Upon the Altar of the Nation (7 page)

By training and creed, academy officers and cadets embodied American might and power. A breed apart, they had little in common with the outside world and its preoccupations. Their bond was their honor to one another, and their comradeship larger than life. They eschewed all creeds save America and subordinated all religious observations to the American mission. Alone among American institutions of higher learning, West Point resisted the evangelical revivals of the “Second Great Awakening” as divisive and in bad taste. From its origins, the Military Academy had remained a quasi-Episcopal establishment. Jewish cadets worshipped on Sundays like everyone else, for nothing could transcend the West Point religion. In fact, West Point celebrated the religion of America, and for that purpose trained a cadre of warriors whose divine mandate was unqualified love of country.

With only about seventy students in each class, all the cadets knew one another—a fact that would become extremely important in the emerging Civil War. Students endured a regimen of intense “character formation” that amounted to overwhelming indoctrination. One nineteenth-century teacher commented: “It stands
in loco parentis
not only over the mental but the moral, physical and, so to speak, the official man. It dominates every phase of his development.... There is very little of his time over which it does not exercise a close scrutiny, and for which it does not demand a rigid accountability.”
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West Point cadets and officers were taught also to be “gentlemen.” The term “gentleman” carried with it powerful moral imperatives of “honor” and justness in the conduct of war. Through intensive training and indoctrination, cadets imbibed a code that stressed the ideal of a “limited war.” The tactics, such as they were, taught by Dennis Mahan, a professor of civil and military engineering, stressed the reserve use of interior lines of operations and campaigns of position and maneuver against armies rather than crushing overland campaigns across civilian populations.
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This West Point Code demanded that real gentlemen protect the innocents and minimize destruction to achieve desired ends.
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But this never meant timidity or intimidation in the face of combat against organized armies. Here fearlessness and ruthlessness ruled. Lived experiences in the Mexican War taught officers the superiority of the “tactical offensive”—a tactic that would have devastating consequences in the war to come.

Five hundred and twenty-three West Point graduates fought in the Mexican War, which became a primer for tactics in the Civil War. Under Winfield Scott’s command, veteran officers included Ulysses S. Grant (class of ‘43), William Tecumseh Sherman (’40), Winfield Scott Hancock (‘44), George Thomas (’40), Gordon Meade (’35), Joseph Hooker (’37), John Sedgwick (’37), Joseph E. Johnston (’29), and, most notably, Robert E. Lee (’29). Nearly all were heavily decorated for gallant conduct and imbibed a warrior culture that gloried in the bayonet charge.

The Military Academy’s new superintendent, Pierre Gustave T. Beauregard of Louisiana, would serve only five days: on January 28, he resigned his commission, returned to his home state, and went on from there to Fort Sumter. To Southern cadets, who were pulled between loyalty to country and state, he prescribed caution: “Watch me; when I jump, you jump; what’s the use of jumping too soon?”
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Some South Carolina cadets had, in fact, begun jumping sooner and resigned as early as November 1860: the first was H. S. Farley (’62) from South Carolina. Other resignations followed in December and January, but not yet in significant numbers. On the other side, William Tecumseh Sherman resigned as superintendent of the Louisiana Military Academy to attach himself to the North.

In raising an army from the ground up, Lincoln depended heavily on West Point. From 1854 to 1861, the Military Academy had adopted a new five-year course of study proposed by Secretary of War Jefferson Davis and administered by the superintendent, Robert E. Lee. To maximize his officer corps, Lincoln reverted to the old four-year plan and ordered two graduating classes in 1861 with five-year cadets graduating in May and four-year cadets in June. The big question was how many would stay loyal to the Union.

The cadets’ response to Sumter would be critical. If only a few followed Beauregard, the South would be deprived of a vital source of skilled lieutenants and captains who could lead untrained volunteers into the mouth of the cannon. If many departed, Lincoln faced a more daunting challenge.

In making their excruciating decisions, Southern cadets found themselves caught between “honor” and “duty to country.” Where once these two ideals had forged an indomitable bond of brotherhood in devotion to the shrine of one unified country, they now demanded an unprecedented choice. Duty meant, above all, unquestioned obedience to orders. In defending the integrity of the Military Academy as two nations prepared for war, General John Gross Barnard (class of ’33), who would become General George B. McClellan’s chief engineer, highlighted duty:

But whose orders would ultimately be honored? They would have to choose whom they would serve. West Point librarian Oliver Otis Howard, who was destined to become one of William Tecumseh Sherman’s greatest generals, recognized that “probably no other place existed where men grappled ... more sensitively ... with the troublesome problems of secession.”
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In late April, after Virginia seceded, Ohio cadet Tully McCrea wrote his belle: “This has been an eventful week in the history of West Point. There has been such a stampede of cadets as was never known before. Thirty-two resigned and were relieved from duty on Monday [April 22] and since then enough to increase the number to more than forty. There are now very few cadets from any southern state here.”
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In fact, seventy-four Southern cadets resigned or were dismissed for refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the United States, but twenty-one Southern cadets remained and would eventually follow “duty” and fight for the Union. This was a far higher proportion of loyalists than Southern students at Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. At Princeton, not one Southern student remained at the college.
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With Southern cadets resigning and returning home, the time for impassioned fistfights had passed. All realized that soon they would be shooting for real, fighting against former brothers and comrades-in-arms. Rather than making shows of bitterness or violence, departing and remaining cadets expressed sorrow and mutual disappointment.

