The Civil War: A Narrative: Fredericksburg to Meridian

by Shelby Foote

  Glad as the departing bluecoats were to escape the wintry hug of the Wilderness, they were more fortunate than they knew. On November 30, the expected assault not having been launched against his intrenchments, Lee had been summoned to the far right by Wade Hampton, who, recovered from his Gettysburg wounds and returned to duty, had discovered an opening for a blow at the Union left, not unlike the one Hooker had received in May on his opposite flank, a few miles to the east. Looking the situation over, the southern commander liked what he saw, but decided to wait before taking advantage of it. He felt sure that Meade would attack, sooner or later, and he did not want to pass up the near certainty of another Fredericksburg, even if it meant postponing a chance for another Chancellorsville. By noon of the following day, however, with the Federals still immobile in his front, he changed his mind. “They must be attacked; they must be attacked,” he muttered. Accordingly, he prepared to go over to the offensive with an all-out assault on the flank Hampton had found dangling. Sidling Early’s men southward to fill the gap, Lee withdrew two of Hill’s divisions from the trenches that evening and massed them south of the plank road, in the woods beyond the vulnerable enemy left, with orders to attack at dawn. Early would hold the fortified line overlooking Mine Run, while Hill drove the blue mass northward across his front and into the icy toils of the Rapidan. This time there would be no escape for Meade, as there had been for Hooker back in May, for there would be twelve solid hours of daylight for pressing the attack, not a bare two or three, as there had been when Jackson struck in the late afternoon, under circumstances otherwise much the same.

  “With God’s blessing,” the young staffer had predicted six nights ago, “there shall be a Second Chancellorsville.” But he was wrong; God’s blessing was withheld. When the flankers went forward at first light they found the thickets empty, the Federals gone. Chagrined (for though he had inflicted 1653 casualties at a cost of 629—which brought the total of his losses to 4255 since Gettysburg, as compared to Meade’s 4406—he had counted on a stunning victory, defensive or offensive), Lee ordered his cavalry after them and followed with the infantry, marching as best he could through woods the bluecoats had set afire in their wake. It was no use; Meade’s head start had been substantial, and he was back across the Rapidan before he could be overtaken. In the Confederate ranks there was extreme regret at the lost opportunity, which grew in estimation, as was usual in such cases, in direct ratio to its inaccessibility. Early and Hill came under heavy criticism for having allowed the enemy to steal away unnoticed. “We miss Jackson and Longstreet terribly,” the same staff officer remarked. But Lee, as always, took the blame on his own shoulders: shoulders on which he now was feeling the weight of his nearly fifty-seven years. “I am too old to command this army,” he said sadly. “We should never have permitted those people to get away.”

  Although Davis shared the deep regret that Meade had not been punished more severely for his temporary boldness, he did not agree with Lee as to where the blame for this deliverance should rest. Conferring with the general at Orange on the eve of the brief Mine Run campaign, two weeks after his return from the roundabout western journey—it was the Commander in Chief’s first visit to the Army of Northern Virginia since its departure from Richmond, nearly sixteen months before, to accomplish the suppression of Pope on the plains of Manassas—he had not failed to note the signs that Lee was aging, which indeed were unmistakable, but mainly he was impressed anew by his clear grasp of the tactical situation, his undiminished aggressiveness in the face of heavy odds, and the evident devotion of the veterans in his charge. Davis’s admiration for this first of his field generals—especially by contrast with what he had observed in the course of his recent visit to the Army of Tennessee—was as strong as it had been four months ago, when he listed his reasons for refusing to accept Lee’s suggestion that he be replaced as a corrective for the Gettysburg defeat. By now though, as a result of what had happened around Chattanooga the week before, he had it once again in mind to shift him to new fields. Directed to take over from Bragg, who was relieved on the day Meade began his withdrawal from the Wilderness, Hardee replied as he had done when offered the command two months ago. He appreciated “this expression of [the President’s] confidence,” he said, “but feeling my inability to serve the country successfully in this new sphere of duty, I respectfully decline the command if designed to be permanent.” Davis then turned, as he had turned before, to Lee: with similar results. The Virginian replied that he would of course go to North Georgia, if ordered, but “I have not that confidence either in my strength or ability as would lead me of my own option to undertake the command in question.”

  It was Lee’s opinion that Beauregard was the logical choice for the post he had vacated a year and a half ago; but Davis liked this no better than he did the notion, advanced by others, that Johnston was the best man for the job. He had small use for either candidate. Deferring action on the matter until he had had a chance to talk it over with Lee in person, he wired for him to come to Richmond as soon as possible. Meantime the Chief Executive kept busy with affairs of state. Congress met for its fourth session on December 7, and the President’s year-end message was delivered the following day.

