For the Common Defense

by Allan R. Millett, Peter Maslowski

  Both sides tried to control desertion by similar means: Stationing guards at fords, ferries, and bridges; offering rewards for capturing deserters; appeals by officers, politicians, and editors; amnesty offers; and drastic punishment. Nothing worked. Many Confederate deserters entered Union lines, but most took to the hills, caves, and swamps, often joining draft dodgers to form armed bands that defied authorities. A few Federal deserters went over to the enemy, some fled to Canada or Mexico, but like southern deserters most sought refuge in inaccessible areas in their home section. Why did men desert? Some reasons were exactly the same for Billy Yank and Johnny Reb, such as cowardice before a battle or lack of devotion to the cause among conscripts and substitutes. Other reasons, although similar, varied in degree. The hardships of soldiering and worry about the family back home influenced men in both armies, but more so in the Confederacy, where the privations were much greater in the service and behind the lines. Some causes were unique to each army. The northern bounty system encouraged desertion, while rising defeatism on the southern home front, conveyed to soldiers through letters and rumors, motivated deserters, who knew they would get a sympathetic reception from their families and friends.

  “The people are soul-sick and heartily tired of the hateful, hopeless strife,” wrote a prominent Georgian. “We have had enough of want and woe, of cruelty and carnage, enough of cripples and corpses. There is an abundance of weeping parents, bereaved widows, and orphaned children in the land.” Such sentiments represented the collapse of civilian morale that preceded, and contributed to, the army’s defeat. Between 1861 and 1864 the South managed to maintain effective armies, but it failed to preserve the population’s well-being. Shortages and inflation, the fear of a centralized government impinging on individual and state liberty, and the hopelessness arising from losses on the battlefield and in the international arena fostered a southern peace movement. People carried money to market in a basket and brought home their purchases in a purse—or so people said—and when Davis called for a day of fasting and prayer in March 1863, one man wrote that the president had asked for “fasting in the midst of famine!” That spring bread riots occurred in five cities, and everywhere gaunt-looking people wore dingy clothes. The knowledge that the North was virtually untouched by the war’s ravages made the privations especially unbearable. The contrast was so stark that some southerners urged soldiers to desert to the Yankees “whear you can get plenty and not stay in this one-horse barefooted naked and famine stricken Southern Confederacy.”

  The Confederate government, wrote a North Carolina congressman in 1863, is becoming “a consolidated military despotism.” Defining liberty as freedom from an arbitrary government, many southerners agreed with him. For popular liberty to survive, civil power must control the military, and state governments must protect the populace from the inevitable authoritarian tendencies of a central government. Yet the dual safeguards of civilian control and strong states seemed to be disappearing. Conscription, the periodic suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, arbitrary arrests, the impressment of private property, and novel taxes all spurred doubts about the justness of the Confederate cause. The government defended its actions on the grounds of temporary military necessity, but more and more civilians attested to the evils without acknowledging the necessity.

  Had the South been winning, the privations and infringements might have been endurable. But even when the South won a battle the North became more powerful, and when the North won a battle the South became permanently weaker. By 1864 all hope that foreign aid would redress the imbalance was gone. Skillful northern diplomacy prevented an internal conflict from becoming an international war. Many reasons accounted for British nonintervention: English dependence on northern foodstuffs, access to new cotton supplies, turmoil in Europe, fear of what might happen to Canada and to British commerce in a war with the Union, and an unwillingness to side with slavery. The British government also wanted to establish precedents by respecting the blockade, a weapon that it often used. Most important, the South did not earn recognition on the battlefield. Realizing that England would never intervene, in August 1863 Davis canceled the diplomatic mission to London, and in December he told the Confederate Congress that European powers had become “positively unfriendly.”

