v1.1.2 / chapter 37 of 93 / 01 oct 09 / greg goebel / public domain
* The battle of Fredericksburg left the Army of the Potomac demoralized and shocked the North. The Lincoln Administration took the brunt of criticism, and the battle indirectly led to a confrontation within Lincoln's cabinet. The war went on, with the Union winning a significant victory at Prairie Grove in Arkansas, and fighting an inconclusive battle at Goldsboro in tidewater North Carolina. Down in New Orleans, Nathaniel Banks arrived to deal with the corrupt state of affairs left behind by Benjamin Butler and confront increasingly resolute Confederate forces.
* After the sun went down on Fredericksburg on the night of 13 December 1862, the temperatures plunged below freezing, causing further misery for the dying and the wounded. There were also many men on the field who, though unharmed, had been ordered to hold their positions, for God knows what reason, or were too close to Confederate positions to safely get away even in the dark.
The 20th Maine Volunteers, under the command of Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, spent the night pinned down in front of the stone wall. Chamberlain described the sound of the wounded as "a smothered moan that seemed to come from distances beyond the reach of natural senses, as if a thousand discords were flowing together in a keynote weird, unearthly, terrible to hear and bear, yet startling with its nearness; some with delirious dreamy voices murmuring loved names, as if the dearest were bending over them; and underneath, all the time, that deep bass note from closed lips too hopeless or too heroic to articulate their agony."
To protect themselves against the cold wind and rebel pot-shots, the survivors lying prone on the field stacked up the frozen bodies of their dead comrades as barricades. Yankee and rebel scavengers roamed the battlefield, taking clothes and equipment, occasionally getting a shock when they wakened live soldiers that had been sleeping among the dead and appeared to be just more corpses. That night, the northern lights, the aurora borealis, which were almost unheard of so far south, played across the sky. Some rebels thought it was a reflection of a Federal supply depot, set on fire by raiders, but others suggested "that the heavens were hanging out banners and streamers and setting off fireworks in honor of our victory."
* There was dejection in the Union rear and many wounded to tend to. The Federals tried as best they could to collect them and care for them. Colonel Cross, who had been struck down so violently early in the battle, had lay on the field for three hours before he was found by one of his men. He was taken to the home of the mayor of Fredericksburg, which was being used as a hospital, arriving well after dark. When he heard someone ask where Colonel Cross was, and then heard the response: "He is dead." -- Cross lifted up his head and snapped back: "Not by a damn sight!"
Few were more dejected than Ambrose Burnside, who kept up a cheerful front that fooled few. General Couch said: "It was plain that he felt he had led us to a great disaster, and one knowing him as long and well as myself could see he wished his body was also lying in front of Marye's Heights. I never felt so badly for a man in my life." In fact, in the small hours of the morning Burnside made plans for another attack that he would lead personally, but just before sunup Bull Sumner confronted him, telling him bluntly: "General, I hope you will desist from this attack. I do not know of any general officer who approves of it, and I think it will prove disastrous to the army."
Everyone knew Sumner was absolutely fearless, and the reply seemed to snap Burnside out of his muddle. Burnside later wrote: "Advice of that kind from General Sumner, who had always been in favor of an advance whenever it was possible, caused me to hesitate." The other generals backed Sumner. It was no surprise that Franklin wasn't in favor of renewing the fight, but Hooker, as enthusiastic a fighter as Sumner, even more strongly denounced the idea. Burnside retreated to his tent, where Baldy Smith found him pacing, saying to himself: "Oh, those men! Oh, those men!"
"What men?" Smith asked.
"Those men over there!" Burnside said, pointing across the river. "I am thinking of them all the time."
* Lee had indeed been expecting Burnside to attack again, wiring Richmond
three hours after nightfall:
I EXPECT THE BATTLE TO BE RENEWED AT DAYLIGHT.
Later, just before midnight, Lee's men captured a Union courier bearing
orders for the new attack. Lee set his soldiers to extending their lines to
counter a possible flanking movement. In reality, all that greeted Lee when
the sun came up that Sunday morning, 14 December, was another heavy fog like
that of the day before. There was no sound of great activity, and when the
fog burned away, no sign of any gathering for another assault. In fact,
Burnside's troops were setting up barricades in the streets of Fredericksburg
on the edge of the town, as if they were preparing to receive an attack
themselves.
The sun curved up in the sky and then back down again. As it dropped low in the sky that afternoon, Lee said to Longstreet, who had been acquainted with Burnside in the old army: "General, I am losing faith in your friend General Burnside."
* While Lee had waited for the Federals to attack, there were still many Federals on the battlefield. Having been given no orders to withdraw, they were forced to remain prone on the ground in front of the stone wall, unable to so much as lift up their heads lest the rebels in front of them pick them off instantly. The Confederate soldiers had nothing much else to keep them occupied and were very alert. One Union soldier later wrote that "whenever [the rebels] saw a Yankee head they tried to hit with a solid shot or shell."
