Gettysburg in the pursuit of Lee's army and that some attempt, at least,
had not been made to interfere with the retreat across the Potomac.
Military critics have in fact pointed out that Meade had laid himself
open to criticism in the management of the battle itself. At the time of
the repulse of Pickett's charge, Meade had available at the left and in
rear of his centre the sixth corps which had hardly been engaged on the
previous two days, and which included some of the best fighting material
in the army. It has been pointed out more than once that if that corps
had been thrown in at once with a countercharge upon the heels of the
retreating divisions of Longstreet, Lee's right must have been curled up
and overwhelmed. If this had happened, Lee's army would have been so
seriously shattered that its power for future service would have been
inconsiderable. Meade was accepted as a good working general but the
occasion demanded something more forcible in the way of leadership and,
early in 1864, Lincoln sends for the man who by his success in the West
had won the hopeful confidence of the President and the people.
Before this appointment of General-in-chief was given to General Grant,
and he came to the East to take charge of the armies in Virginia, he had
brought to a successful conclusion a dramatic campaign, of which
Chattanooga was the centre. In September, 1863, General Rosecrans, who
had occupied Chattanooga, was defeated some twenty miles to the south on
the field of Chickamauga, a defeat which was the result of too much
confidence on the part of the Federal commander, who in pressing his
advance had unwisely separated the great divisions of his army, and of
excellent skill and enterprise on the part of the Confederate commander,
General Bragg. If the troops of Rosecrans had not been veterans, and if
the right wing had not been under the immediate command of so sturdy and
unconquered a veteran as General Thomas, the defeat might have become a
rout. As it was, the army retreated with some discouragement but in good
fighting force, to the lines of Chattanooga. By skilful disposition of
his forces across the lines of connection between Chattanooga and the
base of supplies, General Bragg brought the Federals almost to the point
of starvation, and there was grave risk that through the necessary
falling back of the army to secure supplies, the whole advantage of the
previous year's campaign might be lost. Grant was placed in charge of
the forces in Chattanooga, and by a good management of the resources
available, he succeeded in reopening the river and what became known as
"the cracker line," and in November, 1863, in the dramatic battles of
Lookout Mountain, fought more immediately by General Hooker, and of
Missionary Ridge, the troops of which were under the direct command of
General Sherman, overwhelmed the lines of Bragg, and pressed his forces
back into a more or less disorderly retreat. An important factor in the
defeat of Bragg was the detaching from his army of the corps under
Longstreet which had been sent to Knoxville in a futile attempt to crush
Burnside and to reconquer East Tennessee for the Confederacy. This plan,
chiefly political in purpose, was said to have originated with President
Davis. The armies of the West were now placed under the command of
General Sherman, and early in 1864, Grant was brought to Virginia to
take up the perplexing problem of overcoming the sturdy veterans of
General Lee.
The first action of Grant as commander of all the armies in the field
was to concentrate all the available forces against the two chief armies
of the Confederacy. The old policy of occupying outlying territory for
the sake of making a show of political authority was given up. If
Johnston in the West and Lee in the East could be crushed, the national
authority would be restored in due season, and that was the only way in
which it could be restored. Troops were gathered in from Missouri and
Arkansas and Louisiana and were placed under the command of Sherman for
use in the final effort of breaking through the centre of the
Confederacy, while in the East nothing was neglected on the part of the
new administration to secure for the direction of the new commander all
resources available of men and of supplies.
Grant now finds himself pitted against the first soldier of the
continent, the leader who is to go down to history as probably the
greatest soldier that America has ever produced. Lee's military career
is a wonderful example of a combination of brilliancy, daring ingenuity
of plan, promptness of action, and patient persistence under all kinds
of discouragement, but it was not only through these qualities that it
was possible for him to retain control, through three years of heavy
fighting, of the territory of Virginia, which came to be the chief
bulwark of the Confederacy. Lee's high character, sweetness of nature,
and unselfish integrity of purpose had impressed themselves not only
upon the Confederate administration which had given him the command but
upon every soldier in that command. For the army of Northern Virginia
Lee was the man behind the guns just as Lincoln came to be for all the
men in blue. There never was a more devoted army and there probably
never was a better handled army than that with which Lee defended for
three years the lines across Northern Virginia and the remnants of which
were finally surrendered at Appomattox.
Grant might well have felt concerned with such an opponent in front of
him. He had on his hands (as had been the almost uniform condition for
the army of the Potomac) the disadvantage of position. His advance must
be made from exterior lines and nearly every attack was to be against
well entrenched positions that had been first selected years back and
had been strengthened from season to season. On the other hand, Grant
was able to depend upon the loyal support of the administration through
which came to his army the full advantage of the great resources of the
North. His ranks as depleted were filled up, his commissary trains need
never be long unsupplied, his ammunition waggons were always equipped.
