Upon the Altar of the Nation (60 page)

When Captain Thomas Barker of the Twelfth New Hampshire was ordered to re-form his lines for another massed assault, he “declared with an oath that he would not take his regiment into another such charge, if Jesus Christ himself should order it.”
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In little over an hour, all three assaulting Federal corps were repulsed with staggering losses that totaled seven thousand. In comparison, rebel casualties were meager, under fifteen hundred.

When Charles Washburn had arrived at Cold Harbor, he had found it “a very unsafe place to be.” After the assault, he was immediately enlisted at the field hospital to help with the wounded. He would later write: “It was there I experienced, or realized the awfulness of war ... the wounded were everywhere, under every tree and bush where they could be partially sheltered from the hot rays of a June sun.... Holes were dug in the ground near the tables, and I saw them actually filled, with amputated limbs.”
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In the battle’s aftermath the warrior priests communicated directly. Hundreds of dead and wounded soldiers lay side by side in the field between the two armies. The two generals negotiated the fate of their soldiers, each interceding for his charges. Grant began with a letter to Lee, noting that unless a temporary cessation of hostilities was effected, the wounded could not be gathered up for care. Would Lee agree to such a truce immediately, selecting any three-hour block he liked?

African Americans collecting the bones of soldiers killed in the battle of Cold Harbor, Virginia. This photograph by John Reekie portrays the grisly aftermath of General Grant’s ill-fated charge against Confederate defenses.

Left with little choice, Grant finally acquiesced and raised the flag, and on June 7 all the living Federal wounded were finally gathered up—both of them. The rest had died where they lay on the battlefield. Grant would not forget the humiliation of this day. In the not too distant future, he would dictate the terms to Lee, and it would be permanent.
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For now, however, some of Grant’s officers were not humiliated but furious that the wounded had been left to die for the sake of “honor” and the “rules of war.” Colonel Francis Walker issued a harsh judgment of his commander:

Clearly, the South was not the only side to venerate “honor” at the expense of morality. On both sides, the West Point generals understood honor only too well.

Grant would later reflect on the battle of Cold Harbor and would concede profound “regret” for his (and Meade’s) command decisions. As he wrote:

Grant’s concession suggests that he had a moral sense of the war and an understanding of when the moral brake linings sheared. But even Cold Harbor could be morally justified by his commander in chief, who kept closely to his awful arithmetic.

Grant’s reference to lopsided losses resonates well with Lincoln’s overall moral calculus that the prodigious deaths on the Cold Harbor battlefield shortened the war and prevented higher ongoing death rates in prisons and winter camps. For the most part, American military historians agree, chalking the episode up to bad judgment, forgiving Grant because he admitted his mistake, and then moving on to the next great battle. In this way, Americans past and present manage to record and solemnize battlefield deaths without judging them. Somehow, in ways they could not explain then or now, Americans accepted the levels of destruction as secondary to the work of national redemption America’s God required.

When the losses at Cold Harbor were factored into the combined casualties from the rolling battles of May to June 3, 1864, the totals were stunning and widely broadcast in the North and South. In less than one month, Grant’s Army of the Potomac had lost fifty thousand men—virtually the same number as Lee’s entire Army of Northern Virginia. Even for battle-hungry civilians and statesmen, these figures were shattering—nearly half of the total Federal casualties for the entire three years prior. Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg, and Chickamauga had served as mere dress rehearsals for spring 1864. Lee’s losses of thirty-two thousand were equally devastating, representing in proportional terms half of his Confederate Army. Neither general would order a frontal assault again in the war.

For once, civilians, no less than soldiers, became sickened by the river of blood. Newspapers and ordinary people again labeled Grant the “butcher.” His own soldiers picked up the label and evidenced telltale symptoms of what today would be called post-traumatic stress disorder. Having lived through the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor, they were physically and psychologically shot. No commander—not even Grant—could get them to do it again. In fact, Grant had underestimated Lee, and Cold Harbor became his painful classroom. A vindicated Meade, who earlier had to listen to Grant belittle Union fears of Lee, wrote, “I think Grant has had his eyes opened.” Still, the campaign to “get Lee” would not miss a step.

For embalmers and coffin manufacturers, business was good. As the battles peaked in the overland campaign, notices for “Undertakers” appeared regularly in the newspapers. From a location near the Federal hospital at City Point, Virginia, in July, an embalmer carried a drawing of a coffin with the words:

Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, William Moore advertised “metallic coffins constantly on hand. Particular attention paid to persons desirous of purchasing ground in Woodland Cemetery.”
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Again Lee was victorious tactically, but his army was too devastated to take strategic advantage of his position and launch a devastating counterattack on Grant and Meade. To all intents they were locked into the strict defensive mode that Lee had sought desperately to avoid. Unless Richmond could be conceded, which Davis was loath to do, there would be no more offensive victories for the Army of Northern Virginia. For his part, Grant understood that Lee could not afford to attack and so altered his strategy from a war of maneuver to one of siege.

