Imagine, then, the keen elation with which all hands aboard the U. S. S. Kearsarge heard at their berth off Flushing that the Alabama was in port at Cherbourg on the Channel coast of France, only one day's sail southwest! And there she was when the Kearsarge came 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. The Alabama had 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. The Kearsarge, 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, the Kearsarge, 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 two ships 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 the Alabama was 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 the Kearsarge. Still, four days passed without the Alabama; 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 the Alabama. The Kearsarge thereupon drew off, so that the Alabama could 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, the Deerhound, kept an offing of about a mile, ready to rescue survivors from a watery grave. Its owner, with his wife and family, had intended to stay ashore and go to church. But, when they heard the Alabama was really going out, he put the question to the vote around the breakfast-table, whereupon it was carried unanimously that the Deerhound should go too.

When the deck-officer of the Kearsarge sang 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 the Alabama far enough to sea, the Kearsarge turned toward her again, showing the starboard bow. When at a mile the Alabama fired 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). The Kearsarge's gunnery was magnificent, 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 the Kearsarge. But at sea the stronger side usually suffers much less and the weaker much more than on land. The Alabama lost 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 the Alabama headed 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 out and that the ship was sinking. At the same time a strange thing happened. An early shot from the Kearsarge had carried away the Alabama's colors; and now the Alabama's own 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. The Deerhound, on authority from Winslow, had already closed in to the rescue, followed by two French pilot boats and two from the Kearsarge; when suddenly the Alabama, rearing like a stricken horse, plunged to her doom.

Long before the Alabama's end 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 by this 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 ram Albemarle came 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 the Albemarle. At first she seemed impregnable; and the Federal shot and shell glanced harmlessly off her iron sides. But presently Commander Roe of the Sassacus (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: the Sassacus crashed her bronze beak into the Albemarle's side. Both vessels were disabled; a shell from the Albemarle burst the boilers of the Sassacus, scalding the engineers. But the rest fought off the attempt made by the Albemarles to board. Presently the furious opponents drifted apart; and the Albemarle, 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 the Albemarle's two fights Farragut took Mobile after a magnificent action on the fifth of August. There were batteries ashore, torpedoes across the channel, the Tennessee ram 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 ram Tennessee and 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 part in this great attack, was over five thousand strong, and lost only seven men in the land bombardment later on.

Farragut crossed the bar in the Hartford at 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 monitor Tecumseh, taking the wrong side of the channel buoy in her anxiety to ram the Tennessee, 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 the Tecumseh's mistake 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 Farragut could 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.

The Brooklyn, his next-ahead, was in his way. So he ordered the flagship Hartford and her lashed-together consort, the double-ender Metacomet, to use, the one her screw, the other her paddles, in opposite directions, till he had cleared the Brooklyn's stern. As he drew clear and headed for the danger-channel a shout went up from the Brooklyn's deck—"'ware torpedoes!" But Farragut, his mind made up, instantly roared back—"Damn the torpedoes!" Then, turning to the Hartford's and Metacomet's decks, 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 the Tennessee fought 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 oversea supplies. 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 old Louisiana, 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 the Louisiana was 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 had withdrawn 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 the Shenandoah.



CHAPTER X

GRANT ATTACKS THE FRONT: 1864

On March 9, 1864, at the Executive Mansion, and in the presence of all the Cabinet Ministers, Lincoln handed Grant the Lieutenant-General's commission which made him Commander-in-Chief of all the Union armies—a commission such as no one else had held since Washington. On April 9, 1865, Grant received the surrender of Lee at Appomattox; and the four years war was ended by a thirteen months campaign.

Victor of the River War in '63, Grant moved his headquarters from Chattanooga to Nashville soon before Christmas. He then expected not only to lead the river armies against Atlanta in '64 but, at the same time, to send another army against Mobile, where it could act in conjunction with the naval forces under Farragut's command.

He consequently made a midwinter tour of inspection: southeast to Chattanooga, northeast to Knoxville and Cumberland Gap, northwest to Lexington and Louisville, thence south, straight back to Nashville. This satisfied him that his main positions were properly taken and held, and that a well-concerted drive would clear his own strategic area of all but Forrest's elusive cavalry.

It was the hardest winter known for many years. The sticky clay roads round Cumberland Gap had been churned by wheels and pitted by innumerable feet throughout the autumn rains. Now they were frozen solid and horribly encumbered by debris mixed up with thousands upon thousands of perished mules and horses. Grant regretted this terrible wastage of animals as much in a personal as in a military way; for, like nearly all great men, his sympathies were broad enough to make him compassionate toward every kind of sentient life. No Arab ever loved his horse better than Grant loved his splendid charger Cincinnati, the worthy counterpart of Traveler, Lee's magnificent gray.

Summoned to Washington in March, Grant, after one scrutinizing look at the political world, then and there made up his steadfast mind that no commander-in-chief could ever carry out his own plans from any distant point; for, even in his fourth year of the war, civilian interference was still being practiced in defiance of naval and military facts and needs, and of some very serious dangers.

