GRANT ATTACKS THE FRONT: 1864
On March 9, 1864, at the Executive Mansion, and in the presence of all
the Cabinet Ministers, Lincoln handed Grant the Lieutenant-General's
commission which made him Commander-in-Chief of all the Union armies--a
commission such as no one else had held since Washington. On April
9, 1865, Grant received the surrender of Lee at Appomattox; and
the four years war was ended by a thirteen months campaign.
Victor of the River War in '63, Grant moved his headquarters from
Chattanooga to Nashville soon before Christmas. He then expected
not only to lead the river armies against Atlanta in '64 but, at
the same time, to send another army against Mobile, where it could
act in conjunction with the naval forces under Farragut's command.
He consequently made a midwinter tour of inspection: southeast to
Chattanooga, northeast to Knoxville and Cumberland Gap, northwest to
Lexington and Louisville, thence south, straight back to Nashville.
This satisfied him that his main positions were properly taken and
held, and that a well-concerted drive would clear his own strategic
area of all but Forrest's elusive cavalry.
It was the hardest winter known for many years. The sticky clay
roads round Cumberland Gap had been churned by wheels and pitted by
innumerable feet throughout the autumn rains. Now they were frozen
solid and horribly encumbered by débris mixed up with thousands
upon thousands of perished mules and horses. Grant regretted this
terrible wastage of animals as much in a personal as in a military
way; for, like nearly all great men, his sympathies were broad
enough to make him compassionate toward every kind of sentient
life. No Arab ever loved his horse better than Grant loved his
splendid charger Cincinnati, the worthy counterpart of Traveler,
Lee's magnificent gray.
Summoned to Washington in March, Grant, after one scrutinizing
look at the political world, then and there made up his steadfast
mind that no commander-in-chief could ever carry out his own plans
from any distant point; for, even in his fourth year of the war,
civilian interference was still being practiced in defiance of naval
and military facts and needs, and of some very serious dangers.
Lincoln stood wisely for civil control. But even he could not resist
the perverting pressure in favor of the disastrous Red River Expedition,
against which even Banks protested. Public and Government alike
desired to give the French fair warning that the establishment of
an Imperial Mexico, especially by means of foreign intervention,
was regarded as a semi-hostile act. There were two entirely different
ways in which this warning could be given: one completely effective
without being provocative, the other provocative without being in
the very least degree effective. The only effective way was to win
the war; and the best way to win the war was to strike straight at
the heart of the South with all the Union forces. The most ineffective
way was to withdraw Union forces from the heart of the war, send them
off at a wasteful tangent, misuse them in eccentric operations just
where they would give most offense to the French, and then expose
them to what, at best, could only be a detrimental victory, and to
what would much more likely be defeat, if not disaster.
Yet, to Grant's and Farragut's and every other soldier's and sailor's
disgust, this worst way of all was chosen; and Banks's forty thousand
sorely needed veterans were sent to their double defeat at Sabine
Cross Roads and Pleasant Hill on the eighth and ninth of April, while
Porter's invaluable fleet and the no less indispensable transports
were nearly lost altogether owing to the long-foretold fall of
the dangerous Red River. The one success of this whole disastrous
affair was the admirable work of Colonel Joseph Bailey, who dammed
the water up just in time to let the rapidly stranding vessels
slide into safety through a very narrow sluice.
Even the Red River lesson was thrown away on Stanton, whose interference
continued to the bitter end, except when checked by Lincoln or countered
by Grant and Sherman in the field. When Grant was starting on his
tour of inspection he found that Stanton had forbidden all War
Department operators to let commanding generals use the official
cipher except when in communication with himself. There were to
be no secrets at the front between the commanding generals, even
on matters of immediate life and death, unless they were first
approved by Stanton at his leisure. The fact that the enemy could
use unciphered messages was nothing in his autocratic eyes. Nor
did it prick his conscience to change the wording in ways that
bewildered his own side and served the enemy's turn.
When Grant took the cipher Stanton ordered the operator to be dismissed.
Grant thereupon shouldered the responsibility, saying that Stanton
would have to punish him if any one was punished. Then Stanton gave
in. Grant saw through him clearly. "Mr. Stanton never questioned
his own authority to command, unless resisted. He felt no hesitation
in assuming the functions of the Executive or in acting without
advising with him.... He was very timid, and it was impossible
for him to avoid interfering with the armies covering the capital
when it was sought to defend it by an offensive movement against
the army defending the Confederate capital. The enemy would not
have been in danger if Mr. Stanton had been in the field."
Stanton was unteachable. He never learnt where control ended and
disabling interference began. In the very critical month of August,
'64, he interfered with Hunter to such an extent that this patriotic
general had to tell Grant "he was so embarrassed with orders from
Washington that he had lost all trace of the enemy." Nor was that the
end of Stanton's interference with the operations in the Shenandoah
Valley. Lincoln's own cipher letter to Grant on the third of August
shows what both these great men had to suffer from the weak link
in the chain between them.
