Philip Dru: Administrator Part 9

And then came the election. Troops were at the polls and a free ballot was denied. It was the last straw. Citizens gathering after nightfall in order to protest were told to disperse immediately, and upon refusal, were fired upon. The next morning showed a death roll in the large centers of population that was appalling.

Wisconsin was the state in which there was the largest percentage of the citizenship unfavorable to the administration and to the interests.

Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska were closely following.

Philip concluded to make his stand in the West, and he therefore ordered the men in every organization east of the Mississippi to foregather at once at Madison, and to report to him there. He was in constant touch with those Governors who were in sympathy with the progressive or insurgent cause, and he wired the Governor of Wisconsin, in cipher, informing him of his intentions.

As yet travel had not been seriously interrupted, though business was largely at a standstill, and there was an ominous quiet over the land.

The opposition misinterpreted this, and thought that the people had been frightened by the unexpected show of force. Philip knew differently, and he also knew that civil war had begun. He communicated his plans to no one, but he had the campaign well laid out. It was his intention to concentrate in Wisconsin as large a force as could be gotten from his followers east and south of that state, and to concentrate again near Des Moines every man west of Illinois whom he could enlist. It was his purpose then to advance simultaneously both bodies of troops upon Chicago.

In the south there had developed a singular inertia. Neither side counted upon material help or opposition there.

The great conflict covering the years from 1860 to 1865 was still more than a memory, though but few living had taken part in it. The victors in that mighty struggle thought they had been magnanimous to the defeated but the well-informed Southerner knew that they had been made to pay the most stupendous penalty ever exacted in modern times. At one stroke of the pen, two thousand millions of their property was taken from them. A pension system was then inaugurated that taxed the resources of the Nation to pay. By the year 1927 more than five thousand millions had gone to those who were of the winning side. Of this the South was taxed her part, receiving nothing in return.

Cynical Europe said that the North would have it appear that a war had been fought for human freedom, whereas it seemed that it was fought for money. It forgot the many brave and patriotic men who enlisted because they held the Union to be one and indissoluble, and were willing to sacrifice their lives to make it so, and around whom a willing and grateful government threw its protecting arms. And it confused those deserving citizens with the unworthy many, whom pension agents and office seekers had debauched at the expense of the Nation. Then, too, the South remembered that one of the immediate results of emanc.i.p.ation was that millions of ignorant and indigent people were thrown upon the charity and protection of the Southern people, to care for and to educate. In some states sixty per cent. of the population were negroes, and they were as helpless as children and proved a heavy burden upon the forty per cent. of whites.

In rural populations more schoolhouses had to be maintained, and more teachers employed for the number taught, and the percentage of children per capita was larger than in cities. Then, of necessity, separate schools had to be maintained. So, altogether, the load was a heavy one for an impoverished people to carry.

The humane, the wise, the patriotic thing to have done, was for the Nation to have a.s.sumed the responsibility of the education of the negroes for at least one generation.

What a contrast we see in England's treatment of the Boers. After a long and b.l.o.o.d.y war, which drew heavily upon the lives and treasures of the Nation, England's first act was to make an enormous grant to the conquered Boers, that they might have every facility to regain their shattered fortunes, and bring order and prosperity to their distracted land.

We see the contrast again in that for nearly a half century after the Civil War was over, no Southerner was considered eligible for the Presidency.

On the other hand, within a few years after the African Revolution ended, a Boer General, who had fought throughout the war with vigor and distinction, was proposed and elected Premier of the United Colonies.

Consequently, while sympathizing with the effort to overthrow Selwyn's government, the South moved slowly and with circ.u.mspection.

CHAPTER XX

CIVIL WAR BEGINS

General Dru brought together an army of fifty thousand men at Madison and about forty thousand near Des Moines, and recruits were coming in rapidly.

President Rockland had concentrated twenty thousand regulars and thirty thousand militia at Chicago, and had given command to Major General Newton, he who, several years previously, won the first medal given by the War Department for the best solution of the military problem.

The President also made a call for two hundred thousand volunteers. The response was in no way satisfactory, so he issued a formal demand upon each state to furnish its quota.

The states that were in sympathy with his administration responded, the others ignored the call.

General Dru learned that large reinforcements had been ordered to Chicago, and he therefore at once moved upon that place. He had a fair equipment of artillery, considering he was wholly dependent upon that belonging to the militia of those states that had ranged themselves upon his side, and at several points in the West, he had seized factories and plants making powder, guns, clothing and camp equipment. He ordered the Iowa division to advance at the same time, and the two forces were joined at a point about fifty miles south of Chicago.

General Newton was daily expecting reenforcements, but they failed to reach him before Dru made it impossible for them to pa.s.s through.

Newton at first thought to attack the Iowa division and defeat it, and then meet the Wisconsin division, but he hesitated to leave Chicago lest Dru should take the place during his absence.

