CHAPTER XL
IN SIGHT OF VICTORY
When Grant crossed the Rapidan with his army of one hundred forty-one thousand one hundred and sixty men Lee faced him with sixty-four thousand. The problem of saving Richmond from the tremendous force under the personal command of the most successful general of the North was not the only danger which threatened the Confederate Capital. Butler was pressing from the Peninsula with forty thousand men along the line of McClellan's old march, supported again by the navy.
Jefferson Davis knew the task before Lee to be a gigantic one yet he did not believe that Grant would succeed in reaching Richmond.
The moment the Federal general crossed the Rapidan and threw his army into the tangled forest of the Wilderness, Lee sprang from the jungles at his throat.
Battle followed battle in swift and terrible succession. At Cold Harbor thirty days later the climax came. Grant lost ten thousand men in twenty minutes. The Northern general had set out to hammer Lee to death by steady, remorseless pounding. At the end of a month he had lost more than sixty thousand men and Lee's army was as strong as when the fight began.
Grant's campaign to take Richmond was the bloodiest and most tragic failure in the history of war. The North in bitter anguish demanded his removal from command. Lincoln stubbornly refused to interfere with his bulldog fighter. He sent him word to hold on and chew and choke.
As Grant in his whirl of blood approached the old battle grounds of McClellan, Davis rode out daily to confer with Lee. He was never more cheerful--never surer of the safety of his Capital. His faith in God and the certainty that he would in the end give victory to a cause so just and holy grew in strength with the report from each glorious field. No doubt of the right or justice of his cause ever entered his mind. Day and night he repeated the lines of his favorite hymn:
"I'll strengthen thee, help thee and cause thee to stand,
Upheld by my righteous omnipotent hand."
Again and again he said to his wife half in soliloquy, half in exalted prayer:
"We can conquer a peace against the world in arms and keep the rights of freemen if we are worthy of the privilege!"
The spirit which animated the patriotic soldiers who followed their commander in this bloody campaign was in every way as high as that which inspired their President.
Jennie spent an hour each day ministering to the sick prisoners who had returned from the North and were unable to go further than Richmond. It was her service of love for Jimmie's friends and comrades.
A poor fellow was dying of the want he had endured in prison. He lifted his dimmed eyes to hers:
"Will you write to my wife for me, Miss?"
"Yes--yes--I will."
"And give her my love--"
He paused for breath and fumbled in his pocket.
"I've a letter from her here--read it before you write. Our little girl had malaria. She tried willow tea and everything she could think of for the chills. The doctor said nothin' but quinine could save her. She couldn't get it, the blockade was too tight, and so our baby died--and now I'm dyin' and my poor starvin' girl will have nothin' to comfort her--but--"
He gasped and lifted himself on his elbow.
"If our folks can just quit free men, it's all right. It's all right!" The women and children of Richmond were suffering now for food. The Thirteenth Virginia regiment sent Billy Barton into the city with a contribution for their relief.
Billy delivered it to Jennie with more than a boy's pride. There was something bigger in the quiet announcement he made.
"Here's one day's rations from the regiment, sis," he said--"all our flour, pork, bacon and meal. The boys are fasting to-day. It's their love offering to those we've left at home--"
Jennie kissed him.
"It's beautiful of you and your men, boy. Give my love to them all and tell them I'm proud to be their countrywoman--"
"And they're proud of their country and their General, too--maybe you wouldn't believe it--but every regiment in Lee's army has reënlisted for the war."
She seized Billy's hand.
"Come with me--I want you to see the President and tell him what your regiment has done. It'll help him."
As they approached the White House a long, piercing scream came through the open windows.
"What on earth?" Jennie exclaimed.
"An accident of some kind," the boy answered, seizing her arm and hurrying forward. Every window and door of the big lonely house set apart on its hill swung wide open, the lights streaming through them, the wind blowing the curtains through the windows. The lights blazed even in the third story.
Mrs. Burton Harrison, the wife of the President's Secretary, met them at the door, her eyes red with weeping.
She pressed Jennie's hand.
"Little Joe has been killed--"
"Mrs. Davis' beautiful boy--impossible!"
"He climbed over the bannisters and fell to the brick pavement and died a few minutes after his mother reached his side--"
The girl could make no answer. She had come on a sudden impulse to cheer the lonely leader of her people. Perhaps his need in this dark hour had called her. She thought of Socola's story of his mother's vision and wondered with a sudden pang of self-pity where the man she loved was to-night.
This beautiful child, named in honor of his favorite brother, was the greatest joy of the badgered soul of the Confederate leader.
Suddenly his white face appeared at the head of the stairs. A courier had come from the battlefield with an important dispatch. Grant and Lee were locked in their death grapple in the Wilderness. He would try even in this solemn hour to do his whole duty.
He passed the sympathetic group murmuring a sentence whose pathos brought the tears again to Jennie's eyes.
"Not my will, O Lord, but thine--thine--thine!"
