MAY 2, 1862: With Union forces engaged in cutting Confederate east-west communications through the northern part of Alabama, Colonel John Beatty, of the Third Ohio Volunteer Infantry, reacts strongly after guerrillas wound several of his soldiers as their train passes through the village of Painted Rock. “I had the train stopped and, taking a file of soldiers, returned to the village,” he writes in his diary.
Calling the citizens together, I said to them that this bushwhacking must cease. The federal troops had tolerated it already too long. Hereafter every time the telegraph wire was cut we could burn a house; every time a train was fired upon we should hang a man; and we would continue to do this until every house was burned and every man hanged between Decatur and Bridgeport. If they wanted to fight they should enter the army, meet us like honorable men, and not, assassinlike, fire at us from the woods and run. We proposed to hold the citizens responsible for these cowardly assaults, and if they did not drive these bushwhackers from amongst them, we should make them more uncomfortable than they would be in hell.4
MAY 3, 1862: “The fight for Yorktown… must be one of artillery, in which we cannot win,” Confederate general Joseph Johnston wrote to Robert E. Lee on April 29. Indeed, George McClellan, still convinced (erroneously) that his army is vastly outnumbered, has had troops working furiously to prepare emplacements for powerful cannons that will help even the odds and smash the city’s defenses when the final Union assault begins on May 5. The work proceeds mostly at night under Confederate fire; Union engineer Gilbert Thompson will later remember “a thousand [men] strung along like a train of busy ants in the night, shoveling away, with now and then a shell bursting near.” This night, however, Confederate shells rain down in a heavy bombardment that sends Union troops to ground all along the line until it finally ceases, replaced by an ominous quiet. The reason will become clear to the Federals in the morning: under cover of cannon fire, Johnston’s Confederates have withdrawn from the city. They have left in their wake a countryside sown with “torpedoes” (land mines) devised by General Gabriel J. Rains, behavior that McClellan condemns as “murderous and barbarous conduct.” Their successful retreat has also left Northerners with mixed feelings. Though Yorktown is now in Union hands, it is not the victory the Federals had hoped for. Johnston’s army is still intact and moving back to protect Richmond.5
MAY 5, 1862: Two Union divisions pursuing Johnston’s army on the Virginia Peninsula clash with entrenched Confederates, beginning the battle of Williamsburg, an intense back-and-forth encounter during which each side suffers some two thousand casualties. Sergeant Felix Brannigan, of the Seventy-fourth New York Volunteers, will later recall that, at one point in the battle, “We were so close to the rebels that some of our wounded had their faces scorched with the firing…. The air perfectly whistled, shrieked, and hummed with the leaden storm.” The sounds of battle are clearly audible at Yorktown, yet General McClellan chooses to continue monitoring the loading of troop transports there—even after he receives messages from the front requesting his presence. He is greeted by lusty cheers from the men in the ranks when he does arrive, after most of the shooting is over and Johnston’s army has resumed its withdrawal. South of the Texas border, another battle rages. Taking advantage of American preoccupation with the Civil War, in January France, Britain, and Spain tested the Monroe Doctrine by landing troops in troubled Mexico, which had declared a two-year moratorium on the payment of foreign debt. Now France alone maintains a military presence, and French troops are pushing toward Mexico City. Today they attack the fortified city of Puebla and are dealt a humiliating defeat by Mexican forces under General Ignacio Seguín Zaragoza, an event that will be commemorated henceforth by the Mexican national holiday Cinco de Mayo. As the French reinforce their army (they will take Puebla one year later), Mexican president Benito Juárez will start to send secret agents into the United States to purchase weapons—a difficult assignment, since the Union has initiated an embargo on the export of arms.6
Kearney [sic] at Battle of Williamsburg. Black ink wash drawing by Alfred Waud, ca. May 4–5, 1862. A one-armed veteran of the Mexican War who had been awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honor for his service with the French cavalry in Italy, Union brigadier general Philip Kearny (1814–1862) was cited for bravery in the Williamsburg battle after leading his men, double-quick, through seas of mud to reinforce Joseph Hooker’s endangered line. “At their head was General Kearny flourishing a sword in his only arm,” one of Hooker’s men later recalled of the timely reinforcement. “Never was our eyes more gladdened than at this sight.”
Major General David Hunter (1802–1866), USA. An 1822 graduate of West Point, Hunter placed President Lincoln on the horns of a dilemma when he attempted to abolish slavery in the Union’s Department of the South.
MAY 6, 1862: President Lincoln, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, and Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase arrive at Fort Monroe, at the tip of the Virginia Peninsula. Informed that General McClellan is too busy to see his commander in chief, Lincoln acquaints himself as closely as possible with the status of the general’s campaign. Consulting a map, he notes that the Confederate withdrawal from Yorktown has made the port of Norfolk vulnerable to Union forces—something the Confederate area commander, Major General Benjamin Huger, has also divined. After a Unionist tugboat captain brings Federal authorities the news that Huger has begun withdrawing his troops, Lincoln will join in a scouting foray to Hampton Roads to help choose a suitable landing site for Federal troops moving to take the Southern port city.7
MAY 8, 1862: At the battle of McDowell, Virginia, Stonewall Jackson wins the first victory of his Shenandoah Valley Campaign (see March 26, 1862), repulsing an attack by Union troops commanded by General Robert Schenck. Subsequent success in battles at Front Royal (May 23) and Winchester (May 25) will allow Jackson to march to the Potomac River, causing consternation among Federal authorities and residents of Washington, who will fear for the safety of the capital city.8
MAY 9, 1862: Major General David Hunter, in command of the Union’s Department of the South (including South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, in all of which Union forces have established footholds), issues General Orders No. 11. Noting that he had placed the department under martial law (April 25) and that “[s]lavery and martial law in a free country are altogether incompatible,” Hunter proclaims that “the persons in these three States… heretofore held as slaves, are therefore declared forever free.” Like a similar action by John C. Frémont in Missouri (see August 30, 1861), this takes President Lincoln by surprise—and it places him squarely on the horns of a dilemma.9
Destruction of the Rebel Monster “Merrimac” off Craney Island, May 11th, 1862. Hand-colored lithograph by Currier & Ives, ca. 1862.
MAY 10, 1862: With Treasury Secretary Chase accompanying Major General John E. Wool as an informal co-commander, Union troops land near Norfolk and march on the town while, aboard an accompanying vessel, President Lincoln does everything he can to make certain the troops have adequate backup. On the Mississippi River, as Union mortar boat No. 16, protected by the gunboat USS Cincinnati, fires on the Confederate bastion of Fort Pillow, Tennessee, eight boats of the Confederate River Defense Fleet, commanded by Captain James Montgomery, attack the two Union vessels, beginning the battle of Plum Run (Plum Point) Bend, Tennessee. Caught off-guard and some distance away, the rest of the Union flotilla raises steam, four powerful ironclads soon joining the fight. Although the Southern fleet manages to sink two ironclads (they will later be raised and repaired), the Confederates suffer heavy damage to four of their boats and withdraw, thus ending one of the rare fleet actions of the Civil War. In Florida, Union forces occupy Pensacola, which will become a vital base for the U.S. Navy’s blockade of other ports along the Gulf of Mexico.10
MAY 11, 1862: With his ship’s home base of Norfolk now in Union hands, before sunrise, Flag Officer Josiah Tatnall, in command of CSS Virginia (formerly USS Merrimack) and fearful that his risky plan to take the ironclad upriver will be unsuccessful, runs the vessel aground and sets it afire. The resulting explosion, when the flames reach its magazine, ends the career of this much-feared linchpin of the Confederacy’s eastern seaboard navy.11
MAY 12–13, 1862: In the Charleston, South Carolina, harbor, Robert Smalls, a slave working as an assistant pilot on the Confederate side-wheel steamer Planter, bids good night to the ship’s white officers as they leave the vessel in his hands to be battened down for the night. Instead, Smalls takes on some passengers: his wife and children and those of his brother, John, another member of the Planter’s all-black crew. In the wee hours of the morning, Smalls quietly gives orders to cast off, and Planter begins a short but harrowing voyage, running past the fortifications in Charleston harbor to reach the Union blockaders patrolling just beyond. Any of the fortifications, or the blockaders, could open fire, sinking the vessel and killing all aboard, for Smalls, his crew, and their passengers have vowed not to be recaptured by Confederates. A familiar sight in the harbor, Planter sails unchallenged under the Southern guns, saucily whistling the usual salutes, then raises a white flag, which is recognized by the Federal blockaders. “When they discovered that we would not fire on them,” an eyewitness aboard USS Onward will later report, “there was a rush of contrabands out on her deck, some dancing, some singing, whistling, jumping…. [O]ne of the Colored men stepped forward, and taking off his hat, shouted, ‘Good morning, sir! I’ve brought you some of the old United States guns, sir!’ ” Smalls and his crew will receive a reward for transferring this Confederate “prize” to the Union; and Smalls and Planter, which he will eventually captain, will provide valuable service to the Union for the rest of the war.12
Heroes in Ebony—The Captors of the Rebel Steamer Planter, Robert Small [sic, top], W. Morrison, A. Gradine and John Small [sic]. Wood engraving published in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, June 2, 1862.
Bluebeard of New Orleans. Reproduction of a drawing on a carte de visite, 1862. Among the first generals of volunteers appointed by President Lincoln, Major General Benjamin Franklin Butler (1818–1893), USA, also proved to be among the most problematical. As commander of occupied New Orleans, he issued the infamous “Woman’s Order,” which offended the South and dismayed Confederate sympathizers overseas (note John Bull, aghast, in the background).
