SLAVERY AND THE WAR
A singular fact about modern war is that it takes charge. Once begun it has to be carried to its conclusion, and carrying it there sets in motion events that may be beyond men's control. Doing what has to be done to win, men perform acts that alter the very soil in which society's roots are nourished. They bring about infinite change, not because anyone especially wants it, but because all-out warfare destroys so much that things can never again be as they used to be.
In the 1860s the overwhelming mass of the people, in the North and in the South, were conservatives who hated the very notion of change. Life in America had been good and it had been fairly simple, and most people wanted to keep it that way. The Northerner wanted to preserve the old Union, and the Southerner wanted to preserve the semifeudal society in which he had lived; and the unspoken aim in each section was to win a victory which would let people go back to what they had had in a less turbulent day. But after a war which cuts as deeply and goes on as long as the Civil War, no one "goes back" to anything at all. Everybody goes on to something new, and the process is guided and accelerated by the mere act of fighting.
One trouble was that once this war was well begun there was no way, humanly speaking, to work out a compromise peace. The thing had to end in total victory for one side or the other: in a completely independent Confederacy, or in a completely restored Union and the final evaporation of the theory of the right of secession. The longer the war went on and the more it cost, the less willing were patriots on either side to recede from this position. The heroic dead, who were so tragically numerous and who had died for such diametrically opposite causes, must not have died in vain, and only total victory would justify what had been done. And because total victory was the only thinkable outcome, men came to feel that it was right to do anything at all that might bring victory nearer. It was right to destroy railroads, to burn factories and confiscate supplies of food or other raw materials, to seize or ruin any kind of property which was helpful to the enemy.
This feeling rested with especial weight on the North because the North was of necessity the aggressor. The Confederacy existed and it had to be destroyed - not merely brought to the point where its leaders were willing to talk about peace, but destroyed outright. It had to be made incapable of carrying on the fight; both its armies and the industrial and economic muscle which supported them must be made helpless. And so the North at last undertook to wipe out the institution of human slavery.
SOLDIERS AND SLAVERY
Lincoln had made this official with the Emancipation Proclamation, but that strange document had to be ratified by the tacit consent of the people at home and by the active endorsement of the soldiers in the field. And most of the soldiers had not, in the beginning, felt very strongly about slavery. There were, to be sure, many regiments of solid antislavery sentiment: New Englanders, many of the German levies, and certain regiments from abolitionist areas in the Middle West. But these were in a minority. The average Federal soldier began his term of service either quite willing to tolerate slavery in the South or definitely in sympathy with it. He was fighting for the Union and for nothing more. Lincoln's proclamation was not enthusiastically accepted by all of the troops. A few regiments, from border states or from places like southern Illinois and Indiana where there were close ties of sentiment and understanding with the South, came close to mutiny when the document was published, and a good many more grew morose with discontent.
Yet in the end all of the army went along with the new program; became, indeed, the sharp cutting edge that cut slavery down. This happened, quite simply, because the Federal armies that were being taught to lay their hands on any property which might be of service to the Confederate nation realized that the most accessible and most useful property of all was the Negro slave. They had little sympathy with the slave as a person, and they had no particular objection to the fact that he was property; indeed, it was his very status as property which led them to take him away from his owners and to refer to him as "contraband." As property, he supported the Southern war effort. As property, therefore, he was to be taken away from his owners, and when he was taken away, the only logical thing to do with him was to set him free.
The war, in other words, was taking charge. To save the Union the North had to destroy the Confederacy, and to destroy the Confederacy it had to destroy slavery. The Federal armies got the point and behaved accordingly. Slavery was doomed, not so much by any proclamation from Washington as by the necessities of war. The soldiers killed it because it got in their way. Perhaps the most profound miscalculation the Southern leaders ever made was that slavery could be defended by force of arms. By the middle of the nineteenth century slavery was too fragile for that. It could exist only by the tolerance of people who did not like it, and war destroyed that tolerance.
So where the Northern armies went, slavery went out of existence. In Virginia this meant little, partly because in Virginia the Federal armies did not go very far, and partly because in the fought-over country most Southerners got their slaves off to safety as fast as they could. But in the West, in Tennessee and northern Mississippi and Alabama, Federal armies ranged far, destroying the substance of the land as they ranged. They burned barns, consuming or wasting the contents. They burned unoccupied homes, and sometimes rowdy stragglers on the fringes of the armies burned occupied homes as well; they seized any cotton that they found, they broke bridges and tore up railway tracks and ruined mills and ironworks and similar installations... and they killed slavery. Grim General Sherman, the author of so much of this destruction, remarked not long after the victory at Vicksburg that all the powers of the earth could no more restore slaves to the bereaved Southerners than they could restore their dead grandfathers. Wherever Union armies moved, they were followed by long lines of fugitive slaves - unlettered folk who did not know what the war was about and could not imagine what the future held, but who dimly sensed that the road trodden by the men in blue was the road to freedom.
FROM SLAVES TO REFUGEES
Neither the soldiers nor the generals were entirely happy about this increasing flood of refugees. In a clumsy, makeshift manner camps were set up for them; thousands of the refugees died, of hunger or disease or simple neglect, but most of them survived - survived in such numbers that the Federals had to do something about them. Negro labor could be used to build roads or fortifications, to harvest cotton in plantations that lay inside the Union lines, to perform all manner of useful military chores about the camps.
The refugee camps needed guards, to keep intruders out and to police the activities of the refugees themselves, and the Federal soldiers almost unanimously objected to performing such service. (They had enlisted to save the Union, not to guard a milling herd of bewildered Negroes.) It seemed logical, after a time, to raise guard detachments from among the Negroes themselves, outfitting them with castoff army uniforms. Then it appeared that the immense reserve of manpower represented by the newly freed slaves might be put to more direct use, and at last the government authorized, and even encouraged, the organization of Negro regiments, to be officered by whites but to be regarded as troops of the line, available for combat duty if needed.
To this move the soldiers made a good deal of objection - at first. Then they began to change their minds. They did not like Negroes, for race prejudice of a malignity rarely seen today was very prevalent in the North at that time, and they did not want to associate with them on anything remotely like terms of equality, but they came to see that much might be said for Negro regiments. For one thing, a great many enlisted men in the Northern armies could win officers' commissions in these regiments, and a high private who saw a chance to become a lieutenant or a captain was likely to lose a great deal of his antagonism to the notion of Negro soldiers. More important than this was the dawning realization that the colored soldier could stop a Rebel bullet just as well as a white soldier could, and when he did so, some white soldier who would otherwise have died would go on living... And so by the middle of 1863 the North was raising numbers of Negro regiments, and the white soldiers who had been so bitter about the idea adjusted themselves rapidly.
All told, the Federals put more than 150,000 Negroes into uniform. Many of these regiments were used only for garrison duty, and in many other cases the army saw to it that the colored regiments became little more than permanent fatigue details to relieve white soldiers of hard work, but some units saw actual combat service and in a number of instances acquitted themselves well. And there was an importance to this that went far beyond any concrete achievements on the field of battle, for this was the seed of further change. The war had freed the slave, the war had put freed slaves into army uniforms - and a permanent alteration in the colored man's status would have to come out of that fact. A man who had worn the country's uniform and faced death in its service could not, ultimately, be anything less than a full-fledged citizen, and it was going to be very hard to make citizens out of some Negroes without making citizens out of all.
The armies moved across the sun-baked American landscape in the summer of 1863, trying to preserve the cherished past and actually breaking a way into the unpredictable future; and after Gettysburg and Vicksburg the center of attention became central Tennessee and northern Georgia, where the chance of a war gave the South one more opportunity to restore the balance.
ATTENTION MOVES TO THE CENTER
Nothing of much consequence would happen just now in Virginia. Both armies had been badly mangled at Gettysburg, and the rival commanders were being very circumspect. Lee had not the strength to make a real offensive campaign, and Meade was little better off; the two maneuvered up and down around the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, sparring for position, neither one willing to bring on a stand-up fight unless he could do so to real advantage, each one careful to give the other no opening. There were skirmishes, cavalry engagements, and now and then sharp actions between parts of the armies, but nothing really important took place, and as the summer gave way to fall it became apparent that there would not be a really big campaign in Virginia before 1864.
In Mississippi there was a similar lull. After the capture of Vicksburg, Grant wanted to go driving on. There was nothing in the South that could stop his army, and he believed that he could sweep through southern Mississippi and Alabama, taking Mobile and compelling Bragg to hurry back from in front of Chattanooga. The authorities in Washington, however, clung to the notion that the important thing in this war was to occupy Southern territory, and Grant was compelled to scatter his troops. Some of them he had to send to Louisiana, where Major General Nathaniel P. Banks was preparing to invade Texas. Others went to Missouri and to Arkansas, and those that were left were engaged in garrison duty in western Tennessee and Mississippi, occupying cities and guarding railroad lines, effectively immobilized.
Virginia and Mississippi were, so to speak, the wings of the war front. The center was in middle Tennessee, where Rosecrans with the Army of the Cumberland faced Bragg with the Army of Tennessee; and at the end of June Rosecrans at last began to move, hoping to seize Chattanooga and thus to make possible Federal occupation of Knoxville and eastern Tennessee - a point in which President Lincoln was greatly interested, because eastern Tennessee was a stronghold of Unionist sentiment.
Rosecrans made his move late, but when he did so he moved with much skill. Bragg, covering Chattanooga, had weakened his force sending troops to Joe Johnston, and in his position around the town of Tullahoma he had perhaps 47,000 men, of which a disproportionate number were cavalry. (Forrest's cavalry though, mostly, and hence of value against infantry.) The Confederates held good defensive ground, and considering everything, Rosecrans' field force of 60,000 was none too large for the job at hand.
Old Rosey, as his troops called him, feinted smartly and moved with speed. He made as if to swing around Bragg's left flank, then sliced off in the opposite direction, and despite seventeen consecutive days of rain his troops got into the rear of Bragg's right before Bragg realized what was going on. Rosecrans bluffed an attack and then slipped off on another flanking movement, and Bragg found himself compelled to retreat. By July 4 the Confederate army was back in Chattanooga, and Rosecrans, calling in vain for reinforcements (the government was sending pieces of Grant's army off in all directions, but somehow it could not spare any for Rosecrans), was trying to find a line of advance that would force Bragg to retreat still farther. He presently found it, and in August he made an unexpected crossing of the Tennessee River thirty miles west of Chattanooga. Establishing a base of supplies at Bridgeport, Alabama, on the Tennessee, Rosecrans moved over into a mountain valley with nothing between him and Chattanooga but the long rampart of Lookout Mountain. Refusing to make a frontal assault on Bragg's defensive position, he then went southeast, going through a series of gaps in Lookout Mountain and heading for the Western and Atlantic Railroad, which ran from Chattanooga to Atlanta and was Bragg's supply line. Bragg had to evacuate Chattanooga, Union troops entered the place, and Old Rosey had completed a brilliant and virtually bloodless campaign.
The only trouble was that Rosecrans did not know that he had completed it. He might have concentrated in Chattanooga, paused to renew his supplies and let his hard-marching army catch its breath, and then he could have advanced down the railroad line to good effect. Instead, he tried to keep on going, and as he moved through the mountain passes his three army corps became widely separated. Furthermore, Bragg had stopped retreating and was making a stand at La Fayette, Georgia, about twenty-five miles from Chattanooga, awaiting reinforcements. These he was getting: troops from Knoxville, from Mississippi, and two divisions from the Army of Northern Virginia itself, led by James Longstreet. (The move the Richmond government had refused to make in June was being made now, with troops from Lee going to fight in the West.) Thus reinforced, Bragg moved in for a counterattack, and Rosecrans, waking up in the nick of time, hastily pulled his troops together to meet him. On the banks of Chickamauga Creek, about twelve miles below Chattanooga, Bragg made his attack, and on September 19 and 20 he fought and won the great Battle of Chickamauga. Part of Rosecrans' army was driven from the field in wild rout, and only a last-ditch stand by George Thomas saved the whole army from destruction. The Union troops retreated to Chattanooga, Bragg advanced and entrenched his men on high ground in a vast crescent, and the Army of the Cumberland found itself besieged.
The name Chickamauga was an old Cherokee word, men said, meaning "river of death," and there was an awful literalness to its meaning now. Each army had lost nearly a third of its numbers, Bragg's casualty list running to 18,000 or more, and Rosecrans' to nearly 16,000. Rosecrans' campaign was wrecked, and his own career as a field commander was ended; he was relieved and assigned to duty in St. Louis, and Rock-of-Chickamauga Thomas took his place. Bragg, the victor, had not added greatly to his reputation. He had made the Federals retreat, but if he had handled his army with more energy he might have destroyed the whole Army of the Cumberland, and his subordinates complained bitterly about his inability to make use of the triumph the troops had won. Their complaints echoed in Richmond, and President Davis came to Tennessee to see whether Bragg ought to be replaced, concluded, finally, that he should remain, and went back to Richmond without ordering any change.
Chickamauga was a Union disaster, but at least it jarred the Federal campaign in the West back onto the rails. It forced the government to drop the ruinous policy of dispersion and concentrate its forces, and in the end this was all to the good. Additionally, it gave new powers and a new opportunity to U. S. Grant, who knew what to do with both. Thus it may have been worth what it cost, although the soldiers of the Army of the Cumberland probably would have had trouble seeing it that way.