With both divisions united, and with recruits constantly arriving, Dru had an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men.

Failing to obtain the looked-for reenforcements and seeing the hopelessness of opposing so large a force, Newton began secretly to evacuate Chicago by way of the Lakes, Dru having completely cut him off by land.

He succeeded in removing his army to Buffalo, where President Rockland had concentrated more than one hundred thousand troops.

When Dru found General Newton had evacuated Chicago, he occupied it, and then moved further east, in order to hold the states of Michigan, Indiana and Western Ohio.

This gave him the control of the West, and he endeavored as nearly as possible to cut off the food supply of the East. In order to tighten further the difficulty of obtaining supplies, he occupied Duluth and all the Lake ports as far east as Cleveland, which city the Government held, and which was their furthest western line.

Canada was still open as a means of food supply to the East, as were all the ports of the Atlantic seaboard as far south as Charleston.

So the sum of the situation was that the East, so far west as the middle of Ohio, and as far south as West Virginia, inclusive of that state, was in the hands of the Government.

Western Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Illinois, while occupied by General Dru, were divided in their sympathies. Wisconsin, Minnesota, and every state west of the Mississippi, were strongly against the Government.

The South, as a whole, was negligible, though Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri were largely divided in sentiment. That part of the South lying below the border states was in sympathy with the insurgents.

The contest had come to be thought of as a conflict between Senator Selwyn on the one hand, and what he represented, and Philip Dru on the other, and what he stood for. These two were known to be the dominating forces on either side.

The contestants, on the face of things, seemed not unevenly matched, but, as a matter of fact, the conscience of the great ma.s.s of the people, East and West, was on Dru's side, for it was known that he was contending for those things which would permit the Nation to become again a land of freedom in its truest and highest sense, a land where the rule of law prevailed, a land of equal opportunity, a land where justice would be meted out alike to the high and low with a steady and impartial hand.

CHAPTER XXI

UPON THE EVE OF BATTLE

Neither side seemed anxious to bring matters to a conclusion, for both Newton and Dru required time to put their respective armies in fit condition before risking a conflict. By the middle of July, Dru had more than four hundred thousand men under his command, but his greatest difficulty was to properly officer and equip them. The bulk of the regular army officers had remained with the Government forces, though there were some notable exceptions. Among those offering their services to Dru was Jack Strawn. He resigned from the regular army with many regrets and misgivings, but his devotion to Philip made it impossible for him to do otherwise. And then there was Gloria whom he loved dearly, and who made him feel that there was a higher duty than mere professional regularity.

None of Dru's generals had been tried out in battle and, indeed, he himself had not. It was much the same with the Government forces, for there had been no war since that with Spain in the nineties, and that was an affair so small that it afforded but little training for either officers or men.

Dru had it in mind to make the one battle decisive, if that were possible of accomplishment, for he did not want to weaken and distract the country by such a conflict as that of 1861 to 1865.

The Government forces numbered six hundred thousand men under arms, but one hundred thousand of these were widely scattered in order to hold certain sections of the country in line.

On the first of September General Dru began to move towards the enemy.

He wanted to get nearer Washington and the northern seaboard cities, so that if successful he would be within striking distance of them before the enemy could recover.

He had in mind the places he preferred the battle to occur, and he used all his skill in bringing about the desired result. As he moved slowly but steadily towards General Newton, he was careful not to tax the strength of his troops, but he desired to give them the experience in marching they needed, and also to harden them.

The civilized nations of the world had agreed not to use in war aeroplanes or any sort of air craft either as engines of destruction or for scouting purposes. This decision had been brought about by the International Peace Societies and by the self-evident impossibility of using them without enormous loss of life. Therefore none were being used by either the Government or insurgent forces.

General Newton thought that Dru was planning to attack him at a point about twenty miles west of Buffalo, where he had his army stretched from the Lake eastward, and where he had thrown up entrenchments and otherwise prepared for battle.

But Dru had no thought of attacking then or there, but moved slowly and orderly on until the two armies were less than twenty miles apart due north and south from one another.

When he continued marching eastward and began to draw away from General Newton, the latter for the first time realized that he himself would be compelled to pursue and attack, for the reason that he could not let Dru march upon New York and the other unprotected seaboard cities. He saw, too, that he had been outgeneraled, and that he should have thrown his line across Dru's path and given battle at a point of his own choosing.

The situation was a most unusual one even in the complex history of warfare, because in case of defeat the loser would be forced to retreat into the enemies' country. It all the more surely emphasized the fact that one great battle would determine the war. General Dru knew from the first what must follow his movement in marching by General Newton, and since he had now reached the ground that he had long chosen as the place where he wished the battle to occur, he halted and arranged his troops in formation for the expected attack.