i
THE AMERICAN NATION A HISTORY
FROM ORIGINAL SOURCES BY ASSOCIATED SCHOLARS EDITED BY
ALBERT BUSHNELL HART, LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ADVISED BY VARIOUS HISTORICAL SOCIETIES
IN 27 VOLUMES VOL. 21
THE AMERICAN NATION A HISTORY
LIST OF AUTHORS AND TITLES
Group I.
Foundations of the Nation
Vol. I European Background of American History, by Edward Potts Chey- ney, A.M., Prof. Hist. Univ. of Pa.
" 2 Basis of American History, by Livingston Farrand, M.D., Prof. Anthropology^ Coliunbia Univ.
" 3 Spainin America, by Edward Gay- lord Bourne, Ph.D., Prof. Hist. Yale Univ.
** 4 England in America, by Lyon Gar- diner Tyler, LL.D., President William and Mary College.
" 5 Colonial Self - Government, by Charles McLean Andrews, Ph.D., Prof. Hist. Johns Hopkins Univ.
Group II.
Transformation into a Nation
Vol. 6 Provincial America, by Evarts Boutell Greene, Ph.D., Prof. Hist, and Dean of College, Univ. of 111. " 7 France in America, by Reuben Gold Thwaites, LL.D., Sec. Wis- consin State Hist. Soe.
Vol. 8 Preliminaries of the Revolution, by George Elliott Howard, Ph.D., Prof, Hist. Univ. of Nebraska. ** 9 The American Revolution, by- Claude Halstead Van Tyne, Ph.D.,
" lo The Confederation and the Consti- tution, by Andrew Cunningham McLaughlin, A.M., Head Prof. Hist. Univ. of Chicago.
Development of the Nation
Vol. II The Federalist System, by John Spencer Bassett, Ph.D., Prof. Am. Hist. Smith College.
" 12 The Jeffersonian System, by Ed- ward Channing, Ph.D., Prof. Hist. Harvard Univ.
" 13 Rise of American Nationality, by Kendric Charles Babcock, Ph.D., Pres. Univ. of Arizona.
'* 14 Rise of the New West, by Freder- ick Jackson Turner, Ph.D., Prof. Am. Hist. Univ. of Wisconsin.
*V 15 Jacksonian Democracy, by Will- iam MacDonald, LL.D., Prof. Hist. Brown Univ.
Group IV.
Trial op Nationality
Vol. 16 Slavery and Abolition, by Albert Bushnell Hart, LL.D., Prof. Hist. Harvard Univ.
Group III.
Vol. 17 Westward Extension, by George Pierce Garrison, Ph.D., Prof. Hist. Univ. of Texas.
*' 18 Parties and Slavery, by Theodore Clarke Smith, Ph.D., Prof. Am. Hist. Williams College.
*' 19 Causes of the Civil War, by Admiral French Ensor Chadwick, U.S.N., recent Pres. of Naval War Col.
" 20 The Appeal to Arms, by James Kendall Hosmer, LL.D., recent Librarian Alinneapolis Pub. Lib.
" 21 Outcome of the Civil War, by James Kendall Hosmer, LL.D., re- cent Lib. Minneapolis Pub. Lib.
Group V. National Expansion Vol. 22 Reconstruction, Political and Eco- nomic, by William Archibald Dun- ning, Ph.D., Prof. Hist, and Pohti- cal Philosoph}^ Columbia Univ.
" 23 National Development, bv Edwin Erie Sparks, Ph.D., Prof. Hist. Univ. of Chicago.
" 24 National Problems, by Davis R. Dewey, Ph.D., Professor of Eco- nomics, Mass. Inst, of Technology.
" 25 America the World Power, by John H. Latane, Ph.D., Prof. Hist. Washington and Lee Univ.
" 26 Ideals of American Government, by Albert Bushnell Hart, LL.D., Prof. Hist. Har^'ard Univ.
*' 27 Index to the Series, by David May dole Matteson, A.M., Harvard College Library.
COMMITTEES APPOINTED TO ADVISE AND CONSULT WITH THE EDITOR
The Massachusetts Historical Society
Charles Francis Adams, LL.D., President Samuel A. Green, M.D., Vice-President James Ford Rhodes, LL.D., 2d Vice-President Edward Channing, Ph.D., Prof. History Harvard Univ.
Worthington C. Ford, Chief of Division of MSS. Library of Congress
The Wisconsin Historical Society
Reuben G. Thwaites, LL.D., Secretary and Super- intendent
Frederick J. Turner, Ph.D., Prof, of American His- tory Wisconsin University
James D. Butler, LL.D., formerly Prof. Wisconsin University
William W. Wight, President
Henry E. Legler, Curator
The Virginia Historical Society
William Gordon McCabe, Litt.D., President
Lyon G. Tyler, LL.D., Pres. of William and Mary
College Judge David C. Richardson J. A. C. Chandler, Professor Richmond College Edward Wilson James
The Texas Historical Society
Judge John Henninger Reagan, President George P. Garrison, Ph.D., Prof, of History Uni- versity of Texas Judge C. W. Raines Judge Zachary T. Fullmore
ULYSSES S. GRANT
THE AMERICAN NATION : A HISTORY
VOLUME 21
OUTCOME OF THE CIVIL WAR
1863-1865
BY
JAMES KENDALL HOSMER, LL.D.
RECENT LIBRARIAN OF THE MINNEAPOLIS PUBLIC LIBRARY
WITH MAPS
man inst
JUL I919I8
NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1907, by Harper & Brothers.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A5-\SS'
V. 7- 1
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
Editor's Introduction xi
Author's Preface xiii
I. Military Law and War Finance (1863) . 3
II. The Chickamauga Campaign (August, 1863-
September, 1863) 23
III. Chattanooga and Knoxville (September,
1863-December, 1863) 41
IV. Life in War-Time North and South (1863) 57
V. Concentration under Grant (December,
1863- April, 1864) 72
VI. On to Richmond (May, 1864- June, 1864) . . 86
VII. The Atlanta Campaign (May, 1864- August,
1864) 106
VIII. Attempts at Reconstruction (1863-1864) . 123
IX. Lincoln's Second Election (1864) .... 145
X. The Confederacy on the Sea (1861-1864) . 163
XI. Sheridan in the Valley (July, 1864-February,
1865) 186
XII. Sherman's March to the Sea (September,
1864- December, 1864) 201
XIII. Preparations for Readjustment of the
States (September, 1864-March, 1865) . 218
XIV. Military Severities (1864-1865) .... 232
X CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
XV. Spirit of the North (1864-1865) . . . 249
XVI. Spirit of the South (1864-1865) .... 269
XVII. Downfall of the Confederacy (April, 1865) 290
XVIII. Critical Essay on Authorities 307
MAPS
Seat of War in the West (1861-1865) (in
colors) facing 24
Chattanooga Campaign (1863) ro/o7'5) . . " 42 Seat of War in the East (1861-1865) (in
colors) " 74
Washington and Its Surroundings (1861-
1865) 88
Georgia Campaigns (1863-1864) " 108
Gulf Campaigns (i 863-1865) (in colors) . . " 168
Shenandoah Valley (1861-1865) " 188
Seat of War in the South (1861-1865) (in
colors) 204
Neighborhood of Richmond ** 292
i
i
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
ALTHOUGH independent in field and arrange- L ment, this volume is a continuation of the same author's Appeal to Arms {American Nation, XX.), taking up the story at the crisis of midsummer, 1863, and carrying it forward to the cessation of hostilities in April, 1865. The political conditions from which the war came about and the objects for which the contest was waged are set forth in the previous volume, and in greater detail in Chad- wick, Causes of the Civil War {American Nation, XIX.). The readjustment after the war is the subject of Dunning, Reconstruction, Political and Economic {American Nation, XXII.).
Interwoven with the narrative of military opera- tions during 1863 are two chapters upon internal conditions: chapter i. on military law and war finance, and chapter iv. on life in war time. The remarkable campaigns on the Tennessee River in the second half of 1863 are described in chapters ii. and iii. Chapters v. and vi. are devoted to the re- organization of the eastern armies under Grant, and the terrible Virginia campaign of 1864. In chapter vii. the western campaign of that year is
xii
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
followed out from Chattanooga to Atlanta. The breathing space at the end of 1864, is utilized for a narrative of attempts at reconstruction (chapter vii.) and the presidential election of 1864 (chapter ix.). In chapter x. the blockade and naval cam- paigns during 1863 and 1864 are described. Chap- ters xi. and xii. are devoted to Sheridan's valley campaign and Sherman's march to the sea ; chapters xiii. and xiv. to the renewal of plans of recon- struction, and to the vexed question of military severities both in the field and in the prisons. Chapters xv. and xvi. describe the life and ex- periences of non-combatants, North and South, in the last stages of the war. In chapter xvii. the last military campaigns appear. Chapter xviii. upon authorities includes a serviceable account of the official publications relating to the Civil War.
The purpose of the volimie is not only to describe military movements and to characterize military commanders, but also to picture the Civil War as a national experience, in which public men, governing bodies, and the whole people on both sides, were in- tensely engaged. The war appears in its proper setting, as a contest, not between armies or govern- ments, but between two social systems made up at bottom of the same kind of people, having the same traditions, and capable of reconstitution into one nation.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
AS the Civil War approaches its end, the in- L terest deepens rather than diminishes. To the student of the mihtary art much more is offered worthy of attention than during the early period. On the side of the North, by relentless sifting the men come to the front who through natural en- dowment and painful training are adequate to the work to be done : on the side of the South the leaders, though the same as at the beginning, exhibit a developed power, and sway more absolutely the men and the resources committed to their direction. Campaigns, no longer ill-ordered and fortuitous, become examples of practised soldiership; while battles illustrate the struggle of opposing intellects, and are no longer a mere exchange of blows.
As a drama, the Civil War takes on as it proceeds, shadows new and ever gloomier. On both sides, the devotedness of the generation concerned, the sacrifice of comfort, of resources, of life, to what is believed to be the public good, becomes always more unusual and impressive. At last the combatants are locked in a struggle so intense and desperate that human strength and endurance can go no
xiv
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
further. Here are the elements of colossal, all- absorbing tragedy.
For the most part, the battles described have been studied on the fields where they took place; the strategy of the generals, while traversing the lines of movement of the contending armies. Much has been gained from the stories of participants North and South, in stations high and low ; while the author's own recollections tend to make definite the details of the picture. The present volume, like its predecessor, has been for the most part written in the Library of Congress, at Washington, and I desire to repeat here the acknowledgment of obliga- tion already made to the accomplished staff of that institution for their politeness and skilled assistance.
James K. Hosmer.
January lo, 1907.
OUTCOME OF THE CIVIL WAR
OUTCOME OF THE CIVIL WAR
CHAPTER I
MILITARY LAW AND WAR FINANCE (1863)
IN 1863 "the Fourth of July became trebly famous — no longer the nation's birthday merely, but the day also when through the fall of Vicksburg and the retreat of Lee from Gettysburg the preserva- tion of the nation grew likely. It was, indeed, high time that, for the well-being of the Union, such a day should dawn. During the spring the signs were very unfavorable ; that the war was likely soon to take the North for its arena, as well as the South, was plainly indicated. Every Federal disaster made more numerous and more outspoken the advocates of peace at any price. A bitter war of words broke out, and in many places in the North seemed about to pass into a war of weapons. Disaffection was more acute and audacious in the West than in the East, though not more deep-seated. Friends of the South, looking on from Canada, believed a con-
4 OUTCOME OF THE CIVIL WAR [1863
federacy of the Northwest to be close at hand, which, when formed, would be hostile to the Lincoln govern- ment and ready to join hands with Jefferson Davis.
While in Indiana and Illinois the spirit of revolt abotmded, its focus was in Ohio, where Clement L. Vallandigham, a bold and fluent irreconcilable, fomented the popular inflammation/ He had talked in opposition in Congress with no uncertain sound; on the stump he was still less restrained ; and when Burnside, as commander of the department, issued a certain "Order No. 38," which in terms imusual- ly plain forbade treasonable utterances, Vallandig- ham burst out with exceeding vehemence. On May I, at Mount Vernon, in southern Ohio, a mass- meeting was held, the character of w^hich was not concealed. The head of the Goddess of Liberty on the old-fashioned copper cent was cut out, and dis- played generally as a badge upon the coat-lapel — a ''copper-head." Many speakers of note were heard, among them vSamuel S. Cox (better known as "Sunset" Cox), a man of brilliant gifts; but the voice of most authority was that of Vallandigham, who passed all previous bounds. Within a few feet of him stood officers of Burnside, in civilian dress, noting down the orator's sentences. He said "that it was not the intention of those in power to effect a restoration of the Union; that the government had rejected every overture of peace from the South,
* See A7n. Annual Cyclop., 1863, art. Habeas Corpus, for a good digest of contemporary accounts.
1863] MILITARY LAW AND FINANCE 5
and every proposition of mediation from Europe; that the war was for the liberation of the blacks and the enslavement of the whites; that General Order No. 38 was a base usurpation of arbitrary power; that he despised it and spat upon it, and trampled it under his feet; that people did not de- serve to be freemen who would submit to the conscription law. He called the president ''King Lincoln," and advised that at the ballot-box he should be ''hurled from his throne." Among the cheers that followed, some one shouted that ''Jeff Davis was a gentleman, which was more than Lin- coln was."
A few days later, a company of soldiers took Val- landigham out of bed at his home in Dayton, Ohio, and conveyed him to Cincinnati, where forth- with was held a court-martial, presided over by General Robert B. Potter. No part of American liberty has been more jealously regarded than free- dom of speech ; had it come to such a pass in America that a man could no longer say what he chose ? And if called to account, was it proper that the orator delivering his criticism in a part of the country not the seat of war should be seized by soldiers and tried by a court-martial? Justification for Burn- side's proceeding might be sought in Lincoln's proclamation of September 24, 1862, which de- clared that "During the existing insurrection, and as a necessary measure to suppressing the same, all rebels and insurgents, their aiders and abettors,
6 OUTCOME OF THE CIVIL WAR [1863
within the United States, and all persons discour- aging voluntary enlistments, resisting militia drafts, or guilty of any disloyal practice affording aid and comfort to rebels against the authority of the United States, shall be subject to martial law, and liable to trial and punishment by courts martial, or mili- tary commissions." ^
This was certainly very definite; but the presi- dent's right to issue such a proclamation was grave- ly questioned, in particular by B. R. Curtis, who had been justice of the Supreme Court ;^ moreover, it had been superseded by an act of Congress of March 3, 1863, signed by the president, according to which the proceeding of Burnside was quite too summary.^ Conceding that the arrest of Vallan- digham was permissible (certainly in the arbitrary arrests which had taken place there was abundant precedent), the statute of March 3, 1863, made it necessary that the secretary of war should report the arrest to the Federal judge of that district; and if the grand jury found no indictment against him as giving aid and comfort to the enemy, the dis- charge of the prisoner was proper. In fact, the act of Burnside was an overstepping of his powers, which the administration should have discounte- nanced. In this crisis Lincoln showed vacillation. When, a few weeks later, Burnside suppressed the
* Lincoln, Works (ed. of 1894), II., 239.
^B. R. Curtis, Jr., Life and Writings of B.R. Curtis, II., 306 et seq. ^ U. S. Statutes at Large, XII., 755.
1863] MILITARY LAW AND FINANCE 7
Chicago Times, for an offence similar to that of Vallandigham's, the president, under the pressure of such good friends of his as Lyman Trumbull and Isaac N. Arnold, and others, discountenanced the proceeding. The trial of Vallandigham, May 11, 1863, was after Chancellor sville and before Gettys- burg and Vicksburg, when the Union cause seemed on the verge of ruin ; and the mistaken prosecution appeared about to precipitate a catastrophe.
At the court-martial, Vallandigham denied the right of such a court to judge him, since he was a member neither of the army nor navy. He pro- duced witnesses, among them ''Sunset" Cox, who testified that he had said nothing treasonable, though criticising the government severely. Un- successful application for a writ of habeas corpus was made to Federal Judge H. H. Leavitt, a War Democrat, an appointee of Andrew Jackson. The prisoner was duly found guilty and condemned to Fort Warren, a sentence which Lincoln commuted to banishment beyond the Federal lines into the Confederacy.^
To the sorrow over Fredericksburg and the new occasion for lamentation from Chancellorsville was now added such a cry of indignation at the alleged infringement of constitutional liberty that the tu- mult became appalling. In every quarter the peace party mustered so formidably that to make head
^ For a discussion of the legal and constitutional aspects, see Rhodes, United States, IV., 245 et seq.
8 OUTCOME OF THE CIVIL WAR [1863
against it began to seem desperate. Mass-meetings poured out wrath in every part of the North; of especial note, among such demonstrations, were a series of conventions, one in Ohio, held June 11, by the friends of Vallandigham ; one at Spring- field, Illinois, the president's home; and one at Albany, New York, the ruling spirit of which was Governor Horatio Seymour. Of the three, proba- bly the latter was the demonstration most threat- ening to the administration. Through dignity of character and high social position, the influence of Seymour was powerful. Lincoln had tried to win him over, but an interesting correspondence was the only result. The governor stood, with all whom he could sway, in angry opposition. Nor was the rage of the malcontents expressed in words alone. Val- landigham, who soon escaped from the South on a blockade-runner, and appeared at Niagara Falls, within a short distance of his constituents, was nominated by acclamation for governor by the peace party of Ohio,^ who pushed the canvass with great vigor.
The enrolment and conscription act of March 3, 1863,^ the execution of which was pressed by Gen- eral James B. Fry, provost - marshal - general, met with wide disfavor. Forced enlistments seemed con- trary to the spirit of American institutions. A pro- vision intended to mitigate the situation, whereby on
^ Am. Anntial Cyclop., 1863, ^rt. Ohio. 2 U. S. Statutes at Large, XII., 731.
i863] MILITARY LAW AND FINANCE
payment of three hundred dollars a man drafted might purchase exemption, was interpreted to be a shielding of the rich, while the poor were left to suffer. The draft was met by scowls, which in many places de- veloped into armed resistance. In particular, there began in the city of New York, July ii, 1863, ^ which exceeded in violence anything of the kind ever known in America. For several days the city was in the hands of a mob, who burned, pillaged, and murdered to an extent that suggested the excesses of the French Revolution. In the height of the trouble the conduct of prominent Democrats was dis- couraging and ominous. Archbishop Hughes seem- ed disposed to palliate the outrages, while Governor Seymour addressed a ttimultuous assembly as his ''friends." It was then asserted by Seymour that as many as a thousand lives, all told, were lost, an overestimate, possibly; but the number was large — unresisting negroes, men, women, and children, being especial objects of attack.^
Success came to the Federal arms in the nick of time. The New York riots occurred within less than a week of the fall of Port Hudson, which opened the Mississippi; Lee still stood threatening north of the Potomac; but great victories had been won, and were powerful in changing the face of things. A demonstration from troops, fvirloughed after Gettys- burg, sufficed to put down the New York mob, though only by stern fightitig. In Ohio, John ^ Am. Annual Cyclop., 1863, p. 811 et seq.
OUTCOME OF THE CIVIL WAR [1863
Brou^h, a sturdy War Democrat, took the field against Vallandigham, who in due time was "snowed under" by a majority of 101,000. New York also went Republican. In Pennsylvania, Andrew G. Curtin was triumphantly sustained; far and wide Union men plucked up heart and rallied about the administration.^
In all this crisis nothing is better worth noting than the bearing of Lincoln. If he tripped, it was only for a moment; he was intrepid, good-natured, ready with a reply in every emergency, and judged each case with sense and strength. He had mis- givings as to Burnside's course with Vallandigham ; but he stood by his agent, and parried the remon- strances as they came with tact and logic. "Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier-boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert? This is not the less injurious when effected by getting a father, brother, or friend into a public meeting, and there working upon his feelings until he is persuaded to write the soldier-boy that he is fighting in a bad cause for a wicked administration of a contemptible gov- ernment, too weak to arrest and punish him if he shall desert. I think that in such a case to silence the agitator and save the boy is not only constitu- tional, but, withal, a great mercy."
Stating his conviction that arbitrary measures, under ordinary circumstances harsh or unconstitu- * Am. Annual Cyclop., arts. Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, etc.
1863] MILITARY LAW AND FINANCE 11
tional, may be justified in the stress of a rebellion or invasion, the president scouts the idea that the people may become indifferent to arbitrary meas- ures or perverted into a preference for such a polity. He cannot believe it, ''any more than I am able to believe that a man could contract so strong a taste for emetics during a temporary illness, as to insist upon feeding upon them during the remainder of his healthful life." '
Lincoln's frank admission to the Albany remon- strants is interesting: "And yet let me say that in my own discretion I do not know whether I would have ordered the arrest of Mr. Vallandigham. While I cannot shift the responsibility from myself, I hold that as a general rule, the commander in the field is the better judge of the necessity in any par- ticular case. ... It gave me pain when I learned that Mr. Vallandigham had been arrested ; . . . and it will afford me great pleasure to discharge him as soon as I can by any means believe the public safety will * not suffer by it. . . . Still I must continue to do so much as may seem to be required by the public safety. "2
By way of counter-stroke to the earlier Copper- head mass-meeting at Springfield, Illinois, the sup- porters of the administration gathered at the same place, at the beginning of September, in still greater numbers. Lincoln was urged to be present, and might have effected much by his presence. In our
^ Lincoln, Works (ed. of 1894), II., 349-351. ^ Ibid., 351.
OUTCOME OF THE CIVIL WAR [1863
day, when the rear platform of the special train has become such a fulcrum of influence, and the presi- dent can place himself in distant New Orleans, Chicago, or San Francisco, while scarcely taking his hand from the Washington helm, an oratorical jour- ney to Springfield w^ould be easy. In 1863 "the presi- dent felt that he could not leave his post. He wrote a letter, however, August 26, which perhaps did as well as a speech. It was an arrow shaped with beauty and grace, the finish of the shaft, how- ever, not interfering with the keenness of the point or its unerring aim. One passage runs: ''The signs look better. The Father of Waters again goes un- vexed to the sea. Thanks to the great North- west for it. Nor yet wholly to them. Three hun- dred miles up they met New England, Empire, Key- stone, and Jersey, hewing their way right and left. The sunny South too, in more colors than one, also lent a hand. On the spot their history was jotted down in black and white. The job was a great national one, and let none be banned who bore an honorable part in it. . . . Nor must Uncle Sam's web- feet be forgotten. At all the watery margins they have been present. Thanks to all. For the great Republic, for the principle it lives by and keeps alive, for man's vast future, — thanks for all! Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay. And there will be some black men w^ho can remember that with silent tongue^ clenched teeth, steady eye and well-poised
1 863] MILITARY LAW AND FINANCE 13
bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consiimmation ; while I fear there will be some white ones tmable to forget that with malignant heart and deceitful speech they strove to hinder it." ^
The signs looked better, as Lincoln said. The North was growing to the weight of sword and shield in the enemy's front, and learning also to manage the financial burden, good care of which was as necessary to successful warfare as first-rate soldier- ship. To be sure, there was a perilous prevalence of the greenback. The irredeemable paper money which Chase had so reluctantly brought himself to favor, and which all wise men, following our better traditions, had looked upon with misgivings, came in like a flood ; but it was a device which men thought inevitable in a great crisis. The act of February 25, 1862, authorizing the issue of $150,000,000, was followed by acts of July 11, 1862, and of March 3, 1863, each act authorizing large amounts.^ Dur- ing the years of war there were outstanding, of legal- tenders, in 1861-1862, $96,620,000; in 1862-1863, $387,644,000; in 1863-1864, $431,179,000; in 1864- 1865, $432,687,000. It should always be remembered to Chase's credit that he put forth this issue with hesitation, and that later, when chief-justice, he confessed he had committed an error. ^
^ Lincoln, Works (ed. of 1894), II., 398.
2 U. S. Statutes at Large, XII., 345, 532, 710.
3 Hart, Chase, 436; cf. Hosmer, Appeal to Arms {Am. Nation, XX.), 64, 167, 249; see also 12 Wallace, 576.
14 OUTCOME OF THE CIVIL WAR [1863
While paper mone^T- thus worked balefully, other financial expedients which the enterprising secre- tary^ and Congress had set on foot by the summer and fall of 1863 began to make impression. First, by an act approved March 3, 1863, "the treasury had been authorized to contract loans of much greater volume than heretofore. Upon the second great loan, authorized February 25, 1862, for $500,- 000,000, Chase secured two limitations which proved harmful — namely, that the interest should be only six per cent, and should be payable in gold; with interest so low the bonds would not sell at par on a specie basis ; the price of his bonds was depressed to par in greenbacks, the fact that legal-tenders were convertible into bonds also having an influence. As regards the loan of March 3, 1863, Chase was not able to borrow anything like the amount author- ized, but his work was successful and beneficent.* With the help of Jay Cooke & Co., he invited sub- scriptions in all quarters and from all classes, the securities being of such denominations that people of small means could take them, as well as capi- talists. These were rapidly accepted, "coupon- bonds" becoming not only a hoard in every great financial institution, but a familiar possession in many households. An immense sum presently passed into this form of wealth, the favorite se- curities being the "five- twenties," the bonds whose holders could enforce their redemption in twenty * Hart, Chase, 243, 288.
1 863] MILITARY LAW AND FINANCE 15
years, while the government could, if it chose, pay them after five years, the bonds meantime yielding an interest of six per cent, in gold, pay- able semiannually. Within two months after the adjournment of Congress, on March 3, 1863, the great deficit which had confronted it the preced- ing December quite disappeared. The soldiers were paid, and all necessary requisitions satisfied. More important than an3rthing else, since the people thus showed their confidence in the triumph of the Union, and gave up their savings to its keeping, they proved their determination to sink or swim with it, commit- ting themselves to its fortunes as never before.
The second vital financial measure, for direct taxation and internal revenue,^ entered upon with many fears because counter to cherished Ameri- can traditions, was received with few murmurs and soon yielded a large sum. George S. Bout well, of Massachusetts, was made commissioner. The act was several times amended, and its operation at first was somewhat embarrassed, but its success increased year by year till, in 1866, the yield from this source was nearly three hundred and eleven millions. The country was divided into districts, corresponding generally with the congressional dis- tricts, in each of which were appointed an assessor and collector armed with adequate power for in- spection and seizure. From domestic manufactures and productions, especially distilled spirits and fer- * Act of July I, 1862, U. S. Statutes at Large, XII., 432.
i6 OUTCOME OF THE CIVIL WAR [1863
mented liquors, came the largest revenue. Tobacco was heavily taxed, but wool and cotton fabrics, boots and shoes, hardware, petroleum, everything into or over which passes human handiwork, paid its proportion. The well-to-do were assessed on their incomes; professions and branches of business in general could not be carried on without a license ; and no formal paper — contract, receipt, check, or proprietary label — was valid without a stamp. ^ The country soon adapted itself good-naturedly to the situation, and among the perplexed shapers of the government policy the regret was general that the result could not have been foreseen and direct tax- ation applied more fully to the exigency rather than the irredeemable paper.
The third great gain to our financial well-being was a measure which, in the summer and fall of 1863, began first to find favor, though proposed by Chase in his first formal report as secretary of the treasury. This scheme, for a time neglected, but finally accept- ed, created a system of national banks. The popular loans and heavy taxes were temporary expedients; but the national-bank system was destined to super- sede the old state banks, affording to the United States a system uniform, cheap, convenient, and as stable as the government itself. For this great achievement the credit belongs mainly to Chase,^ and may be regarded as the supreme service he ren-
* Schouler, United States, VI., 386. 2 Hart, Chase, 274 et seq.
1 863] MILITARY LAW AND FINANCE
dered to his country. During the winter session of 1 862-1 863 the plan was freely debated, Eldridge G. Spaulding and Samuel Hooper, in the House, and John Sherman, in the Senate, sustaining the secre- tary's recommendation. February 25, 1863, the bill became a law, passing the Senate by a bare majority of two, and almost as narrowly escaping defeat in the House. ^ Lincoln signed it gladly, and it went into operation forthwith, receiving later amend-' ments as experience showed them necessary. The act provided for the charter of national banks under the supervision of a new officer of the treasury, the comptroller. One-third of their capital must be in United States bonds; and against the deposit of bonds in the treasury, as a reserve, the comptroller prepared for each bank circulating notes to the amount of nine-tenths of the deposit. By an act of 1865, on recommendation of Secretary Fessenden, a tax of ten per cent, was levied on the circulation of state banks, so that many of them hastened to put themselves under the national arrangement.^ The benefits of the scheme to the country have been immense. In 1861 there were over sixteen hundred state banks, scattered ever3rwhere, varying infi- nitely as to solvency and as to wisdom of manage- ment.^ While the banks of New York and New
* U. S. Statutes at Large, XII., 665; John Sherman, RecolleC' tions, 231; Blaine, Twenty Years, I., 478.
2 Dewey, Financial Hist, of the U. S., 328.
3 Blaine, Twenty Years, I., 645.
VOL. XXI. — 2
i8 OUTCOME OF THE CIVIL WAR [1863
England in good part maintained high credit, and some western states had legislated wisely, many banks were "wild-cat," practically unwatched in their transactions, and unpunished if they swindled. Bank-bills varied infinitely, and no expert was skil- ful enough to detect counterfeits. High rates of exchange prevailed, bills rarely passing at par ex- cept in their own locality. The confusion and loss were grave.
The new system brought order and security in money matters; but beyond that it knit the people to the government by a strong tie. The loans of currency to the banks from the treasury were part of the national indebtedness; hence every citizen became vitally concerned in the security and wel- fare of the Union. While in 1863 but sixty-six national banks were organized, the number rapidly grew. In 1864 there were five hundred and eight; a year later one thousand five hundred and seventy- three;^ nor would it be possible to say, after forty years, to how large an extent the progress and wel- fare of the country has been due to this sagacious innovation.
While in the North there was a peace party, some- times very vigorous, the South showed no toleration of any party or individual who opposed the war. W^here such opposition was manifested, as in eastern Tennessee, it was straightway met by force of arms, the offenders being regarded no less as enemies than ^ Blaine, Twenty Years, I., 644.
1 863] MILITARY LAW AND FINANCE
those who came from the North. As to finance, in the early part of 1863 the southern leaders had no anxiety about the outcome: their victories were overwhelming; intervention seemed certain; at the breaking of the blockade, which could not be far off, their accumulations of cotton, transferred to the French and English mills, so long idle, would at once make the Confederacy rich. To anticipate this pros- perity, before the first year of the war had ended the government was irretrievably committed to a paper-money policy.^
As to Confederate taxation, some money came in through the small customs duties. During 1863 a tithe of the agricultural products was exacted, which for a time yielded much, a month's supply of food for a million men coming in ; but it was every- where unpopular, and in North Carolina was rebelled, against. April 24, 1863, was passed the Internal Revenue Act of the Confederacy, from which, by the end of 1864, about five million dollars in specie value was obtained, apparently all a tax "in kind." ^
Nor was there any large resort to bonds. In January, 1863, Emil Erlanger, a European financier, appeared in Richmond to negotiate a loan of fifteen million dollars, to be placed abroad.^ It was au- thorized January 29, and proved successful to all but the unhappy subscribers. It was taken up
^ Schwab, Confederate States, chap. ii.
^ Ibid., 291 et seq.; for act, see C. S. A. Statutes at Large, i Cong., 3 Sess., 115. ^ Ibid., 30 et seq.
OUTCOME OF THE CIVIL WAR [1863
at 90, in great part in England. Erlanger & Co. made out of it a handsome sum; the Confederacy received about six milHon dollars, which was mostly spent in Europe; the subscribers lost ten million dollars, the bonds sinking ever lower after the Union victories, military and diplomatic, to final worth- lessness. Professor Schwab believes this sum de- rived from the Erlanger loan, with fifteen million dollars derived from an earlier loan, taken by the southern banks, and the proceeds of seizures of United States funds and the customs duties, about five million five hundred thousand dollars (perhaps twenty-seven million dollars in all) , to have been the entire amount of specie in the hands of the Rich- mond government during the war.^
The Confederacy was practically supported by paper money and from the proceeds of bonds purchased with paper money and paying interest in scrip. The people preferred notes to bonds, because the former circulated. Before the end of 1863, seven hundred million dollars in notes was in circu- lation, which sum in 1864 became a billion and more. Possibly the treasury itself had no definite knowledge of the amount afloat.^ States, cities, banks — indeed, tradesmen, tobacconists, grocers, barbers — issued notes, these a fractional currency largely. February 17, 1864, the Confederate con- gress passed an act virtually repudiating earlier is-
^ Schwab, Confederate States, 43. 2 Rhodes, United States, V., 344.
1863] MILITARY LAW AND FINANCE 21
sues of paper money. A scheme of compulsory funding was put in operation, recalling expedients of the American and French revolutions ; holders of notes might exchange them for four-per-cent. bonds ; an alternative for exchange into bonds was to re- ceive new notes at a ratio of two to three; if the holder took neither the bonds nor the new notes, he must lose heavily, for by a provision of the act the old notes were to be taxed out of existence/
A vivid picture of the ''Time when Money was Easy" is given by George Gary Eggleston; the ir- redeemable paper fell ever lower, until it became scarcely an exaggeration to say that the house- holder must take his money to market in his basket and bring his purchases home in his pocket-book.^ The funding act was a confession of bankruptcy on the part of the government. The resource of the produce loan was exhausted before the beginning of 1863. United States money became readily cur- rent, an incident so ominous that, February 6, 1864, an act was passed to prohibit its circulation.^ Re- course was had to barter; and at the end of 1864 Kirby Smith wrote that only specie payments or barter prevailed in business in the trans-Mississippi.^ The evidence is conclusive, remarks Schwab, ''that
^ C. S. A. Statutes at Large, i Cong., 4 Sess., 205; cf. Schwab, Confederate States, 64.
^ Eggleston, A Rebel's Recollections, chap. iv.
^ C. S. A. Statutes at Large, i Cong., 4 Sess., 183; also Schwab, Confederate States, 161.
* Rhodes, United States, V., 347.
OUTCOME OF THE CIVIL WAR [1863
at last public expenses were met, like those of a bankrupt corporation, by creating a huge floating debt represented by large arrears, four or five hun- dred million in the war department, and accimiu- lated unpaid warrants in the Treasury."^
* Schwab, Confederate States, 83.
CHAPTER II
THE CHICKAMAUGA CAMPAIGN (August, i863-September, 1863)
THE over - sanguine, who imagined after Vicks- burg and Gettysburg that the South would now submit and that peace was in sight, were soon unde- ceived. From various parts of the wide arena came signs that the spirit of resistance was unbroken and the habit of victory not yet lost. During the closing acts of the Mississippi and Pennsylvania dramas, John H. Morgan, the bold raider, making his way with twenty-five hundred men from Ten- nessee through Kentucky, crossed the Ohio at Brandenburg, and entered upon a terrifying in- vasion of Indiana and Ohio. There were no trained troops at hand to oppose him; he passed rapidly from village to village, despatching companies right and left to create uncertainty as to his movements, replacing his horses as they gave out with fresh ones seized within the country, and taking booty as he chose in the well-to-do communities which he traversed. His troopers galloped long unhanned, the expedition apparently being a glorious "lark" for the youths who for the most part made up the
OUTCOME OF THE CIVIL WAR [1863
force.* But when, passing through the northern suburbs of Cincinnati, they pressed eastward, their career became disastrous. Had Lee carried Ceme- tery Hill, things, no doubt, would have been different with them ; as it was, towards the end of July most of them were captured on the upper Ohio and con- signed, with their leader, to Federal prisons.^
A much graver affair than this brisk and futile adventure was the renewed attempt of the navy, in the same month, to reduce Charleston. After the failure in April, General Quincy A. Gillmore succeed- ed to the place of Hunter, and Admiral Dahlgren to that of Dupont. Both new commanders were brave and capable men, the former an engineer of marked ability. Nevertheless, their efforts were no more successful than those of their predecessors; Beaure- gard was still at hand, and his defence was as suc- cessful as before.^ July 18 an assault on Fort Wagner, on Morris Island, a low-lying waste of sand at the mouth of the harbor, was beaten back, a pathetic incident of the event being the decimation, at the head of the charging column, of the Fifty- fourth Massachusetts, colored, the high-souled young colonel, Robert G. Shaw, falling at the front. The "swamp-angel," a powerful cannon planted with much skill in a morass, hurled its balls five miles into the streets of Charleston; and converging bat-
* Duke, Morgan's Cavalry, 437.
^War Records, Serial No. 34, pp. 632-817 (Morgan's Ohio Raid). ^ Roman, Beauregard, chap, xxxij.
CHICKAMAUGA
25
teries from ship and shore reduced Fort Sumter to a heap of ruins. Neither city nor fortress fell be- fore the assailants, however, until the last days of the war/
Towards Tennessee, as the summer closed, all eyes began to turn. While the armies on the Missis- sippi and Potomac, w^est and east, were struggling so memorably, Rosecrans in the centre, with the Army of the Cimiberland, was lying inactive at Mur- freesboro. Though nearly six months had passed since Stone's River, no blow had been dealt. Rose- crans, whom Cox saw in April, 1861, quarrelling at Camp Dennison over the flooring of the tents, ^ though now a man of note, preserved the same char- acteristics. Though full of amiable traits, his short- comings were marked,^ none more so than a quick- ness of temper that burst out on occasions both slight and grave. He was constantly WTangling with Lincoln, Stanton, and Halleck. To their ur- gency that he should be active, he always com- plained that something was wrong that should be righted at Washington. If left to himself, he very probably would have struck during the spring; but under pressure he braced himself the other w^ay, and lay idle even when his own judgment would have led him to act. Towards those below him his testiness, even to his generals, was equally manifest.
* War Records, Serial No. 46 (Operations at Charleston, June to December, 1863).
2 Cox, Military Reminiscences, I., 24. ^ Ibid., 513.
26 OUTCOME OF THE CIVIL WAR [1863
A tentful of privates with their candles alight after taps would hear the fiat of the general's sword on the canvas in token of displeasure, an exhibition which made him sometimes the victim of practical jokes. ^ Nevertheless, from Lincoln down through the rank and file, Rosecrans brought out affection, and none doubted that he was, in spite of his fail- ings, a brave and able leader.
The stress at Vicksburg having caused Johnston to draw off a strong detachment from Bragg, that he might make head against Grant, a fine chance was offered Rosecrans to strike a blow at his weak- ened adversary. He started out, June 24, 1863, responding at last to the urgency from Washington, yet still protesting; but the campaign upon which he entered was conducted with the most satisfactory energy and skill. The weather, which through the spring and early summer had been favorable, changed to storms, through which Rosecrans drove on in his movements unremittingly. Feinting with his left while striking with his right, with faultless strategy he forced Bragg out of southern and central Ten- nessee, without a battle, bringing to naught the long labors by which Bragg had constructed at and near Tullahoma a series of strongholds.^
Chattanooga now lay not far off, the door into east Tennessee, which Lincoln was so eager to re-
' Cox, Military Reminiscences, I., 127.
2 War Records, Serial No. 34, pp. 399-627 (Tullahoma Cam- paign).
i863]
CHICKAMAUGA
27
lieve, and also the point commanding, above all others, the Confederate commtmications east, west, and south. Would not Rosecrans follow up his success by seizing Chattanooga? But here came more weeks of inaction, of chronic dispute with Washington — angry demands which Halleck began to find intolerable; there must be more men, horses, mules, supplies; communications must be made secure; other departments must co-operate. Stan- ton scrutinized keenly, sending a sharp-eyed agent, Charles A. Dana, to report upon the spot; the pa- tience of the president was sorely tried. But by August 16 Rosecrans was again in motion, and so effectively that some regard the resulting campaign as the masterpiece of strategy during the Civil War.^ A disaster to the Confederacy scarcely less great than those of July appeared imminent, to ward off which the Richmond government brought to bear all its resources.^
To study for a moment the situation, Burnside at Cincinnati, after his work in quelling northern dis- affection, was again assigned to the field, his especial task being, with the so-called "Army of the Ohio," to advance through Cumberland Gap and capture Knoxville, the citadel of east Tennessee; which he accomplished, September 3, with no severe fighting.
* Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, VIII., 71; Cist, Army of tlie Cumberland, 174.
^ War Records, Serial No. 50, pp. 3-107 1 (Chickamauga Cam- paign).
28 OUTCOME OF THE CIVIL WAR [1863
From here Burnside was expected to reach a hand to Rosecrans, in the midst of the remarkable move- ment against Chattanooga. From Tullahoma, his conquest of June, and the posts adjacent, Rosecrans had pushed through the barrier of the Cumberland Mountains, and stood .with his three corps, the Fourteenth, Thomas; the Twentieth, McCook; and the Twenty-first, Crittenden — not far from the Ten- nessee, a broad and deep stream, across which all bridges had been destroyed, protecting Chattanooga, where stood Bragg strongly fortified.
Like Rosecrans, Bragg, though unquestionably meritorious, had, as time went on, hardly made good his title to a high command. Fremantle, the in- telligent British officer who traversed the Con- federacy during the spring and early summer of 1863, portrays him as thin, sallow-faced, with bushy eyebrows meeting in a tuft over the nose, and keen, dark eyes.^ General Taylor's order at Buena Vista: "A little more grape. Captain Bragg," had made his name more familiar, perhaps, before the Civil War, than that of any other southern leader; Davis held him in high regard; Johnston, who after Murfreesboro had been charged to investi- gate him, saw no reason for his removal ; ^ but he had not at all won his subordinates — Polk, Hardee, D. H. Hill, and now Longstreet — who held him to be unequal to his place. Yet he was still retained, and
* Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, 145. ^Johnston, Narrative, 162.
CHICKAMAUGA
29
was now very active. There was some excuse for his ill-success at Tullahoma, his army having been seriously weakened by demands from Vicksburg ; but now he was largely reinforced. Johnston sent back the divisions that had not availed against Grant and Sherman; Buckner came down from Knox- ville after that city was lost; most important of all, Longstreet set out from Virginia with the troops who, on Lee's right at Gettysburg, had so nearly carried the Round Tops, and, though not yet at hand, arrived in time. It was a great loss to Bragg that Hardee had been sent farther south, the de- fence of Mobile, which Grant appeared to threaten, requiring a capable officer. But the Confederacy had no better soldiers than remained to Bragg, and the front w^hich Rosecrans had to face was very formidable.
The Federal beginning was brilliant.* It was natural for Bragg to think that Rosecrans would try first to connect with Burnside, strengthened by whom his power of offence would be greatly in- creased. The eyes of Bragg, therefore, were turned especially towards the northeast, over the region in which the junction could most conveniently take place, a region, too, presenting few difficulties to marching armies. This idea Rosecrans encouraged, despatching the Twenty-first Corps with much pa- rade in that direction, up the Sequatchie Valley. But meantime, with Thomas and McCook, the Four- ^ Battles and Leaders, III., 638 et seq.
OUTCOME OF THE CIVIL WAR [1863
teenth and the Twentieth Corps, he crossed the river farther down unopposed, striking out at once tow- ards Bragg's communications with Atlanta. To hold these unbroken was a vital matter to the Con- federates : the loss of Knoxville interrupted the rail- road line to Richmond and Virginia, and no route remained but a roundabout line via Charleston and Columbia, and through Georgia to Chattanooga. Thomas and McCook were now in a difficult country- crossed by mountain ranges over which the roads were few, poor, and quite unmapped. Nevertheless, they made such progress that Bragg, in alarm, for- sook his fastness, marching quickly southward in a movement rashly interpreted to mean retreat; whereupon Crittenden, with the Twenty-first Corps, promptly crossed the Tennessee from the northern side and occupied Chattanooga on September 9. This was a great and bloodless conquest, and as a piece of strategic work probably deserves all the praise it has received,
Bragg was still further to be reckoned with. Full of the idea that his adversary was retreating, Rose- crans pushed Thomas and McCook through the mountains, hoping to strike his flank on the march southward or make hot pursuit on his rear. McCook went too far ; or, at all events, the three Federal corps became dangerously separated, an interval of three difficult marches cutting off the Fourteenth Corps in the centre from the Twentieth and Twenty-first on either wing. In this situation it suddenly became
CHICKAMAUGA
31
known to Rosecrans that Bragg was not in retreat, but had retired a short distance for a purpose, and was ready at Chickamauga to try conclusions. Had Bragg been a great commander, he might at this moment have brought things to a finish. While his own force, largely increased, was well in hand, the Federal army was badly scattered, and the three corps might have been destroyed one by one. This time fortune favored Rosecrans, for Bragg did not strike. In the respite the hard-marching Federals concentrated through a pass, Rossville Gap, over which ran the high-road from Chattanooga to Lafayette, and by September 18 stood backed by Missionary Ridge. In front of the Federal corps, after a broad interval of level, flowed Chickamauga Creek, in the woods behind which was now gathered the army of Bragg.
McLemore's Cove, in which the hosts were as- sembled, was a remote and secluded spot. It had been reached through difficult mountain -passes in regions sparsely inhabited; rock and forest every- where prevailed, with now and then a settler's clear- ing. In the cove along the dark stream, bearing from some prehistoric slaughter the name Chicka- mauga, "river of death," broad meadows intervened between the ranges, which here and there had been taken up in f anus ; while on the stream was now and then a mill. These obscure and distant farms of Snodgrass, McAfee, Dyer, Kelly, the Widow Glenn, and Lee and Gordon's mills, lying in the September
32 OUTCOME OP THE CIVIL WAR [1863
sunlight, were about to be lifted into a lurid noto- riety. Of the Union army, about fifty-eight thou- sand strong, Thomas, with the Fourteenth Corps, oc- cupied the left; McCook, with the Twentieth, the right; Crittenden holding the Twenty -first in re- serve. The army of Bragg, amounting before the battle ended to about sixty-six thousand,^ had, at the right, Polk; the left as yet awaited its leader.
Bragg, full of vigor, but impatient and unsyste- matic, seized the initiative, his aim being to drive back the Federal left, and, capturing Rossville Gap, to cut Rosecrans off from Chattanooga. September 19 was throughout a day of fierce encounters, di- visions from either side clashing with alternations of fortune. Nothing was decided; but at night Bragg had made no substantial progress. The strengthened Union left held its own; and Polk, who directed the Confederate assaults, found him- self no nearer Rossville Gap than before. Yet the Federals well understood that the fighting of the day was but a preparation for a greater contest.
That night Bragg received a reinforcement of value scarcely calculable, in the arrival of Long- street from Virginia, by rail over the long circuit through the Carolinas and Georgia. Longstreet, for- saking the train, was at once on horseback, riding under the "quartering moon" through the wood- roads to find Bragg and bring the weight of his corps to bear upon the situation. Hurrying thus, * Livermore, Numbers and Losses, 105.
CHICKAMAUGA
33
he rode suddenly into a Federal outpost, escaping only by adroit management.* Bragg was found at last, and the dispositions for the morrow made. The right was again confided to Polk, who was ex- pected to renew his attacks on the Federal left in the early morning. The left now received its leader in Longstreet, whose divisions were to wait until, by the gradual wheel of the Confederate line towards the west and south which Bragg hoped for, the con- venient moment should arrive for an onset.
In the Federal camp neither alacrity nor vigil- ance was wanting. As the cannon cooled after the volleys of the 19th, Rosecrans gathered his gen- erals in council at his headquarters at the Widow Glenn's.^ Besides the corps commanders were some nine or ten of lower rank. The most interesting figure was Thomas, grave, undisturbed, deliberate, with a poise like that of Washington. He had borne through the day the brunt of Polk's assaults, and was physically exhausted. He fell asleep every minute, but when roused to give his opinion in- variably answered, ''I would strengthen the left." The mood of the participants was scarcely as grave as at the council after the second day at Gettysburg. Thus far there was nothing critical in the Federal situation. At the close McCook was called upon for a song, to which he responded with the "Hebrew Maiden."
* Longstreet, Manassas to Appomattox, 438. ' Described by Dana in his Recollections, 113.
VOL. XXI. — 3
OUTCOME OF THE CIVIL WAR [1863
At the dawn of September 20 Bragg was listening eagerly for sounds from his right, where Polk was expected to be at work betimes, and he subsequent- ly brought accusations of neglect against that lieu- tenant ; ^ but it is far easier to believe the statement of Polk, that the conditions made an early move- ment impossible. The forenoon was well advanced when his line at last charged; and the divisions of Breckinridge and Cleburne, directed by D. H. Hill, thrown by the general-bishop upon Thomas, made an unshrinking onslaught. Thomas had strength- ened his front with the rude breastw^orks of earth, tree-trunks, and rails which at this stage in the war the soldiers of both armies had learned to throw up in a few minutes. Rosecrans perhaps went too far in following out Thomas's advice of the evening be- fore, and in his hot way was depleting his right that the left might be sustained; Crittenden, in reserve, was practically stripped of his divisions, which were hurried off to act under Thomas,^ and McCook's line grew thin from the heavy drafts despatched to the same point of attack. The forenoon was now nearing its end, and nothing had gone wrong; though the Federal right was dangerously w^eakened, Bragg 's attack was firmly met ; from general to pri- vate every man was on the alert. No one knew what lay behind the screen of woods before the Federal right wing, but probably under ordinary
^ War Records, Serial No. 51, pp. 33, 47. ^ Ibid., Serial No. 50, p. 607.
CHICKAMAUGA
35
circumstances Rosecrans could have successfully met danger from that quarter. The division at the ex- treme right was that of Sheridan, and the other commanders were scarcely inferior; there were no better men in the Union service.
Just here came the beginning of a disaster. The student of military history will recall how, on Jtme 1 6, 1 815, the corps of D'Erlon, twenty thousand men, by the mistake of an aide-de-camp, was sent to w^ander aimlessly between Ouatre-Bras and Ligny, so that Ne}^, left short-handed, failed to defeat the English; and Napoleon, perplexed, gained only an incomplete victory over the Prussians, the upshot of all being that two da^^s later the French lost Water- loo, which otherwise might perhaps have been won.^ A similar stroke of ill-luck now befell Rosecrans. An aide of Thomas, passing along the line, thought he saw a gap between the divisions of Re^molds and Wood, where Brannan's division should have been. Brannan, indeed, was in his place, but with his line somewhat "refused" and so hidden by brushwood as to be not quite apparent. Forthwith the aide reported the oversight, and Rosecrans, who well un- derstood the necessity of a perfect line in the cir- ctimstances, sent at 11 a.m. a hasty order to Wood "to close up on Reynolds."^ T. J. Wood, a A^et- eran of the old army, one of the best of division- commanders, as was proved later on that day, and
^ Ropes, Campaign of Waterloo, 174, 180, 184. 2 War Records, Serial No. 50, p. 635.
36 OUTCOME OF THE CIVIL WAR [1863
on many another, saw plainly that there was a mistake. He could not close up on Reynolds with- out marching round behind Brannan, an utterly idle movement, Vv'^hich would at the same time create the gap that Rosecrans was so anxious to avoid. Why, then, did not Wood delay, it may well be asked, until there could be explanation? As luck would have it. Wood had just before been the object of an outbreak of temper from Rosecrans, who thought him slow in relieving certain troops to be detached to the left. Angry himself, from the gen- eral's reprimand, Wood was in no mood to risk an- other storm. He has been blamed for not delay- ing ; ^ instead, with obedience too strict, he at once put his troops into motion, opening wide the dreaded gap in the line. To make the matter worse, Thomas now came up and told Wood that Reynolds did not need him, and took the responsibility of despatching Wood also to the left.^
An incident now ensued in the highest degree dramatic. Longstreet, just opposite, was listening impatiently, as the forenoon advanced, to the heavy battle on his right, eager for the time when, accord- ing to Bragg's plan, his turn should come. Learn- ing now that, through oversight or discourtesy, his divisions were being ordered against the opposing
* Cist, Army of the Cumberland, 220 et seq.
^ For criticism on Thomas for stripping McCook and Critten- den, see Livermore, Some Federal and Confederate Commanders, in the Military Hist. Soc. of Mass., Papers, X., 229.
CHICKAMAUGA
37
enemy by Bragg without notice to him, he at once, with faultless tactics, threw into a column, by bri- gades, his Gettysburg veterans, with Hood in the lead/ Other troops not less brave were in the column. With a rush and a roar, the "rebel yell" mingling with the crash of the cannon, the column burst from its screen, poured through the gap so inopportunely left open by Wood, until eight bri- gades, the very pick of southern valor, had pierced the Federal formations through and through. Dana, who was near by, sleeping on the ground after great fatigue, was awakened by "the most infernal noise I ever heard." He saw Rosecrans, good Catholic that he was, crossing himself, and felt that a catas- trophe had come.^ The Union line once pierced, the assailants swept to the right. Hood had fallen dangerously wounded, but there were still good leaders, and there was no pause in the attack. Thirty minutes earlier Longstreet would have en- countered a strong formation; thirty minutes later the movement so unfortunately in progress would have been concluded, and the Federal line would have met him in perfect array. As it was, all at- tempt to stay the onset seemed hopeless. In the midst of the wreck was Sheridan and plenty more as brave, but for a time even their prowess was of no avail. The flood of fighters surged towards the rear of Thomas, whom at the same time Polk as-
' Longstreet, Manassas to Appomattox, 447. 2 Dana, Recollections, 115.
38 OUTCOME OF THE CIVIL WAR [1863
saulted in front. A sauve qui pent seemed the only Federal resource — let every man save himself.^
Borne back by the fugitives, Rosecrans and also Crittenden and McCook, whose troops had in great part gone to strengthen the left, were carried help- less into Rossville Gap. The general, feeling pre- maturely that all was lost on the field, pursued his retreat, with the two corps commanders, to Chatta- nooga, to make ready to receive within its fortifi- cations the wreck of the army. Arriving at four o'clock, after the twelve-mile ride, spent with fatigue and anguish of mind, he was lifted from his saddle to the ground, and staggered nerveless. It would have been better for his fame if, like James A. Gar- field, his chief of staff, he had forced his way from Rossville Gap back to the field, where, as the af- ternoon went forward, came a still louder tumult of battle, indicating that Thomas was holding his own.
The ''horseshoe " which Thomas made his citadel is a rocky hillock rising steeply from the lower level before Rossville Gap. Concentrating his troops in a convex line around the crest of this hill, gathering in fragments from the broken corps to the south- ward, till he had in hand quite two-thirds of the army, with Baird, Palmer, Davis, Negley, Van Cleve, Reynolds, Brannan, and the too-obedient Wood, he refused to flee. Gordon Granger, posted in the morning as a reserve, marched without orders to
* Thrust on, in Southern Bivouac, V., 412 (December, 1886).
CHICKAMAUGA
39
the sound of the cannon, bringing a reinforcement of four thousand men. Against this ''rock of Chickamauga," through the afternoon, the army of Bragg vainly dashed itself, till the dead lay in a wide-curving heap about the base of the horseshoe as the sun fell aslant. The general rode at a mod- erate pace just behind the line, with cool, encourag- ing words. The formation admitted of easy rein- forcement, across the horseshoe, as now one point, now another, was threatened. The position was held till nightfall, when Thomas withdrew. In Ross- ville Gap, as the darkness gathered, two wearied, dust-covered horsemen met and dismounted. In the angle of a fence, the younger, taking a rail from the top, thrust it across the angle lower down for a seat.^ Here the elder sank down in deep exhaus- tion, the younger at his side : they were Thomas and Sheridan. The latter had seen two-fifths of his command fall that day, among them two of his three brigadiers. He had been long without sleep or food. The wasted divisions lay about them ex- hausted like the generals. There was no pursuit; the foe were equally spent. Next day the wrecked army in a toilsome march fell back to Chattanooga, Sheridan with a remnant guarding the rear of the Twentieth Corps. From both armies 28,399 were left dead or wounded upon the field, of whom 16,986 were Confederates. The Federals lost near- ly 5000 prisoners, against some 1500 on the other
^ Sheridan, Personal Memoirs, I., 284.
40 OUTCOME OF THE CIVIL WAR [1863
side.* Nevertheless, neither army was destroyed; clearly neither had gained the object of its cam- paign. It was inevitable that another encounter must follow the indecisive battle.
* Livermore, Numbers and Losses, 105.
CHAPTER III
CHATTANOOGA AND KNOXVILLE (September, i863-December, 1863)
RANT'S success at Vicksburg brought him
VJ recognition and deference. One of the first exercises of this newly won authority was the dis- placement of McClemand, so long to Grant a thorn in the flesh. His insubordination at Champion's Hill, and a foolish proclamation a few weeks later, in which, while arrogating to his own corps un- deserved credit, he at the same time slurred his comrades of the other corps — a proceeding quite unmilitar}'- and intolerable — furnished Grant occa- sion for superseding him, action in which the gov- ernment acquiesced. In this incident Dana counted for much. As special commissioner of the war de- partment at headquarters, an important part of his duty was to report to Stanton upon the men in re- sponsible position. His estimates were so compre- hensive as to include not only the chiefs, but even the brigadiers and staff-officers — a. body of char- acterizations often severe, sometimes not just, but, on the whole, full of insight and intelligence, and of great help to the administration in selecting proper
42 OUTCOME OF THE CIVIL WAR [1863
instruments. As to McClernand, Dana's judgment coincided with that of Grant, and in his place E. O. C. Ord became commander of the Thirteenth Corps.
Grant's hands, however, were not yet quite free to act. He counselled an immediate advance from the north upon Mobile, which he believed might be easily captured.^ The plan was not approved; but Joe Johnston's army was driven back to where it could do no harm ; the Thirteenth Corps was detached southward to Louisiana, whence parts of it went af- terwards to Texas ; a division of the Fifteenth Corps under Steele was despatched into Arkansas, and still other troops into Mississippi ; the Ninth Corps, sent down by Burnside from Cincinnati during the siege, was returned to him; with what remained, under Sherman and McPherson, Grant lay at Vicksburg as the summer closed.
The defeat at Chickamauga spurred the Federal energies into vigorous action. At once the Eleventh Corps, Howard, and the Twelfth Corps, Slocum, were detached from the Army of the Potomac and sent under Hooker to reinforce the defeated Rosecrans. Full fifteen thousand men, with their equipments and belongings, were in eight days transferred by the northern railroads from Virginia to Alabama, stepping out upon the western arena the first days of October unfatigued and well appointed. This was only one of numerous feats of the kind performed by the departments of the quartermaster and com- ^ Grant, Personal Memoirs, I., 484 et seq.
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missary generals, Montgomery C. Meigs and Rufus Ingalls, officials in the background, but whose mighty service in those years counted powerfully towards the successful outcome.
Burnside, charged with the military occupation of east Tennessee through Cumberland Gap, was incited to do his best. Grant, too, was instructed to report at the earliest possible moment at Cairo. Proceeding thither at speed, he was ordered to Louisville, and met on the way no less a personage than Secretary Stanton himself, who had hurried west to concert with him proper measures for the crisis. He was assigned at once to the command of a new department, that of the Mississippi, compris- ing the country west of the Alleghanies, and involv- ing the control of not only the Army of the Ten- nessee at Vicksburg, but also of the Army of the Cumberland and the Army of the Ohio, the latter being the force of Burnside. He acquiesced in the superseding of Rosecrans, whose military inade- quacy had been plain to him since the battles of luka and Corinth.^ Rosecrans, also McCook and Crittenden, thereupon joined the company, now^ be- coming numerous, of commanders found wanting, often rather through ill-luck than ill-desert, and consigned to shelves more or less honorable, with little part thenceforth in the great drama. Thomas was made commander of the Army of the Cumber- land. No sooner were these dispositions made than
^ Grant, Personal Memoirs, I., 490.
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they were definitely announced by telegraph. Grant at once proceeded to Chattanooga, meeting on the way Rosecrans coming north, from w^hom he re- ceived excellent suggestions as to a campaign, "if he had only carried them out." ^ A day or two later he was in Chattanooga, where the situation demanded all his power.
The Army of the Cumberland lay intrenched within the town, dependent for its supplies upon a single long and imperfect road across the moim- tains. The Tennessee, broad and deep, was a bar- rier on the north. Just east of the town began Bragg's intrenchments, on the river, running thence southward along the high crest of Missionary Ridge, then westward across the valley to Lookout Ridge, there connecting again with the river; the outpost here occupied a famous landmark, Lookout Moim- tain, which, rising twenty-four hundred feet, domi- nates the region far and near.
Though diminished and disorganized at Chicka- mauga, the Army of the Cumberland was by no means beaten or discouraged. Two-thirds of it, in- deed, had been held by Thomas to gallant work in the battle, retiring in good order at last. It is per- haps not too much to claim that had Rosecrans gone back with Garfield from Rossville to the field, and shown the force and fertility that he showed in the crisis at Stone's River, a victory might have been gained in spite of the rout of the right. The * Grant, Personal Memoirs, I., 498.
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45
Federals in Chattanooga stood quite undismayed iinder a leader whom they thoroughly trusted, on short rations, to be sure, but cheerfully biding their time. Meanwhile, Hooker was already at hand with two corps ; and Sherman, who now succeeded to the command of the Army of the Tennessee, was ordered, September 23, to march with all speed with the Fifteenth Corps to Chattanooga, leaving McPherson at Vicksburg and Hurlbut at Memphis.^
The powerful blow delivered by the Confederacy at Chickamauga, though to some extent an offset to the Federal successes of the summer, did not really balance them, and had a sequence full of disappointment to the South. Longstreet believed that on the field the tactics of the afternoon of September 20 were gravely at fault, and that the advantage gained was not properly pushed home.^ Chattanooga was only partially invested, whereas, in the opinion of this strong commander of the left wing, the Federal communications might and should have been entirely cut. Fortunately for the Fed- erals, the camp of their adversaries was a scene of contention, Bragg having no friends among his higher officers, and on his part criticising and de- nouncing them in unmeasured terms. Polk was re- moved from his command; D. H. Hill, too, was now forced out of service, not to draw his sword again until the last days of the war. Though Hardee was
* W. T. Sherman, Memoirs, I., 372 et seq.
2 Longstreet, Manassas to Appomattox, 452, 461 et seq.
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recalled from the South and given Polk's place, his relations with Bragg were scarcely more friendly; while every line of Longstreet's memoirs implies disgust at what he regards as the mismanagement of his chief.
Into this scene of dissension suddenly dropped Jefferson Davis, and it is impossible to feel that his visit helped his cause. No testimony could shake his faith in Bragg, though he was so far moved by the general dissatisfaction as to offer the command to Longstreet, then to Hardee. Both refused, de- pressed with hopelessness as to success under the prevailing conditions.^ Longstreet urged that John- ston, already in nominal command of the depart- ment, should be trusted, stating his own willingness to serve under him. When Davis manifested dis- pleasure, Longstreet begged to resign. This request was refused, and Bragg was retained, with memo- rable results.
John C. Pemberton, captured at Vicksburg, but later exchanged, was with Davis at Chattanooga. In spite of his strong fight at Champion's Hill and his stubborn defence of Vicksburg, he was, on ac- count of his northern birth and ill-success, in a high degree unpopular. When Davis, therefore, sustain- ing Bragg 's action in removing Polk, suggested Pem- berton to command the corps, he was met by dis- approval, which he was forced to respect, so that Hardee was appointed.^ The ineffective invest-
^ Longstreet, Manassas to Appomattox, 466. ^ Ibid., 469.
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merit with which Bragg's lieutenants were so dis- satisfied, but which they were powerless to change, soon came to a disastrous end.
Grant arrived in Chattanooga October 23, find- ing that Thomas had omitted nothing that it was possible to accomplish/ The intrenchments were strong, the army in good spirits, the demoralization from Chickamauga a thing of the past. To be sure, rations were short, and animals were dying by hun- dreds of starvation. A scheme was on foot, how- ever, for opening a better and shorter route for communicating with the North, planned by an able engineer. General W. F. Smith, which Grant at once approved and carried out.^ In the operation the Army of the Cumberland was well supported by the corps of Hooker.^ Longstreet, who held the Confederate left, was eluded and beaten back, and by the brilliant night capture of Brown's Ferry, a well-protected road was opened to the town from Bridgeport, which point the railroad reached. In the Federal host hope now rose to the highest. They lived in plenty ; the corps of the Army of the Potomac were good comrades; and now, by Grant's order, Sherman was hurrying the Fifteenth Corps from Memphis across Tennessee to their relief.
Bragg now took a most unfortunate step.^ Burn-
^ Battles and Leaders, III., 679.
^ War Records, Serial No. 54, pp. 39-234 (Reopening of the Tennessee River). ^ Dana, Recollections, 134.
^War Records, Serial No. 54, pp. 255-550 (Knoxville Cam- paign).
4.
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side, with the newly constituted Army of the Ohio, made up of the Ninth and Twenty- third Corps, was ly- ing in east Tennessee, making glad, at last, the heart of Lincoln by bringing succor to the greatly suffering Unionists of that region. At no time in his career did Burnside bear himself so well as during this campaign/ The man vanquished at Fredericks- burg rarely referred to the past; much less did he spend time in bewailing misfortunes or in criticism; he faced his new work with skill and a manly heart. As he approached, Buckner, the Confederate com- mander, retired before him, and, as has been noted, he occupied Knoxville, September 3. His detach- ments spreading thence through the valleys, 'enjoyed what to a Federal army was a most unusual expe- rience, a warm welcome from the people to whom they came.
During the visit of Jefferson Davis at Chatta- nooga, a plan was concerted for a quick disposing of Burnside in east Tennessee, by an expedition from Bragg's army that should return in time for the new battle, which it was now plain the Federals were determined upon. For this work Longstreet was selected; he showed no reluctance, but insisted upon despatch as vital to success. Accordingly, Longstreet, with the division of McLaws, and the former division of Hood, now under Jenkins, to- gether with Wheeler's cavalry, entered early in No- vember upon an operation marked with disaster; ^ Cox, Military Reminiscences, I., 520 et seq.
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while Bragg, meantime, his best troops at a dis- tance, was obhged to meet a peril which he had not rightly measured.
Sherman, in answer to Grant's summons, marched eastward from Memphis with all the speed possible. Going himself in advance of the troops, he narrowly escaped capture by raiding cavalry near Corinth.^ The Army of the Tennessee at this time performed other feats than those of arms : General G. M. Dodge, with eight thousand men, making their own tools, built railroads, boats, mills, bridges, with an in- dustry and skill that repaired in a brief time the ravages of war.^ Word soon came from Grant to drop all work not bearing directly upon the quick- est possible advance to Chattanooga; and, obeying to the letter, on November 14, 1863, Sherman rode into the threatened town, as usual in advance of his divisions. The columns arrived a week later, pre- pared for w^ork that was at once assigned them.
The Confederate line before Chattanooga, except on the left, had changed little since the first in- vestment immediately after Chickamauga.^ Hardee's corps held the right, where at the north Missionary Ridge came to an end, with the Tennessee, just be- low the jimction with the Chickamiauga, near its base. Thence southward to Rossville Gap the line followed the crest, which was often narrow, the
^ W. T, Sherman, Memoirs, I., 379.
2 Grant, Personal Memoirs, 513 et seq.
^ War Records, Serial No. 55 (Chattanooga Campaign).
VOL. XXI. — 4
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slope on either hand descending steeply to the lower level. Bragg had his headquarters here in a central position, the troops of Breckinridge hold- ing the highland from Hardee's position as far as Rossville Gap. Crossing the Chattanooga Valley to Lookout Range, the line south westward to the river again was now but weakly garrisoned, for from this post Longstreet's divisions had just departed for Knoxville. Here Bragg 's position was notably less advantageous than when the siege began. Before Longstreet's departure, the advance of Hooker in connection with the opening of the "cracker-line," the convenient road for supplies so cleverly made available by W. F. Smith, established a powerful force threateningly near the weakened Confederate left.
Opposed to Bragg, Grant, in the lower ground to the west, appreciating fully the value of prompt- ness, now ranged his zealous and hopeful army. Sherman held the left, for the moment lying on the north of the river opposite Hardee. Thomas, with the Army of the Cumberland, reorganized and rein- forced since its disaster, fronted the line of Breckin- ridge on Missionary Ridge immediately before the town; Hooker, as mentioned, stood at the right, on ground won since the siege began. To about fifty- six thousand Federals stood opposed forty-six thou- sand Confederates.^ Any one who has beheld the theatre of operations will believe that the advan- * Livermore, Numbers and Losses, 106.
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tage of the Confederate position was fully equal to the difference in numbers. Grant's plan was that Sherman should make the main attack on the left, while Thomas and Hooker were to make demon- strations in their fronts designed to prevent the reinforcement of Hardee against Sherman from the line farther south; but their feints, should a chance offer, were to be turned into real assaults.
Accordingly, on November 23, 1863, Thomas be- gan offensive operations by marching out from the forts near the town, with Grant in his company, and seizing advanced ground which included Orchard Knob, a rocky hill in front of the Confederate line; Thomas stood prepared to assault from Orchard Knob, while Hooker, at the right, attacked the slope of Lookout. The air on the next morning, November 24, was charged with coolness, mists from the river obscuring the lowlands, while clouds drifted about the heights. Long before light the corps of Sherman threw off concealment and made its way by pontoons across the river against the north end of Missionary Ridge. This was quickly carried and the ridge surmounted, whereupon Sher- man encountered a great disappointment : the height upon which he stood was isolated, a gorge which, had quite escaped his reconnoissance intervening be- tween it and the ridge proper, on the steep opposite side of which Hardee was posted ; but there was no abatement of the vigor of the attack, which was met with equal spirit, the armies clashing in eager battle.
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It was at the south that the Union success first began. The ardor of Hooker's men, impelling them beyond the lower acclivities of Lookout Mountain, soon carried them to the highest points, till at last the battalions, fighting as they climbed, reached Pulpit Rock, a height of twenty-four hundred feet. Nor did Hooker pause here. Though delayed some- what in the low ground by Chattanooga Creek, he soon crossed, the Confederates retiring, and was in good time at Rossville ; whence, pressing northward along Missionary Ridge, with a division in either valley east and west, and still another advancing on the crest between, he threw back Breckinridge, who was thus brought into a strait.
Ere this Thomas was in motion. The feat of Hooker's men, lifted as they were high in air, had been distinctly visible and audible to the Army of the Cumberland, who, standing impatient in battle array on the afternoon of the 25th, received the order to take the rifle-pits which Bragg had con- trived at the foot of the ridge. That proved an easy task, after which the men, without orders, stung by their late humiliation at Chickamauga, and beholding the chance which fortune opened, surged in a wave of blue up the almost precipitous ascent. A second line of rifle-pits half-way up offered an obstacle even less embarrassing than that at the base. Soon the panting ranks were at the summit, four hundred feet above the plain. The hostile line was at once broken through, and, turn-
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ing right and left, the assailants in a few moments overpowered all resistance, whether of infantry or of artillery, barely missing the capture of Bragg himself, who galloped eastward down the height. In this impetuous and happy exploit many were brave, but the figure of special interest perhaps was Sheridan, who reached the top among the first. Afire with the battle-glow, lavish it is to be feared of imprecations, mounted upon a cannon that his short stature might be properly pedestalled, he swayed the throng of stormers.
Sherman, who as yet had made no headway, must be succored at the northern end of the ridge. The division of Baird, therefore, which among the troops of Thomas w^as farthest to the left, fell hotly upon Hardee's rear. Struck thus before and behind, even that skilful soldier was without recourse. He with- drew defeated to the Chickamauga Valley, as did also Breckinridge at the south. Every position was captured, the entire ridge cleared of the foe, and through the night, that fell as the battle closed, the beaten Bragg fled southward into Georgia.
To the Federals the loss in killed was 753 ; wounded, 4722; to the Confederates, in killed, 361; wounded, 2160;* the latter lost many guns and more than 4000 prisoners. The victory of Chattanooga, though attended with small comparative loss, was more im- portant in results than many bloodier fields; and as regards elements of impressiveness perhaps sur- ^ Liveraiore, Numbers and Losses, 106.
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passes every other battle of the war. East and West fought side by side in earnest emulation. It was the Army of the Tennessee, Vicksburg men, that struck at the north; the Army of the Potomac, Gettysburg men, that scaled Lookout; the Army of the Cumberland, Chickamauga men, that carried Missionary Ridge. To these last, since they had suffered most, it fell appropriately to administer the coup de grace. Here, too, for the only time, con- tended side by side the four supreme Federal leaders — Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and Thomas. For the striving of these champions nature provided a ma- jestic theatre, and rarely indeed has a battle been attended by circumstances so picturesque.
The charge of the Army of the Cumberland, with- out orders, up the beetling Missionary Ridge, before Grant and Thomas, astounded and anxious on Orchard Knob, was such a spectacle as human eyes have rarely seen. Hooker's achievement on Look- out Mountain, beheld among and above the drifting clouds by both hosts, was a worthy drama, worthily witnessed. Sheridan, in intense interest, followed with his glass a color-bearer, who in front of the line waved his flag dauntlessly in the charge till the mountain was carried.* As the evening deep- ened, the full moon rose magnified at the horizon line by atmospheric refraction. While it hung for a few moments behind an eastern ridge, a charging column passed across its disk, weirdly silhouetted * Sheridan, Personal Memoirs^ I., 306.
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before the beholders, the brandished weapons and frenzied figures wild and strange as in a march of goblins.*
How fared Longstreet meantime, detached with the best troops of the Confederate army for the Knoxville expedition? From the first things went wrong. Delayed at the start, they found them- selves on arriving among a hostile people, and were met everywhere by Bumside with vigor and skill. The Federal chief had able lieutenants, especially Potter and Hartranft of the Ninth Corps, ^ who, as colonels at Antietam, carried the stone bridge on the left ; and also Sanders, a young cavalry general, whose promise was cut off untimely in this campaign. The southern officers and men appear to have gone to work only half-heartedly. Of the brigadiers, the conduct of Robertson was bad; while Law, jealous of Jenkins, who had been preferred to him as leader of a division in place of the wounded Hood, wilfully held back in his duty, believing that a success would go to the credit of his rival. ^ Even the true and tried McLaws, who in capturing the garrison of Harper's Ferry before Antietam did perhaps as much as Stonewall Jackson, and at Fredericksburg repulsed from the stinken road the Federal right, was now accused of slackness and court-mar tialled.^
* Sheridan, Personal Memoirs, I,, 315.
2 War Records, Serial No. 54, p. 332.
2 Longstreet, Manassas to Appomattox, 495-548.
^ War Records, Serial No. 54, pp. 503 et seq.
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The doughty Longstreet himself, without faith in the enterprise and disheartened by the behavior of both superiors and subordinates, acknowledges a letting down of his own energies. In an assault, November 29, upon Fort Sanders, at Knoxville, where he was beaten back with a loss of a thousand men, he admits that he too credulously accepted an exaggerated account of the strength of the Federal works, and drew off when he ought to have struck again. ^ For the Confederates all came to naught. As Bragg had been driven south of the Georgia border, so Longstreet, after a trying winter expe- rience in the unfriendly highlands, at last made his way back through southwest Virginia to the side of Lee. When the year 1864 opened, Tennessee throughout was almost wrested from the Confeder- ate grasp ; a party of guerillas now and then might threaten a bridge or rob a train, but as to regular and formal resistance in that state, the war for the time was over.
^ Longstreet, Manassas to Appomattox, 507.
CHAPTER IV
LIFE IN WAR-TIME NORTH AND SOUTH (1863)
ii feel that, in spite of many a rough stroke re- ceived, she had inflicted more than she had suf- fered: the Confederacy was now cleft apart, and the patrol of the Union gun-boats up and down the Mississippi was constant and vigilant. Not only was it out of the question for armies to cross, but it was a risk for individuals to attempt a passage in a skiff; much more so to attempt to ferry over a herd of cattle, a load of cotton, or provisions of any kind: unlucky furloughed soldiers from the trans-Mississippi could not get home.^ Resistance was practically quelled in both the divided parts north of the Gulf states. West of that river, Kirby Smith and Dick Taylor were soon to strike a last telling blow for the Confederacy on the Red River; but, as regards the trans-Mississippi coimtry, the Richmond government had little to contemplate but a series of reverses, as a result of which its cause was prostrate. East of the river the war was
North had reason to
Hague, A Blockaded Family, 130.
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practically at an end in Kentucky and throughout Tennessee, except one last spasmodic convulsion to be described ere long. Alabama remained to be subdued, and also the great region from Florida ^ northward; though in each Atlantic state the sea- I coast was dominated, if not actually occupied, by Federal armies and fleets, with the exception of a ^ harbor here and there into which the blockade- \ runners still continued to penetrate.
This wide subjugation, with the desperate effort to fight it off, profoundly modified the life of the southern people. Men of the arms-bearing age were in the field, and those who stayed at home, the women, old men, and children, were greatly affect- ed in their conditions. The modification was not always of a melancholy kind. Miss Parthenia A. Hague, living in southern Alabama, author of an interesting record,^ gives a pleasant picture of the days passed on the plantations. The vigorous men were in arms, the plantations tilled by the negroes, whose fidelity to their old masters was largely un- shaken. The blockade, cutting off as it did every- thing that came from the outside, threw the people upon their own resources. Instead of the unvary- ing cotton, crops became diversified, producing, so far as possible, what could no longer be imported. Domestic industries, long obsolete, were plied again: the women spun, wove, and dyed, making fabrics which they turned into garments; candles were ^ Hague, A Blockaded Family, passim.
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moulded, baskets and furniture contrived of wicker- work, hats from wool, and shoes from leather, which had never before been so well tanned. Flocks of goats were introduced with great benefit, in the idea that they might tempt the cupidity of possible invaders less than horses and beeves. Communities grew self-reliant as never before. It seems plain that the harsh circumstances tended to bring about a healthier life than when the planter and his wife superintended the slave-raised cotton, while mean- time from the outside came in a stream of supplies that removed the need of work of brain or hand. But hardship and afHiction constantly grew deeper; privation pinched ever more acutely; death deso- lated every household; the fear of the foe was con- stant, until they came, and came to crush.
The suffering on the plantations was small as compared with that in the besieged towns. One may still see in Vicksbtn-g two or three of the caves into which the people were driven — damp burrows into the heart of the hills, the crumbling roofs and sides propped up by timbers, the ravines into which they opened never out of reach of the far-penetrat- ing shells of the Federals. Of the constant terror, the pressing want, the wounds, and death with which each day was attended, there are pathetic recitals.^
Of the high life of the South in war-times, the aristocracy under the old regime being scarcely less * My Cave Life in Vickshurg, by a Lady.
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a class apart than in the midst of feudal conditions, there is no more vivid picture than that of Mrs. James Chesnut, wife of a former United States senator from South Carolina who became a Con- federate general and an aide of Jefferson Davis. ^ She was in middle age, full of vitality, good-hearted, well schooled and travelled, possessed, too, of a cheery humor, at times so breezy and robust as to recall the Wife of Bath. Flitting from point to point — Montgomery, Richmond, Columbia, Charles- ton, or at this or that country seat — her familiars were Jefferson Davis, Lee, and many other men of the hour and their families, whom she depicts in her panorama in lively colors. At first her narra- tive effervesces with high spirits, reflecting merrily a cheerful environment; but gloom deepens as the months proceed; in place of buoyancy come wrath and depression, while laughter ceases in the fre- quent shadow of death. After a battle in 1863 she limns a sober picture of a communion service in St. Paul's Church in Richmond, during which the sex- ton hurries at short intervals up the aisle with a whispered summons to the families whose sons, brothers, or husbands are brought in from the fields in their coffins. He goes at last to the min- ister in the chancel, who, leaving the distribution of the bread and wine to his assistant, departs with the others to meet his sorrow.^
Yet Mrs. Chesnut cannot long be sad. In a De- * Mrs. Chesnut, Diary from Dixie. ^ Ibid., 245.
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cember record of this year she tells a merry story of an excursion down the river in the flag-of-truce boat to a French frigate which had come up through Hampton Roads. The party, in much - fractured French, tried to establish an entente cordiale. Vieff r Emperor!" cries one. ''A la sante de I'Emperor!" cries another, with raised glass. But the Frenchmen, of course under orders to be cautious, are unre- sponsive. The good lady may be excused for say- ing that the frigate was *'a dirty little thing," and her officers unattractive. **They can't help not be- ing good-looking, but with all the world open to them, to wear such shabby clothes!"
That the Confederacy, shut off from the world by the ever-tightening blockade, was by this time badly out at the elbows there is much evidence. In the spring of 1863 there were bread riots; in November flour sold at over a hundred dollars a barrel, and suffering more acute was impending.* The painful lack in the Confederacy of all supplies ex- cept food and the raw materials for fabrics was a source of weakness which could not be overcome. Clothes, shoes, medicines, machinery, arms, paper, powder — the thousand appliances of civilized life in peace and the means for making war — came to the South only in blockade - runners from Europe or were captured by her armies from her northern foes. There was grievous dearth of workshops, skilled labor, and scientific accomplishment which could * Jones, Rebel War Clerk's Diary, II., 90, 284.
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be turned to practical account in such an exi- gency. Nevertheless, there were men who coped as they could with a situation which ever grew more serious, and the story requires mention of work often as important as that of generals in the field.
John M. Brooke, a naval officer of ingenious turn, while attached to the Naval Observatory at Wash- ington, had attracted notice as the inventor of an apparatus for deep-sea sounding^ and otherwise furthering the study of the physical geography of the sea, which about the middle of the nineteenth century was engaging attention. Taking sides with the South, he was soon put in charge of the Tredegar Works, at Richmond, and here developed into a skilful mechanical engineer, creating with small means a vast forge and machine-shop, and educat- ing a numerous body of mechanics. His principal achievement was the devising of the ram Virginia ^ a remarkable feat in view of his limited means. ^ His plans were so marked by originality as to place him in the class with Eads, Ericsson, and other great Tubal Cains who in these latter days have equipped the world with marvellous tools. On shore as well as sea Brooke continued to supply machines; and he kept in some sort of order the hard- worked railroads; while shot and shell and
^ Corbin, Maury, 99.
2 Scharf, Confederate States Navy, 145; Battles and Leaders, I., 715-
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the cannon that hurled them came abundantly out of the Tredegar furnaces.
Matthew Fontaine Maury, of an old Huguenot family in Spottsylvania County, Virginia, was in 1 861 probably the most distinguished scientific man who held a commission in the nay7.^ At the head of the Naval Observatory in Washington, his reputa- tion was especially that of an hydrographer. His work in mapping the ocean-currents, in meteorology, in studying marine phenomena in general, from the bed of the sea to the winds that blew^ above its sur- face, in devising and properly laying the first ocean cables, was recognized as of value by the sailors of every land. When at the outbreak he resigned his commission, Constantine, grand-admiral of Russia, offered him high position. But he went with the South, serving the Confederacy first as chief of sea- coast, harbor, and river defences, and later in Europe. His service was especially noteworthy ifi contriving instruments for submarine warfare — mines and tor- pedoes, which the Federal ships found formidable long after the southern navy at home had practically ceased to exist.
Of southern scientists of that time none were more interesting than the brothers John and Joseph Le Conte.^ Like Maury, of Huguenot strain, they were born in Georgia, men of genius in several directions, before the w^ar accomplished chemists. From Jo-
^ Corbin, Maury, passim.
^ Joseph Le Conte, Autobiography.
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seph's autobiography it appears that he was in youth a favorite pupil of Agassiz. He hesitated in regard to secession, but at last, when the University of South Carolina (where both brothers were pro- fessors) was broken up by the enlistment of all the students, they were swept away in the current, be- coming active workers and severe sufferers for their cause. The Le Contes established laboratories at Columbia, South Carolina, which became the main source of supply for medicines and hospital require- ments. Through them also the South was able to utilize its nitre-beds ;' in the manufacture of powder the Le Contes became indispensable.* Joseph, whom we know best, was an amiable teacher and scholar, who later as a geologist, in the University of Cali- fornia, of which John became president, established a fame among the first. His autobiography, written late in life, narrates in calm and unembittered terms many painful experiences in the war-time. With manly candor he writes:
"I am not blaming anybody on either side. It was evidently an honest difference of opinion as to the nature of our government ; it was honestly fought out to a finish, and the result frankly accepted. But let it be distinctly understood that there never was a war in which were more thoroughly enlisted the hearts of the whole people — men, women, and chil- dren— than were those of the South in this. To us it was literally a life and death struggle for national ^ Mrs. Chesnnt, Diary from Dixie, 187.
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existence; and doubtless the feeling was equally honest and earnest on the other side."^
The aspect of the North at the end of 1863 was in marked contrast to that of the South. In poli- tics it was an "off year," the elections being for state officers only; but the results indicated better things for the Union, particularly the overwhelming de- feat of Vallandigham in Ohio. As regards loss of men, the suffering in both sections was similar. The homes were few which had not sent out at least one soldier, and very many had sent more, from whom the grave gathered a heavy tribute. But excepting, this desolation, there was little sign of bad times at the North. It was prosperity that one beheld. The energetic government supplied every need with prompt liberality; every forge was making weapons and ammunition; every factory turning out tents, clothes, equipments, supplies of every kind. What- ever the land could produce, crops, horses, cattle, found a ready market; there was labor for all, and the pay was sure and ample; to the adroit and rapacious, extraordinary opportunities opened for amassing fortunes; to many wealth came almost without an effort. The merchants who happened to have on their shelves a stock of cotton cloth, the farmers who had raised good crops of onions or tobacco, the lumbermen who had beams and boards on hand, sold their merchandise at unexpected prices. A public debt, to be sure, was rolling up, surpassing * Joseph Le Conte, Autobiography, 181.
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everything the world had previously known, and the cautious apprehended a dismal reckoning in the future; but the mass of the people had few fears. They bought with alacrity the government securities and paid with few murmurs the internal revenue taxes, which by this time furnished an abundant return. The rising price of gold was ominous; the disappearance, too, of specie from the currency was startling; but in its place the people accepted the greenbacks, of which there were in circulation,* January i, 1864, $444,825,022, thereby submitting to a forced loan in addition to the ''kewpon bonds," which in thousands of plain households now gave evidence of the confidence in the government. Of the resolute cheerfulness of the northern people, no better or more representative utterance can be found than a passage from the pen of one of the best and ablest Americans, Dr. Asa Gray, in his letters to Dar- win and others at this time.
" Oh foolish people ! When will you see that there is only one end to all this, and that the North never dreams of any other. . . . Wait a year longer and you may return to a country in which slavery having tried to get more has lost all, and as a system, is de- funct. The November elections show a united North. Peace Democracy has made its issue and is dead. The re-election of Lincoln by accla- mation seems probable, supported by moderate men of all sorts, the extremes of the opposing par- ^ Blaine, Twenty Years, I., 643.
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ties alone going against him. Merry Christmas to you!"^
A noteworthy feature of the Civil War was the organized charity. In the wars of past times, up to the middle of the nineteenth century, the com- fort of the soldier depended upon what his govern- ment could give him. The suffering in the Crimea, making plain as it did the inadequacy of the au- thorities to cope with the needs of the troops, de- veloped agencies with which the name of Florence Nightingale is forever bound. Proceeding upon this precedent, at the outset of the Civil War the Sani- tary Commission was organized.^ Its purpose was to supplement the work of the government, in the field, in camps, and in hospitals, supplying to the troops such mitigations of pain and privation as are pos- sible. June 9, 1 86 1, formal organization was effected by an order of the secretary of war. The president of the commission was Henry Whitney Bellows, a New York clergyman of great energy and eloquence, who had initiated the movement ; and its able secre- tary was Frederick Law Olmstead. With them were associated men of distinction in law, business, above all in the medical profession; at once a beginning was made of organized philanthropy.
Everywhere there was zeal ; the suffering to be relieved was that of sons and brothers. Money was ready to flow; especially the hearts of women were
* Asa Gray, Letters, II., 511-517.
2 Still^, Hist, of the Sanitary Commission.
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moved ; whatever their brains could suggest, or their hands contrive, came in overflowing measure. This offering needed direction, which the Sanitary Com- mission undertook to furnish. That its work was wisely done was questioned by few that saw it ; and its record is an interesting chapter in the history of the war. The service rendered by its managers, though unpaid, was constant and able. Through its channels at least twenty-five million dollars flowed out in relief.^ The commission possessed the con- fidence of the soldiers who were ministered to, and of the people who ministered. Since the war it has been the model upon which the "Red Cross" work in various lands has been planned.
Affiliated with the Sanitary Commission was the Western Sanitary Commission, organized in St. Louis for work in the Mississippi Valley.^ A brother or- ganization was the Christian Commission, supported by people of evangelical religious belief, whose effort was, besides physical relief, to reinforce the work of the chaplains in the care of souls.
While in these great societies all was done with the best purpose and the warmest zeal, they did not escape criticism. Still6 speaks of a lack of sym- pathy on the part of the government departments;^ and General Sherman, with his usual frankness, while admitting great usefulness, declares that the
* Stills, Hist, of the Sanitary Commission, 490.
2 Mrs. Charlotte Eliot, W. G. Eliot, 212.
^ Stills, Hist, of the Sanitary Commission, 510.
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ministrations of such societies should be in the rear of fighting armies and not on the field of battle.^ Their creation, however, was undoubtedly a step in advance, and henceforth no civilized country will array armies without studying carefully this Ameri- can experience.
A word or two should be said as to the work of the public press in the war. The newspaper, which in quiet times is the universal informant and counsel- lor, becomes in war-times more than ever a necessity of life. Bread and the newspaper," one is scarcely less essential than the other. The work of the press during the Civil War was performed by men often of the highest character and ability. Horace Gree- ley, Henry J. Raymond, Charles A. Dana, A. K. McClure, Murat Halstead, Whitelaw Reid, George W. Smalley, Joseph Medill, Samuel Bowles, and many more most capable writers — the list is a brill- iant one of those who in editorial chairs or as corre- spondents in the field furnished news and moulded opinion.
Nevertheless, throughout the war, there was never a time when in either North or South the relations were entirely easy and cordial between commanders and newspaper-men, and they often w^ere at swords' points. Lee is said to have spoken of newspapers in general with great severity.^ He impugned their patriotism, instancing particularly their conduct
* W. T. Sherman, Memoirs, II., 392.
^ R. E. Lee, Jr., Recollections and Letters of Lee, 416.
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when, in 1863, Longstreet was sent west before Chickamauga ; it was vital to keep the movement secret, but the newspapers insisted on making it pub- lic. Grant's disposition towards the correspondents was no kinder;* and Cox tells stories of jarring and ill-accord between generals and correspondents which probably all generals at the front could have paral- leled.^ These writers, no doubt, were often incon- siderate, tactless, and perhaps worse. The general was sometimes browbeaten in his headquarters by a correspondent who told him that his paper every day made and unmade greater men than he was. One writer of note, William Swinton, was accused by both Grant and Cox of being an eavesdropper, a presumptuous hector, and a calumniator.
Perhaps there is a deep-seated reason why soldiers and newspaper-men should be unfriendly. If "war is hell," as a high military authority states, it is no more infernal in the devastation and homicide which results, than in the deception which war makes no less necessary. From the time of the Trojan horse, at the outset of history, to the capture of Aguinaldo, in our day, the course of human warfare is marked no more by bloodshed than by strategy. There can be no warfare without strategy, and strategy is the art of making feints. The great strategist is he who can best hoodwink his adversary, and strike his blow while the adversary is in error. Such a course
* Grant, Personal Memoirs, II., 68. ^ Cox, Military Reminiscences, I., 172.
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once entered upon, is liable soon to become bald treachery and lying. To make war is of necessity to produce devastation, man-slaying, untruth — a thing only justifiable as the sole means of averting what is worse. The world believes that the time is not yet come when it can dispense with the sol- dier, and while he exists, the soldier apparently must deceive as well as burn and kill.
Now, while it is essential in the soldier's trade that he go furtively to work, the very air in which the press lives is publicity. It exists to tell the truth fully and accurately; and if a suspicion arises that the press comes short here, it is straightway dis- credited, loses influence, and may be thrust aside. When, therefore, the journalist, the man who must tell the truth or fail, faces the soldier, who must de- ceive or fail, a natural antagonism develops between the two; unfriendliness is inevitable. The agent of publicity can never be welcome in a campaign.
CHAPTER V
CONCENTRATION UNDER GRANT (December, 1863-ApRiL, 1864)
THE military events of the summer and fall of 1863 brought to the front the great commanders who were thenceforth to take responsibility and achieve victory. In civil life also new men pushed to the front. The thirty-eighth Congress (elected in 1862), which met December 7, 1863, organized by choosing as speaker Schuyler Colfax, of Indiana, the party vote standing loi to 81, the majority in- dicating accurately the Republican strength, though there were besides a few Democrats who usually sus- tained the administration.* Colfax, who thus came forward into high position, was by trade a printer, a man active-minded and industrious, who since his appearance in public life had been marked as an able debater, and now confirmed a reputation as a skilful parliamentarian.^ Several of the prominent men of the thirty-seventh Congress were missed: Elbridge G. Spaulding and Roscoe Conkling, of New York; John A. Bingham and Samuel Shellabarger,
^ Blaine, Twenty Years, I,, 497 et seq. 2 Riddle, Recollections, 249.
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of Ohio; Galusha A. Grow, of Pennsylvania, and still others. Of the new men, perhaps the most brilliant was Henry Winter Davis, of Maryland, whose ardent Unionism had operated powerfully to save his state from secession, and who, though be- fore the war a supporter of John Bell, was opposed to the conservatives and a promoter of the war. His powers were conspicuous, and the highest anticipa- tions were entertained of his eminence as a states- man, blasted two years later by his premature death. Another interesting figure was the brave soldier, Major-General Robert C. Schenck, who, severely wounded at the second Bull Rim, resumed a political career which he had earlier followed with distinction, and was chosen from Ohio as the suc- cessor of Vallandigham. He became chairman at once of the committee on military affairs, and soon succeeded Thaddeus Stevens at the head of the com- mittee of ways and means, always showing a grasp of mind and a capacity for effective statement which won admiration. At this time, too, entered James A. Garfield, also a major-general, who had earned his promotion at Chickamauga. His health was breaking under the hardships of campaigning, and he now chose a field of service no less arduous if less dangerous. William B. Allison, John A. Kasson, Samuel J. Randall, and a young man of thirty-three, James G. Blaine, were also among the new members. Into the Senate came a representa- tion of the loyal war governors, Morgan, of New
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York; Sprague, of Rhode Island; and Ramsey, of Minnesota; while among the Democratic accessions were Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland, and Thomas A. Hendricks, of Indiana.
The work of the thirty-seventh Congress had been one of path-breaking, in framing a military policy, devising ways and means to meet vast expenditures, and undermining slavery as the root of all the political evils. What was begun, the thirty-eighth Congress must continue. The proposition for an amendment of the Constitution making slavery thenceforth impossible will be discussed further on.*
On the first day of the session, E. B. Washburne, of Illinois, moved a restoration of the grade of lieu- tenant-general, and supported his motion in a most earnest and picturesque speech, making no secret of the fact that he had Grant in view for the revived dignity. In spite of some reasonable opposition (Garfield, for instance, thought the movement pre- mature), both Houses voted favorably, and on February 29, 1864, the bill was signed.^ The mod- est hero appeared in Washington, stammering and abashed before plaudits, as he had never been be- fore batteries. No one paints more vividly the homeliness of the rather shabby, unimpressive fig- ure than Richard H. Dana, who saw him at Wil- lard's as he started out under his new responsibili- ties. "I suppose you don't mean to breakfast
* See below, chaps, viii. and xiii. 2 S. Statutes at Large, XIII., 11.
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again till the war is over," remarked Mr. Dana, jocosely. **Not here I sha'n't," said Grant, han- dling his English as cavalierly as if it were a rebel position.^
With his new rank was imposed upon Grant the entire command of the Union armies, both East and West. Sherman took the department of the Mis- sissippi, McPherson succeeding him as commander of the Army of the Tennessee. Halleck lost his prominence, though still on duty as " chief -of - staff," near the secretary of war. No incident con- nected with these changes is more interesting than the interchange of letters between Grant and Sher- man.^ The general-in-chief accords to Sherman and McPherson, and to his other lieutenants, the fullest credit for their help in winning his successes, show- ing in every simple phase a warm affection for these friends and aids; to all which the impetuous Sher- man responds with affecting heartiness: the tw^o manly spirits, long working together, now stood in a conjimction, the fruit of which was to be the sav- ing of the nation.
As long as the national arms enjoyed a reasonable success, it w^as certain that the support of Congress would not fail. Vigorous means, as we have seen, had been taken to keep up the number of the troops. Those whose terms were about to expire were en- couraged to "veteranize," or re-enlist, by an offer
1 Adams, R. H. Dana, II., 272.
' W. T= Sherman, Me^noirs, I., 426.
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of a month's furlough; the draft was firmly en- forced, the people acquiescing quietly in what had at first seemed to many an outrage. The money commutation allowed brought many millions into the treasury. By this time the enlistment of negroes had become a settled policy, no longer objected to by soldiers in the field or conservatives at home. Massachusetts sent two regiments of her own colored citizens well equipped and officered,^ and in other northern states negroes were enlisted; but the great body of colored troops were recruited among the freedmen of the South. These did ex- cellent service on military works, in garrison duty, and often among fighters at the front: Lincoln stated in his message, December 8, 1863, that there were a hundred thousand colored men in the govern- ment service, fifty thousand of whom had borne arms in battle.^
It was natural and inevitable that there should no longer be any such rush to the ranks as in 1861 : the country was sadly familiar with the grimness of war's visage; and the opportunities at home for well-paid work were such as had rarely before been known. The privilege of hiring substitutes sent some very poor material into the ranks: but the gaps were filled, and as spring drew near, a vast multitude, on the whole patriotic, brave, well trained, and well equipped, stood ready to force the
* Pearson, John A. Andrew, II., 69 et seq. ^Lincoln, Works (ed. of 1894), II., 454.
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struggle to a finish, too fondly believed to be within easy reach.
After Vicksburg, the capture of Mobile seemed a natural and feasible sequence, but Grant and Sher- man were diverted, as has been seen, to Chatta- nooga. Banks, in Louisiana, also would willingly have gone eastward against the only Confederate port left between Florida and Texas, but the govern- ment formed another plan. A French army was making progress in Mexico, and French intrigues were already on foot designed to affect Texas. To thwart Napoleon III., a firm hold on Texas seemed necessary ; yet at the moment the North held noth- ing in that state. ^ Banks was therefore ordered to Texas, where, in the fall of 1863, after a failure at Sabine Pass, he made important lodgments along the coast at Brownsville on the Mexican border, and at Matagorda Bay. It was thought in Washington that a more satisfactory point of occupation would be found in the interior, to be approached by the Red River. Banks accordingly, in 1864, much against his will, made preparations for such a cam- paign as the spring approached, the only season when the Red River is navigable.
Meantime, the programme of the year's battles opened elsewhere. The important towns on the Atlantic coast of Florida had for some time been in the Federal grasp. With the false idea that a Union sentiment existed in the interior, which * Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, VIII., 285.
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might be encouraged by the advance of an army thither, Gillmore, commanding the department at Charleston, was allowed to despatch such an expe- dition. General Truman Seymour, a brave and ex- perienced officer, was put in charge ; he entered upon the task with misgivings, and soon met with mis- fortune. Florida was not ripe for a Union move- ment; and at Olustee, February 20, 1864, Seymour was repulsed, losing eighteen hundred and sixty men* in his vain effort.^
Grant's policy was to avoid wasting strength in outskirt operations, and concentrate upon two main lines of effort. The campaign of Olustee came before he was in charge; and Banks's expedition up the Red River could not well be checked in March, when Grant assumed his wider duty. Di- visions from the Thirteenth and Nineteenth Corps were detailed, all that could be spared after making secure the widely extended Federal conquests in Louisiana and Texas; and in addition a fine body of ten thousand men under A. J. Smith was sent down from Vicksburg. Steele, also commanding in Arkansas, was ordered southward to co-oper- ate; while Porter's fleet of gun-boats was to as- cend the stream on the flank of the advancing army.
Though the effort was great, the signs from the
* T. W. Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment, 240. ^ War Records, Serial No. 65, pp. 274-356 (Florida Expe- dition).
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outset were unfavorable/ The Vicksburg troops were lent with strict directions that they must be returned in a month: the water in the Red River, though it was the season of flood, was almost too low for navigation: Banks's statement of require- ments necessary to success was neglected: he was delayed while inaugurating, under the president's orders, the new state government of Louisiana. His lieutenants, among them W. B. Franklin, in the background since Fredericksburg, were West Point men, and recognized with no good grace the au- thority of a superior from civil life, who, however brave, had gained little credit in the field. Fortu- nately for the Federals, conditions were no better in the camp of their foes. Dick Taylor, an able officer, who had sustained the Confederate cause in Louisiana as well as circumstances allowed dur- ing the trying year of 1863, was still on the ground, but ranked by Kirby Smith, to whom had been committed the whole trans-Mississippi. Both gen- erals, with their forces, came together below Shreve- port, high up on the Red River, and discord began at once.^ Had Taylor's hands been free, the Federal experience would probably have been rougher than it was.
Banks pushed forward close to Shreveport, having the fleet on his right. While advancing through
* War Records, Serial No. 61, pp. 162-638 (Red River Cam- paign).
^Taylor, Destrtiction and Reconstruction, 148 et seq.
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pine barrens, in a region almost waterless, on a single narrow road, his head of column was heavily- assailed at Sabine Cross Roads, April 8, 1864, his advance being routed and driven back. Next day, at Pleasant Hill, the Federal fortunes were better, but the army grew constantly more demoralized. The losses were great, and dissensions paralyzed the leadership. The river fell when by all precedents it should have risen. Porter, apprehensive that his ships would be caught in the shallows, hurried down stream, and the army followed,, maintaining a severe running battle, as far as Alexandria. The month having expired, the ten thousand men lent from Vicksburg were now recalled by peremptory orders from Grant: a serious crisis confronted the Federal force.
The one man who in this disastrous campaign earned great credit was a Wisconsin lieutenant- colonel, Joseph Bailey, whose feat was not one of arms, but of engineering. The Red River at Alex- andria is broken for a mile by rapids, passable by steamers only at high water. When Porter reached the falls with the fleet, he found only three feet and four inches of water, whereas his larger vessels with their heavy armament required at least seven feet. Bailey, acting as engineer on Franklin's staff, was a lumberman, and, recalling his experiences, proposed a plan which met with opposition,* but which he was allowed to try. Finding skilled helpers in regi- ^ Mahan, Gulf and Inland Waters, 204 et seq.
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ments from Maine and the Northwest, he raised the river to an adequate level by means of ingenious ''wing dams." On May 13, the ten great gun-boats and the smaller craft were brought off in safety, for Bailey *s engineering raised the river six and a half feet; this, with what the channel before contained, was ample for the purpose. While the worst was in this way happily averted, Banks's campaign badly failed. The recrimination between the "po- litical general" and his West Point subordinates was unusually bitter, only surpassed by the violent quarrel between the Confederate leaders. The com- ponents of the forces on both sides were soon ab- sorbed elsewhere, and no serious engagement took place afterwards in the trans-Mississippi.*
The Red River was practically the end of Banks, who had been more unfortunate than blameworthy ; for although retained in nominal command in Louisiana, he was really superseded by E. R. Canby, appointed to superintend a new department to include the whole trans-Mississippi.
The lieutenant-general appointed the beginning of May, 1864, as the moment for advance both in the East and West. The probable Confederate strength at that date is put at 477,233 men ''present for duty"; to whom Grant opposed 662,345. The statement of the adjutant-general as to Federals "present equipped for duty," April 30, is 533,447:
* See Committee on the Conduct of the War, Report, 1864- 1865, pt. ii., 3-401.
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a corresponding deduction from the Confederate estimate so as to state the relative numbers in commensurate terms, would make the total number of southern combatants actually ready for battle about four hundred thousand.^
Though Grant was concentrating as none of his predecessors had done, a considerable dispersion of force was unavoidable. In the North, thousands of prisoners must be guarded, and much local disaf- fection must be watched: Canada also, when mis- fortune befell, showed a spirit semi-hostile, harbor- ing many active enemies of the North. At the Northwest and West, the Sioux and other Indian tribes must be held in check, while the great areas of conquered country both east and west of the Mississippi, could not be left ungarrisoned. A num- ber of small armies, therefore, aggregating a con- siderable force, were scattered about. Dix com- manded the troops in New York and New England, Couch in Pennsylvania, Lew Wallace in Maryland, Augur at Washington, Heintzelman the central West, Pope in Minnesota, Rosecrans in Missouri, Wright on the Pacific, Carleton in New Mexico. Steele, who was charged with holding the trans- Mississippi against Kirby Smith, had a large force; as did also Banks (soon to be superseded by Canby), who, it was hoped, might move against Mobile. But for the most part the Federals were massed for two main operations, which Grant designed should
^ Badeau, Military Hist, of Grant, II., 555, 556.
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be merged into one. Sherman confronted Johnston on the northern border of Georgia, his force compris- ing the Army of the Cimiberland under Thomas, reinforced by the Army of the Tennessee imder McPherson and the Army of the Ohio now imder J. M. Schofield. Meade, with the Army of the Potomac, faced Lee in Virginia, having on his left, about Fortress Monroe, a force gathered from the Carolinas and southeastern Virginia, which it was hoped would support him powerfully, and on his right still another force in the Shenandoah Valley, which was expected also to lend an effective hand/ Where best among such conditions could the commander-in-chief take his place? After the ex- perience with Halleck, it was quite plain that he should be somew^here in the field. "Do not stay in Washington," wrote Sherman, March 10. "Hal- leck is better qualified than you to stand the buffets of intrigue and policy. Come out West. . . . For God's sake, and your country's sake, come out of Washington! I foretold to General Halleck before he left Corinth the inevitable result to him, and now I exhort you to come out West. Here lies the seat of the coming empire, and from the West when our task is done, we will make short work of Charles- ton and Richmond, and the impoverished coast of the Atlantic." ^ Grant did not stay in Washington, neither did he go West. Recognizing the heaviest
^ Badeau, Military Hist, of Grant, II., 29, etc. 2 W. T. Sherman, Memoirs, I., 428.
V
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and most important task to be the destruction of Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia, he estab- lished himself at the side of Meade.
Meade, since Gettysburg, while perhaps over- cautious, had done nothing to forfeit the respect and confidence of his countrymen.^ He followed Lee as he retired southward, in the summer of 1863, and was ready to try conclusions for a second time. In September came the departure of Longstreet for Chickamauga, and his absence made Lee wary; before the month ended the departure of the two Federal corps under Hooker, in the same direction, restrained Meade. A contest of manoeuvres ensued, in which Meade showed skill, ^ with now and then a flash of battle, the most serious being an affair at Bristoe Station, October 14, 1863, where Warren, com- manding the Federal rear-guard, struck effectively at A. P. Hill, and an affair at Rappahannock Sta- tion, November 7, much to the credit of the Sixth Corps. A general engagement was imminent near the Chancellorsville battle-ground, at Mine Run, but the moment passed unused and both armies went into winter quarters. Lee was depressed after Gettysburg and wished to retire, to which neither his government nor army would listen. The failure of Meade to secure marked success in his fall cam- paign was perhaps due more to inefficient subor- dinates than to his own defects: in particular the
* War Records, Serial No. 48, passim. 2 Pennypacker, Meade, chaps, xiv., xv.
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loss of Reynolds and the temporary disabling of Hancock could not be made good.^ When the lieutenant-general appeared, in March, 1864, in the camp of ^leade, the latter begged to be allowed to re- tire in favor of some commander tested and trained imder Grant's own eye, magnanimously offering to serve in a lower place : this Grant refused to permit, ascribing to Meade all honor, and retaining him in his high command. To Meade's high-minded con- duct the course of Buell was in contrast. When offered by Grant the command of a corps with Sher- man or Canby, he declined to serve under men whom he had once outranked, and was soon after mustered out.2
^ General Warren before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, Report, 1865, pt. i., 387.
2 Grant, Personal Memoirs, II., 50.
CHAPTER VI
ON TO RICHMOND (May, 1864-JuNE, 1864)
WHEN the Army of the Potomac stood ready for its campaign of 1864, on April 30, it counted ninety-two thousand men and two hundred and seventy-four guns. The Eleventh and Twelfth Corps were still in the West ; the First and Third Corps had been incorporated with others. There remained the Second Corps under Hancock, now recovered from his wounds, the Fifth under Warren, and the Sixth under Sedgwick. Close by, but for a time not combined with the others, was the Ninth Corps, under Burn- side, about twenty thousand strong. Farther away, but expected to co-operate immediately with the Army of the Potomac, were the two wings, the Army of the James, comprising the Tenth and Eighteenth Corps, about forty thousand men, and the force in the Shenandoah Valley and West Vir- ginia, of about twenty - six thousand men. By great misfortune both wings were inefficiently com- manded— the Shenandoah force by Sigel, whom it was necessary to consider on account of his sup- posed influence with the Germans — the Army of the
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James, by Benjamin F. Butler, the War Democrat, whose capacity for working ill, should he be thrust aside, was dreaded.* Of both these men Grant had no personal knowledge, and the responsibility for their appointment must rest mainly with the ad- ministration. To the short-comings of Butler, es- pecially, the disappointments of the campaign now about to begin are largely due.
To this great Federal army Lee opposed in the immediate front but sixty thousand men, with two hundred and twenty-four guns, under Longs treet, Ewell, and A. P. Hill; but Beauregard was hastening to his aid, bringing all the strength that could be gathered in the Carolinas and along the coast. Lee's inferiority in numbers was to some extent balanced by the advantage that his work was to be defensive, on interior lines, within a country friendly, and with which he was familiar. He was thoroughly known and idolized by his army, which he had led for two years, and which from the corps commanders to the rank and file was the selected strength of the Con- federacy— as admirable a body of troops, perhaps, as the world has ever known.
Grant, a complete stranger to his men, and also to his officers, except as he had encountered here and there a few in the old army, planned an advance which would make it possible to receive supplies from the Potomac and the Chesapeake, inlets from which ran far into Virginia to points near his pro- ^ Badeau, Military Hist, of Grant, II., 44.
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posed line of movement. His campaign was to be aggressive and unremitting: ''I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer," was his grim announcement. It was to be a warfare of the hammer, of unceasing attrition.^
On the night of May 3, the Army of the Potomac crossed the Rapidan, the Fifth Corps at Germanna Ford, followed at once by the Sixth ; the Second Corps crossed farther east at Ely's Ford; the great train of five thousand wagons was divided between the two fords ; the Ninth Corps advanced in rear of the others, but all were south of the river in good time on the 4th. All orders were issued through Meade, though Grant was at hand and supreme. The two commanders were and remained in harmony, but the arrangement was unsatisfactory, causing a di- vision of authority which sometimes proved unfort- unate.^
Once across, the army was on familiar ground. Warren, followed by Sedgwick, was presently at the scene of Stonewall Jackson's last exploit, just a year before; while Hancock stood at Chancellors- ville. It was again the old tangle of the Wilderness, a barren country, stripped at an earlier time of its forests to feed long-abandoned furnaces and mines, now covered with a second growth of thicket almost
^ Grant's report in War Records, Serial No. 67, p. 13 (From the Rapidan to the James).
