Mr Lincoln's Army (34 page)

To get from marching formation into fighting
formation, the soldier had to learn, and become letter-perfect in, a long
series of intricate maneuvers, as formalized as a ballet dance. If he had to
march any distance at all he did it in column—column of twos, of fours, of
platoons, of companies, or what not. To fight, the column had to be spread out
into a long line two ranks deep, and the complexities of infantry drill in
those days, designed to bring this about, were something today's soldier is
happily spared. Furthermore, those complexities weren't just parade-ground
maneuvers; they had to be learned if the men were to be able to fight. There
were a dozen different ways for shaking a marching column out into line, and
the men and their officers had to know all of them—had to know them well enough
so that the maneuvers could be performed under fire, for if an organization
formed its battle line too soon it was all but impossible to get it forward
into action. The wild rout at the first battle of Bull Run is perfectly
comprehensible: most of the soldiers just did not know how to perform those
maneuvers. Once they got into line, they fought well; the trouble was that
neither officers nor men had ever had any experience at swinging a marching
brigade into a formation from which it could fight, or vice versa, and they got
hopelessly snarled up when they tried it. One participant recalled that a
Massachusetts regiment was ordered to open fire while it was still formed in
column of companies. Naturally, men in the leading ranks were killed and
wounded by the fire of their own inexpert comrades in the rear. The wonder is
that either army, in that first battle, was able to do any fighting at all.
⁶

Unless troops were expected to capture a remote
position and stay there overnight, in which case they would want food and
blankets, the usual routine was to leave knapsacks and other surplus equipment
in bivouac before moving up to fight. That order was always complied with
gladly; no soldier ever enjoyed carrying his knapsack, but the one the Civil
War soldier carried seems to have been especially irksome—it was poorly
designed, so that its straps cut the shoulders and strained the back even more
than its weight and bulk made necessary. Unless the regimental or brigade
commander was a stickler for doing everything regular-army style, seasoned
troops soon discarded the knapsack altogether and substituted the blanket
roll. This was formed by spreading out the half of a pup tent which each
soldier carried, laying the opened blanket on top of it, arranging such spare
clothing as the soldier might have on top of that, and then rolling the whole
business up as tightly as possible, tying it with straps from the discarded
knapsack, looping the two ends together to form what the soldier called a horse
collar, and then slipping it over one shoulder. The army was mildly amused when
the spanking-new 118th Pennsylvania joined up on the way through Maryland. This
regiment, known as the "Corn Exchange regiment" (it had been raised
and equipped by elderly patriots of the Philadelphia Corn Exchange), carried
oversized knapsacks, well filled with spare pants, boots, coats, and other
oddments. When it came into camp the veterans urged the men to throw all that
truck away and switch to blanket rolls, but the Pennsylvanians refused—they
wanted to do things right, and the regulations said knapsacks and extra
clothing, and they'd stick with 'em. A man in the 22nd Massachusetts, chuckling
at them, noted: "I don't suppose there was a spare shirt in my
company," and added that his mates traveled so light one man would carry a
towel and another man a cake of soap—no sense in each man loading himself down
with both.

Other new regiments besides this one from
Pennsylvania came in while the army was in Maryland. They came in gaily enough,
looking enormous by contrast with the war-thinned veteran regiments, and their
uniforms and equipment were new and unstained. The veterans were glad to see
them, and remarked that all that newness would get worn off soon enough. One
officer, watching them march into camp, wrote: "Some were singing the John
Brown song, and others found occasion for merriment in commenting upon the
picturesque appearance of our weathered and sunburnt soldiers. They all seemed
cheerful, and as their long columns and full ranks marched by, their polished
arms glistening in the sun, one could scarcely repress a sigh at the thought
that, with a certainty, hundreds of these men would fall in the battle which
all knew was now closely impending."
⁷

3.
Generals on Trial

Back in Washington there was General Halleck,
and the general was worried. Worrying, he called for incompatibles, demanding
in one breath a dashing pursuit and an extreme of caution. Lee must be
overtaken, brought to battle, and crushed, no matter what; but the army must
remember that its primary function was defensive. If it did not hurry, Lee
might get away; if it went too fast, Washington might be exposed. McClellan
should keep his left firmly anchored on the Potomac as he advanced, lest Lee
slide past him to the south and dash into the capital. On the other hand, it
was dangerous to stick too close to the river: Lee might angle off in the other
direction, making (so to speak) a sweep around right end, seizing Baltimore and
coming down on the capital from the north. All of these points glowed and
sparkled by turns, like shifting specks before the eyes of a troubled
strategist. Halleck's telegrams to McClellan at this time, although they were
numerous, were nagging rather than helpful.

In
the beginning McClellan had asked that the garrison at Harper's Ferry, some
twelve thousand good men, be ordered back to join the main army. He argued that
the place itself was of no great importance, that it could quickly be
reoccupied once Lee had been driven south, and that it was wholly indefensible
and could not be held in any case if Lee wanted to make a snatch at it. Halleck
pooh-poohed at him: the twelve thousand men were safe enough, nothing to worry
about there. Later, when Lee had his army squarely interposed between Harper's
Ferry and the Army of the Potomac, Halleck notified McClellan that the garrison
was his to command as soon as he could go pick it up. It couldn't get out
unaided, so it would just have to hold on until McClellan could go and relieve
it, which he had better do at his early convenience. And so on.

Old Brains was in the top command and he was
not being particularly impressive. He was stricdy a headquarters operator.
General Pope (whom one could nearly feel sorry for, if he weren't Pope) had
called on him, almost prayerfully, to come and take command in the field around
the time of the second Bull Run fight, but Halleck felt insecure anywhere
except at the Washington end of the telegraph line. He refused to budge then
and he was not budging now, and he surveyed the war from his office in the War
Department, at 17th Street and the avenue, and looked portentous as the papers
piled higher and higher on his desk. As he studied these papers—or, for that
matter, when he indulged in thought of any kind—he had a way of rubbing his
elbows, slowly and methodically: a mannerism which drove Secretary of the Navy
Welles almost frantic.

Welles had a number of dealings with him,
there being divers matters on which army-navy co-operation was essential, and
he came away from all of them feeling rather baffled. When he put a problem up
to Halleck, he wrote, "he rubbed his elbow first, as if that was the seat
of thought, and then his eyes," and then made noncommittal remarks; and
Welles recorded in his diary the impression that Halleck "has a scholarly
intellect and, I suppose, some military acquirements, but his mind is heavy and
irresolute." Unvarnished old Andrew Foote, the diligent flag officer who
commanded the navy's gunboats in the Mississippi early in the war, when Halleck
commanded out there for the army, told Welles bluntly that Halleck was a
military imbecile who might just possibly make a good clerk. And James Harrison
Wilson, then a young officer of topographical engineers, later to become one of
the Union's best major generals and an advocate of making war modern-style with
magazine rifles, wrote long afterward of the impression he received when he
called on Halleck in his office at the War Department:

"He had already received the sobriquet
of 'Old Brains,' but when I beheld his bulging eyes, his flabby cheeks, his
slack-twisted figure, and his slow and deliberate movements, and noted his
sluggish speech, lacking in point and magnetism, I experienced a distinct
feeling of disappointment which from that day never grew less. I could not
reconcile myself to the idea that an officer of such negative appearance could
ever be a great leader of men. . . . Long before the war ended he came to be
recognized by close observers, and especially by the Secretary of War, as a
negligible quantity."
¹

The
record of Halleck's dispatches during the days just before and after Pope's
disaster makes curious reading. At a time when the big problem on which the
fate of the Union might depend was to get Pope's and McClellan's armies united
before Lee could force a battle, Halleck was sounding partly like a
dollar-a-year man worried because the newspapers were impertinently printing
confidential memoranda, and partly like a tired bureaucrat fussily absorbed by
trifles. He wired Pope to clean all the newspaper reporters out of his army and
to let no telegrams go out except those signed by himself—there had been too
many news leaks recently. Pope protested; Halleck replied that "your
staff is decidedly leaky" and complained that the very order calling for a
news black-out had been printed in the papers as soon as it was issued.
Virtuously Halleck added that "there has been much laxity about all
official business in this army."

