Johnston meanwhile increasingly feared that the Army of the Potomac would launch just such a plan as conceived by Lincoln. He withdrew his army twenty miles south and centered its deployment at Culpeper, below the Rapidan River. Only then did McClellan advance his army on what he called a “practice march” toward the abandoned enemy lines. What they discovered made McClellan a laughingstock. Although he had claimed that the rebel army far outnumbered his, engineers estimated that the camps held only about half as many troops as those in the Army of the Potomac. And as for all those cannons bristling from the enemy’s entrenchments, hundreds were found to be nothing more than black-painted logs, dubbed “Quaker guns” by wags.
The new rebel position did not just stymie Lincoln’s envelopment plan. Johnston now could more easily block a Union march from Urbana. This forced McClellan to change his plan. Now the Army of the Potomac would sail all the way to Fort Monroe at the tip of the peninsula between the James and York Rivers, then march toward Richmond. Lincoln reluctantly approved but insisted that McDowell’s thirty-thousand-man corps stay in northern Virginia to protect Washington. McClellan shrilly protested that he needed those men for his campaign but the president stood firm.
The Army of the Potomac began disembarking at Fort Monroe on April 1.73 The only significant enemy force blocking the roads to Richmond was thirteen thousand Confederates led by Gen. John Magruder at Yorktown, a dozen miles away. McClellan inched his army toward Yorktown, where he fired off urgent messages that he was outgunned and desperately needed more troops. Once again McClellan let himself be snookered by “Quaker guns” and Magruder’s timeworn ruse of marching the same troops across a clearing in sight of the enemy and then circling them back through woods and again across that clearing. On April 22 Johnston brought his army to Yorktown and was horrified by what he found. Magruder, an amateur thespian, was clearly better at theater than engineering. Johnston reported that the fortifications were weak despite all the labor that had been expended in building them and concluded, “No one but McClellan could have hesitated to attack.”74
Lincoln had reached the same conclusion. He literally begged McClellan to move and as always grounded his plea in hard strategic logic: “I think it is the precise time for you to strike a blow. By delay the enemy will relatively gain upon you—that is, he will gain faster by fortifications and reinforcements than you can by reinforcements alone. And once more let me tell you it is indispensable to you that you strike a blow. . . . You must act.”75
Johnston withdrew his army from Yorktown to Williamsburg, a half-dozen miles west, on the night of May 3. The following day McClellan marched his army into empty entrenchments that revealed he faced a foe far inferior in numbers to his own. He continued to claim that he was outnumbered. He did send a corps in pursuit of the retreating rebels. The Union troops caught up to the enemy’s rear guard at Williamsburg, attacked, and were repelled, suffering twenty-two hundred losses to the rebels’ seventeen hundred.
The defeat bolstered McClellan’s timidity. Over the next three weeks he advanced two miles daily toward Richmond. Johnston slowly backed his army westward until he was within the ring of fortifications surrounding the capital. The rebels also withdrew on the south side of the James River. They abandoned Norfolk without a fight on May 9 and two days later were forced to scuttle the CSS Virginia to prevent its capture. This emboldened the Union naval commander to steam his five gunboats, including the Monitor, toward the capital; rebel batteries repulsed the flotilla at Drewry’s Bluff, eight miles downriver from Richmond, on May 15.
Meanwhile Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson fought one of the most brilliant military campaigns in history.76 With no more than seventeen thousand troops and often far fewer, he trounced three converging and more numerous Union armies commanded by generals John Frémont, Nathaniel Banks, and James Shields in a whirlwind campaign that engulfed most of the Shenandoah Valley from May 8 to June 9, 1862. In all, his troops fought and won five battles that forced the Union armies, with a combined strength of thirty-three thousand troops, to retreat. He won four of those battles by racing superior numbers of troops against isolated Union forces. Yet another vital reason for Jackson’s victories was that the Union forces lacked unity of command.
Lincoln rectified that deficiency by creating the Army of Virginia, comprising all troops in that theater, then looked for an energetic and successful general to command it. He first asked Gen. Ambrose Burnside, whose campaign earlier that year had captured New Bern, North Carolina. Burnside turned down the offer. He then asked John Pope, who had led an expedition down the Mississippi River that captured Island Number Ten and Fort Pillow. Pope accepted and received command on June 27.77
Jackson’s campaign provoked near-panic in the capital with the fear that he and his victorious army might soon appear near Washington. This prompted Lincoln to fire off his latest plaintive message to McClellan: “I think the time is near when you must either attack Richmond or give up the job and come to the defense of Washington.”78 Nonetheless, the president typically saw a strategic opportunity in any Jackson march on the capital. He hoped to trap Jackson by ordering Pope to dispatch half his sixty-thousand-man army against him. But by then it was too late to catch Jackson, who led his troops east from Gordonsville toward Richmond on June 17. Lincoln then ordered Pope to march on Richmond and join McClellan against the rebel army. But by the time Pope readied his army to march, the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia was moving rapidly to encircle and attack him.
