Terrible Swift Sword (28 page)
Congress had not
finished. On March 11 it adopted a bristling resolution "declaring the
sense of Congress in regard to reuniting with the United States." The
sense of Congress clearly was that such reunion was out of the question, no
matter what defeats might be suffered: "It is the unalterable
determination of the people of the Confederate States, in humble reliance upon
Almighty God, to suffer all the calamities of the most protracted war, but
that they will never, on any terms, politically affiliate with a people who are
guilty of the invasion of their soil and the butchery of their citizens."
14
This gesture of defiance was followed not long after by a sweeping enactment
which put the waging of the war on an entirely new footing and in effect
remodeled the substructure of the whole Confederate government. Congress passed
a conscription law, and the Richmond government, founded on the most unwavering
faith in states' rights, suddenly found itself empowered and directed to reach
into the sovereign states and compel citizens to enter the Army—a power which
even the government at Washington did not then have and did not especially want
to have.
Mr. Davis requested this in a special
message sent to Congress on March 28. The Constitution, he pointed out, gave
Congress the power to raise armies, and what was needed was a better and
simpler way of doing it. The Federal advance had aroused among the people a spirit
of resistance which "requires rather to be regulated than to be
stimulated," and conscription was the best way to regulate it. After a debate
which—considering the nature of the change—was comparatively brief, Congress
agreed, and on April 16 it adopted a draft act giving the President the power
to call out, for three years or the duration, all white male citizens between
the ages of eighteen and thirty-five. Furthermore, the new law provided that
the twelve-months men whose terms were expiring would be drafted too; their
terms now were three-year terms, no matter what the original enlistment papers
said. There would be no more shifting from one arm of the service to another.
The men could elect their own officers, once the drafting and re-enlisting was
over, but they would stay where they were, and men not in the Army would be
drafted if they did not speedily volunteer. A few days later a supplementary
act provided for innumerable exemptions, and in the months ahead its provisions
would raise some very difficult problems, but the big step had been taken. The
disintegration of the Confederacy's armies would stop. The nation would no
longer try to wage war as a loose assemblage of self-sufficient states.
15
Naturally,
this provoked certain outcries. Georgia's Governor Joseph E. Brown, whose
manifold duties never kept him too busy to write extensive letters of protest
to the President of the Confederacy, complained that the act was subversive of
Georgia's sovereignty and "at war with all the principles for the support
of which Georgia entered into this revolution," and declared that he could
have nothing to do with "the enrollment of the conscripts in this
state"; nor was he soothed by Mr. Davis's rejoinder that the cause was
lost forever if the central government could do no more than ask the states to
send in militia regiments which could be called out only to repel invasion.
Alec Stephens, drifting into a shadow-land where hard facts had to be adjusted
to vaporous doctrine, considered conscription "very bad policy" and
complained that it was all the fault of the West Pointers, in whom lay no
salvation. "If the Southern volunteer," said Stephens, oddly,
"should ever come to forget that he is a gentleman (and that is what the
West Point men say he must do) then it will be merely a struggle between matter
and matter, and the biggest and heaviest body will break the other."
Inasmuch as the point of the whole business was the undeniable fact that the
weaker body was on the verge of being broken forever because of its weakness,
Mr. Davis let this ride; his attitude doubtless stiffened by facts called to
his attention by the War Department. During the last thirty days, the Department
disclosed, the terms of service of 148 regiments expired. Most of the men in
these regiments were not re-enlisting, and most of those who did re-enlist
"entered corps which could never be assembled, or, if assembled, could not
be prepared for the field in time to meet the invasion actually
commenced."
16
The volunteer spirit was not enough. It was time
for compulsion.
But Jefferson Davis understood that the
draft, by itself, was not enough either. The government could raise large
armies,
but it must also learn how to use them.
Its forces would always be outnumbered, and if they were to win the men who
led them must surpass material limitations. In a thoughtful letter to General
Johnston, Mr. Davis tried to explain the necessities of the case, writing
soberly:
"The military paradox that impossibilities
must be rendered possible had never better occasion for its application."
17
5.
Contending with Shadows
The terrible pressure
of time was upon both Presidents. Mr. Davis was compelled to act by the closing
circle of the Federal armed forces; Mr. Lincoln, by the rising momentum of the
war itself. Facing the imminent peril of defeat, Mr. Davis tried to reorganize
his Army; facing the danger that the war might become altogether unmanageable.
Mr. Lincoln sought to reorganize his country's whole mental attitude. On the
evening of March 5, Mr. Lincoln called his cabinet into consultation, and on
the next day he sent a special message to Congress.
