GE

April 6, 1862.

CHAPTER XVII.

PRELIMINARY TO EMANCIPATION.

ENERAL GRANT was encamped at Pittsburg Landing, on the west bank of the Tennessee. General Buell was leisurely moving. from Nashville to join him. After the loss of Fort Donelson the Confederates concentrated at Corinth, twenty two miles from the position occupied by Grant. General Beauregard had been sent west by Jefferson Davis, to aid Albert Sidney Johnston in concentrating and organizing an army. They resolved to attack Grant, and crush him before the arrival of Buell. Though not expecting to be attacked, and although many of the men were asleep when the first volley of musketry broke the stillness of the morning, the Union soldiers did not flee, but fought obstinately through the day. (See "Drum-beat of the Nation.") General Nelson's troops of Buell's army arrived at sunset, and were placed in line of battle. Before morning other divisions joined them, and the Confederates suffered a disastrous defeat. General Grant had maintained the battle against a superior force during the first day of the conflict. He had displayed great ability at Donelson. Yet busybodies were depreciating him; they informed the President that he drank intoxicating liquor.

"Are you sure of it?" the President asked.

"So they say."

"Thank you. Now, if you will find out what kind of liquor he drinks, I'll send some of the same brand to other generals."

Gratifying news came from New Orleans: General Butler and Admiral Farragut were in possession of the city.

The negroes left behind by their masters on the Sea Islands of South Carolina were being fed and clothed by General Hunter, who

had been appointed to command a military department comprisMay, ing South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. He issued a procla

1862.

mation, in which he said that slavery and martial law in a free country were incompatible. He declared that all slaves in his depart

ment were therefore entitled to their freedom. It greatly gratified those who desired to see the system destroyed.

"General Hunter ought to be sustained," said Secretary Chase to the President. (')

By what authority had Hunter issued this order? Solely that of military law. But the President was commander-in-chief.

"No commanding general shall do such a thing upon my responsibility without consulting me," his reply to Secretary Chase. An order was issued by Mr. Lincoln setting aside that of his personal friend, whom he knew to be loyal, honest, and true. Friendship did not have the weight of a feather in the decision.

May 19.

"Whether it be competent for me," reads the order, "as commanderin-chief of the army and navy, to declare the slaves of any State or States free, and whether at any time or in any case it shall become a necessity indispensable to the maintenance of the Government to exercise such supposed powers, are questions which, under my responsibility, I reserve to myself, and which I cannot feel justified in leaving to the decision of commanders in the field."

Once in the world's history, when a favored people gave themselves to wickedness, when violence and oppression ruled, when the dry and thirsty land was parched with summer heat, and the famine sore, a prophet of God sent up his supplication, and there appeared a cloud like a man's hand, as it were, above the sea-the sign of coming rain. So at an hour when the wickedness of the Rebellion was filling the country with woe; when the land was parched by the heat of war, red with human gore, lurid with the lightning of battle, resounding with the thunder of the cannonade; when supplications were ascending to God that the causes of the woe and anguish might be swept awayAbraham Lincoln, like the prophet of old, spoke the words which will ever remain as the sign of the coming of one of the greatest political and philanthropic events of all the ages: the gift of freedom to 4,000,000 bondmen.

Yet there were those who could not discern the little cloud. William Lloyd Garrison could not see it. He said, " All honor to General Hunter. With cheer upon cheer the welkin rings. Shame and confusion of face to the President for his halting, shuffling, backward policy. By his act he has dispirited and alienated the truest friends of freedom universally, and gratified the malignity of the enemies of his Adminis tration, who at heart are traitors." (2)

Some of the newspapers failed to comprehend the meaning under

lying the revocation of General Hunter's orders. "He has declared against the Federal right of emancipation in the States," wrote the editor of the Albany "Argus."

There was no declaration in the order of his want of power under the Constitution to put an end to slavery, but, on the contrary, a clear intimation that the time might come when he would be called upon to exercise such authority. Other newspapers sustained the President.

"We are not surprised," said the New Bedford, Mass., "Standard,” "at the action of the President. We know too well the strength of slavery. The difficulty is not so much in the President's mind as in public opinion. Abraham Lincoln had not for a moment considered whether or not his action would affect his standing with the people. He could not allow others to exercise an authority which was exclusively his own. His judgment decided that the people were not ready for emancipation." (")

"The President has to-day a stronger hold than ever upon the confidence of the majority of the people," said the Boston "Advertiser." (^) "He has shown his own good sense, his consistency, and steady adherence to the Constitution and the laws," the words of the Philadelphia 'Ledger."