For Lee, during the years following the Gettysburg battle, the problem
was unending and increasing: How should the troops be fed and whence
should they secure the fresh supplies of ammunition?
Between Grant and Lincoln there came to be perfect sympathy of thought
and action. The men had in their nature (though not in their mental
equipment) much in common. Grant carries his army through the spring of
1864, across the much fought over territory, marching and fighting from
day to day towards the south-west. The effort is always to outflank
Lee's right, getting in between him and his base at Richmond, but after
each fight, Lee's army always bars the way. Marching out of the
Wilderness after seven days' fierce struggle, Grant still finds the line
of grey blocking his path to Richmond. The army of the Potomac had been
marching and fighting without break for weeks. There had been but little
sleep, and the food in the trains was often far out of the reach of the
men in the fighting line. Men and officers were alike exhausted. While
advantages had been gained at one point or another along the line, and
while it was certain that the opposing army had also suffered severely,
there had been no conclusive successes to inspirit the troops with the
feeling that they were to seize victory out of the campaign.
In emerging from the Wilderness, the head of the column reached the
cross-roads the left fork of which led back to the Potomac and the right
fork to Richmond or to Petersburg. In the previous campaigns, the army
of the Potomac, after doing its share of plucky fighting and taking more
than its share of discouragement, had at such a point been withdrawn for
rest and recuperation. It was not an unnatural expectation that this
course would be taken in the present campaign. The road to the right
meant further fatigue and further continuous fighting for men who were
already exhausted. In the leading brigade it was only the brigade
commander and the adjutant who had knowledge of the instructions for the
line of march. When, with a wave of the hand of the adjutant, the guidon
flag of the brigade was carried to the right and the head of the column
was set towards Richmond, a shout went up from the men marching behind
the guidon. It was an utterance not of discouragement but of
enthusiasm. Exhausting as the campaign had been, the men in the ranks
preferred to fight it out then and to get through with it. Old soldiers
as they were, they were able to understand the actual issue of the
contest. Their plucky opponents were as exhausted as themselves and
possibly even more exhausted. It was only through the hammering of Lee's
diminishing army out of existence that the War could be brought to a
close. The enthusiastic shout of satisfaction rolled through the long
column reaching twenty miles back, as the news passed from brigade to
brigade that the army was not to be withdrawn but was, as Grant's report
to Lincoln was worded, "to fight it out on this line if it took all
summer." When this report reached Lincoln, he felt that the selection of
Grant as Lieutenant-General had been justified. He said: "We need this
man. He fights."
In July, 1864, Washington is once more within reach if not of the
invader at least of the raider. The Federal forces had been concentrated
in Grant's lines along the James, and General Jubal Early, one of the
most energetic fighters of the Southern army, tempted by the apparently
unprotected condition of the capital, dashed across the Potomac on a
raid that became famous. It is probable that in this undertaking, as in
some of the other movements that have been referred to on the part of
the Southern leaders, the purpose was as much political as military.
Early's force of from fifteen to sixteen thousand men was, of course, in
no way strong enough to be an army of invasion. The best success for
which he could hope would be, in breaking through the defences of
Washington, to hold the capital for a day or even a few hours. The
capture of Washington in 1864, as in 1863 or in 1862, would in all
probability have brought about the long-hoped-for intervention of France
and England. General Lew Wallace, whose name became known in the years
after the War through some noteworthy romances, _Ben Hur_ and _The Fair
God_, and who was in command of a division of troops stationed west of
Washington, and composed in part of loyal Marylanders and in part of
convalescents who were about to be returned to the front, fell back
before Early's advance to Monocacy Creek. He disposed his thin line
cleverly in the thickets on the east side of the creek in such fashion
as to give the impression of a force of some size with an advance line
of skirmishers. Early's advance was checked for some hours before he
realised that there was nothing of importance in front of him; when
Wallace's division was promptly overwhelmed and scattered. The few hours
that had thus been saved were, however, of first importance for the
safety of Washington. Early reached the outer lines of the
fortifications of the capital some time after sunset. His immediate
problem was to discover whether the troops which were, as he knew, being
hurried up from the army of the James, had reached Washington or whether
the capital was still under the protection only of its so-called
home-guard of veteran reserves. These reserves were made up of men more
or less crippled and unfit for work in the field but who were still able
to do service on fortifications. They comprised in all about six
thousand men and were under the command of Colonel Wisewell. The force
was strengthened somewhat that night by the addition of all of the male
nurses from the hospitals (themselves convalescents) who were able to
bear arms. That night the women nurses, who had already been in
attendance during the hours of the day, had to render double service.
