Confederate Union

by Alan Sewell

  “It is quite all right. I’m only sorry that the time you had with your family was so brief. We’ll be asking you to take the field again tomorrow, if the Free States have given no satisfactory response to the President’s offer.”

  “To take the offensive?” asked Lee.

  “Yes,” answered Davis. “That’s why we asked you over here so soon. I wish President Douglas was here to brief you personally, but his health won’t allow for it. His doctor positively forbids him seeing visitors today.”

  “I also very much regret not being able to greet him properly,” said Lee. “I didn’t realize his health was so unsettled. The country especially needs him at this moment. Is there any estimate as to when he might be well enough to join us?”

  Davis sighed in exasperation. “The Good Lord only knows. He has been laid low by typhoid, like many others in this city. If he survives the next week he should be out of the woods.” The alternative “if he doesn’t survive” went unspoken. “We should never have built our capital in this fetid swamp. When this war is over we must ask Congress to remove the capital to a healthier place, perhaps to a new Federal District in the Catoctin Mountains.”

  “Yes, we certainly should do that,” Lee replied, thinking of the military implications. “This place is not only unhealthy but all too vulnerable to seaborne attack. A new capital in the mountains would not only be infinitely more defensible but an improvement in health and an inspiration at all seasons. Perhaps we can get around to it once this war is over. It would be a fitting monument to our reunited Confederate Union.”

  “We’ll have to move the White House and the Capitol brick by brick,” Davis mused. “But we should get started on it as soon as the war is over. Let’s not wait until the fevers in this place incapacitate our entire government.” His thoughts returned to Douglas, whose health had been dealt two blows in Washington City: first by the rampant fevers that bred in the swampy ground, and then by the tribulations of national crisis that would have drained the strength of even a healthy man.

  Douglas should have taken my advice to go up to a spa in the Catoctin Mountains for a couple days’ rest. He needs to be relaxing in the hot springs instead of staying here over-drinking and allowing constant worries to interrupt his sleep. There is only so much that a body can stand.

  The possibility that Douglas might fail to recover unnerved him. He tried not to show his concern to General Lee.

  The men seated themselves. Davis got down to business. “Douglas has ordered a campaign to recover the Free States. It will begin tomorrow noon if his deadline for the Free States to return voluntarily passes unheeded. McClellan will give you a full briefing, but fundamentally, he’s worked out a plan of general mobilization that he believes will allow for us to reestablish our authority over the Free States in a 90-day campaign.”

  “I wanted to ask the President about that,” Lee interjected. “I wanted to ask him if he is certain that it will be advantageous to us to reclaim the Free States by force. I believe we could restore peace immediately by offering them their independence based on a mutually agreeable boundary.”

  “What boundary would that be?” asked Davis.

  “Let them have all of Pennsylvania and Ohio. Set the boundary at Latitude 41 east of Pennsylvania, awarding to us Metropolitan New York and most of New Jersey, which we currently hold. Set the border at Latitude 39-30 across Illinois and Indiana, the approximate line of the military frontier in those states. When the insurgents in St. Louis surrender we will have claim to all of Missouri. West of Missouri extend the border across the continent at Latitude 40. That would award the Free States nine degrees of latitude north of the line while we would receive nine degrees to the south.”

  Lee traced the lines across the wall map with his finger. “Those borders would incorporate within our frontiers the substantial majority of people who are loyal to us. Just as importantly, foregoing the occupation of territories north of this line would save us the trouble of governing Abolitionists who do not want any part of our Confederate Union. Why should we not let them go their own way, just as our Southern States would desire if we discovered our position in the Union to be untenable? Do we desire to have anyone in the Confederate Union who does not want to be here?”

  Davis suppressed a grimace. We’re eventually going to force a lot of people to be in the Confederate Union who don’t want to be part of it --- everybody south of the Rio Grande and north of the Great Lakes. But to get to the Mexicans and Canadians we’ll have to put down our own Free State Rebels first.

