What Happened in January 1862

 

I

 

Congress in Session

 

The Cause and Object of the War

 

With the disappearance of the Southern Democrats from the thirty-seventh Congress, in July 1861, the position taken by the Lincoln government that the object of the war was to preserve the Union intact began to change in the second session. The change was expressed in increasingly loud speeches by the Republican radicals, inducing the conservatives—still a strong group—to respond with their own diatribes.

 

Mr. Horace Maynard, a new member to the House, representing a district in east Tennessee, was one of the first to take the floor and express the view that the abolition of slavery, not the preservation of the Union, was the central purpose of prosecuting the war against the seceded states. Mr. Maynard was born in Massachusetts and was graduated from Amherst College, in 1838. He migrated to Tennessee where he took up the practice of law.

"I propose, sir, to speak of the war in which our country is involved. This is a war of ideas, not less than of armies. What produced this infernal contest? What is it that has called into deadly conflict from the walks of peace more than a million of men, the joint heirs of a common heritage of liberty? What power is it that has turned national assassin? These questions demand an answer.

 

It is argued that the slavery question has nothing to do with the present troubles. This rebellion, we are told, is the crowning fruit of the heresy of State Rights and the issue involved, therefore, is simply the old one between the Federal and Democratic parties. Sir, I hope we shall not be misled by this fallacy. I think there are such things as State rights, notwithstanding the efforts of rebels to make them a cloak for treason. On this question I subscribe to the teachings of James Madison, and with him I decline the consequences which slaveholding nullifiers seek to deduce from his constititional opinions. And, heartily as I condemn the dogma of secession, I believe it is no more pernicious than that other heresy which has steadily aimed to shallow up the States, and all the departments of the government, in the vortex of a centralized Federal power.

 

It was not jealousy of the Federal power that prompted the cotton States to secede, but their inability longer to rule the national Government in the interest of slavery. Whether the Constitution has been made to dip toward centralization of State rights, the disturbing element has been slavery.  This is the unclean spirit that from the beginning has need exorcism. To charge this rebellion upon secession and not slavery itself is like charging the domination of slavery itself upon the invention of the cotton gin. Without the previous existence of slavery in the Southern states, cotton would not have been king. Instead of one all engrossing pursuit, there would have been a healthy variety of enterprises, all conducted by educated labor.

 

Slavery founded the kingdom of cotton, and secured its present ascendency under the motive power of fresh lands and new labor-saving machinery; and now slavery is seeking to found an empire in the name of State rights.

 

Mr. Chairman, when I say that this rebellion has its source and life in slavery, I only repeat a simple truism. And the germ of our troubles, it must be confessed, is in the Constitution itself. These may seem ungracious words, but it is best to face the truth. I quote John Quincy Adams on this: `In our Articles of Confederation," he said; "there was no guarantee for the property of the slaveholder, but when the powers of government came to be delegated to the Union, the South refused their subscription to the parchment til it should be saturated with the infection of slavery. The freemen of the North gave way, and the deadly venom of slavery was infused into the Constitution.'

 

This bargain is the fountain of our disasters. I do not say that the founders are to be judged in light of this terrible mistake. We must view their action from their own point of view. They thought they were simply yielding to slavery a transient sufferenace, a brief hospitality, so that it might die and pass away, and they did not dream that the evil would treacherously demand perpetuity. It is not possible to believe that their bargain with slavery would ever have been made, had they foreseen the curses it has entailed upon the nation.

 

Sir, this rebellion is a bloody and frightful demonstration of the fact that slavery and freedom cannot dwell together in peace. The experiment has been tried, with a patience which defied despair, and has culminated in civil war.

 

I know it was not the purpose of Lincoln's Administration, at first, to abolish slavery, but only to save the Union, and maintain the old order of things. But the crisis has assumed new features as the war has progressed. The policy of emanicipation has been born of the circumstances of the rebellion. I believe the popular demand is now, or soon will be, the total destruction of slavery as the righteous purpose of the war, and the only means of a lasting peace. Let us give them a reconstruction based on freedom. Let us convert the rebel States into provinces, remanding them to the status of territories, and governing them as such at our discretion.

 

Upon no circumstances should we consent to end this struggle on terms that would leave us where we began it. To conclude the war by restoring slavery to the constitutional rights it has forfeited by treason would be as unreasonable as putting out the fire and then releasing the incendiary with torch in hand.

