Coming Fury, Volume 1

by Bruce Catton

  9. In view of the innumerable eulogies that have been written on Ellsworth, it should be remembered that the whole affair looked very different in the South. Commenting on the occupation of Alexandria, the Richmond Examiner printed the following: “One trait of true heroism has signalized this unhappy affair. A citizen of Alexandria, named Jackson, lacked the prudence to haul down the flag of his country, which streamed over his dwelling. That band of execrable cut-throats and jailbirds, known as the ‘Zouaves of New York,’ under the chief of all scoundrels, called Col. Ellsworth, surrounded the house of this Virginian and broke open the door to tear down the flag of the South. The courageous owner of that house neither fled nor submitted. He met the favorite hero of every Yankee there in the hall, he alone, against thousands, and shot him through the heart! As a matter of course, the magnanimous soldiery surrounded him and hacked him to pieces with sword bayonets, on the spot, in his own violated home. But he died a death which Emperors might envy, and his memory will live in history, and in the hearts of his countrymen, through endless generations.”

  6. Before the Night Came

  1. Letter of Senator Douglas to Virgil Hicox; from the collection of Elsie O. and Philip D. Sang, River Forest, Ill.

  2. Rhodes, Vol. II, 414; George Fort Milton, The Eve of Conflict, 567–69.

  3. Congressional Globe, 37th Congress, First Session, 30–31; letter of Alexander Stephens to his brother Linton, June 7, 1861, in the Stephens Papers, Brady Memorial Library, Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart, Purchase, N.Y.

  4. Moore’s Rebellion Record, Vol. II, Documents, 282–83.

  5. Rhodes, Vol. III, 466; O.R., Vol. II, 648–51; James Parton, With Butler in New Orleans, 127.

  6. O.R., Vol. II, 649, 653; Series Three, Vol. I, 243.

  7. Moore’s Rebellion Record, Vol. II, Documents, 437–38, 493. Cf Bell Irvin Wiley, Southern Negroes, 1861–1865, 176.

  8. Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 390–91.

  9. O.R., Vol. II, 653. McDowell’s personality and pre-war career are sketched in D.A.B., Vol. XII, 29–30.

  10. New York Tribune, May 27, 1861.

  11. Adam Gurowski, Diary, Vol. I, 41.

  12. Frederick W. Seward, Seward At Washington, Vol. II, 575; Diary of William T. Coggeshall, military secretary to Governor Dennison, entry for May 23, 1861, in the Illinois State Historical Library, Springfield; letter of W. W. Orme to Leonard Swett, May 14, 1861, in the David Davis Papers; W. T. Sherman to Charles Ewing, June 22, 1861, in the Ewing Family Papers, Library of Congress; Stanton to Buchanan, June 8, 1861, in the North American Review for November, 1879.

  13. Dunbar Rowland, Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist, Vol. V, 102–4; Varina Howell Davis, Jefferson Davis, Vol. II, 74–75; letter of Mrs. Wigfall to her daughter, May 30, 1861, in the Wigfall Family Papers, University of Texas.

  14. Jefferson Davis, Rise and Fall, Vol. I, 340; O.R., Vol. II, 927–29, giving Lee’s report on the situation at the time of the transfer. For a detailed appraisal, see Freeman’s R. E. Lee, Vol. I, 521, 527.

  15. Letters of E. Porter Alexander to his wife, dated June 4, 6 and 8, 1861, in the E. P. Alexander Papers, Southern Historical Collection; Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee, 35; O.R., Vol. II, 907; letter of John S. Manning to Mrs. Manning, June 9, 1861, in the Williams-Chesnut-Manning Papers, Southern Historical Collection.

  16. Letter of Edmund Kirby Smith to his mother, May 29, 1861, in the E. Kirby Smith Papers, Southern Historical Collection; letter of William Culbertson Robinson to Charles Abbot, May 29, 1861, in the William Culbertson Robinson Papers, Illinois State Historical Library; undated letter, written in May or June, 1861, from James H. Langhorne to his parents, in the Langhorne Family Papers, Virginia State Historical Society.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: To the Fiery Altar

  1. War In the Mountains

  1. McClellan’s autobiography, McClellan’s Own Story, goes into detail on his activities during the first months of the war. In the Oberlin College Library there is a copy of this book once owned by Jacob D. Cox, the Ohio Republican politician who was closely associated with McClellan in the early days in Ohio, and who later in the war became a competent general in his own right; and Cox wrote a number of pungent marginal notes, commenting on McClellan’s narrative, which are often worth examination. As a sample: on page 43 of his autobiography, McClellan remarks that Unionists in the west at the start of the war lacked organization, arms, supplies, money and officers, to say nothing of a general policy and a directing head, and adds: “It fell to me, perhaps more than to any one person, to supply those pressing wants, and at this distance I may say that the task was not unsatisfactorily performed.” Cox questions this, marginally, writing: “Where was the governor?”

