Freedom (Gone For Soldiers)

by Jeffry S. Hepple

  After the debacle at Franklin, Hood entrenched his army along a four-mile line facing the Union trenches, south of the city.

  On December 2nd, Hood’s batteries at Bell’s Bend on the Cumberland River captured two transports carrying remounts. The following night the Federal ironclad Carondelet and the tinclad Fairplay recaptured the transports while the rest of the Union Navy engaged the batteries.

  Also on December 2nd, hoping to draw Thomas out of his works, Hood ordered three brigades of Bate’s division to attack the railroad between Nashville and Murfreesboro. On the 4th, Bate attacked Blockhouse No. 7 at Overall Creek and was driven away by Union forces from the little fort in La Vergne. The following day, Hood reinforced Bate with two more infantry brigades and two cavalry divisions commanded by Forrest, ordering them to immediately take the La Vergne blockhouse and the fort, and then the Federal Garrison at Murfreesboro. The blockhouse and small fort surrendered when confronted with such a large force, but the Murfreesboro garrison put up a vicious fight and on December 7th, they routed Forrest’s troops.

  Thomas launched his attack at about 4:00 AM, but heavy fog delayed it getting fully underway until after sunrise. Union General Steedman struck the Confederate right flank and, although he was unable to penetrate the defenses, he stayed in the fight all day.

  Smith, Wood and Wilson’s cavalry dismounted and Quincy’s division mounted struck the left flank. Without Forrest and the brigades that he had with him in Murfreesboro, Quincy was able to easily scatter the cavalry division of Confederate General James Chalmers and drive into the infantry.

  As the Confederate flank crumbled, Smith, Wood and Wilson wheeled into formation along the Hillsboro Pike and by noon, they had moved beyond it. Hood sent reinforcements to the outpost on Montgomery Hill, near the center of his line, but Beatty’s division in Wood’s corps took it with a single charge.

  At about 1:00 PM, Wood, supported by Schofield, Wilson and Van Buskirk attacked a salient in Confederate General Stewart’s line and routed the entire corps. The Confederates then retreated to Granny White Turnpike.

  With Wilson’s troops dismounted, Quincy didn’t have a sufficient mounted force to prevent Hood from regrouping, so he returned, disappointed, to the Union lines after nightfall while the battered Confederate troops began digging a new line between Shy’s Hill and Overton Hill.

  December 16, 1864

  Nashville, Tennessee

  General Thomas used the morning to plan his attack and to move into place in front of Hood’s new line. Just after noon, Wood and Steedman probed the Confederate position on Overton Hill while the bulk of Thomas’s infantry maneuvered against Shy’s Hill. At about 4:00, Confederate General Cheatham’s forces broke and ran. At the same time, Wood renewed his attack on Overton Hill and carried it easily.

  It started to rain as the sun was setting and Hood began withdrawing toward Franklin. He had lost over six thousand men in two days.

  After regrouping their cavalry divisions, Wilson set out in pursuit of Hood while Quincy moved toward Murfreesboro to intercept Forrest. The muddy roads made travel slow. At the Murfreesboro garrison, Quincy learned that Forrest had gone and he received a relayed telegram from Sherman, ordering him to Savannah.

  December 24, 1864

  Van Buskirk Point, New Jersey

  Betty Van Buskirk stepped back from the Christmas tree. “It’s just beautiful. I’m so glad you decided to do this.”

  Robert climbed down from the stepladder. “This whole trip has been a colossal waste of money, so throwing away a little time to cut and decorate a tree seemed appropriate.”

  She walked to him, took his arm and put her head on his shoulder. “I don’t think it’s a waste of money to visit your family home for Christmas.”

  “It is when there’s no more family.”

  “How can you say that? The three of us are a family.”

  He looked down at her. “Three?”

  “Not until June, officially. But I know he’s with us now.”

  “He?”

  “Of course.”

  He kissed her. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Tell me you love me.”

  “I love you.”

  “Now wish me a Merry Christmas and let me open that gift.”

  December 26, 1864

  Savannah, Georgia

  EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, December 26, 1864

  MY DEAR GENERAL SHERMAN:--Many, many thanks for your Christmas gift, the capture of Savannah.

  When you were about leaving Atlanta for the Atlantic coast, I was anxious, if not fearful; but feeling that you were the better judge, and remembering that “nothing risked, nothing gained,” I did not interfere. Now, the undertaking being a success, the honor is all yours; for I believe none of us went further than to acquiesce.

  And taking the work of General Thomas into the count, as it should be taken, it is indeed a great success. Not only does it afford the obvious and immediate military advantages; but in showing to the world that your army could be divided, putting the stronger part to an important new service, and yet leaving enough to vanquish the old opposing force of the whole,--Hood’s army,--it brings those who sat in darkness to see a great light. But what next?

  I suppose it will be safe if I leave General Grant and yourself to decide.

  Please make my grateful acknowledgments to your whole army of officers and men.

  Yours very truly,

  A. LINCOLN.

  February 6, 1865

  City Point, Virginia

  Robert closed the door to Grant’s quarters behind him, shutting out the wind and swirling snow. “Robert E. Lee’s the general-in-chief of the South.”

  Grant looked up at him. “Maybe that means he’s going to pull out.”

  “He’ll be pulling out soon, but I doubt that his new position will have much to do with it.”

  “Anything from Cump?”

  “No. But Quincy finally caught up to him at Beaufort’s Bridge in South Carolina.”

  “How is he?”

  “Quincy? Fine, I suppose. We don’t discuss anything other than war business. Do you know anything about a letter that Halleck sent to Cump on about New Year’s Eve?”

  Grant looked annoyed. “Do you know how many letters and wires I read every day?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact I do,” Robert replied in a sharp tone. “And I know that you’d be reading three times as many without my help.”

  Grant sat back in his chair for a moment, then opened a drawer, took out an envelope and tossed it on his desk.

  Robert picked it up and removed the folded letter.

  HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY

  WASHINGTON, D.C., December 30, 1864.

  Major-General W. T. SHERMAN, Savannah.

  MY DEAR GENERAL: I take the liberty of calling your attention, in this private and friendly way, to a matter which may possibly hereafter be of more importance to you than either of us may now anticipate.

  While almost every one is praising your great march through Georgia, and the capture of Savannah, there is a certain class having now great influence with the President, and very probably anticipating still more on a change of cabinet, who are decidedly disposed to make a point against you. I mean in regard to “inevitable Sambo.” They say that you have manifested an almost criminal dislike to the negro, and that you are not willing to carry out the wishes of the Government in regard to him, but repulse him with contempt! They say you might have brought with you to Savannah more than fifty thousand, thus stripping Georgia of that number of laborers, and opening a road by which as many more could have escaped from their masters; but that, instead of this, you drove them from your ranks, prevented their following you by cutting the bridges in your rear, and thus caused the massacre of large numbers by Wheeler’s cavalry.

  To those who know you as I do, such accusation will pass as the idle winds, for we presume that you discouraged the negroes from following you because you had not the means of su
pporting them, and feared they might seriously embarrass your march. But there are others, and among them some in high authority, who think or pretend to think otherwise, and they are decidedly disposed to make a point against you.

  I do not write this to induce you to conciliate this class of men by doing any thing which you do not deem right and proper, and for the interest of the Government and the country; but simply to call your attention to certain things which are viewed here somewhat differently than from your stand-point. I will explain as briefly as possible:

  Some here think that, in view of the scarcity of labor in the South, and the probability that a part, at least, of the able-bodied slaves will be called into the military service of the rebels, it is of the greatest importance to open outlets by which these slaves can escape into our lines, and they say that the route you have passed over should be made the route of escape, and Savannah the great place of refuge. These, I know, are the views of some of the leading men in the Administration, and they now express dissatisfaction that you did not carry them out in your great raid.

