Diary of Edward Bates: April 20, 1859

Today was published in St Louis papers (copied from the New York Tribune) a recent letter of mine to the Whig Committee of New York, in answer to their call upon me for my views and opinions on the politics of the country, and the signs of the times.¹

St. Louis, Feb. 24, 1859.

 

To Messrs. J. PHILIPS PHOENIX, WILLIS BLACKSTONE, H. M. BININGER, DAVID J. LILET AND H. R. SMITH, Committee, New York.

 

Sirs: A short time ago I was favored with your note of the 7th inst., covering a resolution of the Committee, to the effect that it is inexpedient at this time further to discuss or agitate the Negro question, but rather to turn the attention of the people to other topics — "topics of general importance, such as our Foreign Relations, including the Extension of Territory; the building of Railroads for National purposes; the improvement of our Harbors, the navigation of our Rivers to facilitate Internal Commerce; the subject of Currency, and a Tariff of Duties, and other means of developing our own internal resources, our home wealth, and binding together by ties of national and fraternal feelings, the various parts and sections of our widely extended Republic."

 

Your letter, gentlemen, opens a very wide field, in asking for my "opinion upon the subject, and my views as to the signs of the times." Books have been written upon these matters, and speeches delivered by the thousand ; and yet the argument seems as far from being exhausted as it was at the beginning ; and I take it for certain that you do not expect or desire me to discuss at large, all or any of these interminable quarrels. That I have opinions upon all or most of them, is true — not the opinions of this or that party, ready to be abandoned or modified to suit this or that platform, but my own opinions — perhaps the more fixed and harder to be changed because deliberately formed in the retirement of private life, free from the exigencies of official responsibility and from the perturbations of party policy. They are my own opinions, right or wrong.

 

As to the Negro question — I have always thought, and often declared in speech and in print, that it is a pestilent question, the agitation of which has never done good to any party, section or class, and never can do good, unless it be accounted good to stir up the angry passions of men, and exasperate the unreasoning jealousy of sections, and by those bad means foist some unfit men into office, and keep some fit men out. It is a sensitive question into whose dangerous vortex it is quite possible for good men to be drawn unawares. But when I see a man, at the South or the North, of mature age and some experience, persist in urging the question, after the sorrowful experience of the last few years, I can attribute his conduct to no higher motive than personal ambition or sectional prejudice.

 

As to the power of the General Government to protect the persons and properties, and advance the interests of the people, by laying taxes, raising armies and navies, building forts and arsenals, light houses, moles, and breakwaters, surveying the coasts and adjacent seas, improving rivers, lakes, and harbors, and making roads — I should be very sorry to doubt the existence of the power, or the duty to exercise it, whenever the constituted authorities have the means in their hands, and are convinced that its exercise is necessary to protect the country and advance the prosperity of the people.

 

In my own opinion, a government that has no power to protect the harbors of its country against winds and waves and human enemies, nor its rivers against snags, sands and rocks, nor to build roads for the transportation of its armies and its mails and the commerce of its people, is a poor, impotent government, and not at all such a government as our fathers thought they had made when they produced the Constitution which was greeted by intelligent men everywhere with admiration and gratitude as a government free enough for all the ends of legal liberty and strong enough for all the purposes of national and individual protection. A free people, if it be wise, will make a good constitution; but a constitution, however good in itself, did never make a free people. The people do not derive their rights from the government, but the government derives its powers from the people; and those powers are granted for the main, if not the only, purpose of protecting the rights of the people. Protection, then, if not the sole, is the chief end of government.

 

And it is for the governing power to judge, in every instance, what kind and what degree of protection is needful — whether a Navy to guard our commerce all around the world, or an Army to defend the country against armed invasion from without, or domestic insurrection from within; or a Tariff, to protect our home industry against the dangerous obtrusion of foreign labor and capital.

 

Of the existence of the power and duty of the Government to protect the People in their persons, their property, their industry and their locomotion, I have no doubt; but the time, the mode and the measure of protection, being always questions of policy and prudence, must of necessity be left to the wisdom and patriotism of those whose duty it is to make laws for the good government of the country. And with them I freely leave it, as the safest, and indeed the only, constitutional depository of the power.

 

As to our Foreign Policy generally, I have but little to say. I am not much of a progressive, and am content to leave it where Washington [Jefferson] placed it, upon that wise, virtuous, safe maxim — "Peace [. . .] with all nations; entangling alliance[s] with none." The greedy and indiscriminate appetite for foreign acquisition, which makes us covet our neighbor's lands, and devise cunning schemes to get them, has little of my sympathy. I view it as a sort of political gluttony, as dangerous to our body politic as gluttony is to the natural man — producing disease certainly, hastening death, probably. Those of our politicians who are afflicted with this morbid appetite are wont to cite the purchase of Louisiana and Florida, as giving countenance to their inordinate desires. But the cases are wholly unlike in almost every particular. Louisiana was indispensable to our full and safe enjoyment of an immense region which was already owned, and its acquisition gave us the unquestioned control of that noble system of Mississippi waters, which nature seems to have made to be one and indivisible, and rounded off the map of the nation into one uniform and compacted whole. Nothing remained to mar and disfigure our national plat, but Florida, and that was desirable, less for its intrinsic value, than because it would form a dangerous means of annoyance, in case of war with a Maritime Power, surrounded as it is, on three sides by the ocean, and touching three of our present States, with no barrier between. The population of Louisiana and Florida, when acquired, was very small compared with the largeness of the territory; and, lying in contact with the States, was easily and quickly absorbed into and assimilated with the mass of our people. Those countries were acquired, moreover, in the most peaceful and friendly manner, and for a satisfactory consideration.

 

Now, without any right or any necessity, it is hard to tell what we do not claim in all the continent south of us, and the adjacent islands. Cuba is to be the first fruit of our grasping enterprise, and that is to be gotten at all hazards, by peaceful purchase if we can, by war and conquest if we must.² But Cuba is only an outpost to the Empire of Islands and continental countries that are to follow. A leading Senator³ has lately declared (in debate on the Thirty Million bill⁴) that we must not only have Cuba, but all the islands from Cape Florida to the Spanish Main, so as to surround the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, and make them our "mare clausum" like the Mediterranean, in old times, when the Roman Emperor ruled both its shores, from the pillars of Hercules to the Hellespont.⁵ This claim of mare nostrum implies, of course, that we must own the continent that bounds our sea on the west, as well as the string of islands that inclose it on the east — that is, Mexico, Central America, and all South America, so far south at least as the Orinoco.⁶ In that wide compass of sea and land there are a good many native governments, and provinces belonging to the strongest maritime powers, and a narrow continental isthmus which we ourselves, as well as England and France, are wont to call the highway of nations. To fulfill the grand conception, and perfect our tropical empire, we must buy or conquer all these torrid countries, and their mongrel populations. As to buying them, it strikes me that we had better waite [sic] awhile, at least until the Government has ceased to borrow money to pay its current expenses. And as to conquering them, perhaps it would be prudent to pause and make some estimate of costs and contingencies, before we rush into war with all maritime Europe and half America.

 

I am not one of those who believe that the United States is not an independent and safe nation, because Cuba is not a part of it. On the contrary, I believe that we are quite capable of self-defense, even if the "Queen of the Antilles" were a province of England, France or Russia; and surely, while it remains an appendage of a comparatively feeble nation, Cuba has much more cause to fear us than we have to fear Cuba. In fact, gentlemen, I cannot help doubting the honesty of the cowardly argument by which we are urged to rob poor old Spain of this last remnant of her Western empire, for fear that she might use it to rob us.

 

But suppose we could get, honestly and peaceably, the whole of the country — continental and insular — from the Rio Grande to the Orinoco, and from Trinidad to Cuba, and thus establish our mare clausum, and shut the gate of the world across the Isthmus, can we govern them wisely and well? For the last few years, in the attempt to govern our home Territories of Kansas and Utah, we have not very well maintained the dignity and justice of the nation, nor secured the peace and prosperity of the subject people.⁷ Can we hope to do better with the various mixed races of Mexico, Central and South America, and the West India Islands? Some of those countries have been trying for fifty years to establish republican governments on our model, but in every instance have miserably failed; and yet, there was no obstacle to complete success but their own inaptitude.

 

For my part, I should be grieved to see my country become, like Rome, a conquering and dominant nation; for I think there are few or no examples in history, of Governments whose chief objects were glory and power, which did ever secure the happiness and prosperity of their own people. Such Governments may grow great and famous, and advance a few of their citizens to wealth and nobility; but the price of their grandeur is the personal independence and individual freedom of their people. Still less am I inclined to see absorbed into our system, "on an equal footing with the original States," the various and mixed races (amounting to I know not how many millions) which inhabit the continent and islands south of our present border. I am not willing to inoculate our body politic with the virus of their diseases, political and social — diseases which, with them, are chronic and hereditary, and with us could hardly fail to produce corruption in the head and weakness in the members.

 

Our own country, as it is, in position, form and size, is a wonder which proclaims a wisdom above the wit of man. Large enough for our posterity, for centuries to come: All in the temperate zone, and therefore capable of a homogeneous population, yet so diversified in climates and soils, as to produce everything that is necessary to the comfort and wealth of a great people: Bounded east and west by great oceans, and bisected in the middle by a mighty river, which drains and fructifies the continent, and binds together the most southern and northern portions of our land by a bond stronger than iron. Beside all this, it is new and growing — the strongest on the continent, with no neighbor whose power it fears, or of whose ambition it has cause to be jealous. Surely such a country is great enough and good enough for all the ends of honest ambition and virtuous power.

It seems to me that an efficient home-loving Government, moderate and economical in its administration, peaceful in its objects, and just to all nations, need have no fear of invasion at home, or serious aggression abroad. The nations of Europe have to stand continually in defense of their existence; but the conquest of our county by a foreign power is simply impossible, and no nation is so absurd as to entertain the thought. We may conquer ourselves by local strifes and sectional animosities; and when, by our folly and wickedness, we have accomplished that great calamity, there will be none to pity us for the consequences of so great a crime.

 

If our Government would devote all its energies to the promotion of peace and friendship with all foreign countries, the advancement of Commerce, the increase of Agriculture, the growth and stability of Manufactures, and the cheapening, quickening and securing the internal trade and travel of our country ; in short, if it would devote itself in earnest to the establishment of a wise and steady policy of internal government, I think we should witness a growth and consolidation of wealth and comfort and power for good, which cannot be reasonably hoped for from a fluctuating policy, always watching for the turns of good fortune, or from a grasping ambition to seize new territories, which are hard to get and harder to govern.

 

The present position of the Administration is a sorrowful commentary upon the broad democracy of its professions. In theory, the people have the right and ability to do anything; in practice, we are verging rapidly to the One-Man power.

The President, the ostensible head of the National Democrats, is eagerly striving to concentrate power in his own hands, and thus to set aside both the People and their Representatives in the actual affairs of government. Having emptied the Treasury, which he found full, and living precariously upon borrowed money, he now demands of Congress to entrust to his unchecked discretion the War power, the Purse and the Sword. First, he asks Congress to authorize him, by statute, to use the Army to take military possession of the Northern Mexico, and hold it under his protectorate, and as a security for debts due to our citizens⁸ — civil possession would not answer, for that might expose him, as in the case of Kansas, to be annoyed by a factious Congress and a rebellious Territorial Legislature.

Secondly: Not content with this, he demands the discretionary power to use the Army and Navy in the South, also in blockading the coast and marching his troops into the interior of Mexico and New Granada, to protect our citizens against all evil-doers along the transit routes of Tehuantepec and Panama.⁹ And he and his supporters in Congress claim this enormous power upon the ground that, in this particular at least, he ought to be the equal of the greatest monarch of Europe. They forget that our fathers limited the power of the President by design, and for the reason that they had found out by sad experience that the monarchs of Europe were too strong for freedom.

