The Civil War: A Narrative: Fredericksburg to Meridian

by Shelby Foote

  Johnson protested for all he was worth. In the first place, he did not believe the proposed reinforcements could reach Polk in time to head off Sherman; and what was more he was convinced that any substantial reduction of his already outnumbered force, which was being required to maintain a position that had “neither intrinsic strength nor strategic advantage,” would not only expose Atlanta to capture by the blue mass in his front, but would also be likely to result in the destruction of what would remain of the army charged with its defense. This chilling presentation to the government of a choice between losing one or the other of two of its principal cities had the effect of delaying, though not of forestalling, a peremptory order requiring the immediate detachment of Hardee’s corps to Polk for the purpose of covering Mobile. Received on February 16, the order began to be carried out four days later—by coincidence, on the day Sherman began his return march from Meridian—when the three divisions boarded the cars at Dalton for the long ride to Demopolis. Arriving next day they found they were unneeded; Sherman had withdrawn. Polk put them promptly back aboard the cars to rejoin Johnston, who by now was sending up distress signals of his own. His worst fears had been realized; Thomas was advancing. The Union-loyal Virginian had also received peremptory orders, and he too had delayed their execution. Instructed on February 14 to make a “formidable reconnaissance” of Johnston’s position, he took a week to get ready, then started forward from Ringgold on the eighth day, February 22, two days after Hardee departed with the divisions under Cheatham, Walker, and Cleburne. Grant’s hope was that Thomas would catch his adversary off balance and thus be able to drive him back from Rocky Face Ridge and beyond Dalton, in order to “get possession of the place and hold it as a step toward a spring campaign.”

  With three of his seven divisions 350 roundabout miles away, Johnston was something worse than merely off balance when Thomas moved against him. Palmer’s corps made the opening thrust at Tunnel Hill. Formerly occupied by Cleburne, this western spur of Rocky Face Ridge was now held only by Wheeler, whose horse artillery raised such a clatter that the bluecoats were discouraged from attacking until the following day, February 24. By then the rebel troopers had fallen back through Buzzard Roost Gap to cover the flanks of the infantry disposed along the ridge. Thomas probed the passes on the 25th, making some progress against the wide-spread defenders—especially at Dug Gap, immediately southwest of Dalton—but when Palmer launched a coordinated assault next morning he found that Hardee’s three divisions, having completed their round-trip journey to Demopolis, were in position on the ridge; Cleburne, in fact, was on the flank of the flankers. Accordingly, Thomas withdrew as he had come, returning to Ringgold on the same day Sooy Smith rode back into Memphis and Sherman descended on Canton. His “formidable reconnaissance” had cost him 345 casualties and had failed in its larger purpose of seizing Dalton “as a step toward a spring campaign”; but he, like Farragut outside Mobile, had learned much that would be useful when he returned in earnest. As for Johnston, he was agreeably surprised. He had expected to be thrown into precipitate retreat; whereas his men had not only maintained the integrity of a position which he declared had “little to recommend it,” but had inflicted better than twice the 167 casualties they suffered. Even more heartening than the bare tactical result was the contrast between the army’s present frame of mind, here on Rocky Face Ridge, and the one that had been evidenced a dozen weeks ago on Missionary Ridge. Unquestionably its spirit had been lifted: perhaps indeed a bit too much, at least in one respect, to suit Old Joe. For in congratulating his troops on their work, he was critical of the artillery officers for having “exhibited a childish eagerness to discharge their pieces.”

