CLOSING THE RING
On the first of February, 1865, Sherman and his army started north from Savannah, and the war shuddered toward its conclusion. Sherman had some 60,000 veterans, and when he reached North Carolina he would be reinforced by 21,000 more under Schofield. To oppose him, the Confederacy had the troops that had been pulled out of Savannah, some threadbare levies from the broken Army of Tennessee, and sundry home-guard and cavalry units - upwards of 30,000 men in all, many of them not first-line troops. There was not the slightest possibility that it could increase this number substantially; Joe Johnston, brought back from retirement and put in charge in the hope that he might somehow find a way to halt Sherman, confessed sadly: "I can do no more than annoy him."
Johnston's return was a sign of belated and unavailing effort to put new vigor into the defense of the dwindling Southern nation. Late in January the Congress at Richmond had passed an act approving for a general in chief for the armies of the Confederacy, and Robert E. Lee, inevitably, had been given this position. Lee restored Johnston to command in the Carolinas, but he could do very little to help him, and there was not much Johnston himself could do. His chief immediate reliance would have to be on the weather and geography. Sherman's line of march would carry him through swampy lowland regions, cut by many rivers, and in rainy winter weather roads would be almost impassable and the streams would be swollen; all in all, it seemed improbable that he could make much progress during the winter months.
But Sherman's army had special qualities. Like the Confederate armies, it contained men who had lived close to the frontier, backwoods people who could use the axe and who could improvise their way through almost any obstacle, and these men came up through South Carolina as rapidly as they had gone across Georgia, corduroying roads, building bridges, and fording icy rivers as they came. Johnston, watching from afar, remarked afterward that there had been no such army since the days of Julius Caesar.
Sherman's men laid hard hands on South Carolina. They had been very much on their good behavior in Savannah, but they relapsed into their old habits once they left Georgia, burning and looting and destroying as they marched. There was a personal fury in their behavior now that had been missing in Georgia; to a man, they felt that South Carolina had started the war and that her people deserved rough treatment, and such treatment the unhappy South Carolinians assuredly got. The capital, Columbia, was burned after Sherman's men moved in, and although the Federals insisted that the burning had been accidental - a point which is in dispute to this day - most of the soldiers agreed that if the accident had not taken place they themselves would have burned the place anyway. As they came north their path was marked, Old Testament style, by a pillar of smoke by day and pillars of fire by night. South Carolina paid a fearful price for having led the way in recession.
In Richmond approaching doom was clearly visible, and the sight stirred men to consider doing what had previously been unthinkable - to lay hands on the institution of slavery itself. After much debate the Confederate Congress voted a bill to make soldiers out of Negro slaves. That this implied an end to slavery itself was obvious; to turn a slave into a soldier automatically brought freedom, and if part of the race lost its chains, all of the race must eventually be freed; and there was bitter opposition when the measure was first suggested. As recently as one year earlier the idea had been quite unthinkable. One of the best combat soldiers in the Army of Tennessee, Irish-born General Pat Cleburne, had proposed such a step at a conclave of generals, and the proposal had been hushed up immediately. But Cleburne was dead now, one of the generals killed at Franklin, and Lee himself was supporting the plan; and as spring came the Confederacy was taking halting steps to arm and train Negro troops.
At the same time Secretary of State Benjamin played a card which might have been very effective if it had been played two or three years earlier. To France and Great Britain he had the Confederacy's emissaries abroad offer the abolition of slavery in return for recognition. Neither London nor Paris was interested: the Confederacy was beyond recognition now, and nobody could mistake the fact, so the offer fell flat. If it had been made in 1862 or in the spring of 1863, it might possibly have brought what Richmond wanted, but like the Confederate currency it had depreciated so badly by this time that it would buy nothing of any consequence.
If there was to be a negotiated peace, then, it would have to come from Washington, and in February the government at Richmond tried to find out if Washington cared to talk terms. It was encouraged to take this step by a recent visit paid to the Confederate capital by old Francis P. Blair, Sr., one of whose sons had been Postmaster General in Lincoln's cabinet, while the other was a corps commander in Sherman's army. Old man Blair was believed to be in Lincoln's confidence, and in January he came through the lines and went to the Confederate White House for a talk with Jefferson Davis; to Davis he suggested a reunion of the states and a concerted effort by the restored nation to drive the French out of Mexico. Davis refused to commit himself on this eccentric proposal, and it developed presently that Blair had made the trip on his own hook and definitely had not been speaking for Lincoln; but the mere fact that the feeler had been put out seemed to indicate that the Lincoln government might be willing to talk terms, and a semiformal conference was arranged for February 3 on a Federal steamer in Hampton Roads, Virginia. Representing the Confederacy were Vice-President Alexander Stephens, R. M. T. Hunter of Virginia, president pro tem of the Senate, and Judge John A. Campbell of Alabama, formerly of the United States Supreme Court. Speaking for the Union at this conference were president Lincoln and Secretary Seward.
