A Youth's History of the Great Civil War
Van Evrie, Horton & Co., ©1866
Revised edition, ©2006 www.ronie-mooney-encs.us
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CHAPTER XXVIII, THE INAUGURATION OF A REIGN OF PLUNDER AND ARSON
AFTER the failure of the Peninsular campaign Mr.Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 300,000 more soldiers. The people of the North were generally discouraged, that is, the abolitionists and all who sympathized with them began to doubt their ability to subjugate the South. The Black Republican press was bitter and abusive. It was hard work to raise more soldiers, and it was only by paying immense bounties that any recruits could be obtained.
But there was, however, a fresh hope dawning in the bosoms of the abolitionists. Hitherto McClellan's commanding influence enabled him to impart a certain moral restraint upon the army, and to keep its action somewhere within the rules of civilized warfare.
But that influence was now gone. The war was to be changed to an almost universal crusade for theft and plunder. Revenge and cruelty were to take the place of civilized warfare.
By a general order from Washington the military commanders were directed to seize all the property they could find belonging to citizens of the Southern Confederacy. This order caused all Europe to look upon the North with a degree of surprise and contempt, for it was a violation of the rules of civilized war.
While McClellan's campaign on the Peninsula was progressing,all the fragments of the abolition armies in Northern Virginia, under Banks, Fremont,and McDowell, which had from time to time been cut to pieces by Stonewall Jackson, were consolidated into one army, under the command of General John Pope. This was called the "Army of Virginia." The plan of forming this army was in the first place started by the more ultra of the Black Republicans, with the hope of checking the popularity of General McClellan, upon whom they were convinced they could not depend, to carry out the uncivilized plan of warfare now determined on. They had also cherished hopes that this army might work its way round and snatch from McClellan "the glory" of taking Richmond. This accounts for the evident satisfaction expressed by some of the more open-mouthed of these abolitionists when it became evident that McClellan would not take Richmond.
Pope inaugurated his campaign by a general order entirely worthy of his own brutal nature and of the savage instincts of those who had commissioned him. Pope's appointment to the command of this new "Army of Virginia" was dated June 26th, the day before McClellan's battle at Gaines' Mills. The infamous order above referred to was dated July 23d, 1862. It commanded all his subordinate officers to immediately arrest all citizens of the Confederate States within their reach, and make them take an oath of allegiance to Lincoln, and give satisfactory security for keeping it, or be banished from their homes and driven farther South, and, if they ventured to return to their homes, to be treated as spies, that is, to be shot.
The object of this barbarous order was simply to get hold of the private property of the Southern people. His order was couched in the most bombastic language, declaring that his headquarters should be in the saddle, and ridiculing all such ideas as lines of retreat and base of supplies. This was intended as a cut at McClellan, and was greatly relished by all the shallow people who could be taken by the swagger of such an ignorant gasconader.
He also declared that his soldiers should not be employed in guarding "rebel property." This was looked upon as general order for arson and plunder. It gave great delight to all those malignant creatures known as "radicals." Indeed, Pope's brutal order, which was most congenial to his own bad heart, was evidently inspired by the leading Black Republicans of Washington.
But General McClellan at once saw that such an order, proceeding from the commanding general of the new Department of Virginia, would be regarded as a general license for plunder and robbery, and would result in the overthrow of all discipline, and therefore of all efficiency in the army.
So to save his own army from demoralization from such a cause, he immediately issued an order of an entirely different character, in which he used the following words: "The idea that private property may be plundered with impunity, is, perhaps, the worst that can pervade an army. Marauding degrades as men and demoralizes as soldiers all who engage in it, and returns them to their homes unfitted for the honest pursuits of industry. The General commanding takes this occasion to remind the officers and soldiers of this army, that we are engaged in supporting the Constitution and laws of the United States, and in suppressing rebellion; that we are not engaged in a war of rapine, revenge or subjugation; that this is not a contest against populations, but against armed forces and political organizations; and that it should be conducted by us upon the highest principles known to Christian civilization."
Three weeks from the date of this order General McClellan was virtually removed from command. Creditable as it was to him, as a man and a general, it cost him his command; and the brutal and ignorant Pope was, for the moment, the pet and hope of Mr.Lincoln and his party.
Nor can we be surprised at this, for McClellan had, in his order, entirely misstated the objects of the war. He had correctly set forth the rules of civilized warfare, and had well defined his own idea of the objects of the war; but his notions of the objects of the war and those of Lincoln and his party were widely different. It was " a war of rapine, revenge and subjugation," it was a war "against populations," and it was not the design of those who were waging it that it "should be conducted upon the highest principles known to Christian civilization." This was General McClellan's idea, but it was not the idea of Lincoln, Seward,and the party they represented.
No one, therefore, can be surprised that McClellan lost his command after the publication of the humane and enlightened order to his army. Between him and the leaders of the war, there was certainly a very great conflict of opinion. Just as much of a conflict as there is between civilization, and barbarism, or between cruelty and humanity, or vice and virtue.
So McClellan's army was taken from him, and was removed from the Peninsula and sent to act in conjunction with Pope. At the same time, General Halleck, an old army-officer, who had been up to this time, employed in the West, was brought to Washington and placed in the position of Commander-in-chief, much to the disgust of nearly every one of the best officers in the Northern army. But the "malignant's" at Washington must have a fit tool of the despotism and cruelty which were now to be the fixed policy of the Administration. McClellan could not be used for such a tool, Halleck and Pope could.
One of Halleck's letters closed with these brutal words: "our armies will ere long crush the rebellion in the South, and then place their heels upon the heads of sneaking traitors in the North." By sneaking traitors he meant all the patriotic men who loved the Union our fathers made and refused to be roped into the bloody ranks of abolition despotism.
Governor Stone of Iowa in a public speech at Keokuk said: "I admit this to be an abolition war and it will be continued as an abolition war so long as there is one slave at the South to be made free. I would rather eat with a nigger, drink with a nigger, live with a nigger, and sleep with a nigger than with a Democrat."
Such vulgar language shows the hate and bitterness that filled the hearts of the abolitionists. About this time the abolition papers were filled with articles asserting that the war would never be successful until Mr.Lincoln declared all the negroes of the South free. Of course he could not free the negroes until after he had conquered the Southern people, for they would not, until then, be within his control. But still the abolitionists were clamorous for the act to be done. Mr.Lincoln and Mr.Seward, however, were not yet ready to throw off the thin mask of conservatism, under which they commenced the war. But they had wrought up the Northern people to a pitch of fury and made them ready to endorse the cruel and inhuman mode of warfare we have described, and the next step was soon to follow.
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