by H. W. Brands
39
LINCOLN LEARNED OF GRANT’S STRATEGY FOR THE SPRING OF 1864 only as it developed. Grant conceived of the entire South as a single battlefield. Facing south from his new headquarters at Culpeper Court House, Virginia, north of the Rapidan River, he saw a battle line that stretched from the Mississippi on his right to the Atlantic on his left. The western armies of Sherman, who had been promoted to Grant’s old position as commander of the Mississippi division, formed his right wing. The Army of the Potomac, nominally commanded by George Meade but under Grant’s personal direction, was his center. The Army of the James, under Benjamin Butler, was his left. Opposing him were two Confederate armies, that of Joseph Johnston, who had replaced Bragg, in the West, and Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.
Grant’s strategy was simple. Union forces would pursue and capture or destroy Johnston’s and Lee’s armies and by that means eliminate the enemy’s ability to continue fighting. As before, he considered the capture of Confederate cities secondary, although he didn’t dismiss the symbolic and logistical value of Richmond, Atlanta and Mobile.
Sherman would deal with Johnston, whose army now sat between Chattanooga and Atlanta. Grant ordered Sherman “to move against Johnston’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.” Grant’s confidence in Sherman made him comfortable providing this mere sketch. “I do not propose to lay down for you a plan of campaign but simply to lay down the work it is desirable to have done and leave you free to execute in your own way.”
Grant himself, with the assistance of Meade and Butler, would handle Lee. Grant moved slowly in making the Army of the Potomac his own. He knew few of its officers and none of its men. He had met Meade during the war with Mexico but hadn’t encountered him personally since. The day after receiving his commission at the White House he traveled to Meade’s headquarters in Virginia. Meade acknowledged that Grant might wish to put his own lieutenant, perhaps one who had served with him in the West, at the head of the Army of the Potomac. Meade even encouraged him to do so if he thought it for the good of the army and the war effort. “This incident gave me even a more favorable opinion of Meade than did his great victory at Gettysburg the July before,” Grant observed later. “It is men who wait to be selected, and not those who seek, from whom we may always expect the most efficient service.”
Grant impressed Meade rather differently. “Grant is not a striking man, is very reticent, has never mixed with the world, and has but little manner, indeed is somewhat ill at ease in the presence of strangers,” Meade wrote his wife. “Hence a first impression is never favorable. His early education was undoubtedly very slight; in fact, I fancy his West Point course was pretty much all the education he ever had, as since his graduation I don’t believe he has studied or read any. At the same time, he has natural qualities of a high order, and is a man whom, the more you see and know him, the better you like him.”
Grant aimed for the spring campaign to begin in early May. He and Sherman would move simultaneously lest Lee reinforce Johnston or vice versa. But his plans were nearly disrupted, in a most personal way, even before they commenced. Grant traveled from Culpeper to Washington regularly during April to meet with Lincoln and Stanton. One day, returning by train from the capital, he spotted a cloud of dust to the side of the road and inferred a movement of cavalry. He subsequently was informed that Confederate colonel John Mosby’s horsemen were tangling with Union cavalry guarding the railroad. “I do not know that the enemy’s attack on the road last Friday was with the view of ketching me,” he wrote Julia a few days later. “But it was well timed.” He decided to stick closer to his camp. “In the first place I do not like being seen so much about Washington. In the second it is not altogether safe. I cannot move without it being known all over the country, and to the enemy who are hovering within a few miles of the railroad all the time.”
