achieved no Important result. It will be well then here to take up the story of events in the East and to follow them continuously till May, 1863, when the dazzling fortune of the South in that theatre if the war reached its highest point.
3. The War in the East Up to May, 1863.
The interest of this part of the Civil War lies chiefly in the achievements of Lee and "Stonewall" Jackson. From the point of view of the North, it was not only disastrous but forms a dreary and controversial chapter. George McClellan came to Washington amid overwhelming demonstrations of public confidence. His comparative youth added to the interest taken in him; and he was spoken of as "the young Napoleon." This ridiculous name for a man already thirty-four was a sign that the people expected impossible things from him. Letters to his wife, which have been injudiciously published, show him to us delighting at first in the consideration paid to him by Lincoln and Scott, proudly confident in his own powers, rather elated than otherwise by a sense that the safety of the country rested on him alone. "I shall carry the thing en grande, and crush the rebels in one campaign." He soon had a magnificent army; he may be said to have made it himself. Before, as he thought, the time had come to use it, he had fallen from favour, and a dead set was being made against him in Washington. A little later, at the crisis of his great venture, when, as he claimed, the Confederate capital could have been taken, his expedition was recalled. Then at a moment of deadly peril to the country his services were again called in. He warded off the danger. Yet a little while and his services were discarded for ever. This summary, which is the truth, but not the whole truth, must enlist a certain sympathy for him. The chief fact of his later life should at once be added. In 1864, when a Presidential election was approaching and despondency prevailed widely in the North, he was selected as the champion of a great party. The Democrats adopted a "platform" which expressed neither more nor less than a desire to end the war on any terms. In accordance with the invariable tradition of party opposition in war time, they chose a war hero as their candidate for the Presidency. McClellan publicly repudiated their principles, and no doubt he meant it, but he became their candidate—their master or their servant as it might prove. That he was Lincoln's opponent in the election of that year ensured that his merits and his misfortunes would be long remembered, but his action then may suggest to any one the doubtful point in his career all along.
Some estimate of his curious yet by no means uncommon type of character is necessary, if Lincoln's relations with him are to be understood at all. The devotion to him shown by his troops proves that he had great titles to confidence, besides, what he also had, a certain faculty of parade, with his handsome charger, his imposing staff and the rest. He was a great trainer of soldiers, and with some strange lapses, a good organiser. He was careful for the welfare of his men; and his almost tender carefulness of their lives contrasted afterwards with what appeared the ruthless carelessness of Grant. Unlike some of his successors, he could never be called an incapable commander. His great opponent, Lee, who had known him of old, was wont to calculate on his extraordinary want of enterprise, but he spoke of him on the whole in terms of ample respect—also, by the way, he sympathised with him like a soldier when, as he naturally assumed, he became a victim to scheming politicians; and Lee confided this feeling to the ready ears of another great soldier, Wolseley. As he showed himself in civil life, McClellan was an attractive gentleman of genial address; it was voted that he was "magnetic," and his private life was so entirely irreproachable as to afford lively satisfaction. More than this, it may be conjectured that to a certain standard of honour, loyalty, and patriotism, which he set consciously before himself, he would always have been devotedly true. But if it be asked further whether McClellan was the desired instrument for Lincoln's and the country's needs, and whether, as the saying is, he was a man to go tiger-hunting with, something very much against him, though hard to define, appears in every part of his record (except indeed, one performance in his Peninsular Campaign). Did he ever do his best to beat the enemy? Did he ever, except for a moment, concentrate himself singly upon any great object? Were even his preparations thorough? Was his information ever accurate? Was his purpose in the war ever definite, and, if so, made plain to his Government? Was he often betrayed into marked frankness, or into marked generosity? No one would be ready to answer yes to any of these questions. McClellan fills so memorable a place in American history that he demands such a label as can be given to him. In the most moving and the most authentic of all Visions of Judgment, men were not set on the right hand or the left according as they were of irreproachable or reproachable character; they were divided into those who did and those who did not. In the provisional judgment which men, if they make it modestly, should at times make with decision, McClellan's place is clear. The quality, "spiacente a Dio ed ai nemici suoi," of the men who did not, ran through and through him.
Lincoln required first a general who would make no fatal blunder, but he required too, when he could find him, a general of undaunted enterprise; he did not wish to expose the North to disaster, but he did mean to conquer the South. There was some security in employing McClellan, though employing him did at one time throw on Lincoln's unfit shoulders the task of defending Washington. It proved very hard to find another general equally trustworthy. But, in the light of facts which Lincoln came to perceive, it proved impossible to consider McClellan as the man to finish the war.
