America At War - Concise Histories Of U.S. Military Conflicts From Lexington To Afghanistan (11 page)

Heartened by his victories, Lee once again turned north. Battle-tested and accustomed to winning, the Army of Northern Virginia swept through Maryland into Pennsylvania. Lee was confident of victory, perhaps too much so.

Once the Army of the Potomac learned of Lee’s movements, it followed in pursuit. However, Joe Hooker no longer was its commander. Lincoln had replaced him with George Meade. Major General Meade was a respected officer, a career military man who understood the art of war.

Standard practice with both the Union and the Confederates on the march was to send cavalry forward with an assignment of determining the whereabouts of the enemy. Meade had done so, and, on June 30, 1863, two brigades of federal cavalry led by Brigadier General John Buford rode into a small Pennsylvania town. Buford soon spotted a large formation of Confederate infantry advancing from the west.

The town was called Gettysburg.

Buford realized that he had bumped into the lead elements of the entire Army of Northern Virginia. Calling for reinforcements, he understood the imperative of preventing the rebels from securing the high ground south of the town. Additional Union troops soon arrived. The next day, the battle began in earnest as Lee’s men attacked. In furious fighting, the Confederates pushed the Union back through the town. But, in a strategic blunder, they failed to take control of the heights.

By the second day, July 2, Meade and most of his army had arrived on the scene. They were deployed along the ridges and small hills outside of Gettysburg. Their position resembled that of a fishhook, with hills at each end. In between lay a ridge, Cemetery Ridge, south of which a peach orchard and wheat field spread out on relatively flat land. The overall shape of the Union army was that of a shallow convex line. This enabled Meade to move reinforcements back and forth as required. It was a very strong defensive position.

Lee’s army was spread out. It also was smaller, comprising approximately 75,000 men against Meade’s 112,000. Moreover, Gettysburg was not where Lee had planned to fight. Yet the town was where the two armies had crossed paths. Lee felt he had to attack and so, on three successive days, he did.

On July 2, the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the Southern commander launched a full-scale assault on both ends of the fishhook, starting first with the southern tip. Across the peach orchard and wheat field the men in gray advanced. The fighting was fierce. Union soldiers held fast, then gave ground, then held again. At the southernmost point in the Union line, there was a small, tree-lined, stony hill named Little Round Top. If the Confederates could take it, they would be able to swing around and hit Meade’s men from the rear. For the Army of the Potomac, holding Little Round Top was vital. The task of doing so was assigned to a brigade of 1,336 men commanded by Colonel Strong Vincent. He ordered one of his regiments, the 20th Maine, to defend that part of the hill that represented the absolute end of the Union line. With fewer than five hundred soldiers, the regiment held fast, rebuffing repeated attacks by men from Alabama and Texas. When the regiment ran low on ammunition, its commander, Joshua Chamberlain—who, three years earlier, had been a professor at Bowdoin College—issued a command of “fix bayonets.” He then led his men down the hill into the attacking Confederates and stopped them once and for all. It was a defining moment in the battle, one of the great actions in American military history, and yet, for all the courage it entailed, it was but one event in a day when courage was common and gunfire left oceans of blood on the ground. Two-thirds of the casualties at Gettysburg occurred on July 2.

On the next day, Lee ordered an attack on the Union center. It was to be a massive assault. More than 150 Confederate cannons would bombard the Union line. Then, General George Pickett’s division plus men from A. P. Hill’s corps, some twelve thousand men in total, would hit the enemy where Lee believed Meade’s forces were weakest. General Longstreet thought the attack unlikely to succeed. He preferred an assault on the Union flanks. But Robert E. Lee insisted that the attack on the center be carried out as planned.

At one o’clock in the afternoon the rebel artillery opened fire. The bombardment lasted for two hours. When it ceased, the Confederate infantry moved forward. For sixteen minutes they marched across an open field, twelve thousand men with guns at the ready. An impressive sight, it marked the high tide of the Confederacy as the men in gray advanced into both battle and legend. But the soldiers in blue were ready. The rebel bombardment had failed to dislodge them, and they and their artillery poured such fire into the Southerners as to shred their ranks. Meade’s men held their ground. In less than an hour the Confederate assault disintegrated and with it the Confederate hope of victory. Some six thousand Confederate soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured. What became known as Pickett’s Charge was more than a failure, it was a disaster, for the Army of Northern Virginia as well as for the Southern cause, a disaster for which Robert E. Lee alone was responsible.