  “Gloom and unspoken despondency hang like a pall everywhere,” a diarist noted on that date, adding: “Patriotism is a pretty heavy load to carry sometimes.” Davis no doubt found it so on this occasion, obliged as he was to render a public account of matters better left unreviewed, since they could only thicken the gloom and add to the despondency they had provoked in the first place. In any case he made no attempt to minimize the defeats of the past fall and summer. Congress had adjourned in May; “Grave reverses befell our arms soon after your departure,” he admitted at the outset. Charleston and Galveston were gleams in the prevailing murk, but they could scarcely relieve the fuliginous shadows thrown by Gettysburg and Vicksburg, along with other setbacks in that season of defeat, and the bright flame of Chickamauga had been damped by Missionary Ridge, which he confessed had been lost as the result of “misconduct by the troops.” So it went, throughout the reading of the lengthy message. Gains had been slight, losses heavy. Nor did Davis hold out hope of foreign intervention, as he had done so often in the past. Diplomatically, with recognition still withheld by the great powers beyond the Atlantic, the Confederacy was about as near the end of its rope as it was financially, with $600,000,000 in paper—“more than threefold the amount required by the business of the country”—already issued by the Treasury on little better security than a vague promise, which in turn was dependent on the outcome of a war it seemed to be losing. He could only propose the forcible reduction of the volume of currency; which in itself, as a later observer remarked, amounted to “a confession of bankruptcy.” The end of the contest was nowhere in sight, he told the assembled legislators, and he recommended a tightening and extension of conscription as a means of opposing the long numerical odds the Federals enjoyed. “We now know that the only reliable hope for peace is the vigor of our resistance,” he declared, “while the cessation of their hostility is only to be expected from the pressure of their necessities.” In closing he came back to the South’s chief asset, which had won for her the sometimes grudging admiration of the world. “The patriotism of the people has proved equal to every sacrifice demanded by their country’s need. We have been united as a people never were united under like circumstances before. God has blessed us with success disproportionate to our means, and under His divine favor our labors must at last be crowned with the reward due to men who have given all they possessed to the righteous defense of their inalienable rights, their homes, and their altars.”

  Lincoln’s year-end message to the Federal Congress, which also convened on the first Monday in December, was delivered that same Tuesday, thus affording the people of the two nations, as well as those of the world at large, another opportunity for comparing the manner and substance of what the two leaders had to say in addressing themsel
ves to events and issues which they viewed simultaneously from opposite directions. The resultant contrast was quite as emphatic as might have been expected, given their two positions and their two natures. Not only was there the obvious difference that what were admitted on one hand as defeats were announced as victories on the other, but there was also a considerable difference in tone. While Davis, referring defiantly to “the impassable gulf which divides us,” denounced the “barbarous policy” and “savage ferocity” of an adversary “hardened in crime,” the northern President spoke of reconciliation and advanced suggestions for coping with certain edgy problems that would loom when bloodshed ended. He dealt only in passing with specific military triumphs, recommending the annual reports of Stanton and Halleck as “documents of great interest,” and contented himself with calling attention to the vast improvement of conditions in that regard since his last State of the Union address, just one week more than a year ago today. At that time, “amid much that was cold and menacing,” he reminded the legislators, “the kindest words coming from Europe were uttered in accents of pity that we were too blind to surrender a hopeless cause”; whereas now, he pointed out, “the rebel borders are pressed still further back, and by the opening of the Mississippi the country dominated by the rebellion is divided into distinct parts, with no practical communication between them.” A share of the credit for this accomplishment was due to the Negro for his response to emancipation, Lincoln believed. “Of those who were slaves at the beginning of the rebellion, full one hundred thousand are now in the United States military service, about one half of which number actually bear arms in the ranks; thus giving the double advantage of taking so much labor from the insurgent cause, and supplying the places which otherwise must be filled with so many white men. So far as tested, it is difficult to say they are not as good soldiers as any.”

  Having said so much, and reviewed as well such divergent topics as the budget, foreign relations, immigration, the homestead law, and Indian affairs, he passed at once to the main burden of his message, contained in an appended document titled “A Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction.” Lately, in answer to a letter in which Zachariah Chandler, pleased by the outcome of the fall elections but alarmed by reports that the moderates were urging their views on the President during the preparation of this report on the State of the Union, had warned him to “stand firm” against such influences and pressures—“Conservatives and traitors are buried together,” the Michigan senator told him; “for God’s sake don’t exhume their remains in your Message. They will smell worse than Lazarus did after he had been buried three days”—Lincoln had sought to calm the millionaire drygoods merchant’s fears. “I am glad the elections this autumn have gone favorably,” he replied, “and that I have not, by native depravity, or under evil influences, done anything bad enough to prevent the good result. I hope to ‘stand fast’ enough not to go backward, and yet not to go forward fast enough to wreck the country’s cause.” The appended document, setting forth his views on amnesty for individuals and reconstruction of the divided nation, was an example of what he meant. In essence, it provided that all Confederates—with certain specified exceptions, such as holders of public office, army generals and naval officers above the rank of lieutenant, former U.S. congressmen and judges, and anyone found guilty of mistreating prisoners of war—would receive a full executive pardon upon taking an oath of loyalty to the federal government, support of the Emancipation Proclamation, and obedience to all lawful acts in reference to slavery. Moreover, as soon as one tenth of the 1860 voters in any seceded state had taken the oath prescribed, that state would be readmitted to the Union and the enjoyment of its constitutional rights, including representation in Congress.

