For embalmers and coffin manufacturers, business was good. As the battles peaked in the overland campaign, notices for “Undertakers” appeared regularly in the newspapers. From a location near the Federal hospital at City Point, Virginia, in July, an embalmer carried a drawing of a coffin with the words:The subscribers being located by the proper authorities near the Army of the Potomac, would respectfully offer their services to the friends and relations of deceased soldiers, as Embalmers of the Dead bodies procured from the field and hospital grounds when practicable, disinfected and expressed home with promptness properly encased and securely packed.
Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, William Moore advertised “metallic coffins constantly on hand. Particular attention paid to persons desirous of purchasing ground in Woodland Cemetery.”20
Again Lee was victorious tactically, but his army was too devastated to take strategic advantage of his position and launch a devastating counterattack on Grant and Meade. To all intents they were locked into the strict defensive mode that Lee had sought desperately to avoid. Unless Richmond could be conceded, which Davis was loath to do, there would be no more offensive victories for the Army of Northern Virginia. For his part, Grant understood that Lee could not afford to attack and so altered his strategy from a war of maneuver to one of siege.
“The plan” continued as ever to pursue Lee and flank him out of his defenses, but now a new three-pronged strategy would replace the frontal assaults. 21 The army in the Shenandoah Valley commanded by General David Hunter moved south through the valley, destroying railroads and supplies, and continued east toward Richmond where they would converge with Grant. Sheridan was ordered to enter the Shenandoah Valley from the north and meet in the center with Hunter. Grant and Meade meanwhile slid past Lee at Cold Harbor and seized Petersburg, the last railroad link between Richmond and the South. With Richmond isolated from railroads and communications, and the valley also deprived of railroads and foodstuffs, the Army of Northern Virginia had to either surrender Richmond or starve. In the end they would do both.
PART VII DISCRIMINATION
A CIVILIAN WAR
AUGUST 1864 TO FEBRUARY 1865
CHAPTER 36
“THE PIOUS MEN WILL BE HELD UP AS THE GREATEST OF PATRIOTS”
With Grant laying siege to Petersburg, Virginia, and with Lee having no viable plan to engage Grant’s army in battle, attention shifted to the Shenandoah Valley. Grant’s Virginia strategy was sound, but the execution would require one more bloody year and many false starts before it could finally annihilate the enemy. In the Shenandoah Valley, Union commander David Hunter’s troops succeeded in small skirmishes but encountered no open battle. Instead they were beset by “partisans”—guerrillas who dressed in civilian clothes, hit the enemy hard, and then melted back into the population. Again armies were reminded that in this new kind of war there were no innocent civilians.
Fed up with the guerrilla tactics, Hunter’s men (with his acknowledgment) foraged with impunity from the local farmers, destroying what they did not consume, and leaving the population of some of the country’s finest farm-land to starve. Property was also fair game. With the destruction of railroads as a genuine military objective, the troops freely savaged everything around them. On June 12 Hunter’s marauding soldiers entered Lexington and burned the governor’s home and Virginia Military Institute, whose “boys”—literally—had earlier put up a brave charge at New Market. Only Jubal Early’s timely arrival with the remnants of the famed Stonewall Brigade prevented the destruction of Lynchburg.
In cutting Early free to reinforce the rebels in the vital farming areas of the valley, Lee hoped that Early would counter Hunter and threaten Washington, forcing Grant to lift his siege and cross the river in defense. Lee’s strategy brought some Confederate gains on June 17 and 18, as Early disgraced the numerically superior Hunter by driving him across the Allegheny Mountains in retreat. With Hunter out of ammunition and forced to flee, Early’s army of thirty thousand had the valley to themselves and, more important, the means to plan an audacious raid on Washington.
With Hunter in hiding in West Virginia, Washington stood dangerously exposed, and Early nearly made it. Only a desperate holding action by General Lew Wallace bought Grant a precious extra day to funnel reinforcements from the Army of the Potomac into the capital city. Still, Early’s troops reached the outskirts of Washington before they were repulsed. From there they returned to the valley, continuing their hit-and-run attacks on transportation and supply centers that were designed to terrify the soldiers and weaken northern morale.
