# The Civil War  ## Metadata - Author: [[Shelby Foote]] - Full Title: The Civil War - Category: #american-civil-war ## Highlights - During the twelve days since the secession of Mississippi he had remained in Washington, sick in mind and body, waiting for the news to reach him officially. He hoped he might be arrested as a traitor, thereby gaining a chance to test the right of secession in the federal courts. ([Location 43](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=43)) - He was born in Christian County, Kentucky, within a year and a hundred miles of the man whose election had brought on the present furor. Like that man, he was a log-cabin boy, the youngest of ten children whose grandfather had been born in Philadelphia in 1702, the son of an immigrant Welshman who signed his name with an X. ([Location 84](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=84)) - So Davis attended West Point, and found he liked it. ([Location 112](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=112)) - Brought before a court martial for out-of-bounds drinking of “spirituous liquors,” he made the defense of a strict constructionist: 1) visiting Benny Haven’s was not officially prohibited in the regulations, and 2) malt liquors were not “spirituous” in the first place. ([Location 119](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=119)) - As a second lieutenant, U.S. Army, he now began a seven-year adventure, serving in Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, where he learned to fight Indians, build forts, scout, and lead a simple social existence. ([Location 128](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=128)) - He resigned his commission, went straight to Louisville, and married the girl. The wedding was held at the home of an aunt she was visiting. ([Location 140](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=140)) - The overseer was a Negro, James Pemberton. No slave was ever punished except after a formal trial by an all-Negro jury, Davis only reserving the right to temper the severity of the judgment. James was always James, never Jim; “It is disrespect to give a nickname,” Davis said, and the overseer repaid him with frankness, loyalty, and efficiency. ([Location 161](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=161)) - In Washington, his first act was to introduce a resolution that federal troops be withdrawn from federal forts, their posts to be taken by state recruits. It died in committee, and his congressional career was ended by the outbreak of the Mexican War. Davis resigned his seat and came home to head a volunteer regiment, the Mississippi Rifles. ([Location 205](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=205)) - Then history intervened again, as history always seemed to do for him. This time the muse took the form of Franklin Pierce, who in organizing a cabinet reached down from New Hampshire, all the way to Mississippi, and chose Jefferson Davis as his Secretary of War. They had been fellow officers in Mexico, friends in Congress, and shared a dislike of abolitionists. Whatever his reasons, Pierce chose well. Davis made perhaps the best War Secretary the country ever had, ([Location 264](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=264)) - He strengthened the army, renovated the Military Academy, and came out strong for un-Jeffersonian internal improvements, including a Pacific Railway along a southern route through Memphis or Vicksburg, to be financed by a hundred-million-dollar federal appropriation. The Gadsden Purchase was a Davis project, ten million paid for a strip of Mexican soil necessary for the railroad right-of-way. Nor was his old imperialism dead. He still had designs on what was left of Mexico and on Central America, and he shocked the diplomats of Europe with a proclamation of his government’s intention to annex Cuba. ([Location 271](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=271)) - Above all, he was for the unlimited extension of slavery, with a revival of the slave trade if need be. ([Location 275](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=275)) - He considered his highest talents to be military and he had the position he wanted, commander of the Mississippi army, with advancement to come along with glory when the issue swung to war. ([Location 314](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=314)) - “You can fool some of the people all the time, and all the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.” ([Location 506](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=506)) - “Popular sovereignty,” Douglas called it; “Squatter sovereignty,” his opponents considered a better name. “It will raise a hell of a storm,” Douglas predicted. It did indeed, though the Democrats managed to ram it through by late May of 1854, preparing the ground for Bleeding Kansas and the birth of the Republican Party that same year. ([Location 522](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=522)) - How can anyone who abhors the oppression of Negroes be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid.” ([Location 565](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=565)) - According to this decision, “popular sovereignty” went into the discard, since obviously whatever powers Congress lacked would be lacked by any territorial legislature created by Congress. The reaction was immediate and uproarious. Secession, formerly the threat of the South, now came as a cry