Dixie Betrayed

by David J. Eicher

  SOMEHOW life in Richmond carried on. At the White House Varina Davis gave birth to another son, William Howell, on December 16. The Davises were both exhausted and feeling rather ill, independent of the demands of the Confederacy. The president confided in his closest associates his worries about the state of the country. “Recent disasters have depressed the weak,” the president declared to Joe Johnston, away in the field, “and are depriving us of the aid of the wavering. Traitors show the tendencies heretofore concealed, and the selfish grow clamorous for local, and personal, interests.” 25

  And the spring brought little comfort. Virginia governor John Letcher might have declared conscription “the most alarming stride towards consolidation that has ever occurred” but would not fight Davis because the alternative would be ruin. Brown, however, believed the draft was a measure aimed at destroying the states. Addressing Davis, the Georgia governor wrote:

  If the State Regiments are broken up, and the conscripts belonging to them forced into other organizations against their consent, it will have a very discouraging effect. . . . This Act, not only disorganizes the military system of all the States, but consolidates almost the entire military system of the State in the Confederate Executive, with the appointment of the officers of the militia, and enables him at his pleasure, to cripple or destroy the civil government of each State, by arresting, and carrying into the Confederate Service, the officers charged by the State Constitution. 26

  Davis, predictably, was incensed. He wrote:

  I have received your letter of the 22nd inst. informing me of your transfer of the Georgia State troops to General Lawton commanding Confederate forces at Savannah, suggesting that there be as little interference as possible on the part of the Confederate authorities with the present organization of those troops. . . . Interference with the present organization of companies, squadrons, battalions, or regiments tendered by Governors of States, is specially disclaimed. 27

  So began a bitter clash, a wicked one—and the Union had no intention of waiting until the Southern leaders stopped fighting among themselves.

  Chapter 8

  Richmond, the Capital

  THE conscription bill that President Davis pushed through Congress alarmed the city as much as the military setbacks had. So had the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and the authorization of martial law within the city. Soldiers on leave from their regiments filled the city’s streets, dining halls, and private houses. Crime was picking up; rioting erupted occasionally as gangs of drunken soldiers and civilians spoke too loosely. John Winder’s military agents made the situation only worse—Richmond felt like a police state, complete with the hypocrisy that seems requisite of tyranny. For example, in no time at all, recorded one historian, Winder’s agents were “forging prescriptions for brandy, drinking the brandy and then arresting unfortunate apothecaries who had sold it to them.” 1 No one was immune: “Every Virginian,” wrote a clerk in the war office, “and other loyal citizens of the South—members of Congress and all—must now, before obtaining Gen. Winder’s permission to leave the city for their homes, bow down before the aliens in the Provost Marshal’s office, and subscribe to an oath of allegiance, while a file of bayonets are pointed at his back!” 2

  Sallie Putnam, the Richmond diarist, recorded the frustration with the growing scarcity of food in the city. “General Winder, the Provost Marshal of the city,” she wrote, “in order to remedy the evil, laid a tariff of prices on all articles of domestic produce, but did not legislate upon groceries, liquors, and articles imported from abroad. The consequence was, the markets were so ill supplied that they had almost as well been closed.” 3 Meats became increasingly scarce, and fish took over as the main dinnertime item—but only if one got to the fish market “before the break of day,” Putnam recorded. Buyers were fortunate to land a pair of rockfish or shad for dinner, and the situation eased only slightly as springtime brought a slightly larger number of vegetables in from the country. The prices for beef, butter, eggs, vegetables, poultry—and especially imported items such as brandy, sugar, and tea—were astronomical. Butter sold for one dollar per pound (this equates to twenty dollars per pound in 2006).

  Despite such challenges the administration of the war had to carry on. Not surprisingly, this included some shuffling. A loyal Virginian, Robert Garlick Hill Kean, was appointed chief of the Bureau of War, replacing Albert Bledsoe, who had been made an assistant secretary of war. Kean won the job not only by his sterling record as an attorney and soldier but also as a nephew of the new secretary of war, George Wythe Randolph. Over the coming months Kean would keep a close watch on his uncle’s affairs within the war office. At the same time Isaac M. St. John took command of the newly created Bureau of Nitre and Mining, which would undertake the tasks of procuring and manufacturing saltpeter to produce gunpowder, as well as mining iron, copper, lead, coal, and zinc.

  But military bureaucracy was not an immediate worry of Richmonders in the early spring of 1862. The Yankees were bearing down on the Confederate capital, and actions were flaring on many battlegrounds on land and even on the water. The war was splashing across the frontiers of disunion.

  In the east came a peculiar show of innovative naval technology. The Confederate ship Virginia was the retrofitted “screw steamer” Merrimack, scuttled by Union forces when they abandoned the Norfolk Navy Yard, in April 1861. Confederate naval engineers had turned the hull into a new type of warship with heavily armored, canted sides. The 263-foot-long ship was protected by 4-inch iron laid over 22-inch oak beams. Nothing like it existed before. The ship’s armament consisted of six 9-inch Dahlgren guns, naval cannon, and four rifled 6-inch and 7-inch guns. Clad by iron and buoyed by the knowledge of technical advantage, Capt. Franklin Buchanan’s crew of 350 steamed into Hampton Roads, Virginia, on March 8 to destroy all the Federal ships they could find.

  At about 2 p.m., the Virginia rammed the USS Cumberland and fired mercilessly on the USS Congress. The former sank at 3:30 p.m., and the latter surrendered and was run aground. By 10 p.m. a peculiar vessel arrived, the USS Monitor. The invention of John Ericsson, a Swedish-American mechanical engineer, the ship appeared like a flat skiff spanning 172 feet with a single turret extending only 9 feet above the waterline that contained two 11-inch Dahlgren guns. By 9 a.m. the Monitor, commanded by Lt. John L. Worden, moved astride the Virginia and opened fire. “The contrast was that of a pygmy to a giant,” wrote Gershom J. Van Brunt, commander of the nearby USS Minnesota, on March 10. “Gun after gun was fired by the Monitor, which was returned with whole broadsides by the rebels, with no more effect, apparently, than so many pebble-stones thrown by a child.” 4 The Confederate warship withdrew from Hampton Roads, and it would not play a further role in the war, being scuttled two months later. The Monitor itself foundered off Cape Hatteras on December 31, 1862. A new era in naval war had, nonetheless, emerged; the era of wooden ships was gone.

  In the western theater Ulysses S. Grant’s success had shoved Albert Sidney Johnston southward along a line from Memphis to Corinth, Mississippi, to Huntsville, Alabama. Gradually Johnston was reinforced by Maj. Gens. Braxton Bragg, who had been in Mobile, and Leonidas Polk, who had been at Columbus, Kentucky, concentrating about forty thousand men under his command. Grant’s thirty-five thousand men were encamped south of the Tennessee River, at Pittsburg Landing near Shiloh Church, by early April. Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio, consisting of fifty thousand, lay well to the northeast at Columbia.

  On the night of April 5, Johnston, now also supported by Gen. G. T. Beauregard, advanced northward toward Grant’s encampment. Grant did not suspect an attack from the south, but a massive assault came. Between 6 and 7:30 a.m. on April 6, a battle line stretching from southwest to northeast exploded. “Fill your canteens, boys. Some of you will be in hell before night and you’ll need water!” advised Isaac C. Pugh, colonel of the Forty-first Illinois Infantry. 5 The battle of Shiloh, the costliest thus far in the war, had begun.

 
; The enormity of the battle seemed evident to soldiers in the ranks from its earliest hours. Leander Stillwell, a private in the Sixty-first Illinois Infantry, wrote:

  Suddenly, away off on the right, in direction of Shiloh Church, came a dull, heavy “Pum,” then another, and still another. Every man sprung to his feet as if struck by an electric shock, and we looked inquiringly into one another’s faces. . . . Those heavy booms then came thicker and faster, and just a few seconds after we heard that first dull, ominous growl off to the southwest, came a low, sullen, continuous roar. There was no mistaking that sound. That was not a squad of pickets emptying their guns on being relieved from duty; it was the continuous roll of thousands of muskets, and told us that a battle was on. 6

