Читать книгу Captains of the Civil War; a chronicle of the blue and the gray - William Charles Henry Wood - Страница 8

THE CLASH: 1861

States which claimed a sovereign right to secede from the Union naturally claimed the corresponding right to resume possession of all the land they had ceded to that Union's Government for the use of its naval and military posts. So South Carolina, after leading the way to secession on December 20, 1860, at once began to work for the retrocession of the forts defending her famous cotton port of Charleston. These defenses, being of vital consequence to both sides, were soon to attract the strained attention of the whole country.

There were three minor forts: Castle Pinckney, dozing away, in charge of a solitary sergeant, on an island less than a mile from the city; Fort Moultrie, feebly garrisoned and completely at the mercy of Page 2 attackers on its landward side; and Fort Johnson over on James Island. Lastly, there was the world-renowned Fort Sumter, which then stood, unfinished and ungarrisoned, on a little islet beside the main ship channel, at the entrance to the harbor, and facing Fort Moultrie just a mile away. The proper war garrison of all the forts should have been over a thousand men. The actual garrison—including officers, band, and the Castle Pinckney sergeant—was less than a hundred. It was, however, loyal to the Union; and its commandant, Major Robert Anderson, though born in the slave-owning State of Kentucky, was determined to fight.

The situation, here as elsewhere, was complicated by Floyd, President Buchanan's Secretary of War, soon to be forced out of office on a charge of misapplying public funds. Floyd, as an ardent Southerner, was using the last lax days of the Buchanan Government to get the army posts ready for capitulation whenever secession should have become an accomplished fact. He urged on construction, repairs, and armament at Charleston, while refusing to strengthen the garrison, in order, as he said, not to provoke Carolina. Moreover, in November he had replaced old Colonel Gardner, a Northern veteran of "1812," by Page 3 Anderson the Southerner, in whom he hoped to find a good capitulator. But this time Floyd was wrong.

The day after Christmas Anderson's little garrison at Fort Moultrie slipped over to Fort Sumter under cover of the dark, quietly removed Floyd's workmen, who were mostly Baltimore Secessionists, and began to prepare for defense. Next morning Charleston was furious and began to prepare for attack. The South Carolina authorities at once took formal possession of Pinckney and Moultrie; and three days later seized the United States Arsenal in Charleston itself. Ten days later again, on January 9, 1861, the Star of the West, a merchant vessel coming in with reinforcements and supplies for Anderson, was fired on and forced to turn back. Anderson, who had expected a man-of-war, would not fire in her defense, partly because he still hoped there might yet be peace.

While Charleston stood at gaze and Anderson at bay the ferment of secession was working fast in Florida, where another tiny garrison was all the Union had to hold its own. This garrison, under two loyal young lieutenants, Slemmer and Gilman, occupied Barrancas Barracks in Pensacola Bay. Late at night on the eighth of January (the day Page 4 before the Star of the West was fired on at Charleston) some twenty Secessionists came to seize the old Spanish Fort San Carlos, where, up to that time, the powder had been kept. This fort, though lying close beside the barracks, had always been unoccupied; so the Secessionists looked forward to an easy capture. But, to their dismay, an unexpected guard challenged them, and, not getting the proper password in reply, dispersed them with the first shots of the Civil War.

Commodore Armstrong sat idle at the Pensacola Navy Yard, distracted between the Union and secession. On the ninth Slemmer received orders from Winfield Scott, General-in-Chief at Washington, to use all means in defense of Union property. Next morning Slemmer and his fifty faithful men were landed on Santa Rosa Island, just one mile across the bay, where the dilapidated old Fort Pickens stood forlorn. Two days later the Commodore surrendered the Navy Yard, the Stars and Stripes were lowered, and everything ashore fell into the enemy's hands. There was no flagstaff at Fort Pickens; but the Union colors were at once hung out over the northwest bastion, in full view of the shore, while the Supply and Wyandotte, the only naval vessels in the bay, and both commanded Page 5 by loyal men, mastheaded extra colors and stood clear. Five days afterwards they had to sail for New York; and Slemmer, whose total garrison had been raised to eighty by the addition of thirty sailors, was left to hold Fort Pickens if he could.