I have seen your despatch in which you say, "I want Sheridan put
in command of all the troops in the field, with instructions to put
himself south of the enemy, and follow him to the death. Wherever
the enemy goes, let our troops go also." This, I think, is exactly
right, as to how our forces should move. But please look over the
despatches you may have received from here, even since you made
that order, and discover, if you can, that there is any idea in the
head of any one here of "putting our army _south_ of the enemy,"
or of "following him to the _death_" in any direction. I repeat
to you it will neither be done or attempted unless you watch it
every day, and hour, and force it.
The experts of the loyal North were partly comforted by knowing that
Davis and his ministers had interfered with Jackson, that during
the present campaign they made a crucial mistake about Johnston,
and that they failed to give Lee the supreme command until it was
too late. But no Southern Secretary went quite so far as Stanton,
who actually falsified Grant's order to Sheridan at the crisis
of the Valley campaign in October. Here are Grant's own words:
"This order had to go through Washington, where it was intercepted;
and when Sheridan received what purported to be a statement of
what I wanted him to do it was something entirely different."
Nor was Stanton the only responsible civilian to interfere with Grant.
There was no government press censorship--perhaps, in this peculiar
war, there could not be one. So the only safety was unceasing care,
even in cases vouched for by civilians of high official standing.
When Grant was beginning the great campaign of '64 the Honorable
Elihu B. Washburne, afterwards United States Minister to France,
introduced one Swinton as the prospective historian of the war. On
this understanding Swinton accompanied the army. One night Grant
gave verbal orders to the staff officer on duty. Three days later
these orders appeared in a Richmond paper. Shortly afterwards, in
the midst of the Wilderness battle, Swinton was found eavesdropping
behind a stump during a midnight conference at headquarters. Sent
off with a serious warning, he next appeared, in another place, as
a prisoner condemned to death for spying. Grant, satisfied that
he was not bent on getting news for the enemy in particular, but
only for the press in general, released and expelled him with such
a warning this time that he never once came back.
The Union forces at the front were about twice the corresponding
forces of the South. Sherman, who commanded the river armies after
Grant's transfer to Virginia, says: "I always estimated my force at
about double, and could afford to lose two to one without disturbing
our relative proportion." In Virginia the Army of the Potomac under
Meade and the new Army of the James under Butler, both under Grant's
immediate command, totaled over a hundred and fifty thousand men
against the ninety thousand under Lee. These odds of five to three
remained the same when a hundred and ten thousand Federals went
into winter quarters against sixty-six thousand Confederates at
Petersburg. But, when the naval odds of more than ten to one in
favor of the North are added in, the general odds of two to one are
reached on this as well as other scenes of action. In reserves the
odds were very much greater; for while the South was getting down
to its last available man the North began the following year with
nearly one million in the forces and two millions on the registered
reserve. Thus, even supposing that half the reserves were unfit for
active service, the man-power odds against the South were these:
two to one in arms at the beginning of the great campaign, five to
one at the end of it, and ten to one if the fit reserves were all
included. The odds in transportation by land, and very much more
so by water, were even greater at corresponding times; while the
odds in all the other resources which could be turned to warlike
ends were greater still.
The Southern situation, therefore, was not encouraging from the
naval and military point of view. The border States had long been
lost, then the trans-Mississippi; and now the whole river area was
held as a base by the North. Only five States remained effective:
Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia. These formed an
irregular oblong of about two hundred thousand square miles between
the Appalachians and the sea. There were a good eight hundred
Confederate miles from the Shenandoah Valley to Mobile. But the
three hundred miles across the oblong, even in its widest part,
were everywhere threatened and in some places held by the North.
The whole coast was more closely blockaded than ever; and only
three ports remained with their defenses still in Southern hands:
Wilmington, Charleston, and Mobile. Alabama was threatened by land and
sea from the lower Mississippi and the Gulf. Georgia was threatened
by Sherman's main body in southeastern Tennessee. The Carolinas
were in less immediate danger. But they were menaced both from the
mountains and the sea; and if the Union forces conquered Virginia and
Georgia, then the Carolinas were certain to be ground into subjugation
between Grant's victorious forces on the north and Sherman's on
the south.
Grant fixed his own headquarters with the Army of the Potomac at
Culpeper Court House, north of the Rapidan. Lee's Army of Northern
Virginia was at Orange Court House, over twenty miles south. Grant,
taking his own headquarters as the center, regarded Butler's Army
of the James as the left wing, which could unite with the center
round Richmond and Petersburg. The long right wing ran through
the whole of West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, clear away to
Memphis, with its own headquarters at Chattanooga. There Sherman
faced Johnston, who occupied a strong position at Dalton, over
thirty miles southeast. The great objectives were, of course, the
two main Southern armies under Lee and Johnston, with Richmond
and Atlanta as the chief positions to be gained.
All other Union forces were regarded as attacking the South from
the rear. Wherever coast garrisons could help to tighten the blockade
or seriously distract Confederate attention they were left to do
so. Wherever they could not they were either depleted for the front
or sent there bodily. The principal Union field force attacking
from the rear was to have been formed by Banks's forty thousand
veterans in conjunction with Farragut's fleet against Mobile. But
the Red River Expedition spoilt that combination in the spring
and postponed it till August, when Farragut did nearly all the
fighting, and the coöperating army was far too late to produce the
distracting effect that Grant had originally planned.
General Franz Sigel was sent to the upper Shenandoah Valley, both
to guard that approach on Washington and to destroy the resources on
which Lee's army so greatly relied. General George Crook was given
a mounted column to operate from southern West Virginia against
the line of rails running toward Tennessee through the lower end
of the Valley.
The most notable new general was Philip H. Sheridan, whom Grant
selected for the cavalry command. Sheridan was thirty-three, two
years older than his Southern rival, Stuart, and, like him, a young
regular officer who rose to well-earned fame the moment his first
great chance occurred.
Sherman we have met from the very beginning of the war and followed
throughout its course. He was continually rising to more and more
responsible command; but it was only now that he became the virtual
Commander-in-Chief of all the river armies and the chosen coöperator
with Grant on a universal scale. He was of the old original stock,
his first American ancestors having emigrated from England in 1634.
An old regular, with special knowledge of the South, and in the
fullness of his powers at the age of forty-four, he had developed
with the war till there was no position which he could not fill
to the best advantage of the service.
Grant fixed the fourth of May for the combined advance of all the
converging forces of invasion. There were two weak points where
the Union armies failed: one in the farthest south, where, as we
have so often seen, Banks could not attack Mobile owing to his
absence at Red River; the other in the farthest north, where Sigel
was badly beaten and replaced by Hunter. Here, after much disabling
interference at the hands of Stanton, Hunter was succeeded by Sheridan,
whom Grant himself directed with consummate skill. There were also
two Confederate thorns in the Federal side: Forrest's cavalry in
Sherman's rear, Mosby's cavalry in Grant's. Forrest roved about the
river area, snapping up small garrisons, cutting communications,
and doing a good deal of damage right up to the Ohio. Mosby, with
a much smaller but equally efficient force, actually raided to and
fro in Grant's immediate rear; and on one occasion nearly captured
Grant himself just on the eve of the opening move. As Grant's unguarded
special train from Washington pulled up at Warrenton Junction, where
there was only one Union official, Mosby's men had just crossed
the track in pursuit of some Federal cavalry.
But neither these two Confederate thorns in the side nor the more
serious Federal failures could stop the general advance. Nor yet
could Butler's lack of success on the James. Butler had seized
and fortified an exceedingly strong defensive position at Bermuda
Hundred on a peninsula, with navigable water on both flanks and in
rear, and a very narrow neck of land in front. The only trouble
was that it was as hard for him to surmount the Confederate front
across the same narrow neck as it was for the enemy to surmount
his own. He was, in fact, bottled up, with the cork in the enemy's
hands. He did send out cavalry from Suffolk to cut the rails south
of Petersburg. But no permanent damage was done there. Petersburg
itself, which at that time was almost defenseless, was not taken. And
in the middle of the month Beauregard attacked Butler so vigorously
as to make the Army of the James rather a passive than an active
force till it was presently, absorbed by Grant when he arrived
before Richmond in June.
Grant felt perfect confidence only in four prime elements of victory:
first, in his ability to wear Lee down by sheer attrition if other
means failed; next, in his own magnificent army; then in Sherman's;
and lastly in Sheridan's cavalry. His supply and transport services
were nearly perfect, even in his own most critical eyes. "There
never was a corps better organized than was the quartermaster's
corps with the Army of the Potomac in 1864." His field engineering
and his signal service were also exceedingly good. At every halt
the army threw up earth and timber entrenchments with wonderful
rapidity and skill. At the same time the telegraph and signal corps
was busy laying insulated wires by means of reels on muleback.
Parallel lines would be led to the rear of each brigade till quite
clear, when their ends would be joined by a wire at right angles,
from which headquarters could communicate with every unit at the
front. Sherman's army was equally efficient, and Sheridan's cavalry
soon proved that sweeping raids could be carried out by one side
as well as by the other.
Crossing the Rapidan at the Germanna Ford, Grant marched south
through the Wilderness on the fifth of May. The Wilderness was
densely wooded; the roads were few and bad; the clearings rare
and too small for large units. When Lee attacked from the west
and Grant turned to face him the fighting soon became desperate,
close, and somewhat confused. Neither side gained any substantial
advantage on the first day. Next morning Grant, preparing to attack
at five, was forestalled by Lee, who wished to keep him at arm's
length till Longstreet came up on the southern flank. Again the
opposing armies closed and fought with the greatest determination
for over an hour, when the Confederates fell back in some confusion.
Then Longstreet arrived and restored the battle till he was severely
wounded. After this Lee took command of his right, or southern, wing
and kept up the fight all day. Meanwhile Sheridan had countered
the Confederate cavalry under Stuart, which had been trying to
swing round the same southern flank. The main bodies of infantry
swayed back and forth till dark, with the woods and breastworks
on fire in several places, and many of the wounded smothering in
the smoke.
On the seventh reassuring news came in from Sherman and Butler,
Sheridan drove off the Confederate cavalry at Todd's Tavern, and
the southward march continued. As Grant and Meade rode south that
evening, past Hancock's corps, and the men saw they were heading
straight for Richmond, there was such a burst of cheering that
the Confederates, thinking it meant a night attack, deluged the
intervening woods with a heavy barrage till they found out their
mistake.
The race for Richmond continued on the eighth, each army trying to
get south of the other without exposing itself to a flank attack.
Grant had sent his wagon trains farther east, to move south on
parallel roads and keep those nearest Lee quite clear for fighting.
This movement at first led Lee to suspect a Federal retirement on
Fredericksburg, which caused him to send Longstreet's corps south
to Spotsylvania. The woods being on fire, and the men unable to
bivouac, the whole corps pushed on to Spotsylvania, thus forestalling
Grant, who had intended to get there first himself.
This brought on another tremendous battle in the bush. Lee formed
a semicircle, facing north, round Spotsylvania, in a supreme effort
to stem, if not throw back, Grant's most determined advance. Grant,
on the other hand, indomitably pressed home wave after wave of attack
till the evening of the twelfth. The morning of that desperate day
was foggy; and the attack was delayed. The Federal objective was
a commanding salient, jutting out from the Confederate center,
and now weakened by the removal of guns overnight to follow the
apparent Federal move toward the south. The gray sentries, peering
through the dripping woods, suddenly found them astir. Then wave
after wave of densely massed blue dashed to the assault, swarming
up and over on both sides, regardless of losses, and fighting hand
to hand with a fury that earned this famous salient the name of
Bloody Angle. Back and still back went the outnumbered gray, many of
whom were surrounded by the swirling currents of inpouring blue. But
presently Lee himself came up, and would have led his reinforcements
to the charge if a pleading shout of "General Lee to the rear!"
had not induced him to desist. Every spare Confederate rushed to
the rescue. From right and left and rear the gray streams came,
impetuous and strong, united in one main current and dashed against
the blue. There, in the Bloody Angle, the battle raged with
ever-increasing fury until the rising tide of strife, bursting
its narrow bounds, carried the blue attackers back to where they
came from. But they were hardly clear of that appalling slope before
they reformed, presented an undaunted front once more, and then
drew off with stinging resistance to the very last.
After five days of much rain and little fighting Grant made his
final effort on the eighteenth. This was meant to be a great surprise.
Two corps changed position under cover of the night and sprang
their trap at four in the morning. But Lee was again before them,
ready and resolute as ever. Thirty guns converged their withering
fire on the big blue masses and seemed to burn them off the field.
These masses never closed, as they had done six days before; and
when they fell back beaten the fortnight's battle in the Wilderness
was done.
During it there had been two operations that gave Grant better
satisfaction: Sheridan's raid and Sherman's advance. As large bodies
of cavalry could not maneuver in the bush Grant had sent Sheridan
off on his Richmond Raid ten days before. Striking south near
Spotsylvania, Sheridan's ten thousand horsemen rounded Lee's right,
cut the rails on either side of Beaver Dam Station, destroyed this
important depot on the Virginia Central Railroad, and then made
straight for Richmond. Stuart followed hard, made an exhausting
sweep round Sheridan's flank, and faced him on the eleventh at
Yellow Tavern, six miles north of Richmond. Here the tired and
outnumbered Confederates made a desperate attempt to stem Sheridan's
advance. But Stuart, the hero of his own men, and the admiration
of his generous foes, was mortally wounded; and his thinner lines,
overlapped and outweighed, gave ground and drew off. Richmond had
no garrison to resist a determined attack. But Sheridan, knowing he
could not hold it and having better work to do, pushed on southeast
to Haxall's Landing, where he could draw much-needed supplies from
Butler, just across the James. With the enemy aggressive and alert
all round him, he built a bridge under fire across the Chickahominy,
struck north for the Army of the Potomac, and reported his return
to Grant at Chesterfield Station--halfway back to Spotsylvania--on
his seventeenth day out.
In the course of this great raid Sheridan had drawn off the Confederate
cavalry; fought four successful actions; released hundreds of Union
prisoners and taken as many himself; cut rails and wires to such an
extent that Lee could only communicate with Richmond by messenger;
destroyed enormous quantities of the most vitally needed enemy
stores, especially food and medical supplies; and, by penetrating
the outer defenses of Richmond, raised Federal prestige to a higher
plane at a most important juncture.
