v1.1.2 / chapter 12 of 93 / 01 oct 09 / greg goebel / public domain
* Grant's success in the West was encouraging, but Abraham Lincoln knew that it wasn't enough. The President pressed his other generals to pressure the Confederacy along other fronts, while he probed the possibility of eliminating the fundamental problem, slavery, through "compensated emancipation" -- or in other words simply buying all the slaves and setting them free.
Compensated emancipation had no takers, and Lincoln's pressure on General McClellan got mixed results. McClellan did in fact begin to move, but the general's plans seemed inflexible and easily disrupted. McClellan became confused when Joe Johnston pulled Confederate forces from positions in northern Virginia, and even by an attack on Federal forces in the Shenandoah Valley by Stonewall Jackson that ended up a Confederate defeat.
Union efforts in Virginia did seem to be moving forward, if in a way frustrating to Lincoln, General McClellan, and the US Congress. In the meantime, events flowed on, including the world's first battle between ironclads, Confederate political reshufflings, and further Union actions against Southern coastal towns.
* On 6 March 1862, after consulting with his cabinet the evening before, President Lincoln sent a special message to Congress, which read in part:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Resolved, that the United States ought to co-operate with any state which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such state pecuniary aid, to be used by such state in its discretion to compensate for the inconveniences public and private produced by such change of system.
END QUOTE
Although both combatants in the war were to a lesser or greater degree trying to pretend that the conflict wasn't over slavery, the reality of its importance was still recognized by Lincoln, so much so that he could propose to Congress that the Federal government should fund its eventual abolition. Of course, since his proposal implied the states in question were willing to cooperate with the idea, in practice it only applied to the border states that hadn't gone with the Confederacy, but Lincoln recognized that to roll back slavery anywhere would speed up its extinction in all the states.
There was an economic and military rationale behind it as well. The President explained the economic arithmetic in a letter to the editor of the NEW YORK TIMES. According to the President, the war was costing the Federal government some $2 million a day, and to buy up and free all the slaves in the border states would cost some $173 million. This was about the same as the cost of 87 days of continued fighting. Emancipation could take place over a few decades, with the Federal government paying on an installment plan, which would be much more financially bearable than a lump sum payment.
The resolution was duly passed through both houses of Congress. None of the border states showed any real interest in it. Proslavery partisans basically told the President that he should mind his own business. As one Kentucky Congressman put it: "We will attend to our domestic institutions." Antislavery partisans were contemptuous. Thaddeus Stevens called it "the most diluted, milk and water, gruel proposition that was ever given to the American nation."
Despite all that, for the first time, the idea of emancipation had been raised as a practical political measure at the highest levels of US government. Lincoln's proposal was cautious and proved unrealistic, but the words had been spoken and the issue would not go away. He had taken the reasonable approach, and nobody had paid attention; those who rejected it had not so much ended the game as cut themselves out of it, and when the issue came back the game might not be so reasonable.
* The pressure on General McClellan to move against the rebels was slowly becoming overwhelming, and he was already putting into motion the steps necessary to bring the Army of the Potomac down Chesapeake Bay to the gates of Richmond. Since the Potomac itself was blocked by rebel batteries, that required marching his men northeast to Annapolis, where they could board steamers for the short voyage south.
Whatever the military merits of McClellan's plan, some of the details raised concerns in President Lincoln and his cabinet. Suspicion of McClellan was widespread among the Radical Republicans. The fact that not only would Washington be left relatively unprotected by the move, but the soldiers would be leaving by a roundabout route that had them march away from the enemy, seemed to some of the more exciteable to be evidence of outright treason.
The members of the Joint Committee had called on Lincoln on 2 March with a plan to undermine McClellan's authority by reorganizing the Army of the Potomac into corps. This was intended to give more power to generals favored by the radicals, and in principle to provide Secretary of War Stanton direct authority over the corps commanders, allowing him to bypass McClellan. Lincoln favored the idea, partially because it would simplify the chain of command, and partly because it would get the Joint Committee off his back. Unfortunately, when the President went to discuss the matter with General McClellan, the general dismissed it out of hand. McClellan didn't realize that, like the politicians who had stiffed Lincoln's compensated emancipation plan, he had not ended the game, but simply dealt himself out of it.
