From Conciliation to Conquest: The Sack of Athens and the Court-Martial of Colonel John B. Turchin
312
From Conciliation to Conquest: The Sack of Athens and the Court-Martial of Colonel John B. Turchin
312eBook
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Overview
In the summer of 1862, the U.S. Army court martialed Colonel John B. Turchin, a Russian-born Union officer, for "outrages" committed by his troops in Athens, Alabama
In the summer of 1862, the U.S. Army court martialed Colonel John B. Turchin, a Russian-born Union officer, for offenses committed by his troops in Athens, Alabama, including looting, safe cracking, the vandalization of homes, and the rape of young black women. The pillage of Athens violated a government policy of conciliation; it was hoped that if Southern civilians were treated gently as citizens of the United States, they would soon return their allegiance to the federal government.
By examining the volunteers who made up Turchin’s force, the colonel's trial, his subsequent promotion, the policy debate surrounding the incident and the public reaction to the outcome, the authors further illuminate one of the most provocative questions in Civil War studies: how did the policy set forth by President Lincoln evolve from one of conciliation to one far more modern in nature, placing the burden of war on the civilian population of the South?
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780817381707 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Alabama Press |
| Publication date: | 11/18/2010 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 312 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
George C. Bradley received his JD from Albany Law School in 1973. He has published articles and book reviews on Civil War history in numerous periodicals and lectured widely to Civil War round tables and other civic organizations.
The late Richard L. Dahlen received his LLB from Yale Law School in 1968.
Read an Excerpt
From Conciliation to Conquest
The Sack of Athens and the Court-Martial of Colonel John B. Turchin
By George C. Bradley, Richard L. Dahlen
The University of Alabama Press
Copyright © 2006 The University of Alabama PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-5785-6
CHAPTER 1
The Policy
It will require the exercise of the full powers of the Federal Government to restrain the fury of the noncombatants. — Winfield Scott, speaking about the attack on Fort Sumter
It was, perhaps, somewhat ironic that the clouds, which had pretty much shut out the sun over Washington, DC, on the morning of March 4, 1861, cleared away shortly after noon. Sunlight then fell on the thirty thousand people standing on the great west lawn of the Capitol as president-elect Abraham Lincoln stood and strode forward to address the nation. Just how large a nation he was speaking to was the question that weighed most heavily on a majority of minds. Mr. Lincoln had left his home in Springfield, Illinois, for Washington exactly three weeks before, on February 11. On that very same day, former secretary of war Jefferson Davis also had bid farewell to his family, and to his slaves, at his plantation in Mississippi. He rode off on his own journey, to Montgomery, Alabama, to accept the office of provisional president of a "Confederate States of America," which had been officially formed but three days before. It was clearly the position of those delegates, and of Mr. Davis, that the "United States" was an entity of which they were no longer a part. In Washington, as the great, lanky man they had elected president approached the podium, the vast throng facing the west portico of the Capitol quieted, anxious to hear what Abraham Lincoln had to say about this momentous question. The troops lining the streets, the artillery posted nearby, the riflemen guarding against snipers, all evidenced the tension created by this disparity of views.
Lincoln had begun work on this speech while still in Illinois. No one understood better than he the need for clarity. No one felt with more sensitivity the need for reassurance. No one saw better the need, from the first moment he was in office, for a steady hand at the helm of the government, for an unambiguous statement of policy that would guide, and hopefully heal, the nation during this time of trial. The original themes of the initial draft of his address had survived reviews and revision and incorporated the contributions of men he would work with in the years to come. Abraham Lincoln knew what he was about. He stood before his audience knowing exactly what it was he wanted to say to the people, to all the people, to those who celebrated his election and to those who purported to reject it.
Lincoln approached his inaugural address just as any good lawyer would have. He wrote a legal brief, one that explained the policy he would pursue when he took office, one that set out the legal basis for the course he had chosen. The president came right to the point. After only a few words of greeting to his audience, he said that he saw no need to talk about matters of administration, "about which there is no special anxiety, or excitement." Lincoln's primary concern focused on the fact that many people in the slave states appeared to fear him, so to them he spoke first. "Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States, that by the accession of a Republican Administration, their property, and their peace, and personal security, are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed."
He quoted his pledge, repeated many times in his campaign stump speeches, that he had "no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." He quoted the plank from the Republican platform repudiating John Brown's raid as "the gravest of crimes" and assuring each state the right to "order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively." He told his listeners that he felt bound by these promises made by the party that had nominated him for this office.
