American Men of Action Part 16

The Union right wing had been routed, and the Confederates, certain of a great victory, turned against the left wing, twenty-five thousand strong, under command of Thomas. They swarmed up the slope on which Thomas had taken his position, only to be hurled back with heavy loss.

Again and again they charged, sixty thousand of them, but Thomas stood like a rock against which the Confederates dashed themselves in vain.

For six hours that terrific fighting continued, until nearly half of Thomas's men lay dead or wounded, but night found him still master of the position, saving the Union army from destruction. Ever afterwards Thomas was known as "The Rock of Chickamauga."

In the following year, he again distinguished himself by defeating Hood at Nashville, in one of the most brilliant battles of the war. The defeat was the most decisive by either side in a general engagement, the Confederate army losing half its numbers, and being so routed and demoralized that it could not rally and was practically destroyed.

Thomas's plan of battle is studied to this day in the military schools of Europe, and has been compared with that of Napoleon at Austerlitz.

After Grant, Sherman, Sheridan and Thomas, there is a wide gap. No other commanders on the Union side measured up to them, although there were many of great ability. McPherson, Buell, Sumner, Hanc.o.c.k, Meade, Rosecrans, Kilpatrick, Pope--all had their hours of triumph, but none of them developed into what could be called a great commander. Whether from inherent weakness, or from lack of opportunity for development, all stopped short of greatness. It is worth noting that every famous general, Union or Confederate, and most of the merely prominent ones, were graduates of West Point and had received their baptism of fire in Mexico, the only exception being Sheridan, who did not graduate from West Point until after the war with Mexico was over.

Turning now to the Confederate side, we find here, too, four supremely able commanders, the first of whom, Robert E. Lee, is believed by many to be the greatest in our country's history. No doubt some of the renown which attaches to Lee's name is due to his desperate championship of a lost cause, and to the love which the people of the South bore, and still bear, him because of his singularly sweet and unselfish character.

But, sentiment aside, and looking at him only as a soldier, he must be given a place in the front rank of our greatest captains. There are not more than two or three to rank with him--certainly there is none to rank ahead of him.

Robert Edward Lee was a son of that famous "Light Horse Harry" Lee to whose exploits during the Revolution we have already referred. He was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, in 1807, entered West Point at the age of eighteen, and graduated four years later, second in his cla.s.s. His father had died ten years before, and his mother lived only long enough to welcome him home from the Academy. He was at once a.s.signed to the engineer corps of the army, distinguished himself in the war with Mexico and served as superintendent of West Point from 1852 to 1855.

Meanwhile, at the age of twenty-four, he had married Mary Randolph, daughter of Washington Parke Custis, of Arlington, and great-grand-daughter of George Washington's wife. Miss Custis was a great heiress, and in time the estate of Arlington, situated on the heights across the Potomac from Washington, became hers and her husband's, but he nevertheless continued in the service. The marriage was a happy and fortunate one in every way, and Lee's home life was throughout a source of help and inspiration to him.

In the autumn of 1859, while home on leave, he was ordered to a.s.sist in capturing John Brown, who had taken Harper's Ferry. At the head of a company of marines, he took Brown prisoner and, protecting him from a mob which would have lynched him, handed him over to the authorities.

Two years later came the great trial of his life, when he was called upon to decide between North and South, between Virginia and the Union.

Lee was not a believer in slavery; he had never owned slaves, and when Custis died in 1859, Lee had carried out the dead man's desire that all the slaves at Arlington should be freed. Neither was he a believer in secession; but, on the other hand, he questioned the North's right to invade and coerce the seceding states, and when Virginia joined them, and made him commander-in-chief of her army, he accepted the trust.

Shortly before, at the instance of his fellow-Virginian, General Scott, he had been offered command of the Union army, but declined it, stating that, though opposed to secession and deprecating war, he could take no part in an invasion of the southern states.

Curiously enough, the southern press, which was to end by idolizing him, began by abusing him. His first campaign was in western Virginia and was a woeful failure, due partly to the splendid way in which McClellan, on the Union side, managed it, and partly to blunders on the Confederate side for which Lee was in no way responsible; but the result was that that section of the state was lost to the Confederacy forever, and Lee got the blame. Even his friends feared that he had been over-rated, and he was sent away from the field of active hostilities to the far South, where he was a.s.signed to command Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. He accepted the a.s.signment without comment, and went to work immediately fortifying the coast, to such good purpose that his reputation was soon again firmly established. Early in 1862, he was recalled to Richmond to a.s.sist in its defense. He found his beautiful estate on the heights opposite Washington confiscated, his family exiled, his fortune gone.

