When in May 1864 Sherman took his troops into Georgia, the Army of the Potomac too was on the march. Generals Grant and Meade broke camp early in the same month and moved south, crossing the Rapidan River on May 4. Their objective was to engage Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and destroy it.
Grant envisioned multiple assaults on the Confederates. In coordination with Meade’s advance, Grant ordered Butler to attack from the south and General Franz Sigel to take control of the Shenandoah Valley. In concert with Sherman’s invasion of Georgia, the Union forces would be attacking on several fronts simultaneously, offering the rebels no respite. In effect, Grant had crafted a strategy that he hoped would lead to overall victory. It would, but not quickly, and not without great loss of life.
Lee still had some sixty-four thousand soldiers and, most certainly, no intention of giving up. His goal was to keep Grant at bay, hold on to Richmond, and hope Northerners, tired of the war, would agree to let the states in rebellion depart the union. Lee’s army was battle-tested. It had bested the Army of the Potomac before and was confident it would do so again.
With approximately 115,000 men Grant first clashed with Lee at a place in Virginia called the Wilderness. This was an inhospitable tract of land, not far from Chancellorsville, some ten miles wide and full of tangled trees and bushes. It was a terrible place to fight a battle, and the ensuing two-day fight was terrible indeed. Many of the wounded, unable to move, died from brush fires started by the gunfire. Their screams were a chorus to the carnage. The Union army suffered sixteen thousand casualties. No one in blue believed they had won.
After the battle most Union soldiers expected the Army of the Potomac to withdraw, in order to rest and rebuild. That is what the army had done in the past. Grant had a different approach. He ordered Meade south to again engage the enemy. The grinding down of Robert E. Lee and his army had begun.
Grant wanted the Union army to occupy Spotsylvania Court House, some eleven miles south of the Wilderness. This was a crossroads, possession of which might cut Lee off from Richmond. But the Army of Northern Virginia got there first. The resulting battle took place on May 12, and once again, American blood flowed freely. According to Robin H. Neillands, “men fought hand to hand with musket and bayonet, sword and pistol.” On both sides casualties were high. When it was over, Grant again moved south. He was taking the initiative away from Robert E. Lee.
They next met at Cold Harbor, near the Chickahominy River. There, in several days of fighting, the Union troops attacked their Southern counterparts. In one such assault, on June 3, Grant hurled his men against well-entrenched Confederates, losing seven thousand men—killed or wounded—in a single day. Later in his memoirs he would write that this attack was a mistake.
So far Grant’s campaign had been costly. The Army of the Potomac was averaging some two thousand casualties per day. In total, more than fifty-four thousand Union soldiers had been killed, wounded, or gone missing. Critics in Washington, and there were many, were calling Grant a butcher, a perception that has lasted until the present time. In fact, throughout the war Lee’s casualty rates were higher than those of Grant. Historian James M. McPherson notes that among seventeen Civil War commanders, both North and South, Lee had the highest percentage of casualties. But the reputation of Grant as a not so subtle killer of men remains. Yet he was doing what he had to do to win. Grant was using the material superiority of the North to hammer the Confederacy’s best army. Slowly but surely, he was destroying the Army of Northern Virginia. Grant knew it and so did Lee.
The Union commander was relentless. After Cold Harbor he again ordered Meade to move south, this time to Petersburg. This was a small town directly south of Richmond. It embraced a railroad line on which supplies were transported to both the Southern capital and Lee’s army. Take the town and the Army of Northern Virginia would have to move out into the open and fight. Grant wanted such a battle, for he was sure he could win it.
A battle did occur at Petersburg, but not of the type Grant had envisioned. Instead of a few days of assault and counterattack, as had taken place at Cold Harbor and Spotsylvania Court House, the Union army laid siege to Petersburg. For nine months Meade’s men kept Lee’s penned up. Toward the end of the siege, Union trenches extended some fifty miles. It was warfare that foreshadowed the type of fighting that would later characterize the First World War.
While Grant and the Army of the Potomac were at Petersburg, Sherman was marching through Georgia. And Franz Sigel was attempting to take control of the Shenandoah Valley. Unfortunately for the North, Sigel failed to do so. As did his replacement, General Daniel Hunter. Grant then sent Philip Sheridan to deal with the Confederates. A favorite of Grant, Sheridan was an officer who knew how to fight. He vanquished the rebels, whose commander, General Jubal A. Early, previously had moved troops across the Potomac and threatened Washington. So Grant had dispatched troops from the Army of the Potomac to the Northern capital, and Early wisely withdrew. Washington was safe, and thanks to Sheridan, the Shenandoah Valley was at last no longer in Southern hands.
During the siege of Petersburg an episode occurred worthy of mention. Union soldiers from Pennsylvania, men who had been miners before the war, proposed that a tunnel be dug under the Confederate positions, filled with explosives, and then ignited. The result would be a huge gap in the enemy’s defensive structure through which Union troops would pour. The proposal was accepted and the digging began. In overall charge of the project was one of Meade’s corps commanders, none other than Ambrose Burnside.