As McClellan’s 105,000 troops neared Richmond in late May, Johnston had only 70,000 men to defend the rebel capital. On May 31 Johnston seized an opportunity when McClellan split his troops on both sides of the Chickahominy River, by launching his army against the Federals on Richmond’s side of the river at Seven Pines, also called Fair Oaks. The battle raged for two days before the Confederates withdrew in defeat, having lost six thousand men to the Union’s five thousand. Johnston was among the wounded and needed months to recover. The battle bought crucial time for the rebels as McClellan typically reacted with indecision, fear, and calls for massive reinforcements.
Meanwhile President Davis made a decision that decisively affected the war—he appointed Robert E. Lee to command the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee readied his army for another offensive, recalled Jackson from the Shenandoah Valley, and sent his cavalry commander J. E. B. Stuart and twelve hundred troopers on a reconnaissance in which they rode entirely around the Union army. Stuart returned with word that Gen. Fitz-John Porter’s thirty-thousand-man corps east of the Chickahominy River was vulnerable.
Keeping twenty-seven thousand men in Richmond’s trenches and forts, Lee led sixty thousand troops north, then over the Chickahominy River to attack Porter’s corps at Mechanicsville on June 26. The Confederates might have crushed the Federals had Jackson brought his men up quickly enough to strike the enemy’s right flank. But Porter managed to withdraw his corps after repelling the frontal assault. At Gaines Mills on June 27, Savage Station on June 29, and Glendale on June 30, Lee hurled his army against Porter’s corps each time with the same result—the Union troops repulsed the rebels, then Porter withdrew his battered corps a few miles to another defensive position.
Meanwhile, although McClellan had seventy-five thousand troops west of the river facing a thin gray line of rebels defending Richmond, he panicked and chose to retreat rather than attack. He whined to Washington that he faced encirclement and annihilation by two hundred thousand enemy troops if he did not immediately receive massive reinforcements. He wrote Stanton that “if I save this army now I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you or any other persons in Washington—you have done your best to sacrifice this army.”79
McClellan halted his retreat at Malvern Hill, where Lee attacked on July 1. Although Union rifle and cannon fire shattered the rebel assault, McClellan once again turned victory into defeat by withdrawing his army to Harrison Landing on the James River. Although Lee had lost twenty thousand men to
the Federals’ sixteen thousand in these five battles that became known as the Seven Days, he won a decisive strategic victory.
Lincoln sought to see firsthand whether there was any truth to McClellan’s hysterical messages. After arriving at the Army of the Potomac’s headquarters on July 8, he carefully debriefed the general and his corps commanders, scanned maps, and reviewed the troops. His conclusion was firm—McClellan should resume the offensive. Despite all contrary evidence, the general continued to insist that the enemy outnumbered his forces by two to one and thus any advance was out of the question.
Lincoln returned to Washington deeply depressed. Although he was the commander in chief, his general refused to follow his instructions. As if stuck in amber, an army of one hundred thousand troops was encamped a score of miles from Richmond. And this was hardly Lincoln’s only frustration. Despite his fine grasp of strategy and War Secretary Stanton’s administrative talents, without military backgrounds they struggled to direct and supply the deployment of more troops in more commands across the country. The army was in desperate need of a professional commanding general. On July 11 Lincoln tapped Gen. Henry Halleck, the western commander, to come to Washington and take charge of all American soldiers everywhere.
Halleck was a good choice.80 Known as “Old Brains,” he had graduated from and taught at West Point, had written a book titled The Elements of Military Art and Science, and was a naturally gifted administrator. He was not just an intellectual. He had served in the Mexican War, commanded the Department of the West at St. Louis, and led a glacial but ultimately successful campaign that took the strategic rail juncture of Corinth, Mississippi.
After arriving on July 23, Halleck immediately got to work with Lincoln and Stanton. Their first decision was to withdraw McClellan’s army back to northern Virginia to support Pope. After receiving the order to do so on August 2, McClellan typically dragged his feet in implementing it over the next month.
Satisfied that he had thoroughly cowed McClellan, Lee marched his army north to defeat Pope, with Jackson spearheading the advance. Jackson routed Gen. Nathaniel Banks and his corps at Cedar Mountain on August 9, inflicting 2,353 casualties and losing 1,338. He then quick-marched his corps around Pope’s right flank and captured his supply base at Manassas on August 27. Jackson’s corps now had cut off Pope from Washington, while the rest of Lee’s army was marching to join him. Although the Confederates enjoyed the strategic position, Pope’s army still outnumbered Lee’s by seventy-five thousand to fifty thousand troops. While Pope had little choice but to attack Jackson on August 29, he could not have been more murderously inept in doing so. Rather than try to outflank Jackson, who deployed most of his men in a deep cut dug in the earth for a railroad, Pope launched a series of piecemeal attacks straight against the rebel line. The result was the latest slaughter. That night both sides swelled with reinforcements, as Lee joined Jackson and the corps of Irwin McDowell and Fitz-John Porter joined Pope. The next morning Lee sent Gen. James Longstreet against the Union’s left flank. Pope withdrew his army east and then north around Jackson’s position. The Confederates won the second battle of Manassas at a cost of 9,197 men while inflicting 16,054 casualties on the Union army. Lee then led his army in pursuit and caught up to Pope’s rear guard at Chantilly on September 1. Once again the rebels routed the Federals, and Pope concentrated his army within twenty miles south of Washington.
Lee was not content with having bloodied and sent reeling two enemy armies within a couple of months. He decided on an even more ambitious goal. He carried the war to the enemy by marching his army north of the Potomac River, where he hoped to win decisive victories that ended the war. The first regiments of the Army of Northern Virginia crossed the river into Maryland on September 4.
Lincoln saw this invasion more as an opportunity than a threat. With superior forces, the Union could at once defend the capital and cut off and destroy Lee’s army. And with that victory, Lincoln intended to issue a proclamation that would dramatically transform the cause for which the United States was fighting.
8
Emancipation
If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think and feel.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. . . . The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. . . . The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom for the free . . . and then we shall save the country.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Eleven southern states seceded and warred against the United States because of a pathological fear that if they did not do so, the newly elected Republican president and Congress would somehow erode or outright eliminate their “right” to own slaves. They clung to this delusion despite the repeated public reassurances of Abraham Lincoln and most other Republican leaders that they would limit slavery’s expansion but continue to tolerate it where it existed. Yet in seceding and warring against the United States, the rebels ended up provoking their worst fear. The abolition of slavery proceeded in a series of small steps driven by military rather than moral necessity that culminated with the Thirteenth Amendment.1
The effort did not begin in Congress despite the fact that after the eleven southern states seceded, the Republican Party dominated, with 32 of 48 Senate seats and 106 of 176 House seats. Yet these numbers masked sharp differences among Republicans over principles and policies. While the party was united to crush the rebellion and reunify the nation, it split over the means to that end. Conservatives sought only to rejoin the Union and would continue to tolerate slavery where it existed. The most prominent Senate conservatives were John Sherman, James Grimes, William Fessenden, Schuyler Colfax, and Richard Yates. Liberals, then known as Radicals, believed that reunification and abolition were inseparable. The leading Radical voices in Congress were Charles Sumner, Benjamin Wade, and Zachariah Chandler in the Senate and Thaddeus Stevens, Henry Winter Davis, Owen Lovejoy, and James Ashley in the House. During the war, the power balance within the Republican Party shifted decisively from the conservatives to the Radicals. All along Abraham Lincoln struggled to maintain party unity while he himself gradually evolved from a conservative into a moderate with Radical leanings by the time of his death.2
Holding only about one of four seats in each house, the Democrats could protest but not obstruct Lincoln administration policies. They suffered an enormous loss on June 3, 1861, when their most powerful spokesman, Senator Stephen Douglas, died. Rendering the Democrats even more ineffective was their split between “war” and “peace” factions.3 As the war ground on with no end in sight, some Peace Democrats became so radical in their rhetoric and behavior that Republicans assailed them as traitorous “Copperheads.” Lincoln eventually exiled Clement Vallandigham, a prominent Ohio Copperhead and Democrat politician, to the rebel lines.
Lincoln did what he could to entice War Democrats to support Republican policies. Yet at times doing so raised a terrible dilemma in his crusade to crush the rebellion and restore the Union. The political concessions he was forced to make at times contradicted his military strategy. George McClellan, Benjamin Butler, William Rosecrans, and John McClernand were all prominent War Democrats and dismal generals. If he fired them for their at times murderous incompetence, he risked driving War Democrats into the arms of Peace Democrats. Yet by retaining them at the heads of armies, the war dragged on as they either lost battles or lost opportunities to win battles.
The Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, chaired by Radical Republican Benjamin Wade, was set up in December 1861 to investigate the disasters at Bull Run and Ball’s Bluff but swiftly expanded its duties to embrace virtually all aspects of the war. For nearly four year
s it provided valuable oversight by spotlighting inept generals and corrupt contractors and politicians.4
The biggest question that Congress addressed after how to win the war was how to win the peace. The conservative view was reflected in a joint resolution, sponsored by Senator Andrew Johnson of Tennessee and Representative John Crittenden of Kentucky, that passed by huge majorities. The Crittenden-Johnson Resolution proclaimed that “this war is not waged upon our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of these States.”5 Although the words slave and slavery were nowhere mentioned, everyone understood that the resolution’s core message was to reassure slave owners in all the states that they need not fear losing their property. For now, Lincoln publicly echoed this view: “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”6 The liberals’ reply to the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution came in February 1862, when Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts and Representative James Ashley of Ohio submitted resolutions that would transform the rebel states into territories that Congress would remake into states with republican governments; emancipate all slaves without compensation to their owners; confiscate rebel property; and deny political rights to any rebels who were former federal officials or army officers or refused to sign a loyalty oath. These resolutions failed to pass.
While Congress debated the fate of four million enslaved human beings, the army faced a worsening dilemma. Thousands of slaves were escaping to the Union lines. The Fugitive Slave Act was still on the books, requiring that all authorities and citizens aid masters in recovering their chattel. Most commanders followed this law, including most notably generals McClellan, Buell, Halleck, and Burnside; McClellan went so far as to forbid regimental bands from playing the abolitionist song “John Brown’s Body.”
The Age of Lincoln and the Art of American Power, 1848-1876 Page 17