With only a ghost force of twenty-five hundred to defend against Grant, General Beauregard fought the greatest battle of his career at Petersburg. By placing his men well behind strongly fortified defenses and imposing walls, Beauregard held Grant’s forces at bay, buying critical time for Lee to arrive with reinforcements. On June 15 Union forces under General William F. “Baldy” Smith attacked the outer defenses of Petersburg. The assault succeeded in destroying the outer lines, thanks in large measure to a regiment of black troops who attacked with vigor and gained distinction in the Northern press. But again the Union losses proved substantial and prolonged the war by months. The “back door” to Richmond had closed.
As the dreadful warfare continued in Virginia, Confederate moralists praised ongoing army revivals. In desperate times, even the skeptical Richmond Examiner joined in praise for the “untiring exertions of [religious] associations, whereby a vast number of chaplains and missionaries have permeated through the refreshing stream of spiritual inspiration. They have succeeded in making the army of Virginia respectful acknowledgers of the Divine Director, if not devout and pious disciples of the Redeemer.”
Throughout the war, the Examiner had praised “the more chivalrous spirit of the Cavaliers” over the “bigoted descendants of the Puritans” and its tendency to “prevent us, by instinct, from making war on women and burning their homesteads over their unshielded heads.” But in this fierce war, Cavalier manners might not survive or suffice. Religion was also required:But if the natures and dispositions of man be not cultivated in the same degree as the mind, even the manly and chivalrous instincts of the Cavaliers will degenerate into the savage. The religious communities have foreseen this danger ... they have endeavored to instill a religious sentiment in the minds of the army.... There may be a time when the praying man ... will be considered as great a general as those in the fields. There may be a time when the pious men ... will be held up as the greatest of patriots.1
Once again the secular press flip-flopped its position in this dynamic war. For the Examiner to come this far toward piety reflects just how desperate the Confederate cause had become in this ever-changing war.
Religion blossomed as well in Northern prisoner-of-war camps. This account is from Elmira, New York:About ten thousand prisoners are under confinement at the Rebel Camp in Elmira, New York. They are supplied with preaching by the local clergy, and are allowed to choose, from time to time, whom they will hear, the only limitation of choice being that none but ministers of undoubted loyalty should be invited. Strange to say, they have never asked for a man of questionable patriotism. Thomas K. Beecher is quite a favorite among them. Their preaching audiences sometimes number more than two thousand. They have prayer meetings every morning and evening, on the open green, where it is affecting to witness often large masses kneeling in solemn supplication to heaven.2
Meanwhile, in a speech to the U.S. Senate, Senator Benjamin Brown of Missouri fulminated at Lincoln’s refusal to lay out a plan of radical reconstruction, but then went on to note how important religion was becoming in the North: “The nation is putting on its Puritanism. Thanksgivings appoint themselves unitedly. Days of supplication are become somewhat more than holidays. The bowing down has ceased to be a mockery in the presence of the multitudinous remembered dead; and even they who heretofore have been accounted most indifferent begin to hold to a realizing conviction that God does direct the
affairs of nations by His special providences.”3
Back on the fields of battle, Lee’s army began filing into the Petersburg trench works with a determination to halt Grant once again. By the time the Federals finally mounted a massive assault on June 18, Lee had dug in; the Yankees were unwilling to face another Cold Harbor. After a couple of token raids, in which it became clear that the Yankees would not fight suicidally any longer, Meade called off the assaults. Grant decided that Petersburg would have to be invested (besieged). Once again the opportunity to smash Lee’s army came and went, leaving Lincoln frustrated and Grant more determined than ever. By retaining control of the railroad to Richmond, Lee avoided a full-scale siege of starvation and could communicate with the rest of the Confederacy. But he lacked all room and resources for maneuver in the face of Grant’s superior numbers.
After June 22 battles ceased for the summer and the war deteriorated into a duel of trench systems where snipers ruled. Lee worried less about Grant, whom he felt confident he could withstand, than about food. In a message to President Davis on June 26, he declared:I am less uneasy about holding our position than about our ability to procure supplies for the army. I fear the latter difficulty will oblige me to attack Genl Grant in his entrenchments, which I should not hesitate to do but for the loss it will inevitably entail. A want of success would in my opinion be almost fatal, and this causes me to hesitate in the hope that some relief may be procured without running such great hazard.4
Petersburg, in other words, was in danger of becoming Lee’s own Andersonville.
Petersburg afforded a glimpse of the future, in which trench warfare would replace frontal assaults. Every day was potentially a soldier’s last, as snipers took aim at close range from trench to trench. George Elsworth described the new realities: “We are on pickett every other day and only about thirty yards apart. I had 6 of my Co. kild last night.... I wish to be remembered by all and tell them I have seen the Elephant. I have been in twenty two battles and only was wounded once in the left wrist slightly. I have never seen a day in the first 3 years but what I should do duty and not one in the last [year].”5
Again, when not engaged in the business of killing, soldiers engaged in conversation across the line. In a letter written in August, Union Private Blynum described picket duty: “We are now picketing the extreme left near Petersburg. Our line is within speaking distance of the ‘Johnies’ and yesterday we exchanged papers with them.”6
Besides unveiling a new type of war, battles around Petersburg greatly enhanced the reputation of African American soldiers fighting on the outskirts. African American troops were assigned the hardest fighting against forts near Petersburg. A white officer attached to the Twenty-second U.S. Colored Infantry described their triumphant charge up “an almost impassable ravine” that led to a rebel “skedaddle” (retreat). Their performance left no doubt in his mind: “The problem is solved. The negro is a man, a soldier, a hero.”
Then, with Fort Pillow in mind, the officer added a moral of his own:Our men, unfortunately, owing to the irregular feature of the ground, took no prisoners. Sir, we can bayonet the enemy to terms on this matter of treating colored soldiers as prisoners of war far sooner than the authorities at Washington can bring him to it by negotiation. This I am morally persuaded of. I know further that the enemy won’t fight us if he can help it. I am sure that the same number of white troops could not have taken those works.... The real fact is, the rebels will not stand against our colored soldiers when there is any chance of their being taken prisoner.7
While Petersburg lay under siege, Richmond nervously awaited its fate. Davis made clear that “we have no friends abroad,” but still retained hope in Johnston’s army to escape Sherman’s snare, aid Lee, and deliver up the Federals.
Newspapers on both sides continued to print rumors and declare victories prematurely. On June 18 the Philadelphia Inquirer ran front-page headlines on “The Capture of Petersburg.” The news was spectacular: “Baldy Smith Attacks Petersburg,” “The Rebel Fortifications Carried,” “The City Now Held by U.S.”8 The problem, of course, was that the assault had failed, and, on that very day, Grant determined to invest the city and begin a siege.
While Confederate currency was rapidly reduced to near-worthless paper, the Northern stock market, strong for a while, showed signs of panic. In another signal of mounting desperation, the price of gold surged. Northern audiences were meanwhile shocked by the scale of destruction launched by Grant’s armies. After the loss of fifty thousand boys, Grant was—on paper anyway—no closer to Richmond than McClellan two years earlier. And the bodies continued to pile up. Democratic pleas for a negotiated settlement were stronger than ever. What victories there were lost their luster as life in some communities rent by the war became one continuous funeral procession. Casualties that took only weeks to multiply would require years to recover from.
In response, Lincoln proclaimed a fast day for August 4. Word of Lincoln’s proclamation quickly reached the Southern papers and excited much religious response. The secular Richmond Daily Dispatch had, by 1864, become as religious as the religious press had become worldly. On July 16 a writer commented, “A despot humbles himself because his bloody crimes have not yet produced their desired result. Can anything more shockingly blasphemous be imagined?” Clearly both sides thought the other reprobate (regardless of soldierly respect).