What else could he do to reassure these people, many of whom resided in states that already had passed ordinances or resolutions claiming to sever their ties with the United States? "I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible," Mr. Lincoln went on, "that the property, peace and security of no section are to be in anywise endangered by the now incoming administration. I add too that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws can be given, will be cheerfully given when lawfully demanded for whatever cause." What more could he say than this? Their property, their peace, their security would not be endangered by him or those who worked for him. What was more, he would "cheerfully" provide them with "all the protection" he constitutionally could. He thus tried to assure his listeners in Dixie that the national government would continue to do that which good government should always do: protect its citizens from those who choose to operate outside the law.
Lincoln now turned his attention to the question of secession, carefully analyzing it according to the common law of contracts. Two parties could make a contract, and those same parties could rescind it, but once made, neither party could unilaterally undo that which bound them both. Therefore, all of these ordinances and resolutions and acts of secession were legally void and of no effect, since the United States had not consented to the severing of the ties that bound the states to the Union. The Union continued to exist, from Maine to California, from the Straits of Mackinac to the Mississippi delta. It was his duty to enforce the laws throughout. He would continue to hold and occupy all of the establishments that belonged to the federal government no matter where located. He would make sure the mails got through. He would continue to collect the duties and imposts on which the government depended for its income. Those things he would do. But, except to hold and occupy that which belonged to the government, he would not invade or use force or make appointments obnoxious to the people of any locale. "So far as possible, the people everywhere shall have the sense of perfect security which is most favorable to calm thought and reflection."
His concluding remarks presented a quiet challenge based in realism and a poetic call to reason. Having done all he could in the form of verbal reassurance, he told those bent on war that "you can have no war, without being yourselves the aggressors." Then came the trusting, soul-stirring prose that captured everyone's attention. "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." While those gathered on Capitol Hill offered their polite applause, almost at the same hour the Stars and Bars rose for the first time over the Confederate Capitol. While northern papers generally lauded the president's remarks, the Charleston Mercury noted what it saw as Lincoln's "feeble inability to grasp the circumstances of this momentous emergency."
The editor of the Mercury had a point, but if Lincoln erred in his judgment of Southerners, he made the same mistake that thousands of others in the North were making at the same time. As was evidenced in his address, Lincoln believed, or at the very least deeply hoped, that the vast majority of the people in the South were tied to the Union with the same strong, "mystic chords of memory" as were he and the people of the North. Given time, reassurance, and evidence of the government's good intentions, the vast majority of the people in the seceded states would happily return to, and support, the national government; or so it was commonly thought by Lincoln and many other men in authority. Subdue the radical few, mostly the powerful slaveholders of the South, treat everyone else lawfully and with an attitude of reconciliation, and peaceful reunion could be easily achieved — or so they hoped. In responding to some supporters from New York who applauded his remarks, Lincoln said, "[T]here will be more rejoicing over one sheep that is lost, and is found, than over the ninety and nine that have not gone astray." That was the basis of the policy the president established on the day he took office. A man of his word, Lincoln and his administration would follow this policy unless and until its premise proved false.
The tension of the times dampened the force of those words. With pressure building at various locations in the South for the surrender of government forts and arsenals, few ears there would have heard anything conciliatory in whatever the president had to say, had they been able to listen. Even Secretary of State William Seward, who had been deeply involved in the preparation of the inaugural address, but who had since been caught up in the whirl of appointments in which the entire cabinet was awash, complained on the first of April that the administration had no policy, either foreign or domestic. Lincoln gave him a brisk referral to the words of the speech. He also reassured Seward of his own steadfastness. "When a general line of policy is adopted," said the president, "I apprehend there is no danger of its being changed without good reason, or continuing to be a subject of unnecessary debate."
The firing on Fort Sumter settled the question of whether there would be war. Low on ammunition, with fire threatening their powder magazine, and out of food, the small Union garrison surrendered on April 14, 1865, after thirty-four hours of bombardment and return fire that had killed no one on either side but that had set everyone, North and South, afire. President Lincoln immediately called for troops to regain control of this piece of federal property and to quell the rebellion. Ominously, rather than hearing calls from the loyal people of the South for those troops to be quickly dispatched, instead, shouts to meet this act of aggression with equal force rose to fever pitch in nearly every state that permitted slavery within its boundaries. Perhaps equally ominously for a leader hoping to calmly reassure the people in the South whose loyalty may have been wavering, the streets of every community in the North filled with men eager to right this wrong, to fight fire with fire.
