McClellan's Work of Organization

The
Opposing
Forces

into Washington must be drilled and trained for fighting. Accordingly, he set about making radical changes in the organization of the army. After the rout at Bull Run he summoned McClellan from West Virginia and placed him in command of all the forces in and around Washington. McClellan soon showed that he was just the man whom the occasion required. He was highly trained himself, and he knew how to train others. He could win the love of soldiers and at the same time hold them under the strictest discipline. When he came to Washington he found the city infested with swarms of military loafers. The Little Napoleon, as McClellan was called, quickly set officers and men to work, drilling and in other ways preparing for actual warfare. By the last of October he had a well-drilled, well-organized, and well-equipped army of 150,000 men. As a reward for his services McClellan was made (November 1, 1861) the commander of all the armies of the United States. People in the North thought McClellan ought to lead his magnificent army promptly against Richmond, but McClellan held his forces in check, and allowed the year (1861) to pass without any advance upon the Confederate capital.

Although there was but little fighting in 1861, the work of preparation during the year was very great on both sides. Beginning At the beginning of 1862 the organized forces of the Union.

at the

of 1862

army consisted of nearly 500,000 men, and the Union navy numbered more than two hundred armed vessels. Of the land forces, about 15,000 were at Fortress Monroe; about 200,000 were stationed in the vicinity of Washington; about 20,000 were in western Virginia; about 100,000 were at Louisville; about 100,000 were at St. Louis and at Cairo, Illinois; about 20,000 were on the extreme western frontier. The organized forces of the Confederate army at the commencement of 1862 were not far from 250,000 men. Of these about 175,000 were in eastern Virginia; about 30,000 were in Kentucky at Columbus, Fort Donelson, and Fort Henry; about 20,000 were in Tennessee, at Nashville and Chattanooga; and a consid

erable number were holding the Mississippi, being stationed at New Orleans, Natchez, Vicksburg, and Memphis.

Cam

How were these great armies to be employed? What was The the plan of the campaign that was to be directed against the Plan of South? During 1861 the Union troops had moved against paign the enemy in an irregular, haphazard fashion, but by the beginning of 1862 Lincoln and his advisers determined that the Union forces must undertake in a systematic manner the

accomplishment of four things: (1) they must capture Richmond; (2) they must keep the blockade effective so as not to let the South get any supplies from abroad; (3) they must gain possession of the Mississippi River so as to give the Western people an outlet to the ocean, and at the same time cut the Confederacy into two parts; (4) they must press upon the Confederate lines, driving them back farther and farther, until all the territory of the seceding States should be under the control of the federal power.

Forts Henry and

Donelson

General
Grant

THE WAR IN THE WEST: 1862

The energetic movement of the armies began in the West. In February Commodore Foote with a flotilla of gunboats moved up the Tennessee River and captured Fort Henry (February 6). Foote now returned with his gunboats to the Ohio and ascended the Cumberland to attack Fort Donelson by water while General U. S. Grant was to attack it by land. The

Ulysses S. Grant.

an

gunboats were driven back, but Grant with an army of 30,000 men pressed hard upon the fort and after three days of fighting compelled it to surrender (February 16), capturing about 15,000 Confederate soldiers. The capture of these two forts was an event of the greatest importance, for it gave to the Union forces the control of two waterways that led far into the South, and it wrested from the Confederacy the whole of Kentucky and a large part of Ten

nessee.

The man who achieved the victory of Fort Donelson was at the time wholly unknown to the American people. Like most of the leaders in the Civil War, whether Union or Confederate,

Grant had been graduated at West Point and like many of them (p. 308) he had served in the Mexican War. After that war was over he served at various military posts until 1854, when he retired from the army and undertook to conduct a real estate business in St. Louis. Failing in this, in 1860 he took a clerk

If desirable, all of this section and all of the next section except the last paragraph (p. 394) may be omitted.

ship in his father's leather business at Galena, Illinois, where
he remained till the outbreak of the Civil War. Up to this
time Grant's life, in its outward aspects, at least, had been a
failure; he had allowed his great faculties to fall into disuse,
and ambition seemed to have faded from his nature. But when
Lincoln called for soldiers Grant was aroused to action. He
drilled a body of volunteers and wrote to the adjutant-general
at Washington, offering his services to the Union army. But
he was too obscure a personage to secure consideration; he did
not receive even a reply to his letter. Nevertheless, in June,
1861, he was successful in securing an appointment as colonel
of an Illinois regiment; in August he was made a brigadier-
general of volunteers; in September he was made commander
of the Union forces in southeastern Missouri.
He now
moved upward from one position to another until he became
the central figure of the war. Grant was short in stature,
round-shouldered, and not at all striking in personal appear-
ance. "He has rough, light-brown whiskers," said an observer,
"blue eyes and a rather scrubby look withal. . . . But his face
is firm and hard and his eye is clear and resolute." Upon the
field of battle Grant's physical courage was marvelous even in
the opinion of the bravest. Throughout rattling musketry fire
he would sit in his saddle without moving a muscle or winking
an eye, quiet, thoughtful, imperturbable. His great qualities
as a general were manifested in the directness of his movements
and in the perseverance of his actions. He went straight
against the enemy to crush him, and he fought on and on,
hammering away until the victory was complete.

After the fall of Fort Donelson the Confederate troops moved south to Corinth, a railroad center in northern Mississippi. Here a large army was collected under the command of Albert Sidney Johnston, one of the ablest and bravest of the Southern generals. The Union army, after its success at Don- Shiloh elson, was led by Grant up the Tennessee to Pittsburgh Landing near Shiloh Church, where Grant expected to be joined by Buell, who was moving south with the army that had been stationed at Louisville. But before Buell arrived Johnston sud

Bragg's
Raid into
Kentucky;
Murfrees-

boro

Opening

of the Mississippi

denly attacked (April 6) the Union army and on the first day of the battle drove Grant from his position. About sundown, however, the advance forces of Buell began to arrive, and during the night four divisions of his army reached the field. The next morning the battle was renewed, and there was hard fighting on both sides, but after the arrival of Buell's army the Confederates were greatly outnumbered and were compelled to retire. On the first day of the battle Johnston was killed. He was succeeded by Beauregard, who led his forces back to Corinth. But he was unable to hold this position, for General Halleck, then commander of all the armies in the West, pressed upon Corinth (May 30) and compelled the Confederates to move farther south.

After Shiloh it was several months before there was any more desperate fighting in the West between the land forces. In the fall the Confederate general Bragg passed the Union lines and made a raid into Kentucky. He was moving rapidly northward when he was met by Buell near Perryville (October 8) and driven back into Tennessee. On the last day of the year, Bragg, while in winter quarters at Murfreesboro, was attacked by the Union general Rosecrans. After one of the most bloody battles of the war the Confederate troops withdrew from the field, although it would hardly be correct to say that they were defeated.

While the forces of Grant and Halleck were pushing back the Confederate lines in the States of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, other Union forces were gaining control of the Mississippi River. On April 7, Foote with his gunboats and General Pope with a land force took possession of Island No. 10. Two months later the Confederates abandoned Fort Pillow and Memphis, and this left the Union forces in control of the upper Mississippi as far south as Vicksburg. In the meantime, Admiral Farragut was gaining control of the lower Mississippi. In April Farragut entered the mouth of the river with a great fleet, forced his way past Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip, and captured New Orleans and Baton Rouge.