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Title: The History of the Confederate War, Its Causes and Its Conduct, Volume II (of 2)
       A Narrative and Critical History


Author: George Cary Eggleston



Release Date: July 2, 2014  [eBook #46175]

Language: English

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THE HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERATE WAR

ITS CAUSES AND ITS CONDUCT

A Narrative and Critical History

by

GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON

VOLUME I







New York
Sturgis & Walton Company
1910

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1910
By Sturgis & Walton Company

Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1910




CONTENTS


    CHAPTER                                                         PAGE

         PART II.--THE CONDUCT OF THE WAR _Continued_

       XXXI. The Struggle for Emancipation                             3

      XXXII. Burnside's Fredericksburg Campaign                       19

     XXXIII. Halleck's Treatment of Grant                             31

      XXXIV. Grant at Corinth                                         38

       XXXV. Bragg's Campaign against Louisville                      53

      XXXVI. Fall and Winter Campaigns at the West and South          72

     XXXVII. The Chancellorsville Campaign                            83

    XXXVIII. The Gettysburg Campaign                                 122

      XXXIX. The Campaign of Vicksburg                               151

         XL. The State of Things After Gettysburg                    171

        XLI. The Struggle for Charleston                             181

       XLII. The Campaigns of Chickamauga and Chattanooga            196

      XLIII. Grant's Strategy--The Red River Campaign--Fort
               Pillow, Etc.                                          207

       XLIV. Grant's Plan of Campaign                                221

        XLV. The Battles in the Wilderness                           228

       XLVI. Spottsylvania and the Bloody Angle                      237

      XLVII. Cold Harbor and on to Petersburg                        249

     XLVIII. The Confederate Cruisers                                261

       XLIX. Sherman's Campaign against Atlanta                      265

          L. The Bay Fight at Mobile                                 278

         LI. The Mine Explosion at Petersburg                        284

        LII. Early's Invasion of Pennsylvania                        294

       LIII. Operations at Petersburg and Sheridan's Valley
               Campaign                                              299

        LIV. The Presidential Campaign of 1864                       308

         LV. Sherman at Atlanta                                      315

        LVI. Sherman's "March to the Sea"                            330

       LVII. Hood's Campaign                                         337

      LVIII. Preparations for the Decisive Blow                      340

        LIX. The End                                                 347

             Index                                                   357




VOLUME II

THE CONDUCT OF THE WAR (_continued_)




CHAPTER XXXI

THE STRUGGLE FOR EMANCIPATION


In the meantime great events were occurring which were in some respects
more important in their bearing on the war than battles would have
been. In these events the war recognized itself and adapted itself to
its conditions.

From the beginning the abolitionists had clamorously and ceaselessly
demanded of Mr. Lincoln that he should recognize the actual cause of
the war by proclaiming freedom for the slaves at the South. There was
no doubt in anybody's mind that the war was simply the culmination of
that "irrepressible conflict" between the systems and sentiments of
free and slave labor which had constituted the burden of the country's
history for nearly half a century. If there had been no slavery there
would have been no war.

It is true that a very large proportion of the Southern people
regretted slavery, deprecated its existence, and earnestly desired to
be rid of it. It is also true that the great mass of the Southerners
were non-slaveholders, and that their fighting was done not for the
perpetuation of that institution, in which they had no interest, but in
assertion of those reserved rights of the individual states upon the
maintenance of which they sincerely believed that the liberty of the
people depended. These people desired to take their states out of the
Union, not for the sake of slavery, but for the sake of that right of
local self-government which they regarded as the fundamental condition
of liberty among men.

On the other hand a large proportion of the Northern people cared
little or nothing about slavery--many of them even approving the
institution as the only practicable arrangement under which blacks and
whites could live peaceably together, and as a condition eminently
proper for the incapable black man. But these believed in the
maintenance of the Union as a condition of liberty and progress, and
were ready to sacrifice their lives and their possessions in behalf of
that end.

Nevertheless it was clear from the beginning that in the last analysis,
the war involved as its issue the maintenance of slavery, or the
destruction of that system root and branch.

Personally Mr. Lincoln hated slavery and very earnestly desired its
extermination. But, as he reminded those who beset him with unsolicited
advice, he was restrained by his oath of office while they were free to
advocate any principle or policy that might seem good in their eyes.

Moreover, he had upon him the tremendous task of preserving the Union
and in aid of that supreme purpose he was ready to sacrifice all other
considerations of what kind soever. In answer to an impassioned appeal
from Horace Greeley in August, 1862, Mr. Lincoln set forth his attitude
in these words:

"My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or
destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave,
I would do it. If I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do
it. And if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I
would also do that."

At the beginning Mr. Lincoln had clearly seen the necessity of winning
all the support he could to his war measures. He had seen that while
practically the whole population of the North would stand by him in a
war for the preservation of the Union, there must be a very great and
dangerous defection, should he make the war one for the extirpation
of slavery in those states in which the institution existed under
protection of the Federal Constitution. By thus resolutely refusing
to make the war a crusade against slavery, and declaring--as he did
in his official utterances--that it was no part of his purpose to
interfere with the domestic institutions of any state, Mr. Lincoln had
drawn to his support a vast body of influential citizens who would
otherwise have opposed, and whose influence was great enough perhaps,
if it had been offended, to have robbed him of the means of restoring
the disrupted Union. Had he adopted the policy of the extremists at
the North, had he begun by declaring war upon slavery rather than upon
disunion, there is little doubt that Maryland, Kentucky and the whole
strength of Missouri would have been thrown into the Confederate side
of the scale with disastrous effect. Even New York, the financially and
otherwise dominant Northern state, would have given him at best only
a divided and ineffective allegiance, while in all the other states
of the North, heavy minorities, and in some cases perhaps commanding
majorities, would have opposed his measures and deprived him of that
support in Congress and the country upon which depended his success in
his effort to restore and perpetuate the Union.

By his policy of waging war at the outset only for the salvation of
the nation's integrity he won to his measures the support of hundreds
of thousands whose antagonism, or whose dissatisfied inactivity,
would have threatened the National arms with defeat and disaster. So
far-reaching indeed was the effect of his wiser policy that it gave to
the country in its hour of sorest need the services of the great War
Minister, Edwin M. Stanton, with all that his inclusion in the cabinet
implied.

Mr. Stanton and Mr. Lincoln were not friends. They were very nearly
enemies. Stanton was a Democrat of very pronounced views; Mr. Lincoln
represented a party which Stanton had strongly and even bitterly
assailed, holding it to be sectional in origin, impulse and purpose,
and therefore scarcely less than a treasonable conspiracy against the
Nation. But when Mr. Lincoln resolutely formulated his policy, as one
that had for its sole object the restoration of the American Union of
States and the preservation of the Nation from disruption, Mr. Stanton
gladly consented to bear his share in the conduct of affairs with that
end in view.

It was a daring thing for Mr. Lincoln to do, thus to place at the
head of the War Department when actual war was on, a Democrat whose
Democracy was everywhere known to be pronounced and aggressive. Mr.
Lincoln foresaw that such an appointment would inevitably invite
hostile criticism and probably active opposition. But Mr. Lincoln
was a man of exalted moral courage. He needed the peculiar abilities
of Edwin M. Stanton at the head of the War Department at a time when
the war seemed almost everywhere to be going against the Union cause,
and he needed Stanton's influence in the country. He therefore risked
criticism and made the appointment as one that would tend better than
any other to marshal the Federal strength into an effective force and
perhaps extort victory at the last from a situation which had thus far
brought mainly disappointment.

Perhaps the sagacity of the President had still another object in
view in the appointment of Stanton. Mr. Lincoln was a shrewd and
far-seeing politician. By appointing Stanton, his personal enemy and a
distinguished Democrat, to the second most important place among his
Constitutional advisers, he did more than in any other way he could
have done, to reconcile Northern Democrats to his administration and to
make of them earnest supporters instead of active antagonists of his
measures for the preservation of the Union.

Mr. Lincoln had several opportunities to emphasize his attitude and
purpose. The best of these was furnished by Horace Greeley's article,
in reply to which he wrote the passages already quoted in this chapter.

But the matter was made more emphatic in other ways. When McClellan,
early in the war, advanced into Western Virginia, that general issued
a proclamation to all slaveholders there assuring them that it was
no part of the Government's purpose or policy to interfere with the
institution of slavery; that on the contrary the Federal forces would
promptly restore to their masters any fugitive slaves who might escape
to the Union lines, and that the Federal armies would themselves
suppress every attempt at slave insurrection which might be made in the
interest of the Union cause. "Notwithstanding all that has been said
by the traitors," he wrote, "to induce you to believe our advent among
you will be signalized by an interference with your slaves, understand
one thing clearly; not only will we abstain from all such interference,
but we will, on the contrary, with an iron hand crush any attempt at
insurrection on their part."

There is not the smallest doubt that McClellan issued this proclamation
with Mr. Lincoln's full approval and even probably by his direction. In
any case it reflected the President's attitude and purpose at that time.

At an earlier date, in May, 1861, General B. F. Butler, then commanding
at Fortress Monroe, was appealed to for the return of three fugitive
slaves who had escaped into his lines. He refused upon a law point of
great subtlety. He contended that as negro slaves--chattels of their
owners--were capable of being made useful to the Confederates, not
only as producers of food for the support of the Southern armies,
but also as laborers upon the fortifications and the like, they were
properly "contraband of war" precisely as arms and ammunition and
foodstuffs are. From that time forward an escaping slave was called
a "contraband," and in view of the astonishing lies told by such
"contrabands," and the errors of judgment into which those imaginary
bits of information often led the Northern press and people, there was
at last a general ridiculing of all statements based upon the testimony
of "intelligent contrabands."

Mr. Lincoln did not interfere with General Butler's policy of holding
escaped slaves as merchandise "contraband of war." But in other cases
he did interfere with the strong hand. In August, 1861, General
Fremont, commanding in Missouri, issued a proclamation declaring free
the slaves of every Confederate engaged in war against the Union. Mr.
Lincoln repudiated the proclamation and himself abrogated its terms.

Seven months later, in March, 1862, Mr. Lincoln gravely asked Congress
to adopt a policy of compensated emancipation. The war had already cost
about a billion dollars, and it threatened to cost twice or thrice that
sum in addition, with an uncertain result as the outcome.

Accordingly, Mr. Lincoln planned to end the struggle by a business-like
negotiation. He asked Congress (March 6, 1862), to authorize the
Government to lend pecuniary aid to every state which should adopt
measures looking to the gradual abolition of slavery. He saw and felt
that it would be cheaper for the Government to buy every slave in the
land at twice his market value, than to prosecute the war upon the
enormously costly scale which it had assumed. Incidentally, also, the
making of such an arrangement, if it had been possible to make it,
would have saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of men--the flower
of the country's youth on both sides of the line.

It was a business-like and humane thought, and Congress assented to
it. But it was based upon the mistaken notion that the Confederates
were fighting primarily for their property rights in slaves. It ignored
the supremely important fact that the war was costing the Southern
people incalculably more than double the value of all the slaves
owned in those states. It failed to recognize the equally important
fact that, rightly or wrongly, the Southern people sincerely believed
themselves to be contending for liberty, for the constitutional rights
of the states, for the principle of local self-government; that they
were contending against that basilar principle of imperialistic
oppression--the government of communities by a power outside of
themselves. To Mr. Lincoln's own dictum that "no man is good enough
to govern any other man without that other man's consent" they had
added the corollary that no community and no nation is good enough to
govern any other community without that other's consent. They were
fighting, as they confidently believed, for the fundamental principle
of self-government among men, and to that cause they were ready to
make sacrifice of slavery as cheerfully and as heroically as they were
already making sacrifice of all else that they held dear.

Mr. Lincoln misunderstood them and misinterpreted their attitude and
their condition of mind. If they had been offered ten thousand dollars
apiece for all their slaves--worth on the average only a few hundreds
at most--they would have rejected the offer angrily as a tendered
bribe to induce them to give up and betray that cause of human liberty,
states' rights, and the right of local self-government, in behalf of
which they had taken up arms.

To such men, inspired by such beliefs and engaged in such a cause,
no price could offer the smallest temptation. Mr. Lincoln had
misunderstood the Southern people, as they had misunderstood him. Their
warfare had no element of commercialism or of greed in it, precisely
as his was directed not, as they supposed, to the destruction of State
autonomy, but to the sole object of restoring and perpetuating the
American Union. As fanaticism in antagonism to slavery could not swerve
him, so considerations of merely pecuniary advantage did not and could
not influence them. His proposal, which was in effect, to buy all the
negroes in the South, made no more impression upon the Southern mind
than would a proposal to purchase their wives and children, or their
right to sign their own names.

It was under this misapprehension of Southern sentiment that Mr.
Lincoln for a space rejected every suggestion of negro emancipation
and sought to hold his generals in the field to a policy of complete
non-interference with slavery in the Southern States.

We have seen in what fashion he dealt with General Fremont's
proclamation of emancipation in Missouri. On the twelfth of April,
1862, General David Hunter, in command of the forces on the South
Carolina coast, issued a general order to the effect that all slaves
within his immediate jurisdiction should be confiscated as contraband
of war, and instantly set free. On the ninth of May he issued another
general order in which he declared all negroes resident in South
Carolina, Georgia and Florida to be free men.

Ten days later Mr. Lincoln annulled these orders absolutely by
executive command, declaring that the question of the emancipation
of slaves was one which he reserved to himself, and forbidding all
generals in the field to deal with it in any way, direct or indirect.

Congress had legislated on the subject in a very cautious and
hesitating fashion. In August, 1861, it had passed an act authorizing
military commanders to seize and hold all negro slaves found actually
employed in the military service of the Confederacy with the knowledge
and consent of their owners. But the act stipulated that slaves so
confiscated, should not be set free but should be held subject to the
future disposal of the Federal courts.

The proceedings of military officers in the field with respect to this
matter varied according to the views and temper of each. Mr. Lincoln's
revocation of Fremont's orders led to that General's resignation.
General Hunter's act in enlisting a regiment of fugitive slaves who
had fled into his lines, gave great alarm in Congress and in the
country, lest the war should be diverted from its Union-saving purpose
and converted into a crusade for the forcible abolition of slavery,
involving all the horrors of a servile insurrection on the part of
slaves who, in many parts of the South, were scarcely better than half
savages.

General Williams, commanding the Department of the Gulf, sought to
solve the difficulty by the simple process of turning all fugitive
slaves out of his camps, thus avoiding the necessity of deciding
whether or not he would permit masters to come within his lines for the
purpose of recapturing their slaves. Two colonels refused to obey this
order, and were promptly removed from their commands in consequence.

Thus the "irrepressible conflict" of sentiment on the subject of
property in slaves divided the Federal army and sorely vexed the
country as it had done for nearly half a century before.

To Mr. Lincoln it brought perplexities of the gravest sort. It
embarrassed him very greatly in his effort to hold the war steadily
to the purpose he had marked out for it. It defeated all his hopes of
persuading the South to believe that the Government was trying to save
or restore the Union, and that the administration was sincere in its
declaration of a fixed purpose not to interfere with the institution
of slavery in states where it constitutionally existed or to impair
in any way the autonomy of those states. Such pledges could make no
appeal to the minds of Southern men in face of the actual interferences
attempted, often successfully, by commanders in the field.

Worse still, this irreconcilable division of opinion and diversity
of action, threatened to deprive the administration of that strong
support at the North which Mr. Lincoln deemed necessary to a successful
prosecution of the war. It threatened to alienate that great body
of men at the North who were implacably opposed to abolitionism and
who held firmly to the belief that the autonomy of the States was
necessary to the maintenance of liberty, but who were ready enough to
make sacrifice of blood and treasure in aid of a war waged solely for
the preservation of the Union.

In this embarrassing situation Mr. Lincoln made a second attempt to
cripple Southern resistance by securing emancipation by purchase in the
border states, thus cutting off all hope on the part of the South that
those states would ever secede, and at the same time in some degree
satisfying the clamor of the abolitionists. He called the border-state
Congressmen about him and earnestly, even passionately urged them to
vote in Congress for an act pledging the Government to pay to every
state that should decree emancipation the full value of all the slaves
held in such state at the time the census of 1860 was taken. He
especially besought these representatives of border slave states to
persuade their constituents to a willing acceptance of these terms.

Nothing of any practical value came of this effort. It resulted only in
stimulating on the part of the Abolitionists that aggressive insistence
upon universal emancipation by military force which was so sorely
embarrassing to the President.

It was soon afterwards (August 19, 1862), that Horace Greeley published
his open letter entitled "The Prayer of Twenty Millions" to which
Mr. Lincoln replied, setting forth his policy and purpose, in words
already quoted in this chapter: "My paramount object is to save the
Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the
Union without freeing any slave, I would do it. If I could save it by
freeing all the slaves, I would do it. And if I could do it by freeing
some and leaving others alone, I would also do that."

But all this while Mr. Lincoln contemplated the emancipation of the
slaves by executive proclamation as a war measure to be resorted to
whenever it should seem to him likely to be effective. In the preceding
month of July he had drawn up a proclamation of emancipation, and had
read it to his cabinet. But he had laid it aside, believing that the
time was not yet ripe. The Confederates seemed at that time at high
tide of military success. Their armies, victorious and aggressive, were
overthrowing one Federal force after another, and putting Washington
itself upon an uncertain defense. It was the conviction both of Mr.
Lincoln and of Mr. Seward, that to issue an emancipation proclamation
under such circumstances would not only seem ridiculous in the eyes
of the world but would be everywhere interpreted as a despairing
manifestation of conscious weakness, the futile outcry of failure. He
must wait for victories before taking this step.

But when after Antietam, Lee withdrew from Maryland and abandoned his
campaign against the national capital, Mr. Lincoln decided to assume
the rôle of a victor, dictating terms which he held himself strong
enough to enforce.

Accordingly on September 22, 1862, he issued a proclamation declaring
that on the first of January, 1863, all slaves held in those states or
parts of states which should at that time be still in rebellion should
be then and forever afterwards free.

This was at once a threat and a promise.

It is a matter of curious speculation to consider what would have been
the situation if the Southern States had submitted themselves before
the beginning of 1863. In that event the proclamation of freedom to
slaves within their borders would have been of no effect, inasmuch
as it applied only to states remaining at war. A second executive
proclamation of emancipation would have had no war necessity to justify
or even to excuse it. For the Constitution conferred upon the President
no power to emancipate slaves. It was only on the plea of war necessity
that this power could be remotely and speculatively inferred, and that
war necessity would have passed completely away had the war itself come
to an end before the date set for the enforcement of the threat.

Perhaps it was in view of this very remote contingency that Mr. Lincoln
at that time urged upon Congress the adoption of a constitutional
amendment forbidding slavery anywhere within the borders of the Union.

Congress did not act upon the recommendation at that time, and on the
first of January, 1863, Mr. Lincoln issued his final proclamation
of emancipation, naming the states and parts of states in which
rebellion was held then to exist, and declaring free all the slaves
within those states and parts of states. It did not apply to those
slave states which had not joined the Confederacy, and, except that
Maryland voluntarily freed her slaves near the end of the war, the
institution remained lawful in such states as had not seceded, and
actually continued to exist there until December 18, 1865, when the
ratification of the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution was
officially proclaimed by Mr. Lincoln's successor.

So far as securing actual liberty to slaves within the Confederate
lines was concerned, the emancipation proclamations had no effect
whatever. They were probably not expected to have any. But they had
an important bearing upon the conduct of the war and the state of
the public mind. They made an end of all doubt about what Federal
commanders in the field should do with slaves escaping to their
lines. They satisfied the strong and growing abolitionist sentiment
at the North, and they had some effect in alienating war Democrats
and a considerable number of Republicans from the Federal cause,
thus checking enlistments in some quarters, and impairing the
administration's support.

This effect was far less marked than it would have been had Mr. Lincoln
issued an emancipation proclamation earlier in the war when he was
first urged to do so. Nevertheless the political effect was notable.

In the autumn elections there was a heavy falling off in Republican
majorities, while in some important states Democrats relentlessly
opposed to the administration and all its policies were elected to
replace Republicans in office. This was notably the case in New York,
where Horatio Seymour succeeded the Republican governor, E. D. Morgan,
and a sentiment in hostility to the administration and to the war
itself grew up, which was afterwards reflected in bloody riots when the
time came for a draft of men for the army.

In Europe and particularly in England, the emancipation proclamation
went far to change a former friendship for the Confederacy, which had
at times threatened danger, into a strong moral support for the Federal
cause.

But whatever moral and political results, for or against the Lincoln
administration, this act may have produced, it had no perceptible
effect upon the actual conduct of the war. That was still to be fought
out at the cost of millions of treasure and multitudes of lives. Many
of its greatest battles were still to come and its most important
campaigns were yet to be fought out.




CHAPTER XXXII

BURNSIDE'S FREDERICKSBURG CAMPAIGN


It has already been related that at the end of the battle of
Sharpsburg, or Antietam, neither army cared to renew the contest.
The two confronted each other within deadly firing distance for the
space of twenty-four hours, doing nothing whatever. Apparently each
had so far had enough of such fighting that neither cared to take the
initiative for its renewal, yet each was ready enough to meet the other
should that other care to assail it.

At the end of this waiting time Lee slowly retired towards the Potomac,
McClellan not caring to pursue, and finally crossing the river the
Confederates went into camp near Winchester.

So far from planning either to press Lee or to move by some other route
upon Richmond, McClellan seems to have thought that he had done quite
all that could be expected of him, in turning back the Confederate
invasion of the region north of the Potomac. It appears from his
dispatches to Mr. Lincoln that he purposed with his enormously superior
army to take the defensive, post himself on the Potomac and stand
ready to meet any second attempt that Lee might make to invade the
North or to strike at Washington. Even for such a service he did not
deem his army large enough, though it greatly outnumbered Lee's, or
sufficiently well equipped, though its equipment was notably superior
to any that its adversary ever had, either before or after that time.

Instead of planning a campaign McClellan devoted himself to the making
of multitudinous requisitions and ceaseless complaints.

Precious weeks of perfect campaigning weather were thus wasted,
McClellan lying idly upon the north bank of the Potomac while Lee
rested and reinforced his army near Winchester.

But if McClellan did nothing Lee was not so supine. He did not indeed
begin a new campaign or bring on a battle, but he again awakened
apprehension of invasion at the North by sending Stuart--the same
cavalier who had ridden around McClellan's army near Richmond--to
make a raid into Maryland and Pennsylvania which seemed for the time
at least to be the precursor of a new movement of invasion by the
Confederates.

On the tenth of October, with 1,800 picked cavalry men and some
light field-pieces, Stuart crossed the river at Williamsport, above
McClellan's position, made a rapid march to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania,
and thence swept eastward and southward, riding unmolested entirely
around McClellan and returning to Virginia on the thirteenth by passing
the river again below Harper's Ferry.

He brought off a rich store of ammunition, supplies and many valuable
horses, but the capture of these was neither the primary object nor the
chief result of the daring raid. It was intended for moral effect, and
it wrought such effect in a marked degree. It awakened apprehension at
the North, and it showed Lee to be still capable of an aggressiveness
of which McClellan was obviously very greatly in fear. At the North as
well as at the South it gave to the situation, after the late campaign,
the appearance of one in which the Confederates seemed in better
condition for further operations than their adversaries were.

Mr. Lincoln renewed his urgency for McClellan's advance, and finally
succeeded in inducing him to cross the river and to seem at least to
take the offensive. But after crossing into Virginia, McClellan did
nothing effective. The history of Mr. Lincoln's effort to set the
splendid Army of the Potomac in motion again, and the correspondence
incident to that effort, are interesting, but they do not come within
the purview of this present work.

Wearying at last of the inactivity Lincoln ordered General Burnside
to take command of the Army of the Potomac, as McClellan's successor,
and the new commander decided to move down the left bank of the
Rappahannock and attempt a march upon Richmond by a short route.

Establishing his base of supplies at Acquia creek on the Potomac, only
a few miles from Fredericksburg, with a railroad connection between,
Burnside sat down on the north side of the Rappahannock, opposite
Fredericksburg, the last of his columns reaching that point on the
twentieth of November. Lee, moving upon a parallel line, reached
Fredericksburg about the same time, and formed his lines to resist his
enemy's contemplated advance.

Lee's army at that time numbered about 68,000 men, but before the
battle it was swelled by reinforcements to nearly 80,000, and again
reduced by detachments, to 68,000 or less. Burnside's force numbered
about 120,000, with 147 guns, about twice Lee's strength in artillery.

Fredericksburg lies upon fairly level ground, immediately upon the
southern bank of the Rappahannock, which at that point is not fordable
at any season. In rear of the town and within cannon range, there
is a line of bold hills beginning upon the river above the city and
stretching in a curve around the town to the eastward where they
gradually diminish in height and finally disappear.

Lee seized upon these hills and hurriedly fortified them, placing his
artillery in effective positions and shielding his men with strong
earthworks. Here he concentrated the greater part of his army under
Longstreet on the left or west, and Jackson on the right or east, while
D. H. Hill, with the remainder of the Confederate army was posted at
Port Royal, twenty miles further down the river, eastward, to meet and
repel any attempt that might be made to cross there and turn the flank
of Lee's position.

This detachment of Hill with a strong force to a point so far away
as to forbid his direct coöperation with the rest of the army during
the battle, seriously diminished Lee's effective strength, but
the advantage of position which he possessed and the advantage of
fighting behind breastworks which his enemy must assail from the open,
compensated him somewhat.

Burnside's first difficult task was to get his army across the river.
This he could do only by the use of frail pontoon bridges of which
he purposed to lay five--three in front of the city and two below.
The pontoon trains were slow in arriving, and when they came it was
for a time impossible to put the pontoons into position, owing to the
destructive fire of the sleepless sharpshooters Lee had posted along
the banks to interfere with the work. In consequence of this and other
difficulties it was not until the tenth of December that a crossing
was made which Burnside had confidently expected to make more than a
fortnight earlier.

In the meanwhile Lee had busied himself night and day in strengthening
his position in every possible way, and he was soon fully prepared for
the contest.

Burnside's first assault was made about ten o'clock on the morning of
December 13. It was made in two columns, striking simultaneously, the
one against Lee's right and the other against his left. The assault
upon his right was at first attended with a partial success, but
Jackson hurried troops to the breach and quickly hurled the assailants
back in confusion, pursuing them nearly to the river's bank where a
heavy artillery fire checked his progress. The Federal assault on that
part of the Confederate line was not renewed during the day.

From official reports and otherwise, it appears that Burnside at first
intended to direct his main attack upon this right wing of Lee's army.
The hills there were lower and far less defensible than were those on
the Confederate left, and offered, certainly, a much more tempting
opportunity to the Federal commander. It was without doubt the weakest
point in Lee's line--the point which the Federals might have assailed
with greatest hope of success or at least of inflicting the heaviest
loss upon their foes. But, for some reason which has never been clearly
explained, Burnside changed his plan of battle almost at the last
moment, and directed his heaviest columns against Marye's Heights,
the well-nigh impregnable stronghold of Lee's left wing. Here Lee had
his batteries and a host of infantry strongly posted in formidable
earthworks on top of the hills, in a position of great advantage.

For a body of troops to charge up Marye's Heights, bristling as they
did with hostile and well served cannon, and defended by tens of
thousands of veteran riflemen, was a task that might well have appalled
even such sturdy fighters as composed the Army of the Potomac. But
the matter was made more difficult by another peculiarity of the
ground. Looked at from below, the hill seemed to present a smooth
surface, ascending gently toward the works that defended it. But this
appearance was deceptive. On the side of the hill well in advance of
Lee's main line, and running athwart the Federal line of advance, there
was a sunken road, faced with a stone wall, which formed as perfect
a breastwork as any that an engineer could have constructed there.
Into this sunken road Lee threw about two thousand riflemen, who lay
there perfectly concealed from view and as well protected against
adverse fire as men using rifles can be. Their orders were to withhold
their fire until the enemy charging up the slope under a destructive
cannonade from above, and thinking of the works at the top as the first
obstacle to be encountered, should reach a point a score or so of yards
in front of the sunken road, whence they could be swept away like
dust before a housemaid's broom. It was as deadly a trap as could be
imagined, and its concealment was perfect. Yet when the Federal general
decided to make his main attack upon Lee's left, there was no course
open to him but to take this doubly defended hill by assault or suffer
fearful disaster, as he did, in a futile attempt to do so. For the
nature of the ground on Lee's farther left rendered it impossible to
turn his flank or try conclusions with him otherwise than by a direct
charge upon Marye's Heights.

The first attack was made by French's division. It was already
suffering terribly under the fire from the hilltop, when it came upon
the sunken road and was instantly swept away by a hailstorm of bullets.
Retiring, French left about one half of his men on the field, dead or
wounded.

Hancock charged next with five thousand men and was driven back with a
loss of two thousand or more.

The exact nature of the case was not even yet understood. The position
in the sunken road was still masked to the Federal commanders. But
French's and Hancock's attempts had conclusively shown that no courage,
no determination, no heroism however high, could enable mortal men to
carry that hill by assault. Nevertheless Burnside persisted where a
wiser leader would either have withdrawn or have changed his plan of
battle. He sent another, and another, and still another division into
that fire of hell, only to see them instantly hurled back, shattered
fragments of most gallant commands, beaten, broken and well-nigh
destroyed by reason of a blundering obstinacy on the part of their
commanding general.

Finally Hooker was ordered to make another attempt--the sixth of those
futile and bloody charges. He pointed out to Burnside the uselessness
of the effort and begged him to abandon without further needless
sacrifice of gallant men's lives, an operation which had already been
proved to be hopeless.

In a blind rage Burnside seemed unable to comprehend what his
subordinates saw clearly enough. He insisted upon sending Hooker's
command also into that slaughter pen. They rushed forward,--four
thousand as brave fellows as ever fought in battle--and a few minutes
later seventeen hundred of them lay stretched upon the field, their
bodies riddled with Confederate bullets, while their comrades, unable
to achieve the impossible, fell back as the remnants of the other
divisions had done before.

The Confederate war furnished two conspicuous manifestations of supreme
heroism on the part of large bodies of men--one upon one side, the
other upon the other. Pickett's charge at Gettysburg was one of these.
This series of six charges up Marye's Heights was the other.

When the sixth assault ended as its predecessors had done, the time had
manifestly come to end the battle. A wiser commander would have ended
it much earlier, indeed. Having lost 12,353 men in an ill-directed
contest Burnside withdrew to the river bank, baffled and beaten beyond
recovery.

The Army of the Potomac had won all the glory for itself that heroic
conduct can give in the absence of victory, but it had need now of
rest, recruitment and a new commander.

Burnside was clearly not equal to the task of commanding such an army
in a contest with such an adversary as Robert E. Lee. He had himself
passed precisely that judgment upon his own capacities when on three
former occasions the command of the Army of the Potomac was offered
to him. But now that he had accepted that command and had led to
disastrous defeat what somebody at the time characterized as "the
finest army on the planet," disappointment and chagrin seem for the
moment to have unseated his reason. He refused to recognize the extent
of the disaster he had suffered or the conspicuousness and completeness
of his defeat. His army was torn and broken as no other great army
on either side had been before. It was weary with futile battling,
discouraged by a failure that had involved terrible losses, and the
fact that it was not demoralized was due only to the splendid courage
and devotion of the soldiers themselves. Worse than all it had lost
confidence in the capacity of its leader.

Nevertheless Burnside, reckless of any consequences that might follow,
was determined that night to renew the battle on the following morning,
himself leading his own former corps, the Ninth, in still another
desperate attempt to carry Marye's Heights. Earnest protests and
persuasions succeeded at last in inducing him to abandon this purpose,
and after remaining inactive for a day on the bank of the river, he
withdrew his army, under cover of night, to the other side of the river
and the fearfully disastrous Fredericksburg campaign was at an end.

Military critics have wondered much that Lee, whose loss in the battle
had been only 5,309 men, and whose troops were almost wild with the
enthusiasm of victory, permitted his badly beaten adversary to remain
unmolested on the southern bank of the stream for twenty-four hours
and then quietly to retire. Burnside's position and the condition of
his army strongly invited attack. He had a wide and deep river behind
him, with only a frail pontoon bridge spanning it. Had he been defeated
there by assault on the part of the victors there would have been no
way of escape open to him. Destruction or surrender must have followed.

On the other hand, his force still heavily outnumbered Lee's and it
was in no way demoralized. Defeated and discouraged as it was its
spirit was unbroken, and had Lee left his works and assailed it in the
open, the issue of the conflict might have been very uncertain. It is
alleged that Lee's lieutenants urged a tempestuous assault, and that
Lee's chief reason for rejecting the advice was born of his hope that
Burnside would himself on the next day renew the attempt to dislodge
the Confederates from their well-nigh impregnable position.

However that may be, Lee did not in fact assume the offensive; Burnside
retired during darkness to the farther side of the river and the two
armies settled themselves in winter quarters, Lee presently sending
large bodies of men to the southwest to reinforce the armies there,
where active warfare was in progress, and still more active warfare
threatened.

The military operations of the season that thus closed had been in
every way remarkable. Four distinct campaigns had been fought, all of
them severe, and all marked by brilliant strategy and heroic conduct on
the part of the troops on either side. McClellan's siege of Richmond,
which had filled the South with gloomy apprehension, had been broken in
a series of bloody and impressive battles, and the Army of the Potomac
had been forced to withdraw for the defense of Washington.

Pope's campaign with his Army of Virginia had been conspicuously
brought to naught by brilliant strategy and desperate fighting.

Lee's invasion of Maryland had for a time reversed the former order of
things, putting the Federals on the defensive. It had ended at last in
a battle so indecisive that both sides claimed it as a victory. Finally
Burnside's well planned but badly executed Fredericksburg campaign
had resulted in very conspicuous defeat and failure after one of the
bloodiest battles of the war.

The net result of the four campaigns was one of very great advantage to
the Confederates. The gloomy apprehension with which they had looked
forward to that summer's military operations was changed to exultant
joy and confidence as they contemplated the situation when the work
of the year was over. They had discovered a commander for whom their
adversary had as yet found no match in his mastery of the art of war.
They were reinspirited by the results achieved and were full of
confidence for the future.

On the other side, the North rejoiced in the splendid fighting quality
of the Army of the Potomac, as demonstrated in the Seven Days' battles,
at Manassas, at Antietam, and most of all, at Fredericksburg. The
danger which at one time seemed so imminently to threaten their capital
and the cities farther north, had been averted, and they had confidence
that the coming spring would bring results in Virginia as pleasing to
them as those that had been achieved by Grant in the west during the
year that was coming to an end.

The struggle of the giants had but just begun.




CHAPTER XXXIII

HALLECK'S TREATMENT OF GRANT


When Halleck assumed command at Pittsburg Landing after the battle of
Shiloh he seemed intent, not only upon depriving Grant of the privilege
of vigorously following up the victory he had won but also upon
"snubbing," ignoring and humiliating that successful general in every
way possible. If Grant's tremendous and at last successful struggle
to force Beauregard back to his defenses at Corinth had been a crime
instead of a heroic achievement, his commanding general could scarcely
have punished it in more annoying and humiliating ways than he did.

It was a sore affliction to Grant to have command taken from him at the
moment when he saw before him a perfect opportunity to pluck the ripe
fruits of his obstinate fighting by pressing forward in overwhelming
force for the completion of the conquest for which that fighting had
provided an easy and certain way. It was still more severely painful to
him to sit still and see all the easy possibilities of the situation he
had created, deliberately thrown away by martinet incapacity.

To a man like General Grant, simple minded and sincere, a man whose
sole ambition was to force the war to a successful conclusion within
the briefest possible time, and whose vigor in action seemed to make
that result certain with the masterful means now in hand at Pittsburg
Landing, this foolish frittering away of the opportunity he had created
by his splendid fighting, must have been the most painful of all the
punishments which Halleck at that time inflicted upon him for his
impertinence in wresting a great victory from a calamitous defeat,
before his superior officer could reach the field and reap the credit
for himself.

But Halleck had other humiliations in store for his impertinently
successful lieutenant the late Galena clerk, and the now admired and
applauded officer of volunteers. Grant even yet had no rank in the
regular army, and he had ventured to advise the temporary dissolution
of the regular army in order that the skill and training of its
officers might be utilized--with capacity alone as the test--in making
the volunteers, who after all constituted the country's chief reliance
for its salvation, as effective in the field as if they had been
regulars.

We have seen how, after Grant's conquest of Forts Henry and Donelson,
and the complete rupture of the first Confederate line of defense,
Halleck forbade him to gather the fruits of his victory, suspended him
from command and seemingly threatened him with arrest. After Shiloh it
would not have been prudent for Halleck again to suggest the arrest
of a general whose name was on every lip as that of the one Federal
commander who was capable of winning victories while all others were
meeting conspicuous defeats. But Halleck had other arrows in his
quiver. He left Grant as nominally his second in command, and, in form
at least, assigned him specifically to the command of the right wing of
the army. But he proceeded from the beginning to ignore his second in
command. He summoned him to none of those councils and consultations to
which he invited Grant's own subordinates. Even in the matter of orders
to that wing of the army which he had technically placed in Grant's
charge, he ignored all the courtesies and flagrantly violated all the
usages of war, by sending his commands directly to division generals,
instead of sending them through General Grant's headquarters--thus
rivaling the discourtesy of Judah P. Benjamin in his dealings with
Stonewall Jackson. This left Grant in humiliating ignorance even of
the orders issued to divisions which were supposed to be under his
command, and for whose movements and conduct he was held responsible.
His situation was unendurable, even to a man of his robust habits of
mind, and by way of relief he finally asked permission to establish his
headquarters as District Commander, at Memphis, a city which had by
that time come into Federal control.

These details are recited here, not by way of apology or defense of
General Grant. His fame needs no defense, and very certainly his
conduct in war needs no apology. Moreover all these circumstances, and
others that reflect still more unfavorably upon Halleck's extraordinary
treatment of the only Federal general who at that period of the war
seemed able to achieve victories, are calmly and fully set forth in
General Grant's own memoirs. But such details are necessary here,
in explanation of that fair and full, and impartial history of the
Confederate war, which is intended in these volumes.

There were repeated occasions in the course of the struggle when vigor
of generalship on the one side or upon the other, would very certainly
have brought the war to an early conclusion, sparing both sides the
tremendous sacrifices which a lack of capable generalship in the end
entailed upon both.

This post-Shiloh imbecility was one of those conspicuous, and
conspicuously neglected occasions. There is not room for doubt that if
Halleck had remained in his St. Louis headquarters, and had permitted
Grant with the now combined armies of himself, Buell and Pope, to
prosecute an instant and vigorous campaign, the whole Mississippi
Valley would have been speedily brought under Federal control, with all
the consequences that such a conquest must have involved.

After the battle of Shiloh Grant had by his own estimate 120,000 men
at and near Pittsburg Landing, or within easy call. For in addition
to Buell's army Pope had reinforced him with 30,000 men. Beauregard
had about 30,000 effectives at Corinth--or after Van Dorn reinforced
him, perhaps 47,000. Grant's own expert opinion expressed in print, is
that within two days he could and would--if let alone--have captured
Corinth, driving the Confederate forces there into disorderly retreat
if not compelling their surrender, and capturing all their stores.
He would then have been in position to move in overwhelming force
upon Vicksburg and Port Hudson, points not yet strongly fortified or
heavily garrisoned. Capturing them, as he easily could have done, he
would have made the Federals masters of the Mississippi above Baton
Rouge, while Farragut was making himself master of all the lower
reaches of the river. In the meanwhile Grant would have prevented that
concentration and recruitment of Beauregard's army for which Halleck
gave generous leisure to his enemy by delaying his own advance from
Pittsburg Landing for three weeks of preparation and then consuming an
entire month in pushing a force of three men to his adversary's one
over an unobstructed and undefended space of less than twenty miles
only to find when he got to his destination that his enemy, greatly
strengthened, had in leisurely fashion retired to another position,
taking with him every pound of provisions and every round of ammunition
he possessed.

Here were seven of the most precious weeks of the war lost, and the
loss is very inadequately measured by that statement. It is not too
much to say that Halleck's extraordinary deliberation and delay
alone made possible and certain all the terrible fighting and all
the losses of human life incident to the Vicksburg campaign, just as
the paralyzing incapacity of his orders after the capture of Fort
Donelson, made needlessly possible and destructively certain the
tremendous battling of the Confederates at a later period at Nashville,
Chattanooga, Franklin, Lookout Mountain, Chickamauga and in the Atlanta
campaign.

If military etiquette upon either of these occasions had permitted
General Grant, with the support his words would undoubtedly have had
from Sherman, Buell and Thomas, to set forth clearly the conditions,
needs, and opportunities in the Western Department, the authorities
at Washington would pretty certainly have set Halleck's embarrassing
authority aside, thus giving demonstrated capacity the license it
desired to achieve results of incalculable benefit to the National
arms. But Halleck alone of all the generals in that quarter enjoyed
the privilege of direct communication with the War Department, and
Halleck so adroitly represented--perhaps he did not consciously or
intentionally misrepresent--the facts of the situation, that presently,
on the eleventh of July, he was appointed to succeed McClellan as
Commander in Chief of all the Union armies.

This was perhaps the most astonishing, not to say the most unwise,
appointment made on either side during the entire course of the war,
unless we except Mr. Jefferson Davis's appointment of Pemberton after
he had lost Vicksburg, to the position of military adviser of himself,
with apparent authority to control and command even Robert E. Lee.

In the meanwhile Halleck had done all that was possible to him to
humiliate General Grant and to deny him everything in the shape of
opportunity. General Grant, in his "Memoirs," (page 219), pathetically
says:

    Although next to him [Halleck] in rank, and nominally in command of
    my old district and army, I was ignored as much as if I had been
    at the most distant point of territory within my jurisdiction; and
    although I was in command of all the troops engaged at Shiloh, I
    was not permitted to see one of the reports of General Buell or his
    subordinates in that battle until they were published by the War
    Department long after the event.

Again on page 225, General Grant tells of an occasion when he suggested
a military movement to General Halleck--a thing that the second in
command might very well have been expected to do. After explaining
to his readers what his suggestion was, General Grant adds: "I was
silenced so quickly that I felt that possibly I had suggested an
unmilitary movement."

Yet when Halleck was ordered to Washington to assume chief command he
saw clearly that it would not be prudent in the existing state of the
public mind to make any other than Grant the commander at Corinth. He
therefore sent word to Grant in Memphis to report at Corinth. But he
said nothing whatever to him about his own appointment to the command
of all the armies, or about his intended departure for Washington,
or even about his intention that Grant should assume command at
Corinth. He merely directed him to report there, leaving it entirely
to uninformed conjecture whether he was merely to report in person
for some instruction or was to remove his headquarters from Memphis
to that point. In this uncertainty Grant telegraphed asking whether
or not he was to take his staff with him. To this Halleck curtly and
discourteously replied: "This place will be your headquarters. You can
judge for yourself."




CHAPTER XXXIV

GRANT AT CORINTH


When Grant took command at Corinth he found matters in an exceedingly
confused and embarrassing condition. In the first place his authority
was so ill defined that he could do nothing of importance without risk
of subjecting himself to censure and perhaps even to a trial by court
martial for having exceeded his authority, while if he left anything
undone by reason of his uncertainty as to the scope of his command, he
must do so at equal risk of censure or court martial for neglect.

Halleck had been in command of the entire department and of all the
forces within its borders. In leaving General Grant as his successor he
did not invest him with a similarly comprehensive authority. Neither
did he make it clear that such authority was denied to him. So far as
his orders indicated Grant was still only a district commander, having
authority only over troops within the district of West Tennessee, whose
eastern boundary was the Cumberland river, beyond which Halleck had
sent a large part of the forces that had been under his command at
Corinth. And yet Grant was practically a department commander. His own
exposition of the situation is so clear, succinct and complete, that
no paraphrase can better it or equal it. On page 233 _et seq._ of his
"Memoirs," General Grant wrote:

    I left Memphis for my new field without delay and reached Corinth
    on the fifteenth of the month. General Halleck remained until the
    seventeenth of July; but he was very uncommunicative, and gave me
    no information as to what I had been called to Corinth for. When
    General Halleck left to assume the duties of general-in-chief I
    remained in command of the District of West Tennessee. Practically
    I became a department commander because no one was assigned
    to that position over me, and I made my reports direct to the
    General-in-chief; but I was not assigned to the position of
    department commander until the twenty-fifth of October. General
    Halleck, while commanding the Department of the Mississippi, had
    had control as far east as a line drawn from Chattanooga north.
    My district only embraced West Tennessee and Kentucky west of
    the Cumberland river. Buell, with the Army of the Ohio, had as
    previously stated, been ordered east towards Chattanooga, with
    instructions to repair the Memphis and Charleston railroad as
    he advanced. Troops had been sent North by Halleck along the
    line of the Mobile and Ohio railroad to put it in repair as far
    as Columbus. Other troops were stationed on the [Mississippi
    Central] railroad from Jackson, Tennessee, to Grand Junction,
    and still others on the road west to Memphis. The remainder of
    the magnificent army of 120,000 men which entered Corinth on the
    thirtieth of May, had now become so scattered that I was put
    entirely on the defensive in a territory whose population was
    hostile to the Union.

    One of the first things I had to do was to construct fortifications
    at Corinth better suited to the garrison that could be spared to
    man them. The structures that had been built during the months of
    May and June were left as monuments to the skill of the engineer,
    and others were constructed in a few days, plainer in design, but
    suited to the command available to defend them.

In brief Halleck had completely thrown away one of the most brilliant
opportunities of the war. He had found an army of 120,000 men, flushed
with victory and full of spirit, concentrated at a point in the
center of the Confederacy, from which it was not only possible but
easy to advance in overwhelming force in any direction, while the
inflow of recruits at that time was great enough to make good and
even to double the losses that battle might involve. On the other
hand the Confederates had lost so heavily at Shiloh that they did not
venture to make a stand in their intrenchments at Corinth, even though
Halleck's extraordinary dilatoriness gave them seven weeks of precious
time in which to recruit their army, strengthen their defenses and
receive reinforcements of 17,000 seasoned and veteran troops that were
presently sent to them.

General Grant has pronounced the positive and unhesitating opinion
that an energetic advance immediately after the Shiloh battle, with
the enormously superior forces then concentrated at that point would
have resulted beyond a peradventure in the conquest of Corinth within
two days, with the capture of all the stores and ammunition there as
a necessary incident and the capture of Beauregard's army as at least
a promising possibility. By consuming three weeks in preparation for
an advance which ought to have been made at once and by wasting a
whole month more in an advance by parallels, where an advance at the
quickstep with fixed bayonets, was all that was needed, Halleck had
completely thrown away this opportunity.

But even then, even after wasting seven weeks in reaching Corinth, it
was not too late to achieve results of the most momentous consequence.
On page 227 of his "Memoirs," General Grant gives this expert opinion
of the situation and the opportunity:

    The Confederates were now driven out of West Tennessee, and on the
    sixth of June, after a well contested naval battle, the National
    forces took possession of Memphis, and held the Mississippi river
    from its source to that point. The railroad from Columbus to
    Corinth was at once put in good condition and held by us. We had
    garrisons at Donelson, Clarksville and Nashville on the Cumberland
    river, and held the Tennessee river from its mouth to Eastport.
    New Orleans and Baton Rouge had fallen into the possession of
    the National forces, so that now the Confederates at the West
    were narrowed down for all communication with Richmond to the
    single line of road running east from Vicksburg. To dispossess
    them of this, therefore, became a matter of the first importance.
    The possession of the Mississippi by us, from Memphis to Baton
    Rouge, was also a most important object. It would be equal to the
    amputation of a limb in its weakening effect upon the enemy. After
    the capture of Corinth a movable force of 80,000 men, besides
    enough to hold all the territory acquired, _could have been set
    in motion for the accomplishment of any great campaign for the
    suppression of the rebellion_.[1] In addition to this, fresh troops
    were being raised to swell the effective force.

        [1] The italics are not General Grant's, but are placed by the
            author of the present work, upon words that seem to him to
            be pregnant of criticism and explanation.

                    AUTHOR

But the work of depletion commenced. Buell, with the Army of the
Ohio, was sent east, following the line of the Memphis and Charleston
railroad. This he was ordered to repair as he advanced--only to have
it destroyed by small guerilla bands or other troops as soon as he was
out of the way. If he had been sent directly to Chattanooga, as rapidly
as he could march, sending two or three divisions along the line of
the railroad from Nashville forward, he could have arrived with but
little fighting, and would have saved much of the loss of life which
was afterwards incurred in gaining Chattanooga. Bragg would then not
have had time to raise an army to contest the possession of Middle and
East Tennessee and Kentucky; the battles of Stone river and Chickamauga
would not necessarily have been fought; Burnside would not have been
besieged in Knoxville without the power of helping himself or escaping;
the battle of Chattanooga would not have been fought. These are the
negative advantages, if the term negative is applicable, which would
probably have resulted from prompt movements after Corinth fell into
the possession of the National forces. The positive results might have
been, a bloodless advance to Atlanta, to Vicksburg, or to any other
desired point south of Corinth in the interior of Mississippi.

Will the reader bear in mind, that these military criticisms are not
made by the author of the present work, although they fully commend
themselves to his judgment, but are the calm and deliberate utterances
of Ulysses S. Grant, by all consent the ablest general that ever
commanded a Federal army, and a general minutely familiar with every
detail of the situation which presented itself after Shiloh? They bear
the authority both of intimate knowledge and of demonstrated military
skill. Reduced to their lowest terms they amount to this: If Halleck
had been an officer fit to command an army, he would have rushed upon
Corinth with his three to one force on the very day on which he assumed
command. The result could not have been in the least degree doubtful.
But even after he had wasted seven precious weeks--three of them in
preparation for an advance for which he was already fully prepared,
and four more in an advance over a wholly undefended space of nineteen
miles which he ought to have covered in one day or a day and a half
at most,--there was still open to a capable general an opportunity
which Halleck utterly failed to see or to seize. He had under his
command 120,000 veteran troops, of the very best fighting quality and
subordinately commanded by such masters of the military art as Grant,
Sherman, Thomas, Buell, Lew Wallace, Nelson, Prentiss and their fit
fellows. Making the most liberal allowance for detachments to guard
railroads and to hold every acre of country conquered, General Grant
says he could have mustered an effective army of 80,000 men or more for
aggressive operations in any direction that might have seemed best to
him, against which the Confederates could not have opposed more than
30,000 or 40,000 at the utmost. The whole central South lay before him
where to choose. His opportunity was one the like of which came to no
other commander North or South, during the whole course of the war.
He threw it utterly away. He scattered his superbly overwhelming army
to the four winds, under orders that rendered their courage and their
enterprise futile, and left Grant in a hopelessly defensive position,
with no army capable of any measure of aggression, and with an
authority so ill defined that he could not order a concentration even
in the smallest way.

And yet, this man, Halleck, who had never fought a battle in his life,
and who had never commanded an army except to scatter and waste it, was
chosen to command all the armies of the United States.

Surely the country could not have been worse served if the
administration had been intent upon losing the war instead of
carrying it to success. And very certainly the long domination of this
peculiarly incapable man served to embarrass "enterprises of great pith
and moment," and to prolong the destructive, fratricidal struggle for
long after the time during which, under wiser counsels, it would have
endured.

Curiously enough no explanation of this costly blunder has ever been
suggested. We know of course that Halleck's first appointment to
command in the West was made upon General Scott's recommendation, at a
period of the war when nobody knew or could know what officers of the
old army were capable of achieving results and what ones were unfit
for command. General Scott's mistake in selecting Halleck for a highly
responsible command was pardonable under the circumstances. But after
his extraordinary dealings with the victories at Fort Henry and Fort
Donelson, and still more conspicuously after his phenomenal failure
to seize upon the opportunity that came to him ready made by the
results achieved at Shiloh, it is absolutely impossible for the most
imaginative critic to conceive of a reason which might have justified
the administration at Washington in selecting this man with his doubly
demonstrated incapacity to direct all the armies of the Union in their
operations.

Not only was Grant left upon the defensive with a force too small to
permit aggression of any kind on his part, but even this scant force
was rapidly and very dangerously depleted by orders from Halleck's
Washington headquarters. The Confederates and guerrillas were daily
threatening his communications and frequently attacking his defensive
detachments in force. He was confronted on the south by an effective
force of 35,000 men under Van Dorn and Price, threatening Memphis,
Corinth, Bolivar and other points. Grant's concern for the safety of
Memphis, isolated as that post was by the Confederate occupation of
Grand Junction--between Memphis and Corinth--was lightened only by
the fact, as he himself suggestively put the matter, that "it was in
Sherman's hands."

Under this stress of circumstances, and with extraordinary disregard
of what disastrous consequences there might be involved, Halleck
on the fourteenth of August ordered Grant still further to weaken
himself by sending two more divisions to Buell on his tedious march
eastward. Again on the second of September, Grant received orders to
send still further reinforcements to Buell, and two days later Gordon
Granger's division was detached and sent, by orders from Washington, to
Louisville. On the twenty-second Colonel Rodney Mason, whom Grant had
forgiven for arrant cowardice at Shiloh, made a dastardly surrender of
Clarksville with half a regiment or more.

Thus the one commander who had thus far shown himself capable of
conceiving campaigns and conducting them to success, was left with
a totally inadequate and constantly diminishing force, to waste his
time in guarding a vast territory while Bragg was marching from
Rome, Georgia, with a strong Confederate army toward Chattanooga,
meaning to seize that position before Buell could get there. In his
"Memoirs" General Grant gives expression to his regret that he was
not permitted to move, instead of sitting still, at a time when even
with the depleted force under his command, he still felt confidant of
his ability to crush and destroy Bragg's force, thus forestalling and
rendering unnecessary the very severe and bloody campaigns which were
destined to follow for lack of such a timely blow.

The Confederates, early in the spring, had enacted and enforced a
conscription law which had resulted in putting every man in the South
capable of bearing arms, into the army. At the North--largely because
of the defeat of McClellan and Pope in Virginia, and of Halleck's
astonishing failure to follow up the Shiloh campaign with aggressive
operations--the volunteering had so far ceased that Mr. Lincoln's call
for an additional 300,000 men met with a meager and unsatisfactory
response. In several states--New York among them--the quotas were not
furnished by volunteering and it was necessary to order a draft to fill
up the ranks depleted by battle and disease. The North at this time had
more than twice as many men in the field as the South could muster. But
with every southward advance of Federal armies more and more men must
be withdrawn from the active work of aggression and set to guard places
captured, to maintain lines of communication and to hold regions that
had been overrun. Moreover the Southerners were mainly fighting on the
defensive, which in some degree compensated for their lack of equal
numbers. Still again the enlistment of every man at the South was to
endure to the end of the war, while very large numbers of men at the
North were enlisted for shorter terms, some of them for only three
months or a hundred days, scarcely time enough in which to discipline
and train them into effectiveness.

Without offense, also,--and certainly no offense is intended--it is
fair to say that the volunteers and conscripts who at this period of
the war came into the Confederate service, were in many cases morally
superior to the men brought by draft processes into the armies of the
Union. They were all Americans for one thing, while great multitudes
of those enlisted or drafted into the service at the North were recent
immigrants from Europe who neither knew nor cared for the issues
involved in the contest but who entered the service as they might
have accepted any other employment, for the sake of the money returns
promised. These money returns included, besides pay, rations and a
clothing allowance, a bounty of extraordinary liberality, amounting
in many cases to a larger sum of money than its recipients had ever
dreamed of owning, as the price of substitution. For while at the
South every man included within the terms of the conscription law must
shoulder his musket and go to the front, whatever his wealth or social
position might be, the case was very different at the North. There men
who had the means of buying a substitute very often did so. Many who
lacked the means or were unwilling to pay the high price exacted by
those who stood ready to sell themselves as substitutes, emigrated to
Canada or went to Europe to escape the military service.

