Dixie Betrayed (33 page)

The venom went both ways. “I learn that Genl. [Howell] Cobb is getting crazy in the state of fury,” Brown wrote Aleck Stephens.
“A friend from Atlanta writes me that he denounced me on the R.R. car between Macon and that place the other day as a
traitor,
a
Tory;
said I ought to be hung and would be soon; that he had never been to a hanging but would go some distance to see it done,
etc. . . . He did all he could to serve his master [Davis].”
²⁸
A true Confederate this was not.

I
N
the east the armies were positioning themselves for what might be the decisive campaign of the war. The Federal command now
understood fully that geography was not the issue—destruction of the enemy armies and their ability to wage war was. Particular
cities were subtext. “Lee’s army will be your objective point,” wrote Grant at Culpeper Court House on April 9 to George Meade.
“Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also.”
¹

By the first days of May, with the onset of warm weather, Grant’s 119,000 men were spread north of the Rapidan from Culpeper
Court House to Manassas Junction in Virginia. Lee’s 64,000 lay south of the river from Gordonsville to near the Wilderness,
the forested area west of Fredericksburg, with Stuart’s cavalry south of Fredericksburg. Without risking staggering casualties,
Lee’s position could not be attacked frontally. Instead, Grant would need to turn Lee’s right, interposing his army between
Lee’s army and Richmond, to preserve his own line of communications and force Lee to retreat southward. The stage was set
for what would become the Wilderness, or Overland, campaign. So on May 3 Grant ordered the army corps under Maj. Gens. Winfield
Scott Hancock, John Sedgwick, and Gouverneur Warren south to Germanna Ford and Ely’s Ford on the river, where they would cross
and move into the Wilderness.

Just after midnight on May 4, Hancock’s Second Army Corps and Warren’s Fifth Army Corps crossed the fords and moved into the
Wilderness, unsupported by artillery or cavalry. Grant hoped to move the men through the brushy, heavily wooded region quickly,
but by early afternoon Warren had halted at Wilderness Tavern, three miles west of Chancellorsville, and Hancock near Chancellorsville
itself. Meanwhile, Confederates under Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell were approaching Warren, and those under Lt. Gen. A. P. Hill
were nearing Hancock. Longstreet was approaching, too, but farther behind. “You will already have learned that the army of
Gen Meade is in motion, and is crossing the Rapidan on our right, whether with the intention of attacking, or moving towards
Fredericksburg, I am not able to say,” Lee reported to Jefferson Davis on May 4. “But it is apparent that the long threatened
effort to take Richmond has begun, and that the enemy has collected all his available force to accomplish it.”
²

On the morning of May 5, Ewell clashed with Warren, opening the battle of the Wilderness. Sedgwick arrived from the north,
supporting Warren with three additional divisions, and Hancock approached from Todd’s Tavern, three miles south of Wilderness
Tavern. The Yankees, spread along a northwest-southeast line across the Orange-Fredericksburg Turnpike, faced the five divisions
of Ewell and Hill. Poor visibility and difficulty of holding formations meant attackers normally were heard well before they
could fire on the defenders. It was far from ideal for the Northerners: Confederate troops seemed better adapted to the woods,
and Federal troops were relying on poor maps. Moreover, Confederate attacks in such conditions were especially unnerving to
the Yankees, due to the fearsome rebel yell. “The Federal, or ‘Yankee,’ yell, compared with that of the Confederate, lacked
in vocal breadth, pitch, and resonance,” explained Harvie Dew of the Ninth Virginia Cavalry. Dew continued, “This was unquestionably
attributable to the fact that the soldiery of the North was drawn and recruited chiefly from large cities and towns, from
factory districts, and from the more densely settled portions of the country. In an instant every voice with one accord vigorously
shouted that ‘Rebel yell,’ which was so often heard on the field of battle. ‘Woh-who-ey!, who-ey!, who-ey! Woh-oh-ey! who-ey!
etc.’”
³

The Confederates worked their psychological advantages well, and because of various hesitations on the Federals’ part, held
their lines in strong fashion until darkness fell. Each army planned an attack for the next morning. At 5 a.m. on May 6, much
of the Federal line lunged forward on the offensive, with Ewell defending well on the north, and Hill, to the south, breaking
in confusion. As the Confederate right was crumbling, Longstreet arrived and reinforced the position. On the northernmost
end of the line, Confederate Brig. Gen. John B. Gordon launched an attack that succeeded until halted by darkness. On May
7 the armies reinforced their lines and mostly stayed inactive, with fires consuming parts of the Wilderness brush that separated
them—fires that burned some wounded to death. Already the casualties were heavy, amounting to possibly as many as thirty thousand
total, and neither side had gained a meaningful outcome. But rather than retreat, Grant chose to turn Lee’s left and race
toward Richmond, necessitating the Confederate commander to block him at the junction of roads near Spotsylvania Court House.

