Captains of the Civil War Part 2

Johnston, admirably screened by Stuart, drew quietly away, leaving his sick at Winchester and raising the spirits of his whole command by telling them that Beauregard was in danger and that they were to "make a forced march to save the country."

Straining every nerve they stepped out gallantly and covered mile after mile till they reached the Shenandoah, forded it, and crossed the Blue Ridge at Ashby's Gap. But lack of training and march discipline told increasingly against them. "The discouragement of that day's march," said Johnston, "is indescribable. Frequent and unreasonable delays caused so slow a rate of marching as to make me despair of joining General Beauregard in time to aid him." Even the First Brigade, with all the advantages of leading the march and of having learnt the rudiments of drill and discipline, was exhausted by a day's work that it could have romped through later on. Jackson himself stood guard alone till dawn while all his soldiers slept.

As Jackson's men marched down to take the train at Piedmont, Stuart gayly trotted past, having left Patterson still in ignorance that Johnston's force had gone. By four in the afternoon of the nineteenth Jackson was detraining at Mana.s.sas. But, as we shall presently see, it was nearly two whole days before the last of Johnston's brigades arrived, just in time for the crisis of the battle. When Johnston had joined Beauregard their united effective total was thirty thousand men. There had been a wastage of three thousand.

McDowell also had no more than thirty thousand effectives present on the twenty-first; for he left one division at Centreville and lost the rest by straggling and by the way in which the battery and battalion already mentioned had "claimed their discharge" at Blackburn's Ford. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth, while, sorely against his will, the Federals were having their "monster military picnic" at Centreville, he was reconnoitering his constantly increasing enemy under the greatest difficulties, with his ill-trained staff, bad maps, and lack of proper guides.

Lee had chosen six miles of Bull Run as a good defensive position.

But Beauregard intended to attack, hoping to profit by the Federal disjointedness. Consequently none of the eight fords were strongly defended except at Union Mills on the extreme right and the Stone Bridge on the extreme left, where the turnpike from Centreville to Warrenton crossed the Run. Bull Run itself was a considerable obstacle, having fairly high banks and running along the Confederate front like the ditch of a fortress. Three miles in rear stood Mana.s.sas Junction on a moderate plateau intersected by several creeks. The most important of these creeks, Young's Branch, joined Bull Run on the extreme left, near the Stone Bridge and Warrenton turnpike, after flowing through the little valley between the Henry Hill and Matthews Hill. Three miles in front, across Bull Run, stood Centreville, the Federal camp and field base during the battle.

Sunday, July 21, 1861, was a beautiful midsummer day. Both armies were stirring soon after dawn. But a miscarriage of orders delayed the Confederate offensive so much that the initiative of attack pa.s.sed to the Federals, who advanced against the Stone Bridge shortly after six. This attack, however, though made by a whole division against a single small brigade, was immediately recognized as a mere feint when, two hours later, Evans, commanding the Confederate brigade, saw dense clouds of dust rising above the woods on his left front, where the road crossed Sudley Springs, nearly two miles beyond his own left. Perceiving that this new development must be a regular attempt to turn the whole Confederate left by crossing Bull Run, he sent back word to Beauregard, posted some men to hold the Stone Bridge, and marched the rest to crown the Matthews Hill, facing Sudley Springs a mile away. Meanwhile four of "Joe" Johnston's five Shenandoah brigades--Bee's, Bartow's, Bonham's, and Jackson's--had been coming over from the right reserve to strengthen Evans at the Bridge. As the great Federal turning movement developed against the Confederate left these brigades followed Evans and were themselves followed by other troops, till the real battle raged not along Bull Run but across the Matthews Hill and Henry Hill.

Forming the new front at right angles to the old, so as to attack and defend the Confederate left on the Matthews and Henry Hills, caused much confusion on both sides; but more on the Federal, as the Confederates knew the ground better. By eleven Bee had reached Evans and sent word back to hurry Bartow on. But the Federals, having double numbers and a great preponderance in guns, soon drove the Confederates off the Matthews Hill. As the Confederates recrossed Young's Branch and climbed the Henry Hill the regular artillery of the Federals limbered up smartly, galloped across the Matthews Hill, and from its nearer slope plied the retreating Confederates on the opposite slope with admirably served sh.e.l.l. Under this fire the raw Confederates ran in confusion, while their uncovered guns galloped back to find a new position.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _GENERAL T. J. (STONEWALL) JACKSON_ Photograph. In the collection of L. C. Handy, Was.h.i.+ngton.]