from the North, particularly New England, where secessionist meetings were held in many towns. ([Location 585](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=585)) - Hostile papers called him “gorilla” and “baboon,” and as caricature the words seemed unpleasantly fitting. ([Location 722](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=722)) - Lincoln was confronted with division even among the states that had stayed loyal. New Jersey was talking secession; so was California, which along with Oregon was considering the establishment of a new Pacific nation; so, even, was New York City, which beside being southern in sentiment would have much to gain from independence. While moderates were advising sadly, “Let the erring sisters depart in peace,” extremists were violently in favor of the split: “No union with slaveholders! Away with this foul thing!… The Union was not formed by force, nor can it be maintained by force.” ([Location 868](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=868)) - Without the rod of a strong protective tariff, eastern manufacturers would lose their southern markets to the cheaper, largely superior products of England, and this was feared by the workers as well as the owners. ([Location 873](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=873)) - Lincoln had maneuvered them into the position of having either to back down on their threats or else to fire the first shot of the war. What was worse, in the eyes of the world, that first shot would be fired for the immediate purpose of keeping food from hungry men. ([Location 958](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=958)) - If Kentucky seceded he would go to Europe, he said, desiring “to become a spectator of the contest, and not an actor.” ([Location 975](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=975)) - Once, after a lull—which at first was thought to be preparatory to surrender—when the Union gunners resumed firing, the Confederates rose from behind their parapets and cheered them. Thus it continued, all through Friday and Friday night and into Saturday. The weary defenders were down to pork and water. Then at last, the conditions of honor satisfied, Anderson agreed to yield under the terms offered two days ago. ([Location 1007](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1007)) - So far there had been no casualties on either side. The casualties came later, during the arrangement of the particulars of surrender and finally during the ceremony itself. ([Location 1011](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1011)) - As the weary artillerymen passed silently out of the harbor, Confederate soldiers lining the beaches removed their caps in salute. There was no cheering. ([Location 1022](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1022)) - Here as in other northern cities, secession sympathizers were bayed by angry crowds until they waved Union banners from their windows. ([Location 1032](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1032)) - Lincoln assembled his cabinet to frame a proclamation calling on the states for 75,000 militia to serve for ninety days against “combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.” Technically it was not a declaration of war; only Congress could declare war, and Congress was not in session—a fact for which Lincoln was duly thankful, not wanting to be hampered. ([Location 1035](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1035)) - It soon became more or less obvious that, just as Davis had united the North by firing on Sumter, so had Lincoln united the South by issuing this demand for troops to be used against her kinsmen. This was true not only in the cotton states, where whatever remained of Union sentiment now vanished, but also in the states of the all-important buffer region, where Lincoln believed the victory balance hung. ([Location 1044](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1044)) - “I say, emphatically,” Governor Magoffin responded, “Kentucky will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern states.” Governor Jackson of Missouri sent the harshest reply of all: “Your requisition is illegal, unconstitutional, revolutionary, inhuman, diabolical, and cannot be complied with.” ([Location 1061](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1061)) - Many of the army’s best officers were resigning, going South along with hundreds of civil workers from the various departments. ([Location 1071](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1071)) - Washington was cut off from the outside world. It was now a deserted city, the public buildings barricaded with sandbags and barrels of flour, howitzers frowning from porticoes. ([Location 1080](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1080)) - Robert Anderson, the returned hero of Sumter, was promoted to brigadier general and sent to assert the Federal claim to his native Kentucky. ([Location 1095](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1095)) - Vice President Alexander H. Stephens voiced the defiance of the Confederacy, crying: “Lincoln may bring his 75,000 troops against us. We fight for our homes, our fathers and mothers, our wives, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters!… We can call out a million of peoples if need be, and when they are cut down we can call another, and still another, until the last man of the South finds a bloody grave.” ([Location 1103](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1103)) - Yet when he was overruled by the politicians, who were finding Montgomery uncomfortable and dull, he acceded gracefully, even cheerfully, and made the two-day train trip without ceremony or a special car. He took instead a seat in the rear coach of a regular train and remained unrecognized by his fellow passengers until he was called to their attention by cheers from station platforms along the way. ([Location 1112](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1112)) - Lincoln had more or less maneuvered him into firing the first shot, and while Davis did not regret his action in the case of Sumter, he did not intend to give his opponent another chance to brand him an aggressor in the eyes of history and Europe. “All we ask is to be let alone,” he had announced. Therefore, while Lincoln was gathering the resources and manpower of the North in response to the shout, “On to Richmond,” Davis chose to meet the challenge by interposing troops where they blocked the more obvious paths of invasion. ([Location 1133](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1133)) - “You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see that in the end you will surely fail.” ([Location 1182](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1182)) - The North had 110,000 manufacturing establishments, the South 18,000—1,300,000 industrial workers, compared to 110,000—Massachusetts alone producing over sixty percent more manufactured goods than the whole Confederacy, Pennsylvania nearly twice as much, and New York more than twice. ([Location 1210](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1210)) - The South had 9000 miles, the North 22,000, in both cases about a mile of track to every thousand persons. The North, with better than double the mileage in an area somewhat smaller, was obviously better able to move and feed her armies. ([Location 1214](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1214)) - Statistically, therefore, Sherman had solid ground for his judgment, “You are bound to fail.” Yet wars were seldom begun or even waged according to statistics. Nor were they always won on such a basis. ([Location 1216](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1216)) - The Southerner, being accustomed to command under the plantation system, as well as to the rigors of outdoor living and the use of horse and gun, would obviously make the superior trooper or infantryman or cannoneer. ([Location 1223](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1223)) - At this time there was no agreement in either army as to what the war was about, though on both sides there was a general feeling that each was meeting some sort of challenge flung out by the other. ([Location 1296](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1296)) - Meanwhile, perhaps no soldier in either army gave a better answer—one more readily understandable to his fellow soldiers, at any rate—than a ragged Virginia private, pounced on by the Northerners in a retreat. “What are you fighting for anyhow?” his captors asked, looking at him. They were genuinely puzzled, for he obviously owned no slaves and seemingly could have little interest in States Rights or even Independence. “I’m fighting because you’re down here,” he said. ([Location 1302](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1302)) - In late April, for security reasons, he authorized simultaneous raids on every telegraph office in the northern states, seizing the originals and copies of all telegrams sent or received during the past year. As a result of this and other measures, sometimes on no stronger evidence than the suspicions of an informer nursing a grudge, men were taken from their homes in the dead of night, thrown into dungeons, and held without explanation or communication with the outside world. Writs of habeas corpus were denied, including those issued by the Supreme Court of the United States. By the same authority, or in the absence of it, he took millions from the treasury and handed them to private individuals, instructing them to act as purchasing agents for procuring the implements of war at home and abroad. ([Location 1348](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1348)) - “The issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man the question whether … a government of the people, by the same people, can or cannot maintain its territorial integrity against its own domestic foes.” ([Location 1384](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1384)) - Sound as the plan was, it was also complicated, involving two feints by half the army and a flank attack by the other half, with the main effort to be made at right angles to the line of advance. McDowell knew that much depended on soldierly obedience to orders. Yet his commanders were regulars, and despite their clumsy performance on the long march, he felt that he could count on them for a short one. ([Location 1507](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1507)) - On a ridge to their rear—as Johnston and Beauregard had observed, arriving at this moment—Jackson’s Virginians were staunchly aligned on their guns. “There is Jackson standing like a stone wall!” Bee shouted. “Let us determine to die here, and we will conquer.” Jackson too had arrived at a critical moment, but instead of rushing into the melee on the plain, he had formed his troops on the reverse slope of the ridge, protected from