  Incipient peace sentiment found organized expression in the Peace and Constitutional Society, the Peace Society, the Order of the Heroes of America, and other smaller societies. Dedicated to ending the war, these organizations resisted Confederate authority, discouraged enlistments, and assisted invading Union armies. Yet if some southerners despaired, most remained committed to independence. Tenacity among civilian leaders, the fighting prowess of rebel soldiers, and a dash of luck might reverse the war’s adverse course. Northern Copperhead sentiment was by no means dead, and although the South could no longer win an outright military victory, it might forestall Union conquest long enough that the Yankees would give up in frustration.

  The Final Campaigns, 1864–1865

  “There is no enthusiasm for Gen. Grant; and on the other hand, there is no prejudice against him. We are prepared to throw up our hats when he shows himself the great soldier in Virginia against Lee and the best troops of the rebels.” So wrote a colonel in the Army of the Potomac upon learning that Grant had been commissioned a lieutenant general on March 9, 1864, and replaced Halleck as general in chief. Eastern soldiers were skeptical about this westerner who now held a rank that only George Washington had previously held on a permanent basis. Yet they were ready to embrace him if he could duplicate his western successes against the Army of Northern Virginia, which they thought superior to any army that Grant had defeated beyond the Appalachians.

  With Grant’s promotion an awkward but workable command system with modern overtones emerged. To facilitate communications between Lincoln and Grant and between the commanding general and his department commanders, the War Department established the position of chief of staff. Halleck, who had been functioning informally as chief of staff since the summer of 1862, filled the new post. His ability to translate civilian thoughts into military language and vice versa ensured that Lincoln and Grant never misunderstood each other. The chief of staff also relieved Grant of the burden of personally corresponding with his department commanders. Halleck’s position was especially important since Grant did not establish his headquarters in Washington but took the field with the Army of the Potomac, though he left Meade in tactical command of the Army.

  Grant’s plan for the spring campaign demonstrated a grand strategic design that would put simultaneous pressure on as many fronts as possible, working “all parts of the Army to-gether, and, somewhat towards a common center.” In the east, Meade would assail the Army of Northern Virginia, assisted by smaller forces operating on the strategic flanks. Moving from Fort Monroe toward Richmond via the James River, Butler’s Army of the James would capture the capital if possible but at least sever Lee’s supply lines running south to Petersburg. Franz Sigel would move up the Shenandoah, depriving the south of the Valley’s resources. Without supplies and threatened in the rear and on the flanks, Lee would have to move into the open to fight. In the west, Grant wanted Banks to move against Mobile and then thrust toward Georgia to cooperate with Sherman, whose task was to move against Johnston’s army and then “to get into the interior of the enemy’s country as far as you can, inflicting all the damage you can upon their War resources.” While ravaging the countryside Sherman was also determined to strike at civilian morale. “My aim, then,” he wrote, “was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us.”

  From the start the plan went awry. Banks did not advance toward Mobile. Instead, Lincoln ordered him up the Red River to shore up the reconstructed pro-Unionist governments that had been organized in occupied portions of Arkansas and Louisiana, to warn the French in Mexico not to become too ambitious, and to seize the region’s cotton supplies. Since it pointed
away from Sherman and Grant, the Red River campaign was a strategic blunder, made worse by Banks’s inept generalship. When a Confederate army defeated his advance divisions at Mansfield on April 8, Banks retreated to New Orleans. The two other political generals performed no better. Sigel confronted an outnumbered Confederate force at New Market on May 15. When the rebels attacked, Sigel excitedly issued orders in German to his English-speaking staff, contributing to a Union debacle. Butler initially outnumbered the scratch force facing him by six or seven to one, but he avoided capturing Richmond or Petersburg or cutting the vital rail lines. The Confederates penned up his army inside Bermuda Hundred, “as completely shut off from further operations directly against Richmond,” wrote Grant, “as if it had been in a bottle strongly corked.”