 

Third: In strict pursuance of this doctrine, first publicly announced from Ostend,¹⁰ he demands of Congress to hand over to him thirty millions of dollars to be used at his discretion, to facilitate his acquisition of Cuba.¹¹ Facilitate how ? Perhaps it might be imprudent to tell.

 

Add to all this, the fact (as yet unexplained) that one of the largest naval armaments which ever sailed from our coast is now operating in South America, ostensibly against a poor little republic far up the Plate River,¹² to settle some little quarrel between the two Presidents.¹³ If Congress had been polite enough to grant the President's demand of the sword and the purse against Mexico, Central America and Cuba, this navy, its duty done at the south, might be made, on its way home, to arrive in the Gulf very opportunely, to aid the " Commander-in-Chief " in the acquisition of some very valuable territory.

 

I allude to these facts with no malice against Mr. Buchanan, but as evidences of the dangerous change which is now obviously sought to be made in the practical working of the Government — the concentration of power in the hands of the President, and the dangerous policy, now almost established, of looking abroad for temporary glory and aggrandizement, instead of looking at home, for all the purposes of good government — peaceable, moderate, economical, protecting all interests alike, and by a fixed policy, calling into safe exercise all the talents and industry of our people, and thus steadily advancing our country in everything which can make a nation great, happy, and permanent.

 

The rapid increase of the Public Expenditures (and that, too, under the management of statesmen professing to be peculiarly economical) is an alarming sign of corruption and decay.

 

That increase bears no fair proportion to the growth and expansion of the country, but looks rather like wanton waste or criminal negligence. The ordinary objects of great expense are not materially augmented — the Army and Navy remain on a low peace establishment— the military defenses are little, if at all, enlarged — the improvement of Harbors, Lakes and Rivers is abandoned, and the Pacific Railroad is not only not begun but its very location is scrambled for by angry sections, which succeed in nothing but mutual defeat. In short, the money to an enormous amount (I am told at the rate of $80,000,000 to $100,000,000 a year) is gone, and we have little or nothing to show for it. In profound peace with foreign nations, and surrounded with the proofs of National growth and individual prosperity, the Treasury, by less than two years of mismanagement, is made bankrupt, and the Government itself is living from hand to mouth, on bills of credit and borrowed money!

 

This humiliating state of things could hardly happen if men in power were both honest and wise. The Democratic economists in Congress confess that they have recklessly wasted the Public Revenue; they confess it by refusing to raise the Tariff to meet the present exigency, and by insisting that they can replenish the exhausted Treasury and support the Government, in credit and efficiency, by simply striking off their former extravagances.

 

An illustrious predecessor of the President is reported to have declared "that those who live on borrowed money ought to break." I do not concur in that harsh saying; yet I am clearly of opinion that the Government, in common prudence (to say nothing of pride and dignity), ought to reserve its credit for great transactions and unforeseen emergencies. In common times of peace, it ought always to have an established revenue, equal, at least, to its current expenses. And that revenue ought to be so levied as to foster and protect the Industry of the country employed in our most necessary and important manufactures.

 

Gentlemen, I cannot touch upon all the topics alluded to in your letter and resolution. I ought rather to beg your pardon for the prolixity of this answer. I speak for no party, because the only party I ever belonged to has ceased to exist as an organized and militant body.

 

And I speak for no man but myself.

 

I am fully aware that my opinions and views of public policy are of no importance to anybody but me, and there is good reason to fear that some of them are so antiquated and out of fashion as to make it very improbable that they will ever again be put to the test of actual practice.

 

Most respectfully,

EDWARD BATES.

The Republican publishes the letter to gratify the curiosity of my numerous friends throughout the country, but gives no opinion, neither praise nor censure.

The Evening News is rapturous in its applause, and glorifies me without measure or moderation.

The New York City papers eagerly published the letter, with few editorial comments, for the most part with moderate praise — I have seen only the Tribune (Greel[e]y's¹⁴) The Times (Raymond's¹⁵) the Express (Brooks'¹⁶) and the Herald (Bennett's¹⁷)[.]

I expected a sour reception from the Republican papers — Especially the Tribune and Times — on account of my openly opposing the further agitation of the Negro question. The Tribune,¹⁸ tho' well pleased with the rest of the letter, is clearly not well pleased with that part, but makes a distinction in my favor, between the two kinds of opposition to aggitation [sic] — one (with which he charges Hiram Ketchum¹⁹) he characterises as subserviency to the 'Slave power' and a tacit aid to their efforts to propagate and extend slavery. The other (which he supposes may be my position) a desire to stop the slavery aggitation [sic], with a view to more national questions, but with a readiness to resist the efforts of the Southern propagandists in their efforts to spread slavery where we do not find it.

The letter I think, is well written and effective. But some of my friends, I am sure, think me imprudent, in coming out so plainly upon the subjects treated of. I am not so timid, perhaps not so prudent as they — Upon the whole, the letter has been most favorably received in St Louis.

_______________

¹ This present version of the letter is that of the New York Tribune of April 16, 1859.

² This was the substance of the Ostend Manifesto which Buchanan as Minister to Great Britain had joined Ministers John Y. Mason and Pierre Soulé in promulgating. As Secretary of State under President Polk, Buchanan had tried to buy Cuba. In his second, third, and fourth annual messages he urged Congress to cooperate with him in securing it by negotiation.

³ Robert Toombs of Georgia: Whig state legislator, 1837-1840, 1841-1844 ; states' rights Democratic congressman, 1845-1853 ; U. S. senator, 1853-1861. He was later a leader in the Georgia Secession Convention, and congressman, brigadier-general, and secretary of State under the Confederacy.

⁴ January, 1859, Senate Reports, 35 Cong., 2 Sess., ser. no. 994, doc. no. 351. The bill purposed to appropriate $30,000,000 "to facilitate the acquisition of Cuba by negotiation." Senator Slidell (infra, Nov. 24, 1859, note 89) introduced it on January 10. 1859 (Cong. Globe, 35 Cong., 2 Sess., 277) ; it was reported favorably by the Committee on Foreign Relations of which he was chairman, on January 24, 1859 (ibid., 35 Cong., 2 Sess., 538) ; it was debated at great length on January 24, February 9-10, February 15—17, February 21, and February 25 (ibid., 35 Cong., 2 Sess., 538-544, 904-909, 934-940, 960968, 1038, Appendix [155-169], 1058-1063, 1079-1087, 1179-1192, 1326-1363) ; but because of opposition, it was withdrawn on February 26 (ibid., 35 Cong., 2 Sess., 13S51387). At the next session, on December 8, 1859, Senator Slidell reintroduced this bill (ibid., 36 Cong., 1 Sess., 53), had it referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations on December 21 (ibid., 36 Cong., 1 Sess., 199), reported it out favorably to the Senate on May 30, 1860, but because of opposition did not push it (ibid., 36 Cong., 1 Sess., 2456). He promised to call it up again at the next session, but when that time arrived was too busy seceding to bother about Cuba.

⁵ On January 24, Toombs had said, "Cuba has fine ports, and with her acquisition, we can make first the Gulf of Mexico, and then the Caribbean Sea, a mare clausum. Probably younger men than you or I will live to see the day when no flag shall float there except by permission of the United States of America . . . that development, that progress throughout the tropics [is] the true, fixed unalterable policy of the nation." Ibid., 35 Cong., 2 Sess., 543.

⁶ I. e., as far as Venezuela.

⁷ Bitterness over the slavery question had reached the point of armed conflict, raids, and murder in Kansas in 1855-1856, and Utah was at this time subject to frequent Indian raids. It was in 1859, too, that the Republicans tried to prohibit polygamy in Utah and the Democrats succeeded, probably with slavery in other territories in mind, in preventing Congressional legislation on the subject.

⁸ Dec. 6, 1858, James D. Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, V, 514. See infra, Feb. 15, 1860.

⁹ J. D. Richardson, op. cit., V, 516_517.

¹⁰ Supra, April 20, 1859, note 2.

¹¹ J. D. Richardson, op. cit., V, 508-511.

¹² Rio de La Plata in South America.

¹³ An expedition of some 19 ships, 200 guns, and 2.500 men which was sent against Paraguay because a vessel of that nation had fired upon the United States steamer Water Witch. A mere show of force sufficed to secure both an apology and an indemnity on February 10, 1859. The President of Argentina was so interested and so pleased that he presented the commander with a sword.

¹⁴ Infra, Feb. 2, 1860, note 47.

¹⁵ Infra, Feb. 4, 1860, note 61.

¹⁶ Infra, Sept. 20, 1860, note 12.

¹⁷ James Gordon Bennett: journalist in Boston, New York, and Charleston; then Washington correspondent; next editor of the New York Courier and Enquirer, 1829-1832, and of the Pennsylvanian, 1832-1833 ; and finally editor-owner of the New York Herald, 18351867. He made the Herald one of the most enterprising and spectacular of papers and kept it independent. He had supported Taylor (Whig) in 1848, Pierce (Democrat) in 1852, Fr6mont (Republican) in 1856, and was to support Douglas against Lincoln in 1860 and Lincoln against McClellan in 1864, Johnson against the Radicals in 1865-1866 and the Radicals against Johnson in 1866-1867. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Bennett wished to let the Southern States go in peace, but when war came he supported it.

¹⁸ For editorial comment see the New York Tribune, April 16, 1859.

¹⁹ Chairman of the Whig General Committee of New York City. Bates originally sent his letter to Ketchum in February, but it disappeared and he had to recopy it out of his letter-book and resend it for publication. Ibid., April 16, 1859. Ketchum represented moderate anti-Seward opinion in New York, was a delegate to the National Union Convention in Baltimore, but opposed the formation of a third party. He promised to support Mr. Bates if he were nominated by the Republicans.

SOURCE: Howard K. Beale, Editor, Annual Report of The American Historical Association For The Year 1930, Vol. 4, The Diary Of Edward Bates, pp. 1-10

Edward Bates to the Whig Committee of New York, February 24, 1859

St. Louis, Feb. 24, 1859.

To Messrs. J. PHILIPS PHOENIX, WILLIS BLACKSTONE, H. M. BININGER, DAVID J. LILET AND H. R. SMITH, Committee, New York.

Sirs: A short time ago I was favored with your note of the 7th inst., covering a resolution of the Committee, to the effect that it is inexpedient at this time further to discuss or agitate the Negro question, but rather to turn the attention of the people to other topics — "topics of general importance, such as our Foreign Relations, including the Extension of Territory; the building of Railroads for National purposes; the improvement of our Harbors, the navigation of our Rivers to facilitate Internal Commerce; the subject of Currency, and a Tariff of Duties, and other means of developing our own internal resources, our home wealth, and binding together by ties of national and fraternal feelings, the various parts and sections of our widely extended Republic."

Your letter, gentlemen, opens a very wide field, in asking for my "opinion upon the subject, and my views as to the signs of the times." Books have been written upon these matters, and speeches delivered by the thousand ; and yet the argument seems as far from being exhausted as it was at the beginning ; and I take it for certain that you do not expect or desire me to discuss at large, all or any of these interminable quarrels. That I have opinions upon all or most of them, is true — not the opinions of this or that party, ready to be abandoned or modified to suit this or that platform, but my own opinions — perhaps the more fixed and harder to be changed because deliberately formed in the retirement of private life, free from the exigencies of official responsibility and from the perturbations of party policy. They are my own opinions, right or wrong.

