In March,
1864, Ulysses S. Grant was named lieutenant
general and the commander of the Union Army.
Leaving the West under the control of General William T. Sherman,
Grant decided to take control of the Army of the Potomac. With his
able lieutenants, George Meade and Philip
Sheridan the army crossed the Rapidan and entered the Wilderness.
When Robert E. Lee heard the news he sent
in his troops, hoping that the Union's superior artillery and cavalry
would be offset by the heavy underbrush of the Wilderness.
Fighting began on the 5th May and two days later smoldering paper
cartridges set fire to dry leaves and around 200 wounded men were
either suffocated or burned to death. Of the 88,892 men that Grant
took into the Wilderness, 14,283 were casualties and 3,383 were reported
missing. Lee lost 7,750 men during the fighting.
After the battle Ulysses S. Grant moved
south and on May 26th sent Philip Sheridan
and his cavalry ahead to capture Cold Harbor from the Confederate
Army. Lee was forced to abandon Cold Harbor and his whole army
well dug in and by the time the rest of the Union
Army arrived. Grant's ordered a direct assault but afterwards
admitted this was a mistake losing 12,000 men "without benefit
to compensate".
Ulysses S. Grant also gave instructions
to William Sherman to attack the Army
of Tennessee under the control of Joseph
E. Johnston. He told Sherman "to move against Johnson's army,
to break it up, and to get into the interior of the enemy's country
as far as you can, inflicting all the damage you can against their
war resources".
On 7th May, 1864, Sherman and his 100,000 men advanced towards Johnson's
army that was attempting to defend the route to Atlanta,
the South's important manufacturing and communications centre. Joseph
E. Johnston and his army retreated and after some brief skirmishes
the two sides fought at Resaca (14th May), Adairsvile (17th May),
New Hope Church (25th May), Kennesaw Mountain (27th June) and Marietta
(2nd July).
After leaving the Wilderness Grant
moved his Army of the Potomoc towards Richmond
hoping he could arrive there before Robert
E. Lee. However, Pierre T. Beauregard
was able to protect the route to the city before the arrival of Lee's
main army forced Grant to prepare for a siege.
Ambrose Burnside organised a regiment
of Pennsylvania coalminers to construct tunnels and place dynamite
under the Confederate Army front lines.
It was exploded on the 30th June and US
Colored troops were sent forward to take control of the craters
that had been formed. However, these troops were not given adequate
support and the Confederate troops were soon able to recover its positions.
Thousands of captured black soldiers were now murdered by angry Southerners.
The Union Army also suffered heavy losses
at the end of July, 1864, trying to take the port of Petersburg
but was eventually able to cut off Lee's supplies from the lower South.
President Jefferson Davis was unhappy
about withdrawal policy being employed by Joseph
E. Johnston and on 17th July replaced him with the more aggressive
John Hood. He immediately went on the
attack and hit George H. Thomas and
his men at Peachtree Creek. Hood was badly beaten and lost 2,500 men.
Two days later he took on William Sherman
just outside Atlanta and lost another
8,000 men. By 31st August, Confederate forces began to evacuate Atlanta
and by early September the city came under the control of the Union
Army.
Attempts to clear out the Shenandoah
Valley by Major General Franz Sigel
in May and Major General David Hunter
during the summer of 1864 ended in failure. Major General Jubal
Early, who defeated Hunter, was sent north with 14,000 men in
an attempt to draw off troops from Grant's army. Major General Lew
Wallace encountered Early by the Monacacy River and although defeated
was able to slow his advance to Washington.
His attempts to breakthrough the ring forts around the city ended
in failure. Abraham Lincoln, who witnessed
the attack from Fort Stevens, became the first president in American
history to see action while in office.
In August 1864 the Union Army made another
attempt to take control of the Shenandoah
Valley. General Philip Sheridan
and 40,000 soldiers entered the valley and soon encountered troops
led by Jubal Early who had just returned
from Washington. After a series of
minor defeats Sheridan eventually gained the upper hand. His men now
burnt and destroyed anything of value in the area and after defeating
Early in another large-scale battle on 19th October, the Union
Army, for the first time, held the Shenandoah
Valley.