"Curse them for deserting the guns," snapped Imboden, whose battery came face to face with Jackson's brigade. "I'll support you," said Jackson, "unlimber right here." At the same time, half-past eleven, Bee galloped up on his foaming charger, saying, "General, they're beating us back." "Then, Sir," said Jackson, "we'll give them the bayonet"; and his lips shut tight as a vice.

Bee then went back behind the Henry Hill, where his broken brigade was trying to rally, and, pointing toward the crest with his sword, shouted in a voice of thunder: "Rally behind the Virginians! Look!

There's Jackson standing like a stone wall!" From that one cry of battle Stonewall Jackson got his name.

While the rest of the Shenandoahs were rallying, in rear of Jackson, Beauregard and Johnston came up, followed by two batteries. Miles behind them, all the men that could be spared from the fords were coming too. But the Federals on the Matthews Hill were still in more than double numbers; and they enjoyed the priceless advantage of having some regulars among them. If the Federal division at the Stone Bridge had only pushed home its attack at this favorable moment the Confederates must have been defeated. But the division again fumbled about to little purpose; and for the second time McDowell's admirable plan was spoilt.

It was now past noon on that sweltering midsummer day; and there was a welcome lull for the rallying Confederates while the Federals were coming down the Matthews Hill, struggling across the swamps and thickets of Young's Branch, and climbing the Henry Hill. Within another hour the opposing forces were at close grips again, and the Federals, flushed with success and steadied by the regulars, seemed certain to succeed.

Imboden has vividly described his meeting Jackson at this time.

"The fight was just then hot enough to make him feel well. His eyes fairly blazed. He had a way of throwing up his left hand with the open palm towards the person he was addressing; and, as he told me to go, he made this gesture. The air was full of flying missiles, and as he spoke he jerked down his hand, and I saw that blood was streaming from it. I exclaimed, 'General, you are wounded.' 'Only a scratch--a mere scratch,' he replied; and, binding it hastily with a handkerchief, he galloped away along his line."

Five hundred yards apart the opposing cannon thundered, while the musketry of the long lines of infantry swelled the deafening roar.

Suddenly two Federal batteries of regulars dashed forward to even shorter range, covered by two battalions on their flank. But the gaudy Zouaves of the outer battalion lost formation in their advance; whereupon "Jeb" Stuart, with only a hundred and fifty hors.e.m.e.n, swooped down and smashed them to pieces by a daring charge. Then, just as the scattered white turbans went wildly bobbing about, into the midst of the inner battalion, out rushed the Thirty-third Virginians, straight at the guns. The battery officers held their fire, uncertain in the smoke whether the newcomers were friend or foe, till a deadly volley struck home at less than eighty yards.

Down went the gunners to a man; down went the teams to a horse; and off ran the Zouaves and the other supporting battalion, helter-skelter for the rear.

But other Federals were still full of fight and in superior numbers.

They came on with great gallantry, considering they were raw troops who were now without the comfort of the guns. Once more a Federal victory seemed secure; and if the infantry had only pressed on (not piecemeal, by disjoined battalions, but by brigades) without letting the Confederates recover from one blow before another struck them, the day would have certainly been theirs. Moreover, they would have inflicted not simply a defeat but a severe disaster on their enemy, who would have been caught in flank by the troops at the Stone Bridge; for these troops, however dilatory, must have known what to do with a broken and flying Confederate flank right under their very eyes. Premonitory symptoms of such a flight were not wanting. Confederate wounded, stragglers, and skulkers were making for the rear; and the rallied brigades were again in disorder, with Bee and Bartow, two first-rate brigadiers, just killed, and other seniors wounded. Another ominous sign was the limbering up of Confederate guns to cover the expected retreat from the Henry Hill.

But on its reverse slope lay Jackson's Shenandoahs, three thousand strong, and by far the best drilled and disciplined brigade that either side had yet produced--apart, of course, from regulars.

Jackson had ridden up and down before them, calm as they had ever seen him on parade, quietly saying, "Steady, men, steady! All's well." In this way he had held them straining at the leash for hours. Now, at last, their time had come. Riding out to the center of his line he gave his final orders: "Reserve your fire till they come within fifty yards. Then fire and give them the bayonet; and yell like furies when you charge!" Five minutes later, as the triumphant Federals topped the crest, the long gray line rose up, stood fast, fired one cras.h.i.+ng point-blank volley, and immediately charged home with the first of those wild, high rebel yells that rang throughout the war. The stricken and astounded Federal front caved in, turned round, and fled. At the same instant the last of the Shenandoahs--Kirby Smith's brigade, detrained just in the nick of time--charged the wavering flank. Then, like the first quiver of an avalanche, a tremor shook the whole ma.s.sed Federals one moment on that fatal hill: the next, like a loosened cliff, they began the landslide down.