As to the Negro question — I have always thought, and often declared in speech and in print, that it is a pestilent question, the agitation of which has never done good to any party, section or class, and never can do good, unless it be accounted good to stir up the angry passions of men, and exasperate the unreasoning jealousy of sections, and by those bad means foist some unfit men into office, and keep some fit men out. It is a sensitive question into whose dangerous vortex it is quite possible for good men to be drawn unawares. But when I see a man, at the South or the North, of mature age and some experience, persist in urging the question, after the sorrowful experience of the last few years, I can attribute his conduct to no higher motive than personal ambition or sectional prejudice.

As to the power of the General Government to protect the persons and properties, and advance the interests of the people, by laying taxes, raising armies and navies, building forts and arsenals, light houses, moles, and breakwaters, surveying the coasts and adjacent seas, improving rivers, lakes, and harbors, and making roads — I should be very sorry to doubt the existence of the power, or the duty to exercise it, whenever the constituted authorities have the means in their hands, and are convinced that its exercise is necessary to protect the country and advance the prosperity of the people.

In my own opinion, a government that has no power to protect the harbors of its country against winds and waves and human enemies, nor its rivers against snags, sands and rocks, nor to build roads for the transportation of its armies and its mails and the commerce of its people, is a poor, impotent government, and not at all such a government as our fathers thought they had made when they produced the Constitution which was greeted by intelligent men everywhere with admiration and gratitude as a government free enough for all the ends of legal liberty and strong enough for all the purposes of national and individual protection. A free people, if it be wise, will make a good constitution; but a constitution, however good in itself, did never make a free people. The people do not derive their rights from the government, but the government derives its powers from the people; and those powers are granted for the main, if not the only, purpose of protecting the rights of the people. Protection, then, if not the sole, is the chief end of government.

And it is for the governing power to judge, in every instance, what kind and what degree of protection is needful — whether a Navy to guard our commerce all around the world, or an Army to defend the country against armed invasion from without, or domestic insurrection from within; or a Tariff, to protect our home industry against the dangerous obtrusion of foreign labor and capital.

Of the existence of the power and duty of the Government to protect the People in their persons, their property, their industry and their locomotion, I have no doubt; but the time, the mode and the measure of protection, being always questions of policy and prudence, must of necessity be left to the wisdom and patriotism of those whose duty it is to make laws for the good government of the country. And with them I freely leave it, as the safest, and indeed the only, constitutional depository of the power.

As to our Foreign Policy generally, I have but little to say. I am not much of a progressive, and am content to leave it where Washington [Jefferson] placed it, upon that wise, virtuous, safe maxim — "Peace [. . .] with all nations; entangling alliance[s] with none." The greedy and indiscriminate appetite for foreign acquisition, which makes us covet our neighbor's lands, and devise cunning schemes to get them, has little of my sympathy. I view it as a sort of political gluttony, as dangerous to our body politic as gluttony is to the natural man — producing disease certainly, hastening death, probably. Those of our politicians who are afflicted with this morbid appetite are wont to cite the purchase of Louisiana and Florida, as giving countenance to their inordinate desires. But the cases are wholly unlike in almost every particular. Louisiana was indispensable to our full and safe enjoyment of an immense region which was already owned, and its acquisition gave us the unquestioned control of that noble system of Mississippi waters, which nature seems to have made to be one and indivisible, and rounded off the map of the nation into one uniform and compacted whole. Nothing remained to mar and disfigure our national plat, but Florida, and that was desirable, less for its intrinsic value, than because it would form a dangerous means of annoyance, in case of war with a Maritime Power, surrounded as it is, on three sides by the ocean, and touching three of our present States, with no barrier between. The population of Louisiana and Florida, when acquired, was very small compared with the largeness of the territory; and, lying in contact with the States, was easily and quickly absorbed into and assimilated with the mass of our people. Those countries were acquired, moreover, in the most peaceful and friendly manner, and for a satisfactory consideration.

Now, without any right or any necessity, it is hard to tell what we do not claim in all the continent south of us, and the adjacent islands. Cuba is to be the first fruit of our grasping enterprise, and that is to be gotten at all hazards, by peaceful purchase if we can, by war and conquest if we must.² But Cuba is only an outpost to the Empire of Islands and continental countries that are to follow. A leading Senator³ has lately declared (in debate on the Thirty Million bill⁴) that we must not only have Cuba, but all the islands from Cape Florida to the Spanish Main, so as to surround the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, and make them our "mare clausum" like the Mediterranean, in old times, when the Roman Emperor ruled both its shores, from the pillars of Hercules to the Hellespont.⁵ This claim of mare nostrum implies, of course, that we must own the continent that bounds our sea on the west, as well as the string of islands that inclose it on the east — that is, Mexico, Central America, and all South America, so far south at least as the Orinoco.⁶ In that wide compass of sea and land there are a good many native governments, and provinces belonging to the strongest maritime powers, and a narrow continental isthmus which we ourselves, as well as England and France, are wont to call the highway of nations. To fulfill the grand conception, and perfect our tropical empire, we must buy or conquer all these torrid countries, and their mongrel populations. As to buying them, it strikes me that we had better waite [sic] awhile, at least until the Government has ceased to borrow money to pay its current expenses. And as to conquering them, perhaps it would be prudent to pause and make some estimate of costs and contingencies, before we rush into war with all maritime Europe and half America.

I am not one of those who believe that the United States is not an independent and safe nation, because Cuba is not a part of it. On the contrary, I believe that we are quite capable of self-defense, even if the "Queen of the Antilles" were a province of England, France or Russia; and surely, while it remains an appendage of a comparatively feeble nation, Cuba has much more cause to fear us than we have to fear Cuba. In fact, gentlemen, I cannot help doubting the honesty of the cowardly argument by which we are urged to rob poor old Spain of this last remnant of her Western empire, for fear that she might use it to rob us.

But suppose we could get, honestly and peaceably, the whole of the country — continental and insular — from the Rio Grande to the Orinoco, and from Trinidad to Cuba, and thus establish our mare clausum, and shut the gate of the world across the Isthmus, can we govern them wisely and well? For the last few years, in the attempt to govern our home Territories of Kansas and Utah, we have not very well maintained the dignity and justice of the nation, nor secured the peace and prosperity of the subject people.⁷ Can we hope to do better with the various mixed races of Mexico, Central and South America, and the West India Islands? Some of those countries have been trying for fifty years to establish republican governments on our model, but in every instance have miserably failed; and yet, there was no obstacle to complete success but their own inaptitude.

For my part, I should be grieved to see my country become, like Rome, a conquering and dominant nation; for I think there are few or no examples in history, of Governments whose chief objects were glory and power, which did ever secure the happiness and prosperity of their own people. Such Governments may grow great and famous, and advance a few of their citizens to wealth and nobility; but the price of their grandeur is the personal independence and individual freedom of their people. Still less am I inclined to see absorbed into our system, "on an equal footing with the original States," the various and mixed races (amounting to I know not how many millions) which inhabit the continent and islands south of our present border. I am not willing to inoculate our body politic with the virus of their diseases, political and social — diseases which, with them, are chronic and hereditary, and with us could hardly fail to produce corruption in the head and weakness in the members.

Our own country, as it is, in position, form and size, is a wonder which proclaims a wisdom above the wit of man. Large enough for our posterity, for centuries to come: All in the temperate zone, and therefore capable of a homogeneous population, yet so diversified in climates and soils, as to produce everything that is necessary to the comfort and wealth of a great people: Bounded east and west by great oceans, and bisected in the middle by a mighty river, which drains and fructifies the continent, and binds together the most southern and northern portions of our land by a bond stronger than iron. Beside all this, it is new and growing — the strongest on the continent, with no neighbor whose power it fears, or of whose ambition it has cause to be jealous. Surely such a country is great enough and good enough for all the ends of honest ambition and virtuous power.

It seems to me that an efficient home-loving Government, moderate and economical in its administration, peaceful in its objects, and just to all nations, need have no fear of invasion at home, or serious aggression abroad. The nations of Europe have to stand continually in defense of their existence; but the conquest of our county by a foreign power is simply impossible, and no nation is so absurd as to entertain the thought. We may conquer ourselves by local strifes and sectional animosities; and when, by our folly and wickedness, we have accomplished that great calamity, there will be none to pity us for the consequences of so great a crime.

If our Government would devote all its energies to the promotion of peace and friendship with all foreign countries, the advancement of Commerce, the increase of Agriculture, the growth and stability of Manufactures, and the cheapening, quickening and securing the internal trade and travel of our country ; in short, if it would devote itself in earnest to the establishment of a wise and steady policy of internal government, I think we should witness a growth and consolidation of wealth and comfort and power for good, which cannot be reasonably hoped for from a fluctuating policy, always watching for the turns of good fortune, or from a grasping ambition to seize new territories, which are hard to get and harder to govern.

The present position of the Administration is a sorrowful commentary upon the broad democracy of its professions. In theory, the people have the right and ability to do anything; in practice, we are verging rapidly to the One-Man power.

The President, the ostensible head of the National Democrats, is eagerly striving to concentrate power in his own hands, and thus to set aside both the People and their Representatives in the actual affairs of government. Having emptied the Treasury, which he found full, and living precariously upon borrowed money, he now demands of Congress to entrust to his unchecked discretion the War power, the Purse and the Sword. First, he asks Congress to authorize him, by statute, to use the Army to take military possession of the Northern Mexico, and hold it under his protectorate, and as a security for debts due to our citizens⁸ — civil possession would not answer, for that might expose him, as in the case of Kansas, to be annoyed by a factious Congress and a rebellious Territorial Legislature.

Secondly: Not content with this, he demands the discretionary power to use the Army and Navy in the South, also in blockading the coast and marching his troops into the interior of Mexico and New Granada, to protect our citizens against all evil-doers along the transit routes of Tehuantepec and Panama.⁹ And he and his supporters in Congress claim this enormous power upon the ground that, in this particular at least, he ought to be the equal of the greatest monarch of Europe. They forget that our fathers limited the power of the President by design, and for the reason that they had found out by sad experience that the monarchs of Europe were too strong for freedom.

Third: In strict pursuance of this doctrine, first publicly announced from Ostend,¹⁰ he demands of Congress to hand over to him thirty millions of dollars to be used at his discretion, to facilitate his acquisition of Cuba.¹¹ Facilitate how ? Perhaps it might be imprudent to tell.

Add to all this, the fact (as yet unexplained) that one of the largest naval armaments which ever sailed from our coast is now operating in South America, ostensibly against a poor little republic far up the Plate River,¹² to settle some little quarrel between the two Presidents.¹³ If Congress had been polite enough to grant the President's demand of the sword and the purse against Mexico, Central America and Cuba, this navy, its duty done at the south, might be made, on its way home, to arrive in the Gulf very opportunely, to aid the " Commander-in-Chief " in the acquisition of some very valuable territory.

I allude to these facts with no malice against Mr. Buchanan, but as evidences of the dangerous change which is now obviously sought to be made in the practical working of the Government — the concentration of power in the hands of the President, and the dangerous policy, now almost established, of looking abroad for temporary glory and aggrandizement, instead of looking at home, for all the purposes of good government — peaceable, moderate, economical, protecting all interests alike, and by a fixed policy, calling into safe exercise all the talents and industry of our people, and thus steadily advancing our country in everything which can make a nation great, happy, and permanent.

The rapid increase of the Public Expenditures (and that, too, under the management of statesmen professing to be peculiarly economical) is an alarming sign of corruption and decay.