  2. O.R., Vol. II, 49–50, 652. For a general account of the West Virginia situation, see Jacob D. Cox, McClellan in West Virginia, in B. & L., Vol. I, 126 ff.

  3. Moore’s Rebellion Record, Vol. I, Documents, 296–98; O.R., Vol. II, 66–67, 72–74; Charles Leib, Nine Months in the Quartermaster’s Department; or The Chances for Making a Million More, 14–15; John G. Nicolay, The Outbreak of the Rebellion, 144; Appleton’s Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 743–44.

  4. O.R., Vol. II, 197–98.

  5. Ibid, 236, 242.

  6. Cox, McClellan in West Virginia, 130–31; O.R., Vol. II, 208–9.

  7. O.R., Vol. II, 201, 206; Cox, op. cit., 132.

  8. Scott’s message of congratulations is in O.R., Vol. II, 204. McClellan’s message to his troops, 236.

  9. John Beatty, Memoirs of a Volunteer, 1861–1865, 21, 23, 31; McClellan’s Own Story, 59; Appleton’s Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 743–44.

  10. Jed. Hotchkiss, Virginia, Vol. III, Confederate Military History, 61–62.

  11. Moore’s Rebellion Record, Vol. II, Documents, 296.

  12. Charles Leib, Nine Months in the Quartermaster’s Department, 33–35.

  13. Ibid, 126–27.

  14. Jed. Hotchkiss, Virginia, Vol. III, Confederate Military History, 59–60; Moore’s Rebellion Record, Vol. I, Documents, 323–24.

  2. The Laws of War

  1. Murat Halstead in the Cincinnati Daily Commercial, July 1, 1861.

  2. Congressional Globe, 37th Congress, First Session, 2.

  3. Letter from T. J. Barnett to S. L. M. Barlow, May 27, 1861, in the Barlow Papers, at the Huntington Library.

  4. Adam Gurowski, Diary, Vol. I, 63–64, 66.

  5. Congressional Globe, 37th Congress, First Session, 4–5; Rhodes, Vol. III, 441.

  6. Basler, Vol. IV, 421–41.

  7. For the speeches and general debate in both houses of Congress, the writer has relied on the extensive verbatim reports in the American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 232, 234–36, 239–42, 244.

  8. Morse to Dr. James Wynne, May 2, 1861: from the Samuel F. B. Morse Papers, Library of Congress: notes from Allan Nevins.

  9. Congressional Globe, 37th Congress, First Session, 54, 97, 130.

  10. Appleton’s Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 246–50.

  3. A Head Full of Fire

  1. Appleton’s Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 43; New York Herald, July 4, 1861.

  2. D.A.B., Vol. XII, 429–31.

  3. Diary of Betty Herndon Maury, entry for July 10, 1861, in the Library of Congress; Moore’s Rebellion Record, Vol. II, Diary, 21; N.O.R., Vol. IV, 566–67.

  4. Notes by W. G. Cobb, in the Cameron Papers, Library of Congress; mss Recollections of C. D. Fishburne, in the Southern Historical Collection.

  5. “Letters of Francis Parkman,” edited by Wilbur R. Jacobs, Vol. I, 163.

  6. Moore’s Rebellion Record, Vol. II, Documents, 282–83.

  7. Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States, Vol. I, 272–75.

  8. Davis to Johnston, July 13, 1861, in the Joseph E. Johnston Papers at the Huntington Library.

  9. Letter of John S. Manning to Mrs. Manning, July 7, 1861, in the Williams-Chesnut-Manning Papers, Southern Historical Collection.

  10. James D. Richardson
, Messages and Papers of the Confederacy, Vol. II, 34–38, 40.

  11. Congressional Globe, 37th Congress, First Session, Appendix, with report of the Secretary of the Navy, 7–9.

  12. National Intelligencer, July 9, 1861, quoting a letter from Vicksburg dated June 16, 1861.

  13. For a thorough examination of the Confederacy’s economic weakness, see Charles W. Ramsdell, Behind the Lines in the Southern Confederacy. He concludes (p 103) that “the industrial weakness of the South was one of the decisive factors in its defeat.… The colonial economy which had been so characteristic of Southern business before the war had left the country without sufficient fluid capital or coin to sustain the currency.” Even more pointed is the verdict of John Christopher Schwab (The Confederate States of America, 1861–1865: a Financial and Industrial History of the South During the Civil War, 2–3): “The North was industrially much more advanced, its manufactures were vastly more extensive, its urban population was more numerous, its trade more advanced, its transportation system more highly developed—in a word, its resources were far superior to those of the South, and were the cause of the final overthrow of the Confederate government.” The editor of the Cologne Gazette, in Germany, wrote shortly after the outbreak of the war that “the poverty-stricken Don Quixotes of the Southern plantations gave battle to the roaring windmills and smoking chimneys of the wealthy North,” and remarked that the Confederacy was “in arms against the spirit of the century.” (Quoted in Moore’s Rebellion Record, Vol. I, Documents, 265–66.)

