Circa1865

Viscount Garnet Wolseley wrote in his “English View of the American Civil War” that when he was with Lee’s army at Winchester, Virginia in the autumn of 1862 that “the soldiers in every camp laughingly spoke of General John] Pope as “Stonewall Jackson’s Commissary,” so entirely had Jackson in the “Pope Campaign” depended upon capturing from that General everything he required for his men” (page 139).

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

Utilizing the Enemy’s Commissary

“The battle of Gettysburg will, no doubt, rank as the turning point of the war though perhaps it may better be called the breaking point of the South’s resources. For months our men had been on rations such as no troops ever campaigned on and did a tithe of the work ours were called on to do.

Corn meal and damaged bacon were the staples, often so damaged that to live on them inured disease. Medicines, chloroform especially, had got so scarce that small operations as painful as great ones were done without it. Much of that which was used was of such bad quality that it was used as only a choice of evils.

Delicacies for the sick were unheard of. They lived on damaged bacon or lean beef or went hungry. Clothes and shoes were scant and insufficient, except for those which were taken from our friends, the enemy. Overcoats would have been almost unknown but for them, though for that matter we would have fared badly for everything but for their contributions.

Certainly half our muskets and two-thirds our artillery were forced contributions from them, while [General N. P.] Banks, who commanded United States troops in the [Shenandoah] Valley in 1862, was better known as and better deserved the title of [Stonewall] Jackson’s commissary than as commander of his troops.

The state of affairs would appear to give compelling reasons for the much-criticized advance into Pennsylvania. With our railroad lines worn out, our ports blockaded, and the field of operations stripped by both armies, and burned and desolated by the enemy, who at last openly declared that their policy would be, as Sheridan later boasted, to leave the country so that a crow flying over it would have to carry his rations, the capture of arms, clothing, medicine, and even food, which earlier had added to our comfort, now came to be a necessity.

It looked easier to go to the enemy’s homes to get it, and to leave our poor people a chance to rest and to gather together the fragments left them.”

(The Haskell Memoirs, Govan and Livingood, editors, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1960, excerpts, pp. 54-55)

Early in the war, Alabamian Raphael Semmes evaluated the South’s naval dilemma of not having a navy to speak of, and advised the use of privateers to prey upon the North’s merchant marine. His record with the CSS Sumter was exemplary, as was the career of the CSS Alabama he later captained. His protocol when capturing Northern commerce was in accordance with the laws of war: “We were making war upon the enemy’s commerce, but not upon unarmed seamen.”  Semmes and other Confederate privateers like John Newland Maffitt and John Wilkinson virtually destroyed the North’s merchant marine.

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

Success of the Confederate Privateers

“The advance [of American merchant ships] continued to 1855, when American steam-shipping amounted to 115,000 tons. From that time a retrograde movement set in, and the steam-tonnage of the United States was less in 1862 than it was seven years before. The civil war which intervened accelerated the decline, and prevented attention from being devoted to the subject, which might possibly have given a different direction to events.

American commerce was, in a measure, driven from the seas by Confederate cruisers and their allies, and American shipping was sold to foreigners on account of the special risks to which its use was subjected. Attention was turned away from ship-building for commercial purposes, and from the fostering of commercial interests in general, and the heavy burdens imposed upon the country in order to raise war revenues had the effect of restricting foreign intercourse and trade.

Accordingly, when the war was over, the American merchant marine was well-nigh destroyed. The wooden sailing vessels had largely disappeared, there had been no increase in steam-tonnage, and the slight revival which followed the return of peace affected the coasting-trade mainly, if not wholly.”

(Merchant Marine of the United States, Appleton’s Annual Cyclopedia, 1882, Appleton & Company, page 522)

The winter of 1864-1865 at Petersburg found Pickett’s Division cold, hungry, and opposed by a well-fed and equipped war machine. Unable to defeat the starving American army that resembled Washington’s at Valley Forge, the North resorted to propaganda leaflets.

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

A Suffering Devotion to the Cause of Independence

“The cold winter winds began to be felt in the close of the November days . . . The men were not only thinly-clad, but some, at least, had but little clothing of any kind and a large number were without shoes; and when the first blasts of winter came numbers could be seen shivering over the small fires they were allowed to kindle.

Famine stared them in the face; the ration being from one-eighth to one-fourth of a pound of bacon and one pint of unsheived corn meal a day, and occasionally a few beans or peas. With empty stomachs, naked bodies and frozen fingers, these men clutched their guns with an aim so steady and deadly that the men on the other side were exceedingly cautious how they lifted their heads from behind their sheltered places.

[T]hese heroic men, who loved their cause better than life stood to their posts, and defied the enemy to the last. The enemy, by general orders and circular letters which they managed to send and scatter among the Confederate soldiers, offered all manner of inducements to have them desert their country; but, as a rule, such offers were indignantly spurned.

The consecration of the Southern women to the cause for which their husbands, sons, brothers, and sweethearts struggled and suffered, is beyond the power of the pen to describe. The hardships of these women were equal to, and often greater than that of the shivering, freezing and starving soldier in the field.

They had not only given these men to the cause, but, in fact, themselves too; for they remained at home and labored in the fields, went to the mill, the blacksmith shops, lived on cornbread and sorghum molasses, and gave practically every pound of meat, flour and all the vegetables they could raise to the men in the army, whom they encouraged to duty in every possible way.

They manufactured largely their own clothing, out of material that they had produced with their own hands; and would have scorned any woman who would wear northern manufactured goods . . .”

Through this long, cold, dreary winter, Pickett’s Division — less than five thousand strong — held the line which, in length, was not less than four miles; being not many beyond one thousand men to the mile; only a good skirmish line; over which the enemy, by a bold, determined charge, could at any time have gone.

It is certain that if the Federal line in front of Pickett’s men had been as weak, and held by as few men as that of Pickett, they would have either been prisoners before the 1st day of January 1865, or have been driven into the James River and drowned.”

(A History of Middle New River Settlements and Contiguous Territory, David E. Johnston, Standard Printing, 1906, pp. 285-288)

At the Battle of Brice’s Cross Roads on 10 June 1864 in northeastern Mississippi, General Nathan Bedford Forrest commanded about 4,900 cavalry with twelve cannon – which he led against a well-equipped enemy force of 4,800 infantry and 3,300 cavalry, a total of 8,100 men. After the battle, the colonel of a Minnesota regiment blamed the defeat on under-supplied men and under-fed horses. The enemy commander’s career seemed over after this defeat by a less numerous adversary, though he re-emerged in 1877 to command the Seventh Cavalry of the dead Custer — leading that force against the less numerous Nez Perce.

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

They Can’t Whip Old Forrest

“[Despite being outnumbered], Forrest attacked. Because of the thick undergrowth covering most of the area, the Confederates were able to close to within a few paces of [the enemy] infantry. The Federals called for a charge. Forrest’s sixth sense had placed him at the key point. As he dismounted, he shouted for his escort to do likewise. Accompanied by these daring fighters and with revolver in hand, he rushed the Federals.

In the hand-to-hand fighting, the bayonets of the Union infantry were no match for the heavy Colt revolvers. The center of [the enemy] line crumbled, while the Confederate brigades on the right doubled back the Union left upon Ripley Road.

[The Second Tennessee Regiment, sent to attack the enemy left and rear, sought] to deceive the Federals about their strength . . . [and] made a great commotion [as] a bugler galloped up and down the line sounding the charge.

Forrest knew that the crisis had come and that now the battle must be won or lost. Riding along behind his line, he told his people that the enemy was starting to give way and that another charge would win the day.

He told his young chief of artillery . . . to advance four of his guns, double-shotted with canister, to within pistol range of the Federals at the crossroads. At point blank range, they unlimbered their pieces and fired . . . into [the enemy] infantry with frightful effect. After a brief but savage fight, the Federals were routed from the crossroads, with the loss of three cannon.

[The enemy commander wrote:] “I endeavored to get hold of the colored brigade which formed the guard of the wagon train . . . [but] the main line began to give way at various points . . . Order soon gave way to panic. The army drifted toward the rear and was beyond control. No power could check the panic-stricken mass as it swept towards the rear.”

Several regiments, reinforced by two companies of the 55^th US Colored Troops . . . attempted to check the onrushing Confederates; but assailed on the flanks, with [Forrest’s] guns sweeping their front with double-shotted canister, the Northerners broke. In their frantic efforts to escape, [Northern] soldiers pushed their comrades aside.

A mile beyond the bridge, some [enemy] infantry rallied, but [Forrest’s artillery] smashed this pocket of resistance, and as dusk faded into darkness, Forrest and his hell-for-leather troopers overpowered another roadblock hastily manned by black and white Union soldiers. During their nighttime crossing of Hatchie Bottom, [the enemy commander] and many of his officers panicked, and they abandoned fourteen cannon and most of their wagon train.

