History of the War for the Union : civil, military and naval. Founded on official and other authentic documents / by Evert A. Duyckinck. Illustrated ... from original paintings, by Alonzo Chappel

Front matter

27 HKV.KMAN S'J'KEET.

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HISTORY

Chapter I. Introductory

"HoAVEVER disagreeable it may be," is the language of the American historian, Minot, in commencing his narrative of the Insurrections in Massachusetts in 1786, and the Rebellion Consequent Thereon, " to review the troubles of our country, every patriot will look upon it as his duty, not to let them pass without notice. The period of misfortune is the most fruitful source of instruction. By investigating the causes of national commotions, by tracing their progress and by carefully marking the means through which they are brought to a conclusion, well established principles may be deduced, for preserving the future tranquility of the commonwealth." It is in the calm, impartial spirit of this remark that we would proceed to narrate, simply and clearly as we may, the development of the present most extraordinary conflict, a rebellion or attempted revolution, gigantic in its extent, terrible in the ferocity with which it has been carried on, and memorable to all time for its trial i of principles and modes of government, ' in which the whole modern world is ! interested, and upon the maintenance ! of which the welfare of millions of people is immediately dependent. In many lights, truly, a most sad and humiliating struggle ; in others, radiant with the purest glory of national devotion and self-sacrifice.

The time has, of course, not yet come for a complete record of these occurrences to be written. The movement began in secrecy ; many of its hidden contrivances and resources will probably never be fully known ; others may be disclosed only by the revelations of private manuscripts and correspondence in another age. Even a knowledge of what was publicly transacted, so wide has been the area and so numerous and complicated have been the incidents, must await the slow and patient labors of long-continued research. Who can now enter into the secrets of the opposing cabinets, or unravel the intricate web of statesmanship ? The very operations of war, which would appear to be of a tangible character, have always their dis[)utes and contradictions. With the best of evidence before us it is most difficult to determine the facts of a battle — what was actually performed and suffered, let alone determining the motives and plans of the combatants. Military critics

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yet dispute over conflicts which hundreds of annalists and commentators have hibored to ehicidate. How then must it be wlion the smoke and dust of the encounter have scarce rolled away from the i)lain ?

Enough, however, lies open to the view to supply the reader with the m(U'e ])rominent features of these extraordinary passing events ; to gratify his curiosity in many most interesting particulars ; to afford fruitful opportunity for meditation in even a cursory review of the chronicle. We shall meet with many deeds of exalted heroism, worthy a better field than the painful theatre of civil war ; with many exhibitions of manners and character which we might survey with more satisfaction, perhaps, were our fellow citizens not the actors, and our beloved country the scene.

To understand properly the origin and causes of this attempt on the part of the Southern States to assert and maintain their independence of the government of the United States, we must ascend to the beginning of our national history. We shall there find at the outset certain differences and conditions, marking the two portions of the country, the North and the South, which at no subsequent period, perhaps, have been wholly inoperative. They arc to be referred, generally, to climate and the social relations springing from the peculiar institution of slavery. The South, as an agricultural producing region, with its fields tilled and its products gathered by slave labor, a privileged class of its iuhabitants enjoying the benefits of wealth thus obtained, presented many contrasts to the less favored regions of the North, where competence, and even a bare subsistence could be gained in most instances only by patient toil and long conthmed self-denial. When the men of these opposite regions first met in the conventions and congresses j)reliminary to the formation of the national confederacy, the effects of these diversities were exhibited in taste and temper. John Adams, then making his way rapidly upward in the world, a curious and politic student of men's manners, and keenly sensitive to social discriminations, has left us in his diaries and correspondence various anecdotes and observations of these differences. As he travels southward from New England, he notices in Virginia the increased style and expense of living, and more than once records the perils to which the infant Union was subjected in the opposite temperaments and interests of the representatives of the North and the South. There is in particular a curious illustration of the relative social aspects of the two regions, in a letter which he wrote in 1775, to Josei)h Hawley, in reference to the pay given by Congress to the privates of the army. His correspondent, at the East, urged that this remuneration be increased, a recommendation to which Adams replies that the gentlemen of the army from the southward thought it already too high, and that of the ofiicers too low. He says that "many an anxious day and night " has been spent upon this subject ; and adds the general reflection, " we cannot suddenly alter the temper, principles, opinions and prejudices of men. The characters of gentlemen in the four New England colonies differ as much from those in the others, as that of the common people differs ; that is, as much as several distinct nations almost. Gentlemen, men of sense, or any kind of education, in the other colonies, are much

THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH.

fewer in proportion tliiui in New England. Gentloinon in the colonics have large plantations of slaves, and the common people among tlicm are very ignorant and very poor. These gentlemen are accustomed, habituated to higJier notions of themselves, and the distinction between them and the common ])eople than we are. And an instantaneous alterati(m of the character of a colony, and that temper and those sentiments which its inhabitants imbibed with their mothers' milk, and which have grown with their growth, and strengthened with their strength, cannot be made without a miracle. I dread the consequences of this dissimilitude of character, and without the utmost caution on both sides, and the most considerate forbearance with one another, and prudent condescension on both sides, they will certainly be fatal. An alteration of the Southern Constitutions, which must certainly take place if this war continues, will gradually bring all the continent nearer and nearer to each other in all repects."*

This, certainly, is a very noticeable passage which has lost none of its political significance after the lapse of three-quarters of a century. That alteration of the Southern Constitutions is yet needed to complete that essential condition of a perfect union, which has never been better defined than in those very words, "gradually bringing all the continent nearer and nearer to each other in all respects."

The war of the Revolution did much to accomplish this. The men of the South shed their blood in the battle-fields of the North, and the men of the North in the battle-fields of the South, in a common cause ; and the fraternity of the trench,

* Letter to Joseph H.awley, Philadelphia, 25th November, 1Y75. Adams' Works, ix. 366-7.

the rampart and the deadly encounter with the foe was not lost upon them. It was a great lesson of brotherhood wlicn Morgan and his rifiemcn hastened on foot on their extraordinary march to the field of Saratoga, or when Lincoln and (Irecn with their companions found themselves by the side of Sumter and Marion, in defence of the plantations of the South. It was a still greater when Washington, aptly chosen from the middle region of the country, a representative of the purest and best traditions of the South, patiently and magnanimously spent his life in reconciling all contradictions, to mould and establish a great nation. The fates seemed to hold an impartial balance as the struggle for independence begun on Northern soil ended in tlie sunny region of the South.

Notwithstanding, however, this cement of blood in the common struggle of the Revolution, the North and the South were not as yet sufficiently one peo])le to enter without an effort upon the more perfect union of the Constitution. The historian of that great charter of our liberties, while enumerating the embarrassments which beset its adoption, includes also, as "a very serious cause for discouragement, the sectional jealousy and State pride which had been constantly growing from the Declaration of Independence to the time when the States were called upon to meet each other upon broader grounds, and to make even larger sacrifices than at any former period. It is difficult," he adds, in a philosophic spirit, and with a prescience of coming events, "to trace to all its causes the feeling which has at times arrayed the different extremities of this Union against each other. It was very early developed, after the dif-^

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ferent provinces were obliged to act together for their great mutual objects of political indepeudence ; but, even in its highest paroxysms, it has always at last found an antidote in the deeper feelings and more sober calculations of a consistent patriotism. Perhaps its prevalence and activity may with more truth be ascribed, in every generation, to the ambition of men who find in it a convenient instrument of local influence, rather than to any other cause. It is certain that when it has raged most violently, this has been its chief aggravating element. The differences of neither manners, institutions, climate, nor pursuits, would at any time have been sufficient to create the perils, to which the Union of the States has occasionally been exposed, without the mischievous agency of men whose personal objects are, for the time, subserved by the existence of such peculiarities. The proof of this is to be found in the fact, that the seasonable sagacity of the people has always detected the motives of those who have sought to employ their passions, and has compelled them at last to give way to that better order of men who have appealed to their reason." *

Alas ! since this was written the argument has been put to a ruder issue, and a sterner arbiter has been brought in than the voice of sober judgment. But at the beginning and throughout the unhappy contest we may look to find the same parties. The antagonism commenced in faction, and the insane will of the few must depend for reconciliation in the end on the well grounded sober second thought of the many. Posterity, we may hope, profiting by our misfortunes, will

* History of the Constitution of the United States, by George Ticknor Curtis, i. 372. New York, 1854.

be too wise again to renew the conflict on such a stage, with such weapons. No questions of domestic rights and policy can arise among us which may not be peaceably and satisiiictorily adjusted by fair minded men for the welfare of all under the liberal provisions and beneficent working of the Constitution.

To expect that any large bodies of men will live together under a general government, actuated by the spirit of free- ~ dom, without the existence of party differences and opinions, is to look for what has never yet existed under any political system, and what it would, perhaps, be unphilosophical to desire. Uniformity of sentiment on all subjects in which a considerable number of men are called to act together, can exist only with a degree of indifference which would be more alarming than opposition. We may have stagnation and apparent uniformity ; but j a living, vital system will be the result of contending energies. Party we nmst expect to have under the best possible conditions of government. No society, worthy to take rank with the nations of the world, may hope to be without it. The various interests of such a community cannot be made so homogeneous that some cause of contention will not arise. If we could bring our wills and inclinations to uniformity, the very constitution of nature would still produce diversity. If our Northern and Southern States were to be definitely separated from one another, in each portion there would yet be differences. The manufacturing and commercial interests, city and country, free trade and protection, capital and labor, would be asserting their distinctive claims with more or less of hostility. There would be a foreign policy and a

POLITICAL ADJUSTMENTS.

domestic policy ; a policy of taxation, an inequality in the means of meeting it ; a rivalry between the seaboard and the interior, between army and navy, between one method of internal imi)rovement and another. While, if we should admit into the arena the discussion of new forms of government, or make religion in any way a state question, the op})ortunities of controversy would be indefinitely and intensely multiplied.

Now, the first principle of all combinations in society whatever, is that men must regulate their differences by adjustment and concession in some way. It is the most imperative of all social and political doctrines, without which neither a family, a club of friends, a city, a state, an empire, in fact, any form of human organization whatever, can exist. The full recognition of this paramount truth is the great distinction between wisdom and charlatanism in statesmanship. It is the difference between theory and practice, between mathematics and morals — the acceptance of a fate which is a law to the whole world. When material forces simply are to be dealt with, provided their qualities are well understood, a result only of long experience, they may be handled according to a definite, fixed rule or prescription. A formula of the chemist or the mechanician may be carried out to the letter. Not so with human dealing. There our action and progress must be politic. We must, within certa.yi limits, be pliable and yielding, and leaving ideal abstractions and inflexible resolutions, get all the good we can under the circumstances. Wisely, treating of this very subject, and in connection too with American affairs, said the great English statesman, Edmund Burl^e, "All government, indeed everv 2 human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter. We balance inconveniences ; we give and take ; we remit some rights that we ma}' enjoy others ; and we choose rather to be happy citizens than subtle disputants." But he adds, however, that while we may part with some civil liberties, " for the advantages to be derived from the communion and fellowship of a great empire," we must take care that " the thing bought bear some proportion to the purchase paid."* Applying these principles to the regulation of our political affairs on this continent, we find them already recognized in that great instrument, one of the subtlest contrivances of human wisdom, the Constitution of the United States. That organizes a government of balanced powers and mutual duties. It prescribes limitations where they are necessary, and leaves action free in the path of progress. It has been found hitherto, and will be found again, that where its provisions are honestly received and maintained, we shall have a free, liberal and enlightened government.

Is there anything which necessarily interferes with this ? Has the Constitution failed to meet any question which has arisen, either of domestic or foreign policy ? On the contrary, under its guidance and protection we have advanced in honor and influence abroad, in wealth and happiness at home. Why, then, have not all alike acknowledged its advantages, and been faithful in their allegiance ?

In answer to this question, which involves the considerations of the essential conditions of union in the government of the whole number of states, we may

* Speech on Conciliation with America, March 22, 1775.

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with satisfaction turn from the tumult and confusion of the hour, to the cahn, accurately-pronounced judgment of De Tocqueville. He is universally accredited as a philosophical observer, of nice powers of discrimination in all that relates to the constitution and government of political bodies, and the qualifications for their well being. He has sho^vn a remarkable sagacity and insight in his treatment of the affairs of America, and he wrote, moreover, at a time when the subject was fairly open to his view, amply illuminated by the experience of half a century of the history of the country, and quite unobscured by any mists of passion or prejudice belonging to the day. From 1835 to 1840, when M. De Tocqueville was engaged in committing to writing his great work on American Democracy, the results of his observations made a few years previously in the United States, the nation was prosperous and in repose. The cloud which had gathered on the political horizon, in a small region of South Carolina, in the Nullification proceedings of 1832, had been dissipated ; and the political machinery of the general and state governments was working with its accustomed ease and regularity. What were then his observations and deductions ? Looking first to the material interests depending upon the permanent existence of the Union, he found a powerful plea for its safety in the advantages gained by the States in strength in maintaining their commercial and public rights with other nations ; while at home he saw, in the continuance of the confcderac}^ the absence of those evils of custom-houses, standing armies, taxes, and burdensome restrictions of all kinds, sure to arise on the Continent, on the breaking up of the national government. Nor did he find any physical causes calculated to favor such a dissolution. The Alleghanies presented no formidable difficulty, and the differences of soil and climate, with their corresponding varieties of production, so far from creating hostilities, were rightly considered bonds of union. He observed the almost exclusive agricultural employments of the Southern States ; the equally engrossing commercial and manufacturing pursuits of the North, and the mingled agricultural and manufacturing industry of the West. But he saw no opposition in these diverse forms of wealth. He perceived no unhappy disagreement between the production of tobacco, of cotton, or rice, and that of wheat or Indian corn ; nor did he see why one region might not yield with propriety what another with equal felicity should distribute to the w^orld. The central regions of the West could have no ships, and the South might certainly benefit by the hardy commercial adventure of the North. As for slavery, so far from looking upon it at that time as a means of disintegration, he saw the South dependent upon the North for protection against the possible dangers of an alarmingly increasing negro population, dangerous to the safety of the whites in the minority.

Turning from material, he regarded those moral instincts which, stronger than all physical ties, are the bonds of good citizenship in civil societies. He found in the United States a remarkable agreement on those leading social and political principles, "vvhich make men to be of one mind in a house. "A government," says he, " retains its sway over a great number of citizens, far less by the voluntary and rational consent of the multi-

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ELEMENTS tude, than by that instinctive and, to a certain extent, involuntary agreement, which results from similarity of feelings and resemblances of opinion." The people of the United States, though cherishing a great variety of sects, in general, he remarked, exhibited great uniformity of belief. Emphatically they had but one notion of politics, that of self-government, with all its claims or pretensions to wisdom, justice and virtue ; while national pride, lifting them above the monarchies of the old world, which regarded them with distrust, bound them together as one people. " They perceive that, for the present," said he, " their own democratic institutions succeed, while those of other countries fail ; hence the}^ conceive an overweening opinion of their superiority, and they arc not very remote from believing themselves to belong to a distinct race of mankind."

These, it must be admitted, are powerful links of agreement, both of interest and sympathy. But man is not always steadily governed by his interests, and his sympathies on great subjects may be disturbed by very inferior motives. The philosophical De Tocqueville saw some of these at work. G-lancing at the danger of some one portion of the country getting so powerful as to do without the rest, and the difficulties which might result in some undefined way from the vast and unwieldy growth of a people rapidly spreading on a huge continent, with singular sagacity, as the event has proved, he dwelt at length on the jealousy which might arise from the comparative inferiority of a portion — a comparison, by the way, which ought never to arise where inevitable sectional differences should be lost in the general welfare of the whole. That cause of embarrassment he found at

OF UNION. 11 the South, which at that time, under the impulses given to European emigration, was rapidly yielding in population to the hitherto unpeopled West. The institution of slavery he saw also, not so much producing a diversity of interest, as a difference of manners ; opposing the feelings and sentiments attached to a comparatively idle, luxurious mode of living to the thoughts and habits induced by the stern industry and resolute persistence of the occupants of regions in some respects less favored by nature.

"The inhabitants of the Southern States are, of all the Americans," is the language of this acute writer, "those who are most interested in the maintenance of the Union ; they would assuredly suffer most from being left to themselves ; and yet they are the only citizens who threaten to break the tie of confederation. But it is easy to perceive that the South, which has given four presidents, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, to the Union ; which perceives that it is losing its federal influence, and that the number of its representatives in Congress is diminishing from year to year, while those of the Northern and Western States are increasing ; the South, which is peopled with ardent and irascible beings, is becoming more and more irritated and alarmed. The citizens reflect upon their present position, and remember their past influence, with the melancholy uneasiness of men who suspect oppression : if they discover a law of the Union which is not unequivocally favorable to their interests, they protest against it as an abuse of force ; and if their ardent remonstrances are not listened to, they threaten to quit an association which loads them with burdens while it deprives them of their due profits."

Even in this the philosophic observer saw nothing so very alarming, provided time were given, and with time, the sense of justice and moderation which comes with reflection, to settle and compose such fears. He perceived, however, an unfavorable influence at work, in that respect, growing out of the very extent and rapidity of the national prosperity. If the development were less rapid there would not, he thought, be so much occasion for alarm. " The progress of society in America is precipitate, and almost revolutionary. The same citizen may have lived to see his State take the lead in the Union, and afterward become powerless in the federal assemblies ; and an Anglo-American republic has been known to grow as rapidly as a man, passing from birth and infancy to maturity in the course of thirty years. It must not be imagined, however, that the States which lose their preponderance, also lose their population or their riches ; no stop is put to their prosperity, and they even go on to increase more rapidly than any kingdom in Europe. But they believe themselves to be impoverished, because their wealth does not augment as rapidly as that of their neighbors ; and they think that their power is lost because they suddenly come into collision with a power greater than their own. Thus they are more hurt in their feelings and their passions than in their interests. But this is amply sufficient to endanger the maintenance of the Union."

