The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville (165 page)

Biographies of the participants and studies of the war itself, in part or as a whole, make up the secondary sources. These are not only interesting and rewarding in their own right, filling in and deepening the over-all impression, but they also serve as a guide through the labyrinth. I found them invaluable on both counts: so much so, indeed, that while this narrative is based throughout on the original material referred to above, my obligations are equally heavy on this side of the line where it leaves off. The present is the first of three intended volumes—
Fort Sumter to Perryville, Fredericksburg to Meridian, Red River to Appomattox—
and though the last will include a complete
bibliography, I want to state here at the outset my chief debts, particularly to those works still available in bookstores. These include the following biographies, of and by the following men: of Lee by Douglas Southall Freeman, Scribner’s, 1934-35: of McClellan by Warren W. Hassler, LSU Press, 1957: of Beauregard by T. Harry Williams, LSU Press, 1954: of Sherman by Lloyd Lewis, Harcourt, Brace, 1932: of Joe Johnston by G. E. Govan and J. W. Livingood, Bobbs-Merrill, 1956: of Sheridan by Richard O’Connor, Bobbs-Merrill, 1953: of Jackson by Burke Davis, Rinehart, 1954: of Kirby Smith by Joseph H. Parks, LSU Press, 1954: of Davis by William E. Dodd, Jacobs, 1907, and Hudson Strode, Harcourt, Brace, 1955: of Lincoln by Carl Sandburg, Harcourt, Brace, 1939; J. G. Randall, Dodd, Meade, 1945-55; and Benjamin P. Thomas, Knopf, 1952.

Among the more general works, my chief debts are to the following:
Lincoln Finds a General
by Kenneth P. Williams, Macmillan, 1949-56:
Lee’s Lieutenants
by Douglas Southall Freeman, Scribner’s, 1942-44:
The Army of Tennessee
by Stanley F. Horn, Bobbs-Merrill, 1941:
Civil War on the Western Border
by Jay Monaghan, Little, Brown, 1955:
Mr. Lincoln’s Army
and
This Hallowed Ground
by Bruce Catton, Doubleday, 1951 and 1956:
Guns on the Western Waters
by H. Allen Gosnell, LSU Press, 1949:
Lincoln and His Generals
by T. Harry Williams, Knopf, 1952:
Statesmen of the Lost Cause
and
Lincoln’s War Cabinet
by Burton J. Hendrick, Little, Brown, 1939 and 1946:
The North Reports the Civil War
by J. Cutler Andrews, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1955:
The Railroads of the Confederacy
by Robert C. Black, UNC Press, 1952:
The Life of Johnny Reb
and
The Life of Billy Yank
by Bell Irvin Wiley, Bobbs-Merrill, 1943 and 1952:
Reveille in Washington
by Margaret Leech, Harper, 1941:
The Beleaguered City
by Alfred Hoyt Bill, Knopf, 1946:
Experiment in Rebellion
by Clifford Dowdey, Doubleday, 1946:
The Civil War and Reconstruction
by J. G. Randall, Heath, 1937:
The Story of the Confederacy
by Robert S. Henry, Bobbs-Merrill, 1931:
The American Civil War
by Carl Russell Fish, Longmans, Green, 1937:
The Confederate States of America
by E. Merton Coulter, LSU Press, 1950. There were others but these were the main ones, and to each I owe much.

Other obligations, of a more personal nature, I also incurred during the five years that went into the writing of this first volume: to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, for an extended fellowship which made possible the buying of books and bread: to the superintendents, historians, and guides of the National Park Service, for unfailing industry and courtesy in helping me to get the look and feel of the various battlefields: to Robert N. Linscott and Robert D. Loomis of Random House, for combining enthusiasm and patience: to Mrs. O. B. Crittenden of the William Alexander Percy Memorial Library, Greenville, Mississippi, for the continuing loan of that institution’s set
of the
Official Records
. To all these I am grateful, as well as to friends in Memphis who had the out-of-hours grace to refrain from mentioning the Civil War.

A word I suppose is in order as to the use I made of these materials, original and secondary, not only because it is customary but also because it appears to be necessary, at least in certain eyes. One of the best of the latter-day authorities, in the course of his carefully documented exegesis, cautions against accepting the testimony of Lew Wallace as to what took place at a council of war preceding the march on Donelson. “Recollections of events long past are always to be suspected,” he explains, “and especially when set down by a writer of fiction.” Wallace then was doubly suspect. He had waited, and he had written
The Fair God
and
Ben-Hur
. He was a novelist.

