The Words of War Read online

  The Words of War

  By

  Donagh Bracken

  Copyright © 2007 by Donagh Bracken

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission from Donagh Bracken.

  Published in the United States by

  History Publishing Company, LLC

  Palisades, New York

  Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication

  Bracken, Donagh

  The Words of War/

  by Donagh Bracken.

  p.cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  LCCN 2006938438

  ISBN-13: 978-1-933909-32-5

  ISBN-10-1-933909-32-3

  1.United States—History—Civil War, 1861-1865— Press coverage. 2.United States—History—Civil War, 1861-1865—Campaigns. 3.United States—History—Civil War, 1861-1865—Journalists. 4.Journalism—New York (State)—New York—History—19th century. 5.Journalism —South Carolina—Charleston—History—19th century. 6.American newspapers—New York (State)—New York—History —19th century. 7.American newspapers—South Carolina — Charleston—History—19th century. I Title.

  E609.B733.2007 973.7

  QBI06-600707

  Printed in the United States on acid-free paper

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  First Edition

  Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  SECESSION

  CHAPTER 1:

  Fort Sumpter

  CHAPTER 2:

  First Manassas

  CHAPTER 3:

  Fort Donelson

  CHAPTER 4:

  Hampton Roads

  CHAPTER 5:

  Shiloh

  CHAPTER 6:

  Williamsburg

  CHAPTER 7:

  Second Manassas

  CHAPTER 8:

  Antietam

  CHAPTER 9:

  Fredricksburg

  CHAPTER 10:

  Gettysburg

  CHAPTER 11:

  Vicksburg

  CHAPTER 12:

  The Wilderness

  CHAPTER 13:

  Cold Harbor

  CHAPTER 14:

  Petersburg

  CHAPTER 15:

  Atlanta

  CHAPTER 16:

  Opequon

  CHAPTER 17:

  A Casualty of War

  CHAPTER 18:

  Appomattox Court House

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  INDEX

  Acknowledgments

  In order to properly acknowledge all those who contributed to this book, it is necessary to reach back fifteen decades to those in American journalism whose work is contained on these pages. There are men whose contributions, unfortunately, are anonymous at this point: the newspaper compositors and the telegraph operators and all the others on the technical end who made the Charleston Mercury and The New York Times possible. Then there are the names we remember: Henry J. Raymond and Robert Barnwell Rhett, whose identities with The New York Times and the Charleston Mercury will forever be linked. So, too, the gentlemen whose writings made newspaper history: Franc Wilkie, L.L. Crounse, Sam Wilkeson, and William Swinton, all of the Times, and George William Bagby who wrote under the pen name, Hermes, for the Mercury, and Robert Barnwell Rhett, Jr., the actual editor of the Mercury, who toiled in relative obscurity in his father’s shadow.

  To those with us today who put the battles contained herein into historical perspective, much is owed. In 1993, the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission brought together prominent civil war historians for their knowledge, input, and analysis of civil war battles. The resulting summaries provided a more clear understanding of each battle, qualities that might not have been so evident to the early war correspondents.

  Many thanks are due to Beatrice Agnew, Marie Firestone, and the staff of the Palisades Free Library, in Palisades, New York. For their reach into the inter-library loan system on my behalf, a special acknowledgment goes to Joanna Lo and Mary Beth Darnobid of the reference desk. My appreciation goes also to Dr. Libby Chenault and Gary Patillo of the University of North Carolina’s Wilson Library and Davis Library, respectively, and Tom Nix of the reference staff of that great university. Thanks, too, to Katie Gray of the Charleston County Public Library in Charleston, South Carolina, and Susanne Christof and Elaine McConnell of the Special Collections Section, and Nick Battipaglia of the Reference Section of the United States Military Academy at West Point.

  And to those who took my compilation of information and turned it into the attractive book it is, I am very much indebted: Tom Cameron, Senior Editor of History Publishing Company, whose artistic typographical touch and editorial skills are superbly demonstrated, and whose insightful suggestions brought a bright polish to areas in need of a glow; Ann Walter for her tireless eye and interesting thoughts on the English language of the Civil War era; and Blair Sutphen who designed the eye-catching cover graphic that captured everything in the book. A note of thanks, as well, to Marcia Carlson, who compiled a thorough index of a rather complicated subject.

  And, of course, to my sons Chuck and Don and daughter-in-law Elizabeth, whose interest in my progress never wavered, goes my deep appreciation. To my special friend, June Starke, whose carefully phrased questions relating to the progress of the book were really more prod than query, I owe a heartfelt sense of gratitude.

  Introduction

  A Note to the Reader About Newspaper Style During the Civil War

  When the Charleston Mercury and The New York Times reported on the Civil War, they captured the fever of that great war and the flavor of the era. The language used by both newspapers was influenced by their European counterparts, the London Times specifically, which was then the preeminent newspaper.

