The Super Summary of World History (44 page)

Figure 41 Sherman Takes Atlanta—1864

By conserving his men, Johnson at least put Sherman at constant risk. The Army of Tennessee was a tough veteran unit not to be underestimated. Johnson’s strategy infuriated the political leaders of the South who demanded an all out assault to defeat Sherman.
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Johnson dared not take such a risk so they replaced him with General
John
Bell
Hood.
Hood was reckless—at times to the extreme. He was a poor choice to lead the Army of Tennessee, the last army between Sherman and the deep south. Hood assumed command as Sherman’s forces moved on Atlanta, Georgia.

At the Battle of Atlanta on July 20, 1864, Hood attacked Sherman’s army. He set up a plan to roll up Sherman’s flank and deliver a blow to his rear-supply areas. By attacking Sherman’s supply line Hood hoped to damage the Union army’s logistic situation enough to stop the advance. At least focusing on logistics was the correct strategy. The Confederates needed to get at the Union’s supply and communication line (there was only one rail line) and block it to stop the advance.
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Johnson missed his chance to accomplish the same thing earlier in the campaign. In the event, Hood miscalculated the time and distances involved, and Union troops held on to vital areas, destroying the Confederate plan. Hood lost a large number of men and achieved nothing.

After a series of excellent moves to confound Hood and cut
his
supply lines,
Sherman
took
Atlanta
on
September
2,
1864,
thereby sealing a military victory and an electoral victory. Seizing Atlanta virtually guaranteed Lincoln’s re-election to a second term. For unclear reasons, the city of Atlanta burned to the ground. Perhaps the fire was started by Hood’s retreating army blowing up stores or by Sherman’s army deciding to torch it, no one really knows. The results were clear; Atlanta all but ceased to exist. Sherman took Atlanta’s population south by train and then made them debark for the countryside. In doing this, Sherman released thousands of starving, homeless southerners onto their neighbors who could ill afford to take care of them.

After the fall of Atlanta, Hood’s army mustered thirty thousand troops to oppose Sherman’s eighty thousand plus men, so Hood decided to march north toward Nashville and the Union’s railroad and supply centers at that location. Hood’s attack came to naught, except for the complete destruction of his army, thereby allowing Sherman a free hand for the rest of his campaign. For the rest of his operation, Sherman’s army faced little to no organized southern opposition. Sherman marched from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia, and burned and destroyed everything along the way.
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By the time Sherman reached the Atlantic Coast at Savannah his reputation as a destroyer of life and property was well secured. Sherman’s aim was to completely demolish the economy of the South and thereby end the war as soon as possible. “War is hell,” he would famously say, and few in Georgia would argue the point. After Savannah was reached, Sherman turned north to ravage South Carolina and trap Lee between his army and Grant’s.

Even after the fall of Richmond, the burning of Atlanta, the devastation of Georgia, and the annihilation of their every army, the southern political leaders tried to fight on. They thought by reaching Texas the rebellion might survive under their continued encouragement. Lee saw no way out. As the Union army was pursuing his army from Richmond, he stopped at
Appomattox
Court
House
and requested an audience with General US Grant. It was there Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia on
April
9,
1865
. Other ragged, starving Confederate armies surrendered soon thereafter, and the political leaders of the South fell into captivity before they got very far (some dressed as women). Lee showed himself to be the consummate American when he ordered his army home. He could have told his army to fight on in guerrilla style in the hills and mountains of the land, but he did not, even though many counseled him to do so. Lee decided it should be totally over. An extended guerrilla war, deepening the burning hatred of each side, might destroy what was left of the nation. Certainly, the North’s response to such southern actions could have been repressive in the extreme.

Lincoln was prepared to admit the South back into the Union without punishment. During the war the Union’s war aims expanded as the number of dead alone demanded more than just saving the Union. The Union agenda soon included abolishing slavery as a key war aim. President Lincoln was shot dead by John Wilkes Booth on
April
15,
1865
, just a few days after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House. His death removed the main obstacle to the Radical Republican agenda of punishing the South for its rebellion. At this point, a surprising split developed between the new president, Andrew Johnson, and Congress. President Andrew Johnson was a Democratic senator from Tennessee when that state seceded from the Union; however, Johnson stayed on in the Senate, as he was pro-Union. The other southern senators resigned as their states joined the rebellion. Lincoln chose Johnson as a running mate to widen the appeal of the Lincoln ticket to pro-Union Democrats. The Radical Republicans had decided the ideology fomenting the war was to be crushed out of the South. President Johnson tried to put Lincoln’s ideas into action, but this entailed opposing the Radical Republicans in Congress who believed they alone possessed the legal right to structure and run the Reconstruction of the South. Johnson, as Lincoln before him, thought Southern Reconstruction flowed from the executive branch as part of the war powers. Incensed by Johnson’s opposition, the House of Representatives
impeached
him, and failed by only
one
vote
to remove him from office. Nonetheless, the Radicals marginalized President Johnson by enacting their program of southern “reform” over his objections.

Reconstruction
of
the
South

1865
to
1877

Funny
Name,
Bad
Results?
What’d
you
mean
you
can’t
tell?

The war of shot and shell had ended, but the war of words and legislation, ideas and ideologies, continued. The period of
Reconstruction
was a legislative and cultural war that went on for twelve years, or more, and cleaved profound divides into the “restored” Union. This is one of the most controversial periods in US history, as some view the era as one of great social experimentation with significant successes, and others think it was an outright occupation of American territory and the denial of Constitutional rights to ex-Confederates. If a better peace is the purpose of war (remember Scipio at Carthage?), then the North certainly failed to achieve the objective. Certain events, such as the destruction of the agriculturally rich Shenandoah Valley, Sherman’s devastating march to the sea, the Union blockade starving women and children in the South, and other northern war activities, although no doubt shortening the war, caused southerners to believe the North treated them as savages. Southerners thought they fought against oppression, but the Union treated them all like slave holders. The hatred engendered by the war failed to dissolve. Reconstruction fell far short of helping the traumatized nation recover, as once again the South bowed to overwhelming northern force.

The Radical Republicans under their leaders Representative
Thaddeus
Stevens
and Senator
Charles
Sumner
, considered the South conquered territory and totally under federal control. In addition, they thought Congress controlled Reconstruction issues, not the president. Issues such as who should be allowed to vote (ex-Confederates, blacks, etc.), how the rebel states should be allowed back into the Union, how the residents should be taxed, whether blacks should be allowed to hold public office, and many others were decided along ideological lines drawn hard between the radicals and the moderates in Congress. In the election of 1866, Radical Republicans gained enough congressional seats to override presidential vetoes; thus, the South was controlled by Radical Republicans in Congress, the Carpetbaggers,
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Freedmen (free blacks), and US Army. Congress decided that readmission to the Union required a state’s voters to swear allegiance to the US Constitution and ratify recent Constitutional amendments, among several other actions. Northern states, logically concerned about the old southern leadership resuming its role and putting former slaves into economic bondage in place of legal bondage, began searching for ways to keep the Negros free and the old south suppressed. Former southern slave owners must not be allowed to resume their pre-war society. Congress, under Republican radical leadership, passed civil rights acts guaranteeing blacks the right to vote and preventing actions to restrict that right. Congress also passed numerous government service laws requiring southern states to provide education and care for orphans and the insane among other social endeavors long available only in the North.
[145]

Southerners thought the Union was destroying their culture and taking away their constitutional rights. Even after their loss, southerners were proud of their “cause” and still believed they were right to leave the Union. Union actions proved to most southerners that oppression was the ultimate northern goal. Some southerners fought back violently in the form of mystic groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, but most just wanted to get back to work and restore their economy. Union troops stationed in the South were an occupying army for more than a decade as southern states gradually regained admission to the Union. The last state to regain statehood was Georgia in 1870.

An economic downturn called the
Panic
of
1873
caused the Republican Party to lose seats in the House and Senate reducing the Radical Republican’s strength. Political events in 1876 finally ended Reconstruction. In the presidential election of 1876 a dispute arose over who won, Rutherford Hayes (R) or Samuel Tilden (D). Tilden, the Democrat, won the popular vote, but because of a third party candidate neither Hays nor Tilden gained enough electoral votes to win the presidency; however, the Democrat needed only one electoral vote to take the presidency. This deadlock threw the election into the Congress. What happened is a mystery; however, most say a deal ended the deadlock, and Republican Rutherford B. Hays became president after winning all the disputed electoral votes. The deal seemed to be that Union troops would leave the South. The Union troops marched out in 1877. Soon thereafter the white southern culture rebounded, finding ways to limit black voting by restrictions not openly based on race. The methods successfully ended black suffrage in the South for about 100 years.

The Reconstruction era added
three
Constitutional
Amendments
: the
Thirteenth
Amendment
abolished slavery; the
Fourteenth
Amendment
gave citizenship to all persons born in the United States or naturalized and established civil rights for all citizens; the
Fifteenth
Amendment
secured the right to vote no matter what a person’s race, color, or previous condition of servitude. These amendments did not pass easily, and their provisions raise serious questions today because the southern states, not yet back in the Union, did not vote on the Amendments.
Please
note
that
the
Fifteenth
Amendment
failed
to
give
women
the
right
to
vote
. Odd as it may seem, men of all races would have the right to vote but no woman could vote.
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As President Grant assumed his second term scandals and corruption were rife. Newspapers found immense corruption in the Federal government and the Reconstruction governments in the South causing Republicans to lose political power. With western farmers asking for cheap money (greenbacks—paper money not backed by gold or silver) and no tariffs, and the eastern businesses battling for tight money (money backed by gold or silver) and high tariffs, the Republicans lost voters in the west. As the South came back into the Union all the previously Confederate states voted universally for Democrats; thus, Republicans started losing governorships, senatorial seats, and soon would lose the House of Representatives altogether. As the blacks came under increasing pressure in the South, Republicans balked at responding fearing the loss of even more political power. When the Republican Party restrained its Congressional actions the states stepped in and started handling previously federal issues as local matters. The South refused to obey Federal laws on voting, and eventually the Supreme Court struck down the Reconstruction civil rights laws Republicans had pushed through during Reconstruction.