Governor Brown, meanwhile, mourned the worsening situation in Georgia and believed it was all Davis’s fault. At least now, however, Brown acknowledged the national authorities the ability to control his troops. In the Georgia field Bob Toombs approved of Johnston’s removal and felt some confidence in the new commander, whose reputation was as a reckless fighter. “Hood is getting ridd [sic] of Bragg’s worthless pets as fast as he can,” he informed Stephens, “but Davis supports a great number of them, and many other incompts. are sent from other places to take their commands. Hood I think the very best of the generals of his school; but like the rest of them he knows no more of business than a ten year old boy, and [I] don’t know who does know anything about it.” 43
Not knowing went straight to the top. Despite the losses, despite mounting evidence of the Georgia conspiracy, despite the sorrowful shape of the Confederate war effort overall, one man still believed fervently that the South would win the war. He was Jefferson Davis, and in his office in Richmond he was fed a regular diet of suspicious information and conclusions that allowed him to believe such a thing regardless of what transpired on the battlefield. “The Northern mind, as a whole, is in an extremely malleable condition,” S. J. Anderson, a clerk with Southern sympathies in the mayor’s office in New York City, informed the Confederate president. “It fully appreciates the historical fact that Southern Statesmen and Southern policy moulded the character and guided the prosperity of the country prior to the election of Lincoln, and they pant and sigh for the restoration of that statesmanship and policy.” 44 With that kind of idea in the Northern mind, how could the Confederacy, in the end, possibly lose?
The answer was: badly, as Davis and his fellow backbiters were soon to learn.
Chapter 17
Slaves as Soldiers?
AS Grant and Meade continued in their struggle against Lee at Petersburg, and Sherman pushed more deeply into Georgia, a third operation began in the Union grand strategy of simultaneous movements. In August Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan initiated a campaign to clear the Shenandoah Valley of Confederate troops. He would face Jubal Early, who had threatened Washington so successfully the month before. On September 19 the two forces clashed at Winchester, where Sheridan decisively won and forced Early southward to Fishers Hill. Despite the victory a letter written on this day underscores the uncertainty all parties had about the course of the war and the chances for politics to play a critical role. “The State election of Indiana occurs on the 11th of October,” Abraham Lincoln wrote Sherman. “And the loss of it, to the friends of the Government would go far toward losing the whole Union cause. . . . Anything you can safely do to let her soldiers, or any part of them, go home and vote at the State election will be greatly in point.” 1
In the western theater Confederate major general Sterling Price launched a raid across Missouri that had little concrete strategic objective. The idea was to recover the state for the Confederacy, but the realism of such a goal had faded many months before. Nonetheless, Price captured Lexington on September 17-20 and proceeded to attack Fort Davidson, near the distinctive mountain dubbed Pilot Knob, on September 26-27. “Price arrived before Pilot Knob in the afternoon of September 26th,” wrote Wiley Britton of the Sixth Kansas Cavalry (U.S.A.), “and skirmished until night with detachments of Federal cavalry. . . . Price opened the attack on [Fort Davidson] at daylight on the 27th, and kept it up all day with great resolution.” 2 The campaign was fruitless, however, as Price retreated and then made a circuitous journey through Indian Territory to escape Federal forces. In all this he had done little more than increase the well-being of undertakers.
Meanwhile the situation in the valley between Sheridan and Early accelerated. “To-morrow I will continue the destruction of wheat, forage, etc., down to Fisher’s Hill,” Sheridan wrote Grant from Woodstock, west of Front Royal, on October 7. “When this is completed the Valley, from Winchester up to Staunton, ninety-two miles, will have little in it for man or beast.” 3 He subsequently decisively beat the Confederate force at Tom’s Brook, a few miles north of Woodstock, on October 9. Four days later Early made a show of force at Strasburg, forcing Sheridan to recall troops to Middletown, north of Tom’s Brook. Having been in Washington for a conference, on October 19 Sheridan returned and approached his army along the Valley Turnpike from Winchester to Cedar Creek. The battle of Cedar Creek, fought in the fields near Middletown, seemed a rout of the Federals. Sheridan’s presence, however, sparked his men into regrouping and counterattacking, and the resulting Union victory would spell the end of Confederate resistance in the valley.
