The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 3: Red River to Appomattox

  “Flanked! Outflanked!” the cry went up on Early’s left as the dismounted horsemen he had scorned from the outset, calling them buttermilk rangers and worse, fled before the onslaught of Crook, whose two divisions came whooping down the mountainside to strike them flank and rear. Eastward along Fisher’s Hill, where the defenders had begun to remark that Sheridan must have lost his nerve and called off the attack he had been threatening all day, the confusion spread when Wright’s corps joined the melee, advancing division by division across Tumbling Run as the gray line crumbled unit by unit from the shattered left. Fearful of being trapped in the angle between river and run, they too bolted, leaving the teamless cannoneers to slow the blue advance while they themselves took off, first down the rearward slope, then southward up the turnpike.

  “Forward! Forward everything!” Sheridan yelled, coursing the field on his black charger and gesturing with his flat-topped hat for emphasis. “Don’t stop! Go on!” he shouted as his infantry overran and captured twelve of the guns on Fisher’s Hill.

  Anticipating “results still more pregnant,” he counted on Averell, whose division he presently launched in pursuit of the rebels fleeing through the twilight, to complete the Cannae he had had in mind when he sent Torbert with two divisions up the Luray Valley for a crossing of Massanutton to cut off Early’s retreat at New Market. Alas, both cavalry generals failed him utterly in the crunch. Torbert came upon Fitz Lee’s two brigades, posted in defense of a narrow gorge twelve miles beyond Front Royal, and decided there was nothing to be gained from being reckless. He withdrew without attempting a dislodgment. Sheridan was “astonished and chagrined” when he heard of this next morning. But his anger at Torbert was mild compared to what came over him when he learned that Averell had put his troopers into bivouac the night before to spare them the risk of attacking Early’s rear guard in the darkness. Enraged, Little Phil fired off a message informing the cavalryman that he expected “resolution and actual fighting, with necessary casualties, before you retire. There must be no more backing and filling,” he fumed, and when Averell did no better today, despite this blistering, he relieved him of command and sent him forthwith back to West Virginia, “there to await orders from these headquarters or higher authority.”

  By that time Early had cleared New Market, and though Sheridan kept up the pursuit beyond Harrisonburg, where the graybacks turned off eastward around the head of Massanutton to find shelter near one of the Blue Ridge passes a dozen miles southeast of Staunton, he had to be content with what he had won at Fisher’s Hill and picked up along the turnpike afterwards. This included four additional guns, which brought the total to sixteen, and more than a thousand prisoners. Early’s over-all loss, in the battle and on the retreat, was about 1400 killed, wounded, and missing; Sheridan’s came to 528.

  Gratifying as the comparison was, another was even more so. When Sheridan took over Hunter’s frazzled command at Monocacy eight weeks ago, the rebs were bristling along the upper Potomac, as if their descent on Washington the month before had been no more than a rehearsal for a heavier blow. Now they were a hundred miles from that river, and it seemed doubtful they would ever return to its banks, so complete had been his triumph this past week, first near Winchester and then, three days later, at Fisher’s Hill. “Better still,” Grant replied to his protégé’s announcement of the second of these victories, “it wipes out much of the stain upon our arms by previous disasters in that locality. May your good work continue is now the prayer of all loyal men.”

  Exultation flared among Lincoln supporters, whose number had grown considerably in the course of the three-week September span that opened with news of Atlanta’s fall and closed with this pair of Shenandoah victories to balance the tally East and West. The candidate himself was in “a more gleeful humor,” friends testified after visits to the White House. “Jordan has been a hard road to travel,” he told one caller, “but I feel now that, notwithstanding the enemies I have made and the faults I have committed, I’ll be dumped on the right side of that stream.”

