Arriving on the field Sheridan discovered those two splendid leaders, Custer and Getty, holding off the victorious Confederates from what otherwise seemed an easy prey. His presence encouraged the formed defense, restored confidence among the rest near by, and stiffened resistance so much that hasty entrenchments were successfullymade and still more successfully held. The first rush having been stopped, Sheridan turned the lull that ensued into a triumphal progress by riding bareheaded along his whole line, so that all his men might feel themselves once more under his personal command. Cheer upon cheer greeted him as his gallant charger carried him past; and when the astonished enemy were themselves attacked they broke in irretrievable defeat.
This crowning victory of the long-drawn Valley campaigns, coming with cumulative force after those of Mobile, Atlanta, and Opequan Creek, did more to turn the critical election than all the speeches in the North. The fittest at the home front judged by deeds, not words, agreeing therein with Rutherford B. Hayes (a future President, now one of Sheridan's generals) who said: "Any officer fit for duty who at this crisis would abandon his post to electioneer for a seat in Congress, ought to be scalped."
The devastation of everything in the Valley that might be useful to Lee's army completed the Union victory in arms; while Lincoln's own triumph in November completed it in politics and raised his party to the highest plane of statesmanship in war.
From this time till the early spring the battle of the giants in Virginia calmed down to the minor moves and clashes that mark a period of winter quarters; while the scene of more stirring action shifts once more to Georgia and Tennessee.
SHERMAN DESTROYS THE BASE: 1864
Sherman made Atlanta his field headquarters for September and October, changing it entirely from a Southern city to a Northern camp. The whole population was removed, every one being given the choice of going north or south. In his own words, Sherman "had seen Memphis, Vicksburg, Natchez, and New Orleans, all captured from the enemy, and each at once garrisoned by a full division, if not more; so that success was actually crippling our armies in the field by detachments to guard and protect the interests of a hostile population." In reporting to Washington he said: "If the people raise a howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity seeking. If they want peace, they and their relatives must stop the war." He also excluded the swarms of demoralizing camp-followers that had clogged him elsewhere. One licensed sutler wasallowed for each of his three armies, and no more. Atlanta thus became a perfect Union stronghold fixed in the flank of the South.
The balance of losses in action, from May to September, was heavily against the South: nearly nine to four. The actual numbers did not greatly differ: thirty-two thousand Federals to thirty-five thousand Confederates. (And in killed and wounded the Federals lost many more than the Confederates. It was the thirteen thousand captured Confederates that redressed the balance.) But, since Sherman had twice as many in his total as the Confederates had in theirs, the odds in relative loss were nine to four in his favor. The balance of loss from disease was also heavily against the Confederates, who as usual suffered from dearth of medical stores. The losses in present and prospective food supplies were even more in Sherman's favor; for his devastations had begun. Yet Jefferson Davis was bound that Hood should "fight"; and Hood was nothing loth.
Davis went about denouncing Johnston for his magnificent Fabian defense; and added insult to injury by coupling the name of this very able soldier and quite incorruptible man with that of Joseph E. Brown, Governor of Georgia, who, though aviolent Secessionist, opposed all proper unification of effort, and exempted eight thousand State employees from conscription as civilian "indispensables." Then, when Sherman approached, Brown ran away with all the food and furniture he could stuff into his own special train; though he left behind him all arms, ammunition, and other warlike stores, besides the confidential documents belonging to the State.
Brown had also weakened Hood's army by withdrawing the State troops to gather in the harvest and store it where Sherman afterwards used what he wanted and destroyed the rest. Yet Hood kept operating in Sherman's rear, admirably seconded by Forrest's and Wheeler's raiding cavalry. Late in October Forrest performed the remarkable feat of taking a flotilla with cavalry. He suddenly swooped down on the Tennessee near Johnsonville and took the gunboatUndinewith a couple of transports. Hood had meanwhile been busy on Sherman's line of communications, hoping at least to immobilize him round Atlanta, and at best to bring him back from Georgia for a Federal defeat in Tennessee.
Fig. 9GENERAL W. T. SHERMANPhotograph by Brady. In the collection of L. C. Handy, Washington.
GENERAL W. T. SHERMANPhotograph by Brady. In the collection of L. C. Handy, Washington.
On the fifth of October the last action near Atlanta was fought thirty miles northwest, whenHood made a desperate attempt on Allatoona with a greatly superior force. Twelve miles off, on Kenesaw Mountain, Sherman could see the smoke and hear the sounds of battle through the clear, still, autumn air. But as his signalers could get no answer from the fort he began to fear that Allatoona was already lost, when the signal officer's quick eye caught the faintest flutter at one of the fort windows. Presently the letters, C—R—S—E—H—E—R, were made out; which meant that General John M. Corse, one of the best volunteers produced by the war, was holding out. He had hurried over from Rome, on a call from Allatoona, and was withstanding more than four thousand men with less than two thousand. All morning long the Confederates persisted in their attacks, while Sherman's relief column was hurrying over from Kenesaw. Early in the afternoon the fire slackened and ceased before this column arrived. But Sherman's renewed fears were soon allayed. For Corse, after losing more than a third of his men, had repulsed the enemy alone, inflicting on them an even greater loss in proportion to their double strength.
