The Confederate Nation: 1861 to 1865 (24 page)

Davis remained unimpressed. On May 16 he explained his ideas in a letter to his wife:

The panic here has subsided and with increasing confidence there has arisen a desire to see the city destroyed rather than surrender…. these talkers have little idea of what scenes would follow the battering of rows of brick houses. I have told them that the enemy might be beaten before Richmond or on either flank, and we would try to do it, but that I could not allow the Army to be penned up in a city. The boats, we ought to be, and I hope are, able to stop. Their army, when reduced to small arms and field pieces I think we can defeat and then a vigorous pursuit will bring the results long wished for.
⁴¹

Already, Davis had expressed his determination to abandon his capital rather than submit to a siege.
⁴²
And as McClellan’s vast army of 100,000 advanced slowly on Richmond, Davis still held hope, not only of defeating the Federals, but also, with a “vigorous pursuit,” of destroying the invaders. When the President wrote, Richmond indeed seemed secure from naval shelling. At Drewry’s Bluff, just seven miles below the capital, on May 15, the Confederates had turned back a Union flotilla. The crew of the scuttled ironclad
Virginia
manned some of the shore batteries and were once again able to fire on the Union ironclad
Monitor
when it encountered the prepared channel obstructions and torpedo mines.
⁴³

Still, Davis fretted over Johnston’s apparent unwillingness to give battle. On May 28 the President wrote Varina Davis describing a battle aborted by swollen creeks: “Thus ended the offensive-defensive programme from which Lee expected much and of which I was hopeful.”
⁴⁴
Finally, on May 31, Johnston attacked. McClellan had sent two corps of his army south of the Chickahominy River, a usually sluggish stream which bisects the upper peninsula. Heavy rains, however, made a torrent of the Chickahominy and washed away bridges and fords between elements of the blue army. Johnston launched an attack upon the two isolated corps at the village of Seven Pines, but poor staff preparation and a failure in coordination among the three columns that Johnston sent to Seven Pines dulled the Confederate attack. The Southerners drove the Federals back but did not destroy them; McClellan’s threat to Richmond was still very real.
⁴⁵

Johnston suffered a serious wound at Seven Pines, and at this juncture Davis made Lee commander of his army. Davis issued an address to the troops calling Seven Pines a victory and then wrote to his wife, “The opportunity being lost, we must try to find another.”
⁴⁶

Lee made the Army of Northern Virginia his own and put it to work preparing field fortifications. Meanwhile Stonewall Jackson was conducting his brilliant campaign in the Shenandoah Valley. Jackson’s few baffled, evaded, and battled the Federal many, drawing potential reinforcements for McClellan into the Shenandoah and defeating them. And James Ewell Brown (J. E. B.) Stuart and his cavalry rode completely around McClellan’s army, disrupting communication and supply lines. At twenty-nine, young “Beauty” Stuart was something of a paradox—a pious
bon vivant
and a hard-fighting exhibitionist. His ride around McClellan gave expression to his flamboyant nature even as it struck a telling blow at the Federal cause.

The activities of Jackson and Stuart, besides shoring up Southern morale, convinced Lincoln in Washington and McClellan in Virginia that the Confederates were more numerous and more threatening than they actually were. Thus Lincoln withheld some of the troops intended for McClellan, and McClellan began to think more about not losing his campaign than about winning it.

Lee in the meantime planned a battle of annihilation; he determined to attack McClellan’s host before it invested Richmond and his army. Federal front lines were already nearing the suburbs of the capital when Lee set his plan in motion. Between McClellan’s 100,000 and Richmond, Lee stationed 25,000 Confederates; he massed 47,000 men, the bulk of his army, near the village of Mechanicsville on the Union right flank. And while Lee shifted his forces, Jackson left the valley and drove his “foot cavalry” of 18,500 men toward Richmond and the Federal rear.

