v1.1.2 / chapter 5 of 93 / 01 oct 09 / greg goebel / public domain
* Through the late spring and into the early summer of 1861, the Union and the Confederacy prepared to fight the battle that both sides believed would win the war. Their preparations resulted in what was seen at the time as a great battle, fought near a meandering stream south of Washington named Bull Run, with the Federals getting the worst of it. Even before the battle, however, Abraham Lincoln had put in place preparations for a long war. The failure of the Union Army at Bull Run demonstrated his foresight. In the meantime, the Confederacy made long-range plans of their own, seeking opportunities for expansion in the Far West.
* The militias that had arrived in Washington had saved the city, but they were Sunday soldiers, not real warriors. 43-year-old Brigadier General Irvin McDowell was put in charge of turning them into an effective combat force. McDowell was an odd figure. He was a reasonably competent and conscientious officer, with a good record in staff positions. He had received military training in France and wore a neat triangular beard in the French style. He was stout man who combined a prim aversion to tobacco and alcohol with a gluttonous appetite that appalled those around him. He was charmless, tactless, and overbearing, and gave offense for little reason to almost everyone he met. These were not the makings of a commander who would endear himself to his troops.
McDowell did understand that his motley soldiers were not in shape to fight a real battle. He told Lincoln: "This is not an army. It will take a long time to make an army." Lincoln replied: "You are green, it is true, but they are green, also; you are all green alike." The original volunteers had only signed up for 90 days and time was running out. Action needed to be taken soon.
There was something to be said, as would be proven, for moving quickly in war with minimal preparations. On the other hand, there was a certain level of competence required before any sort of action could be undertaken, and it was very uncertain that the Union army had even that minimal amount of skill. To some observers, the Lincoln Administration's push to action seemed rash. William Howard Russell, a war correspondent for the LONDON TIMES who had seen battle in the Crimea and India, commented of Lincoln and his people: "They think that an army is like a round of canister, which can be fired off whenever the match is applied." On the other hand, some enthusiastic Unionists thought Lincoln and his men much too timid. Horace Greeley, the exciteable and erratic editor of the NEW YORK TRIBUNE, fired a barrage of editorials at the White House demanding action, under the bold slogan: ON TO RICHMOND! ON TO RICHMOND!
* In fact, while Lincoln may have been hopeful that the Confederacy would fall over at the first push, he wasn't counting on it, as he made publicly clear early in July.
The first session of the 37th Congress of the United States met in Washington on Thursday, the 4th of July 1861, having been called to special session by the President after the fall of Fort Sumter. 80 days grace had been provided to the President to conduct military actions as he saw fit, and now the time was up.
With all the secessionist fire-eaters gone, Congress was no longer the place it had been. A newspaper editor wondered: "What will our New England brethren do without an opportunity of denouncing the peculiar institution in the presence of its devotees?" There were actually still a few Congressmen present defending State's Rights and slavery, the most prominent of them being John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, who many suspected of being a de facto agent of the Confederacy. Another was a Democratic Congressman from Ohio named Clement Laird Vallandigham, who attempted to introduce measures to send commissioners along with the Union Army in the field to receive Confederate peace overtures, and to censure President Lincoln for measures taken by the administration before Congress had met.
Vallandigham's measures went nowhere. The Republicans had complete control of both houses of Congress. Of the 48 senators, 32 were Republicans, and of the 176 representatives, 106 were Republicans. The House quickly elected a pro-war speaker, Galusha Grow of Pennsylvania. New Englanders now controlled the four powerful Senate committees that influenced war policy. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, still scarred from the murderous caning given him by Senator Brooks, was chairman of Foreign Relations, and his colleague, Henry Wilson, presided over Military Affairs. John P. Hale of New Hampshire was in charge of Naval Affairs, and William P. Fessenden of Maine led the Finance committee.
These men and their associates, most prominently Senator Ben Wade of Ohio and Senator Zachariah Chandler of Michigan, were all "Radical Republicans", determined to punish the South and put an end to slavery once and for all. In the House, clubfooted old Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, a bitter enemy of the South and its "peculiar institution", ran the powerful Committee on Ways and Means, which exerted control on government appropriations. When the secessionists had washed their hands of further discussion and walked out of Congress, they had shifted power there over to the South's worst enemies, people every bit as one-sided and extreme in their way as the secessionist fire-eaters, and the Radical Republicans were determined to make the most of the opportunity they had been given.
* On the first day of the 37th Congress, 4 July, President Lincoln addressed the body in a joint session. The president listed the actions he had taken on his own authority: he had called up the militia; declared a blockade of the Confederacy; increased the regular military forces; suspended the writ of habeas corpus; and committed the government to great expenditures. All this had been done without Congressional approval, and Lincoln needed that approval to proceed further.
