The Man Who Saved the Union

by H. W. Brands

  Still another issue was essentially military but had profound political ramifications for the future. Grant had tried to keep out of matters relating to race, leaving emancipation and civil rights for African Americans to the president, Congress, the states and perhaps the courts. Yet he found himself championing black equality at least as it pertained to his soldiers. Lee and the Confederate government refused to grant prisoner-of-war status to captured Union soldiers who had been Southern slaves, but instead reenslaved them. Grant retaliated by halting prisoner exchanges. “The Government is bound to secure to all persons received into her Armies the rights due to soldiers,” Grant wrote Lee. “This being denied by you in the persons of such men as have escaped from Southern masters induces me to decline making the exchanges you ask.” He added a further sanction: putting Confederate prisoners to work in circumstances similar to those forced upon the captured black Union troops. “I shall always regret the necessity of retaliating for wrongs done our soldiers, but regard it my duty to protect all persons received into the Army of the United States, regardless of color.”

  Grant was happy when the political season ended, and even happier that it resulted in Lincoln’s reelection. The Union army, with most soldiers voting by Grant’s absentee method, returned heavy majorities for Lincoln. The rest of the voting country—which was to say those states still or newly in the Union (Kansas and Nevada emerged from territorial status to statehood in 1861 and 1864, respectively; Unionist West Virginia was carved from Virginia in 1863)—favored Lincoln by a smaller but still decisive margin. George McClellan carried Kentucky, Delaware and New Jersey, but Lincoln won the other twenty-two states, garnering 55 percent of the popular vote and 212 electors to McClellan’s 45 percent and 21 electors.

  “Congratulate the President for me,” Grant wrote Stanton. Preelection rumors had raised concern that Southern sympathizers would disrupt the balloting; the event showed the rumors false. Grant took this as a vote in favor of democracy itself. “The election having passed off quietly, no bloodshed or riot throughout the land, is a victory worth more to the country than a battle won,” he told Stanton.

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  SHORTLY AFTER THE FALL OF ATLANTA, JEFFERSON DAVIS HAD TRAVELED to Georgia to buck up the people in the rest of the state. “It would have gladdened my heart to have met you in prosperity instead of adversity,” the Confederate president said. “But friends are drawn together in adversity.” He couldn’t deny that Confederate arms had been dealt a blow, but the spirit of the South remained strong. “Our cause is not lost. Sherman cannot keep up his long line of communication, and retreat sooner or later he must. And when that day comes, the fate that befell the army of the French empire on its retreat from Moscow will be reenacted. Our cavalry and our people will harass and destroy his army as did the Cossacks that of Napoleon, and the Yankee general, like him, will escape with only a body guard.”

  Sherman read the speech and sneered. “Davis seemed to be perfectly upset by the fall of Atlanta, and to have lost all sense and reason,” he remarked. But he couldn’t discount the possibility that a long retreat from Atlanta, through country hostile in spirit and difficult of terrain, might indeed exact a serious toll on his army. He weighed the alternatives. Suppose the Union navy established a foothold on the Atlantic coast southeast of Atlanta, perhaps at Savannah. “It once in our possession, and the river open to us,” he wrote Grant on September 20, “I would not hesitate to cross the State of Georgia with 60,000 men, hauling some stores and depending on the country for the balance. Where a million of people live, my Army won’t starve, but as you know in a country like Georgia, with few roads and innumerable streams, an inferior force could so delay an army and harass it that it would not be a formidable object.” Yet if the Confederates realized Sherman had supplies waiting on the coast, they would have to come out and fight or let the state be ravaged. Either result, Sherman told Grant, would hasten the end of the war. “They may stand the fall of Richmond, but not of all Georgia.… If you can whip Lee, and I can march to the Atlantic, I think Uncle Abe will give us a twenty days leave of absence to see the young folks.”