Lincoln stood wisely for civil control. But even he could not resist the perverting pressure in favor of the disastrous Red River Expedition, against which even Banks protested. Public and Government alike desired to give the French fair warning that the establishment of an Imperial Mexico, especially by means of foreign intervention, was regarded as a semi-hostile act. There were two entirely different ways in which this warning could be given: one completely effective without being provocative, the other provocative without being in the very least degree effective. The only effective way was to win the war; and the best way to win the war was to strike straight at the heart of the South with all the Union forces. The most ineffective way was to withdraw Union forces from the heart of the war, send them off at a wasteful tangent, misuse them in eccentric operations just where they would give most offense to the French, and then expose them to what, at best, could only be a detrimental victory, and to what would much more likely be defeat, if not disaster.

Yet, to Grant's and Farragut's and every other soldier's and sailor's disgust, this worst way of all was chosen; and Banks's forty thousand sorely needed veterans were sent to their double defeat at Sabine Cross Roads and Pleasant Hill on the eighth and ninth of April, while Porter's invaluable fleet and the no less indispensable transports were nearly lost altogether owing to the long-foretold fall of the dangerous Red River. The one success of this whole disastrous affair was the admirable work of Colonel Joseph Bailey, who dammed the water up just in time to let the rapidly stranding vessels slide into safety through a very narrow sluice.

Even the Red River lesson was thrown away on Stanton, whose interference continued to the bitter end, except when checked by Lincoln or countered by Grant and Sherman in the field. When Grant was starting on his tour of inspection he found that Stanton had forbidden all War Department operators to let commanding generals use the official cipher except when in communication with himself. There were to be no secrets at the front between the commanding generals, even on matters of immediate life and death, unless they were first approved by Stanton at his leisure. The fact that the enemy could use unciphered messages was nothing in his autocratic eyes. Nor did it prick his conscience to change the wording in ways that bewildered his own side and served the enemy's turn.

When Grant took the cipher Stanton ordered the operator to be dismissed. Grant thereupon shouldered the responsibility, saying that Stanton would have to punish him if any one was punished. Then Stanton gave in. Grant saw through him clearly. "Mr. Stanton never questioned his own authority to command, unless resisted. He felt no hesitation in assuming the functions of the Executive or in acting without advising with him.... He was very timid, and it was impossible for him to avoid interfering with the armies covering the capital when it was sought to defend it by an offensive movement against the army defending the Confederate capital. The enemy would not have been in danger if Mr. Stanton had been in the field."

Stanton was unteachable. He never learnt where control ended and disabling interference began. In the very critical month of August, '64, he interfered with Hunter to such an extent that this patriotic general had to tell Grant "he was so embarrassed with orders from Washington that he had lost all trace of the enemy." Nor was that the end of Stanton's interference with the operations in the Shenandoah Valley. Lincoln's own cipher letter to Grant on the third of August shows what both these great men had to suffer from the weak link in the chain between them.

I have seen your despatch in which you say, "I want Sheridan put in command of all the troops in the field, with instructions to put himself south of the enemy, and follow him to the death. Wherever the enemy goes, let our troops go also." This, I think, is exactly right, as to how our forces should move. But please look over the despatches you may have received from here, even since you made that order, and discover, if you can, that there is any idea in the head of any one here of "putting our army south of the enemy," or of "following him to the death" in any direction. I repeat to you it will neither be done or attempted unless you watch it every day, and hour, and force it.

The experts of the loyal North were partly comforted by knowing that Davis and his ministers had interfered with Jackson, that during the present campaign they made a crucial mistake about Johnston, and that they failed to give Lee the supreme command until it was too late. But no Southern Secretary went quite so far as Stanton, who actually falsified Grant's order to Sheridan at the crisis of the Valley campaign in October. Here are Grant's own words: "This order had to go through Washington, where it was intercepted; and when Sheridan received what purported to be a statement of what I wanted him to do it was something entirely different."

Nor was Stanton the only responsible civilian to interfere with Grant. There was no government press censorship—perhaps, in this peculiar war, there could not be one. So the only safety was unceasing care, even in cases vouched for by civilians of high official standing. When Grant was beginning the great campaign of '64 the Honorable Elihu B. Washburne, afterwards United States Minister to France, introduced one Swinton as the prospective historian of the war. On this understanding Swinton accompanied the army. One night Grant gave verbal orders to the staff officer on duty. Three days later these orders appeared in a Richmond paper. Shortly afterwards, in the midst of the Wilderness battle, Swinton was found eavesdropping behind a stump during a midnight conference at headquarters. Sent off with a serious warning, he next appeared, in another place, as a prisoner condemned to death for spying. Grant, satisfied that he was not bent on getting news for the enemy in particular, but only for the press in general, released and expelled him with such a warning this time that he never once came back.