He justified his actions by citing recent events: secession; seizure of Federal property; attacks on Fort Sumter, Harper's Ferry, and Norfolk; and the creation of an "insurrectionary government"; all these being actions intended to destroy Federal authority. Lincoln expressed his intent to deal with the rebel government, as well as to recognize the new Unionist state government in western Virginia as the legitimate authority for that state. He denied the right of secession, and denied that the border states had a right to be neutral. Neutrality, he said, was "treason in effect", just another exercise in state defiance of the Federal government. This last remark clearly meant Kentucky. Lincoln was not being as cautious as he had been, since Congressional elections in that state on June 30 had revealed clear Unionist support among the Kentuckians.
Then the president dropped his bombshell: he requested 400,000 soldiers and $400,000,000 in funds to prosecute the conflict. Lincoln clearly expected a hard war. Finally, Lincoln expressed his hope that the Unionist majorities he believed, though the evidence in support was so far lacking, were lying quietly in the South would assert themselves, and spoke his belief that the Union could be reconstructed into an order directed by the Constitution and no different than that which existed before hostilities.
Reconciliation was unlikely; the mood of Congress was for war. The body did pass by an overwhelming majority a resolution proposed by Senator Andrew Johnson, a tough east Tennessee Unionist who had stayed in the Senate even though his state had left the Union, the only senator from a secessionist state to do so. Johnson's resolution stated that the war had been forced by Southern secessionists, and that the Federal government would prosecute the war simply to restore the Union and uphold the Constitution. The resolution stated there was no intent to either subjugate the South or to interfere with slavery. However, Congress still supported the drastic steps Lincoln had taken, voting him the resources he requested, and resolutions providing reassurances to the South were meaningless in the face of measures taken towards making war on it. The polarization was irreversible.
Despite the weakness of the pro-Southern antiwar faction, the dominance of the Republicans, and the hot rhetoric of the pro-war radicals, a bill to allow the government to seize the property of rebels led to intense dispute. At issue was one section in the bill that stated that slaves used in the Confederate war effort should be declared free. The border-state Congressmen protested angrily, calling this measure unconstitutional and a de facto proclamation of general emancipation in the rebel states. Republicans replied that it was simply a practical measure against rebels themselves, a formal endorsement of Ben Butler's policy concerning contrabands. The radicals used the opportunity to blast their opponents, Thaddeus Stevens angrily responding:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Who pleads the Constitution against our proposed action? Who says the Constitution must come in, in bar of our action? It is the advocates of rebels, of rebels who have sought to overthrow the Constitution and trample it in the dust ... I deny that they have any right to invoke this Constitution ... I deny that they can be permitted to come here and tell us we must be loyal to the Constitution.
END QUOTE
The "Confiscation Act" was passed in early August, allowing US military commanders to liberate slaves being used by Confederate military forces. The measure was very limited and cautiously worded, but it wasn't as faint-hearted as it sounded. The institution of slavery was decrepit and tottering, and any pressure on it could only hasten its fall.
* The Potomac river snakes along the border between the states of Maryland and Virginia, flowing in the west past Harper's Ferry, through the Blue Ridge Mountains, and southeast to Washington DC. Past the capitol, it turns southwest, and finally twists southeast again as it broadens to empty into Chesapeake Bay. Below the bend in the river south of Washington lies the city of Fredericksburg, on the Rappanhanock river, roughly halfway on a line between Washington and Richmond.
In 1861, Fredericksburg and Harper's Ferry were two ends of a semicircle with its center at Washington that defined the avenues open to the Federals for movements into northern Virginia. The Orange & Alexandria Railroad ran southwest through this arc, passing over the Bull Run river and through the rail junction at the town of Manassas. Confederate General Beauregard had about 23,000 men near Manassas to oppose McDowell's force of roughly 35,000 men. Another Confederate force of about 11,000 was beyond the Blue Ridge mountains, south of Harper's Ferry in the Shenandoah Valley, under the command of Brigadier General Joe Johnston. In theory, Johnston was there to block Union forces north of him; in practice, the Federals in the Shenandoah were inactive, leaving Johnston free to move as he pleased.
By mid-July 1861, after many delays and troubles, McDowell was ready to take his amateurish army into battle. His objectives were necessarily limited: he planned to march south and take Manassas Junction. More ambitious goals would have to wait until the Union army was more experienced. McDowell still had his misgivings over even this simple movement. Not only were the militia units in general poorly trained, but he had little cavalry to provide intelligence and almost no engineers. However, he also had his orders, and the Union army moved out on Tuesday, 16 July 1861.