He took the dispatch from the courier's hand and held it open for some time, staring at it with fixed gaze.
He searched the courier's face and asked pathetically:
"Will you tell me, my friend, what is in it--I--I--cannot read--"
The courier read the message in low tones. A great battle was joined. The fate of a nation hung on its issue. The stricken man drew from his pocket a tiny gold pencil and tried to write an answer--stopped suddenly and pressed his hand on his heart.
Billy sprang to his side and seized the dispatch:
"I'll take the message to General Cooper--Mr. President--"
The white face turned to the young soldier and looked at him pitifully:
"Thank you, my son--thank you--it is best--I must have this hour with our little boy--leave me with my dead!"
Jennie stayed to help the stricken home.
She took little Jeff in her arms to rock him to sleep. He drew her head down and whispered:
"Miss Jennie, I got to Joe first after he fell. I knelt down beside him and said all the prayers I know--but God wouldn't wake him!"
The girl drew the child close and kissed the reddened eyes. Over her head beat the steady tramp of the father's feet, back and forth, back and forth, a wounded lion in his cage. The windows and doors were still wide open, the curtains waving wan and ghost-like from their hangings. Two days later she followed the funeral procession to the
cemetery--thousands of children, each child with a green bough or bunch of flowers to pile on the red mound.
A beautiful girl pushed her way to Jennie's side and lifted a handful of snowdrops.
"Please put these on little Joe," she said wistfully. "I knew him so well."
With a sob the child turned and fled. Jennie never learned her name. She turned to the grave again, her gaze fixed on the striking figure of the grief-stricken father, bare-headed, straight as an arrow, his fine face silhouetted against the shining Southern sky. The mother stood back amid the shadows, in her somber wrappings, her tall figure drooped in pitiful grief.
The leader turned quickly from his personal sorrows to those of his country, his indomitable courage rising to greater heights as dangers thickened.
Two weeks later General Sheridan attempted what Dahlgren tried and failed to accomplish.
The President hurried from his office to his home, seized his pistols, mounted his horse and rode out to join Generals Gracie and Ransom who were placing their skeleton brigades to repulse the attack.
The crack of rifles could be distinctly heard from the Executive Mansion.
The mother called her children to prayers. As little Jeff knelt he raised his chubby face and said with solemn earnestness:
"You had better have my pony saddled, and let me go out and help father--we can pray afterwards!"
In driving Sheridan's cavalry back from Richmond General Stuart fell at Yellow Tavern mortally wounded--the bravest of the brave--a full Major General who had won immortal fame at thirty-one years of age. His beautiful wife, the daughter of a Union General, Philip St. George Cooke, could not reach his bedside before he breathed his last.
The President reverently entered the death chamber and stood for fifteen minutes holding the hand of his brilliant young commander.
They told him that he could not live to see his wife.
"I should have liked to have seen her," he said gently, "but God's will be done."
The doctor felt his fast fading pulse.
"Doctor, I suppose I'm going fast now," Stuart said. "It will soon be over. I hope I have fulfilled my duty to my country and my God--"
"Your end is near, General Stuart," the doctor responded softly.
"All right," was the even answer. "I'll end my little affairs down here. To Mrs. Robert E. Lee I give my gold spurs, in eternal memory of the love I bear my glorious Chief. To my staff, my horses--"
He paused and turned to the heavier officer who stood with bowed head.
"You take the larger one--he'll carry you better. To my son I leave my sword--"
He was silent a moment and then said with an effort:
"Now I want you to sing for me the song I love best:
" 'Rock of ages cleft for me
Let me hide myself in thee' "--
With his fast-failing breath he joined in the song, turned and murmured:
"I'm going fast now--God's will be done--"
So passed the greatest cavalry leader our country has produced--a man whose joyous life was one long feast of good will toward his fellow men.
* * * * *
In spite of all losses, in spite of four years of frightful carnage, in spite of the loss of the Mississippi, the States of Louisiana and Tennessee, the Confederacy was in sight of victory.
Lee had baffled Grant's great army at every turn and now held him securely at bay before Petersburg. The North was mortally tired of the bloody struggle. The party which demanded peace was greater than any political division--it included thousands of the best men in the party of Abraham Lincoln.
The nomination of General McClellan for President on a platform declaring the war a failure and demanding that it end was a foregone conclusion. Jefferson Davis knew this from inside information his friends had sent from every section of the North.
The Confederacy had only to hold its lines intact until the first Monday in November and the Northern voters would end the war.
The one point of mortal danger to the South lay in the mental structure of Joseph E. Johnston, the man whom Davis had been persuaded, against his better judgment, to appoint to the command of one of the greatest armies the Confederacy had ever put into the field.
Johnston had been sent to Dalton, Georgia, and placed in command of sixty-eight thousand picked Confederate soldiers with which to attack and drive Sherman out of the lower South.