Joshua Chamberlain and the men of his 20th Maine had a little protection from the corpses they had piled up during the night. He wrote: "We lay there all day long, hearing the dismal thud of bullets into the dead flesh of our lifesaving bulwarks. No relief could dare to reach us." The Confederates even fired on stretcher-bearers trying to pick up the wounded. The Federals remained trapped there all day, unable to eat or drink or relieve themselves, and were not finally withdrawn until nightfall. One brigade reported 140 casualties, even though they had not been in the fight on the 13th and had been unable to do the rebels any harm in return.
The condition of the wounded who had survived the night was so pitiful that one Confederate, a 19-year-old sergeant from South Carolina named Richard Kirkland, asked permission of General Kershaw to take water to them. Kershaw agreed reluctantly but refused to allow Kirkland to wave a white handkerchief, since the Federals might think the rebels wanted to parley. Kirkland went over the wall and spent hours tending the injured men. Kirkland would be known as the "Angel of Marye's Heights" for this gallant gesture, and was honored by both sides. He was killed in action the next year in Tennessee.
Downstream, Franklin's men had a better time of it, though there was a nasty fire-fight in the morning that almost led to a renewal of the battle. A green and enthusiastic Michigan regiment had moved up to the line and fired on Confederates who were up and about, enjoying an informal truce that had been in effect up to then. The rebels were not surprisingly angry about such rudeness, and after an initial flurry of intense firing settled down to trading shots with their enemies for the rest of the day. Towards evening, a Yankee soldier and a rebel soldier who had gotten to trading insults as well as bullets became so mad at each other that they challenged each other to a fist-fight. A truce was finally called, the two men went out in the open, and then had it out with bare hands while their colleagues cheered them on. The fight cleared the tension and the two sides, judging the match a draw, ceased their sniping, agreed not to attack at each other except if ordered to battle, and fraternized, trading coffee and tobacco and other small items.
* In the meantime, Burnside had made up his mind as to what to do next. After a council of war with his generals at noon, he sensibly decided to pull out. Hooker and Franklin would take their men back from where they had come from, but 12,000 men, in Couch's II Corps and Dan Butterfield's V Corps, would be left to hold Fredericksburg, for really no greater reason than to put a gloss on Burnside's failure.
The planning for the move went on quietly through the next day, 15 December. Burnside's men, taking advantage of a truce made by their commander that afternoon, attended to the burial of their dead and the relief of such few wounded as had not been evacuated earlier and had survived two days of exposure. It was a horrible job, with the bodies swollen and blackened, contorted, some with "eyes as large as walnuts", as one soldier wrote, going on to describe "one without a head, there one without legs, yonder a head and legs without a trunk; everywhere horrible expressions, fear, rage, agony, madness, torture; lying in pools of blood, lying with heads half buried in mud, with fragments of shell sticking in oozing brain, with bullet holes all over the puffed limbs."
Many of the dead were naked. Shivering rebels had stripped them of their clothes at night. A Federal officer supervising a detail struck up a conversation with a Confederate officer on the field, who said: "You Yankees don't know how to hate. You don't hate us near as much as we hate you." -- and indicated, as proof, the bare corpses that had been robbed even of their clothes. Not all the Confederates felt such hostility. One wrote later: "All the Yank dead had been stripped of every rag of clothing and looked like hogs that had been cleaned ... It was an awful sight. I pitied these poor dead men and could not help it."
A heavy rain mixed with sleet fell that night, bringing more discomfort to the wretched Union men but effectively concealing their movements as they withdrew back across the Rappahannock over the pontoon bridges, which had been covered with dirt and straw to muffle the sound of tramping feet. In the dark hours of the morning, Burnside, having had more time to regain his composure, realized the pointlessness of leaving a relatively small force in Fredericksburg, and ordered Couch and Butterfield to pull out as well.
At 7:30 on 16 December, the pontoon bridges were dismantled. The withdrawal at least had been perfectly executed. Lee was still expecting Burnside to attack again, but when the sun came up there was nothing but silence in the town below. A quick and embarrassed investigation showed that the Federals had gone and taken everything with them.
There would be no more fighting for the moment. Longstreet was happy with the result of the battle, but Stonewall Jackson, whose men had taken a worse time of it than Longstreet's and done the Yankees much less damage, was disappointed: "I did not think a little red earth would frighten them. I am sorry they are gone. I am sorry that I fortified." There was nothing unexpected in the one-track Jackson complaining that after the enemy had done the unbelievably stupid, they showed a lack of spine in not doing it again, but Lee agreed that the Army of Northern Virginia should had hurt Burnside even worse than they did: "Had I divined that was to have been his only effort, he would have had more of it."
