Battle Cry of Freedom

by James M. McPherson

  4. Hood to Bragg, July 14, 1864, in O.R., Ser. I, Vol. 38, pt. 5, pp. 879–80; Clifford Dowdey, ed., The Wartime Papers of R. E. Lee (New York, 1961), 821–22; Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones, How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War (Urbana, 1983), 607.

  5. O.R., Ser. I, Vol. 38, pt. 5, pp. 882–83.

  6. Anti-administration newspapers attributed Johnston's removal to Davis's "cold snaky hate" for the general. One army veteran remembered that several soldiers deserted when they learned of Johnston's removal. But some soldiers agreed with an artillery lieutenant who wrote that no one "ever dreamed of Johnston falling back this far. . . . I don't believe Johnston ever did or ever will fight." Richmond Whig, quoted in Thomas L. Connelly, Autumn of Glory: The Army of Tennessee, 1862–1865 (Baton Rouge, 1971), 405; Sam R. Watkins, "Co. Aytch": A Side Show of the Big Show (Collier Books ed., New York, 1962), 172; Hoehling, Last Train from Atlanta, 49, 77. For appraisals of the controversy by historians, see Connelly, Autumn of Glory, 391–426; Gilbert E. Govan and James W. Livingood, A Different Valor: The Story of General Joseph E. Johnston (Indianapolis, 1956), 308–36; and Richard M. McMurry, John Bell Hood and the War for Southern Independence (Lexington, Ky., 1982), 116–24.

  ground, on any thing like equal terms, instead of being forced to run up against prepared intrenchments."7 So he said, with benefit of hindsight. But Davis, like Lincoln, preferred generals who would fight. To have lost Atlanta without a battle would have demoralized the South. And whatever else Hood's appointment meant, it meant fight.

  Sure enough, two days after taking command Hood tried to squash the Yankees. As events turned out, however, it was the rebels who got squashed. After crossing the Chattahoochee, Sherman had again sent McPherson on a wide swing—this time to the left—to cut Atlanta's last rail link with the upper South. Schofield followed on a shorter arc, while Thomas's Army of the Cumberland, separated from Schofield by a gap of two miles, prepared to cross Peachtree Creek directly north of Atlanta. Hood saw his chance to hit Thomas separately, but the attack on July 20 started several hours too late to catch the bluecoats in the act of crossing the stream. Five Union divisions drove an equal number of rebels back after the bloodiest combat in the campaign thus far.

  Not succeeding at first, Hood tried again. On July 21 he pulled the army back into elaborate defenses ringing the city. After dark Hood sent one corps on an exhausting all-night march to attack the exposed south flank of McPherson's Army of the Tennessee on July 22. They did, but found the flank less exposed than expected. After recovering from their initial surprise the bluecoats fought with ferocity and inflicted half as many casualties on Hood's army in one afternoon as it had suffered in ten weeks under Johnston. But the Confederates exacted a price in return: the death of McPherson, shot from his saddle when he refused to surrender after riding blindly into Confederate lines while trying to restore his own.

  Though grieved by the loss of his favorite subordinate, Sherman wasted no time getting on with the job. He gave command of the Army of the Tennessee to Oliver O. Howard, a transplant from the Army of the Potomac. The one-armed Christian general from Maine took his profane midwesterners on another wide swing around the Confederate left and headed south to tear up the one remaining open railroad out of Atlanta. Hood sent a corps to stop them and readied another to follow up with a counterattack. But the Federals handled them so roughly at the Ezra Church crossroads two miles west of the city on July 28 that

  7. William T. Sherman, "The Grand Strategy of the Last Year of the War," Battles and Leaders, IV, 253; Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (New York, 1886), II, 72.

  the rebels had to entrench instead of continuing the attack. Nevertheless, they kept the bluecoats off the railroad.

  In three battles during the past eight days Hood's 15,000 casualties were two and one-half times Sherman's 6,000. But southern valor did seem to have stopped the inexorable Yankee advance on Atlanta. Union infantry and artillery settled down for a siege, while Sherman sent his cavalry on raids to wreck the railroad far south of the city. One division of northern horsemen headed for Andersonville to liberate Union captives at the notorious prison, but rebel cavalry headed them off halfway. Six hundred of these Yankee troopers did reach Andersonville—as prisoners. Confederate cavalry and militia prevented other Union detachments from doing more than minimal damage to the railroad, while southern raids in turn on Sherman's supply line fared little better.