Lincoln also raised the concerns that McClellan's Urbanna plan left Washington defenseless. McClellan proposed to submit the plan to his twelve division commanders for comment.
All this fussing came to a climax on 8 March. McClellan got a rude shock when he came to the White House after breakfast that morning, at the request of the President. Lincoln spoke hesitantly of "a very ugly matter" that needed airing. The general suggested that the President come out with it, and so Lincoln continued that rumors were going around that the Urbanna plan "was conceived with the traitorous intent of removing its defenders from Washington, and thus giving over to the enemy the capital and the government, thus left defenseless." The thing had the sound and look of treason, the President said.
McClellan jumped to his feet, protesting violently and demanding a retraction. Lincoln managed to calm him down, saying he didn't believe a word of it and was only repeating what he had heard. The President was obviously sincere in saying this, since McClellan would not be in command if there were any real doubts about his loyalty. McClellan continued to protest, and the President apologized and let the matter go. He had been trying to warn McClellan, but had only succeeded in antagonizing the young general further. McClellan wondered how "a man of Mr. Lincoln's intelligence could give ear to such abominable nonsense."
McClellan saw the point while missing it entirely. It was certainly "abominable nonsense", but it was in the air, and he would have to deal with it one way or another. From his point of view, he had been given a job to do, and he resented interference from those who had entrusted him with it. What he failed to see was that his job had endless political implications that he could not simply shrug off.
That afternoon, it was McClellan's turn to make the President uncomfortable. He assembled his division commanders to judge the Urbanna plan as he said he would, and they approved it by a vote of 8 to 4. The generals went to the White House and announced the result to the President, who under the circumstances had no alternative but to accept the Urbanna plan. As he told Secretary Stanton, who shared his distrust: "We can do nothing else than accept their plan and discard all others ... We can't reject it and adopt another without assuming all the responsibility in the case of the failure of the one we adopt."
Lincoln still had the last word on that day. After the generals returned from the White House, they were given a paper entitled "President's General War Order Number 2." The paper announced that the corps organization that McClellan had rejected was now in force, and four of the division commanders were now corps commanders. Furthermore, the troops around Harper's Ferry were set up as a fifth corps, under the command of Major General Nathaniel P. Banks, a good Republican who had been governor of Massachusetts and Speaker of the House of Representatives. The troops around Washington were put under the command of Brigadier General James Wadsworth, also a good Republican. What was a particular shock to McClellan was that of the four new corps commanders of the Army of the Potomac, three of them had voted against the Urbanna plan. Furthermore, none of them were among his favorites among the division commanders, the "gentlemen and Democrats", as he called them, who shared his views on war and politics.
The order further stipulated in an addendum that the Army of the Potomac could not leave the Washington area without leaving a force judged adequate by McClellan and all his corps commanders to ensure the city's safety. No more than two brigades could be moved until the lower Potomac was cleared of rebel batteries, but the army would indeed be expected to start moving no later than 18 March.
It was not a very happy day for the President or General McClellan, and the day would prove more unsettling as news from the world outside Washington trickled in. Events, as they were likely to, were beginning to upset McClellan's neatly-laid plans.
* Despite the scarcity of iron for armor plate, the South had completed its reconstruction of the steam frigate MERRIMAC into the ironclad CSS (Confederate States Ship) VIRGINIA. Anyone who had known the MERRIMAC could have hardly recognized it in the VIRGINIA. The elegant sail-and-screw frigate had been cut down to the waterline, and a tentlike armored fortress or "casemate" had been constructed where the original upper decks had been. The casemate featured sloping wooden sides two feet (60 centimeters) thick, covered by double layers of two inch (five centimeter) thick iron armor. The ship was over 250 feet long and over 50 feet wide (76 by 15 meters) and had a crew of 350 men. There were no sails.
The casemate held ten guns, four on each side, one each at bow and aft, and the vessel was fitted with a 1,500 pound (680 kilogram) iron beak on its prow for ramming other vessels. The rise of steam power was reviving interest in the long-obsolete ram for naval warfare.
The result was ugly, monstrous, crude, and fearsome. When the dry dock was flooded on 24 February 1862 to float the vessel, many thought she would stay at the bottom. She floated, but the heavy weight of iron on her superstructure gave her a draft of 22 feet (6.7 meters), and her creaky engines strained to make the ship steam along at five knots (9 KPH).