  14. Not long before the bombardment of Fort Sumter, the British correspondent William Howard Russell dined with the Confederate commissioners in Washington and wrote: “Mr. Lincoln they spoke of with contempt; Mr. Seward they evidently regarded as the ablest and most unscrupulous of their enemies; but the tone in which they alluded to the whole of the Northern people indicated their clear conviction that trade, commerce, the pursuit of gain, manufacture, and the base mechanical arts, had so degraded the whole race, they would never attempt to strike a blow in fair fight for what they prized so highly in theory and in words.” (My Diary, 31).

  15. American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 157.

  4. The Road to Bull Run

  1. O.R., Vol. II, 77–82, 93–97; Joseph B. Carr, Operations of 1861 about Fort Monroe,” B. & L., Vol. II, 150; Felix Gregory De Fontaine, “Shoulder to Shoulder,” Century Magazine, No. VI, Vol. I, 443; Moore’s Rebellion Record, Vol. I, Documents, 360–61.

  2. Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 319–20; New York Tribune, June 26, 1861; Adam Gurowski, Diary, Vol. I, 56.

  3. O.R., Vol. LI, Part One, 338–39, 369–70, 387.

  4. O.R., Vol. II, 718–21; Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 322–24; E. D. Townsend, Anecdotes of the Civil War in the United States, 55–57.

  5. O.R., Vol. II, 158–59, 163, 166–69, 187, 661, 691–96. This dreary exchange of messages is confusing enough to the modern student, and it is easy to see how it confused its authors. In his testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, Patterson makes it clear that he precisely obeyed what he understood Scott’s orders to be, and it is hard to feel that he alone was responsible for the fact that he never quite grasped what Scott wanted him to do. (Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, Part II, 1863, Bull Run, 5–7, 104). There is a sketch of Patterson’s career in D.A.B., Vol. XIV, 306–7.

  6. O.R., Vol. II, 485, 923; Vol. LI, Part Two, 688. For a sharp critique of Beauregard’s plan, see T. Harry Williams, Beauregard, 75–80. The New York Tribune, particularly in its issues of July 17 and 18, 1861, appears to have given about all the information regarding McDowell’s plans that Beauregard could have needed, and although the feminine spies in Washington are sometimes credited with having had a decisive influence on the battle of Bull Run it does not seem to this writer that their romantic activities really made very much difference. (It ought to be remembered, in this connection, that no part of the plans which Beauregard is said to have drawn up as a result of the information thus received was ever actually put into operation.) In his July 17 message to Davis announcing that a major engagement was imminent, Beauregard simply said, “The enemy has assailed my outposts in heavy force,” making no mention of the supposedly all-important messages received 24 hours earlier from Washington. (Roman, Military Operations, Vol. I, 90). McDowell’s advance was so heavily publicized all around that Beauregard would have had to be exceedingly stupid (which he decidedly was not) to have remained in ignorance of it.

  7. O.R., Vol. II, 472, 686, 691, 901.

  8. B. & L., Vol. I, 122–23.

  9. Rev. A. M. Stewart, Camp, March and Battlefield; or, Three Years and a Half with the Army of the Potomac, 15; O.R., Vol. II, 168.

  10. O.R., Vol. II, 303–5.

  11. George Wilkes, The Great Battle, 6–7; Francis F. Meagher, Last Days of the 69th in Virginia, 6; D. G. Crotty, Four Years Campaign in the Army of the Potomac, 20. McDowell’s report on the battle of Bull Run recites the difficulties of the march, and asserts that the men were more wearied by the obstacles in the road and the slow pace set than by the distance covered. McDowell adds that the men were “unaccustomed to marching, their bodies not in condition for that kind of work, and not used to carrying even the load of ‘light marching order’.” (O.R., Vol. II, 323–24.) Cf Colin R. Ballard, The Military Genius of Abraham Lincoln, 56: “The Federals were really defeated by their own exhaustion.”

