Chapter One Hundred and Eight Bureaucracy – War By Other Means
Chapter One Hundred and Eight
Bureaucracy – War By Other Means
From “Manpower Miracle – Gideon Pillow’s Bureau of Conscription” from an article by Dr David Shale
North & South Magazine 2011
“A question often asked is how did the Confederates continue to field effective armies after the defeats of the fall of 1863. Confederate losses in Bragg’s Central Campaign and Lee’s Invasion of the North were huge, somewhere between 75,000 and 100,000 killed, wounded and captured. Morale in several elements of the C.S Army collapsed with desertion rising throughout the winter, becoming a torrent in the East after the defeat at Statesville. So how did the Confederate Army go on? One man has long been denied the credit but in the words of General Hardee he “bears the greatest credit for keeping this Army [of Tennessee] in its most needed article – men. His service has been worth a division to me…”. The man in question was Brigadier General Gideon J. Pillow…
Major General Gideon J. Pillow
General Pillow was an aggressive and courageous officer but there his talents in the field ended. Ambitious, disputatious, disingenuous, insubordinate – General Pillow was an extremely inconvenient subordinate for his commanders in the west. A power in the Democratic party before the war and alleged architect of the nomination of James Polk to the presidency, his political feuds were legendary. They were so ambitious that Pillow’s most fervent feud during the period 1862-1864 was with President Davis himself…
Relieved of a field command by a combination of tactical incompetence and political miscalculation, Pillow beset his one senior ally in the West, newly elevated Braxton Bragg, with demands for a command. Bragg would place Pillow in command of the Department of the West’s Office of Conscription. As Chief of Conscription Pillow would prove a revelation. A whirlwind of activity he let nothing stand in the way of his office or his agents in putting every man in uniform that they practically could. Pillow sought and obtained cavalry regiments which he used to swept the areas still under rebel control (and several that technically weren’t!), county by county, for deserters, draft dodgers, unionists and bearers of invalid or fraudulent exemptions. Between the fall of Vicksburg and the Battle of Four Armies, it was estimated by Bragg, that Pillow’s office was responsible for the supply of 11,000 troops to the armies of the Department from the state of Alabama alone…
One of the first actions of the new Secretary of War, John C. Breckinridge, was to accept the endorsements of Generals Bragg, Johnson and Hardee and appoint General Pillow to head the Bureau of Conscription in place of Gabriel Rains. President Davis’ influence was at a low ebb and he could do nothing to block the appointment. Pillow was appointed to the office with, what he certainly believed was, a much belated promotion to Major-General. He translated his energy and methods from the West into his new national office…
Pillow’s actions as head of the Bureau would increase the flow of manpower back to the Confederate armies. One of James Longstreet’s staff officers, Colonel G. Moxley Sorrell, estimated that the Bureau sent 4,000 men to the Army of Northern Virginia in January 1864…
Many questioned Pillow’s methods and effectiveness at the time – what use were deserters and ardent Unionists to the army? Was there any greater breach of the principle of states-rights that the Army’s forcible conscription of citizens? In many cases Pillow’s agents ignored valid exemptions, state and national but particularly state exemptions, in order to fill their quotas. This riding roughshod over state legislation would further heighten the tension between the Army and central government on one hand and state governments on the other. In the post-war environment, following his escape to Mexico, Pillow would become a polarizing figure for Confederate community there - between the Army-based integrationalist faction and the “exilado gris” faction led by former states-rights politicians…”
From “A History of the United States Office of Military Intelligence” by General (Rt) Roger McKee
MacArthur University 2001
“The Office of Military Intelligence had initially been the brainchild of General Joseph Hooker while still serving in the Army of the Potomac. He had originally envisaged a professionally organized bureau attached to the Army of the Potomac. General Kearny had adopted the idea and infused it with his own sense of scope and grandeur, which was endorsed by Secretary Stanton. The Office of Military Intelligence was born with OMI officers attached to all the major Union formations…