  “To be perfectly honest, that was my original thought too,” he said. “Let the Yankees go off into their own country if that’s what they want. Let them have approximately the same border that you suggested. Douglas has since persuaded me that would not be wise.”

  Lee raised his eyebrows. “Then he is a persuasive man indeed! I have heard you argue most convincingly, over many years, that the states are the people’s sovereign governments.”

  Davis smiled as if to acknowledge that his past speeches advocating state sovereignty and the right of secession now sounded strange even to his own ears. “I no longer hold that view. I have come to agree with Douglas that this is a partisan civil war instigated by the 37% who voted for the Republicans against the 63% who voted for us. On principle it doesn’t matter whether the 37% are concentrated in one particular place or whether they are evenly distributed. No matter where the minority is situated, the majority is sovereign over every inch of the country.”

  “That idea contradicts the principle of state sovereignty,” said Lee. “But I am aware that Presidents Jackson, Jefferson, Madison, and Washington came to accept it. My father also accepted it when he undertook Washington’s commission to put down the Whiskey Rebellion. His States Rights friends in Virginia never forgave him. His decision cost him everything, ultimately even his life.”

  Davis answered thoughtfully. “Your father was a wise and courageous man. I can well imagine the torment he felt in placing his loyalty to the nation ahead of his States Rights friends, but he knew the national government would have fallen if it had not asserted its authority. Sustaining the national government was the correct decision then as it is now.”

  Lee was stunned into silence on hearing Davis take the position entirely opposite to what he had been saying in all the years before.

  Davis went on to reinforce his point, his explanation aimed at convincing himself as much as Lee. “Douglas believes that the country belongs not only to us in the present time, but in all the time to come. He thinks that the day will soon come when we will have a fair run at the ballot box in all the northern states. He says that the industrial workers in the North are not Abolitionists. They are men of modest means who have good reason to fear that if the Abolitionists were to succeed in freeing the slaves, the Negroes would go north and take their jobs. Douglas says we will become their party, as we are the party of Southern yeoman farmers. We must reclaim the country for their sakes as well as ours.”

  Lee was impressed by the Unionist influence Douglas had made on Davis. “It appears you have found these arguments to be irrefutable.”

  “Yes,” said Davis, “and Douglas makes one other point.” He waved his hand expansively over the wall map. “He says that this is our continent. Until we divided among ourselves the European Powers respected Monroe’s Doctrine. They would not have dared to intervene anywhere on the American Continents, let alone on our own borders. Now the British are reinforcing the Canadas. The French are on their way into Mexico. How can we be secure with the French Imperialists controlling Mexico, the British fielding an army in Canada, and the Free States left alone to seek an alliance with all of them? The Mexicans, Canadians, British, and French are every bit as hostile to slavery as the Yankee Abolitionists. If we don’t reclaim the Free States, and fast, we are going to have a five-sided antislavery alliance opposing us.”

  “I had not thought of that,” Lee acknowledged. “A five-sided alliance wi
th the Free States would pose a material threat to us. President Douglas has thought through this issue thoroughly. I suppose that is why we elected him President.”

  “Douglas believes that we must reclaim the Free States before they subvert our voters up there,” Davis added emphatically. “They appear to be making progress in that direction in Ohio, as we have reports that our voters have begun enlisting in their so-called Free State Army. If they acquire the loyalty of our voters their manpower may become too much for us to contend with. Indeed they might threaten us with invasion, especially if they receive help from Britain and France.”

  “Thank you for your explanation, Mr. Vice President,” answered Lee. “I am clear now on why we must recover the whole of the Free States.”

  Davis motioned toward the door. “Well, then, what say we go to the War Department and have a palaver with Mac.”

