History of Buchanan County, Iowa, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 120

Author: Williams bros., Cleveland, pub. [from old catalog]; Riddle, A. G. (Albert Gallatin), 1816-1902
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Cleveland, Williams brothers
Number of Pages: 574

USA > Iowa > Buchanan County > History of Buchanan County, Iowa, with illustrations and biographical sketches > Part 120

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CHAPTER III.

WAR EXPERIENCES.

Elected to the Senate .- Studies Law .- Plans of Life .- Approach and Preparation for the War .- General Cox. - James Monroe .- Lieuten- ant Colonel Forty-second Regiment .- General Buell .- Interview with Him .- Plans Mill Creek Campaign .- Finds Humphrey Marshall .- Battle .- Humphrey Hies to Pound Gap .- The Campaign .- Steers the Sandy Valley up the Big Sandy .- At the Battle of Shiloh. - Wash- ington. Fitz John Porter's Trial .- Chief of Staff in Army of the Cumberland. - Rosecrans .- Overrules the Seventeen Generals. - Tul- lahoma .- Chickamauga .- Heroism on the Field .- Major General .- Plan to Supersede Lincoln .- The Patriot Boy .- Lincoln Urges Him to Enter Congress.

With his great personal popularity Mr. Garfield could not well have avoided politics and becoming officially a public man. I don't think he tried. He must have had a relish for affairs. I don't see how, with his robust vital- ity and abounding animal life, he could well have long lived in a college cloister. He was elected to the Ohio Senate in the autumn of 1859, and was then twenty-eight. This indicates a possible change in the plans of life. So earnest and thoughtful a man had plans and programmes, had long and carefully arranged and adhered to sys- tem for the discharge of his duties and avocations. Such men by such means conquer time and win leisure. There is one other evidence of this change of plan. In the same autumn he entered his name as a student-at law in

WAR EXPERIENCES.

the office of Messrs. Williamson & Riddle, of Cleveland, and had full five minutes' conversation with the junior as to the books and course of reading, from whose hand he subsequently received a paper that he had diligently studied that science two years, under whose instruction was omitted, and was admitted to the bar by the supreme court at Columbus. He doubtless then intended, as he has several times since, to turn himself to the practice of law. Of the cause which could have led to this, specu- lation would be useless. We have a catalogue of the reasons which turned him from the sea, though they did not banish the viking from his heart. Less cogent rea- sons, and perhaps fewer in number, may have been am- ple to lead to change of the plans of life.

He was then a member of the Ohio senate, and quite every day from that to the present has been spent in the public service. His figure on the public stage soon be- came conspicuous. The character of his services and the manner in which he has rendered them early called the public attention to him. As his period of service lengthened, his fame broadened; the impressions he pro- duced deepened. As we study and contemplate him he grows upon us.

Perhaps I might leave him here. His career is matter of already written history. Its muse will assuredly care for him. This sketch is not written for him or his friends, nor at their dictation. I have undertaken to furnish some sketches of many men well known to me, though less known to fame than he, for a domestic history. I must in the fulfillment of this undertaking so far glance at the incidents of these later years, or of some of them, as to suggest the lights and shades they throw upon him, to show the effect they have produced, the changes they have wrought in the man himself, and help as I may to form an estimate of him.

It will be remembered that Garfield entered the Ohio senate in 1859, when the leaders of slavery had so far changed the forms of resistance to the exercise of their constitutional rights by the Northern people, that the con- test would inevitably escape from the forms of political action and assume those of war. It cannot be said that the North were not amply warned in time. But hardly a man of that region, a year later, believed the South meant an actual collision of arms. It may be that it was as well that the North was incapable of being thus alarmed. The parties were mutually deceived. The South was in earnest, but, in turn, believed that war, inevitable and bloody, would not ensue, for it was assured that the farm- ers, mechanics, traders, and manufacturers would not attempt to enforce the rights and laws of the Nation against them. The South was more foolhardy than the

North supposed; the North less timid and pusillanimous than the South believed. Curious it now seems, that the peoples of one blood, language, laws, and actual govern- ment, who had lived, associated, traded, and intermarried, occupied the same lands, and jointly carried on the same political institutions, could be so divided by the single thing of slavery, that they could have so misunderstood each other. So it was. The conflict was rapidly ap- proaching. The domestic agitations and political con- vulsions which must precede a contest so great and near, were shaking and shaping the minds and actions of the peoples of the two sections, and, unconsciously on the part of the North, conducting them to the margin of the inevitable conflict. These interests and agitations super- seded the ordinary themes and interests of legislation and discussion. It was the day for the advent of large- brained, warm-natured men of profound convictions, under the passionate impulses of the fiery blood, beating out the fullest pulse of youth. In a way, Garfield's con- stitutional make, the source from which he sprang, the life he had lived, the training and discipline he had gone through with, fitted him admirably for the important part he performed in preparing Ohio for the contest, and leading her side by side with the more advanced Northern States into it, and preparing himself and fellows for their own individual shares in it. It is still strange how that war fought itself, and though utterly unprepared with materials, soldiers, and commanders, perhaps the most surprising thing, after all, was the admirable and thorough preparation of the people themselves for the war, amazed as they were when it broke upon them. The causes which led to it worked this fitting-the planters, nursers and growers of the ideas, the germinal elements which produced the Northern half of these fashioning causes, were older than Garfield. He and the men of his gen- eration, the young, fiery orators, who, under the impetus of older forces and movements, were but to shape the things at the last moments ere the conflict, were to arouse, marshal, and lead the masses into the field, trans- form and be transformed into soldiers and commanders. His share of this work he did faithfully and well. When has he shirked or been wanting? He became almost at once the foremost in it. That, too, is quite his way. Who would expect him long to lag in rear of the most advanced, and that not wholly from emulation,-he has given little evidence of great personal ambition, -as from the qualities and forces of his nature, which, when turned in a given direction, take him as far as men can go, and greatly in advance of all save the very few? With these his race is probably yet to be run. The man's nature makes it inevitable. Seemingly, he leaves himself in the hands of events.

LIFE OF JAMES. A GARFIELD,

No quotation I could make from any speech of the several effective ones delivered by Mr. Garfield in the Ohio senate would do them or him justice. Quotations are always unjust. Of his immediate associates, J. D. Cox, of Trumbull county, and James Monroe, of Lorain county, then in the senate, were his most efficient co- workers. I make no comparisons of these men, nor shall I contrast Mr. Garfield with any. It is probable that with Cox was he the more intimate. When it became probable to these young men that a conflict of arms would ensue, each knew that he should go to the field, each felt that he would be called on to lead others. However that might be, each would be there to meet whatever foe he might find. They at once applied themselves to study the art of war. Both had read Cæsar, were familiar with the history of modern campaigning. They now took the subject up as an elementary study. Garfield, as we know from the natural logical thoroughness of his mind, began at the soldier's tow-path. Cox showed all through the war his natural aptitude, and the helps he drew from study never remitted.

Whatever may be said of the genius, or talent, or both, necessary to fit forth a great military leader, the glitter and dazzle, the pomp and splendor, which ever attend the movements and encounters of men in arms, throw so much glamour over the names of successful generals that their essential merits are lost sight of. The real nature and quality of the faculties, by the possession and exercise of which men succeed as generals, are, after all, a little dubious. The war showed that there was an abund- ance of this talent among us, and of excellent quality. It is useful in war, itself the most absurdly useless of human avocations. Barbarians and savages have it, and doubtless it is developed early in men. Men succeed early in life as commanders, and with us men who failed in everything else, before and after the war, did well as subordinate commanders, and may have had the ability to conduct a campaign.

At the start, Cox received the first command. The early three months' regiments were permitted to elect their field-officers. Upon the organization of the Seventh, Garfield was at Cleveland, and at Camp Taylor, and was, perhaps, willing to have been its colonel. The push- ing, dashing Tyler carried off that honor. The first of his exploits was to sit down to breakfast with the boys one morning, at Cross Lanes, in the enemy's country, never thinking that chaps unmannerly enough to break out of the Union would break in on a colonel at his breakfast, but they did, and this broke up the Seventh. During the summer, Garfield, who began as lieutenant- colonel, was in command of the Forty-second at Camp

Chase, and stamped himself upon it in a month. He was teacher, professor, and colonel in one. On the fif- teenth of December, in obedience to an order from Gen- eral Buell, commanding the department of the Ohio, the Forty-second was sent to Cattlettsburgh, Kentucky, and its colonel proceeded to headquarters at Louisville. The preparations and expectations, the longings, possi- ble doubtings of the eager, anxious months were to be brought to the test of actual war.

What a picture the interview of Buell and Garfield would make in the hands of an artist! Buell, the most accomplished military scholar and critic of the old army, and the most unpopular as well as one of the most deserv- ing generals of volunteers of the war, astute, silent, cold. Garfield, with his glowing thirty years and splendid figure, made to fill and set off the simple blue uniform, with his massive head well borne, and eager, flushing face, and bringing the warm atmosphere of his generous nature to confront his questioning and undetermined fate. A keen, sharp, searching glance, with a few cold, unconnected questions greeted him. Humphrey Mar- shall was moving down the valley of the Big Sandy, threatening eastern Kentucky. Zollicoffer was on the way from Cumberland gap, towards Mill Spring. In con- cise words, as if to one skilled in military technics, the general, with a map before him, pointed out the position and strength of Marshall, the locations of the Union forces, the topography of the country, and lifting his cold eyes to the face of the silent listener, said, "If you were in command of this sub-district what would you do? Report your answer here at nine o'clock to-morrow morn- ing." The colonel, with a silent bow, departed. Day- light the next morning found him with a sketch of the pro- posed campaign still incomplete. At nine sharp he laid it before his commander. The skilled eye mastered it in a minute. He issued to its author an order, creating the Eighteenth brigade of the army of the Cumberland, and assigned Colonel Garfield to the command. After directing the process of embodying the troops, came this sentence, brief enough for the soul of wit:

"Then proceed, with the least possible delay, to the mouth of the Sandy, and move with the force in that vicinity up that river, and drive the enemy back or cut him off." Never was order more literally executed, or with greater prompitude. Buell seemingly risked much on the accuracy of his judgment. Garfield, who had never seen an enemy or heard a musket fired in action, suddenly found himself in command of four regiments of infantry and eight companies of cavalry, charged with the duty of driving from his native State the reputedly ablest of its officers not educated to war, whom Kentucky

WAR EXPERIENCES.

had given to the rebellion, who commanded about five thousand men, and could choose his own position. He was at Paintville, sixty miles up the Sandy, was expected ultimately to unite with Zollicoffer, advance to Lexing- ton, and establish the rebel provisional government in the State. He was a man of great intellectual abilities, and famous for having led the Kentuckians in the charge at Buena Vista. The roads were horrible, the time mid- winter, and the rains incessant.

Before nightfall of the ninth of January, 1862, Gar- field had, at the head of fifteen hundred men, driven in the enemy's pickets between Abbott's and Middle creeks. He dispatched orders to his reserves at Paintville, twenty miles away, less than one thousand strong, and bivouacked in the pitiless rain, to await morning and the struggle. Wrapped in his heavy cloak, with his men about him, on the edge of unknown battle, he lay. There was plenty of time to think,-to think of everything. How the mind, armed with incredible flight in such a supreme moment, will flash the world around! Back over all his life-the canal, his boyhood, trivial things, his mother, old Williams; his wife and babies, and then the Hiram Eclectic boys, a full company of whom were then near him, because he was there. They had followed him. He knew their fathers and mothers. They had, in a way, put them into his hands, and he had brought them here. Somewhere near lay the enemy, of known superior strength. Where should he find him? At odds, in position as in numbers, he must expect. His main force, the Fortieth, the Forty-second, had never faced an enemy. How would they behave? And then he turned to him- self to question- question his innermost self-for weak places, lingering, unexpectedly mayhap, in spirit, perhaps in mere nerve, in some portion of his body, who can tell where may be a treacherous weakness? Then his thoughts wandered away to things he had always revered. And then came the drowsy numbness of sleep, with a sense of the nearness, the presence of the dear ones in his precious, peaceful home.

After all, it was not so easy to find General Humphrey Marshall. Not on Abbott's creek at all. He was so near, his foe could feel his presence; had found his cavalry and artillery. Where was Marshall's self and his army? Garfield could almost hear him breathe. What a day of hunt that was! He was certainly on Abbott's creek; and Garfield would strike Middle creek, and so get in his rear. In executing this movement, he found the enemy perked up on the side of a ragged, wooded hill, as if to be up out of danger. In fact, he was too much up to defend himself. At about four p. M. a rattling fire began-about as much as could be got out

of one thousand muskets that attacked on one side, and three thousand on the other. Never was there such a banging as the rebels made. They, too, were raw, and firing down a steep hill. On level ground raw troops fire too high, and wound the clouds, if in range. The rebels could not get down to our boys, who, under cover of the trees, kept onward and upward. There were too many rebels, for the trees and logs would not cover a fifth of the poor fellows.

Though an up-hill business, the Union soldiers did not aim too high, and they were pushing on up to see where they hit. Finally a rebel reinforcement came up over the crest, and the idea seemed to strike them to make a rush down and sweep the Union line-thin as a skirmish-line-out. At this instant Union Colonel Mon- roe and his Kentuckians-four or five hundred-got up so as to get in a very unpleasant enfilading fire, when round a curve in the road came Colonel Sheldon, with his one thousand from Paintville, through twenty miles of mud. Round they came, in the rear of Garfield's little handful of reserves, and gave a loud cheer. The reserves took it up and sent it to the struggling boys on the side-hill, who sent it up to Humphrey Marshall. Sheldon threw his men in line, and though the ground was miry, they started on a double-quick. Too late. That shout and the sight of the shouters did the rest of Humphrey's business. The shoutees did not wait for shot, or anything worse than noise, but turned and scrambled up hill, followed by the Ohio boys. Night came down; the soldiers gathered up their wounded, and the whole force concentrated on a good position,- pickets thrown out, and preparations made for a final struggle next day.

Shortly after dark a bright light blazed up behind the hill of battle. The Union soldiers beheld it with wonder. It was Humphrey Marshall's last fire. In it he consumed every possible thing that might hinder flight or be of value to his foe, and by the light he hied him away to Pound Gap.

In reading the histories of the numerous generals on both sides of the war, the greatest stress is laid upon the fact whether a given man has been tried by the only reliable test-a separate, independent command. If he had not, or failed under it, his fame had yet a flaw. Garfield met this at his entrance on the field. I never attempted but once an opinion on the movements of our army. I saw the flight from the first battle of Bull Run, and I ven- tured to suggest that the movement was in the wrong di- rection, and, as I remember, not executed with military precision. For this criticism I was promptly hanged, burned, and drowned-in effigy. I venture nothing on

LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD.

the merit of the campaign. Military writers have awarded it high praise. Its fault was the temerity of the attack. The commander had no knowledge of the character and force and commander opposed to him, save what his un- practiced eye could hastily catch when in a possibly too dangerous neighborhood. Probably the disposition made by Marshall might have revealed all that it was necessary to know, but I have no doubt he would have been at- tacked under almost any circumstances. Garfield was capable of extraordinary personal exertions, and the weight of his force-in fighting, pluck, and morale-was perhaps never surpassed by men of their experience. His own subsequent criticism of his conduct was that the attack was rash in the extreme. "As it was, having gone into the army with the notion that fighting was our business, I didn't know any better." The general plan of the campaign must have been based on true military principles, for it was approved by Buell.

I have almost exceeded my limits. This hasty outline must shrink to a mere mention of incidents most useful to my purpose. Garfield received reinforcements, and held the conquered territory for a time. Rations grew scarce, and the only source of supply was from the mouth of the Big Sandy, which the long continued winter rains in that mountain region had swollen to an unnavigable torrent, up which a salmon could hardly make his way. The colonel was at the mouth. He had a cargo of pro- visions placed in the little stern-wheel, "Sandy Valley," and ordered it to start up. The captain refused. No craft could be found to attempt it. The river was sixty feet deep; had risen almost to the tree-tops along its wooded banks. Garfield ordered the captain and crew on board, stationed a plucky officer on deck over the captain, and himself took the wheel. Steering a canal- boat had not been wholly in vain. The captain protested ; declared that no such craft could stem such a down- sweeping tide. The new helmsman had the steam turned on, and headed the shuddering little craft up-stream. With her greatest power she could not make three miles an hour. Night came. The captain implored that the frightened thing might be tied up, but she was kept head- up, and the determined colonel kept the wheel. She plunged her nose into the bank past digging out. Colo- nel Garfield manned a boat, pushed across the stream, extemporized a windlass, and with a line pulled her out, and sent her on up to his hungry boys. He started on Saturday. All that day and night, Sunday and Sunday night, and at nine o'clock Monday morning they reached the camp. A tumult of cheers welcomed him. Spite of military rule, the young commander barely escaped being carried to headquarters on the shoulders of his soldiers.

Of the whole time in climbing the Big Sandy, he had been absent from the wheel but eight hours.

He was formed for a soldier's idol.

The Big Sandy campaign could have no wide signifi- cance, save on the fortunes of the two commanders. Humphrey Marshall disappeared in a shower of ridicule and sarcasm from both sides. The attention of the country was for a day concentrated on the young man who had shown such dashing qualities. He was made a brigadier-general, to date from January 10th, and ordered to report to General Buell. The separation from the Forty-second was a real affliction to both. His new com- mand was two Ohio and two Indiana regiments; nor did the fortunes of war ever again place his old regiment under his command or in his presence.

He was enabled to get into the second day's battle at Pittsburg Landing. He had his share in the tedious siege of Corinth, and finally advanced to Huntsville, where he was at the close of that campaign. He was placed at the head of the court-martial on General Tur- chin, which developed his qualities and fine ability in new directions. The old malarial influences, the result of his early campaign on the canal, quickened by the climate of the South, brought a vigorous return of the old foe, and late in the summer he was obliged to return home. He was ordered to relieve General Morgan on Cumberland Gap, but was still in the clutch of the ague when he was directed to report at Washington as soon as health per- mitted. The eye of the secretary of war had been on him from his first appearance in the army. His knowl- edge of law, the ability in the Turchin case, his admir- able judgment on all occasions, and his ardent patriotism induced Mr. Stanton to place his name among the first of the court for the trial of Fitz-John Porter. The his- tory of that famous trial is to be re-written, with what re- suit is unknown. It is known that General Garfield then had no doubt of his guilt. He is not one to make or change his opinions lightly. In him, however, the moral qualities which produce a firm, quick sense of justice are strong and active.

During this long trial he became intimate with General Hunter, the president, who desired to have him in the contemplated campaign in South Carolina ; and, with his intensified anti-slavery sentiments, the assignment to this field was gratifying to the young general. Meantime was fought the sanguinary battle of Stone River. Gerache, the chief-of-staff of the commanding general, was slain, and Garfield, appointed to the vacant post, was sent to Rosecrans, in January, 1863.

This commander, in some respects the most brilliant general of the army, was the poorest judge of men; and

WAR EXPERIENCES.

though one of the best-hearted, he had one of the most unaccommodating of tempers, especially in his dealings with the powers at Washington. His deficiencies were admirably supplied by his new chief-of-staff. There was perhaps not a prominent general in the army who could not have been supplemented in the same way. The quick eye of the new chief saw the defects in the organ- ization of the army. These could be measurably sup- plied. He saw the incapacity of the wing commanders, A. M. McCook and T. L. Crittenden, and promptly recommended their removal. The general could not injure "two such good fellows." The inefficiency of McCook lost the first day at Stone River. They went on to Chickamauga, where he ruined the field. Garfield would have supplied their places with McDowell and Buell. His arrival at headquarters was about the begin- ning of the bitter, acrimonious correspondence between the general of the army and the war office, which laid the foundation for his being relieved from the command under a cloud. Garfield found the army at Murfrees- boro', and here it lay, spite of the urgency, the importu- nity, the almost command of the secretary of war for action, till the twenty-fourth of June, in the presence of Bragg. Rosecrans needed reinforcements, material sup- plies. He had defeated a superior army at Stone River. The secretary could not understand why he should hesi- tate to assail an inferior one now. It needed explanation.

Rosecrans required the formal opinions of his corps, division, and cavalry generals as to the safety and ex- pedieney of an advance. The seventeen, with singular unanimity, coincided that it should not be attempted. The chief-of-staff collected these opinions, analyzed, and replied to them, showed their weakness, and conclusively that the army could move at once. This bore date June 12, and the army marched the twenty-fourth. The paper has been pronounced by high authority the ablest of its kind of the war. On the morning of the advance, one of the three corps commanders, Crittenden, said to Gar- field, at headquarters, "It is understood, sir, by the gen- eral officers of the army that this movement is your work. I wish you to understand that it is a rash and fatal move, for which you will be held responsible." The army marched on the short and brilliant Tullahoma campaign, which relieved that region of Bragg and his army. Had it been commenced a week sooner, his army undoubtedly would have disappeared from the war. Probably the in- cessant heavy rains only saved him finally. It would have saved Chickamauga.

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History of Buchanan County, Iowa, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 120

Author: Williams bros., Cleveland, pub. [from old catalog]; Riddle, A. G. (Albert Gallatin), 1816-1902 Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Cleveland, Williams brothers Number of Pages: 574

Author: Williams bros., Cleveland, pub. [from old catalog]; Riddle, A. G. (Albert Gallatin), 1816-1902
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Cleveland, Williams brothers
Number of Pages: 574