MAY 15, 1862: After much rude behavior toward Federal troops by devotedly Confederate New Orleans women culminates in a woman dumping the contents of a chamber pot out a window and onto Admiral David Farragut’s head, the Union area commander, Major General Benjamin Butler, issues General Order No. 28:
As the officers and soldiers of the United States have been subject to repeated insults from the women (calling themselves ladies) of New Orleans in return for the most scrupulous non-interference and courtesy on our part, it is ordered that hereafter when any female shall by word, gesture, or movement insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States she shall be regarded as a woman of the town [prostitute] plying her avocation.
Outrage sweeps through the South and erupts as far away as Britain, where the prime minister, Lord Palmerston, declares the edict “infamous.” Yet overt rudeness toward Federal troops in New Orleans does ebb perceptibly, although many people, in the city and elsewhere, will henceforth refer to the Union commander by a less than polite new nickname, “Beast” Butler. In Washington, Lincoln approves the creation of the Department of Agriculture “to acquire and diffuse among the people… useful information on subjects connected with agriculture.” On the Virginia Peninsula, five Union warships, including the ironclad Monitor, move up the James River, under orders to “push on to Richmond if possible, without any unnecessary delay, and shell the place into surrender.” The small fleet is able to get within eight miles of the capital, but must turn back after a harrowing four-hour artillery duel with Confederates stationed at strategically placed Fort Darling, which overlooks the river at Drewry’s Bluff.13
MAY 19, 1862: “[N]either General Hunter, nor any other commander, or person, has been authorized by the Government of the United States, to make proclamations declaring the slaves of any State free,” President Lincoln states in the Proclamation Revoking General Hunter’s Order of Military Emancipation (see May 9, 1862). Decisions regarding emancipation “I reserve to myself,” the president notes. He goes on to remind the nation (and especially the border states) of the possibility of gradual, compensated emancipation (see March 6, 1862) and pleads with the people of the border states to reconsider that proposal. His plea will go unanswered.14
The Chickahominy—Alexanders Bridge. Watercolor drawing by William McIlvaine (1813–1867), 1862. A more volatile body of water than Union forces initially appreciated, the Chickahominy was prone to flooding that could overwhelm the low-lying bridges across it.
Lt. Custer Wading in the Chickahominy River. Pencil drawing by Alfred R. Waud, May 1862. By wading across the uncertain waters of the Chickahominy to determine a safe ford for Union forces, then reconnoitering the enemy’s position on the other side, recent West Point graduate George Armstrong Custer impressed General George B. McClellan to such an extent that McClellan named Custer one of his aides—the first step in Custer’s rise through the ranks to become one of the youngest Union wartime generals.
MAY 20, 1862: Congress passes and President Lincoln signs the Homestead Act, granting 160 acres of land to any adult citizen or intended citizen (man or woman) who stays on the land five years and makes certain improvements. Alternatively, a settler might purchase land for $1.25 an acre after only six months’ residence. A policy opposed before the war by Southern politicians fearful that homesteaders would bring antislavery sentiment with them into the territories, the act will make it possible for some twenty-five thousand settlers to stake claims to more than three million acres before the war ends.15 On the Virginia Peninsula, General McClellan divides his army, sending two corps across the Chickahominy River to the south bank, closest to Richmond, while retaining three corps north of the river. Neither McClellan nor his officers fully appreciate, at first, the temperament and treacheries of the Chickahominy. Surrounded by swamps and spongy ground that make hard going for cavalry and artillery, lined by thick woods that disguise terrain the infantry will have to cross, the river is prone to widespread flooding after soaking rains; its level has been known to rise enough to threaten the bridges that span the river. And it will soon begin to rain.16
MAY 24, 1862: “We approach the stronghold of the enemy,” Colonel Thomas Kilby Smith, of the Fifty-fourth Ohio Volunteer Infantry, states in a letter home. “For every commanding ridge or hill there is a fight.” Union forces are slowly pursuing P. G. T. Beauregard’s Confederate army to the railroad center of Corinth, Mississippi, in the aftermath of the battle of Shiloh (see April 6–7, 1862); and as they press after the enemy, Smith writes,
It is a terrible war…. unholy, unnatural fratricide. As well might he who has buried his knife in his brother’s heart rush forth and exultingly brandish the dripping blade as evidence of good deed done, as he, the executioner of the law (for we are nothing else than executioners sent forth by Government to see the law enforced), offer his trophies, the wrung heart of the widow and fatherless, the ruined plantation… the destruction of the fond hopes of the living, the ruined patrimony of the unborn…. In sadness and sorrow we draw the sword.
In Corinth, Rufus W. Cater, of the Nineteenth Louisiana Volunteers, writes to his cousin Fanny: “The battle of Corinth has not yet been fought…. If we have anything like fair play you may rest assured we will send back the obnoxious hirelings of Lincolndom howling to the shelter of their ironclad boats.” In fact, there will be no battle. On the night of May 29–30, under orders from General Beauregard, Confederate troops will evacuate the disease-ridden city, which Union troops will enter on May 31.17
Rufus W. Cater (ca. 1840–1863), CSA.
Colonel Thomas Kilby Smith (1820–1887), USA.
Professor Lowe’s Balloon Eagle in a Storm. Wood engraving, undated. For the first two years of the war, Professor Thaddeus S. C. Lowe (1832–1913) was the principal driving force behind the U.S. Army’s new Balloon Corps, which provided intelligence on troop movements and geographical information required for making good maps. Balloons and balloonists were particularly vulnerable to the unexpected whims of nature, such as the furious thunderstorm that struck the contending armies on the Virginia Peninsula May 30, 1862.
MAY 27, 1862: At Confederate headquarters on the Virginia Peninsula, General Joseph Johnston receives what later proves to be inaccurate intelligence that forty-one thousand reinforcements are on their way from Fredericksburg to join McClellan’s army, and he decides that he must strike now against that portion of the Army of the Potomac that is encamped south of the Chickahominy. Johnston formulates a plan of attack that will require close coordination among three columns that will be separated by swamps and forests; but he will fail to provide his generals with explicit written orders. Meanwhile, the effects of a drenching rain May 26–27 will be compounded by a furious and lethal thunderstorm the evening of May 30; lightning strikes kill men in both the opposing armies. The Chickahominy rises, threatening the bridges that are the only avenues by which Union forces north of the river can cross over and support their comrades on the other side.18
MAY 31, 1862: From first to last, confusion plays havoc with the execution of General Johnston’s battle plan during what will become known as the battle of Fair Oaks (Seven Pines), Virginia. It begins hours late, when one Confederate column, under D. H. Hill, pushes across swampy ground and into a storm of Union fire. “[M]y horse’s head was blown off, and falling so suddenly as to catch my foot and leg under the horse,” Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Grimes, of the Fourth North Carolina, will later report. “The regiment seeing me fall, supposed I was killed or wounded, and began to falter and waver, when I, still penned to the earth by the weight of my horse, waved my sword and shouted forward! forward! Whereupon some of my men came to my assistance…. [S]eeing the flag upon the ground, the flag-bearer and all the color-guard being killed or wounded, I grasped it and called upon them to charge! Which they did, and together with others captured the fortifications.” Forced to fall back several times during this day of disjointed attacks and seesaw action, Union troops are reinforced in late afternoon, when the venerable and pugnacious General Edwin Sumner brings men across the swollen Chickahominy via the one bridge that is still viable. As Sumner’s troops repel an attack by Confederates under Brigadier General William H. C. Whiting, their fire hits General Johnston, who is watching Whiting’s progress from a knoll well within the Northerners’ range. Seriously wounded, Johnston will be taken back to Richmond for medical care. Major General Gustavus W. Smith assumes interim command of the Confederate troops on the Peninsula.19
The Civil War in America: Destruction of the Confederate Flotilla off Memphis. Engraving, based on a drawing by Frank Vizetelly, from the Illustrated London News, July 19, 1862. “Memphis… the proud city that would never surrender to the Northern vandal is now garrisoned by Federal soldiers,” Vizetelly wrote in his accompanying dispatch. “Commodore Davis, who commands the national flotilla, need scarcely have wasted words in writing his despatch. ‘I came, I saw, I conquered,’ would have expressed everything.”
JUNE
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Gen. J. E. B. Stuart’s Raid Around McClellan, June 1862. Reproduction of a painting by Henry Alexander Ogden (1856–1936), ca. 1900. Dubbed “the eyes of the army” by Robert E. Lee because of the invaluable intelligence he provided to Confederate commanders, James Ewell Brown (Jeb) Stuart (1833–1864) was adept at “seizing the moment”—as he did during his famous ride around the Army of the Potomac on the Virginia Peninsula.