The conferees seem to have had a pleasant chat, but they got nowhere. Lincoln was leading from strength, and he had no concessions to offer. It was told, later, as a pleasant myth, that he had taken a sheet of paper, had written 'Reunion" at the top of it, and then handed it to little Stephens with the remark that Stephens might fill in the rest of the terms to suit himself, but there was no truth in this tale. Lincoln's position was inflexible: there would be peace when the Confederate armies were disbanded and the national authority was recognized throughout the South, and there would be no peace until then. With acceptance of national authority, of course, would go acceptance of the abolition of slavery; the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution, ending slavery forever, had already been submitted to the states for ratification.
What this meant was that the Confederates must simply surrender unconditionally and rely on the liberality of the Federal administration for a reconstruction program that would make the lot of the Southland endurable. Of Lincoln's own liberality there was no question; he was even willing to try to get a Federal appropriation to pay slaveowners for the loss of their human property, and it was clear that he planned no proscription list or other punitive measures. But no Southerner could forget that what would finally happen would depend in large part on the Northern Congress, and such leaders as Thaddeus Stevens, Ben Wade, Zachariah Chandler, and Charles Sumner had ideas very different from Lincoln's. In the end the conference adjourned with nothing accomplished, the Southern delegates went back to Richmond, and Davis told his people that their only hope lay in war to the last ditch.
Sherman kept moving north, inexorably. As he came up through South Carolina his army sliced across the railroad lines that led to Charleston, and that famous city fell at last into Union hands. It had withstood the most violent attacks the Federal army and navy could make, but it had to be abandoned at last because the whole interior of the state was lost. The national flag went up on the rubble-heap that had been Fort Sumter, the Palmetto State was out of the war forever, and Sherman's hard-boiled soldiers tramped on into North Carolina. In this state they went on their good behavior, and the burning and devastation that had marked their path ever since they left Atlanta were held to a minimum. They did not feel hatred fro North Carolina that they had felt for her sister state; and, in point of fact, there was no military need for a policy of destruction now, because the war could not possibly last very much longer.
THE LAST, VERY SLIM CHANCE
To the Confederacy there remained just one chance - a very slim chance, with heavy odds against it. In the lines at Petersburg, Lee faced double his own numbers; in North Carolina, Johnston was up against odds that were even longer. The one hope was that Lee might somehow give Grant the slip, get his army into North Carolina, join forces with Johnston, and defeat Sherman in pitched battle. This done, Lee and Johnston might turn back toward Virginia and meet Grant on something like even terms. It was most unlikely that all of this could be done, but it had to be tried because it was the only card that could be played. Lee would try it as soon as the arriving spring made the roads dry enough to permit his army to move.
The Federal army in Lee's front occupied a huge semicircle more than forty miles long, the northern tip of it opposite Richmond itself, the southern tip curling around Southwest of Petersburg in an attempt to cut the railroads that led south. Lee proposed to form a striking force with troops pulled out of his attenuated lines and to make a sudden attack on the Federal center. If the striking force could punch a substantial hole and break the military railroad that supplied Grant's army, the Union left would have to be pulled back to avoid being cut off. That would make possible a Confederate march south and would pave the way for the combined attack on Sherman.
On March 25 the Army of Northern Virginia launched its last great counterpunch. Lee's striking force, led by the fiery young Georgian, General John B. Gordon, made a dawn attack on the Federal Fort Stedman; carried the fort, sent patrols back toward the railroad, seized a portion of the Federal trenches - and then ran out of steam, crumpled under heavy Union fire, and at last had to confess failure. By noon the survivors of the attack were back in the Confederate lines. Lee's last expedient had misfired; now Grant would take and keep the initiative.