  Grant had a very costly encounter with Lee. As the Army of the Potomac moved into the Wilderness on May 4, the commanding general believed he could defeat the Confederates somewhere between the Rapidan and the James. He had a two-to-one numerical superiority, the subsidiary attacks by Butler and Sigel would supposedly provide diversions, and the Federals had the initiative. Lee, however, also had advantages. The terrain provided defensive positions, morale remained reasonably high despite austere conditions and civilian backsliding, and a sense of desperation honed his fighting instincts. “We must destroy this army of Grant’s before he gets to the James River,” Lee wrote. “If he gets there, it will become a siege, and then it will be a mere question of time.” Lee awaited Grant not far from where he had humiliated Hooker a year earlier, and on May 5 the Battle of the Wilderness began. After two days 17,000 Federals and 11,000 rebels were casualties. Grant had been jolted as badly as Hooker, and when the wagons moved rearward, soldiers thought that, as usual, they were retreating. But orders came for the army to move south. No retreat! Troops sang with joy, even though another cauldron awaited them in the near future.

  What followed was a five-week ordeal in which a battle and a campaign became synonymous. Previous battles lasted several days and then the armies disengaged to recuperate. Now the fighting was continuous. Incessant skirmishing and shelling accompanied the almost weekly battles. Grant kept moving southeast, trying to outflank Lee, but the Army of Northern Virginia anticipated each move, raced along interior lines, and repeatedly blocked the way. The first flanking movement brought the armies to Spotsylvania Court House, where ferocious fighting occurred on May 10 and 12. Then Grant looped to the southeast, but Lee met him on the North Anna; the Federals again shifted, only to run into the rebels at Totopotomy Creek; still another flanking movement ended at Cold Harbor, where Grant launched an all-out attack on June 3. Grant always regretted ordering this ill-conceived frontal assault, which gained little but cost thousands in dead and wounded.

  After more than a week of nasty trench warfare around Cold Harbor, on the night of June 12–13 Grant crossed the James heading for Petersburg, the railroad hub serving the capital. Seize Petersburg and Lee would have to come out from behind his entrenchments to fight for his supply lines. Grant conducted the maneuver brilliantly, leaving Lee mystified as to his destination and intentions. By June 15 the Federal army was below the James, while Lee was still north of it, and only a thin gray line manned the Petersburg defenses. But Beauregard’s heroic defense, and the Union forces’ conflicting orders and ill-coordinated attacks, allowed the rebels to hold the city until Lee awoke to his danger and moved the Army of Northern Virginia into the defenses. The armies then settled into a siege that would last nine months.

  The Wilderness-to-Petersburg campaign earned Grant the reputation of a plodding butcher who resorted to slaughterhouse tactics, knowing that even if he lost two men to every rebel, the North would still win. True, the campaign extracted a terrible toll: 64,000 Union and 30,000 Confederate casualties. But Grant did not want a head-on killing match. With skill and ingenuity he tried to flush Lee into the open, but subordinates poorly executed good orders, and Lee parried each thrust by waging a stolid defensive struggle, refusing to risk his dwindling manpower outside the protecting trenches. Although Grant did not destroy Lee, he pinned the Army of Northern Virginia down in the strategic arena. Unlike Pope or Hooker, Grant did not disengage and let Lee seize the initiative. Remorselessly and at great cost he prevented Lee from launching an offensive that could restore the strategic balance.

  Lincoln recognized this considerable achievement and urged Grant to “Hold on with a bull-dog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.” Grant needed no special prompting as he sought to snap Lee’s defenses either by a breakthrough or by overextending them. The most famous breakthrough attempt was the Battle of the Crater on July 30. The Yankees dug a long tunnel and placed tons of powder under a Confederate redoubt. When the explosion went off, the position disappeared in a geyser of mud, timbers, and mangled Confederates, creating an enormous gap in Lee’s lines. However, tragic blundering, including sending men into the crater instead of around it, gave Lee time to recover. “Such opportunity for carrying fortifications I have never seen,” Grant sadly wired to Washington, “and do not expect again to have.” Meanwhile, Grant pushed his lines westward, trying to cut Lee’s supply arteries, spreading the Confederate defenders more thinly in the ever-extending trenchworks.