Their regret at having not done the Federals more harm was greatly multiplied by the ruin the Union men had made of Fredericksburg. Stonewall Jackson was outraged. When one of his staff officers, distressed by what he saw, had asked him: "What can we do?" -- Jackson had replied directly: "Why, shoot them." Lee similarly wrote his wife that night: "They suffered heavily as far as the battle went, but it did not go far enough to satisfy me."
* The Army of the Potomac had taken more than enough suffering. That morning Joe Hooker was riding along the columns of his men and had come upon Joshua Chamberlain and his 20th Maine resting after crossing the pontoon bridges. Hooker called out to Chamberlain: "You've had a hard chance, Colonel; I'm glad to see you out of it!"
Chamberlain was dirty, tired, and angry after having been pinned down helplessly all day under rebel fire on the 14th. He was also nursing a cut on his cheek where rebel metal had grazed him, and all in all was in an extremely bad mood. He called back to Hooker: "It was chance, General; not much intelligent design back there!"
Hooker bristled: "God knows I did not put you in!"
Chamberlain was not satisfied by the response. He shouted back, angrily: "That was the trouble, General! You should have put us in! We were handed in piecemeal, on toasting forks!" There was an uncomfortable silence, and then Hooker rode on without another word.
The Federals had lost over 12,600 men. The rebels lost little more than 4,000; they were missing about a thousand more when they counted heads, but it turned out many men had gone off for a Christmas leave and showed back up again in due time. The Union men had fought with superb courage and tenacity, but as had been the case many times before, their leaders were not worthy of the men they led, and the men knew it. Not long after the withdrawal back to the Falmouth camp, Couch drew his II Corps up in review for General Burnside. While Burnside inspected the troops, Couch's officers tried to encourage their men to cheer. The only response was silence, broken by a few jeers.
* On Sunday, 14 December, back in Washington, Navy Secretary Gideon Welles could get no news of what had happened at Fredericksburg, a fact that made him nervous in itself: "When I get nothing clear and explicit at the War Department, I have my apprehensions ... Adverse tidings are suppressed with a deal of fuss and mystery, a shuffling over of papers and maps, and a far-reaching vacant gaze."
War Department staff were not at the time actually trying to suppress information; they didn't really know what was going on themselves. No news arrived until that evening, when a boatload of walking wounded arrived from the Aquia Creek base and spread stories of the bungled leadership and the fatalistic courage of the men. That same evening, the correspondent for the NEW YORK TRIBUNE, Henry Villard, arrived in Washington to send off a report on the battle to his newspaper. It was sidetracked by the censors and Villard was cheated of his scoop, but when he went to Willard's to get something to eat, he met Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts and told him the story. Wilson got in touch with the President and brought Villard, still in his dirty field clothes, to the White House to repeat his tale. Lincoln could only reply: "I hope it is not as bad as all that."
It was. It was not until Tuesday, 16 December, that the full truth was revealed of the disaster. The Senate met but could not bring itself to do business and adjourned while the armies of the wounded once again poured into the city. Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin paid a visit to Lincoln and described the condition of the battlefield, and concluded: "Mr. President, it was not a battle, it was butchery."
Curtin later observed that the President was "heart-broken at the recital,
and soon reached a state of nervous excitement bordering on insanity." Of
course the public outcry began quickly and focused on Lincoln, his
administration, and his generals. One political cartoon showed the goddess
Columbia, symbolic of the American state, angrily pointing an accusing finger
at Halleck, Lincoln, and Stanton:
COLUMBIA: Where are my 15,000 Sons -- murdered at Fredericksburg?
LINCOLN: This reminds me of a little Joke --
COLUMBIA: Go tell your Joke at SPRINGFIELD!
Lincoln was actually in no mood for making any of his jokes. He described
his situation simply: "If there is a worse place than Hell, I am in it."
Burnside was distraught as well. He was aware of remarks such as those made by Joshua Chamberlain about being "handed in on toasting forks" and that of another colonel, who said the defeat was "owing to the heavy fire in front and a excess of enthusiasm in the rear." Reports from papers concluded, not unfairly, that it could "hardly be in human nature for men to show more valor, or generals to manifest less judgement, than were perceptible on our side that day." Burnside, usually genial, was so enraged by one such article in the NEW YORK TIMES that he ordered the offending reporter to the come to his tent and and, in a fury, threatened to skewer the reporter with his sword. The fact that Burnside knew much of the criticism was entirely deserved likely made him all the angrier.
In fact, when Burnside sent his own report on the battle to Halleck on 17 December, he accepted full blame for the disaster. Although he identified the fiasco with the pontoon bridges as the central cause for the defeat, he concluded that his superiors, having "left the whole management in my hands, without giving me orders, makes me the more responsible." Burnside was a good man if not a good general. The fact that command had been forced on him against his protests made his failings as a leader difficult to condemn.