Commander of the VIRGINIA was 62-year-old Commodore Franklin Buchanan, known as the "Father of Annapolis" because he had helped set up the Naval Academy there 26 years before. Buchanan was the highest-ranking naval officer in the Confederacy. At noon on Saturday, 8 March 1862, Buchanan took the ship out on its shakedown run. When the VIRGINIA found open water, he saw five ships of the Federal blockading squadron lying across Hampton Roads and decided to attack. The vessel's shakedown run would also be its baptism of fire.
There were three Yankee vessels near Fort Monroe, including the MINNESOTA and the ROANOKE, sister ships of the original MERRIMAC, and the frigate SAINT LAWRENCE. There were two more off Newport News, including the frigate CONGRESS and the sloop CUMBERLAND, both old sailing vessels.
The slow approach of the VIRGINIA gave the Union sailors plenty of time to prepare, and as the ironclad approached the CONGRESS and the CUMBERLAND engaged her. The CONGRESS fired a well-aimed broadside at the Confederate monster, with absolutely no visible effect. The CONGRESS fired again, with help from the shore batteries, with the same result. The VIRGINIA replied to the CONGRESS with a broadside of her own, then fired upon and rammed the CUMBERLAND, breaking off the iron ram but leaving a gaping hole in the old vessel's side. The CUMBERLAND began to settle but though the dead and wounded littered the deck, the ship's captain kept his men firing until she went to the bottom, leaving the masts above the waves. Of the 376 men on board the sloop, 121 were killed in the fight.
The CONGRESS tried to get away but ran aground. The VIRGINIA poured fire on her, killing her captain and many of her crew, until her second in command ran up the white flag. Buchanan stopped firing and sent his men over to take prisoners and burn the vessel. However, the Union soldiers on the shore refused to stop shooting, killing both Confederate and Union sailors in the confusion and wounding Buchanan. Buchanan ordered his gunners to fire red-hot solid shot into the CONGRESS. His second-in-command, Lieutenant Catesby Jones, took over and finished off the Union vessel, incidentally killing Buchanan's brother, a lieutenant who had stayed with the Union.
The other three Union vessels had attempted to join the fight, only to all run aground. The ROANOKE had actually been under tow, since she had a broken propeller shaft. Jones wanted to attack the nearest Union vessel, the MINNESOTA, but the tide was ebbing and he feared going aground himself. His ship had taken many hits and most of its external fixtures were gone. Two guns were disabled, and he had 2 dead and 19 wounded who needed to be attended to. It had been one of the worst days in the entire history of the US Navy. Tomorrow was another day, and the VIRGINIA would finish the job then.
Late that night the fires on the burning CONGRESS reached her magazines and the ship disintegrated in a series of spectacular explosions. The blasts were witnessed by a new Yankee vessel that had just arrived. The new vessel was made of iron and looked like a tin can on a raft. She was the USS MONITOR.
* John Ericcson had put his heart and soul into building his unusual vessel, and the MONITOR was launched on 30 January 1862. Just as with the MERRIMAC, there were many who thought the iron ship wouldn't float, and though Ericcson stood on the ship's deck as it was sent down the ways into the water, a small boat stood by to pick him up. It proved unnecessary.
The vessel consisted of a 172 foot (52.5 meter) long iron-covered hull that lay close to the waterline, with a four foot (1.2 meter) high armored pilothouse in front and a 20 foot (6.1 meter) wide turret in the middle, containing two bottle-shaped 11 inch (28 centimeter) Dahlgren guns. Ventilation was provided through two grates in the deck, with smoke exhaust through two other grates. These four holes were covered with removable square stacks when the ship was at sea, and were removed before combat.
On 25 February 1862, the MONITOR was commissioned into the Union Navy. She had been completed in 101 working days, acceptably close to Ericcson's claim that she could be built in 100 days. In command of the Union ironclad was Lieutenant John L. Worden, who had just returned to the US Navy on a prisoner exchange after seven months in a rebel prison following his capture while trying to deliver messages to the Pensacola squadron. There were roughly 60 men in the ironclad's crew. On 6 March, Worden took the MONITOR to sea with orders to proceed to Hampton Roads.
