The American Civil War

by John Keegan

  The victories of Atlanta and Mobile had a crucial effect on the impending presidential election campaign of 1864. Both parties had already chosen their candidates; the Republicans, known for purposes of the election as the Union Party, had nominated Abraham Lincoln at Baltimore in June; the Democrats were running George McClellan. Frémont, the “Pathfinder,” offered himself as a third-party candidate, tepidly opposed to the war, but made no showing and soon withdrew. McClellan, who had fought to preserve the Union without crushing the South, was identified as an anti-war candidate, though he wisely restored his pro-war position, saying that the sacrifices his comrades in arms had made could not be set aside for electoral purposes. During the Democratic Convention, held in Chicago, proceedings had been disturbed by the intervention of the long-term anti-war campaigner and troublemaker Clement Vallandigham, whose position was dramatised, though he did not deliberately encourage it, by an anti-war conspiracy based in Canada; arms were collected, and there were even some minor attempts at arson in New York and elsewhere, but the conspiracy failed to take fire. It was too blatantly pro-rebellion to win support among the partisans of peace. Nevertheless, at Niagara Falls, emissaries from Richmond hoped to manoeuvre the president into discussing familiar conditions for peace, including recognition, independence, and the continuation of slavery, but Lincoln issued a letter restating his inflexible commitment to restoration of the Union and abolition. At the same time the Republican Party weakly agreed to send its own peace mission to Richmond, with a letter from Lincoln offering peace upon the basis of the Constitution; Lincoln, however, recognised the pitfall, since the Constitution accepted slavery, and at the last moment declined to be caught. Nevertheless, he was, on the eve of the election, wholly uncertain of re-election, apparently believing that McClellan would win and that his last public duty would be to negotiate a way out of the war which would not compromise the Union.

  In any event, what saved the Republicans from shaming concessions, besides Lincoln’s unbending refusal to alter his position on the Constitution and slavery, was McClellan’s retreat from an extreme anti-war position together with the news of victory from the fronts now opened within the Southern heartland, which greatly strengthened Lincoln’s leadership. The anti-war movement was also seriously damaged by the violent activities of self-proclaimed anti-war campaigners in some of the border states, notably Missouri and Kansas, where groups calling themselves Sons of Liberty and the Order of American Knights attacked pro-Union people and, if they could get away with it, officeholders and uniformed Union defenders. The worst outrages occurred in Kansas, where a Confederate sympathiser (though probably a temperamental anti-authoritarian) called William Clarke Quantrill, whose band included the future gunfighter Frank James, brother of Jesse, took possession of Lawrence, a well-known centre of anti-slavery opinion, murdered 182 men and boys, and burnt 185 of the town’s buildings. Anti-slavery activists in Missouri and Kansas, known as Jayhawkers, had added their own violent contributions to those states’ sufferings before and during the war. They were multiplied by the enthusiasm with which local Confederate commanders attached terrorist bands to their units. Worst of these hangers-on was “Bloody Bill” Anderson, who attacked Centralia, Kansas, in September 1864, where he, with Frank and Jesse James, murdered 24 unarmed Union solders returning home on leave and killed 124 among the militiamen sent to chase them down. The leading sponsor of partisans among Confederate officers was General Sterling Price, who on the same day as the Centralia massacre fought a pitched battle at Pilot Knob, Missouri, which cost 1,500 Confederate casualties. Eventually Price and his men were driven out of the state, but it required the diversion of a regular Union infantry division to accomplish it. In the presidential election Lincoln took 70 percent of the vote in Missouri.

