Abraham Lincoln by George Haven Putnam (warren buffett book recommendations txt) 📕

Grant might well have felt concerned with such an opponent in front of him. He had on his hands (as had been the almost uniform condition for the army of the Potomac) the disadvantage of position. His advance must be made from exterior lines and nearly every attack was to be against well entrenched positions that had been first selected years back and had been strengthened from season to season. On the other hand, Grant was able to depend upon the loyal support of the administration through which came to his army the full advantage of the great resources of the North. His ranks as depleted were filled up, his commissary trains need never be long unsupplied, his ammunition waggons were always equipped. For Lee, during the years following the Gettysburg battle, the problem was unending and increasing: How should the troops be fed and whence should they secure the fresh supplies of ammunition?

Between Grant and Lincoln there came to be perfect sympathy of thought and action. The men had in their nature (though not in their mental equipment) much in common. Grant carries his army through the spring of 1864, across the much fought over territory, marching and fighting from day to day towards the south-west. The effort is always to outflank Lee's right, getting in between him and his base at Richmond, but after each fight, Lee's army always bars the way. Marching out of the Wilderness after seven days' fierce struggle, Grant still finds the line of grey blocking his path to Richmond. The army of the Potomac had been marching and fighting without break for weeks. There had been but little sleep, and the food in the trains was often far out of the reach of the men in the fighting line. Men and officers were alike exhausted. While advantages had been gained at one point or another along the line, and while it was certain that the opposing army had also suffered severely, there had been no conclusive successes to inspirit the troops with the feeling that they were to seize victory out of the campaign.

In emerging from the Wilderness, the head of the column reached the cross-roads the left fork of which led back to the Potomac and the right fork to Richmond or to Petersburg. In the previous campaigns, the army of the Potomac, after doing its share of plucky fighting and taking more than its share of discouragement, had at such a point been withdrawn for rest and recuperation. It was not an unnatural expectation that this course would be taken in the present campaign. The road to the right meant further fatigue and further continuous fighting for men who were already exhausted. In the leading brigade it was only the brigade commander and the adjutant who had knowledge of the instructions for the line of march. When, with a wave of the hand of the adjutant, the guidon flag of the brigade was carried to the right and the head of the column was set towards Richmond, a shout went up from the men marching behind the guidon. It was an utterance not of discouragement but of enthusiasm. Exhausting as the campaign had been, the men in the ranks preferred to fight it out then and to get through with it. Old soldiers as they were, they were able to understand the actual issue of the contest. Their plucky opponents were as exhausted as themselves and possibly even more exhausted. It was only through the hammering of Lee's diminishing army out of existence that the War could be brought to a close. The enthusiastic shout of satisfaction rolled through the long column reaching twenty miles back, as the news passed from brigade to brigade that the army was not to be withdrawn but was, as Grant's report to Lincoln was worded, "to fight it out on this line if it took all summer." When this report reached Lincoln, he felt that the selection of Grant as Lieutenant-General had been justified. He said: "We need this man. He fights."

