Two Weeks That Changed the War

Wherein the reverberations of the capture of Ft. Donelson spur action

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After months of low-level activity between the two Armies of the Potomac that had resided in the Washington area since summer 1861, the last two weeks of February saw the beginning of a flurry of activity. Rapid-fire decisions led logically to other rapid-fire decisions that set the course of the war for long after both armies left the theater. This is a day-by-day look at those two weeks of decisions made in the Washington area that led to the beginning of the Civil War as we know it.

February 17, Monday

On the day Joe Hooker sat frustrated, waiting for general-in-chief George McClellan to provide the transports needed to make an attack from Liverpool Point in Charles County, Maryland, across the Potomac River to Evansport [Quantico], Washington City was electrified by the details of the surrender of Fort Donelson, on the Cumberland River. The fort had fallen the day before when its Confederate commander (and former U.S. Secretary of War) John Floyd and his second-in-command, Gideon Pillow, had fled on February 16, leaving a disgusted Simon Bolivar Buckner to surrender it that evening to the unknown Brig. General Ulysses S. Grant.

Grant could not say he was unknown on February 17, and all of Washington was titillated to learn that when Buckner had sent asking for terms of surrender, Grant had written back "unconditional and immediate surrender." For those in Washington already angry at Buckner's good pre-war friend McClellan for moving slowly, the contrast couldn't be starker. Grant's control of the fort made Nashville indefensible, McClellan's inaction kept the Confederates in Centreville. Lincoln sent Grant's nomination to major general of volunteers to the Senate that night.

Valuable Services Rendered

Wherein a scout through no-man's land contains tantalizing hints of a lost drama

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At 3:30 am on February 22, the 5th Pennsylvania Cavalry headed out again. Two weeks earlier, the unit had set off to clear the road between Flint Hill and Hunter's Mill and run into more difficulties than they had expected, but still come home with valuable information about the Confederate position. This time, Colonel Max Friedman was leading the mission himself, but the regiment was again accompanied by that indefatigable Brit, L.D.H. Currie, from division headquarters.

There's unfortunately not a lot of information readily available about Friedman's ride, but the colonel's account is well written, and not quite as stiff as some of his fellow officers, so I'll run it in its entirety (which, unfortunately, takes two screenshots).

The horsemen were most likely again from the 1st North Carolina Cavalry, who were responsible for picketing that section of the Confederate line, but if there's a Confederate account, I haven't found it.

The expedition has a curious footnote. When forwarding the report on to the commanding general, Friedman's superior, Brig. General W.F. "Baldy" Smith noted  a "decided difference of opinion with reference to artillery being seen near Fairfax Court-House." Commanding officers were required to forward reports up the chain, but more often than not did not add any commentary of their own. And since Smith was not on the scout himself, his opinions would have come from Currie.

Smith also believed that some individuals should be particularized, and included in his endorsement three staff officers by names who he says took prisoners. He concluded with the additional observation that "Captain Currie, as usual, was everywhere to direct and make successful the expedition."

Friedman would leave the army in just a few more weeks over disagreements about his approval of a Jewish chaplain for the 5th Pennsylvania Cavalry, but reading the report of his last action in command of his regiment, it's hard not to suspect that McClellanites Currie and Smith played a role in driving away what otherwise seems to be a pretty good officer.

Indisposed to Make It

Wherein Hooker and McClellan don't really help each other

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The noose was beginning to tighten around Maj. General George B. McClellan, general-in-chief of the U.S. Army, and commander of the Army of the Potomac. President Abraham Lincoln had clearly become unhappy with the course of the war, appointing a new Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, and using his commander-in-chief powers to issue a general order for all armies to begin operations by February 22. McClellan was uncertain if Lincoln himself--who McClellan called "the original gorilla" in private, a nickname invented by Stanton a few months before he joined the administration--was the source of the pressure, or if he was responding to the Radical Republicans in Congress, who had convened the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War to drum out "traitors" from the war effort, a word they considered synonymous with "Democrats". They had already claimed their first victim, Charles P. Stone, who was imprisoned without charge in Fort Lafayette in New York Harbor, but McClellan knew that he was their real target.