How wise is all this ! What a key does it afford to the present unhappy contest. It may not unlock all the recesses of this intricate question which, assuming the vast form of an attempted revolution,

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must needs have many explanations of interest and passion ; but it is certainly sufficiently comprehensive of the main issue. The South, jealous of declining influence, and indisposed from pride or prejudice to look for new elements of strength, which might have been found within the Union, sought power and authority outside of it, in a revolutionary attempt at its destruction.

Mr. John Stuart Mill, the eminent English author of the System of Logic, universally acknowledged one of the most acute writers of the times on matters relating to political and social science, has, in a chapter of his recent work on Representative Government, considered the essential conditions of a successful federation. He finds them to bo three -fold : a mutual sympathy ; an amount of power in none of the states great enough to maintain itself alone against encroachment ; an equilibrium of strength, involving mutual dependence of the component parts. Taking the United States separately, and not by large geographical divisions, we may safely apply the two latter tests. None of them is powerful enough to array itself in arms against any serious foreign aggression, and no one is strong or wealthy enough not to feel the need of one or more of the others. As for the first and most important consideration, it is resolved by Mr. Mill, somewhat in the style of thought of De Tocqueville, into the sympathies of race, language, religion, and above all, of political institutions. To name these conditions is at once to suggest their applicability to the United States. We need not stop to illustrate them. But while we draw from them the most hopeful auguries for the future, we may pause to note the single

PHYSICAL BONDS OF UNION.

exception taken by this intelligent observer. " In America," says he " where all the conditions for the maintenance of union existed at the highest point, with the sole drawback of difference of institutions in the single but most important article of slavery, this one difl'erence has gone so far, in alienating from each other's sympathies, the two divisions of the Union, as to be now actually effecting the disruption of a tie of so much value to them both."*

The argument for Union afforded in the physical geography of the country, the bonds and ties of its great arteries of river communication, needs only a glance at the map to be demonstrated. Its force was felt by the first founders of the nation. No one saw it better than Jefferson, who, with prophetic instinct, gave the nation Louisiana. No dweller on the Ohio, the Missouri, the Mississippi or their numerous tributaries need be told of it. Yet we may cite with satisfaction the noble expression of this great natural and political truth uttered by Dr. Lieber in a letter to the President of the Chamber of Commerce of New York. "Nature," says he, "gave us a land abounding in all the means of sustaining life and industry — food and fuel. She cast a net work of fluvial high roads over the whole. Our history is marked by no feature more distinctly than by the early com})lete freedom of river navigation, for which other nations have struggled in vain for many long centuries ; and this Insurrection with a Federal confession of judgment, steps in and means to snap the silver thread. The Mississippi belongs to you, air, as much as to any man in Louisiana, and it is mine as much

* Considerations on Representative Government. By John Sluart Mill. Chap. xvii. Lond. 18tl.

as it is yours. It belongs to the country by Divine right, if jus diviniim ever existed in any case ; and let us trust in God, that the country will never allow it to be wrested from us. Every consideration, from the consciousness of a high mission impressed upon us by our Maker to that of the commonest economy, urges us to hold fast to the unstinted freedom of our fluvial and all other communication." *

Turning from this cursory glance at the elementary conditions of the Union and its preservation, we may briefly review a few of the historical antecedents which stand out prominently in more or less relation to this great Revolt. The}^ may be referred generally, with sufficient accuracy for our purpose, to the maintenance on important occasions of the doctrine of State Rights, and to the legislation on the subject of Slavery. The first prominent assertion of the former after the adoption of the Constitution, arose in the administration of John Adams, in an opposition to certain measures of the government, and found expression in those pregnant texts for future political orators the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798. Both of these were levelled against what are called the Alien and Sedition acts, which were passed by Congress with the view of defending the government against the machinations of foreigners, and any conspiracies or furtherance of them by malicious writings. The Administration of Adams, it will be remembered, was then opposed with great violence by a faction in the interest of France, and it was held, doubtless, by the legislators who passed the acts, that the extraordinary perils of the day jus-