The ship almost didn't make it. The MONITOR was a shallow-draft vessel, built for operations in coastal waters, not the open sea. Worse, it was an entirely new and unproven design and had some severe defects, such as a tendency to take on water underneath the turret. When the weather took a turn for the worse the next day, the crew found themselves in a hair-raising two-day struggle for survival. They arrived at Hampton Roads, exhausted by their ordeal, to find the CUMBERLAND under the waves and the CONGRESS burning furiously.
* In Washington, the next morning, Sunday 9 March, Navy Secretary Gideon Welles rushed to the White House with news of the destruction of the CONGRESS and CUMBERLAND, which had arrived via telegraph during the night. President Lincoln had his cabinet in session by 6:30. The President was agitated, but Secretary of War Stanton was frantic, sitting down and jumping up again, railing about how the VIRGINIA would utterly crush the US Navy's wooden warships, and running nervously to the window to see if the Confederate monster was already up the Potomac, preparing to lob shells into the room even as they met. Stanton managed to get the President nervous as well, with Lincoln peering out the curtains himself.
Gideon Welles, who didn't think much for Stanton and later described him as Secretary as "raving" at the meeting, treated him with aloof contempt. There was certainly cause for distress, since the VIRGINIA had completely defeated the wooden US Navy vessels, and, if not stopped, would derail General McClellan's plans. However, Welles pointed out that the VIRGINIA drew too much water to come up the Potomac, and probably would not even venture out into the open ocean. Furthermore, Welles added, the Union had sent their answer to the VIRGINIA, the MONITOR, to Hampton Roads. Welles told the group that the Union ironclad should already be there. Stanton asked: "How many guns does she have?"
Welles replied: "Two." Stanton gave him a look that combined "amazement, contempt, and distress". The War Secretary later gave orders that barges filled with gravel be sunk in the Potomac to block the VIRGINIA's passage to Washington. Since the telegraph line from Fort Monroe had gone dead, as it tended to do at inconvenient times, there was nothing left to do but wait and worry.
* The battle was raging even as they spoke. The VIRGINIA had lifted anchor at dawn and steamed toward the MINNESOTA, while Confederate citizens lined the shores to watch the destruction of the rest of the Yankee blockaders. As the VIRGINIA advanced, the MONITOR steamed out from behind the grounded frigate to engage the Confederate ironclad. The VIRGINIA's officers had advance warning of the strange vessel, but the rebels were unimpressed by the MONITOR, describing it as a "pygmy".
The VIRGINIA fired the first salvo at a little after 8 AM, and for the next four hours the two ships traded blows. On the plus side, the MONITOR had the advantage of being more maneuverable, while the VIRGINIA had more guns and a faster rate of fire. On the minus side, the Union ironclad lost use of its voice tube and the gunners found it hard to coordinate their firing with the movements of the ship, while their rebel opponent's deeper draft caused it to ground itself for fifteen minutes, leaving it helpless against the MONITOR's shot.
However, neither ship did the other any serious damage. After two hours of fighting, Confederate Lieutenant Jones discovered some of his gun crews were no longer firing. When he demanded an explanation of one of the officers in charge, the man replied: "Our powder is very precious," -- and added: "I can do her [the MONITOR] about as much damage by snapping my thumb at her every two minutes and a half." Jones decided to ram the MONITOR, but with each attempt the more agile vessel dodged the blow and slammed shots into the VIRGINIA's casemate, sending men flying from concussion. Jones then prepared his men to board the MONITOR, but with each approach to the Union vessel the smaller ship simply danced around the Confederate ironclad, pounding her with solid shot.
Finally, after four hours of combat, the VIRGINIA scored a hit on the MONITOR's pilot house with an explosive shell. Lieutenant Worden was peering through the eye slits when the shell went off, and was blinded and burned by the explosion. He would permanently lose the use of one eye, and half of his face would remain blackened for the rest of his life. Worden thought his ship had been seriously damaged and ordered the helmsman to break off. The lieutenant was led to his wardroom by some of his officers. They discussed the matter and decided to go back into the fight. However, on board the VIRGINIA, Lieutenant Jones had realized that even though the MONITOR had withdrawn, the tide was going out. The Confederate ironclad had to go home or it would be stranded. Besides, the VIRGINIA was leaking and ammunition was almost exhausted.
