Mr Lincoln's Army

by Bruce Catton

  9. Personal Recollections of the Civil War, by General Gibbon.

  10. General Philip Kearny.

  4. Man on a Black Horse

  There are innumerable accounts of the disorder and despair attending the retreat from the field of Second Bull Run. One of the most detailed is in General Regis de Trobriand's fascinating Four Years with the Army of the Potomac. See also Charles A. Page's Letters of a War Correspondent, General Oliver Otis Howard's autobiography, the second volume of Battles and Leaders, and any number of regimental histories. The soldiers' odd distrust of General McDowell also crops out in many of the regimental histories.

  Specific references are:

  1. "Personal Experience under Gen. McClellan," by Brigadier General Henry Seymour Hall, from Papers of the Kansas Commandery, Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States.

  2. For the preceding quotations, see Three Years in the Army of the Potomac, by Henry N. Blake; History of the 3rd Regiment of Wisconsin Veteran Volunteer Infantry, by Edwin E. Bryant; History of the 12th Massachusetts Volunteers, and Service with the 6th Wisconsin Volunteers. There is a good discussion of the soldiers' antagonism toward McDowell and Pope in General Cox's Military Reminiscences.

  3. This quotation, and the ones in the immediately preceding paragraphs, are from General de Trobriand's book mentioned above.

  4. Autobiography of Oliver Otis Howard.

  5. Military Reminiscences of General Cox.

  6. Personal Recollections of General Gibbon.

  7. Articles by Captain William H. Powell and George Kimball in Battles and

  Leaders, Vol. H, Part 2.

  8. Following the Greek Cross.

  CHAPTER TWO 1. A Great Work in My Hands

  No bit of Civil War literature is much more interesting than McClellan's Own Story—that oddly organized autobiography which tells so much more about its author than the author can possibly have dreamed. The quotations from McClellan in this chapter are taken from that work, and it has hardly seemed necessary to clutter up the text with footnotes identifying each quotation.

  Specific references are:

  1. For a good account of McClellan's Ohio experience, see General Cox in

  Vol. I, Part 1, of Battles and Leaders.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Under the Old Flag.

  4. Selections from the Letters and Diaries of Brevet Brigadier General Willoughby Babcock.

  5. Three Years in the Army of the Potomac.

  6. Reminiscences of the 19th Massachusetts Regiment, by Captain John G. B.

  Adams.

  7. Military Reminiscences of General Cox.

  2. Aye, Deem Us Proud

  Since it was an unimportant engagement in a military sense, Ball's Bluff gets little space in most histories of the war. There is a good account in Volume II,

  Part 2, of Battles and Leaders, and the histories of the 15th and 20th Massachusetts regiments give interesting details. Colonel Baker is described in Volume I of Carl Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. Specific references are:

  1. The Story of the 15th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry in the

  Civil War, by Andrew E. Ford.

  2. Personal Recollections of the Civil War, by James Madison Stone.

  3. Four Years with the Army of the Potomac.

  4. History of the First Regiment Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, by R. I. Holcombe.

  5. The 20th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, by Lieutenant Colonel George A. Bruce.

  6. The Story of the 15th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.

  7. For a summary of this strange case, see "Ball's Bluff and the Arrest of

  General Stone," by Richard B. Irwin, in Battles and Leaders, Volume II, Part 1.

  3. I Do Not Intend to Be Sacrificed

  It is one of the oddities of Civil War history that General McClellan's handling of his purely military problems cannot be understood unless the purely political problems of President, Cabinet, and Congress are understood also. Along with the military histories, it is necessary to consult such books as Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln, whose rambling, discursive, all-inclusive account of the currents that swirled about Lincoln makes clear so much that McClellan never understood at all. Lincoln's War Cabinet, by Burton J. Hendrick, sheds a good oblique light on the situation, while books by such contemporaries as Gideon Welles and Alexander K. McClure are invaluable. Again, the McClellan quotations in this chapter are from McClellan's Own Story.

