Aggressiveness like that was just what Davis wanted for the Army of Tennessee, and since Hood was still on the spot in Georgia, it seemed only natural to give the army to Hood to be sure something would be done with it. Not a little of that conclusion was helped by Hood’s own ambitious backstabbing of Johnston. “Here is Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s reward for shielding his soldiers and inflicting losses in Gen. Sherman’s army until his own little army could successfully offer battle and turn back the advancing hosts of Sherman’s invaders,” Douglas Cater complained. “This change of commander… had an effect on the army that was hard to overcome,” and from that point on Cater was convinced that Hood would simply drown the Army of Tennessee in blood. “This order sounded the death knell of the Confederate States of America,” he added. “The mistake that our soldiers then made was in not laying down their arms and stopping further bloodshed.” 53
For Sherman, Hood’s appointment was good news: it meant that the Confederates would at last come out and fight in the open, where Sherman was sure he could beat them. Sure enough, only three days after assuming command, Hood took the Army of Tennessee out of its Atlanta defenses and flung them at the heads of Sherman’s columns. Between July 20 and 28, Hood launched three major assaults, at Peachtree Creek (north and slightly west of the city), near Decatur (east of the city), and at Ezra Church (west of the city), each of which failed to stop Sherman, and all of which taken together cost Hood 19,000 casualties. Hood now slumped wearily into the defenses Johnston had prepared, and settled down to the siege he had been appointed to avoid.54
For Sherman, a siege was still a risky proposition; but with Hood in command, he counted on less vigilance than he would have expected from Johnston. Sherman spent the first half of August using his cavalry to feel around behind Atlanta, looking to cut Hood’s rail line south of the city. Sherman’s cavalry were no match for the rebel horsemen commanded by General Joseph Wheeler, however, and at the end of August, Sherman finally concluded that he would have to do the job with infantry instead. On August 25, leaving only one corps in front of the Atlanta lines, Sherman stole around below Atlanta to Jonesboro, on the Atlanta & Macon Railroad. There his men tore up the railroad tracks, heated the iron rails over bonfires of crossties, and twisted the rails around tree trunks in what became known as “Sherman neckties.” Looking out over the deserted Federal lines around Atlanta, Hood at first thought Sherman had retreated and that he had won a great victory. “Last night the enemy abandoned the Augusta railroad and all the country between that road and the Dalton railroad,” he jubilantly reported to Secretary of War Seddon. Too late, he realized where Sherman really was, and by the time Hood got his army down to Jonesboro, Sherman had finished with the railroad and was ready to deal with Hood. After a stiff, two-day fight at Jonesboro on August 31 to September 1, during which Hood ordered his “men to go at the enemy with bayonets fixed, determined to drive everything they may come against,” Hood decided to abandon Atlanta and withdraw southward. “Hood… blew up his magazines in Atlanta and left in the night-time,” Sherman telegraphed Halleck on September 3. “So Atlanta is ours, and fairly won.”55
With the fall of Atlanta, the first of Grant’s strategic objectives was at last in hand. Ironically, the second of these also dropped into Federal hands at nearly the same time. On August 5, David Farragut sailed a combined flotilla of wooden warships and ironclad monitors into Mobile Bay, and hammered the Confederate forts around the Bay into silence. Although a minefield of Confederate “torpedoes” blocked him from penetrating all the way into the Bay, Farragut took his own flagship, Hartford, to the head of the line and plunged into the minefield with the memorable order “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead.”56 The mines sank one of Farragut’s monitors, the Tecumseh, but most of the mines turned out to be ineffective and the rest of the fleet passed safely into the bay. On August 23, 1864, Mobile was effectively sealed off to blockade-runners.57
The question now was what to do with Sherman. It was the navy and not Banks’s infantry that had locked up Mobile, and so Grant’s old idea of Federal infantry linking up with Sherman from Mobile was rendered moot. There was little point in stopping with Atlanta, and Sherman urged Grant not to waste his time and men garrisoning northern Georgia. Instead, Sherman proposed to launch a gigantic raid down through Georgia to Savannah, where he could link up with the Federal forces occupying the Carolina coastline. “The possession of the Savannah River is more than fatal to the possibility of Southern independence,” Sherman argued to Grant over the telegraph. “They may stand the fall of Richmond but not all of Georgia.”58
The reasons Sherman listed behind that argument were threefold. First, he could fan out across the rich Georgia countryside between Atlanta and Savannah and destroy everything of any possible logistical value to the Confederacy. The capture of Atlanta had effectively cut off the northern Confederacy (and with it, Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia) from its communications with the arsenals and foundries of northern Alabama. Now Sherman would put the torch to the fields and farms that fed the Confederate armies. Second, he could demonstrate to foreign nations and to the Confederate people how weak and powerless the Richmond government had become, when it could not stop a Federal army from trampling across its geographical abdomen. “I propose to act in such a manner against the material resources of the South as utterly to negative Davis’ boasted… promises of protection. If we can march a well-appointed army right through his territory, it is a demonstration to the world, foreign and domestic, that we have a power which Davis cannot resist,” Sherman told Grant again on November 6. “This may not be war but rather statesmanship, nevertheless, it is overwhelming to my mind that there are thousands of people abroad and in the South who reason thus: If the North can march an army right through the South, it is proof positive that the North can prevail.” 59 Third, Sherman expected that by putting a major Federal army at the mouth of the Savannah River, he would be in a position to swing north and take Charleston, which had resisted Federal land and sea attacks for two years, from behind.
