Download 35. Battles Every American Should Remember

Battles Every American Should Remember
Shelby Foote was asked by a publisher to write “a short history of the Civil War.”
Foote began to visit battlefields to do research. At Shiloh the Civil War gripped him and
would not let go until he had written three hefty volumes of what is now one of those
histories called a “definitive work.” Therefore, to think we could cover the fighting side
of the Civil War in one monograph is rather ridiculous. I have to try, however.
I had no grip on how to teach the Civil War briefly in a survey course such as this
until a fellow A. P. US history teacher told me there were seven turning points. I’ve
never run across a better way to communicate the basics that all Americans should know.
All Americans need this knowledge since, to paraphrase Shelby Foote’s view that the
Civil War was the crossroads of our being, it is what opened up the United States to what
we became, both good and bad things.
Industrialization, urbanization, and migration were redoubled by the Civil War.
While most men who fought the war had never traveled beyond their own counties, or
even off their farms, one sergeant who kept a diary recorded that he traveled 11,000 miles
during the war. This is only a small example of how the social history of America was
transformed, and if you add on Reconstruction, nothing else that’s ever happened to
America has changed her more.
Remember, a whole new type of government came out of the war. Able to draft
soldiers and tax citizens in entirely new ways, the federal government of the United
States was bigger and more powerful than ever before. President Abraham Lincoln was
the most powerful president the country had ever seen, even including Andrew Jackson.
These are enough reasons for all Americans to know what did this to us. There are also,
of course, the 650,000 Americans who gave their lives at this crossroads in order to
define our nation and to place the word “indivisible” in the Pledge of Allegiance.
The seven turning points of the Civil War are listed below:
1. Fort Sumter
2. First Bull Run (Manassas)
3. Shiloh
4. Antietam and the Emancipation Proclamation
5. Gettysburg and Vicksburg
6. Sherman’s March to the Sea
7. Fall of Richmond and Appomattox Courthouse
You’ve already seen and read information about Ft. Sumter and First Bull Run, but let me
emphasize that Fort Sumter was considered the beginning of the war and was blamed on
the Confederacy. First Bull Run, you will note, is the only Confederate victory listed
among the seven turning points. This battle shocked both sides and convinced nearly
everyone that the war would not be short. Even Shiloh was nearly a Confederate victory,
and this list omits a whole series of glorious Southern victories that would serve to
convince you of the danger for the Union. Remember, however, the object of war is to
win not just battles but the whole war.
Between turning points two and three, Ulysses S. Grant captured Ft. Henry and
Ft. Donelson in February of 1862. These victories caused the Union to claim Tennessee,
but Shiloh belied that claim. The Rebels stopped the advance of the Union Army in this
battle in April of 1862 that was then the largest battle to date in North America, but then
the Confederates retreated to Corinth, Mississippi. Grant was deposed after the Union
plans had gone awry, and General Halleck took over. Halleck advanced, but slowly,
since he fortified his camp every night. A blow to the Confederacy at Shiloh came in that
their highest ranking general, Johnston, was shot and left to bleed to death accidentally,
but they got Robert E. Lee in command.
Meanwhile, back East, George McClellan allowed his 112,000 Union troops to be
held back by 16,000 Confederates in Virginia. General Lee seemed able to read
McClellan’s mind and always did just what was necessary to stop the Union Army. He
held off McClellan and sent Stonewall Jackson with 18,000 men to harass the route to
Washington, DC. Lincoln was obligated to keep reinforcements from McClellan in order
to protect the Union capital. These forays of Stonewall Jackson saved Richmond
repeatedly until Jackson was shot accidentally by his own men and died of pneumonia.
The Confederacy counter-attacked sending Braxton Bragg to invade Kentucky,
but he was defeated at Perryville and retreated to Knoxville and Chattanooga. Lee won
again at Manassas in the Second Battle of Bull Run and resolved to also invade the
North. He chose Maryland to invade in hopes of bringing it into the CSA. This
campaign led to the fourth major turning point, Antietam. From September 16-17 of
1862, Lee fought with his back up against Antietam Creek. His plans had been
discovered in a cigar holder a messenger had dropped, and savage frontal fighting
ensued. Antietam saw the single bloodiest day of the entire war with over 23,000
casualties (killed and wounded from both armies). Lee withdrew back into Virginia, and
Lincoln seized the closest thing he had for a victory in months to issue the Emancipation
Proclamation, so these two items are linked as the fourth turning point together.