[The advancing enemy] column, which had taken eight days to reach Brice’s Cross Roads, retreated to Memphis in sixty-four hours. Union casualties in the fight and retreat were 2,612. Forrest listed his losses at 493 killed and wounded . . . [and] captured 250 wagons and ambulances, 18 cannon, and thousands of stands of arms and rounds of ammunition, as well as Federal baggage and supplies.

A noted British soldier, Field Marshal Viscount Garnet Wolseley, in commenting on Forrest’s victory, called it “a most remarkable achievement, well-worth attention by the military student. He pursued the enemy from the battle for nigh sixty miles, killing numbers all the way. The battle and long pursuit were all accomplished in the space of thirty hours. When another Federal general was dispatched to try what he could do against this terrible Southerner, the defeated [enemy commander] was overheard repeating to himself . . . : “It can’t be done . . . it can’t be done.” Asked what he meant, the reply was, “They can’t whip old Forrest.”

(Leadership During the Civil War, Roman J. Heleniak and Lawrence Hewitt, editors, White Mane Publishing, 1992, pp. 82-84)

Matthew Fontaine Maury was born in 1806 near Fredericksburg, Virginia, from a family descended from a Dutch sea captain. He spent most of the war in Europe procuring privateers for the Confederacy and perfecting his revolutionary electric mines. Maury returned to America in 1868 to accept a professorship of meteorology at the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington, where he advanced the importance of weather forecasting.

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

Maury the Seer and Pathfinder

“Without his father’s knowledge or consent, young Maury talked Congressman Sam Houston of Tennessee into getting him an appointment as midshipman in the United States Navy. Since there was no naval academy then, he was immediately assigned to sea duty [at age nineteen]. His first trip was to Europe on the war vessel that took Lafayette back to France after his memorable visit.

He then went around the world, followed by a voyage to South America [and returning in 1834] he used his leisure in the publication of a work on navigation which he had begun during his sea duty.

In 1842 he was appointed superintendent of the depots of charts and instruments at Washington, afterward the hydrographic office. As naval observatory astronomer he added the task of determining the direction of ocean winds and currents. In 1855 he published “The Physical Geography of the Sea,” the first textbook of modern oceanography, which went through numerous editions and translations.

In the early 1850s the idea of a trans-Atlantic cable was being discussed, and Maury presented a chart representing in profile the bottom of the Atlantic, called the “telegraphic plateau.” The citizens of New York presented him with a silver service and a purse of five thousand dollars in appreciation of his contributions to commerce.

Maury cherished as a favorite project the opening of the Amazon Valley to free trade, hoping that the project would draw slaves from the United States to Brazil. In the growing antagonism between the North and South, his sympathies were naturally with his section, but he favored conciliation. Three days after the secession of Virginia, he tendered his resignation and proceeded to Richmond where he was commissioned a commander of the Confederate States Navy.

He established the naval submarine service at Richmond and experimented with electric mines . . . [and later was] sent to England as a special agent [who was] instrumental in securing needed ships and continued his experiments with electric mines. With the purpose of using these mines, he set out for America, but when he reached the West Indies the Confederacy had collapsed.

Confederates serving abroad were excluded from pardon under the amnesty proclamations; so Maury offered his services to the Emperor of Mexico in a scheme for the colonization of [Southerners]. When the revolution there intervened, he returned to England where he busied himself with perfecting his electric mines and where he wrote a series of geographies for school use. He was presented with a purse of three thousand guineas raised by popular subscription in gratitude for his services to the maritime world, and Cambridge University honored him with the degree of doctor of laws.

While on a lecture tour in the fall of 1872 in promotion of this idea, he was taken ill at St. Louis and died on February 1, 1873.

A self-educated scientist, Maury led his biographer, John W. Wayland, to write in 1930: “The thing than made Maury a great man was his ability to see the invisible . . . He saw the trans-Atlantic cable before it was laid. He saw a railroad across the continent before it was built. He saw a ship canal from the Mississippi to the Great Lakes before it was dug . . . He saw a great training school for our Naval officers . . . and weather reports for our farmers, long before either was a reality. He saw a ship canal across the Isthmus of Panama more than a century before it was constructed.

He was a seer and pathfinder not only on the sea, but under the seas, across the lands, and among the stars.”

(Sons of the South, Clayton Rand, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961, pg. 102)

Washington, the Virginia aristocrat, was to grow into his enormous responsibility as commander-in-chief of an “undisciplined horde led by clowns and fools”; he later admitted: “Could I have foreseen what I have, and am likely to experience, no consideration upon earth could have induced me to accept this command.”