On June 25 the Seven Days campaign began; in the face of advancing Union forces, “Prince John” Magruder conducted a “demonstration” in front of Richmond designed to convince the Federals that there were many more than 25,000 Confederates between them and the city. The next day Lee unleashed what was supposed to be the crushing blow to McClellan’s flank. Amid bitter fighting around Mechanicsville, however, the Southern design miscarried. Jackson was uncharacteristically late and slow, and the Confederate assault uncoordinated. But even though the Union flank survived, McClellan became convinced that his army was in grave danger. The next day, June 27, the Confederates again attacked at Gaines’ Mill and temporarily broke the stubborn Federal line. In the aftermath, McClellan ordered his forces to withdraw to Harrison’s Landing on the James River. Lee, when he realized the Federal intent, attempted a vigorous pursuit, hoping to crush “those people,” as he termed his enemies, while they marched and before they reached the relative security of the landing. For the next three days the Confederates maintained contact but failed to apply the
coup de grâce.
Finally, after six days of heavy action, McClellan’s troops occupied Malvern Hill in strength. Lee knew that this would be his last chance to smash the Federals as they withdrew, but on July 1, after his artillery dueled with Union guns on Malvern Hill and lost, he canceled his order to attack. Then in the late afternoon troop movements on the slope convinced him that the Federals were resuming their retreat, and he sent his infantry straight up the hill in hopes of overrunning a rear guard. But the Confederates found Union artillery and infantry still in strength on Malvern Hill, and piecemeal assaults failed at a bloody cost. Next morning while the Southerners buried their dead, McClellan’s forces reached Harrison’s Landing and sanctuary. Lee withdrew to Richmond and left McClellan undisturbed. Confederate citizens in Richmond and elsewhere hailed Lee as deliverer; the Seven Days battles had humbled the invaders and driven them away from their goal. Lee of course had had more ambitious plans and felt the disappointment of having merely defeated “those people” instead of destroying them.
⁴⁷

Meanwhile, in the war in the west the Confederacy held its own. When on May 30 Beauregard evacuated Corinth, Mississippi, Davis promptly replaced him. The Federals did not press their advantage, and Beauregard’s successor, Braxton Bragg, was able to move into middle Tennessee and block further Union penetration.
⁴⁸
On the Mississippi River, Memphis fell on June 6, and two months later, after a brief but brilliant life, the Southern ironclad
Arkansas
went to the bottom. With it went the South’s final threat to the Union’s “brown water” navy, but the Confederates still held Vicksburg and, after two full campaigning sea sons, still denied the lower Mississippi to the Federals.
⁴⁹

Then in August Confederate armies in the east and west took the offensive and carried the war into the enemy’s country. The Union was in the midst of moving troops from the peninsula to northern Virginia and the command of John Pope. Late in August, Jackson engaged Pope’s army near the familiar field of the Battle of Manassas. Lee waited until Pope committed himself against Jackson’s troops, and then, on August 30, ordered Longstreet to apply the crushing blow to the Federal flank. Although Pope’s army made good its retreat across Bull Run, the second Battle of Manassas was nearly as great a Southern victory as the first.

Lee headed North, crossed the Potomac, and invaded western Maryland. At the same time, Bragg’s army invaded Kentucky. One purpose of these twin invasions was liberation: the Confederates hoped to encourage Kentuckians and Marylanders to join the South. In addition, the Confederates hoped a major victory or victories on Northern soil might persuade European governments to recognize Southern independence and influence Northern voters in the upcoming congressional elections. Finally, the Southerners preferred that the war disrupt Northern harvests in 1862 instead of Southern ones. The Kentucky and Maryland invasions were limited offensives designed to achieve the same results as the offensive defense in the South: a battle or battles of annihilation.
⁵⁰

The late spring and summer of 1862 saw a minor military miracle for the Confederacy. The Southern revolution, which appeared abortive in May, had found new life. By September the Confederates had not only proven themselves capable of defense, they had shown offensive potential as well. As Lee’s and Bragg’s columns swung into Maryland and Kentucky respectively, Southern hopes soared. Nor did the spectacular reversal of military fortune escape the attention of European powers. Although the Confederates could not know it, England and France were about as close as they would ever come to intervening in the American war.

