NEVER LEFT HIS ROOM TILL HE HAD DEVOURED IT.NEVER LEFT HIS ROOM TILL HE HAD DEVOURED IT.
Therein consists the great difference between Noah and myself. He doesn't keep up the interest. A friend of mine at Sing Sing, who secured one of my books, said he never left his room till he had devoured it. He said he seemed chained to the spot; and if you can't believe a convict who is entirely out of politics, whom, in the name of George Washington, can you trust?
Mr. Webster was certainly a most brilliant writer, though a little inclined, perhaps, to bewordy. I have discovered in some of his later books one hundred and eighteen thousand words no two of which are alike. This shows great fluency and versatility, it is true, but we need something else. The reader waits in vain to be thrilled by the author's wonderful word-painting. There is not a thrill in the whole tome.
I had heard so much of Mr. Webster that when I read his book I confess I was disappointed. It is cold, methodical, dry, and dispassionate in the extreme, and one cannot help comparing it with the works of James Fenimore Cooper and Horace.
As I said, however, it is a good book to pick up for the purpose of whiling away an idle hour. No one should travel without Mr. Webster's tale. Those who examine this tale will readily see why there were no flies on the author. He kept them off with this tale.
It is a good book, as I say, to take up for a moment, or to read on the train, or to hold the door open on a hot day. I would never take a long railroad ride without it, eyether. I would as soon forget my bottle of cough-medicine.
Mr. Webster's Speller had an immense sale. Ten years ago he had sold forty million copies. And yet it had this same defect. It was cold, dull, disconnected, and verbose. There was only one good thing in the book, and that was a little literary gem regarding a boy who broke in andstole the apples of a total stranger. The story was so good that I have often wondered whom Mr. Webster got to write it for him.
The old man, it seems, at first told the boy that he had better come down, as there was a draught in the tree; but the young sass-box—apple-sass-box, I presume—told him to avaunt.
At last the old man said, "Come down, honey. I am afraid the limb will break if you don't." Then, as the boy still remained, he told him that those were not eating-apples, that they were just common cooking-apples, and that there were worms in them. But the boy said he didn't mind a little thing like that. So then the old gentleman got irritated, and called the dog, and threw turf at the boy, and at last saluted him with pieces of turf and decayed cabbages; and after the lad had gone away the old man pried the bull-dog's jaws open and found a mouthful of pantaloons and a freckle.
I do not tell this, of course, in Mr. Webster's language, but I give the main points as they recur now to my mind.
Though I have been a close student of Mr. Webster for years and have carefully examined his style, I am free to say that his ideas about writing a book are not the same as mine. Of course it is a great temptation for a young author to write a book that will have a large sale; but that should not be all. We should have a higherobject than that, and strive to interest those who read the book. It should not be jerky and scattering in its statements.
I do not wish to do an injustice to a great man who is now no more, a man who did so much for the world and who could spell the longest word without hesitation, but I speak of these things just as I would expect others to criticise my work. If one aspire to be a member of theliteratiof his day, he must expect to be criticised. I have been criticised myself. When I was in public life,—as a justice of the peace in the Rocky Mountains,—a man came in one day and criticised me so that I did not get over it for two weeks.
I might add, though I dislike to speak of it now, that Mr. Webster was at one time a member of the Legislature of Massachusetts. I believe that was the only time he ever stepped aside from the strait and narrow way. A good many people do not know this, but it is true.
Mr. Webster was also a married man, yet he never murmured or repined.
A Man named Lopez in 1851 attempted to annex Cuba, thus furnishing for our Republican wrapper a genuine Havana filler; but he failed, and was executed, while his plans were not.
Franklin Pierce was elected President on the Democratic ticket, running against General Scott, the Whig candidate. Slavery began to be discussed again, when Stephen A. Douglas, in Congress, advocated squatter sovereignty, or the right for each Territory to decide whether it would be a free or a slave State. The measure became a law in 1854.
That was what made trouble in Kansas. The two elements, free and slave, were arrayed against each other, and for several years friends from other States had to come over and help Kansas bury its dead. The condition of things for some time was exceedingly mortifying to the citizen who went out to milk after dark without his gun.
Trouble with Mexico arose, owing to the fact that the government had used a poor and unreliable map in establishing the line: so General Gadsden made a settlement for the disputed ground, and we paid Mexico ten millions of dollars. It is needless to say that we have since seen the day when we wished that we had it back.
EXCEEDINGLY MORTIFYING TO THE CITIZEN WHO WENT TO MILK WITHOUT HIS GUN.EXCEEDINGLY MORTIFYING TO THE CITIZEN WHO WENT TO MILK WITHOUT HIS GUN.
Two ports of entry were now opened to us in Japan by Commodore Perry's Expedition, and cups and saucers began to be more plentiful in this country, many of the wealthier deciding at that time not to cool tea in the saucer or drink it vociferously from that vessel. This custom and the Whig party passed away at the same time.
The Republican or Anti-Slavery party nominated for President John C. Frémont, who received the vote of eleven States, but James Buchanan was elected, and proved to the satisfaction of the world that there is nothing to prevent any unemployed man's applying for the Presidency of the United States; also that if his life has been free from ideas and opinions he may be elected sometimes where one who has been caught in the very act of thinking, and had it proved on him, might be defeated.
Chief Justice Taney now stated that slaves could be taken into any State of the Union by their owners without forfeiting the rights of ownership. This was called the Dred Scott decision, and did much to irritate Abolitionists like John Brown, whose soul as this book goes to press is said to be marching on. Brown was a Kansas man with a mission and massive whiskers. He would be called now a crank; but his action in seizing a United States arsenal at Harper's Ferry and declaring the slaves free was regarded by the South as thoroughly representative of the Northern feeling.
The country now began to be in a state of restlessness. Brown had been captured and hanged as a traitor. Northern men were obliged to leave their work every little while to catch a negro, crate him, and return him to his master or give him a lift towards Canada; and, as the negro was replenishing the earth at an astonishing rate, general alarm broke out.
OBLIGED TO LEAVE THEIR WORK EVERY LITTLE WHILE TO CATCH A NEGRO.OBLIGED TO LEAVE THEIR WORK EVERY LITTLE WHILE TO CATCH A NEGRO.
Douglas was the champion of squatter sovereignty, John C. Breckinridge of the doctrine that slaves could be checked through as personal baggage into any State of the Union, and Lincoln of the anti-slavery principle which afterwards constituted the spinal column of the Federal Government as opposed to the Confederacy of the seceded States.
Lincoln was elected, which reminded him of an anecdote. Douglas and several other candidates were defeated, which did not remind them of anything.
South Carolina seceded in December, 1860, and soon after Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed suit.
The following February the Confederacy was organized at Montgomery, Alabama, and Jefferson Davis was elected President. Long and patient effort on the part of the historian to ascertain how he liked it has been entirely barren of results. Alexander H. Stephens was made Vice-President.
Everything belonging to the United States and not thoroughly fastened down was carried away by the Confederacy, while President Buchanan looked the other way or wrote airy persiflage to tottering dynasties which slyly among themselves characterized him as a neat and cleanly old lady.
Had Buchanan been a married man it is generally believed now that his wife would have prevented the war. Then she would have called James out from under the bed and allowed him to come to the table for his meals with the family. But he was not married, and the war came on.
Major Anderson was afraid to remain at Fort Moultrie in Charleston Harbor, so crossed over to Fort Sumter. The South regarded this as hostility, and the fort was watched to see if any one should attempt to divide his lunch with the garrison, which it was declared would be regarded as an act of defiance. The reader will see by this that a deaf and dumb asylum in Northern Michigan was about the only safe place for a peaceable man at that time.
President Lincoln found himself placed at thehead of a looted government on the sharp edge of a crisis that had not been properly upholstered. The Buchanan cabinet had left little except a burglar's tool or two here and there to mark its operations, and, with the aged and infirm General Scott at the head of a little army, and no encouragement except from the Abolitionists, many of whom had never seen a colored man outside of a minstrel performance, the President stole incog. into Washington, like a man who had agreed to lecture there.
Southern officers resigned daily from the army and navy to go home and join the fortunes of their several States. Meantime, the Federal government moved about like a baby elephant loaded with shot, while the new Confederacy got men, money, arms, and munitions of war from every conceivable point.
Finding that supplies were to be sent to Major Anderson, General Peter G. T. Beauregard summoned Major Anderson to surrender. General Beauregard, after the war, became one of the good, kind gentlemen who annually stated over their signatures that they had examined the Louisiana State Lottery and that there was no deception about it. The Lottery felt grateful for this, and said that the general should never want while it had a roof of its own.
Major Anderson had seventy men, while GeneralBeauregard had seven thousand. After a bombardment and a general fight of thirty-four hours, the starved and suffocated garrison yielded to overwhelming numbers.
President Lincoln was not admired by a class of people in the North and South who heard with horror that he had at one time worked for ten dollars a month. They thought the President's salary too much for him, and feared that he would buy watermelons with it. They also feared that some day he might tell a funny story in the presence of Queen Victoria. The snobocracy could hardly sleep nights for fear that Lincoln at a state dinner might put sugar and cream in his cold consommé.
Jefferson Davis, it was said, knew more of etiquette in a minute than Lincoln knew all his life.
The capture of Sumter united the North and unified the South. It made "war Democrats"—i.e., Democrats who had voted against Lincoln—join him in the prosecution of the war. More United States property was cheerfully appropriated by the Confederacy, which showed that it was alive and kicking from the very first minute it was born.
Confederate troops were sent into Virginia and threatened the Capitol at Washington, and would have taken it if the city had not, in summer, been regarded as unhealthful.
The Sixth Massachusetts Regiment, hurrying to the capital, was attacked in Baltimore and several men were killed. This was the first actual bloodshed in the civil war which caused rivers and lakes and torrents of the best blood of North and South to cover the fair, sweet clover fields and blue-grass meadows made alone for peace.
The general opinion of the author, thirty-five years afterwards, is that the war was as unavoidable as the deluge, and as idiotic in its incipiency as Adam's justly celebrated defence in the great "Apple Sass Case."
Men will fight until it is educated out of them, just as they will no doubt retain rudimentary tails and live in trees till they know better. It's all owing to how a man was brought up.
Of course after we have been drawn into the fight and been fined and sent home, we like to maintain that we were fighting for our home, or liberty, or the flag, or something of the kind. We hate to admit that, as a nation, we fought and paid for it afterwards with our family's bread-money just because we were irritated. That's natural; but most great wars are arranged by people who stay at home and sell groceries to the widow and orphan and old maids at one hundred per cent. advance.
Arlington Heights and Alexandria were now seized and occupied by the Union troops for theprotection of Washington, and mosquito-wires were put up in the Capitol windows to keep the largest of the rebels from coming in and biting Congress.
Fort Monroe was garrisoned by a force under General Benjamin F. Butler, and an expedition was sent out against Big Bethel. On the way the Federal troops fired into each other, which pleased the Confederates very much indeed. The Union troops were repulsed with loss, and went back to the fort, where they stated that they were disappointed in the war.
West Virginia was strongly for the Union in sentiment, and was set off from the original State of Virginia, and, after some fighting the first year of the war over its territory, came into line with the Northern States. The fighting here was not severe. Generals McClellan and Rosecrans (Union) and Lee (Confederate) were the principal commanders.
The first year of the war was largely spent in sparring for wind, as one very able authority has it.
In the next chapter reference will be made to the battle of Bull Run, and the odium will be placed where it belongs. The author reluctantly closes this chapter in order to go out and get some odium for that purpose.
On the 21st of July, 1861, occurred the battle of Bull Run, under the joint management of General Irwin McDowell and General P. G. T. Beauregard. After a sharp conflict, the Confederates were repulsed, but rallied again under General T. J. Jackson, called thereafter Stonewall Jackson. While the Federals were striving to beat Jackson back, troops under Generals Early and Kirby Smith from Manassas Junction were hurled against their flank.[5]McDowell's men retreated, and as they reached the bridge a shell burst among their crowded and chaotic numbers. A caisson was upset, and a panic ensued, many of the troops continuing at a swift canter till they reached the Capitol, where they could call on the sergeant-at-arms to preserve order.
As a result of this run on the banks of the Potomac, the North suddenly decided that the war might last a week or two longer than at firststated, that the foe could not be killed with cornstalks, and that a mistake had been made in judging that the rebellion wasn't loaded.[6]Half a million men were called for and five hundred million dollars voted. General George B. McClellan took command of the Army of the Potomac.
The battle of Ball's Bluff resulted disastrously to the Union forces, and two thousand men were mostly driven into the Potomac, some drowned and others shot. Colonel Baker, United States Senator from Oregon, was killed.
The war in Missouri now opened. Captain Lyon reserved the United States arsenal at St. Louis, and defeated Colonel Marmaduke at Booneville. General Sigel was defeated at Carthage, July 5, by the Confederates: so Lyon, with five thousand men, decided to attack more than twice that number of the enemy under Price and McCulloch, which he did, August 10, at Wilson's Creek. He was killed while making a charge, and his men were defeated.
General Frémont then took command, and drove Price to Springfield, but he was in a short time replaced by General Hunter, because his warpolicy was offensive to the enemy. Hunter was soon afterwards removed, and Major-General Halleck took his place. Halleck gave general satisfaction to the enemy, and even his red messages from Washington, where he boarded during the war, were filled with nothing but kindness for the misguided foe.
Davis early in the war commissioned privateers, and Lincoln blockaded the Southern ports. The North had but one good vessel at the time, and those who have tried to blockade four or five thousand miles of hostile coast with one vessel know full well what it is to be busy. The entire navy consisted of forty-two ships, and some of these were not seaworthy. Some of them were so pervious that their guns had to be tied on to keep them from leaking through the cracks of the vessel.
Hatteras Inlet was captured, and Commodore Dupont, aided by General Thomas W. Sherman, captured Port Royal Entrance and Tybee Island. Port Royal became the dépôt for the fleet.
It was now decided at the South to send Messrs. Mason and Slidell to England, partly for change of scene and rest, and partly to make a friendly call on Queen Victoria and invite her to come and spend the season at Asheville, North Carolina. It was also hoped that she would give a few readings from her own works at the South, while her retinuecould go to the front and have fun with the Yankees, if so disposed.
HOPED SHE WOULD GIVE A FEW READINGS FROM HER OWN WORKS.HOPED SHE WOULD GIVE A FEW READINGS FROM HER OWN WORKS.
These gentlemen, wearing their nice new broadcloth clothes, and with a court suit and suitable night-wear to use in case they should be pressed to stop a week or two at the castle, got to Havana safely, and took passage on the British ship Trent; but Captain Wilkes, of the United States steamer San Jacinto, took them off the Trent, just as Mr. Mason had drawn and fortunately filled a handwith which he hoped to pay a part of the war-debt of the South and get a new overcoat in London. Later, however, the United States disavowed this act of Captain Wilkes, and said it was only a bit of pleasantry on his part.
The first year of the war had taught both sides a few truths, and especially that the war did not in any essential features resemble a straw-ride to camp-meeting and return. The South had also discovered that the Yankee peddlers could not be captured with fly-paper, and that although war was not their regular job they were willing to learn how it was done.
In 1862 the national army numbered five hundred thousand men, and the Confederate army three hundred and fifty thousand. Three objects were decided upon by the Federal government for the Union army and navy to accomplish,—viz., 1, the opening of the Mississippi; 2, the blockade of Southern ports; and 3, the capture of Richmond, the capital of the Southern Confederacy.
The capture of Forts Henry and Donelson was undertaken by General Grant, aided by Commodore Foote, and on February 6 a bombardment was opened with great success, reducing Fort Henry in one hour. The garrison got away because the land-forces had no idea the fort would yield so soon, and therefore could not get up there in time to cut off the retreat.
Fort Donelson was next attacked, the garrison having been reinforced by the men from Fort Henry. The fight lasted four days, and on February 16 the fort, with fifteen thousand men, surrendered.
Nashville was now easily occupied by Buell, and Columbus and Bowling Green were taken. The Confederates fell back to Corinth, where General Beauregard (Peter G. T.) and Albert Sidney Johnston massed their forces.
General Grant now captured the Memphis and Charleston Railroad; but the Confederates decided to capture him before Buell, who had been ordered to reinforce him, should effect a junction with him. April 6 and 7, therefore, the battle of Shiloh occurred. Whether the Union troops were surprised or not at this battle, we cannot here pause to discuss. Suffice it to say that one of the Federal officers admitted to the author in 1879, while under the influence of koumys, that, though not strictly surprised, he believed he violated no confidence in saying that they were somewhat astonished.
It was Sunday morning, and the Northern hordes were just considering whether they would take a bite of beans and go to church or remain in camp and get their laundry-work counted for Monday, when the Confederacy and some other men burst upon them with a fierce, rude yell. In a fewmoments the Federal troops had decided that there had sprung up a strong personal enmity on the part of the South, and that ill feeling had been engendered in some way.
SOME OTHER MEN BURST UPON THEM WITH A FIERCE, RUDE YELL.SOME OTHER MEN BURST UPON THEM WITH A FIERCE, RUDE YELL.
All that beautiful Sabbath-day they fought, the Federals yielding ground slowly and reluctantly till the bank of the river was reached and Grant's artillery commanded the position. Here a stand was made until Buell came up, and shortly afterwards the Confederates fell back; but they had captured the Yankee camp entire, and many a boy in blue lost the nice warm woollen pulse-warmers crocheted for him by his soul's idol. It is said that over thirty-five hundred needle-books and three thousand men were captured by the Confederates,also thirty flags and immense quantities of stores; but the Confederate commander, General A. S. Johnston, was killed. The following morning the tide had turned, and General P. G. T. Beauregard retreated unmolested to Corinth.
General Halleck now took command, and, as the Confederates went away from there, he occupied Corinth, though still retaining his rooms at the Arlington Hotel in Washington.
The Confederates who retreated from Columbus fell back to Island No. 10 in the Mississippi River, where Commodore Foote bombarded them for three weeks, thus purifying the air and making the enemy feel much better than at any previous time during the campaign. General Pope crossed the Mississippi, capturing the batteries in the rear of the island, and turning them on the enemy, who surrendered April 7, the day of the battle of Shiloh.
May 10, the Union gun-boats moved down the river. Fort Pillow was abandoned by the Southern forces, and the Confederate flotilla was destroyed in front of Memphis. Kentucky and Tennessee were at last the property of the fierce hordes from the great coarse North.
General Bragg was now at Chattanooga, Price at Iuka, and Van Dorn at Holly Springs. All these generals had guns, and were at enmity with the United States of America. They verymuch desired to break the Union line of investment extending from Memphis almost to Chattanooga.
Bragg started out for the Ohio River, intending to cross it and capture the Middle States; but Buell heard of it and got there twenty-four hours ahead, wherefore Bragg abandoned his plans, as it flashed over him like a clap of thunder from a clear sky that he had no place to put the Middle States if he had them. He therefore escaped in the darkness, his wagon-trains sort of drawling over forty miles of road and "hit a-rainin'."
September 19, General Price, who, with Van Dorn, had considered it a good time to attack Grant, who had sent many troops north to prevent Bragg's capture of North America, decided to retreat, and, General Rosecrans failing to cut him off, escaped, and was thus enabled to fight on other occasions.
The two Confederate generals now decided to attack the Union forces at Corinth, which they did. They fought beautifully, especially the Texan and Missouri troops, who did some heroic work, but they were defeated and driven forty miles with heavy loss.
October 30, General Buell was succeeded by General Rosecrans.
The battle of Murfreesboro occurred December 31 and January 2. It was one of the bloodiest battles of the whole conflict, and must have madethe men who brought on the war by act of Congress feel first-rate. About one-fourth of those engaged were killed.
An attack on Vicksburg, in which Grant and Sherman were to co-operate, the former moving along the Mississippi Central Railroad and Sherman descending the river from Memphis, was disastrous, and the capture of Arkansas Post, January 11, 1863, closed the campaign of 1862 on the Father of Waters.
General Price was driven out of Missouri by General Curtis, and had to stay in Arkansas quite a while, though he preferred a dryer climate.
General Van Dorn now took command of these forces, numbering twenty thousand men, and at Pea Ridge, March 7 and 8, 1863, he was defeated to a remarkable degree. During his retreat he could hardly restrain his impatience.
WENT HOME BEFORE THE EXERCISES WERE MORE THAN HALF THROUGH.WENT HOME BEFORE THE EXERCISES WERE MORE THAN HALF THROUGH.
Some four or five thousand Indians joined the Confederates in this battle, but were so astonished at the cannon, and so shocked by the large decayed balls, as they called the shells, which came hurtling through the air, now and then hurting an Indian severely, that they went home before the exercises were more than half through. They were down on the programme for some fantastic and interesting tortures of Union prisoners, but when they got home to the reservation and had picked the briers out of themselves they said thatwar was about as barbarous a thing as they were ever to, and they went to bed early, leaving a call for 9.30A.M.on the following day.
The red brother's style of warfare has an air about it that is unpopular now. A common stone stab-knife is a feeble thing to use against people who shoot a distance of eight miles with a gun that carries a forty-gallon caldron full of red-hot iron.
The effort to open the Mississippi from the north was seconded by an expedition from the south, in which Captain David G. Farragut, commanding a fleet of forty vessels, co-operated with General Benjamin F. Butler, with the capture of New Orleans as the object.
Mortar-boats covered with green branches for the purpose of fooling the enemy, as no one could tell at any distance at all whether these were or were not olive-branches, steamed up the river and bombarded Forts Jackson and St. Philip till the stunned catfish rose to the surface of the water to inquire, "Why all this?" and turned their pallid stomachs toward the soft Southern zenith. Sixteen thousand eight hundred shells were thrown into the two forts, but that did not capture New Orleans.
Farragut now decided to run his fleet past the defences, and, desperate as the chances were, he started on April 24. A big cable stretched across the river suggested the idea that there was a hostile feeling among the New Orleans people. Fiverafts and armed steamers met him, and the iron-plated ram Manassas extended to him a cordial welcome to a wide wet grave with a southern exposure.
Farragut cut through the cable about three o'clock in the morning, practically destroyed the Confederate fleet, and steamed up to the city, which was at his mercy.
The forts, now threatened in the rear by Butler's army, surrendered, and Farragut went up to Baton Rouge and took possession of it. General Butler's occupation at New Orleans has been variously commented upon by both friend and foe, but we are only able to learn from this and the entire record of the war, in fact, that it is better to avoid hostilities unless one is ready to accept the unpleasant features of combat. The author, when a boy, learned this after he had acquired the unpleasant features resulting from combat which the artist has cleverly shown on opposite page.
General Butler said he found it almost impossible to avoid giving offence to the foe, and finally he gave it up in despair.
The French are said to be the politest people on the face of the earth, but no German will admit it; and though the Germans are known to have big, warm, hospitable hearts, since the Franco-Prussian war you couldn't get a Frenchman to admit this.
In February Burnside captured Roanoke Island, and the coast of North Carolina fell into the hands of the Union army. Port Royal became the base of operations against Florida, and at the close of the year 1862 every city on the Atlantic coast except Charleston, Wilmington, and Savannah was held by the Union army.
UNPLEASANT FEATURES RESULTING FROM COMBAT.UNPLEASANT FEATURES RESULTINGFROM COMBAT.
The Merrimac iron-clad, which had made much trouble for the Union shipping for some time, steamed into Hampton Roads on the 8th of March. Hampton Roads is not the Champs-Elysées of the South, but a long wet stretch of track east of Virginia,—the Midway Plaisance of the Salted Sea. The Merrimac steered for the Cumberland, rammed her, and the Cumberland sunk like a stove-lid, with all on board. The captain of the Congress, warned by the fate of the Cumberland, ran his vessel on shore and tried to conceal her behind the tall grass, but the Merrimac followed and shelled her till she surrendered.
The Merrimac then went back to Norfolk,where she boarded, night having come on apace. In the morning she aimed to clear out the balance of the Union fleet. That night, however, the Monitor, a flat little craft with a revolving tower, invented by Captain Ericsson, arrived, and in the morning when the Merrimac started in on her day's work of devastation, beginning with the Minnesota, the insignificant-looking Monitor slid up to the iron monster and gave her two one-hundred-and-sixty-six-and-three-quarter-pound solid shot.
The Merrimac replied with a style of broadside that generally sunk her adversary, but the balls rolled off the low flat deck and fell with a solemn plunk in the moaning sea, or broke in fragments and lay on the forward deck like the shells of antique eggs on the floor of the House of Parliament after a Home Rule argument.
Five times the Merrimac tried to ram the little spitz-pup of the navy, but her huge iron beak rode up over the slippery deck of the enemy, and when the big vessel looked over her sides to see its wreck, she discovered that the Monitor was right side up and ready for more.
