THE BORDER STATES 653 it decided on a neutral ground towards the war.1 President Lincoln tacitly consented to the neutral position of Kentucky, on the supposition that the soil of the state would soon be invaded by Confederate armies, when the people would gladly welcome Federal troops to expel them; and this is exactly what came to pass. On the 20th of June the state voted for members of Congress, and to the lasting joy of the administration the Union party polled nearly three votes to one for the secessionists, electing nine out of ten members by a combined majority of 55,000. Thus ended the hopes of the disunionists for Kentucky, though the state, like Maryland and Missouri, furnished many soldiers for each side in the war. OPENING OF HOSTILITIES IN VIRGINIA AND MISSOURI President Lincoln's call for 75,000 men and for an extra session of Congress was answered by President Davis by a call for 100,000 2 men and for an extra session of the southern Congress. The Confederate Congress met on the 29th of April, authorized the raising of $50,000,000, forbade the payment of all debts due from the southern people to individuals or corporations in the free states, admitted Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas to the Confeder acy, and moved the capital to Richmond. Lincoln, on May 3, called for 42,000 more volunteers for three years unless sooner discharged, for an increase of the regular army by 22,714 men, and for the enlistment of 18,000 seamen for the navy. It was now plain that both sides were preparing for war in earnest. The great immediate concern of the Lincoln administration was to make safe the city of Washington. Soon after the fall of Sumter a member of Davis's Cabinet had boasted that by the first of May the Confederate flag would float over the capital at Washington. This threat was published throughout the North, and it caused much fright among the people. The fear was greatly increased by the knowledge of the gathering of the Confederate armies in northern Virginia and the inability of the northern troops to pass through Baltimore on their way Washington. to the defense of the capital. No attempt to take the city was made by the Confederates, but had such an attempt been Peril of 1 Nevertheless the Confederate Congress went through the farce in December, 1861, of admitting Kentucky into the Confederacy. 2 Or rather, he stated in his message that such an army was being raised under authority of a preceding act of Congress. made before the 25th of April, it might have succeeded. But all fears were scattered on that day by the arrival of two New York and Massachusetts regiments. And others were coming. Before the end of May 50,000 troops had gathered in the city, and they crossed the Potomac and took possession of Alexandria and of the famous heights of Arlington. Here they paused; and the Confederate army, scattered from Harpers Ferry to Norfolk, also remained inactive. Meantime the war had actually begun in another quarter. Early in May Governor Letcher of Virginia called for the militia of that state to assemble under arms for the purpose of repelling an apprehended invasion from the "government at Washington." This meant nothing less than an enlistment in the Confederate service. But the people living beyond the Alleghanies, throughout that section of Virginia bordering on Ohio and Pennsylvania, were not in sympathy with the rebellion. They had few slaves, and their interests lay with the North. Why should they take up arms against the Union and the flag which they loved? They refused to do so; they held mass meetings in Wheeling and other cities, and declared their adherence to the Union. Some forty counties, including a few east of the mountains, held a convention in June, and the delegates were almost unanimous in their desire to have the western counties break away from the old state and form a new one. One of the chief objects of the convention was to bring about a division of the state. The convention chose Francis H. Pierpont governor, not of the proposed new state, but of Virginia, taking the ground that the loyal citizens of the state truly represented it, and that the disunion government at Richmond was illegal. It was this government that applied to Washington for a division of the state. Some time later senators and representatives were sent to the Congress not at Richmond, but at Washington. A constitution was framed for the new state, and was ratified by the people in May, 1862. The following year West Virginia became a state in the West Union, Congress agreeing with the loyal citizens that Virginia. they legally represented Virginia. The clause in the Federal Constitution forbidding the division of any state without 1 As Colonel Ellsworth, the commander of the New York Fire Zouaves, entered Alexandria he saw a Confederate flag flying over a hotel, and, mounting the stair on the inside, he hauled it down. As he came down the stairway he was met by the hotel keeper, who shot Ellsworth dead on sight. The next instant the hotel keeper was shot by one of Ellsworth's men. See Greeley, Vol. I, p. 533. PREPARING FOR BATTLE 655 its consent was overcome on the ground that, as secession was illegal and void, the West Virginians represented Virginia, and their consent to the division was deemed sufficient. Governor Pierpont had applied to President Lincoln for assistance in driving out the secessionists. The request was granted, and western Virginia became the first battle ground of the Civil War; and the first hero of the war, aside from Major Anderson, was George B. McClellan, a young army officer who had McClellan in resigned his commission and was now president of a West railroad company and residing in Cincinnati. His first Virginia. serious work was to clear western Virginia of Confederates, and he addressed himself to the task with great vigor. In a series of skirmishes, covering but a few weeks, he drove the enemy entirely out of that part of Virginia. The Union loss, according to McClellan's report, was twenty killed and sixty wounded, while the loss of the enemy was about twenty times as great, with a thousand taken prisoners. This preliminary work was very important in its results. It saved that entire section for the Union, reëstablished the broken railroad lines westward from Washington, and pointed toward McClellan as the coming man in the great