  Voting was staggered in mid-century America, spread out in 1864 from September to November, when the result was declared. The election of 1864 was also complicated by the need to make provision for soldiers away at the front to vote. Some states allowed absentee voting, either by proxy or post; some did not, but insisted on the presence of the voter, which required commanders to permit soldiers to travel to their home states to register their votes. Despite the military difficulties this caused, most commanders were sensible enough of the importance of assisting Lincoln’s re-election, if victory were to be assured, to facilitate their soldiers’ participation. Research makes it possible to identify soldiers’ votes on the returns from many states and reveals that soldiers voted overwhelmingly for Lincoln, probably in a proportion of 80 to 20. Soldiers’ votes were decisive in several states, notably New York and Connecticut. On November 8, the official election day, Lincoln received 55 percent of four million votes cast, giving him 234 to 21 of the Electoral College votes. He carried every state still within the Union except for New Jersey, Delaware, and Kentucky. The Republicans also won the governorships and legislatures of all but those three states. The presidential election of 1864 was thus a triumph not only for the Republicans and Lincoln but also for Lincoln’s war policy.

  General Ulysses S. Grant, commander of the Union armies, 1863–65, and later president of the United States

  General William Tecumseh Sherman, Union commander in the West. The photograph captures his acute intelligence and strength of will.

  General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia

  General George Thomas, “the Rock of Chickamauga”

  Union engineers bridging the North Anna River, May 1864, Overland Campaign. The steep banks and depth of water show what serious obstacles the short Chesapeake rivers formed.

  Union engineers destroying a Confederate railroad, Atlanta, 1864. The rails are being heated for twisting, as the man in the foreground is doing.

  Confederate dead gathered for burial, Gettysburg, July 5, 1863

  The McLean house at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, where Grant and Lee signed the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, April 9, 1865

  The ruins of Richmond, 1865. The James River runs in the background.

  The gallows built in the Washington Arsenal for the execution of the conspirators in the assassination of Lincoln, 1865

  Veterans of Pickett’s charge on the field of action at the reunion for the fiftieth anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg, July 3, 1913

  Sherman’s success in capturing Atlanta opened the way for a project close to his heart and increasingly to Grant’s as well, which was to make the civilian population of the South suffer as long as resistance was sustained. On July 15, Grant wrote to Halleck, “Sherman, once in Atlanta, will devote himself to collecting the resources of the country.” He was soon to do worse than that. Shortly afterwards his policy for dealing with the Southerners became even more radical. He began on September 8 by ordering the emptying of Atlanta of what remained of its civilian population. The women and children were loaded onto carts and wagons and sent south to the town of Rough and Ready, which had been fought over during his advance. “Then,” recorded Sherman, “began the real trouble.” Hood had retired from Atlanta, to Lovejoy’s Station, thirty miles to the southeast of the city, on the Savannah railroad. His strength was 40,000, all seasoned troops, and he had a large supply train of wagons. On September 21, he shifted his base to Palmetto Station, twenty-five miles southwest of Atlanta on the Montgomery and Selma railroad and began systematic preparations for a campaign against Sherman’s long line of communications, with the purpose of forcing him to abandon his conquests. As a result, Sherman was forced, during September and October 1864, into marching troops up and down the railroad to keep the line open. Hood was now visited by Jefferson Davis, who promised his army cooperation and made a speech threatening to make Sherman pay as dearly as Napoleon had in his retreat from Moscow. Sherman at once took precautions, sending one division westward to Rome, one to Chattanooga, and strengthening the detachments guarding the railroads. To keep Hood under such pressure that he could not interrupt supplies, General Thomas was sent
back to the headquarters of his department at Nashville and Schofield to his at Knoxville, while Sherman remained with the Army of the Tennessee at Atlanta, and awaited Hood’s move, which quickly followed. Hood, behind his cavalry, crossed the Chattahoochee River on October 1, with his main army at Campbelltown and then moved to Dallas, from which he destroyed the railroad above Marietta for fifteen miles. He then sent General French to capture Allatoona. Sherman followed Hood, reaching Kennesaw Mountain in time to see the attack on Allatoona, which was repulsed. Hood then moved westward, bypassing Rome, and by a flank march reached Resaca, which he summoned to surrender but did not attack, continuing up the railroad, destroying it as he moved to the tunnel at Dalton, where he captured the garrison. This was a complete reversal of the campaign which had led Sherman to Atlanta during May. Sherman followed to observe Hood’s movements down the valley of Chattooga, where Sherman failed to intercept him. Hood escaped to Gadsden on the Coosa River. Sherman halted at Gaylesville to observe Hood’s movements across the mountains to Decatur, which, since it was well defended, he avoided, finally halting at Florence, Alabama.