General Beauregard knew all about the move; Confederate sympathizers in Washington were keeping him well informed. Washington was full of spies and Union security was extremely lax, with important information printed in the newspapers. Joe Johnston had already left the Shenandoah Valley to reinforce Beauregard.
The Federal plan was simple. 30,000 men would march down the Warrentown Turnpike southwest through the towns of Fairfax Courthouse and Centerville. They would then engage Beauregard's forces, which were lined up along the far side of the Bull Run river, north of Manassas Junction, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from Washington. The march went poorly. The men were not in good condition and were undisciplined. They broke ranks to pick berries, and engaged in scattered acts of looting and vandalism. They reached Centerville on Thursday, and McDowell had to spend two days trying to get them in order for battle. They finally moved out in the dim morning light of Sunday, 21 July 1861.
The Confederate forces were lined up along the length of the Bull Run river in front of the Federals. The Warrentown Turnpike crossed the Bull Run over a stone bridge. McDowell intended to make demonstrations at and to the south of this bridge, while he swung around to the north with 14,000 men, in hopes of fording the Bull Run and then falling on the Confederate flank.
The plan was sound and had a good chance of success, since there were few Confederates in the way of McDowell's flanking movement. However, the long delay in getting down the road from Washington had given Joe Johnston enough time to link up with Beauregard. Most of Johnston's men were still in transit from the Shenandoah; they would arrive by train during the day. Johnston outranked Beauregard and so now technically was the battlefield commander, but Beauregard was familiar with the situation at hand and in fact was planning to make a counterstroke of his own, with a great flanking move to the south of the enemy line.
The same disorganization that had plagued the march from Washington bogged down the attack as well, and the Union flanking column didn't make it across Bull Run until late in the morning. The diversionary attacks went off more or less on schedule, but they were so faint-hearted that Beauregard and Johnston quickly recognized them as theatrics. In the meantime, the rebels had spotted the Union flanking move. The Confederate commander at the stone bridge, Colonel Nathan G. Evans of South Carolina, swung his forces of about 1,100 men north and advanced until they made contact with the Federals.
In the lead of the Federal column were regiments under General Ambrose Burnside, a militia general from Rhode Island with regular Army background who wore sideburns so enormous that he is said to be the origin of the term. His attack was clumsy and made little progress, but eventually Union artillery began to wear down Evans' men. Both sides called in reinforcements. By late morning the Federals had broken the Confederate line. The rebels fell back south of the turnpike and re-formed along with more reinforcements on a hill where there sat the house of a farmer named Henry.
Johnston and Beauregard moved up additional troops to meet the threat. Five Virginia regiments that had come with Johnston from the Shenandoah were lined up by their commander, Brigadier General Thomas J. Jackson, to wait for the Federal advance up the hill. By noon, however, the Federals appeared close to breaking through and throwing the rebels off the battlefield. Some Confederate regiments were standing firm, among them General Jackson's Virginians.
Jackson himself was a strange sort, a religious zealot full of warlike Presbyterianism, perfectly fearless in an undemonstrable sort of way, as if it never occurred to him that he might ever be in any danger. As other rebel regiments crumbled, an officer rode up to Jackson and cried out: "General, they are beating us back!"
Jackson calmly replied: "Sir, we will give them the bayonet." General Barnard Bee of South Carolina, encouraged by Jackson's solid stand, decided to use his example to rally his own wavering men. Bee stood up in his stirrups, and shouted at them: "Look! There is Jackson standing like a stone wall! Rally behind the Virginians!" A bullet then hit Bee in the stomach and knocked him off his horse. Bee would die soon of the wound, but some of his men rallied and fell in with Jackson's Virginians. Confederate resistance began to stiffen.
The fight for the Henry Hill grew in ferocity. The Federals could not coordinate their attacks, and Union artillery batteries found themselves exposed to murderous rebel fire. Some of the firing came from the vicinity of the Henry house. The Federals shot back with their cannon, incidentally killing the invalid mistress of the house, 84-year-old Judith Henry, as she lay in bed.
The Fire Zouaves and a battalion of marines were sent forward to support the batteries, only to find themselves facing a wild charge by a Virginia cavalry regiment under the command of General James Ewell Brown ("Jeb") Stuart; the Zouaves broke and ran. Stuart had actually been confused himself, thinking the Zouaves were an Alabama outfit that was facing him because they were getting ready to retreat; "Don't run, boys, we're here!" he shouted -- then realized his mistake and turned it to his advantage, tearing into the surprised Federals. Profiting from the confusion, a Confederate regiment that was wearing blue uniforms managed to march right up to the Union batteries unmolested, then fired into them. A Union officer watching the action through field glasses wrote later that "it seemed as though every man and horse of that battery just laid down and died right off."