“The plan” continued as ever to pursue Lee and flank him out of his defenses, but now a new three-pronged strategy would replace the frontal assaults.
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The army in the Shenandoah Valley commanded by General David Hunter moved south through the valley, destroying railroads and supplies, and continued east toward Richmond where they would converge with Grant. Sheridan was ordered to enter the Shenandoah Valley from the north and meet in the center with Hunter. Grant and Meade meanwhile slid past Lee at Cold Harbor and seized Petersburg, the last railroad link between Richmond and the South. With Richmond isolated from railroads and communications, and the valley also deprived of railroads and foodstuffs, the Army of Northern Virginia had to either surrender Richmond or starve. In the end they would do both.

W
ith Grant laying siege to Petersburg, Virginia, and with Lee having no viable plan to engage Grant’s army in battle, attention shifted to the Shenandoah Valley. Grant’s Virginia strategy was sound, but the execution would require one more bloody year and many false starts before it could finally annihilate the enemy. In the Shenandoah Valley, Union commander David Hunter’s troops succeeded in small skirmishes but encountered no open battle. Instead they were beset by “partisans”—guerrillas who dressed in civilian clothes, hit the enemy hard, and then melted back into the population. Again armies were reminded that in this new kind of war there were no innocent civilians.

Fed up with the guerrilla tactics, Hunter’s men (with his acknowledgment) foraged with impunity from the local farmers, destroying what they did not consume, and leaving the population of some of the country’s finest farm-land to starve. Property was also fair game. With the destruction of railroads as a genuine military objective, the troops freely savaged everything around them. On June 12 Hunter’s marauding soldiers entered Lexington and burned the governor’s home and Virginia Military Institute, whose “boys”—literally—had earlier put up a brave charge at New Market. Only Jubal Early’s timely arrival with the remnants of the famed Stonewall Brigade prevented the destruction of Lynchburg.

In cutting Early free to reinforce the rebels in the vital farming areas of the valley, Lee hoped that Early would counter Hunter and threaten Washington, forcing Grant to lift his siege and cross the river in defense. Lee’s strategy brought some Confederate gains on June 17 and 18, as Early disgraced the numerically superior Hunter by driving him across the Allegheny Mountains in retreat. With Hunter out of ammunition and forced to flee, Early’s army of thirty thousand had the valley to themselves and, more important, the means to plan an audacious raid on Washington.

With Hunter in hiding in West Virginia, Washington stood dangerously exposed, and Early nearly made it. Only a desperate holding action by General Lew Wallace bought Grant a precious extra day to funnel reinforcements from the Army of the Potomac into the capital city. Still, Early’s troops reached the outskirts of Washington before they were repulsed. From there they returned to the valley, continuing their hit-and-run attacks on transportation and supply centers that were designed to terrify the soldiers and weaken northern morale.

With only a ghost force of twenty-five hundred to defend against Grant, General Beauregard fought the greatest battle of his career at Petersburg. By placing his men well behind strongly fortified defenses and imposing walls, Beauregard held Grant’s forces at bay, buying critical time for Lee to arrive with reinforcements. On June 15 Union forces under General William F. “Baldy” Smith attacked the outer defenses of Petersburg. The assault succeeded in destroying the outer lines, thanks in large measure to a regiment of black troops who attacked with vigor and gained distinction in the Northern press. But again the Union losses proved substantial and prolonged the war by months. The “back door” to Richmond had closed.

 

As the dreadful warfare continued in Virginia, Confederate moralists praised ongoing army revivals. In desperate times, even the skeptical
Richmond
Examiner joined in praise for the “untiring exertions of [religious] associations, whereby a vast number of chaplains and missionaries have permeated through the refreshing stream of spiritual inspiration. They have succeeded in making the army of Virginia respectful acknowledgers of the Divine Director, if not devout and pious disciples of the Redeemer.”

Throughout the war, the
Examiner
had praised “the more chivalrous spirit of the Cavaliers” over the “bigoted descendants of the Puritans” and its tendency to “prevent us, by instinct, from making war on women and burning their homesteads over their unshielded heads.” But in this fierce war, Cavalier manners might not survive or suffice. Religion was also required: