S2E2 – Summer of War

Noted American historian Bell Irvin Wiley wrote extensively of the Common Civil War soldier. His twin volumes, The Life of Billy Yank and The Life of Johnny Reb, are required reading for anyone wanting to learn what it was like to serve in an army of the North or of the South. When he dives into what men experienced on a battlefield, Wiley's chapters are titled The Supreme Test and The Baptism of Fire. What happened within a Civil War battle was tremendously intimate for each person and ultimately chaotic and violent in its effects on many. In this episode, as we'll see, everything about the gravity of the war is about to change for Americans. The Great Comet of 1861 that streaked across the heavens at the end of June seemed to be a sign that the Union and the Confederacy were shifting into a new season for the conflict, a higher gear, a level of intensity that had not been seen or experienced before. South Carolina Colonel James Chestnut had reportedly said after Fort Sumter that a lady's thimble will hold all the blood that will be shed. Many politicians, newspaper editors, leading citizens, and some military men insisted that the whole affair would be over after one battle. Words like short, decisive, and brief were littered across correspondence and printed broadsheets. This was a product of the Victorian worldview of the times that saw the conflict in terms of heroism, gallantry, order, and discipline. As if the entire war was just a simple duel. The two sides would face off, take ten steps, turn, fire, and it'd be over. Chivalry would suffice, honor would be satisfied, and the victor would prevail. Would this be how the war was to be fought and won? In July of 1861, the weather in Virginia was described as hot and sultry. The sun and humidity that beat down upon the winding little stream known as Bull Run would amplify the combat and make it just as unbearable. For the armies that gathered there in northern Virginia, the thousands of men who would open the largest battle in North America up until that time were about to embark on a summer of war. The skirmishing that had filled the three months since Fort Sumter in Virginia and Missouri, the many small contests like Philippi, Big Bethel, Rich Mountain, and Boonville gave no clue, none as to what the fighting would be like. When it comes to war, many of the ideals for combat, the rules, the civilities that men like to invent or operate by disappear or evaporate in the chaos warfare produces. Now let me be very clear. I have not experienced warfare or combat firsthand. I do not have personal experience. I am in no way trying to claim that I'm something I'm not. What I have done is studied many, many firsthand accounts of combat and warfare across the ages. And from the Civil War we have thousands of personal accounts that have been left behind in official reports, letters, journals, and diaries. It is from these sources and from the training and drill manuals used during the war that we gain a perspective into what it was really like on a Civil War battlefield. There was an order to it all, a geometry of formations and maneuvers, like we might see on a parade ground. But combat comes down to kill or be killed. It is mental, emotional, and physical assault and battery, death by purpose, and randomness. How are we supposed to regard or approach it? Movies and TV can certainly offer an interpreted version of this, but let's not forget that these depictions serve the story being told, not necessarily the complete reality of what happened. There is no Civil War combat footage. No movie can convey what a full day or two of marching in warfare really looked, smelled, and sounded like. The optimistic recruits and their idealistic officers, who led the Union and Confederate armies into the profession of arms in 1861, would encounter war that would be altogether different from what they imagined. Bell Irvin Wiley summarized their culmination of purpose in this way, Battle is the ultimate of soldiering. All else in warfare is but incidental to the vital closing of opposing forces in conflict. In the summer of 1861, the Civil War would give Americans a front row seat for battle, one that would turn a thimble full of blood into a hurricane of death and destruction. Welcome to Breaking Nation, a Civil War podcast. I'm your host, Scott Holmgren. My goal is simple to bring the American Civil War to life by exploring and discovering the people, the places, and the events of this critical era as if we didn't know how it would all turn out. Last episode we considered the individuals pressed into service as the leaders and commanders of the assembling armies of the North and the South. Would each side discover a Napoleon who could lead them to victory? So now let's consider what each side could bring to bear against the others. How did the Union Confederacy stack up when compared and contrasted for war? William T. Sherman, a 41-year-old colonel of a brigade marching toward Bull Run, had been the superintendent of the Louisiana State Military Academy, what's now known as Louisiana State University, before the war. In December of 1860, shortly after Lincoln had been elected, and South Carolina had been the first state to secede, Sherman spoke at great length to a colleague and professor who was from Virginia. His words sound prophetic as a way to begin comparing the North and the South. He said to the man, You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization. You people speak so lightly of war. You don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing. You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people, but an earnest people, and they will fight too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it. Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car. Hardly a yard of cloth or a pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical and determined people on earth, right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think they must see that in the end you will surely fail. Not just in terms of determination, but also with regard to the material and means necessary to wage the war. I mean, he even mentions and calls out the value of shoes. Something as simple as shoes might be a game changer. And Sherman didn't misunderstand the South. He acknowledged how it was prepared, probably more so than the North, when it came to spirit and determination for waging war. It's a truly remarkable statement that he made. Contrast Sherman's words with these of Virginian George Randolph, grandson of Thomas Jefferson, who would become the third war secretary of the Confederacy when he wrote on October 10th, 1861, quote, They may overrun our frontier states and plunder our coast, but as far as conquering us, the thing is an impossibility. There is no instance in history of a people as numerous as we are inhabiting a country so extensive as ours, being subjected, if true, to themselves. End quote. While his conclusion could be debatable, in fact, by history, Randolph did accurately capture the attitude of Southerners. Theirs was a defiant confidence that nothing short of victory and independence was an inevitable outcome. It was a confidence that extended from the common man to their leaders, since all were chivalrous and bound by honor to pick up arms. Howell Cobb, former U.S. Treasury Secretary under Buchanan and a founding father of the Confederacy, spoke even of the politicians when he said in Atlanta on May 22, 1861, quote, We will be there, that when the hour of danger comes we may lay aside the robes of legislation, buckle on the armor of the soldier, and do battle beside the brave ones who have volunteered for the defense of our beloved South. Each side, North and South, brought a resolve to bear for waging the fight that was to come. In terms of commitment, they were evenly prepared. Beyond the attitudes of each section, now let's take a look at some statistical comparisons. In terms of white males between the ages of 15 and 40, the prime pool for fighting men, the numbers favored the North four to one. However, a greater proportion of these men in the North were also needed for laborers in the workforce than were needed in the South. That was where slave labor originally had a significant impact. A higher percentage of all white males in the Confederacy were available for military service. But over time, as black troops would eventually enlist in the Union Army and Navy about 200,000, that imbalance would disappear. In terms of combat manpower, the North would heavily outnumber the South. When it came to financial strength, the North possessed greater financial stability. Its exports numbered $330 million. The South's were less than a tenth of that, 30 million, mostly from cotton. The federal government generated 21% of its income from taxes, which was a constant revenue stream. It had broad access to international credit markets, and was able to borrow liberally while selling bonds widely. The North's economy was diverse and cash strong. In contrast, the South was cash poor, its wealth mainly aggregated in property, land and slaves. Less than 5% of the Confederacy's income came from taxes, and it had limited access to credit, which made borrowing very difficult. While war would lead to inflation in both regions, the North would be able to manage it better and adapt, whereas the South would print large amounts of paper money without proper backing. Runaway inflation would have a crippling effect on the Confederate economy. The North had pretty much more of everything than the South in terms of industrial resources. They had 110,000 manufacturing centers, the South had 18,000. 1.3 million industrial workers could be counted on in the North. There were 110,000 white workers in the South. All the Confederate states together could produce 36,000 tons of pig iron, the raw material used to produce various types of steel. Pennsylvania alone produced 580,000 tons. The North could count on 22,000 miles of railroads. The south had 9,000 miles. And they were often sized differently, different track gauges, meaning trains on one railroad might not be able to run on another, and in places there were gaps where railroads just didn't connect. It's said that Napoleon often stated that an army marches on its stomach. Both the North and South would have no problem producing food for its fighting men, having plenty of wheat, corn, and livestock. The challenge would be one of supply and transport. Could the food get to the armies? The South had not just fewer railroads, but also fewer barges, fewer steamboats, and fewer horse and mule drawn wagons. When a Confederate wagon broke down, shortages in materials meant it might often go unrepaired. When a northern wagon broke because of a busted axle or a wheel, a dozen more could be requisitioned. It would seem that the disparity across the board between North and South would have made it obvious to every Southerner the truth of what Sherman had told his friend from Virginia. As your limited resources begin to fail, he had said. But did that alone guarantee that the North would ultimately prevail? Would more always beat less? For the political and military leaders of the Union and Confederacy, history was filled with examples of David's toppling Goliaths. And if the ragtag colonists and patriots of America could defy the mighty British Empire in the 1770s, certainly the noble and righteous Confederacy could defy the oppressive Yankees of the North in the 1860s. With this scorecard of national resources held alongside the varying levels of leadership and command embodied by the generals in the saddle, it would come down to the fighting men in the field, who would be affected by and who would leverage these advantages in combat. These men would not fight as individuals, like the aforementioned David and Goliath. They would fight as units, formations, concentrated together so as to amass firepower and to hold ground. We need to take some time to understand what an army looked like on a Civil War battlefield. When most of us think of war and combat, again, we're going to take our cues from our culture's repetitive input and training from movies or television. And most of these that are top of mind take place in the modern wars, set in the Middle East or set during World War II. Think of Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers. Think of American Sniper or Blackhawk Down. In all these depictions, the men we see involved are formed into small units, teams of two or four men, squads of eight to twelve, platoons or companies of forty or more men. Just enough guys to keep all the characters separate in the minds of the audience. These formations also fall in line with video gaming that tends to function with tight but individualistic coordination, small unit tactics, urban street fighting, handfuls of men, fighting handfuls of men. This is not what happened on a Civil War battlefield. To create a picture, I'm going to use round numbers as approximations and use infantry, foot soldiers, as the example here, since they made up most of the fighting forces for both the North and South. And I'm going to begin with 1861 numbers for recently formed units at full strength. At the start of the war, according to what the books prescribed, soldiers were initially recruited or volunteered into companies of about a hundred men. These hundred men could be from the same town, township, county, or area. They could be close family, relatives, neighbors, acquaintances, and strangers. They would often be led by a recognized leader from the community, who would be made captain. And if they had any military or militia training, that would be a plus, but not a prerequisite. Let's pause right here. Think about how many men that is. A hundred men. That's right around two NFL teams of players. Not just the 22 we see on the field playing at any given time. That's all the players from both sidelines. One company, a hundred men. That was the group who knew one another by name, got to know some of them personally, may have heard some of their stories, maybe knew their relatives or of their families. When was the last time you were organized into a group of a hundred people that you would daily interact with? I don't think it happens anymore. Maybe if you work for a very large company and you're with a team that big. I've been in large conference rooms, but the largest team I was ever a part of may have been about 30 or 40 people. It's very foreign when I pause and think about what a functional unit of a hundred people must have actually been like. Army regulations at the start of the war then gathered ten of those companies together into a formation called a regiment. Ten companies, a hundred men each, a thousand men total. One regiment, commanded by a colonel. Those regiments were typically identified by a number and the state where it came from. Most famous are probably the 20th Main, featured in the film Gettysburg, or the 54th Massachusetts, the regiment of black soldiers whose story is told in the film Glory. Those regiments would then be grouped together into brigades, anywhere from three to five regiments that sometimes, but not always, were from the same state or region. A brigade was led by a brigadier general, or perhaps a senior colonel. For the Union, some of the better known brigades were the Iron Brigade, made up of regiments from the Midwest, and the Irish Brigade, composed of Irish regiments from New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. The Southern Stonewall Brigade was from Virginia, and the Confederate Orphan Brigade was mostly composed of Kentuckians. The Brigade was the primary organizational unit in an army. Orders from above typically were directed at brigades to move, maneuver, and fight together. So let's do the math. A hundred men per company, a thousand men per regiment would mean three to five thousand men in a brigade, needing to move together in coordination, along roads, through fields, and up and down hills. This is very different from a video game where maybe dozens of soldiers are fighting together. We're talking four thousand soldiers. Let me ask, is this an easy task? Let's empty a minor league baseball stadium and have all 4,000 spectators line up, march ten miles, file into open fields, maintain orderly lines, and then prepare to charge up a hill at another 4,000 people. It's hard for us to wrap our brains around that many people, moving together with one purpose, intentionally keeping alignment like a marching band. In fact, other than at sporting events or concerts, where do we ever even see more than a couple hundred people together? It's easy to read the history books, easy to watch movies where we might see a couple hundred actors and extras on screen at any given moment. But it's exceptionally difficult to think of being among four thousand soldiers moving in such close proximity. Because it doesn't end there. At the very outset of the war, those brigades could further be grouped into divisions, two, three, Three, maybe four brigades, eight to ten thousand men might be organized into a division. That is absolutely nothing like what we might see in a movie or video game. As a side note, the Pickett's charge scene from the movie Gettysburg is pretty impressive. If you've never seen the film, it's worth a watch. But even then, there were maybe 5,000 reenactors on hand for the film, only a third of the actual number of Confederate soldiers originally involved in the attack. And if you've ever attended a Civil War reenactment in person with perhaps several hundred living historians, you now have a gauge for what you're seeing in comparison to what it was really like. So let's agree that each of us would be hard pressed to even comprehend the sheer scale of what it would feel like to stand on a Civil War battlefield. When it was published, English military historian John Keegan's book, The Face of Battle, was significant and influential in its portrayal of war from the perspective of the fighting men on the ground. Rather than seeing battles as affairs directed by kings and generals and as grand strategies, Keegan wrote about what a soldier, boots on the ground, actually saw, felt, and experienced firsthand at famous British battles like medieval Agincourt, Napoleonic Waterloo, and at the Somme during World War I. Since then, historian Alexander Rose has continued Keegan's legacy by authoring his book, Men of War, that does the same thing from the viewpoint of the American soldier. Rose drops down into the fighting at Bunker Hill during the Revolution, at Gettysburg in 1863, and at Iwo Jima in the Pacific during World War II. As he sets the stage for what he seeks to explore, it becomes clear that the guiding principle is that combat is chaos. Standing on any of these battlefields, a soldier would have had a limited understanding of what was happening outside of their immediate field division and hearing. He would know the man on either side of him, those from his unit closest around him, his sergeant and lieutenant, and hopefully which way was forward and which way was back. And that was about it. Imagine you're standing in a field, twenty men on either side of you, all standing shoulder to shoulder. You've got on a wool uniform, leather shoes called brogens, a hat or cap with belts and straps to carry your equipment, a haversack or large pouch slung over your shoulder, and a canteen. You might have a heavy knapsack, but that may have been left back in camp or in the rear before forming for a battle. You're carrying a heavy rifle, maybe earlier in the war a musket, weighing almost 10 pounds and more than four and a half feet long. Forty rounds of ammunition are in a leather box on your belt. A smaller pouch holds metal percussion caps that cause your gun to fire when the trigger is pulled. Behind you is a second row of forty some men. Every man has loaded his weapon, a