Terrible Swift Sword (71 page)

Notes

Chapter One:
THE
LEADERS AND THE LED
1.   Tornado Weather

1.
Congressional
Globe,
1st Session, 37th
Congress, 1861;
222-23. John J. Crittenden as Senator from Kentucky worked
fruitlessly during the first three months of 1861 to bring about a war-averting
compromise. His term in the Senate expiring, he immediately won election to the
House and sponsored there the resolution which defined Federal war aims.

2. Albert Gallatin
Riddle,
Recollections
of
War Times,
42.

3.
Diary
of Charles Francis Adams, quoted in
Charles
Francis Adams,
by Charles Francis
Adams, Jr., 176, 178. This book, an item in the "American Statesmen"
series edited by John T. Morse, Jr., is cited hereafter simply as Adams. See
also Henry Adams,
The Education
of
Henry Adams: an Autobiography,
104.

4.
Letter
of Henry Adams in
A Cycle
of
Adams Letters, 1861-1865,
edited
by Worthington Chauncey Ford; Vol. I, 16.

5.
For
the text of Seward's letters, showing the changes made by President Lincoln,
see Roy Basler,
The Collected Works
of
Abraham Lincoln,
Vol.
IV, 376-80. This compilation is cited hereafter as Basler.

6.         Adams,
145-46.

7. Ibid.,
175, 178, 197-98;
A Cycle
of
Adams Letters,
Vol.
I,
19; John G. Nicolay and John Hay,
Abraham
Lincoln: A
History,
Vol. IV, 276-77.
(Cited hereafter as Nicolay & Hay.)

8.
A
Cycle
of
Adams Letters,
Vol.
I, 14, 39.

9.
Basler,
Vol. IV, 380.

10.
Frederick
W. Seward,
Seward at Washington,
Vol. II, 575.

11.
John
B. Gordon,
Reminiscences
of
the Civil War,
7-16.

12. Charleston
Mercury,
Aug. 29, 1861;
Official
Records
of
the
War
of
the Rebellion
(cited
hereafter as O.R.) Series Four, Vol.
I, 505-6; Richmond
Examiner,
Sept.
24, 1861.

13. O.R., Series Three, Vol. I, 167-70.

2.   A
Mean-Fowt
Fight

1.
Lyon's
activities in the spring and early summer are detailed in
The
Coming Fury,
373-87. For Blair's
comments, see the
Report of the Joint
Committee on the Conduct of the War, 1863,
Part
III, 160-61. (This extensive work is cited hereafter as C.C.W.)

2.
Fremont's
testimony, C.C.W., 1863, Part HI, 33-34. See also his article,
In
Command in Missouri,
in
Battles
and Leaders
of
the Civil War
(cited
hereafter as B, & L.), Vol. I, 279 ff.

3.
For
Lyon's strength and his appeals for help, see O.R., Vol. Ill, 394-97. (Series
I, unless stated.) There is a good analysis in Wiley Britton,
Civil
War on the Border,
Vol. I, 72-73, 75,
77.

4.
Fremont
to Montgomery Blair, Aug. 9, 1861, in the
Official
Records
of
the Union and Confederate
Navies
(cited hereafter as N.O.R.) Vol. XXII,
297. On July 30 Fremont wrote to Lincoln: "I have found this command in
disorder, nearly every county in an insurrectionary condition, and the enemy
advancing in force by different points of the Southern frontier.
...
I am sorely pressed for want of arms. .
. . Our troops have not been paid, and some regiments are in a state of mutiny,
and the men whose term of service is expired generally refuse to enlist."
(Letter in the Robert Todd Lincoln papers, Library of Congress.)

5.
C.C.W.,
1863, Part HI, 35-36; Fremont Memoirs, 238-39, typescript, by Jessie Benton
Fremont, in the John C. Fremont papers, Bancroft Library, University of
California. For Confederate strengths and intentions at this time, see the
report of Gen. Leonidas Polk to Secretary of War L. P. Walker, O.R., Vol. HI,
612-13.

6.         Lyon to Fremont, Aug. 9, 1861,
O.R., Vol. IH, 57.

7. Holcombe
and Adams,
An Account
of
the Battle
of
Wilson's
Creek, or Oak Hills,
19, 21-22. A
description of Lyon's council
of war, appraising the difficulties and outlining the arguments
that led to the decision to attack, is contained in a report written
by Brig. General Thomas W. Sweeney, in the Sweeney Papers
at the Huntington Library. See also the report of Maj. Gen.
John M. Schofield, O.R., Vol. HI, 59. In his book,
Forty-six
Years in the Army,
39, Gen. Schofield
wrote that Lyon was
greatly depressed by his general situation, by the non-arrival
of reinforcements and supplies and by "an evidently strong
conviction that these failures were due to a plan to sacrifice
him to the ambition of another."

