Chapter I: Preface

Mr. Dana wrote these Recollections of the civil war according to a purpose which he had entertained for several years. They were completed only a few months before his death on October 17, 1897. A large part of the narrative has been published serially in McClure's Magazine. In the chapter about Abraham Lincoln and the Lincoln Cabinet Mr. Dana has drawn from a lecture which he delivered in 1896 before the New Haven Colony Historical Society. The incident of the self-wounded spy, in the chapter relating to the secret service of the war, was first printed in the North American Review for August, 1891. A few of the anecdotes about Mr. Lincoln which appear in this book were told by Mr. Dana originally in a brief contribution to a volume entitled Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of his Time, edited by the late Allen Thorndike Rice, and published in 1886.

Although Mr. Dana was in one sense the least reminiscent of men, living actively in the present, and always more interested in to-morrow than in yesterday, and although it was his characteristic habit to toss into the wastebasket documents for history which many persons would have treasured, he found in the preparation of the following chapters abundant material wherewith to stimulate and confirm his own memory, in the form of his official and unofficial reports written at the front for the information of Mr. Stanton and Mr. Lincoln, and private letters to members of his family and intimate friends.

Charles Anderson Dana was forty-four years old when his appointment as Assistant Secretary of War put him behind the scenes of the great drama then enacting, and brought him into personal relations with the conspicuous civilians and soldiers of the war period. Born in New Hampshire on August 8, 1819, he had passed by way of western New York, Harvard College, and Brook Farm into the profession which he loved and in which he labored almost to the last day of his life. When Secretary Stanton called him to Washington he had been engaged for nearly fifteen years in the management of the New York Tribune, the journal most powerful at that time in solidifying Northern sentiment for the crisis that was to come. When the war was over and the Union preserved, he returned at once to journalism. His career subsequently as the editor of The Sun for thirty years is familiar to most Americans.

It is proper to note the circumstance that the three years covered by Mr. Dana's Recollections as here recorded constitute the only term during which he held any public office, and the only break in more than half a century of continuous experience in the making of newspapers. His connection with the Government during those momentous years is an episode in the story of a life that throbbed from boyhood to age with intellectual energy, and was crowded with practical achievement.

NEW YORK, _October 17, 1898_.

CONTENTS.

CHAP. PAGE

I.--FROM THE TRIBUNE TO THE WAR DEPARTMENT 1

First meeting with Mr. Lincoln--Early correspondence
with Mr. Stanton--A command obtained for General
Frémont--The new energy in the military operations--Mr.
Stanton disclaims the credit--The War Secretary's opinion
of McClellan--Mr. Dana called into Government service--The
Cairo investigation and its results--First acquaintance
with General Grant.

II.--AT THE FRONT WITH GRANT'S ARMY 16

War speculation in cotton--In business partnership
with Roscoe Conkling--Appointed special commissioner
to Grant's army--The story of a cipher code--From Memphis
to Milliken's Bend--The various plans for taking
Vicksburg--At Grant's headquarters--The beginning of
trouble with McClernand.

III.--BEFORE AND AROUND VICKSBURG 35

The hard job of reopening the Mississippi--Admiral
Porter runs the Confederate batteries--Headquarters moved
to Smith's plantation--Delay and confusion in McClernand's
command--The unsuccessful attack on Grand Gulf--The
move to the east shore--Mr. Dana manages with
Grant's help to secure a good horse.

IV.--IN CAMP AND BATTLE WITH GRANT AND HIS GENERALS 47

Marching into the enemy's country--A night in a
church with a Bible for pillow--Our communications are
cut--Entering the capital of Mississippi--The War
Department gives Grant full authority--Battle of Champion's
Hill--General Logan's peculiarity--Battlefield
incidents--Vicksburg invested and the siege begun--Personal
traits of Sherman, McPherson, and McClernand.

V.--SOME CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 61

Grant before his great fame--His friend and mentor,
General Rawlins--James Harrison Wilson--Two semi-official
letters to Stanton--Character sketches for the information
of the President and Secretary--Mr. Dana's early
judgment of soldiers who afterward won distinction.

VI.--THE SIEGE OF VICKSBURG 78

Life behind Vicksburg--Grant's efforts to procure
reinforcements--The fruitless appeal to General Banks--Mr.
Stanton responds to Mr. Dana's representations--A steamboat
trip with Grant--Watching Joe Johnston--Visits to Sherman
and Admiral Porter--The negro troops win glory--Progress
and incidents of the siege--Vicksburg wakes up--McClernand's
removal.

VII.--PEMBERTON'S SURRENDER 91

The artillery assault of June 20th--McPherson springs
a mine--Grant decides to storm the city--Pemberton asks
for an interview and terms--The "unconditional surrender"
note--At the meeting of Grant and Pemberton between
the lines--The ride into Vicksburg and the Fourth
of July celebration there.

VIII.--WITH THE ARMY OF THE CUMBERLAND 103

Appointment as Assistant Secretary of War--Again to
the far front--An interesting meeting with Andrew
Johnson--Rosecrans's complaints--His view of the situation
at Chattanooga--At General Thomas's headquarters--The
first day of Chickamauga--The battlefield telegraph
service--A night council of war at Widow Glenn's--Personal
experiences of the disastrous second day's battle--The
"Rock of Chickamauga."