  Reactions varied, but whether its critics thought the proclamation outrageous or sagacious, a further example of wheedling or a true gesture of magnanimity, there were the usual objections to the message as proof of Lincoln’s ineptness whenever he tried to come to grips with the English language. “Its words and sentences fall in heaps, instead of flowing in a connected stream, and it is therefore difficult reading,” the Journal of Commerce pointed out, while the Chicago Times was glibly scornful of the backwoods President’s lack of polish. “Slipshod as have been all his literary performances,” the Illinois editor complained, “this is the most slovenly of all. If they were slipshod, this is barefoot, and the feet, plainly enough, never have been shod.” However, the New York Times found the composition “simple and yet perfectly effective,” and Horace Greeley was even more admiring. He thought the proclamation “devilish good,” and predicted that it would “break the back of the Rebellion,” though he stopped well short of the Tribune’s White House correspondent’s judgment that “no President’s message since George Washington retired into private life has given such general satisfaction as that sent to Congress by Abraham Lincoln today.”

  Just how general that satisfaction might be, he did not say, but one person in emphatic disagreement was Charles Sumner, who, as he sat listening to the drone of the clerk at the joint session, favored visitors and colleagues with a demonstration of the inefficacy of caning as a corrective for infantile behavior. Watching as he “gave vent to his half-concealed anger,” a journalist observed that, “during the delivery of the Message, the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts exhibited his petulance to the galleries by eccentric motions in his chair, pitching his documents and books upon the floor in ill-tempered disgust.”

  Sumner’s disgust with this plan for reconstruction was based in part on his agreement with the New York Herald editor who, commenting on the proposal that ten percent of the South’s voters be allowed to return the region to the Union, stated flatly that he did not believe there were “that many good men there.” Besides, the Bay State senator had his own notion of the way to deal with traitors, and it was nothing at all like Lincoln’s. In a recent issue of the Atlantic Monthly he had advocated the division of the Confederacy, as soon as it had been brought to its knees, into eleven military districts under eleven imported governors, “all receiving their authority from one source, ruling a population amounting to upward of nine millions. And this imperial domain, indefinite in extent, will also be indefinite in duration … with all powers, executive, legislative, and even judicial, derived from one man in Washington.” Although he admitted that “in undertaking to create military governors, we reverse the policy of the Republic as solemnly declared by Jefferson, and subject the civil to the military authority,” he thought such treatment no worse than was deserved by cane-swinging hotheads who had brought on the war by their pretense of secession. So far as he was concerned, though he continued to deny the right of secession, he was willing to accept it as an act of political suicide. Those eleven states were indeed out of the Union, and the victors had the right to do with them as they chose, including their resettlement with good Republican voters and the determination of when and under what conditions they were to be readmitted. Most of the members of his party agreed, foreseeing a solid Republican South.

  Lincoln wanted that too, of course, but he did not believe that this was the best way to go about securing it. For one thing, such an arrangement was likely to last no longer than it took the South to get back on its feet. For another, he wanted those votes now, or at any rate in time for next year’s presidential and congressional elections, not at the end of some period “indefinite in duration.” Therefore he considered it “vain and profitless” to speculate on whether the rebellious states had withdrawn or could withdraw from the Union, even though this was precisely the issue on which most people thought the war was being fought. “We know that they were and we trust that they shall be in the Union,” he said. “It does not greatly matter whether in the meantime they shall be considered to have been in or out.”

  This was a rift that would widen down the years, but for the present the Jacobins kept their objections within bounds, knowing well enough that when readmission time came round, it would
be Congress that would sit in judgment on the applicants. Southward, however, the reaction was both violent and sudden. Lincoln’s ruthlessness—an element of his political genius that was to receive small recognition from posthumous friends who were safe beyond his reach—had long been apparent to his foes. For example, in addition to the unkept guarantees he had given slaveholders in his inaugural address, he had declared on revoking Frémont’s emancipation order that such matters “must be settled according to laws made by law-makers, and not by military proclamations,” and he had classified as “simply ‘dictatorship’ ” any government “wherein a general, or a President, may make permanent rules of property by proclamation.” Thus he had written in late September of the first year of the war, exactly one year before he issued his own preliminary emancipation proclamation, which differed from Frémont’s only in scope, being also military, and which showed him to be a man who would hold to principles only so long as he had more to gain than lose by them. Observing this, Confederates defined him as slippery, mendacious, and above all not to be trusted.