 

If we had been satisfied with the rule of slavery, as it existed prior to the rebellion, we might have had peace today. We might have agreed to the election of Breckinridge. We might have avoided war even after the election of Lincoln, by calling into his Cabinet the chief rebel conspirators who would have been pacified by the spoils. Having chosen a different course by the election of a man with a specific anti-slavery policy, and having undertaken to execute that policy, we are now shut up to the single duty of crushing the rebellion at all hazards, and blasting, forever, the power that has called it into life.

 

Mr. Chairman, our power to destroy slavery now, I believe, is not questioned. Cases may arise in which patriotism itself may demand that we trample under our feet some of the most vital principles of the Constitution, and this has been done already by the Lincoln Administration, under the exigencies of war. But so far as emancipation is concerned, constitutional difficulties are no longer in the way since the Constitution itself recognizes the war power of the Government, which the rebels have compelled us to employ against them. They have sown the wind, now let them reap the whirlwind.

 

But, instead of making slavery the special object of attack, as the weak point of the enemy and the guilty cause of the war, Lincoln's policy has been that of perpetual deference to its claims. The Government speaks with bated breath. I t handles it with kid gloves. The Secretary of State in his instructions to Mr. Adams, our ambassador to Britain, on the tenth of April last, says: `You will indulge in no expressions of harshness concerning the seceded states, or their people.' And Seward tells Adams to remember that these states are `equal and honored members of this Federal Union.' In this Seward is followed by Lincoln in his message to us of July 4th. The Secretary of War, following this line, has taken pains to say that, `This is a war for the Union, for the preservation of all constitutional rights of States.' The Attorney-General, Mr. Bates, has been equally emphatic, and has even insisted upon the enforcement of the fugitive slave law in Missouri. Mr. Bates has said, `This is not a war upon the institutions of slavery, but a war for the restoration of the Union and the protection of all citizens in their constititutional rights.' Both houses of Congress, in July, by the Crittenden resolution, chimed in with this chorus of loyal voices on the side of the assumed constitutional rights of rebels.

 

The conduct of the Administraton towards General Fremont forms a kindred topic of criticism. When he proclaimed freedom to the slaves of rebels in Missouri, the President at once modified it, so far as it went beyond the Confiscation Act of July. Fremont's proclamation was modified to appease the loyal slaveholders of Kentucky; but what right, I ask, had the loyal men of Kentucky to complain if the disloyal men of Missouri forfeited their slaves by treason?

 

To this dread of offending slavery must be charged our loss of respect in the world. We have no true battle-cry. We are fighting only for the Union, and taking pains to tell mankind that this does not mean liberty. We justify Lord Russell in saying that this is simply `a war for independence on the part of the South, and for power on the part of the North.'

 

Sir, our policy must be changed, radically and speedily, if we mean to be in earnest. We must let the world know that this is not a struggle for slavery in the border states, but for liberty and republicanism. We must abandon entirely the delusion that the rebels have any rights under the Constitution and deal with them as outlaws. The felt conciousness that they are in the wrong, and that we have for so many long years been the victims of their injustice, animates them with the fury of devils. They despise us. They regard our system of free labor with abhorrance. If they had the power they would exterminate us. They have a mighty army, led by some of the ablest commanders in the world, and nerved for bloody deeds by all the powers of desperation.

 

Sir, in such a contest we can spare no possible advantage. Every weapon must be used. Every arrow in our quiver must speed toward the heart of a rebel. Every obstacle must be trodden down. War means ruin, destruction, desolation, death—and loyal slaveholders must stand out of the way. All tenderness toward such is treason to our cause. The policy for which I plead, sooner or later, must be adopted, if the rebels are to be mastered, and every day puts in peril the precious interest for which we fight.

 

What To Do With The Negroes

 

Loyal slaveholders in both ends of this Capitol oppose emancipation of the slaves of rebels and publicly declare that such a measure would consolidate the people of the South as one man against the Union. They do not conceal the fact that they consider slavery paramont to the Union. Since I cannot possibly accommodate them, I divide with them on principle.

 

I must not conclude without noticing a further objection to the policy for which I contend. I refer to the alleged danger of this policy and the disposition of the slaves after they shall be free. First, if I am right in dealing with the rebellion as the child of slavery, it will not do to talk about consequences, for no possible consequence of emancipation can be worse than destroying the Government. Do you ask me if I would `turn the slaves loose?' I reply, that this rebellion, threatening to desolate our land, is the consequence of holding them in chains. Do you ask me what I would do with these liberated millions? I answer by asking what they will do with us if we insist on keeping them in bondage. Do you tell me that if the slaves are set free they will rise against their former masters, pillage and lay waste to the South? I answer, that all that, should it happen, would be far less deplorable than a struggle like this. If, therefore, our policy is to be determined by the question of consequences, the argument is clearly on the side of universal emancipation.

