In sociology the dependence of the American tribes upon the animal world becomes most apparent. A great majority of all the family names in America were from animal totems. The division of labour among the sexes was based on zootechny. Labour organizations for hunting, communal hunt and migrations had to do with the animal world.
In the duel between the hunter and the beast-mind the intellectual powers of perception, memory, reason and will were developed; experience and knowledge by experience were enlarged, language and the graphic arts were fostered, the inventive faculty was evoked and developed, and primitive science was fostered in the unfolding of numbers, metrics, clocks, astronomy, history and the philosophy of causation. Beliefs and practices with reference to the heavenly world were inspired by zoic activities; its location, scenery and environment were the homes of beast gods. It was largely a zoopantheon; thus zootheism influenced the organization of tribes and societies in the tribes. The place, furniture, liturgies and apparatus of worship were hereby suggested. Myths, folk-lore, hunting charms, fetishes, superstitions and customs were based on the same idea. (For life zones, see C. H. Merriam, Biol. Survey, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture.)
Travel.
Excepting for extensive and rapid travel over the snow in the Arctic regions by means of dog sleds, the extremely limited transportation by dog travail (or sledge) in the Sioux province, and the use of the llama as a beast of burden throughout the Peruvian highlands, land travel was on foot, and land transportation on the backs of men and women. One of the most interesting topics of study is the trails along which the seasonal and annual migrations of tribes occurred, becoming in Peru the paved road, with suspension bridges and wayside inns, or tambos. In Mexico, and in Peru especially, the human back was utilized to its utmost extent, and in most parts of America harness adapted for carrying was made and frequently decorated with the best art. In the Mexican codices pictures of men and women carrying are plentiful. Travelling on the water was an important activity in aboriginal times. Hundreds of thousands of miles of inland waters and archipelagoes were traversed. Commencing in the Arctic region, the Eskimo in his kayak, consisting of a framework of driftwood or bone covered with dressed sealskin, could paddle down east Greenland, up the west shore to Smith Sound, along Baffin Land and Labrador, and the shores of Hudson Bay throughout insular Canada and the Alaskan coast, around to Mount St Elias, and for many miles on the eastern shore of Asia. In addition to this most delicate and rapid craft, he had his umiak or freight boat, sometimes called woman's boat. The Athapascan covered all north-western Canada with his open and portable birch-bark canoe, somewhat resembling the kayak in finish. The Algonquin-Iroquois took up the journey at Bear Lake and its tributaries, and by means of paddling and portages traversed the area of middle and eastern Canada, including the entire St Lawrence drainage. The absence of good bark, dugout timber, and chisels of stone deprived the whole Mississippi valley of creditable water-craft, and reduced the natives to the clumsy trough for a dugout and miserable bull-boat, made by stretching dressed buffalo hide over a crate. On the Atlantic coast of the United States the dugout was improved in form where the waters were more disturbed. John Smith's Indians had a fleet of dugouts. The same may be said of the Gulf states tribes, although they added rafts made of reed. Along the archipelagoes of the North Pacific coast, from Mount St Elias to the Columbia river, the dugout attained its best. The Columbia river canoe resembled that of the Amur, the bow and stern being pointed at the water-line. Poor dugouts and rafts, made by tying reeds together, constituted the water-craft of California and Mexico until Central America is reached.
The Caribs were the Haidas of the Caribbean Sea and northern South America. Their craft would vie in form, in size, and seaworthiness with those of the North Pacific coast. The catamaran and the reed boat were known to the Peruvians. The tribes of Venezuela and Guiana, according to Im Thurn, had both the dugout and the built-up hull. The simplest form of navigation in Brazil was the woodskin, a piece of bark stripped from a tree and crimped at the ends. The sangada, with its platform and sail, belonging to the Brazilian coast, is spoken of as a good seaworthy craft. Finally, the Fuegian bark canoe, made in three pieces so that it can be taken apart and transported over hills and sewed together, ends the series. The American craft was propelled by poling, paddling, rowing, and by rude sails of matting.
Fine art.
The aesthetic arts of the American aborigines cannot be studied apart from their languages, industries, social organizations, lore and worships. Art was limited most of all by poverty in technical appliances. There were just as good materials and inspirations, but what could the best of them do without metal tools? One and all skilful to a surpassing degree—weavers, embroiderers, potters, painters, engravers, carvers, sculptors and jewellers,—they were wearied by drudgery and overpowered by a never-absent, weird and grotesque theology. The Eskimo engraved poorly, the Dene (Tinneh) embroidered in quill, the North Pacific tribes carved skilfully in horn, slate and cedar, the California tribes had nimble fingers for basketry, the Sioux gloried in feathers and painted parfleche. The mound builders, Pueblo tribes, middle Americans and Peruvians, were potters of many schools; gorgeous colour fascinated the Amazonians, the Patagonians delighted in skins, and even the Fuegians saw beauty in the pretty snail shells of their desolate island shores. Of the Mexican and Central American sculpture and architecture a competent judge says that Yucatan and the southern states of Mexico are not rich in sculptures, apart from architecture; but in the valley of Mexico the human figure, animal forms, fanciful life motives in endless variety, were embodied in masks, yokes, tablets, calendars, cylinders, disks, boxes, vases and ornaments. The Nahuatl lapidaries had at hand many varieties of workable and beautiful stone—onyx, marble, limestone, quartz and quartz crystal, granite, syenite, basalt, trachyte, rhyolite, diorite and obsidian, the best of material prepared for them by nature; while the Mayas had only limestone, and hard, tenacious rock with which to work it, and timber for burning lime. However, looking over the whole field of North American achievement, architectural and non-architectural, composite and monolithic, the palm for boldness, magnitude of proportions and infinity of labour, must go to the sculptured mosaics of Yucatan. Maya architecture is the best remaining index of the art achievements of the American race. The construction of such buildings as the palace at Uxmal and the castillo at Chichen (Chichenitza) indicates a mastery in architectural design. There is lack of unity in plan and grouping, and an enormous waste of material as compared with available room. At Uxmal the mass of masonry is to chamber space about as forty to one. The builders were "ignorant of some of the most essential principles of construction, and are to be regarded as hardly more than novices in the art" (Holmes, Archaeological Studies, &c.). As for the marvels of Peru, the walls of the temple of the sun in Cuzco, with their circular form and curve inward, from the ground upward, are most imposing. Some of the gates without lintels are beautiful, and the geometric patterns in the walls extremely effective. The same objection to over-massiveness might not apply here as in Mexico, owing to volcanic activity.
Sociology.
Institutions in Europe and America have gathered abundant material for an intelligent comprehension of American Indian sociology. The British Association had a committee reporting during many years on the tribes of northwest Canada. The American Museum in New York has prepared a series of monographs on the tribes of the North Pacific coast, of northern Mexico, and of the Cordilleras of South America. The reports of the Bureau of American Ethnology in Washington cover the Eskimo, east and west, and all the tribes of the United States. In Mexico the former labours of Pimentel and Orozco y Berra are supplemented by those of Bandolier, Penafiel, Herrera and Alfredo Chavero. Otto Stoll's studies in Guatemala, Berendt's in Central America, Ernst's in Venezuela, Im Thurn's in Guiana, those of Ehrenreich, von den Steinen, Meyer in Brazil, or of Bandolier, Bastian, Bruhl, Middendorf, von Tschudi in Peru, afford the historian of comparative sociology ample groundwork for a comprehensive grasp of South American tribes. In all parts of the western hemisphere society was organized on cognate kinship, real or artificial, the unit being the clan. There were tribes where the basis of kinship was agnate, but these were the exceptions. The headship of the clan was sometimes hereditary, sometimes elective, but each clan had a totemic name, and the clans together constituted the tribe, the bond being not land, but blood. Women could adopt prisoners of war, in which case the latter became their younger sons. When a confederacy was organized under a council, intermarriage between tribes sometimes occurred; an artificial kinship thus arose, in which event the council established the rank of the tribes as elder and younger brother, grandfather, father and sons, rendering the relationship and its vocabulary most intricate, but necessary in a social system in which age was the predominant consideration and etiquette most exacting. (See Morgan, Tables of Consanguinity, Smithsonian Contributions, xvii.)
The Eskimo have a regular system of animal totem marks and corresponding gentes. Powell sets forth the laws of real and artificial kinship among the North American tribes, as well as tribal organization and government, the formation of confederacies, and the intricate rules of artificial kinship by which rank and courtesy were established. (Many papers in Reports of Bur. Am. Ethnol.) Bandolier declares that in Mexico existed neither state nor nation, nor political society of any kind, but tribes representing dialects, and autonomous in matters of government, and forming confederacies for the purposes of self-defence and conquest. The ancient Mexican tribe was composed of twenty autonomous kins. According to Brinton the social organization of ancient Peru was a government by a council of the gentes. The Inca was a war chief elected by the council to carry out its commands. Among the Caribs a like social order prevailed; indeed, their family system is identical with the totem system of North American Indians. Dominated by the rule of blood relationship, the Indians regulated all co-operative activities on this basis. Not only marriage, but speech and common industries, such as rowing a boat or chasing a buffalo, were under its sway. It obtrudes itself in fine art, behaviour, law-making, lore and religion. In larger or smaller numbers of cognate kindred, for shorter or longer periods of time, near or far from home, the aborigines developed their legislatures, courts, armies, secret societies and priesthoods.
Art of war.
In organization, engineering, strategy, offence and defence, the art of war was in the barbarous and the savage status or grade. One competent to judge asserts that peace, not war, was the normal intertribal habit. They held frequent intercourse, gave feasts and presents, and practised unbounded hospitality. Through this traffic objects travelled far from home, and now come forth out of the tombs to perplex archaeologists. Remembering the organization of the tribe everywhere prevalent, it is not difficult to understand that the army, or horde, that stands for the idea, was assembled on the clan basis. The number of men arrayed under one banner, the time during which they might cohere, the distances from home they could march, their ability to hold permanently what they had gained, together form an excellent metric scale of the culture grade in the several American provinces, and nowhere, even in the most favoured, is this mark high. With the Mexicans war was a passion, but warfare was little above the raid (Bandelier; Farrand). The lower tribes hunted their enemies as they hunted animals. In their war dances, which were only rehearsals, they disguised themselves as animals, and the pantomime was a mimic hunt. They had striking, slashing and piercing weapons held in the hand, fastened to a shaft or thong, hurled from the hand, from a sling, from an atlatl or throwing-stick, or shot from a bow. Their weapons were all individual, not one co-operative device of offence being known among them, although they understood fortification.
The term "slavery" is often applied to the aboriginal American tribes. The truth of this depends upon the definition of the word "slave." If it means the capture of men, and especially of women, and adoption into the tribe, this existed everywhere; but if subjection to a personal owner, who may compel service, sell or put to death the individual, slavery was far from universal. Nieboer finds it only on the North Pacific coast as far south as Oregon, among the Navajo and the Cibola pueblos, and in a few tribes of Middle and South America.
Lore.
The thought life of the American aborigines is expressed in their practical knowledge and their lore. The fascination which hangs around the latter has well-nigh obscured the former. As in medicine theory is one thing and practice another, so among these savages must the two be carefully discriminated. Dorsey, again, draws a distinction between lore narratives, which can be rehearsed without fasting or prayer, and rituals which require the most rigid preparation. In each culture province the Indians studied the heavenly bodies. The Arctic peoples regulated their lives by the long day and night in the year; among the tribes in the arid region the place of sunrise was marked on the horizon for each day; the tropical Indians were not so observant, but they worshipped the sun-god above all. The Mayas had a calendar of 360 days, with intercalary days; this solar year was intersected by their sacred year of twenty weeks of thirteen days each, and these assembled in bewildering cycles. Their knowledge of the air and its properties was no less profound. Heat and cold, rain and drought, the winds in relation to the points of the compass, were nearest their wants and supplies, and were never out of their thoughts. In each province they had found the best springs, beds of clay, paint, soapstone, flinty rock, friable stone for sculpture and hard, tenacious stone for tools, and used ashes for salt. The vegetal kingdom was no less familiar to them. Edible plants, and those for dyes and medicines, were on their lists, as well as wood for tools, utensils and weapons, and fibres for textiles. They knew poisonous plants, and could eliminate noxious properties. The universal reliance on animal life stimulated the study of the animal kingdom. Everywhere there were names for a large number of species; industries and fine arts were developed through animal substances. Society was organized in most cases on animal clans, and religion was largely zoomorphic. The hunting tribes knew well the nature and habits of animals, their anatomy, their migrations, and could interpret their voices. Out of this practical knowledge, coupled with the belief in personeity, grew a folk-lore so vast that if it were written down the world would not contain the books.
Religion.
The religion of the American aborigines, so far as it can be made a subject of investigation, consisted (1) in what the tribes believed about spirits, or shades, and the spirit world—its organization, place, activities and relation to our world; and (2) in what they did in response to these beliefs. The former was their creeds, the latter their cults or worships. In these worships, social organization, religious dramas and paraphernalia, amusement and gambling, and private religion or fetichism, found place. In order to obtain an intelligent grasp of the religion of tribes in their several culture provinces, it must be understood: (1) That the form of belief called animism by Tylor (more correctly speaking, personeity), was universal; everything was somebody, alive, sentient, thoughtful, wilful. This personeity lifts the majority of earthly phenomena out of the merely physical world and places them in the spirit world. Theology and science are one. All is supernatural, wakan. (2) That there existed more than one self or soul or shade in any one of these personalities, and these shades had the power not only to go away, but to transform their bodily tenements at will; a bird, by raising its head, could become a man; the latter, by going on all fours, could become a deer. (3) That the regulative side of the spirit world was the natural outcome of the clan social system and the tribal government in each tribe. Even one's personal name had reference to the world of ghosts. The affirmation that American aborigines believed in an all-pervading, omnipotent Spirit is entirely inconsistent with the very nature of the case. (4) Worship was everywhere dramatic. Only here and there among the higher tribes were bloody sacrifices in vogue, and prayers were in pantomime.
In the culture areas the environment gave specific characters to the religion. In the Arctic province the overpowering influence of meteorological phenomena manifested itself both in the doctrine of shades and in their shamanistic practices. The raven created the world. The Dene (Tinneh) myths resembled those of the Eskimo, and all the hunting tribes of eastern Canada and United States and the Mississippi valley have a mythology based upon their zootechny and their totemism. The religious conceptions of the fishing tribes on the Pacific coast between Mount St Elias and the Columbia river are worked out by Boas; the transformation from the hunting to the agricultural mode of life was accompanied by changes in belief and worship quite as radical. These have been carefully studied by Cushing, Stevenson and Fewkes. The pompous ceremonials of the civilized tribes of Mexico and the Cordilleras in South America, when analysed, reveal only a higher grade of the prevailing idea. Im Thurn says of the Carib: "All objects, animate and inanimate, seem exactly of the same nature, except that they differ in the accident of bodily form." These mythological ideas and symbols of the American aborigines were woven in their textiles, painted on their robes and furniture, burned into their pottery, drawn in sand mosaics on deserts, and perpetuated in the only sculptures worthy of the name, in wood and stone. They are inseparable from industry; language, social organization and custom wait upon them: they explain the universe in the savage mind.
Archaeology.
The archaeology of the western hemisphere should be divided as follows: (1) that of Indian activities; (2) the question of man's existence in a prior geological period. There is no dividing line between first-contact ethnology and pre-contact archaeology. Historians of this time, both north and south of Panama, described tools and products of activities similar to those taken from beneath the soil near by. The archaeologist recovers his specimens from waste places, cave deposits, abandoned villages, caches, shell-heaps, refuse-heaps, enclosures, mounds, hut rings, earthworks, garden beds, quarries and workshops, petroglyphs, trails, graves and cemeteries, cliff and cavate dwellings, ancient pueblos, ruined stone dwellings, forts and temples, canals or reservoirs. The relics found in these places are material records of language, industries, fine arts, social life, lore and religion.
Here and there in the Arctic province remains of old village sites have been examined, and collections brought away by whalers and exploring expeditions. Two facts are established—namely, that the Eskimo lived formerly farther south on the Atlantic coast, and that, aboriginally, they were not specially adept in carving and etching. The old apparatus of hunting and fishing is quite primitive. The Dene (Tinneh) province in Alaska and north-western Canada yields nothing to the spade. Algonquin-Iroquois Canada, thanks to the Geological Survey and the Department of Education in Ontario, has revealed old Indian camps, mounds and earthworks along the northern drainage of Lakes Erie and Ontario, and pottery in a curved line from Montreal to Lake of the Woods. Throughout eastern United States shell-heaps, quarries, workshops and camp sites are in abundance. The Sioux and the Muskhogee province is the mound area, which extends also into Canada along the Red river. The forms of these are earth-heaps, conical mounds, walls of earth, rectangular pyramids and effigies (Putnam). Thomas sums up the work of the Bureau of American Ethnology upon the structure, contents and distribution of these earth monuments, over a vast area from which adobe, building stone and stone-working material were absent. (See Hodge's List of Pubs. of the Bur. Am. Ethnol.) No writings have been recovered, the artisans shaping small objects in stone were specially gifted, the potters in only a few places approached those of the Pueblos, the fine art was poor, and relics found in the mounds do not indicate in their makers a grade of culture above that of the Indian tribes near by. The archaeology of the Pacific coast, from the Aleutian Islands, is written in shell-heaps, village sites, caves, and burial-places (Dall, Harlan I. Smith, Schumacher). The relics of bone, antler, stone, shell and copper are of yesterday. Even the Calaveras man is no exception, since his skull and his polished conical pestle, the latter made of stone more recent than the auriferous gravels, show him to have been of Digger Indian type. In Utah begin the ruins of the Pueblo culture. These cover Arizona and New Mexico, with extensions into Colorado on the north and Mexico on the south. The reports of work done in this province for several years past form a library of text and illustration. Cliff dwellings, cavate houses, pueblos and casas are all brought into a series without a break by Bandelier, Cushing, Fewkes, Holmes, Hough, Mindeleff, Nordenskjold, Powell and Stevenson. From Casa Grande, in Chihuahua, to Quemada, in Zacatecas, Carl S. Lumholtz found survivals of the cliff dwellers. Between Quemada and Copan, in Honduras, is an unbroken series of mural structures. The traditions agree with the monuments, whatever may be objected to assigning any one ruin to the Toltec, the Chichimec or the Nahuatl, that there are distinct varieties in ground-plan, motives, stone-craft, wall decorations and sculptures. Among these splendours in stone the following recent explorers must be the student's guide:—Bowditch, Charnay, Forstemann, F. T. Goodman, Gordon, Holmes, Maudslay, Mercer, Putnam, Sapper, Marshall H. Saville, Seler, Cyrus Thomas, Thompson. A list of the ruins, printed in the handbook on Mexico published by the Department of State in Washington, covers several pages. The special characteristics of each are to be seen partly in the skill and genius of their makers, and partly in the exigencies of the site and the available materials. A fascinating study in this connexion is that of the water-supply. The cenotes or underground reservoirs were the important factors in locating the ruins of northern Yucatan. From Honduras to Panama the urn burials, the pottery, the rude carved images and, above all, the grotesque jewellery, absorb the archaeologist's attention. (Publications of Peabody Museum.)
Beyond Chiriqui southward is El Dorado. Here also bewildering products of ancient metallurgy tax the imagination as to the processes involved, and questions of acculturation also interfere with true scientific results. The fact remains, however, that the curious metal-craft of the narrow strip along the Pacific from Mexico to Titicaca is the greatest of archaeological enigmas. Bandelier, Dorsey, Holmes, Seler and Uhle have taken up the questions anew. Beyond Colombia are Ecuador and Peru, where, in the widening of the continent, architecture, stone-working, pottery, metallurgy, textiles are again exalted. Among the Cordilleras in their western and interior drainages, over a space covering more than twenty degrees of latitude, the student comes again upon massive ruins. The materials on the coast were clay and gravel wrought into concrete, sun-dried bricks and pise, or rammed work, cut stalks of plants formed with clay a kind of staff, and lintels were made by burying stems of cana brava (Gynerium saccharoides) in blocks of pise. On the uplands structures were of stone laid up in a dozen ways. Walls for buildings, garden terraces and aqueducts were straight or sloping. Doorways were usually square, but corbelled archways and gateways surmounted with sculptures were not uncommon. Ornamentation was in carving and in colour, the latter far more effectively used than in Middle America. A glance at the exquisite textiles reveals at once the inspiration of mural decorations. The most prolific source of Peruvian relics is the sepulchres or huacas, the same materials being used in their construction as in building the houses. Here, owing to a dry climate, are the dead, clad and surrounded with food, vessels, tools and art products, as in life. The textiles and the pottery can only be mentioned; their quality and endless varieties astonish the technologist. In the Carib province there are no mural remains, but the pottery, with its excessive onlaying, recalls Mexico and the jewellers of Chiriqui. The polished stone work is superb, finding its climax in Porto Rico, which seems to have been the sacred island of the Caribs. For the coasts of South America the vast shell-heaps are the repositories of ancient history.
Paleolithic man.
Since 1880 organized institutions of anthropology have taken the spade out of the hands of individual explorers in order to know the truth concerning Glacial or Pleistocene man. The geologist and the trained archaeologist are associated. In North America the sites have been examined by the Peabody Museum, the Bureau of American Ethnology, and others, with the result that only the Trenton gravels have any standing. The so-called palaeolithic implements are everywhere. The question is one of geology, simply to decide whether those recovered at Trenton are ancient. Putnam and George Frederick Wright maintain that they are ancient, Alex. Francis Chamberlain and Holmes that they are post-Glacial and comparatively recent (Am. Anthrop., N.S. i. pp. 107, 614). Elsewhere in the United States fossilized bones, crania of a low order, association of human remains with those of fossil animals are not necessarily evidence of vast antiquity. In South America the shell-heaps, of enormous size, are supposed to show that the animals have undergone changes in size and that such vast masses require untold ages to accumulate. The first is a biological problem. As for the second, the elements of savage voracity and wastefulness, of uncertainty as to cubical contents on uneven surface, and of the number of mouths to fill, make it hazardous to construct a chronological table on a shell-heap. Hudson's village sites in Patagonia contain pottery, and that brings them all into the territory of Indian archaeology. Ameghino refers deposits in Patagonia, from which undoubted human bones and relics have been exhumed, to the Miocene. The question is of the age of the sediments from which these were taken. The bones of other associated animals, says John B. Hatcher, demonstrate the Pleistocene nature of the deposits, by which is not necessarily meant older Quaternary, for their horizons have not been differentiated and correlated in South America. Hatcher believes that "there is no good evidence in favour of a great antiquity for man in Patagonia." In a cave near Consuelo Cove, southern Patagonia, have been found fragments of the skin and bones of a large ground-sloth, Grypotherium (Neomylodon) listai, associated with human remains. Ameghino argues that this creature is still living, while Ur Moreno advances the theory that the animal has been extinct for a long period, and that it was domesticated by a people of great antiquity, who dwelt there prior to the Indians. Rodolfo Hauthal, Walter E. Roth and Dr R. Lehmann Nitsche review their work with the conclusion, not unanimously held by them, that man co-existed here with all the other animals whose remains were found during an inter-Glacial period. Arthur Smith Woodward sums up the question in Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, closing with this sentence: "If we accept the confirmatory evidence afforded by Mr Spencer Moore, we can hardly refuse to believe that this ground-sloth was kept and fed by an early race of men." These are individual opinions, subject to revision by that court of appeals, the institutional judgment. (Summary in H. Hesketh Prichard, Through the Heart of Patagonia (1902), Appendix A.)
AUTHORITIES.—A valuable endowment of research in specimens, literature and pictures, deposited in libraries, museums and galleries since 1880, will keep ethnologists and archaeologists employed for many years to come. The scientific inquirer will find a mass of material in the papers and reports contributed to the numerous societies and institutions which are devoted to anthropological research. Museums of aboriginal culture are without number; in Washington the Smithsonian Institution, the National Museum, the Bureau of American Ethnology and the American Anthropologist issue publications on every division of the subject, lists of their publications and general bibliographies. Also the Peabody Museum, Cambridge; the American Museum of Natural History, New York; the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia; the Field Museum, Chicago; the California Academy and the California University, San Francisco; and the Canadian Institute, Toronto, publish monographs and lists. The most comprehensive work on North America is the Handbook of American Indians (prepared by the Bureau of American Ethnology, under W. H. Holmes, and edited by F. Webb Hodge).
The following represent a select list of works on the American aborigines:—H. H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States of North America, vols. i.-v. (1874-1876); A. F. Bandelier, Papers on the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico (see Papers of the Archaeological Institute of America, 1881, 1890, 1892); also 10th, 11th, 12th Reports Peabody Museum; Franz Boas, The Central Eskimo (6th Rep. Bur. Am. Ethnol., 1888); also Bulls. 20, 26, 27 and Reports Brit. Assoc. 1885-1898; Charles P. Bowditch, Mexican and Central American Antiquities; Bull. 28, Bur. Am. Ethnol.; also The Temples of the Cross and Mayan Nomenclature (Cambridge, Mass., 1906); David Boyle, Reports of the Provincial Museum of Toronto on Archaeology and Ethnology of Canada; D. G. Brinton, Library of Aboriginal American Literature, vols. i.-viii. (Philadelphia, 1822-1890); The American Race (New York, 1891); Gustav Bruhl, Die Cultur-volker Amerikas (Cincinnati, 1889); Desire Charnay, The Ancient Cities of the New World (New York, 1887); Frank Cushing, Zuni Folk Tales (New York, 1901); William H. Dall, Alaska and its Resources (Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1870) (also papers by Bur. Am. Ethnol.); J. Deniker, The Races of Man (London, 1900); Roland B. Dixon, The Northern Maidu, Cal., Bull. 17, Am. Mus. Nat. Hist. (New York, 1905); Paul Ehrenreich, Die Volkerstamme Brasiliens (Berlin, 1892); Anthropologische Studien uber die Urbewohner Brasiliens (Berlin, 1897); Livingston Farrand, The American Nation: A History, vol. ii. (New York, 1904), with copious references; J. W. Fewkes, A Journal of American Ethnology and Archaeology, vols. i.-iv. (Boston, 1891-1894); Pliny Earle Goddard, Life and Culture of the Hupa, Univ. of Cal., vol. i. (1903): papers by F. W. Hodge, List of Publications of the Bur. Am. Ethnol., Bull. 31 (1906); W. H. Holmes, Handbook of the Indians North of Mexico; Alice C. Fletcher, Francis la Flesche and John Comfort Fillmore, "A Study of Omaha Indian Music," Peabody Museum Archaeological and Ethnological Papers. i. (1893); George Byron Gordon, "Researches in Central America," Memoirs of the Peabody Museum, vol. i. Nos. 1, 4, 5, 6; and Proc. Mus. Univ. of Pa.; William H. Holmes, Archaeological Studies among the Ancient Cities of Mexico (Chicago, 1895); Walter Hough, Archaeological Field Work in N.-E. Arizona, Museum-Gates Expedition of 1901; Report U.S. National Museum, 1901; Ales. Hrdlicka, "The Chichimecs," Am. Anthropologist, 1903, pp. 385-440; also papers on physical anthropology in the Handbook and Pubs. of the National Museum and the American Museum; Archer Butler Hulbert, Historic Highways of America, 16 vols. (Cleveland, O.); E. F. Im Thurn, Among the Indians of British Guiana (London, 1883); A. H. Keane, Ethnology (Cambridge, 1896); and Man, Past and Present (Cambridge, 1899); A. L. Kroeber, Papers on Eskimo, Arapaho, Languages and Culture of California Tribes, in Pubs. of California University and the American Museum of Natural History, N. Y.; Albert Buell Lewis, "Tribes of the Columbia Valley," Mem. Anthrop. Assoc. vol. i. (1906), with bibliography; Joseph D. McGuire, "The Stone Hammer and its Various Uses," Am. Anthropologist, iv. (1891); Teobert Maler, "Researches in Usumatsintla Valley" (1901- 1903), Peabody Museum Mem. ii.; Clements R. Markham, Cuzco (London, 1836, and Hakluyt Soc., 1859); Marquis de Nadaillac, L'Amerique prehistorique (Paris, 1883); H. J. Nieboer, Slavery as an Industrial System (The Hague, 1900); G. Nordenskjold, The Cliff Dwellers of the Mesa Verde, Colorado (Stockholm, 1893); Zelia Nuttall, The Book of the Life of the Ancient Mexicans (Univ. of Cal., 1903); An Ancient Mexican Codex, special publications of the Peabody Museum (Cambridge, Mass., 1902); Edward John Payne, History of the New World called America (vol. i. 1892, vol. ii. 1899, Oxford ); Antonio Penafiel, Monumentos del Arte Mexicano antiguo (Berlin, 1890); James C. Pilling, "Bibliographies of Indian Languages," Bulls. Bur. Am. Ethnol. 5-19; J. W. Powell, "Indian Linguistic Families," 7th Report Bureau of American Ethnology (1891); H. Hesketh Prichard, Through the Heart of Patagonia (New York, 1902) (appendix on the co-existence of mylodon and man); F. W. Putnam, "Archaeology and Ethnology," vol. vii., Wheeler Surveys, &c. (Washington, 1879); Charles Rau, The Palenque Tablet, Smithsonian Contributions, Washington; Caecilie Seler, Auf alten Wegen in Mexico und Guatemala (Berlin, 1900); Harlan I. Smith, "Archaeological Discoveries in North-Western America," Bull. Am. Geographical Society (May 1906); also Mem. Am. Mus. Nat. History (New York); Karl von den Steinen, Unter den Naturvolkern Zentral-Brasiliens (Berlin, 1884); E. H. Thompson, "Explorations in Loltun and Labna," Memoirs Peabody Museum of Archaeol. and Ethnol. i. 1897; Max Uhle, "Explorations in Peru," Memoir Univ. of Cal. i.; Washington Matthews, Navaho Legends (Cambridge, Mass.); Anne Cary Maudslay and Alfred Percival Maudslay, A Glimpse at Guatemala (London, 1899) (Maudslay's whole series in Biologia Centrali Americana, 1889-1902, are valuable); H. C. Mercer, The Hill Caves of Yucatan (Philadelphia, 1896); Clarence B. Moore, papers on archaeology of Florida and neighbouring states, Journal Acad. Nat. Sc. (Philadelphia, vol. xiii., 1905); Lewis H. Morgan, Smithsonian Contributions, xvii., 1869; and Ancient Society, New York. (O. T. M.)
AMERICA ISLANDS, a name given to Christmas, Fanning, Palmyra and attendant islets, belonging to Great Britain, in the Central Pacific Ocean, between the equator and 6 deg. N., and about 160 deg. W. They are so named because frequented for their guano by traders from the United States. Christmas Island is probably the largest atoll in the Pacific (it is about 90 m. in circuit), and was discovered by Captain Cook in 1777. The islands were annexed by Great Britain in 1888 in view of the laying of the Pacific cable, of which Fanning Island is a station. Guano and mother-of-pearl shells are the principal articles of export; the population of the islands is about 300.
AMERICAN CIVIL WAR (1861-1865). 1. The Civil War between the northern and southern sections of the United States, which began with the bombardment of Fort Sumter on the 12th of April 1861, and came to an end, in the last days of April 1865, with the surrender of the Confederates, was in its scope one of the greatest struggles known to history. Its operations were spread over thousands of miles, vast numbers of men were employed, and both sides fought with an even more relentless determination than is usual when "armed nations" meet in battle. The duration of the war was due to the nature of the country and the enormous distances to be traversed, not to any want of energy, for the armies were in deadly earnest and their battles and combats (of which two thousand four hundred can be named) sterner than those of almost any war in modern history. The political history of the war, its antecedents and its consequences, are dealt with in the articles UNITED STATES (History) and CONFEDERATE STATES. For the purposes of the military narrative it is sufficient to say that eleven southern states seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. Jefferson Davis was chosen president of this confederacy, and an energetic government prepared to repel the expected attack of the "Union" states. The "resumption" by the seceding states of the coast defences (built on land ceded by the various states to the Federal government, and, it was argued, withdrawn therefore by the act of secession) brought on the war.
2. Bombardment of Fort Sumter.—South Carolina, finding other means of seizing or regaining Fort Sumter at Charleston ineffectual, ushered in the great struggle by the bombardment of the 12th of April 1861. Against overwhelming odds the United States troops held out until honour was satisfied; they then surrendered the ruins of the fort and were conveyed by warships to the north. At once the war spirit was aroused. President Lincoln called out 75,000 men. The few southern states which had not yet seceded, refused their contingents and promptly joined the "rebels," but there was no hesitation in the people of the North, and the state troops volunteered in far greater numbers than had been demanded. Nearly the whole of the nation had now definitely taken sides in the quarrel. The Confederacy consisted of eleven states (Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee). All the remaining states and territories stood by the Union, except Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland, in which public opinion was divided. But the first operations of the war brought about the willing or unwilling adhesion of these border states to the Federal cause. Citizens of these states served on either side in the war. The small, but highly efficient, regular army stood by the president, though large numbers of the officers, amongst them many of the best in the service, left it when their states seceded. The navy likewise remained national, and of its officers very few went with their states, for the foreign relations of the navy tended to produce a sentiment wider than local. But the Federal armaments were not on such a scale as to enable the government to cope with a "nation in arms," and the first call for volunteers was followed by more and more, until in the end the Federals had more than a million men under arms. At first the troops on both sides were voluntarily enlisted, but the South quickly, the North later, put in force conscription acts. Reducing the figures to a three years' average, the North furnished about 45% of her military population, the South not less than 90% for that term. Even so the Confederacy was numerically, as in every other respect, far weaker, and rarely, after the second year, opposed equal numbers to the troops of the Union. Throughout the critical period of the war, that is, from the beginning of 1862 up to the day of Chattanooga, three distinct campaigns were always in progress. Virginia, separating the two hostile capitals, Richmond and Washington, was the theatre of the great campaigns of the east, where the flower of both armies fought. In the centre, the valleys of the Ohio, the Cumberland and the Tennessee were the battle-ground of large armies attacking and defending the south and south-eastern states of the Confederacy, while on and beyond the great waterway of the Mississippi was carried on the struggle for those interests, vital to either party, which depended on the mighty river and its affluents. Until the end of 1863 the events in these three regions remain distinct episodes; after that the whole theatre of war is comprised in the "anaconda policy," which concentrated irresistible masses of troops from all sides on the heroic remnants of the Confederacy. In Virginia and the east, Washington, situated on the outpost line of the Union, and separated by the "border" state of Maryland from Pennsylvania and the North, was for some time in great peril. Virginia, and with it the Federal navy yard at Norfolk and the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, was controlled by the rebels. Baltimore was the scene of a bloody riot as the first Northern regiment (6th Mass.) passed through on its way to Washington on the 19th of April, and, until troops could be spared to protect the railway through Maryland, all reinforcements for the national capital had to be brought up to Annapolis by sea. When that state was reduced to order, the Potomac became the front, and, later, the base, of the Northern armies.
3. Missouri and West Virginia.—Missouri, at the other flank of the line, contained an even stronger Confederate element, and it was not without a severe struggle that the energy of Mr (afterwards General) F. P. Blair, and of Nathaniel Lyon, the Unionist military commander, prevailed over the party of secession. In Kentucky the Unionist victory was secured almost without a blow, and, even at the end of 1861, the Confederate outposts west of the Alleghenies lay no farther north than the line Columbus—Bowling Green—Cumberland Gap, though southern Missouri was still a contested ground. Between the Mississippi and the mountains the whole of the year was spent by both sides in preparing for the contest. In the east hostilities began in earnest in western Virginia. This part of the state, strongly Unionist, had striven to prevent secession, and soon became itself a state of the Union (1863). A force under General G. B. McClellan advanced from the Ohio in June and captured Philippi. This promptitude was not only dictated by the necessity of preserving West Virginia, but imposed by the necessity of holding the Baltimore & Ohio railway, which, as the great link between east and west, was essential to the Federal armies. A month later, an easy triumph was obtained by McClellan and Rosecrans against the Confederates of Virginia at Rich Mountain.
4. First Bull Run.—The opposing forces now in the field numbered 190,000 Unionists and half that number of Confederates; sixty-nine warships flew the Stars and Stripes and a number of improvised ironclads and gunboats the rival "Stars and Bars." On the 10th of June a Federal force was defeated at Big Bethel (near Fortress Monroe), and soon afterwards the main Virginian campaign began. On the Potomac the Unionist generals McDowell and Patterson commanded respectively the forces at Washington and Harper's Ferry, opposed by the Confederates under Generals J. E. Johnston and Beauregard at Winchester and at Manassas. The forces of these four commanders were raw but eager, and the people behind them clamoured for a decision. Much against his own judgment, Lieutenant-General Winfield Scott, the Federal general-in-chief, a veteran of the second war with England and of the war with Mexico, felt constrained to order an advance against Beauregard, while Patterson was to hold Johnston in check on the Shenandoah. On the 21st of July took place the first battle of Bull Run (q.v.) between McDowell and Beauregard, fought by the raw troops of both sides with an obstinacy that foreboded the desperate battles of subsequent campaigns. The arrival of Johnston on the previous evening and his lieutenant Kirby Smith at the crisis of the battle (for Patterson's part in the plan had completely failed), turned the scale, and the Federals, not yet disciplined to bear the strain of a great battle, broke and fled in wild rout. The equally raw Confederates were in no condition to pursue. A desultory duel between the forces of Rosecrans and Robert E. Lee in West Virginia, which ended in the withdrawal of the Confederates, and a few combats on the Potomac (Ball's Bluff or Leesburg, October 21; Dranesville, December 20), brought to a close the first campaign in the east.
5. Close of the First Year.—In the end Bull Run did more harm to the victors than to the conquered. The Southerners undeniably rested on their laurels, and enabled McClellan, who was now called to the chief military command at Washington, to raise, organize and train the famous Army of the Potomac, which, in defeat and victory, won its reputation as one of the finest armies of modern history. Johnston meanwhile was similarly employed in fashioning the equally famous Army of northern Virginia, which for three years carried the Confederacy on its bayonets. It was not until the people was stung by the humiliation of Bull Run that the unorganized enthusiasm of the North settled down into an invincible determination to crush the rebellion at all costs. The men of the South were not less in earnest, and the most highly individualized people in the world was thus found ready to accept a rigorous discipline as the only way to success. In the autumn, a spirited attempt was made by the Arkansas Confederates to reoccupy Missouri. Fremont, the Federal commander, proved quite unable to deal with this, and the gallant Lyon was defeated and killed at Wilson's Creek (August 10). Soon afterwards, after a steady resistance, the Unionist garrison of Lexington surrendered to Sterling Price. But the work of Blair and Lyon had not been in vain, and the mere menace of Fremont's advance sufficed to clear the state, while General John Pope, by vigorous action in the field and able civil administration, restored order and quiet in the northern part of the state. In the central theatre (Kentucky), the only event of importance was a daring reconnaissance of the Confederate fort at Columbus on the Mississippi by a small force under Brigadier-General U. S. Grant (action of Belmont, November 7).
6. The Blockade.—Meanwhile the Federal navy had settled down to its fourfold task of blockading the enemy's coast against the export of cotton and the import of war material, protecting the Union commerce afloat, hindering the creation of a Confederate navy and co- operating with the land forces. From the first months of the war the sea power of the Federals was practically unchallenged, and the whole length of the hostile coast-line was open to invasion. But the blockade of 3000 miles of coast was a far more formidable task, and international law required it to be effective in order to be respected. Nevertheless along the whole line some kind of surveillance was established long before the close of 1861, and, in proportion as the number of vessels available increased, the blockade became more and more stringent, until at last it was practically unbreakable at any point save by the fastest steamers working under unusually favourable conditions of wind and weather. As against the civilian enemy the navy strangled commerce; its military preponderance nipped in the bud every successive attempt of the Confederates to create a fleet (for each new vessel as it emerged from the estuary or harbour in which it had been built, was destroyed or driven back), while at any given point a secure base was available for the far- ranging operations of the Union armies. Two hundred and twelve warships or converted merchantmen were in commission on the 1st of January 1862. There had been several coastal successes in 1861, notably the occupation of Hatteras Inlet, North Carolina, by Commodore S. H. Stringham and General B. F. Butler (August 28-29, 1861), and the bombardment and capture of Forts Beauregard and Walker at Port Royal, South Carolina, by the fleet under Commodore S. F. duPont and the forces of General T. W. Sherman (November 7, 1861). Early in 1862 a large expedition under General A. E. Burnside and Commodore L. M. Goldsborough captured Roanoke Island, and the troops penetrated inland as far as Newborn (actions of February 8 and March 14). About the same time Fort Pulaski (the main defence of Savannah, Georgia) was invested and captured. But the greatest and most important enterprise was the capture of New Orleans (q.v.) by Flag-Officer D. G. Farragut and General Butler (April 18-25, 1862). This success opened up the lower Mississippi at the same time as the armies of the west began to move down that river under Grant, who was always accompanied by the gunboat flotilla which had been created on the upper waters in 1861. A slight campaign in New Mexico took place in February 1862, in which several brilliant tactical successes were won by the Texan forces, but no permanent foothold was secured by them.
7. Fort Donelson.—In the early months of 1862 preparations on a gigantic scale were made for the conquest of the South. McClellan and the Army of the Potomac faced Johnston, who with the Army of northern Virginia lay at Manassas, exercising and training his men with no less care than his opponent. Major General D. C. Buell in Kentucky had likewise drilled his troops to a high state of efficiency and was preparing to move against the Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston, whose reputation was that of being the foremost soldier on either side. Farther west the troops on both sides were by no means so well trained, yet active operations began on the Tennessee. Here Fort Donelson on the Cumberland, Fort Henry on the Tennessee and Columbus on the Mississippi guarded the left of the Southern line, Sidney Johnston himself maintaining a precarious advanced position at Bowling Green, with his lieutenants, Zollicoffer and Crittenden, farther east at Mill Springs, and a small force under General Marshall in the mountains of eastern Kentucky. The last-named was soon defeated by General James A. Garfield at Prestonburg, and a few days later General G. H. Thomas won his first victory at Mill Springs (Logan's Cross Roads). Zollicoffer was killed and his army forced to make a disastrous retreat (January 19-20, 1862). The centre of Johnston's line (Forts Henry and Donelson) was next attacked by General Grant and Flag- Officer A. H. Foote. On the 6th of February Fort Henry fell to Foote's gunboat flotilla, and Grant then moved overland to Donelson. His troops were raw and possessed no decisive superiority in numbers, and sharp fighting took place when the garrison of Donelson tried to cut its way out. The attempt failed when almost on the point of success, and the Federals, under the excellent leadership of Generals C. F. Smith, Lew Wallace and McClernand, effected a lodgment in the works. The Confederate commanders proved themselves quite unequal to the crisis, and 15,000 men surrendered with the fort on the 16th of February.
8. Island No. 10 and Pea Ridge.—This very considerable success thrust back Johnston's whole line to New Madrid, Corinth and the Memphis & Charleston railway. The left flank, even after the evacuation of Columbus, was exposed, and the Missouri divisions under Pope quickly seized New Madrid. The adjoining river defences of Island No. 10 in the Mississippi proved more formidable. Foote's gunboats could, and did, run the gauntlet, but a canal had to be cut right round the batteries for the transports, before the land forces could cross the river and attack the works in rear; when this was accomplished, by the skill and energy of all concerned, the place with its garrison of 7000 men surrendered at once (April 8, 1862). Meanwhile, in the Missouri theatre, the Federal general Curtis, outnumbered and outmanoeuvred by the forces of Price and Van Dorn, fought, and by his magnificent tenacity won, the battle of Pea Ridge (March 7-8), which put an end to the war in this quarter. On the whole, the first part of the western campaign was uniformly a brilliant success for the Federal arms. General H. W. Halleck, who was here in control of all the operations of the Federals, had meanwhile ordered Grant's force to ascend the Tennessee river and operate against Corinth; Buell's well-disciplined forces were to march overland from Nashville to join him, and General O. M. Mitchel with a division was sent straight southwards from the same place to cut the Memphis & Charleston line. The latter mission, brilliantly as it was executed, failed, through want of support, to secure a foothold. Had Halleck reinforced Mitchel, that officer might perhaps have forestalled the later victories of Grant and Sherman. As it was, the enterprise became a mere diversion.
9. Shiloh.—Meanwhile Grant was encamped at Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee with an army of 45,000 men, and Buell with 37,000 men about two marches away. Early on the 6th of April A. S. Johnston and Beauregard completely surprised the camps of Grant's divisions. The battle of Shiloh (q.v.) was a savage scuffle between two half- disciplined hosts, contested with a fury rare even in this war. On the 6th the Unionists, scattered and unable to combine, were driven from point to point, and at nightfall barely held their ground on the banks of the river. The losses were enormous on both sides, Johnston himself being amongst the killed. The arrival of Buell enabled the Federals to take the offensive next morning along the whole line, and by sunset on the 7th, after another sanguinary battle, Beauregard was in full retreat. Some weeks afterwards, Halleck with the combined armies of Grant, Buell and Pope began the siege of Corinth, which Beauregard ultimately evacuated a month later. Thus the first campaign of the western armies, completed by the victory of the gunboat flotilla at Memphis (June 6), cleared the Mississippi as far down as Vicksburg, and compelled the Confederates to evacuate the Cumberland and a large portion of the Tennessee basins.
10. The Peninsula.—Many schemes were discussed between McClellan and President Lincoln before the Army of the Potomac finally took the offensive in Virginia. It was eventually decided that General Banks was to oppose "Stonewall" Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, Fremont to hold western Virginia against the same general's enterprise, and McDowell with a strong corps to advance overland to meet McClellan, who, with the main army, was to proceed by sea to Fortress Monroe and thence to advance on Richmond. The James river, afterwards so much used for the Federal operations, was not yet clear, and it was here, in Hampton Roads, that the famous fight took place between the ironclads "Merrimac", (or "Virginia") and "Monitor" (March 8-9, 1862). McClellan's advance was opposed by a small force of Confederates under General Magruder, which, gradually reinforced, held the historic position of Yorktown for a whole month, and only evacuated it on the 3rd of May. Two days later McClellan's advanced troops fought a sharp combat at Williamsburg and the Army of the Potomac rendezvoused on the Chickahominy with its base at White House on the Pamunkey (May 7). J. E. Johnston had, long ere this, fallen back from Manassas towards Richmond, and the two armies were in touch when a serious check was given to McClellan by the brilliant successes of Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley.
11. Jackson's Valley Campaign.—The "Valley of Virginia," called also the "Granary of the Confederacy," was cut into long parallel strips by ridges and rivers, across which passages were rare, and along which the Confederates could, with little fear of interruption from the east, debouch into Maryland and approach Washington itself. Here Stonewall Jackson lay with a small force, and in front of him at the outlet of the valley was Banks, while Fremont threatened him from West Virginia. Jackson had already fought a winter campaign which ended in his defeat at the hands of General Shields at Kernstown (March 23). Banks's main army, early in May, lay far down the Valley at Strasburg and Front Royal, Fremont at the town of McDowell. Jackson's first blow fell on part of Fremont's corps, which was sharply attacked and driven into the mountains (McDowell, May 8). The victor quickly turned upon Banks, destroyed his garrison of Front Royal and nearly surrounded his main body; barely escaping, Banks was again defeated at Winchester and driven back to the Maryland border (May 23-25). These rapid successes paralysed the Federal offensive. McDowell, instead of marching to join McClellan, was ordered to the Valley to assist in "trapping Jackson," an operation which, at one critical moment very near success, ended in the defeat of Fremont at Cross Keys and of McDowell's advanced troops at Port Republic (June 8-9) and the escape of the daring Confederates with trifling loss. McClellan, deprived of McDowell's corps, felt himself reduced to impotence, and three Federal armies were vainly marching up and down the Valley when Johnston fell with all his forces upon the Army of the Potomac. The Federals lay on both sides of the Chickahominy river, and at this moment Johnston heard that McDowell's arrival need not be feared. The course of the battle of Seven Pines or Fair Oaks (q.v.) bore some resemblance to that of Shiloh; a sharp attack found the Unionists unprepared, and only after severe losses and many partial defeats could McClellan check the rebel advance. Here also fortune was against the Confederates. J. E. Johnston fell severely wounded, and in the end a properly connected and combined advance of the Army of the Potomac drove back his successor into the lines of Richmond (May 31-June 1).
12. The Seven Days.—Bad weather and skilful defence completely checked the assailants for another three weeks, and the situation was now materially altered. Jackson with the Valley troops had stealthily left Harrisonburg by rail on the 17th of June, and was now at Ashland in McClellan's rear. General Lee, who had succeeded Johnston in the command of the Army of northern Virginia, proposed to attack the Federals in their line of communication with White House, and passed most of his forces round to the aid of Jackson. The Seven Days' Battle (q.v.) opened with the combat of Mechanicsville on the 26th of June, and the battle of Gaines' Mill on the 27th. Lee soon cut the communication with White House, but McClellan changed his base and retreated towards Harrison's landing on the James river. It was some time before Lee realized this. In the end the Federals were sharply pursued, but McClellan had gained a long start and, fighting victoriously almost every day, at length placed himself in a secure position on the James, which was now patrolled by the Federal warships (June 26-July 1). But the second advance on Richmond was clearly a strategical failure.
13. The Campaign of Perryville.—After the capture of Corinth Halleck had suspended the Federal advance all along the line in the west, and many changes took place about this time. Halleck went to Washington as general-in-chief, Pope was transferred to Virginia, Grant, with his own Army of the Tennessee and Rosecrans's (lately Pope's) Army of the Mississippi, was entrusted with operations on the latter river, while Buell's Army of the Ohio was ordered to east Tennessee to relieve the inhabitants of that district, who, as Unionist sympathizers, were receiving harsh treatment from the Confederate and state authorities. Late in July Braxton Bragg, who had succeeded Beauregard in command of the Confederates, transferred his forces to the neighbourhood of Chattanooga. Tennessee was thenceforward to be the central theatre of war, and too late it was recognized that Mitchel should have been supported in the spring. The forces left south of Corinth were enough to occupy the attention of Grant and Rosecrans, and almost contemporaneously with Lee's advance on Washington (see below), Price and Bragg took the offensive against Grant and Buell respectively. The latter early in August lay near Murfreesboro, covering Nashville, but the Confederate general did not intend to threaten that place. The valleys and ridges of eastern Tennessee screened him as he rapidly marched on Louisville and Cincinnati. The whole of the Southern army in the west swung round on its left wing as the pivot, and Buell only just reached Louisville before his opponent. The Washington authorities, thoroughly dissatisfied, ordered him to turn over the command to General Thomas, but the latter magnanimously declined the offer, and Buell on the 8th of October fought the sanguinary and indecisive battle of Perryville, in consequence of which Bragg retired to Chattanooga.
14. The Western Campaign.—The Union leader was now ordered once more to east Tennessee, but he protested that want of supplies made such a move impossible. Rosecrans, the victor of Corinth and Iuka (see below), was thereupon ordered to replace him. Buell's failure to appreciate political considerations as a part of strategy justified his recall, but the value of his work, like that of McClellan, can hardly be measured by marches and victories. The disgraced general was not again employed, but the men of the Army of the Ohio retained throughout, as did those of the Army of the Potomac, the impress of their first general's discipline and training. Sterling Price in the meanwhile had been ordered forward against Grant and Rosecrans, and Van Dorn promised his assistance. Before the latter could come up, however, Rosecrans defeated Price at Iuka (September 19). The Confederates, not dismayed thereby, effected their junction and moved on Corinth, which was defended by Rosecrans and 23,000 Federal troops. Grant's other forces were split up into detachments, and when Van Dorn, boldly marching right round Rosecrans, descended upon Corinth from the north, Grant could hardly stir to help his subordinate. Rosecrans, however, won the battle of Corinth (October 3-4), though on the evening of the 3rd he had been in a perilous position. The Confederates fell back to the southward, escaping Grant once more, and thus ended the Confederate advance in the West.
15. Pope's Campaign in Virginia.—The Army of Virginia under Pope was composed of the troops lately chasing Jackson in the Valley— Fremont's (now Sigel's), Banks's and McDowell's corps. Halleck (at the Washington headquarters) began by withdrawing McClellan from the James to assist Pope in central Virginia; Lee, thus released from any fear for the safety of Richmond, turned swiftly upon Pope. That officer desired to concentrate his command on Gordonsville, but Jackson was before him at that place, and he fell back on Culpeper. On the 9th of August Banks and Jackson joined battle once more at Cedar Mountain (or Cedar Run); the Federals, though greatly inferior in numbers, attacked with much vigour. Banks was eventually beaten, but he had come very near to success, and Jackson soon retired across the Rapidan, where (the Army of the Potomac having now begun to leave the James) Lee joined him (August 17) with the corps of Longstreet. Pope now fell back behind the Rappahannock without showing fight. Here Halleck's orders bade him cover both Washington and Aquia Creek (whence the Army of the Potomac was to join him), orders almost impossible of execution, as any serious change of position necessarily uncovered one of these lines. The leading troops of the Army of the Potomac were now landed, and set out to join Pope's army, which faced Longstreet and Jackson on the Rappahannock between Bealton and Waterloo. On the 24th of August Lee ordered Jackson to march round Pope's right wing and descend on his rear through Thoroughfare Gap on Manassas and the old battle-ground of 1861. Pope was at this moment about to take the offensive, when a violent storm swelled the rivers and put an end to all movement. On the 26th of August the daring flank march of Jackson's corps ended at Manassas Station (see BULL RUN). Longstreet followed Jackson, and Lee's army was reunited on the battlefield. By the 1st of September the campaign of "Second Manassas" was over. Pope's army and such of the troops of the Army of the Potomac as had been involved in the catastrophe were driven, tired and disheartened, into the Washington lines. The Confederates were once more masters of eastern Virginia.
16. Antietam.—It was at this moment that Bragg was in the full tide of his temporary success in Tennessee and Kentucky, and, after his great victory of Second Bull Run, Lee naturally invaded Maryland, which, it was assumed, had not forgotten its Southern sympathies. But Lee received no real accession of strength, and when McClellan with all available forces moved out of Washington to encounter the Army of northern Virginia, the Confederates were still but a few marches from the point where they had crossed the Potomac. Lee had again divided his army. On the 13th of September Jackson was besieging 11,000 Federals in Harper's Ferry, Longstreet was at Hagerstown, Stuart's cavalry holding the passes of the South Mountain, while McClellan's whole army lay at Frederick. Here extraordinary good fortune put into the enemy's hands a copy of Lee's orders, from which it was clear that the Confederates were dangerously dispersed. Had McClellan moved at once he could have seized the passes without difficulty, as he was aware that he had only cavalry to oppose him. But the 13th was spent in idleness, and stubborn infantry now held the passes. A serious and costly action had to be fought before the way was cleared (battle of South Mountain, September 14). On the following day Harper's Ferry capitulated after a weak defence. Jackson thereupon swiftly rejoined Lee, leaving only a division to carry out the capitulation. On the 16th McClellan found Lee in position behind the Antietam Creek, and on the 17th was fought the sanguinary and obstinately contested battle of Antietam (q.v.) or Sharpsburg. At the price of enormous losses both sides escaped defeat in the field, but Lee's offensive was at an end and he retired into Virginia. Thenceforward the Confederacy was purely on the defensive. Only twice more did the forces of the South strike out (Gettysburg, 1863; Nashville, 1864), and then the offensive was more of a counter-attack than an advance.
17. Vicksburg in 1862.—The Confederate failures of Corinth, Perryville and Antietam were followed by a general advance by the Federals. It is about this time that Vicksburg becomes a place of importance. Farragut from New Orleans, and the gunboat flotilla from the upper waters, had engaged the batteries in June and July, but had returned to their respective stations, while a Federal force under General Williams, which had appeared before the fortress, retired to Baton Rouge. Early in August, Van Dorn, now in command of the place, sent a force to attack Williams, and on the 5th a hard-fought action took place at Baton Rouge, in which Williams was killed but his troops held their own. At this time the minor fortress of Port Hudson was established to guard the rear of Vicksburg. In November Grant, with 57,000 men, began to move down from the north against General J. C. Pemberton, who had superseded the talented Van Dorn. A converging movement made by Grant from Grand Junction, W. T. Sherman from Memphis, and a force from Helena on the Arkansas side, failed, owing to Pemberton's prompt retirement to Oxford, Mississippi, and complications brought about by the intrigues of an able but intractable subordinate, McClernand, induced Grant to make a complete change of plan. Sherman was to proceed down the great river, and join the ships from the Gulf before Vicksburg, while Grant himself drove Pemberton southwards along the Mississippi Central railway. This double plan failed. Grant, as he pushed Pemberton before him to Granada, lengthened day by day his line of communication, and when Van Dorn, ever enterprising, raided the great Federal depot of Holly Springs the game was up. Grant retired hastily, for starvation was imminent, and Pemberton, thus freed, turned upon Sherman, and inflicted a severe defeat on that general at Chickasaw Bayou near Vicksburg (December 29). McClernand now assumed command, and on the 11th of January 1863 captured Fort Hindman near Arkansas Post. This was the solitary gain of the whole operation. Meanwhile Vicksburg was steadily becoming stronger and more formidable.
18. Fredericksburg.—McClellan, after the battle of the Antietam, paused for some time to reorganize his forces, some of which had barely recovered from the effects of Pope's unlucky campaign. He then slowly moved down the east side of the Blue Ridge, while Lee retired up the Valley on the west side of the same range. On the 6th of November the Army of the Potomac was at Warrenton, Lee at Culpeper, and Jackson in the Valley. When on the point of resuming the offensive, McClellan was suddenly superseded by Burnside, one of his corps commanders. Like Buell, McClellan had tempered the tools with which others were to strike; he was not again employed, and in his fall was involved his most brilliant subordinate, Fitz John Porter (q.v..) Burnside was by no means the equal of his predecessor, though a capable subordinate, and indeed only accepted the chief command with reluctance. He began his campaign by cancelling McClellan's operation, and, his own plan being to strike at Richmond from Fredericksburg, he moved the now augmented army to Falmouth opposite that place, hoping to surprise the crossing of the Rappahannock. Delays and neglect, not only at the front, but on the part of the headquarters staff at Washington, permitted Lee to seize the heights of the southern bank in time. When Burnside fought his battle of Fredericksburg (q.v.) an appalling reverse was the result, the more terrible as it was absolutely useless (December 13).
19. Closing Operations of 1862.—Chickasaw Bayou and Fredericksburg ended the Federal initiative in the west and the east; the Army of the Cumberland under Rosecrans alone could claim a victory. Buell's successor retained the positions about Nashville, whilst a new Army of the Ohio prepared to operate in east Tennessee. Bragg lay at Murfreesboro (see STONE RIVER), where Rosecrans attacked him on the 31st of December 1862. A very obstinate and bloody two days' battle ended in Bragg's retirement towards Chattanooga. During these campaigns the United States navy had not been idle. The part played by the gunboats on the upper Mississippi had been most conspicuous, as had been the operations of Farragut's heavier ships in the lower waters of the same river. The work of Du Pont and Goldsborough on the Atlantic coast has been alluded to above. Charleston was attacked without success in 1862, but from June to August 1863 it was besieged by General Gillmore and Admiral Dahlgren, and under great difficulties the Federals secured a lodgment, though it was not until Sherman appeared on the land side early in 1865 that the Confederate defence collapsed. Fort Fisher near Wilmington also underwent a memorable siege by land and sea. Certain incursions were from time to time made at different points along the whole sea-board. Minor operations moreover, especially in Arkansas and southern Missouri, were continually undertaken by both sides during 1862-1863, of which the battle of Prairie Grove, Arkansas (December 7, 1862), was the most notable incident. Meanwhile the blockade had become so stringent that few ordinary vessels could expect to break through, and a special type of steamer came into vogue for the purpose.
20. Capture of Vicksburg.—In 1863 the campaigns once more divided themselves accurately into those of east, centre and west. This year saw the greatest successes and the heaviest reverses of the Union army, Gettysburg and Vicksburg and Chattanooga against Chancellorsville and Chickamauga. Operations began in the west with the second advance upon Vicksburg. One corps of the Army of the Tennessee was detached to cover the Memphis & Charleston railway. Grant, with the other three under Sherman, McClernand and McPherson, moved by water to the neighbourhood of the fortress. Many weeks passed without any success to the Union arms. Vicksburg and its long line of fortifications stood on high bluffs, all else was swampy lowland and intricate waterways. As Sherman in 1862, so now Grant was unable to obtain any foothold on the high ground, and no effective attack was possible until this had been gained. At last, after many trials and failures, Grant took a daring step. The troops with their supplies marched round through a network of lakes and streams to a point south of Vicksburg; Admiral Porter's gunboats and the transports along with them "ran" the batteries. At Bruinsburg, beyond Pemberton's reach, a landing was made on the eastern bank and, without any base of supplies or line of retreat, Grant embarked upon a campaign which made him in the end master of the prize. On the 4th of July Pemberton surrendered the fortress and 37,000 men. Grant's endurance and daring had won what was perhaps the greatest success of the war. General Joseph Johnston with a small relieving army had appeared at Jackson, Mississippi, but had been held in check by General F. P. Blair and a force from the Army of the Tennessee; when Vicksburg surrendered a larger force was at once sent against him, whereupon he retired. In the meanwhile Banks had moved upstream from New Orleans, and laid siege to Port Hudson. Operations were pressed with vigour, and the place surrendered four days after Vicksburg. A Confederate attack on the post of Helena, Arkansas, was the last serious fight on the great river, and before the end of July the first merchant steamer from St Louis discharged her cargo at New Orleans.
21. Chancellorsville and Gettysburg.—In Virginia Burnside had made, in January 1863, an attempt to gain by manoeuvre what he had missed in battle. The sudden swelling of rivers and downpour of rain stopped all movement at once, and the "Mud March" came to an end. A Federal general could retain his hold on the men after a reverse, but not after a farce: Burnside was replaced by General Joseph Hooker, who had a splendid reputation as a subordinate leader. The new commander displayed great energy in reorganizing the Army of the Potomac, the discipline of which had not come unscathed through a career of failure. Lee still held the battlefield of Fredericksburg and had not attempted the offensive, and in April he was much weakened by the detachment of Longstreet's corps to a minor theatre of operations. Hooker's operations began well, Lee was outmanoeuvred and threatened in flank and rear, but the Federals were in the end involved in the confused and disastrous battle of Chancellorsville (q.v.). Stonewall Jackson was mortally wounded, but his men and those of Longstreet's who had remained with Lee defeated Hooker and forced him to retire again beyond the Rappahannock, though he had double Lee's force. But Hooker could at least make himself obeyed, and when Lee initiated his second invasion of the North a month after the battle of Chancellorsville, the Army of the Potomac was as resolute as ever. On the 9th of June the cavalry combat of Brandy Station made it clear to the Federal staff that Lee was about to use the Valley once more to screen an invasion of Maryland. Longstreet, A. P. Hill and Ewell (who were now Lee's corps commanders) were at one time scattered from Strasburg in the Valley to Fredericksburg, and Hooker earnestly begged to be allowed to attack them in detail. Success was certain, but the scheme was vetoed by the Federal headquarters and government, whose first and ruling idea was to keep the Army of the Potomac between Lee and Washington. Hooker was thus compelled to follow Lee's movements. Ewell's men were raiding unchecked as far north as the Susquehanna, while Hooker was compelled to inactivity before the forces of Hill and Longstreet. The Federal general, within his limitations, acted prudently and skilfully. The Army of the Potomac crossed that river only one day later than Lee, and concentrated at Frederick. But Hooker was no longer trusted by the Washington authorities, and his dispositions were interfered with. Not allowed to control the operations of his own men, the unfortunate general resigned his command on the 28th. He was succeeded by General G. G. Meade, who, besides steadiness and ability, possessed the confidence of Lincoln and Halleck which Hooker had lacked. Meade was thus able to move promptly, Lee was compelled to meet him, and the Army of the Potomac began to take up its position on Pipe Creek, screened by Generals Reynolds and Buford at Gettysburg (q.v..) On the 1st of July the heads of Lee's columns engaged Buford's cavalry outposts, and the conflict began. All troops on both sides hurried to the unexpected battlefield, and after a great three days' battle, the Army of the Potomac emerged at last with a decisive victory. On the 4th, as Pemberton surrendered at Vicksburg, Lee drew off his shattered forces. One third of the Army of northern Virginia and one quarter of the Army of the Potomac remained on the field. Pursuit was not seriously undertaken, and the armies manoeuvred back to the old battle-grounds of the Rapidan and the Rappahannock. A war of manoeuvre followed, each side being reduced in turn by successive detachments sent to aid Rosecrans and Bragg in the struggle for Tennessee. In October Lee attempted a third Bull Run campaign on the same lines as the second, but Meade's steadiness foiled him, and he retired to the Rapidan again, where he in turn repulsed Meade's attempt to surprise him (Mine Run, November 26-28, 1863).