The History of the Confederate War, Its Causes and Its Conduct. Volume 2 of 2

CHAPTER LIV
The Presidential Campaign of 1864

At this time there was a presidential campaign in progress at the North. Throughout the war, the South had the advantage of a practically united people, while at the North there was division of sentiment, and a violent difference of opinion as to policy. At the North there was a political party bitterly opposing the administration which must carry on the war, and even opposing the war itself, as unconstitutional in its inception, blundering in its management and completely barren of results.

Here was a fire in the rear with which Mr. Lincoln's administration was forced to reckon, and the reckoning was a very serious one.

In 1864 the Democratic party at the North set itself resolutely against the Lincoln administration, and in opposition to all of its plans, to all of its policies and to all of its performances. In a national political platform, the Democratic party declared that the war was a failure, and in effect called for the abandonment of the Federal cause. For president that party nominated General George B. McClellan, a popular hero in the minds of many men, who was held by them as he held himself, to have been baffled in his military enterprises and robbed of his opportunities by the political antagonism of the Washington administration, and by the prejudice that existed in Congress against him as a Democrat.

Grant's failure to crush Lee in the field or so far to occupy him at Petersburg, as to prevent him from sending Early to threaten Washington, had proved to be a very great discouragement to the Northern people. The cost of the war in men, material and money had been enormous, and there was a widespread sentiment in the North to the effect that it was hopeless to continue the contest. The political feeling of Democrats in antagonism to the Republican party which was represented by the administration was intense and implacable.

There was also a party at the North which opposed Lincoln's reëlection upon quite other grounds than those on which the Democrats antagonized him. This party was radical in the extreme. In its convention, which was held at Cleveland, Ohio, at the end of May, it declared itself in favor of an anti-slavery amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and even urged that the lands of the Southerners should be confiscated and divided among the soldiers who were fighting the war. On a platform of this kind General John C. Fremont, who had resigned from the army because of what he regarded as ill treatment at the hand of the administration, was nominated for President. There was not the smallest chance, of course, that Fremont could be elected upon a platform such as this, but his candidacy seemed likely to withdraw from Lincoln a considerable vote, which would otherwise be his.

The Republican Convention met in Baltimore on the seventh of June and renominated Mr. Lincoln for President on a platform strongly approving his conduct of the war and reaffirming the views that he had expressed from time to time concerning it. At the same time Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, was nominated for Vice-President. Johnson was a Southerner and was at that time acting as military governor of Tennessee. He had always been a Democrat, but he had strongly favored the prosecution of the war for the Union, and at that critical time when Mr. Lincoln's reëlection seemed more than doubtful, it was deemed politic thus to put a war Democrat on the ticket with him, by way of holding to his support that large body of Democratic voters who favored the vigorous prosecution of the contest.

Although Johnson was himself a Southerner, it would have been difficult to find any man more antagonistic than he was to the ruling class of men at the South. He had been born a "poor white," – that is to say, a member of that class at the South which was everywhere held in contempt both by negroes and by white men. He had received no education in his childhood, and it is said, could neither read nor write until after his marriage, when his wife taught him. But he was a man of very considerable intellectual ability, and by diligent work he had come into prominence as a lawyer, before Mr. Lincoln selected him to exercise the functions of military governor over the practically recovered state of Tennessee. As every reader knows, this selection of Johnson for Vice-President proved in the end to be a thorn in the flesh to the Republican party. Their Democratic Vice-President was destined to succeed to the Presidency by Mr. Lincoln's assassination, almost at the beginning of his second term, and as President to do all that he could to thwart and baffle the policies of the party that had elected him.

When the Democratic Convention met in Chicago on the twenty-ninth of August, the situation in the field was such as greatly to discourage a large part of the population at the North. The demands of the Lincoln administration for more and more troops had been incessant and insistent. These demands had exhausted the willingness of the people to respond, and the administration had been compelled to resort to a forcible draft as a means of keeping up the armies in the field. This resort to the policy of enforced enlistment was everywhere bitterly resented. It was held to be un-American, un-Republican, despotic.

There was also the fact that Grant's great campaign from which so much had been expected seemed to a large part of the people to have been a failure. Grant had not crushed Lee, but on the contrary, Lee was so strong that he had pushed a column under Early up to the very gates of Washington. At the end of August Sherman had not yet succeeded in taking Atlanta, but had suffered some severe reverses in his effort to accomplish that object. At that time also, critical discontent at the North was encouraged by the spectacle of Sheridan standing on the defensive in the Valley of Virginia against a force scarcely more than one fourth as great as his own. There was despair in many minds, and weariness in many more.

