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    Articles of War: Winners, Losers, and Some Who Were Both During the Civil War
    Articles of War: Winners, Losers, and Some Who Were Both During the Civil War
    Articles of War: Winners, Losers, and Some Who Were Both During the Civil War
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    Articles of War: Winners, Losers, and Some Who Were Both During the Civil War

    By Albert S. Castel

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    The American Civil War is filled with fascinating characters. This collection of biographical essays on the “winners and losers” of the Civil War covers some of the most intriguing: Ulysses S. Grant, George B. McClellan, Sam Houston, Albert Sidney Johnston, Nathan Bedford Forrest, and William Clarke Quantrill, to name just a few.
    In Articles of War you’ll discover:
    Some Winners
    ·Ulysses S. Grant, whose brilliant Vicksburg Campaign was a model of military strategy
    ·John A. “Black Jack” Logan, one of the war’s few successful political generals
    ·Nathan Bedford Forrest, a natural military genius despite his “Lost Cause”
    Some Losers
    ·George B. McClellan, whose lack of eagerness cost the Union two opportunities to win the war
    ·Earl Van Dorn, a victim of sheer bad luck
    ·Theophilus H. Holmes, the little-known incompetent, called “granny Holmes” by his own men
    Some Winners Who Became Losers
    ·Albert Sidney Johnston, the Confederacy’s “General Who Might Have Been”
    ·Leonidas Polk, whose initial good luck eventually ran out
    ·William Clarke Quantrill, a winner in death but a loser in life
    And Some Losers Who Became Winners
    ·Sam Houston, who, had he lived longer, could have been a winner in Texas
    ·William Tecumseh Sherman, an exceptional man; a capable, but flawed, commander
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStackpole Books
    Release dateJun 1, 2001
    ISBN9780811753647
    Articles of War: Winners, Losers, and Some Who Were Both During the Civil War

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      Articles of War - Albert S. Castel

      Oady

      PROLOGUE

      HOW THE WAR BEGAN: FORT SUMTER—1861

      This article was first published in October 1976 as a special issue of Civil War Times Illustrated and subsequently reissued as a booklet by the Eastern National Park and Monument Association for sale at Civil War battlefield parks. Basically it recounts the political duel between Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. The former, as president of the United States, believed that the retention of Fort Sumter by the Federal government was essential to the preservation of the Union. The latter, as president of the Confederate States, believed that securing possession of the fort was necessary to the establishment of the Confederacy as an independent nation and to it being joined by those slave states that had not yet seceded. Consequently, neither Lincoln nor Davis could concede what the other desired. The inevitable outcome was the Confederate bombardment of Sumter and the beginning of the Civil War. This in turn led to Davis gaining the fort and the accession to the Confederacy of four more states; thus for him it was a victory. On the other hand, despite defeat at Sumter, Lincoln also triumphed, in that he achieved—as a result of the South having fired the first shot—a North united in its determination to maintain the Union. After four years of carnage it did so and Lincoln emerged as the winner and Davis, the loser.

      IN 1846 CONGRESSMAN JEFFERSON DAVIS OF MISSISSIPPI PRESENTED TO the House of Representatives a resolution calling for the replacement of Federal troops in all coastal forts by state militia. The proposal died in committee, and shortly thereafter Davis resigned from Congress to lead the red-shirted 1st Mississippi Rifles to war and glory in Mexico.

      Now it was the morning of April 10, 1861, and Davis was president of the newly proclaimed Confederate States of America. As he met with his cabinet in a Montgomery, Alabama, hotel room he had good reason to regret the failure of that resolution fifteen years earlier. For had it passed, he would not have had to make the decision he was about to make: Order Brigadier General P. G. T. Beauregard, commander of Confederate forces at Charleston, South Carolina, to demand the surrender of the Federal garrison on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.

      But before Davis made this decision, other men had made other decisions—a fateful trail of decisions leading to that Montgomery hotel room on the morning of April 10, 1861.

      In a sense, the first of those decisions went back to 1829 when the War Department dumped tons of granite rubble brought from New England on a sandspit at the mouth of Charleston Harbor. On the foundation so formed a fort named after the South Carolina Revolutionary War hero, Thomas Sumter, was built.