Cadet George Armstrong Custer (’61 June) recalled walking sentinel duty and seeing fifteen defecting Southern cadets marching toward the steamboat landing:

One of the last to leave was the well-liked Fitz Lee from Virginia (not Robert E. Lee’s nephew Fitzhugh Lee, who graduated from Harvard in 1856). On the eve of his departure Lee’s Northern classmates serenaded him. The next day, as Lee departed, eyes moistened. They were friends after all.

For Tully McCrea, who would graduate in the spring of 1862, the May chapel service was somber. In another letter to his girlfriend he wrote:

Outside of West Point, partisans on both sides were certain their side would win quickly. The cadets knew otherwise. Besides the defections from West Point, Southern officers and West Point graduates were resigning their commissions in distressing numbers and joining the Confederacy. Having already fought one impassioned fistfight, Cadet Emory Upton foresaw the consequences of a West Point at war with itself. In a letter to his sister he predicted a hard war to come:

Upton’s ominous sentiments proved prescient. Little did he realize just how personal they would become for him as he would be wounded in battle three times during the course of the war.

In all, 294 West Point graduates became Union officers and 151 Confederate. Well over half became generals and commanded armies in every major engagement. In fifty-five of the sixty major battles, they commanded both sides. Besides feeding the war machine with aggressive tactics, the West Point generals came to embody the face of American patriotism.

On Friday, April 19, as Federal troops marched south to Washington, riots broke out in Baltimore between Federal soldiers of the Sixth Massachusetts and the pro-secessionist citizens of Maryland. As the soldiers moved through the streets, angry Maryland slaveholders and pro-secessionist citizens rained stones on the soldiers, who returned the action with live fire. At least four soldiers and nine civilians were killed in the exchanges. Hysterical reports of the riots suggested Washington itself might be endangered and have to be evacuated.

In a letter to his fiancée, Therena Bates, written on April 19, John G. Nicolay, Lincoln’s chief personal secretary, could not hide his anxiety. As an indication of how frightened the Lincoln administration actually was, Nicolay assured his fiancée: “I do not think any force could be brought against the city to-night, which our men could not easily repel, and therefore do not feel seriously alarmed, although the apprehensions of danger are pretty general.”
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In a letter to the Reverend Alonzo Hill, written on May 1 on House of Representatives stationery, J. Stewart Brown of the Massachusetts volunteers stationed in Washington reported humorously: “We are comfortably quartered in the Senate Chamber, a curious place I think for military to encamp, but at the same time, residents in this city, who have looked in upon us assert that it presents a more peaceable appearance than ever before.” For Brown and his company of volunteers, the overwhelming sentiment was patriotism: “There is but
one
determination, and that is, to stand by our country, to adore the glorious old stars and stripes, and
never
to see them dishonored.”
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Lincoln by this time was ready for war, and saw in Sumter and the Baltimore riots the perfect opportunity to move beyond his inaugural declaration of “possessing” Federal property to “repossessing” it. When a disconsolate Massachusetts businessman named Gustavus Vasa Fox complained bitterly of the loss of Sumter and the timidity of ranking Republicans, Lincoln wrote him on May I: “You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort-Sumpter [sic], even if it should fail; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result.”
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In the midst of these events, Lincoln called for a blockade of the Confederate states.

I
n response to armed mobilization, four of the remaining slaveholding states joined the Confederacy: Tennessee, Arkansas, North Carolina, and, most significantly, Virginia. In Richmond, the post-Sumter embrace of secession was electric, and the scene following news of secession bedazzling. Streets were “brilliantly illuminated” by torches and bonfires, signaling with “triumphal acclaim” the birthday of a new nation. Confederate war clerk J. B. Jones, stationed throughout the war in Richmond, described universal enthusiasm: “Ladies everywhere seem embued [sic] with the spirit of patriotism.” Former president John Tyler delivered a stirring oration invoking “benign providence” to bless the Confederacy’s “holy effort,” all in the spirit of the “Revolution of 1776.”
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Certainly in 1860 no one could have predicted that Richmond would become such a vital center for the Confederacy. In contrast to the fire-eaters to the South, Richmond’s citizens had not been eager for secession. In 1860 business was booming, and that meant business with the North. With many Northerners living in the city, attitudes toward secession were cautious or opposed. Unlike Charleston or New Orleans, Richmond had much to lose from a Northern invasion and very little to gain. As late as April 4, Virginia’s convention voted 2—1 against secession, with Virginia’s governor voting with the majority.

Then came Sumter and secession, and Lincoln’s summons to the state militias to suppress the rebellion. From the first days of the Confederacy to the last, cannons would sound within Richmond’s hearing. The population would increase threefold to more than one hundred thousand. An army was raised so that at any given time ten to fifteen thousand soldiers were stationed in Richmond for training or passing through on battle maneuvers. Soon they would be joined by thousands of the wounded being treated as hospital patients and, a little later, thousands more prisoners of war.