IN SIGHT OF VICTORY
When Grant crossed the Rapidan with his army of one hundred forty-one
thousand one hundred and sixty men Lee faced him with sixty-four
thousand. The problem of saving Richmond from the tremendous force under
the personal command of the most successful general of the North was not
the only danger which threatened the Confederate Capital. Butler was
pressing from the Peninsula with forty thousand men along the line of
McClellan's old march, supported again by the navy.
Jefferson Davis knew the task before Lee to be a gigantic one yet he did
not believe that Grant would succeed in reaching Richmond.
The moment the Federal general crossed the Rapidan and threw his army
into the tangled forest of the Wilderness, Lee sprang from the jungles
at his throat.
Battle followed battle in swift and terrible succession. At Cold Harbor
thirty days later the climax came. Grant lost ten thousand men in twenty
minutes. The Northern general had set out to hammer Lee to death by
steady, remorseless pounding. At the end of a month he had lost more
than sixty thousand men and Lee's army was as strong as when the fight
began.
Grant's campaign to take Richmond was the bloodiest and most tragic
failure in the history of war. The North in bitter anguish demanded his
removal from command. Lincoln stubbornly refused to interfere with his
bulldog fighter. He sent him word to hold on and chew and choke.
As Grant in his whirl of blood approached the old battle grounds of
McClellan, Davis rode out daily to confer with Lee. He was never more
cheerful--never surer of the safety of his Capital. His faith in God and
the certainty that he would in the end give victory to a cause so just
and holy grew in strength with the report from each glorious field. No
doubt of the right or justice of his cause ever entered his mind. Day
and night he repeated the lines of his favorite hymn:
"I'll strengthen thee, help thee and cause thee to stand,
Upheld by my righteous omnipotent hand."
Again and again he said to his wife half in soliloquy, half in exalted
prayer:
"We can conquer a peace against the world in arms and keep the rights of
freemen if we are worthy of the privilege!"
The spirit which animated the patriotic soldiers who followed their
commander in this bloody campaign was in every way as high as that which
inspired their President.
Jennie spent an hour each day ministering to the sick prisoners who had
returned from the North and were unable to go further than Richmond. It
was her service of love for Jimmie's friends and comrades.
A poor fellow was dying of the want he had endured in prison. He lifted
his dimmed eyes to hers:
"Will you write to my wife for me, Miss?"
"Yes--yes--I will."
"And give her my love--"
He paused for breath and fumbled in his pocket.
"I've a letter from her here--read it before you write. Our little girl
had malaria. She tried willow tea and everything she could think of for
the chills. The doctor said nothin' but quinine could save her. She
couldn't get it, the blockade was too tight, and so our baby died--and
now I'm dyin' and my poor starvin' girl will have nothin' to comfort
her--but--"
He gasped and lifted himself on his elbow.
"If our folks can just quit free men, it's all right. It's all right!"
The women and children of Richmond were suffering now for food. The
Thirteenth Virginia regiment sent Billy Barton into the city with a
contribution for their relief.
Billy delivered it to Jennie with more than a boy's pride. There was
something bigger in the quiet announcement he made.
"Here's one day's rations from the regiment, sis," he said--"all our
flour, pork, bacon and meal. The boys are fasting to-day. It's their
love offering to those we've left at home--"
Jennie kissed him.
"It's beautiful of you and your men, boy. Give my love to them all and
tell them I'm proud to be their countrywoman--"
"And they're proud of their country and their General, too--maybe you
wouldn't believe it--but every regiment in Lee's army has reënlisted for
the war."
She seized Billy's hand.
"Come with me--I want you to see the President and tell him what your
regiment has done. It'll help him."
As they approached the White House a long, piercing scream came through
the open windows.
"What on earth?" Jennie exclaimed.
"An accident of some kind," the boy answered, seizing her arm and
hurrying forward. Every window and door of the big lonely house set
apart on its hill swung wide open, the lights streaming through them,
the wind blowing the curtains through the windows. The lights blazed
even in the third story.
Mrs. Burton Harrison, the wife of the President's Secretary, met them at
the door, her eyes red with weeping.
She pressed Jennie's hand.
"Little Joe has been killed--"
"Mrs. Davis' beautiful boy--impossible!"
"He climbed over the bannisters and fell to the brick pavement and died
a few minutes after his mother reached his side--"
The girl could make no answer. She had come on a sudden impulse to cheer
the lonely leader of her people. Perhaps his need in this dark hour had
called her. She thought of Socola's story of his mother's vision and
wondered with a sudden pang of self-pity where the man she loved was
to-night.
This beautiful child, named in honor of his favorite brother, was the
greatest joy of the badgered soul of the Confederate leader.
Suddenly his white face appeared at the head of the stairs. A courier
had come from the battlefield with an important dispatch. Grant and Lee
were locked in their death grapple in the Wilderness. He would try even
in this solemn hour to do his whole duty.
He passed the sympathetic group murmuring a sentence whose pathos
brought the tears again to Jennie's eyes.
"Not my will, O Lord, but thine--thine--thine!"