He had already been summoned to surrender by Colonel Chase and Captain Farrand, who had left the United States Army and Navy for the service of the South. Chase, like many another Southern officer, was stirred to his inmost depths by his own change of allegiance. "I have come," he said, "to ask of you young officers, officers of the same army in which I have spent the best and happiest years of my life, the surrender of this fort; and fearing that I might not be able to say it as I ought, and also to have it in proper form, I have put it in writing and will read it." He then began to read. But his eyes filled with tears, and, stamping his foot, he said: "I can't read it. Here, Farrand, you read it." Farrand, however, pleading that his eyes were weak, handed the paper to the younger Union officer, saying, "Here, Gilman, you have good eyes, please read it." Slemmer refused to surrender and held out till reinforced in April, by which time the war had begun in earnest. Fort Pickens was never taken. On the contrary, it supported the Page 6 bombardment of the Confederate 'longshore positions the next New Year (1862) and witnessed the burning and evacuation of Pensacola the following ninth of May.

While Charleston and Pensacola were fanning the flames of secession the wildfire was running round the Gulf, catching well throughout Louisiana, where the Governor ordered the state militia to seize every place belonging to the Union, and striking inland till it reached the farthest army posts in Texas. In all Louisiana the Union Government had only forty men. These occupied the Arsenal at Baton Rouge under Major Haskins. Haskins was loyal. But when five hundred state militiamen surrounded him, and his old brother-officer, the future Confederate General Bragg, persuaded him that the Union was really at an end, to all intents and purposes, and when he found no orders, no support, and not even any guidance from the Government at Washington, he surrendered with the honors of war and left by boat for St. Louis in Missouri.

There was then in Louisiana another Union officer; but made of sterner stuff. This was Colonel W. T. Sherman, Superintendent of the State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy at Page 7 Alexandria, up the Red River. He was much respected by all the state authorities, and was carefully watching over the two young sons of another future Confederate leader, General Beauregard. William Tecumseh Sherman had retired from the Army without seeing any war service, unlike Haskins, who was a one-armed veteran of the Mexican campaign. But Sherman was determined to stand by the Union, come what might. Yet he was equally determined to wind up the affairs of the State Academy so as to hand them over in perfect order. A few days after the seizure of the Arsenal, and before the formal secession of the State, he wrote to the Governor:

"Sir: As I occupy a quasi-military position under the laws of the State, I deem it proper to acquaint you that I accepted such position when Louisiana was a State of the Union, and when the motto of this seminary was inserted in marble over the main door: "By the liberality of the General Government of the United States. The Union—esto perpetua." Recent events foreshadow a great change, and it becomes all men to choose.... I beg you to take immediate steps to relieve me as superintendent, the moment the State determines to secede, for on no earthly account will I do any act or think any thought hostile to, or in defiance of, the old Government of the United States."

Page 8 Then, to the lasting credit of all concerned, the future political enemies parted as the best of personal friends. Sherman left everything in perfect order, accounted for every cent of the funds, and received the heartiest thanks and best wishes of all the governing officials, who embodied the following sentence in their final resolution of April 1, 1861: "They cannot fail to appreciate the manliness of character which has always marked the actions of Colonel Sherman." Long before this Louisiana had seceded, and Sherman had gone north to Lancaster, Ohio, where he arrived about the time of Lincoln's inauguration.

Meanwhile, on the eighteenth of February, the greatest of all surrenders had taken place in Texas, where nineteen army posts were handed over to the State by General Twiggs. San Antonio was swarming with Secessionist rangers. Unionist companies were marching up and down. The Federal garrison was leaving the town on parole, with the band playing Union airs and Union colors flying. The whole place was at sixes and sevens, and anything might have happened.

In the midst of this confusion the colonel commanding the Second Regiment of United States Cavalry arrived from Fort Mason. He was on Page 9 his way to Washington, where Winfield Scott, the veteran General-in-Chief, was anxiously waiting to see him; for this colonel was no ordinary man. He had been Scott's Chief of Staff in Mexico, where he had twice won promotion for service in the field. He had been a model Superintendent at West Point and an exceedingly good officer of engineers before he left them, on promotion, for the cavalry. Very tall and handsome, magnificently fit in body and in mind, genial but of commanding presence, this flower of Southern chivalry was not only every inch a soldier but a leader born and bred. Though still unknown to public fame he was the one man to whom the most insightful leaders of both sides turned, and rightly turned; for this was Robert Lee, Lee of Virginia, soon to become one of the very few really great commanders of the world.