Meanwhile Sherman, whose own main body included a hundred thousand
men, had started from Chattanooga at the same time as Grant from
Culpeper Court House. In Grant's opinion "Johnston, with Atlanta,
was of less importance only because the capture of Johnston and
his army would not produce so immediate and decisive a result in
closing the rebellion as would the possession of Richmond, Lee, and
his army." Sherman's organization, supply and transport, engineers,
staff, and army generally were excellent. So skillful, indeed,
were his railway engineers that a disgusted Confederate raider
called out to a demolition party: "Better save your powder, boys.
What's the good of blowing up this one when Sherman brings duplicate
tunnels along?"
Sherman had double Johnston's numbers in the field. But Johnston,
as a supremely skillful Fabian, was a most worthy opponent for this
campaign, when the Confederate object was to gain time and sicken
the North of the war by falling back from one strongly prepared
position to another, inflicting as much loss as possible on the
attackers, and forcing them to stretch their line of communication
to the breaking point among a hostile population. Two of Sherman's
best divisions were still floundering about with the rest of the
Red River Expedition. So he had to modify his original plan, which
would have taken him much sooner to Atlanta and given him the support
of a simultaneous attack on Mobile by a coöperating joint expedition.
But he was ready to the minute, all the same.
Dalton, Johnston's first stronghold, was cleverly turned by McPherson's
right flank march; whereupon Johnston fell back on Resaca. Here,
on the upon the fifteenth of May, the armies fought hard for some
hours. But Sherman again outflanked the fortified enemy, who retired
to Kingston. Then, after Sherman had made a four days' halt to
accumulate supplies, the advance was resumed, against determined
opposition and with a good deal of hard fighting for a week in the
neighborhood of New Hope Church. The result of the usual outflanking
movements was that Johnston had to evacuate Allatoona on the fourth
of June. Sherman at once turned it into his advanced field base;
while Johnston fell back on another strong and well-prepared position
at Kenesaw Mountain.
Grant, favored in a general way by Sherman and in a special way
by Sheridan, had meanwhile enjoyed a third advantage, this time
on his own immediate front, through the sickness of Lee, who could
not take personal command during the last ten days of May. On the
twenty-first half of Grant's army marched south while half stood
threatening Lee, in order to give their friends a start toward
Richmond. This move was so well staffed and screened that perhaps
Lee could not have seen his chance quite soon enough in any case.
But when he did learn what had happened even his calm self-control
gave way to the exceeding bitter cry: "We must strike them! We must
never let them pass us again!" On the thirtieth he was horrified
at getting from Beauregard (who was then between Richmond and
Petersburg) a telegram which showed that the Confederate Government
was busy with the circumlocution office in Richmond while the enemy
was thundering at the gate. "War Department must determine when
and what troops to order from here." Lee immediately answered:
"If you cannot determine what troops you can spare, the Department
cannot. The result of your delay will be disaster. Butler's troops
will be with Grant tomorrow." Lee also telegraphed direct to Davis
for immediate reinforcements, which arrived only just in time for
the terrific battle of Cold Harbor.
With these three advantages, in addition to the other odds in his
favor, Grant seemed to have found the tide of fortune at the flood
in the latter part of May. But he had many troubles of his own.
No sooner had half his army been badly defeated on the eighteenth
than news came that Sigel was in full retreat instead of cutting
off supplies from Lee. Then came news of Butler's retreat from
Drewry's Bluff, close in to Richmond. Nor was this all; for it was
only now that definite news of the Red River Expedition arrived
to confirm Grant's worst suspicions and ruin his second plan of
helping Farragut to take Mobile. But, as was his wont, Grant at
once took steps to meet the crisis. He ordered Hunter to replace
Sigel and go south--straight into the heart of the Valley, asked the
navy to move his own base down the Rappahannock from Fredericksburg
to Port Royal, and then himself marched on toward Richmond, where
Lee was desperately trying to concentrate for battle.
The two armies were now drawing all available force together round
the strategic center of Cold Harbor, only nine miles east of Richmond.
On the thirty-first Sheridan drove out the enemy detachments there,
and was himself about to retire before much superior reinforcements
when he got Grant's order to hold his ground at any cost. Nightfall
prevented a general assault till the next morning, when Sheridan
managed to stand fast till Wright's whole corps came up and the
enemy at once desisted. But elsewhere the Confederates did what
they could to stave the Federals off from advantageous ground on
that day and the next. The day after--the fateful third of June--the
two sides closed in death-grips at Cold Harbor.
On this, the thirtieth day of Grant's campaign of stern attrition
and would-be-smashing hammer-strokes at Lee, these were his orders
for attack: "The moment it becomes certain that an assault cannot
succeed, suspend the offensive. But when one does succeed, push it
vigorously, and, if necessary, pile in troops at the successful
point from wherever they can be taken." The trouble was that Grant
was two days late in carrying on the battle so well begun by Sheridan,
that Warren's corps was two miles off and entirely disconnected,
and that the three remaining corps formed three parts and no whole
when the stress of action came.
