If the South Had Won the Civil War, Page 3

  “I do indeed, sir. And I’m glad to see that you’re no longer resisting my efforts for your safety and the safety of your family.”

  Lincoln walked slowly toward the west door. He repeated, as it were a litany: “I wore these duds when I came to Washington, and I might as well wear them going out.”

  Mrs. Lincoln and the boys were already in the van. The President halted a moment on the step and gazed sadly about, taking in the big wagon with its closed body, and the strange figures of mackintosh-draped horsemen alongside.

  “Mr. President,” said Lamon, joining him on the steps, “I have an introduction to perform.” At his words one of the strangers stepped forward.

  “Permit me, Mr. President, to introduce Major John Singleton Mosby of the Confederate States Army. He has very kindly expressed his willingness to accompany us, and I feel that we are in good custody.”

  The President shook hands with the young guerrilla leader. “Oh, yes,” he said, but still speaking as if in a dream. “Mosby. Indeed I have heard of you.”

  Only after he was in the van and established on a settee opposite his wife, did he inquire of Lamon: “Just where are we bound?”

  “To Richmond, Mr. President. I think ’twill be the safest place for you and the folks.”

  Lincoln made no reply, but reached across and stroked the head of the frightened Tad. Then he quoted in a dry whisper: “It is finished.”

  Major Mosby came to the rear of the van to assure the Lincolns that the furniture had been lashed firmly into place, and they need have no fear of an upset. The van began to move. It went rumbling out into 17th Street, with Lamon and Mosby and five of Mosby’s men riding in escort.

  There were cat-calls, then a faint cheer from some of the disorderly rovers in the street, then sounds of a fist-fight breaking out. Several young men started at a dog-trot, following the van; but they fell back when two of the Confederate troopers halted and swung their mounts about to face them.

  The fleeing party turned, moved east through the President’s Park, crossed 15th Street, and turned south to reach the Long Bridge by a devious route. When they were a few blocks away from the White House, they met only with casually curious stares from people encountered.

  Lamon had planned this flight adroitly and under pressure. He had learned that Stuart’s cavalry were closing in north of the city, eager to be the first Confederate troops to enter the Nation’s capital. But the slightly built Partisan Ranger had come on into town in advance, with a few of his men: a characteristic act in one who had explored the route for Stuart’s famous Ride-around-McClellan the year before.

  On reaching the Virginia side of the Potomac, the two Federal troopers got down from the wagon (they had no wish to go to Richmond!) and their places were taken by two of Mosby’s men. Mosby led the party on south, bent on avoiding Alexandria by traveling on back roads which he knew so well.

  It was typical of Mosby that he should be the first of the victorious soldiery to arrive in the Nation’s capital; but the Partisan Rangers were followed quickly by other cavalry. Within a few hours after the flight of the Lincoln family, miscellaneous Confederates were prowling the White House corridors, or staring with awe into dark and silent chambers of House and Senate in the new Capitol building. There was no destruction and no wholesale looting by the military, although a good many souvenirs seemed to have been carried off during the first day or two of the Secessionists’ occupancy. Items such as gavels, ink-stands, sofa-pillows and oil paintings had a way of turning up pridefully in Southern homes for some decades to come.

  Still the only widespread pillaging, with its attendant cruelty, was charged to the mobs of citizenry. Loudly professing Southern sympathies, and rejoicing drunkenly in the downfall of the North, these wolf-packs stampeded up and down the streets, breaking into shops, setting fire or attempting to set fire to the houses of United States Government officials, mutilating stray Negroes, kidnapping prostitutes and sober housewives alike, and perpetrating every other manner of atrocity in the human decalogue. Although they might deplore such occurrences, the first few Confederate officers to reach the capital were powerless in the face of such widespread lunacy. Only artillery might have controlled those herds; and artillery could not be employed for fear of inflicting heavy casualties upon the thousands of bewildered men, women and children who huddled in their homes.

  With dawn, July 7th, arrived the bulk of Jeb Stuart’s command, and the worst was over. Daylight also revealed the National Colors floating over Government buildings, where they had been left through the days and nights preceding. Jaunty troopers immediately began hauling down the flags and substituting Confederate guidons or battle-banners. Such demonstrations of exuberance were halted in short order when General Lee and his staff reached Washington the next day. One of Lee’s first orders dealt with the display of the United States flag.

  “This is the capital of a Nation,” he said. “It is a Nation of which we were once a part. It should be repugnant to any soldier of the Army of Northern Virginia to visit uncalled-for humiliation upon a brave, if humbled, foe. I desire earnestly that the Colors of the United States Government be restored to their rightful place until such time as the mediations of regularly constituted authorities may make other dispositions.”

  The weary commander of a victorious army quartered himself on that first night, and thereafter, in his old home: Arlington, on the hill beyond the Potomac. Mrs. Lee came to join him within the week.

  * * *

  However much Lee and others—North and South—might have desired those “regularly constituted authorities” to sit as a peace commission, and immediately, it was the middle of September before representatives of the two governments met in their historic conclave.

  Meanwhile Federal troops finally brought order to the cities, expediting the martial law which prevailed almost throughout the Union. At first the status of the Presidency itself was in grave doubt. Who indeed was President of the United States? Was it Lincoln, who had fled to Richmond (or deserted to the Confederate cause, as his enemies proclaimed)? Or was it Hannibal Hamlin, formerly Vice-President, now automatically in succession? Even members of the Supreme Court were divided in their opinions. Indeed there were almost as many opinions as there were editors (once the process of the press was restored) or orators eager to prate from rostrum or wagon-tail.

  The most puzzling aspects of the situation were dispelled on the receipt of a letter of resignation, unquestionably valid, from Mr. Lincoln himself. He addressed the Congress and the people of the United States at large.

  “In the hallowed year of Seventeen-seventy-six,” he wrote, “our fathers established, before the eyes of the world, a new Nation. But it now appears that Divine wisdom has dictated that that Nation shall henceforth be in twain.”

  Abraham Lincoln went on to acknowledge that the military events of recent date had demonstrated that the United States of America could no longer be held together by force of arms. He tendered his formal resignation from the Presidency.

  “Let Americans all,” he said, “North and South, blue and gray, now affirm that our respective dead shall not have perished without purpose. Let us pray that our two governments shall have a new birth in freedom.”

  Mr. Lincoln’s last word was interpreted variously by newspapers and statesmen alike. On the whole the public reaction was anything but complimentary, except in the case of the few fanatical devotees who never believed that Lincoln could commit an error. As for the ex-President himself, he had been invited to take up quarters in President Davis’s mansion, once he was escorted to Richmond by Mosby. To be a guest in the home of the Secessionist President was not, however, to Mr. Lincoln’s liking; although he was willing that his family should be cared for, politely if austerely, by their late enemies.

  “No, Mr. Davis,” Lamon recalls Lincoln’s saying flatly to the Confederate dignitary, “it’s just a case of which pen you happen to drive the calf into. Now, if you’d come our way, I suppose
the public would have demanded that I put you in the Old Capitol prison. So pray to make whatever substitution for that famous edifice you can manage! Hill, please affirm to Mr. Jefferson Davis the fact that you would have clapped him in irons, had he ventured into your bailiwick.”

  “Not irons, sir,” Lamon remonstrated, turning to Davis, “but I would have been compelled to incarcerate you.”

  Davis shrugged. “Let it be as you say.”

  Thereupon a section of Castle Thunder was vacated and scrubbed, and Abraham Lincoln was established there. Lamon wished to share his imprisonment.

  “I am a Virginian by birth,” he declared, “and, as such, I demand the right to accompany the President of the United States into exile, into a dungeon, or to the scaffold itself!”

  It was decided that Lamon’s status as Marshal of the District of Columbia was sufficient to allow him to become a prisoner of State. He was ensconced in a cell adjacent to that of Mr. Lincoln. Lamon’s role became that of a glorified secretary who spent most of his time acting as a bulwark between Abraham Lincoln and those who desired to see him, either to revile or—in some rare cases—to commiserate.

