On June 28, as McClellan began a retreat to the James River, the more minor battle of Garnett’s and Golding’s Farms took place. Jackson struck the Federal army from the north at the White Oak Swamp on June 30. And finally, on July 1, Lee’s army attempted a frontal attack at Malvern Hill to crush the retreating Federals, but his men were hammered by well-placed Union cannon that fired with devastating effect—sometimes even to Union soldiers. As Thomas L. Livermore, a New Hampshire soldier, described it,
Shells flew all around us, and the wonder was that more were not hurt. I turned my head to the left and saw the battery and the gunners, springing to their work amid the smoke. I saw one pull the string, saw the flash of the piece, heard the roar, and the whiz of the shell, heard it burst, heard the humming of the fragments, and wondered if I was to be hit, and quicker than a flash something stung my leg on the calf, and I limped out of the ranks, a wounded man. 4
Despite the success at Malvern Hill, it was by now clear that McClellan’s Peninsular campaign was a strategic failure. By July 3 he had withdrawn the Army of the Potomac to Harrison’s Landing and awaited a northward movement. It was over.
Other wheels were turning, however. In mid-July, Lee dispatched Jackson northward to Gordonsville to threaten the advance of Maj. Gen. John Pope, whose Army of Virginia occupied the Shenandoah Valley. This established the basis for the Second Manassas campaign, also called Second Bull Run.
Jackson hit Union Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks at Cedar Mountain on August 9 in an affair significantly mismanaged on both sides. Subsequently, both armies moved northward, and by late August, Jackson interposed himself between Pope’s army and Washington. “His sun-burned cap was lifted from his brow, and he was gazing toward the west, where the splendid August sun was about to kiss the distant crest of the Blue Ridge, which stretched far away, bathed in azure and gold,” wrote Jackson’s staff officer Robert L. Dabney of his celebrated commander. “And his blue eye, beaming with martial pride, returned the rays of the evening with almost equal brightness. . . . His face beaming with delight, [he] said, ‘Who could not conquer, with such troops as these?’” 5 The opposing Federal commander heard no such praise from his fellow soldiers. Pope’s competence had been brought into question a number of times, and a common feeling of distrust had developed. “I don’t care for John Pope one pinch of owl dung,” Union Brig. Gen. Samuel D. Sturgis wrote on August 23. 6 He was far from alone in his sentiments.
Pope’s seventy-five thousand faced about fifty-five thousand men commanded by Lee as the armies converged on the old battleground of Manassas. By August 27 Jackson had concentrated his forces at Manassas Junction, capturing a vast array of Union supply trains. Confederate Maj. Gen. James Longstreet approached from the west. Two days later Federal troops occupied the old battleground at Henry House Hill, as well as the towns of Centreville and Haymarket and lay scattered southward toward Brentsville. Deciding the moment had come, Pope attacked Jackson from both east and west. The Federal attacks westward were poorly coordinated, piecemeal affairs. Vicious fighting erupted at Groveton and along an unfinished railroad that passed by the base of Jackson’s position at Stony Ridge. “I can see him now,” wrote Edward McCrady of the Confederate Brig. Gen. Maxcy Gregg at Groveton, “as with his drawn sword, that old Revolutionary scimitar we all knew so well, he walked up and down the line, and hear him as he appealed to us to stand by him and die there. ‘Let us die here, my men, let us die here.’ And I do not think that I exaggerate when I say that our little band responded to his appeal, and were ready to die, at bay, there if necessary.” 7
On August 30, the battle’s second day, a massive attack by Longstreet on the southern end of the Union line transformed the battle into a great Confederate victory. Jackson struck at Pope’s northern flank, and the Federal army fell back. Pope withdrew toward Centreville, but a rear-guard action ensued on September 1 at Chantilly. There, the Confederate divisions of Maj. Gen. Dick Ewell (who had lost his leg at Groveton on August 28) and Maj. Gen. A. P. Hill struck Federal forces commanded by Maj. Gen. Philip Kearny and Brig. Gen. Isaac I. Stevens. The Confederates were turned back, but both Union commanders were killed. Charles F. Walcott, a captain in the Twenty-first Massachusetts Infantry, described Kearny’s death:
The General, entirely alone, apparently in uncontrollable rage at our disregard of his peremptory orders to advance, forced his horse through the deep, sticky mud of the cornfield past the left of the regiment, passing within a few feet of where I was standing. I watched him moving in the murky twilight through the corn, and, when less than twenty yards away, saw his horse suddenly rear and turn, and half-a-dozen muskets flash around him: so died the intrepid soldier, Gen. Philip Kearny! 8
In the east Robert E. Lee was beginning his ascent to greatness and fame by beating back the Yankees from Richmond. In the west Gen. Braxton Bragg was rising to great notoriety by outflanking Union forces in Tennessee. Significantly alarmed about Charleston, Davis sent Bragg to investigate the situation and then a week later dispatched his old friend Samuel Cooper there also to find out what was going on. 9
The problem of Charleston’s defense festered. The city was nominally under the supervision of Maj. Gen. John C. Pemberton. According to Francis Pickens, Pemberton was “confused and uncertain about everything.” 10 Against nearly everyone else, Davis vigorously defended Pemberton. Late in August Pickens complained again about Pemberton. “[Pemberton] had no idea of defending the city [following orders to do so],” wrote Pickens, who implored Davis to remove him. The president stood by his old friend, however. 11
Along the Mississippi River, combined action resumed on August 5 with an attack on Baton Rouge by Confederate infantry. Yankees had occupied the city on May 12, before commencing operations toward Vicksburg. After their failure in Vicksburg, the Union troops had retreated to Baton Rouge by July 26. During this period some changes took place among the Confederate commanders. After being commissioned a full general in April, Bragg, who held President Davis’s favor, was assigned to replace P. G. T. Beauregard as commander of the Army of Mississippi, assuming charge on August 15. “The great changes of command and commanders here has well nigh overburdened me,” Bragg wrote his wife on July 22, “but I hope yet to mark the enemy before I break down.” 12
For his part Beauregard was once again furious. “If the country be satisfied to have me laid on the shelf by a man who is either demented or a traitor to his high trust—well, let it be so,” he confided to his friend and staff officer Thomas Jordan. Beauregard went on:
I require rest & will endeavor meanwhile by study and reflection to fit myself better for the darkest hours of our trial, which, I foresee, are yet to come. . . . My consolation is, that the difference between “that individual” and myself is—that, if he were to die to day, the whole country would rejoice at it, whereas, I believe, if the same thing were to happen to me, they would regret it. 13
The fate of Vicksburg was a terrific worry back in Richmond. The fortified bastion on the Mississippi River meant control of the lower part of the waterway. If lost to the Yankees, the result would be disastrous. Yet with so much action in the east, there seemed to be little Davis could do to bolster his support for the garrison there. Corinth, Mississippi, where Beauregard had retreated following the battle of Shiloh, was under a slow, tedious advance by Union Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck. 14 “If Miss. troops lying in camp when not retreating under Beauregard, were at home,” mused Davis, “they would probably keep a section of the river free for our use and closed against Yankee transports.” 15 Writing the state’s governor Davis confessed, “My efforts to provide for the military wants of your section have been sadly frustrated.” 16
Davis continued to urge governors to provide soldiers and allow his government to assign them for duty and made vague promises about helping the states resist attacks by Federal troops. “With respect to conscripts, the law of Congress does not allow new Regts. to be formed from their number,” the president wrote Governor Th
omas Moore of Louisiana. “I trust that the new Commandg. Genl., with your assistance, and the co-operation of the patriotic citizens of Louisiana will be able to keep the enemy in check . . . until we shall be able to drive the invader altogether from the soil.” 17 But such words were of little comfort to recipient or sender.