There, in the valley, along Young's Branch, McDowell established his last line of battle, based on the firm rock of the regulars.

But by this time the Confederates had brought up troops from the whole length of their line; the balance of numbers was at last in their favor; and nothing could stay the Federal recoil. Lack of drill and discipline soon changed this recoil into a disorderly retreat. There was no panic; but most of the military units dissolved into a mere mob whose heart was set on getting back to Was.h.i.+ngton in any way left open. The regulars and a few formed bodies in reserve did their best to stem the stream. But all in vain.

One mile short of Centreville there was a sudden upset and consequent block on the bridge across Cub Run. Then the stream of men retreating, mixed with clogging ma.s.ses of panic-struck civilians, became a torrent.

Bull Run was only a special-constable affair on a gigantic scale.

The losses were comparatively small--3553 killed and wounded on both sides put together: not ten per cent of the less than forty thousand who actually fought. Moreover, the side that won the battle lost the war. And yet Bull Run had many points of very great importance.

In spite of all shortcomings it showed the good quality of the troops engaged: if not as soldiers, at all events as men. It proved that the war, unlike the battle, would not be fought by special constables, some of whom first fired their rifles when their target was firing back at them. It brought one great leader--Stonewall Jackson--into fame. Above all, it profoundly affected the popular points of view, both North and South. In the South there was undue elation, followed by the absurd belief that one Southerner could beat two Northerners any day and that the North would now back down _en ma.s.se_, as its army had from the Henry Hill. A dangerous slackening of military preparation was the unavoidable result.

In the North, on the other hand, a good many people began to see the difference between armed mobs and armies; and the thorough Unionists, led by the wise and steadfast Lincoln, braced themselves for real war.

CHAPTER II.

THE COMBATANTS

No map can show the exact dividing line between the actual combatants of North and South. Eleven States seceded: Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas. But the mountain folk of western Virginia and eastern Tennessee were strong Unionists; and West Virginia became a State while the war was being fought. On the other hand, the four border States, though officially Federal under stress of circ.u.mstances, were divided against themselves. In Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and Kansas, many citizens took the Southern side. Maryland would have gone with the South if it had not been for the presence of overwhelming Northern sea-power and the absence of any good land frontier of her own. Kentucky remained neutral for several months.

Missouri was saved for the Union by those two resourceful and determined men, Lyon and Blair. Kansas, though preponderantly Unionist, had many Confederates along its southern boundary. On the whole the Union gained greatly throughout the borderlands as the war went on; and the remaining Confederate hold on the border people was more than counterbalanced by the Federal hold on those in the western parts of old Virginia and the eastern parts of Tennessee. Among the small seafaring population along the Southern coast there were also some strongly Union men.

Counting out Northern Confederates and Southern Federals as canceling each other, so far as effective fighting was concerned a comparison made between the North and South along the line of actual secession reveals the one real advantage the South enjoyed all through--an overwhelming party in favor of the war. When once the die was cast there was certainly not a tenth of the Southern whites who did not belong to the war party; and the peace party always had to hold its tongue. The Southerners formed simpler and far more h.o.m.ogeneous communities of the old long-settled stock, and were more inclined to act together when once their feelings were profoundly stirred.

The Northern communities, on the other hand, being far more complex and far less h.o.m.ogeneous, were plagued with peace parties that grew like human weeds, clogging the springs of action everywhere.

There were immigrants new to the country and therefore not inclined to take risks for a cause they had not learned to make their own.

There were also naturalized, and even American-born, aliens, aliens in speech, race, thought, and every way of life. Then there were the oppositionists of different kinds, who would not support any war government, however like a perfect coalition it might be. Among these were some Northerners who did business with the South, especially the men who financed the cotton and tobacco crops. Others, again, were those loose-tongued folk who think any vexed question can be settled by unlimited talk. Next came those "defeatist" cranks who always think their own side must be wrong, and who are of no more practical use than the out-and-out "pacifists" who think everybody wrong except themselves. Finally, there were those slippery folk who try to evade all public duty, especially when it smacks of danger.

These skulkers flourish best in large and complex populations, where they may even masquerade as patriots of the kind so well described by Lincoln when he said how often he had noticed that the men who were loudest in proclaiming their readiness to shed their last drop of blood were generally the most careful not to shed the first.

