America Aflame

by David Goldfield

  “Our Women and the War,” 1862, attributed to Winslow Homer (1836–1910). Both northern and southern society expected women to fulfill various supportive roles. (Smithsonian American Art Museum / Art Resource, NY)

  General Burnside, armed with new orders from President Lincoln to destroy Lee’s army, prepared to cross the Rappahannock in mid-January and redress the December disaster. By the time he acted, a series of winter storms had slammed into Virginia, turning the roads to mud. The mire trapped and killed draft animals, prevented artillery and supply wagons from moving, and created an army of soaked, mutinous, and dispirited soldiers. General Lee and his men remained safe and dry. Harper’s asked plaintively, “Have We a General Among Us?”14

  The West hardly looked better than the East for Union fortunes that bitter January. Lincoln directed General William S. Rosecrans to move against Confederate General Braxton Bragg and take Chattanooga. Rosecrans cited impassable roads and remained idle. Worse yet, Ulysses S. Grant had failed to capture Vicksburg, the important Mississippi River port and rail junction. The city sat on bluffs two hundred feet above the river, an excellent defensive promontory. Grant ordered General William T. Sherman to attack the bluffs on December 29. The assault was a disaster reminiscent of Fredericksburg. Grant, one newspaper wrote, “is a jackass in the original package. He is a poor drunken imbecile. He is a poor stick sober, and he is most of the time more than half drunk, and much of the time idiotically drunk.”15

  Volunteer totals plummeted for the Union armies. Growing public sentiment of incompetence among the civilian and military high commands, as well as opposition to emancipation as a war aim, reduced enthusiasm for service. The situation forced the administration to institute its first general draft in March 1863, for all males between the ages of twenty and forty-five. These individuals would enter a lottery, with names drawn until the army met its quota. A controversial provision allowed draftees to buy an exemption for three hundred dollars, an inconceivable sum for members of the working class.

  Talk of a peace settlement became so general in the North that Republican leaders and the press felt compelled to remind citizens of the stakes involved. In an article headlined “No Surrender!” Harper’s initiated the media’s reeducation campaign, recycling arguments articulated at the start of the war: allowing the separate existence of the southern states would encourage other states to do the same, resulting in constant friction, warfare, and, ultimately the anarchy of “feeble, jarring States, exhausting their strength in internecine conflicts.” The only acceptable result of the conflict was the creation of a strong central government untrammeled by dissenting factions. “There will be but one nation, but one Government, but one Union upon our domain,” and its constituent parts would owe “absolute obedience to the lawful supreme national authority.”16

  The press not only warned of the consequences of peace but also wrote of the nobility of war. “No such war as ours has ever been waged since the Crusades.” In a variation of the “House Divided” rationale, Harper’s rallied northern citizens to fight “the battle of Democracy against Aristocracy—labor against capital—manhood against privilege.… A nation must be governed by the one or by the other. Both can not coexist.”17

  Lincoln understood that lack of civilian support could cripple the war effort. On January 26, 1863, he dismissed Burnside and appointed Joseph Hooker to lead the Army of the Potomac. “Fighting Joe” looked like a general—tall, handsome, and a commanding presence in the saddle or out. He had earned his nickname accidentally, as a newspaper typesetter omitted a comma after “Fighting,” in an article on an early battle. Hooker had a reputation for drinking and womanizing. Slang for both a shot of whiskey and a prostitute allegedly derived from his last name.18

  At Antietam, Hooker had demonstrated good leadership skills and bravery. His outsized ego, though, infuriated colleagues. Known for brash talk, he once declared that the country would benefit from a military dictator. Lincoln, desperate for a soldier who not only fought but won, overlooked these shortcomings. Besides, unlike Burnside, Hooker had earned the affection and respect of his men. Taking command, he ordered fresh fruits and vegetables for his dispirited troops, granted generous furloughs, and set about to train his 138,000-man army for the spring campaign against Robert E. Lee.

  As the war closed in on the two-year mark, the Confederacy should have gained in confidence. Its armies in the East and West remained intact; the naval blockade, while annoying, had not closed down commerce; its forces had thwarted an attack on the vital port of Vicksburg; Lee had pinned a ruinous defeat on a larger force at Fredericksburg. Dissension had grown in the North, and hopes for peace bloomed in the South as a result.

  Yet all was not well in Dixie. The two-year toll on men and materiel, both in much shorter supply in the South than in the North, began to gnaw at the resolve of southerners. Shortages and inflation forced civilians to make hard choices in their lives, especially those who lived in towns and did not grow their own food. Union soldiers commented on the threadbare appearance of Rebel captives. While northern factories hummed at full speed, southern manufacturing stumbled, plagued by manpower shortages, worn-out machinery, and an increasingly devalued currency. Foreign recognition, which would have provided loans, munitions, and consumer goods, remained elusive. Since most of the fighting had occurred in the South, the destruction of roads, bridges, livestock, and housing added to the discomfort for civilians. “Refugeeing” women and children escaping advancing Union armies created a large dislocated population with little means of support. The hardships led to a growing peace sentiment in the South that would become more formidable as the year progressed.

  Both the Davis administration and the press attempted to counter the peace party with reminders of Yankee barbarity and the certainty of subjugation if peace were achieved on the North’s terms. The Emancipation Proclamation revived the martial spirit for many throughout the South. The Richmond Examiner called the document “the most startling political crime, the most stupid political blunder, yet known in American history.… Southern people have now only to choose between victory and death.”19

  Given those options, the Confederacy would fight on. If desertion rates and draft evasion were any measures, however, soldiers were the greatest advocates for peace. The inability to protect their families, especially women and children, the need for their labor on farms, and the sheer brutality and inconclusiveness of the war to date left most Rebel soldiers praying for peace. In early January, a Confederate private in Tennessee wrote in despair, “I am sick and tired of this war, and, I can see no prospects of having peace for a long time to come, I don’t think it ever will be stopped by fighting, the Yankees cant whip us and we can never whip them.”20

  In less troubled times, Americans looked forward to the end of winter. Not so this year. Spring no longer meant soft fragrances, bright colors, freshly turned earth, and days bountiful in sunshine yet cool. A Confederate soldier wrote home, “Never before has returning spring brought with it such feelings of sorrow & regret. Regret because a winter so suitable for making peace should have passed and nothing done & sorrow at the thoughts of so many bloody battles this coming spring we’ll be called upon to witness, and the many family circles that will have to mourn the loss of one or perhaps more of its members.”21

  As winter turned to spring across the South, neither side seemed anxious to renew the battle. In the West, Confederate Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton, a West Pointer and a Philadelphian with a wife from Virginia, still held Vicksburg with a modest force of twenty-nine thousand men. Grant had yet to figure out a way to capture the well-fortified city. Rosecrans and Bragg were content to stare at each other in southeastern Tennessee. In the East, Lee waited for Hooker while the latter continued to drill and discipline his army. Marion Hill Fitzpatrick of the 27th Georgia saw the lull as a promising sign of impending peace. He wrote home, “The boys … think we will have peace soon. We whipped the yanks last Summer. They gained not
hing the past winter, a great many of their soldiers’ times is up the first of May.… All these reasons I think bring at least a glimmering ray of hope for peace.”22

  The pace quickened in April. Grant moved south of Vicksburg, crossed the river, and marched overland to the state capital at Jackson, cut Pemberton’s supply lines and attacked the river city from the east. In the East, Hooker forded the Rappahannock, boasting, “I have the finest army the sun ever shone on. My plans are perfect, and when I start to carry them out, may God have mercy on General Lee, for I will have none.” After smashing Lee’s army, Hooker planned to march into Richmond and end the war.23

  On May 1, Hooker bore down on Lee’s left flank with seventy-three thousand men, having left forty thousand men behind to mind Fredericksburg. Encountering resistance, he hesitated and then withdrew to form a defensive line at the crossroads town of Chancellorsville in an area of heavy underbrush and woods known, appropriately, as the Wilderness. The decision amazed his fellow officers, who felt the campaign was proceeding well. Hooker’s hesitation allowed Lee to recover. The terrain mitigated Hooker’s two-to-one advantage in troops and made judging the course of the battle nearly impossible, a major factor in Hooker’s misapprehension of Confederate strength and position.24

  Lee discovered that Hooker’s right flank was “in the air,” without solid defensive ground to anchor it, and boldly divided his army, sending Stonewall Jackson on a brilliant maneuver through the Wilderness to fall upon the exposed flank. Late in the afternoon of May 2, some Federals noticed frightened deer and rabbits fleeing the woods. Jackson’s foot cavalry burst out of the cover with Rebel yells and blazing rifles to rout the immobile Union right. Jackson hoped to continue the assault through the night, taking advantage of the moonlight. But in the process of reconnoitering the enemy’s defenses, Jackson was wounded by his own troops. Hooker, fearing for the destruction of his army, withdrew back across the Rappahannock. The Army of the Potomac had suffered seventeen thousand casualties, a greater defeat than the debacle at Fredericksburg five months earlier. The Confederates counted thirteen thousand casualties, a considerably higher percentage than the Federals, 22 percent to 13 percent.

  The news devastated Lincoln, who had only recently recovered from Fredericksburg. A colleague reported that he had never seen the president “so broken, dispirited, and so ghostlike.” He paced back and forth in a room at the White House muttering, “My God! My God! What will the country say! What will the country say!”25

  Robert E. Lee derived the wrong lesson from his smashing victory at Chancellorsville: it fed his growing sense of invincibility. It was a conclusion seconded by the southern press, numerous northern newspapers, and a good many civilians on both sides. In his official report of the battle, Lee wrote, “The conduct of the troops cannot be too highly praised. Attacking largely superior numbers in strongly entrenched positions, their heroic courage overcame every obstacle of nature and art and achieved a triumph.” Lee displayed strategic brilliance at Chancellorsville, but Hooker’s incompetence and Jackson’s discovery of a hidden farm road through the dense Wilderness played significant roles in the victory. Against a more competent opponent and with a little less luck, the outcome might have been different.26

  Good fortune lasted only a short while for Lee. A bullet had shattered the bone in Stonewall Jackson’s left arm just below the shoulder. There were no medical treatments for shattered bones at the time other than amputation. Lee remarked presciently, “He has lost his left arm, but I my right arm.” Jackson endured a bone-jarring twenty-seven-mile wagon ride to a safe location. Pneumonia settled in, another condition for which the medical practice of the time had no cure. On May 10, the general repeated the words of a favorite hymn, “Let us cross over the river and rest under the trees.” Moments later, he died. May 10 was a Sunday. With the master of the daring flanking movement gone, a grief-stricken Lee wept, “I know not how to replace him.”27

  The Holy Cause had a Holy Martyr. For a nation still groping for a national identity, the martyrdom of Stonewall Jackson provided an opportunity to build sentiment for a common purpose and destiny. Sara Pryor, a Richmond resident, wrote, “On May 10 the General died, and we were all plunged into the deepest grief. By every man, woman, and child in the Confederacy this good man and great general was mourned as never man was mourned before.” Jackson had assumed a legendary character even before his death, with his lightning raids, brilliant tactical maneuvers, and uncanny stealth. At a memorial service, a piece called “Stonewall’s Requiem” declared him to be “the Martyr of our country’s cause.” On the fourth Sunday in May, ministers across the Confederacy began their sermons with 2 Samuel 3:38: “Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel?”28

  Even northerners stopped to praise their fallen adversary. Henry Ward Beecher, the abolitionist preacher, announced Jackson’s death from his pulpit: “A brave and honest foe has fallen.” Herman Melville expressed the ambivalence of many northerners with his elegiac poem “Stonewall Jackson,” admiring the man but not the cause.