Lee had learned to respect Grant’s talents from afar, and he assumed Grant would make the Army of the Potomac a more formidable force than it had been. But Lee’s primary concern during the late winter and early spring of 1864 was holding his own army together. The same shortages that had driven him into Maryland in 1862 and Pennsylvania in 1863 had worsened after the retreat from Gettysburg. That August Lee complained to Jefferson Davis that he couldn’t move for lack of horse power. “Nothing prevents my advancing now but the fear of killing our artillery horses,” he said. Deprived of forage, the animals were starving. “The cavalry also suffer, and I fear to set them at work. Some days we get a pound of corn per horse and some days more; some none.… You can judge of our prospects.” During the autumn the men began to suffer, too; in January 1864 Lee lamented to Davis of “our crying necessity for food.” He reported that his army was down to three days’ provisions of four ounces of salt meat per man per day. “I can learn of no supply of meat on the road to the army, and fear I shall be unable to obtain it in the field,” he told Davis. He argued that the Confederate government should take sterner measures to ensure that civilians sacrificed on behalf of the war effort. “If it requires all the meat in the country to support the army, it should be had.”
The food shortages translated into troop shortages. Lee sent soldiers home on furlough, in part to avoid having to feed them; many never returned. Conscription yielded fewer and fewer recruits as the likely ones had already been taken and the unlikely got better at eluding the draft agents. A sense of despondency fell across the Confederacy. “Today closes the gloomiest year of our struggle,” the Richmond Examiner observed on December 31. “No sanguine hope of intervention buoys up the spirits of the Confederate public as at the end of 1861. No brilliant victory like that of Fredericksburg encourages us to look forward to a speedy and successful termination of the war, as in the last weeks of 1862.” Southern finance had fallen into chaos, and for most Southerners mere existence was a grinding struggle. “Hoarders keep a more resolute grasp than ever on the necessaries of life.… What was once competence has become poverty, poverty has become penury, penury is lapsing into pauperism.” The future was grim. “We do not know what our resources are, and no one can tell us whether we shall have a pound of beef to eat at the end of 1864.”
To offset the desertions Lee appealed to his soldiers’ love of their homeland. “A cruel enemy seeks to reduce our fathers and our mothers, our wives and our children, to abject slavery; to strip them of their property and drive them from their homes,” he proclaimed. “Upon you these helpless ones rely to avert these terrible calamities, and to secure to them the blessings of liberty and safety.”
Some soldiers responded; others did not. Desertions mounted to a point where Lee had to shelter himself from certain of their consequences. Until lately he had listened to appeals from decisions by courts martial in cases of desertion and other failures of soldierly will. He now ordered his aides to keep the supplicants away from his tent. “He said that with the great responsibilities resting on him he could not bear the pain and distress of such applications,” Charles Venable of Lee’s staff recalled.
As the fighting season of 1864 approached, Lee’s army dwindled to fifty thousand. These were tested veterans, to be sure, and loyal to the end. And they would have the advantage of fighting on familiar ground. But they knew they were outnumbered and getting more so each day. “The reports of General Lee’s scouts were scarcely necessary to our appreciation of the fact that the odds against were constantly and rapidly increasing,” Confederate general John B. Gordon recalled. “From the highland which bordered the southern banks of the Rapidan one could almost estimate the numbers that were being added to Grant’s ranks by the growth of the city of tents spreading out in full view below.”
Gordon and the others knew the enemy commander by reputation. “Grant had come from his campaigns in the Southwest with the laurels of Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Missionary Ridge on his brow,” Gordon said. Yet he and his comrades cons
idered their own commander fully a match for Grant. “Lee stood before him with a record as military executioner unrivaled by that of any warrior of modern times. He had, at astoundingly short intervals and with unvarying regularity, decapitated or caused the official ‘taking off’ of the five previously selected commanders-in-chief of the great army which confronted them.” Gordon and the others were confident Grant would be Lee’s next victim.
Grant couldn’t decide initially whether to cross the Rapidan above Lee, to the west, or below him, to the east. “Each plan presents great advantages over the other, with corresponding objections,” he mused to Meade. “By crossing above, Lee is cut off from all chance of ignoring Richmond and going north on a raid. But if we take this route, all we do must be done whilst the rations we start with hold out.” The roads weren’t sufficient to sustain an army as large as that of the Potomac. The alternate route—below Lee—was longer but would allow access by water. “Brandy Station can be used as a base of supplies until another is secured on the York or James River.” This approach, however, would tempt Lee to move north, perhaps against Washington. One thing was essential, Grant told Meade. “Lee’s army will be your objective point. Wherever Lee goes there you will go also.”