  12. Meagher, op. cit., 10.

  13. Roman, Military Operations, Vol. I, 74–75; B. & L., Vol. I, 203.

  5. Dust Clouds Against the Sky

  1. George Wilkes, The Great Battle, 17–19; Edmund C. Stedman, The Battle of Bull Run, 15–17.

  2. O.R., Vol. II, 318–19, 326, 559; E. Porter Alexander, Military Memoirs of a Confederate, 30–31; Joseph Mills Hanson, Bull Run Remembers, 4.

  3. Elisha H. Rhodes, The First Campaign of the Second Rhode Island Infantry, 18–19; Martin A. Haynes, A History of the Second Regiment, New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry, 23–24.

  4. Mss diary of Samuel Heintzelman, Library of Congress, 36–37.

  5. O.R., Vol. II, 319, 349, 369, 559; Hanson, loc. cit.; Francis F. Wilshin, Manassas, 11–12.

  6. Alexander, Military Memoirs, 33–35; Johnston’s report, O.R., Vol. II, 474–75.

  7. McHenry Howard, Recollections of a Maryland Confederate Soldier and Staff Officer under Johnston, Jackson and Lee, 34–38; W. W. Goldsborough, The Maryland Line in the Confederate States Army, 19–20; Alexander, 32–33.

  8. Richmond Enquirer, Aug. 9, 1861; letter of Gen. Beauregard to the editors of the Century Magazine, Aug. 1, 1884, in the Palmer Collection, Western Reserve Historical Society. Porter Alexander, whose account of the fight on the Henry House plateau is especially vivid, remarks: “New troops going into action are very prone to ‘fire and fall back’—to touch and let go—as one handles a piece of hot iron when uncertain how hot it may be.” (Military Memoirs, 33.)

  9. Alexander, 35; Richmond Enquirer, Aug. 9, 1861.

  10. T. B. Warder and James W. Catlett, Battle of Young’s Branch, or Manassas Plain, 74–76.

  11. John W. Imboden, Incidents of the First Bull Run, in B. & L., Vol. I, 234–35; Hanson, 5.

  12. Edwin S. Barrett, What I Saw at Bull Run, 20–21; Hanson, 6; O.R., Vol. II, 347–48, 391–92, 403; Alexander, 39; Col. William W. Averell in Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, Part II, 1863, 216.

  13. Hanson, 6–7; Wilshin, 14–15; Moore’s Rebellion Record, Vol. II, Documents, 95; Charles Minor Blackford, in Susan Leigh Blackford’s Letters from Lee’s Army, 25.

  14. McDowell’s report, O. R., Vol. II, 319–20; Captain Woodbury, ibid, 334. After telling how the discipline of the Union troops collapsed during the retreat, Woodbury remarks: “We cannot suppose that the troops of the enemy had attained a higher degree of discipline than our own, but they acted on the defensive, and were not equally exposed to disorganization.”

  15. Alexander, 41–42; Davis, Rise and Fall, Vol. I, 3
49–50; Mss. Diary of Edmund Ruffin, Library of Congress; Avery Craven, Edmund Ruffin, Southerner, 230. There are different versions of Jackson’s remark about the need for a speedy pursuit. T. Harry Williams is inclined to skepticism, and Frank Vandiver (Mighty Stonewall) says that “caution must be used” regarding it. The remark does seem to be wholly in character with Jackson’s aggressive attitude.

  6. Death of the Minute Man

  1. McDowell’s report, O.R., Vol. II, 321. W. T. Sherman (ibid, 370–71) wrote that “there was no positive order to retreat, although for an hour it had been going on by the operation of the men themselves,” and Brig. Gen. Robert C. Schenck reported (360) that the retreat “seemed to me to be occasioned more by the fears of frightened teamsters, and of hurrying and excited civilians (who ought never to have been there) than even by the needless disorder and want of discipline of straggling soldiers.” The classic account of the picnic and the rout is of course William Howard Russell’s. His story of his own adventures at Bull Run begins on page 163 of My Diary.

  2. Sarah Ellen Blackwell, A Military Genius: Life of Anna Ella Carroll, Vol. I, 77–79; Russell, 168–70; Albert Gallatin Riddle, Recollections of War Times, 48–51.

  3. O.R., Vol. II, 316.

  4. Ibid, 747–53.

  5. Beauregard’s report, ibid, 497; report of M. L. Bonham, 519; Davis to Adjutant General Cooper, 987; Roman, Military Operations, Vol. I, 111.

  6. Roman, Vol. I, 114; Davis, Rise and Fall, Vol. I, 352–53; Alexander, 49. Alexander was present at the conference; he identifies the staff officer as Major R. C. Hill, adding: “Nothing that he had ever done had justified his nickname, but it arose from something peculiar in his eye, tones and manner, all suggestive of suppressed excitement.”