  Of particular note is that the articles reproduced here are original, unaltered, battlefield reports as sent from the nearest telegraph station. They include all the typos, convoluted syntax, stylistic peculiarities of the era, and perhaps inaccuracies one might expect from inexperienced and rightfully frightened reporters. The reports, as written, were immediately sent to press, without review or editing.

  Dispatches from correspondents like Franc Wilkie, in the West, and L.L. Crounse and William Swinton, in the East, were printed verbatim. Telegraph companies charged by the word. To save costs, reporters would join two words into one. So Lee’s Army became Leearmy, and, when it came to stating the time of action, just 12 ‘o would suffice because everyone knew the next word should be clock.

  There is one other jounnalistic aspect to this book, the war artist. The technology of photography was too cumbersome to capture the actual battle scenes. Because of the daily nature of the newspaper, illustrations in the newspapers were limited to rough line drawings of maps and diagrams of the war. Often they showed unfamiliar terrain with unfamiliar names. But there were periodicals other than newspapers, the weekly journals, Harpers Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Magazine, that dispatched artists such as Edwin Forbes, the brothers William and Alfred Waud, and Theodore Davis to sketch events as they happened. These drawings would then be sent to the magazines and turned into line engravings. In company with the correspondents’ writings of the Times and Mercury, some of the artist’s renditions are presented, many with the artist’s notes – snapshots of events as they occurred.

  When the Civil War started, American journalism was put to the test. It was the start of the modern age of journalism, and it was a rough start indeed. Newspapers had to wrest themselves from an unsavory past with propagandistic objectives to the dissemination of infor
mation relatively free of propaganda. In this objective they were not entirely successful; but in the restructuring of their nature, they did achieve lasting success.

  Newspapers were instrumental in teaching Americans how to read. For most Americans, newspapers were their only reading material; and, to a great degree, their thinking was shaped by published reports. Publishers, for their part, influenced the political thinking of their followers—sometimes with negative results. Political differences, in some cases, were often resolved with duels, horse whippings, and ransacking newspaper offices.

  In its dark and formative days, the American newspaper was largely a propaganda organ, owned by or rented by subsidy to some political personage or party. Fierce in their opposition to contending interests, newspapers respected no bounds.

  In the early 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote: “The spirit of the journalist in America is to attack coarsely, without preparation, and without art, the passions of those whom it addresses, to set aside principles in order to grab men, to follow them into their private lives, and to lay bare their weaknesses and their vices.”

  The French aristocrat had a keen eye. The politically slanted newspapers, North and South, were written to satisfy the partisan prejudices of their subscribers. As a usual practice, news content was formed by lacing a few “heresays” or rumors with an abundance of editorial comment, which was often spiked with vituperation and accusation.

  But now with the Civil War, the reader wanted more than partisan vituperation and the latest news of their neighbor’s peccadilloes. Much more.

  In the North, this demand to know the news as it happened in places far away, forced the newspapers to expand exponentially. As the scope of the War widened, and its fierce intensity increased, the amount of reportage exploded, as did the payroll for the number of correspondents required to cover the growing number of battles and expanding theaters of war. In doing so, many newspapers incurred great financial strain. Newspapers in the South, never as large or as cash-flow blessed as their Northern counterparts, suffered pains, too, but of a different nature. As armies advanced, newsprint supply was often cut off; and as Union Armies settled in occupied cities, the more outspoken newspapers were usually shut down.

  At the outset of the War, New York City, which boasted seventeen dailies, was the newspaper capital of the country. Not all had a Lincolnian perspective; only five showed degrees of loyalty to him during the War. Many were pro-South in their sympathies, some even pro-slavery.

  The strongest supporter of Abraham Lincoln and the preservation of the Union was The New York Times and its editor, Henry J. Raymond, a bright, industrious, young man who was born in the upstate New York town of Lima in 1820. Educated in New England at the University of Vermont, Raymond was a young man of considerable talent, whose proclivities were the Siamese twins of American public life: politics and journalism. In 1851, he was a principal founder of The New York Times and used its editorial pages to promote Whig interests until he left that party in 1856 to help found the Republican Party. In 1860, he accepted Lincoln’s nomination and supported him throughout his presidency, even in the darkest days of the war. It was during this crisis of war that Raymond and his competitors, Lincoln advocates or not, wrought the change so often fostered by crisis that elevated American journalism to a degree of respectability.

  In the South, newspapers constantly struggled to balance the books. The population was more sparing than in the North, and circulation was limited, but their influence was significant since they were the only source of information. In 1860, the citizens of the states that would make up the Confederacy had access to over seven hundred political journals and newspapers; but the total population, according to the 1860 Census, was only 5,579,000; while the remainder of the nation was 25,996,000, an indication of the difficulties Southern newspapers faced.

  In South Carolina, its paltriness of numbers did not dissuade the Charleston Mercury from preaching secession and achieving a result far exceeding what its small circulation numbers might indicate. Guided by Robert Barnwell Rhett, the Mercury was his organ for secession, and he used it well.

  Rhett was a man destined to bring a flame to the fabric of the American Union. He was raised comfortably in an isolated cocoon of the slave-plantation culture. His formative years were spent devoid of formal education save for two preteen years. His education was self-applied, and eventually he entered the practice of law, which led him to politics where he had intermittent success, with greater degrees of failure, in the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate, and the South Carolina legislature. He was quick of mind, brash and self-confident, and of the latter, annoyingly so to some. Given to syllogistic reasoning and quick to act on his conclusions, however, flawed the basic premise; he believed that the South was economically subservient to the North, and, if it remained so, would never achieve its true level of economic well being. Free from the bonds of the Union, South Carolina, in concert with other southern states, could become prosperous while maintaining its independent, self-governing ways in a confederation of other like-minded southern states.

  For twenty eight years, Rhett’s words of defiance, censure, and criticism were ever ready for usage. Flowing from the lectern, the platform as a member of government, and the editorial room of the Charleston Mercury–the newspaper his family would come to own and he would influence–he brought discomfort, disapproval, and disquietude to many as he brought a blood rush to others. His reasoning, usually free of concern for subtleties and complexities, would take him on a straight line to the heart of the issue and then to a “logical” conclusion. Once reached, it was time for action, and action in troubled times usually meant more trouble. And Rhett was never out of it, for his constant call for action was abrasive to the more moderately disposed. Even in the southland drifting toward disunion, there were some who resented his extremism, but there were not enough to prevent disunion or to foster some sort of compromise. The sparks from Rhett’s fiery orations and writings over the years had singed enough minds to create enough burning embers of discontent. But when disunion came, they were enough to thwart his ambition for high office in the new government of the Confederate States of America. Denied a significant role, he took to Charleston and the Mercury, and reported the war with a bitterness not only towards the hated Yankees but to the Confederate government in Richmond, arguably bringing to the Confederate cause a demoralization that impacted significantly on the home front, the place that would inevitably become the scene of battle.

  A Few Particular Terms of the Era

  Debouche – emerge from a confined area into a wide clearing; a passage or opening thrugh which troops may debouche.

  Enfilade – a volley of gunfire directed along a line from one end to the other; a position of earthworks, troops, etc., subject to a sweeping fire from along the length of a line of opposing troops, a trench, or a battery.

  Factious – inclining towards dissension; a factious group was trying to undermine the government.

  Fascines – bundles of bound sticks used to reenforce the side of a trench; used in building earthworks and batteries and in strengthening ramparts.

  Hors de combat – put out of action; no longer able to fight.

  Investing – to besiege a town or an area; to surround a place with military forces or works and thereby prevent approach or escape.

  Qui vive – a sentry’s challenge (Who goes there?); on the alert; watchful.

  Resaca – Sherman’s first battle in the Atlanta Campaign (May 13-15, 1864).

  Revetments – Facings of sandbags, stones, felled trees, etc. to protect a wall.

  Sideling – moving to the side while approaching stealthily.

  Toades – a contemptible individual.

  Secession

  It may have been the fastest report of breaking news in the history of American journalism. When South Carolina seceded from the Union in the building that would become known as Secession Hall on December 20, 1860, the Charleston M
ercury had an extra edition on the streets of Charleston five minutes after the Convention adjourned.

  The broadside’s announcement of South Carolina’s secession was the culmination of Robert Barnwell Rhett’s efforts to wrest South Carolina from the Federal Union since the nullification days of Andrew Jackson. He was the father of the editor of the Mercury, a key player in the South Carolina delegation, and a volatile force in the writings of the family owned newspaper.

  Several states to the north, The New York Times, in one of its pieces on the following day, was rather haughty in its understated reportage of South Carolina’s actions. In the piece headlined “The Secession Movement,” it said: “South Carolina passed the ordinance of secession yesterday at 1 o’clock P.M. by the unanimous vote of the Convention and her action was greeted with a salvo of a hundred guns. As this step was universally anticipated, it will create no special uneasiness. It does not change the relations of South Carolina to the Union in the slightest degree . . . ,” then, as if reconsidering its thoughts added. . . “though it will very possibly be followed by acts that will have that effect.”

  1

  Fort Sumter

  Initial Engagement of the Civil War

  AUTHOR’S COMMENTARY

  There was a carnival-like atmosphere in Charleston, South Carolina, as the count down marking the instant of the first cannon burst approached. When the muzzles roared at Fort Sumter, cheers arose as if the hometown favorite had scored a winning point in a sporting match. A frenzy of good fellowship embraced the Charleston citizenry.

  Others watching the event did not enjoy that fellowship. Indeed, they were fearing for their well-being. Northern newspaper correspondents were told that they might be hung if they were caught. One such was George Salter, a physician and a native of Charleston. Often sympathetic to the South in his correspondence to The New York Times, written under the pseudonym “Jasper,” he was still viewed in South Carolina with suspicion. As the Charleston Mercury reported on April 13, 1861, Dr. Salter, in fact, was thrown into prison.