As Lee came up to the hotel at San Antonio he was warmly greeted by Mrs. Darrow, the anxious wife of the confidential clerk to Major Vinton, the staunch Union officer in charge of the pay and quartermaster services. "Who are those men?" he asked, pointing to the rangers, who wore red flannel shoulder straps. "They are McCulloch's," she answered; "General Twiggs surrendered everything to the State this morning." Years after, Page 10 when she and her husband and Vinton had suffered for one side and Lee had suffered for the other, she wrote her recollection of that memorable day in these few, telling words: "I shall never forget his look of astonishment, as, with his lips trembling and his eyes full of tears, he exclaimed, 'Has it come so soon as this?' In a short time I saw him crossing the plaza on his way to headquarters and noticed particularly that he was in citizen's dress. He returned at night and shut himself into his room, which was over mine; and I heard his footsteps through the night, and sometimes the murmur of his voice, as if he was praying. He remained at the hotel a week and in conversations declared that the position he held was a neutral one."

Three other Union witnesses show how Lee agonized over the fateful decision he was being forced to make. Captain R. M. Potter says: "I have seldom seen a more distressed man. He said, 'When I get to Virginia I think the world will have one soldier less. I shall resign and go to planting corn.'" Colonel Albert G. Brackett says: "Lee was filled with sorrow at the condition of affairs, and, in a letter to me, deploring the war in which we were about to engage, made use of these words: 'I fear the liberties of our country will be buried in Page 11 the tomb of a great nation.'" Colonel Charles Anderson, quoting Lee's final words in Texas, carries us to the point of parting: "I still think my loyalty to Virginia ought to take precedence over that which is due to the Federal Government; and I shall so report myself in Washington. If Virginia stands by the old Union, so will I. But if she secedes (though I do not believe in secession as a constitutional right, nor that there is sufficient cause for revolution) then I will still follow my native State with my sword, and, if need be, with my life. I know you think and feel very differently. But I can't help it. These are my principles; and I must follow them."

Lee reached Washington on the first of March. Lincoln, delivering his Inaugural on the fourth, brought the country one step nearer war by showing the neutrals how impossible it was to reconcile his principles as President of the whole United States with those of Jefferson Davis as President of the seceding parts. "The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government." Three days later the provisional Confederate Congress at Montgomery in Alabama passed an Army Act authorizing the enlistment of one hundred Page 12 thousand men for one year's service. Nine days later again, having adopted a Constitution in the meantime, this Congress passed a Navy Act, authorizing the purchase or construction of ten little gunboats.

In April the main storm center went whirling back to Charleston, where Sherman's old friend Beauregard commanded the forces that encircled Sumter. Sumter, still unfinished, had been designed for a garrison of six hundred and fifty combatant men. It now contained exactly sixty-five. It was to have been provisioned for six months. The actual supplies could not be made to last beyond two weeks. Both sides knew that Anderson's gallant little garrison must be starved out by the fifteenth. But the excited Carolinians would not wait, because they feared that the arrival of reinforcements might balk them of their easy prey. On the eleventh Beauregard, acting under orders from the Confederate Government, sent in a summons to surrender. Anderson refused. At a quarter to one the next morning the summons was repeated, as pilots had meanwhile reported a Federal vessel approaching the harbor. Anderson again refused and again admitted that he would be starved out on the fifteenth. Thereupon Beauregard's aides declared Page 13 immediate surrender the only possible alternative to a bombardment and signed a note at 3:20 A.M. giving Anderson formal warning that fire would be opened in an hour.

Fort Sumter stood about half a mile inside the harbor mouth, fully exposed to the converging fire of four relatively powerful batteries, three about a mile away, the fourth nearly twice as far. At the northern side of the harbor mouth stood Fort Moultrie; at the southern stood the batteries on Cummings Point; and almost due west of Sumter stood Fort Johnson. Near Moultrie was a four-gun floating battery with an iron shield. A mile northwest of Moultrie, farther up the harbor, stood the Mount Pleasant battery, nearly two miles off from Sumter. At half-past four, in the first faint light of a gray morning, a sudden spurt of flame shot out from Fort Johnson, the dull roar of a mortar floated through the misty air, and the big shell—the first shot of the real war—soared up at a steep angle, its course distinctly marked by its burning fuse, and then plunged down on Sumter. It was a capital shot, right on the center of the target, and was followed by an admirable burst. Then all the converging batteries opened full; while the whole population of perfervid Charleston rushed Page 14 out of doors to throng their beautiful East Battery, a flagstone marine parade three miles in from Sumter, of which and of the attacking batteries it had a perfect view.

But Sumter remained as silent as the grave. Anderson decided not to return the fire till it was broad daylight. In the meantime all ranks went to breakfast, which consisted entirely of water and salt pork. Then the gun crews went to action stations and fired back steadily with solid shot. The ironclad battery was an exasperating target; for the shot bounced off it like dried peas. Moultrie seemed more vulnerable. But appearances were deceptive; for it was thoroughly quilted with bales of cotton, which the solid shot simply rammed into an impenetrable mass. Wishing to save his men, in which he was quite successful, Anderson had forbidden the use of the shell-guns, which were mounted on the upper works and therefore more exposed. Shell fire would have burst the bales and set the cotton flaming. This was so evident that Sergeant Carmody, unable to stand such futile practice any longer, quietly stole up to the loaded guns and fired them in succession. The aim lacked final correction; and the result was small, except that Moultrie, thinking itself in danger, Page 15 concentrated all its efforts on silencing these guns. The silencing seemed most effective; for Carmody could not reload alone, and so his first shots were his last.

At nightfall Sumter ceased fire while the Confederates kept on slowly till daylight. Next morning the officers' quarters were set on fire by red-hot shot. Immediately the Confederates redoubled their efforts. Inside Sumter the fire was creeping towards the magazine, the door of which was shut only just in time. Then the flagstaff was shot down. Anderson ran his colors up again, but the situation was rapidly becoming impossible. Most of the worn-out men were fighting the flames while a few were firing at long intervals to show they would not yet give in. This excited the generous admiration of the enemy, who cheered the gallantry of Sumter while sneering at the caution of the Union fleet outside. The fact was, however, that this so-called fleet was a mere assemblage of vessels quite unable to fight the Charleston batteries and without the slightest chance of saving Sumter.

Having done his best for the honor of the flag, though not a man was killed within the walls, Anderson surrendered in the afternoon. Charleston went wild with joy; but applauded the generosity Page 16 of Beauregard's chivalrous terms. Next day, Sunday the fourteenth, Anderson's little garrison saluted the Stars and Stripes with fifty guns, and then, with colors flying, marched down on board a transport to the strains of Yankee Doodle.

Strange to say, after being four years in Confederate hands, Sumter was recaptured by the Union forces on the anniversary of its surrender. It was often bombarded, though never taken, in the meantime.

The fall of Sumter not only fired all Union loyalty but made Confederates eager for the fray. The very next day Lincoln called for 75,000 three-month volunteers. Two days later Confederate letters of marque were issued to any privateers that would prey on Union shipping. Two days later again Lincoln declared a blockade of every port from South Carolina round to Texas. Eight days afterwards he extended it to North Carolina and Virginia.

Fig. 2

GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE Photograph by Brady. In the collection of L. C. Handy, Washington.

But in the meantime Lincoln had been himself marooned in Washington. On the nineteenth of April, the day he declared his first blockade, the Sixth Massachusetts were attacked by a mob in Baltimore, through which the direct rails ran from North to South. Baltimore was full of secession, Page 17 and the bloodshed roused its fury. Maryland was a border slave State out of which the District of Columbia was carved. Virginia had just seceded. So when the would-be Confederates of Maryland, led by the Mayor of Baltimore, began tearing up rails, burning bridges, and cutting the wires, the Union Government found itself enisled in a hostile sea. Its own forces abandoned the Arsenal at Harper's Ferry and the Navy Yard at Norfolk. The work of demolition at Harper's Ferry had to be bungled off in haste, owing to shortness of time and lack of means. The demolition of Norfolk was better done, and the ships were sunk at anchor. But many valuable stores fell into enemy hands at both these Virginian outposts of the Federal forces. Through six long days of dire suspense not a ship, not a train, came into Washington. At last, on the twenty-fifth, the Seventh New York got through, having come south by boat with the Eighth Massachusetts, landed at Annapolis, and commandeered a train to run over relaid rails. With them came the news that all the loyal North was up, that the Seventh had marched through miles of cheering patriots in New York, and that these two fine regiments were only the vanguard of a host.

Page 18 But just a week before Lincoln experienced this inexpressible relief he lost, and his enemy won, a single officer, who, according to Winfield Scott, was alone worth more than fifty thousand veteran men. On the seventeenth of April Virginia voted for secession. On the eighteenth Lee had a long confidential interview with his old chief, Winfield Scott. On the twentieth he resigned, writing privately to Scott at the same time: "My resignation would have been presented at once but for the struggle it has cost me to separate myself from a service to which I have devoted the best years of my life. During the whole of that time I have experienced nothing but kindness from my superiors and a most cordial friendship from my comrades. I shall carry to the grave the most grateful recollections of your kind consideration, and your name and fame shall always be dear to me. Save in the defense of my native State I never desire again to draw my sword."

The three great motives which finally determined his momentous course of action were: first, his aversion from taking any part in coercing the home folks of Virginia; secondly, his belief in State rights, tempered though it was by admiration for the Union; and thirdly, his clear perception that Page 19 war was now inevitable, and that defeat for the South would inevitably mean a violent change of all the ways of Southern life, above all, a change imposed by force from outside, instead of the gradual change he wished to see effected from within. He was opposed to slavery; and both his own and his wife's slaves had long been free. Like his famous lieutenant, Stonewall Jackson, he was particularly kind to the blacks; none of whom ever wanted to leave, once they had been domiciled at Arlington, the estate that came to him through his wife, Mary Custis, great-granddaughter of Martha Washington. But, like Lincoln before the war, he wished emancipation to come from the slave States themselves, as in time it must have come, with due regard for compensation.

On the twenty-third of this eventful April Lee was given the chief command of all Virginia's forces. Three days later "Joe" Johnston took command of the Virginians at Richmond. One day later again "Stonewall" Jackson took command at Harper's Ferry. Johnston played a great and noble part throughout the war; and we shall meet him again and again, down to the very end. But Jackson claims our first attention here.

Like all the great leaders on both sides Jackson Page 20 had been an officer of regulars. He was, however, in many ways unlike the army type. He disliked society amusements, was awkward, shy, reserved, and apparently recluse. Moderately tall, with large hands and feet, stiff in his movements, ungainly in the saddle, he was a mere nobody in public estimation when the war broke out. A few brother-officers had seen his consummate skill and bravery as a subaltern in Mexico; and still fewer close acquaintances had seen his sterling qualities at Lexington, where, for ten years, he had been a professor at the Virginia Military Institute. But these few were the only ones who were not surprised when this recluse of peace suddenly became a very thunderbolt of war—Puritan in soul, Cavalier in daring: a Cromwell come to life again.

Harper's Ferry was a strategic point in northern Virginia. It was the gate to the Shenandoah Valley as well as the point where the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad crossed the Potomac some sixty miles northwest of Washington. Harper's Ferry was known by name to North and South through John Brown's raid two years before. It was now coveted by Virginia for its Arsenal as well as for its command of road, rail, and water routes. The plan to raid it was arranged at Richmond on the Page 21 sixteenth of April. But when the raiders reached it on the eighteenth they found it abandoned and its Arsenal in flames. The machine shops, however, were saved, as well as the metal parts of twenty thousand stand of arms. Then the Virginia militiamen and volunteers streamed in, to the number of over four thousand. They were a mere conglomeration of semi-independent units, mostly composed of raw recruits under officers who themselves knew next to nothing. As usual with such fledgling troops there was no end to the fuss and feathers among the members of the busybody staffs, who were numerous enough to manage an army but clumsy enough to spoil a platoon. It was said, and not without good reason, that there was as much gold lace at Harper's Ferry, when the sun was shining, as at a grand review in Paris.

Into this gaudy assemblage rode Thomas Jonathan Jackson, mounted on Little Sorrel, a horse as unpretentious as himself, and dressed in his faded old blue professor's uniform without one gleam of gold. He had only two staff officers, both dressed as plainly as himself. He was not a major-general, nor even a brigadier; just a colonel. He held no trumpeting reviews. He made no flowery speeches. He didn't even swear. The armed mob at Harper's Page 22 Ferry felt that they would lose caste on Sunday afternoons under a commandant like this. Their feelings were still more outraged when they heard that every officer above the rank of captain was to lose his higher rank, and that all new reappointments were to be made on military merit and direct from Richmond. Companies accustomed to elect their officers according to the whim of the moment eagerly joined the higher officers in passing adverse resolutions. But authorities who were unanimous for Lee were not to be shaken by such absurdities in face of a serious war. And when the froth had been blown off the top, and the dregs drained out of the bottom, the solid mass between, who really were sound patriots, settled down to work.

There was seven hours' drill every day except Sunday; no light task for a mere armed mob groping its ignorant way, however zealously, towards the organized efficiency of a real army. The companies had to be formed into workable battalions, the battalions into brigades. There was a deplorable lack of cavalry, artillery, engineers, commissariat, transport, medical services, and, above all, staff. Armament was bad; other munitions were worse. There would have been no chance whatever of holding Harper's Ferry unless the Northern Page 23 conglomeration had been even less like a fighting army than the Southern was.

Harper's Ferry was not only important in itself but still more important for what it covered: the wonderfully fruitful Shenandoah Valley, running southwest a hundred and forty miles to the neighborhood of Lexington, with an average width of only twenty-four. Bounded on the west by the Alleghanies and on the east by the long Blue Ridge this valley was a regular covered way by which the Northern invaders might approach, cut Virginia in two (for West Virginia was then a part of the State) and, after devastating the valley itself (thus destroying half the food-base of Virginia) attack eastern Virginia through whichever gaps might serve the purpose best. More than this, the only direct line from Richmond to the Mississippi ran just below the southwest end of the valley, while a network of roads radiated from Winchester near the northeast end, thirty miles southwest of Harper's Ferry.

Throughout the month of May Jackson went on working his men into shape and watching the enemy, three thousand strong, at Chambersburg, forty-five miles north of Harper's Ferry, and twelve thousand strong farther north still. One day he Page 24 made a magnificent capture of rolling stock on the twenty-seven miles of double track that centered in Harper's Ferry. This greatly hampered the accumulation of coal at Washington besides helping the railroads of the South. Destroying the line was out of the question, because it ran through West Virginia and Maryland, both of which he hoped to see on the Confederate side. He was himself a West Virginian, born at Clarksburg; and it grieved him greatly when West Virginia stood by the Union.

Apart from this he did nothing spectacular. The rest was all just sheer hard work. He kept his own counsel so carefully that no one knew anything about what he would do if the enemy advanced. Even the officers of outposts were forbidden to notice or mention his arrival or departure on his constant tours of inspection, lest a longer look than usual at any point might let an awkward inference be drawn. He was the sternest of disciplinarians when the good of the service required it. But no one knew better that the finest discipline springs from self-sacrifice willingly made for a worthy cause; and no one was readier to help all ranks along toward real efficiency in the kindest possible way when he saw they were doing their best.

Page 25 At the end of May Johnston took over the command of the increasing force at Harper's Ferry, while Jackson was given the First Shenandoah Brigade, a unit soon, like himself, to be raised by service into fame.

On the first and third of May Virginia issued calls for more men; and on the third Lincoln, who quite understood the signs of the times, called for men whose term of service would be three years and not three months.

Just a week later Missouri was saved for the Union by the daring skill of two determined leaders, Francis P. Blair, a Member of Congress who became a good major-general, and Captain Nathaniel Lyon, an excellent soldier, who commanded the little garrison of regulars at St. Louis. When Lincoln called upon Governor Claiborne Jackson to supply Missouri's quota of three-month volunteers the Governor denounced the proposed coercion as "illegal, unconstitutional, revolutionary, inhuman, and diabolical"; and thereafter did his best to make Missouri join the South. But Blair and Lyon were too quick for him. Blair organized the Home Guards, whom Lyon armed from the arsenal. Lyon then sent all the surplus arms and stores across the Page 26 river into Illinois, while he occupied the most commanding position near the arsenal with his own troops, thus forestalling the Confederates, under Brigadier-General D. M. Frost, who was now forced to establish Camp Jackson in a far less favorable place. So vigorously had Blair and Lyon worked that they had armed thousands while Frost had only armed hundreds. But when Frost received siege guns and mortars from farther south Lyon felt the time had come for action.

Lyon was a born leader, though Grant and Sherman (then in St. Louis as junior ex-officers, quite unknown to fame) were almost the only men, apart from Blair, to see any signs of preëminence in this fiery little redheaded, weather-beaten captain, who kept dashing about the arsenal, with his pockets full of papers, making sure of every detail connected with the handful of regulars and the thousands of Home Guards.

On the ninth of May Lyon borrowed an old dress from Blair's mother-in-law, completing the disguise with a thickly veiled sunbonnet, and drove through Camp Jackson. That night he and Blair attended a council of war, at which, overcoming all opposition, answering all objections, and making all arrangements, they laid their plans for the Page 27 morrow. When Lyon's seven thousand surrounded Frost's seven hundred the Confederates surrendered at discretion and were marched as prisoners through St. Louis. There were many Southern sympathizers among the crowds in the streets; one of them fired a pistol; and the Home Guards fired back, killing several women and children by mistake. This unfortunate incident hardened many neutrals and even Unionists against the Union forces; so much so that Sterling Price, a Unionist and former governor, became a Confederate general, whose field for recruiting round Jefferson City on the Missouri promised a good crop of enemies to the Union cause.

Lyon and Blair wished to march against Price immediately and smash every hostile force while still in the act of forming. But General Harney, who commanded the Department of the West, returned to St. Louis the day after the shooting and made peace instead of war with Price. By the end of the month, however, Lincoln removed Harney and promoted Lyon in his place; whereupon Price and Governor Jackson at once prepared to fight. Then sundry neutrals, of the gabbling kind who think talk enough will settle anything, induced the implacables to meet in St. Louis. The Page 28 conference was ended by Lyon's declaration that he would see every Missourian under the sod before he would take any orders from the State about any Federal matter, however small. "This," he said in conclusion, "means war." And it did.

Again a single week sufficed for the striking of the blow. The conference was held on the eleventh of June. On the fourteenth Lyon reached Jefferson City only to find that the Governor had decamped for Boonville, still higher up the Missouri. Here, on the seventeenth, Lyon attacked him with greatly superior numbers and skill, defeated him utterly, and sent him flying south with only a few hundred followers left. Boonville was, in itself, a very small affair indeed. But it had immense results. Lyon had seized the best strategic point of rail and river junction on the Mississippi by holding St. Louis. He had also secured supremacy in arms, munitions, and morale. By turning the Governor out of Jefferson City, the State capital, he had deprived the Confederates of the prestige and convenience of an acknowledged headquarters. Now, by defeating him at Boonville and driving his forces south in headlong flight he had practically made the whole Missouri River a Federal line of communication as well as a barrier between Page 29 would-be Confederates to the north and south of it. More than this, the possession of Boonville struck a fatal blow at Confederate recruiting and organization throughout the whole of that strategic area; for Boonville was the center to which pro-Southern Missourians were flocking. The tide of battle was to go against the Federals at Wilson's Creek in the southwest of the State, and even at Lexington on the Missouri, as we shall presently see; but this was only the breaking of the last Confederate waves. As a State, Missouri was lost to the South already.

In Kentucky, the next border State, opinions were likewise divided; and Kentuckians fought each other with help from both sides. Anderson, of Fort Sumter fame, was appointed to the Kentucky command in May. But here the crisis did not occur for months, while a border campaign was already being fought in West Virginia.

West Virginia, which became a separate State during the war, was strongly Federal, like eastern Tennessee. These Federal parts of two Confederate States formed a wedge dangerous to the whole South, especially to Virginia and the Carolinas. Each side therefore tried to control this area itself. The Federals, under McClellan, of whom we shall Page 30 soon hear more, had two lines of invasion into West Virginia, both based on the Ohio. The northern converged by rail, from Wheeling and Parkersburg, on Grafton, the only junction in West Virginia. The southern ran up the Great Kanawha, with good navigation to Charleston and water enough for small craft on to Gauley Bridge, which was the strategic point.

In May the Confederates cut the line near Grafton. As this broke direct communication between the West and Washington, McClellan sent forces from which two flying columns, three thousand strong, converged on Philippi, fifteen miles south of Grafton, and surprised a thousand Confederates. These thereupon retired, with little loss, to Beverly, thirty miles farther south still. Here there was a combat at Rich Mountain on the eleventh of July. The Confederates again retreated, losing General Garnett in a skirmish the following day. This ended McClellan's own campaign in West Virginia.

But the Kanawha campaign, which lasted till November, had only just begun, with Rosecrans as successor to McClellan (who had been recalled to Washington for very high command) and with General Jacob D. Cox leading the force against Gauley. The Confederates did all they could to Page 31 keep their precarious foothold. They sent political chiefs, like Henry A. Wise, ex-Governor of Virginia, and John B. Floyd, the late Federal Secretary of War, both of whom were now Confederate brigadiers. They even sent Lee himself in general commend. But, confronted by superior forces in a difficult and thoroughly hostile country, they at last retired east of the Alleghanies, which thenceforth became the frontier of two warring States.

The campaign in West Virginia was a foregone conclusion. It was not marked by any real battles; and there was no scope for exceptional skill of the higher kind on either side. But it made McClellan's bubble reputation.