Many of these fustian heroes formed the mushroom secret societies that played their vile extravaganza right under the shadow of the real tragedy of war. Worse still, not content with the abracadabra of their silly oaths, the busybody members made all the mischief they could during Lincoln's last election. Worst of all, they not only tried their hands at political a.s.sa.s.sination in the North but they lured many a gallant Confederate to his death by promising to rise in their might for a "Free Northwest" the moment the Southern troopers should appear. Needless to say, not a single one of the whole bombastic band of cowards stirred a finger to help the Confederate troopers who rode to their doom on Morgan's Raid through Indiana and Ohio. The peace party wore a copper as a badge, and so came to be known as "Copperheads," much to the disgust of its more inflated members, who called themselves the Sons of Liberty. The war party, with a better appreciation of how names and things should be connected, used their own descriptive "Copperhead" in its appropriate meaning of a poisonous snake in the gra.s.s behind.

The Indians would have preferred neutrality between the two kinds of inevitably dispossessing whites. But neutrality was impossible in what was then the Far West. Not ten thousand Indians fought for both sides put together. On the whole they fought well as skirmishers, though they rarely withstood sh.e.l.l fire, even when their cover was good and their casualties small.

The ten times more numerous negroes were naturally a much more serious factor. The North encouraged the employment of colored labor corps and even colored soldiers, especially after Emanc.i.p.ation.

But the vast majority of negroes, whether slave or free, either preferred or put up with their Southern masters, whom they generally served faithfully enough either in military labor corps or on the old plantations. As the colored population of the South was three and a half millions this general fidelity was of great importance to the forces in the field.

The total population of the United States in 1861 was about thirty-one and a half millions. Of this total twenty-two and a half belonged to the North and nine to the South. The grand total odds were therefore five against two. The odds against the South rise to four against one if the blacks are left out. There were twenty-two million whites in the North against five and a half in the South. But to reach the real fighting odds of three to one we must also eliminate the peace parties, large in the North, small in the South. If we take a tenth off the Southern whites and a third off the Northern grand total we shall get the approximate war-party odds of three to one; for these subtractions leave fifteen millions in the North against only five in the South.

This gives the statistical key to the startling contrasts which were so often noted by foreign correspondents at the time, and which are still so puzzling in the absence of the key. The whole normal life of the South was visibly changed by the war. But in the North the inquiring foreigner could find, on one hand, the most steadfast loyalty and heroic sacrifice, both in the Northern armies and among their folks at home, while on the other he could find a wholly different kind of life flaunting its most shameless features in his face. The theaters were crowded. Profiteers abounded, taking their pleasures with ravenous greed; for the best of their blood-money would end with the war. Everywhere there was the same fundamental difference between the patriots who carried on the war and the parasites who hindered them. Of course the two-thirds who made up the war party were not all saints or even perfect patriots.

Nor was the other third composed exclusively of wanton sinners. There were, for instance, the genuine settlers whom the Union Government encouraged to occupy the West, beyond the actual reach of war. But the distinction still remains.

Though sorely hampered, the Union Government did, on the whole, succeed in turning the vast and varied resources of the North against the much smaller and less varied resources of the South. The North held the machinery of national government, though with the loss of a good quarter of the engineers. In agriculture of, all kinds both North and South were very strong for purposes of peace. Each had food in superabundance. But the trading strength of the South lay in cotton and tobacco, neither of which could be turned into money without going north or to sea. In finance the North was overwhelmingly strong by comparison, more especially because Northern sea-power shut off the South from all its foreign markets. In manufactures the South could not compare at all. Northern factories alone could not supply the armies. But finance and factories together could.

The Southern soldier looked to the battlefield and the raiding of a base for supplying many of his most pressing needs in arms, equipment, clothing, and even food--for Southern transport suffered from many disabilities. Fierce wolfish cries would mingle with the rebel yell in battle when the two sides closed. "You've got to leave your rations!"--"Come out of them clothes!"--"Take off them boots, Yank!"--"Come on, blue bellies, we want them blankets!"

It was the same in almost every kind of goods. The South made next to none for herself and had to import from the North or overseas.