IX.--THE REMOVAL OF ROSECRANS 120

Preparing to defend Chattanooga--Effect on the army
of the day of disaster and glory--Mr. Dana suggests Grant
or Thomas as Rosecrans's successor--Portrait of Thomas--The
dignity and loyalty of his character illustrated--The
army reorganized--It is threatened with starvation--An
estimate of Rosecrans--He is relieved of the command
of the Army of the Cumberland.

X.--CHATTANOOGA AND MISSIONARY RIDGE 132

Thomas succeeds Rosecrans in the Army of the
Cumberland--Grant supreme at Chattanooga--A visit to the
army at Knoxville--A Tennessee Unionist's family--Impressions
of Burnside--Grant against Bragg at Chattanooga--The
most spectacular fighting of the war--Watching
the first day's battle--With Sherman the second day--The
moonlight fight on Lookout Mountain--Sheridan's
whisky flask--The third day's victory and the glorious
spectacle it afforded--The relief of General Burnside.

XI.--THE WAR DEPARTMENT IN WAR TIMES 156

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.

XII.--ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET 168

Daily intercourse with Lincoln--The great civil leaders
of the period--Seward and Chase--Gideon Welles--Friction
between Stanton and Blair--Personal traits of the
President--Lincoln's surpassing ability as a politician--His
true greatness of character and intellect--His genius
for military judgment--Stanton's comment on the Gettysburg
speech--The kindness of Abraham Lincoln's heart.

XIII.--THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC IN '64 186

Mr. Lincoln sends Mr. Dana again to the front--General
Halleck's character--First visit to the Army of the
Potomac--General Meade's good qualities and bad--Winfield
Scott Hancock--Early acquaintance with Sedgwick--His
death--Humphreys's accomplishments as a soldier and as
a swearer--Grant's plan of campaign against Lee--Incidents
at Spottsylvania--The "Bloody Angle."

XIV.--THE GREAT GAME BETWEEN GRANT AND LEE 200

Maneuvering and fighting in the rain, mud, and
thickets--Virginian conditions of warfare--Within eight
miles of Richmond--The battle of Cold Harbor--The
tremendous losses of the campaign--The charge of butchery
against Grant considered in the light of statistics--What
it cost in life and blood to take Richmond.

XV.--THE MARCH ON PETERSBURG 212

In camp at Cold Harbor--Grant's opinion of Lee--Trouble
with newspaper correspondents--Moving south of
the James River--The great pontoon bridge--The fighting
of the colored troops--Failure to take Petersburg at first
attack--Lee loses Grant and Beauregard finds him--Beauregard's
service to the Confederacy.

XVI.--EARLY'S RAID AND THE WASHINGTON PANIC 224

President Lincoln visits the lines at Petersburg--Trouble
with General Meade--Jubal Early menaces the Federal
capital--The excitement in Washington and Baltimore--Clerks
and veteran reserves called out to defend Washington--Grant
sends troops from the front--Plenty of generals, but no
head--Early ends the panic by withdrawing--A fine letter
from Grant about Hunter.

XVII.--THE SECRET SERVICE OF THE WAR 235

Mr. Stanton's agents and spies--Regular subterranean
traffic between Washington and Richmond--A man who
spied for both sides--The arrest of the Baltimore
merchants--Stanton's remarkable speech on the meaning
of disloyalty--Intercepting Jefferson Davis's letters
to Canada--Detecting the plot to burn New York, and the
plan to invade Vermont--Story of the cleverest and
pluckiest of spies and his remarkable adventures.

XVIII.--A VISIT TO SHERIDAN IN THE VALLEY 248

Mr. Dana carries to Sheridan his major-general's
commission--A ride through the Army of the Shenandoah--The
affection of Sheridan's soldiers for the general--How
he explained it--His ideas about personal courage in
battle--The War Department and the railroads--How the
department worked for Lincoln's re-election--Election
night of November, 1864--Lincoln reads aloud passages
from Petroleum V. Nasby while the returns come in.

XIX.--"ON TO RICHMOND" AT LAST! 263

The fall of the Confederacy--In Richmond just after
the evacuation--A search for Confederate archives--Lincoln's
propositions to the Virginians--A meeting with the
Confederate Assistant Secretary of War--Andrew Johnson
turns up at Richmond--His views as to the necessity of
punishing rebels--The first Sunday services at the
Confederate capital under the old flag--News of Lee's
surrender reaches Richmond--Back to Washington with Grant.

XX.--THE CLOSING SCENES AT WASHINGTON 273

Last interview with Mr. Lincoln--Why Jacob Thompson
escaped--At the deathbed of the murdered President--Searching
for the assassins--The letters which Mr. Lincoln
had docketed "Assassination"--At the conspiracy
trial--The Confederate secret cipher--Jefferson Davis's
capture and imprisonment--A visit to the Confederate
President at Fortress Monroe--The grand review of the
Union armies--The meeting between Stanton and Sherman--End
of Mr. Dana's connection with the War Department.

INDEX. 293

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE CIVIL WAR.