In his own Army, there were generals conspiring to replace him. Brig. General Irvin McDowell, who had appeared to see his career as a commander of troops crushed with the loss at Bull Run, was experiencing a resurgence thanks to his willingness to tell the Joint Committee and Lincoln his proposal for a repeat attack on Manassas Junction. Another division commander, Brig. General Samuel Heintzelman, appeared to be in league with McDowell, ordering reconnaissances along his proposed lines of attack. On the distant right, the senior division commander, Maj. General Nathaniel P. Banks, was requesting McClellan allow him to march his division from Frederick, Maryland, to Winchester, Virginia, almost daily, insisting he could bounce the Confederate force under "Stonewall" Jackson out of the Shenandoah Valley with virtually no losses. To the right of Banks, Brig. General Frederick Lander had been making similar requests with such impertinence that McClellan ordered Banks (through whom his messages were routed) to tell him that the general-in-chief "might comment very severely on the tone of his dispatches, but abstain[s]."

And worst of all for McClellan, other generals were winning successes that he didn't seem able to convince Lincoln were thanks to McClellan's leadership in Washington. His old friend Ambrose Burnside had seized Roanoke Island in North Carolina, providing another base from which to threaten Gosport Shipyard [Norfolk Naval Shipyard], the home port for the new ironclad the Confederates had built out of the scuttled remains of the U.S.S. Merrimack. McClellan might have been due some credit for that operation, but the success in Tennessee against Fort Henry and Fort Donelson by troops under the ultimate command of McClellan's top rival, Maj. General Henry Halleck, looked ominous for Little Mack's tenure.

McClellan had to somehow satisfy Lincoln's insistence, without sacrificing his grand scheme to transport the Army of the Potomac to the Rappahannock and march on Richmond directly. He would need at least a month for the troop ships from Burnside's expeditions to return in order to ferry another army. For McClellan, Joe Hooker provided the solution.

The Arrest of General Stone

Wherein the provost guard carries out an order

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On February 8, Brig. General Andrew Porter received the following order from the general-in-chief, Maj. General George B. McClellan:

You will please at once arrest Brig Genl Chas P Stone U.S. Volunteers & retain him in close custody, sending him under suitable escort by the first train to Fort Lafayette there to be placed under charge of the comdg officer to await trial [sic]. See that he has no communication with any one from the time of his arrest.

Porter was the Provost Marshal for the Army of the Potomac, the officer charged with enforcing regulations and maintaining martial law in the area of the army's operations. He had served in the position since McClellan had taken command of that army, and was largely responsible for the vast improvement in discipline by the troops around Washington (though getting most of them out of the city and into the Virginia countryside had helped). He was also responsible for carrying out unpopular actions against local civilians, including the arrest of Washington City's mayor for conspiring against the government and the imprisonment of Rose O'Neal Greenhow and the other female secessionists.

Porter was a Pennsylvanian with the American army baked deep into his DNA. His father had been an officer in the War of 1812, and his grandfather had been a general in the American Revolution. Porter had only spent six months at West Point before dropping out to fight in the Mexican War, but he was nevertheless a consummate army professional. With the U.S. Mounted Rifles Regiment he was promoted to captain and won brevets to major and lieutenant colonel for prowess in battle. When Fort Sumter surrendered, Porter was chosen to be colonel of the new regular regiment the 16th Infantry, the only one of nine new colonels for the new regiments that had not graduated from West Point.

But before Porter had even seen his regiment, he was commanding a brigade in the Army of Northeast Virginia, whose commander, Irvin McDowell, had decided with such inexperienced troops a regular army colonel was needed to keep them under control. His division commander was the new colonel of his old Mounted Rifles, David Hunter, and the other brigade was commanded by Colonel Ambrose Burnside of the Rhode Island militia. Hunter was wounded on Matthews' Hill and, after the battle, Porter and Burnside argued publicly about which of them had led the division and helped out most in the battle.