Corse was still full of fight, reporting back to Kenesaw that though "short a cheek bone and anear" he was "able to whip all hell yet." Sherman thanked the brave defenders in his general orders of the seventh for "the handsome defense made at Allatoona" and pointed the moral that "garrisons must hold their posts to the last minute, sure that the time gained is valuable and necessary to their comrades at the front."
The situation at the beginning of November was most peculiar. With the whole Gulf coast blockaded and the three great ports in Union hands, with the Mississippi a Union stream from source to sea, and with Sherman firmly set in the northwest flank of Georgia, Hood made the last grand sortie from the beleaguered South. It was a desperate adventure to go north against the Federal troops in Tennessee, with Kentucky and the line of the Ohio as his ultimate objective, when Lincoln had been returned to power, when Grant was surely wearing down Lee in Virginia, and when Sherman's preponderance of force was not only assured in Georgia but in Tennessee as well. Moreover, Thomas, the "Rock of Chickamauga," had been sent back to counter Hood from Grant's and Sherman's old headquarters at Nashville on the Cumberland. And Thomas was soon to have the usual double numbers; for all the Western depots senthim their trained recruits, till, by the end of November, his total was over seventy thousand. Hood's forty thousand could not be increased or even stopped from dwindling. Yet he pushed on, with the consent of Beauregard, who now held the general command of all the troops opposed to Sherman.
The next moves were even more peculiar than the first. For while Hood hoped to close the breach in Georgia by drawing Sherman back, and Sherman expected that when he went on to widen the breach he would draw Hood back, what really happened was that each advanced on his own new line in opposite directions, Hood north through Tennessee, Sherman southeast through Georgia. So firm was the grip of the Union on all the navigable waters that Hood could only cross the Tennessee somewhere along the shoals. He chose a place near Florence, Alabama, got safely over and encamped. There, for the moment, we shall leave him and follow Sherman to the sea.
The region of the Gulf and lower Mississippi being now under the assured predominance of Union forces, Grant, with equal wisdom and decision, entirely approved of Sherman's plan to cut loose from his western base, make a devastatingmarch through the heart of fertile Georgia, and join the eastern forces of the North at Savannah, where Fort Pulaski was in Union hands and the Union navy was, as usual, overwhelmingly strong.
Sherman's March to the Sea at once acquired a popular renown which it has never lost. This, however, was chiefly because it happened to catch the public eye while nothing else was on the stage. For its many admirable features were those about which most people know little and care less: well-combined grand strategy, perfection in headquarter orders and the incidental staff work, excellent march discipline, wonderful coördination between the different arms of the Service and with all auxiliary branches—especially the commissariat and transport, and, to clinch everything, a thoroughness of execution which distinguished each unit concerned. As a feat of arms this famous march is hardly worth mentioning. There were no battles and no such masterly maneuvers as those of the much harder march to Atlanta. Nor was the operational problem to be mentioned in the same breath with that of the subsequent march through the Carolinas. Sherman himself says: "Were I to express my measure of the relative importance of the march to the sea, and of that from Savannahnorthward, I would place the former at one, and the latter at ten—or the maximum."
The Government was very doubtful and counseled reconsideration. But Grant and Sherman, knowing the factors so very much better, were sure the problem could easily be solved. Sherman left Atlanta on the fifteenth of November and laid siege to Savannah on the tenth of December. He utterly destroyed the military value of Atlanta and everything else on the way that could be used by the armies in the field. Of course, to do this he had to reduce civilian supplies to the point at which no surplus remained for transport to the front; and civilians naturally suffered. But his object was to destroy the Georgian base of supplies without inflicting more than incidental hardship on civilians. And this object he attained. He cut a swath of devastation sixty miles wide all the way to Savannah. Every rail was rooted up, made red-hot, and twisted into scrap. Every road and bridge was destroyed. Every kind of surplus supplies an army could possibly need was burnt or consumed. Civilians were left with enough to keep body and soul together, but nothing to send away, even if the means of transportation had been left.
Sherman's sixty thousand men were all as fit ashis own tall sinewy form, which was the very embodiment of expert energy. Every weakling had been left behind. Consequently the whole veteran force simply romped through this Georgian raid. The main body mostly followed the rails, which gangs of soldiers would pile on bonfires of sleepers. The mounted men swept up everything about the flanks. But nothing escaped the "bummers," who foraged for their units every day, starting out empty-handed on foot and returning heavily laden on horses or mules or in some kind of vehicle. If Atlanta had been a volcano in eruption, and the molten lava had flowed to Savannah in a stream sixty miles wide and five times as long, the destruction could hardly have been worse, except, of course, that civilians were left enough to keep them alive, and that, with a few inevitable exceptions, they were not ill treated.