The North could buy silk for balloons. The South could not. The Southern women gave in their whole supply of silk for the big balloon that was lost during the Seven Days' Battle in the second year of the war. The Southern soldiers never forgave what they considered the ungallant trick of the Northerners who took this many-hued balloon from a steamer stranded on a bar at low tide down near the mouth of the James. Thus fell the last silk dress, a queer tribute to Northern sea-power! Northern sea-power also cut off nearly everything the sick and wounded needed; which raised the death rate of the Southern forces far beyond the corresponding death rate in the North. Again, preserved rations were almost unknown in the South. But they were plentiful throughout the Northern armies: far too plentiful, indeed, for the taste of the men, who got "fed up" on the dessicated vegetables and concentrated milk which they rechristened "desecrated vegetables" and "consecrated milk."

There is the same tale to tell about transport and munitions. Outside the Tredegar Iron Works at Richmond the only places where Southern cannon could be made were Charlotte in North Carolina, Atlanta and Macon in Georgia, and Selma in Alabama. The North had many places, each with superior plant, besides which the oversea munition world was far more at the service of the open-ported North than of the close-blockaded South. What sea-power meant in this respect may be estimated from the fact that out of the more than three-quarters of a million rifles bought by the North in the first fourteen months of the war all but a beggarly thirty thousand came from overseas.

[Ill.u.s.tration: North and South in 1861.]

Transport was done by road, rail, sea, and inland waters. Other things being equal, a hundred tons could be moved by water as easily as ten by rail or one by road. Now, the North not only enjoyed enormous advantages in sea-power, both mercantile and naval, but in road, rail, ca.n.a.l, and river transport too. The road transport that affected both sides most was chiefly in the South, because most maneuvering took place there. "Have you been through Virginia?--Yes, in several places" is a witticism that might be applied to many another State where muddy sloughs abounded. In horses, mules, and vehicles the richer North wore out the poorer and blockaded South.

Both sides sent troops, munitions, and supplies by rail whenever they could; and here, as a glance at the map will show, the North greatly surpa.s.sed the South in mileage, strategic disposition, and every other way.

The South had only one through line from the Atlantic to the Mississippi; and this ran across that Northern salient which threatened the South from the southwestern Alleghanies. The other rails all had the strategic defect of not being convenient for rapid concentration by land; for most of the Southern rails were laid with a view to getting surplus cotton and tobacco overseas. The strategic gap at Petersburg was due to a very different cause; for there, in order to keep its local transfers, the town refused to let the most important Virginian lines connect.

Taking sea-power in its fullest sense, to include all naval and mercantile parts on both salt and fresh water, we can quite understand how it helped the nautical North to get the strangle-hold on the landsman's South. The great bulk of the whole external trade of the South was done by s.h.i.+pping. But, though the South was strong in exportable goods, it was very weak in s.h.i.+ps. It owned comparatively few of the vessels that carried its rice, cotton, and tobacco crops to market and brought back made goods in return. Yankees, Britishers, and Bluenoses (as Nova Scotian craft were called) did most of the oversea transportation.

Moreover, the North was vastly stronger than the South on all the inland waters that were not "Secesh" from end to end. The map shows how Northern sea-power could not only divide the South in two but almost enisle the eastern part as well. Holding the Mississippi would effect the division, while holding the Ohio would make the eastern part a peninsula, with the upper end of the isthmus safe in Northern hands between Pittsburgh, the great coal and iron inland port, and Philadelphia, the great seaport, less than three hundred miles away. The same isthmus narrows to less than two hundred miles between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg (on the Susquehanna River); and its whole line is almost equally safe in Northern hands. A little farther south, along the disputed borderlands, it narrows to less than one hundred miles, from Pittsburgh to c.u.mberland (on the Potomac ca.n.a.l). Even this is not the narrowest part of the isthmus, which is less than seventy miles across from c.u.mberland to Brownsville (on the Monongahela) and less than fifty from c.u.mberland to the Ohiopyle Falls (on the Youghiogheny). These last distances are measured between places that are only fit for minor navigation.

But even small craft had an enormous advantage over road and rail together when bulky stores were moved. So Northern sea-power could make its controlling influence felt in one continuous line all round the eastern South, except for fifty miles where small craft were concerned and for two hundred miles in the case of larger vessels. These two hundred miles of land were those between the Ohio River port of Wheeling and the Navy Yard at Was.h.i.+ngton.

Nor was this virtual enislement the only advantage to be won. For while the strong right arm of Union sea-power, facing northward from the Gulf, could hold the coast, and its sinewy left could hold the Mississippi, the supple left fingers could feel their way along the tributary streams until the clutching hand had got its grip on the whole of the Ohio, c.u.mberland, Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, and Red rivers. This meant that the North would not only enjoy the vast advantages of transport by water over transport by land but that it would cause the best lines of invasion to be opened up as well.