  Johnston hoped to push Grant’s army in between two creeks, cutting it off from reinforcement via the Tennessee River, and initially, it looked as if he would succeed. All along the Union battle line, regiments were falling back in the face of the Confederate attack. A Union division under Brig. Gen. Benjamin M. Prentiss stubbornly held fast along a sunken farm lane in an area that became known as the Hornets’ Nest due to the intensity of the fighting. Twelve separate Confederate assaults, supported by heavy cannonading, failed to dislodge Prentiss and Brig. Gen. William H. L. Wallace from their positions. But their perseverance seemed the exception rather than the rule, and the Confederate commanders—knowing well the power of momentum in addition to recalling the criticisms that had followed earlier engagements—rushed forward. As the action flared Johnston personally led an attack in which he was wounded behind the knee. The Confederate commander, blood gushing from his leg, slumped off his horse and died near the base of a tree. Now command devolved on Beauregard.

  The death of Johnston momentarily stunned parts of the Confederate line, but they pushed forward and successfully pinned Grant’s force back against the Tennessee River. Meanwhile, Prentiss had surrendered the Hornets’ Nest, and wounded soldiers crawled to drink from a small pond nearby. The little body of water became known as Bloody Pond after it was stained from the soldiers’ wounds. As darkness fell on April 6, the Federal army’s position seemed tenuous. A rainstorm moved in and depressed the Yankees further.

  By daybreak, however, the tide turned. Although tardy Brig. Gen. Lew Wallace finally had arrived to support Grant, more important, Buell’s army began to cross the river and reinforce Grant. Refreshed with three new divisions, Grant attacked and, by late morning, had forced Beauregard’s troops back in disarray. By early afternoon Beauregard had his whole army retreating southward toward Corinth. The rapidity of the shift surprised some soldiers, including the young Confederate and future explorer Henry M. Stanley, who wrote,

  I became so absorbed with some blue figures in front of me, that I did not pay sufficient heed to my companion greys. . . . Seeing my blues in about the same proportion, I assumed that the greys were keeping their position, and never once thought of retreat. . . . I rose from my hollow; but, to my speechless amazement, I found myself a solitary grey, in a line of blue skirmishers! My companions had retreated! The next I heard was, “Down with the gun, Secesh, or I’ll drill a hole through you! Drop it, quick!” 7

  As Beauregard retreated southward into Mississippi, he left behind some 3,477 men dead on the fields and another 20,264 wounded or missing. The scale of the bloodshed shocked the nation. Shocked, too, were the Confederate leaders.

  They did have some cause for relief, though. In the Shenandoah Valley—the rich, fertile region so critical to supplying the war in Virginia—Stonewall Jackson, now a major general, was busy making trouble for a succession of Union commanders. Jackson was a Virginian, a close ally of Robert E. Lee’s, and an eccentric former professor at the Virginia Military Institute. He was given the nickname “Stonewall” after standing stoutly (or in the way) at the first battle of Manassas. Jackson was a man on a mission, charged with a fervent religious doctrine that overshadowed all else. “The religious element seems strongly developed in him,” wrote observer Garnet Wolseley, “and though his conversation is perfectly free from all puritanical cant, it is evident that he is a person who never loses sight of the fact that there is an omnipresent Deity ever presiding over the minutest occurrences in life, as well as over the most important.” Jackson indeed took his calling seriously. “You appear much concerned at my attacking on Sunday,” he wrote his wife on April 11. “I was greatly concerned, too; but I felt it my duty to do it, in consideration of the ruinous effects that might result from postponing the battle until morning. . . . I hope and pray to our Heavenly Father that I may never again be circumstanced as on that day.” 8

  Jackson’s brilliance as a tactician became clear during the Valley campaign, when he moved against Union Maj. Gen. James Shields at Kernstown. Despite significant casualties, Jackson was able to divert three Yankee armies from reinforcing a troop buildup on the Virginia peninsula, designed to threaten Richmond.

