GENERAL REVIEW OF THE FOURTH YEAR OF THE WAR.—
The Confederates had gained the battles of Olustee,
[Footnote: This battle ended an expedition fitted out by General Gilmore, at Hilton Head, S. C, to recover Florida. After some success his troops, under General Seymour, advanced to Olustee, where (February 20) they met a disastrous defeat and were forced to relinquish much they had gained. The men were afterwards taken to Virginia to engage in more important work.]
Sabine Cross Roads, the Wilderness, Bermuda Hundred, Spottsylvania, New Market, Cold Harbor, and Monocacy; had defeated the expeditions into Florida and the Red River country, the two attacks upon Petersburg, and one against Fort Fisher, and yet held Grant at bay before Richmond. They had, however, lost ground on every side. Of the States east of the Mississippi, only North and South Carolina were fully retained. Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia and Florida were overrun by the Union armies. The Federals had gained the battles of Pleasant Hill, Resaca, Dallas, Kenesaw, Atlanta, Winchester, Fisher's Hill, Cedar Creek and Nashville. They had captured Fort de Russy, the forts in Mobile harbor, and Fort McAlister, and had taken Atlanta and Savannah. Sherman had swept across Georgia; Sheridan had devastated the Shenandoah, driving its defenders before him; Thomas had annihilated Hood's army; Grant held Lee firmly grasped at Richmond, and the navy swept the entire coast.
1865.
THE SITUATION.—The plan of the campaign was very simple. The end of the war was clearly at hand. Sherman was to move north from Savannah against Johnston, and then join Grant in the final attack upon Lee. Sheridan, with ten thousand troopers, had swept down from the Shenandoah, cut the railroads north of Richmond, and taken his place in the Union lines before Petersburg. Wilson, with thirteen thousand horsemen, rode at large through Alabama and Georgia, and at Macon held a line of retreat from Virginia westward. Stoneman, with five thousand cavalry from Tennessee, poured through the passes of the Alleghanies and waited in North Carolina for the issue in Virginia.
[Illustration: SHERMAN'S MARCH.]
SHERMAN'S MARCH THROUGH THE CAROLINAS.—In the meantime Sherman had given his troops only a month's rest in Savannah. Early in February, they were put in motion northward. There was no waiting for roads to dry nor for bridges to be built, but the troops swept on like a tornado. Rivers were waded, and one battle was fought while the water was up to the shoulders of the men. The army, sixty thousand strong, moved in four columns, with a front of more than fifty miles. Cavalry and foragers swarmed on the flanks. Before them was terror; behind them were ashes.
COLUMBIA was captured (February 17), and Charleston, thus threatened in the rear, was evacuated the next day.
[Footnote: The cotton stored in the city was scattered through the streets and destroyed by fire. The flames quickly spread to the houses adjoining. All efforts to subdue the conflagration were unsuccessful, and a large portion of the city was destroyed.]
[Footnote: General Hardee, on leaving, inflicted a terrible injury. He set fire to every shed and warehouse in which cotton was stored. The flames spread to a quantity of powder in the depot, which exploded with fearful destruction. Two hundred lives were lost. In spite of the efforts of the Union troops, a vast amount of private property was involved in the general devastation. The ravages which the war had made were well illustrated by the appearance of this city after its evacuation. An eye-witness says: "No pen, no pencil, no tongue can do justice to the scene; no imagination can conceive the utter wreck, the universal ruin, the stupendous desolation. Ruin, ruin, ruin, above and below, on the right hand and on the left-ruin, ruin, ruin, everywhere and always, staring at us from every paneless window, looking out at us from every shell-torn wall, glaring at us from every battered door, pillar, and veranda, crouching beneath our feet on every sidewalk. Not Pompeii, nor Herculaneum, nor Tadmor, nor the Nile, has ruins so saddening, so plaintively eloquent.">[
In this emergency, Johnston was again called to the command of the Confederate forces. He gathered their scattered armies and vigorously opposed Sherman's advance. After fierce engagements at Averysboro and Bentonville (March 15, 18), he was driven back, and Raleigh was captured (April 13).
SIEGE OF RICHMOND.—Lee's position was fast becoming desperate. His only hope lay in getting out of Richmond and joining with Johnston. Their united armies might prolong the struggle. Grant was determined to prevent this, and compel Lee to surrender, as he had forced Pemberton to do.