These facts undoubtedly created a disparity between the two contending
armies, which had not existed during the earlier part of the war. The
immigrants and the purchased substitutes who joined the Federal armies
after the campaigns of 1862 were over, were not morally the equals of
the native or long naturalized Americans who had fought so heroically
around Richmond, at the second battle of Manassas, at Sharpsburg, and
at Shiloh. For this as well as for the other reasons indicated, the
North had need of larger numbers than the South, in order to carry the
war to success.

The Confederates now held a smaller section of the Mississippi than
before, but they held that more strongly. A general of capacity, after
Shiloh, might easily have wrested its possession from them, as General
Grant has pointed out. Under a general incapacity, nothing was done to
that end and the Confederates, thus favored by Federal neglect, had
so far fortified their strongholds that the dislodgment which would
have been easy in the spring could now be accomplished only by one of
the severest, bloodiest and most perilous campaigns of the war. Thus
all that had been gained above or below, towards the reconquest of the
Mississippi, had gone for next to naught. For the possession of its
mouth on the one hand, and the control of its upper reaches on the
other, meant nothing so long as the Confederates held Vicksburg and
Port Hudson, thus obstructing a river whose sole value was as a highway.

In Virginia the Southern arms had been successful in an extraordinary
degree. McClellan's splendid army of 120,000 men had been broken and
beaten back from the very gates of Richmond, and sent hurriedly
northward to defend the National capital itself against threatened
capture. Pope, at the head of an army quite equal to any that the
Confederates could muster, had been outmaneuvered, outfought and
overthrown at Manassas, and hurled back upon the defenses of Washington
as a needed refuge. Lee had invaded Maryland, his cavalry amusing
themselves by unopposed marches into Pennsylvania. Finally Burnside's
attempt at Fredericksburg with an army overwhelming in its numbers, had
resulted in fearfully bloody failure.

As the autumn drew on Grant was left at Corinth, by no fault of his own
but because of Halleck's orders, with a force barely sufficient, if
sufficient at all, to hold the railroads and outlying posts which he
was set to guard. In his front there lay a threatening army stronger
than any that he could hope to bring together at any one point. To the
eastward Buell, under paralyzing orders, was slowly marching toward
Chattanooga, while Bragg with a strong Confederate army was hastening
northward to seize that commanding strategic position and to push
thence northward with high hopes and fair prospects of making the Ohio
river before the year was out, the dividing line between the Northern
and Southern forces, replacing the line which by Grant's successes had
been drawn the whole width of two states further south.

On these points the testimony of General Grant is too direct, too
conclusive and too valuable to be omitted here, or to be given
otherwise than in his own carefully chosen words. On page 237 _et seq._
of the "Memoirs" he writes:

    General Buell had left Corinth about the tenth of June to march
    upon Chattanooga. Bragg, who had succeeded Beauregard in command,
    sent one division from Tupelo on the twenty-seventh of June for
    the same place. This gave Buell about seventeen days' start. If he
    had not been required to repair the railroad as he advanced, the
    march could have been made in eighteen days at the outside, and
    Chattanooga must have been reached by the national forces before
    the rebels could have possibly got there.

On page 240 we have this careful estimate of the situation at the
beginning of September:

    On the seventh of September I learned of the advance of Van Dorn
    and Price, apparently upon Corinth. One division was brought from
    Memphis to Bolivar to meet any emergency that might arise from this
    move of the enemy. I was much concerned because my first duty after
    holding the territory acquired within my command, was to prevent
    further reinforcing of Bragg in Middle Tennessee. Already the army
    of Northern Virginia had defeated the army under General Pope,
    and was invading Maryland. In the center General Buell was on his
    way to Louisville and Bragg marching parallel to him with a large
    Confederate force for the Ohio river. I had been constantly called
    upon to reinforce Buell until at this time my entire force numbered
    less than 50,000 men of all arms. This included everything from
    Cairo south within my jurisdiction. If I too should be driven back
    the Ohio river would become the line dividing the belligerents west
    of the Alleghanies while at the east the line was already farther
    north than when hostilities commenced at the opening of the war. It
    is true Nashville was never given up after its first capture, but
    it would have been isolated and the garrison there would have been
    obliged to beat a hasty retreat if the troops in West Tennessee
    had been compelled to fall back. To say, at the end of the second
    year of the war the line dividing the contestants at the east was
    pushed north of Maryland, a state that had not seceded, and at
    the west beyond Kentucky, and this State which had been always
    loyal, would have been discouraging indeed. As it was many loyal
    people despaired in the Fall of 1862 of ever saving the Union. The
    Administration at Washington was much concerned for the safety of
    the cause it held so dear.

This was a most trying time for a man of General Grant's overmastering
instinct of activity. The task set him of guarding a vast territory
and three railroad lines against a ceaselessly active and enterprising
enemy, gave him occupation enough it is true. But the situation forbade
him to concentrate anywhere, or to do anything indeed except repel
assaults first upon one insignificant point and then upon another.
A mere catalogue of the actions fought at this time in that quarter
would occupy pages of print. Only one of them had enough significance
to require mention in this history. On the thirteenth of September the
Confederate general, Sterling Price, with a considerable force occupied
Iuka, a town on the Memphis and Charleston railroad, about twenty
miles east of Corinth. The fact was a significant commentary upon the
unwisdom of the orders which delayed Buell's march on Chattanooga, in
the end defeating its purpose, in order to repair a railroad, any point
upon which the Confederates could seize at will in spite of Grant's
utmost diligence in an impracticable and indeed impossible defense.

Grant feared that the object of Price's movement might be something
of vastly more importance than the destruction of a railroad station,
as indeed it was. Price's purpose in seizing Iuka was to get control
of the railroad east of that point long enough to enable him to send
heavy reinforcements to Bragg, who was at that time pushing Buell back
upon Louisville, with the prospect, if reinforced in timely fashion,
of capturing that city, compelling Grant's retirement to Cairo, and
establishing the Ohio river as the northern boundary and the military
line of the Confederacy. Accordingly Grant dangerously weakened
several exposed points in order to concentrate under Rosecrans a
sufficient force to drive Price out of Iuka before the main body of the
Confederate army south of Corinth could join him there.

The operation resulted in some strenuous fighting. Price was driven
back and his scheme was defeated. The details of the battle need not be
recounted here. They belong to the domain of minute history, covering
special campaigns. For the purposes of a general history of the war, it
is sufficient to point out the only strategic purpose involved in the
movement, and its defeat by a timely and judicious activity.




CHAPTER XXXV

BRAGG'S CAMPAIGN AGAINST LOUISVILLE


Strategically considered there was no point in the middle South
so important to either side at that time as Chattanooga. Either
side having possession of that place could hold it against a force
outnumbering its garrison many times. More important still, its
possession by the Confederates opened to them three or four different
routes of advance into Kentucky, which no enemy with anything like an
equal force could effectually guard or defend. To hold one of these
routes was to open another. Confederate possession of Chattanooga at
that period of the war meant therefore the possible and even probable
conquest of all eastern Kentucky, the isolation and fall of Nashville,
the reconquest of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, and the enforced
retirement of Grant's advanced army to the line of the Ohio river.

All these consequences, as General Grant has said, were the probable
results of a Confederate occupation of Chattanooga in force, and had
Bragg succeeded in the campaign he directed from that point all these
consequences would have been morally certain to befall the Union arms,
as General Grant saw at the time and afterwards set forth in his
"Memoirs."

On the other hand the seizure of Chattanooga by a Federal force of
consequence, would have closed and barred the gate to all further
advances of the Confederates into Tennessee and Kentucky. It would have
made the southern boundary of Tennessee permanently the most northerly
military line of division between North and South, making of Kentucky a
state completely saved to the Union and of Tennessee a state completely
recovered to it.

General Halleck had sagacity enough to see, at least in some degree,
the strategic necessity of seizing upon Chattanooga. Accordingly he
ordered Buell to march upon and occupy that place. But he seems to have
forgotten that there were energetic men in command of Southern armies,
men quite as capable as he was of recognizing an opportunity. Instead
of sending Buell post haste to occupy the place, as General Grant
has pointed out that he should have done, leaving the repair of the
Memphis and Charleston railroad to details of troops to be made after
the main point was gained, he threw away the advantage of a seventeen
days' start and a shorter line than that of his enemy, and kept Buell
for many weary weeks repairing bridges and culverts while Bragg was
hurrying with all possible speed to throw a commanding force into
Chattanooga.

The result was that Bragg captured the commanding strategic position
and Buell was left "in the air," as military men say, not knowing where
to concentrate or in what direction his enemy was to be expected. The
story of his haltings, his hesitations, his confusion of mind, his
orders and counter orders, as given in General Van Horne's "History of
the Army of the Cumberland," and in the accompanying documents, is
pitiful in its revelation of the perplexities of an earnest, sincere
and very capable officer who had been made the victim of "orders" from
an incapable but relentlessly exacting "superior."

It would be an idle and wearisome waste of space to recount here all
of Buell's marchings and counter-marchings, all the orders given and
countermanded, and given again only to be again rescinded, which
marked the progress of that campaign. For the purposes of history
it is enough to say that Bragg, with his Confederates, in the end
succeeded in maneuvering Buell out of Tennessee and across Kentucky
to the neighborhood of Louisville, while sending a dangerously strong
detachment into eastern Kentucky to threaten Covington and Cincinnati.
The purpose of this detachment was to compel Buell to divide his force
and send a part of it up the river to defend Cincinnati, thus weakening
the defense of Louisville, which city Bragg intended to assail and
confidently hoped to capture.

That purpose failed. The moment that Cincinnati was threatened, men in
multitudes, who had not before thought of enlisting, swarmed to the
point of danger and freely offered themselves for its defense. It was
not necessary for Buell to spare a single regiment for Cincinnati's
protection, beyond those already holding eastern Kentucky, and
even these, when Bragg's campaign developed its purpose against
Louisville, were able to spare considerable detachments to aid Buell in
Louisville's defense. But all this is an anticipation of events. Let us
tell the story as it occurred.

During the spring and summer of 1862, and after Buell's main army
had marched westward to reinforce Grant at Pittsburg Landing, there
had been almost ceaseless campaigning and fighting along the upper
Tennessee river, in Alabama, and around Cumberland Gap. Generals O.
M. Mitchell, G. W. Morgan and Negley were the active agents in this
campaigning on the Federal side; Kirby Smith was the Confederate
chieftain with John Morgan and N. B. Forrest for his enterprising
cavalry raiders. The fighting was often severe and the maneuvers
brilliant on both sides, but in the absence of strong armies it was
after all scarcely more than skirmishing, involving no battle of
importance and no movement of strategic consequence enough to require
mention in a general history of the war. The struggle was the outcome
of a purpose on either side to maintain the strategic status quo, or
if possible to improve it here and there where opportunity offered.
Substantially the result was to leave matters about as they had been,
except that the continual activity and the frequent encounters of arms
served to discipline and steady the raw recruits who were coming in on
both sides. The operations of that spring and summer served to make
soldiers of the new men North and South.

It was not until after Halleck sent Buell to seize upon the strategic
position at Chattanooga, and Bragg, seventeen days later, withdrew
his main body from Grant's front and set out by the roundabout way of
Mobile to anticipate Buell, that the war in that part of the country
again assumed strategic and historical importance.

Buell's march eastward was necessarily very slow and halting, and
during its continuance he was compelled to scatter his forces in a very
dangerous fashion. There had been two blunders made at the outset--both
of them made by General Halleck against General Buell's protest. One of
them was in making Corinth the base of supplies for Buell's army and
depending for communication upon a long east and west line of badly
broken railroad which was exposed at almost every point to frequent and
destructive incursions of the enemy. Buell had asked to make Nashville
his base instead. That point was connected with Louisville by rail and
still more securely by river, and the river route was at all points
adequately guarded against interruption by an effective gunboat fleet.
From Nashville south and east there were railroads which Buell could
have guarded effectually with one fifth the force necessary to the very
ineffectual protection of the east and west line of the Memphis and
Charleston road.

But Halleck was imperative in his orders and Buell had to submit, with
the ultimate result of having to scatter his forces widely in order to
guard both lines and repair both, on pain of bringing actual starvation
upon his army.

The second mistake was in ordering Buell to repair the very badly
damaged Memphis and Charleston railroad as he advanced. This, as we
have already seen, resulted in so delaying his advance that Bragg
reached Chattanooga first and was from that hour master of the
situation.

In the meanwhile Forrest and Morgan were ceaselessly active in Buell's
rear--towards Louisville--harassing his detachments, threatening and
at times destroying his communications, burning bridges, tearing up
railroads, gathering recruits from the youth of Kentucky and Tennessee,
throwing the people into panic and grave uncertainty of mind, and
now and then defeating and capturing important forces. Thus at
Tompkinsville, Kentucky, Morgan routed the Federal garrison under Major
Jordan, and proceeding, destroyed the railroad at Lebanon Junction,
and at Lebanon compelled the surrender of the force there with a large
amount of supplies which Buell badly needed. Thence he raided all over
central Kentucky, destroying railroads of the utmost importance to
Buell and finally escaping with rich booty into the Confederate lines
again.

Forrest pushed out from Chattanooga and undertook even larger
operations. He assailed Murfreesborough on the thirteenth of July,
carried the place by storm, captured the whole garrison, including
its commander, General Crittenden, and, turning about, overcame and
captured Colonel Lester on the Stone river, with his entire force of
nine full companies.

These actions were not battles of any special consequence, of course.
They are mentioned here merely as illustrations of the perplexities
that beset General Buell in his march upon Chattanooga, and ultimately
made a complete failure of the attempt. Such actions as those described
were of daily occurrence, and they compelled General Buell not only to
weaken his column by detachments sent to strengthen exposed positions,
but still further to cripple himself by sending columns of some
importance to try conclusions with the very enterprising enemy.

Bragg, at the head of a strong Confederate army, established himself in
Chattanooga on the twenty-ninth of July, some weeks before Buell could
finish the reconstruction of the Memphis and Charleston railroad and
advance to the point the occupation of which was the sole object of his
campaign.

Bragg at once called to his aid all the troops that could be spared to
him from points of less importance, and very soon he was at the head of
a strong force which threatened a serious and dangerous invasion.

But while he was thus concentrating his forces for a vigorous
aggressive movement, Bragg adroitly concealed his purposes. He so
disposed his divisions as to leave Buell in utter uncertainty as to his
intentions. It might be that he intended a reconquest of Nashville. It
might be that his purpose was to march into eastern Kentucky. It might
be that he intended to move northward, take Buell in flank and rear,
destroy his communications, cut him off from assistance or retreat, and
perhaps compel his surrender. His dispositions equally threatened each
of these possible enterprises, without in the least degree impairing
his ability instantly to concentrate his entire force for the execution
of any one of them.

And what his force was Buell did not know and could not conjecture with
any degree of confidence. East Tennessee was full of Union men eager to
give helpful information to the Federal commander, but Bragg, with an
adroitness that had not before been brought to bear upon campaigning
in the west, managed to conceal the strength of his army even from
the citizens of Chattanooga, at the same time moving troops about in
such fashion as to suggest half a dozen different and irreconcilable
purposes. It thus happened that the more and the more positive
information Buell received with regard to his enemy's operations
and intentions, the more hopelessly was he bewildered. He dared not
concentrate upon any line, lest his adversary should move at once by
some other and put him in peril. No one can read General Buell's orders
and dispatches written at that time without being strongly impressed
with the hopeless confusion and uncertainty of his mind due to a
situation that was perplexing in the extreme.

It was obvious that he must draw his widely scattered forces together
at some point; but where? He could not concentrate them at any point
upon the line or in the region he was supposed to be occupying without
weakening all other points at grave risk of having his enemy turn his
position and bring him to destruction. There was only one course that
he could pursue with even tolerable prudence. That was to abandon his
aggressive campaign, fall back, concentrate for defense and give battle
at some point of his own selection much farther north.

Bragg's army consisted of five divisions of infantry with artillery
and cavalry. Buell had five divisions in front and three others within
almost instant call, while he could depend upon being still further
reinforced from Louisville, whither a still further part of Grant's
army had been sent. But the nature of the country in which Bragg lay,
and the uncertainty of his intentions forbade an attack upon him there.

Buell decided at last that his adversary's objective was Nashville,
and on the thirtieth of August he gave orders for a retreat toward
that place by way of Murfreesboro. At Murfreesboro he made no pause,
as by that time Bragg's movement had developed his purpose to go into
Kentucky and make a hurried advance upon Louisville, striking that
city before Buell could come to its defense. Buell therefore abandoned
his march towards Nashville and pushed his column northward by hurried
marches, in the hope that he might beat Bragg in the race for the
Ohio river, or failing in that, might be in time to fall upon his
adversary's rear before he could establish himself in Louisville's
defenses. He left a small garrison to hold Nashville but pushed forward
in all haste with his main army, in retreat upon Louisville.

His retreat was embarrassed at every step. Bragg had forces ahead
of him who destroyed bridges, tore up tracks, captured important
supply depots, and in one case, at Mumfordsville, compelled the
surrender--September 17--of a fortified town with its garrison, upon
which Buell had somewhat depended for a reinforcement.

At first Buell had left Thomas at Nashville, to defend that city, but
his own need of strength became so pressing that he called upon that
able officer to join him with the greater part of the troops that had
been left at Nashville.

What Bragg's campaign really meant, and what he hoped to accomplish
by it may best be shown by his own orders and dispatches. On August
eleventh, soon after he had established himself at Chattanooga, he sent
instructions to General Van Dorn who was confronting Grant at Corinth
in which he said: "It is very desirable to press the enemy closely in
West Tennessee. We learn their forces there are being rapidly reduced,
and when our movements become known, it is certain they must throw
forces into middle Tennessee and Kentucky, or lose those regions. If
you hold them in check, we are sure of success here; but should they
reinforce here so as to defy us, then you may redeem west Tennessee and
probably aid us by crushing the enemy's rear."

On August 27, just as his army was got into vigorous motion, General
Bragg wrote to Van Dorn again as follows: "We move from here
immediately--later by some days than expected; but in time, we hope,
for a successful campaign. Buell has certainly fallen back from the
Memphis and Charleston railroad, and will probably not make a stand
this side of Nashville, if there. He is now fortifying that place.
General E. K. Smith, reinforced by two brigades from this army, has
turned Cumberland Gap and is now marching on Lexington, Kentucky.
General Morgan (Yankee) is thus cut off from all supplies. General
Humphrey Marshall is to enter eastern Kentucky from western Virginia.
We shall thus have Buell pretty well disposed of. Sherman and
Rosecrans, we leave to you and Price, satisfied you can dispose of
them, and we confidently hope to meet you upon the Ohio."

Two days later, on August 29, Bragg telegraphed Price, saying:
"Buell's force is in full retreat upon Nashville, destroying their
stores. Watch Rosecrans and prevent a junction. Or, if he escapes, you
follow him closely."

It will be seen from these dispatches that Bragg had no real thought of
advancing upon Nashville, as Buell at first believed that he intended
to do. His campaign was boldly planned for a larger conquest farther
north, which, if he had been successful, would have left Nashville an
easy prey to a strong detachment, if indeed it had failed to succumb to
isolation and fall by its own weight.

In these brief communications we have a complete revelation of Bragg's
plans and purposes--a complete setting forth of his hopes. Stripped
of military technicalities his purpose was to push his army towards
Louisville in advance of Buell's retreat; to strike and destroy the
Federal general's line of railroad communication between Nashville
and Louisville, at points north of Buell's march, thus impeding and
delaying the Federal retreat and in Forrest's phrase "getting there
first with the most men"--_there_ meaning Louisville on the Ohio river.

In aid of this plan he had cut off the Federal general, Morgan,
at Cumberland Gap, rendering his force useless for any aggressive
purpose and incapable of joining Buell anywhere. He had ordered strong
forces into eastern Kentucky, to hold there all the Federals in that
quarter, to threaten Cincinnati and perhaps to compel the detachment
of a considerable force from the garrison at Louisville for the
defense of the Ohio city. He depended upon Price and Van Dorn so to
occupy Grant's badly depleted army in western Tennessee and northern
Mississippi as to prevent it from moving to Buell's assistance, or
should it so move, he expected his very energetic lieutenants to
cripple it by a prompt pursuit and by vigorous blows struck upon its
rear, in the meanwhile overrunning and reconquering the region lost in
western Tennessee and Kentucky.

This was without doubt one of the most brilliantly planned operations
of the entire war on either side. It looked to no less an achievement
than the undoing of all that had been done by Grant and Buell and
Thomas, the reconquest of all the region lost and the establishment
of the Confederate lines upon the Ohio river for both offensive and
defensive operations during the next year and the years to follow.

The one defect of the plan was that the Confederates had not force
enough to carry it to success, except by some happy accident, and happy
accidents were far less likely to happen in the autumn of 1862 than
they had been a year earlier when troops were raw, generals totally
inexperienced and the problems of war wholly unsolved even in their
primary processes.

Bragg's force was considerably less than that which Buell had under
his immediate command. Lee was at that time carrying on his tremendous
campaigns in Virginia and Maryland so that no troops could be spared
from that quarter to reinforce Bragg's undertaking. Price and Van Dorn
had quite all they could do to hold their own against Grant at Corinth
and Sherman at Memphis. It is true that Grant had been "stripped to the
skin," as he expressed it, by calls upon him to reinforce Buell and to
spare division after division for the army that was contending against
Lee and doubtfully defending the Federal capital. But on the other hand
Price and Van Dorn had been stripped equally bare to furnish Bragg with
the troops with whom he was invading Kentucky.

And while Bragg was thus marching into his enemy's country with a
force only about three fifths as numerous as that of his adversary
and with no prospect of important reinforcement from any quarter,
Buell was retreating upon a city strongly held, whose garrison would
furnish an instant and a very strong reinforcement, while the mere
threat of Bragg's advance was inducing the hurrying of multitudes of
fresh troops from all the northwestern states, to the menaced cities of
Cincinnati and Louisville. For it was clearly seen in Ohio, Indiana and
Illinois, and even in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, that should
Bragg succeed in establishing himself on the Ohio river the states
north of that stream must become the ravaged and trampled theater of
the next year's campaign, with a Confederate invading force swelled
by enlistments from Kentucky and Tennessee to enormous proportions
and reinforced by the fifty or sixty thousand Southern veterans
whom the conquest of the Ohio by Bragg would instantly release from
defensive work farther south. In brief, if Bragg could have captured
and held Louisville by defeating Buell, it was morally certain that
the Confederates would have been able, during the following spring,
to invade the Northwest with an effective force of tremendous
proportions. For Kentucky and Tennessee would in that case have become
wholly Confederate, and the whole South would have joined in an effort
to make decisive use of such an opportunity to end the war in triumph.
Tens of thousands of seasoned troops employed during the summer of
1862 in garrisoning towns and protecting railroad lines would in that
case have been set free to aid in an aggressive movement north of the
Ohio. With the Confederates established at Louisville and holding the
Ohio river as their line, there would have been no choice but for
Grant to withdraw from Mississippi, West Tennessee and Kentucky, thus
setting free not only the 30,000 or 50,000 men confronting his present
position, but also the garrisons and armies about Vicksburg and along
the several railroads in Mississippi and in northern Georgia and
Alabama. It is certainly not an exaggeration to estimate that had Bragg
succeeded, as he hoped, in seizing Louisville and meeting Van Dorn and
Price "on the Ohio" as he said, the Confederates could and would have
mustered at least 150,000 men for the invasion of the Northwest at the
opening of the spring of 1863--an army greater than the South ever put
into the field at any point during the entire continuance of the war.

And all this was a not impossible--indeed a not
improbable--contingency. It is true that Bragg's force was in numbers
inferior to Buell's in about the proportion of three to five. But it
was massed at the outset and remained completely coöperating from
beginning to end of the campaign. It had besides, the advantage of
knowing what it intended and whither it was going, while Buell must
vaguely guess its intentions and hold himself ready during a retreat,
to meet his enemy wherever that enemy might see fit to strike.

In war these things offset superiority of numbers in a degree which it
is difficult for the civilian reader to understand. He who can give
battle or refuse it where he pleases, has a very great advantage over
his adversary who must accept whatever is offered or else retreat at
disadvantage.

Moreover Bragg had managed to get the start of Buell in their race
for Louisville, and this advantage had been greatly increased by his
success in breaking Buell's lines of march by burning bridges, tearing
up railroads and capturing supply depots. For a time it seemed more
than probable that Bragg would reach Louisville and occupy it before
Buell could by any possibility get there. In that event Buell would
have been cut off from all supplies, and only ordinary vigilance on the
part of the Confederates would have been necessary to starve him into
surrender--for if thus cut off, his stores could not have supported his
army for more than three or four days at the utmost.

Still again, Bragg had another ground of hope. It often happens in
war, that a smaller force, skilfully handled, masters a larger force.
To go no further back than the Seven Days' battles around Richmond,
and the campaign following, Lee had succeeded by the skilful handling
of a comparatively small force in overcoming one army which greatly
outnumbered his own, while paralyzing the purpose of other forces as
great as his own, that had been sent to reinforce his enemy. With this
and many other familiar illustrations of the possibility of achieving
conspicuous military success against superior numbers present to his
mind, it was not vainglorious on the part of Bragg, who believed in
his own skill, to hope that if he could reach Louisville in advance of
Buell, his army, inspirited by repeated successes on the march, and
holding the vantage ground of possession, might successfully meet and
defeat Buell's way-weary force, cut off, as in that case it would have
been, from its objective, from all hope of assistance and even from
very badly needed supplies.

Indeed, had Bragg achieved his purpose of pushing his columns into
Louisville in advance of Buell's coming, it would have been almost a
miracle for him to have failed in his resistance to the outmarched
Federal commander's attempts to recapture the lost stronghold.

It was one of those fearful crises of the war,--like Sharpsburg
and Gettysburg--in which the whole outcome of the struggle hung
trembling in the balance, and the future alike of the Union and of the
Confederacy was risked, as it were, upon the hazard of a die.

For while Bragg was thus dragging Buell back from northern Alabama and
Georgia to the Ohio river and more than seriously threatening to make
of that river the fortified frontier of the Confederacy, Lee was in
Maryland, after having overthrown McClellan before Richmond and Pope
at Manassas, and the National capital itself seemed in sore danger of
capture. The year which had opened with the Union victories at Forts
Henry and Donelson, presently followed by Grant's success at Shiloh,
while McClellan's overwhelming divisions were near enough to Richmond
to see the spires of that city's churches, seemed about to draw to a
close so disastrous to the Federal cause as to leave it in worse case
than at the beginning of the war or indeed at any time since the first
defeat at Bull Run.

The National credit was impaired as it never had been before. The
Confederates were moved to make of the eighteenth of September a day
of Thanksgiving for a deliverance which they regarded as in effect
accomplished.

Enlistments at the North had so far fallen off that drafts must be made
in order to maintain that great superiority of numbers without which
the North, fighting aggressively, could not hope to make head against
Southern defense, as all the operations of the war up to that time had
shown, and as the later course of the contest additionally proved at
every point.

But Bragg's effort to seize Louisville before Buell could throw
himself into that city's defenses, failed of its purpose. By virtue
of a wonderful march Buell reached the city first, near the end of
September, the last of his forces arriving there on the twenty-ninth.
Bragg was at Bardstown, not far away and in a very threatening
position. In the meanwhile Grant held his own at Corinth in spite of
the dangerous depletion of his forces, and the whole of West Tennessee
remained in possession of the Federals.

Buell found heavy reinforcements awaiting him at Louisville, while
Bragg at Bardstown had not yet been joined, as he had expected to be,
by Kirby Smith's force from eastern Kentucky.

The conditions of the campaign were thus reversed. Buell, who had been
on the defensive and in enforced retreat, was able now to take the
offensive, while Bragg, who had been advancing with high hopes was now
in a position from which he must retreat promptly on pain of having his
army overwhelmed and destroyed.

Buell quickly reorganized his army into corps, welding the raw troops
into the seasoned force, and within a day or two he was ready to assail
the enemy who had driven him across two states.

Bragg retired to Perryville with a total force of about 35,000 men, and
Buell with 58,000 advanced upon him. On the eighth of October a severe
battle occurred which lasted from noonday to night and seemed undecided
when night fell. But when morning came Bragg had retired and was in
slow and orderly retreat southward. The Federal loss in the battle of
Perryville was reported at 4,348, including two brigadier generals
killed. The Confederate loss is unknown, but as Bragg began the battle
with only three divisions assailing eight, and as the fighting at times
was muzzle to muzzle, the slaughter among such troops as were actually
engaged on his side, must have been terrible.

Learning that Kirby Smith's command had on that evening joined Bragg,
General Buell did not press his enemy, but disposed his forces for a
defensive battle. It was not until the thirteenth that he discovered
that Bragg was indeed retreating and ordered a pursuit. This was
pressed, with some fighting now and then, as far as Crab Orchard, where
the Federals halted, leaving Bragg free to make his leisurely way to
East Tennessee with an enormous wagon train loaded with a rich booty of
supplies which he had gathered in Kentucky.




CHAPTER XXXVI

FALL AND WINTER CAMPAIGNS AT THE WEST AND SOUTH


The climatic conditions of the disputed country south and west were
excellent for campaigning during the autumn, and tolerable during most
of the winter. As neither side was satisfied with the results achieved
in that quarter during the spring and summer of 1862, both were
disposed to carry on the war with vigor during the autumn of that year
and the winter following.

On the third of October, while Buell and Bragg were confronting each
other near Louisville, Van Dorn, who had been heavily reinforced from
Missouri, undertook to carry out Bragg's orders, for the capture of
Corinth and the reconquest of western Tennessee and Kentucky. He
advanced upon Corinth in force and assailed Rosecrans, who held the
immediate command of that place, upon lines chosen by the Federal
commander, three miles in front of the main defenses.

It was a rich prize that the Confederate commander battled for, and
right manfully did he strive to gain it. Corinth at that time was
a depot of supplies of unusual consequence, and besides that, its
conquest would mean the complete breaking of Grant's long and difficult
line of defense.

During the first day of terrific fighting, Van Dorn succeeded in
driving Rosecrans back to the refuge of the town's fortifications. On
the next morning he assailed the works with extraordinary vigor and
determination. His men suffered terribly from the cannon and musketry
fire of a protected enemy at short range, but they succeeded at last in
breaking the defenses and forcing their way into the town where they
fought inch by inch through the streets. For a time it seemed certain
that they must succeed not only in carrying the town and capturing
the stores that had been collected there, but also in compelling the
surrender of the defending force, twenty thousand strong, with the
multitude of large guns mounted upon the works. But reinforcements
came to Rosecrans's aid at the critical moment and turned the tide of
battle just in time to prevent a great disaster to the Federals. The
Confederates were driven back and after a heavy loss, never accurately
reported, they retreated from the place.

Grant had ordered Rosecrans, should this occur, to pursue with all his
force and crush the Confederate column completely. Rosecrans delayed
even the beginning of pursuit from noon, when the retreat began, until
the morning of the next day and then, by a mistake in the road taken,
lost even the little chance left to him of effective pursuit.

Grant was sorely displeased with this loss of an opportunity which
had been purchased at cost of so severe a battle, and at his request
Rosecrans was removed to another field. He was sent in fact, after a
brief time, to succeed Buell, whose failure to do greater damage to
Bragg met with condemnation at Washington.

The Confederate authorities were equally displeased with their general,
Van Dorn, and soon afterwards he was superseded in command by General
John C. Pemberton.

Pemberton was a Pennsylvanian by birth, who had married at the South.
He was a special, personal favorite of President Davis. He had never
commanded an army or conducted a battle in his life, yet Mr. Davis had
rapidly promoted him all the way from colonel to lieutenant general,
over the heads and to the great discouragement of colonels, brigadiers
and major generals who had won high distinction upon hotly contested
Confederate battlefields. And now, when the Federal forces were firmly
established on the far Southern line of the Memphis and Charleston
railroad, and when the very greatest generalship was obviously and
peremptorily needed to save the Confederate cause in the South and
West, the Richmond authorities selected this favorite, who had done no
fighting, commanded no armies and manifested no military ability, to
take control of Confederate defense at the most critical point of all.

The result was quite what might have been expected. Pemberton was
badly defeated every time he gave battle and it was he who surrendered
Vicksburg and the Mississippi river on the fourth of July after a
brave but incapable defense. The history of that belongs to a later
chapter. And even after this extraordinary demonstration of his
unfitness and incapacity, and at a time when very many at the South
seriously--though unjustly--suspected him of having deliberately
betrayed their cause, Mr. Davis appointed this man to a post which
seemed at least to give him authority to control General Lee himself.
This latter appointment was so quickly and so hotly resented by an army
that well nigh worshiped Lee, that Mr. Davis wisely modified it before
it had time to provoke a protest that might have savored of mutiny.

When Rosecrans superseded Buell, on October 30, 1862, the Federal army
was in process of concentration at and near Bowling Green. Within a few
days the concentration was complete, and Rosecrans was ready for active
campaigning with a great army, inspirited by recent successes, strongly
reinforced, effectively reorganized and full of hopeful determination.

But in what direction to advance was an unsettled problem. Rosecrans
was strongly urged from Washington to move at once into East Tennessee,
threatening Chattanooga and giving encouragement to the Unionists in
that quarter. But Nashville was in serious danger. It had been held
by a comparatively meager garrison during the Perryville campaign,
against a strong Confederate force under Breckinridge, and there was
more than a chance that Breckinridge might now capture the position
unless Negley, with the two divisions under his command there, could be
promptly supported. The importance of Nashville to the Federal armies
as a secondary base of supplies was very great. Whether Rosecrans
should campaign to the east, west or south, his need of depots at
Nashville must be imperative.

While he was pondering the question of an objective, Bragg settled it
for him. The Confederate general had retired from Kentucky rather of
his own choice than under compulsion. He had suffered no disaster. At
Perryville indeed he had had the best of the fighting for a large part
of the day, and he had retired in the night rather with the purpose of
giving battle again at some more favorable point than with intent to
avoid battle with an enemy in strongly superior force. That enemy had
not seen fit to follow and press him, and so there had been no further
trial of conclusions. The Confederates had indeed failed to capture
Louisville and establish themselves on the Ohio, but they had met with
so much success not only in the various actions fought but also in
demonstrating their ability to advance or retreat at will, that they
came out of the campaign feeling themselves, in effect, victors. They
were full of spirit and eagerly ready for further campaigning.

With his army in this mood and with a secure base behind him at
Chattanooga, Bragg promptly moved upon Murfreesboro, with manifest
intent to join Breckinridge and carry Nashville with a rush, if
Rosecrans should fail to succor that strategic key to the situation.

Murfreesboro lies on the Nashville and Chattanooga railroad, a scant
forty miles southeast of Nashville. The country between is open and so
completely unobstructed by physical features of difficulty, that the
railroad shows scarcely a curve in its course between the two points.

In view of Bragg's advance there was but one course open to Rosecrans.
He must strengthen the defenses of Nashville and concentrate there for
defensive and offensive operations.

He promptly threw a strong force into Nashville and soon his entire
army was concentrated there, except such detachments--and these were
large--as were employed in rebuilding the railroad between Louisville
and Nashville, which the Confederates had destroyed, and those other
and still larger detachments which were necessary to defend that
vitally important line of communication against the ceaseless activity
of Forrest and Morgan, who were making themselves destructively
ubiquitous.

Rosecrans's activity was such that he succeeded in rendering Nashville
secure before Bragg could carry out his purpose of assailing that
stronghold. Still Bragg did not despair of his purpose. He sent
peremptory orders to the forces around Corinth, either to send him
strong reinforcements or to carry on such a campaign in their own
districts as should compel Rosecrans to weaken himself at Nashville by
sending heavy reinforcements to the west.

Meanwhile Bragg fortified himself at Murfreesboro, establishing
his lines along and across Stone river--a little, easily fordable
stream--about two miles in front of the town.

Rosecrans decided to assail him there, and to that end advanced with
47,000 men. His march began on the twenty-sixth of December, and by
the thirtieth he was in position to assail his enemy with an effective
force of 43,700 men. His plan of battle was to throw forward his left
wing in force, envelope his enemy's right and crumple up his lines
by pushing into action a ceaseless stream of fresh troops, wheeling
his divisions to the right as they should be successively brought into
action.

But Bragg was also an officer of great energy and activity, and he had
under his command a force nearly if not quite equal to that of his foe.
He was at disadvantage during Rosecrans's sudden and unexpected advance
from Nashville, from the fact that he had sent away his cavalry under
Wheeler, Forrest, and Morgan to assail Rosecrans's communications at
a time when that general was not expected to take the initiative in a
winter campaign in the field. But now that Rosecrans was in his front,
and obviously intending immediate battle, Bragg in his turn determined
to assume the aggressive and himself bring on the action. His plan was
absolutely identical with that of Rosecrans, namely to push forward his
left wing, envelope and crush his enemy's right and by successive right
wheels to destroy his foe or drive him into retreat. Thus Rosecrans
intended to begin the battle at one end of the line while Bragg meant
to begin it at the other.

Each of course massed his forces at the point where he purposed to make
his first assault, and each thus weakened his line at the point which
his enemy was planning to assail.

As a consequence the initiatory advantage must of necessity lie with
the force that should succeed in making itself the first aggressor,
bringing on the battle before the other was ready and striking the
other's weakest wing with his own strongest divisions.

That advantage fell to Bragg as a reward for his alertness in striking
as soon as possible after dawn on the last day of the year. He had so
extended his left as completely to overlap Rosecrans's right and he
fell upon it in flank with resistless impetuosity. The force defending
it was quickly crushed and the Confederates, advancing with enthusiasm,
bent back the next division encountered, and after some strenuous
fighting, forced it to retire upon a new line which Rosecrans had
hastily established at right angles to that of the morning.

The fighting continued with desperate determination and great slaughter
on both sides until nightfall. The advantage was conspicuously with
the Confederates, though there was no decisive victory won. Rosecrans
had held his position indeed, upon a part of his line, and had not
been either destroyed or forced into retreat. But the Confederates had
driven him from one half or more of the ground that he had held at the
beginning of the battle, had captured twenty-eight of his guns and
large numbers of prisoners, while their cavalry had marched entirely
around him and fallen upon his communications in a way that very
seriously threatened him with an isolation that must have involved his
destruction.

Rosecrans had been badly worsted in battle, but he was not yet
beaten. His army was not demoralized, and his own determination was
not impaired. He took account of his ammunition, sent detachments to
protect his communications, and resolved to hold his position and renew
the battle on the following day, either as the assailant of his enemy
or as the assaulted, as circumstances might determine.

But the next day was passed in inaction on both sides, and it was not
until the second of January, 1863, that the battle was renewed. Even
then it was renewed only in part and obviously with no disposition on
either side to bring on a general engagement. Nevertheless there was
very bloody fighting on the part of the detachments engaged, in which
the Confederate general, Breckinridge, becoming involved and being
subjected to a concentrated artillery fire at short range, lost nearly
two thousand men.

Two days later and after desultory fighting, General Bragg abandoned
his position at Murfreesboro and retired to Duck river, where he
fortified. He reported his losses in this battle--which is variously
known as Murfreesboro, and Stone river--at 10,000 men, and declared
that he had taken 6,000 prisoners. He had also captured thirty guns
and lost three. On the other hand, General Rosecrans reported a loss
of 8,778 in killed and wounded, and about 2,800 in prisoners lost
to the enemy--a total of somewhat less than 11,000. The two reports
are hopelessly at variance and irreconcilable, as to the number of
prisoners taken, as was usually the case with the reports of battle
losses at that period of the war. They were usually inaccurate and
never trustworthy, as every historian who has honestly tried to find
out the truth has learned to his annoyance.

But whatever the exact losses were on either side, they were far
greater than were those of many more famous battles, and about as great
as those of the battles commonly accounted as of superior proportions.
Thus the loss admitted by the Confederates at Murfreesboro out of a
force of about 35,000 or 40,000 men, was nearly twice that which Lee,
with a force of 68,000, suffered at Fredericksburg; while the admitted
Federal loss at Murfreesboro, where the army numbered 43,700 men, was
very nearly as great as that sustained by Burnside's army of 120,000
at Fredericksburg, including the fearful slaughter in the six terrible
assaults upon Marye's Heights.

Obviously the battle of Murfreesboro must be accounted one of the
bloodiest struggles of the war, as well as one of the most heroically
contested on both sides. Its indecisiveness has been very interestingly
summed up by General Van Horne in his "History of the Army of the
Cumberland" as follows:

    Neither army commander had fully executed his plan of battle,
    although General Bragg had approached very nearly the completion
    of his. He had turned a flank of the National army, bent back the
    right to the rear of the center, but had failed to turn its left
    or reach its rear, and hence had not gained the extreme advantages
    which he had anticipated in assuming the offensive and [which he]
    had seemingly attained at the grand crisis of the battle. He had
    assaulted boldly and persistently from first to last, but had
    completely exhausted his army without gaining a decisive victory.
    General Rosecrans had fought a battle radically different from the
    one he had proposed for himself. Instead of turning the right of
    the Confederate army and taking its center in reverse, according
    to his plan, he had been forced into the most emphatic straits in
    maintaining the defensive from flank to flank. Both commanders had
    lost heavily; General Bragg by continuous assaults with massed
    forces, and General Rosecrans by resistance at each point to
    superior numbers, and by frequent recessions under the guns of
    the enemy.... A battle whose emergencies of offense and defense
    involves the use of all reserves, must necessarily be a bloody one.

    It is seldom that an engagement of such dimensions has left two
    commanding generals so much in doubt as to the course that either
    would adopt, and hence each determined to await developments, and
    each was ignorant of the purpose of the other. Of the two General
    Bragg was the more hopeful.

In the end, as we have seen, both armies fell back and fortified, and
campaigning ended in the southwest for that season.

Other events of that winter may be briefly summarized.

Mr. Lincoln's emancipation proclamation became effective on the first
of January.

The Confederate Congress passed a second conscription bill in
February extending age limits both ways and putting practically every
able-bodied white man in the South into the army.

The Federal Congress, on the third of March, authorized the suspension
of the writ of habeas corpus, thus virtually establishing martial law
throughout the North.

A Confederate loan of $3,000,000 was promptly subscribed for in Europe.

On the seventh of April the fleet off Charleston assailed the defenses
of that city, but was beaten off with the loss of one ironclad, the
monitor, Keokuk, sunk.




CHAPTER XXXVII

THE CHANCELLORSVILLE CAMPAIGN


However important the operations at the West and South might be, the
vital seat of the war was always in Virginia.

There the contending armies ceaselessly threatened the two capitals,
the conquest of either of which would have been decisive. There both
sides concentrated their best armies. There was present the Confederate
Army of Northern Virginia under Lee, of which General Hooker, after
being overthrown and beaten by it, testified: "That army has, by
discipline alone, acquired a character for steadiness and efficiency,
unsurpassed, in my judgment, in ancient or modern times. We have not
been able to rival it nor has there been any near approximation to it
in the other rebel armies."

And there on the other side was present for duty that Army of the
Potomac which had so distinguished itself for heroic devotion and
unfaltering courage upon a score of desperately contested battlefields.

After Burnside's bloody defeat at Fredericksburg the authorities
at Washington proceeded to swell the Army of the Potomac to vast
proportions until as the spring of 1863 approached, its total was no
less than 180,000 men and 400 guns.[2]

        [2] These are the figures given by Col. Theodore A. Dodge, U.
            S. A., in his singularly able monograph on "The Campaign of
            Chancellorsville," pages 2 and 19.

Meanwhile operations below Richmond had compelled Lee to detach about
one fourth of his force, thus reducing his strength to a total of
58,100 men and 170 pieces of artillery.

There was one important difference, however. In Lee the Southerners had
found their very ablest commander, a master of all the arts of war, and
an absolute master of the hearts of all the men who served under his
command.

The Army of the Potomac had been commanded in succession by McDowell,
McClellan, Pope, McClellan again, and Burnside, no one of whom had
manifested an ability to contend successfully with Lee, even with the
unstinted resources given into the hands of each. The Army of the
Potomac still lacked a capable commander and the lack was for long a
determining factor of the problem.

Colonel Dodge, an officer of the United States army, and a historian of
exquisite conscientiousness and high repute, puts the matter in these
words:

    Great as was the importance of success in Virginia, the
    Confederates had appreciated the fact as had not the political
    soldiers at the head of the Federal Department of War. _Our
    resources always enabled us to keep more men, and more and better
    material, on this battle ground_ than the Confederates could do;
    but this strength _was constantly offset by the ability of the
    Southern generals_[3] and their independence of action as opposed
    to the frequent unskilfulness of ours, who were not only never long
    in command, but were then tied hand and foot to some ideal plan for
    insuring the safety of Washington.

        [3] Italics ours. AUTHOR.

No impartial student of the history of the war can doubt that Colonel
Dodge here touches the very marrow of the matter. In the operations in
Virginia the North had more men, often by two or three to one, more
guns and incalculably better supply departments. Their men were as
good as the Southerners. Their guns were better, and their materials
immeasurably superior both in quantity and quality. But until Grant was
summoned from the West in 1864 to take command, the Army of the Potomac
was commanded by no general who had capacity enough to make effective
use of these superior advantages in a contest of strategic wits with
Lee.

The real problem which the Washington authorities were set to solve was
to find a general equal to this task, and so long as Halleck remained
commander in chief of the Federal forces, there was no hope of success
in that search. Commander after commander had been set up only to be
promptly and disastrously bowled down again by Lee, in spite of the
enormous disparity of numbers, guns and equipment.

But neither Grant nor Sherman was among those who had been appointed to
try conclusions with Lee.

Halleck was still supreme as the military counselor of Mr. Lincoln.
Grant, in spite of his victories, was a peculiarly objectionable person
to him, and Sherman labored under the serious disability of enjoying
Grant's favor and esteem in a very high degree.

But after Burnside's failure it was necessary to find a new commander
for the Army of the Potomac, and Mr. Lincoln selected General Joseph
Hooker to make the next attempt.

General Hooker was an old army officer. He was thoroughly equipped so
far as military education was concerned, and he was so ardent in the
work of the soldier that his men had lovingly nicknamed him "Fighting
Joe Hooker." But he had never commanded an army or planned a campaign.
He had made the last and most brilliant of that series of heroic
charges up Marye's Heights which Burnside had so foolishly ordered at
Fredericksburg. He had made the charge under protest, correctly deeming
it a needless sacrifice of men's lives in a hopeless undertaking. But
he had made it with extraordinary gallantry and had persisted in it
until, as he sarcastically said, "he thought he had lost as many men as
he was ordered to lose."

Of his devotion as a soldier, and of his unusual capacity in
subordinate command, he had given adequate proof in every battle
in which the Army of the Potomac had been engaged, from Manassas
to Fredericksburg. But his capacity to lead a great army against a
great enemy was wholly conjectural. Mr. Lincoln suggested this in the
extraordinary letter in which he announced to Hooker his selection for
this supreme trust. That letter was as follows:

            Executive Mansion, Washington,
                D. C., January 26, 1863

    Major-General Hooker:

    General:--I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac.
    Of course I have done this upon what appears to me to be sufficient
    reasons, and yet I think it best for you to know that there are
    some things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you.
    I believe you to be a brave and skilful soldier, which of course I
    like. I also believe you do not mix politics with your profession,
    in which you are right. You have confidence in yourself; which is
    a valuable if not an indispensable quality. You are ambitious,
    which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm; but
    I think that during General Burnside's command of the army, you
    have taken counsel of your ambition, and thwarted him as much as
    you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country and to a
    most meritorious and honorable brother officer. I have heard, in
    such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the
    army and the government needed a dictator. Of course it was not for
    this but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only
    those Generals who gain success can set up dictators. What I now
    ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship.
    The government will support you to the utmost of its ability,
    which is neither more nor less than it has done or will do for all
    commanders. I much fear that the spirit you have aided to infuse
    into the army, of criticizing their commander and withholding
    confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall assist you as
    far as I can to put it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were
    alive again, could get any good out of an army while such a spirit
    prevails in it. And now, beware of rashness. Beware of rashness,
    but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us
    victories.

            Yours very truly,
                    A. LINCOLN.

Thus commissioned, Hooker undertook the task in which so many
predecessors had failed--the task of overcoming Lee, breaking the
resisting power of his really wonderful Army of Northern Virginia,
conquering the Confederate capital and adding Virginia, with her pith
and substance, to the list of states reconquered to the Union.

For this task he had more adequate means than any of his predecessors
or even any of his successors enjoyed until Grant, in 1864,
concentrated the whole military force of the nation and coördinated all
its operations with this one object in view.

Hooker had an army of 180,000 men, to Lee's less than 60,000--about
three men to one. He had 400 pieces of artillery to Lee's 170, and
both his guns and his ammunition were superior to Lee's. He had
unsurpassed quartermaster and commissary departments, a matter in
which Lee was wofully deficient. The railroads in Hooker's rear were
in excellent condition, while those upon which his adversary must
depend were well-nigh hopeless wrecks, with nearly helpless engines
and a lamentable insufficiency of cars. Still further, the Northern
army was filled with skilled mechanicians and practical engineers
capable of quickly meeting and overcoming any mechanical difficulty
that might arise. In one case early in the war it is related that an
engine in Federal service ran off the track and was badly damaged,
thus threatening serious embarrassment to a military movement. When
the question arose as to what could be done with the crippled engine,
a private stepped from the ranks, saluted respectfully, and said: "I
built that engine. I guess I can repair her."

The South had next to none of this sort of resource. Nor had it
anywhere great shops capable of producing machinery. The South had been
an almost exclusively agricultural country, in which the mechanic arts
were scarcely at all developed.

With such advantages and others of scarcely less importance, it seemed
a not very difficult task for Hooker so to employ the 180,000 hardened
veterans of the Army of the Potomac as to overcome the resistance of
the 58,100 composing the Army of Northern Virginia. The Government at
Washington expected nothing less than this. The people of the North
demanded such results as their right. The army itself stood eagerly
ready to do the work required, for the Army of the Potomac believed
in Hooker as it had not previously believed in any of its commanders
except McClellan before that general's career was clouded by defeat.
The men had seen Hooker fight. They were in love with his rough and
ready ways. They repeated around their camp fires his witty sayings,
and mightily rejoiced in them. They had indeed none of that filial
reverence for him which the men of the Army of Northern Virginia felt
for Lee--whom they affectionately called "Mas' Bob." But they had for
Hooker an almost boyish enthusiasm which was without doubt an important
element of strength.

Hooker began right. He was a master of the art of military
organization, and he quickly brought the army under his command into a
state of positively wonderful efficiency. Then he planned a brilliant
campaign--a campaign far better conceived than any that Lee had yet
been called upon to meet.

Fully recognizing his own superiority in numbers, in guns, in
equipment, in supplies, in the materials of war and in that mobility
which such superiority necessarily gives, he planned to utilize all
these advantages for the certain and quick destruction of his adversary.

He could force the fighting when and where he pleased. He could choose
his own battlefields and his own time for action.

He had no thought of repeating Burnside's blunder and assailing Lee in
his own chosen and strongly fortified position, at Fredericksburg. It
was his intention instead to force Lee out of his fortifications and
compel him to fight against tremendous odds in the open field.

His plan was, with enormously superior numbers to turn both of Lee's
flanks at once, compel the division of his already inferior army,
overcome both wings of it in detail, and crush it completely. That
done, Confederate resistance in Virginia would be at an end. Richmond
would lie before him a helpless prey. Virginia would be a conquered
state, and the completion of the war a mere matter of detail.

All military critics who have considered the subject, agree that this
was the best planned campaign that any Northern general had as yet
originated and that its promise of success, with the great superiority
of means behind it, amounted almost to a certainty. Its failure in the
end was disastrous in the extreme and discouraging beyond anything that
had occurred since the first battle of Manassas.

These facts taken together--the brilliancy and the entire soundness
of the plan of campaign, the stupendous superadequacy of the means at
command for carrying it to success, and its conspicuous failure in the
end--render the history of the campaign of Chancellorsville one of the
most dramatic of the wonder stories of the Confederate war.

After three months of most intelligent and energetic work in
perfecting organization and bringing all parts of the service into the
highest condition of efficiency, Hooker was ready at last to begin
his campaign. Omitting all the sick, all detachments, all forces sent
to guard communications, all furloughed officers and men, he had "for
duty equipped," according to his morning reports, no less than 131,491
men, with 400 pieces of highly effective artillery. Opposed to him
was Lee with a total force, of all arms, of 58,100 men, of whom less
than 50,000 were ready for duty, and about 170 pieces of artillery,
mostly of an inferior sort. Some small reinforcements are believed to
have come to Lee, swelling his force to about 60,000 men all told, or
perhaps 55,000 effectives.

With numbers so overwhelming, Hooker was free to do pretty nearly
whatever he might choose to do without risk of weakening himself at any
point below the strength of his enemy.

His plan of campaign was simple and strategically admirable. Broadly
stated it was this:

1. To push a strong force of cavalry, under Stoneman, around Lee's
left and into his rear, to destroy his communications, and to harass
and prevent his retreat towards Richmond--for Hooker's plans looked to
nothing less than the capture of the whole Army of Northern Virginia.

2. To send a strong force of artillery and infantry under Sedgwick
down the river to cross there, turn Lee's right, force whatever
might be left of his army, by that time, out of their entrenchments,
and mercilessly assail him in flank on his expected retreat toward
Richmond, thus additionally making his surrender inevitable.

3. At the same time to march up the river with the main body of the
Federal army, estimated by Lieutenant Colonel Theodore A. Dodge, U.
S. A., at 120,000 men, push the head of his column across the stream
far up it, sweep down the southern bank, clear the several fords
in succession and at each to send fresh columns across; then, in
irresistible force to march through the Wilderness, as that tangled
country is called, and emerge from it in appallingly overwhelming
numbers at Chancellorsville.

This would completely turn Lee's left with the main army and force him
either to retreat hurriedly toward Richmond with Sedgwick on his flank,
or to give battle in the open, with utterly inadequate forces.

Never during the whole course of the war was there a campaign more
brilliantly planned than this one was to compel victory; never did one
fail more conspicuously. Never were the advantages of the assailant
so great; never were they so completely offset by the genius of the
defending commander and the resolution of an army vastly inferior in
numbers and in the appliances of war,--in every element of strength
indeed except high soldierliness.

Stoneman moved on the thirteenth of April. His orders were to pass
up the river, keeping well out of sight and masking his movement, to
wheel suddenly and cross the stream at a point west of the Orange and
Alexandria railroad, destroy Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry at Culpeper, seize
upon Gordonsville, where the Orange and Alexandria and the Virginia
Central railroads form a junction; push on toward Richmond; cut the
Richmond and Fredericksburg railroad at Hanover Junction, thus cutting
off Lee's retreat; fortify himself there in strong positions and
obstinately oppose any effort of Lee to retreat, until Hooker, moving
from Lee's left and Sedgwick, moving from his right, should join forces
with Stoneman and complete the work of destroying the Army of Northern
Virginia. This culmination of the campaign was planned to occur six
days after Stoneman's start.

Stoneman made the first failure. He moved up the river and crossed a
part of his force. But high water soon afterwards rendered the stream
unfordable, while Lee's alert cavalry lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart,
confronted the force already crossed, and compelled it to retreat by
swimming to escape certain destruction.

This ended the cavalry part of Hooker's program. For the ford did not
become passable again until the twenty-seventh and by that time the
main movement had been begun. It was too late for Stoneman to do his
part of the work.

In the meanwhile the crossings at and near Port Royal, about twenty
miles below Fredericksburg, had been secured, and bridges had been
laid. On the twenty-ninth of April, early in the morning--before
daylight in fact,--General Sedgwick forced a crossing with three corps.
In preparation for this, ninety-eight guns had been previously placed
in position under Hooker's direction and a number more held in reserve.

Sedgwick's orders were to seize a principal road, turn Lee's right
flank, and in case of serious opposition, to carry Lee's works at all
costs; then to push forward on Lee's flank and harass his retreat. It
was expected that Stoneman would by this time be fortified in the way
of Lee's retreat, and that the main body of the Federal army under
Hooker, moving from Chancellorsville, would fall upon the Confederates
and crush them.

With these dispositions made, Hooker moved up the Rappahannock and the
Rapidan, crossed forces at the upper fords, moved thence down the right
or Confederate bank of the stream, uncovering the several fords in
succession, and crossing heavy forces at each.

