Coming Fury, Volume 1 (65 page)

The district commander was discreet. He was Irvin McDowell, serious, well-intentioned, hard-working, deeply unlucky; a husky, squarely built professional, who had served with credit in the Mexican War and in peacetime assignments thereafter, a man who neither sought nor gained popularity, something of a protégé of Secretary Chase, well liked by General Scott. A major since 1856, he had been made brigadier general in the middle of May, and now he commanded what was about to become an army of invasion. The odds were against him. He had had staff assignments throughout his army career and had never commanded troops in the field; now he had a badly mixed collection of militia regiments which he must somehow turn into an army, and because no one quite understood the problems he was facing he was as a man doomed to make bricks without straw. Through no particular fault of his own he would be remembered as architect of one of the most ignominious defeats in American military history. A total abstainer, he would be accused of drunkenness; a soldier who ignored all political
considerations, he would be accused of heretical softness toward the South; and, all in all, he would have reason to regret that he ever heard of this war. Now he would hew to the line scrupulously, and if the War Department told him to bring fugitive slaves back to their owners, he would do it without a second thought.
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He did not have a great deal of time to get ready for his military operations, for his objective was visibly taking shape before everyone’s eyes this June. This objective, of course, was to be the Confederate capital, whose capture, as hopeful Northerners believed, secession and the Confederacy could not long survive; and the Confederate capital now was the city of Richmond, not more than 100 miles away and apparently ripe to be taken. A New York
Tribune
correspondent, near the end of May, found Richmond “in the most fearful state of agitation.” Troops from the South were arriving at the rate of 500 or 600 a day, but most of them were very young, “entirely inexperienced, ill-clad and ill-armed,” and they would need a great deal of drill “before they will be able even to present a respectable front in a pitched battle.” Venturing into an expression of personal opinion which gives him rank as one of the very worst prophets of the entire war, the
Tribune
man wrote that General Lee, who commanded at Richmond, was “an inferior officer in vigor of mind and energy of character” and he predicted that “the mildness of his disposition will lead him to prefer negotiations to battles.” He added that recruits with and without uniform were parading the streets at all hours, and that nearly all of the soldiers chewed tobacco.
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McDowell’s troops could have been described in practically the same terms; which is to say that they were very young, totally without experience, untrained, poorly equipped, and in all conceivable respects quite unready for campaigning; a fact which, at the beginning of June, seemed to be apparent to no one in the high command except to McDowell himself. Adam Gurowski, the caustic and intransigent
émigré
who held down a small job in the State Department and wrote copiously in a diary meant for early publication, was writing now in lofty disparagement about Northern military preparations. “Weeks run, troops increase,” he wrote, “and not the first step made to organize them into an army, to form brigades, not to say divisions; not yet two regiments maneuvering
together. What a strange idea the military chief or chiefs, or department, or somebody, must have of what it is to organize an army.” As a result of this, he believed, “the loss in men and material will be very considerable before the administration will get on the right track.”
¹¹

He was not the only pessimist. Secretary Seward himself, taking stock in the middle of May, felt a certain gloom, partly because he was not allowed to control things. To his wife Seward wrote sadly that he was “a chief reduced to a subordinate position” and that he was under attack because he had been working for the organization of a powerful army, although “it is only from an army so strong as to dishearten the traitors that we can hope for peace or union.” The military secretary to the governor of Ohio, noting that excellent men of business were eager to make money out of the war, wrote in disgust that “scoundrels get contracts because they have money; have money because they are scoundrels.” The word was out that Pennsylvanians with good connections were getting a good deal from Secretary Cameron; it was said that already “there is evidently much feeling between Lincoln and Cameron” and that Lincoln had received so many complaints about Pennsylvania contracts that he “intended to have the matter examined.” William T. Sherman, brought east and given a colonel’s commission, meditated gloomily about the likelihood of “absolute national ruin and anarchy,” and wrote that Americans might “degenerate into a new brand of men, struggling for power and plunder.” Mr. Stanton told former President Buchanan that “the peculation and fraud” so visible in Washington “have created a strong feeling of loathing and disgust”; Stanton felt the country early in June was in greater danger than ever before.
¹²