He took the dispatch from the courier's hand and held it open for some
time, staring at it with fixed gaze.
He searched the courier's face and asked pathetically:
"Will you tell me, my friend, what is in it--I--I--cannot read--"
The courier read the message in low tones. A great battle was joined.
The fate of a nation hung on its issue. The stricken man drew from his
pocket a tiny gold pencil and tried to write an answer--stopped suddenly
and pressed his hand on his heart.
Billy sprang to his side and seized the dispatch:
"I'll take the message to General Cooper--Mr. President--"
The white face turned to the young soldier and looked at him pitifully:
"Thank you, my son--thank you--it is best--I must have this hour with
our little boy--leave me with my dead!"
Jennie stayed to help the stricken home.
She took little Jeff in her arms to rock him to sleep. He drew her head
down and whispered:
"Miss Jennie, I got to Joe first after he fell. I knelt down beside him
and said all the prayers I know--but God wouldn't wake him!"
The girl drew the child close and kissed the reddened eyes. Over her
head beat the steady tramp of the father's feet, back and forth, back
and forth, a wounded lion in his cage. The windows and doors were still
wide open, the curtains waving wan and ghost-like from their hangings.
Two days later she followed the funeral procession to the
cemetery--thousands of children, each child with a green bough or bunch
of flowers to pile on the red mound.
A beautiful girl pushed her way to Jennie's side and lifted a handful of
snowdrops.
"Please put these on little Joe," she said wistfully. "I knew him so
well."
With a sob the child turned and fled. Jennie never learned her name.
She turned to the grave again, her gaze fixed on the striking figure of
the grief-stricken father, bare-headed, straight as an arrow, his fine
face silhouetted against the shining Southern sky. The mother stood back
amid the shadows, in her somber wrappings, her tall figure drooped in
pitiful grief.
The leader turned quickly from his personal sorrows to those of his
country, his indomitable courage rising to greater heights as dangers
thickened.
Two weeks later General Sheridan attempted what Dahlgren tried and
failed to accomplish.
The President hurried from his office to his home, seized his pistols,
mounted his horse and rode out to join Generals Gracie and Ransom who
were placing their skeleton brigades to repulse the attack.
The crack of rifles could be distinctly heard from the Executive
Mansion.
The mother called her children to prayers. As little Jeff knelt he
raised his chubby face and said with solemn earnestness:
"You had better have my pony saddled, and let me go out and help
father--we can pray afterwards!"
In driving Sheridan's cavalry back from Richmond General Stuart fell at
Yellow Tavern mortally wounded--the bravest of the brave--a full Major
General who had won immortal fame at thirty-one years of age. His
beautiful wife, the daughter of a Union General, Philip St. George
Cooke, could not reach his bedside before he breathed his last.
The President reverently entered the death chamber and stood for fifteen
minutes holding the hand of his brilliant young commander.
They told him that he could not live to see his wife.
"I should have liked to have seen her," he said gently, "but God's will
be done."
The doctor felt his fast fading pulse.
"Doctor, I suppose I'm going fast now," Stuart said. "It will soon be
over. I hope I have fulfilled my duty to my country and my God--"
"Your end is near, General Stuart," the doctor responded softly.
"All right," was the even answer. "I'll end my little affairs down here.
To Mrs. Robert E. Lee I give my gold spurs, in eternal memory of the
love I bear my glorious Chief. To my staff, my horses--"
He paused and turned to the heavier officer who stood with bowed head.
"You take the larger one--he'll carry you better. To my son I leave my
sword--"
He was silent a moment and then said with an effort:
"Now I want you to sing for me the song I love best:
"'Rock of ages cleft for me
Let me hide myself in thee'"--
With his fast-failing breath he joined in the song, turned and murmured:
"I'm going fast now--God's will be done--"
So passed the greatest cavalry leader our country has produced--a man
whose joyous life was one long feast of good will toward his fellow men.
* * * * *
In spite of all losses, in spite of four years of frightful carnage, in
spite of the loss of the Mississippi, the States of Louisiana and
Tennessee, the Confederacy was in sight of victory.
Lee had baffled Grant's great army at every turn and now held him
securely at bay before Petersburg. The North was mortally tired of the
bloody struggle. The party which demanded peace was greater than any
political division--it included thousands of the best men in the party
of Abraham Lincoln.
The nomination of General McClellan for President on a platform
declaring the war a failure and demanding that it end was a foregone
conclusion. Jefferson Davis knew this from inside information his
friends had sent from every section of the North.
The Confederacy had only to hold its lines intact until the first Monday
in November and the Northern voters would end the war.
The one point of mortal danger to the South lay in the mental structure
of Joseph E. Johnston, the man whom Davis had been persuaded, against
his better judgment, to appoint to the command of one of the greatest
armies the Confederacy had ever put into the field.
Johnston had been sent to Dalton, Georgia, and placed in command of
sixty-eight thousand picked Confederate soldiers with which to attack
and drive Sherman out of the lower South.