At dawn Meade's Army of the Potomac (less Warren's corps) began
to take post for the grand attack that some, more sanguine than
reflecting, hoped would win the war. When it was light the guns
burst out in furious defiance, each side's artillery trying to
beat the other's down before the crisis of the infantry assault.
There was no maneuvering. Each one of Meade's three corps--Hancock's,
Wright's, and Smith's (brought over from Butler's command)--marched
straight to its front. This led them apart, on diverging lines, and
so exposed their flanks as well as their fronts to enemy fire. But
though each corps thought its neighbor wrong to uncover its flanks,
and the true cause was not discovered till compass bearings were
afterwards compared, yet each went on undaunted, gaining momentum
with every step, and gathering itself together for the final charge.
Then, surging like great storm-blown waves, the blue lines broke
against Lee's iron front. In every gallant case there was the same
wild cresting of the wave, the same terrific crash, the same adventurous
tongues of blue that darted up as far as they could go alive, the same
anguishing recession from the fatal mark, and the same agonizing
wreckage left behind. In Hancock's corps the crisis passed in just
eight minutes. But in those eight dire minutes eight colonels died
while leading their regiments on to a foredoomed defeat. One of
these eight, James P. McMahon of New York, alone among his dauntless
fellows, actually reached the Confederate lines, and, catching the
colors from their stricken bearer, waved them one moment above
the parapet before he fell.
Flesh and blood could do no more. Under the withering fire and crossfire
of Lee's unshaken front the beaten corps went back, re-formed, and
waited. They had not long to wait; for Grant was set on swinging
his three hammers for three more blows at least. So again the three
assaults were separately made on the one impregnable front; and again
the waves receded, leaving a second mass of agonizing wreckage with
the first. Yet even this was not enough for Grant, who once more
renewed his orders. These orders quickly ran their usual course,
from the army to the different corps, from each corps to its own
divisions, and from divisions to brigades. But not a single unit
stirred. From the generals to the "thinking bayonets" every soldier
knew the limit had been reached. Officially the order was obeyed by
a front-line fire of musketry, as well as by the staunch artillery,
which again gave its infantry the comfort of the guns. But that
was all.
Thus ended the battle of Cold Harbor, the last pitched battle on
Virginian soil. Grant reported it in three short sentences; and
afterwards referred to it in these other three. "I have always
regretted that the last assault [_i.e._, the whole battle of the
third of June] was ever made. No advantage whatever was gained
to compensate for the heavy loss. Indeed, the advantages, other
than those of relative losses, were on the Confederate side." Even
these, however, were also on the Confederate side, as Grant lost
nearly thirteen thousand, while Lee lost less than eighteen hundred.
Cold Harbor undoubtedly lowered Union morale, both at the front
and all through the loyal North. It encouraged the Peace Party,
revived Confederate hopes, and shook the army's faith in Grant's
commandership. Martin McMahon, a Union general, writing many years
after the event, of which he was a most competent witness, said:
"It was the dreary, dismal, bloody, ineffective close of the
lieutenant-general's first campaign with the Army of the Potomac."
Cold Harbor caused a change of plan. Reporting two days later Grant
said: "I now find, after thirty days of trial, the enemy deems it
of the first importance to run no risks with the armies they now
have. Without a greater sacrifice of human life than I am willing
to make all cannot be accomplished that I had designed outside of
the city [of Richmond]. I have therefore resolved upon the following
plan," which, in one word, involved a complete change from a series
of pitched battles to a long-drawn open siege.
The battles lasted thirty days, the siege three hundred. Therefore,
from this time on for the next ten months, Lee had to keep his living
shield between Grant's main body and the last great stronghold
of the fighting South, while the rising tide of Northern force,
commanding all the sea and an ever-increasing portion of the land,
beat ceaselessly against his front and flanks, threw out destroying
arms against his ever-diminishing sources of supply, and wore the
starving shield itself down to the very bone.
Grant's losses--forty thousand killed and wounded--were all made
good by immediate reinforcement; as was his other human wastage
from sickness, straggling, and desertion: made good, that is, in
the quantities required to wear out Lee, whose thinning ranks could
never be renewed; but not made good in quality; for many of the best
were dead. The wastage of material is hardly worth considering on
the Northern side; for it could always be made good, superabundantly
good. But the corresponding wastage on the Southern side was unrenewed
and unrenewable. Food, clothing, munitions, medical stores--it was
all the same for all the Southern armies: desperate expedients,
slow starvation, death.