With the Union Army now clearly wiining
the war, a growing number of politicians in the North began to criticize
Abraham Lincoln for not negotiating a
peace deal with Jefferson Davis. Even
former supporters such as Horace Greeley,
editor of the New York Tribune,
accused him of prolonging the war to satisfy his personal ambition.
Others on the right, such as Clement
Vallandigham, claimed that Lincoln was waging a "wicked war
in order to free the slaves". Fernando
Wood, the mayor of New York, even
suggested that if Lincoln did not change his policies the city should
secede from the Union.
The anti-war section of the Democratic
Party nominated General George McClellan
as their presidential candidate. In an attempt to obtain unity, Abraham
Lincoln named a Southern Democrat, Andrew
Johnson of Tennessee, as his running mate. This upset Radical
Republications but they had no choice but to support Lincoln in
the election.
Leading members of the Republican Party
began to suggest that Lincoln should replace Hannibal
Hamlin as his running mate in the 1864 presidential election.
Hamlin was a Radical Republican and
it was felt that Lincoln was already sure to gain the support of this
political group. It was argued that what Lincoln needed was the votes
of those who had previously supported the Democratic
Party in the North.
Lincoln's original choice as his vice-president was General Benjamin
Butler. Butler, a war hero, had been a member of the Democratic
Party, but his experiences during the American
Civil War had made him increasingly radical. Simon
Cameron was sent to talk to Butler at Fort Monroe about joining
the campaign. However, Butler rejected the offer, jokingly saying
that he would only accept if Lincoln promised "that within three
months after his inauguration he would die".
It was now decided that Andrew Johnson,
the governor of Tennessee, would make the best candidate for vice
president. By choosing the governor of Tennessee, Lincoln would emphasis
that Southern states status were still part of the Union. He would
also gain the support of the large War Democrat faction. At a convention
of the Republican Party on 8th July,
1864, Johnson received 200 votes to Hamlin's 150 and became Lincoln's
running mate. This upset Radical Republications
as Johnson had previously made it clear that he was a supporter of
slavery.
The victories of Ulysses S. Grant, William
Sherman, George Meade, Philip
Sheridan and George H. Thomas reinforced
the idea that the Union Army was close
to bringing the war to an end. This helped Lincoln's presidential
campaign and with 2,216,067 votes, comfortably beat General George
McClellan (1,808,725) in the election.
John Hood continued to adopt an aggressive
policy in Tennessee and despite heavy losses surrounded George
H. Thomas at Nashville. On 15th December, 1864, Thomas broke out
of Nashville and hammered Hood's army. Thomas captured 4,462 soldiers
and those still left alive fled into Mississippi and Alabama.
(1)
Mary Boykin
Chesnut, Richmond, Virginia, diary entry (1st
January, 1864)
One more year of "Stonewall" would have saved us. Chickamauga
is the only battle we have gained since "Stonewall" died,
and no results follow as usual. "Stonewall" was not so much
killed by a Yankee; he was shot by his own men; that is hard. General
Lee can do no more than keep back Meade. "One of Meade's armies,
you mean," said I, "for they have only to double on him
when Lee whips one of them." If General Lee had had Grant's resources,
he would have bagged the last Yankee or have had them all safe back
in Massachusetts.
(2) Harper's
Weekly, (30th April, 1864)
On the 12th April, the rebel General Forrest appeared before Fort
Pillow, near Columbus, Kentucky, attacking it with considerable vehemence.
This was followed up by frequent demands for its surrender, which
were refused by Major Booth, who commanded the fort. The fight was
then continued up until 3 p.m., when Major Booth was killed, and the
rebels, in large numbers, swarmed over the intrenchments. Up to that
time comparatively few of our men had been killed; but immediately
upon occupying the place the rebels commenced an indiscriminate butchery
of the whites and blacks, including the wounded. Both white and black
were bayoneted, shot, or sabred; even dead bodies were horribly mutilated,
and children of seven and eight years, and several negro women killed
in cold blood. Soldiers unable to speak from wounds were shot dead,
and their bodies rolled down the banks into the river. The dead and
wounded negroes were piled in heaps and burned, and several citizens,
who had joined our forces for protection, were killed or wounded.
Out of the garrison of six hundred only two hundred remained alive.
Three hundred of those massacred were negroes; five were buried alive.
Six guns were captured by the rebels, and carried off, including tow
10-pound Parrotts, and two 12-pound howitzers. A large amount of stores
was destroyed or carried away.
(3) Frank
Wilkeson wrote about the fighting in the Wilderness
in May, 1864, in his book, Turned Inside Out: Recollections of
a Private Soldier (1887)
During the first day's fighting in the Wilderness, I saw a youth
of about twenty years skip and yell, stung by a bullet through his
thigh. He turned to limp to the rear. After he had gone a few steps
he stopped, then he kicked out his leg once or twice to see if it
would work. Then he tore the clothing away from his leg so as to see
the wound. He looked at it attentively for an instant, and kicked
out his leg again, then turned and took his place in the ranks and
resumed firing.
There was considerable disorder in the line, and the soldiers moved
to and fro - now a few feet to the right, now a few feet to the left.
One of these movements brought me directly behind this wounded soldier.
I could see plainly from that position, and I pushed into the gaping
line and began firing. In a minute or two the wounded soldier dropped
his rifle and, clasping his left arm, exclaimed: "I am hit again!"
He sat down behind the battle ranks and tore off the sleeve of his
shirt. The wound was very slight - not much more than skin-deep.
He tied his handkerchief around it, picked up his rifle, and took
position alongside of me. I said: "You are fighting in bad luck
today. You had better get away from here." He turned his head
to answer me. His head jerked, he staggered, then fell, then regained
his feet. A tiny fountain of blood and teeth and bone and bits of
tongue burst out of his mouth. He had been shot through the jaws;
the lower one was broken and hung down. I looked directly into his
open mouth, which was ragged and bloody and tongueless. He cast cast
his rifle furiously on the ground and staggered off.
(4) John L. Ranson,
Andersonville Diary (July, 1864)
6th July: Boiling hot, camp reeking with filth, and no sanitary privileges;
men dying off over 140 per day. Stockade enlarged, taking in eight
or ten more acres, giving us more room, and stumps to dig up for wood
to cook with. Jimmy Devers has been a prisoner over a year and, poor
boy, will probably die soon. Have more mementos than I can carry,
from those who have died, to be given to their friends at home. At
least a dozen have given me letters, pictures, etc., to take North.
Hope I shan't have to turn them over to someone else.
7th July: Having formed a habit of going to sleep as soon as the air
got cooled off and before fairly dark. I wake up at 2 or 3 o'clock
and stay awake. I then take in all the horrors of the situation. Thousands
are groaning, moaning, and crying, with no bustle of the daytime to
drown it.
9th July: One-half the men here would get well if they only had something
in the vegetable line to eat. Scurvy is about the most loathsome disease,
and when dropsy takes hold with the scurvy, it is terrible. I have
both diseases but keep them in check, and it only grows worse slowly.
My legs are swollen, but the cords are not contracted much, and I
can still walk very well.
10th July: Have bought (from a new prisoner) a large blank book so
as to continue my diary. Although it is a tedious and tiresome task,
am determined to keep it up. Don't know of another man in prison who
is doing likewise. Wish I had the gift of description that I might
describe this place.
Nothing can be worse kind of water. Nothing can be worse or nastier
than the stream drizzling its way through this camp. And for air to
breathe, it is what arises from this foul place. On al four sides
of us are high walls and tall tress, and there is apparently no wind
or breeze to blow away the stench, and we are obliged to breathe and
live in it. Dead bodies lay around all day in the broiling sun, by
the dozen and even hundreds, and we must suffer and live in this atmosphere.
