June 15, 1862

June 15, 1862:  James Island, South Carolina: South Atlantic Theater - Gen. Henry Benham of the Union army has two divisions of troops on James Island, adjacent to Charleston, and finds himself frustrated by being under Confederate artillery fire daily and having to way to retaliate effectively.  This is the closest Union forces have come to the Cradle of Secession, and many Northerners expect to hear of Charleston’s fall on a daily basis.  Although instructed by the theater commander, Gen. David Hunter, to “make no attempt to advance on Charleston or to attack Fort Johnson until largely re-enforced or until you receive specific instructions from these headquarters to that effect,” Benham has encountered heavy skirmishing and probing attacks by the Rebels, especially a very sharp fight on June 10, and is considering doing something about it.  He instructs his two division commanders, Gen. Isaac Stevens and Gen. Horatio Wright, to prepare for an attack, in spite of Stevens’ protests. 

---Gen Pierre G.T. Beauregard, in command of the Confederate Army of the Mississippi in the area of Tupelo, Mississippi, citing poor health as a reason, takes a leave of absence and turns over temporary command of the army to Braxton Bragg.  He says, “I have concluded to take advantage of the present lull in the operations of this army, due to the necessity of attending of the enemy, for absenting myself a short while from here, hoping to be back in time to assume the offensive at the earliest moment practicable.”  Time will prove that there will not be a moment practicable.

---Maj. Gen. James Longstreet, in an unwonted display of loquaciousness, issues a statement to the troops under his command in Lee’s army, and says,

Let officers and men, even under the most formidable fire, preserve a quiet demeanor and self-possessed temper. Keep cool, obey orders, and aim low. Remember while you are doing this, and driving the enemy before you, your comrades may be relied on to support you on either side, and are in turn relying upon you.
Stand well to your duty, and when these clouds break away, as they surely will, the bright sunlight of peace falling upon our free, virtuous, and happy land will be a sufficient reward for the sacrifices which we are now called upon to make.

---A New York Times editorial offers some views of the conflict, and how perceptions have changed, especially in regard to the question of whether a democratic republic can maintain itself, and whether a self-privileged aristocracy can win wars on the basis of being “high-borne”:

Another error exploded by the war is the belief of European politicians, that the American Republic had no inherent central and saving power to preserve it from intestine discord. Against foreign Governments the Union had always proved a unit. But monarchists and imperialists never believed the bond more than a rope of sand, if it should come to be tried by internal agitation. In the growing alienation between North and South, for some years past, these Anti-Republican prophets plainly foresaw the downfall of a Power of which they had become fearful and jealous. But time has falsified their faith, and henceforth the American Union will be regarded with an interest far deeper than ever before, by the so-called “leading Powers” of the old world. It is not likely that a new convention could be called to meet in London, or near any other European Court, to decide the fate of Mexico, or any other country on this continent, to which the United States Government had not been invited to send a Commissioner, and found it agreeable to do so. . . . The boasted “chivalry” of the South, which Southerners always arrogated, and which many Northern citizens somewhat reluctantly conceded, and Europe accepted as a fact, has been dissipated as a cheat and delusion.

“Chivalry” implied many things to the Southern mind. It meant high birth, to begin with. And here the ardent imagination of the Southrons reveled in complacent pride. . . . “Blood will tell,” boasted these arrogant slaveholders. They were high born, therefore they possessed all the traits that adorn high positions — a palpable non-sequitur, as history so uniformly shows. . . .

Where has any extraordinary achievement signalized either the army or the navy of the rebels? Not at Fort Donelson, where two Generals ran away, and an army of 15,000 men surrendered without a death-struggle for escape or for victory; not at New-Orleans, where two forts, a formidable fleet and a large army succumbed, without losing one hundred men, all told; . . . not at Yorktown, where the flower and strength of the rebel army grew pale behind their gigantic defences, and fled from the approaches of MCCLELLAN.

Nowhere on all the theatre of war, can we find a spot that will live in history as a Southern Thermopylae, made memorable by the heroic endurance or courage of Southern rebels — fighting, as they claim, for their homes, their negroes and their native land. Most wofully has the “Southern chivalry” failed to make good its claims. . . .

---Judith White McGuire, of Richmond, speculates on the irony of Gen. Philip St. George Cooke commanding the blue cavalry that chased Stuart---haplessly, as it turned out---on the Rebel’s now-famous raid:  “General Stuart must have gone, it is said, within a few miles, perhaps nearer, of his father-in-law, the Federal General Cooke. I wonder what the old renegade Virginian thinks of his dashing son-in-law? If he has a spark of proper feeling left in his obdurate heart, he must be proud of him.”