This was, obviously, an outrageously risky proposition, and both Grant and Lincoln objected that such a march would string out Sherman’s already lengthy supply lines to even more vulnerable lengths. Also, they pointed out, Sherman made no mention of what might happen if Hood and the Army of Tennessee decided to imitate Bragg’s maneuver of 1862 and swing an end run around Sherman back up into Tennessee. Sherman’s reply was the essence of military daring: he did not propose to use a supply line. He was going to conduct a large-scale infantry version of one of Forrest’s raids. Like Forrest, he would strip his army down to the bare essentials and encourage his men to forage off the Georgia countryside for whatever else they needed until they struck the coast. “I can make this march, and make Georgia howl!” Sherman assured Grant. “We have on hand over 8,000 cattle and 3,000,000 [rations of] bread,” and for anything else, “we can forage in the interior of the State.” As for Hood, Sherman did not particularly care what the southern general did. Sherman would detach 60,000 men under George Thomas to return and hold Tennessee, but he would keep the rest of his army (nearly 62,000 men) on the road to Savannah come what may. “Damn him,” Sherman snarled at the mention of Hood. “If he’ll go to the Ohio River, I’ll give him rations. Let him go north. My business is down south.”60
Grant mulled the proposition over, and on October 13 persuaded Lincoln to approve it. One month later Sherman marched out of Atlanta, his bands playing “Glory, Glory Hallelujah” and one-third of the city of Atlanta going up in flames behind him. Moving in four immense columns, Sherman swept aside the feeble resistance of the Georgia militia and burned a swath fifty miles wide across the state. He instructed his men to “forage liberally on the country during the march,” an order they obeyed with gusto. “This is probably the most gigantic pleasure expedition ever planned,” exclaimed one Illinois captain. “We had a gay old campaign,” wrote another soldier. “Destroyed all we could not eat… burned
their cotton & gins spilled their sorghum, burned & twisted their R[ail] roads and raised Hell generally.” On December 10 Sherman turned up outside Savannah, and on December 21 the Confederate defenders evacuated the city before Sherman could trap them inside. “I beg to present to you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah,” Sherman telegraphed Lincoln, “with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton.” 61
Along the way, Sherman’s men confiscated nearly 7,000 mules and horses, 13,000 cattle, 10.4 million pounds of grain, and 10.7 million pounds of animal fodder. All told, Sherman estimated that his march to the sea cost the Confederacy all “the corn and fodder in the region of country thirty miles on either side of a line from Atlanta to Savannah,” plus “the sweet potatoes, cattle, hogs, sheep, and poultry, and… ten thousand horses and mules, as well as a countless number of their slaves.” On a rough estimate, that set “the damage done to the State of Georgia and its military resources at one hundred millions of dollars; at least twenty millions of which has inured to our advantage, and the remainder is simple waste and destruction.” Sherman admitted that “this may seem a hard species of warfare.” But it would concentrate Southern minds wonderfully, and bring “the sad realities of war home to those who have been directly or indirectly instrumental in involving us in its attendant calamities.”62
Meanwhile, just as Sherman had expected, Hood took the Army of Tennessee off on a diversionary campaign through northern Mississippi and up into Tennessee, hoping to compel Sherman to break off his march and follow him back out of Georgia. “Unless the Army could be heavily reinforced,” Hood reasoned, “there was, in the present emergency, but one plan to be adopted: by manoeuvres to draw Sherman back into the mountains, then beat him in battle, and at least regain our lost territory.” Contrary to Sherman’s expectations, Hood’s opportunities for causing serious damage in Tennessee were far greater than had been expected. For one thing, Hood had Forrest’s cavalry with him, and that was danger enough on its own terms; for another, George Thomas, who was supposed to be covering Tennessee on Sherman’s behalf, was slow to get the infantry Sherman had left him concentrated in one place. If Hood moved fast enough, it was entirely possible that he could isolate parts of Thomas’ command while they were still on the roads back to Nashville, and annihilate them by pieces.63
