Part 10 (1/2)

The case of Maryland was much more critical, for it appeared to involve the fate of the Capital. Was.h.i.+ngton lay between Maryland and Virginia, and if Maryland joined Virginia in rebellion it could hardly be held.

Yet its abandonment might entail the most serious political consequences, certainly an enormous encouragement to the seceding Confederacy, quite probably its immediate recognition by foreign Powers.

At first the omens looked ugly. The populace of Baltimore, the capital of the State, were at this time p.r.o.nouncedly Southern in their sentiments, and the first Ma.s.sachusetts regiment sent to the relief of Was.h.i.+ngton was hustled and stoned in its streets. The soldiers fired on the mob and there were casualties on both sides. Immediately afterwards the legislature of Maryland protested against the violation of its territory. Lincoln acted with admirable sense and caution. He pointed out that the Federal armies could not fly, and that therefore to reach Was.h.i.+ngton they must pa.s.s over the soil of Maryland; but he made no point of their going through Baltimore, and he wisely provided that further contingents should, for a time, proceed by water to Annapolis.

Meanwhile he strained every nerve to rea.s.sure and conciliate Maryland with complete success. Within a month or two Federal troops could be brought to Baltimore without the smallest friction or disturbance. Later the loyalty of Maryland was, as we shall see, put to a much more critical test and pa.s.sed it triumphantly.

The President naturally felt a special interest in the att.i.tude of his native state, Kentucky. That att.i.tude would have perplexed and embarra.s.sed a less discerning statesman. Taking her stand on the dogma of State Sovereignty Kentucky declared herself ”neutral” in the impending war between the United and Confederate States, and forbade the troops of either party to cross her territory. Lincoln could not, of course, recognize the validity of such a declaration, but he was careful to avoid any act in open violation of it. Sometimes openly and sometimes secretly he worked hard to foster, consolidate, and encourage the Union party in Kentucky. With his approval and probably at his suggestion loyalist levies were voluntarily recruited on her soil, drilled and prepared for action. But no Northern troops were sent across her frontier. He was undoubtedly working for a violation of Kentuckian ”neutrality” by the other side. Circ.u.mstances and geographical conditions helped him. The frontier between Kentucky and Tennessee was a mere degree of lat.i.tude corresponding to no militarily defensible line, nor did any such line exist to the south of it capable of covering the capital of Tennessee. On the other hand, an excellent possible line of defence existed in Southern Kentucky. The Confederate commanders were eager to seize it, but the neutrality of Kentucky forbade them. When, however, they saw the hold which Lincoln seemed to be acquiring over the counsels of the ”neutrals,” they felt they dared not risk further delay.

Justifying their act by the presence in Kentucky of armed bodies of local Unionists, they advanced and occupied the critical points of Columbus and Bowling Green, stretching their line between them on Kentuckian soil. The act at once determined the course of the hesitating State. Torn hitherto between loyalty to the Union and loyalty to State rights, she now found the two sentiments synchronize. In the name of her violated neutrality she declared war on the Confederacy and took her place under the Stars and Stripes.

The line between the two warring confederations of States was now definitely fixed, and it only remained to try the issue between them by the arbitrament of the sword.

At first the odds might seem very heavy against the Confederacy, for its total white population was only about five and a half million, while the States arrayed against it mustered well over twenty million. But there were certain considerations which tended to some extent to equalize the contest.

First there is the point which must always be taken into consideration when estimating the chances of war--the political objective aimed at.

The objective of the North was the conquest of the South. But the objective of the South was not the conquest of the North. It was the demonstration that such conquest as the North desired was impracticable, or at least so expensive as not to be worth pursuing. That the Union, if the States that composed it remained united and determined and no other factor were introduced, could eventually defeat the Confederacy was from the first almost mathematically certain; and between complete defeat and conquest there is no such distinction as some have imagined, for a military force which has destroyed all military forces opposed to it can always impose its will unconditionally on the conquered. But that these States would remain united and determined was not certain at all. If the South put up a sufficiently energetic fight, there might arise in the dominant section a considerable body of opinion which felt that too high a price was being paid for the enterprise. Moreover, there was always the possibility and often the probability of another factor--the intervention of some foreign Power in favour of the South, as France had intervened in favour of the Americans in 1781. Such were the not unlikely chances upon which the South was gambling.

Another factor in favour of the South was preparation. South Carolina had begun raising and drilling soldiers for a probable war as soon as Lincoln was elected. The other Southern States had at various intervals followed her example. On the Northern side there had been no preparation whatever under the Buchanan _regime_, and Lincoln had not much chance of attempting such preparation before the war was upon him.

Further, it was probably true that, even untrained, the ma.s.s of Southerners were better fitted for war than the ma.s.s of Northerners.