  Abrupt though it was, he had cause for this change in mood from gloom to glee. Within two weeks of his August 23 pledge-prediction, countersigned blindly by the cabinet as a prelude to defeat, the news from Sherman down in Georgia produced a scurry by disaffected Jacobins to get back aboard the bandwagon: especially after the mid-September elections in Maine and Vermont showed the party not only holding its own, contrary to pre-Atlanta expectations, but also registering a slight gain. These straws in the wind grew more substantial with the announcement of Sheridan’s triumphal march up the Valley. Salmon Chase paid his respects at the White House, then left to take the stump in Ohio, Vallandigham’s stamping ground, while Horace Greeley, privately declaring that he intended to “fight like a savage in this campaign — I hate McClellan,” he explained — announced that the Tribune would “henceforth fly the banner of Abraham Lincoln for President.” Even Ben Wade and Henry Davis, whose early-August manifesto had sought to check what they called his “encroachments,” took to the stump, like Chase, in support of the very monster they had spent the past two months attacking, though they maintained a measure of consistency by spending so much of their time excoriating the Democratic nominee that they had little left for praise in the other direction. “To save the nation,” Wade told a colleague in explanation of his support for a leader he despised, “I am doing all for him that I could possibly do for a better man.”

  Meantime Lincoln, no doubt as amused as he was gratified by these political somersaults, did not neglect the particulars incident to victory and available to the candidate in office. Patronage and contracts were awarded to those who could do most for the party, and a binding promise went to James Gordon Bennett that he would be appointed Minister to France in exchange for his support in the New York Herald. There remained the thorny problem of Frémont, whose continuation in the race threatened to siphon off a critical number of die-hard radical voters. These had long been calling for the removal of Montgomery Blair, whose presence in the cabinet they considered an affront, and though Lincoln, aware that his compliance would be interpreted as an act of desperation, had resisted their demand for the Postmaster General’s removal, now that Atlanta had turned the tide he felt willing to be persuaded: provided, that is, he got something commensurate in exchange.

  The something in this case was Frémont’s withdrawal, and he got it without having to drop the pretense of unwillingness he had kept up all along. “The President was most reluctant to come to terms, but came,” Zachariah Chandler informed his wife after serving as go-between in the bargain. On September 22 — by coincidence, the day Sheridan hustled Early off Fisher’s Hill — Frémont renounced his candidacy. “The union of the Republican Party has become a paramount necessity,” he explained in his announcement of withdrawal, but he added, by way of a backhand lick in parting: “In respect to Mr Lincoln I continue to hold exactly the sentiments contained in my letter of acceptance. I consider that his administration has been politically, militarily, and financially a failure, and that its necessary continuance is a cause of regret for the country.”

  Blair’s head rolled next day. “My dear Sir,” Lincoln wrote him: “You have generously said to me more than once that whenever your resignation could be a relief to me it was at my disposal. The time has come.” There followed compliments and thanks, if not regrets. Blair saw clearly enough that he was in fact “a peace offering to Frémont and his friends.” The thought rankled. “The President has, I think, given himself, and me too, an unnecessary mortification in this matter,” he wrote his wife before clearing out his desk, “but then I am not the best judge and I am sure he acts from the best motives.” A good party man, like all the Blairs, he soon was out wooing voters for the chief who had let him go when bargain time came round.

  While this high-level politicking was in progress up the country, Grant tried another pendulum strike at opposite ends of Lee’s line, first north then south of the James. Encouraged by
news from the Valley, which seemed to show what determination could accomplish, he was also provoked by a mid-September coup the rebel cavalry scored at his expense. On Coggins Point, six miles downriver from his headquarters, a large herd of cattle awaited slaughter for Meade’s army; or so it was thought until a rustling operation, dubbed “Hampton’s Cattle Raid,” caused the beef to wind up in stomachs unaccustomed to such fare. Hampton set out with three brigades on a wide swing around the Union left, September 14, and reached his objective before dawn two days later. Two brigades fought a holding action, hard in the Federal rear, while the third rounded up the animals on Coggins Point; then all three turned drovers and rode back into their own lines next day with just over 300 prisoners and just under 2500 beeves, at a cost of fewer than 60 casualties. Lee’s veterans were feasting on Yankee beef by the time Grant returned from his Harpers Ferry conference with Sheridan to find that in his absence, and to his outrage, the graybacks had foraged profitably half a dozen miles in rear of City Point. Determined to avenge this indignity — and aware, as well, that the year was about to move into the final month before the national election, still without the main eastern army having chalked up a gain to compare with those scored recently in Georgia and the nearby Shenandoah Valley — he told Meade to proceed with another of those sequential right-left strikes, such as he had attempted twice in the past month, designed to throw Lee off balance and overrun at least a portion of his works.

  Both times before, the initial attack north of the James had been made by Hancock, but his corps by now was practically hors de combat as a result of these and other efforts there and elsewhere. So this time the assignment went to Butler. Presumably refreshed by his recent leave, the Massachusetts general drew up a plan whereby 20,000 men from Kautz’s cavalry and the two corps of infantry under Ord and David Birney — successors to the disgruntled and departed Baldy Smith and Quincy Gillmore — crossed the river on the night of September 28 for a double-pronged assault on Forts Harrison and Gilmer, works that were part of Richmond’s outer line, down near the James, and covered Lee’s critical Chaffin’s Bluff defenses. Ord, coming up on schedule through a heavy morning fog, launched an all-out attack which quickly overran the first of these, a mile beyond the river, along with its surprised and meager garrison, though at the cost of a crippling wound that caused him to be carried off the field. Alerted by the racket, just over a mile away, the defenders of Fort Gilmer were ready when Birney struck. Repulsed, he drew back and struck again, with help from Ord, only to find that the place had been reinforced from Richmond, where the tocsin still was sounding. Grant arrived that afternoon to order still a third assault, which was also unsuccessful, and the effort here was abandoned in favor of bracing Fort Harrison against Lee’s expected attempt to retake it. This came next day, September 30, when two gray divisions and part of a third, 10,000 men in all, came over from Petersburg under Richard Anderson to make three desperate attacks, all of which failed. Butler’s loss for the two days was 3327 of all arms. Lee’s was about 2000; plus the fort.

  This last was no great deprivation. Lee promptly drew a retrenchment in rear of Fort Harrison, still beyond small-arms range of Chaffin’s Bluff, that resulted in a stronger line than the one laid out before. Still, Ben Butler had provided northern journalists with an item fit for crowing over, and best of all — potentially at least — Lee once more had been decoyed into stripping that portion of his defenses where the main blue effort was about to land, off beyond the far end of the long curve of intrenchments south of the James.

  Warren and Parke, with two divisions each and Gregg’s cavalry in support, set out westward from Globe Tavern while Butler’s assault on the forts was in progress. Their mission was to cut, and if possible hold, both the Boydton Plank Road and the Southside Railroad, the two remaining arteries whose severance would bring on the collapse of Petersburg. They were stopped next day along Vaughan Road, less than halfway to the first of these objectives, by Hampton, who skirmished with Warren’s column at Poplar Springs Church. Moving west to meet the threat with two divisions from the Petersburg defenses — already weakened by the detachment of Anderson for the attempt to retake Fort Harrison that same day — A. P. Hill encountered Parke at nearby Peebles Farm. Badly shot up, Parke managed to hang on until Warren sent reinforcements to help him hold his ground along Squirrel Level Road, where both corps dug in at nightfall. That was the limit of their lateral advance, and it cost them 2889 casualties, all told, as compared to about 900 for Hill and Hampton. With scarcely a pause for rest, the Federals got busy with picks and shovels, constructing a line of intrenchments from their new position, back east to Globe Tavern, two miles away on the Weldon Railroad. Lee, of course, was obliged to conform, extending once more the length of line his dwindling army had to cover to keep its flank from being turned.

  By ordinary standards, Grant’s gain in this third of his pendulum strikes at the Richmond-Petersburg defenses — a rather useless rebel earthwork, one mile north of the James, plus a brief stretch of country road, two miles beyond the previous western limit of his line — was incommensurate with his loss of just over 6000 men, a solid half of them captives already on their way to finish out the struggle in Deep South prison camps, as compared to just under 3000 for Lee, most of them wounded and soon to return to the gray ranks. But with the presidential contest barely five weeks off, this was no ordinary juncture. Ordinary standards did not apply. What did apply was that Lincoln supporters now had something they could point to, down around the Confederate seat of government itself, which seemed to indicate, along with recent developments in Atlanta and the Shenandoah Valley, that the war was by no means the failure it had been pronounced by the opposition in Chicago, five weeks back.

