by John Keegan
Grant had lived with the hope that by pressing the Overland Campaign he might end the war as soon as he reached the James River. It was probably not a realistic hope; but its dashing did not mean that the campaign had failed in its objects. At the outset, the Army of the Potomac stood on the line it had occupied at the beginning of the war and was separated from Richmond by over a hundred miles of highly defensible territory which included such water barriers as the Rappahannock and the Rapidan, the Totopotomoy, the Mattapony, the Pamunkey, the North and South Anna and the Chickahominy rivers. Between May 4 and June 15, 1864, the Army of the Potomac had retaken all the ground between the Rappahannock and the James, secured and bridged all the water obstacles, built roads and repaired railroads. Territorially, it was one of the largest successes of the war. The cost had been appalling. Grant’s losses had been about 1,300 men a day, a total of 52,600 in forty days, in human terms a terrible price, though one that the Union could afford as the Confederacy could not. Lee’s 33,000 casualties were a permanent debit. The moral effect on Grant’s army was visible in the appearance of those who survived the ordeal to appear at the siege of Petersburg. As James McPherson describes, those who had fought the May to June campaign, with a battle almost every day, hard marching between engagements, and no relief from action, had grown thin and strained.2 Observers remarked that the men of the Army of the Potomac had aged several years in a few months. Since the horror of the Mule Shoe and the repulse at Cold Harbor, they had also lost the appetite for attacking earthworks. It was for that reason, as much as any other, that Beauregard was able to hold the defences of Petersburg with so few men in the first days of the siege when they might have been captured by a single resolute stroke. The only Union unit which could be persuaded to attack was one of the heavy artillery regiments Grant had remustered as infantry. It paid a terrible price for its bald-headed assault on the earthworks, losing 632 men out of 850.
Although the discrepancy in numbers between defenders and attackers made it seem certain that Grant could bring the siege of Petersburg to a successful conclusion in a short time, all his efforts in the summer of 1864 foundered. The Union difficulty was that whenever they pushed their lines south and west of the Confederate defences, the Confederates always found the men to extend their line a little farther and to garrison the new works. In late June Grant attempted a new method. One of the besieging regiments, the 48th Pennsylvania, was recruited from coal miners. One of them suggested to their colonel, Henry Pleasants, a mining engineer, that the regiment could drive a shaft under the lines and blow up a Confederate fort that dominated one of the sectors. Pleasants got permission to try and in a month a 500-foot shaft had been dug and a chamber containing four tons of gunpowder excavated at the far end. Then the careful planning was overtaken by pettifogging disputes as to how to proceed. A Union formation was specially trained to exploit the devastation when the mine was detonated. As the formation consisted of black soldiers, however, it was decided at the last minute to substitute a white formation in its place. In the aftermath of the explosion, which blew a hole 170 feet long, 60 feet wide, and 30 feet deep, burying a whole Confederate regiment and artillery battery, the untrained white division, whose commander had remained behind, blundered about in the devastation, descending into the crater instead of negotiating the perimeter, and quickly fell victim to improvised Confederate defensive fire and then a well-executed counter-attack. The counter-attackers caught the black division, which had belatedly been sent forward, in an indefensible position and murdered many of its soldiers in the crater. When the fighting eventually ceased, over 4,000 Union troops had been killed or wounded and the Confederate line remained, apart from the enormous hole left by the explosion, intact.
