Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War
thus far from hopeless. The North undoubtedly possessed immense
resources. But an efficient army, even when the supply of men and arms
be unlimited, cannot be created in a few weeks, or even in a few
months, least of all an army of invasion. Undisciplined troops, if the
enemy be ill-handled, may possibly stand their ground on the defensive,
as did Jackson’s riflemen at New Orleans, or the colonials at Bunker’s
Hill. But fighting behind earthworks is a very different matter to
making long marches, and executing complicated manœuvres under heavy
fire. Without a trained staff and an efficient administration, an army
is incapable of movement. Even with a well-organised commissariat it is
a most difficult business to keep a marching column supplied with food
and forage; and the problem of transport, unless a railway or
a river be available, taxes the ability of the most experienced leader.
A march of eighty or one hundred miles into an enemy’s country sounds a
simple feat, but unless every detail has been most carefully thought
out, it will not improbably be more disastrous than a lost battle. A
march of two or three hundred miles is a great military operation; a
march of six hundred an enterprise of which there are few examples. To
handle an army in battle is much less difficult than to bring it on to
the field in good condition; and the student of the Civil War may note
with profit how exceedingly chary were the generals, during the first
campaigns, of leaving their magazines. It was not till their auxiliary
services had gained experience that they dared to manœuvre freely; and
the reason lay not only in deficiencies of organisation, but in the
nature of the country. Even for a stationary force, standing on the
defensive, unless immediately backed by a large town or a railway, the
difficulties of bringing up supplies were enormous. For an invading
army, increasing day by day the distance from its base, they became
almost insuperable. In 1861, the population of the United States,
spread over a territory as large as Europe, was less than that of
England, and a great part of that territory was practically unexplored.
Even at the present day their seventy millions are but a handful in
comparison with the size of their dominions, and their extraordinary
material progress is not much more than a scratch on the surface of the
continent. In Europe Nature has long since receded before the works of
man. In America the struggle between them has but just begun; and
except upon the Atlantic seaboard man is almost lost to sight in the
vast spaces he has yet to conquer. In many of the oldest States of the
Union the cities seem set in clearings of the primeval forest. The wild
woodland encroaches on the suburbs, and within easy reach of the very
capital are districts where the Indian hunter might still roam
undisturbed. The traveller lands in a metropolis as large as Paris;
before a few hours have passed he may find himself in a wilderness as
solitary as the Transvaal; and although within the boundaries of the
townships he sees little
that differs from the England of the nineteenth century—beyond them
there is much that resembles the England of the Restoration. Except
over a comparatively small area an army operating in the United States
would meet with the same obstacles as did the soldiers of Cromwell and
Turenne. Roads are few and indifferent; towns few and far between; food
and forage are not easily obtainable, for the country is but partially
cultivated; great rivers, bridged at rare intervals, issue from the
barren solitudes of rugged plateaus; in many low-lying regions a single
storm is sufficient to convert the undrained alluvial into a fetid
swamp, and tracts as large as an English county are covered with
pathless forest. Steam and the telegraph, penetrating even the most
lonely jungles, afford, it is true, such facilities for moving and
feeding large bodies of men that the difficulties presented by untamed
Nature have undoubtedly been much reduced. Nevertheless the whole
country, even to-day, would be essentially different from any European
theatre of war, save the steppes of Russia; and in 1861 railways were
few, and the population comparatively insignificant.
The impediments, then, in the way of military operations were such as
no soldier of experience would willingly encounter with an improvised
army. It was no petty republic that the North had undertaken to coerce.
The frontiers of the Confederacy were far apart. The coast washed by
the Gulf of Mexico is eight hundred miles south of Harper’s Ferry on
the Potomac; the Rio Grande, the river boundary of Texas, is seventeen
hundred miles west of Charleston on the Atlantic. And over this vast
expanse ran but six continuous lines of railway:—
_From the Potomac._
1. [Washington,] Richmond, Lynchburg, Chattanooga, Memphis, New
Orleans.
2. [Washington,] Richmond, Weldon, Greensboro, Columbia, Atlanta, New
Orleans.
(These connected Richmond with the Mississippi.)
_From the Ohio._
3. Cairo, Memphis, New Orleans.
4. Cairo, Corinth, Mobile.
5. Louisville, Nashville, Dalton, Atlanta, Mobile.
(These connected the Ohio with the Gulf of Mexico.)
6. Richmond, Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah.
(This connected Richmond with the ports on the Atlantic.)
Although in the Potomac and the Ohio the Federals possessed two
excellent bases of invasion, on which it was easy to accumulate both
men and supplies, the task before them, even had the regular army been
large and well equipped, would have been sufficiently formidable. The
city of Atlanta, which may be considered as the heart of the
Confederacy, was sixty days’ march from the Potomac, the same distance
as Vienna from the English Channel, or Moscow from the Niemen. New
Orleans, the commercial metropolis, was thirty-six days’ march from the
Ohio, the same distance as Berlin from the Moselle. Thus space was all
in favour of the South; even should the enemy overrun her borders, her
principal cities, few in number, were far removed from the hostile
bases, and the important railway junctions were perfectly secure from
sudden attack. And space, especially when means of communication are
scanty, and the country affords few supplies, is the greatest of all
obstacles. The hostile territory must be subjugated piecemeal, state by
state, province by province, as was Asia by Alexander; and after each
victory a new base of supply must be provisioned and secured, no matter
at what cost of time, before a further advance can be attempted. Had
Napoleon in the campaign against Russia remained for the winter at
Smolensko, and firmly established himself in Poland, Moscow might have
been captured and held during the ensuing summer. But the occupation of
Moscow would not have ended the war. Russia in many respects was not
unlike the Confederacy. She had given no hostages to fortune in the
shape of rich commercial towns; she possessed no historic fortresses;
and so offered but few objectives to an invader. If defeated or
retreating, her armies could always find refuge in distant fastnesses.
The climate was severe; the internal trade inconsiderable; to bring the
burden of war home to the mass of the
population was difficult, and to hold the country by force
impracticable. Such were the difficulties which the genius of Napoleon
was powerless to overcome, and Napoleon invaded Russia with half a
million of seasoned soldiers.
And yet with an army of 75,000 volunteers, and without the least
preparation, the Federal Government was about to attempt an enterprise
of even greater magnitude. The Northern States were not bent merely on
invasion, but on re-conquest; not merely on defeating the hostile
armies, on occupying their capital, and exacting contributions, but on
forcing a proud people to surrender their most cherished principles, to
give up their own government, and to submit themselves, for good and
all, to what was practically a foreign yoke. And this was not all. It
has been well said by a soldier of Napoleon, writing of the war in
Spain, that neither the government nor the army are the real bulwarks
against foreign aggression, but the national character. The downfall of
Austria and of Prussia was practically decided by the first great
battle. The nations yielded without further struggle. Strangers to
freedom, crushed by military absolutism, the prostration of each and
all to an irresponsible despot had paralysed individual energy. Spain,
on the other hand, without an army and without a ruler, but deriving
new strength from each successive defeat, first taught Napoleon that he
was not invincible. And the same spirit of liberty which inspired the
people of the Peninsula inspired, to an even higher degree, the people
of the Confederate States.
[Illustration: Map of the United States 1861.] For larger view click on
image.
The Northern States, moreover, were about to make a new departure in
war. The manhood of a country has often been called upon to defend its
borders; but never before had it been proposed to invade a vast
territory with a civilian army, composed, it is true, of the best blood
in the Republic, but without the least tincture of military experience.
Nor did the senior officers, professionals though they were, appear
more fitted for the enterprise than the men they led. The command of a
company or squadron against the redskins was hardly an adequate
probation for the
command of an army,[2] or even a brigade, of raw troops against a
well-armed foe. Had the volunteers been associated with an equal number
of trained and disciplined soldiers, as had been the case in Mexico,[3]
they would have derived both confidence from their presence, and
stability from their example; had there been even an experienced staff,
capable of dealing with large forces, and an efficient commissariat,
capable of rapid expansion, they might have crushed all organised
opposition. But only 3,000 regulars could be drawn from the Western
borders; the staff was as feeble as the commissariat; and so, from a
purely military point of view, the conquest of the South appeared
impossible. Her self-sustaining power was far greater than has been
usually imagined. On the broad prairies of Texas, Arkansas, and
Louisiana ranged innumerable herds. The area under cultivation was
almost equal to that north of the Potomac and the Ohio. The pastoral
districts—the beautiful Valley of Virginia, the great plains of
Georgia, the fertile bottoms of Alabama, were inexhaustible granaries.
The amount of live stock—horses, mules, oxen, and sheep—was actually
larger than in the North; and if the acreage under wheat was less
extensive, the deficiency was more than balanced by the great harvests
of rice and maize.[4] Men of high ability, but profoundly ignorant of
the conditions which govern military operations, prophesied that the
South would be brought back to the Union within ninety days; General
Winfield Scott, on the other hand, Commander-in-Chief of the Federal
armies, declared that its conquest might be achieved “in two or three
years, by a young and able general—a Wolfe, a Desaix, a Hoche—with
300,000 disciplined men kept up to that number.”
Nevertheless, despite the extent of her territory and her scanty means
of communication, the South was peculiarly vulnerable. Few factories or
foundries had been established
within her frontiers. She manufactured nothing; and not only for all
luxuries, but for almost every necessary of life, she was dependent
upon others. Her cotton and tobacco brought leather and cloth in
exchange from England. Metals, machinery, rails, rolling stock, salt,
and even medicines came, for the most part, from the North. The weapons
which she put into her soldiers’ hands during the first year of the