That increase bears no fair proportion to the growth and expansion of the country, but looks rather like wanton waste or criminal negligence. The ordinary objects of great expense are not materially augmented — the Army and Navy remain on a low peace establishment— the military defenses are little, if at all, enlarged — the improvement of Harbors, Lakes and Rivers is abandoned, and the Pacific Railroad is not only not begun but its very location is scrambled for by angry sections, which succeed in nothing but mutual defeat. In short, the money to an enormous amount (I am told at the rate of $80,000,000 to $100,000,000 a year) is gone, and we have little or nothing to show for it. In profound peace with foreign nations, and surrounded with the proofs of National growth and individual prosperity, the Treasury, by less than two years of mismanagement, is made bankrupt, and the Government itself is living from hand to mouth, on bills of credit and borrowed money!

This humiliating state of things could hardly happen if men in power were both honest and wise. The Democratic economists in Congress confess that they have recklessly wasted the Public Revenue; they confess it by refusing to raise the Tariff to meet the present exigency, and by insisting that they can replenish the exhausted Treasury and support the Government, in credit and efficiency, by simply striking off their former extravagances.

An illustrious predecessor of the President is reported to have declared "that those who live on borrowed money ought to break." I do not concur in that harsh saying; yet I am clearly of opinion that the Government, in common prudence (to say nothing of pride and dignity), ought to reserve its credit for great transactions and unforeseen emergencies. In common times of peace, it ought always to have an established revenue, equal, at least, to its current expenses. And that revenue ought to be so levied as to foster and protect the Industry of the country employed in our most necessary and important manufactures.

Gentlemen, I cannot touch upon all the topics alluded to in your letter and resolution. I ought rather to beg your pardon for the prolixity of this answer. I speak for no party, because the only party I ever belonged to has ceased to exist as an organized and militant body.

And I speak for no man but myself.

I am fully aware that my opinions and views of public policy are of no importance to anybody but me, and there is good reason to fear that some of them are so antiquated and out of fashion as to make it very improbable that they will ever again be put to the test of actual practice.

Most respectfully,

EDWARD BATES.

_______________

² This was the substance of the Ostend Manifesto which Buchanan as Minister to Great Britain had joined Ministers John Y. Mason and Pierre Soulé in promulgating. As Secretary of State under President Polk, Buchanan had tried to buy Cuba. In his second, third, and fourth annual messages he urged Congress to cooperate with him in securing it by negotiation.

³ Robert Toombs of Georgia: Whig state legislator, 1837-1840, 1841-1844; states' rights Democratic congressman, 1845-1853; U. S. senator, 1853-1861. He was later a leader in the Georgia Secession Convention, and congressman, brigadier-general, and secretary of State under the Confederacy.

⁴ January, 1859, Senate Reports, 35 Cong., 2 Sess., ser. no. 994, doc. no. 351. The bill purposed to appropriate $30,000,000 "to facilitate the acquisition of Cuba by negotiation." Senator Slidell (infra, Nov. 24, 1859, note 89) introduced it on January 10. 1859 (Cong. Globe, 35 Cong., 2 Sess., 277) ; it was reported favorably by the Committee on Foreign Relations of which he was chairman, on January 24, 1859 (ibid., 35 Cong., 2 Sess., 538) ; it was debated at great length on January 24, February 9-10, February 15—17, February 21, and February 25 (ibid., 35 Cong., 2 Sess., 538-544, 904-909, 934-940, 960968, 1038, Appendix [155-169], 1058-1063, 1079-1087, 1179-1192, 1326-1363) ; but because of opposition, it was withdrawn on February 26 (ibid., 35 Cong., 2 Sess., 13S51387). At the next session, on December 8, 1859, Senator Slidell reintroduced this bill (ibid., 36 Cong., 1 Sess., 53), had it referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations on December 21 (ibid., 36 Cong., 1 Sess., 199), reported it out favorably to the Senate on May 30, 1860, but because of opposition did not push it (ibid., 36 Cong., 1 Sess., 2456). He promised to call it up again at the next session, but when that time arrived was too busy seceding to bother about Cuba.

⁵ On January 24, Toombs had said, "Cuba has fine ports, and with her acquisition, we can make first the Gulf of Mexico, and then the Caribbean Sea, a mare clausum. Probably younger men than you or I will live to see the day when no flag shall float there except by permission of the United States of America . . . that development, that progress throughout the tropics [is] the true, fixed unalterable policy of the nation." Ibid., 35 Cong., 2 Sess., 543.

⁶ I. e., as far as Venezuela.

⁷ Bitterness over the slavery question had reached the point of armed conflict, raids, and murder in Kansas in 1855-1856, and Utah was at this time subject to frequent Indian raids. It was in 1859, too, that the Republicans tried to prohibit polygamy in Utah and the Democrats succeeded, probably with slavery in other territories in mind, in preventing Congressional legislation on the subject.

⁸ Dec. 6, 1858, James D. Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, V, 514. See infra, Feb. 15, 1860.

⁹ J. D. Richardson, op. cit., V, 516-517.

¹⁰ Supra, April 20, 1859, note 2.

¹¹ J. D. Richardson, op. cit., V, 508-511.

¹² Rio de La Plata in South America.

¹³ An expedition of some 19 ships, 200 guns, and 2.500 men which was sent against Paraguay because a vessel of that nation had fired upon the United States steamer Water Witch. A mere show of force sufficed to secure both an apology and an indemnity on February 10, 1859. The President of Argentina was so interested and so pleased that he presented the commander with a sword.

SOURCE: Howard K. Beale, Editor, Annual Report of The American Historical Association For The Year 1930, Vol. 4, The Diary Of Edward Bates, pp. 1-9

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: August 1, 1861

It is said the pickets of the Fourteenth Indiana and the enemy's cavalry came in collision to-day, and that three of the latter were killed.

It is now 9 P. M. Sergeants are calling the roll for the last time to-night. In half an hour taps will be sounded and the lights extinguished in every private's tent. The first call in the morning, reveille, is at five; breakfast call, six; surgeon's call, seven; drill, eight; recall, eleven; dinner, twelve; drill again at four; recall, five; guard-mounting, half-past five; first call for dress-parade, six; second call, half-past six; tattoo at nine, and taps at half-past. So the day goes round.

Hardee for a month or more was a book of impenetrable mysteries. The words conveyed no idea to my mind, and the movements described were utterly beyond my comprehension; but now the whole thing comes almost without study.

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 41

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: August 2, 1861

Jerrolaman went out this afternoon and picked nearly a peck of blackberries. Berries of various kinds are very abundant. The fox-grape is also found in great plenty, and as big as one's thumb.

The Indianians are great ramblers. Lieutenant Bell says they can be traced all over the country, for they not only eat all the berries, but nibble the thorns off the bushes.

General Reynolds told me, this evening, he thought it probable we would be attacked soon. Have been distributing ammunition, forty rounds to the man.

My black horse was missing this morning. Conway looked for him the greater part of the day, and finally found him in possession of an Indiana captain. It happened in this way: Captain Rupp, Thirteenth Indiana, told his men he would give forty dollars for a sesesh horse, and they took my horse out of the pasture, delivered it to him, and got the money. He rode the horse up the valley to Colonel Wagner's station, and when he returned bragged considerably over his good luck; but about dark Conway interviewed him on the subject, when a change came o'er the spirit of his dream. Colonel Sullivan tells me the officers now talk to Rupp about the fine points of his horse, ask to borrow him, and desire to know when he proposes to ride again.

A little group of soldiers are sitting around a camp-fire, not far away, entertaining each other with stories and otherwise. Just now one of them lifts up his voice, and in a melancholly strain sings:

Somebody —— “is weeping

For Gallant Andy Gay,

Who now in death lies sleeping

On the field of Monterey.”

While I write he strikes into another air, and these are the words as I catch them:

“Come back, come back, my purty fair maid!

Then thousand of my jinture on you I will bestow

If you’ll consent to marry me;

Oh, do not say me no.”

But the maid is indifferent to jintures, and replies indignantly:

“Oh, hold your tongue, captain, your words are all in vain;

I have a handsome sweetheart now across the main,

And if I do not find him I’ll mourn continuali.”

More of this interesting dialogue between the captain and the pretty fair maid I can not catch.

The sky is clear, but the night very dark. I do not contemplate my ride to the picket posts with any great degree of pleasure. A cowardly sentinel is more likely to shoot at you than a brave one. The fears of the former do not give him time to consider whether the person advancing is friend or foe.

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 41-3

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: August 3, 1861

We hear of the enemy daily, Colonel Kimball, on the mountain, and Colonel Wagner, up the valley, are both in hourly expectation of an attack. The enemy, encouraged by his successes at Manassas, will probably attempt to retrieve his losses in Western Virginia.

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 43

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: August 4, 1861

At one o'clock P. M. General Reynolds sent for Two of Colonel Wagner's companies had been surrounded, and an attack on Wagner's position expected to-night. The enemy reported three thousand strong. He desired me to send half of my regiment and two of Loomis' guns to the support of Wagner. I took six companies and started up the valley. Reached Wagner's quarters at six o'clock. Brought neither tents nor provisions, and to-night will turn in with the Indianians.

It is true that the enemy number three thousand; the main body being ten or fifteen miles away. Their pickets and ours, however, are near each other; but General Reynolds was misinformed as to two of Wagner's companies. They had not been surrounded.

To-morrow Colonel Wagner and I will make a reconnoissance, and ascertain if the rebels are ready to fight. Wagner has six hundred and fifty men fit for duty, and I have four hundred. Besides these, we have three pieces of artillery. Altogether, we expect to be able to hoe them a pretty good row, if they should advance on us. Four of the enemy were captured to-day. A company of cavalry is approaching. "Halt! who comes there?" cries the sentinel. "Lieutenant Denny, without the countersign." "All right," shouts Colonel Wagner, "let him come.” I write with at least four fleas hopping about on my legs.

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 43-4

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: August 5, 1861

To-day we felt our way up the valley eight miles, but did not reach the rebels.

To-night our pickets were sure they heard firing off in the direction of Kanawha. If so, Cox and Wise must be having a pleasant little interchange of lead.

The chaplain of the Thirteenth Indiana is the counterpart of Scott's Holy Clerk of Copmanhurst, or the fighting friar of the times of Robin Hood. In answer to some request he has just said that he will "go to thunder before doing it." The first time I saw this fighting parson was at the burnt bridge near Huttonville. He had two revolvers and a hatchet in his belt, and appeared more like a firebrand of war than a minister of peace. I now hear the rough voice of a braggadocio captain in the adjoining tent, who, if we may believe his own story, is the most formidable man alive. His hair-breadth escapes are innumerable, and his anxiety to get at the enemy is intense. Is it not ancient Pistol come again to astonish the world by deeds of reckless daring?

We have sent out a scouting party, and hope to learn something more of the rebels during the night. Wagner, Major Wood, Captain Abbott, and others are having a game of whist.

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 44-5

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: August 6, 1861

Our camp equipage came up to-day, so that we are now in our own tents.

Four of my companies are on picket, scattered up the valley for miles, and half of the other two are doing guard duty in the neighborhood of the camp. I do not, by any means, approve of throwing out such heavy pickets and scattering our men so much. We are in the presence of a force probably twice as large as our own, and should keep our troops well in hand.

Our scouts have been busy; but, although they have brought in a few prisoners, mostly farmers residing in the vicinity of the enemy's camp, we have obtained but little information respecting the rebels. I intend to send out a scouting party in the morning. Lieutenant Driscoll will command it. He is a brave, and, I think, prudent officer, and will leave camp at four o'clock, follow the road six miles, then take to the mountains, and endeavor to reach a point where he can overlook the enemy and estimate his strength.

