Part 22 (1/2)
”In case you find Lee coming to the north of the Rappahannock, I would by no means cross to the south of it. If he should leave a rear force at Fredericksburg tempting you to fall upon it, it would fight in intrenchments and have you at disadvantage, and so, man for man, worst you at that point, while his main force would in some way be getting an advantage of you northward. In one word, I would not take any risk of being entangled upon the river, like an ox jumped half over a fence and liable to be torn by dogs front and rear, without a fair chance to gore one way or kick the other.”
Five days later, Hooker, having become convinced that a large part of Lee's army was in motion toward the Shenandoah valley, proposed the daring plan of a quick and direct march to capture Richmond. But the President immediately telegraphed him a convincing objection:
”If left to me, I would not go south of the Rappahannock upon Lee's moving north of it. If you had Richmond invested to-day, you would not be able to take it in twenty days; meanwhile, your communications, and with them your army, would be ruined. I think Lee's army, and not Richmond, is your true objective point. If he comes toward the upper Potomac, follow on his flank and on his inside track, shortening your lines while he lengthens his. Fight him, too, when opportunity offers.
If he stays where he is, fret him and fret him.”
The movement northward of Lee's army, effectually masked for some days by frequent cavalry skirmishes, now became evident to the Was.h.i.+ngton authorities. On June 14, Lincoln telegraphed Hooker:
”So far as we can make out here, the enemy have Milroy surrounded at Winchester, and Tyler at Martinsburg If they could hold out a few days, could you help them? If the head of Lee's army is at Martinsburg, and the tail of it on the plank road between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the animal must be very slim somewhere. Could you not break him?”
While Lee, without halting, crossed the Potomac above Harper's Ferry, and continued his northward march into Maryland and Pennsylvania, Hooker prudently followed on the ”inside track” as Mr. Lincoln had suggested, interposing the Union army effectually to guard Was.h.i.+ngton and Baltimore. But at this point a long-standing irritation and jealousy between Hooker and Halleck became so acute that on the general-in-chief's refusing a comparatively minor request, Hooker asked to be relieved from command. The President, deeming divided counsel at so critical a juncture more hazardous than a change of command, took Hooker at his word, and appointed General George G. Meade as his successor.
Meade had, since Chancellorsville, been as caustic a critic of Hooker as Hooker was of Burnside at and after Fredericksburg. But all spirit of insubordination vanished in the exciting stress of a pursuing campaign and the new and retiring leaders of the Army of the Potomac exchanged compliments in General Orders with high chivalric courtesy, while the army continued its northward march with undiminished ardor and unbroken step. When Meade crossed the Pennsylvania line, Lee was already far ahead, threatening Harrisburg. The Confederate invasion spread terror and loss among farms and villages, and created almost a panic in the great cities. Under the President's call for one hundred thousand six months' militia six of the adjoining States were sending hurried and improvised forces to the banks of the Susquehanna, under the command of General Couch. Lee, finding that stream too well guarded, turned his course directly east, which, with Meade marching to the north, brought the opposing armies into inevitable contact and collision at the town of Gettysburg.
Meade had both expected and carefully prepared to receive the attack and fight a defensive battle on the line of Pipe Creek. But when, on the afternoon of July 1, 1863, the advance detachments of each army met and engaged in a fierce conflict for the possession of the town, Meade, on learning the nature of the fight, and the situation of the ground, instantly decided to accept it, and ordering forward his whole force, made it the princ.i.p.al and most decisive battle-field of the whole war.
The Union troops made a violent and stubborn effort to hold the town of Gettysburg; but the early Confederate arrivals, taking position in a half-circle on the west, north, and east, drove them through and out of it. The seeming reverse proved an advantage. Half a mile to the south it enabled the Union detachments to seize and establish themselves on Cemetery Ridge and Hill. This, with several rocky elevations, and a crest of boulders making a curve to the east at the northern end, was in itself almost a natural fortress, and with the intrenchments thrown up by the expert veterans, soon became nearly impregnable. Beyond a wide valley to the west, and parallel with it, lay Seminary Ridge, on which the Confederate army established itself with equal rapidity. Lee had also hoped to fight a defensive battle; but thus suddenly arrested in his eastward march in a hostile country, could not afford to stand still and wait.
