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Authors: Charles Bracelen Flood
Tags: #Biography, #History, #bought-and-paid-for, #Non-Fiction
Grant and Sherman: The Friendship that Won the Civil War (45 page)
BOOK: Grant and Sherman: The Friendship that Won the Civil War
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Of these two leading figures of the Union war effort now meeting in Savannah, Stanton had the more difficult wartime role to play. As a soldier, Sherman’s objective, like Grant’s, was to defeat the enemy. Serving as Lincoln’s highly effective secretary of war, Stanton also clearly had victory as his objective, but he found himself in the midst of the frequent tension between Lincoln and the Radical Republicans. Stanton had great quiet admiration and sympathy for Lincoln, who had to put down the Confederate rebellion and yet wished to impose a gentler peace than the one the Radicals wanted. In addition to that, as president, Lincoln was leader of his Republican Party, which had very nearly foundered during the election year just past. Trying to be president of all the people, not just Republicans and Democrats but
all
Americans—whites, blacks, the people not only of the North but also of the South when its seceded status ended—Lincoln was engaged in the greatest balancing act in American history. Stanton saw and understood all that, and had indeed thrown much of his great energy and administrative skill into being an important initiator and coordinator of many aspects of Lincoln’s 1864 presidential campaign. As a member of Lincoln’s cabinet, he was fulfilling his duty to carry out the commander in chief’s policies, but as the politically astute creature he was, Stanton had also kept on good terms with the leading Radicals. (A measure of Stanton’s adroitness was that, when Lincoln had named him secretary of war, every faction in Congress felt that he was the man to further their agendas.)
all
Americans—whites, blacks, the people not only of the North but also of the South when its seceded status ended—Lincoln was engaged in the greatest balancing act in American history. Stanton saw and understood all that, and had indeed thrown much of his great energy and administrative skill into being an important initiator and coordinator of many aspects of Lincoln’s 1864 presidential campaign. As a member of Lincoln’s cabinet, he was fulfilling his duty to carry out the commander in chief’s policies, but as the politically astute creature he was, Stanton had also kept on good terms with the leading Radicals. (A measure of Stanton’s adroitness was that, when Lincoln had named him secretary of war, every faction in Congress felt that he was the man to further their agendas.)
So it was that the two men conferring in Savannah had at least some identical interests. They wanted to end the war quickly; Stanton, who was a friend of Sherman’s father-in-law, Thomas Ewing, was talking with the general who seemed destined to play a large role in bringing that about, and Sherman knew that Stanton was ready to throw all the available military resources into the effort. After four days in Savannah, Stanton returned to Washington.
In fact, both Sherman and Stanton remained wary of each other. Before Stanton arrived, Halleck had warned Sherman that Lincoln himself was being urged to punish Sherman not only for the Ebeneezer Creek incident but also for his views on slavery, and even on his way back to Washington Stanton had a wire sent to Grant asking to meet “so as to communicate other matters that cannot safely be written”—presumably Sherman’s political volatility, both as to racial remarks and his ambivalence toward white Southerners, in which he mixed his fire-and-sword policy with fond memories of his prewar experiences in the South, and his evident willingness to extend softer peace terms than those the Radicals relentlessly sought. As for Sherman, he mistakenly felt that he had brought Stanton close to his view that yes, the slaves should be freed, but that they were of an inferior race that, even though they were now in the Union ranks, would never make as good soldiers as white men could. On January 15, two days after Stanton left, Sherman wrote Ellen, “Mr. Stanton has been here and is cured of that Negro nonsense.”
What Sherman may not have fully grasped, despite the political knowledge available to him both through Halleck and his brother the senator, was that Stanton had been sympathetic to the abolitionist cause from a time long before the war and had a deep distrust of West Pointers—a feeling shared by many of the Radicals, who felt that the officers of the Regular Army formed a clique with little interest in the values of a democracy and comprised a group that could seize and hold despotic power. There was also the health-draining pressure that Stanton was feeling from the demands of his position: in addition to his constant responsibilities as one of the key figures in the prosecution of the war, by the end of Lincoln’s presidential campaign, Stanton had come down with a combination of chills and fever that had kept him in bed for three weeks, during which he ran his part of the war from his house. High-strung and driven as always, Stanton was more of an enigma than many of his governmental associates knew. While staying on good terms with the Radicals, he had a great unspoken affection for Lincoln, who would soon memorably proclaim in his Second Inaugural Address his policy of acting “With malice toward none; with charity for all,” and later say of the prostrate South, “Let ’em up easy.”