A more explosive situation was brewing in Arkansas, where Governor Henry Rector wanted to pull his state away from the Confederacy altogether. “Arkansas lost, abandoned, subjugated, is not Arkansas as she entered the confederate government,” Rector declared in a proclamation. “Nor will she remain a confederate State, desolated as a wilderness.” Rector threatened to build “a new ark and launch it on new waters, seeking a haven somewhere, of equality, safety, and rest.” 18 Responding to Rector’s proclamation, Francis Lubbock of Texas wrote the president, reassuring him as best he could that support would come from the Deep South. “This is no time for bickerings, heart-burnings, and divisions among a people struggling for existence as a free Government,” wrote Lubbock. 19 True, but false, too.
Davis, worried over the independence of governors and what they might try, continued his run-ins on paper with the most cantankerous of them all, Joe Brown of Georgia. Brown wrote his friend Aleck Stephens, still in Georgia:
I deeply regret that the President, whom I have regarded as a lead State Rights man, should have given in his adhesion to the doctrines of unlimited congressional powers. I am satisfied however that my position is the position of the old State Rights leaders from the days of 1798 till the present time, and I am willing to stand or fall by these doctrines. I entered into this revolution to contribute my humble mite to sustain the rights of the states and prevent the consolidation of the Government, and I am still a rebel till this object is accomplished, no matter who may be in power. 20
As Stephens lay in bed, away from his post in Richmond, he not only reflected on letters from his partners in opposition to Davis, but he also had time to write out a list of his “negroes, with their values.” He listed thirty-one names, starting with “Harry” and ending with “Melissa, a child,” and placed their collective value at $12,950. (A year later he calculated their total value at $32,150. For some, at least for a time, the war seemed to be profitable.) While the Confederate vice president was not willing to help his government in Richmond, he was able to tally his estate. 21 It was an unencouraging sign.
Even the friendliest of Deep South governors had their apparent demands, or at least concerns, to share with the president. “The isolated condition of the States West of the Miss. River, since the fall of New Orleans, and the virtual possession of that River by the enemy rendered it proper that the several executives of those States should confer together freely and fully as to their wants and necessities, and the best means for their protection and defense,” Lubbock and his colleagues from Arkansas, Missouri, and Louisiana informed Davis. “We should have a Commanding General, having territorial jurisdiction over all the States West of the Mississippi River. . . . We must have money for the support of the Army. . . . We must have arms, and also ammunition . . . [and] the General sent should be eminently gifted with administrative ability.” 22
At Chattanooga Maj. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith was preparing an invasion of Kentucky that hoped to retake much of the territory captured and occupied by Federal troops. The Confederate plan called for Bragg to concentrate at the rail center of Chattanooga while Kirby Smith would move against the Union forces controlling the Cumberland Gap to open a thoroughfare into central Kentucky. The two Confederate armies would then unite to destroy the army of Union Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell, which had been moving toward Chattanooga, and push him from Tennessee. Because of its complexity, it was an audacious plan strategically, but one that might work if the timing were handled perfectly and if preliminary events favored the South.
