XXVI. The United States Sustains Its Dignity Abroad
[=The Piratical States of North Africa=]
If the reader will look at any map of Africa he will see on the northern coast, defining the southern limits of the Mediterranean, four States, Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli, running east and west a distance of 1800 miles. These powers had for centuries maintained a state of semi-independency by paying tribute to Turkey. But this did not suit Algeria, the strongest and most warlike of the North African States; and in the year 1710 the natives overthrew the rule of the Turkish Pasha, expelled him from the country, and united his authority to that of the Dey, the Algerian monarch. The Dey subsequently governed the country by means of a Divan or Council of State chosen from the principal civic functionaries. The Algerians, with the other "Barbary States," as the piratical States were called, defied the powers of Europe; their armed vessels sweeping the waters of the Mediterranean, committing a thousand ravages upon the merchant vessels of other nations, and almost driving commerce from its waters. France alone resisted these depredations, and this only partially, for after she had repeatedly chastised the Algerians, the strongest of the piratical States, and had induced the Dey to sign a treaty of peace, the Corsairs would await their opportunity and after a time resume their depredations. Algiers in the end forced the United States to resort to arms in the defence of its commerce, and the long immunity of the pirates did not cease until the great republic of the West took them in hand.
The truth is, this conflict was no less irrepressible than that greater conflict which a century later deluged the land in blood. Before the Constitution of the United States had been adopted, two American vessels, flying the flag of thirteen stripes and thirteen stars, instead of the forty-five stars which now form our national constellation, while sailing the Mediterranean had fallen a prey to the swift, heavily-armed Algerian cruisers. The vessels were confiscated, and their crews, to the number of twenty-one persons, were held for ransom, for which an enormous sum was demanded.
This sum our Government was by no means willing to pay, as to do so would be to establish a precedent not only with Algeria, but also with Tunis, Tripoli, and Morocco, for each of these African piratical States was in league with the others, and all had to be separately conciliated.
[=The War with the Pirates of Tripoli=]
But, after all, what else could the Government do? The country had no navy. It could not undertake in improvised ships to go forth and fight the powerful cruisers of the African pirates--States so strong that the commercial nations of Europe were glad to win exemption from their depredations by annual payments. Why not, then, ransom these American captives by the payment of money and construct a navy sufficiently strong to resist their encroachments in the future? This feeling on the part of the Government was shared by the people of the country, and as a result Congress authorized the building of six frigates, and by another act empowered President Washington to borrow a million of dollars for purchasing peace. Eventually the ransom money was paid to the piratical powers, and it was hoped all difficulty was at an end. But, as a necessary provision for the future, the work of constructing the new warships was pushed with expedition. As will be seen, this proved to be a wise and timely precaution.
We are now brought to the year 1800. Tripoli, angry at not receiving as much money as was paid to Algiers, declared war against the United States. Circumstances, however, had changed for the better, and the republic was prepared to deal with the oppressors of its seamen in a more dignified and efficient manner than that of paying ransom. For our new navy, a small but most efficient one, had been completed, and a squadron consisting of the frigates Essex, Captain Bainbridge, the Philadelphia, the President, and the schooner Experiment, was in Mediterranean waters. Two Tripolitan cruisers lying at Gibraltar on the watch for American vessels were blockaded by the Philadelphia. Cruising off Tripoli, the Experiment fell in with a Tripolitan cruiser of fourteen guns, and after three hours' hard fighting captured her, the Tripolitans losing twenty killed and thirty wounded. This brilliant result had a marked effect in quieting the turbulent pirates, who for the first time began to respect the United States. A treaty was signed in 1805, in which Tripoli agreed no longer to molest American ships and sailors.
[=The Famous Incident of the "Philadelphia"=]
This war was marked by a striking evidence of American pluck and readiness in an emergency. During the contest the frigate Philadelphia, while chasing certain piratical craft into the harbor of Tripoli, ran aground in a most perilous situation. Escape was impossible, she was under the guns of the shore batteries and of the Tripolitan navy, and after a vain effort to sink her, all on board were forced to surrender as prisoners of war. Subsequently the Tripolitans succeeded in floating the frigate, brought her into port in triumph, and began to refit her as a welcome addition to their navy. This state of affairs was galling to American pride, and, as the vessel could not be rescued, it was determined to make an effort to destroy her. One night a Moorish merchantman (captured and fitted for the purpose) entered the harbor and made her way close up to the side of the Philadelphia. Only a few men, dressed in Moorish garb, were visible, and no suspicion of their purpose was entertained. As these men claimed to have lost their anchor, a rope was thrown them from the vessel, and they made fast. In a minute more a startling change took place. A multitude of concealed Americans suddenly sprang into sight, clambered to the deck of the Philadelphia, and drove the surprised Moors over her sides. The frigate was fairly recaptured. But she could not be taken out, so the tars set her on fire, and made their escape by the light of her blazing spars and under the guns of the Tripolitan batteries, not a ball from which reached them. It was a gallant achievement, and gave fame to Decatur, its leader.
[=War Declared by Algiers=]
But peace was not yet assured. In 1815, when this country had just ended its war with Great Britain, the Dey of Algiers unceremoniously dismissed the American Consul and declared war against the United States, on the plea that he had not received certain articles demanded under the tribute treaty. This time the government was well prepared for the issue. The population of the country had increased to over eight millions. The military spirit of the nation had been aroused by the war with Great Britain, ending in the splendid victory at New Orleans under General Jackson. Besides this, the navy had been increased and made far more effective. The administration, with Madison at its head, decided to submit to no further extortions from the Mediterranean pirates, and the President sent in a forcible message to Congress on the subject, taking high American ground. The result was a prompt acceptance of the Algerian declaration of war. Events succeeded each other in rapid succession. Ships new and old were at once fitted out. On May 15, 1815, Decatur sailed from New York to the Mediterranean. His squadron comprised the frigates Guerriere, Macedonian and Constellation, the new sloop of war Ontario, and four brigs and two schooners in addition.
[=The Dey Sues for Peace=]
On June 17th, the second day after entering the Mediterranean, Decatur captured the largest frigate in the Algerian navy, having forty-four guns. The next day an Algerian brig was taken, and in less than two weeks after his first capture Decatur, with his entire squadron, appeared off Algiers. The end had come. The Dey's courage, like that of Bob Acres, oozed out at his fingers' ends. The terrified Dey sued for peace, which Decatur compelled him to sign on the quarter-deck of the Guerriere. In this treaty it was agreed by the Dey to surrender all prisoners, pay a heavy indemnity, and renounce all tribute from America in the future. Decatur also secured indemnity from Tunis and Tripoli for American vessels captured under the guns of their forts by British cruisers during the late war.
This ended at once and forever the payment of tribute to the piratical States of North Africa. All Europe, as well as our own country, rang with the splendid achievements of our navy; and surely the stars and stripes had never before floated more proudly from the masthead of an American vessel--and they are flying as proudly to-day.
[=A Naval War with France=]
One further example of the readiness of this country to defend itself upon the seas in its weak, early period may be related, though it slightly antedated the beginning of the century. This was a result of American indignation at the ravages upon its commerce by the warring nations of Europe. About 1798 the depredations of France upon our merchantmen became so aggravating that, without the formality of a declaration, a naval war began. The vessels of our new navy were sent out, "letters of marque and reprisal" were granted to privateers, and their work soon began to tell. Captain Truxton of the Constellation captured the French frigate L'Insurgente, the privateers brought more than fifty armed vessels of the French into port and France quickly decided that she wanted peace. This sort of argument was not quite to her taste.
Seventeen years after the close of the trouble with Algiers, in 1832, one of the most interesting cases of difficulty with a foreign power arose. As with Algeria and Tripoli, so now our navy was resorted to for the purpose of exacting reparation. This time the trouble was with the kingdom of Naples, in Italy, which had been wrested from Spain by Napoleon, who placed successively his brother Joseph and his brother-in-law Murat on the throne of Naples and the two Sicilies. During the years 1809-12 the Neapolitan government, under Joseph and Murat successively, had confiscated numerous American ships with their cargoes. The total amount of the American claims against Naples, as filed in the State department when Jackson's administration assumed control, was $1,734,994. They were held by various insurance companies and by citizens, principally of Baltimore. Demands for the payment of these claims had from time to time been made by our government, but Naples had always refused to settle them.
[=The Claim Against Naples=]
Jackson and his cabinet took a decided stand, and determined that the Neapolitan government, then in the hands of Ferdinand II.--subsequently nicknamed Bomba because of his cruelties--should make due reparation for the losses sustained by American citizens. The Hon. John Nelson, of Frederick, Maryland, was appointed Minister to Naples, and required to insist upon a settlement. Commodore Daniel Patterson, who had aided in the defense of New Orleans in 1815, was put in command of the Mediterranean squadron and ordered to co-operate with Minister Nelson in enforcing his demands. But Naples persisted in her refusal to render satisfaction, and a warlike demonstration was decided upon, the whole matter being placed, under instructions, in the hands of Commodore Patterson.
[=How King Bomba was Brought to Terms=]
The entire force under his command consisted of three fifty-gun frigates and three twenty-gun corvettes. In order not to precipitate matters too hastily, the plan adopted was that these vessels should appear in the Neapolitan waters one at a time, and instructions were given to that effect. The Brandywine, with Minister Nelson on board, went first. Mr. Nelson made his demand for a settlement and was refused. There was nothing in the appearance of a Yankee envoy and a single ship to trouble King Bomba and his little kingdom. The Brandywine cast anchor in the harbor and the humbled envoy waited patiently for a few days. Then another American flag appeared on the horizon, and the frigate United States floated into the harbor and came to anchor. Mr. Nelson repeated his demands, and they were again refused. Four days slipped away, and the stars and stripes once more appeared off the harbor. King Bomba, looking out from his palace windows, saw the fifty-gun frigate Concord sail into the harbor and drop her anchor. Then unmistakable signs of uneasiness began to show themselves. Forts were repaired, troops drilled, and more cannon mounted on the coast. The demands were reiterated, but the Neapolitan government still declined to consider them. Two days later another warship made her way into the harbor. It was the John Adams. When the fifth ship sailed gallantly in, Nelson sent word home that he was still unable to collect the bill. The end was not yet. Three days later, and the sixth American sail showed itself on the blue waters of the peerless bay. It was the handwriting on the wall for King Bomba, and his government announced that they would accede to the American demands. The negotiations were promptly resumed and speedily closed, the payment of the principal in installments with interest being guaranteed. Pending negotiations, from August 28th to September 15th the entire squadron remained in the Bay of Naples, and then the ships sailed away and separated. So, happily and bloodlessly, ended a difficulty which at one time threatened most serious results.
[=Captain Ingraham and the Koszta Affair=]
Another demonstration, less imposing in numbers but quite as spirited, and, indeed, more intensely dramatic, occurred at Smyrna in 1853, when Captain Duncan N. Ingraham, with a single sloop-of-war, trained his broadsides on a fleet of Austrian warships in the harbor. The episode was a most thrilling one, and our record would be incomplete were so dramatic an affair left unrecorded on its pages. This is the story:
When the revolution of Hungary against Austria was put down, Kossuth, Koszta, and other leading revolutionists fled to Smyrna, and the Turkish government, after long negotiations, refused to give them up. Koszta soon after came to the United States, and in July, 1852, declared under oath his intention of becoming an American citizen. He resided in New York city a year and eleven months.
[=The "St. Louis" and the "Huzzar"=]
A year after he had declared his intention to assume American citizenship, Koszta went to Smyrna on business, where he remained for a time undisturbed. He had so inflamed the Austrian government against him, however, that a plot was formed to capture him. On June 21, 1853, while he was seated on the Marina, a public resort in Smyrna, a band of Greek mercenaries, hired by the Austrian Consul, seized him and carried him off to an Austrian ship-of-war, the Huzzar, then lying in the harbor. Archduke John, brother of the emperor, is said to have been in command of this vessel. Koszta was put in irons and treated as a criminal. The next day an American sloop-of-war, the St. Louis, commanded by Captain Duncan N. Ingraham, sailed into the harbor. Learning what had happened, Captain Ingraham immediately sent on board the Huzzar and courteously asked permission to see Koszta. His request was granted, and the captain assured himself that Koszta was entitled to the protection of the American flag. He demanded his release from the Austrian commander. When it was refused, he communicated with the nearest United States official, Consul Brown, at Constantinople. While he was waiting for an answer six Austrian warships sailed into the harbor and came to anchor in positions near the Huzzar. On June 29th, before Captain Ingraham had received any answer from the American Consul, he noticed unusual signs of activity on board the Huzzar, and before long she began to get under way. The American captain made up his mind immediately. He put the St. Louis straight in the Huzzar's course and cleared his guns for action. The Huzzar hove to, and Captain Ingraham went on board and demanded the meaning of her action.
"We propose to sail for home," replied the Austrian. "The consul has ordered us to take our prisoner to Austria."
"You will pardon me," said Captain Ingraham, "but if you attempt to leave this port with that American on board I shall be compelled to resort to extreme measures."
The Austrian glanced around at the fleet of Austrian war-ships and the single American sloop-of-war. Then he smiled pleasantly, and intimated that the Huzzar would do as she pleased.
Captain Ingraham bowed and returned to the St. Louis. He had no sooner reached her deck than he called out: "Clear the guns for action!"
The Archduke of Austria saw the batteries of the St. Louis turned upon him, and suddenly realized that he was in the wrong. The Huzzar was put about and sailed back to her old anchorage. Word was sent to Captain Ingraham that the Austrian would await the arrival of the note from Mr. Brown.
[=Koszta is Given Up to Ingraham=]
The consul's note, which came on July 1st, commended Captain Ingraham's course and advised him to take whatever action he thought the situation demanded. At eight o'clock on the morning of July 2d, Captain Ingraham sent a note to the commander of the Huzzar, formally demanding the release of Mr. Koszta. Unless the prisoner was delivered on board the St. Louis before four o'clock the next afternoon, Captain Ingraham would take him from the Austrians by force. The Archduke sent back a formal refusal. At eight o'clock the next morning Captain Ingraham once more ordered the decks cleared for action and trained his batteries on the Huzzar. The seven Austrian war vessels cleared their decks and put their men at the guns.
At ten o'clock an Austrian officer came to Captain Ingraham and began to temporize. Captain Ingraham refused to listen to him.
"To avoid the worst," he said, "I will agree to let the man be delivered to the French Consul at Smyrna until you have opportunity to communicate with your government. But he must be delivered there, or I will take him. I have stated the time."
At twelve o'clock a boat left the Huzzar with Koszta in it, and an hour later the French Consul sent word that Koszta was in his keeping. Then several of the Austrian war-vessels sailed out of the harbor. Long negotiations between the two governments followed, and in the end Austria admitted that the United States was in the right, and apologized.
[=The Trouble with Nicaragua=]
Scarcely had the plaudits which greeted Captain Ingraham's intrepid course died away, when, the next year, another occasion arose where our government was obliged to resort to the show of force. This time Nicaragua was the country involved. Various outrages, as was contended, had been committed on the persons and property of American citizens dwelling in that country. The repeated demands for redress were not complied with. Peaceful negotiations having failed, in June, 1854, Commander Hollins, with the sloop of war Cyane, was ordered to proceed to the town of San Juan, or Greytown, which lies on the Mosquito coast of Nicaragua, and to insist on favorable action from the Nicaraguan government.
Captain Hollins came to anchor off the coast and placed his demands before the authorities. He waited patiently for a response, but no satisfactory one was offered him. After a number of days he made a final appeal and then proceeded to carry out his instructions. On the morning of July 13th he directed his batteries on the town of San Juan and opened fire. Until four o'clock in the afternoon the ship poured out broadsides as fast as its guns could be loaded. By that time the greater part of the town was destroyed. Then a party of marines was put on shore, and completed the destruction of the place by burning the houses.
A lieutenant of the British navy commanding a small vessel of war was in the harbor at the time. England claimed a species of protectorate over the settlement, and the British officer raised violent protest against the action taken by America's representative. Captain Hollins, however, paid no attention to the interference and carried out his instructions. The United States government later sustained Captain Hollins in everything he had done, and England thereupon thought best to let the matter drop. In this that country was unquestionably wise.
[=In Paraguayan Waters=]
At this time the United States seems to have entered upon a period of international conflict; for no sooner had the difficulties with Austria and Nicaragua been adjusted than another war-cloud appeared on the horizon. Here again only a year from the last conflict had elapsed, for in 1855 an offense was committed against the United States by Paraguay. To explain what it was we shall have to go back three years. In 1852 Captain Thomas J. Page, commanding a small light-draught steamer, the Water Witch, by direction of his government started for South America to explore the River La Plata and its large tributaries, with a view to opening up commercial intercourse between the United States and the interior States of South America. We have said that the expedition was ordered by our government; it also remains to be noted that it was undertaken with the full consent and approbation of the countries having jurisdiction over those waters. Slowly, but surely, the little steamer pushed her way up the river, making soundings and charting the river as she proceeded. All went well until February 1, 1855, when the first sign of trouble appeared.
[=The Assault on the "Water Witch"=]
It was a lovely day in early summer--the summer begins in February in that latitude--and nothing appeared to indicate the slightest disturbance The little Water Witch was quietly steaming up the River Paraná, which forms the northern boundary of the State of Corrientes, separating it from Paraguay, when suddenly, without a moment's warning, a battery from Fort Itaparu, on the Paraguayan shore, opened fire upon her, immediately killing one of her crew, who at that time was at the wheel. The Water Witch was not fitted for hostilities; least of all could she assume the risk of attempting to run the batteries of the fort. Accordingly, Captain Page put the steamer about, and was soon out of range. It should here be explained that at that time President Carlos A. Lopez was the autocratic ruler of Paraguay, and that he had previously received Captain Page with every assurance of friendship. A few months previous, however, Lopez had been antagonized by the United States consul at Ascencion. This gentleman, in addition to his official position, acted as agent for an American mercantile company of which Lopez disapproved and whose business he had broken up. He had also issued a decree forbidding foreign vessels of war to navigate the Paraná or any of the waters bounding Paraguay, which he clearly had no right to do, as half the stream belonged to the country bordering on the other side.
[=Marcy Demands Reparation=]
Captain Page, finding it impracticable to prosecute his exploration any further, at once returned to the United States, where he gave the Washington authorities a detailed account of the occurrence. It was claimed by our government that the Water Witch was not subject to the jurisdiction of Paraguay, as the channel was the equal property of the Argentine Republic. It was further claimed that, even if she had been within the jurisdiction of Paraguay, she was not properly a vessel of war, but a government boat employed for scientific purposes. And even were the vessel supposed to be a war vessel, it was contended that it was a gross violation of international right and courtesy to fire shot at the vessel of a friendly power without first resorting to more peaceful means. At that time William L. Marcy, one of the foremost statesmen of his day, was Secretary of State. Mr. Marcy at once wrote a strong letter to the Paraguayan government, stating the facts of the case, declaring that the action of Paraguay in firing upon the Water Witch would not be submitted to, and demanding ample apology and compensation. All efforts in this direction, however, proved fruitless. Lopez refused to give any reparation; and not only so, but declared that no American vessel would be allowed to ascend the Paraná for the purpose indicated.
The event, as it became known, aroused not a little excitement; and while there were some who deprecated a resort to extreme measures, the general sentiment of the country was decidedly manifested in favor of an assertion of our rights in the premises. Accordingly, President Pierce sent a message to Congress, stating that a peaceful adjustment of the difficulty was impossible, and asking for authority to send such a naval force to Paraguay as would compel her arbitrary ruler to give the full satisfaction demanded.
