Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Massachusetts in the Army and Navy during the war of 1861-1865, vol. 1: prelminary narrative

Preliminary narrative.

I. The outbreak of the war.

It must also be remembered that the Northern mind, generally shrinking from all belief in a coming war, had delayed serious action long after active preparations had begun at the South. Young men coming from that region were amazed, during the winter of 1860-61, to find their Northern acquaintances employing or amusing themselves as usual, while at the South everybody was drilling. All the events in Kansas had not really opened men's eyes. Both sides, moreover, strangely underrated their opponents. At the South, relying on their own more active outdoor habits, men believed that one Southerner was a match for three Yankees; while at the North the reasoning, though proceeding from a different point, reached the same conclusion. ‘Modern war,’ we reasoned, ‘is a matter not of individual hand-to-hand contest, but of machinery, of organization, of inventive skill, of capital, of material resources.’ In all these things we felt that we had the advantage. We did not allow for the effect of necessity in creating these very resources, nor for the fact that adversity was to call out in the South more important inventions and more triumphs of organizing skill than its years of prosperity had ever claimed. The institution of slavery itself, by giving immense supplies of crude labor for fortifications, by supporting families and by educating the habit of command, was doubtless a power in the hands of the South, until we turned it against them by arming the blacks. And, again, Northern men overlooked the enormous difference between offensive and defensive war, especially in a contest spreading over so vast an extent of rough and sparsely settled country.

There was thus a general impulse, born partly of desire, to make light of the extent and difficulty of the contest.¹ It is remembered that a very able man in Boston, Dr. Samuel Cabot, who had aided largely in sending rifles to Kansas, said once, in speaking of a possible war between the Northern and [5] Southern States, ‘It would not last six months;’ while, on the other hand, one of the best of the Massachusetts militia officers, who went out as adjutant of General Devens's battalion at the very beginning, and afterwards entered the regular army, said, after the attack on Sumter, ‘I would rather have England and France together upon us than this.’ Captain Goodhue was right; war with England and France might have led to the capture or burning of a few cities, but the pressure of the civilized world would have soon settled it by diplomacy, at a cost of money and life incomparably less than that of the contest which was now impending. As it was, the material cost of the war was best summed up by Gen. W. T. Sherman, who said, at Portland, Oregon (July 3, 1890), ‘I do believe, as I believe in Him who rules above us all, that this country spent one thousand million dollars and one hundred thousand lives to teach you the art of war.’²

Ii. The war governor.

Governor Andrew was frank, outspoken, with no concealments and little solicitude for any reserve in others. It was said at the State House that his predecessors had been much given to private and confidential interviews; but that he went to the other extreme. Everything was aboveboard; he talked as freely among his clerks and visitors as in the most secluded privacy. In preliminary negotiations, sometimes delicate and difficult, about the forming [6] of regiments, the selection of officers, the distribution of supplies, it was almost impossible to have a word of confidential intercourse with him. It was also difficult to hold him to a point; he liked to talk over his own plans and to read aloud the letters he had just written; and, as his style was rather florid and he amplified a good deal, these digressions took much precious time. Moreover, he was thin-skinned, and felt keenly any personal attack; and when he met with a thoroughly unscrupulous and tormenting opponent it was not hard to keep him vexed and irritated, in spite of the unselfish nobleness of his aims.

The selection of officers was of course the most perplexing part of his military work, and was that in which he made most mistakes, these arising almost wholly from his virtues. He said truly of himself that he had never despised any man because he was poor, because he was ignorant or because he was black; but there was always a chance that he might overrate a man for one or the other of these reasons. He began, as all war governors did, with a natural prejudice in favor of regular army men and those who had served in foreign armies; and where men had these recommendations, the fact that they had been the object of attack or criticism on other grounds told rather in their favor; unless they had taken positively pro-slavery positions or led mobs against abolitionists or negroes,—he drew the line there.

