Military Reminiscences of the Civil War, Volume 2: November 1863-June 1865

by Jacob D. Cox

"The sheriff came to me to know what would be our course if he should raise the posse comitatus in obedience to the writ. My answer was that the United States forces would use no aggression, but that I wished him and the judge to understand distinctly that the writ could only be executed by overpowering the United States troops in open fight, and that it became all concerned to consider well before they became overt traitors by levying war against the Federal government; that I should regard them as public enemies at the first overt act and use the utmost vigor against them; and that after suppressing any disturbance they might create, my first duty would be to arrest the judge and himself and hand them over to the United States courts to be tried for treason. I likewise expressed my surprise that in a matter which was avowedly an undisguised attempt to bring the State authorities into open conflict with the National government, he had not appealed to the governor of the State, its chief executive (he being himself but a subordinate), for instructions. As he professed embarrassment as to his duty, I told him I would state what in my opinion a loyal sheriff should do in such a case; and that was to make a written return upon the writ saying that it could not be obeyed without levying open war against the United States, and was therefore returned unexecuted.... In view of the circumstances, I have thought best to lay the matter before you, that you may, if you see proper, direct the sheriff to take no steps calculated to bring the State and National authorities into collision, without full communication with and instruction from yourself as chief executive. I have no concern as to the success of any forcible attempt upon Colonel Boone, but regard it as very desirable that no such attempt should be made, and especially that it should not be precipitated, without your knowledge, by the action of the Probate Court of this county in overruling a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States.

"I shall forward a copy of this letter to the Secretary of War for his information, and have the honor to remain," etc.

There were some amusing incidents connected with the sheriff's embarrassment which could not properly appear in my letter to the governor. Both he and the Probate judge were candidates for re-election, and it seemed certain that the aggressive Vallandigham faction in the party would control the nominations in the party convention. In such excited times extreme men are almost sure to take the lead. The sheriff saw very clearly that there was nothing profitable to him in a forcible attack upon the United States troops in barracks, and knew that a call upon the posse would be responded to by nobody but ruffians of the criminal class who might like an opportunity to gather as a mob with a pretext of lawful authority. He complained to me with a comical distress that the judge had taken advantage of him to gain with the extremists of his party the credit for bold defiance of the government, whilst he, the sheriff, was left to bear the brunt of the real danger. I had told him in an earlier interview that if he called out the posse it would be his duty to lead it in person, and had intimated that I should direct the soldiers to save bloodshed by carefully marking the leaders in an attack. I now suggested that if he should inform the judge that he should summon him first as one of the posse and require him to march beside him, he would probably find the zeal for a collision diminished.

Whatever were the reasons which controlled, there was no posse summoned, and I heard no more of the arrest of Colonel Boone. Both judge and sheriff lived to look back upon the episode in their lives with other feelings than those which excited them nearly to desperation in that singular political campaign. It was not always easy to draw a satisfactory line in dealing practically with such powdery elements and social conditions as those of 1863, but the best results seemed to come from carefulness not to provoke unnecessary collision with political prejudices and not to interfere with personal liberty more than was necessary, whilst showing inexorable firmness in carrying out such measures as we had to adopt. Two cases which arose in Dayton made it necessary to distinguish between two possible courses, and though there was a good deal of difference in judgment among loyal men I thought the event fully justified us in that which we pursued.

The arrest of Vallandigham had left a certain class of people in Dayton on the verge of violent outbreak. A mob had wrecked the publishing office of the Union party paper, and we had kept a small garrison at the city to preserve the peace, The "roughs" of the place were insolent to the soldiers and their officers, and it required firm discipline to keep our men as patient as we wished them to be. One day a wrangle began, and one of the city "rowdies" pulled a pistol and fired upon a soldier. We arrested the criminal, but whilst we held him, an indictment was found against him in the local court, and he was demanded by the civil authorities for trial. We knew very well that in any jury of that county enough partisans of Vallandigham would be found to prevent a conviction, but I ordered the man to be delivered up. This was pretty sharply criticised by the more ardent Union men, but I answered that it was necessary to find out whether justice could be administered by the civil authorities before applying military rule.

The delivery of the man was no doubt looked upon as an act of timidity, and it was not long before we had a repetition of the offence. I had taken pains to have the garrison at Dayton carefully instructed that they must be patient and cool, avoiding every provocation, but if attacked, the aggressor must be punished on the spot. In the second case, the man who drew his weapon was instantly shot down. There was now a demand for the soldier to be tried by the local civil court; but I said that the boot was on the other foot. The charge against the soldier was for an act performed in the line of his military duty, and of this our military courts had cognizance. The case was investigated by a military tribunal and the man justified. The result was every way satisfactory. Assaulting soldiers lost its attractiveness to town bullies, and the case in which the civilian had been left to the action of the civil courts was a standing proof of the inefficiency of those tribunals in matters where partisan passions entered, and where the unanimity of a jury was consequently impossible.

The State election occurred in October, and although there had been great fears of rioting and bloodshed, these fears were happily disappointed. There had been enough of the preliminary education as to the relations of the military authorities to the preservation of the peace, to make it generally understood that disturbances would be dangerous. The soldiers were, however, kept carefully out of sight except as they exercised their personal right to vote. They were under arms at their barracks, and no leaves of absence were given. These precautions were all that was needed. In Cincinnati the election was said to be one of the quietest and most orderly ever known. The people seemed to appreciate the gravity of the situation and to realize that it must be soberly and thoughtfully met. Hosts of men who would willingly have been in opposition to the administration party on questions of economy or of details in the conduct of the war declined to vote for Vallandigham, whose utterances had been the great matter of debate during the canvass, and whose disloyalty being thus brought home to the voters in every neighborhood, had repelled all but the most passionate of his party friends. John Brough, the Union party candidate, himself a "war democrat," was elected governor by an unprecedented majority of over a hundred thousand. The soldiers' vote had helped to swell this majority, and as returns had to be made from polling-places opened for each Ohio regiment in the field, there was considerable delay before the extent of the political victory was fully known. The home vote was enough for every practical purpose, and it, of course, was known at once. The returns from the army vote kept adding to the majority, and gave, day by day, a new stimulus to political interest, one party rejoicing over the unanimity of the country's defenders, and the other affecting to see dangers of military despotism. For this reason it was fortunate that the soldiers' vote was not necessary to decide the election, and that without it Brough's triumph went beyond any ordinary measure of party success.

The remarkable result of the election was felt throughout the country as an indication of renewed determination of the people that the war must be fought out to the complete crushing of the Rebellion and the restoration of the Union. There was a noticeable crystallization of public opinion after it. Reasonable men in the defeated party found it easy to accept conclusions which were backed up by so great majorities. Agitation was quieted, and there was an evident disposition to acquiesce in what was so evidently the popular current.

My aversion for the anomalous position of a military commandant out of the actual field of war had not been lessened by my experiences of the summer, and both directly and indirectly I renewed my requests for a field command. I had been told that the Secretary of War awaited only an opening which would permit him to assign me to duty with the advanced grade which had been given me after Antietam, and I had been advised, in a way that seemed authoritative, to wait patiently for this. It became evident in the autumn that such waiting was likely to be profitless as well as wearisome. A regular army officer had a backing in the esprit de corps at the departments, and Halleck was watchful to give the full weight of his official influence in favor of such a one. It was, perhaps naturally, assumed that a volunteer would be assisted by political friends, and if he did not make use of such influence he would fall between two stools. After my first appointment I was never aware of receiving any help from these personal influences, and had gotten whatever recognition I had from my immediate commanders in the field. Burnside had intimated that if Hartsuff's ill health should make that officer retire from the command of the Twenty-third Corps, he would assign me to it in the expectation that the corresponding rank would then be conferred by the President. If I have any regret respecting my own action in seeking active duty, it is that I did not ask for the command of one of the divisions in the corps on the movement into East Tennessee. It was Burnside's wish that I should remain in Cincinnati and I acquiesced; but I have had a lingering belief that my influence with him would have helped decide him to remain in the West had I been with him in Knoxville in October and November. Be that as it may, I was fully determined after the Ohio election was over to cease looking for anything more than a field command, according to my present rank, and to be urgent till I obtained it.

In this year the first volume of Kinglake's "History of the Crimean War" was published, and reading it in the intervals of other duty in Cincinnati, I found in it lessons of hope and confidence in our armies that were to me both stimulating and encouraging. It would not be strange if an English soldier should feel that Kinglake was quite too frank in his revelation of the mistakes and discouragements which attended England's first military operations after the "forty years' peace." But it was precisely this photographic realism and unreserve which gave the book its peculiar value. I found Lord Raglan and his subordinates intelligent men, feeling their way through doubts and mistakes to a new experimental knowledge of their task. I compared them and their work with what I had seen in our own service when a great army had to be organized and put in the field and everything had to be created anew. I saw that we had been no worse off than our neighbors, and that our tuition in the school of experience had gone on quite as rapidly as theirs. I thanked Kinglake in my heart for telling us that Raglan tested what he was doing by asking himself how "the Duke" would have done had he been there. It was only another way of applying the lessons of past experience to the present duty; but it seemed peculiarly human that the English general in the perplexities of his troublesome problem in the Crimea should summon up the shade of Wellington and ask how the practical soldier of the Spanish Peninsular War would act were he deciding for his old staff officer what he must do at the Alma or in front of Sebastopol.