In July, 1864, Washington is once more within reach if not of the invader at least of the raider. The Federal forces had been concentrated in Grant's lines along the James, and General Jubal Early, one of the most energetic fighters of the Southern army, tempted by the apparently unprotected condition of the capital, dashed across the Potomac on a raid that became famous. It is probable that in this undertaking, as in some of the other movements that have been referred to on the part of the Southern leaders, the purpose was as much political as military. Early's force of from fifteen to sixteen thousand men was, of course, in no way strong enough to be an army of invasion. The best success for which he could hope would be, in breaking through the defences of Washington, to hold the capital for a day or even a few hours. The capture of Washington in 1864, as in 1863 or in 1862, would in all probability have brought about the long-hoped-for intervention of France and England. General Lew Wallace, whose name became known in the years after the War through some noteworthy romances, Ben Hur and The Fair God, and who was in command of a division of troops stationed west of Washington, and composed in part of loyal Marylanders and in part of convalescents who were about to be returned to the front, fell back before Early's advance to Monocacy Creek. He disposed his thin line cleverly in the thickets on the east side of the creek in such fashion as to give the impression of a force of some size with an advance line of skirmishers. Early's advance was checked for some hours before he realised that there was nothing of importance in front of him; when Wallace's division was promptly overwhelmed and scattered. The few hours that had thus been saved were, however, of first importance for the safety of Washington. Early reached the outer lines of the fortifications of the capital some time after sunset. His immediate problem was to discover whether the troops which were, as he knew, being hurried up from the army of the James, had reached Washington or whether the capital was still under the protection only of its so-called home-guard of veteran reserves. These reserves were made up of men more or less crippled and unfit for work in the field but who were still able to do service on fortifications. They comprised in all about six thousand men and were under the command of Colonel Wisewell. The force was strengthened somewhat that night by the addition of all of the male nurses from the hospitals (themselves convalescents) who were able to bear arms. That night the women nurses, who had already been in attendance during the hours of the day, had to render double service. Lincoln had himself in the afternoon stood on the works watching the dust of the Confederate advance. Once more there came to the President who had in his hands the responsibility for the direction of the War the bitterness of the feeling, if not of possible failure, at least of immediate mortification. He knew that within twenty-four or thirty-six hours Washington could depend upon receiving the troops that were being hurried up from Grant's army, but he also realised what enormous mischief might be brought about by even a momentary occupation of the national capital by Confederate troops. I had some personal interest in this side campaign. The 19th army corps, to which my own regiment belonged, had been brought from Louisiana to Virginia and had been landed on the James River to strengthen the ranks of General Butler. There had not been time to assign to us posts in the trenches and we had, in fact, not even been placed in position. We were more nearly in marching order than any other troops available and it was therefore the divisions of the 19th army corps that were selected to be hurried up to Washington. To these were added two divisions of the 6th corps.

Colonel Wisewell, commanding the defences of the city, realised the nature of his problem. He had got to hold the lines of Washington, cost what it might, until the arrival of the troops from Grant. He took the bold step of placing on the picket line that night every man within reach, or at least every loyal man within reach (for plenty of the men in Washington were looking and hoping for the success of the South). The instructions usually given to pickets were in this instance reversed. The men were ordered, in place of keeping their positions hidden and of maintaining absolute quiet, to move from post to post along the whole line, and they were also ordered, without any reference to the saving of ammunition, to shoot off their carbines on the least possible pretext and without pretext. The armories were then beginning to send to the front Sharp's repeating carbines. The invention of breech-loading rifles came too late to be of service to the infantry on either side, but during the last year of the War, certain brigades of cavalry were armed with Sharp's breech-loaders. The infantry weapon used through the War by the armies of the North as by those of the South was the muzzle-loading rifle which bore the name on our side of the Springfield and on the Confederate side of the Enfield. The larger portion of the Northern rifles were manufactured in Springfield, Massachusetts, while the Southern rifles, in great part imported from England, took their name from the English factory. It was of convenience for both sides that the two rifles were practically identical so that captured pieces and captured ammunition could be interchanged without difficulty.

Early's skirmish line was instructed early in the night to "feel" the Federal pickets, an instruction which resulted in a perfect blaze of carbine fire from Wisewell's men. The report that went to Early was that the picket line must be about six thousand strong. The conclusion on the part of the old Confederate commander was that the troops from the army of the Potomac must have reached the city. If that were true, there was, of course, no chance that on the following day he could break through the entrenchments, while there was considerable risk that his retreat to the Shenandoah might be cut off. Early the next morning, therefore, the disappointed Early led his men back to Falling Waters.

I happened during the following winter, when in prison in Danville, to meet a Confederate lieutenant who had been on Early's staff and who had lost an arm in this little campaign. He reported that when Early, on recrossing the Potomac, learned that he had had Washington in his grasp and that the divisions marching to its relief did not arrive and could not have arrived for another twenty-four hours, he was about the maddest Early that the lieutenant had ever seen. "And," added the lieutenant, "when Early was angry, the atmosphere became blue."

THE FINAL CAMPAIGN

After this close escape, it was clear to Grant as it had been clear to Lincoln that whatever forces were concentrated before Petersburg, the line of advance for Confederate invaders through the Shenandoah must