Never Call Retreat, page 56
4. Bennett, op. cit., 369-72; N.O.R., Vol. XIII, 579-82, 605-7, 617; Naval Letters of Capt. Percival Drayton, Bulletin of the New York Public Library, Vol. X, Number Eleven, 615, quoting a letter dated Feb. 28, 1863.
5. Confidential Correspondence of Gustavus Vasa Fox, Vol. I, 179-80, 197; O.R., Vol. XIV, 436.
6. Beauregard, op. cit., 4-5.
7. Samuel Jones, The Siege of Charleston, 170-71.
8. Ibid., 167 ff. There is a good description of the scene inside
Fort Sumter in John Johnson, The Defense of Charleston Harbor,
Including Fort Sumter and the Adjacent Island, 50-56.
9. Du Pont's report of April 8, in N.O.R., Vol. XIV, 3-4.
10.Ibid., 11-25, passim; Jones, The Siege of Charleston, Hill.
11.Letter of Rodgers to Welles dated May 2, 1863, in the Welles Papers, Huntington Library.
12.N.O.R., Vol. XIV, 75-78; John Johnson, op. cit., 58. For a statement by six of the monitor captains agreeing that the ironclads could not subdue the forts, see N.O.R., Vol. XIV, 45-48.
13.Diary of Gideon Welles, Vol. I, 259; N.O.R., Vol. XIV, 41-43, 59-60; Basler, Vol. VI, 170. In the fall of 1863 a naval court of inquiry cleared Stimers of Du Pont's charges.
14.A Virginia Yankee in the Civil War, 139; Harper's Weekly, issue of April 25, 1863.
2. Men Trained for Command
1. Letter of Adams to Dana dated April 8, 1863, in the R. H. Dana Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.
2. Lord Newton, Lord Lyons: a Record of British Diplomacy, Vol. I, 99-100, quoting a letter from Lord Russell dated March 28, 1863.
3. Ibid., 102, 104-5; Montague Bernard, A Historical Account of the Neutrality of Great Britain during the American Civil War, 314-16; N.O.R., Vol. II, 97-98; Diary of Gideon Welles, Vol. I, 266-67, 304-5.
4. N.O.R., Series Two, Vol. II, 131, 151, 309; C. F. Adams, Charles Francis Adams, by His Son, 316, 319; William W. Wade, The Man Who Stopped the Rams, American Heritage, Vol. XIV, No. Three, 80-81.
5. N.O.R., Series Two, Vol. Ill, 505-6; Sarah Agnes Wallace and Frances Elma Gillespie, eds., The Journal of Benjamin Moran, Vol. II, 1083; editorial from the Richmond Whig, quoted in the Manchester Guardian for Jan. 16, 1863.
6. The Journal of Benjamin Moran, Vol. II, 1106-7; Diary of Gideon Welles, Vol. I, 259.
7. Letter of Anson G. Henry of Oregon, dated April 12, 1863, in the Anson G. Henry Papers, Illinois State Historical Society; letter of Frank A. Haskell dated April 8, in the Haskell Papers, State Historical Society of Wisconsin.
8. Memoirs of Captain William G. LeDuc, quoting a postwar letter to the editor of the National Tribune setting forth Hooker's version of Lincoln's warning, in the Huntington Library; Noah Brooks, Washington in Lincoln's Time, 51-56. Brooks remarks that during this visit Lincoln anxiously read Southern newspapers that came in through the picket lines, hoping to get news about Du Pont's attack.
9. Darius N. Couch, The Chancellorsville Campaign, B. & L., Vol. m, 155.
10.O.R., Vol. XXIII, Part Two, 111, 171.
11.Ibid., 255-56; Stanley Horn, The Army of Tennessee, 231.
12. Rosecrans explained his reasoning in testimony before the
Committee on the Conduct of the War (CCW Report, 1865, Vol.