  Grant had to think this over. Sherman’s suggestion entailed unusual risks, and with the election still in the balance Grant didn’t want to take unnecessary chances. He told Sherman to concentrate on defending the lines to his rear. “It will be better to drive Forrest from Middle Tennessee as a first step, and do anything else that you may feel your force sufficient for,” he said. “When a movement is made on any part of the sea coast I will advise you.”

  Sherman did as ordered. “I take it for granted that Forrest will cut our road, but think we can prevent him from making a serious lodgment,” he wrote Halleck. His troops kept Forrest off long stretches of the line and his engineers, working around the clock, repaired breaches in the road as fast as the Confederates effected them. “It was by such acts of extraordinary energy that we discouraged our adversaries,” Sherman reflected of the repair crews, “for the rebel soldiers felt that it was a waste of labor for them to march hurriedly, on wide circuits, day and night, to burn a bridge and tear up a mile or so of track, when they knew we could lay it back so quickly.” The rebels seemed to think Sherman had duplicates of rails, bridges, culverts and everything else needed to maintain a railroad. Sherman told a story he heard of a company of Confederates expressing pleasure that they had blown up a tunnel, which would surely require months to fix. “Oh, hell,” a less hopeful member of the group reflected. “Don’t you know that old Sherman carries a duplicate tunnel along?”

  But it was Sherman who ultimately grew discouraged. The rebels roamed through friendly territory and attacked at will. “It will be a physical impossibility to protect the roads now that Hood, Forrest and Wheeler, and the whole batch of devils, are turned loose without home or habitation,” Sherman wrote Grant in October. It was time to regain the offensive. “I propose we break up the railroad from Chattanooga and strike out with wagons for Milledgeville, Millen, and Savannah. Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless to occupy it, but the utter destruction of its roads, houses and people will cripple their military resources. By attempting to hold the roads we will lose 1,000 men monthly, and will gain no result. I can make the march, and make Georgia howl.”

  Grant still wasn’t convinced. Sherman had indicated he didn’t worry about encountering the Confederate army of John Bell Hood, but Grant saw other dangers. “I do not believe you would meet Hood’s army, but would be bushwhacked by all the old men, little boys and such railroad guards as are still left at home,” he said. And he thought Sherman should encounter Hood. “Hood would probably strike for Nashville, thinking by going north he could inflict greater damage upon us than we could upon the enemy by going south. If there is any way of getting at Hood’s army, I would prefer that.” Yet Grant had faith in Sherman. “I must trust to your own judgment.”

  Sherman continued to press his case for a march to the sea. “We cannot now remain on the defensive,” he told Grant. Hood had too many advantages. “With 25,000 infantry and the bold cavalry he has, he can constantly break my road. I would infinitely prefer to make a wreck of the road and of the country from Chattanooga to Atlanta, including the latter city, send back all my wounded and worthless, and with my effective army move through Georgia, smashing things to the sea. Hood may turn into Tennessee and Kentucky, but I believe he will be forced to follow me. Instead of being on the defensive, I would be on the offensive. Instead of my guessing at what he means to do, he will have to guess at my plans. The difference in war is full 25 per cent. I can make Savannah, Charleston, or the mouth of the Chattahoochee. Answer quick, as I know we will not have the telegraph long.”

  Grant was impressed by Sherman’s conviction, and with the favorable outcome of the election now in sight, he let himself be persuaded. “If you are satisfied the trip to the seacoast can be made, holding the line of the Tennessee firmly,” he telegraphed Sherman, “you may make it, destroying all the railroad south
of Dalton or Chattanooga, as you think best.”

  Sherman prepared his army for the march. “I am now perfecting arrangements to put into Tennessee a force able to hold the line of the Tennessee whilst I break up the railroad in front of Dalton, including the city of Atlanta, and push into Georgia, and break up all its railroads and depots, capture its horses and negroes, make desolation everywhere, destroy the factories at Macon, Milledgeville and Augusta, and bring up with 60,000 men on the sea shore about Savannah or Charleston,” he wrote Grant. “I will leave General Thomas to command all my divisions behind me, and take with me only the best fighting material.” To his quartermaster in Atlanta, Sherman gave a deadline. “On the 1st of November I want nothing but what is necessary to war,” he said. “Send all trash to the rear at once and have on hand thirty days’ food and but little forage. I propose to abandon Atlanta and the railroad back to Chattanooga, to sally forth to ruin Georgia.”