artillery and ready for whatever moved against them. When an officer came crying, “General! the day is going against us!” the stern-lipped Jackson calmly replied: “If you think so, sir, you had better not say anything about it.” Another reported, “General, they are beating us back!” “Sir, we’ll give them the bayonet,” Jackson said. ([Location 1579](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1579)) - Johnston and Beauregard had come down off the adjoining hill, Beauregard to ride along the battle line, replacing fallen commanders with members of his staff and making at intervals a speech in which, he said, he “sought to infuse into the hearts of my officers and men the confidence and determined spirit of resistance to this wicked invasion of the homes of a free people,” while Johnston established a command post to the rear, at a road intersection where troops from the right and reinforcements from the Valley could be rushed to where the issue was in doubt. ([Location 1596](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1596)) - Colonel J. E. B. Stuart mistook them for an Alabama outfit, similarly clad, which he thought was facing rear, about to retreat. “Don’t run, boys; we’re here!” he cried, riding toward them at the head of his cavalry regiment. By the time he saw his mistake, it was too late to turn back. So he charged, his troopers slashing at the white turbans of the men in blue and scarlet, who panicked and scattered in gaudy confusion, leaving the eleven guns unsupported, and a Virginia infantry regiment ran forward to deliver at seventy yards a volley that toppled every cannoneer. The guns were out of action. ([Location 1605](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1605)) - The Federals had watched the rebel line as it thickened and lengthened to their front and on their flank. Now the opposing forces were roughly equal. But the blue troops did not know this; they only knew that the enemy was receiving reinforcements, while they themselves got none. “Where are our reserves?” they asked in consternation after the scattering of the zouaves and the loss of their two most effective batteries near the center of the field. Wearied by thirteen hours of marching on dusty roads at night and fighting under a July sun, they began to reason that they had been too thoroughly mismanaged for mere incompetence to account for all the blunders. They were angry and dismayed, and from point to point along the front a strange cry broke out: “Betrayed! We are betrayed! Sold out!” When the long gray line sprang at them, bayonets snapping and glinting in the sunlight as the shrill, unearthly quaver of the rebel yell came surging down the slope, they faltered. Then they broke. They turned and fled past officers on horseback flailing the smoke with sabers while screaming for them to stand. They ran and they kept on running, many of them throwing down their rifles in order to travel lighter and run faster. “Betrayed! Sold out!” some shouted hoarsely as they fled, explaining—as all men apparently always must—the logic behind their fear. ([Location 1617](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1617)) - Meeting Colonel Elzey he conferred the first battlefield promotion of the war: “General Elzey, you are the Blücher of the day!” He joined the horseback chase toward Sudley Springs, and everywhere he encountered rejoicing and elation. In the gathering dusk, coming upon a body of men he thought were stragglers, he began a speech to rally them, only to learn that they were Jackson’s Virginians, who had done so much to win the battle. Their commander was in a nearby dressing station, having a wounded finger bandaged. “Give me ten thousand men,” he was saying, “and I would be in Washington tomorrow.” ([Location 1661](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1661)) - The doctor insisted: “There is no instance on record of recovery from such a wound.” “Well, then,” the lawyer-soldier replied, “I will put my case on record.” ([Location 1673](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1673)) - Fifteen hundred Yankees had thrown down their arms and submitted to being marched away to prison, while in the Confederate ranks only eight were listed as missing, and no one believed that even these had surrendered. ([Location 1683](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1683)) - Tecumseh Sherman, reassembling his scattered brigade, wrote privately: “Nobody, no man, can save the country. Our men are not good soldiers. They brag, but don’t perform, complain sadly if they don’t get everything they want, and a march of a few miles uses them up. It will take a long time to overcome these things, and what is in store for us in the future I know not.” One English journalist at least believed he could guess what was in store. “So short lived has been the American Union,” the London Times observed, “that men who saw its rise may live to see its fall.” ([Location 1709](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1709)) - In Kentucky the contest was political, swinging around the problem of the state’s declared neutrality. Her sympathies were southern but her interests lay northward, beyond the Ohio, Lincoln having guaranteed the inviolability of her property in slaves. ([Location 1726](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1726)) - Kentuckians did not stand aside from individual bloodshed; 35,000 would fight for the South before the war was over, while more than