The Union forces at the front were about twice the corresponding forces of the South. Sherman, who commanded the river armies after Grant's transfer to Virginia, says: "I always estimated my force at about double, and could afford to lose two to one without disturbing our relative proportion." In Virginia the Army of the Potomac under Meade and the new Army of the James under Butler, both under Grant's immediate command, totaled over a hundred and fifty thousand men against the ninety thousand under Lee. These odds of five to three remained the same when a hundred and ten thousand Federals went into winter quarters against sixty-six thousand Confederates at Petersburg. But, when the naval odds of more than ten to one in favor of the North are added in, the general odds of two to one are reached on this as well as other scenes of action. In reserves the odds were very much greater; for while the South was getting down to its last available man the North began the following year with nearly one million in the forces and two millions on the registered reserve. Thus, even supposing that half the reserves were unfit for active service, the man-power odds against the South were these: two to one in arms at the beginning of the great campaign, five to one at the end of it, and ten to one if the fit reserves were all included. The odds in transportation by land, and very much more so by water, were even greater at corresponding times; while the odds in all the other resources which could be turned to warlike ends were greater still.

The Southern situation, therefore, was not encouraging from the naval and military point of view. The border States had long been lost, then the trans-Mississippi; and now the whole river area was held as a base by the North. Only five States remained effective: Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia. These formed an irregular oblong of about two hundred thousand square miles between the Appalachians and the sea. There were a good eight hundred Confederate miles from the Shenandoah Valley to Mobile. But the three hundred miles across the oblong, even in its widest part, were everywhere threatened and in some places held by the North. The whole coast was more closely blockaded than ever; and only three ports remained with their defenses still in Southern hands: Wilmington, Charleston, and Mobile. Alabama was threatened by land and sea from the lower Mississippi and the Gulf. Georgia was threatened by Sherman's main body in southeastern Tennessee. The Carolinas were in less immediate danger. But they were menaced both from the mountains and the sea; and if the Union forces conquered Virginia and Georgia, then the Carolinas were certain to be ground into subjugation between Grant's victorious forces on the north and Sherman's on the south.

Grant fixed his own headquarters with the Army of the Potomac at Culpeper Court House, north of the Rapidan. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia was at Orange Court House, over twenty miles south. Grant, taking his own headquarters as the center, regarded Butler's Army of the James as the left wing, which could unite with the center round Richmond and Petersburg. The long right wing ran through the whole of West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, clear away to Memphis, with its own headquarters at Chattanooga. There Sherman faced Johnston, who occupied a strong position at Dalton, over thirty miles southeast. The great objectives were, of course, the two main Southern armies under Lee and Johnston, with Richmond and Atlanta as the chief positions to be gained.

All other Union forces were regarded as attacking the South from the rear. Wherever coast garrisons could help to tighten the blockade or seriously distract Confederate attention they were left to do so. Wherever they could not they were either depleted for the front or sent there bodily. The principal Union field force attacking from the rear was to have been formed by Banks's forty thousand veterans in conjunction with Farragut's fleet against Mobile. But the Red River Expedition spoilt that combination in the spring and postponed it till August, when Farragut did nearly all the fighting, and the cooeperating army was far too late to produce the distracting effect that Grant had originally planned.

General Franz Sigel was sent to the upper Shenandoah Valley, both to guard that approach on Washington and to destroy the resources on which Lee's army so greatly relied. General George Crook was given a mounted column to operate from southern West Virginia against the line of rails running toward Tennessee through the lower end of the Valley.

The most notable new general was Philip H. Sheridan, whom Grant selected for the cavalry command. Sheridan was thirty-three, two years older than his Southern rival, Stuart, and, like him, a young regular officer who rose to well-earned fame the moment his first great chance occurred.

Sherman we have met from the very beginning of the war and followed throughout its course. He was continually rising to more and more responsible command; but it was only now that he became the virtual Commander-in-Chief of all the river armies and the chosen cooeperator with Grant on a universal scale. He was of the old original stock, his first American ancestors having emigrated from England in 1634. An old regular, with special knowledge of the South, and in the fullness of his powers at the age of forty-four, he had developed with the war till there was no position which he could not fill to the best advantage of the service.

Grant fixed the fourth of May for the combined advance of all the converging forces of invasion. There were two weak points where the Union armies failed: one in the farthest south, where, as we have so often seen, Banks could not attack Mobile owing to his absence at Red River; the other in the farthest north, where Sigel was badly beaten and replaced by Hunter. Here, after much disabling interference at the hands of Stanton, Hunter was succeeded by Sheridan, whom Grant himself directed with consummate skill. There were also two Confederate thorns in the Federal side: Forrest's cavalry in Sherman's rear, Mosby's cavalry in Grant's. Forrest roved about the river area, snapping up small garrisons, cutting communications, and doing a good deal of damage right up to the Ohio. Mosby, with a much smaller but equally efficient force, actually raided to and fro in Grant's immediate rear; and on one occasion nearly captured Grant himself just on the eve of the opening move. As Grant's unguarded special train from Washington pulled up at Warrenton Junction, where there was only one Union official, Mosby's men had just crossed the track in pursuit of some Federal cavalry.

But neither these two Confederate thorns in the side nor the more serious Federal failures could stop the general advance. Nor yet could Butler's lack of success on the James. Butler had seized and fortified an exceedingly strong defensive position at Bermuda Hundred on a peninsula, with navigable water on both flanks and in rear, and a very narrow neck of land in front. The only trouble was that it was as hard for him to surmount the Confederate front across the same narrow neck as it was for the enemy to surmount his own. He was, in fact, bottled up, with the cork in the enemy's hands. He did send out cavalry from Suffolk to cut the rails south of Petersburg. But no permanent damage was done there. Petersburg itself, which at that time was almost defenseless, was not taken. And in the middle of the month Beauregard attacked Butler so vigorously as to make the Army of the James rather a passive than an active force till it was presently, absorbed by Grant when he arrived before Richmond in June.