 

I answer next that if the slaves are set free they will not be pent up. They will occupy a country stretching between two oceans, vast portions of which are yet a wilderness. There is not only abundant room for them, but abundant need of their labor. They are not unfamilar with industrial pursuits, and if compensated for their labor, and acted upon by kindness, they will not only take care of themselves, but become a mighty element of wealth in the lattitudes of our country peculiarly suited to their constitution (how he sneaks it in). Their local attachments are remarkable, and, but for slavery they would not be found either in Canada or the Northern States. Remove slavery, and I believe the negro race among us will naturally gravitate towards a center of its own, and separate itself from the race of its former oppressors. Our prejudice, borrowed from slavery, and still continuing to hold sway, may aid this result. (There you have it, ladies and gentlemen the true cause of the Civil War: White Racism.)

 

But I would give them their freedom, and then leave them to the law of their condition (sink or swim) Let them work out their own destiny, and let them have fair play for fighting the battle of life."

 

Mr. John Bingham, of Ohio, a graduate of Franklin College and a lawyer, followed Maynard with this.

"That this rebellion can be suppressed only by the deadly arbitrament of battle is now no longer an open question. The rebellion declares the Republic is dismembered, its Constitution repealed. This rebellion must be put down and we must by law provide for its suppression, or the Republic dies. I repeat it, sir, that whatever is necessary to be done for the maintenance of the nation's life, is required to be done by the Constitution.

 

 

Necessity Trumps The Constitution

 

 And yet, sir, we have been admonished upon this floor that necessity is the plea of tyrants. Does it result that a Government wickedly assailed and threatened with overthrow, may not protect and perserve its own existence by arms? Wby sir, it is the accepted maxim of the law of nations that whatever is necessary for the preservation of the Government is just. When a nation is driven to the assertion of its rights by war, it has the right to do against the enemy whatever it finds necessary for the attainment of that end. Right goes hand in hand with necessity. War may be wrongfully levied by citizens of a state against their own Government. (Of course, it is not "citizens of a state" that is leving war against Bingham's government, but a State, indeed a group of States) This last is the war which today shakes the Republic, and of which the Constitution speaks when it declares, `that treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies.' In the suppression of this treasonable war against the Constitution, the Government, by law, may by force do all that is necessary.

 

Are The Rebels "Citizens" or "Aliens"?

 

Under the law of nations, the private property of alien enemies cannot be taken. But what is forbidden toward alien enemies waging war against us by the authority of their sovereign (This is the true basis of the resistance of the seceded states to the aggression of the Union), is expressly allowed by the Constitution toward these rebels. Every one of them taken in the overt act of rebellion, inasmuch as he (the individual) is a citizen of the United States and owes allegiance to the Government of the United States may be treated as traitor." (How can General Lee be a "citizen of the United States" when such "citizenship"—in the express language of the Constitution before amended in 1865—depends upon his status as a citizen of his native State, Virginia, and Virginia is, as a matter of fact, not a member of the "United States"? As a matter of  Law, if the rebel is characterized as a "citizen of the United States," under the Constitution, the Lincoln government cannot seize his property; if the rebel is characterized as an alien enemy, under the Law of Nations, the Lincoln government cannot take his property without compensation. See, for example, how Britain, after the Revolution and the War of 1812, by treaty with the United States, compensated slaveholders for the loss of their property seized by Britain during the wars)

 

Mr. Wadsworth, of Kentucky, replied to this.

 

"Kentucky has taken her stand and grasped the sword of the Union. She has now put twenty-eight regiments in the field. Thirty thousand of her citizens are battling on the side of the Union. We knew the risk we ran when, deserted by our natural supporters, we remained faithful to the Union. But we trusted in your fairness, we trusted in your Chicago platform declaration, we trusted in your unanimous vote in this House that you had no power and no intent to interfere with slavery in the States, we trusted in your williness even to amend the Constitution, by the joint resolution passed in July, which you passed by a two-thirds vote of both Houses, forever depriving Congress of the power to interfere with slavery in the States.