In
this message the President urged adoption of a joint resolution:
"Resolved, that the United States ought to cooperate with any state which
may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such state pecuniary aid,
to be used by such state in its discretion to compensate for the inconveniences
public and private produced by such change of system."
The
Northern government was neither making war on slavery nor asserting any power
to interfere with slavery in the states. Yet slavery was the indigestible lump,
after all, the one thing that had made compromise impossible, and perhaps
there still was time to deal with it rationally. Mr. Lincoln believed that if
slavery died in the border states it had no real hope for survival anywhere
else on the continent, and to kill that hope, he felt, "substantially ends
the rebellion." He clung as well to his primary article of faith: the
states which said they were out of the Union were really still in it, and this
proposed act of co-operation would apply to them if they chose to accept it.
And there was one other point: the tremendous sums being spent to fight the
war "would purchase, at fair valuation, all the slaves in any named
state."
In December, Mr. Lincoln had warned that
all indispensable means to restore the Union would be used. Now he insisted
that the war would continue as long as resistance to reunion continued, and
"it is impossible to foresee all the incidents which may attend and all
the ruin which may follow it." The act of Congress, to be sure, would not
by itself accomplish much, but it might initiate a great deal; and so, "in
full view of my great responsibility to my God and to my country I earnestly
beg the attention of Congress and the people to the subject."
1
The
President had assembled some figures. In a letter to the editor of the New York
Times
he pointed
out that the government was spending about $2,000,000 a day to fight the war.
To buy and free all of the slaves in all of the border states at a price of
$400 per head would cost less than three months' more war would cost. If the
action shortened the war by three months, then, there would be some sort of
gain. He went into more detail in a letter to Senator James McDougall of
California, who opposed the plan. Delaware, for instance, contained 1798
slaves; they could be freed for $719,200—less than half of one day's war costs.
In all of the border states put together there were 432,622 slaves; they could
be freed for $173,048,000, which was a little bit less than the cost of
eighty-seven days of war.
He
explained that the thing could be done gradually. "Suppose, for
instance," he wrote to Senator McDougall, "a state devises and adopts
a system by which the institution absolutely ceases therein by a named day—say
January 1st, 1882. Then, let the sum to be paid to such state by the United
States be ascertained by taking from the Census of 1860 the number of slaves
within the state, and multiplying that number by four hundred—the United States
to pay such sum to the state in twenty annual installments, in six per cent
bonds of the United States. The sum thus given, as to
time
and
manner,
I
think would not be half as onerous, as would be an equal sum, raised
now,
for the indefinite prosecution of the war;
but of this you can judge as well as I."
2
A
few days later the President discussed the proposal with a delegation of border
state leaders. He insisted that the government did not want "to injure the
interests or wound the sensibilities of the slave states." Still, the
government was making war, and to make war it had to put armies in the
slave states; and just because they were
there these armies made the institution of slavery more acutely troublesome
than it had ever been before. Abolitionists complained because the armies did
not destroy the institution and slaveholders complained because the armies did
not protect it, and altogether there was increasing turmoil, a great comfort to
secessionists. He believed that if his resolution were adopted by Congress and
accepted by the states, this trouble would cease "and more would be
accomplished toward shortening the war than could be hoped from the greatest
victory achieved by the Union armies." Emancipation, he went on, was
entirely up to the people of the states affected, and yet it was a national
matter also. "Slavery existed, and that, too, as well by the act of the
North as of the South," he explained, "and in any scheme to get rid
of it the North as well as the South was morally bound to do its full and equal
share."
3
In
due time the resolution was passed by both houses of Congress, but no state
followed the lead, and the response Lincoln had hoped to get was not
forthcoming. The extremists were unmoved. Thaddeus Stevens was openly contemptuous:
"I think it is about the most diluted, milk and water, gruel proposition
that was ever given to the American nation." Congressman C. A. Wickliffe
of Kentucky, viewing the plan from a position diametrically opposite to
Stevens', cried out in the House: "Let us alone; permit us to do our duty
in the pending struggle and we will attend to our domestic institutions."
4
The war was not going to be shortened; the nation was not going to save money
or lives, but would have to fight the war to a finish regardless of "all
the ruin which may follow it." As a practical matter, Mr. Lincoln's
attempt had no effect.
Yet
it was enormously significant. For the first time the President of the United
States had discussed emancipation, not as a lofty abstraction which a happier
age might some day embrace, but as an immediate measure aimed at reunion and a
shorter war. Disclaiming all intent to use the Federal power to interfere with
slavery, he had at the same time reiterated that "all indispensable
means" to win the war would be used, and here was the clearest indication
that emancipation might soon look indispensable. In effect the President was
warning that unless final victory were won quickly, emancipation would be
adopted as an essential war measure.