The MONITOR did not pursue. Once the two ships were out of range, the sailors emerged into the air and light, relieved the battle was over. Laid out down in his cabin, Lieutenant Worden was "a ghastly sight", according to his first officer when going down to speak to him after the battle. His face was bloody, his beard singed, his eyes squeezed shut in great pain. Worden asked: "Have I saved the MINNESOTA?"
"Yes, and whipped the MERRIMAC."
"Then I don't care what happens to me."
* The telegraph line from Fort Monroe revived late that afternoon and brought relief to Lincoln and his officials. Both sides claimed a victory, though in tactical terms the battle was a draw, and in private the men involved in the fight admitted as much. Ericcson felt cheated when he learned that the MONITOR's Dahlgren guns had only been fired with 15 pound (6.8 kilogram) half-charges due to Navy worries over the big guns. He angrily claimed that if they had used the full 30 pound (13.6 kilogram) charges, they would have easily punched holes through the VIRGINIA's armor.
From the strategic point of view, Lincoln and his people still had good reason to be relieved. The Federals had immediately nullified the weapon on which the Confederates had placed such high hopes. As long as the MONITOR remained in place to check the VIRGINIA, McClellan's amphibious operation could proceed as planned.
The fight had a wider significance. Any doubts that the age of wooden navies was over had been destroyed, and both sides would step up their efforts to build ironclad warships. Dispatches on the battle sent over the Atlantic by reporters were read with interest by European governments. The United States was ceasing to be a backwater. European states realized they could take lessons from military developments in the war between the Union and the Confederacy.
There were other consequences. The next day, Gideon Welles countermanded Secretary of War Stanton's order to sink barges to block the Potomac, and gave Stanton a tongue-lashing for attempting to override the Navy Secretary's authority. Stanton treated Welles much more considerately from then on.
* Although the threat that the VIRGINIA had posed to General McClellan's plans had been neutralized by the MONITOR, his plans were upset more seriously by Joe Johnston's lack of consideration in refusing to behave as expected. On 9 March, while Washington anxiously waited for news of the outcome of the battle between the two ironclads, McClellan received reports from Virginia that completely derailed his Urbanna plan as it stood. Johnston had pulled back from his advance position around Centreville and Manassas to a new position behind the Rappahannock River. A landing at Urbanna would now put the Federals into the teeth of Johnston's forces, not behind them.
Johnston had, as described, been planning the move since the previous month. Two weeks earlier he had begun to move his supplies to the rear. Finding his forces threatened by the Federal buildup at Harper's Ferry on the left of his line and the massing of Union forces south of Washington on his right, he decided to pull out immediately. Anything that couldn't be moved was to be torched. The troops began to leave on 7 March, setting fire to mountains of baggage, camp equipment, and more than a thousand tons of bacon, spreading a smell of fried bacon for 20 miles (32 kilometers) around. By the 9th the rebels were gone.
The next day McClellan decided to march the Army of the Potomac south into the territory abandoned by the Confederates. Nothing of consequence happened, and he marched them back again. Nobody ever knew exactly why he made the march. He may have hoped to fall upon the rebel rear guard, or it might have been done simply as a training exercise. It rained that morning as the soldiers moved out. McClellan appeared glum as they moved into muddy terrain, marked by smoldering, charred, and damp piles of trash and wreckage. Confederate entrenchments still remained, protected by fake guns, just like the one found at Munson's Hill many months before. The march went well. McClellan's men were drilled and disciplined soldiers now, not the rabble they had been at Manassas almost a year earlier.
However, the press found the idea of McClellan making an advance only after the enemy had left completely ridiculous, and the fake guns left behind by the rebels seemed to emphasize McClellan's timidity. Reporters wrote that the empty rebel camps could not have accommodated half of the 150,000 men that McClellan had believed were entrenched there.
* McClellan quickly managed to regain his composure after this petty fiasco, only to have it crushed again. On Wednesday, 12 March, President Lincoln issued yet another General War Order, Number 3 of course, and McClellan found that he had been relieved of command of all the Union armies. He was now only the commander of the Army of the Potomac, one of seven armies in the Eastern theatre. All the Army commanders would henceforth report directly to Secretary of War Stanton.