  Specific references are:

  1. The Diary of a Public Man, with Prefatory Notes by F. Lauriston Bullard.

  2. Scott's letters are found in Battles and Leaders, Volume II, Part 1.

  3. See Volume II of A History of the United States Navy, by Edgar Stanton Maclay, and The Second Admiral: A Life of David Dixon Porter, by Richard S. West.

  4. Nothing in Douglas Southall Freeman's monumental biography of Lee is much more significant than its picture of Lee's great tact and depth of understanding in his handling of a political problem which was, potentially, quite as explosive as the one which confronted McClellan. It was a problem which was altogether too much for as able a soldier as General Joseph E. Johnston.

  5. Following the Creek Cross.

  CHAPTER THREE

  1. But You Must Act

  The argument over the rights and wrongs of the administration's interference with McClellan's peninsular campaign will not end, probably, until the Civil War itself drops out of discussion. Where certainty is impossible, about the most that can be done is to try to see why the administration did the things McClellan complained of so bitterly. A very good detailed analysis of the way in which McClellan laid himself open to the charge of failing to protect Washington adequately is found in Campaigns in Virginia, Volume I, Papers of the

  Military Historical Society of Massachusetts. The growth of the misunderstanding is traced in two nearly contemporaneous works—William Swinton's Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac, and Benton J. Lossing's Pictorial History of the Civil War. See also The Peninsula: McClellan's Campaigns of 1862, by Major General Alexander S. Webb. Specific references are:

  1. The Rebellion Record, edited by Frank Moore.

  2. For an interesting examination of this point, see Alexander K. McClure, Abraham Lincoln and Men of War Times, pp. 221-22.

  3. Two good discussions of this savage little fight and its far-reaching effects are in Freeman's Lee's Lieutenants, Vol. I, and Henderson's Stonewall Jackson.

  4. Following the Greek Cross.

  2. The Voice of Caution

  The reader who cares to see a complete account of McClellan's espionage and intelligence system in operation can do no better than read The Spy of the Rebellion: Being a True History of the Spy System of the United States Army during the Late Rebellion, by Allan Pinkerton. A good analysis of the troubles his faulty reports got McClellan into is to be found in General Cox's Military Reminiscences. Pinkerton's reports appear in the Official Records, Series I, Vol. XI, Part 1, pp. 268-70.

  Specific references are:

  1. General Philip Kearny.

  2. A Duryie Zouave.

  3. History of the First Brigade New Jersey Volunteers, by Camille Baquet.

  4. Following the Greek Cross.

  5. The Diary of a Young Officer.

  6. Autobiography of Oliver Otis Howard.

  7. For Meade, see Letters of a War Correspondent and Meade's Headquarters.

  8. Under the Old Flag.

  9. De Trobriand: Four Years with the Army of the Potomac.

  10. For McClellan's remarks to the soldiers, see The Rebellion Record.

  3. Tomorrow Never Comes

  An odd and frequently overlooked fact about the fighting on the peninsula is that in no single battle was anything like the whole strength of the Army of the Potomac put into action. The climactic struggle of Gaines's Mill was, for most of the soldiers, simply off-stage noises. In many ways McClellan himself was not much better off than the man in the
ranks. A study of his letters and telegrams in McClellan's Own Story—horn which, in this as in previous chapters, quotations have been drawn liberally—unmistakably depicts a man who never quite knew what was going on.

  Specific references are:

  1. Howard's autobiography.

  2. For a good view of Cross—an uncommonly talented regimental com-

  mander, and an interesting person—see Days and Events, by Colonel Thomas

  L. Livermore, and A History of the 5th Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers,

  by William Child.

  3. The Diary of a Young Officer.

  4. Moore's Rebellion Record, Vol. V.

  5. Recollections of a Private, by Warren Lee Goss.

  6. General Philip Kearny. See also Major General Hiram G. Berry, by Ed-

  ward K. Gould, for an extended description of this incident by Major H. L.

  Thayer.

