A Short History of the United States Part 48

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANTIETAM (A WAR-TIME SKETCH).]

[Sidenote: Battle of Fredericksburg, December, 1862.]

395. Fredericksburg, December, 1862.--Burnside found Lee strongly posted on Marye's Heights, which rise sharply behind the little town of Fredericksburg on the southern bank of the Rappahannock River. Burnside attacked in front. His soldiers had to cross the river and a.s.sault the hill in face of a murderous fire--and in vain. He lost thirteen thousand men to only four thousand of the Confederates. "Fighting Joe" Hooker now succeeded Burnside as commander of the Army of the Potomac. We must now turn to the West, and see what had been doing there in 1861-62.

[Sidenote: General Grant.]

[Sidenote: He seizes Cairo.]

[Sidenote: Battle of Mill Springs, January, 1862.]

396. Grant and Thomas.--In Illinois there appeared a trained soldier of fierce energy and invincible will, Ulysses Simpson Grant. He had been educated at West Point and had served in the Mexican War. In September, 1861, he seized Cairo at the junction of the Ohio and the Mississippi. In January, 1862, General George H. Thomas defeated a Confederate force at Mill Springs, in the upper valley of the c.u.mberland River. In this way Grant and Thomas secured the line of the Ohio and eastern Kentucky for the Union.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BRIDGE AT ANTIETAM. Burnside's soldiers charged over the bridge from the middle foreground.]

[Sidenote: Capture of Fort Henry, February, 1862.]

[Sidenote: Fort Donelson.]

397. Forts Henry and Donelson, February, 1862.--In February, 1862, General Grant and Commodore Foote attacked two forts which the Confederates had built to keep the Federal gunboats from penetrating the western part of the Confederacy. Fort Henry yielded almost at once, but the Union forces besieged Fort Donelson for a longer time. Soon the Confederate defense became hopeless, and General Buckner asked for the terms of surrender. "Unconditional surrender," replied Grant, and Buckner surrendered. The lower Tennessee and the lower c.u.mberland were now open to the Union forces.

[Sidenote: The lower Mississippi.]

[Sidenote: Admiral Farragut.]

398. Importance of New Orleans.--New Orleans and the lower Mississippi were of great importance to both sides, for the possession of this region gave the Southerners access to Texas, and through Texas to Mexico. Union fleets were blockading every important Southern port.

But as long as commerce overland with Mexico could be maintained, the South could struggle on. The Mississippi, too, has so many mouths that it was difficult to keep vessels from running in and out. For these reasons the Federal government determined to seize New Orleans and the lower Mississippi. The command of the expedition was given to Farragut, who had pa.s.sed his boyhood in Louisiana. He was given as good a fleet as could be provided, and a force of soldiers was sent to help him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A RIVER GUNBOAT.]

[Sidenote: Capture of New Orleans, April, 1862. _Higginson_, 303-304; _Source-Book_, 313-315.]

399. New Orleans captured, April, 1862.--Farragut carried his fleet into the Mississippi, but found his way upstream barred by two forts on the river's bank. A great chain stretched across the river below the forts, and a fleet of river gunboats with an ironclad or two was in waiting above the forts. Chain, forts, and gunboats all gave way before Farragut's forceful will. At night he pa.s.sed the forts amid a terrific cannonade. Once above them New Orleans was at his mercy. It surrendered, and with the forts was soon occupied by the Union army. The lower Mississippi was lost to the Confederacy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A WAR-TIME ENVELOPE.]

[Sidenote: s.h.i.+loh, April, 1862.]

[Sidenote: Corinth, May, 1862.]

400. s.h.i.+loh and Corinth, April, May, 1862.--General Halleck now directed the operations of the Union armies in the West. He ordered Grant to take his men up the Tennessee to Pittsburg Landing and there await the arrival of Buell with a strong force overland from Nashville.

Grant encamped with his troops on the western bank of the Tennessee between s.h.i.+loh Church and Pittsburg Landing. Albert Sidney Johnston, the Confederate commander in the West, attacked him suddenly and with great fury. Soon the Union army was pushed back to the river. In his place many a leader would have withdrawn. But Grant, with amazing courage, held on. In the afternoon Buell's leading regiments reached the other side of the river. In the night they were ferried across, and Grant's outlying commands were brought to the front. The next morning Grant attacked in his turn and slowly but surely pushed the Confederates off the field. Halleck then united Grant's, Buell's, and Pope's armies and captured Corinth.

[Sidenote: General Bragg invades Kentucky.]

[Sidenote: Battle of Perryville, October, 1862.]

[Sidenote: Murfreesboro', December, 1862. _Eggleston_, 331.]

401. Bragg in Tennessee and Kentucky.--General Braxton Bragg now took a large part of the Confederate army, which had fought at s.h.i.+loh and Corinth, to Chattanooga. He then marched rapidly across Tennessee and Kentucky to the neighborhood of Louisville on the Ohio River. Buell was sent after him, and the two armies fought an indecisive battle at Perryville. Then Bragg retreated to Chattanooga. In a few months he was again on the march. Rosecrans had now succeeded Buell. He attacked Bragg at Murfreesboro'. For a long time the contest was equal. In the end, however, the Confederates were beaten and retired from the field.