On the Confederate side A. P. Hill was sick, and Longstreet, the senior corps commander, had been seriously wounded, accidentally,
by his own men on the Brock Road on May 6. On May 8, as elements of both armies vied for position near Spotsylvania, Warren’s
infantry clashed with Confederate units of Longstreet’s corps, now commanded by Maj. Gen. Richard H. Anderson. A Federal attack
late in the afternoon was too poorly coordinated to achieve a significant result.

By May 9 the Confederate corps of Anderson, Ewell, and Maj. Gen. Jubal Early (replacing Hill, temporarily) formed a semicircle
near Spotsylvania Court House, with the Federals approaching from the northwest (Hancock, Warren, and Sedgwick) and the northeast
(Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside). On this day, as aides worried over his exposure to Confederate fire, Sedgwick was killed, hit
below the left eye by a minié bullet. (Among his last words were, “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.”) The following
day, the Confederate line tightened, and part of Ewell’s position formed a Mule Shoe salient, a semicircular bulge, around
two local houses. Grant had the opportunity to turn Lee’s left but remained determined that Hancock should assault from the
front. At 4 p.m. on May 10, Hancock, Warren, and Maj. Gen. Horatio Wright (having replaced Sedgwick) struck vigorously into
Anderson’s corps. The resulting casualties were monstrous. “Ambulances and army wagons with two tiers of flooring, loaded
with wounded and drawn by four and six mule teams, pass along the plank, or rather, corduroy road to Fredericksburg,” wrote
Augustus Brown of the Fourth New York Heavy Artillery. “Many of the wounds are full of maggots. I saw one man with an arm
off at the shoulder, with maggots half an inch long crawling in the sloughing flesh, and several poor fellows were holding
stumps of legs and arms straight up in the air so as to ease the pain the road and the heartless drivers subjected them to.”
⁴

The following day, May 11, was quiet, masking a grim determination on Grant’s part to engineer the end of the war. “I propose
to fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer,” he wrote Henry Halleck on this day. All knew the heavy fighting—in
what was becoming a micro-siege at Spotsylvania—would continue. “I shall come out of this fight a live major general or a
dead brigadier,” wrote Brig. Gen. Abner Monroe Perrin, who commanded a brigade in A. P. Hill’s corps.
⁵
He was killed the next day. On May 12 a vicious frontal attack by Hancock plunged into the Mule Shoe. Attacks and counterattacks
continued until dusk. The fighting was stubborn, and Lee slowly began to develop a new line, this time positioned south of
the Mule Shoe.

During all this, Union cavalry under Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan had been raiding Richmond, drawing J. E. B. Stuart away
from Lee’s army. The approach to Richmond culminated in the battle of Yellow Tavern, where Stuart was mortally wounded on
May 11, dying the next day. After destroying supplies and railroad, Sheridan returned to Grant’s army on May 24. After continued
fighting around Spotsylvania Court House, Grant sent Hancock to Guinea’s Station, ten miles east of Spotsylvania, and interposed
Federal forces between Lee’s army and Richmond. A rush to a potential next line of defenses ensued for Lee, who withdrew to
a position along the North Anna River. After a fight on May 23, both armies again raced southward, Lee’s army arriving astride
the old battlefields of the Peninsular campaign of 1862 by May 28. Elements of Grant’s army arrived east of Atlee’s Station
and Cold Harbor by May 30 and June 1.

At Cold Harbor Lee’s army of about 59,000 faced Grant’s force of about 108,000. Between Richmond and Petersburg, Maj. Gen.
Benjamin F. Butler’s Army of the James, consisting of 14,600 men, faced Confederate general G. T. Beauregard’s 9,000 soldiers.
Planning to take the offensive, Lee sent Anderson to strike Sheridan at Old Cold Harbor, with disastrous effect: once opposed,
the Confederates scattered in retreat.