Benjamin Butler would worry Lee’s right. Grant ordered that the Army of the James be reinforced with units drawn from the coast. “What I ask is that with them, and all you can concentrate from your own command, you seize upon City Point”—on the James River below Richmond—“and act from there looking upon Richmond as your objective point,” he told Butler. He and Meade would keep Lee busy to the north of the Confederate capital, creating an opportunity for Butler. “If it should prove possible for you to reach Richmond, so as to invest all on the south side of the river, and fortify yourself there, I shall have but little fear of the result.” As with Sherman, Grant furnished Butler only an outline. “I do not pretend to say how your work is to be done but simply lay down what, and trust to you and those under you for doing it well.”
By late April he had made his decision about the Rapidan. He characteristically opted for directness in ordering that the Army of the Potomac cross above Lee and force him to fight or retreat toward Richmond. “I will move against Lee’s army, attempting to turn him by one flank or the other,” Grant told Halleck. “Should Lee fall back within his fortifications at Richmond, either before or after giving battle, I will form a junction with Butler, and the two forces will draw supplies from the James River.” Until then the Army of the Potomac would be self-sufficient. “The Army will start with fifteen days’ supplies. All the country affords will be gathered as we go along. This will no doubt enable us to go twenty or twenty-five days without further supplies, unless we should be forced to keep in the country between the Rapidan and Chickahominy, in which case supplies might be required by way of the York or the Rappahannock River.” Halleck should see to those. “I would like to have about one million rations, and two hundred thousand forage rations, afloat to be sent wherever it may prove they will be required.”
“This is my forty-second birthday,” Grant wrote Julia on April 27. “Getting old, am I not?” Yet he remained steady and calm. “Before you receive this I will be away from Culpepper and the Army will be in motion. I know the greatest anxiety is now felt in the North for the success of this move, and that the anxiety will increase when it is once known that the Army is in motion.” But he wasn’t worried. “I feel well myself. Do not know that this is any criterion to judge results, because I have never felt otherwise. I believe it has never been my misfortune to be placed where I lost my presence of mind—unless indeed it has been when thrown in strange company, particularly of ladies.”
Lincoln was more nervous than Grant but nonetheless supportive. “Not expecting to see you again before the spring campaign opens, I wish to express, in this way, my entire satisfaction with what you have done up to this time, so far as I understand it,” the president wrote Grant on April 30. “The particulars of your plan I neither know or seek to know. You are vigilant and self-reliant; and, pleased with this, I wish not to obtrude any constraints or restraints upon you. While I am very anxious that any great disaster, or the capture of our men in great numbers, shall be avoided, I know these points are less likely to escape your attention than they would be mine. If there is anything wanting which is within my power to give, do not fail to let me know it. And now with a brave Army, and a just cause, may God sustain you.”
“The confidence you express for the future, and satisfaction with the past, in my military administration is acknowledged with pride,” Grant responded. “From my first entrance into the volunteer service of the country, to the present day, I have never had cause of complaint, have never expressed or implied a complaint, against the Administration or the Secretary of War for throwing any embarrassment in the way of my vigorously prosecuting what appeared to me my duty.” And since his promotion to command of the armies the administration had been especially helpful. “I have been astonished at the readiness with which everything asked for has been yielded without even an explanation being asked.” The burden was now on him. “It will be my earnest endeavor that you, and the country, shall not be disappointed.”
“The movement of this Army will commence at 12 o’clock tomorrow night,” Grant ordered on May 2. “The attempt will be made to turn the right flank of the enemy—that is, to cross the Rapidan east of or below the railroad. Ely’s Ford, Germanna Ford, and Culpeper Mine Ford will be the crossing places.” The early start was to surprise Lee; the three crossings would allow Grant’s army to get over the Rapidan before Lee could react.
