“If these young traitors are in earnest they should go to the Southern Confederacy, where they can receive full sympathy. Tell them all that I will furnish them passes through our lines, where they can join Vallandigham and their other friends till such time as they can destroy us, and come back home as conquerors of their own people, or can learn wisdom and obedience.
“I know this apparently is a small matter, but it is only apparently small. We do not know what the developments of a month may bring forth, and, if such things be permitted at Hiram, they may anywhere. The rebels catch up all such facts as sweet morsels of comfort, and every such influence lengthens the war and adds to the bloodshed.”
It was about the same time the above letter was written that a letter was brought to Rosecrans’s head-quarters, detailing an extensive plan for a universal insurrection of the slaves throughout the South. The rising was to take place August 1st. The slaves were to arm themselves with whatever they could get, and their especial work was to cut off the supplies of the rebel forces. “An army is dependent on its belly,” said Napoleon. To destroy the bridges and railroads within the Confederacy would swiftly undermine the rebel armies, whose rations and ammunition came along those routes. With the universal coöperation of the Union forces, it was thought the Rebellion might be crushed. To secure the coöperation of Rosecrans was the apparent object of the letter. General Garfield talked it over with his chief, and denounced the plan in the most unmeasured terms. He said that if the slaves wanted to revolt that was one thing. But for the Union army to violate the rules of warfare by encouraging and combining with a war upon non-combatants was not to be thought of. The colored people would have committed every excess upon the innocent women and children of the South. The unfortunate country would not only be overrun with war, but with riot. Rosecrans resolved to have nothing to do with it. But Garfield still was not satisfied. The letter said that several commanders had already given their assent. He sent the letter to President Lincoln with a statement of the results which would follow such irregular warfare. A letter of Garfield, written on the subject, says:
“I am clearly of opinion that the negro project is in every way bad, and should be repudiated, and, if possible, thwarted. If the slaves should, of their own accord, rise and assert their original right to themselves, and cut their way through rebeldom, that is their own affair; but the Government could have no complicity with it without outraging the sense of justice of the civilized world. We would create great sympathy for the rebels abroad, and God knows they have too much already.”
Lincoln gave the matter his attention, and the slave revolt never took place in any magnitude. It was an ambitious scheme on paper, and yet was not utterly impracticable. It was a thing to be crushed in its infancy, and Garfield’s action was the proper way to do it.
While Garfield was with Rosecrans, he was addressed by some prominent Northerners upon the subject of running Rosecrans for the Presidency. Greeley and many leading Republicans were dissatisfied with Lincoln in 1862–’63, and wanted to work up another candidate for the campaign of ’64. Attracted by Rosecrans’s successes, they put the plan on foot by opening communication with Garfield, in whom they had great confidence, upon the feasibility of defeating Mr. Lincoln in the convention, with Rosecrans. Garfield, however, put his foot on the whole ambitious scheme. He said that no man on earth could equal Lincoln in that trying hour. To take Rosecrans was to destroy both a wonderful President and an excellent soldier. So effectually did he smother the plan, that it is said Rosecrans never heard a whisper of it.
A most important work of General Garfield, as chief of staff, was his attack upon the corrupting vice of smuggling, and his defense of the army police. When an army is in an active campaign, marching, fighting, and fortifying, there is but little corruption developed. But in a large volunteer army, with its necessarily lax discipline when lying idle for a long time, its quarters become infested with all the smaller vices. The men are of every sort; and, as soon as they are idle, their heads get full of mischief. The Army of the Cumberland, during its long inactivity at Murfreesboro, soon began to suffer. The citizens were hostile, and had but two objects—one to serve the Confederacy, the other to make money for themselves. They thus all became spies and smugglers. Smuggling was the great army vice. The profits of cotton, smuggled contraband through the Union lines to the North, and of medicines, arms, leather, whisky, and a thousand Northern manufactures, through to the South, were simply incalculable. Bribery was the most effective, but not the only way of smuggling articles through the lines. The Southern women, famous the world over for their beauty and their captivating and passionate manners, would entangle the officers in their meshes in order to extort favors. To break up this smuggling, and get fresh information of any plots or pitfalls for the Union army, a system of army police had been organized at Nashville and Murfreesboro. This was in a fair state of efficiency when Garfield was appointed chief of staff. To improve it and make its work more available, General Garfield founded a bureau of military information, with General D. G. Swaim for its head. For efficiency, it was never again equaled or approached during the war. Shortly after the establishment of this bureau of information, a determined attack was made on the whole institution. “It marshaled its friends and enemies in almost regimental numbers. Even in the army it has been violently assailed, not only by the vicious in the ranks, but by officers whose evil deeds were not past finding out.” The accusations which were laid before Garfield were always investigated immediately, and always to the vindication of the police department. A special officer was at last detailed to investigate the entire department. His report of the wonderful achievements of the army police is monumental. Garfield was inexorable. Every officer guilty of smuggling had to come down, no matter how prominent he was. The chief of staff set his face like brass against the corruptions. The opportunities open to him for wealth were immense. All that was necessary for him to do was to wink at the smuggling. He had absolute power in the matter. But he fought the evil to its grave. He broke up stealing among the men. He established a system of regular reports from spies on the enemy. His police furnished him with the political status of every family in that section of the State. He knew just the temper of Bragg’s troops, and had a fair idea of their number. He knew just what corn was selling at in the enemy’s lines. Located in a hostile country, honeycombed with a system of rebel spies, he out-spied the enemy, putting spies to watch its spies. In every public capacity, civil or military, virtue is more rare and more necessary than genius. General Garfield’s incorruptible character alone saved the army police from destruction, and restored the Army of the Cumberland to order and honesty. He had, long before entering the army, shown wonderful ability for using assistants to accumulate facts for him. The police institution was an outcropping of the same thing. No commander during the war had more exact and detailed information of the enemy than Garfield had at this time.
When General Garfield reached the Army of the Cumberland, it was in a shattered and exhausted condition. It had no cavalry, the arms were inferior, and the terrible pounding at Stone River had greatly weakened it. General Rosecrans insisted on its recuperation and reinforcement before making another advance. The Department at Washington and Halleck, Commander-in-chief of the Union forces, were of the opinion that an advance should be made. Rosecrans, though possessing some high military skill, was sensitive, headstrong, absorbed in details, and violent of speech. He demanded cavalry, horses, arms, equipments. Dispatch after dispatch came insisting on an advance. Sharper and sharper became the replies. Garfield undertook to soften the venomous correspondence. Angry messages were sometimes suppressed altogether. But he could not control the wrathy commander. Rosecrans held a different, and, as it turned out, an erroneous theory of the best military policy. At first, Garfield’s views harmonized with those of his superior; but, as the month of April passed without movement, as his secret service informed him of the condition and situation of the enemy, he joined his own urgent advice to that of the Department for an advance. Rosecrans was immovable. The army of 60,000 men had been in quarters at Murfreesboro since January 6th without striking a blow at the rebellion. The month of May, with its opening flowers, its fragrant breezes and blue skies, came and went without a move. General Garfield was sick at heart, but he could do nothing. The more Rosecrans was talked to, the more obstinate he became. Garfield had certain information that Bragg’s army had been divided by sending reinforcements to Richmond, but nobody believed it. Besides, Rosecrans was supported in his position by all the generals of his army. Two of these were incompetent—Crittenden and McCook. They had behaved shamefully at Stone River. General Garfield urged their removal, and the substitution of McDowell and Buell. Rosecrans admitted their inefficiency, but said he hated to injure “two such good fellows.” He kept them till the “good fellows” injured him.
At last, on the 8th of June, 1863, Rosecrans, yielding somewhat to the pressure without, and still more to the persuasion of his chief of staff, laid the situation before the seventeen corps, division and cavalry generals of his army, and requested a written opinion from each one upon the advisability of an advance. It is to be remembered that among the seventeen generals were Thomas, Sheridan, Negley, Jeff. C. Davis, Hazen and Granger. Each of these studied the situation, and presented a written individual opinion. With astonishing unanimity, every one of the seventeen opposed an advance. Rosecrans read the opinions. They coincided with his own. But there was a man of genius at his side. Garfield, his confidential adviser, looked at the opinions of the generals in utter dismay. He saw that a crisis had arrived. The Department of War peremptorily demanded an advance; and to let the vast army, with its then excellent equipment, lie idle longer, meant not only the speedy removal of Rosecrans from command, but the greatest danger to the Union cause. He asked Rosecrans time to prepare a written reply to the opinions opposing an advance. Permission was given, though Rosecrans told him it would be wasted work. Collecting all his powers, he began his task. Four days and nights it occupied him. At the end of that time, on June 12th, he presented to Rosecrans the ablest opinion known to have been given to a commanding officer by his chief of staff during the entire war. The paper began with a statement of the questions to be discussed. Next it contained, in tabulated form, the opinions of the generals upon each question. Then followed a swift summary of the reasons presented in the seventeen opinions against the advance. Then began the answer. He presented an elaborate estimate of the strength of Bragg’s army, probably far more accurate and complete than the rebel general had himself. It was made up from the official report of Bragg after the battle of Stone River, from facts obtained from prisoners, deserters, refugees, rebel newspapers, and, above all, from the reports of his army police. The argument showed a perfect knowledge of the rules of organization of the Confederate army. The mass of proofs accompanying the opinion was overwhelming. Then followed a summary and analysis of the Army of the Cumberland. Summing up the relative strength of the two armies, he says, after leaving a strong garrison force at Murfreesboro, “there will be left sixty-five thousand one hundred and thirty-seven bayonets and sabers to throw against Bragg’s forty-one thousand six hundred and eighty.”
He concludes with the following general observations: