DwtS: NPCs

NPCs

The Union

Administration Officials

President Ulysses Grant, embattled leader

"Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what are we going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do."

President Grant is easily as unhappy and scruffy as he appears in this photograph. Head of the Union armies during the war, he left his post (perhaps inadvisedly) to run for President in the wake of the Andrew Johnson impeachment, on a "firm but fair" platform of whipping the rebels soundly, but always giving them the option of coming back under good terms. There's no point, he believes, in painting them into a corner.

General William Tecumseh Sherman, erratic genius

"War is cruelty. There's no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over."

General Sherman (perhaps inadvisedly) has been placed in charge of the military end of the war effort. A lot of Congressional heat is diverted by his brother John, an influential Congressman. He is the most hated man in the South and quite possibly one of the most hated in the world. He is erratic, but incredibly brilliant, when functional.

The Committee On The Conduct Of The War

Senator Charles Sumner, Radical Republican

"From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned."

Sumner (R-Mass) has been an advocate against slavery and for prison reform and education for free blacks since his election to the Senate in 1851. In 1856, he was beaten unconscious on the floor of the Senate by Preston Brooks, a Congressman from South Carolina, after a truly nasty speech about slavery in Kansas. Sumner supported the impeachment of Andrew Johnson and always suspected that several Republican Senators had been bribed by Southern planters to change their votes. He supported Horace Greeley against Grant in the 1872 presidential election, as well. Although for many years his health was failing (he never quite recovered from the beating he received from Brooks), in recent years he has become more hale, to the dismay of his more moderate colleagues.

Benjamin Wade, Former Congressman, now Committee Spymaster

"I won't back a damned inch. I'm for it because I think it's right, and I know it's right; and if a thing is right, the only way is to keep at it till it wins, for its sure to win sometime or another." --- Wade on whether he would back down on his proposals for black suffrage

"Bluff" Benjamin Wade, an Ohio politico known for his belligerent speeches and stubborn demeanor had been in and out of politics as public opinion shifted in the war years. When the War broke out, Wade tried to enlist (he was 61), and then instead went home to Ohio to raise troops and establish the training camp that now bears his name. At the Battle of Bull Run, Wade was among the congressmen who went to observe the battle, expecting it to be a bloodless and whimsical affair. When it turned into a rout of Northern troops, Wade grabbed a rifle from a fleeing bluecoat, cocked it, and attempted to rally the Northern troops, saying that if anyone tried to retreat past him, he'd blow their brains out. He became a national hero when the tale became known. A thorn in Lincoln's side throughout the war, Wade was especially vehemently against the suspension of habeas corpus for Copperhead supporters of the South. He called General McClellan a "laughingstock" (later, he said that McClellan must be "either a coward or a traitor!") and Southern secessionists "bawling children." He called Lincoln's Cabinet "imbeciles" and once, when very angry, told Lincoln to his face that he was the father of every military blunder in history. Naturally this led to him being put in charge of the House end of the Committee On The Conduct Of The War.

But Wade has a softer side too. Asked to personally inspect prisoners returned from the awful Confederate prison of Andersonville, he returned to Congress sobbing like a child. Photographs of whipped slaves also aroused his sentiment, moving him to declare, "If the war continues thirty years and bankrupts the whole nation, I hope to God there will be no peace until we can say there is not a slave in this land." Wade retired from Congress after an unsuccessful attempt to impeach his former ally Andrew Johnson (which would have made him President, if he could have just swung one more vote. Most people believe that he didn't get the votes because people didn't want him to be President.) He is 76, and is on the Board of Directors of Union Blue Railroad. He is the unofficial contact for the Committee On the Conduct Of The War to contact its agents in the West.

The Confederacy

Administration Officials

President Jefferson Davis, embattled leader

"They have come to disturb your social organizations on the plea that it is a military necessity. For what are they waging war? They say to preserve the Union. Can they preserve the Union by destroying the social existence of a portion of the South? Do they hope to reconstruct the Union by striking at everything which is dear to man? By showing themselves so utterly disgraced that if the question was proposed to you whether you would combine with hyenas or Yankees, I trust every Virginian would say, give me the hyenas."

Jefferson Davis has had a career full of ups and downs. He was one of the best Secretaries of War that the U.S. ever had, and was a forceful proponent of Westward Expansion. When secession came, he returned with his state and became the Confederacy's first president. However, as the desperate straits of the Confederacy became more desperate after the Gettysburg debacle forced Lee back across the Rappahannock, and the money ran out, Davis entertained the possibility of exchanging the freedom of the slaves for their loyalty in supporting the Confederacy (instead of deserting to the North and adding hundreds of thousands of troops essentially for free.) This possibility was enough to revitalize the Confederacy's conservative wing, which became powerful enough to elect Lewis Ayer of South Carolina to the Presidency in 1866. Davis went to Texas between 1866 and 1872, gathering information that he thought was vital to the Confederacy's survival - his cronies in Richmond were able to put many of these over on Ayer's administration despite their best opposition, and Davis won at a walk in the 1872 election to become the Confederacy's third President. In 1874, enjoying more popularity than ever at any previous point in his career, the Slave Conscription Act was passed, which, although it has a nasty tone to it, was essentially emancipation for all slaves willing to fight for the Confederacy. Unfortunately the measure was too little too late, but Davis continues with strong political measures to help defeat the Union.

General Henry Hopkins Sibley, inventive commander

Henry Hopkins Sibley is an innovative and ingenious man, highly thought of by CSA President Jefferson Davis. He's an inventor, having patented a tent (called a Sibley tent), a small cannon (called a Sibley cannon) and a saddle (called - nobody is sure why - a Mclellan saddle). His initial attempt to open up Confederate control of the New Mexico Territories was stomped to pieces at Glorieta Pass. He blew it in the Teche Valley campaign and was court-martialed and censured but not convicted. In 1867, when the West was gaining in importance again, Davis (then in private life), scraped Sibley out of the bottom of a whiskey bottle and had him start to re-organize a command. Davis' still not-inconsiderable pull made the Sibley plan go into effect. Sibley is the commander of all Confederate forces in the West that are not under the control of the Texas Rangers.

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