[=A Powerful Fleet Sent to Paraguay=]
To this request Congress promptly and almost unanimously gave assent, and one of the strongest naval expeditions ever fitted out by the United States up to that time was ordered to assemble at the mouth of La Plata River. The fleet was an imposing one for the purpose, and comprised nineteen vessels, seven of which were steamers specially chartered for the purpose, as our largest war vessels were of too deep draught to ascend the La Plata and Paraná. The entire squadron carried 200 guns and 2,500 men, and was commanded by flag officer, afterward rear-admiral, Shubrick, one of the oldest officers of our navy, and one of the most gallant men that ever trod a quarter-deck. Flag Officer Shubrick was accompanied by United States Commissioner Bowlin, to whom was intrusted negotiations for the settlement of the difficulty.
Three years and eleven months had now passed since the Water Witch was fired upon, and President Buchanan had succeeded Franklin Pierce. The winter of 1859 was just closing in at the north; the streams were closed by ice, and the lakes were ice-bound, but the palm trees of the south were displaying their fresh green leaves, like so many fringed banners, in the warm tropical air when the United States squadron assembled at Montevideo. The fleet included two United States frigates, the Sabine and the St. Lawrence; two sloops-of-war, the Falmouth and the Preble; three brigs, the Bainbridge, the Dolphin and the Perry; seven steamers especially armed for the occasion, the Memphis, the Caledonia, the Atlanta, the Southern Star, the Westernport, the M. W. Chapin, and the Metacomet; two armed store-ships, the Supply and the Release; the revenue steamer, Harriet Lane; and, lastly, the little Water Witch herself, no longer defenceless, but in fighting trim for hostilities.
[=The Ships Anchor off Ascencion=]
On the 25th of January, 1859, within just one week of four years from the firing upon the Water Witch, the squadron got under way and came to anchor off Ascencion, the capital of Paraguay. Meanwhile President Urquiza, of the Argentine Republic, who had offered his services to mediate the difficulty, had arrived at Ascencion in advance of the squadron. The negotiations were reopened, and Commissioner Bowlin made his demand for instant reparation. All this time Flag Officer Shubrick was not idle. With such of our vessels as were of suitable size he ascended the river, taking them through the difficulties created by its currents, shoals and sand bars, and brought them to a position above the town, where they were made ready for action in case of necessity to open fire. The force within striking distance of Paraguay consisted of 1,740 men, besides the officers, and 78 guns, including 23 nine-inch shell guns and one shell gun of eleven inches.
[=President Lopez Brought to Terms=]
Ships and guns proved to be very strong arguments with Lopez. It did not take the Dictator-President long to see that the United States meant business, and that the time for trifling had passed and the time for serious work had come. President Lopez's cerebral processes worked with remarkable and encouraging celerity. By February 5th, within less than two weeks of the starting of the squadron from Montevideo, Commissioner Bowlin's demands were all acceded to. Ample apologies were made for firing on the Water Witch, and pecuniary compensation was given to the family of the sailor who had been killed. In addition to this, a new commercial treaty was made, and cordial relations were fully restored between the two governments.
[=The Civil War in Chili=]
A period of more than thirty years now elapsed before any serious difficulty occurred with a foreign power. In 1891 an event took place that threatened to disturb our relations with Chili and possibly involve the United States in war with that power. Happily the matter reached a peaceful settlement. In January, of that year, civil war had broken out in Chili, the cause of which was a contest between the legislative branch of the government and the executive, for the control of affairs. The President of Chili, General Balmaceda, began to assert authority which the legislature, or "the Congressionalists," as the opposing party was called, resisted as unconstitutional and oppressive, and they accordingly proceeded to interfere with Balmaceda's Cabinet in its efforts to carry out the president's despotic will.
Finally matters came to a point where appeal to arms was necessary. On the 9th of January the Congressional party took possession of the greater part of the Chilian fleet, the navy being in hearty sympathy with them, and the guns of the warships were turned against Balmaceda,--Valparaiso, the capital, and other ports being blockaded by the ships. For a time Balmaceda maintained control of the capital and the southern part of the country. The key to the position was Valparaiso, which was strongly fortified, Balmaceda's army being massed there and placed at available points.
[=The Overthrow of Balmaceda=]
At last the Congressionalists determined to attack Balmaceda at his capital, and on August 21st landed every available fighting man at their disposal at Concon, about ten miles north of Valparaiso. They were attacked by the Dictator on the 22d, there being twenty thousand men on each side. The Dictator had the worst of it. Then he rallied his shattered forces, and made his last stand at Placillo, close to Valparaiso, on the 28th. The battle was hot, the carnage fearful; neither side asked for or received quarter. The magazine rifles, with which the revolutionists were armed, did wonders. The odds were against Balmaceda; both his generals quarreled in face of the enemy; his army became divided and demoralized. In a later battle both of his generals were killed. The valor and the superior tactics of General Canto, leader of the Congressional army, won the day. Balmaceda fled and eventually committed suicide, and the Congressionalists entered the capital in triumph.
Several incidents meantime had conspired, during the progress of this war, to rouse the animosity of the stronger party in Chili against the United States. Before the Congressionalists' triumph the steamship Itata, loaded with American arms and ammunition for Chili, sailed from San Francisco, and as this was a violation of the neutrality laws, a United States war vessel pursued her to the harbor of Iquique, where she surrendered. Then other troubles arose. Our minister at Valparaiso, Mr. Egan, was charged by the Congressionalists, then in power, with disregarding international law in allowing the American Legation to be made an asylum for the adherents of Balmaceda. Subsequently these refugees were permitted to go aboard American vessels and sail away. Then Admiral Brown, of the United States squadron, was, in Chili's opinion, guilty of having acted as a spy upon the movements of the Congressionalists' fleet at Quinteros, and of bringing intelligence of its movements to Balmaceda at Valparaiso. This, however, the Admiral stoutly denied.
[=An Attack on the Men of the "Baltimore"=]
The strong popular feeling of dislike which was engendered by these charges culminated on the 16th of October, in an attack upon American seamen by a mob in the streets of the Chilian capital. Captain Schley, commander of the United States cruiser Baltimore, had given shore-leave to a hundred and seventeen petty officers and seamen, some of whom, when they had been on shore for several hours, were set upon by Chilians. They took refuge in a street car, from which, however, they were soon driven and mercilessly beaten, and a subordinate officer named Riggen fell, apparently lifeless. The American sailors, according to Captain Schley's testimony, were sober and conducting themselves with propriety when the attack was made. They were not armed, even their knives having been taken from them before they left the vessel.
The assault upon those in the street car seemed to be only a signal for a general uprising; and a mob which is variously estimated at from one thousand to two thousand people attacked our sailors with such fury that in a little while these men, whom no investigation could find guilty of any breach of the peace, were fleeing for their lives before an overwhelming crowd, among which were a number of the police of Valparaiso. In this affray eighteen sailors were stabbed, several dying from their wounds.
Of course the United States government at once communicated with the Chilian authorities on the subject, expressing an intention to investigate the occurrence fully. The first reply made to the American government by Signor Matta, the Chilian minister of foreign affairs, was to the effect that Chili would not allow anything to interfere with her own official investigation.
[=An Investigation Demanded=]
An examination of all the facts was made on our part. It was careful and thorough, and showed that our flag had been insulted in the persons of American seamen. Yet, while the Chilian court of inquiry could present no extenuating facts, that country refused at first to offer apology or reparation for the affront. In the course of the correspondence Minister Matta sent a note of instruction to Mr. Montt, Chilian representative at Washington, in which he used the most offensive terms in relation to the United States, and directed that the letter should be given to the press for publication.
After waiting for a long time for the result of the investigation at Valparaiso, and finding that, although no excuse or palliation had been found for the outrage, the Chilian authorities seemed reluctant to offer apology, the President of the United States, in a message to Congress, made an extended statement of the various incidents of the case and its legal aspect, and stated that on the 21st of January he had caused a peremptory communication to be presented to the Chilian government by the American minister at Santiago, in which severance of diplomatic relations was threatened if our demands for satisfaction, which included the withdrawal of Mr. Matta's insulting note, were not complied with. At the time that this message was delivered no reply had been sent to the note.
[=The American Case Presented=]
Mr. Harrison's statement of the legal aspect of the case, upon which the final settlement of the difficulty was based, was that the presence of a warship of any nation in a port belonging to a friendly power is by virtue of a general invitation which nations are held to extend to each other; that Commander Schley was invited, with his officers and crew, to enjoy the hospitality of Valparaiso; that while no claim that an attack which an individual sailor may be subjected to raises an international question, yet where the resident population assault sailors of another country's war vessels, as at Valparaiso, animated by an animosity against the government to which they belong, that government must act as it would if the representatives or flag of the nation had been attacked, since the sailors are there by the order of their government.
[=Chili Offers an Apology and Reparation=]
Finally an ultimatum was sent from the State department at Washington, on the 25th, to Minister Egan, and was by him transmitted to the proper Chilian authorities. It demanded the retraction of Mr. Matta's note and suitable apology and reparation for the insult and injury sustained by the United States. On the 28th of January, 1892, a dispatch from Chili was received, in which the demands of our government were fully acceded to, the offensive letter was withdrawn, and regret was expressed for the occurrence. In his relation to this particular case, Minister Egan's conduct received the entire approval of his government.
While the United States looked for a peaceful solution of this annoying international episode, the proper preparations were made for a less desirable outcome. Our naval force was put in as efficient a condition as possible, and the vessels which were then in the navy yard were got ready for service with all expedition. If the Chilian war-scare did nothing else, it aroused a wholesome interest in naval matters throughout the whole of the United States, and by focusing attention upon the needs of this branch of the public service, showed at once how helpless we might become in the event of a war with any first-class power. We may thank Chili that to-day the United States Navy is in a better condition than at any time in our history.
[=The Monroe Doctrine=]
When the great Napoleon was overthrown, France, Russia, Prussia and Austria formed an alliance for preserving the "balance of power" and for suppressing revolutions within one another's dominions. This has been spoken of in a preceding chapter as the "Holy Alliance." At the time the Spanish South American colonies were in revolt, and the alliance had taken steps indicating an intention to aid in their reduction. George Canning, the English secretary of state, proposed to our country that we should unite with England in preventing such an outrage against civilization. It was a momentous question, and President Monroe consulted with Jefferson, Madison, Calhoun and John Quincy Adams, the secretary of state, before making answer. The decision being reached, the President embodied in his annual message to Congress in December, 1823, a clause which formulated what has ever since been known as the "Monroe Doctrine." It was written by John Quincy Adams, and, referring to the intervention of the allied powers, said that we "should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety;" and further, "that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers."
[=The Case of Cuba=]
By the Monroe Doctrine the United States formally adopted the position of guardian of the weaker American States, and since its promulgation there have been few aggressions of European nations in America, and none in which the United States has not decisively warned them off. The most striking instances may be stated. When, during the troubles in Cuba, France and Great Britain suggested an alliance with the United States to look after affairs in that quarter, they were given plainly to understand that this country would attend to that matter itself and would brook no interference on the part of foreign powers. It also intimated that, in the event of Spain giving up her authority in Cuba from any cause, the United States proposed to act as the sole arbiter of the destinies of the island. Since that date no European power has shown any inclination to interfere in Cuban affairs.
[=France in Mexico and the Fate of Maximilian=]
The only decided effort to set at naught the Monroe Doctrine was made by France during-the American Civil War. Taking advantage of the difficulties under which our government then labored, France landed an army in Mexico, overthrew the republic, established an empire, and placed Maximilian, a brother of the Emperor of Austria, upon its throne. All went well with the new emperor until after the close of our Civil War; then all began to go ill. The Monroe Doctrine raised its head again, and the French were plainly bidden to take their troops from Mexico if they did not want trouble. Napoleon III. was quick to take the hint, and to withdraw his army. Maximilian was advised to go with it, but he unwisely declined, fancying that he could maintain his seat upon the Mexican throne. He was quickly undeceived. The liberals sprang to arms, defeated with ease his small army, and soon had him in their hands. A few words complete the story. He was tried by court martial, condemned to death, and shot. Thus ended in disaster the most decided attempt to set at naught the Monroe Doctrine of American guardianship.
[=The Venezuelan Boundary and the Monroe Doctrine=]
A second effort, less piratical in its character, was the attempt of Great Britain to extend the borders of British Guiana at the expense of Venezuela. To a certain degree Great Britain seems to have had right on its side in this movement, but its methods were those used by strong nations when dealing with weak ones, the demand of Venezuela for arbitration was scornfully ignored, and force was used to support a claim whose justice no effort was made to show. These high-handed proceedings were brought to a quick termination by the action of the United States, which offered itself as the friend and ally of Venezuela in the dispute. President Cleveland insisted on an arbitration of the difficulty in words that had no uncertain ring, and the statesmen of Great Britain, convinced that he meant just what he said, submitted with what grace they could. A court of arbitration was appointed, the boundary question put into its hands to settle, and peace and satisfaction reigned again. The Monroe Doctrine had once more decisively asserted itself. By the decision of the court of arbitration each country got the portion of the disputed territory it most valued, and both were satisfied. Thus peace has its triumphs greater than those of war.
These are not offered as the only occasions in which the United States has come into hostile relations with foreign powers and has sustained its dignity with or without war, but they are the most striking ones, unless we include in this category the Mexican war. Various disputes of a minor character have arisen, notably with Great Britain, the latest being that concerning the Alaskan boundary; but those given are the only instances that seem to call for attention here.
XXVII. Webster and Clay and the Preservation of the Union
[=Questions of Internal Policy=]
During the first half of the nineteenth century a number of great questions came up in American politics and pressed for solution. There was abundance of hostilities--wars with Great Britain, the Barbary states, Mexico and the Indians--and international difficulties of various kinds. The most important of these we have described. We have now to consider questions of internal policy, problems arising in the development of the nation which threatened its peace and prosperity, and to deal with which called for the most earnest patriotism and the highest statesmanship in the political leaders of the commonwealth. Among these leaders two men loomed high above their contemporaries, Daniel Webster, the supreme orator and staunch defender of the Union, and Henry Clay, the great peace-maker, whose hand for years stayed the waves of the political tempest and more than once checked legislative hostilities in their early stage. It was not until Clay had passed from the scene that one of the national problems alluded to plunged the country into civil war and racked the Union almost to the point of dissolution.
[=Danger to the Union=]
Of these great political questions, danger to the Union arose from two, the problem of the tariff and the dispute over the institution of slavery. There were others of minor importance, prominent among them those of internal improvement at government expense, and of state rights, or the degree of independence of the states under the Federal Union, but it was the first two only that threatened the existence of the nation, and in dealing with which the noblest statesmanship and the most fervid and convincing oratory were called into play. The subject of slavery in particular gloomed above the nation like a terrible thunder cloud. All other questions of domestic policy--tariff, currency, internal improvements, state rights--were subordinate to the main question of how to preserve the Union under this unceasing threat. Some, like Calhoun, were ready to abandon the Union that slavery might be saved; others, like Garrison, were ready to abandon the Union that slavery might be destroyed. Between these extremes stood many able and patriotic statesmen, who, to save the Union, were ready to make any sacrifice and join in any compromise. And high among these, for more than fifty years, stood the noble figure of Henry Clay.
[=Clay's Great Popularity=]
Not often does a man whose life is spent in purely civil affairs become such a popular hero and idol as did Clay--especially when it is his fate never to reach the highest place in the people's gift. "Was there ever," says Parton, "a public man, not at the head of a state, so beloved as he? Who ever heard such cheers, so hearty, distinct and ringing, as those which his name evoked? Men shed tears at his defeat, and women went to bed sick from pure sympathy with his disappointment. He could not travel during the last thirty years of his life, but only make progresses. When he left home the public seized him and bore him along over the land, the committee of one state passing him on to the committee of another, and the hurrahs of one town dying away as those of the next caught his ear."
Born a poor boy, who had to make his way up from the lowest state of frontier indigence, he was favored by nature with a kindly soul, the finest and most effective powers of oratory, and a voice of the most admirable character; one of deep and rich tone, wonderful volume, and sweet and tender harmony, which invested all he said with majesty, and swept audiences away as much by its musical and swelling cadences as by the logic and convincing nature of his utterances.
After years of active and useful labor in Congress, it was in 1818 that Clay first stepped into the arena for the calming of the passions of Congress and the preservation of the Union, a duty to which he devoted himself for the remainder of his life. In the year named a petition for the admission of Missouri into the Union was presented in Congress, and with it began that long and bitter struggle over slavery which did not end until the surrender of Lee at Appomattox in 1865.
[=The Slavery Sentiment=]
For years the sentiment in favor of slavery had been growing stronger in the South. At one time many of the wisest southern statesmen and planters disapproved of the institution and proposed its abolition. But the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney, in 1793, and the subsequent great development of the cotton culture had decidedly changed the situation. By 1800 the value of the cotton product had advanced to $5,700,000. In 1820 it had made another great advance, and was valued at nearly $20,000,000. There was now no thought of doing away with the use of slaves, but a strong sentiment had arisen in the South in favor of extending the area in which slave labor could be employed.
[=The Admission of Missouri=]
In the North a different state of feeling existed. Slavery was believed to be a wrong and an injury to American institutions, though no movement for its abolition had been started. Many people thought it ought to and would disappear in time, but there was no idea of taking steps to enforce its disappearance. But when, in the bill for the admission of Missouri, there was shown a purpose of extending the area of slavery, northern sentiment became alarmed and a strong opposition to this project developed in Congress.
It was the sudden revelation of a change of feeling in the South which the North had not observed in its progress. "The discussion of this Missouri question has betrayed the secret of their souls," wrote John Quincy Adams. The slaveholders watched with apprehension the steady growth of the free states in population, wealth and power. In 1790 the population of the two sections had been nearly even. In 1820 there was a difference of over 600,000 in favor of the North in a total of less than ten millions. In 1790 the representation of the two sections in Congress had been about evenly balanced. In 1820 the census promised to give the North a preponderance of more than thirty votes in the House of Representatives. If the South was to retain its political equality in Congress, or at least in the Senate, it must have more slave states, and there now began a vigorous struggle with this object in view. It was determined, if possible, to have as many states as the North, and it was with this purpose that it fought so hard to have slavery introduced into Missouri.
[=The Missouri Compromise=]
The famous "Missouri Compromise," by which the ominous dispute of 1820 was at last settled, included the admission of one free state (Maine) and one slave state (Missouri) at the same time, and it was enacted that no other slave state should be formed out of any part of the Louisiana territory north of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes, which was the southern boundary line of Missouri. The assent of opposing parties to this arrangement was secured largely by the patriotic efforts of Clay, who, says Schurz, "did not confine himself to speeches, * * * but went from man to man, expostulating, beseeching, persuading, in his most winning way. * * * His success added greatly to his reputation and gave new strength to his influence." The result, says John Quincy Adams, was "to bring into full display the talents and resources and influence of Mr. Clay." He was praised as "the great pacificator"--a title which was confirmed by the deeds of his later life.