Grant felt perfect confidence only in four prime elements of victory: first, in his ability to wear Lee down by sheer attrition if other means failed; next, in his own magnificent army; then in Sherman's; and lastly in Sheridan's cavalry. His supply and transport services were nearly perfect, even in his own most critical eyes. "There never was a corps better organized than was the quartermaster's corps with the Army of the Potomac in 1864." His field engineering and his signal service were also exceedingly good. At every halt the army threw up earth and timber entrenchments with wonderful rapidity and skill. At the same time the telegraph and signal corps was busy laying insulated wires by means of reels on muleback. Parallel lines would be led to the rear of each brigade till quite clear, when their ends would be joined by a wire at right angles, from which headquarters could communicate with every unit at the front. Sherman's army was equally efficient, and Sheridan's cavalry soon proved that sweeping raids could be carried out by one side as well as by the other.

Crossing the Rapidan at the Germanna Ford, Grant marched south through the Wilderness on the fifth of May. The Wilderness was densely wooded; the roads were few and bad; the clearings rare and too small for large units. When Lee attacked from the west and Grant turned to face him the fighting soon became desperate, close, and somewhat confused. Neither side gained any substantial advantage on the first day. Next morning Grant, preparing to attack at five, was forestalled by Lee, who wished to keep him at arm's length till Longstreet came up on the southern flank. Again the opposing armies closed and fought with the greatest determination for over an hour, when the Confederates fell back in some confusion. Then Longstreet arrived and restored the battle till he was severely wounded. After this Lee took command of his right, or southern, wing and kept up the fight all day. Meanwhile Sheridan had countered the Confederate cavalry under Stuart, which had been trying to swing round the same southern flank. The main bodies of infantry swayed back and forth till dark, with the woods and breastworks on fire in several places, and many of the wounded smothering in the smoke.

On the seventh reassuring news came in from Sherman and Butler, Sheridan drove off the Confederate cavalry at Todd's Tavern, and the southward march continued. As Grant and Meade rode south that evening, past Hancock's corps, and the men saw they were heading straight for Richmond, there was such a burst of cheering that the Confederates, thinking it meant a night attack, deluged the intervening woods with a heavy barrage till they found out their mistake.

The race for Richmond continued on the eighth, each army trying to get south of the other without exposing itself to a flank attack. Grant had sent his wagon trains farther east, to move south on parallel roads and keep those nearest Lee quite clear for fighting. This movement at first led Lee to suspect a Federal retirement on Fredericksburg, which caused him to send Longstreet's corps south to Spotsylvania. The woods being on fire, and the men unable to bivouac, the whole corps pushed on to Spotsylvania, thus forestalling Grant, who had intended to get there first himself.

This brought on another tremendous battle in the bush. Lee formed a semicircle, facing north, round Spotsylvania, in a supreme effort to stem, if not throw back, Grant's most determined advance. Grant, on the other hand, indomitably pressed home wave after wave of attack till the evening of the twelfth. The morning of that desperate day was foggy; and the attack was delayed. The Federal objective was a commanding salient, jutting out from the Confederate center, and now weakened by the removal of guns overnight to follow the apparent Federal move toward the south. The gray sentries, peering through the dripping woods, suddenly found them astir. Then wave after wave of densely massed blue dashed to the assault, swarming up and over on both sides, regardless of losses, and fighting hand to hand with a fury that earned this famous salient the name of Bloody Angle. Back and still back went the outnumbered gray, many of whom were surrounded by the swirling currents of inpouring blue. But presently Lee himself came up, and would have led his reinforcements to the charge if a pleading shout of "General Lee to the rear!" had not induced him to desist. Every spare Confederate rushed to the rescue. From right and left and rear the gray streams came, impetuous and strong, united in one main current and dashed against the blue. There, in the Bloody Angle, the battle raged with ever-increasing fury until the rising tide of strife, bursting its narrow bounds, carried the blue attackers back to where they came from. But they were hardly clear of that appalling slope before they reformed, presented an undaunted front once more, and then drew off with stinging resistance to the very last.

After five days of much rain and little fighting Grant made his final effort on the eighteenth. This was meant to be a great surprise. Two corps changed position under cover of the night and sprang their trap at four in the morning. But Lee was again before them, ready and resolute as ever. Thirty guns converged their withering fire on the big blue masses and seemed to burn them off the field. These masses never closed, as they had done six days before; and when they fell back beaten the fortnight's battle in the Wilderness was done.

