Touched with fire (2)

(Part one here)

Charles Carleton Coffin rode into camp in the immediate aftermath of a battle lost, when visible evidence of the disaster included corpses laid out in line awaiting burial, and the memory of their first defeat at the hands of Johnny Reb was still fresh in the minds of the young men who'd fought it. "I enlisted to fight," a soldier told him, "but I don't want to be slaughtered. O my God! shall I ever forget that sight..." "He covered his face with his hands," Coffin reported, "as if to shut out the horrid spectacle."

The Civil War was something new at that point, few could even agree if that was what it should be called - or if it should be fought at all. Many had abandoned hope for a swift victory following the battle at Bull Run exactly three months before, some joining the ranks of those calling for an immediate end to it now. Even before this battle things had been going badly for the Union, if not everywhere then certainly where it mattered - and just now in this war few things mattered more than the area immediately around Washington, D.C., or the minds of many elected representatives of the people who called it home at least part of the year.

Still others had been eager for action on the part of the new commander of the federal forces - but General George McClellan (called to Washington following his success in western Virginia after the disaster at Bull Run) was apparently not one of them. Now, at a place on the Maryland side of the Potomac River opposite a point in Virginia called Ball's Bluff, Coffin (whose dispatches from the front lines would be published in newspapers under the byline "Carleton") was surrounded by evidence that long-awaited action had been taken at last - and that things were going from bad to worse.

One could sense - but not know - there were years of war ahead, and battles with casualty lists that would dwarf those produced in its opening months. Few reporters would cover it from start to finish as Carleton would. Other men his age - just slightly too old to join the army and effectively fight in it - might have had the calling, but most would lack the mental and physical fortitude to endure the repeated scenes of battle and aftermath they were free to walk away from whenever they wanted. Yet not only would Carleton witness much of it first hand, he would seek out survivors for decades beyond to document their stories. Years later, when the echoes of shots and screams had faded everywhere but in the memories of those who'd heard them, he would interview one who'd been but a private in this day's fight - and who lived to see action in many others to come.

"I have been in over 80 battles," the older veteran would assure him, "but I never knew such absolutely vicious firing as that at Ball's Bluff. The air was just chock full of bullets. It seemed like hell let loose and there we stood, just simply targets for the rebel riflemen. The nearest approach that we ever had to that firing was at Gettysburg, but even that was nothing so vicious as this."

But those who'd fought it had nothing yet to compare it to when Coffin, who had accompanied the army on its ill-fated march to Manassas, arrived on the scene of his second battle and second Union defeat. What exactly had happened here would take time to sort out, but it seemed likely to prove worse than the first. The young men whose names filled the lists of missing, wounded, and dead had not yet had opportunity to make their own mark on the world, but those names were distinguished in their own right. They'd been inherited from ancestors who'd gained prominence among the first pilgrims to these shores, or before, during, and after the American Revolution, and were maintained by eminent men of the current day - Coffin could see the surgeons attending some of their sons even now. There was one enduring a limb amputation, while over here one refused all treatment - knowing he was a goner and believing the effort would simply make his final hours more agonizing than he already expected them to be. Over there was another with his intestines dangling from an open wound... no use pretending anything could be done for him.

As for the older men who'd led those youngsters, one, at least, was part of the reason he made the trip out from Washington to see things for himself. Coffin had been alerted to developments earlier that day, upon seeing a man emerge from a telegraph office "with bowed head, and tears rolling down his furrowed cheeks, his face pale and wan, his heart heaving with emotion." This man had sought news of the ongoing battle, and in the casualty list he'd gotten the worst. So shaken was he by the name of a friend that he almost fell as he stepped out into the street - a character performing an anguished public drama, a sort of tragic street theater that, with hundreds of thousands of different featured players, became painfully familiar to Americans as it was repeated in towns and cities North and South, large and small throughout the long bloody years of the war.

But those were years still to come. Now the war was something new - and if it wasn't the first battle Ball's Bluff was one of the first. And this man - who walked home to the White House "with both hands pressed upon his heart" as if to keep it from breaking - was Abraham Lincoln, the President of the United States. The name that so upset him was that of Colonel Edward D. Baker, a sitting US Senator (and the only one ever killed in combat) who a few weeks earlier had "expressed a conviction that he would soon be shot in battle" - a "gloomy foreboding" that his friend the President (though he had believed it likely) tried to convince him to dismiss. This night Lincoln, himself one of those who'd grown increasingly restless for action in the previous weeks, would pace the floor in grief, unable to sleep - later he would describe Baker's death as the keenest blow he suffered through the war. So it is with the first such, the sharpest - the one death that defines tragedy, with each of the thousands of individual tragedies to come simply yet one more.