Hot Haste

Wherein a multiethnic force clears Hunter's Mill of rebels

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Much has been written about the families that were torn apart by the American Civil War. Abraham Lincoln, for example, had four brothers-in-law from his wife's family that all fought in the Confederate Army, and one more that married Mary Todd Lincoln's sister. But it was also a war marked by the unfamiliar, one in which people from backgrounds quite different from the Anglo-Saxon or Scots-Irish backgrounds that make up a large part of the warfare we most often remember.

The 5th Pennsylvania Cavalry was one such unit. It had been recruited for three years at the beginning of July 1861 by Max Friedman, a German Jew who had immigrated to Philadelphia when his liberal politics left him on the wrong side of the '48. His key staff had similar backgrounds, and they were able to quickly recruit men among other German immigrants, who tended to be patriotic and particularly anti-slavery (not the least because slave labor undercut their wages). Freidman was made colonel, and named his regiment of cavalry the Cameron Dragoons after then-Secretary of War Simon Cameron, a favorite Pennsylvania politician of the immigrant community in Philadelphia.

Cameron didn't return the respect immediately, choosing not to muster the regiment into service, until the loss at Bull Run expanded the number of authorized regiments of volunteers. In deference to Pennsylvania's odd enumeration system, it was renumbered the 65th Pennsylvania Volunteer Regiment, but it continued to be called the 5th Pennsylvania Cavalry or Cameron's Dragoons. After traveling to Washington, the regiment encamped on 7th Street, not far from today's Verizon Center, and Friedman named a Jewish regimental chaplain, to the ire of the YMCA and several Members of Congress. By February 1862, Friedman was still in hot water, and spending less and less time running his regiment, and more defending his Jewishness against Christian zealots.

So on February 7, it was not Friedman that led the regiment out for their mission, but Major Joseph L. Moss, who was acting as his second in command since the resignation of Lt. Colonel Philip Becker in November. Not much data is available on Moss without a deeper search, but his name indicates that he could be of Anglo-Saxon or East German Jewish descent, both of which are possible in the 5th Pennsylvania Cavalry. The regiment was divided up into five squadrons of two companies each, under himself, Major Edward Boteler, Captain William Heuser, Captain D. P. Hagameister, and Captain Jacob Wilson. Wilson is definitely an English or Scottish name, though like Moss not enough information is readily available to know Jacob's background. He may even have been among the significant minority or the 5th's Irish-born members, of which there were quite a few in his Company F.

Masses of the Enemy

In which we reconnoiter Occoquan

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On February 3, Abraham Lincoln took the time to respond to his general-in-chief. Almost a week earlier the President had taken control of the war effort by issuing General Order No. 1, requiring all armies loyal to the Federal government to begin offensive movements. Maj. General George B. McClellan tried immediately to get Lincoln to countermand it, since the plan he was contemplated involved sailing his army down the Potomac, then up the Rappahannock and landing behind the Confederate position based at Centreville.

He would not be able to gather enough transport ships in that time period, though, which would make a plan supported by the Radical Republicans in Congress of a direct move towards Centreville the only plausible option. McClellan didn't like that plan because he believed the Confederates had too many men, that his own men weren't yet ready to fight, and because somebody else had thought of it. Lincoln was alright with the plan, and so issued Special Order No. 1, requiring the Army of the Potomac to seize Manassas Junction.

But McClellan kept working on Lincoln and on February 3, Lincoln signaled he might be persuadable.

Lincoln also included a separate memorandum with questions geared towards the other plan, one of the keys to which was crossing the Occoquan River near its mouth where the Confederates were thought to be weak, in order to keep them from forming a strong defensive line behind that river and its tributary, Bull Run, just as they had in July 1861.

Suppose the enemy in force shall dispute the crossing of the Occoquan? In view of this, might it not be safest for us to cross the Occoquan at Colchester rather than at the village of Occoquan? This would cost the enemy two miles more of travel to meet us, but would, on the contrary, leave us 2 miles farther from our ultimate destination.