Office details engrossed him. Three days
before the great collision at Bull Run, Pope protested that he was not being
kept up to date about the movements of McClellan's forces. Halleck wired back
petulantly: "Just think of the immense amount of telegraphing I have to do
and then say whether I can be expected to give you any details as to the
movements of others, even when I know them." After the fighting began,
when Pope implored Halleck to come out and take charge of things himself,
Halleck wired tersely: "It is impossible for me to leave Washington."
When the commander of the defenses of Washington complained that he could not
man the fortifications owing to lack of artillerymen, Halleck replied: "If
you are deficient in anything for the defense of the forts, make your
requisitions on the proper office.
...
I have no time for these details and don't come to me until you exhaust other
resources."

To anyone who has ever worked in Washington,
Halleck is quickly recognizable for what he actually was: a typical old-line
government-service hack, to whom the tidy operation of an office is an end in
itself, infinitely more important than anything the office can conceivably
do.
If the papers progress smoothly from "incoming"
to "outgoing," all is well, even though the Republic fall, and it is
much less important to prevent the fall than to make certain that no wreckage
lands on one's own desk. The Republic is strong and it has amazing resilience,
and it can support people like that ordinarily without much trouble, but it can
hardly endure having such a one in command of its armies at the height of a
furious war.

In the midst of all the Bull Run confusion
Secretary Stanton sent in a demand for the full record regarding McClellan's
withdrawal from the peninsula: when was he ordered to leave, when did he leave,
was the whole operation handled with such slackness as to endanger the country?
Recognizing this as Stanton's search for ammunition to destroy McClellan, but
bearing in mind also that McClellan might yet ride out the storm and be the
hero of the nation, Halleck sent a facing-both-ways reply. He gave all the
dates, stated that the withdrawal was not made with the speed the national
safety required, but added that once McClellan did begin to move he moved fast
and that McClellan at the time reported the delay as unavoidable. No matter who
won, Halleck was safe. His reply could be read as condemnation or as
vindication, as circumstances might require.

And so one more attempt by the President to
solve the problem of army high command was nickering out in windy futility.
Lincoln had demoted McClellan because, with McClellan in the number-one spot,
nothing much ever seemed to happen. There had been no way to convey to the
young general the terrible urgency of the moment, the need to bring the war to
a close before it blew up into a raging flame that might consume more than it
saved. For a time the President himself, aided by the Secretary of War, had
been running things, which had brought nothing but disaster. Military affairs
could not be handled by amateurs, even though the President, with a persistence
both ludicrous and pathetic, drew military textbooks from the archives and
boned up on strategy in his spare time. So Halleck, the genius recommended by
General Scott, had been called in, and for a space Lincoln thought he had what
he finally got when he called in Grant; but now Halleck was proving that
Lincoln had just made another mistake.

Which was tragic, from any viewpoint.
Almost anything—including a change in the American form of government—might
happen if the command problem were not solved. McClellan's implied proposal for
veto power by a soldier over political decisions by the civil authorities had
been pigeonholed neatly enough, but some equally astounding suggestions were
coming in from other quarters. Chase and Stanton were leading a drive for
government by Cabinet: choice of the top generals, and with it control of the
war, should be lodged with a junta of cabinet ministers. This drive was
failing, partly because Lincoln would have none of it and partly because of
the good sense and Yankee stubbornness of Gideon Welles, who flatly refused to
be a party to it. Dimly allied with it was a move by Republican leaders to give
executive control to Congress: Congress should pick the generals, pass on
strategy, and set all war policies, and the Committee on the Conduct of the
War—busily spreading fear and distrust and working with clumsy ruthlessness and
undying energy—would be its instrument. Nobody who doubted the need for ending
slavery overnight would be allowed to have any hand in army affairs—although
private soldiers who were not abolitionists would still, presumably, be allowed
to die in battle, if perchance they were hit by Southern bullets.