twice that many would fight for the North, including 14,000 of her Negroes. Here the conflict was quite literally “a war of brothers.” ([Location 1736](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1736)) - Bluegrass leaders to evolve their own decisions unmolested. Considering their touchy sensibilities—so violently in favor of peace that they were willing to fight for it—this was the best he could possibly have done. ([Location 1750](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1750)) - One of the first things Polk did when he arrived at his Memphis headquarters was to order a concentration of Confederate troops at Union City, in northwest Tennessee, prepared to cross the border and occupy Columbus, Kentucky—which Polk saw as the key to the upper Mississippi—whenever some Federal act of aggression made such a movement plausible. ([Location 1761](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1761)) - Whatever talents Frémont might show, and he was reputed to have many, the ability to wait and do nothing was not one of them. ([Location 1787](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1787)) - and the brave Lyon, whose body McCulloch forwarded through the lines under a flag of truce, only to recapture it when the Unionists fell back from Springfield, abandoning it in its coffin in the courthouse. ([Location 1890](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1890)) - Lincoln thus was caught between two fires, having to offend either the abolitionist wing of his own party, which clamored for emancipation, or the loyal men of the border states, who had been promised nonintervention on the slavery question. ([Location 1921](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1921)) - Curtis was told to deliver them only on condition that Frémont had not won a battle or was not about to fight one; Lincoln would not risk the clamor that would follow the dismissal of a general on the eve of an engagement or the morrow of a victory. ([Location 1974](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1974)) - On the day Frémont received his dismissal, McClellan was appointed to head all the armies of the nation, superseding his old chieftain Winfield Scott. ([Location 1988](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=1988)) - McClellan improved with acquaintance. He did not seem young; he was young, with all the vigor and clear-eyed forcefulness that went with being thirty-four. ([Location 2014](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2014)) - the Federals woke to find the hill unoccupied. They went up somewhat cautiously, for the gun was still in position and it seemed unlikely that the rebels would abandon ordinance. Then the revelation came. The cannon was not iron but wood, a peeled log painted black, a Quaker gun. ([Location 2084](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2084)) - Sightseers, riding out to Munson’s Hill to be amused and to exercise their wit, could not see what was clear to army Intelligence: that if Johnston hadn’t wanted them to think he was equipped with wooden guns he would never have left one in position when he drew back. With the swift, uncluttered logic of civilians, all they could see was the painted log itself, complete with a pair of rickety wagon wheels, and the fact that the Confederates had fallen back unpushed. ([Location 2087](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2087)) - Confederate casualties were negligible, but Union losses approached 1000—over 200 shot and more than 700 captured. Prominent men were among them, including a grandson of Paul Revere, a son of Oliver Wendell Holmes, and a nephew of James Russell Lowell. Most prominent of all, however, was the senator from Oregon, Edward D. Baker, called Ned by his friend the President. Back in Washington, Lincoln was at army headquarters while the telegraph clicked off news of the disaster. When the death of Ned Baker came over the wire, Lincoln sat for five minutes, stunned, then made his way unaccompanied through the anteroom, breast heaving, tears streaming down his cheeks. As he stepped out into the street he stumbled, groping blindly, and almost fell. Orderlies and newspapermen jumped to help him, but he recovered his balance and went on alone, leaving them the memory of a weeping President. ([Location 2171](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2171)) - Ben Wade and his colleagues were out to make this fight a war to the knife, and Stone was their warning to anyone who might think otherwise. ([Location 2200](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2200)) - So that evening—while out in Missouri the captain disguised as a farmer was being held incommunicado, having delivered the order relieving Frémont—Lincoln went to McClellan’s headquarters to see how he was bearing up. He found him in high spirits, glad to be out from under the dead weight of General Scott. Lincoln was pleased to find him so, but he wondered whether McClellan was fully aware of how much he was undertaking. ([Location 2213](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2213)) - Southerners laughed at the anaconda, much as the northern cartoonists were doing, especially that portion of it covered by the blockade proclamation, and predicted—quite accurately, as it turned out—that when Yankee sailors began patrolling the swampy littoral they would discover that even the mosquitoes had enlisted in the resistance. ([Location 2280](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2280)) - When the reserve dwindled and the white stream that fed the jennies and looms and the workers who tended them was shut off, Europe would come knocking at Jefferson Davis’ door, offering recognition and the goods of war, the might of the British navy and the use of armies that had blasted Napoleon himself clean off the pages of military history. For all these reasons the South could laugh at and even welcome the proposed blockade, which would strengthen one of her strongest weapons in ratio to its own effectiveness. ([Location 2289](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2289)) - Later in the year, however, when the privateer Jeff Davis was taken, the crew brought to trial in Philadelphia, convicted of piracy and sentenced to be hanged, Lincoln showed every sign of going ahead: whereupon Davis reinforced his counterthreat by causing lots to be drawn among the Union prisoners. The short-straw men—including that grandson of Paul Revere, captured at Ball’s Bluff—were placed in condemned cells to await the action of Abraham Lincoln in reviewing the sentence of the men condemned to death in the City of Brotherly Love. ([Location 2308](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2308)) - Ship Island, off the Mississippi coast, would provide an excellent station for patrolling the eastern delta outlets and the passes down out of Lake Pontchartrain, as well as an ideal base from which to launch the attack on New Orleans itself, if and when the opportunity came. So the board instructed the navy: Take it. And the navy did, together with its uncompleted fortifications, before the Confederates were prepared to fire a shot in its defense. Thus the Union secured its second foothold along the secession coast. ([Location 2343](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2343)) - Beauregard fell first. The man who had shown much modesty on his arrival at Richmond, with the laurels of Sumter still green on his brow, became a different man entirely when he took up his pen in the seclusion of his tent. After Manassas, talk had grown rife that the President had prevented any pursuit of the routed enemy: so rife, indeed, that Davis took the unusual step of asking his generals to deny the rumor officially. ([Location 2505](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2505)) - “I entreat my friends not to trouble themselves about refuting the slanders and calumnies aimed at me.… If certain minds cannot understand the difference between patriotism, the highest civic virtue, and office-seeking, the lowest civic occupation, I pity them from the bottom of my heart.” ([Location 2517](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2517)) - Trouble with Johnston had begun even sooner—all the way back in their West Point days, some said, when he and Davis were alleged to have had a fist fight over the favors of Benny Haven’s daughter. Johnston won both the fight and the girl, rumor added; which might or might not have been true. ([Location 2528](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2528)) - Nothing was more galling to Confederate Virginians than the presence of these men in Washington, and one of the things expected of Lee was that he would abolish the rump government which had sent them there. ([Location 2586](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2586)) - troops were hungry and ragged, cowed by the defeats of the past month, half of them down with measles or mumps and the other half lacking confidence in their leaders. It was here in the mountains that Lee encountered for the first time a new type of animal: the disaffected southern volunteer. “They are worse than children,” he declared, “for the latter can be forced.” ([Location 2598](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2598)) - Floyd had shown a tendency to grow flustered under pressure, and Wise had indicated what manner of soldier he was by ordering a battery commander to open fire in woods so thick that he could see no target and could therefore do no execution. “Damn the execution, sir!” Wise replied when the artillerist protested. “It’s the sound that we want.” ([Location 2608](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2608)) - Yet Lee did what he could. He designed another combined operation, this time up the Kanawha Valley, and finally got the two commands in motion: whereupon, at the critical moment, with the enemy before them, the rivals took up separate positions, twelve miles apart, and, each declaring his own position superior, refused to march to join the other. Lee, whose primary reaction to the situation was embarrassment, was spared the ultimate necessity for sternness, however, when a War Department courier arrived with a dispatch instructing Wise to report immediately to Richmond. Wise pondered mutiny, but then, advised by Lee, decided against it and left, muttering imprecations. ([Location 2617](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2617)) - Lee had already written his wife, “I am sorry … that the movements of our armies cannot keep pace with the expectations of the editors.… I know they can arrange things satisfactory to themselves on paper. I wish they could do so in the field.” ([Location 2630](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2630)) - This called for digging, which Lee ordered done, and this in turn brought a storm of protest. His soldiers, especially the native South Carolinians, found the order doubly onerous. Digging wasn’t fit work for a white man, they complained, and a brave man wouldn’t hide behind earthworks in the first place. He put them at it anyhow, and as they dug they coined a new name for him: King of Spades. ([Location 2647](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2647)) - it was as if the South said plainly to all Europe: “To get cotton you must swallow slavery.” ([Location 2723](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2723)) - In Paris, Napoleon III was more genial and less forthright, though he did make it clear in the end that, however much he wished to intervene, France could not act without England. ([Location 2745](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2745)) - When Lincoln announced a blockade of the southern coast, Britain—in accordance with international law, since obviously no nation would blockade its own ports—issued in mid-May a proclamation of neutrality, granting the Confederacy the rights of a belligerent, and the other European powers followed suit. ([Location 2748](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2748)) - Lieutenant Fairfax informed the British captain, who all this time had scarcely ceased objecting, that he was seizing the four men for return to the United States and trial as traitors. When the captain continued to object—“Pirates! Villains!” some of the passengers were crying; “Throw the damned fellow overboard!”—the lieutenant indicated the San Jacinto, whose guns were bearing on the unarmed Trent. The captain yielded, still protesting; Mason and Slidell and their secretaries were taken over the side. ([Location 2816](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2816)) - Above Harpers Ferry the Confederates had cut the B & O, one of the main arteries of supply, while down the Potomac they had established batteries denying the capital access to the sea. ([Location 2842](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2842)) - According to Pinkerton, 90,000 gray-clad soldiers, superbly equipped and thirsty for blood, with one Manassas victory already blazoned on their battleflags, were behind those earthworks praying for McClellan’s army to advance and be wrecked, like McDowell’s, on those same plains. All that stood between the army and catastrophe was Little Mac, resisting the unscrupulous men who would hurl it into the furnace of combat before the mold had set. By now, though, more than the frock-coated congressmen were urging him forward against his will. ([Location 2905](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2905)) - A major general at forty-six, three years older and one rank higher than his rival, Halleck had the advantage at the outset. Buell was generally considered one of the best officers in the service, particularly as an organizer and disciplinarian; yet Halleck was not only senior in age and grade, he was by far the more distinguished in previous accomplishments. ([Location 2924](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2924)) - McClellan was chagrined and upset by the proposal. He saw the soundness of this substitute plan—which, moreover, had the sort of strategic brilliance he admired—yet he hated to lose the advantages of the first. Invading eastern Tennessee, Buell’s army would not only sever one of the arteries supplying the Confederates in northern Virginia; it would also be poised on their flank, and could then be angled forward to maneuver them out of their intrenched position and assist in the taking of Richmond. ([Location 2980](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2980)) - he was having to deal at the same time with a mentally upset brigadier, red-haired Tecumseh Sherman, who was bombarding headquarters with reports of rebel advances from all directions. “Look well to Jefferson City and the North Missouri Railroad,” Sherman would wire; “Price aims at both.” ([Location 2995](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=2995)) - McClellan put it simpler, saying, “Sherman’s gone in the head.” In hopes that a few weeks’ rest would restore his faculties, Halleck gave an indefinite leave of absence to the distraught Ohioan, whose wife then came down and took him home. ([Location 3002](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=3002)) - Not all of Halleck’s personnel problems could be handled so easily. As a sort of counterbalance to the highly nervous Sherman, he had another brigadier who seemed to have no nerves at all. The trouble with U.S. Grant was that, for all Halleck knew, he might have no brains either. ([Location 3004](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=3004)) - There were indications of such a lack. Grant was a West Pointer and had been commended for bravery in Mexico, but since then his reputation had gone downhill. Stationed out in California, he had had to resign his captain’s commission because of an overfondness for the bottle, and in the seven following years he had been signally unsuccessful as a civilian. ([Location 3006](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=3006)) - (Polk saw him, too, though without recognition. From the nearby skirt of timber which had screened the debarkation, the bishop, seeing the horseman, said to his staff, “There is a Yankee; you may try your marksmanship on him if you wish.” But no one did.) ([Location 3080](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=3080)) - That ended the Battle of Belmont, and though the