The resources of the country had been strained well nigh to the point of breaking. Taxes of every kind had been multiplied almost to the limit of ingenuity. The credit of the country was so far impaired that its paper currency had become depreciated to less than one half its nominal value. The debt of the nation had been swelled to thousands of millions, while its productive capacity was being more and more impaired by the withdrawal of young men by hundreds of thousands from their farms and their workshops. The country had given to Mr. Lincoln soldiers by millions, and dollars by billions, and yet the war went on with no apparent prospect of being early brought to a successful end.

For to people uninstructed in military affairs, there was little in the situation in the field at the end of August, 1864, to encourage the hope of a speedy ending of the struggle. The people generally did not realize the great gain that had been made by Grant's insistent pounding of the Confederates, nor did they understand how surely his policy was weakening and destroying the capacity of resistance on the part of the South. Under these circumstances, there was widespread discontent with the administration and disgust over its seeming failure to accomplish the purpose aimed at in the lavish expenditure of money, and the enormous sacrifice of human life. A feeling of despair had come over a very great part of the Northern people, and to this feeling the Democratic party in its platform made a strongly persuasive appeal.

Among other things, the platform said, "that this Convention does explicitly declare, as the sense of the American people, that after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war, during which under the pretense of military necessity, of a war power higher than the Constitution, the Constitution itself has been disregarded in every part, and public liberty and private right alike trodden down, and the material prosperity of the country essentially impaired – justice, humanity, liberty and the public welfare demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities with a view to an ultimate Convention of all the States, or other peaceable means, to the end that, at the earliest practicable moment, peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal union of the States.

"That the aim and object of the Democratic party is to preserve the Federal union, and the rights of the states unimpaired."

It is obvious enough to us now that the election of McClellan upon that platform would have meant the surrender by the United States of every contention on which the war had been prosecuted. It would have been, in effect, the triumph of the Confederacy. In any convention that might have been called to reconstruct the Union under such conditions, the South as the winning party in the war, would of course have dictated its own terms.

For a time there seemed to be a very strong prospect that precisely this would happen. The weariness of the people with the war, the discontent aroused by excessive taxation, and by the continued slaughter of the youth of the land, the despair of bankers and business men over the never ceasing depreciation of the currency, – all these and other influences tended very strongly to invite a favorable response from the people to this appeal of a political party.

It was the opinion of many shrewd observers of that time, and is the opinion to-day of many students of history who have closely considered the facts, that if the election had occurred at the beginning of September, 1864, there would have been a decisive majority of voters in favor of this policy of surrender. But the election did not occur until November, and in the meanwhile the military situation was vastly changed. Sherman had taken Atlanta before November came, the Confederate army under Hood had been put in the way of being crushed in Tennessee, Sheridan had made himself master of the Valley of Virginia, and Grant was steadily extending his lines southward and westward at Petersburg, in a way which even the unmilitary observer must recognize at last as a process foredooming Lee to destruction.

Under the influence of these changed conditions in the field, Mr. Lincoln was reëlected with a popular majority of about 400,000 and an electoral majority of 212 to 21. There was contention at the time that the votes of the soldiers in the field were juggled with and falsified. It is highly improbable that anything of that kind was done or attempted in any considerable measure. It is certain that the election, as it resulted, represented the determination of the North to prosecute the war to its end.

CHAPTER LV
Sherman at Atlanta

Sherman occupied Atlanta on the second day of September, 1864, the Confederates retiring without a further struggle to a strong position east of the city.

Sherman almost immediately decided to depopulate the town and make of it a rigidly military stronghold. To that end he ordered all the inhabitants, old and young, sick and well, men, women and children alike, to leave the place. He gave to each the choice of fleeing northward or southward as each might elect, but all must go. All these helpless non-combatants must abandon their homes, surrender whatever they possessed of bread-winning employments and go forth among strangers helpless and forlorn objects of charity.

Even that "hellishness" which Sherman attributed to war, could scarcely have given birth to a crueller order than this. Sherman always justified it in apparent apology to his own conscience, upon the ground that his army was placed in a perilous position in the heart of an enemy's country with a long and exceedingly vulnerable line of communication by one single-track railroad, and that the presence of non-combatants in Atlanta, most of them hostile to his purposes, must be an additional source of danger.