ATTACK ON FORT STEADMAN (March 25).—Lee determined to attack Grant's right, in order to hide his plan of retreat, and especially in the hope that Grant would send troops from the left to succor the threatened point. In that case, he would slip out, with the main body of his army, by the nearest road southward, which ran close by the Union left. The assault was made on Fort Steadman, but it was a signal failure. Three thousand out of five thousand engaged in the attempt were lost. To make matters worse, a Union assault followed directly afterward, and a portion of the Confederate outer defences was captured. Thus Grant's grip was only tightened. He had made no change in the position of his troops, and this sortie neither hastened nor delayed the grand, final attack.
BATTLE OF FIVE FORKS (April l).—This movement began Wednesday morning, March 29. Sheridan with his cavalry—nine thousand sabres—and heavy columns of infantry, pushed out from Grant's left wing to get around in Lee's rear. Cloaking his plan by a thick screen of cavalry, to conceal the movements of his infantry, he threw a heavy force behind the Confederate position at Five Forks. Assailed in front and rear, the garrison was overwhelmed, and five thousand men were taken prisoners.
[Footnote: Five Forks is situated twelve miles southwest from
Petersburg. (See map opposite p. 223, and of VIth Epoch.)]
The Effect of this brilliant affair was at once to render Lee's position untenable. His right was turned, and his rear threatened.
CAPTURE OF PETERSBURG AND RICHMOND (April 2, 3).—The next morning, at four o'clock, the Union army advanced in an overwhelming assault along the whole front. By noon, the Confederate line of intrenchments before which the Army of the Potomac had lain so long, was broken, and thousands of prisoners were captured.
[Footnote: Generals Lee and A. P. Hill were at the former's headquarters, within the city, discussing the prospects of the day. Suddenly General Lee, listening, said to Hill: "General, your men are giving way." Instantly Hill was mounted and dashing down the road. As he was spurring his steed, he caught a glimpse of two or three blue coats with rifles leveled at him. "Throw down your arms!" he authoritatively cried. For an instant the men hesitated, but the next moment they fired, and General Hill fell dead.]
That night Petersburg and Richmond were evacuated. The next morning the Union troops took possession of the Confederate capital, the coveted goal of the Army of the Potomac for four long bloody years.
[Footnote: Sunday, the day before, the Confederate President, Davis, was at church, when a note was handed him by a messenger. It was from Leo, informing him that the Confederate army was about to leave Richmond. His pallid face and unsteady footsteps, as he passed out, betrayed the news. Pollard says: "Men, women, and children rushed from the churches, passing from lip to lip news of the impending fall of Richmond. . . . It was late in the afternoon when the signs of evacuation became apparent to the incredulous. Suddenly, as if by magic, the streets became filled with men, walking as though for a wager, and behind them excited negroes with trunks, bundles, and luggage of every description. All over the city, it was the same—wagons, trunks, bandboxes, and their owners, a mass of hurrying fugitives filling the streets. Night came, and with it confusion worse confounded. There was no sleep for human eyes in Richmond that night. About the hour of midnight, hundreds of barrels of liquor were rolled into the street, and the heads knocked in, by order of the City Council, to prevent a worse disorder. As the work progressed, some straggling soldiers managed to get hold of a quantity of the liquor. From that moment law and order ceased to exist." By order of General Ewell, the four principal tobacco warehouses, in different parts of the city, were fired, and soon the flames became unmanageable. "Morning broke upon a scene such as those who witnessed it can never forget. The roar of an immense conflagration sounded in their ears; tongues of flame leaped from street to street; and in this baleful glare were to be seen, as of demons, the figures of busy plunderers, moving, pushing, rioting through the black smoke, bearing away every conceivable sort of plunder.">[
LEE'S SURRENDER.—Meanwhile, Lee, having only the wreck of that proud array with which he had dealt the Union army so many crushing blows, hurried west, seeking some avenue of escape. Grant urged the pursuit with untiring energy. Sheridan, "with a terrible daring which knew no pause, no rest," hung on his flanks. Food now failed the Confederates and they could get only the young shoots of trees to eat. If they sought a moment's repose, they were awakened by the clatter of pursuing cavalry. Lee, like a hunted fox, turned hither and thither; but at last Sheridan planted himself squarely across the front. Lee ordered a charge. His half-starved troops, with a rallying of their old courage, obeyed. But the cavalry moving aside, as a curtain is drawn, revealed dense bodies of infantry in battle line. The Civil War was about to end in one of its bloodiest tragedies, when the Confederate advance was stopped. General Grant had already sent in a note demanding the surrender of the army. Lee accepted the terms; and, April 9th, eight thousand men—the remains of the Army of Virginia—laid down their arms near Appomattox Court House, and then turned homeward, no longer Confederate soldiers, but American citizens.
[Footnote: The officers and men were allowed to go home on their paroles not to take up arms against the United States until exchanged, and the former to retain their private baggage and horses. After the surrender had been concluded, General Lee said that he had forgotten to mention that many of his soldiers rode their own horses. Grant at once replied that such should keep their horses to aid them in their future work at home—That the two armies so fiercely opposed for four years could have parted with no words but those of sympathy and respect was an assured presage of a day when all the wounds of the restored Union should be fully healed.]
The Effect.—This closed the war. The other Confederate armies—Johnston's, Dick Taylor's, and Kirby Smith's—promptly surrendered. Jefferson Davis fled southward, hoping to escape, but was overtaken near Irwinsville, Georgia (May 11), and sent a prisoner to Fortress Monroe.
[Footnote: The last fight of the war happened near Brazos Santiago,
Texas, May 13. A small expedition sent out to surprise a
Confederate camp was overtaken, on its return, by a larger force
and defeated with a loss of eighty men.]
COST OF THE WAR.—In the Union armies probably three hundred thousand men were killed in battle or died of wounds or disease, while doubtless two hundred thousand more were crippled for life. If the Confederate armies suffered as heavily, the country thus lost one million able-bodied men. The Union debt, Jan. 1, 1866, was nearly $2,750,000,000. At one time, the daily expenses reached the sum of $3,500,000. During the last year of the war, the expenses were greater than the entire expenditures of the government from Washington to Buchanan. The Confederate war debts were never paid, as that government was overthrown.
ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN.—In the midst of the universal rejoicings over the advent of peace, on the evening of April 14 the intelligence was flashed over the country that Lincoln had been assassinated. While seated with his wife and friends in his box at Ford's Theatre, he was shot by John Wilkes Booth who insanely imagined he was ridding his country of a tyrant.
[Footnote: Booth stealthily entered the box, fastened the door, that he might not be followed, shot the President, then—waving his pistol shouted "Sic Semper Tyrannis" (so be it always to tyrants), and leaped to the stage in front As he jumped, the American flag draped before the box—mute avenger of the nation's chief—caught his spur and, throwing him heavily, broke his leg The assassin, however escaped from the house in the confusion, mounted a horse which was waiting for him, and fled into Maryland He was at length overtaken in a barn, here he stood at bay The building was fired to drive him out, but, being determined to defend himself against arrest, he was shot by one of the soldiers The accomplices of Booth were arrested, tried and convicted. Herold, Payne, Atzerott and Mrs Surratt were hanged, Arnold, Mudd and McLaughlin imprisoned for life and Spangler was sentenced for six years]
[Footnote: A nearly fatal attempt was also made at the same time upon William H Seward, Secretary of State, who was lying sick in his bed at home]
[Illustration: THE WHITE HOUSE OR EXECUTIVE MANSION
(The Official Residence of the President)]
About the unconscious body of the President gathered the most prominent men of the nation, who mourned and watched, waiting in vain for some sign of recognition until the next morning, when he died. The funeral was held on the 19th. It was a day of mourning throughout the land. In most of the cities and towns funeral orations were pronounced. The body was borne to Springfield over the same route along which Lincoln had come as President elect to Washington. The procession may be said to have extended the entire distance. The churches, principal buildings, and even the engines and cars were draped in black. Almost every citizen wore the badge of mourning.
STATES ADDED DURING THIS EPOCH.—West Virginia, the thirty-fifth State, was admitted to the Union June 20, 1863. During the Civil War, this portion of Virginia remaining loyal, it was incorporated as a separate State.
Nevada, the thirty-sixth State, was admitted to the Union October 31, 1864. Its name was derived from the range of mountains on the west, the Sierra Nevada, a Spanish title, signifying "Snow-covered mountains." It was the third State carved out of the territory acquired by the Mexican war, Texas being the first, and California the second. Its first settlement was at Carson City. It is one of the richest mineral States in the Union.
Summary of the History of the Fifth Epoch, arranged in Chronological Order.
