Upon the Altar of the Nation (43 page)

At the same time that Gettysburg came to its strategically inconclusive end, a far more decisive campaign was winding down in the western theater. There U. S. Grant staged one of the most brilliant and definitive victories of the war at Vicksburg, Mississippi. Although not destined to live like Gettysburg in American memory, the Vicksburg campaign far eclipsed the eastern action in actual strategic significance by controlling the Mississippi River and dividing the Confederacy in two. It also provided a classic instance of patient but forthright command tactics maintained over a sustained period of time, beginning in November 1862 and not concluding until July 1863. After months of unsuccessful feints and engagements, Grant hit on the bold plan to march his army into the heart of Mississippi, even if it meant separating from his supply lines and living off the land.

On May 7 Sherman’s corps linked up with Grant, and the forty thousand Union troops prepared to attack General Joseph E. Johnston in the field at Jackson, Mississippi. They hoped to draw General Pemberton’s army out of its Vicksburg fortress. Pemberton’s twenty-five thousand men and Johnston’s army of about the same number were unable to unite against Grant and Sherman. Grant lodged his army between the two rebel contingents, allowing him to do to the rebels what Hooker could not do to Lee at Chancellorsville. By isolating Johnston and Pemberton and imaginatively shifting his interior lines, Grant was able to attack each wing in succession—a classic Napoleonic divide and conquer.

On May 12 Grant ordered one wing of his army under General James B. McPherson to attack Johnston at Jackson. By May 14 the capital city belonged to Grant. Then Grant wheeled west and routed Pemberton’s hapless forces as they attempted a rescue at Champion’s Hill on May 16. Beaten but not surrendered, Pemberton retreated to the fortress.

On May 19 and again on the twentieth, Grant unsuccessfully stormed the fortress, taking heavy casualties along the way. Unable to carry the assault, Grant laid siege to the Confederate “Gibraltar.” Every day, artillery shells rained down on the fortress’s soldiers and civilians alike. One Union lady living in the Vicksburg fortress through the siege described the terror that accompanied Union shelling:

Eventually the starving inhabitants could hold out no longer. Just as Grant was planning another assault, Pemberton surrendered his army on the unfortunate date of July 4. Unlike Gettysburg, the victory was complete. Between March 29 and July 4, Grant defeated an army of forty thousand, won five battles, captured twenty-nine thousand Confederates, and destroyed hundreds of artillery pieces and munitions. Four days later, the final Confederate fortress on the Mississippi at Port Hudson surrendered to General Nathaniel Banks, leaving the Federals in control of the river and effectively dividing the Confederacy in half.

Grant’s relentless spring campaign that set up the siege of Vicksburg stands as one of the greatest offensives in the war and established Grant’s reputation as a strategist on par with Robert E. Lee. One writer at the time observed, “The capture of Vicksburg is the most staggering blow that has yet been dealt to the Confederacy, and reflects the highest credit on the skill and energy of General Grant.”
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Following the victory, the
Inquirer
ran a portrait of Grant under the headline, “The Hero of the South-West.”
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Grant himself supposed the surrender “sealed” the fate of the Confederacy For his part, Lincoln (who had not yet met Grant) believed that at last he had found his general.
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To Northerners, the recent victories seemed irresistibly providential. Surely God had orchestrated the triumphs to fall on the Fourth of July as a signal that America was His chosen nation. The
New York Evangelist
gloated, “God Our Deliverer. Good news thick upon us. At last the Gibraltar of the Mississippi has fallen.”
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This was not the last providential signal to fall on a sacred day, as Lincoln’s assassination on Good Friday would tragically exemplify, but it was surely the brightest. In one fell swoop, Gettysburg and Vicksburg secured the North and the Mississippi, creating an apparently overwhelming advantage for the Union cause. Richmond and surrender were imminent.

 

Of all the smaller civil wars within America’s Civil War, that of the African American would prove most just. If anyone had a “cause” that could meet all the moral scruples of a just war, it was the slaves and freedmen. W E. B. DuBois would later go so far as to argue in the extreme that even in palpably unjust wars—or battles—African American soldiers should not be held culpable:

DuBois made an important point, but one that could also be extended to white soldiers following orders.

Nineteenth-century African Americans’ victimization became dramatically evident in a series of draft riots in New York that particularly targeted blacks for violence. In March 1863 the Lincoln government passed a national conscription law and, on July 12, posted the names of the first Northerners drafted into the Union army. Democrat speakers and newspapers whipped up a rage of working-class discontent over the exemption and substitution provisions of conscription, which created the appearance of a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.

Along the way, the Democrats singled out African American targets—hardly rich, but, just as polarizing, black. The tensions soon escalated into ethnic and racial bitterness as a civil war within the Civil War broke out in New York City on July 13. The rioting persisted through four days of dark violence. Mobs of predominantly Irish rioters rampaged through the city, burning the homes of prominent Republicans and lynching innocent blacks. Chanting “kill the naygers,” they burned the Colored Orphan Asylum down and roamed the streets seeking out more black victims. At least six African Americans were hanged and burned.
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Women no less than men participated in the mayhem. In a report entitled “Great Riot,” the
Christian Intelligencer
observed how “[t]he fury of the mob was directed ... to negroes who were found in the streets.” Republican newspaper reporters were also targeted: “A young man near the spot was taken for a reporter of the
Tribune.
He was kicked and beaten until nearly dead.”
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As the violence threatened to overwhelm the police, an incensed President Lincoln called troops from the battle of Gettysburg to put down the rioters. When news of the riots reached Philo Buckingham, he wrote to his wife “after the fight at Gettysburg, Penn”: “How I wish I could take this division ... to New York for a week.... Our troops here would just like the job of putting down such a riot. It would be play in comparison to some of the battles in which they have been engaged.”
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In a letter to his parents, John Emerson Anderson brought the surprising news that instead of chasing Lee, he was close to home to “enforce” the draft:

And conquer they did, killing more than one hundred (largely Irish) rioters before the city was finally brought under control.

George Templeton Strong, treasurer of the United States Sanitary Commission, was horrified at the targeting of innocent blacks, the “unspeakable infamy of the nigger persecution. They are the most peaceful, sober, and inoffensive of our poor, and the outrages they have suffered during this last week are less excusable ... than St. Bartholomew’s or the Jew-hunting of the Middle Ages.... How this infernal slavery system has corrupted our blood, North as well as South!”

One female eyewitness to the rioting, Maria Daly, was no less offended at the violence, but considerably less sympathetic to the plight of the blacks:

The draft riots provide a unique window into the violent tensions that boiled beneath the surface of Northern society and the complex relationships binding outraged Republicans and African American “natives” against Democratic Irish “foreigners.” In this cauldron of racial and ethnic hatreds it is clear that hatred of “the enemy” could spill internally as well as outwardly. Newspapers were unstinting in their criticism of the rioters. At first many papers blamed Southern sympathizers and Democratic Copperheads for inciting the mobs as a “diversion” from Confederate military defeats. But soon other more nativist theories prevailed.
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The fact that so many of the rioters were Irish Catholics—and Democrats—was not lost on the overwhelmingly Protestant religious press.

A writer for the
Evangelist
who long championed against slavery, contextualized the violence in nativist terms that privileged black victims over immigrant white rioters:

As news of the atrocities spread, support for emancipation grew steadily. Instead of denigrating African Americans, the draft riots helped transform public opinion into an increasingly supportive identification of the war with abolition.

In tabulating the costs of the riot, the
PhiLadelphia Inquirer
put the total figure from damages at over one million dollars, not including “the expenses of suppressing the riot.” And for what, it asked? “Not even an escape from the Conscription Act, for the draft is to go on.”
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I
n contrast to the Confederacy, the Union called for no more fast days in 1863. Instead, two joyous thanksgiving days were observed, one on August 6 and the other in November, marking a premier “national” holiday. At the August 6 thanksgiving, many orators and newspapers contrasted the present happy state of the war with the dark days of Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg. They celebrated faith in God as well as the elevation of General George Meade, who acknowledged divine deliverance. This was in contrast to his predecessor, Joe Hooker, who offered a “profane boast” before Chancellorsville “that he should capture or destroy the rebel army in spite of Providence.” The ensuing “disaster” and “retreat” proved that God was on the side of the pious and not the boastful.
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In Philadelphia, extreme heat kept people off the streets, but flags flew everywhere and all the churches held services. In excerpting sermons preached in the area, the
Philadelphia Inquirer
fastened on the theme of history and bloodshed. Nobody rehearsed the numbers of casualties; only the baptism in blood.

By 1863 political preaching in the North and South had virtually completed the apotheosis of “patriotism” into a full-blown civil religion. “Martyrdoms” became a major theme in 1863 fast sermons. Even as the North won, the costs mounted to staggering levels, and the only accolade that seemed to work for most were “martyrs” sacrificing themselves upon the “altar” of their country.