  Meanwhile, military events of differing character transpired far to the south. Near Savannah, Georgia, Fort Pulaski—one of the great brick masonry forts of the coastal southeast—on Cockspur Island fell to Union forces on April 10-11. Union Capt. Quincy A. Gillmore had placed batteries of heavy rifled cannon on Tybee Island, one to two miles from the facade of Fort Pulaski (which had been constructed in part under the supervision of a young Robert E. Lee). The fort’s fall signaled the demise of brick masonry forts as an effective defense against the new technology of the rifled cannon. In northern Georgia, at the same time, a band of Yankee spies launched a raid to disrupt the important railroad supply line between Atlanta and Chattanooga. Led by civilian James J. Andrews, twenty-two volunteers traveled to Big Shanty, where on April 12 they captured an engine, the General, and hastily moved northward, destroying track and telegraph wires along the way. The raiders nearly made it to safety in Union-occupied Chattanooga as they were pursued vigorously by the Texas. “With no car left, no fuel, the last scrap having been thrown into the engine or upon the burning car, and with no obstruction to drop on the track, our situation was indeed desperate,” wrote William Pittenger, one of the raiders. “A few minutes only remained until our steed of iron which had so well served us would be powerless.” 9 Indeed, the raiders were caught, and Andrews along with seven of his men were executed in Atlanta, their bodies sent to the Union lines at Chattanooga, where they were buried. Six of the raiders imprisoned for the longest time were the first men to receive the Medal of Honor.

  Far to the west the Confederacy was not faring as well. With a population of nearly 170,000, New Orleans was by far the largest city in the Confederacy. It was also a vital port for supplying the Mississippi River operations and the Deep South. Some ninety miles south of the city, on the river, stood Forts Jackson and St. Philip. These positions and their five hundred men, along with several ships, attempted to block the Federal fleet commanded by Capt. David G. Farragut, who commanded twenty-four wooden vessels and nineteen mortar boats. Instead, Farragut pummeled the defenders at Jackson and St. Philip before capturing New Orleans itself; the citizens were now under Federal occupation. “These people have complimented us highly,” wrote Southern diarist Julia LeGrand on April 25. “To quell a small ‘rebellion,’ they have made preparations enough to conquer a world.” A well-known Northerner viewed the problem from a slightly different perspective. “We woo the South ‘as the Lion wooes his bride,’” wrote Nathaniel Hawthorne, in Concord, Massachusetts, the following summer. “It is a rough courtship, but perhaps love and a quiet household may come a bit at last.” 10

  All these springtime actions, significant as they were, paled in sheer size relative to the great eastern campaign about to unfold on Virginia’s peninsula. Lincoln and most of his advisers favored a movement on land back toward Richmond, as had been attempted the previous summer. Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan had succeeded the aging Winfield Scott as general-in-chief, in late 1861. Instead of using Lincoln’s plan, he preferred to transport his troops by ship to the eastern tip of the peninsula an
d approach Richmond from the southeast. After considerable argument and consternation, McClellan got his way.

  By April 2 McClellan had arrived at Fort Monroe, near Norfolk, the point of debarkation, where fifty thousand Federal troops were massed for the Peninsular campaign. Confederate Maj. Gen. John B. Magruder represented the first line of defense, thirteen thousand troops. The main Confederate army between McClellan and Richmond, which consisted of forty-three thousand men, was that of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. Bluffed by Magruder’s movements, McClellan laid siege to Yorktown rather than attacking it. For a month McClellan was inactive, preparing for a heavy bombardment of the Confederate defenses. But on May 3 Johnston withdrew toward Richmond, and the Federal army struck at his rear guard, opening the battle of Williamsburg. McClellan abandoned his positions and followed, attacking along a new battle line that stretched around the town that had been Virginia’s Colonial capital. Despite his army’s lackluster performance in this engagement, McClellan celebrated the battle in a letter to his wife written on May 6. “As soon as I came upon the field the men cheered like fiends,” he wrote, “and I saw at once that I could save the day. I immediately reinforced Hancock and arranged to support Hooker, advanced the whole line across the woods, filled up the gaps, and got everything in hand for whatever might occur. The result was that the enemy saw that he was gone if he remained in his position, and scampered during the night.” 11