On July 30, 1864, eight tons of explosives were detonated, surprising the Confederates and creating a gigantic crater. But the advance of the Union soldiers was slow. The Confederates recovered, and, worst of all, Burnside’s men were unable to move out of the crater once they had entered it. The soldiers in gray poured fire downward and slaughtered the Union troops. The attack failed, with considerable loss of life. General Burnside was relieved of command and the siege continued.
By early 1865 the Confederacy was crumbling. Southern armies in Tennessee and Georgia had been defeated. The Carolinas essentially were out of the war, courtesy of Sherman as well as of General Alfred Terry and Admiral Porter. Early in January, these latter two gentlemen had led a combined army-navy task force that seized Fort Fisher outside of Wilmington. Mobile and New Orleans were under Northern control. The economy of the South was in ruins. The Union navy owned the waters offshore and on the rivers. Confederate forces—particularly the army facing Grant and Meade—were short of manpower and short of supplies. Many of Lee’s men lacked shoes. Many more had little to eat.
So the Army of Northern Virginia did what it was good at. It attacked, striking a Union position around Petersburg called Fort Stedman. The assault took place on March 25 and, as in the past, was conducted with skill and courage. But the Union troops, by now a match with their Southern counterparts, recovered and beat back the attack. Grant responded in kind. He sent Sheridan and twelve thousand men to the southeast, where, on April 1, they met up with a force commanded by George Pickett of Gettysburg fame. Sheridan’s men demolished their opponents, in the process taking five thousand prisoners. Lee’s army was disintegrating. The next day, Grant ordered a full-scale assault along the entire line of siege. Union artillery blasted away and Union infantry swarmed across the Confederate positions. It was an unstoppable tidal wave of military might, and when it was over, Robert E. Lee and his army were in full retreat.
Union forces occupied Petersburg, and on April 3, 1865, the Army of the Potomac marched into Richmond. Lee hoped to reach North Carolina, there to link up with Joseph Johnston’s remaining troops. Grant prevented this. He ordered Meade’s men to pursue the Southerners. On April 6, Sheridan caught up with the Army of Northern Virginia at Sayler’s Creek and inflicted further damage on the Confederate’s already depleted force. Lee and his army continued to flee. Three days later Union cavalry overtook them at Appomattox Court Ho
use and the Confederate general called it quits.
Grant’s terms were generous. He permitted Lee and his men, once they pledged not to take up arms against the United States, to retain their horses and go home, which is what they did. Once soldiers of the South, they were once again simply Americans. With their departure, for all practical purposes, the War Between the States was over.
Could the South have won?
Perhaps, but a Confederate victory was unlikely. The North simply had too great a material advantage. The South was largely an agrarian society, while the North, though full of farms, was replete with companies small and large that could manufacture what a nation at war required. Resources, natural and man-made, favored the North. For example, of the thirty-one thousand miles of railroad track in the United States twenty-two thousand were in the North. Of the firearms produced in the United States only 3 percent were made in the South. The North also possessed the majority of shipyards. Most telling of all were the population figures: there were twenty-two million people in the North, whereas in the South the population was but nine million, of whom four million were slaves.
Hence those states that formed the Confederacy were outmatched. The American War Between the States was far from an equal contest.
How then might the South have won?
The South might have gained independence from the federal union by doing better than it did on the battlefield. Military victory could have led to successful secession. Had Vicksburg not fallen, had Lee routed McClellan at Antietam or beaten Meade at Gettysburg, the North may well have sued for peace. If Sherman and Sheridan had failed in 1864, Lincoln in all likelihood would not have been reelected and the American union of states would probably have split in two. What if sometime in 1863 or 1864 Robert E. Lee had crushed the Army of the Potomac, had beaten it so badly that it simply disintegrated? Were that to have happened, surely the outcome of the war would have been different. But it didn’t happen. The great victory parade was held not in Richmond but in Washington.
Might Great Britain have altered the course of the war?
Official recognition of the Confederacy by Great Britain might well have produced a different outcome. In addition to legitimacy and prestige, recognition would have brought much needed supplies to the South. Even without official support, Britain at times aided the Southern cause, in one instance permitting Confederate agents to obtain eight hundred thousand British rifles. At first, before Lincoln’s determination to hold the Union together became apparent, Britain’s political elites thought the North could never take control of the 750,000 square miles the rebel states comprised. Plus, they had no love for the United States, a country many of them viewed as uncultured and a commercial threat. But they also had no desire to go to war with the United States. The British wanted the South first to win independence on its own, and then they would bestow recognition and its benefits. The South was hoping that the Union naval blockade, in preventing Southern cotton from reaching English mills, would so damage the British economy as to force the government in London to side directly and substantially with the Confederates. The blockade did hurt England’s industrial midlands but not to the degree the South had hoped. What decided the matter was the Emancipation Proclamation. Once it became evident that the North was fighting to free the slaves, while the South was rebelling in order to preserve slavery, Britain simply could not side with the Confederacy.
What happened at Gettysburg?