process of steps whereby you first took a paper cartridge, roughly the size of a tube of chapstick, from your ammunition box. In one end of the cartridge was the bullet, a cone-shaped soft lead projectile known as a minet ball, named after a French officer who developed it, though it's mostly called a mini ball. The other end was filled with black powder, and the paper was folded over to keep the powder from spilling out. You took the cartridge and bit off the folded end of paper and then poured the powder charge down the barrel of the gun. You then push the bullet and the rest of the paper into the very end of the barrel. Next you'd take your ramrod, a long steel rod, and use it to ram the bullet down to the very bottom of the barrel, all the way. After pulling the ramrod out, you'd then take a percussion cap from your belt pouch and place it over a nipple with a tiny hole in it at the other end of the barrel, leaving the hammer half cocked, ready for marching into battle. When it was time to fire, the hammer would be fully pulled back and you'd pull the trigger, which would cause the hammer to crush the percussion cap, creating the spark to ignite the powder in the barrel that would discharge the gun and propel the bullet at almost a thousand feet per second. In theory, you should be able to load and discharge your rifle three times a minute. In actual combat, possibly twice. If the entire company fired a single volley, maybe once a minute. On either end of your company's line, forty men in the first row and forty in the second row, would be lieutenants, officers making sure that the men stayed in line and functioned together. Sergeants would be spaced out along the line for added oversight. In the rear would be others tasked with keeping the formation. They're called file closers, who would fill gaps by dressing the line or filling in when a soldier was hit and fell to the ground. And in charge would be your captain, the commander of your company. Your one company of about a hundred men formed in line might be twenty five to thirty yards long. Then, on either side of your company would be the other companies that made up your regiment, ten companies in total, typically identified by a letter, company A, B, C, and so on, all similarly aligned like yours. Here, in 1861, maybe 800 to a thousand men total. In all, the regiment might stretch two to three hundred yards, two to three football fields in length for one regiment. After the regiment initially marched into position, it would maneuver to change from a column for marching into a new line of battle. Imagine a massive high school marching band in column moving around the track that surrounds the field and then deploying into a long line along the far sideline, the length of three football fields, like for a halftime show. As this happens, sergeants and officers are working to keep alignment. Soldiers would dress to the right, meaning they'd look right and then make sure that they line up with the man and men on their right. And no surprise, all of this takes time. Depending on how well drilled the regiment is, it could like the precision movements of a university marching band, or it could look like high school freshman bandcamp, right? Either way, there's a lot of yelling, a lot of pointing, a lot of pushing. Keep ranks, you must press forward, keep together. In the middle of the regiment would be the color guard, the soldiers tasked with escorting the flags of the regiment, usually two for the Union, the Stars and Stripes National Flag, and another often dark blue regimental state flag, and sometimes just one battle flag for the Confederates. The flags or the colors were the visual reference point for the entire regiment, not only signifying the center of the line, but also serving as a rallying point. Where the colors went, the regiment went. When a battlefield became choked with smoke, the colorful flags might be the only thing you could visually pick out. Then as the regiment was fully formed, perhaps your colonel, the leader of the full regiment, would appear for a quick speech to raise morale, to fire up the troops, like this one given at Antietam. You have never disgraced your state. I hope you won't this time. If any man runs, I want the file closers to shoot him. If they don't, I shall myself. That's all I have to say. End quote. Maybe you could hear him, maybe not. If it's a battlefield, it's likely to be incredibly noisy, with distant cannon fire and rifle fire crackling all around you. There will be literally hundreds of horses moving about, pulling cannons, caissons, and wagons. Twelve horses were needed for support of each individual cannon, not to mention all the supply wagons and those that mounted officers rode. The noise would be a constant din of men, animals, and equipment. And then would come the waiting. You and your company and your regiment might be standing in that field for a while. It might be a short wait, maybe a long wait, but you'd be there with your thoughts. It's important to remember that the mid-19th century mindset was a spiritual one. The Bible was the most read and most respected book in the country. So a great majority of the men around you could be praying, silently, spoken, sometimes in groups led by officers or chaplains. Some might use humor or laugh to break the tension. You might for the first time suddenly become aware of the weather. How hot is the sun, how cold the wind, how dry is your throat, how clear are your eyes. All your senses would take in the immediacy of where you were, what was about to happen. Fear, anticipation, and the unknown of what might happen next would be managed and handled by each person differently. Early in the war, Colonel Jacob Ammon would describe his regiment, the twenty fourth Ohio, as having, quote, been under severe fire several times and behaved well. The infantry had seen the elephant several times and did not care about seeing him again unless necessary. That's an interesting idea. Seeing the elephant. A soldier's first combat experience. It was a common phrase during the Civil War. The expression may have originated as traveling circuses or exhibitions made their way across America before the conflict, and elephants were simultaneously both exotic and frightful. The phrase was already common by the California Gold Rush, and often had that double meaning. The excitement of experiencing something incredible, and then the harsh reality that it was far more difficult than expected or even dreadful. Private Edward Eads of the thirty third, Massachusetts, wrote his father I have a mortal dread of the battlefield, for I have never yet been nearer to one than to hear the cannon roar and have never seen a person die. I am afraid that the groans of the wounded and dying will make me shake. Nevertheless, I hope and trust that strength will be given to me to stand up and do my duty. And so you're standing there, with hundreds of men on either side of you, and suddenly, across the field, perhaps emerging from some woods or perhaps coming up a slight rise in the land, as if rising right out of the ground, there, it's an enemy regiment, like yours in many ways, but with different uniforms, different flags, possibly different weapons. They march in a long line, parallel to yours, companies all in a row, and there may be a long moment as everyone takes it in. Edwin Southard of the hundred nineteenth New York describes seeing the approach of Confederates. An appalling spectacle, for it rendered our line untenable and defenseless. After that initial shock, as the enemy approached to within two hundred yards, two football fields away, your officers would begin yelling, reminding you of the job at hand, what you were supposed to do, whether you felt defenseless or not. They would point out the enemy colors, enemy officers, and men who might stand out for some reason, usually tall or a colorful shirt or a strange hat. Then would come the command to ready, and then sometimes they would order you to still wait, keep waiting. A soldier in the fourteenth, Connecticut remembered, quote, Major Ellis emphasized this order, Adjutant Doton went forth and back along the line repeating it, and Sergeant Major Hinks and the line officers reiterated it, and so our men, with aim well taken and finger on trigger, submissively waited. And then the order to fire was given, and hundreds of rifles would crack the air with an initial volley. Union soldier Leander Stilwell remembered the sound like quote, the sweep of a thunderstorm in summertime over the hard ground of a stubble field, but a million times louder. As the lead bullets filled the air streaking toward the advancing enemy, the sound was a zip zip or cis siz sound, a blend of buzzing and whistling, and nearly all of them would miss, dozens of feet too high. Stilwell recounted that when the enemy returned the fire, it was, quote, an incessant humming sound away up above our heads like the flight of a swarm of bees. Virginian George Baylor wrote, quote, I recollect the first volley and how unfavorably it affected me. It was apparently made with guns raised at an angle of forty five degrees, and I was fully assured that their bullets would not hit Yankees, unless they were nearer heaven than they were generally located by our people. End quote. A captain from Mississippi would write near the end of the war, quote, I have seen whole regiments and brigades deliver their fire when I was sure that they did not even wound a single man. End quote. While rifled muskets were mechanically accurate up to 300 yards, there were so many factors working against an infantryman that most firefights between regiments occurred at a hundred yards or less. Black powder rifles created rolling clouds of smoke that severely hampered visibility. Who knows how good the soldiers' eyesight may have been? Were they actually aiming or simply firing in a direction? They could tend to jerk the trigger, causing the weapon to kick upwards and pull their fire skyward. Alexander Rose recounts an actual contest the fifth Connecticut held in 1861, where 40 soldiers took aim at a barn that was 20 feet long and 15 feet tall and 100 yards away. After they fired, only one round of the 40 hit the barn lower than the average height of a soldier. 97.5% of the shots would have missed the enemy completely. This is why most officers reserve fire for closer to 50 yards, which was far more effective. To maintain the discipline of not firing, officers and sergeants would stalk back and forth behind the line, telling the men to hold their fire and to aim low, like at the knees, which would force men to keep their guns level and not instinctively pull up as they pulled the trigger, which is why volleys would soar high overhead. Aiming low also meant leg wounds, which were just as effective as anywhere else in terms of stopping a man in his tracks. Likewise, aiming low at legs often kept one's target in view, since smoke could obscure torsos and heads altogether. Imagine you've let loose your first gunshot in battle, and then heard that whizzing of bullets flying high over your head, and then an order is given to shoulder your weapon and ready to advance. The adrenaline is coursing through your body, ears probably ringing from the thunderous noise, smoke in your nose and in the back of your throat. And perhaps you're like an unidentified Confederate in 1861 whose letter was reprinted in a newspaper back home saying, quote, with your first shot, you become a new man. Fear has no existence in your bosom. Hesitation gives way to an uncontrollable desire to rush into the thickest of the fight. You become cool and deliberate with a feeling so callous that your soul seems dead to every sympathizing and selfish thought. Perhaps, perhaps that was also a bit of Victorian braggadocio. But if the rifle fire was closer, a hundred yards, seventy five yards, fifty yards, all taking place within a space the distance of a football field or less, then the chaos might begin to outpace the control. A Pennsylvanian named John Vodier first saw The field in front, swarming with Confederates who came sweeping on in magnificent order with perfect alignment, guns at right shoulder and colors to the front. But then following the crash of his regiment's volley that flared full in the faces of the advancing troops, the ground being quickly covered with their killed and wounded as the balls hissed and cut through the exposed line. It was then that many veterans would remember sounds more than sights. Thomas Evans was a regular, not a volunteer, in the twelfth U. S. Infantry. He described the sound of a bullet hitting a man, a heavy thud when it would strike flesh, or a grating sound when it would hit bone. Captain John DeForest knew that the soldier next to him was hit because of a sharp crack of broken bone followed by a loud o of pain and horror, with blood spurting from his mouth and a state of woeful amazement in his eyes. A bullet had shattered his front teeth and come out behind his left jaw. Sometimes a bullet would be stopped by an object in a jacket or shirt pocket. Many a soldier would be protected by a small Bible, a diary, or a pack of playing cards. Private Salmon Beardsley remembered, quote, a ball went through my canteen and bruised my hip a little, but soon found that I was only scared by the water running down from my wounded canteen instead of blood from my body. But bullets that did hit home caused a great variety of sensations. That began with a sting, or a dull shock, struck by something blunt or receiving a blow from a stone. Next you might feel slight dizziness or a peculiar tingling with numbness, then followed by hard and labored breathing, like having the wind thumped out of you. Finally a sense of utter helplessness and powerlessness would make you drop your gun, then a sinking sensation as you fell to the ground with things growing dark. You'd then involuntarily grab at your wound, stagger and fall, the hot blood gushing from the wound. As units began to take casualties, many soldiers would describe a surreal sensation that seized them. A lieutenant named Wheeler called it a perfect indifference to circumstances. New Yorker Charles Benton was without any emotions of dread. Charles Wainwright experienced no feeling but one of perfect indifference. When Lieutenant Eakin fell against me, I had no more feeling for him than if he had tripped over a stump and fallen. John Campbell of the Fifth Iowa said there was a strange, unaccountable lack of feeling with me. Out of battle and in a battle, I find myself two different beings. It was understood to be work. Harsh, bloody, strictly work. You had to focus, put your head down, and go straight ahead. And if fighting closed distances, then eventually officers and sergeants would begin to be killed or wounded. And when one of them went down, someone else had to step up into their place. These line officers may have been militia, but they could have also been simply citizen leaders who were then supposed to be able to give orders and commands they'd never given before, with smoke and noise and confusion causing utter chaos. It was a very real breakdown in command that could take place right at the moment when it was most critically needed. And there you are. Orders, drill, repetition, muscle memory, all happening in the midst of chaos. Confusion, unpredictability, and randomness. Might get hit with a bullet. You might not. If hit, it might just tear a hole in your uniform or cap, or it hit a Bible in your pocket, or ricocheted, leaving you with a deep bruise. Or it could hit you anywhere on your body, wounding you slightly, seriously, or mortally, or it could kill you instantly. Or you could be untouched. It could be a long, exhausting marching and milling about day, or it could be hell on earth. Battle is the ultimate of soldiering. Before we pick up with events in july eighteen sixty one, where we left off in the previous episode, I do want to address two common misconceptions or misunderstandings that many people have when it comes to battles in the Civil War. The first has to do with the evaluation of armies standing in long lines opposite each other and firing away at one another as being stupid. The second has to do with a proper understanding of casualties. The first suffers from a terrible case of presentism. The second is simple unfamiliarity. There once was a comedy routine that imagined a coin toss before a great battle that determined conditions prior to its starting. Like in football when the winner of the coin toss gets to decide who'd receive the kickoff. In the bit, the setting is before the American Revolution, George Washington and Lord Cornwallis stand with a referee who introduces them all pre-game official like and then flips a coin. The British call heads. And unfortunately, it's tails. And so the ref asks Washington what's he gonna do? He says that his troops can dress however they want and can hide behind rocks and trees and hills and everywhere, and that the British have to wear bright red uniforms and march in a straight line. And that's a very funny bit. While funny, it's not history. Not only does it apply modern interpretations to a hundreds of year old situation, it also pokes fun at and ridicules methodologies that were based on proven experiences and results. Without going into uniforms or the lack thereof, or guerrilla fighting versus field formations, I mainly want to address armies marching in massed formations and forming in long lines in the 18th and 19th centuries. First, let's talk about the weapons. Up until the Civil War, the standard infantry weapon was the smoothbore musket, a gun that was fairly, roughly kind of accurate at 50 yards. Beyond that, not so much. And at a hundred yards, very unreliable. Because the bullet left the barrel of the gun kind of like a pitcher throwing a knuckleball in baseball, without any spin or rotation. The ball might move like it had a will of its own. How does an army stop an opponent when they can barely shoot and hit anything? By massing its guns together, in effect making the formation of men a giant shotgun of concentrated bullets. How do you mass its guns together? By massing its men together, and by forming in a long line. Then all the men could shoot at once, thereby increasing the probability that they would hit something. A hundred men with muskets, spread out, firing individually, would be hard pressed to stop an advancing enemy. But concentrating that firepower all at once could have a deadly effect. Second, let's talk about battlefield conditions. Black powder weapons created a ton of smoke. A commander might suddenly find himself fighting a battle in what seemed to be thick fog. There were no radios, no telecommunications, no drones, no precisely accurate maps. How could a commander keep his army under control in a noisy, chaotic environment? A unit in line was more apt to hear commands, see its flags, and be directed by officers. Third, what was the goal of fighting? This one is mind blowing to modern thought. It wasn't to avoid casualties. It was to absorb casualties. It wasn't just about accuracy and efficiency, it was about morale keeping the unit together and holding one's position through discipline. The unit that could keep its formation and cohesion together longer would win over a unit that would break and run away due to a loss of confidence and potential panic. Linear formations existed because they worked, given the weapons and battlefield conditions of the time. They maximized firepower, enabled standards of organization and control, allowed for communication, and fortified the morale necessary to hold position. But then, with the advent of the Civil War, technology began to change. Rifled muskets replaced smooth bores. A spinning bullet, exiting a gun barrel that was grooved or rifled, allowed it to travel farther and with greater accuracy. Repeating rifles and breech-loaded rifles would begin appearing on battlefields that would greatly increase the output of firepower. This would lead to the frequent use of skirmish lines, small groups of men or individuals moving as a screen in advance of the main line to feel out the enemy position. It would also give rise to units creating fortifications or entrenchments that men could take cover behind. Once we understand how combat was evolving right before the very eyes of Civil War generals, we can see why they initially operated according to Napoleonic tactics, but then would modify and, from our presentist point of view, modernize how they fought. So to simply say that armies lining up in long lines and shooting each other was stupid reveals a lack of understanding of battlefield technology, conditions, and objectives at that time. There were very good reasons why battles were fought the way they were. Now a quick clarification of what we mean when we talk about misunderstanding casualties during the Civil War. Casualties are manpower losses during war due to fighting. Casualties are not losses due to disease or desertion that happened when an army was encamped or on the march. The truth is that far more men died from disease, about twice as many during the Civil War, than from combat. But combat casualty counts were made up of three categories: those immediately dead or killed, those wounded, and those missing or unaccounted for or captured. And so after a battle, it might be said that such and such an army had 5,000 casualties. And of those 5,000, there were 500 killed, 3,500 wounded, and 1,000 missing or captured. 5,000 casualties doesn't mean 5,000 killed, but 500 killed at the end of the fighting would certainly grow to be more days, weeks, or months later, as many of the wounded might eventually succumb to their wounds. Either way, the number of casualties the battle produced would be the combined total of all three categories. The main takeaway for us is to understand the details and impact of the cost the war would have on all Americans. On july sixteenth, eighteen sixty one, Union General Irvin McDowell set his thirty five thousand man army in motion, slowly crawling forward out of Washington. Forward to Richmond, the Northern newspapers had cried. And so the new Grand Army of the North advanced in three columns heading south toward the Confederate Army of 22,000, commanded by PGT Beauregard, that was spread out behind a small waterway called Bull Run, north of the railroad junction at Manassas, Virginia. Some of the soldiers on both sides most likely carried with them newspaper clippings or letters that referenced practical suggestions or hints to our volunteers from a source identified as an old soldier. Many worried parents or relatives read these lists of sage advice from a supposed veteran of perhaps the war with Mexico that were printed and reprinted in papers all across the country. It was info that went viral and provided some comfort to those back home that their loved one would have every advantage for success. On April twenty fourth, eighteen sixty one, the New York Times printed a version that included these tips Avoid drinking water as much as possible while marching. When you feel dry, rinse your mouth with water, but do not swallow it. Water alone should not be drank, but mixed with vinegar. Or a little cold coffee is the only wholesome beverage in a campaign. While marching, never sit down for a second. The change of posture will affect your powers more than the actual marching. We can only wonder how many untested soldiers took these hints to heart as they trudged along dry and dusty roads, with daytime temperatures in the upper eighties to near ninety degrees with a pervasive humidity, no drinking water, no sitting down. But that's what an old soldier said to do so many did. At the same time there were two other armies in northern Virginia, one Union and one Confederate, poised at the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley. That's where Harper's Ferry is located, where the Shenandoah River meets the Potomac. It's important to understand the geography of the Shenandoah if you're going to understand the Civil War in Virginia. The two capitals of the Union and the Confederacy, Washington and Richmond, are about a hundred miles apart, and generally north and south of each other. If an army was to advance against either capital, it would go north or south and have to cross several major and minor rivers that flow diagonally northwest to southeast to the Atlantic. A defending army could typically set up a line of defenses behind one of these waterways to block the way of the attacker. That's exactly what Beauregard was doing along Bull Run, to block any approach southward by McDowell. But the Shenandoah Valley, to the west of the capitals, ran parallel and at an angle to the straight path between D.C. and Richmond. It angled from Virginia northeast up to Maryland and Pennsylvania in a way that an army that moved north would get closer to Washington as it advanced. However, an army marching south would get further away from Richmond as it advanced. It was a different on-ramp that gave Confederate military leaders a secondary way to advance and threaten the Northern Capital, as well as being a bounteous breadbasket of foodstuffs that could sustain Southern armies. And so it was at the northern end of the valley that a Confederate army of 9,000 men under the command of Joseph E. Johnston held Winchester, Virginia. Opposite him, both to defend the secondary route to Washington and to threaten taking the valley from the rebels was an army of about 18,000 men at Harper's Ferry, led by Robert Patterson, old General Winfield Scott's contemporary and equally old friend in the Army. Basically, Patterson had one job to do keep Johnston right where he was. Don't let him go anywhere. He told Scott how he intended to do just that the month before when he wrote, quote, I wish to place such a force on the Virginia shore as can hold every inch of ground gained and however slowly to advance securely upon Winchester. End quote. One job. Would Patterson do what he said he would do? Another reason this was vitally important was that Johnston could go somewhere else if he wanted to. The Manassas Gap Railroad ran its way from the Shenandoah right to Manassas Junction, where Beauregard's army was positioned. This connection would allow either army to cooperate and concentrate at the one point or the other. A fact that President Davis, General Lee, and the Confederate military leaders kept top of mind as they watched and waited for McDowell's army advancing southward. Patterson's actions would decide whether that was a card the Confederates could play. Newspapers, both North and South, followed the action for their citizens and the growing anticipation for battle. On july twelfth, the Charleston Mercury wrote, quote, We have war before us, therefore, and must meet it, and it is very certain we must meet it here. The enemy will faint before he strikes, and there is nothing now left to us but to prepare to meet him. A couple days later, the Mobile Alabama Advertiser and Register printed a map of Northeast Virginia on the front page, showing the location of Manassas Junction. And a few days after that, the New York Daily Herald stated authoratively and confidently, quote, The advance upon Manassas Junction will begin tonight or early in the morning. It will be executed with rapidity. The advancing column will be encumbered with nothing but their arms, blankets, and three days cooked rations. It will be provided with forty pieces of artillery and will be ready to follow up the retreating rebels with the same celerity as characterized the recent victorious movement in Western Virginia. Two days of marching brought McDowell 20 miles to the village of Centerville, about three miles from Beauregard's defensive line. Ironically, each commander had made plans and decided to attack with his right to hit his opponent's left. Ironic as well was that McDowell and Beauregard were classmates at and graduated from West Point together in the class of 1838. They both surely studied the classical tradition of Greek warfare, whereby the right wing or flank was the strongest and superior source from which to attack? Were both commanders seeking their own gaugamela, hoping to replicate Alexander's victory over the Persians? We can't know, but why not emulate a great commander from history to fight the great battle of this war? On july eighteenth, several things happened all at once. First, McDowell's leading brigade, commanded by Israel Richardson, scouted south from Centerville to Bull Run, to a crossing called Blackburn's Ford, where Bull Run was shallow enough for men and animals to cross without a bridge. Union cannon were brought up and opened fire only to be replied to by Confederate guns. Next, the first Massachusetts advanced. So what, you may say? Well, the Massachusetts men had gray uniforms. Let's stop right here. Remember that most of both armies were new recruits, outfitted by their own states, often very quickly. There were not yet, by either side, fully standardized uniforms for the North or South. Regiments were dressed however they were. Remember the Zuavs dressed like French North Africans? Historians roughly estimate that eight to ten, maybe a few more, regiments on both sides wore confusingly colored uniforms. Union troops in gray, Confederates in blue. Likewise, the Confederate flag carried by Southern troops was not the famous rebel battle flag, the blue X with white stars on a red background. Think of the Dukes of Hazard or Leonard Skinner. Units may have carried state flags or the first Confederate national flag, nicknamed the Stars and Bars. That was very similar to the stars and stripes of the U.S. flag. In the upper corner was a blue field with a circle of white stars, and instead of 13 red and white stripes, there were three, red, white, red. The problem was that both flags, the U.S. and the CS, looked nearly identical, except if there was a strong wind blowing. But at Bull Run, if you found yourself facing another regiment, their uniforms and their flag might be of no help identifying who they were. And at Blackburn's Ford in the wooded slopes around Bull Run, soldiers in gray faced other soldiers in gray, asking, Who are you? Only to be asked, Who are you? Gunfire gave the answer. Then up marched the first Michigan, in blue, who opened fire on everyone in gray until officers desperately sorted them all out. More regiments came up on either side and continued the fight until the Federals pulled back. Historian Stephen Sears edited a book called For Country Cause and Leader that includes the wartime journal of Charles Hayden, who was third sergeant of Company I of the Second Michigan. He was there at Blackburn's Ford, part of Richardson's brigade. Listen to a Hayden's amazing attention to detail as he lived moment by moment through the day. As they appeared on top of the hill, the musket balls began to whistle around us. We lay flat down on the ground and let them pass over us. After a short time we deployed to the right. While passing along we saw one Company A man shot through the arm and body lying on the ground, stripped and under surgeon's care. As we came around onto the hill the batteries opened on us and we backed down about eight rods, about forty yards, over the hill and lay down. They shot well, and the balls coming on a curve just missed the top of the hill and would have hit us if we had been standing. About twenty or thirty six pounders, cannonballs fired at them, struck in the opposite bank just behind us. Here, orderly Crego and several others were taken suddenly ill or were sunstruck and fell out of the ranks. The second Michigan was moved up, in case they were attacked. Companies I and K were posted about thirty yards behind the guns and in fair range of the enemy, who now opened a brisk fire from their batteries. It was a very unwise move to place us just there, but we stood the ground for about ten minutes when we were ordered to fall back about sixty yards further, which we did and laid down on the ground a little lower than the batteries. The balls mostly passed about four feet above our heads. One struck a man in Company H about twenty feet from me, shattering his arm and turning him over endwise. After some time we moved back still further. Here Miller fell down and was brought to with difficulty and carried into camp by two men at night. The day was hot and we suffered a good deal for want of water, and some forty or fifty men in the regiment must have fallen from the effect of fatigue and heat. I stood it beyond my expectation. I was not scared, I believe, but I did feel uneasy and mortified when I saw our troops driven back. The second Michigan, except the skirmishers, did not fire a gun. I cocked my gun when the enemy showed themselves on the edge of the woods, but I did not dare to fire without orders, although the temptation was great. The skirmish at Blackburn's Ford resulted in seventy to eighty casualties on each side, and it made it clear to both McDowell and Beauregard that the other was there. The Confederate commander had telegraphed Richmond, saying that he needed Johnston's army in the valley to come and join him. But now he believed there would be no time for that. Even though Richmond relay that order to the valley, one of Beauregard's adjutants volunteered to ride the fifty miles to Johnston to urge him on. The officer rode throughout the night and came to Piedmont Station where he found Johnston and his army already on the move. Johnston had received a wire from Richmond, saying, General Beauregard is attacked. To strike the enemy a decisive blow, a junction of all your effective force will be needed. If practicable, make the movement. That was concerned. Clear, and Johnston needed no further urging. He marched out of Winchester to Piedmont and then began loading brigades into trains that for 48 hours would shuttle his entire army to Manassas Junction. While his artillery and cavalry journeyed by road, the Confederates did something never done before in the history of war in America. They used a railroad for strategic purposes during an active campaign. So what happened to Robert Patterson? He had one job, but he didn't understand it. And it could also be stated that General Scott never provided crystal clear decisive orders. First, Patterson believed Johnston outnumbered him two to one, when it was actually the other way around. Second, he weighed his orders against the blame he'd receive if he were beaten in battle and decided that that was too great a risk to take. Third, several of his regiments had said their ninety days of volunteer service were up and they were going home. Lastly, he decided that everything he had already done had been enough to keep Johnston in place. On the day of Blackburn's Ford, as Johnston was already en route to Manassas, Patterson had telegraphed General Scott saying that he had quote succeeded in keeping General Johnston's force at Winchester. Within a week, Patterson would be relieved and honorably discharged from the army. What would his failure mean? Like two boxers in the ring where all the lights are out in the arena, McDowell and Beauregard made their best guesses where the other was and put their plans in motion. Unlike later in the war, when cavalry units would be used to scout ahead of and on the flanks of an army in the field, getting an idea of an enemy's location or maneuvers, at Bull Run the armies relied on relative frontline observations to make mental and actual maps of the others' positions. The one exception was information provided by Captain Edward Porter Alexander, a West Point graduate from the class of eighteen fifty seven. The twenty six year old Georgian was Beauregard's chief engineer and signal officer, who was positioned atop Signal Hill at Manassas Junction. Alexander was keeping his eyes open. Having left Washington on the 16th, McDowell assessed his situation. The action at Blackburn's Ford on the 18th convinced him the Confederates blocked the way across Bull Run to the south of Centerville. As his wagon train of supplies came up behind him, he needed the army to cook three more days' rations on the nineteenth before advancing on the twentieth. But he still needed a way to land his planned right hook. A crossing point over Bull Run further west at Sudley Springs seemed to be open and clear of Southerners. But it took him most of those two days to find routes for his columns that would get him to the crossing point. After a council of war with his commanders, he decided to move after midnight in the dark of early july twenty first. Meanwhile, Beauregard was massing his men and Johnston's arriving force from the valley below Blackburn's Ford and eastward for his own right hook attack. On the twentieth, President Davis placed Johnston in overall command, with Beauregard as his second. But it was the latter's plan that Johnston gave the Green Light to, and what a plan it was. Historian William C. Davis in his study of First Bull Run wrote No more ambiguous or confusing battle plan would come forth from this war. First, units were called brigades and some were organized and referred to as divisions or corps. None of the commanders were aware of this organization that seemed to exist only in Beauregard's mind. And no one knew who was supposed to command them. Second, there was no sequence or timetable for units to move. A unit might be told to wait for another, or move when the other moved, but the other units were told that too. No one seemed to know who would move first or who should follow who. Third, while Johnston and Beauregard knew who was in command, they didn't clearly explain that to the rest of the army. So here's Beauregard's master class for a set piece right flank attack with the worst set of orders for an army ever written. Maybe hyperbole, but what could possibly go wrong? The battle at Bull Run on july twenty first was to be more than just the great battle to end the war. It would also be dinner theater. As newspapers broadcast the movements of McDowell's army, the citizenry of Washington decided to go out and watch the battle for themselves. This is so informative as to the American mindset about the war. We talked before about the romantic vision of gentlemen settling a duel or the eloquent accounts of the mislabeled decisive battles that had occurred since Fort Sumter. It's kind of like people who are driving through a national park and decide it's a good idea to get out of their car to take some pictures. No, let's be sure to get closer and pose with the bison. Clueless that a wild animal is about to run them down and gruesomely gore them to death. This was the madness that rode out to Centerville. And maybe the crowds who came out from Washington might not have made the trip if it hadn't been a Sunday, but it was a Sunday, and on Sunday, picnics were the thing to do. They gathered alongside the gentle slopes of another stream just a few miles from a stone bridge over Bull Run. Unauthorized private citizens, businessmen, journalists, politicians from Washington with their wives, in carriages and buggies, hundreds of them, with attendance and picnic lunches. They had shown up with some military officers who could provide some commentary in order to be nearby as the Great Battle to end the insurrection took place. War Secretary Simon Cameron and Massachusetts Senator Henry Wilson were present with more than a dozen other members of Congress. While the influencers and social media of the day followed their event planners out to the Virginia countryside, soldiers like Sergeant Hayden of the Second Michigan were beginning to realize what was about to take place. He wrote Everything indicates a great battle near at hand. I pray that I may have the strength and courage to carry me safely through or to die decently and in a manner becoming an American soldier. If I go, goodbye to all McDowell's flank attack marched to the right in the dark, west, past the leftmost Confederate units behind Bull Run at the Stone Bridge. The general himself took position at a key intersection so he could direct traffic himself as the sun rose at about five AM. The first Union Brigades crossed Bull Run at Sudley Ford and their regiments began getting spread out and lined up. Remember the challenges of getting thousands and thousands of soldiers in line, in position, even when they're on familiar ground? Well, what about undulating land with fences and fields, woods, and little streams of water? This would take time. And that's what Confederate Captain Alexander was watching at the break of day from his position up on Signal Hill. He could see the Union Army moving to its right. He could see the rising sun glinting off thousands of rifles and bayonets crossing at Sudley Springs, taking ground where there were no Confederates to be seen. He had to do something. Having been an assistant to Albert J. Meyer, the father of the U.S. Army Signal Corps before the war, Alexander used Meyer's code for signaling via wigwagging signal flags to send a message across the fields to another signal station near the Stone Bridge. Alexander signaled, look out on your left, you are turned. This message was received by Confederate Colonel Nathan Evans, who held the Southerners' far left flank. Evans was an aggressive soldier and acted quickly, moving his regiments west and up a nearby hill where the Matthews house sat. This position on Matthews Hill would be the first key position of the battle. As the sun rose into the Sunday morning, word reached Beauregard and Johnston that McDowell had beat them to the punch. Their intricate, complex, incomprehensible plan of their own was now worthless. If the Union army was already around the end of their line and advancing, then their army was in danger of being attacked from the flank and rear and possibly cut off from their lines of supply and communication. There was no time to waste. Reinforcements had to be shifted from the right of their line to the left. The closest available were units from the valley, and by 8 AM these regiments were marching quickly towards Matthews Hill. From here on, remember the descriptions of what Civil War combat was like. The marching, the formations, the waiting, the lines firing, the smoke, the noise, the random terror but job like tedium of long rows of soldiers trying to follow orders and stay together. This will go on for the next seven hours, in fits and starts, in blocks of thirty to sixty minutes, with no one absolutely in control. The generals will be giving orders, but it will be up to combat to see if they can be followed. It will be a methodical chaos. Like I said in an earlier episode, I'm not going to detail every regiment, every movement, every personality on the battlefield. That could also take seven hours. Instead, here's how the battle happened. From 9 to 11 AM, 4,500 Confederates held Matthews Hill, while more than 10,000 Union troops advanced toward it. Federal guns zeroed in on the defenders as Union regiments would advance, fire, and fall back. Men were falling, killed or wounded, on both sides as another Northern Brigade discovered a new spot to cross Bull Run. This was Colonel William Tecumseh Sherman's brigade, and as they advanced up Matthews Hill, they were outflanking that Confederate line. A deadly volley convinced the Southerners that they needed to fall back. As the rebels abandoned the Matthews Hill position, McDowell and several of his officers followed the Union line up and over the hill. Victory, victory, the day is ours, McDowell exclaimed. However, the Confederates only fell back to the next high ground to the south, a place called Henry House Hill, the second key position of the battle. There the remains of the first line reformed and were reinforced by the Virginians of Brigadier General Thomas J. Jackson and more infantry and artillery. At about noon, the Union regiments lined up and began assaulting Henry House Hill. As smoke billowed across the battlefield from rifle volleys and cannon fire, Confederate General Bernard B. saw his men taking heavy casualties and sensed they were losing cohesion. As B exhorted his men to hold fast, he said words that have lasted throughout all of American history, giving gravity to the moment in this first big battle of the war. Exactly what he said will never be known, but many present recalled and shared with newspaper correspondents that B said quote, there is Jackson standing like a stone wall. And the name stuck. Stonewall Jackson and his Stonewall Brigade would be legendary forever after. Eventually Beauregard and Johnston arrived on Henry House Hill. Beauregard either asked or suggested that Johnston go back to the rear and direct the reinforcing Confederate regiments into battle while he commanded the fight on the hill. Johnston did so and began maneuvering Southern units into position. By 1 PM, 6,500 men and 13 guns held the Confederate line on Henry House Hill. For two hours, Union regiments inched forward, then inched back in a continuous exchange of gunfire. Men fell, officers fell. McDowell brought up eleven cannon manned by U.S. regular soldiers, not volunteers, commanded by captains Charles Griffin and James Ricketts. This was a classic Napoleonic move. The French Emperor would sometimes use artillery for great effect in this way on the battlefields of Europe. But McDowell was not Napoleon, and this was not a European battlefield. This was a half square mile of nervous mayhem, manned by mostly untested volunteers, with uniforms and flags that didn't help identify who was who. And again, here, just like on other parts of that battlefield, that confusion would prove lethal. Jackson's 33rd Virginia attacked the cannon, and the thirty third wore blue uniforms. So the gunners paused firing, and it was just enough for the Confederates to decimate the artillery men and their horses. A charge followed and then a countercharge. The guns changed hands several times. The second Wisconsin advanced, wearing gray uniforms. More chaos. At three PM McDowell's last fresh brigade, men from Vermont and Maine were ordered forward. Perhaps they could turn the tide and push the rebels off the hill. But it was not meant to be. Because Joseph E. Johnston was doing his job very well, funneling new regiments up to Henry House Hill, and his last brigade coming from the valley had disembarked at Manassas Junction around noon. Marching to the sound of the fighting, Johnston met them and said, Quote, Take them to the front. It is our left that is driven back, but the ground is new to me, and I cannot direct you exactly go where the fire is hottest. As the tired but unscathed Confederates followed the sounds of the guns and swept up the Sudley Road and over another hill, the Union army had nothing left in the tank. They had been attacking for seven hours, but with piecemeal movements, one or two regiments at a time, never a fully coordinated attack. The Union troops would falter and then another would sputter forward, and now as the afternoon slipped away, so did the Yankee momentum. McDowell's adjutant, Captain James Fry, would write afterwards, there were no fresh forces on the field to support or encourage them, and the men seemed to be seized simultaneously by the conviction that it was no use to do anything more, and they might as well start home. And like that, the Union regiments began to fall back and withdraw from the hills they had been advancing up all day. At first it was fairly orderly, a casual withdrawal back towards Sudley Springs. The Confederates advanced, but they were just as worn out and disorganized. It wasn't until the reality that they had been beaten, sunk in, and that Southern guns were opening fire on the retreating Federals did the walk become a jog and then a run. Cannonballs whizzing into masses of men turned formations into clusters of men looking out for themselves. And then there were the picnickers. As the thousands of McDonald's army flowed back towards Centerville, the hundreds of onlookers also found themselves caught in the traffic jam of men, animals, and wagons falling back to Washington. Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts had to abandon his buggy and ride on a borrowed horse back to the Capitol. An overturned wagon at a key bridge turned the escape into a route. Citizens panicked, and then soldiers panicked. It was a path strewn with every manner of weapon and supply that had been scattered and abandoned along the retreat. The Confederates had a heyday scooping up everything they could, which distracted them from pursuing their beaten enemy. Jefferson Davis had taken a special train that morning north from Richmond to Manassas, and eventually rode a horse to find Johnston and Beauregard after the battle. Here the president became a West Point soldier again, asking for details and telling his war department of the glorious victory, but just how horrific had the glory been. To put it in perspective, during the entire war with Mexico, U.S. forces sustained more than 7,000 casualties. Remember, that is men killed, wounded, and missing or captured during the one year and nine months of fighting of about a dozen battles. On july twenty first, just one day, yes. Both sides were Americans, but in one day about 5,000 men became casualties. It was a scale of violence and death that Americans had never imagined. Every loss hit the people and the families of both North and South hard with grief, but the Union also had to swallow the fact that they had been beaten. Five days after the battle, Sergeant Hayden of the Second Michigan wrote I cannot cease to regret and speculate on the affairs of Sunday. Our army is large and full of good material, but it is loosely put together. Not one man in fifty ever saw battle before this war, not one in ten knew the simplest elements of military drill. They are liable to be confused. Where rough and tumble fighting and personal bravery are needed, they are great, but for steady movements in line and on retreat, they are not reliable. When I go into another battle, I shall do many things differently, and some I shall not do at all. I begin to feel more like a soldier and there will not be so many new things to look after. The army will get beaten into discipline after a while if they are not drilled into it in any other way. If there were experienced officers, the men would improve much faster. Publisher Horace Greeley, who had banged the drum of war with calls of forward to Richmond, wrote immediately in the New York Tribune We have fought and been beaten. God forgive our rulers that this is so, but it is true and cannot be disguised. But he remained resolute, saying, Our banner, now drooping, will soon float once more in triumph over the whole land. With the right men to lead, our people will show themselves unconquerable. Onward then to victory and glory. But later that week, as the awfulness of the defeat weighed heavier and heavier on the nation, Greeley privately lamented to President Lincoln in a letter on july twenty ninth, saying On every brow sits sullen, scorching, black despair. If it is best for the country and for mankind that we make peace with the rebels, and on their own terms, do not shrink even from that. Lincoln felt the heavy blow of the defeat immediately. This was very bad. His army, the one he was commander in chief of, had quickly, perhaps too quickly, rushed into combat before his volunteers' ninety days were up, cheered on by the media, led by commanders who had never led that many men before, and was beaten only to return exhausted in humiliation to the capital. Something needed to be done. Something needed to be demonstrated to the country that its leadership was seeing and feeling what it saw and felt. Lincoln would not wait long. The very day. Day after the battle, the president sent a telegram to General George McClellan in Western Virginia. Circumstances make your presence here necessary. Charge Rosecrans or some other general with your present department and come hither without delay. While Lincoln moved purposefully and decisively with Army leadership after Bull Run, he had been equally purposeful with the region of the North's long border with the seceded states. Up to now we focused on the border states of Maryland and Missouri, but between Virginia in the east and Missouri in the west was the president's native state, Kentucky. Lincoln was reportedly to have made two remarkable comments about it at the beginning of the war. I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game. And also, I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky. He keenly saw the state as the gateway to the whole territory between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River, and if Kentucky seceded, it would be a gut punch to the midsection of the Union. Let's pause to see how the state fit into the cultural and political history of the country up until then. Kentucky was unique in that it was the first new state outside the area defined by the original colonies. Directly west of Virginia, it was originally a county of that state, until Kentucky was granted statehood in 1792. The Wilderness Road was the principal route used by the new Americans moving westward that ran from Virginia through the Cumberland Gap on into southern Kentucky, up toward where Boonesboro, Lexington, and Louisville would be established. By these early settlers, Kentucky could be called the child of Virginia. And indeed, in its culture and heritage, it inherited a southern spirit. But over time, as more people moved in and then moved out and on, pioneers left Kentucky to settle north and west to Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. Consider Abe Lincoln himself, born in 1809 in Kentucky, who migrated first to Indiana and then Illinois. If Kentucky's grandparents were from the South, then its grandchildren were found in places decidedly not the South. This made the state truly cosmopolitan in a national sense, with less allegiance to any one region and more to the Union, which it was the first state to be beyond the original colonies. Its central location made it the true border state, running along the south of the Ohio River, below the Northwest Territory, and above the upper slave south. Before Fort Sumter was fired upon, Kentucky was split between Unionists and secessionists like the other border states. Once Lincoln called for the initial 75,000 troops from the Union, Kentucky's pro-Southern governor Bariah McGuffin stood his ground against Washington, saying, quote, I say emphatically, Kentucky will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister states. End quote. When Virginia seceded in April 1861, many thought the mother state would take her daughter state along. But many of Kentucky's residents lived along the Ohio River, and they wanted to remain in the Union. So did John J. Crittenden, longtime U.S. Attorney General and Governor and Senator from Kentucky. The longtime Whig was no Republican, but he was a firm Unionist, and he traveled across the state preaching a neutral stance. Kentuckian John C. Breckinridge, Buchanan's vice president, did the same for Southern sympathizers, urging them to show solidarity against Lincoln's designs. In May, the state elected delegates for a border state convention, which voted overwhelmingly in favor of Unionists over secessionists. Like Missouri, Kentucky's state government leaned Southern, but unlike Missouri, the people were firmly pro union. On the sixteenth, the legislature declared, this state and the citizens thereof should take no part in the civil war now being waged, except as mediators and friends to the belligerent parties, and that Kentucky should, during the contest, occupy the position of strict neutrality. Sounds pretty straightforward until this reminder from historian James Raleigh in his book Turning Points of the Civil War, that quote, neutrality is a position that may be taken by an independent nation toward a foreign war. But Kentucky was a member of the Federal Union, and its legislators and executive officers had taken an oath to support the Constitution, the supreme law of the land. Thus Kentucky's neutrality was a direct challenge to President Lincoln. End quote. Like Missouri, the state government of Kentucky was overstepping its bounds by flat out rejecting the call of its federal executive. But Lincoln had a better grasp on the tactical handling of Governor McGuffin, and he skillfully maneuvered his way forward. As Lincoln gently replied to the governor by making overtures to not send Union troops into Kentucky, he also directed 10,000 muskets to be distributed across Unionist regions. He was adroitly keeping the peace while simultaneously preparing for war in his native state. Another tactic was the establishment of the Military Department of Kentucky, with another Kentuckian and the hero of Fort Sumter, Robert Anderson, as the commander. It was a populist maneuver with no real action to demonstrate sympathy for the state's plight. As the summer of 1861 turned, Kentucky took similar steps to those of Missouri in terms of its militia presence aligning along political lines. Its pro-Southern state militia, the State Guard, was commanded by General Simon Bolivar Buckner and prepared to enforce Kentucky's neutrality. Also organizing was the pro-Union Home Guard, under the leadership of William Bull Nelson, to also defend against agitators. But Nelson, though a commanding presence, was not an abolitionist like Nathaniel Lyon in Missouri, nor was Governor McGuffin as duplicitous as Governor Claiborne Jackson of Missouri. While last episode we saw Lyon and Blair lead fighting against Jackson and Sterling Price across Missouri, Kentucky stood relatively still. Buckner resigned command of the State Guard on july twentieth, citing the activities of the Home Guard as depriving him of the means of accomplishing his duties. Why bother having a State Guard if Union backed forces were going to exist? In August, the state elections in Kentucky saw unionists win more than 70% of the seats in both houses of the state legislature. Kentucky would not continue down the path that Missouri had moved down. For the time being, Lincoln could hope that he would not lose the state. This sentiment was echoed in Congress, chiefly voiced by John J. Crittenden of Kentucky and Andrew Johnson of Tennessee. When Southern states seceded and joined the Confederacy, their representatives and senators resigned and headed south, all except Andrew Johnson. He was the only politician from a state that seceded who chose to remain in the Senate. As the most prominent Southern Unionist, Johnson was seen as an important ally by Lincoln, who needed to keep his coalition of unionists together despite many different political stripes. Crittenden and Johnson did their part by putting together a war aims resolution that was passed in Congress on July 25th, just days after Bull Run. The Crittenden-Johnson Resolution stated the goal of the war to be maintaining the Constitution and preserving the Union. The peculiar institution of slavery would be let alone. The entire purpose of the statement was to reassure the border slave states, Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland, that their way of life would not be interfered with. Lincoln and his Congress were doing everything they could to not offend the border states. Would it be enough to not lose any more states to the Confederacy? During the same month, the state of Missouri held a convention on July 22nd. Following a convention in March that voted overwhelmingly against secession, this gathering looked around and took note that the state's governor and 20 of its members were traveling south with Sterling Price's Missouri State Guard. The convention declared that the state's elected offices were therefore vacant, and they placed provisional appointees who would serve on an interim basis until an election could be held in November. For Missouri secessionists, their only hope then was to appeal to the Confederacy for help in reclaiming their state. For Unionists, it was a next step in preserving Missouri's place in the United States. Lincoln then further solidified his Army command structure in July by placing Major General John C. Fremont in command of the Western Department. You might remember him from previous episodes. He was the preeminent explorer of the West in the 1840s, known as the Pathfinder. He explored the Rockies, gave traction to the Oregon Trail. He trekked through Nevada and the area known as the Great Basin, and traveled through Northern California. His published reports became travel guides that Congress had reprinted in order to promote westward expansion. While a national hero and successor to the explorers Lewis and Clark, Fremont also revealed an aggressive military attitude. Before, during, and after the war with Mexico, Fremont would slaughter Native Americans, be suspicious of British influences from Canada, fight the Mexicans, and even battle with his peers and superiors. Fremont was eventually court-martialed but pardoned by President Polk, and then he resigned. However, he remained popular in the public eye. He would become the first senator of the new state of California in 1850. And as a free soiler, he would join the newly formed Republican Party and become its first presidential candidate in 1856, coming in second to Democrat James Buchanan. Fremont then pursued his own private business ventures until he got a message from President Lincoln in May 1861 appointing him a major general in the Union Army and assigning him command in St. Louis, where he arrived at the end of July. Why did he land there? Lincoln originally wanted Fremont to be his minister to France, but Secretary of State Seward objected. The greater need was stability in the Western theater, and Fremont brought an immediate populist recognition that served equal doses of heroism and political pedigree. Fremont himself desired commanded the West, and so Lincoln obliged. This also strengthened Lincoln's ties with the Blair family, who supported Fremont, and the Benton family, Fremont's wife Jessie being the daughter of the powerful Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri. Though the patriarch Benton had died in 1858, his brand of influence and political acumen lived on in his daughter. Keep Jessie Fremont in the back of your mind when we turn the calendar forward in 1861. Upon his arrival in St. Louis, General Fremont had quite a lot of work to do. He had a far better grasp on the geography of Missouri than Nathaniel Lyon, and knew what sort of army would be needed to hold it. He arranged bases for supplies, secured needed weapons, and began assembling troops at key defense positions. While Lyon had vigorously waged his punitive crusade against the secessionist forces of Jackson and Price, he hadn't been managing the big picture of the region. For example, Fremont believed, due to informants, that fifty thousand troops were about to move against him to recapture the capital of Jefferson City, seize St. Louis, and secure the vital base at the tip of Illinois at Cairo, where the Ohio River flowed into the Mississippi. With Lyon holding Springfield in South Central Missouri with 5,000 men, Fremont took a force of thirty, eight hundred men down to hold Cairo, but didn't give Lyon any clear or explicit orders. The Pathfinder was leaving Lyon to do as he thought best. Against him moved an odd alliance of leaders and forces. First there was Claiborne Jackson, former legitimate governor of Missouri, a state that never left the Union, who was, at the beginning of August, working to set up a rival Confederate state government. Sterling Price commanded the Missouri State Guard, troops that were still technically part of the Union, but who were now more loyal to Jackson and Price than to Lincoln. They were not secessionists, they were not Confederates. They fought for Missouri. There were also commanders and units of the Confederacy moving into action. Brigadier William Hardy, set up in Memphis, commanded all Confederate forces in Arkansas along Missouri's southern border. And finally, Brigadier General Ben McCulloch led an army at Fort Smith right on the border of Arkansas and the Indian Territory, or what is now Oklahoma. As we saw last episode, Jackson had reached out to Jefferson Davis for assistance to hold Missouri as a pro-slavery government. But in the spring, Davis had little to spare. After being chased down to the southwest corner of the state by Lyon, Jackson then appealed to McCulloch, who had the closest forces available at Fort Smith. The Confederate War Department finally authorized McCulloch to advance to help Price and the Missouri State Guard stop Lyon. Along with his Confederate brigade, he brought Arkansas State Regiments commanded by Nicholas Pierce. As his troops crossed from Arkansas into Missouri in early July, McCulloch became the first Confederate leader to invade the United States. McCulloch had fought for Texan independence, was a Texas Ranger, fought in Mexico, and was instrumental in seizing federal supplies when Texas seceded. He recognized the threat Lyons' presence posed. On July 9th, McCulloch reported to Richmond, quote, The force that was marching on the governor's rear will no doubt move to Springfield, and I think there will be an urgent necessity in the course of a few days to make an attack upon that place, or we will receive an attack from their concentrated forces. Should I receive no instructions in the meantime, I think that I will, together with General Pierce and Price, make an advance upon it as soon as the different forces are sufficiently organized to take the field. As his force joined with Price's Missouri State Guard, McCulloch was unimpressed by what he saw. On the eighteenth, he lamented to War Secretary Leroy Walker about Price. Quote, I find that his force of 8,000 or 9,000 men is badly organized, badly armed, and now almost entirely out of ammunition. This force was made by the concentration of different commands under their own generals. The consequence is that there is no concert of action among them, and will not be until a competent military man is put in command of the entire force. In spite of his uncertainty about Price and the Missouri State Guard, McCulloch issued orders for an advance on august fifth, telling his men, look steadily to the front, remember that the eyes of your gallant brothers in arms who have so nobly acquitted themselves in the East are upon you. They are looking for a second victory here. Let us move forward then with a common resolve to a glorious victory. The stage was being set for another confrontation in the summer of eighteen sixty one. While not as numerous as what had taken place at Bull Run in Virginia, it would still be the second largest battle of the war at that time. Twelve thousand Confederates and Missourians poised to strike 5,000 Union troops before they themselves could be attacked. A disjointed group of troops and leaders ready to move against a smaller but cohesive force commanded by one of the most proactive generals of the summer. But this would be far from Washington and Richmond, far from the journalism epicenter of the East. It would even be on the far side of the distant Mississippi, in the middle of nowhere, twelve miles southwest of Springfield, Missouri, along the banks of Wilson's Creek. Millions of Germans had come to the U.S. between eighteen forty and eighteen sixty. One of them was thirty seven year old Franz Siegel. He graduated from a German military academy and was a lieutenant in the army of the Grand Duchy of Baden. As revolutions broke out across Europe in eighteen forty eight, the states of the German Confederation were shaken by protests in favor of reforms and the end of monarchies. In Baden, the revolutionaries demanded the creation of a republic. Siegel became a colonel of the revolutionary militia. He was wounded and then led the defeated fighters to Switzerland after the rebellion was put down. He then went to England and on to the U.S. arriving in 1852. Siegel taught in New York public schools and then became a professor in St. Louis, where he became influential among the immigrant Germans who flocked westward to Illinois and Missouri. After Fort Sumter, Siegel was commissioned a Union officer and was instrumental in rallying pro-Union Germans. Lincoln would promote him to Brigadier General, which was Lincoln's way of strengthening his political coalition. Germans had helped elect Lincoln in 1860. The president would count on them to ensure the preservation of the Union. Leading a portion of Lyon's army at Springfield, Franz Siegel brought a European flavor of military leadership that Lyon respected and when looking for veteran officers needed. And then at a moment where decisiveness was required, Lyon began to waver. Whether it was the fatigue of campaigning for months or the pressures of command, he froze. He was getting no clear orders from Fremont. He needed supplies. So a fallback from Springfield to Rolla and the railroad there was an option. And then reports of the size of McCulloch's and Price's advancing army made him doubt his position. He had done so much and come so far. Lyon reportedly asked, quote, shall we endeavor to retreat without giving the enemy battle beforehand and run the risk of having to fight every inch along our line of retreat? Or shall we attack him in his position and endeavor to hurt him so that he cannot follow? End quote. It was Siegel who proposed to Lyon. A bold plan to surprise the enemy. He suggested that the Union Army be split into two wings. He would take 1,200 men around the eastern flank of Wilson's Creek, while Lyon led the main body of 3,800 straight at where McCulloch and Price were encamped. His subordinates objected. But Lyon overruled them. It's not completely clear why Lyon made the risky decision to split his forces, but it might have been enough that Siegel was the one who offered a clear vision of what to do. Fremont had given no guidance. Siegel was confident of his plan. In the days before the Federal forces fully moved out on August 9th, reports were being telegraphed back east of skirmishing and maneuvering. On august seventh, eighteen sixty one, the Evening Star in Washington updated its readers on page three, quote, The enemy were approaching General Lyon in considerable force from the West. I am no believer in the story that McCulloch's army is thirty thousand strong, including Governor Jackson and his runaways. But however numerous it may be, it is such an undisciplined and conglomerate crowd that General Lyons and Colonel Siegel's superior generalship will defeat it. A rumor is afloat here tonight that General Lyon was killed in the alleged engagement of Saturday, which I am satisfied did not take place. So twenty to one, General Lyon is not killed. The Detroit Free Press reprinted days later a dispatch from just before the battle would commence, as rumors of McCulloch's advance spread. Quote, a battle hourly expected at Springfield. No battle had been fought. Five hundred cavalry were ready to move Thursday morning, and the home guards were in motion. The rebels were encamped at Wilson's Creek, twelve miles from Springfield. Tuesday evening a slight skirmish took place between patrolling parties four miles out, in which four rebels were killed. Before we follow the action of what happened on August 10th, I want to highlight two important facts about the Battle of Wilson's Creek. The first has to do with the Union Army Lion Commanded. The Civil War was primarily fought by volunteers, both North and South. Militia units were first called up and then longer term regiments served for years, but nearly all of them were not professionally trained soldiers, except for the U.S. regulars, who were regular army units that were integrated into the many volunteer armies across the country. Most of those regular army units were stationed in the west along the frontier, west of the Mississippi. And while many regulars would serve in the East and in Virginia, the battle at Wilson's Creek would feature a Union army that was composed of approximately 20% disciplined U.S. regulars. No other Union army during the war would have that high a percentage of regulars compared to the total army strength. More than 1,000 regulars from the 1st and 2nd Infantry, 1st Cavalry, 2nd Dragoons, and 2nd Artillery would march into battle. One in five of Lyons' men were professional soldiers. What sort of effect, if any, would that have on the course of fighting? The second fact I want to draw attention to is how already remarkably well all those volunteers had performed in the first big battle of the war. Remember, Bull Run saw the largest armies ever fielded in North America squaring off. McDowell's thirty five thousand, Patterson's 18,000, Beauregard's 22,000, Johnston's 9,000, led by commanders who had never led more than a couple thousand troops before. But McDowell conducted a large flanking movement that successfully placed his attacking columns around the left end of the Confederate line. Sure, they moved slowly, but maybe it was because most of them weren't drinking water. But the fact that the battle happened at all is pretty remarkable. Look at what Johnston's men did. Their giant operational shift from the Shenandoah to Bull Run was a stunning demonstration of how railroads would affect the war. Except for Patterson's inept handling of his force, through no fault of their own, the Bull Run campaign was a solid workmanlike operation that put armies in place for the vital closing of opposing forces in conflict. Would that be the case at Wilson's Creek? It's no small thing to split an army in two for a dramatic advance with a pincer movement to trap the enemy between both attacking wings. Remember there were no radios. Lyon and Siegel would have to move simply by a timetable and hope the other would do their part. What if they didn't coordinate? What if one wing didn't show up at all? And how would the Missouri State Guard conduct itself? It was a raw formation of militia, undersupplied and ill equipped with perhaps two thousand without any weapons at all. Though they may have been the worse for experience, Price's men did have one driving motivation to save Missouri from the Republicans. Would it be enough? To verbally sketch out the landscape of the battlefield, Wilson's Creek ran roughly north to south and was crossed by the Telegraph Road, usually called the Wire Road, that ran from Springfield southwest to Fayetteville. Together the creek and wire road formed a rough X shape. McCulloch and Price had their army camped all along the creek, as it provided a water supply for their men. Camps were both west and east of the creek and north and south of the Wire Road crossing. In other words, the position at Wilson's Creek was chosen not as a defensive line, like Bull Run, but as a gathering place for fresh water. With the Confederates and Missouri's camped all around the middle of the X, Lyon led his men down from the north along the west edge of the X. Siegel and his men circled the east side of the X to approach the field from below the X, from the south. Amazingly, the pincer movement worked. Both Union commanders got their men where they needed to be at the same time. It was solid leadership and probably a bit of luck, and their enemy was unaware until Lyon formed his regiments and his cannon opened fire by five thirty AM. Siegel's men heard the guns and opened fire at the same time. To give us a sequence, there are four distinct phases that follow the action as the day unfolded. By six AM as cannonballs crashed down upon them from the north and behind them from the south, McCulloch and Price's men cut short their breakfast and began forming amidst their camps. Lyon sent three hundred regulars east across the creek to hold his left flank, while the bulk of his army got into position along a ridge, overlooking the enemy camps. The ridge would become known as Bloody Hill. With Lyon holding the hill, the regulars moved purposefully across a cornfield until they met 1,100 Confederates. Outnumbered three to one, the regulars gave as good as they got until the Southerners advanced, causing the Federals to fall back in good order. At the same time, Siegel's column deployed south of the X and pushed up into the supply wagons of the enemy. In this rear area, a mixture of rubble units and the 2,000 unarmed men of the Missouri State Guard found themselves shelled by Union guns and surrounded by Siegel's advancing troops. The enemy scattered into the brush and trees. Siegel's maneuver had been a brilliant success. By 7 30 AM, the battle was now in earnest. With Lyon strongly positioned on high ground to the north, and Siegel now in position directly in the enemy rear, the stage was set for a final crushing advance to destroy the secessionist presence in Missouri. It was at this time the second act of the battle unfolded. McCulloch and Price were feeling the shock of the unexpected Union attack but were beginning to organize a response. As McCulloch rallied and gathered a force near the center of the X to hold the Army's central position, Price's Missourians assembled below the heights of Bloody Hill. About a thousand of Price's men advanced up the ridge, and being that Missouri hadn't seceded, one of Price's officers carried the stars and stripes uphill against the Union first Missouri Infantry. Now it wasn't just uniform confusion. Men on both sides at Bloody Hill carried the very same flag. As the infantry paused to figure out who was who and then blasted away at one another, the hill was wrapped in thick smoke. Two other groups of men struggled to form into a line together, the Union First Kansas and Price's fifth Missouri. After a few minutes the formation aligned and advanced together, until their captains got suspicious, then confused, and then they each ordered their men to open fire at one another. It was complete chaos. But overall Lyon's line was holding, and Price's men fell back to reform. Lyon had to be wondering where was Siegel? He had heard the Germans' guns an hour before and was expecting to see Siegel's men come bursting through the position of the enemy army. After his initial success, Siegel had stopped his advance and aligned his guns with a small force of supporting infantry. But for some reason, the bulk of his regiments were held back as a reserve along the wire road. And that was the extent of his next step. At the most inopportune moment, the man with the plan figured his part was done, and all he had to do was to wait for Lyon's force to break through. Because that was also the moment that McCulloch's counterattacking force stormed into and through Siegel's brittle line. The Union men had spread the word that Lyons men would be coming into their front very soon, so they should be cautious about opening fire on friendly regiments. But that caution gave McCulloch plenty of time to route Siegel's first line and throw it back into confusion into Siegel's reserve. His entire command broke apart and fled from the field in groups and small pockets, some down the wire road, some back to the east, the remnant eventually making it back to Springfield. The pincer movement was no more. It was now nine AM and the fight shifted into its third phase. Lyon and his three five hundred men on Bloody Hill waited and wondered how Siegel was following up his initial success. Intermittent artillery fire flew across the lines. Years later, Private Eugene Ware of the First Iowa remembered this interlude. We all laid down on the ground and for some time the shells. We were playing closely over our heads. Our company did not have much to do for a while in the way of shooting. We simply laid down on the ridge and watched the battery in front of us, or sat up or kneeled down. When we saw the puff of the artillery, we dodged and went down flat, and in the course of fifteen minutes gained so much confidence that we felt no hesitation in walking around and seeing what we could see, knowing that we could dodge artillery ammunition. Soon thousands of Price's Missourians made a second mass assault up the ridge. Volley after volley rolled across Bloody Hill and was returned by fire from the Union volunteers from Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri. Lyon despaired that Siegel hadn't broken through yet, but his chief of staff, Major John Schofield, encouraged him to keep fighting. Lyon had taken two minor wounds when he noticed an opportunity to move the second Kansas into a gap in the line that would drive toward the enemy. Waving his hat, Lyon shouted, Come on, my brave boys, I will lead you forward. A southern volley exploded out from the tall grass across the hill, and a bullet ripped through Lyon's body, piercing both lungs and his heart. Falling from his horse, Lyon was caught by an aid, and gasping for air he whispered I am going. And with that he was dead. The first Union general officer to die in the Civil War. As the line surged back and forth, eventually his body was carried to the rear. Schofield hurried to find Major Samuel Sturgis, who was the ranking regular officer on the field and notify him that he was now in command of the army. By ten AM the battle turned to its final act. Sturgis took command and called his officers together. They were in unanimous agreement that without Siegel breaking through the enemy line from the rear, there was nothing to do but withdraw. But then suddenly, they could see a large formation of men moving along the eastern side of the creek. Perhaps that was Siegel, and perhaps this was the moment they had been waiting for. Could they hold on for one last moment? They would try. Sturgis gave orders to stand their ground. Below the hill, Price had reformed two thousand of his Missouri State Guard when the large formation from the east side of the creek came into view. It was Pierce's state troops from Arkansas. Pierce's men had barely fought all morning, but now they added a thousand fresh southerners to the third assault up Blood. As the formations blasted away, the features of the land and the growth that covered it were key, as related by Private Raz Sturman of the Third Arkansas, who would write They were lying down in the brush and grass until we were within one hundred yards of them. Then they opened up on us, bringing us down like sheep, but we never wavered. We did not wait for orders to fire, but all of us cut loose at them like wild men. Then we dropped to our knees and loaded and shot as fast as we could. We had to shoot by guess as they were upon the hill lying in the grass. By eleven thirty, the attack had lost its momentum and fizzled out. Sturgis decided there was no point in holding the hill as no word had been heard from Siegel. The Union Army fell back and withdrew in good order, making the long, slow march back to Springfield by nightfall. Like at Bull Run, the Southerners held the field at Wilson's Creek after the fighting was over. But it was a very different kind of victory. While Siegel's wing fled the field mid morning, the main Union force on Bloody Hill held firm and only retreated after the death of Lyon. Both sides were terribly bloodied, each side losing twelve hundred or thirteen hundred casualties. But in terms of percentages, that was twenty five percent of the Union Army lost, compared to twelve percent of the Confederate fighting force. Those percentages were far higher than Bull Run. While Bull Run was the larger battle, Wilson's Creek was the more concentrated slaughter. The press, both North and South, spoke of their side as having achieved success. On September 2nd, the weekly news of Shreveport, Louisiana held Wilson's Creek up victoriously alongside Bull Run, proclaiming that the quote, Battle of Springfield is only inferior to that of its worthy predecessor Manassas, in the number of troops engaged. While the St. Louis Triweekly Republican explained on august nineteenth, quote, the closer the accounts of this battle are sifted, the more certain does it appear that the Federal forces, though vastly inferior in number, achieved a most brilliant victory. Like with Bull Run, these first significant fights of the summer weren't just about who held the field and who retreated. There were leaders to assess, quality of troops to consider, next steps to weigh. These were just the initial moving of pawns in a far greater match. Lyon was killed. But in losing his life, his aggressive campaigning had preserved Missouri for the Union across four long months, while outnumbered and seemingly surrounded by Price and Prosecessionist forces. The U.S. regulars proved themselves more than able to provide a backbone that volunteer regiments could fight alongside. The disjointed Confederate command and Smorgas Board of Troops fought well and proved they were not finished. In the aftermath, the combined Confederate Army split and returned to where they had come from with Price moving north toward Lexington, Missouri. His goal? To position himself to retake the state for the pro slavery Missourians. Because Claiborne Jackson kept appealing for assistance. He heard the Confederate Congress had appropriated one million dollars for holding on to Missouri, but no funds had come yet. He wanted more troops. He wanted a single leader to command the theater. He was hoping that success in the field would turn into control of the state. It would now require leadership from above to decide what would happen next. President Jefferson Davis now found himself at a critical moment. His government's fledgling military had just won the two largest battles of the war and caused both advancing Union armies to fall back. While this was certainly a boost to his confidence and resolve, he held no delusions that the war would be over quickly. He was first a soldier, and he knew that he would need to be proactive. He had written a supporter in July, quote, My early declared purpose and continued hope was to feed upon the enemy and teach him the blessings of peace by making them feel in its most tangible form the evils of war. He had Samuel Cooper, former U.S. adjutant and inspector general as his agent and developer of the Confederacy's army. He had Robert E. Lee, who was becoming a trusted advisor to Davis in Richmond. He had generals in the field in Joseph E. Johnston in Virginia, Leonidas Polk in Tennessee, and Ben McCulloch west of the Mississippi. But what he was lacking was a leader who could oversee and coordinate an entire theater of operations. He knew this. He had Claiborne Jackson's appeals ringing in his ears. He needed a commander he could rely on. The easy answer, of course, was himself, but he wasn't going to be able to zip off to Missouri to assess the situation after Wilson's Creek like he had done after Bull Run. Nor would he be able to do that after wherever the next battle would be fought. No, he needed someone he could trust. As August 1861 turned to September, Davis appointed that someone. After traveling more than two months from California eastward to Richmond, Albert Sidney Johnston was given command of the Upper Western Confederacy. His department number two stretched from the Appalachians all the way to Kansas and the Indian Territory. If you recall from the last episode, Johnston would have been one of President Lincoln's and General Scott's next choices to head up the Union Army after Robert E. Lee had turned them down. But like so many others, Johnston's allegiance would lie with the South. A native Kentuckian, West Point graduate in 1826, he adopted Texas as his new home and would serve the Republic of Texas as general and secretary of war. He fought in Mexico, would command the 2nd U.S. Cavalry, and led the expedition west to put down the supposed Mormon rebellion in Utah in 1857. He resigned his U.S. Commission in May after Fort Sumter. Davis thought very highly of Johnston and would later write that he thought him to be the only man who seemed equal to taking command in the West. While Lee was available, he was primarily respected as a Virginian. He had a role in Virginia, and was a fixture at Davis's side in the Capitol. There was not a reason in the president's mind to send Lee West. Why would he? He had the ideal commander, the only man for the job. When Johnston arrived in Richmond, Davis, quote, felt strengthened and reassured knowing that a great support had thereby been added to the Confederate cause. Johnston was capable, was trusted, and was respected in the West. Most importantly, Davis believed Johnston could build a military organization, not just command one. As Secretary of War and Senator, Davis knew firsthand Johnston's responsibility was tested with the Utah campaign. Davis could watch over Virginia himself. He would entrust Johnston with the rest of the Confederacy. To make it official, Davis sent his Congress the seniority ranking for his five full generals of the Confederacy. His claim was that he was following their West Point class and standing, making Samuel Cooper first, and the highest ranking general of them all, Albert Sidney Johnston second, Lee third, Joseph E. Johnston fourth, and Beauregard fifth. Having Albert Sidney Johnston the second ranking now made his appointment to command the West far more logical. Except to Joseph E. Johnston. He was livid, incensed. It was an insult, since he, of the five, was the only one to have been a general in the U.S. Army. He should have been top of the list. He wrote Davis, quote, I now and here claim that notwithstanding these nominations by the president and their confirmation by Congress, I still rightfully hold the rank of first general in the armies of the Southern Confederacy. Davis responded directly, and simply, calling the letter unusual, utterly one sided, unfounded, and unbecoming. Neither of them would ever discuss it again, neither Davis nor Joseph E. Johnston. But would the scars of the decision linger? Would it have an effect on the integrity of Confederate command moving forward? That would remain to be seen. If Davis solved one command problem with one Johnston and perhaps created a new command problem with the other Johnston, he also had to deal with the resignation of his Secretary of War, complicated by a matter that Davis had helped create. On September 3rd and 4th, Leonidas Polk ordered Confederate troops in Tennessee to cross state lines and occupy Columbus, Kentucky. Polk believed the town was threatened by a Union advance, but it was a clear violation of Kentucky's stated neutrality. The pro-Un Kentucky legislature messaged for federal assistance to expel the invaders. Lincoln would now most certainly keep Kentucky in the Union and deny any other state to Davis. Confederate War Secretary Walker ordered Polk to withdraw, but President Davis overruled him and had Polk stay put anyway. With Walker seemingly the wrong man for the job to begin with, and being circumvented as a cabinet member, he told Davis he would resign to become a general. At this point, Davis appointed Attorney General Judah P. Benjamin as Secretary of War on September 17th. What effects would this administrative change have on the Confederacy's successes thus far? One more figure from the past also made headlines that month, the former Vice President of the United States, John C. Breckinridge, who was a sitting senator from the same state, Kentucky, who was a public supporter of states' rights and sympathetic to the South. As his state aligned further with the Union, Breckinridge was forced to make a decision to remain a senator or throw his lot in with the Confederacy. As we saw, Tennessean Andrew Johnson had stayed a Union man. Dozens of others had left when their states seceded. But now Breckinridge was being watched by state and federal authorities. What would Breckenridge do? On September nineteenth, Breckinridge left Lexington quietly and was joined by a handful of other pro-southern Kentuckians, who traveled first east and then south to Abingdon, where they reached the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. By October, they had made it to Bowling Green, which had become the Confederate stronghold in the state, where Bruckinrich penned a letter addressing the people of Kentucky, saying, quote, To defend your birthright and mine, I exchange with proud satisfaction a term of six years in the Senate for the musket of a soldier, end quote. While lauded for his nobility in the South, the politician willing to serve as a private, across the North Breckenridge was vilified as the vice president now a turncoat. The Vermont Daily Messenger proclaimed on October first, quote, the traitor Breckinridge, who has done more than any other man to compromise the loyalty of Kentucky, has openly joined the rebels and has been compelled to take to his heels for safety. Senator Breckinridge ought to have been arrested when in Washington. End quote. The autumn of 1861 for Davis held one final military development, a conference with his generals in the field in Virginia. On October 1st, at Fairfax Courthouse, he met with Joseph E. Johnston Beauregard and a third officer, Gustavus W. Smith, another Kentuckian and West Pointer who'd fought in Mexico. In terms of the overall Southern war for independence, 1861 had been mostly successful in preserving their new nation. While none of the border states had seceded and joined Davis's Confederacy, his armies had proved their mettle at Bull Run and Wilson's Creek. Johnston, Beauregard, and Smith then proposed that it was the precise time to take bold action. It was time to take the war north across the Potomac and into Maryland. Johnston had officially called the meeting and had also asked Davis for another 20,000 well trained men. Johnston knew the Union Army was refitting and spinning up, and he wanted whatever resources could be amassed in Northern Virginia. Beauregard was just as aggressive as he'd been back in July when he had suggested a coordinated offensive north before McDowell moved first and advanced on Bull Run. He was ready for bold and on audacious force. But it was Smith who pressed the issue of timing and suggested now to be inactive would be to lose momentum. Months later, Smith wrote that he had said, quote, success here at this time saves everything. Defeat here loses all. If they waited, the Union Army would only get stronger. If they struck now, they would affect the future. None of the generals suggested hitting Washington directly. They could see and hear the rapid construction of fortifications as part of a perimeter system being developed. On august first, there were about ten forts. By september first, twenty forts. By the time of the conference there were about thirty forts. No, the plan would be to threaten the Capitol out in the open, to draw the Federals out to battle. However, Davis could not provide the requested reinforcements. New troops being raised would be needed everywhere, not just Northern Virginia. But Davis did reorganize to streamline the command structure, keeping Johnston in overall command of the new department of Northern Virginia, and creating three new districts under him. He saw that something had to be done and did as much as he could, but would it be enough? Lincoln had his own challenges, though manpower would not seem to be one of them. At the start of July, he had received approval from Congress to raise four hundred thousand troops for the war. The day after Bull Run, Congress approved five hundred thousand. Then three days later the legislature piled on another five hundred thousand men. Within a couple of days, the Union was on track for a million man army. This is an administration realizing the truth about what they were committing to. Lincoln and his leaders had to acknowledge that the war would not be over quickly. Like the U.S. at the start of 1942, full mobilization would be required to fight this war. No, Lincoln's biggest challenges in the summer of 1861 after military defeats were actually legal ones, and they had to do with slaves and slavery. As the president was doing everything he could to make sure the war was about preserving the Union, as the Congress was stating its war aims resolutions to say the same, as the administration wouldn't touch slavery with a ten foot pole to keep the border states from bolting and joining the Confederacy, a pair of his political generals were stirring the hornets nest of emancipation. In July, Frederick Douglass had written in his monthly To fight against slaveholders without fighting against slavery is but a half-hearted business and paralyzes the hands engaged in it. War for the destruction of liberty must be met with war for the destruction of slavery. Douglas kept banging the drum for adding the end of slavery as a goal of the war. And in May, General Ben Butler had three escaped slaves in Virginia show up and take refuge at his base at Fortress Monroe. Ever the nimble political mind, Butler decided that the insurrectionists in Virginia had forfeited their constitutional rights when they seceded, and that their property could be confiscated, especially if it aided in the armed insurrection. If slaves were property, then he could call them contraband of war and have them work for him. The media adopted the term and eventually it stuck. The administration accepted this rationale with War Secretary Cameron telling Butler that he should keep good records of work, value, and expenses. But what would ultimately become of the contraband would be determined later. Butler pushed back asking if they were property or free. He wasn't responsible for the situation he found himself in, but the questions mattered. On august sixth, Congress passed a confiscation act that formally addressed the issue but left it in limbo. Owners had no claim over former slaves, but nothing stated whether the slaves were free or not. They would remain in the care of the government. Nothing was mentioned about emancipation until John C. Fremont did. Remember him? He was the commander in the West in St. Louis at the time. On august thirtieth, the Union commander issued a proclamation that imposed martial law across the area under his control. Not only did he take on administrative powers of the state, Fremont justified his use of capital punishment, and the confiscation of property to include, their slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared freed men. Yeah, let's free the slaves, print copies of the proclamation, distribute them, and send a few to Washington. That's exactly what Fremont did. He was building his own fiefdom there in the West. Unfortunately, he began alienating everyone who should have been supporting him. His headquarters in St. Louis was overly ceremonial with many guards and a numerous band of foreign aides and adjutants. There were Germans and Hungarians and French and cast offs of the European revolutions of 1848. They were overdressed and they were overaccented. The fanciful foreign air of sophistication really didn't sit well in Missouri. Fremont also drew the ire of Frank Blair, who expected more loyalty from him. And Fremont was spending gross amounts on supplies while padding the pockets of suppliers via graft and corrupt contracts. He was becoming an embarrassment to the administration. The War Department noticed, and so did Blair, and his friends who weren't able to get in on the action themselves. One visiting European saw Fremont as, quote, a commander in chief and a proconsul, an ardent, ambitious personality inclined to dictatorship. Well, after his proclamation, the president wrote back immediately, telling Fremont to modify it. No general