Throughout this autumn season the growing legions of prisoners held in both Northern and Southern prisons suffered like never before. “Our quarters were so crowded that none of us had more space to himself than he actually occupied, usually a strip of the bare, hard floor, about six feet by two,” wrote Abner Small, a Federal soldier formerly of the Sixteenth Maine Infantry imprisoned in Danville, Virginia. “We lay in long rows, two rows of men with their heads to the side walls and two with their heads together along the center of the room.” The scant rations given prisoners led to fantastic rates of death and disease. “A prisoner eating this [spare] diet will crave any kind of fresh meat,” wrote Marcus Toney, a Confederate imprisoned at Elmira, New York. “Marching through the camp one day was a prisoner in a barrel shirt, with placard, ‘I eat a dog’; another one bearing a barrel, with placard, ‘Dog Eater.’ . . . It appeared these prisoners had captured a lapdog owned by the baker who came into camp daily to bake bread.” The methods to which partisans were resorting to win the war, to free the prisoners, to end the sufferings, and to promote their cause were myriad. On November 25, for example, a band of Confederate agents attempted to burn New York City. The conspirators attacked various hotels and well-known galleries (such as P. T. Barnum’s) with incendiary devices, but the fires were controlled, and the whole plan fizzled. “The bottles of Greek fire having been wrapped in paper were put in our coat pockets,” wrote John W. Headley, one of the Confederate agents. He continued:
Each man took ten bottles. . . . I reached the Astor House . . . after lighting the gas jet I hung the bedclothes loosely on the headboard and piled the chairs, drawers of the bureau and washstand on the bed. Then stuffed some newspapers about among the mass and poured a bottle of turpentine over it all. . . . I opened a bottle carefully and quickly and spilled it on the pile of rubbish. It blazed up instantly and the whole bed seemed to be in flames, before I could get out. 4
That the Confederate managed but to set his own bed ablaze was a symbol few in the Confederate leadership seem to have noticed.
ALTHOUGH progress around the Petersburg trenches was slow, Sherman in mid-November embarked on a march from Atlanta to Savannah, abandoning his base and along the way destroying railroads and much of military value to the Confederacy. He was virtually unopposed. “At three o’clock the watch-fires are burning dimly, and, but for the occasional neighing of horses, all is so silent that it is difficult to imagine that twenty thousand men are within a radius of a few miles,” wrote George Ward Nichols, one of Sherman’s staff officers. “The ripple of the brook can be distinctly heard as it breaks over the pebbles, or winds petulantly about the gnarled roots. The wind sweeping gently through the tall pines overhead only serves to lull to deeper repose the slumbering soldier, who is in his tent dreaming of his far-off Northern home.” 5
In the South all knew that a major movement was coming. “That Sherman intends to move with this large army upon some point in Georgia I have no doubt,” wrote Howell Cobb, “but where it will be is not yet so certain though my opinion is that Macon is the point.” 6 Rather than opposing Sherman, Hood believed that by turning northward and threatening lines of supply and communication in Tennessee (as well as endangering Union-held Nashville), he could draw Sherman away from the Deep South. He couldn’t have been more wrong. Hood’s Tennessee campaign began ingloriously for the Confederates and turned into full-fledged disast
er. Hood marched northward from Florence, Alabama, and first encountered Union troops in force near Columbia, Tennessee, with Yankees north of the Duck River on November 27 and Confederates south of it. By midafternoon on November 29, the battle of Spring Hill occurred, with piecemeal and confused attacks mismanaged by Hood.