Lee with sixty-four thousand had defeated Grant's one hundred and forty thousand. Richmond was safe, and the North was besieging Washington with an army of heart-broken mothers and fathers who demanded Grant's removal.
No effort was spared by Davis to enable Johnston to stay Sherman's advance and assume the offensive. The whole military strength of the South and West was pressed forward to him. His commissary and ordnance departments were the best in the Confederacy. His troops were eager to advance and retrieve the disaster at Missionary Ridge--the first and only case of panic and cowardice that had marred the brilliant record of the Confederacy.
The position of Johnston's army was one of commanding strength. Long mountain ranges, with few and difficult passes, made it next to impossible for Sherman to turn his flank or dislodge him by direct attack. Sherman depended for his supplies on a single line of railroad from Nashville.
Davis confidently believed that Johnston could crush Sherman in the first pitched battle and render his position untenable.
And then began the most remarkable series of retreats recorded in the history of war.
Without a blow and without waiting for an attack, Johnston suddenly withdrew from his trenches at Dalton and ran eighteen miles into the interior of Georgia. He stopped at Resaca in a strong position on a peninsula formed by the junction of two rivers fortified by rifle pits and earthworks.
He gave this up and ran thirteen miles further into Georgia to Adairsville. Not liking the looks of Adairsville he struck camp and ran to Cassville seventeen miles.
He then declared he would fight Sherman at Kingston. Sherman failing to divide his army, as Johnston had supposed he would, he changed his mind and ran beyond Etowah. He next retreated to Alatoona. Here Sherman spread out his army, threatened Marietta and Johnston ran again.
On July fifth he ran from Kenesaw Mountain and took refuge behind the Chattahoochee River.
From Dalton to Resaca, from Resaca to Adairsville, from Adairsville to Alatoona (involving the loss of Kingston and Rome with their mills, foundries and military stores), from Alatoona to Kenesaw, from Kenesaw to the Chattahoochee and then tumbled into the trenches before Atlanta.
Retreat had followed retreat for two months and a half over one hundred and fifty miles to the gates of Atlanta without a single pitched battle!
Davis watched this tragedy unfold its appalling scenes with increasing bitterness, disappointment and alarm.
The demand for Johnston's removal was overwhelming in the State of Georgia whose gate city was now besieged by Sherman. The people of the whole South had watched this retreat of a hundred and fifty miles into their territory with sickening hearts.
Again Johnston began his nagging and complaining to the Richmond authorities. His most important message was an accusation of disloyalty against Joseph E. Brown. He telegraphed in blunt plain English:
"The Governor of Georgia refuses me provisions and the use of his roads."
Brown answered:
"The roads are open to him and in capital condition. I have furnished him abundantly with provisions."
The President of the Confederacy now faced the most dangerous and tragic decision of his entire administration. The removal of Johnston from his command before Sherman's victorious army in the heart of Georgia could be justified only on the grounds of the sternest necessity. The Commanding General not only had the backing of his powerful junta in Richmond who were now busy with their conspiracy to establish a dictatorship and oust the President from his office, but he was immensely popular with his army. His care for his soldiers was fatherly. His painful efforts to save their lives, even at the cost of the loss of his country, were duly appreciated by the leaders of opinion in the army. Johnston had the power to draw and hold the good will of the men who surrounded him. He had the power, too, of infecting his men with his likes and dislikes. His hatred of Davis had been for three years the one mania of his sulking mind.
To remove him from command in such a crisis was to challenge a mutiny in his army which might lead to serious results. Yet if he should continue to retreat, and back out of Atlanta without a fight as he had backed out of every position for the one hundred and fifty miles from Dalton, the results would be still more appalling.
The loss of Atlanta at this moment meant the defeat of the peace party of the North, and the reëlection of Lincoln. If Lincoln should be elected it was inconceivable that the South could continue the unequal struggle for four years more.
If Johnston would only hold his trenches and save Atlanta for a few days the South would win. Lee could hold Grant indefinitely.
The thought which appalled Davis was the suspicion which now amounted to a practical certainty that his retreating General would evacuate Atlanta as he had threatened to abandon Richmond when confronted by McClellan, and had abandoned Vicksburg without a blow.
He must know this with absolute certainty before yielding to the demand for his removal. That no possible mistake could be made, he dispatched his Chief of Staff, General Braxton Bragg, to Atlanta for conference with Johnston and make a personal report.
Bragg reported that Johnston was arranging to abandon Atlanta without a battle and the President promptly removed him from command and appointed Hood in his place.
When Hood assumed command of the disgruntled army, it was too late to save Atlanta. Had Johnston delivered battle with his full force at Dalton, Sherman might have been crushed as Rosecrans was overwhelmed at Chickamauga.
Hood's army was driven back into their trenches. Sherman threw his hosts under cover of night on a wide flanking movement and Atlanta fell.
Under the mighty impulse of this news Lincoln was reëlected, the peace party of the North defeated and the doom of the Confederacy sealed.