* Thomas Hindman had been distressed by the attempts of the Confederate government to steal his home-grown force of Arkansas troops and send them across the Mississippi to protect Vicksburg. He felt that he had an opportunity to not only drive the Federals out of Arkansas, but even to take back Missouri; march his soldiers East, and Arkansas would surely fall to the Yankees. Secretary of War Randolph had resigned and his replacement, James Seddon, showed no interest in continuing with the transfer, but Hindman didn't wait to see how things turned out. He reasoned that if he withdrew the Federals would certainly smell blood and come after him, and concluded he needed to hit them first before pulling out.
An opportunity was available. Back in mid-November, Brigadier General John M. Schofield, commander of the three-division Union Army of the Frontier, had decided the fighting was over for the winter. He left his biggest division, under Brigadier General James G. Blunt, near the town of Fayetteville, Arkansas, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southwest of the old Pea Ridge battleground. Schofield pulled the other two divisions back to Springfield, Missouri, handed over command of these two divisions to Brigadier General Francis J. Herron, and took off on sick leave.
This division of forces left a Union force of 7,000-odd men down in Arkansas in front of Hindman's army of well over 11,000. The Confederates moved out of their camp near the town of Van Buren on 3 December to advance over the Boston Mountains, a particularly rugged offshoot of the Ozarks chain, and fall on Blunt. Hindman sent his men off with a rousing pep talk, blasting the "cut-throats" and "bloody ruffians" who had invaded their land, and promised that "we will utterly destroy them."
Blunt was at the town of Cane Hill south down the road from Fayetteville, having moved into the area late in November in response to Confederate movements in the area, and getting into fights with rebel cavalry. Blunt quickly got wind of Hindman's movements. As usual, the reports he received greatly exaggerated the numbers of the enemy, stating that Hindman had 25,000 men, but the 36-year-old Blunt didn't give a damn. He was a Maine-born Kansan, a die-hard abolitionist, a veteran of the border fighting, and "retreat" was not a word in his vocabulary. He ordered his men to dig in and wired north to ask Herron to come to his assistance.
The rebels were only about 20 miles (32 kilometers) away from Cane Hill while Yankee reinforcements were about 130 miles (210 kilometers) away, but the Confederates had to slog over mountain trails in freezing weather. The 25-year-old Herron put his 6,000 men on a forced march from Springfield immediately on the morning of 3 December. They were advancing down the road toward Cane Hill at about 11:00 AM on the morning of Sunday, 7 December 1862, when they came under cannon fire.
Hindman had arrived in front of Blunt's division the afternoon before, only to find out that Herron's column was moving south rapidly. Once Herron's force arrived, the rebels would be outnumbered, so Hindman decided to hit the reinforcements first. During the night, he took 10,000 men up the road to the hilltop village of Prairie Grove, 8 miles (13 kilometers) north of Cane Hill while he left behind a skeleton command to make a fuss and distract Blunt.
Herron reacted to the Confederate threat skillfully, deploying his men and guns along a creekbed, setting his cannons to firing immediately, not only to intimidate the rebels but to alert Blunt that help had arrived and that Herron was in need of help in return. Herron's composure had to have been strained, however, when he saw his exhausted men falling asleep even with bullets kicking up dust all around them. Worse, for all Herron knew, Blunt and his men had already been wiped off the face of the Earth.
The battle raged the rest of the day. Herron sent his men forward twice against the rebel line to be thrown back bloodily, but Hindman couldn't get his green soldiers to make an effective attack themselves. Then, at about 4:00 PM, Blunt finally arrived with his division to back up Herron. Blunt had been taken much by surprise by the firing to the north, and it had taken him some time to react. Now he was adding his weight to put the squeeze on Hindman's rebels, though the first shots fired by Blunt's guns landed among Herron's skirmishers, making them think they were being outflanked and terrorizing them.
Hindman now had no hope of winning the battle but he held his ground. Darkness fell and the firing sputtered out. Hindman pulled out during the night, though as a ruse the next morning he sent a request for a truce to allow him to pick up his dead and wounded. Blunt saw through the trick quickly and got his men together to pursue the retreating Confederates, but then Schofield, out of his sickbed, showed up to criticize his two generals. He was angry that Blunt hadn't withdrawn to meet Herron, while Herron had pushed his men so hard that some were found dead on the battlefield from simple exhaustion and exposure.
Whatever Schofield's view on matters, Prairie Grove was a clear Federal victory. While the balance of casualties was roughly even, about 1,300 for the rebels and 1,250 for the Yankees -- three-quarters of the Union casualties were from Herron's command -- Hindman had failed completely to drive the Federals out of Arkansas and was now in a weak position himself. So much for his dreams of driving the Union out of Missouri. He fell back south of the Arkansas River, trailing stragglers and deserters behind him.
