EARLY'S RAID AND THE WASHINGTON PANIC.
President Lincoln visits the lines at Petersburg--Trouble with
General Meade--Jubal Early menaces the Federal capital--The
excitement in Washington and Baltimore--Clerks and veteran reserves
called out to defend Washington--Grant sends troops from the
front--Plenty of generals, but no head--Early ends the panic by
withdrawing--A fine letter from Grant about Hunter.
Although Grant had decided against a further direct attack on the works
of Petersburg, he was by no means idle. He sent out expeditions to break
up the railroads leading into the town. He began extending his lines
around to the south and southwest, so as to make the investment as
complete as possible. Batteries were put in place, weak spots in the
fortifications were felt for, and regular siege works were begun.
Indeed, by July 1st the general opinion seemed to be that the only way
we should ever gain Petersburg would be by a systematic siege.
A few days later we had an interesting visit from President Lincoln, who
arrived from Washington on June 21st, and at once wanted to visit the
lines before Petersburg. General Grant, Admiral Lee, myself, and several
others went with him. I remember that, as we passed along the lines, Mr.
Lincoln's high hat was brushed off by the branch of a tree. There were a
dozen young officers whose duty it was to get it and give it back to
the President; but Admiral Lee was off his horse before any of these
young chaps, and recovered the hat for the President. Admiral Lee must
have been forty-five or fifty years old. It was his agility that
impressed me so much.
As we came back we passed through the division of colored troops which
had so greatly distinguished itself under Smith on the 15th. They were
drawn up in double lines on each side of the road, and they welcomed the
President with hearty shouts. It was a memorable thing to behold him
whose fortune it was to represent the principle of emancipation passing
bareheaded through the enthusiastic ranks of those negroes armed to
defend the integrity of the nation.
I went back to Washington with the presidential party, but remained only
a few days, as Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Stanton were anxious for my daily
reports of the operations around Petersburg. On the return, I arrived at
City Point on July 1st. The army occupied about the same positions as
when I had left it a week before. Two corps were engaged in siege work,
their effort being to get possession of a ridge before them, supposed to
command Petersburg; if they succeeded in this, Grant thought that the
enemy would have to abandon the south side of the Appomattox, and, of
course, the town. On the left our line extended southward and westward
across what was known as the Jerusalem road, but at so great a distance
from the Confederate fortifications as to have no immediate effect upon
them. Farther around to the west, toward the Appomattox above
Petersburg, the enemy's works extended, and the idea of enveloping them
for the whole distance had been given up. The efforts to break up the
railroads leading from Petersburg had been very successful, Grant told
me. There were plans for assault suggested, but Grant had not considered
any of them seriously.
Before the army had recovered from its long march from Cold Harbor and
the failure to capture the town, there was an unusual amount of
controversy going on among the officers. Smith was berated generally for
failing to complete his attack of June 15th. Butler and "Baldy" Smith
were deep in a controversial correspondence; and Meade and Warren were
so at loggerheads that Meade notified Warren that he must either ask to
be relieved as corps commander or he (Meade) would prefer charges
against him. It seemed as if Meade grew more unpopular every day.
Finally the difficulties between him and his subordinates became so
serious that a change in the commander of the Army of the Potomac seemed
probable. Grant had great confidence in Meade, and was much attached to
him personally; but the almost universal dislike of Meade which
prevailed among officers of every rank who came in contact with him, and
the difficulty of doing business with him, felt by every one except
Grant himself, so greatly impaired his capacities for usefulness and
rendered success under his command so doubtful that Grant seemed to be
coming to the conviction that he must be relieved.
I had long known Meade to be a man of the worst possible temper,
especially toward his subordinates. I think he had not a friend in the
whole army. No man, no matter what his business or his service,
approached him without being insulted in one way or another, and his own
staff officers did not dare to speak to him unless first spoken to, for
fear of either sneers or curses. The latter, however, I had never heard
him indulge in very violently, but he was said to apply them often
without occasion and without reason. At the same time, as far as I was
able to ascertain, his generals had lost their confidence in him as a
commander. His orders for the last series of assaults upon Petersburg,
in which we lost ten thousand men without gaining any decisive
advantage, were greatly criticised. They were, in effect, that he had
found it impracticable to secure the co-operation of corps commanders,
and that, therefore, each one was to attack on his own account and do
the best he could by himself. The consequence was that each gained some
advantage of position, but each exhausted his own strength in so doing;
while, for the want of a general purpose and a general commander to
direct and concentrate the whole, it all amounted to nothing but heavy
loss to ourselves. General Wright remarked confidentially to a friend
that all of Meade's attacks had been made without brains and without
generalship.