McClellan was an ex-captain of United States Engineers who had done very well at West Point, had distinguished himself in Mexico, had represented the American army with the Allies in the Crimea, had written a good official report on his observations there, had become manager of a big railroad after leaving the service, and had so impressed people with his ability and modesty on the outbreak of war that his appointment to the chief command in West Virginia was hailed with the utmost satisfaction. Then came the two affairs at Page 32 Philippi and Rich Mountain, the first of which was planned and carried out by other men, while the second was, if anything, spoiled by himself; for here, as afterwards on a vastly greater scene of action, he failed to strike home at the critical moment.

Yet though he failed in arms he won by proclamations; so much so, in fact, that Words not Deeds might well have been his motto. He began with a bombastic address to the inhabitants and ended with another to his troops, whom he congratulated on having "annihilated two armies, commanded by educated and experienced soldiers, intrenched in mountain fastnesses fortified at their leisure."

It disastrously happened that the Union public were hungering for heroes at this particular time and that Union journalists were itching to write one up to the top of their bent. So all McClellan's tinsel was counted out for gold before an avaricious mob of undiscriminating readers; and when, at the height of the publicity campaign, the Government wanted to retrieve Bull Run they turned to the "Man of Destiny" who had been given the noisiest advertisement as the "Young Napoleon of the West." McClellan had many good qualities for organization, and even some for strategy. An excited press and public, however, would not Page 33 acclaim him for what he was but for what he most decidedly was not.

Meanwhile, before McClellan went to Washington and Lee to West Virginia, the main Union army had been disastrously defeated by the main Confederate army at Bull Run, on that vital ground which lay between the rival capitals.

In April Lincoln had called for three-month volunteers. In May the term of service for new enlistments was three years. In June the military chiefs at Washington were vainly doing all that military men could do to make something like the beginnings of an army out of the conglomerating mass. Winfield Scott, the veteran General-in-Chief, rightly revered by the whole service as a most experienced, farsighted, and practical man, was ably assisted by W. T. Sherman and Irvin McDowell. But civilian interference ruined all. Even Lincoln had not yet learned the quintessential difference between that civil control by which the fighting services are so rightly made the real servants of the whole people and that civilian interference which is very much the same as if a landlubber owning a ship should grab the wheel repeatedly in the middle of a storm. Simon Cameron, Page 34 then Secretary of War, was good enough as a party politician, but all thumbs when fumbling with the armies in the field. The other members of the Cabinet had war nostrums of their own; and every politician with a pull did what he could to use it. Behind all these surged a clamorous press and an excited people, both patriotic and well meaning; but both wholly ignorant of war, and therefore generating a public opinion that forced the not unwilling Government to order an armed mob "on to Richmond" before it had the slightest chance of learning how to be an army.

The Congress that met on the Fourth of July voted five hundred thousand men and two hundred and fifty million dollars. This showed that the greatness of the war was beginning to be seen. But the men, the money, and the Glorious Fourth were so blurred together in the public mind that the distinction between a vote in Congress and its effect upon some future battlefield was never realized. The result was a new access of zeal for driving McDowell "on to Richmond." Making the best of a bad business, Scott had already begun his preparations for the premature advance.

By the end of May Confederate pickets had been in sight of Washington, while McDowell, crossing Page 35 the Potomac, was faced by his friend of old West Point and Mexican days, General Beauregard, fresh from the capture of Fort Sumter. By the beginning of July General Patterson, a veteran of "1812" and Mexico, was in command up the Potomac near Harper's Ferry. He was opposed by "Joe" Johnston, who had taken over that Confederate command from "Stonewall" Jackson. Down the Potomac and Chesapeake Bay there was nothing to oppose the Union navy. General Benjamin Butler, threatening Richmond in flank, along the lower Chesapeake, was watched by the Confederates Huger and Magruder. Meanwhile, as we have seen already, the West Virginian campaign was in full swing, with superior Federal forces under McClellan.

Thus the general situation in July was that the whole of northeastern Virginia was faced by a semicircle of superior forces which began at the Kanawha River, ran northeast to Grafton, then northeast to Cumberland, then along the Potomac to Chesapeake Bay and on to Fortress Monroe. From the Kanawha to Grafton there were only roads. From Grafton to Cumberland there was rail as well. From Cumberland to Washington there were road, rail, river, and canal. From Washington to Page 36 Fortress Monroe there was water fit for any fleet. The Union armies along this semicircle were not only twice as numerous as the Confederates facing them but they were backed by a sea-power, both naval and mercantile, which the Confederates could not begin to challenge, much less overcome. Lee was the military adviser to the Confederate Government at Richmond as Scott then was to the Union Government at Washington.