General Joseph E. Johnston was in command of the forces at Richmond, and was preparing to meet McClellan, who was slowly advancing up the peninsula. But Johnston was wounded at the battle of Seven Pines, on May 31, and on the following day, Lee a.s.sumed command of the army. He got it well in hand at once, sent Stuart on a raid around McClellan's lines, and gradually forced the Union army away from Richmond, until the capital of the Confederacy was no longer in danger. Flushed with success, Lee threw his army to the northeast against Pope, routed him, crossed the Potomac into Maryland, threatened Washington, and carried the war with a vengeance into the enemy's country. A more complete reversal of conditions could not be imagined; a month before, he had been engaged in a seemingly desperate effort to save Richmond; now he had started upon an invasion of the North which promised serious results.

But things did not turn out as he expected. The inhabitants of Maryland did not rally to him, McClellan was soon after him with a great army, and on September 17, overtook him at Antietam, and fought a desperate battle; from which Lee, overwhelmed by an army half again as large as his own, was forced to withdraw defeated, though in good order, and recross the Potomac into Virginia. Three months later, he got his revenge in full measure at Fredericksburg, routing Burnside with fearful loss, and early in May of the following year scored heavily again by defeating Hooker at Chancellorsville. The last victory was a dearly-bought one, for it cost the life of that most famous of all American cavalry leaders, "Stonewall" Jackson, of whom we shall speak hereafter.

That was the culmination of Lee's career, for two months after Chancellorsville, having started on another great invasion of the North, on the fourth day of July, 1863, he was forced to retire from the fierce battle of Gettysburg with his army seriously crippled and with all hope of invading the North at an end. He was on the defensive, after that, with Grant's great army gradually closing in upon him and drawing nearer and nearer to Richmond. That he was able to prolong this struggle for nearly two years, especially considering the exhausted state of the South, was remarkable to the last degree, eloquent testimony to the high order of his leadership. Toward the last, his men were in rags and practically starving, but there was no murmuring so long as their beloved "Ma.r.s.e Robert" was with them.

On the ninth day of April, 1865, six days after the fall of Richmond, Lee found himself surrounded at Appomattox Courthouse by a vastly superior force under General Grant. To have fought would have meant a useless waste of human life. Lee chose the braver and harder course, and surrendered. He knew that there could be but one end to the struggle, and he was brave enough to admit defeat. On that occasion, Grant rose to the full stature of a hero. He treated his conquered foe with every courtesy; granted terms whose liberality was afterwards sharply criticised by the clique in control of Congress, but which Grant insisted should be carried out to the letter; sent the rations of his own army to the starving Confederates, and permitted them to retain their horses in order that they might get home, and have some means of earning a livelihood.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LEE]

When Lee rode back to his army, it was to be surrounded by his ragged soldiers, who could not believe that the end had come, who were ready to keep on fighting, and who broke down and sobbed like children when they learned the truth. The next day, he issued an address to his army, a dignified and worthy composition, which is still treasured in many a southern home; and then, mounting his faithful horse, Traveller, which had carried him through the war, he rode slowly away to Richmond. He was greeted everywhere with the wildest enthusiasm, and found himself then, as he has ever since remained, the idol and chosen hero of the southern people, who saw in him a unique and splendid embodiment of valor and virtue, second only to the first and greatest of all Virginians, and even surpa.s.sing him in the subtle qualities of the heart.

As has been said, his fortune was gone, and it was necessary for him to earn a living. The opportunity soon came in the offer of the presidency of Washington College, at Lexington, where the remainder of his days were spent in honored quiet. Those five years of warfare, with their hardships and exposures, had brought on rheumatism of the heart, and the end came on October 12, 1870. He died dreaming of battle, and his last words were, "Tell Hill he _must_ come up!"

Next to Lee in the hearts of the Southern soldiers was Thomas Jonathan Jackson, better known by the sobriquet of "Stonewall," which General Bee gave him during the first battle of Bull Run. Driven back by the Union onset, the Confederate left had retreated a mile or more, when it reached the plateau where Jackson and his brigade were stationed. The brigade never wavered, but stood fast and held the position.