Well, I am a novelist, and what is more I agree with D. H. Lawrence’s estimate of the novel as “the one bright book of life.” I might also agree with the professor quoted above, but only by considering each witness on his merit, his devotion as a writer to what should be his main concern. The point I would make is that the novelist and the historian are seeking the same thing: the truth—not a different truth: the same truth—only they reach it, or try to reach it, by different routes. Whether the event took place in a world now gone to dust, preserved by documents and evaluated by scholarship, or in the imagination, preserved by memory and distilled by the creative process, they both want to tell us
how it was:
to re-create it, by their separate methods, and make it live again in the world around them.

This has been my aim, as well, only I have combined the two. Accepting the historian’s standards without his paraphernalia, I have employed the novelist’s methods without his license. Instead of inventing characters and incidents, I searched them out—and having found them, I took them as they were. Nothing is included here, either within or outside quotation marks, without the authority of documentary evidence which I consider sound. Although I have left out footnotes, believing that they would detract from the book’s narrative quality by intermittently shattering the illusion that the observer is not so much reading a book as sharing an experience, I have thought it proper to employ the three dots of elision to signify the omission of interior matter from quotations. In all respects, the book is as accurate as care and hard work could make it. Partly I have done this for my own satisfaction; for in writing a history, I would no more be false to a fact dug out of a valid document than I would be false to a “fact” dug out of my head in writing a novel. Also, I have tried for accuracy because I have never known a modern historical instance where the truth was not superior to distortion, by any standard and in every way. Wherever the choice lay between soundness and “color,” soundness
had it every time. Many problems were encountered in the course of all this study, but lack of color in the original materials was never one of them. In fact, there was the rub. Such heartbreak as was here involved came not from trying to decide what to include, but rather from trying to decide what to omit, and in the end the omissions far outnumbered the inclusions.

One word more perhaps will not be out of place. I am a Mississippian. Though the veterans I knew are all dead now, down to the final home guard drummer boy of my childhood, the remembrance of them is still with me. However, being nearly as far removed from them in time as most of them were removed from combat when they died, I hope I have recovered the respect they had for their opponents until Reconstruction lessened and finally killed it. Biased is the last thing I would be; I yield to no one in my admiration for heroism and ability, no matter which side of the line a man was born or fought on when the war broke out, fourscore and seventeen years ago. If pride in the resistance my forebears made against the odds has leaned me to any degree in their direction, I hope it will be seen to amount to no more, in the end, than the average American’s normal sympathy for the underdog in a fight.

— S.F.         