General Kearny resisted attempts to saddle the office with “a political general who would leak like a grape-shot pail”, and who would “serve up any intelligence, and no doubt a good leavening of foolishness, to the papers” . He instead sought an officer of sufficient professionalism and experience to serve in what Kearny had begun to consider was a vital staff role. His choice would outrage the radicals in Congress, but they dared not challenge Kearny for within a few days he became the “liberator” of Richmond. The officer was the recently released Brigadier General Charles Pomeroy Stone…
Brigadier General Charles Pomeroy Stone
However the OMI’s greatest exercise in 1863 was reviewing the treasure trove of papers seized upon the capture of Richmond. Although many of the naval papers had been transferred by Confederate Secretary of the Navy, Stephen Mallory, to Atlanta substantial records for the Confederate army and other departments had been taken. This was supplemented by considerable piles of congressional documentation and personal correspondence obtained from the Confederate Congress and abandoned personal residents around the city. General Stone was unflinching in his pursuit of valuable intelligence. With the fall of the rebel capitol he quickly transferred his personal office from Washington to Richmond or “from one nest of vipers to another” as he confided to a friend later. In his desire to prove himself and his loyalty beyond doubt, and indeed to repay General Kearny’s faith, he pushed the boundaries of common military practice and the manners of the age… Several senior Confederate figures sought to complain to Union officers about Stone’s failure to return personal correspondence…
One of Stone’s subordinates, an injured officer from the 20th Maine, Major Ellis Spear, had been given the task of overseeing the review of correspondence held in the records of the Confederate Regular Army which had largely been captured intact. It was he who realized the importance of the letter from Governor Thomas O. Moore to Secretary of War LeRoy Walker from 2nd April 1861. It confirmed that P.G.T. Beauregard, then an officer in the US Army and recent appointee to the command of West Point Military Academy, had written to the Governor confirming a willingness to serve in any Louisiana State military force or as an appointee from Louisiana to the nascent Confederate Regular Army. The issue was that Beauregard had not resigned for another two weeks after the date of that correspondence…
To Major Spear and later General Stone this was clear evidence that an United States commissioned officer had entered into traitorous correspondence with a “domestic” enemy. It was to prove the first of many letters which would implicate at least two score former regular army officers in similar forms of traitorous correspondence…The review of private correspondence led by Major John McEntee would similarly implicate several former Senators and Representatives in similar communications with “rebellious elements” while still holding elected office under the auspices of the United States Congress…
The disclosure of his initial reports would redeem General Stone in the eyes of many radicals. Senator Ben Wade would later say of General Stone “he is to be lauded for he has given us the means to punish the most despicable class of traitor; men who have betrayed, not only their country, not only their family and neighbors but men who have broken the most sacred of oaths…”
From “Kearny and the Radicals” by Hugh W. McGrath
New England Press 1992
“Spring saw the eruption of the debate on Reconstruction with a vigor. Many saw the question of victory as one of when rather than if. The various factions in Congress were maneuvering in earnest to ensure their vision was the one imposed upon a defeated south…
Although increasingly muted over the last year many conservative Republicans, particularly westerners, supported a light handed approach to the South. States would quickly be reincorporated into the normal political framework, and would retain the right to govern themselves. They discussed general amnesties and how the economic life of the south could be revived at the close of hostilities. The primary goal for this faction was reconciliation. The war for them had been fought to preserve the Union, and while emancipation was an agreeable achievement, the Union restored in practice and in sentiment was their objective….they took their lead from the President himself. When asked by Secretary Chase what instructions the President had given Kearny on the subject of terms should the southern armies seek to surrender, the President replied he had as yet given none but expressed the desire that they should “let them up easy”…
The Radical Republicans opposed Lincoln's terms for reuniting the United States which they viewed as far too lenient. As a minimum they proposed an "ironclad oath" that would prevent anyone who supported the Confederacy from voting in Southern elections. The majority of the Radicals sought the trial and execution of Confederate leaders on charges of treason. All sought that the killers of General Hunter and the perpetrators of other “crimes against the rules of war” be brought to trial. In order to control the terms of Reconstruction Radicals pushed for the formation of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction which seated a Radical majority…
