Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (133 page)

48
.
O.R.
, Ser. I, Vol. 27, pt. 3, p. 539; Foote, Civil War, II, 575; Freeman Cleaves,
Meade of Gettysburg
(Norman, Okla., 1960), 172.

ECLIPSED!
" shouted a headline in the
Philadelphia Inquirer
. The glad tidings reached Washington the day after Pickett's repulse, making this the capital's most glorious Fourth ever. "I
never
knew such excitement in Washington," wrote one observer. When word arrived three days later of the surrender at Vicksburg, the excitement doubled. Lincoln appeared at a White House balcony to tell a crowd of serenaders that this "gigantic Rebellion" whose purpose was to "overthrow the principle that all men are created equal" had been dealt a crippling blow.
⁴⁹
In New York the diarist George Templeton Strong rejoiced that

the results of this victory are priceless. . . . The charm of Robert Lee's invincibility is broken. The Army of the Potomac has at last found a general that can handle it, and has stood nobly up to its terrible work in spite of its long disheartening list of hard-fought failures. . . . Copperheads are palsied and dumb for the moment at least. . . . Government is strengthened four-fold at home and abroad.
⁵⁰

Strong's final sentence was truer than he could know. Confederate Vice-President Stephens was on his way under flag of truce to Union lines at Norfolk as the battle of Gettysburg reached its climax. Jefferson Davis had hoped that Stephens would reach Washington from the south while Lee's victorious army was marching toward it from the north. Reports of Stephens's mission and of Gettysburg's outcome reached the White House at the same time. Lincoln thereupon sent a curt refusal to Stephens's request for a pass through the lines.
⁵¹
In London the news of Gettysburg and Vicksburg gave the
coup de grace
to Confederate hopes for recognition. "The disasters of the rebels are unredeemed by even any hope of success," crowed Henry Adams. "It is now conceded that all idea of intervention is at an end."
⁵²

The victory at Gettysburg was purchased at high human cost: 23,000 Union casualties, more than one-quarter of the army's effectives. Yet the cost to the South was greater: 28,000 men killed, wounded, or missing, more than a third of Lee's army. As the survivors began their sad retreat to Virginia in the rain on July 4, thousands of wounded men suffered torture as ambulances and commandeered farm wagons bounced

49
. Cleaves,
Meade of Gettysburg
, 171;
CWL
, VI, 319–20.

50
. Strong,
Diary
, 330.

51
. Beale, ed.,
Diary of Gideon Welles
, I, 358–62.

52
. Henry Adams to Charles Francis Adams, Jr., July 23, 1863, in Ford, ed.,
Cycle of Adams Letters
, II, 59–60.

along rutted roads. Seven thousand rebel wounded were left behind to be attended by Union surgeons and volunteer nurses who flocked to Gettysburg. Lee was profoundly depressed by the outcome of his campaign to conquer a peace. A month later he offered his resignation to Jefferson Davis. "No one," wrote Lee, "is more aware than myself of my inability for the duties of my position. I cannot even accomplish what I myself desire. How can I fulfill the expectations of others?"
⁵³
Thus said a man whose stunning achievements during the year before Gettysburg had won the admiration of the Western world. Of course Davis refused to accept his resignation. Lee and his men would go on to earn further laurels. But they never again possessed the power and reputation they carried into Pennsylvania those palmy midsummer days of 1863. Though the war was destined to continue for almost two more bloody years, Gettysburg and Vicksburg proved to have been its crucial turning point.