  7. Battles and Leaders, Vol. II, Part 1, p. 375.

  8. Ibid., Part 2, p. 431.

  9. Recollections of a Private.

  10. Battles and Leaders, Vol. II, Part 2, p. 432.

  4. Pillar of Smoke

  One of the things McClellan seems never to have understood, in his dealings with the Lincoln administration, was the weight which the Copperhead movement in the North threw into the scales against him. There is a wealth of literature on this move for a negotiated peace. Two studies which were found especially helpful are The Hidden Civil War, by Wood Gray, and The Movement for Peace without Victory during the Civil War, by Elbert J. Benton.

  Specific references are:

  1. Pictorial History of the Civil War, Vol. II.

  2. See A Military History of the 8th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, by Franklin

  Sawyer, and Recollections of a Private.. .

  3. Under Five Commanders, by Jacob H. Cole.

  4. A History of the 5th Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers.

  5. General Philip Kearny.

  6. Four Years Campaigning in the Army of the Potomac.

  7. Notes of a Staff Officer of Our First New Jersey Brigade, by E. Burd

  Grubb.

  8. Diary of Gideon Welles, Vol. I, p. 107.

  9. Abraham Lincoln and Men of War Times.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  1. Indian Summer

  The innumerable regimental histories now gathering dust on the shelves of libraries and secondhand bookshops are a rich mine of material on the kind of men who enlisted in 1861, the spirit with which they came forward, and the strangely innocent way in which the process of turning them into soldiers was undertaken. In many ways, most of these histories are very dull—poorly written, uncritical, full of an inexpert rehash of military history culled from standard texts. But despite these faults they provide the flavor of the young army as nothing else could do, giving the homely and often almost incredible little touches which make those far-off soldiers suddenly come alive. They have been a principal reliance in the preparation of this book and were used extensively in the preparation of this chapter.

  Specific references are:

  1. For a newspaper roundup of these rather effervescent activities, see Vol.

  V of Rebellion Record.

  2. Four Years with the Army of the Potomac.

  3. The Bivouac and the Battlefield.

  4. References to the friendly reception in Maryland have been taken from

  Musket and Sword, by Edwin C. Bennett; Following the Greek Cross; The 27th Indiana Volunteer Infantry in the War of the Rebellion, by a Member of Company C; History of the 3rd Regiment of Wisconsin Veteran Volunteer Infantry; History of Duryie's Brigade, by Franklin B. Hough; Service with the 6th Wisconsin Volunteers, and Battles and Leaders, Vol. II, Part 2, p. 556.

  5. For the story of this regiment, see the delightfully artless little book, A History of the "Bucktails," by O. R. Howard Thomson and William H. Rauch. Incidentally, while the name "Bucktails" belonged to this regiment alone, the rest of the army often applied it indiscriminately to the entire division of Pennsylvania Reserves.

  6. Another charmingly unsophisticated history is The 27th Indiana Volunteer Infantry in the War of the Rebellion.

  7. The Irish Brigade and Its Campaigns, by Captain D. P. Conyngham.

  8. For a good side light on the way in which a regiment was sometimes

  recruited, see History of the 40th (Mozart) Regiment, by Fred C. Floyd.

  9. History of the First Regiment Minnesota Volunteer Infantry.

  10. History of the 3rd Regiment of Wisconsin Veteran Volunteer Infantry.

  11.For these incidents, see History of the 12th Massachusetts Volunteers and Four Years Campaigning in the Army of the Potomac.

  12.History of the 10th Massachusetts Battery, by John D. Billings. See also Recollections of the Civil War, by Mason Whiting Tyler.

  13.For a fine study of the Civil War soldier and his songs, see "War Music and War Psychology in the Civil War," by James Stone, in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, October 1941.

  14.Under the Old Flag.

  15.Battles and Leaders, Vol. II, Part 1, p. 6.

  16.Recollections of a Private.

  17. History of the 3rd Regiment of Wisconsin Veteran Volunteer Infantry.

  2. Crackers and Bullets

  The fact that the Civil War soldier was compelled to solve, under fire and without much help, a set of quite modeni-lookjng tactical problems raised by the improvement in his weapons is a point that deserves more emphasis than it usually gets in Civil War histories. Two interesting discussions of this matter, written by professional British soldiers shortly before World War I, are The Campaign in Maryland and Virginia, by Lieutenant E. W. Sheppard, and The War of Secession, by Major G. W. Redway. See also The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant, by Colonel J. F. C. Fuller.

