Across Five Aprils

by Irene Hunt

  Shadrach wrote that he and Jenny had seen the President and General Grant as they drove through the Washington streets together.

  .... The President’s face is deeply lined, and his cheeks are gaunt. I have seen so many soldiers whose cheeks have had that sunken look, even though they were young faces.... The President looks at least twenty years older than the pictures you and I used to study together in the early days of the war. But his face was full of light as the crowds cheered; I think he knew they were cheering Grant and that pleased him, for I’d guess that he, too, wanted to cheer the little man who sat beside him.

  Grant does not have the appearance of a great general; he looks awkward, ill at ease, and carelessly dressed. But we have had enough of charm and polish; this commander who doesn’t even walk like a military man is the one who will, I believe, restore the Union....

  Early in 1864 talk of the presidential election was in the air. Jethro had been barely conscious of the excitement, anger, and vicious invective that had accompanied the election of 1860; now he was fully conscious of emotions of even deeper violence in the talk of men in the community and in the papers that he read.

  There was hatred for Mr. Lincoln within his own party as well as in the Democratic party. Thad Stevens, the aging floor leader in the House of Representatives, pushed his program of “no mercy to the South” and let his contempt for the President spill out in every speech he made. Midwestern newspapers reprinted the blasts of Wendell Phillips in the East, and of Editor Horace Greeley, who asked rhetorically if this man Lincoln was the sole hope of the Republican Party. The answer, he thundered, was in the negative: did not such men as General Frémont, General Wade Butler, General Ulysses S. Grant, rank high above Abraham Lincoln?

  The Democratic Party’s strongest asset lay in the weariness of war throughout the country. Men lost were no longer counted by the thousands but by the hundred thousands; there had been blundering, betrayal, and corruption during the entire progress of the war. There was fierce resentment among many when the President and the Secretary of War used every resource at their hands to raise more troops to support Grant and Sherman. And with all these angers there was an added agony when hopes for an end to the war were crushed as the year progressed.

  The country had waited expectantly that summer to hear of a decisive victory by its hero-commander, Grant. Instead, news came of the Battle of the Wilderness, a horrifying story of fighting in a blazing woods, with losses mounting by the thousands and with Lee still holding firm. It had the sound of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville all over again.

  Soldiers of the Army of the Potomac, loyal still to McClellan, had nodded cynically at the advent of Grant. “Sure,” they said, “Grant looked pretty good in the West, but remember that out West he hadn’t met up with Bobby E. Lee.”

  Now, in the Battle of the Wilderness, and later for a full month of fighting at a place called Spotsylvania and along the Chickahominy River, and finally at a blazing crossroads known as Cold Harbor, Grant had met Robert E. Lee; and he was no more a conqueror of that legendary general than George B. McClellan had been. There was one difference though: Grant would not give up. He gave his opponent no quarter, and the stubborn tenacity with which he held on in the face of Lee’s punishment was something the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac had never seen in their idolized General McClellan.

  But, for all of Grant’s determination, the North appeared to be no nearer victory than it had been before the fury and waves of death had begun the month before. He had, however, managed to get away from Lee and, moving south, had come up to the town of Petersburg. At that, Northern papers took hope and began shouting. Through Petersburg ran the railroads by which Lee’s army received its supplies; if Petersburg were taken, then the cry of “On to Richmond” would at last be fulfilled.

  Jubilantly the news came: Petersburg was in Grant’s hands! Then a retraction: Petersburg was not quite in Grant’s hands—only the outworks. And finally: a siege would be necessary before the city would be in Grant’s hands.

  A moan of disappointment and despair went up over the country. The end of the war had appeared to be so near and now, after the horror of the Wilderness and Cold Harbor, there must be a siege of Petersburg. The nation was ready to look for peace. If the price of peace was the dissolution of the Union, many people felt that compensation lay in stopping human slaughter. The Northern Democrats saw their chance.