CHAPTER 39

THE EMANc.i.p.aTION PROCLAMATION

[Sidenote: The blockade.]

402. The Blockade.--On the fall of Fort Sumter President Lincoln ordered a blockade of the Confederate seaports. There were few manufacturing industries in the South. Cotton and tobacco were the great staples of export. If her ports were blockaded the South could neither bring in arms and military supplies from Europe, nor send cotton and tobacco to Europe to be sold for money. So her power of resisting the Union armies would be greatly lessened. The Union government bought all kinds of vessels, even harbor ferryboats, armed them, and stationed them off the blockaded harbors. In a surprisingly short time the blockade was established. The Union forces also began to occupy the Southern seacoast, and thus the region that had to be blockaded steadily grew less.

[Sidenote: Effect of the blockade.]

403. Effects of the Blockade.--As months and years went by, and the blockade became stricter and stricter, the sufferings of the Southern people became ever greater. As they could not send their products to Europe to exchange for goods, they had to pay gold and silver for whatever the blockade runners brought in. Soon there was no more gold and silver in the Confederacy, and paper money took its place. Then the supplies of manufactured goods, as clothing and paper, of things not produced in the South, as coffee and salt, gave out. Toward the end of the war there were absolutely no medicines for the Southern soldiers, and guns were so scarce that it was proposed to arm one regiment with pikes. Nothing did more to break down Southern resistance than the blockade.

[Sidenote: Hopes of the Southerners.]

404. The Confederacy, Great Britain, and France.--From the beginning of the contest the Confederate leaders believed that the British and the French would interfere to aid them. "Cotton is king,"

they said. Unless there were a regular supply of cotton, the mills of England and of France must stop. Thousands of mill hands--men, women, and children--would soon be starving. The French and the British governments would raise the blockade. Perhaps they would even force the United States to acknowledge the independence of the Confederate states.

There was a good deal of truth in this belief. For the British and French governments dreaded the growing power of the American republic and would gladly have seen it broken to pieces. But events fell out far otherwise than the Southern leaders had calculated. Before the supply of American cotton in England was used up, new supplies began to come in from India and from Egypt. The Union armies occupied portions of the cotton belt early in 1862, and American cotton was again exported. But more than all else, the English mill operatives, in all their hards.h.i.+ps, would not ask their government to interfere. They saw clearly enough that the North was fighting for the rights of free labor. At times it seemed, however, as if Great Britain or France would interfere.

[Sidenote: Southern agents sent to Europe.]

[Sidenote: Removed from the _Trent_.]

[Sidenote: Lincoln's opinion.]

[Sidenote: Action of Great Britain.]

405. The Trent Affair, 1861.--As soon as the blockade was established, the British and French governments gave the Confederates the same rights in their ports as the United States had. The Southerners then sent two agents, Mason and Slidell, to Europe to ask the foreign governments to recognize the independence of the Confederate states.

Captain Wilkes of the United States s.h.i.+p _San Jacinto_ took these agents from the British steamer _Trent_. But Lincoln at once said that Wilkes had done to the British the very thing which we had fought the War of 1812 to prevent the British doing to us. "We must stick to American principles," said the President, "and restore the prisoners." They were given up. But the British government, without waiting to see what Lincoln would do, had gone actively to work to prepare for war. This seemed so little friendly that the people of the United States were greatly irritated.

[Sidenote: The war powers of the President.]

[Sidenote: Lincoln follows Northern sentiment.]

406. Lincoln and Slavery.--It will be remembered that the Republican party had denied again and again that it had any intention to interfere with slavery in the states. As long as peace lasted the Federal government could not interfere with slavery in the states. But when war broke out, the President, as commander-in-chief, could do anything to distress and weaken the enemy. If freeing the slaves in the seceded states would injure the secessionists, he had a perfect right to do it. But Lincoln knew that public opinion in the North would not approve this action. He would follow Northern sentiment in this matter, and not force it.

[Sidenote: The contrabands.]

407. Contrabands of War.--he war had scarcely begun before slaves escaped into the Union lines. One day a Confederate officer came to Fortress Monroe and demanded his runaway slaves under the Fugitive Slave Act (p. 281). General Butler refused to give them up on the ground that they were "contraband of war." By that phrase he meant that their restoration would be illegal as their services would be useful to the enemy. President Lincoln approved this decision of General Butler, and escaping slaves soon came to be called "Contrabands."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A WAR-TIME ENVELOPE.]

[Sidenote: Abolition with compensation.]

408. First Steps toward Emanc.i.p.ation, 1862.--Lincoln and the Republican party thought that Congress could not interfere with slavery in the states. It might, however, buy slaves and set them free or help the states to do this. So Congress pa.s.sed a law offering aid to any state which should abolish slavery within its borders. Congress itself abolished slavery in the District of Columbia with compensation to the owners. It abolished slavery in the territories without compensation.

Lincoln had gladly helped to make these laws. Moreover, by August, 1862, he had made up his mind that to free the slaves in the seceded states would help "to save the Union" and would therefore be right as a "war measure." For every negro taken away from forced labor would weaken the producing power of the South and so make the conquest of the South easier.