Expansion and Conflict

by William Edward Dodd

Meanwhile the eyes of the two warring powers were concentrated on the operations in Virginia. McClellan moved in March, 1862, upon Richmond by way of the Yorktown Peninsula, a swampy wild region over which it was difficult, indeed, to move an army. He commanded 125,000 men, and 40,000 more were in the neighborhood of Washington to make a diversion in his favor in case of necessity. Joseph E. Johnston, who had held chief command in Virginia since Bull Run, shifted his position promptly from northern Virginia to Richmond to meet the threatened attack. He had no more than 55,000 men. As McClellan worked his way slowly up the peninsula Johnston fortified his position along the ridges east and north of the Confederate capital, which stood on the hills just above tidewater. From Hanover Court-House to Malvern Hill, a distance of some twenty-five miles, the two armies confronted each other in irregular lines conforming to the topography of the region. Late in May, Johnston attacked McClellan on the Union right, and the fighting continued two or three days, now at one point, now at another of the long lines. On May 31, in the battle of Fair Oaks, Johnston was severely wounded and the command devolved upon Robert E. Lee, whose failure to hold West Virginia against McClellan during the preceding autumn had temporarily eclipsed his growing reputation. Lee's management of his forces during the early days of his new command was faulty; but before the 23d of June he had received reinforcements from the Carolinas and Georgia which brought his total almost to 60,000; and he relied on “Stonewall” Jackson, who was just concluding a wonderful campaign in the Valley of Virginia, to come to his assistance with his corps of 16,000. But McClellan still had 105,000 fairly trained soldiers, and there was no reason to doubt that a second Union army was forming near Alexandria. It was a critical moment.

Meanwhile, Jackson's operations in the Shenandoah Valley had so startled and astounded the Federals that he was able to march, June 20-25, unobserved, over the passes of the Blue Ridge Mountains to Lee's assistance. A series of battles began June 26 at Mechanicsville on McClellan's right, near where Johnston had fought. But the failure of Jackson to arrive and begin the attack, according to agreement, caused the first Confederate onset to fail, with heavy losses to the South. The next day, however, the tide turned the other way and Lee routed McClellan at Gaines' Mill. McClellan now retreated across White Oak Swamp towards Harrison's Landing on the James. The weather was hot, the ground soft from rains, and the underbrush so thick and tangled that men could not see each other at a distance of ten paces, save in the narrow roads or small clearings. Realizing the difficulties under which his opponent labored, Lee ordered hasty pursuit, and ineffective blows were struck at Savage's Station and in White Oak Swamp. Jackson again failed to maintain the great reputation he had won in the Valley, and Magruder, Holmes, and Huger, other lieutenants of Lee, not knowing their own country as well as did the Federals, suffered their commands to be lost in the wilderness and thus aided McClellan in his escape from a dangerous situation. On July 1 the retreating Union army gathered, still devoted to its commander, on Malvern Hill, within support of the Federal gunboats in the James River below. The Confederates, confident and expectant, poured out of the woods from every direction, formed in battle array, and charged over open fields and rising ground toward the two hundred and fifty great guns which had been dragged for weeks through the swamps in the hope of just such an opportunity. The attempt of Lee to carry this impregnable position lost the Confederates as many brave men as all the other six days of unremitting warfare. McClellan held his own till night; Lee withdrew to the neighboring thickets, surprised at the resolute strength of an opponent who had avoided battle at every turn since June 26.

The week of fighting and scouring the woods had cost the North nearly 16,000 men; the South, 20,000. The retreat on July 2 to Harrison's Landing was McClellan's confession of failure, which sorely distressed his superiors in Washington and greatly depressed the spirits of the North. Lee's first essay at war on a large scale had saved the Confederate capital, though at fearful cost, and he was everywhere regarded as a great general. From this time Davis and the Confederate Government gave him the fullest confidence, and the people of the South came to think of him as almost superhuman. Though he was bold in action and even reckless of human life, his soldiers gave him an obedience and a reverence which no other commander in American history has ever received. Jackson, Longstreet, and D. H. and A. P. Hill had also won fame in this baptism of blood. To the average Southerner the outlook was once more exceedingly bright. Richmond breathed freely, and the Government bent its energies to the task of supplying its able officers with men and means.

While the Federal Government was deciding what to do with McClellan and his army, still almost twice as large as Lee's, the Confederate commander sent Jackson with some 20,000 men to the neighborhood of Bull Run, where the commands of McDowell, Banks, and Frémont had been united to make a third army of invasion. General John Pope was brought from successful operations in the West to Washington, where Secretary Edwin M. Stanton, assuming more and more the directing authority of the Government, prepared, with the assistance of Senator Benjamin F. Wade, a proclamation which Pope was to distribute among the troops. “I come from the West, where we have always seen the backs of our enemies,” ran this remarkable admonition to Eastern, officers and men. “Let us look before us and not behind.” Most of the 50,000 men who were soon to meet Jackson and Lee resented the comparison and the affront. On August 9 a sharp encounter at Cedar Mountain showed how resolute and real was the purpose of Lee to drive this army out of Virginia. When President Lincoln removed McClellan and ordered the Army of the Potomac in part to Washington, in part to Acquia Creek, near Fredericksburg, to support Pope, and gave the command of all the armies of the East to General H. W. Halleck, for whom Grant had won high reputation earlier in the year, Lee hastened northward to defeat Pope before these reinforcements could arrive. The Union forces north of Bull Run amounted now to nearly 75,000 men; Lee had 55,000, but there was no thought of delay. On the 29th and 30th Pope was crushed and routed completely in a series of maneuvers and battles which have been pronounced the most masterly in the whole war. For four days the discouraged and baffled troops and officers of the Union retreated or ran pell-mell across the northern counties of Virginia into Washington, to the dismay of Lincoln and the friends of the Federal cause. It was at this moment, too, that Bragg was advancing, as already described, into Kentucky and threatening to seize Lexington and Louisville. It was a dark hour to the patient and patriotic Lincoln, who had never dreamed that such catastrophes could be the result of his reluctant decision, in early April, 1861, to hold Fort Sumter.

General Halleck proved uncertain and dilatory; the Army of the Potomac was generally dissatisfied and clamoring for the restoration of McClellan, who, like Joseph E. Johnston, of the South, was always popular with his men; the Cabinet, too, was uncertain and hopelessly divided in its counsels. The cause of the Union was exceedingly doubtful in September, 1862, as Lee entered Maryland, publishing abroad his call to the Southern element of that State to rise and join their brethren of the Confederacy. Public opinion in the North was divided and depressed. The abolitionists of the East were pressing every day through Sumner and Chase for a proclamation emancipating the slaves, which might have driven Maryland and Kentucky into the arms of the enemy; the Northwest was in turmoil, for there abolitionism was as unpopular as slavery itself, and leading men declared that it was a war for the Union, for a great common country, not a struggle to overthrow the institutions of the South. There was still no great party, sure of a majority in the coming elections, upon which the President could rely, and the loss of a majority in Congress would have been fatal.

Under these circumstances Lee, Longstreet, and Jackson entered Maryland at a point some fifty miles above Washington, with their army enthusiastic and self-confident because of recent victories. It seemed almost certain that another victory, and this on the soil of the North, would secure Confederate recognition in Europe. Reluctantly Lincoln restored McClellan to the command of the Union army which was moving northwestward to confront Lee. An accident, one of those small things in war which sometimes determines the fate of nations, put into McClellan's hands the orders of Lee for the Maryland campaign. General D. H. Hill dropped his copy of these important and highly confidential instructions upon the ground as he was breaking camp on the morning of the 12th of September. On the same day this tell-tale document was handed to the Federal commander. Almost a third of Lee's army was on its way to Harper's Ferry, many miles to the west, to seize that post, which McClellan thought had already been evacuated. McClellan began to press upon the Confederates as they retired from their advanced position to the valley of Antietam Creek. South Mountain, a spur of the Blue Ridge, lay between the armies. On September 16, McClellan crossed the passes and confronted Lee, who was now on the defensive. A most sanguinary battle followed on the 17th, and the Confederates, having suffered losses of nearly 12,000 men, retired to northern Virginia. The campaign was closed, for McClellan was too cautious to risk a second attack, and Lee retired to a safe position south of the Potomac. The consternation of the North subsided and President Lincoln gave out the announcement that if war continued till January he would emancipate the slaves by executive order in all the States which at that time refused to recognize the Federal authority.

The elections which came in October and November following ran heavily against the Administration. New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, Republican States in 1860, went Democratic. Only in States where the war upon the South, as the ancient enemy, was popular did the Administration receive hearty support. In the moderate States like Pennsylvania and the border States like Kentucky, the Republican party had practically ceased to exist. The Emancipation Proclamation had served to emphasize the almost fatal cleavage in Northern public opinion.

But the fortunes of both sides depended on victory in the field as well as votes in Congress, and all eyes turned again to the movements of Lee. The failure of McClellan to follow Lee and deliver battle led to his second removal from command. Ambrose E. Burnside, a corps commander who had done good work at Antietam, succeeded, and in obedience to the orders of the War Department moved directly upon Richmond by way of Fredericksburg, with an army of 122,000. But Lee confronted him on the south bank of the Rappahannock, and though his forces were only a little more than half as strong, there was no uneasiness at Confederate headquarters. On the 12th of December Burnside crossed the Rappahannock and attacked Lee, who held the formidable hills on the southern bank of that stream. Another bloody battle ensued. After a vain and hopeless sacrifice of 12,000 men, Burnside withdrew to the northern bank of the river. The active fighting of 1862 had come to a close. In northern Mississippi Grant and Sherman were blocked; at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the armies of Rosecrans and Bragg were about to make their fruitless onsets already mentioned, and in Virginia the Union outlook was quite as dark as it had been after the first unfortunate trial at arms in July, 1861. Lincoln thought of removing Grant because of the failure of the campaign in northern Mississippi, but gave him another opportunity; Burnside resigned a command he had not sought, and Joseph Hooker took up the difficult problem of beating Lee.

At Washington the deepest gloom prevailed. On July 2, 1862, before the news of McClellan's failure to capture Richmond had reached the people, a call for 300,000 three-year men was made. Then came the disaster of Second Manassas and the invasion of Maryland. Recruiting went on drearily during the fall, when most signs pointed to the failure of all the gigantic efforts to maintain the Union. The writ of habeas corpus, so dear to Anglo-Saxons, had been frequently suspended; arbitrary arrests were made in all parts of the North, and many well-known men were held in military and other prisons without warrant or trial. Stanton and Seward with the approval of the President issued orders for the seizure of men at night, and the mysterious disappearances of public men in places where opposition had been shown served to warn people against displeasing their own officers at the capital. The cost of the war had mounted to $2,500,000 a day, while the gross receipts of the Government were not more than $600,000 a day. When the time came to put into force the Emancipation Proclamation, the people were in greater doubt than ever about the wisdom of the move, and Secretary Seward wrote to a friend condemning utterly this effort to raise a servile war in the South. The letter found its way into the newspapers and showed once more the cleavage of Northern public opinion. The radical East approved, the nationalist West disapproved, and business men, bankers, merchants, and manufacturers, whom Seward best represented, went on their indifferent ways, refusing to lend money to the Government save on usurious terms, and at the same time denouncing its policy of paying debts by issuing irredeemable paper. Lincoln had lost the confidence of the public, even of Congress; but, as he himself said, no other man possessed more of that confidence. An honest German merchant wrote home to friends that if the North could only exchange officers with the Confederates, the war would be over in a few weeks. In the midst of the depression the Secretary of the Treasury issued another $100,000,000 of greenbacks to meet pressing needs; and to fill up the ranks of the armies a Federal conscript law was enacted in March, 1863, only a little less drastic than the Confederate measure which was said to “rob both the cradle and the grave.”

Under these circumstances Hooker moved half-heartedly upon Lee. The two armies, the Union outnumbering the Confederate more than two to one, met in the dreary and almost impenetrable forest, southwest of Fredericksburg, known as the Wilderness, though the battle which followed bears the name of Chancellorsville. For five days the bloody work went on, with the result that Hooker retired beaten and humiliated before his enemy. Lee and the South had also lost their greatest general, Stonewall Jackson, and the people of the South were feeling to the full the disasters of war. But Lee gathered his forces from Norfolk, Petersburg, and Richmond, every regiment that could be spared, more than 80,000 men, and set his face once more toward western Maryland and Pennsylvania, where he confidently expected to wrest a peace from the stubborn North. The Army of the Potomac moved on interior lines toward Gettysburg, leaving some regiments in Washington against an emergency. The people of Pennsylvania and New York were panic-struck; a second time the evils of war had been transferred from Southern to Northern territory. Great cities have not been famous for self-control and philosophy when their banks and their rich storehouses have been threatened with ruin. Philadelphia and New York were no exceptions to the rule, and if it had been left to them the war would have been brought to a close before Lee crossed the Pennsylvania border.