CHAPTER EIGHT - FIRST HOSTILITIES
BULL RUN
The population of the newly Confederated States, four times less numerous than that of the Northern States[1], but better prepared for the job of war by the conditions of its daily life, was rapidly organized ; and the first successes were for her. Besides, the North had a complete confidence in the superiority of its scrength, and did not seem in a hurry to use it. It considered the rebellion as a flash in the pan that would die out by itself. The means used to limit its extension proved to be insufficient.
Surprised by its failures , he North was to make, before our own country[2], the cruel experience that cost us so much. To decree the conscription of men is easy. To find the money to equip them and feed them is also possible, but the military qualities, the discipline, the experience, the power of endurance -- the whole moral and physical preparation that is necessary for officers and soldiers -- can′t be decreed.
With blasts of dollars, the North made many cannons ; assembled 500,000, then 800,000, then 2 1/2 million men. It obtained an armed crowd. It did not have, for a long time at least, the army that was gradually to develop during the war itself by dint of perseverance and energy.
In the South, contrary-wise, from the very beginning the effort was general and one could feel that the entire population was participating in it. Besides, if it was rather difficult to instill militarization more rapidly in the commercial and industrial population of the North, there was less to do to transform into soldiers the rugged planters of Virginia or those of Georgia and Alabama, incessantly riding over their immense savannahs ; or again the rugged pioneers of Texas, seasoned by their constant fights against the Indians.
Finally, the majority of officers trained at West Point happened to belong, by their birth, to the Southern states. They gathered under the flag of their native land and brought the new Confederation precious elements of knowledge and method. The first shot was fired April 12th, 1861, against Fort Sumter. A few military engagements followed, but of mediocre importance.
Then, at the end of July, took place the great Battle of Bull Run near Manassas. Attacked by 36,000 Confederates, the Northern army, counting 55,000, scattered after a few hours of fighting, as if taken by a sudden panic.[3] This victory raised very high -- too high -- the hopes of the South ; whereas the defeat gave the North a warning from which they knew how to profit.
As the war was escalating, General Lee, seeing that the Virginian soil itself was invaded, had given in to the call of his fellow citizens. “I am ready to take any position the country assigns to me, and do the best I can ,” he had said with simplicity. He had been sent to the western part of Virginia. He had to repair serious failures and endeavor to organize the defense of the region, but the sympathies of the local people were with the cause of the North, and they ended up by rallying it completely.
Lee was still at that post when the government at Richmond, worrying about the coasts of Georgia and Carolina, threatened by the North′s powerful Navy, put him in charge of fortifying the ports of those two states. This was far from the Supreme Command offered by Scott, but no thought of personal ambition had ever haunted General Lee. To serve his country was the only dream to which he let himself go.
It was known that prodigies of armament had been done in the U. S. A. Navy. It's ships, covered with iron, could bear guns of an enormous caliber, used until now, only in fortifications. The imagination of engineers had taken free rein. They had known how to vary indefinitely the shapes and aptitudes of their ships, among which the famous Monitor, with its mobile tower and its 120 units of gun, was not the most remarkable.
The problem was, therefore, to bring the coastal defenses at par with what one agrees in calling the progress of our times. General Lee fortified the long coast entrusted to him with the consciousness and the care for details that belonged only to him. It is from the middle of his operations that he wrote, from Savannah, to one of his daughters this letter, so tender:
“Are you really sweet sixteen ? That is charming, and I want to see you more than ever. But when that will be, my darling child, I have no idea. I hope after the war is over we may again all be united, and I may have some pleasant years with my dear children, that they may cheer the remnant of my days… Rob says he is told that you are a young woman. I have grown so old, and become so changed, that you would not know me. But I love you just as much as ever, and you know how great a love that is…,
“This is a serious period, indeed, and the time looks dark, but it will brighten again, and I hope a kind Providence will yet smile upon us, and give us freedom and independence…
“… You must do all you can for our dear country. Pray for the aid of our Father in heaven, for our suffering soldiers and their distressed families. I pray day and night for you. May Almighty God guide, guard, and protect you ! I have but little time to write, my dear daughter. you must excuse my short and dull letters. Write me when you can, and love always your devoted father,
During six monchs -- the winter months -- General Lee scoured without rest, nor respite, the coast entrusted to his care. In the first days of Spring, a sudden order summoned him to Richmond, which the new Confederation had turned into its capital. The situation, from excellent the previous year, had become critical, and President Davis, waking up to reality, put Lee in charge of the defense of the whole country.
What had happened ? How did the Confederates, whom we saw victorious in July, 1861, at Bull Run, find themselves, so few months after, in such a dangerous situation ? We shall try to make it understandable.
Blinded by the smokes of their first, and brilliant, success, imagining, because the principle European governments had gratified them with a quality of belligerence, that those
The bounty system bolstered lagging enlistments by paying new recruits to volunteer. The system was plagued by “bounty jumpers,” who signed up, collected their money, and then quickly deserted to sign up with a different regiment, also for cash. One man reportedly repeated the process more than thirty times before he was caught. This wood-engraving (below) shows a crowd of men in front of recruiting office in New York City.
same governments would admit their Confederation to the rank
of a power, the Southerners had believed that their task was almost accomplished and had fallen into a feeling of security that threatened to be fatal.
The soldiers had been discharged for the Winter, and it seemed that the South counted only on its negotiators to achieve its independence.
During that time, the North, on the contrary, had abandoned its dream of an easy triumph, and was organizing itself with a feverish ardor. Its immense financial resources allowed it to spend without sparing in all directions. All the factories were working for the armament of the country, while enormous bonuses were afforded to the enlisting men.[4]
In the first days of Spring, 800,000 men, abundantly equipped with everything that could add to the power of their efforts, had started to move. While Louisiana was taken by surprise by the Federal Fleet ; Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri were conquered almost without fighting. An army followed the course of the Mississippi. Descending from the northern part, it was to take, one after the other, the fortresses built on the banks of the river and use them to isolate the eastern states from their allies in the west.
Lastly, another army, commanded by General McClellan and supported by numerous detached army elements, was going up the River James at that very moment, and was threatening Richmond. The Congress of the South realized the peril. At the time, it had, through an exaggerated respect of legality, sent home the soldiers engaged for three months.
It′s under those circumstances that General Lee was called to Richmond to serve as military adviser to President Jefferson Davis. Time was running out. There was not a single army to oppose to the invaders. The danger, so obvious, helped Lee to obtain energetic measures, and conscription was established.
Men then arrived, but resources to arm and equip the recruits were lacking. The strong Northern Navy blocked the coasts vigorously ; and the South, congested with cotton, tobacco, sugar, could not exchange its products against the arms, the metals -- the food even -- that it lacked. The City of Richmond, the first to be threatened, did not have a single gun on its walls ; and when it received a provision of powder, the Federals were only a few miles away.
FAIR
OAKS
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A HAVEN FOR THE WOUNDED — THE “SEVEN PINES” FARM-HOUSE SERVING AS A HOSPITAL
FOR HOOKER′S DIVISION, SHORTLY AFTER THE BATTLE OF MAY 30-JUNE 1, 1862
- ↑ According to The Count of Paris, the difference would even be greater. His calculations evaluate the number of men capable of bearing arms in the North at 4 million ; in the South, at 680,000. He adds that, in the South, 351,000 men were enrolled the first year.
- ↑ France -- Mrs. Boissonnas is French.
- ↑ The numbers we give here, and those we will give further on, of the strength present at each battle, are borrowed from Swinton, the historian for the North. They have been adopted by Miss Mason in her A Popular Life of General Robert E . Lee, excellent work from which we have often borrowed, and by other writers of different tendencies.
- ↑ In 1862, already, the volunteer, besides _____ francs, received __ francs per month ; and his wife, __ francs per month. (Taken from The Potomac Campaign, The Prince de Joinville.)