During it there had been two operations that gave Grant better satisfaction: Sheridan's raid and Sherman's advance. As large bodies of cavalry could not maneuver in the bush Grant had sent Sheridan off on his Richmond Raid ten days before. Striking south near Spotsylvania, Sheridan's ten thousand horsemen rounded Lee's right, cut the rails on either side of Beaver Dam Station, destroyed this important depot on the Virginia Central Railroad, and then made straight for Richmond. Stuart followed hard, made an exhausting sweep round Sheridan's flank, and faced him on the eleventh at Yellow Tavern, six miles north of Richmond. Here the tired and outnumbered Confederates made a desperate attempt to stem Sheridan's advance. But Stuart, the hero of his own men, and the admiration of his generous foes, was mortally wounded; and his thinner lines, overlapped and outweighed, gave ground and drew off. Richmond had no garrison to resist a determined attack. But Sheridan, knowing he could not hold it and having better work to do, pushed on southeast to Haxall's Landing, where he could draw much-needed supplies from Butler, just across the James. With the enemy aggressive and alert all round him, he built a bridge under fire across the Chickahominy, struck north for the Army of the Potomac, and reported his return to Grant at Chesterfield Station—halfway back to Spotsylvania—on his seventeenth day out.

In the course of this great raid Sheridan had drawn off the Confederate cavalry; fought four successful actions; released hundreds of Union prisoners and taken as many himself; cut rails and wires to such an extent that Lee could only communicate with Richmond by messenger; destroyed enormous quantities of the most vitally needed enemy stores, especially food and medical supplies; and, by penetrating the outer defenses of Richmond, raised Federal prestige to a higher plane at a most important juncture.

Meanwhile Sherman, whose own main body included a hundred thousand men, had started from Chattanooga at the same time as Grant from Culpeper Court House. In Grant's opinion "Johnston, with Atlanta, was of less importance only because the capture of Johnston and his army would not produce so immediate and decisive a result in closing the rebellion as would the possession of Richmond, Lee, and his army." Sherman's organization, supply and transport, engineers, staff, and army generally were excellent. So skillful, indeed, were his railway engineers that a disgusted Confederate raider called out to a demolition party: "Better save your powder, boys. What's the good of blowing up this one when Sherman brings duplicate tunnels along?"

Sherman had double Johnston's numbers in the field. But Johnston, as a supremely skillful Fabian, was a most worthy opponent for this campaign, when the Confederate object was to gain time and sicken the North of the war by falling back from one strongly prepared position to another, inflicting as much loss as possible on the attackers, and forcing them to stretch their line of communication to the breaking point among a hostile population. Two of Sherman's best divisions were still floundering about with the rest of the Red River Expedition. So he had to modify his original plan, which would have taken him much sooner to Atlanta and given him the support of a simultaneous attack on Mobile by a cooeperating joint expedition. But he was ready to the minute, all the same.

Dalton, Johnston's first stronghold, was cleverly turned by McPherson's right flank march; whereupon Johnston fell back on Resaca. Here, on the upon the fifteenth of May, the armies fought hard for some hours. But Sherman again outflanked the fortified enemy, who retired to Kingston. Then, after Sherman had made a four days' halt to accumulate supplies, the advance was resumed, against determined opposition and with a good deal of hard fighting for a week in the neighborhood of New Hope Church. The result of the usual outflanking movements was that Johnston had to evacuate Allatoona on the fourth of June. Sherman at once turned it into his advanced field base; while Johnston fell back on another strong and well-prepared position at Kenesaw Mountain.

Grant, favored in a general way by Sherman and in a special way by Sheridan, had meanwhile enjoyed a third advantage, this time on his own immediate front, through the sickness of Lee, who could not take personal command during the last ten days of May. On the twenty-first half of Grant's army marched south while half stood threatening Lee, in order to give their friends a start toward Richmond. This move was so well staffed and screened that perhaps Lee could not have seen his chance quite soon enough in any case. But when he did learn what had happened even his calm self-control gave way to the exceeding bitter cry: "We must strike them! We must never let them pass us again!" On the thirtieth he was horrified at getting from Beauregard (who was then between Richmond and Petersburg) a telegram which showed that the Confederate Government was busy with the circumlocution office in Richmond while the enemy was thundering at the gate. "War Department must determine when and what troops to order from here." Lee immediately answered: "If you cannot determine what troops you can spare, the Department cannot. The result of your delay will be disaster. Butler's troops will be with Grant tomorrow." Lee also telegraphed direct to Davis for immediate reinforcements, which arrived only just in time for the terrific battle of Cold Harbor.

With these three advantages, in addition to the other odds in his favor, Grant seemed to have found the tide of fortune at the flood in the latter part of May. But he had many troubles of his own. No sooner had half his army been badly defeated on the eighteenth than news came that Sigel was in full retreat instead of cutting off supplies from Lee. Then came news of Butler's retreat from Drewry's Bluff, close in to Richmond. Nor was this all; for it was only now that definite news of the Red River Expedition arrived to confirm Grant's worst suspicions and ruin his second plan of helping Farragut to take Mobile. But, as was his wont, Grant at once took steps to meet the crisis. He ordered Hunter to replace Sigel and go south—straight into the heart of the Valley, asked the navy to move his own base down the Rappahannock from Fredericksburg to Port Royal, and then himself marched on toward Richmond, where Lee was desperately trying to concentrate for battle.