By this time, although McDowell had reached the hilltop and was observing the battle from the Henry house, the Union attack was completely falling apart. The Confederates were gaining the initiative, hitting the Federals with counterattacks. Jackson ordered his men: "Hold your fire until they're on you. Then fire and give them the bayonet. And when you charge yell like furies!"
The Union attacks disintegrated and Yankee soldiers began to fall back off the firing line. There was no great panic at the moment, and McDowell hoped he could rally them back up the turnpike at Centerville. However, the battle had taken place on Sunday, and many proper citizens of the city of Washington, including at least sixteen Congressmen, thought that watching a battle would be pleasant holiday outing. They had taken their carriages and picnic baskets, and even in a few cases their women, down to the slopes of the Bull Run to watch the war in progress. They couldn't actually see much, since the battlefield was covered with smoke and dust, but it soon became obvious that things weren't going well for McDowell's army. The citizens decided it might be wise to move back out of harm's way.
There was a creek named Cub Run a little over a mile up the turnpike from Bull Run. The military and civilian traffic fleeing the battlefield had to cross this stream over a little bridge, and the result of all converging on this chokepoint was a traffic jam. Then panic began to spread, and soldiers began shouting: "Black horse cavalry! Black horse cavalry!" -- in the frightened but mistaken belief that Confederate riders were tearing into the confused mob.
McDowell had reserves in Centerville, about 5,000 men, and a few of the
units that had been on the field of battle were still in good order. He
deployed them in front of the town in order to halt any Confederate advance,
while he reorganized the rest of his army behind it. But there was no
rallying the confused mob. McDowell could do nothing but fall back to
Washington and hope to hold the line at the Potomac. The Union had suffered
an embarrassing defeat. At 0200 AM that following morning, back in the
mountains of western Virginia, General McClellan received a telegram from
Washington:
CIRCUMSTANCES MAKE YOUR PRESENCE HERE NECESSARY.
CHARGE ROSECRANS OR SOME OTHER GENERAL WITH YOUR
PRESENT DEPARTMENT AND COME HITHER WITHOUT DELAY.
High hopes had given way to disaster. Congressmen had taken up the cry of:
"On to Richmond!" The only one of them who actually made it there, Alfred
Ely of New York, did so as a prisoner.
* The Federals' immediate fear for Washington proved baseless. The battle had disorganized the Confederates almost as badly as it had the Federals. Jefferson Davis had been riding up to the front even as the battle was being won. He found a rabble of stragglers falling away from the fight and thought it evidence of a defeat. He tried to rally them: "I am President Davis! Follow me back to the field!" General Jackson was not far away, having a wounded hand attended to. When the doctor relayed that Davis though things were going badly, Jackson shouted in outrage: "We have whipped them! They ran like sheep! Give me 5,000 fresh men and I will be in Washington City tomorrow!"
The Confederates had in fact won a substantial victory. They had driven the Yankees off the field and captured 28 guns, 37 caissons, and a huge litter of rifles, pistols, blankets, wagons, and other items. However, both Johnston and Beauregard knew their army was in no shape for any further real fighting. Jefferson Davis was inclined to order them to try anyway, but he thought it over and did not. Davis was later much criticised for this decision; in fact, McDowell still had 10,000 men in good fighting condition, and they would have easily held the bridges into Washington. The fighting was over for the moment.
* On 22 July, while a dismal rain fell, the defeated Union soldiers drifted back into Washington. They were dirty, miserable, hungry, and exhausted. They collapsed wherever they could find shelter and slept like the dead. Many officers had drifted into Williard's to seek comfort in alcohol and tell their own sad tales. A writer and poet named Walt Whitman, who had been squeaking out a living in Washington, saw the mob and Williard's and wrote acidly:
BEGIN QUOTE:
There you are, shoulder-straps! But where are your companies? Where are your men? Incompetents! Never tell of chances of battle, of getting stray'd, and the like. I think this is your work, this retreat, after all. Sneak, blow, put on airs, there in Williard's sumptuous parlors and barrooms, or anywhere -- no explanation will save you. Bull Run is your work; had you been half to one-tenth worth your men, this would never have happened.
END QUOTE
Whitman had a point. The Federal soldiers had fought well and been badly bloodied, with maybe 500 confirmed dead, more than 1,100 wounded, and over 1,500 missing in action, most of them captured. Many of the wounded would die or be severely maimed for life. The Confederates had been hurt about as badly, with 400 killed and more than 1,500 wounded, though being the victors they lost only a handful as prisoners. The disorganization that ultimately defeated the Federals was to a large extent a failure of leadership. There was a search for the guilty. McDowell was accused of every failing, even drunkenness, though his hatred of demon liquor was well known.