^ Ropes, "Grant's Campaign in Va. in 1864,'! Military Hist. Soc. of Mass., Papers, IV., 377 et seq.
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impenetrable. Through the tract, worthless for farming, with clearings only here and there, narrow roads accommodated the infrequent travel. The line of the Union advance was southward along a track crossed by roads from the southwest, first a turnpike, then a mile or two south a plank -road, both leading from Orange Court House, the head- quarters of Lee, towards Fredericksburg.
Grant would have been glad before fighting to push through the Wilderness into the more open country southward, where his superior numbers would give him an advantage ; but Lee saw plainly his opportunity, and struck at once. May 5. Ewell marched down the turnpike upon Warren and Sedg- wick, while A. P. Hill advanced by the plank-road against Hancock, who, pushing on from Chancellors- ville, had reached a point south of his colleagues. Burnside, too, hastened forward, the design being to place him between the turnpike and the plank-road ; while on the other side Longstreet, whom Lee had retained at Gordons ville, in view of a possible cross- ing by the Federals farther up the Rapidan, forced his march eastward, arriving opportunely. I The conflict from the first was almost hand to I hand. The Army of the Potomac, aware that the t new general believed they had never been made to j do their best in action, sought close quarters, which their adversaries were not slow to grant. The battle of Sedgwick and Warren against Ewell on the turn- I pike was quite distinct from that of Hancock against
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Hill, and later Longstreet on the plank-road. Both fights, however, were alike heavy and indecisive — alternations of advance and retreat on either side, the encompassing thickets making regular forma- tions impossible: companies and squads breasted one another — fragments into which brigades and regiments were necessarily torn. The persistency on both sides was thorough, the bloodshed unstinted. It was on the plank-road that the combat came near- est to a decision. At the junction here with a wood- track called the Brock Road, Sedgwick, proceeding with most of the Sixth Corps to the support of War- ren, had left the division of Getty, who, when Han- cock arrived, pressed hotly, supported by him, upon A. P. Hill. Success for a time seemed likely. Hill was forced back upon the path by which he came; but Longstreet was at hand — the best of troops and leadership at the critical moment.^ Lee was in the front, and could with difficulty be in- duced to retire to a less threatened station, after a pledge from Longstreet to restore the day.
Guided by the sheriff of the county, who knew every by-path, Longstreet, making a detour with certain divisions, from the concealment of the brush assailed Hancock's fiank, and almost brought about a crushing of the Federal wing as complete as that in Hooker's battle of the previous year. A strange coincidence now befell. As Stonewall Jackson, at the critical moment, fell by the fire of his own * Longstreet, Manassas to Appomattox, 559 et seq.
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men, so now, Longstreet with his party, hurrying along the plank-road, his impetuous colimms dis- ordered as they charged, were mistaken for Federal cavalry; whereupon the Twelfth Virginia fired a volley, prostrating many. A Minie ball passed through Longstreet 's right shoulder and neck; he was borne off the field, waving his hat feebly with his left hand that his disconsolate columns might see he was yet alive. It has been claimed that a Confederate victory might have been won but for the striking down of Longstreet; but the strength of the Army of the Potomac was there, and undis- mayed. No successor could on the instant carry out the complicated manoeuvre which was in prog- ress, not even Lee, who presently assumed com- mand. The opportunity passed, and Hancock's men were soon rallied.^
Thus May 5 and 6 passed in ineffective strug- gle. The Federal loss was 17.3 per cent, of their number engaged, the Confederate loss 18.1 per cent.^ Besides the disabling of Longstreet, the Con- federates lost other generals, among them Micah Jenkins, who since the wounding of Hood at Chicka- mauga had ably led his division. The Federals lost Wadsworth, and on May 9, the able and experi- enced Sedgwick. May 7, Grant set out for Spott- sylvania Court-House, hoping to pass round his adver-
* Longstreet, Manassas to Appomattox, 562; Sorrel, Recollec- tions of a Confed. Staff Officer, 240.
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sary's right : but Lee was there before him. Long- street's corps, driven out of its bivouac by a forest- fire, marched some hours earher than the orders required, and by good luck was able to bar the Federal advance; whereupon ensued a series of combats as determined and as sanguinary as those of the Wilderness. At this stage of the war, every position was at once intrenched, the troops contriv- ing m.arvellously, in the briefest time, out of rails, stones, earth, whatever might be at hand, a shelter from assault, rude but answering the purpose. Lee, acting on the defensive, employed to the utmost this warfare of the axe and spade. At Spottsylvania, Grant found his adversary everywhere protected; and though he did not hesitate to assault, gained no lasting advantage.
Two attempts of this kind were especially brill- iant, and promised at first success. On May 10, Emory Upton, a young colonel of the Sixth Corps, gained a lodgment within the enemy's works which failed of results by not being supported. On May 12, Hancock's first division, tmder Francis C. Bar- low, performed a feat of extraordinary gallantry. Barlow charged near daybreak a point where the Confederate line was thrust forward in a salient. The crest was surmounted and crossed: the de- fenders were captured right and left within the para- pet : twenty cannon, thirty standards, four thousand men, the ''best division in the Confederate army,"*
^ Henderson, Science of War, 325 (Wilderness Campaign).
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with two generals, were in Federal hands. It was, in fact, the Stonewall division, with its com- mander, Edward Johnson. The Coniederate centre appeared fairly broken; a few rods more and the Army of Northern Virginia would be cut in two. But a second line of works rose before the stormers, well defended. The Federal supports, instead of failing to come up, this time came up too soon and too numerously: the crowd of men, disordered by success, failed to make the best application of their strength:^ Lee was at hand, putting himself in the front to repel the danger. The men of Gordon's division turned his horse backward, while a shout arose from the ranks, ''General Lee to the rear!" They refused to advance till Lee retired out of danger.^
Then throughout the day raged a conflict surpass- ing in its terrors. The assailants clinging to one side of the w^orks they had captured faced the defenders on the other: captures were made back and forth by hauling men over the intervening breastworks. Meantime a volleying went forward so incessant and deadly that oak-trees, their trunks severed by the balls, fell to the earth. ^ With thou- sands more added to his losses, the Confederate list being still larger,^ Grant again, May 19, swept round
* Barlow, in Military Hist. Soc. of Mass., Papers, IV., 254. 2 Gordon, Reminiscences of Civil War, 278. ^ Such a trunk nearly two feet thick is preserved in the National Museum at Washington. ^ ^Livermore, Numbers and Losses, 112.
i
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the Confederate right, only to confront his adversary fixed in new strongholds.
A fortnight had now elapsed since the Army of the Potomac crossed the Rapidan, and we must look at the work of the other armies, which set out at the same time, co-operation with which was an essential part of Grant's campaign. In the Army of the Valley, the force under Sigel, and a smaller body under Crook and Averell farther west, advanced as ordered. Crook accomplished results, reaching southwest Virginia, destroying supplies, and break- ing the railroad connection with Tennessee. Sigel's operations were feeble: encountering opposition, he was presently heard from in retreat, and soon after was relieved of command.*
A much greater disappointment befell Grant in the case of the Army of the James. Here Butler was in command for reasons other than military. Grant went to Fortress Monroe to make Butler's acquaint- ance, and, we may believe, to form some conclusion as to his capacity. Apparently, Butler impressed him as clear-headed and forceful.^ At any rate, Grant acquiesced in the selection, and thought to make things secure by placing at the heads of the Tenth and Eighteenth Corps, which together made up the Army of the James, Q. A. Gillmore and W. F. (Baldy) Smith, accomplished and experienced engi- neer officers of the regular army. Smith, in par-
^ Grant, Personal Memoirs, II., 72, 142. 2 Butler's Book, chap. xiv.
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ticular, had Grant's confidence, having served under his own eye with brilhant efficiency at Chattanooga, and Grant brought him east believing that there was no officer better fitted than he to command a corps. It was expected that Butler would admin- ister his department, which included southeastern Virginia and North Carolina, leaving the field oper- ations to Smith's guidance.^ But Butler had no thought of being an3rwhere except in the fore- ground and actively directed the movements.
Charles Francis Adams, who as a cavalry officer took part in this campaign, compares Grant's cam- paign of 1864 to that of Napoleon in 181 5. While Napoleon advanced upon Wellington, it was essen- tial that Grouchy should detain Bliicher: so while Grant engaged Lee, Butler was expected to defeat or at least neutralize Beauregard,^ for to that able soldier Jefferson Davis, after hesitation, assigned the preservation of Lee's communications, and the defence of Richmond from the south and east. As to Grouchy so to Butler, the orders were vague, much being necessarily left to the discretion of the lieutenant. Beauregard did not arrive upon the scene till May 10,^ and Butler, who had struck out with great vigor, was on the verge of success. May 4, after a feint towards the York River, his two
* Grant to Butler, April 2, 1864, War Records, Serial No. 67, p. 16.
^ Adams, Some Phases of the Civil War, 36 (pamphlet, 1905). ^ Roman, Beauregard, II., 199.
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corps were transferred to City Point on the James, occupying immediately Bermuda Hundred, a strong position within a few miles of Richmond.
Here the fair beginning, a surprise to the Rich- mond authorities, was frustrated by unwisdom. The relation of the general to his lieutenants had become in a high degree unpleasant; he held them to be insubordinate West-Pointers who would in- jure, if they could, a volunteer; they held him to be headstrong, inexperienced, and incapable.^ Disap- proving of his scheme of operations, they united in recommending an advance upon Petersburg, a city twenty-two miles south of Richmond and command- ing its southern connections, which at the time was unfortified and ungarrisoned. "The Grouchy of the Wilderness Campaign," though his troops were within three miles of Petersburg, May 9, rejected the advice in an angry letter,^ ordering a movement in another direction, which he claimed his orders fa- vored. Had the advice of Smith and Gillmore been followed, apparently nothing could have prevented the capture of Petersburg. To avoid the loss of the three great southern roads (to Danville, to Weldon, and the south-side road), and the loss of Richmond, Lee would have been forced to break up from be- fore Grant and march at once southward. The chance was missed; the demonstration of Butler failed; Beauregard arrived with an army, and soon
^ Butler's Book, 649; for W. F. Smith's opinion, see Battles and Leaders, IV., 206. ^ lYar Records, Serial No. 68, p. 35.
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attacked successfully at Drewry's Bluff. The Army of the James, instead of affording the help upon which Grant had counted, was presently "bottled up" * at Bermuda Hundred, as Grant later put it, quite safe, but also quite unable to trouble the peace of Richmond.
Meanwhile, Grant, struggling in his dreadful grap- ple with Lee, reached out as it were to the south, hoping to grasp the help for which he had made provision. As campaign followed campaign, the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac had constantly grown in usefulness, until now it was a formidable arm. Though Pleasonton, who had led it with credit, and Buford, who had done so well at Gettys- burg, had now disappeared, Averill was doing good service with Crook in southwestern Virginia; and Kilpatrick was soon to distinguish himself in Geor- gia. Several forceful young officers worked to the front — D. M. Gregg, Wesley Merritt, James H. Wil- son, and George A. Custer. Grant was bent upon having his troopers under the best leadership, and placed Sheridan in command here, the only com- rade from the West (except Rawlins) whom he had at his side in any prominent position in the Army of the Potomac. Meade's army remained entirely under its old generals, except that at the head of the cavalry rode Philip H. Sheridan, last seen by us mounted upon the cannon at the climax of the bat- tle of Missionary Ridge.
^ Grant, Personal Memoirs, II., 75,
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As Grant, among almost total strangers, found his environment not altogether congenial or fortu- nate, so Sheridan at first was ill at ease and not quite well received. He had in the Wilderness a quarrel with Meade, in the heat of which he threw up his command, but Grant interfered to prevent.* In the woods the cavalry found small opportunity. The embarrassing thickets, filled with infantry, army wagons, and guns, left little scope for horse- men along the encumbered tracks; but at Todd's Tavern, near where Hancock received the blow from Longstreet, Sheridan measured swords with Stuart to some purpose. The latter was a factor whom Grant was anxious to eliminate from the game; great harm, too, would come to Lee if the railroad between him and Richmond could be cut; above all, it was important to connect with Butler, who was relied upon to encircle Richmond on the south about this time.
All this Sheridan must do, and May 9, eluding the divisions of Lee as they manoeuvred for the defence of Spottsylvania Court House, he was soon far on his way. Reaching the Virginia Central Railroad, Custer tore up ten miles of track, wrecking at the same time locomotives, cars, stations, and supplies; and soon after, in like fashion, the road from Rich- mond to Fredericksburg was broken up. Sheridan now hastened towards Richmond, within six miles of which, at Yellow Tavern, he encountered Stuart, * Sheridan, Personal Memoirs, I., 368.
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prompt and bold in his defence. A hard battle en- sued, in which, while the skill and gallantry were equal, the Federal superiority in numbers told powerfully. The Confederates were defeated, Stuart himself being among the slain, a loss to the South hardly less than that of Stonewall Jackson.^
The battle over, Sheridan pursued the division of Fitzhugh Lee nearly to Richmond, pausing only when the inner intrenchments were reached. Had the Army of the James enveloped the city on the south, as it might so easily have done, the hand ex- tended by Grant would have met here a friendly clasp. As it was, Sheridan could do nothing more than elude his many foes, on the battle-fields of two years before, coming down at last by devious paths to Harrison's Landing, McClellan's old camps on the James, with Butler opposite at Bermuda Htmdred. A week had passed since the raid began ; in another week the cavalry returned, Sheridan re- porting to his chief May 24.
In the interval Grant was marching and ma- noeuvring widely. Another move about the flank of Lee brought the Army of the Potomac to the North Anna, where its great adversary with fault- less management. May 23, blocked its path once more behind impregnable defences. Yet another march brought Grant to the Chickahominy, with Richmond almost in sight, but still unattainable. The ground now occupied was precisely that of the ^ McClellan, /, K, B. Sttujrt, chap. xx.
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early operations of the "Seven Days," but the two armies had exchanged positions : while Lee held the . neighborhood of Gaines's Mill, and the line which Meade, as a brigadier in the Pennsylvania reserves, had then maintained against A. P. Hill, Meade now ranged the Army of the Potomac near Cold Harbor, on an area over which Stonewall Jackson and D. H. Hill had advanced to attack Fitz-John Porter.^
The scene awoke sombre memories in the minds of those much-tried veterans, whose associations with this region were of the darkest. Lee stood at Cold Harbor, intrenched more firmly than ever. Since May 4, when the campaign began, the Federals had made almost as many desperate assaults upon impregnable positions as there were days; and all to no purpose. It is probably Grant's worst mis- take, one that always hung heavy upon his heart, that he here resolved upon still another attack in front." The Eighteenth Corps, under W. F. Smith, lying idle at Bermuda Hundred after Butler's fail- ure, had been transferred to the Army of the Poto- mac, now badly in need of reinforcements. As the Federals reconnoitred, no sign appeared that the confronting works were assailable: but with mad recklessness, on June 3 an assault was ordered "all along the line." The obedience and gallantry were unhesitating, the soldiers sometimes pathetically
1 Hosmer, Appeal to Arms {Am. Nation, XX.), 58.
2 Grant, Personal Memoirs, II., 171.
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pinning papers inscribed with their names to their clothes that their bodies might later be identified. The failure was utter. Barlow, with the first divi- sion of the now more than decimated Second Corps, effected a lodgement, as he had within the Spottsyl- vania salient three weeks before: but it was only for a moment; the line recoiled, leaving upon the earth about twelve thousand dead and wounded men.* Grant, with determination almost insane, would once more have applied the hammer, whose smiting head was not of steel, but flesh and blood; his second thought was better and he desisted. The Army of the Potomac lost in killed, wounded, or captured, in the interval from the crossing of the Rapidan to its arrival in June, near the James, 54,926 men. That Grant showed inhumanity tow- ards his wounded at Cold Harbor is an accusation without good foundation. 2 During the week after the assault of Cold Harbor, Grant and his men, baffled and depressed, marched once more south- ward by the left, crossing the James, June 14, at City Point.
June 6, Hunter, who succeeded Sigel in the Shenandoah Valley, won a victory at Piedmont, which made him master of the valley. June 8, he made a junction at Staunton with Crook and Averell,
* Livermore, Numbers and Losses, 114.
^War Records, Serial No. 67, p. 188; see correspondence be- tween Grant and Lee, War Records, Serial No. 69, pp. 638, 639, 666, 667; discussion by Colonel T. L. Livermore, Military Hist. Soc. of Mass., Papers, IV., 457.
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from southwestern Virginia, marching thence with promptness by Lexington to Lynchburg, before which city he arrived on the i6th. The hope of its capture, however, failed; for Lee, alarmed, sent Breckinridge in haste back to the valley ; and, more important, despatched Ewell's corps, twelve thou- sand of his best men, under Early, to meet Hunter. Grant, too, was watchful, sending off Sheridan with two divisions towards Charlottesville to succor Him- ter, whose whereabouts was uncertain. Sheridan was forced to return without finding him, but damaged as he could the Virginia Central Rail- road, and fought a sharp cavalry battle with Wade Hampton and Fitzhugh Lee, June 11, at Trevilian's Station. Hunter, unsupported, living off the coun- try, and out of ammunition, retired to the Ohio River; whereupon Early set forth on an enterprise to be mentioned presently.^
The Eighteenth Corps was no sooner back at City Point, after Cold Harbor, than it was sent against the defences of Petersburg, believed to be not strongly held. W. F. Smith attacked June 15, but not boldly; Hancock, who brought up the Second Corps to his aid, through some oversight of Meade not being informed what he was to do, failed to carry out Grant's purpose.^ Petersburg might easily have been captured. On the i6th, however, the
* War Records, Serial Nos. 70, 71.
2 Grant, Personal Memoirs, II., 189; but see Pennypacker, Meade, 322, and Bache, Meade, 467.
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works were manned, and when the Federal onset at last came it was beaten back. Nor was Grant more successful in his efforts to capture the rail- roads. On the Weldon road, June 22, A. P. Hill foiled an attempt at seizure, defeating badly the Second Corps, for the time without the leadership of Hancock, whose Gettysburg wound had opened afresh. Wilson, with the cavalry, was not more fortunate, for though he tore up many miles of track on both the South Side and Danville railroads, the damage was soon repaired, and the expedition got back only through hard fighting with serious loss.^
Drought set in, during which the roads grew heavy with dust, and the marching columns could scarcely find water: but this put no bar upon the warfare. Down the valley turnpike, Early with his twelve thousand men marched, crossing the Potomac and throwing Washington and the North into panic after the old fashion of Stonewall Jackson. Grant hastily despatched the Sixth Corps on transports from the James ; and the Nineteenth Corps just ar- rived at Fortress Monroe from Louisiana. July 8, Lew Wallace, with one division of the Sixth Corps and an improvised army of militia, clerks, convales- cents, whatever could be gathered about Baltimore at a day's notice, made a brave stand at the Monoc- acy near Frederick. He was defeated, but Grant de- clared the defeat was worth many victories, for Early 1 War Records, Serial Nos. 80-82.
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there lost a day, which saved the capital.* July 11, Early was in the northern suburbs of Washington, but as he hesitated before the bold front of the handful that manned the works, the Sixth and Nineteenth Corps, just arrived, occupied the lines. It was the last, and also the worst, scare which the city under- went . Early retired to the valley, but not to inaction . ^ One more mortification occurred for Grant and the Army of the Potomac in this gloomy mid- summer. A regiment of Pennsylvania coal-miners, directed by their lieutenant-colonel, Henry Pleasants, constructed a mine under a part of the Petersburg intrenchments, which, July 30, was ready for ex- plosion. Grant declares that most careful direc- tions were laid down, which, if followed, would have made sure the capture of the city through the breach, during the resulting panic. The mismanage- ment, for which Burnside was mainly accused, was almost incredible: the preparations ordered were neglected; for the storming column inferior troops with an incapable general were selected. The mine exploded with an effect of which even to-day, after forty years, the so-called crater is an appalling evidence, and the way was clear to the heart of the city. But the stormers, instead of advancing, hud- dled into the crater, while the appointed leader sheltered himself in a bom.b-proof in the rear. The
* Grant, Personal Memoirs, II., 196, 197. 2 War Records, Serial No. 70 (Lynchburg and Shenandoah Valley Campaigns) .
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defenders soon recovered spirit, the division of Mahone being in the front. About four thousand Federals were sacrificed and no advantage gained.^ The Federals had now sacrificed, before and about Petersburg, more than fifteen thousand men, and it was sadly significant that the loss in prisoners was sometimes very large as compared with the casualties. It meant that the Army of the Potomac had deteriorated : the fighters of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania were slain or crushed in spirit; while the fiood of recruits that kept the numbers full, men obtained by the draft, and substitutes gained by high bounties, were not the stuff for soldiers. When discouragement was deepest, Sheridan was appoint- ed, August 7, to command the army in the valley of Virginia, a new military division being constituted. The stifling and melancholy summer approached its end; but as to Virginia there was no lifting of the anxiety. Many causes might be assigned for the Federal failures, but the chief one was the devotion and bravery of the southern troops and the ex- traordinary ability with which they were directed.
1 Grant, Personal Memoirs, II., 202; War Records, Serial Nos. 81, 82 (Court of Inquiry) ; Committee on the Conduct of the War, Report, 1864-1865, pt. i., 525. For the controversy over Grant's campaign of 1864, see Ropes, " Grant's Campaign in Va. in 1864," Military Hist. Soc. of Mass., Papers, IV., 363; McClellan, Grant versus the Record; Badeau, Military Hist, of Grant, II.; Liver- more, "Grant's Campaign against Lee," Military Hist. Soc. of Mass., Papers, IV., 407; C. F. Adams, Some Phases of the Civil War, 32-46; Humphreys, Virginia Campaign of '64 and '6^; Henderson, Science of War, chap, xi.; Long, Lee, chap. xvii.
