Stanton by Benjamin P. Thomas

Author:Benjamin P. Thomas [Thomas, Benjamin P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-82890-3
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-07-31T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XV

A TOWER OF STRENGTH

DANA’S PREDICTION that the only way Lee could now harass the North was by means of raiding parties was accurate. Gray raiders broke loose in the Shenandoah Valley once again in the first week of July. Bald, stooped Confederate general Jubal Early commanded the raiders, but beyond this there was little reliable information. Stanton was taking all possible emergency measures, but he desperately needed accurate intelligence.

On July 8, Hitchcock called on Halleck. He was alarmed by the danger to the capital represented by Early’s thrust, but Halleck was calm and passive. At Stanton’s behest, Halleck had warned Grant of the situation, but Grant had recommended no course of action. Thinking it unwise to leave decisions affecting the safety of Washington to Grant far down in Virginia, Hitchcock hurried to see Stanton and repeated his forebodings. The Secretary calmly told him that everything was in Grant’s hands.

Hitchcock was far from satisfied, and he decided to see Lincoln. He found him more depressed than he had ever seen him, “indeed quite paralyzed and wilted down,” but nevertheless the President repeated what Halleck and Stanton had said. Hitchcock warned that if Stonewall Jackson were alive and in command of the rebel raiders, Washington would fall within three days. There was nothing to stop him. Stanton had told Lincoln the same thing, Hitchcock later learned. But neither of them could move the President. Hitchcock concluded that Lincoln, having been criticized before for interfering in tactical movements, had resolved to keep hands off Grant, and Stanton was obeying this decision.

The rebels crossed the Potomac. Lincoln, now spending every free minute at the War Department, told Hay that with good management the Union forces could annihilate any enemy detachments that ventured north of the river. Stanton agreed, provided that General Hunter would act vigorously. But Hunter had withdrawn too far westward and might not come up in time, and Sigel, Stanton knew, was inept.

Lincoln and Stanton were determined not to withdraw men from Grant, although they hoped that he would recognize their danger and decide to send some troops to Washington. The Secretary called on Pennsylvania and New York for 100,000 militiamen each to serve for 100 days. Governor Seymour responded handsomely, but Curtin was obstreperous, as usual, insisting that he control the Pennsylvania troops but that the federal government pay and supply them. Stanton scorned the proposition; unless these men were under army control they were useless. The governor finally backed down.1

Debouching from the Valley and swinging eastward toward Washington, Early’s troops seemed to overrun western Maryland. Though Union general Lew Wallace dug in at the Monacacy River, Hunter, who might have come in on Early’s rear, seemed paralyzed. Tardily recognizing the seriousness of the threat Early posed, Grant sent Rickett’s division of the 6th Corps to support Wallace, but on July 9 the Confederates swept through this thin barrier. Washington lay before them. Grant wired Halleck that the rest of the 6th and part of the 19th Corps were hurrying to the rescue.

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