war that was to follow. While these things were going on, conditions were maturing in eastern Virginia for the first great battle of the war. Public opinion at the North was impatient at the inaction of the army along the Potomac. Why not strike a blow for the Union? This was the cry all over the North, and though General Winfield Scott, the commander in chief, did not favor giving battle at that moment, the pressure was too great to be resisted. General Irvin McDowell held 45,000 men on the Potomac opposite Washington; General Butler, who had been transferred from Baltimore, occupied Fortress Monroe with 10,000, while General Patterson marched from Pennsylvania into Virginia with 20,000 men. Opposed to these were General J. B. Magruder, facing Butler with about the same force; General Joseph E. Johnston with some 12,000 men, who had retreated from Harpers Ferry to Winchester at the approach of Patterson; while opposite McDowell, with his base at Manassas, Beauregard,' who in former years had been a classmate of McDowell at West Point, held the main Confederate army of about 20,000 men. Such 1 Beauregard had resigned from the United States army, as had also many of the Confederate officers, some two hundred in all. advance. was the military situation in eastern Virginia when the administration decided on a general advance for the purpose of offering battle. On the 16th of July McDowell moved forward with 30,000 men, to attack Beauregard at Manassas. Every indication pointed to a northern victory. McDowell was a good strategist. McDowell's The plan of the coming battle was his own, though the general movements were directed from Washington by General Scott. The North was in high spirits in anticipation of the battle. Many members of Congress drove out from Washington to receive the earliest word of the expected victory of the "Grand Army." And it would have been realized but for the unaccountable action of General Patterson, who failed to detain Johnston at Winchester as he was ordered to do. Instead of doing this he withdrew to Charleston, twenty-two miles away, and Johnston hastened to join Beauregard with the major part of his army. Patterson was a veteran of the War of 1812 and of the Mexican War, and though he was a Breckenridge Democrat in the campaign of 1860, there is little ground to question his loyalty to the Union. His costly blunder was the result of incapacity. He was speedily relieved of his command, and Nathaniel P. Banks was appointed in his stead. McDowell had planned the battle with reference to Beauregard's army alone, and did not know of the arrival of Johnston till after Battle of the battle. He decided to make the attack on Sunday, July 21, and before three o'clock in the morning his army moved from Centreville in three columns under Generals Tyler, Hunter, and Heintzelman. Tyler was to make a feint on Beauregard's left; the other two were to make a long detour and cross Bull Run at Sudley Ford and make the real attack. Hunter's division met the enemy at ten o'clock and opened fire. In a short time the Confederates were driven back a mile and a half to a plateau where General Thomas J. Jackson stood with a brigade awaiting the Union forces. At this point the Confederate General Bee, who was mortally wounded later in the day, is said to have exclaimed to his men, "Look at Jackson, there he stands like a stone wall!"—and from that time this remarkable commander, whose powers were yet to be revealed, was known as "Stonewall" Jackson. The firing was heard by Beauregard and Johnston, then four miles away, and they galloped to the scene of the conflict. Johnston 1 Two other divisions, under Miles and Runyon, were left to guard the base at Centreville and the communications with Washington. BATTLE OF BULL RUN 657 was the ranking officer, but he approved most of the plans of Beauregard, and the two worked in harmony during the day. They arrived on the field at noon and ordered an immediate renewal of the fight. The battle raged for three hours longer. The divisions of Tyler and Heinzelman having joined that of Hunter, the Union forces surged up the slope and gained possession of the hill. They were driven back by Jackson at the point of the bayonet; but they rallied and regained their ground, sweeping the Confederates from the field. Such was the condition at three o'clock. The Union troops began to rejoice in their victory. Union rout. But at this moment the Confederates began to cheer and to move forward with great confidence. Why the sudden change? General Kirby Smith had just arrived with the remnant of Johnston's army, over twenty-five hundred men. These fresh troops were joined to the army of Beauregard and the whole force moved impetuously against McDowell. The word now flew through the Union ranks that Johnston's army had arrived, and the untrained militia were seized with a sudden fear. They began to waver, to retreat down the slope; and in a little time they were a panic-stricken, disorganized mass, fleeing for their lives across the Virginia plains. In vain did McDowell and his officers attempt to rally the frightened men. They believed the Confederates were pursuing them (which was not true), and they fled on and on till late in the night, many of them never stopping till they reached the heights of Arlington or Washington, thirty miles from the scene of the conflict. Thus ended the famous, disastrous battle of Bull Run. The news of the defeat at Bull Run caused deep depression and indignation at the North. McDowell was severely censured, but he had done nobly, and deserved no blame. The army was denounced as a band of cowards, but unfairly and unjustly. Most of them were untrained in military affairs; they had enlisted in the war through a patriotic impulse, with little knowledge of the real character of war. They had been thrown into a panic, had lost their heads and become uncontrollable through a sudden fright. Such an experience might come to any body of raw militia, but it would hardly be possible with regulars. 1 They had not yet learned that Johnston with most of his army had arrived on Saturday. The Union loss in this battle was 481 killed, 1011 wounded, and about 1300 prisoners, many of whom were wounded. The Confederate loss was 387 killed, 1582 wounded, and a few prisoners. The Union army also lost 28 cannon, 5000 muskets, and half a million cartridges. |