"See there!" shouted General Bee, "Jackson is standing like a stone wall. Rally on the Virginians!"

Rally they did, and Jackson was ever thereafter known as "Stonewall."

It was a good name, as representing not only his qualities of physical courage, but also his qualities of moral courage. There was something rock-like and immovable about him, even in his everyday affairs, and so "Stonewall" he remained.

In some respects Stonewall Jackson was the most remarkable man whom the war made famous. A graduate of West Point, he had served through the Mexican war, and then, finding the army not to his liking, had resigned from the service to accept a professorship at the Virginia Military Inst.i.tute. He made few friends, for he was of a silent and reserved disposition, and besides, he conducted a Sunday school for colored children. It is a fact worth noting that neither of the two great leaders of the Confederate armies believed in slavery, the one thing which they were fighting to defend. So Jackson's neighbors merely thought him queer, and left him to himself; certainly, none suspected that he was a genius.

Yet a genius he was, and proved it. Enlisting as soon as the war began, and distinguishing himself, as we have seen, by holding back the Union charge at Bull Run, he was made a major-general after that battle, and a year later probably saved Richmond from capture by preventing the armies of Banks and McDowell from operating with McClellan, making one of the most brilliant campaigns of the war, overwhelming both his antagonists, and, leaving them stunned behind him, hastening to Richmond to a.s.sist Lee, arriving just in time to turn the tide of battle at Gaines Mills.

As soon as McClellan had been beaten back from Richmond, Jackson returned to the Shenandoah valley, defeated Banks at Cedar Run, seized Pope's depot at Mana.s.sas, and held him on the ground until Lee came up, when Pope was defeated at the second battle of Bull Run. Two weeks later, Jackson captured Harper's Ferry, with thirteen thousand prisoners, seventy cannon, and a great quant.i.ty of stores; commanded the left wing of the Confederate army at Antietam, against which the corps of Hooker, Mansfield and Sumner hurled themselves in vain; and at Fredericksburg commanded the right wing, which repelled the attack of Franklin's division.

These remarkable successes had established Jackson's reputation as a commander of unusual merit; he was promoted to lieutenant-general, and Lee came to rely upon him more and more. He had, too, by a certain high courage and charm of character, won the complete devotion of his men; to say that they loved him, that any one of them would have laid down his life for him, is but the simple truth. No other leader in the whole war, with the exception of Lee, who dwelt in a region high and apart, was idolized as he was. But his career was nearly ended, and, by the bitter irony of fate, he was to be killed by the very men who loved him.

On the second day of May, 1863, Lee sent him on a long flanking movement around Hooker's army at Chancellorsville. Emerging from the woods towards evening, he surprised and routed Howard's corps, and between eight and nine o'clock rode forward with a small party beyond his own lines to reconnoitre the enemy's position. As he turned to ride back, his party was mistaken for Federal cavalrymen and a volley poured into it by a Confederate outpost. Several of the party were killed, and Jackson received three wounds. They were not in themselves fatal, but pneumonia followed, and death came eight days later.

There was none to fill his place--it was as though Lee had lost his right arm. The result of the war would have been in no way different had he lived, but his death was an incalculable loss to the Confederacy. It was Lee's opinion that he would have won the battle of Gettysburg had he had Jackson with him, and this is more than probable, so evenly did victory and defeat hang in the balance there. But, even then, the North would have been far from conquered, and its superior resources and larger armies must have won in the end. Perhaps, after all, Jackson's death was, in a way, a blessing, since it shortened a struggle which, in any event, could have had but one result.

Another heavy loss which the Confederacy suffered even earlier in the war was that of Albert Sidney Johnston, killed at the battle of Shiloh.

Jefferson Davis said the cause of the South was lost when Johnston fell, but this was, of course, only a manner of speaking, for Johnston could not have saved it. Johnston had an adventurous career and saw a great deal of fighting before the Civil War began. Graduating at West Point in 1826, he served as chief of staff to General Atkinson during the Black Hawk war, and then, joining the Texan revolutionists, served first as a private and then as commander of the Texan army. He commanded a regiment in the war with Mexico, and in 1857, led a successful expedition against the rebellious Mormons in Utah.