On 28 December, Schofield's cavalry raided the town of Van Buren, burning five steamboats at the dock and sending up in smoke all the corn and bacon Hindman had accumulated to feed his army over the winter. The Confederates fell back again, but the Yankees did not pursue; they returned north to winter quarters.
The controversy over moving Hindman's army across the Mississippi had now been resolved: Hindman didn't have much of an army left, since those who had not been shot had mostly decided they'd had enough fighting and run away. As for Blunt and Herron, Schofield's dissatisfaction with them did them little harm. The two men were made major generals within the month, making Herron the youngest man to hold the rank, and making both of them superior to Schofield. Whatever mistakes they had made, they had won a battle, and given events elsewhere the high command wasn't inclined to nitpick about how they had done it.
* Nathaniel Banks walked down the gangplank to the city of New Orleans on 14 December, and traded places with Ben Butler the next day in a ceremony marked by a windy speech by the outgoing commandant. Butler proclaimed effusive farewells to his "brave comrades", but except for the cronies who had been accumulating fortunes there with Butler's discreet help, nobody was unhappy to see him go. Not only had he done a good job of making sure the citizens of New Orleans knuckled under, he had also done pretty well at teaching fear and loathing to his own soldiers. He was so enthusiastic about having men shot for various infractions that the War Department had ordered him to perform no more executions without approval. Butler went back East, where he would take up command at Fort Monroe again.
Banks got of to a rolling start, hitting it off well with David Farragut, and then sending his men to reoccupy Baton Rouge, which Butler had abandoned months before. Baton Rouge fell without a fight on 17 December and Banks reported to Washington the next day that he hoped "to make good the most sanguine expectations in regard to my expedition."
The expectations were high. He was to take Vicksburg and Mobile, and then move up the Red River to extend Federal control over Louisiana. The Red River would also provide an avenue for further Union incursions into Texas. At the moment, Banks had over 36,000 men under his command, plus the assistance of Farragut and the Navy.
Banks was confronted with two rebel forces. The first was under the command of the second of Theophilus Holmes' three major generals, Richard Taylor, a star in the Shenandoah Valley campaign. Taylor had arrived in the department late in August and had spent the intervening time building up a force of a few thousand men. Taylor hoped to make up in energy for what he lacked in resources.
The second force came as a nasty surprise. Banks had his sights set on Vicksburg. Unknown to him, rebel efforts to fortify Port Hudson, only 35 miles (56 kilometers) north of Baton Rouge on the Mississippi, had been proceeding rapidly. The first Banks heard of the matter was a report indicating that the Confederates had 12,000 men and 21 heavy guns entrenched in solid positions that dominated river traffic.
While Banks was absorbing this bad news, he found he had other issues to deal with. One involved a note he received from two gentlemen representing Northern business interests, a Mr. C.A. Smith and a Mr. Andrew Butler (Ben's brother) that bluntly offered him $100,000, a tempting sum now and an enormous one at the time, for his assistance in their business ventures. Banks turned down the offer indignantly, but the system of corruption that Butler had left behind persisted, and Banks was forced to spend much of his time just trying to keep the books clean and administer other civil matters. Banks had not demonstrated much ability to delegate up in the Shenandoah and he didn't in New Orleans, either. Between military and civilian worries, his energy once more began to bog down. Christmas came, then New Year's Day, and still he did not move.
* When Burnside had left the Federal holdings on the North Carolina coast back in July, he had been replaced by General John G. Foster as commander of the Union stronghold in New Berne. Burnside having taken large numbers of troops with him, Foster only had about 8,000 men left with him, too few to take the offensive, and could do little more than build up his defenses and trade small-scale raids with the Confederates.
By December, however, Foster had received several regiments of reinforcements from Massachusetts, and orders from Burnside to cut the vital rail line from the blockade-runner port of Wilmington, North Carolina, to Richmond. This line ran through the town of Goldsboro, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) inland from New Berne. Foster moved out of New Berne on 11 December, with 10,000 infantry, 640 cavalry, and 40 pieces of field artillery.
About 2,000 rebels under the command of Brigadier General Nathan "Shanks" Evans tried to make a stand near the town of Kinston, about halfway between New Berne and Goldsboro. They were completely outnumbered and the Federals quickly sent them running back to the nearby town of Whitehall, where they regrouped, only to be forced back again, this time all the way to Goldsboro.