Perceptive southerners sadly recognized this. The fall of Vicksburg "is a terrible blow, and has produced much despondency," wrote War Department clerk John Jones when he heard the news on July 8. Next day his spirits sank lower, for "the news from Lee's army is appalling. . . . This [is] the darkest day of the war." The fire-eater Edmund Ruffin "never before felt so despondent as to our struggle." And the usually indefatigable Josiah Gorgas, chief of Confederate ordnance, sat down on July 28 and wrote a diary entry whose anguish echoes across the years:

Events have succeeded one another with disastrous rapidity. One brief month ago we were apparently at the point of success. Lee was in Pennsylvania, threatening Harrisburgh, and even Philadelphia. Vicksburgh seemed to laugh all Grant's efforts to scorn. . . . Port Hudson had beaten off Banks' force. . . . Now the picture is just as sombre as it was bright then. . . . It seems incredible that human power could effect such a change in so brief a space. Yesterday we rode on the pinnacle of success—today absolute ruin seems to be our portion. The Confederacy totters to its destruction.
⁵⁴

53
. Lee to Davis, Aug. 8, 1863, in Dowdey and Manarin, eds.,
Wartime Papers of
R. E.
Lee
, 589–90.

54
. Jones,
War Clerk's Diary
(Miers), 238, 239; Betty L. Mitchell,
Edmund Ruffin: A Biography
(Bloomington, 1981), 231; Vandiver, ed.,
Diary of Gorgas
, 55.

22
Johnny Reb's Chattanooga Blues

I

Lincoln also believed that the victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg had set the Confederacy tottering. One more push might topple it. "If General Meade can complete his work . . . by the literal or substantial destruction of Lee's army," said the president on July 7, "the rebellion will be over."
¹
But Lincoln was doomed to disappointment. Although Lee was in a tight spot after Gettysburg, the old Gray Fox once again gave the blue hounds the slip.

It was a near thing, however. A Union cavalry raid wrecked the Confederate pontoon bridge across the Potomac, and days of heavy rain that began July 4 made the swollen river unfordable. The rebels were compelled to stand at bay with their backs to the Potomac while engineers tore down warehouses to build a new bridge. The tired soldiers fortified a defensive perimeter at Williamsport and awaited Yankee attack. But no attack came. Having given Lee a two-day head start from Gettysburg, Meade did not get his reinforced army into line facing the Confederates at Williamsport until July 12. In Washington an "anxious and impatient" Lincoln awaited word of Lee's destruction. As the days passed and no word arrived, the president grew angry. When Meade finally telegraphed on July 12 that he intended "to attack them tomorrow, unless

1
.
CWL
, VI, 319.

something intervenes," Lincoln commented acidly: "They will be ready to fight a magnificent battle when there is no enemy there to fight."
²
Events proved him right. A pretended deserter (a favorite southern ruse) had entered Union lines and reported Lee's army in fine fettle, eager for another fight. This reinforced Meade's wariness. He allowed a majority of his corps commanders to talk him out of attacking on the 13th. When the Army of the Potomac finally groped forward on July 14, it found nothing but a rear guard. The slippery rebels had vanished across a patched-together bridge during the night.

"Great God!" cried Lincoln when he heard this news. "What does it mean? . . . There is bad faith somewhere. . . . Our Army held the war in the hollow of their hand & they would not close it." Lincoln's estimate of the situation at Williamsport was not quite accurate. An attack on the strong Confederate position might have succeeded—with heavy casualties—or it might not. In either case, the destruction of Lee's veteran army was scarcely a sure thing. When word of Lincoln's dissatisfaction reached Meade, the testy general offered his resignation. But Lincoln could hardly afford to sack the victor of Gettysburg, so he refused to accept it. On July 14 he sat down to write Meade a soothing letter. "I am very—
very
—grateful to you for the magnificent success you gave the cause of the country at Gettysburg," said the president. But as his pen scratched on, Lincoln's distress at the presumed lost opportunity took over. "My dear general, I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee's escape. He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with our other late successes, have ended the war. As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely." Upon reflection, Lincoln concluded that this letter was unlikely to mollify Meade, so he did not send it. And the war continued.
³

Lincoln's temper soon recovered. In early August his secretary John Hay wrote that "the Tycoon is in fine whack. I have seldom seen him more serene."
⁴
The president's spirits had been buoyed by the "other late successes" he noted in the unsent letter to Meade. These successes included victories west of the Mississippi and Rosecrans's expulsion of

2
. Dennett,
Lincoln/Hay
, 66;
O.R
., Ser. I, Vol. 22, pt. 1, p. 91; David Homer Bates,
Lincoln in the Telegraph Office
(New York, 1907), 157.

3
.
The Diary of Gideon Welles
, ed. Howard K. Beale, 3 vols. (New York, 1960), I, 370; Dennett,
Lincoln/Hay
, 69, 67;
CWL
, VI, 327–28.

4
. Dennett,
Lincoln/Hay
, 76.

Bragg's army from middle Tennessee as well as the capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson.

The transfer of Van Dorn's Confederate army to Mississippi in the spring of 1862 had left northern Arkansas shorn of defenders. Samuel R. Curtis's small Union force began advancing toward Little Rock, slowed only by skittish militia and harassing guerrillas. Into the Confederate breach stepped Thomas C. Hindman, a political general five feet tall who made up in energy what he lacked in size. Hindman enforced conscription with a will that created a 20,000-man army of lukewarm Arkansans, hardened Texans, and Missouri guerrillas. This force deflected the enemy campaign against Little Rock and went over to the offensive in the fall, driving the Federals northward almost to Missouri. But then the initiative went over to the Yankees. Their leader was General James G. Blunt, a Maine-born Kansas abolitionist who had learned his fighting with John Brown. While Blunt and Hindman were sparring in northwest Arkansas during the first week of December, two small Union divisions marched no miles in three days from Missouri to help Blunt. Turning to attack this force at Prairie Grove on December 7, Hindman suddenly found himself attacked in front and flank by three converging Yankee divisions. Forced to retreat in freezing weather, the diminutive Arkansan watched helplessly as his conscript army melted away.

In the spring of 1863 Jefferson Davis reorganized the trans-Mississippi Department by assigning overall command to Edmund Kirby Smith and sending Sterling Price to Little Rock. Both generals did well with their small resources. Kirby Smith turned the trans-Mississippi into a virtually autonomous region after it was cut off from the rest of the Confederacy by the loss of Vicksburg. But Price could not stop the blue invaders who advanced toward Little Rock from two directions in midsummer. Blunt led a multiracial force of white, black, and Indian regiments down the Arkansas River from Honey Springs in Indian Territory, where they had defeated a Confederate army of white and Indian regiments on July 17. In early September Blunt occupied Fort Smith, while another Union army approached Little Rock from the east and captured it on September 10. The rebels fled to the southwest corner of the state, yielding three-quarters of Arkansas to Union control—though southern guerrillas and the small number of occupation troops made that control tenuous in large areas.

Gratifying to Lincoln as these results were, they took second place to events in Tennessee. Northern progress in that theater had been exasperatingly slow. All through the spring of 1863 the administration had been urging Rosecrans to advance in concert with Grant's movements in Mississippi and Hooker's in Virginia. This would achieve Lincoln's strategy of concurrent pressure on all main Confederate armies to prevent one of them from reinforcing another. But Rosecrans balked like a sulky mule. The memory of the New Year's Eve bloodbath at Stones River convinced him that he must not attack without sufficient resources to insure success. His delays enabled Bragg to send reinforcements to Mississippi, an action that increased Lincoln's exasperation. But when Rosecrans finally made his move on June 24, his careful planning produced a swift and almost bloodless success. Each of the four northern infantry corps and one cavalry corps burst through a different gap in the Cumberland foothills south of Murfreesboro. Having confused Bragg with feints, Rosecrans got strong forces on both Confederate flanks in the Duck River Valley. Despite constant rain that turned roads to gluten, the Yankees kept moving. One blue brigade of mounted infantry armed with seven-shot Spencer carbines got in the rebel rear and threatened to cut their rail lifeline. At the beginning of July, Bragg decided to fall back all the way to Chattanooga rather than risk a battle.