1861. Abraham Lincoln inaugurated President of United States,
March 4,
Fort Sumter fired upon, April 12,
Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers, April 15,
Confederates seized Harper's Ferry, April 18,
Massachusetts troops fired upon in Baltimore, April 19,
Confederates seized Norfolk Navy Yard, April 20,
Battle of Philippi, Va., June 3,
" Big Bethel, Va., June 10,
" Booneville, Mo., June 17,
" Carthage, Mo., July 5,
1861. Battle of Rich Mountain, Va., July 11,
" Carrick's Ford, Va., July 14,
Confederate Congress assembled at Richmond, Va., July 20,
Battle of Bull Run, Va., July 21,
" Wilson's Creek, Mo., August 10,
Forts at Hatteras Inlet, N. C., captured, August 29,
Battle of Carnifex Ferry, Va., September 10,
" Lexington, Mo., September 20,
" Ball's Bluff, Va., October 21,
Port Royal, S. C., taken, November 7,
Battle of Belmont, Mo, November 7,
Seizure of Mason and Slidell, November 8,
Skirmish of Dranesville, Va., December 20,
1862. Battle of Mill Spring, Ky., January 19,
Fort Henry, Tenn., taken, February 6,
Roanoke Island, N. C., taken, February 8,
Fort Donelson, Tenn., taken, February 16,
Battle of Pea Ridge, Ark., March 7,8,
" of the Monitor and the Merrimac, March 9,
Newberne, N. C., taken, March 14,
Battle of Shiloh (Pittsburg Landing), Tenn., April 6,7,
Island No. 10 captured, April 7,
Fort Pulaski, Ga., captured, April 11,
New Orleans captured, April 25,
Beaufort, S. C, captured, April 25,
Yorktown, Va., taken, May 4,
Battle of Williamsburg, Va., May 5,
Norfolk, Va., surrendered, May 10,
Corinth, Miss., taken, May 30,
Battle of Fair Oaks or Seven Pines, Va., May 31, June 1,
Lee assumed command of the Confederate armies, June 3,
Memphis, Tenn., surrendered, June 6,
Seven-Days battles, June 25-July 1,
Battle of Cedar Mountain, Va., August 9,
Second Battle of Bull Run, Va., August 29,
Battle of Richmond, Ky., August 30,
" Chantilly, Va., September 1,
" South Mountain, Md., September 14,
Harper's Ferry surrendered, September 15,
Battle of Antietam, Md., September 17,
" Iuka, Miss., September 19,
" Corinth, Miss., October 4,
" Perryville, Ky., October 8,
1862. Battle of Fredericksburg, Va., December 13,
First attack on Vicksburg, Miss., December 29,
Battle of Murfreesboro, Tenn., December 31 and January
2, 1863,
1863. Emancipation Proclamation, January 1,
Arkansas Post taken, January 11,
Fort Sumter, S. C., bombarded by fleet, April 7,
Grant's campaign before Vicksburg, May 1-17,
Battle of Chancellorsville, Va., May 2, 3,
West Virginia admitted to the Union, June 20,
Battle of Gettysburg, Penn., July 1-3,
Vicksburg, Miss., surrendered, July 4,
Port Hudson surrendered, July 8,
Draft Riot in New York City, July 13-16,
Fort Wagner, S. C., taken, September 7,
Battle of Chickamauga, Ga., September 19, 20,
" Chattanooga, Tenn., November 24, 25,
Siege of Knoxville, Tenn., raised, December 4,
1864. Battle of Olustee, Fla, February 20,
Grant made Lieutenant-General, March 3,
Fort de Russy captured, March 14,
Fort Pillow, Tenn., captured, April 12,
Butler landed at Bermuda Hundred, May 5,
Battle of Wilderness, Va., May 5, 6,
" Spottsylvania, Va., May 8-12,
" Resaca, Ga., May 14, 15,
" New Market, Va., May 15,
" Dallas, May 25-28,
" Cold Harbor, Va., June 3,
" Lost Mountain, Ga., June 15-17,
Battle between the Kearsarge and the Alabama, June 19,
Battle of Kenesaw Mt., Ga., June 27,
" Monocacy, Md., July 9,
Battles before Atlanta, Ga., July 20, 22, 28,
Chambersburg, Pa., burned, July 30,
Mine explosion, Petersburg, Va., July 30,
Farragut entered Mobile Bay, Ala., August 5,
Weldon Railroad seized, August 18,
Atlanta, Ga., taken, September 2,
Battle of Winchester, Va., September 19,
" Fisher's Hill, Va., September 22,
" Cedar Creek, Va., October 19,
Nevada admitted to the Union, October 31,
Fort McAlister, Ga, taken, December 13,
1864. Battle of Nashville, Tenn., December 15, 16,
1865. Fort Fisher, N. C., taken, January 15,
Columbia, S. C., taken, February 17,
Charleston, S. C., taken, February 18,
Battles of Averysboro and Bentonsville, N. C., Mar 15, 18,
Attack on Fort Steadman, Va., March 25,
Battle of Five Forks, Va., April 1,
Petersburg and Richmond taken, April 2, 3,
Lee's army surrendered, April 9,
President Lincoln assassinated, April 14,
Johnston's army surrendered, April 26,
Jefferson Davis captured May 11,
* * * * *