Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War
If any nation could improvise an army at short notice it would be the
United States, for its men, all round, are more hardy, more
self-reliant, and quicker to learn than those of older communities.
But, notwithstanding this advantage, both in 1861 and 1898 the United
States failed to create the thoroughly efficient armies so suddenly
required, and in both instances the unnecessary sufferings of the
private soldier were the price paid for the weakness and folly of the
politicians. In 1861 the Governors of the several Northern States were
ordered to call for volunteers to enlist for ninety days, the men
electing their own officers. It was generally believed throughout the
North that all Southern resistance would collapse before the great
armies that would thus be raised. But the troops sent out to crush the
rebellion, when they first came under fire, were soldiers only in
outward garb, and at Bull Run, face to face with shot and shell, they
soon lapsed into the condition of a terrified rabble, and ran away from
another rabble almost equally demoralised; and this, not because they
were cowards, for they were of the same breed as the young regular
soldiers who retreated from the same field in such excellent order, but
because they neither understood what discipline was nor the necessity
for it, and because the staff and regimental officers, with few
exceptions, were untrained and inexperienced.
Mr. Davis, having prevented the Southern army from following up the
victory at Bull Run, gave the Northern States some breathing time. Mr.
Lincoln was thus able to raise a new army of over 200,000 men for the
projected advance on Richmond.
The new army was liberally supplied with guns, pontoons, balloons,
hospitals, and waggons; but, with the exception of a few officers
spared from the regular army, it was without trained soldiers to lead
it, or staff officers to move and to administer its Divisions. It must
be admitted, I think, that General McClellan did all that a man could
do in the way of training this huge mass. But when the day came for it
to move forward, it was still unfit for an offensive campaign against a
regular army. To the practised eye of an able and experienced soldier
who accompanied McClellan, the Federal host was an army only in name.
He likened it to a giant lying prone upon the earth, in appearance a
Hercules, but wanting the bone, the muscle, and the nervous
organisation necessary to set the great frame in motion. Even when the
army was landed in the Peninsula, although the process of training and
organisation had been going on for over six months, it was still a most
unwieldy force. Fortunately for the Union, the Confederate army, except
as regards the superior leaders and the cavalry, was hardly more
efficient.
The United States, fully realising their need of a larger regular army,
are now on the point of increasing their existing force to treble its
present strength. Their troops, like our own, are raised by voluntary
enlistment for a short period of service with the colours. England has
always very great difficulty in filling the ranks even with undeveloped
youths. The United States obtain as many full-grown men as they
require, because they have the wisdom to pay their men well, on a scale
corresponding to the market rate of wages. Here they are fortunate; but
men are not everything, and I will still draw the moral that a nation
is more than blind when it deliberately elects to entrust its defence
to an army that is not as perfect as training and discipline can make
it, that is not led by practised officers, staff and regimental, and
that is not provided with a powerful and efficient artillery.
Overwhelming disaster is in store for such nation if it be attacked by
a large regular army; and when it falls there will be none to pity. To
hang the ministers who led them astray, and who believed they knew
better than any soldier how the army should be administered, will be
but poor consolation to an angry and deluded people.
Let me now dwell briefly upon the second of the two great national
lessons taught by the Secession War. I shall say nothing here upon
civilian meddling with army organisation and with the selection of
officers for command, but I wish particularly to point out the result
of interference on the part of a legislative assembly or minister with
the plans and dispositions of the generals commanding in the field.
Take first the notorious instance of Mr. Lincoln’s interference with
McClellan in the spring of 1862. McClellan, who was selected to command
the army which was to capture Richmond and end the war, was a soldier
of known ability, and, in my opinion, if he had not been interfered
with by the Cabinet in Washington, he would probably have succeeded. It
is true, as Colonel Henderson has said, that he made a mistake in not
playing up to Lincoln’s susceptibilities with regard to the safety of
the Federal capital. But Lincoln made a far greater mistake in suddenly
reducing McClellan’s army by 40,000 men, and by removing Banks from his
jurisdiction, when the plan of campaign had been approved by the
Cabinet, and it was already too late to change it. It is possible,
considering the political situation, that the garrison of Washington
was too small, and it was certainly inefficient; but the best way of
protecting Washington was to give McClellan the means of advancing
rapidly upon Richmond. Such an advance would have made a Confederate
counterstroke against the Northern capital, or even a demonstration,
impossible. But to take away from McClellan 40,000 men, the very force
with which he intended to turn the Yorktown lines and drive the enemy
back on Richmond, and at the same time to isolate Banks in the
Shenandoah Valley, was simply playing into the enemy’s hands. What
Lincoln did not see was that to divide the Federal army into three
portions, working on three separate lines, was to run a far greater
risk than would be incurred by leaving Washington weakly garrisoned. I
cannot bring myself to believe that he in the least realised all that
was involved in changing a plan of operations so vast as McClellan’s.
Again, look at the folly of which Mr. Benjamin, the Confederate
Secretary of War, was guilty at the same period. The reader should
carefully study the chapter in which Colonel Henderson describes
Stonewall Jackson’s resignation of his command when his arrangements in
the field were altered, without his cognizance, by the Secretary of
War.
I should like to emphasise his words: “That the soldier,” he says, “is
but the servant of the statesman, as war is but an instrument of
diplomacy, no educated soldier will deny. Politics must always exercise
a supreme influence on strategy; yet it cannot be gainsaid that
interference with the commander in the field is fraught with the
gravest danger.”[1]
The absolute truth of this remark is proved, not only by many instances
in his own volumes, but by the history of war in all ages, and the
principle for which Jackson contended when he sent in his resignation
would seem too well founded to be open to the slightest question. Yet
there are those who, oblivious of the fact that neglect of this
principle has been always responsible for protracted wars, for useless
slaughter, and costly failures, still insist on the omniscience of
statesmen; who regard the protest of the soldier as the mere outcome of
injured vanity, and believe that politics must suffer unless the
politician controls strategy as well as the finances. Colonel
Henderson’s pages supply an instructive commentary on these ideas. In
the first three years of the Secession War, when Mr. Lincoln and Mr.
Stanton practically controlled the movements of the Federal forces, the
Confederates were generally successful. Further, the most glorious
epoch of the Confederacy was the critical period of 1862, when Lee was
allowed to exercise the full authority of Commander-in-Chief; and
lastly, the Northern prospects did not begin to brighten until Mr.
Lincoln, in March 1864, with that unselfish intelligence which
distinguished him, abdicated his military functions in favour of
General Grant. And yet while Lee and Grant had a free hand over the
military resources of their respective nations the political situation
suffered no harm whatever, no extravagant demands were made upon the
exchequer, and the Government derived fresh strength from the successes
of the armies.
The truth is that a certain class of civilians cannot rid themselves of
the suspicion that soldiers are consumed by an inordinate and
bloodthirsty ambition. They cannot understand that a man brought up
from his youth to render loyal obedience is less likely than most
others to run counter to constituted authority. They will not see that
a soldier’s pride in his own army and in the manhood of his own race
tends to make him a devoted patriot. They do not realise that a
commander’s familiarity with war, whether gained by study or
experience, must, unless his ability be limited, enable him to
accommodate his strategy to political exigencies. Nor will they admit
that he can possess a due sense of economy, although none knows better
than an educated soldier the part played in war by a sound and thrifty
administration of the national resources.
The soldier, on the other hand, knows that his art is most difficult,
that to apply strategical principles correctly experience, study,
knowledge of men, and an intimate acquaintance with questions of
supply, transport, and the movement of masses, are absolutely
necessary. He is aware that what may seem matters of small moment to
the civilian—such as the position of a brigade, the strength of a
garrison, the command of a detachment—may affect the whole course of a
campaign; and consequently, even if he had not the historical examples
of Aulic Councils and other such assemblies to warn him, he would rebel
against the meddling of amateurs. Let it not be forgotten that an
enormous responsibility rests on the shoulders of a commander in the
field: the honour of army committed to his charge, the lives of the
brave men under him, perhaps the existence of his country; and that
failure, even if he can plead that he only obeyed the orders of his
Government, or that he was supplied with inadequate means, will be laid
at his door. McDowell received no mercy after Bull Run, although he had
protested against attacking the Confederates; and it was long before
the reputation of Sir John Moore was cleared in the eyes of the English
people.
Such, to my mind, are the most important lessons to be drawn from this
history of the first period of the Secession War. But it is not alone
to draw attention to the teaching on these points that I have acceded,
as an old friend, to Colonel Henderson’s request that I should write an
Introduction to his second edition. In these days of sensational
literature and superficial study there is a prejudice against the story
that fills more than one volume. But the reader who opens these pages
is so carried away by the intense interest of the subject, clothed as
it is in forcible and yet graceful language, that he closes them with
regret; and I am only too glad to ask others to share the very great
pleasure I have myself enjoyed in reading them. I know of no book which
will add more largely to the soldier’s knowledge of strategy and the
art of war; and the ordinary reader will find in this Life of Stonewall
Jackson, true and accurate as it is, all the charm and fascination of a
great historical romance.
[1] Vol. i, p. 206.
PREFACE
To write the life of a great general, to analyse his methods of war and
discipline, to appraise the weight of his responsibilities, and to
measure the extent of his capacity, it would seem essential that the