Then the fates frowned upon rising Southern hopes. As Lee’s columns separated to march into Maryland and take the offensive, a Union patrol happened upon a copy of Lee’s complete invasion plan wrapped around three cigars lying in a road. McClellan, again in command of Federal forces in the east, studied the document for a time, realized his good fortune, and set his army in motion to smash the dispersed invaders. Lee had to forget about his offensive and concentrate quickly to save his army from destruction. Confederate units delayed McClellan’s advance through the mountains of western Maryland as best they could, and Lee drew his battle line along Antietam Creek near the town of Sharpsburg, Maryland. On September 17, as Southern troops were still arriving on the field, McClellan’s Federals attempted to overrun the Southern position and drive Lee’s army into the Potomac River. The resultant combat produced the bloodiest single day of the war and a tactical draw, as the Confederates allowed their lines to bend but not break. The Army of Northern Virginia survived, yet the invasion of Maryland was over, and Lee led his battered troops back across the Potomac into Virginia.
⁵¹

In Kentucky, Bragg’s army began its invasion with a series of clever maneuvers which allowed the Southerners free rein for a time, evading Don Carlos Buell’s Federals. On October 4 at Frankfort, Bragg even presided over the inauguration of Richard Hawes as Confederate governor of the state. But four days later Buell overtook the Confederates; the armies collided at Perry-ville, and although the fight was inconclusive, the Southerners abandoned the field and the idea of liberating Kentucky. Bragg marched his army back into Tennessee. The second half of the Confederacy’s twin offensive had also failed.
⁵²

During late autumn 1862 the Confederacy managed to preserve the military stalemate established by the frustration of its offensives in Maryland and Kentucky. The army of John C. Pemberton beat off an assault on Vicksburg on December 29 and retained for another six months that last Southern bastion on the river. In middle Tennessee, on December 21, Bragg’s army fought a tactical draw with William S. Rosecrans’ Federals (formerly commanded by Buell) at Murfreesboro (Stones River) and retired to lick its wounds in winter quarters at Tullahoma, Tennessee. In Virginia, Lee’s army entrenched at Fredericksburg and repulsed the frontal assaults of the Army of the Potomac commanded by Ambrose E. Burnside.

Burnside had replaced McClellan and proved as overbold as McClellan was overcautious. Time after time on December 13, Union forces surged forward across open ground in front of Marye’s Heights, and each time the Confederates stopped them cold. When the fighting ended the Army of the Potomac had suffered 12,653 casualties, the Army of Northern Virginia 5,309.

During 1862 the Confederate South began to achieve an identity apart from the Old South, and the creative efforts of Davis’ government bore fruit. Talented leadership, tenacious soldiers, and the fortunes of war played their parts; but the statecraft of the Richmond government and the zeal of the Southern people for the cause combined to produce a nascent nation. By autumn the tottering experiment seemed on the brink of victory in enemy country and fulfillment at home. But the moment of near triumph was brief. By the year’s end Southern armies were again on the defensive, and the South’s survival as a nation still lay in the balance.

The inconclusiveness of the Confederacy’s war was, on one hand, a favorable circumstance. Every day the war lasted was one more day of Southern independence, and Southerners believed they could win independence by enduring, by outlasting their enemy’s will to conquer them. But wars, beyond an undefined point, seem to demand a victor. An inner dynamic takes hold and drives the combatants to a conclusion, if only to justify the death and sacrifice. The Confederate war had passed that point of no return, and hindsight confirms that the United States persisted. The Confederacy, having sacrificed blood and treasureand compromised principles on which the nation was founded, was still in a state of becoming. The inconclusiveness of the war would require more sacrifice and more compromise, and the South would become more Confederate and less Southern in the fateful year of 1863.