 

Now, after Kentucky has remained firm, notwithstanding that ten of her sisters have gone with South Carolina, we want to know whether you mean to fling her into that vortex which has swallowed so many kindred States? I tell you, Gentlemen, who favor the policy of Mr. Bingham that you mean no less than this. It will be said that it was not the valor and policy of treason that wrecked the Republic, but the folly and treachery of loyality.

 

You are for confiscation and emanicpation, you say, in order to destroy the resources of the rebellion, but none of you explain how that course will put an end to the rebellion.  You say it will not result in a slave insurrection; you say you do not want to put John Brown's pikes in the hands of the slaves to murder our white population. You do not want to do these things. Well, then, how do you propose, by carrying out your course of policy, to put an end to the rebellion? How, except by a slave insurrection? That is what Binghan means, that is what Maynard means.

 

Sir, is it true that you cannot put down the white population in the rebellious States by the strong arm of the white population of the loyal States, that you talk about arming the slaves? Will you admit that twenty odd millions of us cannot overcome one third that number without invoking the help of slaves and this institution of slavery, which you say is a weakness and curse to those who have it?

 

I say the first attempt to emancipate slaves will necessarily result in the enlargement of the boundaries of the rebellion. Millions in the revolted states, now loyal, with one heart, will join the foe. That instant the people of Missouri, Maryland, and Kentucky would resist the execution of such an act; that instant the loyal men, who have not gone into the war to accomplish Africanization of our society, will disband. Everything would compel them to throw down their arms. They would revolt at the idea of having been drawn into a war under the pretense of sustaining the Union, but in fact for the purpose of forcing emancipation upon the slaves of the South. (These concerns underpinned Lincoln's original policy; once they waned in his mind, so, too, did the policy.)

 

Then how would you fight your battles? I see you leading the charge against the regiments of rebellion and the war would be brought to a speedy conclusion led by men like you.  If you commit the great blunder of making this war for emancipation, there will arise the great danger of a quarrel among ourselves.  Will you abolish slavery in the District of Columbia? Will you nullify the Fugitive Slave Law? Will you confiscate the slaves? Will you try to divide the State of Virginia? Then the war will enlarge its proportion. (Within a matter of months, the Lincoln government would do these things.)

 

This day you have to make the choice. If you are for the emancipation of the slaves, you arm each man of those states against you. You must chose between negro slavery or the white people of fifteen States in opposition to you. The free States could not conquer fifteen slave States. You might defeat armies, overthrow them in battle, but fresh armies would spring up when the question is between liberty and extermination."

 

Mr. Samuel C. Fessenden, of Maine, a graduate of Bowdoin College, a pastor, and brother of Senator William Fessenden, breaks in.

 

"Sir, I am to be found with those who plant themselves squarely on the ground that the aim of this war is to preserve the Government of the United States (i.e, preserve the Union). This is the aim of the war. But it is as to means that we differ. No slavery—no Union, you say; but the people of nineteen States may declare, No liberty, no Union. I cannot but think, though the honorable gentleman from Kentucky will not agree with me, that sooner or later the people of the North and the West will choose No Liberty No Union, since choose them must."

 

Mr. William Steele, of New Jersey, answered Fessenden.

 

"It is not true, sir, that slavery is an outlaw to this Government. It is guaranteed by the Constitution and was part of the consideration for the original compact, upon which our Government and Constitution were founded. It has always existed with us, and with it we have prospered beyond every other nation on the earth. These gentlemen, sir, who grow so ferociously eloquent over their emancipation idea, do not tell us what they propose to do with their black brethern when they get them. Possibly they think their equalizing and humanizing philanthropy has so far elevated the character and tastes of the white men that they will consider it a privilege to fight side by side with black slaves. Let them try it. No, sir, we will not let them thus degrade and disgrace our brave soldiers; but, if they had the power to try it, they would find that human instincts were stronger than all their fine-spun theories.

 

I do not stand here as the advocate for slavery; I have no love for that institution—quite the contrary, but I remember that it was introduced here by our fathers, and by them ingrafted upon our Constitution, so that to each State, as an independent sovereignty, was secured the exclusive power and right to retain or abolish it. "

 

Mr. Henrick Wright, of Pennslyvania, adds his view.

 

'What did the President mean by alleging, when he called a military force into the field, that there should be no interference whatever with property of any kind? Sir, if he meant anything, he meant that the question of slavery should be let alone. If you adopt the doctrines advanced by Mr. Bingham and declare that four millions of slaves shall be set free, you do interfere with the rights of property and you do oppose the Executive.