Once across the Rapidan he moved his army rapidly through the
Wilderness, to Chancellorsville, a solitary plantation house near the
Southern edge of that vast thicket.

In posting himself at Chancellorsville Hooker had placed his army far
to the rear of Lee's left at Fredericksburg. It was obvious that Lee
must quit his entrenchments and move southwest to meet his adversary
at Chancellorsville, otherwise his army would be completely cut off,
overwhelmed and conquered, and the road to Richmond would be opened to
his adversary with no possibility of effective resistance anywhere.

But Lee had not been asleep. Neither was he appalled by the enormous
advantages of numbers, guns and position enjoyed by his adversary.

With that calm self-possession which was the keynote of his character;
with that masterful skill in the art of war which had so often served
him in lieu of heavy battalions, and which then and since has
commanded the admiration of military men both north and south; and,
above all, with that confidence in the superb endurance of his veterans
which their conduct on many fields had taught him to feel, he set to
work to meet and defeat Hooker's admirably planned campaign.

He left 8,500 men and thirty guns to hold the works at Fredericksburg,
so long as they could be held against Sedgwick's 30,000 men and more
than 100 guns. With the remainder of his army,--in round numbers about
45,000 men,--he quickly moved to Chancellorsville to meet Hooker with
his tremendously superior force.

The great Confederate had by this time completely penetrated Hooker's
plan of campaign. He had no idea that the 8,500 men left in the works
at and below Fredericksburg could for long hold that position against
Sedgwick's superior force, but he knew the quality of the men set
to that task, and he confidently reckoned that they would make such
resistance--as in fact they did--as to prevent Sedgwick from forming
a junction with the main army at Chancellorsville, until the struggle
there should be ended.

And what a struggle it promised to be! Lee knew that at most he could
hope for nothing better than to oppose one man to Hooker's three but
even against such odds he decided to risk battle in the open rather
than attempt a hazardous and dispiriting retreat to the defenses of
Richmond.

Cautiously but rapidly, he transferred his army to Chancellorsville and
after baffling various Federal attempts to strike at his stores and
communications, he concentrated in Hooker's front quite all that he
could of his scanty force.

By this time Hooker's ceaseless activity had uncovered all the fords
above Fredericksburg, and opened short and easy lines of communication,
through Falmouth opposite Fredericksburg, between Sedgwick, operating
on the east of Fredericksburg, and Hooker's headquarters near
Chancellorsville on the southwest. Thus the two temporarily divided
wings of Hooker's army were brought again into touch with each other
and the whole vast force acted as a unit under Hooker's command, while
its disposition was such as to compel Lee to divide his much smaller
force in preparation for the expected determined assault of the
Federals upon one or the other of two faces--he could not know which.

But it was not Lee's purpose long to await attack. His all-daring
thought was to become himself the assailant as soon as he could get his
army corps disposed in positions favorable to such a purpose.

He first selected a strong defensive position in front of
Chancellorsville and hurriedly fortified it as a means of holding
Hooker in check until he should himself be ready to take the offensive.

In the meanwhile, as his orders issued at that time clearly show,
Hooker regarded his campaign as already completely successful. He had
succeeded in so enveloping Lee that that general, according to all the
rules of the war game must surrender either after a show of fighting or
without that bloody preliminary.

In these calculations Hooker had not sufficiently reckoned upon Lee's
resourcefulness or his daring, or the fighting qualities of the Army
of Northern Virginia. All these were factors underestimated in his
statement of the equation.

The position at Chancellorsville itself was a conspicuously bad one for
the Federals if they should stand on the defensive, and Hooker, seeing
this, pushed his forces forward to more advantageous ground, a movement
which involved a good deal of fighting in a comparatively small way,
for the Confederates not only resisted stoutly but manifested a
fiercely aggressive disposition wherever opportunity offered for a
fight.

For reasons that have never been disclosed Hooker after a time
withdrew his advance columns to their old unfavorable position at
Chancellorsville and awaited his opportunity. His force was so greatly
superior to that of his adversary that there seemed no risk in doing
this, although it sacrificed a distinct advantage. It was obvious that
if Lee should make a front attack he must be beaten off and crushed
while, with his already inferior force, it would be simple madness,
Hooker thought, for his opponent to divide his army and attempt any
flank movement against an army outnumbering his own by three to one.

That madness Lee deliberately adopted as his strategy, and he carried
it to a conclusion that must always be an astonishment to the reader of
history.

Hooker's extraordinary retirement from the front of an enemy whom he
had come out for the express purpose of attacking in overwhelming
force, has always been inexplicable. Why he shrank from the attack
after seeking opportunity for it with so much energy and skill it is
impossible to understand. Why he abandoned his offensive operation just
as its culmination in victory seemed certain, and, with enormously
superior forces under his command fell back and assumed the defensive
in an unfavorable position, even he seems never to have been able to
explain. The most masterful critic and historian who has written of
this campaign, says:

    At this point Hooker faltered. Fighting Joe had reached the
    culminating desire of his life. He had come face to face with
    his foe, and he had a hundred and twenty thousand eager and
    well-disciplined men at his back. He had come to fight and he
    retreated without crossing swords.[4]

        [4] Dodge's "The Campaign of Chancellorsville," p. 55.

This was the situation: Lee had had 59,000 men at Fredericksburg. He
had left 8,500 of them there and had made other compulsory detachments
which reduced his fighting force in front of Hooker to no more than
39,000. He confronted Hooker, who had 120,000 securely intrenched with
11,000 or 12,000 more within reach. Obviously Lee could not hope by
direct assault to carry the works and conquer a force so overwhelming.
Equally he could not hope to stand on the defensive against an army
which could easily and certainly overlap both his flanks and quickly
crush him to a pulp. He must either retreat or play a great and most
hazardous game of strategy.

In consultation with Stonewall Jackson--the two being seated upon
cracker boxes abandoned in Hooker's retirement--it was decided to take
a supreme risk in face of a supreme danger. With 39,000 men facing
120,000, it was decided to divide the smaller army and send Jackson,
with 22,000 men upon an expedition, the purpose of which was to strike
like a lightning flash at Hooker's right flank and rear, while Lee,
with the little remnant of his army, 17,000 in all, should so far
occupy Hooker in front as to prevent him from detaching troops for the
timely reinforcement of his threatened wing.

The results that followed this operation have been and still are a
subject of bitter controversy. Hooker tried afterwards to throw the
blame for the disaster which ensued upon Howard, Sickles and his other
lieutenants. They in turn disclaimed that responsibility and insisted
that the disaster was due solely to Hooker's own orders and to his
neglect of obvious duty as commanding general. The skilled military
critics who have since written of the campaign have taken one side
or the other of this purely personal controversy, according to their
lights of knowledge, or their darkenings of prejudice. These things
belong to biography. It is the function of the historian merely to tell
the story of what happened and to that task alone the present writer
addresses himself.

Lee and Jackson decided, as they sat there on the cracker boxes, that
Jackson, with 22,000 men, should undertake to turn Hooker's right flank
and assail him in rear, while Lee with 17,000 men should fully occupy
him by a threat of front attack, and that if Jackson's movement should
succeed, his part of the army should force its way to a junction with
Lee. Failing that, the two parts of the army must of course retreat
in the not very confident hope of uniting again at Gordonsville and
together falling back to the defenses of Richmond. For Stuart with the
Confederate cavalry had utterly broken up and defeated that part of
Hooker's plan which had contemplated Stoneman's sweep to Hanover Court
House and the entrenching of his force there as an obstacle in the way
of Lee's retreat.

On Saturday, May 2, 1863, at daylight, or a little before, Lee and
Jackson began the execution of their daring stratagem.

Hooker's headquarters were at Chancellorsville. His line stretched
eastward and northeastward to the river and westward to a region of
high ground unassailable from the front, where his right lay "in the
air," in military phrase, that is to say with no natural obstacle, such
as a river or a mountain, to defend it. It was Jackson's purpose to
march westward on a route parallel with Hooker's line, turn its western
end and strike it in flank and rear.

To accomplish that he must completely separate his 22,000 men from
Lee's 17,000 and take the chances of battle for a reuniting of the two
forces.

It took all day to make the march. All day Jackson kept Stuart's
cavalry between his column and the enemy, feeling the enemy's lines
to find out how they were posted and what their strength was at every
point.

His march was clearly discovered to the Federal troops, and
fully reported to their commander, Hooker. But it was completely
misinterpreted. It was believed to be the initiatory movement of
that retreat upon Richmond, which Hooker--master of logistics that he
was--thought that he had by his maneuvers compelled Lee to undertake by
way of saving his little army from destruction.

While Jackson, with scarcely any disguise or concealment, was marching
along Hooker's front with intent to turn his flank and strike him
in rear, Hooker rested easily in the conviction that his adversary,
confronted by an irresistible force, was retreating upon Richmond
either by way of Culpeper or by the Gordonsville route.

In this belief Hooker broke the continuity of his own lines by throwing
forward a part of his forces to assail Jackson's moving column in
flank and rear, but he made no effort to advance from Chancellorsville
upon Lee's manifestly depleted force in front or in any vigorous way
to push a column in between Lee and Jackson. He fought Lee on the
skirmish lines all day, but he made no determined attempt to run over
the skirmish lines and find out what was behind them. In other words
he suffered himself to be completely and disastrously deceived by
that tapping at his own lines which Lee ceaselessly kept up by way of
misleading him.

As he knew Lee's strength almost to a man, and as he was fully and
frequently informed during the day concerning the extent to which
Jackson's detachment had weakened it, it is difficult to understand
why he did not end the struggle then and there by hurling three men to
one against Lee on the one hand and against Jackson on the other, and
crushing them separately.

Here was another illustration and proof of the fact that the Federal
administration at Washington had not yet found a general fit to command
the superb Army of the Potomac. The opportunity at Chancellorsville
was the very greatest and completest that was at any time during the
war offered to a commanding general on either side to make a quick and
complete end of the struggle.

Under like circumstances a Grant or a Sherman would have hurled 40,000
or 50,000 men upon Lee and an equal number upon Jackson, meanwhile
employing a lesser but quite sufficient force in keeping the two wings
of the Confederate army divided beyond the possibility of reunion. But
it is conceivable at least that if Lee had been confronting a Grant or
a Sherman, he would never have risked so dangerous a division of his
inferior force. The character of the adversary's commanding general is
a factor in every military problem, upon which a strategist must reckon
as carefully as he does upon the number of that adversary's men or guns.

However that may be, Lee had divided his meager force in the presence
of an enemy who greatly outnumbered him, and Hooker took no effective
account of the fact. He did not strengthen his own right wing while
Jackson was marching around it to assail it in the rear. He took no
effective measures either to assail Jackson on his threatening march
or to fall upon Lee in front in crushingly overwhelming force. He was
content to beat off Lee's pretended attacks in front and to neglect
Jackson's movement as very certainly a retreat with which he had not
energy enough to interfere.

As a result Jackson succeeded in turning the Federal right flank, and
at six o'clock in the evening the great Confederate flanker fell like a
thunderbolt upon the rear of Hooker's divisions on the right.

Without skirmishers to give warning of his coming Jackson pushed his
columns through the woods and the tangled underbrush. So eager were the
Confederates in their work that their divisions, thrown into separate
lines for the forward movement, pushed after each other until the
several lines became a single mass of humanity pressing forward, each
man striving to get in front of his fellow and be first to fall upon
the foe.

Jackson knew his men too well to doubt them for a moment, and he
therefore rushed them forward to the assault without any of those
precautions which the books of tactics prescribe. He threw out no
skirmishers to feel the way. He sent no company in advance to ascertain
the enemy's disposition. He simply hurled his force upon that of the
foe, striking as the tempest does, without warning.

The first intimation Hooker's men had of their enemy's advance came to
them in a rush of deer, grouse and other game that had been disturbed
and was fleeing through the tangled woodlands before the on-coming mass
of armed and belligerent humanity. And before wonder over this rush of
animals, serpents and birds had satisfied itself, Jackson's men, nine
deep, fell upon the unsuspecting Federals at supper, and swept like a
hurricane through their camps and over their lines.

Then occurred the second great panic of the war, in which men fell
into such fear as to lose all semblance of soldierly self-control,
and in which military cohesion was completely dissipated. Here and
there a brigade or a regiment or a company of Federals bravely stood
its ground, but the great mass of that German army corps commanded by
men of unpronounceable names which had been extensively advertised as
intending to show Americans how to fight, fell into hopeless confusion,
broke ranks and ran to whatever cover the fugitives could find. Jackson
ran over their lines, possessed himself of their defenses, captured
their arms and their suppers and completely telescoped the left wing of
Hooker's army.

Night alone saved the rest of it. For panic is more contagious than
smallpox and, in view of what happened afterwards, it is safe to say
that but for the coming of night the panic which so suddenly reduced
the right wing of Hooker's force to a mass of fugitives, would quickly
have spread throughout the army.

But night called a halt and Jackson's men rested upon their arms, ready
to renew their victorious progress with the dawn of day. According to
a competent and adverse witness[5] these men of Jackson's command were
"the best infantry in existence, as tough, hardy and full of _élan_, as
they are ill-fed, ill-clothed, and ill-looking."

        [5] Lieutenant Colonel Theodore A. Dodge, U. S. A., in his
            "Campaign of Chancellorsville," p. 92.

But a great calamity was in store for the Confederates that evening.
Stonewall Jackson was mortally wounded by his own men acting under
orders of his own giving, while he was making his preparations for
the completion of his wonderful work on the following morning. Except
in the possible death of Lee, no greater loss could have befallen the
Southern arms. The destruction of a division or even of an army corps
would have been a trifling disaster in comparison. For upon Jackson
as upon no other man, Lee depended for the masterful execution of his
plans, and equally for wise counsel and daring initiative. The soldiers
of the army, too, had come to look upon the great lieutenant as the one
man invincible, and to regard whatever work he might assign them to do
as a task that must be accomplished at all costs and all hazards. In
the doing of his bidding, the officers and men alike were accustomed
to think of their orders as the decrees of an all-wise Providence and
of themselves as mere instruments set to accomplish the purposes of a
higher authority. No man among them questioned the wisdom of Jackson's
plans or doubted the possibility of doing whatsoever he had ordered
them to do. In such mood as that which their reverent love for Jackson
inspired in them, those incomparable fighters were capable of well-nigh
any achievement.

When it was whispered through the army that Stonewall Jackson was
wounded unto death there was mourning and distress at every bivouac
fire, and depressing sorrow in every soldierly heart. But there was no
thought of failure or faltering in the work to be done on the morrow.
That work had been marked out for them by Stonewall Jackson himself,
and every man of them was resolved to do it or fall fighting in a
determined endeavor to accomplish to the uttermost limit of possibility
the will of the fallen chieftain.

The command fell upon J. E. B. Stuart and after sustaining a midnight
assault upon the Confederate flank by Sickles, which was repulsed with
comparative ease, Stuart was prepared, early on Sunday morning, to
press forward with the entire detachment and force a junction with Lee
in front of Chancellorsville, after destroying or driving into retreat
all of Hooker's forces that lay west of that point.

There was terrific fighting at every step. There were formidable
breastworks to be assailed and carried, and they were protected by
difficult abattis in front. There were superbly served batteries at
every defensive point with determined infantry in support. But the men
who had been Jackson's yesterday, and were to-day under the dare-devil
leadership of Stuart, remembered that Jackson had planned this movement
and they were death-resolute to carry it to completion. They pressed
forward always. A "fire of hell" meant no more to them than a summer
breeze. In face of canister and a murderous fire of musketry, they
plunged onward with no thought of hesitation or shrinking.

Jackson lay under a tree somewhere, wounded unto death, but it was
Jackson still whom these heroic fellows were serving; it was in
obedience to his orders and in execution of his plans that they were
advancing, and their inspiration of resoluteness had for one of its
elements a mad resentment of Jackson's wounds, as an injury for which
the enemy must be made to pay the blood atonement of those old
Scriptures in whose words Jackson so devoutly and reverently believed.

Probably never before or since in battle did men fight with a madder
impulse than did this "best infantry in existence" on that Sunday
morning, in execution of their stricken leader's purpose. They were
very maniacs, filled with fury, assailing the enemy at every point with
truly demoniacal determination, reinforced by all the strength and
skill that long discipline and battle-habit could give to men with arms
in their hands.

In spite of numbers, in the face of obstacles that would have appalled
the best battalions in any European army, these grief-stricken
worshipers of the great leader, swept forward as the hurricane does,
regardless of all obstacles and absolutely resistless in their onward
progress.

Their impulse was indicated by the battle cry, "Charge and remember
Jackson!" which was continually passed up and down the lines by word of
mouth throughout the day, by men with set teeth and lips compressed to
paleness.

Early in the morning it was Stuart's thought to refresh some of his
troops who had been long without food. He ordered an issue of rations
and a pause for breakfast, meantime directing a small advance in order
to rectify the line at a defective point. The men rushed forward with
such impetuosity, abandoning rations and taking the bloody work of war
in lieu of breakfast, that Stuart decided to let them have their way
and bring on at once the action for which it had been his thought to
prepare them by a feeding. The incident is valuably illustrative of the
temper in which that Sunday's fight was undertaken, a fight decisive
for the time, and ending as it did in the defeat and overthrow of the
largest, strongest, and most perfectly equipped army that had ever been
assembled on this continent, by a force one third or one fourth its
number, ill-fed, ill-clothed and exceedingly ill-looking, as Colonel
Dodge has testified in print.

Here it is necessary to make an important distinction, which is often
overlooked. When troops are beaten by an adversary having inferior
numbers, the fault is not always or even usually with the men. It lies
almost always with commanding officers who, through error or incapacity
or otherwise, fail to bring the men into such positions as may render
their superiority of numbers effective. At Chancellorsville Hooker had
quite all of three men to Lee's one--and including Sedgwick's force his
odds were even greater than that. On the part of the so-called German
corps there seems to have been a distinct inferiority of soldierly
quality, while Jackson's men, according to the expert judgment of
Colonel Dodge, supported by that of General Hooker, were "the best
infantry in existence." But between the men generally of the two armies
there was no such superiority on the one side and inferiority on the
other as to offset the enormous disparity of numbers and thus to
account for the result.

The difficulty was that in the great war game Lee was immeasurably
more than Hooker's master. At every point he so handled his forces
as to bewilder and embarrass his enemy. In spite of his inferiority
in numbers he managed at many points, by deft maneuvering, to assail
Hooker's divisions, with more men than they could for the moment bring
to bear in resistance.

In reviewing great battles and campaigns it is important to bear these
things in mind, and, for the credit of a brave soldiery, to remember
that all dispositions of troops are made by men higher up. The skill
and alertness of those men higher up, or their lack of skill and
alertness, determines whether or not due advantage is to be taken of
numbers, the nature of the ground and other adventitious circumstances
upon which the outcome of battles in a large measure depends.

At Chancellorsville, for example, there was one position so favorable
that the artillery of either army, posted there upon the crest of a
commanding hill, could work havoc in the ranks of its adversary. The
Federals held that position when night fell on Saturday. They unwisely
abandoned it during the night and early in the morning Stuart, always
quick to see and alert to seize advantage, occupied it with thirty guns
too strongly supported to be dislodged. In like manner the superior
generalship of the Confederates at other points enabled them often to
bring two men to bear against one in spite of their general inferiority
of numbers.

When Hooker found his right wing crushed and reduced to a
panic-stricken mass of fugitives, he still had the battle in his own
hands and victory easily within his grasp.

After Jackson's blow was delivered on Saturday evening Hooker could
not have doubted that Lee's little army of less than forty thousand
men had been divided in his front. It was his obvious and easy task to
keep it divided and to crush its two parts separately. He had already
thrust Sickles in between Lee and Jackson, and in order to maintain
the separation he had only overwhelmingly to reinforce Sickles, an
enterprising officer. This he might easily have done by drawing
troops from his completely unemployed left wing which stretched away
superfluously to the fords of the river with no enemy at all in front.

The war problem was simple and easy at that time, and had Hooker been a
man of masterful mind, he must have wrought it out to checkmate within
twenty-four hours.

But it is to be remembered that Lee knew all old army officers, and
knew the capacity and temper of every commander sent to oppose him. It
is probable that had Hooker been a man of masterful mind, Lee would
never have attempted the strategy which created this opportunity.

Let us leave speculation for facts. Hooker had unaccountably abandoned
his brilliant offensive movement at the crowning moment when its
success, complete and decisive, seemed certain. Having come out to
force Lee to a fight in the open, he had shrunk from the conflict.
Having skilfully and brilliantly so maneuvered as to place himself
on the flank of Lee's army with intent to assail and overwhelm his
adversary, he had suddenly shrunk back, as if appalled, into a
defensive attitude and had left it to Lee to determine when and where
and how the further fighting should be done. Having advanced from
Chancellorsville into the more favorable country beyond, he had quite
inexplicably fallen back to Chancellorsville again and fortified there
as if he had been confronted by an adversary of superior strength, and
when he clearly saw that Lee had divided his inferior force, he had
over-confidently assumed that retreat was intended instead of a blow.

But even after the blow had been delivered, with staggering effect,
Hooker had the war game in his own hands. It was his obvious policy
to order fifty or sixty thousand men or more from his unemployed left
wing, to Chancellorsville, to fall destructively upon each of Lee's
widely separated detachments, with the purpose of crushing them both.

He did nothing of the kind. Instead he stood upon the defensive against
Lee in front and Stuart upon his flank, and utterly failing to prevent
a junction between these two he retired still further and stood upon
the defensive again to receive their joint assault.

In the meantime he had unemployed troops in vastly superior numbers,
lying idly upon his left. Instead of ordering them into the conflict he
waited for Sedgwick, who was coming up after driving the Confederates
out of their works at Fredericksburg, to save him from defeat and
disaster.

In the meanwhile, and for lack of the reinforcements which he had
failed to send to the firing line, the Confederates had won a great
victory, reuniting their divided army and completely driving Hooker
from the defensive position which he had taken up at Chancellorsville.

Stuart's hurricane-like advance, begun early in the morning, resulted
long before noonday, not only in effecting the desired junction between
the two separated portions of the Confederate Army, but also in the
compulsory retirement of Hooker's army from the entire Chancellorsville
line and its retreat toward the river.

The fighting by which all this was accomplished has been wonderfully
well described in summary, by Colonel Dodge, in his admirably complete
and impartial history of this campaign. A quotation from that work
seems a quite sufficient showing-forth of what was done, with equal
justice to the heroism of the men on both sides of the terrible
conflict. Colonel Dodge writes:

    There can be no limit to the praise earned by the mettlesome
    veterans of Jackson's corps, in the deadly fight at Fairview. They
    had continuously marched and fought with little sleep and less
    rations, since Thursday morning [till Sunday]. Their ammunition had
    been sparse, and they had been obliged to rely frequently upon the
    bayonet alone. They had fought under circumstances which rendered
    all attempts to preserve organization impossible. They had charged
    through woods against well-constructed fieldworks and in the teeth
    of destructive artillery fire, and had captured the works again and
    again. Never had infantry better earned the right to rank with the
    best which ever bore arms than this gallant twenty thousand--one
    man in every four of whom lay bleeding on the field. Nor can the
    same meed of praise be withheld from our own brave legions. Our
    losses had been heavier than those of the enemy. Generals and
    regimental commanders had fallen in equal proportions. Our forces
    had, owing to the extraordinary combinations of the general in
    command, been outnumbered by the enemy wherever engaged.... Well
    may the soldiers who were engaged in this bloody encounter of
    Sunday, May 3, 1863, call to mind with equal pride, that each met a
    foeman worthy of his steel.

It is in this spirit that the present historian desires to write of the
events of that time, forty odd years agone. All the military skill, all
the heroism, all the personal courage that marked the events of that
struggle, whether upon the one side or upon the other, is a part of our
common American heritage of glory. For these men who fought each other
so gallantly and with such heroic determination, were all Americans,
and to all of them Americans owe the tribute of admiration.

After all these years the memory of their gallant deeds will be
cherished by the whole Republic and all its people, whether the heroism
of daring and endurance was shown on the one side or on the other. The
men who met in battle there were fighting on the one side and on the
other for liberty. Their views differed as to what would best minister
to liberty, but their purpose was the same. The questions that divided
them were long ago settled, and they no longer vex the Republic. The
time has come when we may rejoice as citizens of one country in the
devotion and courage that animated both sides in that great struggle
for the decision of questions that could be settled only by the
arbitrament of arms.

On Sunday, before noon, Hooker was completely driven from the
Chancellorsville line and compelled to retire to a new position of
extraordinary strength. Lee, with an army much smaller and considerably
disorganized, but inspirited by repeated victory, confronted him.
It was Lee's purpose to move again to the assault, in the conviction
that the delivery of another of his tremendous blows would result in
breaking Hooker's resistance and driving him across the river. It is
true that Hooker still had a vastly superior force, but events had
clearly shown that the Federal commander did not know how to handle
his superior forces in a way to make the most of their superiority.
Lee confidently believed that even with his smaller numbers he could
deliver a blow that would drive his adversary out of the new lines as
his previous assaults had already driven him out of the old ones.

The new position taken up by the Army of the Potomac is described by an
engineer officer of high authority as "well-nigh impregnable," and the
Army of Northern Virginia was very nearly worn out with the work it had
done in conquering the former situation. But it was Lee's habit of mind
to do and dare, and he had sufficiently tried conclusions now, to know
beyond all question, that in the war game he was immeasurably more than
Hooker's match.

So about noon on Sunday he began feeling of Hooker's new lines,
searching for the most favorable point at which to hurl himself upon
them in the hope of breaking them and driving his enemy into final
retreat. For Lee's strategy no longer had any element of defensive
purpose in it. He was no longer thinking of defense indeed or of
securing lines of retreat. It was his bold thought to assail Hooker and
destroy him with all his superior forces, or at the very least to drive
him back across the river and take into his own keeping the problem
of where and how the campaigning of 1863 should be done. Says Colonel
Dodge:[6]

        [6] "The Campaign of Chancellorsville," p. 156.

    Hooker still had in line at Chancellorsville, counting out his
    losses of Saturday, over eighty-five thousand men. Lee had not
    exceeding half the number. But every musket borne by the Army of
    Northern Virginia was put to good use; every round of ammunition
    was made to tell its story. On the other hand of the effective of
    the Army of the Potomac, barely a quarter was fought _au fond_,
    while at least one half the force for duty was given no opportunity
    to burn a cartridge to aid in checking the onset of the elated
    champions of the South.

So much for disparity in generalship. The South had found its great and
masterful commander, who knew how to utilize to the utmost such forces
as were placed at his disposal. Mr. Lincoln had not yet found a general
capable of employing to the full measure of its capacity, the superb
army which the North had created by a lavish expenditure of treasure
and by the eager volunteering of Northern youth for their country's
service. Ulysses S. Grant was still the subordinate of Halleck and the
Army of the Potomac was commanded by a general utterly unequal to the
task of holding his own in a contest with Robert E. Lee.

In his new position Hooker stood upon the defensive and appealed to
Sedgwick, who held the position below Fredericksburg, to come to his
rescue and save him from disaster.

Sedgwick responded promptly, as it was his custom to do, though the
task set him was a difficult one. He must assail Lee's works at
Fredericksburg, drive out the 8,500 confident Confederates who were
holding the trenches there, and then by a march of some weary miles
fall upon Lee's right and rear, thus rescuing Hooker from the peril of
the great Confederate's persistent assaults.

A whole library of controversial literature has been written in
conflicting efforts to show who was to blame for the failure of
Sedgwick to relieve Hooker in time to save him from the vengeance of
Lee. With that controversy the present narrative of facts in no way
concerns itself. Let us simply tell what happened.

Already in command of an available force twice as great as Lee's,
Hooker, driven from his chosen line, had fallen back to a more
concentrated one. Finding Lee disposed, with one man to his two,
to assail him on this new line, he called upon Sedgwick as already
stated, to come to his relief, against enormous obstacles. The order
was received late at night. Its execution required a complete change
in Sedgwick's dispositions, which had been made with the entirely
different purpose of cutting off Lee's retreat after Hooker should have
broken the Confederate resistance at Chancellorsville. So far from
breaking that resistance Hooker had been forced to yield to it and
retire before it.

Sedgwick changed front, drove Lee's 8,500 men out of the works at
Fredericksburg, and pushed on to assail Lee's flank. Lee detached, to
meet him, all of his small force except the Jackson corps of 19,000
men, with which he undertook, personally, to hold in check any
movement that Hooker might make with the 80,000 or more of hardened
veterans whom the Federal commander had under his immediate orders.
But Hooker made no determined movement. On Sunday a fierce battle was
fought between Sedgwick and those of Lee's forces which were engaged
in trying to check his movement. It ended in the Confederates holding
their ground and defeating Sedgwick's purpose of coming to the relief
of his commander.

Early on Monday morning the Confederates succeeded in reoccupying the
Fredericksburg Heights in Sedgwick's rear, which left him, in case of
defeat, with no course open to him except to retreat across the river
and give up the contest.

To compel this the Confederates, falling upon him at six o'clock in the
evening, pressed him at every point while Hooker, with the main body
of the Federal army, lay quite inert in rear of Chancellorsville. Soon
after nightfall Sedgwick crossed the river, leaving the Confederates
in full possession of the Fredericksburg Heights and of all the region
east of the fords upon which Hooker depended for retreat in case of
necessity.

Lee next set about the task of compelling that retreat. With full
confidence in the willingness and the abundant ability of his men to
respond to any demand he might make upon them for activity, he quickly
ordered the reinforcements with which he had strengthened his right
wing for the day's work, to return, and with the bulk of his force thus
reunited, after having disposed of Sedgwick he was ready to fall upon
Hooker.

During these operations against Sedgwick Lee's army had been for the
second time divided. A great part of it had been sent half a dozen
miles or more away to force Sedgwick back to the river and across it.
In the meanwhile Lee, with a mere fragment of his force, had lain in
front of Hooker. Why Hooker did not fall upon him and destroy him
with the eighty thousand men whom he could easily have brought to
bear against less than twenty thousand, is a question that can be
answered only by the reminder that Hooker was not equal to the task of
successfully handling the marvelous fighting machine which the North
had so successfully created. Great as he was as a fighter under some
other and abler man's direction, Hooker in command of 120,000 men seems
to have been paralyzed by the magnitude of his task. He left it to Lee,
with his greatly smaller force to determine when and where the fighting
should be done. He lay still and let Lee alone while the greater part
of Lee's army was detached upon the mission of driving Sedgwick across
the river and recapturing the heights at Fredericksburg. He lay still
while Lee was bringing back the troops thus detached and putting
himself in readiness to strike that final blow that should break the
Federal lines, drive them back across the river, and make an inglorious
end of Hooker's superbly planned but phenomenally ill-executed campaign.

On Monday, May 4, he had 80,000 men (Dodge) under his immediate command
at Chancellorsville, with more than 20,000 under Sedgwick within easy
call, as an available reinforcement. At the very most Lee could
bring less than 30,000 to bear against him even if every movement in
concentration should be successfully made. Yet according to his own
testimony, given two years later, Hooker decided on Monday to retreat
across the river. He called his major generals together "not as a
council of war" he says in his testimony, but merely to find out how
they felt with regard to the alternative policy of making what Hooker
himself regarded as "a desperate move against the enemy in our front."
That "desperate move" was the assailing of less than 30,000 men by more
than 80,000 of as good soldiers as ever pulled a trigger, while 20,000
more remained within call as reinforcements.

It was decided by Hooker, against the nearly unanimous advice of his
lieutenants not to make that "desperate move," and the history of war
records no more lame and impotent conclusion than that. It was decided
by Hooker that the great army which had made a splendid strategic
movement for the purpose of fighting Lee in the open and destroying him
by overwhelming numbers, should run away from him and escape beyond the
river if he should graciously permit it to do so.

To that end--to render possible the escape of 80,000 resolute men from
the assault of less than 30,000 of the enemy, all the engineering skill
that the Army of the Potomac could command was brought to bear. It
protected the roads with abattis and the bridge heads with batteries
which the aggressively insistent Confederates shelled persistently.
A sudden rise in the river for a time threatened the retreat with
failure and placed a part of the force in danger of destruction or
capture. But in the end Hooker succeeded in extricating his army from
its position. Early on the morning of May 6, the last battalions of the
Army of the Potomac withdrew across the river.

Thus ended in failure the most brilliantly planned attempt that had yet
been made to destroy Confederate resistance, conquer the Confederate
capital and make a mercifully early end of a fratricidal war of
stupendous proportions.

Hooker reported his losses during the campaign at 17,285 men; Lee's
loss was 12,277.

If Lee could have attacked Hooker's fleeing columns when they were
huddled together at the bridge ends on the river, demoralized and
without organization as they were, he might easily have multiplied
the Federal loss in killed, wounded, and prisoners by two or three.
General Schurz once expressed to the present historian his astonishment
that Lee neglected to do this. Perhaps the best answer is given in an
extract from Colonel Dodge's exhaustive history of the conflict. He
writes that Lee "was doubtless profoundly grateful that the Army of
the Potomac should retire across the Rappahannock and leave his troops
to the hard-earned rest they needed so much more than ourselves; but
little thanks are due to Hooker, who was, it seems, on the north side
of the river during these critical moments that the casualties of the
campaign were not doubled by a final assault on the part of Lee while
we lay in this perilous situation.... Providentially the artillery of
the Army of Northern Virginia had expended almost its last round of
ammunition previous to this time."

Thus accident alone saved the rear of Hooker's defeated army from a
disaster and demoralization comparable with that of Manassas, at a
time when, in the urgently expressed opinion of General Sickles, the
conspicuous rout of the Army of the Potomac would necessarily have
meant the abandonment of the struggle by the North. "If," he alleged,
"this army should be destroyed, it would be the last one the country
would raise."

Hooker had lost, by his own incapacity, a decisive opportunity to end
the war with Federal success, and Lee, because of a lack of ammunition,
had lost a still more obvious opportunity to end it by a decisive
triumph of the Confederate arms.




CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE GETTYSBURG CAMPAIGN


When the campaign of Chancellorsville ended in defeat for the Federals,
the two armies returned to their former positions at Fredericksburg,
confronting each other with a river between--a river which neither of
them was for the time being disposed to cross with fighting intent.

Hooker, as his orders issued at that time showed, was content as
McClellan had been the year before, that he had saved his great
army from disastrous defeat and capture. He was glad to escape with
what remained of his army from a position which he had brilliantly
achieved in the confident expectation of there completely crushing Lee,
compelling his surrender, and marching unopposed into Richmond. His
escape had been a very narrow one, made possible only by the exhaustion
of the Confederate ammunition, but at any rate he had escaped, and he
was disposed to congratulate himself on that.

Lee, on the other hand had good reason to be satisfied with the results
of his work. With one man to his enemy's three he had so brilliantly
maneuvered as to strike his foe at each point with a superior force; he
had, by virtue of superior genius alone inflicted disaster upon an army
vastly greater than his own in numbers, and possessed of commanding
strategic positions; he had beaten that army in a succession of
battles, and driven it into hurried and uncertain retreat; he had saved
Richmond and again made himself master of the military situation.

His army needed rest after its arduous work, and to give it rest he lay
still for some weeks.

But in the meanwhile he did not lose sight of that supreme purpose
which had inspired him from the beginning of his career as the
commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. That purpose was to
transfer the seat of war northward, to press the enemy, to protect
Richmond by putting Washington on its defense.

There were special reasons for the adoption of this policy now.
Operations at the West had been disastrous and discouraging to the
Confederates. Their armies had been driven out of Kentucky and
Tennessee. The fall of Island Number Ten and Memphis a little later in
the northern reaches of the Mississippi and Farragut's capture of New
Orleans at its southern end had left the Southerners only a small hold
upon the great river at Vicksburg, Port Hudson and the space between.
Grant was insistently hammering at Vicksburg, with every prospect
of soon capturing that key to the river and completely cutting the
Confederacy in twain. But if Lee could capture Washington or compel
its evacuation by pushing himself into its rear and perhaps seizing
upon Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, the disasters at the West
would count for nothing in the reckoning. Europe at least would accept
the successful invasion of the North and the conquest of its capital
as events decisive of the war in behalf of the South; and European
intervention was still the one thing most dreaded at the North and most
ardently hoped for at the South.

Again there was a strong party at the North, embracing a minority
so great that a small influence might easily convert it into a
majority, which was opposed to the war in every way and bitterly
antagonistic to the Lincoln administration. That party held the war
upon the seceding states to be wrong, wicked and without adequate
constitutional warrant. It contended also that the conduct of the war
had been recklessly wasteful of life and treasure, and that in point
of fact it had failed of its purpose. In support of this view the
people opposed to Mr. Lincoln cited the Manassas panic, the defeat
of McClellan before Richmond, the utter overthrow of Pope, the drawn
battle at Sharpsburg, the defeat of Burnside at Fredericksburg, and
finally the all-conspicuous defeat of Hooker at Chancellorsville. If
Lee could add to such a list of achievements the conquest of Washington
or Philadelphia or if he could win a great battle anywhere north of
the Potomac, this minority of protesting and complaining malcontents
at the North, must be quickly converted into an overwhelming majority,
clamorous for the ending of the war by the concession of all that the
Confederates demanded.

Still another influence had its bearing upon Lee's mind. His army,
after its experiences in the Seven Days' battles, in the second
Manassas campaign, at Antietam, at Fredericksburg, and finally in the
campaign of Chancellorsville, had come to regard itself as absolutely
invincible when led by Robert E. Lee. It was ready and more than ready
for any enterprise that he might direct it to undertake. It believed in
itself. Still more confidently it believed in Lee. It wanted to fight.
It was restlessly eager for whatever Lee might prescribe of daring and
endurance. Probably there was never an army, great or small, whose
spirit gave to its leader a stronger inducement to desperate endeavor.
Those men wanted war. They courted battle. They welcomed hardship,
exposure, fatigue, starvation--if only at the end of it all they might
come face to face with the enemy, under the leadership of Lee.

A skilled military critic on the Northern side has characterized them
as the best soldiers on earth. The phrase is not an extravagant one, as
every close student of the Confederate war must clearly see, and their
spirit meant more to the enlightened mind of Lee than a hundred guns
and a score of infantry divisions could have signified.

There was still another fact to be taken into account. Under the
mistaken system of short-term enlistments which had been adopted at the
North, more than thirty thousand of Hooker's best and most seasoned
soldiers were about this time going home. Enlistments at the North had
well-nigh ceased under the discouragement of repeated failure, while
at the South the conscription law--extended as to age--had resulted in
putting pretty nearly every able-bodied white man in all that region
into the army. The Army of Northern Virginia was being rapidly swelled
in numbers, while the Army of the Potomac was losing many of its best
fighting regiments and brigades. The Army of Northern Virginia was
flushed by recent and conspicuous victory; the Army of the Potomac was
sadly disheartened by a defeat which, in view of its vast superiority
in numbers, it could in no wise account for or understand. The Army
of Northern Virginia had unbounded confidence in itself and limitless
belief in its commander; the Army of the Potomac had no longer any
reason to trust itself, and it had utterly lost confidence in the
general who had so badly handled it as to subject it to humiliating
defeat where it had justly expected to achieve victory quick, certain
and decisive.

Moved by these considerations Lee at once planned a new invasion of
the region north of the Potomac. The enemy confronting him was still
superior in numbers, equipment and everything else except spirit
and fighting quality and its general. It would not do for Lee to
move northward, leaving that army in his rear with full opportunity
to destroy his communications, rush upon Richmond and possess the
Confederate capital. He must so maneuver as to compel Hooker to fall
back upon Washington, precisely as he had done in McClellan's case the
year before.

Again he successfully played upon the excessive concern felt at the
North for the safety of Washington. Having brought Longstreet with
two strong divisions from the south side of the James river for his
reinforcement, and having brought up every battery and battalion that
could be spared from any other position, Lee played again the game
he had played against McClellan. While still strongly and securely
holding his position at Fredericksburg, he began detaching forces in a
way to threaten Washington with an attack in the rear, and to compel
Hooker to retire upon the national capital for its defense.

First he sent Stuart with his splendid cavalry to Culpeper Court House.
Then, a little later, he sent Ewell's and Longstreet's corps to the
same point, retaining only A. P. Hill's corps to hold the works at
Fredericksburg. Should Hooker deem this an opportunity and seek to
seize it, it would require fully three days at the very least for him
to lay pontoon bridges and push a column across the river for purposes
of assault. In the event of such a demonstration two days would amply
suffice Lee to bring his two detached corps back to the works at
Fredericksburg, there to defend them irresistibly. Hooker was much too
discreet a general not to see this, and so he undertook no crossing of
the river.

Lee was thus left in complete control of the military situation.
The transfer of two of his army corps to Culpeper was a threat to
Washington and Washington promptly responded--as Lee intended that it
should do--by calling upon Hooker for the retirement of his army for
the defense of the National capital.

Hooker ordered all his cavalry, under Pleasanton, to move against and
assail the Confederate horsemen under Stuart at or near Culpeper. The
two forces met at Brandy Station, where for the first time in the
history of the Confederate War a strictly cavalry contest of great
proportions ensued. The Confederates had distinctly the better of it.
They repelled the assault, with losses about equal on either side, and
left the Federals with no further information as to the Confederate
movement than they had had before the action. As the acquisition of
such information was precisely all that Pleasanton had fought to
secure, it must be reckoned that he had failed in his purpose. But he
had at any rate proved that the Federal cavalry men had at last learned
how to ride their horses, an art in which they had proved themselves
distinctly inferior to the Confederates in all previous conflicts
between horsemen of the two sides.

On the thirteenth of June Ewell's corps was in the Valley of the
Shenandoah marching northward; Hill was still holding the entrenchments
at Fredericksburg, while Longstreet was in a position near Culpeper,
from which he could reinforce either at will.

Hooker had by this time recovered the sanity which he had so completely
lost during the campaign of Chancellorsville and he at once asked
permission of Washington to push the whole of his vastly superior force
in between the separated fragments of Lee's army and destroy them in
detail. This was obviously the right thing to do, but Halleck was still
in supreme control at Washington, and Hooker, by his phenomenal failure
at Chancellorsville, had justly lost Halleck's confidence. Moreover Lee
knew all about this situation, and, knowing Halleck quite as well as he
knew Hooker, he was reckoning upon that general's character.

Halleck forbade Hooker to make the bold move he proposed, precisely as
Lee had expected him to do, and Lee was thus left free to direct the
course of the campaign as he pleased.

Hooker, under orders, retired toward Washington, leaving Lee free to
add Hill's corps to the forces with which he was advancing northward.

Ewell swept down the valley and assailed Winchester, where he
completely broke and destroyed Milroy's force of ten thousand men,
capturing four thousand of them and driving the rest into disorderly
retreat upon Harper's Ferry.

Lee promptly threw Hill's corps into the Shenandoah Valley, while
Longstreet moved northward upon parallel lines, east of the mountains.

Presently the Confederate cavalry crossed the Potomac and reached
Chambersburg in Pennsylvania. The infantry and artillery promptly
followed, and by the twenty-second or twenty-third of June, the
whole Confederate army was in Pennsylvania--threatening Washington,
threatening Baltimore, threatening Philadelphia, and gravely menacing
even New York.

A great panic ensued among the Northern people, to whom the fact of war
had not often before been brought home in this intimate and terrifying
fashion. Women and children fled as refugees. Horses and cattle were
driven away into hiding. Silverware and jewels were hastily buried,
and all food stuffs that could be carried away were hidden. For the
first time the people at the North had some small realization of what
war means to those who dwell in an invaded country. They suffered no
such desolation as that which for years overspread northern Virginia.
They learned no such lesson of havoc as that which Sheridan afterwards
mercilessly taught the people of that fruitful valley of Virginia over
which, after his desolating march, he picturesquely said that "the
crow that flies must carry his rations with him." But at the least
they learned that to a people whose land is invaded, war is truly "all
hell," in General Sherman's phrase.

There was a hurried calling out of militia in the threatened states,
quite as if militia could be expected to stand against the veterans
who had fought at Richmond, at Antietam, at Fredericksburg and at
Chancellorsville. Half a million of militia, if so many could have been
brought together, would have been able to oppose no obstacle to the
determined will of such veteran soldiers as these. At that stage of
the war, the militia and raw, untrained volunteers on either side, had
ceased to be regarded as forces to be reckoned with.

A more important fact was that Hooker was moving with his veteran army
to meet Lee, keeping himself always between the great Confederate and
the National capital.

Again as during the former invasion, there were eleven thousand Federal
troops holding Harper's Ferry. Again, as a year before, the general
commanding the Army of the Potomac wanted to save them to his army by
ordering them to evacuate the place and join him in the field. Again,
as on the former occasion, Halleck refused to sanction this, in spite
of the obvious fact that the Confederates must certainly and easily
capture the whole of that force unless it should save itself by timely
retreat.

About this time Hooker, in disgust at the restraints to which he was
subjected, asked to be relieved of the command of the Army of the
Potomac, and General Meade, a very much abler man, was appointed
to succeed him. Meade instantly ordered the evacuation of Harper's
Ferry--the very thing that Hooker had been forbidden to order, and thus
saved eleven thousand seasoned troops to the Army with which he must
presently confront Lee.

On the twenty-eighth of June Lee's army lay at Chambersburg, York, and
Carlisle, in Pennsylvania. In that position it threatened Baltimore,
Harrisburg and Philadelphia about equally. It might move upon either
at will and in either case cut off Washington. The problem of the Army
of the Potomac was to find out its adversary's intention and interpose
itself at whatever point interposition might seem to be most necessary.

In the course of this advance, Lee made one capital blunder. It was his
courteous custom, in giving orders to his higher lieutenants, to leave
much to their discretion, if only by way of emphasizing his confidence
in them. In this case he left much to the discretion of Stuart, who
had no discretion, although he had every other good quality of the
soldier. Lee ordered Stuart to make certain movements if they commended
themselves to his judgment, but left him in effect free to do as he
pleased, assuming that he would please to do that which was discreet,
bearing in mind that the cavalry are the eyes and ears of the army.

It was Stuart's chief business to find out and report every movement
of the Army of the Potomac, to follow its every march, to learn what
it was planning to do, and at every step to find out and report to Lee
the force employed in each maneuver. Stuart was an adept in this work.
No man then living--probably no man who ever lived--knew better than
he did how to find out the purposes of an enemy or to estimate his
strength or to determine where and when that enemy meant to strike.

But by virtue of his orders, Stuart was free to do what he pleased; and
it pleased him to find out how nearly his cavaliers could ride into
Washington, to throw shells into that city and generally to impress
himself dramatically and theatrically upon the Federal administration
as a terror.

As a consequence Lee was left without that information as to his
adversary's movements which he depended upon the cavalry to furnish.
While Stuart was trying to throw shells into Washington, Meade was
concentrating his forces toward Gettysburg, to meet his opponent there
and Lee was left in ignorance of the fact.

Accordingly when the head of Lee's somewhat scattered and straggling
column came upon a Federal force occupying a strong position at
Gettysburg which it had been Lee's intention that his own advance
forces should seize and hold, there were all the elements of surprise
in the situation.

Neither army was as yet sufficiently concentrated to deliver a blow
that might be decisive. Lee had in all about 73,500 infantry and
artillery--the largest army he ever commanded. Meade had about 82,000
effective infantry and artillery. The cavalry on each side numbered
ten or eleven thousand sabers, but Lee's horsemen were absent, trying
to make a display of themselves, while Meade's were in front, where
they ought to have been, trying to secure for their commander full
information and promptly to seize upon the best positions that might
avail to give him advantage in the approaching fight. This difference
gave to Meade about 93,000 fighting men against 73,000 on the other
side.

Lee's army was strangely scattered. A part of it was at York; a part
of it at Carlisle; a part of it at Chambersburg, and another part in
front of Gettysburg. Because of Stuart's aberration Lee knew nothing
of his enemy's movements until the head of his column ran against
Meade's forces at Gettysburg. He seems to have expected Meade to
remain south of the Potomac, or at the most to cross that river and
place himself in the northern defenses of Washington. He had ordered
the concentration of the Confederate forces at Gettysburg without the
smallest expectation of finding the Army of the Potomac there to meet
him in full force.

A glance at a map will show the reader how completely the position at
Gettysburg dominates the military geography, and how perfectly his
mastery of it would have enabled Lee to dictate the further course of
the campaign.

It is greatly to the credit of General Meade as a strategist that
he quickly saw all this and hurried his army forward to occupy that
commanding position before Lee could seize upon and control it.

He did this masterfully. When Lee's advance reached Gettysburg on the
first of July, it found itself opposed by a force too great for it
to deal with in any summary fashion. And that force had seized upon
positions of the utmost strategic value before the Confederates reached
Gettysburg.

Here a little topographical information is necessary to a clear
understanding. With the aid of any good map of the region it may be
condensed into brief space.

The town of Gettysburg was itself of no consequence to either side. The
military position among the hills surrounding it was vitally important.

Many roads converge at this point. A trifle over two miles south
of the town there are two bold and commanding hills--Round Top and
Little Round Top. From these a line of hills extends toward the town,
commanding the lower ground to the east and west. This is called
Cemetery Ridge, and is not to be confounded with Seminary Ridge,
presently to be mentioned. Cemetery Ridge, just before it reaches the
town, trends off to the east and ends in Culp's Hill.

West of the town is another and higher ridge, also running north and
south, called Seminary Ridge. Just west of these high grounds is
Willoughby Run, a little creek which afforded opportunity for attack
and defense.

When Lee learned that Meade, instead of sitting down to the defense of
Washington, was advancing against his communications, he ordered his
army to concentrate at Gettysburg for a decisive battle. Meade in the
meanwhile was pushing his columns to that point. Here were two masters
of the game of war, who, while opposing each other, were agreed that
Gettysburg was the key to the situation. The strategic value of that
point was equally apparent to both.

Lee, being left in the dark by Stuart's absence, was slowly advancing
in detachments, in order to subsist his army upon the country,
confident that his enemy was still lingering around Washington and that
he had himself ample time in which to seize the commanding positions in
advance of the foe's approach. Meade, meanwhile, was perfectly informed
of Lee's movements and was hourly quickening his march.

When the head of Lee's column under Ewell reached the neighborhood of
Gettysburg on the first of July, it encountered not only the Federal
cavalry, which it had expected to find there and to brush aside without
difficulty, but the whole of Meade's advance corps--artillery and
infantry--under Reynolds, while another corps under Howard was hurrying
up in support.

Seizing upon the line of Willoughby Run the Federals undertook to hold
it and the hills in rear of it against the enemy's assault. Ewell,
expecting to encounter no resistance except such as the cavalry and
perhaps some brigades of Pennsylvania militia, could offer, advanced
confidently only to find his way disputed by some of the best veteran
corps of the Army of the Potomac.

Reynolds, commanding the Federal advance, was killed early in the
action and Doubleday succeeded him. Howard presently superseded
Doubleday in chief command and later Hancock replaced Howard.

So completely had Lee been left in the dark by the vagaries of his
cavalry leader that in ordering Ewell's advance upon Gettysburg he had
intended only that his lieutenant should brush away the cavalry and
militia there, seize upon the strategic positions and hold them easily
until the Confederate army could come up and plant itself impregnably
to receive the attack which the foe must make in sheer desperation.
But when Ewell approached the town and found himself confronted by
the strongest corps of Meade's army instead of merely having cavalry
and militia to deal with, it was imperative upon him to bring on a
general action at once, in disobedience of Lee's order to avoid such
an action until the other Confederate army corps should come up. Ewell
was much too wise a soldier not to see the necessity of striking at
once and with all the force he could command in the hope of securing
for Lee some at least of the strong positions and thus giving to the
Confederates an opportunity to fight the great and inevitable battle
with a reasonable hope of winning it.

So Ewell struck hard with what force he had, and the enemy struck back
with equal vigor. Hour after hour the conflict endured, the men on both
sides fighting with determination and calmly enduring a slaughter that
only veterans could have stood.

When Lee heard the roar of the conflict and, with practised ear
measured its severity, he hurried forward reinforcements as fast as
possible, and meanwhile sent a messenger to ask Ewell "What are you
fighting there?" In response Ewell answered, "The whole Yankee army, I
think."

Here at last the advance forces of the two greatest and gallantest
armies ever assembled on this continent had met, each under a leader in
whom it had confidence. Here at last, with approximately equal numbers
those two armies faced each other with intent to fight out to a finish
the question which of them was the better organized for the work of
war. The Federals outnumbered the Confederates by no more than 15,000
men or so, and the _élan_ the Confederates had brought with them out
of recent victories, together with their limitless confidence in Lee's
superiority to any living man as a general, served adequately to offset
that small advantage.

The courage of the men on both sides was matchless. Their endurance was
superb. Their heroism was such as poets rejoice to celebrate in song.
The drama, with all its arts and all its accessories has no "effects"
to offer, that can for one instant compare in masterfulness with those
presented by the story of this struggle of Americans against Americans
for the mastery.

Toward the end of the day, the Confederate onsets proved irresistible
and the Federal forces in large part at least, fell into retreat. But
with the cavalry standing fast and with a brigade of infantry strongly
posted on Cemetery Ridge, Hancock, who had assumed command on the
field, succeeded in stopping the flight and forming a new line along
the crest of Cemetery Ridge.

Thus ended the first day's fight. The Confederates had had the better
of it in certain ways. They had been taken by surprise, not in the
usual way by being unexpectedly set upon by an army whose assault they
were not anticipating, but by finding in their path, when seeking to
occupy an advantageous position, a veteran army skilfully handled and
well commanded, where they had expected to meet only light bodies of
cavalry and militiamen whose resistance they might regard as lightly as
they would the small embarrassment of a field of ripening grain. They
had lost heavily in the ensuing conflict, but they had driven their
foes--or most of them--into retreat and had occupied positions from
which the great battles of the ensuing days might be waged with hope
and confidence.

During all the night that followed, as during all that first day of
fighting, the army corps and divisions and brigades on both sides
marched ceaselessly in an endeavor to put themselves into their places
on the line in time for the final struggle. Some of them, on either
side, marched eighteen miles, some twenty-five, and one at least on
the Federal side tramped wearily over thirty-three miles of distance
without sleep or rest, in its eagerness to bear its part in what
promised to be the crowning conflict of the war.

But each side having secured a strong position neither desired to bring
on the conflict until its forces should be fully up, and so the two
armies did not fall a-fighting again until about four o'clock in the
afternoon of the second day--July 2, 1863. Then Longstreet with his
Confederates fell upon Sickles with a fury that only a seasoned corps
could have withstood for a moment. Sickles occupied a line of rather
low-lying hills that stretched diagonally across between the Federal
and Confederate positions. His left wing having no natural obstacle to
rest upon, was bent back toward Little Round Top, thus presenting an
angle to the enemy.

Upon this angle Longstreet's veterans were hurled with determination,
while a part of his corps--Hood's fierce fighting Texans, and that most
desperate of rowdy corps, Wheat's Louisiana Tigers--passing around the
flank of it, made a determined attempt to seize Little Round Top, a
position from which, had they secured it, their guns could have swept
a large part of the Federal line with a destructive enfilade fire.
General Warren saw the danger in time and moved a heavy force toward
the coveted hill, including a battery whose guns the men dragged by
hand up the steep and into position.

Hood's men pressed on in face of the fire opened upon them, and with
a desperate determination rarely equaled even in this war, endeavored
to conquer the position in a hand to hand struggle. The men on both
sides saw the vital importance of the position and fought for its
possession like so many war-drunken demons. They fought hand to hand,
using bayonets when too close together to load and fire. They brained
each other with the butts of their muskets. They assailed each other
with bowie knives. They even resorted to the use of stones, hurling
them in each other's faces and breaking each other's skulls with heavy
boulders.

In the end Hood's attack was baffled, and Warren held the hill. But for
his alertness in seeing the necessity and his wonderful determination
in seizing the opportunity, the battle must have been lost then and
there; for, with his guns planted on Little Round Top, Lee could
quickly have compelled the whole Federal line to retire and seek some
other field of fighting.