On the morning of July 2, both commanding generals were in the field.
After careful studies and consultations Lee ordered an attack on both the extreme right and extreme left of the Union position, meeting some success in the former, but a complete repulse in the latter. That night, Meade's council of war, coinciding with his own judgment, resolved to stand and fight it out; while Lee, against the advice of Longstreet, his ablest general, with equal decision determined to risk the chance of a final and determined attack.
It was Meade who began the conflict at dawn on the morning of July 3, but only long enough to retake and hold the intrenchments on his extreme right, which he had lost the evening before; then for some hours an ominous lull and silence fell over the whole battle-field. But these were hours of stern preparation At midday a furious cannonade began from one hundred and thirty Confederate guns on Seminary Ridge, which was answered with promptness and spirit by about seventy Union guns from the crests and among the boulders of Cemetery Ridge; and the deafening roar of artillery lasted for about an hour, at the end of which time the Union guns ceased firing and were allowed to cool, and to be made ready to meet the a.s.sault that was sure to come. There followed a period of waiting almost painful to officers and men, in its intense expectancy; and then across the broad, undulating, and highly cultivated valley swept the long attacking line of seventeen thousand rebel infantry, the very flower of the Confederate army. But it was a hopeless charge.
Thinned, almost mowed down by the grape-shot of the Union batteries and the deadly aim of the Union riflemen behind their rocks and intrenchments the Confederate a.s.sault wavered, hesitated, struggled on, and finally melted away before the destructive fire. A few rebel battle-flags reached the crest, only, however, to fall, and their bearers and supporters to be made prisoners. The Confederate dream of taking Philadelphia and dictating peace and separation in Independence Hall was over forever.
It is doubtful whether Lee immediately realized the full measure of his defeat, or Meade the magnitude of his victory. The terrible losses of the battle of Gettysburg--over three thousand killed, fourteen thousand wounded, and five thousand captured or missing of the Union army; and twenty-six hundred killed, twelve thousand wounded, and five thousand missing of the Confederates--largely occupied the thoughts and labors of both sides during the national holiday which followed. It was a surprise to Meade that on the morning of July 5 the Confederate army had disappeared, retreating as rapidly as might be to the neighborhood of Harper's Ferry. Unable immediately to cross because the Potomac was swollen by heavy rains, and Meade having followed and arrived in Lee's front on July 10, President Lincoln had the liveliest hopes that Meade would again attack and capture or destroy the Confederate army. Generous praise for his victory, and repeated and urgent suggestions to renew his attack and end the rebellion, had gone to Meade from the President and General Halleck. But Meade hesitated, and his council of war objected; and on the night of July 13 Lee recrossed the Potomac in retreat. When he heard the news, Mr. Lincoln sat down and wrote a letter of criticism and disappointment which reflects the intensity of his feeling at the escape of Lee:
”The case, summarily stated, is this: You fought and beat the enemy at Gettysburg, and, of course, to say the least, his loss was as great as yours. He retreated and you did not, as it seemed to me, pressingly pursue him; but a flood in the river detained him till, by slow degrees, you were again upon him. You had at least twenty thousand veteran troops directly with you, and as many more raw ones within supporting distance, all in addition to those who fought with you at Gettysburg, while it was not possible that he had received a single recruit, and yet you stood and let the flood run down, bridges be built, and the enemy move away at his leisure, without attacking him.... Again, my dear general, I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee's escape. He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with our other late successes, have ended the war.
As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely. If you could not safely attack Lee last Monday, how can you possibly do so south of the river, when you can take with you very few more than two thirds of the force you then had in hand? It would be unreasonable to expect, and I do not expect [that] you can now effect much. Your golden opportunity is gone, and I am distressed immeasurably because of it.”