Lincoln had himself in the afternoon stood on the works watching the
dust of the Confederate advance. Once more there came to the President
who had in his hands the responsibility for the direction of the War
the bitterness of the feeling, if not of possible failure, at least of
immediate mortification. He knew that within twenty-four or thirty-six
hours Washington could depend upon receiving the troops that were being
hurried up from Grant's army, but he also realised what enormous
mischief might be brought about by even a momentary occupation of the
national capital by Confederate troops. I had some personal interest in
this side campaign. The 19th army corps, to which my own regiment
belonged, had been brought from Louisiana to Virginia and had been
landed on the James River to strengthen the ranks of General Butler.
There had not been time to assign to us posts in the trenches and we
had, in fact, not even been placed in position. We were more nearly in
marching order than any other troops available and it was therefore the
divisions of the 19th army corps that were selected to be hurried up to
Washington. To these were added two divisions of the 6th corps.
Colonel Wisewell, commanding the defences of the city, realised the
nature of his problem. He had got to hold the lines of Washington, cost
what it might, until the arrival of the troops from Grant. He took the
bold step of placing on the picket line that night every man within
reach, or at least every loyal man within reach (for plenty of the men
in Washington were looking and hoping for the success of the South). The
instructions usually given to pickets were in this instance reversed.
The men were ordered, in place of keeping their positions hidden and of
maintaining absolute quiet, to move from post to post along the whole
line, and they were also ordered, without any reference to the saving of
ammunition, to shoot off their carbines on the least possible pretext
and without pretext. The armories were then beginning to send to the
front Sharp's repeating carbines. The invention of breech-loading rifles
came too late to be of service to the infantry on either side, but
during the last year of the War, certain brigades of cavalry were armed
with Sharp's breech-loaders. The infantry weapon used through the War by
the armies of the North as by those of the South was the muzzle-loading
rifle which bore the name on our side of the Springfield and on the
Confederate side of the Enfield. The larger portion of the Northern
rifles were manufactured in Springfield, Massachusetts, while the
Southern rifles, in great part imported from England, took their name
from the English factory. It was of convenience for both sides that the
two rifles were practically identical so that captured pieces and
captured ammunition could be interchanged without difficulty.
Early's skirmish line was instructed early in the night to "feel" the
Federal pickets, an instruction which resulted in a perfect blaze of
carbine fire from Wisewell's men. The report that went to Early was that
the picket line must be about six thousand strong. The conclusion on the
part of the old Confederate commander was that the troops from the army
of the Potomac must have reached the city. If that were true, there was,
of course, no chance that on the following day he could break through
the entrenchments, while there was considerable risk that his retreat to
the Shenandoah might be cut off. Early the next morning, therefore, the
disappointed Early led his men back to Falling Waters.
I happened during the following winter, when in prison in Danville, to
meet a Confederate lieutenant who had been on Early's staff and who had
lost an arm in this little campaign. He reported that when Early, on
recrossing the Potomac, learned that he had had Washington in his grasp
and that the divisions marching to its relief did not arrive and could
not have arrived for another twenty-four hours, he was about the
maddest Early that the lieutenant had ever seen. "And," added the
lieutenant, "when Early was angry, the atmosphere became blue."
VIII
THE FINAL CAMPAIGN
After this close escape, it was clear to Grant as it had been clear to
Lincoln that whatever forces were concentrated before Petersburg, the
line of advance for Confederate invaders through the Shenandoah must be
blocked. General Sheridan was placed in charge of the army of the
Shenandoah and the 19th corps, instead of returning to the trenches of
the James, marched on from Washington to Martinsburg and Winchester.
In September, the commander in Washington had the satisfaction of
hearing that his old assailant Early had been sent "whirling through
Winchester" by the fierce advance of Sheridan. Lincoln recognised the
possibility that Early might refuse to stay defeated and might make use,
as had so often before been done by Confederate commanders in the
Valley, of the short interior line to secure reinforcements from
Richmond and to make a fresh attack. On the 29th of September, twenty
days before this attack came off, Lincoln writes to Grant: "Lee may be
planning to reinforce Early. Care should be taken to trace any movement
of troops westward." On the 19th of October, the persistent old fighter
Early, not willing to acknowledge himself beaten and understanding that
he had to do with an army that for the moment did not have the advantage
of Sheridan's leadership, made his plucky, and for the time successful,
fight at Cedar Creek. The arrival of Sheridan at the critical hour in
the afternoon of the 19th of October did not, as has sometimes been
stated, check the retreat of a demoralised army. Sheridan found his army
driven back, to be sure, from its first position, but in occupation of a
well supported line across the pike from which had just been thrown back
the last attack made by Early's advance. It was Sheridan however who
decided not only that the battle which had been lost could be regained,
but that the work could be done to best advantage right away on that
day, and it was Sheridan who led his troops through the too short hours
of the October afternoon back to their original position from which
before dark they were able to push Early's fatigued fighters across
Cedar Creek southward. Lincoln had found another man who could fight. He
was beginning to be able to put trust in leaders who, instead of having
to be replaced, were with each campaign gathering fresh experience and
more effective capacity.
From the West also came reports, in this autumn of 1864, from a fighting
general. Sherman had carried the army, after its success at Chattanooga,
through the long line of advance to Atlanta, by outflanking movements
against Joe Johnston, the Fabius of the Confederacy, and when Johnston
had been replaced by the headstrong Hood, had promptly taken advantage
of Hood's rashness to shatter the organisation of the army of Georgia.
The capture of Atlanta in September, 1864, brought to Lincoln in
Washington and to the North the feeling of certainty that the days of
the Confederacy were numbered.
The second invasion of Tennessee by the army of Hood, rendered possible
by the march of Sherman to the sea, appeared for the moment to threaten
the control that had been secured of the all-important region of which
Nashville was the centre, but Hood's march could only be described as
daring but futile. He had no base and no supplies. His advance did some
desperate fighting at the battle of Franklin and succeeded in driving
back the rear-guard of Thomas's army, ably commanded by General
Schofield, but the Confederate ranks were so seriously shattered that
when they took position in front of Nashville they no longer had
adequate strength to make the siege of the city serious even as a
threat. Thomas had only to wait until his own preparations were
completed and then, on the same day in December on which Sherman was
entering Savannah, Thomas, so to speak, "took possession" of Hood's
army. After the fight at Nashville, there were left of the Confederate
invaders only a few scattered divisions.
It was just before the news of the victory at Nashville that Lincoln
made time to write the letter to Mrs. Bixby whose name comes into
history as an illustration of the thoughtful sympathy of the great
captain:
"I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of
the adjutant-general of Massachusetts that you are the mother of
five sons who died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how
weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to
beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming, but I cannot
refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in
the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our
Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement and
leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost and the
pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the
altar of freedom."
In March, 1864, Lincoln writes to Grant: "New York votes to give votes
to the soldiers. Tell the soldiers." The decision of New York in regard
to the collection from the soldiers in each field of the votes for the
coming Presidential election was in line with that arrived at by all of
the States. The plan presented difficulties and, in connection with the
work of special commissioners, it involved also expense. It was,
however, on every ground desirable that the men who were risking their
lives in defence of the nation should be given the opportunity of taking
part in the selection of the nation's leader, who was also under the
Constitution the commander-in-chief of the armies in the field. The
votes of some four hundred thousand men constituted also an important
factor in the election itself. I am not sure that the attempt was ever
made to separate and classify the soldiers' vote but it is probable that
although the Democratic candidate was McClellan, a soldier who had won
the affection of the men serving under him, and the opposing candidate
was a civilian, a substantial majority of the vote of the soldiers was
given to Lincoln.
Secretary Chase had fallen into the habit of emphasising what he
believed to be his indispensability in the Cabinet by threatening to
resign, or even by submitting a resignation, whenever his suggestions or
conclusions met with opposition. These threats had been received with
patience up to the point when patience seemed to be no longer a virtue;
but finally, when (in May, 1864) such a resignation was tendered under
some aggravation of opposition or of criticism, very much to Chase's
surprise the resignation was accepted.
The Secretary had had in train for some months active plans for becoming
the Republican candidate for the Presidential campaign of 1864. Evidence
had from time to time during the preceding year been brought to Lincoln
of Chase's antagonism and of his hopes of securing the leadership of the
party. Chase's opposition to certain of Lincoln's policies was doubtless
honest enough. He had brought himself to believe that Lincoln did not
possess the force and the qualities required to bring the War to a
close. He had also convinced himself that he, Chase, was the man, and
possibly was the only man, who was fitted to meet the special
requirements of the task. Mr. Chase did possess the confidence of the
more extreme of the anti-slavery groups throughout the country. His
administration of the Treasury had been able and valuable, but the
increasing difficulty that had been found in keeping the Secretary of
the Treasury in harmonious relations with the other members of the
administration caused his retirement to be on the whole a relief.
Lincoln came to the conclusion that more effective service could be
secured from some other man, even if possessing less ability, whose
temperament made it possible for him to work in co-operation. The
unexpected acceptance of the resignation caused to Chase and to Chase's
friends no little bitterness, which found vent in sharp criticisms of
the President. Neither bitterness nor criticisms could, however, prevent
Lincoln from retaining a cordial appreciation for the abilities and the
patriotism of the man, and, later in the year, Lincoln sent in his
nomination as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Chase himself, in his
lack of capacity to appreciate the self-forgetfulness of Lincoln's
nature, was probably more surprised by his nomination as Chief Justice
than he had been by the acceptance of his resignation as Secretary of
the Treasury.