The fighting hardly disturbed the daily routine. Sherman was never in danger; though wiseacre Washington, supposing that he ought to be, used to pester Lincoln, who always replied: "Grant says the men are safe with Sherman, and that if they can't get out where they want to, they can crawl back by the hole they went in at." This seemed to allay anxiety; though the truth was that Sherman's real safety lay in going ahead tothe Union sea, not in retracing his steps over the devastated line of his advance.
On approaching Savannah a mounted officer was blown up by a land torpedo, his horse killed, and himself badly lacerated. Sherman at once sent his prisoners ahead to dig up the other torpedoes or get blown up by those they failed to find. No more explosions took place. Savannah itself was strongly entrenched and further defended by Fort McAllister. Against this fort Sherman detached his own old Shiloh division of the Fifteenth Corps, now under the very capable command of General William B. Hazen. As the day wore on Sherman became very impatient, watching for Hazen's attack, when a black object went gliding up the Ogeechee River toward the fort. Presently a man-of-war appeared flying the Stars and Stripes and signaling,Who are you?On getting the answer,General Sherman, she asked,Is Fort McAllister taken?and immediately received the cheering assurance,No; but it will be in a minute.Then, just as the signal flags ceased waving, Hazen's straight blue lines broke cover, advanced, charged through the hail of shot, shell, and rifle bullets, rushed the defenses, and stood triumphant on the top.
Before midnight Sherman was writing hisdispatches on board the U.S.S.Dandelionand examining those received from Grant. He learned now, from Grant's of the third (ten days before), that Thomas was facing Hood round Nashville and that the Government, and even Grant, were getting very impatient with Thomas for not striking hard and at once. A week later the Confederate general, Hardee, managed to evacuate Savannah before his one remaining line of retreat had been cut off. He was a thorough soldier. But men and means and time were lacking; and the civil population hoped to save all that was not considered warlike stores. Thus immense supplies fell into Sherman's hands. Savannah was of course placed under martial law. But as the wax was now nearing its inevitable end, and the citizens were thoroughly "subjugated," those who wished to remain were allowed to do so. Only two hundred left, going to Charleston under a flag of truce.
Fig. 10
The following official announcement reached Lincoln on Christmas Eve.
Savannah, Georgia, December 22, 1864.
TO HIS EXCELLENCY PRESIDENT LINCOLN,WASHINGTON, D. C.
I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns andplenty of ammunition, also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton.
W. T. SHERMAN, Major-General.
In the meantime Hood's desperate sortie had struck north as far as Franklin, Tennessee. Here, on the last of November, General John Schofield, commanding the advanced part of Thomas's army, gallantly withstood a furious attack. On this the closing day of a lingering Indian summer the massed Confederates charged with the piercing rebel yell, and charged again; re-formed under cover of the dense pall of stationary smoke; and returned to the charge again and again. Many a leader met his death right against the very breastworks. Another would instantly spring forward, only to fall in his turn. Thirteen times the gaunt gray lines rushed madly through the battle smoke and lost their front ranks against the withering fire before the autumn night closed in. Schofield then fell back on Brentwood, halfway on the twenty miles to Nashville. He had lost over two thousand men. But Hood had lost three times as many; and Hood's were irreplaceable except by a very few local recruits.
Hood now concentrated every available man for his final attack on Thomas, who had odds of twenty thousand in his favor. Hood marched his thirty-fivethousand up to Nashville, where he actually invested the fifty-five thousand Federals. By this time even Grant was so annoyed at what seemed to him unreasoning delay that he sent Logan to take command at once and "fight." But on the fifteenth of December Thomas came out of his works and fought Hood with determined skill all day. Having gained a decisive advantage already he pressed it home to the very utmost on the morrow, breaking through Hood's shaken lines, enveloping whole units with converging fire, and taking prisoners in mass. After a last wild effort Hood's beaten army fled, having lost fifteen thousand men, five times as much as Thomas.
The battle of Nashville came nearer than any other to being a really annihilating victory. Out of the forty thousand men Hood had at first in Tennessee not half escaped; and of the remainder not nearly half were ever seen in arms again. As an organized force his army simply disappeared. The few thousands saved from the wreckage of the storm found their painful way east to join all that was left for the last stand against the overwhelming forces of the North.
THE END: 1865
By '65 the Southern cause was lost. There was nothing to hope for from abroad. Neither was there anything to hope for at home, now that Lincoln and the Union Government had been returned to power. From the very first the disparity of resources was so great that the South had never had a chance alone except against a disunited North. Now that the North could bring its full strength to bear against the worn-out South the only question remaining to be settled in the field was simply one of time. Yet Davis, with his indomitable will, would never yield so long as any Confederates would remain in arms. And men like Lee would never willingly give up the fight so long as those they served required them. Therefore the war went on until the Southern armies failed through sheer exhaustion.
The North had nearly a million men by land andsea. The South had perhaps two hundred thousand. The North could count on a million recruits out of the whole reserve of twice as many. The South had no reserves at all. The total odds were therefore five to one without reserves and ten to one if these came in.