The Confederate vessel gave it up at last, and went back to Norfolk defeated, her career suddenly closed by the timely genius of the able Scandinavian.
The Peninsular campaign was principally addressed toward the capture of Richmond. Onehundred thousand men were massed at Fort Monroe April 4, and marched slowly toward Yorktown, where five thousand Confederates under General Magruder stopped the great army under McClellan.
After a month's siege, and just as McClellan was about to shoot at the town, the garrison took its valise and went away.
On the 5th of May occurred the battle of Williamsburg, between the forces under "Fighting Joe" Hooker and General Johnston. It lasted nine hours, and ended in the routing of the Confederates and their pursuit by Hooker to within seven miles of Richmond. This caused the adjournment of the Confederate Congress.
But Johnston prevented the junction of McDowell and McClellan after the capture of Hanover Court-House, and Stonewall Jackson, reinforced by Ewell, scared the Union forces almost to death. They crossed the Potomac, having marched thirty-five miles per day. Washington was getting too hot now to hold people who could get away.
It was hard to say which capital had been scared the worst.
The Governors of the Northern States were asked to send militia to defend the capital, and the front door of the White House was locked every night after ten o'clock.
But finally the Union generals, instead of calling for more troops, got after General Jackson, and he fled from the Shenandoah Valley, burning the bridges behind him. It is said that as he and his staff were about to cross their last bridge they saw a mounted gun on the opposite side, manned by a Union artilleryman. Jackson rode up and in clarion tones called out, "Who told you to put that gun there, sir? Bring it over here, sir, and mount it, and report at head-quarters this evening, sir!" The artilleryman unlimbered the gun, and while he was placing it General Jackson and staff crossed over and joined the army.
One cannot be too careful, during a war, in the matter of obedience to orders. We should always know as nearly as possible whether our orders come from the proper authority or not.
No one can help admiring this dashing officer's tour in the Shenandoah Valley, where he kept three major-generals and sixty thousand troops awake nights with fifteen thousand men, saved Richmond, scared Washington into fits, and prevented the union of McClellan's and McDowell's forces. Had there been more such men, and a little more confidence in the great volume of typographical errors called Confederate money, the lovely character who pens these lines might have had a different tale to tell.
May 31 and June 1 occurred the battle of FairOaks, where McClellan's men floundering in the mud of the Chickahominy swamps were pounced upon by General Johnston, who was wounded the first day. On the following day, as a result of this accident, Johnston's men were repulsed in disorder.
General Robert E. Lee, who was now in command of the Confederate forces, desired to make his army even more offensive than it had been, and on June 12 General Stuart led off with his cavalry, made the entire circuit of the Union army, saw how it looked from behind, and returned to Richmond, much improved in health, having had several meals of victuals while absent.
Hooker now marched to where he could see the dome of the court-house at Richmond, but just then McClellan heard that Jackson had been seen in the neighborhood of Hanover Court-House, and so decided to change his base. General McClellan was a man of great refinement, and would never use the same base over a week at a time.
He had hardly got the base changed when Lee fell upon his flank at Mechanicsville, June 26, and the Seven Days' battle followed. The Union troops fought and fell back, fought and fell back, until Malvern Hill was reached, where, worn with marching, choked with dust, and broken down by the heat, to which they were unaccustomed, theymade their last stand, July 1. Here Lee got such a reception that he did not insist on going any farther.
But the Union army was cooped up on the James River. The siege of Richmond had been abandoned, and the North felt blue and discouraged. Three hundred thousand more men were called for, and it seemed that, as in the South, "the cradle and the grave were to be robbed" for more troops.
Lee now decided to take Washington and butcher Congress to make a Roman holiday. General Pope met the Confederates August 26, and while Lee and Jackson were separated could have whipped the latter had the Army of the Potomac reinforced him as it should, but, full of malaria and foot-sore with marching, it did not reach him in time, and Pope had to fight the entire Confederate army on that historic ground covered with so many unpleasant memories and other things, called Bull Run.
WHERE BEER WAS ONLY FIVE CENTS PER GLASS.WHERE BEER WAS ONLY FIVE CENTS PER GLASS.
For the second time the worn and wilted Union army was glad to get back to Washington, where the President was, and where beer was only five cents per glass.
Oh, how sad everything seemed at that time to the North, and how high cotton cloth was! The bride who hastily married her dear one and bade him good-by as the bugle called him to the war,pointed with pride to her cotton clothes as a mark of wealth; and the middle classes were only too glad to have a little cotton mixed with their woollen clothes.
WANTS HIS MONEY'S WORTH WHEN HE PAYS FOR A BATTLE.WANTS HIS MONEY'S WORTH WHENHE PAYS FOR A BATTLE.
Lee invaded Maryland, and McClellan, restored to command of the Army of the Potomac, followed him, and found a copy of his order of march, which revealed the fact that only a portion of the army was before him. So, overtaking the Confederates at South Mountain, he was ready for a victory,but waited one day; and in the mountains Lee got his troops united again, while Jackson also returned. The Union troops had over eighty thousand in their ranks, and nothing could have been more thoughtful or genteel than to wait for the Confederates to get as many together as possible, otherwise the battle might have been brief and unsatisfactory to the tax-payer or newspaper subscriber, who of course wants his money's worth when he pays for a battle.
The battle of Antietam was a very fierce one, and undecisive, yet it saved Washington from an invasion by the Confederates, who would have done a good deal of trading there, no doubt, entirely on credit, thus injuring business very much and loading down Washington merchants with book accounts, which, added to what they had charged already to members of Congress, would have made times in Washington extremely dull.
General McClellan, having impressed the country with the idea that he was a good bridge-builder, but a little too dilatory in the matter of carnage, was succeeded by General Burnside.
President Lincoln had written the Proclamation of Emancipation to the slaves in July, but waited for a victory before publishing it. Bull Run as a victory was not up to his standard; so when Lee was driven from Maryland the document was issued by which all slaves in the United States became free; and, although thirty-one years have passed at this writing, they are still dropping in occasionally from the back districts to inquire about the truth of the report.
STILL DROPPING IN OCCASIONALLY FROM THE BACK DISTRICTS.STILL DROPPING IN OCCASIONALLY FROM THE BACK DISTRICTS.
STILL MORE FRATERNAL BLOODSHED, ON PRINCIPLE.—OUTING FEATURES DISAPPEAR, AND GIVE PLACE TO STRAINED RELATIONS BETWEEN COMBATANTS, WHO BEGIN TO MIX THINGS.
On December 13 the year's business closed with the battle of Fredericksburg, under the management of General Burnside. Twelve thousand Union troops were killed before night mercifully shut down upon the slaughter.
The Confederates were protected by stone walls and situated upon a commanding height, from which they were able to shoot down the Yankees with perfect sang-froid and deliberation.
In the midst of all these discouragements, the red brother fetched loose in Minnesota, Iowa, and Dakota, and massacred seven hundred men, women, and children. The outbreak was under the management of Little Crow, and was confined to the Sioux Nation. Thirty-nine of these Indians were hanged on the same scaffold at Mankato, Minnesota, as a result of this wholesale murder.
This execution constitutes one of the green spots in the author's memory. In all lives nowand then an oasis is liable to fall. This was oasis enough to last the writer for years.
In 1863 the Federal army numbered about seven hundred thousand men, and the Confederates about three hundred and fifty thousand. Still it took two more years to close the war.
It is held now by good judges that the war was prolonged by the jealousy existing between Union commanders who wanted to be President or something else, and that it took so much time for the generals to keep their eyes on caucuses and county papers at home that they fought best when surprised and attacked by the foe.
General Grant moved again on Vicksburg, and on May 1, defeated Pemberton at Fort Gibson. He also prevented a junction between Joseph E. Johnston and Pemberton, and drove the latter into Vicksburg, securing the stopper so tightly that after forty-seven days the garrison surrendered, July 4. This fight cost the Confederates thirty-seven thousand prisoners, ten thousand killed and wounded, and immense quantities of stores. It was a warm time in Vicksburg; a curious man who stuck his hat out for twenty seconds above the ramparts found fifteen bullet-holes in it when he took it down, and when he wore it to church he attracted more attention than the collection.
The North now began to sit up and take notice.Morning papers began to sell once more, and Grant was the name on every tongue.
The Mississippi was open to the Gulf, and the Confederacy was practically surrounded.