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"He has given to the world evidence of that firmness and moral courage for which he is distinguished," the declaration of the Albany "Evening Journal." (*)

The President sent a special message to Congress, recommending the passage of a resolution to the effect that the United States ought to co-operate with any State in securing the abolition of slavery by compensating the owners of slaves. Congress complied with the recommendation. Slavery had been thus abolished in the District of Columbia, but the border States stood aloof from such a measure. The President made a tender and pathetic appeal to those States. He said: "The proposal makes common cause for a common object, casting no reproaches upon any. It acts not the Pharisee. The change it contemplates would come as gently as the dews of heaven, not sending weakness to anything. Will you not entertain it? So much good has not been done by one effort in all past time as, in the providence of God, it is now your privilege to do. May the vast future not have it to lament that you neglected it.”

The army under McClellan was on its way to Fortress Monroe. In eighteen days' time 121,000 men, nearly 15,000 horses and mules, 1150 wagons, 260 cannon, and 74 ambulances were transported from Alexan

dria, besides provisions, camp equipage, ammunition, and a vast amount of other material.

April 1.

General McClellan left Washington to join the three corps of his army-Heintzelman's, Sumner's and Keyes's--which had preceded him. McDowell's was to follow. Startling information came to the President from General Wadsworth, informing him that he had only 19,000 troops to garrison the forts and defend Washington! At the conference of the commanders of the four army corps, held at Fairfax Court-house (see page 307), Generals Keyes, Heintzelman, and McDowell had agreed that if the forts on the Virginia side of the Potomac should be fully garrisoned, and those on the Washington side occupied, there must still be left a covering force of 25,000. General

Sumner, commanding a corps, said that a total of 40,000 must be left. Was not General Wadsworth mistaken? Could the information be correct? The President directed Generals Hitchcock and Thomas to investigate the matter. They reported it would require 30,000 men to man all the forts, which, with 25,000 as a covering force, would make a total of 55,000 to render the capital secure. "The requirement of the President has not been fully complied with," they said; whereupon Mr. Lincoln issued an order that McDowell's corps should remain.

In speaking of this action of the President, McClellan says: "It frustrated all my plans for impending operations. It made brilliant operations impossible. It was a fatal error." (")

Yorktown was held by a Confederate force of 11,000 men under General Magruder. His line extended thirteen miles along Warwick Creek. McClellan saw breast works and fortifications with cannon. He sent this despatch to the President:

'The approaches, except at Yorktown, are covered by the Warwick, over which there is but one, or, at the most, two passages, both of which are covered by strong batteries. It will be necessary to resort to the use of siege operations before we assault. . . . I am impressed with the conviction that here is to be fought the great battle that is to decide the existing contest. I shall, of course, commence the assault as soon as I can get up my siege train."

The President replied:

"You now have over one hundred thousand troops. I think you had better break the enemy's line from Yorktown to Warwick River at once. Your despatches complaining that you are not properly sustained, while they do not offend me, do pain me very much. Blenker's division was withdrawn from you before you left here, and you know the pressure under which I did it, and, as I thought, acquiesced in it-certainly not without reluctance. After you left I ascertained that less than twenty thousand unorganized men, without a single field battery, were all you designed to be left for the defence of Washington and Manassas Junction, and part of this even was to go to General Hooker's old position. General Banks's corps, once designed for Manassas Junction, was diverted and tied up on the line of Winchester and Strasburg, and could not leave it without again exposing the Upper Potomac and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. This presented, or would present, when McDowell and Sumner should be gone, a great temptation to the enemy to turn back from the Rappahannock and sack Washington. My explicit order that Washington should, by the judgment of all the commanders of army corps, be left entirely secure, had been neglected. It was precisely this that drove me to detain McDowell.

"I do not forget that I was satisfied with your arrangement to leave Banks at Manassas Junction; but when that arrangement was broken up and nothing was substituted for it, of course I was constrained to substitute something for it myself. And allow me to ask, do you really think I should permit the line from Richmond via Manassas Junction to this city to be entirely open, except what resistance could be presented by less than