The scene of action, for all decisive purposes, had shrunk again, and now included nothing beyond Virginia and the Carolinas; and even there the Union forces had impregnable bases of attack. When Wilmington fell in January the only port still left in Southern hands was Charleston; and that was close-blockaded. Fighting Confederates still remained in the lower South. But victories like Olustee, Florida, barren in '64, could not avail them now, even if they had the troops to win them. The lower South was now as much isolated as the trans-Mississippi. Between its blockaded and garrisoned coast on one side and its sixty-mile swath of devastation through the heart of Georgia on the other it might as well have been a shipless island. The same was true of all Confederate places beyond Virginia and the Carolinas. The last shots were fired in Texas near the middle of May. But they were as futile against the course of events as was the final act of war committed by theConfederate raiderShenandoahat the end of June, when she sank the whaling fleet, far off in the lone Pacific.
For the last two months of the four-years' war Davis made Lee Commander-in-Chief. Lee at once restored Johnston to his rightful place. These two great soldiers then did what could be done to stave off Grant and Sherman. Lee's and Johnston's problem was of course insoluble. For each was facing an army which was alone a match for both. The only chance of prolonging anything more than a mere guerilla war was to join forces in southwest Virginia, where the only line of rails was safe from capture for the moment. But this meant eluding Grant and Sherman; and these two leaders would never let a plain chance slip. They took good care that all Confederate forces outside the central scene of action were kept busy with their own defense. They also closed in enough men from the west to prevent Lee and Johnston escaping by the mountains. Then, with the help of the navy, having cut off every means of escape—north, south, east, and west—they themselves closed in for the death-grip.
By the first of February Sherman was on his way north through the Carolinas with sixty thousandpicked men, drawing in reinforcements as he advanced against Johnston's dwindling forty thousand, until the thousands that faced each other at the end in April were ninety and thirty respectively. On the ninth of February (the day Lee became Commander-in-Chief) Sherman was crossing the rails between Charleston and Augusta, of course destroying them. A week later he was doing the same at Columbia in the middle of South Carolina. By this time his old antagonist, Johnston, had assumed command; so that he had to reckon with the chances of a battle, as on his way against Atlanta, and not only with the troubles of devastating an undefended base, as on his march to the sea. The difficulties of hard marching through an enemy country full of natural and artificial obstacles were also much greater here than in Georgia. How well these difficulties could be surmounted by a veteran army may be realized from a recorded instance which, though it occurred elsewhere, was yet entirely typical. In forty days an infantry division of eight thousand men repaired a hundred miles of rail and built a hundred and eighty-two bridges.
Sherman took a month to advance from Columbia in the middle of South Carolina to Bentonvillein the middle of North Carolina. Here Johnston stood his ground; and a battle was fought from the nineteenth to the twenty-first of March. Had Sherman known at the time that his own numbers were, as he afterwards reported, "vastly superior," he might have crushed Johnston then and there. But, as it was, he ably supported the exposed flank that Johnston so skillfully attacked, won the battle, inflicted losses a good deal larger than his own, and gained his ulterior objective as well as if there had not been a fight at all. This objective was the concentration of his whole army round Goldsboro by the twenty-fifth. At Goldsboro he held the strategic center of North Carolina, being at the junction whence the rails ran east to Newbern (which had long been in Union hands), west to meet the only rails by which Lee's army might for a time escape, and north (a hundred and fifty miles) to Grant's besieging host at Petersburg. Sherman's record is one of which his men might well be proud. In fifty days from Savannah he had made a winter march through four hundred and twenty-five miles of mud, had captured three cities, destroyed four railways, drained the Confederate resources, increased his own, and half closed on Lee and Johnston the vice which he and Grant could soon close altogether.
Nevertheless Grant records that "one of the most anxious periods was the last few weeks before Petersburg"; for he was haunted by the fear that Lee's army, now nearing the last extremity of famine, might risk all on railing off southwest to Danville, the one line left. Lee, consummate now as when victorious before, masked his movements wonderfully well till the early morning of the twenty-fifth of March, when he suddenly made a furious attack where the lines were very near together. For some hours he held a salient in the Federal position. But he was presently driven back with loss; and his intention to escape stood plainly revealed.
The same day Sherman railed down to Newbern over the line repaired by that indefatigable and most accomplished engineer, Colonel W. W. Wright, took ship for City Point, Virginia, and met Lincoln, Grant, and Admiral Porter there on the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth. Grant explained to Lincoln that Sheridan was crossing the James just below them, to cut the rails running south from Petersburg and then, by forced marches, to cut those running southwest from Richmond, Lee's last possible line of escape. Grant added that the final crisis was very near and that his onlyanxiety was lest Lee might escape before Sheridan cut the Richmond line southwest to Danville. Lincoln said he hoped the war would end at once and with no more bloodshed. Grant and Sherman, however, could not guarantee that Davis might not force Lee and Johnston to one last desperate fight. Lincoln added that all he wanted after the surrender was to get the Confederates back to their civil life and make them good contented citizens. As for Davis: well, there once was a man who, having taken the pledge, was asked if he wouldn't let his host put just a drop of brandy in the lemonade. His answer was: "See here, if you do it unbeknownst, I won't object." From the way that Lincoln told this story Grant and Sherman both inferred that he would be glad to see Davis disembarrass the reunited States of his annoying presence.
