ON THIS DAY: Tuesday, Dec. 31, 1861

"Good, all?"

The happiest man in western Virginia must be Lt. Col. Rutherford B. Hayes of the 23^rd Ohio, now in winter quarters at Camp Union in Fayetteville. Hayes is a man with a warm, engaging personality, a perennial optimist who enjoys life wherever he finds it.

The 39-year-old Hayes exults in fair weather, carefully toting up in his diary the number of consecutive sunny days to date. He enjoys army life, savoring the rough-and-ready existence with all its discomforts. While others complain of boredom and discomfort, Hayes never does. His diary entry for the last day of the year is in character:

A lovely day today. Twenty-six fine days this month; a few [of] them cold, not severely so, but all good weather. Lucy getting on well.

Good, all!

Others might not agree. Gloom has settled on the North. Having embarked on war with high hopes for glory and quick victories, the Union side has suffered one humiliation after another: the capitulation of Fort Sumter, the embarrassing rout at Bull Run, the shocking disaster at Ball’s Bluff, and, to top it off, the puzzling lethargy of Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan and Army of the Potomac, a highly polished force that seems to be going nowhere.

These failings occurred in the Eastern Theater and were highly visible. Getting far less attention was Western Theater success in dominating most of western Virginia And there were encouraging signs of initiative in southeastern Missouri and western Kentucky by Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, a promising man of action. Grant is an unknown, so Easterners aren't paying a lot of attention.

In Washington, President Abraham Lincoln quietly labors away, besieged by critics from the left and right, as frustrated as everyone else, but never giving up. Among Lincoln’s difficult partners is the Congressional Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War (CCW), a group of Radical Republicans who want hard, swift action against the Confederacy. Lincoln spends an hour and a half conferring with the CCW, then writes General McClellan an encouraging note because the committee’s doings “give you some uneasiness.” McClellan is right to be uneasy and so is Lincoln, but the President is determined—for now—to be supportive of the general-in-chief of Union forces.

Lincoln also replies to an “ugly” letter from Maj. Gen. David Hunter, who is complaining of “banishment” to a lesser command in Kansas. The President warns Hunter that “you are adopting the best possible way to ruin yourself.”

Because General McClellan is ill, Lincoln steps into army affairs to wire Generals Henry W. Halleck, commander of the Department of the Missouri, and Don Carlos Buell, commander of the department of the Ohio: “Are you in concert?” These close neighbors in command are not, a problem that will not be solved until the Western theater is given unified leadership.

The weary Lincoln ends the day by listening to serenades from four bands. We can only hope the music was soothing.

Good, all?

IT’S COMING SOONER THAN YOU THINK: April 12, 2011—less than 3½ years from now!—will be the 150^th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1861, April 12 was the day Confederates opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.

Your suggestions, comments, and questions about this blog are always welcome. Address the author: Ohioan@bloodtearsandglory.com

For more information about the author and his newest book, please go to http://www.orangefrazer.com/btg

ON THIS DAY: Monday, Dec. 30, 1861

A Renaissance Man

And His Men

Col. Jacob Dolson Cox (pictured) was one of those remarkable 19^th-century Americans of many talents, unrestrained by professional boundaries or the god of specialization worshipped by later generations. We could call him a “Renaissance Man.”

A graduate of Ohio’s Oberlin College, Cox was a lawyer well read in military literature, fluent in French, a good horseman, and a fine fencer. Author Fletcher Pratt wrote that Cox was “world famous as an authority on microscopy and cathedral architecture, [as well as being a fine writer], politician, soldier, artist—everything.” To top it off, the slim, six-foot-tall Cox was 21^st-century handsome, fine featured, with a clear, unwavering gaze that practically demanded you trust him.

Which many people did. At the outbreak of war, Cox was an Ohio state senator who promptly won one of only three brigadier generalships allotted Ohio. It wasn’t long until the 33-year-old Cox was commanding the “District of the Kanawha” and its three brigades. This was the region in western Virginia to which Rutherford Hayes’ 23^rd Ohio is assigned.

During the winter of 1861-1862, the Northern public and many soldiers grouse over the apparent lack of action. Instead of leading men into combat, however, many officers are using the winter to tune up their forces, much of the effort going into what Cox called “the work of sifting the material for an army.” A backlog of courts-martial is being cleared up, unsuitable officers are being demoted or dismissed, and bad actors in the ranks are being sent home.

Writing years later about this period of the war, Cox came to some interesting conclusions.

First, “the volunteers were always better men, man for man, than the average of those recruited for the regular army,” he said. According to Cox, this was because volunteers were moved by “patriotic zeal” and a need for “self-respect,” while regulars tended to be the dregs of society, “outcasts, to whom life had been a failure,” men to whom the army is a last resort.

Second, volunteer officers employed “much milder methods of discipline” with volunteer soldiers than regular officers did with regular troops. This was because volunteer soldiers’ “hearts were as fully set [on victory] as the hearts of their colonels or generals.” Regular officers, on the other hand, tended to be “arbitrary, despotic, often tyrannical.”

Cox, of course, was describing western troops, whom he knew best, and what he said applied especially to them: western volunteers followed orders when they believed in what they were doing. An attempt by a foolish officer to treat them unfairly or to force them to do something that didn’t make sense was apt to fail. The best officers in the western armies are respected or even loved, while bad officers risk rebellion in the ranks.

It might be said that western officers governed with the consent of the governed. There’s something very American about that.

IT’S COMING SOONER THAN YOU THINK: April 12, 2011—less than 3½ years from now!—will be the 150^th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1861, April 12 was the day Confederates opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.

Your suggestions, comments, and questions about this blog are always welcome. Address the author: Ohioan@bloodtearsandglory.com

For more information about the author and his newest book, please go to http://www.orangefrazer.com/btg