casualties were about equal—something over 600 on each side, killed, wounded, and captured—it followed in general the pattern of all the battles fought that year, the attackers achieving initial success, the defenders giving way to early panic, until suddenly the roles were reversed and the rebels were left in control of the field, crowing over Yankee cowardice. ([Location 3084](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=3084)) - Without the loss of a man, he would have cut his marching distance in half and he would be in the rear of Johnston—who then would be forced to retreat and fight on grounds of McClellan’s choosing. The more he thought about it, the better he liked it. It was not only beautifully simple. It was beautifully bloodless. ([Location 3142](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=3142)) - It was a question, Lincoln saw already, of finding the right man to do the job. Already he was looking for a general who would not only believe in his “idea of this war,” but would follow it, inexorably, to the end. Meanwhile it was becoming increasingly evident that, for all his gifts, for all his soldiers’ love of him, McClellan was not the man. ([Location 3174](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=3174)) - In this he was most likely much mistaken, for the main goal of Confederate diplomacy was to draw England into the conflict on the southern side. And yet he was not entirely wrong—at least so far as regarded human nature. ([Location 3219](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=3219)) - Seward was called Billy, too—Billy Bowlegs, his enemies dubbed him: a bandy-legged, untidy man with a great deal of personal charm behind the bristling eyebrows, the constant cigar, and the nose of a macaw. Mrs Lincoln detested him outright. “He draws you around his little finger like a skein of thread,” she warned her husband. But when other advisers urged that he drop the New Yorker from the cabinet, Lincoln said: “Seward knows that I am his master.” Seward knew no such thing, as yet, but he was learning. Though Lincoln liked him, enjoyed his stories, and respected his political astuteness, from Sumter on he watched him and rode herd on him, toning down his overseas dispatches, which in first draft rather demonstrated his theory that a war with Europe would solve the urgent problems here at home. ([Location 3234](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=3234)) - a Texan who had scalded his arm in snatching a joint of meat from a bubbling pot as he charged through one of the Federal camps replied that if Grant’s army had not been surprised it certainly had “the most devoted mess crews in the history of warfare.” ([Location 6833](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=6833)) - It was no easy thing to do; the horse was kicking and plunging and Forrest was hacking and slashing; but one of the soldiers did his best. Reaching far out, he shoved the muzzle of his rifle into the colonel’s side and pulled the trigger. The force of the explosion lifted Forrest clear of the saddle, but he regained his seat and sawed the horse around. As he came out of the mass of dark blue uniforms and furious white faces, clearing a path with his saber, he reached down and grabbed one of the soldiers by the collar, swung him onto the crupper of the horse, and galloped back to safety, using the Federal as a shield against the bullets fired after him. Once he was out of range, he flung the hapless fellow off and rode on up the ridge where his men were waiting in open-mouthed amazement. ([Location 7072](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=7072)) - The heavy-caliber fire was deliberate and deadly: as Harvey Hill could testify. While his troops were forming under a rain of metal and splintered branches, the North Carolinian sat at a camp table on the exposed side of a large tree, drafting orders for the attack. When one of his officers urged him at least to put the trunk between him and the roaring guns: “Don’t worry about me,” Hill said. “Look after the men. I am not going to be killed until my time comes.” With that, a shell crashed into the earth alongside him, the concussion lifting the predestinarian from his chair and rolling him over and over on the ground. Hill got up, shook the dirt from his coat, the breast of which had been torn by a splinter of iron, and resumed his seat—on the far side of the tree. This and what followed were perhaps the basis for his later statement that, with Confederate infantry and Yankee artillery, he believed he could whip any army in the world. ([Location 10351](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=10351)) - It should not be a war looking to the subjugation of the people of any State in any event. It should not be at all a war upon population, but against armed forces and political organizations. Neither confiscation of property, political executions of persons, territorial organization of States, or forcible abolition of slavery should be contemplated for a moment.” This last was a point he emphasized, since “a declaration of radical views” in this direction would “rapidly disintegrate our present armies.” ([Location 10675](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=10675)) - As a result of trying to encourage trade in cotton, he said, his camp was “infested with Jews, secessionists, and spies.” ([Location 11238](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004C43GGU&location=11238))