The necessities of war have always been held to justify or at least excuse many things that would otherwise be deemed barbaric and even savage in their cruel inhumanity. That plea of military necessity rests upon the assumption that the purposes of war are of so supreme moment, and in themselves so clearly righteous, that they should be prosecuted to success regardless of human suffering and regardless of all other considerations; that they should be insisted upon in utter disregard of the suffering even of those non-combatant women and children upon whom such war-decrees as this fall with an excess of cruelty.

In every such case as this, the commander who issues the decree is himself sole and arbitrary judge of the extent of his necessity. What if he judges wrongly? What if he permits considerations of his own convenience to outweigh all other arguments, and, for the sake of his own repose in his headquarters wantonly condemns many innocent, helpless, and in no way offensive, women and little children and men sorely stricken with age, to a banishment which must mean to many of them a long period of suffering with lingering and painful death by the wayside as an incident? What if he is moved to the issue of such an order merely by way of saving himself and his army from the trouble of effectually guarding a position which due diligence might sufficiently protect?

At the beginning of the war and indeed throughout its progress, Washington City had multitudes of people in it whose sympathies were with the Southern cause, and who daily communicated by one means or another with the Confederates in Virginia. Would McClellan have been justified by the facts, in ordering the utter depopulation of the Federal city, and the sending into exile of every man, woman and child dwelling there and not enlisted in the military service? Did any commander on either side ever think of depopulating Harper's Ferry or Winchester or Martinsburg, although throughout the struggle those points of strategic importance were inhabited about equally by Northern and Southern sympathizers.

It is true that at Atlanta General Sherman was in a position of considerable danger and difficulty. But he had deliberately placed himself in that position, for the sake of the military advantages it might yield to him; and moreover, he had almost phenomenally overwhelming resources in men, money, food stuffs, and all the other appliances of war, with which to maintain himself there, in spite of anything and everything that the non-combatants of the town could have done to annoy him. Impartial history must therefore earnestly challenge his order for the depopulation of Atlanta, asking whether its cruelty was really a military necessity or whether it was merely a resort of convenience, intended to save an invading army and its commander from petty annoyance. Did not General Sherman by this order of depopulation needlessly add to the suffering of non-combatants? Was his military necessity at that time so great – when he had only a badly crippled army to contend against, and when he had three or four men to its one – was his military extremity so great, history will ask, as to justify this enormous cruelty?

General Sherman always contended that it was. In his correspondence with Hood at the time, in his letters of explanation to Halleck and Grant, and finally in his "Memoirs" published years afterwards, he defended his action vigorously and even angrily, as a military necessity, but always in such fashion as to suggest that he felt it necessary to defend himself and his fame, in the forum of civilization, and to make out a sufficient case of military necessity to excuse that which he felt that humanity shrank from as a cruel and barbaric expedient.

These questions belong to biography and the literature of personal controversy. It is the function of history merely to record the facts. The facts in this case are that Sherman depopulated Atlanta, sending its helpless people into exile, and ruthlessly destroying the greater part of their homes in order, as he himself explained, to contract his lines of defense, reduce the city and all its suburbs to the dimensions of a military post easily held, and spare himself the necessity of maintaining a multitude of provost guards and detailing large bodies of troops to hold a populated place, where very small bodies might hold one depopulated.

It is certain that enormous human suffering resulted from his decree. It is certain that women and children and aged persons perished because of it. Whether it was really a measure of military necessity, or only a measure prompted by ill temper, or a measure intended to save trouble to an invading army, each reader must judge for himself. In judging, the reader should remember that no such thing was done at Memphis or Nashville or Chattanooga; that Grant adopted no such measure after he conquered Vicksburg; that even Benjamin F. Butler, whose disposition it always was to employ all the technicalities of the law in defense of arbitrary measures against his enemies, never for one moment thought of depopulating New Orleans during his occupancy of that city. The depopulation of Atlanta by the fiat of a military commander stands out in relief as the only occurrence of the kind that marked or marred the conduct of the war on either side. It must be judged upon its own merits without parallel or precedent to guide the mind that inquires concerning its humanity or its inhumanity.

In securing possession of Atlanta Sherman had fully accomplished one of the supreme purposes of the campaign which Grant had marked out as the objects of all the operations of all the armies during the summer of 1864. He had indeed accomplished quite all that Grant had set him to accomplish during that season. His success had been completer than Grant's own in fact, for he had overcome the Confederate army in his front and, after a series of hotly contested battles and a brilliant display of grand strategy on both sides, he had completely achieved the objective of the campaign marked out for him. Hood's further resistance was both problematical and well nigh hopeless in view of the enormous disparity of numbers between the two armies. On the other hand Grant had failed in his twin purposes of crushing the Army of Northern Virginia in the field, and making himself master of the Confederate capital city.

