Fig. 8
Lee's loss exceeded forty per cent of his command. Meade's loss fell short of thirty. But Meade was quite unable to pursue at once when Lee retired on the evening of the fourth. The opposingcavalry, under Pleasonton and Stuart respectively, had fought a flanking battle of their own, but without decisive result. So Lee could screen his retreat to the Potomac, where, however, his whole supply train might have been cut off if its escort under the steadfast Imboden had not been reinforced by every teamster who could pull a trigger.
Gettysburg and Vicksburg, coming together, of course raised the wildest expectations among the general public, expectations which found an unworthy welcome at Government headquarters, where Halleck wrote to Meade on the fourteenth: "The escape of Lee's army has created great dissatisfaction in the mind of the President." Meade at once replied: "The censure is, in my judgment, so undeserved that I most respectfully ask to be immediately relieved from the command of this army." Wiser counsels thereupon prevailed.
Lee and Meade maneuvered over the old Virginian scenes of action, each trying to outflank the other, and each being hampered by having to send reinforcements to their friends in Tennessee, where, as we have seen already, Bragg and Rosecrans were now maneuvering in front of Chattanooga. In October (after the Confederate victory of Chickamauga)Meade foiled Lee's attempt to bring on a Third Manassas. The campaign closed at Mine Run, where Lee repulsed Meade's attempted surprise in a three-day action, which began on the twenty-sixth of November, the morrow of Grant's three days at Chattanooga.
From this time forward the South was like a beleaguered city, certain to fall if not relieved, unless, indeed, the hearts of those who swayed the Northern vote should fail them at the next election.
FARRAGUT AND THE NAVY: 1863-4
The Navy's task in '63 was complicated by the many foreign vessels that ran only between two neutral ports but broke bulk into blockade-runners at their own port of destination. For instance, a neutral vessel, with neutral crew and cargo, would leave a port in Europe for a neutral port in America, say, Nassau in the Bahamas or Matamoras on the Rio Grande. She could not be touched of course at either port or anywhere inside the three-mile limit. But international law accepted the doctrine of continuous voyage, by which contraband could be taken anywhere on the high seas, provided, of course, that the blockader could prove his case. If, for example, there were ten times as many goods going into Matamoras as could possibly be used through that port by Mexico, then the presumption was that nine-tenths were contraband. Presumption becoming proof by further evidence, thedoctrine of continuous voyage could be used in favor of the blockaders who stopped the contraband at sea between the neutral ports. The blockade therefore required a double line of operation: one, the old line along the Southern coast, the other, the new line out at sea, and preferably just beyond the three-mile limit outside the original port of departure, so as to kill the evil at its source. Nassau and Matamoras gave the coast blockade plenty of harassing work; Nassau because it was "handy to" the Atlantic ports, Matamoras because it was at the mouth of the Rio Grande, over the shoals of which the Union warships could not go to prevent contraband crossing into Texas, thence up to the Red River, down to the Mississippi (between the Confederate strongholds of Vicksburg and Port Hudson) and on to any other part of the South. But what may be called the high-seas blockade was no less harassing, complicated as it was by the work of Confederate raiders.
The coast blockade of '63 was marked by two notable ship duels and three fights round Charleston, then, as always, a great storm center of the war. At the end of January two Confederate gunboats under Commodore Ingraham attacked the blockading flotilla of Charleston, forced theMerceditato surrender, badly mauled theKeystone State, and damaged theQuaker City. But, though some foreign consuls and all Charleston thought the blockade had been raised for the time being, it was only bent, not broken.
At the end of February the Union monitorMontaukdestroyed the Confederate privateerNashvillenear Fort McAllister on the Ogeechee River in Georgia. In April nine Union monitors steamed in to test the strength of Charleston; but, as they got back more than they could give, Admiral Du Pont wisely decided not to try the fight-to-a-finish he had meant to make next morning. Wassaw Sound in Georgia was the scene of a desperate duel on the seventeenth of June, when the Union monitorWeehawkencaptured the old blockade-runnerFingal, which had been converted into the new Confederate ramAtlanta. The third week in August witnessed another bombardment of Charleston, this time on a larger scale, for a longer time, and by military as well as naval means. But Charleston remained defiant and unconquered both this year and the next.
Confederate raiders were at work along the trade routes of the world in '63, doing much harm by capture and destruction, and even more by shakingthe security of the American mercantile marine. American crews were hard to get when so many hands were wanted for other war work; and American vessels were increasingly apt to seek the safety of a neutral flag.
Slowly, and with much perverse interference to overcome in the course of its harassing duties, the Union navy was getting the strangle-hold that killed the sea-girt South. By '64 the North had secured this strangle-hold; and nothing but foreign intervention or the political death of the Northern War Party could possibly shake it off. The South was feeling its practical enislement as never before. The strong right arm of the Union navy held it fast at every point but three—Wilmington, Charleston, and Mobile; and round these three the stern blockaders grew stronger every day. The Sabine Pass and Galveston also remained in Southern hands; and the border town of Matamoras still imported contraband. But these other three points were closely watched; and the greatly lessened contraband that did get through them now only served the western South, which had been completely severed from the eastern South by the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson. The left arm of the Union navy now held the whole line of theMississippi, while the gripping hand held all the tributary streams—Ohio, Cumberland, and Tennessee—from which the Union armies were to invade, divide, and devastate the eastern South this year.
Several Southern raiders were still at large in '64. But the most famous or notorious three have each their own year of glory. TheFloridabelongs to '63, theShenandoahto '65. So the one great raiding story we have now to tell is that of theAlabama, the greatest of them all.
TheAlabamawas a beautiful thousand-ton wooden barkentine, built by the Lairds at Birkenhead in '62, with standing rigging of wire, a single screw driven by two horizontal three-hundred horse power engines, coal room for three hundred and fifty tons, eight good guns, the heaviest a hundred-pound rifle, and a maximum crew of one hundred and forty-nine—all ranks and ratings—under Captain Raphael Semmes, late U. S. N. Semmes was not only a very able officer but an accomplished lawyer, well posted on belligerent and neutral rights at sea.
For nearly two years theAlabamaroved the oceans of the Old World and the New, takingsixty-six Union vessels valued at seven million dollars, spreading the terror of her name among all the merchantmen that flew the Stars and Stripes, and infuriating the Navy by the wonderful way in which she contrived to escape every trap it set for her. She was designed for speed rather than for fighting, and, with her great spread of canvas, could sometimes work large areas under sail. But, even so, her runs, captures, and escapes formed a series of adventures that no mere luck could have possibly performed with a fluctuating foreign crew commanded by ex-officers of the Navy. Her wanderings took her through nearly a hundred degrees of latitude, from the coast of Scotland to St. Paul Island, south of the Indian Ocean, also through more than two hundred degrees of longitude, from the Gulf of Mexico to the China Sea. She captured "Yankees" within one day's steaming of the New York Navy Yard as well as in the Straits of Sunda. West of the Azores and off the coast of Brazil her captures came so thick and fast that they might have almost been a flock of sheep run down there by a wolf. Finally, to fill the cup of wrath against her, she had sunk a blockader off the coast of Texas, given the slip to a Union man-of-war at the Cape of Good Hope, and kept theNavy guessing her unanswered riddles for two whole years.
Imagine, then, the keen elation with which all hands aboard the U. S. S.Kearsargeheard at their berth off Flushing that theAlabamawas in port at Cherbourg on the Channel coast of France, only one day's sail southwest! And there she was when theKearsargecame to anchor; and every Northern eye was turned to see the ship of which the world had heard so much. The Kearsarges hardly dared to hope that there would be a fight; for they had the stronger vessel, and now the faster one as well. TheAlabamahad been built for speed; but she had knocked about so much without a proper overhaul that her copper sheathing was in rags, while she was more or less strained in nearly every other part. TheKearsarge, on the other hand, was in good order, with mantlets of chain cable protecting her vitals, with one-third greater horse power, with fourteen more men in her crew, and with two big pivot guns throwing eleven inch shells with great force at short ranges. Moreover, theKearsarge, with her superior speed and stronger hull, could choose the range and risk close quarters. The Alabamas were also keen to estimate respective strengths. But the French authorities naturally kept the twoships pretty far apart; so the Alabamas never saw the chain mantlets which the Kearsarges had cleverly hidden under a covering of wood that appeared to be flush with the hull.
The Kearsarges had a second and still more elating surprise when they heard theAlabamawas coming out to fight. Semmes was apparently anxious to show that his raider could be as gallant in fighting a man-of-war as she was effective in sinking merchant vessels; so he wrote his challenge to the Confederate Consul at Cherbourg, who passed it on to the U. S. Consul, who handed it to Captain Winslow, commanding theKearsarge. Still, four days passed without theAlabama; and the Kearsarges were giving up hope, when, suddenly, on Sunday morning, the nineteenth of June, just as they had rigged church and fallen in for prayers, out came theAlabama. TheKearsargethereupon drew off, so that theAlabamacould not easily escape to neutral waters if the duel went against her. Cherbourg, of course, was all agog to see the fight; and many thousands of people, some from as far as Paris, watched every move. An English yacht, theDeerhound, kept an offing of about a mile, ready to rescue survivors from a watery grave. Its owner, with his wife and family, had intended tostay ashore and go to church. But, when they heard theAlabamawas really going out, he put the question to the vote around the breakfast-table, whereupon it was carried unanimously that theDeerhoundshould go too.
When the deck-officer of theKearsargesang out, "Alabama!" Captain Winslow put down his prayer-book, seized his speaking-trumpet, and turned to gain a proper offing, while the drum beat to general quarters and the ship was cleared for action, with pivot-guns to starboard. The weather was fine, with a slight haze, little sea, and a light west breeze. Having drawn theAlabamafar enough to sea, theKearsargeturned toward her again, showing the starboard bow. When at a mile theAlabamafired her hundred-pounder. For nearly the whole hour this famous duel lasted the ships continued fighting in the same way—starboard to starboard, round and round a circle from half to a quarter mile across. Each captain stood on the horse-block abreast the mizzen-mast to direct the fight. Semmes presently called to his executive officer: "Mr. Kell, use solid shot! Our shell strike the enemy's side and fall into the water" (after bounding off the iron mantlets Winslow had so cleverly concealed). TheKearsarge'sgunnery wasmagnificent, especially from the after-pivot, which Quartermaster William Smith fired with deadly aim, even when three of his gun's crew had been wounded by a shell. These three, strange to say, were the only casualties that occurred aboard theKearsarge. But at sea the stronger side usually suffers much less and the weaker much more than on land. TheAlabamalost forty: killed, drowned, and wounded.
The Kearsarges soon saw how the fight was going and began to cheer each first-rate shot. "That's a good one! Now we have her! Give her another like the last!" The big eleven-inchers got home repeatedly as the range decreased; so much so that Semmes ordered Kell to keep theAlabamaheaded for the coast the next time the circling brought her bow that way. This would bring her port side into action, which was just what Semmes wanted now, because she had a dangerous list to starboard, where the water was pouring through the shot-holes. Kell changed her course with perfect skill, righting the helm, hoisting the head-sails, hauling the fore-try-sail-sheet well aft, and pivoting to port for a broadside delivered almost as quickly as if there had not been a change at all. But at this moment the engineer came up to say the water had put his fires outand that the ship was sinking. At the same time a strange thing happened. An early shot from theKearsargehad carried away theAlabama'scolors; and now theAlabama'sown last broadside actually announced her own defeat by "breaking out" the special Stars and Stripes that Winslow had run up his mizzenmast on purpose to break out in case of victory. A cannon ball had twitched the cord that held the flag rolled up "in stops."
Semmes sent his one remaining boat to announce his surrender; threw his sword into the sea; and jumped in with the survivors. TheDeerhound, on authority from Winslow, had already closed in to the rescue, followed by two French pilot boats and two from theKearsarge; when suddenly theAlabama, rearing like a stricken horse, plunged to her doom.
Long before theAlabama'send the Navy had been preparing for the finishing blows against the Southern ports. Farragut had returned to New Orleans in January, '64, hoping for immediate action. But vexatious delays at Washington postponed his great attack till August, when he crowned his whole career by his master-stroke against Mobile. Grant was equally annoyed bythis absurd delay, which was caused by the eccentric, and therefore entirely wasteful, Red River Expedition of '64, an expedition we shall ignore otherwise than by pointing out, in this and the succeeding chapters, that it not only postponed the overdue attack on Mobile but spoilt Sherman's grand strategy as well as Farragut's and Grant's. Banks commanded it. But by this time even he had learnt enough of war to know that it was a totally false move. So he boldly protested against it. But Halleck's orders, dictated by the Government, were positive. So there was nothing for it but to suffer a well-deserved defeat while trying to kill the dead and withering branches of Confederate power beyond the Mississippi, in order to "show the flag in Texas" and say "hands off!" to Mexico and France in the least effective way of all.