JUNE 1, 1862: As the battle of Fair Oaks (Seven Pines) concludes with an ineffective assault by Confederates under James Longstreet, Jefferson Davis “temporarily” relieves Robert E. Lee of his duties as chief military adviser to the Confederate president and places him in command of the troops protecting Richmond—a force now officially known as the Army of Northern Virginia. Among Lee’s first priorities: improving the system for moving food and other needed supplies to the field (while urging greater attention to the care and preservation of these limited materials) and the overall well-being of his troops—some of whom have been reduced to trapping and eating rats. Faced with the need to improve fortifications, Lee, like Johnston before him, encounters a problem: “Our people are opposed to work,” he will write Davis on June 5. “Our troops, officers, Community & press, All ridicule & resist it.” Yet his men buckle down to their duties when he establishes work details, and they rapidly improve the defensive environment. Lee also appoints Albert H. Campbell head of the Commission of Engineers and Draughtsmen and orders him to prepare accurate detailed maps of the area, something that both Confederate and Union forces sadly lack.20
JUNE 6, 1862: “The guns of the enemy!” Union naval inventor Charles Ellet shouts to the crewmen of his two vessels, Queen of the West and Monarch, as he hears the rumble of naval artillery from downstream on the Mississippi River. “Round out and follow me! Now is our chance!” His two rams—ships with iron-reinforced prows—quickly join in the battle already raging in the waters just off Memphis, Tennessee, between Commodore Charles Davis’s Union flotilla of five ironclads and two rams versus Confederate captain James E. Montgomery’s determined but inferior makeshift squadron of eight vessels. Thousands of people watch from shore as the battle continues for nearly two hours. Many of the spectators weep as the Union boats emerge triumphant, having either captured or knocked out of commission seven of the Confederate vessels. (The Federals suffer only one fatality from this encounter; Charles Ellet will die from his wounds two weeks later.) Now under Union control, Memphis will rapidly become a refuge for runaway slaves and a humming center of commerce, both legal and illegal. An estimated $20 million in black-market goods will flow through the city and into Confederate hands over the next two years.21
JUNE 8–9, 1862: Stonewall Jackson’s legendary Shenandoah Valley Campaign, which kept Union troops occupied that might have otherwise reinforced McClellan’s army on the Peninsula, comes to a close with Confederate victories at Cross Keys and Port Republic. Within a week, an exchange of letters between Jackson and Robert E. Lee will result in a decision to bring Jackson and his “foot cavalry” back to join the forces protecting Richmond. “To be effcacious the movement must be secret,” Lee will write to Jackson on June 16. “Let me know the force you can bring and be careful to guard from friends and foes your purpose and your intention of personally leaving the Valley. The country is full of spies and our plans are immediately carried to the enemy.”22
The Burial of Latane. Engraving by Campbell A. Gilchrist after a painting by William Dickinson Washington (1833–1870), undated. Shortly after Captain William Latane’s death during Stuart’s ride around McClellan’s forces on the Virginia Peninsula, the Southern Literary Messenger published a poem by John Reuben Thompson (1823–1873) that included the lines “The aged matron and the faithful slave / Approached with reverent feet the hero’s lowly grave.” Inspired by the poem, the painting became an icon of the “Lost Cause” after the war.
JUNE 12–16, 1862: On the Virginia Peninsula, Brigadier General James Ewell Brown (Jeb) Stuart exceeds Robert E. Lee’s orders to scout the Union’s left flank and instead leads twelve hundred Confederate cavalrymen on a reconnaissance completely around Union lines, “routing the enemy in a series of skirmishes, taking a number of prisoners, and destroying and capturing stores to a large amount,” as General Lee will write in a congratulatory order several days later. “Having most successfully accomplished its object, the expedition recrossed the Chickahominy almost in the presence of the enemy with the same coolness and address that marked every step of its progress, and with the loss of but one man, the lamented Captain [William] Latane.” With this deed, Stuart and his men secure a place in the history books; and circumstances surrounding the burial of Captain Latane will inspire a poem and a painting that will live long in Southern mythology.23
JUNE 17, 1862: Suffering from a persistent throat ailment, General P. G. T. Beauregard relinquishes his command of the Confederacy’s Western Department to his subordinate, the energetic but quarrelsome General Braxton Bragg. Beauregard deems this action temporary; but President Davis, who has become critical of Beauregard’s performance as department commander (particularly his retreat from the battlefield at Shiloh and his evacuation of Corinth, Mississippi), will make the change permanent. In September Beauregard will return to Charleston, where he led Confederate troops as the war began, as commander of the Department of South Carolina and Georgia. In Washington, the U.S. Congress passes the Land Grant College Act, also called the First Morrill Act, after its sponsor, Congressman Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont. One of the most important pieces of educational legislation in United States history, the bill transfers public lands—mostly in the West—to all states loyal to the Union. Colleges devoted to “agriculture and the mechanic arts” are to be built with money accumulated from selling these lands.24
JUNE 19, 1862: President Lincoln signs into law a measure prohibiting slavery in the territories of the United States. There is no question of compensation to those people in the territories who might currently be slaveholders, for Republicans believe that slavery has never been valid outside the established states in which it already existed. More conservative members of Congress are not comfortable with what they view as another emancipationist measure; the vote on the bill was strictly along party lines—Republicans yea, Democrats and border state representatives nay.25
JUNE 25, 1862: The first wartime Union League is established in Pekin, Illinois, providing a template for many other such leagues that will form in the North over the next year. Complete with publication boards, the Leagues will seek to bolster Northern morale and faith in the Union cause and counteract the activities of Copperheads, or Peace Democrats, and the subversive plans (real and rumored) of clandestine organizations, such as the Knights of the Golden Circle, that are sympathetic to the Confederacy.26 On the Virginia Peninsula, one day before Robert E. Lee plans to embark on an offensive, a Union reconnaissance-in-force dispatched from the main body of the Army of the Potomac south of the Chickahominy River sparks a lively engagement at Oak Grove, a premature opening encounter in what will become known as the Seven Days Campaign. The following day, Lee will attack Brigadier General Fitz John Porter’s Union Fifth Corps north of the river at Mechanicsville. Even though Federal troops manage to repulse that attack (which suffers from sluggish action by Stonewall Jackson), Major General George McClellan will order Porter’s troops to pull back to Gaines’ Mill.27
Rebels Leaving Mechanicsville. Union Batteries Shelling the Village. Pencil and Chinese white drawing by Alfred R. Waud, May 24, 1862. Driven from Mechanicsville by Union troops under Brigadier General William F. (“Baldy”) Smith on May 24, 1862, Lee’s Confederates were unsuccessful in an attempt to retake the village on June 26.
JUNE 26, 1862: President Lincoln consolidates several Union forces, creating a new force, the Army of Virginia, and placing it under the command of Major General John Pope. He directs this new force to “operate in such manner as, while protecting western Virginia and the national Capitol from danger or insult, it shall in the speediest manner attack and overcome the rebel forces under [Stonewall] Jackson and [Richard] Ewell, threaten the enemy in the direction of Charlottesville, and render the most effective aid to relieve General McClellan and capture Richmond.”28
JUNE 27, 1862: Amazed by the retreat of Union forces north of the Chickahominy (see June 25, 1862), Lee strikes again. Leading some fifty-seven thousand men, he hits Union general Fitz John Porter’s reinforced thirty-five-thousand-man Fifth Corps at the battle of Gaines’ Mill (First Cold Harbor)—while McClellan and seventy thousand troops remain south of the river, tied down, McClellan believes, by a far superior force (in fact, he faces some twenty-five thousand Confederates). After nine hours of vicious fighting observed by Jefferson Davis and other prominent Confederate figures from behind Rebel lines, the Confederates are victorious at Gaines’ Mill. This costly Union defeat and his own supposed predicament completely unnerve McClellan. “I have lost this battle because my force was too small,” he will write to Secretary of War Stanton on June 28. “The government must not and cannot hold me responsible for the result…. this Government has not sustained this army.” As Lee pursues him, through engagements at Savage’s Station (June 29) and Glendale (Frayser’s Farm, June 30), McClellan will determine to end his campaign to take Richmond. In the meantime, both sides pay heavily in blood: all told, some thirty-six thousand soldiers (twenty thousand Confederate, sixteen thousand Union) will be killed, wounded, or declared missing during the Seven Days Campaign. Writing to his wife on June 29, regimental surgeon Spencer Glasgow Welch, of the Thirteenth South Carolina Volunteers, will tell of huge numbers of wounded. “Not only are the houses full, but even the yards are covered with them. There are so many that most of them are much neglected. The people of Richmond are hauling them away as fast as possible.” Many of the Union injured will be taken to Washington by boats with “every deck, every berth and every square inch of room covered with wounded men,” as U.S. Sanitary Commission nurse Katharine Wormeley writes to her mother in June, “even the stairs and gangways and guards filled.” Eighteen new hospitals will be established in the capital city during and in the aftermath of the Seven Days Campaign, some of them in such makeshift quarters as Caspari’s Hotel on Capitol Hill, the synagogue on Eighth Street, and a former Republican Party campaign headquarters.29
5th U.S. Cavalry Charge at Gaines’ Mill, 27th June 1862. Reproduction of a painting by William B. T. Trego (1859–1909), published in The Army and Navy of the United States from the Period of the Revolution to the Present Day, by William Walton, 1899, Vol. 1.
