Military Reminiscences of the Civil War, vol 1 (April 1861-November 1863) | Page 5

loyalty--Their faith in the future.
CHAPTER XXVI
BURNSIDE IN EAST TENNESSEE
Organizing and arming the loyalists--Burnside concentrates near
Greeneville--His general plan--Rumors of Confederate
reinforcements--Lack of accurate information--The Ninth Corps in
Kentucky--Its depletion by malarial disease--Death of General Welsh
from this cause--Preparing for further work--Situation on 16th
September--Dispatch from Halleck--Its apparent purpose--Necessity to
dispose of the enemy near Virginia border--Burnside personally at the
front--His great activity--Ignorance of Rosecrans's peril--Impossibility
of joining him by the 20th--Ruinous effects of abandoning East
Tennessee--Efforts to aid Rosecrans without such
abandonment--Enemy duped into burning Watauga bridge
themselves--Ninth Corps arriving--Willcox's division garrisons
Cumberland Gap--Reinforcements sent Rosecrans from all
quarters--Chattanooga made safe from attack--The supply
question--Meigs's description of the roads--Burnside halted near
Loudon--Halleck's misconception of the geography--The people
imploring the President not to remove the troops--How Longstreet got
away from Virginia--Burnside's alternate plans--Minor operations in
upper Holston valley--Wolford's affair on the lower Holston.
APPENDIX A
APPENDIX B

MILITARY REMINISCENCES OF
THE CIVIL WAR

CHAPTER I
THE OUTBREAK OF THE WAR
Ohio Senate April 12--Sumter bombarded--"Glory to God!"--The
surrender--Effect on public sentiment--Call for troops--Politicians
changing front--David Tod--Stephen A. Douglas--The insurrection
must be crushed--Garfield on personal duty--Troops organized by the
States--The militia--Unpreparedness--McClellan at Columbus--Meets
Governor Dennison--Put in command--Our stock of
munitions--Making estimates--McClellan's plan--Camp Jackson--Camp
Dennison--Gathering of the volunteers--Garibaldi uniforms--Officering
the troops--Off for Washington--Scenes in the State Capitol--Governor
Dennison's labors--Young regulars--Scott's policy--Alex.
McCook--Orlando Poe--Not allowed to take state commissions.
On Friday the twelfth day of April, 1861, the Senate of Ohio was in
session, trying to go on in the ordinary routine of business, but with a
sense of anxiety and strain which was caused by the troubled condition
of national affairs. The passage of Ordinances of Secession by one after
another of the Southern States, and even the assembling of a
provisional Confederate government at Montgomery, had not wholly
destroyed the hope that some peaceful way out of our troubles would
be found; yet the gathering of an army on the sands opposite Fort
Sumter was really war, and if a hostile gun were fired, we knew it
would mean the end of all effort at arrangement. Hoping almost against
hope that blood would not be shed, and that the pageant of military
array and of a rebel government would pass by and soon be reckoned
among the disused scenes and properties of a political drama that never
pretended to be more than acting, we tried to give our thoughts to
business; but there was no heart in it, and the morning hour lagged, for
we could not work in earnest and we were unwilling to adjourn.
Suddenly a senator came in from the lobby in an excited way, and
catching the chairman's eye, exclaimed, "Mr. President, the telegraph
announces that the secessionists are bombarding Fort Sumter!" There
was a solemn and painful hush, but it was broken in a moment by a

woman's shrill voice from the spectators' seats, crying, "Glory to God!"
It startled every one, almost as if the enemy were in the midst. But it
was the voice of a radical friend of the slave, who after a lifetime of
public agitation believed that only through blood could freedom be won.
Abby Kelly Foster had been attending the session of the Assembly,
urging the passage of some measures enlarging the legal rights of
married women, and, sitting beyond the railing when the news came in,
shouted a fierce cry of joy that oppression had submitted its cause to
the decision of the sword. With most of us, the gloomy thought that
civil war had begun in our own land overshadowed everything, and
seemed too great a price to pay for any good; a scourge to be borne
only in preference to yielding the very groundwork of our
republicanism,--the right to enforce a fair interpretation of the
Constitution through the election of President and Congress.
The next day we learned that Major Anderson had surrendered, and the
telegraphic news from all the Northern States showed plain evidence of
a popular outburst of loyalty to the Union, following a brief moment of
dismay. Judge Thomas M. Key of Cincinnati, chairman of the Judiciary
Committee, was the recognized leader of the Democratic party in the
Senate, [Footnote: Afterward aide-de-camp and acting judge-advocate
on McClellan's staff.] and at an early hour moved an adjournment to
the following Tuesday, in order, as he said, that the senators might have
the opportunity to go home and consult their constituents in the
perilous crisis of public affairs. No objection was made to the
adjournment, and the representatives took a similar recess. All were in
a state of most anxious suspense,--the Republicans to know what
initiative the Administration at Washington would take, and the
Democrats to determine what course they should follow if the President
should call for troops to put down the insurrection.
Before