McClellan saw this as a demotion. By accident or not, McClellan received no notification of the change until he was informed by a telegram sent by friends who had read about it in the papers. While McClellan was sometimes thin-skinned, in this case the President and Secretary Stanton had stepped heavily on his toes and he was justly unhappy. Later that day he received the full text and an explanation of the order and was somewhat reassured. The phrasing of the order seemed to indicate that it was a temporary measure to allow him to concentrate on his plans for an offensive. His composure restored again, McClellan returned to his work with his customary diligence.
He was being deceived to an extent. President Lincoln issued the order partly out of mistrust of McClellan's plans, and Secretary Stanton was looking to replace the general. Stanton had gone so far as to approach a 64-year-old retired Army officer from Vermont named Ethan Allen Hitchcock to command the Army of the Potomac. This was bizarre idea, since though Hitchcock was a grandson of Ethan Allen, the hero of the battle of Ticonderoga in the Revolutionary War, he had never been a very enthusiastic soldier, preferring a private life of studies in philosophy and mysticism. Hitchcock managed to beg off the appointment, though he did end up taking a staff position in the War Department. Even that didn't work out well. When Stanton abused him, Hitchcock simply submitted his resignation, and was only persuaded to burn it by energetic pleading from Stanton, who claimed a bad temper aggravated by pressure. Hitchcock stayed on for a while but decided he was serving no purpose in the War Department, and obtained a leave of absence to return to his solitary life.
General War Order Number 3 also enlarged General Halleck's authority, reducing Buell to his subordinate, and created a new Mountain Department, covering western Virginia and eastern Tennessee. The Mountain Department was to be commanded by the tattered hero of the radicals, General John C. Fremont, who would replace the senior officer on the spot, Major General William Rosecrans, by the end of the month. Rosecrans was placed under Fremont's command, but he would quickly tire of Fremont's leadership, requesting and obtaining a transfer to the West.
McClellan did what he could to adjust to the order. His Urbanna plan was obsolete as it stood, so he quickly modified it. His offensive would now work its way up the James River peninsula towards Richmond from Fort Monroe. The Federal stronghold offered an excellent beachhead, and the Navy would be able to provide additional firepower along the waterways. Having learned from past events, he called a conference of his generals, obtained unanimous assent to his revised plan, and had them put their approval in writing. General McDowell then presented the document to Lincoln and Secretary Stanton on 13 March. Faced with this solid consensus, the President and the War Secretary again had no choice but to agree with the plan. McClellan immediately received a reply from Stanton giving him the go-ahead, with the provisions that Washington be left adequately protected, and that a force be left at Manassas Junction to keep the rebels from re-occupying their old positions there.
McClellan was now free to move forward with the logistical planning at which he was so competent. His plan required almost 400 ships and barges to transport over 100,000 men and their supplies to Fort Monroe from Alexandria within three weeks. The plan had been simplified by Johnston's retreat, since the Confederate batteries blocking the Potomac had gone with it, and it was no longer necessary to depart from Annapolis. On 17 March, the first contingent of McClellan's men began to load up on ships for the journey to Hampton Roads.
The Army of the Potomac was on the move at last. Then things started to go back to hell all over again.
* When Joe Johnston pulled out of Manassas, he had ordered his commander in the Shenandoah Valley, Stonewall Jackson, to fall south as well. Jackson was willing to obey orders and withdrew from Winchester, near the northern end of the valley, marching a little over 40 miles (64 kilometers) to the south. However, Jackson was not the sort of general who was fond of retreats: "If we cannot be successful in defeating the enemy should he advance, a kind Providence may enable us to inflict a terrible wound and effect a safe retreat in the event of having to fall back." Jackson had deep faith in the Lord, and was certain that He would assist in the just punishment of the unholy Yankees.
Union General Nathaniel P. Banks had 25,000 men, Jackson had only 4,600, and the chances of doing any serious injury to Banks appeared slight. At least McClellan saw it that way, and ordered Banks to take his force over the Blue Ridge mountains to occupy Manassas, in accordance with Lincoln's wishes. Banks was to leave a division or so behind in the Shenandoah to keep an eye on the rebels. Banks left Brigadier General James Shields and 9,000 men in the vicinity of Winchester to perform the necessary guard duty. On 21 March, Jackson got wind of Banks' move and felt he had a chance to attack Shields. The next day, Jackson sent his men on a fast march north, and by the afternoon of 23 March 1862 they were skirmishing with the Federals along their advance positions at Kernstown.