possessed the authority to emancipate. Fremont said he wouldn't modify it unless Lincoln publicly ordered him. The president didn't take that bait. So Fremont went one step further. He sent his wife to Washington. Remember Jesse Fremont, the daughter of the former powerful senator of Missouri. As her husband parried Lincoln's orders from afar, Jesse traveled to the Capitol. The senator's daughter met with the president, and according to Nicolayan Hay, quote, she took the opportunity to justify General Fremont in all he had done, and to denounce his accusers with impetus earnestness. She even asked for copies of confidential letters about her husband's personal embroilment. In these circumstances it was no light task for Mr. Lincoln to be at once patient, polite, and just. More than two years afterward, Lincoln recapitulated these incidents, saying She taxed me so violently with many things that I had to exercise all the awkward tact I have to avoid quarreling with her. Jessie may have been formidable in her own right, but she could not save her husband from his missteps and mistakes. And Lincoln had had enough. He ordered Fremont to change the proclamation, not because Fremont asked him to, but because the general's action had been illegal. In early November, Fremont would be relieved of his command. At the same moment, George B. McClellan was named as the commander in chief of all Union armies. It had been a whirlwind three months since he'd received Lincoln's wire summoning him to Washington the day after the defeat at Bull Run. While blame for the campaign's failure was mostly directed at Patterson's inability to keep Johnston in place in the valley, McDowell was seen as having done all he could with an army of inexperienced leaders and troops. McDowell would retain a command when McClellan arrived in the Capitol on july twenty sixth. The young Napoleon was met by everyone, politicians, members of the administration, military officers, people of influence, and his sense of importance began to inflate. He wrote his wife Mary Ellen, or Nelly, quote, by some strange operation of magic I seem to have become the power of the land. William Russell, the London Times correspondent, wrote in his diary of McClellan as he arrived in Washington, quote, there is an indefinable air of success about him and something of the man of destiny. McClellan immediately went about not just rebuilding the army, he rebranded it. On august twentieth, he officially named his force the Army of the Potomac. He organized it into twelve brigades that would grow in numbers as new regiments arrived in Washington. These would then be gathered into divisions that would be given to commanders like Irvin McDowell, Nathaniel P. Banks, William Franklin, Fitzjohn Porter, George McCall, William F. Smith, and Joseph Hooker. Then there was Colonel John G. Barnard, whom McClellan appointed chief engineer of the Washington Defenses. As we already saw, he took the handful of existing fortifications that protected the Potomac River bridges, Arlington and Alexandria, and developed them into the foundation for a substantial connected system of fortified points, roughly a thousand yards apart. It would eventually grow from a collection of forts to an emerging defensive system to a continuous perimeter. By the end of 1861, there would be forty eight named forts with connected batteries and miles of rifle pits. Simultaneously, Barnard would also serve on the Interservice Blockade Strategy Board between June and September. We'll see the impact that group had shortly. John Barnard would be one of those unknown officers who would shape entire dimensions of the war without ever leading an army. As the Army and fortifications grew, Washington regained its confidence. The 50,000 man force McClellan inherited at the end of July would more than triple in size by November. He used the Army regulars in the Capitol as MPs to get men off the streets of the city and out of the taverns. He required passes for men who wanted to go on limited leave. McClellan took the broken axles of the army's recent failures and repaired them with confident remedies. And he rode that wagon straight to personifying Russell's man of destiny. He wrote Nelly throughout the summer, telling her, You have no idea how the men brighten up now when I go among them. I can see every eye glisten. You never heard such yelling. I believe they love me. God has placed a great work in my hands. I was called to it. My previous life seems to have been unwittingly directed to this great end. He brightened up the men, except one, his mentor, General Winfield Scott. The old general did hold McClellan in high regard, but his respect for the young commander's judgment started to wane. And this was due in large part to McClellan's increasing reliance upon the intelligence gathering services of Alan Pinkerton. That name should sound familiar as he and his detective service were involved in getting Lincoln to Washington for his inauguration and avoiding the supposed Baltimore plot against the president elect. Pinkerton knew McClellan before the war when the latter was with the Illinois Central Railroad. And the relationship led to Pinkerton and His agents working behind southern lines to assemble detailed reports on the location and sizes of Confederate units in Northern Virginia. Most of Pinkerton's intelligence gathering came by way of deserters and contrabands, those runaway slaves that Butler categorized, and not spies. The information collected was fact-heavy and recorded as provided, but the critical analysis and interpretive aspects of the Intel work was not part of the process, and it wouldn't be used as a filter until the following year. McClellan took reports of a hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand Confederates arrayed against him and compared them to his own numbers, determining that he ought to be concerned. It was more likely he would be attacked than not. He would write Nelly, quote, I have hardly slept one moment for the last three nights, knowing well that the enemy intends some movement and fully recognizing our own weakness. End quote. In his insightful book, The Secret War for the Union, historian Edwin C. Fischel describes Pinkerton's methods as more credible than many others have acknowledged. While the reports generated for McClellan estimated that Joe Johnston had more than 90,000 men, double the troops he actually had, a close read shows that Pinkerton may have been including other units elsewhere across the state of Virginia, not just along Johnston's line. In notes that McClellan spelled out but never submitted in reports, he essentially says it was his patriotic duty to then take Pinkerton's numbers without drilling down to what they actually meant, and then to inflate them, as was his patriotic duty. McClellan gave additions to be made for the sake of safety. Pinkerton wrote that his projection was made large. If indeed this was McClellan's position rather than a proposal, then it justified his and Pinkerton's estimates as strategically wise in order to mitigate ever being outnumbered on a battlefield. My presentism considers accuracy as the gauge for valuable estimates. But what if that wasn't the goal? The fact is that McClellan did not forward Pinkerton's number to Lincoln and War Secretary Cameron. He would continue to gather numbers from several sources throughout the fall. Some would at times include various separate commands across western, northern, and eastern Virginia, and at others omit those commands. McClellan would also make a safety allowance as a margin of error, always rounding up, and that allowance could change. If this was the methodology going on inside McClellan's head, it bothered Winfield Scott to no end. Scott saw a great fighting force being assembled, and then McClellan would say he needed more troops, more drill, more supplies, and more time. The young Napoleon would sidestep Scott's proddings and questions, exhausting the old general. He wrote Nelly in August That confounded old general always comes in my way. He understands nothing, appreciates nothing. If he cannot be taken out of my path, I will resign and let the administration take care of itself. The people call upon me to save the country. I must save it and cannot respect anything that is in the way. The relationship would suffer and deteriorate until Scott retired from the Army on october thirty first. So as Fremont was relieved in the West at the beginning of November, Lincoln appointed McClellan as commander in chief of all Union armies, not just his Army of the Potomac. When pressed by Lincoln if the responsibility would be too great, McClellan replied, quote, I can do it all. The fall of eighteen sixty one was mostly quiet, from a military sense. McClellan was too concerned with being outnumbered. Davis believed the same as his reason for not having either Johnston move offensively, and neither army had a cohesive plan or command structure in the West. But during the autumn, two often unnoticed developments did take place that would have significant effects on the war moving forward. The first was the work done by the Blockade Strategy Board that we mentioned earlier, the one on which Army Engineer John Barnard, who oversaw the Washington defenses, was a member. Along with Barnard was the Navy's Samuel DePont and the Coast Survey's Alexander Batch. This three man joint service board conducted a thorough investigation of the coast and harbors, their access and defenses, as part of the implementation of the Union blockade per the Anaconda Plan. While McClellan insisted on his need for overwhelming odds and experience before his land forces could do anything, the board actually followed through on its purpose and its orders and developed three successful operations that were conducted in August, September, and November of 1861. It's these lesser known next steps that really deserve more study and understanding in order to appreciate the hard, granular work that it took to prosecute the war. They weren't the Battle of Gettysburg, but each had a significant impact on events that would happen next. The first operation took place on August 28th and 29th at Hatteras Inlet, off the coast of North Carolina. A combined force of seven warships under Flag Officer Silas Stringham and 900 men under the command of Ben Butler approached two light forts, Hatteras and Clark, that guarded the inlet leading into Pamlico Sound. Defended by 700 North Carolinians, the warships formed up and blasted away at the forts for two days, pummeling both positions. With difficulty, Butler got most of his force ashore and was ready to accept surrender when the Confederates saw there was nothing they could do. This victory allowed Union blocking ships to anchor in Pamlico Sound for the rest of the war. The second operation was down in the Gulf of Mexico in September. Ship Island lies about a dozen miles off the coast of Biloxi, Mississippi. Before the war, construction began on a fort that the Confederates occupied after hostilities and named Fort Twiggs. The board identified its value as a staging area, and the USS Massachusetts moved quickly to seize it. The Confederates gave it up without a shot. Little did anyone know the valuable staging area that Ship Island would become. The third and largest operation took place off Hilton Head at Port Royal Sound, where the board believed the best harbor was along that part of the coast. On November 7th, a combined Army Navy force of more than 70 ships and 12,000 men under Captain DuPont himself and Brigadier General Thomas Sherman, no relation to William T. moved against the two rebel forts that guarded the sound, Fort Walker and Fort Beauregard. For six hours, DuPont's gunboats perfected a tactic that had been employed at Hatteras Inlet, itself imitating tactics used by British and French warships during the Crimean War. DuPont's warships sailed into the sound past Fort Beauregard, blasting away, and then turned left to circle back past Fort Walker, blasting away. They would then circle back to stay in line, whereby they brought full broadsides to bear against both positions in a continuous bombardment. It was devastating. Both forts fell and Union forces secured not only the Sound but Beaufort and Port Royal as well. It would become the base for the South Atlantic blockading squadron. This work done along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts did punctuate the newspapers with incremental gains, but the second of the two often unnoticed developments would turn Washington, D.C. on its head. In September, while McClellan remained timid about using his new army against what he thought were superior numbers of the enemy, some Union troops occupied works that had been abandoned by Johnston's men on Munson's Hill between Washington and Fairfax. In the October fourth issue of the New York Times, its correspondent wrote of what the defenses were supposed to be and what they actually were. Quote Nothing in the shape of artillery was to be seen and probably had never been there. Logs of wood, painted on the end to represent heavy ordnance, of the same unsubstantial and deceptive character almost as baseless as the airy fabric of a dream. Where the young Napoleon saw heavy enemy fortifications, the rebels had simply painted tree trunks to trick his strategic thinking. The press's insinuation was clear. McClellan was being fooled by smoke and mirrors. Perhaps in response, he grew more active in probing Johnston's forces south of the Potomac. McClellan ordered two columns to threaten Confederates stationed at Leesburg, one column from Virginia, the other from Maryland. He then called off the operation, notifying the first column, but failing to notify the second. The second column was commanded by Brigadier General Charles Stone, and he proceeded to cross the Potomac at a spot called Ball's Bluff. On october twenty first, Stone put Colonel Edward Baker in command of the troops in the field. Baker was not only a colonel and a Mexican War veteran, but he was also a close friend from Illinois of President Lincoln. And he was a U.S. Senator from Oregon. As he moved his men into position, he was woefully ignorant of the precarious situation he occupied at the top of the bluff, surrounded on three sides by troops commanded by Nathan Evans, who had opened the Battle of Bull Run three months prior. As combat began, Federals were falling fast, and eventually a Union cannon recoiled and tumbled down the bluff. The Southerners increased their fire, and Baker was shot through the head and heart, killing him instantly. With their leader down, many Federals began to fall back along the trail down the bluff, to the boats to take them back across the river. And then the Confederates pressed their attack, firing swiftly and turning the retreat into a panic. Men slid and fell down the heights, rushing to the river, some drowning, some swimming, with Evans' men blasting down at them. It was chaos and a turkey shoot for the Southerners. About a thousand Union troops were casualties, less than two hundred Confederates. Baker's death brought Lincoln to tears. Three days later, McClellan would write his division commanders, quote, The disaster was caused by errors committed by the immediate commander, not General Stone. The next day, McClellan wrote his wife. He was in command, disregarded entirely the instructions he had received from Stone, and violated all military rules and precautions. McClellan was not wrong, but he completely omitted his own failure to tell Stone that he had canceled the advance to begin with. In addition, McClellan now found himself treading water in a political rising tide. This is nothing to speak of the private thoughts he had of his own president and his cabinet, as he would share privately with Nelly, quote, Seward is the meanest of them all, a meddlesome, officious, incompetent little puppy. Wells is a garrulous old woman. Bates an old fool. The president is nothing more than a well meaning baboon, the original gorilla. It is sickening in the extreme, the weakness and unfitness of the poor beings who control the destinies of this great country. But now Congress chose to reach into the domain of the military and exercise its powers to hold generals and officers accountable. This would turn Washington into a boxing ring for the legislature and the soldiers. With a sitting senator slain on a battlefield, Congress looked hard and fast at the fiasco that claimed one of their own. On December ninth, the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War was formed. At its head was Senator Zechariah Chandler of Michigan, a devout abolitionist and radical Republican. Formed with five Republicans and two Democrats, the committee wanted answers for their million dollars a day investment to prosecute the war. General Stone was squarely in the committee's crosshairs as the one responsible for the death of Senator Baker. Stone was accused within a conspiratorial context of aiding the enemy, was ignored when he protested, and was relieved of his command and locked up in a New York Harbor. Stone would serve as an example of what the committee could do when it held in question the conduct of the war. They then turned to the general in chief. How could he do nothing but sit in the defenses of Washington? Senator Chandler questioned the army soon going into winter quarters, complaining, quote, If we fail in getting a battle here, now all is lost, and up to this time a fight is scarcely contemplated. McClellan endured pressing meetings with the politicians and discussions with Lincoln. Again to Nelly he took his private thoughts. I have a set of scamps to deal with, unscrupulous and false. If possible, they will throw whatever blame there is on my shoulders, and I do not intend to be sacrificed by such people. Would this be how eighteen sixty one would end? With infighting and mistrust between the young Napoleon and his own government? Lincoln provided a measure of balance, telling McClellan to be necessarily patient and to work directly with him. The president was proving to be a master leader, dealing with political drama, the tug of war between public opinion and military pragmatism, and whatever might happen next. Like the seizure of a mailboat in the Atlantic Ocean. Last episode, in May we saw Jefferson Davis send a three man diplomatic commission to seek conversation and aid, if possible, from Great Britain. Led by the fire eater William Yancey, the Confederate negotiation team was snubbed and then totally shut down by Queen Victoria and her proclamation of neutrality. Trade could continue with both the North and the South, but Britain would be neutral. Now, six months later, Davis was ready to try again. He had retooled his State Department with a new head, Robert Hunter, and chose John Slidell and James Mason to be his new envoys to Britain and France. This was a better choice. Slidell was a negotiator during the Mexican War, and Mason had been chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before Lincoln's election. Sailing via the Caribbean, Slidell and Mason quietly made their way eastward aboard the British mail steamer RMS Trent. Word of the departure made it up the chain of U.S. naval intelligence to Captain Charles Wilkes in command of the screw frigate USS San Yacinto. Wilkes was an aggressive commander and decided to find the Trent and capture the traitors. Loosely and creatively scouring international law, Wilkes discovered he had the authority to seize enemy dispatches, and so he could seize Slidell and Mason as the embodiment of dispatches. On November eighth, the San Yacinto spotted the Trent flying the Union Jack. Wilkes fired two shots across her bow to stop her. The two Confederate emissaries were removed from the Trent against the protests of the British captain James Moire. Sliddell and Mason would be returned to the U.S. as traitors. When on