Battle Cry of Freedom

by James M. McPherson

  52. O.R., Ser. II, Vol. 7, pp. 150–51; Hesseltine, Civil War Prisons, 172–209.

  53. Futch, Andersonville Prison, 43.

  against the President, because they think sympathy with a few negroes, also captured, is the cause of a refusal" to exchange.54

  Lincoln could indeed have renewed the exchange if he had been willing to forget about ex-slave soldiers. But he no more wanted to concede this principle than to renounce emancipation as a condition of peace. On August 27, Benjamin Butler, who had been appointed a special exchange agent, made the administration's position clear in a long letter to the Confederate exchange commissioner—a letter that was published widely in the newspapers. The United States government would renew exchanges, said Butler, whenever the Confederacy was ready to exchange all classes of prisoners. "The wrongs, indignities, and privations suffered by our soldiers," wrote Butler who was a master of rhetoric, "would move me to consent to anything to procure their exchange, except to barter away the honor and the faith of the Government of the United States, which has been so solemnly pledged to the colored soldiers in its ranks. Consistently with national faith and justice we cannot relinquish that position."55

  General Grant had privately enunciated another argument against exchange: it would strengthen enemy armies more than Union armies. "It is hard on our men held in Southern prisons not to exchange them," Grant said in August 1864, "but it is humanity to those left in our ranks to fight our battles." Most exchanged rebels—"hale, hearty, and well-fed" as northerners believed them to be—would "become active soldier[s] against us at once" while "the half-starved, sick, emaciated" Union prisoners could never fight again. "We have got to fight until the military power of the South is exhausted, and if we release or exchange prisoners captured it simply becomes a war of extermination."56

  A good many historians—especially those of southern birth—have pointed to Grant's remarks as the real reason for the North's refusal to exchange. Concern for the rights of black soldiers, in this view, was just for show. The northern strategy of a war of attrition, therefore, was responsible for the horrors of Andersonville and the suffering of prisoners

  54. D. C. Anderson and J. H. Brown to Lincoln, Sept. 4, 1864, H. Brewster to Stanton, Sept. 8, 1864, in O.R., Ser. II, Vol. 7, pp. 767–68, 787. See also Samuel White to Lincoln, Sept. 12, ibid., 816.

  55. Butler to Robert Ould, Aug. 27, 1864, in O.R., Ser. II, Vol. 7, pp. 687–91; quotation from p. 691. The letter was published in the New York Times, Sept. 6, 1864, and printed as a leaflet by the government for general circulation.

  56. O.R., Ser. II, Vol. 7, pp. 607, 615, 691.

  on both sides.57 This position is untenable. Grant expressed his opinion more than a year after the exchange cartel had broken down over the Negro prisoner question. And an opinion was precisely what it was; Grant did not order exchanges prohibited for purposes of attrition, and the evidence indicates that if the Confederates had conceded on the issue of ex-slaves the exchanges would have resumed. In October 1864, General Lee proposed an informal exchange of prisoners captured in recent fighting on the Richmond-Petersburg front. Grant agreed, on condition that blacks be exchanged "the same as white soldiers." If this had been done, it might have provided a precedent to break the impasse that had by then penned up more than a hundred thousand men in POW camps. But Lee replied that "negroes belonging to our citizens are not considered subjects of exchange and were not included in my proposition." Grant thereupon closed the correspondence with the words that because his "Government is bound to secure to all persons received into her armies the rights due to soldiers," Lee's refusal to grant such rights to former slaves "induces me to decline making the exchanges you ask."58

  In January 1865 the rebels finally gave in and offered to exchange "all" prisoners. Hoping soon to begin recruiting black soldiers for their own armies, Davis and Lee suddenly found the Yankee policy less barbaric. The cartel began functioning again and several thousand captives a week were exchanged over the next three months, until Appomattox liberated everyone.59

  Few if any historians would now contend that the Confederacy deliberately mistreated prisoners. Rather, they would concur with contemporary opinions—held by some northerners as well as southerners—that a deficiency of resources and the deterioration of the southern economy were mainly responsible for the sufferings of Union prisoners. The South could not feed its own soldiers and civilians; how could it feed enemy prisoners? The Confederacy could not supply its own troops with enough tents; how could it provide tents for captives? A certain makeshift quality in southern prison administration, a lack of planning and efficiency,

  57. See especially Hesseltine, Civil War Prisons, and Foote, Civil War, III, 131. This view was not confined to southerners; James Ford Rhodes, for example, shared it. See Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 . . . 7 vols.(New York, 1920), V, 499.

  58. O.R., Ser. II, Vol. 7, pp. 906—7, 909, 914.

  59. Ibid., Vol. 8, pp. 98, 123, 504; Hesseltine, Civil War Prisons, 229–32.

  also contributed to the plight of prisoners. Because Confederates kept expecting exchanges to be resumed, they made no long-range plans. The matter of shelter at Andersonville affords an example of shortages and lack of foresight. Although the South had plenty of cotton, it did not have the industrial capacity to turn enough of that cotton into tent canvas. The South had plenty of wood to build barracks, but there was a shortage of nails at Andersonville and no one thought to order them far enough in advance. Not enough sawmills existed in that part of Georgia to make boards, and the sawmills that did exist were working day and night for railroads whose ties and rolling stock the Yankees kept burning. Prisoners could have hewn log huts from the pine forests that surrounded Andersonville, but no one thought to supply axes, and the young boys and old men who guarded the prisoners were too inexperienced to prevent escapes from work details outside the stockade.

  So the prisoners broiled in the sun and shivered in the rain. Union captives at other enlisted men's prison camps endured a similar lack of shelter—in contrast to northern prisons, all of which provided barracks except Point Lookout in Maryland, where prisoners lived in tents. During the war numerous southerners criticized their own prisons. After describing conditions at the Florence camp, a South Carolina woman told the governor: "If such things are allowed to continue they will most surely draw down some awful judgment upon our country. . . . Don't think that I have any liking for the Yankee; I have none. . . . But I have not yet become quite brute enough to know of such suffering without trying to do something, even for a Yankee." A young Georgia woman expressed similar sentiments after a visit to Andersonville. "I am afraid God will suffer some terrible retribution to fall upon us for letting such things happen. If the Yankees ever should come to South-West Georgia . . . and see the graves there, God have mercy on the land!"60

  "And yet, what can we do?" she asked herself. "The Yankees themselves are really more to blame than we, for they won't exchange these prisoners, and our poor, hard-pressed Confederacy has not the means to provide for them, when our own soldiers are starving in the field." This defensive tone became dominant in southern rhetoric after the war. "Whose fault was it that there was no exchange of prisoners?" asked a former Andersonville guard. In any case, he continued, "Andersonville

  60. O.R., Ser. II, Vol. 7, p. 976; Eliza Frances Andrews, The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 1864–1865; (New York, 1908), 78–79.

  was no worse than northern prisons. There was suffering at Andersonville; there was also suffering at Johnson's Island; there were hardships in all prisons." In their memoirs Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens maintained that the death rate at southern prisons was actually lower than at northern prisons. And the responsibility for "all this sacrifice of human life," asserted Stephens, "rests entirely on the Authorities at Washington" who refused to exchange prisoners.61 The state of Georgia has placed two historical markers near Andersonville declaring that wartime shortages
caused the suffering there, which thus cannot be blamed on anybody, and that "deaths among the prison guards were as high as among the prisoners." In 1909 the United Daughters of the Confederacy erected a monument to Henry Wirz (which still stands in the village of Andersonville) proclaiming that this "hero-martyr" was "judicially murdered" by Yankees whose general in chief prevented the exchange of prisoners.

  These defenders of the South doth protest too much. Readers of this book will form their own conclusions about responsibility for the breakdown in prisoner exchanges. As for the comparison of Andersonville with Johnson's Island, the mortality of southern prisoners at the latter was 2 percent—and at Andersonville, 29 percent. This percentage of deaths among inmates at Andersonville was in fact five or six times higher than among guards.62 Davis and Stephens were also wide of the mark. Because of the loss or destruction of many Confederate records, the actual number of Union dead in all southern prisons can never be known. The best estimate based on existing records finds that 30,218 (15.5 percent) of the 194,743 northern inmates of southern prisons died there, compared with 25,976 (12 percent) of 214,865 southerners who died in northern prisons. The figure for Union prisoners is undoubtedly too low.63 In any event, the treatment of prisoners during the Civil War was something that neither side could be proud of.

  61. James Dunwoody Jones, "Recollections of a Young Confederate Officer," in Andersonville, p. 1; Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government,2 vols. (New York, 1881), II, 607; Alexander H. Stephens, A Constitutional Viewof the Late War Between the States, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1868—70), II, 507–9.

  62. Edward T. Downer, "Johnson's Island," in Hesseltine, ed., Civil War Prisons, 105;Futch, Andersonville Prison, 106–7.

  63. General F. C. Ainsworth, Chief of the Record and Pension Office, to James Ford Rhodes, June 29, 1903, in Rhodes, History, V, 507–8. In April and again in the fall of 1864 the Confederates exchanged several thousand sick prisoners in excess of the number of ill prisoners received from the North in return. Several hundred of these Union prisoners died soon after they were exchanged, but their deaths have not been included in the mortality toll of prisoners.

  IV

  In the end the POW issue played a minor role in the presidential election. The principal issue was the war itself, and how it should be ended. In this matter the Republicans managed to get a patent on the policy of peace through victory. Even McClellan could not escape the copper taint of peace without victory. Most Confederates saw McClellan's candidacy that way, after some initial hesitation caused by the general's warlike letter of acceptance. Southern agent Clement C. Clay in Canada expressed disappointment with that letter. Yet "the platform means peace, unconditionally," Clay reasoned. "McClellan will be under the control of the true peace men. . . . At all events, he is committed by the platform to cease hostilities and to try negotiations. . . . An armistice will inevitably result in peace. The war cannot be renewed if once stopped, even for a short time." If McClellan was elected, predicted a War Department clerk in Richmond, "we shall have peace and independence."64

  War-weary rebel soldiers hoped fervently for McClellan and peace. "The enemy are exceedingly anxious to hold out until after the Presidential election," reported Grant from the Petersburg front. "Deserters come into our lines daily who tell us that the men are nearly universally tired of the war, and that desertions would be much more frequent, but they believe peace will be negotiated after the fall elections."65 Such sentiments provoked opposite feelings among Union soldiers. Although "many leading officers" in the Army of the Potomac were still "Mc-Clellanized," according to a general in another Union army, most men in the ranks no longer favored their former commander. "Not that the soldiers dislike the man so much as the company he keeps," wrote one enlisted man. "There are a good many soldiers who would vote for McClellan but they cannot go Vallandigham." A Democratic triumph would mean "inglorious peace and shame, the old truckling subserviency to Southern domination," declared an officer in the Iron Brigade. "I had rather stay out here a lifetime (much as I dislike it)," wrote

  64. Clay to Judah P. Benjamin, Sept. 12, 1864, in O.R., Ser. IV, Vol. 3, pp. 637-38; Jones, War Clerk's Diary (Swiggett), II, 285.

  65. Grant to Elihu Washburne, Aug. 16, 1864, quoted in Bruce Catton, Grant Takes Command (Boston, 1969), 355; Grant to Stanton, Sept. 13, 1864, in O.R., Ser.III, Vol. 4, p. 713.

  another soldier, a former Democrat, "than consent to a division of our country. . . . We all want peace, but none any but an honorable one."66

  Many Union soldiers had a chance to register their opinions at the ballot box. Here was a bold experiment in democracy: allowing fighting men to vote in what amounted to a referendum on whether they should continue fighting. But as Grant put it, "they are American citizens, [and] they have as much right to [vote] as those citizens who remain at home. Nay, more, for they have sacrificed more for their country."67 By 1864 nineteen states had enacted provisions for soldiers to vote in the field. Of the states that had not, the three most important were Indiana, Illinois, and New Jersey where Democratic legislatures had blocked the measure. Although much rhetoric about "proconsular rule" and "Caesarism" had accompanied this opposition, the true reason was the recognition by Democrats that the army had become overwhelmingly Republican—or at least "Union," as the Republican party styled itself in 1864.