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

Congress Selects a Virginia Aristocrat

“Before the Bunker Hill news reached the Congress, the delegates had already agreed to arm the Colonies for defense under a single command and had appointed George Washington commander-in-chief, with the rank of general.

The big, pock-marked plantation master, who stoically suffered the experiments of colonial dentists on iron and wooden teeth, has come across time more as an abstraction than as a person. First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen – this alone is enough to dehumanize any man. Certainly he is not first in the hearts of people who inhabit the county he won, and George Washington personally would regard the nation that has evolved with cold incomprehension.

First of all, George Washington was a product of the ruling class of Virginia’s aristocratic republic. His antecedents were English; his affiliations were with English people and the Virginia English. His experiences were largely limited to the plantation world of eastern Virginia, and he had no real desire to extend his experiences beyond these limits.

When his State allied with others for mutual defense, his ambition and sense of authority motivated him to seek leadership in the area where he felt most qualified to serve – in the military.

The plantation master suffered no delusions about his military gifts, nor did the Continental delegates who appointed him. Washington was picked, for a variety of sound political and practical reasons, primarily because he was a Virginia aristocrat, and not because he was some vaporless distillation of “The Patriot.”

Any New Englander was eliminated from leadership because many of the delegates from other colonies (especially the rich conservatives) regarded them as troublemakers. This elimination made a Virginian the logical choice. Virginia was the largest and oldest colony; it had been a leader on principle in the struggle with England over colonial rights, and its representatives were as a group the most distinguished.

Finally, despite all the later-day talk about democracy, the colonial representatives in 1775 agreed that an aristocrat, habituated to and a symbol of authority, should lead. This made a Virginian at least one inevitability of the movement.

In selecting Washington for these considerations, the Congress could not have known they had selected a man with the most enormous capacity for growth under pressure. Washington was the apogee of the progressive-conservative of his class and his state. He was the most dramatic vindication of the oligarchy’s theory of producing from the plantation society superior individuals for leadership.”

(The Great Plantation, A Profile of Berkeley Hundred and Plantation Virginia, Clifford Dowdey, Bonanza Books, 1957, pp. 220-222)

Second only to Robert E. Lee as a great American military commander, Stonewall Jackson’s death proved to be a calamity which may have cost Lee the battle at Gettysburg. Jackson, like Lee, could handily defeat far superior forces as he did between April 30 and June 9, 1862 in the Valley, frustrating 70,000 Northern troops with less than 18,000 men of his own.

Bernhard Thuersam, www.circa1865.org

Jackson’s Value to Lee

“It was not until the spring of 1862, when Lee became Jefferson Davis’ military advisor and Commander of the Army of Northern Virginia that Jackson’s independent command in the Shenandoah Valley came under Lee’s control. It was at this time that the partnership between Lee and Jackson first took form.

At once Lee sensed Jackson’s integrity. Lenoir Chambers . . . wrote that while Jackson and Lee were far apart, as far as communications went, they were always able, through their letters and orders, to project themselves into the future. Each had a sagacity to discern what the other was thinking or desired. Lee never had a subordinate so quick to grasp his thoughts or so reliable in carrying them out or, when on his own, in taking care of himself while he fitted all his movements to the grand purpose as did Jackson in the Valley Campaign of 1862.

On several occasions, Jackson demonstrated his zealous devotion to his chieftain. During the winter of 1863-63 [near Fredericksburg], Lee once sent word that he wanted to talk with Jackson at his convenience on a matter of no great urgency. Thereupon Jackson arising at daybreak and without breakfast rode through a blinding snow storm to Lee’s headquarters, 15 miles away.

Lee expressed amazement, saying: “You know, General, I did not wish you to come in such a storm. It was a matter of no importance and I am sorry you had such a ride.” Thereupon Jackson blushed and simply said: “I received your note, General.” Jackson’s personal loyalty to Lee was intimately bound up with his confidence in Lee’s military ability. Once when an officer had criticized Lee, Jackson instantly replied: “Lee is a phenomenon. He is the only man I would follow blindfold.”

On that beautiful Sunday morning of May 10, 1863, when he was informed that Jackson could probably not live through the day, Lee at first refused to believe it, saying: “Surely God will not take from us now that we need him so much.” Notifying Gen. Jeb Stuart of Jackson’s death, Lee said: “The great and good Jackson is no more . . . May his spirit pervade our whole army; our country will then be secure.”

It was only after the war that General Lee gave a glimpse of what he may have thought in 1863 of the ultimate consequence of the removal of Jackson from the scene. In a conversation with one of his friends at Washington College, of which he was then president, he remarked: “If I had had Stonewall Jackson, as far as a man can see, I should have won the battle of Gettysburg.”

