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Selected American history
The Life of Abraham Lincoln
By Henry Ketcham
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE WAR HERE TO STAY.
Lincoln was a man of great sagacity. Few statesmen have had keener
insight, or more true and sane foresight. While cordially recognizing
this, it is not necessary to claim for him infallibility. He had his
disappointments.
The morning after the evacuation of Fort Sumter he issued his call for
75,000 volunteers to serve for three months. We have seen that one
reason why the number was so small was that this was the largest number
that could possibly be clothed, armed, and officered at short notice.
Subsequent experience showed that the brief enlistment of three months
was an utterly inadequate period for so serious an insurrection. Did
Lincoln really think the rebellion could be put down in three months?
Why did he not save infinite trouble by calling for five-year
enlistments at the beginning?
For one thing, he had at that time no legal power to call for a longer
period of enlistment. Then he desired to continue the conciliatory
policy as long as possible, so as to avoid alienating the undecided in
both the North and the South. Had the first call been for 500,000 for
three years, it would have looked as if he intended and desired a long
and bloody war, and this would have antagonized large numbers of
persons. But it is probable that neither he nor the community at large
suspected the seriousness of the war. The wars in which the men then
living had had experience were very slight. In comparison with what
followed, they were mere skirmishes. How should they foresee that they
were standing on the brink of one of the longest, the costliest, the
bloodiest, and the most eventful wars of all history?
Virginia was dragooned into secession. She declined to participate in
the Charleston Convention. Though a slave state, the public feeling was
by a decided majority in favor of remaining in the Union. But after the
fall of Sumter she was manipulated by skilful politicians, appealed to
and cajoled on the side of prejudice and sectional feeling, and on
April 17th passed the ordinance of secession. It was a blunder and a
more costly blunder she could not have made. For four years her soil
was the theater of a bitterly contested war, and her beautiful valleys
were drenched with human blood.
Back and forth, over and over again, fought the two armies, literally
sweeping the face of the country with the besom of destruction. The
oldest of her soldiers of legal age were fifty-five years of age when
the war closed. The youngest were twelve years of age when the war
opened. Older men and younger boys were in the war, ay, and were killed
on the field of battle. As the scourge of war passed over that state
from south to north, from north to south, for four years, many an
ancient and proud family was simply exterminated, root and branch. Of
some of the noblest and best families, there is to-day not a trace and
scarcely a memory.
All this could not have been foreseen by these Virginians, nor by the
people of the North, nor by the clear-eyed President himself. Even the
most cautious and conservative thought the war would be of brief
duration. They were soon to receive a rude shock and learn that "war
is hell," and that this war was here to stay. This revelation
came with the first great battle of the war, which was fought July 21,
1861, at Bull Run, a location not more than twenty-five or thirty miles
from Washington.
Certain disabilities of our soldiers should be borne in mind. Most of
them were fresh from farm, factory, or store, and had no military
training even in the militia. A large number were just reaching the
expiration of their term of enlistment and were homesick and eager to
get out of the service. The generals were not accustomed to handling
large bodies of men. To add to the difficulty, the officers and men
were entirely unacquainted with one another. Nevertheless most of them
were ambitious to see a little of real war before they went back to the
industries of peace. They saw far more than they desired.
It was supposed by the administration and its friends that one crushing
blow would destroy the insurrection, and that this blow was to be dealt
in this coming battle. The troops went to the front as to a picnic. The
people who thronged Washington, politicians, merchants, students,
professional men, and ladies as well, had the same eagerness to see a
battle that in later days they have to witness a regatta or a game of
football. The civilians, men and women, followed the army in large
numbers. They saw all they looked for and more.
The battle was carefully planned, and except for delay in getting
started, it was fought out very much as planned. It is not the scope of
this book to enter into the details of this or any battle. But thus
much may be said in a general way. The Confederates were all the day
receiving a steady stream of fresh reinforcements. The Federals, on the
other hand, had been on their feet since two o'clock in the morning. By
three o'clock in the afternoon, after eleven hours of activity and five
hours of fighting in the heat of a July day in Virginia, these men were
tired, thirsty, hungry,--worn out. Then came the disastrous panic and
the demoralization. A large portion of the army started in a race for
Washington, the civilians in the lead.
The disaster was terrible, but there is nothing to gain by magnifying
it. Some of the oldest and best armies in the world have been broken
into confusion quite as badly as this army of raw recruits. They did
not so far lose heart that they were not able to make a gallant stand
at Centerville and successfully check the pursuit of the enemy. It was
said that Washington was at the mercy of the Confederates, but it is
more likely that they had so felt the valor of the foe that they were
unfit to pursue the retreating army. It was a hard battle on both
sides. No one ever accused the Confederates of cowardice, and they
surely wanted to capture Washington City. That they did not do so is
ample proof that the battle was not a picnic to them. It had been
boasted that one southern man could whip five northern men. This catchy
phrase fell into disuse.
