General Grant, fresh from his great success at Vicksburg and
Chattanooga, having shown that he had military genius of a high order,
was created Lieutenant-General, and appointed to the command of all the
armies of the Union in the field. It was the beginning of a new
_regime_. Up to that time there had been little concert of action
between commanders. The armies lacked a head. The President, General
Halleck, Secretary Stanton, had ideas of their own upon the best methods
and plans for conducting the war. Department commanders worked at cross
purposes. Each officer in the field naturally looked upon his sphere of
action as the most important of all, and each had his own plan of
operations to lay before the Secretary of War. A million men were
tugging manfully at the Car of Freedom, which was at a stand-still, or
moved only by inches, because they had no head. But when the President
appointed General Grant to the command, he gave up his own plans, while
General Halleck became a subordinate. The department commanders found
all their plans set aside. There was not merely concert of action, but
unity of action, under the controlling force of an imperial will.
In the article entitled "The May Campaign in Virginia," the movements of
the Army of the Potomac, from the Rapidan to Cold Harbor, are given. It
is not intended in the present article to dwell in detail upon all the
subsequent movements of that army and its allies, the Armies of the
James and the Shenandoah. Volumes are needed to narrate the operations
around Petersburg,--the battles fought on the 18th and 19th of June east
of that city,--the struggles for the Weldon Railroad,--the movements
between the James and the Appomattox, and north of the James,--the
failure in the springing of the mine,--the march of the Fifth Corps to
Stony Creek,--the battles between the Weldon Road and Hatcher's
Run,--the many contests, sharp, fierce, and bloody, between the opposing
lines, whenever an attempt was made by either army to erect new
works,--the fights on Hatcher's Run,--the attack upon Fort Harrison,
north of the James,--the successive attempts of each commander to break
the lines of the other, ending with the Fort Stedman affair, the last
offensive effort of General Lee. The new campaign which was inaugurated
the next day after the attack on Fort Stedman compelled the Rebel chief
to stand wholly on the defensive.
The appointment of General Grant to the command of all the armies was
not only the beginning of a new _regime_, but the adoption of a new
idea,--that Lee's army was the objective point, rather than the city of
Richmond.
"The power of the Rebellion lies in the Rebel army," said General Grant
to the writer one evening in June last. We had been conversing upon Fort
Donelson and Pittsburg Landing. One by one his staff officers dropped
off to their own tents, and we were alone. It was a quiet, starlit
night. The Lieutenant-General was enjoying his fragrant Havana cigar,
and was in a mood for conversation, not upon what he was going to do,
but upon what had been done. He is always wisely reticent upon the
present and future, but agreeably communicative upon what has passed
into history.
"I have lost a good many men since the army left the Rapidan, but there
was no help for it. The Rebel army must be destroyed before we can put
down the Rebellion," he continued.[I]
There was a disposition at that time on the part of the disloyal press
of the North to bring General Grant into bad odor. He was called "The
Butcher." Even some Republican Congressmen were ready to demand his
removal. General Grant alluded to it and said,--
"God knows I don't want to see men slaughtered; but we have appealed to
arms, and we have got to fight it out."
He had already given public utterance to the expression,--"I intend to
fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer."
Referring to the successive flank movements which had been made, from
the Rapidan to the Wilderness, to Spottsylvania, to the North Anna, to
the Chickahominy, to Petersburg, he said,--
"My object has been to get between Lee and his southern communications."
At that time the Weldon Road was in the hands of the enemy, and Early
was on a march down the Valley, towards Washington. This movement was
designed to frighten Grant and send him back by steamboat to defend the
capital; but the Sixth Corps only was sent, while the troops remaining
still kept pressing on in a series of flank movements, which resulted in
the seizure of the Weldon Road. That was the most damaging blow which
Lee had received. He made desperate efforts to recover what had been
lost, but in vain. It was the beginning of the end. Then the public
generally could see the meaning of General Grant's strategy,--that the
Wilderness, Spottsylvania, and all the terrible battles which had been
fought, were according to a plan, which, if carried out, must end in
victory. The Richmond newspapers, which had ridiculed the campaign, and
had found an echo in the disloyal press of the North, began to discuss
the question of supplies; and to keep their courage up, they indulged in
boastful declarations that the Southside Railroad never could be taken.
The march of Sherman from Atlanta to Savannah and through South
Carolina, destroying railroads and supplies,--the taking of
Wilmington,--Sheridan's movement from Winchester up the Valley of the
Shenandoah, striking the James River Canal and the Central Railroad, and
then the transfer of his whole force from the White House to the left
flank of the Army of the Potomac,--were parts of a well matured design
to weaken Lee's army.
Everything was ready for the final blow. The forces of General Grant
were disposed as follows. The Army of the James, composed of the
Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Fifth Corps, and commanded by General Ord, was
north of the James River, its right flank resting near the old
battle-field of Glendale, and its left flank on the Appomattox. The
Ninth Army Corps--the right wing of the Army of the Potomac--was next in
line, then the Sixth, and then the Second, its left resting on Hatcher's
Run. The Fifth was in rear of the Second. The line thus held was nearly
forty miles in length, defended on the front and rear by strong
earthworks and abatis.
General Grant's entire force could not have been much less than a
hundred and thirty thousand, including Sheridan's cavalry, the force at
City Point, and the provisional brigade at Fort Powhatan. Lee's whole
force was not far from seventy thousand,--or seventy-five thousand,
including the militia of Richmond and Petersburg; but he was upon the
defensive, and held an interior and shorter line.
The work which General Grant had in hand was the seizure of the
Southside Railroad by an extension of his left flank. He had attempted
it once with the Fifth Corps, at Dabney's Mill, and had failed; but that
attempt had been of value: he had gained a knowledge of the country. His
engineers had mapped it, the roads, the streams, the houses. The fight
at Dabney's Mill was a random stroke,--a "feeling of the position," to
use a term common in camp,--which enabled him to detect the weak point
of Lee's lines. To comprehend the movement, it is necessary to
understand the geographical and topographical features of the country,
which are somewhat peculiar. Hatcher's Run is a branch of the Nottoway
River, which has its rise in a swamp about four miles from the
Appomattox and twenty southwest of Petersburg. The Southside Railroad
runs southwest from Petersburg, along the ridge of land between the
Appomattox and the head-waters of the Nottoway, protected by the swamp
of Hatcher's Run and by the swamp of Stony Creek, another tributary of
the Nottoway.
The point aimed at by General Grant is known as the "Five Forks," a
place where five roads meet, on the table-land between the head-waters
of Hatcher's Run and Stony Creek. It was the most accessible gateway
leading to the railroad. If he could break through at that point, he
would turn Lee's flank, deprive him of the protection of the swamps, use
them for his own cover, and seize the railroad. To take the Five Forks
was to take all; for the long and terrible conflict had become so shorn
of its outside proportions, so reduced to simple elements, that, if Lee
lost that position, all was lost,--Petersburg, Richmond, his army, and
the Confederacy.
Surprise is expressed that the Rebellion went down so suddenly, in a
night, at one blow, toppling over like a child's house of cards,
imposing to look upon, yet of very little substance; but the
calculations of General Grant were to give a finishing stroke.
If, by massing the main body of his troops upon the extreme left of his
line, he succeeded in carrying the position of the Five Forks, it would
compel Lee to evacuate Richmond. Lee's line of retreat must necessarily
be towards Danville; but Grant, at the Five Forks, would be nearer
Danville by several miles than Lee; and he would thus, instead of the
exterior line, have the interior, with the power to push Lee at every
step farther from his direct line of retreat. That Grant saw all this,
and executed his plan, is evidence of great military ability. The plan
involved not merely the carrying of the Five Forks, but great activity
afterwards. The capture of Lee was a forethought, not an afterthought.
"Commissaries will prepare twelve days' rations," was his order, which
meant a long march, and the annihilation of Lee's army. An ordinary
commander might have been satisfied with merely breaking down the door,
and seizing the railroad, knowing that it would be the beginning of
dissolution to the Rebel army; but Grant's plan went farther,--the
routing of the burglar from his house, and dispatching him on the spot.
Perhaps Lee saw what the end would be, and did the best he could with
his troops; but inasmuch as he did not issue the order for the transfer
of a division from Richmond to the south side till Saturday night, after
the Five Forks were lost, it may be presumed that he did not fully
comprehend the importance of holding that gateway. If he had seen that
Richmond must be eventually evacuated, he might have saved his army by a
sudden withdrawal from both Richmond and Petersburg on Friday night,
pushing down the Southside Road, and throwing his whole force on
Sheridan and the Fifth Corps, which would have enabled him to reach
Danville. Not doing that, he lost all.
It is not intended in this article to give the details of the attack at
the Five Forks and along the line, but merely to show how the forces
were wielded in that last magnificent, annihilating blow.
On the 25th of March, the Twenty-Fourth Corps was transferred from the
north side of the James to Hatcher's Run, taking the position of the
Second Corps.
The force designed for the attack upon the Five Forks was composed of
the Fifth Corps and Sheridan's Cavalry,--the whole under command of
Sheridan. The Second Corps was massed across Hatcher's Run, and kept in
position to frustrate any attempt which might be made to cut Sheridan
off from the support of the main army.
Sheridan found a large force in front of him, along Chamberlain's Creek,
three miles west of Dinwiddie Court-House. He had hard fighting, and was
repulsed. There was want of cooperation on the part of Warren,
commanding the Fifth Corps, who was relieved of his command the next
morning, General Griffin succeeding him. A heavy rain-storm came on.
Wagons went hub-deep in the mud. The swamps were overflowed. The army
came to a stand-still. The soldiers were without tents. Thousands had
thrown away their blankets. There was gloom and discouragement
throughout the camp. But all the axes and shovels were brought into
requisition, and the men went to work building corduroy roads. It was
much better for the _morale_ of the army than to sit by bivouac-fires
waiting for sunny skies. The week passed away. The Richmond papers were
confident and boastful of final success.
"We are very hopeful of the campaign which is opening, and trust that we
are to reap a large advantage from the operations evidently near at
hand.... We have only to resolve that we will never surrender, and it
will be impossible that we shall ever be taken," said the "Sentinel," in
its issue of Saturday morning, April 1st, the last paper ever issued
from that office. The editor was not aware of the fact, that on Friday
evening, while he was penning this paragraph, Sheridan was bursting open
the door at the Five Forks and had the Rebellion by the throat. Lee
attempted to retrieve the disaster on Saturday by depleting his left and
centre to reinforce his right. Then came the order from Grant, "Attack
vigorously all along the line." How splendidly it was executed! The
Ninth, the Sixth, the Second, the Twenty-Fourth Corps, all went tumbling
in upon the enemy's works, like breakers upon the beach, tearing away
_chevaux-de-frise_, rushing into the ditches, sweeping over the
embankments, and dashing through the embrasures of the forts. In an hour
the C. S. A.,--the Confederate Slave Argosy,--the Ship of State launched
but four years ago, which went proudly sailing, with the death's-head
and cross-bones at her truck, on a cruise against Civilization and
Christianity, hailed as a rightful belligerent, furnished with guns,
ammunition, provisions, and all needful supplies, by England and France,
was thrown a helpless wreck upon the shores of Time!
It would be interesting to follow the troops in their victorious advance
upon Petersburg, their closing in upon Lee, the magnificent tactics of
the pursuit, and the scenes of the surrender; but in this article we
have space only to glance at