  In recognition of this, Democrats lately had shifted their emphasis from the conduct to the nature of the war; “The Constitution as it is, the Union as it was,” was now their cry. How effective this would prove was not yet known, for all its satisfying ring. But the evidence from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, all of which held their state and congressional elections on October 11, was far from encouraging to those who were out of power and wanted in. With help from Sherman, who at Lincoln’s urging not only granted furloughs wholesale to members of the twenty-nine Hoosier regiments in his army down in Georgia, but also sent John A. Logan and Frank Blair with them on electioneering duty, all three states registered gains for the Union ticket, both in Congress and at home.

  “There is not, now, the slightest uncertainty about the reëlection of Mr Lincoln. The only question is, by what popular and what electoral majority?” Chase had told a friend in Ohio the week before, and once the ballots were tallied in these three states — all considered spheres of Copperhead influence — Harper’s Weekly was quick to agree with the former Treasury head’s assessment: “The October elections show that unless all human foresight fails, the election of Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson is assured.”

  Neither of these nominees campaigned openly, any more than McClellan or Pendleton did, but their supporters around the country — men of various and sometimes awesome talents, such as the stout-lunged New Orleans orator, who “when he got fairly warmed up,” one listener declared, “spoke so loud it was quite impossible to hear him” — more than made up for this traditional inactivity, which was designed to match the dignity of offices too lofty to be sought. Behind the scenes, other friends were active, too; especially those on the Union executive committee, responsible for funding the campaign. Cabinet members were assessed $250 each for the party coffers, and a levy of five percent was taken from the salaries of underlings in the War, Treasury, and Post Office departments. Gideon Welles alone refused to go along with this, pronouncing the collectors “a set of harpies and adventurers [who] pocket a large portion of the money extorted,” and though workers in the Brooklyn Navy Yard “walked the plank in scores” for demonstrating support or sympathy for the opposition, Welles was by no means as active in this regard as Edwin Stanton,
who at a swoop fired thirty War Department clerks for the same cause, including one whose sole offense was that he let it be known he had placed a bet on Little Mac. Such methods had produced excellent results in the recent state elections, held four weeks, to the day, before the national finale, scheduled for November 8, when still better returns were not only hoped for but expected, as the result of yet a third Sheridan-Early confrontation, providentially staged within three weeks of that all-important first Tuesday following the first Monday in November.

  After Fisher’s Hill, Sheridan’s progress southward up the Valley — described by a VI Corps veteran as “a grand triumphal pursuit of a routed enemy” — ended at Mount Crawford, beyond the loom of Massanutton, where he gave his three infantry corps some rest while the cavalry raided Staunton and Waynesboro, a day’s march ahead on the Virginia Central. Grant wanted the whole force, horse and foot, to move in that direction and down that railroad for a junction with Meade, wrecking Lee’s northside supply lines as it went. “Keep on,” he wired, “and your good work will cause the fall of Richmond.” But Sheridan, with Hunter’s unhappy example before him — not to mention that of bluff John Pope, who had tried such a movement two years ago, only to wind up riding herd on Indians out in Minnesota — replied that, even though Early had been eliminated as a deterrent, this was “impracticable with my present means of transportation.… I think that the best policy will be to let the burning of the crops in the Valley be the end of this campaign, and let some of this army go elsewhere.” Lured by the notion of bringing Wright’s hard-hitting corps back down the coast to Petersburg, Grant agreed that Sheridan would do well to make a return march down the Valley, scorching and smashing left and right to ensure that this classic “avenue of invasion” would no longer furnish subsistence even for those who lived there, let alone for Lee’s army around Richmond. “Carry off stock of all descriptions, and negroes, so as to prevent further planting,” he reminded Little Phil, elaborating on previous instructions. “If this war is to last another year we want the Shenandoah Valley to remain a barren waste.”