The next day both armies moved toward Cold Harbor. In the early morning of June 3, Grant ordered a frontal attack designed
to push Lee to the Chickahominy, but more than seven thousand Yankee soldiers were cut down in less than one hour. “The dead
and dying lay in front of the Confederate lines in triangles, of which the apexes were the bravest men who came nearest to
the breastworks under the withering, deadly fire,” wrote Charles Venable, a staff officer of Lee’s, of the attack. The armies
stubbornly fought from the trenches for the next nine days, with the cost in suffering and casualties fearfully high. “We
are now at Cold Harbor, where we have been since June 1,” wrote Federal colonel Emory Upton on June 5. “On that day we had
a murderous engagement. I say murderous, because we were recklessly ordered to assault the enemy’s intrenchments, knowing
neither their strength nor position. Our loss was very heavy, and to no purpose. Our men are brave, but cannot accomplish
impossibilities.” Despite the savagery of the fighting and the newspaper reports of monstrous casualties, young men were still
anxious to support both armies with their sweat and blood. Richard Corbin, a young Southerner in Paris, ran the blockade to
join his beloved army. “
Veni, Vici,
and as Julius Caesar remarked, we have gone in and won,” he wrote on June 5 from Wilmington. “Thank Heaven I am at last on
Confederate soil, having most successfully passed through that awful ordeal . . . the blockade.”
⁶

On June 12 Grant initiated a movement that would set up the final act of the war. His plan was to shift his base of operations
south of the James River, capture Petersburg, and threaten the last railroad supply line connecting Richmond with the outside
world. To do this he established a second line at Cold Harbor and withdrew under the cover of darkness, sending Maj. Gen.
William F. Smith’s Eighteenth Corps to Bermuda Hundred, on the James River twenty miles south of Richmond, where it arrived
on June 15. The remaining corps also sped southward, and when Lee heard about the Yankee movements, he relocated Anderson
and A. P. Hill south toward Malvern Hill to block an approach toward Richmond.

Having fooled Lee entirely, Grant ordered Smith to attack and capture Petersburg at daybreak on June 15, but he approached
cautiously and reconnoitered the city’s defenses so extensively that an attack was not launched until 7 p.m. He captured two
redans, small gun emplacements, with ease, and by the fall of darkness nothing prevented him from marching straight into Petersburg.
Unduly concerned about possible growing Confederate strength in the area, Smith stayed put, and the opportunity was lost.

On June 16 heavy reinforcements arrived, along with Grant, who ordered an assault at 6 p.m. A light attack on the following
day and a heavier one on June 18 both failed against the strengthening Confederate defenses. “I shall never forget the hurricane
of shot and shell which struck us as we emerged from the belt of trees,” wrote Augustus Brown of the battle on June 18. “The
sound of the whizzing bullets and exploding shells, blending in awful volume, seemed like the terrific hissing of some gigantic
furnace. Men, torn and bleeding, fell headlong from the ranks as the murderous hail swept through the line.”
⁷
The Petersburg operations were transforming into a siege. Indeed, sporadic fighting around a deepening network of trenches—punctuated
by infrequent major attacks—would characterize the remainder of the war on the Petersburg front.

W
HILE
these many developments were transforming the war’s character in Virginia, Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman was transforming
the war another way in Georgia. In May Sherman, who commanded the Military Division of the Mississippi, moved his three armies
southward toward the Army of Tennessee, commanded by Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. He was not alone: Sherman brought the Army of
the Tennessee (24,000 men commanded by Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson), the Army of the Cumberland (61,000 under Maj. Gen. George
H. Thomas), and the Army of the Ohio (13,500 under Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield) against some 50,000 of Johnston’s defenders.
The plan was for Sherman to crush Johnston’s army, move against the rail center of Atlanta, and destroy the heart of Georgia’s
capacity to support wartime operations.

The armies clashed at Rocky Face Ridge, north of Dalton, between May 5 and 7. On May 13 Johnston fell back to Resaca, south
of Dalton, hoping to lure Sherman into a foolish attack. Elements of the armies skirmished at this position for three days
before Johnston again pulled back, allowing Sherman to capture the manufacturing town of Rome. After additional minor engagements,
Johnston retreated to the heavily defended position of Allatoona Pass. Between May 25 and 27 the armies clashed, and Sherman
continued turning movements that forced Johnston southward toward Atlanta. Thereafter, Union soldiers established a supply
depot at Big Shanty—the position from which James Andrews’s raid had departed two years before—and by late June Johnston constructed
a heavy defensive line along Kennesaw Mountain, northwest of Marietta. There, on June 27, a savage frontal assault from Sherman
resulted in bloody casualties, particularly for the Union attackers, who amassed three thousand killed, wounded, and missing.