Pope's II, 501; diers reached the peninsula, instead of finding it a clear field for their advance on Richmond, they found their way barred by a line of entrenchments extending from Yorktown to the James. By the end of May, however, the Union army reached the vicinity of Richmond, and fought a severe and indecisive battle at Fair Oaks - about ten miles from the Confederate capital (May 31). Joseph E. Johnston was wounded, and Lee assumed command. Meantime a Confederate army in the Shenandoah valley, led by Thomas J. Jackson, known popularly as "Stonewall Jackson," had been fighting a remarkable campaign. So admirably had Jackson planned, and so wonderfully had his soldiers marched, that they had defeated two Union armies in succession. Lee now ordered Jackson to abandon the valley and transport his men by rail to Richmond. With this reinforcement, Lee attacked the Union army again and again (June 26-July 2, 1862); forced it to withdraw to the James; and attacked it there on Malvern Hill, to be repulsed with fearful loss. In these engagements, the total loss was thirty-six thousand men, more than one half of which was on the Southern side. 355. The Second Bull Run Campaign, August, 1862.— Notwithstanding its misfortunes, the Army of the Potomac still threatened Richmond, and Lee, to secure its withdrawal, determined to make a demonstration against Washington. Halleck's victories at Corinth and Memphis had commended him to the government. He had been summoned to Washington to act as chief of staff, or military adviser to the President. In his turn he had called General Pope from the Mississippi valley to command the troops defending the federal capital. Halleck and Lee had known one another before the war, and Lee now felt certain that if he should seriously threaten Washington Halleck would summon McClellan from the peninsula. This calculation proved to be well founded, for no sooner was Lee's purpose known than McClellan was ordered to retire from the neighborhood of Richmond and place his army under Pope's orders. The 1862] Antietam and Fredericksburg 535 He battle of Bull Run, Confederates now made one of those rapid marches by which 1862. Battles and Leaders, II, 630; 107. 356. The Antietam and Fredericksburg, 1862. — Elated Antietam, by this extraordinary success, the Confederate authorities September, determined to carry the war into the North. Lee crossed the Potomac near Harper's Ferry to release Maryland from "the foreign yoke". as connection with the Union was termed and to add that state to the number of the seceders. He found the mass of the people of Maryland hostile. Meantime McClellan was restored to command. Keeping between the Confederates and Washington, he met the Southerners at the Antietam and there fought a bloody battle (September 17, 1862). The Union force was double that under Lee; but McClellan threw away the advantages which his superiority gave him in a series of disconnected assaults. The two armies lost twenty-two thousand men, more than twelve thousand being on the Union side. Lee then retreated across the Potomac, and McClellan was superseded by General Ambrose E. Burnside. Fredericks burg, December, 1862. The Confederates now fortified Marye's Heights on the south side of the Rappahannock behind Fredericksburg. Burnside attacked this impregnable position in front, and was repulsed with a loss of thirteen thousand men to four thousand on the Confederate side (December 13, 1862). III, 70; Battles and Leaders, Dodge's View, 110115. Buell and Leaders, III, 31; View, ch. xv. Perryville, October, 1862. Rosecrans and Bragg, The "Horror of Fredericksburg" led to Burnside's dismissal and the elevation of "Fighting Joe" Hooker to the chief command of the Army of the Potomac. 357. Campaign in Eastern Tennessee, 1862. After the occupation of the western end of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, two lines of attack presented themselves to the Union commander: the capture of Vicksburg and other fortresses on the banks of the Mississippi, and the occupation of Chattanooga and eastern Tennessee. The latter was the more important as its accomplishment would make communication between Virginia and the Gulf states difficult and slow and thus greatly aid a future conquest of Mobile, Vicksburg, and other places in Mississippi. Accordingly, Halleck ordered Buell, with one portion of the Western army, to proceed to Chattanooga; Grant and Rosecrans, with the other divisions, were to remain in and about Corinth and make what conquests they could. Braxton Bragg, the new Southern commander in the West, showed himself to be a man of military perception and energy. Leaving Price and Van Dorn to occupy the attention of Grant and Rosecrans, he placed thirty thousand men on railroad cars, transported them to Mobile, and thence to Chattanooga, and reached that place in advance of Buell. He then eluded that commander and marched northward across Tennessee and Kentucky to the vicinity of Louisville on the southern side of the Ohio River; a small force even penetrated as far as Cincinnati. Bragg was then obliged to retire and to fight the Union army at Perryville (October 8, 1862). After this conflict he retired to Chattanooga. Buell, instead of following him, halted at Nashville, on the Cumberland, and was relieved by Rosecrans. Before long Bragg again marched northward. This time he advanced as far as Murfreesboro on the road to Nashville. There, near Stone River, he encountered Stone River, the Union army, which was on its way southward to Chattanooga. A most stubborn contest followed. Splen December, 1862. 