Foster's target was the 270 yard (245 meter) long bridge over the Neuse River south of Goldsboro. On 17 December, the Union men advanced on the bridge, only to find it heavily defended by four regiments of North Carolina men. Two Union corporals, James Green and Elias Winans, volunteered to destroy the bridge and ran forward under fire with torches to set it aflame. The bridge wouldn't burn, though the two men worked frantically at it while bullets creased their clothes. Finally, two of their colleagues came up with more torches and they finally managed to set it alight. Foster then had his men tear up several miles of track and marched them back to New Berne. He was pleased with his work, having inflicted over 700 casualties on the enemy for less than 600 of his own, damaged the railroad as ordered, and seized a large quantity of produce and livestock.
Unfortunately, the damage to the rail line was superficial and easily repaired. On 29 December, Major General Gustavus W. Smith, in command of the Confederate defense of the North Carolina coast, reported to Richmond that he regretted "that this grand army of invasion did not remain in the interior long enough for us to get at them. As it is, they have utterly failed to take advantage of the temporary and partial interruption of our railroad line."
While this might have been posturing to cover up weakness, some Federals involved in the campaign hadn't been much impressed by it, either. One soldier reported that a good deal of energy and blood had gone into the destruction of "fences, houses, cattle, hogs, sweet potatoes, and corn." For the moment, the little war on the North Carolina coast went quiet, while both sides considered what they might do next with the limited resources they had available, and the real war went on elsewhere.
* The disaster at Fredericksburg led to an immediate political confrontation in Washington, though the defeat was really only a pretext; the confrontation had actually been brewing for a long time.
Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase and Secretary of State William Seward could cooperate when it suited their purposes, but they were otherwise very much opposites. Chase was pompous, a person of strong and often self-serving ideals, while Seward was genial, pragmatic, and sometimes so slippery that it seemed his left hand didn't know what his right hand was doing. The President was much more like Seward than Chase, and that, along with the prominent position of Secretary of State, made Seward Lincoln's chief advisor. Chase resented Seward's influence and regarded him as an obstacle to his own ambitions. In order to remove that obstacle, Chase kept slipping damaging reports about Seward to the Radical Republicans in Congress.
On 17 December, the Radicals decided to act. All but one of the 32 Republican Senators met secretly on Capitol Hill to pass a resolution suggesting "a change in and partial reconstruction of the cabinet." The essential change under consideration was to get rid of Seward. The one Republican senator who did not attend, Preston King of New York, was a friend of Seward's and immediately went to the secretary to warn him. Seward, having no liking for such an inquisition, immediately scribbled out a resignation and sent it to Lincoln.
Lincoln just as promptly came over to Seward's house, which was across the street from the White House, to find out what was going on. Seward explained, and added that he would be just as happy to get away from his duties and the continuous public harassment he faced. Lincoln shook his head and replied: "Ah, yes, Governor, that will do very well for you, but I am like the starling in Sterne's story: 'I can't get out.'" Lincoln was not going to let Seward out so easily, either. The President put the resignation back in his pocket and went back across the street.
Lincoln was in a nasty predicament. The Radical senators were acting far beyond their rights in interfering to such an extent in the internal affairs of the Administration, but that was almost irrelevant. The political compromises that kept the Union war effort afloat were delicate. If Lincoln caved into the Radicals and got rid of Seward, he would antagonize moderates and put the control of the war effort into the hands of extremists. If he kept Seward, he would antagonize the Radicals and lose their support.
A spokesman for the Radicals showed up at the President's office the next morning, 18 December. Lincoln agreed to meet them at 7:00 PM, and nine Senators showed up that evening to vent for three hours. In their view, the war was not being prosecuted hard enough, and changes had to be made to focus the Administration on the task at hand. According to the Radicals, Lincoln acted too arbitrarily, without the advice of his secretaries, and the cabinet was at odds due to the malign influence of Seward, a man whose dedication to good Republican principles was highly questionable.
Lincoln held his temper and listened patiently, but finally suggested that the meeting continue the next night, the 19th. The Senators agreed and went out into the night. Left to himself, the President thought over what had been said and realized that he could not give these men their way; "the whole government must cave in" if he did. The next day he asked his friend, Illinois Republican Senator Orville Browning, the next day: "What do these men want?" Browning replied: "I hardly know, Mr. President, but they are exceedingly violent."
Lincoln had his own ideas of their ultimate goal: "They wish to get rid of me, and I am sometimes half disposed to gratify them." Browning protested, but the President simply shook his head and elaborated: "We are now on the brink of destruction. It appears to me the Almighty is against us, and I can hardly see a ray of hope."
Browning tried to reassure the President, and to defend the fact that he had voted with the other Republican Senators against Seward. Browning said he respected the Secretary of State, but there were others who believed that Seward had the President under his thumb. This hardly made Lincoln happier. He replied: "Why should men believe a lie, an absurd lie, that could not impose on a child, and cling to it and repeat it in defiance of all evidences to the contrary?" He grew moody: "The committee is to be up to see me at 7 o'clock. Since I heard last night of the proceedings of the caucus I have been more distressed than by any event of my life."