CHAPTER VII
THE ATLANTA CAMPAIGN (May, 1864-AuGUST, 1864)
SHERMAN, in 1864, was early active. Febru- ary 3 he marched from Vicksburg with twenty thousand men for Meridian, in eastern Mississippi, where the Mobile and Ohio railroad crosses the line from Jackson eastward, forming an important stra- tegic point which Polk had been set to guard. Sher- man directed matters with characteristic energy, de- stroying the roads and the Confederate resources in a region till then not reached by Federal power; but he failed in his hopes to dispose of Forrest, who frustrated the efforts of a cavalry column from Tennessee.^ The elevation of Grant to supreme command brought promotion to Sherman: March 18 he assumed his large responsibilities — the con- trol of four great western armies, with headquarters at Chattanooga.^
The Confederate leaders were in anxious consulta- tion over plans for retrieving the disasters of 1863, no one of which plans seemed so promising as a
* W. T. Sherman, Memoirs, I., 418 et seq. Ubid., II., 5.
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combined and rapid movement northward towards the Ohio River. In this, Bragg's old **Army of Tennessee," uniting with Longstreet, and receiving other reinforcement, it was beHeved might occupy middle Tennessee and Kentucky, and draw north- ward the Federal armies whose range in the South had become so wide. Davis and his new chief of staff, Bragg, as well as Lee, Longstreet, Hood, and other energetic spirits, regarded such an enterprise as hopeful : ^ but it was never entered upon, prob- ably because Johnston, who succeeded Bragg in the command in the Mississippi Valley, was too cautious to make a rash movement. Many obstacles must be removed before such a scheme could be prudent- ly undertaken. While the consultation progressed, the initiative went to the Federals, and the cam- paign took place in the South and not in the North. Longstreet, as we have seen, returned to Lee: while Johnston concentrated to meet what stood before him.
The Confederacy had been sundered the previous year by the capture of the Mississippi River; the new Federal scheme was to sunder it once more by driving a line of conquest southward to the impor- tant city of Atlanta, and thence still farther into the Confederacy.^ To accomplish this task, to Sherman
^ Hood, Advance and Retreat, 88 et seq. ; Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox, 544; Johnston, Narrative, chap, x.; Davis, Confed. Government, II., 548.
2 War Records, Serial No. 72, p. 3 (Grant's Report).
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were assigned nearly a hundred thousand infantry, comprising the Army of the Cumberland, under Thomas, of sixty thousand; the army of the Ten- nessee, under MePherson (who now succeeded Sher- man in that post) , of twenty-five thousand ; and the Army of the Ohio, of fifteen thousand; besides cavalry and 254 guns/ The Army of the Ohio was under John M. Schofield, a new commander who now comes into the foreground. He was of the West Point class of 1853, in which MePherson had been first scholar, Schofield sixth, Sheridan thirty- fourth, and Hood forty -fourth.^ He had filled a post which was full of trouble in administering the Department of Missouri, where the enemy was scarcely more annoying than the jarring local fac- tions. This work he had gladly given up shortly before, to accept command in east Tennessee; and now he led his army to Sherman's side, where he was to prove himself a good soldier.
Johnston stood some thirty miles south, with Dalton for a centre, his army in two corps under Hardee and Hood : early in the campaign the num- ber was raised to seventy-five thousand by the arrival of the corps of Polk from Mississippi, and by other reinforcements.^ He had an efficient force of cavalry under Wheeler. Both armies were made up for the most part of seasoned veterans : the corps
* Livermore, Numbers and Losses, 119.
2 Cullum, Register of U. S. Mil. Acad., arts. Schofield, etc.
3 Battles and Leaders, IV., 247 et seq.
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commanders on both sides were men sifted out for their positions through the severest experience: in the subordinate ranks the rawness of the earHer years disappeared. The proportion of the Con- federates to the Federals was about seven to ten. Operating, as the Confederates did, in a famiHar and friendly country, on interior lines, on the de- fensive, against a foe hundreds of miles from his base, in a hostile country and always the assailant, their inferiority in numbers was balanced by the advantages of position.
Sherman and Johnston had already proved them- selves great leaders, but as they stood now face to face, they were in some ways strongly contrasted. Sherman was forty-four years old, tall, lithe, erect, thrilling with vitality, quick to impatience, but genial, every sentence and gesture indicating alert- ness of mind and soundness of judgment. Ag- gressiveness was very apparent in him — the quali- ties of an offensive leader. Johnston, whose mother was a niece of Patrick Henry, was fifty-seven years old, below the middle height, compact in build, cold in manner, of measured, accurate speech, a dark, firm face surmounted by an intellectual forehead. He was quite at ease under his high responsibilities.^ The wounds received at Fair Oaks were now thor- oughly healed, and he was in full vigor. As Sher- man was in temperament very sanguine, Johnston by nature and through experience was cautious ^ Freeman tie, Three Months in the Southern States, 116.
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and wary. While dominating his environment by- ability and weight of character, he did not invite friendships ; he exacted deference and a recognition of his authority, and when these were withheld became disputatious. He was always at cross-pur- poses with some one, and his Narrative is one long controversy, on the one hand with Jefferson Davis and the Richmond superiors, on the other with subordinates who ventured to dispute the wisdom of his methods. With so much wariness a defensive attitude would be the natural outcome; and this campaign was destined to secure for Johnston a high place as a Fabian.
While the Federal army was numerous and well equipped, it had in truth enormous difficulties to face. The region in which it operated, northern Georgia, was wooded and mountainous, in great part thinly settled, and quite unsurveyed and unmapped. The hundred thousand men, with thirty or forty thousand animals, must be supplied mostly from the Ohio River, by a single track of railroad running from Louisville to a great permanent depot at Nash- ville; thence to Chattanooga to a secondary depot; thence on towards Atlanta. Up to the very pre- cincts of Louisville, these communications were ex- posed to the enemy, even while Sherman was pre- paring to start. Forrest, now developed into a matchless commander of cavalry, appeared at Pa- ducah on the Ohio River; this time he was beaten off, his troopers capturing Fort Pillow as they re-
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tired, April 13, and refusing quarter to the negro soldiers in its garrison.^ His return even thus far north was to be feared; while as regards the more southern stretches, the line betw^een Nashville and Chattanooga was certain to be often attacked, and below Chattanooga might be broken any day.
Along this thread of connection, one hundred and thirty cars, carrying ten tons each, must proceed every day, in order that Sherman's army might be fed and clothed; a still larger service must be pro- vided if supplies were to be accumulated against a blockade. To preserve this vital cord every possible arrangement was made; heavy detachments were stationed in the important towns; guards sheltered in block -houses watched every important bridge and culvert.^ Two men from civil life, carefully selected, were appointed to superintend. Since the work of these men was quite as important as that of generals in the field, they should be honored in the record. W. W. Wright was a constructing en- gineer, to whom the rank of colonel was given for convenience, together with a force of two thousand men. His task was to keep the road in repair, a duty thoroughly performed. The destruction from natural wear and tear, in track and rolling-stock, necessarily great in view of the demands, was made good without delay ; while the wreck made by raiders and the retiring enemy, of bridges, rails, tanks, and
^ War Records, Serial No. 57, p. 518 et seq. ^ W. T. Sherman, Memoirs, II., 10.
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locomotives, was repaired as if by magic, from du- plicate material kept on hand. The telegraph fol- lowed the army even to the battle-field, the elec- tricians carrying wire and insulators in wagons up to the firing-line. Along the road thus held open by Colonel Wright, a skilled railroad operator. Colo- nel Adna Anderson, directed the passage of thou- sands of tons demanded for every day's consump- tion, with such promptness that the army was never in a strait.*
The beginning of May, 1864, came before the many absent troops (furloughed for a month, it will be remembered, on condition that they should "veter- anize") were fully returned to the ranks; but Sher- man set forth ^ on the day appointed in conference with Grant, May 3. Two days later he faced John- ston, intrenched at Dal ton, the Army of the Cum- berland in the centre and the Army of the Ohio to the east, while to the Army of the Tennessee was assigned the work of flanking the Confederate left, the first manoeuvre of the campaign.
The enemy was much too strong to be attacked in front ; but when it presently appeared that his posi- tion might be turned, McPherson made his way through Snake Creek Gap towards Johnston's rear, threatening his communications at Resaca and opening a path for the whole Federal army about the Confederate left. Johnston thereupon aban-
* Cox, Military Reminiscences, II., io6.
^War Records, Serial Nos. 72-76 (Atlanta Campaign).
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doned Dalton, retiring southward to Resaca, where he occupied strong works previously constructed, and faced his foe again. Such was the procedure during nearly two months, Johnston slowly falling back from position to position, each a stronghold skilfully selected and fortified beforehand; out of each one of which in turn he was flanked by Sher- man. Two months of such fighting brought the army, after a progress of more than a hundred miles, in sight of Atlanta. Let it be noted that in the con- temporaneous Virginia campaign, though Lee once, in the battle of the Wilderness, attacked fiercely, almost recklessly, he afterwards, like Johnston, re- tired and fortified, while Grant outflanked him until Richmond was at hand. The two campaigns were essentially alike.
Sherman believed that McPherson made an error in not attacking Resaca. That point on his ap- proach was but weakly held, and might have been captured.^ As it was, the Federals gained small ad- vantage : here, too, Johnston was still further favored, for Polk reinforced him from the west.
Two streams large enough to obstruct an army, the Oostanaula and the Etowah, now crossed Sher- man's path ; running southwest the streams unite to form the Coosa River, at which point stands Rome,
I a Confederate centre for supplies and manufactures.
I Sherman crossing the Oostanaula, May 15, captured Rome, and through the cotmtry eastward, more ^ W. T. Sherman, Memoirs, II., 34.
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open than the Dalton neighborhood, again threat- ened Johnston's Hne of supply. The latter fell back as before, yielding Calhoun, Adairsville, and King- ston, and giving no opportunity for attack.^ Sher- man, most anxious for a battle on open ground, where his superior numbers would tell, ran risks to invite an encounter. May 18, at Cassville, his corps became somewhat perilously separated as they marched; and Johnston, who was eagerly watching for a false step, prepared to attack. Polk and Hood, who felt their troops were ill-placed, dissuaded him, preventing a stroke that might have been successful.^ A week after, at New Hope Church, Howard with the Fourth Corps, and Hooker with the Twentieth (into which had been consolidated the old Eleventh and Twelfth), assaulted unsuccessfully the strongly intrenched Confederates. May 28, Hardee attacked the Federals with no better success.^ In the ma- noeuvres which follow^ed, Sherman seized the railroad to Atlanta, crossing the Etowah, and establishing a depot at Acworth. Johnston withdrew to the neigh- borhood of Marietta.
In the almost constant skirmishing and battles of this first month of the campaign, the Federal loss in killed, wounded, and missing, was little short of twelve thousand, while that of the Confederates ap-
* Cox, Atlanta, chap. vi.
2 W. T. Sherman, Memoirs, II., 65; Johnston, Narrative, 323; Hood, Advance and Retreat, chaps, v., vi.
3 Cox, Atlanta, 84.
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proached ten thousand. The Federal number was kept up by the arrival of the Seventeenth Corps, under Frank P. Blair. While Sherman had gained much ground, as yet he had won no permanent ad- vantage, and his operations seemed no more effective than did those of Grant at the same moment in Vir- ginia. Meantime his connection with the Ohio, maintained by the slender line of railroad through Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, grew more pre- carious with each advance.
The prudent Johnston had the fact well in view, that the halting progress of the Federal armies both in East and West was powerfully stimulating dis- affection throughout the North; he believed if he could hold his own for a while longer, he might do much to bring about the downfall of the Lincoln administration in the presidential campaign now at hand.^ In June, severe rains prevailed, during which the streams became floods and the country a morass. While Sherman with his mired corps was prohibited from action, Johnston stood before Marietta on Kene- saw Mountain and heights adjoining. As hereto- fore, his engineers planned well, and having at comm.and the Georgia militia and thousands of im- pressed negroes, he had prepared in advance a shel- ter for the Confederate army. The respite gained through the storms was used to make the works more than ever formidable. Sherman, fuming at delay, apprehending attacks upon his communica- ^ Johnston, Narrative, 363.
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tions by Johnston's unemployed men, or, indeed, the detachment of a force to Lee in Virginia, which he was especially charged to prevent, resolved upon a direct assault.
At this moment disappears from the stage Lieu- tenant-general Leonidas Polk. While a cadet at West Point, he was converted under the influence of the chaplain. Reverend C. P. Mcllvaine, after- wards bishop of Ohio, taking orders after graduation in the Protestant Episcopal Church, and becoming bishop of Louisiana.^ He early took up arms for the South, not relinquishing his sacred ofQce. It throws an interesting light upon the men w4th whom we are dealing to read that a few days before his death, as they were riding together, the bishop was told by his fellow lieutenant-general. Hood, that he had never been received into the communion of the church, and he begged that the rite might be performed.^ The bishop arranged for the cere- mony at once — at Hood's headquarters, a tallow candle giving light, the font a tin basin on the mess-table. The staff were there as witnesses ; Hood, "with a face like that of an old crusader,"^ stood before the bishop. Crippled by wounds received at Gaines's Mill, at Gettysburg, and at Chickamauga, the warrior could not kneel, but bent forward on his crutches. The bishop, not robed, but girt with his
^ Cullum, Register of U. S. Military Acad., art. Polk.
2 W. M. Polk, Leonidas Polk, II,, 329, 330.
3 Mrs. Chesnut, Diary from Dixie, 230.
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soldier's belt, administered the rite. A few days later Johnston was baptized in the same simple way. Now the bishop's time had come: June 14, while reconnoitring on Pine Mountain, a Federal cannon-ball struck him full upon the breast and his life of devotion was ended.
As June drew near its end, the sun shone out, the roads dried, and Sherman resumed activity. Rest- lessly reconnoitring the hostile lines, he fixed upon the point which seemed weakest, and on June 27, 1864, the assault was delivered with a loss of two thousand;^ the failure was complete; whereupon Sherman, making the best of the roads now becom- ing firm, returned to his former methods. Manoeu- vring again by the right, he presently crossed the Chattahoochee, a considerable stream, and now had Atlanta in full view. But the unconquered John- ston anticipated him; withdrawing as before, he occupied previously prepared lines more formidable than ever.
During the second month of this campaign, the tale of Sherman's loss in killed, wounded, and miss- ing was seven thousand five hundred; for the Con- federates, probably seven thousand.^ Aside from the great battle at Kenesaw, the skirmishing in the rain had been constant ; and although at this stage of the war even the skirmish-line was elaborately forti- fied as soon as occupied, so close and deadly was the conflict that a daily average of two hundred went
^ Livermore, Numbers and Losses, 121. ^ Cox, Atlanta, 351.
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to grave and hospital. Yet the temper of both armies remained buoyant; neither entertained the thought of failure; each followed its general with confidence unshaken.
The weight of authority favors the view that the retreat of Johnston before Sherman was a master- stroke of military art, and that his removal from command, which now took place, was a grave calam- ity to the Confederacy, and one of the worst of many blunders committed by Jefferson Davis in his delusion that he possessed good military judgment.* Hood, who was appointed to succeed Johnston, criticised this policy severely, and Davis presents his side with dignity and force. ^ In truth, the course of the Richmond government can be palliated; Johnston, estranged from them, while serving them ably and with perfect fidelity, maintained always an attitude sullen and unfriendly. While reporting with exactness what happened, he was silent as to his expectations and purposes — a reticence which irritated and embarrassed. A little frankness and sympathy on his part towards Bragg and Davis, whom he left in doubt as to whether or not he meant to defend Atlanta, would probably have kept him in his place. ^
* See Wood and Edmonds, Civil War in U. 5., 392; testi- mony of Hardee and Stewart, corps commanders, in Johnston, Narrative, 365 et seq. ; Pollard, Lost Cause, 543.
2 Hood, Advance and Retreat, chaps, iv.-ix.; Davis, Confed. Government, 11., chap, xlviii.
^ Cox, Military Reminiscences, 11., 275.
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From Sherman down, there was not a man in the Federal army who did not hear with joy that John- ston was no longer in command ; and it is impossible to read his Narrative without feeling that the cause of the Union escaped a great peril. Four hundred miles now stretched between Sherman's hundred thousand men and their base at Louisville, the line throughout open to attack, with troopers like For- rest sure to be let loose upon the communications. Johnston was displaced for doing in Georgia pre- cisely what in Virginia had added to the fame of Lee — falling back upon the post he was set to de- fend, while his adversary with enormous waste of life and resources was no nearer beating the army or capturing the city. Johnston insisted upon the wisdom of protracting the campaign with reference to its effect upon the northern presidential election. Had Atlanta been held during the fall by a con- tinuance of this Fabian policy, probably the party which at the North declared the war to be a fail- ure would have come into power, and the cause of the South might have secured a new consider- ation.*
Johnston's policy was not purely defensive. He hoped and watched from the first for a moment when his adversary would lay himself open and he might strike with effect. At Cassville came this op- portunity, missed through the reluctance of his lieu- tenants to run the risk. A second chance opened ^ Johnston, Narrative, 355 et seq.
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before Atlanta, in the very moment of his dismissal, and Johnston confided his plan to Hood, as the latter stepped into his place. Sherman's three armies now immediately before the city, advancing near Peach-Tree Creek, became separated, a wide gap opening between Thomas and McPherson. Hood, assuming command on July 18, 1864, following his predecessor's suggestion, on the 20th threw his army into the opening, to the great peril of Sher- man. Hood had courage, but never great skill, and was beaten off by severe fighting; Johnston would have done better. July 22, Hood tried again in the northern suburbs of Atlanta. Hardee, get- ting into the rear of the Army of the Tennessee, made an attack of which the issue was for a time doubtful. McPherson, in the moment of surprise, rode into the skirmish-line of Cleburne's advancing division. They called to him to surrender; but raising his hat as if in salute, he turned his horse to gallop away, but fell with a mortal wound.
This was the worst calamity of the day, but there was a heavy sacrifice of less important lives before the battle ended. A week later, July 28, while Sherman, reaching out to the southwest, attempted to seize the railroads on which Atlanta depended. Hood delivered a third blow at Ezra Church — but like the rest it was manfully encountered and turned aside, again by the Army of the Tennessee, ' with Howard at the head in place of McPherson. Hood's aggressive policy was not resvilting well, his
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own losses for July being larger than those he inflicted. August, like July, was a month of severe fighting. Stoneman, despatched southward with cavalry, in the hope that besides injuring the enemy he might reach Andersonville and set free the thirty- two thousand prisoners whose condition was a mat- ter of great concern to the North, quite failed of large results. To save his main force, he sacrificed himself with a few followers, facing imprisonment — "a chivalrous act, which did not make impression when it afterwards appeared that the surrender was to an inferior force, and quite needless.^ At the end of the month there were severe encounters about Jonesboro, Sherman struggling as before to cut off Hood from Macon and Montgomery as he had already done from Augusta. September i, Atlanta was still holding out; Lincoln's anxiety had not ceased, and the people feared that the out- pour of blood and treasure in Georgia, as well as in Virginia, would lead to no result. Since the advance from Chattanooga, Sherman had lost thirty-five thousand men, while inflicting upon his enemy a loss as heavy. It was a time of great darkness, and the country knew not that it was the darkness ■ that precedes the daw^n. On August 3 1 , the Demo- cratic convention at Chicago adjourned after pro- claiming that the war was a failure,^ and on that day it seemed to the world that neither Grant nor
* Cox, Atlanta, 189.
2 McPherson, Polit. Hist, of the Great Rebellion, 417.
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Sherman had accomplished anything to prove the declaration false. Just in time, September 2, came the sunburst: Hood evacuated Atlanta, and the Twentieth Federal Corps took possession.
CHAPTER VIII
ATTEMPTS AT RECONSTRUCTION (1863-1864)
WHEN once the country was involved in war, debate became secondary to the wielding of weapons: but from the first there were underlying difficulties which must come up if the Federal gov- ernment finally asserted its supremacy. Was the arbitrary control of individuals in the North, away from the scene of hostilities, to have the ultimate sanction of the supreme court and of public opinion ? Were those engaged in making war on the United States ultimately to be put on civil trial for treason ? Were the enactments and executive acts against slavery, forged in the heat of contest, to stand after peace should be restored ? Were the states, as fast as they acknowledged the impossibility of getting out of the Union, to be restored at once to their former status?
The extent of the war powers of the government was a question warmly discussed in Congress and outside. One writer on the subject gravely claimed that, ''It was intended by . . . the Constitution . . . that the powers of Government in dealing with
124 OUTCOME OF THE CIVIL WAR [1863
civil rights in time of peace should be defined and limited: but the powers to provide for the general welfare and the common defence in time of war should be unlimited." ^ During 1863 the suspen- sion of the habeas corpus, and other invasions of ordinary private rights, were regulated by statute and by practice; the president's earlier acts were covered by a kind of statute of indemnity, his au- thority to suspend the habeas corpus definitely ad- mitted: but the sentiment of the cotmtry was against arrest and confinement without some spe- cific charge. Nevertheless, conduct in the govern- ment, which at first appeared arbitrary, thenceforth passed unchallenged.^
As for slavery, the Republican majority in the House in 1 863-1 864, though only twenty, was radical and energetic. Not satisfied even with the Proclamation of Emancipation, on December 14, 1863, James M. Ashley, of Ohio, like Lincoln tall and uncouth, but possessed of political shrewdness and moral earnestness, introduced a momentous measure — namely, to submit to the states in proper consti- tutional fashion, with the approval of two-thirds in each House of Congress, a thirteenth amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery in the United States.^
* Whiting, War Powers and the Constitution, 27. 2 Dunning, Essays on' the Civil War, 62.
^ Cong. Globe, 38 Cong., i Sess., 19; John Sherman, Recollec- lions, 277 et seq.
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When the war began, not one-tenth of the people of the country would have favored immediate and unconditional abolition; but in the three years' struggle sentiment ripened rapidly.^ Congress was throughout much in advance of the people; while the president held in check the legislature, he also counselled and led the country, which in the school of events was learning that he was the main agent to bring about a happy consimimation. The meas- ure of Ashley was referred to the judiciary com- mittee, which at a later date recommended its sub- stance as a thirteenth amendment: a test vote on a resolution to table stood 79 for the amendment and 58 against it, an evidence that a two-thirds vote in favor of such a measure could not be secured in the House.
January 13, 1864, Senator John B. Henderson, of Missouri, proposed in the Senate a joint resolution to abolish slavery throughout the United States by a thirteenth amendment to the Constitution, which February 10 was reported by Lyman Trumbull, of Illinois, in these words: ''Neither slavery nor in- volimtary servitude, except as a punishment for crime w^hereof the party shall have been duly con- victed, shall exist in the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction." The spokesman of the opposition was Garrett Davis, of Kentucky, who proposed to amend by excluding the descendants of negroes on the maternal side from all places of
^ Blaine, Twenty Years, I., 504 et seq.
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office and trust under the government of the United States. He proposed at the same time an amend- ment (a slap at the section from which so much originated of which he disapproved) consoHdating the six New England states into two, to be called East and West New England. In the debate that followed, Trumbull ascribed to slavery the present misfortunes of the country, and earnestly pleaded for its removal. Clark, of New Hampshire, criti- cised the Constitution, lamenting its recognition of slavery, to which he also traced the public woe. On the other hand, Saulsbury, of Delaware, justified slavery from history and Scripture, citing both Old and New Testament authority in its sanction; while Hendricks, of Indiana, objected to amending the Constitution while eleven states were unable to make themselves heard in the matter. The debate lasted from March 28 to April 8, when a vote of 38 to 6 in favor of the measure was taken.*
When Henderson's resolution was submitted to the House, issue was again joined, and the test vote stood 76 to 55, the necessary two-thirds still want- ing. It was, however, vigorously debated, Morris, of New York, Ingersoll and Arnold, of Illinois, and George S. Bout well, of Massachusetts, standing out among the Republicans; while among the Dem- ocrats Samuel J. Randall, of Pennsylvania, and George H. Pendleton, of Ohio, were especially able.
^ Cong. Globe, 38 Cong., i Sess., 13 13 et seq.; Blaine, Twenty Years, I., 506.
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Randall exclaimed that the policy pursued was uniting the South and dividing the North, which could not be gainsaid ; ^ while Pendleton argued with acuteness that three-fourths of the states could not by any technical process either establish or abolish slavery in all the states ; that the power to amend meant not the power to revolutionize, and it was nothing less than a revolution which was under dis- cussion.
The vote on the passage of the amendment, taken June 15, 1864, stood 93 to 65 : the bill was evidently growing in favor, but did not yet command the necessary two-thirds. Ashley, who from the first had steered the measure, by an adroit manoeuvre made sure of its thorough discussion by the peo- ple: he voted with the opposition; then, after the announcement, using his parliamentary privilege, entered upon the Journal a motion to reconsider the vote, and declared that the question should go before the country, and that he would bring it up in the following December, at the next session.^ The matter thus became a live issue in the presi- dential canvass just beginning.^
The financial situation of the government at the opening of the session, December 7, 1863, was de- cidedly improved. The amended national bank act was in operation ; taxation was beginning to be pro- ductive ; the successes at Gettysburg and Vicksburg
^ Cong. Globe, 38 Cong., i Sess., 2991.
2 Ibid., 3357. ^ Blaine, Twenty Years, I., 507.
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caused gold to drop, and the five-twenty bonds were rapidly taken. The customs duties were producing all that had been hoped for: though the returns from the internal revenue caused some disappoint- ment. But there was no thought in Congress, or in the mind of the secretary of the treasury, other than to press forward on the lines already laid down. Seven hundred and fifty -five million dollars was the estimate of what would be re- quired before the end of the fiscal year, June 30, 1864; Chase expected to provide $594,000,000 from further loans: additions to the internal revenue taxes were expected to yield $150,000,000; $161,- 500,000 was anticipated from customs duties and other ordinary sources.^ To Chase's demand for authority to act. Congress responded liberally, as John Sherman says, "placing in the power of the Government almost unlimited sources of revenue, and all necessary expedients for borrowing." ^ On March 3, 1864, a new loan act was passed providing for an issue of $200,000,000 in bonds :^ the minimum period of redemption was placed at ten years and the maximum at forty, which gave them the name of "ten-forties." Through an error of Chase, who set the interest at five instead of six per cent., this issue of bonds proved less successful than the five- twenties : the total amount sold up to June 30 was
^ Dewey, Financial Hist, of U. S., 312 et seq. 2 John Sherman, Recollections, 279. 8 U. S. Statutes at Large, XIII., 13.
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only $73,337,000. Chase tided over the strait by issuing, as he had before, short-term six-per-cent. notes, the interest to be compounded, which in- vestors took easily, an expedient which caused con- tinued anxiety and embarrassment, for these loans rapidly matured and had to be renewed/
Not only did the laws relating to loans engage the serious attention of Congress, but also those relating to currency, customs duties, and internal taxes. For such legislation the foundation was laid by the preceding Congress, but numerous supple- menting and correcting acts were passed. The in- ternal revenue bill now enacted, June 30, was far more comprehensive and searching than its prede- cessor: Indeed, every instrument or article to which a stamp could be attached was counted in; all incomes above six hundred dollars must pay ten per cent. ; while licenses were exacted for every call- ing, with a minute care that nothing could escape. A special income tax of five per cent., in addition to the previous tax, was levied to provide bounties for enlisting soldiers, but the measure passed only after long debate and hesitation, for discontent was feared among the people. The tax, however, met with lit- tle objection; and in general the internal revenue was cheerfully paid, pouring a handsome contribu- tion into the national coffers. It was a time of
* Dewey, Financial Hist, of U. S., 313.
2 U. S. Statutes at Large, XIII., 223-306; John Sherman, Recollections, 278.
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prosperity; the market was good for everything that could be grown or manufactured ; labor was in demand.
The customs duties were carefully revised and much increased by a statute of Jime 3, 1864, the consideration of protection to home industries being ignored in the immediate need of a heavy revenue. Many articles heretofore free became dutiable, and a large increase of income at once resulted.^
June 3, 1864, Congress carefully went over and re-enacted in a new form the national bank legis- lation of 1863,^ still with a comptroller of the currency in charge of this branch of the treasury. Whereas in 1863 sixty-six state banks underwent conversion into national banks, in 1864 the number was five htmdred and eight. In subsequent years the number rapidly increased with the stimulus of an act of March 3, 1865, by which state bank issues were legislated out of existence by a ten-per-cent. annual tax. It was no hardship for any honest in- stitution to comply with the conditions, and make secure the payment of its circulating notes by a deposit with the government. Probably in our whole financial history no more beneficent change has ever taken place. If, as has been suggested, it could not have been brought about except under the pressure of war,^ the establishment of the na- tional banking system is a make-weight worth men-
' U. S. Statutes at Large, XIII., 202. Ibid., 99.
^ Dewey, Financial Hist, of U. S., 323.
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tioning even against the loss and distress of the evil time.
It is well to note that the financial managers in this session were turning to less objectionable meth- ods than the issue of irredeemable paper money. By the acts of February 25 and July 11, 1862, and January 17, 1863, $450,000,000 greenbacks had been authorized, of which $431,000,000 were outstanding. As all forms of gold and silver had disappeared, small notes, ''fractional currency," in denomina- tions running as low as three cents, were authorized, March 3, 1863, the amount rising at last to $50,- 000,000.^ The greenback pervaded life, but no more were issued after the summer of 1864.^ It was becoming apparent that sotmder expedients were possible, and Congress was adopting them.
The quotation of gold rose during the summer to 286, indicating a depreciation of paper money to about thirty- five per cent, of its face value. The best heads were at fault as to what ought to be done. A piece of financial legislation which completely failed of its end was the gold bill of Jtme 17, 1864,^ intended to correct the abuses in the buying and sell- ing of gold. The law proved to be worse than useless, gold rising in price as never before. The best finan- ciers became urgent for its repeal, and fortunately there was time for reconsideration before the ses- sion closed. The fluctuations in gold, at the time
^ Dewey, Financial Hist, of U. 5., 310. ^ Ibid., 288. ^ U. S. Statutes at Large, XIII., 132.
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so much misunderstood, are regarded now as the symptoms of the pubUc depression and anxiety: when success came, people were no longer alarmed lest the greenbacks should become imperilled.^
John Sherman declares the devising of the great financial schemes, sometimes mistaken but often successful, to have been the work of the ways and means committee in the House and the finance committee in the Senate. They occupied the prin- cipal attention of both Houses, and may fairly be claimed as successful measures of the highest im- portance. I was deeply interested in all of them, took an active part in their preparation in com- mittee and their conduct in the Senate, and feel that the measures adopted contributed largely to the triumph of the Union cause." ^ The veteran statesman, writing thirty years later, does not claim too much. The financiering of the Civil War period may properly excite our admiration and gratitude. Mistakes were inevitable; but the tremendous tem- porary exigency was met, and in some ways the financial condition of the country was vastly and permanently bettered.
Of the acts not relating to slavery or finance, passed at this session, the more important^ were those looking towards greater military efficiency, including a new enrolment act, and one creating the
* Dewey, Financial Hist, of U. S., 297.
^ John Sherman, Recollections, 281.
3 U. S. Statutes at Large, XIII., 6, 11, 30, 32, 47, 385.
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office of lieutenant-general, already referred to; en- abling acts for statehood for Nevada (March 21,1 864) and Nebraska (April 14, 1864); an act to encourage immigration (April 19, 1864), which John Sherman thinks was justifiable only under the extraordinary circimistances prevailing :^ and acts relating to Pacific railroads. More liberal grants were bestowed upon the roads authorized the previous year; and a new enterprise, the Northern Pacific Railroad, to connect Lake Superior with Puget Sound, was sanctioned, and most liberally endowed from the public lands. ^ The most exciting discussion in Congress in the session of 1 863-1 864 was upon the status of the rebellious states, and resulted in a disagreement between the executive and legislative branches of the government that threatened at first to wreck the administration. The origin of this controversy must be traced back to the beginning of the war. As a provisional arrangement, to remain in force only until the formalities of reorganization could be com.pleted, the administration appointed ''military governors," "with authority to establish all neces- sary officers and tribunals, and suspend the writ of habeas corpus, during the pleasure of the president, or until the loyal inhabitants of the state shall organize a civil government in conformity with the constitution of the United States." ^
* John Sherman, Recollections, 280.
^ U. S. Statutes at Large, XIII., 356, 365.
^ Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, VI., 345.
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No military governor was necessary in Virginia, for a minority, after the secession of the state in
1 86 1, organized a loyal state government, with Francis H. Peirpoint at the head; and the senators and representatives chosen under this government were duly recognized by Congress. Soon after, steps were taken for the setting off of the western counties, and in 1862 was organized the new state of West Virginia, with Wheeling for a capital ; June 19, 1863, it was formally admitted to the Union, on the fiction that the Peirpont government was competent to give the necessary assent of "Virginia." Peirpont's shadowy commonwealth, often called the "vest-pocket government," with Alexandria for a capital, was also represented for a time in Congress.^
By the end of 1863 five of the seceding states, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana, were in whole or in part nominally sub- jugated: and some steps needed to be taken with reference to their relations to the Union. March 5,
1862, Andrew Johnson was confirmed as military governor of Tennessee, Albert Sidney Johnston having just retired as far south as Murfreesboro after the Confederate defeats at Forts Henry and Donelson. Here, although there were two repre- sentatives in Congress, the provisional arrangement was not replaced by any state government until a period later than that to which we have arrived.^
^ Am. Annual Cyclop., 1863, art. Virginia. McCarthy, Lincoln's Plan of Reconstrttction, 1 et seq.
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May 2, 1862, Edward Stanley was made military governor of North Carolina; but for a long time there was no great development of Union senti- ment. In Louisiana, August, 1862, General George F. Shepley, who had been made by Butler mayor of New Orleans, was appointed military governor ; and by his authority, December 3, 1862, a state election was held at which 7760 votes were cast, resulting in the choice of two Federal representatives, who were duly admitted to seats at Washington. No attempt to reorganize the state government was made in 1863/ In Arkansas, though Federal success in the field and wide-spread Union sentiment induced Lin- coln as early as March, 1 862 , to appoint a military gov- ernor, reconstruction remained in abeyance^ until 1 864, when a free-state organization came into existence.
December 8, 1863, Lincoln took the portentous step of sending to Congress a special message con- taining a copy of a proclamation already issued, irrevocably committing the executive to a general plan of reconstruction. He announced as the con- ditions necessary for the recognition of a state, three preliminaries: (i) The completion of an organiza- tion by persons who (2) have subscribed to the Con- stitution of the United States, and (3) who have pledged themselves to support the acts and procla- mations promulgated during the war with reference to slavery." ^
^ McCarthy, Lincoln's Plan of Reconstrtiction, 36 et seq. 2 Ibid., 77 et seq. ^ Dunning, Essays on the Civil War, 77.
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The president further dealt with the status of individuals by prescribing an oath to be used in states lately in rebellion, pledging the person taking it to support the Constitution of the United States and all acts and proclamations put forth during the rebellion relating to slavery, except such as had been formally repealed: this oath might be taken by all men except high military and civil officers of the Confederacy, and others who had resigned civil or military positions in the United States to take part in the rebellion, or who had unlawfully treated colored men in the United States service who had been taken prisoners. To all persons taking this oath, full amnesty for past offences was granted. Moreover, whenever, in any rebellious state, a ntmi- ber not less than one-tenth of the voters at the presidential election of i860 should desire, having taken the oath, to reconstitute their state, they should have power to do so, and thereupon return to the old relations with the Union. The proclama- tion further declared that any temporary provision made for the freedmen of a state, recognizing their freedom and looking towards their education, would not be objected to by the national executive: it suggested that as regards name, constitution, laws, boundaries, etc., there should be as little departure as possible from what had been established before: it recognized that the admission to seats in the Fed- eral Congress, of persons elected as senators and representatives, rested entirely with Congress, being
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outside of executive control. The proclamation concludes by stating that while thus laying down for rebellious states a method for returning to their allegiance, it must not be understood that no other possible mode would be acceptable/
In the message, the president in his usual clear and straightforward way reviewed the situation, citing the acceptance which the Emancipation Proc- lamation had met at last, the justification and growing approval of the employment of negro sol- diers, the lessening of pro-slavery sentiment in the border states, the favorable change in the feeling of Europe. He maintained that his action was authorized by the Constitution or by statutes. "The proposed acquiescence of the national execu- tive in any reasonable state temporary arrangement for the freed people" is made with the hope ''that the already deeply afflicted people of those states may be somewhat more ready to give up the cause of their affliction, if to this extent this vital matter be left to themselves ' ' ; while at the same time the president retained power to correct abuses. He dwelt on the possibility of other acceptable plans for reconstruction, and urged Congress to help for- ward the great consummation,^
John Hay, who was on the floor of Congress when the message was received, recorded in his diary that the approval seemed unanimous. In the Senate, not only Chandler, Sumner, and Wilson spoke of it
* Lincoln, Works (ed. of 1894), II., 444. 2 454.
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with delight, but Dixon, of Connecticut, a strong conservative, and Reverdy Johnson, the Democrat, of Maryland, also approved. In the House the sentiment was similar, George S. Boutwell, James A. Garfield, Henry T. Blow, of Missouri, all men of radical views, were full of enthusiasm. One mem- ber went shouting through the lobbies : * ' The Presi- dent is the only man. There is none like him in the world ! ' ' Reverend Owen Love j oy exclaimed : ' ' How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings'." while Horace Greeley, who was on the floor of the House, less devout but not less hearty, declared the message ' ' devilish good. ' ' In congratulating Lincoln, conservatives vied with radicals. The president was greatly cheered, and with good reason : to devise a settlement of this most difficult matter in a way almost universally accepta- ble among loyal men was an achievement indeed.^
The judiciary eventually sustained fully the view of the executive regarding reconstruction, the su- preme court unanimously showing in its opinions that, like the president, it never doubted the con- stitutional existence of the states. "Circumstances had disarranged their relations with the Federal Government, but with the correction of the dis- turbance the former conditions could be resumed. ' ' ^
* Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, IX., 109.
2 Dunning, Essays on the Civil War, 72; see opinion of su- preme court in the Prize Cases, December term, 1862, 2 Black, 668; also case of the Venice, 2 Wallace, 278.
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As to the legislative branch of the government, however, a want of harmony began to appear which brought momentous consequences. While at one with the executive and the judiciary, in according to the states a being incapable of destruction by any unconstitutional organization of the inhabitants, Congress shrank from the steps towards restoration announced in the president's message of December 8, 1863. It was feared that Lincoln would be lax in exacting satisfactory guarantees of continued loyalty.
The change in the temper of Congress soon mani- fested itself. Henry Winter Davis, of Maryland, moved at once in the House that the part of the message relating to reconstruction be referred to a special committee "on the rebellious states," of which he was made chairman; and on February 15, 1864, he reported a plan of reconstruction quite different from Lincoln's.^ Davis, able and of high personal character, a cousin of David Davis, of Illinois, Lincoln's intimate friend, had won the ad- miration of the president, who greatly desired his friendship and support ; but Davis had taken a dis- like to Lincoln, perhaps because the latter favored the Blairs,^ which developed into hostility extreme and vindictive. In spite of the bitterness, Lincoln's all-abounding magnanimity wrapped Davis within his regard; the president could not win him, but he steadfastly endured, striking no return blow.
* Cong. Globe, 38 Cong., i Sess., 668 (February 15, 1864). ^ Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, IX., 113.
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In opposition to Lincoln's idea, declared in his inaugural and repeatedly reaffirmed, that no state had power to secede from the Union, Davis main- tained that the seceding states were out of the Union — a proposition so vehemently announced in the preamble that the House rejected it, but the same idea pervaded the resolutions which followed.* The work already begim in states wholly or partly conquered^ was to be set aside as invalid, and noth- ing more of the kind attempted. The incom- petency of the executive to act in the case being thus assimied, the bill laid down as a " Congressional plan " a scheme much more severe and difficult than the one rejected; in any state w^hich might have succumbed to the Federal arms, imder a provisional governor a census of white men was to be taken, a majority of whom must take the oath of allegiance, after which delegates might be elected to a conven- tion to establish a state government. In the new state constitution three provisions must appear: (i) disfranchising practically all high civil or mili- tary officers of the Confederacy; (2) abolishing slavery; (3) repudiating all debts and obligations created by or under the sanction of the usurping power. Such a constitution having been adopted and ratified, the provisional governor was to cer- tify the same to the president, who after having been authorized by Congress to do so, should recog-
^ Cong. Globe, 38 Cong., i Sess., 2107 (February 22, 1864). 2 See chap. viii.. above.
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nize the state; after which recognition congressmen and presidential electors might be chosen/
Davis supported his bill in a speech of imusual power, ^ in which, while denoimcing the amnesty oath suggested by the president as utterly inade- quate, and rejecting contemptuously any plan for a scheme based upon the votes of only one-tenth of the former voting population, he strongly urged the passage of his bill. He argued that the proclama- tion recognized slavery ; that reconstruction belonged to Congress alone, and should go to the root of things. Rarely in the history of the United States has eloquence produced so marked a result. Whereas among the Republicans opinion had at first been almost unanimous in favor of the president's plan, the ablest and most cautious being among the heartiest in their approval, when the matter after much debate came to a vote, March 22, the Davis bill passed by 73 to 59.
It was brought up in the Senate by B. F. Wade, who sustained the measure in a strain similar to that of Davis. It is evident that the Republican leaders had made up their minds to set Congress athwart the president's plans. Hence the vote was favorable in the Senate, and the bill, usually called the " Davis-Wade bill," went to the president for his signature on the closing day of the session.
The diary of John Hay, who was at the presi-
* McPherson, Polit. Hist, of Great Rebellion, 317.
^ Cong. Globe, 38 Cong., i Sess., App. (March 22, 1864).
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dent's elbow, is here again most interesting. Lin- coln sat in the president's room at the Capitol, July 4, at noon of which day Congress was to adjourn. Members intensely excited stood at hand as the bills were one after another disposed of. When the reconstruction measure came at last, Lincoln laid it aside, whereupon in the general tension of the group, Zachariah Chandler sharply interrogated Lin- coln as to his intentions. " As to prohibiting slavery in the reconstructed states," said Lincoln, ''that is the point on which I doubt the power of Congress to act." It is no more than you have done your- self," said Chandler. ''I conceive," said Lincoln, that I may in an emergency do things on military grounds which cannot be done constitutionally by Congress." Mr. Chandler, not concealing his anger, went out ; while Lincoln, turning to the cabinet who sat at hand, said: I do not see how any of us now can deny and contradict what we have always said, that Congress has no constitutional power over slavery in the states." One senator present, Fes- senden, of Maine, expressed his entire agreement with this view. The president continued: ''the position of these gentlemen, that the insurrectionary states are no longer in the Union, seems to me to make the fatal admission that states whenever they please may of their own motion dissolve their con- nection with the Union. Now we cannot survive that admission, I am convinced." ^
^ Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, IX., 120.
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Congress adjotirned in great excitement, and Lin- coln followed up his action in "pocketing" the bill, without signature or veto, by issuing, July 8, a proclamation to the people, in which after reciting the circumstances, he declared his unpreparedness to commit himself to any one plan of reconstruction, and also his unpreparedness to set aside as naught the action of Louisiana, Arkansas, or any lately in- surrectionary state whose people began to show a desire to return to the Union. He expressed his strong hope that the thirteenth amendment, for the time held up, would within a few months be adopted ; and his earnest desire to aid any state desiring to return to the Union, and his approval of the con- gressional scheme as "one very proper plan for the loyal people of any state choosing to adopt it."^
To this Wade and Davis replied, August 5, by a manifesto in the New York Tribune, "To the Sup- porters of the Government," the severest attack ever made upon Lincoln within his own party. Every line of the proclamation was traversed and sharply criticised, especial emphasis being laid upon the usurpations of the executive. "This rash and fatal act of the president — a blow at the friends of his administration, at the rights of humanity and at the principles of republican government. ... But he must imderstand that our support is of a cause and not of a man ; that the authority of Congress is paramount and must be respected; ... he must
^ Lincoln, Works (ed. of 1894), II., 545.
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confine himself to his executive duties,- — to obey and t;o execute, not make the laws, and leave political reorganization to Congress."^ Yet it clearly ap- peared ere long that Lincoln, before the people, had received no harm from this attempt to wound him in the house of his friends.
^ McPherson, Polit. Hist, of Great Rebellion, 332.
CHAPTER IX
LINCOLN'S SECOND ELECTION (1864)
THROUGHOUT the first three years of the war the determined champions of the Union saw that it was as imperative to keep control of the political as of the military organization. Hence, politicians