v1.1.2 / chapter 60 of 93 / 01 oct 09 / greg goebel / public domain
* With winter arriving in earnest, the fighting ground down to a halt while both sides reconsidered their positions. The Federals built Chattanooga into a massive base of supplies for offensive actions into north Georgia come the spring. The Confederates had no such resources, and in the aftermath of the calamity at Chattanooga all Jefferson Davis could do was relieve the discredited Braxton Bragg of command. Davis reluctantly replaced Bragg with Joe Johnston.
With the war shifting heavily in favor of the Union, Abraham Lincoln publicly addressed the issue of how the Confederate states should be treated when they were conquered. The discussion was met with rage and protest in the South, but since the Federals clearly held the upper hand, all the fury meant absolutely nothing.
* When winter came to Chattanooga, it was harsh. Sherman later wrote: "The winter of 1863-64 opened very cold and severe, and it was manifest that military operations must in a measure cease." Sherman and Grant retired to the relative comfort and central location of Nashville.
Once spring came, Chattanooga would be a springboard into Georgia. In preparation for that time the Yankees began to build Chattanooga into a major supply depot for future operations. Bridges were built, tracks were laid, and huge stockpiles of supplies began to accumulate in the town.
There were other matters to attend to, such as the burial of the dead in a new military cemetery in the shadow of Missionary Ridge. The chaplain in charge of the effort asked Thomas if he wanted to arrange the dead in sections by state, as had been done at Gettysburg. Thomas thought it over for a moment and replied: "No, no, mix 'em up, mix 'em up. I'm tired of States' Rights."
Thomas was in excellent spirits. His men had spontaneously handed him the glory of a victory on Missionary Ridge, making him the hero of the hour when others such as Sherman were to have been the stars. Thomas had also had more than adequate revenge on his old commander, Braxton Bragg.
Bragg was completely humiliated by the defeat. However much he could, and did, complain that his men had behaved disgracefully on the field of battle, he could not conceal, even from himself, the fact that they had no confidence in him. The soldiers had mocked his attempts to rally them on Missionary Ridge, and now that they were all consolidated in Dalton, Georgia, the spirit of mockery continued. Bragg wrote Richmond: "I deem it due to the cause and to myself to ask for relief from command and an investigation into the causes of defeat."
This may have been sincere but it may have also been a ploy, with Bragg gambling that the investigation would exonerate him. If so, he lost the bet. On 30 November he was informed that he was relieved from command and told that Lieutenant-General Hardee would take his place. Whether this was precisely what Braxton Bragg had expected is difficult to say, but he certainly used the opportunity to fire some parting shots, writing Richmond: "The disaster admits of no palliation, and is justly disparaging on me as a commander. I trust, however, you my find upon full investigation that the fault is not entirely mine ... " He then proceeded to suggest those among his lieutenants, particularly Generals Breckinridge and Cheatham, where the fault could also be placed.
It was what might be expected of him. Within a few days, Bragg was on a train rolling east towards Richmond, where he had been ordered to report so the Confederate government could figure out what to do with him.
* The resignation of Bragg left Jefferson Davis with the problem of filling the vacated position. Hardee refused to take the job except on a temporary basis. Davis offered it to Robert E. Lee, but Lee politely refused and suggested that Beauregard be offered the job. Davis didn't like that idea at all, and also didn't like suggestions from others that Joe Johnston might fit the requirement.
Unfortunately, disagreeable choices were the only ones Davis had left. This applied not just to the selection of generals, but to the entire Southern war effort. The discomfort of his position was emphasized by an address given to the Confederate Congress on 8 December 1863. In his speech, Davis could point to few military successes, none of them were comparable to the defeats inflicted at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga. Hope of foreign intervention was completely dead, and the Confederate government was penniless. The single hope Davis could offer was that continued Southern resistance to the Union power might make the Northern people grow weary of the bloodshed. He appealed to Southern patriotism to carry on the fight.
Davis then turned his attention back to the selection of a permanent commander for the Confederate Army of the Tennessee. On 9 December, Robert E. Lee received a request from Davis to come immediately to Richmond. The general went to the capital, dreading that he was going to be given that command whether he liked it or not. To Lee's great relief, Davis only wanted him on hand to obtain the benefit of his counsel. Davis had finally been forced to face the fact that there were really only two candidates, Beauregard and Joe Johnston.
Davis hated the idea of appointing either, but both had their advocates.
Confederate Secretary of War James Seddon was fond of Joe Johnston, though
even he admitted that Johnston's lack of aggressiveness during the siege of
Vicksburg had been disappointing. Johnston's critics felt that the only
thing the general knew how to do was retreat. The debate lasted a week.
Johnston won on a vote. Although those who voted against him detested the
idea of putting him in command, they couldn't propose any substitute. On 16
December, Seddon wired Johnston, who was at Meridian, Mississippi:
YOU WILL TURN OVER THE IMMEDIATE COMMAND OF THE
ARMY OF MISSISSIPPI TO LIEUTENANT GENERAL POLK
AND PROCEED TO DALTON AND ASSUME COMMAND OF THE
ARMY OF TENNESSEE.
Johnston would receive complete instructions on his arrival in Dalton.
* Lee spent five more days inspecting Richmond's defenses. It gave him a chance to see his family again and to spend a little time at such social events as could be assembled in that threadbare season. Despite the military reverses, Lee was still rightly the hero of the Confederate cause, and he was treated like a demigod everywhere he went. On 21 December, he left Richmond to be with his men for Christmas. His family had to take second priority to his soldiers, and his family understood that.
There had been some excitement on the battlefront over the previous two weeks, with Union Brigadier General William Averell leading a column of cavalry on a fast-moving raid into Virginia behind rebel lines. It was more of a nuisance than a real threat to the rebels, but the Federals succeeded in doing some damage, and worse Confederate cavalry never managed to touch them. Jeb Stuart could have only been humiliated and angry at the once-contemptible Union cavalry doing what they pleased in his own back yard.
Averell and his men had made their escape on 21 December, and now all was quiet for the season. The soldiers on both sides of the Rapidan took life easy and arranged amusements as best they could with the resources they had.
Back in Richmond, in the absence of Robert E. Lee, the city's society made do with lesser heroes. John Bell Hood was up and around, or at least as well as he could be with his right leg gone and with his shattered arm still in a sling; he would never regain full use of that arm. Hood looked heroic. The ladies fawned over him, all the more so because he was unmarried. He accompanied Jefferson Davis on inspections, and Longstreet had recommended his promotion to lieutenant general, with the recommendation quickly accepted by the Confederate Congress. All that could not have been a fair trade for his injuries, but it undoubtedly softened their pain.
Another hero wasn't in Richmond for Christmas, but soon would be. John Hunt Morgan and six of his officers had managed to dig their way out of the Ohio State Penitentiary on the night of 27 November. Dressed in civilian clothes, they took a train from right outside the prison in Columbus and were in Cincinnati before anyone knew they were gone. The fugitives crossed the Ohio river, obtained horses from sympathetic Kentuckians, and rode south as fast as they could. A Federal patrol captured two of the group near Louisville, but by Christmas Morgan was home with his wife in Danville, Virginia. A grand reception was planned for him in Richmond on 2 January.
These were only bright spots in an otherwise gloomy picture. Richmond's high society managed to scrape together the niceties for the celebrations, but luxuries were scarce and beyond the means of all but the wealthiest. Worse, only the blindest optimist could see any hope for the future in the Confederacy's desperate military situation.
* Joe Johnston left Meridian, Mississippi, by train on 22 December, after arranging transfer of his command to General Polk, and arrived in Dalton, Georgia, on 26 December. On his arrival, he received and read his instructions from War Secretary Seddon and President Davis. They both encouraged him to take the offensive and did everything they could to proclaim their confidence in him and his ability to turn the unfortunate Army of Tennessee around. They were trying to be tactful and mend fences. Johnston wasn't interested in returning the favor and flatly replied that taking the offensive was out of the question, detailing at length the impossibility of the task. This was realistic, but it was also exactly the attitude that Jefferson Davis had expected. Relations between the two men immediately went back to their normal frosty state.
Johnston's arrival in Dalton demonstrated his touchy attitude toward his superiors, as well as his kindly attitude toward his subordinates. He improved rations, got his men better clothing, and instituted a system of furloughs. Most importantly, he mingled continuously among his men, shaking hands and speaking to them as if they were his own family, which they were as far as Johnston was concerned.
He could be a stern father on occasion, ordering the execution of soldiers who would simply not get with the program. They were stood in front of open graves with the troops lined up to watch, with the sinners shot and buried on the spot. Johnston took such measures only when necessary. After enduring Braxton Bragg, who was much more enthusiastic about the stick than the carrot, the men thought they had died and gone to heaven. They cared for Johnston as he cared for them. One day after Johnston's arrival, General Cheatham took some of his men and a regimental band over to Johnston's tent, and serenaded him as a welcome. Johnston came out to thank them, and Cheatham introduced him by patting him gently on the head and announcing: "Boys, this is Old Joe."
* Although the Confederacy's difficulties might have seemed overwhelming to most, some rebels didn't give a damn. One was Bedford Forrest, now a freshly-minted major general. He had arrived in Northern Mississippi in mid-November with only about 300 men. This was a ridiculously small command for someone of his rank, but that wasn't really a problem: Forrest was perfectly capable of building his own command as it suited him. At the end of November he left Northern Mississippi, taking his men behind Federal lines into West Tennessee to recruit volunteers and collect supplies. He returned by New Year's Eve with a total of about 3,500 men, plus many pigs and livestock, as well as forty wagonloads of bacon.
The troops were of questionable value. Nearly all the men in West Tennessee who had any strong will to fight for the Confederacy were either in the ranks or were now dead or maimed, leaving only deserters and other faint-hearts. General Sherman, on hearing about Forrest's recruiting drive, dismissed it: "Forrest may cavort about that country as much as he pleases. Every conscript they now catch will require a good man to watch."
Sherman still knew better than to underestimate Bedford Forrest. If anyone could make good troops out of such poor material, it would be Forrest, and in fact Forrest understood precisely what he was dealing with. Despite his lack of formal military background, he had a natural understanding of drill and discipline, backed up by thrashings if it came to that, plus firing squads when called for. In itself, such treatment would have earned him as much respect as it had earned Braxton Bragg. The difference was that Forrest was a tiger, a fighter and a winner, and he had the ability to instill that tiger spirit into his men. He taught them that they were an elite, more than a match for any Yankees: they felt like warriors, they were warriors.
* The same day that Jefferson Davis addressed the Southern Congress, 8 December, Abraham Lincoln addressed its Northern counterpart. The Congress now included members from a new state, West Virginia: the Virginia counties that had "dismembered" themselves from the state of Virginia were now a state in their own right, officially established in May.
Lincoln spoke from a position of political and military strength. The President commented that Union military successes had led to renewed public enthusiasm for the pro-war Republican ideology. In the recent by-elections, candidates of the "National Union Party" -- basically a temporary marriage of convenience between Republicans and pro-war Democrats, named to imply that opponents were of the "Anti-Union Party" -- swept the polls. To the satisfaction of the Lincoln Administration, Clement Vallandigham was resoundingly defeated in his quest for the governorship of Ohio.
The Federal military situation was so positive that Lincoln did not bother to linger on it in his address. It was unnecessary to do more than summarize the improvements in the military situation since the last time that the President had addressed Congress.
Of course, Lincoln would have hardly been a politician had he not suggested that his Emancipation Proclamation had been a major factor in the success of the Federal war effort: "Of those who were slaves at the beginning of the rebellion, full one hundred thousand are now in United States military service, about one half of which actually bear arms in the ranks; thus giving the double advantage of taking so much labor from the insurgent cause, and supplying the places which otherwise must be filled with so many white men. So far as tested, it is difficult to say they are not as good soldiers as any."
The President then listed other matters of administration, such as the budget; foreign relations; immigration; the Homestead Law; and relations with the Indian tribes; and then moved on to the heart of the address, which concerned the processes by which the rebel states would be readmitted to the Union. Lincoln had been considering this matter in increasing depth as Federal control had stretched over the South. His latest thoughts on the matter were contained in an appendix to his address titled: "A Proclamation Of Amnesty And Reconstruction".
The document suggested that all rebels should be granted amnesty if they took an oath of loyalty to the US government, and proclaimed their support of the Emancipation Proclamation and all Federal laws on slavery. Senior Confederate government officials, military officers, turncoat US government officials, and those guilty of war crimes were to be denied amnesty. Once 10% of a state's citizenry, the number being determined by the 1860 census, took the oath, the state would be readmitted to the Union as if nothing had happened. The Federal government would repudiate all Confederate war debts.
This was not a strictly theoretical discussion. Lincoln had already written Nathaniel Banks in Louisiana, suggesting that state might make a good place to perform an experiment along such lines. In the letter, Lincoln also made some necessarily vague but optimistic comments on the mechanisms of coexistence between white and black in the new post-slavery order.
Reconstruction was a controversial issue. Such Democrats as remained in Congress found the President's ideas radical and harsh. They believed that the Union should be restored with no change in the status quo as prevailed before the war. This was unrealistic given that the clashes of armies had already effectively destroyed the status quo, and the Democrats were a minority anyway.
In contrast, the Radical Republicans in Congress didn't think the President's ideas were harsh enough. To them, the wayward states were to be treated like the military conquests they were, or soon would be. If the South was to be readmitted to the Union, it would be in a form acceptable to the Radical Republicans. Their ideas congealed later in a bill promoted by the fiery Senator Ben Wade of Ohio and his opposite number in the House of Representatives, the equally resolute Congressman Henry Winter Davis of Maryland. The legislation raised the proportion of voters taking the loyalty oath to 50%; specified that military governors run the state until state conventions drafted a new constitution banning slavery, as well as repudiating secession and Confederate war debts; and gave amnesty only to those who could prove they hadn't willingly supported the rebellion.