He still greeted the nine Senators warmly when they arrived that evening, 19 December, but suggested that since Radical complaints involved the actions of his cabinet he might as well have his cabinet secretaries present to clarify matters, minus Seward of course. He then opened the door to let the six secretaries in. He had asked them to attend that morning, and though Secretary Chase and Secretary Bates had been reluctant, the others had very much wanted to confront their accusers, and the two dissenters had been forced to come along.
Lincoln then stood and read off the list of concerns the Radical Senators had presented to him the evening before. He admitted that he had not always consulted the cabinet on every issue and had not always followed their advice, but he still valued their abilities and judgements. Though some dissent was to be expected among a group of such strong-willed men, the President judged that they all did work together as an effective team. The President then polled the secretaries and asked them, one by one, if this was a fair assessment of matter. None of them had any problem agreeing, except for Secretary Chase. When his turn came, he squirmed, grew flustered, protested and complained, but finally admitted that the cabinet had indeed reviewed all matters of real importance, and concluded that there was "no want of unity in the cabinet, but a general acquiescence in public measures."
In saying this, he was contradicting the stories he had fed the Radicals and was doing it right in front of them, while they coldly stared at him. Lincoln then went on to defend Secretary Seward, but when he began to poll the Radicals on their precise judgements of Seward, they grew uncomfortable as well and one of them, Senator William Fessenden of Maine, suggested this was inappropriate. Chase agreed quickly and also suggested the cabinet members should withdraw. The secretaries left and the meeting broke up. Lincoln had successfully sidetracked Chase and the Radicals and left them in a tangle with each other.
* The matter was not quite finished, of course. Chase was not the sort of fellow who could easily accept that his boss had made a monkey out of him, and besides, under the circumstances it seemed quite possible that Lincoln would purge him every bit as quickly as he had purged Simon Cameron a year before. The next morning, 20 December, Lincoln went into his office to find Chase, Edwin Stanton, and Gideon Welles waiting for him. Chase complained of the treatment he had received the evening before and then, with some hesitation, said he had written a resignation.
Lincoln had clearly been expecting exactly this scene. He appeared perfectly delighted by this news and asked excitedly: "Where is it?!" Chase replied: "I brought it with me." -- and drew it from his inside coat pocket tentatively.
"Let me have it!" the President said, and snatched it before Chase could pull away. Lincoln read through it. As Gideon Welles reported as he watched the scene unfold in satisfaction, the President laughed and said: "This cuts the Gordian knot. I can dispose of this subject now without difficulty. I see my way clear."
Stanton, who had been involved in sneaky intrigues of his own, said that he was thinking of submitting his resignation as well, but Lincoln had long had the measure of Edwin A. Stanton and cut him off brutally short: "You may go to your department. I don't want yours." He held up Chase's resignation: "This is all I want; this relieves me; the case is clear; the trouble is ended. I will detain neither of you longer."
With the secretaries gone, Lincoln could now apply the finishing cuts to the Radicals as well. He informed them that he had received a resignation from Secretary Chase as well as Secretary Seward. Since they had complaints about the conduct of the cabinet and since Secretary Chase had told them he had no real differences with Secretary Seward, then if Lincoln had to accept Seward's resignation, of course he had to accept Chase's. Chase was just as "guilty" as Seward, after all: "If one goes, the other must; they must hunt in couples."
However much they hated Seward and however much Chase had discredited himself, this was not a bargain they could accept. Lincoln privately explained matters by analogy to his boyhood memory of watching farmers take pumpkins to market by slinging them on each end of a pole, hung over the back of a horse, and concluded: "Now I can ride. I have got a pumpkin in each end of my bag." He then sent replies to the two secretaries, declining their resignations and asking them to stay on. Seward immediately accepted, but Chase, who was still very much humiliated over the whole thing, asked to "sleep on it." After a Sunday of devout prayer decided to withdraw his resignation as well.
Lincoln almost gloated over the matter: "I do not see how I could have done better." He would have hardly have been human if he hadn't. He had sidetracked the attack of the Radical Republicans and managed to deflect their animosity on Secretary Chase, and at the same time proved to Chase just who the boss really was. However obnoxious Chase was in some ways, he was an extremely competent man and Lincoln could use his services. Besides, Chase was less trouble within the Administration than he would be working against it from without.
It was a useful lesson for Seward as well. While he had benefited from and had been very much amused by the President's clever machinations, it demonstrated further to him what he had learned a year earlier: Lincoln was not a man to be trifled with. At the same time, Seward realized that his own veiled presidential ambitions had to be given up: the senators of his own party had almost unanimously tried to bring him down, and with his lack of political support in such clear evidence, Seward realized that the presidency was out of his reach. Seward now focused his energies on serving the Administration to the best of his considerable abilities, and became even more valuable to Lincoln. Chase had tried to drive a wedge between the President and Secretary Seward, and had, instead, succeeded in driving them closer together.
* Lincoln had scored an important political victory. Guiding his armies to a significant military victory was another matter. Ambrose Burnside was willing to try. Despite the horrifying setback at Fredericksburg, he was determined to carry out the campaign that had been demanded of him after he was given command of the Army of the Potomac.
On 26 December, Burnside requisitioned supplies for ten days of operations and had the men cook three day's rations, in preparation for a military offensive. They were to be ready to move out with 12 hours' notice. His plan was to move the Army of the Potomac about 7 miles (11 kilometers) downstream from Fredericksburg and cross the river at a place called Muddy Creek. His engineers corduroyed roads to support the movement, while artillerymen selected sites where they could protect the crossing. Burnside was hoping to catch the Confederates napping. To keep them distracted, he intended to use his cavalry in a bold and aggressive fashion, something his predecessors never quite understood how to do.
Federal cavalry was held in contempt by the rebels, as well as by Union infantry, who regarded them as useless and timid. Footsoldiers jeered at them, asking loudly: "Did anyone ever see a dead cavalryman?!" There was some justice in this. The North had been settled long enough to make horseback riding uncommon, and so skillful riders were scarce. Not only that, but the romantic image of the cavalry had attracted a lot of men with thoroughly unbusinesslike notions of warfare. These deficiencies were multiplied by the fact that the generals of the Army of the Potomac had little idea of how to use cavalry effectively for their traditional tasks of scouting and screening, much less as a fast strike force as used by skillful adversaries like Jeb Stuart and Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Burnside planned to send 1,500 cavalrymen upriver, with 500 of them to make a
showy feint towards Warrenton and Culpeper, while the bulk of them were to
move across the Rappahannock at a place called Kelly's Ford, and then proceed
in an arc across Virginia towards the coast, cutting railroad lines and
raising hell. Their ultimate destination was to be the town of Suffolk, on
the coast. The cavalrymen were excited. They moved out on 30 December, made
camp 30 miles (48 kilometers) upstream at Kelly's Ford, but that was as far
as they got. That evening, Burnside received a telegram from the President
that read:
I HAVE GOOD REASON FOR SAYING YOU MUST NOT MAKE A
GENERAL MOVEMENT WITHOUT LETTING ME KNOW OF IT.
Burnside, upset and mystified, cancelled the movement and went to Washington
to figure out what was going on.
* What had been going on was a confused series of intrigues among his own officers that had ultimately led up to the President and back down to Burnside again. The first direct contact the President had with the restlessness of Burnside's subordinates was from a letter he received on 21 December, signed by Major General William B. Franklin and Brigadier General William F. "Baldy" Smith. In this letter, the two men proposed that McClellan's Peninsula strategy be revived by sending 250,000 men to the James for an attack on Richmond.
This letter demonstrated both a lack of judgement and a lack of realism. Not only were they going over Burnside's head, an action that the President could not approve of, but asserting that the Union could raise an army of that size in any reasonable period of time was ridiculous. Also, both Franklin and Smith were McClellan men, and McClellan had bitterly objected to the President's interference in his strategy of military operations. Apparently this was not so objectionable when the interference was something the generals wanted.
The letter came to nothing in itself, but on 29 December, the President received complaints that he took more seriously. Two brigadier generals in Baldy Smith's command, John Newton and John Cochrane, had come to Washington to complain to their Congressmen, but hadn't considered that with Congress in recess over Christmas and New Years, their Congressmen might not be around. Failing in their original objective, Cochrane, who had been an influential Republican Congressman himself, managed to get in touch with Secretary of State Seward, who then brought them before the President.
The two generals were not entirely comfortable with this turn of events, since they hadn't expected to take their complaints to the top. Newton was senior, so he spoke up first and tried to tell Lincoln in so many words that the Army of the Potomac was near to falling apart, and that Burnside's planned movement would probably drive it onto the rocks. Newton was hesitant to criticize Burnside directly, and simply made the President angry with his muddled and evasive language. Lincoln suggested they were no more than self-seeking officers with an axe to grind, but Cochrane jumped in and replied that they were motivated only by patriotism and their concerns. Newton regained his nerve and warned the President that the Army would be destroyed if Burnside attempted his movement.
The two men left, having infected the President with their fears. He might not have taken them so seriously except for the fact that Burnside had kept his movement secret from his superiors, a measure that couldn't help but inspire a certain lack of confidence. Lincoln then wired Burnside to tell him to stay put. Ironically, Lincoln, who had spent the year urging his generals to move, ended the year by learning that one of his generals was on the move -- and then ordered him to stop.