After he was repelled from Washington in July, Jubal Early retired into the Shenandoah Valley, pursued by Sheridan, to whom Grant gave the additional instructions to lay the valley waste, to terminate for good the supply of provisions which reached the Army of Northern Virginia from it. Sheridan set about the laying waste energetically, in the process discovering that Early had retreated to Winchester, where his position seemed to be vulnerable. On September 19 Sheridan attacked and broke up Early’s force, capturing thousands of prisoners. When Early retreated to Fisher’s Hill, south of Strasburg, Sheridan attacked again on September 22 and drove them sixty miles into the mountains. Lee responded by sending Early an infantry division and a cavalry brigade. Despite news of this Confederate reinforcement, Sheridan left the army to go to Washington for a conference. While Sheridan was absent, Early concentrated his forces and attacked at dawn. He took the Army of the Shenandoah completely by surprise and drove it back four miles. Sheridan, however, had returned the previous evening, and when he woke to the sound of fighting, he jumped into the saddle and rode to the sound of the guns. Although Early had dispersed some of the Union force, the Sixth Corps was still intact and, shouting for the men to follow him, Sheridan gathered stragglers into a counter-attack force and caught Early contemplating what he believed to be a decisive victory. Sheridan, in what James McPherson calls “the most notable example of personal battlefield leadership in the war,”3 managed to reorganise his troops as he advanced to contact and unleashed a counter-attack which caused Early’s army to disintegrate in a rout to the south. Thus the battle of Cedar Creek, which had seemed to be a conclusive Confederate victory, ended as a Union triumph. With the valley pacified and stripped of all wealth, Sheridan was eventually able to withdraw the Army of the Shenandoah and rejoin Grant for the concluding stages of the siege of Petersburg.
Despite continuing good news from Sherman’s army in Georgia, the failure before Petersburg brought about a severe decline in Northern morale during the summer of 1864. The peace party found a new voice while Republicans, including the president himself, grew increasingly pessimistic about the prospect of winning the presidential election in the coming autumn. Jefferson Davis made peace feelers, and Lincoln unwisely agreed to meet Southern representatives to discuss terms. Despite Lincoln’s dread of bad war news and the personal agony brought by casualty reports, however, the South’s insistence on being treated as a legitimate combatant entitled to independence continued to supply Lincoln, who himself was adamant on the issue, with the support necessary to hold out for eventual victory. The Southern peace mission failed, as did a Southern attempt to foment treachery in the Midwest, while Lincoln’s electoral prospects improved as the summer drew out. Of cardinal importance to the presidential campaign was Sherman’s capture of Atlanta in September, following Farragut’s victory at Mobile, which decisively turned the tide of opinion. At the election Lincoln carried all but three states in the Union and won all but 21 of 233 votes in the Electoral College. His result was greatly assisted by the improvement of Union fortunes in Virginia, particularly the Shenandoah Valley.
By the fall of 1864, the military predicament of the South, combined with the fact of Lincoln’s re-election as president, lent energy to the movements for a negotiated peace, of which there were many. Some were entangled with Southern attempts to foment dissent in the Midwest; the unveiling of the connection stifled their prospect of success. Peace efforts continued nonetheless, and grew in strength in the South, where there was much disappointment as news from the front worsened. One Southerner, Jefferson Davis, remained as fervent for war as ever. He came under increasing pressure in early 1865, particularly after the fall of Fort Fisher, at Wilmington, North Carolina, to seek terms. Lincoln, too, though in a much stronger position, was also lobbied by peace-seekers to enter into discussions with the South, a tricky undertaking since Washington had steadfastly repelled any dealing with Richmond throughout the war. In January 1865 the Washington political veteran Francis Preston Blair persuaded Lincoln to grant him a pass to visit Richmond, with the object of persuading the Confederate government to join with the Union in an expedition to expel the Archduke Maximilian from Mexico, a scheme Blair argued would result in the cessation of civil hostilities. Lincoln understandab
ly thought the project nonsensical, but acquiesced in Blair’s mission to see what came of it. Davis agreed to receive Blair, hoping that what he knew would be a restatement of Union demands for surrender and the abolition of slavery would reanimate Southern determination to fight for independence. Davis nominated three commissioners to meet the Northern delegation, including the Confederate vice president, the Speaker of the Senate, and the secretary of war. It was agreed that the two parties should see each other aboard the Union steamer River Queen in Chesapeake Bay. At the last moment Lincoln decided to join the Union delegation himself. He made it clear from the outset that surrender, disbandment of the Confederate army, and abolition of slavery were the only terms to be discussed and that they were non-negotiable. The delegates discussed points of detail inconclusively, and the talks relapsed into genial conversation about old political days in Washington, when they had been colleagues. The Southerners returned to Richmond without anything to offer to President Davis, who denounced the Northern party in contemptuous terms.