For many months Grant had refused to make frontal attacks on the Confederate fortifications. They were simply too strong to be taken by direct assault, so long as even a skeleton force remained to hold them, and the fearful losses of the first months of 1864 had taught the Federals the folly of trying to drive Lee's men out of prepared positions. Grant's tactics ever since had been to extend his lines to the west, using his superior manpower to compel Lee to stretch his own army past the breaking point. Sooner or later, Grant would be able to put a force out beyond Lee's flank which would compel the Confederates to quit their position or fight a battle they could not win. The impassable roads of midwinter had caused a suspension of movement, but after Fort Stedman it was resumed.
During the final days of March, Federal infantry tried to drive in past Lee's extreme right. The Confederate defenders were alert, and this infantry move was roughly handled; but Phil Sheridan, meanwhile, had brought his cavalry down from the Shenandoah Valley, after cleaning out the last pockets of Confederate resistance there, and with 12,000 mounted men he moved out to Dinwiddie Court House, south and west of the place where Union and Confederate infantry had been fighting for control of the flank. On the last day of the month, Sheridan moved north from Dinwiddie Court House, aiming for a road junction known as Five Forks. This was well beyond Lee's lines; if the Federals could seize and hold it they could break Lee's railroad connections with the South, compel the evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond, and interpose themselves between Lee and Johnston. Lee sent a mixed force of cavalry and infantry out to hold Five Forks, and Sheridan called to his aid a veteran infantry corps from Grant's left flank.
On April 1 Sheridan and his powerful column routed the Confederate defenders at Five Forks. The Rebel force there was commanded by George Pickett, who would forever wear the glamour of that of that magnificent charge at Gettysburg, and Pickett was badly overmatched now. Sheridan had too many men and too much impetus, Pickett appears to have handled his own part of the assignment inexpertly, and as dusk came down on April 1 Pickett's column had been almost wiped out, with about 5,000 men taken prisoner, and most of the survivors fleeing without military formation or control.
Oddly enough, at the very moment that this sweeping victory was being won Sheridan removed Major General G. K. Warren from command of the Federal infantry involved, on the ground that Warren had been slow and inexpert in getting his men into action. Warren had brought the V Corps over from the left end of the Federal entrenched position; he had had a hard march in the darkness over bad roads, the orders he had been given were somewhat confusing, and the delay was not really his fault - and in any case the Union had won the battle and no real harm had been done. But Sheridan was a driver. At the very end of the war the Army of the Potomac was being given a sample of the pitiless insistence on flawless performance which it had never known before. Warren was treated unjustly, but the army might have been better off if similar treatment had been meted out to some of its generals two years earlier.
The way was clear now for Grant to get in behind the Army of Northern Virginia; to emphasize the extent of the Union victory, Grant ordered a blow at the center of the Petersburg lines for the early morning of April 2. The lines had been stretched so taut that this blow broke them once and for all. That evening the Confederates evacuated Richmond and Petersburg , the government headed for some Carolina haven where it might continue to function, and Lee put his tired army on the road and began a forced march to join forces with Johnston.
He was never able to make it. The Union advance, led by Sheridan, outpaced him, and instead of going south the Army of Northern Virginia was compelled to drift west, with Federals on its flank and following close in its rear. In the confusion that surrounded the evacuation of Richmond the Confederate government got its victualing arrangements into a tangle, and the rations which were supposed to meet Lee's almost exhausted army along the line of march did not appear. The army stumbled on, its march harassed by constant stabs from Yankee cavalry, its men hungry and worn out, staying with the colors only because of their unshakable confidence in Lee himself. At Sayler's Creek, Federal cavalry and infantry struck the Confederate rear, destroying a wagon train and taking thousands of prisoners. Witnessing the rout from high ground in the rear, Lee remarked grimly: "General, that half of our army is destroyed."
SURRENDER AT APPOMATTOX
The end came on April 9, at a little town named Appomattox Court House. Federal cavalry and infantry had got across Lee's line of march, other powerful forces were on his flank, and a huge mass of infantry was pressing on his rear. He had no chance to get in touch with Johnston, no chance to continue his flight toward the west, no chance to put up a fight that would drive his foes out of the way; Lee had fewer than 30,000 soldiers with him by now, and not half of these were armed and in usable military formation. The rest were worn-out men who were pathetically doing their best to stay with the army, but who could not this day be used in battle.
