Captains of the Civil War

W >> William Wood >> Captains of the Civil War


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 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 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 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
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 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.

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 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 preeminence 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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,
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 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 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.

Such was the central scene of action, where the first great battle
of the war was fought. The Union forces were based on the Potomac
from Washington to Harper's Ferry. The Confederates faced them
from Bull Run to Winchester, which points were nearly sixty miles
apart by road and rail. The Union forces were fifty thousand strong,
the Confederate thirty-three thousand. The Union problem was how to
keep "Joe" Johnston in the Winchester position by threatening or
actually making an invasion of the Shenandoah Valley with Patterson's
superior force, while McDowell's superior force attacked or turned
Beauregard's position at Bull Run. The Confederate problem was how to
give Patterson the slip and reach Bull Run in time to meet McDowell
with an equal force. The Confederates had the advantage of interior
lines both here and in the semicircle as a whole, though the Union
forces enjoyed in general much better means of transportation. The
Confederates enjoyed better control from government headquarters,
where the Cabinet mostly had the sense to trust in Lee. Scott, on
the other hand, was tied down by orders to defend Washington by
purely defensive means as well as by the "on to Richmond" march.
Patterson was therefore obliged to watch the Federal back door
at Harper's Ferry as well as the Confederate side doors up the
Shenandoah: an impossible task, on exterior lines, with the kind
of force he had. The civilian chiefs at Washington did not see
that the best of all defense was to destroy the enemy's means of
destroying _them_, and that his greatest force of fighting _men_,
not any particular _place_, should always be their main objective.

On the fourteenth of June Johnston had destroyed everything useful
to the enemy at Harper's Ferry and retired to Winchester. On the
twentieth Jackson's brigade marched on Martinsburg to destroy the
workshops of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway and to support the
three hundred troopers under J. E. B. Stuart, who was so soon to
be the greatest of cavalry commanders on the Confederate side.
Unknown at twenty-nine, killed at thirty-one, "Jeb" Stuart was a
Virginian ex-officer of United States Dragoons, trained in frontier
fighting, and the perfect type of what a cavalry commander should
be: tall, handsome, splendidly supple and strong, hawk-eyed and
lion-hearted, quick, bold, determined, and inspiring, yet always
full of knowledge and precaution too; indefatigable at all times,
and so persistent in carrying out a plan that the enemy could no
more shake him off than they could escape their shadows.

On the second of July the first brush took place at Falling Waters,
five miles south of the Potomac, where Jackson came into touch
with Patterson's advanced guard. As Jackson withdrew his handful
of Virginian infantry the Federal cavalry came clattering down
the turnpike and were met by a single shot from a Confederate gun
that smashed the head of their column and sent the others flying.
Meanwhile Stuart, who had been reconnoitering, came upon a company
of Federal infantry resting in a field. Galloping among them suddenly
he shouted, "Throw down your arms or you are all dead men!" Whereupon
they all threw down their arms; and his troopers led them off.
Patterson, badly served by his very raw staff, reported Jackson's
little vanguard as being precisely ten times stronger than it was.
He pushed out cautiously to right and left; and when he tried to
engage again he found that Jackson had withdrawn. Falling Waters was
microscopically small as a fight. But it served to raise Confederate
morale and depress the Federals correspondingly.

Patterson occupied Martinsburg, while Johnston, drawn up in line
of battle, awaited his further advance four days before retiring.
Then, with his fourteen thousand, Patterson advanced again, stood
irresolute under distracting orders from the Government in Washington,
and finally went to Charlestown on the seventeenth of July--almost
back to Harper's Ferry. Johnston, with his eleven thousand, now
stood fast at Winchester, fifteen miles southwest, while Stuart,
like a living screen, moved to and fro between them.

Meanwhile McDowell's thirty-six thousand had marched past the President
with bands playing and colors flying amid a scene of great enthusiasm.
The press campaign was at its height; so was the speechifying;
and ninety-nine people out of every hundred thought Beauregard's
twenty-two thousand at Bull Run would be defeated in a way that
would be sure to make the South give in. McDowell had between two
and three thousand regulars: viz., seven troops of cavalry, nine
batteries of artillery, eight companies of infantry, and a little
battalion of marines. Then there was the immense paper army voted
on the Glorious Fourth. And here, for the general public to admire,
was a collection of armed and uniformed men that members of Congress
and writers in the press united in calling one of the best armies
the world had ever seen. Moreover, the publicity campaign was kept
up unflaggingly till the very clash of arms began. Reporters marched
along and sent off reams of copy. Congressmen, and even ladies,
graced the occasion in every way they could. "The various regiments
were brilliantly uniformed according to the aesthetic taste of peace,"
wrote General Fry, then an officer on McDowell's staff, and "during
the nineteenth and twentieth the bivouacs at Centreville, almost
within cannon range of the enemy, were thronged with visitors,
official and unofficial, who came in carriages from Washington,
were under no military restraint, and passed to and fro among the
troops as they pleased, giving the scene the appearance of a monster
military picnic."