Hood attacked frontally at Franklin, recklessly exposing his troops to an entrenched position that inflicted murderous casualties to his army. (His ignorance of just how reckless these actions were was summed up in a letter he wrote on the 29th: “I expect to die more proud of my defense of Atlanta & my Tenn. campaign than all my career as a soldier.”) 7 The flashpoint of the battle was the Fountain Branch Carter House and a nearby gin mill, around which intense barrages ignited throughout the late afternoon. Hood’s frontal attacks cost the army men it could not afford to lose, as he amassed more than six thousand casualties, including six general officers either dead or mortally wounded. Four of these generals were carried to a nearby mansion, where they were laid out on the porch—Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne, beloved as one of the greatest Confederate generals in the west, and Brig. Gens. John Adams, Otho F. Strahl, and Hiram B. Granbury. Two other Confederate brigadier generals, John C. Carter and the unsubtly named States Rights Gist, died fighting at Franklin.
If Hood had bruised his Army of Tennessee into incoherence at Franklin, he ruined it permanently two weeks later at Nashville. As he advanced from Franklin, Federal officers in Nashville prepared to fight a decisive battle with all the resources they had. “Every horse and mare that could be used was taken,” wrote Maj. Gen. James H. Wilson. “All street-car and livery stable horses, and private carriage- and saddle-horses, were seized. Even Andrew Johnson, the vice-president-elect, was forced to give up his pair. A circus then at Nashville lost everything except its ponies; even the old white trick horse was taken but it was alleged that the young and handsome equestrienne, who claimed him, succeeded in convincing my adjutant general that the horse was unfit for cavalry service.” 8 On December 15 Hood’s approach brought on an attack by Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas over a broad front south of the city. The initial battle was a lopsided victory for Union forces, and it continued through part of the next day before the remains of Hood’s army fled south.
Anything but obsessed by Hood, Sherman and his sixty-two thousand men were, at this moment, approaching Savannah on his revolutionary March to the Sea. On December 20 he occupied the city and sent Lincoln the message that he could offer Savannah as his Christmas present. A new legend was developing. “General Sherman is the most American looking man I ever saw,” wrote John Chipman Gray, a Federal staff officer, on December 14, “tall and lank, not very erect, with hair like a thatch, which he rubs up with his hands, a rusty beard trimmed close, a wrinkled face, sharp, prominent, red nose, small, bright eyes, coarse red hands; black felt hat slouched over the eyes.” 9 The final diamonds of the Confederacy were crumbling away, and time was running out rapidly now.
With the Yankees closing in from seemingly every quarter, John H. Winder, still charged with the Union prisoners, let out a cry for help from Columbia, South Carolina. “It is advisable to remove the prisoners from Florence,” he pointed out to G. T. Beauregard. “If so, how am I to arrange for Guard. I now have South Carolina reserves. Cannot carry them into Georgia.” 10 Yet again an insistence on state rights, carried to the extreme, left the Confederate military effort little more than an unravelling patchwork.
The military situation was fast becoming untenable.
IN Richmond, meanwhile, the second session of the Second Congress of the Confederate States of America began on November 7. On the opening day Jefferson Davis sent a long message to Congress covering many urgent points that needed to be faced. In many ways it was a last attempt for a turnaround and cooperation on a variety of issues that, the president felt, would sink the Confederacy if left unresolved.
“The exemption from military duty now accorded by law to all persons engaged in certain specified pursuits is shown by experience to be unwise, nor is it believed to be defensible in theory,” he lectured. “A general militia law is needful in the interest of the public defense,” he added. “The employment of slaves for service with the Army as teamsters or cooks, or in the way of work upon the fortifications, or in the Government workshops, or in hospitals or other similar duties, was authorized by the act of the 17th of February last, and provision was made for their impressment to a number not exceeding 20,000, if it should be found impracticable to obtain them by contract with the owners.”
Continued the president, “Viewed merely as property, and therefore as the subject of impressment, the service or labor of the slave has been frequently claimed for short periods in the construction of defensive works. The slave, however, bears another relation to the State—that of a person.”