We need only notice the doings of the main armies in this theatre of the war and take no account of various minor affairs at outlying posts. From the battle of Bull Run, which was on July 21, 1861, to March 5, 1862, the Southern army under Joseph Johnston lay quietly drilling at Manassas. It, of course, entrenched its position, but to add to the appearance of its strength, it constructed embrasures for more than its number of guns and had dummy guns to show in them. At one moment there was a prospect that it might move. Johnston and the general with him had no idea of attacking the army of the Potomac where it lay, but they did think that with a further 50,000 or 60,000 they might successfully invade Maryland, crossing higher up the Potomac, and by drawing McClellan away from his present position, get a chance of defeating him. The Southern President came to Manassas, at their invitation, on October 1, but he did not think well to withdraw the trained men whom he could have sent to Johnston from the various points in the South at which they were stationed; he may have had good reasons but it is likely that he sacrificed one of the best chances of the South. McClellan's army was soon in as good a state of preparation as Johnston's. Early in October McClellan had, on his own statement, over 147,000 men at his disposal; Joseph Johnston, on his own statement, under 47,000. Johnston was well informed as to McClellan's numbers—very likely he could get information from Maryland more easily than McClellan from Virginia. The two armies lay not twenty-five miles apart. The weather and the roads were good to the end of December; the roads were practicable by March and they seem to have been so all the time. As spring approached, it appeared to the Southern generals that McClellan must soon advance. Johnston thought that his right flank was liable to be turned and the railway communications south of Manassas liable to be cut. In the course of February it was realised that his position was too dangerous; the large stores accumulated there were removed; and when, early in March, there were reports of unusual activity in the Northern camp, Johnston, still expecting attack from the same direction, began his retreat. On March 9 it was learned in Washington that Manassas had been completely evacuated. McClellan marched his whole army there, and marched it back. Johnston withdrew quietly behind the Rapidan River, some 30 miles further south, and to his surprise was left free from any pursuit.
For months past the incessant report in the papers, "all quiet upon the Potomac," had been getting upon the nerves of the North. The gradual conversion of their pride in an imposing army into puzzled rage at its inactivity has left a deeper impression on Northern memories than the shock of disappointment at Bull Run. Public men of weight had been pressing for an advance in November, and when the Joint Committee of Congress, an arbitrary and meddlesome, but able and perhaps on the whole useful body, was set up in December, it brought its full influence to bear on the President. Lincoln was already anxious enough; he wished to rouse McClellan himself to activity, while he screened him against excessive impatience or interference with his plans. It is impossible to say what was McClellan's real mind. Quite early he seems to have held out hopes to Lincoln that he would soon attack, but he was writing to his wife that he expected to be attacked by superior numbers. It is certain, however, that he was possessed now and always by a delusion as to the enemy's strength. For instance Lincoln at last felt bound to work out for himself definite prospects for a forward movement; it is sufficient to say of this layman's effort that he proposed substantially the line of advance which Johnston a little later began to dread most; Lincoln's plan was submitted for McClellan's consideration; McClellan rejected it, and his reasons were based on his assertion that he would have to meet nearly equal numbers. He, in fact, out-numbered the enemy by more than three to one. If we find the President later setting aside the general's judgment on grounds that are not fully explained, we must recall McClellan's vast and persistent miscalculations of an enemy resident in his neighbourhood. And the distrust which he thus created was aggravated by another propensity of his vague mind. His illusory fear was the companion of an extravagant hope; the Confederate army was invincible when all the world expected him to attack it then and there, but the blow which he would deal it in his own place and his own time was to have decisive results, which were indeed impossible; the enemy was to "pass beneath the Caudine Forks." The demands which he made on the Administration for men and supplies seemed to have no finality about them; his tone in regard to them seemed to degenerate into a chronic grumble. The War Department certainly did not intend to stint him in any way; but he was an unsatisfactory man to deal with in these matters. There was a great mystery as to what became of the men sent to him. In the idyllic phrase, which Lincoln once used of him or of some other general, sending troops to him was "like shifting fleas across a barn floor with a shovel—not half of them ever get there." But his fault was graver than this; utterly ignoring the needs of the West, he tried, as General-in-Chief, to divert to his own army the recruits and the stores required for the other armies.
The difficulty with him went yet further; McClellan himself deliberately set to work to destroy personal harmony between himself and his Government. It counts for little that in private he soon set down all the civil authorities as the "greatest set of incapables," and so forth, but it counts for more that he was personally insolent to the President. Lincoln had been in the habit, mistaken in this case but natural in a chief who desires to be friendly, of calling at McClellan's house rather than summoning him to his own. McClellan acquired a habit of avoiding him, he treated his enquiries as idle curiosity, and he probably thought, not without a grain of reason, that Lincoln's way of discussing matters with many people led him into indiscretion. So one evening when Lincoln and Seward were waiting at the general's house for his return, McClellan came in and went upstairs; a message was sent that the President would be glad to see him; he said he was tired and would rather be excused that night. Lincoln damped down his friends' indignation at this; he would, he once said, "hold General McClellan's stirrup for him if he will only win us victories." But he called no more at McClellan's, and a curious abruptness in some of his orders later marks his unsuccessful effort to deal with McClellan in another way. The slightly ridiculous light in which the story shows Lincoln would not obscure to any soldier the full gravity of such an incident. It was not merely foolish to treat a kind superior rudely; a general who thus drew down a curtain between his own mind and that of the Government evidently went a very long way to ensure failure in war.