The first phase of the operation went well. Grant’s cavalry seized the fords in the dark and captured or dispersed the Confederate pickets on the south bank. At dawn his engineers began building pontoon bridges, which were helpful to the infantry and indispensable to the artillery and supply trains.
Lee didn’t contest the crossing, leaving Grant to wonder whether he would oppose the advance at all or retreat to Richmond. “The crossing of Rapidan effected,” Grant informed Halleck in the late morning of May 4. “Forty-eight hours now will demonstrate whether the enemy intends giving battle this side of Richmond.” Grant hoped for a fight, as his advantage in numbers would have greater effect in the open field than if Lee’s army fought from the fortifications of the Confederate capital.
Lee might well have fallen back had the ground been different. But the Wilderness, as the region south of the Rapidan was called, was hardly an open field. “It was uneven, with woods, thickets, and ravines right and left,” one of Grant’s generals, Alexander Webb, explained. “Tangled thickets of pine, scrub-oak, and cedar prevented our seeing the enemy, and prevented anyone in command of a large force from determining accurately the position of the troops he was ordering to and fro.” Lee knew the Wilderness better than Grant did, and he counted on its confusing nature to work to his advantage. He would hit Grant hard; if Grant recoiled, the way his predecessors had, Lee would emerge the winner. If Grant kept coming, Lee would make him pay for each mile he gained. By the time they got to Richmond the odds would be more nearly even. And even odds favored the defender.
As Grant’s columns pressed south from the river to the Wilderness Tavern, a local landmark, Lee brought up his forces to attack him from the west. The Federals turned to face the Confederates and on May 5 the serious fighting began. The overall clash took the apparent form of discrete engagements as the vegetation and terrain often prevented both Grant and Lee from knowing where their own units were, let alone those of the enemy. The fighting was heavy, lethal and utterly disorienting. “My command had cut its way through the Union center,” Confederate John Gordon recalled, “and at that moment it was in the remarkably strange position of being on identically the same general line with the enemy, the Confederates facing in one direction, the Federals in the other. Looking down that line from Grant’s right toward his left, there would first have been seen a long stretch of bl
ue uniforms, then a short stretch of gray, then another still longer of blue, in one continuous line. The situation was both unique and alarming.” Gordon had never experienced, or read of, such a position, and he didn’t know how to get out of it. “Further movement to Grant’s rear was not to be considered, for his unbroken lines on each side of me would promptly close up the gap which my men had cut through his center, thus rendering the capture of my whole command inevitable.” Retreat was almost as fatal. “Those same unbroken and now unopposed ranks on each side of me, as soon as such retrograde motion began, would instantly rush from both directions upon my retreating column and crush it.” So Gordon improvised. He ordered half his line to file right and the other to file left, thereby arraying each half perpendicular to the flank of the corresponding segment of the Union line. He then ordered a double charge, with his twin lines surging away from each other but wreaking havoc on the Federal flanks.
The fighting continued throughout the day, with both sides taking satisfaction. “By the blessing of God, we maintained our position against every effort until night, when the contest closed,” Lee reported to Jefferson Davis. Grant was equally, if paradoxically, upbeat. “We have engaged with the enemy in full force since early yesterday,” he wrote Halleck on the morning of May 6. “So far there is no decisive result, but I think all things are progressing favorably.”
The paradox persisted through the second day. Each general brought up reinforcements, which swelled the casualty count without materially changing the balance of battle. “The enemy advanced and created some confusion,” Lee acknowledged of the morning’s fighting. But the Confederates quickly regrouped. “The ground lost was recovered as soon as the fresh troops got into position, and the enemy driven back to his original line. Afterward we turned the left of his front line and drove it from the field, leaving a large number of dead and wounded.… Every advance on his part, thanks to a merciful God, has been repulsed. Our loss in killed is not large.”