On January 15, 1862, President Lincoln replaced the inefficient Secretary of War Simon Cameron with Edwin M. Stanton. Stanton, a skilled lawyer, had been attorney general under President Buchanan and had adamantly opposed to secession, although President Buchanan was at first willing to tolerate it. As a Democrat, he opposed Lincoln during the 1860 campaign, but agreed to work as legal assistant to Secretary Cameron. At first he was very critical of Lincoln's abilities, but within a few months of close working with the president, who spent much of his time in the War Department, Stanton began to appreciate Lincoln's honesty and dedication to the Union cause. He eventually became a Republican and one of Abraham Lincoln's most trusted and loyal advisers.
In January General George H. Thomas defeated a Confederate force at Mill Springs, Kentucky, and then teamed up with General Grant to begin moving into Tennessee. Grant engaged Flag Officer Andrew H. Foote to work with his ground troops in attacking Fort Henry, which lay on the Tennessee River in northwest Tennessee. Foote sent his gunboats up the river to bombard the fort, and Grant placed his troops ashore on either side. The Confederate commander, however, decided to abandon the fort and sent his soldiers to Fort Donel-son, which lay 10 miles to the east on the Cumberland River. When Fort Henry surrendered, Union armies had use of the Tennessee River all away to Alabama.
Following the fall of Fort Henry, Grant sent Foote's gunboats down the Tennessee, up the Ohio and thence up the Cumberland River toward Fort Donelson. Meanwhile he marched his army overland and surrounded the fort. The Confederate commanders attempted to break
Out but were unable to penetrate Grant's lines. Two Confederate generals departed through Union lines under a white flag, leaving General Simon Bolivar Buckner in charge. Although Fort Donelson artillery drove off Flag Officer Foote's gunboats, Grant had a firm hold on the fort. When Buckner asked Grant for terms, Grant responded that no terms except "unconditional surrender" could be accepted. He added, "I propose to move immediately upon your works." Thereafter Gen.
Ulysses S. Grant became known as "unconditional surrender" Grant.
Buckner, an old friend of Grant from prewar days, told the victor, "Sam, if I'd been in charge the whole time, you never would have gotten away with it." Grant supposedly responded, "Buckner, if you had been in charge, I never would have tried." Whether true or not, the anecdote illustrates a factor that played itself out numerous times in the Civil War; often the opposing commanders knew each other. Many had served together in the Mexican war and elsewhere, and they often gauged their tactics according to their knowledge of what their opponents would be likely to do.
Shiloh. The victory at Fort Donelson was a major success, and the Union celebrated its first hero. Combined with the Union victories at Middle Creek, Kentucky, under Colonel (and future president) James Garfield and General George Thomas's victory at Mill Springs, Kentucky, the Confederates were driven out of Kentucky, and Union forces controlled the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers as well all the railroads in western Tennessee. General Grant had established himself as an effective commander and continued moving further into Tennessee. Grant moved his Army up the Tennessee River to a point known as Pittsburg Landing, about 15 miles northwest of the Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee intersection, where he
Was waiting to combine forces with General Don Carlos Buell. Although the area was lightly settled, a church in the vicinity named Shiloh gave its name to the battle, which was fought on April 6 and 7, 1862.
General Albert Sidney Johnston, reputed to be the finest officer in the Confederate army, decided to attack before Grant could be reinforced, and he launched an assault early on April 6. Not realizing that the Confederates were so close, Grant had neglected to fortify his position and instead was drilling his troops. Grant was not even on the scene when his troops were caught off guard by Johnston's Confederates, but although they were hard-pressed, the Union Army managed to hang on during a long day of fierce fighting, taking a stand at a sunken road that became known as the "hornet's nest." Johnston was mortally wounded during the first day's fighting, and command was turned over to General P. G.T. Beauregard. During the night General Buell's troops arrived and crossed the Tennessee River to join Grant's men. Early on the morning of April 7, the fighting resumed, and Beauregard, having suffered heavy casualties, retired from the field and took his army back to Corinth, Mississippi. A pursuit led by General William T. Sherman on April 8 was unsuccessful, but the victory had been substantial.