  Lincoln had been nominated in June in spite of the reluctance of the men within his party who hated him. But in late summer with the word of Federal reverses pouring in, many papers shouted that he stood no chance for reelection, and to Jethro it seemed that most men were agreed.

  Ross Milton was not, however; he said, “Lincoln will win. When it comes to the final vote, the country will not admit that its sons have died for nothing.”

  But Matt shook his head. “I want to believe it,” he said, “but I don’t. I think we’re in the midst of an awful crumble.”

  In Chicago during the month of August, 1864, the Democrats nominated George B. McClellan as their candidate for the presidency. After days in which the Democratic nomination filled the papers, there came suddenly the thunderbolt of General McClellan’s response to his nomination. Shadrach wrote of that response to Jethro:.... I could not cheer General McClellan at Antietam; I watched the men who had been under his command for months and wondered at the love they felt for this man who, to my way of thinking, had prolonged the suffering and bloodshed of this struggle through some aspect of his nature that lacked, not the courage to face personal danger, but the courage to risk being wrong.

  Today as I read General McClellan’s response to the Democratic Committee, so set to elect him as an advocate of their peace platform, I thought that I must write to you and point out a quality of courage in this man that I wouldn’t have believed to be there.

  I gave a yell when I read it, and your sister was aghast. She said, “But, Shad, I thought you were all for Mr. Lincoln!” and I had to explain to my dearly beloved and legally wed Jenny that I am “all for Mr. Lincoln,” but that today I’ve had to give a belated cheer for my former commander.

  Shadrach sent a clipping from a Washington newspaper in case Jethro had missed General McClellan’s response. The article quoted the general as saying that as far as he was concerned, the party’s platform meant that the North was not to offer peace on any terms short of the reestablishment of the Union, that to accept anything else would be an insult and an affront to the thousands of soldiers who had died in battle. Shadrach added a note at the bottom of the article: “This is the man whom the radical Republicans accused of traitorous disloyalty!”

  Then to the sullen and despairing North there came heartening news, the first of which was in a dispatch from Mobile, Alabama. In August, Admiral Farragut had led his fleet in the torpedo-infested waters of Mobile Bay to capture the Confederate Tennessee, said to be one of the most powerful warships afloat. After that, land forces had captured three forts guarding the city of Mobile, which meant that the Confederacy had lost its most essential port on the Gulf of Mexico.

  In itself the capture of Mobile might not have been a matter of such rejoicing had not other good news arrived upon the heels of it. But in September word came to Washington from the excitable general who, months before, had annoyed Congress with his predictions of a long and difficult war. William Tecumseh Sherman had telegraphed the President that the city of Atlanta, Georgia, had fallen to the Army of the Tennessee.

  “Atlanta is ours and fairly won,” was Sherman’s message to Mr. Lincoln, and that, coupled with the news from Mobile, sent the North into paeans of thanksgiving.

  News of victory also came from the Shenandoah Valley, where gallant, steel-nerved Phil Sheridan had defeated the Confederate General Early at Cedar Creek. Sheridan had made a dramatic ride to rally his straggling troops and turn a nearly-lost battle into a decisive Union victory.

  The North was still war-weary, but it was no longer ho
peless. The prize was almost within its grasp; the goal for which its thousands of boys had died or suffered the agony of prison camps was almost won. It would have been folly to give up with victory so near—so men went to the polls that November and reelected Abraham Lincoln.

  The preponderance of the soldier vote was for Lincoln that year. There had been unrest and anger, despair and desertions by the thousands; still, when the vote was taken, the men whose sufferings had been past all belief now took their stand that the war should go on. The news of that vote was heartwarming to the tired President; so, too, was the fact that all the Northern states except Kentucky, Delaware, and New Jersey were of one accord with the soldier vote. That included Mr. Lincoln’s home state of Illinois; but to Jethro’s disappointment, it was not southern Illinois that gave the state’s electoral votes to the President. Even Sangamon County, where Mr. Lincoln had lived all his mature years, gave a plurality of its votes to General George B. McClellan.

  After the excitement of the election, the papers began to speculate upon what had become of the Army of the Tennessee. It was lost in a mysterious silence somewhere in Georgia. There were rumors that the Confederate General Hood had encountered Sherman and had cut the Army of the Tennessee to pieces, but they were unconfirmed rumors. When Hood came up from Georgia and through northern Alabama into Tennessee, he did not claim to have defeated Sherman’s army.

  The Army of the Cumberland was in Tennessee ready to face the same General Hood, and in command of it was “The Rock of Chickamauga,” General George Thomas.

  Some of Thomas’s men had been sent off to the Army of the Tennessee with Sherman. John wrote home that a lot of the boys were behaving like “spoiled young uns,” because they believed the Georgia campaign would be a lark with little fighting, while the Army of the Cumberland must stay on to do the stern work of keeping Tennessee in Federal hands.

  Perhaps General Hood believed that the Army of the Cumberland, weakened by loss of regiments to the Army of the Tennessee, could be overcome and Tennessee regained for the Confederacy; perhaps he hoped that Sherman would be recalled from Georgia in case General Thomas were too sharply threatened in Tennessee. Whatever the thinking behind the move in this bloody chess game, Hood appeared in Tennessee in November of 1864, and the two armies clashed at Franklin, only a few miles south of the city of Nashville, where Hood was worsted.

  Then came another clash at Nashville in December, and it was from there that John’s next letter came. The first page told briefly of the battle:.... Ther was days of sleet and we coodnt make a move. We set ther waitin and wonderin what was agoin to happen. Then the wether turned warm. As soon as the sleet was melted we started the attack. The fitin was awful bad but Hoods army—what ther was left of it—was druv out of Tennessee and back down to Alabamy. Tell Jeth not to beleve that Grant is the gratest general in this war. I tell you they dont come grater than old Pap Thomas.

  A second sheet was added to this letter, evidently days after the first had been written. It carried news that those at home had almost despaired of hearing.

  .... It is late at night but I hev a story to tell and I must rite it becus I cant sleep til I hev told you. A few days ago I was put in charge of helpin to feed the reb prisners that we took in this battel. Tonight when I walked amongst em I seed a man and I swer to you I thot it was pa at first look. The man had a light colered berd like pas was when I was a boy and he had the same blue eyes with pas look in em. I stopt in my tracks and looked agin and then I seed it was my brother Bill growed to look as old as pa looked a fue years back. I didn’t dast to stop or take his hand but I went close and under my breth I told him Id try to come back and I think he nodded but it was so littel that I skarse cood tell he nodded at all. Then I went to my capten and asked him if I cood talk to a reb prisner that was my own blood brother. My capten looked at me. Yore brother he said and then after a long time he said Yes that I cood go ahead.

  Wel I found Bill and we set together with thousands of sad men all around us and things was cold and foul everwhere but we was brothers agin and we talked like brothers ought to talk.

  He wanted to kno all the news of home and I told him how Tom dide at Pittsburg Landing and of Eb desertin and then goin back. I told him how Jeth had rit a letter to the President and got an anser back. I told him about pas sickness and how my boys was growin up fine with ther good littel ma bringin em up alone. I told him how Shad was near about kilt at Gettysburg and that now him and Jenny was man and wife. All the time his eyes was on the ground and he was sayin nothin but when Id stop hed say tell me more John and Id try to remember more of what was in yore letters. Then come the time when I must go and we shook hands fer a long time like as if our fingers didnt want to let go. And when I turned to go he called me back and he axed me to be shore that I told this to ma and so I am ritin what he said with the hope that it will bring comfert to her. Ma—Bill wants that I shood tell you this—he was not at Pittsburg Landing. That bullet was not fired by him....

  12

  Still there was no word of Sherman and the lost Army of the Tennessee. All over the country, and in Europe, too, people waited for word as they tried to guess what was happening.

  “If he can do it,” people said, “if he can march three hundred miles through enemy territory, then it is certain that the Confederacy is nearly spent. If Sherman can do it, then surely the war must be very near its close.”

  But many remembered that Sherman had always been considered a little “crazy.” He looked wild; it was like him to attempt a mad, impossible feat like this.

  “But Grant trusts him,” some said.

  “Yes,” replied others, “and Grant has made any number of mistakes, too. He’s ‘Mr. Big’ with Ol’ Abe, but that doesn’t mean that he’s always right.”

  Suddenly in December the waiting was over, and the Army of the Tennessee was again in contact with Washington.

  “I beg to present you the city of Savannah as a Christmas gift,” Sherman wired the President.

  Quick word followed that the Army of the Tennessee had marched from Atlanta to the sea and had met hardly more than a brush of resistance. It was a signal for great rejoicing in the North.

  Then during the next weeks, stories about Sherman’s march began filtering back, first to the eastern cities and then to the Midwest. They traveled to the quiet farms, where barns were full of grain and fat stock, where smokehouses were crammed with hams and sides of beef, where apples, cabbages, and potatoes were buried under mounds of earth and straw for winter use, where homes were warm in bitter weather and children slept safely through the nights in feather beds. Out in the Midwest the railroads were intact and carried the farmers’ grain and stock to market; trade was good, and prices high. Throughout this part of the country the farms lay tranquil under the winter snow, waiting for spring and the plow and the stir of new life.

  People on these farms and in the cities received the stories coming up from Georgia with mixed reactions. The talk among the men who came to visit with Matt at his fireside was all of “Billy Sherman’s march through Georgia”:

  “.... The Rebs fired on their country’s flag. They’ve held on fer all these months and years, and hundreds of thousands of boys hev been lost to save the Union their great-grandfathers established. Don’t talk to me of mercy—Billy Sherman is givin’ ’em the mercy they deserve!”

  “.... My boy wrote that it was like a picnic all the way. They et chicken and pork chops and yams every meal if they wanted ‘em; they hadn’t had grub like that in months. And they burned every fence and house and barn in sight; the railroads they bent up like hairpins—over two hundred miles of ’em.”

  “.... A war ain’t won that leaves scars like this on folks who be our brothers.”

  “.... Hev you heered of Andersonville Prison? Do you know what the Rebs have done in that black hole to their brothers?”

  “Well, there’s Camp Douglas right here in Illinois—hev you heered the stories of that place?”


  “It’s a terr’ble thing, it’s a pitiful thing, but it’s war. The sooner we make one great swoop, the sooner the sufferin’ is over fer all of us—South as well as North.”

  “.... There be limits even in war. This was mean, mad destruction. This was war on babies and their mothers, on the sick and old and helpless.”

  “.... And they brought it on themselves. They hev to pay the price.”

  “Would their armies hev spared us if the tables had bin turned? Don’t believe it fer one minute!”

  Word came that the Army of the Tennessee, after reaching Savannah, had turned north to join Grant; it was then that South Carolina knew the lash of a triumphant army drunk with the plundering of Georgia and enraged at the stubborn tenacity of the South in holding onto a cause that was already lost. In South Carolina the vast, undisciplined army could find another excuse for its excesses beyond the slogan, “This is War, and War is Hell.” The role of this state in bringing on the war served as a “just” excuse for atrocities that no thoughtful man could excuse.

  “This is the nest where secesh was hatched,” the army shouted, and the proud possessions of a gracious life, the little homes of the poor, the cities, farms, and the frightened, desperate people were swept down before the fury of the Army of the Tennessee.

  Ed Turner’s youngest boy, just eighteen and in the army only a few months, was in South Carolina. Ed brought the boy’s letter down for Matt to read. In it the boy told of the burning of Columbia, of how the soldiers laughed as a great wind fanned the flames, of the loot carried off, of mirrors and pianos smashed, and of intimate family treasures scattered to the winds by men who seemed to have gone mad.

  Ed Turner’s hands trembled as he returned the letter to its envelope.