  Twelve of the states allowing absentee voting provided for the separate tabulation of soldier ballots. Lincoln received 119,754 of them to McClellan's 34,291, a majority of 78 percent for the president compared with 53 percent of the civilian vote in those states. The absentee soldier-vote majority for Republicans in the other seven states was probably at least as great. Of the states that did not permit absentee voting, the contest was particularly close and important in Indiana. As commander in chief, the president could help along his cause there and did not shrink from doing so. "The loss of [Indiana] to the friends of the Government," Lincoln wrote to General Sherman in Atlanta, "would go far towards losing the whole Union cause," so the president would be pleased if the general could furlough as many Indiana soldiers as possible to go home and vote.68 Several thousand soldiers did get to Indiana to vote; the War Department also combed military hospitals for convalescent Indiana soldiers well enough to travel. Some members of a Massachusetts regiment temporarily stationed in Indiana may have added their votes to the Republican total there.69

  In none of the states with separately tabulated soldier ballots did this

  66. Catton, Stillness at Appomattox, 303, 324, 323; John Berry to Samuel L. M. Barlow, Aug. 24, 1864, Barlow Papers, Henry E. Huntington Library.

  67. O.R., Ser. I, Vol. 42, pt. 2, pp. 1045–46.

  68. CWL, VIII, 11.

  69. Democrats charged fraud and intimidation in connection with the soldier vote in several places. Although there were undoubtedly some irregularities, their partisan benefits tended to cancel each other out. Indeed, the worst frauds were committed by Democratic commissioners sent to receive the vote of New York soldiers. Two of the commissioners were subsequently convicted (one of them having confessed) of forging McClellan votes. The voting of soldiers in 1864 was about as fair and honest as 19th-century elections generally were, and Lincoln's majority was probably an accurate reflection of soldier sentiment. The War Department did all it could to expedite the furloughing of soldiers likely to vote Republican, however, and in other ways lent its considerable weight to the Republican side in the gathering of the soldier vote. The best studies of this matter are Oscar O. Winther, "The Soldier Vote in the Election of 1864," New York History, 25 (1944), 440–58, and Josiah Henry Benton, Voting in the Field: A Forgotten Chapter of the Civil War (Boston, 1915).

  vote change the outcome of the presidential contest—Lincoln would have carried all of them except Kentucky in any case. But in two close states where soldier votes were lumped with the rest, New York and Connecticut, these votes may have provided the margin of Lincoln's victory. The men in blue also decided the ou
tcome in several congressional districts, and the votes of Maryland soldiers for a state constitutional amendment abolishing slavery more than offset the slight majority of the home vote against it.

  Lincoln's popular-vote majority of half a million translated into an electoral count of 212 to 21. The president won all the states but Kentucky, Delaware, and New Jersey; his party also captured control of the governorships and legislatures of all but those states. The next Congress would have a Republican majority of three-fourths. The similarity between the "Union" vote of 1864 and the Republican vote of 1860 in the northern states was remarkable. Lincoln received virtually the same 55 percent from the same regions and constituencies within these states that he had received four years earlier. Republicans continued to draw their greatest support from native-born and British Protestant farmers, skilled workers, and white-collar voters especially in New England and the greater New England of the upper North. Democrats remained strongest among unskilled workers, immigrant Catholics, and Butternuts in the southern Midwest. As the "Union" party, Republicans expanded their base beyond 1860 in the border states (including West Virginia) where they won 54 percent of the vote (compared with about 9 percent in 1860) and drew most of their support from the urban middle class and prosperous non-slaveholding farmers. Democrats retained the slaveholders, immigrants, and poorer farmers.

  Contemporaries interpreted the election of 1864 as a triumph for Lincoln's policy of compelling the unconditional surrender of the Confederacy. "I am astonished," wrote the American correspondent of the London Daily News, at "the extent and depth of [this] determination . . . to fight to the last. . . . [The northern people] are in earnest in a way the like of which the world never saw before, silently, calmly, but desperately in earnest."70

  But Jefferson Davis was also in earnest. He had never shared southern hopes for the election of McClellan and a negotiated peace. "We are fighting for existence; and by fighting alone can independence be gained," Davis had told audiences during a morale-building tour of the lower South after the fall of Atlanta. The Confederacy remained "as erect and defiant as ever," he informed Congress in November. "Nothing has changed in the purpose of its Government, in the indomitable valor of its troops, or in the unquenchable spirit of its people."71 It was to quench this spirit that Sherman set forth on his march from Atlanta to the sea.