The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 3: Red River to Appomattox (157 page)

One other piece of news there was, but Sherman was not sure, just yet, whether he was glad or sorry to receive it. Joe Johnston, he learned, had replaced Beauregard as commander of the “scattered and inconsiderable forces” assembling in his front.

*  *  *

Often, down the years, it would be said that Lee’s first exercise of authority, following his confirmation as general-in-chief, had been to recall Johnston to active duty; whereas, in fact, one of his first acts at his new post was the denial of a petition, signed by the Vice President and seventeen prominent Senators, urging him to do just that by restoring his fellow Virginian to command of the Army of Tennessee. “The three corps of that army have been ordered to South Carolina and are now under the command of Genl Beauregard,” he replied on February 13, one week after his elevation. “I entertain a high opinion of Genl
Johnston’s capacity, but think a continual change of commanders is very injurious to any troops and tends greatly to their disorganization. At this time, as far as I understand the condition of affairs, an engagement with the enemy may be expected any day, and a change now would be particularly hazardous. Genl Beauregard is well known to the citizens of South Carolina, as well as to the troops of the Army of Tennessee, and I would recommend that it be certainly ascertained that a change was necessary before it was made.” Besides, he told Stephens and the others, “I do not consider that my appointment … confers the right which you assume belongs to it, nor is it proper that it should. I can only employ such troops and officers as may be placed at my disposal by the War Department.”

Old Joe it seemed would have to bide his time in the Carolina piedmont, awaiting the outcome of further efforts by his supporters. But developments over the course of the next week provoked a reassessment of the situation. For one thing, Beauregard’s health was rumored to be “feeble and precarious,” which might account for his apparent shakiness under pressure. Shifting his headquarters, formerly at Augusta, from Columbia to Chester, then to Charlotte, the Creole seemed confused and indecisive in the face of Sherman’s “semi-amphibious” march through the boggy lowlands. “General Beauregard makes no mention of what he proposes or what he can do, or where his troops are,” Lee complained to Davis. “He does not appear from his dispatches to be able to do much.” Columbia by then had been abandoned, along with outflanked Charleston, and Wilmington was under heavy pressure from Schofield; at which point, on February 21, Davis received and passed on to Lee a wire just in from Beauregard, once more proposing a “grand strategy” designed to bring the Yankees to their knees. In the Louisianian’s opinion, Sherman (who would not turn east, away from Chester, until the following day) was advancing upon Charlotte and Salisbury, North Carolina, on his way to a conjunction with Grant in rear of Richmond, and Old Bory saw in this — as he so often had done before, under drastic circumstances — the opportunity of a lifetime. “I earnestly urge a concentration of at least 35,000 infantry and artillery at [Salisbury], if possible, to give him battle there, and crush him, then to concentrate all forces against Grant, and then to march on Washington and dictate a peace. Hardee and myself can collect about 15,000 exclusive of Cheatham and Stewart, not likely to reach in time. If Lee and Bragg can furnish 20,000 more, the fate of the Confederacy would be secure.”

Unknowingly, Beauregard had proposed his last air-castle strategy of the war. “The idea is good, but the means are lacking,” Lee told Davis two days later. He had by then made up his mind that the Creole had to go, and by way of providing a successor he had already sounded out Breckinridge on the matter. “[Sherman] seems to have everything
his own way,” he informed the War Secretary on February 19, the day after Charleston fell, adding that he could get little useful information from the general charged with contesting the blue advance through the Carolinas. “I do not know where his troops are, or on what lines they are moving. His dispatches only give movements of the enemy. He has a difficult task to perform under present circumstances, and one of his best officers, Genl Hardee, is incapacitated by sickness. I have also heard that his own health is indifferent, though he has never so stated. Should his strength give way, there is no one on duty in the department that could replace him, nor have I anyone to send there. Genl J. E. Johnston is the only officer whom I know who has the confidence of the army and people, and if he was ordered to report to me I would place him there on duty. It is necessary to bring out all our strength.…”

Puzzled by Lee’s indirectness, the Kentuckian asked just what it was he wanted, and when. Lee replied that he had intended “to apply for Genl J. E. Johnston, that I might assign him to duty, should circumstances permit.” Understanding now that by “circumstances” Lee meant the President’s objections, Breckinridge passed the request along, and Davis — despite his recent expression of “a conviction so settled that it would be impossible for me again to feel confidence in [Johnston] as the commander of an army in the field” — agreed, however reluctantly, to the recall and appointment, though he was careful to point out that he did so only “in the hope that General Johnston’s soldierly qualities may be made serviceable to his country when acting under General Lee’s orders, and that in his new position those defects which I found manifested by him when serving as an independent commander will be remedied by the control of the general-in-chief.”

That was how it came about that Johnston received on February 23, the day after they were issued, simultaneous orders from the War Department and from Lee, recalling him to active duty and assigning him to command of the troops now under Beauregard, including the Army of Tennessee. He was then at Lincolnton, North Carolina — “I am in the regular line of strategic retreat,” Mrs Chesnut, who preceded him there in her flight from threatened Mulberry, had remarked sarcastically when she learned that he was expected any day — thirty miles northwest of Charlotte, where Beauregard had established headquarters after falling back from Chester. Instructed to “concentrate all available forces and drive back Sherman,” Johnston replied much as he had done on his arrival in Mississippi just under two years ago, preceding the fall of Vicksburg: “It is too late.… The remnant of the Army of Tennessee is much divided. So are the other troops.… Is any discretion allowed me? I have no staff.”

