Read Two Miserable Presidents Online
Authors: Steve Sheinkin
Two Miserable Presidents (20 page)
L
incoln was so anxious for some good news, he was hardly able to sleep at night, and he walked around the White House with black bags under his eyes. An artist who was painting a picture of Lincoln at this time said of the president's face: “There were days when I could scarcely look into it without crying.”
incoln was so anxious for some good news, he was hardly able to sleep at night, and he walked around the White House with black bags under his eyes. An artist who was painting a picture of Lincoln at this time said of the president's face: “There were days when I could scarcely look into it without crying.”
There was some news in July, but it wasn't too good. A small Southern force had fought its way inside the borders of Washington, D.C., and was now just a few miles from the White House. Lincoln went out to have a look at the fighting. He stood on the wall of a fort as bullets zoomed past. Standing six foot four, with a tall black hat, he was the most obvious target in the city.
“Mr. President, you are standing within range of five hundred rebel rifles,” cautioned a Union soldier.
Another soldier was more direct: “Get down, you damn fool, before you get shot!”
Lincoln got down.
The Southern soldiers were chased from the capital, but soon there was more bad newsâthis time from Grant.
This story begins in Petersburg, Virginia, where the enemy armies were living in trenches just 150 yards apart. In one of the Union trenches, a few Pennsylvania soldiers looked out at the Confederate fort protecting Petersburg. These guys were coal minersâexperts at digging tunnels. And now one of them had an idea:
“We could blow that fort out of existence if we could run a mine shaft under it.”
The Pennsylvania boys got permission to give it a try. And in just four weeks they pulled off one of the great engineering feats of the warâa 511-foot tunnel that ended twenty feet below the Confederate fort. They opened up a huge room at the end of the tunnel and filled it with 320 barrels of gunpowder. Then they attached a long fuse to the gunpowder.
The fuse was lit at 3:15 a.m. on July 30. Thousands of Union soldiers crouched nearby, ready to attack right after the explosion. The fuse should have reached the gunpowder in fifteen minutes. But fifteen minutes passed, then thirty, then forty-five â¦
A soldier named Harry Reese volunteered to enter the tunnel and find out what had gone wrong. He saw that the fuse had burned out. He relit itâand ran for his life.
Moments after Reese dove out of the tunnel opening, soldiers heared a low rumble that sounded like distant thunder. “Suddenly the earth trembled beneath our feet,” a Union soldier remembered. Then red flames shot up from cracks in the ground, and a massive section of earth lifted up into the air and seemed to float there like an island in the sky.
The blast woke up thousands of Confederate soldiersâmany of them were in the air at the time. One man remembered opening his eyes while flying through the air and seeing his own arms and legs swinging wildly. He passed out, landed hard, and lived.
But more than 250 Confederate soldiers were killed in the blast, and thousands more panicked and ran. This was the opportunity of a lifetime for the Union army. But the Northern soldiers just stood there. They were just as shocked as the Southerners by the gigantic explosion and the huge crater that now lay at their feet. Even worse, the Union general who was supposed to lead the attack got scared and hid in a ditch and started guzzling rum. By the time the Union soldiers finally attacked, they were too late and too disorganized. Another 4,000 Union men were killed or woundedâand the Union army accomplished nothing.
Grant called the Battle of the Crater “the saddest affair I have witnessed in the war.”
Lincoln was not too pleased about it, either.
M
any Northerners were now convinced that they could not win this war. And they were furious with Lincoln for continuing to send young men to fight and die. A woman named Sarah Butler summed up this anger:
any Northerners were now convinced that they could not win this war. And they were furious with Lincoln for continuing to send young men to fight and die. A woman named Sarah Butler summed up this anger:
“What is all this struggling and fighting for? This ruin and death to thousands of families?”
Sarah Butler
Former presidents spoke out against Lincoln. Newspapers called for him to drop out of the presidential race. A Democratic Party newspaper reported with glee: “Lincoln is deader than dead.” Even Republican leaders turned against him. “I told Mr. Lincoln that his re-election was an impossibility,” a top Republican said. “The people are wild for peace.”
What could be worse for Abe Lincoln? How about this: it looked as if he was going to lose his job to none other than George McClellan. That's right, the former Union general who had once referred to Lincoln as “the original gorilla.” McClellan was chosen to be the Democratic candidate for president in 1864. He promised to bring a quick end to the war.
“I am going to be beaten,” Lincoln said in August. “And unless some great change takes place, badly beaten.”
W
illiam T. Sherman could not sit stillâor shut up. “The most restless man in the army” was how one officer described Sherman. Men who served with him said it was always exciting when he entered the room, and always a great relief when he left.
illiam T. Sherman could not sit stillâor shut up. “The most restless man in the army” was how one officer described Sherman. Men who served with him said it was always exciting when he entered the room, and always a great relief when he left.
For a man who never stopped talking, Sherman needed only a few words to announce the biggest news of the war so far. On September 3, 1864, he sent a telegram to Washington saying: “Atlanta is ours, and fairly won.”
Yes, after months of marching and fighting in Georgia, Sherman's army had just captured the key city of Atlanta. With the elections coming up, this changed everything. Suddenly it looked as if the Union actually could win the war.