12th July: I keep thinking our situation can get no worse, but it
does get worse every day, and not less than 160 die each twenty-four
hours. Probably one-forth or one-third of these die inside the stockade,
the balance in the hospital outside. All day and up to 4 o'clock p.m.,
the dead are being gathered up and carried to the south gate and placed
in a row inside the dead line. As the bodies are stripped of their
clothing, in most cases as soon as the breath leaves and in some cases
before, the row of dead presents a sickening appearance.
At 4 o'clock, a four or six mule wagon comes up to the gate, and twenty
or thirty bodies are loaded onto the wagon and they are carried off
to be put in trenches, one hundred in each trench, in the cemetery.
It is the orders to attach the name, company, and regiment to each
body, but it is not always done. My digging days are over. It is with
difficulty now that I can walk, and only with the help of two canes.
(5) Benjamin
Wade and Henry Winter Davis
issued a joint statement in the New
York Tribune after Abraham Lincoln
vetoed the Wade-Davis Bill (5th August,
1864)
The bill directed the appointment of provisional government
by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. The President, after
defeating the law, proposes to appoint, without law and without the
advice and consent of the Senate, military governors for the rebel
States!
Whatever is done will be at his will and pleasure, by persons responsible
to no law, and more interested to secure the interests and execute
the will of the President than of the people; and the will of Congress
is to be "held for naught unless the loyal people of the rebel
States choose to adopt it."
The President must realize that our support is of a cause and not
of a man and that the authority of Congress is paramount and must
be respected; and if he wishes our support, he must confine himself
to his executive duties - to obey and execute, not make the laws -
to suppress by armed rebellion, and leave political reorganization
to Congress.
(6) Mary
Boykin Chesnut, Columbia,
South Carolina, diary entry (24th September, 1864)
These stories of our defeats in the valley fall like blows upon
a dead body. Since Atlanta fell, I have felt as if all were dead within
me forever. The reserves, as somebody said, have been secured only
by robbing the cradle and the grave - the men too old, the boys too
young.
(7) Orders
issued by William Sherman before his
Atlanta Campaign (9th November, 1864)
The army will forage liberally on the country during the march.
To this end, each brigade commander will organize a good and sufficient
foraging party, under the command of one or more discreet officers,
who will gather, near the route traveled, corn or forage of any kind,
meat of any kind, vegetables, corn-meal, or whatever is needed by
the command, aiming at all times to keep in the wagons at least ten
days' provisions for his command, aiming at all times to keep in the
wagons at least ten days' provisions for his command, and three days'
forage. Soldiers must not enter the dwellings they may be permitted
to gather turnips, potatoes, and other vegetables, and to drive in
stock in sight of their camp.
To corps commanders alone is entrusted the power to destroy mills,
houses, cotton-gins, etc.; and for them the general principle is laid
down: In districts and neighborhoods where the army is unmolested,
no destruction of such property should be permitted; but should guerrillas
or bush-whackers molest our march, or should the inhabitants burn
bridges, obstruct roads, or otherwise manifest local hostility, then
army commanders should order and enforce a devastation more or less
relentless, according to the measure of such hostility. As for horses,
mules, wagons, etc., belonging to the inhabitants, the cavalry and
artillery may appropriate freely and without limit; discriminating,
however, between the rich, who are usually hostile, and the poor and
industrious, usually neutral or friendly.
(8) William Sherman
wrote about his Atlanta Campaign in his Memoirs published in 1875.
The skill and success of the men in collecting forage
was one of the features of this march. Each brigade commander had
authority to detail a company of foragers, usually about fifty men,
with one or two commissioned officers selected for their boldness
and enterprise. This party would be dispatched before daylight with
a knowledge of the intended day's march and camp; would proceed on
foot five or six miles from the route traveled by their brigade, and
then visit every plantation and farm within range. They would usually
procure a wagon or family carriage, load it with bacon, corn-meal,
turkeys, chickens, ducks, and every thing that could be used as food
or forage, and would then regain the main road, usually in advance
of their train. No doubt, many acts of pillage, robbery, and violence,
were committed by these parties of foragers, for I have since heard
of jewelry taken from women, and the plunder of articles that never
reached the commissary; but these acts were exceptional and incidental.