Within the Radicals there were more eccentric philosophies: known as the "conquered provinces" idea, Thaddeus Stevens asserted that the Confederacy had in practical fact created a separate nation, however illegal doing so under the Constitution might be. They could therefore be treated as if they were a foreign nation that had been conquered, permitting the United States full power to remake southern society as it saw fit. (At the same time, Stevens' theory meant that Confederate leaders could not be tried for treason, because they had not made war on their own country, and Stevens himself was prepared to act as defence counsel for Jefferson Davis, if the occasion arose.). Furthermore Stevens proposed large scale permanent property confiscations. Initially rejected by his colleagues this idea would gain growing favour in Congress as a means of punishing rebels, rewarding Southern Unionists, assisting freed slaves and perhaps paying down the debt incurred by the Government during the war. The idea of land confiscations became a cure-all for the Radicals…
General Kearny was not an apolitical general in the mold of U.S. Grant. Nor though did he seek to become a competing locus of power to the President as McClellan had. However he had always ploughed his own furrow, and he did not agree with the President’s view of reconstruction. As a result he had subtly percolated his views among his more trusted and politically influential generals (Daniel Sickles, Joseph Hooker, Isaac Stevens, Jacob D. Cox etc) as well as a number of influential northern governors. Kearny had no difficultly with Lincoln’s “up-easy” policy for the “common citizenry of the rebellious south; the rank and file” but he was fiercely opposed to the idea that the southern leadership should be let off lightly. Initial reports from General Stone’s OMI suggested a number of former US regular officers, now in Confederate uniform, had committed their acts of treachery to paper. Some indeed appeared to have accepted commissions in rebel state and Confederate forces before resigning their US commissions. It was clear that many elected and appointed officials were likewise guilty… Furthermore Union prisoners of war had been executed… Kearny’s rage would only increase when Custer returned from his raid on the Salisbury prison camp with wagons filled with emaciated veterans…
General Wadsworth supported and promoted Kearny's views through his own connections in New York
Kearny meant for the Confederate leadership to be punished harshly and publicly. Kearny clarified his thinking during a dinner with former Democrat and friend to the President, General Isaac Stevens, in the midst of the North Carolina campaign. In what became known as the Potomac Memorandum Kearny set out roughly in his own hand his thoughts on some of the key elements of Reconstruction settlement:
1. Necessary amnesty for enlisted men and commissioned officers of the rank of captain and below;
2. Internment of field grade officers and of C.S. national and state government officials pending preferment of appropriate charges;
3. Charges to be heard by military tribunal;
4. Lifetime disenfranchisement of all field grade and general officers, also C.S. elected officials and general office holders – neither a right to vote nor the ability to hold public office;
5. Confiscation of all real property of convicted traitors - and other convicted rebels and criminals;
6. Limits to future property holding rights for convicted traitors [This item is struck through in a different color in the original document]
7. Guarantees of the rights of southern veterans of the Union army – southerners and negros;
8. A regular army of a minimum of 25 infantry regiments and 15 cavalry regiments to sufficiently occupy the south during any period of Reconstruction.
The contents of the Potomac Memorandum and variations on it would almost immediately begin to appear in the correspondence of Union generals and several northern governors, and as such began to inform the debate on Reconstruction from the Army’s perspective…
It would be inaccurate to suggest that General Kearny disagreed with the President in all matters pertaining to Reconstruction. Kearny was firmly in the President’s camp when it came to his belief that the southern states, though in rebellion, remained constituted as states and were, as they had always been, part of the Union. Kearny was also enthusiastic about the idea of returning the “liberated” states to an atmosphere of normality as quickly as possible. General Sedgwick’s reports from Virginia suggested that a firm but fair hand in the governance of the southern states would see them quickly pacified and would nurture a rapid upswing in Unionist sentiment among the common classes…”
Last edited:
