His work, after the Ordinance of Secession had been passed, was constant and absorbing. The Governor of Virginia had informed the Superintendent of the Institute that he should need the services of the more advanced classes as drill-masters, and that they must be prepared to leave for Richmond, under the command of Major Jackson, at a moment’s notice.
The Lexington Presbytery was holding its spring meeting in the church which Jackson attended, and some of the members were entertained at his house; but he found no time to attend a single service—every hour was devoted to the duty he had in hand.
On the Saturday of that eventful week he expressed the hope that he would not be called upon to leave till Monday; and, bidding his wife dismiss from her thoughts everything pertaining to the war and his departure, they spent that evening as they had been accustomed, reading aloud from religious magazines, and studying together the lesson which was to be taught on the morrow in the Sunday-school.
But at dawn the next morning came a telegram, directing Major Jackson to bring the cadets to Richmond immediately. He repaired at once to the Institute; and at one o’clock, after divine service, at his request, had been held at the head of the command, the cadet battalion marched to Staunton, on the Virginia Central Railway, and there took train.
Camp Lee, the rendezvous of the Virginia army, presented a peculiar if animated scene. With few exceptions, every man capable of serving in the field belonged either to the militia or the volunteers. Some of the companies had a smattering of drill, but the majority were absolutely untaught, and the whole were without the slightest conception of what was meant by discipline. And it was difficult to teach them. The non-commissioned officers and men of the United States army were either Irish or Germans, without State ties, and they had consequently no inducement to join the South. With the officers it was different. They were citizens first, and soldiers afterwards; and as citizens, their allegiance, so far as those of Southern birth were concerned, was due to their native States. Out of the twelve hundred graduates of West Point who, at the beginning of 1861, were still fit for service, a fourth were Southerners, and these, almost without exception, at once took service with the Confederacy. But the regular officers were almost all required for the higher commands, for technical duties, and the staff; thus very few were left to instruct the volunteers. The intelligence of the men was high, for every profession and every class was represented in the ranks, and many of the wealthiest planters preferred, so earnest was their patriotism, to serve as privates; but as yet they were merely the elements of a fine army, and nothing more. Their equipment left as much to be desired as their training. Arms were far scarcer than men. The limited supply of rifles in the State arsenals was soon exhausted. Flintlock muskets, converted to percussion action, were then supplied; but no inconsiderable numbers of fowling-pieces and shot-guns were to be seen amongst the infantry, while the cavalry, in default of sabres, carried rude lances fabricated by country blacksmiths. Some of the troops wore uniform, the blue of the militia or the grey of the cadet; but many of the companies drilled and manœuvred in plain clothes; and it was not till three months later, on the eve of the first great battle, that the whole of the infantry had received their bayonets and cartridge boxes.
An assemblage so motley could hardly be called an army; and the daring of the Government, who, with this levée en masse as their only bulwark against invasion, had defied a great power, seems at first sight strongly allied to folly. But there was little cause for apprehension. The Federal authorities were as yet powerless to enforce the policy of invasion on which the President had resolved. The great bulk of the Northern troops were just as far from being soldiers as the Virginians, and the regular army was too small to be feared.