Clay served as secretary of state during the administration of John Quincy Adams, but in 1829, when Jackson, his bitter enemy, succeeded to the presidency, he retired for a short season to private life in his beautiful Kentucky home. But he was not long to remain there; in 1831 he was again elected to the Senate, where he remained until 1842. They were stormy years. In South Carolina the opposition to the protective tariff had led to the promulgation of the famous "nullification" theory--the doctrine that any state had the power to declare a law of the United States null and void. Jackson, whose anger was thoroughly aroused, dealt with the revolt in summary fashion, threatening that if any resistance to the government was attempted he would instantly have the leaders arrested and brought to trial for treason. Nevertheless, to allay the discontent of the South, Clay devised his Compromise Tariff of 1833, under which the duties were to be gradually reduced, until they should reach a minimum of twenty per cent. In 1832 he allowed himself, very unwisely, to be a candidate for the presidency, Jackson's re-election being a foregone conclusion. In 1836 he declined a nomination, and Van Buren was elected. Then followed the panic of 1837, which insured the defeat of the party in power, and the election of the Whig candidate at the following presidential election; but the popularity of General Jackson had convinced the party managers that success demanded a military hero as a candidate; and accordingly General Harrison, "the hero of Tippecanoe," was elected, after the famous "Log Cabin and Hard Cider campaign" of 1840. This slight was deeply mortifying to Clay, who had counted with confidence upon being the candidate of the party. "I am the most unfortunate man in the history of parties," he truly remarked; "always run by my friends when sure to be defeated, and now betrayed for a nomination when I, or any one else, would be sure of an election."
[=Clay as a Presidential Candidate=]
In 1844, however, Clay's opportunity came at last. He was so obviously the Whig candidate that there was no opposition. The convention met at Baltimore in May, and he was nominated by acclamation, with a shout that shook the building. Everything appeared to indicate success, and his supporters regarded his triumphant election as certain.
[=The Contest of 1844=]
But into the politics of the time had come a new factor--the "Liberty party." This had been hitherto considered unimportant; but the proposed annexation of Texas, which had become a prominent question, was opposed by many in the North who had hitherto voted with the Whig party. Clay was a slaveholder; and though he had opposed the extension of slavery, his record was not satisfactory to those who disapproved of the annexation of Texas. In truth, the opposition to slavery in the North was rapidly gaining political strength, while the question of the annexation of Texas was looked upon as one for the extension of the "peculiar institution," since Texas would, under the Missouri Compromise, fall into line as a slave state, and was large enough, if Congress should permit, to be cut up into a number of slave states. Clay was between two fires. He was distrusted in the South; while his competitor, Polk, was pledged to support the annexation of Texas. He was doubted in the North as a slaveholder. His old enemy, Jackson, used his influence strongly against him. The contest finally turned upon the vote of New York, and that proved so close that the suspense became painful. People did not go to bed, waiting for the delayed returns. The contest was singularly like that of Blaine and Garfield, forty years later, when the result again turned upon a close vote in the State of New York. When at last the decisive news was received, and the fact of Clay's defeat was assured, the Whigs broke out in a wail of agony all over the land. "It was," says Nathan Sargent, "as if the first-born of every family had been stricken down." The descriptions we have of the grief manifested are almost incredible. Tears flowed in abundance from the eyes of men and women. In the cities and villages the business places were almost deserted for a day or two, people gathering together in groups to discuss in low tones what had happened. The Whigs were fairly stunned by their defeat, and the Democrats failed to indulge in demonstrations of triumph, it being widely felt that a great wrong had been done. It was the opinion of many that there would be no hope thereafter of electing the great statesmen of the country to the presidency, and that this high office would in future be attained only by men of second-rate ability.
[=The Compromise of 1850=]
The last and greatest work of the life of Henry Clay was the famous Compromise of 1850, which has been said to have postponed for ten years the great Civil War. At that period the sentiment against slavery was rapidly increasing in the North and had gained great strength. Though the number of free and slave states continued equal, the former were fast surpassing the latter in wealth and population.
It was evident that slavery must have more territory or lose its political influence. Shut out of the northwest by the Missouri Compromise, it was supposed that a great field for its extension had been gained in Texas and the territory acquired from Mexico. But now California, a part of this territory which had been counted upon for slavery, was populated by a sudden rush of northern immigration, attracted by the discovery of gold; and a state government was organized with a constitution excluding slavery, thus giving the free states a majority of one. Instead of adding to the area of slavery, the Mexican territory seemed likely to increase the strength of freedom. The South was both alarmed and exasperated. Threats of disunion were freely made. It was clear that prompt measures must be taken to allay the prevailing excitement, if disruption were to be avoided. In such an emergency it was natural that all eyes should turn to the "great pacificator," Henry Clay.
[=An Orator of Seventy-two=]
When, at the session of 1849-50, he appeared in the Senate to assist, if possible, in removing the slavery question from politics, Clay was an infirm and serious, but not sad, old man of seventy-two. He never lost his cheerfulness or faith, but he felt deeply for his distracted country. During that memorable session of Congress he spoke seventy times. Often extremely sick and feeble, scarcely able, with the assistance of a friend's arm, to climb the steps of the Capitol, he was never absent on the days when the compromise was to be debated. On the morning on which he began his great speech, he was accompanied by a clerical friend, to whom he said, on reaching the long flight of steps leading to the Capitol, "Will you lend me your arm, my friend? for I find myself quite weak and exhausted this morning." Every few steps he was obliged to stop and take breath. "Had you not better defer your speech?" asked the clergyman. "My dear friend," said the dying orator, "I consider our country in danger; and if I can be the means, in any measure, of averting that danger, my health or life is of little consequence." When he rose to speak it was but too evident that he was unfit for the task he had undertaken. But as he kindled with his subject, his cough left him, and his bent form resumed all its wonted erectness and majesty. He may, in the prime of his strength, have spoken with more energy, but never with so much pathos or grandeur. His speech lasted two days; and though he lived two years longer, he never recovered from the effects of the effort. The thermometer in the Senate chamber marked nearly 100 degrees. Toward the close of the second day, his friends repeatedly proposed an adjournment; but he would not desist until he had given complete utterance to his feelings. He said afterwards that he was not sure, if he gave way to an adjournment, that he should ever be able to resume.
[=Clay's Tribute to the Union=]
Never was Clay's devotion to the Union displayed in such thrilling and pathetic forms as in the course of this long debate. On one occasion allusion was made to a South Carolina hot-head, who had publicly proposed to raise the flag of disunion. When Clay retorted by saying, that, if Mr. Rhett had really meant that proposition, and should follow it up by corresponding acts, he would be a traitor, and added, "and I hope he will meet a traitor's fate," thunders of applause broke from the crowded galleries. When the chairman succeeded in restoring silence, Mr. Clay made that celebrated declaration which was so frequently quoted in 1861: "If Kentucky to-morrow shall unfurl the banner of resistance unjustly, I will never fight under that banner. I owe paramount allegiance to the whole Union, a subordinate one to my own state." Again: "The senator speaks of Virginia being my country. This Union, sir, is my country; the thirty states are my country; Kentucky is my country, and Virginia, no more than any state in the Union." And yet again: "There are those who think that the Union must be preserved by an exclusive reliance upon love and reason. That is not my opinion. I have some confidence in this instrumentality; but, depend upon it, no human government can exist without the power of applying force, and the actual application of it in extreme cases."
[=The Omnibus Bill=]
The compromise offered by Clay became known as the "Omnibus Bill," from the various measures it covered. It embraced the following provisions: 1. California should be admitted as a free state. 2. New Mexico and Utah should be formed into territories, and the question of the admission of slavery be left for their people to decide. 3. Texas should give up part of the territory it claimed, and be paid $10,000,000 as a recompense. 4. The slave-trade should be prohibited in the District of Columbia. 5. A stringent law for the return of fugitive slaves to their masters should be enacted.
[=Effect of the Fugitive Slave Law=]
The question concerning Texas was the following: Texas claimed that its western boundary followed the Rio Grande to its source. This took in territory which had never been part of Texas, but the claim was strongly pushed, and was settled in the manner above stated. The serious question, however, in this compromise was that concerning the return of fugitive slaves. When an effort was made to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law great opposition was excited, on account of the stringency of its provisions. The fugitive, when arrested, was not permitted to testify in his own behalf or to claim trial by jury, and all persons were required to assist the United States marshal, when called upon for aid. To assist a fugitive to escape was an offence punishable by fine and imprisonment. In the last two respects the law failed; and its severe provisions added greatly to the strength of the anti-slavery party, and thus had much to do in bringing on the Civil War.
Side by side with Clay in the senate stood another and greater figure, the majestic presence of Daniel Webster, one of the greatest orators the world has ever known, a man fitted to stand on the rostrum with Demosthenes, the renowned orator of Greece, or with Chatham, Burke, or Gladstone of the British parliament.
[=The "Reply to Hayne"=]
In the hall of the United States Senate, on January 26, 1830, occurred what may be considered the most memorable scene in the annals of Congress. It was then that Daniel Webster made his famous "Reply to Hayne,"--that renowned speech which has been declared the greatest oration ever made in Congress, and which, in its far-reaching effect upon the public mind, did so much to shape the future destiny of the American Union. That speech was Webster's crowning work, and the event of his life by which he will be best known to posterity.
Nothing in our history is more striking than the contrast between the Union of the time of Washington and the Union of the time of Lincoln. It was not merely that in the intervening seventy-two years the republic had grown great and powerful; it was that the popular sentiment toward the Union was transformed. The old feeling of distrust and jealousy had given place to a passionate attachment. It was as though a puny, sickly, feeble child, not expected by its parents even to live, had come to be their strong defense and support, their joy and pride. A weak league of states had become a strong nation; and when in 1861 it was attacked, millions of men were ready to fight for its defence. What brought about this great change? What was it that stirred the larger patriotism that gave shape and purpose to this growing feeling of national pride and unity? It was in a great degree the work of Daniel Webster. It was he who maintained and advocated the theory that the Federal Constitution created, not a league, but a nation; that it welded the people into organic union, supreme and perpetual. He it was who set forth in splendid completeness the picture of a great nation, inseparably united, commanding the first allegiance and loyalty of every citizen; and who so fostered and strengthened the sentiment of union that, when the great struggle came, it had grown too strong to be overthrown.
[=Webster's Personal Appearance=]
[=Voice and Personal Magnetism of Webster=]
No description of Daniel Webster is complete or adequate which fails to describe his extraordinary personal appearance. In face, form and voice nature did her utmost for him. So impressive was his presence that men commonly spoke of this man of five feet ten inches in height and less than two hundred pounds in weight as a giant. He seemed to dwarf those surrounding him. His head was very large, but of noble shape, with broad and lofty brow, and strong but finely cut features. His eyes were remarkable. They were large and deep-set, and in the excitement of an eloquent appeal they glowed with the deep light of the fire of a forge. His voice was in harmony with his appearance. In conversation it was low and musical; in debate it was high but full. In moments of excitement it rang out like a clarion, whence it would sink into notes of the solemn richness of organ tones, while the grace and dignity of his manner added greatly to the impressive delivery of his words. That wonderful quality which we call personal magnetism, the power of impressing by one's personality every human being who comes near, was at its height in Mr. Webster. He never punished his children. It sufficed, when they did wrong, to send for them and look at them in silence. The look, whether of sorrow or anger, was rebuke and punishment enough.
[=The Question of Nullification=]
As an orator, Mr. Webster's most famous speeches were the Plymouth Rock address, in 1820; the Bunker Hill Monument address, in 1825; and his orations in the Senate in 1830 in reply to Hayne, and in 1850 on Clay's Compromise Bill. Greatest among these was the speech in reply to Robert Y. Hayne, of South Carolina, on the 26th of January, 1830. The Union was threatened, and Webster rose to the utmost height of his impassioned genius in this thrilling appeal for its preservation and endurance. The question under debate was the right of a state to nullify the acts of Congress. Hayne, in sustaining the affirmative of this dangerous proposition, had bitterly assailed New England, and had attacked Mr. Webster by caustic personalities, rousing "the giant" to a crushing reply.
"There was," says Edward Everett, "a very great excitement in Washington, growing out of the controversies of the day, and the action of the South; and party spirit ran uncommonly high. There seemed to be a preconcerted action on the part of the southern members to break down the northern men, and to destroy their force and influence by a premeditated onslaught.
"Mr. Hayne's speech was an eloquent one, as all know who ever read it. He was considered the foremost southerner in debate, except Calhoun, who was vice-president and could not enter the arena. Mr. Hayne was the champion of the southern side. Those who heard his speech felt much alarm, for two reasons; first, on account of its eloquence and power, and second, because of its many personalities. It was thought by many who heard it, and by some of Mr. Webster's personal friends, that it was impossible for him to answer the speech.
[=Hayne's Speech in the Senate=]
"I shared a little myself in that fear and apprehension," said Mr. Everett. "I knew from what I heard concerning General Hayne's speech that it was a very masterly effort, and delivered with a great deal of power and with an air of triumph. I was engaged on that day in a committee of which I was chairman, and could not be present in the Senate. But immediately after the adjournment. I hastened to Mr. Webster's house, with, I admit, some little trepidation, not knowing how I should find him. But I was quite re-assured in a moment after seeing Mr. Webster, and observing his entire calmness. He seemed to be as much at ease and as unmoved as I ever saw him. Indeed, at first I was a little afraid from this that he was not quite aware of the magnitude of the contest. I said at once:
"'Mr. Hayne has made a speech?'
"'Yes, he has made a speech.'
"'You reply in the morning?'
"'Yes,' said Mr. Webster, 'I do not propose to let the case go by default, and without saying a word.'
"'Did you take notes, Mr. Webster, of Mr. Hayne's speech?'
[=Webster Prepares for Reply=]
"Mr. Webster took from his vest pocket a piece of paper about as big as the palm of his hand, and replied, 'I have it all: that is his speech.'
"I immediately arose," said Mr. Everett, "and remarked to him that I would not disturb him longer; Mr. Webster desired me not to hasten, as he had no desire to be alone; but I left."
"On the morning of the memorable day," writes Mr. Lodge, "the Senate chamber was packed by an eager and excited crowd. Every seat on the floor and in the galleries was occupied, and all the available standing-room was filled. The protracted debate, conducted with so much ability on both sides, had excited the attention of the whole country, and had given time for the arrival of hundreds of interested spectators from all parts of the Union, and especially from New England.
"In the midst of the hush of expectation, in that dead silence which is so peculiarly oppressive because it is possible only when many human beings are gathered together, Mr. Webster arose. His personal grandeur and his majestic calm thrilled all who looked upon him. With perfect quietness, unaffected apparently by the atmosphere of intense feeling about him, he said, in a low, even tone:
[=The Opening of a Great Speech=]
"'Mr. President: When the mariner has been tossed for many days in thick weather and on an unknown sea, he naturally avails himself of the first pause in the storm, the earliest glance of the sun, to take his latitude and ascertain how far the elements have driven him from his true course. Let us imitate this prudence; and before we float farther on the waves of this debate, refer to the point from which we departed, that we may, at least, be able to conjecture where we are now. I ask for the reading of the resolution before the Senate.'
"This opening sentence was a piece of consummate art. The simple and appropriate image, the low voice, the calm manner, relieved the strained excitement of the audience, which might have ended by disconcerting the speaker if it had been maintained. Every one was now at his ease; and when the monotonous reading of the resolution ceased, Mr. Webster was master of the situation, and had his listeners in complete control."
With breathless attention they followed him as he proceeded. The strong, masculine sentences, the sarcasm, the pathos, the reasoning, the burning appeals to love of state and country, flowed on unbroken. As his feelings warmed the fire came into his eyes; there was a glow in his swarthy cheek; his strong right arm seemed to sweep away resistlessly the whole phalanx of his opponents, and the deep and melodious cadences of his voice sounded like harmonious organ tones as they filled the chamber with their music. Who that ever read or heard it can forget the closing passage of that glorious speech?
[=A Magnificent Peroration=]
"When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on states dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance behold rather the glorious ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured; bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, What is all this worth? or those other words of delusion and folly, Liberty first, and Union afterwards; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart,--LIBERTY AND UNION, NOW AND FOREVER, ONE AND INSEPARABLE!"
As the last words died away into silence, those who had listened looked wonderingly at each other, dimly conscious that they had heard one of the grand speeches which are landmarks in the history of eloquence; and the men of the North and of New England went forth full of the pride of victory, for their champion had triumphed, and no assurance was needed to prove to the world that this time no answer could be made.
[=Calhoun, the Advocate of Slavery=]
The great supporter of the doctrine which Hayne advocated and which Webster tore into shreds and fragments, the indefatigable sustainer of the institution of slavery in the United States Congress, was John C. Calhoun. That this man was sincere in his conviction that slavery was morally and politically right, and beneficial alike to white and black, to North and South, no one has questioned. He was one of the most upright of men; one devoid of pretence or concealment; a man of pure honesty of purpose and great ability, and in consequence of immense influence. His own state followed his lead with unquestioning faith, and it is not too much to say that the slavery conflict was in great measure due to the doctrines which he unceasingly advocated for a quarter of a century.
[=The South Carolina Exposition=]
Calhoun is equally well known for his state rights championship and in connection with the effort of South Carolina to secede from the Union, as a consequence of the tariff bill of 1828. This measure, which considerably increased the duties on imports, aroused bitter opposition in the South, where it was styled the "Tariff of Abominations." On its passage Calhoun prepared a vigorous paper called the "South Carolina Exposition," in which he maintained that the Constitution limited the right of Congress to exact tariff charges to the purpose of revenue; that protective duties were, therefore, unconstitutional; and that any state had the right to declare an unconstitutional law null and void, and forbid its execution in that state. Such was the famous doctrine of "nullification."
This paper was issued in 1828, Calhoun being then Vice-President under Jackson, and as such president of the senate. In 1829, the long debate on the question: "Does the Constitution make us one sovereign nation or only a league of separate states?" reached its height. Its climax came in January, 1830, in the remarkable contest between Webster and Hayne, above described. Webster showed that an attempt to nullify the laws of the nation was treason, and would lead to revolution, in the employment of armed force to sustain it.
[=The Ordinance of Nullification=]
To such a revolutionary measure South Carolina proceeded. After the presidential election of 1832, Calhoun, who had resigned the vice-presidency, called a convention of the people of the state, which passed the famous Ordinance of Nullification, declaring the 1828 tariff null and void in that state.
[=Jackson and Nullification=]
The passage of the ordinance created intense excitement throughout the states. Everywhere the dread of civil war and of the dissolution of the Union was entertained. Fortunately there was a Jackson, and not a Buchanan, in the presidential chair. Jackson was not a model President under ordinary circumstances, but he was just the man for the emergency of this character, and he dealt with it much as he had dealt with the Spaniards in Florida. On December 10, 1832, came out his vigorous proclamation against nullification. The governor of South Carolina issued a counter-proclamation, and called out twelve thousand volunteers. A crisis seemed at hand. Congress passed a "Force Bill" to provide for the collection of the revenue in South Carolina, though Calhoun--then in the Senate--opposed it in the most powerful of his speeches. It is said that Jackson warned him that, if any resistance to the government was made in South Carolina, he would be at once arrested on a charge of treason.
[=Calhoun Seeks to Force the Issue of Slavery=]
The President made prompt preparations to suppress the threatened revolt by force of arms, troops and naval vessels being sent to Charleston. But at the same time Congress made concessions to South Carolina and the crisis passed. It was through the efforts of Henry Clay as already specified that this warcloud was dissipated. The tariff question settled, the slavery issue grew prominent. The agitation of this question, from 1835 to 1850, was chiefly the work of one man, John C. Calhoun. Parton says that "the labors of Mr. Garrison and Mr. Wendell Phillips might have borne no fruit during their lifetime, if Calhoun had not made it his business to supply them with material. 'I mean to force the issue on the North,' he once wrote; and he did force it."