The two armies were now drawing all available force together round the strategic center of Cold Harbor, only nine miles east of Richmond. On the thirty-first Sheridan drove out the enemy detachments there, and was himself about to retire before much superior reinforcements when he got Grant's order to hold his ground at any cost. Nightfall prevented a general assault till the next morning, when Sheridan managed to stand fast till Wright's whole corps came up and the enemy at once desisted. But elsewhere the Confederates did what they could to stave the Federals off from advantageous ground on that day and the next. The day after—the fateful third of June—the two sides closed in death-grips at Cold Harbor.

On this, the thirtieth day of Grant's campaign of stern attrition and would-be-smashing hammer-strokes at Lee, these were his orders for attack: "The moment it becomes certain that an assault cannot succeed, suspend the offensive. But when one does succeed, push it vigorously, and, if necessary, pile in troops at the successful point from wherever they can be taken." The trouble was that Grant was two days late in carrying on the battle so well begun by Sheridan, that Warren's corps was two miles off and entirely disconnected, and that the three remaining corps formed three parts and no whole when the stress of action came.

At dawn Meade's Army of the Potomac (less Warren's corps) began to take post for the grand attack that some, more sanguine than reflecting, hoped would win the war. When it was light the guns burst out in furious defiance, each side's artillery trying to beat the other's down before the crisis of the infantry assault. There was no maneuvering. Each one of Meade's three corps—Hancock's, Wright's, and Smith's (brought over from Butler's command)—marched straight to its front. This led them apart, on diverging lines, and so exposed their flanks as well as their fronts to enemy fire. But though each corps thought its neighbor wrong to uncover its flanks, and the true cause was not discovered till compass bearings were afterwards compared, yet each went on undaunted, gaining momentum with every step, and gathering itself together for the final charge.

Then, surging like great storm-blown waves, the blue lines broke against Lee's iron front. In every gallant case there was the same wild cresting of the wave, the same terrific crash, the same adventurous tongues of blue that darted up as far as they could go alive, the same anguishing recession from the fatal mark, and the same agonizing wreckage left behind. In Hancock's corps the crisis passed in just eight minutes. But in those eight dire minutes eight colonels died while leading their regiments on to a foredoomed defeat. One of these eight, James P. McMahon of New York, alone among his dauntless fellows, actually reached the Confederate lines, and, catching the colors from their stricken bearer, waved them one moment above the parapet before he fell.

Flesh and blood could do no more. Under the withering fire and crossfire of Lee's unshaken front the beaten corps went back, re-formed, and waited. They had not long to wait; for Grant was set on swinging his three hammers for three more blows at least. So again the three assaults were separately made on the one impregnable front; and again the waves receded, leaving a second mass of agonizing wreckage with the first. Yet even this was not enough for Grant, who once more renewed his orders. These orders quickly ran their usual course, from the army to the different corps, from each corps to its own divisions, and from divisions to brigades. But not a single unit stirred. From the generals to the "thinking bayonets" every soldier knew the limit had been reached. Officially the order was obeyed by a front-line fire of musketry, as well as by the staunch artillery, which again gave its infantry the comfort of the guns. But that was all.

Thus ended the battle of Cold Harbor, the last pitched battle on Virginian soil. Grant reported it in three short sentences; and afterwards referred to it in these other three. "I have always regretted that the last assault [i.e., the whole battle of the third of June] was ever made. No advantage whatever was gained to compensate for the heavy loss. Indeed, the advantages, other than those of relative losses, were on the Confederate side." Even these, however, were also on the Confederate side, as Grant lost nearly thirteen thousand, while Lee lost less than eighteen hundred. Cold Harbor undoubtedly lowered Union morale, both at the front and all through the loyal North. It encouraged the Peace Party, revived Confederate hopes, and shook the army's faith in Grant's commandership. Martin McMahon, a Union general, writing many years after the event, of which he was a most competent witness, said: "It was the dreary, dismal, bloody, ineffective close of the lieutenant-general's first campaign with the Army of the Potomac."

Cold Harbor caused a change of plan. Reporting two days later Grant said: "I now find, after thirty days of trial, the enemy deems it of the first importance to run no risks with the armies they now have. Without a greater sacrifice of human life than I am willing to make all cannot be accomplished that I had designed outside of the city [of Richmond]. I have therefore resolved upon the following plan," which, in one word, involved a complete change from a series of pitched battles to a long-drawn open siege.

The battles lasted thirty days, the siege three hundred. Therefore, from this time on for the next ten months, Lee had to keep his living shield between Grant's main body and the last great stronghold of the fighting South, while the rising tide of Northern force, commanding all the sea and an ever-increasing portion of the land, beat ceaselessly against his front and flanks, threw out destroying arms against his ever-diminishing sources of supply, and wore the starving shield itself down to the very bone.

Grant's losses—forty thousand killed and wounded—were all made good by immediate reinforcement; as was his other human wastage from sickness, straggling, and desertion: made good, that is, in the quantities required to wear out Lee, whose thinning ranks could never be renewed; but not made good in quality; for many of the best were dead. The wastage of material is hardly worth considering on the Northern side; for it could always be made good, superabundantly good. But the corresponding wastage on the Southern side was unrenewed and unrenewable. Food, clothing, munitions, medical stores—it was all the same for all the Southern armies: desperate expedients, slow starvation, death.

Consternation reigned at Richmond on the twelfth of June, the day the fitful firing ceased around Cold Harbor. There was danger in the Valley, where Hunter had won success at Staunton, and where Crook's and Averell's Union troops were expected to arrive from West Virginia. Sheridan, too, was off on a twenty-day raid. He cut the Virginia Central rails at Trevilian, did much other damage between Richmond and the Valley, and, toward the end of June, rejoined Grant, who had reached the James nearly a fortnight before. Always trying to overlap Lee's extending right, Grant closed in on Petersburg with the Army of the Potomac while the Army of the James held fast against Richmond. This part of the front then remained comparatively quiet till the end of July.

But the beleaguered Confederates made one last sortie out of the Valley and straight against Washington. At the beginning of July the Valley was uncovered owing to the roundabout flank march that Hunter was forced to make back to his base for ammunition. The enterprising Jubal Early took advantage of this with some veteran troops and made straight for Washington. On the ninth Lew Wallace succeeded in delaying him for one day at the Monocacy by an admirably planned defense most gallantly carried out with greatly inferior numbers and far less veteran men. This gave time for reinforcements to pour into Washington; so that on the twelfth, Early, finding the works alive with men, had to retreat even faster than he came.

In the meantime Grant's extreme right wing was steadily pressing the invasion of Georgia, where we left Sherman and Johnston face to face at Kenesaw in June. Here again the beleaguered Confederates had been making desperate raids or sorties, trying to cut Sherman off from his base in Tennessee and keep back the Federal forces in other parts of the river area. "Our Jack Morgan," whom we left as a prisoner of war after his Ohio raid of '63, had escaped in November, fought Crook and Averell for Saltville and Wytheville in May, and then, leaving southwest Virginia, had raided Kentucky and taken Lexington, but been defeated at Cynthiana and driven back by overwhelming numbers till he again entered southwest Virginia on the twentieth of June. Forrest raided northeastern Mississippi, badly defeated Sturgis at Brice's Cross Roads in June, but was himself defeated by A. J. Smith at Tupelo in July.

Meanwhile Sherman had been tapping Johnston's fifty miles of entrenchments for three weeks of rainy June weather, hoping to find a suitable place into which he could drive a wedge of attack. On the twenty-seventh he tried to carry the Kenesaw lines by assault, but failed at every point, with a loss of twenty-five hundred—three times what Johnston lost.

By a well-combined series of maneuvers Sherman then forced Johnston to fall back or be hopelessly outflanked. Johnston, with equal skill, crossed the Chattahoochee under cover of the strongly fortified bridgehead which he had built unknown to Sherman. But Sherman, with his double numbers, could always hold Johnston with one-half in front while turning his flank with the other. So even the Chattahoochee was safely crossed on the seventeenth of July and the final move against Atlanta was begun. That same night Johnston's magnificent skill was thrown to the winds by Davis, who had ordered the bold and skillful but far too headlong John B. Hood to take command and "fight."

Five days later Hood fought the battle of Atlanta. Just as Sherman was closing in to entrench for a siege Hood attacked his extreme left flank with the utmost resolution, driving it in and completely enveloping it. But Sherman was not to be caught. Knowing that only a part of Hood's army could be sent to this attack while the rest held the lines of Atlanta, Sherman left McPherson's veteran Army of the Tennessee to do the actual fighting, supported, of course, by the movement of troops on their engaged right. McPherson was killed. Logan ably replaced him and won a hard-fought day. Hood's loss was well over eight thousand; Sherman's considerably less than half.

On the twenty-eighth Hood attacked the extreme right, now commanded by General O. O. Howard in succession to McPherson, whose Army of the Tennessee again did most distinguished service, especially Logan's Fifteenth Corps near Ezra Church. The Confederates were again defeated with the heavier loss. After this the siege continued all through the month of August.

While Hood was trying to keep Sherman off Atlanta Grant was trying to make a breach at Petersburg. Grant gave Meade "minute orders on the 24th [of July] how I wanted the assault conducted," and Meade elaborated the actual plan with admirable skill except in one particular—that of the generals concerned. Burnside was ordered to use his corps for the assault, and he chose Ledlie's division to lead. The mine was on an enormous scale, designed to hold eight tons of powder, though it was only charged with four, and was approached by a gallery five hundred feet long. On the twenty-ninth Grant brought every available man into proper support of Burnside, whose other three divisions were to form the immediate support of Ledlie's grand forlorn hope.

In the early morning of the thirtieth the mine blew up with an earthquaking shock; the enemy round it ran helter-skelter to the rear; a crater like that of a volcano was formed; and a hundred and sixty pieces of artillery opened a furious fire on every square inch near it. Ledlie's division rushed forward and occupied the crater. But there the whole maneuver stopped short; for everything hinged on Ledlie's movements; and Ledlie was hiding, well out of danger, instead of "carrying on." After a pause Confederate reinforcements came up and drove the leaderless division back. "The effort," said Grant, "was a stupendous failure"; and it cost him nearly four thousand men, mostly captured.

