Upon the Altar of the Nation

by Harry S. Stout

  Another diarist, Martha Wayles Robertson, who lived just north of Petersburg, heard the din of cannon and prayed for deliverance. As guns fired only five miles distant, she prayed that the “noble Beauregard” and Lee would repel the evil invaders: “Oh give them the victory. They are both Christians!”4

  In the field after the battles around Spotsylvania Court House, Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Lyman observed the curious fraternization taking place between the warring armies:To-day has been entirely quiet, our pickets deliberately exchanging papers, despite orders to the contrary. These men are incomprehensible—now standing from daylight to dark killing and wounding each other by thousands, and now making jokes and exchanging newspapers! You see them lying side by side in the hospitals, talking together in that serious prosaic way that characterizes Americans. The great staples of conversation are the size and quality of rations, the marches they have made, and the regiments they had fought against. All sense of personal spite is sunk in the immensity of the contest. 5

  Herein lies the central paradox of the Civil War: the soldiers’ awe at the scale of conflict and destruction eventually transcended personal “spite”; in the very act of annihilating one another, they recovered the fact that they really were Americans all.

  The destructions wrought in 1864 were unique and pivotal in the Civil War. As the spring campaigns raged, prospects of death displaced romantic love as the soldier’s central obsession. On May 22, Private William Willoughby wrote: “The Rebs now hold the R. Road from Petersburg to Richmond. We have been here 16 days and we have had 12 or 13 days hard fighting. Almost a constant roar of Cannon and rattle of Musketry and it is astonishing to me how a man escapes alive.” Whatever the fears, Willoughby resigned himself to a Providence that none could foretell: “I submit to the will of God. Let him do as seemeth him good.”

  While duty and Providence justified the war, they did not steel Willoughby in the face of battle. In responding to a letter from his wife, Willoughby wrote:You say Eliza thinks I was foolish in going with the Regt and you write as though you regretted it. Now you would not want it said your Husband was a coward nor would Eliza care to have it said she had a cowardly Brother in the Army. Neither would Raymond a few years hence should he live, care to hear his Father was a Shirk or Flunkey. My attachments for home and Friends are as Strong as any ones Yet to come home disgraced I should not care to do. I shall not of course expose myself unnecessarily, and shall try to take care of my self the best I can.6

  John Emerson Anderson had no doubt what he was fighting for. This he defined simply: “Patriotism as I understand it, is, to be willing to sacrifice something to promote any good cause for our common country. It is not in words, that great things are accomplished but in deeds, and in actions . . . continue to pray Mother for our common cause and I have the best assurance that you will not pray in vain.” Of the justice of his cause, Anderson had no doubts. Emancipation had rendered it a “holy war,” so that Union soldiers who were killed in action were nothing less than “martyrs” who died that slavery might end:May they realize that the sacrifice of our brave and noble comrades who have fallen in the struggle are every one of them martyrs. Justice demands at our hands that they shall not have fallen in vain, but that every vestige of the great National Sin, slavery, shall be washed away with their blood, that future generations may look back upon the records of these times and say with pride as well as with reverence these men were our preservers under God, for they saved our Republic. I believe God is certainly with us. And if so who can prevail against Him.7

  Many went so far as to draw analogies between the soldiers’ deaths and the atoning work of Christ on the cross. In the North, at a funeral for James T. Stebbins and Myron E. Stowell, the pastor cried out: “We must be ready to give up our sons, brothers, friends—if we cannot go ourselves—to hardships, sufferings, dangers and death if need be, for the preservation of our government and the Freedom of the nation. We should lay them, willing sacrifices, upon the altar!”8

  By 1864 the language of martyrdom and sacrificial altars was instinctual and, through sheer repetition, forming a national consensus and literally incarnating a powerful new religion of patriotism. After rehearsing the lives of Albany’s “martyrs” who died for their nation, Pastor Rufus Clark closed: “A republic for which such sacrifices have been made, and upon whose altar such noble and precious lives have been laid, must live, must triumph over all its foes, and shine with new splendor in the ages yet to come.” In all seriousness, one minister consoled grieving parents with the words that their son “laid himself cheerfully upon the altar, and gloried to be there.”9

