The Land We Live In Part 15

The Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation, issued by President Lincoln on New Year's Day, 1863, was in every sense a statesmanlike and justifiable measure. It aroused the powerful anti-slavery sentiment of England in support of the Union, and neutralized Tory sympathy with the Confederacy; it strengthened the Union cause at home, and it showed that the National Government was not afraid to punish, and was resolved to weaken its enemies by the confiscation of their property.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

General Grant Invests Vicksburg--The Confederate Garrison--Scenes in the Beleaguered City--The Surrender--Hooker Defeated at Chancellorsville-- Death of "Stonewall" Jackson--General Meade Takes Command of the Army of the Potomac--Lee Crosses the Potomac--The Battle of Gettysburg--The First Two Days--The Third Day--Pickett's Charge--A Thrilling Spectacle--The Harvest of Death--Lee Defeated--General Thomas, "The Rock of Chickamauga"

--"This Position Must Be Held Till Night"--General Grant Defeats Bragg at Chattanooga--The Decisive Battle of the West.

The Confederates made Vicksburg a position of marvelous strength. General William Tec.u.mseh Sherman, who had proved his eminent talent as a commander under Grant at s.h.i.+loh, a.s.saulted the bluffs north of the town on December 29, 1862, and was repulsed. General Grant, with the perseverance which he afterward exhibited at Richmond, fought battle after battle until he had Vicksburg completely invested. Commodore David D. Porter, with a formidable fleet, bombarded the stronghold from the river, while Grant's kept up a cannonade day and night from the land side. General John C. Pemberton had about 15,000 effective men out of 30,000 within the lines of the beleaguered city. Every day the situation grew more intolerable for the besieged. Rats were on sale in the market-places with mule-meat. The people lived in cellars and caves, children were born in caves, and it is interesting to read in a diary of that fearful time that "the churches are a great resort for those that have no caves. People fancy that they are not sh.e.l.led so much, and they are substantial and the pews good to sleep in." A woman wished to go through the lines to her friends, and on July 1 an officer with a flag of truce carried the request. He came back with the statement: "General Grant says no human being shall pa.s.s out of Vicksburg; but the lady may feel sure danger will soon be over. Vicksburg will surrender on the fourth." A Confederate general present when this message was received, said: "Vicksburg will not surrender." But Grant was right. On July 4 silence descended upon Vicksburg. The simoon of shot and sh.e.l.l was over, and men and women and children crawled from their caves into the light of day. The river vessels poured in an abundance of provisions, and plenty succeeded starvation. General Pemberton surrendered 27,000 men as prisoners of war.

General Hooker, notwithstanding his undoubted courage, proved no more fortunate than his predecessors in command of the Army of the Potomac.

With 90,000 men he attacked Lee and 45,000 men at Chancellorsville, May 1 to 4. The Confederate commander was at his best in this fearful four days' struggle. Hooker, says a high Confederate authority, had guided his army "into the mazes of the Wilderness, and got it so mixed and tangled that no chance was afforded for a display of its mettle." Lee with inferior forces managed by consummate strategy to meet and overcome Hooker's subordinates in detail. Then he prepared for a crus.h.i.+ng blow at Hooker himself, which the latter escaped by a timely retreat. The bombastic Order No. 49 which followed this sweeping disaster for the Union arms did not deceive either President Lincoln or the people, who had once more seen the lives of thousands of our gallant troops sacrificed on the altar of shoulder-strapped incompetency. The killed and wounded in this battle numbered about 25,000, of whom more than half were Unionists. These figures repeat eloquently that real soldiers were waiting for a real general. The death of "Stonewall" Jackson at Chancellorsville was in no slight degree a compensation for Union losses.

The tide turned at Gettysburg. General George Gordon Meade succeeded Hooker in command of the Army of the Potomac. Meade was not a brilliant man, but he was a thorough soldier, and eminently free from that spirit of envy which was the bane of our armies, which had nearly driven Grant from the service, and which was responsible for the loss of more than one battle. Elated by Chancellorsville, Lee determined to invade the North.