  Grant defended Sherman’s plan to the Lincoln administration, which remained nervous about such an undertaking. “On mature reflection, I believe Sherman’s proposition is the best that can be adopted,” he wrote Stanton. “With the long line of railroad in rear of Atlanta, Sherman cannot maintain his position. If he cuts loose, destroying the road from Chattanooga forward, he leaves a wide and destitute country for the rebels to pass over before reaching territory now held by us.” Grant was confident Thomas in Tennessee could handle Hood if the Confederate general went north. And if he pursued Sherman, Sherman could look out for himself. “Such an army as Sherman has (and with such a commander) is hard to corner or capture.”

  Grant wrote Sherman a send-off message: “Great good fortune attend you.… I believe you will be eminently successful.”

  “Oh, God, the time of trial has come!” Dolly Sumner Lunt recorded in her diary two weeks later. Dolly Lunt had been born in Maine and was kin to Charles Sumner, the abolitionist senator. She had followed her married sister to Georgia, where she met Thomas Burge, who wooed her, won her and took her home to his plantation near Covington. They lived in such happiness as wealth and slaves could ensure until Burge died amid the sectional crisis of the late 1850s. His widow and young daughter were left to face the tribulations of the Civil War and, in the autumn of 1864, the wrath of William Sherman.

  Frightful tidings of Sherman’s army preceded it. “Have been uneasy all day,” Dolly Lunt wrote in her diary for November 17. “At night some of the neighbors who had been to town called. They said it was a large force moving very slowly. What shall I do? Where go?” In fact there was nowhere to go and nothing to do but wait and watch. “Slept very little last night,” she wrote the next day. “Went out doors several times and could see large fires like burning buildings. Am I not in the hands of a merciful God who has promised to take care of the widow and orphan?” She concealed what she could: a barrel of salt, some pieces of meat. She packed herself and her daughter as though for a trip. “I fear that we shall be homeless.”

  On November 19 the bluecoats arrived. “I walked to the gate. There they came filing up.” She hurried back to the house to warn the servants to hide, as the Yankees would carry them off. But the invaders were too swift. “Like demons they rush in! My yards are full. To my smoke-house, my dairy, pantry, kitchen, and cellar, like famished wolves they come, breaking locks and whatever is in their way. The thousand pounds of meat in my smoke-house is gone in a twinkling, my flour, my meat, my lard, butter, eggs.… Wine jars and jugs are all gone. My eighteen fat turkeys, my hens, chickens, and fowls, my young pigs are shot down in my yard and hunted as if they were rebels themselves.” She appealed to the officer in charge. He shrugged. “I cannot help you, Madam,” he said. “It is orders.”

  The raiders were relentless. They drove off her horses. “There they go!” she cried. They drove off other livestock. “There go my mules, my sheep!” They drove off her servants. “My boys! Alas!” She reflected later: “Little did I think while trying to save my house from plunder and fire that they were forcing my boys from home at the point of a bayonet.” One of the young slaves crawled under the floor. “A lame boy he was, but they pulled him out, placed him on a horse, and drove him off.” Another was frightened nearly to death. “Jack came crying to me, the big tears coursing down his cheeks, saying they were making him go. I said, ‘Stay in my room.’ But a man followed him in, cursing him and threatening to shoot him if he did not go; so poor Jack had to yield.” The soldiers left the slave boys’ parents but took the families’ meager possessions. “Their cabins are rifled of every valuable, the soldiers swearing that their Sunday clothes were the white people’s, and that they never had money to get such things as they had.”

  An officer identified himself as Captain Webber from Illinois and said he knew Dolly Lunt’s brother Orrington, an attorney in Chicago. “At that name I could not restrain my feelings, but, bursting into tears, implored him to see my brother and let him know my destitution,” she remembered. “I saw nothing before me but starvation. He promised to do this, and comforted me with the assurance that my dwelling-house would not be burned, though my out-buildings might.”