This twenty-eighth of March saw the last farewells between the President and his naval and military lieutenants at the front. Admiral Porter immediately wrote down a full account of the conversations, from which, together with Grant's and Sherman's strong corroboration, we know that Lincoln entirely approvedof the terms which Grant gave Lee, and that he would have approved quite as heartily of those which Sherman gave to Johnston.
Next morning the final race, pursuit, defeat, and victory began. Grant marched all his spare, men west to cut Lee off completely. He left enough to hold his lines at Petersburg, in case Lee should remain; and he arranged with Sherman for a combined movement, to begin on the tenth of April, in case Johnston and Lee should try to join each other. But he felt fairly confident that he could run Lee down while Sherman tackled Johnston.
On the first of April Sheridan won a hard fight at Five Forks, southwest of Petersburg. On Sunday (the second) Lee left Petersburg for good, sending word to Richmond. That morning Davis rose from his place in church and the clergyman quietly told the congregation that there would be no evening service. On Monday morning Grant rode into Petersburg, and saw the Confederate rearguard clubbed together round the bridge. "I had not the heart," said Grant, "to turn the artillery upon such a mass of defeated and fleeing men, and I hoped to capture them soon." On Tuesday Grant closed his orders to Sherman with the words, "Rebel armies are now the only strategic points to strike at," and himself pressed on relentlessly.
Late next afternoon a horseman in full Confederate uniform suddenly broke cover from the enemy side of a dense wood and dashed straight at the headquarter staff. The escort made as if to seize him. But a staff officer called out, "How d'ye do, Campbell?" This famous scout then took a wad of tobacco out of his mouth, a roll of tinfoil out of the wad, and a piece of tissue paper out of the tinfoil. When Grant read Sheridan's report ending "I wish you were here" (that is, at Jetersville, halfway between Petersburg and Appomattox), he immediately got off his black pony, mounted Cincinnati, and rode the twenty miles at speed, to learn that Lee was heading due west for Farmville, less than thirty miles from Appomattox.
On Thursday the sixth, Lee, closely beset in flank and rear, lost seven thousand men at Sailor's Creek, mostly as prisoners. The heroes of this fight were six hundred Federals, who, having gone to blow up High Bridge on the Appomattox, found their retreat cut off by the whole Confederate advanced guard. Under Colonel Francis Washburn, Fourth Massachusetts Cavalry, and Colonel Theodore Read, of General Ord's staff, this dauntless six hundred charged again and again until, their leaders killed and most of the others dead or wounded,the rest surrendered. They had gained their object by holding up Lee's column long enough to let its wagon train be raided.
Grant, now feeling that his hold on Lee could not be shaken off, wrote him a letter on Friday afternoon, saying: "The results of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance." That night Lee replied asking what terms Grant proposed to offer. Next morning Grant wrote again to propose a meeting, and Lee answered to say he was willing to treat for peace. Grant at once informed him that the only subject for discussion was the surrender of the army. That evening Federal cavalry under General George A. Custer raided Appomattox Station, five miles southwest of the Court House, and held up four trains. A few hours later, early on Sunday, the famous ninth of April, 1865, Lee's advanced guard was astounded to find its way disputed so far west. It attacked with desperation, hoping to break through what seemed to be a cavalry screen before the infantry came up; but when Lee's main body joined in, only to find a solid mass of Federal infantry straight across its one way out, Lee at once sent forward a white flag.
Grant, overwrought with anxiety, had beensuffering from an excruciating headache all night long. But the moment he opened Lee's note, offering to discuss surrender, he felt as well as ever, and instantly wrote back to say he was ready. Pushing rapidly on he met Lee at McLean's private residence near Appomattox Court House. There was a remarkable contrast between the appearance of the two commanders. Grant, only forty-three, and without a tinge of gray in his brown hair, took an inch or two off his medium height by stooping keenly forward, and had nothing in his shabby private's uniform to show his rank except the three-starred shoulder-straps. When the main business was over, and he had time to notice details, he apologized to Lee, explaining that the extreme rapidity of his movements had carried him far ahead of his baggage. Lee's aide-de-camp, Colonel Charles Marshall, afterwards explained that when the Confederates had been obliged to reduce themselves simply to what they stood in, each officer had naturally put on his best. Hence Lee's magnificent appearance in a brand-new general's uniform with the jeweled sword of honor that Virginia had given him. Well over six feet tall, straight as an arrow in spite of his fifty-eight years and snow-white, war-grown beard, still extremelyhandsome, and full of equal dignity and charm, he looked, from head to foot, the perfect leader of devoted men.