  24

  The War Department, Washington City

  July 15, 1861

  McClellan studied the map spread over his desk while he waited for Lee and Davis. It was a railway map of the East from the Atlantic Coast to the first tier of states beyond the Mississippi. He preferred these railroad company maps to the typologically-detailed ones produced by the Army’s engineers. He knew the war would be organized according to railroad logistics so he used maps showing the railroad supply lines with the greatest clarity.

  McClellan had labeled his railroad map “General Plan for Suppressing the Free State Insurrection.” He had divided it with a grease pencil into new military departments designed to facilitate the prosecution of war against the insurgent Free States. He had subdivided the old Department of the East, which had covered the country east of the Mississippi, into the Departments of the Southeast, the Northeast, and the North. He had divided the former Department of the West, extending northwest from New Orleans to the Rockies, into the Departments of the Southwest and Northwest. He had merged the former Department of Texas into his new Department of the Southwest.

  He had then demarcated the military frontier between the territories held by the Confederate Union and the United States of Free America with a blue pencil:

  The first point that drew one’s attention was the thick blue line encircling Metropolitan New York City, encompassing the city, neighboring Brooklyn, Long Island, the suburbs in New Jersey, and those going up the Hudson. This was a strongly Democratic and therefore pro-Confederate area whose constituents were largely immigrant workingmen who had little use for Negroes or their Republican benefactors, and merchants who made most of their money trading with Southern planters. Mayor Fernando Wood, a staunch Confederate Unionist, had ordered his supporters to suppress the Republican Wide Awakes before they could organize against his administration. About two hundred thousand committed Free Staters had left the city and its environs, but the rest had subsided into quiet neutrality. Horace Greeley, like many others nominally loyal to the Free States, stayed on in New York, continuing to publish his paper without a hint of endorsing either side.

  The evacuation of the city’s Free State loyalists had been mitigated by the arrival of about the same number of Douglas voters from the areas of New York and New England controlled by Free Staters. This exchange of population all along the military frontier was hardening the divide between the Confederate Unionists and the Free Staters. Many of the refugees, fleeing burned out homes and mourning friends and relatives killed in partisan fighting, had vengeance on their minds. It was becoming ever more difficult for anybody in New York City or any other place to remain neutral.

  From McClellan’s perspective the most significant effect of the blue circle around Metropolitan New York was the occupation of the Free States’ primary seaport and the disruption of its interconnecting railroads. The Free States were left with only two circuitous, overloaded railroad routes linking the Republican strongholds in New England to those around the Great Lakes. The Free State’s overseas trade was reduced to those products produced in New England that had access to local ports. The produce of the Great Lakes States would be left to rot in the field as it could not reach any port for exportation to Europe, diminishing what little was left of the Free States’ foreign exchange. Equally important was the loss of financial capital that the Confederate Union’s grip on New York denied to the Free States. Although some banks and trading companies owned by Republicans had been able to relocate their operations to Boston or Cleveland, most had decided to stay put and take their chances in the Confederate Union.

  McClellan had shaded in another disconnected blue area around the coal mining counties of eastern Pennsylvania where Confederate Union partisans effectively controlled the countryside around Reading and Easton, further constricting Philadelphia’s railroad communications to the north and west. Philadelphia had voted with a slight Confederate Unionist majority. But two years prior it had elected staunch Republican Mayor Alexander Henry who was dedicated to keeping Philadelphia in the Free States.

  McClellan’s blue area in eastern Pennsylvania was separated from the blue circle around Metropolitan New York by a corridor that Free State Republicans had managed to drive through western New Jersey and extreme eastern Pennsylvania. The corridor was just wide enough to maintain communications between Philadelphia and the Free State “mainland” up in New York via the Delaware River and the railroad and highway beside it.

  Further south McClellan had marked the contiguous military frontier that followed the rounded tip of Delaware across the northern border of Maryland. The line bulged up west of Philadelphia where Confederate partisans in Maryland had crossed the state line to help their Democratic-voting friends in southern Pennsylvania. The military frontier split York and Adams counties where Confederate Unionist partisans battled Free Staters for control of the county seats of York and Gettysburg. West of Gettysburg the frontier followed the Pennsylvania line until bulging up again into Greene County at the southwestern edge of the state. It then followed the Virginia panhandle as far as Wheeling, falling short of the far-northern portion of the panhandle occupied by Free State men keeping the railroad from Pittsburgh to Steubenville and Columbus open. It then followed the Ohio River past Ohio.

  The State of Ohio particularly concerned McClellan, not least because he still had a residence in Cincinnati from his days as president of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad. Ohio had voted for Lincoln by the slim margin of 50.8%. However, Ohio did not have its Democratic vote concentrated in the southern counties as did Indiana and Illinois. Most of the Ohio River counties, except several around Cincinnati, were Republican-heavy and therefore blocked the Douglas men in Kentucky from coming across the river to help their Ohio friends. The Douglas votes were concentrated in only two small parts of the state, neither having a charismatic leader like John Logan in Illinois or Fernando Wood in New York City.

  The uprisings by Democratic voters against Republican authority in Ohio had therefore taken on the character of mob riots instead of organized efforts. Governor Dennison and Provisional President Freemont had suppressed the riot of Douglas men in, of all unlikely places, Fremont, Ohio --- the very town named to honor Fremont for his explorations of the West! Dennison and Fremont had next embarked on the heavy-handed suppression of the Douglas men in the riverfront wards of Cincinnati. About a third of that city had been demolished, depending on whose story you believed, either by Fremont’s promiscuous artillery bombardment or by fires set by intoxicated Douglas rioters. McClellan had no word whether his residence in the city had survived, and if it had, whether the Free State Government had confiscated it.

  West of Cincinnati the frontier continued along the Ohio River, being anchored by the Abolitionist-settled town of Madison, Indiana. West of Madison it bulged northward into Indiana along the Confederate-held Louisville, New Albany, and Chicago railroad.

  The line stopped short of Indianapolis, held by Free State militias reinforced from Michigan and Ohio. From there it ran west to Terre Haute, then doglegged north up the Wabash until it encountered Grant
’s fortified line along the Toledo, Wabash and Great Western railroad. It continued along that line through Central Illinois from Danville to Springfield to Quincy. It then followed the Mississippi River up past the top of Missouri, continuing from there along the Missouri/Iowa border until it reached the Nebraska Territory where the map ended.

  Within the territory held by the Confederate Union were two Free State enclaves McClellan had colored in red ink. The first was the center of St. Louis showing the city blocks where U.S. Army Captain Nathaniel Lyon’s Free State men and their German auxiliaries were still fighting. McClellan did not expect them to last much longer now that Grant’s attempt to relieve them had failed. But until they surrendered they would continue to tie down Missouri Governor Claiborne Jackson’s Confederate Union militias, thereby preventing their transfer to the main front in Central Illinois.

  McClellan’s bigger red splotch covered the beginning of the Kansas Territory at the edge of the map. Kansas had been won by Free Soil men during the “Bleeding Kansas” violence of the 1850s and had been destined to enter the Old Union as a Free State. But there were only a hundred thousand settlers out there, not enough to threaten the Confederate Union from the west. McClellan decided to leave them alone for the time being while he worked toward defeating the centers of the Free State Rebellion to the east.

  West of Kansas there were no disturbances, other than occasional Indian raids, for McClellan to be concerned with. The Pacific Coast, with its 70% Democrat majorities and Southern-rights governors, was quiet for the moment. There had been rumors of unrest by some of the Yankee emigrants in San Francisco, but their leaders had been arrested before being able to organize any trouble. No doubt that Fremont would have been one of the first ringleaders arrested if he had not come east to lead the Free State Rebellion from Ohio.

  McClellan next began placing silver three-cent coins on the map to show his points of military concentration. He fancied this coin because its front side was embossed with a large star enclosing the Shield of the Union at its center.