Shields was an aggressive 56-year-old Irish politician who had once, long ago, challenged Abraham Lincoln to a duel, though it was never fought. He was not easily panicked. Jackson threw his men at the Union troops hard in the belief that the Federals could be stampeded, but the Yankees stood and fought, inflicting considerable injury on the attackers. The assault quickly disintegrated. Jackson tried to rally his men, but they poured past him. He was forced to fall back along with them. Jackson suffered about 700 casualties, Shields about 600. Shields himself was wounded.
The rebels had clearly been outmatched, but that made little difference to Jackson. The commander of the Stonewall Brigade, Brigadier General Richard P. Garnett, had under extreme pressure ordered his men to retreat; he was arrested and ordered to stand court-martial for having done so without authorization. In the future, Jackson's men would do as they were told if it killed them. In fact, Jackson hardly acknowledged that he had been defeated at Kernstown at all, and in a strategic sense he was right. It seemed obvious to the Federals that Jackson wouldn't have attacked unless he was a lot stronger than he had seemed, and so Banks was ordered to return immediately to Winchester and drive him off.
It also seemed obvious that with such large forces at their disposal, the rebels were a threat as well to the Union forces in the mountains of western Virginia, now under General Fremont. To meet this perceived threat, a division of troops commanded by General Louis Blenker, consisting mostly of German immigrants, was removed from McClellan's command and sent off to the mountains as reinforcements.
Jackson may have been rash, but by demonstrating initiative he had succeeded in tying up a force of Federals much larger than his own, at a time when they were thought to be desperately needed for an offensive against the vast numbers of rebels that McClellan was sure he faced. Neither Jackson nor, from his position on the sidelines, Robert E. Lee failed to notice this interesting fact.
* As a footnote that reveals something about what kind of organization the Army of the Potomac was, Blenker's Germans ended up getting lost on their way to the mountains of western Virginia. Through some mix-up in paperwork, they were sent out with almost no equipment or supplies, and Blenker apparently did not bother to obtain decent maps. The ragged Germans ended up wandering across the countryside, taking what supplies they could wherever they could find them, enraging the local citizenry. The really bizarre thing was that the War Department simply forgot about the entire division. They no longer reported to McClellan and hadn't yet reported to Fremont, so nobody in the high command felt any burning curiosity about where Blenker and his men were.
Eventually their absence was noticed, and Rosecrans was ordered to go find them. It took him a few days, and when he did locate them he reported to Secretary Stanton that they "were short of provisions, forage, horseshoes and horseshoe nails, clothing, shoes, stockings, picket ropes and ammunition, without tents or shelters, and without ambulances or medicines for any important work." They had almost no horses and the men hadn't been paid since December, and Rosecrans concluded it was "not much wonder they stole and robbed." It took them six weeks to get from Alexandria to western Virginia.
* While the Lincoln fretted with McClellan and his other generals, Jefferson Davis dealt with problems of his own. His relations with Joe Johnston continued to deteriorate. McClellan wasn't the only one surprised by Johnston's withdrawal from the Manassas area on 9 March; Davis was so much in the dark about the move that on the 10th he tried to wire Johnston's old, now-evacuated headquarters. Johnston didn't inform him until three days after that.
Johnston's retreat, coming after the disasters in Tennessee and on the North Carolina coast, was more evidence of the military weakness of the Confederacy, and led to widespread dissatisfaction. Much of the grumbling focused on Jefferson Davis and, to a greater extent, on War Secretary Judah P. Benjamin. Joe Johnston stated at a dinner party that the Confederacy could not win with Benjamin as Secretary of War, and the remark made the rounds.
Davis was finally forced to take action on the matter, and on 18 March 1862 he sacked Benjamin. However, Davis wasn't the sort of person to bow to pressure any more than he had to, and he immediately gave Benjamin the position of Secretary of State, which had been left vacant when R.M.T. Hunter quit in a huff a month before to become a senator. Benjamin was replaced as War Secretary by George W. Randolph, a prominent lawyer and politician with naval experience, and, most importantly to the status-conscious South, a grandson of Thomas Jefferson. Attorney General Thomas Bragg, who had become demoralized, was asked by Davis to resign and was replaced by Thomas Hill Watts of Alabama.