Clearly as Mr. Lincoln had sketched and deeply as he felt Meade's fault of omission, so quick was the President's spirit of forgiveness, and so thankful was he for the measure of success which had been gained, that he never signed or sent the letter.
Two memorable events are forever linked with the Gettysburg victory: the surrender of Vicksburg to Grant on the same fourth of July, described in the next chapter, and the dedication of the Gettysburg battle-field as a national cemetery for Union soldiers, on November 19, 1863, on which occasion President Lincoln crowned that imposing ceremonial with an address of such literary force, brevity, and beauty, that critics have a.s.signed it a high rank among the world's historic orations. He said:
”Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
”Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
”But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate--we cannot consecrate--we cannot hallow--this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so n.o.bly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under G.o.d, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Having safely crossed the Potomac, the Confederate army continued its retreat without halting to the familiar camps in central Virginia it had so long and valiantly defended. Meade followed with alert but prudent vigilance, but did not again find such chances as he lost on the fourth of July, or while the swollen waters of the Potomac held his enemy as in a trap. During the ensuing autumn months there went on between the opposing generals an unceasing game of strategy, a succession of moves and counter-moves in which the opposing commanders handled their great armies with the same consumate skill with which the expert fencing-master uses his foil, but in which neither could break through the other's guard. Repeated minor encounters took place which, in other wars, would have rated as heavy battles; but the weeks lengthened into months without decisive results, and when the opposing armies finally went into winter quarters in December, 1863, they again confronted each other across the Rapidan in Virginia, not very far south of where they lay in the winter of 1861.
XXVII
Buell and Bragg--Perryville--Rosecrans and Murfreesboro--Grant's Vicksburg Experiments--Grant's May Battles--Siege and Surrender of Vicksburg--Lincoln to Grant--Rosecrans's March to Chattanooga--Battle of Chickamauga--Grant at Chattanooga--Battle of Chattanooga--Burnside at Knoxville--Burnside Repulses Longstreet
From the Virginia campaigns of 1863 we must return to the Western campaigns of the same year, or, to be more precise, beginning with the middle of 1862. When, in July of that year, Halleck was called to Was.h.i.+ngton to become general-in-chief, the princ.i.p.al plan he left behind was that Buell, with the bulk of the forces which had captured Corinth, should move from that place eastward to occupy eastern Tennessee. Buell, however, progressed so leisurely that before he reached Chattanooga the Confederate General Bragg, by a swift northward movement, advanced into eastern Kentucky, enacted the farce of appointing a Confederate governor for that State, and so threatened Louisville that Buell was compelled abruptly to abandon his eastward march and, turning to the north, run a neck-and-neck race to save Louisville from rebel occupation. Successful in this, Buell immediately turned and, pursuing the now retreating forces of Bragg, brought them to bay at Perryville, where, on October 8, was fought a considerable battle from which Bragg immediately retreated out of Kentucky.
While on one hand Bragg had suffered defeat, he had on the other caused Buell to give up all idea of moving into East Tennessee, an object on which the President had specially and repeatedly insisted. When Halleck specifically ordered Buell to resume and execute that plan, Buell urged such objections, and intimated such unwillingness, that on October 24, 1862, he was relieved from command, and General Rosecrans was appointed to succeed him. Rosecrans neglected the East Tennessee orders as heedlessly as Buell had done; but, reorganizing the Army of the c.u.mberland and strengthening his communications, marched against Bragg, who had gone into winter quarters at Murfreesboro. The severe engagement of that name, fought on December 31, 1862, and the three succeeding days of the new year, between forces numbering about forty-three thousand on each side, was tactically a drawn battle, but its results rendered it an important Union victory, compelling Bragg to retreat; though, for reasons which he never satisfactorily explained, Rosecrans failed for six months to follow up his evident advantages.