 

Mr. Chairman, the next thing that was done in the process of time, defining the object of the war, was the adoption of the resolutions offered by Mr. Crittenden upon the 4th of July last. On July 22, the House, with only two dissenting votes, passed these resolutions. The resolutions defined the object of the war and declared that the war was not being fought in any spirit or purpose to overthrow or interfere with slavery, but to defend and maintain the Government. That was the platform upon which the House sustained Lincoln in the war. This is no war for slave emancipation; it is to put down rebellion and treason.

 

What will be the effect, sir, if you change the policy of the war, and make it a war of negro emancipation? The six hundred thousand men in the field this day, enlisted with the pledge of the Government that they were fighting to save the Union. I venture to say there are not three thousand who went into the field with any other impression. It is the battles of the white man that they are enlisted to fight, and not the battles of the black man."

 

Mr. Bingham breaks in.

 

"Pray, sir, who are the citizens of the States?"

 

Mr. Wright replies.

 

I will tell the gentleman. Each State, not having yielded the power of declaring citizenship in the Constitution, reserved it to herself, and Pennsylvania has not only decided through her courts, but has adopted it as a cardinal principle in her constitution, that black men are not citizens." (This reservation the States—some of them coerced—gave up upon the passage of the 14th amendment.)

 

Are you not aware that five States have adopted constitutional provisions prohibiting black people from coming into their territory?"

 

Mr. Bingham:

 

"There is no such provision in my State. And, anyway, they are citizens of the United States are they not?" (Mr. Bingham ignores the Supreme Court's holding in, 1856, in In Re Dred Scott.)

 

Mr. Wright:

 

"If this degraded class of people called slaves are citizens, then I concede that no State has a right to pass a law prohibiting their migration into it. But let me say to the gentleman that if his army of four millions of slave were to commence their march into Ohio and Pennsylvania it would be worse upon those States than the plagues of Egypt.

 

If those gentlemen who want to carry out this ultra policy will but stand by Abraham Lincoln as the conservative men of this body will stand by him, six months shall not pass away before the rebellion is dead, the national flag restored and the nation's glory vindicated. Why not confine ourselves to the legitimate issues of the war—to save the white race—and not adopt the other alternative, which is the destroy it." (Had Wright's prophecy proved accurate, slavery would have survived the Civil War.)

 

At this the hammer fell.

 

II

 

Lincoln's Herds His Generals

 

Abraham Lincoln was, without question, a very good trial lawyer and politician, but a general he was not. In the first days of  January 1862, with McClellan still sick in bed, Lincoln stepped into the chain of command and began communicating directly with Henry Halleck, commander of the Department of Missouri, and Don Carlos Buell, commander of the Department of the Ohio. He was prompted to do this, because he had received a copy of a memorandum Buell had written to McClellan in which Buell proposed that he should march his army from Louisville to Nashville, while Halleck directed a force against the Memphis & Ohio Railroad where it crosses the Tennessee River, just above the Confederate Fort Henry. Lincoln, wrote Buell on January 3: "Have arms gone forward for East-Tennessee?" Buell answered him with, "Arms can only go forward under the protection of an army. Better to use the army in an attack on Nashville."

 

Buell and Halleck in Kentucky

 

Lincoln responded to this with a letter that set forth a plan of operation that McClellan had been pushing, but Buell had been resisting.

 

"Your dispatch disappoints and distresses me. I would rather have a point on the Tennessee & Virginia Railroad south of Cumberland Gap than Nashville, first because it cuts a great artery of the enemies' communications, which Nashville does not, and, secondly, because it is in the midst of loyal people while Nashville is not."

The Situation in the Upper Mississippi Valley Click to enlarge image

 

 

On November 27, 1861, Buell had recommended to McClellan a plan of operation for both his forces and Halleck's. Halleck was responsible for operations west of the line of the Cumberland River and Buell for operations east of it. "It is my conviction," Buell wrote McClellan, "that all the force that can possibly be collected should be brought to bear on that front of which Columbus and Bowling Green are the flanks. The center, that is the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers where the railroad between Memphis and Bowling Green crosses them, is the most vulnerable point. I regard it as the most important strategical point in the whole field of operations."