The South made an extreme effort to replenish its armies, and that of Northern Virginia was raised to about 100,000 men. With the greater part of this magnificent host, including 15,000 cavalry and 280 guns, Lee marched down the Shenandoah Valley, crossed the Potomac on the twenty-fifth of June, and headed for Chambersburg. Meade drew near with the army of the Potomac, and such reinforcements as had been hastily collected in Pennsylvania on the news of the invasion. At Gettysburg the two armies met for the decisive battle of the war. Meade had on the field 83,000 men and 300 guns; Lee, 69,000 men and 250 guns. For three days the two armies contended with frightful losses, and with a courage not surpa.s.sed in ancient or modern warfare. The brave General John F.

Reynolds lost his life in the first encounter, and General Winfield Scott Hanc.o.c.k was sent by Meade to take charge of the field. On the second day occurred the desperate conflict for Little Round Top, which resulted in that key to the Union line being seized and held by the Union troops.

Neither side, however, gained any decided advantage. On the third day Lee prepared for the grand movement known in history as "Pickett's charge."

Fourteen thousand men were selected as the forlorn hope of the Confederacy. For two hours before the charge 120 guns kept up a fearful cannonade upon the Union lines. Meade answered with eighty guns. About three o'clock in the afternoon Meade ceased firing. Lee thought the Northern gunners were silenced. He was mistaken; they knew what was coming.

On moved the charging column, as the smoke of battle lifted, and the "tattered uniforms and bright muskets" came plainly into view. At an average distance of about eleven hundred yards the Union batteries opened. Shot and sh.e.l.l tore through the Confederate ranks. Still they marched on over wounded and dying and dead. Canister now rained on their flanks, and as they came within closer range a hurricane of bullets burst upon them, and men dropped on every side like leaves in the winds of autumn. The strength of the charging column melted before the gale of death; but the survivors staggered on. When the remains of the Confederate right reached the Union works their three brigade commanders had fallen, every field officer except one had been killed or wounded; but still the remnant kept its face to the foe, led to annihilation by the dauntless Armistead. The four brigades on the left of Pickett met a similar fate. "They moved up splendidly," wrote a Union officer, "deploying as they crossed the long sloping interval. The front of the column was nearly up the slope, and within a few yards of the Second Corps' front and its batteries, when suddenly a terrific fire from every available gun on Cemetery Ridge burst upon them. Their graceful lines underwent an instantaneous transformation in a dense cloud of smoke and dust; arms, heads, blankets, guns and knapsacks were tossed in the air, and the moan from the battlefield was heard amid the storm of battle."

One half of the 14,000 perished in the charge. Gettysburg was over, and the tide of invasion from the South was rolled back never to return.

Meade had lost about 23,000 men, and Lee about 23,000. Halleck, whose business as general-in-chief seemed to be to annoy successful commanders, and irritate them to the resignation point, blamed Meade for allowing Lee to retire without another battle, but public opinion upheld the victor of Gettysburg, and Congress honored him and Generals Hanc.o.c.k and O. O.

Howard with a resolution of thanks.

General George H. Thomas, a Southern officer of the Lee and Johnston rank in military capacity, who fortunately stood by the Union, saved Chickamauga from being a Union defeat that would have done much to offset Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Rosecrans had compelled Bragg to evacuate Chattanooga, and erroneously a.s.sumed that the Confederate commander was in retreat, when in fact he had been reinforced by Longstreet and was ready to risk another battle. The two armies met in the valley of Chickamauga. Operations on the Union side were chiefly a series of blunders which resulted in the right wing of Rosecrans' army being broken and driven from the field, leaving the brunt of the conflict to be borne by General Thomas with the left wing.

The magnificent stand made by Thomas against the victorious Confederates, gained for him the t.i.tle of the "Rock of Chickamauga." Surrounded on all sides by a force that a craven commander might have deemed irresistible, Thomas thought out his plans as coolly as if miles away from danger.

"Take that ridge!" he said calmly to General James B. Steedman, when that fearless soldier came up with his division; and Thomas pointed to a commanding ridge held by the enemy. Steedman moved at once to the attack, and the ridge was carried with a loss of 2900 men. In vain both wings of the Confederates were hurled, with fierce determination against the little army of Thomas. With 25,000 men he successfully resisted the attacks of between 50,000 and 60,000. "It will ruin the army to withdraw it now; this position must be held till night"--was the answer of Thomas to Rosecrans; and Thomas held the position until night, and then withdrew in good order. The Union loss was about 19,000 and that of the Confederates at least as great. Thomas in the following month succeeded Rosecrans as commander of the Army of the c.u.mberland. It is more than probable that up to that time his merits had not been fully recognized, owing to unfounded suspicion of his loyalty. When it was said of Thomas to General Joseph E. Johnston that he "did not know when he was whipped,"

Johnston answered: "Rather say he always knew very well when he was not whipped."

The Army of the Tennessee, now commanded by Sherman, was brought up to Chattanooga from Vicksburg, and General Grant was placed in command of all forces west of the Alleghenies. General Hooker was sent from Virginia with reinforcements, and General Grant prepared for the decisive battle of the West. In that battle, which was fought about Chattanooga, November 24 and 25, Bragg was completely defeated with a loss of about 3000 in killed and wounded and 6000 prisoners. A remarkable feature of this battle is that the Confederate position on Missionary Ridge was carried by a charge made by the Union troops without orders from their commanders.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

Grant Appointed Lieutenant-General--Takes Command in Virginia--Battles of the Wilderness--The Two Armies--Battle of Cedar Creek--Sheridan's Ride--He Turns Defeat Into Victory--Confederate Disasters on Land and Sea--Farragut at Mobile--Last Naval Battle of the War--Sherman Enters Atlanta--Lincoln's Re-election--Sherman's March to the Sea--Sherman Captures Savannah--Thomas Defeats Hood at Nashville--Fort Fisher Taken--Lee Appointed General-in-chief--Confederate Defeat at Five Forks--Lee's Surrender--Johnston's Surrender--End of the War--The South Prostrate--A Resistance Unparalleled in History--The Blots on the Confederacy--Cruel Treatment of Union Men and Prisoners--Murder of Abraham Lincoln--The South Since the War.

The Confederacy having been dismantled in the Southwest--except in Texas, where secession simply awaited the result in other States--Virginia became the central battle-ground of the rebellion. There its chief energies were concentrated for the closing struggle, and there its greatest leader commanded. It was the part of wisdom, therefore, for the National Government to make its most successful general chief of all the National armies, with the understanding that he would personally direct operations in the most important field. Grant was appointed lieutenant-general in March, 1864, and he at once gave his attention to the Army of the Potomac, which Meade continued to command under his supervision. The Army of Northern Virginia was no longer the well-equipped host which had gained victory after victory in the earlier period of the war, but its spirit was undaunted, and Lee, as his resources diminished, displayed more signally than ever his remarkable military genius. The two great commanders were face to face, but not on the equal terms that in '62 or '63 would have presented a duel of giants.

The Confederacy was falling, gradually, it is true, but the end was in sight. It was virtually confined to four States, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia, and these but sh.e.l.ls that only needed Sherman's march to the sea to prove how hollow they were. General Grant fought his way through the battles of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania and Cold Harbor, and across the James River to Petersburg. His losses of men were enormous, but the strength of his army was maintained by a continuous supply of recruits from the North. Grant established his lines in front of Petersburg, and proceeded to reduce that place. He gave Lee no rest, and exhausted the Confederates with repeated surprises and attacks.

General Lee had about 50,000 men to defend two cities and a line of intrenchments enveloping both, thirty-five miles long, against about 150,000 men, a large proportion of them veterans, trained and steeled to war. The time had pa.s.sed for offensive operations on any effective scale on the part of the Confederates, although a desperate dash now and then gave a false impression to the world outside that the Confederacy still had a vigorous vitality. While General Philip H. Sheridan, Chief of Cavalry of the Army of the Potomac, was at Winchester, October 19, General Jubal Early suddenly attacked Sheridan's forces at Cedar Creek, nearly twenty miles from Winchester. The attack was made at dawn, and proved a complete surprise. The National troops were defeated, and the roads were thronged with fugitives, while camp, and cannon and a large number of prisoners fell into the hands of the enemy. Sheridan was riding leisurely out of Winchester, when he met his routed troops. At once he dashed forward on his black charger, crying out to his men: "Face the other way, boys! Face the other way!" and, as he learned the extent of the disaster, he added: "We will have all the camps and cannon back again!" With courage revived by their leader's example, the Union troops rallied and turned upon the foe, recovering all the spoil, and virtually destroying Early's army.

Disaster attended the Confederate cause on land and sea. The British cruiser Alabama, flying the Confederate flag, was defeated and sunk by the United States frigate Kearsarge, off the coast of France, in June, 1864. Admiral David Glasgow Farragut entered Mobile Bay, August 5, lashed to the mast of his flags.h.i.+p, the Hartford, and fought the last naval battle of the war. The monitor Tec.u.mseh, which led the National vessels, was struck by the explosion of a torpedo, and sank with Commander Craven and nearly all her officers and men. Farragut, unshaken by this disaster, ordered the Hartford to go ahead heedless of torpedoes, and the other vessels to follow. He silenced the batteries with grapeshot, destroyed the Confederate squadron, and on the following day captured the forts with the a.s.sistance of a land force of 5000 men from New Orleans. The impatience of the Richmond government, chafing under its own impotence, hastened the catastrophe. General Joseph E. Johnston, who had succeeded Bragg, and who husbanded as far as compatible with an efficient defence the troops under his command, was removed to give way to General John B.

Hood, who was willing to waste his forces in hopeless conflict with Sherman. On September 2 Sherman entered Atlanta.

The news of Lincoln's re-election by 212 electoral votes to 21 for McClellan, put an end to Confederate reliance on Northern sympathy and aid. Even the most sanguine now lost hope.

After sending a part of his army under Thomas to cope with Hood, who had moved into middle Tennessee, Sherman started about the middle of November with 60,000 men on his famous march through Georgia to the seacoast. He destroyed the railroads, and devastated the country from which the Confederacy was drawing its supplies. Although I have never seen it mentioned in any publication regarding the war, I believe that previous to Sherman's march it was the purpose of the Confederate Government to retreat to North Carolina when too hardly pressed in Virginia. Otherwise there seems to be no explanation for the vast acc.u.mulation of provisions at Salisbury, which were certainly not intended or used for the Union prisoners at that place, and for the large stores of food at Charlotte.

Sherman captured Savannah just before Christmas, and proceeded northward through the Carolinas. Meantime General Thomas had completely defeated Hood at the battle of Nashville, and dispersed his army, the remnant of which gathered again under General Joseph E. Johnston to oppose the march of Sherman. Fort Fisher, North Carolina, surrendered to General Alfred H.

Terry and Admiral Porter in January, 1865.

Lee, reduced to the last extremity at Richmond, and appointed in February, 1865, general-in-chief of armies which no longer had a real existence, decided to abandon the Confederate capital and effect a junction with Johnston. Sheridan prevented this by defeating the Confederates at Five Forks, April 1, and turning Lee's right and threatening his rear. Five Forks was the beginning of the end.

Thirty-five thousand muskets were guarding thirty-seven miles of intrenchments, and on these attenuated lines General Grant ordered an immediate a.s.sault. The defences were found to be almost denuded of men.

Petersburg and Richmond fell, and Lee, driven westward, surrendered at Appomattox, on April 9, the remains of the once proud Army of Northern Virginia, now numbering 26,000 ragged and starving soldiers. On learning that Lee's troops had been living for days on parched corn, General Grant at once offered to send them rations, and the Union soldiers readily shared their own provisions with the men with whom, a few hours before, they had been engaged in mortal strife. Lee bade a touching farewell to his troops, and rode through a weeping army to his home in Richmond. A fortnight afterward Johnston surrendered to Sherman, and with the surrender of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Army, May 26, the war was at an end. The Confederate Government had fled from Richmond when Lee withdrew his army, and on May 10, Jefferson Davis was captured near Irwinsville, Ga., and sent as a prisoner to Fortress Monroe.