  By now the Confederates had returned to Meridian, or at any rate to the desolation Sherman had created in its place. Speaking in Jackson on his first western visit, just over a year ago, Jefferson Davis had warned that the invaders had it in mind to handle Mississippi “without gloves,” and now his words had been borne out; Meridian was an example of what the men he referred to as “worse than vandal hordes” could accomplish when their commander turned them loose with the admonition that “vigorous war … means universal destruction.” In addition to the damage inflicted on the town itself, a total of twenty-four miles of railroad track, extending an average half dozen miles in all four directions, had been demolished, the crossties burned, the rails heated and twisted into what were known as “Sherman neckties.” Beyond this circumference of utter destruction, for a distance of nearly fifty miles north and south, not a bridge or a trestle had been left unwrecked on the Mobile & Ohio. Already, in the course of their march from Jackson, the raiders had disposed of fifty-one bridges on the Southern, together with an even larger number of trestles and culverts, and they had extended their work eastward, nine miles beyond the junction, to add three more bridges and five trestles to the tally. Yet, sad as it was to survey the charred remains of what once had passed for prosperity in this nonindustrial region, sadder by far were the people of those counties through which the blue column had slogged on its way to and from the town that now was little more than a scar on the green breast of earth. They had the stunned, unbelieving look of survivors of some terrible natural disaster, such as a five-day hurricane, a tidal wave, or an earthquake: with the underlying difference that their grief had been inflicted by human design and was in fact a deliberate product of a new kind of war, quite unlike the one for which they had bargained three years ago, back in that first glad springtime of secession. It was, moreover, a war that was still in progress, and somehow that was the strangest, most distressful aspect of all. Their deprivation was incidental to the large design. They were faced with the aftermath before the finish.

  Polk took no such gloomy view of the prospect. Though he could scarcely deny the all-too-evident validity of Sherman’s boast of having “made a swath of desolation fifty miles broad across the State of Mississippi which the present generation will not forget,” he did not agree with his adversary’s further assertion that the east-central portion of the state could be written off as a factor in the conflict. “I have already taken measures to have all the roads broken up by him rebuilt,” the bishop notified Richmond two days after the raiders turned back in the direction they had come from, “and shall press that work vigorously.” Press it he did. Summoning to his Demopolis headquarters President Samuel Tate of the Memphis & Charleston Railroad, he put him in general charge of the restoration, with full authority to requisition both property and labor. Tate was a driver. Despite a crippling shortage of rails and spikes—not to mention the inevitable objections of planters to the impressment of such of their Negroes as had not gone off with Smith and Sherman—within twenty-six days he had the Mobile & Ohio back in operation, from Tupelo south to Mobile Bay, along with the Alabama & Mississippi, from Meridian to the Tombigbee. The Southern took longer, mainly because of administrative complications, but within another five weeks it too was open, all the way to the Pearl.

  But that was later. At the time he made it, February 28, Sherman’s pronouncement: “My movement cleared Mississippi at one swoop, and with the railroad thus destroyed the Confederacy cannot maintain an army save cavalry west of Tombigbee,” seemed to him irrefutable. He was back in Vicksburg by then, having come on ahead of the infantry, which he left marking time in Canton, as he said afterwards, “with orders to remain till about the 3d of March”—he was still hoping Sooy Smith would turn up—“and then come into Vicksburg leisurely.” Pleased by the added destruction of several miles of the Mississippi Central, north of Jackson—together with 19 locomotives, 28 cars, and 724 carwheels, which helped to ease his disappointment that Polk had managed to save the rolling stock on the other roads within his reach—he proudly announced: “Everything with my command was successful in the highest degree.” That this was hardly an overstatement was evidenced by the anguished protests of his opponents and victims, soldiers and civilians, some of whom reported the damage at a larger figure than his own.
Stephen Lee, for one, charged the raiders with “burning 10,000 bales of cotton and 2,000,000 bushels of corn and carrying off 8000 slaves, many mounted on stolen mules.” He estimated the over-all loss at five million dollars, of which “three fourths was private property,” and asked rhetorically: “Was this the warfare of the nineteenth century?” Sherman was not inclined to dispute the statistics, and he had already given his answer to Lee’s question. This was indeed the warfare of the nineteenth century, at any rate as he intended to practice it, and he was not only proud of what had been accomplished by this first large-scale application of the methods that had aroused the South Carolinian’s moral indignation; he was also looking forward to the time when he could apply those methods elsewhere, perhaps even in the angry young cavalryman’s native state, where the provocation had begun.

  First though would come Georgia; Mississippi had been something of a warm-up, a practice operation in this regard, just as perhaps Georgia in turn would be a warm-up for the Carolinas. In any case Sherman had composed at Vicksburg, by way of further preparation while waiting to set out across Mississippi, a letter to the assistant adjutant general of his army, most of whose members were in camps around Chattanooga waiting for him to return from his current excursion and lead them against Joe Johnston and Atlanta. Ostensibly addressed to Major R. M. Sawyer, the letter was in fact a warning to the civilians in his southward path, as well as a legalistic justification for military harshness, since it dealt primarily with his intention regarding “the treatment of inhabitants known or suspected to be hostile or ‘secesh.’ ” His policy up to now, he said, had been to leave the question to local commanders of occupation forces, “but [I] am willing to give them the benefit of my acquired knowledge and experience,” and though he admitted that it was “almost impossible to lay down rules” for their guidance in such matters, he proceeded to do precisely that, and more.

  “In Europe, whence we derive our principles of war, as developed by their histories,” he began, “wars are between kings or rulers, through hired armies, and not between peoples. These remain as it were neutral, and sell their produce to whatever army is in possession.… Therefore the rule was, and is, that wars are confined to the armies and should not visit the homes of families or private interests.” Little or none of this applied in the present instance, however, any more than it had done in the case of the Irish insurrection against William and Mary, who dispossessed the rebels of their property, sent them forthwith into exile, and gave their lands to Scottish emigrants. The same could be done with justice here, Sherman declared, but he preferred to withhold such measures for a time, on grounds that the guilt was not entirely restricted to the guilty. “For my part,” he explained, “I believe this war is the result of false political doctrine, for which we all as a people are responsible … and I would give all a chance to reflect and when in error to recant.… I am willing to bear in patience that political nonsense of slave rights, States rights, freedom of conscience, freedom of the press, and such other trash as have deluded the Southern people into war, anarchy, bloodshed, and the foulest crimes that have disgraced any time or any people.” He would bear all this in patience, but only for a season; meanwhile he would have the occupation commanders “assemble the inhabitants and explain to them these plain, self-evident propositions, and tell them that it is now for them to say whether they and their children shall inherit the beautiful land which by the accident of nature had fallen to their share.” After this, if they persisted in the error of their ways, would come the thunder. “If they want eternal war, well and good; we accept the issue, and will dispossess them and put our friends in their places.” Moreover, the longer they delayed recanting, the sterner their fate would be. “Three years ago, by a little reflection and patience, they could have had a hundred years of peace and prosperity, but they preferred war; very well. Last year they could have saved their slaves, but now it is too late. All the powers of earth cannot return to them their slaves, any more than their dead grandfathers. Next year their lands will be taken; for in war we can take them, and rightfully, too, and in another year they may beg in vain for their lives.” He warmed as he wrote, assuming the guise of an avenging angel—even the Archangel Michael—to touch on eschatology in the end. “To those who submit to the rightful law and authority, all gentleness and forbearance; but to the petulant and persistent secessionists, why, death is mercy, and the quicker he or she is disposed of the better. Satan and the rebellious saints of Heaven were allowed a continuous existence in hell merely to swell their just punishment. To such as would rebel against a Government so mild and just as ours was in peace, a punishment equal would not be unjust.”

  A copy went to his senator brother, with the request that it be printed for all to read, along and behind the opposing lines of battle. “It’s publication would do no harm,” he said, “except to turn the Richmond press against me as the prince of barbarians.” Actually he was of the opinion that it would do much good, especially Southward, and he urged his adjutant to see that his views were presented to “some of the better people” of the region already occupied, with the suggestion that they pass them along to friends in whose direction he would be moving in the spring. “Read to them this letter,” he wrote, “and let them use it so as to prepare them for my coming.”