At this point, with the war yet to be won, Lincoln was still formulating his thoughts as to the terms on which the seceded states were to be readmitted to the Union and the way the freed slaves were to be given their civil rights. Stanton saw in Lincoln the indispensable leader who was guiding the nation through the maelstrom. Like Sherman, Stanton had a great desire for order, an impulse almost constantly thwarted by the realities of the war and wartime politics, and Stanton was ready to see a political dissident as an outright traitor. Just where all this was taking Stanton’s tendency to mistrust Sherman would become dramatically apparent within a few months. When that happened, under circumstances that at the moment seemed unimaginable, Grant would extricate Sherman from the crisis he created for himself.
THE MARCH THROUGH THE CAROLINAS, AND AN ADDITIONAL TEST OF FRIENDSHIP
Sherman’s widely praised capture of Savannah still left unanswered Lincoln’s question, “But what next?” Grant and Sherman differed on this and, as was the case before Sherman set out from Atlanta for Savannah, each man held reasonable views and put them before the other. Grant, still locked in daily heavy combat with Lee at Petersburg that was costing many Northern lives, continued to feel that if he could have ships land Sherman’s splendid army near him on the Virginia coast, between them they could swiftly “close out Lee and his army.” That would mean the fall of Richmond, the Confederacy’s capital. The Confederate forces under Beauregard in North Carolina would still be in existence, but Beauregard, hugely outnumbered at that point, might well surrender, and the war could be over then and there.
Sherman saw it differently. Trusting in himself and his men—he wrote Grant, “I don’t like to boast, but I believe this army has a confidence in itself that makes it almost invincible”—Sherman wanted to turn his army north and make another march, up through the Carolinas, continuing to disembowel the South and destroy its will and capacity to make war. This northward march—it was 270 miles in a straight line between Savannah and North Carolina’s capital of Raleigh, but the real distance to be covered through swamps and on terrible roads was more than 400—would keep Beauregard, soon to be replaced by Joseph E. Johnston, from moving up to Virginia to reinforce Lee. Sherman’s plan was to defeat the enemy in the Carolinas wherever they were, then move on and attack Lee’s rear while Grant smashed at his front, and bring the war to an end that way.
Although Grant and Sherman laid out their differing points of view on Sherman’s next move in a quick series of telegrams and letters, this time a logistical reality decided the matter. Grant found that there were not enough ships available to bring Sherman’s army up to the Virginia coast quickly enough to justify his strategy. On December 27, he approved Sherman’s plan for his inland march.
Ulysses S. Grant was still Sherman’s superior, but both of them knew that Sherman’s brilliant slashes through the South, taking important cities and costing few casualties, were making him greatly popular throughout the North, while Grant remained the general under whose direction the Army of the Potomac was losing many thousands of men every month. On the last day of 1864, with his army unable to start its northward march until widespread flooding in the Carolina coastal lowlands subsided, Sherman wrote a most tactful letter to Grant. Without referring to the change in the public’s perception of the two of them, he said, “I am fully aware of your friendly feelings towards me, and you may always depend on me as your steadfast supporter. Your wish is Law & Gospel to me and such is the feeling that pervades my army.” At the same time, possibly having this letter from Sherman in mind, Grant wrote Julia, “How few there are who when rising to popular favor would stop to say a word in defence of the only one between himself and the highest in command. I am happy to say that I appreciated him from the first feeling him to be what he is proven to the world he is.” During December, Grant had helped to start the Sherman Testimonial Fund of Ohio, which was collecting contributions from businessmen to give to Sherman, who had saved little money and had no house, to help him buy a house for his family when his life became more settled. In sending his own contribution of five hundred dollars, Grant wrote the committee, “I can not say a word too highly in praise of General Sherman’s services from the beginning of the rebellion to the present day … Suffice it to say that the World[’]s history gives us record … of but few equals. I am truly glad for the movement you have set afoot and of the opportunity of adding my mite in testemonial [
sic
] of so good and great a man.”
sic
] of so good and great a man.”