The Emancipation Proclamation said that all slaves in states still in rebellion were
free. Therefore, it freed no slaves, but it did mean territory that was conquered after
January 1, 1863, would experience emancipation. The war then became a crusade to
liberate the slaves, especially for the black soldiers who were now eligible to participate
in the fight. Antietam and the Emancipation Proclamation opened the way for black
troops and was said to stave off British intervention as the cotton began to run out in
England. In one document, therefore, Lincoln achieved a domestic and foreign policy
victory. Perhaps that is why the Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee was
ordered to invade the North again.
A whole article could be written on Gettysburg, alone. You have seen it
discussed on the film, and perhaps some of you have seen the movie that bears the name
of the battle that was part of the most important turning point of all. The 150,000 men
who fought there in Pennsylvania made it the largest battle in the Western Hemisphere to
this very day, and the 51,000 casualties made it the worst battle of the Civil War. The
Union Army alone experienced more casualties than there are people living in our whole
city. Nearly everyone on both sides realized after Gettysburg that the South was going to
lose the war. Added to the news of the July 1-3 loss, the fall of the last Confederate
stronghold on the Mississippi River at Vicksburg on July 4, 1863 made up the fifth and
most devastating turning point.
After the fall of Chattanooga to Union armies, Atlanta was attacked and somehow
burned. No one knows if the escaping Confederates set the fire in order to destroy
supplies or if the advancing Union Army was already practicing William Tecumseh
Sherman’s tactic of total war. Regardless, Sherman practiced total war from that point on
and is therefore considered the first modern general. Total war means that an army does
not merely fight the enemy army but destroys the civilian support structure keeping the
enemy army in the field. All wars since the Civil War have to one degree or another been
total wars. Something chivalrous died in this change, but Sherman said “War is all hell.
There’s no sense trying to baptize it. The worse it is the sooner it will be over.” He set
off from Atlanta with an army 100,000 strong and cut himself completely off from
supply. His intention was to live off the land and to “make the South howl.”
Sherman’s army’s trip from Atlanta to Savannah is known as Sherman’s March to
the Sea. His men confiscated and consumed all the food they came across. Sherman said
his troops could “stick, gut, scrape, and butcher” a hog while marching. His engineers
could build ten miles of road per day through swamps. His army destroyed everything in
its path in a swath 60 miles wide. Plantation houses were burned leaving the chimneys
on either end standing as “Sherman’s Sentinels.” His troops took up railroad tracks,
heated the center over large fires, and twisted them around trees. The twisted remains
were known as “Sherman’s Neckties.” All of this destruction removed the South’s
capacity to support the war effort and helped Lincoln win a critical re-election in 1864.
Sherman said he gave the city of Savannah to Lincoln for a Christmas present, and then
he turned north to join up with Grant’s army chasing Lee in Virginia. Along the way he
burned Columbia, South Carolina, where secession was born.
Grant chased Lee to a last stand at Petersburg where the Confederate Army
foreshadowed World War I by entrenching. Grant dug trenches, too, but Lee’s army was
smaller and became stretched thin as Grant flanked Lee’s trenches. This stand off was
the site of one of the more bizarre moments in the first modern war. Coal miners from
West Virginia suggested to Grant that they tunnel across the “no man’s land” and place
explosives under the Confederate trenches. The goal was to blow a gap in the line to
allow the Union Army to penetrate and take Petersburg. The tunnel was dug, an
immense amount of gunpowder was placed below Lee’s men, and the attack force was
readied. When the fuse reached the cavern of death it touched off the largest explosion
any of the combatants had ever seen. An immense crater was cut out of the ground where
the Confederate fortifications had been. The Union Army surged forward to the edge of
the crater and stopped to look down inside. Several men actually went down in the crater
only to discover that they could not climb back out. Lee prepared and launched a
counter-attack while the Yankees stood dumbfounded. The men in the crater were shot
to death, and the Union charge failed.
Petersburg fell anyway. When Lee retreated on a Sunday he sent Jefferson Davis
a note to flee Richmond. The Confederate president received the note while attending a
church service, turned ashen, and then rose and left. By April 5, 1865, Abraham Lincoln
came to Richmond and entered the Confederate capitol building and sat down at
Jefferson Davis’s desk which was in full view of a large glass window. The Union troops
outside cheered. As Lincoln left, black Virginians touched his clothing as he passed
through the crowd and called him, “Father Abraham.” With only ten days left to live,
Lincoln gave a speech calling for leniency and forgiveness for the Confederacy which
was about to collapse.
Lee had fewer than 25,000 soldiers left. He fled the vicinity of Richmond but was
surrounded at Appomattox Courthouse. General Grant was lying on the ground with a
migraine headache when news came that Lee would surrender. His headache
immediately disappeared, and he jumped up. He threw the nearest coat on, which
happened to be a private’s jacket, and sped by horse to arrange the surrender ceremony.