Grant, holding out his hand in cordial greeting, began the conversation by saying: "I met you once before, General Lee, while we were serving in Mexico.... I have always remembered your appearance, and I think I should have recognized you anywhere." After some other personal talk Lee said: "I suppose, General Grant, that the object of our present meeting is fully understood. I asked to see you in order to ascertain on what terms you would receive the surrender of my army." Grant answered that officers and men were to be paroled and disqualified from serving again till properly exchanged, and that all warlike and other stores were to be treated as captured. Lee bowed assent, said that was what he had expected, and presently suggested that Grant should commit the terms to writing on the spot. When Grant got to the end of the terms already discussed his eye fell on Lee's splendid sword of honor, and he immediately added the sentence: "This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage." When Lee read over the draft he flushed slightly on coming to this generous provisoand gratefully said: "This will have a very happy effect upon my army." Grant then asked him if he had any suggestions to make; whereupon he said that the mounted Confederates, unlike the Federals, owned their horses. Before he had time to ask a favor Grant said that as these horses would be invaluable for men returning to civil life they could all be taken home after full proof of ownership. Lee again flushed and gratefully replied: "This will have the best possible effect upon the men. It will be very gratifying and do much toward conciliating our people."
While the documents were being written out for signature Grant introduced the generals and staff officers to Lee. Then Lee once more led the conversation back to business by saying he wished to return his prisoners to Grant at the earliest possible moment because he had nothing more for them to eat. "I have, indeed, nothing for my own men," he added. They had been living on the scantiest supply of parched corn for several days; and this famine fare, combined with their utter lack of all other supplies—especially medicine and clothing—was wearing them away faster than any "war of attrition" in the open field. After heartily agreeing that the prisoners should immediately returnGrant said: "I will take steps at once to have your army supplied with rations. Suppose I send over twenty-five thousand; do you think that will be a sufficient supply?" "I think it will be ample," said Lee, who, after a pause, added: "and it will be a great relief, I assure you."
Then Lee rose, shook Grant warmly by the hand, bowed to the others, and left the room. As he appeared on the porch all the Union officers in the grounds rose respectfully and saluted him. While the Confederate orderly was bridling the horses Lee stood alone, gazing in unutterable grief across the valley to where the remnant of his army lay. Then, as he mounted Traveler, every Union officer followed Grant's noble example by standing bareheaded till horse and rider had disappeared from view.
Grant next sent off the news to Washington and, true to his sterling worth, immediately stopped the salutes which some of his enthusiastic soldiers were already beginning to fire. "The war is over," he told his staff, "the rebels are our countrymen again, and the best sign of rejoicing after the victory will be to abstain from all demonstrations in the field."
In the meantime Lee had returned to his ownlines, along which he now rode for the last time. The reserve with which he had steeled his heart during the surrender gave way completely when he came to bid his men farewell. After a few simple words, advising his devoted veterans to become good citizens of their reunited country, the tears could no longer be kept back. Then, as he rode slowly on, from the remnant of one old regiment to another, the men broke ranks, and, mostly silent with emotion, pressed round their loved commander, to take his hand, to touch his sword, or fondly stroke his splendid gray horse, Traveler, the same that had so often carried him victorious through the hard-fought day.
North and South had scarcely grasped the full significance of Lee's surrender, when, only five days later, Lincoln was assassinated. "It would be impossible for me," said Grant, "to describe the feeling that overcame me at the news. I knew his goodness of heart, and above all his desire to see all the people of the United States enter again upon the full privileges of citizenship with equality among all. I felt that reconstruction had been set back, no telling how far." "Of all the men I ever met," said Sherman, "he seemed to possessmore of the elements of greatness, combined with goodness, than any other."
On the very day of the assassination Sherman had written to Johnston offering the same terms Grant had given Lee and Lincoln had most heartily approved. Three days later, on the seventeenth, just as Sherman was entering the train for his meeting with Johnston, the operator handed him a telegram announcing the assassination. Enjoining secrecy till he returned, Sherman took the telegram with him and showed it to Johnston, whom he watched intently. "The perspiration came out on his forehead," Sherman wrote, "and he did not attempt to conceal his distress. He denounced the act as a disgrace to the age and hoped I did not charge it to the Confederate Government. I told him I could not believe that he or General Lee or the officers of the Confederate army could possibly be privy to acts of assassination." When Sherman got back to Raleigh he published the news in general orders, and experienced the supreme satisfaction of finding that not one man in all that mournful army had to be restrained from a single act of revenge.
After much misunderstanding with Washington now in lesser hands, the surrender of Johnston's and the other Confederate armies was effected.Each body of troops laid down its arms and quietly dispersed. One day the bugles called, the camp fires burned, and comrades were together in the ranks. The next, like morning mists, they disappeared, thenceforth to be remembered and admired only as the heroes of a hopeless cause.
It was a very different scene through which their rivals marched into lasting fame with all the pride, pomp, and circumstance of war. On the twenty-third and twenty-fourth of May, in perfect weather, and in the stirring presence of a loyal, vast, enthusiastic throng, the Union armies were reviewed in Washington. For over six full hours each day the troops marched past—the very flower of those who had come back victorious. The route was flagged from end to end with Stars and Stripes, and banked with friends of each and every regiment there. Between these banks, and to the sound of thrilling martial music, the long blue column flowed—a living stream of men whose bayonets made its surface flash like burnished silver under the glorious sun.
Then, when the pageantry was finished, and the volunteers that formed the vast bulk of thosemagnificent Federal armies had again become American civilians in thought and word and deed, these steadfast men, whose arms had saved the Union in the field, were first in peace as they had been in war: first in the reconstruction of their country's interrupted life, first in recognizing all that was best in the splendid fighters with whom they had crossed swords, and first—incomparably first—in keeping one and indivisible the reunited home land of both North and South.
Thousands of books have been written about the Civil War; and more about the armies than about the navies and the civil interests together. Yet, even about the armies, there are very few that give a just idea of how every part of the war was correlated with every other part and with the very complex whole; while fewer still give any idea of how closely the navies were correlated with the armies throughout the long amphibious campaigns.
The only works mentioned here are either those containing the original evidence or those written by experts directly from the original evidence. And of course there are a good many works belonging to both these classes for which no room can be found in a bibliography so very brief as the present one must be.
The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 128 vols. (1880-1901), andOfficial Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, 26 vols. (1894-), form two magnificent collections of original evidence published by the United States Government. But they have some gaps which nothing else can fill.Battles and Leaders of the Civil War(1887-89), written by competent witnesses on both sides, gives the gist of the story in four volumes(published afterwards in eight).The Rebellion Record, 12 vols. (1862-68), edited by Frank Moore, forms an interesting collection of non-official documents.The Story of the Civil War, 4 vols. (1895-1913), begun by J. C. Ropes, and continued by W. R. Livermore, is an historical work of real value. Larned'sLiterature of American Historycontains an excellent bibliography; but it needs supplementing by bibliographies of the present century. Inquiring readers should consult the bibliographies in volumes 20 and 21 (by J. K. Hosmer) in theAmerican Nationseries.
There are many works of a more special kind that deserve particular attention. General E. P. Alexander'sMilitary Memoirs of a Confederate(1907), theTransactions of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, Major John Bigelow'sThe Campaign of Chancellorsville(1910), and J. D. Cox'sMilitary Reminiscences, 2 vols. (1900), are admirable specimens of this very extensive class.
The two greatest generals on the Northern side have written their own memoirs, and written them exceedingly well:Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, 2 vols. (1885-86), andMemoirs of General W. T. Sherman, 2 vols. (1886). But the two greatest on the Southern side wrote nothing themselves; and no one else has written a really great life of that very great commander, Robert Lee. Fitzhugh Lee's enthusiastic sketch of his uncle,General Lee(1894), is one of the several second-rate books on the subject. Colonel G. F. R. Henderson'sStonewall Jackson and the American Civil War, 2 vols. (1898), is, on the other hand, among the best of war biographies. Henderson's strategical study of the Valley Campaign is a masterpiece. Twogood works of very different kinds are:A History of the Civil War in the United States(1905), by W. Birkbeck Wood and Major J. E. Edmonds, andA History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850, 8 vols. (1893-1919), by James Ford Rhodes. The first is military, the second political. Mr. Rhodes has also written a single volumeHistory of the Civil War(1917).American Campaignsby Major M. F. Steele, issued under the supervision of the War Department (1909), deals chiefly with the military operations of the Civil War.
The naval side of this, as of all other wars, has been far too much neglected. But that great historian of sea-power, Admiral Mahan, has told the best of the story in hisAdmiral Farragut(1892).
An interesting contemporary account of the war will be found in the five volumes of Appleton'sAmerican Annual Cyclopœdiafor the years from 1861 to 1865. B. J. Lossing'sPictorial History of the Civil War, 3 vols. (1866-69), and Harper'sPictorial History of the Rebellion, 2 vols. (1868), give graphic pictures of military life as seen by contemporaries. Personal reminiscences of the war, of varying merit, have multiplied rapidly in recent years. These are appraised for the unwary reader in the bibliographies already mentioned. Frank Wilkeson'sRecollections of a Private Soldier in the Army of the Potomac(1887), George C. Eggleston'sA Rebel's Recollections(1905), and Mrs. Mary B. Chestnut'sDiary from Dixie(1905) are among the best of these personal recollections.
The political and diplomatic history has been dealt with already in the two precedingChronicles.Abraham Lincoln: a History, by John G. Nicolay and John Hay,in ten volumes (1890), andThe Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, in twelve volumes (1905), form the quarry from which all true accounts of his war statesmanship must be built up. Lord Charnwood'sAbraham Lincoln(1917) is an admirable summary. To these titles should be added Gideon Welles'sDiary, 3 vols. (1911), and, on the Confederate side, Jefferson Davis'sThe Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, 2 vols. (1881), and Alexander H. Stephens'sA Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States, 2 vols. (1870). The best life of Jefferson Davis is that by William E. Dodd in theAmerican Crisis Biographies(1907). W. H. Russell'sMy Diary North and South(1863) records the impressions of an intelligent foreign observer.
The presentChronicleis based entirely on the original evidence, with the convenient use only of such works as have themselves been written by qualified experts directly from the original evidence.
Alabama, secedes,56; in 1864,335; threatened,336
Alabama, Confederate raider,69,70,311-12;Kearsargeand,69,313-17; andHatteras,69,115
Albatross, ship,265
Albemarle, Confederate ram, Cushing destroys,303,318-319
Albemarle Sound, command lost,93
Alexandria (Louisiana), State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy,6-7
Allatoona (Georgia), Johnston evacuates,348; Corse's defense of,369-70
"Anaconda policy,"184
Anderson, Colonel Charles, quotes Lee,11
Anderson, Major Robert, commands at Fort Moultrie,2; at Fort Sumter,3,12-15; surrender,15; leaves Fort Sumter,16; appointed to Kentucky command,29; superseded by Sherman,120
Annapolis, Union troops at,17
Antietam (Maryland), battle,178,245-46,292
Apache Cañon, fight in,166
Appomattox Court House (Virginia), Lee's surrender,327,389
Appomattox Station, Custer raids,388
Aquia, McClellan's troops at,228-29,231,234
Archer, J. T., Confederate brigadier,298
Arizona, "War in the West,"165
Arkansas secedes,56
Arkansas, Confederate ram,109
Arkansas Post, capture of,164
Arlington, home of General Lee,19
Armstrong, Commodore, at Pensacola,4
Army, Confederate, Act providing for enlistment,11-12; at Harper's Ferry,21-22; Jackson and,21-22,23-24; lack of equipment,63,244; advantages,76-77; conscription,78; munitions,78; relations with Federals at Vicksburg,276; Army of Northern Virginia,336; unrenewable wastage,355; number of troops (1865),380; Lee's farewell to,393
Army, Federal, enlistments,33; Congress votes troops and money,34,40; McDowell's,39-40; regulars in,79; number of troops,79-80; conscription,81; organization,82; Grant's (1862),148; Army of the Cumberland,164,279; Army of the Mississippi,160;Army of the Ohio,160,279; well equipped,244; Army of the Potomac,254-55,287,334,386,351,354,356; Army of the Tennessee,160,260,280,358; Army of Virginia,227,243; relations with Confederates at Vicksburg,276; Army of the James,334,336,340,356; reviewed in Washington,395
Army Act, Provisional Confederate Congress passes,11-12
Ashby, Turner, Confederate cavalry leader,205; at Harrisonburg,207; Valley raid,212; death,215-16
Ashby's Gap, Johnston crosses Blue Ridge at,45
Ashland (Virginia), Jackson at,223
Atlanta, Southern cannon made at,64; Northern objective,327,386; battle,358-59; Sherman announces fall of,361; effect of victory,364; Sherman's headquarters,366-67; last action near,368-70
Atlanta, Confederate ram captured byWeehawken,309
Averell, W. D., cavalry leader,355,357
Bailey, Colonel Joseph,330
Bailey, Captain Theodorus,100
Balloons,68
Baltimore, Secessionists at Fort Sumter,3; Massachusetts troops mobbed in,16; Jackson's plan to occupy,194
Baltimore and Ohio Railway, Jackson destroys workshop,37
Banks, General N. P., supersedes General Butler,113; on the Mississippi (1862),113,114,167; (1863),261,264-65,272,273; commands in Shenandoah Valley,198; in Shenandoah campaign,199,200,203,204,205,207,208,210,211,212,235; incapacity,261,265,273; commands Red River Expedition,318,329,330,337,338
Barrancas Barracks,3
Bartow, General F. S., Bull Run,48; killed,52
Baton Rouge, Union Arsenal at,6; Farragut captures,107; Confederate attack,110; Union Navy wins way to,117
"Battle above the Clouds," Lookout Mountain,284
Baylor, Captain J. R., proclaims himself Governor of New Mexico,165-66
Beauregard. General P. G. T., sons at Louisiana Military Academy,7; and Fort Sumter,12,15-16; on the Potomac,35; at Bull Run,36,45,49; preparation for Shiloh,146,147; battle of Shiloh,153-54; Corinth,156; and Confederate plans,195; attacks Butler,340; telegram to Lee,348-49; command of troops opposed to Sherman,371
Beauregard, Fort,92
Beaver Dam Creek (Virginia), Porter's front at Mechanicsville,223
Bee, General B. E., Bull Run,49; killed,52
Bell, Commodore H. H.,99,114
Belmont (Missouri), Grant attacks,92,121
Benjamin, J. P., Confederate Secretary of War,70,101,182
Benton, flagship,266
Bentonville (North Carolina), battle,382-83
Bering Sea,Shenandoahin,69
Bermuda Hundred (Virginia), Butler seizes,339
Beverly (West Virginia), Confederates retire to,30
Big Black River (Mississippi), Grant's victory at,271
Birge, H. W., and sharpshooters,133
Bixby, Mrs., letter to,190-191
Blackburn's Ford (Virginia), McDowell at,43,46
Blair, General F. P., fight for Missouri,25,26,27,57,131; as a general,261