THE TURN OF THE TIDE
The death of Jackson was to Jefferson Davis an appalling disaster. He
had never seriously believed the Southern people could win their unequal
struggle against the millions of the North backed by their inexhaustible
resources until the achievements of Lee and Jackson had introduced a new
element into the conflict. So resistless and terrible had become the
effective war power of Southern soldiers led by these two men whose
minds moved in such harmony with each other and with their Chief in
Richmond that the South at last was in sight of success.
The impossible had been accomplished. Anything now seemed possible.
Jackson's death had destroyed this new equation of war.
Davis' faith in Jackson was in every way equal to Lee's and Lee but once
refused to follow Jackson's lead in his veto on his Lieutenant's plan to
annihilate Burnside's army at Fredericksburg.
When the report reached Richmond that Jackson was dying Davis was
inconsolable.
The whole evening the President of the Confederacy shut himself in his
room--unable to think of anything save the impending calamity. When the
end was sure he sent with his own hand the handsomest flag in Richmond
in which to wrap his body.
When Davis gazed on the white, cold, rugged features, the tears were
streaming down his hollow checks. He bent low and the tears fell on the
face of the dead.
When an officer of the Government came to the President's Mansion where
the body lay in state to consult him on a matter of importance, the
Confederate Chieftain stared at his questioner in a dazed sort of way
and remained silent.
Lifting his haggard face at last he said in pathetic tones:
"You must excuse me, my friend, I am staggering from a dreadful blow--I
cannot think--"
Three days and nights the endless procession passed the bier and paid
their tribute of adoration and love. And when he was borne to his last
resting place through the streets of the city, the sidewalks, the
windows and the housetops were a throbbing mass of weeping women and
men.
Jefferson Davis was perhaps the only man in the South in a position to
realize the enormous loss which the Confederacy had sustained in the
death of Lee's great lieutenant.
The Southern people who gloried in Jackson's deeds had as yet no real
appreciation of the services he had rendered. They could not realize
their loss until events should prove that no man could be found to take
his place.
The brilliant victory of Chancellorsville, following so closely on
Fredericksburg, had lifted the Confederacy to the heights.
In the West the army had held its own. The safety of Vicksburg was not
seriously questioned. General Bragg confronted Rosecrans with an army so
strong he dared not attack it and yet not strong enough to drive
Rosecrans from Tennessee.
Two campaigns were discussed with Davis.
The members of his Cabinet, who regarded the possession of Vicksburg and
the continued grip on the Mississippi River vital to the life of the
Confederacy, were alarmed at Grant's purpose to fight his way to this
stronghold and take it.
They urged that Lee's army be divided and half of it sent immediately to
reënforce Bragg. With this force in the West Rosecrans could be crushed
and Grant driven from his design of opening the Mississippi.
Lee, flushed with his victories, naturally objected to the weakening of
his army by such a division. He proposed a more daring and effective way
of relieving Vicksburg.
He would raise his army to eighty-five thousand men, clear Virginia of
the enemy and sweep into Pennsylvania, carry the war into the North,
forage on its rich fields, capture Harrisburg and march on Washington.
Davis did not wish to risk this invasion of Northern soil. But his
situation was peculiar. His relations with Lee had been remarkable for
their perfect accord. They had never differed on an essential point of
political or military strategy. Davis' pride in Lee's genius was
unbounded, his confidence in his judgment perfect.
Lee was absolutely sure that his army raised to eighty-five thousand
effective men could go anywhere on the continent and do anything within
human power. He had crushed McClellan's army of two hundred thousand
with seventy-five thousand men, and driven him from his entrenchments at
Richmond down the Peninsula. With sixty thousand he had crushed Pope and
hurled his army into the entrenchments at Washington, a bleeding,
disorganized mob. With sixty-two thousand he had cut to pieces
Burnside's hundred and thirteen thousand. With fifty thousand he had
rolled up Hooker's host of one hundred and thirty thousand in a scroll
of flame and death and flung them across the Rappahannock.