I never heard of any cases of murder or rape; and no army could have
carried along sufficient food and forage for a march of three hundred
miles; so that foraging in some shape was necessary.
(9) Statement issued by the members of the Georgia Congress
(19th November, 1864)
We have had a special conference with President Davis and
the Secretary of War, and are able to assure you that they have done
and are still doing all that can be done to meet the emergency that
presses upon you. Let every man fly to arms! Remove your negroes,
horses, cattle, and provisions from Sherman's army, and burn what
you cannot carry. Burn all bridges, and block up the roads in his
route. Assail the invader in front, flank, and rear, by night and
by day. Let him have no rest.
(10) Frank
Wilkeson, Turned Inside Out: Recollections of a Private Soldier
(1887)
Wounded soldiers almost always tore their clothing away from their
wounds so as to see them and to judge of their character. Many of
them would smile and their faces would brighten as they realized that
they were not hard hit and they would go home for a few months. Others
would give a quick glance at their wounds and then shrink back as
from a blow, and turn pale as they realized the truth that they were
mortally wounded. The enlisted men were exceedingly accurate judges
of the probable result which would ensue from any wound they saw.
They had seen hundreds of soldiers wounded, and they had noticed that
certain wounds always resulted in death. After the shock of discovery
had passed, they generally braced themselves and died in a manly manner.
(11) Frank
Wilkeson, Turned Inside Out: Recollections of a Private
Soldier (1887)
Near Spotsylvania I saw, as my battery was moving into action, a group
of wounded men lying in the shade cast by some large oak trees. All
of these men's faces were gray. They silently looked at us as we marched
past them. One wounded man, a blond giant of about forty years, was
smoking a short briarwood pipe. He had a firm grip on the pipestem.
I asked him what he was doing. "Having my last smoke, young fellow,"
he replied. His dauntless blue eyes met mine, and he bravely tried
to smile. I saw he was dying fast. Another of these wounded men was
trying to read a letter. He was too weak to hold it, or maybe his
sight was clouded. He thrust it unread into the breast pocket of his
blouse and lay back with a moan.
This group of wounded men numbered fifteen or twenty. At the time,
I thought that all of them were fatally wounded and that there was
no use in the surgeons wasting time on them, when men who could be
saved were clamoring for their skillful attention. None of these soldiers
cried aloud, none called on wife, or mother, or father. They lay on
the ground, palefaced, and with set jaws, waiting for their end. When
my battery returned from the front, five or six hours afterward, almost
all of these men were dead.
Long before the campaign was over I concluded that dying soldiers
seldom called on those who were dearest to them, seldom conjured their
Northern or Southern homes, until they became delirious. Then, when
their minds wandered and fluttered at the approach of freedom, they
babbled of their homes. Some were boys again and were fishing in Northern
trout streams. Some were generals leading their men to victory. Some
were with their wives and children. Some wandered over the family's
homestead; but all, with rare exceptions, were delirious.
(12) In his book, Specimen
Days,
Walt Whitman
described fighting during the American Civil
War (1881).
What history, I say, can ever give - for who can know - the mad, determined
tussle of the armies, in all their separate large and little squads.
Who know the conflict, hand-to-hand, the writhing groups and squads,
the cries, the din, the cracking guns and pistols, the distant cannon,
the cheers and calls and threats and awful music of the oaths, the
indescribable mix - the officers' orders, persuasions, encouragements
- the strong shout, "Charge, men, charge", the flash of
the naked sword, and rolling flame and smoke? Of scenes like this,
I say, who writes the story. Of thousands, north and south, of unwritten
heroes, unknown heroisms, incredible, impromptu, first-class desperations
- who tells? No formal general's report, nor book in the library,
nor column in the paper, embalms the bravest, north or south, east
or west. Unnamed, unknown, remain, and still remain, the bravest soldiers.
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