CHAPTER 1. P
ROLOGUE
—T
HE
O
PPONENTS

1. Secession: Davis and Lincoln

2. Sumter; Early Maneuvers

3. Statistics North and South

CHAPTER 2. F
IRST
B
LOOD
; N
EW
C
ONCEPTIONS

1. Manassas—Southern Triumph

2. Anderson, Frémont, McClellan

3. Scott’s Anaconda; the Navy

4. Diplomacy; the Buildup

CHAPTER 3. T
HE
T
HING
G
ETS
U
NDER
W
AY

1. The West: Grant, Fort Henry

2. Donelson—The Loss of Kentucky

3. Gloom; Manassas Evacuation

4. McC Moves to the Peninsula

CHAPTER 4. W
AR
M
EANS
F
IGHTING
 …

1. Pea Ridge; Glorieta; Island Ten

2. Halleck-Grant, Jston-Bgard: Shiloh

3. Farragut, Lovell: New Orleans

4. Halleck, Beauregard: Corinth

CHAPTER 5. F
IGHTING
M
EANS
K
ILLING

1. Davis Frets; Lincoln-McClellan

2. Valley Campaign; Seven Pines

3. Lee, McC: The Concentration

4. The Seven Days; Hezekiah

CHAPTER 6. T
HE
S
UN
S
HINES
S
OUTH

1. Lincoln Reappraisal; Emancipation?

2. Grant, Farragut, Buell

3. Bragg, K. Smith, Breckinridge

4. Lee vs. Pope: Second Manassas

CHAPTER 7. T
WO
A
DVANCES
; T
WO
R
ETREATS

1. Invasion West: Richmond, Munfordville

2. Lee, McClellan: Sharpsburg

3. The Emancipation Proclamation

4. Corinth-Perryville: Bragg Retreats

CHAPTER 8. L
AST
, B
EST
H
OPE OF
E
ARTH

1. Lincoln’s Late-Fall Disappointments

2. Davis: Lookback and Outlook

3. Lincoln: December Message

CHAPTER l. T
HE
L
ONGEST
J
OURNEY

1. Davis, Westward and Return

2. Goldsboro; Fredericksburg

3. Prairie Grove; Galveston

4. Holly Springs; Walnut Hills

5. Murfreesboro: Bragg Retreats

CHAPTER 2. U
NHAPPY
N
EW
Y
EAR

1. Lincoln; Mud March; Hooker

2. Arkansas Post; Transmiss; Grant

3. Erlanger; Richmond Bread Riot

4. Rosecrans; Johnston; Streit

5. Vicksburg—Seven Failures

CHAPTER 3. D
EATH OF A
S
OLDIER

1. Naval Repulse at Charleston

2. Lee, Hooker; Mosby; Kelly’s Ford

3. Suffolk: Longstreet Southside

4. Hooker, Stoneman: The Crossing

5. Chancellorsville; Jackson Dies

CHAPTER 4. T
HE
B
ELEAGUERED
C
ITY

1. Grant’s Plan; the Run; Grierson

2. Eastward, Port Gibson to Jackson

3. Westward, Jackson to Vicksburg

4. Port Hudson; Banks vs. Gardner

5. Vicksburg Siege, Through June

CHAPTER 5. S
TARS IN
T
HEIR
C
OURSES

1. Lee, Davis; Invasion; Stuart

2. Gettysburg Opens; Meade Arrives

3. Gettysburg, July 2: Longstreet

4. Gettysburg, Third Day: Pickett

5. Cavalry; Lee Plans Withdrawal

CHAPTER 6. U
NVEXED TO THE
S
EA

1. Lee’s Retreat; Falling Waters

2. Milliken’s Bend; Helena Repulse

3. Vicksburg Falls; Jackson Reburnt

4. Lincoln Exults; N.Y. Draft Riot

5. Davis Declines Lee’s Resignation

CHAPTER 7. R
IOT AND
R
ESURGENCE

1. Rosecrans; Tullahoma Campaign

2. Morgan Raid; Chattanooga Taken

3. Charleston Seige; Transmississippi

4. Chickamauga—First Day

5. Bragg’s Victory Unexploited

CHAPTER 8. T
HE
C
ENTER
G
IVES

1. Sabine Pass; Shelby; Grant Hurt

2. Bristoe Station; Buckland Races

3. Grant Opens the Cracker Line

4. Davis, Bragg; Gettysburg Address

5. Missionary Ridge; Bragg Relieved

CHAPTER 9. S
PRING
C
AME ON
F
OREVER

1. Mine Run; Meade Withdraws

2. Olustee; Kilpatrick Raid

3. Sherman, Meridian; Forrest

4. Lincoln-Davis, a Final Contrast

5. Grant Summoned to Washington

CHAPTER l. A
NOTHER
G
RAND
D
ESIGN

1. Grant in Washington—His Plan

2. Red River, Camden: Reevaluation

3. Paducah, Fort Pillow; Plymouth

4. Grant Poised; Joe Davis; Lee

CHAPTER 2. T
HE
F
ORTY
D
AYS

1. Grant Crosses; the Wilderness

2. Spotsylvania—“All Summer”

3. New Market; Bermuda Hundred

4. North Anna; Cold Harbor; Early

CHAPTER 3. R
ED
C
LAY
M
INUET

1. Dalton to Pine Mountain

2. Brice’s; Lincoln; “Alabama”

3. Kennesaw to Chattahoochee

4. Hood Replaces Johnston

CHAPTER 4. W
AR
I
S
C
RUELTY
 …

1. Petersburg; Early I; Peace?

2. Hood vs. Sherman; Mobile Bay; Memphis Raid; Atlanta Falls

3. Crater; McClellan; Early II

4. Price Raid; “Florida”; Cushing; Forrest Raids Mid-Tenn.