No one can now appreciate how difficult it was, after a prolonged period of peace, to look around upon the community and say of this man or that ‘He would make a good military officer.’ Men did not know this in regard to themselves. No man could feel humbler about this process of selection than Governor Andrew. He said once, ‘It seems very absurd that I, who am a man of peace and always hated soldiering, should be the man to choose. these officers; but Providence has put this duty upon me, and I shall do it as best I can.’ He was liable, as are most of us, to be misled by an imposing appearance, a commanding manner, and to underrate the obscurer virtues. He was over-influenced at times by trivial or temporary considerations, as when he once gave it as his reason for proposing to give one civilian a colonelcy, that this person had wished for one before, and had behaved very well under disappointment. It is now known, on the other hand, that the present head of the American army, Major-General Miles, was set aside by Governor Andrew at the last moment as too young for the command of [7] a company which he had raised at his own expense; although the governor of New York had afterwards the discernment, after one or two battles, to take this young officer from his lieutenancy and make him colonel of a regiment.³ He had also the tendency, common to strong-willed men, to stick to an appointment, even when an obvious mistake. He once said of an officer of foreign birth, ‘He is the best field officer who ever went from Massachusetts.’ There being rumors of insubordination and inefficiency in regard to this officer, Governor Andrew was asked, a month or so later, if he still held to the same opinion. ‘I will go further now,’ he said, striking the table with his hand; ‘I will say that he is worth all the other field officers who have left Massachusetts, put together.’ Yet the career of this particular person was by no means a success, and he left the service early.⁴ On the other hand, his dislikes were as warm and impetuous as his likings, and he could not always be trusted to exercise patience or justice in dealing with any one who had forfeited his good opinion.⁵

On the evening of the very day on which Governor Andrew's inaugural address was delivered (Jan. 5, 1861) he sent confidential messengers to the governors of the New England States, urging military preparation on the part of all. Col. Albert G. Browne, afterwards the governor's military secretary, was sent to the governors of Maine and New Hampshire; Colonel Wardrop, commander of the 3d Mass. Volunteer Militia, was sent to Vermont, and others to Rhode Island and Connecticut. The military historians of Maine and New Hampshire make no reference to this communication; and it is evident that in Vermont it led only to some correspondence but to ‘little open or actual preparation for fighting.’⁶

The first direct and overt step taken by Governor Andrew was the apparently mild one of causing a salute to be fired on Jan. 8, 1861,⁷ in commemoration of the battle of New Orleans, this being at the suggestion of the Hon. Charles Francis Adams. The next step took place on January 16,⁸ when an order was issued requiring each company commander in a militia regiment to revise his muster roll, to ascertain whether any of the members [8] would be, ‘from age, physical defect, business or family cares, unable or indisposed to respond at once to the orders of the commander-in-chief,’ in order that they might be ‘forthwith discharged, so that their places may be filled by men ready for any public emergency which may arise, whenever called upon. This once done, no discharge could be granted unless for cause satisfactory to the commander-in-chief.’ From the moment when this order was issued Massachusetts had begun to be placed on a war footing.

The time for actual fighting, however, soon came. It is said that on April 12, 1861, the Senate of Ohio was in session and was vainly trying, amid suppressed excitement, to settle down to its ordinary routine. Suddenly a senator came hastily in from the lobby, and, catching the chairman's eye, exclaimed, ‘Mr. President, the telegraph announces that the secessionists are bombarding Fort Sumter.’ There was a moment's hush, which was broken by a woman's shrill voice from the spectators' seats, crying ‘Glory to God.’ ‘It startled every one,’ says a spectator, ‘almost as if the enemy were in the midst.’⁹ The scene was Ohio, but the voice was a voice from Massachusetts, for the speaker was Abby Kelly Foster of Worcester, one of the most daring and self-devoted of the early abolitionists, a woman whose tones had always a peculiar and thrilling quality, as of one crying in the wilderness. She now uttered the impulse of many who saw at a glance that the death struggle between freedom and slavery had come. The next day the Union flag fluttered over myriads of roofs in the great Northern cities, and political differences appeared annihilated. In