Terrible Swift Sword (7 page)
What they heard was a proclamation,
signed by Fremont and addressed to the public at large. It began by asserting
that because of the general disorganization in Missouri—"the helplessness
of the civil authority, the total insecurity of life, and the devastation of
property by bands of murderers and marauders" who were out to settle old
scores with private foes and "who find an enemy wherever they find
plunder"—it was necessary for the commanding general to "assume the
administrative powers of the state." The commanding general was therefore
proclaiming martial law throughout Missouri. Within the lines of the "army
of occupation"—the area, that is, which was enclosed by the chain of
fortified towns, running from Cape Girardeau through Ironton, Rolla, and Jefferson
City all the way up to the northwestern tip of the state—it was decreed that
all persons found with weapons in their hands should be court-martialed and, if
convicted, shot to death. In addition: "The property, real and personal,
of all persons in the state of Missouri who shall take up arms against the
United States, or who shall be directly proven to have taken an active part
with their enemies in the field, is declared to be confiscated to the public
use, and their slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared freemen." The
proclamation went on to warn everybody not to engage in treasonable correspondence,
to destroy railroad tracks, bridges, or telegraphs or to circulate "false
reports or incendiary documents," and closed with the assertion: "The
object of this declaration is to place in the hands of the military authorities
the power to give instantaneous effect to existing laws and to supply such deficiencies
as the conditions of war demand."
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Nothing ever really daunted Jessie
Fremont, but Mr. Davis was somewhat stunned, and he got to his feet to warn the
general: "Mr. Seward will never allow this. He intends to wear down the
South by steady pressure, not by blows, and then make himself the
arbitrator." Fremont calmly replied that the thing went beyond any
question of what Seward might or might not approve. It was a war measure, and
he proposed to "bring the penalties of rebellion home to every man found
striving against the Union." There was a printing press at headquarters,
and without further ado the general had the proclamation printed and made
public. He also sent a copy to Washington, for the President's guidance.
Secretary Seward might well disapprove
of this document, as a matter of policy, if his opinion was asked. But
Fremont's vein was much the vein of Seward himself, in that letter which had
startled Charles Francis Adams. He was making explicit what Seward had
elaborately hinted at . . . the slow development, deep in this war for
reunion, of an uncontrollable and undesigned war for human freedom.
4.
End
of
Neutrality
And so the war had changed its
character, a thousand miles from Washington. If a general in the field could
displace the civil government, set the bondsmen free, and bring in firing
squads to settle neighborhood disturbances, the struggle might quickly be what
Wisconsin's Governor Randall had feared it might become—an unlimited war, far
greater than a mere fight to put down rebellion. It was a peculiarity of the
situation that although this had happened because of the unvarnished energy
with which the border folk made war, it was nevertheless the people of the
border whom Abraham Lincoln had most in mind when he tried to keep the war
limited. They would fight for the Union, he believed, but they would not fight
to suppress slavery, which was where Fremont's proclamation unquestionably
would take them; and on September 2 the President sent the general a firm but
not unfriendly letter.
There
must be (said the President) no shooting of men taken in arms, because the
Confederates could play the same game, with reprisals and counter-reprisals
keeping firing squads busy from the Potomac all the way to Kansas; therefore
the general must order no executions without first getting specific approval
from Washington. In addition, and more importantly, there was the matter of
the emancipation of slaves. This, wrote the President, "will alarm our
Southern Union friends, and turn them against us—perhaps ruin our rather fair
prospect for Kentucky." Fremont therefore was requested to modify that
part of his proclamation, putting it in line with a recent act of Congress
which provided only that slaves actually used in service of the Confederate
armed forces could be taken from their owners, the subsequent status of such
slaves being left most indefinite.
1
General
Fremont would not retreat. He wrote that he had been in a hot spot,
"between the Rebel armies, the Provisional Government, and home
traitors," and his proclamation was "as much a movement in the war as
a battle"; if he modified it of his own accord it would imply that he
felt that he had made a mistake, and he did not feel that way. Consequently, he
would modify it only if the President publicly ordered him to do so. He was
satisfied that "strong and vigorous measures have now become necessary to
the success of our arms," and he hoped that his views would receive the
President's approval.
2
Meanwhile, General Fremont sent Jessie off
to Washington to argue the case with the President in person.
By
this time the general was in far over his depth. What he was saying, in effect,
was that the military problem in his own bailiwick justified him in committing
the entire nation— both the states of the Federal Union, and the Confederate
states which had declared their independence—to an entirely different kind of
war; a remorseless revolutionary struggle which in the end could do nothing
less than redefine the very nature of the American experiment, committing the
American people for the rest of time to a much broader concept of the quality
and meaning of freedom and democracy than anything they had yet embraced. The
war might indeed come to that. Secession was at bottom a violent protest
against change, and extended violence would almost certainly destroy the
delicate unspoken understanding by which the rival governments fought a limited
war. But this was a problem for Washington, not for a general in the field.
