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Recollections of the Civil War

<h2>CHAPTER XI.</h2> <h3>THE WAR DEPARTMENT IN WAR TIMES.</h3> <div class='intro'> Grant's plans blocked by Halleck—Mr. Dana on duty at Washington—Edwin McMasters Stanton—His deep religious feeling—His swift intelligence and almost superhuman energy—The Assistant Secretary's functions—Contract supplies and contract frauds—Lincoln's intercession for dishonest contractors with political influence—A characteristic letter from Sherman. </div> I reached Washington about the middle of December, and immediately gave to Mr. Stanton an outline of Grant's plan and reasons for a winter campaign. The President, Mr. Stanton, and General Halleck all agreed that the proposed operations were the most promising in sight; indeed, Mr. Stanton was enthusiastic in favor of the scheme as I presented it to him. He said that the success of Grant's campaign would end the war in the Mississippi Valley, and practically make prisoners of all the rebel forces in the interior of Mississippi and Alabama, without our being at the direct necessity of guarding and feeding them. But Halleck, as a sine qua non, insisted that East Tennessee should first be cleared out and Longstreet driven off permanently and things up to date secured, before new campaigns were entered upon. The result was that no winter campaign was made in[Pg 157] 1863-'64 toward the Alabama River towns and Mobile. Its success, in my opinion, was certain, and I so represented to Mr. Stanton. Without jeoparding our interests in any other quarter, Grant would have opened the Alabama River and captured Mobile a full year before it finally fell. Its success meant permanent security for everything we had already laid hold of, at once freeing many thousands of garrison troops for service elsewhere. As long as the rebels held Alabama, they had a base from which to strike Tennessee. I had unbounded confidence in Grant's skill and energy to conduct such a campaign into the interior, cutting loose entirely from his base and subsisting off the enemy's country. At the time he had the troops, and could have finished the job in three months. After I had explained fully my mission from Grant, I asked the Secretary what he wanted me to do. Mr. Stanton told me he would like to have me remain in the department until I was needed again at the front. Accordingly, an office in the War Department was provided for me, and I began to do the regular work of an assistant to the Secretary of War. This was the first time since my relations with the War Department began that I had been thrown much with the Secretary, and I was very glad to have an opportunity to observe him. Mr. Stanton was a short, thick, dark man, with a very large head and a mass of black hair. His nature was intense, and he was one of the most eloquent men that I ever met. Stanton was entirely absorbed in his duties, and his energy in prosecuting them was some[Pg 158]thing almost superhuman. When he took hold of the War Department the armies seemed to grow, and they certainly gained in force and vim and thoroughness. One of the first things which struck me in Mr. Stanton was his deep religious feeling and his familiarity with the Bible. He must have studied the Bible a great deal when he was a boy. He had the firmest conviction that the Lord directed our armies. Over and over again have I heard him express the same opinion which he wrote to the Tribune after Donelson: "Much has recently been said of military combinations and organizing victory. I hear such phrases with apprehension. They commenced in infidel France with the Italian campaign, and resulted in Waterloo. Who can organize victory? Who can combine the elements of success on the battlefield? We owe our recent victories to the Spirit of the Lord, that moved our soldiers to rush into battle, and filled the hearts of our enemies with dismay. The inspiration that conquered in battle was in the hearts of the soldiers and from on high; and wherever there is the same inspiration there will be the same results." There was never any cant in Stanton's religious feeling. It was the straightforward expression of what he believed and lived, and was as simple and genuine and real to him as the principles of his business. Stanton was a serious student of history. He had read many books on the subject—more than on any other, I should say—and he was fond of discussing historical characters with his associates; not that he made a show of his learning. He was fond, too, of discussing[Pg 159] legal questions, and would listen with eagerness to the statement of cases in which friends had been interested. He was a man who was devoted to his friends, and he had a good many with whom he liked to sit down and talk. In conversation he was witty and satirical; he told a story well, and was very companionable. There is a popular impression that Mr. Stanton took a malevolent delight in browbeating his subordinates, and every now and then making a spectacle of some poor officer or soldier, who unfortunately fell into his clutches in the Secretary's reception room, for the edification of bystanders. This idea, like many other false notions concerning great men, is largely a mistaken one. The stories which are told of Mr. Stanton's impatience and violence are exaggerated. He could speak in a very peremptory tone, but I never heard him say anything that could be called vituperative. There were certain men in whom he had little faith, and I have heard him speak to some of these in a tone of severity. He was a man of the quickest intelligence, and understood a thing before half of it was told him. His judgment was just as swift, and when he got hold of a man who did not understand, who did not state his case clearly, he was very impatient. If Stanton liked a man, he was always pleasant. I was with him for several years in the most confidential relations, and I can now recall only one instance of his speaking to me in a harsh tone. It was a curious case. Among the members of Congress at that period was a Jew named Strouse. One of Strouse's race, who lived in Virginia, had gone down to the mouth of the James[Pg 160] River when General Butler was at Fortress Monroe, and had announced his wish to leave the Confederacy. Now, the orders were that when a man came to a commanding officer with a request to go through the lines, he was to be examined and all the money he had was to be taken from him. General Butler had taken from this Virginian friend of Strouse between fifty thousand and seventy-five thousand dollars. When a general took money in this way he had to deposit it at once in the Treasury; there a strict account was kept of the amount, whom it was taken by, and whom it was taken from. Butler gave a receipt to this man, and he afterward came to Washington to get his money. He and Strouse came to the War Department, where they bothered Mr. Stanton a good deal. Finally, Mr. Stanton sent for me. "Strouse is after me," he said; "he wants that money, and I want you to settle the matter." "What shall I do?" I asked; "what are the orders?" He took the papers in the case and wrote on the back of them: <div class='letter'> Referred to Mr. Dana, Assistant Secretary of War, to be settled as in his judgment shall be best. E. M. Stanton. </div> The man then turned his attention from the Secretary to me. I looked into the matter, and gave him back the money. The next day Mr. Stanton sent for me. I saw he was angry. "Did you give that Jew back his money?" he asked in a harsh tone. "Yes, sir." [Pg 161] "Well," he said, "I should like to know by what authority you did it." "If you will excuse me while I go to my room, I will show my authority to you," I replied. So I went up and brought down the paper he had indorsed, and read to him: "Referred to Mr. Dana, Assistant Secretary of War, to be settled as in his judgment shall be best." Then I handed it over to him. He looked at it, and then he laughed. "You are right," he said; "you have got me this time." That was the only time he spoke to me in a really harsh tone. At the time that I entered the War Department for regular duty, it was a very busy place. Mr. Stanton frequently worked late at night, keeping his carriage waiting for him. I never worked at night, as my eyes would not allow it. I got to my office about nine o'clock in the morning, and I stayed there nearly the whole day, for I made it a rule never to go away until my desk was cleared. When I arrived I usually found on my table a big pile of papers which were to be acted on, papers of every sort that had come to me from the different departments of the office. The business of the War Department during the first winter that I spent in Washington was something enormous. Nearly $285,000,000 was paid out that year (from June, 1863, to June, 1864) by the quartermaster's office, and $221,000,000 stood in accounts at the end of the year awaiting examination before payment was made. We had to buy every conceivable[Pg 162] thing that an army of men could need. We bought fuel, forage, furniture, coffins, medicine, horses, mules, telegraph wire, sugar, coffee, flour, cloth, caps, guns, powder, and thousands of other things. Sometimes our supplies came by contract; again by direct purchase; again by manufacture. Of course, by the fall of 1863 the army was pretty well supplied; still, that year we bought over 3,000,000 pairs of trousers, nearly 5,000,000 flannel shirts and drawers, some 7,000,000 pairs of stockings, 325,000 mess pans, 207,000 camp kettles, over 13,000 drums, and 14,830 fifes. It was my duty to make contracts for many of these supplies. In making contracts for supplies of all kinds, we were obliged to take careful precautions against frauds. I had a colleague in the department, the Hon. Peter H. Watson, the distinguished patent lawyer, who had a great knack at detecting army frauds. One which Watson had spent much time in trying to ferret out came to light soon after I went into office. This was an extensive fraud in forage furnished to the Army of the Potomac. The trick of the fraud consisted in a dishonest mixture of oats and Indian corn for the horses and mules of the army. By changing the proportions of the two sorts of grain, the contractors were able to make a considerable difference in the cost of the bushel, on account of the difference in the weight and price of the grain, and it was difficult to detect the cheat. However, Watson found it out, and at once arrested the men who were most directly involved. Soon after the arrest Watson went to New York. While he was gone, certain parties from Philadelphia[Pg 163] interested in the swindle came to me at the War Department. Among them was the president of the Corn Exchange. They paid me thirty-three thousand dollars to cover the sum which one of the men confessed he had appropriated; thirty-two thousand dollars was the amount restored by another individual. The morning after this transaction the Philadelphians returned to me, demanding both that the villains should be released, and that the papers and funds belonging to them, taken at the time of their arrest, should be restored. It was my judgment that, instead of being released, they should be remanded to solitary confinement until they could clear up all the forage frauds and make complete justice possible. Then I should have released them, but not before. So I telegraphed to Watson what had happened, and asked him to return to prevent any false step. Now, it happened that the men arrested were of some political importance in Pennsylvania, and eminent politicians took a hand in getting them out of the scrape. Among others, the Hon. David Wilmot, then Senator of the United States and author of the famous Wilmot proviso, was very active. He went to Mr. Lincoln and made such representations and appeals that finally the President consented to go with him over to the War Department and see Watson in his office. Wilmot remained outside, and Mr. Lincoln went in to labor with the Assistant Secretary. Watson eloquently described the nature of the fraud, and the extent to which it had already been developed by his partial investigation. The President, in reply,[Pg 164] dwelt upon the fact that a large amount of money had been refunded by the guilty men, and urged the greater question of the safety of the cause and the necessity of preserving united the powerful support which Pennsylvania was giving to the administration in suppressing the rebellion. Watson answered: "Very well, Mr. President, if you wish to have these men