  Now that you are in possession of Savannah, and there can be no further fears about supplies, would it not be possible for you to reopen these avenues of escape for the negroes, without interfering with your military operations? Could not such escaped slaves find at least a partial supply of food in the rice-fields about Savannah, and cotton plantations on the coast?

  I merely throw out these suggestions. I know that such a course would be approved by the Government, and I believe that a manifestation on your part of a desire to bring the slaves within our lines will do much to silence your opponents. You will appreciate my motives in writing this private letter. Yours truly,

  H. W. HALLECK.

  “Those bastards.” Robert put the letter back in the envelope and dropped it on Grant’s desk. “What did you do about this?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Why not?”

  “It isn’t my business.”

  “You’re the general-in-chief.”

  “I know who I am. Do you?”

  Robert walked out into the blizzard and slammed the door.

  Betty Van Buskirk parted the curtains and looked out the window of her cabin, then hurried to open the door for her husband. “What’s the matter?”

  “Grant.” He came in, closed the door and began brushing snow off his clothes. “He’s allowing the politicians to walk all over Cump.”

  She took his hat and cape. “Sherman’s perfectly capable of defending himself.”

  “Well thank you for your support,” he said sarcastically.

  “This has nothing to do with support. You’re wrong, Grant’s right. Now go stand by the fire before you freeze.”

  March 4, 1865

  Washington, D.C.

  The second inauguration of Abraham Lincoln as the 16th President of the United States took place on the Capitol’s east front.

  Before the president was sworn in by Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, Vice President-elect Andrew Johnson, who had been drinking to offset the pain of typhoid fever, took his oath and was ridiculed in the press as a “drunken clown.”

  Lincoln seemed not to notice and proceeded as if nothing unusual had occurred.

  As Chief Justice Chase administered the oath of office, John Wilkes Booth, an actor from a famous thespian family, was standing almost within pistol range of Lincoln. His proximity to the President was granted by virtue of his fiancée, Lucy Hale, the daughter of John P. Hale. Hale was a lifelong politician, unsuccessful candidate for President and the recent Lincoln nominee for the position of United States Minister to Spain. Booth had been a member of the pro-Confederate Knights of the Golden Circle for several years and in March of 1864, after U.S. Grant had suspended prisoner-of-war exchanges, Booth and several conspirators had plotted to kidnap Lincoln and hold him until exchanges were reinstated. That plan had never borne fruit but Booth had new plans.

  With his right hand raised and his left hand on a Bible, Lincoln pronounced in clear tones, “I, Abraham Lincoln, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God.”

  He shook Chase’s hand, murmured a few thanks to excited supporters and stepped to the podium. “Fellow countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

  “On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it–all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war–seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

  “One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.

  “Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered–that of neither has been answered fully.

  “The Almighty has his own purposes. ‘Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.’ If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope–fervently do we pray–that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ‘The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’

  “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan–to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.”

  When it came
time for Lincoln to leave the Capitol and return to the White House, he passed through the police cordon and into a guarded passage. A moment later, he stopped to look back toward the sound of a disturbance, but then went on when nothing seemed amiss. That evening he was told that the actor John Wilkes Booth had tried to force his way through the policemen in order to shake the President’s hand. Lincoln immediately dismissed the incident but John Wilkes Booth wrote in his diary, “What an excellent chance I had, if I wished, to kill the President on Inauguration day!”

  March 11, 1865

  Fayetteville, North Carolina

  Sherman’s Carolinas campaign began on February 1st. Meeting little Confederate resistance, he’d captured Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, by the 17th. In response, Robert E. Lee, the general-in-chief of the Confederacy, ordered General Joseph E. Johnston to command all Confederate forces capable of opposing Sherman, and Johnston did what he could to gather disparate units at Smithfield, North Carolina, in anticipation of Sherman’s movements.

  Sherman reached Fayetteville on the 11th where he stayed for four days. His plan was to send his left wing on a feint toward Raleigh while he moved his right wing toward his real objective, Goldsboro.

  March 17, 1865

  Washington, D.C.