  Sherman perceived that Hood’s object was to harass and interrupt his communications, rather than to fight a major battle, which he was unlikely to win. Sherman accordingly made a redisposition of his forces to allow him both to restrain Hood and to prepare for a further march into the Southland. He sent Schofield with two of his six corps by rail to Nashville, gave Thomas the troops he needed to defend Tennessee, and began to concentrate, at Atlanta, the forces necessary for a major offensive into Georgia. Repairing the railroads, he assembled the food and transportation necessary for 60,000 men, sent to the rear all unnecessary baggage and equipment, and called in his detachments to Atlanta, where by November 4, he had had concentrated four infantry divisions, a cavalry division, and 65 field guns, totalling 60,598 men. Hood remained at Florence, preparing either to invade Tennessee and Kentucky or to follow Sherman. “We were prepared for either alternative.”

  At the conclusion of the Atlanta campaign, Sherman was supremely confident and looked forward to the next and, he believed, final and decisive stage of the campaign and, indeed, of the war. In his survey of his operations, he quoted the great Napoleon “on the fundamental maxim of war, which was ‘to converge a superior force on the critical point at the critical time.’ “That meant, in 1864, on Lee’s and Johnston’s armies. He reflected that, had Lee abandoned Richmond before Sherman captured Atlanta, Grant would have advanced to meet him. As he had taken Atlanta first, the correct strategy was now to march his army to meet Grant. “The most practicable route to Richmond was a thousand miles in distance, too long for a single march; hence the necessity to reach the sea-coast for a new base. Savannah, three hundred miles distant, was the nearest point.” “‘The March to the Sea’ was in strategy only a shift of base for ulterior and highly important purposes.”6 It was the outcome of the battle and campaign of Atlanta which may thus be seen as one of the most crucial operations of the whole war.

  Sherman’s March to the Sea would make him the most hated Northerner in the Confederacy but also crush the South’s spirit of resistance for good. He foresaw coordinating his advance on the ground with naval operations up the Savannah River so that he could “move rapidly to Milledgeville, where there is abundance of corn and meat and could so threaten Macon and Augusta that the enemy would doubtless give up Macon for Augusta; then I would move so as to interpose between Augusta and Savannah, and force him to give up Augusta with the only powder mills and factories remaining in the South.”7 He was actively contriving a scheme to make a war upon food resources turn into a war on industrial production. He was now certain that he could make the march to the sea and “make Georgia howl.” After devastating Georgia he intended to turn on the Carolinas and thence to reach Virginia and Richmond. He now began to organise the troops he had around Atlanta into marching formations for the great advance. The force was divided into a right and left wing, commanded, respectively by General Oliver Howard and General Henry Slocum; the right wing consisted of the Fifteenth and Seventeenth Corps, the left wing of the Fourteenth and Twentieth Corps. There was also a cavalry corps commanded by General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick. The army’s strength totalled 55,000 infantry, 5,000 cavalry, and 64 guns. What opposed it was 3,500 of Wheeler’s cavalry corps and 3,000 under-trained and poorly equipped Georgia militia.