 

During this entire time—the period of November 1861 to January 1862—Buell held an army of 55,000 men concentrated at Louisville, the soldiers recruited from Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. At the same time Halleck held an army of about 50,000 with most of its units scattered across the southern half of Missouri; Halleck had U.S. Grant, then a brigadier-general, in command of about 15,000 men—composed of Illinois recruits—concentrated at Cario, Illinois with a detachment occupying Paducah and Smithland at the mouths of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers.

Opposed to Buell's and Halleck's forces was the Confederate army of the West, commanded by Albert Sidney Johnston, the second highest ranking general in the Confederate Army. Johnston had about 20,000 men in the southern part of Missouri, 30,000 men at Bowling Green, 20,000 at Columbus, blocking Union navigation on the Mississippi, and 5,000 garrisoning Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, the two river forts planted just inside the Tennessee state line. Johnston, like Halleck, has been severely criticized by the civil war writers for indecision and inaction, but he was well aware of his strategic predictment and warned the Confederate Government early and often: "The purpose of having troops in Kentucky is to protect the frontier of Tennessee which is essential to our present line of defense," he wrote Confederate Adjutant General, Samuel Cooper. "We have only half the men we need to be secure from disaster. To suppose the enemy will suspend operations on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers is a delusion. All the resources of the Confederacy are now needed for the defense of Tennessee."

 

What Johnston was well aware of, and presumably, too, the Confederate Government at Richmond, was that, through the fall and into the winter of 1862, Lincoln's Government had contracted for the construction of gunboats, for use on the rivers of the Mississippi Valley. Building these gunboats was James E. Eads, who, by the time Lincoln was writing to Buell, had delivered eight of them to Grant at Cairo. Each of these boats, powered by steam engines and boilers, carried thirteen heavy guns (64 pounders), were plated with two inch thick iron, and, drawing six feet of water, could travel at nine miles per hour. The building of these boats had required rolling mills, machine shops, foundries, forges, and saw mills. Four thousand skilled mechanics and laborers were employed in the building of the boats and their components. The first boat, named The St. Louis, was launched at Carondelet, MO, on October 13, 1861. The rest arrived at Cario at the beginning of December. In addition, eight armored steam boats were built as troop and supply transports.

 

Eads' Construction Yard at Carondelet

 

 

Eads's Gunboat

 

The Confederate Government contracted for the construction of similar gunboats, and several were being built at New Orleans, the only place in the South which possessed the necessary heavy equipment and skilled tradesmen the construction effort required. And these boats were of no use to Johnston, because there was no way to get them onto the waters of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers.

 

Looking over the map of Kentucky and northern Tennessee, Johnston recognized that, with the use of Union naval power, the Union infantry force at Cario might at any moment come up the Tennessee River, attack and seize Fort Henry, and then destroy the railroad bridge that carries the Memphis & Ohio Railroad across the Tennessee.

 

The Railroad Bridge Over the Tennessee

 

With the bridge over the Tennessee River destroyed, Johnson's force, under Polk, at Columbus, would be cut off from reinforcing his force at Bowling Green and vice versus. Therefore, it was crucial to the Confederates' control of Kentucky territory that Fort Henry and For Donelson be defended at all costs—but how to do this, given the resources available to Johnston, was more than problematical, it objectively seems, under the circumstances, to have been impossible. For, if Johnston were to use a substantial part, if not all, of the Confederate force at Bowling Green to reinforce the forts, there was nothing to prevent Buell, with his 50,000 soldiers, from immediately follow down the railroad and either attack the forts or pass directly to Nashville, Johnston's base of supply. If this happened, all of Kentucky and most of Tennessee, west of Chatanooga, would be instantly lost to the Confederacy.

 

Notwithstanding the obvious strategic advantage the Union forces, under Halleck and Buell, enjoyed, McClellan, who had his own agenda at the forefront of his mind, wrote to Buell on January 6th: "My own general plans make the speedy occupation of East Tennessee of absolute necessity, Interesting as Nashville is to the Louisville interests, its strikes me that its possession is of very secondary important. Lincoln followed this, with messages to both Halleck and Buell, asking them to state the date they would move—Buell to move toward the Tennessee & Virginia Railroad (i.e., toward Knoxsville) and Halleck having Grant move on Polk's force at Columbus, the idea being that Grant's move would keep Johnston from being reinforced as he moved northeast to block Buell's move toward the southeast.

 

Halleck replied to Lincoln the same day:

 

"The enemy has 22,000 at Columbus. I have at Cairo and Paducah only 15,000 men, which leaving guards, gives me only 10,000 to help Buell. It would be madness to attempt anything serious with such a force, and I cannot at present time withdraw from Missouri without risking the loss of the state. Price and others have a considerable army in the Southwest which I am operating with all my available force."