The break came just as Federal infantry and cavalry were ready to make a final, crushing assault on the thin lines in Lee's front. Out between the lines came a Confederate horseman, a white flag fluttering at the end of a staff, and a sudden quiet descended on the broad field. While the soldiers in both armies stared at one another, unable to believe that the fighting at last was over, the commanding generals made their separate ways into the little town to settle things for good.
So Lee met Grant in the bare parlor of a private home at Appomattox Court House and surrendered his army. For four long years that army had been unconquerable. Twice it had carried the war north of the Potomac. Time and again it had beaten back the strongest forces the North could send against it. It had given to the Confederate nation the only hope of growth and survival which that nation ever had, and to the American nation of reunited North and South it gave a tradition of undying valor and constancy which would be a vibrant heritage for all generations. Not many armies in the world's history have done more. Now the Army of Northern Virginia had come to the end of the road, and it was time to quit.
One option Lee did have, that day, which - to the lasting good fortune of his countrymen - he did not exercise. Instead of surrendering he might simply have told his troops to disband, to take to the hills, and to carry on guerilla warfare as long as there was a Yankee south of the Mason and Dixon Line. There were generals in his army who hoped he would do this, and Washington unquestionably would have had immense difficulty stamping out a rebellion of that nature. But the results of such a course would have been tragic beyond comprehension - tragic for Northerners and Southerners of that day and for their descendants forever after. There would have been a sharing in repeated atrocities, a mutual descent into brutality and bitterness and enduring hatred, which would have created a wound beyond healing. Neither as one nation or as two could the people of America have gone on to any lofty destiny after that. All of this Lee realized, and he set his face against it. He and the men who followed him had been fighting for an accepted place in the family of nations. When the fight was finally lost, they would try to make the best of what remained to them.
In Grant, Lee met a man who was as anxious as himself to see this hardest of wars followed by a good peace. Grant believed that the whole point of the war had been the effort to prove that Northerners and Southerners were and always would be fellow citizens, and the moment the fighting stopped he believed that they ought to begin behaving that way. In effect, he told Lee to have his men lay down their arms and go home; and into the terms of surrender he wrote the binding pledge that if they did this, signing and then living up to the formal articles of parole, they would not at any time be disturbed by the Federal authority. This pledge had far-reaching importance, because there were in the North many men who wanted to see leading Confederates hanged; but what Grant had written and signed made it impossible to hang Lee, and if Lee could not be hanged no lesser Confederate could be. If Lee's decision spared the country the horror of continued guerilla warfare, Grant's decision ruled out the infamy that would have come with proscription lists and hangings. Between them, these rival soldiers served their country fairly well on April 9, 1865.
To all intents and purposes, Lee's surrender ended things. Johnston had fought his last fight - a valiant but unavailing blow at Sherman's army at Bentonville, North Carolina, late in March - and when the news of Lee's surrender reached him he knew better than to try to continue the fight. He would surrender, too, and nowhere in the Southland was there any other army that could hope to carry on. A ponderous Federal cavalry force was sweeping through Alabama, taking the last war-production center at Selma, and going on to occupy the onetime Confederate capital, Montgomery; they were so strong that even Bedford Forrest was unable to stop them. On the Gulf coast, Mobile was forced to surrender; and although there was still an army west of the Mississippi it no longer had any useful function, and it would eventually lay down its arms like all the rest. Lee and his army had been the keystone of the arch, and when the keystone was removed the arch was bound to collapse.
Amid the downfall President Davis and his cabinet moved across the Carolinas and into Georgia, hoping to reach the trans-Mississippi and find some way to continue the struggle. It could not be done, and the cabinet at last dispersed. Davis himself was captured by Federal cavalry, and the government of the Confederate States of America at last went out of existence. The war was over.
Davis went to a prison cell in Fort Monroe, and for two years furious bitter-enders in the North demanded that he be tried and hanged for treason. The demand was never granted; despite the furies that had been turned loose by four years of war, enough sanity and common decency remained to rule out anything like that. Davis' imprisonment, and the harsh treatment visited on him by his jailers, won him new sympathy in the South, where there had been many men who held him chiefly responsible for loss of the war, and he emerged from prison at last to become the embodiment of the Lost Cause, standing in the haunted sunset where the Confederate horizon ended.
He had done the best he could do in an impossible job, and if it is easy to show where he made grievous mistakes, it is difficult to show that any other man, given the materials available, could have done much better. He had great courage, integrity, tenacity, devotion to his cause, and like Old Testament Sisera the stars in their courses marched against him.