His fame filled the world. His soldiers worshiped him. At his command
they would charge the gates of hell with their bare hands. His soldiers
were seasoned veterans in whose prowess he had implicit faith. His faith
was not a guess. It was founded on achievements so brilliant there was
scarcely room for a doubt.
Lee succeeded in convincing Davis that he could invade the North, live
on its rich fields and win a battle which would open the way, not only
to save Vicksburg from capture, but secure the peace and independence of
the South.
A single great victory on Northern soil with his army threatening
Washington would make peace a certainty. Davis was quick to see the
logic of Lee's plan. It was reasonable. It was a fair risk. And yet the
dangers were so enormous he consented with reluctance.
Reagan, the Western member of his Cabinet, urged with all the eloquence
of his loyal soul the importance of holding intact the communications
with the territory beyond the Mississippi. He begged and pleaded for the
plan to reënforce Bragg and play the safe game with Vicksburg. Davis
listened to his advice with the utmost respect and weighed each point
with solemn sense of his responsibility.
The one point he made last he tried to drive home in a sharp personal
appeal.
"You cannot afford, Mr. President," he urged with vehemence, "to further
expose your own people of Mississippi to the ravages of such men as now
control the invading army. They have laid your own home waste. The
people of Vicksburg are your neighbors. They know you personally. The
people of this territory have sent their sons and brothers into Virginia
by thousands. There are no soldiers left to defend them--"
The President lifted his thin hand in protest.
"I can't let the personal argument sway me, Reagan. Our own people must
endure what is best for the cause. All I wish to know is what _is_
best--your plan or General Lee's."
Lee persuaded him against his personal judgment to consent to the daring
scheme of Northern invasion.
So intent was Reagan on the plan of direct relief to Vicksburg that
after Lee had begun his preparations for the advance, Davis called a
Cabinet meeting and reconsidered the whole question. Reagan pleaded with
tears at last for what he knew his Chief felt to be best. Davis weighed
for the second time each point with care and again decided that Lee's
plan promised the greater end--peace.
The moment his final decision was made Davis at once commissioned Vice
President Alexander H. Stephens, who knew Lincoln personally, to go to
Washington to make the proposition for an armistice and begin the
negotiations for a permanent peace on the day Lee should make good his
promise.
The letter with which Stephens started to Washington asked on its face
that the President of the United States arrange for an exchange of
prisoners which would be prompt and effective and prevent all suffering
by Northern men in Southern climates and Southern men in Northern
prisons. Davis had asked again and again that all prisoners be
exchanged. The Federal War Department had obstructed this exchange until
thousands of Northern soldiers crowded the prisons of the South and it
was impossible for the Confederate authorities to properly care for
them. Medicine had been made contraband of war by the North and the
simplest remedies could not be had for the Confederate soldiers or their
prisoners. Behind this humane purpose of Stephens' mission lay the
bigger proposition, which was a verbal one, to propose peace on Lee's
victory on Northern soil.
Lee's army lay on the plains of Culpeper during the beautiful month of
May. The vast field was astir with the feverish breath of preparations
for the grand march. Trains rushed to the front loaded with munitions of
war. New batteries of artillery with the finest equipment ever known
were added to his army. The ordnance trains were packed to their
capacity. His troops were better equipped than ever before in the
history of the war. Every department of the huge, pitiless machine was
running like clockwork.
Fifteen thousand cavalry were reviewed at Brandy Station led by Stuart's
waving plume--Stuart, the matchless leader who had twice ridden round a
hostile army of a hundred thousand men. Crowds of cheering women watched
this wonderful pageant and waved their handkerchiefs to the handsome
young cavalier as he passed on his magnificent horse draped with
garlands of flowers.
It required an entire week to review the cavalry, infantry, and
artillery.
On June the first, the advance began.