The failure of the July 3 attack meant Lee had lost the Battle of Gettysburg. The outcome gave hope to the North and to the Army of the Potomac, which now realized that in future engagements it could more than match its vaunted opponent. For Lee, Gettysburg meant a severe and undeniable defeat.

At Gettysburg, the Confederate army suffered 22,874 casualties, of whom 4,637 were killed. The Army of the Potomac listed its dead at 3,149, with 19,664 men wounded or missing. For those three days in July 1863, 45,687 men were either put in the hospital or never left Gettysburg alive. The number bears repeating: 45,687. Never has the United States of America witnessed such bloodshed.

On July 4, Lee began his retreat, marching south, back into Virginia. He moved as quickly as he could, though speed was difficult, as the army’s wagon train of wounded soldiers extended seventeen miles. Meade took up the pursuit and battled with the Confederate rear guard, taking some fifteen hundred prisoners. But the bulk of Lee’s force escaped. The result was that the war would continue.

Lincoln was displeased that Meade had allowed Lee to get away. The president wanted the Army of Northern Virginia to be destroyed, not just defeated. He realized that once Lee’s army ceased to exist, the Confederate cause would collapse, much as the American fight for independence would have fallen apart had the British been able to destroy Washington’s Continental army. Nevertheless, Lincoln retained Meade as the commander of the Army of the Potomac.

Because of Gettysburg, George Meade’s place in American history is secure. Yet in his day, he did not gain the fame his success in that battle warranted. One reason was Lincoln’s dissatisfaction. Another was that he soon became overshadowed by another general. But the principal reason was newspaper reporters. According to historian Brian Holden Reid, General Meade, in 1864, had humiliated a reporter who had written an insulting article about him. The press retaliated by no longer mentioning Meade when writing about the war. As a result he all but disappeared from public view. Perhaps Meade did not care. He had accomplished something significant: he had beaten Robert E. Lee in battle, winning a victory of immense importance. And he had done so while in command of the Army of the Potomac for but three days, having relieved Hooker on June 28,1863. His was an outstanding performance.

By the time of the great battle, the need for more men to serve in the Union army was clear. The thousands who had volunteered at the outbreak of hostilities were an insufficient number. As a result, Congress had enacted a law drafting men into the army. As it was possible to avoid military service by paying a fee of $300, the law fell heavily on the urban poor, whose support of the war was often tenuous. Why? Because they saw freed slaves as cheap labor that would come north and take their jobs. Moreover, racism was not limited to the South. Not everyone north of the Mason-Dixon Line was an abolitionist. The result in New York City was an outbreak of violence. For five days mobs rampaged through the streets. Buildings were set on fire and people killed. Eighteen African-Americans were hanged. Order was restored only with the arrival of federal troops, some of which came from Gettysburg.

Though Lincoln did not fire Meade as he had McClellan and the others, the president was looking for a general who understood the necessity of ruthlessly destroying the enemy’s war machine. He wanted an aggressive general. He wanted a man who would seek out and crush the Confederate armies wherever they were.

Out west there was such a general. Lincoln brought him to Washington and placed him in charge of the entire Union army. The general’s name was Ulysses S. Grant.

To reinforce Grant’s authority, President Lincoln, with the approval of Congress, conferred on him the rank of lieutenant general. Up to then only two men in the United States had held this three-star rank. One was George Washington. The other was Winfield Scott, the hero of the war with Mexico, although his was of an honorary nature. During the American Civil War generals in command of an army or of its principal subdivision, a corps, were major generals, a two-star rank. As a lieutenant general, Grant outranked them all.