      It was built very slowly, however, as Congress appropriated the needed money in driblets. Thirty-one years later it was over 80 percent complete, though without a garrison and with most of its cannons unmounted. Even so, potentially it was quite formidable. Surrounded by the sea, its five-sided brick walls stood 50 feet high and varied in thickness from 12 feet at the base to 8½ feet at the top. Adequately manned, gunned, and supplied, it could—and in fact eventually would—resist the most powerful assaults.

      Three and a third miles to the northwest across the harbor lay Charleston. Here on December 20, 1860, a state convention voted unanimously that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of ‘The United States of America,’ is hereby dissolved. During the rest of that day and all through the night, jubilant crowds celebrated.

      To South Carolinians the election of the Black Republican Abraham Lincoln to the presidency in November had been tantamount to a declaration of war by the North on the South. They had responded by secession, the doctrine so long advocated by their great leader, John C. Calhoun, now lying in Charleston’s St. Philip’s churchyard beneath a marble monument. Soon, they were confident, the other slave states would join them in forming a glorious Southern Confederacy.

      Meanwhile South Carolina would be a nation among nations. For that reason the continued presence of foreign United States troops in the forts that controlled Charleston’s harbor was more than irritating—it was intolerable. They must go.

      Hopefully the Federal government would pull them out. To that end Governor Francis Pickens of South Carolina appointed three commissioners to go to Washington and negotiate the evacuation of the forts. But if the troops did not leave voluntarily, they would have to be removed.

      That did not appear difficult to accomplish. Hundreds of militia, Citadel cadets, and freelance volunteers were gathering in Charleston, spoiling for a fight. In contrast, the United States soldiers numbered a scant eighty-five—nine officers and seventy-six enlisted men, of whom eight of the latter were musicians. Furthermore, nearly all of these troops were stationed in Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island. Designed to repel sea attack, this fort was practically defenseless on its land side: Overlooking it were high sand dunes from which riflemen could slaughter the garrison.

      In 1780 Major Richard Anderson had gallantly but unsuccessfully defended the original Fort Moultrie against British assault. Eighty years later his son, Major Robert Anderson of the 1st U.S. Artillery, arrived at the new Fort Moultrie and took command of the Federal troops stationed at Charleston.

      Secretary of War John B. Floyd of the lame-duck Buchanan administration personally selected him for the post in November 1860. Fifty-five, a West Pointer, and twice promoted for bravery in battle, Anderson was an experienced and competent officer—exactly what was needed at Charleston. Moreover, his background should have been reassuring to the Carolinians. As a Kentuckian he qualified as a Southerner, he had owned slaves, and his wife came from an aristocratic Georgia family. Indeed, it is just possible that Floyd, a Virginian, hoped that the major would do what he himself was already doing: Support secession.

      If so, Floyd had picked the wrong man. Anderson may have been a Southerner, but he was dedicated to Duty, Honor, Country. Above all he was resolved to do everything in his power consistent with those principles to avoid a clash at Charleston that might plunge the nation into civil war.

      That is why Fort Moultrie’s vulnerability alarmed him. As early as November 23 he reported to the War Department that the Carolinians had a settled determination . . . to obtain possession of this work. Since then they had made their determination even more evident. Should they attack, duty would compel him, despite the odds, to resist. And that meant war.

      Hence he decided to transfer his troops to Fort Sumter. There they would be much more secure, and so would peace. For on being confronted with a target less tempting than Moultrie, presumably the Carolinians would be less bellicose.

      To be sure, Floyd had instructed him on December 11 to avoid every act which would needlessly tend to provoke the Carolinians. But Floyd had also authorized him to move his command to either of the other two forts in Charleston Harbor should he have tangible evidence of a design to proceed to a hostile act. He ignored a confidential letter from Floyd, received December 23, which in effect urged him to surrender the forts rather than make a vain and useless sacrifice of your life and the lives of the men under your command, upon a mere point of honor. Also he was unaware that on December 10 President Buchanan had informally promised a group of South Carolina congressmen that no change would be made in the military status quo at Charleston.

      The transfer to Fort Sumter took place December 26–27. Private John Thompson described how it was managed in a letter to his father in Ireland:

      Our Commander set about fortifying himself in Moultrie, with such unparalelled [sic] vigor that our opponents soon became thoroughly convinced that he intended to make a desperate stand in the position he then held, and the duty of watching us was performed with a laxity corresponding to the strength of their conviction. So completely did our Commander keep his own counsel, that none in the garrison[,] officer or soldier[,] even dreamed that he contemplated a move. . . .

      On the night of the 26th Dec. shortly after sun down, we were formed in heavy marching order and quietly marched out of Moultrie leaving only a few men behind on Guard, and embarking on board a number of small boats . . . were safely landed in Sumter.

      Several schooners carrying food, munitions, medical supplies, and forty-five army wives and children followed the soldiers. In the morning the rear guard also made the crossing after spiking Moultrie’s cannons and setting fire to their carriages.

      The column of smoke that rose from Moultrie merely confirmed what had been reported in Charleston by the crew of a harbor patrol boat:

      The Federals had slipped away to Sumter. The Carolinians fumed with anger and chagrin, and Governor Pickens promptly sent Colonel J. Johnston Pettigrew to the fort.

      Pettigrew accused Anderson of breaking Buchanan’s December 10 promise to maintain the existing military situation at Charleston. Anderson replied, truthfully enough, that he knew of no such promise, that he had every right to move to Sumter, and that he had done so to protect his men and prevent bloodshed. In this controversy between the North and South, he added, my sympathies are entirely with the South—but his duty came first.

      Well, sir, said Pettigrew with a bow, however that may be, the Governor of the State directs me to say to you, courteously but peremptorily, to return to Fort Moultrie.

      I cannot and will not go back, answered Anderson.

      Pettigrew left. Soon afterward, at noon, Anderson assembled his troops on Sumter’s parade ground. Chaplain Matthias Harris delivered a prayer of thanksgiving; then to the accompaniment of the band playing Hail Columbia, Anderson personally raised the United States flag that he had brought from Moultrie to the top of a pole, where it waved above the fort.

      In Charleston Pickens, on learning that Anderson refused to return to Moultrie, ordered the state troops to seize that fort, Castle Pinckney, and the Federal arsenal, treasury, customs house, and post office. He believed that he was carrying out justified retaliation against aggression. Instead he committed a bad blunder.

      Buchanan would retain the constitutional powers of the presidency until March 4, 1861. He no longer possessed its moral and political authority, however; he was old and tired, and his overriding desire was to finish out his term in peace—and with the nation still at peace.

      To that end he sought to appease the South and thus prevent war. The North, he declared, was to blame for the sectional crisis. Secession, he announced, was unconstitutional—but so would be any attempt of the Federal government to resist it by coercion. He refused to reinforce the tiny garrison at Charleston and even ordered it to return muskets and ammunition it had drawn from its own arsenal. This was in keeping with his December 10 promise to the South Carolina congressmen, which, along with the instructions sent to Anderson, he hoped would keep the Charleston powder keg from exploding.

      On December 26 the three commissioners appointed by Pickens to negotiate the evacuation of the Charleston forts arrived in Washington. William Trescot, a South Carolinian who was acting as an intermediary, informed Buchanan of their arrival and purpose. Buchanan replied that he would see them as private gentlemen and that he would submit to Congress their proposal that the forts and other Federal facilities in Charleston be turned over to South Carolina in exchange for a fair monetary compensation.

      The following morning the commissioners were discussing matters in the mansion Trescot had rented for them when a burly, bearded man came slamming through the door. He was Senator Louis T. Wigfall of Texas, a native South Carolinian and fanatical secessionist. A telegram, he announced, had just arrived from Charleston: Anderson had spiked his guns at Moultrie and moved his troops to Sumter.

      The commissioners refused to believe it. So did Secretary of War Floyd, who also showed up. Then came another telegram from Charleston confirming the first.

      Trescot, accompanied by two top Southern leaders, Senators Jefferson Davis of Mississippi and Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia, hastened to the White House. Davis told the president the news from Charleston. Buchanan was dumbfounded. I call God to witness, he exclaimed, this is not only without but against my orders. It is against my policy.

      The Southerners urged him to order Anderson back to Moultrie. Otherwise, they warned, South Carolina almost surely would seize the other forts, attack Sumter, and begin civil war. But he refused to do so until he had consulted with his cabinet.

      At the cabinet meeting Floyd charged that Anderson had disobeyed orders. Secretary of State Jeremiah S. Black, a Pennsylvanian, disagreed. To settle the issue, Buchanan and his secretaries examined a copy of Anderson’s December 11 instructions. There it was, the authorization to leave Moultrie whenever you have tangible evidence of a design to proceed to a hostile act. Obviously what constituted tangible evidence had to be determined by Anderson—and he had so determined.

      Nevertheless, Floyd (who had been asked several days previously by Buchanan to resign for having misappropriated $870,000 of government funds) insisted that Anderson be ordered back to Moultrie. Unless this was done, he argued, Buchanan would be guilty of breaking his pledge to the South Carolina congressmen.

      Attorney General Edwin Stanton, backed by the other Northern cabinet members, took a different view. A President of the United States who would make such an order, he asserted, would be guilty of treason.

      Oh, no! not so bad as that, my friend! cried Buchanan in dismay. Not so bad as that!

      The cabinet meeting ended without a decision. Several days later Floyd finally resigned. Eventually, as commander of Confederate forces at Fort Donelson, he would render great service—to the Union cause.

      On December 28 the South Carolina commissioners visited the White House. They demanded that Anderson’s troops be removed from Charleston Harbor, as they are a standing menace which renders negotiations impossible and threatens a bloody issue. They also pressed for an immediate reply to this ultimatum.

      Again Buchanan refused to commit himself: You don’t give me time to consider; you don’t give me time to say my prayers. I always say my prayers when required to act upon any great State affair.

      As Trescot shrewdly noted, Buchanan had a fixed purpose to be undecided. Yet he could not avoid making a decision much longer. What would it be?

      His impulse was to grant the Carolinians their demand: Anything to forestall war. But he felt countervailing pressures. The North cheered Anderson’s action and hailed the pro-Southern major as a hero. To repudiate what he had done by ordering him to evacuate Sumter would raise a storm that might result in impeachment. Moreover, Black, a close friend, declared that he would resign if the Sumter garrison was pulled out—and undoubtedly the other Northern cabinet members would follow suit.

      What tipped the balance, however, was Pickens’s seizure of Moultrie, Pinckney, and the other Federal installations in Charleston. This was, Black pointed out, an act of aggression that could not be justified. It was also something which could not be ignored by a president of the United States without violating his oath of office.

      Hence on December 30 Buchanan sent a reply, drafted by Black, to the South Carolina commissioners. After referring to the armed action taken by South Carolina against Federal property in Charleston, Buchanan stated: It is under . . . these circumstances that I am urged immediately to withdraw the troops from the harbor of Charleston, and am informed that without this, negotiation is impossible. This I cannot do: This I will not do. Instead, Sumter would be defended, and I do not perceive how such a defense can be construed into a menace of the city of Charleston.

      Having thus decided, Buchanan next gave the commanding general of the army, Winfield Scott, the go-ahead for a plan proposed by him earlier: To send the warship Brooklyn with supplies and 250 troops from Fort Monroe in Virginia to reinforce Sumter.

      At Sumter Anderson’s soldiers and a number of loyal civilian workers busily prepared to resist attack, which they expected at any time. They had a lot to do. Although the fort contained sixty-six cannons, only fifteen had been mounted prior to their arrival. There was plenty of powder and shot, but it lay scattered about the parade ground amidst piles of bricks and sand. Means for repelling a landing on the wharf, which lay outside the wooden gate on the south or gorge wall, were practically nonexistent.

      Fortunately for the garrison, the Carolinians thought the fort impregnable. Twenty-five well-drilled men could hold it against all Charleston, warned the Charleston Courier on December 31. Its batteries could level Fort Moultrie with the ground in a few hours, and shell the city effectively. . . . Besides, the South Carolinians were confident that Buchanan would evacuate the fort, thus making an attack unnecessary.

      Hence they concentrated on building up their own defenses. They removed the soft iron nails with which the Federals, for lack of anything better, had spiked Moultrie’s cannons, then remounted the big guns on new carriages. At the same time they constructed a battery on the east shore of Morris Island parallel to Charleston Harbor’s main channel. Hundreds of black slaves and white volunteers did the work. Among the latter was sixty-seven-year-old Edmund Ruffin of Virginia. For years he had dreamed and preached secession. Now he had come to Charleston to commit a little treason.