August was a sad month for the loyal North. It was then, as we have seen, that Lincoln had to warn Grant about the way in which his orders were being falsified in Washington. It was then that Sherman asked for reinforcements, so as to be up to strength before and after the taking of Atlanta. And it was then that Halleck warned Grant to be ready to send some of his best men north if there should be serious resistance to the draft. Nor was this all. Thurlow Weed, the great election agent, told Lincoln that the Government would be defeated; which meant, of course, that the compromised and compromising Peace Party would probably be at the helm in time to wreck the Union. With so many of the best men dead or at the front the whole tone of political society had been considerably lowered—to the corresponding advantage of all those meaner elements that fish in troubled waters when the dregs are well stirred up. There were sinister signs in the big cities, in the press, and in financial circles. The Union dollar once sank to thirty-nine cents. To make matters worse, there was a good deal of well-founded discontent among the self-sacrificing loyalists, both at the home and fighting fronts, because the Government apparently allowed disloyal and evasive citizens to live as parasites on the Union's body politic. The blood tax and money tax alike fell far too heavily on the patriots; while many a parasite grew rich in unshamed safety.

Mobile was won in August. But the people's eyes were mostly fixed upon the land. So a much greater effect was produced by Sherman's laconic dispatch of the second of September announcing the fall of Atlanta. The Confederates, despairing of holding it to any good purpose, had blown up everything they could not move and then retreated. This thrilling news heartened the whole loyal North, and, as Lincoln at once sent word to Sherman, "entitled those who had participated to the applause and thanks of the nation." Grant fired a salute of shotted guns from every battery bearing on the enemy, who were correspondingly depressed. For every one could now see that if the Union put forth its full strength the shrunken forces of the South could not prevent the Northern vice from crushing them to death.

September also saw the turning of the tide on the still more conspicuous scene of action in Virginia. Grant had sent Sheridan to the Valley, and had just completed a tour of personal inspection there, when Sheridan, finding Early's Confederates divided, swooped down on the exposed main body at Opequan Creek and won a brilliant victory which raised the hopes of the loyal North a good deal higher still.

Exactly a month later, on the nineteenth of October, Early made a desperate attempt to turn the tables on the Federals in the Valley by attacking them suddenly, on their exposed left flank, while Sheridan was absent at Washington. (We must remember that Grant had to concert action personally with his sub-commanders, as his orders were so often "queered" when seen at Washington by autocratic Stanton and bureaucratic Halleck.) The troops attacked broke up and were driven in on their supports in wild confusion. Then the supports gave way; and a Confederate victory seemed to be assured.

But Sheridan was on his way. He had left the scene of his previous victory at Opequan Creek, near Winchester, and was now riding to the rescue of his army at Cedar Creek, twenty miles south. "Sheridan's Ride," so widely known in song and story, was enough to shake the nerves of any but a very fit commander. The flotsam and jetsam of defeat swirled round him as he rode. Yet, with unerring eye, he picked out the few that could influence the rest and set them at work to rally, reform, and return. Inspired by his example many a straggler who had run for miles presently "found himself" again and got back in time to redeem his reputation.

Arriving on the field Sheridan discovered those two splendid leaders, Custer and Getty, holding off the victorious Confederates from what otherwise seemed an easy prey. His presence encouraged the formed defense, restored confidence among the rest near by, and stiffened resistance so much that hasty entrenchments were successfully made and still more successfully held. The first rush having been stopped, Sheridan turned the lull that ensued into a triumphal progress by riding bareheaded along his whole line, so that all his men might feel themselves once more under his personal command. Cheer upon cheer greeted him as his gallant charger carried him past; and when the astonished enemy were themselves attacked they broke in irretrievable defeat.

This crowning victory of the long-drawn Valley campaigns, coming with cumulative force after those of Mobile, Atlanta, and Opequan Creek, did more to turn the critical election than all the speeches in the North. The fittest at the home front judged by deeds, not words, agreeing therein with Rutherford B. Hayes (a future President, now one of Sheridan's generals) who said: "Any officer fit for duty who at this crisis would abandon his post to electioneer for a seat in Congress, ought to be scalped."

The devastation of everything in the Valley that might be useful to Lee's army completed the Union victory in arms; while Lincoln's own triumph in November completed it in politics and raised his party to the highest plane of statesmanship in war.

From this time till the early spring the battle of the giants in Virginia calmed down to the minor moves and clashes that mark a period of winter quarters; while the scene of more stirring action shifts once more to Georgia and Tennessee.



CHAPTER XI

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 was allowed 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 a violent 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 gunboat Undine with 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.



On the fifth of October the last action near Atlanta was fought thirty miles northwest, when Hood 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 an ear" 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 sent him 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 devastating march 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 cooerdination 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 Savannah northward, 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 as his 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 to the 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 his dispatches on board the U.S.S. Dandelion and 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.



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 and plenty 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-five thousand 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.



CHAPTER XII

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 and sea. 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 the Confederate raider Shenandoah at 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 thousand picked 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 Bentonville in 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 only anxiety 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 approved of 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 been suffering 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 extremely handsome, and full of equal dignity and charm, he looked, from head to foot, the perfect leader of devoted men.