We have read of the sieges of Numantia and of Haarlem, of Scotland's struggle for liberty under Wallace and Bruce, and of the virtual extinction of the men of Paraguay in the war against Brazil and Argentina; but history records no resistance on the part of a considerable population inhabiting an extensive region, under an organized government, worthy to compare in resolution, endurance and self-sacrifice, with that of the Southern Confederacy to the forces of the Union. When the war closed the South was prostrate. When the Governor of Alabama was asked to join in raising a force to attack the rear of Sherman he answered, no doubt truthfully, that only cripples, old men and children remained of the male population of the State. In their desperation the Southern leaders even thought of enlisting negroes, thus adding a grotesque epilogue to the mighty national tragedy. Of course even the most ignorant negro could not have been expected to fight for his own enslavement. I saw Richmond about a month before the surrender.

It was like a city of the dead. Two weeks later I was in New York. It teemed with life and bustle and energy.

The blots on the Confederacy were the cruel persecution of Union men living in the South, who were, in many instances, dragged from their families and put to death as traitors, and the maltreatment of Union prisoners. The North tolerated Southern sympathizers, when not actually engaged in plotting against the government, and treated Southern prisoners with all the kindness possible. It has been said for the South that while Union prisoners were starving, the Confederate troops in the field were almost starving too. This is a dishonest subterfuge. The Southern troops were starving not because ordinary food was not plentiful in the Confederacy, but because of lack of transportation to carry the food from the interior to the front, while the Union prisoners perished from hunger in the midst of abundance. Again, even a.s.suming the plea of scarcity to be true, that would not palliate the numerous murders of helpless prisoners by volleys fired into the stockades at the pleasure of the guards.[1] There was a vindictiveness in these crimes which no plea can extenuate.

[1] As one of the survivors of the ma.s.sacre of November 25, 1864, at Salisbury, North Carolina, I know whereof I speak.

The murder of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth removed the only man who could have done justice to the South and controlled the pa.s.sions of the North. Lincoln was signally, providentially adapted to be the nation's guide in the struggle which, under his leaders.h.i.+p, was brought to a successful conclusion. For the equally difficult task of reconstruction he was likewise admirably qualified, and his death was followed by a civil chaos almost as deplorable as armed disunion. From that chaos the American people gradually emerged by force of their native character and their fundamental sense of justice and of right. The South, for some years subjected to the rule of camp-followers and freedmen, gradually recovered from the devastation of war, and superior intelligence came to the top, as it always will eventually. The Southern people learned that they had other resources besides cotton, and they began to emulate the North in the development of manufactures and mines.

The old slave-owning aristocracy in the South has disappeared, but the "poor whites" have also almost disappeared, and the average of comfort in that section is greater than at any period in American history. The negroes complain, and with too much cause, of political oppression and exclusion from the suffrage, but they seem to be on good terms with their "oppressors," and on the principle of the old Spanish proverb that "he is my friend who brings grist to my mill," the Southern black has no better friend than the Southern white.

Thirty Years of Peace.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

Reconstruction in the South--The Congress and the President--Liberal Republican Movement--Nomination, Defeat and Death of Greeley--Troops Withdrawn by President Hayes--Foreign Policy of the Past Thirty Years-- French Ordered from Mexico--Last Days of Maximilian--Russian-America Bought--The Geneva Arbitration--Alabama Claims Paid--The Northwest Boundary--The Fisheries--Spain and the Virginius--The Custer Ma.s.sacre --United States of Brazil Established--President Harrison and Chile --Venezuela--American Prestige in South America--Hawaii--Behring Sea--Garfield, the Martyr of Civil Service Reform--Labor Troubles-- Railway Riots of 1877 and 1894--Great Calamities--The Chicago Fire, Boston Fire, Charleston Earthquake, Johnstown Flood.