by Bruce Catton
He found it without delay. Polk had been warned that some kind of move was coming, and when his scouts told him about the approach of Grant’s flotilla he sent Gideon Pillow with some 2500 men across the river to support the small Confederate garrison in Belmont. By midmorning Grant’s men were fully engaged with these troops and a small but red-hot battle was on.
Grant had things all his own way, during the morning. The Confederates were driven out of their position, detached fragments huddling in the lee of the river bank while the Federals went roistering through the captured camp, seizing military equipment, picking up souvenirs, listening to speeches by their officers, and in general celebrating a glorious victory before the battle was half over. Polk had supposed that another column was going to attack Columbus itself, but nothing of the kind happened, and before long he sent reinforcements across to rally the beaten men and to cut off Grant’s line of retreat; meanwhile, his heavy guns opened a sharp fire on the captured camp, and Grant’s gunboats, totally unarmored, were unable to move in and make a stand-up fight of it. In the end, the Federals had to fight their way out, leaving all of the loot and many of their own wounded behind; they reached their transports late in the afternoon and got away for Cairo, but the Confederates could and did boast that Grant’s men had been routed. Pillow reported that in the pursuit his troops found quantities of “knapsacks, arms, ammunition, blankets, overcoats, mess-chests, horses, wagons and dead and wounded men,” and a Louisiana soldier said that most of his regiment was outfitted after the battle with captured blankets, coats, and rifled muskets. Grant had lost more than 600 men and he had accomplished nothing whatever, aside from inflicting equal losses on his foe and giving his men some combat experience. His case was curiously like that of Robert E. Lee: the first engagement under his command was not a success. Confederates who read their Bibles noted that the Union troops came down from southern Illinois, which was known locally as Egypt, and were beaten by Confederates, many of whom came from Memphis, and they cited a Scriptural prophecy: “Egypt shall gather them, and Memphis shall bury them.”18
Belmont, in short, might as well not have been fought at all. It meant nothing and it depressed the spirits of many Northern patriots, one officer writing bitterly that “it is called a victory, but if such be victory God save us from defeat.” It greatly encouraged the Southerners, who felt that they had won a significant triumph; General Polk believed that he had beaten off a serious attempt to take Columbus, and he got formal congratulations from President Davis and General Johnston, along with a resolution of thanks from the Confederate Congress.19 But nothing had been changed. General Johnston’s bluff had not yet been called. Until it was called, at Cumberland Gap, along the river, or somewhere else, by a soldier whose will to fight outweighed his instincts of caution, Tennessee would remain in Confederate hands.
CHAPTER TWO
A Vast Future Also
1: Magazine of Discord
Along the border all the fires were burning, producing a heat that made the war expand and an evil light that made the expansion visible. In the two capitals, posted so close together at the eastern end of the border country, the heat and light had strange effects. The men of government had to move slowly, for they were trying to organize and direct chaos itself; yet there was upon them a growing necessity to move quickly, to act even as they sought to prepare the means of action, to assert mastery over this war before it imposed its own monstrous rules.
The impulse which had forced the soldiers to fight at Bull Run before they were ready to fight had by no means spent its force, and it seemed clear that simply to drift could be ruinous. Whether one stood for the North, for the South, or for some vanished middle ground that once had room for both, the situation as it existed was intolerable. Every man had to look to the future, and no matter what he hoped to see there he had to work desperately to bring it into existence. It was a time when every American was impatient.
Among the impatient were these two excellent professional soldiers, Generals Joseph E. Johnston and P. G. T. Beauregard, who commanded the Confederacy’s armed forces in northern Virginia. Between them these two had won at Bull Run, had found themselves unable to pursue the routed Federals when that battle ended, and for weeks thereafter had held their army in camp north and east of Centreville with outposts thrown forward so far that on bright days the vedettes could look across the Potomac and see the unfinished dome of the United States Capitol in Washington. They were dissimilar types, and they lived these days in a state of courtly, unostentatious rivalry—Johnston first in command, Beauregard second, the ranking somewhat fogged by Beauregard’s glittering reputation and his native inability to understand that he had an immediate superior. Early in August Beauregard had proposed that they move forward, attack the Federal outposts, and see if they could not provoke the Yankees into fighting a battle in the open, outside of the Washington lines.1 Johnston, cautious by nature and conscious that his army was very little stronger than it had been at the time of Bull Run, rejected the idea; but as fall came the two men agreed that it was time to strike a blow instead of waiting passively to see what the enemy might do, and at the end of September they sat in conference with Jefferson Davis at Johnston’s Fairfax Courthouse headquarters to project a decisive offensive. With them was the third man in their army’s hierarchy, Gustavus W. Smith, a Kentucky-born West Pointer who until recently had been commissioner of streets in New York City, now a Confederate major general.
All four men could see one thing readily enough: the Federal Army in front of Washington was growing faster than their own was growing, and if there ever was to be a Confederate offensive it had better take place quickly. Johnston remarked that “decisive action before the winter was important to us,” and none of the others disagreed; the question was how such action could be made possible.2 The soldiers believed that their army ought to be strongly reinforced, and they proposed in substance that Davis raise it to a strength of 60,000 men—nearly double its present size—by arming new recruits and by bringing in troops from every point in the deep South that was not actually under attack. With such an army, they argued, they could cross the Potomac, bring on a battle northwest of Washington, and win a victory that would virtually establish Southern independence. They believed that the Virginia theater was all-important. Smith spoke for the trio when he declared, “Success here at this time saves everything—defeat here loses all.” No one, said Smith, questioned “the disastrous results of remaining inactive throughout the winter.”3
This was true enough; and yet the generals were asking for the impossible. There were plenty of recruits to be had, but the weapons for them simply were not at hand. The War Department had placed contracts for the manufacture of weapons but Southern manufacturing facilities were wholly inadequate and so far the results had been negligible. Arms contracts had also been placed overseas, but very few arms had actually arrived; the procurement program was poorly managed, and also the derided Federal blockade was beginning to be somewhat effective. Mr. Davis, who was conscious of the deficiency, remarked sadly, long afterward: “The simple fact was, the country had gone to war without counting the cost.” It was quite true, as the Richmond Examiner was insisting, that “the idea of waiting for blows instead of inflicting them is altogether unsuited to the genius of our people,” but blows could not be inflicted without guns; for the moment the genius of the people was sadly crippled.4
There were, to be sure, numbers of troops at various points in the South who were not at the moment menaced by advancing Federals, and the generals felt justified in demanding that the Confederacy concentrate its available strength at the point of greatest danger. But the kind of concentration they wanted was, at the moment, a political impossibility. The Confederacy was still as much an association of independent and equal states as it was a nation, and the governors who insisted (with the full support of their constituencies) that proper garrisons be maintained in places which were not then under attack, but which conc
eivably would be as soon as the Yankees bestirred themselves vigorously, had to be heeded. Mr. Davis had to exercise his authority within the limits of a system under which the wishes of the separate states were all but sacrosanct. He had written recently to Virginia’s Governor John Letcher that he would adhere to “my fixed determination not to have conflict with the Governors of the States and in all things to seek for that cordial co-operation with them which alone can enable us to succeed in our present struggle,”5 and although in the years ahead he would be violently wrenched away from this program he could not at this particular stage of the war follow any other.
This fact was crippling to the Confederacy, but it was unavoidable. The Southern people might in truth be all fire and ardor, but they were bound by the rigid limits of the theorem on which they had seceded. The same law of state sovereignty which had kept Washington from touching the institution of slavery now kept Richmond from defending the institution effectively; and although Mr. Davis saw what lay ahead he was tied by what lay behind. So his conference with the generals ended with gloomy agreement that nothing in particular could be done. The army at Fairfax Courthouse would remain inert, waiting for the blockade runners to bring the essential weapons over the sea from England, waiting for the South’s own rural mills and blacksmith shops to meet their contracts, waiting for the restless thousands of recruits to be armed and equipped for combat—waiting, as well, for the enemy to strike a blow and for demonstration of the fact that the Federal power could arm even more men and that the odds against the South would constantly grow longer. The cost, as Mr. Davis remarked, had not been counted, and the longer payment was deferred the worse the final settlement was going to be.
Reality as seen in Richmond, in other words, was not quite like the roseate visions that had inspired the founding fathers at Montgomery half a year earlier; and indeed some of the original Montgomery crowd were drifting away now, unable or unwilling to go on with the roles Montgomery had given them. Blustery Robert Toombs was no longer Secretary of State. He had resigned in July, at odds with Jefferson Davis, disgusted with the outside world for its refusal to recognize his foreign ministry, perhaps disgusted with the war itself for its failure to make more prominent use of Robert Toombs; the real trouble probably being that the cabinet just did not offer scope for his turbulent energies. Perhaps the army could use him. The army would soon find out, for Toombs had taken a brigadier’s commission and was in command of a brigade of Georgia troops in Johnston’s army; a soldier in spite of his own lack of military experience and his outspoken contempt for West Point, its teachings and its graduates. He was replaced in the cabinet by the distinguished Virginian, Robert M. T. Hunter, one-time member of the United States Senate, a conservative suspected of being willing to consider overtures regarding peace.6
Toombs was not the only man who found Army service preferable to a cabinet post. Leroy Pope Walker had been neither happy nor effective as head of the War Department. Frail, a poor administrator and a man who knew very little of military affairs, he had been a natural target for every complaint arising from the inaction of Southern armies and the nonappearance of the munitions of war, and although he had perhaps done just about as well as anyone had a right to expect he was under mounting criticism. He resigned in mid-September, solaced with a pleasant letter from Mr. Davis and an appointment as brigadier general, and went to the Gulf Coast for duty. In looking for a successor, Mr. Davis apparently considered the appointment of Robert E. Lee, and gave some thought as well to his friend Leonidas Polk; awarded the post at last, first on an “acting” basis and then definitely, to Judah P. Benjamin, who had been his attorney general and who, before secession, had been United States Senator from Louisiana.7 Benjamin was suave, subtle, intelligent, deviously brilliant, and in the end Mr. Davis considered him indispensable; but to be Confederate Secretary of War called for just the qualities which Benjamin lacked—blunt frankness in counsel, and an instinct for being disarmingly candid with the electorate. Frankness and candor were needed on the issue that had driven Walker from the cabinet—the fact that the new nation was not yet armed for vigorous offensive warfare. Instead, the administration tried to shield the country from an unpleasant truth and put itself in the position of justifying inaction as a chosen policy. It at least seemed to argue that it was fighting a purely defensive war in which it would defend every acre of Southern soil but would commit no aggression and attempt no invasions, and in this thesis lay the seeds of a crippling estrangement between government and the people.
The estrangement was not yet visible. On November 6, indeed, there was a stirring demonstration of wholesome unanimity. Going to the polls to name a regular constitutional government to replace the provisional regime set up at Montgomery, the people of the Confederacy unhesitatingly named Jefferson Davis for a six-year term and designated Alexander Stephens as Vice-President.8 There had been no opposition, no campaigning, no dissenting voices, and no contest. As far as an election could say so, all was harmony.
Yet there was dissent. General Beauregard had a grievance, and so did Joe Johnston, and Vice-President Stephens and his friends were beginning to realize that they also had grievances. The reasons for these grievances were dissimilar and inadequate, not to say ridiculous, signifying perhaps little more than the fact that both professional soldiers and professional politicians can be very hard to get along with. But their existence was a bad omen. This government was new and small, and it might not have room for the inner turbulences which are characteristic of American administrations.
Beauregard’s case seemed to reflect little more than Napoleonic vanity on the loose. It had begun more or less harmlessly, with Beauregard publicly criticizing Confederate commissary arrangements, drawing a mild and even-tempered rebuke from the President, and subsiding gracefully enough. Then Beauregard submitted a report on the Bull Run campaign, making it appear that interference at Richmond had kept him from executing a grand offensive design which could have captured Washington; and a summary of this document unfortunately appeared in the press before the report itself reached the President. Davis composed another rebuke, much less even-tempered than the first, began to assemble evidence to show that it was not he who had kept Confederate soldiers from winning the war, and suggested that Beauregard’s report “seemed to be an attempt to exalt yourself at my expense.” Beauregard countered, on November 3, by sending a letter to the editor of the Richmond Whig—an astounding epistle, which was headed “Centreville, Virginia,—within hearing of the Enemy’s guns,” and which blandly remarked that “my attention has been called to the unfortunate controversy” arising out of his Bull Run report for which the President had just reprimanded him. The letter then went on to remark: “If certain minds cannot understand the difference between patriotism, the highest civic virtue, and office seeking, the lowest civic occupation, I pity them from the bottom of my heart.” In case anyone had missed the point, Beauregard added that he was not and never would be a candidate for any office; once independence was won, he just wanted to retire to private life.9
Beauregard’s grievance grew from nothing much more solid than a simple inability to get along with the President who had appointed him. So, as a matter of fact, did Johnston’s grievance, although it came out in a different way. Johnston, who seemed to be so courtly and self-effacing, unexpectedly displayed an abiding concern over rank, which unhinged him almost as badly as Beauregard had been unhinged by the realization that his fame had to be shared and controlled. On August 31 the Confederate Congress confirmed the appointments of the men Mr. Davis had nominated as full generals—Samuel Cooper, the Adjutant and Inspector General of the army; Albert Sidney Johnston, Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, and P. G. T. Beauregard. These nominations stipulated that the appointments would be effective as of different dates, and under military law the commission of earliest date outranked the others. Reading this list and the accompanying dates, Joseph E. Johnston discovered to his horror that the date of his commissio
n made him junior to Cooper, Sidney Johnston, and Lee. Of the five generals, he ranked fourth.10
According to Joe Johnston, this was insulting and illegal. Confederate law said that generals of identical commissions would have relative rank according to rank held in the Old Army—the United States Army, that is, from which one and all had resigned. In that army Joseph E. Johnston had been Quartermaster General, with brigadier’s rank, and none of the other four had ranked higher than colonel. Therefore, said the aggrieved general, he was entitled to top rank in the Confederate Army: if he did not get it, both justice and he personally would be outraged. (The controversy actually was over the relative merits of staff and line commissions. The determining factor, in Mr. Davis’s opinion, was the command an officer had held in the line. As a pre-war brigadier, Johnston of course had had a staff appointment.)
For a general to argue for higher rank is nothing new, but rarely has anyone submitted a longer or a more impassioned argument than the one composed now by General Johnston; nor, in the opinion of Mr. Davis and his Secretary of War, the astute lawyer Mr. Benjamin, did any sort of argument often rest on a weaker base. Mr. Davis coldly gave Johnston a two-sentence reply: “I have just received and read your letter of the 12th instant. Its language is, as you say, unusual; its arguments and its statements utterly one-sided, and its insinuations as unfounded as they are unbecoming.”11 With this, General Johnston had to be content. His rank remained number four.
All of this actually had done no immediate harm. Davis’s and Johnston’s angry exchange took place a fortnight ahead of the Fairfax Courthouse conference, without affecting their ability to have a reasoned exchange of views. What was significant about both the Beauregard and Johnston cases was the indication that the Confederate President was not going to try very hard to accommodate himself to a proud and touchy general; and Southern characteristics being as they were, he was likely to have to deal with a large number of proud and touchy generals before the war ended. Furthermore, even though the Confederate nation was set up under a one-party regime, there would inevitably develop, sooner or later, some sort of anti-administration party. Here was clear warning that when that happened, at least two of the five ranking generals in the Confederate Army might become allies of such a party.