The following week, another shot was lodged at the fast day. Conveniently forgetting that the Confederacy had long-since been “Puritanized” with its observation of civil fast days, the paper accused the North of a “blending of politics and religion ... a distinctive characteristic of Puritanism.” Without religion, the writer declared, the evil war could not continue. But Lincoln’s proclamation for a fast day and the churches’ willing acquiescence proved that “[t]he Puritan pulpit is the big drum for the Yankee war, calling sinners to the battlefield instead of to repentance.”9
While on the losing side more often than not, Southern opinion was not as sour as that in the North. In part, they were encouraged by a Northern Democratic resurgence. And in larger part, they were encouraged by Lee. That his forces could fight to the death and, at the same time, turn to Christ in record numbers provided a mighty inspiration. Americans have always loved an underdog, and in that role Lee and his army held uncontested sway over the Confederate public imagination. As long as Lee stood, so did the Confederacy.
Although loath to assault Lee’s impregnable fortifications at Petersburg, Grant was not one to sit idle. In late June he hatched a brilliant scheme to employ a regiment of coal miners from Pennsylvania to dig a five-hundred-foot tunnel under the Southern trenches and pack it with an immense eight-thousand-pound load of gunpowder to blast the rebels into oblivion.
The engineering and the explosion on July 30 were nearly textbook perfect, but the follow-up proved to be yet another Federal slaughter. It began when Meade countermanded Burnside’s orders to lead the assault with a division of black veterans led by an experienced commander and instead chose a white division with a green commander chosen by drawing straws. Worse, the commander, James H. Ledlie, failed to appear at all, staying behind the lines drinking rum. The blast was so enormous that it created a crater twenty-five feet deep and two hundred feet wide and momentarily stunned the rebel defenders.
But then the plan ran awry. Instead of exploiting the gap created by the explosion and running around the crater as he was ordered, Burnside, in Grant’s words, “seemed to have paid no attention whatever to the instructions and left all the obstruction in his own front for his troops to get over.”10 The Yankees flooded into the crater instead of around it, where, to their horror, they soon found themselves entombed by recovered Confederates. What was forever after known as the Battle of the Crater became a shooting gallery as the Confederates sealed the breach and then proceeded to virtually murder the targets massed beneath them.
Again Grant looked incompetence and destruction in the eye. He later complained
, “The effort was a stupendous failure. It cost us about four thousand men, mostly, however, captured; and all due to inefficiency on the part of the corps commander and the incompetence of the division commander who was sent to lead the assault.”11 James H. Payne, an African American quartermaster sergeant, agreed:How easily Petersburg could have been taken on the 30th of July, had the white soldiers and their commanders done their duty! But prejudice against colored troops prevented them. Instead of a general effort being made, as was contemplated, only a few men were taken in to be slaughtered and taken prisoner, which is the equivalent of death, for no mercy is shone to them when captured.12
Though defeated, the division of African Americans commanded by General Edward Ferrero showed their courage and determination in action. When the rebels re-formed and counterattacked, they encountered the black division left behind. For Lee’s soldiers, who had never seen African American troops, the sight was enraging. Not content to simply shoot at the Yankees, the rebels charged into the fray, killing five hundred black soldiers and taking only two black prisoners. Many of the blacks were shot in cold blood after surrendering. Lee had observed the carnage from only five hundred yards away and obviously knew of the murders taking place. In yet another searing enactment of the inhumane racial civil war within the Civil War, he made no comment, then or later.13
CHAPTER 37
“IF THEY WANT PEACE THEY . . . MUST STOP THE WAR”
As Grant invested Lee’s troops at Petersburg, a very different war emerged in Georgia. Sherman had built his army less for brute strength than for maneuverability and rapid flanking movements. For John Emerson Anderson, who had fought with General Banks in the Shenandoah, suffered as a prisoner of war at Belle Isle, and then been reinstated with Sherman’s army, the first impression of the army in formation was overwhelming:When we awoke on Monday May 9 1864, thousands upon thousands of our union boys had been collected here from all parts of the lines east, and west, organized in six army corps each one commanded by men that were a host within themselves, and the whole commanded by General W. T. Sherman whose very appearance denoted a giants strength of intellect, force and physical endurance. As we stood and gazed on the magnificent host in our sight, who were formed in mass, in the order of rank in which the columns would move at the word of command, our faith in the final triumph of the union arms was quickened.1
Upon the Altar of the Nation Page 44