  Of course soldiers did not cheerfully do any such thing. But interestingly, many did not wish to lay their enemies on the altar either. Unlike American armies trained after World War II—programmed to instinctively shoot to kill—many soldiers, though patriots and nonpacifists, could not bring themselves to kill another human being in the heat of battle.10 This understandably concerned commanders, but not as much as did the deserters or “skulkers” who were also part of every battle. They were the ones who would feign injury or illness or effect labors to save wounded comrades—anything that would take them behind the lines.

  This could prove to be devastating. Soldiers had to know they could count on their comrades. To ensure this, the commanders instituted the ultimate penalty for desertion. On both sides, soldiers who deserted their comrades in time of battle were put to death by execution. Lieutenant Colonel Lyman observed how in the recent battles “stragglers have committed great outrages” in the cause of victory. Worried that Lincoln might later manumit the sentences, Lyman was in favor of hanging deserters on the spot in full view of their advancing comrades. Desertions continued, he believed, because of “the uncertainty of the death penalty through the false merciful policy of the President. It came to be a notorious thing that no one could be executed but poor friendless wretches, who had none to intercede for them ... there was no certainty in punishment, and certainty is the essence of all punishment.”11

  On this score, Lee was similar to Lincoln. He lacked the stomach to execute Confederate deserters. In practice, this meant officers would rely not on civil process to punish deserters and stragglers but on the point of their own swords in the back of the offenders.

  Sporadic skirmishing continued for several days after Spotsylvania, but neither general itched for an immediate replay of “the game.” The most significant engagement took place on May 11 at Yellow Tavern, Virginia, just six miles north of Richmond. There Philip Sheridan clashed with Lee’s flamboyant cavalry officer Jeb Stuart. Both generals shared a fearlessness in battle that energized their soldiers. When Sheridan’s twelve thousand troops met up with Stuart’s five thousand cavalrymen, Sheridan assumed the offensive. He was repeatedly beaten back until Brigadier General George A. Custer’s brigade broke through the line. In the process, the charismatic Stuart was felled by an unmounted Michigan cavalryman and died the following day in Richmond. Again the capital city was devastated.

  As the Confederacy mourned its heroic general, Sheridan rejoined Grant and prepared for the next assault. Despite the exhaustion of both armies, Grant and Lee understood that they could not stand still. If Grant was not to retreat—which he certainly was not—then he must resume the battle, or Lee would hit him first. Likewise, if Lee was to avoid open contact or costly offensive assaults, he would have to remain far enough ahead of Grant’s omnivorous army to entrench strongly and nullify his inferior numbers, which grew more diminished by the day.

  From the start of the campaign, Grant had hoped to close Lee in a vice between Meade’s Army of the Potomac and Butler’s Army of the James, which presumably was coming from the south to get into position around Petersburg. But the incompetent General Butler had his hands full with Confederate General Beauregard. Worse, he was hamstrung by his own timidity and indecisiveness. Through a series of disastrous moves that even an amateur map reader could have avoided, Butler managed t
o hem himself into his own trenches between the James and Appomattox rivers. Incredulous, General Beauregard took his small army into entrenched lines that sealed Butler off, rendering his thirty-thousand-man army, in Grant’s words, “in a bottle strongly corked.”12

  Now on his own, Grant once again confronted an experienced and determined foe. In the last week of May, he began moving on Richmond, knowing Lee would have to follow.

  The two armies next dug in with entrenchments and abatis in the tightly confined fields around the intersections at Cold Harbor. The site was near Gaines’ Mill field where, two years earlier, Lee had defeated McClellan. But much had changed in two years. Gaines’ Mill offered only picket fences for cover. At Cold Harbor, Lee could forge a battle line with tangled abatis and field guns supporting entrenched positions. The line extended from Bethesda Church on the Mechanicsville Turnpike south along Bethesda Church Road to the Chickahominy River below Cold Harbor and Gaines’ Mill.

  Lee left no reserves behind and no option for retreat. With local knowledge, skilled engineers, and veteran soldiers, his entrenchments were cunningly designed to provide maximum defensive support as well as fields of fire that would take advantage of ravines and tree lines to create murderous crossfire from which no escape, forward or backward, would be possible. Nature and logistics together were impregnable. Amazingly, neither side appeared to be discouraged or demoralized.

  If Grant and Meade were confident in their superior numbers and willing to put the men to the task, the troops were less certain. Having already borne bloody battles for a month straight, a sort of mad fatalism permeated their conversations and actions. In an unusual gesture, many soldiers wrote out their names and addresses on slips of paper and pinned them to their hats or shirts so that kin could be notified of the fact that “June 3. Cold Harbor. I was killed.”13

  For Charles Washburn of the Thirteenth New Hampshire, the work of music continued in or out of battle, rain or shine. The bands usually played in the morning as marches began, and one or two pieces again in the evening after supper. Funerals were also fit for music and became increasingly common. To Washburn, a funeral dirge represented “the most beautiful and affecting music ever written.” Grant was about to provide him with all the beauty he could desire.

  Although Grant (who would assume formal responsibility) has often been solely credited for the assault about to happen, he actually shared the decision with Meade. For some time, Meade had been concerned that Grant was getting all the attention for commanding what was, in fact, his Army of the Potomac. In a gesture of reconciliation, Grant had ceded operational control to Meade, who bragged openly: “I had complete and entire command on the field all day.” He would later rue his words of dismissive pride.14

  At 4:30 a.m. the tragically brief and criminally expensive assault began. The worst destruction hit Union Brigadier General John H. Martindale, whose division had to pass through a ravine that was murderously swathed by criss-crossing lines of fire. The first line approached the Twentieth South Carolina, where the rebels waited patiently, sighting their targets. The Yankees never had a chance as the first line “reeled and attempted to fly the field, but were met by the next column, which halted the retreating troops with the bayonet, butts of guns, and officer’s sword.” As rebel soldiers fired methodically and relentlessly from their impregnable entrenchments, Union soldiers funneled like pigs into a slaughter pen. They had no choice but to press on, pushed forward as they were by their own men.

  1864

  The next line fared no better, “rear rank pushing forward the first rank, only to be swept away like chaff.” Rebel soldiers laughed and joked as they poured lead into the hapless Yankees. The carnage was total.

  When Captain Thomas Barker of the Twelfth New Hampshire was ordered to re-form his lines for another massed assault, he “declared with an oath that he would not take his regiment into another such charge, if Jesus Christ himself should order it.”15 In little over an hour, all three assaulting Federal corps were repulsed with staggering losses that totaled seven thousand. In comparison, rebel casualties were meager, under fifteen hundred.

  When Charles Washburn had arrived at Cold Harbor, he had found it “a very unsafe place to be.” After the assault, he was immediately enlisted at the field hospital to help with the wounded. He would later write: “It was there I experienced, or realized the awfulness of war ... the wounded were everywhere, under every tree and bush where they could be partially sheltered from the hot rays of a June sun.... Holes were dug in the ground near the tables, and I saw them actually filled, with amputated limbs.”16

  In the battle’s aftermath the warrior priests communicated directly. Hundreds of dead and wounded soldiers lay side by side in the field between the two armies. The two generals negotiated the fate of their soldiers, each interceding for his charges. Grant began with a letter to Lee, noting that unless a temporary cessation of hostilities was effected, the wounded could not be gathered up for care. Would Lee agree to such a truce immediately, selecting any three-hour block he liked?

  African Americans collecting the bones of soldiers killed in the battle of Cold Harbor, Virginia. This photograph by John Reekie portrays the grisly aftermath of General Grant’s ill-fated charge against Confederate defenses.

  Left with little choice, Grant finally acquiesced and raised the flag, and on June 7 all the living Federal wounded were finally gathered up—both of them. The rest had died where they lay on the battlefield. Grant would not forget the humiliation of this day. In the not too distant future, he would dictate the terms to Lee, and it would be permanent.17 For now, however, some of Grant’s officers were not humiliated but furious that the wounded had been left to die for the sake of “honor” and the “rules of war.” Colonel Francis Walker issued a harsh judgment of his commander:If it be asked why so simple a duty of humanity as the rescue of the wounded and burial of the dead had been thus neglected, it is answered that it was due to an unnecessary scruple on the part of the Union commander in chief. Grant delayed sending a flag of truce to General Lee for this purpose because it would amount to an admission that he had been beaten on the 3d of June. It now seems incredible that he should for a moment have supposed that any other view could be taken of that action. But even if it were so, this was a very poor way of rewarding his soldiers who had fallen in the attack, or of encouraging their comrades to take similar risks.18

  Clearly, the South was not the only side to venerate “honor” at the expense of morality. On both sides, the West Point generals understood honor only too well.

  Grant would later reflect on the battle of Cold Harbor and would concede profound “regret” for his (and Meade’s) command decisions. As he wrote:At Cold Harbor no advantage whatever was gained to compensate for the heavy loss we sustained. Indeed, the advantages other than those of relative losses, were on the Confederate side. Before that, the Army of Northern Virginia seemed to have acquired a wholesome regard for the courage, endurance, and soldierly qualities generally of the Army of the Potomac. They no longer wanted to fight them “one Confederate to five Yanks ...” This charge seemed to revive their hopes temporarily; but was of short duration.19

  Grant’s concession suggests that he had a moral sense of the war and an understanding of when the moral brake linings sheared. But even Cold Harbor could be morally justified by his commander in chief, who kept closely to his awful arithmetic.

  Grant’s reference to lopsided losses resonates well with Lincoln’s overall moral calculus that the prodigious deaths on the Cold Harbor battlefield shortened the war and prevented higher ongoing death rates in prisons and winter camps. For the most part, American military historians agree, chalking the episode up to bad judgment, forgiving Grant because he admitted his mistake, and then moving on to the next great battle. In this way, Americans past and present manage to record and solemnize battlefield deaths without judging them. Somehow, in ways they could not explain then or now, Americans accepted the levels of destruction a
s secondary to the work of national redemption America’s God required.

  When the losses at Cold Harbor were factored into the combined casualties from the rolling battles of May to June 3, 1864, the totals were stunning and widely broadcast in the North and South. In less than one month, Grant’s Army of the Potomac had lost fifty thousand men—virtually the same number as Lee’s entire Army of Northern Virginia. Even for battle-hungry civilians and statesmen, these figures were shattering—nearly half of the total Federal casualties for the entire three years prior. Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg, and Chickamauga had served as mere dress rehearsals for spring 1864. Lee’s losses of thirty-two thousand were equally devastating, representing in proportional terms half of his Confederate Army. Neither general would order a frontal assault again in the war.

  For once, civilians, no less than soldiers, became sickened by the river of blood. Newspapers and ordinary people again labeled Grant the “butcher.” His own soldiers picked up the label and evidenced telltale symptoms of what today would be called post-traumatic stress disorder. Having lived through the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor, they were physically and psychologically shot. No commander—not even Grant—could get them to do it again. In fact, Grant had underestimated Lee, and Cold Harbor became his painful classroom. A vindicated Meade, who earlier had to listen to Grant belittle Union fears of Lee, wrote, “I think Grant has had his eyes opened.” Still, the campaign to “get Lee” would not miss a step.