They were, as a community, agrarian, accustomed to an open-air life, proud of their skill in riding and shooting. The first levies of the North were drawn mostly from the urban population, and consisted largely of clerks, artisans, and men of the professional cla.s.s, in whose previous modes of life there was nothing calculated to prepare them in any way for the duties of a soldier. To this general rule there was, however, an important reservation, of which the fighting at Fort Donelson and s.h.i.+loh afforded an early ill.u.s.tration. In dash and hardihood, and what may be called the raw materials of soldiers.h.i.+p the South, whatever it may have had to teach the North, had little to teach the West.

In the matter of armament the South, though not exactly advantageously placed, was at the beginning not so badly off as it might well have been. Floyd, at one time Buchanan's Secretary for War, was accused, and indeed, after he had joined the Secessionists, virtually admitted having deliberately distributed the arms of the Federal Government to the advantage of the Confederacy. Certainly the outbreak of war found some well-stocked a.r.s.enals within the grasp of the rebellion. It was not until its later phases that the great advantage of the industrial North in facilities for the manufacture of armaments made itself apparent.

But the great advantage which the South possessed, and which accounts for the great measure of military success which it enjoyed, must be regarded as an accidental one. It consisted in the much greater capacity of the commanders whom the opening of the war found in control of its forces. The North had to search for competent generals by a process of trial and error, almost every trial being marked by a disaster; nor till the very end of the war did she discover the two or three men who were equal to their job. The South, on the other hand, had from the beginning the good luck to possess in its higher command more than one captain whose talents were on the highest possible level.

The Confederate Congress was summoned to meet at Richmond on July 20th.

A cry went up from the North that this event should be prevented by the capture before that date of the Confederate capital. The cry was based on an insufficient appreciation of the military resources of the enemy, but it was so vehement and universal that the Government was compelled to yield to it. A considerable army had by this time been collected in Was.h.i.+ngton, and under the command of General McDowell it now advanced into Virginia, its immediate objective being Mana.s.sas Junction. The opposing force was under the Southern commander Beauregard, a Louisianian of French extraction. The other gate of Eastern Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley, was held by Joseph Johnstone, who was to be kept engaged by an aged Union general named Patterson. Johnstone, however, broke contact and got away from Patterson, joining Beauregard behind the line of a small river called Bull Run, to which the latter had retired.

Here McDowell attacked, and the first real battle of the Civil War followed. For a time it wavered between the two sides, but the arrival in flank of the forces of Johnstone's rearguard, which had arrived too late for the opening of the battle, threw the Union right wing into confusion. Panic spread to the whole army, which, with the exception of a small body of regular troops, flung away its arms and fled in panic back to Was.h.i.+ngton.

Thus unauspiciously opened the campaign against the Confederacy. The impression produced on both sides was great. The North set its teeth and determined to wipe out the disgrace at the first possible moment. The South was wild with joy. The too-prevalent impression that the ”Yankees”

were cowards who could not and would not fight seemed confirmed by the first practical experiment. The whole subsequent course of the war showed how false was this impression. It has been admitted that the Southerners were at first, on the whole, both better fitted and better prepared for war than their opponents. But all military history shows that what enables soldiers to face defeat and abstain from panic in the face of apparent disaster is not natural courage, but discipline. Had the fight gone the other way the Southern recruits would probably have acted exactly as did the fugitive Northerners. Indeed, as it was, at an earlier stage of the battle a panic among the Southerners was only averted by the personal exertions of Beauregard, whose horse was shot under him, and by the good conduct of the Virginian contingent and its leader. ”Look at Jackson and his Virginians,” cried out the Southern commander in rallying his men, ”standing like a stone wall.” The great captain thus acclaimed bore ever after, through his brief but splendid military career, the name of ”Stonewall” Jackson.

Bull Run was fought and won in July. The only other important operations of the year consisted in the successful clearing, by the Northern commander, McClellan, of Western Virginia, where a Unionist population had seceded from the Secession. Lincoln, with bold statesmans.h.i.+p, recognized it as a separate State, and thus further consolidated the Unionism of the Border. In recognition of this service McClellan was appointed, in succession to McDowell, to the command of the army of the Potomac, as the force entrusted with the invasion of Eastern Virginia was called.

At the first outbreak of the war English sympathies, except perhaps for a part of the travelled and more or less cosmopolitan aristocracy which found the Southern gentleman a more socially acceptable type than the Yankee, seem to have been decidedly with the North. Public opinion in this country was strong against Slavery, and therefore tended to support the Free States in the contest of which Slavery was generally believed to be the cause. Later this feeling became a little confused. Our people did not understand the peculiar historical conditions which bound the Northern side, and were puzzled and their enthusiasm damped by the President's declaration that he had no intention of interfering with Slavery, and still more by the resolution whereby Congress specifically limited the objective of the war and the preservation of the Union, expressly guaranteeing the permanence of Slavery as a domestic inst.i.tution.

These things made it easy for the advocates of the South to maintain that Slavery had nothing to do with the issue--as, indeed, directly, it had not. Then came Bull Run--the sort of Jack-the-Giant-Killer incident which always and in a very human fas.h.i.+on excites the admiration of sportsmanlike foreigners. One may add to this the fact that the intelligent governing cla.s.s at that time generally regarded the Americans, as the Americans regarded us, as rivals and potential enemies, and would not have been sorry to see one strong power in the New World replaced by two weak ones.

On the other hand, the British Government's very proper proclamation of neutrality as between the United States and the Confederacy had been somewhat unreasonably criticized in America.

Yet the general sympathy with the Free as against the Slave States might have had a better chance of surviving but for the occurrence in November, 1861, of what is called the ”Trent” dispute. The Confederacy was naturally anxious to secure recognition from the Powers of Western Europe, and with this object despatched two representatives, Mason of Virginia and Slidell of South Carolina, the one accredited to the Court of St. James's and the other to the Tuileries. They took pa.s.sage to Europe in a British s.h.i.+p called the _Trent_. The United States cruiser _San Jacinto_, commanded by Captain Wilkes of the American Navy, overhauled this vessel, searched it and seized and carried off the two Confederate envoys.

The act was certainly a breach of international law; but that was almost the smallest part of its irritant effect. In every detail it was calculated to outrage British sentiment. It was an affront offered to us on our own traditional element--the sea. It was also a blow offered to our traditional pride as impartial protectors of political exiles of all kind. The _Times_--in those days a responsible and influential organ of opinion--said quite truly that the indignation felt here had nothing to do with approval of the rebellion; that it would have been just as strong if, instead of Mason and Slidell, the victims had been two of their own Negro slaves. Indeed, for us there were no longer Northern and Southern sympathizers: there were only Englishmen indignant at an insult openly offered to the Union Jack. Northerners might have understood us better, and been less angry at our att.i.tude, if they had remembered how they themselves had felt when the guns opened on Sumter.

The evil was aggravated by the triumphant rejoicings with which the North celebrated the capture and by the complicity of responsible and even official persons in the honours showered on Captain Wilkes. Seward, who had a wild idea that a foreign quarrel would help to heal domestic dissensions, was somewhat disposed to defend the capture. But the eminently just mind of Lincoln quickly saw that it could not be defended, while his prudence perceived the folly of playing the Southern game by forcing England to recognize the Confederacy. Mason and Slidell were returned, and the incident as a diplomatic incident was closed. But it had its part in breeding in these islands a certain antagonism to the Government at Was.h.i.+ngton, and thus encouraging the growing tendency to sympathize with the South.

With the opening of the new year the North was cheered by a signal and very important success. In the course of February Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, essential strategic points on the front which the Confederate invaders had stretched across Southern Kentucky, were captured by General Ulysses Grant, in command of a Western army. The Confederate forces were compelled to a general retirement, sacrificing the defensive line for the sake of which they had turned the ”neutral” border State into an enemy, uncovering the whole of Western Tennessee, including the capital of Nashville, and also yielding the Upper Mississippi. The importance of the latter gain--for the Mississippi, once mastered, would cut the Confederacy in two--was clearly apparent to Beauregard, who at once marched northward and attacked Grant at s.h.i.+loh. The battle was indecisive, but in its military effect it was a success for the North.

Grant was compelled to abandon the ground upon which his army stood, but he kept all the fruits of his recent campaign.

Another incident, not only picturesque in itself but of great importance in the history of naval war, marks the opening months of 1862. After the failure of the first attempt to take Richmond by a _coup de main_ the war became in its essence a siege of the Confederacy. To give it this character, however, one thing was essential--the control of the sea by the Union forces. The regular United States navy--unlike the regular army, which was divided--was fully under the control of the Federal Government, and was able to blockade the Southern ports. Davis had attempted to meet this menace by issuing letters of marque to privateers; but this could be little more than an irritant to the dominant power. It so happened, however, that a discovery had recently been made which was destined to revolutionize the whole character of naval war. Experiments in the steel-plating of s.h.i.+ps had already been made in England and in France, but the first war vessel so fitted for practical use was produced by the Southern Confederacy--the celebrated _Merrimac_. One fine day she steamed into Hampton Roads under the guns of the United States fleet and proceeded to sink s.h.i.+p after s.h.i.+p, the heavy round shot leaping off her like peas. It was a perilous moment, but the Union Government had only been a day behind in perfecting the same experiment. Next day the _Monitor_ arrived on the scene, and the famous duel between the first two ironclads ever constructed commenced.

Each proved invulnerable to the other, for neither side had yet constructed pieces capable of piercing protection, but the victory was so far with the North that the hope that the Confederacy might obtain, by one bold and inventive stroke, the mastery of the sea was for the moment at an end.