In his dispatches to Sherman at the time, Grant fully and generously recognized all this, taking pains even to emphasize the fact that his great lieutenant's success had been completer than his own.

But when he had settled himself in Atlanta, depopulated the town and sent its helpless people into exile, Sherman found himself in a sore predicament. His sole base of supplies was at Chattanooga – a hundred miles away – and his only line of communication with that base was a single track railroad running through a hostile country and subject to interruption at any hour. His enemy occupied a position near Atlanta from which he could not be dislodged without fearful slaughter, and the enterprise of that enemy in attacks upon the Federal line of communications was hourly made evident. Sherman's problem of future operations was an exceedingly perplexing one. But whatever its decision might ultimately be, he prepared himself for it by bringing forward great quantities of provisions and ammunition and strengthening his rear in every possible way. At every station on the line of railroad between Atlanta and Chattanooga, he placed small bodies of men, entrenching them to resist cavalry. At important points he built strong blockhouses for further defense.

More important still, in anticipation of a northward advance of the Confederates, he asked for and secured strong reinforcements for Thomas, whom he had stationed at Nashville, with command of all the strategic points in Tennessee and Northern Georgia.

In the meanwhile Sherman himself was watching Hood, and meditating upon the question of what further movements he might undertake with his army at Atlanta, now that he had effectually secured Nashville, Chattanooga and the other strategic points north of his position.

He was also busily engaged in diplomacy. At that time there was widespread discontent at the South with the conduct of the war and not a little despair. To many minds, including those of a number of influential statesmen, the conviction had come that all hope of the ultimate success of the Confederate cause had passed away, and that it was high time to give up the effort and make peace while yet the South's resisting power was great enough to serve as an argument in behalf of favorable terms.

In North Carolina this sentiment took form in the open candidacy of Mr. Holden for the governorship on a platform which advocated the secession of that state from the Confederacy, and the conclusion of peace between the United States and North Carolina as an independent sovereignty entirely free to return at will to the Union.

This was logical enough, but it was of course impracticable. The foundation stone of the Confederacy was the contention that each state was independently sovereign and could withdraw at its own good pleasure from any union or confederacy into which it might have entered. But logic or no logic, law or no law, sovereignty or subjection, it was certain that while war was on the Richmond government would never permit North Carolina to withdraw from the Confederacy and become again one of the United States. The geographical position of North Carolina was such that Confederate consent to such a program would have been Confederate suicide. Nevertheless, and in face of the certainty of Confederate warfare, the candidate who advocated this course received 20,000 votes against his adversary's 54,000.

In Georgia the discontent took a form even more dangerous to Confederate interests. The Governor of that state, Joseph E. Brown, was almost in open rebellion against the Richmond government. On the tenth of September he recalled and furloughed all the Georgia militia that had been serving under Johnston and afterwards under Hood, thus seriously weakening Hood's already inferior force at a time when it stood in peculiar need of strengthening. He still further claimed for his state the right to recall from the Confederate armies everywhere all the Georgia troops that were enlisted in that service. With the scarcely disguised purpose of thus taking Georgia out of the Confederacy and making a separate peace for that state, he issued a summons for the legislature to meet almost immediately.

Further than this, Georgia's most famous statesman and by all odds that state's most influential citizen was Alexander H. Stephens. Mr. Stephens had opposed secession to the bitter end and his selection to be Vice-President of the Confederacy had clearly been dictated by the desire of the politicians to placate him and the multitude of strong Union men who looked to him for leadership. Mr. Stephens had at no time during the war been on terms of intimacy with Mr. Davis. Mr. Davis could not distrust the integrity of such a man, but he always distrusted his sympathy with the plans and purposes of the Richmond Government, and when the grave discontent arose in Georgia, he attributed it largely to the influence of Mr. Stephens's sentiments. For these were everywhere known.

Mr. Stephens believed firmly in the constitutional right of secession, but, in common with many others, and especially in common with the Virginians, he had from the first held that secession was uncalled for by anything that Mr. Lincoln's election in 1860 implied or threatened. He had insisted upon love for the Union as stoutly as Alexander Hamilton himself – for whom Mr. Stephens was named – could have done. Believing as he did firmly in the right of a state to secede and in the paramount obligation of every citizen to yield allegiance to his state, Mr. Stephens accepted Georgia's secession without in the least approving it.