What happened, in essence, is that the Army of the Potomac, under the command of Major General George Meade, decisively defeated the Army of Northern Virginia. In July 1863 Meade stopped Lee’s second invasion of the North and, in so doing, inflicted heavy losses on the Confederate army. Responsibility for the defeat rests squarely on Robert E. Lee. In American history Lee is a revered figure. He was a gifted leader and a skilled commander. That he was fighting to uphold the institution of slavery seems not to have lessened the respect in which he was, and is, held. Yet his management of the Battle of Gettysburg requires a reassessment of his talents. Lee failed miserably at Gettysburg. His insistence on directly attacking the Union center on day three was crucially wrong. Pickett’s Charge was suicidal, the results catastrophic. A Union general who did what he had done would have been sacked. But Lee was not. He continued on, beloved by his men and respected—then and now—throughout the entire country.
Of course, another view of the Battle of Gettysburg shifts responsibility from Lee to others. Instead of blaming the Confederate leader, credit is given to Meade and the troops he commanded. This view is wonderfully expressed, according to Civil War historian James M. McPherson, by Pickett himself, who, when asked after the war what had led to the Confederate defeat, is said to have replied, “I always thought the Union army had something to do with it.”
How best to think about Ulysses S. Grant?
In comparison to that of Lee, Grant’s reputation suffers. Much of that stems from his less than successful years as president. Some originates with the widely held view that his approach to battle was excessively costly in blood. And his lack of success in business simply adds to his tarnished reputation.
He deserves better. True, his years in the White House were undistinguished and his talents for business were limited. But as a military commander in the War Between the States, Ulysses S. Grant had no peer. He understood the North’s need for a comprehensive strategy. And, unlike his predecessors as general in chief, he was able to implement one. His reputation as a butcher of men is unfair. As noted above, Lee had a higher rate of casualties, and as the Vicksburg campaign revealed, Grant could maneuver an army in the field as well as anyone. What his actions in the East against Lee showed was his determination to do what had to be done to wear down and eventually destroy the Army of Northern Virginia. In thinking about Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant, it’s well to remember who won.
The plain fact of the matter is that Grant was the best of the American civil war generals. That’s because he knew how to fight and, more important, how to win. He may not have looked the part—in appearance he was nondescript and in dress ordinary (he usually wore a private plain blue shirt with the stars of his rank sewn on)—but as a military commander he was superb. The American army has had no better general.
What did Philip Kearny, John Reynolds, and John Sedgwick have in common?
They were all major generals in the Union army and they were all killed in battle. During the American War Between the States high rank was no guarantee of safety. Often generals led from the front and often they were killed or wounded. Thousands more of lesser rank lost their lives. Indeed, the years 1861–1865 in the United States saw killing become a common occurrence. The battles between North and South resulted in the death of approximately 618,000 men. Then—and now—that is an enormous number. In 1865 it represented 2 percent of the U.S. population. There was hardly a town in America that did not have someone killed. The war was many things—a sectional conflict, a crusade against slavery, an effort to keep the Union together, a spur of economic growth in the North, and in the South a misguided attempt to preserve the status quo—but, above all, it was a bloodbath. Young men, boys really, marched into battle. Wearing blue or gray, they shouldered arms and advanced in the face of enemy fire. Courage was their companion, as was the angel of death. Again, 618,000 men were killed. The price of union was high, very high.
5
SPAIN
1898
As the year 1898 began, few Americans held kind thoughts toward Spain. They resented a European political presence in the Caribbean, Spain then controlling both Cuba and Puerto Rico. They identified with Cuban insurgents fighting for independence. They were repelled by accounts of Spanish brutality on the islands. Moreover, they blamed Spain for the destruction of the battleship Maine, which mysteriously had exploded in Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898, resulting in considerable loss of life. In all these areas American anger was encouraged by
widespread newspaper reporting that faulted Spain. That the reports often exaggerated the truth seemed not to matter. Spain was the target of American ire.
So when the president of the United States, then William McKinley, called on Congress to take action, the legislators responded. On April 20, 1898, both the House of Representatives and the Senate adopted a resolution that: (1) stated that the people of Cuba were and should be free and independent, (2) directed the government of Spain to relinquish control of Cuba and to withdraw its military from the island, and (3) required the president to direct the armed forces of the United States to take steps necessary to realize the objectives laid out in (1) and (2). Further, the congressional resolution stated that save for the time necessary to rid the island of Spain, the United States had no intention of exercising sovereignty over Cuba.
Naturally enough, the government in Madrid took exception to the resolution. It withdrew its ambassador to the United States, saying the resolution was equivalent to a declaration of war. Were there any doubt as to what was intended—and there really wasn’t—Congress, at McKinley’s request, formalized its action on April 25, declaring quite specifically that a state of war existed between the United States of America and the Kingdom of Spain.
It was to be an uneven fight. Spain had neither the economic resources nor the military might to wage a successful war against the United States. The conflict would last less than four months. Casualties would be modest in number, although the consequences for the United States would be great. Senator John Hay called it “a splendid little war.” Theodore Roosevelt said it was “a bully fight.”
America at War: Concise Histories of U.S. Military Conflicts From Lexingtonto Afghanistan Page 11