Of all the men in the North the one who
most vitally needed to heed this warning was General George B. McClellan.
McClellan
was a conservative Democrat who sincerely and openly detested abolition. When
he became general-in-chief he wrote to his friend Barlow begging him to
"help me dodge the nigger," declaring: "I am fighting to
preserve the integrity of the Union & the form of the Govt.—and no other
issue. To gain that end we cannot afford to mix up the negro question—it must
be incidental & subsidiary. The Presdt. is perfectly honest & is really
sound on the nigger question. I will answer for it now that things go right
with him."
5
Now there was this writing on the wall, cryptic
but still readable: if the Confederacy fell within the next few months, the
infinitely complicated, infinitely tragic problem in human sorrows and
destinies which McClellan knew as "the nigger question" could still
be dodged; or at least the effort to dodge it could continue, which might come
to the same thing. But if victory did not come soon the problem would become
central to everything the nation did and the time for dodging would end
forever.
So
far, General McClellan's winter had been no happier than General Johnston's. He
had been helped into his high place by hard men who believed in hard war, and
they wanted immediate action. They wanted it so badly that General McClellan
had been in General Scott's place for no more than
a
week when Mr. Russell of the London
Times
made a note about it: "The inactivity of
McClellan, which is not understood by the people, has created an undercurrent
of unpopularity, to which his enemies are giving every possible strength."
Before December ended, Senator Ben Wade, hardest and most impatient of them
all, was complaining that the nation would soon be $600,000,000 in debt with
very little to show for it. "All this," said the senator, "is
hanging upon one man who keeps his counsels entirely to himself. If he was an
old veteran who had fought
a
hundred
battles, or we knew him as well as Bonaparte or Wellington was known, then we could
repose upon him with confidence. But how can this nation abide the secret
counsels that one man carries in his head, when we have no evidence that he is
the wisest man in the world?"
8
A basic trouble of course was that
General McClellan refused to take the Republican radicals into his confidence;
they were giving every sign of a strong desire to run the war, and the general
was keeping them at arm's length. Yet Ben Wade did speak for the increasing
restlessness of a vigorous people who had gone to war without realizing that
wars are not always won quickly. In spite of victories elsewhere this
restlessness was growing day by day because of the inactivity of the Army of
the Potomac. Until that army moved and won victories of its own McClellan was
going to be the target for the deadliest sharpshooters in Washington.
McClellan thus was in an exceedingly
strange position. Unless he could win the war quickly it was likely to turn
into the last thing he wanted it to be, a war for emancipation; yet at the same
time the greatest pressure for speed—a pressure which could break him if he
resisted it too long— was coming from the men he despised most, the militant
emancipationists. McClellan could best thwart them by doing exactly what they
wanted him to do, a point which probably no one except Mr. Lincoln himself was
subtle enough to grasp.
Call them emancipationists, radicals, or
radical Republicans; all the words apply. They believed firmly in immediate and
uncompensated emancipation; they were radicals in that they bluntly favored the
revolutionary struggle which Mr. Lincoln wanted to avert; and they were
Republicans of an intense partisanship, working night and day to win political
advantage for themselves and their party. Their motives were mixed but their goal
was clear; they wanted immediate action, and they believed this could come only
from generals who felt as they felt. Senator Wade's recent remarks indicated
that they might very soon go on the warpath against General McClellan himself.
McClellan seems to have sensed this, and a few days after the senator had
spoken Mr. Lincoln tried to reassure the general.
"I hear that the doings of an
investigating committee give you some uneasiness," the President wrote.
"You may be entirely relieved on this point. The gentlemen of the Committee
were with me an hour and a half last night, and I found them in a perfectly
good mood. As their investigating brings them acquainted with the facts, they
are rapidly coming to think of the case as all sensible men should."
7
The investigating committee the
President was talking so hopefully about was the Joint Committee on the Conduct
of the War, and "the case" was the bungled fight at Ball's Bluff
which had wrecked a brigade of the Army of the Potomac and had killed Colonel
Edward D. Baker, close friend of Mr. Lincoln and a prominent member of the
Senate. Reacting to this disaster, Congress in December had created this
investigating committee, with Ben Wade as its chairman. Other members were
Senators Zachariah Chandler of Michigan and Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, along
with Representatives Daniel W. Gooch of Massachusetts, John Covode of Pennsylvania,
George W. Julian of Indiana and Moses F. Odell of New York. The committee had
broad powers and relentless determination; in effect it was the action arm of
the militant radicals, largely controlled by Wade and Chandler; a fearsome
committee if ever there was one. Right now it was methodically ruining
Brigadier General Charles P. Stone, who had commanded the troops that fought at
Ball's Bluff. Stone was blameless but unlucky, a professional who did not understand
how violently this war departed from the professional soldier's tradition. He
was about to learn.