The bond between Grant and Sherman was soon to be brought under pressure again. Around the time Sherman commenced his march into South Carolina at the beginning of February 1865, rumors started to circulate that Sherman was going to be promoted to lieutenant general, making him equal in rank to Grant. It would then be possible for Sherman to be named general in chief, replacing Grant as the Union’s top military leader. A bill for Sherman’s promotion was introduced in Congress; as soon as he heard of it, Sherman wrote to his brother the senator, stating that he wanted the effort stopped: “I will accept no commission that would tend to create a rivalry with Grant. I want him to hold what he has earned and got. I have all the rank I want.” He also wrote Grant about his feelings on the matter, telling him, “I would rather have you in command than anyone else [and] I should emphatically decline any commission calculated to bring us into rivalry.” Grant replied to Sherman, “I have received your very kind letter in which you say that you would decline, or are opposed to, promotion. No one would be more pleased at your advancement than I, and if you should be placed in my position and I put subordinate it would not change our personal relations in the least. I would make the same efforts to support you that you have ever done to support me, and would do all in my power to make our cause win.”
That cause was nearer to being won than either Grant or Sherman realized. At the beginning of March, by which time Sherman was well on his way up through the Carolinas, Grant received a letter from Robert E. Lee. It developed that, during a meeting in Virginia under a flag of truce to exchange political prisoners, Union general Edward Ord had found himself talking with Grant’s old friend and West Point classmate, Julia’s cousin Confederate general James Longstreet. Ord and Longstreet were also good friends from the prewar army and, with the business of exchanging the prisoners completed, they began to discuss the possibilities for holding peace talks. After Ord told Longstreet that a first step might be for Lee and Grant to meet, Longstreet took the suggestion to Lee, who wrote Grant about what he termed “the possibility of arriving at a satisfactory adjustment of the present unhappy difficulties.” Lee added, “Sincerely desiring to leave nothing untried which may put an end to the calamities of war, I propose to meet you at such convenient time and place as you may designate.” Grant immediately forwarded this to Stanton, who sent back this equally prompt reply:
The President directs me to say that he wishes you to have no conference with General Lee unless it be for the capitulation of Gen. Lee’s army … He instructs me to say that you are not to decide, discuss or confer upon any political question. Such questions the President holds in his own hands.
Nothing came of the matter, but the fact that Lee made this overture demonstrated the deterioration of the Confederacy and its morale. Many men were deserting from Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, but Grant, still locked in combat with Lee at Petersburg, remained wary of his remarkable opponent. He knew that Lee could do to him what he had done to Lee at Cold Harbor: move out overnight, and in this case head south to link up with Joseph E. Johnston. Of these days in March of 1865, Grant wrote that “I was afraid, every morning, that I would wake from my sleep to hear that Lee had gone, and that nothing was left but his picket line. I knew he could move much more lightly and more rapidly than I, and that, if he got the start, he would leave me behind so that we would have to fight the same army again further south—and the war might be prolonged another year.”
As for what was going on “further south,” after treating the residents of Savannah gently, Sherman and his army had entered South Carolina in an increasingly vindictive frame of mind toward the state they felt had begun the war and started causing the deaths of their comrades. Just as they were leaving Georgia, Sherman told one of his division commanders, Henry W. Slocum, “Don’t forget that when you cross the Savannah River you are in South Carolina … The more of it you destroy the better it will be.” Speaking of South Carolina, he wrote Halleck in Washington that “I almost tremble at her fate, but feel that she deserves all that is in store for her.” (Halleck had written Sherman, “Should you capture Charleston, I hope that by
some accident
the place may be destroyed,” and when as the campaign began, Sherman’s cavalry leader Brigadier General Judson Kilpatrick asked him, “How shall I let you know where I am?” Sherman replied, “Oh, just burn a barn or something. Make smoke like the Indians do.”)
some accident
the place may be destroyed,” and when as the campaign began, Sherman’s cavalry leader Brigadier General Judson Kilpatrick asked him, “How shall I let you know where I am?” Sherman replied, “Oh, just burn a barn or something. Make smoke like the Indians do.”)
Once again, there was skepticism about the outcome of a march that flouted the conventional military belief that an advancing army must have lines of supply and communication extending behind it to bases in the rear. The British
Army and Nary Gazette
said, “If Sherman has really left his army in the air and started off without a base from Georgia to South Carolina, he has done either one of the most brilliant or one of the most foolish things ever done by a military leader.” In any event, Sherman and his army were on their way. Putting down logs to make roads through huge swamp areas that the Confederates had considered impassable, they occasionally engaged in short battles that caused their enemies to fall back before them.