JULY
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JULY 1, 1862: At the battle of Malvern Hill, Virginia, which ends the Seven Days Campaign, Robert E. Lee makes his final attempt to deal George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac a lethal blow—but the Confederate attacks, launched against well-placed Union lines, are neither well planned nor well coordinated. Rebel troops march over open fields under lacerating and unrelenting fire from Union army artillery and Flag Officer Louis M. Goldsborough’s river-based gunboats. “It was not war,” General D. H. Hill will later declare, recalling the scene as shells tore into his Confederate troops, “it was murder.” McClellan rejects suggestions from some of his officers that he take advantage of this bloody victory and renew the drive toward Richmond. He continues his retreat to Harrison’s Landing, where navy gunboats can protect the Union camps and communications. The Peninsula Campaign, upon which McClellan embarked with both undermining caution and overweening confidence, has failed. As President Lincoln’s dissatisfaction with McClellan’s generalship increases, Union civilians seek someone to blame for the campaign’s failure: Republicans tend to blame McClellan; many Democrats zero in on Secretary of War Stanton. In the Confederacy, citizens and soldiers breathe a sigh of relief. “Lee has turned the tide,” Confederate war department clerk John Jones writes in his diary. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia will henceforth remain central to Southern hopes—including the hope that the European Powers will recognize the Confederate States as an independent nation, an event that now seems tantalizingly close: the Confederacy’s recent battlefield successes have impressed European governments, and the war-related dearth of Southern cotton is now causing significant layoffs among British textile workers, giving Britain added reason to intercede in the American conflict. In Washington, President Lincoln signs the Pacific Railroad Act, granting land and loans to corporations organized to build a railroad and telegraph line from Omaha, Nebraska, to Sacramento, California. (The first rails will be laid eastward from Sacramento in 1863.) An infinitely more painful piece of legislation, the U.S. Internal Revenue Act of 1862, also becomes law today. Establishing taxes on just about everything, from luxuries to a wide variety of professions and occupations—including, as Representative James G. Blaine notes, “bankers and pawn brokers, lawyers and horse-dealers, physicians and confectioners, commercial brokers and peddlers”—the bill will eventually raise monies that cover almost a quarter of wartime expenditures. Most of the taxes will not live long past the war; but the Bureau of Internal Revenue, also established under the act, will become a permanent fixture in American lives.30
Private Edwin Francis Jemison (d. 1862), CSA, a soldier in the Second Louisiana Infantry, was one of 869 Confederate soldiers and 314 Federals killed at the Battle of Malvern Hill.
Mount Pleasant Hospitals, Washington, DC. Color lithograph by Charles Magnus, 1862. Hospitals were relatively scarce when the Civil War started; as the war dragged on and tens of thousands of men fell ill or became battlefield casualties, both sides established many permanent and makeshift hospital facilities. Military barracks were converted into the Mount Pleasant Hospitals in March 1862.
JULY 2, 1862: “The question often occurred to me,” author Nathaniel Hawthorne will write of a visit to Washington in July 1862, “what proportion of all these people… were true at heart to the Union, and what part were tainted with treasonable sympathies and wishes.” It is a question that has troubled many others since the beginning of the war (see July 9, 1861). Thus, on this day when he issues a call for three hundred thousand new volunteers, President Lincoln also signs into law the Ironclad Test Oath, by which elected or appointed government officials must swear that they have never “borne arms against the United States” and will “support and defend the Constitution.” The president has already approved less stringent loyalty oaths for shipmasters headed to foreign ports, Federal government employees, and military personnel. In addition, Union military commanders require Southerners in occupied territory, or suspected Confederate sympathizers in the border states, to take loyalty oaths. With his eye on cooperation and future reconstruction, Lincoln will later order that these oaths require only a promise of future loyalty. In 1867, the Supreme Court will declare the Ironclad Oath unconstitutional.31
JULY 3, 1862: As Union forces are increasingly plagued by Confederate guerrillas and other irregulars, General Ulysses S. Grant, in command of the District of West Tennessee, issues the following order:
The system of guerrilla warfare now being prosecuted by some troops organized under the authority of the so-called Southern Confederacy, and others without such authority, being so pernicious to the welfare of the community where it is carried on, and it being within the power of the communities to suppress this system, it is ordered that wherever loss is sustained by the Government, collections shall be made by seizure of a sufficient amount of personal property from persons in the immediate neighborhood sympathizing with the rebellion to remunerate the government for all loss and expense of collection.
Persons acting as guerrillas without organization and without uniform to distinguish them from private citizens are not entitled to treatment as prisoners of war when caught, and will not receive such treatment.32
“I shall do nothing in malice. What I deal with is too vast for malicious dealing.”
—ABRAHAM LINCOLN, JULY 28, 1862
A Jerilla [sic] / A Deserter. Pencil drawing by Alfred R. Waud, between 1860 and 1865. Plagued by guerrillas who harassed army columns, attacked civilians sympathetic to the Union, and often behaved viciously toward African Americans attempting to aid the Union army, Department of West Tennessee commander Ulysses S. Grant issued stern guidelines for coping with such irregular warfare.
JULY 4, 1862: The people of Boston open a Discharged Soldiers’ Home for honorably discharged Union soldiers who are suffering due to wounds or illness stemming from their army service and who need help finding jobs or reestablishing their community ties. One year later, the home’s first annual report will note that it is a “model only, on a scale far too small, and one which will soon be found, as indeed it already is, inadequate to the proper care of the disabled Soldiers who are likely to be thrown upon the community for support” (see also March 3, 1865). At Himrods Corners, New York, Frederick Douglass delivers a Fourth of July speech in which he criticizes Lincoln’s conservative approach to emancipation—and lambastes General McClellan: “I feel quite sure that this country will yet come to the conclusion that Geo. B. McClellan is either a cold blooded Traitor, or that he is an unmitigated military Impostor.”33
JULY 8, 1862: When President Lincoln visits the Union encampments at Harrison’s Landing, Virginia, to personally observe the state of the Army of the Potomac after its defeat on the Peninsula, General McClellan hands the president a long, unsolicited letter, in which he expresses his views on the conduct of the war. “It should not be at all a war upon population, but against armed forces and political organizations. Neither confiscation of property, political executions of persons, territorial organization of States, or forcible abolition of slavery should be contemplated for a minute….” The president does not answer the letter. But it is clear that the Union’s experience thus far in the war has caused him to contemplate more forceful policies. On July 28, he will answer at length a letter protesting Union policies in occupied Louisiana. “What would you do in my position? Would you drop the war where it is? Or, would you prosecute it in future, with elder-stalk squirts, charged with rose water? Would you deal lighter blows rather than heavier ones? Would you give up the contest, leaving any available means unapplied…. I shall do all I can to save the government, which is my sworn duty as well as my personal inclination. I shall do nothing in malice. What I deal with is too vast for malicious dealing.”34
JULY 11, 1862: “McClellan is an imbecile if not a traitor,” Radical Republican senator Zachariah Chandler writes to his wife. “He has virtually lost the army of the Potomac.” A powerful member of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, Chandler has won approval to use heretofore restricted testimony taken by that committee in open congressional debate. Tomorrow, he will criticize McClellan on the Senate floor. On the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, President Lincoln appoints Major General Henry W. Halleck “to command the whole land forces of the United States as General-in-Chief,” a post that has been vacant since the president relieved McClellan of that responsibility months before. Learning of the appointment, McClellan will write to his wife and others that he regards the appointment of “a man whom I know by experience to be my inferior” to be a “slap in the face.” Halleck, meanwhile, telegraphs the president that he will travel to the capital as soon as he has had a conference with the general who will succeed him in command of the Department of the Mississippi, Ulysses S. Grant.35
Although well thought of by many of his Army of the Potomac soldiers, Major General George B. McClellan was a source of increasing aggravation to some of his subordinate officers, most Radical Republicans, and other Northern civilians eager for fewer excuses and more victories. McClellan’s detractors might have snapped up copies of this illustrated envelope to both enclose and advertise their criticism of the general.
Major General Henry W. Halleck (1815–1872), USA. Dubbed “Old Brains” because of his intelligence and prewar intellectual pursuits, Halleck proved to be an undistinguished battlefield commander and a disappointing general in chief.