To many active or former officers of the United States Army who remained faithful to the Union cause, men like George B. McClellan, the policy espoused in the president's inaugural address made perfect sense. This was a war to preserve the Union. It was not, nor should it become, in their view, a war to destroy or alter Southern society or to correct or punish societal wrongs, although even then such ideas had the support of a very vocal minority on Capitol Hill. It was to be fought fairly by men, uniformed and armed, maneuvering on battlefields or to strategically important geographic positions, who would target the uproarious few and leave everyone else alone. Southern civilians were outside the fray. As citizens of the United States, they were entitled to, and would receive, the protection of its laws and government. When Henry Halleck first assumed command in Missouri in the fall of 1861, the first order he received from McClellan was to "impress the inhabitants ... that we are fighting solely for the integrity of the Union ... to restore to the nation the blessings of peace and good order." McClellan thus echoed the sentiments of his commander in chief.
Another of the faithful officers was Don Carlos Buell. Orphaned as a young child, Buell was an upstanding, intelligent boy, but one who, perhaps as a result of those early losses, formed few, if any, close attachments to anyone. He was a loner, a man who stood aloof, one who formed opinions internally, too rarely taking into account the feelings or insights of others. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1841. While there, he had no known close friends and accumulated an astonishing number of demerits, never fully accepting the disciplinary system, never fully bending to the reality of his situation there. (During his senior year alone, he piled up 193 demerits, the most of anyone in his class, and only 7 short of mandatory dismissal.) The demerits were the first tangible proof of a stubborn streak and a resistance to higher authority that would later mar his tenure in high command. An introvert by nature, when pressed in a crisis he would look to himself for answers, often failing to consider, or ignoring, the demands of his superiors and the challenges presented by his opponents. He never appreciated the value of popularity in a leader and consequently felt himself above politics. When he thought he was right (and that was often), he was intractable. No one, not even the president (especially a president who had no military training or experience), could force him to change course.
But these were faults and traits difficult to discern in the early months of 1861, for in many other, very visible ways, Don Carlos Buell was the epitome of a good soldier. In the Mexican War, Buell had demonstrated tremendous personal bravery in nearly every important battle, right up to the moment a Mexican soldier put a ball through his shoulder at Churubusco, on August 20, 1847. Brevetted all the way up to major, for the next fourteen years he served as an adjutant, at first in his own regiment, the Third Infantry, then from 1848 on in various headquarters, performing very competently, earning two tours in the War Department itself. His diligence earned for him the permanent rank of lieutenant colonel by the time Lincoln assumed the presidency.
That bravery was not limited to his martial exploits. In 1854, although severely burned when the boiler exploded, Buell led the fight to quell the flames aboard a Mississippi River steamboat. He received wide praise for saving not only the ship but also the lives of many others who had been trapped on board. Later that same year yellow fever nearly killed him. He survived and then spent weeks alongside his wife nursing his soldiers, also stricken during the epidemic, back to health. Future corps commander and Gettysburg hero Winfield Scott Hancock put the press on to the steamboat story. For his devotion during the yellow fever outbreak, Buell "won the respect of every officer in the department." He was devoted to his wife, free of any obvious vice, rarely if ever spoke ill of anyone, and was respected as a man whose word was his bond.
Unable to accept the discipline imposed on him at the academy, he yet demonstrated an intense degree of self-discipline and dedication to duty that quickly caught the attention of the officers he worked with. One was a young captain named George B. McClellan, who crossed Buell's path at the end of 1852. McClellan immediately wrote to a friend, reporting that he had met "one of the best men in the Army." In the late summer of 1861, none other than famed West Point professor Denis Hart Mahan reminded McClellan of this acquaintance when he forwarded a list of names of officers who might be, in the professor's opinion, considered for high rank. Despite his disciplinary problems at the academy, Buell had caught Mahan's eye. Originally tapped to head a division in the Army of the Potomac, when Brigadier General William T. Sherman resigned his command of the Department of the Cumberland, Buell received the order to lead the expanded and renamed Department of Ohio.
Buell was one of the few officers chosen for high Union command who happened to own slaves, the result of his marriage in 1851. That fact made him automatically suspect in the eyes of radical Republicans. A devout student of Swiss-born military strategist Henri de Jomini, Buell believed in the science of warfare. Success would come from careful and complete preparation followed by exact execution. "Buell strove for a calculated war, in which every move was contemplated and absolute care was given to logistics, administration, and detail to maneuver for favorable situations for his army, rather than fighting from strategic positions." In addition, he found it difficult to delegate. All official correspondence crossed his desk. Leaves of absence, transfers, and resignations all required his personal approval. Only he could address the public. He banned regimental commanders from his tent, personal interaction with them being outside the chain of command. The incessant delays occasioned by such attention to detail, and his isolation from his subordinates, would create further doubts about the general's devotion to the cause.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from From Conciliation to Conquest by George C. Bradley, Richard L. Dahlen. Copyright © 2006 The University of Alabama Press. Excerpted by permission of The University of Alabama Press.
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