  4

  Sherman’s notion of how the war could be won was definite enough, but whether it would be fought that way—with stepped-up harshness, to and through the finish—depended in no small measure on who would be directing it from the top. This was a presidential election year; the armies might have a new Commander in Chief before the advent of the victory which not even the ebullient Ohioan, in his days of highest feather, predicted would occur within the twelve-month span that lay between his return from Meridian, having demonstrated the effectiveness of his method, and the inauguration of the winner of the November contest at the polls. Moreover, the Republican convention was barely three months off, and though Lincoln had expressed a cautious willingness to stand for re-election—“A second term would be a great honor and a great labor,” he had told Elihu Washburne in October, “which together, perhaps, I would not decline if tendered”—whether he would be renominated appeared doubtful. For one thing, recent tradition was against it; none of the other eight Presidents since Andrew Jackson had served beyond a single term. Besides, whatever his popularity with the people, the men who controlled the convention seemed practically unanimous in their conviction that a better candidate could be found. “Not a Senator can be named as favorable to Lincoln’s renomination,” the Detroit Free Press had reported, and the claim went uncontradicted. Nor was this opinion limited to his enemies. David Davis, who had managed his 1860 nomination, and who had been duly rewarded with a seat on the Supreme Court, declared in private: “The politicians in and out of Congress, it is believed, would put Mr Lincoln aside if they dared.” Lyman Trumbull, an associate from early days and now a power in the Senate, believed however that it was not so much a question of daring as of tactics. Writing to a constituent back in Illinois, he presented the reasons behind this opposition and suggested that those who held them were merely biding their time between now and early June, when the delegates would convene in Baltimore. “The feeling for Mr Lincoln’s re-election seems to be very general,” he said, “but much of it I discover is only on the surface. You would be surprised, in talking with public men we meet here, to find how few, when you come to get at their real sentiment, are for Mr Lincoln’s re-election. There is a distrust and fear that he is too undecided and inefficient to put down the rebellion. You need not be surprised if a reaction sets in before the nomination, in favor of some man supposed to possess more energy and less inclination to trust our brave boys in the hands and under the leadership of generals who have no heart in the war. The opposition to Mr L. may not show itself at all, but if it ever breaks out there will be more of it than now appears.”

  It broke out sooner than expected, though not from an un
predictable direction, the source of the explosion being Salmon Chase, or at any rate the men around or behind him, who saw in the adverse reaction to the overlenient Amnesty Proclamation an opportunity too fruitful to be neglected. Chase had been sobered by the Cabinet crisis of mid-December, fourteen months ago, but renewed ambition apparently caused him to forget his extreme discomfort at that time. In any case, in an attempt to influence various state conventions soon to be in session, a group of the Secretary’s friends banded together and sent out in early February a “strictly private” letter afterwards known as the Pomeroy Circular. So called because it was issued over the signature of the group chairman, Senator Samuel C. Pomeroy of Kansas, a prominent Jacobin and old-line abolitionist, the document charged that “party machinery and official influence are being used to secure the perpetuation of the present Administration,” asserted that “those who believe in the interests of the country and of freedom demand a change in favor of vigor and purity,” and then went on to present five main points all delegates would do well to bear in mind. The first two were against Lincoln, whose re-election was not only “practically impossible” but also undesirable, since under him “the war may continue to languish” and “the cause of human liberty, and the dignity of the nation, suffer proportionately.” The third point found “the ‘one-term principle’ absolutely essential to the certain safety of our republican institutions.” The final two were devoted to Chase, who not only had “more of the qualities needed in a President during the next four years than are combined in any other candidate,” but had developed, as well, “a popularity and strength … unexpected even to his warmest admirers.” Finally, each recipient was urged to “render efficient aid by exerting yourself at once to organize your section of the country” and to enter into correspondence with the undersigned chairman “for the purpose either of receiving or imparting information.”