Jefferson Davis, meanwhile, had arrived in Richmond. He was unwell, and the long trip up from Montgomery had been an ordeal; he tried to keep to his bed while the slow train clanked along, but had to rouse himself at each whistle stop and show himself, responding to cheers and serenades and the salutes of military companies. Physically very trying, the trip at least showed the President that his country was enthusiastic for the war. The wife of Senator Wigfall recorded that the whole country looked like a military camp, “all as jubilant as if they were going to a frolic instead of a
fight,” and the Richmond
Enquirer
believed that the trip “has infused a martial feeling in our people that knows no bounds.” At Richmond there was a parade, with much handshaking, and the weary President had to go to a hotel balcony and address an enthusiastic crowd. He said what was expected of him, said it gracefully and with spirit: “I look upon you as the last best hope of liberty.… Upon your strong right arm depends the success of your country … remember that life and blood are nothing as compared with the immense interests you have at stake.… To the last breath of my life, I am wholly your own.” He was at last permitted to retire and get a little rest.
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He was on the frontier, and although serious fighting had not yet begun, it would obviously come in the near future; it would come in Virginia first of all, and Virginia was full of vulnerable points. The state formally turned its armed forces over to the Confederate government—which, for the moment, left General Lee with an empty title and nothing much to do—and the President must begin by taking stock. He found that he had between 35,000 and 40,000 troops immediately available. There were 7000 in and around Norfolk, where the great naval base must be made secure, and where engineers were already raising and preparing to refit the sunken steam frigate
Merrimack
. Five thousand or more were on the lower peninsula, guarding the approach to Richmond between the James and York rivers, there were perhaps 2700 in the vicinity of Fredericksburg, and between 7000 and 8000 were at Manassas, a day’s march from Washington; Beauregard had come up from Charleston, his arrival in Richmond the occasion for a great ovation, and he was in command at Manassas, where much was expected of him. Harper’s Ferry and the lower Shenandoah Valley were held by nearly 8000 men, and there were between 5000 and 6000 in Richmond itself, the number rapidly increasing as new levies arrived for organization and training.
¹⁴

All of these points needed immediate attention. In Richmond a captain of engineers named E. Porter Alexander, who would become a notable artillerist in the years just ahead, wrote that Governor Letcher had done little to prepare the state for proper defense and said that “Davis was greatly deceived before his arrival here about the state of affairs.” The President, Alexander believed, was
moving fast, making many improvements; Richmond was “so full of men & uniforms you could hardly walk the streets,” and if the Yankees would hold off just a little longer, things would work out all right—“I don’t think the Yanks can ever get to Richmond now. Should they try it they would be ‘feted.’ ” Lee himself, his occupation for the moment gone, wrote to his wife that he did not know what his own position would be: “I should like to retire to private life, if I could be with you and the children, but if I can be of any service to the State or her cause I must continue.” At Manassas, Beauregard was calling Virginians to arms, announcing that Lincoln, “a reckless and unprincipled tyrant,” was invading Virginia’s soil with irresponsible “abolition hosts” which had abandoned all rules of civilized warfare; “they proclaim by their acts, if not on their banners, that their war-cry is ‘beauty and booty.’ ” One of his staff officers believed that Davis’s appearance at Richmond had put fresh energy into war preparations, said that reinforcements were coming, and wrote: “Our regiments here are superbly drilled & equipped.”
¹⁵

 … There still was daylight, but it would not last much longer. There was abroad, in the North and in the South, an odd expectancy, a feeling almost of exaltation. From a Confederate troop camp at Lynchburg, Virginia, Lieutenant Colonel Edmund Kirby Smith sensed it and was moved and disturbed by it. Writing to his mother, he spoke of what he felt: “Surrounded by military preparations, with troops arriving and departing daily, with the tramp of armed men and the rapid roll of the drum ringing hourly in my ear, I feel as if the realities of war were fast closing upon us—and when I see the best blood of our country enrolled, the youth of sixteen and the aged side by side, the statesman, planter and minister of the gospel in the ranks, my heart throbs with anxiety. I deprecate a contest which must be baptised in the blood of all we hold dear and good in the land.” Out on the Illinois prairie, a young man preparing to enlist wrote that “it is worth everything to live in this time,” and stated his reliance on a faith he could not define: “It seems to me almost like a disgrace not to be in the ranks when there is so much at stake.” From the Shenandoah Valley, a very youthful Virginia recruit wrote to his mother that he too saw great things in the balance: “If the North subjugates the South I never want to live to be 21 years old; when I am at that age, to be regarded
as an effective citizen of my state, I want to breathe the breath of a freeman or not breathe at all.” The historical society which preserves this letter records that its writer, presumably before reaching his majority, was killed in action.
¹⁶

CHAPTER SEVEN

George Brinton McClellan had almost all of the gifts. He was young, sturdy, intelligent, and up to a certain point he was very lucky. A short man with a barrel chest, a handsome face, and the air of one who knew what all of the trumpets meant, he won (without trying much more than was necessary) the adoration and the lasting affection of some very tough fighting men who tended to be most cynical about their generals. He had too much, perhaps, and he had it too soon and too easily; life did not hammer toughness into him until it was too late, and although many men died for him, he never quite understood what their deaths meant or what he could do with their devotion. For a time he served his country most ably.