Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1892, volume 3).djvu/756

718 showed, with convincing clearness, that peaceful secession was impossible. " Can aliens make trea- ties," he said, " easier than friends can make laws ? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends ? Suppose you go to war ; you cannot fight always, and when, after much loss on both sides and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon you." He pleaded for peace in a strain of equal tenderness and dignity, and in closing he said : " In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The govern- ment will not assail you. You can have no conflict with- out being your- selves the ag- gressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to de- stroy the gov- ernment, while I shall have a most solemn one to preserve, protect, and de- fend it." This speech pro- foundly affect- ed the public opinion of the north; but in the excited state of senti- ment that then controlled the south it natu- rally met only contempt and defiance in that section. A few weeks later the inevitable war began, in an attack upon Fort Sumter by the secessionists of South Carolina under Gen. G. T. Beauregard, and after a long bombardment the fort surrendered on 13 April, 1861. The president instantly called for a force of 75,000 three-months' militiamen, and three weeks later ordered the enlistment of 64,000 soldiers and 18,000 seamen for three years. He set on foot a blockade of the southern ports, and called congress together in special session, choosing for their day of meeting the 4th of July. The remaining states of the south rapidly arrayed themselves on one side or the other ; all except Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri were drawn into the secession movement, and the western part of Virginia, adhering to the Union, under the name of West Virginia, separated itself from that ancient commonwealth.

The first important battle of the war took place at Bull Run, near Manassas station, Va., 21 July, 1861, and resulted in the defeat of the National troops under Gen. Irwin McDowell by a somewhat larger force of the Confederates under Gens. Joseph E. Johnston and Beauregard. Though the loss in killed and wounded was not great, and was about the same on both sides, the victory was still one of the utmost importance for the Confederates, and gave them a great increase of prestige on both sides of the Atlantic. They were not, however, able to pursue their advantage. The summer was passed in enlisting, drilling, and equipping a for- midable National army on the banks of the Poto- mac, which was given in charge of Gen. George B. McClellan, a young officer who had distinguished himself by a successful campaign in western Vir- ginia. In spite of the urgency of the government, which was increased by the earnestness of the peo- Sle and their representatives in congress, Gen. [cClellan made no advance until the spring of 1862, when Gen. Johnston, in command of the Confederate army, evacuated the position which, with about 45,000 men, he had held during the autumn and winter against the Army of the Poto- mac, amounting to about 177,000 effectives. Gen. McClellan then transferred his army to the penin- sula between the James and York rivers. Al- though there was but a force of 16,000 opposed to him when he landed, he spent a month before the works at Yorktown, and when he was prepared to open fire upon them they were evacuated, and Gen. Johnston retreated to the neighborhood of Richmond. The battle of Seven Pines, in which the Confederates, successful in their first attack, were afterward repelled, was fought on 31 May, 1862. Johnston was wounded, and the command devolved upon Gen. Robert E. Lee, who in the latter part of June moved out from his position before Richmond and attacked McClellan's right flank, under Gen. Fitz-John Porter, at Gaines's Mills, north of the Chickahominy. Porter, with one corps, resisted the Confederate army all day with great gallantry, unassisted by the main army under McClellan, but withdrew in the evening, and McClellan at once began his retreat to the James river. Several battles were fought on the way, in which the Confederates were checked ; but the retreat continued until the National army reached the James. Taking position at Malvern Hill, they inflicted a severe defeat upon Gen. Lee, but were immediately after withdrawn by Gen. McClellan to Harrison's Landing. Here, as at other times during his career, McClellan labored under a strange hallucination as to the numbers of his enemy. He generally estimated them at not less than twice their actual force, and continually re- proached the president for not giving him impos- sible re-enforcements to equal the imaginary num- bers he thought opposed to him. In point of fact, his army was always in excess of that of Johnston or Lee. The continual disasters in the east were somewhat compensated by a series of brilliant successes in the west. In February, 1862, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had captured the Confederate forts Henry and Donelson, thus laying open the great strategic lines of the Tennessee and Cumber- land rivers, and, moving southward, had fought (6 and 7 April) the battle of Shiloh, with unfavor- able results on the first day, which were turned to a victory on the second with the aid of Gen. D. C. Buell and his army, a battle in which Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston was killed and the Confederate invasion of Kentucky baffled, Farragut, on 24 April, had won a brilliant naval victory over the twin forts above the mouths of the Mississippi, which resulted in the capture of New Orleans and the control of the lower Mississippi. After Gen. McClellan's retreat to the James, the president visited the army at Harrison's Landing (8 July), and, after careful consultations with the corps commanders, became convinced that in the actual disposition of the officers and the troops there was no reasonable expectation of a successful movement upon Richmond by McClellan. An or- der was therefore issued for the withdrawal of the army from the James, and. Gen. Halleck having been appointed general-in-chief, Gen. Pope was sent forward from Washington with a small force to delay the Confederate army under Gen. Lee un-