Probably in all the course of the war the margin between victory and
defeat was never at any point narrower than it was in that desperate
struggle for possession of Little Round Top, about sunset on the
second day of July, 1863. Never anywhere, before or since, was there
fiercer fighting. Never anywhere did soldiers give a better account of
themselves. Officers, from lieutenants to generals, fell in numbers by
the side of their enlisted men, and over the whole slope the ground was
strewn with the dead and the dying. Some of them wore the blue, and
some of them the gray--about equal numbers in each uniform--but all
of them were Americans and the memory of their heroism is the common
heritage of all the people of the great Republic.

During these two days of terrific fighting the Federals had got
distinctly the worst of it. The Confederates had not won a victory,
but they had at any rate secured advantages that might well give their
adversaries pause.

General Meade called a council of war after the firing ceased on the
night of the second. He has himself declared that he had no thought of
retreating after the fashion that had been established by usage in
the Army of the Potomac. General Meade's truthfulness is wholly above
suspicion. But General Doubleday has pretty conclusively shown that
General Meade's memory was at fault in this and that his object in
calling the council of war was to take the opinions of his lieutenants
as to whether he should withdraw from the Gettysburg position--as the
Army of the Potomac had withdrawn from so many others after being
worsted in battle--or should stay there and fight the matter out.

However that may be--and historically it does not matter--it was
decided to stay there, and the night was spent by both armies in
diligent preparation for a renewal of the desperate and not unequal
conflict on the morrow. Every man and every gun that was within reach
was brought into position. Every inch of advantageous ground that
either side commanded was occupied to the full. Every preparation
that either of those titanic forces could make for the morrow was
made. It was at last the fixed purpose of each of these great armies
to give battle to the other in a final contest for supremacy, in
full conviction that the whole question at issue between the warring
sections was deliberately staked upon the outcome of this one desperate
struggle.

And indeed the stake was no whit less than that. It was obvious that
should Meade beat and crush Lee on this decisive battlefield, the very
existence of the Southern Confederacy would be at an end; the road to
Richmond would be open to any single army corps that might be sent
to undertake the conquest of the Confederate capital, while a dozen
or a score of strong divisions could easily be sent on that task if
necessary. On the other hand if Lee could have crushed Meade in this
battle Washington would have been his for the taking, while Baltimore,
Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and New York would have been helpless to
offer any resistance which need in the least check or embarrass him. In
either case the war must have come to a hurried end.

Thus, when it was decided to renew the battle on the field of
Gettysburg on the third of July, 1863, the stakes of the war game
included all that there was of a cause on either side.

Lee was in a position in which he must take supreme risks. Therein only
lay his hope. Meade was in a very different case. He might fall back
and still reserve to himself the opportunity to fight again with hope
of success. It is in no way astonishing that Meade hesitated, called
a council of war, and asked for the advice of his major generals as
to whether he should risk the whole Federal cause upon the issue of
a single and very uncertain battle with such an adversary as Lee, or
should withdraw and adopt a defensive attitude.

On the other side Longstreet strongly advised Lee against giving battle
in this position. Longstreet thought Lee had accomplished enough. He
thought also that by shifting the position it was easily possible for
Lee to put himself in better and his adversary in much worse case, for
fighting, before bringing on the battle.

Whether Longstreet's counsels were wise or otherwise, only skilled
military critics are competent to determine; and even their
determination must always be open to doubt, especially as Longstreet's
support of Lee's plan of battle seems to have lacked something of
efficiency--the lack of which may have been determinative of results.

At any rate Lee decided to give battle, and he made his dispositions
accordingly. He had already assailed both flanks of the Federal army
and found both too strongly posted to be successfully turned or
crushed. He decided, therefore, to hurl his entire strength directly
against the Federal line in the hope of breaking it and thus driving
his enemy into disorderly retreat.

It was a desperate thing to do, but Lee knew the fact, which has since
been recorded by a historian on the other side, that the soldiers under
his command were "the best infantry on earth" and he hesitated not to
exact of them the most desperate and terrific work. He knew at least
that these men would do and dare anything and everything in an attempt
to carry out his will and achieve the ends he purposed.

He assembled a hundred guns on Seminary Ridge, each so well manned as
to be capable of firing from four to six times a minute. In answer
the Federals on Cemetery Ridge assembled about a like number of guns,
equally well served.

The greatest artillery duel that had ever occurred was waged on that
morning. Nearly a thousand shells a minute were launched upon their
life-destroying career. Guns were knocked from their carriages, only
to be replaced by other guns for which there had been no firing room
before. Cannoneers were swept away like flies, and their places were
promptly taken by other cannoneers who eagerly and clamorously claimed
the privileges of the conflict. Caissons were exploded by bursting
shells and other caissons moved into their places with the precision of
mathematics itself.

The Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac had learned
their business. The men who composed them now were soldiers, drilled,
trained, battle-seasoned and thoroughly hardened to their work by
long and varied experience. Whatever it was possible for courage and
endurance to accomplish, that they were ready to undertake. They no
more thought of reckoning the personal danger than of calculating the
wanderings of the stars in their courses. They stood their ground,
nothing daunting them and nothing suggesting to their minds a thought
of running away. Is it any wonder that when such men composed the
opposing armies, the fighting was such as to make men admire and angels
weep?

The one thing that made the greater battles of the Confederate war
terrible was this fact that the two armies were equally American in
their composition, equally determined, equally heroic in daring and in
enduring.

While all this fury of artillery fire continued, the infantry on either
side lay flat on their bellies, taking advantage of every smallest
inequality of the ground, and waiting for the serious work of war to
begin. For by this time every soldier in either of these armies knew
all there was to know about war's work, and every one of them knew
that this terrific artillery bombardment--the greatest that had ever
occurred since cannon were invented--was merely preliminary to that
onset of the infantry which was presently to determine which of these
two great armies should have the mastery and which should be destroyed.

After two hours or more of this work with the guns, there came
Pickett's charge--one of the very gallantest endeavors in all the
history of war--having for its only rival in heroic determination
the six successive charges of Federal troops up Marye's Heights at
Fredericksburg.

Fourteen thousand of Lee's "best infantry on earth" were set to make
this onslaught. Their task was about the most difficult and terrible
one that had been anywhere undertaken during the war. There was a full
mile of open country lying between the line from which they moved and
the line which they were called upon to assault. Every inch of that
mile of open space was swept by the fire of a hundred guns served
as guns were rarely served before or since. It was in face of this
veritable "fire of hell" that these fourteen thousand men were required
to traverse a mile of space and then assail an entrenched and strongly
posted enemy like unto themselves in courage, determination and all
soldierly qualities.

They went to this work with unfaltering courage, and at the end of it
all a new chapter had been added to the history of heroism.

The moment Pickett's men began their mile long charge, the Federal
cannon--about a hundred guns--resumed their fire while the Confederate
artillery must of course cease firing lest their shells plow through
the ranks of their own infantry. In spite of all, and in face of a
hailstorm of shot and shell the Confederates steadily advanced. Great
rents were made in their lines by the explosion of shells, but the
gaps thus made were instantly closed up, and not for one moment did
the assaulting force recoil, or halt or slacken the eager rapidity of
its advance. As it drew near to the enemy's lines the Federal fire
was changed from shell and shrapnel to canister in double and triple
charges--each gun hurling from a quart to a gallon of balls every
few seconds into the faces of the still advancing and still cheering
Confederates. Presently, when the Southerners drew still nearer to the
lines, a great body of Federal infantry that had been lying down and
sheltering itself, rose and poured murderous volleys into the ranks of
the assailants.

Those ranks were withering now, under the destructive fire, but still
they faltered not nor failed. Still they went forward to execute Lee's
will, which meant to them quite all that the will of God means to the
devotee.

They trampled over the advance lines of the enemy. They pushed forward
to the breastworks. They even crossed the fortifications and for a
brief space held the lines they had been sent to conquer.

But so depleted were their ranks by this time, and so strangely
unsupported were they by those other divisions which they had expected
Longstreet to send in after them, and which he did not send in, that
they were at last forced back by sheer weight of numbers.

A small remnant of that splendid charging column returned to Lee's
lines under a withering fire. The rest of it lay dead or dying on the
hillside.

It has always been a fact highly creditable to American armies that the
killed and wounded among their officers of high rank in every severe
conflict relatively outnumber the casualties among the enlisted men.
At Gettysburg, on both sides, this was conspicuously the case. On the
Federal side General Reynolds was killed early on the first day of the
fight. Later General Weed was mortally wounded; General Vincent and
Colonel O'Rorke were killed. So were General Zook and Colonel Cross,
while General Sickles lost a leg. In the third day's fighting Generals
Hancock, Doubleday, Gibbon, Warren, Butterfield, Stannard, Brooke and
Barnes were wounded; General Farnsworth was killed. On the Confederate
side the number of killed and wounded among officers of high rank was
equally great. General Barksdale fell, leading his men in terrific
assault. General Armistead was shot to death as he laid his hand upon
a Federal gun, and in Pickett's matchless charge, very nearly every
officer, high and low, was either killed or wounded. Their men were not
sent into the conflict; they were led into it, and between those two
things there is a world of difference.

Longstreet has criticised Lee for ordering Pickett's charge. On the
other hand Longstreet has been severely criticised for not having
supported that charge with all his might, pushing forward every man he
could command to take the places of Pickett's killed and wounded and
to crown their superb endeavor with compulsory success. Again Lee has
been criticised for having given Ewell, in command of his left wing,
uncertain and discretionary orders, instead of directing him, at the
time of Pickett's charge, to hurl his whole force upon the enemy in his
front, regardless of all other considerations. These matters are open
questions that belong to military criticism rather than to history.
They need not be discussed in these pages. But it belongs to history
to relate that when the struggle was at an end, and the people of the
South manifested a disposition to hold Longstreet responsible for its
failure to accomplish the results intended, Lee promptly and definitely
took upon himself all there might be of blame for the miscarriage of
his plans. In a letter to President Davis he wrote protesting that the
responsibility was all his own, and asking that some younger and fitter
man than himself should be appointed to succeed him in command of that
splendidly devoted and unfaltering army which he had so often led to
victory but on this occasion had led to something akin to defeat and
disaster.

There could scarcely be a stronger contrast than that between Lee's
generous refusal to have any of his lieutenants held responsible
for the results of a battle which he had authority to direct and
Hooker's endeavor to shift to the shoulders of his subordinates the
responsibility for his phenomenal failure at Chancellorsville. Lee was
a great man, Hooker fell far short of that measure.

Gettysburg was, like Sharpsburg or Antietam, technically a drawn
battle. Neither side had won a recognizable victory. Neither army had
driven its adversary from the field. Neither had destroyed or even
seriously impaired the fighting capacity of the other. Neither had
triumphed over the other. But the result at Gettysburg as at Antietam
was that Lee's invasion of the North was brought to naught. In the one
case as in the other the Confederate hope of compelling terms of peace
was defeated by successful resistance. To that extent at least the
battle had resulted in victory for the Federal arms.

When the fourth of July dawned, neither army cared to assail the
other. All day they confronted each other sullenly, as they had done
at Sharpsburg. Then Lee slowly and deliberately withdrew, as he had
done on the former occasion, his enemy not having confidence or
strength enough to interfere in any active way with his retirement.
Lee's ammunition was so far exhausted that many of his divisions had
only one round of cartridges, while many of his batteries had none at
all. But so terrible had been his onset, and so greatly did his foe
dread a further conflict with him, that after taking his own time in
the enemy's country in which to determine what he would do, he moved
to the Potomac practically unmolested, rested there because of high
water, still unmolested, and finally returned to Virginia. Meade slowly
and quite inoffensively followed. The two armies resumed their old
positions on the Rappahannock and the Rapidan and neither ventured to
assail the other during the remainder of that summer or autumn.

Here was another of those strange pauses in the war which history
finds it difficult to explain. The first battle of Manassas was fought
on the twenty-first of July, 1861. There was no further battling of
consequence during that summer or autumn. The battle at Sharpsburg
was fought at the middle of September, 1862; there was no further
fighting until the middle of December following. The Gettysburg battle
was fought during the first three days of July, 1863, and throughout
the long summer and autumn that followed there was no activity on
either side. Not until May of the following year did the armies that
confronted each other in Virginia meet again in conflict.

The wherefore of this inactivity has never been explained.

But meanwhile events of the utmost importance were occurring at the
South and West, which claim attention in another chapter.




CHAPTER XXXIX

THE CAMPAIGN OF VICKSBURG


After Shiloh, Grant was left, as he himself has told us, in a state
of grave uncertainty as to the limits of his command, and even as to
the question whether or not he had any command. After Halleck was
transferred to Washington and placed in the position of General in
Chief, things at the West did not much mend. We have seen how Grant at
Corinth was slowly stripped of his forces and compelled to stand mainly
upon the defensive in a field where offense, instant and vigorous, was
obviously called for.

After the fall of Memphis, New Orleans, and Baton Rouge, the
Confederates were left in possession only of that part of the
Mississippi river which lies between Vicksburg and Port Hudson. Their
possession of that stretch of river was doubly important to them.
Defensively, it enabled them to blockade the river and render it a
no-thoroughfare to Federal troops and supplies. Still more importantly,
it enabled them to maintain their communications with the country lying
to the west of the Mississippi in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. From
that region they drew a very important part of their food supplies.
These came to Vicksburg by water or over the Shreveport railroad on the
west of the river, and were carried from Vicksburg eastward by other
lines of railroad. A still more important line of communication was
that by way of the Red river, which empties into the Mississippi from
the westward between Vicksburg and Port Hudson.

To hold these routes seemed almost an absolute necessity to the
Confederates. To cut them and open the Mississippi river from Cairo to
the Gulf was equally a necessity to the Federals.

Here were the conditions that rendered a campaign inevitable, and
in a degree marked out its course and character. The Confederates
energetically fortified Vicksburg and Port Hudson, and planted posts
at various other points on both sides of the Mississippi and on the
Arkansas and Red rivers. The Federals had made several attempts--one
of them made by Farragut himself--to open the Mississippi, but had
completely failed, largely because the Confederate fortifications at
Vicksburg were perched so high upon the bluff that Farragut's guns
could not be sufficiently elevated to reach them.

It was not until the twelfth of November, 1862, that General Grant
was set free to do those things which it was necessary to do in this
quarter of the country. On that date he received a dispatch from
General Halleck, giving him command of all troops in his department,
and authorizing him to conduct operations there on his own judgment.
Thus armed with liberty to act, Grant instantly consulted Sherman, in
whose sagacity and in whose superb fighting qualities he had the utmost
confidence. These two energetic commanders quickly agreed upon a plan
of action which looked to nothing less than the capture of Vicksburg
and Port Hudson, the opening of the great river throughout its length,
and the severance of the Confederacy in twain.

Their plan at first was that Grant, with about 30,000 men, should move
against the Confederate General Pemberton, who had about an equal force
in the Tallahatchie river country, and occupy him there while Sherman,
with 30,000 more, should descend the Mississippi in transports,
convoyed by the gunboats, and effect a landing within striking distance
of Vicksburg. Should Pemberton fall back for the defense of that
stronghold, Grant was to press him with all possible vigor, endeavoring
to cut him off from Vicksburg, and leave Sherman free to deal with that
fortress as he pleased.

The Tallahatchie country, through which Grant marched to assail
Pemberton, is a tangled wilderness, lying actually lower than the
surface of the Mississippi, and itself laced by multitudinous rivers,
creeks, and streams, all of them difficult of passage, even at times
of lowest water, and impossible of passage when a rain or a break in a
Mississippi levée suddenly raises them to flood height. The region is,
in fact, a vast morass. In parts of it the planters were often left for
six, eight or ten months without communication with the outer world,
except by way of the rivers themselves, during the winter. It is not
difficult, even for the reader who has no technical knowledge of war,
to understand how slowly and painfully a march through such a country
must be made, when not only the cannon but a wagon train, carrying
every ounce of supplies necessary for 30,000 men must be dragged at
every step through a quagmire.

But this was not Grant's chief difficulty. With his headquarters at
Holly Springs, and a purpose to press forward in a southwesterly
direction, he must maintain a long and attenuated line of communication
with his base at Columbus, Kentucky. The Confederates were alert and
ceaselessly active in assailing this line and rendering it hopelessly
insecure. They sent heavy cavalry detachments under Van Dorn and
Forrest to cut him off from his base, and Van Dorn, emboldened by
repeated successes at last on the twentieth of December assailed Holly
Springs itself, where Grant had accumulated many million dollars' worth
of supplies in preparation for his campaign. The Confederate cavalrymen
captured the town and its garrison, burned all the stores and destroyed
the railroad buildings. In the meanwhile Forrest raiding farther north
cut the railroad between Jackson, Tennessee, and Columbus, Kentucky,
thus completely severing Grant's line, and leaving him in the enemy's
country without supplies or the means of procuring them.

In order to save his army Grant immediately abandoned his plan of
campaign and moved northwestward to Memphis. His purpose now was to
join Sherman there, unite the two wings of the army, and in company
with Sherman and the gunboats move down the river and assail Vicksburg
in overwhelming force.

But when Grant reached Memphis Sherman had already gone down the river
in his transports, accompanied by Porter's gunboats, to a point called
Milliken's Bend. There on Christmas day Sherman had landed on both
sides of the river, sending the main body of his troops up the Yazoo,
which empties from the northeast into the Mississippi near that point.
He did this in order to assail the Confederates on the bluffs north of
Vicksburg.

At this point a little topographical explanation seems necessary.
Vicksburg lies on a great easterly bend of the river. It is perched
upon high bluffs which extend thence northward to the Yazoo, striking
it at a point called Haines's Bluff.

From Milliken's Bend above Vicksburg Sherman had sent a brigade
down the western side of the river to cut the railroad leading from
Shreveport, Louisiana, to that city. Landing his main force under
the bluffs on the Yazoo, he hoped to march southward in the rear
of Vicksburg, and cut the railroad which leads thence to Jackson,
Mississippi, the state capital, about fifty miles away. If he could
accomplish this he would have Vicksburg isolated from communication on
either side of the river.

In all this he was instantly and completely baffled. Low grounds
bordered the Yazoo at the point of landing, while the Confederates
occupied and had cannon-crowned the bluffs at a little distance from
the stream. The flat lands with their marshes were pestilential to
the young men of the northwest who constituted Sherman's army. At
times of high water the lowlands were often overflowed to a depth of
ten feet. They were at all times malarial, and such water as could be
had by digging a foot or two into the mucky soil was simply poisonous
for human beings to drink. On the other hand, the Southerners on the
bluffs above were living in much more salubrious conditions. They had
the advantage also of being immune by lifelong use to the miasms which
laid so many of the Northern soldiers low. It is scarcely too much
to say that the spores of miasmatic disease were at this time more
important to the Confederates as a means of defense than their powder
and bullets were.

Still further, Sherman had been misled and misinformed with regard
to the character of the bluffs which he must assail. He had supposed
them to be easily accessible to such lithe young fellows as those
northwestern boys who constituted the pith and marrow of his army.
He found them instead scarcely more accessible than the steeps of
Gibraltar itself. And as at Gibraltar, so at this point the men
standing upon the defense not only occupied the heights, but held their
bases with a bristling row of well-served cannon, strongly supported
by an infantry as good as any that ever fought. The approaches across
bayous and creeks and broad marshes were narrow and difficult. The
Confederates had fully made good their deficiency in numbers by so
planting their cannon and their riflemen as to command these approaches
completely.

It was on the twenty-ninth of December, 1862, that Sherman made his
desperate attack. One brigade, by determined fighting, reached the
foot of the bluffs but was instantly hurled back again, leaving five
hundred of its men stark and stiff on the battlefield. At another point
a regiment of daring fellows reached the base of the headland and found
it impossible either to go forward or to retreat without inviting
destruction. The men dug rat holes for themselves at the base of the
bluffs, and did what they could in the way of self-protection, while
the Confederates on the cliffs above kept up a murderous vertical fire
upon them throughout the day, until nightfall mercifully came and
brought with it an opportunity for the Federals to retire.

In this struggle Sherman lost nearly two thousand men, while the
Confederate loss was less than two hundred--one man killed on the one
side to ten laid low on the other.

Sherman was a man not easily daunted. He was not yet ready to
abandon his plan, to admit himself defeated or even to suspend his
preternatural activity. He instantly decided upon still further
assaults at other points. He arranged that the transports should carry
the bulk of his army further up the river to Haines's Bluff during the
night with the purpose of taking the Confederate works there by assault
from the rear. There came a great fog so that the transports could not
find their way, and so this plan miscarried.

By this time Sherman discovered that great bodies of Confederates were
being hurried into the defensive works surrounding Vicksburg. He had
previously heard nothing whatever from Grant, and it was only in this
way that he learned that Grant had somehow failed to hold Pemberton in
check, and that he, therefore, had in front of him the greater part of
the Confederate army instead of the little garrison which he had set
out to encounter and overcome.

Sherman was a man of wits and promptitude. He wasted no time in
speculation, but at once reëmbarked his troops and returned to the
mouth of the Yazoo, thus abandoning as a failure the campaign which
he had undertaken in full confidence that it would be crowned with
distinguished success. He did not abandon the hope of ultimately
reducing the Vicksburg stronghold, but for the time being he knew
not how to go on with that enterprise with any tolerable prospect of
success. He sat still, therefore, for a day or two, until on the fourth
of January, 1863, General McClernand was placed in command of the
forces which Sherman had previously controlled.

Many little actions followed, most of them directed to the purpose
of breaking up small tributary Confederate posts and fortresses on
the Arkansas river and elsewhere in the neighborhood. In these little
operations the Federals were in the main successful, but as yet they
had achieved nothing that seriously threatened the integrity of the
Confederate position at Vicksburg, and that alone was the real object
of their persistent endeavors.

Then came Grant. His coming opened a new chapter in the war for the
possession of the Mississippi river. He brought to bear upon the
problem all that superb determination, that dauntless courage and that
splendid obstinacy which afterward won for him his place in history.

He had no particular plan at first, because he was not yet familiar
with the terms and conditions of the problem he was set to solve.
But he intended to take Vicksburg, and he did not intend to fritter
away the energies of his army in little side expeditions which in
no important way could affect the general result. He called in all
the troops who had been sent by McClernand to unimportant points and
set himself at work to find a way of conquering the stronghold, the
conquest of which was the sole object of his campaign.

The difficulties that presented themselves were many and exceedingly
great. While Vicksburg, itself, was perched upon high hills, every
conceivable road to it lay through swamps and morasses naturally
defended by streams that were bottomed with unfathomable mud.

The best approaches to the town were from points farther down the
river, but except by desperate endeavor it was impossible to reach
those approaches so long as the works at Vicksburg completely commanded
the stream. Grant was satisfied that if he could reach any point on the
river below Vicksburg where a landing was practicable he could march
thence into the rear of the town and compel its surrender.

In order to accomplish this he sent McClernand and Sherman to cut a
canal across the peninsula made by the great bend in the river west of
Vicksburg. This effort proved a failure, partly through engineering
difficulties and partly because there were bluffs on the eastern side
of the river below Vicksburg, which the Confederates promptly fortified
and armed in such fashion as to command the outlet of the proposed
canal.

Grant soon saw that even if he should succeed in making this canal
cut-off, he must still find himself confronted on the river bank by
heavily armed and high-placed works as difficult for his flotillas to
pass as were the bluffs at Vicksburg itself.

He continued the work, however, in despair of anything better to do
until early in March when a sudden flood in the Mississippi completely
overflowed the peninsula on which the Federals were working, and
compelled Sherman to withdraw hastily to save his army from drowning.

Grant's next scheme was by cutting another canal to carry his flotilla
through Lake Providence west of the Mississippi, and thence by way of
the many navigable bayous in that quarter to a point on the river well
below Vicksburg. A good deal of digging was done in an attempt to carry
out this plan, but in the end it failed as completely as the former one
had done.

Grant now turned his attention to possibilities on the eastern side
of the Mississippi. By blowing up a levée he tried to open again an
old and abandoned waterway from the Mississippi into the Yazoo river,
by way of the Tallahatchie and Yalobusha rivers. Those two streams
unite at Greenwood to form the Yazoo river. They are narrow, tortuous,
uncertain of channel, and densely wooded along their banks. The
Confederates with their ceaseless and alert activity swarmed on the
banks of these rivers, and obstructed them not only by the fire of
sharpshooters, and now and then of a field battery, trained against
the advancing flotilla, but still more effectively by felling trees
into the stream and thus rendering it impassable. Presently Grant
found also that the Confederates were engaged in a system of defense
still more dangerous to him than this. While obstructing his pathway
down these streams in the way described they were also felling trees
into the channels in the rear of his flotilla, and constructing strong
earthworks along the banks above him. It was obvious that he must
withdraw at once from his perilous position or encounter something
worse than a mere risk of capture.

The work of extricating himself was difficult, but with strong
reinforcements continually coming to him Grant succeeded in
accomplishing it.

Still he did not abandon his hope of getting into the rear of Vicksburg
by some movement from the north. The Yazoo river was connected by
many bayous and other watercourses on the west of Haines Bluff with
its tributary, the Big Sunflower. Grant decided to go up the Yazoo to
Steele's Bayou and to go on up that watercourse, through some difficult
passes into the Big Sunflower; thence he planned to descend the
last-named stream, and strike the Yazoo again above the fortifications
at Haines Bluff. If he could accomplish this he would have an open and
comparatively easy road into the rear of Vicksburg.

This effort was met and baffled, as the former one had been, by
Confederate obstructions in the streams, and by ceaseless annoyance
from the woodlands on the banks. So active were the Confederates that
at one time Commodore Porter seriously contemplated the abandonment of
all his gunboats and transports. His energy, however, and his wonderful
skill in navigation saved him at last from this humiliating necessity.
By backing through streams in which there was not room enough to turn
around, he managed at last to retreat lobster fashion, through thirty
miles of tangled and crooked waterways, under a constant and galling
fire from the banks, and in the end to get back into openly navigable
waters.

As a wise and discreet commander, it was Grant's habit to adopt
those measures which promised success at the smallest cost of
human life--these first. But as a man of indomitable courage and
determination, it was his habit also, if the less costly method
failed, to venture upon more desperate courses with a single-minded
determination to accomplish his purposes at whatever hazard and
whatever sacrifice. He was convinced now, that in order to conquer
the stronghold at Vicksburg he must manage in some way to place his
army on the river bank below that city in some position from which he
could march into its rear. To do this involved a world of difficulty,
incredible hardship, and immeasurable danger. He must somehow get his
army past the town, and into a position where it would be hopelessly
dependent upon such stores as he could carry with him for the
maintenance of his troops from day to day.

In order to reach such a position he must take incredible risks,
and, having attained it, he must find himself isolated without
communications of any sort, and dependent upon complete and quick
success for the very existence of his army. Having once placed himself
in that position he must promptly conquer Vicksburg, or ingloriously
surrender all his force.

Fortunately, he had for his coadjutor one of the most enterprising
and most daring men who ever commanded a ship. David D. Porter, in
his personal character, was typical of that all-unfaltering courage
which the officers of the American navy have always exacted of each
other and of themselves as the measure of a man. Porter was ready for
anything. Cool-headed, skilled in navigation, resolute, and thoroughly
familiar with the problems of the Mississippi, he responded instantly
and eagerly to Grant's demand that he should run his fleet past the
Vicksburg batteries at any and every hazard and place it in a position
below, where the gunboats might serve as transports to the troops if
Grant could manage to get the troops there.

This thing was splendidly done, and perhaps nothing more picturesque or
dramatic occurred during the war. Porter chose the night, of course,
for his attempt, but the Confederates on the shore had long anticipated
some such enterprise and had prepared themselves to overcome the
difference between night and day. They had collected great piles of
lumber on the banks; they had filled many houses with combustibles,
and to all these they instantly set fire when it was known that the
fleet was endeavoring to pass the batteries. The river and the entire
landscape were rendered lurid by the flames. The men behind the guns on
shore were enabled to deliver their fire as accurately as if the sun
had been shining. The fleet, in the meanwhile, replied to every shot
as it steadily steamed by, and in spite of the hellish appearances the
losses on either side were trifling.

In the meanwhile Grant had moved on the western side of the
Mississippi, from Milliken's Bend to a point opposite Grand Gulf. There
he found the Confederates strongly fortified, but by moving down the
river to Bruinsburg he succeeded in getting his army across on the
thirtieth of April.

If the reader will now look at a map, remembering that Vicksburg and
Port Hudson were both held by the Confederates, and that the regions
along the river bank on the western side of the stream were quagmires,
traversed at every step by impassable streams and bayous, he will have
some conception of the boldness of this movement of Grant's. The great
fighter had deliberately carried his army into a position where he had
no possibility of communication with any base of supplies in either
direction. He had cut himself off from all help and must henceforth
rely exclusively upon himself. He had put himself in a position where
victory was the only alternative to destruction. During all the course
of the war no other general on either side ventured upon so desperate a
risk as this.

Having marched over difficult roads, and by circuitous routes, Grant
had brought with him, of course, supplies of food and ammunition
sufficient only for a very brief campaign. For further food than this
he must depend upon a country by no means rich in supplies at any time,
which had already been stripped nearly bare by the requisitions of his
adversary. For ammunition, beyond the store that he had in his caissons
and cartridge boxes, he had no supply-source at all. To employ the
old metaphor of war history, he had completely burned his ships and
his bridges behind him. But at least and at last he had succeeded in
placing himself in a position from which he could operate in the rear
of Vicksburg.

The Confederate general, Joseph E. Johnston--just recovered from the
well-nigh mortal wound he had received at Seven Pines--had been sent
to Jackson, Mississippi, less than fifty miles east of Vicksburg to
take command of such forces as could be gathered there. He had in fact
collected a considerable body of men whose numbers Grant could in no
wise ascertain. Nevertheless, Grant determined to push his own army
into a perilous position between that of Johnston at Jackson, and that
of Pemberton near Vicksburg. He was aided in this by a great cavalry
raid which had recently been made by Grierson from the north which
swept through the Mississippi country, desolating it and occupying the
attention of the Confederates in many quarters from which, but for this
diversion, Johnston might easily have drawn reinforcements.

During the next two months the battling was well-nigh incessant, and
the losses on both sides, though incurred in comparatively small
engagements, amounted in the aggregate to those of a great contest. One
considerable battle occurred on the fifteenth of May at Champion Hills.
Having captured the city of Jackson and destroyed there everything that
could aid the Confederates in their struggle, Grant had turned westward
in a direct march toward Vicksburg. At Champion Hills he encountered
Pemberton, who had taken up a strong position on high ground and
who desperately resisted the Federal advance. After four hours of
such fighting as only veterans could have done or stood, Pemberton
retreated, leaving his dead, his wounded and thirty guns on the field.
The losses on either side were between twenty-five hundred and three
thousand men. Yet this battle of Champion Hills is scarcely known by
name to the millions of youths who every year pass their examinations
in American history. A smaller but still considerable battle was fought
on the Big Black river on the seventeenth, resulting in a loss of
eighteen guns and two thousand men to the Confederates.

From that point Pemberton retired to Vicksburg and Grant following,
closely besieged that city. In the meanwhile his operations had been so
far successful that he was now in command of a point on the Yazoo where
he established a secure base of supplies.

In apprehension of an attack from Johnston in the rear, Grant made a
tremendous effort on the twenty-second to carry the Vicksburg works by
storm, but was beaten off with losses so heavy that he determined to
settle down into regular siege operations.

During the period of this siege the situation in Vicksburg was
appalling in an extreme degree. The Federal guns were near enough to
pour a continuous stream of shells into the town, and they did so
without pause, night or day. The inhabitants, including women and
children, were ceaselessly under a fire that might well have staggered
the courage even of veteran soldiers. No house in the town was for one
moment a safe dwelling place, and for refuge the people dug caves in
the cliffs and harbored there unwholesomely. In the meanwhile they were
suffering under progressive starvation. The food supplies were daily
dwindling, yet with splendid courage those who were beleaguered in
the city maintained their cheerfulness to the end, as is testified by
files of that daily journal printed upon the back of wall paper which
appeared at its appointed time every day and in spite of all, until the
end.

The end came on the fourth of July, one day after the failure of Lee's
final assault at Gettysburg.

Pemberton surrendered unconditionally, and Grant generously directed
that the surrendered men should first be fed and then paroled and
permitted to return to their homes.

One event which belongs rather to biography than to history may
perhaps be mentioned here in illustration of General Grant's delicacy
of sentiment,--a trait in his character often overlooked. When it was
arranged that the surrendered Confederates should march out, General
Grant issued an order to forbid all demonstrations that might wound a
conquered enemy's pride or sensitiveness. "Instruct the commands," the
order read, "to be orderly and quiet as these prisoners pass, and to
make no offensive remark."

Thus at Vicksburg, as at Appomattox many months later, that soldier
who has been accounted the least sensitive of all to considerations of
sentiment, manifested a generous delicacy to which all honest minds
must make reverent obeisance. During his correspondence with Pemberton
concerning the surrender, Grant had declined to consider any terms that
limited or imposed conditions upon the capitulation. But he had also
generously written to his adversary as follows: "Men who have shown
so much endurance and courage as those now in Vicksburg will always
challenge the respect of an adversary, and I can assure you that you
will be treated with all the respect due to prisoners of war."

Grant's supplies, in his difficult position, were meager in the
extreme, and it is one of the most touching incidents of the war that
his men voluntarily furnished from their own haversacks the food their
famished enemies needed, thus cutting off their own dinners in order
that these starving foes might not longer suffer the pangs of hunger.
Such incidents go far to redeem war from its curse of brutal barbarity.

Five days after the fall of Vicksburg, Port Hudson was surrendered,
and in Mr. Lincoln's own phrase, thenceforth the Mississippi "flowed
unvexed from its source to the sea." The Confederacy was cut in
twain. The end seemed to be foreordained beyond peradventure, but the
determined courage and endurance of the Confederates was destined to
postpone that end for nearly two years longer.

The result of this campaign taken in connection with the baffling
of Lee's invasion of the North at exactly the same time, in effect
determined the issue of the war. From that hour forward, as we now see,
it was certain that the Federal cause must ultimately triumph; but how
and at what cost remained in the womb of fate.

Grant's conquest of Vicksburg and of the Mississippi river was a
result inestimably valuable to the Federal cause if viewed only in its
strategic, geographical and other external aspects. But it bore one
other fruit of immeasurably greater importance even than these things.
It discovered to the government at Washington the existence and the
capacity of a commander capable of measuring swords with Robert E. Lee.
It taught the authorities at Washington at last the lesson which ought
to have been learned by them many moons earlier, namely that in Grant
the nation had at its service a man great enough to understand the war
problem and to solve it--a man capable of clearly seeing and perfectly
understanding that the Confederate strength lay in the fighting force
of the Southern armies, rather than in the possession of strategic
positions--a man fit to use the enormously superior resources of the
North in men, money and material, in such fashion as to break the
resisting power of the Army of Northern Virginia.

Grant was eminently a man of common sense rather than of imagination.
The picturesque and the romantic appealed to him scarcely at all.
War was to him a problem in physics. It was his habit of mind when
any undertaking was set for him to do, carefully to weigh the means
at his command and the means at the command of his enemy, and
judiciously to employ whatever superiority of means he possessed for
the accomplishment of the purposed end. There had been much strategy
of another sort than this employed in the conduct of the war on
the Federal side. There had been much of sentiment brought to bear
ineffectually, and often with disastrous results. With the coming
of Grant the turn of common sense had come, and Grant preëminently
represented common sense, backed by daring, determination and tireless
energy.

After Vicksburg the days of the dominance of Halleck and his kind were
numbered. The time was approaching when capacity was to take command
in lieu of regularity; when sense was to replace shoulder straps; when
the man under the uniform was to count for more than the uniform. The
Galena clerk, Ulysses S. Grant, was a few months hence to succeed to
the command of all the armies of the United States, replacing the pet
of an antiquated system.

Two thirds of a year were yet to elapse before this change in the
administration of Federal military affairs should completely take
place, but its coming was sure and with it the beginning of an end to a
struggle which had already cost the country much of its best blood and
untold millions of its treasure.

To the nation the best result of the Vicksburg campaign was its
discovery of Grant.




CHAPTER XL

THE STATE OF THINGS AFTER GETTYSBURG


The summer of 1863 presented the most interesting epoch of the war. The
baffling of Lee's second attempt to invade the North left the struggle
in Virginia about as it had been before, except that Lee's veteran army
continued to grow steadily stronger in morale and weaker in numbers.
The operations at the West, however, had been very disastrous to the
Confederates. Their chief city had been taken and was firmly held.
Their armies had been driven out of Missouri, Kentucky and the greater
part of Tennessee. The Mississippi river had been completely wrested
from their possession and the Confederacy had been cut in two.

Some critics, writing at a later time, have held that these conditions
demanded the abandonment of the Confederate cause, and called for a
suit for peace on the part of the Southerners, upon whatever terms the
Federal Government might be willing to grant. Those who take this view
do so, it would seem, upon inadequate conceptions of the conditions and
the facts. Had the South been a European country, with all its problems
of military geography wrought out, with its strategic positions marked
upon myriads of maps, with all lines of communication definitely
settled and fixed, the situation at midsummer in 1863 might well
have justified an opinion of this kind. But none of these conditions
existed. The South was still possessed of a vast area unplatted for
military purposes, abounding in obstacles that might be made effective
against any adversary's advance. Still more important, there remained
the spirit of the army and an unconquerable determination on the part
of the people to exhaust every conceivable resource before surrendering
a cause which they believed to be absolutely and eternally right.

They had been fed in childhood and youth upon the memories and
traditions of American history; they had learned well the lesson that
the battle is not always to the strong; they did not forget those dark
hours of the American Revolution when Washington, with a small, ragged
and mutinous army, lay at Valley Forge while the British occupied New
York and Philadelphia and were threatening to overrun Virginia, Georgia
and the Carolinas. It was their fixed belief that their own cause in
this Confederate war was identical with that of their Revolutionary
forefathers, and they would have held themselves in contempt had
they shown a readier spirit of surrender than that of the earlier
Americans. They remembered how even after the British had conquered
Charleston and Savannah, and with superior forces had overrun Georgia
and the Carolinas, some mere handfuls of determined men under Marion,
Sumter, Pickens, Horry and their kind, had kept war alive in those
regions until such time as Greene should come and by masterful strategy
make his own defeats more effective than victories, and ultimately
reconquer their country from its conquerors, thus making American
independence possible. The Confederate people, in their manhood,
believed in and acted upon that American history which they had learned
in their youth. Reverses only stimulated them to new endeavors, and a
more heroic endurance.

Finally, there remained the Army of Northern Virginia, under command
of Robert E. Lee. For them to have abandoned their cause while such an
army under such a commander was still in the field would have been a
confession of weakness and cowardice wholly beyond conception by such
men. The war was not yet over. The men who were fighting it on the side
of the South were still so potent in arms that in that very month of
July, 1863, the Government of the United States found it necessary to
resort to an enforced draft in order to raise the 300,000 men called
for three months before, to reinforce armies that already outnumbered
those of the South by two to one and more.

So far was the Confederacy at that time from defeat and the necessity
of surrender that for a space it was exceedingly uncertain whether or
not the North would furnish the quotas now called for. So small was
the confidence of the North in the administration, and in the success
of its methods, that in some parts of the country volunteering had
practically come to an end.

As has been pointed out in a former chapter, there was a party
at the North, only slightly inferior in strength to that of the
administration, which determinedly opposed the further prosecution of
the war. This opposition was in part political and in part economic.
On its economic side it enlisted all those men who had business
interests or business hopes connected with the Southern trade. On its
political side it included all men at the North who were opposed to the
policies and the principles of the Republican party. It included also a
vast multitude of men who had from their youth up hated Abolitionism,
and detested the thought of negro equality in this land.

Still another force, and not a small one, had its influence. There were
men of earnest minds, throughout the North, who seriously apprehended
the undermining of the Constitution and the destruction of liberty
in our country by the exercise of what are called war powers. These
men were genuinely and patriotically alarmed when they saw the power
of the National Government used to suspend the habeas corpus--that
traditional bulwark of personal liberty the existence of which has been
for many centuries regarded by all English-speaking men as their most
priceless possession. When these men saw in addition a declaration of
martial law, and the establishment of a system of passports as rigid
as that of any military despotism, and when at last they saw the
administration openly assuming and exercising the power of overturning
the institutions of states by mere executive proclamation, they grew
gravely alarmed for liberty itself. To them it seemed--rightly or
wrongly--that in the struggle to free the negro slaves of the South
there was very serious danger of incurring the loss of liberty to
all men in this Republic. Being unwilling to exchange all that is
fundamental in the Republic for the freeing of some negro slaves these
earnest thinkers,--whether mistakenly or not,--opposed with all their
might the further progress of the war and sought in every legal and
constitutional way to make an end of it.

This then was the situation. The North had armies in the field vastly
outnumbering those of its adversary and immeasurably better equipped
and supplied. But public sentiment at the South was a unit, while the
North in its political views was a house divided against itself. For
the South to have abandoned its cause at such a time and under such
circumstances merely by reason of military reverses, when it still had
in the field some hundreds of thousands of veteran troops, would have
been an act of cowardice inconceivable to American men.

In New York City there was a complete failure to make adequate response
to Mr. Lincoln's demand for further troops. Either the government must
go without the important quota from the principal city in the nation,
or else a draft must be ordered to make good the deficiencies in the
volunteering. This Republic of ours had always thitherto depended upon
the patriotism of its people for such strength as it might need in a
fighting way. It had several times happened that during wars against
foreign powers some parts of the country had manifested an unpatriotic
lack of enthusiasm, and had failed to furnish their quotas of
volunteers for the common defense. But there had been then no thought
of dragging men unwillingly into the military service, although there
had been great public indignation throughout the rest of the country
over the unpatriotic attitude of a part of the Union. The quotas that
some of the states refused to furnish were made good by a larger
volunteering in other parts of the country.

But in 1863 the conditions were radically different. The war for which
the new levies were wanted was a war against Americans, and not for
the defense of the nation against foreign powers. In the view of very
many men it was, rightly or wrongly, regarded as a war instigated
by a sectional, political party in the name of the nation for the
destruction of all that was fundamental in the nation. The time
has long gone by when it was worth while to argue the soundness or
unsoundness of these opinions. It is necessary now only to record the
fact of their existence in aid of an understanding of what happened.

The draft was begun in New York on the eleventh of July, 1863. That
date fell upon a Saturday. The draft had been opposed in some of the
newspapers and in public speeches as unconstitutional, and as an
invasion of those private rights which free government is instituted
among men to secure. There was murmuring and muttering throughout
the Saturday's operations and by the time that Monday came there was
throughout the city an aroused spirit of protest which threatened
violence. That violence came with a vengeance when the draft was
resumed on Monday. Angry crowds surrounded the offices in which the
drawings were to be made. The street cars were stopped and their horses
unhitched. Then the draft offices were invaded and sacked, and in some
cases the buildings were set on fire. At one point an entire block was
burned by the mob; at another point there were battles fought between
the populace and the police which rivaled in violence and in slaughter
skirmishes on the lines in Virginia. Mobs filled the streets in every
direction, and for a time had their own way. The office of the New York
"Tribune" was assailed and it was defended only by running out chutes
from which hand grenades could be dropped into the throngs below, and
by arming the printers and other employees with muskets and abundant
cartridges. The office of the "Evening Post" was defended against the
mob by steam jets shot from hose attached to the boilers that worked
the machinery and the presses.

In the meanwhile every negro who made his appearance in the street was
assaulted and eleven of them fell victims to the anger of the populace.
A negro orphan asylum in Fifth avenue at 44th street was sacked and
burned by the infuriated rioters and its helpless little wards narrowly
escaped by the way of back doors.

In Second avenue the police and soldiers were attacked from the windows
and the roofs of houses. They quickly wreaked a terrible vengeance.
They pushed their way into every house and every room of every
house, assailed everybody they could find there, whether guilty or
innocent of offense, thrust many of them through with bayonets without
inquiring as to their degree of culpability, brained many others in
like unquestioned manner with locust clubs, threw some of them over
balusters upon the stones below, hurled some out of fourth and fifth
story windows to be crushed upon the pavement, followed the fleeing
ones to the roofs, and shot them there as the most northern of northern
historians has recorded--we quote his exact language--"refusing all
mercy, and threw the quivering corpses into the street as a warning to
the mob."

All this occurred more than forty-five years ago. The war which gave
birth to such fury is a matter of history now, not of controversy. It
is not worth while nearly half a century later to inquire too curiously
into the rights and wrongs, or into the responsibilities involved in
such things. But it is perhaps of human advantage, or at the least of
curious historic interest, to note that all these things were done in
professed service to that personal liberty which free government among
men is instituted to secure.

From the point of view of the angels and other superior intelligences
there could be nothing more gruesomely ludicrous than the attitude and
condition of the American people on both sides of the war-drawn lines
at that period. On both sides men professed and honestly believed
that their supreme concern was for the maintenance--in Mr. Lincoln's
phrase--of a "government of the people, by the people and for the
people." Yet on each side there existed, and men consented to it, a
military despotism as arbitrary, as unreasoning, and as tyrannical
as that of Russia itself. On either side no man could travel without
permission of some provost authority which there was nowhere any power
to question or any court to curb. On either side that military power
which our Constitution requires to be always subordinate to the civil
arm, had laid its iron hand without even the disguise of a velvet glove
upon the fate and fortune and life of every citizen of a land supposed
to be the freest on earth. In New York men could be butchered in their
homes and thrown out of high windows without so much as the order of
a sheriff in justification. In Richmond Winder's men made practical
prisoners of all soldiers and citizens who undertook to traverse the
streets upon however laudable an occasion.

It is always thus in war. No sooner is the military power invoked in
aid of civil authority than it demands and enforces the abdication of
all civil authority in so far as that authority may interfere in the
slightest degree with its arbitrary execution of its own irresponsible
will. So during this Confederate war of ours we see a great people,
free by inheritance, free by tradition, and clamorously free by every
conceivable act of self assertion throughout generations of history,
suddenly and willingly surrendering to military despotism all that they
had ever dreamed of, or clamored for, or fought for of personal right
and immunity, and doing all this in the name and in behalf of liberty.

The despotism thus established at the South was more perfect and more
arbitrary than that which fell upon the North because at the South
there was practically no party in existence that antagonized the powers
that were, while at the North there was such a party that must in some
ways be reckoned with. Moreover, at the North the citizen who felt that
he could not endure the despotism had at any rate the option to flee
from it, and take up his residence in some foreign country in which he
might enjoy an actually greater personal liberty; while the Southerner
who felt himself equally oppressed and wronged was completely shut in
and compelled to submit.

In the contemplation of history these facts and conditions are curious
and curiously interesting.

These were the conditions of the war at midsummer, 1863, after Lee's
retirement from Gettysburg, and after the loss of Vicksburg, Port
Hudson and the Mississippi river by the Confederates. They were
certainly not conditions suggesting an abandonment of the struggle by
either of the contestants, or at all clearly foreshadowing its end
in victory for either. Anything in the way of results still remained
possible. To hopeful minds on either side everything of good seemed
likely to happen.

So the war went on.




CHAPTER XLI

THE STRUGGLE FOR CHARLESTON


The Confederate war necessarily involved military operations at very
widely separated points at one and the same time. The telling of its
story, therefore, of necessity involves a good deal of harking back, as
the huntsmen say.

While Lee's tremendous campaigns in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania
had been going on, and while Grant was engaged in conquering Vicksburg
and reopening the Mississippi river, there was important fighting done
at other points and particularly at Charleston in South Carolina.

The earliest efforts of the Federal Government to shut the Confederates
in had been directed toward the closing of the port of Charleston.
There first a blockading fleet had been established, and when it
proved ineffective an effort had been made very early in the war
to close the port by sinking hulks, loaded with stone in the main
channels, leading into that harbor. Fortunately for all concerned,
this effort permanently to close a commercial port failed completely
and conspicuously. So far from obstructing the entrance to the harbor,
the sinking of the hulks there had the effect of extensive dredging.
The tide flows in and out of the port with a tremendous current which
brooks no resistance. When the stone laden hulks were sunk this
current quickly swept away the sand and mud from beneath them, so that
presently the harbor entrance was found to have been actually deepened
by the effort to close it.

From that time forward two objects engaged Federal attention so far
as Charleston was concerned; one of these was to maintain in front of
the harbor a blockading squadron strong enough to prevent the entrance
and exit of ships. The other was to force the harbor itself, capture
its defenses and recover the city to Federal possession. In both of
these efforts the Federal operations failed, but in their progress they
involved some of the severest and most picturesque battling of the war.

The profits of blockade running were so great that English capitalists
invested lavish sums in the business as a promising speculation. They
built ships of light draft, great power, and a speed greater than that
of any vessel in the American navy for the express purpose of carrying
on this forbidden traffic. These ships had but little free-board
exposed above the water. They were painted a dull sage green, as
nearly as possible the color of the sea itself, when looked at from
a distance. They were commanded by daring navigators and manned by
equally daring crews who stood ready to take any and every risk that
might aid in the achievement of ends so profitable as those aimed at in
this commerce.

And those profits were tempting in an extraordinary degree. With
cotton purchasable in the South for a few cents per pound, payable
in the enormously depreciated Confederate currency, and salable in
England at almost incredibly high prices in gold, and with all forms of
English-made goods bearing fabulous prices in the South, it was easily
calculable that if a ship could complete one round trip from Nassau to
Charleston and back again and then should be lost with all its cargo on
a second attempt, there would still remain to the owners a profit of
not less than a hundred per cent upon the money invested.

As a matter of fact the steamer Minho, and several others of the
blockade runners continued until late in the war to make their trips
successfully, almost with the regularity of packet boats. They carried
into Charleston stores of quinine, opium and other drugs which the
Confederate Government stood ready to buy at fabulous prices. They
carried clothing also, and shoes and harness, all of which were eagerly
purchased at any price that the importers might choose to charge. They
carried out of Charleston the cotton to which the markets of the world
were otherwise closed, and which could be purchased, therefore, at a
price so low as to make its cost an inconsiderable fraction unworthy of
consideration. So the blockade running went on.

So far as the reduction of the city and its defenses was concerned the
failure of Federal efforts was still more pronounced. Great sums were
expended, vast quantities of ammunition were wasted, and many lives
were sacrificed in an effort--futile from beginning to end--to reduce
this stronghold. Charleston, the birthplace of Secession and of the
Confederate war remained in Confederate possession until the very end.
The city did not fall under Federal control until those closing days
of the war when Sherman, after his march to the sea, began his final
movement northward in rear of the Carolina port.

In the meanwhile the struggle at that point was marked by many fierce
land contests in the country round about, and by much heroic naval
fighting.

The Confederates made such endeavors as they could, with the meager
means at hand, to create a naval power there which might be launched
against the blockading fleet outside. There was no navy yard and no
ship-building plant at Charleston, but with an energy that did credit
to the men who exercised it, several small gunboats and torpedo boats
were extemporized within the harbor and employed with energy and
effect. In January, 1863, two of these extemporized gunboats boldly
steamed out one morning, and assailed the Federal fleet lying off the
harbor. They promptly disabled two of the Federal ships, and compelled
them to strike their colors. But the rest of the enormous Federal fleet
came quickly to the rescue and the two little gunboats were forced to
retreat again, and take refuge under the guns of the forts.

This event gave warning at Washington of the necessity of promptly
and greatly strengthening the naval force employed off Charleston.
Accordingly, a powerful fleet, consisting of seven monitors, an
ironclad frigate, an ironclad ram and many gunboats was sent in
April, 1863, under command of Rear-Admiral S. F. Du Pont, to reduce
and capture Charleston. The expedition failed in its purpose, as all
previous ones sent with a like end in view had done, and as all future
ones did to the very end.

It was on the seventh of April, 1863, that Du Pont, with his masterful
armada, steamed into the harbor to reduce the forts and to sweep away
all the defenses of Charleston. At every point he found himself under a
destructive fire from forts and batteries occupied by men who knew how
to shoot. At every point he found his pathway obstructed by chains and
torpedoes and whatever else mechanical ingenuity up to that period in
human history had succeeded in devising for the checking of an enemy's
progress.

One of the Federal ironclads, the _Keokuk_, ventured too near Fort
Beauregard, manned by Confederate volunteers who had practised with
their cannon as they might have done with close range rifles until they
could plant a shell wheresoever they desired. The commandant of the
fort did not open fire upon the vessel until it had securely anchored
itself, bow and stern, in a position from which its officers expected
to make themselves quickly masters of the work. When they were thus
securely fastened in position the commander of the fort gave the order
to fire. Within the next minute or two the _Keokuk_ was struck and
penetrated by not less than 100 shells, ninety of which had passed
through her sides below the water line and burst within her engine
rooms. She went down as a cracked teapot might have done.

Another ironclad, the _Weehawken_, had been sent to lead the way,
pushing a raft before her in order to explode all contact torpedoes
before reaching them. As soon as she became involved in the chain and
other defenses of the harbor a terrific fire was opened upon her and
for half an hour she was threatened with the fate of the _Keokuk_.
At the end of that time she retired, baffled and beaten, and DuPont,
seeing how completely his effort had failed, abandoned the purpose of
taking Charleston or reducing its defenses by any sea attack. Nearly
all of his vessels had been so far damaged as to be unfit for further
use until repairs in them could be made. Most of the monitors had been
completely disabled for effective action by the smashing of titanic
shells against their turrets, which were bent and twisted in such
fashion that they could no longer be revolved. Many of the ships of
less formidable character had been altogether withheld from action in
view of the terrific effectiveness of the Confederate fire. Finding
that even his most powerful floating fighting machines were unable to
resist the fire of the forts Du Pont wisely reserved his weaker vessels
and kept them out of a contest in which they were so manifestly unfit
to engage.

Thus came to an end the best planned and most capably conducted effort
that was at any time made to conquer Charleston by sea. It was obvious
from that time forth that if Charleston was to be taken at all it must
be captured by other means than those of a flotilla attempting to force
its way into the splendidly defended harbor.

With that patience and persistence which are dominant characteristics
of the American mind the authorities at Washington set themselves at
once at work to devise and use those other and slower, but more hopeful
means of conquest. General Quincy A. Gillmore was assigned to this
work. A large force was placed under his command and whatever guns he
needed were subject to his requisition. The monitors and other naval
vessels were ordered to coöperate with him and act under his direction.

His plan was quickly and intelligently formed. Charleston lies upon
a tongue of land between the Ashley and Cooper rivers which, uniting
at the battery, form the bay exactly as the union of the North and
East rivers does at New York. Indeed, a map of Charleston in outline
differs from a map of New York only in one important particular, that
the widening of the peninsula in its middle part occurs on one side in
Charleston and on the opposite side in New York. South of the Ashley
river the coast line sweeps in a semicircle trending northwards and
bounded by James Island. That island is separated from the mainland
by Wapoo Cut, which connects the mouth of the Ashley river with Stono
Inlet. Stono Inlet separates James Island from John's Island and the
mainland on the south, and its entrance is from the sea. On the eastern
side of James Island there is an inlet known as Folly river which has
many ramifications, and which in its general course cuts off from James
Island a marsh known as Folly Island. This marsh lies along the ocean
front very much as Sandy Hook does at the mouth of New York harbor. A
narrow and shallow creek cuts Folly Island in two towards its northern
end, and the space north of that creek is known as Morris Island. The
northern end of Morris Island abuts upon the entrance to the harbor and
commands it on the one side while Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island
commands it on the other. Fort Sumter, built upon an artificial island
in the middle of the harbor, forms the third point in the triangle in
which the Federal fleet had encountered such difficulty, and suffered
such defeat.

General Gillmore's plan was to capture Morris Island, and gain
possession of its northern extremity, known as Cummings's Point, where
stood Battery Gregg, on guard against entrance to the harbor.

By an error in judgment the Confederates gave him his opportunity. They
withdrew from the marsh known as Folly Island, where they might have
defended themselves almost to the end of time. Gillmore was quick to
see their mistake, and to take advantage of it. He instantly seized
upon the southern end of Folly Island, and set to work to convert
his troops into amphibians. In boats, on rafts and by wading through
indescribable mud he pushed them northward to Morris Island.

In anticipation of this movement on his part, the Confederates had
strengthened a battery on that island, and named it Fort Wagner.
They had armed it with the best they had in the way of heavy guns,
light guns and infantry forces of grandly desperate courage and
determination. Here was to be fought out the question of the possession
of Morris Island and the control of Charleston harbor.

The fighting in front of that work was, from the first, desperate in
the extreme. In order to approach it at all the Federal troops were
forced to wade waist deep in water, carrying their rifles above their
heads. The first assault was made on the eleventh of July, 1863,
and was aided by a terrific fire from the fleet. It was led by the
first regiment of negroes that had thus far actively participated in
fighting in the war, and the conduct of those troops was worthy of
the best traditions of battling. The assault was met in such fashion
as to destroy the greater number of the assailants and hurl back the
fragmentary remains of the column in confusion. So desperate was this
endeavor and with such determination was the assault made that the
Federals lost more than 1,500 men while inflicting a loss of less than
one hundred upon their adversaries.

Having failed in direct assault General Gillmore determined to take
Fort Wagner and the works north of it by regular siege approaches.
General Gillmore was an engineer of the highest capacity and a soldier
of the utmost courage, energy and determination. He drew his first
parallel and mounted great siege guns upon it almost immediately. Then
working under such cover as he could provide he established a second
parallel, and opened fire from it on the twenty-third of July. He was
advancing in this slow and perilous way over a narrow strip of land--a
mere marsh scarcely at all elevated above the level of the surrounding
waters. His sick list was from the first enormous, and day by day it
grew as one man after another succumbed to the poisonous miasms of
those pestilential swamps in which, until the time of the war no white
man had ever dared spend a night between the first of June and the end
of November. "Country fever"--believed by many physicians to be nothing
less than yellow fever in its native and endemic form--slew far more of
his troops than the shot and the shell and the bullets of his adversary
did. Nevertheless, like the soldier that he was, Gillmore pressed on,
working his way inch by inch toward the hostile embankments.

Toward the last his lines were swept by a fire from a battery on James
Island and by a cross fire of infantry and sharpshooters from a point
in Fort Wagner itself. With the ingenuity of an accomplished engineer
he protected his men against these special dangers by bringing up tubes
of boiler iron through which the men were able to do their mining,
moving them forward at night, in order to cover the space excavated by
day.

In all the war no more desperate work was done than that of both the
Federals and Confederates on the face of Fort Wagner. The fire was
incessant and whether it came from siege guns, from field pieces, from
rifles or from pistols held in the hand, it was all at pistol shot
range. And it was all murderous in its effects. Yet on neither side
was there for one moment a sign of flinching by day or by night. Many
scores of men were shot through the body as they slept, and at no
moment of the twenty-four hours was any man secure against this danger.

Little by little Gillmore got his great guns into position for
breaching his enemy's works. The moving of each gun into its place cost
scores of lives and every attempt to fire it must cost other scores.
But here was work that must be done, and here were men resolute enough
to do it.

On the seventeenth of August the great guns opened against Fort Wagner
and Fort Sumter. Night and day for a full week the terrible conflict
continued. The walls of Fort Sumter were beaten into an amorphous
mass of bricks and mortar, its guns were dismounted and its men dwelt
ceaselessly under the fire of Gillmore's terrible instruments of
death. Nevertheless, they stood firm, and held their position without
faltering or failure. It is to be observed that the terror of this
struggle was due to the fact that the men on the one side and on the
other were of unconquerable spirit, and indomitable courage, and
that to them the measure of danger served only to set a measure for
endurance.

It should be stated here that in spite of the ruin of Fort Sumter's
defenses, the Confederates continued to occupy that work, driving
off several assaults that were afterwards made upon it. A little
later Major, afterwards Brigadier General, Stephen Elliott, of South
Carolina--a man almost womanly in his delicacy of demeanor, but
lion-like in courage and activity--was sent to take command of the
little infantry force which still held the ruins of the fort. With an
enterprise that suggests a creative imagination on his part, he ordered
cargoes of sand bags to be brought thither by night, and little by
little with these, he reconstructed the frowning walls, and mounted
upon them again the great guns that such a fort is supposed to carry.

His work was first revealed to the enemy in a dramatic and poetic way.
When the time came for the Christmas salute in which the foes, as it
were, lifted their caps to each other, the saluting was begun by the
ships of the Federal fleet. One after another, as they lay in line,
they fired the conventional number of guns. Then the Confederate
batteries took up the courteous work, each firing its quota. When the
last one on the left of Sumter had fired it was supposed that the
saluting would be continued by the next battery on the right of that
ruined work. It was not dreamed on either side that Sumter had a single
gun in position. But Elliott's work of reconstruction had been done.
His guns were ready again for the fray. And in his turn he fired the
Christmas salute, to the astonishment and admiration of all.

Then came one of the graceful courtesies of war. Under signal orders
from the commandant of the Federal fleet every ship in the squadron
dipped its flag in deference to Fort Sumter.

Here were brave men saluting brave men, and rejoicing in their courage
and their enterprise although these were antagonistically employed.
Perhaps no incident in all the war better illustrates than this one
does the sympathy that brave men feel for brave men, irrespective of
the lines of conflict drawn between them.

As he approached Fort Wagner General Gillmore was forced to work
upon ground so low that the spring tides freely washed over it, and
drenched his working details to their waists. Nevertheless, he pushed
them forward, determined that the work he had undertaken should be
fully done. As his parallels drew nearer and nearer to the work they
were intending to reduce they came at last upon ground which had been
mined, and planted with destructive torpedoes. Nevertheless, Gillmore
pushed forward his working parties and multiplied the fire of his
mortars which dropped shells incessantly into the fort, letting them
fall vertically so that no earthwork might afford protection against
their destructiveness. Under the glare of powerful calcium lights the
work went on by night as well as by day. During every minute of every
hour in the twenty-four the contest was continued ceaselessly. The
destructive fire upon the Confederate fort was added to by bringing a
great ironclad warship the _New Ironsides_ close in shore, and setting
her guns at work.

After two days of this fearful conflict Gillmore was ready with his
infantry columns to make that final rush upon the works by which he
hoped to conquer them. But suddenly, in anticipation of a charge
which they were too weakened to resist with any hope of success, the
Confederates abandoned Fort Wagner, and withdrew also from Battery
Gregg to the north of it.

This gave Gillmore complete control of Morris Island clear to
Cummings's Point, and as he believed, made him master of Charleston
harbor. In that belief he sent a fleet of whaleboats packed with
infantrymen to take possession of Fort Sumter. But the Confederates
there resisted with a vigor which destroyed most of the boats,
disabling their crews, and resulted in the killing or capturing of the
infantrymen who constituted their ship's companies.

It had been the hope of General Gillmore that when he should thus
secure command of the entrance to Charleston harbor the fleet lying
outside would press in and complete his work by capturing the city. But
in this hope he was disappointed. Admiral Dahlgren, who commanded the
fleet, knew far better than Gillmore did the reserve resisting power
of the Confederate batteries within the harbor, and he wisely declined
to push his vessels into a bay which, if he had resolutely invaded it,
would have become quickly a naval graveyard.

During all this time it had been Gillmore's ambition to bombard the
city of Charleston itself. To that end in August he had brought up to
Morris Island an eight-inch rifle gun of exceedingly long range and
ordered it planted at a point selected by himself. The point was one
so marshy that for a time no platform could be constructed that would
support the gun. It is humorously related that the officer constructing
it, having been told to make requisitions for whatever materials he
might need, formally sent in a requisition for "a hundred men eighteen
feet high." At last, however, by driving piles a platform was made and
the gun, which the men named the Swamp Angel, was got into position. It
threw thirty-six shells into the city of Charleston five miles away,
and then burst. In order to reach so great a distance it had been
elevated to about 23 degrees. No gun that was ever constructed other
than a mortar, can long endure firing at so great an elevation.

After his capture of Fort Wagner and Battery Gregg Gillmore resumed his
bombardment of the city from the latter point, which lies a mile or two
nearer than did the position of the Swamp Angel.

Gillmore had succeeded in capturing what had been supposed to be the
main defenses to the harbor and the city. He had utterly failed to
capture the city itself, or in any way to break the resistance which,
to the end, continued to hold the harbor secure against Federal attack.

During all this time the Federals had been holding Port Royal and the
islands along the coast between Charleston and Savannah. With strong
forces they had made many advances inland, hoping to break the railroad
line between the two cities and to push through the open country into
the rear of one or the other.

All of these efforts had failed. Chief among them was the attempt upon
Pocotaligo and Coosawhatchie, which was made with a force of five
thousand men on the twenty-second of October, 1862. This attempt was
defeated by a meager force of 350 men reinforced to 700, who stood all
day against eight times their number in defense of a causeway 225 yards
long, which ended in a bridge on the Confederate side. The bridge was
torn up by the Confederates and hour after hour during the long day
they stood to their guns and swept away every column that was formed to
advance along the causeway and rebuild the crossing.




CHAPTER XLII

THE CAMPAIGNS OF CHICKAMAUGA AND CHATTANOOGA


While Lee was fighting his tremendous campaigns in Virginia, Maryland
and Pennsylvania, and while Grant was battling for Vicksburg, two
other armies confronted each other near the southern border line
of Tennessee. Rosecrans had command of the Federal forces near
Murfreesboro, and Braxton Bragg was in charge of the Confederates at
Chattanooga. The position of each of these armies was a serious threat
to the other side. If Bragg should be left unoccupied by his enemy it
was easily within his power to make a dangerous dash towards Cincinnati
or Louisville, while if he should withdraw from Rosecrans's front there
was nothing to prevent that general from "marching through Georgia," to
Mobile or Savannah or Charleston.

Grant, besieging Vicksburg, asked for reinforcements from Rosecrans by
way of warding off that blow in the rear which he feared that Johnston
might deliver and at the same time Johnston begged for reinforcements
from Bragg in order that he might deliver such a blow. Each of the
commanders at Murfreesboro and Chattanooga realized the necessity of
remaining where he was so long at least as his adversary should remain.
The result was that neither sent the reinforcements for which his
brother in the field was so clamorously calling.

These two armies for a long time stood watching each other, each
waiting for the other to make some movement that would give it
opportunity. In the meanwhile the cavalry on either side was engaged in
making some of the most picturesque raids that were at any time made
during the struggle. On both sides the cavalry had by this time learned
its business, and realized its possibilities of independent action in
the enemy's country. The Federal cavalier, Grierson, swept through
Mississippi carrying desolation wherever he went. The Confederates,
Wheeler and Forrest, rushed hurricanelike through the country north,
battling here and there with such forces as they met. Gordon Granger
and Colonel Streight on the Federal side were swinging swords almost
continually.

The operations of this kind were too many, and strategically of too
little importance to call for detailed description in a general history
of the war. But two of them were so dramatic in their conduct and
ending that they must be mentioned here. One of these was the attempt
of Colonel Streight with about 2,000 men to march around Bragg's army,
and cut off his communications. This raid was made early in April, and
Forrest followed it with all the vigor that usually characterized that
general's operations. The two forces were in constant battle as the one
swept onward and the other followed. Streight meanwhile was working
havoc with Confederate depots of supplies, with railroad property, and
other possessions of his enemy. Finally on the third of May, Forrest
succeeded in placing himself in a position where he was justified in
demanding the surrender of Streight's force. He made the demand boldly
and threateningly and Streight surrendered only to learn after the
capitulation was made that the men under his command really outnumbered
those of Forrest. It was Forrest's boast afterward that in this case he
had "won by a pure bluff."

The other raid which rises into historical importance was that of
John Morgan north of the Ohio. Starting in July with a force of 3,000
Confederate cavalrymen and ten guns Morgan crossed the Ohio river
into Indiana, capturing two steamers and using them as ferryboats.
He then swept through Indiana towards Cincinnati, burning mills and
bridges, tearing up railroads, and spreading terror in his pathway.
But resolution accompanied the terror. Every man in all that region
who could bear a gun turned out to fight the raiders and to destroy
them before they should succeed in recrossing the river. This was
accomplished at last with the aid of gunboats and steamboats. Morgan
was compelled to surrender a small remnant of his force, and was sent
for safe-keeping to the Ohio state prison, from which he later escaped
by digging.

All these operations, of course, were subsidiary to the general
purposes of the campaign.

Rosecrans was an exceedingly capable strategist and upon this occasion,
more conspicuously than on any other during his career, his capacity in
that way was demonstrated.

Bragg occupied Chattanooga, the strategic importance of which has
been explained in an earlier chapter. The position was practically
impregnable by any form of direct assault; for Rosecrans to have hurled
his army against it would have been an act of well-nigh suicidal
folly. In such an assault he must have lost ten men for every one of
his enemy's men whom he could hope to put hors de combat. Yet it was
necessary for Rosecrans to get Bragg out of Chattanooga. In order to
do so he pushed a part of his army southward, threatening an invasion
of Georgia. That state was defenseless except in so far as Bragg's
army defended it. Rosecrans's movement, therefore, quickly compelled
Bragg to withdraw from his strong and threatening position in order to
head off what he supposed to be that southward movement that Sherman
afterward made, and that is known in history as "the march to the sea."
As soon as he quitted Chattanooga, Rosecrans occupied that place about
the middle of September.

It was apparently good policy for Rosecrans instantly and aggressively
to follow his foe, and he did so in spite of the fact that his three
corps were dangerously separated at a time of heavy rains, when the
roads were bad, streams out of their banks, marching difficult, and
promptitude of movement impossible. In the meantime Bragg had been
heavily reinforced by Longstreet's corps sent out by Lee to save
this situation. Thus strengthened Bragg turned about with intent to
assail his adversary, and perhaps to destroy him. On the nineteenth of
September the two armies met on the banks of Chickamauga creek. There
for two days raged one of the great battles of the war.

Rosecrans brought into the action about 55,000 men and Bragg had
perhaps 10,000 more. It was Bragg who made the attack. As the lines
lay, the Confederate right and the Federal left extended toward
Chattanooga.

Bragg's plan of battle was to fall upon the Federal left, crush it,
bend back the line, and place himself between the Federal army and
its base. There could have been no better plan of battle formed, but
it was not executed in the best fashion possible. Had Bragg fully
realized the superiority of Longstreet to his other corps commanders,
and still more the superiority of Longstreet's men who had fought at
Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Antietam and Gettysburg, he would
have placed Longstreet upon his right, in order that the blow might
be delivered with all that was possible of crushing force. Instead of
that he assigned the force of General Leonidas Polk to that position.
Polk was a West Point graduate, but soon after graduation he had
become a clergyman of the Episcopal church, and for many years past
had been a bishop in that church. A fact that had more importance
perhaps, was that Polk's men had not been trained by the experience
of Lee's tremendous onslaughts to the best work of the soldier, and
unfortunately for Bragg, but fortunately for Rosecrans, that left
wing of the Federal army upon which the main assault was made, was
under command of General George H. Thomas, one of the most determined
fighters on either side during the war.

Under Polk the assault was made loosely, and without that perfect
concert of action which Longstreet, had he been in command, would have
brought to bear. Thomas met it with obstinate resistance, and when
opportunity offered, with counter attacks that greatly interfered with
Bragg's plans. Nevertheless, the fighting was obstinate and destructive
to both sides. In the end Polk succeeded in forcing Thomas's line
backwards for a time, but before nightfall the Federal general had
recovered the greater part of his ground, and when the first day's
fighting ended the position of the two armies was practically the same
that had existed in the morning.

About eleven o'clock on the next morning the battle was resumed with
fury. Polk again assailed Thomas, and Thomas urgently asked for
reinforcements with which to repel the assault. On that part of the
line the struggle continued for hours with varying and not unequal
success, the advantage lying on the whole with the Confederates. But
later in the day Longstreet, who commanded the right center of Bragg's
line, made a tremendous assault of that kind which had been rendered
familiar to the fighters in Virginia by repeated experience. He swept
everything before him. He made a gap in Rosecrans's line crushing
its center, separating its wings from each other and driving it into
confused retreat. Thomas alone held his force together, and fought the
matter out to a finish. In spite of the fact clearly apparent to him
that Rosecrans was defeated, and three fifths of his army destroyed,
Thomas continued the bloody contest with a fury that knew no flinching,
and hesitated at nothing of human sacrifice in the achievement of its
purposes. But for Thomas's obstinacy, skill and courage the Federal
defeat at Chickamauga would have been a repetition of the disaster at
Chancellorsville.

During the night Thomas succeeded in withdrawing his command, and
the Federal army fell back to Chattanooga, taking refuge behind the
fortifications there. Each army had lost in this struggle from 15,000
to 20,000 men. The exact figures are nowhere procurable.

Bragg had won a great victory, but he had not succeeded in regaining
possession of Chattanooga. His enemy held that strong, strategic
position. It was therefore his next task to besiege the foe there, and
either by fighting or by maneuvering to drive him out of the place.

Two mountain heights, the one known as Lookout mountain and the other
as Missionary Ridge, overlook the town, and command many of its
approaches. When the battle was over Bragg promptly advanced and seized
upon these heights. By doing so he succeeded in placing Chattanooga in
a state of siege, stopping the navigation of the river, and cutting off
all of Rosecrans's communications, with the exception of one highly
inadequate mud road.

It is a maxim of military science that the army which can besiege
a position can always capture it in the end unless the beleaguered
place is relieved from the outside. Chattanooga was relieved from the
outside in an exceedingly quiet, but exceedingly effective way. Ulysses
S. Grant--at last a major general in the regular army and in full
command of the western department--went thither to supersede Rosecrans
in command. The coming of this one silent and unostentatious man meant
more to the Federal forces in that quarter than the arrival of half
a dozen army corps would have signified. Grant got to Chattanooga on
the twenty-third of October, 1863, and set to work at once with his
practical common sense to meet and solve the problems of the situation.

He found the army half starved for lack of routes of communication with
its bases of supply. He instantly set his men at work to open a new
road which the facetious soldiers named the "cracker line," and which
connected Chattanooga with a point on the river to which steamboats
could come with abundant supplies. This relieved the Federal army in
Chattanooga of its condition as an army in a state of siege. It made of
it instead an army in the field, well fed, properly supplied, and ready
for march or battle, as its commander might direct.

Having thus relieved the distresses of the army he had been sent
to command, Grant's next thought was to employ that army in some
profitable way. The Confederates, strongly fortified, held Lookout
mountain and Missionary Ridge, and stretched their line for twelve
miles across the Chattanooga valley. Grant decided to dislodge them. He
could not do so with the forces assembled at Chattanooga, but at last
the authorities at Washington had recognized him as a man worthy to
command, and had placed the entire department under his control, and
all its armies were at his disposal. Grant believed in Sherman, and
mightily trusted him. At every point in his career where Sherman could
be called to his aid Grant summoned that commander, and employed his
genius as the most effective instrument for the accomplishment of his
own purposes. It is not too much to say that Sherman was to Grant quite
all that Stonewall Jackson was to Lee--a lieutenant to whom he might
assign the most difficult enterprises with full assurance that they
would be executed with all the skill, determination, valor and sagacity
that it was possible to bring to bear upon them as military operations.

So when Grant determined to dislodge the Confederates from Lookout
mountain and Missionary Ridge his first step was to summon Sherman to
join him with the corps then under Sherman's command.

Certain military necessities delayed Sherman's march, and he did not
reach the position at Chattanooga until the fifteenth of November.
His arrival swelled Grant's force to about 80,000 men, while Bragg's
army was weakened by the detachment of Longstreet with 20,000 men to
operate against Burnside, who was commanding at Knoxville, Tennessee.
The Confederate force in possession of Lookout mountain and Missionary
Ridge was thus considerably inferior to the army with which Grant
prepared to assail it. But the Confederates were strongly posted and on
a part of their line, at least, they were well entrenched.

Grant's plan of battle was simple, as his plans of battle usually were.
He ordered Sherman to carry Missionary Ridge, which constituted the
extreme right of the Confederate position, while Thomas and Hooker
should so far engage the remainder of the line as to prevent the
reinforcement of that point upon which his chief assault was to be
made. If he could accomplish this Bragg must either retreat, abandoning
his threat against Chattanooga, or he must seek some point at which
to give battle again with a force so far weakened by detachment as to
render battle a dangerous alternative for him.

Sherman advanced on the twenty-fourth of November. His assault was
repulsed and for the time unsuccessful. Hooker, in the meanwhile,
exceeded his orders, and did a good deal more fighting than Grant had
intended him to do. It was his assigned duty merely to engage that part
of the Confederate lines which lay in front of him, sufficiently to
prevent the sending of any force from it to reinforce the Confederate
right. But Hooker was by instinct a fighter at all times. And on this
occasion he pushed his men boldly into a fight that his commanding
officer had not intended. His force climbed to the extreme summit of
the mountain, passing a zone of mist and fog as they went. Having
reached the summit they routed the Confederates there and made
themselves masters of the heights. The fact that they passed through
this fog zone on their way up led to the poetic nicknaming of this
action as the "Battle above the Clouds." It was not, properly speaking,
a battle at all, and it was not above the clouds in the sense in which
that phrase impresses the ordinary mind.

On the twenty-fifth Grant pushed Thomas again into the fight, and
assailed the position on Missionary Ridge. A very gallant and very
vigorous action followed. It resulted in the Federals carrying the
Ridge, sweeping everything before them, and driving Bragg's army into
full retreat. He retired with what remained of his force to Dalton,
Georgia, and almost immediately afterward Gen. Joseph E. Johnston was
ordered to take command in that quarter in his stead.

The campaign had been dramatic in many of its features, and peculiarly
picturesque in some of them. It had cost the lives of from six to
ten thousand men on either side. It left the Federals masters of
Chattanooga, placing the Confederates in an uncertain defensive
position against which future operations were comparatively easy.




CHAPTER XLIII

GRANT'S STRATEGY--THE RED RIVER CAMPAIGN--FORT PILLOW, ETC.


The operations of the Confederate war covered a vast area, and included
a multitude of actions severe in themselves, and often rising to
the dignity of great battles so far, at least, as the extent of the
slaughter was concerned. But many of these actions had no particular
bearing or effect upon the general conduct and outcome of the war. To
tell the story of them all would not only be tedious, but it would
make this history a confused mass of only slightly related details
rather than a consecutive narrative of what happened. It is necessary,
therefore, to summarize many things which in themselves were dramatic
in their character and of the highest importance to the men engaged in
them.

The detachment of Longstreet to operate against Burnside at Knoxville
has already been mentioned in the previous chapter. There was some
brilliant fighting there, in which the Federals succeeded in beating
off Longstreet's tremendous assault, but only after suffering one
conspicuous defeat at the hands of the great Confederate lieutenant.
In like manner the expedition of Banks in command of 40,000 Federals
into the Red River country, west of the Mississippi, had no important
bearing upon the war except in so far as it resulted in depriving
Grant for a time of the services of 40,000 veterans whose soldierly
vigor he could have used to much better purpose.

This Red River expedition was inspired by cotton speculators for their
own purposes of greed. It was intended to enable them to get possession
of the great stores of cotton that lay in Louisiana and Texas. The
expedition consisted of the army under Banks--a political general of
far better military capacity than most political generals had--and a
fleet of gunboats under that noted fighter, Commodore David D. Porter.
Banks's army was opposed by a much smaller force of Confederates under
General Richard Taylor, who nevertheless defeated it in an irregular
action and drove it into a confused retreat which must have ended in
surrender but for the protection of Porter's gunboats. Banks retreated
painfully along the margin of the tortuous stream, nowhere daring
to quit the gunboats' support even in order to save weary miles of
marching around the bends in the river.

This expedition was ordered before Grant took command of all the
armies. It was one of the many foolish blunders with the results of
which the great Federal commander had to reckon and wrestle when he
came into his own. As the spring of 1864 approached something happened
which was of more importance to the Federal cause than any battle could
be, or the success of any campaign. Congress and the administration
recognized Grant as the great leader that he was, and gave him that
authority of command which alone he needed in order to make an end of
the struggle. On the twenty-sixth of February a bill passed by Congress
revived the grade of lieutenant general in the army. Grant was promptly
nominated for that office, and confirmed in it by the Senate on the
second day of March. On the third he was ordered to Washington, and on
the ninth Mr. Lincoln delivered to him his commission as lieutenant
general, with authority to direct the operations of all the Federal
armies in whatever part of the country they might be stationed.

Oddly enough in thus bringing to the front and giving command to
the only general who had shown adequate capacity to direct the war
to a successful conclusion, the administration still retained as
its adjutant general that conspicuously incapable person, General
Halleck, who had done more than all other men and all other influences
combined to interfere with Grant's work in the war, to prevent him
from accomplishing the ends he sought in behalf of his country, and
to fritter away the fruits of his victories after he had won them.
The shade of Winfield Scott still held in mortmain its strange
influence over the Washington authorities. And General Grant's personal
memoirs--though they make no complaint of this absurdity--very clearly
show, that in the gigantic combinations which he was now called upon
to make, he was often seriously embarrassed by this continuance of an
authority to interfere in many ways with his plans.

The advent of Grant to the command of all the armies in the field
wrought a revolution instantly and conspicuously in the conduct of
the war. He had no sympathy whatever with the "pepper box policy."
From the very beginning he had clearly seen that the strength of the
Southern Confederacy lay in the fighting capacity of its armies.
He had clearly seen that the problems of this war were not mainly
geographical--that the occupation of this, that or the other position
was of small consequence, except in so far as it tended to weaken the
tremendous fighting force of that "best infantry on earth" which was
defending Richmond on the one hand, and threatening Washington on the
other.

Now that he had come into supreme command it was his first thought so
to organize and coördinate all the operations of all the armies as to
make them tend to the accomplishment of one supreme purpose--namely,
the breaking and crushing of the Confederate power of resistance.
As that power of resistance was centered chiefly in the Army of
Northern Virginia, and in the genius of Robert E. Lee, Grant's grand
combinations were all directed toward the destruction of that army, and
the baffling of that genius.

As has been said already Grant was preëminently a man of practical
common sense, and to his mind military problems were like any others
that present themselves to the human mind--that is to say, they were
problems, to be solved by the use of the means at command in the
most effective way that could be thought of. War was to him like any
other business. He knew that the administration had at its command,
in men, money and materials, resources immeasurably superior to those
which the South could control. It was his purpose to avail himself
of that superiority in every way possible. In all that involved
considerations of humanity or courtesy he had the delicate sentiments
of a tender-hearted and generous man. But in the conduct of war he did
not permit sentiment for one moment to interfere with common sense.

The strategy with which he undertook to fight the war out to a finish
was simple. His "objective" was always the army opposed to him, and
not merely a geographical position. In all his orders to all his
lieutenants he emphasized this incessantly. In order to end the war he
must crush the Confederate armies, and to that effect he instructed
Sherman and every other commander under his orders.

Grant established his headquarters in Virginia in order that he might
give personal direction to the operations of the Army of the Potomac.
He did this with a most delicate consideration for Meade, who had
direct command of the Army of the Potomac, and whose devotion and
capacity he trusted implicitly, as he has himself testified in his
memoirs.

It was his simple plan of campaign first to prevent Lee's reinforcement
from any quarter, and secondly to hurl all the force he could
concentrate against the Army of Northern Virginia for the purpose of
destroying the resisting power of that army. In his judgment it was
more important to cripple Lee than to capture Richmond. And in his
judgment, also, to cripple Lee was to make the capture of Richmond easy
and certain.

In order that Lee might not be reinforced, Grant began by issuing
orders for vigorous operations in every other part of the Confederacy.
He ordered Banks to withdraw from his wasteful cotton-seeking
expedition up the Red river, to return to New Orleans, and to
move thence against Mobile. He ordered Sherman to press back the
Confederates in northern Georgia toward Atlanta, directing him to seize
that town, and push on to the Gulf, thus again cutting in twain what
remained of the Confederacy.

The military situation at this time could not be more clearly set forth
than it was by General Grant himself, in his memoirs written long
afterwards. In aid of a clear understanding his exact words are quoted
here:

    The Mississippi river was guarded from St. Louis to its mouth; the
    line of the Arkansas was held, thus giving us all of the northwest
    north of that river. A few points in Louisiana, not remote from
    the river, were held by the Federal troops, as was also the mouth
    of the Rio Grande. East of the Mississippi we held substantially
    all north of the Memphis and Charleston railroad, as far east as
    Chattanooga, thence along the line of the Tennessee and Holston
    rivers, taking in nearly all of the State of Tennessee. West
    Virginia was in our hands; and that part of old Virginia, north of
    the Rapidan and east of the Blue Ridge we also held. On the sea
    coast we had Fortress Monroe and Norfolk in Virginia, Plymouth,
    Washington and New Berne in North Carolina, Beaufort and Folly
    and Morris Islands, Hilton Head, Port Royal and Fort Pulaski in
    South Carolina and Georgia, Fernandina, St. Augustine, Key West
    and Pensacola in Florida. The balance of the southern territory,
    an empire in extent, was still in the hands of the enemy. Sherman,
    who had succeeded me in the command of the military division of the
    Mississippi, commanded all the troops in the territory west of the
    Alleghanies and north of Natchez, with a large movable force about
    Chattanooga.

       *       *       *       *       *

    In the east the opposing forces stood in substantially the same
    relations towards each other as three years before or when the war
    began. They were both between the Federal and Confederate capitals.
    It is true footholds had been secured by us in Virginia and North
    Carolina, but beyond that no substantial advantage had been gained
    on either side.

       *       *       *       *       *

    That portion of the Army of the Potomac not engaged in guarding
    lines of communication was on the northern bank of the Rapidan.
    The Army of Northern Virginia, confronting it on the opposite bank
    of the same river was strongly entrenched, and commanded by the
    acknowledged ablest general in the Confederate army.

       *       *       *       *       *

    The Union armies were now divided into nineteen departments,
    though four of them in the west had been concentrated into a
    single military division. The Army of the Potomac was a separate
    command, and had no territorial limits. There were thus seventeen
    distinct commanders. Before this time these various armies had
    acted separately and independently of each other, giving the
    enemy an opportunity often of depleting one command, not pressed
    to reinforce another more actively engaged. I determined to stop
    this. To this end I regarded the Army of the Potomac as the center,
    and all west to Memphis, along the line described as our position
    at the time, and the north of it, the right wing; the Army of
    the James, under General Butler (with headquarters at Fortress
    Monroe), as the left wing, and all the troops south as a force in
    rear of the enemy. Some of these latter were occupying positions
    from which they could not render service proportionate to their
    numerical strength. All such were depleted to the minimum necessary
    to hold their positions as a guard against blockade runners; where
    they could not do this their positions were abandoned altogether.
    In this way 10,000 men were added to the Army of the James from
    South Carolina alone, with General Gillmore in command. Officers
    and soldiers on furlough, of whom there were many thousands, were
    ordered to their proper commands; concentration was the order of
    the day.

       *       *       *       *       *

    As a reinforcement to the Army of the Potomac, or to act in support
    of it, the Ninth army corps, over 20,000 strong, under General
    Burnside, had been rendezvoused at Annapolis, Maryland. This was
    an admirable position for such a reinforcement. The corps could be
    brought at the last moment as a reinforcement to the Army of the
    Potomac, or it could be thrown on the sea coast south of Norfolk,
    in Virginia or North Carolina, to operate against Richmond from
    that direction.

       *       *       *       *       *

    My general plan now was to concentrate all the force possible
    against the Confederate armies in the field. There were but two
    such, as we have seen, east of the Mississippi river, and facing
    north. The Army of Northern Virginia, General Robert E. Lee
    commanding, was on the south bank of the Rapidan, confronting the
    Army of the Potomac. The second, under Joseph E. Johnston, was at
    Dalton, Ga., opposed to Sherman, who was still at Chattanooga.
    Beside these main armies the Confederates had to guard the
    Shenandoah valley, a great storehouse to feed their armies from,
    and their line of communications from Richmond to Tennessee.
    Forrest, a brave and intrepid cavalry general, was in the West
    with a large force, making a larger command necessary to hold what
    we had gained in middle and west Tennessee. We could not abandon
    any territory north of the line held by the enemy, because it
    would lay the Northern states open to invasion. But as the Army
    of the Potomac was the principal garrison for the protection of
    Washington, even while it was moving on Lee, so all the forces to
    the west and the Army of the James guarded their special trusts
    when advancing from them, as well as when remaining at them.

       *       *       *       *       *

    Accordingly I arranged for a simultaneous movement all along the
    line. Sherman was to move from Chattanooga, Johnston and Atlanta
    being his objective points. Crooke, commanding in West Virginia,
    was to move from the mouth of the Gauley river, with a cavalry
    force and some artillery, the Virginia and Tennessee railroad to be
    his objective. Sigel was in command in the Valley of Virginia. He
    was to advance up the Valley, covering the North from an invasion
    through that channel, as well by advancing as by remaining near
    Harper's Ferry. Every mile he advanced also, gave us possession
    of stores on which Lee relied. Butler was to advance by the James
    River, having Richmond and Petersburg as his objective.

       *       *       *       *       *

    Banks, in the department of the Gulf, was ordered to assemble all
    the troops he had at New Orleans in time to join in the general
    move, Mobile to be his objective.

Now for the first time in the entire history of the war a single
masterful mind was in control of all the operations of all the vast
armies of the United States, and was trying to direct all those
operations with singleness of purpose to a foreordained end. The coming
of Grant into command thus marks an epoch in the history of the war.

Some of his lieutenants did their work incompetently, thus in a degree
baffling his purpose, but in the main those whom he had wisely selected
for command did that which he required of them in masterly fashion.
Sigel, who was to advance up the Valley of Virginia, and break the
communications between Tennessee and the Confederate capital, failed
utterly. In profound disgust, General Grant received from Halleck a
dispatch saying, "Sigel is in full retreat on Strasbourg. He will do
nothing but run; never did anything else."

Banks also failed to place his army of 40,000 men at New Orleans in
time to help in the grand strategy which Grant had inaugurated.

Butler got himself "bottled up," as General Grant phrased it, on the
south side of the James river, so that while he held a strong defensive
position there, he was unable to employ his troops aggressively
with effect. But the rest of Grant's subordinates--and especially
Sherman--carried out their orders with brilliant capacity and
tremendous effect.

While Grant was thus preparing for his grand campaign, the Confederates
were not idle. With forces greatly inferior in number and equipment,
and with an exhausted country behind him, Lee stood upon the
defensive, waiting to see what his adversary might undertake, and what
opportunities might open themselves to him for offensive defense.

In the meanwhile that most active and tireless of campaigners, General
N. B. Forrest, went upon a raid in West Tennessee and Kentucky
which, for a time, seriously threatened an invasion of the North and
a disturbance of General Grant's plans. Sweeping northward like a
hurricane, Forrest captured the Federal garrison of 500 men at Union
City in Tennessee, wrecked railroads in every direction, and pushed his
column daringly to Paducah, Kentucky, on the banks of the Ohio, fifty
miles above Cairo. Sherman sent all his cavalry and other available
troops to check this movement, and if possible to make an end of
Forrest by capturing him and his force. But Forrest was too quick
for him. Rapidly falling back, he assailed the Federal fort on the
Mississippi river, known as Fort Pillow. That fortress was held by
negro troops, and the Southerners had never yet consented to regard the
employment of such troops as legitimate in this war.

Here it is necessary to explain. The enlistment of negroes in military
service was no new thing in American war. During the Revolution, and
even before it, the statutes of South Carolina and of some of the other
colonies specifically provided for such enlistments, and in South
Carolina, at least, the law made it an offense for the master of any
slave to refuse his service to the country as a soldier. Again during
the war of 1812-1815, Andrew Jackson made free use of vigorous young
negroes, enlisting them as soldiers wherever he could find them, and
appealing to their patriotism to support with manly determination the
independence of the only country they could call their own.

But in the Confederate war a different condition of affairs existed.
From the beginning of the struggle the Confederates employed negroes
to work upon fortifications, and although they did not enlist them
as soldiers, this employment of them amounted to much the same thing
in so far as it released an equal number of enlisted men for active
work in the field. So general was the prejudice against any and every
recognition of negro equality at the North as well as at the South,
that many newspaper writers at the North--ignorant of the history
of their own country with respect to the military employment of
negroes--bitterly denounced all this, insisting that the Confederates
were employing savages in arms against a civilized enemy. That plea
was apt to be an effective one in this country, for the reason that
from the beginning of the colonial struggles until the end of the war
of 1812-1815 it had been one of America's grievances against Great
Britain that agents of the mother country had mercilessly employed Red
Indian savages in murderous warfare upon the white men.

When, later in the war, it was decided at the North to arm and use as
soldiers such able-bodied negroes as might be induced to volunteer,
the recruits were naturally drawn in the main from the large companies
of runaway slaves who had escaped into the Federal lines. This fact
gave to the military employment of negroes against the South the
aspect of an attempt to create a servile insurrection and war--the one
thing which had been always most dreaded in those states in which the
negroes outnumbered the whites. Servile insurrection was understood to
mean rapine, the burning of homes, the butchery of women and little
children, and all else of horror that savage warfare may signify. The
Southerners therefore held the enlistment of negroes in the Northern
armies to be an act of unforgivable vandalism and savagery. They
peremptorily refused to recognize the negro anywhere as a soldier, or
in case of his capture to treat him as a prisoner of war.

In execution of that purpose of absolute and unflinching historical
truthfulness which the author of this work has tried to make his only
inspiration, it must be said that in many cases, and particularly on
occasions of raids into undefended country, certain of the negro
troops did many things to justify the Southern view of the iniquity
of their employment against white men. In regions undefended they
frequently committed outrages of a kind which the instincts of humanity
never forgive.

It is proper here to emphasize again the fact to which the present
historian directed earnest attention in a work published in
1874--namely, that throughout the war, when all the Southern white men
were in the field, and when all the plantations with the women and
children inhabiting their homes were unprotected, the negro slaves who
remained upon the plantations were affectionately loyal and obedient,
nowhere instituting insurrection or in any other wise betraying the
trust reposed in their fidelity and affection, and this in spite of
the fact that they perfectly knew that the failure of the South in
the War must result in their own emancipation. Emphasis is here given
to this fact in order that nothing recorded concerning the atrocities
committed by certain negro troops shall impair or reflect upon the
negro character generally.

But from beginning to end the Confederates refused to recognize the
right of their enemy to enlist their runaway slaves in the war against
them. From first to last they refused to regard negroes as soldiers,
entitled to be treated as such. So returning to our theme, it must
be said that when Forrest found Fort Pillow garrisoned chiefly by
negro troops, even had he desired it to be otherwise, he could not
have prevented the slaughter that ensued. His men simply would not
make prisoners of war out of negroes in arms, and the result of the
struggle was a Federal loss of about 500 killed together with nearly
all their officers, while the Confederates according to Forrest's
report lost only about twenty men. In his dispatches, written at
that time of excitement, Forrest said, "It is hoped that these facts
will demonstrate to the Northern people that negro soldiers cannot
cope with Southerners." His words have since been construed to mean
a blood-thirsty antagonism to the negroes. That construction may be
correct, but General Forrest himself contended to the end of his
life that he meant only to point out the ease with which Southern
soldiers conquered and destroyed this negro force as illustrating the
inefficiency of black men in fighting white men. That meaning would
seem to be the only one which it is necessary to give to the language
of his dispatch.

Other minor operations during the period of preparation for the
tremendous struggle of 1864 were carried on in different parts of the
South with results that had no important bearing upon the general
course of the contest or upon its outcome. These operations need not be
more particularly mentioned here.




CHAPTER XLIV

GRANT'S PLAN OF CAMPAIGN


As the month of April neared its end Grant prepared to execute the
plans he had so laboriously formed, and for which he had given to all
his lieutenants in every quarter of the country orders as minute as
they could be made without risk of leaving any lieutenant embarrassed
for want of liberty of action in the event of an emergency.

For the sake of a clear understanding let us state again in brief
outline his scheme of operation. His fundamental conception was that
in order to conquer the Confederacy he must destroy its armies in the
field, and especially Lee's army, which had been from the first the
chief source and center of danger to the Federal cause, both by reason
of its superb fighting quality, and by reason of the masterful genius
of Lee that directed it. Grant's first care, therefore, was so to
employ all the subsidiary forces in all quarters of the South as to
prevent the sending of any reinforcements to Lee.

His second fundamental idea was to fight the Confederate armies in the
open field rather than assail them in defensive works at the points of
chief strategic importance.

Certain writers for the press have severely criticized the great
Federal commander for having wasted thousands of lives in his march
overland upon Richmond instead of transferring his army to the front of
that city by water as he might easily have done without the loss of a
man. This criticism is ignorant in the extreme, but as its conclusions
persist in spite of Grant's own, and many other intelligent replies,
it seems necessary to say again that his purpose was not to reach the
front of Richmond, but to encounter, and if possible, to crush Lee's
army in the field. It is perfectly true that he might have placed the
Army of the Potomac in front of Richmond and Petersburg without any
battling or any loss of life, just as McClellan had done in 1862.
But in that case his task would have been to assail the greatest
general of the Confederate army, the greatest engineer of modern
times, and the strongest fighting force of the South in positions of
their own choosing, defended by the most formidable defensive works
that ingenuity could construct. It was Grant's idea, and a perfectly
sound one, that he could not afford this--that this was the longest
and most difficult instead of the shortest and easiest road to the
accomplishment of his military purposes. He had two men to Lee's one;
he could get two more for the asking where Lee could not get another
one. He wisely decided, therefore, that if possible he would compel Lee
to fight in the open field, instead of confronting him in defensive
works. It was not certain that he could compel Lee to this course. But
it was his purpose to do so if possible, and in the end he succeeded in
achieving that possibility.

Rightly interpreted, there was no greater strategy in all the war
than this. Yet nothing has been more misunderstood or more injuriously
reported. In his uncertainty as to whether Lee would accept battle
in the open field, or would fall back upon Richmond and defend that
city behind strong earthworks, Grant prepared himself for either
contingency. He ordered Butler, with a strongly reinforced army, to
move up the southern side of James river, supported by the gunboats,
and to establish himself in an unassailable position, from which, in
case of Lee's declining battle in the open, he might threaten or assail
the southern and eastern defenses of the Confederate capital, while
Grant, with the Army of the Potomac, might fall upon that city from the
North, thus bringing to bear against Lee a combined force three or four
times as great as his own.

But his strong hope was that Lee would accept battle in the field,
and that the Confederate general might be so far crippled there by
the assaults of overwhelming numbers as to be far less formidable in
his final defense of Richmond than he must be if forced back to that
position by maneuvering and without fighting.

If there was any error or miscalculation in General Grant's plan for
the destruction of the Confederacy and the ending of the war, that
error was in underestimating the tremendous fighting force of the Army
of Northern Virginia, under command of Robert E. Lee. Grant had never
met Lee in battle, and had learned of his capacity and of the resisting
power of the army under his command only by hearsay. These were so much
greater than anything else of the kind that had been known in the war
that Grant's mistake, if he made any mistake, was surely pardonable. He
had reckoned rightly in supposing that Sherman could deal successfully
with Johnston, could take Atlanta, and could push his army thence to
the sea, again cutting in twain what remained of the Confederacy.
Perhaps he had not fully appreciated the resisting capacity of Lee with
his Army of Northern Virginia. Perhaps he had a trifle too confidently
reckoned upon numbers as a means of crushing that force. At any rate
in his tremendous campaign from the Wilderness to Petersburg, he did
not conquer it or crush it. So far indeed did he fail to do this, that
after Lee had retired to Richmond and Petersburg and there confronted
Grant's enormously reinforced army, the Confederate general was able to
reinforce Early in the valley and send him on an expedition northward
which threw Washington again into a panic, and for a time threatened
the compulsory withdrawal of a part of Grant's forces from the siege of
Richmond and Petersburg.

In all his plans Grant calculated, as he had an entire right to do,
upon an enormous superiority of force, whether measured by the number
of men under his command, or by the extent of equipment, or by the
perfection of his supply departments or by the limitless reinforcement
which he was privileged to call to his aid, where his adversary was
forbidden by strenuous circumstance, to add a single brigade or
regiment or company or man to his fighting force.

It was his plan to hurl against Lee a force so overwhelming that in
the ordinary calculations of war it should crush him completely. To
that end he ordered Meade on the twenty-seventh of April to advance
with his entire army from the position he occupied near Bull Run to the
Rappahannock. On the same day he ordered Burnside, who lay at Annapolis
with 20,000 men, to advance and occupy Meade's former position, thus
bringing to bear the whole of the forces in northern Virginia as a
column of offense against Lee.

At the same time Grant ordered Butler to push up on the south side
of the James river, and secure a strong and threatening position in
rear of the Richmond defenses. Reinforcements were held ready to go to
Butler's aid in the event that Lee should fall back upon the defenses
of the Confederate capital.

On the same day Sherman was directed from Grant's headquarters to
mass his forces and begin that splendid advance against Johnston and
Atlanta, which was intended first to neutralize and then to destroy
the only great Confederate army other than Lee's which remained in
the field. Other and minor operations were ordered from the Valley of
Virginia, from West Virginia, from eastern Tennessee, from New Orleans
and from other points, all of which were intended to accomplish two
purposes--one of them the interruption of Confederate communications,
and the other to prevent the sending of any reinforcements to Lee.

General Grant has himself frankly stated in his "Memoirs," page 419,
that "to get possession of Lee's army was the first great object. With
the capture of his army Richmond would necessarily follow." Here
we have the purpose of the campaign in a nutshell. If General Grant
could have succeeded in capturing Lee's army or destroying it in the
field, there is no possible doubt whatever that Richmond would have
followed, as he said, and the Confederate resistance would have ended
early in the summer of 1864. For Sherman's operations against Johnston,
Atlanta and the far South were completely successful, as we shall see
hereafter. The resisting capacity of the Confederacy was prolonged
solely through the fact that Grant's hope of quickly capturing or
destroying Lee's army was baffled for the time, and postponed to
another year.

General Grant has himself explained the immediate strategy employed by
him in his campaign in northern Virginia. He had his choice between
two courses,--either to move continuously by his own left flank around
Lee's right, thus keeping always at his back that great system of
waterways beginning in the Rappahannock and Potomac, and stretching on
to Fortress Monroe and the James, and maintaining at all times in his
rear a perfect and unassailable base of communications and supplies;
or, on the other hand, to move by his own right flank around Lee's
left, as Hooker had tried to do, thus threatening the Confederate
communications, and forcing Lee, as it were, into a pocket. Should
he adopt this second course, however, he must carry with him all
that he needed of ammunition and food supplies, and expose his own
communications to possible rupture at any hour by daring operations
on the part of the Confederate forces. He determined, therefore, to
move by his own left, assailing Lee's right and keeping the waterways
always at his back.

The plan was simple and effective. It is true that it left some
advantages to Lee--unmolested communications and short lines of
march--but these were more than offset by the other considerations
involved. From beginning to end of the struggle Grant found no occasion
to change his method in the least.




CHAPTER XLV

THE BATTLES IN THE WILDERNESS


With the coming of May, 1864, the two great commanding geniuses of
the War--Lee and Grant--met each other in conflict. The exact forces
commanded by each have never been ascertained. But the estimates of
the various writers on the subject, North and South, do not differ
sufficiently, to make their differences of much consequence. In round
numbers Lee had, on the Rapidan, about 66,000 men. The army with which
Grant opposed him numbered approximately 120,000. These estimates
do not include either the Confederate forces defending Richmond and
Petersburg on the one hand, or Butler's strong army south of the
James on the other. Lee had called Longstreet back from the region of
Atlanta, and had thus in effect massed all the force that he could hope
to employ in that campaign. With this force substantially half as large
as that of his adversary, he determined to accept Grant's offer of
battle in the field. To that end he moved his army on the second of May
to the western edge of that peculiar region known as the Wilderness.
There he awaited the coming of Grant.

This Wilderness, it should be explained, is a region of peculiar
difficulty by reason of the tangled mass of second growths which have
replaced the original forest, cut away a century or more ago as fuel
for iron works. In extent the region is about a dozen miles wide in
either direction. It borders the Rapidan, and extends to the open
country in front of Chancellorsville, where the battle of that name had
been fought a year before.

At midnight on the third of May the Army of the Potomac crossed
the Rapidan on five pontoon bridges, and marched at once into the
Wilderness, where it remained during the whole of the fourth in order
that its enormous train of 4,000 wagons and the reserve artillery of
more than 100 guns might be protected in their passage across the
river. It was Grant's hope to move by his left flank, out of the
Wilderness, passing around his enemy, and placing himself with all
his force between that enemy and the Confederate capital. But with
that promptitude which was characteristic of all his operations, Lee
anticipated this movement and struck at Grant's flank early on the
morning of the fifth.

The assault was made in the midst of the Wilderness--in a thicket so
dense that it was impossible at many points for the men on one side to
see those on the other, a hundred feet away. Every forward or backward
movement involved a struggle through a tangle of vines and underbrush
and young forest growths so thickly standing as to render all progress
difficult, and all regularity of formation impossible. On either
side no corps or regiment or company could know what its own friends
were doing on its right or its left; no officer could tell whether
he was being supported on his flank or had been abandoned there; no
steadiness or cohesion was possible. No alignment could be maintained.
It is doubtful to-day that any officer on either side in that struggle,
from Grant and Lee at the top to the smallest commander at the other
end of the line, ever had a clear-cut idea of the course that that
day's fighting took. It consisted of a series of irregular assaults
made with desperate valor, and repelled with equal determination. It
resembled nothing so much as a battle in the dark, the one thing which
all commanders most dread, and most sedulously avoid.

Very naturally the fighting was at short range at every point. Scarcely
anywhere on that tangled field did the opposing forces discover each
other's positions until they came within short pistol-shot range.
The slaughter was therefore tremendous and at no time could either
commanding general fully satisfy himself as to how the battle was going
or what its result was likely to be or even what his own or the enemy's
position was.

The two greatest fighting machines that America has yet produced
had met in battle, in the midst of such a maze of tangled growths
as nowhere else exists except in marshes where such a meeting is
impossible by reason of a lack of firm ground for the men to stand
upon. Here at least, there was firm ground.

Grant had not expected to encounter his enemy here. He had supposed
that Lee would move out of the Wilderness and choose more favorable
ground upon which to receive the assaults of his enemy. Accordingly,
the Federal commander had already pushed a part of his army under
Hancock toward the edge of the Wilderness, hoping by a rapid march to
place it between the Confederate army and the Confederate capital. No
sooner, however, was Lee's assault developed than Grant saw clearly
that he must fight a determined battle here on this most unsuitable
ground. Lee had decided this in the obvious expectation of finding
Grant unready. But readiness under all circumstances was a part and an
important part of Grant's character and intellectual make-up. It was
his habit of mind to take things as he found them and to do the best
he could in every case. He hurriedly called Hancock back and accepted
battle in the jungle.

The fighting was desperate throughout the day, and at the day's end no
decisive advantage rested with either party. Lee had been fighting with
only a part of his army, for the reason that Longstreet with that first
corps upon which Lee always relied for the more desperate work of war
did not reach position in time to take part in the struggle of that day.

At nightfall it was obvious that the contest must be resumed in the
morning and indeed, each of the great commanders intended that it
should be, each planning to strike first if possible. In preparation
for the coming morning's work both sides spent the night in diligent
fortifying with such means as were at hand.

Grant ordered an assault all along the line to be made at five o'clock
in the morning. Lee, still more alert, struck out with his left an hour
earlier. He was still weak on his right wing, for lack of Longstreet,
who had not yet come up. Grant, recognizing this fact, planned to
hurl Hancock upon the Confederate right at the appointed hour of five
o'clock in the morning. By an adroit handling of Rosser's cavalry, the
Confederates managed to deceive Hancock into the belief that Longstreet
was making a flank movement against the Federal left, similar to those
which Jackson had made with such destructive effect in former battles.
To meet this and to avoid a disaster like that which had befallen
Hooker at Chancellorsville, Hancock promptly detached a considerable
part of his force, and sent it to his left, thus weakening his column
of attack.

Nevertheless he struck hard enough to drive back the weak Confederate
right for more than a mile. Then Longstreet, who had undertaken no such
flanking expedition as that which Hancock had supposed, came up and
threw his veterans precipitately upon his foe.

These two--Longstreet and Hancock--were both old fighters and very
stubborn ones, and they had under their command the very best men there
were in their respective armies. When they met in direct conflict at
close quarters, therefore, the fighting was as obstinate as any that
had yet occurred on any field since the beginning of the war.

Hancock was driven back and the losses on both sides were great,
including a conspicuously large loss of officers from the lowest to
the highest grade. General Wadsworth on the Federal side, and General
Jenkins on the Confederate, were killed, and Longstreet himself was
shot through the neck and shoulder so that he had to be carried from
the field.

Having thus lost his great lieutenant, General Lee went to that quarter
of the field and took personal command in Longstreet's place. It was
then that one of the most picturesque incidents of the war occurred.
Impressed with the desperate necessity of carrying a certain peculiarly
difficult position, General Lee seized the colors of a Texas regiment
and undertook to lead the perilous assault in person. The troops loudly
protested against such an exposure of their beloved general to danger,
and the Texas colonel, in behalf of his men and amid their applause,
solemnly promised that they would carry the point at all costs and
all hazards if Lee would go to the rear. Finally, Lee's bridle rein
was seized, and he was forcibly taken to the rear, while the Texans
advanced to the charge with the battle cry of "Lee to the rear!" upon
their lips. The incident has been exquisitely celebrated in song by the
poet John R. Thompson.

Under inspiration of this incident, the Confederates made an assault
of desperate determination, and at one point broke through the Federal
lines. They captured the position for the recovery of which Lee had
sought to sacrifice himself, but the result was achieved at tremendous
cost of life, and their further efforts to dislodge Hancock were
bloodily repelled.

By some means--probably by reason of the fierce firing on either
side--a forest fire now broke out in Hancock's front, and the
flames quickly communicated themselves to the log revetments of his
fortifications. The heat and the smoke forced the Federals to retreat,
fighting as they went against the Confederates who pursued them with
fury. Sadly enough, besides the dead there were large numbers of
wounded men, both Federal and Confederate, lying among the burning
bushes and underbrush of that mile-wide stretch of wilderness over
which the flames swept. Here misfortune and sheer accident wantonly
added to the necessary horrors of war another horror not contemplated
or intended by either commander although that, like all other risks
of battle, is included in the contract which the soldier makes with
his country. These men, wounded and helpless as they lay amid the
flames that circled and enwrapped them, must have realized as nobody
unaccustomed to the horrors of war can, the truth of Sherman's
statement that "war is all hell."

Night ended the struggle, and the men on both sides retired to their
entrenchments to await the events of the morrow. On neither side was
there the least suggestion of demoralization or of shrinking from the
work that was yet to be done. On neither side were there skulkers in
the rear as there had been at Manassas, at Shiloh and at nearly every
other great battle of an earlier time. The volunteers who composed the
armies of the Potomac and Northern Virginia were real soldiers now,
inured to war, and desperate in their determination to do its work with
out faltering or failure. This fact--this change in the temper and
morale of the men on either side--had greatly simplified the tasks set
for Grant and Lee to solve. They knew their men. They knew that those
men would stand against anything, endure slaughter without flinching,
hardship without complaining, and make desperate endeavor without
shrinking. The two armies had become what they had not been earlier in
the contest, perfect instruments of war, that could be relied upon as
confidently as the machinist relies upon his engine scheduled to make
so many revolutions per minute at a given rate of horse power, and with
the precision of science itself.

It will be remembered that as Jefferson Davis approached the
battlefield of Manassas, where the Confederates had won a conspicuous
victory, the multitude of panic-stricken fugitives through whom
he passed was such as to convince him that Beauregard had been
disastrously defeated. It will be remembered that at Shiloh when
Grant made his way to the front he was appalled by the presence under
shelter of the river banks of a multitude of fugitives, demoralized
and panic-stricken, who ought to have been at the front lying on their
bellies and firing at the enemy. Nothing of the kind occurred on either
side at the Wilderness. The war school had perfectly educated its
pupils.

The losses in these two days of fighting in the Wilderness have never
been accurately ascertained, and never will be. The best estimates
fix them at about 15,000 or 16,000 men on either side. These losses
included, as has already been said, a remarkable number of officers of
high grade on both sides. Nothing could be more significant than this
of the determination with which the battle was fought.

In the strictest sense of the military term this had been a drawn
battle. Neither side had overcome the other and neither had driven the
other into retreat. Yet each side has claimed it as a victory upon
grounds which are logical enough in themselves. The Confederates
held that by checking Grant and baffling his plan of marching out
of the Wilderness, and forcing Lee to a fight in the open, they had
accomplished a very distinct victory. The Federals held, that, as they
had succeeded in placing their army securely south of the Rapidan and
in a position to carry on a further campaign, and that as they had not
been so far damaged in the fight as to feel themselves under compulsion
of retreat, they were entitled to regard the general result of the two
days' fight as a victory for themselves.

There is no doubt whatever that at the end of this struggle the
Confederates expected Grant to retire to the northern side of the
river, as all his predecessors had done after similar conflicts. When
the next morning dawned and Grant still stood firm in their front
they were astonished to find him there. Among the men no explanation
of his continued presence in the wilderness was forthcoming. In the
mind of Lee there was an explanation ready and sufficient. The great
Confederate general is reported to have said to his staff on that
morning, "Gentleman, at last the Army of the Potomac has a head."




CHAPTER XLVI

SPOTTSYLVANIA AND THE BLOODY ANGLE


All day during the seventh of May the two armies lay still. There was
a little cavalry fighting at Todd's Tavern, but the two great armies
did not again engage each other in conflict. They had tried conclusions
here, and each was measurably satisfied with the result.

The question now was where next they should meet each other in arms.
Lee had chosen the field of the first onset. It was for Grant to choose
the next. And in pursuance of his strategy Grant determined to move
by his left flank to Spottsylvania Court House, hoping to reach that
position before his adversary could get there, and to seize upon its
best strategic points. In that position he would still have the great
waterways at his back as a support, and a trustworthy source of supply.
His desire was throughout the campaign to thrust his army in between
the Army of Northern Virginia and Richmond, and this seemed to be his
best opportunity to do so. He had somewhat a shorter line of march, and
moreover by taking the initiative he was able to start first. If he was
baffled in the attempt it was only by reason of the alertness of Lee's
genius which penetrated his purpose, grasped his thought, and promptly
acted in contravention of it.

Spottsylvania Court House lay fifteen or sixteen miles southeast
of the Wilderness battlefield, and nearly that far southwest of
Fredericksburg. In order that the movement might be made without
danger of his army being attacked while in motion, Grant adopted the
plan of using the troops on his right as the advance force of his
movement towards the left. He did this throughout that campaign by
the left flank, always withdrawing the forces on his right, passing
them in rear of his main army, and thus making of the movement what is
technically known as a countermarch. In this way the advancing troops
had always the main army between them and the enemy until they cleared
the position occupied, and were well on march toward the new one aimed
at. After that, of course, they must take care of themselves, but in
the meanwhile the march was begun without discovery on the part of the
enemy.

The movement on this occasion was begun at nine o'clock in the evening,
on the night of Saturday, May 7. With his extraordinary alertness and
penetration Lee anticipated it and obstructed it. He threw a force of
cavalry across the roads that Grant's head of column must traverse, and
directed it to oppose and delay the movement so far as it was possible
to do so. He also sent sappers and miners ahead to fell trees across
the road over which Grant must march, then with caution, but with
boldness, he set his own columns in motion, sending the head of them to
seize upon and hold the strongly strategic positions at Spottsylvania
until such time as Grant's movement should so far develop itself as to
justify him in moving his whole army into that position. The Federal
cavalry had occupied these strategic positions before the Confederates
got there, but they were quickly brushed away, and by the time that the
head of Grant's column of infantry and artillery reached Spottsylvania,
Lee's advance was in full possession and everywhere throwing up
earthworks. The remainder of Lee's forces were quickly brought up, as
were those of Grant, and the two great armies again confronted each
other, each with set lips, determined to get the better of the other if
human resolution could accomplish that purpose.

In the meanwhile Grant had sent Sheridan with a strong force of cavalry
to ride around the Confederates as Stewart had thrice done around the
Federal army, to disturb their communications, and obstruct their
avenues of retreat in case of disaster. His movement was promptly met
by the Confederate cavalry under their great leader J. E. B. Stuart,
and the two forces fell a-fighting at a point known as the Yellow
Tavern, seven or eight miles north of the city of Richmond. There in
fierce conflict Stuart met the death which he had always declared that
he longed for. He was mortally wounded at the head of his men while
making one of those tremendous onsets which it was the pride of his
soul to conduct. With Stuart disabled, the Confederate cavalry was left
without a leader capable of making the most of its dash and prowess,
and Sheridan succeeded in breaking through the outer lines around
Richmond, but not in going farther. He retreated and rejoined the army
under Grant on the twenty-fifth of May, seventeen days after the time
of his setting out.

The first casualty of importance at Spottsylvania was the killing of
General Sedgwick by a Confederate sharpshooter. This one sharpshooter
had already sent his bullets through twenty men as the Federals were
trying to establish themselves in position. So deadly was his aim that
in spite of the distance he seemed to be able to hit anybody that he
shot at. After a little experience with him the men who were engaged in
erecting fortifications shrank from their work, and General Sedgwick
rebuked them, saying that at such a distance the best sharpshooter
couldn't hit an elephant. A moment later he fell dead pierced through
by a bullet from the sharpshooter's rifle.

By the evening of the ninth of May the two armies confronted each
other, each behind its breastworks. A little fighting of a severe
character occurred that evening on the Confederate left, both sides
losing heavily, and neither gaining any advantage of moment. On the
next day the fighting was renewed with desperation upon both sides.
Several times the Federalists reached the Confederate breastworks,
and held them for a few moments, but upon every occasion they were
driven back. In their retreat they carried away some prisoners, some
battle flags, and other trophies, but none of the guns that they had
temporarily captured.

Thus the fighting on the tenth of May resulted in no advantage to
either side. Grant had failed completely in his effort to place himself
at Spottsylvania in advance of Lee, and thus to thrust his army in
between Lee and Richmond, compelling the Confederate general to make
a race for it under disadvantageous circumstances, and by a longer
line than that which Grant must follow. Thus when the fight began
at Spottsylvania Lee was still between Grant and Richmond, and the
fighting itself was an attempt to dislodge him by assault, by an army
outnumbering his by two to one or more.

On the eleventh of May throughout the day and night it rained
incessantly, and enormously. The whole earth in that region was
converted into a quagmire impracticable for the movement of artillery,
and almost impassable even by infantry. Lee's men in the trenches
were forced to stand upon fence rails and sticks and whatever else
they could get to keep themselves from sinking to their knees in the
glutinous red clay, softened as it was by the rain. It was impossible
even to send couriers with orders in the rear of either line in the
rain, and so the orders were passed, particularly during the night,
by word of mouth, from one man to another up and down the lines.
The conditions were of a kind to try the courage and endurance of
soldiers far more severely than either battle or hard marching could.
Yet through it all these veterans on either side maintained their
courage and resolutely refused to let even the rains of that Virginia
springtime wash the starch out of their stamina.

The two lines were so near together at many points that pickets could
not be thrown out even into the rifle pits which are customarily placed
between works thus closely confronting each other. It was impossible
to see for any distance in any direction, and at all hours of that
terrible night there was a constant threat of sudden advance and
surprise upon one point or another of the Confederate line. These
threats were reported by word of mouth, as has been explained, from
one soldier to another along the line. A message would come "Look out
on the left," or "Look out on the right; enemy advancing." About two
o'clock in the morning, after there had been a lull of half an hour in
the tremendous downpour, the rain began again in bucketsfull and some
wag in the Confederate lines started a message, "Get out of the wet."
In spite of their discomforts, of their fatigue, of their exhaustion
from sleeplessness, and of their momentary danger, the gallant fellows
took it up and passed it from one to another, as they might have passed
any order of General Lee's. This incident is related here merely by way
of showing into what condition of cheerful endurance the men had been
wrought by their soldierly experience. It is of value as showing what
stuff these contesting armies were made of in the spring of 1864, when
the issues of the war lay in their hands.

The Confederate line at one point presented what is known in military
parlance as a salient angle,--that is to say, a bend, the point of
which projects toward the enemy, so that the enemy advancing toward
it, and upon either side of it, has the advantage of shooting down
along the lines of the men defending it on either side. This is called
enfilading, and it especially endangers a position of the kind. Grant
decided to begin the fighting on the twelfth by an early assault upon
this Confederate salient. During the night he carefully disposed his
forces with a view to this operation, hoping thus early in the morning
to break through the Confederate line, cut it in two and assail each of
its divisions in rear and at disadvantage.

In this operation he was greatly favored by a dense fog, which rendered
it impossible for his enemy to discover his movements, or even the
presence of his moving columns at a greater distance than a few yards.
Hancock had charge of this particular movement, and he succeeded before
his movement was discovered in gaining a position very near to the
exposed salient angle, and from that position his men rushed with a
wild hurrah upon the works. The Confederates stood their ground as such
veterans were at that time always expected to do.

Hancock's men climbed over the breastworks, and the fighting that
ensued was that of desperadoes in mortal conflict. They were foes of
a sort that knew no flinching and no fear. They fought hand to hand.
They thrust each other through with bayonets. They brained each other
with clubbed muskets. Cannoneers on the Confederate side finding the
infantry support inadequate used their rammerheads, their linstock
points, and even the handspikes of their guns with deadly effect.
Those of the artillerymen who had none of these instruments to use did
that which is not often done in war. They drew their short artillery
swords--blades resembling the bowie knife in shortness--and fought with
them to the death.

So sudden was the onset and so overwhelming was Hancock's force that in
spite of its desperate resistance the small Confederate body holding
the salient was overcome, and the greater part of it captured. It
consisted of General Edward Johnson's division of about 3,000 men,
together with twenty guns, which were immediately turned upon such of
the Confederates as had succeeded in avoiding capture.

Flushed by this success, and believing that they had finally broken
the Confederate line, Hancock's men pushed on towards Spottsylvania
Court House, until they encountered a second line of entrenchments,
which, in spite of rain and fog and mud had been thrown up during that
night of storm across the rear of that dangerously salient angle. Those
entrenchments were manned by the flower of Lee's army, and they quickly
brought to nought the triumphant march of an enemy who had supposed
that his hard work was, for the time being, done,--that the Army of
Northern Virginia was broken in two, and must seek safety in flight.

It was here more conspicuously than anywhere else in all the history
of the war that the superb staying power of Lee's veterans was
illustrated. At the salient their line of battle had been successfully
broken, but at a brief distance in rear of the salient that line of
battle stood fast and irresistible to any assault that even Hancock's
victorious veterans might make upon it. Here we have a single fact
which might be multiplied many times over, which serves to show how
and why it was that this contest of 1864 was from beginning to end
so bloody and so determined. The time had come when the morale of
both armies was perfect, and when each was invincible, except by the
pressure of utterly overwhelming force. The time had come when the
Americans who were fighting on those Virginia fields were perfect
soldiers, immeasurably superior in stamina, in courage, and in devotion
to any regulars who were ever drilled into obedience and endurance in
any country of the world, before or since. This, the historian believes
to be a simple statement of fact which should be recorded in history
and not forgotten or overlooked by those persons, who in the twentieth
century shall study the story of what Americans did during the first
hundred years of the Republic's vigorous life.

But the fighting already described was only a shadowy beginning of that
which was presently to follow. The Confederates were not content with
having hurled back Hancock's assault at the base of their captured
salient, but were determined to retake the salient itself, although the
difficulty of doing so was appalling. What had been a salient angle in
possession of the Confederates became a reëntering angle as soon as
it was held by the Federals. For the Confederates to push their force
into it was for them to encounter a destructive fire from either side,
not only enfilading their lines, but sweeping them from front and rear
at the same moment. Nevertheless, and with a courage too splendid to
be fitly characterized by any adjective in the language, they promptly
followed Hancock's men as the latter retired under pressure to the
entrenchments of the salient angle. At that point the Federal troops
leaping over the works to their own side of them, used them as their
own in the defensive operation. Time after time--five times in all--the
Confederates pressed forward, enduring the bloodiest slaughter in their
attempt to retake the angle, amid a fire of hell from the front, both
flanks and diagonally from the rear. All day long this struggle was
continued. The Confederates in spite of the slaughter, and despite
all their disadvantages, forced their way, step by step, back to the
captured works, and there fought hand to hand over the small embankment
with their enemy on the other side.

The embankment itself was a frail structure of logs, from which the
rain had washed away the greater part of the earth that was intended
to give it a power of resistance against fire. Huddled on either
side of it--the Federals on the one side and the Confederates on the
other--they fought over and through it, throughout the hours of that
terrible day. Sometimes they thrust their bayonets through the crevices
in the log barrier, and thus ran each other through. Sometimes they
fired through those crevices upon enemies less than ten feet away.
Sometimes the men on one side or the other would suddenly mount upon
the small parapet, and with bullet or bayonet, assail their adversaries
on the other side.

This spot in the annals of the war is fitly called "The bloody angle at
Spottsylvania." The fighting there lasted throughout the day and until
after midnight of the twelfth. It was a fighting of blind fury from
beginning to end. It was such a struggle as few wars have ever given
birth to, and it illustrated in the most conspicuous way imaginable
that American heroism which made our war so terrible in its conduct,
and so glorious in its memory. At every point in the bloody angle when
the fighting was done dead men lay piled, one upon another, sometimes
five deep. Wounded men were often imprisoned under the dead, unable to
extricate themselves, at a time when there were none to rescue them.
Every bush and every sapling that constituted the thicket there was cut
away by a stream of bullets, as grass is before a mower's scythe. Even
an oak tree nearly two feet thick was worn in two near its base by the
continual and incessant stroke of leaden balls until it fell, crushing
some of the Confederates who were fighting beneath its branches.

Is not the question a pertinent one--what did the little charge of the
six hundred at Balaklava amount to as an exhibition of human heroism in
comparison with such a fight as this? Has the age of poetry passed? And
have the poets forgotten their cunning that not one of them has ever
yet celebrated in song such American deeds as these, or as Pickett's
charge at Gettysburg, or as Grant's assault at Cold Harbor, or as
the six matchless advances of the Federals upon Marye's Heights at
Fredericksburg? Or is it merely that our poets have been embarrassed by
the very richness of our Confederate war in deeds of derring-do?

On neither side have the losses in this struggle at the death angle
been separately computed with even such tolerable accuracy as might
justify the historian in the use of round numbers. But the slaughter,
it is certain, was as terrific as at any other point of fighting during
the entire war, with the possible exception of Cold Harbor, a little
later.

After midnight the Confederates withdrew from the apex of the angle to
their second line at its base, and for that day the fighting was over.

Concerning this struggle Dr. Rossiter Johnson in his "History of the
War of Secession" has written a sentence so wise and so just that no
apology is needed for incorporating it in the text of the present
work. He wrote, "If courage were all that a nation required, there was
courage enough at Spottsylvania, on either side of the entrenchments,
to have made a nation out of every state in the Union."




CHAPTER XLVII

COLD HARBOR AND ON TO PETERSBURG


A week of desperate fighting had convinced Grant that he could not
break through or overlap or force back Lee's stubborn line of defense
at Spottsylvania. After another week devoted to a study of the problem
the Federal commander decided to make another movement by his left
flank, similar to that which he had made from the Wilderness. He had
in the meantime replenished his supplies of food and ammunition, and
in spite of continuous fighting in a small way throughout the week of
pause, he had succeeded in reorganizing such of his forces as had been
broken, and in resting those of them whose previous exertions had been
most exhausting.

On the nineteenth the Confederates under Ewell sharply assailed
the Federal right, and a considerable conflict ensued. But in its
proportions it was insignificant as compared with the fighting done a
week before.

Grant's next objective point was the North Anna river at or near
Hanover Court House. He moved one corps at a time, keeping them twelve
hours apart, by way of confusing his enemy, and if possible bringing on
a fight in the open field before Lee could have time to throw up those
hasty entrenchments which had hitherto, slender as they were, given
him a great advantage in the struggle. This hope was disappointed.
Lee was too wily a strategist not to perceive and avoid his enemy's
purpose. Moving hurriedly and upon a somewhat shorter line than Grant's
he reached and crossed the North Anna before Grant got there, and so
established his line that Grant could not assail it without dividing
his own army into three parts, each separated from the others by a bend
of the river, and each in danger of being crushed before it could be
supported. There was some severe fighting at this point, involving a
loss of two or three thousand men on either side, but nothing occurred
that could be called a pitched battle, or that deserves more than a
mention in comparison with the other splendid contests of that campaign.

Having satisfied himself that there was no thoroughfare here, Grant
determined upon a still further movement by his left flank, similar
to those already made. He moved on the night of the twenty-sixth, and
finding Lee still in his pathway he almost immediately moved again,
his destination now being Cold Harbor. The Confederates promptly moved
in the same direction, and the two armies met at various points in
sharp conflict, but no general action resulted. In the end they came
face to face at Cold Harbor with Lee again behind hastily constructed
breastworks.

Lee instantly called to his aid all the troops that could be spared
from the defenses of Richmond, less than ten miles away, while Grant
brought heavy reinforcements for himself from Butler's army, south of
the James.

Again Lee had beaten his adversary in a race to secure the commanding
ground at the place of meeting. He had placed his army in a position
where it could be assailed only in front, and the men, who had learned
the use of spade and shovel as expertly as they already knew the use
of the bullet and the bayonet, had been favored by the nature of the
soil in throwing up a line of breastworks which they felt themselves
competent to hold against any assault. Lee's right rested on the
Chickahominy river, and his left upon a maze of little streams between
which there were impracticable swamps. The river in his rear was at
that season very low and easily fordable at almost any point at which a
crossing might be attempted, so that it offered no barrier to a retreat
of the Confederates, if retreat should be forced upon them. Best of
all, as a source of confidence to Lee was the superb morale of his
army. It might be possible for an enemy to carry his works and force a
way through his lines though that was exceedingly improbable in view
of the stubbornness with which his Confederates had learned to fight.
But even should that improbable thing be accomplished, Lee perfectly
knew that his men would none of them run away, but that they would
stand fast by their colors, and fall back fighting to the works before
Richmond. The time had completely gone by when panic or demoralization
was to be reckoned upon as even a possible factor in either of these
two veteran armies. They had both of them thoroughly learned the trade
of war. They were both composed of as good human material as was ever
employed in the construction of an army. They were both commanded from
top to bottom by officers who knew their business, and were disposed to
do it at their best.

Here, then, were all the conditions for a great battle and it was for
Grant to determine whether or not that battle should be fought. His
critics have contended that he should have determined that question in
the negative--that the position of Lee was too strong to invite direct
assault, or to offer his assailant a tolerable chance of victory. It
was at any rate certain, that no assault could be made which would not
involve tremendous slaughter among the assailants, while no assault
unless successful beyond any promise that the conditions held forth
could possibly inflict upon the Confederates any compensating loss,
even if reckoned upon the arithmetical hypothesis that Grant could
afford to lose two or three men to his adversary's one.

Writing near the end of his life, General Grant said in his "Memoirs":

"I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever
made.... At Cold Harbor no advantage whatever was gained to compensate
for the heavy loss we sustained. Indeed the advantages other than those
of relative losses were on the Confederate side."

But the assault was made. In spite of the adverse conditions, Grant
determined to assail Lee there, and if possible to force a passage
through his lines. It should be explained that during all these
movements the two armies had kept themselves always within striking
distance of each other, and that conflicts between them had occurred
at every step--conflicts which earlier in the war would have been
reckoned as battles of great moment, but which at this stage of the
struggle were regarded merely as passing incidents of a campaign marked
by tremendous battles. At Cold Harbor there was very heavy fighting on
the second of June, when Lee took the offensive and bent back the right
of Grant's line, thus greatly strengthening the Confederate position of
defense.

The great battle came, however, on the morning of the third of June,
just as the darkness of night began to gray into the dawn. There
was no strategy employed in this action. There was nothing in it of
tactics, grand or petty. As one historian has said, it was a fierce
battle depending for its results "upon the brute strength of the
forces engaged." Grant simply hurled nearly his whole army against
Lee at a single point. The fighting covered scarcely more than a
brigade front of Lee's line, and upon that short front Lee promptly
concentrated troops until they stood six deep at the breastworks, the
men in rear loading rifles, and passing them to those in front to fire.
The Federals were advancing against strong earthworks, and through a
tangled mass of abattis or trees felled with their branches toward the
enemy, and with their limbs sharpened to obstruct a march.

The action lasted scarcely more than twenty minutes. Yet in that brief
time Grant lost, according to his own report, 10,500 men, or at the
rate of more than five hundred men per minute, or nearly ten men per
second. When General Lee sent a messenger to General A. P. Hill, who
commanded at that point, to ask for a report of the results Hill
pointed to the dead bodies of Federal troops piled high upon each
other, and for answer said, "Tell General Lee it is the same all along
my front."

The Confederate loss in this action was reported at about 1,000 men.

This was the most staggering blow that Grant had ever received in
battle, and the news of it appalled the authorities at Washington, and
greatly depressed the people throughout the North. That a little army
like Lee's, reduced by this time to less than 50,000 men, should have
inflicted such a defeat upon an adversary whose forces were generally
estimated at 120,000 men seemed to those persons who do not understand
the conditions of battle to indicate a lack either of commanding
capacity on the part of General Grant or of fighting capacity on the
part of the army under his command.

Both of these judgments were clearly mistaken. It was perhaps an
error on General Grant's part to assail Lee in his strong position
at Cold Harbor, but it was a mistake prompted by that boldness which
so often achieves conspicuous results in war. In criticizing such
operations it is always necessary to bear in mind that "war is a
hazard of possibilities, probabilities, luck and ill luck." At Cold
Harbor there was, to say the least, a possibility that Grant, with his
overwhelmingly superior numbers, might break through the Confederate
lines, and force his way into Richmond. There was the hazard of such
failure as that which the Federal army in fact met with. For the sake
of the possibility Grant accepted the hazard. Had he won there would
have been nothing but praise throughout the North for a boldness
which had achieved so conspicuous a success. As he lost in the hazard
instead, there was bitter criticism which has not ceased even unto this
day.

Fortunately for the Federal cause, the administration at Washington
had at last learned that uniform, continued, and complete success
is a thing not to be expected of any commander in the field. The
administration, therefore, did not withdraw its confidence from Grant
or put some other in his place because Lee had thus far baffled him
in his endeavors, or because in this instance he had met with bloody
defeat at Lee's hands. As for Grant himself, he was always a man of
calm mind in no way given to hysterical exaltations on the one hand, or
morbid depressions of spirit on the other. He accepted his defeat at
Cold Harbor as a mere incident in a campaign which he was determined to
carry on to the end in the best way he could.

The campaign had now endured for almost exactly one month. During that
time Grant had lost about 60,000 men and 3,000 officers. Lee's loss
has been estimated at about 18,000 men, with a proportionate number of
officers. The campaign in the field was now practically over, and it
remained for Grant to settle his army before Richmond and Petersburg as
a besieging force. The object of the campaign in the field, as we have
seen, and as General Grant has himself declared, was to crush Lee's
army if possible, and failing that to cripple it for defense before his
own siege of the Confederate capital should begin. He had succeeded,
though at enormous cost to himself, in reducing the numerical strength
of his adversary by about one third. Such reduction was undoubtedly
less than he had hoped for, but at any rate it was something to the
good, so far as his operations were concerned, and it left him in
better case for the beginning of that siege during which, as he well
knew, he could limitlessly reinforce himself while his adversary had no
reserves anywhere to draw upon, even sufficiently to make good those
daily losses which defensive operations of necessity involve.

After a week of waiting in indecision Grant determined upon his plan of
future operations. He decided that to assail Richmond from the north
or east was rendered hopelessly impracticable by the demonstrated
alertness of Lee in always interposing the Army of Northern Virginia
between the Army of the Potomac and its objective. Halleck proposed
from Washington that Grant should place himself on the north and east
of the Confederate capital, and conduct siege operations from those
directions, thus carrying out that traditional and paralyzing policy
which had prevailed during the whole of Halleck's term of command,
of keeping the Army of the Potomac always interposed between Lee and
Washington. If Halleck had been still Grant's superior in command,
there is no doubt that he would have insisted to the end upon this
plan of operations, dictated as it always had been by an overweening
anxiety lest some Confederate force should succeed in entering the
Federal capital city. Grant was a man of very different type. He was
not given to fearful imaginings. He saw no reason why those in charge
of Washington city--fortified and armed to the teeth as that city
was--should not themselves defend the capital against any force that
Lee might spare from in front of the Army of the Potomac, so long
as that army should continue its operations against the Confederate
general with vigor, determination and ceaseless activity. He decided,
therefore, to transfer his army from the northern to the southern side
of the James river, to seize upon Petersburg, if that should prove
possible, to invest that town, if it could not be taken by assault, and
by continued movements to the left to cut off Lee's communications.

Here a little geographical explanation is necessary. Petersburg lies on
the Appomattox river, twenty-two miles due south of Richmond. It was
connected with Richmond by a line of railway and this line was extended
from Petersburg southward, by way of Weldon, North Carolina. The Weldon
railroad constituted Lee's main line of communication with the coast
country south of him. From Petersburg west, extended another line of
railway to Lynchburg and beyond, while from Richmond a third line,
the Richmond and Danville road, extended southwesterly to Danville,
crossing the south side railroad at Burkesville, or as the place was
more familiarly known, the Junction.

These three lines of railway constituted Lee's sole means of
communication with the country south and west of Richmond. It was
Grant's purpose, while holding Lee rigidly to his defensive works, to
push his own columns around Lee's right and into his rear, threatening
and ultimately cutting these three lines of communication.

Grant hoped so far to conceal his purposes from his wily adversary as
to take Petersburg by surprise and capture it, thus at once and easily
breaking two of the three lines of Confederate communication, and
gaining possession of a position which McClellan two years before had
seen and declared to be the military key to Richmond. In aid of this
purpose of surprise he set men at work, throwing up fortifications to
the north of Richmond, and sent large bodies of cavalry to operate
destructively on the north and west of that city, while he held at and
near Cold Harbor a sufficiently threatening line in Lee's front to give
the impression that he had determined upon making his siege approach in
the same way in which McClellan had sought to take the city two years
before. He transferred his base of supplies to the White House on York
river, where McClellan's base had been.

Then he began his movement upon Petersburg. Sending a large part of his
force by water, he moved the rest across the James river by pontoon
bridges, all his operations being beyond sight of the Confederates.

In his effort to take Petersburg by surprise he was very nearly
successful. At the beginning of the movement he had Butler under his
command and well placed south of the James river, with an army of
30,000 men. In anticipation of his own movement with the main army, he
ordered Butler to advance at once upon Petersburg, capture that place,
and hold it until the Army of the Potomac should come up.

This was a bold movement, and one altogether well planned. But Butler's
advance was met at Petersburg with determination by the small force
present there, aided by the home guards of elderly men, and men
otherwise unfit for the regular service. These men, though unused to
the work of the soldier, did that work well until they were slowly
driven back and forced to fight in the streets of the city itself. But
before Butler could bring up his main body to support the attack he had
made with the head of his column, Beauregard arrived upon the scene
with a small force of Confederate veterans from the south. That always
active commander at once fell with fury upon the Federal advance, and
drove it back to the hills outside the city, where, during the night a
slender line of earthworks was hastily thrown up by the men with their
bayonets, and such spades and shovels as could be found in the city.

In the meantime Lee had penetrated Grant's design, and as usual had
met it with celerity and promptitude. Marching his men at a double
quick which would speedily have killed off two thirds of them if they
had been in less perfect training than they were, he pushed them into
Petersburg, and out upon the hills that guard the city in time to meet
Grant there in a strong position which diligent labor quickly rendered
stronger with earthworks.

Thus began that historic siege of Petersburg which was destined to
last for many months, and which was marked daily by that heroism of
endurance on both sides which is after all, more admirable than the
heroism of dash and daring.

The story of that siege will be told in a later chapter. Meanwhile
other events had been occurring in other quarters, some account
of which must first be given in order that the reader shall fully
understand the course and progress of the war during that fighting
summer of 1864.




CHAPTER XLVIII

THE CONFEDERATE CRUISERS


From the beginning of the war the Federals had enjoyed the very great
advantage of having possession of a navy, and of shipyards in which
that navy could be increased almost at will, while the Confederates
had neither ships nor shipyards. On the Federal side it was easily
possible to increase the naval force by drawing into the service
available vessels of every kind--steamers, merchantmen, tugs, and even
double-ender ferry boats from New York Harbor. The guns with which to
arm these vessels were at hand, and they were quickly made ready for
service by slight alterations which the shipbuilders of the North were
prepared to make at exceedingly short notice. On the Southern side
there was next to nothing in this way. For a time the Norfolk navy
yard was in the possession of the Confederates, and as we have seen in
a former chapter they availed themselves of its working resources so
far as to prepare the _Merrimac_ or _Virginia_, and send her out into
Hampton Roads, upon her mission of destruction. But presently a change
in the military situation made it necessary for them to blow up that
ironclad ship, and they had no means of providing another to take her
place. At Charleston two or three ironclad gunboats were constructed,
together with several torpedo boats that did more or less execution;
but so inadequate were the means of construction on the southern side
that these boats accomplished very little. On the Mississippi some rams
were created out of old hulks, which did some execution, but which were
speedily destroyed.

On the open sea the Confederacy had no ships of its own afloat, except
the _Sumter_, a sailing craft heavily sparred, and commanded by Raphael
Semmes, perhaps the most expert sailor and daring fighter among all the
men who had resigned from the Federal navy to engage in the Confederate
service. That ship, daringly commanded and daringly maneuvered, wrought
havoc for a time in the early part of the war, but the days of her
usefulness as against steam craft were easily numbered.

Somewhat later a steam vessel, the _Alabama_, was built at Birkenhead
in England for the use of Captain Semmes and his daring crew. She was a
little thing, only 220 feet long, and built of wood with no protection
whatever against an enemy's fire. But she was fleeter than any ship in
the American navy, and it was hoped by the Confederates that she might
destroy the commerce of the United States upon the high seas without
herself meeting with destruction. In spite of the protests of the
American minister in London, this ship, all unarmed, was permitted to
escape to sea, and at Fayal in the Azores her cannon and coal were put
on board of her.

For nearly two years she made herself a terror to American merchantmen,
and was the despair of the American navy, which had no ship capable
of steaming one half so fast as she could do. In effect she swept
American commerce from the seas, not so much by her captures of
American merchantmen as by her perpetual threat of capture which
rendered it a bad speculation for any American merchant to send a ship
to sea, and thus subject her to the possibility of capture by the
_Alabama_.

In June, 1864, the _Alabama_ put into the harbor of Cherbourg, France.
The _Kearsarge_, a United States war vessel under command of John A.
Winslow, lay off the harbor, waiting for the _Alabama_ to come out.
The one vessel could not attack the other in a neutral port, or within
three miles of the shore. But when the _Alabama_ steamed out to a
distance of perhaps eight miles, she was assailed by the _Kearsarge_,
and a fierce battle ensued. The two ships were substantially the same
in size, but the _Kearsarge_ was a chain protected vessel, stronger in
every way than her Confederate adversary, and on that Sunday morning of
June nineteenth, 1864, she made short work of the Confederate cruiser.
The _Alabama_ was quickly riddled, and went down stern foremost. Many
of her crew went down with her and perished in the sea. The remainder
of them were picked up by a British yacht and carried in safety to
England.

There were other Confederate cruisers like unto the _Alabama_,
including the _Shenandoah_, the _Florida_, the _Tallahassee_, the
_Tacony_, and the _Georgia_. These ships largely aided in that
destruction of American commerce in which the _Alabama_ had taken the
lead. But none of them had so picturesque a career as was that of the
_Alabama_, while the careers of all of them are fitly represented by
that of Admiral Semmes's ship.

The destructive activities of these ships were afterwards made the
subject of an international arbitration, and Great Britain was
condemned to pay to the United States an indemnity of $15,500,000 for
her neglect of international comity in permitting them to sail from her
ports.




CHAPTER XLIX

SHERMAN'S CAMPAIGN AGAINST ATLANTA


The plan by which General Grant hoped to crush the Confederacy during
the summer of 1864 and to make an end of the resisting power of its
armies has been set forth already. In that plan, as the reader will
remember, an operation second in importance only to Grant's own
campaign in Virginia was Sherman's southward march from Chattanooga,
which was intended to defeat Johnston, seize upon Atlanta, and push
forward thence through the heart of the Confederacy, either to Mobile
or to Savannah, in either case cutting the Confederacy in two and
leaving Lee with no substantial country behind him. Sherman had already
in the spring swept through the country from Vicksburg to Chattanooga,
paralyzing Confederate resistance there, breaking up all the railroad
communications, and opening a wide path on the east of the Mississippi
river for any military operations that the Federal Government might
decide to institute in that quarter of the country. Then Grant in
pursuance of his policy of putting his strongest lieutenants into
the most important commands under himself, had ordered Sherman to
take control of all the forces in the West, subject to no dictation
whatsoever, except such as Grant himself might find occasion to
exercise. And in giving Sherman his orders, Grant steadfastly bore
in mind his conviction that Sherman was a general too capable and too
energetic to need minute instruction or anything more than general
orders. To Sherman he assigned a command and a duty. He left it to
Sherman's own judgment so to handle the command as to execute the duty,
and accomplish the purpose intended.

Many months earlier Grant had left affairs undirected in a part of
the smaller area which he then controlled upon the avowed ground that
"Sherman was there." Upon the same principle and in the same abounding
confidence in his lieutenant, he thought it sufficient in 1864 to
tell Sherman in a general way what he wanted him to do in aid of the
general purposes of the campaign, and to leave him to do it in his own
way. In scarcely any other act of his life did Grant better illustrate
the breadth and strength of his own capacity than he did in thus
appreciating and trusting Sherman, and in treating Meade in like manner
in Virginia so far as his own presence with Meade's army permitted.

Sherman's problem was difficult of execution, but perfectly simple in
its terms. It was his duty to assail Johnston, destroy him if possible,
seize upon Atlanta, the great railroad center of the South, and push
a column thence to the sea. For the accomplishment of this purpose
Sherman had the Army of the Cumberland, commanded by General George
H. Thomas, the Army of the Tennessee, commanded by General James B.
McPherson, and the Army of the Ohio, commanded by General John M.
Schofield. His total fighting force was about 100,000 men.

Opposed to him was Johnston, who lay at Dalton, Georgia, with about
43,000 men.

Sherman had hope of reinforcements sufficient at least to make good his
losses on the march which he was about to undertake, while Johnston
perfectly knew that he could hope for no reinforcement at all. Sherman
had lines of communication over which he could bring to his army 130
carloads of provisions each day. Johnston's men sometimes had scanty
rations, and sometimes none at all. He had no secure source of supply
in any quarter, as was usually the case with Confederate armies at this
period of the war. Lee's army had received a ration of three quarters
of a pound of uncooked flour to each man at Spottsylvania just before
the movement from that point, and it was three days later--three
days of hard fighting and hard marching--before the majority of them
received any other rations whatsoever. Johnston's army was similarly
starved during the campaign of Atlanta.

On the fifth of May, 1864, at precisely the same time when Grant moved
into the Wilderness, Sherman set out on his march to Atlanta. With the
true instinct of a fighting commander, he had stripped himself and his
army of all encumbering baggage and other superfluities. He had no
tent, even for himself. And he boasted in after years that he changed
his underclothes only once between Chattanooga and Atlanta. He required
all his officers, high and low, except General Thomas, whose health was
impaired, to follow his own example of unencumbered movement.

The distance from Chattanooga to Atlanta, as the crow flies, is almost
exactly a hundred miles. Johnston's position at Dalton was about
fifteen miles southeast of Chattanooga. The country is a hilly and
broken one, traversed by many streams which afford good defensive
positions to a retiring army, as do also the various gaps among the
hills which must be crossed by an army advancing offensively. Johnston
was strongly fortified at Dalton and Sherman, not venturing to assail
him in his works there, sent McPherson to make a détour, and strike the
Confederate lines of communication at Resaca, ten miles or so farther
south.

There McPherson found Johnston's men behind earthworks, and wisely or
unwisely shrank from attacking them in their defenses. If he could have
carried the works at Resaca Johnston's position would have been one of
extremest danger from which he could escape only by fighting on all
sides at once, and forcing his way through opposing lines, strongly
posted and well fortified. But in McPherson's judgment an attack at
that point with such force as he had with him was unadvisable. He
therefore refrained from attack, and fell back to a secure position in
the hills to await the approach of reinforcements. Sherman promptly
moved to McPherson's position, only to find that Johnston had also
retired from Dalton to Resaca, and had concentrated his entire army
there in a strong defensive position.

Even with all his army present Sherman, himself, hesitated to attack
Johnston in his works--a fact which seems a sufficient answer to that
criticism of McPherson which has been freely exploited in writings
concerning this campaign.

Sherman, however, had so greatly the advantage of Johnston in numbers
that he could afford to send large detachments against the Confederate
general's communications, while still holding a threatening position of
his own in front. This he did with consummate skill, forcing Johnston
with his small army to retreat southward following the railroad, and
destroying as he went.

Johnston left Resaca on the night of the fifteenth of May, and on the
nineteenth took position at Cassville, where he seemed to offer battle
to his enemy. But after some sharp skirmishing the Confederate general
retreated again during the night of the twentieth to a point south of
the Etowah river and to Alatoona.

After a few days of rest and reprovisioning, Sherman moved again, not
directly against his antagonist, but by the flank, so as to threaten
Marietta and Atlanta itself, which lies only a few miles south of
Marietta. By this movement Sherman hoped to force Johnston to abandon
his strong position at Alatoona Pass, where he securely held the
railroad over which Sherman had need to bring his supplies in any
further advance that he might make southward.

Promptly recognizing the purpose of this movement, Johnston marched
westward to assail his enemy in flank. The two armies met at New Hope
Church, a point a few miles west of Marietta, and a few miles northwest
of Atlanta. Here for six days there was continuous and very bloody
fighting, both armies doing their work in a fashion that rivaled even
that of the contending forces in Virginia.

By virtue of his superior numbers, Sherman was able to make strong
detachments to assail the communications and the flanks of Johnston's
army, and thus to compel him to fall back again to a strong defensive
position on the railroad above Marietta, on Kenesaw, Lost and Pine
Mountains.

Against this position Sherman advanced with caution, strongly
entrenching himself in its front. There the fighting was continuous and
costly of human life on both sides. There it was that General Leonidas
Polk, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Louisiana, who had been educated
at West Point for the military service, but who had afterwards risen to
the highest place of honor in his church as a Bishop, and had at the
outbreak of the war entered the Confederate service in which he had
risen to the rank of major general, was instantly killed by a cannon
shot which Sherman himself had directed to be fired into a group of
Confederate officers of whom he caught sight on a hill. This was on
June 14.

If he had had anything like Sherman's force with which to contest
Sherman's advance, Johnston's position at this time would have been
one of peculiar strength and opportunity. But his line was ten miles
long, and the ground was so broken that the reinforcement of one part
of it by another was peculiarly difficult, while, on the other hand,
Sherman's assailing position was geographically such that he might
concentrate forces at will and without observation against any point in
Johnston's line which he might select for assault.

Without further following the details of this struggle it is enough to
say that day by day Johnston slowly retired toward Atlanta, obstinately
fighting at every point and baffling all the efforts of his brilliant
assailant to break through his lines, or to take him by surprise in the
rear of either of his flanks.

On the morning of the twenty-seventh of June Sherman determined to end
this struggle by a tremendous assault upon his enemy's entrenchments.
At two points a mile apart he hurled his columns against them with
all the fury that it was possible to infuse into the minds and the
conduct of veteran soldiers. At the same time he ordered all other
troops on all other parts of the line to maintain an incessant fire by
way of preventing the removal of troops from the unassailed parts of
Johnston's lines, for the reinforcement of those defending the points
of special attack.

It was Sherman's hope to break through Johnston's lines, cut his army
in twain, hold one half of it in position by stubborn fighting and
crush the other half by a desperate rush. This plan was baffled only
by the desperate courage and splendid obstinacy of the fighting on the
Confederate side. The Federal columns advanced to the charge with all
the determination that is possible even to the best of veteran troops.
The Confederates resisted with a like determination, mowing down their
adversaries by a withering fire from behind the breastworks, and so far
depleting their strength as to render it impossible for them to force
their way over or through the resisting lines. A very few of Sherman's
men succeeded in reaching the Confederate works, and these were
promptly shot down or made prisoners. Sherman's loss in this attempt
was more than 2,500 men, while the Confederate loss was less than one
third as great.

Thus defeated in his attempt to push his way to Atlanta, while holding
on to his communications in rear, Sherman now determined upon a
desperate move which violated all the traditions of war and all the
teachings of the books on strategy, but which both Lee and Grant had
boldly adopted and with success, on other and most notable occasions.
Loading his wagons with ten days' supplies of food and ammunition he
decided to abandon his communications altogether, move independently
of them, and trust to the fortunes of war for a success which might
justify the daring of his endeavor. He had tried and failed to force
Johnston back to Atlanta. He now determined to maneuver him into such
retreat and in the course of his maneuvering boldly to take the risk of
the destruction or the capture of his own army.

His plan was to swing his entire army--foot loose from its
communications--around Johnston's flank, and to strike the railroad in
the Confederate general's rear, between Marietta and Atlanta. If he
could succeed in doing this, he would easily compel Johnston to make
a hasty retreat upon the defenses of Atlanta. But should he fail in
doing it he would have on his hands an army in the field, destitute
alike of provisions and ammunition so soon at least, as the supplies it
carried with it should be consumed. In that event he must surrender to
a foe vastly inferior to himself in numbers, for no army can long live
without food and no army can fight after its ammunition is expended.

Thus Sherman undertook to accomplish certain great military operations
within ten days' time, with the certainty present to his mind that
should he fail he must fail disastrously, sacrifice all the achievement
which he had set out to gain, and possibly even surrender an army that
outnumbered its adversary far more than two to one.

Following the same plan which Grant was following in Virginia but by
reverse process, Sherman on the night of July second made a movement by
his right flank southward, withdrawing first the troops on his left,
and passing them to the right, in rear of troops still holding the
lines.

Johnston was quick to penetrate Sherman's purpose, and by way of
defeating it he promptly abandoned his position, and fell back to the
Chattahoochee river, which closely flanks Atlanta on the northwest.
Sherman had hoped that Johnston would attempt the immediate crossing of
that stream, and he therefore hurried forward his strongest divisions,
in the hope of catching his enemy in the act, and assailing him at a
disadvantage. But Johnston was too wily for that. He had prepared for
himself in advance a line of fortifications along the Chattahoochee,
which Sherman has described as one of the strongest pieces of field
fortifications he ever saw.

Here Johnston briefly paused while Sherman prepared to turn his
position by crossing the river both above and below. The works,
however, gave Johnston the opportunity he desired to make his crossing
unmolested, and with his little handful of men after his brilliant and
sturdily fighting retreat, before an army heavily outnumbering his own
Johnston retired to the defenses of Atlanta.

Then on the seventeenth of July came a change of commanders on the
Confederate side which did more than anything else that happened or
could have happened during the campaign, to help forward Sherman's
success. Angrily and with insulting comment, the Confederate
authorities removed Johnston from command and ordered him to turn over
his authority to General John B. Hood.

In a subordinate position Hood had demonstrated a vigorous fighting
capacity. He had not before commanded an army, and in the opinion
of those who had directed his operations, he was a man peculiarly
unfit to command an army. General Longstreet once said of him, "Hood
is one of the best division commanders I ever knew. He would fight
anybody anywhere, at any time. But he has no more discretion than any
pugnacious schoolboy might be expected to manifest."

Hood's proceedings at and after Atlanta certainly justified this
judgment of a great general who had had full opportunity to observe his
conduct and estimate his capacities. For surely at no point in the war
was a situation more blunderingly or more bravely handled than was that
at Atlanta under Hood. If that general had had any discretion at all
he must have seen that it was the one function of his army to delay,
embarrass and prevent Sherman's march through Georgia to the sea. Yet
no sooner was that march undertaken than Hood abandoned all effort
to check it, left Sherman free to do as he might, and himself marched
northward upon a wild-goose chase of campaigning in pursuit of the pot
of gold at the farther end of the rainbow. With all that we shall deal
hereafter.

Hood's reckless impetuosity promptly manifested itself. Abandoning
all of Johnston's precautions, and quitting his defenses, Hood
hurled column after column upon the enemy on the twentieth of July
and succeeding days, only to have them broken to pieces in a mad
endeavor to accomplish the impossible. He inflicted heavy losses upon
Sherman's army, to be sure, but his madness entailed upon his own
force losses which it could far less well afford. There is no doubt
whatever that his impetuosity, which some critics have characterized
as foolhardiness, greatly aided Sherman in his purpose of capturing
Atlanta.

Beaten in these insane ventures Hood was slowly forced back upon the
inner defenses of the town, but he had not yet learned his lesson.
As late as the twenty-second of the month he again moved out of his
fortifications and assailed Sherman with a vigor which would have been
praiseworthy had he possessed a force adequate to his undertaking.
Seven times he pushed his men forward to the assault, and seven times
he was bloodily repulsed. It was gallant fighting that he did, but
fighting ill directed and foolishly undertaken. To paraphrase the
familiar quotation, it was magnificent, but it was not war. So far as
the facts are ascertainable, it appears that Hood's losses greatly
exceeded those which he inflicted upon his enemy, a very serious
circumstance in view of the fact of his greatly inferior numbers.

On the twenty-seventh of July Sherman again moved by his right flank
in the attempt to cut the railroad lines south of Atlanta. On the
twenty-eighth Hood assailed him violently, and a severe action occurred
involving heavy losses on both sides. Thus far in the campaign,
according to the official reports, the Confederates had lost 8,841 men,
and the Federals 9,917.

The campaign had been accompanied by various and extensive cavalry
raids, chiefly on the part of the Federal troops. On one of these raids
the Federal General Stoneman was captured with 700 of his men, while
General McCook, who was to have met and coöoperated with him, lost the
greater part of his force as prisoners.

Continuing his southward movements by the right flank Sherman at last
succeeded in placing his army south of Atlanta, where a deal of hard
fighting occurred.

The position thus taken up by the Federals rendered it imperative
that Hood should either assail and crush his foe or make such escape
as he could from Atlanta. His efforts to crush his foe had failed too
conspicuously for even so venturesome a commander to renew them, and
accordingly on the night of September first Hood destroyed all that
he could of government property, and withdrew to a strong position
eastward of the town. Sherman immediately occupied Atlanta, and quickly
made an impregnable fortress of it.

His army now lay fortified almost in the center of what remained of
the Confederacy. A pause for reorganization, recuperation and the
bringing in of supplies was all that remained to him before he should
undertake that march to the sea by which Grant had ordered him again to
cut the Confederacy in twain. He expected to make that march in daily
and hourly conflict with Hood's forces. But as we shall see hereafter,
when the story of that matter is told, he made the march in fact, with
no opposition at all, beyond that of some handfuls of cavalry, for the
reason that Hood, after the surrender of Atlanta, had gone rainbow
chasing northward into Tennessee.




CHAPTER L

THE BAY FIGHT AT MOBILE


In the meanwhile another important blow had been struck in pursuance of
Grant's comprehensive plan of destroying the Confederate capacity of
resistance.

The reader will doubtless remember that when Farragut captured New
Orleans in April, 1862, he desired at once to move against Mobile
in the hope and confident expectation of capturing and closing all
those Confederate ports upon which, as blockade running centers, the
Southerners relied for the export of their cotton, and the import
of arms, ammunition and clothing. From this purpose Farragut was
diverted by the peremptory orders of civilians in the navy department
at Washington, and it was not until more than two years later that he
was permitted to act upon a plan which common sense had dictated from
the beginning. In the meanwhile the Confederates, with that energy and
ceaseless determination which characterized all their activities, had
been daily and hourly rendering the capture of their ports more and
more difficult. At Mobile they had strengthened the fortifications and
mounted destructively heavy guns in their casemates and upon their
parapets. They had strewn the harbor thick with torpedoes of every
kind then known to the military science of destruction. When at last
in August, 1864, Farragut was permitted to undertake that enterprise
against Mobile which would have been easy and nearly bloodless, if he
had been allowed to undertake it two years and three months earlier,
he had before him one of the most difficult tasks that was set for any
naval commander in this war to accomplish.

Early on the morning of August fifth, Farragut put his fleet in motion
to enter Mobile bay. The entrance is a narrow one and was obstructed
by every device that engineering ingenuity could place in the pathway
of an invading fleet. The only passageway into the harbor lay between
Fort Morgan on Mobile Point, and Fort Gaines on Dauphin Island, three
miles away. Two miles of this narrow passageway had been completely
obstructed by the driving of innumerable piles into the sands, thus
forming a fence through which the stoutest ship could not force its
way. From the end of this pile fence eastward toward Fort Morgan there
extended a quadruple line of destructive torpedoes. The only open way
into the harbor was a narrow passage left for the use of blockade
runners, directly under the guns of Fort Morgan.

Inside the bay there was a Confederate fleet of considerable strength,
including one ironclad ram, and many heavily armed wooden gunboats.
The bay was also thickly strewn with mines and torpedoes, the exact
location of which was known of course to the Confederate officers, but
entirely unknown to Farragut and his captains.

On the fourth of August a strong land force under General Gordon
Granger succeeded in making a landing on Dauphin Island. This gave to
Farragut the support he had desired from the land side. His time had at
last come, and with four ironclad monitors, seven wooden vessels, all
heavily armed, and a fleet of gunboats he advanced toward the mouth of
the bay, a little after daylight on the morning of August 5, 1864.

During almost half an hour before Farragut's ships were in a position
from which they could render their own fire effective, the fire from
the Confederate forts and still more from the Confederate fleet that
lay just inside the entrance line, played havoc with the wooden
ships of Farragut's squadron. His flagship, the _Hartford_, had her
mainmast shot away and many of her crew destroyed. Still Farragut
pushed onward without a moment's hesitation at any point until he
brought his ships into a position from which they could effectively
return the Confederate fire. The heavier metal of his guns quickly and
disastrously told upon the Confederate defenses. But these continued to
belch out destruction in spite of any crippling that had been done to
them, and for a time the fleet suffered terribly.

In order that he might see everything that occurred and direct the
conflict with full knowledge of all its details, Farragut mounted to
the rigging of his flagship, and a quartermaster lashed him to the
spars in order that he might not fall to the deck, in the event of his
receiving a wound.

One of Farragut's monitors, the _Tecumseh_, was quickly destroyed
in an attempt to pass over the line of torpedoes in order to engage
the Confederate ram, _Tennessee_, at close quarters. The _Monitor_
encountered one of the torpedoes, and its explosion sent her to the
bottom so suddenly that her commander and most of her crew perished
with her.

The _Brooklyn_ had been set to lead the advance with Farragut's
flagship following immediately in her wake. The _Brooklyn_ was provided
with an apparatus for removing torpedoes in advance of her, but the
apparatus was by no means a perfect one, and when the commander of that
ship discovered the presence of torpedoes almost immediately under his
bows, he stopped his vessel and began to back her. The whole fleet was
now under a terrific fire, and the maintenance of its order was of the
most vital importance. Farragut saw in a moment that the backing of
the _Brooklyn_ must result not only in halting the entire line under a
destructive fire, but in throwing it into hopeless confusion. It was
then that he gave his celebrated order, "Go on, damn the torpedo!" But
as the _Brooklyn_ still hesitated, Farragut immediately pushed the
_Hartford_ past that vessel, and himself took the lead of the line with
his flagship, "damning the torpedoes."

Having crippled the forts and forced his way past the entrance into the
harbor, Farragut ordered all his gunboats which had been lashed to the
wooden vessels to cut loose, and assail the enemy's fleet. This they
did with vigor and promptitude, capturing or destroying nearly all of
the Confederate vessels.

There still remained, however, the Confederate ram, _Tennessee_, a
powerful ironclad ship, commanded by a gallant captain, and manned by a
desperately determined crew. Seeing what had happened, the commander
of the _Tennessee_ instantly tripped his anchors, and steamed at full
speed into the midst of the Federal fleet, firing as he went, and with
the great steel nose of his ship ramming every vessel that came in his
way. Farragut's fleet in the meanwhile poured all the fire possible
upon the ironclad monster to no effect, and many of them stove in their
bows in a futile effort to sink her by collision. Then the monitors
assailed her and so far crippled her, after a brief struggle, that she
surrendered.

The story of this great battle at the mouth of Mobile Bay has been
splendidly told in verse by Henry Howard Brownell in his poem entitled,
"The Bay Fight." Mr. Brownell had written a poem called "The River
Fight" in celebration of Farragut's struggle for the defenses of New
Orleans two years before. Farragut had written to the poet, expressing
his appreciation of his tribute, and at Brownell's request that he
might accompany the great sea fighter in his next battle, Farragut had
taken him with him on the _Hartford_ as a witness to the struggle at
the mouth of Mobile Bay.

The battle there had been a desperate one, costly in life and in ships,
but it had accomplished its purpose. Farragut had passed the forts
after crippling them so badly that they surrendered a few days later.
He had destroyed the Confederate fleet and was now completely master of
the entrance to a harbor which he had permanently sealed against the
world. By reason of shoal water in the bay, he found it impossible to
steam up to the city and take possession of it. But at any rate he had
destroyed it for all useful purposes as a Confederate port. Its capture
from the land side was now certain, whenever any one of the Federal
generals in the field should see fit to move against it in adequate
force. In the meanwhile its nominal defense served henceforth only
to occupy troops whose presence was badly needed by Lee in his great
contest with Grant in Virginia.




CHAPTER LI

THE MINE EXPLOSION AT PETERSBURG


General Grant was a man of skill and genius in the game of war. But
until the summer of 1864 he had never played that game against another
great master of it. He had baffled and beaten Albert Sydney Johnston,
whose reputation as a commander of great skill rests rather upon the
anticipation of his comrades in the old army at the outbreak of the
war, than upon any demonstration of such skill made by himself. Grant
had held his own and more against Beauregard in the tremendous second
day's struggle at Shiloh. He had overcome great natural obstacles in
his effort to take Vicksburg and he had received there the surrender
of Pemberton,--a general who had never before commanded an army in the
field, or in any other way manifested a capacity for command. Grant
had also met Bragg at Chattanooga and beaten him. But none of these
antagonists had been comparable with Lee as a great master of strategy
and command.

When Grant found himself defeated at Cold Harbor, as he has himself
described his situation, he had been baffled in both the purposes
with which he had undertaken his campaign. He had not crushed Lee's
army, nor had he succeeded in cutting it off from its base in the
fortifications of Richmond. He had said at Spottsylvania that he would
"fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." The summer was
still young when he found himself at Cold Harbor unable to do further
fighting upon that line. He had crippled his enemy, it is true, but he
had lost more than three men to that enemy's one, and that enemy still
lay between him and Richmond in a mood of resoluteness and defiance.
There was no way open to him by which, with any show of sanity, to
assail Lee further in the field. It was then that he decided upon a
campaign on other lines than those which he had chosen at the beginning
of the summer.

He hoped by his movement upon Petersburg to take Lee at last by
surprise, to cut his communications, and compel his precipitate retreat
from the Confederate capital. Here again he was baffled of his purpose.
There remained to him only the resource of dogged determination. He
called for reinforcements in order that his army might always outnumber
that of his adversary by two or three to one, and thus equipped with
superior force, he determined, by continually extending his lines to
the south and west, to draw Lee's slender line of defense into the
condition of an attenuated thread.

Let us make this military situation clear to the minds of unmilitary
readers. Grant lay east of Richmond and Petersburg, with a secure
base of supplies at City Point on the James river, just in his rear.
That base was perfectly protected by a great war fleet which lay in
the river and held it. It was easily accessible from the North by
transports of every kind, bringing troops or supplies of food or
ammunition. Grant's rear was as secure and as well furnished as if it
had rested upon New York harbor.