Army and Nary Gazette
said, “If Sherman has really left his army in the air and started off without a base from Georgia to South Carolina, he has done either one of the most brilliant or one of the most foolish things ever done by a military leader.” In any event, Sherman and his army were on their way. Putting down logs to make roads through huge swamp areas that the Confederates had considered impassable, they occasionally engaged in short battles that caused their enemies to fall back before them.
Looting and burning more than they had in Georgia, Sherman’s columns moved through South Carolina along different routes. Near Barnwell, Mrs. Alfred Proctor Aldrich, mistress of a plantation named The Oaks and a woman who had a husband and two sons in the Confederate Army, braced herself for the arrival of Sherman’s men.
The first of the soldiers who rushed into the house seemed only intent upon procuring food, and … ate like hungry wolves.So soon, however, as they were satisfied, their tramp through the house began. By this time they were pouring in at every door, and without asking to have bureaus and wardrobes opened, broke with their bayonets every lock, tearing out the contents, in hunting for gold, silver, and jewels, all of which had been sent off weeks before. Finding nothing to satisfy their cupidity so far, they began turning over mattresses, tearing open feather-beds, and scattering the contents in the wildest confusion.
After the troops found and drank some bottles of whiskey, “work of destruction began in earnest. Tables were knocked over, lamps with their contents thrown over carpets and mattings, furniture of all sorts broken, a guitar and violin smashed.” For ten days, as different units of Sherman’s army passed through, camping on her plantation at night, Mrs. Aldrich tried to save her house. Occasionally, Union officers and enlisted men came to her aid, the officers ordering off groups of marauding troops. One night an enlisted man from Ohio named McCloskey appointed himself as a sentry; leaning his rifle against the door, he said to Mrs. Aldrich and one of her young female relatives who had her terrified children with her, “Ladies, it makes my heart sick to see this. I never approved of fighting your people, and would not volunteer for the war, but lately I have been drafted into a new regiment. I have no family of my own, but my mother and sisters are as little in favor of this trip as I am. I can’t bear to see women and children ill used.”
Different efforts were made by individuals or small groups to start putting the house to the torch, but timely interventions by other Union soldiers combined with Mrs. Aldrich’s own steadfast courage to save her house. At times she simply faced down some of the intruders, and at one point she shamed Union General David Hunter, whose tent was pitched on her lawn, into ordering some men to extinguish a fire that had just been set in her corn house. Eventually the corn house was burnt to the ground, as were the plantation’s stables, and the books from the library were carried off. The house survived, but this was the scene that now surrounded it: “My beautiful avenue of oaks had been ruthlessly cut down or killed by camp fires near the gates. The park fence was burned up, the large entrance gate cut down, and the undergrowth scorched as black as midnight.”
After Sherman’s troops moved on, it was a few days before Mrs. Aldrich went into little nearby Barnwell. “I do not remember the day our town was burned, or the division that accomplished it, but I do remember the spectacle presented the first time I beheld its ruins. All the public buildings were destroyed. The fine brick Courthouse, with most of the stores, laid level with the ground, and many private residences, with only the chimneys standing like grim sentinels; the Masonic Hall in ashes.”
Barnwell had been a small place. Soon Sherman’s army would arrive at a bigger one. On February 17, the largest of Sherman’s columns, led by him, came to Columbia, South Carolina’s capital. As he entered the city, accompanied by its mayor, who had ridden out to meet Sherman and assure him that he would encounter no opposition, he came upon an already chaotic scene. The retreating Confederates had burnt down the railroad station and a warehouse, which still had some flames among the ruins. The Southern soldiers had done some looting as they left, and broken furniture and scattered household objects littered the sidewalks and streets. Many bales of cotton had been ripped open, so that their contents would scatter and become useless. There was a high wind, and wisps of cotton were flying about in a way that reminded Sherman of a “Northern snow-storm.” A number of these fragments were catching fire from the smoldering buildings. Soon the streets filled with black people tumultuously greeting the troops, and in a short while many of Sherman’s soldiers had been given liquor or had stolen it, and became increasingly drunk.
BOOK: Grant and Sherman: The Friendship that Won the Civil War
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