It was natural and politic for the Confederates to magnify their
victory. This was done without stint by Jeff Davis who was present as a
spectator. He telegraphed the following:
"Night has closed upon a hard-fought field. Our forces were victorious.
The enemy was routed and fled precipitately, abandoning a large amount
of arms, ammunition, knapsacks, and baggage. The ground was strewed for
miles with those killed, and the farmhouses and the ground around were
filled with wounded. Our force was fifteen thousand; that of the enemy
estimated at thirty-five thousand."
That account is sufficiently accurate except as to figures. Jeff Davis
never could be trusted in such circumstances to give figures with any
approach to accuracy. Lossing estimates that the Federal forces were
13,000, and the Confederates about 27,000. This is certainly nearer the
truth than the boast of Jeff Davis. But a fact not less important than
the numbers was that the Confederate reinforcements were fresh, while
the Federal forces were nearly exhausted from marching half the night
before the fighting began.
Although the victorious forces were effectively checked at Centerville,
those who fled in absolute rout and uncontrollable panic were enough to
give the occasion a lasting place in history. The citizens who had gone
to see the battle had not enjoyed their trip. The soldiers who had
thought that this war was a sort of picnic had learned that the foe was
formidable. The administration that had expected to crush the
insurrection by one decisive blow became vaguely conscious of the fact
that the war was here to stay months and years.
It is a curious trait of human nature that people are not willing to
accept a defeat simply. The mind insists on explaining the particular
causes of that specific defeat. Amusing instances of this are seen in
all games: foot-ball, regattas, oratorical contests. Also in elections;
the defeated have a dozen reasons to explain why the favorite candidate
was not elected as he should have been. This trait came out somewhat
clamorously after the battle of Bull Run. A large number of plausible
explanations were urged on Mr. Lincoln, who finally brought the subject
to a conclusion by the remark: "I see. We whipped the enemy and then
ran away from him!"
The effect of the battle of Bull Run on the South was greatly to
encourage them and add to their enthusiasm. The effect on the North was
to deepen their determination to save the flag, to open their eyes to
the fact that the southern power was strong, and with renewed zeal and
determination they girded themselves for the conflict. But the great
burden fell on Lincoln. He was disappointed that the insurrection was
not and could not be crushed by one decisive blow. There was need of
more time, more men, more money, more blood. These thoughts and the
relative duties were to him, with his peculiar temperament, a severer
trial than they could have been to perhaps any other man living. He
would not shrink from doing his full duty, though it was so hard.
It made an old man of him. The night before he decided to send bread to
Sumter he slept not a wink. That was one of very many nights when he
did not sleep, and there were many mornings when he tasted no food. But
weak, fasting, worn, aging as he was, he was always at his post of
duty. The most casual observer could see the inroads which these mental
cares made upon his giant body. It was about a year later than this
that an old neighbor and friend, Noah Brooks of Chicago, went to
Washington to live, and he has vividly described the change in the
appearance of the President.
In Harper's Monthly for July, 1865, he writes: "Though the
intellectual man had greatly grown meantime, few persons would
recognize the hearty, blithesome, genial, and wiry Abraham Lincoln of
earlier days in the sixteenth President of the United States, with his
stooping figure, dull eyes, careworn face, and languid frame. The old
clear laugh never came back; the even temper was sometimes disturbed;
and his natural charity for all was often turned into unwonted
suspicion of the motives of men, whose selfishness caused him so much
wear of mind."
Again, the same writer said in Scribner's Monthly for February, 1878:
"There was [in 1862] over his face an expression of sadness, and a
faraway look in the eyes, which were utterly unlike the Lincoln of
other days.... I confess that I was so pained that I could almost have
shed tears.... By and by, when I knew him better, his face was often
full of mirth and enjoyment; and even when he was pensive or gloomy,
his features were lighted up very much as a clouded alabaster vase
might be softly illuminated by a light within."
He still used his epigram and was still reminded of "a little story,"
when he wished to point a moral or adorn a tale. But they were
superficial indeed who thought they saw in him only, or chiefly, the
jester. Once when he was reproved for reading from a humorous book he
said with passionate earnestness that the humor was his safety valve.
If it were not for the relief he would die. It was true. But he lived
on, not because he wanted to live, for he would rather have died. But
it was God's will, and his country needed him.
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