The defeat was a bitter disappointment in the North. That noisy jack-in-the-box, Horace Greeley, who had trumpeted ON TO RICHMOND!in his headlines, wrote President Lincoln a gloomy letter speaking of "sullen, scorching, black despair" and suggested that peace be made with the rebels at once. Lincoln was of course discouraged but not in the least defeatist. He wrote to his wife two days after the defeat: "The fat is all in the fire now and we shall have to crow small until we can retrieve the disgrace somehow. The preparations for the war will be continued with increased vigor by the government."
The War Department gathered up its scattered soldiers as best it could by issuing rations at a few distribution points where the men could be assembled. State governors sent new militia units to Washington in response to desperate appeals, and the government was quickly able to issue statements reassuring the public that matters were under control and further disasters were not imminent. Lincoln had been preparing for a long war, while hoping for a short one. Now undeceived, he wrote up his plans for the future:
BEGIN QUOTE:
1. Let the plan for making the Blockade effective be pushed forward with all possible dispatch.
2. Let the volunteer forces at Fort Monroe & vicinity -- under Genl. Butler -- be constantly drilled, disciplined, and instructed without more for the present.
3. Let Baltimore be held, as now, with a gentle, but firm, and certain hand.
4. Let the force now [in the Shenandoah Valley] under Patterson, or Banks, be strengthened, and made secure in its position.
5. Let Gen. Fremont push forward his organization, and operations in the West as rapidly as possible, giving rather special attention to Missouri.
6. Let the forces late before Manassas, except the three months' men, be reorganized as rapidly as possible, in their camps here and about Arlington.
7. Let the three months forces, who decline to enter the longer service, be discharged as rapidly as circumstances will permit.
8. Let the new volunteer forces be brought forward as fast as possible, and especially into the camps on the two sides of the river here.
END QUOTE
An addition to this list read:
BEGIN QUOTE:
1. Let Manassas Junction (or some point on one or the other of the railroads near it) and Strasburg, be seized, and permanently held, with an open line from Harper's Ferry to Strasburg -- the military men to find a way of doing these.
2. This done, a joint movement from Cairo on Memphis; and from Cincinnati on East Tennessee.
END QUOTE
The list showed that Lincoln's mind was necessarily running in many directions at once. One thing was very clear: there would be no short and easy war.
* While the main lines of the conflict were developing in the East, a sideshow war was forming up in the Far West, in the Territories of New Mexico and Utah. The war had been in part caused by the desire of slave states to acquire new brethren in the Far West, and now Jefferson Davis wanted to take action towards that end. He saw in the Far West the opportunity to outflank the Union blockade by opening Confederate ports in California, and ultimately to open the Spanish-speaking lands below the Rio Grande to Confederate domination.
He was given encouragement in this dream by Henry H. Sibley, previously a major in the United States Army, who had spent much of his military career in the territories in question and saw the potential there for the Confederacy. In early July, two weeks before Manassas, Jefferson Davis gave Sibley a brigadier's commission and command of the Department of New Mexico, which was an ambitious title given that the land in question was still in Federal hands. Sibley had Davis's blessing to begin operations in New Mexico Territory and points west.
Unfortunately, Jefferson Davis had no resources to spare and made it very clear to General Sibley that he was on his own. Sibley did had some help from a few assistants, particularly in the form of Confederate Lieutenant Colonel John R. Baylor. Baylor had seized Fort Bliss when Texas declared for the Confederacy, and was from that vantage point considering what else he might be able to do. The first thing he saw was Fort Fillmore, 40 miles (64 kilometers) upstream on the Rio Grande from Fort Bliss, in pro-Confederate territory, and the primary Federal obstacle to his ambitions in the lower portion of New Mexico Territory.
In mid-July, while Sibley was on the return trip from Richmond, Baylor led his Texas Mounted Rifles north to Fort Fillmore. On 25 July 1861, he had a small, indifferent fight with Federal troops under US Army Major Isaac Lynde. Despite the fact that the Federals outnumbered the rebels two to one, Lynde was intimidated by the little battle and pulled his men out of the fort. The next day the rebels demanded the surrender of his command and got it. Lynde basically gave the southern half of New Mexico Territory to the Confederacy on a platter. On 1 August 1861, Baylor issued a proclamation establishing the Confederate Territory of Arizona, with himself as military governor. Richmond sustained the action. More opportunities were visible to the north across the desert.