 

Shortly after the receipt of Lincoln's message, Buell replied that he would acquiese in Lincoln's wishes, and Lincoln responded with this bewildering letter:

 

"My general idea of this war is that we have the greater numbers, and the enemy has the greater facility of concentrating forces upon points of collision. We must fail, therefore, unless we can find some way of making our advantage an over-match for his. This can be done by menacing him with superior forces at different points, at the same time, so that we can safely attack one or both, and if he weakens one to strengthen the other, we can stand on the defensive against the strengthened one, and move against the weakened one.

 

To illustrate, suppose last summer, when Winchester (Joe Johnston's force in the Shenandoah Valley) ran away to re-inforce Manassas (Beauregard's force at Bull Run), we had forborne to attack Manassas, but had seized and held Winchester. I mention this, not to criticize. I did not lose confidence in McDowell, and I think less harshly of Patterson than some others seem to. (If he did not lose confidence in McDowell, why did he call for McClellan to come east less than twenty-four hours after the battle?)

 

Applying this principle to your case, my idea is that Halleck shall menace Columbus, while you menace Bowling Green, and East Tennessee. If the enemy shall concentrate at Bowling Green, leave him there and seize East Tennessee while Halleck seizes Columbus." (Leave him there to march on Louisville?)

 

Then he ends with this: "It is matter of no small anxiety to me that the East Tennessee line is so long, and over so bad a road." (edited for clarity)(The distance between Louisville and Knoxville, with the Alleghanies in the way, is 250 miles. The distance from Lousiville to Bowling Green is 113 miles, between Louisville and Nashville, 175 miles, and there is a railroad all the way.)

 

 

Lincoln's letter to Buell goes a long way to show his incompetence at playing the general. First, had Lincoln left Scott and McDowell alone, in July of 1861, to plan and execute the operation against Manassas, instead of insisting that McDowell march directly to Bull Run and immediately attack the enemy, the Union army probably would have been successful in eventually forcing the rebel force to retreat, with or without a battle. Plainly, to achieve this result, McDowell should have taken a defensive position at Centreville, to guard his right and rear, while moving his main body south through the woods and across the Occoquan River to Brentsville. Once securely positioned at Brentsville, McDowell then would have moved westward toward the Orange & Alexandria Railroad, with Broad Run protecting his right flank; the going here would have been slow and methodical, to be sure, as McDowell would be building fortifications as he advanced, but, even though Joe Johnston might arrive to augment Beauregard's force, McDowell, being reinforced from Washington, would have eventually gotten close enough to the railroad to compel the Confederates to withdraw behind the Rappahannock. It might have taken McDowell several months to achieve this, but the odds are that he would have been successful.

 

The language of Lincoln's letter suggests that he seriously thought Patterson's force at the foot of the Shenandoah Valley could have either marched east to join McDowell, or marched  south to engage Johnston in front of Winchester; yet, as Lincoln acknowledges in the letter, Patterson really did not have a force capable of doing either; given the fact that the enlistment time of almost all the regiments that composed it had expired and the soldiers were being mustered out, a consequence of the manner in which Lincoln first called upon the states for troops.

 

Second, Lincoln's invoking the military principle of interior lines is misplaced in the context of the strategic situation confronting Sidney Johnston, on the one hand, and Halleck and Buell on the other. In fact, a simple look at the map makes plain that, here, the Union had the "interior lines" and the Confederates, "exterior lines" which Buell, Halleck, and Grant well knew and were anxious to exploit. Forts Henry and Donelson were the center of Johnston's line, which extended from Columbus at the mouth of the Ohio, to Bowling Green. In order for a rebel force from one flank to move to the other flank, it would have to march forty miles or more to the south (or take the railroad) and go around the two forts and then march forty miles or more to the north, while Buell and Halleck could communicate with each other by the Ohio River in a straight line. Furthermore, destroying the railroad bridge across the Tennessee River would leave the Columbus force, if it marched to Bowling Green, with the challenge of fording the river in the winter time.

 

After receiving Lincoln's letter, Buell wired Halleck the suggestion that he dispatch two gunboat expeditions, supporting 20,000 troops, up the Tennessee and Cumberland, for the purpose of inducing Johnston to reinforce the river forts with his force at Bowling Green.

