to time issued to the papers, and the practice of silence and caution was carefully fostered.
In the attainment of military secrecy and editorial restraint the results at the South, while not ideal, were at least generally satisfactory. When the Confederate General Early was operating in Virginia in 1864 with a force so limited that secrecy was absolutely essential to success, warnings were sent to the papers "not to allude even by implication" to the movements of troops. The correspondent of the Richmond Inquirer had information of Early's movements, but, with a degree of self-control that was rare in his profession, wrote his paper not to make the information public.[1] Even news of victory was sometimes withheld from an eager people lest the enemy should derive the first intelligence of their disaster from Confederate papers.[2] Sherman at various times testified to Confederate success in guarding military information, and declared at one time that while everything his own army attempted to do was paraded, yet he looked in vain for scraps in Southern papers from which to guess at the disposition of the enemy's forces. At another time he referred to the South moving "their forces from Virginia to Mississippi and back without a breath spoken or written".[3] The problem of keeping the enemy mystified seems to have been carefully studied, and at times spurious information was furnished. For instance, in 1862, when Jackson was on his way to Richmond to support Lee, Confederate editors published accounts of reinforcements sent to Jackson in the Shenandoah valley.[4]
- ↑ Lee's Confidential Dispatches, July 15, 1864, pp. 240–241.
- ↑ Jones, Rebel War Clerk's Diary, October 11, 1864.
- ↑ Home Letters of General Sherman, pp. 238, 240.
- ↑ This information was published at the request of Lee, who knew of McClellan's habit of reading the Richmond journals. Reinforcements had actually been sent earlier, but at the time the newspapers had maintained silence. While Lincoln and McClellan were exchanging telegrams concerning the reinforcement of Jackson, the latter was already half-way to Richmond. The importance of secrecy in Jackson's movement lay in the fact that the Confederates were greatly outnumbered, and the true Union policy was to concentrate against Richmond. It was Jackson's diversion in the valley and the panicky dread of an attack upon Washington that caused the Federal authorities to retain McDowell's army corps which had been promised to McClellan, to divert part of McDowell's troops into the valley, and to withhold the forces under Frémont, Banks, Milroy, and Shields, which ought to have co-operated in the Richmond campaign. A disclosure of Jackson's movements, by newspaper indiscretion or otherwise, would have completely upset Confederate strategy. McClellan, at the time, conceived himself to be confronted by an army far superior to his own, and this belief, as well as his clamoring for reinforcements, was published in Northern papers which reached Richmond. This known timidity on the part of their adversary emboldened the Southern generals. Richmond Dispatch, June 18, 1862; Rich-
