His mind was probably on General Grant, too. However much the purpose of our trip was to commemorate a battle whose echoes had long since died away, the fact of the matter was that even then, at that very moment, huge troop movements were amassing tens of thousands of soldiers in Tennessee in what would prove to be Ulysses Grant’s first test of generalship since his promotion a month earlier.
The date was November 19, 1863. It is a day I shall never forget, and I doubt the citizens of Gettysburg will forget it, either.
The huge mass of people assembled in town, then walked and rode in a great procession to the new cemetery. Mr. Lincoln and other dignitaries rode horses, some rode in carriages, most walked. I was pleased to see some of my friends from St. Xavier’s, and I rode with Father McFey, along with Jennie Wade’s mother and sister, in a large black-draped carriage.
Everyone was dressed in black—the men in suits and tall black top hats, the women either in black dresses or draped with black shawls. Even though the mood was solemn, on the outskirts of town local entrepreneurs, some of them only ten or twelve years old, had set up tables and were selling drinks and cookies and battlefield relics they’d collected—even dried wildflowers, which had grown up since July.
Most everyone stood. Some of the women and families from town had brought blankets to spread out and sit on. A wooden stand had been built for the speakers so they could be seen. Several dozen chairs stood just below the speaker’s stand, where I sat next to Mr. Hay. I was the only woman among those seated in front, and I felt more than a little conspicuous!
The main speaker of the day was Edward Everett, a noted pastor, diplomat, and politician, who had served as governor of Massachusetts. He was now seventy years old and mostly traveled about the Union giving stirring, patriotic orations.
He was introduced, stood up, and began the longest speech I have ever heard in my life—before or since! It’s a good thing it wasn’t as hot as it had been during the actual battle, or the death toll might have mounted still further among those in attendance. As it was, they didn’t drop from the heat but gradually sank to the ground from sheer boredom! After an hour, most of the listeners who had begun on their feet were seated on the ground. And he was only half through!
Finally Mr. Hay leaned over to me.
“Corrie,” he whispered into my ear, “I’m afraid we are going to have to eliminate your remarks from the agenda. If Everett doesn’t sit down pretty soon, everyone will be asleep and even the President won’t be able to speak!”
I smiled and nodded. Actually it was a great relief.
Occasionally during Mr. Everett’s speech, the President had continued to write on the envelope he had been scribbling on during the train ride.
At long last, Mr. Everett began winding down his passionate oratory, and then finally stopped—just a minute or two short of two hours since he’d begun—and took his seat next to President Lincoln. There was scattered applause—mostly because the speech was finally over, not because of anything Mr. Everett had said.
Then President Lincoln stood up. A great silence descended upon the crowd. The words that came from his mouth were so brief, and yet so powerfully forceful—especially to my ears, because I had actually seen this battle—that I could not keep tears from coming to my eyes. Every face from these terrible days came back to me—Jennie Wade’s, Alan Smith’s, Isaac Tomlinson’s, as well as faces of the dead whose names I had never known and whose voices I had never heard. I cry every time I remember Mr. Lincoln’s words, some of the most magnificent words ever spoken:
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place of those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
He turned and went back to his seat. People were still shifting around trying to get comfortable, and his short address was finished.
Not much more happened. Afterward Mr. Lincoln was introduced to Jennie Wade’s family, to whom he gave his regards. He’d heard about Jennie before, as the only citizen of the town to be killed as a result of the fighting.
On the train ride back to Washington I saw the Times man again.
“I had a feeling you were trying to pull my English leg, telling me you were going to take to the podium with your President,” he said.
“I told you the truth,” I insisted. “But after Mr. Everett had gone on for an hour, they decided they should shorten the program, and mine was the one they eliminated.”
He shrugged as though he halfway believed me but still wasn’t sure. “Whatever you say. Might have made it a more memorable day though.”
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“Not hardly worth our coming all this way for, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I wouldn’t have missed it!”
“I could have found ten more useful ways to spend the day. Your President was an abject failure. It’s a wonder to me you Americans have managed to keep your country from blowing apart all this time, considering the mediocre men you thrust up into leadership from the most unqualified of backgrounds.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The gall of him to say such things about Mr. Lincoln!
“It was the most wonderful speech I’ve ever listened to!” I said.
“Ha! It will be forgotten by next week!”
The article he sent back to be printed in his own London Times was circulated through the papers of Washington and New York, too. About Gettysburg he wrote: “The ceremony was rendered ludicrous by the sallies of that poor President Lincoln, whose ridiculously brief remarks were hardly fitting for so momentous an occasion. Anyone more dull and commonplace it would not be easy to produce.”
I was furious when I read them.
I hoped Mr. Lincoln never saw the disparaging words. There was at last some good news for him from the South. His appointment of General Grant had paid off! Just six days after his speech at Gettysburg, the two-day battle of Chattanooga began. When it was over, Ulysses Grant had scored another brilliant Union victory.
Three great turning points of the war had come during 1863—Gettysburg, which beat back Lee’s invasion of the North. Vicksburg, which gave the Union control of the Mississippi. And now Chattanooga, which solidified General Grant’s leadership and gave the entire Tennessee line into the control of the Federal army.
As the fateful year ended, it seemed impossible that the South could hope to win the war militarily. All the advantages were with the Union.
Yet still the stubborn Confederacy refused to yield. And as a result, thousands more would have to die. . . .
Chapter 39
A Night to Remember
Christmas of that year was one of the loneliest times I had ever known. Christmas was always such a special day in our family, and I was so far away! All I could think of
was what they were doing, and I couldn’t help feeling sorry for myself. But even if I did want to go back, once winter set in, travel across the country was no longer possible. I would be in the East at least until the spring—maybe longer. As long as the war lasted, nothing was certain.
But I didn’t have to spend the day alone. I enjoyed a nice morning with Mrs. Richards and some of her family. The afternoon I spent with Mrs. Harding and some of the other Commission people. We had planned several Christmas events at both Harewood Army Hospital and the Armory Square Hospital. We’d arranged for decorations and what extra food the citizens of Washington could donate. We had a small band to play Christmas carols and a choir of nursing volunteers to sing to the men.
By evening I was too tired to remember that I was lonely. None of the wounded men or the soldiers in the field could be with their families for Christmas, either. It was a time of sacrifice for everyone, and mine was hardly to be compared with all the suffering and misery I’d seen.
A little over two months later, in the first week of March, 1864, President Lincoln announced that he had promoted General Grant again, above brigadier general, placing him at the head of all Union armies. Grant would be coming to Washington to personally receive from the President the specially created rank of lieutenant general. No one since George Washington had held such a high military rank.
I was thrilled to receive an invitation to attend a reception at the White House on the evening of March 8, at which General Grant would be honored!
I immediately made plans to take some of my article money out of the bank, and asked Mrs. Richards if she would help me select a new dress for the occasion.
When the day came I was so excited I could hardly wait till evening. What a birthday present this was—even if it was two weeks early—to be invited to a fancy reception at the Executive Mansion and to see General Grant!
He was just as I remembered him—older, of course, and now with some gray in his hair and beard, but short, strong-looking, stocky, with piercing eyes.
After Grant left California, he had resigned from the army altogether. He’d done lots of things since, but had failed at all of them—farming, selling property, peddling firewood on the streets, bill collecting. Finally he went to work as a clerk in the family leather store, working for his brother in Galena, Illinois. That’s where he was when the war broke out.
He reentered the army, was put in charge of a small band of volunteers, and gradually began to be noticed by Union leaders when he started winning battles while most of the northern generals were suffering humiliating defeats. Within two years he was in command of the whole Mississippi theater of the war.
The instant he walked into the room, all the guests began applauding. The President immediately approached him, took his hand, and vigorously pumped it up and down. “Why, here is General Grant!” he exclaimed. “This is a great pleasure, having you here, General, I assure you.”
Everyone was pressing around to see him and greet him, but he could hardly be seen because of his height. There was Mr. Lincoln, easy enough to see above most of the heads. But Mr. Grant was eight inches shorter than the President. Most of the women were taller than he was!
All at once, from near the back where I was standing, I suddenly saw the general’s head appear—taller even than the President’s. He had stepped up onto a crimson-covered sofa where he could be seen. And there he stood for over an hour, shaking hands with everyone in the room.
What a sight it was! For once the President of the United States was not the central figure, but stood back while all the attention was directed toward this apprehensive man who disliked crowds, disliked Washington, D.C., and who even then, he confessed later, was eager to get out of all the hubbub and back to battle. But then he stood on a sofa while the most important people in the National Capital treated him like a hero.
And, in a way, I suppose he was. He was the first general, at least, that President Lincoln was entirely pleased with. And to have the confidence of a man like Abraham Lincoln was no small accomplishment for any man.
I waited patiently in the stream of people moving steadily toward the crimson sofa.
When at last the moment came, and I found my hand in his and his piercing eyes looking down into mine, it was all I could do to find my voice.
“I’m happy to see you again, General,” I said. “I saw you out in California in 1853.”
“Where was that?” he asked.
“North of Sacramento. You stopped by in our little town to see your friend Simon Rafferty.”
His eyes brightened. “Yes . . . yes, of course. I do recall the day.”
“You were on your way up to Eureka.”
“Ah, yes . . . Fort Humboldt—a dreadful place. Drove me to the bottle and straight out of the army!” He laughed.
“I’m glad to see you didn’t stay out,” I said.
“Under the circumstances, so am I, young lady, although if I do ever catch up with Robert E. Lee, I may live to regret my decision.” He paused, then bent down a little and added softly, “But don’t tell the President what I just said!”
“No, sir, not a word.”
I moved on, but he stopped me. “Wait, young lady,” he said, “you forgot to tell me your name.”
I turned back toward him. “Corrie Hollister,” I said, “Corrie Belle Hollister.”
“I’ll try to remember it,” he said. “I hope our paths may cross another day, Miss Hollister.”
“Thank you, Mr. Grant,” I said. An instant later I was past him, and he was busy greeting someone else.
Ulysses Grant had not only come to Washington to receive his new rank from the President, he had come quite literally to take charge of the Union army of the North—which had until then been led by General Meade—and to do what no other northern general had been able to do—advance upon the Confederate capital of Richmond. Five different generals had attempted it. All had been repelled by Robert E. Lee, who was already being called the greatest general of the war—on either side.
But now it was time for the greatest Union general to take on Lee’s army face-to-face. It seemed almost inevitable that one day the two men would square off and do battle against each other. It was fitting, I suppose, that the war would culminate in such a way. The Union controlled every other major front—the seas, the Mississippi, Tennessee, and Georgia. The only area the Union could not gain control of was northern Virginia and the Rebel capital of Richmond.
Only Robert E. Lee stood between the Confederacy and utter defeat.
And at last the moment had arrived for Ulysses S. Grant to take firm command of the armies that had been placed under him, and march south to meet Lee.
In April General Grant reviewed his new troops, then retired to confer with General Meade and discuss strategy for the planned campaign. As they met, members of his staff told of his great exploits and triumphs in the West and at Vicksburg. The veteran soldiers of the Army of the Potomac were not impressed.
“Everything you say may be true,” one man said. “But you never met Bobbie Lee and his boys. Grant’ll have his match in him, and that’s the truth.”
Chapter 40
Following Grant into the Wilderness
For months I had been talking and writing about helping the war’s wounded and donating money and supplies to the Sanitary Fund. I had helped Mrs. Harding recruit and train people, and worked at the organizational duties of the Commission. Then one day it dawned on me that I hadn’t really done any of the work I was telling other people they ought to do. What had happened at Gettysburg had come upon me almost by chance. I just suddenly found myself in the midst of it. I began to wonder what business I had saying what I said to others when I had done only two days of it myself.
The very next day I went to see Mr. Hay, then I talked to Mr. Vargo, and finally I discussed my plan with Mrs. Harding. I told them all the same thing—that I thought it was time I joined the Commission volunteers myself, and put the nursing and medic
al training I’d been giving into practice on the actual battlefield again. I told them that I was going to go south with the Commission brigade that was getting ready right then to follow General Grant’s movements as he marched toward Richmond. I would continue to help them in any way possible, I said. I would continue to write articles and send them back to Mr. Hay. But in the meantime, I felt I needed to be near to offer any real help that I might be able to give.
They all said they would be sorry to see me go, and that they would miss me, but they understood.
I wrote to Pa and Almeda about my plans too, although I didn’t tell them how close to the actual fighting the Commission tents sometimes were. I figured they would probably worry enough without my adding to their troubles by talking about the potential danger.
General Grant launched his move into the wilderness of northern Virginia during the first week of May. He hoped to force Lee into a showdown that would end the war quickly. The Confederate capital was only seventy-five miles away, but General Grant could not take Richmond. Supreme general faced supreme general. Neither would give up, neither would retreat, both continued to wage skillful and canny warfare—Grant offensively, Lee defensively. Neither could defeat the other.
It was the military chess game of all time. There had never, in all the years of the war before this, been such a period of sustained, day-after-day, unrelenting savage fighting. Over 90,000 men were killed in the first month alone. All Americans, all young . . . all dead. And still the war was no closer to being over.
The Confederacy could not possibly achieve a victory now. The numbers against them were too strong. Yet Lee fought on, determined, it seemed, not to lay down arms as long as a single boy wearing gray was left alive. In truth, the South’s greatest general also cost the South countless lives and great destruction of property. How many Rebel boys could have gone on living had Robert Lee not been so stubborn to continue after defeat was inevitable?
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