Fremont was making a decision that lay beyond his competence, and in his
message to the President there was a proconsular arrogance that American
soldiers are not supposed to display.
President
Lincoln acted promptly. He publicly ordered Fremont to modify the clause about
emancipation, he sent Postmaster General Montgomery Blair to St. Louis to talk
to the general and give the President a fill-in on the situation, and when
Jessie Fremont reached the White House he gave her an exceedingly cold
reception. Jessie's trip in fact did Fremont much harm. Mr. Lincoln said
afterward that "she more than once intimated that if General Fremont
should decide to try conclusions with me, he could set up for himself,"
8
and although she denied vehemently that she ever said anything of the kind she
undoubtedly helped to confirm the President's dawning suspicion that Fr6mont,
in a decidedly tough situation, was trying to protect his fences by winning
the support of the abolitionists. At one point, Jessie explained that only an
edict of emancipation would keep England and France from recognizing the
Confederacy; and the President, who had devoted agonizing hours to the question
of preventing European intervention in this war, cut her short with the curt
remark: "You are quite a female politician." The next day the elder
Blair
(who had been Jessie's friend for many
years) scolded her, crying out: "Who would have expected you to do such a
thing as this, to come here and find fault with the President?" All in
all, she had a most unhappy visit.
4
Overruling Fremont,
Mr. Lincoln was thinking of a principle and of a point of tactics, and the
explanation which he did not bother to give Jessie Fremont he gave to his old
friend and political supporter, Senator Orville Browning of Illinois. Writing
to Browning not long afterward, Mr. Lincoln said that the principle was simple
but basic. As a general Fremont could seize all sorts of property—a Missouri
farm, or even a Missouri slave—for purely military purposes, but the effect of
such seizures was only temporary. "When the need is past it is not for him
to fix their permanent future condition. That must be settled according to the
laws made by law-makers, and not by military proclamations." What Fremont
did was nothing less than an act of dictatorship. The United States no longer
had a constitutional government if a general, or a President, "may make
permanent rules of property by proclamation." Reflecting that the acts of
a general were in the end the acts of the President himself, Mr. Lincoln went
on to write a sentence that would echo powerfully a year later: "What I
object to is that I as President shall expressly or impliedly seize and exercise
the permanent legislative functions of the government."
So much for principle. There was also
work-a-day practicality, for Fremont had packed both moral error and tactical
blunder into one ill-advised pronunciamento. Tactically, the case rested
largely on Kentucky; on Kentucky's geographical position and on its divided
state of mind, representative of the divided minds of so many millions who
lived elsewhere. Kentucky was still at peace, delicately poised between the
warring sections, and Kentucky's sentiments were fearfully, tragically mixed,
strong devotion to the Union going hand in hand with cheerful acceptance of
slavery and outright horror of anything that smacked of racial equality.
Fighting an abolitionists' war, the Federal government might well lose Kentucky
entirely, and the President wrote soberly: "I think to lose Kentucky is
nearly the same as to lose the whole game
...
we would as well consent to separation at once, including the surrender of this
capital."
5
So far the war was incomplete. It had
two ends and no middle which is to say that although it was being fought at
full strength in Virginia and in Missouri it was not being fought at all in the
400-mile length of Kentucky. Here was where North and South touched one another
most intimately, and perhaps came closest to a mutual understanding; here was
the vital center of the whole border country, which in reality was no border at
all but a broad corridor straight through the heart of America. Once the war
broke into Kentucky it could begin to develop its full potential, which was
likely to be much greater than had been bargained for by either of the two
Kentuckians, Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, who headed the opposing
governments.
Kentucky had tried hard to stay out of
the war, thus reflecting not only the split in popular feeling but also the
fact that Governor Beriah Magoffin leaned toward secession while a majority of
the state legislature opposed it. Immediately after Fort Sumter Governor
Magoffin notified Lincoln that the state would furnish no troops "for the
wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern states," and a group called
the State Union Committee agreed that Kentucky could not send such troops
"without outraging her solemn convictions of duty, and without trampling
upon that natural sympathy with the seceding states which neither their
contempt for her interests nor their disloyalty to the Union has sufficed to
extinguish." On May 20 the governor made formal announcement of the
state's neutrality, warning "all other states, separate or united,
especially the United and Confederate states," not to enter Kentucky or to
occupy Kentucky soil without express invitation from the state's legislative
and executive authorities.
6
In the long run this policy was bound to
fail, and throughout the summer both sides prepared methodically for the day of
failure. They began simply by seeking Kentucky recruits, carefully
establishing camps outside of the state for their reception —Union camp near
Cincinnati, just north of the Ohio River; Confederate camp near Clarksville,
Tennessee, just below the Kentucky-Tennessee line. Inside the state there was
the Kentucky State Guard, some 4000 militiamen strongly pro-Confederate in
sympathies, commanded by Brigadier General Simon Bolivar Buckner—a solid West
Pointer who had many friends in the Old Army, including both George B.
McClellan and Ulysses S. Grant, and who was correctly believed to be ready to
enter the Confederate service whenever neutrality should come to an end. As a
counterweight, Unionists formed a militia of their own, naming it the Home
Guard, and centering it at Camp Dick Robinson, not far from the state capital,
Frankfort. The Home Guard was led by a burly ex-lieutenant in the Navy, William
Nelson, a three-hundred-pound giant whom Mr. Lincoln made a brigadier general
of volunteers and entrusted with a substantial quantity of arms and ammunition.
7
Nelson had influence in Kentucky. He also had much drive, and a flaming
temper which one day would be the death of him; and now he worked hard to
prepare the loyalists for the coming fight.
Governor Magoffin wrote letters of
protest—to Mr. Lincoln, complaining about Nelson's force at Camp Dick Robinson,
and to Mr. Davis, protesting the presence of Confederate troops in Tennessee,
close to the Kentucky line. Lincoln replied blandly that the men at Nelson's
camp were all Kentuckians, menacing nothing and attacking nothing; he did not
think most Kentuckians wanted them removed, and he would not remove them. Davis
replied with equal blandness, saying that his troops in Tennessee were there
solely to protect that state from invasion.
8
Things went on as they
had been, with Washington and Richmond raising troops, bringing in arms and
lining up leading Kentuckians, no overt acts being performed but nothing being
done in complete secrecy. During the summer Kentucky held a state election,
sending a solid Unionist slate to the Federal Congress and increasing the
Unionist majority in both houses of the state legislature.
The stakes were high. In Confederate
hands, Kentucky would effectively blockade the Ohio River and deprive the Federals
of any feasible base for a large-scale offensive in the Mississippi Valley,
fundamental in the Union's grand strategy; if Mr. Lincoln felt that to lose
Kentucky was to lose everything there was good reason for it. Conversely, if
the state were held by the Union the Confederacy had no good way to save
Tennessee, hold the Mississippi, and stave off a drive into the deepest South.
Neither side could afford to lose, and neither side dared risk losing by moving
prematurely; Kentuckians were notably touchy, and as far as anyone could see in
the summer of 1861 they might go either way. Much would depend on which side
first angered the Kentucky majority.
It was into this situation that General
Fremont had thrust his proclamation about freeing the slaves of people who supported
the Confederacy. The effect could have been a major Union disaster, except for
two things—Mr. Lincoln's disavowal of the proclamation, and the abrupt
appearance on Kentucky soil of a full-fledged Confederate Army, which on
September
3
crossed
the Tennessee line, occupied the towns of Hickman and Columbus, and began to
plant heavy guns on the bluffs which overlook the Mississippi River at the
latter point. Kentucky's neutrality was ended forever.
The occupation of Hickman and Columbus
was accomplished by soldiers under contentious Brigadier General Gideon J.
Pillow, but the movement had been ordered by Pillow's superior, Major General
Leonidas Polk. Polk was a close friend of Jefferson Davis, a West Point
graduate who years ago had left the Army to take holy orders, becoming at last
a bishop in the Episcopal Church, as grave and as lacking in impetuosity as any
bishop need be; a man who had returned to the Army when the war came, who had
been given a general's commission by his old friend the President, and who
somewhat against his will had been entrusted with the top Confederate command
along the central portion of the Mississippi.
Polk
knew as well as anyone that Kentucky needed very careful nursing, but he also
believed that the Federals were going to send armies into the state any day
now, and the immense weight of military necessity was on him. General Grant was
moving to Cairo, building up forces which obviously would come down the river
sooner or later, and there was no better place to stop such forces than
Columbus. Armed Federals had recently appeared at the Missouri hamlet of
Belmont, just across the river from Columbus, apparently designing a seizure of
the Columbus bluffs, and a Federal gunboat had anchored off the town, looking
menacing and sending a party ashore to tear down a Confederate flag which some
incautious civilian had hoisted; and, altogether, General Polk believed that it
was time for him to act. Grant had in fact been told by Fremont in complete
disregard of Kentucky's neutrality that he was to take possession of Columbus
as soon as he conveniently could, and although Polk did not know about these
orders he could easily see what Grant's next move was likely to be, and as a
soldier he was bound to beat his enemy to the punch if he could. On September 1,
Polk wrote to Governor Magoffin, saying that it was "of greatest
consequence to the Southern cause in Kentucky or elsewhere that
I
should
be ahead of the enemy in occupying Columbus and Paducah"; and not long
after that he got Pillow's men in motion. He sent a hasty wire to President
Davis, telling what he had done and explaining the reasons for it, and
asserting that now that he had a force in Columbus he proposed to keep it
there.
9