During this delay the Confederate ramAlbemarlecame down the Roanoke River, hoping to break through the local blockade in Albemarle Sound and so give North Carolina an outlet to the sea. Two attempts against Newbern, which closed the way out to Pamlico Sound, had failed; but now (the fifth of May) great hopes were set upon theAlbemarle. At first she seemed impregnable; and the Federal shot and shell glanced harmlesslyoff her iron sides. But presently Commander Roe of theSassacus(a light-draft, pair-paddle, double-ender gunboat) getting at right angles to her, ordered his engineer to stuff the fires with oiled waste and keep the throttle open. "All hands, lie down!" shouted Roe, as the throbbing engines drove his vessel to the charge. Then came an earthquake shock: theSassacuscrashed her bronze beak into theAlbemarle'sside. Both vessels were disabled; a shell from theAlbemarleburst the boilers of theSassacus, scalding the engineers. But the rest fought off the attempt made by the Albemarles to board. Presently the furious opponents drifted apart; and theAlbemarle, unable to face her other enemies, took refuge upstream. There, on the twenty-seventh of October, she was heroically attacked and sunk by Lieutenant W. B. Cushing, U. S. N., with a spar torpedo projecting from a little steam launch. Cushing himself swam off through a hail of bullets, worked his way through the woods, seized a skiff belonging to one of the enemy's outposts, and reached the flagship half dead but wholly triumphant.
Between theAlbemarle'stwo fights Farragut took Mobile after a magnificent action on the fifthof August. There were batteries ashore, torpedoes across the channel, theTennesseeram and other Confederate vessels waiting on the flank: three kinds of danger to the Union fleet if one false movement had been made. But Farragut's touch was sure. He sent his ironclads through next to the batteries, which were only really dangerous on one side. This protected the wooden ships against the batteries and the ironclads against the torpedoes; for the Confederates had to leave part of the fairway clear in order to use it themselves. Through this narrow channel the four strongly armored monitors led the desperate way, a little ahead and to starboard of the wooden vessels, which followed in pairs, each pair lashed together, with the stronger on the starboard side, next to Fort Morgan.
The Confederates in Fort Morgan, and in the small and distant Fort Powell on the other side, hardly reached a thousand men. Their force afloat was also comparatively small: the ironclad ramTennesseeand three side-wheeler gunboats. But the great strength of their position and the many dangers to a hostile fleet combined to make Farragut's attack a very serious operation, even with his four monitors, eight screw sloops, and four smaller vessels. The Union army, which took no partin this great attack, was over five thousand strong, and lost only seven men in the land bombardment later on.
Farragut crossed the bar in theHartfordat ten past six in the morning with the young flood tide and a westerly breeze to blow the smoke against Fort Morgan. All his ships ran up the Stars and Stripes not only at the peak, as usual, but at each mast-head as well. Farragut himself at first took post in the port main rigging. But as the smoke of battle rose around him he climbed higher and higher till he got close under the maintop, where a seaman, sent up by Captain Drayton, lashed him on securely.
All went well amid the furious cannonade till the monitorTecumseh, taking the wrong side of the channel buoy in her anxiety to ram theTennessee, ran over the torpedoes, was horribly holed by the explosion, and plunged headforemost to the bottom, her screw madly whirling in the air. Nor was this the worst; for theTecumseh'smistake had thrown the other monitors out of their proper line-ahead, athwart the wooden ships, which began to slow and swing about in some confusion. The Confederates redoubled their fire. Ahead lay the fatal torpedoes. For a moment Farragutcould not decide whether to risk an advance at all costs or to turn back beaten. He was a very devout as well as a most determined man; and his simple prayer, "O God, shall I go on?" seemed answered by the echo of his soul, "Go on!" So on he went, not in unreflecting exaltation, but in exaltation based on knowledge and on skill. Like Cromwell, he might well have said, "Trust in the Lord and keep your powder dry!" For he had done all that naval foresight could have done to ensure success. And now, in one lightning flash of genius, he reviewed the situation. He knew the torpedoes of his day were often unreliable, that they exploded only on a special kind of shock, that those which did explode could not be replaced in action, that they were all fixed to their own spots, and that if one ship was blown up her next-astern would get through safely.