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 45-6

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: August 7, 1861

The scouting party sent out this morning were conveyed by wagons six miles up the valley, and were to take to the mountains, half a mile beyond. I instructed Lieutenant Driscoll to exercise the utmost caution, and not take his men further than he thought reasonably safe. Of course perfect safety is not expected. Our object, however, is to get information, not to give it by losing the squad.

At eleven o'clock a courier came in hot haste from the front, to inform us that a flag of truce, borne by a Confederate major, with an escort of six dragoons, was on the way to camp. Colonel Wagner and I rode out to meet the party, and were introduced to Major Lee, the son, as I subsequently ascertained, of General Robert E. Lee, of Virginia. The Major informed us that his communication could only be imparted to our General, and a courier was at once dispatched to Huttonville.

At four o'clock General Reynolds arrived, accompanied by Colonel Sullivan and a company of cavalry. Wagner and I joined the General's party, and all galloped to the outpost, to interview the Confederate major. His letter contained a proposition to exchange prisoners captured by the rebels at Manassas for those taken at Rich mountain. The General appointed at day on which a definite answer should be returned, and Major Lee, accompanied by Lieutenant-Colonel Owen and myself, rode to the outlying picket station, where his escort had been halted and detained.

Major Lee is near my own age, a heavy set, but well-proportioned man, somewhat inclined to boast, not overly profound, and thoroughly impregnated with the idea that he is a Virginian and a Lee withal. As I shook hands at parting with this scion of an illustrious house, he complimented me by saying that he hoped soon to have the honor of meeting me on the battlefield. I assured him that it would afford me pleasure, and I should make all reasonable efforts to gratify him in this regard. I did not desire to fight, of course, but I was bound not to be excelled in the matter of knightly courtesy.

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 46-7

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: August 8, 1861

Major Wood, Fifteenth Indiana, thought he heard chopping last night, and imagined that the enemy was engaged in cutting a road to our rear.

Lieutenant Driscoll and party returned to-day. They slept on the mountains last night; were inside the enemy's picket lines; heard reveille sounded this morning, but could not obtain a view of the camp.

Have just returned from a sixteen-mile ride, visiting picket posts. The latter half of the ride was after nightfall. Found officers and men vigilant and ready to meet an attack.

Obtained some fine huckleberries and blackberries on the mountain to-day. Had a blackberry pie and pudding for dinner. Rather too much happiness for one day; but then the crust of the pudding was tolerably tough. The grass is a foot high in parts of my tent, where it has not been trodden down, and the gentle grasshopper makes music all the day, and likewise all the night.

Our fortifications are progressing slowly. If the enemy intends to attack at all, he will probably do so before they are complete; and if he does not, the fortifications will be of no use to us. But this is the philosophy of a lazy man, and very similar to that of the Irishman who did not put roof on his cabin: when it rained he could not, and in fair weather he did not need it.

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 47-8

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: August 9, 1861

Pickets report firing, artillery and musketry, over the mountain, in the direction of Kimball.

The enemy's scouts were within three miles of our camp this afternoon, evidently looking for a path that would enable them to get to our rear. Fifty men have just been sent in pursuit; but owing to a little misunderstanding of instructions, I fear the expedition will be fruitless. Colonel Wagner neither thinks clearly nor talks with any degree of exactness. He has a loose, slip-shod, indefinite way with him, that tends to confusion and leads to misunderstandings and trouble.

I have been over the mountain on our left, hunting up the paths and familiarizing myself with the ground, so as to be ready to defeat any effort that may be made to turn our flank. Colonel Owen has been investigating the mountain on our right. The Colonel is a good thinker, an excellent conversationalist, and a very learned man.

Geology is his darling, and he keeps one eye on the enemy, and the other on the rocks.

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 48-9

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: August 10, 1861

My tent is on the bank of the Valley river. The water, clear as crystal, as it hurries on over the rocks, keeps up a continuous murmur.

There will be a storm to-night. The sky is very dark, the wind rising, and every few minutes a vivid flash of lightning illuminates the valley, and the thunder rolls off among the mountains with a rumbbling, echoing noise, like that which the gods might make in putting a hundred trains of celestial artillery in position.

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 49

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: August 11, 1861

Lieutenant Bowen, of topographical engineers, and myself, with ten men, carrying axes and guns, started up the mountain at seven o'clock this morning, followed a path to the crest, or dividing ridge, and felled trees to obstruct the way as much as possible. Returned to camp for dinner.

During the afternoon Lieutenant W. O. Merrill, Lieutenant Bowen, and I, ascended the mountain. again by a new route. After reaching the crest, we endeavored to find the path which Lieutenant Bowen and I had traveled over in the morning, but were unable to do so. We continued our search until it became quite dark, when the two engineers, as well as myself, became utterly bewildered. Finally, Lieutenant Merrill took out his pocket compass, and said the camp was in that direction, pointing with his hand. I insisted he was wrong; that he would not reach camp by going that way. He insisted that he would, and must be governed by some general principles, and so started off on his own hook, leaving us to pursue our own course. Finally Bowen lost confidence in me, said I was not going in the right direction at all, and insisted that we should turn squarely around, and go the opposite way. At last I yielded with many misgivings, and allowed him to lead. After going down a thousand feet or more, we found ourselves in a ravine, through which a small stream of water flowed. Following this, we finally reached the valley. We knew now exactly where we were, and by wading the river reached the road, and so got to camp at nine o'clock at night.

Merrill, who was governed by general principles, failed to strike the camp directly, strayed three or four miles to the right of it, came down in Stewart's run valley, and did not reach camp until about midnight.

On our trip to-day, we found a bear trap, made of heavy logs, the lid arranged to fall when the bear entered and touched the bait.

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 49-50

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: August 12, 1861

This is the fourth day that Captain Cunard's company has been lying in the woods, three miles from camp, guarding an important road, although a very rough and rugged one. Companies upon duty like this, remain at their posts day and night, good weather and bad, without any shelter, except that afforded by the trees, or by little booths constructed of logs and branches. From the main station, where the captain remains, sub-pickets are sent out in charge of sergeants and corporals, and these often make little houses of logs, which they cover with cedar boughs or branches of laurel, and denominate forts. In the wilderness, to-day, I stumbled upon Fort Stiner, the head-quarters of a sub-picket commanded by Corporal William Stiner, of the Third. The Corporal and such of his men as were off duty, were sitting about a fire, heating coffee and roasting slices of fat pork, preparing thus the noonday meal.

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 50-1

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: August 13, 1861

At noon Colonel Marrow, Major Keifer, and I, took dinner with Esquire Stalnaker, an old-style man, born fifty years ago in the log house where he now lives. Two spinning-wheels were in the best room, and rattled away with a music which carried me back to the pioneer days of Ohio. A little girl of five or six years stole up to the wheel when the mother's back was turned, and tried her skill on a roll. How proud and delighted she was when she had spun the wool into a long, uneven thread, and secured it safely on the spindle. Surely, the child of the palace, reared in the lap of luxury and with her hands in the mother's jewel-box, could not have been happier or more triumphant in her bearing.

These West Virginians are uncultivated, uneducated and rough, and need the common school to civilize and modernize them. Many have never seen a railroad, and the telegraph is to them an incomprehensible mystery.

Governor Dennison has appointed a Mr. John G. Mitchell, of Columbus, adjutant of the Third.

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 51

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: August 14, 1861

Privates Vincent and Watson, sentinels of a sub-picket, under command of Corporal Stiner, discovered a man stealing through the woods, and halted him. He professed to be a farm hand; said his employer had a mountain farm not far away, where he pastured cattle. A two-year-old steer had strayed off, and he was looking for him. His clothes were fearfully torn by brush and briars. His hands and face were scratched by thorns. He had taken off his boots to relieve his swollen feet, and was carrying them in his hands. Imitating the language and manners of an uneducated West Virginian, he asked the sentinel if he "had seed anything of a red steer." The sentinel had not. After continuing the conversation for a time, he finally said: "Well, I must be a goin'; it is a gettin' late, and I am durned feared I won't git back to the farm afore night. Good day." "Hold on," said the sentinel; "better go and see the Captain." "O, no; don't want to trouble him; it is not likely he has seed the steer, and it's a gettin' late.” "Come right along," replied the sentinel, bringing his gun down; "the Captain will not mind being troubled; in fact, I am instructed to take such men as you to him."

Captain Cunard questioned the prisoner closely, asked whom he worked for, how much he was getting a month for his services, and, finally, pointing to the long-legged military boots which he was still holding in his hands, asked how much they cost. "Fifteen dollars," replied the prisoner." "Fifteen dollars! Is not that rather more than a farm hand who gets but twelve dollars a month can afford to pay for boots?” inquired the Captain. "Well, the fact is, boots is a gettin' high since the war, as well as every thing else." But Captain Cunard was not satisfied. The prisoner was not well up in the character he had undertaken to play, and was told that he must go to head-quarters. Finding that he was caught, he at once threw off the mask, and confessed that he was Captain J. A. De Lagniel, formerly of the regular army, but now in the Confederate service. Wounded at the battle of Rich mountain, he had been secreted at a farm-house near Beverly until able to travel, and was now trying to get around our pickets and reach the rebel army. He had been in the mountains five days and four nights. The provisions with which he started, and which consisted of a little bag of biscuit, had become moldy. He thought, from the distance traveled, that he must be beyond our lines and out of danger.

De Lagniel is an educated man, and his wife and friends believe him to have been killed at Rich mountain. He speaks in high terms of Captain Cunard, and says, when the latter began to question him, he soon found it was useless to play Major Andre, for Paulding was before him, too sharp to be deceived and too honest to be bribed. When De Lagniel was brought into camp he was wet and shivering, weak, and thoroughly broken down by starvation, cold, exposure, and fatigue. The officers supplied him with the clothing necessary to make him comfortable.

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 51-3

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: August 15, 1861

I have a hundred axmen in my charge, felling timber on the mountain, and constructing rough breastworks to protect our left flank.

General Reynolds came up to-day to see De Lagniel. They are old acquaintances, were at West Point together, and know each other like brothers.

The irrepressible Corporal Casey, who, in fact, had nothing whatever to do with the capture of De Lagniel, is now surrounded by a little group of soldiers. He is talking to them about the prisoner, who, since it is known that he is an acquaintance of General Reynolds, has become a person of great importance in the camp. The Corporal speaks in the broadest Irish brogue, and is telling his hearers that he knew the fellow was a sesesh at once; that he leveled his musket at him and towld him to halt; that if he hadn't marched straight up to him he would have put a minnie ball through his heart; that he had his gun cocked and his finger on the trigger, and was a mind to shoot him anyway. Then he tells how he propounded this and that question, which confused the prisoner, and finally concludes by saying that De Lagniel might be d----d thankful indade that he escaped with his life.

The Corporal is the best-known man in the regiment. He prides himself greatly on the Middle Fork "skrimage." A day or two after that affair, and at a time when whisky was so scarce that it was worth its weight in gold, some officers called the Corporal up and asked him to give them an account of the "skrimage." Before he entered upon the subject, it was suggested that Captain Dubois, who had the little whisky there was in the party, should give him a taste to loosen his tongue. The Corporal, nothing loth, took the flask, and, raising it to his mouth, emptied it, to the utter dismay of the Captain and his friends. The dhrap had the effect desired. The Corporal described, with great particularity, his manner of going into action, dwelt with much emphasis on the hand-to-hand encounters, the thrusts, the parries, the final clubbing of the musket, and the utter discomfiture and mortal wounding of his antagonist. In fact by this time there were two of them; and finally, as the fight progressed, a dozen or more bounced down on him. It was lively! There was no time for the loading of guns. Whack, thump, crack! The head of one was broken, another lay dying of a bayonet thrust, and still another had perished under the sledge-hammer blow of his fist. The ground was covered now with the slain. He stood knee-deep in secesh blood; but a bugle sounded away off on the hills, and the d----d scoundrels who were able to get away ran off as fast as their legs could carry them. Had they stood up like men he would have destroyed the whole regiment; for, you see, he was just getting his hand in. "But, Corporal," inquired Captain Hunter, "what were the other soldiers of your company doing all this time?" "Bless your sowl, Captain, and do you think I had nothing to do but to watch the boys? Be jabers, it was a day when every man had to look after himself."