Before taking over he went by rail to Charlotte to confer with his predecessor, now designated his second in command. Beauregard assured him of his support, having just wired Lee that he would “at all
times be happy to serve with or under so gallant and patriotic a soldier.” Privately, though, the Louisianian was bitterly disappointed at having once more been relegated to a subordinate position, as at Manassas, Shiloh, and Petersburg. “My greatest desire has always been to command a good army in the field,” he had recently declared. “Will I ever be gratified?” Now in the Carolinas — as in Mississippi nearly three years before, following his canny withdrawal from Halleck’s intended trap at Corinth — another chance had come and gone, and he knew this was the last; Fate and Davis had undone him, now as then.

Johnston was by no means correspondingly elated. Though he was grateful for Beauregard’s loyalty, he believed the post afforded little opportunity for success or even survival. He had, as he informed one of his Richmond supporters, “not exactly no hope, but only a faint hope,” and even this was presently seen to have been an overstatement of the case. He said later that he took over in Charlotte, February 25, “with a full consciousness … that we could have no other object, in continuing the war, than to obtain fair terms of peace; for the Southern cause must have appeared hopeless then, to all intelligent and dispassionate Southern men.”

Sherman by now was astride Lynch’s Creek, midway between the Wateree and the Pee Dee, closing fast on Cheraw, his final intermediary objective before he entered North Carolina. Moreover, the invaders by then had still another powerful column in contention; Wilmington’s fall, on the day of Johnston’s restoration by the War Department, freed Schofield to join Sherman for a northward march across the Roanoke, the last strong defensive line south of the Appomattox. Lee pointed out that the only way to avoid the consequences of such a penetration would be for him to combine with Johnston for a strike at Sherman before that final barrier was crossed, even though this would require him not only to give up his present lines covering Petersburg and the national capital, but also to manage the evacuation so stealthily that Grant would not know he was gone until it was too late to overtake and crush him on the march. How long the odds were against his achieving such a deliverance Lee did not say, yet he did what he could to warn his superiors of the sacrifice involved in the attempt. On the day after Foster occupied Charleston — February 18: the fourth anniversary of Davis’s provisional inauguration in Montgomery — he notified Breckinridge: “I fear it may be necessary to abandon all our cities, and preparation should be made for this contingency.” Similarly, on the day after Wilmington fell — February 22: the third anniversary of Davis’s permanent inauguration in Richmond — he made it clear to Davis himself that any attempt to “unite with [Johnston] in a blow against Sherman” would “necessitate the abandonment of our position on James River, for which contingency every preparation should be made.” One other alternative there was, and he mentioned it one week later in a different connection.
This was the acceptance of Lincoln’s terms, as set forth aboard the
River Queen
four weeks ago in Hampton Roads. “Whether this will be acceptable to our people yet awhile,” he told Davis, “I cannot say.”

“Yet awhile” was as close as Lee had come, so far, to foreseeing surrender as the outcome of the present situation. As for himself, this detracted not a whit from the resolution he had expressed in a letter to his wife the week before: “Sherman and Schofield are both advancing and seem to have everything their own way. But trusting in a merciful God, who does not always give the battle to the strong, I pray we may not be overwhelmed. I shall however endeavor to do my duty and fight to the last.”

Victory, and Defeat

“EVERYTHING LOOKS LIKE DISSOLUTION in the South. A few more days of success with Sherman will put us where we can crow loud,” Grant wrote his congressional guardian angel Elihu Washburne on the day after Schofield captured Wilmington, hard in the wake of Foster’s occupation of Charleston and Sherman’s burning of Columbia. By coincidence, this February 23 was also the day Lee warned Davis of the need for abandoning Richmond when the time came for him to combine with Johnston in a last-ditch effort to stop Sherman and Schofield before they crossed the Roanoke River, sixty miles in what had been his rear until he was cooped up in Petersburg. Far from being one of the things Grant looked forward to crowing about, however, such a move by his adversary, even though it would mean possession of the capital he had had under siege for eight long months, was now the Union commander’s greatest fear. Looking back on still another of those “most anxious periods,” he afterwards explained: “I was afraid, every morning, that I would awake from my sleep to hear that Lee had gone, and that nothing was left but a picket line. He had his railroad by the way of Danville south, and I was afraid that he was running off his men and all stores and ordnance except such as it would be necessary to carry with him for his immediate defense. 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 the same army to fight again farther south.” In other words, he feared that Lee might do to him what he had done to Lee after Cold Harbor; that is, slip away some moonless night while the bluecoats, snug in their trenches across the way, engaged in lackadaisical speculation on “a good run of Johnnies.” The result would be recovery by the old fox of his freedom to maneuver, a resumption of the kind of warfare at which he and his lean gray veterans had shown themselves to be past masters, back in May and early June; in
which case, Grant summed it up, still shuddering at the prospect, “the war might be prolonged another year.”