His training, then, and an experience greater than any other commander in the Civil War started out with, fitted him for brilliant work from the very first. At the outbreak of the war, he was put by the Confederate government in command of the departments of Kentucky and Tennessee, and on April 6, 1862, swept down upon Grant's unprotected army at Shiloh. That battle might have ended in a disastrous defeat for the North but for the accident which deprived the Confederates of their commander. About the middle of the afternoon, while leading his men forward to the attack which was pressing the Federals back upon the river, he was struck by a bullet which severed an artery in the thigh.

The wound was not a fatal, nor even a very serious one, and his life could have been saved had it been given immediate attention. But Johnston, carried away by the prospect of impending victory and the excitement of the fight, continued in the saddle cheering on his men, his life-blood pulsing away unheeded, until he sank unconscious into the arms of one of his officers. He was lifted to the ground and a surgeon hastily summoned. But it was too late.

Johnston's death left the command of the army to General Pierre Beauregard, who had had the somewhat dubious honor of firing the first shot of the war against Fort Sumter and of capturing the little garrison which defended it. Beauregard was a West Point man, standing high in his cla.s.s, and his work, previous to the war, was largely in the engineer corps. When the war began, he was superintendent of the academy at West Point, but resigned at once to join the South. After the capture of Sumter, he was ordered to Virginia and was in practical command at the first battle of Bull Run, which resulted in the rout of the Union forces. After that, he was sent to Tennessee, as second in command to Albert Sidney Johnston, and he succeeded to the command of the army on Johnston's death at Shiloh.

The first day's fighting at Shiloh had resulted in a Confederate victory, but Beauregard was not able to maintain this advantage on the second day, and was finally compelled to draw off his forces. Grant pursued him, and Beauregard was forced to retreat far to the south before he was safe from capture. Two years later, he attempted to stop Sherman on his march to the sea, but was unable to do so, and, joining forces with Joseph E. Johnston, surrendered, to Sherman a few days after Appomattox.

Joseph E. Johnston had been a cla.s.smate of Lee at West Point, and had seen much service before the Civil War began. He was aide-de-camp to General Scott in the Black Hawk war; and in the war with the Florida Indians, was brevetted for gallantry in rescuing the force he commanded from an ambush into which it had been lured, the fight being so desperate that, besides being wounded, no less than thirty bullets penetrated his clothes. In the war with Mexico he was thrice brevetted for gallantry, and was seriously wounded at Cerro Gordo and again at Chapultepec. At the beginning of the Civil War, he was quartermaster-general of the United States army, resigning that position to take service with the South.

When McDowell advanced against Beauregard at Bull Run, Johnston, who was at Winchester, hastened with his army to the scene of battle, and this reinforcement, which McDowell had endeavored vainly to prevent, won the day for the Confederates. He remained in command at Richmond, opposing McClellan's advance up the peninsula, but was badly wounded at the battle of Seven Pines, and was incapacitated for duty for several months, Lee succeeding him in command of the army.

Johnston was never again to gain any great victories, for he had in some way incurred the ill-will of Jefferson Davis, and was placed in one impossible position after another, sent to meet an enemy which always outnumbered him, and refused the a.s.sistance which he should have had.

The last of these tasks was that of stopping Sherman's march to the sea, but Sherman had sixty thousand men to his seventeen thousand, and a battle was out of the question.

After Lee's surrender, Davis fled south to Greensboro, where Johnston found him and advised that, since the war had been decided against them, it was their duty to end it without delay, as its further continuance could accomplish nothing and would be mere murder. To this Davis reluctantly agreed, and Johnston thereupon sought Sherman and made terms of surrender for his army and Beauregard's. The terms which Sherman granted were rejected by Congress as too liberal, and another agreement was drawn up, similar to the one which had been signed between Grant and Lee. It is worth remarking that the Union generals in the field were disposed to treat their fallen foes with greater charity and kindness than the politicians in Congress, who had never seen a battlefield, and who were concerned, not with succoring a needy brother, but with wringing every possible advantage from the situation.

To two other southern commanders we must give pa.s.sing mention before turning from this period of our history. First of these is James Longstreet, who had the reputation of being the hardest fighter in the Confederate service, whose men were devoted to him, and called him affectionately "Old Pete." The army always felt secure when "Old Pete"

was with it; and, indeed, he did not seem to know how to retreat. He held the Confederate right at Bull Run, and the left at Fredericksburg; he saved Jackson from defeat by Pope, at the second battle of Bull Run; he was on the right at Gettysburg, and tried to dissuade Lee from the disastrous charge of the third day which resulted in Confederate defeat; he held the left at Chickamauga, did brilliant service in the Wilderness, and was included in the surrender at Appomattox. A st.u.r.dy and indomitable man, the Confederacy had good reason to be proud of him.

The second is J.E.B. Stuart, as a cavalry leader second only to Jackson, and Sheridan, but with his reputation shadowed by a fatal mistake. He was a past master of the sudden and daring raid, and on more than one occasion carried consternation into the enemy's camp by a brilliant dash through it. One of his most successful raids was made around McClellan's army on the peninsula, shaking its sense of security and threatening its communications. On another occasion, he dashed into Pope's camp, captured his official correspondence and personal effects and made prisoners of several officers of his staff, Pope himself escaping only because he happened to be away from headquarters. The one shadow upon his military career, referred to above, was his absence from the field of Gettysburg.

He was directed to take a position on the right of the Confederate army, but started away on a raid in the rear of the Federals, not expecting a battle to be fought at once, and he did not get back to the main army until the battle of Gettysburg had been lost. The absence of cavalry was a severe handicap to the Confederate army, and Lee always attributed his defeat to Stuart's absence; but Stuart maintained that he had acted under orders, and that the mistake was not his. He was killed in a fight with Sheridan's cavalry at Yellow Tavern, Virginia, a short time later.

And here we must end the story of the great soldiers of the Confederacy.

There were many others who fought well and bravely--Bragg, A.P. Hill, Magruder, Pemberton--but none of them attained the dimensions of a national figure. Weighing the merits of the leaders of the two armies, they would seem to be pretty evenly balanced. This was natural enough, since all of them had had practically the same training and experience, and, during the war, the same opportunities. Lee, Jackson and Johnston were fairly matched by Grant, Sheridan and Sherman.

The Southern leaders, perhaps, showed more dash and vim than the Northern ones, for they waged a more desperate fight; but both sides fought with the highest valor, and if the war did not have for the North the poignant meaning it had for the South, it was because practically all of its battles were fought on southern soil, and the southern people saw their fair land devastated. In no instance did the North suffer any such burning humiliation as that inflicted on the South by Sherman in his march to the sea; at the close of the war, despite its sacrifice of blood and treasure, the North was more prosperous than it had been at the beginning, while the South lay prostrate and ruined. So to the North the war has receded into the vista of memory, while to the South it is a wound not yet wholly healed.

There have been no great American soldiers since the Civil War--at least, there has been no chance for them to prove their greatness, for there is only one test of a soldier and that is the battlefield. When George A. Custer was ambushed and his command wiped out by the Sioux in 1876, a wave of sorrow went over the land for the dashing, fair-haired leader and his devoted men; yet the very fact that he had led his men into a trap clouded such military reputation as he had gained during the last years of the war.

The war with Spain was too brief to make any reputations, though it was long enough to ruin several. The man who gained most glory in that conflict was "Fighting Joe" Wheeler, veteran of Shiloh, of Murfreesboro, of Chickamauga, dashing like a gnat against Sherman's flanks, and annoying him mightily on that march to the sea; a southerner of the southerners, and yet with a great patriotism which sent him to the front in 1898, and a hard experience which enabled him to save the day at Santiago, when the general in command lay in a hammock far to the rear.

Let us pause, too, for mention of Nelson A. Miles, who had volunteered at the opening of the Civil War, fought in every battle of the Army of the Potomac up to the surrender at Appomattox, been thrice wounded and as many times brevetted for gallantry; the conqueror of the Cheyenne, Comanche and Sioux Indians in the years following the war; and finally attaining the rank of commander-in-chief of the army of the United States; to find himself, as Winfield Scott had done, at odds politically with the head of the War Department and with the President, and kept at home when a war was raging. For the same reason as Scott had been, perhaps, since some of his admirers had talked of him for the presidency. He was released, at last, to command the expedition against Porto Rico, which resulted in the complete and speedy subjugation of that island. A careful and intelligent, if not a brilliant soldier, he is, perhaps, the most eminent figure which the years since the great rebellion have developed.