The first week of July the subject came to pretty full discussion at
Grant's headquarters on account of an extraordinary correspondence
between Meade and Wilson. The Richmond Examiner had charged Wilson's
command with stealing not only negroes and horses, but silver plate and
clothing on a raid he had just made against the Danville and Southside
Railroad, and Meade, taking up the statement of the Examiner for truth,
read Wilson a lecture, and called on him for explanations. Wilson denied
the charge of robbing women and churches, and said he hoped Meade would
not be ready to condemn his command because its operations had excited
the ire of the public enemy. Meade replied that Wilson's explanation was
satisfactory; but this correspondence started a conversation in which
Grant expressed himself quite frankly as to the general trouble with
Meade, and his fear that it would become necessary to relieve him. In
that event, he said, it would be necessary to put Hancock in command.
In the first days of July we began to get inquiries at City Point from
Washington concerning the whereabouts of the Confederate generals Early
and Ewell. It was reported in the capital, our dispatches said, that
they were moving down the Shenandoah Valley. We seemed to have pretty
good evidence that Early was with Lee, defending Petersburg, and so I
wired the Secretary on July 3d. The next day we felt less positive. A
deserter came in on the morning of the 4th, and said that it was
reported in the enemy's camp that Ewell had gone into Maryland with his
entire corps. Another twenty-four hours, and Meade told me that he was
at last convinced that Early and his troops had gone down the valley. In
fact, Early had been gone three weeks. He left Lee's army near Cold
Harbor on the morning of the 13th of June, when we were on the march to
the James. Hunter's defeat of Jones near Staunton had forced Lee to
divide his army in order to stop Hunter's dangerous advance on
Lynchburg.
On the 6th General Grant was convinced that Washington was the
objective. The raid threatened was sufficiently serious to compel the
sending of troops to the defense of the capital, and a body of men
immediately embarked. Three days later I started myself to Washington,
in order to keep Grant informed of what was going on. When I arrived, I
found both Washington and Baltimore in a state of great excitement; both
cities were filled with people who had fled from the enemy. The damage
to private property done by the invaders was said to be almost beyond
calculation. Mills, workshops, and factories of every sort were reported
as destroyed, and from twenty-five to fifty miles of the Baltimore and
Ohio Railroad torn up.
During my first day in town, July 11th, all sorts of rumors came in.
General Lew Wallace, then in command at Baltimore, sent word that a
large force of the enemy had been seen that morning near that city. The
Confederate generals were said to have dined together at Rockville a day
or two before. The houses of Governor Bradford, Francis P. Blair,
senior, and his son, Montgomery, the Postmaster General, were reported
burned. We could see from Washington clouds of dust in several quarters
around the city, which we believed to be raised by bodies of hostile
cavalry. There was some sharp skirmishing that day, too, on the
Tennallytown road, as well as later in front of Fort Stevens, and at
night the telegraph operators at the latter place reported a
considerable number of camp fires visible in front of them.
I found that the Washington authorities had utilized every man in town
for defense. Some fifteen hundred employees of the quartermaster's
department had been armed and sent out; the veteran reserves about
Washington and Alexandria had likewise been sent to the front. General
Augur, commanding the defenses of Washington, had also drawn from the
fortifications on the south side of the town all the men that in his
judgment could possibly be spared. To this improvised force were added
that day some six boatloads of troops which General Grant had sent from
the Army of the Potomac. These troops went at once to Fort Stevens.
With the troops coming from Grant, there was force enough to save the
capital; but I soon saw that nothing could possibly be done toward
pursuing or cutting off the enemy for want of a commander. General
Hunter and his forces had not yet returned from their swing around the
circle. General Augur commanded the defenses of Washington, with A. McD.