However, Hood’s 39,000 men were pitifully unequipped for a November campaign. Hood himself was too much of a physical wreck from his wounds, and the opium and alcohol he took as a cure for pain, to seize the opportunities thrown into his path. On November 30, at Franklin, Tennessee, Hood caught up with part of the force Thomas was supposed to be using to watch him, and attempted to overwhelm it by throwing his men at the Yankees in a daylong frontal assault. All those tactics did was leave Hood with 6,300 casualties, including twelve of his general officers and fifty-five regimental commanders, while the Federals slipped away north to join Thomas at Nashville. 64
Unwilling to admit defeat, Hood advanced on Nashville, where Thomas had concentrated his 60,000 men, and tried to besiege it. Grant was frantic to see Hood destroyed, and warned Thomas, “If you delay attack longer the mortifying spectacle will be witnessed of a rebel army moving for the Ohio River. … I am in hopes of receiving a dispatch from you to-day announcing that you have moved.” However, Thomas would not be hurried, even by Ulysses S. Grant. “They treat me as if I were a boy and incapable of planning a campaign,” complained the normally unflappable Thomas. “If they will let me alone, I will fight this battle just as soon as it can be done.” Only when he was satisfied of the odds, on December 15, 1864, did Thomas move out from Nashville and smash Hood’s army in a running two-day battle. Hood fell back into Mississippi, where he found that he could rally only 15,000 men. The ill-starred Army of Tennessee was finished, and so was Hood, who resigned on January 13, 1865. Also finished, for that matter, was the Confederacy. Just as Grant had predicted a year earlier, and Sherman had predicted in October, the real heart of the Confederate war effort lay along the terrible line that stretched from Fort Henry to Savannah, and once that line was in Federal hands, the Virginia theater, along with Lee and his fabled army, was living on borrowed time.65
VICTORY BY BALLOT
The summer of 1864 was one of the gloomiest seasons of the war for Lincoln and his administration. Grant was bogged down below Petersburg after a campaign that had cost the Union staggering casualties, Sherman was still struggling slowly toward Atlanta, and the Alabama was still burning Northern merchantmen on the high seas. To add insult to injury, Lee detached from the Army of Northern Virginia four infantry divisions and four cavalry brigades under General Jubal Early (about 14,000 men) and sent them on a raid into the Shenandoah Valley. Lee hoped that Early’s raid, like “Stonewall” Jackson’s in 1862, would draw off Federal troops from the Petersburg siege. In the event, not only did Early chase the Federals out of the Shenandoah, but on July 11 he even dared to cross the Potomac and make a lunge at Washington. Grant was forced to pull an entire infantry corps (Horatio Wright’s 6th Corps) out of the Petersburg lines and send it to Washington, where the troops arrived just in time to fend off an attack by Early on the outer ring of Washington’s fortifications. Early merely drew off into Maryland, where he extorted immense ransoms from the citizens of Hagerstown and Frederick. When the citizens of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, refused to pay a ransom of $500,000 for their town, Early unhesitatingly burned the town to the ground. “The entire heart or body of the town is burned,” wrote one despairing civilian. “The Courthouse, Bank, Town Hall, German Reformed Printing Establishment, every store and hotel in the town, and every mill and factory in the space indicated, and two churches, were burnt,” along with “three and four hundred dwellings… leaving at least twenty-five hundred persons without a home or a hearth.” 66
Lincoln faced opposition from other quarters than just Jubal Early in the summer of 1864. Supreme Court interference in his war powers and proclamations remained a vivid possibility until Roger Taney’s death in October, and the president continued to endure criticism and harassment from the Democrats, and especially from the Peace Democrats, who seized on Grant’s overland campaign as an example of Republican butchery and incompetence. But with the fall of 1864 meaning another presidential election, Lincoln also now had to deal with a rising tide of disgruntlement from within his own Republican party, some of it within his own cabinet.
Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln’s secretary of the Treasury, had always considered himself better presidential material than Lincoln, and he had been sorely disappointed in 1860 when he was passed over for the Republican nomination. “He never forgave Lincoln for the crime of having been preferred for President over him,” wrote Alexander McClure, the prominent Pennsylvania Republican, “and while he was a pure and conscientious man, his prejudices and disappointments were vastly stronger than himself, and there never was a day during his continuance in the Cabinet when he was able to approach justice to Lincoln.” 67 Chase’s disappointment had not abated after three years of serving as Treasury secretary, and he was particularly incensed at Lincoln’s habit of parceling out tasks to the members of his cabinet as though they were so many errand boys, rather than paying earnest heed to the presumably wiser counsel that Chase longed to unburden himself of. Now, with the 1864 election looming large and the armies conquering little, Lincoln was looking more and more like a liability to the Republican Party, and Chase’s moment seemed to have come at last.
In December 1863 Chase’s supporters began building a boom for Chase as a dump-Lincoln candidate. The marriage of his daughter, Kate Chase, to Rhode Island governor William Sprague gave Chase a foothold in New England politics and unlocked the Sprague fortune and the blockhouse-like Greek Revival mansion at 6th and E Streets in Washington that Sprague bought for the secretary’s political uses. In February 1864 Chase’s political manager, Kansas senator Samuel C. Pomeroy, arranged for the publication of a pro-Chase pamphlet, The Next Presidential Election, which
declared that a second term for Lincoln would be a national calamity, that the next president needed to be a statesman with a record of advanced economic thinking, and that Lincoln was manifestly inferior to Jefferson Davis as an executive. Though the pamphlet did not expressly advocate a Chase presidency as the alternative, it was clear that no more likely person to fill such a need was then living in the Republic than Salmon P. Chase. The pamphlet itself was a cheap, discreditable essay in political character assassination, and it looked all the more cheap for having been distributed to Senator John Sherman’s Ohio constituents by means of Sherman’s postage-free frank.68
The impact might not have been nearly so embarrassing for Chase had not Pomeroy also boiled down its essential points into a “strictly private” circular letter to Republican Party backers two weeks later naming Chase—“a statesman of rare ability and an administrator of the highest order” whose “private character furnishes the surest guarantee of economy and purity in the management of public affairs”—as the proper successor to Lincoln. The idea that Chase would sit in Lincoln’s cabinet and encourage his political foot soldiers to stab Lincoln in the back made party regulars blanch. Chase rushed to Lincoln to swear that he had known nothing about the Pomeroy circular, and he even offered to resign from the Cabinet. Lincoln pointedly gave Chase’s protests a chilly reception, and, knowing that it would be easier to keep a leash on Chase’s ambition inside the cabinet rather than outside, refused the resignation. The Chase boomlet had worried Lincoln a good deal, and McClure remembered that it was the only occasion when he had seen Lincoln “unbalanced … like one who had got into water far beyond his depth.” 69
Lincoln now had Chase where he wanted him: Chase’s chances for the nomination vanished into thin air, and even the Republicans in his native Ohio rejected any notion of his candidacy. “The Pomeroy Circular has helped Lincoln more than all other things together,” wrote one of John Sherman’s constituents. At the end of June Chase offered again to resign over a minor disagreement about patronage, and this time Lincoln accepted his offer. “You and I have reached a point of mutual embarrassment in our official relation which it seems can not be overcome, or longer sustained,” Lincoln wrote coldly. He replaced him with William Pitt Fessenden, the chair of the Senate Finance Committee. That December, Lincoln got rid of Chase once and for all by kicking him upstairs to become chief justice of the Supreme Court, a position that no one had any hope of using as a springboard for the presidency.70
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