Ewell's corps, once commanded by Jackson, led the way. They swung
rapidly through the Blue Ridge Mountains, into the Valley and suddenly
pounced on General Milroy at Winchester. Milroy with a few of his
officers escaped through the Confederate lines at night and succeeded in
crossing the Potomac at Harper's Ferry. Ewell captured three thousand
prisoners, thirty pieces of artillery, a hundred wagons and great
stores. Seven hundred more men were taken at Martinsburg.
On June twenty-seventh, the whole of Lee's army was encamped at
Chambersburg in Pennsylvania in striking distance of the Capital of the
State.
The execution of this march had been a remarkable piece of strategy. He
had completely baffled the Northern Commanders, spread terror through
the North and precipitated the wildest panic in Washington.
Within twenty-odd days the Southern General had brought his forces from
Fredericksburg, Virginia, confronted by an army of one hundred thousand
men, through the Blue Ridge, and the Shenandoah Valley into
Pennsylvania. He had done this in the face of one of the most powerful
and best equipped armies the North had put into the field. He had swept
the hostile garrisons at Winchester, Martinsburg and Harper's Ferry into
his prisons and camped in Pennsylvania without his progress being once
arrested or a serious battle forced upon him. He had cleared Virginia of
the army which threatened Richmond and they were rushing breathlessly
after him in a desperate effort to save the Capital of Pennsylvania.
So far Lee had made good every prediction on which he had based his plan
of campaign.
Davis felt so sure that he would make good his promised victory that he
hurriedly dispatched Stephens to Fortress Monroe under a flag of truce
and asked for a safe conduct for his Commissioner to Washington.
In alarm the Governors of Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, and
West Virginia called out their militia. Lee was not deterred by their
panic. He knew that those raw troops would cut no figure in the swift
and terrible drama which was being staged among the ragged crags around
Gettysburg. The veteran armies of the North and South would decide the
issue. If he won, he would brush aside the militia as so many school
boys and march into Washington.
Meade was rushing his army after his antagonist with feverish haste. His
advance guard struck Lee before the town of Gettysburg on July first,
1863. A desperate struggle ensued. Neither Meade nor Lee had yet reached
the field.
Within a mile of the town the Confederates made a sudden and united
charge and smashed the Federal line into atoms. General Reynolds, their
Commander, was killed and his army driven headlong into the streets of
Gettysburg. Ewell, charging through the town, swept all before him and
took five thousand prisoners.
The crowded masses of fugitives, fleeing for their lives, passed out of
the town and rushed up the slopes of the hills beyond.
At five o'clock Lee halted his men until the rest of his army should
reach the field.
During the night General Meade rallied his disorganized men, poured his
fresh troops among them and entrenched his army on the heights where his
defeated advance guard had taken refuge.
Had Lee withdrawn the next morning when he scanned those hills which
looked down on him through bristling brows of brass and iron the history
of the Confederacy might have been longer. It could not have been more
illustrious.
His reasons for assault were sound. To his council of war he was
explicit.
"I had not intended, gentlemen," he said, "to fight a general battle at
such distance from our base, unless attacked by the enemy. We find
ourselves confronted by the Federal army. It is difficult to withdraw
through the mountains with our large trains. The country is unfavorable
for collecting supplies while in the presence of the main body of the
enemy as he can restrain our foraging parties by occupying the mountain
passes. The battle is in a measure unavoidable. We have won a great
victory to-day. We can defeat Meade's army in spite of these hills."
When Lee surveyed the heights of Gettysburg again on the morning of the
second of July, he saw that the Northerners held a position of
extraordinary power. Yet his men were flushed with victory after
victory. They had swept their foe before them in the first encounter as
chaff before a storm. They were equal to anything short of a miracle.
He ordered Longstreet to hurl his corps against Cemetery Ridge and drive
the enemy from his key position before the entrenchments could be
completed.
Longstreet was slow. Jackson would have struck with the rapidity of
lightning. On this swift action Lee had counted. The blow should have
been delivered before eight o'clock. It was two o'clock in the afternoon
before Longstreet made the attack and Meade's position had been made
stronger each hour.
From two o'clock until dark the long lines of gray rolled and dashed
against the heights and broke in red pools of blood on their rocky
slopes.
Three hundred pieces of artillery thundered their message in an Oratorio
of Death. The earth shook. Hills and rocks danced and reeled before the
excited vision of the onrushing men. For two hours the guns roared and
thundered without pause. The shriek of shell, the crash of falling
trees, the showers of flying rocks ripped from cliffs by solid shot, the
shouts of charging hosts, the splash of bursting shrapnel, the neighing
of torn and mangled horses, transformed the green hills of Pennsylvania
into a smoke-wreathed, flaming hell. The living lay down that night to
sleep with their heads pillowed on the dead.
On this second day Lee's men had gained a slight advantage. They had
taken Round Top and held it for two hours. They had at least proven that
it could be done. They had driven in the lines on the Federal left. The
Southern Commander still believed his men could do the impossible.
Longstreet begged his Chief that night to withdraw and choose another
field. Lee ordered the third day's fight. On his gray horse he watched
Pickett lead his immortal charge and fall back down the hill.
He rode quietly to the front, rallying the broken lines. He made no
speech. He uttered no bombast.
He calmly lifted his hand and cried:
"Never mind--boys!"
To his officers he said:
"It's all my fault. We'll talk it over afterward. Let every good man
rally now."
His army had never known a panic. The men quietly fell into line and
cheered their Commander.
To an English officer on the field Lee quietly said:
"This has been a sad day for us, Colonel--a sad day; but we can't expect
always to gain victories."
Lee had lost twenty thousand men and fourteen generals. Meade had lost
twenty-three thousand men and seventeen generals. Lee withdrew his army
across the swollen Potomac, carrying away his guns and all the prisoners
he had taken.
General Meade had saved the North, but Lee's army was still intact, on
its old invincible lines in Virginia, sixty-five thousand strong.
The news from Gettysburg crushed the soul of Davis. He had hoped with
this battle to end the war, and stop the frightful slaughter of our
noblest men, North and South. His Commissioner, Alexander H. Stephens,
was halted at Fortress Monroe and sent back to Richmond with an
insulting answer.
So bitter was Lee's disappointment that he offered his resignation to
Davis.
The President at once wrote a generous letter in which he renewed the
expressions of his confidence in the genius of his Commanding General
and begged him to guard his precious life from undue exposure.
Gettysburg was but one of the appalling calamities which crushed the
hopes of the Confederate Chieftain on this memorable fourth of July,
1863.
On the recovery of Joseph E. Johnston from his wound at Seven Pines he
was assigned to the old command of Albert Sidney Johnston in the West.
His department included the States of Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama,
Georgia and North Carolina.
He entered on the duties of his new and important field--complaining,
peevish, sulking.
On the day before his departure Mrs. Davis visited his wife and
expressed to General Johnston the earnest wish of her heart for her
husband's success.
"I sincerely hope, General," she said cordially, "that your campaign
will be brilliant and successful."
The General pursed the hard lines of his mouth.
"I might succeed if I had Lee's chances with the army of Northern
Virginia."
From the moment Johnston reached his field he began to quarrel with his
generals and complain to the Government at Richmond. He made no serious
effort to unite his forces for the defense of Vicksburg and continuously
wrote and telegraphed to the War Department that his authority was
inadequate to really command so extended a territory. He made no effort
to throw the twenty-four thousand men he commanded into a juncture with
Pemberton who was struggling valiantly against Grant's fifty thousand
closing in on the doomed city.
On May eighteenth, Johnston sent a courier to Pemberton and advised him
to evacuate Vicksburg without a fight! Pemberton held a council of war
and refused to give up the Mississippi River without a struggle.
Johnston sat down in his tent and left him to his fate.
Grant closed in on Vicksburg and the struggle began. Pemberton could not
believe that Johnston would not march to his relief.
Women and children stood by their homes amid the roar of guns and the
bursting of shells. Caves were dug in the hills and they took refuge
under the ground.
A shell burst before a group of children hurrying from their homes to
the hills. The dirt thrown up from the explosion knocked three little
fellows down, but luckily no bones were broken. They jumped up, brushed
their clothes, wiped the dirt from their eyes, and hurried on without a
whimper.
When the dark days of starvation came, the women nursed the sick and
wounded, lived on mule and horse meat and parched corn.
Johnston continued to send telegrams to the War Department saying he
needed more troops and didn't know where to get them. Yet he was in
absolute command of all the troops in his department and could order
them to march at a moment's notice in any direction he wished. He
hesitated and continued to send telegrams and write letters for more
explicit instructions.
He got them finally in a direct peremptory order from the War
Department.
On June fifteenth, he telegraphed his Government:
"I consider saving Vicksburg hopeless."
Davis ordered his Secretary of War to reply immediately in unmistakable
language:
"Your telegram grieves and alarms us, Vicksburg must not be lost
without a struggle. The interest and honor of the Confederacy
forbid it. I rely on you to avert this loss. If better resource
does not offer you must hazard attack. It may be made in concert
with the garrison, if practicable, but otherwise without. By day
or night as you think best."
The Secretary of War, brooding in anxiety over the possibility of
Johnston's timidity in the crisis, again telegraphed him six days
later:
"Only my convictions of almost imperative necessity for action
induced the official dispatch I have sent you. On every ground I
have great deference to your judgment and military genius, but I
feel it right to share, if need be to take the responsibility and
leave you free to follow the most desperate course the occasion may
demand. Rely upon it, the eyes and hopes of the whole Confederacy
are upon you, with the full confidence that you will act, and with
the sentiment that it were better to fail nobly daring, than through
prudence even to be inactive. I rely on you for all possible to save
Vicksburg."
On June twenty-seventh, Grant telegraphed Washington:
"Joe Johnston has postponed his attack until he can receive ten
thousand reënforcements from Bragg's army. They are expected early
next week. I feel strong enough against this increase and do not
despair of having Vicksburg before they arrive."
Pemberton's army held Vicksburg practically without food for forty-seven
days. His brave men were exposed to blistering suns and drenching rains
and confined to their trenches through every hour of the night. They had
reached the limit of human endurance and were now physically too weak to
attempt a sortie. Johnston still sat in his tent writing letters and
telegrams to Richmond.
Pemberton surrendered his garrison to General Grant on July fourth, and
the Mississippi was opened to the Federal fleet from its mouth to its
source.
Grant telegraphed to Washington:
"The enemy surrendered this morning, General Sherman will face
immediately on Johnston and drive him from the State."
But the great letter writer did not wait for Sherman to face him. He
immediately abandoned the Capital of Mississippi and retreated into the
interior.
In the fall of Vicksburg, the Confederacy had suffered a most appalling
calamity--not only had the Mississippi River been opened to the Federal
gunboats, but Grant had captured twenty-four thousand prisoners of war,
including three Major Generals and nine Brigadiers, ninety pieces of
artillery and forty thousand small arms.
The Johnston clique at Richmond made this disaster the occasion of
fierce assaults on Jefferson Davis and fresh complaints of the treatment
of their favorite General. The dogged persistence with which this group
of soreheads proclaimed the infallibility of the genius of the weakest
and most ineffective general of the Confederacy was phenomenal. The more
miserable Johnston's failures the louder these men shouted his praises.
The yellow journals of the South continued to praise this sulking old
man until half the people of the Confederacy were hoodwinked into
believing in his greatness.
The results of this Johnston delusion were destined to bear fatal fruit
in the hour of the South's supreme trial.