JULY 13, 1862: On the same day that President Lincoln receives a “manifesto” from border state congressmen rejecting his proposed policy of financial compensation for slaveholders whose slaves are emancipated, Secretary of State William Seward and Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles accompany the chief executive on a carriage ride to Oak Hill Cemetery, where they are to attend interment services for Secretary of War Edwin Stanton’s infant son. During the ride, Lincoln informs the two cabinet members, as Welles will later record in his journal, that “in case the rebels did not cease to persist in their war,” he intends to issue an Emancipation Proclamation, having reached the conclusion, after much contemplation, “that it was a military necessity absolutely essential for the salvation of the Union, that we must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued.” In Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his Confederate cavalry stage a spectacularly successful raid, capturing Brigadier General Thomas L. Crittenden’s entire 1,040-man Federal garrison, its weapons, and $1 million in supplies. Forrest will continue his disruption of Union forces in middle Tennessee through the end of the month. To the north, in Kentucky, Confederate colonel John Hunt Morgan and his men are in the midst of a three-week cavalry raid through the state, raising fears of pro-Confederate uprisings there and creating consternation in neighboring Ohio.36
JULY 14, 1862: Lincoln signs the General Pension Law, establishing the Federal pension system for men who become disabled “from causes which can be directly traced to injuries received or disease contracted while in the military service.” Retroactive to March 1, 1861, the act also provides pension benefits to widows and families of military personnel killed in the war.37
JULY 15, 1862: The recently commissioned Confederate ironclad ram CSS Arkansas, captained by Lieutenant Isaac Newton Brown, battles its way down the Yazoo River, where three Union vessels are conducting a reconnaissance. Disabling USS Carondelet, Arkansas sustains heavy damage as it pursues USS Tyler and Queen of the West out of the Yazoo and into the Mississippi River—where Brown runs into a thirty-vessel Union fleet anchored above Vicksburg, blockading the city. Initially unprepared for battle, the Union ships soon begin firing, repeatedly hitting Arkansas as the Confederate vessel moves past them (scoring hits on several Union ships). With ten of his crewmen dead and sixteen wounded, Brown finally gets the battered Arkansas to relative safety at a wharf protected by Vicksburg’s guns, where it is met by wildly cheering soldiers and civilians from the city. Yet the duel is not over. After nightfall, Admiral David Farragut, enraged that Arkansas got past his fleet, leads several ships in a run past Vicksburg, targeting the ironclad (while other vessels, under Charles Henry Davis, give them covering fire). But this, and a follow-up attempt on July 22, are unsuccessful; although it sustains additional damage, the Confederate ironclad remains afloat. “I need not say to you,” Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles wires the two Union commanders, “that the escape [of the Arkansas] and its attending circumstances have been the cause of serious mortification to the Department and the country.” In Cincinnati, five days of growing racial tensions explode into a riot as a mob of perhaps a thousand white men rages through the black section of the city, unrestrained by police (many of whom have rushed to Lexington, Kentucky, to defend that city against a possible Confederate raid; see July 13, 1862). Black citizens stay under cover as the rampaging whites take control of the streets; it will take a full day for authorities to reestablish calm. “The difficulty… grew out of a difference between white and colored hands upon steamboats,” the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer will report on July 18, “the latter working for smaller wages than the former, and therefore being preferred by the employers.”38
Plan of Homograph. To Be Made with a Sword, Tiller, Stick, Stretcher, and a Handkerchief, or Flag. Chart in Code of Flotilla and Boat Squadron Signals for the United States Navy, 1861. Throughout the war, manual signaling was an essential means of communication between individual naval vessels and between ships and installations ashore. The sudden appearance of an enemy vessel, such as CSS Arkansas in pursuit of two Union vessels, often sent signalers scrambling.
Major General Thomas C. Hindman (1828–1868), CSA. A veteran of the Mexican War, Hindman played a leading role in the Arkansas secession movement. As commander of the Trans-Mississippi Department (May–July 1862), his policies, including strict enforcement of conscription, provoked protest among local civilian authorities.
JULY 17, 1862: After acrimonious debate, the U.S. Congress passes the Second Confiscation Act. Among its provisions are freedom for the slaves of all those who support the Rebellion when those slaves come within Union control, and an authorization for the president to “employ as many persons of African descent as he may deem necessary and proper for the suppression of this rebellion.” Congress also authorizes the president to provide for colonization “in some tropical country beyond the limits of the United States, of such persons of the African race, made free by the provisions of this act, as may be willing to emigrate.” Later in the war, this act will serve to inspire a growing conflict between Congress and the president over which more properly should have authority over slavery and reconstruction measures. Congress also approves “An Act to amend the Act calling for the militia to execute the Laws of the Union” (Militia Act), which states, in part: “the President… is hereby authorized to receive into the service of the United States, for the purpose of constructing intrenchments, or performing camp service or any other labor, or any military or naval service for which they may be found competent, persons of African descent.”39 West of the Mississippi River, Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department commander Major General Thomas C. Hindman issues an order that will be the catalyst for many brutal encounters between regular and irregular forces in Arkansas after Union forces take Little Rock in 1863. The order states, in part:
For the more effectual annoyance of the enemy upon our rivers and in our mountains and woods all citizens of this district who are not subject to conscription are called upon to organize themselves into independent companies of mounted men or infantry… arming and equipping themselves, and to serve in that part of the district to which they belong…. Their duty will be to cut off federal pickets, scouts, foraging parties, and trains, and to kill pilots and others on gunboats and transports, attacking them day and night, and using the greatest vigor in their movements.40
Parole Camp, Annapolis, Md. Color lithograph by Sachse & Co., May 1864. Based on the French parole d’honneur, the Civil War system of paroling prisoners sometimes involved sending captives to a special camp run by their own army until formal prisoner exchange was completed. Discipline could be lax. “The guard that do duty over us are raw Pennsylvania Militia and seem disposed to grant us… the largest degree of liberty,” Union soldier Warren H. Freeman wrote to his father after his capture by Confederates at Gettysburg and subsequent parole. “Consequently some of the men have gone home, others work for the farmers in the neighborhood at haying, etc.”
JULY 20, 1862: Major General William T. Sherman arrives to take command at Memphis, Tennessee, and surprises its citizens with his generous policies toward this former Confederate city. Sherman will fast become perturbed, however, over the brisk commerce in cotton and other goods eagerly sought by the Union that sends funds flowing into Confederate coffers, and by the smuggling of salt and other materials from Memphis into Confederate-held territory. “I have no hesitation in saying that the possessing of the Mississippi River by us is an enormous advantage to our enemy,” he will write in August, “for by it and the commercial spirit of our people… the enemy, get directly or indirectly all the means necessary to carry on the war.” Contrabands seeking refuge, guerrilla activity, and increasingly strained relations with the Memphis press will be other vexing problems Sherman will face as commander at Memphis.41
JULY 22, 1862: Union general John Dix and Confederate general D. H. Hill agree on an exchange cartel for prisoners of war—now, after more than one year of warfare, numbering in the thousands and presenting both governments with problems of proper housing and care. The cartel provides for the parole and exchange of prisoners and bases the rate of exchange on a prisoner’s rank. A parole, to be put in effect within ten days after capture, permits a prisoner to return to his own lines, provided that he does not take up arms until he is officially exchanged. Most prisoners will be returned with relative speed to their own side under this system, which will remain effective until late spring of 1863, when fundamental disagreements between the two sides, most particularly regarding the treatment of black Union soldiers, will cause it to break down. In Washington, Lincoln reads his draft of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet (see also July 13, 1862). As the president has anticipated, reaction is mixed: Secretary of War Stanton and Attorney General Bates firmly endorse immediate release of this hallmark decree (Bates insisting that the freed slaves be transported out of the country). Secretary of the Treasury Chase, heretofore a firm advocate of emancipation, counsels a less radical move; and Postmaster General Blair firmly opposes the proclamation, fearing its effect on the fall elections and on Unionists in the border states. Yet the president has already told his advisers that he is determined to take this step. He does, however, listen to an argument put forth by Secretary of State Seward. At this time, when Union forces have suffered reverses and there is bubbling political unrest in the North, the secretary of state advises Lincoln not to issue the proclamation until it can be backed up by a substantial military victory, lest it be viewed “as the last measure of an exhausted government, a cry for help.” Lincoln agrees to wait.42
A Short History of Braxton Bragg. Booklet in a series designed to be included in cigarette packs, 1888. A West Point graduate and veteran of the Seminole and Mexican wars, Bragg (1817–1876), CSA, had a difficult personality that alienated many of his subordinate officers. A friend of President Davis’s, he was placed in command of the Army of Tennessee in June 1862.
JULY 23, 1862: In the first phase of a planned invasion of Kentucky, Confederate general Braxton Bragg begins the largest Confederate railroad movement of the war, sending thirty thousand men via a roundabout rail route of 776 miles from Mississippi to Chattanooga, Tennessee.43
JULY 25, 1862: The Union’s new general in chief, Henry W. Halleck (see July 11, 1862), arrives at Harrison’s Landing, Virginia, to discuss with General McClellan the future of the Army of the Potomac. After observing the strategic situation, Halleck will write to his wife that McClellan “does not understand strategy and should never plan a campaign.” Accepting McClellan’s estimate that Lee has two hundred thousand men (in fact, the Confederate general has substantially fewer than a hundred thousand), Halleck is concerned that Lee will be able to concentrate on and destroy, in turn, McClellan’s scattered forces and John Pope’s newly formed Army of Virginia. In fact, Lee does have something of that nature in mind: Stonewall Jackson and his men are now heading in Pope’s direction.44
Belle Boyd (1843–1900). Boyd’s final undercover adventure, sailing for England in 1864 to deliver letters from President Davis, ended in her capture, imprisonment, and release. She later married her captor.
JULY 29, 1862: Eighteen-year-old Belle Boyd is captured by Union forces near Warrenton, Virginia. Accused of being a spy and courier for the Confederates, she will be sent to the Old Capitol Prison in Washington—the same facility that recently housed Mrs. Rose O’Neal Greenhow, a celebrated Washington hostess whose many connections in the city had allowed her to warn Confederate forces in July 1861 of the Union’s impending attack at First Bull Run. (On June 2, 1862, after signing a pledge that she would not go north of the Potomac River, Greenhow was released from prison and sent south.) During Stonewall Jackson’s recent Shenandoah Campaign, Boyd provided similar useful information to Confederate troops, gleaned from artful eavesdropping on Union officers. Federal authorities lack sufficient evidence to hold her, however, and on August 28 she will be released. By now, both sides have learned to fully appreciate the value of accurate intelligence; both are engaged in spying and espionage. Enemies caught in the act are generally imprisoned—but some are executed, including the Union’s Timothy Webster, hanged in Richmond, Virginia, on April 29, 1862, and the Confederacy’s Sam Davis, executed in Giles County, Tennessee, on November 27, 1863.45
Destruction of the Rebel Ram “Arkansas”: By the United States Gunboat “Essex,” on the Mississippi River, near Baton Rouge, August 4th [sic], 1862. Hand-colored lithograph by Currier & Ives, ca. 1862. Although Essex and other Union vessels were bearing down on CSS Arkansas, this print exaggerates their role in the Confederate ship’s demise.