[=A Pen Picture of Three Great Orators=]
This chapter cannot be more fitly closed than with a quotation from Harriet Martineau, in whose "Retrospect of Western Travel" we find the following pen-picture of the three great statesmen above treated: "Mr. Clay sitting upright on the sofa, with his snuff-box ever in his hand, would discourse for many an hour in his even, soft, deliberate tone, on any one of the great subjects of American policy which we might happen to start, always amazing us with the moderation of estimate and speech which so impetuous a nature has been able to attain. Mr. Webster, leaning back at his ease, telling stories, cracking jokes, shaking the sofa with burst after burst of laughter, or smoothly discoursing to the perfect felicity of the logical part of one's constitution, would illuminate an evening now and then. Mr. Calhoun, the cast-iron man, who looks as if he had never been born and could never be extinguished, would come in sometimes to keep our understanding on a painful stretch for a short while, and leave us to take to pieces his close, rapid, theoretical, illustrated talk, and see what we could make of it. We found it usually more worth retaining as a curiosity, than as either very just or useful.
"I know of no man who lives in such utter intellectual solitude. He meets men and harangues by the fireside as in the Senate; he is wrought like a piece of machinery, set going vehemently by a weight, and stops while you answer; he either passes by what you say, or twists it into a suitability with what is in his head, and begins to lecture again."
Chapter XXVIII
The Annexation of Texas and the War with Mexico.
[=Mexico Gains Its Independence=]
We have spoken, in Chapter xxiii, of the revolt of Texas from Mexico and the annexation of the newly formed republic to the United States. In the present chapter it is proposed to deal more fully with this subject and describe its results in the war with Mexico. In the year 1821, after more than ten years of struggle for freedom, Mexico won its independence from Spain, and soon after founded a constitutional monarchy, with Augustin de Iturbide, the head of the revolutionary government, as emperor. This empire did not last long. General Santa Anna proclaimed a republic in 1823, and the emperor was obliged to resign his crown. In the following year he returned to Mexico with the hope of recovering his lost crown; but, on the contrary, was arrested and shot as a traitor. Mexico is not a good country for emperors. About forty years afterward, a second emperor, sent there by France, was disposed of in the same manner.
[=The Settlement of Texas=]
The establishment of the republic was followed by earnest efforts in favor of the settlement and development of the unoccupied territory of the country, and Texas, a large province in its northeastern boundary, began to be settled by immigrants, very largely from the United States. By 1830 the American population numbered about 20,000, being much in excess of that of Mexican origin. These people were largely of the pioneer class, bold, unruly, energetic frontiersmen, difficult to control under any government, and unanimous in their detestation of the tyranny of Mexican rule. Their American spirit rose against the dominance of those whom they called by the offensive title of "greasers," and in 1832 they broke into rebellion and drove all the Mexican troops out of the country.
[=The Career of General Houston=]
It was this revolt that brought the famous Samuel Houston to Texas. The early life of this born leader had been spent on the Tennessee frontier, and during much of his boyhood he had lived among the Cherokee Indians, who looked up to him as to one of their head chiefs. He fought under Jackson in the war of 1812, and was desperately wounded in the Creek War. He subsequently studied law, was elected to Congress, and in 1827 became governor of Tennessee. An unhappy marriage brought to an end this promising part of his career. A separation from his wife was followed by calumnies on the part of her friends, which became so bitter that Houston, in disgust, left the state and proceeded to Arkansas, where for three years he lived with his boyhood friends, the Cherokees. The outbreak in Texas offered a promising opportunity to a man of his ambitious and enterprising disposition, and he set out for that region in December, 1832.
[=War in Texas=]
For two years after Houston joined fortunes with Texas there was comparative quiet; but immigration went on in a steadily increasing stream, and the sentiment for independence grew stronger every day. The Mexican government, in fear of the growing strength of Texas, ordered that the people should be disarmed--a decree which aroused instant rebellion. A company of Mexican soldiers sent to the little town of Gonzales, on the Guadalupe, to remove a small brass six-pounder, was met a few miles from the town by one hundred and eighty Texans, who fell upon them with such vigor that they turned and fled, losing several men. No Texan was killed. This battle was called "the Lexington of Texas."
Then war broke out again more furiously than ever. The Mexican soldiers, who were under weak and incompetent commanders, were again dispersed and driven out of the country. But now Santa Anna himself, the Mexican dictator, an able general, but a false and cruel man, took the field. With an army of several thousand men, he crossed the Rio Grande, and marched against the Texans.
The town of Bexar, on the San Antonio River, was defended by a garrison of about one hundred and seventy-five men. Among them were two whose names are still famous--David Crockett, the renowned pioneer, and Colonel James Bowie, noted for his murderous "bowie-knife," his duels, and his deeds of valor and shame. The company was commanded by Colonel W. Barrett Travis, a brave young Texan. On the approach of Santa Anna, they took refuge in the Alamo, about half a mile to the north of the town.
[=The Massacre of the Alamo and Goliad=]
The Alamo was an ancient Franciscan mission of the eighteenth century. It covered an area of about three acres, surrounded by walls three feet thick and eight feet high. Within the walls were a stone church and several other buildings. For two weeks it withstood Santa Anna's assaults. A shower of bombs and cannon-balls fell incessantly within the walls. At last, after a brave defense by the little garrison, the fortress was captured, in the early morning of Sunday, March 6, 1836. After the surrender, Travis, Bowie and Crockett, with all their companions, were by Santa Anna's especial command massacred in cold blood.
But this was not the worst; a few days afterwards a company of over four hundred Texans, under Colonel Fannin, besieged at Goliad, were induced to surrender, under Santa Anna's solemn promises of protection. After the surrender they were divided into several companies, marched in different directions a short distance out of the town, and shot down like dogs by the Mexican soldiers. Not a man escaped.
While these horrible events were taking place, Houston was at Gonzales, with a force of less than four hundred men. Meetings were held in the different settlements to raise an army to resist the Mexican invasion; and a convention of the people issued a proclamation declaring Texas a free and independent republic. It was two weeks before General Houston received intelligence of the atrocious massacres at Bexar and Goliad, and of Santa Anna's advance. The country was in a state of panic. Settlers were everywhere abandoning their homes, and fleeing in terror at the approach of the Mexican soldiers. Houston's force of a few hundred men was the only defense of Texas; and even this was diminished by frequent desertion from the ranks. The cause of Texan freedom seemed utterly hopeless.
[=General Houston and Santa Anna=]
In order to gain time, while watching his opportunity for attack, Houston slowly retreated before the Mexican army. After waiting two weeks for reinforcements, he moved toward Buffalo Bayou, a deep, narrow stream connecting with the San Jacinto River, about twenty miles southeast of the present city of Houston. Here he expected to meet the Mexican army. The lines being formed, General Houston made one of his most impassioned and eloquent appeals to his troops firing every breast by giving as a watchword, "REMEMBER THE ALAMO."
Soon the Mexican bugles rang out over the prairie, announcing the advance guard of the enemy, almost eighteen hundred strong. The rank and file of the patriots was less than seven hundred and fifty men. Their disadvantages only served to increase the enthusiasm of the soldiers; and when their general said, "Men, there is the enemy; do you wish to fight?" the universal shout was, "We do!" "Well, then," he said, "remember it is for liberty or death; remember the Alamo!"
At the moment of attack, a lieutenant came galloping up, his horse covered with foam, and shouted along the lines, "I've cut down Vince's bridge." Each army had used this bridge in coming to the battle-field, and General Houston had ordered its destruction, thus preventing all hope of escape to the vanquished.
[=The Battle of San Jacinto=]
Santa Anna's forces were in perfect order, awaiting the attack, and reserved their fire until the patriots were within sixty paces of their works. Then they poured forth a volley, which went over the heads of the attackers, though a ball struck General Houston's ankle, inflicting a very painful wound. Though suffering and bleeding. General Houston kept his saddle during the entire action. The patriots held their fire until it was given to the enemy almost in their very bosoms, and then, having no time to reload, made a general rush upon the foe, who were altogether unprepared for the furious charge. The patriots not having bayonets, clubbed their rifles. About half-past four the Mexican rout began, and closed only with the night. Seven of the patriots were killed and twenty-three were wounded; while the Mexicans had six hundred and thirty-two killed and wounded, and seven hundred and thirty, among whom was Santa Anna, made prisoners.
The victory of San Jacinto struck the fetters forever from the hands of Texas, and drove back the standard of Mexico beyond the Rio Grande, never to return except in predatory and transient incursions. General Houston became at once the leading man in Texas, almost universal applause following him. As soon as quiet and order were restored, he was made the first President of the new republic, under the Constitution adopted in November, 1835.
[=Texas Applies for Admission to the Union=]
In 1837 the republic of Texas was acknowledged by the United States, and in 1840 by Great Britain, France and Belgium. The population was overwhelmingly of American origin, and these people had in no sense lost their love for their former country, a sentiment in favor of the annexation of the "Lone Star State" to the United States being from the first entertained. In 1837 a formal application for admission as a state of the American Union was made. This proposition found many advocates and many opposers in this country, it being strongly objected to by northern Congressmen and favored by those from the South. The controversy turned upon the question of the extension of the area of slavery, which was a matter of importance to the South, while others who supported it held large tracts of land in Texas which they hoped would increase in value under United States rule.
As a result of the opposition, the question remained open for years, and was prominent in the presidential campaign of 1844, in which Henry Clay, the Whig candidate, was defeated, and James K. Polk, the Democratic candidate, was elected on the annexation platform. This settled the dispute. The people had expressed their will and the opposition yielded. Both Houses of Congress passed a bill in favor of admitting Texas as a state, and it was signed by President Tyler in the closing hours of his administration. The offer was unanimously accepted by the legislature of Texas on July 4, 1845, and it became a state of the American Union in December of that year.
[=Mexico Protests=]
In admitting Texas, Congress had opened the way to serious trouble. Though Mexico had taken no steps to recover its lost province, it had never acknowledged its independence, and stood over it somewhat like the dog in the manger, not prepared to take it, yet vigorously protesting against any other power doing so. Its protest against the action of the United States was soon followed by a more critical exigency, an active boundary dispute. Texas claimed the Rio Grande River as her western boundary. Mexico held that the Nueces River was the true boundary. Between these two streams lay a broad tract of land claimed by both nations, and which both soon sought to occupy. War arose in consequence of this ownership dispute.
[=A Disputed Boundary=]
In the summer of 1845 President Polk directed General Zachary Taylor to proceed to Corpus Christi, on the Nueces, and in the spring of 1846 he received orders to march to the Rio Grande. As soon as this movement was made, the Mexicans claimed that their territory had been invaded, ordered Taylor to retire, and on his refusal sent a body of troops across the river. Both countries were ripe for war, and both had taken steps to bring it on. A hostile meeting took place on April 24th, with some loss to both sides. On receiving word by telegraph of this skirmish, the President at once sent a message to Congress, saying: "Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, and shed American blood upon American soil. * * * War exists, notwithstanding all our efforts to avoid it."
[=War Declared Against Mexico=]
The efforts to avoid it had not been active. There was rather an effort to favor it. Abraham Lincoln, then a member of Congress, asked pointedly if special efforts had not been taken to provoke a war. But Congress responded favorably to the President's appeal, declared that war existed "by the act of Mexico," and called for fifty thousand volunteers.
The declaration of war was dated May 13, 1846. Several days before this, severe fights had taken place at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, on the disputed territory. The Mexicans were defeated, and retreated across the Rio Grande. They were quickly followed by Taylor, who took possession of the town of Matamoras. The plan of war laid out embraced an invasion of Mexico from four quarters. Taylor was to march southward from his position on the Rio Grande, General Winfield Scott to advance on the capital by the way of Vera Cruz, General Stephen W. Kearny to invade New Mexico, and California was to be attacked by a naval expedition, already despatched.
[=The Storming of Monterey=]
Taylor was quick to act after receiving reinforcements. He advanced on September 5th, and on the 9th reached Monterey, a strongly fortified interior town. The Mexicans looked upon this place as almost impregnable, it being surrounded by mountains and ravines, difficult to pass and easy of defense. Yet the Americans quickly penetrated to the walls, and were soon within the town, where a severe and bloody conflict took place. The stormers made their way over the house roofs and through excavations in the adobe walls, and in four days' time were in possession of the town which the Mexicans had confidently counted upon stopping their march.
[=Taylor at Buena Vista=]
Some months passed before Taylor was in condition to advance again, his force being much depleted by reinforcements sent to General Scott. It was February, 1847, when he took the field once more, reaching a position south of Monterey known as Buena Vista, a narrow mountain pass, with hills on one side and a ravine on the other. This bold advance of an army not more than 5,000 strong seemed a splendid opportunity to Santa Anna, then commander-in-chief of the Mexican army, who marched on the small American force with 20,000 men. The battle that followed was the most interesting and hard fought one in the war. Santa Anna hoped to crush the Americans utterly, and would perhaps have done so but for the advantage of their position and the effective service of their artillery.
"You are surrounded by twenty thousand men, and cannot, in all human probability, avoid suffering rout and being cut to pieces with your troops." Such were the alarming words with which the Mexican general accompanied a summons to General Taylor to surrender within an hour. Taylor's answer was polite but brief. "In answer to your note of this date summoning me to surrender my forces at discretion, I beg leave to say that I decline acceeding to your request."
General Taylor, or "Rough and Ready" as he was affectionately called by his men, had long before--he was now sixty-three years old--won his spurs on the battlefield. He was short, round-shouldered, and stout. His forehead was high, his eyes keen, his mouth firm, with the lower lip protruding, his hair snow-white, and his expression betokened his essentially humane and unassuming character. No private could have lived in simpler fashion. When he could escape from his uniform he wore a linen roundabout, cotton trousers, and a straw hat, and, if it rained, an old brown overcoat. In battle he was absolutely fearless, and invariably rode a favourite white horse, altogether regardless of attracting the enemy's attention. The old hero never wavered when he heard of the approach of the dreaded Santa Anna. He quietly went to work, and, having strongly garrisoned Saltillo, placed his men so as to seize all the advantages the position offered.
[=The Field of Battle=]
Imagine a narrow valley between two mountain ranges. On the west side of the road a series of gullies or ravines, on the east the sheer sides of precipitous mountains. Such was the Pass of Angostura, which, at one spot three miles from Buena Vista, could be held as easily as Horatius kept the bridge in the brave days of old; and here was placed Captain Washington's battery of three guns, with two companies as a guard. Up the mountain to the eastward the rest of the American army was ranged, more especially on a plateau so high as to command all the ground east and west, and only approachable from the south or north by intricate windings formed by ledges of rock.
At nine o'clock on the morning of the 22d of February the advance pickets espied the Mexican van, and General Wool sent in hot haste to Taylor, who was at Saltillo. The Mexican army dragged its slow length along, its resplendent uniforms shining in the sun. With much the same feelings as Macbeth saw Birnam Wood approach, must many of the Americans have watched the coming of this forest of steel. Two hours after the pickets had announced the van, a Mexican officer came forward with a white flag. He bore the imperious message from the dictator the opening words of which have already been quoted.
The fight on that day was confined to an exchange of artillery shots, and at nightfall Taylor returned to Saltillo, seeing that the affair was over for the time. But during the night the Mexicans made a movement that put the small American force in serious peril. While the Americans bivouacked without fires in the bitter chill of the mountain height, some 1,500 Mexicans gained the summit under cover of the darkness, and when the mists of morning rose the Americans, to their surprise and chagrin, saw everywhere before them the battalions of the enemy.
[=The Mexican Cavalry Charge=]
[=O'Brien's Battery=]
Up the pass soon came heavy force, in the face of Captain Washington's battery, while a rush, that seemed as if it must be irresistible, was made for the plateau. The fight here was desperate. The soldiers of neither army had had any experience in battle, and an Indiana regiment retreated at the command of its colonel, and could not be rallied again. This imperilled the safety of all who remained, many of them being killed, while only the active service of the artillery prevented the loss of the plateau, upon whose safe keeping depended the issue of the day. So fierce was the Mexican charge that every cannonier of the advanced battery fell beside his gun, and Captain O'Brien was obliged to fall back in haste losing his guns. He replaced them by two six pounders, borrowed from Captain Washington, who had repulsed the attack in the pass. Meanwhile, more American artillery on O'Brien's left was driving the Mexicans back upon the cavalry opposed to the gallant captain. The Mexican lancers charged the Illinois soldiers--"the very earth did shake." It was not until the lancers were within a few yards of O'Brien that he opened fire. This gave the Mexicans pause, but with cries of "God and Liberty!" on they came. Once more the deadly cannonade--another pause. O'Brien determined to stand his ground until the hoofs of the enemy's horses were upon him, but the recruits with him, only few of whom had escaped from being shot down, had no stomach left for fighting. The intrepid captain again lost his pieces, but he had saved the day.
At this point the leisurely General Taylor, on his white horse, so easily recognisable, came from Saltillo to the field of battle. North of the chief plateau was another, where the Mississippi Rifles, under Colonel Davis--who, although early wounded, kept his horse all day--stood at bay, formed into a V-shape with the opening towards the enemy. Nothing loth, the Mexican lancers rushed on, and the riflemen did not fire until they were able to recognize the features of their foe and to take deliberate aim at their eyes. This coolness was too great to be combated.
For hours the active and deadly struggle went on. The Mexican lancers made an assault on Buena Vista, where were the American baggage and supply train, but were driven off after a sharp contest. At a later hour of the day the brunt of the fight was being borne by the Illinois regiment and the Second Kentucky Cavalry, who were in serious straits when Taylor sent to their relief a light battery under Captain Bragg. It was quickly in peril. The Mexicans captured the foremost guns and repulsed the infantry support.
[=The Work of Captain Bragg=]
Bragg appealed for fresh help. "I have no reinforcements to give you," "Rough and Ready" is reported to have replied, "but Major Bliss and I will support you"; and the brave old man spurred his horse to the spot beside the cannon. Unheeding, the Mexican cavalry rode forward--the day was now theirs for a certainty, "God and Liberty!" their proud cry again rang out. Their horses galloped so near to Captain Bragg's coign of vantage that their riders had no time in which to pull them up before the battery opened fire with canister. As the smoke cleared, the little group of Americans saw the terrible work they had done in the gaps in the enemy's ranks, and heard it in the screams of men and horses in agony. They reloaded with grape. The Mexicans pressed on; their courage at the cannon's mouth was truly marvelous. This second shower of lead did equal, if not greater, mischief. A third discharge completely routed the enemy, who, being human, fled in headlong haste over the wounded and the dead--no matter where. The American infantry pursued the flying foe, with foolish rashness, beyond safe limits. The Mexicans, all on an instant, turned about, the hounds became the hare, and had it not been for Washington's cannon checking the Mexican cavalry, who had had enough grape and canister for one day, they would have been annihilated.
At six o'clock, after ten hours of fierce and uninterrupted fighting, the battle came to an end, both armies occupying the same positions as in the morning, though each had lost heavily during the day. General Taylor expected the battle to be renewed in the morning, but with daylight came the welcome news that the enemy had disappeared. The five thousand had held their own against four times their number, and the victory that was to make General Taylor President of the United States had been won.
[=Scott's Advance Against the City of Mexico=]
Meanwhile General Scott, the hero of Chippewa and Lundy's Lane in 1814, had sailed down the Gulf with a considerable force to the seaport city of Vera Cruz, which was taken after a brief bombardment. From here an overland march of two hundred miles was made to the Mexican capital. Scott reached the vicinity of the City of Mexico with a force 11,000 strong, and found its approaches strongly fortified and guarded by 30,000 men. Yet he pushed on almost unchecked. Victories were won at Contreras and Churubusco, the defences surrounding the city were taken, and on September 13th the most formidable of them all, the strong hill fortress of Chapultepec, was carried by storm, the American troops charging up a steep hill in face of a severe fire and driving the garrison in dismay from their guns.
This ended the war in that quarter. The next day the star and stripes waved over the famous "Halls of the Montezumas" and the city was ours. On February 2, 1848, a treaty of peace was signed at the village of Guadalupe Hidalgo, whose terms gave the United States an accession of territory that was destined to prove of extraordinary value.
[=New Mexico and California=]
New Mexico, a portion of this territory, had been invaded and occupied by General Kearny, who had taken Santa Fé after a thousand miles' march overland. Before the fleet sent to California could reach there, Captain John C. Fremont, in charge of a surveying party in Oregon, had invaded that country. He did not know that war had been declared, his purpose being to protect the American settlers, whom the Mexicans threatened to expel. Fremont was one of the daring pioneers who made their way over the mountains and plains of the West in the days when Indian hostility and the difficulties raised by nature made this a very arduous and perilous enterprise. Several conflicts with the Mexicans, in which he was aided by the fleet, and later by General Kearny, who had crossed the wild interior from Santa Fé, gave Fremont control of that great country, which was destined almost to double the wealth of the United States. Whatever he thought of the ethics of the acquisition of Texas and the Mexican war, their economical advantages to the United States have been enormous, and the whole world has been enriched by the product of California's golden sands and fertile fields.
XXIX. The Negro in America and the Slavery Conflict
[=Beginning of the Slave Traffic=]
[=Increase in Numbers=]
When, over two hundred and eighty years ago (it is in doubt whether the correct date is 1619 or 1620) a few wretched negroes, some say fourteen, some say twenty, were bartered for provisions by the crew of a Dutch man-of-war, then lying off the Virginia coast, it would have seemed incredible that in 1900 the negro population of the Southern States alone should reach very nearly eight million souls. African negroes had, indeed, been sold into slavery among many nations for perhaps three thousand years; but in its earlier periods slavery was rather the outcome of war than the deliberate subject of trade, and white captives no less than black were ruthlessly thrown into servitude. It has been estimated that in historical times some forty million Africans have been enslaved. The Spaniards found the Indian an intractable slave, and for the arduous labors of colonization soon began to make use of negro slaves, importing them in great numbers and declaring that one negro was worth, as a human beast of burden, four Indians. Soon the English adventurers took up the traffic. It is to Sir John Hawkins, the ardent discoverer, that the English-speaking peoples owe their participation in the slave trade. He has put it on record, as the result of one of his famous voyages, that he found "that negroes were very good merchandise in Hispaniola and might easily be had on the coast of Guinea." For his early adventures of this kind he was roundly taken to task by Queen Elizabeth. But tradition says that he boldly faced her with the argument that the Africans were an inferior race, and ended by convincing the Virgin Queen that the slave trade was not merely a lucrative but a perfectly philanthropic undertaking. Certain it is that she acquiesced in future slave trading, while her successors Charles II. and James II. chartered four slave trading companies and received a share in their profits. It is noteworthy that both Great Britain and the United States recognized the horrors of the slave trade as regards the seizing and transportation from Africa of the unhappy negroes, long before they could bring themselves to deal with the problem of slavery as a domestic institution. Of those horrors nothing can be said in exaggeration.
[=Colonial Laws About Slavery=]
The institution of slavery, introduced as we have seen into Virginia, grew at first very slowly. Twenty-five years after the first slaves were landed the negro population of the colony was only three hundred. But the conditions of agriculture and of climate were such that, once slavery obtained a fair start, it spread with continually increasing rapidity. We find the Colonial Assembly passing one after another a series of laws defining the condition of the negro slave more and more clearly, and more and more pitilessly. Thus, a distinction was soon made between them and Indians held in servitude. It was enacted that "all servants not being Christians imported into this colony by shipping shall be slaves for their lives; but what shall come by land shall serve, if boyes or girles, until thirty years of age; if men or women, twelve years and no longer." And before the end of the century a long series of laws so encompassed the negro with limitations and prohibitions, that he almost ceased to have any criminal or civil rights and became a mere personal chattel.
[=Slavery in Early New York=]
In some of the northern colonies slavery seemed to take root as readily and to flourish as rapidly as in the South. It was only after a considerable time that social and commercial conditions arose which led to its gradual abandonment. In New York a mild type of negro slavery was introduced by the Dutch. The relation of master and slave seems in the period of the Dutch rule to have been free from great severity or cruelty. After the seizure of the government by the English, however, the institution was officially recognized and even encouraged. The slave trade grew in magnitude; and here again we find a series of oppressive laws forbidding meetings of negroes, laying down penalties for concealing slaves, and the like. When the Revolution broke out there were not less than fifteen thousand slaves in New York--a number greatly in excess of that held by any other northern colony.
[=Slavery in Massachusetts=]
Massachusetts, the home in later days of so many of the most eloquent abolition agitators, was from the very first, until after the war with Great Britain was well under way, a stronghold of slavery. The records of 1633 tell of the fright of Indians who saw a "Blackamoor" in a treetop, whom they took for the devil in person, but who turned out to be an escaped slave. A few years later the authorities of the colony officially recognized the institution. To quote Chief Justice Parsons, "Slavery was introduced into Massachusetts soon after its first settlement, and was tolerated until the ratification of the present constitution in 1780." The curious may find in ancient Boston newspapers no lack of such advertisements as that, in 1728, of the sale of "two very likely negro girls," and of "A likely negro woman of about nineteen years and a child about seven months of age, to be sold together or apart." A Tory writer before the outbreak of the Revolution sneers at the Bostonians for their talk about freedom when they possessed two thousand negro slaves. Even Peter Faneuil, who built the famous "Cradle of Liberty," was himself, at that very time, actively engaged in the slave trade. There is some truth in the once common taunt of the pro-slavery orators that the North imported slaves, the South only bought them.
[=Negro Soldiers in the Revolution=]
As with New York and Massachusetts, so with the other colonies. Either slavery was introduced by greedy speculators from abroad or it spread easily from adjoining colonies. In 1776 the slave population of the thirteen colonies was almost exactly half a million, nine-tenths of whom were to be found in the southern states. In the War of the Revolution the question of arming the negroes raised bitter opposition. In the end a comparatively few were enrolled, and it is admitted that they served faithfully and with courage. Rhode Island even formed a regiment of blacks, and at the siege of Newport and afterwards at Point's Bridge, New York, this body of soldiers fought not only without reproach but with positive heroism.
[=Slavery Abolished in the North=]
From the day when the Declaration of Independence asserted "That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," the peoples of the new, self-governing states could not but have seen that with them lay the responsibility. There is ample evidence that the fixing of the popular mind on liberty as an ideal bore results immediately in arousing anti-slavery sentiment. Such sentiment existed in the South as well as in the North. Even North Carolina in 1786 declared the slave trade of "evil consequences and highly impolitic." All the northern states abolished slavery, beginning with Vermont in 1777, and ending with New Jersey in 1804. It should be added, however, that many of the northern slaves were not freed, but sold to the South. The agricultural and commercial conditions in the North were such as to make slave labor less and less profitable, while in the South the social order of things, agricultural conditions, and climate were gradually making it seemingly indispensable.
When the Constitutional debates began the trend of opinion seemed strongly against slavery. Many delegates thought that the evil would die out of itself. One thought the abolition of slavery already rapidly going on and soon to be completed. Another asserted that "slavery in time will not be a speck in our country." Mr. Jefferson, on the other hand, in view of the retention of slavery, declared roundly that he trembled for his country when he remembered that God was just. And John Adams urged again and again that "every measure of prudence ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States." The obstinate states in the convention were South Carolina and Georgia. Their delegates declared that their states would absolutely refuse ratification to the Constitution unless slavery were recognized. The compromise sections finally agreed upon, avoided the use of the words slave and slavery, but clearly recognized the institution, and even gave the slave states the advantage of sending representatives to Congress on a basis of population determined by adding to the whole number of free persons "three-fifths of all other persons." The other persons referred to were, it is almost needless to add, negro slaves.
[=Compromises in the Constitution=]
The entire dealing with the question of slavery, at the framing of the Constitution, was a series of compromises. This is seen again in the failure definitely to forbid the slave trade from abroad. Some of the southern states had absolutely declined to listen to any proposition which would restrict their freedom of action in this matter, and they were yielded to so far that Congress was forbidden to make the traffic unlawful before the year 1808. As that time approached, President Jefferson urged Congress to withdraw the country from all "further participation in those violations of human rights which have so long been continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa." Such an act was at once adopted, and by it heavy fines were imposed on all persons fitting out vessels for the slave trade and also upon all actually engaged in the trade, while vessels so employed became absolutely forfeited. Twelve years later another act was passed declaring the importation of slaves to be actual piracy. The latter law, however, was of little practical value, as it was not until 1861 that a conviction was obtained under it. Then, at last, when the whole slave question was about to be settled forever, a ship-master was convicted and hanged for piracy in New York for the crime of being engaged in the slave trade. In despite of all laws, however, the trade in slaves was continued secretly, and the profits were so enormous that the risks did not prevent continual attempts to smuggle slaves into the territory of the United States.
[=The Slave Trade=]
The first quarter of a century of our history, after the adoption of the Constitution, was marked by comparative quietude in regard to the future of slavery. In the North, as we have seen, the institution died a natural death, but there was no disposition evinced in the northern states to interfere with it in the South. The first great battle took place in 1820 over the so-called Missouri compromise. Now, for the first time, the country was divided, sectionally and in a strictly political way, upon issues which involved the future policy of the United States as to the extension or restriction of slave territory. State after state had been admitted into the Union, but there had been an alteration of slave and free states, so that the political balance was not disturbed. Thus Ohio was balanced by Louisiana, Indiana by Mississippi, Illinois by Alabama. Of the twenty-two states admitted before 1820, eleven were slave and eleven free states.
[=The Missouri Compromise=]
Immediately after the admission of Alabama, of course as a slave-holding state, Maine and Missouri applied for admission. The admission of Maine alone would have given a preponderance to the free states, and for this reason it was strongly contended by southern members that Missouri should be admitted as a slave state. But the sentiment of opposition to the extension of slavery was growing rapidly in the North, and many members from that section opposed this proposition. They had believed that the ordinance of 1787, adopted simultaneously with the Constitution, and which forbade slavery to be established in the territory northwest of the Ohio, had settled this question definitely; but this ordinance did not apply to territory west of the Mississippi, so that the question really remained open. A fierce debate was waged through two sessions of Congress, and in the end it was agreed to permit the introduction of slavery into Missouri, but to prohibit it forever in all future states lying north of the parallel of 36 degrees 30 minutes, the southern boundary of Missouri. This was a compromise, satisfactory only because it seemed to dispose of the question of slavery in the territories once and forever. It was carried mainly by the great personal influence of Henry Clay. It did, indeed, dispose of slavery as a matter of national legislative discussion for thirty years.
[=The Anti-slavery Sentiment=]
But this interval was distinctively a period of popular agitation. Anti-slavery sentiment of a mild type had long existed. The Quakers had, since revolutionary times, held anti-slavery doctrines, had released their own servants from bondage, and had disfellowshipped members who refused to concur in the sacrifice. The very last public act of Benjamin Franklin was the framing of a memorial to Congress in which he deprecated the existence of slavery in a free country. In New York the Manumission society had been founded in 1785, with John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, in turn, as its presidents. But this early writing and speaking were directed against slavery in a general way, and with no tone of aggression. Gradual emancipation and colonization were the only remedies suggested. It was with the founding of the Liberator by William Lloyd Garrison, in 1831, that the era of aggressive abolitionism began. Garrison and his society maintained that slavery was a sin against God and man; that immediate emancipation was a duty; that slave owners had no claim to compensation; that all laws upholding slavery were, before God, null and void. Garrison exclaimed: "I am in earnest. I will not equivocate--I will not excuse--I will not retreat a single inch. And I will be heard." His paper bore conspicuously the motto "No union with slaveholders."
[=Leading Opponents of Slavery=]
The Abolitionists were, in numbers, a feeble band; as a party they never acquired strength, nor were their tenets adopted strictly by any political party; but they served the purpose of arousing the conscience of the nation. They were abused, vilified, mobbed, all but killed. Garrison was dragged through the streets of Boston with a rope around his neck--through those very streets which, in 1854, had their shops closed and hung in black, with flags Union down and a huge coffin suspended in mid-air, on the day when the fugitive slave, Anthony Burns, was marched through them on his way back to his master, under a guard of nearly two thousand men. Mr. Garrison's society soon took the stand that the union of states with slavery retained was "an agreement with hell and a covenant with death," and openly advocated secession of the non-slaveholding states. On this issue the Abolitionists split into two branches, and those who threw off Garrison's lead maintained that there was power enough under the Constitution to do away with slavery. To the fierce invective and constant agitation of Garrison were, in time, added the splendid oratory of Wendell Phillips, the economic arguments of Horace Greeley, the wise statesmanship of Charles Sumner, the fervid writings of Channing and Emerson, and the noble poetry of Whittier. All these and others, in varied ways and from different points of view, joined in bringing the public opinion of the North to the view that the permanent existence of slavery was incompatible with that of a free republic.
[=Southern Hatred of Abolitionists=]
In the South, meanwhile, the institution was intrenching itself more and more firmly. The invention of the cotton gin and the beginning of the reign of cotton as king made the great plantation system a seeming commercial necessity. From the deprecatory and half apologetic utterances of early southern statesmen, we come to Mr. Calhoun's declaration that slavery "now preserves in quiet and security more than six and a half million human beings, and that it could not be destroyed without destroying the peace and prosperity of nearly half the states in the Union." The Abolitionists were regarded in the South with the bitterest hatred. Attempts were even made to compel the northern states to silence the anti-slavery orators, to prohibit the circulation through the mail of anti-slavery speeches, and to refuse a hearing in Congress to anti-slavery petitions. The influence of the South was still dominant in the North. Though the feeling against slavery spread, there co-existed with it the belief that an open quarrel with the South meant commercial ruin; and the anti-slavery sentiment was also neutralized by the nobler feeling that the Union must be preserved at all hazards, and that there was no constitutional mode of interfering with the slave system. The annexation of Texas was a distinct gain to the slave power, and the Mexican war was undertaken, said John Quincy Adams, in order that "the slave-holding power in the government shall be secured and riveted."
[=The Literature of Slavery=]
The actual condition of the negro over whom such a strife was being waged differed materially in different parts of the South, and, under masters of different character, in the same locality. It had its side of cruelty, oppression and atrocity; it had also its side of kindness on the part of master and of devotion on the part of slave. Its dark side has been made familiar to readers by such books as "Uncle Tom's Cabin," Dickens' "American Notes," and Edmund Kirk's "Among the Pines;" its brighter side has been charmingly depicted in the stories of Thomas Nelson Page, Joel Chandler Harris, and Harry Edwards. On the great cotton plantations of Mississippi and Alabama the slave was often overtaxed and harshly treated; in the domestic life of Virginia, on the other hand, he was as a rule most kindly used, and often a relation of deep affection sprang up between him and his master.
[=The Fugitive Slave Law and Underground Railroad=]
With this state of public feeling North and South, it was with increased bitterness and developed sectionalism that the subject of slavery in new states was again debated in the Congress of 1850. The Liberty party, which held that slavery might be abolished under the Constitution, had been merged in the Free Soil party, whose cardinal principle was, "To secure free soil to a free people," and, while not interfering with slavery in existing states, to insist on its exclusion from territory so far free. The proposed admission of California was not affected by the Missouri Compromise. Its status as a future free or slave state was the turning point of the famous debates in the Senate of 1850, in which Webster, Calhoun, Douglas and Seward won fame--debates which have never been equaled in our history for eloquence and acerbity. It was in the course of these debates that Mr. Seward, while denying that the Constitution recognized property in man, struck out his famous dictum, "There is a higher law than the Constitution." The end reached was a compromise which allowed California to settle for itself the question of slavery, forbade the slave trade in the District of Columbia, but enacted a strict fugitive slave law. To the Abolitionists this fugitive slave law, sustained in its most extreme measures by the courts in the famous--or as they called it, infamous--Dred Scott case, was as fuel to fire. They defied it in every possible way. The "Underground Railway" was the outcome of this defiance. By it a chain of secret stations was established, from one to the other of which the slave was guided at night until at last he reached the Canada border. The most used of these routes in the East was from Baltimore to New York, thence north through New England; that most employed in the West was from Cincinnati to Detroit. It has been estimated that not fewer than thirty thousand slaves were thus assisted to freedom.
[=The Outbreak an Kansas=]
Soon the struggle was changed to another part of the western territory, which was now growing so rapidly as to demand the formation of new states. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill introduced by Douglas was in effect the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, in that it left the question as to whether slavery should be carried into the new territories to the decision of the settlers themselves. As a consequence immigration was directed by both the anti-slavery and the pro-slavery parties to Kansas, each determined on obtaining a majority enabling it to control the proposed State Constitution. Then began a series of acts of violence which almost amounted to civil war. "Bleeding Kansas" became a phrase in almost every one's mouth. Border ruffians swaggered at the polls and attempted to drive out the assisted emigrants sent to Kansas by the Abolition societies. The result of the election of the Legislature on its face made Kansas a slave state, but a great part of the people refused to accept this result; and a convention was held at Topeka which resolved that Kansas should be free even if the laws formed by the Legislature should have to be "resisted to a bloody issue."
[=John Brown at Harper's Ferry=]
Prominent among the armed supporters of free state ideas in Kansas was Captain John Brown, a man whose watchword was at all times action. "Talk," he said, "is a national institution; but it does no good for the slave." He believed that slavery could only be coped with by armed force. His theory was that the way to make free men of slaves was for the slaves themselves to resist any attempt to coerce them by their masters. He was undoubtedly a fanatic in that he did not stop to measure probabilities or to take account of the written law. His attempt at Harper's Ferry was without reasonable hope, and as the intended beginning of a great military movement was a ridiculous fiasco. To attempt to make war upon the United States with twenty men was utter madness, and if the hoped for rising of the slaves had taken place might have yielded horrible results. The execution of John Brown, that followed, was the logical consequence of his hopeless effort.
But there was that about the man which none could call ridiculous. Rash and unreasoning as his action seemed, he was still, even by his enemies, recognized as a man of unswerving conscience, of high ideals, of deep belief in the brotherhood of mankind. His offense against law and peace was cheerfully paid fur by his death and that of others near and dear to him. Almost no one at that day could be found to applaud his plot, but the incident had an effect on the minds of the people altogether out of proportion to its intrinsic character. More and more as time went on he became recognized as a martyr in the cause of human liberty.