This last thought must have struck some of the lawmakers like a clap of thunder. The president then wondered aloud if emancipation should be offered to slaves for faithful military service, and he guessed that, if given, they would not leave their local areas after the war. “A double motive for a zealous discharge of duty would thus be offered to those employed by the Government—their freedom and the gratification of the local attachment which is so marked a characteristic of the negro, and forms so powerful an incentive in his action,” the president proposed. 11 This was a conclusion so blindfolded and naive as to be idiotic—morally and politically. Although the president stopped short of suggesting slaves be armed, emancipation for military service—aiding the soldiers in the field and use for manual labor, etc.—was now on the table, confusing many and infuriating others. And yet the whole debate was cloaked in such a supreme air of desperation that many politicians knew something drastic had to be done or the war would be lost.
In the House the topic dominated the day. Members of Congress reported on a conference of governors that had taken place in mid-October in which the chief executives of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi had concluded “under proper regulation, to appropriate such part of [the slaves] to the public service as may be required,” not prohibiting their use as soldiers. They speculated, however, that “no exigency now exists nor is likely to occur in the military affairs of the Confederacy . . . which demands that negroes shall be used as soldiers.” 12 The following day Henry S. Foote resolved that arming slaves would be inexpedient, but that they should be used extensively as laborers.
In the House, resolutions were introduced to give the president the opportunity to clarify his opposition to the emancipation of slaves under any conditions. If the public and the European powers got the impression that the government had the power to emancipate slaves, after all, it would be in no better a position than Abraham Lincoln and the United States government. 13
On November 10 the argument shifted and became murkier. Impressment of up to forty thousand slaves into the army, with prospective emancipation for faithful service, would require consent of the states, Congress concluded. Said a congressman,
Some have claimed that our army is decreasing by death, disease, and desertion, but our president says it has not suffered half as much as has the Yankee army. President Davis, in his Macon Speech, said that two-thirds of the army is absent, and that this problem should be addressed by Congress, rather than in making plans to recruit negroes as soldiers. Do the gentlemen of the South propose to fight alongside negroes? Should the slaves be commingled with our brave white troops? The negro race has been ordained to slavery by the Almighty. 14
Still others opposed the use of slaves as soldiers because it could be seen as a confession of weakness.
On December 12 senators resumed debate on a bill to furnish slaves and free blacks to work on fortifications and provide labor for the armies. “Regarding the limitation of not more than one in five slaves shall be impressed who is working on agriculture, or that the last slave between 18 and 45 shall not be impressed,” Virginia congressman Robert M. T. Hunter offered, “as lo
ng as any state was not exempted from furnishing its fair quota.” 15 The amendment was then adopted, and the bill passed.
Six days later in the House, members proposed a resolution disapproving the government’s purchasing slaves as laborers in the army and liberating them after faithful service had been rendered. The topic was referred to committee. Since Davis’s opening remarks in November, thousands of Confederate troops had been killed. Amid the blood the politicians argued. “I cannot bring my mind to the conviction that arming our slaves will add to our military strength,” wrote William Porcher Miles shortly afterward, “and the prospective and inevitable evils resulting from the measure make me shrink back from the step as only to be taken when on the very brink of the precipice of ruin. At first I was inclined to think we might with some advantage employ negro soldiers—but the more I think of it, the more disinclined I am to resort to what at best can only be regarded as a doubtful experiment.” 16 James Leach of North Carolina later offered a House resolution “condemning the use of negroes as soldiers in the Confederate army.” Leach said that arming slaves would “be wrong in principle, disastrous in practice, an infringement upon the States rights, an endorsement of the principle contained in President Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation, an insult to our brave soldiers and an outrage upon humanity which, if carried into effect, will degrade us in the eyes of the civilized world, endanger our liberties, and jeopardize the lives of our wives and children.” 17
“It would be a fatal stab to the institution of slavery,” added Porcher Miles, “and would overturn the whole social fabric of our country. The negro is unfit by nature for a soldier, and he cannot be expected to fight on our side when the Yankees offer him far greater inducements than we can.” 18
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