- 06 Jul 2020 13:41
#15105579
July 7, Monday
Military action on the James is relatively light as both North and South rest and repair their weary ranks. Meanwhile, General Pope has wasted no time since his arrival from the West before stoking the fires of controversy over the fate of McClellan and his army. He joins Stanton’s anti-McClellan cabal and disparages McClellan immoderately in frequent talks with Lincoln. Testifying before the Republican-controlled Committee on the Conduct of the War, he criticizes McClellan for his conduct of the Peninsula Campaign; Pope brands McClellan’s retreat to the James an egregious blunder, since it has permitted General Lee to interpose his army between McClellan’s force and Washington. Despite the considerable merit of his charges, Pope’s position is tainted with cynical self-interest—he stands to gain such troops and prestige as McClellan loses.
President Lincoln has listened attentively to both sides in the rancorous debate and decided to go down to Harrison’s Landing and appraise the situation firsthand. He arrives today aboard the Navy steamer Ariel. One chaplain will write that while the President looks ludicrous reviewing the troops on horseback—“It did seem as though every moment the President’s legs would become entangled with those of the horse and both come down together.”—he is universally popular with the soldiers. McClellan disagrees, writing to his wife, Nellie, that Lincoln is received unenthusiastically by the army; that he has to order the men to cheer and that they do so feebly.
In spite of being plagued by the pro-Union bushwhackers that abound in the East Tennessee mountains, Colonel Morgan’s cavalry have been able to make the 104-mile ride from Knoxville across the Cumberland Plateau to Sparta, Tennessee. Here, as General Smith and Colonel Morgan have expected, the people are sympathetic to the Confederate cause; new recruits flock to join Morgan’s raiders. Among the volunteers is a guerrilla named Champ Ferguson, who has earned a reputation for barbaric treatment of prisoners. One of Morgan’s men will write of Ferguson: “Ill-treatment of his wife and daughter by some soldiers and Home-guards enlisted in his own neighborhood made him relentless in his hatred of all Union men. He had a brother of the same character as himself in the Union army, and they sought each other persistently, mutually bent on fratricide. The mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee were filled with such men, who murdered every prisoner they took.”
Morgan is eager to move on with his brigade, now number 1,100 men, to Tompkinsville, Kentucky, 90 miles to the northwest. Doubtless he relishes the idea of taking Tompkinsville, because he knows that the town is defended by a battalion of the 9th Pennsylvania Cavalry commanded by Major Thomas Jefferson Jordan. Back in May, these same Pennsylvanians occupied the Kentucky village of Lebanon and insulted the women there with vulgar language and advised them that the only way to preserve their virtue was, as Jordan put it, “to sew up the bottoms of their petticoats.”
At Chattanooga, Confederate General Kirby Smith sends a confidential letter to General Stevenson outlining his intention to outflank General Morgan’s 10,000-man army in the Cumberland Gap and drive into Kentucky. But he isn’t yet ready to reveal his plan to anyone else.
There are skirmishes at Inman Hollow and Newark, Missouri. Other operations include a Federal reconnaissance from Yorktown, Virginia, July 7-9; and in Aransas Bay, Texas, July 7-17.
Military action on the James is relatively light as both North and South rest and repair their weary ranks. Meanwhile, General Pope has wasted no time since his arrival from the West before stoking the fires of controversy over the fate of McClellan and his army. He joins Stanton’s anti-McClellan cabal and disparages McClellan immoderately in frequent talks with Lincoln. Testifying before the Republican-controlled Committee on the Conduct of the War, he criticizes McClellan for his conduct of the Peninsula Campaign; Pope brands McClellan’s retreat to the James an egregious blunder, since it has permitted General Lee to interpose his army between McClellan’s force and Washington. Despite the considerable merit of his charges, Pope’s position is tainted with cynical self-interest—he stands to gain such troops and prestige as McClellan loses.
President Lincoln has listened attentively to both sides in the rancorous debate and decided to go down to Harrison’s Landing and appraise the situation firsthand. He arrives today aboard the Navy steamer Ariel. One chaplain will write that while the President looks ludicrous reviewing the troops on horseback—“It did seem as though every moment the President’s legs would become entangled with those of the horse and both come down together.”—he is universally popular with the soldiers. McClellan disagrees, writing to his wife, Nellie, that Lincoln is received unenthusiastically by the army; that he has to order the men to cheer and that they do so feebly.
In spite of being plagued by the pro-Union bushwhackers that abound in the East Tennessee mountains, Colonel Morgan’s cavalry have been able to make the 104-mile ride from Knoxville across the Cumberland Plateau to Sparta, Tennessee. Here, as General Smith and Colonel Morgan have expected, the people are sympathetic to the Confederate cause; new recruits flock to join Morgan’s raiders. Among the volunteers is a guerrilla named Champ Ferguson, who has earned a reputation for barbaric treatment of prisoners. One of Morgan’s men will write of Ferguson: “Ill-treatment of his wife and daughter by some soldiers and Home-guards enlisted in his own neighborhood made him relentless in his hatred of all Union men. He had a brother of the same character as himself in the Union army, and they sought each other persistently, mutually bent on fratricide. The mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee were filled with such men, who murdered every prisoner they took.”
Morgan is eager to move on with his brigade, now number 1,100 men, to Tompkinsville, Kentucky, 90 miles to the northwest. Doubtless he relishes the idea of taking Tompkinsville, because he knows that the town is defended by a battalion of the 9th Pennsylvania Cavalry commanded by Major Thomas Jefferson Jordan. Back in May, these same Pennsylvanians occupied the Kentucky village of Lebanon and insulted the women there with vulgar language and advised them that the only way to preserve their virtue was, as Jordan put it, “to sew up the bottoms of their petticoats.”
At Chattanooga, Confederate General Kirby Smith sends a confidential letter to General Stevenson outlining his intention to outflank General Morgan’s 10,000-man army in the Cumberland Gap and drive into Kentucky. But he isn’t yet ready to reveal his plan to anyone else.
There are skirmishes at Inman Hollow and Newark, Missouri. Other operations include a Federal reconnaissance from Yorktown, Virginia, July 7-9; and in Aransas Bay, Texas, July 7-17.
Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.
—Edmund Burke
—Edmund Burke