LAST YEAR OF THE DISAGREEABLE WAR.
General Grant was now in command of all the Union troops, and in 1864-5
the plan of operation was to prevent the junction of the
Confederates,--General Grant seeking to interest the army in Virginia
under General Lee, and General Sherman the army of General Joseph E.
Johnston in Georgia.
Sherman started at once, and came upon Johnston located on almost
impregnable hills all the way to Atlanta. The battles of Dalton, Resaca,
Dallas, Lost Mountain, and Kenesaw Mountain preceded Johnston's retreat
to the intrenchments of Atlanta, July 10, Sherman having been on the
move since early in May, 1864.
Jefferson Davis, disgusted with Johnston, placed Hood in command, who
made three heroic attacks upon the Union troops, but was repulsed.
Sherman now gathered fifteen days' rations from the neighbors, and,
throwing his forces across Hood's line of supplies, compelled him to
evacuate the city.
The historian says that Sherman was entirely supplied from Nashville
_via_ railroad during this trip, but the author knows of his own
personal knowledge that there were times when he got his fresh
provisions along the road.
[Illustration: GETTING FRESH PROVISIONS ALONG THE ROAD.]
This expedition cost the Union army thirty thousand men and the
Confederates thirty-five thousand. Besides, Georgia was the Confederacy,
so far as arms, grain, etc., were concerned. Sherman attributed much of
his success to the fact that he could repair and operate the railroad so
rapidly. Among his men were Yankee machinists and engineers, who were as
necessary as courageous fighters.
"We are held here during many priceless hours," said the general,
"because the enemy has spoiled this passenger engine. Who knows any
thing about repairing an engine?"
"I do," said a dusty tramp in blue. "I can repair this one in an hour."
"What makes you think so?"
"Well, I made it."
This was one of the strong features of Sherman's army. Among the hundred
thousand who composed it there were so many active brains and skilled
hands that the toot of the engine caught the heels of the last echoing
shout of the battle.
Learning that Hood proposed to invade Tennessee, Sherman prepared to
march across Georgia to the sea, and if necessary to tramp through the
Atlantic States.
Hood was sorry afterwards that he invaded Tennessee. He shut Thomas up
in Nashville after a battle with Schofield, and kept the former in-doors
for two weeks, when all of a sudden Thomas exclaimed, "Air! air! give me
air!" and came out, throwing Hood into headlong flight, when the Union
cavalry fell on his rear, followed by the infantry, and the forty
thousand Confederates became a scattered and discouraged mob spread out
over several counties.
The burning of Atlanta preceded Sherman's march, and, though one of the
saddest features of the war, was believed to be a military necessity.
Those who declare war hoping to have a summer's outing thereby may live
to regret it for many bitter years.
On November 16, Sherman started, his army moving in four columns,
constituting altogether a column of fire by night, and a pillar of cloud
and dust by day. Kilpatrick's cavalry scoured the country like a mass
meeting of ubiquitous little black Tennessee hornets.
In five weeks Sherman had marched three hundred miles, had destroyed two
railroads, had stormed Fort McAllister, and had captured Savannah.
On the 5th and 6th of May, 1864, occurred the battle of the Wilderness,
near the old battleground of Chancellorsville. No one could describe it,
for it was fought in the dense woods, and the two days of useless
butchery with not the slightest signs of civilized warfare sickened both
armies, and, with no victory for either, they retired to their
intrenchments.
Grant, instead of retreating, however, quietly passed the flank of the
Confederates and started for Spottsylvania Court-House, where a battle
occurred May 8-12.
Here the two armies fought five days without any advantage to either. It
was at this time that Grant sent his celebrated despatch stating that
he "proposed to fight it out on this line if it took all summer."
Finally he sought to turn Lee's right flank. June 8, the battle of Cold
Harbor followed this movement. The Union forces were shot down in the
mire and brush by Lee's troops, now snugly in out of the wet, behind the
Cold Harbor defences. One historian says that in twenty minutes ten
thousand Yankee troops were killed; though Badeau, whose accuracy in
counting dead has always been perfectly marvellous, admits only seven
thousand in all.
Grant now turned his attention towards Petersburg, but Lee was there
before him and intrenched, so the Union army had to intrench. This only
postponed the evil day, however.
Things now shaped themselves into a siege of Richmond, with Petersburg
as the first outpost of the besieged capital.
On the 30th of July, eight thousand pounds of powder were carefully
inserted under a Confederate fort and the entire thing hoisted in the
air, leaving a huge hole, in which, a few hours afterwards, many a boy
in blue met his death, for in the assault which followed the explosion
the Union soldiers were mowed down by the concentrated fire of the
Confederates. The Federals threw away four thousand lives here.
On the 18th of August the Weldon Railroad was captured, which was a
great advantage to Grant, and, though several efforts were made to
recapture it, they were unsuccessful.
[Illustration: PAUSING TO GET LAUNDRY-WORK DONE.]
General Early was delegated to threaten Washington and scare the able
officers of the army who were stopping there at that time talking
politics and abusing Grant. He defeated General Wallace at Monocacy
River, and appeared before Fort Stevens, one of the defences of
Washington, July 11. Had he whooped right along instead of pausing a day
somewhere to get laundry-work done before entering Washington, he would
easily have captured the city.
Reinforcements, however, got there ahead of him, and he had to go back.
He sent a force of cavalry into Pennsylvania, where they captured
Chambersburg and burned it on failure of the town trustees to pay five
hundred thousand dollars ransom.
General Sheridan was placed in charge of the troops here, and defeated
Early at Winchester, riding twenty miles in twenty minutes, as per poem.
At Fisher's Hill he was also victorious. He devastated the Valley of the
Shenandoah to such a degree that a crow passing the entire length of the
valley had to carry his dinner with him.
It was, however, at the battle of Cedar Creek that Sheridan was twenty
miles away, according to historical prose. Why he was twenty miles away,
various and conflicting reasons are given, but on his good horse Rienzi
he arrived in time to turn defeat and rout into victory and hilarity.
Rienzi, after the war, died in eleven States. He was a black horse, with
a saddle-gall and a flashing eye.
He passed away at his home in Chicago at last in poverty while waiting
for a pension applied for on the grounds of founder and lampers brought
on by eating too heartily after the battle and while warm, but in the
line of duty.
The Red River campaign under General Banks was a joint naval and land
expedition, resulting in the capture of Fort de Russy, March 14, after
which, April 8, the troops marching towards Shreveport in very open
order, single file or holding one another's hands and singing "John
Brown's Body," were attacked by General Dick Taylor, and if Washington
had not been so far away and through a hostile country, Bull Run would
have had another rival. But the boys rallied, and next day repulsed the
Confederates, after which they returned to New Orleans, where board was
more reasonable. General Banks obtained quite a relief at this time: he
was relieved of his command.
August 5, Commodore Farragut captured Mobile, after a neat and
attractive naval fight, and on the 24th and 25th of December Commodore
Porter and General Butler started out to take Fort Fisher. After two
days' bombardment, Butler decided that there were other forts to be had
on better terms, and returned. Afterwards General Terry commanded the
second expedition, Porter having remained on hand with his vessels to
assist. January 15, 1865, the most heroic fighting on both sides
resulted, and at last, completely hemmed in, the brave and battered
garrison surrendered; but no one who was there need blush to say so,
even to-day.
At the South at this time coffee was fifty dollars a pound and gloves
were one hundred and fifty dollars a pair. Flour was forty dollars a
barrel; but you could get a barrel of currency for less than that.
Money was plenty, but what was needed seemed to be confidence. Running
the blockade was not profitable at that time, since over fifteen hundred
head of Confederate vessels were captured during the war.
The capture of Fort Fisher closed the last port of the South, and left
the Confederacy no show with foreign Powers or markets.
The Alabama was an armed steam-ship, and the most unpleasant feature of
the war to the Federal government, especially as she had more sympathy
and aid in England than was asked for or expected by the Unionists.
However, England has since repaid all this loss in various ways. She has
put from five to eight million dollars into cattle on the plains of the
Northwest, where the skeletons of same may be found bleaching in the
summer sun; and I am personally acquainted with six Americans now
visiting England who can borrow enough in a year to make up all the
losses sustained through the Alabama and other neutral vessels.
[Illustration: PERSONALLY ACQUAINTED WITH SIX AMERICANS.]
Captain Semmes commanded the Alabama, and off Cherbourg he sent a
challenge to the Kearsarge, commanded by Captain Winslow, who accepted
it, and so worked his vessel that the Alabama had to move round him in a
circle, while he filled her up with iron, lead, copper, tin, German
silver, glass, nails, putty, paint, varnishes, and dye-stuff. At the
seventh rotation the Alabama ran up the white flag and sunk with a low
mellow plunk. The crew was rescued by Captain Winslow and the English
yacht Deerhound, the latter taking Semmes and starting for England.
This matter, however, was settled in after-years.
The care of the sick, the dying, and the dead in the Union armies was
almost entirely under the eye of the merciful and charitable, loyal and
loving members of the Sanitary and Christian Commissions, whose work
and its memory kept green in the hearts of the survivors and their
children will be monument enough for the coming centuries.
In July, 1864, the debt of the country was two billion dollars and
twenty cents. Two dollars and ninety cents in greenbacks would buy a
reluctant gold dollar.
Still, Abraham Lincoln was re-elected against George B. McClellan, the
Democratic candidate, who carried only three States. This was
endorsement enough for the policy of President Lincoln.
Sherman's army of sixty thousand, after a month's rest at Savannah,
started north to unite with Grant in the final blow. "Before it was
terror, behind it ashes."
Columbia was captured February 17, and burned, without Sherman's
authority, the night following. Charleston was evacuated the next day.
Johnston was recalled to take command, and opposed the march of Sherman,
but was driven back after fierce engagements at Bentonville and
Averysboro. On March 25 Lee decided to attack Grant, and, while the
latter was busy, get out of Richmond and join Johnston, but when this
battle, known as the attack on Fort Steadman, was over, Grant's hold was
tighter than ever.
Sheridan attacked Lee's rear with a heavy force, and at Five Forks,
April 1, the surprised garrison was defeated with five thousand
captured. The next day the entire Union army advanced, and the line of
Confederate intrenchments was broken. On the following day Petersburg
and Richmond were evacuated, but Mr. Davis was not there. He had gone
away. Rather than meet General Grant and entertain him when there was no
pie in the house, he and the Treasury had escaped from the haunts of
man, wishing to commune with nature for a while. He was captured at
Irwinsville, Georgia, under peculiar and rather amusing circumstances.
He was never punished, with the exception perhaps that he published a
book and did not realize anything from it.
Lee fled to the westward, but was pursued by the triumphant Federals,
especially by Sheridan, whose cavalry hung on his flanks day and night.
Food failed the fleeing foe, and the young shoots of trees for food and
the larger shoots of the artillery between meals were too much for that
proud army, once so strong and confident.
Let us not dwell on the particulars.
As Sheridan planted his cavalry squarely across Lee's path of retreat,
the worn but heroic tatters of a proud army prepared to sell themselves
for a bloody ransom and go down fighting, but Grant had demanded their
surrender, and, seeing back of the galling, skirmishing cavalry solid
walls of confident infantry, the terms of surrender were accepted by
General Lee, and April 9 the Confederate army stacked its arms near
Appomattox Court-House.
The Confederate war debt was never paid, for some reason or other, but
the Federal debt when it was feeling the best amounted to two billion
eight hundred and forty-four million dollars. One million men lost their
lives.
Was it worth while?
In the midst of the general rejoicing, President Lincoln was
assassinated by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre, April 14. The
assassin was captured in a dying condition in a burning barn, through a
crack in the boarding of which he had been shot by a soldier named
Boston Corbett. He died with no sympathetic applause to soothe the dull,
cold ear of death.
West Virginia was admitted to the Union in 1863, and Nevada in 1864.
The following chapters will be devoted to more peaceful details, while
we cheerfully close the sorrowful pages in which we have confessed that,
with all our greatness as a nation, we could not stay the tide of war.