Lee met him in his last dress uniform and signed the surrender document after a
Cherokee Indian soldier had written out the terms. Grant sent 25,000 rations to Lee’s
starving army. He said the officers could keep their swords, and any man who owned a
horse could keep it because it was plowing season.
The official surrender ceremony was arranged for April 9, 1865. General John B.
Gordon was chosen to represent the Confederacy. Having been shot in the face, Gordon
could still make his horse bow, which it did to Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.
Chamberlain had been the hero the second day of Gettysburg but had been wounded so
severely at Petersburg that he had been left for dead. He had recovered just in time to be
given the honor of representing the Union as the Confederate soldiers stacked their
weapons and turned over their battle flags, all except for one. I have met the family in
Bristol, Virginia whose ancestor hid a battle flag under his uniform. They kept the flag
until recently—it is now the flag draped over Traveler’s saddle in the Confederate
museum in Richmond. Speaking of Traveler, Lee rode him out into the midst of his
assembled troops after the surrender, and his soldiers ran their hands over the horse’s
sides. Lee urged his men to go home and become peaceful farmers once more.
Before we say goodbye to the Confederate Army, two of its stand-outs deserve
mention. Another soldier from Bristol, Virginia was John Singleton Mosby, the officer
most commended in Robert E. Lee’s dispatches. Mosby was a small man who assembled
a cavalry strike force of men his size who rode large horses and packed two six-shooters
each. Mosby’s Rangers often surprised Union camps and rode through them at full
gallop shooting with both pistols and out the other side before the Yankees knew what hit
them. Mosby and his men intercepted the first shipment of repeating rifles by simply
riding up to the Union detachment guarding them while wearing stolen Union uniforms.
Mosby told their commander, “You and your men are tired. We have been sent to relieve
you.” The Union commander merely handed them over. Audacity like this caused the
Union to remove the planks from the bridges over the Potomac River each night in fear
that Mosby would ride across and kidnap Lincoln. On March 9, 1863, Mosby did capture
two captains, 30 privates, Brigadier General Edwin Stoughton, and 58 horses. When
Lincoln heard of this exploit he said, “For that, I am sorry. I can make generals, but I
cannot make horses.”
Nathan Bedford Forrest also deserves mention one more time. The acknowledged
genius of the war, Forrest had the talent of being able to instantly see where his cavalry
forces needed to be to win a given battle on a given terrain. The one time he was tricked
and found his men surrounded, he gave the unlikely command of “Divide in two and
charge both ways!” It worked. He stayed behind himself until all his men were clear and
was surrounded while on horseback by an enemy infantry force. One of them said,
“Shoot the bastard!” A Yankee soldier placed his rifle muzzle against Forrest’s side and
pulled the trigger. The force of the bullet raised Forrest out of his saddle, but when he
came back down, he grabbed the soldier and threw him up behind him and galloped
away. When he was out of rifle range, he dropped the dead soldier to the ground.
Having recovered from that wound, he was shot at point black range in the chest by the
pistol of an outraged subordinate. Forrest grabbed that man by the collar with one hand
and took out his pocket knife with the other and opened the blade with his teeth. He said,
“The man who kills me shall not live,” and slit the man’s throat. His would-be murderer
stumbled across the street and died in a gutter, but Forrest lived.
While we’re talking about murder, no tale of the Civil War’s end can avoid the
subject of the assassination of Lincoln. On April 14, 1865, with the war over, Lincoln
told a friend, “I think I am the most tired man on the face of the Earth,” and decided to
see a play to lighten his spirits. He and his wife and one Union officer entered his private
box seat at Ford’s Theatre to see Our American Cousin, a comedy. A conspiracy was set
in motion that included four conspirators, one of whom stabbed Secretary of State
William H. Seward in the neck (Seward lived). The foremost conspirator, alcoholic actor
John Wilkes Booth, used his fame to get past security into Lincoln’s box, stole up behind
the President, and shot him in the back of the head with a derringer. The Union officer
rose up, and Booth slashed open his entire arm with a knife, then jumped from the box to
the stage (breaking his leg) and shouted Virginia’s state motto to the audience, “Sic
semper tyrannis” This Latin phrase means, “Thus always to tyrants.” Booth fled and
was later cornered and either shot to death or burned to death in a barn.
Lincoln lingered through the night. His wife was never sane again. On the
morning of April 15, 1865 the first assassinated president was pronounced dead. Having
sat by his bed through the night, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton said, “Now he belongs
to the ages.” His death proved to be a great calamity for the South, as you will see as we
tackle the period known as Reconstruction.