Consternation reigned at Richmond on the twelfth of June, the day
the fitful firing ceased around Cold Harbor. There was danger in
the Valley, where Hunter had won success at Staunton, and where
Crook's and Averell's Union troops were expected to arrive from West
Virginia. Sheridan, too, was off on a twenty-day raid. He cut the
Virginia Central rails at Trevilian, did much other damage between
Richmond and the Valley, and, toward the end of June, rejoined Grant,
who had reached the James nearly a fortnight before. Always trying
to overlap Lee's extending right, Grant closed in on Petersburg
with the Army of the Potomac while the Army of the James held fast
against Richmond. This part of the front then remained comparatively
quiet till the end of July.
But the beleaguered Confederates made one last sortie out of the
Valley and straight against Washington. At the beginning of July
the Valley was uncovered owing to the roundabout flank march that
Hunter was forced to make back to his base for ammunition. The
enterprising Jubal Early took advantage of this with some veteran
troops and made straight for Washington. On the ninth Lew Wallace
succeeded in delaying him for one day at the Monocacy by an admirably
planned defense most gallantly carried out with greatly inferior
numbers and far less veteran men. This gave time for reinforcements
to pour into Washington; so that on the twelfth, Early, finding
the works alive with men, had to retreat even faster than he came.
In the meantime Grant's extreme right wing was steadily pressing
the invasion of Georgia, where we left Sherman and Johnston face
to face at Kenesaw in June. Here again the beleaguered Confederates
had been making desperate raids or sorties, trying to cut Sherman
off from his base in Tennessee and keep back the Federal forces
in other parts of the river area. "Our Jack Morgan," whom we left
as a prisoner of war after his Ohio raid of '63, had escaped in
November, fought Crook and Averell for Saltville and Wytheville
in May, and then, leaving southwest Virginia, had raided Kentucky
and taken Lexington, but been defeated at Cynthiana and driven back
by overwhelming numbers till he again entered southwest Virginia
on the twentieth of June. Forrest raided northeastern Mississippi,
badly defeated Sturgis at Brice's Cross Roads in June, but was
himself defeated by A. J. Smith at Tupelo in July.
Meanwhile Sherman had been tapping Johnston's fifty miles of
entrenchments for three weeks of rainy June weather, hoping to find
a suitable place into which he could drive a wedge of attack. On
the twenty-seventh he tried to carry the Kenesaw lines by assault,
but failed at every point, with a loss of twenty-five hundred--three
times what Johnston lost.
By a well-combined series of maneuvers Sherman then forced Johnston
to fall back or be hopelessly outflanked. Johnston, with equal skill,
crossed the Chattahoochee under cover of the strongly fortified
bridgehead which he had built unknown to Sherman. But Sherman, with
his double numbers, could always hold Johnston with one-half in front
while turning his flank with the other. So even the Chattahoochee
was safely crossed on the seventeenth of July and the final move
against Atlanta was begun. That same night Johnston's magnificent
skill was thrown to the winds by Davis, who had ordered the bold
and skillful but far too headlong John B. Hood to take command
and "fight."
Five days later Hood fought the battle of Atlanta. Just as Sherman
was closing in to entrench for a siege Hood attacked his extreme
left flank with the utmost resolution, driving it in and completely
enveloping it. But Sherman was not to be caught. Knowing that only
a part of Hood's army could be sent to this attack while the rest
held the lines of Atlanta, Sherman left McPherson's veteran Army
of the Tennessee to do the actual fighting, supported, of course,
by the movement of troops on their engaged right. McPherson was
killed. Logan ably replaced him and won a hard-fought day. Hood's
loss was well over eight thousand; Sherman's considerably less
than half.
On the twenty-eighth Hood attacked the extreme right, now commanded
by General O. O. Howard in succession to McPherson, whose Army of
the Tennessee again did most distinguished service, especially
Logan's Fifteenth Corps near Ezra Church. The Confederates were
again defeated with the heavier loss. After this the siege continued
all through the month of August.
While Hood was trying to keep Sherman off Atlanta Grant was trying
to make a breach at Petersburg. Grant gave Meade "minute orders
on the 24th [of July] how I wanted the assault conducted," and
Meade elaborated the actual plan with admirable skill except in one
particular--that of the generals concerned. Burnside was ordered
to use his corps for the assault, and he chose Ledlie's division to
lead. The mine was on an enormous scale, designed to hold eight tons
of powder, though it was only charged with four, and was approached
by a gallery five hundred feet long. On the twenty-ninth Grant
brought every available man into proper support of Burnside, whose
other three divisions were to form the immediate support of Ledlie's
grand forlorn hope.
In the early morning of the thirtieth the mine blew up with an
earthquaking shock; the enemy round it ran helter-skelter to the
rear; a crater like that of a volcano was formed; and a hundred
and sixty pieces of artillery opened a furious fire on every square
inch near it. Ledlie's division rushed forward and occupied the
crater. But there the whole maneuver stopped short; for everything
hinged on Ledlie's movements; and Ledlie was hiding, well out of
danger, instead of "carrying on." After a pause Confederate
reinforcements came up and drove the leaderless division back.
