Captains of the Civil War: A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray

Sixty years ago today the guns that thundered round Fort Sumter began the third and greatest modern civil war fought by English-speaking people. This war was quite as full of politics as were the other two--the War of the American Revolution and that of Puritan and Cavalier. But, though the present Chronicle never ignores the vital correlations between statesmen and commanders, it is a book of warriors, through and through.

I gratefully acknowledge the indispensable assistance of Colonel G. J. Fiebeger, a West Point expert, and of Dr. Allen Johnson, chief editor of the series and Professor of American History at Yale.

WILLIAM WOOD,

Late Colonel commanding 8th Royal Rifles, and Officer-in-charge, Canadian Special Mission Overseas.

QUEBEC, April 18, 1921.

CONTENTS

I. THE CLASH: 1861

II. THE COMBATANTS

III. THE NAVAL WAR: 1862

IV. THE RIVER WAR: 1861

V. LINCOLN: WAR STATESMAN

VI. LEE AND JACKSON: 1862-3

VII. GRANT WINS THE RIVER WAR: 1863

VIII. GETTYSBURG: 1863

IX. FARRAGUT AND THE NAVY: 1863-4

X. GRANT ATTACKS THE FRONT: 1864

XI. SHERMAN DESTROYS THE BASE: 1864

XII. THE END: 1865

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

INDEX

ILLUSTRATIONS

GENERAL U. S. GRANT

Photograph by Brady. In the collection of L. C. Handy, Washington.

GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE

Photograph. In the collection of L. C. Handy, Washington

GENERAL T. J. (STONEWALL) JACKSON

Photograph. In the collection of L. C. Handy, Washington.

NORTH AND SOUTH IN 1861

Map by W. L. G. Joerg, American Geographical Society.

ADMIRAL D. G. FARRAGUT

Photograph by Brady.

CIVIL WAR: CAMPAIGNS OF 1862

Map by W. L. G. Joerg, American Geographical Society.

CIVIL WAR: VIRGINIA CAMPAIGNS, 1862

Map by W. L. G. Joerg, American Geographical Society.

CIVIL WAR: CAMPAIGNS OF 1863

Map by W. L. G. Joerg, American Geographical Society.

GENERAL W. T. SHERMAN

Photograph by Brady. In the collection of L. C. Handy, Washington.

CIVIL WAR: CAMPAIGNS OF 1864

Map by W. L. G. Joerg, American Geographical Society.

CAPTAINS OF THE CIVIL WAR

CHAPTER I

THE CLASH: 1861

States which claimed a sovereign right to secede from the Union naturally claimed the corresponding right to resume possession of all the land they had ceded to that Union's Government for the use of its naval and military posts. So South Carolina, after leading the way to secession on December 20, 1860, at once began to work for the retrocession of the forts defending her famous cotton port of Charleston. These defenses, being of vital consequence to both sides, were soon to attract the strained attention of the whole country.

There were three minor forts: Castle Pinckney, dozing away, in charge of a solitary sergeant, on an island less than a mile from the city; Fort Moultrie, feebly garrisoned and completely at the mercy of attackers on its landward side; and Fort Johnson over on James Island. Lastly, there was the world-renowned Fort Sumter, which then stood, unfinished and ungarrisoned, on a little islet beside the main ship channel, at the entrance to the harbor, and facing Fort Moultrie just a mile away. The proper war garrison of all the forts should have been over a thousand men. The actual garrison--including officers, band, and the Castle Pinckney sergeant--was less than a hundred. It was, however, loyal to the Union; and its commandant, Major Robert Anderson, though born in the slave-owning State of Kentucky, was determined to fight.

The situation, here as elsewhere, was complicated by Floyd, President Buchanan's Secretary of War, soon to be forced out of office on a charge of misapplying public funds. Floyd, as an ardent Southerner, was using the last lax days of the Buchanan Government to get the army posts ready for capitulation whenever secession should have become an accomplished fact. He urged on construction, repairs, and armament at Charleston, while refusing to strengthen the garrison, in order, as he said, not to provoke Carolina. Moreover, in November he had replaced old Colonel Gardner, a Northern veteran of "1812," by Anderson the Southerner, in whom he hoped to find a good capitulator. But this time Floyd was wrong.