The River Queen episode occurred during the continuing stalemate on the Petersburg front, one of several long periods of quiescence in the eastern theatre. The first, between First Bull Run and the opening of the Peninsula Campaign, lasted nine months. The second, between Gettysburg and the Wilderness, lasted ten months. Grant, both by reputation and in fact so actively aggressive, allowed the Confederates to hold the Petersburg position without suffering a major attack between the Battle of the Crater in July 1864 and March 1865, a period of eight months. The reasons for these long pauses were various. After First Bull Run, McClellan delayed action because he was organising the Army of the Potomac and making plans, though at a luxuriously leisurely pace. After Gettysburg, Meade declined to attack Lee on the Rappahannock because he feared to compromise his great victory. Grant’s acceptance of inactivity outside Petersburg after Cold Harbor was determined by the condition of his army. The almost continuous fighting from May to July between the Rappahannock and the North Anna rivers had not only killed or disabled many of his best soldiers; it had also left the survivors without eagerness to mount further attacks, particularly against entrenchments, which at Petersburg were visibly very strong. They also extended too far to the west to be outflanked, so Grant therefore decided to attempt to draw Lee’s men out of the Petersburg lines, where they could be attacked and defeated in the open, without allowing them any opportunity to manoeuvre and escape towards Johnston’s army in the deeper South. In order to make Lee move, it was essential to persist with the cutting of the Richmond-Petersburg railroads on which his supply depended. The most important of the railroads was the Southside, which followed the line of the Appomattox River, and the Weldon, up which supplies came from the south. In August A. P. Hill, commanding one of Lee’s corps, managed to drive Grant away from the Weldon Railroad, and again on August 25. In September, Wade Hampton relieved Lee’s supply situation somewhat by capturing and driving into the lines 2,500 head of cattle. Grant ordered Meade to stage a major attack near Peebles’ Farm; the battle lasted three days, until October 2, and resulted in the extension of the Union line a further three miles beyond Petersburg to the west.
Winter brought a pause, to add to Grant’s frustration, but with the return of better weather in March he extended his siege lines again and interrupted the Boydton Plank Road, which brought supplies to Lee from the southwest. Grant’s efforts to sustain pressure on Lee’s communications were assisted by the return in March of Sheridan’s cavalry from the Shenandoah Valley, now completely laid waste and empty of Confederate troops. Grant was certain that Lee would, as soon as opportunity offered, break out of the Petersburg line and move south to link up with Joseph E. Johnston’s army, which was still operating in North Carolina. Before he did so, Grant wished to be certain that he had sufficient force in place to bring about Lee’s destruction. That required the further extension of his own line to the west, so as to be certain of getting around Lee’s flank as he moved out into open country.
Grant’s lines were now nearly forty miles long, extending from east of Petersburg to thirty miles west of it. Manning the lines consumed much of his manpower, but the arrival of Sheridan’s troops provided a mass of manoeuvre which he could use to advantage. On March 29 Grant started two corps westward towards Dinwiddie Court House; they were followed by three infantry divisions, while Sheridan’s cavalry was sent on a wide westward sweep to cut for good Lee’s surviving rail links with the South. Grant was sure that Lee would respond by bringing his troops out of the entrenchments. If he judged the Petersburg lines sufficiently weakened, he could assault them. In any case, once Lee was in the open, he would attack and bring about a clinching victory.