  Specific references are:

  1. Reminiscences of the 19th Massachusetts Regiment.

  2. For a good review of Civil War rations, cookery, and camp life in general, see John D. Billings's entertaining Hardtack and Coffee. Good details are also to be found in The Diary of an Enlisted Man.

  3. Regimental Losses in the American Civil War, by Lieutenant Colonel William F. Fox.

  4. Reminiscences of the Civil War, by General John B. Gordon.

  5. From "Field and Temporary Hospitals," by Deering J. Roberts, M.D., in Vol. VII, Photographic History of the Civil War.

  6. The reader who is interested can study these tactical details in such standard Civil War texts as Rifle and Light Infantry Tactics, by Brevet Lieutenant Colonel William J. Hardee; Manual of Instruction for the Volunteers and Militia of the United States, by Major William Gilham, and Camp and Outpost Duty for Infantry, by Brigadier General Daniel Butterfield. 7. History of Dury&e's Brigade.

  3. Generals on Trial

  A considerable volume of correspondence between Halleck and Pope, covering the period of the second Bull Run campaign and ending with Pope's exile to the Indian wars on the Western frontier, is available in the Official Records, Series I, Vol. XII, Part 3; and while nothing of very great importance is contained in it, it is worth reading for the picture it gives of the queer deficiencies of the army's high command. Studying it, one senses that the army's chief command problem just then was at the very top, embodied in the person of the general-in-chief. If McClellan was overcautious, Halleck was just a plain fuss-budget; and if the need of the day was for someone to infuse drive and energy into army commanders, Halleck's own dispatches make it clear that he was the last man for the job. Gideon Welles seems to have been almost alone in his realization that it was the iron-hard spirit of war that was needed, and Vol. I of his Diary has been drawn on for quotations. For a consideration of the danger of foreign intervention in the fall of 1862, see James Ford Rhodes's History of the Civil War.

  Specific references are:

  1. Under the Old Flag.

  2. Quoted in The Hidden Civil War.

  3. Military Reminiscences of General Cox.

  4. Under Five Comman
ders.

  5. Correspondence of John Sedgwick, Major General.

  CHAPTER FIVE 1. At Daybreak in the Morning

  Extensive use has been made in this work of Major General James H. Wilson's spirited memoirs, Under the Old Flag. Wilson was a young engineer lieutenant who served on McClellan's staff for a time and who later became a very distinguished cavalry leader. As a young aide he appears to have been brash and cocky, with a knack for confusing his own functions with those of the major general commanding—altogether, it would seem, an uncomfortable young man to have around headquarters. Opinionated as his book is, however, it casts a most revealing light on the shortcomings of the high command at this period. The stall' of the commanding general of the Army of the Potomac was no place for an ardent young perfectionist—not until Grant came along, which is another story.

  Specific references are:

  1. For details about the finding of the lost order, see "Antietam and the Lost

  Dispatch," by John McKnight Bloss, in Papers of the Kansas Commandery,

  Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States. Brigadier General

  Silas Colgrove tells the story in Battles and Leaders, Vol. II, Part 2.

  2. Gibbon's Personal Recollections.

  3. Abraham Lincoln and Men of War Times.

  4. For Reno and Barbara Frietchie, see Personal Recollections of the Civil

  War, by James Madison Stone.

  5. An enthusiastic account of this surprising little exploit occurs in a quaint pamphlet, A Sketch of the 8th New York Cavalry, by Henry Norton.

  2. Destroy the Rebel Army

  Regimental histories usually give a very faulty picture of a battle as a whole, since each author is responsible only for what he himself saw and relies on other authority—camp gossip, as often as not—for events which took place out of his sight. But when they are used to supplement the more formal reports and narratives, these histories are invaluable. They bring life and color; with their help these battles of the long ago cease to be bloodless set pieces out of military textbooks and become as real and as moving as something out of today's newspaper.

  Specific references are:

  1. For these quotations, see Battles and Leaders, Vol. TJ, Part 2, pp. 551 and