 

Halleck Starts Organizing An Attack on Fort Henry

 

Notwithstanding his position that he had no available force that could do anything substantial, Henry Halleck ordered Grant, on January 6, the same day he wired Lincoln he could do nothing to help Buell,  to make a "demonstration. "Let it be understood that Fort Donelson is the object of your attack," he wrote. "But do not advance far enough to expose your flank and rear to attack from Columbus, and by all means avoid a serious engagement."

 

In response to this, Grant went out for a week with McClernand toward Columbus, splashing through mud, rain, and snow, while his subordinate, C.F. Smith, led a brigade, accompanied by gunboats, up the Tennessee as far as Fort Henry. Meanwhile, Buell sent a division southwestward from the vicinity of Louisville which attacked and routed a rebel force that had approached the Ohio River from the direction of the Cumberland Gap. Then, the day after Buell's force routed the rebel force, Halleck wired McClellan, who was now on his feet and dealing with Lincoln and the Radical politicians, that he meant to move up the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers and capture Nashville: "A feasible plan," he wrote, "is to move up the Cumberland and Tennessee, making Nashville the objective point. This would turn Columbus and force the abandonment of Bowling Green. The line of the Cumberland or Tennessee is the great central line of the Western theater of war."

 

Halleck followed this, on January 30, with, "Grant and Commodore Foote (in command of the fortilla of gunboats and steamers) will be ordered to immediately advance, and to reduce Fort Henry on the Tennessee River, and also cut the railroad between Fort Donelson and Paris." To Buell, Halleck wired: "I have ordered an advance of our troops on Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. It will be made immediately. Buell responded, saying he needed more time to be able to cooperate with the plan. Halleck replied: "Cooperation not essential."

 

 Burnside in North Carolina

Soon after Ambrose Burnside obtained rank as a major-general, he approached his old pal, McClellan, and proposed that an infantry division be organized from the eastern seaboard states, to move via ships to Palmico Sound on the North Carolina coast, and, using Roanoke Island as a base of operations, capture New Bern, opening the way for Lincoln to set up a state government with the support of the loyal slaveholders. McClellan approved the plan in October and Burnside organized the division at Annapolis. By December 12, he had a fleet of vessels comprised of sailing ships, large steamers, tugs, barges and ferry boats which were capable of transporting 15,000 men plus equipment and supplies. By the end of December, most of these vessels, along with water and coal carrying ships, were gathered at Hampton Roads.

 

The North Carolina Coast

 

On the night of January 11th, Burnside's fleet was at sea in a severe storm, beating its way south from Hampton Roads. During the transition the fleet took much damage but all vessels eventually arrived off Hatteras Inlet. The inlet, itself, had been seized several months earlier, by an expedition sent out from Fort Monroe by Ben Butler and it was through the inlet the vessels of Burnside's fleet had to sail, to reach the sound and Roanoke Island. In atttempting the fleet's transfer from the open sea to the sound, the propeller ship, City of New York, laden with supplies and ordnance stores, grounded on the bar and its crew had to be rescued by surf-boats. One of the troop vessels also grounded on the bar, but a tug boat got her off and into the sound. Such of the vessels that could not cross the bar anchored under the protection of the cape. The ship Pocohantas was lost and the gunboat, Zouave, was sunk in the sound after she crossed the bar. From the 14th of January until the 26th, storms battered the fleet, driving many of the vessels from their anchors, grounding several on the swash and the bar. Many collisions occurred, causing further damage to the fleet. Finally, as the storms fell away, the fleet vessels gained the sound, Roanoke Island was seized, and Burnside moved to the mainland and toward New Bern.

 

FARRAGUT'S EXPEDITION

 

On November 12, Lincoln had ordered that a naval expedition be fitted out for the capture of New Orleans. Farragut was given its command, with a flotilla of gunboats to be built, under D.D.Porter's command. On January 20, Farragut assumed command of the West Gulf Blockading Squadron and reached his station at the mouth of the Mississippi on January 20. Eventually Farragut would accumulate seventeen armed vessels, carrying 177 guns.

 

The Mouth of the Mississippi

The Confederates had constructed two forts at the mouth: Fort Jackson and Fort St.Philip, and were busy trying to complete construction of a 16 gun ironclad gunboat, Mississippi,  and a ram, Manassas. Two other iron clads were under construction at New Orleans, and a third, Arkansas, was being built at Yazoo City.

III

 

McCLELLAN CONFOUNDS THE POLITICIANS