Charles Anderson Dana
My Recollections of the Civil War
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER I. FROM THE TRIBUNE TO THE WAR DEPARTMENT.
CHAPTER II. AT THE FRONT WITH GRANT'S ARMY.
CHAPTER III. BEFORE AND AROUND VICKSBURG.
CHAPTER IV. IN CAMP AND BATTLE WITH GRANT AND HIS GENERALS.
CHAPTER V. SOME CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.
CHAPTER VI. THE SIEGE OF VICKSBURG
CHAPTER VII. PEMBERTON'S SURRENDER.
CHAPTER VIII. WITH THE ARMY OF THE CUMBERLAND.
CHAPTER IX. THE REMOVAL OF ROSECRANS.
CHAPTER X. CHATTANOOGA AND MISSIONARY RIDGE.
CHAPTER XI. THE WAR DEPARTMENT IN WAR TIMES.
CHAPTER XII. ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET.
CHAPTER XIII. THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC IN '64.
CHAPTER XIV. THE GREAT GAME BETWEEN GRANT AND LEE.
CHAPTER XV. THE MARCH ON PETERSBURG.
CHAPTER XVI. EARLY'S RAID AND THE WASHINGTON PANIC.
CHAPTER XVII. THE SECRET SERVICE OF THE WAR.
CHAPTER XVIII. A VISIT TO SHERIDAN IN THE VALLEY.
CHAPTER XIX. "ON TO RICHMOND" AT LAST!
CHAPTER XX. THE CLOSING SCENES AT WASHINGTON.
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.
CHAPTER I.
FROM THE TRIBUNE TO THE WAR DEPARTMENT.
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.
I had been associated with Horace Greeley on the New York Tribune for about fifteen years when, one morning early in April, 1862, Mr. Sinclair, the advertising manager of the paper, came to me, saying that Mr. Greeley would be glad to have me resign. I asked one of my associates to find from Mr. Greeley if that was really his wish. In a few hours he came to me saying that I had better go. I stayed the day out in order to make up the paper and give them an opportunity to find a successor,