[=Slaves "Contraband of War"=]
Events of vast importance to the future of the negro in America now hurried fast upon each other's footsteps: the final settlement of the Kansas dispute by its becoming a free state; the formation and rapid growth of the Republican party; the division of the Democratic party into northern and southern factions; the election of Abraham Lincoln; the secession of South Carolina, and, finally, the greatest civil war the world has known. Though that war would never have been waged were it not for the negro, and though his fate was inevitably involved in its result, it must be remembered that it was not undertaken on his account. Before the struggle began Mr. Lincoln said: "If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to destroy or to save slavery." And the northern press emphasized over and over again the fact that this was "a white man's war." But the logic of events is inexorable. It seems amazing now that Union generals should have been puzzled as to the question whether they ought in duty to return runaway slaves to their masters. General Butler settled the controversy by one happy phrase when he called the fugitives "contraband of war." Soon it was deemed right to use these contrabands, to employ the new-coined word, as the South was using the negroes still in bondage, to aid in the non-fighting work of the army--on fortification, team-driving, cooking, and so on. From this it was but a step, though a step not taken without much perturbation, to employ them as soldiers. At Vicksburg, at Fort Pillow, and in many another battle, the negro showed beyond dispute that he could fight for his liberty. No fiercer or braver charge was made in the war than that upon the parapet of Fort Wagner by Colonel Shaw's gallant colored regiment, the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth.
[=Behavior of Slaves During the Civil War=]
In a thousand ways the negro figures in the history of the war. In its literature he everywhere stands out picturesquely. He sought the flag with the greatest avidity for freedom; flocking in crowds, old men and young, women and children, sometimes with quaint odds and ends of personal belongings, often empty-handed, always enthusiastic and hopeful, almost always densely ignorant of the meaning of freedom and of self-support. But while the negro showed this avidity for liberty, his conduct toward his old masters was often generous, and almost never did he seize the opportunity to inflict vengeance for his past wrongs. The eloquent southern orator and writer, Henry W. Grady, said: "History has no parallel to the faith kept by the negro in the South during the war. Often five hundred negroes to a single white man, and yet through these dusky throngs the women and children walked in safety and the unprotected homes rested in peace.... A thousand torches would have disbanded every southern army, but not one was lighted."
[=The Emancipation Proclamation=]
It was with conditions, and only after great hesitation, that the final step of emancipating the slaves was taken by President Lincoln in September, 1862. The proclamation was distinctly a war measure, but its reception by the North and by the foreign powers and its immediate effect upon the contest were such that its expediency was at once recognized. Thereafter there was possible no question as to the personal freedom of the negro in the United States of America. With the Confederacy, slavery went down once and forever. In the so-called reconstruction period which followed, the negro suffered almost as much from the over-zeal of his political friends as from the prejudice of his old masters. A negro writer, who is a historian of his race, has declared that the government gave the negro the statute book when he should have had the spelling book; that it placed him in the legislature when he ought to have been in the school house, and that, so to speak, "the heels were put where the brains ought to have been."
A quarter of a century and more has passed since that turbulent period began, and if the negro has become less prominent as a political factor, all the more for that reason has he been advancing steadily though slowly in the requisites of citizenship. He has learned that he must, by force of circumstances, turn his attention, for the time at least, rather to educational, industrial and material progress than to political ambition. And the record of his advance on these lines is promising and hopeful. In Mississippi alone, for instance, the negroes own one-fifth of the entire property in the state. In all, the negroes of the South to-day possess two hundred and fifty million dollars' worth of property. Everywhere throughout the South white men and negroes may be found working together.
[=Progress of the Negroes of the South=]
[=Educational Development of the Negro Race=]
The promise of the negro race to-day is not so much in the development of men of exceptional talent, such as Frederick Douglas or Senator Bruce, as in the general spread of intelligence and knowledge. The southern states have very generally given the negro equal educational opportunities with the whites, while the eagerness of the race to learn is shown in the recently ascertained fact that while the colored population has increased only twenty-seven per cent. the enrollment in the colored schools has increased one hundred and thirty-seven per cent. Fifty industrial schools are crowded by the colored youth of the South. Institutions of higher education, like the Atlanta University, the Hampton Institute of Virginia, and Tuskegee College are doing admirable work in turning out hundreds of negroes fitted to educate their own race. Honors and scholarships have been taken by colored young men at Harvard, at Cornell, at Phillips Academy and at other northern schools and colleges of the highest rank. The fact that a young negro, Mr. Morgan, was, in 1890, elected by his classmates at Harvard as the class orator has a special significance. Yet there is greater significance, as a negro newspaper writes, in the fact that the equatorial telescope now used by the Lawrence University of Wisconsin was made entirely by colored pupils in the School of Mechanical Arts of Nashville, Tenn. In other words, the Afro-American is finding his place as an intelligent worker, a property owner, and an independent citizen, rather than as an agitator, a politician or a race advocate. In religion, superstition and effusive sentiment are giving way to stricter morality. In educational matters, ambition for the high-sounding and the abstract is giving place to practical and industrial acquirements. It will be many years before the character of the negro, for centuries dwarfed and distorted by oppression and ignorance, reaches its normal growth, but that the race is at last upon the right path, and is being guided by the true principles cannot be doubted.
XXX. Abraham Lincoln and the Work of Emancipation
[=Washington and Lincoln=]
Among the men who have filled the office of President of the United States two stand pre-eminent, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, both of them men not for the admiration of a century but of the ages, heroes of history whose names will live as the chief figures among the makers of our nation. To the hand of Washington it owed its freedom, to that of Lincoln its preservation, and the name of the preserver will occupy a niche in the temple of fame next to that of the founder. But our feeling for Lincoln is different from that with which we regard the "Father of his Country." While we venerate the one, we love the other. Washington was a stately figure, too dignified for near approach. He commanded respect, admiration and loyalty; but in addition to these Lincoln commands our affection, a feeling as for one very near and dear to us.
[=A Great Man and His Critics=]
[=The Character of Lincoln=]
The fame of Lincoln is increasing as the inner history of the great struggle for the life of the nation becomes known. For almost two decades after that struggle had settled the permanence of our government, our vision was obscured by the near view of the pygmy giants who "strutted their brief hour upon the stage;" our ears were filled with the loud claims of those who would magnify their own little part, and, knowing the facts concerning some one fraction of the contest, assumed from that knowledge to proclaim the principles which should have governed the whole. Time is dissipating the mist, and we are coming better to know the great man who had no pride of opinion, who was willing to let Seward or Sumner or McClellan or any one imagine himself to be the guiding spirit of the government, if he were willing to give that government the best service of which he was capable. We see more clearly the real greatness of the leader who was too slow for one great section of his people, and too fast for another, too conservative for those, too radical for these; who refused to make the contest merely a war for the negro, yet who saw the end from the beginning, and led, not a section of his people, but the whole people, away from the Egyptian plagues of slavery and disunion, and brought them, united in sentiment and feeling, to the borders of the promised land. We are coming to appreciate that the "Father Abraham" who in that Red Sea passage of fraternal strife was ready to listen to every tale of sorrow, and who wanted it said that he "always plucked a thistle and planted a flower when he thought a flower would grow," was not only in this sense the father of his people; but that he was a truly great statesman, who, within the limits of human knowledge and human strength, guided the affairs of state with a wisdom, a patience, a courage which belittle all praise, and make him seem indeed a man divinely raised up, not only to set the captive free, but in order that "government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
[=Lincoln's First Experience of Slavery=]
It is not our purpose to tell the story of Lincoln's boyhood--his days of penury in the miserable frontier cabins of his father in Kentucky and Indiana, his struggles to obtain an education, his pitiful necessity of writing his school exercises with charcoal on the back of a wooden shovel, his efforts to make a livelihood when he had become a tall and ungainly, but strong and vigorous, youth, his work at farming, rail-splitting, clerking, boating, and in other occupations. A journey on a flat-boat to New Orleans gave him his first acquaintance with the institution of slavery, with which he was thereafter to have so much to do. Here he witnessed a slave auction. The scene was one that made a deep and abiding impression on his sympathetic mind, and he is said to have declared to his companion, "If I ever get a chance to hit that institution, I'll hit it hard." Whether this is legend or fact, it is certain that he did get a chance to hit it, and did "hit it hard."
Difficult as it was to obtain an education on the rude frontier and in the extreme poverty in which Lincoln was reared, he succeeded by persistent reading and study in making himself the one man of learning among his farming fellows, and one who was not long content with the occupations of rail-splitting, flat-boating, or even that of keeping country store, which he tried without success. He was too devoted to his books to attend very carefully to his business, which left him seriously in debt, and he soon chose the law as his vocation, supporting himself meanwhile by serving as land surveyor in the neighboring district.
[=In the Illinois Legislature=]
Lincoln's political career began in 1834, when his neighbors, who admired him for his learning and ability, elected him to represent them in the Illinois legislature. His knowledge was only one of the elements of his popularity. He had acquired a reputation as a teller of quaint and humorous stories; he was a champion wrestler, and could fight well if forced to; and he was beginning to make his mark as a ready and able orator. In the legislature he became prominent enough to gain twice the nomination of his party for speaker. His principal service there was to advocate a system of public improvements, whose chief result was to plunge Illinois deeply in debt. A significant act of his at this early day in his career was to join with a single colleague in a written protest against the passage of resolutions in favor of slavery. The signers based their action on their belief that "the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy." It needed no little moral courage to make such a protest in 1837 in a community largely of southern origin, but moral courage was a possession of which Lincoln had an abundant store.
[=Lincoln as a Lawyer=]
In the meantime Lincoln had been admitted to the bar, and in 1837 he removed to Springfield, where he formed a partnership with an attorney of established reputation. He became a successful lawyer, not so much by his knowledge of law, for this was never great, as by his ability as an advocate, and by reason of his sterling integrity. He would not be a party to misrepresentation, and more than once refused to take cases which involved such a result. He even was known to abandon a case which brought him unexpectedly into this attitude, making in his first case before the United States Circuit Court the unusual statement that he had not been able to find any authorities supporting his side of the case, but had found several favoring the opposite, which he proceeded to quote.
The very appearance of such an attorney in any case must have gone far to win the jury; and, when deeply stirred, the power of his oratory, and the invincible logic of his argument, made him a most formidable opponent. "Yes," he was overheard to say to a would-be client, "we can doubtless gain your case for you; we can set a whole neighborhood at loggerheads; we can distress a widowed mother and her six fatherless children, and thereby get for you the six hundred dollars to which you seem to have a legal claim, but which rightfully belongs, it appears to me, as much to the woman and her children as it does to you. You must remember that some things legally right are not morally right. We shall not take your case, but will give you a little advice for which we will charge you nothing. You seem to be a sprightly, energetic man; we would advise you to try your hand at making six hundred dollars in some other way."
[=In the United States Congress=]
In 1846 he accepted a nomination to Congress and was triumphantly elected, being the only Whig among the seven representatives from his state. As a member of the House his voice was always given on the side of human freedom, he voting in favor of considering the petitions for the abolition of slavery and supporting the doctrines of the Wilmot proviso, which opposed the extension of slavery to the territory acquired from Mexico.
As yet Lincoln had not made a striking figure as a legislator. He was admired by those about him for his sterling honesty and integrity, but his name was hardly known in the country at large, and there was no indication that he would ever occupy a prominent position in the politics of the nation. It was the threatened repeal of the Missouri Compromise, in 1854, an act which would open the western territory to the admission of slavery, that first fairly wakened him up and laid the foundation of his remarkable career. The dangerous question which Henry Clay had set aside for years, but which was now brought forward again, absorbed his attention, and he grew constantly more bold and powerful in his denunciation of the encroachments of the slave power. He became, therefore, the natural champion of his party in the campaigns in which Senator Douglas undertook to defend before the people of his state his advocacy of "squatter sovereignty," or the right of the people of each territory to decide whether it should be admitted as a slave or a free state, and of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, by which the "Missouri Compromise" was repealed.
[=The Great Lincoln and Douglas Debate=]
The first great battle between these two giants of debate took place at the State Fair at Springfield, in October, 1854, Douglas made a great speech to an unprecedented concourse of people, and was the lion of the hour. The next day Lincoln replied, and his effort was such as to surprise both his friends and his opponents. It was probably the first occasion in which he reached his full power. In the words of a friendly editor: "The Nebraska bill was shivered, and like a tree of the forest was torn and rent asunder by the hot bolts of truth.... At the conclusion of this speech every man and child felt that it was unanswerable."
But it was the campaign of 1858 that made Lincoln famous. In this contest he first fully displayed his powers as an orator and logician, and won the reputation that made him President. Douglas, his opponent, was immensely popular in the West. His advocacy of territorial expansion appealed to the patriotism of the young and ardent; his doctrine of popular sovereignty was well calculated to mislead shallow thinkers; and his power in debate was so great that he became widely known as the "Little Giant." But he found a worthy champion of the opposite in Abraham Lincoln, who riddled and ventilated many of his specious arguments, and succeeded in inducing him to make a statement that proved fatal to his hopes of the Presidency.
[=Douglas's Fatal Answer=]
When Lincoln proposed to press upon his opponent the question whether there were lawful means by which slavery could be excluded from a territory before its admission as a state, his friends suggested that Douglas would reply that slavery could not exist unless it was desired by the people, and unless protected by territorial legislation, and that this answer would be sufficiently satisfactory to insure his re-election. But Lincoln replied, "I am after larger game. If Douglas so answers, he can never be President, and the battle of 1860 is worth a hundred of this." Both predictions were verified. The people of the South might have forgiven Douglas his opposition to the Lecompton Constitution of Kansas, but they could not forgive the promulgation of a doctrine which, in spite of the Dred Scott decision (a Supreme Court decision to the effect that a master had the right to take his slave into any state and hold him there as "property"), would keep slavery out of a territory; and so, although Douglas was elected and Lincoln defeated, the Democracy was divided, and it was impossible for Douglas to command southern votes for the presidency.
[=Lincoln Takes His Stand=]
The campaign had been opened with a speech by Lincoln which startled the country by its boldness and its power. It was delivered at the Republican convention which nominated him for Senator, and had been previously submitted to his confidential advisers. They strenuously opposed the introduction of its opening sentences. He was warned that they would be fatal to his election, and, in the existing state of public feeling, might permanently destroy his political prospects. Lincoln could not be moved. "It is true" said he, "and I will deliver it as written. I would rather be defeated with these expressions in my speech held up and discussed before the people than be victorious without them." The paragraph gave to the country a statement of the problem as terse and vigorous and even more complete than Seward's "irrepressible conflict," and as startling as Sumner's proposition that "freedom was national, slavery sectional." "A house divided against itself," said Lincoln, "cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the farther spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the states,--old as well as new, North as well as South."
[=The "Champion of Freedom"=]
Never had the issues of a political campaign seemed more momentous; never was one more ably contested. The triumph of the doctrine of "popular sovereignty," in the Kansas-Nebraska bill, had opened the territories to slavery, while it professed to leave the question to be decided by the people. To the question whether the people of a territory could exclude slavery Douglas had answered, "That is a question for the courts to decide," but the Dred Scott decision, practically holding that the Federal Constitution guaranteed the right to hold slaves in the territories, seemed to make the pro-slavery cause triumphant. The course of Douglas regarding the Lecompton Constitution, however, had made it possible for his friends to describe him as "the true champion of freedom," while Lincoln continually exposed, with merciless force, the illogical position of his adversary, and his complete lack of political morality.
[=Lincoln's Views on the Slavery Question=]
Douglas claimed that the doctrine of popular sovereignty "originated when God made man and placed good and evil before him, allowing him to choose upon his own responsibility." But Lincoln declared with great solemnity: "No; God did not place good and evil before man, telling him to take his choice. On the contrary, God did tell him that there was one tree of the fruit of which he should not eat, upon pain of death." The question was to him one of right, a high question of morality, and only upon such a question could he ever be fully roused. "Slavery is wrong," was the keynote of his speeches. But he did not take the position of the abolitionists. He even admitted that the South was entitled, under the Constitution, to a national fugitive slave law, though his soul revolted at the law which was then in force. His position, as already cited, was that of the Republican party. He would limit the extension of slavery, and place it in such a position as would insure its ultimate extinction. It was a moderate course, viewed from this distance of time, but in the face of a dominant, arrogant, irascible pro-slavery sentiment it seemed radical in the extreme, calculated, indeed, to fulfill a threat he had made to the governor of the state. He had been attempting to secure the release of a young negro from Springfield who was wrongfully detained in New Orleans, and who was in danger of being sold for prison expenses. Moved to the depths of his being by the refusal of the official to interfere, Lincoln exclaimed: "By God, governor, I'll make the ground of this country too hot for the foot of a slave."
Douglas was re-elected. Lincoln had hardly anticipated a different result, and he had nothing of the feeling of defeat. On the contrary, he felt that the corner-stone of victory had been laid. He had said of his opening speech: "If I had to draw a pen across my record, and erase my whole life from sight, and I had one poor gift or choice left as to what I should choose to save from the wreck, I should choose that speech, and leave it to the world unerased."
[=The Cooper Institute Speech=]
The great debate had made Lincoln famous. In Illinois his name was a household word. His stand for the liberty of the slave was on the lips of the advocates of human freedom through all the country. Deep and widespread interest was felt in the East for this prairie orator, and when, in 1860, he appeared by invitation to deliver an address in the Cooper Institute, of New York, he was welcomed by an audience of the mental calibre of those who of old gathered to hear Clay and Webster speak.
It was a deeply surprised audience. They expected to be treated to something of the freshness, but much of the shallowness, of the frontier region, and listened with astonishment and admiration to the dignified, clear, and luminous oration of the prairie statesman. It is said that those who afterwards published the speech as a campaign document were three weeks in verifying its historical and other statements, so deep and abundant was the learning it displayed.
[=A Tour in New England=]
He had taken the East by storm. He was invited to speak in many places in New England, and everywhere met with the most flattering reception, which surprised almost as much as it delighted him. It astonished him to hear that the Professor of Rhetoric of Yale College took notes of his speech and lectured upon them to his class, and followed him to Meriden the next evening to hear him again for the same purpose. An intelligent hearer spoke to him of the remarkable "clearness of your statements, the unanswerable style of your reasoning, and especially your illustrations, which are romance and pathos, fun and logic, all welded together." Perhaps his style could not be better described. He himself said that it used to anger him, when a child, to hear statements which he could not understand, and he was thus led to form the habit of turning over a thought until it was in language any boy could comprehend.
[=The Rail-splitter Made President=]
It is not necessary to tell in detail what followed. Lincoln had attained the high eminence of being considered as a suitable candidate for President, and when the Republican Convention of 1860 met in Chicago, he found himself looked upon as the man for the West. Seward was a prominent candidate, but his candidacy sank before that of the choice of the westerners, who were roused to a frenzy of enthusiasm when some of the rails which Lincoln had split were borne into the hall. He was nominated on the third ballot amid the wildest acclamations. In the campaign that followed Lincoln and Hamlin were the triumphant candidates, winning their seats by a majority of fifty-seven in the electoral college. The poor rail-splitter of Illinois had lifted himself, by pure force of genius, to be President of the United States of America. From that time forward the life of Abraham Lincoln is the history of the great Civil War. His task was such as few men had ever faced before. The mighty republic of the West, the most promising experiment in self-government by the people that the world had ever known, seemed about to end in failure. No man did more to save it from destruction and start it on its future course of greatness and renown than this western prodigy of genius and rectitude.
Mr. Lincoln called to his cabinet the ablest men of his party, two of whom, Seward and Chase, had been his competitors for the nomination, and the new administration devoted itself to the work of saving the Union. Every means was tried to prevent the secession of the border states, and the President delayed until Fort Sumter had been fired upon before he began active measures for the suppression of the rebellion and called for seventy-five thousand volunteers.
[=The Great Question of the Civil War=]
The great question, from the start, was the treatment of the negro. The advanced anti-slavery men demanded decisive action, and could not understand that success depended absolutely upon the administration commanding the support of the whole people. And so Mr. Lincoln incurred the displeasure and lost the confidence of some of those who had been his heartiest supporters, by keeping the negro in the background and making the preservation of the Union the great end for which he strove. He repeatedly declared that, if he could do so, he would preserve the Union with slavery, and further said, "I could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had even tried to preserve the Constitution, if, to save slavery or for any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of government, country and Constitution, all together." Only when it became evident that the North was in accord with him in his detestation of slavery did the President venture to strike the blow which was to bring that perilous system to an end.
[=The Proclamation of Emancipation=]
In the dark days of 1862, when the reverses of the Union arms cast a gloom over the North, and European governments were seriously considering the propriety of recognizing the Confederacy, it seemed to Mr. Lincoln that the time had come, that the North was prepared to support a radical measure, and that emancipation would not only weaken the South at home, but would make it impossible for any European government to take the attitude toward slavery which would be involved in recognizing the Confederacy. Action was delayed until a favorable moment, and after the victory of Antietam the President called his cabinet together and announced that he was about to issue the Proclamation of Emancipation. It was a solemn moment. The President had made a vow--"I promised my God," were his words--that if the tide of invasion should be mercifully arrested, he would set the negro free. The final proclamation, issued three months later, fitly closes with an appeal which indicates the devout spirit in which the deed was done: "And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God."
The question of slavery was only one of the many with which Lincoln had to contend. Questions of foreign policy, of finance, of the conduct of the war, of a dozen different kinds pressed upon him for solution, while dissensions in his cabinet and incompetence in the army made his task anything but a pleasant one. His personal advisers, Stanton, Seward, Chase, and others, were strong and able men, but above them was a stronger man, who held firmly in his own hands the reins of government, and would not yield them to any of his ambitious subordinates, nor change his fixed policy at the bidding of irresponsible critics and fault-finders.
[=Lincoln and the "Plain People"=]
[=An Able Diplomatist=]
Upon what Lincoln called "the plain people"--the mass of his countrymen--he could always depend, because he, more than any other political leader in our history, understood them. Sumner, matchless advocate of liberty as he was, distrusted the President, and was desirous of getting the power out of his hands into stronger and safer ones. But suddenly the great Massachusetts senator awoke to the fact that he could not command the support of his own constituency, and found it necessary to issue an interview declaring himself not an opponent, but a supporter, of Lincoln. The President's grasp of questions of state policy was, indeed, stronger than that of any of his advisers. The important dispatch to our minister in England, in May, 1861, outlining the course to be pursued towards that power, has been published in its original draft, showing the work of the Secretary of State and President Lincoln's alterations. Of this publication the editor of the North American Review says: "Many military men, who have had access to Lincoln's papers, have classed him as the best general of the war. This paper will go far toward establishing his reputation as its ablest diplomatist." It would be impossible for any intelligent person to study the paper thus published, the omissions, the alterations, the substitutions, without acknowledging that they were the work of a master mind, and that the raw backwoodsman, not three months in office, was the peer of any statesman with whom he might find it necessary to cope. He was entirely willing to grant to his secretaries and to his generals the greatest liberty of action; he was ready to listen to any one, and to accept advice even from hostile critics; and his readiness made them think, sometimes, that he had little mental power of his own, and brought upon him the charge of weakness; but, as the facts have become more fully known, it has grown more and more evident that he was not only the "best general" and the "ablest diplomatist," but the greatest man among all the great men whom that era of trial brought to the rescue of our country.
[=The Assassination of Lincoln=]
And when the end came, after four years of desperate conflict; when Lee had surrendered and the work of saving the Union seemed complete; when the liberator was made, by the assassin's hand, the martyr to that great cause which he had carried to its glorious termination, a depth of pathos was added to our memory of America's noblest man, insuring him a fame that was worth dying for, that crown of human sympathy which lends glory to martyrdom.
The story of the end need hardly be told. On the evening of April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln was shot by a half-crazed sympathizer with the South, John Wilkes Booth. The President had gone, by special invitation, to witness a play at Ford's Theatre, and the assassin had no difficulty in gaining entrance to the box, committing the dreadful deed, and leaping to the stage to make his escape. The story of his pursuit and death while resisting arrest is familiar to us all. Mr. Lincoln lingered till the morning, when the little group of friends and relatives, with members of the cabinet, stood with breaking hearts about the death-bed.
[=The Grief of the People=]
Sorrow more deep and universal cannot be imagined than enveloped our land on that 15th of April. Throughout the country every household felt the loss as of one of themselves. The honored remains lay for a few days in state at Washington, and then began the funeral journey, taking in backward course almost the route which had been followed four years before, when the newly-elected President went to assume his burdens of his high office. Such a pilgrimage of sorrow had never been witnessed by our people. It was followed by the sympathy of the whole world until the loved remains were laid in the tomb at Springfield, Illinois. Over the door of the state house, in the city of his home, where his old neighbors took their last farewell, were these lines:
"He left us borne up by our prayers; He returns embalmed in our tears."
[=A Man of Melancholy and of Wit=]
Abraham Lincoln was in every way a remarkable man. Towering above his fellows, six feet four inches in height, his giant figure, with its inclination to stoop, of itself attracted attention. While possessed of gigantic strength, he was diffident and modest in the extreme. The expression of his face was sad, and that sadness deepened as the war dragged on and causes for national depression increased. Melancholy was hereditary with him, and it is doubtful if his mind was ever free from a degree of mental dejection. On certain occasions he was almost overwhelmed by it. Yet with all this he was one of the readiest inventors and gatherers of amusing stories, which were inimitable as told by him. He opened the cabinet meeting in which he announced his purpose to issue the Emancipation Proclamation by reading to his dignified associates a chapter from Artemus Ward. His jokes were usually for a purpose. He settled more than one weighty question by the wit of a homely "yarn," that told better than hours of argument would have done. A signal illustration of his method is the telling aphorism by which he once settled the question of changing the generals in command: "It is a bad plan to swap horses crossing a stream."
His gift of expression was only equaled by the clearness and firmness of his grasp upon the truths which he desired to convey; and the beauty of his words, upon many occasions, is only matched by the goodness and purity of the soul from which they sprung. His Gettysburg speech will be remembered as long as the story of the battle for freedom shall be told; and of his second inaugural it has been said: "This was like a sacred poem. No American President had ever spoken words like these to the American people. America never had a President who found such words in the depth of his heart." The following were its closing words, and with them we may fitly close this imperfect sketch:
[=The Great Gettysburg Oration=]
"Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword; as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
XXXI. Grant and Lee and the Civil War
[=The Great Leaders of the Civil War=]
In several of the preceding chapters the causes which led the United States into its great fratricidal war have been given. In the present we propose to deal with the war itself; not to describe it in detail,--that belongs to general history,--but to speak of its great soldiers and its leading events, which form the chosen topics of this work. Of the statesmen brought into prominence by the war, President Lincoln was the chief, and we have given an account of his life. Of its famous soldiers two stand pre-eminent, Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, and around the careers of these two men the whole story of the war revolves. They did not stand alone; there were others who played leading parts,--Thomas, Sherman, Sheridan, McClellan and others, on the Union side; Jackson, Johnston and others on the Confederate,--but this is not a work of biographical sketches, and our main attention must be centred upon the two leading figures in the war, the mighty opponents who linked arms in the desperate struggle from the Wilderness to Appomattox.
[=Grant Takes Command=]
Grant was a modest and retiring man. While others were strenuously pushing their claims to command, he, an experienced soldier of the Mexican war, held back and was thrust aside by the crowd of enterprising incompetents, doing anything that was offered him, the coming Napoleon of the war performing services suitable for a drill sergeant. But gradually men of experience in war began to find their appropriate places, and in August, 1861, Grant was made brigadier-general and given command of a district including southeast Missouri and western Kentucky. He soon set out to meet the Confederates, and found them at Belmont, Missouri, where he drove them back in a hard four hours' fight. Then they were reinforced and advanced in such strength that Grant and his men were in danger of being cut off from the boats in which they had come.
"We are surrounded," cried the men, in some alarm.
"Well, then," said Grant, "we must cut our way out, as we cut our way in," and they did. It was the only retreat in Grant's career.
[=All Quiet on the Potomac=]
Meanwhile, in the East, the battle of Bull Run had been fought, to the dismay of the Union side, the triumph of the Confederate. There followed an autumn and winter of weary waiting, which severely tried the patience of North and South alike, both sides being eager for something to be done. Early in the following year something was done, but not in the region where the people looked for it. While attention was chiefly concentrated upon the Potomac, where McClellan was organizing and drilling that splendid army which another and a greater commander was to lead to final victory; while the only response to the people's urgent call, "On to Richmond!" was the daily report, "All quiet on the Potomac;" Grant, an obscure and almost unknown soldier, was pushing forward against Forts Henry and Donelson, eleven miles apart, on the Tennessee and the Cumberland, near where these rivers cross the line dividing Kentucky and Tennessee.
[=The Surrender of Fort Donelson=]
He had obtained from his commander, Halleck, a reluctant consent to his plan for attacking these important posts with a land force, co-operating at the same time with a fleet of gunboats under Commodore Foote. It was the month of February and bitterly cold. Amid sleet and snow the men pushed along the roads, arriving at Fort Henry just after it had been captured, as the result of a severe bombardment, by the gunboats. Grant immediately turned his attention to Fort Donelson, which had been reinforced by a large part of the garrison that had escaped from Fort Henry. It was held by Generals Buckner, Floyd and Pillow with 20,000 men. For three days a fierce attack was kept up. Buckner, who had been at West Point with Grant, and doubtless knew that he was, as his wife designated him, "a very obstinate man," sent on the morning of the fourth day, under a flag of truce, to ask what terms of surrender would be granted. In reply Grant sent that brief, stern message which thrilled throughout the North, stirring the blood in every loyal heart: "No terms but unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works."
Buckner protested against the terms; but he was obliged to accept them and to surrender unconditionally. With Fort Donelson were surrendered 15,000 men, 3,000 horses, sixty-five cannon, and a great quantity of small arms and military stores. It was the first victory for the North, and the whole country was electrified. Grant's reply to Buckner became a household word, and the people of the North delighted to call him, "Unconditional Surrender Grant." He was made a major-general of volunteers, his commission bearing date of February 16, 1862, the day of the surrender of Fort Donelson.
[=The Terrible Struggle at Pittsburg Landing=]
On April 6th, less than two months afterwards, another of Grant's great battles was fought, at Shiloh, or Pittsburg Landing, in Mississippi. In this battle Sherman was Grant's chief lieutenant, and the two men tested each other's qualities in the greatest trial to which either had as yet been exposed. The battle was one of the turning-points of the war. The Confederates, 50,000 strong, under Albert Sidney Johnston, one of their best generals, attacked the Union force of 40,000 men at Shiloh Church. All day on Sunday the battle raged. The brave Johnston was killed; but the Union forces were driven back, and at night their lines were a mile in the rear of their position in the morning. Grant came into his headquarters' tent that evening, when, to any but the bravest and most sanguine, the battle seemed lost, and said: "Well, it was tough work to-day, but we will beat them out of their boots to-morrow." "When his staff and the generals present heard this," writes one of his officers, "they were as fully persuaded of the result of the morrow's battle as when the victory had actually been achieved."
The next day, after dreadful fighting, the tide turned in favor of the Union forces, which had been strongly reinforced by General Buell during the night. In the afternoon Grant himself led a charge against the Confederate lines, under which they broke and were driven back. Night found the Union army in possession of the field, after one of the severest battles of the war.
A man who wins victories is apt to become a fair foil for criticism from those who lose them. "Grant is a drunkard," said his opponents. This charge came to the President's ears. "Grant drinks too much whisky," some fault-finder said. Lincoln replied, with his dry humor. "I wish you would tell me what brand of whisky General Grant uses; I should like to send some of it to our other generals."
[=The War in the East=]
It would doubtless have been better if this general, who drank a fighting brand of whisky, had been brought to the East, where the war was proceeding in a manner far from satisfactory. For six days the armies of Lee and McClellan met in desperate battle before Richmond, the Union army being driven from all its positions, and forced to seek a new base on the James River. This disaster was followed by a second conflict at Bull Run, which ended in one of the most sanguinary defeats of the Union side during the war. The repulse was in a measure retrieved by McClellan at Antietam, yet affairs did not look very bright for the Union cause, and in the winter of 1862-63 there was much depression in the North. The terrible defeats at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville added to the anxiety of the people, and the necessity of some signal success seemed urgent. Such a success came in double measure in the following summer, at Gettysburg and at Vicksburg.
[=The Vicksburg Problem=]
On a high bluff on the east bank of the Mississippi River, which pursues a winding course through its fertile valley, stands the town of Vicksburg. From this point a railroad ran to the eastward, and from the opposite shore another ran westward through the rich, level country of Louisiana. The town was strongly fortified, and from its elevation it commanded the river in both directions. So long as it was held by the Confederate armies, the Mississippi could not be opened to navigation; and the line of railroad running east and west kept communication open between the western and eastern parts of the Confederacy. How to capture Vicksburg was a great problem; but it was one which General Grant determined should be solved.
For eight months he worked at this problem. He formed plan after plan, only to be forced to abandon them. Sherman made a direct attack at the only place where a landing was practicable, and failed. Weeks were spent in cutting a canal across the neck of a peninsula formed by a great bend in the river opposite Vicksburg, so as to bring the gunboats through without their passing under the fire of the batteries; but a flood destroyed the work. Meanwhile great numbers of the troops were ill with malaria or other diseases, and many died. There was much clamor at Washington to have Grant removed, but the President refused. He had faith in Grant, and determined to give him time to work out the great problem,--how to get below and in the rear of Vicksburg, on the Mississippi River.
This was at last accomplished. On a dark night the gunboats were successfully run past the batteries, although every one of them was more or less damaged by the guns. The troops were marched across the peninsula, and then taken down the river on the side opposite the town; and on April 30th the whole force was landed on the Mississippi side, on high ground, and at a point where it could reach the enemy.
[=Passing the Batteries=]
The railroad running east from Vicksburg connected that city with Jackson, the state capital, which was an important railway centre, and from which Vicksburg was supplied. Grant made his movements with great rapidity. He fought in quick succession a series of battles by which Jackson and several other towns were captured; then, turning westward, he attacked the forces of Pemberton, drove him back into Vicksburg, cut off his supplies, and laid siege to the place.
[=The Siege of Vicksburg=]
The eyes of the whole nation were now centred on Vicksburg. More than two hundred guns were brought to bear upon the place, besides the batteries of the gunboats. In default of mortars, guns were improvised by boring out tough logs, strongly bound with iron bands, which did good service. The people of Vicksburg took shelter in cellars and caves to escape the shot and shell. Food of all kinds became very scarce; flour was sold at five dollars a pound, molasses at twelve dollars a gallon. The endurance and devotion of the inhabitants were wonderful. But the siege was so rigidly and relentlessly maintained that there could be only one end. On July 3d, at ten o'clock, flags of truce were displayed on the works, and General Pemberton sent a message to Grant asking for an armistice, and proposing that commissioners should be appointed to arrange terms of capitulation.
On the afternoon of the same day, Grant and Pemberton met under an oak between the lines of the two armies and arranged the terms of surrender. It took three hours for the Confederate army to march out and stack their arms. There were surrendered 31,000 men, 250 cannon, and a great quantity of arms and munitions of war. But the moral advantage to the Union cause was far beyond any material gain. The fall of Vicksburg carried with it that of Port Hudson, a few miles below, which surrendered to Banks a few days later; and at last the great river was open from St. Louis to the sea.
[=The Great Victories and Their Effect=]
The news of this great victory came to the North on the same day with that of Gettysburg, July 4, 1863. The rejoicing over the great triumph is indescribable. A heavy load was lifted from the minds of the President and his cabinet. The North took heart, and resolved again to prosecute the war with energy. The name of Grant was on every tongue. It was everywhere felt that he was the foremost man of the campaign. He was at once made a major-general in the regular army, and a gold medal was awarded him by Congress.
Grant's next striking victory was at Chattanooga, an important railway centre in the valley of the Tennessee River, near where it enters Alabama. South of the town the slope of Lookout Mountain rises to a height of 2000 feet above sea-level. Two miles to the east rises Missionary Ridge, 500 feet high. Both Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge were occupied by the army of General Bragg, and his commanding position, strengthened by fortifications, was considered by him impregnable.
[=Chickamauga and Chattanooga=]
The disastrous battle of Chickamauga, in September, 1863, had left the Union armies in East Tennessee in a perilous situation. General Thomas, in Chattanooga, was hemmed in by the Confederate forces, his line of supplies was endangered, and his men and horses were almost starving. The army was on quarter rations. Ammunition was almost exhausted, and the troops were short of clothing. Thousands of army mules, worn out and starved, lay dead along the miry roads. Chattanooga, occupied by the Union army, was too strongly fortified for Bragg to take by storm, but every day shells from his batteries upon the heights were thrown into the town. This was the situation when Grant, stiff and sore from a recent accident, arrived at Nashville, on his way to direct the campaign in East Tennessee.
"Hold Chattanooga at all hazards. I will be there as soon as possible," he telegraphed from Nashville to General Thomas. "We will hold the town until we starve," was the brave reply.
[=Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge=]
Grant's movements were rapid and decisive. He ordered the troops to be concentrated at Chattanooga; he fought a battle at Wauhatchie, in Lookout Valley, which broke Bragg's hold on the river below Chattanooga and shortened the Union line of supplies; and by his prompt and vigorous preparation for effective action he soon had his troops lifted out of the demoralized condition in which they had sunk after the defeat of Chickamauga. One month after his arrival were fought the memorable battles of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, by which the Confederate troops were driven out of Tennessee, their hold on the country was broken up, and a large number of prisoners and guns were captured. Nothing in the history of war is more inspiring than the impetuous bravery with which the Union troops fought their way up the steep mountain sides, bristling with cannon, and drove the Confederate troops out of their works at the point of the bayonet. An officer of General Bragg's staff afterward declared that they considered their position perfectly impregnable, and that when they saw the Union troops, after capturing their rifle-pits at the base, coming up the craggy mountain toward their headquarters, they could scarcely credit their eyes, and thought that every man of them must be drunk. History has no parallel for sublimity and picturesqueness of effect, while the consequences, which were the division of the Confederacy in the East, were inestimable.
[=Grant Made Lieutenant-General and Commander-in-Chief=]
After Grant's success in Tennessee, the popular demand that he should be put at the head of all the armies became irresistible. In Virginia the magnificent Army of the Potomac, after two years of fighting, had been barely able to turn back from the North the tide of Confederate invasion, and was apparently as far as ever from capturing Richmond. In the West, on the other hand, Grant's armies had won victory after victory, had driven the opposing forces out of Kentucky and Tennessee, had taken Vicksburg, opened up the Mississippi, and divided the Confederacy in both the West and the East. In response to the call for Grant, Congress revived the grade of lieutenant-general, which had been held by only one commander, Scott, since the time of Washington; and the hero of Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga was nominated to this rank by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and placed in command of all the armies of the nation.