The Wade-Davis bill passed both houses of Congress easily in May. The bill would come before Lincoln in early July and he would refuse to sign it. He replied that it was an attempt by Congress to usurp executive powers, and besides the bill was an attempt to address "a matter of too much importance to be swallowed in that way." Although Lincoln did nothing further to provoke controversy over the matter, the pocket veto was enough. The Radicals were furious, and Wade and Davis retaliated a month after the rejection by publishing an angry manifesto against Lincoln in the New York TRIBUNE, suggesting that he restrict his actions to the administration of the country and leave the making of laws to Congress.
It cannot be said that Lincoln didn't also want a South rearranged to suit his ideals: he simply saw no way to attain it by dictate. If the Union were to be restored, it was incompatible with the principles on which the nation was based to suggest that the Southern states be controlled by military force indefinitely. Such a measure would breed greater hatred among the South's citizens, and make the healing process even longer and more difficult.
For the moment, Lincoln did not address a particularly thorny question. Black people were to be freed from slavery, but did that imply that black men should be allowed to vote? To give black men the right to vote was to take another great step. Of course at the time, no women, white or black, could vote. But Lincoln realized that with a hundred thousand black men serving in the ranks of his great army, it would be unreasonable to deny them their rights as citizens while they were bearing the obligations of service to their government. Besides, they would probably vote Republican anyway.
He was wise not to push the issue for the moment. Race, as much or more then as now, was a fine subject on which people could posture, and Attorney General Edward Bates commented on the advocates of the black man in Congress:
BEGIN QUOTE:
The Negro is ever uppermost in their thoughts, and is sure to give a sable tinge to every subject of legislation that comes before either house. And yet, strange to say, there has not been a single proposition calculated in the smallest degree to give any substantial advantage to the freedmen, by establishing their status, and giving them locality, stability, and consistent social relations. The subject is only used as a topic (very sensitive) for electioneering -- not at all for the good of the Negro.
END QUOTE
* Whatever was said by Northern politicians about "reconstruction", the discussion didn't play well in the South. Lincoln's ideas assumed without question the military subjugation of the rebel states and the extinction of the rebel government. Although the Confederate House of Representatives suggested a policy of "silent and unmitigated contempt" towards "that miserable and contemptible despot, Lincoln", Southern rhetoric on the matter was to absolutely no surprise loud, shrill, and enraged. Lincoln could have hardly have expected otherwise.
Governor Zebulon Vance, never a Confederate hard-liner by any means, wrote Jefferson Davis that month, suggesting that Davis seek terms with the Federals. Even if they were rejected, Vance reasoned, that would increase the solidarity of the Southern people in their fight against the Union. Davis managed to choke down his exasperation and replied with strained patience. Envoys had been sent out, only to be sent back again by the Lincoln Administration, which did not formally recognize the legitimacy of the Confederacy. Davis had put out peace feelers in his messages to the Confederate Congress, only to have them ignored.
The reason that the Federals were invading the South to begin with was the Northern refusal to admit the legitimacy of the dissolution of the Union. In turn, Davis refused to accept the return of the South to the old flag. There was no halfway ground between North and South on this issue, and there was really nothing the two sides could say to each other. One had to win the war and the other had to lose it. Hopes that the South could win were faint and continuously growing fainter, and both sides knew it.
* Winter weather made sure that there would be no real fighting for a while. The major problems for some commands were to simply keep warm and fed. This was a particular problem in the mountains of east Tennessee, for both Confederate and Yankee. Longstreet's command in Rossville was short on everything and their condition was completely wretched, aggravated by the occasional attacks of Unionist guerrillas. The "bushwhackers" took no prisoners, and when the Confederates could catch them, they returned the favor.
The condition of Federal troops in Knoxville was almost as bad, dangling as they were at the end of a very long supply line in mountainous territory. They were no longer under Burnside's command. He had been bitterly criticised for his failures to come to the aid of Rosecrans and to finish off Longstreet; disgusted, he had asked to be relieved in early December. Command passed through a few hands to Phil Sheridan.
At the end of December, Grant himself visited Knoxville to see what could be done to help the soldiers there, and pushed through the construction of a rail link to the swelling supply center at Chattanooga. The circumstances of Yankee and Confederate troops in the mountains were not really equivalent. The destitution of the Yankees was a temporary thing, while the rebels were scraping the bottom of the barrel.