November 27th, Captain Moir arrived in London and his story was heard, it snowballed into outrage, anger, and effrontery. The Times of London wrote, quote, By Captain Wilkes, let the Yankee breed be judged, swagger and ferocity built on a foundation of vulgarity and cowardice. These are his characteristics, and these are the most prominent marks by which his countrymen, generally speaking, are known all over the world. Everyone assumed Wilkes was acting under orders from the Lincoln administration. Lord Palmerston, the eighty year old British Prime Minister, informed his cabinet, quote, You may stand for this, but damned if I will. The British Army and Navy immediately made preparations to send troops and ships to Canada to defend its border while Foreign Secretary John Russell drafted a response to the United States. Apologize and give up the prisoners or go to war. This was no empty threat. The shorthand of history says that the British sent eleven thousand troops to Canada. Yes and no. All told the British would have seventeen thousand men in Canada or committed to go with another twenty eight thousand ready for mobilization. It was not just infantry. There were artillery batteries, Royal Engineers, and two military trains making up the force. It would be a full field army led by Lieutenant General Sir Williams, a hero of the Crimean War. The naval fleet would include the existing North American station, but reinforced with more than twenty five additional warships, including Britain's new ironclad frigate, the HMS Warrior, a powerful British army right on the Great Lakes, and a very powerful British fleet right off the coast of New England and Washington. This could be the War of eighteen twelve all over again. This had the potential to be bad, very bad for the Union. A northern front would mean diverting Union troops away from McClellan and his preparations to move south. The British Navy in force off the Atlantic coast would disrupt the Union blockade. The Anaconda plan would be undone. And within a week the first British units were preparing to cross the Atlantic for Canada. By two weeks, the first wave of reinforcements had sailed, and the second wave was gathering. The British wasted no time. Why? When Wilkes brought Mason and Slidell to Boston, where they would be held, the initial American enthusiasm for the seizure swelled patriotic pride, but it quickly highlighted more questions than answers around what had actually been done. Had the US not just done what it had accused Britain of doing 50 years prior, which led to the War of 1812 in the first place? While Seward was no Anglophile, he also remarked. Regarded Wilkes as acting too rashly and perhaps illegally. He certainly had not acted according to direct orders from Washington. In fact, Lincoln told visitors to the White House the evening after he first heard of the capture, quote, I fear the traitors will prove to be white elephants. We must stick to American principles concerning the rights of neutrals. We fought Great Britain for insisting on the right to do precisely what Captain Wilkes has done. If Great Britain shall now protest against the act and demand their release, we must give them up, apologize for the act as a violation of our doctrines, and thus forever bind her over to keep the peace in relation to neutrals, and so acknowledge that she has been wrong for sixty years. By december eighteenth, Lord Russell's response arrived for Lincoln with its ultimatum apologize or go to war. But it had also had been edited by a cooler hand. That belonged to Prince Albert, the husband and consort of Queen Victoria, who was very sick and possibly dying. Weeks before the Queen asked Albert to review the entire Trent affair, and he intentionally toned down Russell's language to give Seward room to diplomatically maneuver in order to explain what happened, and to reassure Britain that no insult was ever intended. Albert and Russell said they were willing to believe that the U.S. government hadn't ordered the seizure and that Captain Wilkes may have misunderstood his instructions. They asked for the liberation of Mason and Slidell and a suitable apology. Seward took this tactful opening and crafted an adroit reply that satisfied the British while preserving American dignity. He clarified that the U.S. government had not ordered the seizure, and that while Captain Wilkes had the legitimate right to stop and search the Trent, there had been a procedural misstep. Seward would be cheerfully pleased to release the diplomats at a time and place of British choosing. It was a great example of civility and respect that completely diffused the situation. By the end of the year, Mason and Slidell were released, Prince Albert had died, and war had been averted. For Jefferson Davis, the initial misstep by Captain Wilkes had almost been a godsend for him, a catalyst for Great Britain moving closer to becoming potential allies with the Confederacy against a common enemy in the United States. But Lincoln, Seward, and their diplomatic corps effectively made wise choices, used wise words, and shut down the opportunity. One war was enough. As the Trent affair, how it would come to be known, was unfolding, General McClellan finally did something with his big brand new army. With politicians and publishers urging action, the commander in chief staged a grand review of the army five miles west of Arlington. On november twentieth, seven divisions, seventy thousand troops, passed before the president near Bailey's Crossroads. Lincoln's cabinet and thousands of spectators were there as well to see the army, military bands, and artillery salutes. It represented the power and morale McClellan had infused into the Union Army. It was a force that came to love and respect its general. It also caused many to observe that McClellan was more interested in having a parade than launching an offensive before winter. However, he couldn't accept a direct encounter with what he believed to be superior numbers. With Pinkerton's input, McClellan's math put Johnston's army at 150,000, more than double his. Yet until he could grow his army to the size it needed to be, he was hard at work developing a plan. And it was testing Lincoln's patience. In early December, McClellan gave name to his new strategic approach. He called it his Urbana Plan. Urbana was a landing point about twenty miles up the Rappahannock River from Chesapeake Bay. His plan was to load his army on transports and then sail them from Washington down to Urbana. It was bold, audacious, and would require a Herculean effort on the part of the Army and Navy. But this would place his men in the rear of the Confederates at Manassas, without a lot of marching and without him having to force his way across a river. It would also avoid a big battle and the possible repeat of another bull run. McClellan was optimistic, but was struggling with the incredible logistics that would be needed to pull it off. He wrote I have no intention of putting the army into winter quarters. I mean the campaign will be short, sharp, and decisive. I am doing all I can to get ready to move before winter sets in, but it now begins to look as if we were condemned to a winter of inactivity. If it is so, the fault will not be mine. There will be that consolation for my conscience, even if the world at large never knows it. As if in response as a self fulfilling prophecy, McClellan fell ill in the middle of December. His condition worsened to when on december twenty third he was scheduled to testify before the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, he was too sick to testify. On the twenty seventh, doctors said he had typhoid fever. The New York Tribune speculated on the last day of the year that a successor to McClellan would be absolutely necessary and would be the next decision for the government. Lincoln now faced the winter full of troubles. He lamented to his quartermaster general Montgomery Miggs. Treasury Secretary Chase has no money and he tells me he can raise no more. The general of the army has typhoid fever. The bottom is out of the tub. What shall I do? Everything seemed to be working against him, especially when it came to fighting the fight that would end the war. The president was wondering if McClellan, while masterful at building and fine tuning an army, was still the man to take it into the field and wield it. And for what purpose would it be wielded? The language of the conflict, the verbiage of the president and the politicians, the publishers, and the people, the words that were being used had undergone a subtle and often political transition. The narrative was slowly changing. On April 15th, in his first proclamation, Lincoln had called for 75,000 volunteers using the language of the Militia Act of 1795 that said in case of an insurrection in any state, and to suppress such insurrection. And while the Confiscation Act of August sixth referred to the present insurrection against the government of the United States, during the summer a different word began being used by politicians and journalists alike rebellion. In his july fourth message to Congress, Lincoln justified his suspension on the writ of habeas corpus because of this shift, saying, It was decided that we have a case of rebellion. If nothing else, apart from the technicalities of terminology, where this shift in verbiage really hit hard was the emotional connotation. The word insurrection was descriptive in its resistance to an authority or the laws of a government. The word rebellion was more morally motivated, implying someone was treasonous and wrong for revolting against legitimate authority. A rebel had betrayed their pledged allegiance. Not only did 1861 see a summer of war, it was a summer of the words of war. The violence was transcending a gentleman's duel. It was becoming a fight to the death for hearts and minds. The Confederacy had picked up weapons for a war between the states. The Union had grabbed its weapons to fight the war of the rebellion. That December saw the first Christmas of the war. Not so much a holiday for Americans as it was a marker. Much had happened, but then nothing was happening. It was like a momentary hibernation before whatever was going to happen would happen next. Sally Brock Putnam was a 30-year-old living in Richmond at the time. Years later she would write a book, Richmond during the war, that would recount her experiences in the Confederate Capital City. As Sally reflected on how that first Christmas of 1861 was different, she captures the both and melancholy of a holiday that was festive but wasn't. She remembered, quote, never before had so sad a Christmas dawned upon us. Our religious services were not remitted, and the Christmas dinner was plenteous as of old, but in nothing further did it remind us of days gone by. We had neither the heart nor inclination to make the week merry with joyousness when such a sad calamity hovered over us. All before us seemed a wilderness through which our feet, bleeding, bare and torn, must travel. As the armies went into winter quarters there was a huge pause. Like Sally Brock Putman put it, all before us seemed a wilderness. What would lie before the North and the South? Great armies were forming, but no movement was happening. Two presidents had navigated serious challenges both foreign and domestic, but both were still proactively leading and guiding their governments. Two populations were committed to their goals over the conflict, and the border states were making it clear which side they were on, governmentally and socially, even when those two factors weren't exactly in harmony. And as the old year passed into the new, in January, the massive and astounding growth of the Union Army and War Department began revealing serious problems with management of the war effort. The pre-war army of sixteen thousand men was now forty times its original size. The logistics required were overwhelming, Secretary of War Simon Cameron. In September, an order for rifles were directed to two different states. Special agents were being authorized to procure weapons and supplies without accountability. The record keeping and tracking were laughable in their disorganization, and Cameron was increasingly out of his league. As a politician who emphasized relationships and patronage, he was no administrator. Week after week Lincoln was watching the organizational mechanism for supporting his military leaders' efforts misfire and lock up in the details. If every lesson he had learned from the first summer of war and every command challenge he addressed through risky but necessary decisions was now in jeopardy of being undone by careless administration, the president knew he had to make a change. If Lincoln was going to expect a high standard of George McClellan, he would need to impose the same high standards on himself and his cabinet. Under the snowy landscape of January 1862, in the stillness of the cold winter winds, his armies rested in their winter quarters, Lincoln would have to turn to a new Secretary of War, who would ensure that his armies were well supplied, well equipped, and well situated for the task before them. A new war secretary who he would have to place his complete trust in and reliance upon as one man had never been before. The largest army the United States had ever fielded needed competence. It needed a modern wartime bureaucracy. It needed relentless oversight and efficiency. It needed Edwin Stanton. Now, forgive me for the comparison, but 1861 feels a little like the beginning of the Lord of the Rings for me. At first, in the Shire there's a lot of fanfare, banners, speeches, and the excitement of adventure. The hobbits step out their front door with hope and spring in their step, but with some naivete about what will come next. They leave the Shire and make it to both Bree and Weathertop, and then they finally get a cold, hard slap of reality. The Black Riders clear up any confusion about what's really at stake. This will be violent, chaotic, and nothing like the sunshine and flowers of the Shire. Both the North and the South had rushed headlong into war, expecting it to be over quickly. And then the bloody reality of what they had all signed up for got real. Bull Run and Wilson's Creek were the first casualty lists that northerners and southerners alike would be forced to run their fingers down because there were so many names, searching for those they knew or loved. And for those rose color lensed idealists concentrated in the cities of Washington and Richmond, in the east, in the hundred miles of space there, the jarring reality that these were not just local concerns or events sat there, reminders that this was far flung westward across a continent, eastward across an ocean. These were harder and uglier events that were not the hyper-inflated urgency the media and the narratives of the day spoke of. The words of Sherman come back now with more force in reality than anyone might have imagined when he said, This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization. You people speak so lightly of war. You don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing. So, in light of all this, what lessons are there for us from the summer and fall of eighteen sixty one? As I started to make a list, I had to cut myself off before I created a whole separate episode. Let me just keep it to these. Before I start something, do I take a realistic assessment of the undertaking? As Sherman pointed out, the Southerners would have done well to take stock of what they were getting themselves into. There's a proverb that wisely says, prepare your work outside, get everything ready for yourself in the field, and after that, build your house. How many projects have I started but left undone? How much energy has or how many resources have been expended for no real purpose? At the beginning of 1861, there were a few people who had an idea of what the cost would be for a war. By the end of the year there were a lot more. In terms of naivety, in what ways do I tend to be like the picnickers who went out to watch the battle at Bull Run? If I'm honest with myself, it's easier than I'd like to admit to not grasp the reality of a developing situation, or to minimize the potential of an unpleasant outcome. I know I can tend to be an idealist, which sometimes is a good thing. Other times it can lead me to being unprepared for when things take a turn for the worst. Consider the inner thoughts of George McClellan. It's easy to think of him being pretentious and full of himself. And before I say, I'm sure I'm not like that, I know I can cling to a prideful streak that will insist my motives are good or justify my boastful accomplishments. How do I need to be careful of creating my own self-inflated sense of importance? With the Trent affair, the international affront and insult nearly knocked history off its feet. Insults would lead to the Franco-Prussian War a decade later in eighteen seventy, so how do I handle a potentially offensive situation? Are all insults created equal? Might there be a misunderstanding lurking within the confrontation? Do I need to be patient or employ wise counsel like what Prince Albert provided? Or does a situation actually warrant a stern reply? And lastly, keep in mind the underappreciated work done by the blockade strategy board. The Army, Navy, and coast survey teams brought together their various disciplines and approaches and laid a solid foundation for strengthening the Union blockade. Am I a good collaborator? Am I able to see how I need others with complementary skills and abilities to work alongside to achieve greater good? How might I have an opportunity to grow in this way in the coming months? In our next episode, the calendar reads 1862. The Confederacy and the Union have had months to assess what had just happened. The Southerners, trending victoriously, must have thought, We told you so, you couldn't just leave well enough alone. They demolished the early cost benefit analysis of Northern idealism. The Northerners, though, might have been thinking every setback is an opportunity for a great comeback. Just give us some time to get that million man army ready and then look out. But when the snow melted and the ground thawed, would the fighting be different from the first summer of war? The great majority of both sides' armies were still untested, many regiments waiting to see the elephant, wondering if their commanders would fare any better than those who led the summer before. And new political tensions began pulling on Lincoln and Davis. Was the war still about preserving the Union? How did former slaves now being treated as contraband augment that objective? Was freeing slaves a military measure, a political one, a moral one? And why hadn't Europe interceded on behalf of the South yet? That was a foregone conclusion in the minds of many Confederates. They need our cotton, and we need their aid. It's a win win. Or was it? Thanks for listening, supporting, and sharing. If you enjoy this podcast, leave a quick review. It really helps us to keep growing. You can also go to Breaking Nation.com to see my recommended book list for each episode, read blog posts about important Civil War events and individuals, and sign up for email updates. For social media, follow Breaking Nation on Facebook or Reddit so you can share posts and continue conversations. I've had many listeners ask about Breaking Nation branded merch and ways to support the podcast. I'm working through some of these opportunities and ways to demonstrate my appreciation for you all. There may also be a complimentary short form podcast in the making. More to come on that later. Next, join me for season two, episode three, Star of the West. Breaking Nation, a Civil War podcast, is a production of Waveland Creative. I'm Scott Holmgren, your host. Thank you for listening. And if you're not learning, you're not living.