JULY 30, 1862: In honor of his decisive victory at New Orleans, David Farragut becomes the first U.S. flag officer to be commissioned rear admiral.46
AUGUST
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Soldier’s Dummies and Quakers, Left in the Works at Harrison’s Landing. Pencil and Chinese white drawing by Alfred R. Waud, August 1862. Turning the tables on the Confederates, who used this ruse more than once on them, Army of the Potomac soldiers left “Quaker” [fake] cannon and dummy soldiers to help cover their withdrawal from Harrison’s Landing.
AUGUST 1, 1862: The Liberator publishes prominent African American John Rock’s observations on President Lincoln’s policies regarding emancipation: “I have never doubted but that the President was on the side of freedom and humanity, but I confess I do not understand how it is, that when the national life has been assailed, he has not availed himself of all the powers given him; and, more especially, why he has not broken every yoke, and let the oppressed go free…. We all know that emancipation, if early proclaimed, would not only have saved many precious lives, but the nation itself. Why then delay, when delays are dangerous, and may prove fatal?”47
AUGUST 6, 1862: Suffering from severe engine trouble, the celebrated ironclad CSS Arkansas (see July 15, 1862) is heavily damaged in a battle with four Union vessels during a Confederate attempt to wrest the Louisiana state capital of Baton Rouge from the Union forces that have occupied the city since May 9. Before abandoning ship, its crew sets Arkansas ablaze—bringing to a fiery end the twenty-three-day career of the Rebel warship, the last of its kind on the Mississippi River.48
AUGUST 9, 1862: Having thwarted McClellan’s attempt to take Richmond, Robert E. Lee now aims to recover lost territory and supplies and more effectively secure the area north of the Confederate capital, with its vital railroads to the Shenandoah Valley. The first Union contingent in his sights is Major General John Pope’s Army of Virginia. Today, twenty-four thousand Confederates under Stonewall Jackson encounter elements of Pope’s army—some nine thousand Federals led by Nathaniel Banks—at the battle of Cedar Mountain. “At first, we sustained a fire from the rebels only in the woods, which was not very severe, but soon the enemy made their appearance in an oblique line and commenced a cross fire which was perfectly fearful,” Lieutenant Charles F. Morse of the Second Massachusetts Infantry will later record in his diary. “Our poor men were dropping on every side, yet not one of them flinched but kept steadily at his work…. I never was more surprised in my life than when I heard the order to retreat.” The battle, which continues well into the night, is a Confederate victory. But before Jackson withdraws to embark on a singular mission (see August 25, 1862), on August 10 both sides hastily bury their dead and tend to the wounded. “A house with quite a large yard had been taken for hospital use,” Morse will write, “the scene in and about it was very painful. Soldiers lying in all directions, with every variety of wounds.” Among those tending the wounded is Clara Barton, who nurses both Union wounded and Confederate prisoners.49
Bringing the Wounded Soldiers to the Cars after Battle of Seven Pines. Pencil and Chinese white drawing by Arthur Lumley, June 3, 1862. By August 1862, scenes of soldiers and civilians pitching in to help battlefield casualties had become all too familiar. Lieutenant Charles F. Morse, who described the aftermath of the battle of Cedar Mountain, himself “took hold and worked hard, loading the ambulances, for about an hour, when our regiment moved and I was ordered to join it.”
AUGUST 10, 1862: Riding from around Fredericksburg in the middle of Texas, and heading for Mexico, more than sixty Unionist Texans, recent immigrants from Germany, are overtaken by ninety-five Confederate soldiers at the Nueces River. In the pitched battle that follows, two soldiers and about thirty Unionists are killed. Many other real and suspected Unionists in the Fredericksburg, Texas, area will be arrested, hanged, or killed by other means in the following weeks before relative calm returns to the region. “Nowhere else in the Confederacy,” historian William C. Davis will later write, “did the military put so many disloyal citizens to death.”50
AUGUST 14, 1862: Two weeks after he first received the order from General in Chief Halleck (and as Lee’s army closes in on Pope’s Army of Virginia), General McClellan begins withdrawing his troops from Harrison’s Landing, moving to the embarkation points from which they will travel by boat to northern Virginia, where they will be in a position to assist Pope and protect the Union capital; but the transport of so many men will take time. In the western theater, the Confederate Heartland Campaign begins as General Edmund Kirby Smith leads ten thousand troops out of Knoxville, Tennessee, into Kentucky. In Washington, a deputation of black leaders headed by Edward M. Thomas, president of the Anglo-African Institute for the Encouragement of Industry and Art, visits the White House at the invitation of the president and hears a lengthy presidential discourse advocating colonization of African Americans outside the continental United States (see also December 3, 1861). “Your race are suffering, in my judgment, the greatest wrong inflicted on any people,” the president says. “But even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on any equality with the white race…. It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated.” Lincoln asks the men to recruit from twenty-five to one hundred families for a nascent colonization project in Central America, pledging government support. He does note that “one of the principal difficulties in the way of colonization is that the free colored man cannot see that his comfort would be advanced by it”—and the overwhelmingly negative reaction to his remarks at this meeting proves the truth of his assessment. “Pray tell us, is our right to a home in this country less than your own, Mr. Lincoln?” A. P. Smith, of Saddle River, New Jersey, will ask in a published reply to the president. “Are you an American? So are we. Are you a patriot? So are we. Would you spurn all absurd, meddlesome, impudent propositions for your colonization in a foreign country? So do we.”51
AUGUST 19, 1862: Horace Greeley, the influential editor of the New York Tribune, publishes a long open letter he has written and titled “The Prayer of the Twenty Millions,” calling on Lincoln to enforce the recently passed Confiscation Act and no longer tolerate the behavior of Union officers who display what Greeley terms a “mistaken deference to Rebel slavery.”
You, Mr. President, elected as a Republican, knowing well what an abomination Slavery is, and how emphatically it is the core and essence of this atrocious Rebellion, seem never to… give a direction to your Military subordinates, which does not appear to have been conceived in the interest of Slavery rather than of Freedom…. there is not one disinterested, determined, intelligent champion of the Union cause who does not feel that attempts to put down the Rebellion and at the same time uphold its inciting cause are preposterous and futile… and that every hour of deference to Slavery is an hour of added and deepened peril to the Union.52
AUGUST 21, 1862: Responding to rumors that the Union is enlisting black soldiers in the Northern-occupied portions of Louisiana and South Carolina, Confederate army headquarters issues a general order that such “crimes and outrages” require “retaliation” in the form of “execution as a felon” of any officer of black troops who is captured.53
AUGUST 22, 1862: “I have just read yours of the 19th addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune,” Lincoln writes to Horace Greeley, referring to the editor’s pro-emancipation editorial, “The Prayer of the Twenty Millions” (see August 19, 1862).
If there be perceptible in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right. As to the policy I “seem to be pursuing” as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt. I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution…. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that…. I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.
Lincoln’s letter prepares the public to accept the Emancipation Proclamation, which he has still not issued.54
Horace Greeley (1811–1872). Print by Armstrong & Co., 1872. One of the North’s most influential editors, Greeley spoke out against monopolies, for labor unions, in support of experiments in “constructive democracy”—and against slavery.
This hand-colored 1864 print published in New York by George Whiting portrays Abraham Lincoln as determined protector of the Constitution, loyal citizens, and the Union they are defending. The legend under the art reads: “The people of these United States are the rightful masters of both Congresses and Courts, not to over-throw the Constitution, but to over-throw the men who pervert that Constitution.”
AUGUST 24, 1862: Having relinquished command of the battered CSS Sumter, in which he and his crew had captured or sunk some eighteen Union vessels, Confederate commerce raider Raphael Semmes takes command of a new vessel, CSS Alabama, which is commissioned as a cruiser in the Confederate navy today near the Azores in the Atlantic.55
AUGUST 25, 1862: A month after passage of the Second Confiscation Act and the Militia Act of 1862 (see July 17, 1862), which include provisions on which this action is based, the U.S. War Department authorizes Brigadier General Rufus Saxton, military governor of the South Carolina Sea Islands, to raise five regiments of black troops on the islands, with white men as officers. An important provision of this order is the specification that these troops are to receive “the same pay and rations as are allowed by law to volunteers in the service.” It is with this understanding that other black regiments will be recruited until the summer of 1863. In Virginia, Stonewall Jackson’s “foot cavalry” begin a spectacular march from below the Rappahannock River that by August 27 will bring them to the Army of Virginia’s main supply depot at Manassas Junction. There, the Confederate soldiers, suffering from a dearth of their own supplies, will eat and drink, stuff everything they can carry into their knapsacks, and burn the rest. Jackson will then withdraw from Manassas and establish lines along the Warrenton Turnpike, near the First Bull Run battlefield.56
AUGUST 28, 1862: General Braxton Bragg leads the thirty-thousand-man Army of Mississippi north from Chattanooga, Tennessee, and into Kentucky on a course parallel to that of Edmund Kirby Smith’s smaller force (see August 14, 1862). Union general Don Carlos Buell, whose Army of the Ohio is being constantly harassed by Confederate cavalry, will only belatedly react to this Rebel incursion and leave Tennessee, following the Confederates into Kentucky. In Virginia, after a confused pursuit of Stonewall Jackson and his troops, a division of Union troops commanded by Rufus King approaches Jackson’s concealed position, and the Confederate general decides to engage them, precipitating the battle of Groveton (Brawner’s Farm), an hours-long musket-fire duel that ravages the lines of both sides. As night falls and the firing stops, Union Army of Virginia commander John Pope, believing that Jackson is retreating, determines to concentrate his forces on the elusive Confederate commander and his troops. As this occurs, another Confederate force under James Longstreet is approaching Pope’s army from the west while, from his headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, McClellan determines he cannot send troops to reinforce Pope, despite orders to the contrary from Halleck. “Pope is in a bad way,” McClellan writes to his wife, “& I have not yet the force at hand to relieve him.”57
AUGUST 29–30, 1862: Just over one year after the war’s first major battle, the Federal defeat at First Bull Run, the Union suffers another humiliating loss at Second Bull Run, as Robert E. Lee continues his successful campaign against John Pope’s Army of Virginia. Throughout the two-day battle, Pope makes a series of misjudgments that will bring his Civil War battlefield service to an inglorious end. Beginning with the erroneous conviction that he has trapped Stonewall Jackson, and continuing with his failure to believe General Fitz John Porter’s report that thirty thousand Confederates under James Longstreet have arrived on the battlefield, Pope ends the first day of the battle by mistaking Confederate moves to consolidate their lines as evidence that the Rebels are retreating; his report to Washington that his troops have won the battle proves spectacularly inaccurate. (Meanwhile, General McClellan continues to resist sending Pope reinforcements, now informing General in Chief Halleck that 120,000 Rebels are advancing to attack Washington.) August 30 finds Lee’s army still in line of battle and full of fight. A day of ferocious Rebel-yell-punctuated combat will conclude with Pope’s army in full retreat, saved from complete disaster only by stubborn rear-guard action. As the Federals pause and regroup near Centreville (while Stonewall Jackson and his tired troops slog through rain and mud to occupy a position at nearby Chantilly and prepare to strike Pope again), Pope promises “as desperate a fight as I can force our men to stand up to” in a dispatch to Halleck. He also asks the general in chief an unsettling question: “I should like to know whether you feel secure about Washington should this army be destroyed.”58
Major General John Pope (1822–1892), USA. Steel engraving from The Southern Rebellion, Being a History of the United States from the Commencement of President Buchanan’s Administration to the Inauguration of General Ulysses S. Grant as President Grant, 1870.
Circular panoramic view of the Second Bull Run battlefield by French artist Theodore Poilpot. Illustration in A Comprehensive Sketch of the Battle of Manassas, or Second Battle of Bull Run, 1886.
AUGUST 30, 1862: Edmund Kirby Smith’s Confederate force defeats a sixty-five-hundred-man Union garrison at Richmond, Kentucky. After the surviving Federal troops withdraw toward Louisville, Smith continues on to Lexington and the state capital of Frankfort. 59
SEPTEMBER
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General Kearney’s [sic] Gallant Charge, at the Battle of Chantilly, Va., 1st of September 1862. Color lithograph by Augustus Tholey, 1867. Called “the bravest man I ever saw, and a perfect soldier” by former Union general in chief Winfield Scott, General Philip Kearny added to the esprit de corps of his men by having them wear a distinctive red “Kearny patch.” “You are marked men,” he said; “you must be ever in the front.” Riding up to investigate a rumored gap in Federal lines, Kearny was killed at the battle of Chantilly.
SEPTEMBER 1, 1862: In a driving rainstorm, Stonewall Jackson initiates a fierce firefight with Pope’s Army of Virginia at the battle of Chantilly, an encounter that becomes a soggy stalemate in which two popular Union generals, Isaac Stevens and Phil Kearny, are killed. Shortly after the battle, Pope is ordered to fall back toward Washington. While the Federals retreat, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton calls for volunteer nurses to aid the wounded strewn along their way. Many of the male volunteers behave abysmally; but the women, led by Clara Barton, perform admirably—even as, once again, a Confederate army threatens Washington.60
Celebrated Songs of the Confederate States of America. Sheet music cover published in London, ca. 1862. As shown, No. 1 in this series of Southern favorites is “My Maryland.” Yet despite the many Confederate sympathizers within its borders, Maryland remained with the Union.
SEPTEMBER 2, 1862: Over the vigorous objections of Secretary of War Stanton and Secretary of the Treasury Chase, Lincoln reluctantly gives George McClellan command of the Union forces in Virginia and surrounding Washington—including Pope’s Army of Virginia. (Pope will soon be transferred to the West.) In an amazingly short time, McClellan will reorganize and revitalize the troops under his command. Although the general has displayed minimal aggression in the field, “he excels in making others ready to fight,” Lincoln will observe to his secretary, John Hay.61
SEPTEMBER 5, 1862: Calculating that it will take time to restore the strength and morale of Union forces surrounding Washington and determined to maintain the initiative despite the fatigue of his army, Robert E. Lee writes to President Davis: “This army is about entering Maryland, with a view of affording the people of that State an opportunity of liberating themselves. Whatever success may attend that effort, I hope at any rate to annoy and harass the enemy.” His Army of Northern Virginia soon begins to cross the Potomac River.
SEPTEMBER 7, 1862: Robert E. Lee issues a proclamation to the people of Maryland in which he outlines “wrongs and outrages” they have suffered at Union hands. To rescue them from this intolerable situation, “our army has come among you, and is prepared to assist you with the power of its arms in regaining the rights of which you have been despoiled.” This is a prospect that holds little appeal, however, for the overwhelmingly Unionist population of western Maryland, where Lee’s troops are encamped. To the northeast, the New York Times asks a question that is reverberating throughout the Union shocked by a series of battlefield losses: “Of what use are all these terrible sacrifices? Shall we have nothing but defeat to show for all our valor?”62
SEPTEMBER 8, 1862: After leading elements of the Army of the Potomac out of Washington on September 5, George McClellan has established headquarters in Rockville, Maryland, from which he writes General in Chief Halleck that he does not yet have adequate intelligence about the disposition of Lee’s forces to determine a course of action. “As soon as I find out where to strike,” he declares, “I will be after them without an hour’s delay.” Twenty-five miles away, Robert E. Lee writes to President Davis: “The present posture of affairs, in my opinion, places it in the power of the Government of the Confederate States to propose with propriety to that of the United States the recognition of our independence…. The proposal of peace would enable the people of the United States to determine at their coming elections whether they will support those who favor a prolongation of the war, or those who wish to bring it to a termination.” The Union’s fast-approaching fall elections are also a subject of concern (for Republicans and War Democrats) and hope (for Peace Democrats), while both the elections and the military outcome of Lee’s Maryland raid are of interest to the European powers, still trying to determine whether to recognize the Confederacy or otherwise intercede in the American war. “If the Federals sustain a great defeat,” Prime Minister Palmerston will write, as British deliberations continue, “[their] Cause will be manifestly hopeless… and the iron should be struck while it is hot. If, on the other hand, they should have the best of it, we may wait… and see what may follow.”63
Operatives Reading the Latest News from America—A Scene in Camp-field Free Library, Manchester. Engraving in the Illustrated London News, November 29, 1862. While most British aristocrats favored recognition of the Confederacy, many working-class Britons were sympathetic to the Union. In January 1863, after President Lincoln issued the final Emancipation Proclamation, the people of Manchester sent the president a letter stating, in part: “Since we have discerned… that the victory of the free north, in the war which has so sorely distressed us as well as afflicted you, will strike off the fetters of the slave, you have attracted our warm and earnest sympathy.”
General Robert E. Lee. Engraving by John C. McRae, after a photograph by Mathew Brady, ca. 1867. A former commandant of West Point who held the complete confidence of President Davis, Lee (1807–1870) never hesitated to seize the initiative. His first foray into Northern territory ended near Sharpsburg, Maryland, in the bloodiest one-day battle of the war.
SEPTEMBER 10, 1862: Marching out of Frederick, Maryland, the Army of Northern Virginia splits into four columns as specified in Robert E. Lee’s Special Orders No. 191, issued the previous day. Three of the columns are to cooperate in a pincer movement aimed at protecting the Army of Northern Virginia’s supply lines by taking the Federal garrison at Martinsburg, in western Virginia, and the larger garrison protecting the Union army arsenal at Harpers Ferry (with its large and tempting stores of clothing and munitions). Lee remains in Maryland with the balance of his troops.64
SEPTEMBER 12, 1862: Advance units of the Army of the Potomac enter Frederick, Maryland, recently vacated by Lee’s Confederates, and receive a tumultuous, morale-boosting welcome. McClellan and other Union leaders, meanwhile, remain perplexed about Lee’s whereabouts, his intentions, and the size of his force, which McClellan sets at 120,000. The Rebel commander has significantly less than half that number.65
SEPTEMBER 13, 1862: In a field where he has stopped to rest, Corporal Barton W. Mitchell, of the Twenty-seventh Indiana Infantry, finds a copy of Lee’s Special Orders No. 191 wrapped around three cigars. Quickly realizing the importance of his find, he sends it on its way to headquarters, where McClellan exults, “Here is a paper with which if I cannot whip ‘Bobbie Lee,’ I will be willing to go home,” and he wires President Lincoln, “I have the plans of the rebels, and will catch them in their own trap.” But instead of acting quickly to take advantage of this windfall, McClellan proceeds with caution, giving Lee (who soon learns that McClellan has captured his plan) time to effectively react. He sends troops to cover the passes through South Mountain that he correctly anticipates the Federal columns will use when they move against him.66
SEPTEMBER 14, 1862: Confederates and Federals battle each other in a series of fierce engagements at South Mountain that leave Confederate forces battered and give McClellan the impression that he has won, as he telegraphs Washington, “a glorious victory.” For a time, Lee agrees with his Union counterpart. He determines to retreat to Virginia.67
SEPTEMBER 15, 1862: “God bless you, and all with you,” President Lincoln wires McClellan. “Destroy the rebel army, if possible.” Lee also receives an important communication today. Stonewall Jackson reports that Harpers Ferry has surrendered, freeing troops to rejoin Lee’s main force. The Confederate commander rescinds his decision to retreat and decides to stand where his main force is now located, outside the town of Sharpsburg, near a tributary of the Potomac River called Antietam Creek.68
Burning of Mr. Muma’s [sic] Houses and Barns at the Fight of the 17th Sept. Pencil and Chinese white drawing by Alfred R. Waud, September 17, 1862. The Mumma family of Sharpsburg, which had donated land for the construction of the Dunker Church—a landmark of the battle of Antietam—removed themselves from harm’s way before the fighting began. Returning to find their home in ashes, they rebuilt it the following year.
SEPTEMBER 16, 1862: Rather than seizing the moment to smash the portion of Lee’s army now facing him at Antietam, General McClellan spends this day developing a battle plan—based on the assumption that the Army of Northern Virginia, in its entirety, is three times larger than it actually is. By the time McClellan is ready, all but one division of the Harpers Ferry contingent has rejoined Lee at Antietam, though the Confederates are still significantly outnumbered (thirty-six thousand, without the division still at Harpers Ferry, versus some seventy-five thousand Federals).69
SEPTEMBER 17, 1862: Scattered gunfire at dawn turns into roaring waves of artillery and musket fire, the shouts of men battling at close quarters, and the screams of the dying as the battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg) becomes the costliest single-day clash of the American Civil War. Union general Joseph Hooker lives up to his nickname, “Fighting Joe,” as he leads his corps against Stonewall Jackson’s men through woods and across a cornfield that is quickly reduced to bloody husks covered with the dead and dying. “Never have I seen men fall as fast and thick,” South Carolina soldier Stephen Welch, of John Bell Hood’s Confederate division, will later write to his parents. “In about one hour’s time our whole division was almost annihilated.” Burnside’s Bridge, the West Woods, and Bloody Lane are among other pivotal sites of this lacerating battle, as McClellan persists in committing only a portion of his greater force, and then only in piecemeal attacks, allowing Lee to shift his Confederates to reinforce areas under greatest threat. One major threat occurs in the late afternoon, when Ambrose Burnside’s Union corps seems set to cut off the Rebels’ only line of retreat. At a key moment, A. P. Hill arrives with his division from Harpers Ferry. Though weary from their rapid seventeen-mile march, Hill’s men smash into Burnside’s flank, which disintegrates; and McClellan fails to send Burnside reinforcements. Thus Lee’s avenue of retreat remains open. By the end of the day, although the badly battered Confederates have been forced back from their original positions, they still maintain a continuous line, and Lee is not yet prepared to retreat.70
SEPTEMBER 18, 1862: The rising sun reveals a tableau of the horrors of war all across the Antietam battlefield as both sides brace for the anticipated renewal of fighting. With untouched reserves and new reinforcements, McClellan does contemplate attacking Lee; but, as the morning wears on and he considers what he believes to be the odds, he decides against it. While he reaches this decision, burial details and medical workers go about their somber duties despite sporadic gunfire. Clara Barton, who arrived at the blood-soaked cornfield while the battle was raging the previous day, continues providing such valuable aid to the wounded that one of the Union surgeons, Dr. James Dunn, will dub her the Angel of the Battlefield. Antietam is the first full-scale test of a system of care recently developed by Army of the Potomac medical director Dr. Jonathan Letterman. In his diary, Union soldier John W. Jaques salutes the men of “the new… Ambulance Corps…. they could be seen with the green [identification badges] on their arm, faithfully tending to their duties.” They were not the only soldiers daring to move between the hostile forces: “Many from either side met in the space between the lines,” James Steptoe Johnston, of the Eleventh Mississippi Volunteers, will write to his sweetheart, Mary Green, “and while the dead and wounded were being cared for, chatted as pleasantly as though they have never done each other harm.” Lee has concluded, meanwhile, that McClellan will make no move against his army, and the reports he has been receiving from his officers about the condition of men and equipment lead him to order his army to withdraw. The Confederates quietly recross the Potomac during the night, a fact that Union scouts will discover the next morning. “Our victory was complete,” McClellan will crow, in a telegram to Halleck. “The enemy is driven back into Virginia.”71
Antietam Sharpsburg and Vicinity. Color map by Charles Sholl, 1864, published in The War with the South, 1862–1867.
Clara Barton (1821–1912). Photographic print on a carte de visite, ca. 1865. Though called the Angel of the Battlefield, Barton spent much of her time behind the lines procuring desperately needed provisions. A tireless fund-raiser for that purpose, she also established a parcel post service for soldiers.
SEPTEMBER 21, 1862: “I suppose the battle of ‘An-Tee-Tam’ must be set down as the greatest ever fought on this continent,” Union sergeant Warren H. Freeman writes to his father. “Our loss in killed and wounded will exceed 10,000 men. That of the rebels will never be known, but it exceeds ours by thousands.” (Final casualty estimates for the battle will be more than twenty-three thousand killed, wounded, and missing for both sides.) “We have been in the advance and on picket duty since the battle began till yesterday,” Freeman continues. “The rebels are in full view on the opposite bank of the Potomac.” Yet, despite some grumbling from within his own ranks, and pressure from Washington, McClellan makes no move to pursue Lee’s army.72
SEPTEMBER 22, 1862: “I think the time has come now,” President Lincoln tells his cabinet. Though far from a sweeping triumph, the Union victory at Antietam has placed the administration in a position of sufficient strength to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation that Lincoln has had in his desk drawer for three months (see July 13, 22, 1862). Released this day, the proclamation states that unless the Confederate States end their rebellion and return to the Union before the end of the year, on January 1, 1863, “all persons held as slaves, within any state, or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” Reactions are intense: waves of jubilation animate some in the Union, heated protests erupt among others, particularly Democrats and citizens of the border states; near-universal condemnation roars out of the Confederacy. As news travels slowly to Europe, first of Lee’s retreat from Antietam, then of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, the pro-Confederate but antislavery leaders in England will back away from their determination to intercede in the war. “I am convinced,” Lord Palmerston will write in October, “that we must continue merely to be lookers-on till the war shall have taken a more decided turn.” Yet this day does mark a decided political turn—for the Union. The way is now open, should the South still be in rebellion at the first of the year, to broadening U.S. war aims from simple reconstruction of the Union to achieving reconstruction without slavery.73
The only known copy of the first edition of Abraham Lincoln’s preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, issued September 22, 1862.
SEPTEMBER 24, 1862: In the wake of violent resistance to militia drafts under the recently passed U.S. Militia Act (see July 17, 1862), President Lincoln issues a proclamation subjecting to martial law “all persons discouraging volunteer enlistments, resisting militia drafts, or guilty of any disloyal practice affording aid and comfort to the rebels” and suspending the writ of habeas corpus in cases of persons under military arrest. As in the Confederacy, persons deemed to be engaged in disloyal activities have been incarcerated without the writ’s protections since early in the war; but Democrats seize upon today’s action, and the release of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, as political issues that will strengthen their chances of making gains in the approaching state and congressional elections. Also in Washington, the U.S. Secretary of War creates the office of provost marshal general. In 1863, the Provost Marshal General’s Bureau of the War Department will help enroll eligible men under the first effective national conscription act (see March 3, 1863).74
SEPTEMBER 27, 1862: In the Confederate States, the Second Conscription Act goes into effect, expanding the military draft to white males ages eighteen to forty-five. The act also allows pacifist members of Dunkard, Mennonite, Nazarene, and Quaker religious communities to avoid military service that conflicts with their beliefs by providing a substitute or paying a $500 exemption tax. In Union-occupied New Orleans, the First Regiment of the Louisiana Native Guards, U.S. Army, comprising free black Louisianans and ex-slaves, becomes the first black unit to be officially mustered into United States military service. (The Second and Third Louisiana Native Guards will be mustered in during October and November.) Organized under Major General Benjamin F. Butler, these regiments include some seventy-five black officers—a step that will be reversed after Butler is succeeded by Nathaniel Banks in December. Declaring that “the appointment of colored officers is detrimental to the service,” Banks will methodically drive black officers in his jurisdiction out of the service, using charges of incompetence (an ineffective tactic; most charges will prove to be unfounded) and a steady campaign of slights and humiliations. During the war, only thirty-two other black officers will be commissioned in the Union army: thirteen of them chaplains and at least eight physicians (who will be required to meet far more stringent requirements than those generally demanded of white army doctors).75
Rebel Enlistment in Virginia—a “Willing Volunteer.” Cartoon, ca. 1862. Although patriotism ran high in both warring regions, conscription was far from popular.
The cover of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, March 7, 1863, saluted the first black regiment officially mustered into the U.S. Army with this illustration, Pickets of the First Louisiana “Native Guard” Guarding the New Orleans, Opelousas and Great Western Railroad.
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