"The effort," said Grant, "was a stupendous failure"; and it cost
him nearly four thousand men, mostly captured.
August was a sad month for the loyal North. It was then, as we
have seen, that Lincoln had to warn Grant about the way in which
his orders were being falsified in Washington. It was then that
Sherman asked for reinforcements, so as to be up to strength before
and after the taking of Atlanta. And it was then that Halleck warned
Grant to be ready to send some of his best men north if there should
be serious resistance to the draft. Nor was this all. Thurlow Weed,
the great election agent, told Lincoln that the Government would
be defeated; which meant, of course, that the compromised and
compromising Peace Party would probably be at the helm in time
to wreck the Union. With so many of the best men dead or at the
front the whole tone of political society had been considerably
lowered--to the corresponding advantage of all those meaner elements
that fish in troubled waters when the dregs are well stirred up.
There were sinister signs in the big cities, in the press, and
in financial circles. The Union dollar once sank to thirty-nine
cents. To make matters worse, there was a good deal of well-founded
discontent among the self-sacrificing loyalists, both at the home
and fighting fronts, because the Government apparently allowed
disloyal and evasive citizens to live as parasites on the Union's
body politic. The blood tax and money tax alike fell far too heavily
on the patriots; while many a parasite grew rich in unshamed safety.
Mobile was won in August. But the people's eyes were mostly fixed
upon the land. So a much greater effect was produced by Sherman's
laconic dispatch of the second of September announcing the fall of
Atlanta. The Confederates, despairing of holding it to any good
purpose, had blown up everything they could not move and then retreated.
This thrilling news heartened the whole loyal North, and, as Lincoln
at once sent word to Sherman, "entitled those who had participated
to the applause and thanks of the nation." Grant fired a salute
of shotted guns from every battery bearing on the enemy, who were
correspondingly depressed. For every one could now see that if
the Union put forth its full strength the shrunken forces of the
South could not prevent the Northern vice from crushing them to
death.
September also saw the turning of the tide on the still more conspicuous
scene of action in Virginia. Grant had sent Sheridan to the Valley,
and had just completed a tour of personal inspection there, when
Sheridan, finding Early's Confederates divided, swooped down on
the exposed main body at Opequan Creek and won a brilliant victory
which raised the hopes of the loyal North a good deal higher still.
Exactly a month later, on the nineteenth of October, Early made a
desperate attempt to turn the tables on the Federals in the Valley
by attacking them suddenly, on their exposed left flank, while
Sheridan was absent at Washington. (We must remember that Grant
had to concert action personally with his sub-commanders, as his
orders were so often "queered" when seen at Washington by autocratic
Stanton and bureaucratic Halleck.) The troops attacked broke up
and were driven in on their supports in wild confusion. Then the
supports gave way; and a Confederate victory seemed to be assured.
But Sheridan was on his way. He had left the scene of his previous
victory at Opequan Creek, near Winchester, and was now riding to the
rescue of his army at Cedar Creek, twenty miles south. "Sheridan's
Ride," so widely known in song and story, was enough to shake the
nerves of any but a very fit commander. The flotsam and jetsam of
defeat swirled round him as he rode. Yet, with unerring eye, he
picked out the few that could influence the rest and set them at
work to rally, reform, and return. Inspired by his example many
a straggler who had run for miles presently "found himself" again
and got back in time to redeem his reputation.
Arriving on the field Sheridan discovered those two splendid leaders,
Custer and Getty, holding off the victorious Confederates from what
otherwise seemed an easy prey. His presence encouraged the formed
defense, restored confidence among the rest near by, and stiffened
resistance so much that hasty entrenchments were successfully made
and still more successfully held. The first rush having been stopped,
Sheridan turned the lull that ensued into a triumphal progress by
riding bareheaded along his whole line, so that all his men might
feel themselves once more under his personal command. Cheer upon
cheer greeted him as his gallant charger carried him past; and
when the astonished enemy were themselves attacked they broke in
irretrievable defeat.
This crowning victory of the long-drawn Valley campaigns, coming
with cumulative force after those of Mobile, Atlanta, and Opequan
Creek, did more to turn the critical election than all the speeches
in the North. The fittest at the home front judged by deeds, not
words, agreeing therein with Rutherford B. Hayes (a future President,
now one of Sheridan's generals) who said: "Any officer fit for
duty who at this crisis would abandon his post to electioneer for
a seat in Congress, ought to be scalped."
The devastation of everything in the Valley that might be useful
to Lee's army completed the Union victory in arms; while Lincoln's
own triumph in November completed it in politics and raised his
party to the highest plane of statesmanship in war.
From this time till the early spring the battle of the giants in
Virginia calmed down to the minor moves and clashes that mark a
period of winter quarters; while the scene of more stirring action
shifts once more to Georgia and Tennessee.