“Our men have cleared it to Liberty Street. That’s the limit of our artillery fire support from across the river. Lee has decided not push any further north for now as he wants his men available to fight the decisive battle shaping up at Lawrenceburg. Why don’t we wait a day or two to see how that battle develops? If it yields the anticipated results we can announce a victory there and at Cincinnati.”
“Yes,” agreed Davis. “Let’s do wait until we can announce both victories simultaneously. That will magnify their effect on the public mind. Gaining control of Cincinnati and points west seems like a fair bargain for our giving up the territory we won in The Salient.”
“It’s much more than a fair bargain,” replied Stanton. “Besides being a transportation center, Cincinnati has a large manufacturing and commercial establishment valued at many millions of dollars. At least it was valued at many millions before Fremont and Lee unloaded their artillery on it. Our occupation prevents their incursions into Kentucky, which would have been expected to follow their incursions into Maryland and Missouri.”
“What are we going to do about those?” Davis asked sharply, his mind suddenly returning to the unpleasant question of how the Confederate Union was going to respond to invasions of its territory. “Fremont is stirring up a hornet’s nest in Maryland. I’ve received over two hundred telegrams demanding that I remove ‘the invader’ from our soil. I don’t like that term ‘invader’ by the way. Fremont’s men are rebels against this government, not foreign invaders.”
“We’ve moved some partially trained regiments of the National Army up from Baltimore to the Susquehanna,” Stanton explained. “They’ll complete their training there while being on alert to repel any attempt by the Rebels to advance across the river. General Longstreet has sent one of his infantry brigades and a cavalry battalion to assist the Maryland Militia in containing Fremont’s movement through Cecil County. It’s engaged about four miles southeast of Elkton. If Fremont moves deeper into Maryland or Delaware we can reinforce Longstreet’s men and cut him off.”
“Thank you, Mr. Secretary. You have responded well.”
“The incursion makes Fremont look silly,” opined Stanton. “He thought he was coming South to liberate four million slaves and all he turned up was two broken down old Darkies. If anything, his ‘Liberation Proclamation’ is educating our people to the danger an independent Free State Republic poses to our northern border. It might even induce Rhett and Yancey to join us in fighting the Rebellion instead of agitating the Southern Rights men against us.”
Davis was relieved that he would not have to worry about the specifics of thwarting Fremont in Maryland. Stanton, with his untiring energy, would allocate the troops necessary to contain Fremont and then force him back into Pennsylvania.
“That brings our discussion to Missouri. I’ve received reports of the Rebels commanded by their General Curtis raiding into the northern counties.”
“The Rebels have raided the northern tier of counties bordering Iowa,” Stanton explained. “Telegrams arriving this morning report that a raid by Abolitionist guerillas operating out of Kansas also took place against Osceola, Missouri the day before yesterday. Unconfirmed reports have it that they executed nine slave owners in cold blood before returning to Kansas.”
“We don’t need that devil’s work to get started up again,” Davis said, slamming his fist on the table. “McClellan thought we could avoid a guerilla war if we kept our men out of Kansas. But if they’re determined to start a war we’ll have to respond. What is Sterling Price doing out there?”
“He’s occupying the counties along the Missouri River from St. Louis to Jeff City with his Missouri Militia.”
“He needs to be more aggressive in moving against the Abolitionists raiding from Iowa and Kansas. Governor Jackson will ask for the return of the units he sent to Illinois if the Rebels keep raiding the state. I suspect that is the purpose of these raids — to thin our line in Illinois.”
Stanton scribbled a note. “I’ll inform Price of our conversation. If the reports of the Osceola murders are verified I would think that it will enrage the Missourians to go on the rampage against the Abolitionists with a vengeance.”
“Let’s try to keep it a civilized war if we possibly can,” Davis replied wearily. “I don’t want to endorse bushwhacking. Once it gets started it becomes impossible to stop. And it will give the Rebels more propaganda to feed the British about our supposed ‘inhumanity’ even if it is the Rebels who are committing the depredations.”
Davis stood up, walked around the room, sat back down, and sipped his coffee. Stanton could see that he was troubled. Was it because of the protest he had received from the British Ambassador this morning, or was it something more? Davis finally confessed his doubts.
“Mr. Secretary, McClellan planned for us to defeat the Rebels in ninety days. By now we were to be in possession of the Eastern Seaboard from Philadelphia to New England. In the Northwest we were to be in possession of Chicago, Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, Dayton, and Cincinnati. The Rebel armies were to have been surrounded by our mobile units and destroyed. Except for the operation in New England, we have not had anywhere near the success we anticipated.”
“It was a sound plan,” interjected Stanton. “It failed by narrow margins — in Pennsylvania when Fremont showed up at Gettysburg and in Illinois when the tempest dumped its rain on Lee’s offensive. The fortunes of war have gone against us during these last ninety days. Odds are that they will favor us in the future. They appear to be working in our favor now around Cincinnati and Lawrenceburg.”
“Yes,” agreed Davis, “and I will be grateful if the victory at Lawrenceburg is consummated.”
Davis studied national map on the wall. “But the Rebels hold a compact territory with densely populated cities. We’ll still have to fight our way through Chicago, Indianapolis, South Bend, Dayton, Columbus, Toledo, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Rochester, Albany, Hartford, and of course Philadelphia.
They’re operating on interior lines that allow them to move reinforcements to defend any point on their line faster than we can move men to attack it. They blocked our offensives in Pennsylvania and Illinois. Even our surprise landing in New England has come to much less than expected. They moved their people back behind Sherman’s line and then gave Mac a bloody nose with their counterattack from Providence.”
“It’s a very long front,” replied Stanton. “Can they possibly defend it all? We outgun them in heavy artillery. If necessary we can stack the guns hub to hub and bludgeon them as we have at Cincinnati.”
“The British will not allow that!” exclaimed Davis. “That’s what so disturbed me about the British ambassador’s letter. They are looking for any excuse to intervene. They were infuriated by our campaign slogan ‘Confederate Union, United Expansion.’ They want to thwart us from further expansion into Mexico and the Canadas by helping the Free States become independent. If we bombard our way into another Rebel city the Insurgents will call it a ‘crime against humanity’ and ask the British intervene. I imagine they are feeding the British stories at this very moment about atrocities in Providence. We can’t fight the Free States and the British too.”
Stanton considered the point.
“Even if the British don’t intervene,” continued Davis, “the Rebels have turned this from a war of maneuver — that favors us —- into a war of attrition that favors them. By my reckoning we’ve lost seventy thousand men in the ninety days of hostilities, and that’s not including the ten thousand we lost retaking St. Louis during the Partisan War.”