  Civilians continued to flee the city; some of those who remained were killed by northern shells that rained down on their streets. "War is war, and not popularity-seeking," wrote Sherman in pursuance of his career as Georgia's most unpopular visitor.8 The defiant courage of Atlantans who stayed raised the spirits of southerners everywhere. Much of the Confederate press viewed Hood's attacks as victories. The Atlanta Intelligencer (published in Macon) predicted that "Sherman will suffer the greatest defeat that any Yankee General has suffered during the war. . . . The Yankee forces will disappear before Atlanta before the end of August." The "cheering" news from Georgia convinced a War Department clerk in Richmond that "Sherman's army is doomed."9 Richmond newspapers exulted that "Atlanta is now felt to be safe, and Georgia will soon be free from the foe. . . . Everything seems to have changed in that State from the deepest despondency."10

  Opinion north of the Potomac reflected the other side of this coin of southern euphoria. As Sherman closed in on Atlanta during July, northern newspapers had daily predicted the city's capture before the next edition. By early August the forecast had moderated to "a question of a few days," and one reporter confessed himself "somewhat puzzled at the

  8. Memoirs of Sherman, II, 111. It should be noted that factories, rail facilities, warehouses, and other military targets—including artillery emplacements—were scattered among residential areas of Atlanta.

  9. Intelligencer quoted in Hoehling, Last Train from Atlanta, 325, and in Samuel Carter III, The Siege of Atlanta, 1864 (New York, 1973), 275; Jones, War Clerk's Diary(Swiggett), II, 259.

  10. Quoted in Hoehling, Last Train from Atlanta, 167, 251.

  stubborn front presented by the enemy." By the middle of the month a Boston newspaper expressed "much apprehension" while the New York Times warned against "these terrible fits of despondency, into which we plunge after each of our reverses and disappointments." A Wisconsin soldier, formerly confident, wrote home on August 11 that "we make but little progress toward Atlanta, and it may be some time before we take the place." In New York a prominent member of the Sanitary Commission feared that "both Grant and Sherman are on the eve of disaster."11

  II

  Indeed, Grant's siege of Petersburg seemed even less successful during those dog days of summer than Sherman's operations against Atlanta. Soldiers on both sides burrowed ever deeper in the trenches at Petersburg to escape the daily toll exacted by sharpshooters and mortars. Grant did not cease his efforts to interdict Lee's supply lines and break through the defenses. During the latter half of June the rebels turned back an infantry drive and a cavalry raid that tried to cut Richmond's remaining three railroads, though the Yankees managed to break all three temporarily. In these actions many of the exhausted veterans and inexperienced new troops in the Army of the Potomac performed poorly. The vaunted 2nd Corps, bled to a shadow of its former self, made an especially bad showing. And soon afterward Grant had to send away his best remaining unit, the 6th Corps.

  This happened because Jubal Early's 15,000 rebels, after driving David Hunter away from Lynchburg in June, had marched down the Shenandoah Valley and crossed the Potomac on July 6. They bowled over a scratch force of Federals at the Monocacy River east of Frederick on July 9 and marched unopposed toward Washington. This seemed a stunning reversal of the fortunes of war. Northern hopes of capturing Richmond were suddenly replaced by fears for the safety of their own capital. The rebels appeared in front of the Washington defenses five miles north of the White House on July 11. Except for convalescents, militia, and a f
ew odds and ends of army units there were no troops to man them, for Grant had pulled the garrison out for service in Virginia. But the fortifications ringing the capital were immensely strong, and Grant, in response

  11. Northern newspapers quoted in ibid., 92, 99, 107, 126, 221, 278, 330; Wisconsin soldier quoted in ibid., 290; Strong, Diary, 474.

  to frantic appeals from the War Department, quickly sent the 6th Corps to Washington. These hardened veterans filed into the works just in time to discourage Early from assaulting them.

  During the skirmishing on July 12 a distinguished visitor complete with stovepipe hat appeared at Fort Stevens to witness for the first time the sort of combat into which he had sent a million men over the past three years. Despite warnings, President Lincoln repeatedly stood to peer over the parapet as sharpshooters' bullets whizzed nearby. Out of the corner of his eye a 6th Corps captain—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.—noticed this ungainly civilian popping up. Without recognizing him, Holmes shouted "get down, you damn fool, before you get shot!" Amused by this irreverent command, Lincoln got down and stayed down.12 With the 6th Corps in his front and other Union troops gathering in his rear, Early wisely decided that it was time to return to Virginia. He did so with only a few scratches, much to Grant's and Lincoln's disgust, because the forces chasing him were divided among four command jurisdictions that could never quite coordinate their efforts.

  During their raid some of Early's soldiers made as little distinction between military and private property as did many northern soldiers in the South. Indeed, they went the Union invaders one better, for while the latter often seized or burned whatever tangible goods they could find they rarely took Confederate money, which was almost worthless. But northern greenbacks were another matter; the rebels levied $20,000 on Hagerstown and $200,000 on Frederick, besides drinking up the contents of Francis Preston Blair's wine cellar, burning down the Silver Spring home of his son Montgomery the postmaster-general, and putting the torch to the private residence of Maryland's governor. To add further injury to insult, on July 30 two of Early's cavalry brigades rode into Pennsylvania, demanded $500,000 from the citizens of Chambers-burg as restitution for Hunter's pillaging in Virginia, and burned the town when they refused to pay.

  Early's foray to the outskirts of Washington caused the London Times to comment that "the Confederacy is more formidable than ever." Many discouraged Yankees agreed. Gold soared to 285. "I see no bright spot anywhere," wrote New York diarist George Templeton Strong, only "humiliation and disaster. . . . The blood and treasure spent on this

  12. James G. Randall and Richard N. Current, Lincoln the President: Last Full Measure (New York, 1955), 200; Benjamin P. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln: A Biography (New York, 1952), 434.

  summer's campaign have done little for the country."13 On July 18, Lincoln issued a new call for 500,000 men, with quota deficiencies to be filled by a draft just before the fall elections. "Lincoln is deader than dead," chortled a Democratic editor.14

  Angered by the inability of fragmented Union forces to run Early down, Grant cut through the Washington red tape and put Phil Sheridan in charge of a newly created Army of the Shenandoah consisting of the 6th Corps, several brigades from David Hunter's former Army of West Virginia, two divisions recently transferred from Louisiana, and two divisions of Sheridan's own cavalry. Grant ordered Sheridan to go after Early "and follow him to the death."15 Sheridan was just the man for the job, but it would take him time to organize this composite army. Meanwhile Grant suffered another frustration in his attempt to break Lee's lines at Petersburg.

  This was the famous battle of the Crater. In conception it bid fair to become the most brilliant stroke of the war; in execution it became a tragic fiasco. A section in the center of the Union line at Petersburg held by Burnside's 9th Corps lay within 150 yards of an enemy salient on high ground where the rebels had built a strong redoubt. One day in June, Colonel Henry Pleasants of the 48th Pennsylvania, a Schuylkill County regiment containing many coal miners, overheard one of his men growl: "We could blow that damn fort out of existence if we could run a mine shaft under it." A prewar mining engineer, Pleasants liked the idea, proposed it to his division commander, who submitted it to Burnside, who approved it. Pleasants put his regiment to work excavating a tunnel more than 500 feet long. They did so with no help from the army's engineers, who scoffed at the project as "claptrap and nonsense" because ventilation problems had limited all previous military tunnels in history to less than 400 feet.16 Meade consequently put no faith in the enterprise. Nevertheless, the 48th Pennsylvania improvised its own tools and found its own lumber to timber the shaft. Burnside borrowed an old-fashioned theodolite from a civilian so Pleasants could triangulate for distance and direction. Pleasants also rigged a coalmining

  13. Times quoted in Foote, Civil War, III, 461; Strong, Diary, 467, 474.

  14. CWL, VII, 448–49; Frank L. Klement, The Copperheads in the Middle West (Chicago, 1960), 233.

  15. O.R., Ser. I, Vol. 37, pt. 2, p. 558.

  16. Henry Pleasants, Jr., The Tragedy of the Crater (Washington, 1938), 32; William H. Powell, "The Battle of the Petersburg Crater," Battles and Leaders, IV, 545.

  ventilation shaft with a fire at the base to create a draft and pull in fresh air through a tube. In this manner the colonel confounded the skeptics. His men dug a shaft 511 feet long with lateral galleries at the end each nearly forty feet long under the Confederate line in which they placed four tons of gunpowder. Reluctantly converted, Meade and Grant authorized Burnside to spring the mine and attack with his corps through the resulting gap.