The Confederate Congress grudgingly confirmed the new appointments. There was no love lost there for Judah Benjamin, and the fact that in the absence of any foreign recognition the position of Secretary of State was almost meaningless was about the only thing that made Benjamin's presence in the cabinet acceptable. Many Congressmen were also unhappy that Stephen Mallory remained as Secretary of the Navy, though in hindsight Mallory was very effective at his job.
Congress expressed its dissatisfaction by passing a bill to appoint a general-in-chief of the Confederate military. Davis vetoed the bill, saying it undercut the President's constitutional powers, but as a concession recalled General Robert E. Lee from the Carolina coast to act as his director of military operations. This seemed to make General Lee little more than Davis's personal advisor, but Lee characteristically accepted without complaint, with the hope that the assignment would eventually lead to a combat command. Lee was far more astute in handling politicians than McClellan, and appreciated the usefulness of a good relationship with Davis.
Then Davis took a more drastic step. On 28 March, in a special message to the Confederate Congress, he requested the authority to draft Confederate citizens between the ages of 18 and 45 into the military. This measure had already been established by the state of Virginia, but Lee strongly suggested to Davis that it be expanded to the entire Confederacy. This was certainly an unusual request for a nation and a man thoroughly devoted to the concept of state's rights.
The times demanded it. The Confederacy had few troops to guard a long front that arced from the Shenandoah Valley to Norfolk, and which could be threatened readily by superior Union forces moving more or less unseen behind that arc. McClellan's advance to Manassas and his quick return to Washington seemed suspicious. Lee sensed the Federals were getting ready to make their move.
There were smaller but more immediate worries. The Federals had been continuing their raids along the Carolina coast and establishing more bases as they were able. In early March the Yankees captured the town of Beaufort, near Cape Lookout at the southern end of the Outer Banks, but that was just a warm-up to the seizure of the city of New Berne, at the south end of Pamlico Sound on the Neuse River. New Berne was the second largest port in the region, making it an obvious target. The rebels had been busily building up its defenses since the fall of Roanoke Island, and had about 4,500 men there. On 11 March, General Burnside sailed from Roanoke Island with about 11,000 men to rendezvous near Hatteras Inlet with 13 Federal warships. The Union troops made a landing south of New Berne two days later.
The next morning, 14 March, the Federals threw themselves against the rebel defenses. The Confederates fought back hard but the Union soldiers persisted until they pushed through, and the defenders broke and ran as fast as they could. Both sides took a few hundred casualties. The rebels had fewer killed and wounded, but many of the missing were simply men who had decided that war wasn't their idea of a good time and went home. A week later, on 21 March, the Yankees captured Washington, directly north of New Berne on the Tar River.
These two new bases put the Federals within marching distance of the only rail link between Richmond and the Confederate states to its south. Lee had few resources to deal with the threat. He was forced to borrow regiments from General Huger at Norfolk and from General Johnston and send them down to North Carolina. There, they were placed under the command of Major General Theophilus Holmes, a North Carolinan with a vested interest in resisting the Yankees.
Holmes couldn't do much to stop Burnside, with the Federals continuing their operations in the tidewater: some weeks later, on 17 May, the Federals would capture Plymouth, which controlled access to Albemarle Sound. The Confederates would find the Union strongholds at New Berne, Washington, and Plymouth an unceasing annoyance and insult.
The Union was also busy down on the Florida coast in the first weeks of March, seizing the town of Fernandina, just south of the Georgia border on the Atlantic coast, followed by the bloodless occupation of Jacksonville and Saint Augustine. Meanwhile, General Benjamin F. Butler had sailed to Ship Island, arriving there on 20 March, to direct the buildup of Union forces intended to seize New Orleans.
All the coastal attacks were deliberately limited in scope. They were only intended to support the blockade by providing ports for Federal blockaders and denying access to the same by rebel blockade-runners. Still, the steady, irresistible seizure of towns and cities had a draining effect on Confederate morale. The future looked darker with each announcement of bad news.