released, all that is necessary is to give the order; but I shall ask to have it in writing. In such a case as this it would not be safe for me to obey a verbal order; and let me add that if you do release them the fact and the reason will necessarily become known to the people." Finally Mr. Lincoln took up his hat and went out. Wilmot was waiting in the corridor, and came to meet him. "Wilmot," he said, "I can't do anything with Watson; he won't release them." The reply which the Senator made to this remark can not be printed here, but it did not affect the judgment or the action of the President. The men were retained for a long time afterward. The fraud was fully investigated, and future swindles of the kind were rendered impossible. If Watson could have had his way, the guilty parties—and there were some whose names never got to the public—would have been tried by military commission and sternly dealt with. But my own reflections upon the subject led me to the conclusion that the moderation of the President was wiser than the unrelenting justice of the Assistant Secretary would have been. [Pg 165] Not a little of my time at the department was taken up with people who had missions of some kind within the lines of the army. I remember one of these particularly, because it brought me a characteristic letter from General Sherman. There was much suffering among the loyal citizens and the Quakers of East Tennessee in the winter of 1863-'64, and many relief committees came to us seeking transportation and safe conduct for themselves and their supplies into that country. Some of these were granted, to the annoyance of General Sherman, then in command of the Military Division of the Mississippi. The reasons for his objections he gave in this letter to me: <div class='letter'> Headquarters Military Division of the Mississippi, Nashville, Tenn., April 21, 1864. C. A. Dana, Esq., Ass't Sec. of War, Washington. My dear Friend: It may be parliamentary, but is not military, for me to write you; but I feel assured anything I may write will only have the force of a casual conversation, such as we have indulged in by the camp fire or as we jogged along by the road. The text of my letter is one you gave a Philadelphia gentleman who is going up to East Tennessee to hunt up his brother Quakers and administer the bounties of his own and his fellow-citizens' charity. Now who would stand in the way of one so kindly and charitably disposed? Surely not I. But other questions present themselves. We have been working hard with tens of thousands of men, and at a cost of millions of dollars, to make railroads to carry to the line of the Tennessee enough provisions and material of war to enable us to push in our physical force to the next stop in the war. I have found on personal inspection that hitherto the railroads have barely been able to feed our men, that mules have died by the thousand, that arms and ammunition had [have] [Pg 166]laid in the depot for two weeks for want of cars, that no accumulation at all of clothing and stores had been or could be moved at Chattanooga, and that it took four sets of cars and locomotives to accommodate the passes given by military commanders; that gradually the wants of citizens and charities were actually consuming the real resources of a road designed exclusively for army purposes. You have been on the spot and can understand my argument. At least one hundred citizens daily presented good claims to go forward—women to attend sick children, parents in search of the bodies of some slain in battle, sanitary committees sent by States and corporations to look after the personal wants of their constituents, ministers and friends to minister to the Christian wants of their flocks; men who had fled, anxious to go back to look after lost families, etc.; and, more still, the tons of goods which they all bore on their merciful errands. None but such as you, who have been present and seen the tens, hundreds, and thousands of such cases, can measure them in the aggregate and segregate the exceptions. I had no time to hesitate, for but a short month was left me to prepare, and I must be ready to put in motion near one hundred thousand men to move when naught remains to save life. I figured up the mathematics, and saw that I must have daily one hundred and forty-five car loads of essentials for thirty days to enable me to fill the requirement. Only seventy-five daily was all the roads were doing. Now I have got it up to one hundred and thirty-five. Troops march, cattle go by the road, sanitary and sutler's stores limited, and all is done that human energy can accomplish. Yet come these pressing claims of charity, by men and women who can not grasp the great problem. My usual answer is, "Show me that your presence at the front is more valuable than two hundred pounds of powder, bread, or oats"; and it is generally conclusive. I have given Mr. Savery a pass on your letter, and it takes two hundred pounds of bread from our soldiers, or the same [Pg 167]of oats from our patient mules; but I could not promise to feed the suffering Quakers at the expense of our army. I have ordered all who can not provide food at the front to be allowed transportation back in our empty cars; but I can not undertake to transport the food needed by the worthy East Tennesseeans or any of them. In peace there is a beautiful harmony in all the departments of life—they all fit together like the Chinese puzzle; but in war all is ajar. Nothing fits, and it is the struggle between the stronger and weaker; and the latter, however it may appeal to the better feelings of our nature, must kick the beam. To make war we must and will harden our hearts. Therefore, when preachers clamor and the sanitaries wail, don't join in, but know that war, like the thunderbolt, follows its laws, and turns not aside even if the beautiful, the virtuous, and charitable stand in its path. When the day and the hour comes, I'll strike Joe Johnston, be the result what it may; but in the time allotted to me for preparation I must and will be selfish in making those preparations which I know to be necessary. Your friend, W. T. Sherman, Major General. </div> [Pg 168] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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