But Baker...

"My friends," the President-elect had said to the citizens of Springfield, Illinois who'd come to the train station to see him off to Washington just a few months before (though by now it would have seemed an eternity) - "no one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting..."

"To this place and the kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him who can go with me, and remain with you, and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell."

Those many friends were distant memories now, but here in Washington was Baker - in 1861 a U.S. Senator, and a friend at a time and place where such a friendship was inestimably valuable to the man on whose shoulders rested no less a burden than the future of the Republic. Ned, they had called him back home in Springfield - where Abe Lincoln had known Ned Baker for a quarter century. He'd named his second son (tragically, the one who had died in childhood there) Edward Baker Lincoln, and at the end of that train trip when he delivered his first inaugural address it was Baker who introduced him to the masses gathered to listen.

Years later William Herndon, Lincoln's Springfield law office partner, would share a story of the two men in their younger days, from the time of the 1840 election campaign:

Baker was a brilliant and effective speaker, and quite as full too of courage as invective. He was addressing a crowd in the court room, which was immediately underneath Stuart and Lincoln's office. Just above the platform on which the speaker stood was a trap door in the floor, which opened into Lincoln's office. Lincoln at the time, as was often his habit, was lying on the floor looking down through the door at the speaker. I was in the body of the crowd. Baker was hot-headed and impulsive, but brave as a lion. Growing warm in his arraignment of the Democratic party, he charged that "wherever there was a land office there was a Democratic newspaper to defend its corruptions." This angered the brother of the editor of our town paper, who was present, and who cried out, "Pull him down," at the same time advancing from the crowd as if to perform the task himself. Baker, his face pale with excitement, squared himself for resistance. A shuffling of feet, a forward movement of the crowd, and great confusion followed.

Just then a long pair of legs were seen dangling from the aperture above, and instantly the figure of Lincoln dropped on the platform. Motioning with his hands for silence and not succeeding, he seized a stone water-pitcher standing near by, threatening to break it over the head of the first man who laid hands on Baker. "Hold on, gentlemen," he shouted, "this is the land of free speech. Mr. Baker has a right to speak and ought to be heard. I am here to protect him, and no man shall take him from this stand if I can prevent it." His interference had the desired effect. Quiet was soon restored, and the valiant Baker was allowed to proceed.

The two friends had their differences over the years. At one point they would compete for their party's nomination for office, and later, as the US waged war with Mexico, Lincoln opposed it from his seat in the US House of Representatives while Baker answered the call of the drum and joined those marching on the Halls of Montezuma. When it was over the future president's political career appeared to be a casualty of that war, but their friendship survived.

Like that friendship, Baker's competitive instinct had not cooled over the intervening years. When the Civil War broke out he raised a regiment of volunteers (mostly in Pennsylvania; although that state had met its recruiting goal the unit was allowed to fill a troop quota for far-off California, and fought its earliest battles as "the California Brigade") and he declined a higher commission in order to keep his place as its commander, and lead men into battle. Still, as the battles would be fought nearby, he kept his seat in the Senate, where he appeared in uniform that summer between the disaster at Bull Run and the debacle at Ball's Bluff.

Breckinridge

There he'd listened to Democrat John C. Breckinridge, Vice President under Buchanan, one of three men who ran against Lincoln in the previous year's elections and now US Senator from Kentucky (birthplace of Lincoln and Confederate President Jefferson Davis) "bitterly denouncing the war and opposing its prosecution" - predicting that waging war would only result in more regions separating from the already diminished Union. Baker rose in response, demanding clarification of the meaning of those words: "Are they not words of brilliant, polished treason*?" What if a Senator of Rome had risen "in that distinguished council of old," he wondered, "and declared that the cause of advancing Hannibal was just, and that Carthage ought to be dealt with in terms of peace?"

"Does not the Senator from Kentucky know," Baker asked with obvious contempt, "that every word he has uttered will be an inspiration to every Confederate ear?"

Ever a good judge of character, on the day of the battle the President had good reason for concern. "Baker is in the fight," Lincoln had said earlier in the day, "and I am afraid his impetuous daring will endanger his life."