In addition to three stars, Lincoln enhanced Grant’s authority by appointing him general in command. At the war’s beginning the most senior position in the Union army had been held by Winfield Scott. By 1860 Scott was past his prime, though he did propose to Lincoln the sensible strategy of strangling the South by a naval blockade in the East and by taking control of the Mississippi River in the West. For a short period of time George B. McClellan was general in chief, having replaced the ailing Scott in October 1861. This didn’t work out, so the president appointed Major General Henry Halleck to the position. Halleck was Scott’s choice for the job, which entailed providing Lincoln with military advice. Halleck, one of the few intellectuals in the army, was considered by many to be an ideal choice. Yet “Old Brains,” as he was called, failed miserably in the job. His critics, and they came to be many, considered him a highly paid clerk. When Grant took over, things would be different.

Ulysses Simpson Grant was thirty-nine years of age when he rejoined the army in June 1861. A graduate of West Point and a veteran of the Mexican War, he’d left the service in 1854 to pursue several business ventures. These did not turn out well; nor did the New York investment banking company he established after he left the White House. Historians, of course, judge his two terms as president (1869–1877) a failure. Clearly, Grant was a man neither of business nor of politics. But he was a man of war. In all of American history, no general stands taller.

Grant’s first action against Confederate troops, at Belmont in eastern Missouri, was less than fully successful. He and his troops did better early in 1862 when, with the assistance of navy gunboats, he took control of two key Confederate forts in Tennessee. The second, Fort Donelson, was the more important. In seizing it he captured a strategic position. He also took possession of fifteen thousand Confederate prisoners and a huge supply of enemy stores. Given that Union victories early in the war were infrequent, the capture of Fort Donelson pleased Lincoln greatly. For his efforts Grant was promoted to major general.

With the fall of Fort Donelson, the senior Confederate general in the area, Albert Sidney Johnston, retired south to the town of Corinth in Mississippi, just below the state’s boundary with Tennessee. He had forty-five thousand men. They were well equipped and ready to fight. Grant, with slightly fewer troops, had pursued him, moving down the Tennessee River to Pittsburgh Landing, just north of the boundary, where he and his men disembarked. Between the two armies lay relatively flat land and a church called Shiloh.

Grant was waiting for additional troops belonging to Don Carlos Buell, who were coming down from Nashville. Upon their arrival, he planned to attack.

No fool, Albert Sidney Johnston struck first. On April 6, 1862, he hit Grant’s forces hard and caused them to fall back. While many Union soldiers fought well, a large number simply ran away. As night fell, it seemed that come morning Johnston’s men would push Grant and his troops into the river. However, Grant remained calm. He redeployed his men and said he would counterattack the next day and win the battle, which is what he did, albeit with help from Buell, whose soldiers had just arrived.

Shiloh, occurring before Antietam and Gettysburg, was the first true bloodbath of the Civil War. Confederate casualties numbered 10,699, among them Albert Sidney Johnston, who was killed. Grant’s army suffered 13,047 killed or wounded. These numbers shocked people in both the North and South. They began to realize that, in human life, the war was to be extremely costly.

Toward the end of 1862 the North had three field armies confronting the Confederacy. To be sure, there were other troops either in training or guarding lines of supply. And elsewhere there were smaller units on the offensive. But the principal threat to Jefferson Davis and friends came from three Union armies. One was the Army of the Potomac then commanded by Burnside. Another was Grant’s Army of the Tennessee. The third was the Army of the Cumberland. Its commander was William S. Rosecrans.

Rosecrans was a cautious yet capable general, popular with his men. He had fought Confederate forces at Iuka and Corinth and done well, though Grant thought he ought to have done better. For his efforts, however, Rosecrans received a vote of thanks from Congress and a promotion.

He was then ordered to take the Army of the Cumberland southeast for another crack at Bragg. The purpose was to keep Bragg’s army away from Grant in Mississippi. Rosecrans accomplished this, but on September, 19, 1863, his army was defeated at Chickamauga. Only calm steadying of troops by Major General George H. Thomas prevented a Union rout. No small affair, total casualties at Chickamauga numbered thirty thousand. Afterward, the Army of the Cumberland retreated into Chattanooga.

Rosecrans was soon relieved. He was at odds with Lincoln’s secretary of war, and by now Grant thought little of him. Command of the Army of the Cumberland went to Thomas. Grant himself became in charge of all Union forces in the West. His army, the Army of the Tennessee, was now led by William Tecumseh Sherman.