Upon the Altar of the Nation (13 page)

 

In the South, a similarly reflexive patriotism prevailed. Charleston’s Thomas Smyth preached a jubilee celebration sermon at the Second Presbyterian Church on the theme “Our Fathers.” The point was to invoke the spirit of Washington and Jefferson as patriotic Southern voices who embraced the same spirit of independence that their Confederate descendants proclaimed in 1861: “They have ever and every where been found firm, faithful and true, honest and honorable, indomitable in will, uncompromising in principle, and clinging to their rights with unconquerable tenacity.”
⁸

Sympathy for Southern nationalism led the Southern-raised William J. Hoge to resign one of the most prestigious Northern pulpits at Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City. When Hoge prayed publicly for the rulers of the Confederate States, as well as the Union, he knew he was on borrowed time and announced his intention to return to the South. On July 21 he delivered his farewell discourse to Brick Church, confessing that: “Ever since the beginning of this national conflict, my heart has yearned towards my beloved South, and especially the dear Commonwealth of Virginia. I have longed to share their privations, their dangers, and their destiny, whether of humiliation or triumph.”
⁹

The
Charleston Daily Courier
used the Fourth of July to tout the glories of the new Confederacy: “These are stormy times indeed. In addition to the reported fighting on the Potomac, and the invasion of the Old Northwest, we have intelligence of a glorious victory of the Confederacy in Western Virginia, and another by the Confederates in Missouri. Can it be that Providence designs that we shall rejoice over the simultaneous fall of Washington, Wheeling, and St. Louis?”
¹⁰
Of course, Charleston’s intelligence was flawed, and the “victories” were not forthcoming. But such were the vainglorious hopes and self-righteous certainties that would fuel the bloodlusts on both sides as they prepared to do battle.

Without knowing exactly where the first great engagement might come, all realized that it would be somewhere in Virginia on a route to Richmond. For the soldiers, excitement came mingled with fear. On the eve of battle, a young soldier wrote a worried letter to his pastor, asking him to help in the disposition of his “personal effects” in the event of his death. Like many soldiers who had not yet seen “the elephant” (combat), premonitions of death haunted him:

Confederate resolve was no less assured. In a sermon preached in June 1861 to Savannah’s Pulaski Guards, who were about to join the army in Virginia, Stephen Elliott urged boldness: “Ye may go to battle without any fear, and strike boldly for your homes and your altars without any guilt.... The Church will sound the trumpets that shall summon you to battle.”
¹²
In hopeful terms he assured the soldiers that with a proper relationship to “God’s word,” victory would be assured.
¹³
With moral counters and assurances like these, all the pieces were put in place for the bloodshed to come.

 

As Davis moved to secure Richmond, Lincoln attended to his Maryland border in order to protect his capital. With the Baltimore riots as a powerful reminder of how vulnerable Washington was, Lincoln quickly ensured that Maryland would never again threaten Washington. This meant a “root-and-branch” extraction of all outspoken Confederate loyalists in public places.

The most draconian measures Lincoln took—and a hint of things to come—were to suspend the writ of habeas corpus from Philadelphia to Washington, effectively erasing civil liberties, and to place Maryland under martial law. When Chief Justice Roger B. Taney opined that only Congress had the constitutional right to suspend habeas corpus, Lincoln—who had despised Taney ever since the
Dred Scott
decision—issued orders (never served) for Taney’s arrest. Secretary of State William Seward followed with the arrests of thirty-one proslavery Maryland legislators together with the mayor of Baltimore. From the start, Lincoln knew in essence where he was headed and was clearly prepared to take whatever steps were necessary to crush resistance, without waiting for Congress or the Supreme Court to oppose him.
¹⁴

On the Northern and Southern home fronts, news of episodic exchanges and skirmishes filled the press with foreboding and declarations of crisis but not many reports of casualties. The most serious fighting was occurring in the West. In western Virginia, a Union army under General George B. McClellan occupied the mountain counties of western Virginia and pursued a successful campaign to drive Confederate forces out of the newly created pro-Union state of West Virginia. Meanwhile, in Missouri, Governor Claiborne Jackson, the pro-Confederate “border ruffian,” refused Lincoln’s call to raise state militias and kept his militia in spring quarters at Boonville, near St. Louis.

Under Lincoln’s authorization, a small Union regiment led by the highly volatile and possibly insane Nathaniel Lyon compelled Jackson’s proslavery militia to surrender their arms. Soon a sympathetic crowd gathered around Jackson, shouting insults. In an impetuous move, Lyon opened fire and killed twenty-eight civilians in cold blood. He was never charged by the Lincoln administration.
¹⁵
This “victory” helped the Union control the Missouri River, but at the cost of unending internecine disputes and guerrilla warfare that resulted in even higher civilian casualties.
¹⁶

Ongoing violence in Missouri, pitting neighbor against neighbor, would only grow more savage as time passed. In effect, a civil war was erupting within its own borders. Lyon declared war on Sterling Price, commander of the pro-Southern militia, and chased him to the southwest corner of the state. In the process, Price set in motion pro-secession guerrilla bands—little more than common criminals—who ambushed and murdered anyone in their path, including women and children.

Three-fourths of Missouri residents were Unionists, and the guerrillas would stop at nothing to intimidate and terrorize these private citizens. In the process, they pushed the region into a virtual state of anarchy. Under their reign of violence, blood revenge trumped all sane considerations on both sides. Pro-Southern “bushwhackers” like William Quantrill, George Todd, “Bloody Bill” Anderson, and brothers Jesse and Frank James faced off against Unionist “Jayhawkers” (also guerrillas) like Charles Jennison, James Montgomery, and James Lane. In the orgy of killing that followed, there were no innocents and no limits on the extent of depredations they would enact. More than any other state, Missouri offered a chilling preview of what would happen if guerrilla warfare were to erupt on a grander scale.

Though strategically important, none of the spring encounters in the West had, in West Point terms, “risen to the dignity of a battle.” As in most wars, the shooting would come first and the war plans would follow. With the exception of Winfield Scott, no American commander on either side had any experience commanding a brigade of two or more regiments in the Mexican War (about eight hundred men). And no one had commanded units as large as divisions (about five regiments) or corps (consisting of three divisions).

Based on modest experiences, initial military objectives were also modest. Northern generals strove to fight a traditional campaign on land and sea designed merely to force Southerners to accept the legitimacy of the Union government and come back into the Union with slaves and property intact. Winfield Scott’s noncombative “Anaconda” strategy sought gradually to blockade the entire South, cutting off their access to ports and strangling them into early submission. Like Lincoln, Scott presumed a strong Unionist presence in the South that would soon sue for peace.

On the other side, Confederate leaders planned to march on Washington, picking up supposed legions of Maryland loyalists along the way. In time it would become clear that Maryland would not flock to the Confederacy any more than supposed masses of Southern Unionists would flock to the Union. But in 1861 hopes burned bright on both sides and promised quick victories. A “clean” and decisive Confederate victory in the field would win European recognition, which meant Northern blockades could not stand, and Lincoln would have to let them go.
¹⁷

T
he Civil War began with the attack on Fort Sumter, but the first significant battle would wait three long months.
¹
In the interim, armies had to be raised, logistical infrastructures created, munitions manufactured, officers commissioned, and battle plans laid. Neither the Union nor the Confederacy was prepared for war, and while everyone knew war had begun, no one knew what it meant. The ninety-day enlistment periods confirm that most leaders assumed the war would be brief and the costs minimal. Northerners, confident in a strong Unionist yeomanry, assumed the planters would capitulate without popular support. Southerners, well aware of Northern Whig opposition to the Mexican War and of abolitionist pacifists like Wendell Phillips, assumed the North would cut and run once the bullets flew. Hardly anyone thought a war would last longer than six months. Patriots on both sides remained confident that triumph would soon be theirs and victories glorious. Armies passed in review, volunteers lined up to fight, and civilians mixed easily with the commanders and local soldiers around the camps.

The politics of this war—aimed at reunion and reconciliation—dictated minimal civilian deprivations and fair fights by armies in the field. Leaders on both sides assumed that civilian property would be protected and, of course, civilians left untouched in any way. Above all, the code
of jus in bello
—just conduct—gave highest priority to the protection of innocents and civilians, even at the cost of heightened risk for the combatants.

By June Confederate soldiers were guarding the three major invasion routes into Virginia. Brigadier General Joseph E. Johnston’s forces stood at the mouth of the Shenandoah Valley; Brigadier General Pierre G. T. Beauregard remained just above Manassas guarding the railroad; and Colonel John (“Prince John”) Bankhead Magruder guarded the Peninsula between the James and York rivers. All were West Point graduates with experience in the Mexican War. Faced with the lack of a general in chief, President Davis assumed both the title and the responsibilities of commander in chief. The decision would prove costly.

 

In Washington, D.C., one thing was clear. Lincoln intended to fight rather than let the South go peacefully. And he would not wait for congressional consultation to increase the size of the regular army. When he assumed office, the professional army numbered under 20,000, spread out over seventy-nine frontier outposts. By July 4, when Congress was called into session, Lincoln had increased the Union forces to 235,000 men. Virtually all of the troops were already under arms—volunteers spoiling for a fight and a quick victory. There was a general staff and commanding general, the tall and imposing Winfield Scott. Scott had led America to victory in the war with Mexico. While a cadet at West Point, a young Ulysses S. Grant had stood in formation while Scott passed in review. Now at the head of the Union forces, Scott had one overarching objective: “Forward to Richmond.”
²
The North, he knew, enjoyed an enormous advantage in sea power and shipbuilding capacity. But that would not immediately help a land campaign, which this war threatened to be.

Many voluntary companies were led by incompetent amateurs who would factor largely in early battles. But looming over them were the professional soldiers who had fought in Mexico and graduated from the service academies. Campaign strategies began to take shape immediately after Sumter. Both armies were served by the hundreds of talented West Point graduates trained both to command the armies and to lead by courageous example. Their powers in the field were virtually unchallenged. In the calculus of this looming war, the importance of generals would be difficult to overestimate. Civil War generals fought at the front and their instantaneous and instinctive decisions literally meant victory or defeat. Raw physical courage also determined outcomes. This was a time when generals still
fought,
unlike modern wars in which commanding generals function more like congressmen than warriors immediately in harm’s way

The key to the offensive was, in the Swiss tactician Antoine-Henri Jomini’s term, “vivacity”—a single spirited charge of such intensity that the intimidated defenders, trapped in their inadequate entrenchments, would be rolled over and destroyed. Along with vivacity came romance. The greatest “art” of the offensive was the bayonet charge, a romanticized moment of individual—up close and personal—bravery and glory. One Confederate manual carried as its motto: “The bayonet is the weapon of the brave.”
³
If forced to take a defensive position, commanders were trained to return to the offensive as fast as possible, preferably with a bayonet charge. These tactics had proved irresistible in the Mexican War. The question was not raised as to whether they would succeed in the coming war.