“Since Atlanta I have felt as if all were dead within me,” said Mary Chesnut of South Carolina. “We are going to be wiped off the earth.”
N
ovember 8, Election Day, was cool and rainy in Washington, D.C. After work, Abraham Lincoln walked from the White House to the telegraph office in the War Department building. While waiting for news from around the country, Lincoln served plates of fried oysters to his cabinet members. And he kept everyone calm by telling funny stories that began with lines such as, “You know, that reminds me of a feller I knew in Illinois ⦔
ovember 8, Election Day, was cool and rainy in Washington, D.C. After work, Abraham Lincoln walked from the White House to the telegraph office in the War Department building. While waiting for news from around the country, Lincoln served plates of fried oysters to his cabinet members. And he kept everyone calm by telling funny stories that began with lines such as, “You know, that reminds me of a feller I knew in Illinois ⦔
Then the election returns started coming in, and the news was good:
Abraham Lincoln
(
Republican
)
Republican
)
George McClellan
Democrat)
| Electoral Votes: | 212 | 21 |
| Popular Votes: | 2,213,665 | 1,805,237 |
| Percentage of total vote: | 55% | 45% |
| Percentage of soldiers' vote: | 78% | 22% |
Lincoln's strong support from Union soldiers turned out to be a key to his victory. Winning seventy-eight percent of this vote is amazing when you think that soldiers were basically voting on whether or not to continue the war. They wanted peace more than anyoneâbut they also wanted to finish the job they had begun. As one Union soldier put it: “I had rather stay out here a lifetime, much as I dislike it, than consent to a division of our country.”
When the election results reached Grant's army at Petersburg, the men broke out in loud cheers. Lee's men heard the noise and called across the open space between enemy trenches:
Southern Soldier:
Say, Yank!
Say, Yank!
Northern Soldier:
Hello, Johnny!
Hello, Johnny!
Southern Soldier:
Don't fire, Yank.
Don't fire, Yank.
Northern Soldier:
All right, Johnny.
All right, Johnny.
Southern Soldier:
What are y'all cheering for?
What are y'all cheering for?
Northern Soldier:
Big victory on our side.
Big victory on our side.
Southern Soldier:
What is it, Yank?
What is it, Yank?
Northern Soldier:
Old Abe has cleaned all your fellers out up North.
Old Abe has cleaned all your fellers out up North.
Lincoln's election was a crushing disappointment to the South. But Jefferson Davis was still committed to victory. “We will be free,” he vowed. “We will govern ourselves ⦠if we have to see every Southern plantation sacked, and every Southern city in flames.”
Speaking of plantations and cities in flames â¦
A
few weeks after the election, Dolly Lunt looked out the window of her plantation home in Georgia and saw a large group of Union soldiers marching toward her yard. As soon as they got there, the soldiers started stealing everything in sight.
few weeks after the election, Dolly Lunt looked out the window of her plantation home in Georgia and saw a large group of Union soldiers marching toward her yard. As soon as they got there, the soldiers started stealing everything in sight.
“Like demons they rush in!” she wrote to a friend, “Breaking locks and whatever is in their way. The thousand pounds of meat in my smoke-house is gone in a twinkling, my flour, my meat, my lard, butter, eggs, pickles of various kinds ⦠wine, jars, and jugs are all gone. My eighteen fat turkeys, my hens, chickens, and fowls, my young pigs, are shot down in my yard and hunted as if they were rebels themselves.”
She ran outside and found a Union officer and begged him for help.
He shrugged and said, “I cannot help you, madam, it is orders.”
Lunt watched helplessly as the soldiers rode off with her horses, mules, and sheep. And of course, slaves living on the plantation took the opportunity to escape.
This was all part of Sherman's plan to end the war. After capturing Atlanta (and burning much of it to the ground) Sherman divided his army in two. He sent half of it, under General George Thomas, to chase after the Confederate army that had been defeated at Atlanta. Sherman personally led the other half on a march through Georgia, destroying farms, burning buildings, ripping up railroads. Sherman wanted to make it painfully clear to white Southern families that the Confederate army was no longer strong enough to protect them. He wanted to convince Southerners that it was foolish to continue supporting this war. “I can make the march,” he told Grant, “and make Georgia howl!”
Sherman knew this was a cruel way to fight, but he saw it as the best way to end the war:
“War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”
William T. Sherman
With this idea in mind, Sherman led his army of 60,000 on a 285-mile march from Atlanta all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. For Union soldiers, this was like a vacation. With plenty to eat and no fighting to do, the men sang as they marched. One favorite song began: “We will hang Jeff Davis on a sour apple tree.”
The people in Sherman's path, meanwhile, shook with rage. Eliza Andrews was shocked to see the blackened remains of buildings, and farm animals killed and left on the ground to rot. “The stench in some places was unbearable,” she said. “I almost felt as if I should like to hang a Yankee myself.”
Sherman's army reached the sea in late December. He sent a quick telegram to President Lincoln, saying: “I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah.”
Then he marched his army into South Carolina, the state where the Civil War began. “We will let her know that it isn't so sweet to secede as she thought it would be,” said one Union soldier. And Sherman's soldiers continued slicing a wide wound through the South.
Now you know why, to this day, one of the most, hated men in the southern United States is William Tecumseh Sherman.
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