Lee with sixty-four thousand had defeated Grant's one hundred and forty
thousand. Richmond was safe, and the North was besieging Washington with
an army of heart-broken mothers and fathers who demanded Grant's
removal.
No effort was spared by Davis to enable Johnston to stay Sherman's
advance and assume the offensive. The whole military strength of the
South and West was pressed forward to him. His commissary and ordnance
departments were the best in the Confederacy. His troops were eager to
advance and retrieve the disaster at Missionary Ridge--the first and
only case of panic and cowardice that had marred the brilliant record of
the Confederacy.
The position of Johnston's army was one of commanding strength. Long
mountain ranges, with few and difficult passes, made it next to
impossible for Sherman to turn his flank or dislodge him by direct
attack. Sherman depended for his supplies on a single line of railroad
from Nashville.
Davis confidently believed that Johnston could crush Sherman in the
first pitched battle and render his position untenable.
And then began the most remarkable series of retreats recorded in the
history of war.
Without a blow and without waiting for an attack, Johnston suddenly
withdrew from his trenches at Dalton and ran eighteen miles into the
interior of Georgia. He stopped at Resaca in a strong position on a
peninsula formed by the junction of two rivers fortified by rifle pits
and earthworks.
He gave this up and ran thirteen miles further into Georgia to
Adairsville. Not liking the looks of Adairsville he struck camp and ran
to Cassville seventeen miles.
He then declared he would fight Sherman at Kingston. Sherman failing to
divide his army, as Johnston had supposed he would, he changed his mind
and ran beyond Etowah. He next retreated to Alatoona. Here Sherman
spread out his army, threatened Marietta and Johnston ran again.
On July fifth he ran from Kenesaw Mountain and took refuge behind the
Chattahoochee River.
From Dalton to Resaca, from Resaca to Adairsville, from Adairsville to
Alatoona (involving the loss of Kingston and Rome with their mills,
foundries and military stores), from Alatoona to Kenesaw, from Kenesaw
to the Chattahoochee and then tumbled into the trenches before Atlanta.
Retreat had followed retreat for two months and a half over one hundred
and fifty miles to the gates of Atlanta without a single pitched
battle!
Davis watched this tragedy unfold its appalling scenes with increasing
bitterness, disappointment and alarm.
The demand for Johnston's removal was overwhelming in the State of
Georgia whose gate city was now besieged by Sherman. The people of the
whole South had watched this retreat of a hundred and fifty miles into
their territory with sickening hearts.
Again Johnston began his nagging and complaining to the Richmond
authorities. His most important message was an accusation of disloyalty
against Joseph E. Brown. He telegraphed in blunt plain English:
"The Governor of Georgia refuses me provisions and the use of his
roads."
Brown answered:
"The roads are open to him and in capital condition. I have furnished
him abundantly with provisions."
The President of the Confederacy now faced the most dangerous and tragic
decision of his entire administration. The removal of Johnston from his
command before Sherman's victorious army in the heart of Georgia could
be justified only on the grounds of the sternest necessity. The
Commanding General not only had the backing of his powerful junta in
Richmond who were now busy with their conspiracy to establish a
dictatorship and oust the President from his office, but he was
immensely popular with his army. His care for his soldiers was fatherly.
His painful efforts to save their lives, even at the cost of the loss of
his country, were duly appreciated by the leaders of opinion in the
army. Johnston had the power to draw and hold the good will of the men
who surrounded him. He had the power, too, of infecting his men with his
likes and dislikes. His hatred of Davis had been for three years the
one mania of his sulking mind.
To remove him from command in such a crisis was to challenge a mutiny in
his army which might lead to serious results. Yet if he should continue
to retreat, and back out of Atlanta without a fight as he had backed out
of every position for the one hundred and fifty miles from Dalton, the
results would be still more appalling.
The loss of Atlanta at this moment meant the defeat of the peace party
of the North, and the reëlection of Lincoln. If Lincoln should be
elected it was inconceivable that the South could continue the unequal
struggle for four years more.
If Johnston would only hold his trenches and save Atlanta for a few days
the South would win. Lee could hold Grant indefinitely.
The thought which appalled Davis was the suspicion which now amounted to
a practical certainty that his retreating General would evacuate Atlanta
as he had threatened to abandon Richmond when confronted by McClellan,
and had abandoned Vicksburg without a blow.
He must know this with absolute certainty before yielding to the demand
for his removal. That no possible mistake could be made, he dispatched
his Chief of Staff, General Braxton Bragg, to Atlanta for conference
with Johnston and make a personal report.
Bragg reported that Johnston was arranging to abandon Atlanta without a
battle and the President promptly removed him from command and appointed
Hood in his place.
When Hood assumed command of the disgruntled army, it was too late to
save Atlanta. Had Johnston delivered battle with his full force at
Dalton, Sherman might have been crushed as Rosecrans was overwhelmed at
Chickamauga.
Hood's army was driven back into their trenches. Sherman threw his hosts
under cover of night on a wide flanking movement and Atlanta fell.
Under the mighty impulse of this news Lincoln was reëlected, the peace
party of the North defeated and the doom of the Confederacy sealed.