General Gillmore now took charge of the Union troops, and, landing on Morris Island, by regular siege approaches and a terrible bombardment captured Fort Wagner and reduced Fort Sumter to a shapeless mass of rubbish (map, p. 280). A short time after, a party of sailors from the Union fleet essayed to capture it by night, but its garrison, upstarting from the ruins, drove them back with great loss.
[Footnote: In a marsh west of Morris Island, piles were driven in the mud twenty feet deep, and a platform made on which was placed an eight-inch rifled Parrot gun, which was nicknamed the "Swamp Angel." It threw shells five miles into Charleston, but burst on the thirty-sixth round. The bombardment of the city was afterward continued from the other batteries.]
[Footnote: Two unsuccessful charges were made on this fort. In one, the 54th regiment, Colonel Shaw, bore a prominent part. It was the first colored regiment organized in the free States. In order to be in season for the assault it had marched two days through heavy sands and drenching storms. With only five minutes rest it took its place at the front of the attacking column. The men fought with unflinching gallantry, and planted their flag on the works; but their colonel, and so many of the officers were shot, that what was left of the regiment was led off by a boy—Lt. Higginson. No measure of the war was more bitterly opposed than the project of arming the slaves. It was denounced at the North, and the Confederate Congress passed a law which threatened with death any white officer captured while in command of negro troops, leaving the men to be dealt with according to the laws of the State in which they were taken. Yet, so willing were the negroes to enlist, and so faithful did they prove themselves in service, that in December, 1863, over fifty thousand had been enrolled, and before the close of the war that number was quadrupled.]
GENERAL REVIEW OF THE THIRD YEAR OF THE WAR—The Confederates had gained the great battles of Chickamauga and Chancellorsville, seized Galveston, and successfully resisted every attack on Charleston.
The Federals had gained the battles before Vicksburg, and at Chattanooga and Gettysburg. They had captured the garrisons of Vicksburg and Port Hudson. The Mississippi was patrolled by gunboats, and the supplies from the West were entirely cut off from the Confederate army. Arkansas, East Tennessee, and large portions of Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, had been won for the Union.
1864.
THE SITUATION.—In March, General Grant was made Lieutenant-General in command of all the forces of the United States. Heretofore the different armies had acted independently. They were now to move in concert, and thus prevent the Confederate forces from aiding each other. The strength of the South lay in the armies of Lee in Virginia, and Jos. E. Johnston in Georgia. Grant was to attack the former, Sherman the latter, and both were to keep at work, regardless of season or weather. While the army of the Potomac was crossing the Rapidan (May 4), Grant, seated on a log by the road-side, penciled a telegram to Sherman to start.
[Illustration:
CROSSING THE RAPIDAN—GRANT'S TELEGRAM.]
THE WAR IN TENNESSEE AND GEORGIA.
ADVANCE UPON ATLANTA.—Sherman, with one hundred thousand men, now moved upon Johnston, who, with nearly fifty thousand, was stationed at Dalton, Ga. (map opp. p. 222). The Confederate commander, foreseeing this advance, had selected a series of almost impregnable positions, one behind the other, all the way to Atlanta. For one hundred miles there was continued skirmishing among mountains and woods, which presented every opportunity for such a warfare. Both armies were led by profound strategists. Sherman would drive Johnston into a stronghold, and then with consummate skill outflank him, when Johnston with equal skill would retreat to a new post and prepare to meet his opponent again.