  While Grant fought to Petersburg, Sherman maneuvered to Atlanta. Coordinating his offensive with Grant’s, Sherman faced difficult problems. Supply depended on the railroad back to Nashville, which, said Sherman, “takes a whole army to guard, each foot of rail being essential to the whole.” The rugged terrain, which Johnston knew how to utilize, was ideal for defense. Rather than attack at every opportunity, Johnston preferred to concede territory and conserve manpower. He wanted to draw the Federals deep into southern territory, inviting them to make frontal assaults against prepared positions, and await that supreme moment to unleash a lethal counterstroke. But Sherman refused to attack and instead flanked the Confederate left, never leaving an opening for Johnston to exploit. The armies engaged in a minuet, dancing from Johnston’s initial position along Rocky Face Ridge to Kennesaw Mountain, where, mistakenly assuming Johnston had overextended his lines and left his center vulnerable, Sherman attacked on June 27. Suffering 3,000 casualties for his effort, he resumed the indirect approach, inducing Johnston to withdraw behind the Chattahoochee River. Then for the first time the Yankees flanked to the east and Johnston fell back to Peach Tree Creek.

  President Davis watched the campaign with dismay. He had opposed retreating, and his confidence in Johnston waned in proportion to the length of the retreat. When the commander refused to give a firm commitment to defend Atlanta, Davis’s tolerance snapped. The city had a symbolic significance second only to Richmond’s, contained invaluable war industries, and was the last important railroad link between the west and Virginia. Losing it, especially without a fight, would be a severe blow, and on July 17 Davis placed John B. Hood in command of the Army of Tennessee. Hood had an arm mangled at Gettysburg and lost a leg at Chickamauga, but his fighting spirit remained intact. As both Sherman and Davis expected, Hood assailed the Federals. At the Battles of Peach Tree Creek, Atlanta, and Ezra Church, fought between July 20 and 28, Union troops had the advantage of entrenchments and inflicted 13,000 casualties at a cost of 6,000. Hood poured out the army’s lifeblood to no effect, except to decrease morale and increase desertions. Davis ordered him not to attack again, and the army assumed a defensive stance in the trenches surrounding Atlanta. Like Grant at Petersburg, Sherman undertook a siege.

  With the war degenerating into a protracted siege in both theaters and apparently stalemated, the northern public’s determination wavered. The North expected imminent victory, anticipating that the Confederacy could not survive for long after the 1863 defeats; but instead of collapsing, the South seemed capable of prolonging the war indefinitely. Lincoln knew that the enemy armies retained little of their former striking power, but most people did not share his appreciation for his generals’ accomplishments. Civilians saw that Meade and Sherman
had failed to crush Lee and Johnston or to capture Richmond and Atlanta. They also saw the grisly casualty lists, especially from Grant’s theater, and the South’s ability to fight back: In July, Jubal Early’s corps rampaged down the Valley, unbeknown to Grant for several weeks, reaching the outskirts of Washington on July 11. Early soon withdrew, but he did not go far and remained a threat.

  As frustration increased, the 1864 election became a referendum on the war. The Democrats, who nominated McClellan, adopted an anti-emancipation, pro-peace platform. As the public feeling that the South could never be defeated increased, Lincoln received such pessimistic reports that he predicted his own defeat. Ironically, a dramatic reversal in the war was already underway; it began at Mobile Bay in a three-week August campaign. Farragut led a fleet through the minefields and past the forts protecting the bay’s entrance, defeated an enemy naval squadron, and helped capture the forts, sealing Mobile off from the outside world. A week after the last fort capitulated, Sherman captured Atlanta. Although Hood’s army escaped, the North exploded in celebrations. Further good news came from the Valley, where Grant ordered Philip H. Sheridan to destroy Early’s army and turn the Shenandoah into “a barren waste.” With a large numerical advantage, Sheridan defeated Early at Opequon, Fisher’s Hill, and Cedar Creek and systematically destroyed the Shenandoah’s resources, ending organized military operations in the Valley. Military success paved the way for Lincoln’s overwhelming reelection, dashing southern hopes that McClellan’s election meant independence. People everywhere realized that the election demonstrated the North’s resurrected dedication to victory.