1862] Lincoln's Policy as to Slavery 537 didly commanded by Thomas and Sheridan, the Union Battles and center repelled every Southern onslaught (December 31, Leaders, III, 613; 1862). Out of eighty thousand men engaged, twenty- Dodge's three thousand were placed out of the fighting line by View, 122this one day's battle. Bragg retired to Chattanooga, and Rosecrans remained where he was for nearly six months, until June, 1863. Meantime Price and Van Dorn endeavored to carry out their part of the Confederate plan of campaign. They attacked the Union armies at Iuka (September 19, 1862) and at Corinth (October 3 and 4, 1862), and were each time repulsed, but they prevented the sending of reinforcements to Buell. The autumn campaign, therefore, may be said to have been unfavorable to the Northern armies. 126. 358. Lincoln's Policy as to Slavery, 1861–63. – In his in- Lincoln's augural address (p. 508), President Lincoln had stated that slavery he stood by the declaration in the Chicago platform (p. 496), 1861-62. policy, - that the right of "each state to regulate its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively" was essential to the "endurance of our political fabric. For a long time, a year and a half, Lincoln maintained this position so far as the march of events permitted him so to do. In 1861 General John C. Frémont, the first candidate of the modern Republican party for President, and now commanding the military department of Missouri, had issued an order to the effect that the slaves of all persons in Missouri, taking up arms against the Federal government, should be free. The President overruled him. Later on, in 1862, General Hunter, commanding the Federal forces. in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, issued an order declaring all the slaves in those states free; but Lincoln reversed this order, stating that he reserved the management of the whole matter to himself as commander in chief. He well knew that the mass of the people in the North cared little for abolition and would not have entered upon the war to free the slaves their purpose was to save the Congress and slavery, 1862. Lincoln's letter to Greeley, Union. There was, however, a body of determined and energetic men in the North who were resolved to bring about the abolition of slavery. They did not at all relish the attitude which the President had assumed. From the very beginning of the conflict slaves had been received into the Union lines and there retained. General B. F. Butler, commanding at Fortress Monroe, appears to have initiated this measure by refusing to deliver up slaves who had escaped into his lines to their owner, a Confederate soldier who claimed them under the Fugitive Slave Act. Butler declared that he retained them as "contraband of war," on the ground that their services would be useful to the enemy. This policy was approved by the President and by Congress. In March, 1862, Lincoln took an important step in recommending Congress to grant pecuniary aid to any state which should undertake the gradual abolition of slavery with compensation to the owners. Congress fell in with the President's views; it also (April, 1862) passed a law abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia with compensation to the owners; West Virginia, too, abolished slavery within its limits. The Senate, at about the same time, ratified a treaty with Great Britain for suppressing the slave trade by permitting a mutual right of search of merchant vessels within two hundred miles of the African coast, and within thirty leagues of the more important places outside the United States, where slavery still existed. In June (1862), Congress took a long stride forward by abolishing slavery in the territories without compensation, and in the following July passed an act authorizing the seizure of slaves of persons then in rebellion. Lincoln had been much influenced by the stubborn resistance offered by the Southerners. He also probably thought that the antislavery sentiment was gaining strength in the August, 1862. North. He already had in mind the emancipation of the slaves in the states then in insurrection as a war measure Steaman and Hutchin son, VII, 81; justifiable under the Constitution. On August 19, 1862, |