      While the Carolinians labored, so did the garrison. By early January, Anderson was able to report to the War Department that he could hold this fort against any force which can be brought against me, and that therefore the government could reinforce him at its leisure.

      This was exactly what the government was doing. First Buchanan postponed sending the Brooklyn to Sumter until the South Carolina commissioners replied to his rejection of their ultimatum. Then General Scott had some second thoughts—he feared that the deep-draft Brooklyn would have trouble crossing the bar of Charleston Harbor and that Virginia secessionists might seize Fort Monroe if its garrison was reduced. So with Buchanan’s approval he arranged to charter the unarmed paddle wheeler Star of the West at New York, where several days were consumed loading her with supplies and 200 troops. He and Buchanan also hoped that a vessel of this type would be less provocative to the Carolinians than a warship.

      Because of this shilly-shallying the relief expedition did not set forth until January 5. Worse, not until that date did the War Department get around to dispatching a letter to Anderson informing him that the Star of the West was on the way with reinforcements and instructing him to aid the ship if she was attacked. Furthermore, instead of sending this vital message by special courier, it entrusted it to the regular mail, apparently oblivious to the possibility that the South Carolina authorities might be intercepting all letters to Sumter—which in fact they had been doing for a week.

      Consequently Anderson and his men remained unaware that a relief expedition was on the way. In fact, they were about the only ones in the Charleston area who did not know. Despite efforts by Buchanan and Scott to keep the Star of the West’s voyage secret, Southern sympathizers in Washington and New York provided ample advance warning. Panic gripped Charleston, and the South Carolina forces frantically prepared to beat back the Yankee ship when it appeared. Their commander, however, openly doubted that his ill-trained artillerists could hit a fast-moving steamer and predicted that Sumter’s guns would blast Moultrie off the face of the earth.

      At dawn on January 9 the Star of the West, with 200 soldiers below deck, entered Charleston’s main channel. When she was two miles from Sumter, the Morris Island battery, which had been alerted by a patrol boat, opened fire. George Haynesworth, a Citadel cadet, touched off the first cannon. He missed. So did most of the other rounds from the battery’s two cannons. Soon the Star of the West passed by, having suffered only minor damage.

      From the ramparts of Sumter, Anderson watched the approaching ship through a spyglass. The normally calm major appeared excited and uncertain what to do. He could see that the Carolinians were shooting at an unarmed vessel flying the United States flag, and only the day before he had read in the Charleston Mercury that the Star of the West was heading for Sumter with reinforcements. That rabidly secessionist paper was notoriously unreliable, however, and in any event he had no official information or instructions concerning the ship. Besides, the Morris Island battery was beyond the reach of Sumter’s guns.

      Then the Star of the West came within range of Fort Moultrie, which opened up on her. Anderson’s gunners eagerly expected his order to return the fire. One of his officers, Lieutenant Richard K. Meade of Virginia, however, pleaded with him not to give the order: It will bring civil war on us. In contrast, Captain Abner Doubleday, the New York—born inventor of baseball, stamped his feet in frustration, and a soldier’s wife attempted by herself to fire a cannon aimed at Moultrie.

      Meanwhile, shot and shell rained about the Star of the West and an armed schooner approached her. Concluding that he could expect no assistance from Sumter, and fearful of sinking or capture, the Star of the West’s captain turned his ship about and headed back to sea.

      On seeing the ship retreat, Anderson decided not to fire on Moultrie. Instinct and training urged him to do so, but while there remained the slightest chance of peace he would not strike the blow that could lead only to war.

      By all precedents of law and history the Federal government would have been justified in employing the full power of its armed forces against South Carolina for having fired on the Star of the West. It did nothing of the kind, nor did Buchanan even consider such action. First of all, the armed forces of the United States were not very powerful. To be sure, the navy probably could have bombarded Charleston in retaliation, but the bulk of the army was scattered throughout the West, barely holding its own against the Indians.