The relief of President Lincoln at having such a man in command was very great. "Grant is the first general I've had," he remarked to a friend. "You know how it has been with all the rest. As soon as I put a man in command of the army, he would come to me with a plan, and about as much as say, 'Now, I don't believe I can do it, but if you say so I'll try it on,' and so put the responsibility of success or failure upon me. They all wanted me to be the general. Now, it isn't so with Grant. He hasn't told me what his plans are. I don't know, and I don't want to know. I am glad to find a man who can go ahead without me."
[=The Virginia Campaign of 1864-65=]
Never were the persistent courage, the determined purpose, which formed the foundation of Grant's character, more clearly brought out than in the Virginia campaign of 1864, in which he commanded; and never were they more needed. Well did he know that no single triumph, however brilliant, would suffice. He saw plainly that nothing but "hammering away" would avail. The stone wall of the Confederacy had too broad and firm a base to be suddenly overturned; it had to be slowly reduced to powder.
During the anxious days which followed the battle of the Wilderness, Frank B. Carpenter, the artist, relates that he asked President Lincoln, "How does Grant impress you as compared with other generals?"
"The great thing about him," said the President, "is cool persistency of purpose. He is not easily excited, and he has the grip of a bull-dog. When he once gets his teeth in, nothing can shake him off."
His great opponent, Lee, saw and felt the same quality. When, after days of indecisive battle, the fighting in the Wilderness came to a pause, it was believed in the Confederate lines that the Union troops were falling back. General Gordon said to Lee,--
"I think there is no doubt that Grant is retreating."
The Confederate chief knew better. He shook his head.
"You are mistaken," he replied earnestly,--"quite mistaken. Grant is not retreating; he is not a retreating man."
The battles of Spottsylvania and North Anna followed, and then came the disastrous affair at Cold Harbor. Then Grant changed his base to James river and attacked Petersburg. Slowly but surely the Union lines closed in. "Falling back" on the Union side had gone out of fashion. South or North, all could see that now a steady resistless force was back of the Union armies, pushing them ever on toward Richmond.
[=The End of The War=]
Grant's losses in the final campaign were heavy, but Lee's slender resources were wrecked in a much more serious proportion; and for the Confederates no recruiting was possible. Their dead, who lay so thickly beneath the fields, were the children of the soil, and there were none to replace them. In some cases whole families were destroyed; but the survivors still fought on. In the Confederate lines around Petersburg there was often absolute destitution. An officer who was there testified, shortly after the end of the struggle, that every cat and dog for miles around had been caught and eaten. Grant was pressing onward; Sherman's march through Georgia and the Carolinas had proved that the Confederacy was an egg-shell; Sheridan's splendid cavalry was ever hovering round the last defenders of the bars and stripes. Grant saw that all was over, and on April 7, 1865, he wrote that memorable letter calling upon Lee to surrender and bring the war to an end. Lee, whose army was cut off beyond possibility of escape, was obliged to consent, and the terrible four years' conflict ceased.
We have told the chief incidents in the career as a soldier of the great Union general; we have now to deal with that of his equally great opponent in the final year of the war, the brilliant commander of the Confederate forces, General Robert E. Lee.
[=Character of General Lee=]
Of all the men whose character and ability were developed in the Civil War, there was perhaps not one in either army whose greatness is more generally acknowledged than that of the man just named. His ability as a soldier and his character as a man are alike appreciated; and while it is natural that men of the North should be unwilling to condone his taking up arms against the government, yet that has not prevented their doing full justice to his greatness. It is not too much to say that General Lee is recognized, both North and South, as one of the greatest soldiers, and one of the ablest and purest men, that America has produced.
Lee, like Grant, was a graduate of West Point and had seen service in the Mexican war, in which he won high honor. It was he who, when John Brown made his raid against Harper's Ferry, was despatched with a body of troops for his capture. The raiders had entrenched themselves in the engine house of the arsenal, but Lee quickly battered down the door, captured them, and turned them over to the civil authorities.
[=Lee's Devotion to His State=]
Lee, the son of "Light Horse Harry Lee," a famous general of the Revolutionary War, cherished an attachment to the Union which his father had helped him to form, and at the breaking out of the Civil War was in great doubt as to what course he should take. He disapproved of secession, but was thoroughly pervaded with the idea of loyalty to his state,--an idea which was almost universal in the South, though not entertained by the people of the North. He had great difficulty in arriving at a decision; but when at last Virginia adopted an ordinance of secession, he resigned his commission in the United States army. Writing to his sister, he said, "Though I recognize no necessity for this state of things, and would have forborne and pleaded to the end for redress of grievances, yet in my own person I had to meet the question whether I should take part against my native state. With all my devotion to the Union, and the feeling of loyalty and duty as an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. I have therefore resigned my commission in the army, and, save in defence of my native state, I hope I may never be called upon to draw my sword."
[=Lee in Command at Richmond=]
It was not a case in which a soldier who believed in state supremacy could long hesitate. Virginia was invaded, and Lee drew his sword "in defence of his native state," his first service being as brigadier-general in Northwestern Virginia, where he was opposed to General Rosecrans. Here no important battle was fought, and in the latter part of 1861 he was sent to the coast of North Carolina, where he planned the defences which were held good against Union attack until the last year of the war. After the wounding of General J. E. Johnston at Fair Oaks, Lee was called to the command of the forces at Richmond, and on June 3, 1862, took charge of the army defending the Confederate capital.
[=The Six Day's Fight=]
The task before him was no light one. McClellan lay before Richmond with a powerful and well-appointed army, and that city was in considerable danger of capture. But the generals opposed to each other were of very different calibre. McClellan was of the cautious and deliberate order; Lee was one of those ready to dare all "on the hazard of a die." On June 26th he made a vigorous assault on the Union army, and continued it with unceasing persistence day after day for six days, driving McClellan and his men steadily backward. On the final day, July 1st, the Union army, strongly posted on Malvern Hill, defeated Lee, who suffered heavy loss. But McClellan continued to retreat until the James River was reached and the siege of Richmond abandoned.
A few months passed, and then, with a sudden and rapid sweep north, Lee fell upon the large army which had been gathered under General Pope, on the old battlefield of Bull Run. Here a terrible struggle took place, ending in the disastrous defeat of Pope. In this bloody battle the Unionists lost 25,000 men, of whom 9,000 were made prisoners. The Confederates lost about 15,000. As the defeated army had fallen back on Washington, that city was safe against assault, and on September 4th, with another of his brilliant and rapid movements, Lee marched his army into Maryland, hoping that this State would rise in his support.
[=Second Bull Run and Antietam=]
He was disappointed in this; the Marylanders proved staunch for the Union; but one great advantage was gained in the capture of Harper's Ferry by Stonewall Jackson, with nearly 12,000 prisoners and immense quantities of munitions of war. It was a bloodless victory, as valuable in its results for the Confederacy as had been the sanguinary battle of Bull Run. A few days later, on September 17th, the two late opponents, McClellan and Lee, met in conflict at Antietam, in the most bloody battle, for the numbers engaged, of the war. Lee had taken a dangerous risk in weakening his army to despatch Jackson against Harper's Ferry. But the alert Jackson was back again, and the Confederates had 70,000 men to oppose to the 80,000 under McClellan. The result was in a measure a drawn battle, but Lee was so severely handled that he did not deem it safe to wait for a renewal of the conflict, and withdrew across the Potomac. The failure of McClellan to pursue with energy brought his career to an end. He was removed from command by the government and replaced by General Burnside.
[=Fredericksburg And Chancellorsville=]
It cannot be said that the change of commanders was a successful one. Burnside attacked the vigilant Lee at Fredericksburg, on December 13th, and met with one of the most disastrous defeats of the war, losing nearly 14,000 men to a Confederate loss of 5,000. General Hooker, who succeeded him, met with a similar defeat. Supplied with a splendid army, over 100,000 strong, he attacked Lee at Chancellorsville on May 3, 1863, and met with a terrible repulse, through a brilliant flank movement executed by Stonewall Jackson, losing over 17,000 men. The Confederates had a loss, not less severe, this being the death of Jackson, their most brilliant leader after Lee.
His great successes at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville led Lee to venture upon a daring but dangerous movement, an invasion of the North; one which, if successful, might have placed Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington in his hands, but which, if unsuccessful, would leave him in a very critical position.
[=The Armies at Gettysburg=]
[=The Union Victory at Gettysburg=]
It was, as all readers know, unsuccessful. General Meade, who replaced Hooker in command, followed the Confederates north with the utmost haste, and placed himself across their path at Gettysburg, in western Pennsylvania. On July 1st, the advance columns of the two armies met, and engaged in a preliminary struggle, which ended in a repulse of the Union forces. These fell back and took up a strong position on Cemetery Ridge, where during the night they were strongly reinforced by the troops hurrying up from the south. During the next two days the Union army fought on the defensive, Lee making vigorous onslaughts upon it and fighting desperately but unsuccessfully to break Meade's line or seize some commanding point. The end of this fierce struggle--which is ranked among the decisive battles of the world--came on the 3d, when Lee launched a powerful column, 15,000 strong, under General Pickett, against the Union centre. It ended in a repulse, almost an annihilation, of the charging force, and the great battle was at an end. The next day Lee retreated. He had lost in all about 30,000 men. The Union loss aggregated about 23,000.
[=The 4th of July, 1863=]
The 4th of July, 1863, was in its way as great a day for the American Union as the 4th of July, 1776, for it was the great turning point in the war. On this day Grant took possession of Vicksburg, with 30,000 prisoners, and cut the Confederacy in two. And on the same day Lee began his retreat, disastrously beaten in his last act of offensive warfare. During the remainder of his career he was to stand on the defence, until driven to bay and forced to surrender by the hammer-like blows of "Unconditional surrender Grant."
[=The Great Struggle for Richmond=]
But while brilliant in offensive war, Lee was in his true element in defence, and never has greater skill and ability, or more indomitable resistance, been shown than in his struggle against his vigorous adversary. Grant was appointed commander-in-chief of the Union armies, on March 1, 1864. Having sent Sherman to conduct a campaign in the South, he himself, on May 4 and 5, crossed the Rapidan River for a direct advance on Richmond. A campaign of forty-three days followed, in which more than 100,000 men, frequently reinforced, were engaged on either side. Grant came first into encounter with Lee in the Wilderness, near the scene of Hooker's defeat a year before. Here, after two days of terrible slaughter, the battle ended without decided advantage to either side, though the Union loss was double that of the Confederates.
Finding Lee's position impregnable, Grant advanced by a flank movement to Spottsylvania Court House. Here, on May 11th, Hancock, by a desperate assault, captured Generals Johnson and E.H. Stewart, with 3000 men and 30 guns, while Lee himself barely escaped. But no fighting, however desperate, could carry Lee's works. Sheridan with his cavalry now made a dashing raid toward Richmond. He fought the Confederate cavalry, killed their ablest general, J. E. B. Stuart, and returned, having suffered little damage, to Grant. On May 17th, Grant, having executed another flank movement, reached the North Anna River. But Lee had fallen back with his usual celerity, and the advancing army found itself again in face of strong entrenchments. As a vigorous attack failed to carry Lee's works, Grant made a third flank march, which brought him to the vicinity of Richmond.
Here once more he found his indefatigable opponent in his front, very strongly posted at Cold Harbor. Grant, perhaps incensed at seeing this man always blocking up his road, hurled his tried troops upon the impregnable works of the enemy. It was a vain effort, leading only to dreadful slaughter. The Unionists lost in this hopeless affair over 10,000 in killed and wounded, while the Confederates escaped practically without loss.
[=Grant's March on Petersburg=]
Grant now executed the most promising of his flank movements. He secretly crossed the James River about June 15th and made a dash on Petersburg, hoping to seize the railroads leading south and to cut the line of supply of Richmond. But unforeseen delays and strong resistance enabled Lee to throw a force of his veterans into the town, and the movement failed. And now for months it was a question of attack and defence. Both sides threw up entrenchments of enormous strength, and the following fall and winter were occupied in an incessant artillery duel, marked by a few assaults, which had little effect other than that of loss of life.
But during all this time Lee's army was weakening, while that of Grant was kept in full strength. At the end of March, 1865, the final events of the great struggle were at hand. Grant sent Warren and Sheridan to the south of Petersburg, to cut the Danville and Southside Railroads, Lee's avenues of supply. On April 1st the Confederate right wing was encountered and defeated at Five Forks, and on the following day the whole line of works defending Petersburg was successfully assailed.
[=The End of the Conflict=]
Richmond could no longer be held. Lee evacuated it that night, and retreated towards Danville with about 35,000 men. But the Union cavalry under Sheridan pursued with such celerity that escape was cut off, and the Confederates were surrounded at Appomattox Court House, and forced to surrender on April 9, 1865.
Lee had made for himself a world-wide reputation. While the bulldog persistence of Grant had enabled him to crush army after army of the Confederacy, Lee had shown himself one of the most brilliant of generals, successful in all his assaults except at Gettysburg, and almost without a peer in defensive warfare. Only the utter exhaustion of the country behind him and the slow grinding of his army into fragments brought final success to his opponents.
We can only refer briefly to the careers of some of the abler subordinate commanders in the war. First among them was Sherman, whose exploits in great measure place him on a level with Grant and Lee. In truth, there was no more brilliant operation in the entire war than his famous "March through Georgia."
[=Sherman's March on Atlanta=]
This striking event was the culmination of a series of successful battles and flank movements, by which Johnston was gradually forced back from Chattanooga to Atlanta. Here the able Johnston was removed and replaced by the dashing but reckless Hood, who attacked Sherman fiercely, but only to meet a disastrous repulse. A final flank movement, which cut off Hood's sources of supply, forced him to evacuate Atlanta, which Sherman occupied on September 1, 1864. It was the most brilliant success of the year, and Sherman became the hero of the hour. Hood, finding that he could do nothing there, made a dash into Tennessee, hoping to draw Sherman after him for the defence of Nashville.
Sherman had no intention of doing anything of the kind. The removal of Hood from his vicinity was just what he wanted, and he remarked in a chuckling tone, "If Hood will go to Tennessee I will be glad to furnish him with rations for the trip." What he had in view was something very different; namely, to abandon his long line of supplies, march across Georgia to Savannah, nearly three hundred miles away, and live upon the country as he went, while destroying one of the richest sources of Confederate supply.
[=Marching Through Georgia=]
The Confederate generals did not dream of a movement of such unusual boldness, and left the field clear for Sherman's march. For a month he and his men simply disappeared. No one knew where they were, or if they were not annihilated. They had plunged into the heart of the Confederacy, far away from all means of communication, and the people of the North could only wait and hope. "I know which hole he went in at," said Lincoln to anxious inquirers, "but I know no more than you at which hole he will come out."
He came out at Savannah. He had cut a great swath, thirty miles wide, through Georgia, his soldiers living off the country and rendering it incapable of furnishing supplies for the Confederate armies, and on December 23d he sent Lincoln a despatch that carried joy throughout the North: "I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty guns and plenty of ammunition, and about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton."
[=Sherman Marches North=]
The remainder of Sherman's movement may be briefly told. Marching northward, he took Charleston, which had so long defied Union assault, without a shot. Reaching North Carolina, he found himself opposed again to Johnston, but before much fighting took place the news of Lee's surrender came, and nothing was left for Johnston except to yield up his force. Meanwhile, Thomas, who had saved the army at Chickamauga, hurried to Nashville to meet the hard-fighting Hood, and there defeated him so utterly and dispersed his army so completely that it never came together again.
[=General Early's Raid on Washington=]
There is only one further exploit of the Union generals that calls here for special mention, that of Sheridan's famous ride. In 1864 Lee sent General Early with 20,000 men to the Shenandoah Valley, recently cleared of its defenders, the purpose being to threaten Washington and possibly oblige Grant to weaken his forces for its defence. Success attended Early's movement. He invaded Maryland, defeated Lew Wallace near Frederick, and reached the suburbs of Washington, which an immediate attack might have placed in his hands. Not venturing, however, to attack the capital, he soon returned, with large spoils in horses and cattle, to the Valley, where he defeated General Crook at Winchester.
In one respect this movement had failed. Grant was not induced to weaken his forces to any important extent. Had it been Stonewall Jackson in the Valley it might have been different, but he contented himself with sending Sheridan to take care of Early. Sheridan bided his time, despite the growing impatience in the country. Grant visited him, intending to propose a plan of operations, but he found that Sheridan was in full touch with the situation, and left him to his own devices.
[="Whirling Through Winchester."=]
At length, in September, Early incautiously divided his command, and Sheridan, who was closely on the watch, attacked him, flanked him right and left, broke his lines in every direction, and sent him, as he telegraphed to Washington, "Whirling through Winchester." "I have never since deemed it necessary to visit General Sheridan before giving him orders," said Grant afterwards. Sheridan again attacked and defeated Early at Fisher's Hill, driving him out of the valley and into the gaps of the Blue Ridge.
Sometime afterwards took place the most famous event in Sheridan's career. During an absence at Washington his camp at Cedar Creek was surprised by Early, the men were driven back in disorderly rout, and eighteen guns and nearly a thousand prisoners were lost. Sheridan, on his way back from the capital, had stopped for the night at Winchester. On his way to the front the next morning the sound of distant guns came to his ears. Perceiving that a battle was in progress, he rode forward at full speed. Soon he began to meet frightened fugitives, and guessed what had happened. Taking off his hat, he swung it in the air as he dashed onward at a gallop, shouting, "Face the other way, boys; face the other way. We're going back to lick them out of their boots!"
[=Sheridan's Ride=]
His words were electrical. The fugitives did "face the other way." As he came nearer and met the retreating companies and regiments, he rallied them with the same inspiring cry. The men turned back. The Confederates, who were rifling their camp, were astounded to find a routed army charging upon them. Dismay spread through their ranks, they were thrown into disorder, and were soon in full flight, having lost all the captured guns and twenty-four more, with a heavy loss in killed, wounded, and prisoners. Since that day "Sheridan's ride" has been celebrated in song and story as the most dramatic incident of the war.
[=Stonewall Jackson and His Exploits=]
We have told some of the exciting events of the conflict from the Union side. The Confederates also had their dashing generals and thrilling deeds of valor. But this chapter is already so extended that we must confine ourselves to an account of but one in addition to Lee, the renowned Stonewall Jackson. It is well known how Thomas J. Jackson got this title of honor. In the battle of Bull Run his men stood so firm amid the disordered fragments of other corps, that General Bee called attention to them: "Look at those Virginians! They stand like a stone wall." The title of "Stonewall" clung to their leader until his death. His most famous work was done in the Shenandoah Valley. In March, 1862, he retreated before Banks some forty miles, then suddenly turned and with only 3,500 men drove him back in dismay. But his most brilliant exploit was in April, when he whipped Milroy, Banks, Shields, and Fremont, one after another, in the Valley, and then suddenly turned, marched to Lee's aid, and helped to defeat McClellan at Gaines's Mills, the first victory in the memorable six days' fight.
In August, 1862, he drove Pope back from the Rappahannock, and by stubborn fighting held him fast until Longstreet could get up to aid in the victory of the second Bull Run. We have told of his striking exploit at Harper's Ferry, and how he won the day at Chancellorsville. Here he was wounded by a mistaken volley from his own men, was soon after attacked with pneumonia, and died on May 10, 1863. Thus fell the ablest man, after Lee, that the great contest developed on the Confederate side.