General
Stone was caught in the middle. A West Pointer who had been entrusted with
security of the capital in the anxious days just before Mr. Lincoln's
inauguration, he commanded a division along the upper Potomac in the summer
and fall of 1861, and this division contained three regiments from
Massachusetts, strongly tinged with abolitionist sentiment. Fugitive slaves
kept coming into his lines, pursued by indignant masters, and General Stone
followed his orders in respect to all such: that is, he promptly returned the
fugitives to their owners, who were residents of Maryland and presumably loyal
Unionists. The New Englanders complained bitterly, and before long General
Stone was involved in hot arguments with the Governor of Massachusetts,
forceful John A. Andrew, and with the even more forceful Massachusetts Senator
Charles Sumner. Then on October 21 came Ball's Bluff, in which battle these
same New Engand regiments suffered heavy losses.
Less
than a week after the battle, Bull Run Russell made a little note: "It is
whispered that General Stone, who ordered the movement, is guilty of treason—a
common crime of unlucky generals—and at all events is to be displaced and will
be put under surveillance."
Harper's
Weekly
said that "somebody must be
sacrificed on the altar" and remarked that General Stone's reputation was under
attack, and Senator McDougall asserted later that rumor, "that great
manufacturer of falsehoods," had been calling the general a traitor
throughout the fall and winter. When the Committee on the Conduct of the War
began to hold closed-door hearings on Ball's Bluff, Stone was squarely on the
spot.
8
He
got no help from his superiors. Called before the committee early in January
to explain why his troops had gone into action at Ball's Bluff, General Stone
was flying blind. As far as he knew, all that was going on was a clumsy attempt
by uncomprehending civilians to examine the military plans and orders under
which he had been operating. The case was fairly clear; he had been instructed
to make a demonstration toward Leesburg, Virginia, to see what the Confederate
forces there were doing and if possible to induce them to go elsewhere, and
whether he had done well or poorly he
1
had at least done what he had
been told to do. Yet he could not really explain it, because Army headquarters
put him under wraps just before he testified. Sometime later he said: "I
was instructed at General McClellan's headquarters that it was the desire of
the general that officers giving testimony before the committee should not
state, without his authority, anything regarding his plans, his orders for the
movements of troops, or his orders concerning the position of troops."
9
That left General Stone in the position of assuming all of the responsibility
for an action taken at the direction of the high command. He could pass the
buck to no one.
General Stone knew very well that his
military competence was under attack, and about the time of the hearings he did
what any professional soldier would do in a similar case; he asked for a court
of inquiry, at which the record would speak for itself under the examination of
fellow professionals. A court of inquiry, however, he could not get. A staff
officer at McClellan's headquarters warned him not to apply, pointing out:
"Your military superiors are under attack, and that consideration involves
the propriety of abstaining just now."
10
The only inquiry
would be this one by the Committee on the Conduct of the War, and what General
Stone did not know was that the committee proposed to show, not merely that he
had made mistakes but that he was actively disloyal to his country.
After it heard
General Stone the committee heard others, all in closed session, and it got
some rather odd testimony. It appeared that General Stone had exchanged letters
with Confederate officers across the Potomac. There had been many flags of
truce, with mysterious emissaries passing back and forth. Camp gossip said that
if Union guns damaged Confederate civilians' property General Stone would see
that it was paid for. Escaped slaves were too willingly restored to men who
claimed them. Encouraged by leading questions, various officers and enlisted
men said that they doubted General Stone's loyalty, considered him a
secessionist at heart and did not want to fight for him. He had let the Rebels
plant batteries when he could have prevented it. (It turned out later that the
batteries specifically complained of simply did not exist.) This went on and
on, through 260 pages of the committee's records.
11
It was not
exactly evidence, as a lawyer would understand the word, but it was at least
testimony, and the committee passed it along to the Secretary of War (first
Cameron, and then Stanton) and suggested that General Stone be called to
account.
On January 28, Secretary Stanton sent
McClellan a written order to relieve General Stone from his command and put him
under arrest. McClellan removed him, but suspended execution of the order for
his arrest, saying that Stone ought to have a chance to answer the charges,
and, on January 31, Stone went before the committee for a second time and
learned that he was in serious trouble. He was told that the committee had
evidence which "tends to prove that you have had undue communication with
the enemy," and for the first time he realized that the committee really
took this fantastic talk of treason seriously. Instead of being asked to
explain a military mistake he had been supposed to prove that he was not a
Benedict Arnold.