He so disposed his men as to threaten Richmond and Petersburg over a
space of about thirty miles. His battalions and his guns besieged the
two cities all the way from a position north of Richmond, across James
river and the Appomattox, to a point south and west of Petersburg.
Good roads and a railroad in his rear lay beyond the possible sight of
his enemy, and by the use of these he could concentrate any force he
pleased at any point he might select upon Lee's attenuated lines,--all
without Lee's knowledge, and beyond the possibility of his discovery.

From the beginning of these siege operations to the end General Grant's
plan was not that which is here suggested, but another and slower one.
It was his plan to continue the extension of his lines southward and
westward toward the Weldon railroad, thus compelling his adversary
to stretch out his lines and weaken his defenses at every point, and
at the same time threatening his communications with the south. This
cautious policy is explained and perhaps justified by the fact that in
the preliminary operations against Petersburg, in which General Grant
was baffled of his purpose to take that town with a rush, the Federals
had lost no less than 10,000 men in a stubborn fight with Lee's small
head of column. To assail Lee and such an army as that which Lee
commanded behind entrenchments was a task so difficult and so perilous
that it might well give pause to the most daring and most obstinate of
generals.

No sooner was position taken up in front of Petersburg than Grant
began his bold operations against the Weldon railroad leading thence
southward. On the twenty-first and twenty-second of June Grant and
Meade sent heavy forces southward and hurled them upon the Confederate
defenses of that railroad. These forces were promptly met by the
Confederates and disastrously defeated with a loss of 1,700 prisoners
and four guns captured.

The failure of this enterprise ended operations in that quarter with
such purpose for several weeks to come. Another plan was formed
by which to break Confederate resistance. Immediately in front of
Petersburg the two opposing lines of fortifications lay at one point
within less than fifty yards of each other. Each line was strongly
built and each was protected at every point by traverses,--earthworks
built at right angles to the main works, as a protection against an
enfilade or cross fire. So close were the works together, and so
incessant was the fire that it became at last impossible for men on
either side to show their heads above the works in order to discharge
their guns. On either side port holes were made by the placing of
sand bags on top of the parapets, in such fashion as to leave holes
through which the men might fire their guns. Even these port holes
were unavailable for use if by any chance the enemy looking toward
them through a port hole on the other side could see the sky beyond.
The moment a man undertook to shoot through the port hole his head,
obscuring the light, revealed his presence there to some sharpshooter
on the other side who was standing ready with gun aimed and "bead
drawn" waiting to fire into the hole the instant the sky beyond
should be obscured by human presence. So ceaseless was the fire at
this point that repeated experiments showed that any twig thrust above
the crest of the parapet would be instantly cut in two by one of the
multitudinous bullets which were flowing in a continuous stream from
one side to the other.

The space between the works was so perfectly and completely commanded
by Confederate artillery that no general in his senses would have
thought of attempting to cross it, even with the most heroic of
veterans. But just in rear of the Federal lines there was a cavernous
hollow between the hills, where anything might be done without the
possibility of Confederate discovery. A regiment composed mainly of
Pennsylvania coal miners was brought to that point, and instructed
to push a mining shaft under the hill in order to plant a great mine
immediately beneath the Confederate works.

The tunnel began in the ravine in rear of the Federal works, and
extended thence 500 feet. This brought it immediately under an
important redan in the Confederate lines. There a cross gallery eighty
feet long was dug, and packed full of gunpowder,--8,000 pounds in all.

The plan was to surprise the Confederates and break their lines by the
explosion of this tremendous mine on the morning of the thirtieth of
July. It was intended to take advantage of the confusion thus created,
and push a strong column through the gap made in the works, thus
cutting Lee's army in two, and compelling it to retreat.

The affair was badly managed from beginning to end, and resulted in a
disaster which amounted almost to a crime. For the execution of such
an enterprise as this, General Meade ought to have selected his most
daring and determined subordinate to lead the assailing force. Instead
of that he permitted the selection to be made by some species of lot
drawing, and the choice fell upon General James H. Ledlie, who proved
himself peculiarly unfit for the conduct of an enterprise that required
so much of heroic daring. General Grant in his "Memoirs" says of this
officer that, "Ledlie, besides being otherwise inefficient, proved also
to possess a disqualification less common among soldiers." He did,
indeed, order his men to advance into the breach made by the explosion
which occurred at about daylight, but he did not lead them. He remained
instead, during all that terrible day, securely ensconced in the ravine
that lay in rear of the Federal line.

The explosion completely destroyed a Confederate fort and its garrison,
leaving a vast crater thirty feet deep and two hundred feet long into
which Ledlie's men were sent like sheep to the slaughter. Having
reached the crater they stopped there instead of pushing on as had been
intended and running over the weak second line of Confederate defense.
Thus the whole purpose of the enterprise was completely defeated at the
outset for lack of capable leadership.

It must be remembered that at that period of the war Lee's army was
so far battle seasoned that any form of panic was to it completely
impossible. Even when it saw the most important part of its line blown
up, and thousands of Federal troops rushing into the crater, the Army
of Northern Virginia remained steadfast and unshaken. Hurried orders
were given, and promptly obeyed. Within ten minutes after Ledlie's
column came to a halt in the crater it was forever too late for them to
gain the advantage intended by rushing through that slender second line
which held the Jerusalem plank road, and which alone stood then between
the Federal army and Petersburg. Under Lee's command, the Army of
Northern Virginia had become as perfect a piece of military mechanism
as ever existed, and under Lee's command, for both Lee and Beauregard
were promptly present at the post of danger, the men of that army were
quickly shifted into positions against which an advance of their enemy
would have been nothing less than wholesale suicide.

In the meanwhile Ledlie's men in the crater were as helpless to retire
as they were to advance. They were practically leaderless and the space
in rear of them was already commanded by Confederate artillery which
could sweep it with canister from end to end. To this commanding force
of artillery Lee promptly added thirty-five other guns, placing each in
a position from which it could hurl its missiles from one end to the
other of the doomed space.

It was not until after midday that these preparations and others of
a like kind were completed. But in the meanwhile detachments from
Lamkin's battery of mortars were pushed up and placed behind traverses
within sixty yards of that cavernous hole in which thousands of Federal
soldiers were lying helpless for lack of a leader fit to command them.
These mortars continued ceaselessly throughout the morning to hurl
twenty-four-pound shells into the hole at the rate of twenty a minute.
This fire was murderous in an extreme degree, but there was no escape
from it. The men subjected to it had no choice but to sit still and
await the end. They could neither advance nor retreat with any hope of
escape in either direction.

Finally a little after midday, and after he had completed his
preparations and the placing of his guns, Lee ordered Mahone, with a
heavy infantry force, to charge across the field to the very edge of
the crater, and pour into it a fire so destructive that its further
tenancy should be rendered impossible. The more desperate of the
Federal troops in the hole risked flight toward their own lines, fifty
yards away. Not many of them succeeded in getting there. The rest
surrendered, and the Confederates occupied the crater.

The narrow space between the two lines was literally piled high with
dead Federal soldiers, lying on top of each other, sometimes three
deep, and in some places five. A day later there was a suspension of
hostilities for a few hours, and the dead were dragged away and buried.

This badly managed affair well nigh rivaled the blunder at Cold Harbor
in its costliness to the Army of the Potomac. Grant's loss was more
than 4,000 men,--Lee's less than 1,000.

The whole enterprise was of doubtful military propriety. Yet if it had
been conducted with an energy and capability equal to that which had
been brought to bear upon other fields it might have promised the
early and complete destruction of Lee's defenses. If there had been,
in command of the troops set apart for the assault, such a man as
Sheridan, for example, or Hooker, or Hancock, the chance was an even
one or better that the force hurled suddenly upon Lee's broken line
could have made its way into Petersburg by impetuous advance. It must
be accounted one of General Meade's rare failures in judgment, that he
did not place the assailing force under some such commander upon whom
he could depend to give wise personal direction and leadership to the
desperate fighting needed on such an occasion.

In its outcome, this enterprise which had been planned for
the destruction of Lee and his army, resulted rather in their
strengthening. Having recaptured the crater they promptly threw up a
line of works along that side of it which lay nearest to their enemy,
thus in fact, shortening the distance between the two lines, without in
any way weakening their position.

An unfortunate circumstance connected with this affair was the fact
that General Burnside, who had general command in that part of the
field, made a desperate endeavor--which came a few minutes too late--to
force the Confederate second line by an advance of the negro troops
under his command. These pushed themselves as far forward up the hill
as they could go and were there hurled back and driven into the great
pit. In the event many of them were captured. The Confederates refused
to recognize these black men as soldiers or to treat them as prisoners
of war. It was a time, indeed, when the Southern soldiers were in
a state of peculiar exasperation and revengefulness against negroes
in arms. During a recent raid certain negro troops had committed
unforgiveable outrages upon women, and in consequence the mood of mind
of the Army of Northern Virginia was such that a negro soldier in arms
had better have fallen into hell than into their hands. General Lee and
his subordinates did what they could to compel a merciful treatment
for the negro troops who were captured in the crater. It was all to no
purpose. Every effort made to send these men to the rear as prisoners
under charge of details ended in a report from the commander of the
detail that the negroes had "escaped." Their escape was of such kind
that burial parties had to be sent into the covered ways leading to
Petersburg to clear them of the negro corpses there.

General Grant has said of this mine enterprise: "The effort was a
stupendous failure. It cost us about 4,000 men, mostly however,
captured; and all due to inefficiency on the part of the corps
commander (Burnside) and the incompetency of the division commander
(Ledlie) who were sent to lead the assault."




CHAPTER LII

EARLY'S INVASION OF PENNSYLVANIA


It will be remembered that General Grant set out upon his Virginia
campaign of 1864 with the definite and avowed purpose of crushing
and destroying Lee in the field. The completeness of his failure
to accomplish this purpose was made manifest in July, when Lee,
confronting the consolidated armies of the Potomac and the James,
nevertheless felt himself strong enough to detach from his own force
a vigorous body of troops under Early, with instructions to sweep
Hunter out of the Valley of Virginia and undertake a third invasion of
Maryland, so conducted as to threaten Baltimore and Washington.

This movement was a peculiarly daring one, but the strategy of it
was brilliant. The detachment of the troops sent to Early seriously
weakened the force that Lee had under his command for the defense of
the Confederate capital, but he hoped for such results from Early's
movement as should again compel the Federal Government to weaken or
withdraw Grant's army from the siege of Petersburg. He had twice before
succeeded by such tactics in compelling the Army of the Potomac to
withdraw from Virginia and stand upon its defense at the North. In both
instances as soon as that army had withdrawn Lee himself had moved with
all his force to the support of the invading column. There is little
doubt that he intended to repeat this operation if Early's threat to
Washington should prove effective in compelling Grant's withdrawal from
Virginia. But by this time volunteering by hundreds of thousands and
drafts, some of which brought as many as half a million men into the
field, had so enormously increased the Federal numbers that Grant was
strongly disposed to leave the defense of Washington to quite other
troops than those he had with him in his operations at Petersburg. The
disparity of numbers between the two armies had now become too great to
be offset by brilliant strategy, or by any energy in daring enterprise.

Hunter had so far carried out Grant's plan of ravaging the Valley of
Virginia and moving upon the Confederate lines of communication at
Lynchburg, as to create in Lee's mind a serious apprehension. Partly
to meet this danger, and partly with a larger strategic purpose,
Lee detached Early, and sent him down the Valley with about 8,000
men. Slipping into the upper or southern end of the valley without
discovery, Early plunged forward impetuously, and so completely broke
Hunter's resistance that that general, instead of retiring before his
enemy toward the Potomac, abandoned the field completely, and took
refuge in West Virginia, thus leaving Early's pathway to the region
beyond the Potomac open and unobstructed. Early was an officer of
extraordinary vigor and promptitude. He quickly crossed the Potomac
and pushed on to Monocacy near the city of Frederick. There he was met
by a force under General Lew Wallace on the ninth of July. Hurling
his army upon Wallace he quickly swept him from the field. He then
pushed forward until, on the eleventh of July, he came within sight of
Washington City itself, and for a time it was gravely feared there that
he would enter and possess the Federal capital.

Grant had known nothing of Early's detachment from Lee's army until the
news came to him that the Confederates were marching upon Washington in
threatening force. As has been said before, it was Grant's conviction
that Washington ought to be able to take care of itself so long as the
main body of the Army of Northern Virginia was kept busy in his own
front at Richmond and Petersburg. Nevertheless, as soon as news came to
him that Early had defeated Hunter and driven him out of the valley,
and that the Confederates were rapidly advancing upon Washington,
Grant detached a strong force, and hurried it to the capital city. In
the meanwhile the authorities at Washington seem to have been thrown
into a panic as dangerous as it was senseless. They did, indeed, take
certain measures of defense. They put arms in the hands of the clerks
in the several departments, and sought with these to make some show
of opposition to the approach of the Confederate veterans. This was
manifestly useless. The time had long gone by when untrained clerks,
however well armed, could be expected to stand for one moment against
the battle-hardened veterans who had learned their trade under Lee or
Grant in the desperate struggles in Virginia. It is not an exaggeration
but simple truth to say that at that time a single regiment from
either the Army of Northern Virginia or the Army of the Potomac could
easily and almost without effort have swept away a hundred thousand
untrained militiamen, however patriotic they may have been, and however
they may have been inspired with personal courage. To send a mob of
department clerks, however numerous, against such a force as that
which Early commanded was like sending sheep to a contest with wolves.
It meant the butchery of the poor fellows, without the smallest hope
that their sacrifice of life could yield anything of advantage to the
Federal cause or could delay the Confederate progress by more than
a few minutes at the most. But Grant had promptly met the danger by
hurrying two corps of his veterans to Washington city. Fortunately for
the Federal cause, this force got there in time to interpose itself
effectively between Early and the capital.

After burning the city of Chambersburg Early was compelled to retire,
which he did at once without loss, taking up a strong position in
the Valley of Virginia, where his presence as a continual threat to
Washington city was more effective than his coöperation with Lee at
Petersburg could have been.

Posted in the valley, Early's little force of 8,000 men served to
occupy twice or thrice that number of Grant's troops in the defense of
Washington, and in preparation for repelling an apprehended invasion of
the country north of that city.

This Monocacy campaign, as it is called in history, involved no great
battle, but as a strategic influence it was an achievement of the
utmost importance to General Lee. Before that campaign was begun
Hunter's presence in the Valley and his mastery there served not only
to cut off from Lee the rich supplies which it was his custom to draw
from that quarter of the country, but also to threaten him dangerously
in the rear. If Hunter had been let alone, he must presently have
forced his way to Lynchburg, cutting Lee's chief line of communication
with the south and west, and opening the way to a junction between his
own force and the forces which were pushing forward by Grant's order
from Tennessee toward that point. By the detachment of Early with
8,000 men Lee had succeeded in preventing all this; in driving Hunter
beyond the mountains into West Virginia, where his force could render
no assistance whatever to Grant's campaign; in clearing the valley of
all Federal forces; and in compelling Grant to keep at Washington a
strong force which he might otherwise have utilized in his operations
at Petersburg.

For several months after the Monocacy campaign this continued to be
the situation. It grew at last so intolerable to Grant that he sent
Sheridan to the Valley to drive Early out, and possess that fair
region. In the meanwhile the results of Early's brilliant campaign with
a handful of men, and his still more important success in holding the
Valley of Virginia with that same handful of men, had its influence
upon operations at the principal seat of hostilities.




CHAPTER LIII

OPERATIONS AT PETERSBURG AND SHERIDAN'S VALLEY CAMPAIGN


In the mine operation General Grant had been baffled even more
conspicuously than at the Wilderness or at Spottsylvania or at Cold
Harbor. All his efforts to break through Lee's lines had completely
failed. All his efforts to crush Lee and destroy his resisting power
had come to naught. There remained to him--notwithstanding his enormous
superiority of force and of the materials of war--only the resource of
continuing the regular siege operations already in progress.

For such operations he was peculiarly well equipped. He had more men
than his adversary had by three or four to one. He had an unassailable
base of supplies upon the James river to which his vessels could come
without the slightest fear of molestation. He had unlimited supplies
while his adversary hung all the time upon the verge of starvation.
He had a railroad in his rear over which he could move trains at will
without even the possibility of his adversary's discovery. He had
already by the extension of his lines compelled Lee to draw his out
to the point of breaking. Grant could, at any moment, concentrate a
hundred thousand men and a hundred guns upon any point in Lee's line
which he might select for assault, and that without the smallest
possibility of Lee's discovering his purpose. But instead of assault,
which he had many times attempted with disastrous results, General
Grant wisely determined to continue his policy of attenuating
Lee's lines by enforced extension. He continued to move his own
troops southward and westward toward and along the Weldon railroad,
thus compelling Lee to stretch out his lines until the men in his
breastworks, instead of standing elbow to elbow, stood many feet apart,
and held their ground only by virtue of a desperate determination.

On the thirteenth of August Grant sent Hancock to assail the defenses
of Richmond on the northern side of the James river. Lee was prompt
to meet him, and the Confederates succeeded in repelling every attack
made throughout a succession of bloody days. But while these operations
were going on north of the James, Grant availed himself of his superior
numbers by sending Warren on the eighteenth to seize upon the Weldon
railroad south of Petersburg, and entrench himself in a line crossing
that avenue of Confederate communication. On the nineteenth of August
and again on the twenty-first, Lee desperately assailed Warren in this
position, but without success. On the twenty-fifth a Confederate force
under General A. P. Hill was sent forward to recapture the position.
The Confederates made three desperate assaults, but in each case were
beaten back with terrific loss. Finally, Hill ordered Heth's division
to move forward and carry the works at all hazards and all costs.
That was an order which the veterans in these two contending armies
understood, and were accustomed to obey. Ordered to carry the works,
Heth did so, capturing three batteries and a large number of prisoners.
Then the Federals, under General Miles, rallied and made a counter
assault, recapturing a part of the works, but suffering terribly in
the encounter. In this fierce struggle the Federals lost 2,400 men.
The Confederate loss has never been accurately reported, but in such
desperate fighting as was done on that field, it must have been severe.

The total result of this struggle was that Grant held and continued
thereafter to hold a part of the railroad which led south from
Petersburg, by way of Weldon, and upon which Lee was compelled to
depend in a considerable degree for communication and supplies.
But with that vigor and resourcefulness which had come to mark the
operations of the armies on both sides, Lee promptly opened a wagon
route thirty miles long and well defended, over which as a bridge to
the gap he was able for months afterwards to carry all supplies and
reinforcements that could be brought to him from the south.

In the meanwhile there was continuous battling all along the Richmond
and Petersburg lines, which covered a space of more than thirty miles.
The sharpshooting was incessant, the bombardment scarcely less so. But
Grant was not yet ready to make another determined assault upon Lee's
works, or in any other way to bring on a battle in earnest.

The defeat and driving away of Hunter from the Valley was a painful
miscarriage of the plans with which the lieutenant general had hoped
to conduct the campaign. So long as Early should remain in the Valley
it was obvious that continual raids upon Washington were not only
possible but probable, and that these raids or even the possibility of
them must seriously impair Grant's strength at Petersburg. Accordingly,
Grant decided that his first care now must be to regain possession of
the valley of Virginia, and to hold that region irresistibly against
Confederate invasion. To accomplish this he sent for General Sheridan
and placed under his command a force of 30,000 men, or nearly four
times as many as those with which Early could oppose him. With a force
so overwhelming, Sheridan was ordered completely to clear the valley of
Confederate troops, to cut off all supplies that might come from that
fertile region for the support of Lee's army, and permanently to render
that pathway toward the north a no-thoroughfare to the Confederates.

Grant's purpose looked to a campaign of utter and complete destruction.
In his orders to Sheridan he said, "In pushing up the Shenandoah
Valley, where it is expected you will have to go first or last, it is
desirable that nothing should be left to invite the enemy to return.
Take all provisions, forage and stock wanted for the use of your
command. Such as cannot be consumed destroy. It is not desirable that
the buildings should be destroyed--they should rather be protected; but
the people should be informed that so long as an army can subsist among
them recurrences of these raids must be expected; and we are determined
to stop them at all hazards."

Up to this time General Halleck, who was acting as adjutant general,
though no longer in command, had continued in annoying ways to
interfere with Grant's orders and proceedings. A dispatch from Mr.
Lincoln warned Grant that certain of his orders would not be carried
out unless he, Grant, should personally see to their execution. This
gave Grant his opportunity, once for all, to teach Halleck the bitter
lesson that it was now the Galena clerk who had the right to command.
Grant went to Washington and so far asserted himself that Halleck
sent him a message of complete submission, and thereafter executed
the orders of the commanding general, instead of criticizing them and
interfering with them.

Grant's instructions to Sheridan were to put himself south of the
Confederates, and to follow them to the death wherever they might go.
Having 30,000 men with whom to chase 8,000 Sheridan's task in the
execution of this order was not a difficult one.

Early lay at this time just south of the Potomac, a little way above
Harper's Ferry, and was drawing his supplies from Maryland by cavalry
operations in that quarter. Sheridan promptly pushed southward toward
Winchester and Early retired to that point to await reinforcements
from Lee. Early retreated as far as Fisher's Hill, east of Winchester,
and there took up a strong position, offering battle to his adversary
while waiting to be reinforced. There Sheridan attacked Early on the
twenty-first of August and was beaten off by the Confederates with a
loss of two or three hundred men. Sheridan thereupon retired to Hall
Town, destroying as he went "everything eatable."

Then occurred one of the odd situations of the war. For three or
four weeks, Early with less than 8,000 men was practically besieging
Sheridan with more than 30,000, and in the meantime keeping Washington
in a condition of chronic fright by threatening raids into Maryland,
West Virginia and Pennsylvania, by breaking up the Baltimore and Ohio
railroad and the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, and in other ways behaving
himself precisely as he might have done had his force been four times
that of Sheridan's, instead of being, as it was in fact, one fourth as
great.

Why Sheridan with his enormously superior force did not at this time
fall upon Early and crush him must always be a puzzling question to the
historian and the military critic. Whatever the explanation may be, the
fact is that during all these weeks Sheridan was standing at bay in
the hope that Grant's operations before Petersburg might compel Lee to
withdraw Early and his small force from the Valley. So far from driving
Early out of that region Sheridan stood upon the defensive in order
that Early might not drive him out instead.

At last Lee recalled to Petersburg the troops he had sent to Early's
reinforcement, and about the same time Early divided his forces,
sending a large part of them to Martinsburg, twenty miles or so north
of Winchester. Here was a great opportunity and Grant promptly ordered
Sheridan to take advantage of it. On the nineteenth of September
Sheridan advanced with all his force upon Winchester, which place Early
was defending east of the town. Promptly discovering the purpose of
Sheridan's movement, Early recalled his troops from Martinsburg, and
concentrated all the force he had in front of Winchester. A fierce
and desperate battle ensued in which the Federal loss was about 5,000
men, and the Confederate loss about 4,000. In the end the enormous
superiority of numbers on the Federal side prevailed, and Early was
driven into retreat up the Valley. But the retreat was made in good
order, and all the trains were saved.

Early retired again to Fisher's Hill, where the Valley is about four
miles in width, and there took up a strong position for resistance.
There on the twenty-second of September Sheridan again assailed him in
overwhelming force, and after a stubborn fight drove him again into
retreat up the Valley, but failed in a deliberately formed plan for
capturing the meager Confederate force. During the next three or four
days Early continued his retreat until he reached Port Republic, and
the fighting, though irregular, was continuous.

Grant had hoped that Sheridan would make his way as far south as
Charlottesville, but in that he was disappointed. Finding it impossible
to force his way further, Sheridan began a retrograde march northward
down the Valley on the fifth of October. He destroyed as he went
everything that might by any possibility have value to his enemy. In
his report he said, "I have destroyed over 2,000 barns, filled with
wheat, hay and farming implements; over 70 mills filled with flour and
wheat; have driven in front of the army over 4,000 head of stock, and
have killed and issued to the troops not less than 3,000 sheep." After
this march was over Sheridan picturesquely suggested the desolation he
had wrought in one of the fairest of all God's countries by saying that
"The crow that flies over the Valley of Virginia must henceforth carry
his rations with him."

Here we have a suggestion of the barbarity and brutality and desolation
of war! With their barns burned, their wheat and their corn and
their flour destroyed, and their stock carried off by the enemy, the
farmers of that rich valley were left by the decree of war to stare
starvation in the face, and to suffer an extreme of poverty more severe
even than that which wastefulness and debauchery bring to men. With
jaunty indifference to human suffering war decrees starvation to women
and children, the ruin of men's fortunes, the destruction of their
means of subsistence, and their sudden reduction from affluence to
poverty. In this particular case, in order that no Confederate army
might thereafter secure supplies upon which to subsist in the Valley
of Virginia, Sheridan decreed that all these farmer folk should be
completely deprived of their substance, that their barns should be
burned, their cattle slaughtered, their sheep driven off, their wheat
stacks reduced to ashes, their smokehouses stripped of the last flitch
of bacon that might be hanging there--in brief, that these people, men,
women and children, should be deprived of all food supplies and left
to starve in wretchedness for the sake of accomplishing a military
purpose. How long, oh, Lord, how long will it be before the world shall
advance to that point in civilization in which war will be justly
regarded as the infamous crime that it is? How long will it be before
civilization shall cease to be a mere veneer or varnish and become a
matter of substance in human affairs?

As Sheridan retired northward down the Valley, Early received some
meager reinforcements, and with that energy which characterized all his
operations, he instantly set out in pursuit of his adversary.

Sheridan had taken a position at Cedar Creek, a little to the north of
Strasburg, and there on the night of the eighteenth, Early, with every
precaution of silence, moved around the Federal left, and at dawn of
the nineteenth fell upon the Federal forces with all the vigor he could
command. The rout of the Federals was quick and complete. Sheridan was
absent at the time, and on his return he met his army in full flight.
He instantly set cavalry to work against his own men, in order to stop
the insensate retreat. Thus rallying his men he turned them back,
entrenched them hastily, and repulsed Early's assault. Later in the
day he took the offensive, and succeeded in breaking the Confederate
line, and driving it into retreat, capturing 34 Confederate guns in the
operation. On the Confederate side 3,100 men fell in this contest. On
the Federal side the loss amounted to 5,764.

The result of these operations was to give Sheridan complete command of
the Valley of the Shenandoah for the time being, at least, and to wipe
that danger spot off the map.




CHAPTER LIV

THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1864


At this time there was a presidential campaign in progress at the
North. Throughout the war, the South had the advantage of a practically
united people, while at the North there was division of sentiment, and
a violent difference of opinion as to policy. At the North there was a
political party bitterly opposing the administration which must carry
on the war, and even opposing the war itself, as unconstitutional in
its inception, blundering in its management and completely barren of
results.

Here was a fire in the rear with which Mr. Lincoln's administration was
forced to reckon, and the reckoning was a very serious one.

In 1864 the Democratic party at the North set itself resolutely against
the Lincoln administration, and in opposition to all of its plans,
to all of its policies and to all of its performances. In a national
political platform, the Democratic party declared that the war was a
failure, and in effect called for the abandonment of the Federal cause.
For president that party nominated General George B. McClellan, a
popular hero in the minds of many men, who was held by them as he held
himself, to have been baffled in his military enterprises and robbed
of his opportunities by the political antagonism of the Washington
administration, and by the prejudice that existed in Congress against
him as a Democrat.

Grant's failure to crush Lee in the field or so far to occupy him
at Petersburg, as to prevent him from sending Early to threaten
Washington, had proved to be a very great discouragement to the
Northern people. The cost of the war in men, material and money had
been enormous, and there was a widespread sentiment in the North to
the effect that it was hopeless to continue the contest. The political
feeling of Democrats in antagonism to the Republican party which was
represented by the administration was intense and implacable.

There was also a party at the North which opposed Lincoln's reëlection
upon quite other grounds than those on which the Democrats antagonized
him. This party was radical in the extreme. In its convention, which
was held at Cleveland, Ohio, at the end of May, it declared itself in
favor of an anti-slavery amendment to the Constitution of the United
States, and even urged that the lands of the Southerners should be
confiscated and divided among the soldiers who were fighting the war.
On a platform of this kind General John C. Fremont, who had resigned
from the army because of what he regarded as ill treatment at the hand
of the administration, was nominated for President. There was not
the smallest chance, of course, that Fremont could be elected upon a
platform such as this, but his candidacy seemed likely to withdraw from
Lincoln a considerable vote, which would otherwise be his.

The Republican Convention met in Baltimore on the seventh of June and
renominated Mr. Lincoln for President on a platform strongly approving
his conduct of the war and reaffirming the views that he had expressed
from time to time concerning it. At the same time Andrew Johnson, of
Tennessee, was nominated for Vice-President. Johnson was a Southerner
and was at that time acting as military governor of Tennessee. He had
always been a Democrat, but he had strongly favored the prosecution of
the war for the Union, and at that critical time when Mr. Lincoln's
reëlection seemed more than doubtful, it was deemed politic thus to
put a war Democrat on the ticket with him, by way of holding to his
support that large body of Democratic voters who favored the vigorous
prosecution of the contest.

Although Johnson was himself a Southerner, it would have been difficult
to find any man more antagonistic than he was to the ruling class of
men at the South. He had been born a "poor white,"--that is to say,
a member of that class at the South which was everywhere held in
contempt both by negroes and by white men. He had received no education
in his childhood, and it is said, could neither read nor write until
after his marriage, when his wife taught him. But he was a man of
very considerable intellectual ability, and by diligent work he had
come into prominence as a lawyer, before Mr. Lincoln selected him
to exercise the functions of military governor over the practically
recovered state of Tennessee. As every reader knows, this selection of
Johnson for Vice-President proved in the end to be a thorn in the flesh
to the Republican party. Their Democratic Vice-President was destined
to succeed to the Presidency by Mr. Lincoln's assassination, almost at
the beginning of his second term, and as President to do all that he
could to thwart and baffle the policies of the party that had elected
him.

When the Democratic Convention met in Chicago on the twenty-ninth of
August, the situation in the field was such as greatly to discourage
a large part of the population at the North. The demands of the
Lincoln administration for more and more troops had been incessant and
insistent. These demands had exhausted the willingness of the people
to respond, and the administration had been compelled to resort to a
forcible draft as a means of keeping up the armies in the field. This
resort to the policy of enforced enlistment was everywhere bitterly
resented. It was held to be un-American, un-Republican, despotic.

There was also the fact that Grant's great campaign from which so much
had been expected seemed to a large part of the people to have been a
failure. Grant had not crushed Lee, but on the contrary, Lee was so
strong that he had pushed a column under Early up to the very gates
of Washington. At the end of August Sherman had not yet succeeded in
taking Atlanta, but had suffered some severe reverses in his effort
to accomplish that object. At that time also, critical discontent at
the North was encouraged by the spectacle of Sheridan standing on the
defensive in the Valley of Virginia against a force scarcely more than
one fourth as great as his own. There was despair in many minds, and
weariness in many more.

The resources of the country had been strained well nigh to the point
of breaking. Taxes of every kind had been multiplied almost to the
limit of ingenuity. The credit of the country was so far impaired that
its paper currency had become depreciated to less than one half its
nominal value. The debt of the nation had been swelled to thousands
of millions, while its productive capacity was being more and more
impaired by the withdrawal of young men by hundreds of thousands from
their farms and their workshops. The country had given to Mr. Lincoln
soldiers by millions, and dollars by billions, and yet the war went on
with no apparent prospect of being early brought to a successful end.

For to people uninstructed in military affairs, there was little in
the situation in the field at the end of August, 1864, to encourage
the hope of a speedy ending of the struggle. The people generally did
not realize the great gain that had been made by Grant's insistent
pounding of the Confederates, nor did they understand how surely his
policy was weakening and destroying the capacity of resistance on the
part of the South. Under these circumstances, there was widespread
discontent with the administration and disgust over its seeming failure
to accomplish the purpose aimed at in the lavish expenditure of money,
and the enormous sacrifice of human life. A feeling of despair had come
over a very great part of the Northern people, and to this feeling the
Democratic party in its platform made a strongly persuasive appeal.

Among other things, the platform said, "that this Convention does
explicitly declare, as the sense of the American people, that after
four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war,
during which under the pretense of military necessity, of a war
power higher than the Constitution, the Constitution itself has been
disregarded in every part, and public liberty and private right alike
trodden down, and the material prosperity of the country essentially
impaired--justice, humanity, liberty and the public welfare demand that
immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities with a view to
an ultimate Convention of all the States, or other peaceable means, to
the end that, at the earliest practicable moment, peace may be restored
on the basis of the Federal union of the States.

"That the aim and object of the Democratic party is to preserve the
Federal union, and the rights of the states unimpaired."

It is obvious enough to us now that the election of McClellan upon that
platform would have meant the surrender by the United States of every
contention on which the war had been prosecuted. It would have been, in
effect, the triumph of the Confederacy. In any convention that might
have been called to reconstruct the Union under such conditions, the
South as the winning party in the war, would of course have dictated
its own terms.

For a time there seemed to be a very strong prospect that precisely
this would happen. The weariness of the people with the war, the
discontent aroused by excessive taxation, and by the continued
slaughter of the youth of the land, the despair of bankers and
business men over the never ceasing depreciation of the currency,--all
these and other influences tended very strongly to invite a favorable
response from the people to this appeal of a political party.

It was the opinion of many shrewd observers of that time, and is the
opinion to-day of many students of history who have closely considered
the facts, that if the election had occurred at the beginning of
September, 1864, there would have been a decisive majority of voters
in favor of this policy of surrender. But the election did not occur
until November, and in the meanwhile the military situation was
vastly changed. Sherman had taken Atlanta before November came, the
Confederate army under Hood had been put in the way of being crushed in
Tennessee, Sheridan had made himself master of the Valley of Virginia,
and Grant was steadily extending his lines southward and westward at
Petersburg, in a way which even the unmilitary observer must recognize
at last as a process foredooming Lee to destruction.

Under the influence of these changed conditions in the field, Mr.
Lincoln was reëlected with a popular majority of about 400,000 and an
electoral majority of 212 to 21. There was contention at the time that
the votes of the soldiers in the field were juggled with and falsified.
It is highly improbable that anything of that kind was done or
attempted in any considerable measure. It is certain that the election,
as it resulted, represented the determination of the North to prosecute
the war to its end.




CHAPTER LV

SHERMAN AT ATLANTA


Sherman occupied Atlanta on the second day of September, 1864, the
Confederates retiring without a further struggle to a strong position
east of the city.

Sherman almost immediately decided to depopulate the town and make
of it a rigidly military stronghold. To that end he ordered all the
inhabitants, old and young, sick and well, men, women and children
alike, to leave the place. He gave to each the choice of fleeing
northward or southward as each might elect, but all must go. All
these helpless non-combatants must abandon their homes, surrender
whatever they possessed of bread-winning employments and go forth among
strangers helpless and forlorn objects of charity.

Even that "hellishness" which Sherman attributed to war, could scarcely
have given birth to a crueller order than this. Sherman always
justified it in apparent apology to his own conscience, upon the
ground that his army was placed in a perilous position in the heart
of an enemy's country with a long and exceedingly vulnerable line of
communication by one single-track railroad, and that the presence of
non-combatants in Atlanta, most of them hostile to his purposes, must
be an additional source of danger.

The necessities of war have always been held to justify or at least
excuse many things that would otherwise be deemed barbaric and even
savage in their cruel inhumanity. That plea of military necessity rests
upon the assumption that the purposes of war are of so supreme moment,
and in themselves so clearly righteous, that they should be prosecuted
to success regardless of human suffering and regardless of all other
considerations; that they should be insisted upon in utter disregard of
the suffering even of those non-combatant women and children upon whom
such war-decrees as this fall with an excess of cruelty.

In every such case as this, the commander who issues the decree is
himself sole and arbitrary judge of the extent of his necessity. What
if he judges wrongly? What if he permits considerations of his own
convenience to outweigh all other arguments, and, for the sake of
his own repose in his headquarters wantonly condemns many innocent,
helpless, and in no way offensive, women and little children and men
sorely stricken with age, to a banishment which must mean to many of
them a long period of suffering with lingering and painful death by the
wayside as an incident? What if he is moved to the issue of such an
order merely by way of saving himself and his army from the trouble of
effectually guarding a position which due diligence might sufficiently
protect?

At the beginning of the war and indeed throughout its progress,
Washington City had multitudes of people in it whose sympathies were
with the Southern cause, and who daily communicated by one means
or another with the Confederates in Virginia. Would McClellan have
been justified by the facts, in ordering the utter depopulation of
the Federal city, and the sending into exile of every man, woman and
child dwelling there and not enlisted in the military service? Did any
commander on either side ever think of depopulating Harper's Ferry
or Winchester or Martinsburg, although throughout the struggle those
points of strategic importance were inhabited about equally by Northern
and Southern sympathizers.

It is true that at Atlanta General Sherman was in a position of
considerable danger and difficulty. But he had deliberately placed
himself in that position, for the sake of the military advantages
it might yield to him; and moreover, he had almost phenomenally
overwhelming resources in men, money, food stuffs, and all the other
appliances of war, with which to maintain himself there, in spite of
anything and everything that the non-combatants of the town could have
done to annoy him. Impartial history must therefore earnestly challenge
his order for the depopulation of Atlanta, asking whether its cruelty
was really a military necessity or whether it was merely a resort of
convenience, intended to save an invading army and its commander from
petty annoyance. Did not General Sherman by this order of depopulation
needlessly add to the suffering of non-combatants? Was his military
necessity at that time so great--when he had only a badly crippled army
to contend against, and when he had three or four men to its one--was
his military extremity so great, history will ask, as to justify this
enormous cruelty?

General Sherman always contended that it was. In his correspondence
with Hood at the time, in his letters of explanation to Halleck and
Grant, and finally in his "Memoirs" published years afterwards,
he defended his action vigorously and even angrily, as a military
necessity, but always in such fashion as to suggest that he felt it
necessary to defend himself and his fame, in the forum of civilization,
and to make out a sufficient case of military necessity to excuse
that which he felt that humanity shrank from as a cruel and barbaric
expedient.

These questions belong to biography and the literature of personal
controversy. It is the function of history merely to record the facts.
The facts in this case are that Sherman depopulated Atlanta, sending
its helpless people into exile, and ruthlessly destroying the greater
part of their homes in order, as he himself explained, to contract his
lines of defense, reduce the city and all its suburbs to the dimensions
of a military post easily held, and spare himself the necessity of
maintaining a multitude of provost guards and detailing large bodies of
troops to hold a populated place, where very small bodies might hold
one depopulated.

It is certain that enormous human suffering resulted from his decree.
It is certain that women and children and aged persons perished because
of it. Whether it was really a measure of military necessity, or only a
measure prompted by ill temper, or a measure intended to save trouble
to an invading army, each reader must judge for himself. In judging,
the reader should remember that no such thing was done at Memphis or
Nashville or Chattanooga; that Grant adopted no such measure after he
conquered Vicksburg; that even Benjamin F. Butler, whose disposition it
always was to employ all the technicalities of the law in defense of
arbitrary measures against his enemies, never for one moment thought
of depopulating New Orleans during his occupancy of that city. The
depopulation of Atlanta by the fiat of a military commander stands out
in relief as the only occurrence of the kind that marked or marred
the conduct of the war on either side. It must be judged upon its own
merits without parallel or precedent to guide the mind that inquires
concerning its humanity or its inhumanity.

In securing possession of Atlanta Sherman had fully accomplished one
of the supreme purposes of the campaign which Grant had marked out as
the objects of all the operations of all the armies during the summer
of 1864. He had indeed accomplished quite all that Grant had set him
to accomplish during that season. His success had been completer than
Grant's own in fact, for he had overcome the Confederate army in his
front and, after a series of hotly contested battles and a brilliant
display of grand strategy on both sides, he had completely achieved the
objective of the campaign marked out for him. Hood's further resistance
was both problematical and well nigh hopeless in view of the enormous
disparity of numbers between the two armies. On the other hand Grant
had failed in his twin purposes of crushing the Army of Northern
Virginia in the field, and making himself master of the Confederate
capital city.

In his dispatches to Sherman at the time, Grant fully and generously
recognized all this, taking pains even to emphasize the fact that his
great lieutenant's success had been completer than his own.

But when he had settled himself in Atlanta, depopulated the town and
sent its helpless people into exile, Sherman found himself in a sore
predicament. His sole base of supplies was at Chattanooga--a hundred
miles away--and his only line of communication with that base was a
single track railroad running through a hostile country and subject to
interruption at any hour. His enemy occupied a position near Atlanta
from which he could not be dislodged without fearful slaughter, and
the enterprise of that enemy in attacks upon the Federal line of
communications was hourly made evident. Sherman's problem of future
operations was an exceedingly perplexing one. But whatever its decision
might ultimately be, he prepared himself for it by bringing forward
great quantities of provisions and ammunition and strengthening his
rear in every possible way. At every station on the line of railroad
between Atlanta and Chattanooga, he placed small bodies of men,
entrenching them to resist cavalry. At important points he built strong
blockhouses for further defense.

More important still, in anticipation of a northward advance of the
Confederates, he asked for and secured strong reinforcements for
Thomas, whom he had stationed at Nashville, with command of all the
strategic points in Tennessee and Northern Georgia.

In the meanwhile Sherman himself was watching Hood, and meditating
upon the question of what further movements he might undertake with
his army at Atlanta, now that he had effectually secured Nashville,
Chattanooga and the other strategic points north of his position.

He was also busily engaged in diplomacy. At that time there was
widespread discontent at the South with the conduct of the war and
not a little despair. To many minds, including those of a number of
influential statesmen, the conviction had come that all hope of the
ultimate success of the Confederate cause had passed away, and that
it was high time to give up the effort and make peace while yet the
South's resisting power was great enough to serve as an argument in
behalf of favorable terms.

In North Carolina this sentiment took form in the open candidacy of Mr.
Holden for the governorship on a platform which advocated the secession
of that state from the Confederacy, and the conclusion of peace between
the United States and North Carolina as an independent sovereignty
entirely free to return at will to the Union.

This was logical enough, but it was of course impracticable. The
foundation stone of the Confederacy was the contention that each state
was independently sovereign and could withdraw at its own good pleasure
from any union or confederacy into which it might have entered. But
logic or no logic, law or no law, sovereignty or subjection, it was
certain that while war was on the Richmond government would never
permit North Carolina to withdraw from the Confederacy and become again
one of the United States. The geographical position of North Carolina
was such that Confederate consent to such a program would have been
Confederate suicide. Nevertheless, and in face of the certainty of
Confederate warfare, the candidate who advocated this course received
20,000 votes against his adversary's 54,000.

In Georgia the discontent took a form even more dangerous to
Confederate interests. The Governor of that state, Joseph E. Brown,
was almost in open rebellion against the Richmond government. On the
tenth of September he recalled and furloughed all the Georgia militia
that had been serving under Johnston and afterwards under Hood, thus
seriously weakening Hood's already inferior force at a time when it
stood in peculiar need of strengthening. He still further claimed for
his state the right to recall from the Confederate armies everywhere
all the Georgia troops that were enlisted in that service. With
the scarcely disguised purpose of thus taking Georgia out of the
Confederacy and making a separate peace for that state, he issued a
summons for the legislature to meet almost immediately.

Further than this, Georgia's most famous statesman and by all odds
that state's most influential citizen was Alexander H. Stephens. Mr.
Stephens had opposed secession to the bitter end and his selection
to be Vice-President of the Confederacy had clearly been dictated
by the desire of the politicians to placate him and the multitude
of strong Union men who looked to him for leadership. Mr. Stephens
had at no time during the war been on terms of intimacy with Mr.
Davis. Mr. Davis could not distrust the integrity of such a man, but
he always distrusted his sympathy with the plans and purposes of the
Richmond Government, and when the grave discontent arose in Georgia, he
attributed it largely to the influence of Mr. Stephens's sentiments.
For these were everywhere known.

Mr. Stephens believed firmly in the constitutional right of secession,
but, in common with many others, and especially in common with the
Virginians, he had from the first held that secession was uncalled for
by anything that Mr. Lincoln's election in 1860 implied or threatened.
He had insisted upon love for the Union as stoutly as Alexander
Hamilton himself--for whom Mr. Stephens was named--could have done.
Believing as he did firmly in the right of a state to secede and in
the paramount obligation of every citizen to yield allegiance to his
state, Mr. Stephens accepted Georgia's secession without in the least
approving it.

In the autumn of 1864 he was convinced, as many other thinking men
at the South were, that the military problems of the war had been in
effect decided; that there was absolutely no further ground for hope of
Southern success, and that further continuance of the war could mean
nothing else than a needless sacrifice of life and of the substance of
the people. He made no concealment of these views and the number of
Southern men who shared them grew daily greater.

These men felt that in view of the inevitableness of Confederate
failure in the end, it was the duty of the Richmond government to
seek terms while yet it had something to offer in exchange for
terms. Mr. Lincoln's supreme desire, it was well known, was to secure
the restoration of the Union. He had often, emphatically, and very
eloquently, proclaimed that as the sole purpose of his mind and heart,
and had declared insistently his readiness and eagerness to sacrifice
all other considerations for the sake of that one object. His influence
at the North was so clearly all dominating that there could be no doubt
of the ready acceptance by Congress and the people, of any arrangement
he might make with the seceding states for their restoration to the
Union. Mr. Stephens and those who agreed with him in mind, held that
now was the time to recognize facts and take the utmost possible
advantage of conditions as they existed. Mr. Lincoln was anxious
well nigh to the verge of sacrifice, to crown his lifework by the
restoration of the Union, and "the people said 'Amen.'"

While the Southern cause was obviously hopeless of ultimate success
the South still had veteran armies in the field, under command of
generals who perfectly knew how to use them destructively. It was
manifest that if the war were to continue, these armies would inflict
vast slaughter--as in the event they did--upon the Federal forces,
and enormously increase the already stupendous cost of the war to
the North. In brief it was certain that if negotiations should be
undertaken then the South could secure better terms than would be
granted if the struggle should be prolonged until the South could fight
no more. So long as Lee's army was intact--however surely its ultimate
destruction could be counted upon--its very existence, and its
matchless fighting capacity, must offer to the Washington government a
very strong inducement to give lenient terms for the sake of ending the
war without the further effusion of blood and the further expenditure
of treasure.

In commercial parlance the South at that time had something to trade
on--something with which to buy favorable terms of peace; a little
later, as these wise men foresaw, she would have nothing and must
accept whatever terms her triumphant adversary might see fit to impose.

This condition of things was revealed to General Sherman about the
time of his occupation of Atlanta, and he eagerly sought to take
such advantage of it as might lead to a prompt ending of the war by
the political disintegration of the Confederacy. About that time two
men of prominence in Georgia sought permission to enter the Federal
lines under safe conduct in order to secure and take home the body of
a Confederate officer who had been killed in battle. Both of these
men were influential and one of them had been a member of Congress
before the war. Sherman not only granted their request but received
and entertained them at his headquarters. Having got some inkling
of Governor Brown's attitude and state of mind, Sherman seized the
opportunity to send messages to that revolting state executive. He
intimated to him a purpose presently to march over a great part of the
state, and declared that if Governor Brown would withdraw Georgia's
quota of troops from the Confederate army, he, Sherman, would confine
his men on march to the high roads and pay for all supplies taken from
the country. Otherwise, it was plainly suggested, his march would be a
desolating one.

The negotiations came to no practical result. The march was made, and
the desolation of it was well-nigh unmatched in the world's annals.
But the historical fact that such a negotiation was carried on between
a Federal commanding general and the governor of a Confederate
state, with distinguished and influential citizens of that state for
go-betweens, is interesting in itself and still more interesting as
an illustration of the condition into which the events of the great
struggle had brought the Southern mind.

About this time President Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy visited
the South and made speeches there not only to the people but to the
men of Hood's army. In these speeches he bitterly assailed not only
Governor Brown but also General Joseph E. Johnston, plainly suggesting
that he regarded both as scarcely better than traitors to the Southern
cause. Governor Brown's attitude and action in withdrawing the Georgia
militia from Hood's army, in negotiating with Sherman and in summoning
the legislature with the scarcely disguised purpose of recalling
all Georgia troops from the Confederate armies at the time of their
sorest need, legitimately bore such construction, perhaps. But General
Johnston's only offense was his inability, with a vastly inferior army,
to overcome Sherman and prevent his advance toward Atlanta. Johnston's
fighting retreat is very differently judged by all historians and all
military critics. General Sherman himself, to the end of his life,
always spoke of it as one of the most masterly operations of the war,
and no impartial mind can come to any other conclusion after studying
the conditions and considering the factors of the problem.

But Mr. Davis's animosity toward Johnston was of long standing and
it was implacable. History will scarcely reckon Johnston among the
great commanders, but it will always account him a very capable one.
Certainly it will reckon his retirement toward Atlanta in presence
of Sherman's vastly superior and most capably commanded force, as an
enforced retreat conducted with all the skill that any military genius
could have brought to bear upon it, and so conducted as to inflict the
maximum of injury upon the enemy, while suffering the minimum of hurt
in return.

The simple fact, as history sees it clearly, is that Johnston's force
was utterly inadequate to check Sherman's advance. He did the best he
could and far better than most commanders in like circumstances could
have done. He made Sherman's advance as costly and as slow as it was
possible for any general with so inferior a force to make it.

But he had not destroyed Sherman's army or prevented its approach to
Atlanta. He had not been able to make one man equal to three, and Mr.
Davis bitterly resented his incapacity to work these wonders. Mr.
Davis had removed Johnston from command and had put Hood in his place.
So he told the Confederate soldiers, in his speeches, that a new era
was dawning, and explained to them Hood's plan of campaign, which,
insane as it was, appealed to their imaginations and fired them with an
enthusiasm which meant enormous slaughter in the operations presently
to be undertaken by the madman who had replaced a wise and discreet
general in command of the Confederate army before Atlanta.

A more important fact is that Davis's speeches, outlining the plan of
campaign, were published in the Southern newspapers, copies of which
came to Sherman every day. Thus the Federal general learned in advance
precisely what his adversary intended to do or to attempt, and was
forearmed by the forewarning.

Hood's plan thus revealed to Sherman was to operate toward the north,
destroying the Federal general's communication with Chattanooga, and
then advancing against the strongholds of Chattanooga and Nashville.

It is doubtful that an insaner plan of campaign than this was ever
devised by any man in command of a great army. It left Sherman free to
work his will in Georgia. It withdrew practically all resistance from
his front, while the threat to his rear which it implied was scarcely
worthy of consideration. For with Thomas at Nashville and adequate
forces at Chattanooga and elsewhere it was as certain as anything in
war can be, that Hood could accomplish nothing in his northward march
except his own destruction.

About the beginning of October Hood cut loose from his communications,
abandoning every trustworthy and secure source of supply and, leaving
his enemy in overwhelming force in his rear, moved northward. It was
easy for him to break the railroad line by which Sherman had received
supplies, but Sherman had already brought vast stores of food and
ammunition to Atlanta and was for the time being quite independent of
his communications. He promptly pushed a column out in pursuit of Hood
and by signals called General Corse from the northward to the support
of a small force that was holding Allatoona. There a sharp fight
occurred, ending in a check to the Confederates. General Corse had an
ear shot off and a cheek bone carried away by a bullet, but, treating
his wounds lightly, he telegraphed to Sherman, "I am short a cheek bone
and an ear, but am able to whip all hell yet."

Hood did great damage to the railroad and then continued his march
northward. After following him for a while Sherman decided to leave
Thomas to take care of him, and himself to begin the march to the sea.

Thomas was amply able to meet and defeat any effort that Hood might
make, as the event proved, and Sherman, with no adversary south of him,
was free to carry out his purpose of marching through the Confederacy,
again splitting it into halves and demonstrating his theory, that all
that remained of it was "an empty eggshell which only needs to be
punctured." He decided at once to puncture it.




CHAPTER LVI

SHERMAN'S "MARCH TO THE SEA"


Upon reaching this decision, which had the approval both of General
Grant and of the War Department, Sherman's first thought was to equip
Thomas for the task of dealing successfully with Hood. He detached
strong army corps from his own force and sent them to Thomas's
reinforcement. He ordered the prompt abandonment of all unimportant
posts held in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama,
sending their garrisons to Nashville or Chattanooga, still further to
strengthen his lieutenant for independent resistance. He asked Grant to
send to Thomas also all the recruits that had been gathering at various
points in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee. In these
ways he secured for Thomas a total force much stronger than Hood's, and
knowing Thomas's capacity he felt himself entirely justified in leaving
the defense of the Tennessee strongholds to that general with orders to
follow Hood whithersoever he should go and in the end destroy him.

Then Sherman completed the work of destruction which Hood had begun
upon the railway line between Atlanta and Chattanooga. By way of
stripping himself for action he sent to the North every sick man, every
wounded man and every other man in his army whom he deemed less than
perfectly fit for the arduous work now to be undertaken and when that
was done he utterly destroyed all that remained of the railroad.

He stripped his army of all baggage that could in any wise be dispensed
with, but organized perhaps the greatest wagon train that any army
had ever carried with it, for the transportation of food supplies
and ammunition. His was now an army without a base and without
communications. It was his purpose to subsist his men upon such
supplies as he could take from the country through which he intended to
march, but for the sake of perfect security he planned to carry fully
ten days' rations with him at all times, or quite enough to feed his
army on short rations for three or four weeks in the event of necessity.

Now that Hood had gone northward, Sherman knew that he had no enemy in
his pathway except an insignificant cavalry force, and that he might
march whithersoever he pleased without fear of serious molestation or
opposition. With ten days' full rations in his wagon train and with the
country to live upon there was simply no possibility of harm coming to
him or his army.

He hoped that one or other of the expeditions planned by Grant against
the southern Atlantic coast might reduce the defenses of Savannah and
capture that city before his arrival there. If not, he had force enough
to take the town himself, or, failing that, to capture Charleston or
Mobile or Wilmington, in any case establishing a new base for himself
on the sea.

Many years later, at the Authors Club in New York, in the presence
of the writer of these volumes, some one mentioned this operation to
General Sherman, speaking of it as "The March to the Sea." Thereupon
General Sherman turned to the writer and said--as nearly as a good
memory can report--

    Just see how poets glorify things! That march was nothing more
    than a change of base,--an operation perfectly familiar to
    every educated soldier. But a poet got hold of it, nicknamed
    it "Sherman's March to the Sea," and gave it a totally new
    significance to the popular mind. Let me explain. At Atlanta I was
    in the midst of the enemy's country. My nearest base of supplies
    was Chattanooga--a hundred miles away. That place was itself liable
    to siege, and it lay the width of two states away from my real and
    ultimate source of supplies on the Ohio. The enemy might cut it off
    at any time and even if he failed to do that, I could not defend
    the hundred miles of single track railroad that connected it with
    Atlanta. At Atlanta my army was in the air. Its communications were
    likely to be cut at any moment. Obviously, I must either retire
    northward from that place, or I must move southward in search of
    a new base of supplies. As there was no force south of me capable
    of resisting my advance in that direction, I decided to march
    toward the south, thus securing a new base for my self within
    easy sea communication with sources of supply at the north, and
    at the same time cutting the Confederacy in two again and, more
    important still, demonstrating the nearly complete collapse of the
    Confederate power of resistance. So I decided to make the march and
    change my base. That is all there was of it. But the poet got hold
    of it--and so instead of a "military change of base," it has become
    the "March to the Sea."[7]

        [7] This report of General Sherman's words was written out
            while memory was fresh, submitted to General Sherman and
            approved by him as correct.--Author.

Sherman's first plan with respect to Atlanta had been to make a great
military fortress of the place. To that end, as we already know, he had
issued his decree of depopulation. Now that he had decided to abandon
the town he destroyed it by fire.