  The Man who fiercest charged in fight

  Whose sword and prayer were long—

  Stonewall!

  Even him who stoutly stood for Wrong,

  How can we praise? Yet coming days

  Shall not forget him with this song.29

  Stonewall Jackson combined piety with valor. In an increasingly bloody war where success was measured in body counts, it was easy to lose sight of basic values and transcending causes. Jackson’s death brought those values and causes to the fore. To what end remained unclear. The certitude of a holy cause that greeted the war’s onset slid into doubt, the same doubt about God’s intentions that Lincoln had expressed. How to understand why the best of men, “such men as Jackson[,] are cut down in the zenith of their glory?” Kate Cumming learned about Jackson’s death while at her post in a Chattanooga hospital. “How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways are past finding out” she wrote. “For who hath known the mind of the Lord.” It was difficult, especially for evangelical Christians, to reconcile the death of a good and pious man with God’s everlasting love.30

  In late May, Union General Nathaniel Banks launched an assault on Confederate fortifications at Port Hudson, Louisiana, on the Mississippi River. The attack was part of a larger plan to open up the river for Union navigation. The battle marked one of the first deployments of black troops in combat. Though the assault failed to dislodge the Rebels, the troops, many of whom were free people of color from Louisiana, gave a good account of themselves. Banks noted in his report, “Whatever doubt may have existed heretofore as to the efficiency of Negro regiments, the history of the day proves conclusively to those who were in condition to observe the conduct of these regiments that the Government will find in the class of troops effective supporters and defenders.”31

  The decision to deploy black troops was not an easy one for the Lincoln administration. Many high-ranking Union officers and government officials remained convinced that African Americans were best suited for menial support occupations or tilling the soil at abandoned plantations. While many soldiers approved of emancipation in the abstract, fighting alongside black troops was quite another matter. Blacks, however, were anxious to fight for their own freedom, and numerous African Americans in the North lobbied the president to open recruiting for colored regiments.

  In August 1862, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton approved the enlistment of five thousand black troops in South Carolina. Lincoln allowed the order to stand. The final draft of the Emancipation Proclamation authorized the recruitment of black troops. With emancipation a fact and the war going badly, Lincoln became a devoted convert to the idea: “The bare sight of 50,000 armed and drilled black soldiers on the banks of the Mississippi would end the rebellion at once.” To the contrary. The prospect of armed black men threw Confederates into a murderous frenzy.32

  The Davis administration warned that the army would consider captured b
lack soldiers as “slaves captured in arms,” not as prisoners of war, and therefore subject to execution. Lincoln advised the Richmond government that he would match man for man the death of captive black soldiers. The Confederacy never carried out this edict formally, though Rebel troops, on several occasions, killed black soldiers after they had surrendered. At Fort Pillow, Tennessee, in April 1864, Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s troops murdered three hundred black prisoners, many of whom had begged for mercy. A Confederate soldier described the scene at Fort Pillow following the executions: “Human blood stood about in pools and brains could have been gathered up in any quantity.” Another Rebel soldier stated flatly, “It was understood among us that we take no negro prisoners.” After capturing several black soldiers during the assault on Fort Wagner near Charleston Harbor in July 1863, a Georgia soldier reported with satisfaction that the prisoners were “literally shot down while on their knees begging for quarters and mercy.” Union officials found these incidents difficult to corroborate. Only later did sources confirm these murders.33

  “A Shell in the Rebel Trenches,” Winslow Homer, 1863. Yes, blacks did “fight” for the Confederacy, but rarely voluntarily, and here is one of many reasons why. The army used slaves to dig trenches and for other menial chores. It was dangerous work, as this sketch indicates. The help slaves provided for the Confederate cause supported the case for their enlistment in the Union armies. (The New York Public Library / Art Resource, NY)