He was right. And he couldn't save him this time. Though the place where Ned had died was close by there was no trap door from which Abe could drop and rescue his friend - his body would be returning to Washington soon.

*****

*****

Whispered news of some sort of disaster nearby passed through Washington earlier that day; Charles Carleton Coffin heard the rumors, and "Riding at once with a fellow-correspondent, Mr. H. M. Smith of the Chicago Tribune, to General McClellan's head-quarters, and entering the anteroom, we found President Lincoln there..."

I had met him on several occasions, and he was well acquainted with my friend. He greeted us cordially, but sat down quickly, rested his head upon his hand, and seemed to be unusually agitated. His eyes were sunken, his countenance haggard, his whole demeanor that of one who was in trouble.

"Will you please step in here, Mr. President," said an orderly from an adjoining room, from whence came the click of the telegraph. He soon came out, with his hands clasped upon his breast, his head bowed, his body bent as if he were carrying a great burden. He took no notice of any one, but with downcast eyes and faltering steps passed into the street and towards the Executive mansion.

"He stumbled upon the outer steps, but did not fall," Coffin recalled later. "He passed down the street towards the White House, carrying not only the burden of the nation upon his heart, but a heavy load of private grief, which with swiftness of a lightning flash had been hurled upon him."

At McClellan's headquarters the two journalists would hear only sketchy details, the limits of early reports and the fog of war. "A disaster..." they were told. And "we have lost a large number of men, possibly fifteen hundred," and "Colonel Baker is killed." They determined to make the brief journey to the scene of the battle by horseback, and arrived there at sunset - but they'd already had their first confirmation of something gone horribly wrong while still on the way. Riding along the banks of the Potomac "I saw the bodies floating in the stream of those that were killed at Ball's Bluff, or who were drowned while attempting to gain the Maryland shore."

Major Paul Revere, 20th Massachusetts Infantry

In fact Major Paul Revere was named for his grandfather, so when his capture was reported Americans everywhere would recognize the name that so recently personified their call to arms - as they would those of so many of the other recent Harvard graduates (like young Wendall Holmes - '61, now lying on the floor wounded but perhaps soon to be numbered among the dead) who dominated the junior officer corps of the 20th Massachusetts Infantry, Volunteer. Coffin couldn't see the missing troops - but anywhere he cared to look he'd have ample evidence that the term "blue blood" was inaccurate; pools of the stuff were drying everywhere, and quite red after all.

Back in Washington Lincoln's grief kept him up, pacing the floor. As if the loss of Baker wasn't enough, he knew who those "perhaps 1,500" other men were, too. Elements of the 20th and 15th Massachusetts had crossed that day, along with companies from the 42nd New York - a unit of volunteers raised by Tammany Hall, the political machine through which Democrats controlled New York City. It was no mistake, no mere clerical happenstance that had placed these units with Senator Baker's "California" at a spot removed from the greater concentration of opposing forces nearer Washington. They were positioned down the line, with the river separating them from the enemy. It was the perfect ground, strategically important, but easier to defend - though no enemy could possibly be foolish enough to attempt a crossing for a battle there.

And no enemy had. No - it was Baker who'd gone to the Virginia side, on a mission that proved every bit as suicidal as anyone would have expected before it was launched. What had happened? Lincoln wondered - and he was wise enough to know that in this modern age of high-speed communication that same question would be asked throughout the entire nation tomorrow. As for answers, well, many would have those, too - each assured his was best, and the telegraph could disseminate them just as fast as it did the question. As to whether any might be right answers... as marvelous an invention as it was it could do nothing to facilitate discovery of that.

(Part three is here.)

Bibliography:

Charles Carleton Coffin, The Boys of '61 (1885) and Stories of our Soldiers: War Reminiscences (1893)

William Henry Herndon and Jesse William Weik, Herndon's Lincoln; the True Story of a Great Life (1889)

Frank Hamilton Taylor, Philadelphia in the Civil War 1861-1865 (1913) (Includes a brief history of the California Brigade)

Michael Burlingame, Lincoln's Journalist: John Hay's Anonymous Writings for the Press, 1860 - 1864 (1998) and Abraham Lincoln: A Life (2006) (Unedited manuscript of chapter 24 here.)

Note:

* Breckinridge - whose home state of Kentucky remained in the Union - was expelled from the Senate for treason by resolution on December 4, 1861. By then he'd joined the Confederate Army; he would fight for the South throughout the war.