Lee, however, had plans of his own and hopes of securing sufficient advantage to make a clean break to join up with Johnston. His scheme was to attack Grant’s entrenchments and so force him to shorten his line at the western end in order to reinforce the threatened point. When Lee attacked at Fort Stedman on March 25, although he achieved success, captured ground, and took many Union prisoners, he was swiftly counter-attacked, the lost ground was retaken and 2,300 Confederates made prisoner. Moreover, Grant did not shorten his lines. Instead, on March 29 he directed parts of the Army of the Potomac, the Army of the James, now commanded by General Edward Ord, and Sheridan’s cavalry to march westward round the end of the Petersburg entrenchments towards the road junction at Five Forks. Lee had two bodies of troops in the vicinity, a corps under General Richard Anderson and two divisions under General George Pickett, of Gettysburg fame. Sheridan fought and defeated them on April 1.
Next day, Grant judged that the Petersburg defences had been sufficiently weakened to risk an attack on the entrenchments. The Confederate defenders were swept aside in an hour’s fighting, forcing Lee to recognise that he had no option but to leave the security of his positions and retreat westward. He gave orders to do so on the night of April 2, meanwhile sending word to Jefferson Davis that Richmond would have to be abandoned as well. The Confederates succeeded in extricating themselves from the entrenchments during the evening and by midnight were in retreat westward along the course of the Appomattox River. Lee had divided his remaining 30,000 men into two groups, marching parallel. They were pursued by Meade, leading the Army of the Potomac on the northern route, and Ord, leading the Army of the James behind them. The objective was the Richmond and Danville Railroad, which Lee had chosen as his route of escape south to join Johnston. Sheridan’s cavalry, however, pressing forward, reached the railroad before the Confederates arrived. Lee turned west and then, at Amelia Court House, south again, but whatever his efforts to shake off the pursuit, he found all routes of escape blocked. There was a fight at Sayler’s Creek on April 6 which resulted in heavy Confederate losses. Lee still had hopes of crossing the Appomattox and escaping to Lynchburg, in the Shenandoah Mountains, but the Union pursuers were able to prevent him, destroying the bridges behind him, and so terminated his last chance of delaying what was now inevitable. On April 7 Grant sent Lee a letter calling on him to accept what he could not now defer.
The result of last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance in the struggle. I feel that it is so and regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility for any further effusion of blood by asking of you to surrender that portion of the C.S. Army known as the Army of Northern Virginia.4
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Breaking into the South
SHERMAN, who had been left by Grant to command in the West—a term used during the war to signify the campaigns not fought in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, but geographically in the beginnings of the Deep South—received on April 4 and 19 two letters in which Grant outlined his plans for the conclusion of the western campaign. Grant’s order to Sherman and his armies in Tennessee for the campaign of 1864-65 had been to “move against Johnston’s army, to break it up and to get into the interior of the enemy’s country as far as you can, inflicting all the damage you
can against their war resources.”1 In addition to the Army of the Potomac, Grant had three other armies to employ in 1864: those of Banks at New Orleans, Butler on the Virginia coast, and Sigel in West Virginia. Sigel was responsible for the Shenandoah Valley, from which Lee drew many of his supplies; Butler was to operate on the James River near Richmond, with the object of cutting the city’s rail communications with the rest of the Confederacy; Banks, Grant hoped, would get into Mississippi and seize Mobile, an important naval and rail centre.
The key operation, however, was that of Sherman, who commanded, as a combined force, McPherson’s own Army of the Tennessee (24,465), Thomas’s Army of the Cumberland (60,773), and John Schofield’s Army of the Ohio (13,559), total strength 98,797. Its task looked simple enough: to push forward from the neighbourhood of Dalton to Atlanta, ninety miles to the south, dispersing Johnston’s Army of Tennessee, only 60,000 strong, and beating its component units as he went. Easier said than done. Part of Sherman’s problem was his very long and attenuated line of communications, which stretched back along the Western and Atlantic Railroad 470 miles to his main base at Louisville, Kentucky, much of its length running through hostile or at least dangerous territory. Forward of Dalton, moreover, the defenders enjoyed the use of several strong defensible features, notably the Oostanaula, Etowah, and Chattahoochee rivers and the steep slope of Kennesaw Mountain. Johnston’s favoured strategy, moreover, was perfectly suited to the terrain, since he believed in avoiding battle when possible and extracting advantage by manoeuvre.