  The author of Georgia’s agony appeared and supervised additional destruction. “Sherman himself and a greater portion of his army passed my house that day,” she said. “All day, as the sad moments rolled on, were they passing not only in front of my house, but from behind; they tore down my garden palings, made a road through my back-yard and lot field, driving their stock and riding through, tearing down my fences and desolating my home—wantonly doing it when there was no necessity for it. Such a day, if I live to the age of Methuselah, may God spare me from ever seeing again!”

  Sherman remembered the Georgia campaign differently. Not long after capturing Atlanta he had ordered the evacuation of the city’s inhabitants. The order shocked the townsfolk, who described it as inhumane and petitioned to have it revoked. Sherman refused. “My orders are not designed to meet the humanities of the case, but to prepare for the future struggles in which millions, yea hundreds of millions, of good people outside of Atlanta have a deep interest,” he said. “We must have peace not only in Atlanta but in all America.” Sherman’s petitioners had suggested he didn’t appreciate the cruelty of war; they were quite wrong, he said. “You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war on our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.… You might as well appeal against the thunderstorm as against these terrible hardships of war.”

  Sherman led his own tempest out of Atlanta. The first evening he camped near Lithonia. “Stone Mountain, a mass of granite, was in plain view, cut out in clear outline against the blue sky,” he recounted. “The whole horizon was lurid with the bonfires of rail-ties, and groups of men all night were carrying the heated rails to the nearest trees, and bending them around the trunks.… I attached much importance to this destruction of the railroad, gave it my own personal attention, and made reiterated orders to others on the subject.”

  Sherman didn’t think the destruction egregious, and he noted that not everyone feared his approach. “The negroes were simply frantic with joy,” he said of his visit to Covington, where Dolly Lunt lived. “Wherever they heard my name, they clustered about my horse, shouted, and prayed in their peculiar style, which had a natural eloquence that would have moved a stone. I have witnessed hundreds, if not thousands, of such scenes, and can now see a poor girl, in the very ecstasy of the Methodist ‘shout,’ hugging the banner of one of the regiments and jumping up to the ‘feet of Jesus.’ ” That night Sherman camped outside Covington. “I walked up to a plantation-house close by, where were assembled many negroes, among them an old, gray-haired man, of as fine a head as I ever saw.” Sherman asked him if he knew what the war was about and how it progressed. “He said he did; that he had been looking for the ‘angel of the Lord’ ever since he was knee-high, and though we professed to be fighting for the Union, he supposed that slaver
y was the cause, and that our success was to be his freedom.”

  Sherman instructed his troops to be self-sufficient. “The army will forage liberally on the country during the march,” he declared at the outset. The foraging Dolly Lunt experienced was part of a process Sherman’s army soon perfected. Brigade commanders detailed companies of foragers who left their camps before dawn in the general direction of that day’s march. They set out afoot but acquired wagons or carriages from the farms and plantations they visited. “Often I would pass these foraging parties at the roadside, waiting for their wagons to come up, and was amused at their strange collections—mules, horses, even cattle, packed with old saddles and loaded with hams, bacon, bags of corn meal, and poultry of every character and description,” Sherman recalled. “Although this foraging was attended with great danger and hard work”—even widows, albeit not Dolly Lunt, sometimes defended their homes with lethal force—“there seemed to be a charm about it that attracted the soldiers, and it was a privilege to be detailed on such a party. Daily they returned mounted on all sorts of beasts, which were at once taken from them and appropriated to the general use; but the next day they would start out again on foot, only to repeat the experience of the day before.” Sherman didn’t deny that his foragers—known both pejoratively and affectionately as “bummers”—sometimes exceeded their orders. “No doubt many acts of pillage, robbery, and violence were committed.” Civilians were handled roughly and occasionally money, jewelry and other easily concealed items never reached the commissary. “But these acts were exceptional and incidental.” In any event they were part of war.