  * * *

  While Lincoln lived behind bars, the scissors of History and of Fate slashed at the map of the United States.

  There sounded still the chatter of musketry, the pounding of cannon. A simultaneous collapse and defeat of the two stoutest armies which the North had put into the field was not accepted as prima facie evidence of a National surrender by certain doughty commanders whose far-flung forces still resisted. Men died during July, hopelessly or with supreme dedication, at lonely places in Arkansas, West Virginia, and in the South Central States. But the scale of the Confederacy had hurled itself aloft, the pan of the Union struck the ground with a disheartening thud.

  In the general disorganization of government and of the military establishment, there could be no efficient supply or reinforcement of those units not directly affected by the obliteration of armies at Vicksburg and in the East. No one could count or name the last shot fired in a pitched battle, but certainly it spoke its echo into the hot air before the end of July. And, long since, the State of Maryland (following the brutal assassination of pro-Union Governor Augustus W. Bradford) had elected to join the Southern Confederacy—to be followed, in opinion and action, by Kentucky only five days later.

  The loss of these two States did not come as a surprise to most of the North. It was recognized that Maryland and Kentucky had sent huge bodies of troops to support the Confederate arms. The delighted Secessionists contended spiritedly that neither State truly desired to remain as part of the Yankee structure, but had been held there either by trickery or by force.

  Missouri, however, was quite another matter. Here there extended no Mason and Dixon line, nor was the Ohio River flowing within Missouri’s boundaries. Truly the Missouri River did flow there, but its demarkation was neither geographical nor soundly political. A preponderance of Confederate sentiment bulked heavily in the northern counties: Sterling Price, the Marmadukes, Claiborne Fox Jackson and their adherents all came from that region. The mass of pro-Yankee sentiment was in the southern portion of the State—in the highlands, with the highlanders’ traditional adherence to the status quo and their disinclination to change. Also there existed a solid core of pro-Nationalist sympathy among the Germans in St. Louis (a sturdy factor in the original decision that Missouri should remain with the North).

  Kansas was no problem: a blanket of National troops had taken care of that; the Kansas question per se was long since solved. But the “bleeding Kansas” of yore found a counterpart in the “murderous Missouri” of the several months following July. From the leaders of both Confederate and United States governments issued appeals for tolerance, human sympathy, human decency. It was no more feasible for Federal troops to attempt upholding a northern Missouri regime by the strength of bayonets, than it was for the Confederate States’ Government to send a punitive expedition through the Ozarks; though both courses were advocated by firebrands of either camp. Vicious raids by irresponsible freebooters did nothing to help the situation, no more than did the duels (these were a momentary disgrace): duels fought, many of them, by men prominent in the life of the State.

  In the autumn, however, the State Legislature, which could by no stretch of imagination be called a rump, established Missouri’s adherence to the North beyond any shadow of a doubt. Then, as in 1861, an official appeal was made for Federal troops. These were forthcoming, and remained on guard until 1866.

  The Confederacy had little desire to expend blood in order to add doubtful territory to its possessions, when such rich and populous commonwealths as Kentucky and Maryland had swept into the Southern ranks without coercion. The pro-slavery and pro-Secessionist groups and families of the northern Missouri counties promptly washed their hands of the whole situation, and the most ardent of these chose to take up residence within the Confederacy. Many pathetic or humorous accounts of the hegira which ensued have since became a portion of Americana. The “Sixty-three-ers” and “Sixty-four-ers” of Missouri legendry have almost as firm a hold on our traditional affection as the Forty-niners. Rich slave-holding families sold out—in most cases, to remarkable advantage, since there were many bidders for every inch of property. They moved to Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas, to be received with open arms by their late comrades. A former Confederate general, Sterling Price, eventually became a Confederate senator from Tennessee.

  The retention of Missouri in the Union was regarded as an event of signal importance in the West, and as a matter especially vital to her closest neighbors—Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Illinois. Attention in the East, however, was focused upon the future status of West Virginia, the struggle for the eastern shore of Maryland, and the problem of Washington, D.C.

  In Richmond, Virginia’s more vociferous patriots demanded immediate re-acquisition of those counties of northwestern Virginia which had formed a new State and so recently attached themselves to the United States (formal admission: June 19th, 1863). Following the piecemeal destruction of the Army of the Potomac, Confederate commanders of troops in the Harpers Ferry region and farther up the Valley of Virginia had, on their own responsibility, thrown out columns through mountains to the west. (In one case at least there was out-and-out expression of intent to seize and subjugate the city of Charleston.) The advancing Secessionists were halted with heavy losses, inflicted by Federal troops still holding the region, together with West Virginia militia and hastily armed parties of enraged citizens. Governor Arthur I. Boreman issued a manifesto in which he declared that the mother state, Virginia, stood guilty of abrogating morally the doctrine of Secession which had now achieved a dignity of historical stature. Quoting the lives, fortunes and sacred honor phrase of the original Declaration of Independence, Governor Boreman flung back in the teeth of the Secessionists their own statements, uttered devoutly in earlier years.

  “We West Virginians stand as intentioned spiritually as we do physically,” he declared, “to uphold the doctrine of self-determination as staunchly as any Virginian, living or dead, ever upheld it against the fancied domination of the North.” Save West Virginia! became a rallying cry throughout southeastern Ohio and southwestern Pennsylvania. Within three days after the publication of this firm stand, Federal artillery brigades were wheeling into position in the mountains.

  In Richmond ex-President Lincoln was reputed to have pleaded personally with Jefferson Davis to avoid further bloodshed. Lamon, in his memoirs,* hints that a meeting came about, but gives few details. Whether he was impressed by Boreman’s plea or not, or whether he was considerate merely of the practical military problems involved (obviously these were tremendous, because of the nature of the terrain) Davis soon persuaded his impetuous commanders not to proceed further on what might have turned out to be an exceedingly ill-starred campaign. The admission of West Virginia to the Union was acknowledged by the Southern Confederacy, and was included as an integr
al part of the Washington Treaty signed on December 16th, 1863.

  * * *

  When the Army of the Potomac was destroyed during the first week of July, Major General Sickles managed to salvage the bulk of Major General David B. Birney’s Division of his corps, together with remnants of Brigadier General Andrew A. Humphreys’ Division. In a rapid retreat across northern Maryland, Sickles was joined also by most of the “Philadelphia Brigade” and a few other regiments of Brigadier General John Gibbon’s Division, Second Corps. Lee was occupied with erasing the Union Fifth and Sixth Corps from the landscape, so Sickles had been harried during his march only by small detachments of Confederate cavalry who soon turned back to rejoin Stuart.

  Sickles explained afterward that he knew a retreat in a southerly direction would be fatal. In the absence of specific orders from Meade, he decided to take up a defensive position on the left bank of the Susquehanna. There he might resist any approach of the enemy aimed at Wilmington and Philadelphia. (Meade did indeed send him orders to the contrary, by three couriers, but all of those messengers were killed or captured before they could reach Sickles.)

  Whatever the motive of the Third Corps commander, his movement served one grain of useful purpose. It affirmed the retention of Cecil County, Maryland, by the Union. Sickles desired mightily to take over the entire eastern shore of that State.… He would have needed Napoleon’s entire army and Drake’s entire navy to occupy the region successfully: pro-Southern sentiment had always run high on the Del-Mar-Va peninsula. Chincoteague Island, Virginia, voted against Secession at the outbreak of the war, but by a narrow margin. Many residents of Delaware, a loyal State (although a slave State), went south to join the Confederates.

  Sickles’ occupation of Cecil County kept that one small area of Maryland in the Union. Snuggled as they were against Pennsylvania and northern Delaware, the residents boasted a preponderance of pro-Federal belief. This county was later attached to the dismembered State of Delaware, after Sussex County had registered a top-heavy sentiment for leaving its parent Commonwealth and joining adjacent Maryland in cleaving to the Confederate States of America.