His plan of march through Georgia was to move in four columns upon
parallel roads, throwing out foragers in every direction to seize upon
every ounce of food supplies that still remained in the country, to
burn all mills, to capture all live stock, to seize upon all grain and
to strip the region bare even of poultry and vegetables. It was to cut
a swath of utter desolation through Georgia--a swath sixty miles wide
and nearly three hundred miles long--in every square mile of which he
should "make a solitude and call it peace."

The desolating march began on the fifteenth of November, Atlanta being
left in ashes and smoldering ruins. Under Sherman's marching orders,
houses were not to be entered by the soldiers--but those orders were
freely disregarded. Only corps commanders were privileged to burn
mills, cotton gins and the like; but there were matches in every pocket
and they were used with little if any respect for orders which nobody
regarded seriously as commands intended to be obeyed. The orders
included a provision that wherever the inhabitants should "manifest
local hostility, army commanders should order and enforce a devastation
more or less relentless according to the measure of such hostility."

Under such orders the progress of the army was marked at every step
by devastation and desolation. General Sherman always contended that
he did not intend it to be so, but to a victorious and practically
unopposed army, moving through an enemy's country, such orders as
those that General Sherman issued could not be expected to result in
anything less than the utmost possible destruction. In express terms,
his orders authorized the cavalry and artillery to "appropriate freely
and without limit," the "horses, mules, wagons, etc., belonging to
the inhabitants," and soldiers were authorized to "gather turnips,
potatoes, and other vegetables and to drive in stock in sight of their
camp." It was suggested in the orders that "in all foraging the parties
engaged will endeavor to leave with each family a reasonable portion
for their maintenance." But as to what constituted such "reasonable
portion" of the property of non-combatants thus to be plundered of
their substance, every foraging party was left to be sole judge. No
instructions were given for the enforcement of this saving clause of
the orders by any authority and in fact it was never enforced.

Sherman's army, moving in four columns over a track sixty miles wide,
simply seized upon everything that it found, destroying what it could
not use, and there followed it a corps of utterly irresponsible camp
followers--plain, simple thieves and robbers--who completed the
devastation by taking or wantonly destroying whatever the foraging
parties had overlooked or spared.

The hideousness of war was never better illustrated than in Sherman's
march to the sea. Its wantonness was never more conspicuously shown
forth, than in a military operation which had absolutely nothing of
glory in it, inasmuch as it involved no battle, no possible risk of
encounter with any force, and no enterprise more daring than raids
upon barnyards and turnip patches. An army of more than sixty-two
thousand men and sixty-five guns, perfectly equipped and utterly
unopposed by any force that could even pretend to give battle to it,
moved over a space of nearly three hundred miles, making war only upon
non-combatants and leaving a blackened path of desolation behind. It
fought no battles--for the reason that there was no army anywhere
to fight. It engaged in no strategy--for the reason that there was
no enemy to maneuver against. It encountered no more risk than does
a picnic excursion in time of profound peace. Yet at every foot of
its progress it wrought such havoc among a helpless people as even
grim-visaged war might well blush to own.

It was entirely proper that General Sherman should march his army to
the sea by way of changing its base and demonstrating the incapacity
of the Confederate country for further resistance. It was entirely
proper that on such a march he should draw upon the country for the
means of subsisting his army. But all this might have been done by a
man of Sherman's commanding ability, armed with such resources as he
had under his hand without inflicting anything of hardship upon the
helpless people whose homes he rendered desolate and from whose mouths
he snatched away the little that was left to them of food.

After an exceedingly slow march of nearly thirty days, Sherman's army
in perfect condition reached the defenses of Savannah on the thirteenth
of December. Easily sweeping over Fort McAllister Sherman established
communication with the blockading fleet and the "March to the Sea" was
finished. On the morning of the twenty-first his troops marched into
Savannah, which the Confederates had evacuated.




CHAPTER LVII

HOOD'S CAMPAIGN


In the meanwhile Hood had moved northward from in front of Atlanta. His
hope had been to draw Sherman in pursuit and induce him to leave the
Confederate city. When Sherman shunned the bait and stayed in Atlanta
arranging for his march to the sea, Hood set out to assail Thomas at
Chattanooga.

It was an absurdly impracticable campaign, which could not possibly
result in anything of advantage to the Confederates except the
incidental slaughter of a good many thousands of Federal soldiers with
no consequent improvement of Confederate prospects.

Hood had with him about 40,000 men, or nearly that. They were as good
men as any in the South, and their organization and discipline were
perfect. But they were led upon a wild-goose chase by an incapable
commander whose leadership gave them opportunities of heroism, indeed,
but doomed them on the other hand to hopeless enterprise and wholly
profitless slaughter.

Hood first met his enemy under Schofield, at Duck river, forty miles
or so south of Nashville. He quickly and easily flanked the position
and compelled Schofield to retreat to Franklin, eighteen miles south
of Nashville. There, during the afternoon of November thirtieth, Hood
delivered a tremendous assault. He carried the front line easily and
rushed onward to assail the second. Again he succeeded in a struggle
that extended itself far into the night.

At midnight Schofield was driven from his works and retreated to
Nashville. Thither Hood followed him with that impetuosity that
characterized the indiscretion of the new Confederate commander.

Then followed a long pause--Hood could not in any wise tempt Thomas
into field battle and Thomas was too strongly entrenched for even Hood,
with all his daring indiscretion, to attack him in his works.

It was not until the fifteenth of December that Thomas struck. When
he did so it was with tremendous force and determination. He crushed
Hood's entrenched left flank and forced him back to a new line of
entrenchments in the rear.

On the next day Thomas renewed the attack with his entire army, and
succeeded in completely destroying Hood's resisting power and driving
his force into broken and disastrous retreat. Thus ended Hood's
ill-judged but audacious campaign.

In the meanwhile Sherman had reached Savannah and his plan of campaign
was completely successful at both its ends. The Confederacy was again
split in two, and there remained in the gulf states no Confederate
army capable of offering anything like effective resistance to any
operations that Federal armies might have undertaken. Had he been so
minded Thomas might have launched a column against Mobile or Wilmington
or Charleston with the practical certainty that it would nowhere
encounter an opposition which it need seriously consider.

All that now remained of Confederate strength lay in Lee's little army
around Petersburg and Richmond, and in such fragments of armies as
General Joseph E. Johnston was presently to gather together with the
retreating garrison of Savannah and what remained of Hood's army as a
nucleus.

The time was drawing near when Grant was to deliver his final blow and
at last make an end of the war.




CHAPTER LVIII

PREPARATIONS FOR THE DECISIVE BLOW


The situation of the Confederates was now desperate in the extreme.
During January an expedition ordered by Grant captured Fort Fisher, at
the mouth of Cape Fear river, and made itself master of Wilmington,
North Carolina. New Orleans had long ago fallen, Mobile had been
completely closed by Farragut's Bay fight and Sherman had secured
possession of Savannah. Charleston was the only Southern port still in
possession of the Confederates, and Sherman was already threatening
that from the rear in such fashion as to render it useless as an avenue
of supplies.

The county west of the Mississippi was completely cut off. Georgia
had been desolated and all the railroads that might otherwise have
carried supplies from Alabama and Mississippi to Lee's army were
destroyed. Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana were
in possession of Federal troops. Sheridan had reduced the Valley
of Virginia to the condition of a desert, while Grant's forces at
Petersburg held the Weldon railroad and were rapidly pushing their
works toward the South Side railroad which connected Petersburg with
Lynchburg. They were also threatening the Richmond and Danville
railroad--Lee's last line of communication southward.

In the meanwhile Sherman was preparing to move northward from Savannah,
opposed only by Johnston's army of fragments, and to form a junction
with Grant.

Obviously the end was drawing near. Obviously it was the duty of the
Confederate Government to make the best terms it could for the ending
of the war. It still had Lee's army, and that army was even yet a force
to be reckoned with by its adversary. It could still offer to the enemy
a choice between the granting of favorable terms of peace on the one
hand and the endurance of such further slaughter as Lee's army could
inflict on the other. The Confederacy still had in its hands a fighting
capacity that might serve as legal tender in the purchase of peace
conditions. It was perfectly well known that Mr. Lincoln and indeed the
whole North were eager to end the war upon any reasonable terms that
might secure the restoration of the Union without a further effusion of
blood or a further expenditure of the nation's substance.

It was absolutely certain now that the Confederacy could never win
its independence. It was absolutely certain that every day's further
fighting must reduce that resisting capacity upon which alone the
Southern people could rely as a means of securing terms other than
those of unconditional surrender.

In view of these obvious conditions an effort was made in February,
1865, to bring about a peace. A Confederate Commission, with Alexander
H. Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, at its head, met Mr.
Lincoln and others on board ship in Hampton Roads to discuss the
question of ending the war. Mr. Lincoln and his advisers were eager
to stop the conflict without further bloodshed. They demanded only the
restoration of the Union and the abolition of slavery in accordance
with the terms of the emancipation proclamation. All else they were
willing to concede. They were ready to admit all the seceding states
to the Union again upon equal terms; to grant universal amnesty;
to recognize all the state governments; to set free all military
prisoners; to give up all property held in capture; and to negotiate
for money compensation in every case in which hardship should appear to
have been inflicted upon individuals.

In brief Mr. Lincoln's supreme desire to end the war in a complete
restoration of Union, and to reëstablish fellowship and good will among
the states was so dominant that the South might at that time have made
any terms it pleased, short of a dissolution of the Union, or the
reëstablishment of slavery.

Mr. Jefferson Davis decreed otherwise. Perfectly knowing that the
Confederate capacity of resistance was nearing its end, and perfectly
knowing that the restoration of the Union was with Mr. Lincoln a
_sine qua non_ of all negotiations, he deliberately and emphatically
instructed the Confederate Commissioners not even to discuss that
proposal. He thus practically forbade all negotiations for peace.
With the Confederacy manifestly conquered Mr. Davis insisted that its
commissioners should adopt the attitude of conquerors, dictating terms
of peace to a vanquished enemy.

The result was foredoomed, of course. Speaking of the affair years
afterwards Mr. Stephens pithily said:

"Mr. Davis carefully spiked all our guns and then ordered us to the
front."

It was about this time that Lee visited Mr. Davis and explained the
situation to him. He set forth the fact that Grant, with his enormously
superior force, could indefinitely extend his lines to the left, thus
compelling the Confederate commander to stretch out his own lines
to nothingness; that Grant could, and surely would, concentrate an
overwhelming force at some point and there irresistibly break through
the Confederate lines of defenses; and that when this should be done,
successful retreat would be impossible to the Confederate army.

There is good historical ground for the belief that General Lee at that
time proposed an alternative course of action. He asked Mr. Davis to
give him the negroes of the South as soldiers; to permit him to put
them into the defensive works, and thus set his veterans free to make a
last desperately determined invasion of the North; or, if the negroes
were denied to him, that he should be permitted to abandon the defense
of Richmond and Petersburg, while retreat was yet possible, retire to
the line of the Roanoke river, form a junction with such other forces
as the Confederacy still had at command and make a final stand in the
far interior against Grant.

It is credibly reported that Mr. Davis resolutely refused to permit
General Lee to carry out either of these alternative plans; that he
refused to permit the enlistment of negroes and at the same time
forbade General Lee to withdraw his army from the defense of Richmond
and Petersburg.

There was left to the great Confederate commander only the duty of
returning to his headquarters, resisting while resistance was possible,
and accepting the inevitable end whenever the advance of spring and
the consequent hardening of the roads should open the way for Grant to
bring that end about by a decisive movement.

The time was not yet ripe for the delivery of the final blow. Mud still
stood in the way; but while awaiting his opportunity Grant continued
those operations in other quarters which effectually prevented Lee's
reinforcement and contributed in important ways to the accomplishment
of his ultimate purpose. He kept Canby pounding at Mobile. He drew from
Thomas in Tennessee strong reinforcements for the Army of the Potomac.
In February he directed Sheridan to move up the Valley of Virginia in
irresistible force, brush the remnant of Early's army out of existence,
destroy the locks of the James river and Kanawha canal, cut the
railroad communications and then sweep like a hurricane eastward to
join the main army before Petersburg and Richmond. At the same time he
ordered a column to move from Chattanooga eastward toward Lynchburg,
destroying the railroad as it marched and thus additionally hemming Lee
in and crippling him.

In the meanwhile his own pounding on Lee's lines was ceaseless. The
object of this was to occupy all of Lee's attention and prevent him
from detaching troops for operations in any direction.

Grant's lines now extended from a point north of Richmond, eastward,
southward and westward to positions south and west of Petersburg,
and at every opportunity he was pushing his left wing farther around
Lee's flank, with the double purpose of still further weakening the
Confederates by attenuation and rendering impossible the successful
retreat of the Army of Northern Virginia when the time should come to
concentrate an overwhelming Federal force against some point in it and
break through.

To meet this strategy General Lee undertook a bold operation on
the twenty-fourth of March which was brilliantly, but in the end
unsuccessfully, executed by General Gordon. His plan was by an attack
upon the Federal left wing to compel Grant for a time to contract his
lines on the left and thus to secure to the Confederates a way out of
the net in which they had been enmeshed. The attack was made in the
night, a fact which would have rendered it perilous in the extreme
had the troops that made it been other than war-worn veterans. At the
point selected for assault the Federal and Confederate lines lay within
one hundred yards of each other, and both were strongly fortified.
By an adroit movement the Confederates captured the whole body of
Federal pickets and sent them as prisoners to the rear, thus reducing
the distance between themselves and the earthworks to be assaulted to
less than fifty yards. Then with a rush they hurled themselves upon
the Federal works and carried them. For a time it seemed likely that
they would crumple up the whole of Grant's left wing and compel the
contraction of his lines by several miles. But General Parke, who
commanded the Federal forces in that quarter, made hurried dispositions
to check the Confederate assault, and after some hours of hard
fighting, in which the Confederates lost 4,000 men and the Federals
2,000, the Federal lines were reëstablished.

All this occurred just before Grant's final and decisive blow was
delivered. Earlier in the war this conflict would have been everywhere
heralded as a great battle. In the spring of 1865--so used had the
country become to such things--it was a scarcely noticed incident in
the siege operations about Petersburg.




CHAPTER LIX

THE END


While all this was going on around Petersburg, Sherman, under Grant's
instructions, was carrying out the other part of the lieutenant
general's program. After securing possession of Savannah he pushed
troops forward to Pocotaligo, a point on the Charleston and Savannah
railroad about midway between the two cities. From that position he
could move with equal ease against Charleston, Augusta, or Columbia and
the cities and towns north of Columbia.

General Joseph E. Johnston had been grudgingly recalled to the command
of such Confederate forces as could be assembled in that quarter for
the purpose of offering resistance to that advance northwardly which
Sherman obviously intended. But for a time Johnston could not know
or safely conjecture by which of the three lines of march that were
equally open to him, Sherman would elect to move. Consequently for
a time Johnston was compelled to scatter his meager forces widely,
holding them in such readiness as he could for concentration when his
enemy's purposes should be disclosed.

On the first of February Sherman began his march. Carefully spreading
reports that Charleston on the one hand or Augusta on the other was his
destination, he moved swiftly upon Columbia, the capital city of South
Carolina.

It was Sherman's plan in this northward march to keep the sea always
at his back. He arranged for the fleet to coöperate with him from
beginning to end, to bring supplies to the several points along the
coast that were held by the Federals and to preserve to him at those
points secure places of refuge to which he might retreat in the event
of his encountering disaster in the field. His tactics were precisely
those adopted by Cornwallis in his contest with Greene in 1780, but
with the modern improvement of a navy driven by steam and therefore far
more certain and precise in its operations than that which supported
Cornwallis could be.

Sherman entered the city of Columbia on the seventeenth of February.
Thus far he had encountered no opposition except such as the alert
Confederate cavalry under Wade Hampton could offer. For as yet the
uncertainty as to whither Sherman planned to go compelled Johnston to
keep his own forces scattered over a line that stretched all the way
from Augusta to Charleston.

It was in South Carolina, of which Columbia is the capital, that
secession had been born. It was here that South Carolina had proclaimed
her withdrawal from the Union and her independent sovereignty. It was
here that the war which had cost so much of life and treasure and
sacrifice and suffering had been born. There was very naturally, among
the now victorious men of Sherman's command, a specially vengeful
feeling toward South Carolina and still more against its capital city.

The cotton stored in that city was brought out and piled in the middle
of the broad streets. Presently it was fired by some agency. The fire
spread to the buildings of the town, and the greater part of the
beautiful city was burned.

The Confederates have always insisted that Columbia was wantonly burned
by General Sherman's order. General Sherman always denied the charge.
The controversy over that point in newspapers, pamphlets and books, has
filled space enough in print to constitute a library.

It would quite uselessly encumber these pages to present here, even in
outline, the hopelessly conflicting testimony that has been given on
either side. All of that testimony is accessible to every reader who
cares to follow it in controversial publications, and it seems to lead
to no safely definite conclusion.

Let us leave the matter here as one of the calamities of war concerning
which the responsibility is so hopelessly involved in a mass of
conflicting testimony that no historian mindful of fairness can feel
himself safe in passing judgment with respect to it. Columbia has been
rebuilt in all its beauty. The country in whose crown it is a jewel
has grown to be the greatest and freest on earth. Surely we can leave
the dead past to bury its dead, so far as such matters as this are
concerned.

From Columbia northward Sherman's advance was contested at every step
with all the vigor and determination that General Joseph E. Johnston
could bring to bear. That able general was a grand master of the art of
so retreating as to make his retreat more costly to his enemy than an
advance would have been. His force was exceedingly small as compared
with Sherman's columns, but it was made up of veteran troops, as good
as ever stood up before an enemy, and it was perfectly responsive to
any and every demand that its commanding general might make upon it
either for daring or for endurance.

The country through which Sherman had to march was swampy, forest
grown, and laced with watercourses difficult to pass. Its roads
were mere tracks through woods and fields, which, when rain fell,
quickly became quagmires. At every stream Johnston's ceaselessly
active men burned the bridges and obstructed the fords. In every
forest stretch they felled trees across the roads, and planting
cannon in commanding positions, rendered the progress of their foes
as dangerous as it was difficult. Wherever a vantage ground lay, the
Confederates--war-educated as they were, and still determined--took
position and inch by inch contested the difficult ground. Not in all
the war was there an operation more gallant on either side than this
advance and retreat.

Still keeping the protecting sea on his right flank which he could at
any moment change into his rear, Sherman left the ashes of Columbia on
the twentieth of February and advanced towards Fayetteville, where he
arrived on the eleventh of March.

In the meanwhile the city of Wilmington, on the coast, had been
captured by General Terry's Fort Fisher expedition, and communication
was established between Terry and Sherman. Thus a way was opened by
which both supplies and reinforcements might be sent without limit or
molestation to the army that was for the third time cutting in twain
what remained of the Confederacy.

From Fayetteville, Sherman pushed on to Goldsboro fighting with
Johnston's desperate Confederates at every step. Thence he advanced
toward Raleigh, the capital city of North Carolina.

At Averysboro, a point between, the two armies came into direct
collision on the sixteenth of March and each lost about half a thousand
men in a severe conflict. Three days later on the nineteenth they met
again at Bentonville and in a small, but bloody conflict, the Federals
lost 1,600 men and the Confederates somewhat more than 2,000.

In the meanwhile, at Goldsboro, Sherman had been reinforced by the
whole of Schofield's corps, withdrawn from Thomas's force at Nashville.
This addition to his force rendered his army almost ridiculously
superior in numbers to that of his adversary. That, under Grant's
direction, was always the keynote of tactics and strategy. From
beginning to end of his campaigns Grant held to the doctrine of "the
most men." Seeing clearly that the North could put three or four men
into the field to the South's one, he regarded it as very clearly his
duty, as the commander in chief of the Federal forces, to see to it
that wherever a fight was to occur, the three or four should be present
to meet and overcome the one.

The fierce struggle at Bentonville which for a time seemed of very
doubtful issue, was the last battle of consequence fought between
Sherman and Johnston.

Let us go back now to Petersburg, where the hour of the final struggle
drew near. The reader has already been told of Lee's effort to compel
Grant to contract his lines south and west of Petersburg. That effort
was made on the night of the twenty-fourth of March and the morning of
the twenty-fifth.

The spring was advancing now. The roads were hardening. Grant had all
the force that he could use and more. His army vastly outnumbered the
remnant of Lee's. His equipment was as perfect as good organization and
a lavish expenditure of money could make it. With an unseen railroad
skirting his rear and a fleet at his base he could concentrate as heavy
a force as he pleased at any point he might select on Lee's line.
Moreover the extension of the Federal line to the left had placed
the two armies in such position that if Grant could crush or break
through Lee's right wing, Richmond would be completely cut off, and the
successful retreat of Lee's army would be impossible.

It was Grant's plan to do precisely this. To that end he sent three
strong divisions under General Ord to strengthen his extreme left,
where General Sheridan commanded. Then he ordered Sheridan to push
forward through Dinwiddie Court House to Five Forks and assail the
enemy there.

Battle was joined on the thirty-first of March, but so great was the
resisting power of the sadly depleted Confederate army, that Sheridan
was hurled back and compelled to appeal to Grant for help. On the first
of April, strongly reinforced, Sheridan again advanced to the attack,
and after a bloody contest succeeded in carrying the position, taking
about 5,000 prisoners, the very flower of the Confederate troops.

The work of ending the war was now on, and Grant prosecuted it
vigorously. At daybreak on April the second he assaulted the center
of Lee's line near Petersburg, broke through it at two points, and by
pressing Lee hard on his right made a practical end of Confederate
resistance in that quarter.

There was nothing left to Lee but to abandon Richmond and Petersburg
and go into a retreat which was sure to be marked at every step by
fierce fighting, but which was clearly hopeless from its beginning. His
only chance was to fall back through Virginia, place himself behind the
Roanoke river, form a junction there with Johnston's army and make one
last, desperate stand against armies overwhelmingly superior to his
own in all except courage and dogged determination. That chance was so
slender, by reason of the situation, that only a high heroism would
have regarded it even as a possibility.

Under Lee's instruction Richmond was evacuated. In the process some
fool poured all the alcoholic liquor there was in the town into the
gutters, at a time when the arsenals and public warehouses were being
fired. The fire, of course, quickly set the rivers of whiskey aflame
and from these the houses were ignited, so that within a brief while
the entire heart of the city was burned.

Lee's only hope in retreat lay in marching south-westwardly. But
Grant's forces under Sheridan had the advantage of him at the start
and their activity was such as to keep them constantly not only upon
the left flank of the retreating forces, but also in front of them
at many points. From beginning to end of the retreat Grant hammered
Lee's southern flank, turned and assailed his front, and continuously
pressed him back toward James river on the north. That way there lay
no thoroughfare for the Confederates. They must force their way to
the southwest or they must surrender for lack of food. They simply
could not force their way to the southwest, and so their surrender was
inevitable from the very first hour of the retreat.

Moreover Lee's force, already depleted to a mere handful, was hourly
losing strength in many ways. The constant fighting was depleting it.
Starvation--not figurative but actual--was compelling many of the men
to wander away from the line of march in search of food. Many filled
their bellies with grass or leaves and marched on, determined to
hold out to the end. Here and there one got possession of an ear of
hard corn and accepted it as a three days' ration. Pasture fields in
which wild onions had sprung up in response to the spring sunshine,
were despoiled of their fruitage by famishing men. The bursting buds
of forest trees were greedily eaten. Even haystacks--when they were
infrequently found--were devoured as human food for lack of anything
better.

All these things and others like unto them, were done by the steadily
diminishing company of Confederates who were determined to hold out to
the end even if the end should prove to be death by starvation. But
hour by hour that small company of heroic souls was growing smaller and
smaller. Many died by the roadside. Many were killed while delivering
their own despairing fire. Many, seeing that further resistance was
hopeless, and knowing how terribly their wives and children needed them
in the homes which a farther march would leave behind, simply went home.

During the last days of his retreat Lee had at no time so many as
20,000 men, all starving, while his adversary was assailing him by day
and by night, with a force numbering 150,000, or about eight to one.
Surely even the story of the Confederate war presents no spectacle
which better illustrates the high quality of American manhood than does
this resistance through many days of starvation and discouragement, by
a mere handful of men, assailed in flank, in rear and in front by seven
or eight times their number of perfectly equipped and well fed men.

At Appomattox Court House Lee found himself completely surrounded.
By good marching Grant had succeeded in pushing an infantry column
of 80,000 men into Lee's front, in support of Sheridan's cavalry
operations there.

There was only one course open to the great Confederate chieftain.
He surrendered on the ninth and tenth of April all that remained of
the Army of Northern Virginia. They numbered, all told, including
teamsters, quartermaster's men and all, only 26,000 men, of whom no
more than 7,800 carried muskets.

In effect this surrender made an end of the most stupendous war of
modern times. As the army under Lee had been from the beginning the
backbone of the Confederate cause, its destruction resulted in the
surrender of all the other Confederate forces as soon as the news of
the event at Appomattox could reach the detached commanders.

Here ends the story of the Confederate war. In these pages a
conscientious effort has been made to tell it with the utmost
impartiality and the most scrupulous regard for truth.

That war began about forty-nine years ago. It is now forty-five years
since it ended in the restoration of the American Union. The American
people are again completely one, and the great Republic has come to be
the most potent as it is the freest nation that has ever existed on
earth. The bitternesses and resentments to which the fierce struggle
gave birth have been displaced by kindlier thoughts in all but the
narrowest and most ungenerous minds. The two great commanders, Lee and
Grant, have alike been assigned to honored places in all our Halls of
Fame. The time has come when all Americans may fitly rejoice together
in the story of the great deeds done on the one side and on the other
in that Confederate war which did so much to give to the Republic its
foremost place among the nations of the earth.


END OF VOL. II.




INDEX


  Abolitionists, vol. I, 53, 63, 65-66

  Adams, Abigail, vol. I, 22

  Alabama, the, vol. II, 262-63

  Anti-slavery presidential candidates, vol. I, 82-83

  Anti-slavery sentiment in South, vol. I, 43-47

  Anti-war sentiment in North, vol. I, 99; vol. II, 124, 174-75

  Anderson, Major Robert, vol. I, 178-79, 191-92

  Antietam, battle of, vol. I, 429-32

  Atlanta, Sherman's campaign against, vol. II, 265-77

  Appomattox Court House, vol. II, 355

  Army of Northern Virginia, quality of, vol. II, 124-25


  Ball's Bluff, battle of, vol. I, 247

  Baltimore, first blood of war shed in, vol. I, 206-207

  Banks, Gen. N. P., in Valley campaign, vol. I, 381-84;
    in Red River campaign, vol. II, 207-208

  Bailey, Capt. Theodorus, vol. I, 344-45

  Belligerent Rights of Confederates, vol. I, 250-51

  Belmont, battle of, vol. I, 274

  Bell and Everett Party in 1860, vol. I, 146

  Benjamin, Judah P., vol. I, 368-71

  Benton, Thomas H., vol. I, 128

  Beauregard, Gen., reduces Fort Sumter, vol. I, 179-80, 191-92;
    at Manassas, vol. I, 215 et seq.;
    under Gen. A. S. Johnston, vol. I, 305 et seq.;
    at Shiloh, vol. I, 323-27

  Big Bethel, battle of, vol. I, 210

  Blockade of Southern ports, vol. I, 261 et seq.

  Brandy Station, battle of, vol. II, 127

  Border States, attitude of toward secession, vol. I, 194 et seq.;
    war operations in, vol. I, 256-59

  Bragg, Gen. Braxton, campaign against Louisville, vol. II, 49-71;
    at Murfreesboro, vol. II, 76-82;
    at Chattanooga, vol. II, 196 et seq.

  Brown, John, in Kansas, vol. I, 124;
    at Harper's Ferry, vol. I, 133 et seq.;
    influence of raid, vol. I, 141-42

  Brown, Gov. Joseph E., of Georgia, discontent with war, vol. II,
        322, 325-26

  Brownell, Henry Howard, vol. II, 282

  British Government, fostering of slavery in American colonies by,
        vol. I, 39;
    attitude of toward Confederacy, vol. I, 254-55;
    payment of indemnity by, vol. II, 264

  Buchanan, James, vol. I, 155 et seq.

  Buell, Gen. Don Carlos, operations in Kentucky, vol. I, 284;
    occupies Nashville, vol. I, 292;
    movement toward Pittsburg Landing, vol. I, 316;
    at Shiloh, vol. I, 323-24;
    campaign against Louisville, vol. II, 49-71;
    superseded by Rosecrans, vol. II, 75

  Bull Run, see _Manassas_

  Burnside, Gen, A. E., operations on Southern coast, vol. I, 354;
    in command of Army of Potomac, vol. II, 21;
    Fredericksburg campaign, vol. II, 19-30

  Butler, Gen, B. F., in command of troops sent to New Orleans,
        vol. I, 335;
    rule over New Orleans, 346-48;
    at Petersburg, vol. II, 258-59


  California, controversy over admission, vol. I, 76

  Casey, Gen., vol. I, 409

  Calhoun, John C., vol. I, 51, 91

  Carthage, Mo., battle of, vol. I, 257

  Causes of war, vol. I, 19 et seq.

  Cedar Mountain, battle of, vol. I, 417

  Cedar Creek, battle of, vol. II, 307

  Cemetery Ridge, Gettysburg, vol. II, 134, 143

  Charleston, struggle for possession of, vol. II, 181-195;
    blockade running, vol. II, 182-83;
    attempt to capture by sea, vol. II, 184;
    topography of, vol. II, 187;
    Gen. Gillmore's expedition against, vol. II, 186-195;
    bombardment of, vol. II, 194

  Chancellorsville, campaign of, vol. II, 83-121

  Champion Hills, battle of, vol. II, 165

  Chattanooga, strategic importance of, vol. II, 53-54;
    operations around, vol. II, 196-206

  Chickamauga Creek, battle of, vol. II, 199-202

  Chickamauga, campaign of, see _Chattanooga_

  "Civil War" not accurate term, vol. I, 13-18

  Clay, Henry, vol. I, 45, 51, 53, 54, 59, 86-87

  Compromise of 1850, vol. I, 71-112

  Confederate States Government organized, vol. I, 152

  Confederate war, magnitude of, vol. I, 3 et seq.;
    compared with other wars, vol. I, 4-5;
    consequences of, vol. I, 5 et seq.;
    causes of, vol. I, 19 et seq.;
    inevitableness of, vol. I, 177

  Confederate Commission at Hampton Roads, vol. II, 341-42

  Cold Harbor, battle of, vol. II, 249-54

  Congress, resolutions of to avoid war, vol. I, 184-85

  Cotton-gin, effect of on slavery, vol. I, 47-51

  Cruisers, the Confederate, vol. II, 261-64

  Corinth, Confederate concentration at, vol. I, 314;
    Gen. Grant at, vol. II, 37-52;
    attacked by Gen. Van Dorn, vol. II, 72-74

  Cross Keys, battle of, vol. I, 394

  Credit, national, effect upon of war, vol. II, 69

  Crittenden, Gen. J. J., vol. I, 160-162

  Culpeper Court House, vol. II, 127-28


  Dahlgren, Admiral, vol. II, 194

  Davis, Jefferson, unjustly blamed for inaction of Confederate army
        after Manassas, vol. I, 240;
    favoritism toward Gen. Pemberton, vol. II, 74-75;
    animosity toward Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, vol. II, 326-27;
    reveals Hood's plan of campaign, 327-28;
    instructions of to Confederate commanders, vol. II, 342-43;
    rejects Lee's proposals, vol. II, 343

  Daniel, John M., vol. I, 152

  Democratic Party, division of in 1860, vol. I, 144-5;
    opposition of to war in 1864, vol. II, 308-309, 311-13

  Disunion sentiment, growth of in South, vol. I, 83-86;
    in North, vol. I, 88-90

  District of Columbia, slave trade in, vol. I, 96

  Douglass, Frederick, vol. I, 135

  Douglas, Stephen A., personality of, vol. I, 115-17;
    of "Squatter Sovereignty," vol. I, 120;
    division over in Democratic convention in 1860, vol. I, 144-45

  Dodge, Col. Theodore A., vol. II, 84, 98, 112, 115, 120

  DuPont, Rear-Admiral S. F., vol. II, 184-86

  Draft Riots in New York City, vol. II, 176-78


  Early, Gen., invasion of Pennsylvania by, vol. II, 294-98;
    operations of in Shenandoah Valley, vol. II, 303-307

  Elliott, Gen. Stephen, vol. II, 191-92

  Election of 1860, temper of North and South as it approached,
        vol. I, 137-38;
    story of, vol. I, 139-147

  Enlistments, North and South, vol. I, 169

  Emancipation, of slaves by owners, vol. I, 44, 73;
    the struggle for, vol. II, 3-18;
    Lincoln's plan of compensated, vol. II, 9-11;
    his plan by purchase in border states, vol. II, 14;
    as a war measure, vol. II, 15;
    results of, vol. II, 16-18

  English people, sentiments of against slavery, vol. I, 254

  European nations, attitude of toward Confederacy, vol. I, 251-55

  Ericsson, Capt. John, vol. I, 299

  Ewell, Gen., called to aid of Gen. Jackson in Valley campaign,
        vol. I, 375-81;
    in Shenandoah Valley, vol. II, 127-29;
    at Gettysburg, vol. II, 135-37


  Fair Oaks, battle of, vol. I, 359-61

  Farragut, Admiral D. G., early neglect of, vol. I, 272;
    record of, vol. I, 232-33;
    at New Orleans, vol. I, 335-46;
    up the Mississippi, vol. I, 348-51;
    expedition against Mobile, vol. II, 278-83

  Fisher's Hill, battles of, vol. II, 303-305

  Five Forks, battle of, vol. II, 352

  Foote, Commodore, secures permission for Grant to proceed against
        Forts Henry and Donelson, vol. I, 276;
    at Island Number 10, vol. I, 329

  Forrest, Gen. N. B., operations in Kentucky, vol. II, 56-58;
    operations against Grant in Vicksburg campaign, vol. II, 154;
    captures Col. Streight, vol. II, 197-98;
    raids West Tennessee and Kentucky, vol. II, 216;
    at Fort Pillow, vol. II, 219-20

  Franklin, Benjamin, vol. I, 22

  Frazier's Farm, battle of, vol. I, 407-408

  Free Soil Party, vol. I, 82, 112, 123

  Fredericksburg, Burnside's campaign of, vol. II, 19-30;
    battle of, 23-28

  Fremont, Gen. J. C., forces of opposed to Gen. Jackson in Valley
        campaign, vol. I, 378, 389-94;
    at battle of Cross Keys, 394-95;
    emancipation proclamation of, vol. II, 9;
    resignation of, vol. II, 12;
    candidate for presidency in 1864, vol. II, 309

  French, Gen., vol. II, 25

  Fugitive Slave Act, vote in Congress on, vol. I, 99;
    enforcement of, vol. I, 104-5;
    as concession to South, vol. I, 114;
    denunciation of by extremists, vol. I, 117


  Gaines's Mill, battle of, vol. I, 401, 404

  Georgia, discontent with war in, vol. II, 4, 14

  Gettysburg, battle of compared with Waterloo, vol. I, 4;
    campaign of, vol. II, 122-150;
    battle of, vol. II, 134-149

  Gillmore, Gen. Q. A., operations against Charleston, vol. II, 186-195

  Gordon, Gen., vol. II, 345

  Granger, Gen. Gordon, vol. II, 279

  Grant, Gen. U. S., early neglect of, vol. I, 268;
    antagonism toward at headquarters, vol. I, 274;
    captures Paducah, vol. I, 274;
    expedition against Forts Henry and Donelson, vol. I, 275-77;
    restrained by Halleck, vol. I, 278, 285;
    plan of for prosecuting war, vol. I, 291-92;
    restored to command, vol. I, 308;
    his conception of strategy, vol. I, 310-11;
    at Pittsburg Landing, vol. I, 315 et seq.;
    superseded by Halleck, vol. I, 326;
    treatment of by Halleck, vol. II, 31-37;
    at Corinth, vol. II, 38-52;
    Vicksburg campaign, vol. II, 152-70;
    at Chattanooga, vol. II, 202-206;
    appointed Lieutenant-General, vol. II, 209;
    strategy of, vol. II, 210-15;
    plan of campaign, 1864, vol. II, 221-27;
    at battle of the Wilderness, vol. II, 228-36;
    at Spottsylvania, vol. II, 237-48;
    movement to Cold Harbor, vol. II, 249-52;
    battle of Cold Harbor, vol. II, 252-54;
    to Petersburg, vol. II, 255-59;
    confidence in Sherman, vol. II, 265-66;
    operations at Petersburg, vol. II, 284-93, 299-301;
    plans Sheridan's Shenandoah Valley campaign, vol. II, 302-303;
    operations early in 1865, vol. II, 344-46;
    moves against Lee, vol. II, 352 et seq.;
    receives Lee's surrender at Appomattox, 355


  Halleck, Gen. H. W., opposition of to Grant, vol. I, 275, 278, 285-88,
        292, vol. II, 31-37;
    assumes command at Pittsburg Landing, vol. I, 326-27;
    inaction of, vol. I, 330-31, vol. II, 38-40;
    in supreme command, vol. II, 43;
    blunders of while opposing Bragg's campaign against Louisville,
        vol. II, 54, 57;
    opposition to Hooker during Gettysburg campaign, vol. II, 128

  Harper's Ferry, John Brown's raid upon, vol. I, 134 et seq.;
    capture of by Gen. Jackson, vol. I, 427

  Hancock, Gen. W. S., charge upon Marye's Heights, vol. II, 25;
    at Gettysburg, vol. II, 137;
    in battle of the Wilderness, vol. II, 230-33;
    at Spottsylvania, vol. II, 243-47;
    attack upon Richmond, vol. II, 300

  Hartford, the, Farragut's flagship at Mobile, vol. II, 280-82

  Heintzelman, Gen., vol. I, 404-405

  Hill, Gen. A. P., vol. I, 400, vol. II, 300

  Hill, Gen. D. H., vol. I, 400, vol. II, 22

  Hollins, Commodore, vol. I, 329

  Holly Springs, battle of, vol. II, 154

  Hood, Gen. J. B. at Gettysburg, vol. II, 139-140;
    qualities as commander, vol. II, 274;
    at Atlanta, vol. II, 274-77, 327-29;
    campaign north of Atlanta, vol. II, 337-39

  Hooker, Gen. Joseph, charge of up Marye's Heights, vol. II, 26;
    appointed to command of Army of Potomac, vol. II, 85-87;
    state of army, 88-89;
    Chancellorsville campaign, vol. II, 90-122;
    forced by Lee back to Potomac, vol. II, 128-29;
    resigns command, vol. II, 131;
    at battle of Lookout Mountain, vol. II, 205

  Huger, Gen., vol. I, 407-408

  Hunter, Gen. David, vol. II, 11-12, 295


  Irrepressible Conflict, the, vol. I, 37-57

  Island No. 10, vol. I, 328-30

  Iuka, vol. II, 51


  Jackson, Fort, vol. I, 341-44

  Jackson, "Stonewall," at Manassas, vol. I, 225-26;
    in Shenandoah Valley, vol. I, 358;
    Valley campaign of, vol. I, 364-96;
    offers resignation, vol. I, 366;
    restrained by Johnston and Letcher, vol. I, 369-70;
    at Gaines's Mills, vol. I, 400-401;
    operations against Pope in northern Virginia, vol. I, 416-17;
    at second battle of Manassas, vol. I, 420-21;
    captures Harper's Ferry, vol. I, 427;
    at Chancellorsville, vol. II, 98-107;
    mortally wounded by his own men, vol. II, 104-105;
    influence of upon his men, vol. II, 105-106;
    Col. Dodge's tribute to, vol. II, 112

  Jefferson, Thomas, vol. I, 39, 43

  Johnson, Andrew, proposes constitutional amendment, vol. I, 158;
    vice-presidential candidate, vol. II, 310

  Johnson, Edward, vol. I, 375-78

  Johnston, Gen. Albert Sydney, killed at Shiloh, vol. I, 321

  Johnston, Gen. Joseph E., strategy of before battle of Manassas,
        vol. I, 211;
    at Manassas, vol. I, 224;
    in command at Richmond, vol. I, 356-57;
    at Seven Pines, vol. I, 360-61;
    interference with plans of by Benjamin, vol. I, 368-70;
    at Jackson in Vicksburg campaign, vol. II, 165;
    operations in Sherman's Atlanta campaign, vol. II, 266-74;
    criticized by Jefferson Davis, vol. II, 326-27;
    recalled to command of Confederate forces in South Carolina opposed
        to Sherman, vol. II, 347;
    opposes Sherman's northward advance from Columbia, vol. II, 349-51


  Kansas, civil war in, vol. I, 123-27

  Kansas-Nebraska Bill, vol. I, 119 et seq.

  Kentucky, neutrality of, vol. I, 194, 258;
    military operations in, vol. I, 258, 282 et seq.


  Ledlie, Gen. J. H. in command of mine explosion at Petersburg,
        vol. II, 289-93

  Lee, Gen. Robert E., resigns from U. S. Army and takes commission
        from Virginia, vol. I, 207-209;
    early neglect of, vol. I, 269;
    assumes command of Confederate Army, vol. I, 361-62;
    plans for conduct of war, vol. I, 363-64;
    strategy of in Jackson's Valley campaign, vol. I, 387-88;
    in Seven Days battles, 397 et seq.;
    in second Manassas campaign, vol. I, 416-21;
    first invasion of Maryland, vol. I, 423-32;
    at Fredericksburg, vol. II, 21-28;
    at Chancellorsville, vol. II, 91-121;
    plans invasion of the North, vol. II, 123 et seq.;
    enters Pennsylvania, vol. II, 129;
    at Gettysburg, vol. II, 131-50;
    battle of Wilderness, vol. II, 228-236;
    battle of Spottsylvania, vol. II, 237-48;
    Cold Harbor, vol. II, 249-54;
    at Petersburg, vol. II, 283-93;
    strategy of in Early's invasion of Pennsylvania, vol. II, 294-95,
        297-98;
    defense of Petersburg and Richmond, vol. II, 299-301;
    conference with Jefferson Davis, vol. II, 343;
    retreat from Richmond, vol. II, 353-55;
    starved condition of army, 354;
    surrender at Appomattox, 355

  Leesburg, battle of, see _Ball's Bluff_

  Letcher, Gov. John, vol. I, 46, 366, 370

  Lincoln, Abraham, attitude toward slavery, vol. I, 20, 78;
    popular majority against in 1860, vol. I, 148-49;
    effect of election upon South, vol. I, 149-151;
    policy upon taking office, vol. I, 166-67;
    calls for troops, vol. I, 167-68;
    inaugural address, vol. I, 181-84;
    paramount object to save Union, vol. II, 4-6;
    appointment of Stanton, vol. II, 6-7;
    attitude toward emancipation, vol. II, 7 et seq.;
    proclamation of emancipation, vol. II, 16;
    opposition to, vol. II, 173-75;
    presidential campaign of 1864, vol. II, 308-14;
    desire to end war, vol. II, 341-42

  Little Round Top, Gettysburg, vol. II, 134, 139-40

  Lodge, Henry Cabot, vol. I, 29-30

  Longstreet, Gen., at Gaines's Mills, vol. I, 400-401;
    at Gettysburg, vol. II, 138-39, 142-43, 146-47;
    at Chattanooga, vol. II, 199-200;
    in Wilderness battle, vol. II, 231-32

  Lookout Mountain, battle of, vol. II, 202-205

  Louisiana territory, taking of slaves into, vol. I, 52

  Lovejoy, Owen, vol. I, 64


  McClellan, Gen. George B., succeeds McDowell in command, vol. I,
        245-47;
    genius for organization, vol. I, 249;
    character of, vol. I, 293-94;
    Peninsular campaign of, vol. I, 352-361;
    operations during Seven Days Battles, vol. I, 338-413;
    restored to command, vol. I, 426;
    at South Mountain, vol. I, 428-29;
    at Antietam, vol. I, 430-33;
    proclamation to slaveholders in Virginia, vol. II, 7-8;
    inaction of after Antietam, vol. II, 19-20;
    superseded by Burnside as commander of Army of Potomac,
        vol. II, 21;
    succeeded by Halleck as commander Federal army, vol. II, 36;
    Democratic candidate for president in 1864, vol. II, 308, 313

  McDowell, Gen. Irwin, plans battle of Manassas, vol. I, 221;
    succeeded by McClellan in command of Federal army, vol. I, 245;
    operations during Jackson's Valley campaign, vol. I, 364, 389, 390,
        393

  McClernand, Gen., vol. II, 158

  McGuire, Dr. Hunter, vol. I, 385-6

  McPherson, Gen. J. B., vol. II, 266, 268

  Magruder, Gen., vol. I, 355, 357, 405, 407-408

  Malvern Hill, battle of, vol. I, 410-12

  Mails, use of by anti-slavery propagandists, vol. I, 66-69

  Manassas, first battle of, vol. I, 215-32;
    inaction of Confederates after, vol. I, 233 et seq.;
    second campaign of, vol. I, 414-22;
    second battle of, vol. I, 420-21

  Marshall, John, vol. I, 37

  Maryland, division of sentiment in, vol. I, 259

  Marye's Heights, vol. II, 24-27

  Massachusetts, disunion threats in, vol. I, 88-89

  Mason and Slidell, vol. I, 295

  Meade, Gen., appointed to command Army of Potomac, vol. II, 131;
    at Gettysburg, vol. II, 133-50;
    at Petersburg, vol. II, 287, 289, 292

  Mechanicsville, battle of, vol. I, 400

  Merrimac and Monitor, fight of, vol. I, 299-301

  Mexican war, effect of upon slavery controversy, vol. I, 61-62

  Military strength of North and South, vol. I, 169-72

  Mill Springs, battle of, vol. I, 284

  Missouri Compromise, vol. I, 54-57;
    change of Southern feeling toward, vol. I, 71 et seq.;
    repeal of, vol. I, 113 et seq.

  Missouri, secession sentiment in, vol. I, 198;
    civil war in, vol. I, 198-213;
    military operations in, vol. I, 256 et seq.

  Missionary Ridge, battle of, vol. II, 202-206

  Mississippi river under control of Confederates, vol. I, 328-29

  Morgan, Gen. John, vol. II, 56, 58, 198

  Morris Island, vol. II, 188, 193

  Mobile, fortifications of, vol. II, 278-79;
    bay fight at, vol. II, 280-83

  Monocacy campaign, vol. II, 294-98

  Mountaineers, feeling of toward slavery, vol. I, 195-98;
    union sentiment among, vol. I, 259

  Murfreesboro, captured by Forrest, vol. II, 58;
    battle of, vol. II, 76-81


  National Idea, growth of, vol. I, 19 et seq.

  Negroes, enlistment of, vol. II, 217-20;
    troops at Petersburg, vol. II, 292-93

  New England, slave traders of, vol. I, 39-41

  New Hope Church, battle of, vol. II, 269

  New Madrid, vol. I, 328-29

  New Orleans, importance of to Confederacy, vol. I, 333-35;
    capture of, 339-48

  New York City, draft riots in, vol. II, 176-78

  North Carolina, discontent with war in, 1864, vol. II, 321-22

  North, political hostility to war, vol. I, 199


  Patterson, Gen., vol. I, 211

  Pea Ridge, battle of, vol. I, 257

  Peace Conference, vol. I, 165

  Peace proposals, vol. I, 185-87

  Pemberton, Gen. John C., vol. II, 74-75, 153, 165, 167

  "Pepper Box Policy," vol. I, 209 et seq.

  Perryville, battle of, vol. II, 70

  Petersburg, situation of, vol. II, 257;
    attack upon, vol. II, 258-59;
    siege of, vol. II, 285-93;
    mine explosion at, vol. II, 288-91

  Pickett's charge at Gettysburg, vol. II, 145-46

  Pinckney, Eliza, vol. I, 22, 48

  Pittsburg Landing, vol. I, 315, 320

  Pillow, Fort, vol. II, 217-19

  Pleasanton, Gen., vol. II, 127-28

  Pocotaligo, vol. I, 264-65, vol. II, 195

  Polk, Gen. Leonidas, vol. I, 306, vol. II, 200-201, 270

  Pope, Gen. John, vol. I, 306, 328-29, 416-21

  Porter, Commodore D. D., at New Orleans, vol. I, 336 et seq.;
    with fleet at Vicksburg, vol. II, 161 et seq.;
    in Red River expedition, vol. II, 208

  Porter, Gen. Fitz-John, vol. I, 421-22

  Port Hudson, vol. II, 151, 152, 168

  Price, Gen. Sterling, vol. II, 51-52

  Potomac, Army of the, fighting quality of under McClellan,
        vol. I, 414 et seq.


  Randolph, John, vol. I, 29

  Red River Campaign, vol. II, 207-208

  Republican Party, vol. I, 83, 123, 131, 146

  Resources, comparative, of North and South, vol. I, 169-201

  Richmond, evacuation and burning of, vol. II, 353

  Rockingham Memorial, vol. I, 29

  Rosecrans, Gen., at Corinth, vol. II, 72-73;
    supersedes Buell, vol. II, 73, 75;
    at Nashville, vol. II, 77;
    at Stone River, vol. II, 77 et seq.;
    at Murfreesboro, vol. II, 196 et seq.

  Russia, opposition of to intervention, vol. I, 255


  Savage's Station, battle of, vol. I, 404-405

  Saxton, Gen., vol. I, 378-80

  St. Philip, Fort, vol. I, 340-44

  Secession, Ordinance of, vol. I, 151

  Senate, balance of power in, vol. I, 76-77

  Sedgwick, Gen., operations of in Chancellorsville campaign,
        vol. II, 91, 93, 115-118;
    death of at Spottsylvania, vol. II, 239

  Seminary Ridge, Gettysburg, vol. II, 134, 143

  Semmes, Admiral Raphael, vol. II, 262-63

  Seward, W. H., vol. I, 297-98

  Seven Days Battles, vol. I, 397-413

  Schenck, Gen., vol. I, 378-80

  Scott, Dred, vol. I, 127-28

  Schofield, Gen. J. M., vol. II, 266, 337-38

  Sharpsburg, see _Antietam_

  Sheridan, Gen. P. H., in cavalry skirmish at Yellow Tavern,
        vol. II, 239;
    in Shenandoah campaign, vol. II, 302-307;
    at Cedar Creek, vol. II, 307;
    in pursuit of Lee, vol. II, 353-55

  Sherman, Gen. Wm. T., at Shiloh, vol. I, 317 et seq.;
    in Vicksburg campaign, vol. I, 152-58;
    battle of Missionary Ridge, vol. II, 204-205;
    campaign against Atlanta, vol. II, 265-77;
    at Atlanta, vol. II, 315-29;
    order of depopulation, vol. II, 315-19;
    negotiations of with Southern statesmen, vol. II, 321-26;
    march to sea, vol. II, 330-36;
    march upon Columbia, vol. II, 347;
    burning of Columbia, vol. II, 349;
    northward march from Columbia, vol. II, 350-51

  Shiloh, vol. I, 302-27

  Shields, Gen., vol. I, 390-95

  Sickles, Gen., vol. II, 139

  Slaves as contraband of war, vol. II, 8

  Slaves, return of fugitive, vol. I, 79

  Slavery, effect of controversy upon sentiment of nationality,
        vol. I, 37 et seq.;
    attitude of colonies toward, vol. I, 39-40;
    political contest over, vol. I, 52;
    maintenance of as issue of war, vol. II, 3-4

  Slidell, John, vol. I, 295

  Smith, Gen. G. W., vol. I, 361

  Soldiers of North and South compared, vol. I, 204-206

  South Mountain, battle of, vol. I, 428-29

  Spottsylvania, battle of, vol. II, 237-248

  "Squatter Sovereignty," vol. I, 120-22

  Stanton, Edwin M., vol. II, 6-7

  States, sovereignty of, vol. I, 25 et seq.

  Stephens, A. H., vol. II, 322-24, 341, 343

  Stoneman, Gen., vol. II, 91-93

  Stone River, battle of, vol. II, 80

  Story, Justice Joseph, vol. I, 41

  Stowe, Mrs. Harriet Beecher, vol. I, 108

  Streight, Col., vol. II, 197-98

  Stuart, J. E. B., at Manassas, vol. I, 228;
    desire of to advance upon Washington after Manassas, vol. I,
        238-39;
    rides around McClellan, vol. I, 398-99;
    raid into Maryland and Pennsylvania, vol. II, 20;
    in Chancellorsville campaign, vol. II, 93, 100, 106-107;
    at Brandy Station, vol. II, 127-28;
    in Gettysburg campaign, vol. II, 131-32;
    death of at Spottsylvania, vol. II, 239

  Sumner, Gen., vol. I, 361, 404-405

  Sumter, Fort, occupation of by Major Anderson, vol. I, 179, 188;
    Beauregard's preparations for reduction of, vol. I, 179-80;
    bombardment of, vol. I, 192;
    results of reduction of, vol. I, 193;
    bombardment of by Gillmore, vol. II, 190-93

  Supreme Court, decisions of, vol. I, 37


  Taney, Chief Justice, vol. I, 128-29

  Taylor, Gen. Richard, vol. II, 208

  Texas, annexation of, vol. I, 58 et seq.

  Thomas, Gen. George H., vol. I, 283;
    at Mill Springs, 284;
    at battle of Chickamauga, vol. II, 200-202;
    at Missionary Ridge, vol. II, 205;
    defeats Hood, vol. II, 338

  Trent Affair, the, vol. I, 295 et seq.


  "Uncle Tom's Cabin," influence of, vol. I, 108 et seq.

  Underground railroad, effect of on South, vol. I, 156


  Van Buren, Martin, vol. I, 83

  Van Dorn, Gen., vol. II, 62, 72-74, 154

  Van Horne, Gen., vol. I, 320, 322, vol. II, 81

  Vicksburg campaign, vol. II, 151-70;
    siege of, vol. II, 166-68

  Virginia, sentiment against secession in, vol. I, 152-55;
    proposes peace conference, vol. I, 164-65;
    secession of, vol. I, 168-69;
    divided by secession of West Virginia, vol. I, 259-60


  Wade, Benjamin F., vol. I, 159

  Wagner, Fort, vol. II, 188-93

  Warren, Gen., vol. II, 139-40

  Washington, threatened by Gen. Early, vol. II, 296-97

  Webster, Daniel, vol. I, 29, 50, 90, 97

  West Virginia, creation of, vol. I, 259-60

  Whig Party in 1860, vol. I, 146

  Whitney, Eli, vol. I, 47-49

  Welles, Gideon, vol. I, 349

  Wilderness, battle of the, vol. II, 228-36

  Wilkes, Capt. Charles, vol. I, 295

  Williams, Gen., vol. II, 12-13

  Williamsburg, battle of, vol. I, 357

  Willoughby Run, Gettysburg, vol. II, 134, 135-37

  Wilmington, capture of, vol. II, 350

  Wilmot Proviso, vol. I, 64, 71-72

  Winchester, battles of, vol. I, 384, vol. II, 305

  Wythe, George, vol. I, 43


  Yorktown, McClellan's siege of, vol. I, 355


  Zollicoffer, Gen., vol. I, 282, 284




      *      *      *      *      *      *




Transcriber's note:

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not
changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unpaired
quotation marks were retained except as noted below.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

Text uses both "Haines Bluff" and "Haines's Bluff".

Text uses both "DuPont" and "Du Pont" when referring to the same
Rear-Admiral.

Some interrogative sentences ended with periods instead of with
question marks; retained here.

Text uses both "Alatoona" and "Allatoona".

Page 88: "wofully" was printed that way.

Page 104: Missing closing quotation mark added after 'ill-looking.'

Page 130: "been able to oppose no obstacle" was printed that way.

Pages 210-215: opening quotation mark removed from General Grant's
quotation, because there were no other quotation marks in the rest of
that text.

Some out-of-sequence entries in the Index have been remedied, but
others may remain. Page references in the Index were not checked for
accuracy.

Page 365: "succeeded by Halleck as commander Federal army" (under
McClellan) likely is missing the word "of".

Page 368: "divided by secession of West Virginia, vol. I, 259-60" was
missing the volume and page numbers. They were added by Transcribers
based on examination of volume I of this set of books.



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