As September ended these soldiers were in serious trouble. They held Chattanooga, but they seemed very likely to be starved into surrender there. The Confederate line, unassailable by any force George Thomas could muster, ran in a vast semicircle, touching the Tennessee River upstream from Chattanooga, following the high parapet of Missionary Ridge to the east and south, anchoring itself in the west on the precipitous sides of Lookout. The Confederates had no troops north of the river, nor did they need any there; that country was wild, mountainous, and all but uninhabited, and no military supply train could cross it. Supplies could reach Thomas only by the river itself, by the railroad which ran along the river's southern bank, or by the roads which similarly lay south of the river, and all of these were firmly controlled by Bragg. The Union army could not even retreat. (No army under Thomas was likely to retreat, but physical inability to get out of a trap is a handicap any way you look at it.) As far as Bragg could see, he need only keep his army in position for a month or two longer, and the Unionists would have to give up.
Neither by a military nor a political calculation could the Federal cause afford a catastrophe like the outright loss of the Army of the Cumberland, and the crisis at Chattanooga had a galvanic effect on the Federal nerve center in Washington. Two army corps were detached from Meade, placed under the command of Joe Hooker, and sent west by rail. This was the most effective military use of railroads yet made anywhere, and the soldiers were moved with surprising speed; leaving the banks of the Rappahannock on September 24, they reached Bridgeport, Alabama, just eight days later. Sherman was ordered to move east from Memphis with part of the Army of the Tennessee, and Grant was put in command of all military operations west of the Alleghenies (except for Banks' venture in the New Orleans-Texas area) and was ordered over to Chattanooga to set things straight.
This Grant proceeded to do, his contribution being chiefly the unflagging energy with which he tackled the job. Plans for loosening the Confederate stranglehold had already been made, and what Grant did was to make certain that they were put into effect speedily. He brought Hooker east from Bridgeport, used a brigade of Thomas' men in a sudden thrust at the Confederate outpost on the Tennessee River west of Lookout Mountain, and presently opened a route through which supplies could be brought to Chattanooga. The route combined the use of steamboats, scows, a pontoon bridge, and army wagons, and it could not begin to supply the army with everything it needed, but at least it warded off starvation. Thomas' men dubbed it "the cracker line" and began to feel that life might be worth living after all.
Sherman, leaving Memphis, had about three hundred miles to march, and for some reason Halleck had given him orders to repair the line of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad as he moved, so his progress was glacial. Grant told him to forget about the track-gang job and to come as fast as he could; and by early November the Federal force in Chattanooga, no longer half-starved, had powerful reinforcements at hand and was ready to try to break the ring that was around it. Bragg, meanwhile, acted with incredible obtuseness. A Federal force under General Burnside had come down through the Kentucky-Tennessee mountain country to occupy Knoxville, and although it had got into the place it was not, for the moment, doing any particular harm there; but Bragg sent Longstreet and 12,000 men away to try to dislodge this force, and he detached his cavalry and still more infantry to help - so that when it came time for the big fight Bragg would be badly outnumbered, facing the best generals the Federals could muster - Grant, Sherman, and Thomas.
THE BATTLE OF CHATTANOOGA
The big fight came on November 24 and 25. Hooker with his men from the Army of the Potomac drove the Confederate left from Lookout Mountain - less of an achievement than it looked, since Bragg had only a skeleton force there, which was dug in along the slopes rather than on the crest, but it was one of the war's spectacular scenes for all that. There had been low-lying clouds all day, and when these finally lifted the sun broke through, the Northern flag was on top of Lookout, and war correspondents wrote enthusiastically about the "battle above the clouds." Sherman took his Army of the Tennessee units upstream and attacked the Confederate right. He made some progress but not enough, and was getting not much more than a bloody nose for his pains; and on the afternoon of November 25 Grant told Thomas to push his Army of the Cumberland forward and take the Rebel rifle pits at the base of Missionary Ridge. This pressure might force Bragg to recall troops from Sherman's front.
At this point Thomas' soldiers took things into their own hands. They had been suffering a slow burn for a month; both Hooker's and Sherman's men had jeered at them for the Chickamauga defeat and had reminded them that other armies had had to come to the rescue, and the Cumberlands had had all they cared to take. Now they moved forward, took the Confederate rifle pits as ordered - and then, after a brief pause for breath, went straight on up the steep mountain slope without orders from either Grant or Thomas, broke Bragg's line right where it was strongest, drove the Confederate army off in complete retreat, and won the Battle of Chattanooga in one spontaneous explosion of pent-up energy and fury.
Chattanooga was decisive. The beaten Confederates withdrew into Georgia. Burnside's position in Knoxville was secure. Grant, with new laurels on his unassuming head, was very clearly going to become general in chief of the Union armies, the South had definitely lost the war in the West - and, when spring came, the Federals would have a chance to apply more pressure than the Confederacy could hope to resist.