(Wartime Relationship Between Lee and Jackson, Dr. W. Gleason Bean, Rockbridge Historical Society Proceedings, Volume Six, J.P. Bell Company, 1966, pp. 43-46)

Though early in his career friends saw Thomas J. Jackson exhibiting much energy and industry, none viewed him as possessing anything resembling military genius. His biographer John Esten Cooke wrote of Jackson that “To fight to the death was his unfaltering resolve, and his own invincible resolution was infused into his troops; they became inspired by his ardor, and were more than a match for two or three times their number fighting without this stimulus.”

Bernhard Thuersam, www.circa1865.org

Jackson’s Skill, Nerve and Generalship

“ . . . Jackson set out in person for Winchester [in late May 1862], travelling by a special train on the Winchester and Potomac Railroad. A gentleman who was with his relates a scene that ensued during the brief journey. At one of the wayside stations, a courier was seen galloping down from the direction of Winchester, and Jackson clutched at the dispatch which he brought. “What news?” he asked.

As [the courier] spoke his lips were firmly compressed, his face grew rigid, and his eyes fixed themselves apparently on some distant object. Then this preoccupation suddenly disappeared; he read the [dispatch] which he held in his hand, tore it to pieces . . . and leaning forward, rested his forehead on his hands, and immediately fell asleep. He soon roused himself and, turning to the gentleman who furnishes these particulars, said:

“I am going to send you to Richmond for re-enforcements. I have just received a dispatch informing me of the advance of the enemy upon Front Royal, which is captured, and Fremont [with 25,000 men] is now advancing toward Wardensville. Thus, you see, I am nearly surrounded by a very large force.

“What is your own [plan], General?”

“To meet this attack I only have 15,000 effective men.”

“What will you do if they cut you off, General?” Jackson hesitated for a moment, and the coolly replied: “I will fall back upon Maryland for re-enforcements.”

Jackson was in earnest. If his retreat was cut off, he intended to advance into Maryland, and doubtless make his way straight to Baltimore and Washington, depending on the Southern sentiment in that portion of the State to bring him re-enforcements. The design was characteristic of his military genius, and its bold air of invasion probably surrounded it with more charms to the leader, who never lost sight of that policy.

That the [Northern] Government was apprehensive of some such movement is certain. The wildest rumors were prevalent in that country. It was said that Jackson had defeated all his opponents, had crossed the Potomac with an enormous army, and was then advancing on Washington. Terror reigned in the North.

We have seen that the “great force” at Jackson’s command was 15,000 men, and that a much larger force was about to close in on his rear. His position was critical in the extreme. Unless he moved with the greatest speed, and reached Strasburg before the junction of [Northern commanders] Fremont and Shields [4,000 men], his retreat would be cut off, and General McDowell, then at Front Royal [with 20,000 men], would achieve his design of “bagging Jackson.”   To defeat the designs of the enemy, and extricate his forces, was the object upon which he now concentrated all his skill, nerve and generalship.

On the speed of the “foot cavalry” depended the safety of the army; and if the larger portion marched, as they seem to have done, from the vicinity of Harper’s Ferry to Strasburg, nearly fifty miles, between the afternoon of the 30^th and the night of the 31^st of May, it is one of the swiftest marches on record. Jackson arrived in time, just in time . . . [and then] determined to attack Fremont, and hold him in check. Jackson was now comparatively safe. He had realized the prayer which his great namesake of the “Hermitage” uttered for a friend – he had “triumphed over all his enemies.”

[Jackson] had flanked them at Front Royal, pursued them from Middletown, beaten them at Winchester, chased them to the Potomac, filled Washington with alarm; and now, when their forces were closing in upon his rear to intercept him, he had passed between them with his prisoners and stores, struck them heavily as he retired, and was moving toward the upper Valley.

He had captured 2300 prisoners, 100 cattle, 34,900 pounds of bacon, flour, salt, sugar, coffee, hard bread, and cheese, $125,185 worth of quartermasters stores, $25,000 worth of sutler stores, immense medical stores, 9354 small-arms, two pieces of artillery, many cavalry horses . . . These results had been achieved with the loss of 68 killed, 329 wounded, and 3 missing – a total loss of 400. In ending his report, Jackson proudly reported that the battle of Winchester was, “on our part, a battle without a straggler.”

(Life of Stonewall Jackson, John Esten Cooke, D. Appleton and Company, 1876, pp. 158-161)