Casualties at Shiloh numbered over 23,000, with the Union having suffered more losses.
The Confederates lost a larger percentage of their troops, however. The total casualties exceeded all of America's previous wars put together, yet it was by no means the costliest battle of the Civil War. Despite his successes, rumors about Grant's former drinking problems and other political machinations brought criticism of him in Washington. President Lincoln said, however, "I can't spare this man: He fights."
Part of the reason for President Lincoln's response to the criticism of Grant was that his general in the East, George B. McClellan, was moving so slowly that even his impressive reviews had begun to lose their luster. The administration and Congress wanted victories, not parades. McClellan initially planned a direct assault on Richmond, but when he advanced across the Potomac, he discovered that the Confederates had withdrawn southward, so he conceived a new battle plan.84 He decided to take the entire Army of the Potomac down the river for which it was named and land it on the peninsula between the York and James Rivers. As a superb organizer and logistician, McClellan moved his army efficiently; the problems began when it was time to fight.
The Monitor and the Merrimack. While McClellan was preparing his campaign during early March, a famous naval battle took place in Hampton Roads, Virginia. The Confederate Navy had captured the former U. S.S. Merrimack, rebuilt it with heavy iron plating and renamed it C. S.S. Virginia. The ironclad Confederate ship had maneuvered out of the harbor and easily destroyed several Union warships, as cannonballs bounced off her heavy metal plates. During the night after the first day of fighting, a strange-looking Union craft arrived, the U. S.S. Monitor. The Monitor, the invention of John Ericsson, possessed but a single gun, but it was mounted inside a revolving turret, and its iron plating made it impervious to shells. On March 9 the Monitor and the Virginia (Merrimack) fought it out in Hampton Roads, and the small "cheese box on a raft" neutralized the Confederate threat, which might have disrupted the Union blockading fleet. It was the first "battle of ironclads," and although it was more or less indecisive, it provided a glimpse of future naval warfare.
At the outbreak of the war the Union Navy had been nothing but a motley collection of ships, few of them formidable. But the U. S. government purchased ships of all kinds for use in the blockade, and began a building program in August, 1861. Within a year the number of ships sailing in and out of Southern ports had been substantially reduced, and as Union forces captured various ports and islands along the Southern coast, the blockade gradually grew tighter. Early in the war, the odds of successfully running the blockade were approximately nine in ten; as the Union blockade tightened, the chances of a blockade runner getting through dropped to about one in three.
McClellan's Peninsular Campaign. After months of preparation, General McClellan began his Peninsula Campaign on March 17, moving the Army of the Potomac by ship to a location east-southeast of the Confederate capital of Richmond. McClellan's plan was to invade Richmond by advancing up the peninsula formed by the York and James Rivers. McClellan failed to grasp the nature of modern warfare—he thought it uncivilized to consider crushing the South and destroying carefully trained military units. He was an unsurpassed military administrator and planner, but he did not like to risk damage to his well prepared army. Thus McClellan conducted his Peninsula Campaign with too much caution.
On April 5 he began a siege of Yorktown, which led to occupation of the city. If Yorktown had been a strategically significant, fortified city, a siege—which involves intricate engineering maneuvers—might have made sense. But as one Confederate officer said in derision, "Only McClellan would besiege an undefended city."
As had happened with Grant at Fort Donelson, familiarity with the mindset of one's opponent arose in this campaign. Being aware of McClellan's "over-cautiousness" (as Lincoln put it), Confederate commanders went out of their way to befuddle their slow-moving opponent. Confederate General John McGruder, known from his West Point days as "Prince John" because of his acting ability, marched troops back and forth behind his lines to create the illusion of a larger force than he actually possessed. McClellan engaged the well known detective Allan Pinkerton as his intelligence adviser. Pinkerton, demonstrating what is sometimes a propensity among intelligence officers to play it safe by overestimating enemy strength, played right into McClellan's fears. During the campaign McClellan's forces were assisted by Union gunboats, another measure of the effectiveness of the Union "river navy," sometimes undervalued by Civil War historians in retrospect.
As McClellan moved closer to Richmond against light Confederate resistance, he constantly misjudged the strength of the Southern army and repeatedly called on Washington for additional forces. As The Union army was advancing toward Richmond, General Thomas
J. ("Stonewall") Jackson was operating in the Shenandoah Valley with an army of troops who moved so fast they were known as "foot cavalry." His campaign lasted from late March until early June and kept some 40,000 Union troops under Union Generals Banks and Fremont constantly occupied. Concerned about the security of the national capital, President Lincoln was held in a state of worry, partially due to McClellan's repeated requests for reinforcements.
McClellan eventually advanced so close to Richmond that his troops could see the church spires in the city and hear their bells ringing on Sunday morning. With McClellan's troops stretched on either side of the Chickahominy River, General Joseph Johnston decided to take the battle to his enemy. On May 31 and June 1 the two armies clashed in the battle of Seven Pines (Fair Oaks), with high casualties on both sides. The outcome was a tactical draw, but General Johnston was wounded and was soon replaced by Robert E. Lee.
Lee had earned a reputation for cautiousness himself during the early days of the war. After losing a small battle in western Virginia, he was placed in charge of organizing defensive emplacements along the Southern coast. President Davis then brought him to Richmond and put him in charge of defense of the capital, where he earned the nickname of "King of Spades" for digging extensive trenches around the capital. His reputation was soon to change, however.
As McClellan sat idly by, Lee extended his lines and reorganized his troops, now designated the Army of Northern Virginia. Joined by Jackson's men who had moved into the Richmond area from their Valley campaign, Lee once again took on the Union Army of the Potomac. This clash became known as the Seven Days' Battles: Mechanicsville, Gaines Mill, and Malvern Hill. Lee was an excellent tactician, and unlike McClellan, he had a bold and masterful plan for the Seven Days' battle, which again placed McClellan on the defensive. Unfortunately for Lee, his plan may have been too sophisticated, and the Confederate generals had difficulty carrying it out. Even Jackson's Corps was not up to the level it had achieved during his Valley campaign; his movements were uncharacteristically slow.
During the fighting east of Richmond, Major General Jeb Stuart, Lee's cavalry commander, made a bold ride completely around the Union Army, attacking supply trains and disrupting communications. As fine a commander as Stuart was, however, his daring cavalry tactics sometimes failed to produce decisive results. During that early stage of the conflict, Confederate cavalry was superior to the Union's horse soldiers, but that important factor was also destined to change.
Once again, the loss of life during the Seven Days was appalling. At the last battle at Malvern Hill, Union artillery demonstrated its skill and value on the battlefield by repeatedly
Breaking up Confederate attacks. Half of the Confederate casualties were caused by Union artillery. Following the battle Confederate General D. H. Hill said that what had occurred "was not war—it was murder."85 Despite the impressive performance by McClellan's troops in combat, the Peninsular Campaign itself was a strategic failure. Total casualties numbered some 36,000 on both sides. McClellan withdrew his battered army, and Lincoln ordered it back to Washington. Lee's men licked their wounds and prepared to move northward again on the Richmond-Washington axis.
Second Battle of Bull Run. While McClellan was moving his army back to disembarkation points in Alexandria, General John Pope, who had won a small but notable victory at Island #10 on the Mississippi River north of Memphis, took command of the troops in and around Washington. His command was called the Army of Virginia. Pope got off to a bad start by suggesting in a speech to his men that Western soldiers were better than those in the East.
Pope planned to move South on Richmond while Lee was still defending the eastern approaches to the capital. But Lee dispatched Stonewall Jackson's corps to block Pope's advance. Pope met Jackson, who was soon reinforced by the rest of Lee's army, on August 29 and 30 at the Second Battle of Manassas, or Bull Run. Jackson's men, soon reinforced by Longstreet's corps, trapped Pope's army, which had left a flank exposed. Two days of fighting left the Union Army battered. As McClellan had done nothing to assist Pope, bitter recriminations followed on the northern side, including charges that Union General Fitz-John Porter had been reluctant in battle. As often happens in times of military disappointment, the hunt for scapegoats was on. The stage was now set for the first major battle in the North as Lee prepared to invade into Maryland in order to relieve pressure on Virginia.
World History