In the autumn of 1864 he was convinced, as many other thinking men at the South were, that the military problems of the war had been in effect decided; that there was absolutely no further ground for hope of Southern success, and that further continuance of the war could mean nothing else than a needless sacrifice of life and of the substance of the people. He made no concealment of these views and the number of Southern men who shared them grew daily greater.

These men felt that in view of the inevitableness of Confederate failure in the end, it was the duty of the Richmond government to seek terms while yet it had something to offer in exchange for terms. Mr. Lincoln's supreme desire, it was well known, was to secure the restoration of the Union. He had often, emphatically, and very eloquently, proclaimed that as the sole purpose of his mind and heart, and had declared insistently his readiness and eagerness to sacrifice all other considerations for the sake of that one object. His influence at the North was so clearly all dominating that there could be no doubt of the ready acceptance by Congress and the people, of any arrangement he might make with the seceding states for their restoration to the Union. Mr. Stephens and those who agreed with him in mind, held that now was the time to recognize facts and take the utmost possible advantage of conditions as they existed. Mr. Lincoln was anxious well nigh to the verge of sacrifice, to crown his lifework by the restoration of the Union, and "the people said 'Amen.'"

While the Southern cause was obviously hopeless of ultimate success the South still had veteran armies in the field, under command of generals who perfectly knew how to use them destructively. It was manifest that if the war were to continue, these armies would inflict vast slaughter – as in the event they did – upon the Federal forces, and enormously increase the already stupendous cost of the war to the North. In brief it was certain that if negotiations should be undertaken then the South could secure better terms than would be granted if the struggle should be prolonged until the South could fight no more. So long as Lee's army was intact – however surely its ultimate destruction could be counted upon – its very existence, and its matchless fighting capacity, must offer to the Washington government a very strong inducement to give lenient terms for the sake of ending the war without the further effusion of blood and the further expenditure of treasure.

In commercial parlance the South at that time had something to trade on – something with which to buy favorable terms of peace; a little later, as these wise men foresaw, she would have nothing and must accept whatever terms her triumphant adversary might see fit to impose.

This condition of things was revealed to General Sherman about the time of his occupation of Atlanta, and he eagerly sought to take such advantage of it as might lead to a prompt ending of the war by the political disintegration of the Confederacy. About that time two men of prominence in Georgia sought permission to enter the Federal lines under safe conduct in order to secure and take home the body of a Confederate officer who had been killed in battle. Both of these men were influential and one of them had been a member of Congress before the war. Sherman not only granted their request but received and entertained them at his headquarters. Having got some inkling of Governor Brown's attitude and state of mind, Sherman seized the opportunity to send messages to that revolting state executive. He intimated to him a purpose presently to march over a great part of the state, and declared that if Governor Brown would withdraw Georgia's quota of troops from the Confederate army, he, Sherman, would confine his men on march to the high roads and pay for all supplies taken from the country. Otherwise, it was plainly suggested, his march would be a desolating one.

The negotiations came to no practical result. The march was made, and the desolation of it was well-nigh unmatched in the world's annals. But the historical fact that such a negotiation was carried on between a Federal commanding general and the governor of a Confederate state, with distinguished and influential citizens of that state for go-betweens, is interesting in itself and still more interesting as an illustration of the condition into which the events of the great struggle had brought the Southern mind.

About this time President Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy visited the South and made speeches there not only to the people but to the men of Hood's army. In these speeches he bitterly assailed not only Governor Brown but also General Joseph E. Johnston, plainly suggesting that he regarded both as scarcely better than traitors to the Southern cause. Governor Brown's attitude and action in withdrawing the Georgia militia from Hood's army, in negotiating with Sherman and in summoning the legislature with the scarcely disguised purpose of recalling all Georgia troops from the Confederate armies at the time of their sorest need, legitimately bore such construction, perhaps. But General Johnston's only offense was his inability, with a vastly inferior army, to overcome Sherman and prevent his advance toward Atlanta. Johnston's fighting retreat is very differently judged by all historians and all military critics. General Sherman himself, to the end of his life, always spoke of it as one of the most masterly operations of the war, and no impartial mind can come to any other conclusion after studying the conditions and considering the factors of the problem.

But Mr. Davis's animosity toward Johnston was of long standing and it was implacable. History will scarcely reckon Johnston among the great commanders, but it will always account him a very capable one. Certainly it will reckon his retirement toward Atlanta in presence of Sherman's vastly superior and most capably commanded force, as an enforced retreat conducted with all the skill that any military genius could have brought to bear upon it, and so conducted as to inflict the maximum of injury upon the enemy, while suffering the minimum of hurt in return.