Smaller-scale operations were a part of the Confederate effort. Col. John Hunt Morgan was assigned the task of trapping Union Brig. Gen. George W. Morgan, who was presently at Cumberland Gap. Beginning a forced march from Sparta, Tennessee, John Morgan’s raiders attempted to cut the Louisville & Nashville Railroad and attack Gallatin on August 12, northeast of Nashville. There, they skirmished with a Union garrison and destroyed an eight-hundred-foot-long railroad bridge over the Cumberland River as well as a railroad tunnel between Gallatin and Bowling Green. The commander of the Federal force, Col. William P. Boone, had left camp to visit his wife, who was lying ill in a hotel in town. On leaving the hotel Boone was surrounded and captured. John Morgan’s men infiltrated the town so quietly that most of the pickets and guards were asleep and surprised as well. The result was, in the words of Union Capt. Walworth Jenkins, “a shameful and complete surprise within two hours after Colonel Boone had left his guards ‘on the alert and doing their duty,’ and the surrender of the whole camp, on guard, and at the tunnel and bridges without a shot being fired for the defense of their position, the reputation of their State, or the honor of their country.” 23
THESE actions in the western theater, especially in the critically important border state of Kentucky, were fought against the politically volatile backdrop of coming emancipation. On July 17 President Lincoln had signed the Second Confiscation Act, after considerable debate in Congress. The act stated that slaves held by those in rebellion against the government of the United States would be set free after coming into regions of Federal control or occupation. Vigorously supported by radical Republicans, and seen as not going far enough by many abolitionists, the act was highly controversial in the North. It called for the confiscation of slaves as property, suggested that other types of property also could be seized, and allowed the government both to employ freed slaves in various tasks as well as to establish a provision for colonization somewhere outside the United States (an idea that had been batted around in Congress as a solution to the slave dilemma for several decades). Although Lincoln was not satisfied with all parts of the act, and many elements were never enforced (as is the case with many complex laws), he had signed it. It signaled another step toward transforming the character of the war, and it upset nearly everyone in one way or another.
“We think you are strangely and disastrously remiss in the discharge of your official and imperative duty with regard to the emancipating provisions of the new Confiscation Act,” implored the powerful, radical, eccentric editor Horace Greeley in an open letter to Lincoln. The letter, titled “The Prayer of Twenty Millions,” was published in the New York Tribune on August 20. “We think you are unduly influenced by the councils,” continued Greeley, “the representations, the menaces of certain fossil politicians hailing from the Border Slave States. . . . The Rebels from the first have been eager to confiscate, imprison, scourge, and kill; we have fought wolves with the devices of sheep.” 24 In response to this public stab at his policy, Lincoln sent a reply to the editor and his paper two days later. “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union,” Lincoln wrote, “and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. . . . I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could be free.” 25 Greeley printed the text of Lincoln’s letter on August 25.
While Lincoln was stepping into considerably more controversial waters as chief executive, Secretary of State William H. Seward wrote off concerns about the violent war spilling over into politics. “Assassination is not an American practice or habit,” he told John Bigelow, the U.S. consul in Paris, on July 15, “and one so vicious and so desperate cannot be engrafted into our political system.” 26
MEANWHILE, the Lincoln administration continued to experiment with command structure, as it had throughout the first part of the war. Having given up on the timid George McClellan in March, Lincoln next appointed a “War Board” to run the army consisting of his bureau chiefs, alo
ng with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. When this arrangement proved too cumbersome, with too many cooks in the kitchen, Lincoln found a western general whom he lacked faith in on the battlefield but who might serve as an excellent glorified clerk—Henry Halleck. In July he brought Halleck to Washington and reinstated a conventional general in chief role for him.
In the South there were no such neat solutions. Yankee armies still held close to the Confederate capital, and Navy Secretary Stephen R. Mallory confided to his diary, “I feel that if my life would gain this victory [before Richmond] it should be instantly offered; nay, I would seize and glory in, the chance of sacrificing it for so great a result.” He also began to sour on the prospects for the Confederacy. “England . . . may be here fitted by the annihilation of our cotton producing power,” he wrote. “Her efforts to raise this staple in India, Egypt & Africa indicate her determination to look elsewhere than to us for it.” Mallory also reflected on his lack of confidence in Jefferson Davis. “The Presdt. does not consult his cabinet either as to plans or arrangements of campaigns, or the appointments of military men to office.” 27
While Mallory lacked confidence in Davis, others lacked confidence in Mallory. Blaming him for the inaction of Confederate forces on the water and the failure to raise any kind of naval force that could respectably take on the Yankees, Congress took action. It appointed a Joint Select Committee in the House to investigate the Navy Department and Mallory. The second session of the First Regular Congress of the Confederacy was just getting under way, called to open on August 18. It would be the most contentious yet.
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