McCook and a lot of brigadier generals under him, but he was not allowed
to go outside. Wright commanded only his own corps. General Gilmore had
been assigned to the temporary command of those troops of the Nineteenth
Corps just arrived from New Orleans, and all other troops in the Middle
Department, leaving Wallace to command Baltimore alone. But there was no
head to the whole. General Halleck would not give orders, except as he
received them from Grant; the President would give none; and, until
Grant directed positively and explicitly what was to be done, everything
was practically at a standstill. Things, I saw, would go on in the
deplorable and fatal way in which they had been going for a week. Of
course, this want of a head was causing a great deal of sharp comment on
all sides. Postmaster-General Blair was particularly incensed, and,
indeed, with real cause, for he had lost his house at Silver Springs.
Some of his remarks reached General Halleck, who immediately wrote to
Mr. Stanton the following letter:
HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY, WASHINGTON, _July 13, 1864_.
Hon. E. M. STANTON, Secretary of War.
SIR: I deem it my duty to bring to your notice the following facts:
I am informed by an officer of rank and standing in the military
service that the Hon. M. Blair, Postmaster General, in speaking of
the burning of his house in Maryland this morning, said, in effect,
that the officers in command about Washington are poltroons; that
there were not more that five hundred rebels on the Silver Springs
road, and we had one million of men in arms; that it was a
disgrace; that General Wallace was in comparison with them far
better, as he would at least fight. As there have been for the last
few days a large number of officers on duty in and about Washington
who have devoted their time and energies, night and day, and have
periled their lives in the support of the Government, it is due to
them, as well as to the War Department, that it should be known
whether such wholesale denouncement and accusation by a member of
the Cabinet receives the sanction and approbation of the President
of the United States. If so, the names of the officers accused
should be stricken from the rolls of the army; if not, it is due
to the honor of the accused that the slanderer should be dismissed
from the Cabinet.
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
H. W. HALLECK,
_Major General and Chief of Staff_.
The very day on which Halleck wrote this letter we had evidence that the
enemy had taken fright at the arrival in Washington of the troops sent
by Grant, and were moving off toward Edwards Ferry. It was pretty
certain that they were carrying off a large amount of cattle and other
plunder with them. By the end of another day there seemed no doubt that
Early had got the main body of his command across the river with his
captures. What they were, it was impossible to say precisely. One herd
of cattle was reported as containing two thousand head, and the number
of horses and mules taken from Maryland was reported as about five
thousand. This, however, was probably somewhat exaggerated.
The veterans, of course, at once moved out to attempt to overtake the
enemy. The irregulars were withdrawn from the fortifications, General
Meigs marching his division of quartermaster's clerks and employees back
to their desks; and Admiral Goldsborough, who had marshalled the marines
and sailors, returned to smoke his pipe on his own doorstep.
The pursuit of Early proved, on the whole, an egregious blunder,
relieved only by a small success at Winchester in which four guns and
some prisoners were captured. Wright accomplished nothing, and drew
back as soon as he got where he might have done something worth while.
As it was, Early escaped with the whole of his plunder.
One of the best letters Grant sent me during the war was at the time of
this Early raid on Washington. When the alarms of invasion first came,
Grant ordered Major-General David Hunter, then stationed at Parkersburg,
W. Va., to take the direction of operations against the enemy's forces
in the valley. Hunter did not come up to Mr. Stanton's expectations in
this crisis, and when I reached Washington the Secretary told me to
telegraph Grant that, in his opinion, Hunter ought to be removed. Three
days later I repeated in my dispatch to Grant certain rumors about
Hunter that had reached the War Department. The substance of them was
that Hunter had been engaged in an active campaign against the
newspapers in West Virginia, and that he had horsewhipped a soldier with
his own hand. I received an immediate reply:
CITY POINT, VA., _July 15, 1864_--8 P.M.
C. A. DANA, Assistant Secretary of War:
I am sorry to see such a disposition to condemn so brave an old
soldier as General Hunter is known to be without a hearing. He is
known to have advanced into the enemy's country toward their main
army, inflicting a much greater damage upon them than they have
inflicted upon us with double his force, and moving directly away
from our main army. Hunter acted, too, in a country where we had no
friends, while the enemy have only operated in territory where, to
say the least, many of the inhabitants are their friends. If
General Hunter has made war upon the newspapers in West Virginia,
probably he has done right. In horsewhipping a soldier he has laid
himself subject to trial, but nine chances out of ten he only acted
on the spur of the moment, under great provocation. I fail to see
yet that General Hunter has not acted with great promptness and
great success. Even the enemy give him great credit for courage,
and congratulate themselves that he will give them a chance of
getting even with him.
U. S. GRANT, _Lieutenant General_.