  The sidewhiskered general's enthusiasm for the project had grown steadily from the time it began on June 25. Here was a chance to redeem his failure at Fredericksburg by capturing Petersburg and winning the war. Burnside's corps contained four divisions. Three had been worn down by combat since the Wilderness; the fourth was fresh, having seen no action except guarding rear-area supply lines. It was a black division, and few officers in the Army of the Potomac from Meade down yet believed in the fighting capacity of black troops. Burnside was an exception, so he designated this fresh division to lead the assault. The black soldiers received special tactical training for this task. Their morale was high; they were eager "to show the white troops what the colored division could do," said one of their officers.17 Grant arranged a diversion by Hancock's corps north of the James which pulled several of Lee's divisions away from the Petersburg front. Everything seemed set for success when the mine was scheduled to explode at dawn on July 30.

  Only hours before this happened, however, Meade—with Grant's approval—ordered Burnside to send in his white divisions first. Meade's motive seems to have been lack of confidence in the inexperienced black troops, though in later testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War Grant mentioned another reason as well: If things went wrong, "it would then be said . . . that we were shoving these people ahead to get killed because we did not care anything about them. But that could not be said if we put white troops in front."18

  Apparently demoralized by the last-minute change of his battle plan, Burnside lost all control over the operation. The commander of the division designated to lead the assault (chosen by drawing straws!), James H. Ledlie, had a mediocre record and an alcohol problem. During the assault he stayed behind in the trenches drinking rum cadged from the surgeon. With no preparation and without leadership, his men attacked

  17. Henry Goddard Thomas, "The Colored Troops at Petersburg," Battles and Leaders, IV, 563.

  18. Powell, "The Battle of the Petersburg Crater," ibid., 548.

  in disordered fashion. The explosion blew a hole 170 feet long, 60 feet wide, and 30 feet deep. One entire rebel regiment and an artillery battery were buried in the debris. Confederate troops for a couple of hundred yards on either side of the crater fled in terror. When Ledlie's division went forward, its men stopped to gawk at the awesome spectacle. Mesmerized by this vision of what they supposed Hell must be like, many o
f them went into the crater instead of fanning out left and right to roll up the torn enemy flanks. The two following white divisions did little better, degenerating into a disorganized mob as rebel artillery and mortars found the range and began shooting at the packed bluecoats in the crater as at fish in a barrel. Frantic officers, with no help from Burnside or from division commanders, managed to form fragments of brigades for a further penetration. But by mid-morning a southern division commanded by William Mahone was ready for a counterattack. The black troops who had finally pushed their way through the milling or retreating white Yankees caught the brunt of Mahone's assault. As on other fields, rebel soldiers enraged by the sight of black men in uniform murdered several of them who tried to surrender. When it was all over, the 9th Corps had nothing to show for its big bang except 4,000 casualties (against fewer than half as many for the enemy), a huge hole in the ground, bitter mutual recriminations, and new generals commanding the corps and one of its divisions. Grant pronounced the epitaph in a message to Halleck: "It was the saddest affair I have witnessed in the war. Such opportunity for carrying fortifications I have never seen and do not expect again to have."19

  III

  The months of July and August 1864 brought a greater crisis of northern morale than the same months in 1862. The theme of homefront war songs (which enjoyed an extraordinary popularity during the conflict, with sheet music selling millions of copies) took a sudden turn from ebullient patriotism to a longing for peace. When This Cruel War Is Over, with its haunting refrain "Weeping, sad and lonely" became the best-seller of 1864, while the chorus of Tenting on the Old Camp Ground seemed more than ever to echo northern sentiment: "Many are the hearts that are weary tonight, Wishing for the war to cease." From the presses poured new songs whose titles hardly encouraged martial enthusiasm: