This Hallowed Ground - Bruce Catton [55]
As was the case with a number of things in this war, the operation seemed to begin with Ben Butler, After his crackdown on Baltimore and eastern Maryland, Butler had been sent to take command at Fortress Monroe, at the entrance to Chesapeake Bay. In a purely military way he had very little to do there, but his fertile lawyer’s mind had made one great contribution to the handling of the fugitive-slave problem. Runaway slaves who came within his lines, he held, were, as far as he was concerned, simply a species of property owned by men in rebellion; property which could have a direct military usefulness and whose owners, by the act of rebellion, had forfeited title; contraband of war, in other words. As contraband, fugitive slaves could be collected and used by a Union army just as any other property could be collected and used, and nobody was in any way committed on any side of the slavery issue itself. This interpretation proved enormously handy to harassed Federal commanders everywhere, and the word itself caught on at once. For the rest of the war runaway slaves and displaced colored folk in general were contrabands.
Late in August an amphibious expedition with troops under Butler and warships under a lean, irritable flag officer named Silas Stringham sailed from Hampton Roads, dropped down the Carolina coast, and without great difficulty captured two forts which the Confederates had built at Hatteras Inlet, where there was a good entrance to the vast enclosed area of the North Carolina sounds. Leaving a garrison for the forts and a tiny fleet of light-draft vessels, general and flag officer returned to Hampton Roads. The foothold they had gained could be exploited whenever the government chose.1
Government would choose just as soon as it could get everything ready, for the advantages of amphibious warfare were beginning to become evident. While Butler and Stringham were cracking Hatteras Inlet, the navy was thinking about seizing a good harbor farther down the coast to serve as a fuel and supply base for blockading squadrons. It set aside its best warships and gave them to Flag Officer Samuel du Pont, a sailor whose social and financial standing was quite impeccable. Dupont decided to make a descent on Port Royal, South Carolina, and asked the War Department to stand by to provide troops. McClellan objected bitterly; this was a side show, the troops ought to be sent to his own Army of the Potomac, for the issue would finally be settled in Virginia and there should be no diversions. He was overruled, however. Lincoln wrote to the Secretary of War that the expedition must get moving in October, and twelve thousand soldiers were earmarked for the job, under General Thomas W. Sherman. (Not William Tecumseh; it was Thomas W.’s misfortune, by the end of the war, to be known simply as the other General Sherman.)
Inspired by this or by cogitations of his own, General Ambrose E. Burnside next went to McClellan with a proposition.
Burnside was an easy-going West Pointer from Rhode Island; a big, handsome, likable chap whose visible assets included an intimate friendship with McClellan, a set of the best intentions in all the world, and a fantastic growth of well-sited whiskers; and he asked permission to recruit along the New England seaboard a division of troops familiar with the coasting trade and the handling of small boats. With such men, he said, and with proper help from the navy, he could go in through Hatteras Inlet, dismantle every Confederate installation on the sounds, and forever end the danger of any blockade-running in that area. Furthermore, the army would be established on the mainland not too many miles south of Richmond if the expedition was a success.2
McClellan had just got through objecting to the Port Royal expedition,