  The order of march arranged the corps on four parallel roads, and allotted a minimum of wheeled transport to each. The surplus and unnecessary were ruthlessly thrown away. Captain David Oakey, of the 3rd Massachusetts Volunteers, described the sorting out. “Each group of messmates decided which hatchet, stew pan or coffee-pot should be taken. The single wagon allowed to a battalion carried scarcely more than a gripsack and blanket, and a bit of shelter tent about the size of a large towel for each officer, and only such other material as was necessary for regimental business. Wagons to carry the necessary ammunition in the contingency of a battle and a few days rations in case of absolute need, composed the train of each army corps and with one wagon and one ambulance for each regiment made very respectable impedimenta, averaging about eight hundred wagons to a corps.”8

  The paucity of food carried was because Sherman had quite deliberately decided that the army should eat out the state as it advanced: “We were expected to make fifteen miles a day; to corduroy the roads where necessary; to destroy such property as was designated by our corps commander; and to consume everything eatable by man or beast.” In Georgia, South Carolina, and, to a slightly lesser extent, in North Carolina when it was reached, Sherman’s men found food in abundance, particularly sweet potatoes and hams, for which they developed a keen nose, usually accurate whatever trouble was taken by the inhabitants to hide the produce, often by burying it. The march into Georgia had begun on November 15. By early December, Sherman’s Army of Georgia, as it was now officially known, was halfway to Savannah. A swathe of scorched earth had been driven through the state by the foraging parties which marched ahead of the troop columns, on whose flanks hung parties of “bummers” not under the control of the foraging officers; they were there simply to scrounge whatever they could. By December 10 the army was outside Savannah and poised to capture the city. Sherman wrote that it had pulled up a hundred miles of the three main Georgia railroads and, besides that, had also “consumed the corn and fodder of country thirty miles either side of the line from Atlanta to Savannah, as also the sweet potatoes, cattle, hogs, sheep and poultry and [had] carried away more than 10,000 horses and mules, as well as a countless number of slaves. I estimate the damage done to the State of Georgia and its military resources at $100,000,000…. This may seem a hard species of warfare, but it brings the sad realities of war home to those who have been directly and indirectly instrumental in involving us in its attendant calamities.”9

  Sherman also wrote, “War is war and not popularity-seeking. If they want peace, they and their relatives must stop the war.” “You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.”10

  His march to Savannah brought maledictions in plenty. Before taking Savannah, Sherman had to overcome the defences of Fort McAllister, which guarded the bay. As the troops formed up, a Union gunboat, the USS Dandelion, appeared and signalled, “Is Fort McAllister taken?” and was answered, “Not yet, but it will be in a minute.” Almost at once Hazen’s Second Division, Fifteenth Corps, swarmed over the parapet and swamped the garrison of 200 men and their 24 guns. Following its fall and the arrival of the Federal fleet offshore, Savannah was evacuated on the night of December 20-21. Next day Sherman telegraphed to Lincoln, offering him the city, with 150 heavy guns and 25,000 bales of cotton, as a Christmas present.

  The South was now running desperately short of soldiers, as desertion became endemic and widespread. By December 1864, manpower returns showed a nominal strength of 400
,787 but only 196,016 actually present with the colours. The state’s authorities, moreover, had generally ceased to run down deserters, who in many cases had formed themselves into armed bands to resist arrest and coercion back into the ranks. There were many reasons why men deserted. Concern for the welfare of their families was an overriding impulse, particularly where farms were falling out of cultivation for want of labour. Husbands and fathers also feared for their womenfolk’s safety, though one of the few barbarities of which the marauding Union marchers were not guilty was rape.

  After Savannah, Sherman was on the threshold of carrying his version of war-making into one of the states where slaves formed a majority of the population, South Carolina. It was also, in Northern eyes, the seedbed of the rebellion, and the region most deserving of harsh treatment. It was the home of several of the most fiery theorists of secession and the place where the first shots had been fired in 1861. Many in Sherman’s army were eager to punish South Carolina and its people for their attack on the Union. Thus far, moreover, the state had escaped paying the cost of rebellion, except in the deaths of its sons on the battlefield. Now Sherman was determined to make it howl even louder than Georgia had done. But before the march into South Carolina began, there had to be a preliminary in Tennessee, where Thomas was charged by Sherman into dealing with Hood.