双语·林肯传 18

18

Lincoln issued a call for seventy-five thousand men, and threw the country into a frenzy of patriotic fervor. Mass-meetings were held in thousands of halls and public squares, bands played, flags waved, orators harangued, fireworks were set off; and men, leaving the plow and the pencil, flocked to the flag.

In ten weeks, a hundred and ninety thousand recruits were drilling and marching and singing:

John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,

But his soul goes marching on.

But who was to lead these troops to victory? There was one recognized military genius in the army then—and only one. His name was Robert E. Lee. He was a Southerner; but, nevertheless, Lincoln offered him the command of the Union Army. If Lee had accepted, the whole history of the war would have been vastly different. For a time he did think seriously of accepting: thought about it, read his Bible, and got down on his knees and prayed about it, and paced the floor of his bedchamber all night, trying honestly to come to a righteous decision.

He agreed with Lincoln on many things. He hated slavery as Lincoln hated it; Lee had freed his own negroes long ago. He loved the Union almost as Lincoln loved it; he believed that it was “perpetual,” that secession was “revolution,” that “no greater calamity” could befall the nation.

But—and this was the trouble—he was a Virginian, a proud Virginian, a Virginian who put State above Nation. For two hundred years his forebears had been mighty factors in the destiny, first of the Colony, and then of the State. His father, the famous “Light Horse Harry” Lee, had helped Washington chase the redcoats of King George; after that, he had been Governor of Virginia; and he had taught his son, Robert E., to love the State more than the Union.

So when Virginia cast her lot with the South, Lee quietly announced: “I cannot lead a hostile army against my relatives, my children and my home. I go to share the miseries of my people.”

That decision probably lengthened the Civil War by two or three years.

To whom could Lincoln now turn for help and guidance? General Winfield Scott was then in command of the army. Scott was an old man. He had won a notable victory at Lundy's Lane in the War of 1812. And this was 1861. Forty-nine years later. He was weary, now, in body and mind. His youthful initiative and courage had long since perished.

Besides, he was suffering from a spinal affliction. “For more than three years,” he wrote, “I have been unable to mount a horse or walk more than a few paces at a time, and that with much pain.”

In addition, he now had “other and new infirmities—dropsy and vertigo.”

Such was the man to whom Lincoln had to look to lead the nation to victory: a broken old soldier who ought to have been in the hospital, with a nurse and a water mattress.

Lincoln had called in April for seventy-five thousand men to serve for three months. Their enlistments would expire in July; so, in the last part of June, a great hue and cry arose for action! Action! Action!

Day after day Horace Greeley kept “The Nation's War Cry” standing in bold type at the head of the “Tribune's” editorial columns: “Forward to Richmond!”

Business was bad. The banks were afraid to extend credit. Even the Government had to pay twelve per cent for borrowed money. People were disturbed. “Now, look here,” they said, “there is no use fooling any longer. Let's strike one sharp blow, capture Lee's army, and have this nasty mess over and done with once and for all.”

That sounded attractive, and every one agreed.

Every one except the military authorities: they knew the army wasn't ready. But the President, bowing to public clamor, finally ordered an advance.

So, on a hot, brilliant July day, McDowell, with his “Grand Army,” thirty thousand strong, marched away to attack the Confederates at Bull Run, a creek in Virginia. No American general then living had ever before commanded so large a body of men.

What an army it was! Raw. Half trained. Several of the regiments had arrived within the last ten days, and had no idea of discipline.

“With all my personal effort,” said Sherman, who commanded a brigade, “I could not prevent the men from straggling for water, blackberries, and anything on the way that they fancied.”

The Zouaves and Turcos in those days were regarded as mighty warriors; so many soldiers aspired to dress like them and act like them. Consequently, thousands of the troops marched away to Bull Run, that day, with their heads in scarlet turbans, their legs in red baggy breeches. They looked more like a comicopera troupe than men marching to death.

Several silk-hatted Congressmen drove out to watch the battle, taking with them their wives and pet dogs, and baskets of sandwiches and bottles of Bordeaux.

Finally, at ten o'clock on a broiling day in late July, the first real battle of the Civil War began.

What happened?

As soon as some of the inexperienced troops saw cannonballs crashing through the trees, heard men shrieking, and saw them pitching forward on the ground with blood running out of their mouths—as soon as they saw this, the Pennsylvania regiment and the New York Battery happened to recall that their ninety-day term of enlistment had expired; and they insisted on being mustered out of service. Then and there! Quick! And, as McDowell reports, they “moved to the rear to the sound of the enemy's cannon.”

The rest of the troops fought surprisingly well until about half-past four in the afternoon. Then suddenly the Confederates, throwing twenty-three hundred fresh men into the assault, took the field by storm.

From mouth to mouth ran the report, “Johnston's army has come.”

A panic ensued.

Twenty-five thousand soldiers, refusing to obey orders, broke from the field in mad confusion. McDowell and scores of officers made frantic efforts to stem the rout, but it was useless.

Quickly the Confederate artillery shelled the road, already jammed with fleeing soldiers and commissariat wagons and ambulances and the carriages of silk-hatted, sightseeing Congressmen. Women screamed and fainted. Men shouted and cursed and trampled on one another, A wagon was upset on a bridge. The highway was clogged. Plunging and kicking horses were cut from wagons and ambulances and artillery pieces; and frightened men in red turbans and yellow trousers leaped upon them and dashed away, the traces trailing in the dust, the harness dragging at their heels.

They imagined that the Confederate cavalry was in close pursuit. The cry of “the cavalry! the cavalry!” convulsed them with fear.

The grand debacle had now become a terror-stricken mob.

Nothing like it had ever before been witnessed on any American battle-field.

Maddened men threw away their guns, coats, caps, belts, bayonets, and fled as if driven by some unknown fury. Some sank on the road in utter exhaustion and were crushed beneath the oncoming horses and wagons.

The day was Sunday, and the distant roar of the cannon twenty miles away reached Lincoln's ears as he sat in church. At the close of the services, he rushed to the War Department, to read the telegrams that had already begun to pour in from different parts of the field. Fragmentary and incomplete as they were, Lincoln was eager to discuss them with General Scott; so he hurried to the old general's quarters, and found him taking a nap.

General Scott awoke, yawned, rubbed his eyes; but he was so infirm he couldn't get up without help. “He had some sort of harness with a pulley arrangement attached to the ceiling of the room; and, grasping the strap, he pulled his vast bulk into an upright position and swung his feet off the lounge upon the floor.”

“I don't know,” he said, “how many men are in the field, where they are, how they are armed, how they are equipped, or what they are capable of doing. Nobody comes to tell me, and I am in ignorance about it.”

And he was the head of all the Union armies!

The old general looked at a few telegrams that were coming in from the battle-field, told Lincoln there was nothing to worry about, complained of his aching back, and went to sleep again.

At midnight the broken army, in a riot of disorder, began to stagger across the Long Bridge and pour over the Potomac into Washington.

Tables were quickly set up on the sidewalks, wagon-loads of bread suddenly appeared from somewhere, and society women stood over wash-boilers of steaming soup and coffee, dispensing food.

McDowell, utterly exhausted, had fallen asleep under a tree while writing a despatch, his pencil still in his hand, a sentence half finished. His soldiers were too weary now to care for anything, so they threw themselves on the sidewalks and slept, inert as dead men, in the steadily falling rain—some still clutching their muskets as they slept.

Lincoln sat that night until long after dawn, listening to the stories of the newspaper correspondents and silk-hatted civilians who had witnessed the debacle.

Many public men were thrown into a panic. Horace Greeley wanted to end the war at once, on any terms. He was positive the South could never be conquered.

London bankers were so certain that the Union would be destroyed that their agent in Washington rushed to the Treasury Department on Sunday afternoon, demanding that the United States Government give security immediately for forty thousand dollars that was owing them.

He was told to come back on Monday, that the United States Government would probably still be doing business at the old stand then.

Failure and defeat were not new experiences to Lincoln. He had known them all his life; they did not crush him; his faith in the ultimate triumph of his cause remained firm, his confidence unshaken. He went among the disheartened soldiers, shaking hands with them, and saying over and over: “God bless you. God bless you.” He cheered them, sat down and ate beans with them, revived their drooping spirits, and talked of brighter to-morrows.

It was to be a long war. He saw that now. So he asked Congress for a levy of four hundred thousand men. Congress raised him a hundred thousand, and authorized half a million to serve for three years.

But who could lead them? Old Scott, unable to walk, unable to get out of bed without a harness and pulley, and snoring the afternoon away during a battle? Absolutely not. He was slated for the discard.

And there now gallops into the limelight one of the most charming and disappointing generals that ever sat in a saddle.

Lincoln's troubles were not over. They were just beginning.