      More importantly, the free states were not ready for a showdown over secession. Most Northerners hoped for, even expected, another great sectional compromise like the ones in 1820, 1833, and 1850. Many of them believed that South Carolina was merely throwing a tantrum, that the talk of a Southern Confederacy was simply a bluff designed to extract concessions. Others, mainly Democrats, sympathized with the Southerners, whom they viewed as defending themselves against Republican radicalism. Thus Democratic congressman John Logan of Illinois compared the Dixie secessionists to the patriots of the Revolution. At the opposite ideological extreme, such prominent abolitionists as William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, and Horace Greeley expressed a willingness to let the erring sisters go in peace. That way the United States would rid itself of the sin of slavery.

      Hence, as George T. Strong, a disgusted New Yorker who favored retaliation against South Carolina, wrote in his diary, The nation pockets this insult to the national flag, a calm, dishonorable, vile submission.

      The attempt to reinforce Sumter incensed the Southern secessionists, who saw it as coercion. At the same time, the repulse of the Star of the West and the failure of the North to react to it made them all the more confident that the money-grubbing Yankees would not dare fight to keep the South in the Union. Senator Judah P. Benjamin of Louisiana sneered that the Federal government in effect had relinquished all claim to sovereignty. Jefferson Davis met with other Cotton State senators in Washington to plan a convention at Montgomery, Alabama, for the establishment of an independent confederacy. During January Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana seceded, and Texas prepared to do the same.

      As these states pulled out, their militia took over Federal arsenals, forts, customs houses, and post offices. Nowhere did they encounter resistance. Thus on January 12 semisenile Commodore James Armstrong surrendered the Pensacola Navy Yard to Florida and Alabama troops. Two days before, however, 1st Lieutenant Adam Slemmer, anticipating such an eventuality, had transferred forty-six soldiers and thirty sailors from nearby Fort Barrancas to powerful Fort Pickens on Santa Rosa Island in Pensacola Bay.

      Following the seizure of the naval yard, representatives of the governors of Florida and Alabama demanded the surrender of Fort Pickens (named after the grandfather of the South Carolina governor). Slemmer replied, I am here by authority of the President of the United States, and I do not recognize the authority of any governor to demand the surrender of United States property,—a governor is nobody here.

      Thanks to Slemmer’s initiative, the Federal government now held another fort off the coast of a seceded state. Like Sumter it was too strong for the secessionists to seize immediately, but unlike the Charleston fort its location made reinforcement easy.

      Anderson had refrained from blasting Fort Moultrie. Nevertheless, he was angered by the firing on the United States flag. As soon as the Star of the West steamed out of sight he dispatched a note to Governor Pickens. In it he threatened to close Charleston Harbor—which he could readily do—unless Pickens disavowed the attack on the ship as having been made without his sanction or authority.

      Pickens answered that the attempt to reinforce Sumter was a deliberate act of hostility, and that to close the harbor would be to impose on South Carolina the condition of a conquered province—something it would resist. In effect he countered Anderson’s threat with a threat of his own: All-out war.

      Since this is what Anderson hoped to avoid, he agreed in subsequent negotiations to a de facto truce while one of his officers, Lieutenant Theodore Talbot, went to Washington for instructions. For his part Pickens allowed mail to enter Sumter and the women and children to leave. Moreover, the garrison could purchase bread, meat, and vegetables (but not flour) in Charleston, and a South Carolina officer sent over several cases of claret.

      Notwithstanding these friendly gestures, Pickens was anxious to attack Sumter. Two factors restrained him. First, a number of other Southern leaders cautioned him that precipitate action at Charleston might produce war before a confederacy could be organized. Thus Jefferson Davis wrote him on January 20 that the little garrison at Sumter "presses on nothing but a point of pride . . . you can well aford [sic] to stand still . . . and if things continue as they are for a month, we shall then be in a condition to speak with a voice that all must hear and heed. . . ."

      The other and more basic factor was that Pickens lacked the means to assault Sumter successfully. Time was needed to furnish these means, the truce supplied the time, and the governor made the most of it. At his orders four hulks crammed with stones were sunk in the main channel in order to block future relief ships (though the tide soon swept the sunken hulks away). Working day and night, militiamen and slaves added more guns to Moultrie, strengthened the

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