Captains of the Civil War | Page 8

shortness of
time and lack of means. The demolition of Norfolk was better done,
and the ships were sunk at anchor. But many valuable stores fell into
enemy hands at both these Virginian outposts of the Federal forces.
Through six long days of dire suspense not a ship, not a train, came into
Washington. At last, on the twentyfifth, the Seventh New York got
through, having come south by boat with the Eighth Massachusetts,
landed at Annapolis, and commandeered a train to run over relaid rails.
With them came the news that all the loyal North was up, that the
Seventh had marched through miles of cheering patriots in New York,
and that these two fine regiments were only the vanguard of a host.

But just a week before Lincoln experienced this inexpressible relief he
lost, and his enemy won, a single officer, who, according to Winfield
Scott, was alone worth more than fifty thousand veteran men. On the
seventeenth of April Virginia voted for secession. On the eighteenth
Lee had a long confidential interview with his old chief, Winfield Scott.
On the twentieth he resigned, writing privately to Scott at the same
time: "My resignation would have been presented at once but for the
struggle it has cost me to separate myself from a service to which I
have devoted the best years of my life. During the whole of that time I
have experienced nothing but kindness from my superiors and a most
cordial friendship from my comrades. I shall carry to the grave the most
grateful recollections of your kind consideration, and your name and
fame shall always be dear to me. Save in the defense of my native State
I never desire again to draw my sword."
The three great motives which finally determined his momentous
course of action were: first, his aversion from taking any part in
coercing the home folks of Virginia; secondly, his belief in State rights,
tempered though it was by admiration for the Union; and thirdly, his
clear perception that war was now inevitable, and that defeat for the
South would inevitably mean a violent change of all the ways of
Southern life, above all, a change imposed by force from outside,
instead of the gradual change he wished to see effected from within. He
was opposed to slavery; and both his own and his wife's slaves had
long been free. Like his famous lieutenant, Stonewall Jackson, he was
particularly kind to the blacks; none of whom ever wanted to leave,
once they had been domiciled at Arlington, the estate that came to him
through his wife, Mary Custis, great-granddaughter of Martha
Washington. But, like Lincoln before the war, he wished emancipation
to come from the slave States themselves, as in time it must have come,
with due regard for compensation.
On the twenty-third of this eventful April Lee was given the chief
command of all Virginia's forces. Three days later "Joe" Johnston took
command of the Virginians at Richmond. One day later again
"Stonewall" Jackson took command at Harper's Ferry. Johnston played
a great and noble part throughout the war; and we shall meet him again

and again, down to the very end. But Jackson claims our first attention
here.
Like all the great leaders on both sides Jackson had been an officer of
regulars. He was, however, in many ways unlike the army type. He
disliked society amusements, was awkward, shy, reserved, and
apparently recluse. Moderately tall, with large hands and feet, stiff in
his movements, ungainly in the saddle, he was a mere nobody in public
estimation when the war broke out. A few brother-officers had seen his
consummate skill and bravery as a subaltern in Mexico; and still fewer
close acquaintances had seen his sterling qualities at Lexington, where,
for ten years, he had been a professor at the Virginia Military Institute.
But these few were the only ones who were not surprised when this
recluse of peace suddenly became a very thunderbolt of war--Puritan in
soul, Cavalier in daring: a Cromwell come to life again.
Harper's Ferry was a strategic point in northern Virginia. It was the gate
to the Shenandoah Valley as well as the point where the Baltimore and
Ohio Railroad crossed the Potomac some sixty miles northwest of
Washington. Harper's Ferry was known by name to North and South
through John Brown's raid two years before. It was now coveted by
Virginia for its Arsenal as well as for its command of road, rail, and
water routes. The plan to raid it was arranged at Richmond on the
sixteenth of April. But when the raiders reached it on the eighteenth
they found it abandoned and its Arsenal in flames. The machine shops,
however, were saved, as well as the metal parts of twenty thousand
stand