The people of the United States had long cherished the Utopian dream that war was impossible upon their favoured soil. The militia was considered an archæological absurdity. The regular troops, admirable as was their work upon the frontier, were far from being a source of national pride. The uniform was held to be a badge of servitude. The drunken loafer, bartering his vote for a dollar or a dram, looked down with the contempt of a sovereign citizen upon men who submitted to the indignity of discipline; and, in denouncing the expense of a standing army, unscrupulous politicians found a sure path to popular favour. So, when secession became something more than a mere threat, the armed forces of the commonwealth had been reduced almost to extinction; and when the flag was fired upon, the nation found itself powerless to resent the insult. The military establishment mustered no more than 16,000 officers and men. There was no reserve, no transport, no organisation for war, and the troops were scattered in distant garrisons. The navy consisted of six screw-frigates, only one of which was in commission, of five steam sloops, some twenty sailing ships, and a few gun-boats. The majority of the vessels, although well armed, were out of date. 9,000 officers and men were the extent of the personnel, and several useful craft, together with more than 1,200 guns, were laid up in Norfolk dockyard, on the coast of Virginia, within a hundred miles of Richmond.[[1]]
The cause of the Confederacy, although her white population of seven million souls was smaller by two-thirds than that of the North, was thus far from hopeless. The North undoubtedly possessed immense resources. But an efficient army, even when the supply of men and arms be unlimited, cannot be created in a few weeks, or even in a few months, least of all an army of invasion. Undisciplined troops, if the enemy be ill-handled, may possibly stand their ground on the defensive, as did Jackson’s riflemen at New Orleans, or the colonials at Bunker’s Hill. But fighting behind earthworks is a very different matter to making long marches, and executing complicated manœuvres under heavy fire. Without a trained staff and an efficient administration, an army is incapable of movement. Even with a well-organised commissariat it is a most difficult business to keep a marching column supplied with food and forage; and the problem of transport, unless a railway or a river be available, taxes the ability of the most experienced leader. A march of eighty or one hundred miles into an enemy’s country sounds a simple feat, but unless every detail has been most carefully thought out, it will not improbably be more disastrous than a lost battle. A march of two or three hundred miles is a great military operation; a march of six hundred an enterprise of which there are few examples. To handle an army in battle is much less difficult than to bring it on to the field in good condition; and the student of the Civil War may note with profit how exceedingly chary were the generals, during the first campaigns, of leaving their magazines. It was not till their auxiliary services had gained experience that they dared to manœuvre freely; and the reason lay not only in deficiencies of organisation, but in the nature of the country. Even for a stationary force, standing on the defensive, unless immediately backed by a large town or a railway, the difficulties of bringing up supplies were enormous. For an invading army, increasing day by day the distance from its base, they became almost insuperable. In 1861, the population of the United States, spread over a territory as large as Europe, was less than that of England, and a great part of that territory was practically unexplored. Even at the present day their seventy millions are but a handful in comparison with the size of their dominions, and their extraordinary material progress is not much more than a scratch on the surface of the continent. In Europe Nature has long since receded before the works of man. In America the struggle between them has but just begun; and except upon the Atlantic seaboard man is almost lost to sight in the vast spaces he has yet to conquer. In many of the oldest States of the Union the cities seem set in clearings of the primeval forest. The wild woodland encroaches on the suburbs, and within easy reach of the very capital are districts where the Indian hunter might still roam undisturbed. The traveller lands in a metropolis as large as Paris; before a few hours have passed he may find himself in a wilderness as solitary as the Transvaal; and although within the boundaries of the townships he sees little that differs from the England of the nineteenth century—beyond them there is much that resembles the England of the Restoration. Except over a comparatively small area an army operating in the United States would meet with the same obstacles as did the soldiers of Cromwell and Turenne. Roads are few and indifferent; towns few and far between; food and forage are not easily obtainable, for the country is but partially cultivated; great rivers, bridged at rare intervals, issue from the barren solitudes of rugged plateaus; in many low-lying regions a single storm is sufficient to convert the undrained alluvial into a fetid swamp, and tracts as large as an English county are covered with pathless forest. Steam and the telegraph, penetrating even the most lonely jungles, afford, it is true, such facilities for moving and feeding large bodies of men that the difficulties presented by untamed Nature have undoubtedly been much reduced. Nevertheless the whole country, even to-day, would be essentially different from any European theatre of war, save the steppes of Russia; and in 1861 railways were few, and the population comparatively insignificant.
The impediments, then, in the way of military operations were such as no soldier of experience would willingly encounter with an improvised army. It was no petty republic that the North had undertaken to coerce. The frontiers of the Confederacy were far apart. The coast washed by the Gulf of Mexico is eight hundred miles south of Harper’s Ferry on the Potomac; the Rio Grande, the river boundary of Texas, is seventeen hundred miles west of Charleston on the Atlantic. And over this vast expanse ran but six continuous lines of railway:—
From the Potomac.