Ill, Rosecrans' Campaigns, 26-27). See also O.R., Vol. XXIII,
Part One, 9, 403-4. Anyone who cares to leaf through his long
exchange of messages with Halleck can find plenty of material in
O.R., Vol. XXIII, Part Two, 9-383, passim.
13.A good account of the action at Kelly's Ford is in H. B. McClellan's / Rode with Jeb Stuart, 202-17.
14.Lee's appraisal of the possibilities is set forth in his dispatches to Cooper, to Seddon and to President Davis during April. O.R., Vol. XXV, Part Two, 713-14, 724-25, 745.
15. Ibid, 756-57.
3. The Darkness, and Jackson, and Fear
1. William Swinton, Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac,
275; CCW Report, 1865, Vol. I, Army of the Potomac, 139-40.
2. Ibid., 114-16; O.R., Vol. XXV, Part One, 1057-65, 1066.
3. Walter H. Hebert, Fighting Joe Hooker, 195-98; O.R., Vol. XXV, Part One, 171; Part Two, 306-7.
4. Chancellorsville has been exhaustively analyzed by highly competent critics. To this writer the best study is John Bigelow's massive The Campaign of Chancellorsville; it should be supplemented by Douglas Southall Freeman's material in R. E. Lee and Lee's Lieutenants. A good brief account of Federal maneuvers is Darius N. Couch, The Chancellorsville Campaign, B. & L., Vol. Ill, 154-71. Also useful is Edward J. Stackpole, Chancellorsville; Lee's Greatest Battle.
5. Couch, op. cit. 161.
6. O.R., Vol. XXV, Part Two, 330.
7. Col. William Allan, manuscript account of postwar conversations with Lee, in the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina Library; Lee's report on Chancellorsville, O.R., Vol. XXV, Part One, 797-98; Freeman, R. E. Lee, Vol. II, 520 ff.
8. O.R., Vol. XXV, Part Two, 360-61. General Howard insisted that this order never reached him. Carl Schurz, one of his division commanders, said that he himself received the order and read it to Howard. Schurz said Howard told him that Hooker did not anticipate a flank attack, citing as proof Hooker's detachment of an XI Corps brigade to go to Sickles' aid. (Carl Schurz, Reminiscences, Vol. II, 416-20; Howard, The Eleventh Corps at Chancellorsville, B. & L., Vol. II, 196.)
9. Couch, op. cit., 163; O.R., Vol. XXV, Part Two, 363. The order to Sedgwick was timed 4:10 P.M., shortly before Jackson was completing the formation of his column of assault.
10.Letter of Abner Doubleday to Samuel P. Bates dated Oct. 19, 1875, in the Bates Collection, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Division of Public Records, Harrisburg.
11.O.R., Vol. XXV, Part Two, 365. The message to Sedgwick was sent at 9 P.M. Headquarters apparently misunderstood Sedgwick's position; he had crossed below the town and he needed time to get back into position to carry the sunken road and Marye's Heights. For an analysis of the fight put up by the XI Corps see Augustus Choate Hamlin, The Battle of Chancellorsville, 125-28. The soldier's comment quoted here is from the Civil War Diary of Thomas Evans, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
12. Couch, op. cit., 164-65.
4. Aftermath of Victory
1. A Rebel War Clerk's Diary, 205-7; T. C. De Leon, Four Years in Rebel Capitals, 251-52; Richmond Daily Dispatch, issues dated May 12 and 13, 1863; Lee to Seddon dated May 10, in O.R., Vol. XXV, Part Two, 790.
2. O.R., Vol. XXIV, Part One, 215; Vol. XXV, Part Two, loc. cit.
3. O.R., Vol. XXV, Part Two, 790-92.
4. Thomas Jordan, Notes of Projected Operations on the Confederate Side Immediately Following the Battle of Chancellorsville, in B. & L, extra-illustrated, Vol. XIII, at the Huntington Library. Written in 1877, Jordan's notes were corrected by Beauregard himself. See also O.R., Vol. XXV, Part Two, 791-92; Lee's Lieutenants, Vol. Ill, 42-45.
5. As late as June 23 Lee wrote Davis that if his campaign succeeded "we might even hope to compel the recall of some of the enemy's troops from the west." O.R., Vol. XXVII, Part Three, 924-25.
6. Lee's own postwar explanation of his plans is in Col. William Allan's manuscript notes of a conversation at Lexington, Va., in 1870, now in the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina Library. Maj. Gen. Harry Heth said that Lee told him: "The question of food for this army gives me more trouble and uneasiness than everything else combined; the absence of the army from Virginia gives our people an opportunity to collect supplies ahead." SHSP, Vol. IV, 153.
7. E. P. Alexander, in SHSP, Vol. IV, 98; Lee to Davis, June 10, in O.R., Vol. XXVII, Part Three, 881-82.
8. O.R., Vol. XXV, Part Two, 833-34, 846; Vol. XXVII, Part Three, 453-54, 909, 947; Freeman, R. E. Lee, Vol. HI, 12-28; Clifford Dowdey, Experiment in Rebellion, 277-86.
9. O.R., Vol. XXVII, Part One, 34-35; Basler, Vol. VI, 257.
10. O.R., Vol. XXVII, Part One, 45; Basler, Vol. VI, 281-82.
On the eve of the Battle of Gettysburg the President wrote to Gov.
Joel Parker of New Jersey: "I really think the attitude of the enemy's army in Pennsylvania presents us the best opportunity we have had since the war began." O.R., Vol. XXVII, Part Three, 436-37.
11.Letter of T. J. Barnett to Barlow dated May 18, 1863, in the Barlow Papers, Huntington Library; letter of Frank Haskell to his brother dated May 12, in the Haskell Papers, State Historical Society of Wisconsin.
12.Letter of Barnett to Barlow dated June 10, in the Barlow Papers; letter of Lincoln to Isaac Arnold dated May 23, in the Lincoln Collection, Chicago Historical Society. For the exchange of views on McClellan, see O.R., Vol. XXVII, Part Three, 429, 436; also Basler, Vol. VI, 311-12.
13.The assumption that the administration nagged Hooker into resigning does not seem entirely justified by the record. The dispute over Harper's Ferry simply was not big enough to bring a resignation from a general who was not ready to quit anyway. The decisive factor appears to have been Lincoln's order putting Hooker under Halleck; the two men cordially disliked and distrusted each other. For the "forced resignation" theory, see Charles F. Benjamin, Hooker's Appointment and Removal, B. & L., Vol. Ill, 239-43; a very different analysis is in K. P. Williams, Lincoln Finds a General, Vol. II, 646-53. Hooker's own version is in CCW Report, 1865, Vol. I, Army of the Potomac, 163-78, passim.
5. Mirage on the Skyline
1. Diary of Francis Middleton Kennedy, chaplain, entries for June 25 and June 29, 1863, in the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina Library; letter of Major William Noland Berkeley to his wife dated June 28, in the Alderman Library, University of Virginia; Fitzgerald Ross, Cities and Camps of the Confederate States, 34, 39; letter of Edward Mc-Gehee Burrus dated July 27, in the John C. Burrus Family Papers, Department of Archives, Louisiana State University; James Arthur Lyon Fremantle, The Fremantle Diary, 195; Spencer Glasgow Welch, A Confederate Surgeon's Letters to His Wife, 56-57. Both Chaplain Kennedy and Major Berkeley testified that despite Lee's orders the Confederate private managed to do a good deal of eifective free-lance foraging.
2. Cf. Col. Charles F. Wainwright, A Diary of Battle, 229-30: "The Pennsylvanians do not give us an over-warm welcome; they are much more greedy than the Marylanders. . . . They fully maintain their reputation for meanness."
3. Letter of Gen. N. B. Buford dated June 4, 1863, in the Jacob Ammen Papers, Illinois State Historical Library. For the mutiny of the 109th Illinois regiment, see the New York Tribune for Feb. 7, 1863.
4. There is a slightly more detailed discussion of the coal field disturbances in Glory Road, 239-44.
5. Congressional Globe, 37th Congress, Third Session, Appendix, 209-10; Part Two, 998. See also O.R., Series Three, Vol. V, 611-12.
6. O.R., Vol. XXIII, Part One, 395-96. There is an engaging retelling of the story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer for August 27, 1933.
7. Appleton's American Annual Cyclopaedia for 1863, 4T5.
8. Nicolay & Hay, Vol. VII, 331; American Annual Cyclopaedia for 1863, 473-74; Journal of D. R. Larned, entry for May 5, 1863, in the Library of Congress; Dayton dispatch in the Cincinnati Daily Commercial for May 7, 1863; O.R., Series Two, Vol. V, 634-35.
9. Ibid., 635-38, 645; Kean, Inside the Confederate Government, 63; Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, issue of May 25, 1863.
10.American Annual Cyclopaedia for 1863, 482.
11.Nicolay & Hay, Vol. VII, 338-39; Basler, Vol. VI, 260-69.
12.There is an excellent account of this case in Mrs. L. E. Ellis, The Chicago Times During the Civil War, Illinois State Historical Society's Transactions for the Year 1932, 135-69. See also the Chicago Times, issues for Jan. 3 and June 5, 1863; American Annual Cyclopaedia for 1863, 423-25; O.R., Series Two, Vol. V, 724, and Series Three, Vol. V, 837-38. It seems clear that Burnside's actions against both Vallandigham and Storey were taken without consultation with Washington.
13.Rowland, Vol. V, 513-15; Alexander H. Stephens, A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States, Vol. II, 563-64.
14. Ibid., 565-66; O.R., Series Two, Vol. VI, 74-76.
15.Diary of Gideon Welles, Vol. I, 359-61; Johnston and Browne, Life of Alexander H. Stephens, 444-45.
16.Letter of Barnett to Barlow dated May 28, 1863, declaring that the political opposition to President Lincoln "is so mixed up that it, as much as anything, presents the spectacle of a peace party"; letter of S. S. Cox to Barlow dated Nov. 21, 1863; both in the Barlow Papers, Huntington Library.
6. Encounter at Gettysburg
1. To follow Lee from June 28 to the beginning of the battle see Freeman, R. E. Lee, Vol. Ill, 60 ff.
2. O.R., Vol. XXVII, Part One, 70-71; Part Three, 458; testimony of Gen. W. S. Hancock, CCW Report, 1865, Vol. I, Army of the Potomac, 404.
3. Col. George Meade, The Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade, Vol. II, 35-36; Col. Thomas L. Livermore, The Gettysburg Campaign, MHSM Papers, Vol. XIII, 524-26, 528-29.
4. Abner Doubleday, who was Reynolds' ranking division commander, said that in conversations en route to Gettysburg Reynolds "was clearly of opinion that it was necessary to bring the enemy to battle as soon as possible . . . He was really eager to get at them." (Letter of Doubleday to Samuel Bates dated April 3, 1874, in the Bates Collection, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Division of Public Records, Harrisburg.) The orderly who was with Reynolds when the battle began wrote that he had seen many men killed in action but that he never saw one die as quickly as Reynolds did. (Letter of Charles H. Veil to "Mr. McConaughy," dated April 7, 1864, in the Civil War Institute, Gettysburg College.)
5. Letter of Gen. Barlow dated July 7, 1863, in the Francis Channing Barlow Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. The XI Corps did some hard fighting before it retreated. Its Gettysburg losses included 369 men killed and 1922 wounded, and the great bulk of these losses came on July 1. It listed fewer men as "missing" than did the I Corps.
6. Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, Vol. Ill, 34-37; Ewell's report, O.R., Vol. XXVII, Part Two, 444-46; Jubal Early, Causes of Lee's Defeat at Gettysburg, SHSP, Vol. IV, 253-61; A. L. Long, Memoirs of Robert E. Lea, 276-78. Ewell has probably been too much blamed for the Confederate failure to seize the heights south of Gettysburg on July 1. His troops were temporarily disorganized by their victory and by the large number of Federal prisoners they had taken; one of the two divisions on the scene, Rodes', had lost 2500 men, and Howard's artillery was laying down a sharp fire. Lee's orders—to take the high ground but not to bring on a general engagement—were vague, and Ewell's decision to wait until Johnson's division arrived is quite understandable. By the time that division was ready to go into action the Federal grip on the new defensive line was probably too firm to be broken.
7. At 6 P.M. on July 1 Meade wrote to Hancock and Double-day: "It seems to me we have so concentrated that a battle at Gettysburg is now forced on us, and that, if we get up all our people and attack with our whole force tomorrow, we ought to defeat the force the enemy has." O.R., Vol. XXVII, Part Three, 466.
8. Longstreet, Lee's Right Wing at Gettysburg, B. & L., Vol. Ill, 339.
9. Diary of Henry Robinson Berkeley, entry dated July 2, in the Virginia State Historical Library, Richmond; letter of E. P. Alexander to his brother dated July 17, in the E. P. Alexander Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina Library.
10.Notes by Gen. Warren commenting on Samuel P. Bates' The Battle of Gettysburg, in the G. K. Warren Papers, New York State Library, Albany.
11.The theory that Meade on the night of July 2 wanted to order a retreat to the Pipe Creek line hardly needs to be taken seriously. The Hooker contingent in the Army of the Potomac officer corps argued this at length, and was supported by members of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, and the dreary record of this back-biting is available in the Committee's 1865 report, but the alleged evidence hardly merits detailed consideration.
12.Cf. Gen. Heth, Vol. IV, SHSP, 160: "The fact is, General Lee believed the Army of Northern Virginia, as it then existed, could accomplish anything."
13. Longstreet, Lee in Pennsylvania, in Annals of the War, 429.
14.O.R., Vol. XXVII, Part One, 74; Col. J. B. Walton, in SHSP, Vol. V, 47-52.
15.John Gibbon, Personal Recollections of the Civil War, 147-48; report of Col. Joseph Mayo, Jr., of the 3rd Virginia Infantry, in the George Pickett Papers, Manuscript Department, Duke University Library; diary of Henry Robinson Berkeley, entry for July 3, in the Virginia State Historical Society; Freeman, R. E. Lee, Vol. Ill, 120; memoirs of Gen. Henry H. Bingham, in the Palmer Collection, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland.
16.Longstreet, Lee's Right Wing at Gettysburg, B. & L., Vol. Ill, 346-47.
17.All estimates of numbers and losses in this attack are conjectural, and it is hard to feel sure that one knows how many men made the advance. The figures in the text simply represent the best guess this writer can make. A good study of the subject is George R. Stewart, Pickett's Charge.
It might be emphasized that only a third of "Pickett's charge" was actually Pickett's, since he was not formally in command of either Pettigrew or Trimble. In fact, the command situation was extremely odd. Most of the men belonged to A. P. Hill, but Longstreet was in general control, and he used his control hardly at all—possibly because of his profound premonition of disaster—to direct or guide the operation. Once the advance began the separate divisions were more or less on their own.
18. Frank A. Haskell, The Battle of Gettysburg, 118; letter of Meade to "Dear Margaret" dated July 5, in the George G. Meade Papers, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Walter Lord, ed., The Fremantle Diary, 213-15; John D. Imboden, The Confederate Retreat from Gettysburg, B. & L., Vol. Ill, 421.