TheBrooklyn, his next-ahead, was in his way. So he ordered the flagshipHartfordand her lashed-together consort, the double-enderMetacomet, to use, the one her screw, the other her paddles, in opposite directions, till he had cleared theBrooklyn'sstern. As he drew clear and headed for the danger-channel a shout went up from theBrooklyn'sdeck—"'ware torpedoes!" But Farragut, hismind made up, instantly roared back—"Damn the torpedoes!" Then, turning to theHartford'sandMetacomet'sdecks, he called his orders down: "Four bells! Captain Drayton, go ahead! Captain Jouett, full speed!" In answer to the order of "four bells" the engines worked their very utmost and the two vessels dashed ahead. Torpedoes knocked against the bottom and some of the primers actually snapped. But nothing exploded; and Farragut won through.
Inside the harbor theTennesseefought hard against the overwhelming Union fleet. But her low-powered engines gave her no chance at quick maneuvers. Three vessels rammed her in succession; and she was forced to surrender.
After this purely naval victory on the fifth of August, General Granger's troops invested Fort Morgan, which, becoming the target of an irresistible converging fire from both land and sea on the twenty-second, surrendered on the twenty-third.
The next objective of a joint expedition was Fort Fisher, which stood at the end of a long, low tongue of land between the sea and Cape Fear River. Fort Fisher guarded the entrance to Wilmington in North Carolina, the port, above all others, from which the Confederate armies drew their overseasupplies. Lee wrote to Colonel Lamb, its commandant, saying that he could not subsist if it was taken. Lamb had less than two thousand men in the fort; but there were six thousand more forming an army of support outside. The Confederates, however, had no naval force to speak of, while the Union fleet, commanded by Admiral Porter, was the largest that had ever yet assembled under the Stars and Stripes. There were nearly sixty fighting vessels of all kinds, including five new ironclads and the three finest new frigates. The guns that were carried exceeded six hundred.
There was also a mine ship, the oldLouisiana, stuffed chock-a-block with powder to blow in the side of the fort. The Washington wiseacres set great store on this new mine of theirs. It was, of course, to end the war. But naval and military experts on the spot were more than doubtful. On the night of the twenty-third of December theLouisianawas safely worked in near the fort by brave Commander Rhind, who fired the slow match and escaped unhurt with his devoted crew of volunteers. A tremendous explosion followed. But, as there was nothing to drive the force of it against the walls, it simply resulted in an enormous flurry of water, mud, sand, earth, and bits of flaming wreckage.
Next morning the fleet bombarded with such success as to silence many of the guns opposed to them. But on Christmas Day General Weitzel reported that an assault would fail; whereupon General Butler concurred and retreated, much to the rage of the fleet, which thought quite otherwise.
In a few days General Terry arrived with the same white troops reinforced by two small colored brigades, making a total of eight thousand men. To these Porter, strongly reinforced, added a naval brigade, two thousand strong, that volunteered to storm the sea face of Fort Fisher. These gallant men had only cutlasses and pistols—except the four hundred marines, who carried bayonets and rifles. They were a scratch lot, from the soldier's point of view, never having been landed together as a single unit till called upon to assault the most dangerous features of the fort. Yet, though they were repulsed with considerable loss, they greatly helped to win the day by obliging the defenders to divide their forces. As Terry's army was, by itself, four or five times stronger than Lamb's entire command the military stormers succeeded in fighting their way through every line of defense and compelling a surrender. They did exceedingly well. But their rear was safe, because Bragg hadwithdrawn the supporting army for service elsewhere; while, in their front, the enemy defenses had been almost torn out by the roots in many places under the terrific converging fire of six hundred naval guns for three successive days.
When Fort Fisher surrendered on the fifteenth of January (1865) the exhausted South had only one good port and one good raider left: Charleston and theShenandoah.
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 ofinspection: 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 inhis 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 messageswas 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 thatthe 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 armysouthof the enemy," or of "following him to thedeath" 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 areGrant'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 ingeneral, 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 unfitfor 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, andMobile. 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 yearsolder 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 wasfor 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. Parallellines 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 keptup 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 themen 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 shoutof "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 andSherman'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 atChesterfield 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 demolitionparty: "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 accumulatesupplies, 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 telegramwhich 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. Heordered 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 whenone 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 renewedhis 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'scommandership. 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 outdestroying 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 otherdamage 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 weleft 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 Shermanthen 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-foughtday. 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 bedefeated; 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 Washingtonby 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.