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 53-5

Diary of Private Richard R. Hancock: Sunday, April 6, 1862

On the above day and date commenced one of the great battles of the "War Between the States," generally known as the "Battle of Shiloh."

Finding a very full description of said battle in the History of Forrest's Campaigns, from the pen of General Thomas Jordan (than whom, perhaps, no other was better qualified to describe said battle, as he was at the time A. S. Johnston's Adjutant-General), I will copy at length, though I shall somewhat abridge without using marks of ellipsis or quotation points:

The Confederate forces that had abandoned Kentucky and Middle Tennessee were assembled by railroad from Huntsville and Decatur at Corinth, in North Mississippi.

Major-General Polk's forces, from Columbus, Kentucky, and West Tennessee, had likewise been concentrated at the same place, as well as a splendid corps under General Bragg, drawn from Pensacola and New Orleans, with the addition of some newly-enrolled Mississippi regiments. This force was reorganized during the last week of March into three army corps: The First, commanded by Major-General Polk; the Second, by Major-General Bragg, and the Third, by Major-General Hardee. The cavalry had a separate organization of about four thousand five hundred. The whole was under the chief command of Albert Sidney Johnston, with Beauregard as second in command.

While the Confederates were thus occupied their adversary had not been dilatory. General Grant, under orders from his superior, had proceeded, with his force engaged in the operations ending in the fall of Fort Donelson, and established himself at a point upon the west bank of the Tennessee River known as Pittsburg Landing. Here, too, he had been followed soon by three other divisions, commanded by W. T. Sherman, Hurlburt and Prentiss.

Moreover, after diverting one of his divisions (Mitchell's) toward Huntsville, Alabama, General Buell, with his other four divisions, was known to be rapidly converging to the same theater of operations.

Thus matters stood on the evening of the 2d of April: Two considerable hostile armies had been brought within eighteen miles of each other, with no physical barrier, such as a large river or mountain, between them.

Being satisfied the time had come to spring upon, if possible, surprise and crush General Grant's army before Buell had come up, General Johnston, about eleven o'clock on the night of the 2d, decided to put his army in movement the following day, and trust its fortunes to the "iron dice" of battle. Accordingly the orders to that end, issued at once by his Adjutant-General, were received by his several corps commanders by forty minutes past one on the morning of the 3d of April, while a reserve was organized at the same time of three brigades, under Breckinridge, to move directly from Burnsville and join the main body at a petty cross-road village called Monterey. By noon (the 3d) the whole Confederate army was under arms and ready to begin the march. But from untoward causes the First (Polk's) Corps did not get in motion so soon as had been expected, and did not bivouac as far in advance as was desirable.

Moreover, the badness of the roads, caused by a heavy rainfall the night of the 3d, so retarded the movement that Bragg's Corps was not able the second day to advance further than Monterey, whereas it had been confidently anticipated that by the night of the 4th the whole army would have assembled in the vicinity of their antagonist. Instead of being able to attack Saturday morning, as anticipated, General Polk's Corps did not reach the vicinity of the designated point of concentration until quite as late as two o'clock Saturday afternoon, 5th of April.

Though General Johnston, through his staff, had made every effort to get his troops in position for an attack that day.

Supremely chagrined that he had been balked in his just expectations, it was now evidently too late for a decisive engagement that afternoon, so General Johnston called his corps and reserve commanders together, and a council of war was held within less than two miles of Shiloh Chapel, the headquarters of the Federal General Sherman.¹ General Beauregard earnestly advised the idea of attacking the enemy should be abandoned, and that the whole force should return to Corinth, inasmuch as it was now scarcely possible they would be able to take the Federals unawares after such delay and noisy demonstrations which had been made meanwhile.

It did seem that the Federals had had ample warning of the impending tempest, for a force of Confederate cavalry that had been sent forward mainly to procure topographical information which hitherto the Confederate generals had been unable to acquire of that region, had been pushed up, and somewhat injudiciously though boldly landed in the immediate front of the Federal position. During that day (Saturday) one regiment of cavalry (Colonel N. B. Forrest's) had had some lively skirmishing on the left of the Federal position.

Therefore, Beauregard urged the enemy would be now found formidably intrenched and ready for the attack; that success had depended on the power to assail them unexpectedly, for they were superior in numbers, and in large part had been under fire. On the other hand, few comparatively of the Confederates had that advantage, while a large part were too raw and recently enrolled to make it proper to venture them in an assault upon breastworks which would now be thrown up. And this unquestionably was the view of almost all present.

General Johnston, having listened with grave attention to the views and opinions advanced, then remarked in substance that he recognized the weight of the objections to an attack under the circumstances involved by the unfortunate loss of time on the road. But, nevertheless, he still hoped the enemy was not looking for offensive operations, and that he would yet be able to surprise them. And that, having put his army in motion for a battle, he would venture the hazard.

This decision being announced, the officers rapidly dispersed to their respective posts in high and hopeful spirits, notwithstanding the probabilities that all previous expectations of a surprise would fail of accomplishment.

Here a topographical sketch of the theater of war may serve to make more intelligible the occurrences and vicissitudes of the battle.

Two streams, Lick and Owl Creeks, taking their rise very near each other, just westward of Monterey, flowing (a little east of north) nearly parallel with each other, the former empties into the Tennessee about three miles above Pittsburg Landing, the latter, after mingling its waters with Snake Creek, empties into the Tennessee about one mile below said landing. In other words, Owl Creek empties into Snake Creek about three or four miles (in a direct line, nearly west), from the mouth of the latter. Intersected by various ravines, drainage is into Owl Creek, as the land rises highest and ridgelike near Lick Creek.

Recent heavy rains had rendered the soil boggy, especially along those small streams, and hence difficult for artillery and cavalry. A primeval forest, cumbered with a great deal of undergrowth, covered the region, except a few small farms of fifty or seventy acres scattered occasionally here and there. Two roads leading from Corinth, crossing Lick Creek about a mile apart, converge together about two miles from Pittsburg Landing. Other roads also approach from all directions: one from Purdy crosses Owl Creek by a bridge before its junction with Snake Creek; one from Crump's Landing, six miles below Pittsburg, crosses Snake Creek by a bridge, and one from Hamburg Landing, about four miles above, crosses Lick Creek by a bridge, about one and a half miles from its mouth.

A Federal force of five² strong divisions, thirty-seven thousand infantry, three thousand cavalry and artillery, and eighty-four guns, forty thousand of all arms, occupied the space we have described, between Owl and Lick Creeks, in front of Pittsburg, and were thus disposed:

The first Federal line, extending from the crossing of Owl Creek, on the Purdy road, to the crossing of Lick Creek on the Hamburg road, was composed of Sherman's and Prentiss' Divisions. The headquarters of the former were at a rustic log "meeting-house," called Shiloh, while the latter was to the left. A third division, that of McClernand, was in supporting distance. of Sherman at the confluence of the two Corinth roads.

A second line to the rearward was composed of Hurlbut's and W. H. L. (not Lew) Wallace's Divisions, the first of which was stretched across the Corinth road, and the other extended to the leftward along the Hamburg road.

By three o'clock Sunday morning the Confederate army was all astir, and, after a hasty, scanty breakfast, the lines were formed as follows:

Hardee's corps, augmented by Gladden's Brigade from Bragg's corps, constituted the first line, deployed in battle order on the grounds upon which they had bivouacked.

The second line, five hundred yards rearward, was formed of Ruggles' Division and two brigades (the other was in the first line) of Withers' Division, under Major-General Bragg. The artillery of both corps followed their respective lines by the Pittsburg road.

The First Corps (Clark's and Cheatham's Divisions) under Major-General Polk, drawn up in a column of brigades, deployed in line about eight hundred yards to the rear of Bragg, constituted a third line.

Three brigades under Brigadier-General Breckinridge constituted a special reserve³ for the support of the attacking lines as might be needed on either flank.

The cavalry, about 4,300 strong, was distributed, for the most part, to guard the flanks. The cavalry, with the exception of Forrest's and Wharton's regiments, being lately regimented, insufficiently armed, and wholly without drill, together with the nature of the scene of operations, was rendered almost valueless, and only the two regiments mentioned took any material part in the actions of either day.

About sunrise some thirty-four thousand infantry, with about fifty guns, were in movement, with a bearing never surpassed, to fall upon their enemy-an enemy as yet undeveloped, but known to be ensconced near at hand in the fog and forest, superior in numbers and equipments, for their many drums the evening before had plainly told their formidable strength.

That the Federals did not take even the ordinary precautions which habitually hedge an army in the field is passing strange. Instead of that, in sooth, there was no line of infantry pickets in advance of the ordinary chain of sentinels, apparently no cavalry exterior either to Sherman or Prentiss, and that invading army lay drowsily in its cosy encampments, as if supremely confident no harm were threatening and no disaster could befall it. Many as yet were in their blankets, fast asleep, many others washing and dressing, others cooking their morning meal, while the arms and accoutrements of all were spread around in the orderless fashion of holiday soldiers.

Meanwhile, swiftly forward through the woods strode the Confederates. With an elastic tread they surged onward and forward until, the mist gradually lifting, the white tents might be seen through the trees.

On poured the living current of the Confederates. By an anomalous arrangement Hildebrand's Brigade of Sherman's Division was on the left of Prentiss' Division. Sherman, with his other three brigades, was on the right.

By a mischance the Confederates' left had not been thrown sufficiently near to Owl Creek, so when the collision came it was only with the left (Hildebrand's) brigade; but it soon fell with overwhelming force upon Prentiss from flank to flank. Their sentinels, taken by surprise, were run in with barely time to discharge their pieces. Just at their heels came the Confederates, cheering heartily; and so complete a surprise of an army has not the like in history. Officers and men were killed or wounded in their beds, and large numbers had not time to clutch up either arms or accoutrements. Nevertheless, few prisoners were taken, nor were many either killed or wounded in the first stage of the battle. Hildebrand's Brigade of Ohioans, swept by the violence of the onslaught from their encampment, scattered and was heard of no more as a belligerent organization on that field! Prentiss' Division, rallying, was formed in good time on a neighboring ridge, but, little able to stand the torrent that streamed after it, was swept further back. Meanwhile Sherman's rightward brigades, which had escaped collision with Hardee, he had time to form, and with them right manfully did he strive to make head against Ruggles' Division of Bragg's Corps, that by this time had come upon the scene and bore down vehemently upon them.

The position held by Sherman was one of natural strength; with a small watercourse in front, it afforded a converging fire upon the Confederates. Such, however, was the vigor of the assault that Sherman, with the loss of five or six guns, was forced back just as McClernand came to his support. They were both then swept rearward near the line of the cross-road from Hamburg to Purdy. There Sherman, with McClernand, gained a foothold, and, with several batteries favorably posted, made another stand on a thickly-wooded ridge with a ravine in front. But, speedily assailed by Ruggles' and some of Polk's Brigades with a fury not to be withstood, the Federal line again yielded, losing several pieces of artillery and receding to the position of McClernand's encampment.

About forty minutes past seven A. M., hearing the uproar in front, Hurlbut also sent Veach's Brigade of his division to support Sherman, and with his other two brigades moved swiftly to the succor of Prentiss', who had called for aid. After Prentiss' Division had filtered through his lines he formed in the edge of an old field, sheltered by timber and thick undergrowth, near the Hamburg road, south (to the left) of the position taken by Sherman and McClernand. There Hurlbut also was speedily assailed by the Confederates, now reenforced in that quarter by Chalmers' and Jackson's brigades of Bragg's Corps, and was soon swept back, with the loss of some artillery. Thus the whole front line of Federal encampments was left in the hands of the adversary, filled with equipage and baggage, the most abundant and luxurious that encumbered any except an oriental army.

Meanwhile Sherman was making able, desperate efforts to redeem the losses of the morning. However, the Confederates, now re-enforced in that quarter by Cheatham's and Clark's Divisions, Polk's Corps, still drove their enemy nearer the river.

W. H. L. Wallace had also been attacked, and the Federal line of battle was pushed back to within a mile of the Landing. There were massed what remained of their artillery and the fragments of their five divisions.

General Johnston, the Confederate Commander-in-Chief, was now in the very front of the battle. Assured of a great victory after the marvelous success of his planned surprise, he now stimulated the onslaught by his personal presence on the right, where the press was fiercest, the resistance the most effective. More than once brigades that faltered under the inspiration of his leading bore back the enemy and wrested the position fought for. As far as can be ascertained, General Grant was not upon the immediate field earlier than midday. On Saturday afternoon he had gone to Savannah and slept there. The sound of many cannon at Shiloh was his first tidings of a hostile juncture at Pittsburg Landing. As he was leaving Savannah he ordered Nelson's Division of Buell's Corps, that lay at that place, to march to Pittsburg by the nearest road. When he reached Pittsburg it was to find his whole front line surprised, overwhelmed, routed, and the ravines and river bank adjacent packed with thousands of crouching fugitives. These could not be rallied nor incited to return. to the field to aid in recovering the fortunes of the day.

There was abundant intrepidity in leading everywhere, but, unfortunately for the Confederate cause, too little knowledge of the right way to handle regiments, brigades, divisions, even corps, to secure that massing of troops, those mighty blows which achieve decisive victories. Though, indeed, there were far to many stragglers who ignobly shrank from the victorious edge of battle, many going back to Corinth that night, yet everywhere there was the largest measure of sturdy fighting by regiments, brigades, and parts of divisions. For the most part, confident of the issue and bent on pressing toward the enemy, there was yet a lack of harmonious movement. Superior officers led with notable courage regiments or parts of brigades, and doubtless stimulated their men not a little by their example, but at the same time lost sight of the mass of their commands, which were thus not unfrequently left at a halt without orders and uncertain what to do. And this was the case with batteries also, which, moreover, were too often employed singly. There was no concerted concentration of these triumphant corps respectively, much less of the whole mass, for a well-timed, overwhelming blow at the now sorely crippled, dispirited enemy. And as a consequence, with Sherman among them doing all possible in the exigency, the Federals were enabled to protract their defense against the desultory onset with which they were assailed for the next hour or two.

Meanwhile, to the rightward the Confederate General-in-Chief, taking part at a critical juncture in the charge of a brigade, and by his intrepid presence giving a resistless momentum to the onset, received a rifle wound in the leg—a mortal wound, as it proved presently, for the want of timely surgical aid. The Governor of Tennessee (I. G. Harris), by his side when struck, caught the soldier in his arms as he fell from his saddle, exhausted by an apparently painless loss of blood. A moment after his aid-de-camp and brother-in-law, Colonel William Preston, of Kentucky, came up, and A. S. Johnston, with scarce a murmur, died in his arms. The scene of his untoward death was a wooded, secluded hollow, and the loss of their chief was not known to the Confederate army until that night, nor even generally then.

About the time of this calamity the reserves under Breckinridge were thrown vigorously into action. He was ordered to the support of Bragg, who had called for aid. In front was to be seen a camp without an inmate. This camp was in an open woods and just ahead was an open field bordered by a dense thicket.

Through the camp passed Breckinridge's Brigade and into the open field, and still there was silence; but not long, for a few steps beyond a hissing stream and flame of musketry burst at their breasts, mowing their ranks. fearfully and heaping the ground with dead and wounded. They gave back to the woods, but only for a little while did they recede. Closing their thinned ranks, and animated by their officers, they retook the advance, and their adversaries were forced back, yet with not a little. stubbornness and desperate fighting on fighting on favorable ground. By this time Withers' Division, of Bragg's Corps, as well as Breckinridge's reserves, mingled with portions of Hardee's men, were all massed on the Confederate right in the quarter of Lick Creek. General Bragg, assuming command of the whole, launched them with a resistless weight at the enemy, who now gave way, and on all sides were forced from the line of Wallace's and Hurlbut's encampments, leaving behind more of their artillery and three thousand prisoners, chiefly. of Prentiss' Division, in the hands of their assailants.

At the same time, on the center and left, Polk's Divisions, with Ruggles' Division of Bragg's Corps, and some of Hardee's also, made no less strenuous efforts to close the battle. Those of the routed Federals who were not killed or captured dropped back in great confusion toward the Landing. Some were rallied upon the ridge immediately overhanging the Landing, but large masses were added to the already dense mob of fugitives huddled below the bank.

But meanwhile Colonel Webster, chief of the Federal staff, an officer of the regulars who knew his profession, observing the mortal peril of his people, had gathered upon that ridge all the guns available, including some thirty-two pounders and a battery of twenty-pounder Parrotts, or in all, twenty-two pieces, which he manned with gunners from the least demoralized of the run-aways. Soon, too, the remains of the field batteries were added, and some fifty guns were massed upon this eminence about five P. M., with a field of fire sweeping all the approaches to the river. The position was strong; timber and undergrowth gave shelter for the artillery and their support, while a deep ravine separated it from the table-land over which it dominated; tangled brushwood obstructed its steep slopes, and on or behind this position, as we have said, took final refuge the entire Federal force except the remains of one of Sherman's brigades, which appear to have drifted off with their General to the vicinity of the bridge across Snake Creek, on the road to Crump's Landing, and not being followed, he established them there undisturbed, with the rear open for retreat in an emergency, northward.

The air now resounded with hearty shouts of natural exultation on part of the victorious Confederates.

General Beauregard, through his staff, urged the forward propulsion of the whole force upon the shattered fragments of the enemy. Unfortunately, however, from various causes, none of the divisions confronted in an embodied form the last position that remained between them and the deep, broad waters of the Tennessee. The superior officers present, howbeit, collected the men immediately around them, of whatever corps. Tired, hungry, and exhausted as were the Confederates, nevertheless a number of determined separate efforts were made by them during the remaining hour of daylight to wrench the last foothold from their elsewhere beaten adversary. But meanwhile, at five P. M., Ammen's Brigade of Nelson's Division had been thrown across the river and established by Buell as a support of Webster's powerful battery, and the Federals, like a rat brought to bay in a corner from which there is no escape, fought with all the desperation of that animal under similar circumstances, knowing, moreover, that night, with its shield of darkness, and ample succor were close at hand.

But in attempting to mount the last ridge, the Confederates were met by a fire from a whole line of batteries, protected by infantry, and assisted by shells from the gun-boats. They, however, stoutly persisted in storming the steep hillside despite the impediments with which it bristled, and made charge after charge without success until night closed hostilities.

General Beauregard, in the meantime, observing the exhausted, widely-scattered condition of his army, directed it to be brought out of battle, collected and restored to order as far as practicable, and to occupy for the night the captured encampments of the enemy.

All the encampments that had been occupied by the five Federal divisions were now in possession of their adversary. They were full of the rich, opportune spoils of war, including many thousand stands of arms, all the blankets and baggage of the whole force, their subsistence, their hospital stores, means of transportation to a great extent, and large stores of ammunition. But so great was the lassitude and fatigue of the Confederates that all which could be done was to glean food sufficient for their supper, for which, indeed, all were dependent upon what they could thus find.

The prisoners, however, were collected together during the night not far from Shiloh Church, where Generals Beauregard and Bragg established their headquarters. There, after a time, the former had an interview with his corps commanders and received brief oral reports of the operations of the day.

Among the prisoners was General Prentiss himself, who had much to say touching the ultimate issue of the affair, which he asserted was by no means terminated with the disaster of that untoward day; for Buell, he stated, would effect a junction that night, the fight would break out the next morning with renewed vigor, and all losses would be recovered. At the moment, however, this was regarded as idle talk, for an official telegraphic dispatch, addressed to General Johnston from near Florence, was forwarded to the field from Corinth, announcing that Buell was moving with his whole force upon Florence. Emanating from a reliable. officer placed there in observation, whose scouts had doubtless mistaken the movement of Mitchell's Division for the whole of Buell's army, it was credited, and Buell's timely junction with General Grant was accordingly deemed impossible. Therefore the capture of the latter was regarded at Confederate headquarters as inevitable the next day, as soon as all the scattered Confederate resources could be brought to bear for a concentrated effort. Such of the Confederate soldiery as could find shelter from a heavy rain slept undisturbed and hopeful of the fullest fruition of a great victory on the morrow.

After first finding food and forage for his men and horses, Colonel Forrest threw out a squadron as pickets, confronting, as close as possible, those of the enemy, on a stretch of a mile across to Owl Creek. He also dispatched Lieutenant Sheridan with other scouts clad in Federal cavalry overcoats, to reconnoiter within the precincts of the enemy's lines. Completely successful, in an hour Sheridan returned and reported that, reaching the Landing, he had seen heavy reinforcements coming rapidly by water. Also, in his opinion, such was the disorder prevailing that if an attack were made in full force at once, they might be readily pushed into the river. Forrest, ever a man of prompt action, mounted his horse instantly to convey this startling intelligence to the nearest corps commander, and soon coming upon Generals Hardee and Breckinridge, made known what his scouts announced. He also bluntly added his opinion that either the Confederates should immediately resume the battle or quit the field to avoid a damaging conflict with overwhelming odds. Hardee directed him. to communicate his information to General Beauregard, and with that object he rode forth again; but after a diligent search through the woods and darkness, unable to find that General, he became so deeply solicitous that he hurried back to his pickets. Finding all quiet he again dispatched his scouts within the Federal lines. It was two o'clock A. M. before they returned and reported the continued arrival of fresh troops. Again Forrest repaired and reported to General Hardee the state of affairs, but was instructed to return to his regiment, keep up a vigilant, strong picket line, and report all hostile movements. All the while, every few minutes through the night, two gun-boats had been sedulously throwing their dread "bolted thunder" directly over Forrest's bivouac, murdering sleep, weary and drowsy as all his men were.

By seven P. M. Nelson's other two brigades (Bruce's and Hazen's) had crossed the Tennessee, and, with the one (Ammen's) that so materially helped, with Webster's opportunely posted battery, to save the Federal army from utter overthrow, were at once thrown forward by General Buell as a shield between General Grant's army and the Confederates. Crittenden's Division likewise came up from Savannah by water not long after, and was promptly established in the same manner on Nelson's right. Moreover, Lew Wallace, one of Grant's divisions that was not in the first day's battle, came up by land from near Crump's Landing, crossed Snake Creek, and took a position there commanding the bridge, and by chance, too, in the neighborhood of Sherman. One of McCook's Brigades (Rousseau's) also reached the scene about sunrise and took a position on Crittenden's right. His other two brigades. (Johnson's and Kirk's) took position about ten a. M.

Thus were marshaled there or near at hand, ready to take the offensive against the victors of the day before, twenty-five thousand fresh Federal troops. On the Confederate side, to meet such an onset, there was not a man who had not fought steadfastly for the greater part of Sunday, and not more than twenty thousand Confederate infantry could have been found to answer to their names that morning, the 7th.

In haste to efface the tarnish of the arrant disaster inflicted on his army on Sunday, General Grant did not await the advent of Buell's other divisions, but directed the offensive to be assumed at dawn. His shattered forces on Sunday night had been reorganized into three divisions under Sherman, McClernand and Hurlbut.

To recapitulate: Six Federal divisions- Nelson's, Crittenden's, McClernand's, McCook's,⁴ Sherman's and Lew Wallace's-were in position in the order named, and ready to take the offensive Monday morning, with Hurlbut's Division held back near the river as a reserve. Hurlbut, bringing up his reserves about ten o'clock and fusing them with McClernand's command, repaired rearward again, at McClernand's request, to seek further support.

Chalmers' Brigade, with a part of J. K. Jackson's, under Wheeler, in advance, in front of Nelson, were the first to become engaged. Nelson came out with vigor, and the Confederates retired slowly to concentrate their strength. By eight o'clock, Hardee, however, had massed in that quarter a number of his own corps, as well as Withers' Division of Bragg's, and the combat began in earnest. Nelson now found a lion in his path, but Hazen's Brigade pushed forward with decided pluck, and the Confederates were driven from their position with the loss of a battery. A well-timed concentration, however, enabled the Confederates to hurl Hazen back from his prey, and in turn pressed Nelson so sorely that by nine A. M. he was calling lustily for aid. Nelson was reinforced by Terrell's Battery (regulars), and a portion of Crittenden's Division, and an obstinate struggle for the mastery of this part of the field raged until about one P. M. But neither party gained any material advantage, except Terrell's Battery was so cut up that he had to assist as a gunner at one of his pieces, and the battery narrowly escaped capture.

Crittenden by this time was likewise hotly engaged in the immediate center. The Confederates on his front, at first retiring to concentrate at his advance, finally rebounded, and he and Nelson were borne back by the same refluent wave. Polk's corps coming up from the rear, on the Confederate side, entered the battle in splendid order and spirit.

By the time Nelson was well at work on the Federal left, the Confederates opened a light fire upon Wallace and Sherman, who, encouraged by its feebleness, adventured the offensive. But their speedy greeting was a sheet of flame, lead and canister from the woods in their front, where portions of Ruggles' and Breckinridge's Divisions stood in wait. The Federals reeled and rushed rearward, followed nearly a mile by the Confederates; but here, reinforced by McCook, Sherman attempted to resume the advance. Now, the fight waxed obstinate, and the firing, says Sherman, was the "severest musketry" he had ever heard. Rousseau's Federal Brigade was pitted against Trabue's Kentuckians. Both fought with uncommon determination to win, but the Federals were repulsed, and Wallace was so pressed that his situation became extremely critical.

As the Confederates in that part of the field were confronted by more than double their number, the impetus of their attack was, therefore, slackened in the face of such odds. Yet several brilliant charges were made, in one of which, to the left of Shiloh, General Beauregard himself led in person, carrying the battle flag of a Louisiana regiment; and Trabue's Brigade, having carried earlier an eminence near Owl Creek, repulsing every effort to dislodge him, held his position until the retreat was ordered. Here, as on the right, the Confederate troops were animated by the greatest intrepidity on the part of their superior officers.

It was now after one o'clock. The battle had raged furiously from right to left for more than five hours, and, notwithstanding the odds of fresh troops brought up against them, despite their long-continued engagement, the Confederates had not receded from the ground upon which they had been concentrated as soon as it was apparent that the battle was on their hands. Beginning the combat with not more than twenty thousand men, exclusive of cavalry, less than fifteen thousand were now in the Confederate ranks. General Beauregard, seeing the unprofitable nature of the struggle, determined not to prolong it. Directing his Adjutant-General to select a position, and post such troops as were available to cover the retreat, he dispatched other staff officers to the corps commanders, with the order to retire simultaneously from their several positions, ready, however, to turn and fight should it become necessary. And, accordingly, about two o'clock the retrograde movement was inaugurated, and carried out with a steadiness never exceeded by veterans of a hundred fields. The retreat had now commenced in earnest, but so stunned and crippled was the enemy that no effort or pretense to pursue was made. The line established to cover the movement commanded the ground of Shiloh Church and some open fields in the neighborhood. Thence, keeping up a vigorous play of artillery on the woods beyond, there was no reply, nor did any enemy become visible. The next line, three-fourths of a mile to the rear, was abandoned, with no enemy in sight. Breckinridge, assigned to the duty of covering the retreat with his division, was ordered to bivouac for the night at a point not more than four and a half miles from Pittsburg Landing. The other corps were now en route for Corinth by a road which, that night, was made almost impracticable for wheels by a heavy rainfall.

On Tuesday morning, General Breckinridge fell back to a position only three miles beyond, and there remained undisturbed for some days, with the cavalry thrown forward in close proximity to the Federal lines. After Breckinridge had thus withdrawn, Colonel Forrest found himself with about three hundred and fifty troops on Tuesday morning (the 8th), on the road toward Monterey, in the presence of a heavy Federal infantry force, advancing in three lines of battle. The position, a ridge, was advantageous, and Forrest determined to attempt to hold it until re-enforcements could be brought up. Formed in line of battle, the Confederates boldly stood their ground as about two battalions of cavalry and a regiment of infantry were thrown forward to assail them. The infantry advanced handsomely at a charge, with their bayonets presented. There was some confusion, however, in the Federal ranks in crossing a small stream, and Forrest, with his characteristic quickness of sight and plans, his wonted hardihood, resolved to charge the Federals with his force, as small as it was. His bugler sounded the charge, and forward dashed the Confederates from their covert behind the crest of the ridge in superb order and spirit, and were almost upon the enemy before the nature of the movement was perceived or they had had time to prepare for it. At twenty paces the Confederates gave a volley with their shot-guns—a formidable weapon at that short distance-and rushed in with pistols and sabers. So sudden was the onset that, despite their numbers, the Federal cavalry broke in disorder and fled back through the woods, running over their own infantry in their panic, creating a scene of singular confusion and tumult for some moments. Many of the infantry were thus knocked down; many horses also were transfixed by the bayonets of their own infantry.

Scores of other horses fell and threw their riders, sprawling and bruised, upon the ground, and all around was a medley of cavalry and infantry, scattering and running to and fro, hither and thither, officers shouting and cursing and the hurt groaning. The flying infantry were closely pursued for several hundred yards by their eager, excited enemy. The loss inflicted was heavy, while seventy were captured.

In the ardency and exultation of the pursuit Forrest pressed on until he found himself alone within fifty yards of the main body of the Federal expeditionary force, and beyond, indeed, a large part of those whom he had just surprised and routed. Halting, he saw at a glance that his men, perceiving sooner the situation, had very properly halted, and were then falling back with their prisoners-which they were doing, however, unaware of the perilous position of their leader. Immediately observed by the enemy, now all around him, Forrest was fired at from all sides. One ball from an Austrian rifle, striking him on the right side, just above the point of the hip-bone, penetrated to the spine, and, ranging around, lodged in the left side- a severe if not, indeed, mortal wound, as his surgeon apprehended. His right leg, benumbed by the blow, was also left hanging useless in the stirrup. Turning his horse, however, he resolved to escape, surrounded as he was by hundreds bent on his death, and shouting, “Kill him!" "Shoot him!" "Stick him!" "Knock him off his horse!" all of which they literally sought to do. His horse, too, was wounded (mortally, as it proved); but still bore up under his daring rider as he dashed out of the throng of assailants, using his revolver with deadly aim to clear his path. In a moment more his path to the rear, at least, was clear of foes, but their marksmen, still within easy range, sent hundreds of balls after him as he galloped down the road and over the hill. Happily, he escaped without further hurt, and rejoined his command, halted behind the ridge. Giving orders to the officer next in rank to assume command, but to avoid further action with so large a force, Forrest went to Corinth that night, when the horse, which had borne him so stoutly and faithfully, dropped and died a few hours later. On the next day Colonel Forrest, furloughed for sixty days, repaired to Memphis.

The losses of the Confederates in the two days' combats are accurately and officially stated by General Beauregard at 1,728 killed, 8,012 wounded, 959 missing, or an aggregate of 10,699. The Federal commander, in his brief report of the battle, estimates his own losses at only 1,500 killed and 3,500 wounded, an

evidently large understatement, for in the official reports of three of his division generals we find their losses foot up in killed and wounded as high as 4.614, with 1.832 reported missing, a number of whom must have been killed, as only 3,000 were captured, and most of them were Prentiss' Division. Furthermore, Swinton, who always writes in a fair spirit, estimates the Federal loss at 15,000. Of trophies the Confederates carried from the field some twenty-six stands of flags and colors, and about thirty of the guns captured on the 6th. The guns which figure in Federal subordinate reports as captured from the Confederates, with few exceptions, were those lost on Sunday by the Federals, which, for want of horses to draw them from the field, had been left by the Confederates where they had been taken.

COMMENTARIES.

The true reason why the battle of Sunday fell short of the most complete victory of modern war by the capture of the whole Federal army is simply this: First, General Johnston, not knowing the actual position occupied by the Federal front line, failed to extend his line of battle sufficiently near Owl Creek to force the Federal right (Sherman) back north-easterly into the cul de sac made above Pittsburg Landing by the junction of Lick Creek with the Tennessee River. As the attack was made, the shock of the onset only affected Sherman's left brigade (Hildebrand's). Had it fallen with full force upon his entire division, it is manifest that that which happened to Hildebrand's Brigade would have befallen it. The entire division must have been swept away as that brigade was, and been driven rearward so rapidly upon McClernand's, Hurlbut's, and Wallace's (W. H. L.) as to give them little or no time to form their divisions, and make the stand which Sherman's obstinate resistance with two brigades near Shiloh enabled them to do.

Second, after the combat was at its height, those superior officers who should have been occupied with the concentration and continuous projection of their troops in heavy masses upon the shattered Federal divisions, were at the very front and "perilous edge" of the battle, leading forward regiments, perchance brigades, into action with great individual intrepidity, and doing a great deal, no doubt, by their personal example to impel small bodies forward. But meanwhile, to their rear were left the masses of their respective commands without direction, and thus precious time was lost. The Confederates were not kept continuously massed and employed, either corps or divisions; mere piecemeal onsets were the general method of fighting after twelve o'clock, with this consequence: Sherman was enabled to make several obstinate, powerful stands, by which he protracted the battle some hours. Had the corps been held well in hand, massed and pressed continuously upon the tottering, demoralized foe, the battle assuredly would have closed at least by midday.

As our battalion was on outpost duty, on the extreme right of Johnston's army (as my diary has shown), it was not in the Shiloh battle. While we were sitting quietly in camp on Sunday, listening to a sermon from our chaplain, we could hear the booming of artillery at Shiloh.

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¹ Grant, the Federal Commander-in-Chief, it appears, had gone that afternoon down the river to Savannah, some twelve miles distant.

² Grant had six divisions, but one of them (Lew Wallace's) was about six miles below, near Crump's Landing, and consequently not in the first day's fight.

³ Statham's Brigade, to which McNairy's Battery formerly belonged, was in this reserve.—R. R. H.

⁴ Two of McCook's brigades, as before stated, did not take position until about ten A. M.

SOURCE: Richard R. Hancock, Hancock's Diary: Or, A History of the Second Tennessee Confederate Cavalry, p. 140-64