8.
E. F. Ware,
The
Lyon Campaign in Missouri, Being
a
History
of
the First Iowa Infantry,
339-40,
gives an interesting picture of Lyon: "Lyon was a small man, lean, active
and sleepless. He was not an old man, although he had wrinkles on the top of
his nose. He had a look of incredulity; he did not believe things.
...
I never liked him, nor did any of us as
far as I could see, but we did believe that he was a brave and educated
officer. He struck us also as a man devoted to duty, who thought duty, dreamed
duty and had nothing but duty on his mind."

9.
The
estimate of numbers is McCulloch's, O.R., Vol. HI, 622-23.

10.     A most engaging description of
Price's army is Thomas
L. Snead's
The First Year
of
the War in Missouri,
B.
& L., Vol.
I, 269-71. The description of Price is from John Crittenden,
Civil War Letters to His
Wife,
Vol.
I, 114, in the Eugene C.
Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas; original in
the possession of Miss Frances Harvey of Arlington, Texas.

11. O.R., Vol. HI, 563-64.

12.
Thomas L.
Snead,
The Fight
for
Missouri,
255-57.
Snead was present when Price talked to McCulloch, and although his account of
the conversation was written after the war, from memory, it probably conveys
the substance of what was said.

13.
Reminiscenses
of N. B. Pearce, mss. in the files of the Arkansas History Commission;
McCulloch's report, O.R., Vol. Ill, 104.

14.
Ware,
The
Lyon Campaign in Missouri,
310-11; L.
E. Meador, pamphlet,
History
of
the Battle
of
Wilson Creek;
O.R., Vol.
Ill, 98; Diary of John T. Buegel, 3rd Missouri Volunteers, in the J. N. Heiskell
Collection, Little Rock.

15.  Sigel's report, O.R., Vol. HI,
86-88; Schofield's account
of the repulse, 94-95. After the war Sigel wrote that he probably
escaped capture on his flight because he wore a blanket over
his uniform and had a yellow slouch hat on his head; the Confederates, he
believed, mistook him for a Texas Ranger. (Letter
of Aug. 10, 1895, to Walter L. Howard, in the Franz Sigel
Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland.) In his
article
The Flanking Column
at Wilson's Creek
(B. & L.,
Vol. I, 306) Sigel vigorously denied that he became separated
from his men after his flanking movement gave way.

16.    B. & L., Vol. 1, 296,
footnote; Snead,
The Fight for
Missouri,
275-76, 285-86; O.R.,
Vol. Ill, 57-64; Joseph A.
Mudd, "What I Saw at Wilson's Creek," in the
Missouri
His-
torical Review,
January 1913; Ware,
op. cit., 323; Schofield,
Forty-six
Years in the Army,
45.

17.
Oddly
enough, each side claimed that its opponents had been routed. Schofield wrote,
"Finally the enemy gave way and fled from the field." Sturgis said
that his men held their ground to the last and then "Withdrew at their
leisure to return to their provisions and their water." Price asserted
that "the enemy retreated in great confusion" and McCulloch said the
Federals were last seen, at noon, "fast retreating among the hills in the
distance." (O.R., Vol.
in,
57-64,
64-71, 98-102, 104-7.) Apparently the battle simply sputtered out, but however
it ended it is impossible to interpret it as anything but a Confederate
victory.

18.
The figures for this
battle, as for all others in the Civil War, vary considerably depending on the
source used. The writer has followed Snead,
The
Fight for Missouri,
310, 312. Somewhat
different totals are in O.R., Vol.
in,
72,
101, 106. See also T. L. Livermore,
Numbers
and Losses in the Civil War,
76.

19.    William
Watson,
Life
in the Confederate Army,
222-23.

3.   The Hidden Intentions

1.
Letter
of Price to Jefferson Davis, Nov. 10, 1861, O.R., Vol. Ill, 734-36.

2.
There
are many descriptions of the atmosphere at Fremont's headquarters. See, for
instance, Galusha Anderson,
A Border
City in the Civil War,
206-7; John Raymond
Howard,
Remembrance
of
Things Past,
144;
Ida M. Tarbell,
The
Life
of
Abraham Lincoln,
Vol. Ill, 63-64,
quoting from accounts by Col. George E. Leighton and General B. G. Farrar;
Lieut. Col. Camille Ferri Pisani,
Prince
Napoleon in America,
238-39. (This latter
book gives an engrossing picture of Fremont at the height of his power; it is
cited hereafter as Ferri Pisani.)

3. Diary of John Hay, quoted in Nicolay &
Hay, Vol. JV, 414.

4.
Cf.
Montgomery Blair's testimony, C.C.W., 1863, Part III, 154-55.

5.
William
T. Sherman,
Memoirs,
Vol.
I, 195-97; testimony of Frank Blair, C.C.W., 1863, Part III, 182-83, naming the
men who, in Blair's not unprejudiced opinion, were "in the worst possible
repute in California" and denouncing McKinstry as "the worst man that
Fremont had about him."

6.
Blair
was vocal about the contracts. His testimony is in C.C.W., 1863, Part IH,
178-80. There is a vast amount of material
on procurement practices at St. Louis, indicating pretty clearly the existence
of extensive irregularities, in the report of the commission set up by
Congress to investigate Fremont's regime. See "War Claims at St.
Louis," No. 94 in Executive Documents of the House of Representatives,
Second Session, 37th Congress, 1861-62. The commissioners—David Davis, Joseph
Holt, and Hugh Campbell—examined 1200 witnesses and concluded that Fremont
"virtually ignored the existence of the quartermaster's and the
commissary's departments, and of the Ordnance Bureau, and necessarily that of
the government at Washington." It added that "the most stupendous
contracts, involving an almost unprecedented waste of the public money, were
given out by him in person to favorites, over the heads of the competent and
honest officers appointed by law." (Op. cit., 34.)

7.
Letter
of Frank Blair to "Dear Judge," dated Sept. 7, 1861, in the Blair
Family Papers, Library of Congress.

8.
For
a good discussion of the disagreement between Price and McCulloch, and the
consequences it entailed, see Snead,
The Fight
for
Missouri,
293-97.
Snead, who was present as an officer on Price's staff, asserted that the
Confederates could easily have captured the Federal army, and estimated that at
least 10,000 Missourians could have been armed for Confederate service with the
military equipment that could have been taken.

9.
Fremont
Memoirs, typescript, in the Bancroft Library; Jessie Benton Fremont,
The
Story
of
the Guard,
84-85.

10.     Fremont Memoirs, 240-41. The
best account of Grant's
trials and lapses in the pre-war years is Lloyd Lewis's in
Captain
Sam Grant.

1
1. Fremont,
In
Command in Missouri,
B. & L., Vol. I,
286.

12.
Basler,
Vol. IV, 470-71; Comte de Paris,
History
of
the Civil
War
in America,
Vol. I,
338; statement of George W. Fish-back, managing editor and part owner of the
Missouri
Democrat,
in
the Ida M. Tarbell Papers, Allegheny College. (From Allan Nevins's notes.)

13.
Nicolay
& Hay, Vol. IV, 411-12; Diary of Edward Bates, 217; Letter from "S.
S." to "Dear Judge," dated Sept. 3, 1861, in the Blair Family
Papers, Library of Congress.

14.    Ferri Pisani,
238-46.

15. The text of Fremont's proclamation
is in O.R., Vol. Ill,
466-67. The description of his meeting with Mrs. Fremont and
Davis is Jessie Fremont's, in a portion of the Fremont Memoirs
headed "The First & Second Emancipation Proclamations," in
the Bancroft Library.

4.  
End
of
Neutrality

1.
Basler,
Vol. IV, 506-7. For the Act of Congress (a copy of which Lincoln thoughtfully
enclosed for Fremont's guidance) see the
Congressional
Globe,
First Session, 37th Congress, 1861,
Appendix, 42.

2.
Letter
of Fremont to Lincoln dated Sept. 8, 1861, O.R., VoL HI, 477-78.

3.
Mss.
diary of John Hay, quoted in Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 414. It should be
noted that in the Fremont Papers at the Bancroft Library there is a document
in Mrs. Fremont's handwriting denying that she ever made any such remark.

4.
Jessie
Fremont wrote three accounts of her interview. Differing in minor details but
making essentially the same statement of material facts, they are with the
Fremont Papers in the Bancroft Library. Allan Nevins, in his extremely thorough
study,
Fremont, Pathmarker
of
the West,
(503)
holds that "beyond question" Fremont got out his proclamation
"simply as a war measure in Missouri, and with little if any thought of
its effect outside that state." It takes a brash man to disagree with one
of Nevins's considered findings on Fr6mont, but it is extremely hard to believe
that the general did not intend the proclamation to be to at least some extent
a political maneuver.

5.
Basler,
Vol. IV, 531-32.

6.
American
Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861,
396-97.

7. There are
interesting references to Buckner in McClellan's
Own Story,
48-49,
and in a dispatch he sent to the War Depart-
ment from Cincinnati on June 11 (O.R., Vol. II, 674). General
Robert Anderson said that Buckner, who had made many "strong
attachments" in the officer corps of the pre-war army, did much
to win "many young men of the best families and highest in-
fluence" in Kentucky to the Confederate cause. (Testimony of
Robert Anderson before an army retirement board, in the Papers
of the Massachusetts Commandery, Military Order of the Loyal
Legion; in the Houghton Library, Harvard University.) For Nel-
son, see Col. R. M. Kelly,
Holding
Kentucky
for
the Union,
B.
& L., Vol. I, 375.

8.         Basler,
Vol. TV, 497; O.R., Vol. IV, 378, 396-97.

9. O. R., Vol. IV,
179-81. Fremont's orders to Grant, dated
Aug. 28, are explicit: "It is intended in connection with all these
movements" (i.e., operations in southeastern Missouri) "to
occupy Columbus as soon as possible." (O.R., Vol. Ill, 141-42.)

In the Fremont mss. at the Bancroft
Library, Jessie Fremont remarks that by the end of August Fremont felt that it
was time either to take Kentucky "or relinquish it into the hands of the
rebels," and mentions "the plans with which General Grant had been
made acquainted at his interview with General Fremont on the 28th of
August." Strangely enough, Grant makes no mention of this in his
Memoirs.